Transition and Transformation: Navigating Leadership Changes for Organizational Growth

How do you navigate the treacherous waters of transitioning leadership in an organization? And how can a founder's exit be a catalyst for growth, rather than a hindrance? Join us as we explore these riveting questions with Dave McCauley and Matt Overby, the dynamic duo at the helm of Summit Leadership. Through intimate conversations around their unique approach to leadership, they give us a keyhole view into the four pillars of their service - connecting, consulting, coaching, and caring - all aimed at fortifying communities and shaping leaders.

Discover in our candid chat, how McCauley, in a deliberate move, stepped down after a 10-year tenure at the organization he founded. He speaks about the necessity of succession planning, the value in finding the right successor, and creating a system that lives beyond the founder. Overby, the torchbearer, speaks about the importance of a seamless handoff and how to avoid becoming a tragic Olympic relay team - a story that is sure to pique your interest. 

As we round off our enlightening conversation, we delve into the power of collaboration and the concept of a 'three-way win'. McCauley and Overby speak passionately about a business model where the business community isn't just a bystander but a primary funder, generating services for nonprofits and churches. We also touch upon the 'abundance mentality' and the significance of connecting the right people with the right resources, at the right time. This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom and insights, sure to leave you motivated, inspired and raring to make a difference in your own leadership journey.

To help you to navigate the home buying and mortgage process, Jonathan & Steve are currently licensed in Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, contact us today at 423-491-5405 or visit www.jonathanandsteve.com.

Chapters

• 0:02 Summit Leadership and Founder Syndrome
• 4:39 Transitioning Leadership and Planning for Succession
• 16:11 Connecting, Coaching, Consulting, and Caring
• 23:26 Collaboration and Abundance Mentality Power

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

This is Benchmark Happenings, Brought to you by Jonathan and Steve from Benchmark Home Lounge. Northeast Tennessee, Johnson City, Kingsport, Bristol, the Tri-Cities One of the most beautiful places in the country to live. Tons of great things to do and awesome local businesses. And on this show you'll find out why people are dying to move to Northeast Tennessee. And on the way we'll have discussions about mortgages and we'll interview people in the real estate industry. It's what we do. This is Benchmark Happenings, Brought to you by Benchmark Home Lounge and now your host, Christine Reed.

Christine Reed: 0:46

Well, hello everybody, thank you for joining us on another podcast of Benchmark Happenings, and today we are just so excited and blessed to have Dave McCauley, a founder and consultant and coach with Summit Leadership, and also Matt Overby, who is executive director for Summit, and so, guys, we've got a lot to unpack today about Summit. Summit represents a lot of things. That is so unique here to not only to East Tennessee, but you're serving throughout the country and also reaching globally with your leadership organization. So we are blessed to have you today, and so I want to welcome you and thank you for joining us.

Dave McAuley: 1:34

Thank you for having us on Benchmark Happenings. It's our pleasure oh absolutely.

Christine Reed: 1:39

So I'm going to kind of start out a little bit for a question for Matt and Matt this is loaded. Okay, thanks for the warning. So a very high level. Could you give us an overview of Summit leadership?

Matt Overby: 1:55

Oh, a very high level, high level. 501c3 nonprofit.

Christine Reed: 2:01

Okay, a little bit more than that. We are.

Matt Overby: 2:06

You know, we talk all the time with leaders and help them realize that often they're in the people business, and we are just like that. We're in the people business. We believe that better leaders equal stronger communities, and so our heart is to come alongside of leaders with whatever their passion is, whatever they've been called to do, whether it's rescuing puppies and kittens or serving veterans or feeding the food insecure. You know any area of need that you can probably imagine in our region. We are blessed to be engaged with an organization that is affecting that area of need, and so that's our heart, and we serve those leaders through four core services of connecting, consulting, coaching and caring. That's how we live out that belief that better leaders equal stronger communities.

Christine Reed: 2:49

Absolutely, and that is so true and I know that you all have had such an impact in so many businesses organizations, but also for benchmark, benchmark home loans, Because I know my husband, Steve. We have definitely benefited from being part of Summit and being a business partner, which we want to talk a little bit about that, all those great business partners that you have. So now, Matt, when did you join Summit?

