Ever felt like a substitute teacher in your own life, lacking the authority to command your time and decisions? Eric Beck, CEO of Founders Fire, steps in to elevate us from passive participants to proactive authors of our existence.
Drawing on insights from Hebrews 5, Eric dissects the critical need for discernment between right and wrong, and righteous versus evil, instilling in us the wisdom to pursue a purpose-driven life. It's about syncing our actions with our values, much like a musician to a score, ensuring we hit every note of our personal and professional ambitions with precision.
But what happens when distractions loom, threatening our carefully composed symphony? Eric teaches us the art of focus and discipline, essential when safeguarding our God-given visions from the plethora of cultural distractions.
Ever felt like a substitute teacher in your own life, lacking the authority to command your time and decisions? Eric Beck, CEO of Founders Fire, steps in to elevate us from passive participants to proactive authors of our existence.
Drawing on insights from Hebrews 5, Eric dissects the critical need for discernment between right and wrong, and righteous versus evil, instilling in us the wisdom to pursue a purpose-driven life. It's about syncing our actions with our values, much like a musician to a score, ensuring we hit every note of our personal and professional ambitions with precision.
But what happens when distractions loom, threatening our carefully composed symphony? Eric teaches us the art of focus and discipline, essential when safeguarding our God-given visions from the plethora of cultural distractions.
Okay, expert owners, so happy to be with you. This is Eric Beck. I am the CEO at Founders Fire, master coaching for entrepreneurs. And well, first of all, let me just say there would be no Founders Fire without expert ownership, without David and Jason, and it's been an incredible journey with these amazing brothers and they're just giving me the honor here to sit in on their podcast for a second. So let me just say, if you haven't really gotten into the expert ownership materials owner suite, any of their books, please do. It is the best investment you could possibly make in your calling, in your life. These two men of God have just been incredible, incredible influences, I know, in so many people's lives. But I want to just say my life, my family and it's just been an honor to work with them and to build out this coaching arm of their calling that marketplace, a warrior ship calling, and so we're going to get after it. Today they asked me to do a segment on the details of kind of this intentional building how do we build God's way? So that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1:I'm going to dive right in here and just ask you guys a very important question. If you were to look at your week right now, a given week, how much of that week do you think is authorized? Meaning, how much of that week do you have authorship of? We're going to go a little further Meaning how much of your week do you have authority? Okay, authorization, authorship, authority.
Speaker 1:You know what it's like to act without authority. You do. All of us in school have experienced this. I want you to think back to one of the classes where there was a teacher that you really respected. Maybe they were pretty hard on you, but you respected them. And if they said to do something, man, you did it Right. If they said, oh, you got a seat, you're like oh, man, I got to do better, right, okay. But now, if that person went on vacation for a week and the substitute teacher came in, the substitute teacher could say all the same words, can make all the same gestures, have the same physical presence, all the same things. But what happened when the substitute teacher comes to town? Okay, okay, probably, if you're like me, you know a fair bit of chaos was going on. There was some Tom Fulery going on. Why? Why? No authority, no, authority.
Speaker 1:Authority has to be earned. Authority comes from being commissioned, and when you have a substitute teacher who comes in has not got any relationship with the kids. Typically they act as though they have authority that they don't have Now. I taught school for years and in doing so and designing curriculum, I would always counsel teachers if you're going to sub in the first 10 minutes of the class cannot be about English, it cannot be about history or math. It has to be about establishing, even in a very small way, a legit relationship with those students and from that to start to build the sense of authority that you're there to help. If you try to walk in there in the existing teacher's authority, that's not going to go over. Well, okay, now that's exactly what it feels like for some of us in our week, we feel like the substitute teacher. In our week, where we just don't have that authority, we're not in authorship of the week, we're in reactivity to the week. Finally, we haven't been authorized to do what we're doing. Now.
