L3 Leadership Podcast Transcriptions: L3 Founder Doug Smith on Our Vision And Values

 

 

 

 

Doug Smith: 00:00 What’s up everyone and welcome to episode number 200 of the L3 Leadership podcast. My name is Doug Smith and I am your host. In this episode, you’ll hear me share our core values and our vision for the next year at L3 Leadership. Also in honor of our 200th episode, we’re going to be giving away two $100 gift cards to Amazon. So stay tuned for details on how you can win and I just want to say this, that I actually can’t believe that we made it to 200 episodes. That just blows me away. I still remember episode number one. I was interviewing my father-in-law, Mike Steidel in his basement and I literally put a handheld recorder on the seat of the couch we were sitting on and interviewed him and now here we are 200 episodes later and I am absolutely blown away on how far the podcast has come.

Doug Smith: 00:41 I originally started the podcast because I wanted others to be able to sit in on the conversations I was having with leaders and I never imagined that starting this podcast would lead to me to having the opportunity to interview leaders like Dr. Henry Cloud, all three of the Pittsburgh professional sports teams coaches, all Dave Ramsey personalities and so many other great leaders, and I just want to say that to encourage you that if you’ve ever desired to create content and you’re afraid to just go for it, start where you’re at. If you want to encourage, go back and listen to episode number one of this podcast. I promise you, you will be greatly encouraged by how bad the quality was, not of the interview, but the sound quality and all of that, but you know what? I started where I was, and over time you’ll be able to upgrade.

Doug Smith: 01:23 You’ll be able to increase the quality, but just start where you’re at. You have no idea the doors that will be open for you and you never know who you’ll have the opportunity to influence. Literally, I’ve been blown away by some of the people that have told me they listened to this podcast. It’s just, it’s crazy and so if you’ve ever wanted to do that, but you’ve struggled because of fear, just do it. You never know what’ll happen, it does not have to be perfect to get started. Just go. So with that being said, I do want to say that whether this is your first time listening to the podcast or if you’ve been with us since episode number one. Thank you. Thanks for being a listener. I never take one of you for granted and I count it a great honor and a great responsibility to be able to come into your life and add value on a consistent basis.

Doug Smith: 02:05 So thank you and as a thank you, I want to give two of our listeners $100 gift card to Amazon and there are two ways you can be entered to win. The first is to simply leave a rating and review on iTunes and make sure that when you do, if you’re Apple ID is something that I wouldn’t recognize as a real name, please leave your name in the review or take a screenshot of your review and send it to me on social media or email me at DougSmith@L3Leadership.org. The second way to be entered is you can tag the L3 Leadership podcast on social media, so maybe you take a screenshot of yourself listening to the podcast or some creative way and just tag the L3 Leadership podcast on social media and we will enter you into the drawing and you can be entered up to two times, one for the review and one for the tag on social media and we will draw a winner early next week.

Doug Smith: 02:51 And so again, I just wanted to do that as a thank you and just say thank you again for listening. It’s just been such an honor to come into your life on a consistent basis. So with that being said, let’s dive right into the content for today. Today I want to share with you the values and the vision of L3 Leadership. And I truly believe that every leader needs to be in a community of leaders like L3 Leadership in order to for them to grow to their full potential. So at the end of this lesson, I’ll share with you several ways that you can take next steps with L3 Leadership and I hope that you’ll join our community of leaders, but let’s just start with the basics. Our mission, our mission at L3 Leadership is to build and develop a community of leaders that will grow to their maximum potential, that develop the courage to pursue their dreams and to become great leaders in their families, communities, cities, nations, and their world.

Doug Smith: 03:37 That is our mission. That’s why we do what we do. And so I want to share our core values with you as well. Core value number one is this, is that leadership matters. Leadership matters. We believe that everything, literally, everything rises and falls on leadership and we believe when a leader gets better, everything else gets better. And that’s why we focus all of our attention on developing leaders. We will do everything we can to add value to leaders who will go and multiply value to other leaders. We believe that it is our best chance at making a difference in this world is the development of leaders. So leadership matters, core value number two is that we’re obsessed with personal growth. We do everything we can to grow to our maximum potential and to help others grow to theirs. It’s why we wake up and go to work every day.

