Today’s guest is Dr. Stephen Drawford. Stephen is a coach, speaker, and consultant, on a mission to help business leaders unlock their full potential. He began his career in the non-profit world, but quickly realized that he could have a greater impact on the community by helping for-profit companies to discover their mission and desired impact and align them to achieve success by clarifying their message and their focus.
For the last twenty years Dr. Crawford has been instrumental in developing and training thousands of leaders seeking to improve their leadership skills. As a motivational speaker and trainer, he has delivered inspiring messages to businesses, conferences, Universities, and workshops to thousands of audiences all over the nation and in 13 countries.
In today’s podcast you’ll learn how to bring about positive social change in your business, maximize profits for your teams and start giving yourself permission to succeed.
Links mentioned:
The Experience Leadership Podcast
Transcript
Colin Hunter 0:07
Hi folks, and welcome to another episode of the leadership tales Podcast. Today I'm joined by a lovely gentleman, Stephen Crawford. He runs a podcast called experienced leadership that I was a guest on. He's also a coach speaker and the CEO of a Minneapolis-based leadership coaching firm. So he's going to take us through his journey to get to where he is, a journey that's taken many challenges to overcome. But he comes from a place of the real value set. And his whole focus is how he gets business leaders to come to a place of restructuring the business, out of chaos, and therefore into clarity. So you'll hear a story today about how he's coming to do that. He's also got a new book too stupid to fail, which is coming out now. So it's a chance for you to hear his story. Looking forward to the conversation.
Colin Hunter:
I'm delighted to be joined by a wonderful guy, Dr. Stephen Crawford from the US; Stephen and I were talking about a while ago on his podcast, and a lot of the times this happens, Stephen, isn't it that we get a reciprocal conversation going because your background is fascinating. And even though it was all particularly all about me the last time, I'd love it to be all about you today. So welcome, sir.
Dr.Stephen Crawford 1:27
Well, I appreciate that. Thanks so much. Great to be here.
Colin Hunter 1:31
Good. And for those listening. Tell me this, tell us a bit about yourself and your background. I'd love to hear your story,
Dr.Stephen Crawford 1:37
I guess the classic story. And on the south side of Chicago, it's inundated with poverty. If anybody knows the history of Chicago, the United States, it was, you know, Dr. King went and lived there for three years, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who led the civil rights movement in the United States. He lived there for three years dealing with urban poverty because when they built the highways, they separated, they went through all of the black communities that had been established, and we're well done, but the highways torn down through eminent domain. And they put them in buildings that we now call projects, that forced people to live, probably 20 to 25 thousand People without living in a six to the eight-block radius, and all living in buildings on top of each other, and so sucked out all of the opportunity to jobs, everything out of those communities. And so Dr. King was kind of moving into that. So I grew up in one of those neighborhoods. And so, you know, my grandfather was a Methodist pastor. And, you know, you know, he was a big Wesley guy. So John Wesley, from England, you know, who
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Dr.Stephen Crawford:
was a very socially active mentor, a lot of the people that led the abolitionist movement here in England. And so he was my grandfather, was a historian too, so, it's, you know, he was big on Wesley, big on community involvement and activation and really kind of led a process in which he educated us that we needed to be different than our circumstance. So just because we were surrounded by poverty. And so as an entrepreneur as well, he was a construction, he built houses, by hand, built buildings had, he had five sons. So that helped. And, you know, I grew up in an environment where, you know, I was poor black, but I didn't know it. And because we had a grandfather who basically commanded us to be the best that we could be and really spoke to our potential and not to our circumstances. And so I grew up with a different belief system than most of my friends around me are the people that are the schools that I participated in. And as I went to college, I moved to Minnesota; I had no idea that I was going in for the rest of my life. I started to Urban Studies because I started to see systematically how broken communities were not poor and resource economically, because there were tonnes of chain stores and liquor stores and tobacco shops and all those other things that were very prevalent in the community with a problem wasn't the amount of resources is the way they were allocated, and the way they were distributed, and the poverty. So I took Urban Studies in order to try to find out how to make a difference. And right out of college, my professor who left the program decided that he wanted to; he said, You talk really well; I want you to participate in this program that we're launching. And the pharmaceutical company had launched a program with this question if we didn't go into urban communities looking at deficits, and we look at winning to assets, what would that mean? And within three years of working in that program, I realised this was kind of a life's Colin. And I really just began, I became the director. And we grew that organization from initially around five or six employees to well over 60, and we were going into other non-profits doing leadership planning, strategic ideation, and launches and really saying, What if we took an asset-based approach to urban communities in order to really develop them and cultivate leaders within them. And so we were making a big debt. And then that little ripple of the economy in 2008, called the pharmaceutical company, pulled back the resources.
