April 29, 2025 • 34 mins
Generosity is not something you can perfect; it’s an endless process of growth and commitment. In this episode, Alex explains what true generosity is and why it’s important. He then shares 8 key principles for becoming a more generous leader and individual. Make sure to follow and review the podcast on your favorite platform for more content like this!
Information isn’t the gap between failure and success—action is. Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching helps you create a plan and execute on what matters most for your business. Apply today at pathforgrowth.com/coaching.
Episode Recap:
- Generosity is an endless and infinite stream of opportunity
- What is generosity?
- 1. Generosity is not less than our finances, but it does involve more than just our finances
- 2. The primary blockers to generosity are twofold: greed or fear
- 3. True generosity is rooted in a stewardship mindset
- 4. In business, generosity can take many forms
- 5. Generosity to your team is given, not earned
- 6. Healthy generosity is cheerful
- 7. Generosity is best received with gratitude and extension
- 8. Strength is for service
If you’re ready to move beyond just gathering information and start executing on what truly matters, Path for Growth’s 1-on-1 coaching can help. Apply now at pathforgrowth.com/coaching.
Resources:
Follow the podcast on Apple or Spotify
Try Path for Growth 1on1 Coaching Free for 14 Days
Download the Free Reading Guide
Join us for our 2025 Experience – Long Game Leadership
Connect with our Founder Alex Judd on LinkedIn and Instagram
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex Judd (00:00):
Wanna talk to you today about generosity. And the
reason why I want us to focus onthat for this episode is because
we always say this podcast andthis business exists for impact
driven leaders. And one of thethings that I've found as a
common denominator for leadersthat make an impact is that they
are generous people. This is avirtue that we want to strive
for. And it's also a virtue thatlike many of the great virtues,
(00:22):
you're never there.
Right? It's never like, oh, Ifinally figured out generosity
or I'm finally grown in the areaof generosity. Now what's so
cool about this is it's anabundance virtue, meaning that
you're never grown, you'realways growing. There's never
figured it out. It's alwaysfiguring it out.
And so to the degree that weapply our attention and energy
to this virtue of generosity,it's an endless and infinite
(00:46):
stream of opportunity. And sowith that, the way I want to
break this down is eightprinciples. The way within Path
for Growth Coaching we alwaystalk about principles is
principles are concisely wordedstatements of truth that
transcends circumstance. So whatI really wanted to do is to
distill, man, what are eighttruths that apply to all of us
regardless of stage of business,stage of life, regardless of
(01:09):
background or belief system?These are eight truths about how
reality works that we would bewise to attend to and then to
practically think out how dothese truths work in my
situation, my stage, mybusiness, my life.
So let's jump into first adefinition of generosity. I love
this definition. It saysgenerosity is the spirit and
(01:32):
action of freely and frequentlygiving to others. So generosity
number one is a spirit. It'ssomething that occurs inside of
us, and that internal statecomes out of us.
We all know that if you justhave the actions of generosity
without the spirit ofgenerosity, it actually feels a
lot more like stinginess.Conversely, if you just have the
(01:54):
spirit without the action, well,what does James say? I think
it's James one twenty two, butbe doers of the word and not
hearers only deceiving yourself.So what we want is we want to
simultaneously have the spiritand the action. We should have
an internal state of generositytowards others where we're
seeing the best of people, wherewe're seeing opportunities to
(02:16):
give, where we're seeing placeswhere needs can be met and
problems can be solved if wefreely give.
But then also, that spirit thatis internal has to manifest in
boots on the ground, roll upyour sleeves, get muddy, get
dirty, get bloody action. Sogenerosity is the spirit and
(02:36):
action of freely. I love thatbecause it conveys a loose
script, which so many people,especially in business, need.
And frequently, it's not amoment in your day. It's a
lifestyle giving to others.
So that's the definition thatwe're pulling from as we walk
through these eight principles.Let's start with principle
number one. Generosity is notless than our finances but it
(03:00):
does encompass a great deal morethan our finances. So often the
minute you hear the wordgenerosity, right, if someone
tells you, hey, at church thisSunday, they're talking about
generosity, you don't think toyourself, oh, they're talking
about freely giving ofourselves. What you think to
yourself is they're about totalk about money.
And that's because generositydoes absolutely apply to our
(03:22):
finances and it's really, reallyimportant. That's gonna be much
of how we look at this topic aswe walk through the next, seven
principles. But the thing that Iwant us to understand is that
all of the principles that wetalk about here today are not
just about money. I love thatframework of time, talent,
treasure. So treasure is yourmoney or your resources but so
(03:45):
often, man, what's your talent?
What's your strength? And whatwould it look like for you to
give that away? And for so manyof you, you literally say, man,
as a leader the most valuablething that you've got access to
is your time. And if that's thecase, man what an powerful thing
(04:05):
to be outrageously andincomprehensibly generous with
your time. And so as we walkthrough these principles, I put
this one first for a veryspecific purpose.
I want you to think of these notjust as principles that apply to
your finances, they do butcertainly they also apply to
your talents, strengths, yourgifts, your wiring and also how
(04:27):
you give away your time.Associated with this, I want us
to remember that the highestform of generosity, I would say,
is sacrificial generosity. Theabsolute perfect example of this
is Christ on the cross. Right?He gave his entire self away
sacrificially for us, and that'satonement.
(04:48):
At one moment, he he solved theentire gap between humanity and
God, and now we're able to livein communion with God and live
in a state of victory. Right?Sacrificial generosity. We
literally just celebrated theholiday where we said, man, that
is what we are aiming for. Thattype of life, that type of
impact.
Okay, so that's the highest formof generosity. What's
(05:08):
interesting is you can get to astage of business in life where
giving away money is good, it'snever not gonna be good, but
it's not actually sacrificial.What's interesting is I coincide
with a lot of CEOs that once youreach a certain dollar number on
net worth, it actually doesn'thurt at all to give away money
(05:29):
or to write checks. I am in noway demeaning or devaluing the
power of writing checks, I thinkthat it's absolutely necessary
and so powerful. But what wecould actually gain from and
grow from recognizing is thatman, sometimes the greatest
opportunity for growth andgenerosity might be the greatest
area of discomfort.
(05:50):
So writing that check for alarge amount of money to a cause
we believe in is good, but maybewe would become more generous
and experience the fruit of thevirtue of generosity not by just
writing the check but alsogiving our time. And we always
say growth and comfort nevercoexist. So you could ask
yourself, man, what's the thingthat for me to loosen my grip on
(06:13):
it a little bit, it would be alittle bit uncomfortable for me?
And maybe just ask, is this aseason where I'm called to be
generous in this area because Ireally think God can bless that
in our lives but then also inour business. Number one,
generosity is not less than ourfinances but it does encompass a
great deal more than ourfinances, also our time and
(06:35):
talent.
