ISI Brotherhood Podcast

148. Lead Like a Maverick: Rule-Breaking Strategies That Work

• Aaron Walker

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We’re pulling this one back into focus because too many leaders are stuck playing a game they were never called to play.

Let’s be honest—most of us aren’t drowning in a lack of knowledge. We’re drowning in repetition. Same strategies. Same formulas. Same recycled systems. Everyone handing you a blueprint for success… that may have nothing to do with your assignment.

What if you weren’t designed to fit the mold?
What if you were built to break it?

A true maverick isn’t chaotic or careless. He’s anchored. He’s convicted. He refuses to conform when conformity compromises the mission. He values calling over credentials, obedience over optics, and purpose over popularity.

But let’s address the real barrier: fear.
Not fear of failure — fear of regret. The kind that whispers, “What if it would’ve worked?” Strong leaders would rather risk wisely than lie awake wondering what could have been. That doesn’t mean recklessness. It means calculated courage — testing, learning, aligning with your spouse, and deciding in advance what you’re willing to risk for the vision.

Maverick leadership also demands expanded perspective. Growth doesn’t come from echo chambers. It comes from exposing yourself to ideas outside your comfort zone — sharpening your thinking and strengthening your edge.

If you’ve felt the tension between blending in and standing firm, this conversation is your wake-up call.

Your legacy won’t be built by how well you followed someone else’s system.
 It will be forged by the courage you had to lead differently.

Key Takeaways:

  • Think like a maverick, not a manager.
  • Identify where you may be suffocating in sameness.
  • Count the real cost of leading differently.
  • Apply rule-breaking strategies with wisdom.
  • Balance bold vision with disciplined risk.
  • Lead from purpose, not pressure.

Connect:


Leadership Beyond The Status Quo

Hosts Check In And Live Event

SPEAKER_01

So, in a world filled with frameworks, with a lot of people conforming to the status quo and everybody saying they've got a plan for your life, how do you learn to think like a maverick? How do you learn to pursue what truly matters to you so that you can leave a life of purpose, impact, and legacy? That's what we're diving into today. So settle in. So, what if the real key to leadership isn't following the rules? It isn't chasing the status quo. It isn't doing what everybody else is doing, but actually breaking the rules and thinking differently. So let's dive into this idea of what it looks like to lead like a maverick. Big A, let's talk about what Maverick leadership styles look like.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, I'm pretty fired up to be here today. How was your week, first of all, Sid? You had a good one?

SPEAKER_01

It was wonderful. We're coming off of Easter weekend when this is getting recorded and just had a wonderful time with my kids, my grandkids, all the things.

SPEAKER_00

Hey, I got to see you the week prior to that, too. We had the live event here in Nashville. How did you like the live event? Was it good for you?

Breaking Barriers And Real Wins

SPEAKER_01

It's always good for me. You know, when you build relationships by uh a Zoom, it's always good to press the flesh a little bit. And Nashville's a great city, and it's always fun to uh go a little bit deeper with the guys and uh just carry that momentum into our weekly calls afterwards.

SPEAKER_00

Our theme was breaking barriers. And man, I have seen so many guys overcome those obstacles in their life to help them scale their business, to help them really go deeper with their families. And there were so many barriers that came down. I'm still jacked up about that week. It was just so fun to get those guys in the same room, have the meals together, pray together, have worship time together, do breakout sessions. It was just an amazing time. You had some really cool breakthroughs yourself, I know that we talked about a little bit. And you had some family you got to visit while you're here. You just made a whole week out of it.

SPEAKER_01

We did, you know, it just was a reminder on a bunch of fronts that everybody's going through stuff. And when you get together and you get a little bit more time, you can go a little deeper into that. And I had some amazing family reconciliation moments. I had some major business changes, all that happened within that week. So definitely memorable. I've almost forgotten about it because it's been, you know, a whole week ago.

