Mart Green

Yeah, I'd say early mistakes that I learned was sometimes I knew that I didn't have the right person, but I kept just hoping it would work out, making that hard decision to sell somebody a different career. So I would say early on I did not let people go as early as I should have, even though I knew I'd hired wrong because I was learning how to hire.

So that's to all people. It's even your enemies, if you would, or what feels like enemies. Because you just never know. And it's crazy. It is crazy how many times 10 years later, 15 years later, something that happened way back then. And because I didn't burn the bridge like I did when I was younger, it actually came back. And not only was it healed, it became a huge advantage to me.

I have several stories where I thought that was over and it's done that, wow, God restored that relationship and it helped me move forward. But I never know when that's going to happen. So how do you treat everybody well? And I think that's the best way to do it.

I wish I was smart enough to figure that all out, right, for the future. Because there's lots of people I've been kind to and nice to and tried to keep the bridge, and I never see them again. And so I just trust that's not my responsibility. I just want to do the right thing. How do I go do the next right thing? How do I treat people well? I want to be treated well. I've made mistakes.

I hope people will give me a second chance. And I've had people that wouldn't give me a second chance. And it grieves my heart because I thought, oh, I could have done better if you just could have seen me differently because I made a mistake the first time. And so, but yeah, I don't think I'm smart enough to manipulate or even make those things happen. I just know that they do.

I've seen them happen.

Well, thank you, Craig. And you've given me a lot of advice in my life. So I have less than five I get that from.

Yeah, well, yeah, I just, through time, I just, in praying or thinking about people, I think, well, what's something symbolic? I like symbolic things. I got stuff on my body. When I run, every piece of clothing has symbolics to it. So I'm a very symbolic person. So when I give a gift, I like to think of something that's symbolic. Who's this person? What is it that I could say to them?

Mm-hmm.

Because I've been in that situation where I'm trying to figure out, is this a gift or is this an obligation that I just got into?

Great question. I've never thought of it. And I'll have to think longer about it because nothing comes to my mind at the very top. I just maybe see my family being that way. I mean, I just saw my mom and my dad always care for people. And so, yeah, probably hereditary. And they saw their parents do that. And so I've heard story about my grandmother and her gift of generosity.

My grandmother was not – had no wealth. She'd have two dresses and she'd give one away. And so – She gave her a gift. She figured out the value of it because she thought she ought to pay tithes on her increase. She just loved people. She loved the Lord. Because she understood how much she was loved, it was easy for her to love.

If I had to go back to anything, I think it was modeled for me through a couple of generations of the people that I got to see.

It goes back to the original thing I talked about, good people surrounding myself. And I'll never forget one of the quotes I steal from you, and I'm obsessed with empowering the right people. Not just people, but how do you find the right people? So professionally, I have one prayer, and it's based on Luke 10 and 2. So people say, how can I pray for you? Well, I have family issues.

I can pray for that. But professionally, there's only one prayer. The harvest is plentiful, but the harvest hands are few. Pray for harvest hands. And so I'm always praying. I mean, right now I'm looking for some board members, you know, different things.

Right people. All the time. All the time.

Yeah, that'd probably be when I was 19. And the situation was Hobby Lobby did start in our home. I was nine years old when my dad went and borrowed $600. And so when you borrow $600, you got to use child labor and free labor. And so mom was free labor and we were the child labor. So we glued frames for seven cents each. And this is how Hobby Lobby grow slowly, one store at a time.

Yeah. Yes. Because that's... Because I love empowering people, and so I don't have to do everything myself. I've learned that a long, long time ago. Now, when I was at Mardell and I was a founder and I ran that business, there was a lot of weight to that because I was in charge and had 800 employees, all those kind of things.

Now I'm in a situation where I'm at where I'm just helping to empower, coming alongside, whether it's Bobby. here at U-verse, and how can I help him? How can I add value to him? Other projects I've started have a little bit more weight to them, but I'm usually working myself out.

