How to Create a Life Plan that Drives Your Growth

In this episode, Doug Smith joins Nick Poole on the Calvary Leadership Podcast. Doug shares his journey from being unaware of personal development to becoming a champion of continuous growth is highlighted through his impactful story. Doug shares his life plan approach for setting long-term goals in various life areas—spirituality, marriage, family, finances, friendships, and health—and emphasizes the value of feedback, resilience, and effective mentorship. 

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:17 First Encounter and Early Memories
00:47 Doug's Work and Personal Life
00:54 The Importance of Personal Development
02:02 Daily Disciplines for Growth
04:01 Staying Connected to God
05:15 Maintaining Hunger and Vision
10:35 Seeking and Responding to Feedback
15:39 Balancing Personal Development and Leadership
17:03 The Value of Real-World Experience
19:20 The Importance of Accountability
20:58 Finding and Engaging with Mentors
24:36 Preparing for Mentor Meetings
27:43 Fostering Resilience and Adaptability
30:44 Final Thoughts and Encouragement

The Calvary Leadership Podcast
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Transcript

Doug Smith: 0:00

Hey, leader, and welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership Podcast, where we are obsessed with helping you grow to your maximum potential and to maximize the impact of your leadership. My name is Doug Smith, and I am your host, and we recorded this episode live from our Burgo Realty Studios. Today, you're actually going to hear me being interviewed by my good friend, Nick Poole, who is a pastor here in Pittsburgh. And in the interview, he asked me all about personal growth and how to develop leaders, which are two of my favorite subjects. And so I think it's going to add a ton of value to your life. And so let's dive right in. Here's my conversation with Nick Poole.

Nick Poole: 0:34

Welcome, everyone, to this month's Calvary Leaders Podcast. And today, I'm so excited. We have a good friend, Doug Smith, with us. And Doug works for Light of Life. But also, I think, I was just thinking, just to cross my mind, I think the first time I ever met you was at your first L3 gathering on the north side. I don't think it was a conference, per se. Okay, one of our breakfasts? No, it wasn't. It was in the evening. Okay. It was a conference.

Doug Smith: 1:05

Do you remember who was speaking? Matt. Matt Keller. Matt Keller. There you go. All right. I remember that. Okay. That was the first time, man. That's awesome. Great memory. Matt's a great friend and mentor, and that was a phenomenal night.

Nick Poole: 1:18

And so that was pretty cool. You're doing some amazing things with leaders and pastors all over Pittsburgh. And what you're doing with Light of Life, of course, fantastic. Thank you. So I appreciate all you're doing. So we're blessed to have you with us. And we're talking today about aiming to always get better, which is something that really is at the core of who you are and what you do. And so I'm super pumped to get to have this conversation with you. So anything else I missed about you?

Doug Smith: 1:43

No, you hit most of the things. I would just say, as we're speaking, we're currently expecting our fifth child any moment. So if this is only like a five-minute podcast, it's because I got a call from my wife and I'm going to have my fifth kid. So yeah, I know we both have large families. And I just want to say, when we talk about continual improvement, I was just sharing with you before we started recording, I've been watching you for the last, I guess, if that was the first time we met, at least five or six years. And you are someone who I've just watched their journey over and over again, continually get better and better and better. And I'm just so proud of you, and it's been amazing. It's so fun to watch you grow and develop and get better every day to make a bigger impact for the kingdom. So thank you for your ministry.

Nick Poole: 2:20

Yeah, I appreciate that. That means a lot. That's very, very grateful for those words. I don't know if I can live up to those fully, but I'll try. One day at a time. One day at a time. So to kind of start off... Us getting better, I think doesn't happen naturally necessarily. And so a question is what personal disciplines or routines do you follow to make sure that you're kind of on that constant path of growth?

Doug Smith: 2:46

Yeah. So for me, I spent the first 17 years of my life not even knowing that there was such thing as personal development or getting better or continuous growth. And I was fortunate enough to have a youth pastor that came into my life at 17 and he handed me a John Maxwell CD, which would be equivalent to the conversation we're having now. And it was the first time I had ever been exposed to this idea that you can actually grow and develop into something more tomorrow than you are today. And for whatever reason, when I got exposed to that idea, something went off in me. I often tell people Yeah. That was really the start of this whole discipline and routine that I've had in my life now for over 20 years. And really what that looks like for me is just doing something every single day to grow. And so my morning time for me is usually my growth time. We both have a lot of kids. And so if I don't have my time with God and growth time before 7 a.m., it's not going to happen. And so I try to spend an hour every day, and I've done this for 20 plus years, where I'm getting into the Word of God. I'm reading a leadership book. And I also would say I utilize a lot of my free time when I'm commuting and things like that to listen to podcasts. So I think this one guy I heard say, make your free time your prime time. And so I've just tried to grow and add habits and disciplines in my life in the free time that I do have.

