Please enjoy this transcript of this episode with Chris Brown. It was transcribed and therefore might contain a few typos. For ways to connect with Chris, check out our show notes.
Chris Brown: 00:00 I’m seeing more and more influential people where subconsciously, and these are great people, they’re actually friends of mine, many of them where it’s getting more and more about their influence and their platform and less about true impact and true ministry and it’s just the, it’s just the nature of the society that we live in today.
Doug Smith: 00:17 This is theL3 Leadership podcast, episode number 184 what’s up everybody, and welcome to another episode of the L3 Leadership podcast. My name is Doug Smith and I’m the founder of L3 Leadership. In this episode, you’ll hear my interview with Chris Brown. Chris is one of Dave Ramsey’s Ramsey personalities. He’s also the host of the Life, Money and Hope podcast and the leadership momentum podcast, both of which I would recommend that you check out in the interview here. Chris, talk about what he’s learned while working for Dave Ramsey. You’ll hear him talk about the famous no gossip rule, Ramsey Solutions, what trends he’s seeing in the church world, his advice to speakers and podcasters and so much more, but before we dive into the interview, just a few announcements. I want to encourage you to become a member of L3 Leadership. Why? Because I believe that every leader needs a community of leaders around them that will encourage them, challenge them and hold them accountable and that is exactly what we provide here at L3 Leadership.
Doug Smith: 01:12 When you become a member, you’ll have the ability to join one of our mastermind groups. You’ll have access to our community of over 100 leaders and access to the tools and resources you need to take your life and leadership to the next level. To learn more about membership, go to L3leadership.org/membership. I also want to thank our sponsor Alex Tulandin. Alex is a full-time realtor with Keller Williams Realty and if you’re looking to buy or sell a house in the Pittsburgh market, Alex is your guy. He’s a member and a supporter of L3 Leadership and he’d love the opportunity to connect with you. You can learn more about Alex and connect with him at pittsburghpropertyshowcase.com. With that being said, let’s dive right into the interview with Chris and I’ll be back at the end with a few announcements. Thank you so much for being willing to take time to do this interview. And why don’t we just start off with you just telling us a little bit about you and
Doug Smith: 01:57 who you are and what you do.
Chris Brown: Yeah, so my name is Chris Brown and I work at Ramsey Solutions. I worked alongside Dave Ramsey if folks have heard of that name before. And I raise the banner of stewardship all over the country, specifically in the church. And by stewardship, I don’t mean a giving campaign, I mean managing God’s blessings, God’s way for God’s glory. It means how to live this life on purpose and intentionally knowing that are managers and we’re not the owner of all these things. And obviously, that comes a big, huge under underbelly of gratitude and that kind of quenches entitlement in our lives. So I try to teach that all over the country, whether it be podcasts, radio, media, blogging, or speaking in churches, you name it. So that’s what I do and I’ve been for about four years.
Doug Smith: 02:43 That’s fantastic. Now I’ve heard a little bit about your journey and I’m just curious, what’s something that you would want people to know and that people would be surprised about your journey that they may not know?
Chris Brown: 02:53 Well, you know, I started off coaching and teaching in a private school, a private Christian school for five years and when to real estate for three years. Then I went into full-time ministry as a multisite director and CFO and executive pastor at churches all the way until 2013. So it’s kind of a weird journey, but probably the thing I’d want to share with people is obviously the grace of God has been on my life through that. And I feel like God’s really been moving, but the biggest thing would be on a practical level, on something that we can tangibly put into our lives. Is I’ve just looked back and I said, yes. I said yes to further responsibility with ever never asking about pay. Hey Chris, would you do this? Yes, yes. I was just hungry. And so my twenties and thirties I was very, very hungry
Chris Brown: 03:40 and said yes to everything. I looked back and I think that really served me well. And also, there are two things that I feel like if people are like, you know, how do I take that next step in my journey to things that everything have served me well? Number one is I care deeply about what my leader cared about. That was big, I deeply cared about what my leader cared about. And number two is that I solve the biggest problems. So whatever the biggest problems are in that season, I said, oh no, I’m going after that. That’s a big, huge problem. It’s a, and I’m going to be the answer to it. Either I’m going to answer it myself or I’m going to go find the answer, but I’m going to solve the biggest problems. If you do those two things well, it will serve you well.
