what is meaningful work for me?

What do I want out of work?

And after I narrowed it down, it, I only came up with five things.

And, since that time, those five things have still been the filter

for any work that I pursue.

even if it's a new opportunity that someone brings to me and say,

oh, mark, you'd be great for this.

let me show you this opportunity.

If it doesn't, if it doesn't check all five boxes, I just kindly say no.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to Seek Go Create.

This is your host, Tim Winders.

I'm an executive coach.

Love to work with leaders and leadership teams.

I'm excited today because I get to speak with someone who does similar things.

We kinda skirt around the same circles.

I just wanna remind you, this is where we challenge the conventional definitions

of success and explore stories of transformation in leadership, business,

and in ministry, mash all that together, we're gonna be doing that today.

I have the privilege today of interviewing Mark Slabaugh.

He's a coach with a unique background in both nonprofit

leadership and in entrepreneurship.

And so I love that we're gonna bring those two together here during our conversation.

His experience have equipped him with valuable insights on recruiting,

leading, and retaining teams, as well as the pressure faced by

leaders in all of those areas.

So we're gonna have a fun conversation.

Mark.

Welcome to Seek, go create.

Tim, I'm so glad to be here.

Thank you for the invitation.

This is gonna be a lot of fun today.

Glad that you're here.

I've got beautiful weather here where I'm at in the Black Hills of South

Dakota and you're in central Florida.

We talked about it earlier.

Uh, nice summer weather there.

Yes, it is.

So I, I suppose it all depends on what kind of weather it defines.

Beautiful for you.

yes, it is beautiful for us.

We love it.

It's hot, it's humid, it's great.

We love it.

Yeah, I think, the humidity, I'll let you have that humidity.

I'm okay without that.

After 50 years of living in Georgia.

Hey Mark.

let's, let's, we don't really have to pretend, we've been around

each other, but this is our first face-to-face and, I'd like to know

more about people when I meet them.

So I usually ask the question, what do you do?

In some ways it's a superficial question.

In some ways it's a deep question, but if someone asks you what

you do, what do you tell people?

I was a pastor for many years in a local church, and

one of the things that always brings anxiety to varying levels, to pastors

is this conversation about money.

whether it be like I.

Organizationally, like every week and how we make budget or capital campaigns and

how do we raise money for this big thing?

And there's all this anxiety up in, in a pastor.

And what I do is I work with pastors and their leadership teams to have capital

campaigns that don't create carnage along the way and help them create more money

for the mission because what they do matters, and there's a way to go about it

that we can just get rid of that anxiety and actually have a lot of fun with it.

So did you do some capital campaigns when you were a pastor?

I did.

And honestly the first one we did was a failure.

It was terrible.

It was like, it was something we didn't wanna talk about for a couple

years, and it was like, there was definitely wounds and we just kinda

let it be and didn't talk about it.

After a while, the need just kept presenting itself.

We had to do something.

And so in the second goro, it was fantastic.

it was successful.

We, relocated to 42 acres, new building.

It was fantastic.

Loved it.

And then I was going through my own thing of like how I wanna

work and that sort of stuff.

I was like, is this a thing?

Can you do this?

what, what do I do with this?

And, yeah.

10 years later, here I am.

So I wanna back up a little bit.

One of our underlying themes here, mark, I might have mentioned this

earlier, is redefining success.

And this will tell you a lot about me with this question.

When you said it was abysmal failure, it was horrible Cetera.

I'm sitting here going, I wanted to know why it was a failure.

I really do want to know what.

What now?

but you told me the success when you mentioned the successful one, you said new

building moved to a new campus, et cetera.

So I'm gauging that was the success indicator, but gimme some of the

ugly stuff that happened with the failure so that we can understand.

I think a lot of people don't, in fact, we got a lot of people associated

with churches ministries, but they've never, they don't even know that a

capital campaign is needed for a church.

And so tell us what the failures were, because I have a feeling it wasn't

just that you didn't raise the money.

Yeah.

and there's, it's super transferable to just about anything that you

are getting ready to accomplish as an organization that's big.

And you'll see this very quickly and in, in many ways it has, I would

say, The opportunity where we failed has informed my 10 years of work

more so maybe than the success did.

So there be a couple things that happened.

Number one was our goal was too big.

And we, even though we had outside counsel, they did not caution us or

help us assess a right-sized goal.

And so that's number one is we didn't have a right-sized goal.

It was way too far out in front of us and we should not have

been chasing that big of a goal.

Second, we were not well prepared in going into meetings, conversations, vision

casting, seen again, even though we had that outside counsel, there was not a

lot of contextual prep for us so that we would go into those conversations.

Ready and be successful in those environments.

And so those two things are super, super important in the work that I do is let's

make sure we have a right-sized goal.

how do we find out over there's a right size goal?

And so that's becoming a student of, not only what that local organization is, but

also like understanding in doing this for 10 years, what is a typical outcome and

what are the variables that slide, that outcome in the range higher or lower?

And yeah, it was super, powerful.

I wish we didn't have that right.

I wish we did not have that failure because it was hard.

But it has been super powerful for my work in the last 10 years.

part of I'm gonna, I'm gonna disagree with you right

outta the gate, part of redefining success and so that we could truly

understand what works and doesn't.

I'm not sure that many of us.

Can come up with that if we don't go through something like that.

I've been through it.

I mean, we've gone through some ugly stuff business-wise.

I work with a lot of leaders.

Some of them have not really been through what would be an ugly, and we're trying to

really get all this perspective on things.

So there are two things.

I think there's two lessons.

And I'm, I mentioned when we were started off, I said he, we were talking

about which direction we're going.

I don't know, I actually just have two directions that I want to go

with this and I want to talk about that big goals because I think that

transfers to any organization, family, entity, profit, nonprofit, whatever.

and I'm actually going to use your own language to get you to talk more about it

because I think somewhere I was reading that you help teams or organizations

chase after their crazy ideas.

