Episode 87 - Setting Priorities for the Year Ahead with Steve Graves
Today we’re talking to Steve Graves. For the past 25 years he's worked with hundreds of organizations from Fortune 100 giants to small bootstrapping start-ups. He’s a regular contributor to the blog site where we love to share his wisdom and he’s also very involved with our friends at Praxis, coaching other young entrepreneurs.
Steve’s written some great, practical books that we highly recommend. We like to think of them as Operators Manuals for startups. Today we get to kick off this new year spending time talking about his latest work “The 5 Tasks Every Entrepreneur Needs to Do.”
If you’re looking to treat this new year as a fresh start, or if you want to get a jump on continuing the success of last year, this episode is a great place for you to start. As always, thanks for listening!
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Henry [00:02:26] Welcome back to the podcast. We have with us in our virtual studio of sorts, a great friend of mine, Steve drase, who I've known for maybe eight years now. And Steve is a guy that is an expert in this space. He is an expert in working and encouraging and helping to lead and help faith driven entrepreneurs themselves to lead. We were joking before we actually started recording about the fact that it's silly. There's been this long for us to get Steve on the podcast, but there's also a benefit to which is that we now have a broad enough distribution for our listener base. In fact, we've recently finally got some people from South Dakota to tune in. Welcome to all those people in South Dakota. Of course, we had listeners from 100 other countries, including Mauritius and the Seychelles on before we head South Dakota. And so welcome to the people that are in the middle of the South Pacific to Morse here. So we have Steve on who I have had the pleasure of getting to know on the board of Praxis. We served together for about seven years as it got started. Steve is still on that board. He's also on the board of que-. He is known in the circles as the go to person to seek out mentoring and coaching. He is very sought after. And I know some people who've tried to bring him on board as their mentor, as their coach, and he is way oversubscribed. And so it's a big deal for us to be able to get some of his time. And he is an expert in a lot of different things. One of them is in being able to encourage dads. And he's got a great book, which is called Was it the 41 Lessons, 41 gifts or 1 deposits, 41 deposits. And as a father of three boys, that's been super helpful for me because you get little bits that are able to help you to be a better dad. But that's not where we're actually talking about today, although we probably should talk about being a parent while being a feature of an entrepreneur and something that's coming out. But today, instead, we're talking about another book that he's got that is very, very much focused on being entrepreneur. And Steve wants to give us an overview and a flyover of that book. What is the message that you have? Frontmen, instance, and then we'll spend some time together with Rusty, with William and we'll unpacks them those together. Give us a flyover, if you will.
Steve [00:04:34] Yeah. Thanks, Henry. It's always fun to be with you. I love serving with you and love being with you. You're a ton of fun. It's great to be with your listeners today. I'm honored every time you said the word expert. I just kind of cringed a little bit because I'm an old person. I'm just not sure I'm really an expert. It. So you're an expert. Well, thanks. So the book is called The Five Tasks What Every senior leader or in this case what every entrepreneur must do. And the book actually came out of years and years. This is probably the easiest book that I've ever written because it's actually a book that kind of I just observed in the marketplace for the last deal, 20 or 30 years working with CEOs and business leaders and entrepreneurs and owners, kind of what it is at the end of the day that they really are supposed to do. I was first captured by this quote years ago. Remember, I was reading Peter Drucker and Peter Drucker said there's nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. And I just thought about that because a lot of times what happens with senior leaders is we find ourselves doing a whole bunch of stuff that really does not respect the seat of the CEO. Not not trying to remove the CEO from having touchpoints with any organization or being, you know, the upper office that nobody sees and they're in and out of their private elevator. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is a CEO or a business owner or senior level leader doing the things that they alone should be doing in their role. And so I came down to five tasks there, five tasks.
[00:06:07] And then, you know, I mean, there's people have lists for everything. And I generally think most list could find themselves populating other people's lists if you sort them correctly. So this is not the list that I'm trying to make the list opposed to anybody else's list. This is just what I think at the end of the day, if a senior leader will do this, they will do primarily what their job description calls on them to do. So it's set direction, set speed, set risk, set resources and set called. And then what I do is I try to make sure that that concept of setting that it can be more top down driven if that's your personality and that happens to be your organizational culture. It can be more bottom up driven. It can be kind of a halfway both in kind of a thing. I mean, there's all kinds of different styles and methodologies and depending on your Enneagram number or whatever. But the end of the day, those five task must be done by the senior leader sitting at the senior seat of any organization. Direction, speed, risk, resources and culture.
