Selling Knives and Changing Lives with Pastor and Entrepreneur Scot Anderson

Audio Transcription

On today’s show, pastor Scot Anderson of living word church shares why your Iq doesn’t necessarily determine the level of success that you will achieve while you cannot win, until you decide to stop being a victim and how he’s able to cope. Pastor one of the largest churches in Arizona I’m talking about for campus church called living word church while also running simultaneously a successful small business, all this and much, much more.

Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Today’s show, we have a very special guest, a man by the name of pastor Scot Anderson. He is the pastor of a pastor of living word church, which he leads along with his wife Holly Anderson and pastors Jason and Kelly Anderson. Uh, I first encountered pastor Scot Anderson in the year 2006 chip. And I was, uh, my company DJ connection was providing sound equipment for a speaking event in Dallas, I believe, maybe Anatole hotel somewhere. I don’t remember what it was. Maybe it was tyler, Texas. It was somewhere in Texas and I saw this guy speak and I thought to myself, oh, that’s good. And then I saw him speak somewhere like, oh, that’s really, that’s even better. And then I’m like, I’m my, my pen is running out of ink here. I’m taking notes everywhere. I was like, I like a modern scribe taking notes because his brain was giving us so many knowledge bombs per capita fire hose fire hose of knowledge and so now we have caught. We’ve caught the Unicorn. Pastor Scott, how are you sir?

I am doing amazing. How are y’all doing today?

Well, I’m honored to have you on this show. I know you have 4,500 people who attend your campuses, so you probably have a lot going on and I thank you for taking an hour out of your time. You guys are. You guys are a busy, busy folks. So can you share with the listeners out there and that they have a little girl, a little look into your background. When did you start living word church in the process of building such a great church?

Well, my parents started it in 1986 and uh, I graduated from college in about 93 came on and me and my brother both basically ran the church so my parents could just speak and, and focus on teaching. And then about five years ago, uh, the torch was passed. And so now I’ve been the lead pastor for five years and I’ve made, my brother had built a campus, a couple campuses during that time ourselves and had a couple of our own services we’re doing, but we took it all over five years ago.

What was your childhood like being raised in a family where you had to pick a family and ministry? What was that like growing up? Were you, uh, how would you describe that?

Which we started off broke. Um, when my parents got. Say we come from generations of very, very, very poor people. My mom comes from a very broken home with use everything and uh, you know, they got saved and God began to work in their life and you know, I like to say we went from glory to glory to glory. I mean in license got better every year. And then what we got our, we moved out to Arizona and our little trailer man, I was nice and then we got our house and you know, 900 square feet and now we’re living. Now we’re like, and then we got 1200 square foot house and there are 2000 and you can just see that my parents were growing in the Lord grown in their wisdom and great parents of course, who um, you know, they didn’t do the same thing generations before did they, you know, marriage was hard and it was worked, but they worked on it. And today they’re married 51 years.

Yeah.

That’s still in love with each other yet you don’t even wanna be around them. They just kiss. And then

this is where I want to focus on today’s show. We have so many things you could talk about pastor Anderson, but Scot Anderson, love, I love how you talk about renewing your mindset or changing your mindset, becoming intentional about this new mindset. And that’s really where I want to focus today. Can you talk to us from your book you wrote, financial success has nothing to do with a person’s Iq or with the person’s gifts and talents. What do you, what do you mean by that?

I think that we think that the smarter you are, the more successful you come to find out, uh, when they, when they went through and they were doing all the surveys and all the, all the studies on it, and it had nothing to do with how smart somebody was as nothing to do with, uh, where they started off from background had to do with social economics, a male female. Um, the one thing that they did find out that it was your ability to solve problems and it was your ability to take risks. And it’s called the corridor of principals. And I’m a millionaire habits in 21 days. Um, they, they, they researched all of these people that graduated from this, uh, this, uh, college and to find out who went from the business school to find out who you know, went on to not just be average, but to go on and be highly successful and they found out the only difference between those that were average and those that went on to be highly successful or the ones that stepped out and took a risk and they came up with the court or principle, which means this, as I out opportunities in this corridor of stepping out against the present itself to me, things I never would have saw had I not stepped out.

So many people are sitting around there waiting for, well, you know, when I have the money, I’ll start a business or what I have this and when I have the. And so they’re waiting for all these things to present itself. But what they find out is as you begin to step out, everything begins to present itself to you as you’re stepping out. My daddy always said, you can’t steer a bike that’s not moving. You got to get moving. Too many Christians are sitting around waiting for God to drop Jericho in their lap, but God says, no, you’re going to do do some laps in order to get Jericho, we’re going to have to do some stepping and I don’t know how many labs are going to be one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. But you have to be willing to be that person that’s willing to step out. You read that. Nine out of 10 businesses fail and the average mine goes, well, why would I start a business? But a, somebody who is wealth minded goes, you may not only have to start 10 businesses to become successful. Well, that’s not bad because it doesn’t matter that the first business, second business failed the third business day. Here’s the fact that temp business sword

let out, you know, I started 15 businesses and I’ve had two very successful, but I had a toy company and now my knife company is very successful. Um, and so yeah, I, I, it took me 15.

What’s the one that’s doing very well? The most recent one for you? That’s doing well.

That’s okay, Raven, crest tactical. Um, and so that’s my knife company and we started about seven years ago in my garage and uh, now we’re all, you know, we’re one of the biggest knife in the OTF or wishes out the front. And so we’re about, I think we’re number three right now in otf knives. So we of course, if you, if you search out OTF knives work number one, we’re on the first page of Google and um, yeah, that’s, that’s the company I took everything that I knew what I put it into that one and it really exploded fast.

