How Is Greater Than What: Preston Poore’s Secrets to Faith-Driven Leadership

Speaker: 00:00:00

my heart didn't sing when I was selling Coke.

Speaker: 00:00:02

Zero.

Speaker: 00:00:03

Great brand, loved it, loved working with it.

Speaker: 00:00:05

My heart didn't sing when I was selling.

Speaker: 00:00:07

Hershey's kisses.

Speaker: 00:00:08

Hershey's Kisses are fantastic.

Speaker: 00:00:10

They're wonderful.

Speaker: 00:00:11

I enjoyed those things.

Speaker: 00:00:12

But to have that individual, move from A to B, uh, have an insight that

Speaker: 00:00:16

made a difference in their life, their career, their relationship, gosh,

Speaker: 00:00:20

put me there, put me on

Speaker: 00:00:22

the front

Speaker: 00:00:22

line for

Speaker: 00:00:22

that.

Speaker: 00:00:22

I'm all in.

Speaker: 00:00:35

Decades of leading Fortune 500 teams taught him one lesson.

Speaker: 00:00:39

How you lead matters more than what you do.

Speaker: 00:00:42

Preston Poor is a leadership trainer who helps leaders turn practical

Speaker: 00:00:45

strategies into real transformation.

Speaker: 00:00:48

We'll explore building confident leadership without shortcuts and turning

Speaker: 00:00:52

hard won lessons into daily practices.

Speaker: 00:00:56

This isn't just information, it's transformation.

Speaker: 00:00:58

By the end, you'll see how shifting focus from tasks to people changes everything.

Speaker: 00:01:04

Preston, welcome to Seek.

Speaker: 00:01:06

Go create.

Speaker: 00:01:07

Hey, Tim.

Speaker: 00:01:08

Glad to be

Speaker: 00:01:08

here.

Speaker: 00:01:08

Thanks for having me.

Speaker: 00:01:10

Glad you're here too.

Speaker: 00:01:10

And as we hit record, we realized we're not far away from each other.

Speaker: 00:01:14

We should have done this face to face.

Speaker: 00:01:16

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:01:16

stones throw away right here

Speaker: 00:01:18

in Georgia.

Speaker: 00:01:18

That's great.

Speaker: 00:01:19

I know Marietta, Georgia.

Speaker: 00:01:21

That's where I was born.

Speaker: 00:01:22

Okay, well,

Speaker: 00:01:23

I.

Speaker: 00:01:23

great.

Speaker: 00:01:23

So you're a

Speaker: 00:01:24

native, there aren't many native Atlantans,

Speaker: 00:01:26

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:01:27

with you, very similar.

Speaker: 00:01:28

I was born in Atlanta.

Speaker: 00:01:29

My dad, I was born actually, at, Piedmont Hospital

Speaker: 00:01:32

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:01:33

down in,

Speaker: 00:01:33

north Atlanta,

Speaker: 00:01:34

many moons ago.

Speaker: 00:01:36

Yeah, my wife was born down at Georgia Baptist, which I

Speaker: 00:01:38

don't think it's that anymore.

Speaker: 00:01:39

I think it's something else.

Speaker: 00:01:41

yeah,

Speaker: 00:01:41

anyway, yeah, I came home from the hospital the day JFK was shot.

Speaker: 00:01:45

I don't remember it and I didn't have anything to do with it, I don't think.

Speaker: 00:01:48

But,

Speaker: 00:01:49

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:01:49

so,

Speaker: 00:01:50

might be coming out right

Speaker: 00:01:51

So, but anyway, man, glad Yeah, Marietta, I spent some time

Speaker: 00:01:54

there, still have relatives there.

Speaker: 00:01:56

And, great spot, great spot here in the Atlanta area.

Speaker: 00:01:59

So, Preston, the question I like to start with is kinda one of two things.

Speaker: 00:02:05

I'll give you a choice.

Speaker: 00:02:06

would you rather answer what do you do or who are you?

Speaker: 00:02:12

Pick it and answer.

Speaker: 00:02:13

There's not a right or wrong answer here.

Speaker: 00:02:15

What if I don't like

Speaker: 00:02:16

either one?

Speaker: 00:02:16

Can we move

Speaker: 00:02:17

Go ahead.

Speaker: 00:02:18

Yeah, you could.

Speaker: 00:02:19

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:02:21

Alright, next question.

Speaker: 00:02:22

What's your favorite ice cream?

Speaker: 00:02:23

you know why I like, yeah, thanks.

Speaker: 00:02:24

You know why I like this, Tim?

Speaker: 00:02:25

great question to ask.

Speaker: 00:02:27

because often when we introduce ourselves to other people or we're

Speaker: 00:02:31

asking other people, we ask them about their job and people talk about that.

Speaker: 00:02:36

I know you're probably Sure.

Speaker: 00:02:37

I'm sure you're very familiar with that.

Speaker: 00:02:38

And it hints the question on it.

Speaker: 00:02:40

Who am I?

Speaker: 00:02:41

am a guy that's married to a beautiful woman for almost 34 years.

Speaker: 00:02:46

she went to the University of Alabama.

Speaker: 00:02:48

I came to the southeast after being in Colorado for a number of years,

Speaker: 00:02:52

looking for my Scarlet O'Hara.

Speaker: 00:02:54

And believe it or not, I found her.

Speaker: 00:02:55

Doesn't mean I'm Clark Gable or anything, but, uh, she is, uh, the Scarlet Era.

Speaker: 00:03:01

Uh, I've got two great kids, a 31-year-old daughter that

Speaker: 00:03:04

lives in Manhattan, New York.

Speaker: 00:03:06

And, is married and has her first child.

Speaker: 00:03:08

And my son Benton and his wife Emma, live here in the Atlanta market.

Speaker: 00:03:12

So I'm first and foremost a family guy.

Speaker: 00:03:15

I'm a faithful guy.

Speaker: 00:03:16

I've been a believer since I was a young kid.

Speaker: 00:03:19

That shapes, molds, everything that I do.

Speaker: 00:03:21

My worldview, my behaviors, actually, I'm not great at behavior often, but I try.

Speaker: 00:03:27

so those are the things I think that who I am.

Speaker: 00:03:29

And, if you wanna talk values or personality traits or

Speaker: 00:03:33

character, those types of things.

Speaker: 00:03:34

But when I, when people ask me, and often too, it's kind of funny,

Speaker: 00:03:36

Tim, I forget when I introduce myself, I forget my family.

Speaker: 00:03:41

I bounce through and tick off all the things that I've done

Speaker: 00:03:44

my resume and said, oh Yeah.

Speaker: 00:03:45

I've got my wife and kids.

Speaker: 00:03:46

We are in the Atlanta area.

Speaker: 00:03:47

That's, that's, I need to put those up top.

Speaker: 00:03:50

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:03:50

and I don't know, you spent times in corporate, we're gonna talk about that,

Speaker: 00:03:53

you know, with one of the largest, most well-known brands that, exist,

Speaker: 00:03:58

especially for those in the Atlanta area.

Speaker: 00:04:00

Coca-Cola is famous, but, it is kind of typical that we, and especially men, I'll

Speaker: 00:04:07

say men more often than not, lean into the what you do and rattle off the titles and

Speaker: 00:04:13

the accomplishments and things like that.

Speaker: 00:04:15

And I know you've been through a journey to kind of move beyond that

Speaker: 00:04:19

quite a bit, but why do you think it is that we migrate to that, what

Speaker: 00:04:26

you do, description, title thing?

Speaker: 00:04:29

Because I know you did that at one point too, right?

Speaker: 00:04:31

Oh, easily.

Speaker: 00:04:32

I think it's the path of least resistance.

Speaker: 00:04:34

I think it's what you're taught and you model that behavior.

Speaker: 00:04:36

how do you introduce yourself to somebody?

Speaker: 00:04:38

How do you ask them when you're in a networking situation, what's

Speaker: 00:04:41

the first question you ask them?

Speaker: 00:04:42

Typically, what do you do?

Speaker: 00:04:44

And, that's where we drive often their identity.

Speaker: 00:04:46

Then we start to compare and say, okay, well then I, start to subconsciously

Speaker: 00:04:49

think about economic status and, where do they live and all those things.

Speaker: 00:04:53

and that, that's probably not the best place to start.

Speaker: 00:04:56

but I think it's path of least resistance.

Speaker: 00:04:58

I think it's a learned behavior and it's hard to adjust, but, I

Speaker: 00:05:02

think that's the way most people

Speaker: 00:05:03

handle it.

Speaker: 00:05:04

I think it's like it's just everybody expects it.

Speaker: 00:05:08

And, you know, when we answer something like you just did, because I forced

Speaker: 00:05:13

you to do it by asking you a little bit of a different question, people

Speaker: 00:05:19

will often kind of be perplexed because they're just not used to it.

Speaker: 00:05:22

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:05:23

I hate to say at times that I do wonder if we are just living sort of

Speaker: 00:05:26

a, I hate to use the word superficial because I do think, I do think there's

Speaker: 00:05:30

value to telling people what you do.

Speaker: 00:05:32

I don't, I don't think that's a bad thing, but I really do

Speaker: 00:05:35

enjoy learning about people at a deeper level and similar to you.

Speaker: 00:05:42

I don't think I've always been that way.

Speaker: 00:05:45

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:05:45

early on in my career.

Speaker: 00:05:47

Hard charger.

Speaker: 00:05:48

Sounds like you were that way too.

Speaker: 00:05:49

I'm about to ask you more details about that and probably were rewarded

Speaker: 00:05:54

for some of that, you know, hard results driven type, mindset.

Speaker: 00:06:00

tell me a little bit, you said you're born in Atlanta Tell me a little bit

Speaker: 00:06:04

about, Preston, the growing up years, that kinda led into your, before

Speaker: 00:06:09

you get to corporate, I just kinda wanna know a little bit about the

Speaker: 00:06:12

foundational time so that we could kinda have fun with the journey here.

Speaker: 00:06:16

the formative years, huh?

Speaker: 00:06:17

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:06:18

I

Speaker: 00:06:19

lived in a middle class neighborhood growing up in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Speaker: 00:06:24

my dad is a college professor and also an entrepreneur.

Speaker: 00:06:27

We could talk a little bit about that too, like.

Speaker: 00:06:29

Went to Georgia Tech, so I think you did too.

Speaker: 00:06:31

Is that correct?

Speaker: 00:06:32

Yeah, so a tech grad rambling wreck, and having a heck of a

Speaker: 00:06:35

football team right now too.

Speaker: 00:06:38

I grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Colorado was a fantastic place to grow up.

Speaker: 00:06:42

You think about all of the outdoor things that are there.

Speaker: 00:06:45

I had skiing, I had the mountains, I had all that, and that was a lot of fun.