Rusty [00:07:14] You know, let me push into that first one, which is around setting direction. So it seems obvious, right? I mean, we're supposed to set direction. Why do you think it's so hard for entrepreneurs to grok that?
Steve [00:07:27] Yeah. No, Rusty, that's a great question. What happens a lot of times? Well, first of all, I think there's all kinds of reasons. A lot of times entrepreneurs really get in the way of themselves or they get in the way of the organizational trajectory, their narrative, their personal narrative over their personal calling or their personal ambition, even though it might be good and pure and not Elstein on unbridled or something. A lot of times that personal narrative can overtake the narrative. What the organization really is trying to do or where the organization is going. So at the end of the day, I really feel like it's the job of every single leader to say basically we're going they're not there now that there can be philosophical. You know, it can be geographical, literally. We're going international. We're going East Coast, we're going regional. Or it could be we're going upscale with certain segments of the market or whatever. But there's a directional assignment that every senior leader has to provide for the organization. Otherwise, we don't know how to really marshal resources. And we have no idea whether we're really making progress or not.
Rusty [00:08:32] It's fascinating. You also say something about setting direction gives you the boundaries to say yes and no. Yeah. Right. Talk a little bit about that, because I think one of the hardest things for entrepreneurs is to say, no, you don't wanna miss an opportunity.
Steve [00:08:45] Yeah, I agree with that. And by the way, guys, everything that you're saying, you know, I do coach CEOs, but also on a co on four or five businesses myself. And so I'm in that same role having to figure out, do I say yes or do I say no myself? So as a customer, I do that. The reason I think I have trouble saying no and the reason I think sometimes CEOs have trouble saying no is a lot of times that particular muscle set, it hasn't been developed as a skill set. You'll find somebody who's a strong people pleaser, somebody who has a real high EQ, our RQ, and that's the more natural part of their wiring. Those kinds of people will always struggle with saying no. I mean, it'll always be an extra. You know, they're going to have to kind of hold their fist a little tighter and pray a little harder that morning or whatever, because saying no and handling rejection and making hard choices, that's just not part of their natural wiring. If you take somebody who's, you know, the other side of the spectrum, they have to work on the personal side of stuff. So sometimes it's my personal wiring, my personality. Sometimes it's because I'm so used to having surrounded myself with people who really, really don't do Iren on our life. They really don't challenge me. And that's a very common issue in the world of entrepreneurs. You know, we talk a lot of iron on iron, but in reality, a lot of people just don't build structures of partnerships and leadership teams and friends who really do, you know, bring the hard messaging, the accountability. So why are you really doing that? That kind of stuff. And so what we do is we end up just kind of living in a yes only world and we do whatever we want to do or whatever. Another reason I think often happens is a lot of entrepreneurs efforts are funded by themselves or their friends and family. And so they might feel like they have the freedom to maybe stretch the ambition or the pursuit a certain direction. But I mean, learning how to say no. Generally speaking, I mean, it's a skill that we have to learn. For most people, there are exceptions, but there are really some highly successful people that still have to really have people around them to hold a know and let a know really be a no. At least that's my experience.
Rusty [00:10:59] And to your point, I mean, if your task is to set the direction, you should have some boundaries in there that help you.
Steve [00:11:05] So, yeah, totally. I mean, we can't go everywhere. I mean, that's the thing about it. Entrepreneurs want to do it all. But we know at the end of the day, if all I am is me and my two kids and we got a food truck and it's just that's nothing. But if I've got an organizational footprint and I've got, you know, 10 people, 100 hundred people, a thousand people, and I've got a budget, it's a million dollars or 10 million or 100 hundred million or a billion. I could be going north and south at the same time on an interstate doing well. I just. You can't do it now.
William [00:11:37] Yeah. Tesla. Tesla's working on it, though.
Steve [00:11:39] You had to bring that up. Even they may might be the exception.