Nick Poole: 4:19

It's really good. That's really good. I'm the same way. I get up early before my wife leaves for school at seven and get that stuff done. I think it's so important. You're busy. I mean, all leaders, we're all busy. How in the busyness of just our schedules, how do you stay connected to God in your daily life? With all the demands and all the stuff that is pulling at you, how do you keep yourself grounded?

Doug Smith: 4:47

For me, it goes back to that daily discipline. If I don't spend that time with God, I'm not the same for the day. And fortunately, you know, I was able to develop these habits pretty early on in my walk with God, but it's my time with prayer in the morning. It's my time getting quiet. I hear from God during those daily moments. And so for me, it's the daily discipline. It's just giving God time. It doesn't, you know, I know I talked about an hour, but God is God. Like you can give God three minutes and God can speak more in three minutes than you need in a lifetime. And that's the beautiful thing about knowing, you the creator of the universe. And so you have access to God anytime that you want. And so my encouragement to people would just be find time every day, whether some of us are morning people like me and that's my time, but other of you might be night owls and you know, Hey, your best time is 11 o'clock at night. Well, Hey, that's great. Just make sure you're putting in that daily time with God. Cause it really does add up. And it's honestly, I tell people all the time, I don't know how people do life or especially leadership without God. Like I don't know how that's possible.

Nick Poole: 5:46

Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. How do you keep yourself, with all the rhythms and disciplines, how do you keep yourself hungry? How do you not let it become monotonous? Or is that just more of your personality?

Doug Smith: 5:58

So it's probably a mixture of both. And so one, I talked about when that light bulb went off and I felt like I was Neo in the Matrix. for whatever reason, that set something off in me. Prior to that moment in my life, I had no drive. I was the laziest person on earth. But I think the key here is you have to have a vision for your life. And so for me, one thing that I encourage leaders to do, and really all people to do when they get involved with L3 leadership or whatever, is to create a life plan. This was an idea that I was exposed to pretty early on. And a life plan is basically you taking a few days away, There's a great book that I'd recommend called Living Forward by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. And they'll walk you through this whole process. But basically, you take two or three days, you get away, and you really start to think through every area of your life, your marriage, your career, your friendships, your finances, your physical fitness. And you basically say, hey, regardless of how old I am now, at the end of my life, what do I want to have said about each of those areas? Or if I heard people speak about each of those areas at my funeral, what would I want to hear them say based on the way I I stewarded my life. And when you do that, what you'll find is you kind of get this huge vision for your life and what you can be. And when we talk about continual improvement, that's what it's all about. It's the hope and the promise that tomorrow can be better today. But the only way, I love what John Maxwell says, the only way tomorrow will be better than today is if you grow today. And so when you have a vision of the end, It makes every day a stepping stone to get toward that vision, another step closer. So this is maybe a little too nuanced and I'm happy to dive more into my system if you want, but every year in the beginning of the year, we're recording this in January. I get excited and I review my life plan. And so I'm kind of reminded of what I want the end to be. And then I say, okay, if that's my vision of where I want my life to go, what steps do I need to take this year in each area of my life to actually make that vision a reality? Okay. Hey, in my marriage, these are the things I'm going to need to do with Laura this year to make sure that we're continuing to have a flourishing marriage so that in the end, we can say X, Y, Z. Hey, what are the things I need to do in my leadership to grow and develop? So by the end of the year and by the end of my life, I can say that I led people well. And And when you do that, you kind of get excited about the year. And then you just start breaking that down into 90 day goals and then weekly goals and daily. And so when you do it that way, you recognize that every single day has importance and has value and you should never underestimate it. And so for me, that's what kind of keeps me going and waking up every day, wanting to get better is this today is vital in me becoming the man I want to be and living the life I want to live.

Nick Poole: 8:32

So you took this big dream goal of where you want to end up at the end of your life and you brought it into bite-sized pieces, which is just to They're smart, that's really good. Just real quick, what are the different categories or areas that you outline?

