The Uncommon Leader Podcast
Are you ready to break free from mediocrity and lead an extraordinary life? Join us on The Uncommon Leadership Podcast as we explore the power of intentionality in personal and professional growth. Our podcast features insightful interviews with inspiring leaders from all walks of life, sharing their stories of overcoming challenges and achieving greatness.
Discover practical strategies to:
- Think positively and cultivate a growth mindset
- Live a healthy and balanced lifestyle
- Build your faith and find inner strength
- Read more and expand your knowledge
- Stay strong in the face of adversity
- Work hard with purpose and passion
- Network effectively to build meaningful relationships
- Worry less and focus on what matters
- Love always and make a positive impact
In each episode, we'll dive into relevant leadership topics, share inspiring stories, and provide actionable steps you can take to elevate your life. Whether you're a seasoned leader or just starting your journey, The Uncommon Leadership Podcast offers valuable insights and practical guidance to help you achieve your goals and live your best life.
The Uncommon Leader Podcast
Why Excellence Matters in Leadership and Life - with Hall of Fame Speaker Chris Widener
Dive into a compelling conversation with Chris Widener, a celebrated motivational speaker and author, as he shares his transformative journey through leadership, excellence, and service. From his childhood experiences as a ball boy for the Seattle Supersonics, Widener draws upon powerful life lessons that shaped his understanding of true leadership—serving and uplifting others. He emphasizes that excellence is not just a goal but a moral obligation for all.
In this episode, listeners will hear about Chris’s encounters with NBA legends like Dennis Johnson, who exemplified servant leadership by helping an 11-year-old keep his job. This story serves as a foundational pillar for understanding the core message of Widener's work: to lead effectively, one must hold oneself to a higher standard and serve with humility and generosity.
Additionally, Chris discusses his influential books, including "The Art of Influence," where he intertwines personal narratives with essential lessons about integrity, optimism, and the importance of serving others. His latest work, "The Coming American Revival," calls for a spiritual awakening within the church, igniting conversations around the need for renewed faith and cultural influence among believers.
As you listen, consider the powerful advice to “be a voice, not an echo,” a poignant reminder to cultivate authenticity and influence in your leadership style. Join us for an enlightening discussion that reinforces the idea that true excellence manifests through loving service and intentional actions that empower those around us. Don't miss out on this opportunity to explore the depths of leadership with Chris Widener—subscribe, share, and engage with the timeless wisdom uncovered in this episode!
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Did you know that many of the things that I discuss on the Uncommon Leader Podcast are subjects that I coach other leaders and organizations ? If you would be interested in having me discuss 1:1 or group coaching with you, or know someone who is looking to move from Underperforming to Uncommon in their business or life, I would love to chat with you. Click this link to set up a FREE CALL to discuss how coaching might benefit you and your team)
Until next time, Go and Grow Champions!!
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I believe that every human being is created in the image of God, and the image of God is excellence. There's nothing in God that is anything less than perfection, and every single one of us is given gifts and talents in which we can exhibit excellence. And I believe that whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we write, whatever we think, should be set up against the standard of excellence.
Speaker 2:Hey, uncommon Leaders, welcome back. This is the Uncommon Leader Podcast and I'm your host, john Gallagher, today. I've definitely got an uncommon leader for us today. I'm going to read down just a little bit of some of the, if you will, statistics for this individual that are going to tee it up for the great conversation we're going to have today.
Speaker 2:Chris Widener is one of the top 50 speakers in the world. He's in the Motivational Speaker Hall of Fame. He's been named by Success Magazine as one of the top 10 sales speakers and I know he probably gets tired already. He's like John, we don't need to talk about this but Inc Magazine is one of the top 100 leadership speakers in the world. He's recognized for that and he's written 25 books, which is really what we're here to talk about today in terms of learning about him. Not all 25. We'll never get through all of those, but I'm even interested in some of his favorite stories about those he's mentored and been mentored by, and that's John Maxwell, zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn. So, looking forward to the conversation today, chris Weiner, welcome to the Uncommon Leader Podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me. And you know I got to tell you I must've sent you an old bio because three days ago I was named the 17th best sales speaker in the world by Global Gurus, which is a big worldwide sort of speaker monitoring kind of thing. It was a total shock.
Speaker 2:I just I got an email said hey, we just named you that I'm like I'll take it Excellent. Well, that's you're talking about 2,500 times. You've spoken all over the world, so that's probably been a few more since you wrote that as well. So I can understand how, if you can do it that many times, you're going to get really good at it. One of the coaches that I have says if you want to get great, he says you do the first thousand of them, you're really bad, and then you get really good after that. So I think I got about 992 left to go in terms of speeches, but we'll see how that goes. So, hey, I'll start you off with the first question. I always start my first time guests and it's really great to have you on the show. But tell me a story from your childhood that still impacts who you are today, as a person or as a leader.
Speaker 1:So I had the great fortune at the age of 11 to become a ball boy for the Seattle Supersonics and I spent seven years working in the NBA. The first two years I was in the Sonics locker room. The second, third or the third, fourth and fifth I was in the visiting team locker room, and then the last two years of high school I was in the Sonics locker room again, and my very first year here I am 11 years old. My very first year I fell off a roof and I broke both of my arms and so I literally had casts on my arms like this. And I went to work at a game and I walked in and Frank Furtado was our trainer. He was the former wrestling coach from Seattle Pacific and I was terrified of Frank. He was my boss and I'm 11 years old and he was taping the ankles of Dennis Johnson, dj.