Chris Brown: 04:20 Yeah, I love that. I’m going to talk a little bit about leadership. So you were one of the Ramsey personalities and you’ve been there for four years. I’m just curious, what are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned about leadership and about business since you’ve come on board there?
Chris Brown: The biggest thing I’ve learned at random solutions is the value of proactive communication. And I say that right now, and maybe somebody listening in and goes, Oh yeah, Yada, Yada, Yada productivity. That means a lot to, it’s relevant. I mean it’s a, it’s a very relative term, proactive. No, I see it in a very tangible way, and I’ll give you an example. Every Monday morning here at Raymond Solutions, 700 staff get in a room and it’s led by the CEO, Dave Ramsey himself probably out of 52 weeks, he probably leads personally 45 of them when he’s in town and he proactively talks about every single business unit, what’s going on.
Chris Brown: 05:11 Everyone kind of gets up and they give these little two minute, three-minute update, so everybody’s on the same page. Then he talks about one of our values for a good 15-20 minutes. He talks about anything that’s out there in the media. He talks about any kind of possible gossip that could start and it’s proactive. And if you don’t fill, if you don’t fill the conversation with the right conversation, people will make it up themselves. They’ll fill the gaps in themselves. And what I’ve seen here is just great proactive communication of, I’ve never had, I’ve never wondering what’s going on. I’m never wondering about a strategy. I’ve never wondering about motives. I literally, I’m caught up to speed on everything. And when I miss a meeting, it’s a big deal. I feel like I’m out of the loop, but it takes a ton of value on communication to put seven people in a room. Think about that. That’s like a $5 million investment for us each and every year to have that meeting. So, I just feel like from a communications standpoint, if you read any leadership book is gonna be one of the major chapters and Ramsey Solutions does that very, very well. That’s just to pick one thing.
Doug Smith: 06:14 And I’m just going to, so obviously you guys are famous for your no gossip rule. Can you just talk about that for listeners who may have no idea what that is because that’s definitely not normal in most cultures today.
Chris Brown: 06:23 Yeah, I think it’s, something that everybody would love to. I know Lencioni had talks about like aspiring values, and one of his books, like things that you really value but you don’t really do it. So everyone would say, I would love to have no gossip. But it actually happens here. It’s crazy. And the idea is, is that if you have a problem, you don’t pass problems down to people who can’t solve the problem. If it’s a negative, it goes up. If it’s positive, it goes sideways and all around. But negatives only go up to people who can actually solve it. So the way this happens in real life is I literally have seen this happen with my own eyes, time and time again, almost about probably three or four times a week, because we’ve got really ambitious and all-in crusader type people working here.
Chris Brown: 07:06 They’re heart deep. So they care. So they get into something and they’re frustrated about something, oh, the video team won’t do this. Right? And they’ll start going down this path. Well, we couldn’t get a video. Well, why couldn’t you get a video? Let’s see we just couldn’t get a video and they just stop it there. And you know what, from here on out, I’m not pointing blame. The facts are, we couldn’t get a video done whose fault it is. I don’t even know. It might be a priority issue. It might be deeper. I’m not going to point blame. So we sometimes we challenge methods, but we don’t challenge motives. And that’s big. So negatives up positives all around.
Speaker 3: 07:41 I love that. As part of your job, you get spent time with some of the greatest leaders in the country. And I’m just curious, I had a pastor tell me once that anytime you see God use someone in a significant way ask God, what is it about them that that’s enabled them to be used that way? Have you seen patterns emerge in the leaders that you get spent time with and the leaders in your organization that you’re saying, these are the qualities that continually just go to the top when it comes to people that God’s using?
Chris Brown: Yeah. I’ll
Chris Brown: 08:08 give you one positive and one kind of a negative. Just for us to be aware of. If you’re thinking about aspirational people that you want to be like one day, it’s something that we should know about. The first thing is that they’re willing to work hard on the positive side. They’re willing to work, pay a price that nobody else is willing to pay to leave the cave and kill something and drag it home. A lot of folks say, I want to, they have aspirations to be something, but we’ve all heard it before the Tiger Woods saying like, if you want what I have to do, what I did or whatever. He said, if you want to become the best golfer in the world, which used to be an accurate statement, but then you got to do what I did to get there.