I know I'm kind of working myself out of a job, so I'm always looking for people, which is so fun, because you see people, they grow and all that. Some people can be micromanagers and try to take control. That's not my natural personality, so that's fun for me.

Yeah, I do now. Cause I gave up Mardale that I'd done for 35 years to be available. And so that's kind of where I'm at. And there's some things I stay with longer Bible translation. I've been with for 15 years and I'm 2033. I'm going to be with it for at least another eight years trying to reach a goal. But yeah. So I kind of trying to figure out what's my identity.

And I try to get it down to a couple of words and through a long process, transformational unifier. So if I had to get myself down to two words, it'd be a transformational unifier.

So transformation means you got to transform something. You got to do things differently than what it was before. And you have the same time to unify. So the words are almost, seems like they're opposed to each other, but then how do you unify it? So I think of a bridge. And so a bridge, how do you bring two sides together to get something done that would not get done separately and

And I will be in it, and it will be in me, but it doesn't need me anymore, right? And so that's what I'm trying to define those projects, just like you, version. That doesn't necessarily need me, but I'm helping them to bridge, in the case, Bible translation, you know, that were needed.

So obviously my skills weren't too good at doing that in the beginning. I learned through the process that actually it's a double negative. One, I'm hiring somebody that I don't need, is not able to do the job. And two, they're not getting ready to go to their next opportunity.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, we all have different kind of personalities. So like I said, for me, it's kind of a natural deal. I saw my dad. I was 19, right? He helped me go get a loan. How many dads can help their 19-year-old son get a loan? Now I felt a huge obligation to that. And so, yeah, I think people empowering others is a huge gift. You've spoken about it in your leadership podcast.

You can't be a micromanager. You have to empower people. You've got to do that. Otherwise, you're going to choke that out. Now, some people only want a certain size. And maybe that's all it's supposed to be is a certain size. And not everything has to go to a thousand stores. So there's nothing wrong with not being an empowering of people.

But if you want to grow in certain ways in certain places, then you're going to have to empower people.

And I was actually at college and I called my dad one time and I was just talking to my dad was an entrepreneur. He talked about open a barbecue stand and different things. And none of that was interesting to me, but he talked about Christian bookstores. And so I called him back a week later. So are you really going to do that someday? He says, well, if you'll come home, I'll help you get a loan.

Yeah, yeah. So that was a long process, but I kind of got into the three words, and they're G, H, and I. So I like to keep things simple. G is generous. I'm looking for people who are generous because I feel like that helps defeat one of Satan's tricks, you know, which is the lust of the eyes. I'm looking for someone who has humility, which beats the Satan's trick of the pride of life.

So I want people to be humble. And then the lust of the flesh would be integrity. So if you can find me, these are the three character traits. Somebody who's generous, somebody who has humility, and somebody who has integrity. Those are my friends.

Yeah, well, Randy Alcorn had talked about the three that Satan has. Satan created nothing, so he had to corrupt something. So he gave the neutrals. I said, Randy, you left me hanging here. I know the neutral. You know, there's nothing wrong with your possessions. There's nothing wrong with power. There's nothing wrong with pleasure. Those three Ps.

But I know the negatives to them, but I got to know the positives. So that's where I said, no, no, no, I have to know the antidote. So I just prayed about it, thought through, and said, well, how do you do that? And I thought about my grandmother. Well, she's generous. You don't have to worry about her. The lust of the eyes, she... She had no problem with that.

People who are humble don't have a problem with pride. People who have integrity don't have with the flesh. And they just happened to work out to GH and I, which I kind of liked.

Yeah, no, I think excellence is what we all are striving for, and excellence can bring that. How do you get mission fulfillment with economic sustainability? As a Christian, is there something wrong with making a lot of money? No, I don't think so. Okay. No, or you don't think so? No, no. Okay, I'm making sure. I know so. If you're going to be gray with me, I don't know. No, nothing wrong with it.