Defining A Maverick Leader

SPEAKER_00

So I know. We need to get another one. But we need to get one between the meetings that we normally do. Leading like a maverick, rule-breaking strategies that work. This is going to be a good topic. It's going to be fun, but there's some problems involved in being a maverick. Uh, and here's the truth that most leaders won't really admit we're not drowning in a lack of information. Like we're we're not at all. What we're doing is we're suffocating in sameness. That's what we're doing. And I don't like sameness. Robin says I'm a maverick in everything that I do. But when you start thinking about every podcast you listen to, every book that you read, every leadership course that you take, it tells you to follow these steps and trust the system and stick to the playbook. But what if the playbook wasn't written for me? What if it was written for somebody else's game? And what I think the real problem is today is there's too many Christian business owners out there leading like copycats in a world that's crying out for originals. And Robin said, Are you always a Maverick? Are you always the one that goes the other direction? I don't know. Maybe I am, but I don't think we were called to be predictable. I think we were called to be powerful. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the leaders who felt boxed in, who's tired of coloring inside the lines while watching others blaze a trail. So I'm pretty amped up, Seth. You'll have to look out because this episode really, really resonates with me. But what about you? Are you a maverick?

SPEAKER_01

I am. You know, it's been called a rebel. And certainly, uh, you know, as a as a kid, I think I I've always been a leader, but I was a bit of a negative leader, you know. And then you at some point you conclude, hey, it's it's, you know, you you you grow up and you're like, okay, I'm a leader. You know, that's a tremendous privilege, but I still have to go, you know, make stuff happen. Uh yeah, I'm definitely uh I lean on that side. I rebel is a negative word, as you know.

SPEAKER_00

Like it feels negative, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01

It feels like it speaks to like rebellion and you know, incorrigible, you're never gonna figure it out kind of thing. But a maverick, I don't think it has to be a negative word. In fact, I was thinking, you know, danger zone, highway to the danger zone. I'm tempted to sing it. But you know, once I sing this topic, I was like Kenny Loggins running through my head, highway to the danger zone. We see Tom Cruise and Maverick and the Top Gun and all that.

SPEAKER_00

I love that movie.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, all that uh God bless America movie. Um, but it it can be a very positive word, but there's price to be paid for being a maverick, too, right? You gotta be willing to stand alone. You gotta be willing to push through the fire.

SPEAKER_00

You know, I was thinking about what a maverick even is. And uh a maverick, really, in the world of Christian business leadership, I think is a bold, principled trailblazer who refuses to be confined by tradition when it hinders truth, purpose, or impact. That's what really a maverick is that we're going to talk about today. This is not a guy that's reckless, this is a guy that's resolute, and he's not rebellious, he's not that guy. That's not who I'm talking about. This guy's redemptive. And he doesn't break rules just to be different. He breaks them when they block the mission God has put on his life and it gets in the way. And I think that these mavericks that we're talking about today, people that I admire, people that I follow, they they have conviction over conformity and they have creativity over comfort, and they have a calling over credentials. And I think that when God puts a calling in your life, nothing's gonna stop you, nothing's gonna hold you back. And I love having that disposition personally. It's like people tell me, you can't do that. I say, you stand right over there and watch, you're fixing to witness it for the first time because we're going there.

SPEAKER_01

Well, you don't drink, but if you did, you'd say, hold my beer, because what I would I don't drink, and you're right.

Trailblazing In The Amazon

SPEAKER_00

But that is what I would say. I would say, hold it. I'm fixing to go over there and I'm gonna do this. This is a kind of guy that's not afraid of challenging systems. He questions the norms and he goes and carves a new path. Yeah, I remember when we were in South America, we were fishing. I don't know if you've ever been to South America or not, but we were down in the Amazon. We flew into Caracas and uh drove over to Columbia, then we drove through the jungle, and we've got these natives, and they're carrying our boat down to the Amazon. And I'm like, pinch me. Like I'm in the Amazon. I'm about to fish for peacock bass. We go two hours up the Orinoco, we get to the Toma River, we take a right, go up the Toma River. And when I did, I look over there, and there's all this little trees about three inches in diameter, and they're growing in the water. And then on the other side, probably 100 yards through there, you could see a big open pool of water. And I told the guide, I said, Hey, I want to go over there and fish. He goes, We can't get over there. I said, Sure, we can get over there. You got a machete. And he goes, Oh, we can't get over there. I said, Get me up through those trees. And so we went up there and we hacked our way through those trees and we got to that pool of water. Seth, we caught fish that were unbelievable. We blazed our own trail.

SPEAKER_01

See, once that happens one time to a guy, we're ruined for the rest of our life. Listen, it worked.

SPEAKER_00

It did work, and it did work, and the results were amazing. Now, I've done that metaphorically speaking in other venues, and it didn't work out so well. It kind of got me in trouble. But the truth is, is that I want to go where no one else has been.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Like I want to see it a different kind of way. And that's the reason I'm so excited about this episode today.

