Episode 1064: Sharing Some of My Journey

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining me on episode 1064 of the inspired stewardship podcast. Hey,

[00:00:07] Cassidy Cash: there I'm Cassidy cash. The host of that Shakespeare life. If you'd like to impact the world one day like Shakespeare, one way to do that is listening to this it's inspired stewardship podcast with my friend Scott made.

[00:00:19] Scott Maderer: throughout it also, I began to recognize that I needed to get better control of my time. I needed to develop better control over my communication and my leadership. And there were financial implications too. It was at our ETS that my wife. Began to work to get out of debt. And I went through a period where I was actually suicidal over the debt that we had.

[00:00:44] Welcome. And thank you for joining us on the inspired stewardship podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent and your treasures for your true calling in the [00:01:00] inspired stewardship podcast. We'll learn to invest in yourself.

[00:01:03] Invest in. And develop your influence so that you can impact the world

[00:01:10] and today's episode about investing in others through stewarding your talent. I talk with you about some of my journey. I share how this led to the framework of invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world. And I also talk about how the Keystone habit areas of time, talent, and treasure.

[00:01:29] Came about, you've heard me talk about developing your talent. And one of the best ways to do that is through books. But if you're like most people today, it's hard to find the time to read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible. Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial.

[00:01:53] There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And you can pick one and listen your [00:02:00] way to developing your talents via. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast. As I've been working on putting together the ideas for the book that I'm working on this year.

[00:02:20] I began to realize that a lot of what I talk about is interconnected in ways that maybe aren't clear if you're just listening in from the outside and hearing bits and pieces. So I decided to talk a little bit about my story and how that's connected to these ideas that I talk about on the show all the time.

[00:02:42] So there's a few things that if you've listened for a while, you've heard that the theme of the Monday interviews is invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world. And then you've also heard me talk about mastering stewardship, mastering your [00:03:00] time, your talent and your treasure, so that you could live out your calling.

[00:03:03] And this idea of living out your calling is one. That I think a lot of us struggle with a lot of us. Wonder how do we know if we're actually living out our calling? How do we know if we've arrived at that one perfect thing that we were designed to do? And the short answer, I think is you don't know. I don't think we ever really know.

[00:03:30] And yet it's through these areas of stewardship and investing in yourself, investing in others, developing your influence and impacting the world that you resonate and recognize whether or not your calling is being lived. So I wanted to talk a little bit about my journey and my story and how, what I'm doing today is closer to my calling than what I was doing 20 years ago.

[00:03:57] And how that. So the truth [00:04:00] is I grew up as a young man in the Christian Church. I was always a smart nerdy kid. I did a lot of good things and bookwork, but it was always something that I had to work at in school. And I did very well in school and it came. Relatively easily, honestly, but I was never one of the popular kids.

[00:04:21] I had friends. Sure. And we hung out and did things, but it wasn't ever something where I was really social. And yet I always enjoyed helping others. I always enjoy being the one that not only learned it myself, but would tutor other people. I always enjoyed having opportunities to, to speak in front of the class or in front of others.

[00:04:46] And I knew that what I was meant to do and what I should do should have to do with these areas of helping educate or teach others and helping others in ways that involved [00:05:00] speaking and things. And yet, as I went through college, I originally started college with the idea of becoming a medical researcher.

[00:05:09] I went to a and M I got a degree in biochemistry and a degree in genetics. And my thought throughout the beginning of my college career was I wanted to be a medical reason. Part of that was this idea of helping others in a big way. And then part of it was also that it seemed something that lent itself to some of my strengths around thinking and process and research and doing these sorts of things.

[00:05:33] And so it seemed like it was an alignment with my calling. And yet, as I went through school, I took a course where I actually. Had an opportunity to go work at a middle school and help them with science fair. And I loved it and I really enjoyed it. And at the same time I was doing research work in a lab and I lost that position because of some stuff that happened.

[00:05:59] And[00:06:00] I ended up deciding that maybe research wasn't what I wanted to do. It seemed like it was too much politics, too much money grubbing. Work around things that didn't really have to do with the things that I most love to do. And so I pivoted and decided to become a school teacher. So I went through an alternative certification program and I began to teach school.

[00:06:24] Now, let me back up a minute throughout all of this, I was beginning to develop myself. I was spending time and energy on not just learning the book, learning. But I was also learning better how to get along with others. I learned how to spend some time beginning to learn how to speak better. I actually.

[00:06:49] Put energy into learning, not just what was going on in the classroom, but other things as well. And it I'll be honest as a college student, it was pretty [00:07:00] limited. I wasn't spending a lot of time and energy on investing in myself, beyond my classes, but even my classes was indirectly investing in myself.

[00:07:09] And as I did that again, I began to look for opportunities to tutor other people. I began to look for opportunities to connect with others. And I began to invest in others and to develop my influence at some level. And through that, I was impacting the world that I was in at that moment. And it was the feedback I was getting about how, when I was working with the middle school kids and when I was working tutoring, that seemed more in alignment with what I really got energy.