And then what you also just mentioned was, is that early on

that big goal was maybe too much.

How do we reconcile, don't go after the big goal, but crazy

ideas are okay, but where?

Where does all of that come into the mix?

And because here's what I know.

I know people are listening in and they think they've got a big goal

in this conversation we just had.

They go, Ooh, maybe my goal's too big, but maybe it's not.

How do you help people through that?

I think that's where experience pays off.

and you're right, like what is a right-sized goal?

But yet what is also, as we talk about those who live in this space of, not only

just church leaders, but those who, who have a faith foundation to their lives.

How do I operate in a faith way, in this endeavor, but also at

the same time understanding like, what can I actually accomplish?

And so to the specific of capital campaigns, there's a range of

typical outcomes that happen.

And not to get too nerdy on, on what those metrics are.

I can tell you, Tim, that if we said, you can 10 x your budget

with a capital campaign, I can tell you that just, it doesn't happen.

It just doesn't happen.

I don't know that it has happened.

can it, yes, God can do all things and it's not so much that I don't think

that he can, I'm just trying to help an organization prepare for, for a

process that puts them number one in a position where God could do that.

But number two, also understanding there's really.

Like some typical outcomes that inform how we go about this.

However, at the same time, I've sat down with, a few churches over the

years that have essentially said we just think if we raise a few

thousand dollars, we'll be good.

And the things that they wanna accomplish are basically like, we

can have that done by next Tuesday.

So what are we talking about here?

And I think you need to have, you need to have a balance between this idea of what

is aspirational, what is gonna capture the attention and the imagination of the

people that are in that organization, that church, but also in the sense of there

really is some consequences to chasing a 50 million goal and raising 7 million.

those consequences are, I think I used the word carnage at the beginning.

It's no joke, failed capital campaigns, have caused a lot of pastors to walk away.

whether it was internal pressure, whether it was just

the sense of failure within them.

I can't, I can't really speak to all the reasons why that is, but I

can just tell you capital campaigns that go wrong, have a lot of, have

a lot of pastoral resignations tied to it within a six month range.

They just do.

I also see that it actually impacts the.

Participants.

The members, because let's go back to the numbers you just brought up.

if your goal is 50 and you raise seven, there could be carnage.

If your goal is 10 and you raise seven, I don't know if that's, It's better, I

guess I could say, I've had goals that, you get close to it, it's Ooh, wow,

that's all my, and I don't know what the ratio should be, but I wanna tie in

one other thing to it that I think is fascinating with money in church world.

I use that term church world quite a bit.

I went through a capital campaign.

I was part of the quote unquote leadership team, cuz I'm a business guy.

I was in the church.

It was a decent sized church and it was a church that we will use the term.

and this was back during the nineties, early two thousands.

That would be a prosperity gospel message type church.

So the concept of money that we had was kind of in the perspective

that you were bringing up earlier.

It's like, you know what?

We need a new building.

And if it's the I'm gonna use some terms that some people are gonna

go, that's not theologically sound.

I know that I'm using it for a purpose.

If it's God's will, it's God's bill.

if we just show up and then all of a sudden we start seeing this thing, we

start p seeing P people with the pledges.

someone who, makes an hourly wage pledging, $10,000,

$50,000 that'll be collected.

Cuz they're thinking, okay, if I commit then it's gonna

bless me and blah blah, blah.

All this kinda stuff.

So the reason I bring that up is to me it seems like the money.

Paradigm or money tapes that these people have in this body.

if you go to maybe a denominational type situation, it'll be much different than

non-denominational prosperity gospel.

So I think what I wanna do here is let's go ahead and throw money

in the mix, because I think it impacts business leaders also.

You know, when they're looking to set goals and establish things.

So what have you learned, or what do you wanna share related to just

the way people think about money when it comes to these type things?

Yeah.

So in a marketplace context, if you have a sales team and you say, okay,

what's your, third quarter sales, goals?

what are you gonna try and track down?

it's, I shouldn't say it's easy, but it's typical to just throw a number out

there, oh, I did 80,000 last quarter.

I'm sure I can sell 120,000 this quarter.

Well, based on what, do you have 50% more prospects that are in your queue

this month or going into this quarter so that, you can bump another 50%?

And it's things like that, that, in a church space are equally valuable.

There's data that really informs it, and we can, we need to have

that science element to it.

In other words, there's a math, there's a math part of this that

informs us, but there is a faith element that it informs us.

And coming back to that church space, I would say, we can be smart

about this, but we also wanna make sure that we understand what God's

trying to do in this environment.

And when we do that, we'll be in our best place.

I find that, Tim, one of the things that is probably, greatest indicator as to

where a pastor's view on money is if I can find out like what are his influences?

Who does he listen to, what conferences does he go to, who does he read?

A lot of our contemporaries grew up watching, perhaps some very high profile

pastors, from television that, their image, their reputation, their kind of

wake, if you will, is somewhat damaging to this idea about money in the church.

And so in these last 10 years of coaching other.

Pastors and churches, there's a little bit of correction we need to do

because some guys say, remember him.

I don't wanna be like that, so I'm going to swing all the way over to

this side and I'm gonna do everything opposite of what that guy did.

And both extremes are actually quite, detrimental to where we need to

be so that there's health, so that there's biblical perspective on it.

And that then we can lead our people in the best way.

So I think the marketplace ideas are still in the same way, right?

There's a, there's definitely some math behind how you inform your goals,

and yet, in the church space, we have some faith that can also guide us and

inform how we, how we approach the organizational goals that we have.

Yeah, that's, I think that's very helpful.

And I, you know, one of the things, I've never heard that, but that is

a really good indicator and that is, if I wanna know more about you, I.

Your organization, tell me who you follow, whose books do you have in your bookstore?

Who's, who do you go to?

Who are you connected with on social media?

Things like that.

Because it does give an indicator, I'm sure it's not the only indicator, but it's

Ooh, okay, we know that this guy, I don't wanna, I could name names, but we, Yeah.

we could look at certain people and go, oh, okay.