Innovation, Failure, And Elon Musk

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I, again, I think that that's um, that's hardwiring, that's personality. That is that's gifting. Um, you know, nothing happens in this world until somebody gets frustrated enough to say, I'm gonna fix that. I'm gonna change that, right? And so, you know, we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen to this podcast. We have a lot of business owners that probably wouldn't identify as being entrepreneurs. But, you know, right now in our society, you know, we've got a guy that's putting on display what it looks like to challenge norms in Elon Musk, right? Oh man, golly, what a maverick. Because he is, he's just saying, listen, this is the goal. Yeah, I realize that none of us in history have figured out how to solve that problem, but it doesn't mean that we can't, right? What if, right? And and the thing that we also have to remember is, you know, and I come, I have a little bit of a technology background, if you will, or at least I'm around technology. And one of the things about innovation is it requires a willingness to fail. See, a lot of the reason people aren't mavericks and they don't embrace that maverick mentality, right? Is they can't tolerate the idea of actually failing. In fact, I know in our uh in our um Iron Sharpens Iron Master more mastermind this very morning, one of our members was coming to grips with what would feel like a failure to his business, but is something that he wants to pivot to do something else. And he's coming to grips with what if, right? I've never had a failure, you're right. But he sees this thing on the other side of it. And that's that's really the price of admission. You know, mavericks have this willingness to go for it and like, you know, what if it doesn't work? Oh well, I'll survive, I'll live, but but can I tolerate not trying? Right. A maverick challenges that conventional wisdom, is willing to be not a conformist, right? Uh, and then seeking this better way, like, or at least asking the question, there must be a better way. Now I will take a quick bunny trail here and then I'll yield the mic, big A. And then, as I know as an entrepreneur, sometimes I've been guilty of thinking, well, if everybody's doing it this way, then surely there's a better way. But that's not always true. Sometimes the reason they're doing it the way they're doing it is because it's the only way that works. There literally is no other way, right? But still we have to have this mindset of knowing when to try these bold initiatives.

Risk, Responsibility, And Opportunity

SPEAKER_00

You know what's really helped me kind of work through that over the years, and I do understand this goes into other principles of our life. I do understand that there's responsibilities and obligations that we have commitments to. And we call those the golden handcuffs. It disallows you from doing some things differently because you can't miss a paycheck. Yeah. You can't miss, you know, a royalty payment, you can't miss a commission, you can't, because if you do, then you can't make this payment. That goes into another principle of not over-leveraging yourself and getting into that bondage that scripture so clearly outlays, you know, uh for us. And so we can talk on a different episode about that. But as you get a little bit older, you have more flexibility and more freedom. And what has really helped serve me well over the course of my life is I fear missing an opportunity more than I fear failure. And when you really start thinking about, I couldn't lay there in bed and go, I wonder if it would have worked. That would kill me.

SPEAKER_01

Interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I'm like, I had rather do it and it not work, and now I know than I would be my whole life carry on my shoulders, would it have worked?

Nonconformity And Resourcefulness

Community Perspectives That Spark Ideas

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, that's definitely the courage piece, right? Right. It's the courage piece. So as we think about this my maverick mindset, you know, I talked about you got to embrace this non-conformity. You got to be willing to not be status quo or standard. You might look a little weird, right? You might be the kind of that social outcast. You might not have anything in common with the people that are hanging out at the, you know, at the party or the country club or even the church, right? You got to be willing to stand separately, but you also have to think like wily coyote. You got to cultivate some resourcefulness. You got to say, where's the duct tape? Where's the bailing wire? Because everybody's going to say, well, if I had enough money and enough time, I could do this. And it's like, well, you know what? You don't have all of those things. But nevertheless, what resources can be rallied? And, you know, what can you create with a little bit of blood, sweat, tears, and elbow grease to really innovate and do something nobody's ever done?