Chris Brown: 08:44 Well these people have worked their tails off and they’ve been willing to go the extra mile. And another thing is that they became a specialist in their area. They’re hyper-focused. They’re not trying to be everything to all worlds. They know their lane and they’ve just absolutely killed it and their lane on the negative side kind of negative. Maybe it’s just an awareness thing, is their number one devil in their life. We all have devils in our life. We all have these, like our number one like are not since they devils, but like obstacles or road roadblocks. There’s is going to be pride because they’re winning. They’re doing great. They’re doing, they’re doing incredible. The folks that I’ve, I’ve talked to that had been successful for a long period of time, are aware that their number one thing that’s going to hinder them as pride.
Chris Brown: 09:27 It doesn’t mean that they don’t have bouts with pride, but they have systems in their life. They have voices in their life that can coach them from becoming too prideful in the season. And they have to always adjust every single day, every single week they’ve got somebody or some people in their life that ground them continually so they don’t go turning into some wacko when it comes to pride. So that’s just happens to be the devil or the temptation. Pride is that one sin and successful people’s lives are that you start to, you know, hey, I’m the man, I’m the woman. And so the people who have routinely, you know, are succeeding over a decade or two decades, they’ve learned how to, how to balance that.
Doug Smith: 10:11 It’s good. I’m just curious for you personally, do you, do you have a system like that and your life? Is it the people on staff at ranch solutions? Is it a small group, a mastermind group outside of work? What keeps you grounded?
Chris Brown: 10:22 My wife, she will not let me get a big head ever. My wife is number one, literally as she can care less about and there’s a difference between impact and influence. She cares about the impact. She can care less about the influence. And, I tell myself that I don’t care either. I’m all about the impact, but if we’re real, we like a little bit of the influence. So I’ve always got to be doing that. She’s that in my life and I will say this, we have 700 staff here and they don’t put up with any junk. Like we just do not put up with any diva stuff. So if you even give a little bit of diva, you’ll know it in two seconds, I’ll let you know. So we’ve got a bunch of rock stars and thoroughbreds that work here. They’ve been around a bunch of influential people in prior jobs or this job. They’re not wowed by anything, so they definitely keep us grounded.
Chris Brown: 27:24 Well, you know, when I think about my mission statement, it’s God, family, ministry in that order. God, family, ministry. So I would want someone to say, man, that’s a guy who was loved. God. That’s a guy who loved his family and gave his life to ministry. And because of the value add that he did in people’s lives, they became better people. More purposeful people and people who are closer to God. Then it became a better Christ follower, a better husband, better wife, a better business person, a better parent, that I added value to people’s lives.
Doug Smith: 27:57 If someone’s listening to this and they’re like, wow, I want to connect with Chris. How can people connect with you? Find your podcasts?
Chris Brown: 28:03 Yeah, I’m ChrisBrownonair on social media and my podcast lives@stewardship.com. Of course, it’s on iTunes, it’s on Googleplay and all that kind of stuff. Sirius XM radio. The name of the podcast is Life, Money, Hope and that we talk about, you know, not just money, but as you heard on this, on this podcast, talk about leadership and talk about life as well. And I have another podcast called the Leadership Momentum Podcast, right? Interview Church leaders from all over the country and all over the world that we’re having a lot of fun with as well. So I, I’m very, very thankful that I got the opportunity to be on this one.
Doug Smith: Anything else you want to leave leaders with today?
Chris Brown: One day at a time. One day at a time. I think, for overachievers, which would be somebody who listens to podcasts would be somebody who is an achiever, right? Just relax, right? Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’d be the best you that you can be today and tomorrow. Worry about itself. Literally, just all you can do is the best you can do today, which involves some strategic planning for the future, but let’s make sure that we get a good Roi, that we steward what God’s given us today and that is our calendar and that has our checkbook.
Doug Smith: That’s good. Well, Hey, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Chris Brown: Thank you.