I know kinda what you're thinking here.

I know what you're thinking there.

I think I wanna circle back to some of this conversation later as we're

wrapping up so we can come back to maybe some specifics of people with

capital campaigns and things like that.

But you brought up something to me that's always fascinating to me.

We've actually interviewed a few people here at Seek Go Create

that have done what you've done.

We've interviewed some, pat, not specific your work.

I'll tell you, I'll tell you in just a moment what it is.

But some people in ministry, some people in business, and again,

I mentioned at the beginning, we actually mashed together business

ministry, faith, things like that.

But the thing that I'm fascinated with are people that go from what we

will call full-time ministry roles.

Pastor most often is what I see into, a business type role.

Even though you're still working with those people, you're

in more of a business role.

Was that 10 years ago that you did that?

Is that correct?

Let's go back and I want, I wanna hear some of the process

and the good, some bad.

I don't know if you wanna share any ugly, but just, we don't shy away from some of

the tough conversations here, but tell me some things because I, in all my social

media and things like that, I've got all these folks that are in ministry that

are attempting to make more money or to maybe move into a non full-time role.

And then there's people that are in business that are wanting, thinking

that they need to go to full-time ministry to, to serve God's kingdom.

And so talk about that transition some Mark.

I'd love to hear more about it.

Yeah.

Wow.

there's a thousand different things there.

and let me preface this by saying for me, so this is a very personal, Journey.

And for me, as I talk about these next things here, over these moments, this

is what was good for me and I've found it to be helpful as I've shared this

story in other environments as well.

I've found it to be helpful to others, but I want to encourage you, like

you've gotta put in the work to discover some of this stuff for yourself.

I, while I mentioned to you that we had that capital campaign, it

was very successful and there was like a, ooh, wow, this is cool.

like everything else about my job at that time, I really did not enjoy.

and that really became, there was a significant tension point

between myself and, my leader.

and.

I'm the one to blame here because I was, I didn't know how to deal with this tension.

I didn't know how to deal with this frustration.

It's not that I no longer enjoyed the organization or the church that I was

with, but there was just something inside of me that I didn't understand.

There was something brewing inside of me that I didn't know what to do

with, and it really manifested itself in probably ways it didn't need to,

but because I didn't understand, but because I didn't go through the process

of understanding myself and asking myself hard questions, having people

ask me hard questions, it really just, it really just became very difficult.

So without that understanding, I made myself available to other

opportunities that seemed like a natural progression from where I was.

And in fact, it was.

There were positions that other people familiar with my

space with what I was doing.

Oh, mark, you should do this, or Mark, you should do this.

Let me introduce you over here.

I remember coming back from an interview to a place that, I met some wonderful

people, just truly delightful people.

And I came back from the interview and my wife asked me as any good wife would

do, how to go, and, talked a little bit about it, some of the answers, some of the

things that we, and I said, yeah, I guess.

And she looked at me, I don't remember if this were her exact

words, but this is what I heard.

She looked at me and she said, dude, I am not moving five hours away for,

I guess, so you better figure it out.

And it was just like this, it really led to a hyper process of discovery

over a holiday weekend that I'm like, I do, I need to figure this out.

And I came away with this idea of okay, what is meaningful work for me?

What do I want out of work?

And after I narrowed it down, it, I only came up with five things.

And, since that time, those five things have still been the filter

for any work that I pursue.

even if it's a new opportunity that someone brings to me and say,

oh, mark, you'd be great for this.

let me show you this opportunity.

If it doesn't, if it doesn't check all five boxes, I just kindly say no.

Hey, one thing I'd like to pause you on, can you share those

five things or at least some of those?

I'm curious about it cuz here's what I know.

Similar to me, there are people going, I wonder what those five things are and, but

I want to emphasize what you said earlier.

These are your five

for me.

Yeah, it's

not Tim's, five things, not Joe listeners.

Five things.

But I'm curious about it because I think you, clarity is a big word.

When I read up on you and studied, I think this level of clarity is so important.

So what can you share about those five things specifically?

And then I want us to continue the conversation.

And before I get to the five, tell you about how I discovered

those five lists a little bit.

The five things a little bit more.

a lot of things can be born out of hurt or, as I shared with pastors who

said, I'm not gonna be that guy, so I'm gonna be everything opposite of him.

And that's not success.

That is like avoidance.

And so I really had to filter through what was born out of, like who I

am and what I really want, and what was born out of like this idea of

hurt and if it was born out of hurt.

Does that immediately illegitimized it, so I went through a whole thing, like

literally for 72 hours, I did nothing but a notebook and was writing stuff out

and asking myself some hard questions.

and also one of the qualifiers, or like one of the eliminators I should say, was

like, if there was a salary, large enough, would I give it, would I give this up?

in other words, like one of the big things right now is people

say, I wanna work from home.

I wanna work remote.

Okay, is there a salary?

is there a number?

if there's a number that like you would give up working from home, then

that it doesn't go on the list for me.

These five, there's no salary that's gonna take one of these off the list.

So my five R number one, I wanted my experience to count for something.

I didn't wanna go back to school.

it's too long of a story.

I can't get into it, but my dream from middle school through high

school was to be an architect.

I'm not going back to architecture school.

I'm just not.

I'm at my age.

It's just not it's not something I want to go through.

and I really think that what I've experienced, what I've gone through to

this point, my experience should matter.

My experience should give me an opportunity of which I can leverage all of

that in a way that brings, immense value to those that I get to work with next.

The second thing is, I wanna be, I wanna have a little bit

more control over my schedule.

Now that's for people.

Well, that's working from home.

No, not really.

and.

oddly enough, I don't care if I have to work weekends.

I don't care if I have to work an 18 hour day.

I'm cool with all of that.

like over the last 10 years I've been traveling.

I've lived out of airports, I've lived out of my car.

