Christian Business Concepts
Christian Business Concepts
Stop Planting Weeds And Start Planting Oak Trees: How Great Leaders Think
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Ready to trade “good enough” for godly excellence? We dive into how thought patterns shape leadership and why shifting your mindset is the most leveraged move you can make. Starting with Proverbs 23:7 and the call to renew the mind, we unpack the barriers that keep leaders stuck: comfort zone gravity, scarcity programming, fear of looking stupid, short-term scoreboard addiction, the lone-wolf myth, and confusion around servant leadership. Each one poses as wisdom but drains courage, creativity, and impact.
We then lay out seven ways great leaders think. First, think big because God is bigger, and size your vision to His capacity rather than current resources. Second, put people first, trusting that profit follows genuine value and that serving employees multiplies service to customers. Third, think without lines by challenging assumptions and returning to first principles, the approach that fuels breakthroughs rather than incremental gains. Fourth, think long term and measure success by transformed lives and durable culture, not just quarterly optics. Fifth, choose abundance over scarcity to unlock collaboration and higher standards. Sixth, be a lifelong learner with an open mind and a bias for “teach me, show me.” Seventh, practice stewardship over ownership, treating money, people, and opportunities as God’s and leading with integrity in the small things.
To make it practical, we share a focused 30-day challenge: set one 10x goal and tell three people, deliver daily acts of unexpected value, break one sacred-cow rule that holds you back, and ask five people how you can serve them better—then act. Along the way, reflection prompts help you assess whether today’s choices will earn your 80-year-old self’s thanks and whether you operated from abundance. Subscribe, share with a friend who leads, and leave a review to help more Christian professionals build courageous, people-centered, stewardship-driven leadership.
Wonderful job, Kelly, and welcome everyone to this week's Christian Business Concepts Podcast. I'm your host, Harold Melby, and I'm so excited that you've decided to download and listen to this week's podcast. You know, CBC is a completely free resource to anybody who wants to grow as a Christian business leader, a department head, a manager, or anybody else who wants to find true godly success in their careers and even in their personal life. So each week we discuss business topics and we apply biblical principles to those uh topics and try to help you find that true godly success. And uh today it's it's my hope uh that as you listen, that you'll be encouraged, that you'll be enlightened, and you'll be empowered to be that godly leader that God needs you to be. Now, this week I want to give a big shout out to Hampstead, North Carolina for having so many downloads this week. We appreciate you folks there in North Carolina, right here in the U.S. And we appreciate all of you around the world uh for making us a part of your day and of your growth program. We thank you. We appreciate you. Uh thank you so much. You know, this past week we had our largest uh uh down amount of uh largest amount of downloads of any week that we've ever had, and and I'm so appreciative of that. And you guys are helping us to grow uh because you're sharing this podcast with four or five other people, and you're also posting links to this podcast on your Facebook pages, your LinkedIn pages. Thank you so much. I I appreciate that very much. But more importantly, I think it's it's just a part of what we do because we're trying to reach people, not just with the gospel, but we're trying to reach people and and businesses to help them become godly businesses. That's such uh a thing that that is our main thing. That's our heart, that's our goal here at CBC uh and everything that we do. So we're so thankful to you. Thank you very, very, very much for what you're doing. Uh, today I want to talk about um how great uh and very successful business leaders think. I want to talk about that for a few minutes. It's so important because you know, Proverbs 23, 7 says, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Let me say it again. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. So, in other words, how you think uh is very, very critical. It's important. The Bible even says that we're to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, that we're to be transformed, the Bible says, through the renewing of our mind. Our thinking is so important, our thoughts are so important. So I want to talk a little bit about how great leaders think. Uh, because great business or great Christian business leaders don't just think differently from the world, they think differently uh from most Christians in business. If they are a very successful, very great business leader, they typically think different even than Christian business uh leaders, you know. So I want to talk about some obstacles, and then I want to talk about uh the ways that great people and great leaders think from what I have studied and what I have found. Okay, so first of all, I want to talk about these obstacles that keep most leaders from thinking like the great leaders that are out there. And then we're gonna talk about what these obstacles are, and we're gonna talk about how to get rid of them, how to destroy them, how to keep them from holding us back. You know, uh the the real reasons, you know, these are some of the real reasons that 99% of leaders say stuck. They stay stuck in average thinking. And if you're going to be super successful, if you're gonna have that godly success, then