Let's go to number two. Theprimary blockers to generosity
are twofold, greed or fear. Thisis really interesting because in
business literature, businesslexicon, the way we even talked
about virtue and value basedbusiness, the thing that is so
often focused on is greed asbeing antithetical to
(06:59):
generosity. Without a shadow ofa doubt, that is true. Greed is
an insatiable need for more.
I need more and I need it all tobe mine. It's the archetypal
greedy fat cat that we see in somany Hollywood movies that they
just can't stop. They just needmore, and the idea of anyone
having anything that's quoteunquote theirs is almost
(07:21):
inconceivable to them. It's justgotta be more, and it's gotta be
mine. It's gotta be more.
It's gotta be mine. That's greedpersonified, right? But what's
interesting is we sodisproportionately focus on the
topic of greed that I actuallythink we can become incredibly
susceptible, and I'm speakingfrom personal experience here,
to a second equally powerfulblocker to generosity. And that
(07:46):
blocker is fear. So what isfear?
A need to hoard out of scarcityand unhealthy independence. So
fear can cause us to think, thisis all on me. Fear can cause us
to say, man, I have to make sureI cover every single basis of
(08:07):
what could possibly happen. Fearsays I can't afford to give
anything away because I need tomake sure I am ready for
anything and everything. Andwhat's crazy is if you're
holding on to everything,hoarding everything, saying I
need to keep this so that we aresafe, you can't give away
(08:29):
anything.
And what I often see, especiallyin economic and geopolitically
turbulent times like what we'rein, it can be so, so, so easy to
get into this independentperspective and paradigm of
business and leadership that wesay, this is all on me. Am I
(08:49):
advocating against wise savingand creating a retained earnings
account and thinking about howmany months of your operating
expenses you've got put away inliquid cash that you can access
if you need to? No. What is thatcalled? That's called wisdom.
But you and I both know thatit's possible to over index on
hoarding and saving that itactually becomes scarcity and
(09:11):
fear and instead of trusting onand leaning on God who's the
sovereign creator protectorsustainer, we actually start
trusting and leaning onourselves and we become in a
very toxic way independent.We're not called to be
independent ultimately, we'recalled to be in dependence and
so that's why we need toremember that fear can actually
(09:34):
be a blocker generosity.Remember this, generosity is not
something that we should apply aone day mindset to. Man one day
when I reach this stage in mylife, when I reach this stage in
my business, when I reach thisstage in my leadership, when our
family gets to this place, oneday then we'll be able to be
generous. I'll never forget,there was a time a few years ago
(09:55):
now where I sat down with aremarkably successful
businesswoman.
I mean this woman had made it inso many ways and not just once,
she had made it multiple timesin multiple different arenas.
And one of the things that stoodout to me about her was she had
quote unquote made it and shewas wildly generous. And I had
talked to a couple people abouther and one of the things that
always came up is man, howfreely her and her husband in
(10:18):
particular gave their resourcesaway, invested into the
community, invested into causes,invested into people, even
invested into other businesses.People just said, man, they just
have such a spirit of generosityabout them. And I had the
opportunity to ask this womanthis question.
I said, what is it that givesyou the ability to so freely
give whenever you have so muchtoday? And what's so cool is
(10:41):
here's what she said. She said,you know Alex, we've actually
talked about that. And we kindof look at each other and we
say, why are we able to do this?And she said, both of us find
ourselves being so grateful toGod.
That's what she said. She said,we thank God that we gave
whenever we had nothing. Shesaid because at that time we
(11:02):
would say ma'am we're not makingmuch but with the little that we
have, and I think they actuallycame from a pretty poor state,
with the little that we havewe're gonna try and give 10%.
And she said we're so gratefulthat we did that then because
she said if we didn't have thestomach and the muscles to write
the check then, we wouldn't justbe able to get to where we are
(11:24):
today and write that many commason a check that we're just
giving away. She's like, Iwouldn't be able to do it.
And so she said, it was soimportant that we built the
muscle up over time and westarted where we were. And
that's so good becauseespecially whenever we're in
this small early stage where wedon't feel like we're making
(11:44):
much and we're not doing much,that's when we can lean into
both fear and greed. We can say,I need to protect this as mine
right now so that one day I canstart to give And her story
should stand in directopposition to that and remind us
that no, giving is not a momentin your day, it's also not a
stage of your life. Giving andgenerosity is a lifestyle. Okay
(12:07):
number three, true generosity isrooted in a stewardship mindset.
Here's when I am least generouswith the resources in our
business. It's when I get thisscrewed up, twisted ideology
that this business is mine Andtherefore like it all belongs to
me. That's messed up. And it'sout of that messed up posture
(12:30):
and positioning that I'm justquite frankly not a very
generous person, not a verygenerous leader. And I'm not
even just talking about generouswith my money, although it
certainly affects that.
I'm talking about generous withmy time. I'm talking about
generous with my energy. I'mtalking about generous with my
words and my spirit, I'm justnot a very generous person. And
the reason why is because that'snot a stewardship mindset.
(12:50):
That's in some ways an unhealthyultimate ownership mindset,
right?
What we want to preserve andwhat I believe we're called and
challenged to preserve is astewardship mindset. And here's
what a stewardship mindset lookslike in the business context.
This business is not mine, thisbusiness is God that he's given
me to manage. What is a steward?A steward is a caretaker.
(13:15):
And what's so cool is when Istart to view this business and
all of its associated resourceand assets, and then even expand
beyond that and say, man, thishouse, this car, this marriage,
my family, all of the resources,our financial portfolio, right,
the condo that we rent out, allof that stuff, don't get it
twisted. It's not mine. It's notmine at all, right. This is
(13:38):
God's that he's given me tomanage and why has he given it
to me to manage? It's to serveand impact other people.
So that's so cool because thatmeans that man the reason why
I've been given these things isnot for me. Rather I've been
tasked as the steward, thecaretaker, the manager of these
things and it's with thesethings that I am now tasked to
(14:02):
love other people. And so thestewardship mindset is man,
praise God for all the coolstuff that he blessed me with
and the amazing relationshipsand the time and the talent and
the treasure. Praise God forthat. Now how do I make sure he
gets a return on what he's givenme to manage?
And man, if I'm an effectivesteward, if I'm an effective
(14:23):
investor, let's not even justmake it a incremental return,
let's make it an exponentialreturn. He who can be trusted
with little can be trusted withmuch. Jesus said that. And so if
I can create an exponentialreturn, not just financial but
impact return in the lives ofother people, return through the
(14:43):
lens of a kingdom economy forand through other people, well
then the way God has structuredthe world, praise God for this,
is that he trusts you with alittle, you create exponential
return, you look up and you say,my gosh, I've been trusted with
more. And then you create anexponential return.