I know what it means to be a road warrior.

but I'm not gonna miss my daughter's birthday again.

And this is one of those that is born out of hurt.

because I was told I had to be at a meeting.

I was like, eh, it's my daughter's birthday, boy, I'd really like to not.

Yep.

Gotta have that day.

It's can only be that day.

show up to the meeting, the guy who said it's gotta be that day

didn't show up to the meeting.

yeah, it's just not worth that anymore.

And I just want a little bit more control over my schedule.

and so that's important to me.

You looked like you were gonna say something.

No, I, the thing that I'm thinking is how valuable this

is, and when you and I first started talking, I said, I'm not really

sure the direction we're going.

This is so powerful.

So I'm so appreciative of this conversation, so keep going.

I do have questions about things, but I want to get these five things before we

drill more because I run across so many people that need this conversation, mark,

because it's so critical and I think so few people take the time to do it.

So keep going.

Thank you.

yeah.

so let me review.

I want my experience to count for something.

I want greater control over my schedule.

I wanna be rewarded for hard work.

now th this one's hard because not everybody's reward is the same

because we're wired differently.

Some people need to attaboy, some people want cash.

Some people want some other form of affirmation, and I get it.

You need to know yourself.

I went through a period where I felt like I was working hard.

I was busting it, and there was nothing to show for it.

In fact, quite the opposite kind of manifested itself where

there were people with Yeah.

Emotions trumped results.

And it just became a place that it was like, what are we doing here?

I, I mean, uh, yeah, it was great confusion and frustration for me.

And I've just, and the idea of we can all be, loving, kind, spiritual beings

and also acknowledge when, the right things were accomplished and people get

rewarded in a way that is meaningful and acknowledged when that work is done.

And so as holy as I can make that sound, it, I wanna be rewarded for hard work.

let's see.

rewarded for hard work.

I, I didn't wanna work alone.

and that's really hard as a freelancer, Tim, because, you're doing stuff

every day, every week that is kinda where's the next client coming from?

Who's the next client I gotta serve?

Where's my next engagement?

You have all these things happening and you stay in this bubble.

And so because of that, one of the things I did was, I made sure that

I had people that I could connect with on a regular basis that knew

the profession I'm working in.

That could be a sounding board for me that could speak into my life and give me.

And give me, just the wisdom and, perhaps the kick in the

seat of the pants that I need.

And so in a freelancer world, that's what that has looked like for me.

and so I just make sure that I'm not working alone.

All right, so what do we have?

We have, my, I want my experience account for something I wanna be,

have greater control over my schedule.

keep in mind the person that has the greatest amount of, control

over the schedule is unemployed.

So just keep that in mind.

I wanna be rewarded for hard work.

I don't wanna work alone.

and I think the other thing, for me is, I wanna pursue meaningful

work, in a way that serves beyond just like the, what do I say?

making widgets.

And I also, let me give a qualifier in there, you can make widgets and

contribute to community in a great way.

and you just need to make sure that you have those things in there.

And I can also tell you, I know a few people that God's put them on this

earth and connected to the people where their gift is making money.

And a couple of them have even said to me like, I can't make this money

doing anything else, but I get to do a lot of good with this money.

And they understand how they can create that impact.

And yeah, that's, I mean it without having a 90 minute conversation

deeper, yeah, that's the list man.

It's gotta qualify into those lists.

That is so good.

and like I said earlier, it's because I see so many people, and

again, because of the theme here is redefining what success is.

Our observation is that many people will call it the masses.

A lot of people out in the world have never even taken the time to define

what it means in the first place.

Much less go through the process that you did, which is

redefining and seeing what it is.

I mean, a couple things I observe, I'll say this and maybe let you respond.

Most people are really not even attempting to define what it is.

It's not even now.

I think they come to it because they go through situations where

they say something to the effect of, I'm never gonna do that again.

Like in my situation, I will never work.

Large corporation.

Again, I did it for nine years when I came out of college, and I'll tell

you, I will never do that again.

So part of what we go through, and probably some of yours

was you did it and you said to yourself, not gonna do that again.

And then in another one that I see, I'll mention this one and

then I'll just pause and you could respond, is people not taking the

time to go through this personally, they're just copying other people.

They're just on social media.

They're seeing what something looks like for somebody.

They're the, success means a three car garage and a house and a one and a half

hour commute into the city with a, high paying position or something like that.

I don't know if that's right or not, but, and unfortunately social media allows us

to compare ourselves to more people and.

And then, and so anyway, so that's it.

But I, and the reason I wanna bring that one up and then I want to

say this and then let you respond.

You started out, I think, tell me if this was incorrect, cuz I know you went

to a, to a ministry type school and you were moving down a ministry path.

And so the way I'm gonna pose this question is, was there pressure either

from you or exterior, or your family or mama said Mark's gonna be a preacher

from the time you were two years old and except Jesus into your life?

I do think that sometimes full-time ministry and I went to Bible school

for a couple years and it was like people considered the ultimate to be.

What you did and you left 10 years ago, and so anyway, I know I threw a

lot out at you there and I didn't even really pose it as a question, but just

talk about that, respond, whatever the Holy Spirit leads and guides.

just what are your thoughts on those responses to how important

this is that you just shared.

So after I shared the list with my wife, and we talked

about it a little bit, going back and forth and okay, what's that one about?

Okay.

Why is that one important?

And she just asked me great questions.

she looked at me and she said, that's not a pastor job.

And I said, I know.

And I came upon that criteria, not even really with a job destination in mind, but

just as like a self destination in mind.

what is going on?

Why am I frustrated?

Why is this not working?

Why is this not the thing that everybody says I should be,

inspired by Why is it not inspiring?

Why is it not the thing that brings joy to my life?

so building that based on a discovery of what do I need to do?

And I would tell you, in your audience, please don't quit your job tomorrow.

hold on a second.

don't quit your job.

and in fact, like I wish I would've been able to do this

two years earlier than I did.

I.

Because maybe I didn't have to quit my job.