I wanted to do was I wanted to argue with a pastor Scot here, but yesterday you can’t read, you can’t respond for 60 seconds. Okay. So you take it because there’s so many out there now that the devil needs an advocate, but I’m going to give it a whirl here. Chop. So here we go. Here we go. Ready? Just because the Abraham Lincoln didn’t have a degree or the guy who started bank of America, a PG and e didn’t have a degree or Andrew Carnegie who started the steel industry didn’t have a degree or just because Benjamin Franklin didn’t have a degree or Bill Gates didn’t have a degree who created modern software. Just because bill, Bill Gates, I mentioned him without Steve. John Chow, no degree debbi fields, fields, cookies. No, no degree. Just because Dave Thomas didn’t have a degree and just because Frank Lloyd Wright didn’t have a degree just because mark Zuckerberg didn’t have a degree and just because Henry Ford who changed the automotive industry didn’t a degree in in just because John d Rockefeller didn’t have a degree in change the oil industry. Just because Larry Ellison didn’t have a degree in. Just because Milton Hershey didn’t have a degree in Michael doubt. It doesn’t mean you’re right. You still have to have a ton of intelligence to start a successful company and you have to have a ton of degrees.

Feel free to argue.

A lot of people don’t know that. I think a lot of people don’t know that and so they end up and what happens is is college is an industry and so the people feel like once I get the degree, now all of these opportunities will present, so I want you to. I want to go back to what you said. You said you have to take action to enter the corridor where the opportunities present themselves. I think in clay stairs you see this and I’m going to get your take on this fbs, Scot, you see people taking the wrong action, so they go, oh, it’s a result of this podcast. I needed to get my Mba. That was about the right kind of actions we need to take to enter this corridor that you speak of.

I believe that starting a business, the action, and I believe that I talk about different levels of business. I think one of the big problems people have is they try to start what I would say a level for business, so they sell, therefore, okay, House bill all the money out and they go start a restaurant. To me that’s a. that’s a level four business and those businesses go under all the time. What you do is you start at a level one business. So let’s say you’re. You have a chimney chango recipe. That’s just amazing and so you know, you’re like, all right, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna add because what happens is, is I started before I don’t have the wisdom and the understanding to back up that business. I have to grow with my business so I have to start small. I started little timmy Chaga business. Maybe I’m going to sell it at the kids’ sporting events. I look around at Pop Warner football and I get myself a little table. I’m selling my chimney is their thing. I find out what the good price is. I find out how to get a negotiate better deals on the produce and on the tortillas and everything that I need and I learned how to work it and maybe after a year I’d taken that money and now I’m ready to open another one.

Cool. I’m going to one and maybe then I, I buy a cart, one of those $5,000 car, so now I got a little bit bigger car, but I’m level two now level two, and then you go to level three. You see that you grow a business with you. So I started my knife company out of my garage and uh, off we go, I’m putting together build them, we’re going to gun shows around doing a local, kind of get the word out. And so my business grew to the point now that we have what, 12 employees and uh, we got, I don’t even know how many sales people all over America right now selling my knives.

I’d like for you to share with your background and really the age at which you grasped and you understood what he’s saying now. Can you explain with him you are your background and when you became an entrepreneur? Yeah. Yeah.

Scot Anderson. Hi, this is clay stairs is very nice to meet you sir. And um, yeah, I uh, grew up in a ministry family as well. My Mom and dad, dawn and Shirley stairs started shepherds fold ranch, which is a summer camp and retreat center just north of Tulsa back in 1972. So, uh, you know, so I grew up in a mobile home 13 years growing up in a mobile home out in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, exactly. And uh, and, and, and, and so I learned early on how to ask for money. You know, I learned that if I needed more money, you ask for it. Hey man, you got exactly, exactly. If we needed more. And I even saw that in the business world because I was immersed in the business world of the ministry and if we needed more money, you asked for time and got a.

and then after graduating from school, I became a school teacher and I was a public school teacher for 15 years. Loved it. Had a great time doing it. But once again, was immersed in that culture as far as if you needed more money while you have to get a grant, you have to go out and you gotta come, you gotTa go after the school board and say, give us more money, give us more money. And for some reason those efforts just weren’t working at age 47. Yeah. Yeah. So then I came back and ran the. I actually ran my parents’ company for 10 years, but I was 47 years old Scott before I began to learn these principles of how to actually build and grow a business and how to actually make money. What kept you from making that jump? Clay stairs? Why did it take you to age 47 to get the concepts that Scott teaches? Well, again, I think going back to Scott, your point, I think my mindset was very limited in my belief system. My Bs was, my bs meter was very high and I didn’t know. I never did feel like wealth and success was available to me. Scott, you’ve written in your book, you wrote whatever you believe with conviction, your mind will move heaven and earth to make true. How do you fix your mindset? If you believe with conviction that you don’t have what it takes, how do you, how do you fix that

to the future and what that. When you look at that for the Greek and Hebrew, it really means to transpose your future over your past. And so we all have a recorder in our mind that plays and uh, you know, a problem comes in, a lot of people go up. There is another problem. I don’t know if we’re gonna make it past this one. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what to do. How come everything goes against me. This is the recorder that a lot of people I find is what plays to their mind. I feel I see a problem like, oh, praise God. You know, as James Talks about counting it all joy when you have a problem because it builds up your faith and get you to a place that you lack nothing. And so you have to get yourself rerecording. What does that come by?

Faith cometh by hearing and hearing the word of God, and so I believe in and taking scriptures. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I at that which is born of God will overcome the world. I’m blessed when I go in. I’m blessed when I grew up and you reprogram your thought process so that when things don’t go exactly the way that you want, what you immediately here is that voice in your head that said, hey, we can do this with overcome bigger things. This is no big deal. Manga. We got this with God and all of a sudden my faith begins to go forth and drive me to the future that I desire rather than the future that a lot of people limit themselves with because I was hearing what you were saying and you had a limited mindset. That’s what you find a lot of people. This is, you know, this is as high as I can go. I can. I talk to people. I don’t know if I could do a business. I don’t know if I could.

I don’t know.

Book. I don’t know, and you know, if you go off on what you told, because my English teacher literally set the, my parents and myself, he shouldn’t even go to college. Uh, the boy can’t write a, let’s just be honest,

will never get into school and you know, what? Seven more books and she’s written so they didn’t have it. I want to get, I want to throw in some secular, secular clients out there. So Tim Ferriss, who is a best selling author, silicone valley investor, best known for writing the four hour work week and having one of the world’s highest ranked podcast. I will say that we’re slightly ahead of time right now, but he is one of the world’s top rated podcasts right now. Chip, we’re number two on the itunes charts and Tim Ferriss is a huge entrepreneur, very successful. And he writes, you are the average of the five people you associate with the most, so do not underestimate the effects of your pessimistic, unambitious disorganized friends. If someone isn’t making you stronger, they’re making you weaker. And he goes on to explain that basically if you’re around people that are all not doing well, then the self talk and the out loud talk.