Speaker 1:Most people don't know DJ For the Sonics. They know him as on those great Celtics teams. In fact, larry Bird called Dennis Johnson the greatest teammate I ever played with, and DJ was not famous. Yet. This was the first year we ended up losing the World Championship that year to the Washington Bullets at the time in seven games. The second year we won the World Championship against the same Bullets in five games. So at the age of 13, I had the highlight of my career. I was in a ticker tape parade with 500,000 people as part of an NBA championship team. I'd be like, where do you go from here? Right, how do you ever top this 11 years old? Yeah, I'm done, I've lived it.
Speaker 1:But the story that profoundly impacted me was I came walking into the thing arms in casts and they both kind of laughed at me at first, like what happened to you? We ended up and I said can I keep my job? And Frank said you can keep your job if you can do your job. And I said, okay. Well, one of my jobs was to make the five-gallon jugs of Gatorade and water one Gatorade, one water and to haul them 500 yards to the court. So I'm like, oh boy, how am I going to do this? And we didn't have carts at the time.
Speaker 1:So I go into the room where we filled them and you know I had. We had these paint sticks. You know clean paint sticks that I stir them with. So here I am, stirring a wedget into my hands, I'm stirring it up, and while I'm stirring it up. Dj, now done with getting his ankles wrapped, he comes into the room and he says hey, tell you what, wait for me and I'll walk out to the court with you. And I said okay. So I drag these things, one at a time with both hands, drag them like this, and I'm 11. I'm like maybe not even five feet tall at this point.
Speaker 1:I go out the main door into the hallway and I sit down on top of one of them and I wait for DJ. He said you want to walk out to the court with me? Okay, dj comes walking out with a basketball to do the shoot around. This is before many of the fans have gotten there. They go shoot around, then they come back and then they do their team layup things. You know, you know that way. So anyway, I'm sitting there, he walks out, he hands me the basketball and I go like this and he scoops up both of those containers because he heard Frank say I could only keep my job if I could do my job and one of my jobs was getting those things.
Speaker 1:He knew there was no way I was getting those things out to the court. So we walk about 200 yards down this tunnel and then the way it worked was you came out of the tunnel and the bottom concourse was there and they had red ropes and so you had all these fans against these red ropes and you walked maybe 50 yards and then you disappeared underneath the bleachers and you popped out into the arena. For six weeks Dennis Johnson, hall of Famer, all defensive team, carried the water for an 11-year-old kid through the fans, so they saw him doing this. A lot of players would be like never would I humble myself this way Six weeks. He did that so I could keep my job and I was a lifelong fan even after I was out and he was still the Celtics. He'd leave me tickets for the games when he'd come back to Seattle and all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:But here's the funny story that ties it into leadership, servant leadership. So the funny thing is is after the game, one of my jobs was to give beer to the players to drink afterwards and we had this. Excuse me, we had this big refrigerator like you'd had this, you know, big refrigerator like you'd find in a grocery store, one of the machines that just kind of stands there, not a vending machine, but you know, you open it up. Well, most of the beer was Budweiser or Rainier, which was a big Seattle beer. Okay, sure, then we had a six pack of saint paulie's girl beer and a six pack of heineken. And you can imagine when you're comparing saint paulie's and heineken to rainier or budweiser all the players wanted heineken or the saint paulie job to distribute the beer. Guess who never drank budweiser or or rainier beer? I'm gonna guess dj, dj never drank.
Speaker 1:Budweiser or Rainier beer, I'm going to guess DJ, dj never drank the bad beer and I'll tell you. It's a great leadership lesson when you humble yourself and you serve your followers, they become fiercely loyal. In fact, one of my points in the speech on my book the Art of Influence is about how you gain loyalty through servanthood. And if you want your employees, your clients, your customers, you want them to be loyal to you, make sure they understand that you are serving them sacrificially. And it all came from his willingness to help me keep my job and I was devoted to him until the time he passed away. He passed away a heart attack when he was coaching in the developmental league for the NBA, but it had profound impact on me. He didn't care that he was rich and famous. He didn't care that he was black and I was white. He didn't care about, he was helping a little kid keep his job.
Speaker 2:Chris, I love that story, first of all because I connect. I'm a DJ, I'm a Celtics fan, larry Bird fan Love to hear that. In terms of how Bird talked about him, I do remember him with the Supersonics and playing.
Speaker 1:I think he played with Sigma, right yeah in fact, I have an NBA championship ring and one of the reasons I have it, or one of the things I like it, is because, number one, it's just a beautiful time in my life. Number two, it's a great conversation speech, a conversation starter in my life. Number two, it's a great conversation speech, a conversation starter. But number three is even a lot of diehard fans can't name a single starter from that NBA team and I always say it's the most unsung team that ever won an NBA championship. If I say name some players from the Lakers Magic, Kareem, James Worthy name from theics you know larry bird name some from the 76ers, dr j.
Speaker 1:you know anybody can name most of these teams, but even a lot of nba players can't name or nba fans can't name the starting five. So the starting five was gus williams, who passed away a few weeks ago, dj. Our small, small forward was John Johnson, jj, and then our power forward is Lonnie Shelton, who also passed away, and then Jack Sigma was our starting center. And then we had a guy on the bench, fred Brown. Most people name actually most people say downtown Freddie Brown and he was our sixth man. So I like the ring for that because it represents what you can do even if you're unsung, even if nobody knows you, you can still win championships.