Maybe I could have figured out how to, in a healthy way, continue to

do that, but find some fulfillment outside of the day-to-day.

Responsi responsibilities I had, you asked me a lot in, in, in the, in,

in the last little, little bit there.

yeah, leaving, leaving the pastorate, leaving the local church ministry.

there was a lot going on there.

perhaps, maybe self-induced guilt.

people definitely treated me differently once I did.

and I will say again, I, I, I have chosen to look at it based on my journey

and what I was trying to accomplish, because I suspect for them, They were not

treating me differently because of the decision I made as much as like their own

journey and where they're going and what they're doing and what they're trying

to accomplish and lead their people for.

and while that sounds selfish, I'm, I just don't really wanna nuance it that way.

I just think, I was on my journey.

I needed to answer my own questions for my own journey, and yeah,

that's what I needed to do.

But that guilt was real, that, that heaviness was real.

I definitely felt like I was outside of, yeah.

I don't even really know how to put that into words other than to say, yeah, there

was definitely some, some guilt there.

I wanna pause you there because I've had an interview.

Maybe I've had more than one, is the reason this is so interesting to me.

I was saved in a business setting, so I don't get this conversation, but I'm

fascinated by it, and I've seen the results of it from other people that

have gone down a path that they haven't addressed these five things or whatever

their three things are, their seven things, whatever, they haven't addressed

it, but I'm joking, but not really.

Mama and God says, I need to go into ministry, so that's where I'm going.

but I remember having this conversation with someone who, they were a pastor.

It was successful.

They hadn't, it wasn't like any, scandal or anything like that.

They left and went into consulting and all that.

And we did some work together during the nineties, together as

a consultant coach, had a great organization, had some nonprofit stuff.

But he told me that when he left ministry, he had so many people,

number one, that assumed there had been some form of a scandal or issue,

or backslidden, something like that.

and he had so many conversations where people said, oh, I'm so

sorry brother, I know, whatever.

And so the only reason I bring it up is what is up with our culture, society,

our church world, whatever, that we have this assumption that people can't.

The ministers in the marketplace.

And there's a lot to that question too.

So address it however you want to.

And then there's, I still, man, I'm loving this conversation.

what are your thoughts on that?

Okay.

there's a couple things that I've, that I've discovered from my journey.

I actually wrote a book about this, we'll come back to that in a little while.

But, in my journey, one of the things that I realized, Tim, was people who saw me

as like in this box of you're a pastor.

And once I jumped outta that box, they really didn't know what to do with me.

and I don't.

Know that's limited to being a pastor, although that, that

probably has a lot to do with it.

But I think, if you're a, if you're a banker and you decide you wanna do

something other than banking and you jump outta that box, I think the people

who only saw you as that have a hard time knowing what are you doing now?

Like, why wouldn't you do that forever.

Why wouldn't you just do that for the next 97 years?

I think a lot of people struggle to know how to deal with you

when you jump out of that box.

And one of the things that I found was in order to be successful in I

was outside of that box, I needed an entirely different network.

So again, even though I say a lot of people stopped talking to me, like quite

frankly, I was now communicating and residing in a whole different network.

I was in a whole different span of influence and people that

I was trying to connect with.

And so those things combined probably answer why like a lot

of relationships dropped off.

And I think if you really are trying to change what is next for

you, you need to jump outside of that current network that you have.

Because if that opportunity was available to you in the network you already have,

like that opportunity would already be available to you in that network.

Cause you already have, but it's not.

And so jumping outside of that's one of the hardest things you're gonna have

to do if you get to the same conclusion that I did and said this isn't a

job that is gonna be in this space.

Not so now what?

What do I do?

you brought up your wife earlier and.

I know you've got I think four kids.

I think I saw somewhere.

Yeah.

what was the conversation?

One thing that was fascinating to me is I think you initially said you

went through this process on your own and then you let your wife know.

was that correct?

Did I hear that correctly?

Cuz some people are going, man, if I decide to change my job, my work, my

anything, my wife and I wanna make sure we do, we say this clearly when we

talk about a new we new network, it may not mean get rid of all of that stuff.

H how did, can you give any tips, advice, ways you this with your spouse?

Because there are so many people right now, and I'm gonna use words

that I got from you that we're gonna be discussing in just a moment

that are wanting to make impact.

But they can't make an impact because they don't have clarity on who they

are and what they wanna do to develop strategy so that they can have impact.

Those are three words that I really picked up on when I was doing some research

on you, clarity, strategy, and impact.

But they're floundering right now, so that's why I'm digging a little bit here.

What can someone do?

It's man, I know I need to be doing something different.

We've already said, don't quit your job.

How do you get started with that process?

And then how do you communicate with a spouse and what did that look like

for you, and what advice can you give?

Oh man, we're going into marriage counseling and everything here.

do we have to?

Yeah, probably we do.

would say, Tim, one of the things that, like my

wife knows me better than anybody.

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna all of a sudden reveal

something to her about myself.

She's oh, I didn't know that you were stubborn.

Oh, I didn't know that you'd like to have a plan.

is come on.

She already knows all those things.

and I think part of the most helpful, kind of activator in that process was putting

very specific language to these things.

And it helped her.

And I have a better conversation about what was going on because I don't think

my wife was necessarily like, you have to be a pastor for the rest of your life.

now what are we gonna do?

there's, there is enough belief in each other that was like,

okay, we can figure this out.

but that also, I buried the lead here a little bit.

There were several hard transitions that I went through professionally

before even that place.

And we figured it out.

it, it all came together when it needed to.

And so we had that background a little bit that informed kind of this next thing,

okay, we're gonna change jobs again.

Okay, it'll all come together.

So what's it gonna be?

What's our plan?

How do we find this out?

How do we do this?

And she just became a little bit more of a, accountability partner through the

process so that I wasn't just floundering and just Meandering about it, but okay,

you're a plan guy, so what's the plan?