Matt Overby: 3:18

Yeah, it's been 12 years. We blinked and 12 years have flown by. Yeah, I was working with Chick-fil-A at the time and had actually established a relationship with Dave, our founder before that career was with Starbucks and Dave's a coffee snob, and so we got to build a relationship around coffee and a passion for leadership, and that friendship lasted several years until I was serving on the board of Summit. Dave gave me the opportunity to engage in that capacity while I was working for Chick-fil-A and we just began a dialogue about transitioning Summit to more of a board-led organization with the true executive director, ceo type position, versus just a founder-led model where one person is the vision caster and the torchbearer and the face and the voice and all of those roles, which is okay for a little while you're in that season, but you reach a point where you have to transition in order to create sustainability and something that hopefully we can replicate down the road, and so we began that conversation and joined the team 12 years ago.

Christine Reed: 4:20

And I think that's interesting that you talk about a board being led by a board because, dave, earlier when we had met, you had mentioned something about that founder syndrome. Founder syndrome and a lot of nonprofits are in that founder syndrome. Touch on that just a little bit for us.

Dave McAuley: 4:39

Yeah, it's something I experienced in just in different situations. In fact, I got hired into a situation one time where there was a founder that was 76 years old and they hired me as his replacement and he didn't leave and everything I was doing he found a fence with that somehow. He was apparently doing it wrong if I changed anything, and it's part of that, holding onto it too tight, and so it was one thing I vowed early on. We started Summit.

Dave McAuley: 5:05

I started it literally at my dining room table, and then Starbucks that's what I tell people. I'd go to Starbucks and I figured I was renting space for $3 and getting free coffee, you know. So I would just hang out at Starbucks and do things there. But in those early days, you know you're doing that entrepreneurial startup, You're doing everything, and early on I realized that you know, at some point and I kind of set the meter for it about 10 years I want to start looking for my replacement, not because I couldn't continue doing it but I was going to become the lid on the organization, and one of the things I remind people is we started Summit in 2004 to help people connect.

Dave McAuley: 5:41

The other thing that started in 2004 just to give you an idea of the connections that happen in the world is that's when Facebook started, right, so we started at the same time. Zuckerberg has done a little better than I've done as far as the financial side of things, but it was the same concept. How do we get people to connect was one of the things we were working on. So the world changes and if you don't change with it, in meeting Matt with Starbucks and then Chick-fil-A, and seeing his strength and operations and managing people and again, for me, my strength is I'm visionary. I have an idea a minute.

Dave McAuley: 6:12

That doesn't work well with an organization once it gets established. You can't keep changing direction. You can, when it's early on, you can do a lot of different things, but you need more focus, you need more intentionality, staff needs more consistency and so, recognizing that in Matt's skill set it's kind of a unique thing I recruited Matt, we had conversations and I trained him over time to become my boss right, so, literally now, even though I was the founder of the organization. When Matt came on board, we kind of did that transition between about 2011 through about 2016 and then one day he became the president and the CEO and the executive director all those titles and then I was the founder and coaching consultant and Matt that day became my boss and but, that's the way you want because it became now. It's replicable, it's something that is now.

Dave McAuley: 7:10

We're putting systems and people in place to where it can outlive me. So I'm actually on a. I Interesting on that too. I hired a coach here a short time ago and I've Determined my exit date.

Dave McAuley: 7:23

If God doesn't do it sooner than that, my exit date is December of 2027 I'll be off payroll Okay and we're working towards that because, again, to set up the next generation for success, they need to know when I'm no longer, you know, going to be dependent on the organization. So we're working on how do I replace myself and and things that I'm doing right now, between now and then, and so I've got a coach helping me with that. It's not an easy process of letting go. It's a necessary process.

Christine Reed: 7:51

That's what I was just thinking about. You know, being the founder of, and, and God clearly gave you this vision. For some it years, years ago, and I think I read an article years ago about in leadership, how we passed the baton and there's a lot of wisdom and what you are doing. You know you've hired your boss. How many, how many people can say that they've actually done that?