you have to get out of that. You have to get out of average thinking. You know what the word average is, you've heard me say it a million times, and that is average is the worst of the best and the best of the worst. Well, that's not what I'm looking for. I know you don't want to be that. I don't want to be that. So um, you know, it's important. You know, even people that have been uh to all kinds of different conferences and read all kinds of different books, you have to get out of that average thinking. You have to choose. You have to choose. So let's talk about some of these obstacles. Well, first of all, the first one is the comfort zone gravity. What I call comfort zone gravity. It pulls you back, it keeps you down, uh, keeps you pulled down. And so we call it the comfort zone gravity. And so thinking big for some people, it feels risky. It feels like it's going to be expensive, it feels like it's going to be exhausting. And so staying small to them, it just kind of feels safe. It feels very uh very familiar. You know, I remember when I when I took over as senior pastor of my first church, and there were about 20 people there in the church when we got there. And uh I remember uh one of the people that came up to me after I'd been there for about three months, and they said, We're probably gonna leave the church. And I said, I am so sorry. What have I done something to offend you? What's going on? I'm so sorry. If I've done something to offend you, I apologize. And they said, No, no, no, it's not you at all. But what we've listened to, and we begin, you begin to share your vision and your heart for what you felt like God brought you here for. You really want to grow the church. And we like it small like this. We like it where we know everybody and we can talk to everybody. And so that's, you know, we're we're not, we we we don't want to grow. We don't want to be in a bigger church. And I said, okay, well, let me just take you down this path here and let's talk about this for a minute. I said, What do you think is the attitude that Christ would have with regard to if he came in to pastor a church? Do you think he'd want to keep it small or do you think he'd want to grow that church? And they looked at me really funny and they said, We completely understand what you're trying to say. We're gonna have to think about it. Well, the short story is they never left. They were there until the day that I left, and they were excited that the church grew because they began to realize that their thinking was not just holding them back. It was whole it would hold the church back, especially if they had a church full or not full, if all 20 people thought like they did. So it's a comfort zone gravity that we that I call it. So the brain, our brain is wired to conserve energy and avoid pain. So if we uh think that if we think big or or or we think in a different way, it feels risky or or maybe it's going to be exhausting. Well, our brain is wired to conserve energy, to protect, to avoid vein, uh to avoid pain. So therefore, it's hard to break out of that thinking. You know, it's like it's like staying at a really warm bed on a cold morning. Uh, you know, we're winter here right now, and so in the mornings it's kind of cold uh in the bedroom. We kind of turn that heat down while we're sleeping. And uh so there are times you just don't want to get out from underneath the warm blankets. You know, that short-term comfort, it's so strong that it overrides the long-term regret of, well, I shouldn't have slept 15 minutes later. I got too much to do today. I can't believe I slept in. I need to get up and get out. Well, it was because of that short-term comfort. It just felt so good to be under that nice, warm, toasty uh blankets that you have on your bed and you just didn't want to get up. So, what do you have to do? Well, first you have to make the cost of staying small, you got to make it hurt more than what the perceived cost is of going big, if I can say it that way. So write down what your life and your organization will look like in 10 years. And if you keep thinking small, and then write down what it would look like if you stop thinking small. All right, the next one is scarcity, scarcity programming. In other words, you know, people genuinely believe there's only one pie and someone else is eating most of it. So they just don't think there's anything there. In other words, it, you know, some of these root causes can be, you know, maybe money doesn't grow on trees. They've heard that their whole life. Money doesn't grow on trees. You know, we're we're not, hey, I'm not the richest man in the world. You can't be spent, you know, we hear all these things through our childhood, and we're we we get raised into a place of we think scarcity. We we don't think abundance, we think scarcity. And uh, you know, maybe you've been in some toxic workplaces that, you know, I know a company right now, I'm not gonna mention the name, but I know a company right now that's approaching one billion, one billion with a B, one billion dollars in revenue, and yet every major purpose within that company has to flow through the CEO. That's ridiculous. You're putting a stranglehold on your people. Look, you can set boundaries, you can set limitations, you can do that, but every decision on any kind of major purchase, and I'm talking about anything over$5,000. Not even that, it's it's less than that. I take that back. It's less than that. So anytime there's somebody that needs to spend three to five thousand dollars, it's got to go through the CEO of a company that's almost a billion-dollar company. Ridiculous. I'm sorry, it's ridiculous, and it's poor leadership. But people have that scarcity mindset. You know, it's like, it's like, it's