Doug Smith: 29:17 Hey everyone. Thank you so much for listening to our interview with Chris. You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything that we discussed in the show notes at
Doug Smith: 29:24 L3leadership.org/184. I want to thank our sponsor, Henne Jewelers. They’re a jeweler, owned by my friend and mentor, John Henne, my wife Laura, and I got her an engagement and wedding rings through Henne Jewelers. And we just loved them as an organization. Not only do they have great jewelry, but they also invest in people. They give every couple of book to help them prepare for their marriage. And we just love that. And so if you’re in need of a good jeweler, check out Hennejewelers.com. As always, if this podcast added value to your life, it would mean the world to me. If you would subscribe, leave a rating and review and share this on social media, it helps us grow our audience. So thank you for that. And thanks again for being a listener. I never take one of you for granted. And lastly, if you want to stay up to date with everything we’re doing here at L3 Leadership, you could sign up for our email list at L3leadership.org as always, I like to end with a quote and Joe Brooks said this, he said, “You never get better until you are your toughest boss.” I love that. Thanks for listening and being a part of L3 Leadership. Laura, and I appreciate you so much and we’ll talk to you next episode.Doug Smith: 11:13 I love that. You spent some time on staff and uh, churches and I’m just curious, you spent a lot of time with pastors. What patterns are you seeing in the church world that leadership be
Doug Smith: 11:22 aware of? I’m just curious from your vantage point.
Chris Brown: Well, you know, there’s one thing, that is right down, you know, what we’re talking about. It’s kind of a cousin of what we’re talking about and that is the power of lights and stage. There’s a power of the lights and stage that create this element inside. And I’m not just talking about lead pastors. It could be a children’s pastor, it could be a youth pastor, it could be a traveling evangelist and they can be a large church, megachurch, or it could be a church of 200 or maybe even a hundred. There’s something about what happens when you get on that stage and lights get on you where you have to be very, very careful that you don’t go down this road where it’s all about you and it’s all about your influence and it’s all about your platform.
Chris Brown: 12:08 That’s a word I hear a lot. My platform, if you authentically think that is you know that you’re deeply convicted, that is about impact, not influence, so you can impact more people authentically, then there might not be a problem with it, but we’ve got to know. One of the things you asked me, what am I seeing in the church world today? I’ve seen more and more influential people, where subconsciously, and these are great people. They’re actually friends of mine, many of them where it’s getting more and more about their influence and their platform and less about true impact and true ministry and it’s just a, it’s just the nature of the society that we live in today, that there’s this big huge mentality. Look at them, look at them, and we’re humans. We got flashed on and we’re just, listen, we’re going to fall into that trap.
Chris Brown: 12:53 We’ve got to be careful because the person who’s lost and sitting in the seats at a church can pick up out that in two seconds and they’re turned off by it. So I know it’s real negative, but I feel like if we’re going to have a podcast, let’s be real. This is literally what I feel like is happening in the world today. And another one is over expanding way too fast. You’re launching campuses before you can afford it. They’re glorified small groups. And if you play out the ROI on the investment, you literally have 40 people on this offsite or 80 people in this offsite and you’re spending 200k a year to run the site. It makes no sense. So, but I am saying, there are a segment of churches that are saying, you know what? We get that. We get that and you know what? We’re not going to do the campus anymore. We’re gonna actually just plant them. We’re going to plant them. And it makes a lot more, you know, financials, no sense to have a local government. They’re in a local context there to be able to run the finances. So those are two big ones that I see. I could probably go on for days. But yeah, those are probably the two big ones.
Doug Smith: 13:59 Sure. You may have answered this, but I’m just curious. Open-ended question. What advice do you have for church leaders today? Is it, have people that are able to speak into your life and call you out? Is it slowed down and don’t be in a hurry? Anything else that you would say to them?
Chris Brown: 14:12 Yeah, it definitely is the accountability piece or I’m seeing this go crazy is where there, if it has the common variable is the no accountability. So obviously that means your governing body has the appropriate amount of accountability. They don’t own you. That’s another whole podcast. But family, even the team that you’re leading, giving them the opportunity to appropriately lead up and to speak into your life on. Again, the key keyword is appropriately and reasonable. And then always being vulnerable, appropriately vulnerable with the congregation, with the team, with your family, and just having an open, an open life where you’re just like, you what? I’m not perfect. Cause I think subconsciously what happens when we get in that that big huge snowball going the wrong direction is that a, we were trying to match this persona of being perfect. And that pressure usually makes people snap. And I feel like this next season that I’m going into, I’m getting really, really passionate about helping people with that. I’m helping people that have already fallen. And the people who are about to fall and I know it, I can see all the signs and trying to prevent people from falling.