So I was going to college. He wasn't helped paying for it. So I was going to semester, working a semester. So I'll just go home next semester. I'll work and I'll try this thing. So when you're 19 and you start a new business, you realize everybody's looking to you for all the questions, all the answers. It's not always easy because they're looking for the boss.

Nothing wrong with making money. Yeah. And in our case, we like to make more money because we give more money away. That's our motivating factor. We've not taken raises for 10 or 15 years now, you know, because God's done well for us. Don't feel sorry for me. There's nothing wrong with that. But what motivates us? Why do we put another store in? Why do we put 30 more stores?

That's just 30 more headaches that we're going to have. Because we love to give. We love to be generous. And we think if you do business with excellence, you can do business with excellence and you can make money. Yeah. God actually gave us work. Now, the fall may not work hard, but I think there's always been work. And so we get fulfillment in our work.

Yeah. Recently, I read a quote from Albert Einstein. He said he found the eighth great wonder of the world. I thought, what's the eighth great one in the world? You know, one of the smartest guy ever. And he said, compound interest. I'm going, compound interest. Yeah, it's very powerful.

If you take $1,000 and put it under a pillow and come back 40 years later, it's going to be worth a whole lot less than $1,000. All right? If you get simple interest, it's worth three times as much. If you get compound interest, it's like 15 times, you know? So compound interest is very powerful. I thought, wow. If he had met Jesus like I have, he would have said compound generosity. Hmm.

Because I believe compound generosity grows. So there's a lot of people that are holding their money. They're not doing stuff with it. I'm saying it's like putting it under the pillow. Put it to work. Because I do believe we're eternal beatings. I do believe. You know, you can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. So there are verses throughout the Bible that talks about God rewards.

Now, some people think it's here and now. I think, no, no, no, it's there and later. And I'd rather have it there and later. So I'm kicking as much stuff as I can to eternity. Because eternity is a whole lot longer than maybe the 100 years. Even if I lived to 100, I'd be lucky. But eternity is forever. So yeah, I'm encouraging people, store up your treasures on the other side.

Because yes, there's ROI, a business person, return on investment. But I realize it's eternal return on investment. So I want an EROI. What's going to matter 10,000 years from now?

When I didn't give the answer they wanted, when somebody come in, they didn't get the answer they wanted, well, I want to meet your boss. And I'm like, well, I'm the top of the list. I am the leader.

Yeah, it's a dynamic process, as you could imagine. And yes, wealth has its issues. Now, it doesn't have the issue. I know where my food's coming from, my shelter and all that. So I'm blessed, blessed, blessed. But then you feel this stewardship responsibility. Where do you give that money? In our case, we actually have seven family members.

We've all worked together for nearly 50 years that make those decisions. So the other good news is there's more than one. But I say stewardship for us has three H's to it. One, a steward is generous. Well, that's your heart, right? You see something, you see a need, and you want to meet it. And so we all have that inside of us. If a child falls down, we help pick them up. That's a generous act.

And so that's your heart. But then you learn that sometimes people can tell you stories that aren't true, all right? And so you used your heart, and it was a heart-wrenching story, but come to find out, none of the money went where you said it was. So then you use your head. That's discerning. So I think good stewardship is both your heart and your head. and discerning and generosity.

That's good stewardship. And then for us, we believe the Holy Spirit actually can prompt us. And so there are different times that we've given to certain places because we felt like the Lord tapped somebody's heart and we'd have to say, hey, look, I just feel like maybe we should do this, but there's six more of you guys, let's all pray together.

And so there's been a few places where that's the way we gave.

Yeah, yeah. So that's why I said a little bit crazy. So I came home. I have no clue what I was doing. I learned a little bit from my dad, obviously.

What would you do? I would invest it making sure that people get God's word translated in their heart language.

And so that's my deepest heart longing because our family mission statement, we have a business mission statement, and you should, and that's very important to have a mission statement that we sat down and had one for our family because all of a sudden my kids are marrying and our family went from my mom and dad who were two, now there's 47 of us all live in Oklahoma City.

