The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP052 – How Craig Groeschel Stays Healthy, Relevant and Passionate in Ministry
Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. Well hey everybody and welcome to episode 52 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff and I really hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. And yeah, we made it 52. Hey, this is the one year mark for the podcast. It was a year ago this week that we launched with episode one, Andy Stanley and man. I'm thrilled to bring it around to our anniversary. Yes, this year. And he's a good friend of Andy. Actually, his name is Craig Grishel and I'm sure Craig like Andy needs very little introduction to most of you who are listening. I am so, so excited to have Craig on the podcast and I thought, you know, there's a number of different directions we could go. But Craig shares with you and shares with me his personal disciplines over the last 20 years. Like, how has he stayed fresh? How has he stayed alive? How has he stayed vibrant leading one of the fastest growing and largest churches in the world and certainly in America? And so Craig gets really honest and sort of peels back the valence says, Hey, here's what I'm doing to make sure that I keep my personal life out of the ditch, how I stay fresh in my relationship with God and how I keep growing as a leader. So I think you're really, really going to enjoy it. And we'll get started with that in just a few minutes. Actually, I want to let you know about how we're celebrating the one year anniversary of the podcast. If you're just an occasional listener, you haven't subscribed yet, you might want to hit the subscribe button. It's free because we've got bonus episodes this month. That's right. I've got three coming up. In fact, two days from now on the Thursday, usually this podcast releases on a Tuesday, this Thursday, two days from now, we're going to be doing a one year best of episode where we take 52 episodes and shrink it down to an hour. And I just pull some of the most powerful moments of the first year and put them together into like an hour. So I think you're probably really going to enjoy that. And there are at least some of my favorite moments from the podcast. And so you'll get that bonus episode. Also, the following Thursday and Thursday after that, I'm going to be doing something brand new. It's called Ask Carry. It's another bonus episode. I get a lot of questions almost on a daily basis from you. And I love to answer them. And I just thought, you know, why don't we just throw that together into an episode? So if you're on Twitter, use the hashtag #AskCarry that's C-A-R-E-Y, #AskCarry. And I'll collect those questions. And also, if you want, you can go over to my blog, carrynewhough.com. And you'll see on the right hand side, a little got a question icon. Click on that. And you can actually leave me a voice message. And I will be playing some of those back on the air. So if you got a blog and you want to share, you know, your blog with people, you can do that. And I'll be playing some of those back in the bonus episodes as well. And the easiest way to make sure that you don't miss those is to subscribe. Also, we got some special guests this month. Ravi Zacharias is on next week. Judd Will height the week after. So it's going to be a powerful month. And the best way to make sure you don't miss anything is to subscribe. And you can do it for free. I also want to say thank you to all the listeners for doing an incredible, like you have made this year so much fun. All of your feedback, your ratings, your reviews, your encouragement, your emails, the personal conversations we've had when I've been speaking somewhere. Man, you guys rock. I just think I've got the best community in the world. You guys are incredible. And the goal is of all of this is just to help you lead like never before. So we want to get better at it in year two. And I just want to thank you for making it so rewarding. One of the ways I love to help you lead is by writing. And I've got a couple of books that I've released already. And I'm really excited to let you know that my brand new book, lasting impact, seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow is available right now. Actually, you can pre-order it releases in October, but you can pre-order it today. And once launch week is over, you will not be able to get the bonuses I'm going to tell you about right now. So if you order now, you will get not only the book that you order, but you'll get the eversion and it runs on any platform, iBooks or whatever you've got on your Kindle, on your Kobo, whatever, it will run on that. We've also got a free audio book for you. Some of you are huge audio book fans. So I am reading that book right now. It'll be available in October once it's released. And you'll get it for free if you order now. And then finally, I'm doing an exclusive webinar for people who pre-order the book. Now, the book is all about the conversations you have to have to help your church grow. So in the book, I write about why people aren't attending church as often and what you can do about it. I write about personal health and how you can keep yourself from burnout. I write about keeping volunteers aligned and alive. I write about why young adults are walking away from the church and what to do about it. I write about change and other subjects that will really help your church grow. So that's sort of the substance. And there's some discussion questions, but one of the things we all struggle with is, okay, that's great. But how do I actually have the conversation with my team? That's what that webinar is about. And that's what I'll be sharing with you. So if you order now at lastingimpactbook.com, you get the ebook. You also get the audio book and you get exclusive access to that free webinar. So just go to lastingimpactbook.com. You can order copies for you and your team. And thanks so much, man. What a lot to celebrate. Also, my guest, Craig Grishel, has a brand new book coming out next month. And his book is called, are you ready for this? I love the subject hashtag struggles following Jesus in a selfie centered world. So while you're at it, you'll want to order Craig's book as well. And I'm just so excited. We're going to jump right into that conversation now with Craig Grishel all about how over these last few decades, he has led himself while leading one of the fastest growing and one of the most influential churches on the planet. Well, like a lot of you, I am really excited to have Craig Grishel on the podcast today. Craig, welcome. Hey, thank you, Carrie. I'm honored to be on with you. Well, I know a lot of leaders, I would in fact suspect most are very well aware of who you are. You've had a tremendous influence on the church as a whole. And on many of our lives, personally, through your writing and your speaking. But give us a thumbnail version of the journey that God has had you on over the last 20 or some odd years at life church and with what he's done in your ministry and your life. Sure. I'll be happy to. And I will say before I kind of get into that is I really enjoy what you do. I saw a tweet with the link to one of your articles on your blog and I read it and thought it was so good. I started kind of pursuing what you write. And I also listened to several of your podcasts. I just wanted to say thank you. Your content is rich and really helpful to me as well. So thank you, Craig. That means an awful lot. And of course, you and I have known each other for 10 years now. I was telling you as we were getting ready. We're close friends. We have because I was a guy. And this is really cool. I should tell people this that, you know, 10 years ago, I sat at the back at a Willow conference in 2005. And you and a few others were talking about the birth of multi site. And I was that dweeb that walked down to the front and said, Hey, Craig, I really love what you do. You have lunch with me. And you said yes. And you and Amy sat down. We had lunch together. You spent about 45 minutes or an hour together. You just need to know that meant the world to me. And it's really cool that we're connecting a decade ago. Thank you. Yeah, I enjoy receiving from you now. Well, yes, but last 20 years, which is a long time. Yeah, just in two minutes or so. Yeah, I've been married for 24. So I'll leave four years out. And the