Doug Smith: 15:20 Wow. I love that. So you talked a little bit about platform and obviously, you have a platform with your job and you get the opportunity to speak at churches and organizations over the u s and maybe even internationally. I’m just curious, what advice do you have for public speakers? What have you learned about public speaking? Obviously, you know, a bunch of open-ended questions. How do you prepare when you’re going to speak somewhere?
Chris Brown: 15:41 Yeah, the biggest thing that I’ve learned recently is it’s not a performance. You’re having a conversation. If I can think of myself like when I’m going to an event, because I speak to anything from Interstate Batteries to Valvoline to, Pipeline Industries, to the Carolina Panthers, to a small church, a liturgical church to a very stylish, charismatic church. Literally all these different environments. I’m having a conversation. So think who your audiences are they going to be able to pick up what you’re laying down. So that’s the biggest one. I’m having a cup that when I said I’m having a conversation when I figured that out, it was a big, huge win for me. Another one is, it’s more important that, I’m more focused on how I make them feel, not on what I, that they are impressed with what I know. How do I make them feel?
Chris Brown: 16:31 Because you can Google information today. If you want five points to win in your marriage, you can go, you’re a Google away. If you want to know five points to do this or five ways you can do, they don’t need information. They need inspiration. I want to get them to want to care more about the subject matter so that they will get the resources in their life or they’ll log into my podcasts more often or log into something that we do here at Ramsey Solutions. But they’ll want to get more. You’re never going to like completely change someone’s life in 30 minutes. I got to get them to want to care more and then they’ll change their own lives. They’re the hero. I’m the guide. I’m not their hero. That’s a big thing. So it’s all about how I make them feel, not necessarily about what they know after my talk.
Doug Smith: 17:14 That’s good. And do you have any systems in place to make you better? How do you get feedback around your, your particular speaking style? Do you guys have systems set up like that?
Chris Brown: 17:23 Yeah, we record everything that we do and then we go through the painful process of critiquing our talks. So I tell everybody, my job description is threefold. I create content, I deliver content, and I critique content that literally is it. I have five or six different platforms. I do that. But literally, it comes down to the, I got a threefold job description. So we record everything. We watch it and I’m like, oh, Holly, my wife, I was like, I just killed it. I just did. I killed it. I’ll tell her on Sunday afternoon, it was the best I’ve ever done. And Monday I watched the tape and I’m like, oh my goodness. That was awful. So, but as far as, some of my filters when I’m preparing a talk like Ted, the very, very good resource where it talks about appealing not only to the emotional side but also to the logical side of the intellectual side.
Chris Brown: 18:13 And you’ve got to have all these different components. We also have a filter where we going to make sure that every talk has scripture in it. Every talk has research in it that goes to the intellectual side, that there’s humor involved in it. We try to have some kind of humor with every, it’s like three minutes or so to just lighten it up. Especially when you’re talking about money, which I talk about often. I want to make sure it’s, you know, lighten up the environment. We want to make sure that there are stories. People connect with stories. You’ll read that and talk like Ted, still people connect with stories. The this is an interesting fact I think and it’s a little off so just get the general idea that I think it might be, well at one point it was all the standing ovations that have happened in talk like Ted Environments, Ted Talks.
Chris Brown: 18:59 They have been like 40 to 60% stories because people connect with stories. So for us, stories, scriptures, research, those are really important elements. So we run that through a filter to make sure I talk is as well done. As far as prep, I like to write mine completely out and then I take it from a full script to a full outline to a partial outline to talking points. But I started a script and the kind of, but I don’t have the best prep process. I don’t know if I’m a podcast authority on that. It still feels like a, I like I’m carrying around an unfolded lawn chair. I don’t like it at all, but it gets the job done.
Doug Smith: 19:38 Yeah. A similar question, just a podcast and you’ve had over 9 million downloads with your podcast, which is incredible. What have you learned about podcasting? What advice do you have? The podcasters and or radio hosts out there?
Chris Brown: 19:49 Yeah, the biggest thing about podcasting is that the podcasting world is always changing. So whatever worked three months ago may not work. Now there’s a great book that’s a Who Moved My Cheese, which is really good about making sure that you sniff out the future changes that are happening in an industry. And podcasting is one of those. And so yesterday’s, analytics would say people love a 42-minute podcast and then today’s might say people are starting to zone out after 22 minutes. And then tomorrow is, might be 59 minutes. I have no clue. What we do is we study analytics. We studied like, okay, whenever I do an ad where there’s an ad spot or whenever I’m going to be pushing a product, we see this dip. And people who are, who are disengaging at that time, we’re watching how long people, right now we have a 59 minute a format and we’re seeing how many people stay engaged through the entire thing.