Speaker 2:Hey listeners, I want to take a quick moment to share something special with you. Many of the topics and discussions we have on this podcast are areas where I provide coaching and consulting services for individuals and organizations. If you've been inspired by our conversation and are seeking a catalyst for change in your own life or within your team, I invite you to visit coachjohngallaghercom forward slash free call to sign up for a free coaching call with me. It's an opportunity for us to connect, discuss your unique challenges and explore how coaching or consulting can benefit you and your team. Okay, let's get back to the show. Amen.
Speaker 2:So sports and leadership tie really close together. But the leadership story of servant leadership is really powerful as well. You think about that as a leader of an organization and often people will say, well, that's not fair, that he does something like that gives the good beer to DJ and not to the others. But what you're really looking for as a leader, when someone will serve you, it's like saying, hey, if you will basically show me that you're capable of going that extra step, then I will treat you differently, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I didn't give him all the good beer, because he wouldn't have been able to drive home if I gave him all the good beer. That's right, there was a six-pack of St Paul he's a six-pack of Heineken.
Speaker 2:That was it, but he got first choice. There's no doubt about it.
Speaker 1:I got first choice every time.
Speaker 2:Hey, the art of influence. Let's stay there. Write on that book too. So you talked about in this book. Okay, one of 25, I couldn't get ready for all of your books, but you write your books. Let's start with how you write them, and most of them in the form of fables. Tell me how you got kind of started in writing that in fables and I don't know if it goes back to your time as a pastor as well or not and Jesus spoke in parables. And now you're speaking. What was there?
Speaker 1:I wish it was something altruistic like that. I had written a bunch of books. I was starting my career, got involved with John Maxwell. I ghost wrote for John, I wrote his nationally syndicated column and then I decided I didn't want to ghost write anymore and I wanted. I set out, I want to write a best selling book. And I was looking at it very formulaic, very practical. So at the time when I wrote my book called the Angel Inside, which is my best selling book of all time, number two on the Wall Street Journal, number seven on the New York Times, number three on Amazon overall, not in a category. Overall, in fact, the only two books that beat that on Amazon were the pre-release of Harry Potter and the lost book of JRR Tolkien that his grandson found in his attic after his grandpa died, that his grandson found in his attic after his grandpa died. And so I'm like, if I'm going to be number three okay, the best-selling fictions of all time and one of the greatest Christian writers of all time I'll take number three. It makes me feel like I'm number one. So I was looking like what could I write? That's very creative.
Speaker 1:Well, another book that was a best seller at the time was the Da Vinci Code and everybody was into Da Vinci. There was a self-help book called how to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci and I thought I don't want to write another one on da Vinci. But Michelangelo lived there and so I started looking at Florence Italy in the early 1500s Now Florence, italy was only 50,000 people and so I started looking in there where there was four major people that lived there. One of them was sort of part time, raphael, kind of lived there part time. So the three that were Florence residents lived there, born there, raised there, died. There were Leonardo da Vinci, michelangelo, and those two did not like each other at all. And then the third one was Machiavelli, and I'm like I immediately got rid of Machiavelli and I'm not writing a book on self-help from Machiavelli's perspective. So that left me with Michelangelo and I didn't know a lot about him. So I ended up looking through his history and I thought I could write a self-help book based on his life, the principles of Michelangelo, and so I had two people who said random things to me that completely changed the book I was going to write. One was I don't know if you remember the old motivational speaker he's contemporary of Ziggs and Jim's. He wasn't ever as famous as them, but his name was Charlie Tremendous Jones. Charlie was amazing.
Speaker 1:The biggest personality I've ever met in my life was Charlie Tremendous Jones and in fact the first time I ever met him I walked up to him and said Mr Jones, we have a mutual friend in Kyle. And he goes and he's six foot five. He weighed like 300 pounds. He leans over to me, he goes. You know, kyle's a brother of mine. Are you a brother of mine? He was asking me if I was a Christian and I said I am a brother of yours, at which point I've known him less than 15 seconds. At this point he puts his hands under my armpits, lifts me six inches off of the ground and plants a big kiss on my cheek. That's Charlie Tremendous Jones. You've never met a guy like Charlie. He was something else. Charlie says to me Chris, make it short. Nobody reads thick books anymore. Make it short. So I thought, okay, interesting.
Speaker 1:Then another friend of mine, mark Sanborn, who's Hall of Fame speaker, wrote a book called the Fred Factor, 5 million copies in print. President of the National Speaker Association, mark says to me you know what you should do, chris. You should write it like a parable. And I went huh, okay, I will. So again, I'm just looking at a formula to write a bestselling book because I was tired of ghostwriting for other people, I was tired of writing medium selling books, whatever.
Speaker 1:So I went into a Barnes Noble in Bellevue, washington, where I was living in Seattle at the time. I walk in there, I walk to the business section. I find a 10-blanchard book, one Minute Manager. I open it up. I counted how many words were on one page. I went to how many pages there were. Multiplied it 20,000. So all of my books are well, almost all of my books the fiction ones are all between 20 and 25,000 words.