Christine Reed: 8:14

Yeah and we see so many organizations that fall apart after certain people leave and and companies. We just don't do a good job of Building those relationships and having those people ready to To take our spot. You know, and and really just you planning your exit, that takes a lot of humility. Well, it has to be hard.

Dave McAuley: 8:38

It is, it's, it's hard and you know, but but it's, it's one of those necessary things and you know, and I've got limited perspective and Matt does things differently than I would do them, but we end up getting to the same place and sometimes the way he did it was maybe better than I would have done. Maybe it, maybe my way would have been better, but we get to the same place and, trusting that over time and trusting the development of the team members, and use that handing off the baton, the you know that's part. That analogy is a great one, because if the runner handing off the baton has to be at the same speed, if you will, if the one taking the handoff, they just don't stop and start. There's an overlap, if you will. And so that's what we did for several years. We had about a four or five year overlap of working together and handing off the baton so that when Matt took the reins he was fully up to speed.

Matt Overby: 9:29

Yeah, tragic video that you can watch on YouTube from the Olympics a women's relay Olympics team that was trying to make that handoff and they weren't. They weren't at that same pace, they were up to speed and it was just a catastrophic failure of what that looks like when it's not done well. And so, yeah, we, you know it's one thing to teach leadership, it's another thing to live it out. And so we, we always teach to a very high standard, an aspirational level, but we admit every day that we're not there. We have to do our own introspection and learning and growth and personal development, because we're human, just like everybody else.

Christine Reed: 10:05

Absolutely, and I love that and the fact that you guys truly are Living out your mission and vision with each other and your leadership, and how you've matched your strengths, how you about your balancing each other. Yeah, so, dave, tell us a little bit about the beginning how it started. Yes, I love this story so.

Dave McAuley: 10:26

I was living in st Petersburg, florida, at the time, and I was in retail furniture business. We had our two oldest children were going to a private Christian school in st Petersburg on a campus where they hada radio station and a conference center. And as our kids are going to school there, the headmaster approached me one day and said you know? I said no, you have your business. But he said we need help, you know, kind of promoting ourselves in the community and Creating more awareness, and would you come and work with us on that? And I said sure. So I started going out into the community to promote that campus. But as I started meeting with leaders in the community whether it be business leaders, nonprofit leaders, government leaders, church leaders, whatever to promote this campus, I found time after time that People didn't know each other. They didn't know each other existed, but they had similar passions. Maybe it was for at-risk youth or unwed mothers or food insecurity or Workforce development, whatever the topic was.

Dave McAuley: 11:23

Over time I would discover Bob or Susan or Janet or Bill had a similar passion and I just started saying, hey, why don't you all meet? Let's meet for coffee, or let's meet for lunch one day, or breakfast, and I would get those three or four or five people together and just have them introduce themselves to each other. And it wasn't part of my job, it just was part of my personality to do that. And so out of that, I started seeing traction once they met and Started thinking what would it look like if we did this intentionally as a nonprofit? So I started working on a nonprofit, actually talked to the headmaster at the school and said you know, I'm not gonna do this forever. I want to start an organization. This is what I've learned from this. And and he was actually at a conference in Tennessee and Elizabeth than Tennessee when they announced that you know, somebody's looking for a director for a retreat center up here. So he actually Nominated me for that position. That's how I ended up in northeast Tennessee. But during that lesson what I learned was that that power of connecting people and making those introductions and the image that came to mind, and it's how we came up with these, what we call the four C's with summit.

Dave McAuley: 12:29

That idea of connecting leaders and doing Consulting and coaching and then caring for leaders came from an Old Testament passage in Exodus 17, where Moses has just taken the all the Israelites out of Egypt. They've been in captivity for 400 years and Pharaoh at that time in Egypt is really wants them to get out. So he said take whatever you want and just go. And they took gold and silver and fine linens and they went out. And here they are in the middle of the desert, a million people with all these riches, and a guy named Amalek who had an army looked at that and said boy, this is easy picking. So he Set up to wage war against Israel.