Speaker: 00:06:49

I gave my life to the Lord when I was in eighth grade.

Speaker: 00:06:52

And then, I had some wonderful mentors around me all the way through high school.

Speaker: 00:06:58

in high school.

Speaker: 00:06:59

I figured out that, I kind of wanted to figure out if I had a fomo, Tim,

Speaker: 00:07:03

actually a fear of missing out.

Speaker: 00:07:05

And, that's when I went to the University of Colorado my freshman year.

Speaker: 00:07:09

And I talk about this a little bit in my book.

Speaker: 00:07:11

I share kinda a little bit about my journey on this, but, my freshman

Speaker: 00:07:15

year, university of Colorado was the number one party school in Playboy

Speaker: 00:07:19

Magazine, which it had been for years.

Speaker: 00:07:21

I partook and all, all of that, right?

Speaker: 00:07:24

And everything.

Speaker: 00:07:25

And, led to me doing some things and transferring back to Colorado

Speaker: 00:07:27

State University because my dad said I'm not paying for that,

Speaker: 00:07:30

which I don't blame him at all.

Speaker: 00:07:32

And, graduated from CSU was a Sigma Chi, which is in the fraternity there

Speaker: 00:07:36

at, at CSU in a national fraternity.

Speaker: 00:07:39

And my lifestyle was very different, than my high school and younger years.

Speaker: 00:07:43

And, when I. I remember a night when I got sick and, and threw up actually on

Speaker: 00:07:48

my Bible and, yeah, hard to hear, but it's kind of funny 'cause I actually

Speaker: 00:07:52

just leaned over on the bed and got sick and that actually, and it was

Speaker: 00:07:55

in a cover, so it was okay still.

Speaker: 00:07:57

Right.

Speaker: 00:07:57

I had one of those covers and, That was a turning point for me.

Speaker: 00:08:02

'cause I thought, uhoh, something's not right.

Speaker: 00:08:04

There's some incongruence here that's not, not good.

Speaker: 00:08:09

So I started doing this search on the inside and I basically fleed Fort

Speaker: 00:08:12

Collins, left an ex-girlfriend, left the situation there, and went to Alabama.

Speaker: 00:08:17

the reason I went to Alabama is because of my relatives lived there,

Speaker: 00:08:20

my grandparents, my, my dad's, parents, cousins and stuff like that.

Speaker: 00:08:24

So had a network, a base there.

Speaker: 00:08:27

I started working in banking, believe it or not, I started

Speaker: 00:08:29

as, I was what they call Tim.

Speaker: 00:08:31

I dunno if you've heard of this before.

Speaker: 00:08:31

I was a must hire and I must hires where two, guys meet in the country club.

Speaker: 00:08:37

And one says to the other, I've got a goofy nephew that's in town.

Speaker: 00:08:40

He needs a job.

Speaker: 00:08:41

Can you help him?

Speaker: 00:08:42

And I started at AM South Bank, an internal audit of all things.

Speaker: 00:08:46

which is the only job I could find, and that was a miserable

Speaker: 00:08:49

job, miserable experience.

Speaker: 00:08:50

But actually, I met my wife at the bank a couple years, later and married her.

Speaker: 00:08:54

So that's kind of, I'll leave it there for a minute, but that's

Speaker: 00:08:56

kind of where my formative years.

Speaker: 00:08:58

it was really great childhood love.

Speaker: 00:09:00

My parents have a great, wonderful brother.

Speaker: 00:09:03

But this journey that I went on was a kind of self-sabotaging, decisions

Speaker: 00:09:08

that I made because of this fomo.

Speaker: 00:09:11

And then realizing, that incongruence created a lot of, challenges

Speaker: 00:09:14

inside of me, internal churn.

Speaker: 00:09:17

And I had to go figure out what that meant.

Speaker: 00:09:18

And that's why I left Colorado, to come to Alabama.

Speaker: 00:09:20

And now we live in Georgia.

Speaker: 00:09:21

So, that's a little bit of

Speaker: 00:09:23

the journey.

Speaker: 00:09:24

Our daughter's up in Colorado Springs.

Speaker: 00:09:26

We spent some time up in Woodland Park, Colorado.

Speaker: 00:09:28

That is

Speaker: 00:09:29

Good.

Speaker: 00:09:30

a beautiful, beautiful part of the country.

Speaker: 00:09:32

And I, I, I do wanna chime in.

Speaker: 00:09:33

I, I, Georgia Tech guy, but I married a Georgia girl

Speaker: 00:09:37

Oh,

Speaker: 00:09:38

and I will say this, that, I've got family from Mississippi.

Speaker: 00:09:43

and if you want to find some absolutely beautiful women, Georgia,

Speaker: 00:09:49

Alabama, Mississippi, those southern girls, they are quite impressive.

Speaker: 00:09:53

We digress.

Speaker: 00:09:54

That is not the topic here, but,

Speaker: 00:09:57

well, you digressed a little bit.

Speaker: 00:09:58

You're the one that threw up on the Bible, so come on, man.

Speaker: 00:10:00

I love it.

Speaker: 00:10:01

I'm with you.

Speaker: 00:10:02

So, there's a couple things that I wanted to dig just a little bit more

Speaker: 00:10:04

on the, the first was the, you say.

Speaker: 00:10:11

University of Colorado, you know, number one party school, Playboy

Speaker: 00:10:14

and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker: 00:10:16

and you say it, it wasn't flippantly, but it also wasn't pridefully and

Speaker: 00:10:20

it wasn't necessarily apologetic.

Speaker: 00:10:22

What was the decision?

Speaker: 00:10:24

I mean, you were in Fort Collins, so you were close.

Speaker: 00:10:26

It was a great school.

Speaker: 00:10:26

It's in a beautiful setting in Boulder there, but

Speaker: 00:10:28

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:10:29

do you recall what the decision process was for?

Speaker: 00:10:32

Because for me, I was just down the road from Georgia Tech and I

Speaker: 00:10:35

decided I wanted to be an engineer because the four out of the top five

Speaker: 00:10:39

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:10:40

jobs in 1982 were engineers.

Speaker: 00:10:42

And I went, oh, I'm okay in math.

Speaker: 00:10:44

And I went down there.

Speaker: 00:10:45

That may not have been the best decision either, but what was your decision

Speaker: 00:10:48

process to go to University of Colorado?

Speaker: 00:10:50

Was it that party school or was there something else?

Speaker: 00:10:53

It was, I think maybe to get away from home.

Speaker: 00:10:55

I grew up in a college town.

Speaker: 00:10:57

I didn't wanna be called a townie, if you will.

Speaker: 00:10:59

if you go directly from high school in Fort Collins, just

Speaker: 00:11:01

like Athens

Speaker: 00:11:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:11:03

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:11:04

you're, a

Speaker: 00:11:04

townie.

Speaker: 00:11:05

So I wanted to get away.

Speaker: 00:11:07

that was the idea behind that.

Speaker: 00:11:08

And I really didn't have any idea, Tim, what I wanted to do.

Speaker: 00:11:11

I wish I had better direction.

Speaker: 00:11:13

I went in as a psychology major.

Speaker: 00:11:14

I think I changed my major four times in college.

Speaker: 00:11:17

that's been a pattern in my life.

Speaker: 00:11:19

And I hate to tell you, I still don't know what I wanna be when I

Speaker: 00:11:21

grow up right

Speaker: 00:11:23

mm.

Speaker: 00:11:23

that.

Speaker: 00:11:24

mm.

Speaker: 00:11:24

but I very clearly

Speaker: 00:11:25

remember my dad, working with me and saying, okay, I'm a college professor.

Speaker: 00:11:30

We're paying for this as a family.

Speaker: 00:11:31

If you to go down there, your first semester, you gotta,

Speaker: 00:11:33

here's the story on this.

Speaker: 00:11:35

You got a, you got a two point, I think it was 2.7.

Speaker: 00:11:39

Something like that.

Speaker: 00:11:40

Not good, right?

Speaker: 00:11:41

Not a good start.

Speaker: 00:11:42

And dad said, okay, let's do the math.

Speaker: 00:11:44

I'll support you if you can get a average for the year, a 3.0.

Speaker: 00:11:50

I said, okay, I can think I could do that.

Speaker: 00:11:51

I just gotta get a three, three, do the math and I'll be fine.

Speaker: 00:11:55

Well, as it turns out, I ended up getting a, 3.2 the second semester.

Speaker: 00:12:01

So you're a Georgia Tech grad.

Speaker: 00:12:02

You can probably do it.

Speaker: 00:12:03

That doesn't equal three when you divide it by two, when you

Speaker: 00:12:05

add those numbers together.

Speaker: 00:12:06

So dad said, well, you, you made a commitment.

Speaker: 00:12:08

I made a commitment.

Speaker: 00:12:09

We had a deal.

Speaker: 00:12:10

You're coming home.

Speaker: 00:12:12

and believe it or not, I chose to live in my mom and dad's

Speaker: 00:12:14

basement for those three years.

Speaker: 00:12:17

because I didn't want to have to go work and do all the other things.

Speaker: 00:12:19

I, I was just, there was some goofy things going on.

Speaker: 00:12:23

But anyway, uh, but at the same time, I went back to Colorado State and got

Speaker: 00:12:26

a business degree and finally figured out that I love business and I love the

Speaker: 00:12:30

management side of it, the people side of it, and that's really what I did.

Speaker: 00:12:34

But honestly, I still dunno what I wanna be.

Speaker: 00:12:36

And I never said, Hey, this is a top four or five job that's out there.

Speaker: 00:12:39

I never had that direction.

Speaker: 00:12:41

and consider yourself, Tim, honestly, fortunate that you

Speaker: 00:12:44

had that, maybe that worked

Speaker: 00:12:45

out for you or not.

Speaker: 00:12:46

No.

Speaker: 00:12:46

full story, but

Speaker: 00:12:47

It didn't,

Speaker: 00:12:48

on that.

Speaker: 00:12:49

No.

Speaker: 00:12:49

I turned 62 yesterday and I'm still like going, huh, I

Speaker: 00:12:52

wonder what I might do when I

Speaker: 00:12:54

grow up or, you know, become something.

Speaker: 00:12:57

I do think part of life is identifying things that you don't want to do

Speaker: 00:13:01

sure.

Speaker: 00:13:01

and, that's that gain some clarity.

Speaker: 00:13:03

And also, you know, what's, what's interesting, there's one other

Speaker: 00:13:06

thing I wanna mention here before we like jump fast forward to

Speaker: 00:13:08

your career and things like that.

Speaker: 00:13:10

I'm always intrigued and to me it's a bit of a dichotomy to have someone who's

Speaker: 00:13:15

a college professor and an entrepreneur.