Speaker 1:I released this book became a big international bestseller 14 languages, the whole thing. And so Art of Influence was just another one of those books I ended up. We self-published it sold 120,000 copies. Then I sold it to Random House on a two book deal and the second book became the Art of Influence.
Speaker 1:So it's a fictional story about a young man, first guy to ever go to college in his family, certainly the first guy to ever get his MBA. And the book opens with him at a backyard barbecue back in Kansas where they were throwing him a party and his grandmother, who he barely knew from South Dakota, comes down to the party and she hands him an envelope for his gift. Now in the book, a lot of things, a lot of fun things about writing fictional books is you can incorporate stories from your life and just change them. In fact, I'll tell you a couple of little Easter eggs in the book that are kind of fun. Um so um. She hands him an envelope and the the idea is is I don't know when you were growing up, what your grandmother gave you every year for for your birthday was usually an envelope with a $5 bill in it.
Speaker 2:I got you Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Those of you who are younger and you're used to getting playstations and stuff like that. You know, john and I we got $5 in our in an envelope. You know that's what we got it was. It was standard. I don't even think I lived long enough to get my grandmother to give me 10 bucks for my birthday. It was always a $5 bill it had a little window too.
Speaker 2:You could see Lincoln in the window Right.
Speaker 1:But then the other funny thing is for the young people is you know, that was great for us because you could get a Snickers bar for 15 cents Maybe 10 cents actually, but you could go buy 30 candy bars for 15 cents, so anyway. So I ended up writing the and so. But inside the envelope she says you get to spend a week with Bobby Gold. Well, Bobby Gold's a fictional character, but he's like the 10th or 15th richest guy in America and he thinks his grandmother's gone crazy. He's like how, what are you talking about? Like, how do I get to spend a week with Bobby Gold? And she goes oh, I probably never told you, but I was his nanny when he was a little boy. And so he gets to spend a week.
Speaker 1:And so the story of the art of influence is is Bobby Gold teaching Marcus the lessons of the art of influence? And he basically says look. When they first meet, he says look, I know you graduated from Keller Kellogg school of business. I know you know Kellogg School of Business. I know you know the science of business. I'm going to teach you the art of business. And the art of business is the art of influence. So that's the premise of the book and four lessons, lessons on integrity, optimism, service and excellence. But before we dive into it, I'll tell you a couple of the little Easter eggs. The jet in that book is Jeff Bezoszos jet, his first jet not anymore, he sold that it was a Falcon 900 EX extended range and one of the guys that went to my church was Jeff's personal pilot. So I was going to write this thing and so he was always down at Boeing field. So I called him up and I said I need to write about a jet. Can I come down and look at Jeff's jet? And he goes yeah, sure, come on down, I'm just hanging out. So the jet in that is is actually Jeff Bezos. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:The second little Easter egg is there is that Bobby Gold owns a baseball team and one of the things he does in the service chapter you know, serving others is they're at a baseball game. He owns a fictional Chicago baseball team and about two or three innings into it he says come on, let's go. And they start walking around the stadium and he starts talking like he knows every usher's name, he knows every vendor's name and he walks up to him Bob, how are you doing? Bob has seven kids and 14 grandkids and blah, blah, blah. Well, that's based on a friend of mine who was also a member of my church when I was a pastor, who was.
Speaker 1:The first thing was 17 years as a CFO of the Mariners and the last seven years president. Ceo of the Mariners and I would go to a lot of Mariners games. We always sat in the owner's box and then when he became president he had his own box so we'd sit there, but every time by about the third inning he, my friend Kevin, would say get up, let's go. And we walked to that stadium and we would go to the third deck in the outfield and he knew the ushers. Wow, all those people loved him because he cared more about them than he cared about the fact that he was the president and could be sitting in his own little box. So, um, great leadership. Those are a couple of little Easter eggs in the in.
Speaker 2:Those are Easter eggs, those are really cool. And as I read through those golden rules, as you said, integrity, attitude, um, the, the importance of others' interests, uh, which is in that story, right there. And then, don't settle for anything less than excellence, and that one, you know, for me, uh, you know, I I believe the first book that I write is going to be titled Excellence Only Happens on Purpose. You have to be very intentional to build that space and there was a quote in there. He said inside of that chapter it says gain influence by making money. You gain even more by giving it away.
Speaker 2:Now, first of all, I'd like you to chat with me about that word excellence and kind of what that means to you, Because you even talked about little stories like that but also little examples of excellence. For me, it's when somebody leaves a shopping cart in the parking lot. It just drives me crazy. From a pet peeve standpoint, I'm going to push it back into the corral or into the store, whatever it takes. But that quote you can gain influence by making money. Gain even more by giving it away. That's like bigger than even excellence, that's kingdom type impact. What is there for you in that word, excellence?
Speaker 1:Well, remember what Jesus said. Jesus said to give your wealth away to your friends so that you might be received into heaven right, and he doesn't mean that you earn your way into heaven by giving your money away. He means that by giving your money away, you'll have impact and those people will see you in heaven. That's what he meant that you'll be received by all these other people for whom your money made an impact. Use your wealth to gain friends is actually what Jesus said, and a lot of people go whoa. Use your wealth to gain friends. He doesn't mean you're buying friendships. He means you're distributing your wealth. You're a generous giver. You know you're giving that money away.
