ISI Brotherhood Podcast

149. Circle of Ten: Why Your Crew Determines Your Climb.

• Aaron Walker

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0:00 | 31:18

We’re bringing this powerful conversation back to the forefront because too many leaders are silently carrying weight they were never meant to carry by themselves.

Many of us were trained early on to keep struggles private. Handle it yourself. Don’t show weakness. Stay composed. But that mindset breeds isolation—and isolation slowly erodes strength, clarity, and growth.

In this episode, we challenge the myth of self-sufficient leadership and unpack what it really takes to build a trusted inner circle. Not surface-level relationships. Not networking. Not convenience. But intentional connections with people who have earned the right—and been given permission—to speak truth into your life.

Because the right circle doesn’t just hold you accountable.
 They love you enough to challenge you.

We break down the difference between harsh truth and honest truth delivered with care. How tone affects trust. How empathy increases implementation. And why the strongest relationships are built long before a crisis ever hits.

One of the most powerful principles discussed:
 Reach out when you don’t need anything.

Consistency outside of pressure is what separates authentic brotherhood from transactional connection. If the only time you call someone is when things are falling apart, you don’t have a circle—you have emergency contacts.

We also confront how to evaluate who truly belongs in your inner ten. Status doesn’t qualify someone. Success doesn’t qualify someone. Character does. Shared values do. The way they live when no one is watching does.

Here’s the hard question:
 Who in your life has permission to challenge you when you’re drifting?

Your circle will either sharpen you—or slowly allow you to settle. You were never designed to lead in isolation. The strength of your journey will always be tied to who walks it with you.

Key Takeaways:

  • The danger of isolated leadership vs. the strength found in a trusted circle.
  • Why accountability thrives on consistency, not just during crisis.
  • How balancing hard truth with kindness builds lasting relationships.
  • Reach out when you don’t need anything—that’s real connection.
  • Choose your inner circle for character, not status.
  • Evaluate whether your relationships push you forward or hold you back.
  • Recognize when it’s time to release relationships that drain more than they give.

Connect:

Building A Personal Board

SPEAKER_00

If you have people in your life that are truly the kind of people that you go to when in a crisis, they're truly this board of directors, something that we're talking about here, big A, is creating this personal board of directors. Well, if these are your personal board of directors, you got to talk to them. You got to communicate to them, not just when you need something, as you said, but but more regularly.

SPEAKER_01

Seth, it's been a great week for me. Hopefully it's been for you.

SPEAKER_00

It's been epic. Had a wedding, all sorts of fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. That wedding was a week ago, though. You ought to be rested and recovered by now. This is true.

SPEAKER_00

I'm uh back in the groove. Everything's smooth sailing, you know, just like always, right?

SPEAKER_01

People are talking to me about my tan. They're saying, Big A, you're so tanned. I've been fishing a lot. The fish are biting right now in Nashville. You need to come out, man. We need to go out in the boat and do a little fishing together.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I don't have a white spinner. I mean, it was your white spinner that caught all the spinner bait.

Weekend Banter And Friendship

The Circle Of Ten Concept

Upbringing And Privacy Norms

SPEAKER_01

It was, but I've got multiple white spinner baits. And so you don't need anything. All you need to do is show up. I got plenty of tackle. I could open a bait and tackle shop. So you don't need anything. You just get out here from Oregon and uh Big A will show you around the lake. Count on it. So it'll be fun. Hey, speaking of that, you are one of my top 10 guys. And this is what we're talking about today, the circle of 10, why your crew determines your climb. And I want to dive right in the thick of this because if you show me your 10 closest brothers, I'm going to show you the ceiling of your life because no man, nobody climbs higher than the strength of the circle around him. And I'll tell you, this is something that it's not relatively new, but in comparison to my lifespan, I guess you could say only a third of my life have I really been involved in adopting this mindset. And I want to dive in just for a second, just for context's sake. And I was sharing this with you and our producer a little bit before we hit the record button. This is not the way I was taught. This is not the way my dad raised me. My dad was a very private man. It didn't matter what it was that we were going through. It was private and you never share it. I don't care if you're afraid, if you're scared, if you're out of money, if you've got a sin to confess. It doesn't matter what it is. We discuss it in the family. And you don't go outside of this family. You don't need to share any secrets with anybody. And I was like, man, I lived for the first 40 years of my career, or first 40 years of my life, I guess, first 20 years of my career with the mindset you don't share anything with anybody. So what about you? Were you raised differently or similar?