Speaker: 00:13:18

Mm,

Speaker: 00:13:19

tell me more about your father and maybe any, I don't like throwing our

Speaker: 00:13:24

parents under the bus, but maybe any positive and or negative that may be

Speaker: 00:13:30

there because he was professor and entrepreneur all wrapped up in one.

Speaker: 00:13:35

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:13:35

my dad and my family, we used to have a business called Numerica Corporation.

Speaker: 00:13:41

dad is an applied mathematics PhD from Caltech.

Speaker: 00:13:45

And an electrical engineer, so a brilliant man.

Speaker: 00:13:49

And, he got some patents and discovered some things about

Speaker: 00:13:53

how to track objects in the sky.

Speaker: 00:13:56

fast forward 25 years, the company's, technology sat on the president or

Speaker: 00:14:01

still sits, I think, on the president's desk in case of missile attack.

Speaker: 00:14:05

And so we were, he created a fence.

Speaker: 00:14:09

and then my brother jumped in to help him out and ran it, for a number of years.

Speaker: 00:14:12

And so, dad was, and the thing was at CSU, he started all this

Speaker: 00:14:15

as the, as a mathematician.

Speaker: 00:14:17

He, he had some students and they decided to enter a contest to solve a problem,

Speaker: 00:14:22

to get a grant, to get money for it.

Speaker: 00:14:24

ended up getting best of breed from IBM all these years ago.

Speaker: 00:14:27

I mean, he beat all these major organizations like, Northrop, Grumman,

Speaker: 00:14:31

Lockheed Martin, everybody else.

Speaker: 00:14:33

And, boom.

Speaker: 00:14:34

After that, that was the tipping point for him.

Speaker: 00:14:36

And things took off.

Speaker: 00:14:37

And, we recently got out of the business last year, and, sold to an organization

Speaker: 00:14:42

called Andre, is a major defense company in Orange County, California.

Speaker: 00:14:47

But,

Speaker: 00:14:47

Mm.

Speaker: 00:14:48

Dead's.

Speaker: 00:14:48

Brilliant.

Speaker: 00:14:49

I learned a lot of things from my dad.

Speaker: 00:14:51

He, he's probably one of the ones that taught me something very simple

Speaker: 00:14:54

that is from the book, how is Greater Than What You mentioned in the intro.

Speaker: 00:14:59

people are taught what to think, not how to think they're taught

Speaker: 00:15:03

what to think, but not how to think.

Speaker: 00:15:05

And that's so important today in the ai, right?

Speaker: 00:15:07

They're, we've got a lot of what's out there.

Speaker: 00:15:09

People don't have the critical thinking ability.

Speaker: 00:15:11

They don't have the discernment.

Speaker: 00:15:13

Dad was always big with me asking me about what I thought about something.

Speaker: 00:15:17

so yeah, I love my dad.

Speaker: 00:15:18

I look up to him.

Speaker: 00:15:18

He's one of my heroes and amazing what he did as a college professor to

Speaker: 00:15:22

transition into becoming an entrepreneur.

Speaker: 00:15:25

that journey for him was just an incredible one to watch.

Speaker: 00:15:28

Along with my family, my brother specifically, my wife worked at

Speaker: 00:15:31

the company, my sister-in-law did.

Speaker: 00:15:33

And, just a wonderful, American success story moving from Acorn to Oaktree,

Speaker: 00:15:38

if you will.

Speaker: 00:15:38

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:15:39

And I'll say this, and if it's, there's nothing to it, don't worry about it,

Speaker: 00:15:43

but darn, that's a pretty darn high bar to have someone as your father.

Speaker: 00:15:49

I don't know if accomplished, accomplished, all that kind of stuff.

Speaker: 00:15:53

did that have anything to do with your pursuit of things as you started

Speaker: 00:15:59

moving into your career at all?

Speaker: 00:16:01

Yeah, I think my dad always, I learned the value of hard work from him.

Speaker: 00:16:07

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:16:08

understood early

Speaker: 00:16:08

on that, from his childhood that he was unique the way he thought

Speaker: 00:16:12

in his intelligence level.

Speaker: 00:16:14

he recognized that I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer right early on,

Speaker: 00:16:20

but my dad helped me find things and excel in, and my mom did too.

Speaker: 00:16:24

find things that I was good at that I enjoyed, that I did well at.

Speaker: 00:16:27

but dad would always hammer me about, the hard work and leaning those in.

Speaker: 00:16:30

And, I think I've taken that work ethic from him,

Speaker: 00:16:34

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:16:34

been good.

Speaker: 00:16:35

and other times it's not been so good.

Speaker: 00:16:36

But, that's where this driven, this excellence comes from.

Speaker: 00:16:40

but I very much appreciate, all that hard work that he did.

Speaker: 00:16:43

And then I transferred that ethic that, that value to me, that

Speaker: 00:16:46

virtue, if you will.

Speaker: 00:16:48

Right.

Speaker: 00:16:48

And you brought it up a couple times, the how is greater than what book?

Speaker: 00:16:51

I've got it here on my Kindle and we'll dive into that more.

Speaker: 00:16:53

the thing that I think is important to unpack because you, at some point you

Speaker: 00:16:59

landed in what we'll call corporate world.

Speaker: 00:17:04

and it sounds as if from the reading in the book and some things that

Speaker: 00:17:08

I've heard and studied on you, that there were a few epiphanies or.

Speaker: 00:17:13

Catalytic events or transformations along the way.

Speaker: 00:17:16

whatever we want to call it, we could throw some other words at it,

Speaker: 00:17:19

probably, but, I'd love to know.

Speaker: 00:17:22

I always love to know how people end up.

Speaker: 00:17:23

So you were in banking and found you a beautiful Alabama girl, and then

Speaker: 00:17:29

somewhere along the way you, merged into the Coca-Cola realm which,

Speaker: 00:17:35

you know, Coca-Cola, for those that are around Atlanta is held high.

Speaker: 00:17:38

It's held high in these parts.

Speaker: 00:17:40

We'll just say it that way.

Speaker: 00:17:41

So

Speaker: 00:17:42

it could be, you're right.

Speaker: 00:17:44

And there's some people that might still think there's a little bit of

Speaker: 00:17:47

cocaine in that Coca-Cola possibly.

Speaker: 00:17:50

So,

Speaker: 00:17:50

Yes.

Speaker: 00:17:51

about how did you land there?

Speaker: 00:17:52

how'd you get that gig?

Speaker: 00:17:53

we were, I was working at Hershey Foods at the time we were actually living

Speaker: 00:17:58

right outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Speaker: 00:18:00

My wife Carla, is an only child from Alabama, and if you've ever spent time

Speaker: 00:18:04

in the, Mid-Atlantic, I won't call it, I learned when I was up there.

Speaker: 00:18:07

It's Mid-Atlantic, not northeast, but she really wanted to

Speaker: 00:18:10

get back home and I did too.

Speaker: 00:18:11

the job situation wasn't great at Hershey at the time.

Speaker: 00:18:14

And man, I tell you what, divine providence I got

Speaker: 00:18:16

connected with a headhunter.

Speaker: 00:18:18

I still remember her name.

Speaker: 00:18:19

Her name was Z, that was her first name.

Speaker: 00:18:22

I won't give the last one.

Speaker: 00:18:23

But she, helped me get connected with Coke.

Speaker: 00:18:25

And I went through a, a rigorous interview process and they

Speaker: 00:18:30

had an opening in Montgomery, Alabama working with Coca-Cola.

Speaker: 00:18:34

And I was working for the Coca, I was being hired by the Coca-Cola

Speaker: 00:18:37

company to call on and work with Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Speaker: 00:18:40

At the time, they were the bottler and it was a turnaround market.

Speaker: 00:18:44

it was really high share, but they had had a lot of problems

Speaker: 00:18:47

and so they brought me into that.

Speaker: 00:18:49

it gave us an opportunity to get back home.

Speaker: 00:18:52

And so it was very, I tell you that it was one of the greatest, days of my life.

Speaker: 00:18:55

I think Tim, when I got that phone call saying it was right before Christmas

Speaker: 00:18:58

too, said, Hey, Preston, you made it through, love to have you and, when

Speaker: 00:19:03

can we get you down to Montgomery?

Speaker: 00:19:04

So that was 2001 is when I

Speaker: 00:19:06

started with Koch.

Speaker: 00:19:07

Wow.

Speaker: 00:19:08

And how long had, had you been with Hershey?

Speaker: 00:19:09

How long you been with them?

Speaker: 00:19:10

almost six years with Hershey before

Speaker: 00:19:12

that, so

Speaker: 00:19:14

what is one thing, give, give me, a, just a learning point or two with

Speaker: 00:19:20

your six years at Hershey that you took forward with you or something

Speaker: 00:19:24

that you left behind and said, no, I'm not taking this with me at all.

Speaker: 00:19:28

Yeah, there were a

Speaker: 00:19:29

lot of both, man.

Speaker: 00:19:30

Good.

Speaker: 00:19:31

yeah, my early career at Hershey was wonderful, and what I loved about it,

Speaker: 00:19:36

it may seem odd to people, but I was responsible for my first couple of years

Speaker: 00:19:41

actually going into grocery stores, selling chocolate or pasta or something

Speaker: 00:19:47

else to a grocery store manager, building displays, working the shelf, putting

Speaker: 00:19:53

new items on the shelf, selling it.

Speaker: 00:19:54

It was so fun.

Speaker: 00:19:55

I got to call on headquarters, at the time there was an account called

Speaker: 00:19:58

Bruno's, or even Piggly Wiggly, if you've heard of that before, or Mitchell

Speaker: 00:20:01

Grocery, different independents.

Speaker: 00:20:03

It was fun.

Speaker: 00:20:04

what I loved about it is consumer products.

Speaker: 00:20:07

everybody loved Hershey.

Speaker: 00:20:08

I mean, if you love chocolate man, most people do.

Speaker: 00:20:11

was so cool because I could go into all those stores on my routes month after

Speaker: 00:20:16

month, develop relationships, but I could see them needle move by my efforts.

Speaker: 00:20:21

it was amazing when I was the one that was responsible for doing a lot of this

Speaker: 00:20:24

stuff in the market, selling in the displays, making sure they got out on

Speaker: 00:20:27

the floor, making sure the new products were on there, I had fun doing that.

Speaker: 00:20:30

As a matter of fact, our team won a President's Cup, which

Speaker: 00:20:32

was the National Sales Award.

Speaker: 00:20:35

actually won those twice at Hershey before I left.

Speaker: 00:20:37

But that won, was just one of the most memorable two or

Speaker: 00:20:40

three years I had with Hershey.

Speaker: 00:20:41

And I learned the value of great management, great training,

Speaker: 00:20:47

and then this idea of that, do whatever it takes to get it done.

Speaker: 00:20:51

I didn't slough on the routes.