Doug Smith: 8:46

Yeah. Yeah. Number one is my walk with God. So at the end of the day, what do I want God? Hey, you know, I want to hear well done, good and faithful servant. So at the end of my life, what do I want God to be able to say to me about the way I stewarded what he entrusted me with to his marriage? Like I talked about, Hey, I want my wife to, to be able to say that we were married 50 plus years and she wouldn't have chosen another man in any of those 50 years because I was the best husband I could possibly be. We, and then family, Hey, I want to raise a world changing multi-generational family team on mission. That's not just worry about themselves individually, but is concerned about the generation after them and after them and really making a huge kingdom impact. Finances. I want to be a good financial steward and enable, I want to get to a place where we can be financially free so we can focus on whatever God's called us to do without that burden. And so you go through these areas. I'll just mention the other ones without jumping in, but friendships is really important. Physical fitness and your physical health is another category. And I'm sure there's probably one I'm forgetting. Are those from the

Nick Poole: 9:46

book? Living

Doug Smith: 9:48

Forward? Yes.

Nick Poole: 10:12

Yes, 100%. That's so good, so good.

Will Host: 10:14

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Nick Poole: 11:12

One of the challenges of leading is depending on everyone's personality and wiring and even seat they're sitting in of leadership is our drive. You know, we have an idea of where we're going. We have a direction, we have a vision, and we want to get there. The other side of that that can be the challenge is feedback, getting feedback from others. And in the church world specifically, feedback oftentimes doesn't go well. Usually it's, you know, one of two extremes. Either you got the grumpy, you know, grumpy person that like, hates everything. Or we're so passive aggressive that we don't actually give any feedback. We just like, you were awesome in our head. We're like, that was really bad. And so how do you as a leader seek feedback from others to really find those areas that we need to get better? Do you need to grow? You need to improve?

Doug Smith: 12:16

Yeah, this could be part of my natural wiring too, but I believe teachability is the key to everything. And humility is the key to everything if you really want to grow and develop. And so for me, I've always just sought feedback for whatever reason, because Ken Blanchard, I think, said feedback is the breakfast of champions. Because what I think you'll find, yes, feedback can offend us and hurt us initially, because it's basically telling you like, hey, where do you want to go? You're not there yet. I remember interviewing Clint Hurdle, the former manager of the Pirates, and he would have to sit down with people saying, you know, these athletes who thought they were the best athlete on the field and saying, well, you're not an MVP. yet. Or to my little players, hey, you're not a major league player yet. That stings. But if you view it properly, that can also be the feedback that you need to actually grow to the next level. And I think going back to what you just mentioned, it's all about the why. If I'm seeking feedback and my why is because the piece of feedback that I ask you for could make me better, then all of a sudden I get excited for feedback. It may hurt when I hear it. One thing that I do, and I guess I would just say process-wise, you need to ask Thank you. And at the end of every interview, I asked two questions. I said, hey, make me a better interviewer. What feedback do you have for me that can make this experience better for future guests? And then I always ask for referrals. And out of 400 interviews, I would probably say that maybe 25 people actually gave me real feedback. And out of that, two or three of those people changed my life forever with the feedback that they gave me. And here's what I know. If If you don't ask for feedback or if you don't respond well to feedback, you'll never get real authentic feedback again. It's hard enough to get just when you're asking for it. But I'm telling you, if people are courageous enough to give it to you and you respond poorly, Andy Stanley said, if you don't respond well, you'll soon be surrounded by people who have nothing to say. And that's honestly my biggest fear. I never want to get to a place in my life where people aren't willing to tell me what I need to hear rather than what I want to hear. So the big thing I would just say is you need to ask for it and get hungry for it. And it's just like anything. Once you get a few reps of it in, you start feeling the excitement and momentum that comes with the growth for it, and then you start to hunger after it.

Nick Poole: 14:41

What's the wrong way to respond to feedback? Just to be really specific and clear. What's a wrong way?