Doug Smith: 04:20 We want everyone to grow to their maximum potential. Number three is we do not do life alone but in community. We do not do life alone but in community. When you become a member of L3 Leadership, we will make sure that every leader has a community of leaders around them that will support them, encourage them and hold them accountable. We see way too many leaders live lives that are isolated and they end up burning out or making poor decisions, and as a result, they never make it to their finish line and it’s all because they didn’t have a community that could support them when they were in trouble. So stop doing life alone. We do not do life alone, but we do life in community. Number four, we boldly and courageously pursue our dreams. We boldly and courageously pursue our dreams. We take risks and we boldly pursue the dreams in our hearts because we believe that the world is counting on us to go after them.

Doug Smith: 05:11 And so let me just ask you this. Who is on the other side of your dream? And I’m sure you have a thousand reasons why you shouldn’t go after your dreams. You probably have a ton of fear. All of these different things and we exist to help you push past those barriers and to actually pursue those dreams. And we have to do the same thing ourselves. I’m going to mention in a moment, but next year we’re launching an L3 Leadership, one day conference. And to be honest with you, it’s a little bit scary and it’s gonna be a big risk. It’s going to be a huge investment. But listen, we’re going to go after it and we’re going to do it. Why? Because I have no idea who is on the other side of having this dream, to have a conference. But if one life gets impacted in one person’s life has changed in one leader’s life is transformed forever than it was worth it.

Doug Smith: 05:52 And so we’re going to boldly and courageously pursue the L3 Leadership, one day conference, and listen, if any, for any L3 member in our community, we will do everything we can to make sure you boldly and courageously pursue your dreams. Number five is this, is that we believe character development is the most important development. I say this all the time. We believe character development is the most important development. We want all L3 leaders to make it to their finish line with their character and integrity and tact and unquestioned. And so we do everything we can, not just to develop leaders, but leaders with character that will sustain them for the long haul that enable them to get to their finish line and cross it with integrity. And lastly, number six, we lead so we can serve. We lead so we can serve. We believe that leadership is losing the right to think about yourself.

Doug Smith: 06:42 And the reality is, as we become leaders and we grow leaders for one reason and one reason only, and that is not so you can have a parking spot, it’s not so you can have a big house or a nice car. It’s to make the world around us a better place. That is the only reason we become leaders. It’s the only reason we develop leaders and it’s the reason we give our lives away to leaders is because we believe that if we can get all leaders serving, if we can get all leaders to stop thinking about themselves and putting others first, that we’re going to make the world the way it ought to be. And that’s why leaders need to wake up every day to go and make the world the way it ought to be. And so those are our core values.

Doug Smith: 07:21 I hope that you’re fired up because I am. And let me just share with you a little bit of our vision for the next year where we’re going a few things. Number one, the thousand leader mandate. I’m really fired up about this. The thousand leader mandate, I believe that we’re called to reach 1000 leaders and invest in and help grow 1000 leaders over the next three years. We currently have around 140 leaders in L3 leadership and we want to not only add value to those leaders, but we want those leaders to go and add value and multiply value to other leaders and if every one of our members intentionally invest in 10 other leaders and brings them into the L3 community and we will be able to consistently invest in over 1000 leaders lives, which is just incredible. And who knows what the exponential outcome of that would be.

Doug Smith: 08:06 And so, listen, I’m asking you to join us for the thousand leader mandate. Will you be one of the thousand leaders in our community? And if you’re in our community and listen to this, will you bring 10 leaders with you? You intentionally invest your life into 10 other leaders and bring them into our L3 community so we can grow and develop and connect them. It’s a thousand leader mandate. Three years from now, a thousand leaders is awesome. I’m fired up. The second thing that we’re doing is we’re going to continue to do mastermind groups. Mastermind groups are the bread and butter of what we do. We believe that every leader needs to be in a mastermind group, and so here’s what masterminds are gonna look like over the next year. Our systems, there’ll be better. We’re always getting better, but we’re going to get better at leader replacement. We’ve gotten a ton of feedback, which has been phenomenal and we’re going to do a better job training our facilitators and so we’re going to get better as we get bigger.