Dave McAuley: 13:08

And that's when God told Moses Moses, what I want you to do is take the staff of God, the one that you parted the Red Sea with. I want you to stand on the Summit of the hill that's where we get our name and I want you to hold that staff of God above your head. And as long as you do that, israel will prevail in the battle. But the problem was Moses arms got tired and if he didn't hold his arms up, israel would start losing. And that's when two other leaders, named Aaron and her, saw this happening and they came alongside and it tells us, they rolled up a stone for him to sit on and One held up one arm and one held up the other, and that day Israel prevailed in battle because leaders came together on the summit To accomplish what God had called Moses to do. And we tell leaders this all the time, as God created you to do great things, but he designed you where you cannot do great things alone.

Dave McAuley: 13:56

We need other people to help us. We have to make those key connections. So out of that story we see those four services that we need to do. We need to connect people and leaders need to connect. We're better if we're connected with other leaders. We need to do a little bit of consulting. Some strategy involved, coaching I can't imagine they were sitting there silent. They're probably sitting there going, hey, we're doing good, hang in there, we could do a little longer. And and then that caring part of rolling up the stone.

Dave McAuley: 14:19

Leadership is not easy and too many leaders and I saw this in in my own leadership journey of how many times, if we're not connected Well, we can feel really alone or overwhelmed, or overburdened. Even the imposter syndrome sits, sneaks in and we start thinking we're not good enough. And it's when we have other leaders around us that can support us in that, be advisors and help us with it that we become stronger and better. So out of that passage and out of my experience came this idea to start summit leadership. And back in 2004 I left a Job at a local church that I was working for at the time in Northeast Tennessee and and just Went to my dining room table and said, hey, we're gonna start this thing, and part of it was I was in my mid 40s at the time, so it's sort of Matt says I started something out of a midlife crisis.

Speaker 1: 15:06

That's how it started.

Dave McAuley: 15:07

But I was kind of at that place. If I was gonna do it, I had this idea that had been floating in my head from 1993 to 2004, and and just the concept, and finally it was. It was the time I said, okay, this is time I need to do this. If I'm gonna do it, now is the time, and that's when we started summit leadership back in 2004. So we're in our 20th year right now, and and so Next June will be the 20th anniversary and that is amazing and I hope to see a big 20th Anniversary celebration for summit yes, with all your partners and special benchmark happenings 20th anniversary.

Christine Reed: 15:42

Of course you know it, we know this plan, the party so, matt, one thing I would really like for you to share with us is talking about the four C's of connecting, coaching, consulting and caring, and Talk about each one of those and how. What role does summit specifically play? Could you share that with us?

Matt Overby: 16:04

Absolutely happy to Excuse me that, yeah, those four C's again. That's sort of the how we do what we do. Right, we come alongside of leaders, organizations, whether those are businesses, whether they're nonprofits, whether their churches, because we're passionate about leadership and the principles that we're talking about, the concepts they're all Transcend any arena that you're in, because the majority of time we're dealing with people.

Matt Overby: 16:26

Mmm and so when we think about those four C's out of the of connecting connecting the right people to the right resources at the right time and timing is so key in that, all right, the right people and the right resources for one organization. Maybe they're completely wrong resources and people for another organization. And so we are a very relationship based ministry or organization. One of our core values we're relational, not transactional if we ever find ourselves getting stuck in a transaction.

Matt Overby: 16:55

That's a values violation. For us. It has to be based on the relationship. You'll hear that over and over and over again in our messaging, throughout our facility. Everything we talk about hinges on relationships, and so that idea of connecting the right people to the right resources at the right time is Knowing right.

Matt Overby: 17:14

We, we love to just sit down and meet with people. We'll do initial meetings. There's no cost, there's no obligation, it's just to find out what's going on in your world. What are you passionate about? What are you? What do you see as a gap in our community that you want to step into, that you feel like you're being called to, to be a part of, or the impact, and we'll just listen, you know, tell us your heart, what's on your heart, what's burdening you, what's breaking your heart right now that you see that you won't do something about. And then we love to make connections. I did.

Matt Overby: 17:41

Somebody sits down to meet with us and they say, well, we're really, really heartbroken for Youth in our area. You know, right, this, this idea that you know we need more mentors, or we need, you know, places for them to go, or support systems who might. Well, that's great. Do you know TR and Carla Dunn with 413? Or do you know Randy Hensley over at coalition for kids? Or do you know Michael and Sherry Marion with rise up? Or Robin Crumbley at the Boys and Girls Club? Because there are people in this community that have the same passion and burden that you have, and so before we'll let them sort of silo off and give them any homework to do anything On their own, we're gonna say let us introduce you to these folks right who have a similar passion, as they've said, that that you have.