The overall conversation is always one of poverty. It’s always one of disorganization. It’s always one of dysfunction. And if you surround yourself with positive people, pastor Craig Rochelle, going back to Christian reference pastor Craig Rochelle, who we just had on yesterday, pastored the largest church in America, life church right now. He explained that neuroscience shows you actually are creating new neural networks in new parts of the brain. You’re beginning to retrain your brain. So it is a. Some could say a spiritual thing. Some could say it’s a physical thing. The point is, it’s a thing. You’ve got to retrain your brain to think differently. And you wrote in your book, you quoted into finial. Emonds, I believe it is the renowned theologian who wants Roddy says, habit is either the best of servants or the worst of masters. Why did you include that quote in your book?

Because it makes up most of your decisions, which is your habits, your habit of thinking, your habit of how you deal with problems, your habits of taking risks, your habits in relationships, and you don’t even realize it. You ever ended up. We’re in the process of moving right now. And in that process I drove to my old house without even thinking about it. It’s just, it’s just in you, you, your mind goes on cruise control, you’re trying to open the garage and you’re like, oh, what am I doing? That’s not my house anymore? And uh, the same thing, people wake up and they have the same bad attitude. They have the same way that they deal with their spouse the same way that they treat their money the same way they think about money and all of these things are shaping your future. And so you gotta reprogram.

And I love the whole nero of those ways because the more you think something, those, uh, those neuro connectors, they expand, they say almost a thousand times. But as you stopped thinking it, they begin to shrink. So if you have negative thinking, all you have to do is stop thinking negative, which is going to take about 21 days is what I say in my book. That’s how long it takes to force a new habit. After 21 days, just be conscious. Wake up in the morning, put it in front of me. Okay? I’m not going to think negative. Think positive. This is going to be a great day. Yeah, I can do this. I can handle this. Alright, I’m smart. I’m intelligent. I have whatever I put my hands to today is going to be prosperous. And you begin to force yourself to think that and before long you opened up those connectors and your mind naturally flows like water down to the ones that have the biggest openings.

Um, I like to say that you got two dogs and your mind, uh, you’ve got a positive dog and you get a negative dog. Whatever you feed the most is going to be the loudest. Most people are feeding the negative ones. So that’s the one that’s making all the noise. But the positive dog never gets any food. And so if I can just switch it around and feed the positive dog for 21 days, all of a sudden the loudest voice I hear in my head is, yeah, you can do this. Yeah, he can handle this. Yeah, this is gonna be good. Everything’s gonna. Turn out great. And that is the voice that shaping your future.

You’ve seen this. But in our office it’s not everyday, but occasionally once a month, once every few months during certain seasons, the power will go out in a big thunderstorm in Scott, it’s about 20,000 square foot facility there. There’s lots of employees in the power will go out, you know during the big tornadoes are coming through are stormy weather and the Oklahoma. It’s a big booming thunder and the power will go up and shove. You’ve seen this, but I had to train myself to do this. But whenever the power goes out, I know that you gained strength through struggle and that setbacks are setups. So you’ll always see me go. Yes, true. Literally there’s like 50 big screens that are all turned off at once. All the computers, 50 employees or immediately without thinking that they can’t do anything and I’ll just go minimum of A. Does the client meetings in the office.

It’s hilarious though because people are in the building. They don’t know what we’re doing, but there’s like if I say yes, jumper, I’ll go, yes. What happens next? Everybody yells yes. And pretty soon we’re saying like td jakes. Yes, yes, yes. You guys are talking about here. So it just, it’s a thing where you. I mean I but I used to get upset by those things come off, but I had to retrain myself. And one thing that you wrote about, you wrote your book. I didn’t agree with it, so I highlighted it. I went home, I sat up, I thought about it and I did not agree with it and I wrestled with it in my mind for probably too long, I’d say about a week. I wrestled with this a, I didn’t go on social media to argue with you. I didn’t send you an email and argue with you.

Never even told you I was upset about it, but this is what I read and now I get it, but at the time I was like, this doesn’t make any sense. You said if it isn’t my fault, if it is the job, the spouse, the economy, there’s no reason to get better. No reason to change. And I agreed with you on the job and the economy part, but spouse part. I’ve been married 17 years and I noticed that every 30 days I make my wife crazy and I can say honestly, our marriage is so much better now than we first got married. I mean it’s getting better every year, but I used to want to like figure it out what she could do better and never look at like I’m the problem. But now I’ve trained my brain a time. She’s upset. I go, what did you do to make myself right? Uh, can you talk to me about this, this, this mindset that if it, if it isn’t my fault, if it is the job, the spouse, the economy, there’s no reason to get better. No reason to change.

I believe it’s law number one in my book and it all starts with that because if it’s not my fault, then there’s nothing to change, which means that everything in the world, then I just have to take whatever the world offers me and uh, it’s Kinda like being in a river and the stream was taking you down and yeah, I know it’s moving you down, but if you just sit in there and just go, well, wherever I ended up, I ended up, no, I’m the guy that’s going to be. I’m to be swimming to the side. I’m going to be grabbing a log and doing whatever I can. So for many people, they’re driving through life and life is in the driver’s seat, in the passenger seat and they’re headed for a cliff. They’re headed for a tree. They’re headed for something that’s not where I want to be.

I want to be in the driver’s seat. And many people need to just scoot on over and go, all right, I got this. You know, uh, I had a bad childhood. I get it, but you know what, that’s not going to affect my future. I still can do these things, and as you begin to take accountability for your life, your subconscious, because they go, oh, we need to change, but as long as it’s not your fault, then your subconscious goes, well, there’s nothing we could do. We just got to accept whatever life offers us. Whatever life throws our way is what we’re going to have to accept, and life is very stingy. So you have to go take life. How do I take life? I go, Hey, you know what? If I want to be wealthy, then I’m going to have to read some books.