Doug Smith: 08:54 Number two is we’re going have mastermind groups meeting around the nation. Right now they’re meeting around Pittsburgh, but I believe that there’s going to be mastermind groups all over the nation meeting on a consistent basis. Number three is, and we’re going to have online mastermind hours available to the whole L3 community where our L3 community will be able to log in and, and be on the hot seat in front of our whole L3 community. And then lastly, we’re going to be developing mastermind group training and an online course to help people launch their own mastermind groups. And I’m really excited about that. And listen, if you are not in a mastermind group, you need to be in one. So make sure you connect with us@L3Leadership.org and either start your own or jumping one that already exists as far as events, I kind of already let the cat outta the bag, but in the spring of 2019, we’re going to have our first L3 one day conference.

Doug Smith: 09:42 It’s going to be a one-day leadership conference that I am saying will be an annual summit for L3 members, but also leaders of our community and to give them an opportunity to connect, learn and grow. I believe it’s going to be the premier leadership conference in our area. And I’m really, really excited about that. So look for more details to come. And if you live in the Pittsburgh area, which is where we do most of our other events, we will have more evening events coming up, more social events that give you opportunities to connect with the L3 community and also different formats, like panels and things like that, to make the events more unique. So that’s what events look like coming up. We’ll continue to do the podcasts of course. So going for 300 episodes now and we’re playing around right now with different formats that we can be more creative to add value to you.

Doug Smith: 10:26 So we’re excited about that. We’ll continue to partner with local high schools. So a lot of people don’t know we do this, but we partnered with the high school last year and we had a speaker series where L3 leader members would go into high school assemblies that add value to students lives. And that was phenomenal. And we had the juniors and seniors of that school and mastermind groups. So we’re going to continue to do that and partner with more schools. We’re going to be making L3 curriculum. So we’re actually going to be creating a course called the L3 leader and it’ll provide an assessment for where you are and where you can go as a leader. And I’m really excited about that. And then lastly, we’re going to be continuing to add more partnerships in training. Probably the most recent is we partnered with Predictive Index and so now when you become a member of L3 Leadership, you get a free Predictive Index assessment and training, which is a huge value add and so we’re looking for other organizations that we can partner with to add value to our leaders.

Doug Smith: 11:16 So that’s a little bit of vision for where we’re going over the next year. I hope that you’re as excited as I am and if you are, my question to you is, will you join us? Will you join us? Will you come alongside our vision and help us accomplish it? You may be saying, well, how can I get involved? Here are some next steps you can take. The first step is you can become a member. I mentioned the thousand leader mandate were at 140 leaders right now, will you become one of the thousand? To become a member you can go to L3Leadership.org/ membership and you’ll see all the perks of membership and a button to register as well, become a member, become one of the thousand. Let’s go! If you’re listening to this and you own an organization and you believe in what we’re doing, would you become a sponsor?

Doug Smith: 11:58 Would you get behind what we’re doing and sponsor L3 Leadership so that it will enable us to invest in and develop over a thousand leaders in the next three years. If you’re interested in becoming a sponsor, email me at DougSmith@L3Leadership.org, or you can fill out the form on our website. Another way you can get involved and step up and lead us to become a mastermind facilitator. Maybe you’re supposed to start your own mastermind group. I mean, how incredible would it be that you can invest in 10 to 12 other leaders over the next year through leading a mastermind group, and so if you’re interested in that, there’s a form that you can fill out on our website. If you don’t feel led to start a mastermind group, I encourage you to join a mastermind group and I already challenged you to do that earlier today. You can get more information on our website as well.

Doug Smith: 12:41 Another next step you can take us to commit to attending the L3 one day conference and we’ll have information on that as soon as possible, but get there, get your team there. Get the leaders that you influence there. You can also become a volunteer. We’re always looking to grow her inner circle team and so if you are passionate about the vision of L3 Leadership and you want to move that vision forward, just simply contact me. Again, DougSmith@L3Leadership.org. We’d love to have you on our lead team and so those are a few next steps that you can take, but again, I just want to ask you, will you join us? We can’t do this alone. I can’t do it in my own strength. I can’t do it in and of myself. I need others, and so I’m asking you to come alongside us and help us accomplish the vision that’s in our hearts.

Doug Smith: 13:19 The other things I’d encourage you to do is keep growing to your maximum potential and keep multiplying and adding value to other leaders who are. The question you should always be asking yourself is who are you bringing along with you? So that wraps it up. Get involved with L3 Leadership. I hope that you got fired up about the vision and values. Thank you again for listening. It means the world to me. Thank you for being a part of L3. We love you. We believe in you and we can’t wait to see what happens when you decide to step up and lead. Have a great day and we’ll talk to you next episode.