Pushing Through Resistance

SPEAKER_00

Robin asked me sometimes, she'll come out and see me doing a project and she'll go, How did you think of that? And I'm like, looking at it from different perspectives and talking to people that don't have anything in common with me because they look at it differently. And that's what the value of being in community is. The greatest value is other people's perspective. I remember used to, I would go in the Eagles group and I would have three ideas when I would get there every Wednesday morning at seven o'clock, and I would share the ideas, and people would say, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. Then other people, like, you know, Dan Miller would pop up or Ken Abraham would pop up and go, wait a minute, if you do this, or if you change that, or if you add this resource, and I'm like, I didn't even know that resource existed. Exactly. See, it's the perspective from different people that have different filters, different life experiences that introduce us to things. I met Jeff Hoffman at an event, one of the priceline investors, early adopters was Jeff Hoffman, multi-billionaire. And I got an opportunity to talk to him out in the hallway after a conference. And I said, What is the best advice you could give an entrepreneur? He said, You're not gonna like it and you're probably not gonna understand it. And I said, Okay, what is it? He said, I'm an avid reader. And he said that 10% of everything I read has nothing to do with anything I'm interested in. And I said, You got to explain that a little deeper. He said, Well, I'm interested in these three things. And he told me, and I said, Yeah, he said, but I'll actively read about things that I have no interest in. He said, The irony of that is 90% of my success has come out of that 10% reading because it gave me a different perspective. See, these conformists, they only want to read things that they're interested in. Yeah. This is the only way, right? And so I've adopted that principle as well and read and study about things that I'm really not interested in. And then it opens new doors for you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, my problem is I'm interested in everything, big A. So that's a different different thing.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you've got the shiny object syndrome. We've got to narrow your focus a little bit.

SPEAKER_01

Well, one other thing that really factors into a Maverick mindset is you got to be willing to push through the opposition. You're gonna have opposition, you're gonna have resistance. We think about an airplane since we're in top gun maverick mode today. Uh Maverick said the enemy doesn't know your limits, right? So, you know, we've got to push through and endure things that don't feel comfortable, right? I I often think about an airplane, right, before you take off, you know, you're bouncing down the tarmac and it's noisy and it's bumpy, and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he's gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_00

I hope it takes off.

Calibrating Risk With Your Family

SPEAKER_01

Hurry up, right? And then it then it gets off the ground and all of a sudden it smooths out and eventually it quiet out, but you had to go through the resistance, right? Stephen Pressfield in his killer book called The War of Art said, you know, part of us having expression as entrepreneurs and business people, and in his context, it was around being a writer, is you got to push through the resistance because you're gonna hear all of these voices telling you, not now, you're not qualified, you're not the guy, who do you think you are? Like all of these voices that that that rattle around in our head that society, that's why everybody's conforming, is they're all hearing the same voices, right? But at some point, somebody has enough conviction, maybe desperation. You know, I can think about businesses. You know, what really motivates me is actually the idea of solving really big problems. I don't feel like I'm particularly money motivated. Now, I get money motivated from time to time when I run out of money and I'm like, okay, you know, gotta have some more. Right. But, you know, solving these big problems, but you got to know going into it that you're gonna have to face down that resistance and that opposition.

SPEAKER_00

Seth, let me suggest to the listeners that are new entrepreneurs that are just starting, married less than five years, got one or two children, got a mortgage, and the entrepreneur goes to his wife and says, Hey, I want to do this new thing, whatever this new thing is. And there's usually great opposition because there's a risk involved. I always tell those guys, why don't you come to an agreement with your spouse of a percentage of your net worth that you're willing to risk? Yeah. Don't bet the whole farm. Don't put your family at risk. I'm not suggesting that ever, but there is a percentage of your net worth that you should be willing at this young age. There is no great gains where there is no greater risk. And so be willing to venture a percentage of your net worth in order to be the Maverick, right? Don't go out there and go, I'm gonna start this new thing. We're putting everything we've got. It's like, no, that'd be foolish. But I would just suggest that you both agree on a percentage and see how that goes for you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And get yourself some people around you that can kick the tires and give you that outside perspective. As you said earlier, being a maverick is more around being courageous, you know, and taking action, not about being foolish and stubborn and, you know, not listening to anybody else, right?