I’m going to have to get some wisdom in the. I’m going to have to learn to start a business or write a book or buy some Land Bison at best. I’m going to have to learn because there’s millions of ways to make money everyday. I’m meeting people that made a ton of money and some of the weirdest ways. And I’m like, wow, that’s cool. Okay. There’s a lot of ways in which, uh, you can attain great wealth. But I just sitting back and going, well, let’s see what happens is not one them. I got to take accountability for my life. And same thing for barriers. You have to change the one thing, you have the power to change. You cannot change your spouse. You can change a job if we can change jobs, but you can’t change your boss. You can’t change the economy. You can’t change. But I can’t change me. I can change how I look at my job, I can change how I act in my job, I can change my marriage, I can change my attitude and my nerves. I can change about how I talk about my spouse. I can say I. There’s a lot of things that I can change, which then ends up changing my life.

Yeah. I had a question for you. I’m pastor Scot Anderson. We’re talking a lot about you’ve taken action and solving problems and changing your mindset and I wanted to get your take on how important is it to set big goals in your life and then use those goals. Not just set them, but actually use them daily as kind of the rudder to your life shift to make sure you don’t drift away and you’re actually going in the right direction.

Oh, that’s so good. And I think, I think that we limit ourselves. So, so I, I believe in having, you know, of course, big, limitless gods in which, you know, I can’t do on my own, on my own. And then of course you have your daily goals, your goals. I think that I want to accomplish this year, this month, this day, and where there is no vision, dreams, parish, another translation of that is whether you like parameters and boundaries. So until I get a vision, um, I have really. My life just seems to go whatever direction it wants to go, but as soon as they have a vision, boundaries and parameters seem to spring up. And it forces me, my, my belief system. You had to force me towards my vision. Great example. A lot of people who ended up, you know, I’ve ever bought their first house, you know, they get to that place where they’re like, oh, we want to get a new house, and they go down, they find out they’re going to come up with let’s say $5,000 down payment. Now these are people who up until 23 years of their life, 28 years of the life, they have $183 in the bank, but in the next six months they find a way to cut the corner and they find a way to to cut back. They find a way to save the work extra.

Yes.

Six months, they have 5,000, $200 in the bank. The vision for the parameters that they needed in order to produce what the vision was. So we gotta we gotta have the vision. I like to say it, we, we finished before we start, you have to finish things, which means what? That already see it done. Once I see something done, then I just have to fill in all of the blanks on there. We do it all the time, but just not when it comes to business, when it comes to life, but of money. If you want to go on a trip, you don’t just get in the car and go, all right, we’re going to go. Wherever it goes,

she’d freak out. I have a question for you and your wife. I’m sorry to cut you off. I just ended the skype cut out there for a second. Know No, no. Done this a ministry together for a long time and there’s somebody out there that’s thinking right now they’re going, it must be awesome

being a pastor. Chop you. Just get up there one day a week and just talk about how just beloved out people always look at him, but I’m out there working, man. Now I want to talk about the. I want to get into the trenches because I actually work with a lot of pastors. Our organization helps grow a lot of churches from a marketing perspective and you have 4,500 people that attended. I’m sure you have the best people in the world and you never ever get hate on social media. You’ve never ever said something that people feel logically disagreed with. You’ve never had a bad unit. No comment. Other churches, they’ve other nation, so what advice would you have? Perfect. What advice would you have for the other pastors than the other churches? The ones out there, I’m sure not yours where they have negative feedback because they’re going, I’m trying to be positive man, but that was. It was easier to be positive in the nineties when I didn’t have social media, but now I’m getting negative comments daily. I’m getting pelted with 85 interruptions a day. What advice would you have for the business owners? Are Pastors out there who are dealing with negative hate on social media?

I think it works the same way in both. I mean it literally was meeting today with social media can be mean and you know, people are haters. They don’t like themselves, so they just want to hate and I think it’s a. I stay away from them. It just be the best I can and preach the best message and I love people and I love my enemies and I have found that responding to the, to the hate doesn’t do any good. It just escalates. I just love this. Love seems to always win. And you know, Joel Olsteen, who’s got one of the largest churches, google him, it’s a lot of people hate him and I’m like, hey joe, I got every day’s a Friday with Joel, but people hate. And you know what? You have to remind yourself that Jesus was hated and he had no sin. He did. He taught right. He healed people. He did a lot of good things, and so Jesus was hated so much that they crucified him right then and people aren’t gonna like me. And if people, if everybody likes you, you ain’t doing something right.

There you go. You know what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna break down. I had audio chop. What they actually, how they decided to kill Jesus. These guys got together and thought so he does everything right. So saving people. You see people who spend less, so why don’t we kill him, right? Yeah. I mean, that’s what Martin Luther King Jr there like. So he’s trying to end. It sounded like from Brooklyn without the Patriots are. We really loved the Patriots. A lot of us. We got to kill them. No, but I think a lot of people though, it’s like they love to hate. So I’m gonna get to the Joel Olsteen thing. You mentioned this. Um, my attorney West Carter, his law firm, winters and King has represented a brother Osteen in the past. And this is the hate that I get in Tulsa, Oklahoma about Joel osteen. This is what I hear, you know, he has the globe.

When you tune in to the Joel Olsteen show, you know, to the sermons, he’ll say, hey, everybody welcome. And there’s the globe. He, there’s no cross there. And I’ve heard him explain to oprah or, or it was on an interview where he explained that, you know, it, it more people will tune in if they don’t immediately see a cross in their face. And he always starts with a funny joke and people will rip his jokes and then he always ends with a call to find a good local church. But how, I mean, how do you win when somebody writes on your social media and they write just like they do with Joel osteen. I don’t like this sermon. Pastor Scott does not know what he’s talking about. This guy’s not a nut. Do you ever respond at all? Do you respond at all or what do you do?