like this. It's like playing musical chairs in a room with a hundred chairs and yet there's only 10 people playing. People still panic when the music stops. You got 100 chairs, you got 10 people, you know. So it it's this good enough trap. You know, we're it's good enough. It's it's good enough. We're we're already in the top 10 to 20 percent of their industry. So, you know, they don't have this urgency, right? Um, and so, you know, success becomes the enemy of greatness. You know, I've said that many times. Success becomes the enemy of greatness because you get successful in a in a certain way and you just stop. You get comfortable, you say, that's good enough. That's good enough. I can't expect anything more, though you should be expecting more. You know, so hang around people that are 10 times ahead of you. Hang around those kind of people. And uh, you know, when you get into proximity of those kinds of people, it'll really help you kill complacency. All right, let's look at another one. Fear of looking stupid. And this is no more than just ego protection. You're just trying to protect ego. Uh, you know, thinking without lines means asking dumb questions. I'm sorry. You have to ask them, and sometimes they're dumb questions. You don't know it's a dumb question until you ask. You know, sometimes you fail publicly. That's okay. Uh, you got to challenge those sacred cows uh, you know, that are out there. Um, you know, some people they have their identity. It's tied to being that smart one. Uh, you know, well, forget about having your identity as the smart one and begin to change it to the identity of that one that says, the growing one. That person's always growing. Yeah, he makes mistakes, she makes mistakes. Uh uh, you know, things happen, but they're growing. They're growing, they're getting better, they're getting better, they're growing. Uh, you know, uh some people would rather be the captain of a sinking ship than a rookie on a rocket ship. You know, I don't want to be the captain of a sinking ship. I don't care. That's not I don't have that kind of an ego. I'm not looking for that. Uh, I want to be growing, uh, and I'd rather be the rookie on a rocket ship, you know. Uh, but that's just that's just my thoughts. Um, you know, uh maybe you need to adopt this different mantra. You know, hey, I'd rather look stupid for six months than to stay stupid for 60 years. You know, think about that. So, all right, let's move on. Let's move on. All right, so another one is short-term, what I call short-term scoreboard addiction. Uh, you know, Wall Street, boards, bosses, social media, uh, they they reward quarterly results, but not decade-long legacy. So they're looking for an external validation. It's it's louder than the internal conviction that they have. You know, it's like they're sprinting a marathon while they're checking their stopwatch every 10 seconds. It's a marathon. You don't sprint in a marathon. We're looking for longevity. Don't look for the short-term scores. Don't look for the short-term here. What you're looking for is you're looking for the long game. You're looking for the legacy scorecard. You know, um, you know, a legacy scorecard, you you kind of review monthly, uh, that that you you measure how people are developed, how culture is built, how lives are changed. You know, you're not looking for quick scores. All right, the another is lone wolf myth, the lone wolf myth. In other words, they believe that great leaders figure it out themselves instead of barring on ladders that other people have already built to help you go to that next level. They're always got to do it theirself. It's kind of like, you know, I'm gonna do it myself, I'm gonna fix it myself. And sometimes when you try to do things without getting any help, you try to do things all on your own, eventually what happens, I just learned this today. Somebody said this today. When you try to do it yourself without getting any help and you try to do it on your own, sometimes you wind up paying the ignorance tax. The tax because of ignorance. And it's it just it's not worth it sometimes. It's okay to get help. It's okay to find out from other people. Uh, the next is uh servant leadership misunderstanding. Now, what happens is they confuse serving with being a doormat or being a people pleaser. That's not servant leadership. You're not being a doormat. If you're being a doormat, you got bigger problems. It has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with leadership. If you if you think that that being a servant leader is being a doormat, then you you got to find some other issues and try to find out why you think that. You know, they've seen weak leaders, and what's happened is those weak leaders sometimes will use servant or servant leadership as the excuse for them being spineless. I mean, I'm just being honest, okay? I'm just being completely honest. And so they they they think that if they are carrying somebody else's bags, um, you know, when when when the real servant is building the airport so everybody can fly. I'm not talking about being the guy that carries everybody's bags. I'm talking about the servant leader who's building the airport so everybody can fly. Um, you know, if you study Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, and then the next moment you see him flipping tables over and and running people out of the temple with a with a whip because they had turned that into a marketplace. So yeah, Jesus exemplified servant leadership, but Jesus wasn't a pushover. Jesus wasn't a doormat. He wasn't a people pleaser. He loved people, he wanted to add value to people. So true servant leaders serve people by raising the standard, not by lowering it. So every single one of these obstacles is a lie. And