You say, my god, I've beentrusted with more. Praise God.
(15:05):
And that's the benefit andblessing of a stewardship
mindset. Okay, let's go tonumber four. In business,
generosity can take many forms.
So we're particularly talkingabout business right now. The
most common and publicizedversion of business generosity
is generosity to a cause, right?Oh, I gave to help in sex
trafficking. Oh, I helped giveto the homeless in our
(15:28):
community. Or oh, I helped giveto support veterans that are
looking for a place to work.
All of those are causes andthose are brilliant things to
give to, right? That's the mostpublicized way we exercise
generosity in business but Iwant you to expand your thinking
on generosity to three otherareas. We have generosity to the
(15:49):
team. How are you going aboveand beyond to bless your team
and their families? You wantthat as a CEO or owner to be on
your mind all the time,especially when the business is
winning.
How am I going above and beyondto bless my team and their
(17:50):
families? One of the things thatI often think of is does the
team member think of you asgenerous? That's good obviously
if they think of you asgenerous. Here's a real cool
litmus test question. Does theteam member's spouse think of
you as generous?
And here's why I think that'sactually really important to
think about is because somepeople might answer that
(18:12):
question and be like, well Idon't know, the spouse doesn't
really know me. And that mightbe true, especially if you're a
larger company and the spousemight not know you personally,
although it would be awesome ifthey did know you personally.
But is your generosity affectingthe team member in such a way
that they go home and they can'thelp but be inspired by it and
(18:32):
talk about it at the dinnertable that night? That's what
we're really trying to get towith that question. Generosity
to the team.
Generosity to the customer. Man,it's so cool that whenever you
structure your organizationalfinances well, this is something
that fulling management andaccounting does so well. We've
talked about them on thispodcast at length. When you
structure your finances well,you're hopefully operating with
(18:54):
a degree of margin in yourbusiness. And when you're
operating with a degree ofmargin in your business,
inevitably, it will happen,sometime in the next couple
months, you're going to coincidewith a customer that has a need.
It might be related directly towhat your company does. It might
also be related to somethingyour company doesn't do, but if
you have margin in your businessyou might be able to say hey
(19:17):
we're gonna, our customer thatwe care about deeply, that we've
built a relationship isexperiencing a problem. What if
we were part of the solution?What if we were able to extend a
temporary discount or extend alittle bit of a free offering or
service for a period of time inhopes of a greater extended
relationship? What if we wereable to meet them in their time
(19:39):
of need and trouble and help askthem, hey what would be
supportive right now or do weneed to delay your payment right
now or something like that.
If you're running on a hairpinand you're being a poor steward
of your organization's financesbecause they're not organized,
it's irresponsible to do this.What's so cool is that if you've
organized your finances, youhave margin in your finances in
(19:59):
a responsible and wise way, youcan help meet your customers'
needs. And man, when you do thatlike you're gonna gain lifetime
fans of your business, right?And whether that results in more
business from them or not iskind of beside the point. It's
the right thing to do.
But what I see is like even ifit doesn't result in more
business from them, you betterbelieve they're going to be
(20:21):
telling that story to theirfriends. And that's how you
start to build a reputation ofcharacter. Generosity to the
team, generosity to thecustomer, generosity to the
community. One of the Psalmsthat I focused on last year
said, trust in the Lord and dogood. Dwell in the land and
befriend faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord andhe will give you the desires of
(20:43):
your heart. I love that secondphrase there. Dwell in the land.
Seek the good of the land thatyou find yourself in. We live in
a virtual environment.
Many of you have virtual teams,although not all of you that
listen to this podcast. And itcan be so easy to say, how can I
impact the world? And maybe thequestion to ask is, how can I
(21:05):
impact my world? Or with yourteam to ask, how can we impact
our world? There are legitimatepressing needs in the community
that you live in.
What if your business was ableto provide service or finances
to help solve those problems andmeet those needs? What we're not
(21:26):
talking about here is, oh man,this is gonna be really good for
business because we do this. Itmight be good for business, but
that's not the reason why we'redoing it. We're doing it because
we have a spirit of action thatfreely gives towards others. And
then finally, generosity to acause, which is what we already
discussed.
This is saying, man, I'm gonnachoose something that there is
(21:46):
not a direct line of how itbenefits me or us, but it's the
right thing to do, so we'regoing to do it. Generosity to
the team, generosity to thecustomer, generosity to the
community, generosity to acause. Okay, let's go to number
five. Generosity to your team isgiven not earned. And what's
really crucial to understandhere is that generosity,
(22:09):
remember the definition, is thespirit and action of freely and
frequently giving to others.
So we are freely giving. What'simportant to understand here is
that generosity is not thisbilateral reciprocal agreement.
It's not you did this so I'mgoing to give you this or it's
not I'm going to give you thisand out of giving you this, I'm
(22:32):
expecting you to give me that.That's more like a contract or a
covenant that we're making. Ihave nothing wrong with
contracts.
I have nothing wrong with,performance based bonuses or
rewarding or thing like that. Ithink you should do those
things. And I think it can bereally powerful if you do it
thoughtfully and in a wise wayto have really, really
intentional incentive programsfor action taken in your
(22:56):
business. Just know that's notgenerosity. And we don't want
people to think or get thistwisted idea of like the
generosity of my leader isentirely dependent on my
performance or lack thereof.
Generosity is given. It'ssomething that you freely give,
it's not earned, and thereforewe wanna divorce it from
(23:17):
performance. We don't wanna say,oh because you did this, I'm
gonna give you this. Rather wewanna freely give. And we never
want the two to be toointerlinked, and it's okay if
you incentivize performance, andI would say you should do that.
Just don't put it under theguise of a gift or generosity. A
gift is something that is freelygiven. Number six, healthy
(23:39):
generosity is cheerful. Well,this is taken straight from the
bible. I believe it's in secondCorinthians that it says, each
one must give as he has decidedin his heart, not reluctantly or
under compulsion, for God lovesa cheerful giver.
We are called biblically to notbe stingy. We're also called to
(24:00):
not be hoarders. We alreadytalked about that. We're called
not to be greedy. We're notcalled to be fearful.
And so what's so cool about thisis it puts this sense of onus
and agency on the giver. It'snot telling you you have to
give. In fact, it's telling youif you feel like you're doing it
because you have to, youshouldn't be doing it. It says
each one must give as he hasdecided in his heart. So you are
(24:23):
looking into your heart andyou're prayerfully considering,
man, what am I called to giveand what can I give cheerfully?
What's the thing that you canliterally have a smile on your
face, no holdups, no hangups, nohookups to it, right? But rather
you're just saying, I just amdelighted to give this. It's not
reluctantly. It's not undercompulsion. God loves a cheerful
(24:47):
giver.