[00:07:42] It seemed to, to feed back energy into me. But when I went to the research job, I began to lose energy. It began to suck energy out of me. And so it was this feedback that gave me the direction of, I want to spend more time doing this education [00:08:00] thing. That's why I knew to pivot towards teaching. In some ways you connect the dots in reverse.

[00:08:08] It's almost after you've experienced it, that you begin to know that it's the direction. This is why I've always been big on trying things experimenting. I don't think we can know whether or not something is going in the direction of our calling by passively observing it or by reading about it. It requires action.

[00:08:30] It requires doing something. So I went through this alternative certification program, which is a crash course in. And I began to teach on the south side of San Antonio in a lower socioeconomic school. I started my very first teaching gig. I taught two periods in the cafeteria, and then I moved to two other classrooms during the day while they were building some new classrooms.

[00:08:55] I had large classes and I was teaching science in the middle school. [00:09:00] It was crazy. And yet at the same time, It felt right, but I also knew I wasn't very good at it yet. So I immediately began to try to learn more, to invest in myself. I began to connect with other teachers and ask what they were doing. I took workshops and courses on how to teach science better.

[00:09:21] I read books on how to teach and I tried things out in the classroom and I began to do more and more experiential learning. By chance. I got sent to a workshop and ended up volunteering to work in science reform and joined what they call project 2061 at that time. And I began working in all of these different areas and working on the benchmarks for science literacy and other things just by chance, they needed to send somebody from the school.

[00:09:52] And since I was the new guy, I got to go and then it ended up being something that. Really [00:10:00] important to me. And it helped me learn how to teach better and how to reach the kids better. I got a award while I was teaching middle school on being one of the best teachers in San Antonio. And I got recognized for that.

[00:10:14] And interestingly, I got called in for the interview on a day that I was doing water rockets and I was covered from head to toe in mud because we were outside launching rockets. And I didn't realize the interview was that day. So I got called in for the interview covered in mud, but I actually think it probably helped because it showed that I was willing to go out and do things with the kids and be experiential in the learning.

[00:10:38] It gave me a chance to develop my influence within the science community, the work I was doing with project 2061, let me develop my influence and it impacted the world of science education. Eventually I moved to teaching at the high school, in the same school. And later I moved to a private school in downtown San Antonio, teaching science.

[00:10:59] And [00:11:00] in each of these cases, I continued to develop how I taught and invest in myself. I invested in my classroom and in my students and look for ways to make them better at what they were doing. And through that, I began to develop my influence, not just in each of those communities of the schools in the classroom, but in the larger education community.

[00:11:25] And through all of that, I think I had an impact, but the truth is while I was doing all of that, it will also began to burn me out. It began to take. Energy from me because there were parts of teaching that were not in alignment with what I really wanted to do. They didn't feel like they were helping me invest in others.

[00:11:47] They didn't feel like they were helping me develop my influence. They didn't feel like they made an impact. They felt like they took energy away from that ability to make it impact. And as [00:12:00] I discovered that I began to think. Leaving teaching and doing something else. And eventually I did leave teaching.

[00:12:09] I went around for a while and I did just some odd jobs while I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I sold cars for a while. I ended up in the hospital with a collapsed lung twice, once in December and once in January, which by the way means I got to pay all the medical bills twice because that's the year had recent.

[00:12:29] And while I was in the hospital, a friend of mine who was a former teacher, reached out to me and said, you might want to apply for a job over here at educational testing service. They're looking for someone in the science department and I figured why not? So I applied and I got called in for an interview shortly after I was out of the hospital.

[00:12:51] I went in and interviewed and I got offered a job. Working for educational testing service. This is a company that writes test for a living. [00:13:00] And at first glance that may be like, wait a minute. You went from teaching and helping others in that way to testing. But again, remember my mindset is one of, let me experiment, let me find out if this is something that is in alignment with my calling, I can always pivot and go somewhere else.

[00:13:18] And we get a work and write the questions. And I found that I was pretty good at it and I enjoyed it. There was a lot of fun and we worked together in little teams and there was a lot of client interaction. You got to go and do these things with teacher committees. There were a lot of different things that fed the energy that I got, but then there were also, again, things that didn't.

[00:13:41] And as I got promoted in that company, I moved up and eventually I got into a management position and there is where I began to realize that I needed to develop my skills in leadership. As a coach, I got involved with John Maxwell's stuff. I began to [00:14:00] invest in myself about how to lead teams, how to develop other people in that.

[00:14:06] It was different than teaching. It was a different set of skills that I needed to develop. Some of them were connected and some of them were related and some of them were deepening what I already knew, but again, I needed to begin to invest in myself. And so I spent time and energy doing that. I went back to school for an MBA.

[00:14:24] I got involved with the John Maxwell team. I began to learn skills about coaching and managing and leaders. And I began to practice those. This is also where I began to learn about personality and communication. Learned about disc and how that applies. And I began to do things like I figured out who on my team needed that personal connection.

[00:14:46] And I put an event on my calendar. So every Wednesday I went and visited with those people and spent some time and talk to them about their kids and their baseball game. It's not something that comes naturally to me, but I went through the effort of doing it because [00:15:00] they needed it and it was good for the team.