This is sound weird because I’m sure I get it. I think my social media team, if it’s on the church website, I think they, uh, maybe take those off. Uh, I never get it on my personal stuff. I can’t imagine that. Not that I’m not, but I do see like, you know, we have a few people right now that are on their social media and you know, they were a big part of the church. They left the church and they’re saying thing without naming names, obviously they’re talking about me. Uh, you know what I’m saying? And so you see that, but I haven’t seen my name so I haven’t had to cross that bridge, but I think that if it does show, it’s just, you know, we can do that if you want to know. We do have facebook, a bad reviews here and there that are on there. Um, but most of them are good.

Do you do it, take your joy for even 10 seconds. Reason I’m asking is because psychology today says the average American is interrupted 85 times a day on social media and they’re saying that the average American is actually becoming depressed as a result of reading what other people are saying about them on social media. The comparison, the jealousy, the how. How long do you let somebody upset you? Thirty seconds. Never at all. I mean, what, what do you, when you get a negative thing, do you immediately. I love this person.

I believe in being unacceptable. So I very hard to be very honest. If it lasts a few seconds, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not okay with that because people can’t. And I know who I am. I’m trying to be better. I know I had my mistakes. I know, think that I’m not, you know, I know, I know. I get it. And uh, but you know what I’m pressing forward. I forget those things behind them. Like Paul Paul who says, you know what, I have wronged. No Man, well all you have, you killed people. But, so I think that it’s just having that mindset that, um, people, once again, a lot of accountability we talked to earlier, I have control over my emotions that I have control about what I let in and I choose only to let the positive in. I choose to only let myself talk positive about myself.

Um, it’s interesting how many people, you know, they, they walked throughout the day and the person they spend the most time with themselves is the one that is putting them down. Or if I have to hang out with myself, I might as well enjoy myself. And I enjoyed being encouraging. I enjoy being lifted up. And so, um, I, that’s the life that I live and I feel like it’s a happy, enjoyable, exciting life. And so if somebody says something negative, I just go, you know, people, people, we love people, you know. What do you do?

You wrote in your book, You wrote in your book, you said, I don’t get anything. If you don’t get anything else out of this chapter do. You said, if you don’t get anything else out of this chapter, let it be that circumstances have no control over your happiness. Is there somebody out there who is adding circumstances dictate their happiness? Preach the good news. Encourage somebody out there if they’re just letting circumstances, uh, like my dad died of als two years ago, not a good circumstance, but years ago, I probably would have dwelled on it and probably not have been able to get over it, you know, uh, but it didn’t really affect but courage. Somebody out there who’s at the bottom right now who just, they’re letting circumstances control their happiness.

Your life will begin to go up when you begin to realize that emotions don’t have the power over me, but I have the power over my emotions and that circumstances also that we’re going to have. Everybody has stuff that happened in the day. We all have stuff and I think the sometimes the world system, whatever you want to call it, makes us think that, especially on social media, you know, you see somebody, you know the picture of the family, all the kids are smiling and everybody’s happy and loving the hug and you’re like, well, how come I can’t have that? Well, you don’t get to see five seconds earlier where the mom’s like, if you guys don’t shut up and take it,

I’m going to kill somebody.

You don’t see everything and you know, and then you’ve got the couple on there. Every time they take a picture, they’re holding hands and they’re having a little picnic. You’re like, well, how come my husband doesn’t give me a picnic? Well, because I didn’t do it either.

Their licenses happy, blissful. We never fight type of things. And so we live in this world of comparison and I’m comparing my own. My inconsistency is in the negative in my life with your perfect one second moment, and that’s not a good comparison, but that was just don’t get into that comparison. Just focus on me and realizing that you know what, there’s going to be some, some things that happened that aren’t going to go exactly the way that I want them today. That’s all right. You don’t have power over my joy and you don’t have power with my attitude. My attitude begins to overcome my circumstances rather than my circumstances overcome my attitude, and it goes back to the beginning of retraining that belief system inside of you where you really do believe that it doesn’t. You’re like Paul in the Bible who Paul says, you know what?

I’m happy when I’m shipwrecked. I’m happy when I’m. When I’m not shift. I’m happy when I’m in jail, I’m happy when I’m in jail, I’m happy when I’m saving lives. Right? And he’s like, and if I die, I’ll be happy and if I don’t die, good. I got more things to do here on earth. And so the debt and the devil, the world, everything goes okay. Well, we can’t affect him no matter what happens. I mean, he’s in jail. He’s had. He’s like, great, I can write. He’s not in jail. He’s out saving the world. He ship wreck, he’s. And so that has to be our mindset. No matter what happens. I have a story of one of my books were wake up in the morning, the has three foot of water in it. And so, oh my gosh, I just put all the computers in the house on the floor.

I was cleaning up the counters, dealing with that and while we’re doing that, it’s real hot in the house and I’m trying to figure out why when the world’s going on. Well, there’s not coming on. So I called Arc guy come out, he comes out and uh, and so I’m dealing with all that. Then just I get an irs thing, some weird old thing in the mail. And so I’m like, oh my God, you know, and it’s like Saturday. So I’m like, what in the world’s going on with that? And then I got a cool photo. Raider of me. I’m also, the city of Mesa decided to take my picture and send it to me. And, but it’s later the dam talking to my mom and she’s like, so how’s your day? And I go, oh, it’s a great day. And she paused and she goes, well, it didn’t.

You basements was flooded, right? She goes and your AC. I go, yeah, I need a new units, like five grand. She’s like, uh, okay. You get the tax, namely, I know that’s the thing. She’s like, Eh, the photo? I go, yeah. Great. Said I’m going out with the kids in the family today and whatever. It’s still going to end up being a great day. I don’t let problems, little problems in my day effect the fact that I’m going to have a great day, so I have the annoying things that happen, but I still have a great day every single day of my life. And that’s a life worth living. And when you began to do that, you go to bed every night and it was another great day. Had some speed bumps, but it was a great day.