And it's in that vein that wecan reflect on what Jesus said.
He said it's more blessed togive than to receive. Blessed is
right? It's the good life. It'ssupremely and distinctively
joyful, right?
So it's more blessed to givethan to receive. Now what's
interesting here is supremelyand distinctively joyful.
(25:08):
Makarios, right? This idea ofthe good life, or from Christian
perspective, the successfullife. Is it that we are
distinctively joyful and out ofthat we give?
Or is it that we give and thatgiving makes us distinctively
joyful, makes us blessed? That'sa little bit of a conundrum and
the way I would answer thatquestion is yes. Is it that man,
(25:33):
we are so joyful, we are soabundantly provided for, we are
so so blessed that out of thatwe're going to give. Yes, but
then also whenever we give, holycow, do we see that it's like
any time I give I become sojoyful, so aware of the
abundance around me, blessed?The answer is yes.
(25:55):
And so I like to think of it asthis virtuous circle that my
blessing spurs generosity and mygenerosity spurs blessing. That
goes into number seven.Generosity is best received with
gratitude and extension. So nowwe're talking about being the
recipient of generosity, whichwe all are. Whether we know it
(26:16):
or not is the question, but weare all the recipients of
generosity.
If you are a team member thatworks for a generous owner, want
you to focus on gratitude andextension. If you are a business
owner, I guarantee you in someway, some form, some facet, you
are the recipient of generosity.Whether that's people's time,
(26:37):
talent, treasure, or somethingelse. And so what do we need to
first do? We need to acknowledgeit and say man that was
incredibly generous of thatperson.
Because so often, especiallyrelated to people's time, like
people can give you time andtheir time could be worth so
much and they just gave it awayfreely. If we're not careful we
don't even acknowledge, man thatwas an act of supreme
generosity. That was theequivalent of them writing a
(26:59):
check for $20,000 because theygave me three hours of their
time and I didn't even say thankyou for it. I didn't even
recognize that they were beingso generous. So we've got to
acknowledge it.
And then how do you receive it?Gratitude and extension. So
here's what I mean by that. Makesure that you say thank you. And
I would say, man, there'ssomething really powerful about
(27:19):
a thank you note or a thank youletter to really commemorate
when you are the recipient ofgenerosity.
So the first thing you areacknowledging whenever you say
thank you is you're saying, I amthe beneficiary of this
generosity so it's right to saythank you. So you're
acknowledging man this is a giftto me. I wanna make sure I say
thank you. Number two, what doyou wanna do? I want to
(27:42):
perpetuate more of thishappening in the world so I want
to say thank you.
Here's the deal, and I'veactually had conversations with
business owners before wherethey actually took a step. They
took a leap to be outrageouslygenerous to their team. And
unfortunately I've had callswith them afterwards where I
asked, hey man, how'd that go? Iknow you were super excited
about that. And they said, wellit a nice internal feeling but I
(28:05):
don't know that any of themreally noticed.
Or it didn't seem to move thedial. Or they're just not a very
vocal bunch they didn't reallysay much but I'm just trusting
that it made a difference.Here's the deal, if you are the
recipient of something that youwould like to see more of from
your business owner or from amentor or from a friend like
generosity, go out of your wayto say thank you. Don't think to
(28:29):
yourself like, oh man, theydon't need to hear this.
Everyone, everyone, everyonebenefits from hearing someone
take the time to say thank you.
It's interesting. It wasactually not long ago now that
someone that I know that has apretty massive platform, like
massive massive platform, had atalk that they gave that was
(28:49):
posted on a podcast that Ilistened to. And the talk was
just so good. It was so dialedin. It was so effective.
It was just, I mean, the person,they are just a master of their
craft, and they so clearlyworked on this, prepared this,
and just crushed it, absolutelycrushed it. And I was on a run
while I was listening to it andI just thought to myself it
(29:11):
would be really good to sendthem a thank you note just to
say thanks for the time that youput into that. I listened to it
and it really made an impact onme and it's clear that you
really really invested a ton oftime to just give this away
(30:27):
essentially. And then I had thisthought in the back of my head
that was like well that person'sa really really really big deal.
Right?
Like they are a household nameand I'm sure they've got emails
flooding in right now and textmessages and all that. Who am I
to send this message? They don'tneed to hear from me. But you
know I credit this to that postrun high and probably a god
(30:49):
thing right is I said no I'mactually gonna take the time to
send the note. And they'llprobably won't reply but I'm
gonna send it anyway.
So it's like later in theevening. I take a moment just to
basically say exactly what Ijust said to you, email it to
this person. That night, I wannasay it was within two hours I
get a reply back from theperson. And I had told them, hey
(31:11):
I kind of hesitated to send thisbecause I'm sure you're hearing
from so many people but wantedto send it anyway. And they just
responded, this means a lot tome, thank you.
Never hesitate to send an emaillike this, appreciate you. And
to me that was just such apowerful reminder of that
proverb, do not withhold goodfrom those to whom it is due. If
you see something good, saysomething good. Be generous with
(31:33):
your words. Be generous with theway we commend people.
We're called to do that andthat's what it looks like to
freely give. And then finallyhere's the next point that I
want to make on extension and itactually connects to the eighth
principle as well. The singlebest way to say thank you to
someone being generous to you isto take responsibility for going
(31:57):
out and being generous toothers. If someone is exercising
generosity with a cheerful heartand you are the recipients, The
single best way for you to saythank you is not a thank you
note. It's not you telling themthank you, although those are
both good and necessary.
It's you taking it upon yourselfto say, man I'm so grateful for
(32:19):
what I've been given and nowit's on me to go out and
generously give. And thatactually kind of even sums up
the eighth principle. The eighthprinciple is what we say at the
end of every podcast. It's oneof our core values at
Path4Growth. Strength is forservice.
Why were you blessed with theremarkable talents, time,
(32:43):
resources, family, marriage,kiddos, intellect, strength
physically, strength creativelythat you've been blessed with.
Why were you given those things?Were you given them for
yourself? No. Right?
That strength is meant to bespent. It's meant to be given
away. You have been made strongso that you can effectively
(33:06):
serve and benefit others. And Ibelieve that when you do that,
when you give your strengthaway, others benefit and God is
glorified. Well, there you haveit.
Thanks so much for joining usfor this episode. If you want
any of the information orresources that we mentioned,
that's all in the show notes.Hey, before you go, could I ask
(33:27):
you for one quick favor? Couldyou subscribe, rate, and review
this podcast episode? Yourfeedback is what helps our team
engage in a sequence of neverending improvement.