William [00:11:45] They are.
Rusty [00:11:46] Speaking of Tesla. You talk about the task of speed and that you think that that's sort of a 21st century phenomena, which makes sense to me, having worked in the last century. And it seemed like speed was not something that you thought as much about. But talk to us about that from a leaders perspective. And how does one balance fast and slow?
Steve [00:12:08] Yeah. Yeah, this is one that I probably face this every week with some of the CEOs I work with and or the stuff I'm involved in personally. You know, it's really funny. Nonprofit leaders, entrepreneurs in certain industries, certain verticals, we mistakenly think we set the speed of the market.
[00:12:30] OK. But as a general rule, we don't. Now, every now and then, there is a company or an innovation that is allowed to set the speed of the market for a very short period of time. But as a general rule, we don't set the speed of the market. What we said is the speed that we're going to relate to the speed of the market. That's what I've got to do. You know, so little. We had a meeting this Monday with a gentleman who is the CEO. Let's put him in that. He's in the health care space. He has more than a billion dollars. You know, he's got a very large company. And he said to me, he said, you know, he said, I just don't know what's going on. The competition is coming in so fast in the my markets. And it was kind of like I looked at him. I said, well, I guess the question is, what are you gonna do there? What's your play gonna be? Are you going to try to stay up with the speed of the market or you're going to shape it and say, you know what? We're not going to stay that speed? I can't go that fast. I can't spend that fast. So we're gonna go at our speed of our culture, and that's where we're gonna go and that's fine. And so it's up to me to set the speed. I'm going to relate to organizationally to the given market. And then I've got to pay the consequences of going too slow or too fast. If I go the wrong direction, because both of those carry kind of, you know, weighted consequence on either side. Does it make sense?
Henry [00:13:49] Steve, one of the things that impacted us as we prepare for this is what you write about in the Journal of the Senior Leader, and you talk about this need for a leader to be able to frame the lack of time realities we all face as we need to prioritize. Can you can you just read a bit?
Steve [00:14:05] Yeah. So what I did is I tried to open up with just a little bit of a little fictional piece. We all know is we could find people's names to put buy it, but basically it would look like this legit. So Tuesday, May the 11th at 8:40, 7 p.m.. So this is a person's journal. So it's from the journal. Well, this has been one of those days. I'm exhausted and it seems like my head is in the jaws of an industrial grade vise. I really need to go, but I'm committed to writing something in these pages every few days. For the last six weeks, I'm just gonna stop just now because it's been one crappy day. Maybe writing down one of my thoughts will help me sort through some stuff. So here you go. Where do I start? So then he goes off story. It came just before 5 o'clock. I actually was wrapping things up for the day so I could make it to Jenny's piano recital. She's 9 and she has a real talent. I love listening to her play, seeing her face light up when she finishes a piece. She's been practicing on for weeks, but then the email hit. It sure was a sour note, so to speak. And it sent me scrambling. If I left right now, maybe I could catch the end of the recital. Now, who am I kidding? That ship has already sailed. It left the dock and I got that dying email.
[00:15:16] The gist of it was pretty simple. Our biggest competitor is canceling our most profitable contract now. That's a big deal. That's a big deal for any business, any person, any leader to get that email at five o'clock on a given day. Ho-hum Right. Just another day at the office. Another ordinary e-mail. That's not true at all. I called her main contact. No answer. I brought in our leadership team and the reps who handle that account for emergency Skoal session. Everyone was caught off guard. Everyone was stunned. We piece to fit things together, but it will be tomorrow or the next week before we confirm the why behind the decision. We've done nothing wrong. So that's what my team says. Ellen probably had the most insight on the situation when she said they're simply making a strategic shift. And then the guy goes on to make it longer email entry, Henry. But then he says this. He says, well, we'll rebound, we'll rebound. And it's my job to calm the herd in my head as well as the whole office. And then he says what to do about this particular situation. And he finds himself basically ending the email or the journal entries saying basically, well, I guess I'll just have to face this tomorrow.
[00:16:25] The point is this every senior leader, every CEO, every business owner, every entrepreneur has to figure out which task they're going to tackle themselves. And when we begin to find ourselves working on things that are not our task, we can literally either find ourselves having too many things to do.