And that's really where her accountability just helped me accomplish it.

And if I didn't have that, like she's my biggest cheerleader, but she's my

biggest accountability partner as well.

That matters.

Yeah, that, that's extremely helpful and I think that's

probably a good succinct way without us going down the full, marriage path.

The word impact I is one that you use quite a bit, I think, in discussing

what you do and how you do it.

And I do think a lot of the root of what the root of the word impact to be

able to have impact is rooted in some of the things we've been discussing here.

I think there's a frustration that a lot of people have, especially

people that are followers of Christ, people that are believers, people that

have a faith about them, that they need to be making a bigger impact.

And so there's this tension of maybe I need to be doing something else.

the Apostle Paul, I love the scripture where he, which I need

to hear this over and over again.

I have a bounded, I have a base.

I can be content, and I think he wrote it while he was in prison, which

is fascinating to think about that.

But do we stretch for impact?

also being content where we are right now.

Because I see so many people that they're just churning on the inside because they

believe the way that they were raised or the way our culture, society is that they

should just be doing more for whatever it is they believe they're called to.

And I'm sometimes I wonder if they really understand what they're called to do.

They haven't gone through this process we've talked about here.

Did that question make any sense?

I don't even know if it was a question.

impact though.

I think impact is a great word, but I also think it's a word that a lot of

people struggle with in our culture, society, ministry, business, everything.

Yeah, let me see if I can relate, coaching boys

through baseball here in, into to what you're talking about.

Perfect.

Perfect example.

what something happens when you coach, a team of, 7, 8, 9,

10, 11, 12 year old boys through a season of 30, 40 games in the summer.

And boys develop at different paces.

They, you show up the next year and one guy grew four inches and, put

on 20 pounds and all these kinds of things, and the other kids still a run.

And, three years later the runt is now the biggest of all these

kinds of things play into it.

And I remember one time we were, we were at a tournament on a Saturday afternoon.

we've come through a number of games, it's hot, we're weary, and this little

guy gets up there and he strikes out, and it may have been like his.

It may have been like his third or fourth strikeout of the, of that

day with a couple of games in there.

he wasn't, he was struggling and I remember, I'm gonna blame it on his

dad because dad can be overwhelming to their sons on baseball.

I remember his dad yelling something to the effect of what'd you do that for?

And I'm just, in my head is exploding cuz I'm like, no kid wants to strike

out, no kid's getting up there.

And he wants, and like, oh, how do I miss the ball here and look like an idiot?

And no kid's doing that.

He's not trying to strike out at the same time.

Then there's another kid who like, whatever.

He goes four for four in the game, he gets to score three runs, steals a base.

He's the pitcher, he's striking kids out and he has an amazing game.

And his dad comes up and says, why don't you do that every game?

And I'm just in, in my head, I'm thinking like, Don't you understand a bell curve?

Can I have a marker board here?

Somebody can somebody help me out?

And I just think when it comes to impact, it's kind of like that, right?

We're you're gonna, you're gonna strike out sometimes.

You're gonna have amazing days sometimes.

And just understand that no one goes four for four every day.

no one strikes out every day.

Like you're gonna live in the middle at some point.

And those extremes are just gonna be part of a process.

So if you're going through a time of like, where you feel like you're not

making any impact, I would say, maybe something needs to change or maybe

y it's coming and you just need to continue pressing on what you're doing.

I just don't think that there's a magic.

there's a magic, recipe to build your day that, oh, today's the greatest impact.

Okay.

I'm just gonna repeat those seven things and tomorrow's

gonna be the greatest impact.

I just, and I'm just gonna sound like a cranky old guy.

I just don't think it, I don't think it works like that.

I think you brought up a couple things that were

jumping around in my head.

First of all, there was a proverb, I think it's in Proverbs 19, maybe

not correct, but it says, life and death is in the power of the tongue.

And what I heard, two fathers that you used in that analogy.

But I think all of us could hear real fathers saying things exactly like that,

no.

that they literally were speaking death.

There was no life in those words.

So that when I hear life and death is in the power of the tongue,

I heard just some really strong things that could really be hurtful.

And unfortunately we've all kind of have possibly done things like that.

The next thing was, and this was an odd thought that I had, was, don't quit in

the middle of the game or, the middle of the tournament or even the season, but

maybe you should play soccer next year.

You know, maybe, maybe you're a soccer kid.

I don't know that, and maybe that's, maybe your role is something else.

And unfortunately it could be that dads who, wanted to be a superstar

baseball player and never was, could be forcing, junior to go into baseball.

So those were a couple of things that came to mind as you were saying that.

and then the last thing, and this is what I'm gonna pose in the form of a question

that is something I've been putting a lot of thought into lately, and that

is this aspect of time and eternity and how maybe we're skewed with time and our

perception of it, that God thinks in time differently and we think that we have

to perform or make an impact right now.

And in all likelihood, I think there's, there'll be a day and I

don't wanna discuss this theologically cuz I, I don't have these answers.

You may, if you do, let me know because we may go down this path real quick.

I, I could see sitting around at some point going, mark, you

think your impact was this?

Yep.

Yep.

Lemme tell you what I, what your impact really was in the world.

And any comments there on just time and the eternal aspect of why

we're here and what we're doing.

This is like really existential, isn't it?

you can tell I'm a pastor.

Cause I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you another story.

several months ago I was, I was in the midst of a plumbing project and I don't

know what it is about plumbing, Tim.

you want me to build a backyard?

Shed?

I'm on it.

I can do it.

I got it.

You want me to do some rewiring in your garage to, hook up a generator's?

I got it.

I got you.

But plumbing somehow is just I don't do as well with plumbing.

And I had this, I had a plumbing emergency and it's a Saturday.

Of course it's a Saturday, of course.

and I had two friends help me out.

one came right away.

He's I can get you through the first part of this.

And then I, called another guy on a whim and I was like, Wayne, dude, do you know

what, do you know what's going on here?

Do you know how to fix this?

