22 - Unlock Your Leadership Legacy | The Secret from Good to Great

Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. In my book The Titan Doctrine, I talk about one of the most controversial people, and this person is Catherine II. She's actually known as Catherine the Great. When I wrote the book, I even took a little bit of flak for using her as one of the historical figures because there's a lot of the things that she did that were questionable, but I did it because there's one principle that I believe changes how to get the most out of the people around you. After organizing and operating and running over, 86 companies can currently at one time up until 2019. I had many, many leaders, and if you think of those organizations, you would have maybe 86 leaders running those companies. One of the beneficial things that I did in running those companies was I got to actually look and learn and teach and help these leaders break through their ceilings, but I began to see patterns in their lives. The book that I wrote called The Titan Doctrine is really eight principles that I found in these leaders' lives. One of these principles that I found lacking in so many of the leaders' lives that were missing the opportunity to get the most out of their followers was this, that you should never hold the sum of all knowledge. You should actually pride yourself in giving and instilling the knowledge that you have in those around you. The reason that I picked Catherine the Great is one of the historical figures in my book, The Titan Doctrine, is because one thing that this lady did is the Empress of Russia was she educated her followers. Let me just paint the picture. In the late 1700s, it was one of the darkest, most dull moments in Russian history. They had gone through a very, very dark period. It is a very difficult place. The people are starving. The people are starting to revolt. The ideologies of Russia and the way that they built their empire was on the backs of their people. As a matter of fact, there was a class of people called the serfs, and really, that group of people were nothing more than slaves. The people of Russia were very oppressed. All of a sudden, you have this person, Catherine the Great, who comes into power. She came into power in a very unique way, but she comes into power and she has been trained from the likes of people like Voltaire out of France. She has been pushed into this burgeoning edge of the age of enlightenment. Catherine the Great begins to take these ideologies that are the very opposite of Russian culture, and she begins to do the things that no one else would do. She does the unthinkable. One thing that she starts doing is she begins to start taking the money out of the treasuries of Russia and spending it on the lowest class people. She began to build museums and libraries. She began to hire and employ French philosophers. She once bought a library that was for money-making purposes and turned it into a free library for her people. She began to give the lowest class of people in Russia access to information and knowledge. Because of that, the entire Russian outlook in this time period began to change. She began to educate from a place of freedom, not from manipulation. Oftentimes, as a leader or a person that possesses information or knowledge, what we do is we try to hold that knowledge and information to ourselves because it makes us most valuable. Especially if you're in middle management or if you're in upper management, but yet you still have a layer above you, maybe it's an ownership or a board, you want to be the sum of all knowledge because that is the most secure place to be in. You don't want your followers or those around you to be able to usurp the value that you have. So you resist teaching and training others what you know. As a matter of fact, we oftentimes cloak it in this idea of, I'm just too busy to train those around me. I'm too busy to replicate. I'm too busy to cross train. I'm too busy to pass this information on. And that's simply not true. Oftentimes, we do it unknowingly. Oftentimes, it's tied to our subconscious because we know that that's why we got here, this knowledge we possess, this skill that we have. And so why would we pass it on to those around us? However, passing knowledge and skills onto those around us creates a butterfly effect. It creates the ripple effect. It creates this opportunity for those to grow. And what Catherine realized was when you not only have this level of knowledge, like she did because she was trained by contemporaries, but then she began to give it away, that it actually elevated her to a status where she wasn't just Catherine the second, she became Catherine the Great. A couple other stories that I just want to talk to you about with regard to Catherine before we jump into what is the best practices to make sure we're passing the knowledge onto not just those around us, but those that follow us, those that could potentially take your place was that Catherine not only, while she is accused of a lot of atrocities, a couple of the very amazing things that she did while educating her followers was she actually led the way. When the smallpox epidemic pandemic was scouring the world, she was one of the first people in Russia to actually take the vaccine and she took it in front of the people at great peril to her own life because she wanted to prove that she was not willing to ask her people to do something that she wasn't willing to do herself. You think about that to take a smallpox vaccine, which was simply small pieces of the smallpox disease or the actual virus itself, and she took pieces of that in her own