We wanna amplify what's valuableto you and obviously reduce or
even remove the things thataren't. Also, you leaving a
positive review is what helps usconnect with, build trust with,
(33:50):
and serve other leaders aroundthe country. So thanks in
advance for helping us out onthat front. Are you a leader
that wants to grow your businessin a healthy way, serve people
exceptionally well, and glorifyGod in the process? Go to
pathforgrowth.com to get moreinformation about our community
of impact driven leaders andschedule a call with our team.
(34:11):
Hey. Thank you so much to thePath for Growth team, Kyle
Cummings and the crew atPodCircle, and the remarkable
leaders that are activelyengaged in the Path for Growth
community. Y'all are the peoplethat make this podcast possible.
Y'all know this. We're rootingfor you.
We're praying for you. We wannasee you win. Remember, my
strength is not for me. Yourstrength is not for you. Our
(34:32):
strength is for service.
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
Wanna talk to you today about generosity. And the
reason why I want us to focus onthat for this episode is because
we always say this podcast andthis business exists for impact
driven leaders. And one of thethings that I've found as a
common denominator for leadersthat make an impact is that they
are generous people. This is avirtue that we want to strive
for. And it's also a virtue thatlike many of the great virtues,
(00:22):
you're never there.
Right? It's never like, oh, Ifinally figured out generosity
or I'm finally grown in the areaof generosity. Now what's so
cool about this is it's anabundance virtue, meaning that
you're never grown, you'realways growing. There's never
figured it out. It's alwaysfiguring it out.
And so to the degree that weapply our attention and energy
to this virtue of generosity,it's an endless and infinite
(00:46):
stream of opportunity. And sowith that, the way I want to
break this down is eightprinciples. The way within Path
for Growth Coaching we alwaystalk about principles is
principles are concisely wordedstatements of truth that
transcends circumstance. So whatI really wanted to do is to
distill, man, what are eighttruths that apply to all of us
regardless of stage of business,stage of life, regardless of
(01:09):
background or belief system?These are eight truths about how
reality works that we would bewise to attend to and then to
practically think out how dothese truths work in my
situation, my stage, mybusiness, my life.
So let's jump into first adefinition of generosity. I love
this definition. It saysgenerosity is the spirit and
(01:32):
action of freely and frequentlygiving to others. So generosity
number one is a spirit. It'ssomething that occurs inside of
us, and that internal statecomes out of us.
We all know that if you justhave the actions of generosity
without the spirit ofgenerosity, it actually feels a
lot more like stinginess.Conversely, if you just have the
(01:54):
spirit without the action, well,what does James say? I think
it's James one twenty two, butbe doers of the word and not
hearers only deceiving yourself.So what we want is we want to
simultaneously have the spiritand the action. We should have
an internal state of generositytowards others where we're
seeing the best of people, wherewe're seeing opportunities to
(02:16):
give, where we're seeing placeswhere needs can be met and
problems can be solved if wefreely give.
But then also, that spirit thatis internal has to manifest in
boots on the ground, roll upyour sleeves, get muddy, get
dirty, get bloody action. Sogenerosity is the spirit and
(02:36):
action of freely. I love thatbecause it conveys a loose
script, which so many people,especially in business, need.
And frequently, it's not amoment in your day. It's a
lifestyle giving to others.
So that's the definition thatwe're pulling from as we walk
through these eight principles.Let's start with principle
number one. Generosity is notless than our finances but it
(03:00):
does encompass a great deal morethan our finances. So often the
minute you hear the wordgenerosity, right, if someone
tells you, hey, at church thisSunday, they're talking about
generosity, you don't think toyourself, oh, they're talking
about freely giving ofourselves. What you think to
yourself is they're about totalk about money.
And that's because generositydoes absolutely apply to our
(03:22):
finances and it's really, reallyimportant. That's gonna be much
of how we look at this topic aswe walk through the next, seven
principles. But the thing that Iwant us to understand is that
all of the principles that wetalk about here today are not
just about money. I love thatframework of time, talent,
treasure. So treasure is yourmoney or your resources but so
(03:45):
often, man, what's your talent?
What's your strength? And whatwould it look like for you to
give that away? And for so manyof you, you literally say, man,
as a leader the most valuablething that you've got access to
is your time. And if that's thecase, man what an powerful thing
(04:05):
to be outrageously andincomprehensibly generous with
your time. And so as we walkthrough these principles, I put
this one first for a veryspecific purpose.
I want you to think of these notjust as principles that apply to
your finances, they do butcertainly they also apply to
your talents, strengths, yourgifts, your wiring and also how
(04:27):
you give away your time.Associated with this, I want us
to remember that the highestform of generosity, I would say,
is sacrificial generosity. Theabsolute perfect example of this
is Christ on the cross. Right?He gave his entire self away
sacrificially for us, and that'satonement.
(04:48):
At one moment, he he solved theentire gap between humanity and
God, and now we're able to livein communion with God and live
in a state of victory. Right?Sacrificial generosity. We
literally just celebrated theholiday where we said, man, that
is what we are aiming for. Thattype of life, that type of
impact.
Okay, so that's the highest formof generosity. What's
(05:08):
interesting is you can get to astage of business in life where
giving away money is good, it'snever not gonna be good, but
it's not actually sacrificial.What's interesting is I coincide
with a lot of CEOs that once youreach a certain dollar number on
net worth, it actually doesn'thurt at all to give away money
(05:29):
or to write checks. I am in noway demeaning or devaluing the
power of writing checks, I thinkthat it's absolutely necessary
and so powerful. But what wecould actually gain from and
grow from recognizing is thatman, sometimes the greatest
opportunity for growth andgenerosity might be the greatest
area of discomfort.
(05:50):
So writing that check for alarge amount of money to a cause
we believe in is good, but maybewe would become more generous
and experience the fruit of thevirtue of generosity not by just
writing the check but alsogiving our time. And we always
say growth and comfort nevercoexist. So you could ask
yourself, man, what's the thingthat for me to loosen my grip on
(06:13):
it a little bit, it would be alittle bit uncomfortable for me?
And maybe just ask, is this aseason where I'm called to be
generous in this area because Ireally think God can bless that
in our lives but then also inour business. Number one,
generosity is not less than ourfinances but it does encompass a
great deal more than ourfinances, also our time and
(06:35):
talent.
Let's go to number two. Theprimary blockers to generosity
are twofold, greed or fear. Thisis really interesting because in
business literature, businesslexicon, the way we even talked
about virtue and value basedbusiness, the thing that is so
often focused on is greed asbeing antithetical to
(06:59):
generosity. Without a shadow ofa doubt, that is true. Greed is
an insatiable need for more.
I need more and I need it all tobe mine. It's the archetypal
greedy fat cat that we see in somany Hollywood movies that they
just can't stop. They just needmore, and the idea of anyone
having anything that's quoteunquote theirs is almost
(07:21):
inconceivable to them. It's justgotta be more, and it's gotta be
mine. It's gotta be more.