in that amount of time we've had six kids. I just got my my first one oldest just got married, which is a really big deal. Congratulations. Rachel house. Yeah, thank you. And I'm still celebrating and crying anytime I get close to that subject. We started the church almost 20 years ago. And we actually had a really kind of slower start. Thankfully, people are starting churches a lot of times stronger today than we did 20 years ago. And the early years were harder. You know, five, six years into it, we started seeing some momentum. And we were one of the first churches to kind of go multi site and we did it out in a necessity. And also, we didn't know anybody else was doing it. They actually were, but we thought we were the only ones. And so we didn't have anyone to learn from, which in some ways, Kerry was actually a blessing because we weren't copying the bottle as much as we were creating something that was kind of in our hearts, but we didn't have the language or, or, you know, anything to follow. And so we've been doing, I guess, multi site since 2001, I think to date, we have 24 locations. We've got it really, we, I don't know, probably five, six years ago. If I go back even more, maybe 10 years ago, we were barely hanging on financially about to fall apart, made some strategic changes, one of which we started giving away our resources, I think opened up a door of blessing from God. Two is we just we kind of decided to bet the farm on multi site is only what I can say it is there's a difference between a multi site church and a church that does multiple locations. There's, there's a difference. And so we decided to become, you know, a multi site church and everything that we do. And we thought there might be kind of a tipping point in influence and in ability. And it ended up being a greater stronger tipping point than we expected. And so it's really become a little more explosive in the last years. And we've been able, because of the model to actually pay cash for all the buildings as we go, which we never thought of thought would be possible. And so we're now 24 years into it, our 24 campuses into it, almost 20 years, and have some several under construction right now. And for the first time, we have always taught them in multi site, there's five things that have to happen. One is you have to, you know, find and develop leaders to is you have to find and pay for the buildings. Three is you have to develop the staff that comes along with it. Four is you have to fill the buildings up or you can't do it for long. And then five is you have to have the structure to support the new campuses. And you know, those all sound relatively simple, but you have to do them all at the same pace. And to if any one of those legs aren't on the stool, then it doesn't go forward. And by the grace of God, we're now really for the first time ever, we have all five of those things working together at the right pace. And it's really become, you know, quite a ride that we're blessed to take. You piqued my interest. I know we're going to focus a lot on your personal side of the leadership journey for the last 20 years. But you said there's a difference between multi site and multi church multiple locations. Is that the essence of it? Those five things? No, not necessarily. You know, the essence is going to be leadership and values and drive and culture and all that. You don't want to add a second sight. You don't want to duplicate something that you don't love. And, you know, I try to talk more people out of doing multi site than I actually encourage people to do multi site because I think if it's done early, over the wrong reasons, it actually can hurt the ministry. And in my opinion, it's often done way too early. And for the wrong reasons, you know, if you're struggling, you don't go out a second site that's like saying we got a bad marriage. Let's have a baby that maybe it'll fix it, you know. And also, if you've got two or three services, I would say don't add another site, you know, literally, I would argue you need to, if you've got a permanent facility, you want five services, six, seven, eight, you know, before maximize what you've got before you go somewhere else and be a good steward to honor God, the stewardship before you go and start another site. So that's my bias and I'm not always right. But I do, yeah, I do stand by that bias quite often. So, you know, the essence of multi sites going to be always vision, you know, passion for the uncharged and creating the right culture and developing leaders. But in order to go from, you know, one to seven in a short period of time, you have to do those five. And it's easy to, it's easy to, I don't want to be harsh, but you can get a goal, your wife pregnant, you know, several times, but you think you got to raise the kids. You don't want to just go have, go start. Hey, we're starting four new campuses this year and they all have 40 people. Well, right, you're going to be upside down financially, you're going to end up hurting, you know, you're sending campus the original one or whatever. And so you want to do them the right way at the right time, birthed by the spirit of God, born out of the right motives. And when you do that, it can be really, you know, in fact, a lot of people, if you don't, you can end up complicating something that didn't need to be complicated. No, absolutely true. I think that's good advice. Let me ask you this. I mean, tempting question would be, so did you ever think it would get this big? But when did you realize that you were at that tipping point as a leader? Yeah, the question is, no, I never, ever, ever, ever, ever dreamed it would be this big. My secret goal when I started was to have 2,000 people and that seems so big. I didn't tell anybody because I didn't want them to laugh. So, you know, I actually think we crossed the tipping point before we realized we crossed the tipping point. And so, you know, I'm not big into making goals if I want to see this many people or this much whatever, because all we can do is we can input, but God is responsible for the outcome. And so, what we want to do is try to say we want to try to do what's right and trust God with the results. We've never had a, we're going to start, you know, five campuses in this year type of goal. I don't like that. What I want to do is I want to start the right locations when we have the right people, the right resources. And so, our goal is always going to be try to do what is the right thing at the right time and then see what happens beyond that. And to answer your question about the tipping point, we thought it would be there. We just didn't realize once and by tipping point, I mean that we've got the systems that we can reproduce quickly, that we can pay for it, that we are building the right leaders. And when that did happen, I thought, you know, maybe we could go from nine campuses to 14. And instead we went from 9 to 24. And now 50 doesn't look, it doesn't look difficult. And originally, I would have thought 50 was, you know, oh my gosh, impossible. But it all seems very doable now. Earlier in 2015, I mean, I follow you personally and live church on Instagram. And it seemed like you were opening a campus every weekend there for a run. Like it was crazy. It was just, yeah, it was just kind of as to where they fell. And then we're in a season, now we're in a season of doing a lot of work behind the scenes nobody knows about. Right. And so, you know, I've got three pieces of land that are under contract that we're trying to close on. I've got two buildings going up. And you know, we don't talk about that stuff while it's happening. So it's kind of a planting season and then a harvesting season. And that was the harvest and now we're now we're planting again. Right, right. So just so people get a scale, because we're going to dive into the personal journey of leadership, which is what I'm so excited to talk to you about today. But you know, you're leading a lot. So how many people 24 locations, how many people would be present at a typical weekend service? You know, at the time of recording this, we're doing kind of a big outreach series. And all but, you know, the last three weekends, we've had 90,000 and above at physical locations average for the year, probably going to be mid 70s. And again, this is this is kind of like the it's a blow, the kind of roof off type of promotion. And