body at great peril. You think about that to do that in front of your people, to teach them that it's okay to walk into these concepts, these ideas with courage and with intent. I can't even imagine our world leaders today doing something like that. Could you imagine the president of the United States or could you imagine the leaders of our health organizations actually showing how much faith they have in something and actually taking it themselves with great peril? She could have died if that vaccine was administered improperly or if it was the wrong dosage or if they didn't have it correct and she was one of the first people in Russia to take it before all the people took it, not because she was trying to avoid smallpox, but because she was willing to show the people that it was worth trying in order to overcome this deadly epidemic. One thing that she also did was that it was sometimes popular and sometimes very unpopular, was the religious centers of the day of Russia. They had this big Orthodox religious kind of center to the culture of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church owned over one-third of all lands in Russia. What she began to do is take the lands back off of the churches and the religious organizations and began to give it to the slaves and the people so that they could begin to live and have their own means. It was a pretty amazing thing that she took a lot of flak for, but ended up bringing in an amazing age for the country of Russia. She's my titan doctrine person of the day today, but I want to just talk for just a few minutes about how to make sure that we're educating our followers. How are we passing on the information to those around us? Because in holding the information and holding the content so that they can't grow, so that they can't surpass you, all you're doing is limiting the organization, limiting your reach, limiting your ultimate effect in your life. And by the way, as we step into this, one last thing I want to say is that education is never free. Education always has a cost. While sometimes you could hop on YouTube today and you could maybe get a free lesson, it took someone something, it cost someone something to get that education and to actually bring it to you. And so number one, we have to have an appreciation for the information around us. We have to have an appreciation for those that are willing to share, those that are willing to educate, spend their time. You know, each and every week as I build these podcasts out, I have to give something up in order to make this happen. Oftentimes, it's at the cost of the time that I would be spending inside of my organization. I do these podcasts during the week with my staff and it's an exchange. I get the chance to bring information and knowledge to you. I get to teach and train my staff through teaching these concepts through my podcast. I get to educate and mentor those that follow or want to follow in my life. But in the end, I'm also exchanging the time that I could be at work, the time that I could be doing it. So there's never a time period where education isn't free to believe that education should be free is a misnomer. If you go back to Catherine the Great, she had to empty the treasuries and coffers of Russia in order to bring education to her people. The thing though is, is it's always a great investment. Education never, ever, ever turns back to you without repayment. Education always elevates. Education elevates you, it educates the people around you. And oftentimes, you can't see the direct correlation to money or capital or response immediately, but over time, you always do. You always do. Education always brings the next phase, the next opportunity, the next enlightenment in your life to allow you to continue to elevate. And it will do that for those around you. And so education has a financial cost, right? It has the cost of exchanging dollars. It has the time and effort cost. It has opportunity cost. It has emotional and psychological cost, right? And so the question is, should we ever offer free education? And the answer is, is that as long as somebody has a perceived value on the education, you can give it to them. But if they don't have a perceived value, you must always exchange it with something in expectation or return. For instance, on one of my mentoring calls I did last night, I said, I'm willing to give you the information but at the cost I'm going to expect is for you to actually take action on what I'm saying. And if I'm willing to give this information, this education, this knowledge to you, and you don't take action, that's the payment that I'm expecting, the action that you're going to take, that I'm no longer going to give you the education, the mentorship, the content, because then it's devalued. And when education is devalued, you don't see the benefit out of it. Somebody gave you three ways that I believe that you should educate your follower, educate your follower. Number one, educate through the stories of your life. Most people will take the principles that you're teaching through the stories that you tell and they'll apply them to their life more easily. And so if you'll just tell the story of the experience that you had and then allow the application to be made, it's the greatest way to educate your follower. If every month I have what's called the lunch and learn here in my office where I stand up in front of our staff and I begin to educate or teach a principle, I always lead with a story. And it's typically a story about my life or a lesson I learned or this is what happened. Let me tell you what happened over here. And I began to tell the story. One