Speaker 1:You could say well, are you talking about, like, sinning or doing things that are bad or immoral? No, no, no, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about Hebrews 5, where it says very clearly that the mature who are eating the meat are not rehearsing the fundamentals all over again on the milk, but these are people who, through constant use, have trained themselves with a very important level of discernment about what is, if you'll permit me, what is authorized and what isn't Okay, what is righteous and what is evil, and it's different than just right and wrong. Okay, could the enemy attack you by getting you to do lots of right things at the wrong time? And how would that go? I think it'd mess you up. I think it would mess me up.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about this? When you hear an orchestra playing in a movie soundtrack, or if you go see the orchestra or you're at an opera or something like that, right, do the musicians just walk up and start playing whatever they want to? No, they don't. Do they play the right notes, but in the wrong order or at the wrong time? No, because it would be a mess. Right, that's exactly what we do with our week, though we don't have our sheet of music. We haven't defined the what and we haven't defined the when. That's the first level of systemization. We teach all of our clients at Founders Fire, okay, all of our spiritually minded entrepreneurs. We have to define the what and the when. That's what music is. Music, a sheet of music is the what and the when.
Speaker 1:If we haven't defined it, if we haven't authored it, then we will not have any authority, and if we don't have any authority, then the power is gone. It says the kingdom of heaven is not a matter of talk, but a matter of power. I would add to that a little bit. My thinking is power comes from alignment and leverage. Power comes from footing, grounding.
Speaker 1:Think about a football player who's going to plant his feet to tackle someone. What would happen if you put his feet in sand? What would happen if you took off his shoes and put him on a gym floor that had water on it and he planted his feet to push off? What would happen? We know what would happen. You can see it in your mind right now. Is that happening to you? Are you losing traction? Are you losing your authority? Are you losing your power? Is it because you're doing wrong things? No, no. It's not that it could be. It could be, but likely it's not that. What it's more likely is that we're not doing the authorized work, we're not running the play. So if there's play 11-14, that's on your football team, that's a play number right and the quarterback calls a different play, but you run 11-14. What's going to happen? You know what's going to happen we're going to have missed assignments, people are going to get sacked, passes might get intercepted. It's not going to go well. No authority, no authorship. Okay, we're not in alignment. So, ultimately, what we can do is we can see oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. This is just like music, this is just like sports, this is just like a building and that's the analogy that's used several times in the New Testament. Is the house okay about? The foundation Can't be on sand, it's got to be on the rock. Okay, you guys have hardly.
Speaker 1:If you've listened to this podcast before, you've heard David and Jason teach this, or maybe me. But listen to this idea, guys, and maybe even hear it in a new way. Martha, martha, you are worried about many things. Do you have a Martha spirit right now? Are you worried when you're listening to this? Are you distracted? Are you worried about many things? Are you right here with me right now? Because I want to coach you, guys. I have coached some of the best in the world. I've been so lucky to coach the best in the world, and if you were to ask me, what's the difference between somebody who really, really excels and somebody who just can't seem to get it together. I'll tell you number one distraction. Dis meaning without traction, without traction. Why? Because Martha worried about many things.
Speaker 1:It says it later in the New Testament. It says do you see the man who goes and looks at you, who goes and looks in the mirror and when he comes away from the mirror he cannot remember his face? This man is double-minded and unstable in all that. He does Distraction. He doesn't have traction. That cannot operate in our life and to the degree that it does is to the degree we need to work out. Don't feel condemned. No, we need to do push-ups. Let's get stronger there. Let's get you less distracted. Let's make 2024 a year where you say, wow, I got so much traction.
Speaker 1:And it starts right this minute, literally right this minute, doing an assessment internally of am I, in the Martha spirit, distracted by many things, or am I doing what Mary did? She's chosen the one thing. Oh man, that is so against our culture, so against social media. It's against the distraction culture, the attention economy, everyone vying for your attention, and we're losing our strength, our muscle tone to stay focused.
Speaker 1:Imagine that you're having a really important conversation with someone you deeply love, but every minute or two you look away and you clearly are thinking about something else. And then you come back to that conversation. You're trying so hard to be there and be earnest, but every minute or two you look away. What is that communicating? It's communicating that you don't really care, that you're not really there. And you see, it's not about your effort, it's about your discipline. You're trying to be there, but the discipline's not there, and so there's not the freedom to say this is what I'm authorized to do. So I'm going to do this one thing right now, with my whole heart. I'm going to do what Jesus did in John 5. I'm going to try to see where the Father is working and go there and work with Him.