You’ve never coached a client a negative mindset. I certainly never have. I’ve heard rumors of clients, people that would say, somebody wrote a bad review about me on Google and I swear I’m going to find the Ip address in the head and I will show it to them on a slide. And you’re like, uh, is it, is it, is it legal to kill people in your city? I mean, we work with businesses all over the world and we see people honestly, and I have to coach you. That’s part of the coaching, has kind of let it flow, let it go. What question do you have a pastor Scott? Hot Tick? Yeah. I was going to see if we could get a little nuts and bolts here. Kinda kind of go behind the scenes. UEC Pastor Scott, we, I’ve known multiple and we’ve coached a lot of pastors and in a lot of times they have a hard time keeping their volunteers on task or holding them accountable. Do you have like a philosophy or do you guys kind of hold your volunteers accountable? Do you fire volunteer? Do you have a lead Pi? Have a guy named Joel with a lead pipe? Like, what’s your kind of philosophy on holding accountable and managing volunteers? This is good.

Uh, that is a really good one. And you know, it’s like 25 years of learning and growing, you know, because when I came onto the church, whatever, right, years ago, 25, 26 years ago, and I ran all the volunteers at the time and you know, the church was at 400 at the time and then we grew to where we are today and you know, how many volunteers we possibly have. So I went through the thing, you know, hey volunteers or late, hey, let’s, let’s blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I think that was kind of under the thinking that people don’t want to be great volunteers. But I think I’ve evolved into some people that are volunteering. They want to be great, they want to be good, they want to do better and they have things in their life and stuff. And our job is to inspire them. And if they showed up, we’re going to love on them. And, uh, you know, we’re going to try and just show them how to be great volunteers with our leadership. Um, you know, our head off our heritage reader or altar call a people that were training in the midst. And so if you show up, we’re happy you showed up. Good for you. You were late. That’s all right. Uh, you know, of course we’re going to deal with this. You know, you’re, you’re an usher and you wore a tank top.

We’re not going to have that used to be a good church. Let’s just say that. Let’s just say as an example, let’s say you have a praise and worship leader. Okay? There is a leader, a leader, and you’re paying them. Okay? There are leaders in there, and I know your churches would never happen, but other churches, and they’re supposed to be there at 9:00 for rehearsals because church starts at 10:30 or something like that. In this person is intentionally late, always by 20 minutes, 18 minutes. People are waiting on them. Every week there’s, there’s traffic, there’s an issue. They didn’t know. I forgot. There was a miscommunication. I’m so emotional, how do you handle people that are intentionally being on accountable and they’re late all the time and you’re paying them

and you’re paying them. You teach them and train them, but you know, there comes a point if you’re on staff, you know you’re supposed to do all things under the Lord end of it. If it hinders the gospel being preached in the church or it hinders our ability to touch lives, that’s a big deal. So we like to show them the big purpose when you’re late. This is how many lives that are affected, but ultimately it has the power to affect maybe somebody getting saved because the enemy is looking for anything they can. When a new person walks through those doors to put a wall up or a wedge up and so we can’t be that and we can’t allow that. So you know, we’ll have that discussion. If it doesn’t immediately changed and we’re just gonna have to, to move you. And I hate to remove. That’s a very, that’s a last last thing, but. Well, you know, maybe you’re gonna have to be a backup singer for awhile. You know, their life has consequences and if you can’t live up to the responsibility then then we’re going to have to move you to a place that has less responsibility until you can handle the responsibility.

I would like you to share this with. I know there’s. There’s a pastor out there listening as pastors I’ve talked to. I wouldn’t say hundreds at our conferences, but I could say dozens who’ve asked me this question, I want to get your take because you’re a multi-campus guy. They will say, I have a church of let’s say a thousand people in our building is debt free. This is very normal. A lot of pastors will be stuck at about 500 to a thousand people. They’re debt free and they want to open another campus in another town. They want to do that, but in order to do that, they’re going to either a, acquire some debt in the church can then make payments and pay it off over 10 years or be wait until they’re 74 and then when they’re 74, they can open up the second campus. What advice would you have out there as it relates to debt and growing a church or maybe maybe maybe more applicable nonprofit for people out there? Are you okay with some level of debt to open up another campus or do you believe it should be debt free? What is your take on that?

My friend? I believe there is good debt, bad debt, good debt is something that it’s an investment. So let’s say to, you know, you want to start up a campus in a storefront and you know you’re going to have to come out of pocket to be able to do it and it’s going to be $4,500 a month and you’re going to have to get chairs for that and hopefully in your lease she worked out a build out so you’re not going to have to pay for the build outs for four in there, but you’re still going to have to have sound equipment. You’re still going to have to have lighting. You’re going to have to have a stage built and have all that and you come up, you know, we’re gonna. We’re gonna need to be able to start this campus. Um, I think we started our, the campus for a little under $100,000.

So you’ve got to come out, you’re going to invest $100,000 a, then you get to look at, and it’s all about research, making sure that, okay, we believe if you believe in it, that it’s a good investment. You go out there and you start it, you take $100,000 worth of debt and it doesn’t take long before the money that’s coming in from the parishioners as you’re growing that campus more than covers that debt. That’s what we found with our campuses more than covers, uh, the debt that is. Because sometimes if you’re full on the campus, the only way you can grow is you got to add. That’s the only way you can grow. So you add another campus. Now add income. Yes, I added expense, but the income begins to grow faster and so good debt, bad debt. I don’t mind the debt. Of course, if you can raise the money is always the best churches. The one cool industry that can do that, the church can put it in front of people and say, Hey, here’s a goal in six months we want to start a campus, it’s going to take $100,000. So here we go and they run a campaign and you get 100 grand. So that’s not a bad way either. So I think it’s on a case by case. It’s hard to, you know, just blanket it,

you know, there’s somebody out there, you’ve met a fellow pastors, I’m sure it conferences or you’ve met your peers who would say that the debt is bad and maybe they have a biblical justification in their mind or an interpretation of what is the argument that people have against what, what, what’s the argument that some pastors have about against using any debt at all.

They have some scriptures. Don’t be a lender, you know, in some of these things that they kind of pull out from that culture back then and they try and pull it in here and I don’t know. What’s funny is those faster than they have a home loan. So you’re like, well, you know, which is um, you know, out there. So once again, I think taking bad debt, I don’t think God’s good for that. I don’t think, I don’t think I started when I say that. I mean that I don’t think that’s ever a good thing just to take that out so that you can buy a brand new car that’s going to depreciate 40 percent, uh, as you drive it off the lot. I think that’s bad debt. A good debt is an investment. So you’re investing in a campus that is going to grow, your church is going to grow the income.