what we try to do, you know, we're recording this. It's yeah, it's the end of July, July and into August is we tried to take what was normally a dead month July and say, just because everyone surrenders to we believe that you can actually grow there. And so to me, it's like a balloon, a lot. The next time you try to blow the same balloon up, it's not as difficult. And so I know that we have more of a crowd. We've got, you know, literally 20,000 people that weren't there in June, and they're not necessarily going to be there in August, but we're expanding the crowd. And then in August, we go actually real hard hitting in discipleship type teaching, followed up by massive small group push. So what we're trying to do is expand the potential people that we're influencing and then convert the crowd and try to help them think more like a church. And it's a cycle that we've done year over year. And so it's kind of the rhythms of let's try to attract attendance and then let's try to do something with them. And I don't actually try to do both at the same time, believe it or not, because there's certain things that bring the people and a lot of people criticize that like crazy. I make no excuse for it at all. I would rather reach more people and minister to more people every time. I think Jesus did that. And I don't, you know, people can criticize all they want to really don't care. And so we're trying to draw a crowd and then we're trying to convert them deeper into into a commitment to the church. And so literally for four weeks, we're trying to draw a crowd. And then, and then for four weeks, we're massively trying to move on talking on addictions and really heavy stuff because they're in the rhythm of coming. And then we go into a massive small group push where we're going to try to start, you know, about 1100 kind of is the goal of small groups if we do the things right to build the leaders and connect them as they go back into the school year. And so, you know, it's a prayerful strategy that we've worked out over the years and kind of run the same game plan year over year with different players and pieces. And it seems to work pretty well for us. And just to connect the dots for leaders, the big series is at the movies, right? That's when you're in right now is we're recording this. Is that the big drum? Correct. Yes. And it's and a lot of sorts have tried to copy or do or, you know, do their own version of it. And it's, you know, you have to understand it's not you don't play a movie and people come. That's not what drives it. It's it's the culture of evangelism where they they believe if I get people here that don't normally go to church, it's the it's the months of vision cast. And it goes into it that this is the time we're seeing, you know, we're seeing, you know, well over 1000 people come to Christ every single week, week over week. And it's it's been created. There've been I mean, we put out hundreds of thousands of door hangers with free popcorn, all this really kind of cheesy stuff. And you know, we we drive the value and we'll do anything short to sin to reach people who don't know Christ to reach people. No one's reaching. We have to do things. No one's doing. And so that just we drive that value and value. We want to create a motion. I don't want to say we stand for evangelism. We do. I want to do something that creates a feeling and a sense. And so this has been culturally we built it for years. It doesn't have to be movies. It could be anything. Sure. You know, it's the it's the culture of we want to see people who don't know Christ come to Christ. And that's that's what drives it. And I think that's a good point, you know, me just deciding, oh, I'm going to do at the movies next month. And I'll talk about four movies is not necessarily going to try 10,000 in church people. Well, there's a lot of people who have tried it with not great results. And I think that's the reason why is you don't you just copy what someone does. You have to understand the why behind the what or the what generally doesn't produce the same results. Well, and you've got a whole system behind that too. I mean, you do a ton of production. You do a whole lot of invest and invite you're out in the community. It's a lot more than just for 14 years to it. So the church, it's like Easter for the church. They know what's coming and you don't you don't build that in three years. It takes time. Wow. So let's switch to the the personal side of the journey. I mean, you've been doing this for 20 years and I can hear it in your voice already 10 minutes in the interview, 15 minutes in the interview. You're pretty passionate. What keeps your passion white hot? How do you stay in this for 20 years? You know, I don't know. I to a few things, one would be, I think I have the advantage of being a guy that grew up going to church that didn't know Christ. And it's I was a church goer, but I was not a disciple of Jesus. And so I have a massive passion to present the gospel of in the church. So you know, evangelism is the driving force of value in my life. And I respect people who are great disciples or respect people who have a heart for worship or prayer. And I value those things, but above all else, put me in a room full of lost people and I come to life. And so for me, quite honestly, it's staying in connection and relationships with people that are not followers of Jesus. Going to the gym is kind of like my heroine, honestly, is I go in and you know, I go to the same place and just develop relationships, meet people, meet people, meet people. And I'm kind of, you know, in almost a sense, like the pastors of the gym where I've got a lot of people that will talk to me about the problems that have never come to church. And I see that as much as ministry time as I do workout time. And that really keeps me going. If I if I didn't have that, I would very quickly become, I'd be thinking more about church problems, church people. And I'd lose that passion for the lost. And that keeps me fresh. And so, you know, that's my idea. I'd say to everyone, you just got to find whatever that thing is that breaks your heart and moves you to action and makes you righteously angry and righteously excited. And then whatever that is, just stay close to that long enough to. And if if you lose, if you lose that, find something else that just really creates a divine hunger and past inside your heart and find that and fuel it. Yeah, the gym was something I was going to talk to you about because it's pretty clear, you know, you work out, you spend a lot of time getting and staying physically fit. Is that as much of a mission field for you as it is like it's sort of a dual purpose? Because I mean, you're not just a guy who spends 15 minutes on the treadmill and goes box ticked, you know, you take it pretty seriously. Is that a big part of staying healthy, personally, for you? It's both for me. It's both it's both a mission field. And it's like, I've got a little place to work at a home. And it's easier to do it there because when I go to the gym, it's as much talking as anything, but I choose to keep going to the gym probably 80% of the time because of the mission field. And that's I need that. The other side is, it's probably three years ago or so that I just recognized to, you know, if I'm, if I want to do this, I want to, you know, I want to bring in, I'm getting older, I want to bring my best of everything to it. And so I want to be in tip top physical shape, whatever that is, you know, if I'm 45, I'm 55, whatever to serve God. And so it was more of a spiritual decision than a physical decision. The biggest change for me was diet. I've always worked out, but I didn't see much results bunching. My diet actually started seeing results and I realized that's pretty important and I know when I didn't realize it. And so to me, it's a God, I want to bring my everything I have to serve you in my mind, in my heart, my spirit, and my body. And so I tried to really take that seriously and and I feel better and sleep better and since make a difference. Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned three years ago, because I mean, hey, I'm a guy who sort of works out. I cycle and all that. But like, I don't notice the massive physical change in sort of just the way you look over the last three years. And that's been the diet and like taking exercise to another level. I have a 19 year old who works out. And I mean, I can never cross him because I would, you know, he could take me with his little finger, I think. Yeah, and I think part of it is too, I read somewhere something about basically the best of the best every year they're finding something new to get good at or some new interest. And whatever that is for people doesn't have to be working out our diet. But you know, every year trying to tackle something that says the triggers I'm improving. Yeah, I'm getting closer to God. I'm caring more about people. I'm getting in better shape on my mind is sharp or whatever that is. And that was one of those that was that year commitment for me. And then I try to add something to it every year to some little thing that says that triggers me to say, I'm not a complacent person, I'm improving, stretching, growing, whatever. I grew up in a church context where a lot of pastors were out of shape. And I was out of shape for a lot of years in ministry and I'm more in shape like not at a high level, but you know, I've certainly more activity in my life. I've noticed a big difference both mentally and physically in how I feel. When you upped your game three years ago, did that make a difference in how you felt and the energy you were able to bring to life and to ministry? It did. You know, the one of the biggest things is I slept a bit and I had a hard time sleeping. And then kind of when I pushed myself and started eating better and I got off of pop and you know, caffeine, sodas, whatever you call it. And all that kind of stuff and I only drink water now. And so end of the day, there's nothing kind of fighting to keep my body awake and I sleep so much better and I have so much more energy. And I feel better about myself. And so I think all those things work together. And what's interesting, Carrie, is like our staff, I've never stood out and said, Hey, let's let's all get in shape. Let's all take this seriously. Never do that. But our staff, you know, as it goes with the leader, it often goes with those around. And so just real quietly, other people are saying, let's get in shape. Bobby Grunwald, he's one of our key leaders. And he created the new version Bible app. He was not in great shape. The guy's a monster now. And it's I mean, he truly is a monster. And it's just organizationally, you see people watching what they exercising. And culturally, it's exciting because they all a lot of them feel like, Hey, we're getting better. We're getting the shape. We're doing something good. And that creates a positive self improving culture, which I think honors God and helps us all improve. You know, and with Bobby too, every single day, you version is my go to app. I can't remember the last time I opened up physical Bible. So on behalf of everybody, thank you. Thank you for that gift. Craig, thank you, Bobby. Thank you to the whole team. We love it. I'm glad you use it. Thank you. It's it's huge. So continuing the theme of personal growth, how do you keep growing as a leader? I mean, I want to ask this question, both in terms of your skill set, but also in terms of your personal development. I mean, when you're leading a church of 200, it's easier to find other leaders who are like, Oh, yeah, when we reached a thousand, this is what we did. But I mean, when you have 90,000 people at church, there's like two or three people you can call up and go. So how are you guys doing this? How do you how do you figure that stuff out when you only have a couple of peers? Yeah, I thought that same thing. And what I'm finding now is that you can really learn from anybody. Everybody's got a story. And so one of the things I've in the last, I'd say 18 months or so, I'm seeking out is the 28, 30, 32 year old who's doing kind of what I did. I was influenced by Bill Hibles was massive to me. And so I came and I looked at what he was doing. He was probably early 40s and I was 28. And I took what he was doing and I adapted it to my generation. And there are people who are doing that. Basically, they're looking at, you know, an Andy Stanley, or maybe they're, you know, a Perry no Bloor, Steven Ferg, he's Steven's young, but maybe me, whoever, and then they're adapting it to their generation. So I'm trying to learn from those guys and figure out what are they doing? How are they improving upon what we did? And what are they doing that we didn't see or think of? And so they don't have to be bigger to learn from. And that's really, really important. You can learn from anybody. And I would rather be found asking more questions in a room full of pastors than answering more questions. And I have to be intentional about that. And so I can learn from pastors of all different stages. I can learn from you about podcasting all day long, about technology, about, you know, I read your, I've read several of your blog posts have really triggered me to think differently. So I learned from you. And then I learned from business leaders all the time, you know, that was the CEO of Walmart. And, you know, he's opening up more stores in a, you know, in a four hour period around the clock that I'm moving in campuses all year long. So that, what I like to use, I like to get around people that the phrase I use is that they give me the gift of disorientation. I want to, the gift of disorientation. I don't want to just see somebody who's one step ahead of me. I want to see somebody who's five or 10 or 20 or 100 steps ahead of me. Because, and then I want to pay real attention to the places where I push back and say, well, that doesn't apply to me. Well, that's not true here. Well, I disagree with that. It's at those places I generally have the most to learn because I haven't fully understood their context. Wherever I push back the most is where I try to say, okay, what do I not understand here? And like, there may be someone listening today that gets real mad at something I say or says that wouldn't work where we live in our small town or whatever, some leadership principle. And I would say actually, you know, you may be right, but there's a bigger chance that you don't understand the full context yet. And that may be where you're disoriented. And let's try to, let's try to figure out why. And I love it when someone gives me the gift of disorientation. Like, I don't, I can't even wrap my mind around that. I don't understand it. So I got to pick it apart and study it. And I got to learn 15 steps up to it. And how did you get there? Why? I don't want to just, what are you doing? But why? Why do you think this way? I can't call me what you do, but I can learn how you think. And so that's what I like to get into. And does that come naturally for you? Or is this something you've had to develop over the last 20 years? I think I was blessed when we started with good mentors. And so I've always had access to people. And I feel like I feel sometimes people say, well, I can't get access to, you know, whoever, well, you read their books, listen to podcasts or information is everywhere now. There's no excuse. No excuse whatsoever. Totally. Yeah. And that's one of the goals of this, right? This is like a mentoring thing that you can do for a lot of people. And I love the idea of cross disciplinary learning too, that, you know, you go and talk to you're not going to be opening department stores anytime soon, but there are principles you can learn from, which is great. Absolutely. And you know, business leaders, we should learn from all the time, because they, you know, they're doing the principles of leadership cross fields. And, and you know, we're, we're, Jesus was a leader. He led people to know God personally. And you know, through 12 people, he changed the world. And so I want to learn from anybody who can help me be a better, better spiritual leader. Terms of your personal walk with Christ, just your devotional life, that's got to be really, really top notch, I'm sure, to be able to lead what you're leading. How has that changed? What are you doing currently? And how is that different than your message? Well, that's a great question. How has it changed? Because in the early years, it really suffered. And I heard Bill High will say quote one time he said, the way I was doing the work of God was destroying the work of God in me. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. Because in the early years of ministry, I allowed kind of my sermon time to be my devotion time. And I, and that's not for me, that's not adequate. And I thought it was. And so I literally kind of started letting ministry replace my first love and ministry became my first love. And so that was really not a good time spiritually. And then Kerry, I always felt guilty because you're like, you know, I know people who pray now are first thing every morning. And, you know, man, I'm praying five minutes straight. And I feel like my mind's drifting and wandering. So I always felt like a big spiritual failure. So what's funny is the U version Bible app is that has actually been the best thing for my personal time in God's words. So the tool our church created to help other people is the tool that really helps me a lot. I have made a discipline to read through the Bible. I used say cover to cover now as a front to back. And I've done that for a long, how many years straight. And what that does for me is a little bit a day just isn't enough. And I like this, I like to force myself into places I wouldn't read otherwise. And every year, I see something different. Every year I try to change the translation. So I'm reading the same words from, from a different, different translation. So that that is brought my time in God's word to life. Prayer time, what I learned is that rather than feeling guilty for not praying for our day, what I want to do is I want to be a person of prayer. And I'm praying all day throughout the day. And so it prayers more of a conversation and ongoing awareness of presence of God. And that's been life-changing for me. So I can honestly say the last five years, and I end up a goal when we get new staff members, I tell them the five things I want from one of them is that if five years into the organization, I want you more in love with Jesus than when you got here today. Because as you and I both know in the church world, it's often the opposite because it's just assumed we're growing spiritually and we're not a lot of times. And so I can say with integrity that the last five years have been closer to Jesus and really happy and thankful and rejoice in that. And also just the fact that it's possible, you know, a lot of people think it is. And you can be friends with church members. Yes, you can. You can be close to Jesus. Yes, you can. You can be happy. Yes, you can. Your kids can still love the church after they're raising it. Yes, it's possible. It should be that way. And yes, how it differs from message prep. It is just devotion time is really for me to connect with God. Message prep is for me to try to connect other people to God. So it's a totally different gear. That that part's hard, laborious, grueling, you know, women get mad when I say this because they should. But I feel like it writing a term is like giving birth every week. I know that's not fair because I've never given birth. But it feels like that to me is like, Oh my gosh, this is hard every single week. And so it's just, you know, we could talk for hours about that. It's work. It's work. Well, Louis Giglio, you can get mad. You can blame him because he's called it, you know, the whole birth process. He uses that as a metaphor. So get mad at him. I stole the idea from him. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You know, I thank you for being honest about the struggle with prayer life. I don't know about Amy, but like my wife, Tony, she'll pray for like two hours. And I'm like, what are you even talking about? Like, I don't know, because I'll get distracted after five minutes. But like you, you know, when I'm out cycling, I will often, that's just a conversation I slip into and out of with God when I'm driving when, you know, I'm working through the day. So it's more, you know, you have a burst of prayer, maybe, that where you try to stay focused. And then it's more like a conversation. Yeah, I think it's given yourself permission to connect with God in non-traditional ways. You know, most of the time in church is Bible study and prayer. And those are really important. Well, you can also connect with God worship. You can, there's some people just, you walk outside and look at nature and say, God is screaming through nature is glory. And you can sit outside and just contemplate the goodness of God. I literally feel close to God working sometimes that I feel like I'm bringing him pleasure by using the gifts he gave me. And so I, I, you know, look at, I mean, doing leadership to me feels like a spiritual thing. It feels very spiritual. It's in my DNA. And so I feel like this is the way I'm worshiping God, and I feel close to him doing it. So I think if you give yourself permission to be close to God in non-traditional ways, it's a freeing thing. Is that kind of how you see your work with catalyst and other organizations and your writing as an expression of, you know, well, feeling close to God? Because I feel that way about this, like, I love this. This is in my own time. But like, to me, this is just joy to be able to have conversations like this. So I know who you mean, and I don't know the last name either. So yeah, something about running. Oh, yeah. When I, when I run, I feel the pleasure of God or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Eric Laitel, Chariots of Fire. Oh, I D D L L. All I need to do is yeah. Yeah. When I run, I feel the pleasure of God. And like when I, when I work with other spiritual leaders and we all get better, I feel the pleasure of God. I really do. And I totally can relate to that. That, that to me is the spiritual is praying with somebody. And, um, and I think what, you know, everybody's going to have some things like that and giving it permission to say that's spiritual too, because God put this in me. I think it's a great, a great freeing thing in a way to connect with God. And what other ways you would think, well, that's a secular thing. That's a modern Christian. He made you, he gave you the gifts. Or that's just work. Yeah. I totally get that. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't pray like with your eyes closed and it's connecting, but it's more than that. So you've got a lot of demands on your time. You've also got a large family by today's standards, a huge family. How do you balance or how it's still current for you? Because you've got kids at home and, and exploding ministry. So walk us through the balance of ministry and family and maybe even a typical week and what that looks like for you. Sure. When, um, yeah, I served for five years at another church before here and I have nothing but admiration and respect for my pastor, but we worked so hard there. The church was hard on families. And so what I, and we still work hard at live church, but when we started the church, a mentor told me design it as much as possible. Design the church around your family values, not the other way around. And so what I just decided is I don't want to be away from my kids at night. I don't want to be home. I don't want to work many evenings, you know, I want to go over to get day off. And so we've really worked hard to do that. So for me, I'm going to set some standards ahead of time to help me make decisions all year long. For example, you know, yes, because I come to the conference in Canada one time and I told you no on the spot, not because I don't believe what you're doing, but because I, at the time I was doing six events a year, now I do no more than 12, 12 nights a year away from family. And that's it, not 13 to 12. So I'm very selective and choose what those are. So I'm setting those standards ahead of time. And those look up pretty quickly, I imagine. They do. And, you know, and I know the type of events where I feel like I can make the highest impact. And so the same is true with evenings, which is I want to be tonight. I'm going to be home with my family. We take very few work events, board meetings there in the day. We just, you know, typically I work Saturday nights and rarely anything any other nights. And that's just kind of the way it is. If you want me, it's during the day. I believe in creating artificial deadlines. I think they're really important. For example, if you, if you're taking Thursday and Friday off to go to the beach or whatever, you get your work done Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, because you had to. So if I have an open end today, meaning I'm not going to leave until I'm done, it's going to take me longer to get done. Yes. I will leave at 345 as I did yesterday because I'm going to the gym. And so because I've got that artificial deadline, it makes me do three things. One is it makes me not do things I shouldn't do. It helps me to delegate the things that other people could do. And it helps me make faster decisions because I got the deadline coming. So I would argue on more efficient and effective because I have an artificial deadline than if I didn't have one at all. And so by saying, I'm going to be home tonight. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to be home for dinner time. I'm better all day long. I think it's my theory. So home with family, you know, making them a priority. I just, you know, I've got six kids. We home educate them. And it's, it's choosing to be healthy. You have to choose it. Oh, the church will take everything. If I'm healthy at home, the church will be better. If I'm not healthy at home, nobody's better. And so we have to, we have to make those choices. And do you take like one day off every week or two days off every week? Absolutely. Yeah, I take one day off and a lot of pastors only get one day off. And the thing I try to tell them, think about it, if society norm is two days off, you only get one. That's about 52 fewer days off than most everybody you're ministering to. Okay, so that's about seven weeks more. If you think if you add it all up, that's about seven weeks more that the average person gets off that you do seven weeks, almost two months. So that means if that's your life, I recommend that you don't take two weeks of vacation, but you take three or four or five or six. Okay, so I literally probably have somewhere in the neighborhood on a track, but probably about six weeks off during the year, where I'm taking more time off. And I understand not everybody can do that. But you know, the other 40 somewhat weeks, it's I'm probably putting more into the weeks than what most people do as well. And so you have to find those rhythms. And then the more time off you can take at one at one chunk, the more valuable it is, because in what we do, and a lot of your listeners will understand this, we use our RPM, our internal RPMs are higher, and it takes us two or three or four days to unwind. Oh, yeah, five day trip. The day you unwind, you're packing to come home. So if you've got, you know, two weeks back to back, two weeks are not twice as good as one week, two weeks or five times as good. And so whatever extended time you can take every year, guilty, fresher. And a lot of people think, well, I can't afford to be away from my ministry or whatever. Well, you're not a power people, you can, you're not, you're not that important. This is what my counselor told me you're not that important. You're not that good. Let someone else handle it. And everyone would be better off if you're fresh. You mentioned counseling has counseling been a big part of keeping you healthy over the years? I did two, I did two rounds of counseling, both both for being a workaholic. And one was the second I was focusing on my workaholic tendencies. And I was focusing on my fear of lack. I was basically trying to develop my generosity. And what was, I was afraid if I give more, there won't be enough. And so I was trying to develop not a prosperity theology, but an abundance theology that my God is a God. And so I was trying to become, I was trying to learn to give more without fear. And I was trying to learn to not feel like my presence is always necessary. And that's a big, we could talk a lot about that in multi-site that everyone thinks it's all about your ego being on the screen. It actually, you know, you have to be strategically absent and empower people far more. It's actually less about you, more about empowering other people to really make multi-site work. But that's a whole other, a test. Yeah. So okay. So you take, what's your day off? Is that like a Friday or? For me, for me, it's Friday. Someone told me like Monday, a lot of guys take Monday off, they said, don't waste your bad recovery day under family, wait until you feel good. And so that's why Monday's I feel horrible. And so I'm not going to waste that on my family. But yeah, yeah, just stumble into the office and get done what you can get done. Right? Yeah. But some people aren't like that. Just whatever works best for your rhythms. How many Sundays are you preaching typically? How many weekends a year these days? I probably do about 40 weekends of content. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm on that weekend. For example, the last weekend I was on was the third weekend of May. And I'll be on again the first weekend or second weekend of August. But I will have produced the content for those all but maybe two of them. I mean, I taught it in the studio on a Thursday and we show it on whatever. So it's a different way of measuring. I'll produce about 40 weekends of content. But then I won't necessarily be there that weekend. And here's something I'll tell you that we're really excited about is in September this year I'm going to have about 83 different speakers speak on one given weekend. As a second time we've done this developmental weekend. And I'm looking at my staff, do I have, you know, can this guy or this girl, are they good enough to speak to 75,000 people? Probably not. Are they good enough to speak to a service of 400 people? Absolutely they are. So what we're going to do is we've got about 130, 540 services at all of our churches. So everybody's going to get, you know, like two one or two services, the campus passenger may get one and then everybody else gets two. And so we slotted 83 slots to have 83 different people speak on a given weekend. And we just love that. Second time we've done a developmental weekend to say to the church, we're developing communicators and to say to anyone on the team, you may not be in a great speaking role. But if we see you have a gift, then you can have an outlet for it. We're going to help develop you. So at a typical campus, if they have three or four services, you might have three or four different speakers on that day. Correct. Wow. That's a great idea. Yeah, they hadn't heard about that. Yeah, because we were actually talking about that even in our small context. Yesterday or this morning, it's like our band is so good now. We don't really have the opportunity to develop musicians and we've got to start creating venues to bring people up. You know, my son's 23. He still plays in the church band, but he started when he was 13. And, you know, he definitely was not where he is now when he was 13. And, you know, you need runways for communicators, for musicians. That's a really cool thought. Right. Yeah. You know, how do they become good enough if you don't give them reps? Right. And so this is a way to give a lot of people reps. Moral failure seems to be something that we just never escape in the church. And it happens often to, you know, influential business leaders. We've seen it even recently this year in the church once again. What are you doing to guard your family, your personal life, and your church against moral failure, Craig? Yeah. You know, I think making, you know, everything down to making your marriage relationship really important, not being a child center parent, where everything revolves around the kids, but, you know, really guarding that is really big. And then to me, putting safeguards in every place that you're potentially vulnerable is really, really wise. What I don't want to do is I don't want to, you know, resist temptation in the future when I can eliminate that potential temptation today. And I want to say it again, because I think it's pretty important. Yeah, please say it again. I don't want to resist temptation in the future when I can eliminate the temptation today. My job is not to manage temptation when I can eliminate it. And so I can't eliminate all temptation, but I can say and live that I'm not going to be alone with a woman. And you know, I can do that. I can make sure all of my devices from iPad, computer, cell phone is locked down. So I have no access to look at something I wouldn't want to look at. Right. I can say, and I do, I do all this too, when I travel, someone's always with me. I don't even stay in a room alone. Part of it's because I'm an extrovert and I don't, I get lonely, you know, so so Bobby goes with me or my daughter goes with me or see, you