Speaker 1:It says that our work will be tested by fire, by fire, but if it remains, there will be a great reward. The remaining is just like in Mary. Mary she's going to choose the one thing and it won't be taken, it stays, it remains, it's solid, it's the rock, there is traction and that means there's authority. Authority means there's power and in some cases, there's miracles, there's literal miracles. Now some of you, baby, listen to this saying man, I need a miracle. And I want to say you're in the right place.
Speaker 1:Expert ownership is the place where we bring faith into every area of life and, in particular here, business entrepreneurship. And I want to say, if God's given you a vision and you haven't revisited that, you need to, like that man, look in the mirror and see your face, see who you've been made to be, and I don't just mean in the sweet by and by way off in the future in Bula land. I'm trying not to offend anybody, but we got to be real here, people. We got to be real. If we have airy fairy notions of what it means to be a believer, to be a spiritual person with a destiny in God, and all we can come up with is just to love him and know him better. I'm not saying that that's not true, but it's in many cases not actionable and we need action.
Speaker 1:Our culture is disintegrating in front of our eyes. Okay, why? Mainly because we've abandoned our post, we have thought about the future and we've left the now to the enemy. Well, not on this podcast, not at expert ownership, not at Founders Fire. We are about kindling that fire, getting people into the now at high speed, major level deployment boots on the ground right now. These are my orders. What am I to do, Sir? Yes, sir, show up and salute and get that done, but we can't do that with distraction. We have to leave the, the Martha spirit behind us, and everywhere that shows up, even in good content. But too much distraction. You guys know the study I've mentioned it before and if you haven't heard it, if you are distracted, it is the same as Losing ten points on your IQ. That means you could go from a normal intelligence to special needs category, simply by distracting yourself, by allowing yourself to be distracted.
Speaker 1:Why do we want to be distracted? Well, there's a lot of reasons we're not going to get into all over right now. We feel bad about something. There's pain in an area of our life, whatever it is. Ultimately, though, we have got to take control of that. We've got to take control of the distraction, and we've got to say this this is not how my life is supposed to go. I have to make a difference now, and I have to do so by being obedient now. It doesn't mean that we take on all the responsibility for the outcome.
Speaker 1:That's another way the enemy gets us. He's like oh yeah, you got to be right here right now, all in, and it's all up to only you. Well, no, no, no, no, that's not, that's not it either. So we can't be on the one side, distracted, no traction, no authority, no authorship, no power. But we can't then just swing to the whole other side. It all depends on you, it's all about you, and you're the only one who can get it done. That's, that's another trick. We want to be right in the middle. We're submitted.
Speaker 1:Okay, we look in the mirror. Proverbs 20, verse 5. The purposes of the human heart are like deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out. I can see my face for the first time. I look in that mirror. I can see my face. Think about it. In the ancient world, I don't know that, there were a lot of mirrors. That's probably something that the only the wealthy had, or maybe you could. You would only see your face, you know, on certain occasions maybe, like in the reflection of water occasionally.
Speaker 1:Okay, no, so so think about that. You're going to this place of refinement. That's what a mirror is. It's refinement. And you're seeing Yourself. You're seeing who you're really supposed to be. That's alignment, that's clarity about that vision, you're seeing it, and then you go away and you get distracted, you forget, you forget what you look like, you forget who you are, you forget who's you are and you just start working hard and, as my Mentor back back in the day, michael Gerber, said at E-Meth, now you're just doing it, doing it, doing it. You're working in the business, but not on it.
Speaker 1:Why? Why does that happen? Because the enemy is coming to wreck you. Did you know you're in a war? You totally are, you absolutely are. And it's not just I, golly, gee, that's a nice metaphor. No, he comes to kill and steal and destroy and he is Doing those things.