And when I say income for those pastors out there, it just means more income. I have the more that I can do for the body of Christ. So to me, that’s what I would say is a good debt. You know, if it’s going to produce it. So there’s a difference between debt and investment, let’s, let’s categorize it that way. But if I have some money that I can use to invest, that’s great. If I use the money and I bury it like the one guy, then that’s not good. I got to take those talents and I got to use those talents to build what I’ve been given.

I want to get into your daily habits and routines. Pastor Craig, Rochelle was explained to us that every day he gets to church between 5:00 AM and 6:30 every single morning and he has the same routine every day. He’s got a flow that works for him. We’ve had A. I don’t even know how many. I mean everyone has their own routine. Five o’clock in the morning, he’s already winning. I mean some people I want to, I want to get because you’ve been able to sustain a level of success for a long time and so what I like to do on this show is getting into the habits and routines of ultra successful people and give the thrivers here, here’s proof of concept. So what is, what is your daily routine? Looks like maybe those first four hours of every day.

Get up in the morning. The first thing that I believe in is I believe in praise and worship. I believe that you always start with battle with praise and worship. I think it’s interesting that the Israelites would send the praise team out first. I couldn’t imagine a, our military center, some tambourines out, uh, you know, out before the

right. Get the dancers out there. Let’s go. Let’s go

hillsong that. There you go. So I do, I believe strongly in, um, and, and starting my day with, with praise and worship and with Thanksgiving prayer, I think it just opens up a whole lot and everyday of mine is different. But, um, because I do run a business, but let’s say, you know, you take Monday for instance as my study day, so, um, I would, you know, do my praise and worship time, uh, have a little, uh, make myself my juice

music or is it like a loud, is it quiet or do you, what are you doing with the music business?

Put It on my phone. I just put on my phone and then I, and so and normally I get it on my phone. I go out, I forgot this, I take and I get my wife for coffee everyday. She loves, she loves her starbucks. I don’t, I coffee but I drive to starbucks. I’m listening to praise and worship, appraise a praying, get bitter starbucks, come back home, give her a coffee and I’ll continue on that. And then on Monday all kind of open up and get my, get my sermon ready. I like to have my sermon at least pretty much done on Monday so that I can meditate it while I’m driving throughout the week. Uh, and so, you know, have a lunch meeting, a, a Monday afternoon with us, my brother and his wife, my wife, and then I’ll go back to studying and kind of get my sermon ready.

And then my son gets home about 3:30. We go work out five days a week, we’ll go work out and then we’ll do family time, dinner time with the family, hang out. We’re big about eating dinners together and a watched show together, play games together. And I mean, my wife will climb into bed and watch a show or two and kind of talk and share our day. And at the Monday Tuesdays we film our wake up TV show. Tuesday morning I do the same early routine as far as praise and worship. Get my wife, her coffee will do she wake up TV. Um, so we should all, all week episodes for that. I’ll meet with the staff, will do a big managers meeting and for with my son and rents and their teeth at night.

Intentional schedule though, right? You’ve designed a schedule. I mean it seems like you know what you’re going to do today. Tomorrow

I can tell you what I’m gonna do next Wednesday. I could probably tell you what I’m going to eat next Thursday.

Teaching moment to moment. Somebody out there. Every successful person that we have interviewed has an intentional schedule. Everyone who we’ve interviewed who is not successful, we’ve had a lot of people who call in because they have questions and they don’t. They just sorta react. Can you talk about the importance of having an intentional schedule?

I think it’s very important to know I want to know what I’m doing two weeks from now on a, on a, on a Friday. I like to know that. It doesn’t mean that I’m not flexible. I don’t know what kind of sway it, but for the most part I know where I’m going to eat. I know what I’m going to eat. I don’t know. I’m very. I know. I know what I’m going to wear next Sunday. I think that many people waste so much time, uh, you know, they, you’re in line at Mcdonald’s or like, you know, like you don’t know by now what you want from Mcdonald’s. We have some big problems in life. This is just order a number, pick another one,

need somebody out there is going to be,

they said a half an hour trying to figure out what they’re going to, where they spent, and they don’t realize that time is your most. What are your most valuable resources that you have? And so they, they waste so much time and people ask me, how do you run a church size? How do you run a business? That’s my business is a multi, multimillion dollar business. I have a huge church. I have five kids. How do you do all that? Because I don’t waste time. Every moment of my time is something that’s doing something. I don’t care if I’m in the shower, I’m thinking I’ll put my sermon together. I’m writing my next book. As I lay my head down on the pillow, I’m going through a, you know, either my phone or my next book that I’m always using my time. I don’t just listen to the radio in the car. I am a playing through my mind problems and meetings and things that I have to do. I think many people, you know, what are you thinking in like a. You can ask me that anytime. I already know what I’m thinking. I’m thinking something that’s going to bring success in the future.

I really liked this guy. I want to know more about them. What is the one book that you’ve written that you would recommend our listeners all go checkout or maybe a couple of books?

I think all my books are good. It’s weird. I like think like a billionaire millionaire habits and most people don’t know that I released a fiction book. And so that was one of my goals in life. It took me a decade of, you know, here and there and putting a book called Eden. And so I wrote a Harry Potter style fiction book for Christians. And so that’s just been released and uh, um, but those, as far as bettering your life. And my marriage book is epic. If you want to have a great marriage, I’m married for life is a step by steps here. How, and it’s all about getting in and out of fights in five minutes. I, I believe in that. Fights and arguments, people last for days and days and they don’t know, they just don’t know. No one ever taught them how to get out of the fight. And so this book teaches you how to get out in five minutes and not how to let you know, all the stupid fights that marriages have to get rid of all of those. And you have so much more time to be productive.

So pastor Scott out there, they’re curious about checking out your website. What’s the website you direct our listeners to go to?

The best thing to just go to the church, one living word online.com is great. Um, you can go to a Scot Anderson ministries that come also. That’s, that’s my personal one. And you can always find me on facebook and instagram is a. those are always good too.