Speaker: 00:20:53

I did what I needed to do, did more than that, and, we succeeded in it very well.

Speaker: 00:20:57

And again, that's a hard work, ethic that I mentioned earlier that had on it.

Speaker: 00:21:01

But it was just neat to have something tangible, to make happen,

Speaker: 00:21:04

to see it move.

Speaker: 00:21:05

my mouth waters a little bit when you bring up Hershey, actually, my wife does

Speaker: 00:21:09

some work where we're doing work right now, and I went in her office and I guess

Speaker: 00:21:13

stole would be the correct word here about a handful of Hershey kisses today.

Speaker: 00:21:18

And that's mostly what I ate today.

Speaker: 00:21:19

Great diet.

Speaker: 00:21:20

truthfully, they're excellent.

Speaker: 00:21:22

there's not much better than that.

Speaker: 00:21:24

would you say that you were on a spiritual level where you, were you

Speaker: 00:21:29

at a deep place during that time?

Speaker: 00:21:31

Were you still just kinda moving along?

Speaker: 00:21:35

What was your spiritual walk around that time before you

Speaker: 00:21:40

came back to the Bible Belt?

Speaker: 00:21:42

Yeah, no, thank you.

Speaker: 00:21:43

it's interesting.

Speaker: 00:21:44

Up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, they had one, evangelical Protestant church that, not

Speaker: 00:21:49

just one, but the one that we connected with, and we had a, a small group there.

Speaker: 00:21:53

I spent a lot of time thinking in church and going to church,

Speaker: 00:21:56

investing time with that community group, and they were great people.

Speaker: 00:22:00

But when it came to transitioning and transferring my faith into the

Speaker: 00:22:04

workplace, I would venture to say that most people at work probably didn't

Speaker: 00:22:08

know, was a believer unless I, you know, taught, told 'em right away.

Speaker: 00:22:12

But they couldn't tell by my actions the way I treated people.

Speaker: 00:22:15

It was dog eat dog when I got in there, or, you know, eating

Speaker: 00:22:18

a candy bar and chasing that.

Speaker: 00:22:20

Uh, the way I was working on an analogy but didn't pop out like I was hoping to.

Speaker: 00:22:25

So we can cut that if you want to.

Speaker: 00:22:26

Just kidding.

Speaker: 00:22:27

Um, Yeah.

Speaker: 00:22:28

so that's, that's kind of, that's, there was this, if you

Speaker: 00:22:31

ask me about was it shallow.

Speaker: 00:22:34

I think it was, it was a rich time in many ways from a spiritual perspective,

Speaker: 00:22:40

but also very challenging because I was still, you remember, I, I told you early

Speaker: 00:22:43

on I had this behavior that I had learned, while going to college and, and kind of

Speaker: 00:22:49

what I would consider walking away and enjoying everything that, others might do.

Speaker: 00:22:54

and then trying to get back into that.

Speaker: 00:22:56

And so I've always had this challenge of being pulled back

Speaker: 00:22:58

in and trying to move forward.

Speaker: 00:23:01

and I would feel like now hopefully I'm not as close to that as I was.

Speaker: 00:23:04

'cause it's been a journey, I don't know if that answers

Speaker: 00:23:07

your question, Tim, but Yeah.

Speaker: 00:23:08

That, that's what I, I guess I would really tell you that the SEC

Speaker: 00:23:10

secular And the, sacred didn't really

Speaker: 00:23:13

overlap.

Speaker: 00:23:13

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:23:14

to, link

Speaker: 00:23:14

the two.

Speaker: 00:23:15

And that's what I've worked really hard on over the

Speaker: 00:23:16

past 10 years.

Speaker: 00:23:18

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:23:18

And the reason that I love you brought up.

Speaker: 00:23:21

That is because I think I either read it in your book or I heard it on

Speaker: 00:23:25

where you were on a podcast where I think as you moved into the Coca-Cola

Speaker: 00:23:30

corporation, you were, you were hard charger, you were working hard.

Speaker: 00:23:35

But it seems as if that divide.

Speaker: 00:23:38

Still existed

Speaker: 00:23:40

yeah.

Speaker: 00:23:40

because, you were extremely, and I'm gonna say a couple things.

Speaker: 00:23:44

I'm gonna let you respond because I think this is a journey that many

Speaker: 00:23:48

of us and our listeners go through.

Speaker: 00:23:50

So I think it's powerful to talk about going through it and learning while

Speaker: 00:23:54

why, how is greater than what, and the importance of relationship over results

Speaker: 00:23:58

or, anyway, we'll talk more about that.

Speaker: 00:24:01

So you brought in hard work ethic, results driven.

Speaker: 00:24:05

you kept your soft heartedness on Sundays, but then come

Speaker: 00:24:09

Monday, you were going at it.

Speaker: 00:24:12

Tell me more about that.

Speaker: 00:24:13

I thought that.

Speaker: 00:24:14

performance would get me in my career where I wanted to go.

Speaker: 00:24:17

I tell people, I used to have a piece of paper in my cube that.

Speaker: 00:24:20

had the word performance written over people.

Speaker: 00:24:25

And so I considered and thought and said, okay, if I perform well deliver

Speaker: 00:24:29

results regardless of the wake.

Speaker: 00:24:31

And I saw people in the organization like this, right?

Speaker: 00:24:33

I saw some role models that acted like that, that I would climb the corporate

Speaker: 00:24:37

ladder and, the people didn't matter the collateral damage that I left behind.

Speaker: 00:24:41

there's a story though, Tim, in the book that I kind of opened

Speaker: 00:24:44

with, it's about Sunset Cinemas.

Speaker: 00:24:46

It's a little outdoor movie theater that we started with in Coke.

Speaker: 00:24:50

it was this idea of a, that I was coming into this marketplace

Speaker: 00:24:53

that needed to be turned around.

Speaker: 00:24:54

I have just come out of Hershey Foods where I had run a couple President's cups.

Speaker: 00:24:58

I was a top performer.

Speaker: 00:24:59

I got this huge new salary increase.

Speaker: 00:25:01

And so I'm the man coming in.

Speaker: 00:25:02

I'm not the leader of the market, but I'm the man, right?

Speaker: 00:25:05

They're expecting big things.

Speaker: 00:25:07

And, we put this little movie theater or outdoor movie theater idea together,

Speaker: 00:25:11

and I put a great plan together.

Speaker: 00:25:13

then I emailed it to the team.

Speaker: 00:25:14

Things didn't go as we thought that they might.

Speaker: 00:25:17

Like it rained.

Speaker: 00:25:18

We were expecting 500 people, only 50 showed up.

Speaker: 00:25:20

the wrong samples were there.

Speaker: 00:25:22

And, and by the way, the movie we showed was Remember the Titans?

Speaker: 00:25:24

Guess what competitor was actually on the scoreboard that was flashed

Speaker: 00:25:27

on the movie screen a hundred

Speaker: 00:25:29

thousand times.

Speaker: 00:25:30

Not Coke.

Speaker: 00:25:31

no, not

Speaker: 00:25:32

Coke.

Speaker: 00:25:32

it was Pepsi.

Speaker: 00:25:33

And so I have all these going through my head.

Speaker: 00:25:36

I'm thinking the team has let me down.

Speaker: 00:25:38

what's wrong?

Speaker: 00:25:39

I'm calling the media person at home.

Speaker: 00:25:41

you know, at them saying, do your job.

Speaker: 00:25:45

Then I had my VP call me over, and he's not directly my vp.

Speaker: 00:25:49

I was actually working with him, but he was, the guy in charge calls

Speaker: 00:25:52

me over I thought, you know what?

Speaker: 00:25:54

I've moved to Montgomery.

Speaker: 00:25:55

This is the tipping point.

Speaker: 00:25:57

I had moved from Hershey to Montgomery for a career move, right?

Speaker: 00:26:01

Got all this big salary to take my family back.

Speaker: 00:26:03

It was a kind of a homecoming type thing.

Speaker: 00:26:05

And I knew in that moment, the way I acted.

Speaker: 00:26:09

Something was wrong and something was amiss, and my career was on the line.

Speaker: 00:26:13

But when Rick, who was the vp, ended up being my mentor, great

Speaker: 00:26:16

guy, he calls me over and he goes, and there was no yelling, Tim.

Speaker: 00:26:20

was no lecture, just a quick little conversation, a low voice.

Speaker: 00:26:25

And then he'll say a phrase to me that I never forget.

Speaker: 00:26:30

It was Preston, it's not what you did, it's how you did it.

Speaker: 00:26:36

And I knew in that moment that that challenge was pressed and poor.

Speaker: 00:26:39

It wasn't the thing that happened at the Sunset Cinema of the plan went awry.

Speaker: 00:26:43

It was how I reacted to it and how I reacted to the people.

Speaker: 00:26:47

I think if you ask me what the tipping point of that was, it was a

Speaker: 00:26:50

realization that if I didn't change, I was going to be changed, meaning

Speaker: 00:26:54

that I was gonna be out of a job.

Speaker: 00:26:56

because I remember Rick saying, I'm not sure you're the right guy for this job.

Speaker: 00:27:01

I'm like, oh, well, crap, I better, I better figure some stuff out.

Speaker: 00:27:04

And that was really the, catalyst for me, starting to consider, wait a second.

Speaker: 00:27:08

These two circles I mentioned, the spiritual and the secular.

Speaker: 00:27:12

why am I this way here?

Speaker: 00:27:14

My, my family and my friends all think of me this way, but at work I've got

Speaker: 00:27:17

some work friends, but they all think I'm a hard charger and I'm a jerk.

Speaker: 00:27:21

Where's the difference?

Speaker: 00:27:22

And that's really the start of the

Speaker: 00:27:23

journey.

Speaker: 00:27:25

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:27:25

That's fascinating because, and I think that's one of the things that I

Speaker: 00:27:28

kind of drew me in to read through the book and to, to have a conversation

Speaker: 00:27:34

with you because, man, it sounds kind of familiar, Preston, I went

Speaker: 00:27:38

to work for Bell South outta Georgia Tech, and I was known for season.

Speaker: 00:27:45

I don't wanna call myself the hatchet man, but, there were two organizations

Speaker: 00:27:50

that I was tasked with, getting rid of.

Speaker: 00:27:55

And, and I, and I. I'm sorry to say that I, I was

Speaker: 00:28:01

somewhat proud of that.

Speaker: 00:28:02

You, you know what I mean?

Speaker: 00:28:03

I mean, there were people involved and different things like that.

Speaker: 00:28:07

And you know, one of 'em, they gave me six months to see what needed to be done.

Speaker: 00:28:10

And I was pretty proud of the fact that within six weeks I had pretty much

Speaker: 00:28:14

this organization dismantled and people were moved to other places or left the

Speaker: 00:28:19

company and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker: 00:28:20

And I,

Speaker: 00:28:21

you know, this is what comes to mind.