Speaker 1:But excellence I believe that every human being is created in the image of God, and the image of God is excellence. There's nothing in God that is anything less than perfection, and we are created in the image of God and every single one of us is given gifts and talents that God has given us in which we can exhibit excellence. And I believe that whatever we do, whatever we say, whatever we write, whatever we think, should be set up against the standard of excellence, Because the Bible also says whatsoever, you put your hand to the standard of excellence, Because the Bible also says whatsoever you put your hand to do it as though you're doing it under the Lord. In fact, there's a Christian band that many of you have probably heard of, called Casting Crowns. That's the name of the big Christian band.
Speaker 1:It comes from the story in the book of Revelation where all the people in heaven will take their crowns and they will cast them at the feet of Jesus, and the crowns are embedded with jewels and all those kinds of things and a lot of people theologians think that those jewels represent our good works in our life and then we're given a crown based on our good works in life. We don't earn salvation with our good works, but we get this crown, and so the act of taking our crown and casting it is my life was yours, All of my good works were yours, all of this. So I always joke and I say when you get to heaven, you want a diamond, ruby, emerald, encrusted, you know, gold crown. You don't want one of those old Burger King paper crowns, right?
Speaker 2:You don't want to show It'll still be a crown, but it's not the same, it'll still be a crown.
Speaker 1:You'll get in, but you won't have much to offer, right? So the idea is number one we want to be excellent because it's representative of God's excellence and we are made in the image of God. You know, I'm probably the only guy you know who cries watching the Voice, because the TV show, the Voice. Sometimes I will hear some singer just amazing singer and I'll start to cry, not because they're so good, but because of how good God is. Like, look at the person, look at the gift that God gave this person. I always look at God when I hear something amazing or see something amazing or something like that, because it's from the hand of God, it's so incredible. So the idea of excellence and I like your ideas that excellence is a choice. We get to choose what we're going to do. So what I always teach people is take a look at your life, finances, relationships, marriage, business, health and ask yourself can I raise my standard of excellence? Now, there's some things. If you put a scale of one to 10, there's some things that people are nines or tens at. They're excellent at it, but that excellent part may be being undone because they have an area of their life where they are not particularly excellent and it undermines their ability to influence other people.
Speaker 1:I knew a guy, a preacher, once, who was like 150 pounds overweight and one of his congregation told him one time I just got to tell you I have a really hard time listening to you, particularly when you talk about discipline and disciplining yourself to pray and disciplining yourself to give, and he's like you don't demonstrate it and it's the first thing people see from you. Well, this guy lost so much weight that one time I was at a retreat and there was another church using the retreat center and it was a pastor that I knew, but he knew this other pastor that had been told he was too fat and they were talking. I walked up to the pastor I knew. I didn't even talk to this guy who I was good friends with, because I hadn't seen him in like a year and a half. I literally did not even recognize the guy. He had brought himself from like 375 to like 175 or something like that, so much so I didn't even recognize.
Speaker 1:I'm talking to Jeff and I'm not even talking to this guy, but he wanted to eliminate that poor demonstration of excellence because it was affecting. He was a great preacher, great Bible teacher and but it was affecting his ability to what he was excellent at because he wasn't excellent at another area of his life. So I always tell people improve your level of excellence as much as you possibly can, because in the book I talk about this in my speeches. Excellence commands respect. People respect people who live a life of excellence.
Speaker 1:They might not even have certain things, but the best way for you to show up and have influence is, you know, integrity, yes. Optimism, yes, service, yes, but there's also excellence. Number one is always integrity. The others you can put whatever order you want, but excellence is such. It builds the ability to influence. And I always use this example the celebrity endorsement. The celebrity endorsement is basically a product taking a person of excellence, merging the two, and it allows you to sell more of the product because they associate it with the person, and I always use Michael Jordan as an example. Michael Jordan made more money as an endorser than he did in his salary.
Speaker 2:As a basketball player.
Speaker 1:As a basketball player. And so why did they choose Michael Jordan? Because he was now, I always say, the greatest player in the nba history. But I only say that because everybody else is too young to remember wilt chamberlain, who's actually the greatest player to ever play in the end. And you don't even want to get an argument with me on that. I figured we don't have enough time, do we? 50 years after he retired from the nba, he still owns 72 nba records, kind of hard to argue with that, but anyway, um, you know, think about Wheaties.
Speaker 1:What is a Wheatie? I had one guy yell from the audience it's corn, corn. It's like a corn flake. I'm like no, that's cornies. Wheaties is a baked flake of wheat, that's it. But their brand is the breakfast of champions. Absolutely. Do we really believe that every four years at the summer olympics, some guys getting ready to run the 1500 and they say, hey, you got your race today. What are you gonna do? I'm gonna go down and have three bowls of wheaties. No, breakfast of champions is like white the egg, whites, lean meats, fruit. That's the breakfast of champions, not Wheaties. But they were brilliant. They take Nadia Comaneci, the first person to ever get a 10, she's a breakfast of champion. Michael Jordan, you know Bruce Jenner, you know all these people they put them on the I remember Mary Lou Retton on the front of one, being from West Virginia as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, she was on there, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:I always make this joke that some guys looking at some guys looking at Wheaties and goes well, michael Jordan eats Wheaties. If I eat Wheaties, maybe I could dunk. No, you're five, two, two, 40. You're never going to dunk, but they've built this idea. Nike everybody knows Nike, air Jordans. I asked the question what does Michael Jordan drink when he's during a timeout? Everybody yells Gatorade. They've built these brands by partnering with someone of excellence. So what I always say is is if you wanna have more influence in the lives of other people, if you want people to respect you, if you want people to remember your name, you are product. You are the product. You're always selling product. You are the product. You're always selling yourself. You are the product. And the first thing they're going to ask is is this excellent? And if you're excellent, you're deep into being able to influence those people.