It's gotta be mine. That's greedpersonified, right? But what's
interesting is we sodisproportionately focus on the
topic of greed that I actuallythink we can become incredibly
susceptible, and I'm speakingfrom personal experience here,
to a second equally powerfulblocker to generosity. And that
(07:46):
blocker is fear. So what isfear?
A need to hoard out of scarcityand unhealthy independence. So
fear can cause us to think, thisis all on me. Fear can cause us
to say, man, I have to make sureI cover every single basis of
(08:07):
what could possibly happen. Fearsays I can't afford to give
anything away because I need tomake sure I am ready for
anything and everything. Andwhat's crazy is if you're
holding on to everything,hoarding everything, saying I
need to keep this so that we aresafe, you can't give away
(08:29):
anything.
And what I often see, especiallyin economic and geopolitically
turbulent times like what we'rein, it can be so, so, so easy to
get into this independentperspective and paradigm of
business and leadership that wesay, this is all on me. Am I
(08:49):
advocating against wise savingand creating a retained earnings
account and thinking about howmany months of your operating
expenses you've got put away inliquid cash that you can access
if you need to? No. What is thatcalled? That's called wisdom.
But you and I both know thatit's possible to over index on
hoarding and saving that itactually becomes scarcity and
(09:11):
fear and instead of trusting onand leaning on God who's the
sovereign creator protectorsustainer, we actually start
trusting and leaning onourselves and we become in a
very toxic way independent.We're not called to be
independent ultimately, we'recalled to be in dependence and
so that's why we need toremember that fear can actually
(09:34):
be a blocker generosity.Remember this, generosity is not
something that we should apply aone day mindset to. Man one day
when I reach this stage in mylife, when I reach this stage in
my business, when I reach thisstage in my leadership, when our
family gets to this place, oneday then we'll be able to be
generous. I'll never forget,there was a time a few years ago
(09:55):
now where I sat down with aremarkably successful
businesswoman.
I mean this woman had made it inso many ways and not just once,
she had made it multiple timesin multiple different arenas.
And one of the things that stoodout to me about her was she had
quote unquote made it and shewas wildly generous. And I had
talked to a couple people abouther and one of the things that
always came up is man, howfreely her and her husband in
(10:18):
particular gave their resourcesaway, invested into the
community, invested into causes,invested into people, even
invested into other businesses.People just said, man, they just
have such a spirit of generosityabout them. And I had the
opportunity to ask this womanthis question.
I said, what is it that givesyou the ability to so freely
give whenever you have so muchtoday? And what's so cool is
(10:41):
here's what she said. She said,you know Alex, we've actually
talked about that. And we kindof look at each other and we
say, why are we able to do this?And she said, both of us find
ourselves being so grateful toGod.
That's what she said. She said,we thank God that we gave
whenever we had nothing. Shesaid because at that time we
(11:02):
would say ma'am we're not makingmuch but with the little that we
have, and I think they actuallycame from a pretty poor state,
with the little that we havewe're gonna try and give 10%.
And she said we're so gratefulthat we did that then because
she said if we didn't have thestomach and the muscles to write
the check then, we wouldn't justbe able to get to where we are
(11:24):
today and write that many commason a check that we're just
giving away. She's like, Iwouldn't be able to do it.
And so she said, it was soimportant that we built the
muscle up over time and westarted where we were. And
that's so good becauseespecially whenever we're in
this small early stage where wedon't feel like we're making
(11:44):
much and we're not doing much,that's when we can lean into
both fear and greed. We can say,I need to protect this as mine
right now so that one day I canstart to give And her story
should stand in directopposition to that and remind us
that no, giving is not a momentin your day, it's also not a
stage of your life. Giving andgenerosity is a lifestyle. Okay
(12:07):
number three, true generosity isrooted in a stewardship mindset.
Here's when I am least generouswith the resources in our
business. It's when I get thisscrewed up, twisted ideology
that this business is mine Andtherefore like it all belongs to
me. That's messed up. And it'sout of that messed up posture
(12:30):
and positioning that I'm justquite frankly not a very
generous person, not a verygenerous leader. And I'm not
even just talking about generouswith my money, although it
certainly affects that.
I'm talking about generous withmy time. I'm talking about
generous with my energy. I'mtalking about generous with my
words and my spirit, I'm justnot a very generous person. And
the reason why is because that'snot a stewardship mindset.
(12:50):
That's in some ways an unhealthyultimate ownership mindset,
right?
What we want to preserve andwhat I believe we're called and
challenged to preserve is astewardship mindset. And here's
what a stewardship mindset lookslike in the business context.
This business is not mine, thisbusiness is God that he's given
me to manage. What is a steward?A steward is a caretaker.
(13:15):
And what's so cool is when Istart to view this business and
all of its associated resourceand assets, and then even expand
beyond that and say, man, thishouse, this car, this marriage,
my family, all of the resources,our financial portfolio, right,
the condo that we rent out, allof that stuff, don't get it
twisted. It's not mine. It's notmine at all, right. This is
(13:38):
God's that he's given me tomanage and why has he given it
to me to manage? It's to serveand impact other people.
So that's so cool because thatmeans that man the reason why
I've been given these things isnot for me. Rather I've been
tasked as the steward, thecaretaker, the manager of these
things and it's with thesethings that I am now tasked to
(14:02):
love other people. And so thestewardship mindset is man,
praise God for all the coolstuff that he blessed me with
and the amazing relationshipsand the time and the talent and
the treasure. Praise God forthat. Now how do I make sure he
gets a return on what he's givenme to manage?
And man, if I'm an effectivesteward, if I'm an effective
(14:23):
investor, let's not even justmake it a incremental return,
let's make it an exponentialreturn. He who can be trusted
with little can be trusted withmuch. Jesus said that. And so if
I can create an exponentialreturn, not just financial but
impact return in the lives ofother people, return through the
(14:43):
lens of a kingdom economy forand through other people, well
then the way God has structuredthe world, praise God for this,
is that he trusts you with alittle, you create exponential
return, you look up and you say,my gosh, I've been trusted with
more. And then you create anexponential return.
You say, my god, I've beentrusted with more. Praise God.
(15:05):
And that's the benefit andblessing of a stewardship
mindset. Okay, let's go tonumber four. In business,
generosity can take many forms.
So we're particularly talkingabout business right now. The
most common and publicizedversion of business generosity
is generosity to a cause, right?Oh, I gave to help in sex
trafficking. Oh, I helped giveto the homeless in our
(15:28):
community. Or oh, I helped giveto support veterans that are
looking for a place to work.
All of those are causes andthose are brilliant things to
give to, right? That's the mostpublicized way we exercise
generosity in business but Iwant you to expand your thinking
on generosity to three otherareas. We have generosity to the
(15:49):
team. How are you going aboveand beyond to bless your team
and their families? You wantthat as a CEO or owner to be on
your mind all the time,especially when the business is
winning.