Speaker: 00:28:24

'cause I believe then you started on a journey and that's what I really want us

Speaker: 00:28:27

to dig into here for the last, half hour that we've got to talk and that, I think

Speaker: 00:28:31

it's what you laid out in your book, but this is the vision that I had when

Speaker: 00:28:36

I was listening to something you said.

Speaker: 00:28:38

And also when I think about myself in the old cartoon, the Grinch, the Grinch goes

Speaker: 00:28:43

through this, transformation where they say his heart grew three sizes that day.

Speaker: 00:28:50

and I do, for me, believe it was a heart

Speaker: 00:28:55

issue

Speaker: 00:28:57

Sure.

Speaker: 00:28:58

that had a lot of spiritual aspects to it.

Speaker: 00:29:00

But, it does that resonate with you?

Speaker: 00:29:02

I mean, and especially, I'm sorry I wasn't calling you the Grinch, but uh,

Speaker: 00:29:06

Oh, I'll take it.

Speaker: 00:29:07

That's fine.

Speaker: 00:29:07

That's good.

Speaker: 00:29:08

The Jim Carrey.

Speaker: 00:29:09

Grinch,

Speaker: 00:29:09

thank you very much.

Speaker: 00:29:10

His heart grew three sizes that day and all of a sudden he,

Speaker: 00:29:13

anyway, talk to me about that.

Speaker: 00:29:15

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:29:16

I think there's this theological term.

Speaker: 00:29:19

called sanctification and I found that, the Lord will put you in circumstances

Speaker: 00:29:28

repetitively until he gets your attention.

Speaker: 00:29:31

I kept bumping up against the same thing.

Speaker: 00:29:34

honestly, heart change, but it wasn't my decision to say,

Speaker: 00:29:37

okay, no, I'm gonna go change.

Speaker: 00:29:38

It was like, wait a second, something's not right here.

Speaker: 00:29:41

Something's not clicking.

Speaker: 00:29:43

And I've done everything I possibly can in my power to perform, to do

Speaker: 00:29:47

well, and something's not right.

Speaker: 00:29:49

so I surrender to you and I need your help.

Speaker: 00:29:53

I can't tell you a specific day, but I think it's that journey that I went

Speaker: 00:29:57

on and that prayer and that submission where things started to change.

Speaker: 00:30:00

And I think my heart grew maybe, one and a half size or two and a half size.

Speaker: 00:30:05

I would love to tell you, I'd love to tell your listeners, Tim, that Sunset

Speaker: 00:30:09

Cinema with that one tipping point, that everything was awesome after that.

Speaker: 00:30:15

It wasn't, when you talk about a path, a journey, it was, I mean, I ran into other

Speaker: 00:30:20

things where I had employees quitting on me when I became a people manager,

Speaker: 00:30:25

and be called being called a jerk and people quitting on me and all that.

Speaker: 00:30:29

And then even having 360 evaluations that were extremely negative at the Coca-Cola

Speaker: 00:30:34

Company, over a four or five year span.

Speaker: 00:30:37

it took time.

Speaker: 00:30:38

I tell people, the way I use this is people normally don't look at this way,

Speaker: 00:30:41

but I look at like Moses' career journey.

Speaker: 00:30:44

Our hero, Moses in Exodus, in the first 40 years, he was the prince of Egypt.

Speaker: 00:30:50

He was all that.

Speaker: 00:30:51

Then he decided he wanted to go out and see what his people,

Speaker: 00:30:53

the Hebrew people were doing.

Speaker: 00:30:55

he said, wait a second.

Speaker: 00:30:55

I think I'm gonna be the one to set these people free.

Speaker: 00:30:57

He ends up killing somebody.

Speaker: 00:30:59

The Pharaoh God was working through for Pharaoh, said, get the heck outta Dodge.

Speaker: 00:31:03

Moses goes in the desert for 40 years.

Speaker: 00:31:06

He's formed.

Speaker: 00:31:07

He is shaped.

Speaker: 00:31:08

He has to have been.

Speaker: 00:31:09

He's, he's humbled in that, right?

Speaker: 00:31:12

And then all of a sudden, is 80 years old about that, he is walking through and he

Speaker: 00:31:16

sees this bush on fire and he turns and looks at it and God speaks to him and

Speaker: 00:31:21

calls him in that moment to go do this.

Speaker: 00:31:22

And over those last 40 years, he wasn't perfect, but he led Israel out

Speaker: 00:31:25

of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

Speaker: 00:31:28

that I am.

Speaker: 00:31:29

Moses, but my career trajectory, those first 40 years, I thought I was all that.

Speaker: 00:31:35

Or those, like Moses, there's an in-between part where God

Speaker: 00:31:38

worked in me and through me.

Speaker: 00:31:40

And then there's another part on the, the good news is, is that

Speaker: 00:31:43

I overcame those things and I got to do some incredible stuff.

Speaker: 00:31:47

I'm still doing incredible stuff, it's because of that.

Speaker: 00:31:49

moment of surrender and I said, Lord, just change me.

Speaker: 00:31:53

I need your help.

Speaker: 00:31:54

And it's been a catalyst for an enzyme, if you will, for

Speaker: 00:31:57

all the things that I'm doing

Speaker: 00:31:58

right now.

Speaker: 00:31:59

I'm always, and that's that story of Moses.

Speaker: 00:32:03

That journey is fortunately, unfortunately, the story of

Speaker: 00:32:09

a lot of, it's usually men.

Speaker: 00:32:11

For some reason, women get this stuff better than men do.

Speaker: 00:32:15

I hate to generalize, but you know what?

Speaker: 00:32:17

they lead with heart more than we do.

Speaker: 00:32:19

we try to

Speaker: 00:32:20

do

Speaker: 00:32:20

the results and task and things like that, but I am incredibly thankful that.

Speaker: 00:32:27

It wasn't 40 years on the backside of the desert for me.

Speaker: 00:32:33

How about you?

Speaker: 00:32:33

Amen.

Speaker: 00:32:34

I mean, he went through some growth and obviously, you know, his

Speaker: 00:32:37

latter years were awesome, but 40 years, we have no concept of that.

Speaker: 00:32:42

I'm sure we could talk about your process as you moved along.

Speaker: 00:32:46

There were stops and starts.

Speaker: 00:32:48

It sounded like that began with that, situation at

Speaker: 00:32:52

Coca-Cola, at the movie theater.

Speaker: 00:32:54

Were you ever, aware of being in a position where your job was really

Speaker: 00:33:01

in jeopardy, that you could have lost the job because of the situation

Speaker: 00:33:05

or the way you were projecting yourself, the way you were acting?

Speaker: 00:33:07

Yeah, I mean, fast forward from, that Sunset Cinema circumstance,

Speaker: 00:33:11

into, I think it was 2004, 2005, and Knoxville, Tennessee.

Speaker: 00:33:16

So I got promoted, believe it or not, I was a top performer.

Speaker: 00:33:20

and, and so they still recognized that and wanted to pull me up and

Speaker: 00:33:22

they said, okay, and then we're gonna give you a couple people to manage.

Speaker: 00:33:25

And I remember, sitting in a conference room, Tim, at the end of the year,

Speaker: 00:33:31

about to do a, year end evaluation.

Speaker: 00:33:34

And this individual that I had reporting to me, I was trying to shape and mold

Speaker: 00:33:38

the individual to be just like Preston.

Speaker: 00:33:40

knew what it took to succeed.

Speaker: 00:33:42

You're gonna be just like me.

Speaker: 00:33:44

the individual didn't have the same skillset, nor the same disposition,

Speaker: 00:33:49

really didn't like me that much because of all those things.

Speaker: 00:33:52

And I remember, sitting at that conference room, in the conference phone,

Speaker: 00:33:56

and I pick up and I say, and before Tim, I could get a word in edgewise.

Speaker: 00:34:02

On the phone immediately says, we don't have to do our review today.

Speaker: 00:34:06

I quit Preston, you're a jerk, and hung up on me.

Speaker: 00:34:11

That's the second person that's quit me, quit on me, and is in probably

Speaker: 00:34:14

two months, believe it or not.

Speaker: 00:34:16

So I try to head off the issue and I go down to my manager

Speaker: 00:34:19

and, talk, go to her office.

Speaker: 00:34:20

I shut the door and I tell her what happened.

Speaker: 00:34:23

And, there was this long pregnant pause and then she goes,

Speaker: 00:34:28

Preston, you're a top performer.

Speaker: 00:34:30

We all know that, but your people skills stink.

Speaker: 00:34:34

If you wanna rise in this organization, you wanna stay here,

Speaker: 00:34:37

you have to go get that fixed.

Speaker: 00:34:39

And I scratched my head a little bit and I said, how do I do that?

Speaker: 00:34:42

She goes, I don't care.

Speaker: 00:34:43

You just go figure it out.

Speaker: 00:34:45

Well, that was another journey for me, recognizing that she looked me in

Speaker: 00:34:48

the face and said, you, you get this, and you're a top performer, but if

Speaker: 00:34:52

you don't fix these things, they're not gonna want you around much longer.

Speaker: 00:34:56

And so that's another tipping point for me where I decided, oh, wait a second.

Speaker: 00:34:59

And the good news is, is that the company supported me because I came

Speaker: 00:35:02

back to her with a plan and said, okay, here's what I need to do.

Speaker: 00:35:05

And I actually engaged an executive coach.

Speaker: 00:35:08

Her name was Jennifer.

Speaker: 00:35:09

She was fantastic.

Speaker: 00:35:11

And, over six to eight weeks she worked with me to pull all these different

Speaker: 00:35:14

things out of me, a plan and how to move forward, taught me what, or pulled outta

Speaker: 00:35:17

me and showed me what my triggers were, I acted the way I did with certain people.

Speaker: 00:35:22

and that was just a wonderful time and it was a really self-realization.

Speaker: 00:35:26

All the while, Tim, was, praying.

Speaker: 00:35:30

reading the Bible, leaning in and seeking God and all that.

Speaker: 00:35:34

And so it was a, it was a, you know, it was an inward journey that

Speaker: 00:35:37

I went on because of that, moment.

Speaker: 00:35:40

So that was another moment that, that hit me, that, that you're like, okay,

Speaker: 00:35:43

why do I keep running into this?

Speaker: 00:35:45

And,

Speaker: 00:35:45

some work to do.

Speaker: 00:35:46

Right.

Speaker: 00:35:47

So at some point, because you're not with Coca-Cola now, right?

Speaker: 00:35:49

you left there and you're doing some things on your own.

Speaker: 00:35:52

You got books and things like that.

Speaker: 00:35:54

what was that situation leaving?