Colin Hunter 5:18
As a lot of everybody has a 2008 calendar that had a bad
Dr. Stephen Crawford 5:24
Absolutely. For us, it was fun, though; they flew us down to Indiana that where the Indiana University on campus, and they basically set us around. And they were just, I mean, they had asked us in our best case studies and stories between us and many of the other programs that they had funded. And the guy that was just leading the progress was just crying as he was reading kind of the case studies. We're just excited because we're thinking we're about to get more money. And he said, great news, we're really proud of you. And we really believe that you guys have developed to the point where you can sustain yourself. So go out there and get them. Yeah, so it was a painful story. But it also taught me something about creativity, ingenuity, and, you know, because at that time, in 2008, I was probably in the third year of my doctoral program. And I was studying leadership transformational leadership, was kind of the focus of a lot of the research that I was doing, and trying to bring that to build holistic, urban transformation to cities. And we got to travel all over the world because it was a global program. So going to Mumbai, Hyderabad, we went to Jordan, Oman, and we went to Kuala Lumpur, different cities around the globe, just to really explore this. And it was fascinating that I saw the opportunity to be in many of these impoverished countries, that the ingenuity and the creativity behind entrepreneurship were really what sparked economic development. And so I bought into that as an idea and started to do consulting alongside the non-profit. And three years later, when the board, as they say, promoted me to a customer, they dissolved the organization.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And, you know, he says, We promote you to pursue your own endeavors.
Colin Hunter 7:17
That's a positive message.
Dr. Stephen Crawford 7:22
And so, I went full time in this in this endeavor to really, really ignite the heart of entrepreneurs not just to be incredibly effective through solid strategy and good leadership, but also to align them with their missional values and to see what the good they can do because and I got sick of asking for permission to do good. And I really got so fed up with that I just
created a for-profit initiative that says, I'm going to do all the good I want to do, but not because I need to beg for someone's dollars or permission, I'm going to do it because I choose to do it. And I'm going to ignite other entrepreneurs to think this way. And that's what we've been doing. For the last ten years or so, we've grown, our team has had an impact, aligning our companies with missional values and really helping them build a successful, profitable business. I've met with a client of mine who has been a client for Oasis, Oh, man, since 2011, so about ten years, and we were doing training for his team, his leadership team. And one of the things I challenged him on, he says, until we get richer, we can't do better,
Colin Hunter::
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford::
Because he's highly involved in the community, and I said, we can't do good ethics, jeopardize becoming incredibly successful. Because if we're more successful, the better we can do, and we have to attach doing good and be having a thriving economic palette to be able to pull those things together.
Colin Hunter::
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford::
And so we're driven to make our clients successful, on average our clients are doing for the small business portion, it's a little shift, the bigger the business you get, but the smaller businesses that we work with, you know, between one to 15 million are doing somewhere between 67 to 70% per year over year, increasing their net profit and their bottom line. So that's kind of a thing we're kind of proud of. So that's a long background before I tell you.
Colin Hunter 9:12
I mean, we could have about five podcasts on that, just let alone that, so I want to dig into a few things as you and I have a similar background. I had a professor of theology as a grandfather church Scotland minister, and therefore you know that's where I got a lot of my belief systems in there, and one of those was about going out and mission work and doing the other thing in there but what I call mission work was helping others, and you know, doing a paying afford to them, but I'm interested in tying that into this bit that you were talking about, later on, you know, I'm hearing it as profit equals freedom for people you know, if the [inaudible] is richer, then we can reinvest and therefore, the two compliments you got one which was you know, you're now self-sustaining. So great, we don't need to give you any money, which is a bit of a kicker at the time; it is one of those models and almost teachable points of view that you drive through all of your work. Tell us how you get leaders to do that. Because I think a lot of leaders are basking in the corporate world who sit there with budgets provided for them, and they don't really fundamentally understand how a business works. Yeah. So
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Yeah, well, first, you have to lie to them. No, I'm just kidding. But in truth, you know, you in order to earn the right, to get them what they need, you have to sell them what they want. And that's just a reality; most leaders don't know what they need. I think they need something until they realize that thing that they want doesn't really solve the problem. So, it is sort of a two-step, you know, we have to lay out reality the same, alright. So you think you want higher profits or more business, but if we got you more business, with your high turnover rate, with your low conversion rate, with your inconsistent service, with your broken systems, if we just get you more business, it will only magnify your problem. So a lot of times, we are selling people on the idea that, hey, we're going to evaluate your seven pillars between lead generation, lead conversion, client fulfillment, we look at systems and accountability management, and we look at how they develop their team, their financials, and their leadership. And so we're, I know that we're going to eventually get back to his leadership. I know that you know, but we don't start there. Most people say I need more leads; if I just hit more leads, that would solve all my problems. So we Okay, let's start a conversation, let's evaluate your marketing and what you're doing there. And we will and will legitimately do that. And sometimes it'll be two or three quarters because we operate in 90 days, windows, it'll be two or three quarters, where all their goals around getting more business. And over time, we'll just continue to coach them to ask better questions and really refine what they really want. And when they really figure out that what they need to do is build a solid foundation of leadership within their organization. And you won't have until you become and so the expectation that they can get something without changing who they are. I challenged a gentleman yesterday; he and a business partner have a thriving business. It had done 400% of what it did when they bought it from the previous owner and just under two and a half years. I mean, it is incredible. It's like a skyrocket. But he is chronically dissatisfied. And kind of walking in kind of a depressive state when things are going tough. And he's overwhelmingly joyful and gleeful. When things were going well, I was challenging him to stabilize himself as a leader. And I said you want to you think you want to get to a place where you can close. And I can promise you this as a world as an entrepreneur, myself, and someone who's worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the last dozen or more years. I said I can promise you this, an entrepreneur never cost,
Colin Hunter:
Yup.