Chris Brown: 20:45 All right? Now we’re at 82%, which is very high for the industry, but we’re watching all of those things to make sure that our content is actually resonating with people. And we’ve learned that if you do multiple segments, that helps with, so it’s like not me teaching for 59 minutes. But it’s, I’ll do like a six-minute segment, then I’ll do a 25-minute segment with calls. Then I’ll do a 20-minute teaching and then I’ll do a story with somebody. But those kinds of aspects that I talked about with teaching there. Same thing with podcasting. You want some scripture in there. If it’s a faith-based, a platform, but you want some research in there, you want some stories and some laughter and some humor like so you want to make sure it’s really dynamic and it keeps people on their toes.
Doug Smith: 21:31 That’s good. For time sake, this will be the last question before we, or what I call the lightning round, but you may have answered this earlier in the beginning, but what advice do you have for young leaders? If you had a room full of 20 somethings, what would you tell them?
Chris Brown: 21:44 Food tastes better and the crock pot than it does in the microwave. And what I mean by that, this is a very thick microwave culture. And I remember back to when I was in my twenties and thirties, and I wanted everything now and what I see in this current generation of twenties and thirties, they want it now. There is when I look back at where I’m at today, everything that I’ve done along the journey, I needed all those skills and their skills that I obtained that I could’ve never obtained from books. Granted, I read like 150 leadership books, between, you know, 22 years old and today at 40, that have helped me. But man, what really helped me was the experience. And a lot of folks are coming in and they’re a youth pastor, or they’re a middle manager, for three weeks, and they think that they should run the place. Just relax. Be Faithful in your, Ken Coleman says all time, be faithful in your now and don’t be so hyper-focused on your next. If you are faithful in your now, it’ll lead to a great next. That’d be my biggest one. It’s just, just chill out. That’d be patient. Everything is so quick nowadays. You can download a podcast, you can download a song in two seconds, and your career is not that way. If you’re faithful, you’ll get noticed.
Doug Smith: 23:09 That’s good. So we’ll dive into the lightning round again, just a bunch of fun questions. That’ll be quick answers. I think we have about seven minutes left. And so, just start off, what is one belief or behavior that’s changed your life?
Chris Brown: 23:22 Oh, today’s execution is tomorrow’s success. And that has a cousin to it. And that means that today’s success is yesterdays execution. So all that to say, if you’re winning right now, it’s not because you’re winning right now with execution. It means you won yesterday. So you’ve got to win the day if you want to keep up. Love it. If you could put a quote on a billboard for everyone to read, what would it say? It’s not about you, it’s not about you. And know what I mean is be filled with gratitude, not entitlement.
Doug Smith: What’s the best purchase you’ve made in the last year for $100 or less?
Chris Brown: I recently bought chargers, for all of my devices for everywhere I do work and has been the best thing ever. I’m not pulling chargers from everywhere I have everywhere and it literally just pay the price buy quality cry once.
Doug Smith: 24:21 I love it. That’s a great idea. What books do you find yourself giving away most often recommending?
Chris Brown: How to Lead When You’re Not in Charge by Clay Scroggins is my current favorite book. That is absolutely great. I mentioned Talk Like Ted whenever it comes to speaking in those kinds of things. That’s a big one. Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley is a great one. There’s another one, a Stand Like Churchill Speak Like Lincoln or something like that. It’s a great speaking book that, the title is weird, but it’s really good.
Doug Smith: Awesome. Same thing, same question with podcasts. If you listen to podcasts, what are your top three?
Chris Brown: Entreleadership, is a great leadership podcast and I love Craig Groeschel’s leadership podcast. Those are probably my two favorite. I’m a leadership junkie.
Doug Smith: That’s awesome. Uh, what is your, what is your favorite question to ask leaders when you get to spend time with them?
Chris Brown: 25:20 If you were a Crayon, what color would you be? No, I’m just kidding. Just kidding. Oh, let’s see, okay. What can you currently not see? You can’t see it, it’s not tangible that possibly be ruining your goals for a year from now. Like what is underground? Like, sniff out what’s underground in your culture and your team. And maybe it’s a trust issue. I don’t know what it is, but what do you think it is? This is obviously not on the air when I asked us, but what do you think it is and in your business or your venture or whatever you’re doing that possibly could hinder your goals a year from now? That’s always a really good question.