of my favorite authors is a business author by the name of Patrick Lencioni. What I love about Patrick is that he actually teaches in parables. He'll tell a story, he'll give people or he'll personify the lessons in the parable by attaching them to a person, a character. He'll develop the character so that by the end of the parable, as long as you can identify the characters, you now know all the principles. This is one of the greatest ways to teach. If you're going to educate your follower, it can't be bullet points and power points, right? It can't just be here are the five things, here are the three things. They have to be anchored in stories. They have to be anchored in stories because stories are tied to the emotions that we feel. And when we tie truths to emotions, it's something that our body or our mind understands how to absorb and then go back to later. Think about it. All the stories of your life are the lessons and the teachings that you take with you. Next, you have to apply it to them specifically. If I'm teaching my follower, there has to be not just self application, but external application. How do you apply this? What does this do for your life? If you were to walk this out, what would it look like? Begin to role play and help them not only tie it to their emotions through the stories that you're telling, but also help them make application for themselves. Again, bullet points and power points are great reference materials, but horrible teachers. So if you're going to educate your followers, make sure that you are telling the stories of your life and you're making application. One of the great stories of Catherine the Great was that she would go sit in the libraries with the children of the serfs, which were the slaves, and she would read them the books, tell them how it applied to her life, and then she would ask for these little children that never should have had access to the Empress of Russia, and she would have them explain to them what this means and how it makes application to their lives. Think about being in a very, very dark place in Russia with no hope, no opportunity, atrocities everywhere, people dying, people being used for who they are. And now you're a child that's sitting there with the Empress of Russia and making application to the stories of her life into your own life, super powerful and something that I think is so vitally important. And lastly, lastly, the three points I want to give you today is lead by example. If your life is an opposition to what you teach, very few people will take action from it. Lead by example, this idea of do what I say and not what I do is one of the greatest damning principles that we could give those around us. Nothing more detrimental to a follower than to see you act in opposition of what you say and what you teach. When you do not actually take action on the things that you're speaking about, the things that you're explaining, the things that you're teaching, and they see you in opposition, it erodes the very confidence that they want to take action from. It's like you've built this pillar of concrete that you're setting all these principles on and all of a sudden it turns to sand and it begins to erode the moment that you act in opposition to it. And I got to say that as a leader, that is the great responsibility. It's not just teaching and educating. It's not just expressing the concerns and the ideals and the principles that you want your followers or those around you to have, but it's living inside of them. It's living inside of them. I would say that as a leader, it's almost important or imperative that if you are not acting in agreement with what you believe, that you should stop teaching it or preaching it or using it as a lesson because it'll undermine everything else that you teach. We must be people of character. We must be people that follow and act and walk out the things that we teach so that those around us, our followers, those that are coming behind, our employees, are willing to get on board and begin to actually act in accordance to what you're teaching. Teach with stories, give them emotion. Secondly, make sure that you are making personal application to them. And thirdly, make sure you're walking out the principles that you're teaching. Catherine the Great, she taught, she educated her followers. She brought in one of the greatest ages of Russian history. She was the longest female ruler in all of Russian history and she did it by not making herself the pinnacle. What she did was she elevated everyone else around her and in the end, it pulled her to become Catherine the Great. One of the stories that I love to tell, I told her on a recent live Instagram deal that I did and I'd kind of forgotten about it, but I was playing golf with a very well known actor that was on the show, Seinfeld. And I was in my early career and I was chasing money and information. I was just chasing and pursuing growth and I had had the chance to do a small voiceover piece on the movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And I had made a few bucks on getting a small piece of doing a quick voiceover on this cartoon. Like the Disney movie? The Disney movie. And you're credited in the credits? Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And just, you know, I did a little small piece and I had, I did a lot of voiceover in my early career and and so this person that was also a very well known voice in that movie, I was playing golf with. And I was just in awe of his career. I wasn't necessarily in awe of him as a person. Like I wasn't like enamored with him. He's funny. He's hilarious. Like I really enjoyed him. But I was more enamored with his ability to just jump from show to movie to opportunity and and I just peppered him with questions the entire time. And I got a text and it was from my son. I had actually sent me a text through my wife and it said, Dad, I love you so much. He was three years old. Dad, I love you so much. When are you going to be home? I can't wait to play with you. And, you know, being a dad, like that, that those are those are amazing moments, right? Like, I mean, like, but you almost take them for granted. So like, as I picked up my phone and I looked at that text, I wasn't paying attention to the fact that he was also reading my text, right? Like, it's like one of those moments where and I don't know that he wanted to admit it either. And I was like, Oh, it's super cool. And then I like texted him and I set it back down. And I look at him and notice that he was struggling, like almost about to cry. And I said everything okay. And he said, yeah, he said, you know, even ask me the questions about, you know, this thing and he goes probably the largest paycheck for the smallest amount of work I've ever done is tied to this movie. And he said, you know, I got a check for, I don't know what it was like a million 10 million or something crazy that he got this check, he's like, I physically have a check. He said, I would trade. He said, if there was a way to trade places with you, he said, I would gladly, gladly give you that check to have that one moment. He said, not your life, that moment, he said, I've never had that moment in my life. I said, what moment he goes, the one you just had, he's like the one where you have a son that loves you so much that he's sitting there just waiting to spend a few moments with you where he's anticipating, he was like, there's no one in my life. He said that sitting there, just waiting in anticipation for me to come home. There's no one in my life that's expressing love unconditional that he said, and I would give you the check. He's like, as a matter of fact, I'd give you everything in my life to have that one moment. And he began to like, just break down. And it changed all perspective in me. It changed everything in me. And so when you ask about the stories of your life, what I just did was I transferred information by telling the emotion of the story. If you just heard that story, and you're a father, you're a mother, you feel that, right? You feel that it was a moment that impacted my life that taught me a lesson. I didn't even have to teach you the lesson and expressing the story. The lesson was already innate. All I had to do is express it. Because when a story seats in your emotions and the emotions teach you a lesson, all you have to do is recreate the moment in time. And so what was the lesson we just learned? Well, the lesson we learned is that some things, while we pursue them, don't have as much value as the things we have. The lesson is to make sure that you value the actual things you have. The lesson is to value the people that are in your life that God has put in your life, to value the people that love you, to not chase the things that are temporal, but to chase the things that are eternal. There's so many lessons in that. And you, by nature, just captured all of them by hearing the story. And that's what we need to do in our lives is capture the great stories. And so I was reminded this week, and the reason that I was reminded of that story this week is because I had told that story in front of a group of college students 12 years ago. I was on Instagram live with a good friend of mine who was present. He was a speaker at that college. He wasn't a student. He was a speaker. He was waiting for his chance to speak. And he heard me tell that story. We were doing Instagram live. He said, Eddie, he said, there's always a story that I tell my son. He said, and it's a story you told at this university years ago. And he said, do you remember it? You're playing golf with a very famous person. It took me a minute on Instagram live to even remember. I was like, I do remember that story. I was like, man, that story was so impactful to me. He was like, Eddie, I've told that story 10,000 times. He said, I've told that story to my kids. I've told he said, because that lesson, the crazy part is I never even taught him the lesson. I literally told the story in front of a group of, you know, college students. He was a speaker just listening to the story. But you think about how the principle was passed on through the story. That's how you take the moments of your life that have the greatest lessons. And you begin to tell the story, not just teach the principle. The challenge for today is this, look at those around you. Are they better because you're in their lives? Or are they just the same? If you are not taking the people around you to the next level, you're missing the greatest opportunity in this life. The greatest opportunity in this life is influence. To be able to take those around you and make them better people, to educate them, to create a path of success for them will ultimately get you to your greatest potential and your greatest success. So I highly, highly recommend this week, look at those around you, look at those that follow you, maybe it's your children, maybe it's your employees, maybe it's just somebody that you have influence over, and don't take it for granted. Think about how you're going to instill knowledge, information, education in their lives to get them to their greatest potential so that you can reach yours. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further and you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.