Matt Overby: 18:22

And See what's the synergy like. You know what? They may be sitting there praying for somebody just like you with your passion, your education, your skill set to help take them to the next level or launch a new program or do something that they've been wanting to do for a long time, but just don't have the ability, for whatever reason, to do it. And if we don't explore that opportunity for synergy, what have we missed out on? And so that connecting aspect of Just making those introductions, we have a fun little tagline that will tell people we will do an introduction but we will not do a prearranged marriage, right, and so they're not obligated to anything. And our partners know that as well.

Matt Overby: 18:58

If we're referring somebody or saying, hey, you know, you should really go and meet Randy and I'll make that introduction, randy knows that he's not on the hook for anything either. It's just simply the introduction for somebody that he didn't know before and vice versa. And let's see where God goes with it from there. But there's no pretense, there's no obligation, just simply an introduction. So that's that concept of connecting, coaching and consulting Sort of run parallel. But you know, if you've ever had a good coach, whether you spent time in the athletic arena or even in your professional career that good coach is looking for talent right and he's trying to get. How do we bring that raw talent out? How?

Christine Reed: 19:30

do we?

Matt Overby: 19:30

you're already there, but how do we encourage it, how we develop it. So, meeting with leaders to help understand what is talent, what's already there, what has God's put in there that we can both, we can build up, draw out, strengthen and use that to leverage. And then the idea of Coaching and consulting. So this idea of consulting is more along the lines of best practices, strategic planning, and we've actually honestly kind of shifted away from this idea of quote-unquote best practices to just better Practices, because the rate of chains that we're seeing around us, the pace at which we're running around, especially since COVID, is what was a best practice yesterday May not be a best practice anymore today. Right, so what are those better practices? What are the things that we can do to change, maybe even incrementally, but that'll get us better at what we're trying to achieve and what we're trying to fulfill?

Matt Overby: 20:18

So that I did consulting with people. And then that last thing is just caring. I Because leadership is hard, especially in the startup phases We've got leaders who are trying to birth this idea right, birth an organization out of a passion or out of a broken heart, and they're wearing a lot of hats. Right Again, they're the vision caster, they're the face, they're the voice, they're answering the phones, they're sweeping the floor, they're paying the bills, they're doing a lot, and so sometimes you just need somebody to come alongside of you to encourage you. We use Nehemiah as the example of that right.

Matt Overby: 20:47

Nehemiah was working hard, trying to rebuild that wall, and there were literally people that wanted to kill him right To not succeed, and so we may not be that extreme, but it can feel like there's a lot of things against you at times and everything's really, really hard and so having a place you can come, having people you can come and talk to, to be encouraged.

Matt Overby: 21:05

You know, we're not a misery loves company type of organization. We're going to let you vent and we'll talk about it and we're going to say, okay, where do we go from here? How do we move forward? And we actually have a license counselor on our staff. Michelle King has been with us for over a decade. I won't tell you how long she's been in this work because she looks like a spring chicken, but she's been working on this for a long, long, long time and it has a network of 40 other counselors in our region that she can refer out to that have their own specialties, that have their own sliding scale if they need to depending on the situation and we probably keep some counselors in business.

Matt Overby: 21:38

We do so many referrals out of Summit to connect again needs to resources. We're that bridge. A lot of times we'll use that analogy of bridge builders right and we're trying to just connect one side to the other. But that's our four C's.

Christine Reed: 21:52

That is awesome, and I think you know when I think about leaders and the entrepreneur and someone that has a passion and they come to Summit, you know here's my passion. You know how can you help me Like, can we brainstorm? You know I look at you guys as sort of preventing someone falling through the cracks. You know you're almost there to help, help not rescue and help lift that person up or or that company that that's maybe struggling. So I love that and I think it's extremely successful and how you guys have gone about that, and so I know one thing that you talk about too is the three wins you know with your. So talk, let's talk a little bit about because we have to have business partners right, that's right. So share a little bit about some of who some of your business partners are and how do they help you guys be able to accomplish your overall mission and vision in the community.

