Recently, I’ve been reading some great books written by entrepreneur’s. Mostly because the application to church planters is uncanny. A few of my favorites are The Hard Thing about Hard Things, Chess not Checkers, The Everything Store, Creativity Inc., and How Google Works. If you are a pastor or a church planter, you are an entrepreneur and the wisdom in these books are incredibly helpful to those tasks.
Even though most pastors don’t believe that.
Enter Darren Hardy, the publisher of Success Magazine and his latest book The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster: Why Now Is the Time to #Join the Ride. Darren share some of his best insights, but also many from his interviews with the world’s top CEO’s and leaders for his magazine. Simply fascinating. The insights were incredible. I felt like I kept highlighting parts of the book!
Here are a few that jumped out (if you are a pastor or planter, simply insert church/church planter when it says business and you’ll see the wisdom):
- The first and most important factor in building a successful business is that you have to love it.
- The mistake people make is that they judge one person’s “front of stage” persona with their “back of stage” reality.
- Work is gonna suck 95% of the time. But that other 5% is freaking awesome!
- After years of studying the success of the world’s leading achievers across a spectrum of disparate fields, my conclusion time and time again has been that those who are at the top of their game are really just people who have found something to love.
- When you step outside the status quo, you become a giant mirror for those who stay, reflecting back their cowardice.
- The higher you climb on the ladder of success, the more people will dislike you. Climb high enough, and people might even hate you.
- We spend most of our lives pursuing success, but I’m not sure we stop often enough and ask ourselves: What does success mean to me?
- The person who knows how to get, keep, and cultivate a customer gets paid the most. Period.
- One of the fastest (and most common) ways to derail your roller coaster car and send it to a fiery death is to hire and keep the wrong people.
- Your people are your most important recruiting tool.
- Great leaders know that businesses are nothing but a group of people brought together to accomplish a mission.
- You cannot shape or create the culture. The culture of an organization is not a whiteboard exercise done with executives sitting around a conference table spit-balling ideas. The culture of an organization evolves around the people who make up the company. The culture is the personality and character expression of the people in it. The only way to shape that culture is to focus on hiring people with the attributes you want your culture to have.
- Great people want to work with great people. It’s self-perpetuating. It’s the number one thing people are looking for.
- Great people want to be a part of something great.
- People don’t go as fast as they can. They don’t work as hard as they can either. They aren’t as disciplined as possible. They aren’t as positive-minded or enthusiastic as they can be. They’re only as fast and disciplined and positive as you are.
- The leader’s responsibility is to draw out the talent, drive, and capability of the people on your team. Your job as a leader is to grow your people.
- Activity is not productivity.
- The greatest threat to your productivity is keeping yourself from getting awash in low-value activities.
- Any time you feel overwhelmed, there’s a good chance the culprit is a lack of clear priorities.
As I said, if you are a leader, this is a great book to have on your summer reading list.