Intentional Influence And Drift

Beyond Masterminds: Whole-Life Mentors

SPEAKER_00

Well, I was raised in a commune. So there's that. So it was a little different. Uh, there was people you trusted, people you didn't trust. But I can think about it from the context of my dad. My dad was more of a very much a people person. And so he tried to connect with others and, you know, was really a possibilities thinker. He was pretty entrepreneurial. So I think I would say he was a little bit more extroverted, life of the party. Um, maybe didn't go as deep in in terms of saying how he was feeling, but I think guys of a certain generation, you you know, they just didn't talk about or dads didn't talk. But I will I will tell you this, you know, relative to this, this, this topic, is, you know, I always told our kids as they were growing up, it's like somebody's leading. You're either somebody else is leading you or you're leading them, right? And I think the context here is this is not something to be approached new in neutral. If we want to be around people that inspire us and challenge us and call us to our best version of ourselves and even give us a blueprint or a template or even a vision for what our kingdom effectiveness can be, that's an intentional thing. And if we're not being intentional, we have to really check are we actually being pulled back because we're just allowing the wrong influences, frankly, in our life to stall us, right?

SPEAKER_01

You know, here's the thing, too, and everyone that follows us knows that we have Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind. And we want you to know that's just a very small portion of what we're talking about. Um, Seth and I were talking about earlier a guy here in Nashville that I've been seeing for almost 30 years on a regular basis professionally, go to see him. Robin and I go together and we see him. Floyd Dawson's his name. He's a great guy that lives here in Hendersonville in my city. And that guy has probably saved our marriage and probably saved my sanity on top of that. So he's a really important person. Robbie Gallaty, my pastor at Long Hollow Baptist Church, is somebody that I can find in regularly. Alan Lindsay, Hugh Morris, Chris Freeman, Randy Butler, all these guys are guys that I confine in on a regular basis that are not even in our mastermind group. So the mastermind group is a place to kind of get started. But I want this level of accountability and I want men around me in every arena of my life, personally, professionally, and spiritually, whether it be virtual or in person, to be able to help walk me on this journey. And so I just want to make it clear that it's in all facets of our life, not just in our mastermind.

Time, Proximity, And Depth

SPEAKER_00

So, big A, you know, I I think about this phrase to know and to be known. Like that's a human longing we have. But um, you know, we we're we're finite, we can only be one place at a time. And so you're talking about all those people that you're in good, deep relationship with. And I'm like, how do you find the time? Because it does take proximity to breed this influence. So, how do you be intentional? Like, how do you really cultivate genuine, ongoing relationships with people that you don't see every day?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Well, it takes a lot of work. And for me to say it's easy would be a lie. It's not, it's very difficult, quite honestly, and it takes an inordinate amount of time. But it just depends on how much you want to grow and how much realism you want to hear from people that have context of your life. And you're like, man, I don't have that amount of time. Well, I think oftentimes we don't have time not to do it if we want to be all that God's called us to be. Because it does take that amount of work on a regular basis to really go that deep in order to maximize uh the purposefulness that we have in our lives.

Accountability As Real Work

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. How important is it to you? I mean, because you look, any other category of life, I mean, if we really believe the premise of this, which is the 10 people that we're around really impact the trajectory of uh of our life and our kingdom effectiveness, our legacy. Like if we believe that, we have to look at it the same way that we would look at, for instance, our health, physical health. It's like if if you believe that being healthy and fit is important, you're gonna, it's gonna show up in your choices, right? Choices to not have that dessert, but to do this thing, to be at the gym. It's like it's gonna be real work. If if you want to invest in your relationship, we all know this with our wives, is like, man, it just doesn't happen by being passive. You have to hang it up there on the mantle, like this is really important to me. And then you start to move your behaviors to reflect how important it is. Um, because it seems like drift is contagious, right? It just happens if we let it, right?