We have final question from Eric and from clay stares. Final 60 seconds. Tough question. Clay stares. Tough question. Eric, Chop Chop. I’ll let you go first. Hard hitting question typing notes. I’ll just, I’ll be honest with you, clay, I was typing up notes, putting his wife page into a corner to hit something that to you. We’re coming back to you though through your notes and findings. Okay. I’ve got one because I have used this stat as well. You wrote in your book one time, one of your quotes, your self concept was formed between the time you were born until the age of 12. I remember hearing from George Barna, the research that the Barna Institute did, that they said that it was 12 and 13. The way you think by the time you’re 13 is the way you will think when you die. Oh, a little bit about that. That sounds pitiful because my brain isn’t even really fully formed until I’m 25. So I got a lot of jacked up thinking when I’m 13. How do I, how do I help me with this?

Got To get them.

There it is.

There’s a number of steps and things that you have to do to retrain their thinking. It is sad that by the age of 12 really, I’ve, I’ve had my, all my thinking is all set in place and now this is going to carry and direct the rest of my life. And so we got to do the Romans 12 to renew our minds. We’ve got to get an, a in a newness of our thinking, a new way that we think about money, the new way that we think about finances, the new way that we think about life. And uh, it comes, you know, a lot with just taking control of what you have control of. Once again, I have control over my thoughts, so why not control them and that the more I control them for 21 days, it becomes a habit. When I forced myself to have a positive outlook day after day, all throughout a day, it’s going to be hard at the beginning. But as I do it day after day and 21 days, it just becomes a habit and all of a sudden my habits just make me think positive. My habits just make me think different about money by habits make me think different. But my spouse,

you look ready now. You look good, you got the super hot would go back to you now.

Hey, that’s just got. So we were just talking about, you know, it sounds like you’ve got your schedule pretty much hammered out. That name is pretty routine based. My question for you is how do you handle. You have multiple businesses. You said you’re running a big church with four campuses, 4,500 members. How do you handle all of those? Got a minute meetings and your managers, you said you have some lunch meetings, but how do you create that time freedom so that you can have that optimized schedule

and you said the key thing? I set my schedule, my schedule doesn’t set me. People don’t get to dictate my week and my time and everything else. If you want to meet with me then it’ll talk to betsy and I have a time on Tuesday that I sent it in and it may not be for six weeks from now. Um, and so that’s how I, I, my time is so valuable to me. They have my, my things that I have to do. I obviously I have to bring a great sermon this Sunday. That’s what’s going to build the church. So I have to be able to weed out the things that, um, that are going to produce are things that are going to produce in my life. I make sure that I put them in slots that, that fit around my schedule and no one touches my Monday because that’s my study day. Wednesday is my business day. A Tuesday is, that’s when I’m in the office, so if you want me for a meeting or something, that’s a great time to schedule me with those things. I delegate

and I empower people around me and I think that’s a, that’s a really big thing. And I create systems to do things that a lot of pastors do every week. I have systems to take care of it because if I find myself having the same problem week after week, I just need to develop a system so I don’t have that problem anymore. What’s one system where you go, that was a system. I used to have a problem. I used it. That was a problem I always had. And now it’s a system. It’s taken care of. Uh, let’s say wedding

funerals, you know, with the church. Decide how many people want to have a, you know, if they want pastor Scott, they, they, they want pastor Jason, they want this. And so we had to create a system. We developed a big group of leadership, went through a training and we empowered them, certificates them, and then they have to go through a number of different steps to be able to finally, you know, saying this is who you talked to and so it doesn’t get to me now there are some weddings and funerals they’ll do, but I don’t do a lot of them because that was soaking up a lot of my weekends and my family time. And uh, so we created a pretty cool system. I think that one makes people happy and we all like to tell people, Scott’s a great preacher. He’s horrible at reading. Says so.

Not good at laundry too. That’s kind of my Scott, I want to respect your schedule. I thank you for taking time to hop on the show right now. As at the time of today’s show, we’re in the top three on itunes for business. All we were number one most of today and then have all categories were whether you were in number 13 this morning, chip. So we have hundreds of thousands of people who will remember 10 right now in the world of all podcasts is $530,000. So I encourage everybody out there, thrive nation. Go check out pastor Scott, go go check out one of his books. We’ll put a link to it on the show notes, but at the very least, go to living word online.com. Visit the web, the website one time. Kind of poke around and see that he really does know his stuff. And again, I’m so glad we were able to reconnect and this time you’re not speaking at a business conference and I’m not running sound and hurting cats with our entertainment crew.

Amen. Amen. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And if they want to also check out my knife company, it’s nice knife that Tom is easiest one to remember.

Nice. Aren’t they? Want to pick it up?

Validation,

Nice. Knife.com. Nice. Nice. Dot Com. And a pastor Scott. We always like to end every show with the boom, which is essentially we say three, two, one, and then shepherd. We say, oh, boom, there we go. So Pastor Scott, are you ready to end the show with the boom

clay stares. You Ready? Bring it, Eric. Chop thrive nation, the December thrive time show conferences just around the corner. If you’ve yet to buy your tickets, get them today online by going to thrive time show.com, and clicking on the conferences button. This event is going to be epic, December seventh and eighth. It’s going to be, we’re gonna. We’re gonna teach you that the millionaire mindset to time management. We’re going to teach you social media marketing on steroids. We’re going to teach you how to organize your calendar. We’re going to teach you how to become an effective executive. We’re going to teach you how to create a linear workflow. We’re going to teach you how to plan proactively your financial lives. We’re going to teach you how to generate more leads. We’re gonna teach you to build a scalable business model. You’re going to love it.

It’s two days. It’s 15 hours of power, and Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Michael Jackson. Nike Prints, Bill Clinton, George Bush, and so many other huge names is going to be in attendance and rumor has it. He’ll be speaking on Saturday, December the eighth. My name is Clay Clark and I’ve got one favor. I want to ask one quick favor when I want to see if you could do for me, if you could share today’s podcast. If you could share today’s podcast with just one person, it would make my life better by one percent and maybe somebody else’s life better by one percent, or maybe you strongly disliked it. Today’s podcast, so share this podcast with an enemy.