[00:16:46] Our world is backlogged of work that never gets done. You know, my to do list never ends. I can't separate operational things from strategic things. My personal life and my work life can never, ever find any kind of balance in rhythm and symmetry. Never. Because literally, if I don't have some sort of really high filter figured out for my task as the senior leader or the CEO or the entrepreneur or business owner, then what happens is this everything can come into my office, sit on my desk until I work on it versus me having set up a machine. I mean, we know this, guys. We know this for sure. If I have any size of an organization, I'm not doing much of the work. My team is doing the work. You know, I mean, I'm not carrying tons of the water. I'm doing the set direction, set speeds. And when I find myself being the guy that's trying to run the bulldozer and move the mountain and carry the water, there's a really good chance that I'm not doing those assignments that are respectively designed for my seat.
William [00:17:54] Yeah, totally, totally makes sense to me. It's funny, William here. I had a roommate one time who was George Bush's personal assistant 10 years ago and just, you know, the job of the job of a president. Right. Is his personal aide. And I used to ask him some times I'd say, I imagine if I was the president, I would just never sleep at night. Right. Right. I mean, that I can't fathom what information they get in.
[00:18:20] Yeah. And a daily basis and how they ever go to sleep. And there's so many decisions, national security, economy, so many things. And it was interesting. I mean, his response is somewhat of what you just said. He said, look, I mean, he's just like any other CEO. He's got a Department of Defense for a reason. He's got ahead head of Interior for a reason. And he has to trust that he's put the right people in place and that they will make the overwhelming majority of decisions by themselves and they will selectively choose the ones to elevate to him. And if for some reason those people aren't working out, he replaces them. And I was just like, I mean, that makes so much sense.
Steve [00:18:54] But yeah, it does. And you know, what happens is we can imagine it working for somebody else. But a lot of times. Right. We just can like. Yeah, but you'd understand. Nobody can do it. Like I mean, like I said, it wanted to make this decision but me. I mean, like I'm the only one that really understands all the moving parts. And so what happens is, is we don't practice. The very thing that we know probably is in theory the right answer. Yeah.
William [00:19:19] Then that's so big. Yeah. That's why I want to just like sit on that because it's so true. It just hit me like wait. That's how the president. But I'm letting a small team of four people and I can't figure that out and yet live.
Steve [00:19:30] So what happens is this. So if I'm the boss, if I'm the leader, what I often do is I will not push work down or out appropriately. And the thing is, the faster I push your work to you, if I'm costley doing a work around and I'm propping you up and you're not really doing your work, then what happens is I don't ever get to find out. Can you really carry your work there? So the faster I can push work over and down and to you, the faster we can find out. Are you the right person to sit in that seat, to run that division or to run that department or to carry that load? If and if you're not, then we can find out what can we do to coach you up. But as long as I'm doing your work for you, we have no idea if you can really carry the load or not. And then that's what happens is if you let that happen, you know, over and over and over.
[00:20:20] That's where a dysfunctional culture or dysfunctional organizations or the journal nature that we that's where the exhausted boss, you know, I mean, look, everybody knows there's some Friday night or some Wednesday night that you can't you can't make one of your sons or daughters practices or whatever. I mean, there's gonna be one. But for the repeated thing, I hear this all the time. I'll hear people say, hey, you know, yeah, I'm going on vacation. But I guess dad won't really go on vacation again this year because dad can't take vacations because, you know, he just can't ever go on vacations. And the answer would be, well, I'm sure there's a vacation every now then that you have to go late to for sure. But the notion that you can't figure out a way to have a balanced life. I mean, I really believe this guy. I believe that if you've got a good hard work ethic for 40 to 50, maybe 60 hours a week for certain given weeks, you should be able to get it all done. There should not be some job out there that requires me to work 90 hours a week, every week, every month, every year. I mean, if that's true, the job is either it needs three people, not one, or I'm not doing my job or something. And so, you know, set up the right structure and then put those right assignments in place. And that's where the direction, speed, risk, resources and culture become so important. And that those terms only my terms, different people use different words. But the concept, I think, is what the big idea is.