Truth With Grace: Delivery Matters

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we get lazy. You know, it's like you do drift uh in every area of your life. It doesn't matter if it's personal development, professional development, your spiritual development, if we're lazy and we're not consistent. Uh, we do drift, and it's contagious not only to that particular area of your life. My dad used to say the way you do anything is the way you do everything. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And so drift is contagious in every area of your life. We've got to not uh not just pay attention, but we've got to act as a result of what our intentions are. That's the reason it's so important to have people around you to hold you accountable, to have a vision, to have a plan. Um, I didn't have any of that 25, 30 years ago in my business. And I grinded it out. I look back at my businesses now and I look back at my marriage, and I'm like, how much better could it have been had I aligned myself with people like Floyd Dawson and Alan Lindsey and Hugh Morris and all these guys that I've named, Chris Freeman. And then even the virtual guys that I have in my life now. I've got hundreds of guys in my life now virtually that have walked this journey with me for over a dozen years that have really helped me down the path to grow in every area of my life and to challenge me uh in everything that we do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And if you have a circle and your circle is kind of lukewarm and compromised, you're gonna find that that starts to sneak into our life too. So thinking about the purpose of brotherhood, big A, I know that you probably more than 99% of the people I know are not afraid to get in somebody's grill and challenge them, but from a motivation of love and encouragement, but how do you balance that that um truthfulness with kindness and and grace? And then I want to ask you on the back end of that is how often have you like totally offended somebody just because you're like, hey man, can I tell you the truth? And then and then they kind of tell you that they're ready for it, and then you like double blast them and they're like, oh my gosh, you hurt my feelings.

Adapting Confrontation To The Person

SPEAKER_01

This has been a source of contention for me in my life uh for the past 25 plus years. And Robin has helped me probably more than anybody, really tempered that a little bit because used to, I didn't even preface it. I didn't beat around the bush, I just said it. And that didn't serve me well at all, quite honestly. People weren't prepared for that, they wasn't ready for that. I don't ever mean it condescending or judgmental, but I feel like we're wasting time if we coddle you too much. And it's like, hey, let's just say it. So I have learned to surround myself with people, me personally in my personal life, with people that are very similar to that. These guys don't coddle me at all. They call me out, they call me up, hopefully. But here's the caveat to all of it is they're doing it because they love me. They don't have anything to gain or lose as a result of calling me out or calling me up. There's no dog in the hunt for them, other than our friendship.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

Goals, Stakes, And Follow-Through

SPEAKER_01

And so for me personally, I've learned the strategy of let's just get to it and say it. Oftentimes, though, that's been a reflection back to me, and they are able to call me out and call me up to a greater level because we have that understanding. But I'm still not real diplomatic. I'm still not real good at positioning it in a way that's gentle and soft. Well, we're getting deeper than I wanted to get this morning, Seth. So thank you for doing this. It's funny that. Yeah, Robin and I had this discussion yesterday. It's funny that uh you touched on this. I don't know if I'm angry or glad, but Robin said, Why did you say it so stern to me? And I'm like, what are you talking about? And she repeated it. She said, You just said it like this. And I'm like, I had no idea I said it like that. I didn't, you know I didn't mean it that way. It's just, I think it's just my demeanor, my personality. I'm just forward and I just say it. But I think if we do that with the wrong motivation, I think that's wrong. But if we're doing it and we learn to accept people, people that are really close friends of ours now, they know that I'm just direct and forward and they know not to think anything about it. Yeah. On the other hand, Robin is like, I want you to learn to say it with a little more compassion, a little bit more empathy instead of just being so direct. So it's honestly, I guess now that you're pointing it out, it's probably a flaw in me that I don't present it sometimes in a way that's really more acceptable to some people.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I think sometimes it's your audience too. I remember uh there's a question is is the teacher teaching if the learners aren't learning, right? So um, in some environments, the learners can uh need that. Like we need a little bit of shock therapy. In other environments, you know, not so much. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So hey, I'm just curious here, now that we've gotten all vulnerable and transparent, uh, have you seen a growth in me? You've known me a dozen years now, or is it still just as blunt as it was?

Networking With Right Motives

SPEAKER_00

No, I actually have seen uh uh seen uh a tempering of uh of the um the temperature in which it comes at you. I I think I genuinely, I I feel like I genuinely have. But I also I've appreciated and I will say this about you. You tend to say it with a smile, unless it's a moral issue. Like you tend to be like, hey man, like why haven't you recorded your audiobook? If you're not gonna get that done in the next 30 days, you're gonna give a gift to your you know favorite non-charity. And I was like, whoa, all right, you know, it got it done, didn't it? It did, you know. Uh I I'm in right now, it is uh a couple weeks or a couple days away from the end of the month. And I told my ISI guys, I'm like, I will, I will hit this goal weight, I will have one cup of coffee every day because I was getting out of hand with my cappuccinos. Um, I'll have my time management plan kind of implemented, and I'll have a cash flow budget. Like, and I'm about a week out, and guess what? I'm on the scale, I'm looking at stuff, I'm I'm focused because I know that I told these guys I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get there and they're gonna hold me accountable in about four days. Now, I that's norm, not normally how I roll, but I can also say I'm in a season of progress right now because I have that level of accountability with these guys.