Dave McAuley: 22:49

So we've got probably. What about 50 or 60 business partners benchmark being a faithful business partner for many, many years. A lot of businesses in the in the community, a firehouse restaurant, Chick-fil-A. We like restaurant partners too.

Christine Reed: 23:03

We just knew to say we like all those lunches.

Dave McAuley: 23:07

Sleep zone, just several different business Crowder RV. We've had a bunch of them over the years. Now I'm going to forget some Y song.

Speaker 1: 23:14

Mulligan flooring has been a great partner.

Matt Overby: 23:16

Action BFX yeah, action.

Dave McAuley: 23:18

BFX. There's just. We go on. There's like 60 of them.

Dave McAuley: 23:20

They're on our website, so you can go to the website, they can see all the business partners and the model that we have. There's sort of a cascading effect, if you will. We do leadership coaching, consulting workshops. We have businesses that support us just to be sponsors of what we do, and our business community are the kind of the primary funders, if you will, if a lot of what we do, and it cascades down so we can now do things for nonprofits and churches in the region that may not be able to afford. Now, some of the larger nonprofits, larger churches, can afford more, but you have smaller nonprofit, smaller churches, startups that can't, and we're able to provide services at either low cost or no cost to them.

Dave McAuley: 24:02

And going back to what you asked about the three wins, that's one of the things we always look for in a relationship is can we get three wins out of this? Is it good for the business? Is it good for summit? And then the third one is it good for our region or our community? And as we start doing that, it becomes for the business.

Dave McAuley: 24:19

They may say that, yeah, the leadership development, the coaching, the connections, those things of a benefit or our business, and then they make a donation, if you will, to summit as part of the getting relational, it's not transaction when I say we're going to do this for a certain amount of dollars, a donation, so they make donation to support what we're doing and then out of that we're able to do the same workshop, maybe four, or the same type consulting for a nonprofit that maybe they want to try to support or help out, or that we're working within the community and in that synergy between the three wins when we're working together, that third win to me is the deal maker Right, and if it's not out there then it's more transactional because that's really why we exist.

Dave McAuley: 24:59

So those three sectors and that came up early on when we started, when I started summit, recognizing that the business leaders were the leaders on the boards at nonprofits and in leadership positions at churches. So the business leaders become kind of the main contact point to have influence in nonprofits and in the churches and if we get those three working together well, through relationships and through partnerships and collaboration, we really can effectively serve the community. And you mentioned early on, you know, better leaders, equal, stronger communities. And if we can get the leaders in those three and there's other segments, whether it be education or the media or the arts that we serve as well, but we focus on those three If we can get those three working together, then we can effectively impact the community in the region.

Christine Reed: 25:50

That's. I love that. And one thing that you talked about earlier was the abundance mentality, because I think a lot of times, as businesses or churches or ministry organizations, we have a tendency to silo ourselves because I think Matt, you mentioned this earlier about holding on so tightly. So let's talk a little bit about that abundance mentality and just how it opens up these relationships.

Matt Overby: 26:21

Yeah, it really does. One of our core values is we believe that God owns the bakery, and when you see that imprint for the first time, you may scratch your head and be like what world are they talking about?

Matt Overby: 26:30

Right, but it's just that exact point. It's the fact that we choose to be Abundance oriented. We choose to believe that God owns the bakery. We're not going to fight over a piece of the pie. We're not going to just sweep the crumbs off and think that that's okay. No, if we're pursuing what God has put in our heart to do, he'll forgive us a whole pie. That's what he wants us to have right. It's his providence and his time for his will. And so we're gonna. We're gonna walk around and do our best to lead with Open hands so that God can put in and take out what he wants to when he wants to for his purposes, and not clenched fists and just Choking the life out of everything that he's given us the opportunity to steward for that season. And so for us, it's that not getting trapped in that scarcity mindset and being more abundance oriented.