Doug Smith: 14:49

Yeah, so, and to make sure that people realize that I'm far from perfect on this. Oh yeah, I get it. None of us are. Just recently, I would say in the past two or three months, I had three different people come to me, unsolicited feedback. And I remember one of them was a leader and a mentor. And he said, Doug, the knock on you and your leadership right now is... And then he gave me some very blunt and candid feedback. And inside... And again, this is a natural reaction. I got mad. I got defensive. And that defensiveness, I didn't hold it in, which is what I should have done. But I automatically started saying, but what you don't know is, and he actually stopped me, which was awesome if you're a mentor listening to this. And he said, Doug, I'm not here to listen to you complain. I'm not here to listen to you defend yourself. I'm here to give you feedback that this is the area you need to grow in your leadership. What you do with it, it's up to you. And that's all that people can do for us. But if, and I actually apologize to them. And that's where I would tell you, if you've been defensive in the past, go apologize. Hey, you know what? I shouldn't have reacted that way. Wow, you should react. Thank you for the feedback. I needed to hear it. Now, when you're actually processing the feedback, you need to really discern whether or not, hey, what's true? What do I need to apply what not to? But in general, yeah, do not get defensive. Do not push back. Just be thankful.

Nick Poole: 16:06

And on those lines, what's the difference between inviting feedback versus not? feedback coming to you unsolicited?

Doug Smith: 16:18

Well, I would say this. So the feedback that came to me unsolicited came because I have the relationship and I think those people knew that I'm teachable and

Nick Poole: 16:26

knew... But in some ways that is solicited because you have that relationship.

Doug Smith: 16:29

Yes. So in that case, as we're processing this, I would just say that you're building your reputation every day with every interaction that you have with people. And when feedback comes, you're either building a reputation of being humble and teachable, or you're building a reputation of being prideful and defensive. And again... you're not going to get solicited or unsolicited feedback if you have a reputation for being prideful and defensive. Only if you have an attitude of humility and teachability will you start to receive that. So again, if you're assessing your life right now and you're saying, I can't remember the last time I got feedback that was real and honest, you may want to do some self-assessment there and maybe need to make some changes.

Nick Poole: 17:10

That's good. That's really good. Now, how do you balance the time and energy for your own personal development with just the responsibilities you have as a leader. Like, you know, we have all of these responsibilities that literally can fill 100% of our time. How do you make room and space for personal development?

Doug Smith: 17:31

So this is beautiful. Now, historically, again, you probably noticed already, I love personal growth. I listen to hours of podcasts, listen to tons of, I read tons of books every year. And really, I just fit it into the daily, like making my downtime primetime, have time to listen to a podcast a year, book a year. But I remember doing an interview with a leader named Bill Strickland. He actually just retired. He's a legendary leader here in Pittsburgh. He led the Bidwell Training Center. And I was interviewing him and I actually didn't know how to respond to his answer because I was asking him the same thing you're asking me, like, hey, how do you actually to grow and develop as a leader. And his answer was unlike anything I've ever heard still to this day. And he said, I show up to work, man. I show up to work and I make payroll. And that was all he said. I'm like, what?

Nick Poole: 18:16

What do you do with that?

Doug Smith: 18:17

I show up to work and make payroll. But I would say the more I've grown and developed as a leader, I think there's so much wisdom in what he shared. Man, show up. Show up, show up in your organization, do the work. It's when you're doing the work of leadership that you learn the most. You can read a ton of theory and listen, I'm all about personal growth. Books are great. Podcasts are great. Things like this are great. You need that because it'll help accelerate your growth, but nothing's going to accelerate your growth than actually getting reps leading and actually being in the arena. And so for me, I've come to value that. Hey, when I show up that day, every work to work every day, it is an opportunity for me to run into things that I don't necessarily want to run into, but are going to be good for my growth. So the more I grow, I would just say being in the arena and actually leading because I think we live in a world where a lot of people have a lot of talk, but they don't actually have to walk it out. And they're not actually leading anywhere. They're just theory people. And that's my biggest fear.

Nick Poole: 19:10

We have a lot of talking heads, not just on the news, but everywhere, who are experts at all kinds of things they're not actually doing.

Doug Smith: 19:18

100%.

Nick Poole: 19:20

I love Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. He talks about the idea that to be an expert in anything, you need 10,000 hours of work, which is equivalent to almost 10 years. And we have a lot of people who have hundreds of hours in a certain thing, ministry included, that are experts. Show up, do it. You'll get better. I think it's really good.