SPEAKER_01

Do you desire that level of accountability or is it something that you just find is necessary for you to progress? A little of both.

SPEAKER_00

You know, a little of both.

SPEAKER_01

I think most people repel accountability or are desirous of it.

SPEAKER_00

I think they I that's a good question. I think eventually they appreciate it because they like progress. I mean, it's like going to the gym. Like I say, when you start to see some results and your clothes start to fit, you're like, all right, this is worth it. But at first you're like, oh my gosh, my back hurts, you know.

Check In When You Don’t Need Anything

SPEAKER_01

There was a guy in ISI, it's been here for 10 or 11 years, I guess. And he would never fill out his accountability progress report. And I got on him in front of some guys in the group one day, pretty hard. And he goes, I'll just be honest with you, I don't need the accountability. And he really pushed back. And we're good friends. I mean, I go to his house and we fish together, and I mean, we're good friends. But he just said, uh, I'll let you know when I need it. And so I thought about it. And this was one of those high D personalities, hitting another high D personality. My approach was was not really good. So next day I got in the hot tub and I was thinking through it and I was praying, Lord, how how can I present this in a different way to my brother? And so I called him and I said, Let's call him Billy. That's not his name, but let's call him Billy. I said, Billy, let me ask you a question. He said, Yeah, I said, we kind of got into it yesterday a little bit, and I'm sorry for that, but I just want you to know that I'm really concerned about you losing a little bit of weight, and I'm concerned about your grandkids, I'm concerned about your marriage, I'm concerned about your health. And when I presented it that way, he said, uh, Big A, thank you so much. It was totally different than the day before. You know what he did? He did something about it after that. And so I think us as leaders and facilitators and people that are in people's lives, a skill I need to learn better is the one you pointed out, is to learn how to present it differently to different people. But the point was he did need and he did desire accountability. It was just the presentation was wrong.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and one of the things that I'm thinking about at a high level is when life gets really busy and we don't have time for meaningful conversation. We tend to think I don't want to waste time, I'm just gonna quote unquote cut to the chase. And that is a shortcut that actually stifles um implementation. It's not as effective, right? And I and I think uh what I'm aspiring to in life is that there's a little bit more margin so you can notice those those conversations, and that conversation rather than just feel like a drive-by shooting to that other person is actually one of these moments where we have the privilege of speaking into their life with some tact and some empathy in a way that could literally change their life.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, right.

Choosing Friends By Values

SPEAKER_00

If we'll notice the moment, but many times we're just going so fast, we're like, I don't have time to notice the moment. Well, if you don't have time to notice the moment, guess what? You're doing something wrong. Yeah, right. I'm doing something wrong.

SPEAKER_01

And I'm guilty of that of moving at such a high speed.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01

Outside of accountability, let's jump for a second to networking opportunities with the people that uh, because it's not the reason you go into it. Can you share an example of networking opportunities for you, uh, of the people that are closest to you and how that's been effective or beneficial to you?

SPEAKER_00

Um, help me understand what you mean by networking in that context.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I mean, I mean when you call me and say, Big A, do you know this person or do you have a resource or do you have an avenue that would help me in regards to connecting with someone else? Uh yeah. A Robbie Galauty would be an example uh for you there in Oregon, right? Some of the things that you do.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um there's other benefits outside of accountability. That's what I'm trying to get to.