[00:15:03] I think because of that, I developed a pretty good reputation as a leader, and I continued to get promoted in the company and eventually went up to a senior management position. I spent 11 years with educational testing service. I spent 16 as a teacher and throughout all of that, there were parts of it that connected to this idea of being able to do what I wanted to do.

[00:15:28] But there were other parts that didn't throughout it. Also, I began to recognize that I needed to get better control of my time. I needed to develop better control over my communication in my leadership. And there were financial implications too. It was at our ETS that my wife and I began to work to get out of debt.

[00:15:50] And I went through a period where I was actually suicidal over the debt that we have. And it was then that we decided we were going to change how we related with money. [00:16:00] And I began to change how I related with time. I began to find ways to stop working an 80 hour work week and instead work a 40 hour work week.

[00:16:09] I began to recognize that as I gained more control over my time and my money, it gave me the energy to do more other things. And I opened up a coaching business on the side and began to coach other people. Because other people began to ask me, how are you doing it? How are you getting out of debt? How are you getting control of your time?

[00:16:35] They began to ask me questions about communication and leadership. And I began to coach others and educate others. We started first with money and then later began to add the time and the talent, because it turned out that there were questions that overlapped there. And I began doing that on the side.

[00:16:53] And slowly I backed out of my day job, went to part-time and eventually left and began to do the [00:17:00] coaching. Wow. Because as I went through all of this experience and all of this work, I recognize that as I gained more control over my time, my talent and my treasure is through investing in myself. It gave me more opportunities to invest in others in a way that felt authentic to me.

[00:17:18] And as I did that, I naturally developed my influence and had an impact on the world. It all fit together. That's where this language that I use came from it's through recognizing that's how it worked for me and for others. That's how all of this came together. Now throughout it, there were things I did on the side.

[00:17:41] I continue to work in my church. Now I continue to do other things and they have overlap with those core skills and abilities. And I continue to run experiments and try new things. The book that I'm working on is a new thing. The podcast, when I started, that was an experiment I tried all the time to [00:18:00] see and to test.

[00:18:01] Am I yet living as authentically as I can into my car. And I'm open to the feedback that maybe there's something that needs to be added. There's something that needs to be taken away. I'm looking for that feedback so that I can continue to invest in myself, develop new skills. I can continue to invest in others to develop my influence and to impact the world in different ways.

[00:18:27] Notice here, it's not about impacting the world in terms of impacting the whole world, everybody on the planet. It's impacting the world in terms of the world that I live in, the people in my community, the people in my circle, my clients, my family, my friends, my church, those folks, that's where I want to make the impact.

[00:18:49] And what's interesting. As I've gotten deeper into coaching, I found that this right now is the most authentic fit for me. [00:19:00] Now that may change. I may find something else I want to do more public speaking. I want to write the book that I'm writing. I want to do some masterminds. I want to do other things and test those out and see, is this even more authentically doing what I'm called to do?

[00:19:17] And it's through that testing and that experimentation. Then I'll get feedback and may pivot again and go do something other than coaching. Last year, I ran an experiment. I worked full time for a little while with the company while I went back to doing coaching part-time and very quickly I figured out it wasn't a fit.

[00:19:35] It was not moving in the direction of living deeper into my calling. And so I pivoted and I left that job within about six or eight months and I went back to the coaching. Full-time. So this idea of constantly testing what you're doing and getting the feedback, but listening to that feedback notice, by the way, I didn't just start the job and quit.

[00:19:57] After two days, I gave it six or [00:20:00] eight months because I needed to give it long enough to really figure out was the uncomfortableness I had around the job. Was it because I was new to it or was it because it was simply something that wasn't really in alignment with what I needed to do. And so I gave it a long enough experiment to really figure that out.

[00:20:23] And then once I did, I, of course, acted and left and went back to the coaching. That's where the idea of let's pivot and do some speaking and some masterminds through writing this book came about. So that's a little bit about my journey and how throughout it, by investing in myself, investing in others, developing my infant.

[00:20:45] I began to impact the world and I got the feedback and I knew that to do it, to do those things better and better. I had to get better at controlling my time and my treasures and developing my talent. [00:21:00] And that's the framework by which I approach working with my clients, whether it's working on their money, whether it's working on their productivity, whether it's working on their communication, whether it's working on their leadership, that framework of get better in those Keystone areas.

[00:21:14] So that. You could run those experiments and invest in yourself, invest in others. And by doing those two things, you naturally develop, influence and impact the world. That's the connection that I found that seems to be the real secret to both seeing if you are living out your calling and then if you're not figuring out which direction to go to actually live more into your calling.

[00:21:42] Thanks for this.

[00:21:43] thanks so much for listening to the inspired stewardship podcast as a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. [00:22:00] If you like this episode on the stewardship of talent, you can go over to inspired stewardship.com/.

[00:22:09] And sign up for our five week series on the stewardship of talent, or if you're in the U S you can text 4, 4, 2, 2, 2 talent tips. That's talent tips to 4 4, 2, 2, 2, and get those tips until next time. Invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.