So we said, wow, we better get a mission statement so as to love God intimately and live extravagant generosity. Mm-hmm. And so to love God intimately, the number one way I know how to love God is through His Word. So if I want that for my kiddos, then I have to want it for all this world.

And when I found out that everybody didn't have God's Word in their heart language, it became a driving force for me.

Yeah. First, it looked like finding a location. So I drove through Oklahoma City, our hometown here, and I found a location. It was 6,000 square feet. At that time, I thought that's too big for a Christian bookstore. So my dad said, well, put office supply in. I hate going to office supply. That was before Office Max, Office Depot, all this. And so now I have to learn the Christian industry.

Yeah, that's a great question. It feels like it comes somewhat naturally for me. And again, I get modeled through my family and just, again, thinking eternally. We always think about eternity. Think about 10,000 years from now. What's going to matter 10,000 years from now? And so when you think that way, it automatically kind of makes you make decisions a certain way, I think.

Some things become frivolous and stuff like that. Yeah, we go have fun. We go to basketball games. We do this. It's not like we do everything that's serious and all that kind of stuff. But at the bottom of my mind and thinking through, I'm thinking about eternity. I'm thinking about others and And I've got a mission statement to love God intimately and live extravagant generosity.

And so how do I do that in my family? And how do I make sure that others who want to can do the same thing?

Yeah, it was a co-author, David Bowden, another gentleman. He lives in Oklahoma City. Came to me and he said, Mark— Incredibly talented guy. Yeah, talented guy. Just ridiculously talented. Spoken gospel. He said, Mark, whenever you talk about God, it seems like he's chasing you down. In my life, he says, I always feel like I have to earn God's love.

And when he said that, I said, well, I never thought about that way. And when our family came up with Love, God, Intimately, Live, Extravagant Generosity as our mission statement, I started saying, well, how do you do that? How do you get intimate with God? And so over time, it took me five or 10 years, I wrote down 31 different ways. I call them gateways to intimacy.

Well, he had seen that document, and he kind of writes theologically from that perspective. And he was learning that God does pursue him, and that's why it's called Learning to be Loved, the book. And so he said, Mark, I'll write theology and some of that if you'll write 20 stories. So he asked me to take 20 of my 31 gateways of intimacy. and just write stories about those.

And now I got to learn office supplies. At 19, you don't know much about either one of those. And so I was thrown into the fire and Trucks would back up with all this stuff. I had no clue what a hanging file folder frame was, all that. So I'm curious, you had no experience. Well, I had 10 years. I remember I started at nine gluing frames. So you're a frame gluer.

So I wrote about 20% of the book. David wrote the rest of it, and I'm glad.

Yeah, I know. I told people I wouldn't write books. I sell books. I said, no, no, I don't want to write books. I sell books. He happened to hit me on the one subject that he could do it, and he wrote 80% of it.

Yeah, I mean, there's several that are very important to me. I guess there would be one that I would share probably, and it's called wounds. Because a lot of times people don't think that wounds can be a way to intimacy with God. So what's my wound story? Well, I got married, you know, I found my wife in ninth grade, pursued her for six years.

And finally she agreed and we got married a few years later. And 43 years later, she's been my wife with four kiddos. But we were, we, in our marriage, we had some, you know, some complications and stuff along the way. And so we'll get it worked out. And then my son started marrying. I started, there's some of the same problems. I got to get these people fixed. Right.

So I brought a coach in to fix, you know, help my wife and help, you know, some of my kids who are marrying these people that I didn't raise. Right. And so, So they come, they talk about trust. I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, trust. I'm a pretty good trust builder. That guy's gifted me with that. And then he asked, how are you with emotional trust? And I'm like, oh, just a second here.