Doug Smith: 19:43

And let me just say this because I'm somewhat being unfair. So I'm 39 years old. I was just as hungry and trying to grow just as much in my 20s when we talked about theory. And there is a time, if you're a young leader listening to this, you probably are a theory person. And you don't want to hear that because I didn't want to hear that because people told me that. They said, you haven't learned anything. Don't let that discourage you because when you're young, it is your time to learn. Like your 20s, God doesn't care where you develop. He just wants you developing. So take all that in. I was trying to teach leadership lessons in my 20s when I knew nothing. That's okay. Get those reps in and be okay with that. But eventually, you don't want to be 20 years into your career and still being a theory person. You want to make sure that eventually your practice is matching your theory. And I would say this, if you're not getting the opportunities that your theory has turned into practice, that's where I would really look for feedback with mentors of, hey, you know, I I've been learning about leadership. I have a desire to lead, but there seems to be a gap between me where I am now and me actually having an opportunity to lead. What do you think that gap is and what are some ways that I can grow so that I can actually get a leadership position to start to get some of those reps?

Nick Poole: 20:51

So good. That's really good. Really good. Along those lines, what role does accountability play in just growing and seeing yourself, your plan, your hopes to grow and to improve actually happen?

Doug Smith: 21:04

Yeah, I think for me, so I would probably put the most emphasis on me holding myself accountable. You know, Dwayne, the rock Johnson is famous for saying like your greatest competition is you. It's always you versus you. So for me, I try to be my own toughest boss. I never want someone else to have to set the standard for me. So, so for me, it's really holding myself to a higher standard than anybody else. Uh, but I would say organizationally on accountability, accountability is really important. Uh, something we do at light of life that I think has been extremely valuable, uh, to helping people grow and develop and achieve things is we use an operating system called EOS stands for the entrepreneurial operating system. And within that system, everyone in the organization, every single quarter, every 90 days has to have three to seven, we call them rocks. Uh, they're basically goals, but what are the three to seven most important things for you to complete this quarter that are going to move the ball forward to helping us reach our goal. And once we set those every quarter, every one-on-one I have with my direct reports, Hey, we're doing a rock review. Is this on track or off track. If it's off track, it becomes an issue. Hey, why is this off track? How can I help you? If it's on track, bravo. And at the end of the quarter, we want to have you have at least 80% of your rocks complete. And if you go a few quarters and that's not happening consistently, hopefully there's some coaching opportunities in there, but it ultimately become a performance issue. So I think there's a healthy balance, but more than you shouldn't need a system like that to drive you. You should be your own toughest accountability. That's good.

Nick Poole: 22:31

That's really good. How have you, and you've talked a little about this with mentors in your life, how have you involved others in your own growth process? And kind of along those lines with mentors, how have you identified a mentor? How have you found mentors?

Doug Smith: 22:47

Yeah, so a few things here, and I could do a whole podcast on this, so feel free to interrupt. But I love what you're doing here, because when I was an intern at the church I was working at, Victory Family Church, the youth pastor, Larry Bettencourt, he would do this. Every month he would bring in leaders to teach the interns from the community. And if he had you in, he would say, hey, guys, Nick's coming in today. If you connect with what Nick says and you feel like you're inspired by him and want to learn from him, I would encourage you to reach out to him afterwards and ask him out to coffee or breakfast or a learning call and come with a list of questions, come prepared. And then he walked us through this whole process, which I'd be happy to share. And so I started meeting leaders every single month I did that. And I had learning lunches for about 10 years. I was meeting with a leader every month. And I would say as far as, you know, meant they were one-off mentor meetings, but I would say, how do you develop long-term mentors? You have mentor meetings like that. And if I met with Nick and I was like, wow, I love that meeting with him. You know, I want to do what he told me to do in it, but I'm going to follow up with him in three months and say, Hey, Nick, it's been three months since we met. Here's what you told me to do in the meeting. Here's what I did with what you told me. Can we meet again? And if you do that, I promise you no mentor is ever going to say no because no one does that. And once you meet with them a few times, hopefully they become a long-term mentor or a long-term friend. Oftentimes mentors turn into friendships, which is a beautiful thing. Sometimes mentors are in your life for a season. Sometimes they're in your life for a lifetime. You know, that's a whole nother subject, but I'd really encourage you to have learning lunches every month. You know, at Light of Life, I have our team. Hey, every year, I want you to connect with missions that are bigger and better than us. I want you to reach out to them and find the person that's in your role at that mission and schedule a learning lunch. And you'd be surprised how much growth that has provided both to the individuals and to our organization. So that's where I would encourage people