Doug Smith: Yeah. Do you have any unusual habits that help you be effective and successful? It can be in any area of life.
Chris Brown: 5:00 AM every morning, 5:00 AM so I’ll wake up call at 5:00 AM but Chris Holly will be like because you don’t have to get up in the morning or like, like you don’t have anything until 10. No, 5:00 AM I get my best thinking done, my best writing done. There’s just something about getting up before the world does.
Doug Smith: I love it. I’m the same way. After you could have coffee with a 20-year-old Chris, what would you tell them?
Chris Brown: 26:36 I would go back to my billboard and it’s not about you. All my frustrations when I was 20 all had to do with me thinking that it was all about me. It’s just selfishness. It’s in all of us. But I think, you know, the older you get, you mask it a little bit more. You become more mature and covered up and the 20-year-old doesn’t cover it up very well. It’s very obvious. Some millennials get ripped a lot, but there are no different than older. They’re just old is older. You get, you covered up more. Millennials just don’t cover it.
Doug Smith: That’s awesome.
Doug Smith: 27:17 What do you want, what do you want your legacy to be when it’s all said and down? What would you love for your kids and your family and friends who say about you and your funeral?
Chris Brown: 27:24 Well, you know, when I think about my mission statement, it’s God, family, ministry in that order. God, family, ministry. So I would want someone to say, man, that’s a guy who was loved. God. That’s a guy who loved his family and gave his life to ministry. And because of the value add that he did in people’s lives, they became better people. More purposeful people and people who are closer to God. Then it became a better Christ follower, a better husband, better wife, a better business person, a better parent, that I added value to people’s lives.
Doug Smith: 27:57 If someone’s listening to this and they’re like, wow, I want to connect with Chris. How can people connect with you? Find your podcasts?
Chris Brown: 28:03 Yeah, I’m ChrisBrownonair on social media and my podcast lives@stewardship.com. Of course, it’s on iTunes, it’s on Googleplay and all that kind of stuff. Sirius XM radio. The name of the podcast is Life, Money, Hope and that we talk about, you know, not just money, but as you heard on this, on this podcast, talk about leadership and talk about life as well. And I have another podcast called the Leadership Momentum Podcast, right? Interview Church leaders from all over the country and all over the world that we’re having a lot of fun with as well. So I, I’m very, very thankful that I got the opportunity to be on this one.
Doug Smith: Anything else you want to leave leaders with today?
Chris Brown: One day at a time. One day at a time. I think, for overachievers, which would be somebody who listens to podcasts would be somebody who is an achiever, right? Just relax, right? Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’d be the best you that you can be today and tomorrow. Worry about itself. Literally, just all you can do is the best you can do today, which involves some strategic planning for the future, but let’s make sure that we get a good Roi, that we steward what God’s given us today and that is our calendar and that has our checkbook.
Doug Smith: That’s good. Well, Hey, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.
Chris Brown: Thank you.
Doug Smith: 29:17 Hey everyone. Thank you so much for listening to our interview with Chris. You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything that we discussed in the show notes at
Doug Smith: 29:24 L3leadership.org/184. I want to thank our sponsor, Henne Jewelers. They’re a jeweler, owned by my friend and mentor, John Henne, my wife Laura, and I got her an engagement and wedding rings through Henne Jewelers. And we just loved them as an organization. Not only do they have great jewelry, but they also invest in people. They give every couple of book to help them prepare for their marriage. And we just love that. And so if you’re in need of a good jeweler, check out Hennejewelers.com. As always, if this podcast added value to your life, it would mean the world to me. If you would subscribe, leave a rating and review and share this on social media, it helps us grow our audience. So thank you for that. And thanks again for being a listener. I never take one of you for granted. And lastly, if you want to stay up to date with everything we’re doing here at L3 Leadership, you could sign up for our email list at L3leadership.org as always, I like to end with a quote and Joe Brooks said this, he said, “You never get better until you are your toughest boss.” I love that. Thanks for listening and being a part of L3 Leadership. Laura, and I appreciate you so much and we’ll talk to you next episode.