First of all, I don't know what you're talking about. Emotional trust. Well, I said, well, Mark, do people trust you with their emotions? And I'm like, oh, my gosh. So as we dug deeper in that, I realized that when my wife came to me with her emotions, I just naturally, because since I was 19 years old, every time somebody brings me a problem, they want me to fix it. And so I'm trying to fix it.

And he says, she doesn't want you to do that. She wants you to go down in the well with her. And I'm like, oh, no, I'm not going down the well with her. I'm trying to get her up out of that well. No, no, she wants you to feel what she feels. Her feelings are real and stuff like that. And so through a process, so that's one of my deep wounds is realizing I hurt some of my family members.

I had to go back, especially the more artistic they were because they live out of their feelings, that I realized that I'd hurt them because of my personality because I just assumed everybody's like me, right? And they're not. And so that deep wound of realizing that she didn't want me to fix it. So how can I let people trust me with their emotions? Am I a safe place?

For people to come with their emotions.

Yeah, yeah, but you know me in the later years there. In the earlier years, and so that's a wound. So anyway.

Yeah, I do.

Yeah. Power dynamics are real. You know, even though you don't feel them or you want to, people know, oh, you have a lot of money or you've done these kinds of things. So they kind of feel that. You don't feel that toward yourself, but it's there.

So for me, I've realized that if I can just let my voice come last as best I can, you know, so that, because once somebody, the leader says something, then it almost sets the pace of the room and stuff like that. And there's times to do that. But when you're trying to collaborate, which a lot of what I'm trying to do now is leverage giving and collaborate, that's transformational unifier.

Then if I don't watch, if I speak too early, then I've kind of killed new ideas. So I usually try to be the last one to speak as best I can so that I know that I'm hearing real thoughts and then honoring those thoughts again before – I would not have understood the emotions and all those kind of things.

Yes, emotions sometimes can get out of control, of course, and sometimes you need to work on that. But to understand what's happening behind that, there's something behind that emotion. So how do you get that? But I think probably one of the things I've tried to learn over time is just be real slow about speaking.

Because sometimes you've got ideas, you want to share them, and you want to put them out there. But I realize that I kill other people's ideas.

Yeah, and there's pros and cons to it. There's pros because, wow, better ideas come up and you get to go through that. And sometimes things happen and you have to realize you've got to come back and pull that back in because now we've gotten off mission or wherever we're trying to go and all that stuff. So there's both sides of that, but yeah. There's pros and cons to every level.

Yeah, I guess my morning routine would be where I start. I mean, I always want to start with some of these gateways of intimacy. And there's three verses I pray every morning before I read the Bible.

The importance of people, getting the right people. And then when you're 19, you're just looking for somebody who comes in the door, and then you get a little more discerning. How do you find the right people? Obviously, it's easy to find people your age. When you're 19, you wind up hiring people not too far from your age. Well, sometimes that works, sometimes it didn't.

God's word would be obviously prayer, wounds, fear. There's been times that I've had fear, but then I've learned to get closer to the Lord. Nature has been one of them. Believing that God exists.

Bible tells us you'll get closer. I just found verse that talked about. So there's 31 different ways to do that. And so, so obviously I'm trying to get two or three of them in the morning. Right. And then used to, I'm a very left brain person. So I don't get a lot of music in my life, but I realized that songs at different times. So every morning now I just buy an album.

I just listen to 10 songs every year at a, On January 1st, I give my kids the songs of the year. So last year there was 12. I give them an Apple guard. I don't humor myself. They go download the 12 songs I give them. They do it to something else. Fair enough. But they're just songs that for some reason that day just spoke deeply to me. But I've just given myself the opportunity.

And then I do things physically. I'm a runner. And so I enjoy going to spend about 30 minutes just running on a day because I feel like, you know, that I want to take care of my spirit, my mind, and my body. Mm-hmm. And so that's part of my lifelong learning. That's why I want to keep my mind challenged, my body. So those are the ways that I start my day.

One of them is you versus getting ready to download the one billionth device coming up this year. So that gets me super, super excited. We're probably going to.