Speaker: 00:35:57

And it sounds like you're doing your own thing now, right?

Speaker: 00:35:59

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:36:00

That's right?

Speaker: 00:36:00

so yeah, 22 years at the Coca-Cola Company.

Speaker: 00:36:03

had a great career.

Speaker: 00:36:04

did a lot of great things.

Speaker: 00:36:05

You know, at the end of my career, I ran into a, false allegation, because I have

Speaker: 00:36:11

Mm

Speaker: 00:36:12

desire to start this leadership training business, and I kind of

Speaker: 00:36:15

tried to do it while I was still

Speaker: 00:36:17

working at Koch.

Speaker: 00:36:18

mm.

Speaker: 00:36:19

people turned

Speaker: 00:36:20

me in for saying that I was charging the company for some of the training

Speaker: 00:36:23

that I was doing voluntarily.

Speaker: 00:36:25

which was just false because you have to have a, you know, you have

Speaker: 00:36:29

to have the managers agree to pay you, you have to have an invoice, a

Speaker: 00:36:32

master service agreement, all these different things that Koch, you'd

Speaker: 00:36:34

have to do to get away with that.

Speaker: 00:36:35

None of that existed and never was there an intent behind it.

Speaker: 00:36:39

But, I left Koch after 22 years, with, a feeling of don't let the door

Speaker: 00:36:44

hit me in the butt on the way out.

Speaker: 00:36:46

I just was done.

Speaker: 00:36:47

I was.

Speaker: 00:36:48

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:36:49

And so, I'm

Speaker: 00:36:50

not, it took me three years.

Speaker: 00:36:52

I think I'm just now getting over it.

Speaker: 00:36:55

not a pity story, but that was really hard when you dedicate your career 20 plus

Speaker: 00:36:59

years, and then to be treated that way.

Speaker: 00:37:02

on the end

Speaker: 00:37:03

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:37:04

a lot about, uh,

Speaker: 00:37:04

forgiveness, uh, to not be resentful, not to try to take

Speaker: 00:37:10

revenge, uh, and to kinda let it go.

Speaker: 00:37:13

And that was a journey for me at the end of my career.

Speaker: 00:37:15

So I keep telling you, bumping into these things that God sticks me in,

Speaker: 00:37:19

sticks me in these circumstances that he's doing something and my

Speaker: 00:37:22

question's never why my question's.

Speaker: 00:37:24

What do you

Speaker: 00:37:25

want me to learn?

Speaker: 00:37:26

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:37:27

that's kind of, and it's funny.

Speaker: 00:37:29

You go through all of these things and guess what happens?

Speaker: 00:37:31

They end up

Speaker: 00:37:31

in a book

Speaker: 00:37:33

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:34

the book is not,

Speaker: 00:37:34

and the book's not derogatory toward Koch.

Speaker: 00:37:36

It just shares my experiences on some of these things.

Speaker: 00:37:38

the reason those things happen to me is that I feel like.

Speaker: 00:37:42

Is they've given me the ability to say, okay, here's what I've learned from them,

Speaker: 00:37:45

and I wanna help other people with those stories, those leadership lessons that I

Speaker: 00:37:50

learned, those life lessons, if you will.

Speaker: 00:37:53

And, you know, only if, if only a hundred people read the book and get

Speaker: 00:37:56

a couple things at 'em and say, Yeah.

Speaker: 00:37:57

that made a difference to me.

Speaker: 00:37:58

I have to say, yeah, that's a, that's

Speaker: 00:37:59

success.

Speaker: 00:38:01

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:38:01

So the interesting thing when people go through transitions

Speaker: 00:38:05

like that, I agree with you.

Speaker: 00:38:07

They sting in the moment, but three years out.

Speaker: 00:38:13

My, it's probably enough time, sometimes it's even quicker than this, but Preston,

Speaker: 00:38:16

I'm guessing that you're probably seeing a lot of reasons, possibly even divine,

Speaker: 00:38:23

that you were moved out of that role and not just because you know, somebody,

Speaker: 00:38:29

false allegation or anything like that,

Speaker: 00:38:31

but that there was a bigger picture.

Speaker: 00:38:33

when I say that, what starts coming to your mind?

Speaker: 00:38:37

Obviously there's a book, we're about to dive into that even more, but what else?

Speaker: 00:38:41

what are the things that never would've happened if you were

Speaker: 00:38:44

still in a corporate environment?

Speaker: 00:38:46

Well, I, let me answer it this way, if I can.

Speaker: 00:38:48

Uh, was, is for me, is what makes my heart sing.

Speaker: 00:38:53

What was I passionate about?

Speaker: 00:38:55

Mm.

Speaker: 00:38:56

at the

Speaker: 00:38:57

Coca-Cola company, I probably wasn't the best at managing my career.

Speaker: 00:39:00

But, what happens at Coke is you get put into these roles

Speaker: 00:39:04

like, training and development.

Speaker: 00:39:05

That's where they put the old horses to kind of go in the, barn and pass

Speaker: 00:39:10

away kind of thing before you leave.

Speaker: 00:39:12

And there were a number of us that had been put through like that, and I

Speaker: 00:39:14

knew that's what was happening to me.

Speaker: 00:39:16

And so I had lost my passion for Koch.

Speaker: 00:39:18

I had a huge passion for driving sales and marketing and had a

Speaker: 00:39:21

lot of fun in most of my career.

Speaker: 00:39:23

but the end, it was my heart just wasn't singing anything there.

Speaker: 00:39:27

And it was singing to help people, equip them develop.

Speaker: 00:39:31

Now, funny I just said that I didn't like my training role that I was

Speaker: 00:39:35

in, but I wasn't training people on what I wanted to help them with.

Speaker: 00:39:38

I wanted to help them grow their leadership skills.

Speaker: 00:39:40

I wanted to help people develop discipleship skills,

Speaker: 00:39:44

and walk closer with the Lord.

Speaker: 00:39:46

when I left at 55, it was clear to me what my calling was.

Speaker: 00:39:50

I had this sense that I could go out and make a difference

Speaker: 00:39:52

and have some fun with it.

Speaker: 00:39:53

Now, I'm not light the world on fire, Tim.

Speaker: 00:39:55

Honestly, I'm not.

Speaker: 00:39:57

very niched.

Speaker: 00:39:58

I'm selective in what I do who I engage.

Speaker: 00:40:01

but that's okay.

Speaker: 00:40:02

I'm retired.

Speaker: 00:40:03

before we got on the podcast, we were on at six 30 tonight, right?

Speaker: 00:40:06

To record this.

Speaker: 00:40:07

I'm working on a board of directors for a nonprofit.

Speaker: 00:40:09

I'm working on a three year strategic plan for them.

Speaker: 00:40:12

I literally ran upstairs to get a shower in 20 minutes and get down

Speaker: 00:40:15

here on the mic and camera in shape.

Speaker: 00:40:18

I'm thinking, man.

Speaker: 00:40:19

I'm retired.

Speaker: 00:40:20

Is this what retired life's like?

Speaker: 00:40:22

part of me just needs to rest a little bit.

Speaker: 00:40:24

but I very much enjoy being in front of people, connecting with

Speaker: 00:40:27

them, helping them, and sharing what I've learned and try to pull

Speaker: 00:40:30

out of them their best, to do that.

Speaker: 00:40:32

So I enjoy that.

Speaker: 00:40:33

it seems like you

Speaker: 00:40:33

do love to do that too, so

Speaker: 00:40:34

Yeah, early in my career, I ended up in training with the

Speaker: 00:40:40

Bell South Leadership Institute.

Speaker: 00:40:42

And what you said unfortunately is accurate, that is where they either

Speaker: 00:40:47

move people or people go there to just kinda like, I don't, it's not coast.

Speaker: 00:40:52

but there were a lot of people at Bell South that said, man, this is what you do.

Speaker: 00:40:55

That's not work.

Speaker: 00:40:56

You know, you stand up in front of people and talk all day long, which,

Speaker: 00:40:59

I would like to say it's hard.

Speaker: 00:41:00

it's actually not.

Speaker: 00:41:01

I enjoy it thoroughly but there is something there with people that are

Speaker: 00:41:06

wired to share information, to help people go through transformation.

Speaker: 00:41:13

And it sounds like that's where the Lord is moving you and you're still there.

Speaker: 00:41:19

And, you know, I don't really even use the word retired much, but it

Speaker: 00:41:23

sounds like that's the season that you're in, that includes books

Speaker: 00:41:27

and training and things like that.

Speaker: 00:41:29

Correct.

Speaker: 00:41:30

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker: 00:41:31

this past week I was up in New York and Manhattan speaking to the New Canaan

Speaker: 00:41:35

Society, about how is greater than what.

Speaker: 00:41:38

Then the next day I went across the river, into New Jersey, Bergen County,

Speaker: 00:41:42

New Jersey, and spoke to their chapter over there, and it's this idea that I

Speaker: 00:41:45

have a keynote around how is greater than what that resonates with people.

Speaker: 00:41:48

It talks about this transformation we're talking about, and, it's a joy for me

Speaker: 00:41:53

to get up there and share with them because it's not about me up there.

Speaker: 00:41:56

I've realized after all these years, but it's about two things.

Speaker: 00:41:59

It's about God, right, and working in me and through me, but it's also

Speaker: 00:42:03

those people that are listening.

Speaker: 00:42:05

One of the greatest joys I have is, during my keynotes that I deliver, I

Speaker: 00:42:09

don't necessarily speak the whole time.

Speaker: 00:42:11

I ask a couple questions, get them engaged, and the

Speaker: 00:42:13

engagement's always great.

Speaker: 00:42:15

then, I love the time afterwards when people come up and say,

Speaker: 00:42:18

Hey, this resonated with me.

Speaker: 00:42:19

Here's what's different.

Speaker: 00:42:20

Are they ask a question?

Speaker: 00:42:22

the, that's the real time for me, that makes my heart sing.

Speaker: 00:42:26

And so, and then other things that I love is being in this and then getting

Speaker: 00:42:29

notes from people that had read the book.

Speaker: 00:42:31

Two or three.

Speaker: 00:42:31

I, there's one guy that wrote me, I did a, actually, I did a leadership

Speaker: 00:42:35

workshop for a company called Raise Coca-Cola in California a few years back.

Speaker: 00:42:40

We went through some John Maxwell material, and one of

Speaker: 00:42:42

'em was talking about integrity.

Speaker: 00:42:44

And I got a LinkedIn message, I think it was last year, from

Speaker: 00:42:48

one of the guys that was in that training three or four years ago.

Speaker: 00:42:50

And he just reached out and said, I wanted to let you know how much of

Speaker: 00:42:52

a difference that day, that topic, the way you covered things, made a

Speaker: 00:42:57

difference in my life, in my career.

Speaker: 00:42:59

And I appreciate that.