Iron That Sharpens With Love

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there are. Um, you only have a few. You have to be cautious, and you know, and you can only be friends. I remember hearing somebody one time ask, they were at Chuck Swindahl, you know, a famous uh preacher was at a at a at a retreat center, and somebody came up and was just moved by his talk and said, Hey, can we be friends? And the and Chuck somehow delicately said, For me to be your friend means I have to kick somebody else out of the circle. You know, and I thought, oh, that's an interesting insight because you can only have so many close friends, right? But you do need to build this tribe and this circle of this. It's been described sometimes as this board of directors, right? And so I think we have to have our, and in the same way, almost like sales, um, you know, you're you got to have your opportunity eyes open, which is who is who is a good mentor who's further down a path that I actually want to travel on. And then you actually have to go get those people. You have to get them through tapping your network, big A, or getting on an airplane, or going to a conference, or sometimes joining a mastermind. Like, I don't know if you remember this. I bought your podcasting service when I first met you uh to help me get uh because you were partnered with a business that did help people get. And I had just written the book, Ambition, Leading with Gratitude, buy yours now on Amazon. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01

Hey, by the way, that's a great place to put that plug, and it is a great book. So go buy a setup. It's right over my shoulder. Uh's a great book.

Letters For Honest Feedback

SPEAKER_00

But um, you know, and I had a philosophy which was invest in the relationship with your handout to give, not take out of the gate. Right. And so, so I had a way of communicating to you, hey, what you care about is important to me. And I think this is interesting enough. I'm willing to spend some money and some time, and then let's see what can happen. And and and getting to know you has changed my life in a lot of really great ways. And I can I can go through a long list because this is how my brain works of people you introduced me to that introduced me to others. I just came back from Costa Rica and Panama. I was there looking after an investment that I made from somebody that Derek Champagne introduced me to, and you introduced me to Derek. And right, so I can see how the network and God's kingdom all integrates together. But the point of all that is you have to be intentional and you have to be active. And um, and you also have to test your motives, right? And you can't come off like a creeper, like you're needy, like you demand something from people, but you have to also pursue people that you'd like to have a genuine friendship with and then take the steps. And sometimes the door closes and sometimes the door opens. And, you know, that's a God thing.

Coaches, Not Just Cheerleaders

SPEAKER_01

You know, I want to give a little tip to some of those just starting to network and starting to build their circle of 10 and start really pouring into the people that you want to be mentors in your life. And here's the thing: here's the biggest pro tip I could give you is call those people and check on them when you don't need anything.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And invariably the people that do that have the most dividends over the long haul of their life. And what I mean by that is I get phone calls from various people. Hey, can you introduce me to this person? Well, I hadn't heard from them in two years. And hey, can you do this for me? Or I need your help in doing this. But the people that call me and say, Hey, Big A, checking on you, checking on Robin, how's Holly doing with, you know, the transplant? Uh, how's your grandkids? You know, and a lot of the times people do that to warm up, then they get to what they really want. And when you stop at that and you don't ask for anything, you're like, hey, it makes an indelible impression. On me because you really were interested in me. I love it. Is your time to get something or need help? It's a lot easier to get. And so that's the reason you said earlier you can only manage so many people. You can only do that with so many people.