Yeah, yeah. And I got to drive by and saw you got a new building for you version. So I just know it's growing and God's been blessing that. And then I've been excited about The Chosen. I think The Chosen, incredible television series because my passion for languages, we're going to help them get into 600 languages. 95% of the world speaks the top 600 languages.

So then how do I attract somebody with more maturity, more experience than I had? Mm-hmm.

So there's a couple of things that I'm working on right now outside of Bible translation, which I've been doing and will continue to do for years. So those are some of the most exciting things going on right now.

Yeah. And as you said, I'm a person of faith. That's obviously very obvious. But I believe God created us all with a purpose and a plan or what I call an identity. And that's why I pushed in. That's just even the last year. What's my identity? What am I going to do? There's some things about Craig Groeschel I love. I wish I could be like you in this and that. And I realized, you know what?

I don't need to be you. God didn't make me to be Craig Groeschel. I need you to be the best Groeschel possible. I need to be the best Mark Green possible. So don't compare yourself to others. Go in and find in your spirit, what is it that you were created? You have a purpose. And we all lose when you don't live your purpose out. And we try to be somebody else, we lose too. So go back in.

How do you find out who you're made to be? And some of it's your natural giftings, your bents, all that stuff. It takes time. It takes talking to others. I have six adventure partners. I ask them, do you think I'm a transformational unifier? Does this resonate with you? And so they were able to help me process, get with others. Who am I? Where does God naturally use me?

And forget trying to be Craig Groeschel. Don't try to be Mark Green. Please don't try to be Mark Green. Be who you are because we all lose if you don't be the best identity that you should be.

About 20 years ago, I was getting it over my head. So I wanted to get – actually, I had seven at that time. One passed through COVID. So for the last 20 years, these guys come along. They're kind of like my – if you want to call them a board, my accountability group. But these are the guys that I hold myself accountable. And so when life gets upside down, it gets crazy –

You know, these seven guys I can call, one's a pastor, one's business, one's my neighbor, some are out of town. So they've all got variety. A couple of them think I'm the greatest thing ever. I got a couple who prune me every single time, right? So you need guys who kind of cheer you on and you need guys who kind of prune you.

And so, but I just call them my adventure partners because I think life is an adventure. It's uncomfortable, you get wounded, but you can see God provide if you go on that adventure.

Well, in the end, you have to empower them, I think, and stuff like that. So they have to believe that. So you're looking for people. You find out they've got skills, they've got competency. the things that you're looking for, and you say, hey, come on, let's take a risk together. So you have to convince them why they wanted to work in retail. Maybe they had retail experience in other places.

Maybe they had a bad experience, whatever. But I learned early on, if I didn't empower them, it wasn't too hard, though, when you're 19, right? Because most everybody has more experience than you do. And so the good news, it was easy for me to empower others because I needed to learn from them. And I did learn a lot from my dad. I don't even want to honor that. I got to work under him.

I got to saw him work. He had been in retail all of his life. He worked in high school years in retail. So I just learned a lot about people, how to take care of people. Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say early mistakes that I learned was sometimes I knew that I didn't have the right person, but I kept just hoping it would work out, making that hard decision to sell somebody a different career. So I would say early on, I did not let people go as early as I should have, even though I knew I'd hired wrong because I was learning how to hire.

So obviously, my skills weren't too good at doing that in the beginning. And so that would be one early lesson, again, that I learned.

And so that's where I made my mistake. So yes, I hired some really good people, thank goodness, but I hired some that weren't. And again, I just think, oh, they'll get better. I'll try. Or again, just the disappointment of having to tell them that they don't have a job because you hired them, you brought them on. So you feel that sense of obligation. But I learned...

through the process that actually it's a double negative. One, I'm hiring somebody that I don't need, is not able to do the job. And two, they don't, they're not getting ready to go to their next opportunity. So I realize, you know, sometimes letting people go to their next opportunity actually is a favor both to myself, right, as well as to them.