Speaker: 00:43:00

And when you get a note like that and you're having a bad

Speaker: 00:43:03

day, that's where you take those.

Speaker: 00:43:04

You write 'em down, you print 'em out, and you stick 'em in a book.

Speaker: 00:43:06

And so when you have a bad day, you can go look at all that stuff.

Speaker: 00:43:09

But man, that, that made my heart sing, right?

Speaker: 00:43:12

and I didn't, my heart didn't sing when I was selling Coke.

Speaker: 00:43:15

Zero.

Speaker: 00:43:16

Great brand, loved it, loved working with it.

Speaker: 00:43:18

My heart didn't sing when I was selling.

Speaker: 00:43:20

Hershey's kisses.

Speaker: 00:43:22

Hershey's Kisses are fantastic.

Speaker: 00:43:23

Like you just said.

Speaker: 00:43:24

They're wonderful.

Speaker: 00:43:25

I enjoyed those things.

Speaker: 00:43:26

But to have that individual, move from A to B, uh, have an insight that

Speaker: 00:43:31

made a difference in their life, their career, their relationship, gosh,

Speaker: 00:43:34

put me there, put me on

Speaker: 00:43:36

the front

Speaker: 00:43:36

I'm all in.

Speaker: 00:43:37

Well, it is the thing that I picked up on.

Speaker: 00:43:39

you've really moved from transaction to transformation is really what it appears.

Speaker: 00:43:45

And I love your phrase that you use here makes your heart sing.

Speaker: 00:43:48

The phrase that I use is, it nourishes my soul,

Speaker: 00:43:51

I

Speaker: 00:43:51

which is probably the same thing.

Speaker: 00:43:53

Sure,

Speaker: 00:43:54

I want to go into how is greater than what, but this is not

Speaker: 00:43:57

the first book you've written.

Speaker: 00:43:59

Mm-hmm.

Speaker: 00:43:59

And when I heard the title of the other one, I was.

Speaker: 00:44:04

Incredibly intrigued.

Speaker: 00:44:06

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:44:06

And so I'd love for you to tell about that

Speaker: 00:44:09

Sure.

Speaker: 00:44:10

we're gonna finish, take the last bit of our 10, 15 minutes or whatever here and

Speaker: 00:44:14

talk about how it's greater than what.

Speaker: 00:44:15

So at first I thought it was discipline leader, but it's actually

Speaker: 00:44:19

discipled leader.

Speaker: 00:44:21

So tell me about it.

Speaker: 00:44:22

Right On

Speaker: 00:44:23

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:44:24

I went

Speaker: 00:44:24

through a program called Christian Leadership Concepts,

Speaker: 00:44:28

in the late two thousands.

Speaker: 00:44:29

it was a two year men's discipleship program actually

Speaker: 00:44:32

on the board of it right now.

Speaker: 00:44:34

what an honor to do that.

Speaker: 00:44:35

when I got out of that program, I had a desire to communicate, write a book.

Speaker: 00:44:41

I took some ideas from that, experience that I had and wrote

Speaker: 00:44:46

this book called Disciple Leader.

Speaker: 00:44:48

concept and idea is this, is that, how do you teach a biblical principle.

Speaker: 00:44:54

And then tie it into what does it actually look like in the workplace?

Speaker: 00:44:58

so that book has 10 chapters, about that.

Speaker: 00:45:00

let me give you a quick example.

Speaker: 00:45:02

the first chapter is Seek, that's the title of the chapter, and

Speaker: 00:45:06

it's about decision making.

Speaker: 00:45:09

so what I walk people through is the importance of the, uh, or I talk

Speaker: 00:45:13

about the Bible, I talk about the Holy Spirit and the roles in our lives.

Speaker: 00:45:15

I talk about the importance of having a daily quiet time

Speaker: 00:45:18

and then this often missing.

Speaker: 00:45:21

for believers is what I call in the book, is, divine input.

Speaker: 00:45:27

when you're making a decision, are you asking God what his thoughts are?

Speaker: 00:45:30

Are you search, searching the scriptures to try to understand that?

Speaker: 00:45:34

lastly, Tim, what I do is I go and say, okay, now God gave you a noodle.

Speaker: 00:45:37

He gave you a noggin.

Speaker: 00:45:39

I need you to think.

Speaker: 00:45:40

And so I walk people and give them a framework about make

Speaker: 00:45:43

to make, these decisions.

Speaker: 00:45:44

And it's called Deb Day.

Speaker: 00:45:45

It's D-B-D-A-E.

Speaker: 00:45:47

the first thing you do is define your decision.

Speaker: 00:45:49

Then you brainstorm on it.

Speaker: 00:45:50

Then you actually decide, then you move into acting on that decision.

Speaker: 00:45:55

And then you evaluate or examine what your decision was.

Speaker: 00:45:59

That's just chapter one.

Speaker: 00:46:00

And so what I try to do is to take it from a business aspect and say, okay, those

Speaker: 00:46:03

two things that we just talked about, the Venn diagram that's spiritual and

Speaker: 00:46:06

the secular, how do those overlap and how do I help you live out your faith in the

Speaker: 00:46:11

workplace?

Speaker: 00:46:13

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:46:13

That the, the reason that's good is because it's going back to

Speaker: 00:46:17

addressing that issue that you talked about earlier, which is Sunday and

Speaker: 00:46:23

Monday are diametrically opposed.

Speaker: 00:46:26

They're you, you're just, you're, you're, you're, I hate to say schizophrenic.

Speaker: 00:46:30

I don't want, I'm not calling you that, but that's what we are.

Speaker: 00:46:33

It's like we're one thing on one day, and then the next day we all of a

Speaker: 00:46:36

sudden transform into something else, and it's not a good transformation.

Speaker: 00:46:40

here's the, the root cause of that.

Speaker: 00:46:42

And I love to tell people this.

Speaker: 00:46:43

Barna did a study and it talks about the number of Christians

Speaker: 00:46:46

that have actually been discipled.

Speaker: 00:46:48

That means somebody that's come

Speaker: 00:46:49

along and taught them how to pray, how

Speaker: 00:46:51

Zero.

Speaker: 00:46:52

Well, the number's very generous.

Speaker: 00:46:53

That one out of five.

Speaker: 00:46:54

But how to pray, how to share your faith, how to read the Bible and the

Speaker: 00:46:57

importance of being involved in community.

Speaker: 00:46:59

If you don't have somebody that helps you understand those things and you

Speaker: 00:47:02

start to grow in those immature, spiritually formation, how are you

Speaker: 00:47:05

ever gonna show up any way at work?

Speaker: 00:47:08

Right.

Speaker: 00:47:09

or if you're at work and you don't have a role model that is living

Speaker: 00:47:12

out their faith in the workplace, how do you see how to do that?

Speaker: 00:47:16

And so what I try to do is to say, okay, wait a second.

Speaker: 00:47:19

Let's start at the root cause and wanna try to bring you up to speed

Speaker: 00:47:23

and teach you these things to help you draw closer to the Lord and let

Speaker: 00:47:25

him work in you and through you.

Speaker: 00:47:27

And then if you do that, God will use you as a redemptive

Speaker: 00:47:30

influence in the workplace.

Speaker: 00:47:32

You'll make things better.

Speaker: 00:47:34

that's what I'm after in that.

Speaker: 00:47:35

And I have a vision of reaching a million people by 2030 with disciple leader.

Speaker: 00:47:41

we've got some ways we're gonna do that.

Speaker: 00:47:43

very excited.

Speaker: 00:47:43

Thank you for asking me.

Speaker: 00:47:44

That's my baby.

Speaker: 00:47:44

I love my book.

Speaker: 00:47:45

How is Greater Than What, the new one I wrote, but that's my baby.

Speaker: 00:47:48

Well, tell me, um, tell me what your, uh, I I always, as a writer myself, I'm always

Speaker: 00:47:55

fascinated with what provokes someone, and I use that word very intentionally.

Speaker: 00:48:01

What provokes someone to think that we've got this great idea that we

Speaker: 00:48:09

can put in writing and put, you know, 20, 30, 40,000 words, whatever,

Speaker: 00:48:14

and share it with the world.

Speaker: 00:48:16

What was the catalyst for you?

Speaker: 00:48:18

for that book

Speaker: 00:48:19

or just for writing.

Speaker: 00:48:20

Well, let's talk about how is greater than what, because that's

Speaker: 00:48:24

what we're discussing here.

Speaker: 00:48:25

sure.

Speaker: 00:48:26

It's pretty simple for me.

Speaker: 00:48:27

things can be better in the workplace.

Speaker: 00:48:30

Employee engagement is low.

Speaker: 00:48:32

people don't wanna get into leadership.

Speaker: 00:48:34

I, shared a statistic when I was in Manhattan last week that only

Speaker: 00:48:36

6% of individual contributors are interested in leadership.

Speaker: 00:48:41

Another study came out two weeks ago and said that we're gonna have a shortfall of

Speaker: 00:48:45

managers in 2032 of 3 million managers.

Speaker: 00:48:50

That's because people don't wanna be managers, right?

Speaker: 00:48:53

70% of managers are disengaged.

Speaker: 00:48:55

So what happens if a manager's disengaged?

Speaker: 00:48:58

the team is, right?

Speaker: 00:49:00

So this idea of how is greater than what is that?

Speaker: 00:49:04

results matter.

Speaker: 00:49:05

The what is the results, right?

Speaker: 00:49:07

But how you get there, how you treat people, how you bring them

Speaker: 00:49:10

along more than what you accomplish.

Speaker: 00:49:13

And Tim, you and I both know this, that results matter.

Speaker: 00:49:16

You have to look at all the college football coaches right

Speaker: 00:49:18

now that are getting axed.

Speaker: 00:49:19

They're not, they're not, they're not producing results, right?

Speaker: 00:49:22

And they're getting paid big dollars and they're people come

Speaker: 00:49:24

along and say, you can't do it.

Speaker: 00:49:25

You gotta produce results.

Speaker: 00:49:27

But it's how you get those results, because people remember you for

Speaker: 00:49:31

how you treated them over life, not necessarily what you did.

Speaker: 00:49:35

People remember Preston Poor, probably hopefully in that second half of my

Speaker: 00:49:39

career for the way I treated them.

Speaker: 00:49:41

asked questions like, do you care for me?

Speaker: 00:49:43

Can you help me?

Speaker: 00:49:44

Do I trust you?

Speaker: 00:49:45

And hopefully they said yes to those things they'll remember those things.

Speaker: 00:49:49

They won't remember that we won an award or whatever for that might talk

Speaker: 00:49:52

about it, but that wasn't the big thing.

Speaker: 00:49:54

so those, that's the reason I wrote that because things can be better.