Nick Poole: 24:31

to start. That's really good. The fear sometimes in doing that, I think, is that people fear rejection. And they assume a no before it's even asked. And I don't know if you've seen this. I've seen this. You would be shocked at the people that will say yes. Yes. You just have to ask. Because no one asks. Everyone assumes the no. So no one asks those people. And the worst thing that happens is they're like, I don't have time for that. Okay. No hard feelings. The best thing is you actually get to sit across the table from them and glean from their wisdom. A

Doug Smith: 25:08

hundred percent. And to be honest, there's been times where I've watched your guest speakers at church and be like, man, I need to go to Nick's church. You better like Ken Shamrock. And again, it's the same thing you just asked. And that's actually how I started my podcast. My peers started saying, wow, you get to spend time with this person, this person. I wish I could. But again, they never asked. And so I would just say that if you're a younger leader, senior leaders, they're already successful. They're looking to make a lasting impact in the next generation. And can I be honest with you? They're just as scared of you as you are of them because they don't know how to So I've always tried to be a bridge between the next gen and the gen ahead of me and putting them together because they both have a hunger to meet together and learn from each other. They just don't ask each other. And so reach out and ask. And if you get rejected once, it doesn't mean a no forever. I have a friend that does a podcast that's much bigger than mine. And he said with some guests, he's had to send 88 emails until he got a yes. And again, you don't want to be annoying to people. There's a way to do that. But a no once isn't a no forever.

Nick Poole: 26:07

Yeah, that's so true. 100%. You mentioned, you kind of touched on this, when you did those learning lunches, you kind of came in with questions and things. Can you just briefly explain how do you prepare yourself? If you do reach out to someone that you respect and you want to learn from and you get a meeting with them, it's coffee, it's lunch, maybe it's a Zoom call or a phone call, what advice would you give to someone to be prepared for that? What should they do?

Doug Smith: 26:36

Yeah, I'll try to make this short and concise. Ask for time in your ask. Be clear. How much time do you want and what do you want? If you develop, I always basically say, hey, hey, Nick, I would love to meet with you for coffee. I usually ask for a podcast. That would be a bonus. Like that's a bonus of having a podcast is when you ask someone, you're not just asking them to influence you. You're saying, hey, it'll also reach everyone in my audience. So that's an extra bonus. But hey, Nick, I want to have 30 minutes of your time. I want to let you know I won't waste your time. I will send you a week in advance of us meeting, et cetera. And so you want them to know you'll value their time and then actually do what you'll say. So when I get a meeting, if I got a meeting with you, Nick, I would start looking up sermons that you've done. If you've written articles, blog posts, social media posts, and basically just saying what sticks out to me. And then just writing down questions that I'm naturally curious to ask you. And then coming with those questions, sending them in advance, being early to the meeting. To be early is to be on time. To be on time is to be late. And to be late is to be left. And then when you have the Thank you so much for the time. I want to respect your time. Can we dive right in? Take notes when you're at the meeting. It shows that you're respecting the person and it's showing you're valuing what they say. Trust me, you want to do that. And there's more reasons for it after. After the meeting, thank them. And then go through your key takeaways, write them a thank you note. And in the thank you note, write three key takeaways of notes that you took and say, hey, here are the highlights of what you taught me. When you learn, thanks again. And here's a bonus that I heard the story once from the woman that created the Aflac duck. She got a meeting with Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett historically to that point had only done 10 minute interviews. In her research, she heard that he loved Diet Cherry Coke. So on her way to the interview, she stopped at a convenience store, bought a $2 Diet Cherry Coke, ice cold in a bottle. Went up, met Warren Buffett and said, Mr. Buffett, in my research, I learned that you learned Diet Cherry Cokes and I thought we would start the interview off with something that you love. Here you go. She handed him a Diet Cherry Coke. Warren Buffett looked at her and said, young lady, in all the years that I've been doing interviews, no one's ever brought me a Diet Cherry Coke. You can have as much time as you want. Gave her an hour and a half. And so a bonus would be, if they have an executive assistant, I always ask them like, hey, what's something Nick loves that I could get him? It doesn't have to be expensive. It could be a $2 Coke. Hey, I'm going to buy Nick a gift card to Starbucks or something just to say one more thank you. If you do that, listen to me, you'll be able to meet with 90% of the people you want to meet with.