He said, yep, I gotcha.

I'll be there in about an hour.

And he shows up with his truck and he's got all these tools that I don't have.

he said, yep, I looked up a couple of YouTube videos and I

think this is what we need to do.

Oh, wow.

Okay, great.

and so Wayne, saw me through the rest of it and it was just fantastic.

He solved everything.

The backstory is Wayne is a kid that was in the very first youth group that

I was a youth pastor at, and I had the privilege of officiating his wedding.

and so I've known he and his wife for a long time.

they've just been great people.

and he has, we've stayed in contact for however many years ago it

was, and we're wrapping up this thing and we, we have it solved.

Like we, even along the way, we had some leaks and he came back over and he came,

I, he came to my house several times.

We're done.

And I'm like, dude, Wayne, I gotta give you some money.

I have to give you some money.

this is costly and I'm getting ready to give him some money.

He's no.

And Wayne goes into, one of the most heartfelt appreciations

that I have ever received in the work of ministry that I did.

And he relays a couple of instances that were formational for him that I spoke

into that I don't remember speaking into.

And he is attributing those words to me and saying, mark, I hear your voice in my

head so many times when I'm going through this or through this, you have spoken into

my life in ways that you don't even know.

And Tim, he's saying this in front of my wife and my wife is getting teary.

And, through, through so many other things that were going on in our life, like

Tim, that story is not about plumbing.

That story is about how God wanted to affirm some things that I have done

in my life, and plumbing became the vehicle for that to be revealed to us.

And I just, I just think, for me, I came out of that wow, I had no idea.

and I'm grateful that God allowed Wayne to say that back to me because

I needed it and I didn't even have any idea of the impact that I made there.

And so I just think, I think if you have lived your life in that way, where you

have given yourself to other people, I suspect there are one or two or a dozen

stories like Wayne that are out there.

And you, maybe you need to hear it, but, perhaps it will at some point.

And I don't know if that brings hope to your people or not, but I just

think man, if you're out there and you're giving, you're making an impact.

And while you don't always have the feedback, that is valuable, I get it.

But I think it's out there.

Yeah, the reason I really, I love that story almost teared up

too, and I'm not one to tear up much, is what's interesting about it is

that not only did you sow something I.

Probably years ago it sounds like that impacted Wayne, but this is,

I think this is Kingdom of God.

This is like how I describe things in the kingdom of God.

It sounds as if you and your wife needed to hear Wayne say something about

that in or around the time he did not.

Not just because of the plumbing, but y'all probably needed

to hear that at that time.

So that's like the circling where Wayne May not understand the impact.

Yeah, the plumbing thing was awesome, his words were life.

Going back to that proverb, they were life to you and your wife at that time.

Is that correct?

Absolutely.

And, in more ways than and that I even have time to tell you about.

Yeah.

And so that's, to me, that's to me the message that all of us need to know.

I sometimes joke, my mom uses this statement all the time, you never know.

And we joke about it in the family because she'll say something like,

yeah, I need to carry the umbrella.

I go, yeah, but there's no chance for me.

She goes, you never know.

I think this applies here.

You never know the impact you're having on people.

and we may never.

Know that.

hey, mark, I wanna do something here.

We've got a few minutes left and I want to put a nice little bow on the conversation,

which has been so incredible.

I'm so loving how this is materialized.

But I would love for you to talk a little bit about how the process,

the journey you've been on with, checking the boxes, moving into helping

organizations with capital campaigns.

But tell me more about the type people you work with, because I do think you

work with people not necessarily doing just capital campaigns also Correct.

you're, you do some coaching and, and work with those.

tell, just tell me about it and we'll see where that leads here in

the last few minutes that we've got.

Yeah, my focus right now is, in terms of my consulting is in the

capital campaigns and succession planning.

and that's been a lot of fun.

Succession planning really is just about facilitating hard conversations

and getting people to just be honest with each other about what the

next days, years look like and just facilitating those great conversations.

So that's been a lot of fun.

I'm also, because of my wiring, because of my self discovery, because of, I know how

my brain works, I got some other things that I'm like fiddling around with, and

I think there are things that are gonna.

Play that play out over the next 10 years.

They're gonna have other opportunities that I get to be in

a different sandbox for a while.

So I'm loosely connecting in places of startups and mergers and acquisitions

and just seeing where all that goes.

But here's really what's at play and all of those, there's a big idea, whether

it's a capital campaign, whether it's, I'm gonna retire, I want to hand it off.

Whether it's we've got this great idea for a company and we're gonna do this

and we're gonna market it and it's gonna do this and it's gonna make lots

of money and we're gonna be a unicorn.

Whatever it is, we got a big idea.

How do we accomplish it?

and if it's that kind of an idea, if it's that kind of a conversation,

that's where I really lean in and I can provide a lot of help to people.

and that's where I'm working.

that's what, that's the stuff that is, bringing the paycheck, if you will.

But, I just have really been.

keeping my eyes open to where can I help someone else?

Where can I help my friends go further?

and I don't really know where all that's gonna play out in the years to come.

But I do know that there have been times where I met someone and I didn't

think they would become a friend.

They became a friend.

They introduced me to someone who introduced me to someone who introduced

me to someone that was like, whoa, this was the conversation that I needed.

And that's just been something I've been trying to do is okay, where's

this, where is this gonna lead?

what happens here?

who do you know that I should talk to?

And that's been very powerful.

One thing that I picked up on early in that, that,

conversation I guess that you were just having was the hard conversations.

I think I saw something written that you talk about truthful conversations.

I'll use the term often mature conversations.

And I think this is close to my final question before we do a wrap up on a

few questions, but is that a skill or trait or characteristic that you have

always had the ability to have those?

Because I, my observation is it's getting.

More and more unique and scarce in the world we're in today.

We have a lot of superficial, we have a lot of trying to

impress or please or whatever.

Maybe it's just my observation and may, if we went back a hundred years,

we maybe could say the same thing.