Speaker: 00:49:57

And that's my mission through how it's greater than what is to try to

Speaker: 00:49:59

be a redemptive influence and teach people that there's a better way.

Speaker: 00:50:04

I love titles.

Speaker: 00:50:05

You have a great title here.

Speaker: 00:50:06

I'm gonna hold it up for those that are,

Speaker: 00:50:08

this is on my Kindle

Speaker: 00:50:09

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:50:10

and it looks, I think it's a bright yellow

Speaker: 00:50:12

right

Speaker: 00:50:12

You could hold it up, hold it up for people on YouTube.

Speaker: 00:50:15

How is Greater than White?

Speaker: 00:50:16

That's a great title, but what I really love are subtitles.

Speaker: 00:50:19

I look for subtitles.

Speaker: 00:50:20

'cause I think that's where we often try to get a different, I don't know,

Speaker: 00:50:25

maybe the real message, maybe publishers don't let us do certain things anyway.

Speaker: 00:50:28

Master the growth and leadership skill.

Speaker: 00:50:32

Everyone else ignores.

Speaker: 00:50:35

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:50:36

So everyone else ignores.

Speaker: 00:50:39

And you know, this is, I, I'll ask this and we've only got a few minutes left

Speaker: 00:50:43

here, but the thing that's, it sounds like both of us, early on in our career,

Speaker: 00:50:49

we were hard chargers and could get some results, but yet we didn't have

Speaker: 00:50:54

what we'll call the heart part of it.

Speaker: 00:50:58

And then over time we've grown that heart, but I, I've known people

Speaker: 00:51:03

that might have the heart, but yet they don't have the results.

Speaker: 00:51:07

It does require

Speaker: 00:51:10

both, correct.

Speaker: 00:51:12

Yep, it does.

Speaker: 00:51:13

So one key story for me at the Coca-Cola company, I, I, I share in the book

Speaker: 00:51:18

I've been through, uh, at least at Koch, I've been through 11 reorgs.

Speaker: 00:51:23

that's one reorg for every two years.

Speaker: 00:51:25

I, tell people it's like being a member of Congress every two years

Speaker: 00:51:28

you're up for reelection, right?

Speaker: 00:51:30

Once you get reelected, then boom, you gotta campaign again and get that C

Speaker: 00:51:34

capital before the next one happens.

Speaker: 00:51:36

I remember Tim being in a conference room when I was a people manager and

Speaker: 00:51:40

you had to go into the conference room.

Speaker: 00:51:41

We were about to go through a reorg, and a lot of jobs are on the line, and

Speaker: 00:51:45

you all have to go around and calibrate your associates and talk about things.

Speaker: 00:51:48

And the thing I recognize is we went around, everybody

Speaker: 00:51:52

had some type of results.

Speaker: 00:51:55

Not everybody had the how.

Speaker: 00:51:56

they weren't considered a leader that developed their people cared

Speaker: 00:51:59

for them, built a culture, that people would wanna come work with

Speaker: 00:52:02

them and do fantastic things.

Speaker: 00:52:04

And that was the differentiator for me.

Speaker: 00:52:06

You had to have both, right?

Speaker: 00:52:07

Everybody had the results.

Speaker: 00:52:10

if you didn't have results of Coke, you were exited pretty quick, right?

Speaker: 00:52:13

But it's that differentiator when it came to those, rubber meet the

Speaker: 00:52:16

road life decisions, if you will.

Speaker: 00:52:19

when you're talk looking at people.

Speaker: 00:52:21

And if they had the, how right?

Speaker: 00:52:23

They normally stuck around 'cause they all had the what, the ones that

Speaker: 00:52:27

didn't have the, how they were taken

Speaker: 00:52:29

out.

Speaker: 00:52:30

I think one of the things that came to me, I'll mention this and this

Speaker: 00:52:33

might be, might be my last question.

Speaker: 00:52:36

One of the things that I believe that does Preston, is it makes a team, a

Speaker: 00:52:44

group, an organization, a company, a large organization, it makes them resilient.

Speaker: 00:52:50

And people that recognize short term results or achieve those,

Speaker: 00:52:57

typically they're not building something for a longer haul.

Speaker: 00:53:01

And organizations that understand that,

Speaker: 00:53:03

Yeah,

Speaker: 00:53:03

just more resilient.

Speaker: 00:53:04

And so if they understand this, how that it's involving people and results,

Speaker: 00:53:10

then they could withstand the storms and the winds and the, they're built

Speaker: 00:53:15

on a firm foundation Is that accurate?

Speaker: 00:53:17

Oh, by all means.

Speaker: 00:53:18

Yeah.

Speaker: 00:53:19

I mean, if you have a manager that is browbeat you over results.

Speaker: 00:53:24

And, you're not gonna wanna work with them at all.

Speaker: 00:53:27

but if you have somebody and a team that builds a culture where you wanna be

Speaker: 00:53:31

there, where you're marching with one goal together and you're accomplishing those

Speaker: 00:53:36

things and doing great things together, why not give your all and be part of

Speaker: 00:53:41

that?

Speaker: 00:53:42

Hmm.

Speaker: 00:53:42

side of that is if you're

Speaker: 00:53:43

not, man, I know what it's like to be both engaged and disengaged.

Speaker: 00:53:46

it's like you talked about earlier about learning some things from what not to do

Speaker: 00:53:50

and then things that you, the good stuff.

Speaker: 00:53:52

a lot of things not to do from bad managers that I was disengaged from.

Speaker: 00:53:56

But yeah, I think wholeheartedly what you just said is, is

Speaker: 00:53:58

right on.

Speaker: 00:54:00

Hmm, that's good.

Speaker: 00:54:01

So, Preston, tell, tell me, tell the audience who is this book for, and

Speaker: 00:54:09

then kind of go right into where they could find it and all that type stuff.

Speaker: 00:54:14

How is greater

Speaker: 00:54:14

than what was written for

Speaker: 00:54:16

I.

Speaker: 00:54:16

leaders?

Speaker: 00:54:18

this is another statistic to throw at you real quick.

Speaker: 00:54:20

I, the study I found showed that people, managers are, promoted to

Speaker: 00:54:26

people management roles when they're on average age of 30 years old.

Speaker: 00:54:30

You know how old they are when they receive leadership training.

Speaker: 00:54:34

There's a 10 year gap between the two.

Speaker: 00:54:37

so what I'm trying to do is to get the millennials that are, I think

Speaker: 00:54:40

right now, the youngest millennial is 20, what, 29, right around there.

Speaker: 00:54:45

that sweet spot for me is to try to get the millennial, that is trying

Speaker: 00:54:49

to figure out this people leadership, the people management thing, and

Speaker: 00:54:53

challenge them about where to start.

Speaker: 00:54:56

And starting with your identity, moving into your purpose and meaning.

Speaker: 00:54:59

And I talk about calling and vision and mission and then ultimately

Speaker: 00:55:03

significance, which is different than success, but points matter and I'm

Speaker: 00:55:07

trying to get their attention on it.

Speaker: 00:55:08

So if you're interested in reading about how is greater than what

Speaker: 00:55:11

a few things you can do, one, you can go on Amazon, to buy it.

Speaker: 00:55:14

It's sold all over, on all the, websites that are out there.

Speaker: 00:55:18

you can listen to my podcast.

Speaker: 00:55:19

It's called pq.

Speaker: 00:55:20

You can check it out.

Speaker: 00:55:21

So thank you for that cross promotion.

Speaker: 00:55:24

it's also, it's interesting, I recorded the audio book for

Speaker: 00:55:26

how is greater than what, I.

Speaker: 00:55:27

Man, that was tough.

Speaker: 00:55:29

So you did it.

Speaker: 00:55:29

You pulled it off.

Speaker: 00:55:30

41 hours for seven hours of, total recording.

Speaker: 00:55:33

And I edited it too.

Speaker: 00:55:34

So I did all that.

Speaker: 00:55:35

it was really hard.

Speaker: 00:55:36

but it's one of my, I really enjoy that.

Speaker: 00:55:37

But it's available on Spotify.

Speaker: 00:55:39

It's an audio book out there as well.

Speaker: 00:55:40

So, check it out and you can go to my website.

Speaker: 00:55:43

Lastly, I'll mention this, go to preston pour.com.

Speaker: 00:55:46

That's preston, POR e.com.

Speaker: 00:55:50

Yeah, very good.

Speaker: 00:55:50

I've got your website pulled up here.

Speaker: 00:55:52

You got some good stuff there.

Speaker: 00:55:53

You got some articles and resources and things like that, so we'll

Speaker: 00:55:56

include that down in the link.

Speaker: 00:55:59

The book is how is Greater than What Master the Growth and Leadership

Speaker: 00:56:03

Skill everyone else ignores.

Speaker: 00:56:05

I'll hold it up on my Kindle one more time here just so.

Speaker: 00:56:09

That's

Speaker: 00:56:09

watching can get a glimpse of it.

Speaker: 00:56:11

Man, I appreciate the conversation.

Speaker: 00:56:13

Thanks for listening in here at Seek Go Create.

Speaker: 00:56:16

It's been a great, great conversation.

Speaker: 00:56:17

Make sure you check out all the Preston's stuff.

Speaker: 00:56:20

We have new episodes here at Seek.

Speaker: 00:56:22

Go create.

Speaker: 00:56:22

Every Monday this is releasing, I think it's right around probably

Speaker: 00:56:27

before Christmas, and so I'm hopeful everyone has a great holiday.

Speaker: 00:56:32

If you're listening to it, then if you're listening to it over

Speaker: 00:56:34

in the new year, that's awesome.

Speaker: 00:56:36

But I gotta mention one thing that's coming up big.

Speaker: 00:56:39

I have been working on a huge project.

Speaker: 00:56:41

I'm not gonna announce it all here, but the first three months of 2026, I am

Speaker: 00:56:47

going to be doing a project where I am going to be going through every book.

Speaker: 00:56:52

Of the New Testament 27 books with some things that I have

Speaker: 00:56:56

written as some immersive stories that introduce each book.

Speaker: 00:57:02

And we are going to dive deep into the first century, which is where I've been

Speaker: 00:57:06

hanging out for the last two years plus.

Speaker: 00:57:09

And I'm excited to share this.

Speaker: 00:57:11

we'll probably be doing about two or three episodes releasing per week.

Speaker: 00:57:15

So those listening in, watch for that.

Speaker: 00:57:17

It'll be on YouTube, it'll be here on the podcast platform.

Speaker: 00:57:20

I'll probably do an intro episode to fill you in on all the details, but I just

Speaker: 00:57:25

gotta promote it 'cause it's exciting.

Speaker: 00:57:27

Preston, thanks again.

Speaker: 00:57:28

Thanks for joining us listener.

Speaker: 00:57:30

We'll see you next time on Seek Go Create.