Delegate, Enlist, And Avoid Burnout

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think we all, there's a there's a value in the consensus of the multitudes and other people's perspective, their willingness to have uh greater superpower than you might have in an area, trusting in people that have gone the road before you, mentors, leaders, mastermind groups, peer advisory groups, these are really strong and extremely valuable. And I attribute probably what little success I've had to the past 25 years being involved weekly. I thought about this the other day. I've been in a mastermind meeting every week for 26 years. And I can't even begin to tell you the value that's been for me because there's so many boneheaded mistakes that I would have made had I not had these trusted advisors around me. Well, what about these rule-breaking strategies that we mentioned uh earlier? Some of the things that I want to encourage you to think about is to experiment. You don't have to go all in at one time. I've got a family member right now that's thinking about going in business for himself. And I said, why don't we experiment with this a little bit? Why don't we test the market? Why don't we see if there's a need for this particular niche that you're looking at? Let's experiment with this a little bit before you dive into the deep end of the pool, right? You've got to know exactly what it is that you're getting into. Right. And when you do this experimentation a little bit, it really fosters a culture where testing new ideas is welcome. And that's what you want to be around. You want to be around open-minded people that really understand that failure can lead to growth and they can encourage you and push you through that mindset.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I've I've been I've heard that certain, you know, tech startups that are well funded and ready to kick some butt, they're they favor people that have actually failed. They favor it because that though they know that the learnings come from the failing sometimes, and that people who fail paid really close attention to the lessons they learned in that failure and they're less likely to repeat them over and over. You know, it sounds counterintuitive, but it makes sense from that perspective. And then the other part, big A, is don't do it alone.

SPEAKER_00

No.

SPEAKER_01

Right? You can't do it alone. You've got to learn to delegate, you've got to learn to empower other people. If you're gonna do something that's big and bold and maybe even becomes a movement or a successful company, you know, you got to call people to what's ambitiously possible and get other people enlisted in your great cause, or you're gonna burn out. Right. I think one of the problems when we apply Maverick to the category of entrepreneur is a lot of entrepreneurs fall into this solopreneur bucket. And that's okay if you're choosing to be a solopreneur. Personally, I'm a bad solopreneur. I get overwhelmed quickly, right?

SPEAKER_00

But um Plus you're a people person, you like to be around people, you like to have dialogue and conversation, interaction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

You don't want to get stuck where you're the only guy in this maverick mode, right? You got to delegate. And then there's also, you know, this kind of keeping our eye on the big picture. How do you keep your eye on the big picture, big A?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, there again, it's surrounding myself with trusted advisors, people that don't have a dog in the hunt, people that don't have anything to gain or lose as a result of the advice they give me. And this is why we started Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind is to be able to get like-minded people, similar core values, in groups that can be blatantly honest with you, uh, people that can look at what you're doing. They have full context and what you're trying to accomplish. I mentioned last week's episode, Scott Beebe. Scott Beebe really helped me create a vision to kind of have the big picture in mind, kind of keeping that overarching vision at the forefront of my mindset. And it kind of guides me and our team towards. Towards long-term success. And most people don't have that. They don't have a vision. They don't have a written vision. They barely have a vision, but they don't have a written vision. Because when you have the written vision, you know the task that you need to do weekly in order to accomplish this thing that you're trying to call a goal or a dream. And it helps us accomplish the vision. Dan Miller was sharing some statistics with me years ago. Dan passed away about a year and a half ago. Obviously, prior to that, he was sharing some statistics with me. And he said, you should have a vision that you never obtain. And I'm like, well, that would be demoralizing. And he said, no. He said, they have found that when you set a vision or a goal that's achievable, the people that set big, hairy, audacious goals surpass what they would have if it had been a realistic goal. He said, So any goal that you set, you should never accomplish it. You're going to be much further along the way, though, as a result of setting a big, hairy, audacious goal. Now, on the other hand, you want to set realistic goals that your team can get their arms around, that they can see, okay, we can accomplish these smaller goals, but do have a real audacious, aspirational goal out there that you're heading towards. So for me, it's having a map. And that map is my written vision so that I know where I want to go, keeping my focus on the big picture.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's it's it's interesting. When I, when I, when you're talking about that big, hairy, audacious goal, I kind of tend to think about that as like a purpose statement or a why. You know, otherwise, you you you are gonna hit them. And and life changes. You know, you have seasons of life too where you have to kind of reset those goals and keep yourself motivated. And frankly, you know, we got to push. You know, we got to push ourselves because we don't feel good if we know we're just kind of going through the motions. We have to put ourselves in that danger zone, use that phrase again, to feel like we're alive.

Age, Risk Tolerance, And Seasons

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, to me, it would be very boring to live with no vision, no goals, never any risk at all. My tolerance to risk is very high. Now, I will admit though, I'll be 65 my next birthday. I will admit, though, that my tolerance to risk is lessening. And I think that's normal as you get older because I don't have the time to recover.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

When I was younger, right, if it failed, okay, I'll start at something else. And now today it's like, eh, I don't know if I've got the energy or the desire at 65 to start completely over. And I want to be prudent in my investments and I want to be smart. And, you know, I've just got Robin and I now that I've got to take care of, but I want to be sure that I've done a good job. So I think your tolerance to risk can lessen over time. But if you're in your 30s, 40s, 50s, it's okay to be risk, uh not averse, but be involved in a certain measure of risk.