Matt Overby: 27:18

And unfortunately, you find that in nonprofit, the nonprofit community in the church community and Business is not so much, but in those other two arenas we really have to spend time talking with leaders and help them move out of that trap. And it really is. I believe it's a trap from the enemy. He wants us to walk around in insecure. He does not want us to walk around bold and in faith that God is is providing what he's called us to, and so helping leaders sometimes shake that off and give them a new perspective and and trust right and walk in faith that he's. He's called you to it and he'll provide what you need when you need it, for his purposes and his will. It's about him and his glory anyway. It's not about us or our agenda or our plans.

Christine Reed: 28:01

It's it's about right, right, that's, and it too is, and it brings people out into relationship. And and how much more do we need that now, post COVID, to have people connecting and being together and Learning from one another. And I love what, what you guys are doing at summit and it again, there's so many services that are provided with summit. What is one of the main takeaways that you would love for the people listening today to know about summit? How to get in touch with you, because I know we've unpacked a lot.

Matt Overby: 28:35

We'll probably do another podcast to talk about more things, but Just either one of you mind briefly and I know Dave will have a thought as well, but mine is Our team is very, very intentional About living out the reality that we are not the hero of 99% of the stories that we're involved in. We're serving amazing organizations. We're serving very, very, very passionate leaders that are doing the frontline hard work of the ministry and the mission that they've been called to, and so we walk a fine line of not ever overshadowing those organizations that we're serving. We may be doing very impactful work and they would maybe the first ones that would tell you that, but that's their story to tell. That's not our story. You'll never hear us tell that story.

Matt Overby: 29:20

If they would like to from their perspective on our behalf, that's wonderful, but that is their story. They are the heroes, they're doing the heavy lifting and we're sort of in that spotter Weightlifter analogy. We're encouraging them, we're hopefully equipping them, helping them go further, faster than they would by themselves, but that's that's our role. We'd like to be again behind the scenes in that Aaron and her support system role in the shadows is where we thrive. We we typically don't like to be in the spotlight very often, but that's what I would like just people remember about summit.

Christine Reed: 29:49

Yeah, thank you, matt Dave.

Dave McAuley: 29:51

You know, one of our defining values is serve first. I think, about it walking through Sam's Club and they're giving out the samples, right we?

Dave McAuley: 29:57

like to be able to allow people to sample the service of summit.

Dave McAuley: 30:01

So if people want to reach out to us, our website is summit life org and there's a contact form on there that they can Fill out if they want to get in touch with us or call the office and set up a time to meet.

Dave McAuley: 30:13

We just like to build those relational networks. We like to know you know what is it that you're trying to do, what is your passion. You know, like Matt said, what breaks your heart that you're trying to address, or and and how can we maybe help you connect to other people that are doing the same? And or, if there's not something already, what would it look like if you were going to try to start something up and help someone through that process? So we just we want to connect with people and we love to have you and host you over at summit. Come over, check out, you have a cup of coffee and See what we have facility wise, and meet some of the staff and see how we might be able to help you. But then again, trying to find the three wins what's good for you, how might you be able to help summit, how might we be able to do something together that could impact our region or this community, and that's what we're looking for through those relationships.

Christine Reed: 30:59

Thank you Well, matt and Dave, I want to thank you for joining us today. It's just a wealth of information and I love what some it's doing and I know that God is in it and we know that when God's part of something, it's always going to be successful and Bring light to Northeast Tennessee and help so many people.

Matt Overby: 31:21

So look forward to our next podcast, because I think we've got more things to talk about absolutely.

Dave McAuley: 31:27

Thanks so much.

Matt Overby: 31:28

Thanks for having us.

Dave McAuley: 31:28

Thanks for and thanks for benchmark to y'all been a great supporter of summit.

Christine Reed: 31:32

Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1: 31:35

This has been benchmark happenings brought to you by Jonathan Tipton and Steve Reed from benchmark home loans. Jonathan and Steve are residential mortgage lenders. They do home loans in Northeast Tennessee and they're not only licensed in Tennessee but Florida, georgia, south Carolina and Virginia. We hope you've enjoyed the show. If you did make sure to like rate and review. Our passion is Northeast Tennessee, so if you have questions about mortgages, call us at 423 491 5405 and the website is wwwJonathanandStevecom. Thanks for being with us and we'll see you next time on Benchmark happenings.