Final Challenge To Audit Your Circle

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And um, and if you're always chasing something new rather than caring for what you already have, you're not being grateful. And this is me preaching to myself. I was literally thinking last night about some amazing friends that I have that I haven't talked to in a while. And I'm like, why? You know, make it a priority, value them. Gratitude is appreciating a gift that has been received. If you have people in your life that are truly the kind of people that you go to when in a crisis, they're truly this board of directors, something that we're talking about here, big A, is creating this personal board of directors. Well, if these are your personal board of directors, you got to talk to them. You got to communicate to them, not just when you need something, as you said, but but more regularly. And I just want to camp on this idea for a second. And that is how you show the Lord appreciation for the wisdom, the mentors and friends that He's put in your life. He knows you need friends. The question we should be asking is, how are you caring for those friendships? Right. And here's the other one that that really gets me with myself is I have to be careful on the classes of people. And I know that everybody flinched when I just said that, but we all know there's different stratums of people, right? You have friends. You have friends that have no money but have a great family. You have friends that have a lot of money and have a crappy family. You have friends that have money and great family. And and how you pick your friends is is in whether you're sorting them by their net worth or you're sorting them on their kingdom faithfulness. Like there's a little bit of science and a little a little bit of art to that. Big A, I'm curious on your feedback on that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I think it's really important that you look at all those aspects in regards to picking out people that you want to be associated with, that you want to be mentors in your life, that you want to give solid advice. And I have a lot of close friends that have helped me work through various situations, some of them personally, some of them professionally, some of them spiritually. Uh, all different arenas of my life, there's different people that have helped at different times. And so I think all those things are important to measure, uh, but it's not for the sake of what you can get from them, but it's the sake of how you can pour into them in their life. And so I think that you've got to really evaluate your friendships closely. Robin and I paired off some people over the past 10 years in our life because they were draining us, literally sucking the life out of us. Everything was negative, everything was bad, nothing was gonna be good. And it's like, you know, you can be around that for a little while, but if you really want to level up in your own life, there's got to be a sense of encouragement. There's got to be a sense of hope. There's got to be a sense of aspiration. And so Robin and I've really picked our friends very, very closely. And they say that uh people that get around people and talk about people is not somebody you want to hang out with, right? You don't want to be around people that are always gossiping or talking about others and from a negative perspective. So I think all of these things have worth or value as you're determining what that group of people are. But for me personally, it's first and fundamentally they've got to have a solid foundation.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And they've got to have principles by which they live their life, not only through audible, but through demonstration. Uh, you know, uh, we have very close friends that I can say, hey man, I've seen you model what you teach. And those are the people that I want to be around. It's people that are encouragers, they lift you up, they have similar core values uh in alignment with Robin and I and the way we want to live our life because you want to be around iron sharpens iron. It's people that encourage you to a degree that don't just uh make you feel good about yourself, but it kind of goes back to that accountability. It's people in your life that can really help you from a challenge you is kind of a form of love. It's really pushing you to level up in your faith and your family and your finances. These are people that are saying, you can't do that, or you can't do this. I saw a guy at church a couple of years ago, and uh I was telling him about all the fish I'd caught in South America, and Alan Lindsay overheard me tell uh this guy. And Alan called me to lunch the next day and he said, You made it sound like you were a world traveler to this guy. You've been all over South America fishing. And the truth is you've been down there twice, and you've covered about, you know, 50 miles of a 4,000 mile Amazon chain. And what you were wanting that guy to think of you as a big deal fisherman. And what was I gonna say? I mean, that was truth. And he said, you need to be factual with people, and it's really made me think now when I tell stories, tell the story factual and not leading people to believe something that isn't true. And so he loved me enough to call me out, to call me up to that. And so that's what we're trying to say here is do you have people in your life today that are doing that? Do you have people that are calling you up, that are calling you out in a loving way? And maybe they're more tactful than I am. Uh, hopefully you're more tactful than I am in doing that. But these men need to be cheerleaders in your life. They need to hold you accountable, to ask you the tough questions. You know, I do something, I do an exercise, and I would encourage everyone listening to this podcast today to do the same exercise. You're like, man, I don't know if I'd want to do that. I write letters to people that I know intimately, and we'll call it 10 or 12 guys. And I will ask them specific questions. How do you see me treating Robin? How do you see me as a grandfather? How do you see me the way I talk versus the way I do business? How do you see me in all these areas? Now I want to tell you, the first time I did that, I felt like I'd been knocked out of the boat with a boat paddle. I didn't expect the answers that I got because I thought, oh, I've kind of got it together in these areas. And other people see you differently than you see yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_01

So don't think that you're going to get all this lovey dovey back if you really are subjecting yourself to those answers to those questions. And it has heightened my awareness in so many areas in my life that I needed to work on. Uh, but I want to get better. And that's the reason that I asked these questions.

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. Well, we're just about to wrap this one up. But you know, relative to this personal board of directors, you mentioned they are cheerleaders, but they're not just that. They're they're coaches, right? Because what we need is we need wisdom, we need challenge, we need correction sometimes, and sometimes we need strategy. And that doesn't happen accidentally. Like this is too important to leave the chance. If you hear anything from this episode, it's be intentional about seeking out this tribe of mentors, right? The these coaches, these brothers that you can walk with because your odds of having the kind of life and the kind of kingdom impact that that you're capable of go up as you invest in these men.

SPEAKER_01

You know, your circle is gonna either call you to greatness in you or quietly let it die. And your climb is determined by the crew, the people that you surround yourself with. I can promise you, you weren't made to go it alone. And we here at ISI, we want to do life with people. We don't want to do it solo, and I hope you don't either. I want you to take a hard look at your inner circle and ask who has permission to challenge my decisions, to challenge the way I might be drifting, and to really get into your life this week and figure out what I can do to level up so that I can go higher and be all that God called me to be. So I want to encourage you this week to take that challenge and look at your inner circle and see who it is that you need to enlist.