How am I going above and beyondto bless my team and their
(17:50):
families? One of the things thatI often think of is does the
team member think of you asgenerous? That's good obviously
if they think of you asgenerous. Here's a real cool
litmus test question. Does theteam member's spouse think of
you as generous?
And here's why I think that'sactually really important to
think about is because somepeople might answer that
(18:12):
question and be like, well Idon't know, the spouse doesn't
really know me. And that mightbe true, especially if you're a
larger company and the spousemight not know you personally,
although it would be awesome ifthey did know you personally.
But is your generosity affectingthe team member in such a way
that they go home and they can'thelp but be inspired by it and
(18:32):
talk about it at the dinnertable that night? That's what
we're really trying to get towith that question. Generosity
to the team.
Generosity to the customer. Man,it's so cool that whenever you
structure your organizationalfinances well, this is something
that fulling management andaccounting does so well. We've
talked about them on thispodcast at length. When you
structure your finances well,you're hopefully operating with
(18:54):
a degree of margin in yourbusiness. And when you're
operating with a degree ofmargin in your business,
inevitably, it will happen,sometime in the next couple
months, you're going to coincidewith a customer that has a need.
It might be related directly towhat your company does. It might
also be related to somethingyour company doesn't do, but if
you have margin in your businessyou might be able to say hey
(19:17):
we're gonna, our customer thatwe care about deeply, that we've
built a relationship isexperiencing a problem. What if
we were part of the solution?What if we were able to extend a
temporary discount or extend alittle bit of a free offering or
service for a period of time inhopes of a greater extended
relationship? What if we wereable to meet them in their time
(19:39):
of need and trouble and help askthem, hey what would be
supportive right now or do weneed to delay your payment right
now or something like that.
If you're running on a hairpinand you're being a poor steward
of your organization's financesbecause they're not organized,
it's irresponsible to do this.What's so cool is that if you've
organized your finances, youhave margin in your finances in
(19:59):
a responsible and wise way, youcan help meet your customers'
needs. And man, when you do thatlike you're gonna gain lifetime
fans of your business, right?And whether that results in more
business from them or not iskind of beside the point. It's
the right thing to do.
But what I see is like even ifit doesn't result in more
business from them, you betterbelieve they're going to be
(20:21):
telling that story to theirfriends. And that's how you
start to build a reputation ofcharacter. Generosity to the
team, generosity to thecustomer, generosity to the
community. One of the Psalmsthat I focused on last year
said, trust in the Lord and dogood. Dwell in the land and
befriend faithfulness.
Delight yourself in the Lord andhe will give you the desires of
(20:43):
your heart. I love that secondphrase there. Dwell in the land.
Seek the good of the land thatyou find yourself in. We live in
a virtual environment.
Many of you have virtual teams,although not all of you that
listen to this podcast. And itcan be so easy to say, how can I
impact the world? And maybe thequestion to ask is, how can I
(21:05):
impact my world? Or with yourteam to ask, how can we impact
our world? There are legitimatepressing needs in the community
that you live in.
What if your business was ableto provide service or finances
to help solve those problems andmeet those needs? What we're not
(21:26):
talking about here is, oh man,this is gonna be really good for
business because we do this. Itmight be good for business, but
that's not the reason why we'redoing it. We're doing it because
we have a spirit of action thatfreely gives towards others. And
then finally, generosity to acause, which is what we already
discussed.
This is saying, man, I'm gonnachoose something that there is
(21:46):
not a direct line of how itbenefits me or us, but it's the
right thing to do, so we'regoing to do it. Generosity to
the team, generosity to thecustomer, generosity to the
community, generosity to acause. Okay, let's go to number
five. Generosity to your team isgiven not earned. And what's
really crucial to understandhere is that generosity,
(22:09):
remember the definition, is thespirit and action of freely and
frequently giving to others.
So we are freely giving. What'simportant to understand here is
that generosity is not thisbilateral reciprocal agreement.
It's not you did this so I'mgoing to give you this or it's
not I'm going to give you thisand out of giving you this, I'm
(22:32):
expecting you to give me that.That's more like a contract or a
covenant that we're making. Ihave nothing wrong with
contracts.
I have nothing wrong with,performance based bonuses or
rewarding or thing like that. Ithink you should do those
things. And I think it can bereally powerful if you do it
thoughtfully and in a wise wayto have really, really
intentional incentive programsfor action taken in your
(22:56):
business. Just know that's notgenerosity. And we don't want
people to think or get thistwisted idea of like the
generosity of my leader isentirely dependent on my
performance or lack thereof.
Generosity is given. It'ssomething that you freely give,
it's not earned, and thereforewe wanna divorce it from
(23:17):
performance. We don't wanna say,oh because you did this, I'm
gonna give you this. Rather wewanna freely give. And we never
want the two to be toointerlinked, and it's okay if
you incentivize performance, andI would say you should do that.
Just don't put it under theguise of a gift or generosity. A
gift is something that is freelygiven. Number six, healthy
(23:39):
generosity is cheerful. Well,this is taken straight from the
bible. I believe it's in secondCorinthians that it says, each
one must give as he has decidedin his heart, not reluctantly or
under compulsion, for God lovesa cheerful giver.
We are called biblically to notbe stingy. We're also called to
(24:00):
not be hoarders. We alreadytalked about that. We're called
not to be greedy. We're notcalled to be fearful.
And so what's so cool about thisis it puts this sense of onus
and agency on the giver. It'snot telling you you have to
give. In fact, it's telling youif you feel like you're doing it
because you have to, youshouldn't be doing it. It says
each one must give as he hasdecided in his heart. So you are
(24:23):
looking into your heart andyou're prayerfully considering,
man, what am I called to giveand what can I give cheerfully?
What's the thing that you canliterally have a smile on your
face, no holdups, no hangups, nohookups to it, right? But rather
you're just saying, I just amdelighted to give this. It's not
reluctantly. It's not undercompulsion. God loves a cheerful
(24:47):
giver.
And it's in that vein that wecan reflect on what Jesus said.
He said it's more blessed togive than to receive. Blessed is
right? It's the good life. It'ssupremely and distinctively
joyful, right?
So it's more blessed to givethan to receive. Now what's
interesting here is supremelyand distinctively joyful.
(25:08):
Makarios, right? This idea ofthe good life, or from Christian
perspective, the successfullife. Is it that we are
distinctively joyful and out ofthat we give?
Or is it that we give and thatgiving makes us distinctively
joyful, makes us blessed? That'sa little bit of a conundrum and
the way I would answer thatquestion is yes. Is it that man,
(25:33):
we are so joyful, we are soabundantly provided for, we are
so so blessed that out of thatwe're going to give. Yes, but
then also whenever we give, holycow, do we see that it's like
any time I give I become sojoyful, so aware of the
abundance around me, blessed?The answer is yes.