know, someone goes with me and so I'm never in a room alone. And so, you know, just I know where I'm vulnerable and I put safeguards in place that way. And, you know, people say, matter you that week and, you know, maybe I'd say I'm going to be that wise. Decide ahead of time. It's great. Are you that week? No, I'm trying to be that wise. That's a good way to think about it. Yeah, it's just, you know, everybody falls into moral failure. No one planned on it. And so we have to, we have to acknowledge that we have an enemy who's pretty sly. And whenever we think we're not, whenever we think it never happened to us, that's typically the first time that it could happen to us. And so I'm not going to assume I'm better than that. I'm going to assume that I need all the help I can get. I'm going to put all the help I can get in place. Well, I mean, you've got it right down. I'm, we're doing this via video, but I mean, you've got this huge glass door on your office. And I mean, there's no way anything could happen inside that office without somebody outside seeing that. Why? And I'm not asking you to comment on any specific case, but any theories on why moral failure takes down so many leaders. Yeah, I mean, here's what I, what I hate, I have to watch out for this in myself, because I think I'm vulnerable to it. And as leaders, especially spiritual leaders, man, we can become so narcissistic so fast. It's not even funny. And, you know, we have to, we have to stay with a servant attitude. The moment we start becoming narcissistic, prideful thinking about the rules were massively vulnerable. And I see that all the time, I think we do face pressures that are, that if we don't combat them, as churches can be hard on marriages, because of the schedules we keep, you know, I think spouses can feel left out. And then we get attention from people, and they think we're better than we really are. And so I think this, you know, it's a, it's a classic, you know, we are ripe to be vulnerable for it. And so the biggest thing I've just been working with pastors lately is just, and I want to fight it myself is I don't want to think I'm better, higher, more important, more special. I hate that. And when I see another pastor's probably because there's a little bit of that in me. And so I really want to, I don't want any of that in me. And so how do you do that? How do you fight that? When you're thinking, you know, hey, that rule shouldn't apply to me, or how come I have to stand in line? Would it, would it, or something? Yeah. We have to create a culture where we're not treated as, as special people. And there are times when, yes, we have to, as leaders, we have to do things and, and, you know, people are going to serve us, but we have to be willing to serve others. You know, it can't be all about us. And, you know, I may upgrade to first class because I want to sleep better, but I'm not there because I deserve it. Right. You know, I'm there because, because it's a tool to help me do ministry better when I get off the plane, you know. So we have to really keep the why in it. It's not about maybe more important or whatever. And I don't know, I just, we need to, we need to allow people to correct us if we're above correction. We're in big trouble. If we don't serve others, we're in big trouble. If we start thinking we're more important than others, you know, we've lost the true spirit of who Jesus called us to be. And we have to find that we have, we, that doesn't happen naturally. People try to elevate us and when they elevate us, then we can fall. What are a couple of things you and Amy have done over the years to really keep your relationship vibrant and alive? I always see you guys on Instagram, right? You're off on this little venture or something like taking time away. What have you done to keep the marriage strong over 24 years? We were like fanatic date night people and pre-state night, day night, day night, day night. So 14, 15 years into our marriage, we're getting busy and we're like, we have, we really have a good marriage. And so like, we have a good marriage, we're kind of busy now. So let's not do our date nights as much. So suddenly we woke up, we're going to a small group and she cried about something that was on her heart and I didn't know that. Or I talk about something that was burdening me and she's like, I didn't know that. And suddenly we realized we had surrendered the discipline that helped contribute to what we wanted was a date night. And so we're like, oh my gosh, we just the thought we didn't need it. That's like a person who's in shape and exercises and eats good and they said, well, you don't have to eat good, you're in shape. Well, you're in shape because you exercise and eat good. Yeah. So we picked that back up and a date night again is really important. And then I just always tell people, man, at least once a year, three night get away. You know, I don't care if you have to go to the holiday and down the street and have your kids stay, you know, whatever, just get away at least one time a year, more if possible. That's been really big. And then for us care, this is kind of embarrassing. But I'll tell you, one of the biggest things that changed our marriage was, Amy wanted to pray and like, you know, pray for hours and all this kind of stuff. And I just didn't want to do that. The commitment to pray with her daily has changed everything. And for us, it's a morning prayer before I leave for work. And it's it may be a minute, it may be five, but it's not more. And it's just a thanking God praying together. And that spiritual connection, as small as it is, if we're in a fight, you got to work it out because you can't pray and fight. If you're vulnerable to something, you got to talk about working out because it's just too intimate and spiritual. And so for us is a short prayer every day. And then the other thing that really is helpful is we work on our marriage during non conflict times, meaning if and this is a real simple tool, I was during non conflict times, we'll ask each other and we've done this for years, what are three things I'm doing that are blessing you and what are three things I could do to be a bigger blessing to you. And so I'm thinking she likes the fact that I've got a new bench press record or whatever. You know, and as I asked, what am I doing as blessing? And she's like, Oh, when you put when you gave the kids a bath, that was so special, that made me want to kiss you all over. Like, Oh, I don't know that. I just learned it. I thought it was my bench press record. And then the next question is, what could I do better? And the wording is really important. It's not we're not where am I messing up? But what can I do better? And then that creates an environment where we're serving each other and we're growing during non conflict time. So we, we've been doing, we call it marriage checkups. And that's kind of cheesy, but we've done those for years. And that helps us praying together, time away, you know, date nights, and then just talk working on our marriage or non conflict times. Great advice. So a couple more questions before we wrap up today, Craig, what's been the hardest aspect of your personal journey over the last 20 years when you when you look back at it and you're kind of like, well, almost 25, if you include the pre life church days, but you know, the one that you've just had to chip away the hardest at or the one that's like, man, I wish I thought I was going to solve this. But I just think it's always going to be here. There were there, there was one particular season in the church that I thought I lost the church that I loved. It, you know, spread out and I couldn't seem to, I couldn't seem to impact the culture and create change the way that I once had. And I just, I almost surrendered. I, it was a short season where I, I don't think I really seriously thought about quitting, but I did think about it. You know, like, what would it be like to do something else? And this was at life church. So absolutely. This was basically between, it was between years 11 and 13 or year 20 now, but somewhere in there's that season, I had tension with my key leaders. And my top four guys have been with me for 17 years. They're still with me. And we had tension. And there was a lack of trust going both ways a little bit. And I just, I looked at it and it's probably what the guy who feel, you know, like