Henry [00:21:44] So as you talk through this, I'm imagining again the angst that you just alluded to, which is, okay, I get it in a perfect world. I've got the staff and their home in their rock and roll in. And of course, I can take vacation. In fact, they're so good. I'm I take extra vacation and I might read their SAS reports in between rounds of golf or something like that. But as you said, that's just not my situation. And that situation may not be their deal because maybe they do have a dysfunctional team and everybody knows what that can look like. And there's always some level dysfunctions in a team. And yet some of that is headed off at the pass. When we hire well. So walk us through how you coach leaders and framework that you give them so that when they are having this conversation and their listeners podcasts, they're like, you know what? You know, maybe I haven't trusted my team enough to let me go back to why I brought this person on board to begin with.
Steve [00:22:43] That's great. I mean, you know, it's it's very possible. It's very, very possible for me as a senior leader to have a much more competent team around. Me with me under me that I'm actually giving them space to run. I remember one time one of my early mentors was a guy who lived here in northwest Arkansas. He was the guy who architected the original Procter and Gamble and Wal-Mart partnership. It was the prototype for all macro global partnerships at that time. I mean, he's a really smart fella. And I remember him telling me the primary job of any leader is to basically hire the right people and then set up the right systems, processes and culture for those race horses to run hard. And then the leader's job is to simply keep the track clear, keep them resource stop and keep them running hard and make sure they don't hit roadblocks inside. No problems here and sideways energy, they are whatever. And so to your point, I completely agree. I think it's very possible a lot of times that I will find myself or a leader could find themselves pulling work that they really shouldn't have on their plate. And they need to push it back down to people. In a lot of times, what has to happen is we have to reanimate our culture. You know, it's really it's really fun. We'll set up great cultures and we'll set up our values and all that, and then we'll let it run for a few years. But most, most healthy cultures have to be reanimated. They have to kind of be not reprogramed completely. You really have to just kind of got to reanimate that thing. And so sometimes what that looks like is sitting down with your senior team or sitting down with whoever your executives are or the people running certain departments just once again go over their roles and their assignments and make sure that they really do feel empowered and capable and live and all of that and then just kind of give them the keys to the bus again. And I mean, the faster any leader can find out if you really are the person that I think you are in a role, the better off we are. Because, again, if you're not, I've only got a couple of choices. Either have to let you go or I have to grow you into that role. And the faster we can find that, the better off, you know? If there's things that are destructive, like if someone's bad for the culture or they're, you know, they're being really a destructive element in a culture that's a different animal. You know, a senior leader has a job to do something there. But ultimately, ultimately, I know CEOs all over the country that have really great rhythm and balance. Now they work their tails off. But you know what? They take a vacation. They have a weekend. So this notion that the only model for CEO or business owner or an entrepreneur to be successful is to work incessantly on everything and have a finger and a touch point for everything. That's just not true. Are good people given the keys and let them run?
Henry [00:25:33] Where do the common mistakes you see leaders making hiring good people? To that last point.
Steve [00:25:37] Yeah, well, let me do this. You guys have seen as much as I have, so let me flip it and make sure that you guys are able to speak in as well. Because I mean, we have a credible panel here. Okay, I'll leave, but you guys jump in as well. So some mistakes I think often. Is this last year, a couple of years ago, I read the book. Who and not pushing the book is a good book. But the idea is this more times than not, the higher we get in an organizational role, we don't objectify the hiring process. What we do is we treat it in a subjective manner in the data and research is all really true. The more subjective the hiring process is as in. Oh man, I just got the perfect candidate. All this person's unbelievable. Oh, God just led me to this person or this person just showed up in my back door or whatever. And those are all fake. I'm not I'm not denying God leads somebody to join our team. What I am saying, though, is that just run that through the objective process. It makes sure we really do have a role clarity she or a job description. We're not just hiring a good buddy. You know, I think a lot of times we really took Jim Collins get the person on the bus thing. I think a lot of times in an entrepreneurial world, we've abused what Jim really was trying to say. I don't think he was ever saying, hey, just load up the bus with all kinds of people and hope it works out. That is not what he was saying. You know, what he was saying is when you know, you have someone who really fits a role that your organization needs or a person of talent that fits the mission, the culture, the trajectory, you know, you try to get them on. But you can't hire 10 of those people without work to be done. Your P.A. will let you know. So a lot of times what happens is to your questioning. We don't objectified the hiring element enough. We don't just have it is a process or we don't treat it like an expert assignment. We treat it more as a personal choice. I mean, look at you and I both know you're not both. I've seen enough CEOs who really are not very good at hiring when they really aren't. And so, you know what? If you're not very good at hiring, lets somebody who's good at it bring you the candidates, you know, let them bring you two or three candidates. And you be part of that, not I'm going to do all the hiring. So let me stop you guys jump in, because I know. Have you seen Henry?