Impact Investing And Real-World Problems

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, I'm in similar, I'm I'm 10 years your junior, and um I'm in the mode of saying, all right, by the time I'm 60, I'd kind of like to be de-risked financially so that I out of respect for my wife and her risk profile, right? And so I have to go through the process. All right, if I'm hardwired to be a maverick to break the norms, to push the boundaries, to solve big problems, how do I do that in a way that's sensitive to her desire for security and also kind of what I want to do in the last quarter of my life? And just a little bit of intentionality. And so I kind of am in both camps at once. I'm when I have investments in various companies, when those things return to me, Lord willing, I'm gonna tuck that stuff away for what I would call safe things. Right. But I'm also intentionally choosing to start businesses and to invest in things with my time that are kind of innovating and groundbreaking. You know, you've heard me talk about faith-driven investor community, and they have this theme out right now. It's called solving the world's greatest problems. And I love that because they're calling people of faith with resources to say, hey, why are we not the ones talking about, you know, solving malaria or well water or human trafficking or resource depletion and places like that? Like we can lead this, we can solve it. Or other people are saying, how, why is health insurance so jacked up? Why isn't there a better way? Right. I'm invested and I'm the chairman of a company reimagining wastewater by putting modern sewer in small communities right now. And it's like, I didn't come from that world, but I saw an opportunity and we rallied some people and got some investors and we're doing the thing. And to me, it scratches that itch. Definitely being a maverick. But one thing I'll say is when you're the one who's challenging the norms, people will question your pedigree, they'll question your motivation, they'll question your process, they'll question your your character, like because you're a disruptor and you got to be willing to take the heat if you're gonna be the maverick.

SPEAKER_00

Blue Ocean.

unknown

Right.

Transparency And Team Autonomy

SPEAKER_00

That's another great book. Hey, as we finish up today talking a little bit more, I want to talk about when you're leading with uh Maverick mindset, what are some of the principles that you got to think about? And I think about even now, and I promote this strongly, is a level of transparency to people that you trust, because that's gonna help you make informed decisions with people that are in alignment with what you're trying to accomplish. And if you don't go in with full transparency to the people that is helping you make this decision, there's gonna be a void. There's gonna be a lack of trust. And so, in order for you to have that level of trust, if you're a Maverick, the people that are helping you, that are on your team, there's gotta be a level of transparency. There's also got to be an attitude of autonomy for the people that you're working with. Trust them. Understand that they have the skills that can help you accomplish this. You got to allow those team members to set their own goals and their methods by which to help you accomplish that. And that's gonna help you lead to increased motivation and innovation with the people that you're around.

Find Your Inner Maverick

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, big A, as we think about, you know, what we've talked about today, you know, how do we find that inner maverick? I would say first, you know, we got to question the rules we've been following. You know, are we even aware that we're following other people's template? Right? We've been conditioned to do things the safe way. We got to be willing to bust out of that and ask ourselves, are these rules that I'm following serving our team? And we've got to be willing to lead with courage and care a little bit less around conformity. You know, we got to think about what success looks like for us. You know, that's a personal process. Nobody's gonna do this for us. That's the other thing. There's no intervention coming, there's no Calvary coming to help us create a successful life for ourselves. How do you think about defining success for yourself? Like who do you invite into that? And how much of that do you feel like is your own, big A?

Redefine Success And Lead Boldly

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's uh It's a$64 question, right? Because we're all individuals and we have to make those determinations ourselves. I loved how you made a summary here of questioning the rules that you've been following because that may be for somebody else's game and not your own. And the courage part comes over time, right? We are nervous to a point, but once we've had a measure of success, it allows you to have more courage. So you've got to step out, you've got to get outside of the uh of your own self, and you've got to color outside the lines uh and not just always be in a level of conformity. And then success, we talked about earlier, how you design that success is uh up to you and to your family, but just be open with your spouse, be open with your peers, your colleagues, your trusted advisors, and figure out what success looks like for you at this current time in your life. And I just want to tell you guys your legacy won't be built by how well you followed the playbook, but by the lives you changed when you dared to write a new one. So go out there, set a new standard, one built on purpose, one built on people, and one built on Kingdom Impact. Enjoy today. Go out there now and lead boldly. Mavericks aren't born, they're forged.