For me, what I needed really, I think, was learning. I had to go out and really learn a lot. So I didn't know the best-selling books. I didn't know a lot of stuff. And that's back before we had computers. So I had Microfish. So I'm getting Microfish in.

I'm going down the library, just working really hard to understand the industries I was getting into, which was the Christian industry and the office supplies. Because again, I came in with no information on either one of them. Outside, I had a... Kirkbride Bible, maybe, you know, Thompson chain Bible at that time. So I think working hard was part of that and just being a lifelong learner.

I always want to learn. I've always been a lifelong learner. And so I just feel like jumping in and learning about that and, uh, and making some mistakes. And, uh, like I say, some of the mistakes I made, I held on too long with employees, others, I was easier for me to move on and said, well, that doesn't work. Let's, let's move on.

Early on for the business, I would go to other Christian bookstores and find out where the best Christian bookstores are. I just called my reps. Hey, you sell books. Who's the best in the country? Okay, I'm flying all over this country just going and looking and learning.

And it was huge for me because sometimes your brain is a certain size, but I wanted to go stretch my brain, see something, see the best. And so that's what helped me as far as the Mardell stores.

Yeah, again, it's tapping into other people, whether it's through their books. A lot of times it's through books because I don't know people and all that stuff. I listen to the Greg Groeschel Leadership Podcast. And so even through COVID, there was a phenomenal podcast you had right in the middle of it. I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do now?

I mean, if you went to leadership, it was right in the middle of COVID. And you had a podcast that came out that spoke very deeply to me. And so it's just listening to others, picking it up. And sometimes you get from younger people because now – The world has changed. I didn't grow up in the digital world, so I'm learning from them.

All right. When I read a book, I highlight it, and then I go back and I mark my favorite quotes. And then my executive assistant takes my favorite quotes of a book, so I'll type them up and make five copies of them and put them in a binder. And then when my four kids, I have four children, they're all married now, they got 13 binders of over 1,000 books that I've read and my favorite quotes.

Now, I don't humor myself that they've read them, but maybe when I die someday, they'll go back and look and say, oh, there's the years he was involved with this or that. Because you can see – because a lot of times I do like to learn. I learn easier probably by books and that way than people because I'm more of an introvert. But I love to learn from people too.

But they'll see that where I learned a lot in life was reading other people's books.

Yeah. Just today, earlier, I was talking to a guy, and we got into a conversation, and I said, oh, I'll send you my favorite quotes. Then I'll say, hey, if you want to read the book, fine, but if not, at least get the favorite quotes. But yeah, they come back to me, and so I've learned so much from other people.

Yeah, I guess it goes back to another weakness because my weakness on reading books is I wish I could remember what I read. And that's why I get the quotes and go back to them. So when I meet people for the first time, usually I'll document when we met them, what the occasion was, and maybe two or three facts about them. They've been married for 30 years. They got three kids or whatever.

And so, yeah, I've done that on hundreds of people. And so I can... But I can't remember them. So my brain, I have to keep my phone with me because if I don't have my phone with me, I've lost my brain. But it just helps me to remember, to go back. But there's other people who have photographic memory. I don't have that. So I know I don't. So I'm never going to. I can't practice my way to that.

So I overcome my weakness by trying to document things.

What's the motivation? Yeah, I think it's honoring to people. And I've learned that friendships are one of the greatest gifts that God gives us. And so how do I be a good friend to know something about you to be able to remember that? Now, I wish I could remember it on my own, and so I don't. But I think a trusted friendship is what I say is one of the greatest gifts God gives us.

So I want to be a trusted friend.

Yeah, I guess early on, another lesson you learn is that when you burn bridges, it lasts for a long, long time. So then I learned, even I've had situations that didn't work out well. I mean, it was tough, but I've learned never to burn that bridge, you know, to still keep half the bridge up. So I want to keep half the bridge up. You may never come back, but how do you do that?