Rusty [00:27:55] You're exactly right, Steve. I mean, if you think about it, we would never roll a product out like you just said. We would hire. We wouldn't. Oh, hey, I've got a great idea. Let's just put it out there. Yeah, right. So you're exactly right on that. You're one of the things that I see happening a lot. You turned it back to us. As you know, a lot of times we hire to the deficiency of the person before us. Yeah. Yeah, right. The other person. So we run from guardrail to guardrail. Happens all the sales. Right. So the last sales, they just they can't build sales systems. So we go out and we hire the sales systems salesperson. Ignoring the fact that, you know, we still have to be able to build a team motivated team do it. So we tend to overcompensate to the weakness of the person that we're replacing instead of, to your point, staying objective, stepping back, zooming back, doing the work and say, what do we really need in the totality, not just trying to fill that other hole. We do it all time. Yeah.
Steve [00:28:57] Yeah. You know, the hard part. A lot of times something I call historical competence. The hard part when you're hiring somebody is to what level of confidence do you really have that they can do here? What they did over there. You know, like you're never denying someone's resumé that they were very successful over here. But, well, we always have to take a risk and we have to take a challenge with is just because I was able to do something in one environment. We just really don't know for sure that I can do it in the next environment. That's the reason it two objectified the hiring process more, not less, is usually a really good idea. And I know there's the exception. I know there's the you know, you meet a guy on an airplane or whatever. I know there's that one exception to a thousand hires, but the other nine hundred ninety nine hires probably are going to fit that model. Better to be more successful. Exactly right.
William [00:29:51] You guys seem like experts and Rusty wrote a book on H.R., so I'm going to refrain from flipping out.
Steve [00:29:57] That's the reason I turned it back to make it good. Yeah. Yeah.
William [00:30:01] So I'm gonna pass and we have a little time left. I want to switch to this risk. You talked about setting risk. That is just a word that is ingrained in most entrepreneurs heart. Right. That is why they're doing what they're doing. They have an outsized comfort with ambiguity and risks compared to the rest of the world. And that's why they go out to slay dragons when the rest of us are, you know, sitting at home making sure our armor is intact before we go out and do things like that. Talk to us about setting risk, what that looks like from your perspective, how you've seen it, and just what did that concept mean in your framework?
Steve [00:30:35] Yeah. Yeah. Well, William, you gave it a great tee up. I mean, the frame up you gave it is perfect. I mean, entrepreneurs are the people in the world who get something off the ground. They can go from zero to one. You know, it's not that they're better or worse, but it takes a different risk profile to go from nothing to something. You know, it still takes a big risk profile often to scale or to acquire things like that. But it's a whole different animal going from zero to one. And I think often what happens with our risk is it's up to me as a senior leader, an entrepreneur or a CEO. It's up to me to figure out when I'm going to bet part of the farm, when I'm going to bet the whole farm and when I'm going to bet your farm. You know, I mean, a lot of times entrepreneurs are really, really good at betting other people's farm. Now, most entrepreneurs are more than willing to put some skin in the game and bet some of their farm. But I kind of know when I'm really going to take, you know, what size is my risk going to be? The scope of my risk. And when you put all the factors in, sometimes you just kind of got to roll the dice and push it all out there. Sometimes you don't. And what we do know is this, though, you'll let me go this way. I had actually a change in my thinking or risk. So a year ago, we had a magazine called Life at Work and we pulled the topic up and we would release a top. It was a theme based topical magazine every month. And I remember we did one on stewardship. And so when we did the issue in guys, this has been decades ago. But when we had it, I remember studying about stewardship. And when I read studied that parable about the talents, I remember I changed my whole way of how I thought God thought about risk. Because what happens is if you remember in the parable on the talents or the stewards.