Speaker 2:Love that and I love the conversation going all the way back to your start about the discipline that's required to do that. I use a quote that says you know, good intention, which we have. We often. We do have good intention about our health, finances, career, whatever those things are, but good intention without discipline will lead to excuses.
Speaker 2:Good intention with good discipline leads to excellence. It's printed on that coffee mug right there. I mean absolutely. I mean that word is really something that—important is probably not the right word, but it elicits a response from me when someone says that, even as it being a biblical quote, whatever you do, do it with excellence and do it for God. I mean those are things that exist inside of that space. Whether it's picking up a piece of paper that they talk about in the book as you're walking through you know a room, or whether it's putting a shopping cart back in the shopping cart corral or, frankly, whether it's being the best basketball player in the world, like Will Chamberlain was best ever. Okay, We'll give, we'll give a we'll Chamberlain. I don't know that I could argue with it on this call.
Speaker 1:Martin Luther King Jr said do whatever you do with excellence. If you're a street keeper, if you're a street sweeper be the greatest street sweeper, the greatest Yep Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So. That book is really cool and I could spend even the call on another book that influenced me and I think how we ended up. Connecting was really about faith and you've touched on that just a little bit. You have one that's come out really recently called the Coming American Revival, which was not written in the form of a fable, so in writing that book, the Coming American Revival, tell me a little bit about that book, what it meant to you, but who'd you write it for?
Speaker 1:Well, so I was writing my 25th book, called Capitalism, or the Capitalist is the working title, and it was going to be a fiction story. It was going to be about a billionaire who hosted a family reunion at his mansion in Jackson Hole his estate in Jackson Hole at the request of his 94-year-old grandmother. Will you hold a big family reunion? I'm getting old? Well, his sister brings her very, very, very, very ultra-liberal daughter to this event and she hates her uncle because he's a billionaire. So the book is. Eventually I'm going to release it. I'm 40% of the way through, but it's the conversations between this billionaire and his anti-capitalist niece. So anyway, 40% of the way through that book, I felt like God said I want you to write a book on revival. So I'm like all right, I'll have to dust off my pastor's hat. So I started doing a lot of research on revival the first great awakening, second great awakening, third great awakening, azusa Street revival and the Jesus people revival. They usually come 50 to 70 years or have, so we're about due for a revival. So I did a research on the revivals, things we learned from those revivals, talked about why we need revival and the spiritual bankruptcy that the church has in America today. One of the reasons we're so ineffective is because we're just lukewarm. You take the average Christian. Take away Sunday morning and Wednesday night. They look exactly like every other person in America. They spend their money the same way, they watch the same movies, they listen to the same music, they go to the same places. They look exactly like the rest of the world. And that's the problem. And so I have chapters in there. What revival would look like in education? What revival would look like in entertainment? What revival would look like in entertainment? What revival would look like in business? What revival would look like in the church? And then I end the book with two sort of add-ons. One is an analysis of Richard Foster's spiritual disciplines that he talks about in the book Spirit of the Disciplines. That might be Dallas Willard's book, but the one Richard Foster wrote, challenge of the Disciplines, I think. And then I end the book with a 31-day devotional. First 10 days are about personal revival. Second 10 days are about church revival. Third 10 days are about national revival. And then the last day, the 31st day, is a where do you go from here? So wrote that book came out, hit a lot of the lists on Amazon and such. I gave the very first book to President Trump because I knew him, I used to put on Trump events so I gave the very first copy to him, got a really nice letter back from him about the book, which now in our living room I have a big beautiful frame with the cover of the book and the letter from President Trump. But Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina is the cover endorsement of the book and the letter from President Trump. But Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina is the cover endorsement of the book. Country star John Rich wrote an endorsement for the book. So I got a really wide variety of endorsers on that book.
Speaker 1:But it's doing well and it became the premise for a revival meeting that we're putting on in May 3rd in Jacksonville that we're going to live stream to thousands of churches, prisons, colleges, universities, every military base in the world. We'll have 10 or 15,000 people at that event. People are interested. They can go to revive25.org and find out more about the event. But I just believe that we're on the cusp of revival. It's already starting to bubble up. You see it a lot in prisons, you're seeing it a lot on college campuses and so you got these little bubblings all over America. You know, and I think really we're just ripe for somebody to call the church to repentance and to turn their hearts back to God, and God led us to do that.
Speaker 1:I have a couple partners. The whole event is nonprofit. All monies are going to be distributed to 501c3s and we're excited about it. We've got some amazing partners national religious broadcasters, whose members reach 174 million people a month. Praycom, which has 18 million downloads. Pushpay, the number one church donation processor. They're donating all the streaming through a company they own called Resi, a company called Glue, which is the number one texting platform in America for churches. They have 90,000 churches that are paying customers. So everything's just coming together. God has just networked this whole thing together.
Speaker 2:Have I seen this advertised on the Bible app as well, craig?