my church won't grow. It's like how this hopeless feeling of, I can't create change anymore. And so that was a really scary, scary time. Wow. And I had kind of a real special breakthrough moment that, that helped me at that time. And then I think the other thing is there've been just seasons where I kind of felt like, I don't know if I can survive the grind forever, you know, like another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week, another week. Like do I remember ask myself if one of my sons wanted to do this, not like they're calling it, they wanted to do this, would I be excited or scared? Wow. And I remember thinking I would actually be a little bit scared because it's so it's so ruling. And so kind of working through those times and choosing to see that this is actually a gift. And it's, and I have the power of God to help me. I'm not alone. I'm around great people. And so I was literally talking myself through those times. And even guy, I called mild depression and, and talking, just literally talking through and reminding myself of the truth, that I'm able to pull out of it and, and keep doing it with joy. That's. Wow. I appreciate you sharing that. When you, when you talk about the critical breakthrough that happened in that tough season, is that something that's shareable or is that like a two hour conversation? No, I can share real fast. I was at a conference. I was actually teaching. And I was feeling like a hypocrite because I was teaching on leadership and feeling like I wasn't a good leader. And I went and sat down. Marcus Buckingham followed me. He was speaking. And I felt like God spoke to me. And when I say that, there's probably four or five times, you know, in the 20 years when I felt like it was that direct, where I just had my head down, I felt like a loser. And I felt like God said to me, these words, I wrote them down, quit whining, your sharp fix it. I wrote it down, like quit whining. It's almost like God was talking to me like, like a loving coach or father would almost in my language, quit whining, your sharp, which I kind of heard like, I've given you what you need to do it. Yeah, you're the leader I put in charge. You have the ability if if you didn't have the ability to put someone else with the ability, fix it. And it was just the hope of, I can't fix this. And so I went back to my leaders and kind of just said, you know, I we've got tension. I'm going to ask you to trust me. And if you don't trust me, we don't have anything. If you trust me, my intentions where we're going, then I believe we can lead this. And they kind of apologize to me. I apologize to them. And then I stood before the staff and said, here's where I failed, dude. Here's where I've been off. And here's what I want to do. And there was almost this like collective sigh of relief, like, okay, our leader is confident, he's hurt from God, he's back. And immediately things started changing over two years, nothing would change. And so it was wow, it was a real breakthrough. And it was a sense of confidence in God having called me to do this. And so I would say to anyone out there right now who feels like we can't grow, I can't make a difference, I can't get through this or whatever. If you can just maybe pretend like this is God speaking to quit whining, you're sharp, fix it. You've got what it takes. God has given you what you need. God's given you the gifts. You're there because he wants you there. Get in there and do what spiritual leaders do and leave, believe it's possible, believe you can use you to make a difference, believe it's believe it's possible. Let God do his perfect will through you. And hopefully you'll see a breakthrough like I did. That's an incredible word. And I think it's probably in a great way helpful to leaders to know that, Oh my goodness, you can have 90,000 people at your church, 24 locations, but at this 20 years, one of the most effective churches in the world today and still get discouraged and still run into struggles. So Craig, this has been incredible. I just, I just want to thank you so much. And in the last 60 seconds, anything else you want to share with leaders, anything else on your heart that might encourage a young leader? I mean, I think you've done an incredible job of that just now, but anything else in your heart, you know, what someone said to me really helped years ago, they said, you'll probably overestimate what God wants to do through you in the short run, but you're grossly underestimate what God will do through a lifetime of faithfulness. And that really helped me because I'm all to this day. Yes, you can, you can have 70 or 90,000 people and be discouraged. You know, because you can have 200,000 people and be discouraged. I promise you, and it doesn't, you may not believe me now that when you have double what you have today, you'll wake up and feel discouraged. Yes, you can be discouraged. And so you, because as leaders, we always want more, we want to see, we want to see more people reached. And so there's never enough, you never arrive ever. And so you may feel discouraged that, you know, in the short run, a lot is not happening, but you'll also underestimate what God can do through a lifetime of faithfulness. And so that's my goal is to see ministry, not as a, as a supremacist marathon, serving faithfully. And 20 years into the church, yes, he has exceeded my long-term expectations. And so I hope I can get another 20 years to a faithfulness to see what he can do. Craig, on behalf of everybody, just thank you so, so much for your time today. Thanks for your insights. Thanks, your vulnerability and your transparency. We'll link to everything in the show notes. But where's the, where's your favorite place online these days? It's like, is Twitter Instagram? Yeah, Twitter, Instagram. I'm trying Periscope, which may be older by the time this comes out. Oh, no, no, no, no. It's just a month or two. So it'll be on it September. So you're on Periscope. You haven't showed up on my feed yet. That's cool. I'll be tracking you. Okay, cool. All right. Craig, thank you so much. Hey, thanks for sharing your leadership thoughts too. Again, I've been impacted by them and look forward to learning for me more. Well, isn't that great? I mean, Craig really challenges me as a leader. I love his passion and I love, you know, I'm convicted by his focus on physical fitness. I know that's always been a challenge for me. And I'm probably in the best shape of my life at this point, but like, I could always do a little bit better. So I think I'm going to go for an epic bike ride right after I finish recording this. Okay, I don't know what you're going to do, but that's that's what I'm going to do. So if you want more, you can just go to my blog to the show notes and you can find that at kerrynewhoff.com/episode52. And don't forget Craig's new book struggles following Jesus in a selfie centered world. That will be linked to in the show notes. We'll also link to my new book lasting impact seven powerful conversations that can help your church grow. And remember, if you pre-order, you get some bonuses and you could go direct on that too to lasting impact book.com. And finally, for those of you who stuck around till the end, do you know where you can get a copy of my book before anyone else does? It's the only place you can get it. In fact, it's a place where I will get the physical copy of my book before anyone else does. You can get it pre-release on the orange tour. That's right. We are going to be in a number of different cities this month. If you go to orange tour.org, you'll see all the cities. I am going to be in Atlanta and I'm going to be in Irvine, California. So if you look at those tour dates, I'm going to be there. I'm happy to sign your book. And otherwise, my book is going to be at all the orange tour stops, all 15 of them this fall. And you can actually get a copy of the book before it's released to the world. See, because you hung around till the end? Now you know. And hey, you've got a lot more celebration coming up. Don't forget to subscribe for the bonus oads coming up. We got a bunch of those. And in the meantime, I will see you very, very soon. And I really hope that this episode has helped you lead like never before. Thanks for being so awesome. You've been listening to the Kerry Newhof Leadership podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. [BLANK_AUDIO]