[00:32:23] What happens is you remember that parable where the owner comes to town and the owner's God, Jesus, the owner comes to town. He passes out talents to different people and to some, he gives this money to somebody, gives us money to somebody, gives one. And then what happens is as each God doubles them, but the guy that has one basically doesn't double it. But he comes back to the owner. Jesus is the parable goes back to the owner.
[00:32:45] He says, hey, big news, big news. I was so scared that you would be upset with me. That I buried it, but I've given you gave me one and I gave you one back. OK. And so what he does is he basically says, hey, you know what? I was so nervous. I was fear-based and I was scared that I didn't take any risk and I took no leverage. And what happens is this. In the parable of the steward, in the complete theology of the parable, the steward, we basically draw a line in the middle of it. And we only teach the top part of the parable, which is, hey, everything that you own belongs to God. God's really the owner of it traded the way the owner would treat it. Make sure you take care of it like the owner has left you and all. That's true. The bottom part of the parable is this takes some leverage and takes some risk. Do give me more back than what I gave you. And so when I read that parable and really studied it again, I changed my whole view of risk. Now, obviously, I'm not saying every decision in life ought to be, you know, all the dice in that the whole farm. But this notion that I'll never to take any risk and I'm never to take any leverage, that's just not the biblical concept of stewardship.
[00:34:02] I don't think. And so for me, the word risk actually is embedded in a much more robust word theologically that we're all comfortable with called stewardship.
William [00:34:15] We love a good sermon on this podcast. Don't ever apologize for that. If you ask another question.
Rusty [00:34:22] It feels like church.
Steve [00:34:24] Yeah. We'll pass the plate here just a minute.
William [00:34:29] If you ask another question to one of the three of us, you just might get one yourself. Well Steve. This has just been a joy and a pleasure. And I know our audience has gotten so much out of this. One of the things we love to help them get a little more out of is as you think about your life right now, we want to let the audience in to your life. Where's God working in you? Because it's amazing somehow how many of our listeners end up being in the same spot as some of our guests. And so we would love to hear from you about maybe wearing God's word. His words coming alive in a new way or a different way. Or maybe for the first time you picked up a different book to the Bible. And that could be today. That could be this week. That could be this month or this season. But let us in to your world a little bit. Yeah.
Steve [00:35:15] Oh, great. Appreciate you giving me that invitation. You know, a couple of verses, actually. So I've been rereading some of the Psalms lately and I was rereading Psalm 78 toward the end of that chapter. And actually, it's really funny because if you would have asked me years and years ago if I had a life first, it was these verses, but then I actually didn't really animated them. I didn't get inside those verses for a few years as much as I could have and should have. But you remember in Psalm 78 where it talks about David was transitioning from being a shepherd of sheep to a shepherd of people. And then it says and then he led them skillfully with hands of skills and with purity of heart. And so what I'm trying to kind of figure out now is, you know, as an empty nester and as a guy who would be called one of my buddies likes to say we're in the fourth quarter. And I just kind of looked at him and laugh. But I mean, you know, I'm clear, I'm 62 and I'm clearly in the latter season of life. I'm trying to continue to figure out as a good steward how I transition my skill set into, you know, another season of life. And often we just kind of get into a rhythm and we know exactly what our calling looks like and what living a life looks like and serving God serving people. And we kind of get into a rhythm, but then we go through a transition to a new season. Why we kind of got to figure it out again. And so I'm kind of in a little bit of a figuring it out again, season of life as I move into these next few years, that's kind of where I am. So you can you guys can pray for me and send me your wisdom and your advice along the way.
Henry [00:36:54] Heavenly Father, we lift up her brother, Steve Graves, and we thank you for him. And we thank you for his life. And we thank you for the way that you speak to us through your word. And dear Lord, we ask that indeed, you give Steve that wisdom and grace continued grace and continued wisdom, because you've already given them a lot of it, and that you give the same to us and to all of our listeners. If this in Jesus name, amen.