Nick Poole: 29:05

So true. It just shows you care, you appreciate, and you actually value people. Yes. Yeah. Last question, I'll wrap up here. Yeah. And this is a tough one. We could talk a whole hour on this, but what practices have you put in place to foster resilience and adaptability? I think resilience as a leader is a lost art in some ways, but is still a necessity. So what have you done to kind of foster resilience and adaptability?

Doug Smith: 29:36

Yeah. Well, one is I would just encourage all the leaders listening to this. If you've never had a place where you've had to be resilient, if you've never came to a place in your leadership journey where you've wanted to throw in the towel or wanted to quit or not know that you would make it another day, you haven't led anything yet. I think when you're young, you're really naive and you think that everything's going to be up and to the right and you'll never have any problems. But unfortunately, I've had to learn this the really hard way. I've had some really, really challenging seasons in my leadership journey. And so the things I would point out that have helped me be resilient is one determined to never give up like just make that decision like I am going to live for God and I'm going to make it to my finish line whatever it costs like I will crawl my dead body across the finish line to God's call in my life like that's it I'm never going to give up I love what Peter said like I think it was Peter when he said Jesus where else would we go like all the other disciples were leaving he said are you guys going to leave me too where where else are you going to go then follow God so God I'm never going to quit two is when tough times come do not do like And recognize that you are not alone. The enemy's one of his greatest strategies is to convince you that you're the only one on the planet going through this. You're the only one struggling. Everyone else in the body of Christ is victorious and living in victory except for you. And it's a lie from the pit of hell. Everyone is going through the same test and trial as the Bible says. And when you recognize that in your time of need, we can lock arms with our brothers and sisters in need and say, you know what, guys? I need help. And I say every leader needs to be in a group small group. I lead a group of pastors and we always say, man, you need a group where you're fully known, fully loved, and fully challenged. What does that mean? Fully known, I can fully be myself and share what I'm going through. And I could do that because I know I'm going to be fully loved unconditionally. But at the same time, I'll also be fully challenged because sometimes I do need a hug and prayer and pat on the back. But other times I need a slap in the face to keep going. And so you need a group of community and then get help however you need help. I've gone to therapy. I've been on medication for anxiety. When Whatever you need to do to get help and get through a season, you need to do it. But the biggest thing I would say is all going back to that attitude of, hey, one day at a time, I'm going to keep getting up. You know, Jesus prayed, give us this day our daily bread, not our monthly bread, not our annual bread, not our lifetime bread. Like, God, give me what I need to get through today, and I'll be grateful for it. And if you determine that attitude, you just keep getting up every day, and that's all you can do.

Nick Poole: 31:58

So good, Doug. That was really good. What you kind of touched on is the values of our life groups, that we recognize no one walks alone, that we learn to live and love like Jesus, and that we recognize that we should be deeply known by few. Come on. I love that. So wrap up here. Any final thoughts on how we can aim to always get better?

Doug Smith: 32:21

No, just make a decision. Every day I'm going to get better. And I would just say, Nick, thank you for daily getting better. Just like I said in the beginning, if you're watching this, you guys are very, very blessed to have a leader like Nick. And I know that you'll all be doing this anyway, because he's a leader that'll encourage and inspire you to do so. So thanks for having me, Nick. It was a great honor to be here. And I hope I added value to your

Nick Poole: 32:40

audience. Yeah. Thank you, Doug. You're a blessing. And I look forward to everyone next month. We'll have another guest. You talked about Victory Family Church. We actually have Pastor John Nuzzo from there later this year. You'll get to hear from him, so that'll be super cool.

Doug Smith: 32:54

I'm just glad he came after me. He's my pastor, spiritual father, and I do not want to follow that man. He is incredible. Thanks so much, Doug. Thanks, everyone, for joining us. Well, hey, Leader, thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Nick. I hope that it added value to your life. You can find links to everything that we discussed in the show notes below. I also want to give a special thanks to our sponsor, Andosha Marketing Solutions. They are the producers of this podcast. And if your organization has any marketing expertise needs at all, I wholeheartedly recommend their services. You can visit them at Andosha.com. That's A-N-D-O-C-I-A.com. And as always, Leader, I like to end every episode with a quote. And today, I will share one of my favorite quotes on growth, which is this, growth is the only guarantee of tomorrow being better. That is so good. Growth is the only guarantee of tomorrow being better. Well, leader, that's going to wrap up today's episode. So remember, don't quit. Keep leading. The world desperately needs your leadership. We'll talk to you next episode.