Speaker 1:Roussel's Bible app. No, we really haven't advertised it. Advertise might? Be the right word, but You're actually the very first person that I've ever even said anything to about the website. The website went live yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, wow, Fantastic.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we're at the very beginning stages, we're under 90 days, but we already have people coming out and volunteering to speak, volunteering to sing. The very first person that we talked to she reached out to me on LinkedIn Chyna Phillips, one of the three Wilson Phillips band. She's married to Billy Baldwin. Her mom and dad were half of the group Mamas and Papas, yeah, so we're getting a lot of. We're talking to trying to get Denzel Washington to come out. He just got ordained and is going into ministry. Talking to Russell Brand, we've got a bunch of preachers, some great preachers, musicians, worship leaders, all of that. So it's going to be a real great day of revival. It's not a show. There will be great, we will do it with excellence, but it's not a show. It's really driven to call the church to get back and to get right with God.
Speaker 2:Love that. I mean. I think that word revival is so misunderstood. I've had a conversation with someone recently and said you know about an event that I'll be working at in March for Christian business leaders and really their personal development, running their businesses as a ministry as well, and you know, kind of talking about some of the ideas, and one of the individuals says I don't want it to really be a revival, though I'm like I think it has to be a revival. So there's like this feeling of the revival. The Southern Baptist revival is, you know, bible thumpers, snakes and owls and things like that, but revival is you define it in your book, I love it a spiritual awakening from a state of dormancy.
Speaker 1:I love that simple definition. It literally means again, re-means again. Vival is from the Latin term viva life. It means life again, come to life again, which it reminds me of the book of Revelation, all those seven letters to the seven churches, and one of them he said you know, go back to doing the things that you did. You know, regain your first love, do the things you did at the beginning.
Speaker 1:And so many people, they're all excited for God and they're on fire for God, and then they slowly die. But it's not just your spiritual revival. Your spiritual revival brings about marriage. Revival brings about health. Revival brings about money revival. It's bringing all of those things to life again under the spiritual covering that we have when we have a relationship with Christ. And so we need to come to life again. The church is dead. I mean, if you think about it, it's anemic at best. We have more money, more churches, more Christians, more conferences, more books, more audio programs, more podcasts than we ever have in the history of the church, and we're anemic at best. We have no cultural influence. Why? Because there's no power behind it. That's the problem. We need to be brought to life again.
Speaker 2:I have followed Craig Rochelle for a while, both this leadership podcast and Life Church and he had a five-part series recently called Christian-ish. That you know, we say we're Christian but we're kind of Christian, we're Christian-ish. You talk about that being the Sunday and the Wednesday night, so to speak, but what are our lives display that make us Christian? That we should really be doing, and I love you know the criteria to talk about that. You know the Christian will be humble, they will repent, they will pray, they'll proclaim the gospel and they'll love their neighbors, and all of those things together are things that are critical, and it's another podcast I think I could talk about the whole time. I'm so glad you wrote it Well.
Speaker 1:The other thing is there's a difference between a revival and evangelistic meeting. Sometimes people say I went to a Billy Graham revival meeting. No, he didn't. He didn't do revival meetings, he did evangelistic outreach. This is going to be about the church. Will some people who are just pursuing the faith come? Sure, some. This isn't about evangelism. We're not going to have, you know, come forward and receive Jesus. We might not, because there will be some people and through churches and prisons and the like, you know there will be some people. But it's really a message to the church because if the church gets revived, evangelism takes care of itself. Right, evangel, right.
Speaker 1:So you have two kinds of Christians sitting in the churches. One is that are not revived, they're kind of just Christian-ish right. Number one is the person that never talks about Jesus to anybody. Well, they would if they had a deep relationship with Jesus. The other one is those who try to talk to people about Jesus but they have no power in their life and the people just go yeah, why don't you figure your life out first and then come tell me about Jesus, right? So the key here is to inflame that church and fan the flames, get them going again and the rest of it takes care of itself, feeding the poor, witnessing of Christ. All those things take place out of a church that is alive.
Speaker 2:Love that. I wish I could take more time to spend. I just got a couple more questions. I want to honor your time, chris, as we go through this. A little bit about you. So you've had the privilege of I use the term learning from giants but also influencing giants. These guys, john Maxwell, zig Ziglar, jim Rohn Tell me your favorite Maxwell story have fun. One that you've never told before. That's going to get somebody in trouble, kind of thing. No, but not in a lawsuit.
Speaker 1:It popped right into my mind. Okay, so it's a funny story about John. In fact, I saw John about three months ago at an event and I reminded him of this story I had. John was one of the speakers. I was one of the speakers Whitaker I can't remember his first name he was the first American up Mount Everest. He was one of our speakers and as was Vince Lombardi Jr. So Jim Whitaker was his name, founder of REI. Him and his brother founded REI and he was the first American up. Well, this was in 2002, september 26th 2002.