(25:55):
And so I like to think of it asthis virtuous circle that my
blessing spurs generosity and mygenerosity spurs blessing. That
goes into number seven.Generosity is best received with
gratitude and extension. So nowwe're talking about being the
recipient of generosity, whichwe all are. Whether we know it
(26:16):
or not is the question, but weare all the recipients of
generosity.
If you are a team member thatworks for a generous owner, want
you to focus on gratitude andextension. If you are a business
owner, I guarantee you in someway, some form, some facet, you
are the recipient of generosity.Whether that's people's time,
(26:37):
talent, treasure, or somethingelse. And so what do we need to
first do? We need to acknowledgeit and say man that was
incredibly generous of thatperson.
Because so often, especiallyrelated to people's time, like
people can give you time andtheir time could be worth so
much and they just gave it awayfreely. If we're not careful we
don't even acknowledge, man thatwas an act of supreme
generosity. That was theequivalent of them writing a
(26:59):
check for $20,000 because theygave me three hours of their
time and I didn't even say thankyou for it. I didn't even
recognize that they were beingso generous. So we've got to
acknowledge it.
And then how do you receive it?Gratitude and extension. So
here's what I mean by that. Makesure that you say thank you. And
I would say, man, there'ssomething really powerful about
(27:19):
a thank you note or a thank youletter to really commemorate
when you are the recipient ofgenerosity.
So the first thing you areacknowledging whenever you say
thank you is you're saying, I amthe beneficiary of this
generosity so it's right to saythank you. So you're
acknowledging man this is a giftto me. I wanna make sure I say
thank you. Number two, what doyou wanna do? I want to
(27:42):
perpetuate more of thishappening in the world so I want
to say thank you.
Here's the deal, and I'veactually had conversations with
business owners before wherethey actually took a step. They
took a leap to be outrageouslygenerous to their team. And
unfortunately I've had callswith them afterwards where I
asked, hey man, how'd that go? Iknow you were super excited
about that. And they said, wellit a nice internal feeling but I
(28:05):
don't know that any of themreally noticed.
Or it didn't seem to move thedial. Or they're just not a very
vocal bunch they didn't reallysay much but I'm just trusting
that it made a difference.Here's the deal, if you are the
recipient of something that youwould like to see more of from
your business owner or from amentor or from a friend like
generosity, go out of your wayto say thank you. Don't think to
(28:29):
yourself like, oh man, theydon't need to hear this.
Everyone, everyone, everyonebenefits from hearing someone
take the time to say thank you.
It's interesting. It wasactually not long ago now that
someone that I know that has apretty massive platform, like
massive massive platform, had atalk that they gave that was
(28:49):
posted on a podcast that Ilistened to. And the talk was
just so good. It was so dialedin. It was so effective.
It was just, I mean, the person,they are just a master of their
craft, and they so clearlyworked on this, prepared this,
and just crushed it, absolutelycrushed it. And I was on a run
while I was listening to it andI just thought to myself it
(29:11):
would be really good to sendthem a thank you note just to
say thanks for the time that youput into that. I listened to it
and it really made an impact onme and it's clear that you
really really invested a ton oftime to just give this away
(30:27):
essentially. And then I had thisthought in the back of my head
that was like well that person'sa really really really big deal.
Right?
Like they are a household nameand I'm sure they've got emails
flooding in right now and textmessages and all that. Who am I
to send this message? They don'tneed to hear from me. But you
know I credit this to that postrun high and probably a god
(30:49):
thing right is I said no I'mactually gonna take the time to
send the note. And they'llprobably won't reply but I'm
gonna send it anyway.
So it's like later in theevening. I take a moment just to
basically say exactly what Ijust said to you, email it to
this person. That night, I wannasay it was within two hours I
get a reply back from theperson. And I had told them, hey
(31:11):
I kind of hesitated to send thisbecause I'm sure you're hearing
from so many people but wantedto send it anyway. And they just
responded, this means a lot tome, thank you.
Never hesitate to send an emaillike this, appreciate you. And
to me that was just such apowerful reminder of that
proverb, do not withhold goodfrom those to whom it is due. If
you see something good, saysomething good. Be generous with
(31:33):
your words. Be generous with theway we commend people.
We're called to do that andthat's what it looks like to
freely give. And then finallyhere's the next point that I
want to make on extension and itactually connects to the eighth
principle as well. The singlebest way to say thank you to
someone being generous to you isto take responsibility for going
(31:57):
out and being generous toothers. If someone is exercising
generosity with a cheerful heartand you are the recipients, The
single best way for you to saythank you is not a thank you
note. It's not you telling themthank you, although those are
both good and necessary.
It's you taking it upon yourselfto say, man I'm so grateful for
(32:19):
what I've been given and nowit's on me to go out and
generously give. And thatactually kind of even sums up
the eighth principle. The eighthprinciple is what we say at the
end of every podcast. It's oneof our core values at
Path4Growth. Strength is forservice.
Why were you blessed with theremarkable talents, time,
(32:43):
resources, family, marriage,kiddos, intellect, strength
physically, strength creativelythat you've been blessed with.
Why were you given those things?Were you given them for
yourself? No. Right?
That strength is meant to bespent. It's meant to be given
away. You have been made strongso that you can effectively
(33:06):
serve and benefit others. And Ibelieve that when you do that,
when you give your strengthaway, others benefit and God is
glorified. Well, there you haveit.
Thanks so much for joining usfor this episode. If you want
any of the information orresources that we mentioned,
that's all in the show notes.Hey, before you go, could I ask
(33:27):
you for one quick favor? Couldyou subscribe, rate, and review
this podcast episode? Yourfeedback is what helps our team
engage in a sequence of neverending improvement.
We wanna amplify what's valuableto you and obviously reduce or
even remove the things thataren't. Also, you leaving a
positive review is what helps usconnect with, build trust with,
(33:50):
and serve other leaders aroundthe country. So thanks in
advance for helping us out onthat front. Are you a leader
that wants to grow your businessin a healthy way, serve people
exceptionally well, and glorifyGod in the process? Go to
pathforgrowth.com to get moreinformation about our community
of impact driven leaders andschedule a call with our team.
(34:11):
Hey. Thank you so much to thePath for Growth team, Kyle
Cummings and the crew atPodCircle, and the remarkable
leaders that are activelyengaged in the Path for Growth
community. Y'all are the peoplethat make this podcast possible.
Y'all know this. We're rootingfor you.
We're praying for you. We wannasee you win. Remember, my
strength is not for me. Yourstrength is not for you. Our
(34:32):
strength is for service.
Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.