Speaker 1:But we're here to stand against that, and part of the way we stand against that is we do it married it. We choose the one thing and it will remain, and then we choose the next one thing and it will remain. And now we're building the Foundation and pretty soon we got the foundation, we're starting to frame this bad boy out, and pretty soon We've taken some territory, and In this territory the Kings, laws reign, the, the fruits of the spirit are here peace and gentleness, justice, right all of the things that we know we want to see on the earth and that need to be here. That's what alignment brings and that's what you can bring, not only in your life but in your business the primary hammer in your hand to Construct, to build, to bring increase. They've been adjacent to so many great teachings on multiplication Right. They do so many great teachers on everything right the best teachers I've ever heard. But yeah, multiplication right, increase. How do you bring that? By just wanting it. No, you gotta get your toolbox. You gotta get that hammer out.
Speaker 1:What is the hammer for the entrepreneur? Well, one of the main ones is the business that you're in right now and if you do a great job to systemize so the work heads towards automation and people know how to run the play right. They're not making up their own music. If you grow the business and scale it on the back of those systems now, you're heading to full potential. Finally, you're in the place to be ready to exit that business, to hand it off to another righteous leader, a management team that can run this thing the way it's supposed to be run, or maybe for you it's right to sell it. Whatever it is that's leading you to maximum impact. So we're talking about systemize in order to automate. That makes things easier. Grow and scale. That takes you to full potential. That makes things better. And then finally, exit or sell. That brings you to maximum impact. That means a better future. So, easier, better future.
Speaker 1:How do you do that? You swing that hammer. You do what, mary did you choose the one thing. You build a culture that does that. I'm gonna tell you what. That's what we're about at Foundershire. We are all about helping people, just like you do that.
Speaker 1:We would love to help you do that by giving you something free, and it's a roadmap. If you've heard me talk about it before, it's called the flagship assessment. It's free, that's right. It's free. It's normally 200 bucks. It's probably worth about $5,000.
Speaker 1:What is it? It is a 12 month roadmap for all the areas of your business to bring them into alignment. Okay, how do I get? I think it's all right, but it's not working together. Or sometimes it works together, but then the wheel pops off a little bit.
Speaker 1:I gotta go do this or ask yourself this question how long can you let your business run on its own and not be involved at all? Zero involvement A day, an hour, a week, a month, a year. Hey, that's one of the best measures for the maturity of the business. And if you did leave it alone, would it follow the principles that are in the DNA of the vision God put in your heart for it? That's what we wanna give you. We wanna give you a business that's fully mature and good news is it doesn't have to go from toddler to adult like a human. 18 years. It usually takes between 12 and 18 months and again, depending on how get after it you got in you, it could take even less.
Speaker 1:But it starts by knowing where am I today, what is happening, and getting clarity and organized around that. So if you go over it'll be in the show notes, but the link is foundersflagshipcom. If you go to foundersflagshipcom right now, go to that sign up page and put in the word spark S-P-A-R-K and you can get the flagship assessment for free. That's what captains need. Captains need orientation. Where am I Get that compass out? Look up at the stars. Get your heading. Okay.
Speaker 1:You're not gonna go in a straight line, nobody goes in a straight line but you are gonna go in a direction, okay. And holding your ship to that direction, to that heading amongst the waves and the wind, is gonna get you to save harbor, and it's gonna get you to that place where Mary was, where she chose the thing and it wasn't taken from her. It's gonna get you to what it talks about in Corinthians the work can be tested by fire and it will remain. We're not just living for the weekend, we're not just living for quarterly earnings, we're not just trying to survive, to make payroll. We're gonna bring you into, by God's will, a new season, a new season of traction and groundedness and alignment. Yes, it's gonna happen. So courage, you guys.
Speaker 1:If you're new to expert ownership, please head over to expertownershipcom. Pick up a copy of the book Expert Ownership. I have literally marked that thing up like it's the Bible, like I have literally notes on every page. It's, to me, the best business book out there and highly recommend you guys. Dive into that or get involved in the owner suite where you can be around a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and believers. Or, if you're ready and you're like, you know what, I gotta take that next step. I need to get into the coaching man. We would love to serve God's vision for you and your life and your business and get you through these three stages Systemize, grow and scale, exit and sell for a maximum impact future. All right, guys, it's been a blast to be with you today. Hope you guys have an amazing and strategic into this year and launch into next year.