I don't know, it seemed like people wrote a lot more and did a lot of things, but

have you always been able to do that or is that something you've gained momentum

skills training over the years and if so, just a answer that first and then

we may go somewhere else with that.

I think as a pastor, one of the things that, One of the

skills that I developed in that was reading the room and also just trying

to understand how to best take a group of people that are in a confined

space and lead them to a destination.

And so that skill has been extremely valuable in the consulting work

because if we're gonna get to a real place of productivity, I

need to read the body language.

And why is that?

Why is that person always looking down when we have, whenever

we say something like this?

or why is that person leaning in?

They're ready to say something.

And you need to facilitate in such a way that they're talking more than me because

I'm not gonna get, I'm not gonna get as much information if I talk more than them.

So I need more information.

So I need to get them to talk more than me.

So I just try to lean into that a little bit and have them talk more than me, and

that's served well in those environments.

And, I, boy, this just came to me, so I'm just gonna say it.

And then you can I think many people that get into those situations, people

that wanna consult, coach, whatever, often they project their issues, their

values, their beliefs, their, this is the way, their dogma, whatever.

And I believe I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to tie something together.

If I'm forcing something, you let me know.

I believe unless someone has gone through something like answering those

five questions that you answered, it's very difficult for them to be in a room

and be comfortable with themselves, their own skin, who they are, whatever

they're reaching for the dollar bill or the, the ego or the position.

And so do you think those two are related or am I trying to connect some

dots that don't need to be connected?

I think so, I think when, particularly to the area of money, Tim,

I have a pretty good ability of, put me in a room with 20 church leaders.

and after a few minutes I can probably, with a high level of accuracy, I can

tell you who's generous and who's not.

I can just read the discomfort that some people have.

I'm like, that guy hasn't figured out where he is at on money and

generosity and he's not real good about this conversation just yet.

and yeah, I think that, I think a lot of that is connected.

This idea of.

the confidence, the ability to operate out of that clarity,

tends to make some other folks uncomfortable, or at least, skeptical.

I suspect it is, it is connected, but we probably need someone smarter than

me to speak into that, what's going on psychologically and physiologically

and all those other words.

Just went, that's not in my pay grade or my skillset either,

but I'm the guy asking questions.

So that's what I was able to ask the questions.

Hey, mark, if if someone wanted to connect with you either to work with,

their team, their organization, or for capital or capital campaign or anything

like that, if they want resources or anything, where would you like them to go?

We'll include it, but just let everybody know how they can connect with you.

what would be really, what would be really cool for me is that

if I could help someone who was going through that idea of I need to figure

out what's meaningful work for me.

I have written a book and it's called My Job Sucks.

Now What?

Because I was having these conversations with folks and they wanted more about

the details of, how'd you do that?

What was this about?

And I just found that the story was, So much part of the process that I

wanted to put it in a way that the story helped people uncover it for themselves.

And so I wrote this book, and it's called, my Job Sucks.

Now What?

It's on Amazon.

It's super easy to get.

my nephew, my nephew got it a couple of weeks ago and he told me, he got

home from work at 10 30 or 11 o'clock.

He said he read all the way through it and it was like four 30 in the

morning or something like this.

And I was so proud, number one that he got it.

And number two, he said it was inspiring.

I loved it.

And so I just thought, that was the biggest compliment I could ever get.

and so if it helps you, yeah, I wanna lean into that and I wanna pro, I

wanna put useful tools in your hands.

So if you're going through that career thing, what do I do?

I would say yeah, grab ahold of that.

It's an easy read.

I intentionally did that.

But it also walks you through how to identify your meaningful, your

meaningful criteria for work.

If you have interest in like the other side of Hey Mark, we need you to come

talk to our church or our leadership team.

I would just point you to, our website that is called ministryrenewal.com.

Ministryrenewal.com.

Super easy, just like it sounds too easy.

Words, ministry renewal dot ComCom.

And there's ways for you to get in contact with me there and we can talk

about what your leadership team has.

But I would say, man, if I can add value in any way, I'd love to do it.

and love to help you take some steps.

I know you've added value to me today just with this conversation.

I'm sure folks listening in, Hey Mark, we are seek, go create those

three words that we bring together.

If you've got a pastor background, you know where we pulled some of

those words from, probably could even quote the scriptures and all that.

But I'm gonna let you choose one word as we wrap up here that just, and this is not

a deep question, but resonates with you more than the other two right now and why?

That's my final question before I do it.

A quick wrap.

Yeah.

Based on our conversation today, I would say seek.

And, there was a time where I was convinced I was supposed to have a job.

I was convinced that job was for me, I was a hundred percent

convinced that was the job.

they hired someone else.

And then I was like, two people can have the same job.

what's the deal?

and it was almost like God was saying like, no, I got something

different for you and I'm not sure you've been listening.

and so I would just say seek, seek in a way that you're trying to actually listen

and not seek what you already want or what you've already defined in your own way.

Excellent.

Mark, thank you so much for this conversation.

I wasn't exactly sure where it was gonna go.

We even said that when we started.

But I am so thankful that it went the direction it did, because I

know it was a blessing to me, and I am confident it will be to others.

If you have listened in and you've gone, wow, I needed to hear that.

I also know that you know someone that probably needs to hear it.

The number one way that people get exposed to podcasts like this to hear

messages like Mark shared, is when someone personally shares that with them.

So screenshot of if you're listening on a podcast player, screenshot that, text

it to someone, send it to someone email.

If you're watching this on YouTube or some of the clips that we might be doing on

social, just share it and comment and let us know what you think about it, because

that is how people can get this message.

I firmly believe that what Mark said is something that many people.

And our world today need to go through, and that is the process of finding

out what those 3, 5, 7, 8, 12, 22, whatever they are, things are that.

Check the box for you to give you clarity so that you can have the impact.

Thanks again, mark.

I appreciate it.

We have new episodes here at Seek Go Create every Monday.

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.