it's it's wearing a mask of wisdom. You know, you think that's just wisdom, all the things we we've talked about, but they're a lie. Great thinking isn't about intelligence, it's really about courage. The moment that you decide that the pain of staying average is greater than the pain of changing, then these obstacles are going to crumble. Okay? So what do you got to do? You got to name it, you got to face it, and then you got to kill it. Which one of these seven are holding you back the most? That you have to deal with. Name it, face it, and kill it. All right? All right. So let's go right now into the ways that great leaders and very successful leaders think. Number one, they think big because their God is bigger. I'm just being honest with you. They refuse small visions because they serve a great God. They serve a God that can do anything. You know, Galatians 3.20 says, God who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. And I can imagine a lot. But you know, the vision that God gives me and I have been given by Him, it's greater than anything that Harold Milby could do in and of itself. And that's what I'm looking for. I want that vision to be big. I've had people tell me, I've had family members tell me, close family members tell me, you just think everything has to be big. You think it has to be this big, grandiose plan. No, that's not what I don't feel that way at all. But I don't want to limit God, and God's a big God, so I can believe for great and big and mighty things. You know, most people will plant flowers that bloom for one season. But great leaders plant oak trees that take 70 years to mature and shelter thousands for hundreds of years. That's the difference. They think big. Leaders, great leaders think big. So don't let today's resources limit what your possibilities are for tomorrow. Don't look at it that way. Because God owns a cattle on a thousand hills. Don't be don't worry about resources. You start moving forward with the plan that God gives you. So great godly leaders in business think big. They think big. All right, number two, they think other people first because people matter. And they matter to God for sure. You know, profits important. Don't get me wrong, profits important, but people are eternal. You know, so they they, you know, these kinds of leaders they lead with like Matthew 20, 26 through 28. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. That's what that passage says. Great leaders like that, they ask, how can I add value to others before they ask what's in it for me? They know profit and influence always follows value that you place on others. Always. You know, uh uh Cheryl uh Bachelder from Popeyes, she was a CEO for Popeyes for a long time. During her tenure as C A CEO, uh, the the Popeye stock. It went up three times. Their stock values went up three times. And she said this. She said, the most powerful thing a leader can do is decide to serve the people who serve the customers. So when your employees, when you serve your employees and you show them that you value them, guess what? They're going to turn around and they're going to show the customers how much they value them. That's how it works. I promise you. I've seen it and I've lived it. All right, number three, they think outside the lines. They think, they don't even think outside the lines. They think without lines. See, because the gospel erases lines, it erases industry norms, organizational charts. You know, we we don't restrict, you know, as godly leaders, as godly business leaders, we don't restrict. You know, Colossians 3 and 11 says, here there is no Gentile or Jew, slave or free, but Christ is in all and is in all, is all and is in all. You know, so, you know, great thinkers, great leaders, they refuse to accept artificial boundaries. You know, some people they color inside the lines, but great leaders rip the paper in half and they start drawing on the table. You know, they don't accept those boundaries. They don't accept those boundaries at all. Uh, so you need to ask yourself, what rule, what tradition, what assumption are we blindly accepting right now that's holding us back? You know, the example of Elon Musk, you know, with SpaceX, everybody knew that rockets cost about 60 to$100 million each. But Musk asked the question: what is a rocket made out of? Well, aerospace great aluminum alloys, titanium, copper, carbon fiber. What do these raw materials cost on the London metal exchange? And the answer was 2% of the typical price that was being charged to build a rocket. So what was the result? The result was that SpaceX built the Falcon 9, forget this,$3.9 million in raw materials. And he disrupted a century-old industry. So he thought outside, he thought without lines. He didn't think outside the lines, he thought without lines. You know, uh uh Mary Barra, who was the GM or was the CEO for GM for a long time, she said that the biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that's changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. So that's important. And to do that, you've got to challenge the norms. So that's what great leaders do. Uh another thing that they do, uh, they think long-term. They think legacy. They don't short, they don't think short-term ego. They think long-term. Uh, you know, they make decisions today that their 80-year-old self will thank them for. You know, it's like it's like average leaders build monuments to themselves, but great leaders build bridges others will walk across long after they're gone. That's the difference. Those are great thinkers. They think eternal ROI. They don't just think quarterly numbers, they think eternal ROI. What is the eternal return on investment? They measure success by transformed lives, changed lives, stored treasure in heaven. That's what they measure it by. You know, a great example of Jeff Bezos, 1997. He sent out a shareholder letter. He still sends it out every year. Decisions are made with a, he says this, decisions are made with a long time horizon that most companies, you know, don't do. We will be misunderstood for long periods of time. We are okay with that. So, in other words, what he was saying was that look, I'm looking long term. On the short term short term, it may not look really good, but stick with me because eventually you're going to see what I'm saying. You know, he quoted, he was quoted as saying this. He said, if everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you're competing against a lot of people. But if you're willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you're now competing against a fraction of those people. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue. So well said. You know, Netflix had to kill its DVD business to push the streaming and the stock crashed 75%. But now, look at them. They're now worth hundreds of billions of dollars. But people misunderstood them that they were looking at the long, they were playing the long game. You know, planting oak trees that take 70 years to mature is one thing because everybody else is planting fast-growing weeds. Can I say it like that? All right. Next is uh they think abundance. They think abundance. You know, the Bible says in John 10 and 10, it says, I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly. You know, scarcity is a lie. It's an absolute lie. They think abundance, they don't think scarcity. They believe that there's plenty of success, there's plenty of money, there's plenty of opportunity to go around. So they don't, they, they, they don't think that way. They don't. So we've got a couple of others here. I want to get these done. So number number six, they think continually. They're a lifelong learner. They think that way. They're allergic to the phrase, oh, I already know that. You know, their favorite sentence is teach me, show me. You know, in other words, uh, you know, their mind is like a parachute. Uh, it only work, it only works when it's open. They never fold it up and put it in the closet. You know, it's like a parachute. But parachute only works when it's open. Your mind only works at that level when it's open. So you've got to be willing, you've got to be willing to be a lifelong learner. I never, ever want to quit learning, ever. There are those of you today that are just starting out in business and you may be young and you may feel like you don't have the experience that I have. I promise you, if I could spend 20 minutes with you, I'm gonna learn something from you. I guarantee you I would. Because I want to be a lifelong learner and you can learn so many things from so many different people. And then number seven, they think stewardship, not ownership. Every dollar, every employee, every customer, every opportunity, they see it as belonging to God. They're just managers. They're just managers. You know, Luke 16, 10 and 11 says, whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. In Luke chapter 16, we were talking about the stewards. You know, if you're sloppy with a hundred dollars, don't expect God to hand you a million. I mean, it's it's just that simple if I can use that analogy. So it's important. It's so, so very, very important. They think stewardship. So ask yourself, how big am I thinking right now? Whose success am I actively celebrating this week? What line or maybe what rule am I refusing to accept? You ask yourself, will my 80-year-old self thank me for today's decisions? Did I operate from scarcity or abundance today? What was the last thing I learned that made me uncomfortable? Who did I intentionally serve today without expecting anything back? Great leaders don't have bigger heads, they have they have bigger hearts, they have bigger vision, and they have bigger thinking. So here's a 30-day challenge for you. Here's a 30-day challenge to think like a great leader. Number one, the week one, think big. Write one goal that's 10 times bigger and tell three people about it. Tell three people about it. Week two, think other people. Do one expect unexpected act of massive value for a team member or customer every day. Week three, think without lines, identify and break one sacred cow rule in your organization in week three. And in week four, think servant first. Ask five people, how can I serve you today? How can I serve you better? And do exactly what they ask. See, great leaders are not born. Great leaders are not born, great leaders are built, they're transformed, uh, they transform their thought over time. So now you've got a good blueprint. So you need to go out, think differently, and watch everything else change. That the the world needs Holy Spirit-filled, bold, generous, eternally minded leaders who run companies the way that Jesus would if he were a CEO. And that's you. Think that way and watch heaven invade earth through your leadership. And remember, Colossians 3.23, whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord. Lord, I thank you right now, Lord, for the people who have downloaded this podcast and listened so intently today. Lord, I pray that you begin to transform the people who have listened today to become great thinkers, big thinkers. Lord, I thank you and I praise you for it. Lord, let them implement these principles, Lord, in their lives in the name of Jesus and bring them true godly success. Amen and amen. Well, we've run out of time this week. Thank you so much again for being a part of Christian Business Concepts Podcast. And again, we appreciate it. And so until next time, remember, Jesus is Lord and He wants you blessed.