Speaker 1:Well, he got to the top of Mount Everest on May 3rd or May 4th, 1974. So or no, pardon me, it was 50 years later. Anyway, he was coming up on some you know it was, he was about 18 months from you know big anniversary going up. And so we were standing there it was me and John and Jim Whitaker, and he had announced to the audience that he was taking people who wanted to go with him. He would take them up and he would go to base camp. He wasn't going to take them all the way to the top of Mount Everest, but he was going to take them up.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, we were standing there and John says, and you know, john, big goals, big dreams. And John says I'm coming to my, I'm coming up Mount Everest with you, I'm coming on Mount Everest with you. And Jim stepped back and he looked at John and he goes. Are you sure John goes? I do 45 minutes a day on the treadmill. He goes. You better do about four hours a day on the treadmill. So that's a kind of a funny story that might get me in trouble. But but it's true. You know you had to be in tip-top shape if you were going to go with Jim Whitaker. Like I didn't even think about it, I looked at myself in the mirror that day. There's no way I'm going up Mount Everest with Jim Whitaker.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you sharing. You know those have been and John laughed about it, so he would Absolutely no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I don't read, I hardly read, any books that are contemporary. I barely ever read a book that's contemporary. I like to read biographies of dead guys. I like to read books written by dead guys, and I'll tell you why because there's so much Vogue content. You know, right now it's all about habits. Everybody's got their habits books, right. You know everybody. You know just Google. Go to Amazon and type in the word, the F word, and you'll see how many books have the F word in it now, cause there was one book that took off and had the F word in it. Now everybody's got an F word book. You know, it's like everybody just piles on because they want to be a bestseller.
Speaker 1:The dead guys wrote to change lives, the new guys write books to get speaking engagements, and so I I rarely read any sort of contemporary books. Rarely. I read dead guys and particularly I focus in on, you know, founding Fathers. I'm reading through anything by Andrew Murray, anything by AW Tozer, anything by Charles Finney. I'm reading Confessions by Augustine right now, because if it's still true a thousand years later or a hundred years later, it's a universal truth, and so I try to fill myself with that kind of thing mostly.
Speaker 2:Love that. Thanks for sharing, Chris. How do folks stay in touch with you or learn more about you?
Speaker 1:Well, they can go to revive25.org if they want to know about the revive or org revive25.org if they want to find out about that revival. We also have a place there if you're interested in sponsoring or vending or any of those kinds of things. But chrisweidnercom is my website. Chris at chrisweidner is my email, chris at chrisweidnercom. And be happy if there's any way I can help you or any of those kinds of things. Happy to do it.
Speaker 2:Chris, fantastic. I'll make sure to put those links in your email address in the show notes so that folks have access to it. I'll give you the last word here. The question I always end up with on my with my first time guests I'm going to give you a billboard. You can place it anywhere you want to, whether it's in there in Chattanooga where you are, or anywhere else you want to put it up in Seattle, it doesn't matter to me where you put it, billboard, and why do you put that message on there?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm going to tell you a story briefly. I'll condense it because I know we're short on time, but I would put the phrase that I heard in this story. I was at a Christian conference when I was like 22 years old, 23 years old, right out of Bible college, and there's 500 people there. It was in Edmonton, alberta. I didn't know a single soul. And you know, during the breaks you're kind of standing there with your coffee and I don't know anybody. And I turn around and I come face to face with a woman who's about 55 and a woman who's about 30, like bam, there they are, and the woman who's 30 does this, doesn't say a word. And her mother looks at me, looks at her, looks at me, looks at her. And her mother looks at me, looks at her, looks at me, looks at her, looks at me, looks at her and goes. Is that him? And she goes still has said not a word. Her mother says OK, this is probably weird to you, but I got to tell you the story. This is my daughter. We're here for the conference.
Speaker 1:Last night, at two in the morning, she woke up, bolted out of bed, woke me up and said Mom, I just had the weirdest dream. I saw this man's face and God told me to tell him something. So she looks at her daughter and says tell him To the mom. It was just nonchalant. So tell him. And the younger woman says I'm supposed to tell you, and this is what I would put on a billboard. I've told this story so many times. She said I'm supposed to tell you.
Speaker 1:Be a voice, not an echo. I never saw them again. I didn't get their names, I don't know who they are, I don't know where they live, don't know anything about them. But I've remembered that for 36 years now 34, 35, 36 years now. Be a voice, not an echo, which is probably why I like reading dead guys and not all the people that pile on to write a bestselling book, and I think it is so good. It's such great advice. Do your own work, do your own thinking. Don't just regurgitate what other people are doing. Don't regurgitate something you heard from somebody else. Sure, quote them, but give them credit for it. If I had a nickel for every single time somebody quoted Jim Rohn as their own, I'd be a rich, rich, rich, rich, rich, rich man, because everybody tries to pass off work harder on yourself than you do on your job and people post those things as though they're themselves.
Speaker 2:Average of the five people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in the comment section I always write I love Jim Rohn quotes. Anyway, I think it's important, if you're in business, be the voice, not the echo. Deliver something above and beyond. Deliver something unique to you. Don't just deliver what every other HVAC company's offering. Don't just deliver what every other furniture store is offering. Offer something else. Be a voice, not an echo. And I love that and that's probably what I would put on a bill. Else be a voice, not an echo, and I love that, and that's probably what I would put on a billboard. Be a voice, not an echo.
Speaker 2:So much fun to share. Chris, thank you so much. I have appreciated our time and I really appreciate I know the listeners have that you've added value to those on the Uncommon Leader podcast. I wish you the best in the future and look forward to connecting at some point again.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. And that wraps up another episode of the Uncommon Leader Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. If you found value in this episode, I encourage you to share it with your friends, colleagues or anyone else who could benefit from the insights and inspiration we've shared. Also, if you have a moment, I'd greatly appreciate if you could leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback not only helps us to improve, but it also helps others discover the podcast and join our growing community of uncommon leaders. Until next time, go and grow champions.