Dr.Stephen Crawford:
It is a consistent appetite that needs to grow and get more you're waiting to get there. There is never coming. What you. So when you walk into chaos, You're surprised by
Colin Hunter:
Yeah. Yeah. Great
Dr.Stephen Crawford:
And I say so what we need to do is we need to figure out how to calm the storm.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah,
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
On the inside, with the expectation that it'll never be calm on the outside.
Colin Hunter:
No,
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
you're the call. And we have to shift that. And I said, and until you become who you need to be, you'll never have what you need to have. But the question you have to ask yourself is, Do you have a commitment to be such a strong commitment to being true to who you are that you're unwilling to become who you need to be to have the business that you want to have?
Colin Hunter:
Yeah,
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And so I think that's at the heart of it, we get to the, you know, the soft, gooey center, as I say, of leadership, which is really, really the hard skills to develop, because it takes courage. One of our core values is courage because you have to have the courage to walk and live in vulnerability to actually develop the strength to move into an environment that really is consistently producing for you. So that's how we invite them. And so it is kind of a bait and switch. We do that completely. But you know, we do say to them, Hey, yes, we can help you get what you want.
Colin Hunter:
Yep.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
What we don't tell them is the work that it's going to take to get there, or they might never sign on.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Colin Hunterv:
And I think it's an easy one because I think a lot of times leadership and leaders don't really fully understand. And I almost want to go back to your asset-based urban development because it's similar to that reality; it's about getting systems and structures in place to make yourself sustainable, and looking at all of those systems is interdependent. So your sales do your leads do fulfill your customer service to you, but that all flow from this principle. But the leader is the servant to all of those systems and keeping them in. And I know you're a big fan of habits and practices and richness in there. But that's where we're coming to. So I love your analogy about calming the storm because we talk about confidence conviction connection, that calm in the storm is where does the leadership where does the rock come from to go to biblical reference when all.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Absolutely
Colin Hunter:
Around is it crushing against it? So I love that I want to just explore a couple of things because I think there's a lot to be learned vice versa from the urban leadership, and then you know, the upbringing that you had in that because grits for me is sometimes missing. But actually, the experimental immersion of that experience you had growing up, particularly with the father and sons with the grandfather, had allowed you to be more resilient in some ways, but there must have been times where inside you're coming in the storm is not happening. You are, you know, treading water heavily would tell me about those times. Yep.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Well, honestly, you know, what really stands out, as you say that, I grew up with the belief that was incorrect, because my father, my grandfather was heavy into education.
Colin Hunter:
Right
Dr.Stephen Crawford:
I did believe that that was a solution. And so I remember, I moved to Costa Rica for a year on sabbatical from the non-profit, I graduated with my master's degree, and I flew down to Costa Rica. And I was trying to learn Spanish because I said, if I'm going to be effective in urban areas, I want to at least be able to be conversational in Spanish. And I was endorsed by the board; they gave me a stipend, you know, allow me to do that. And I went down there. And there are three languages you should all learn if you're going to work in urban development. It's a Mandarin, English, and Spanish.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah, yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
You got most of the world covered if you can handle those three. But, you know, I came back, and they changed leadership. So although they moved me out of the director position, they said, we'll revisit that when you come back, see where we are. And they had a different leader in the organization. Then, a university offered me a job that paid off me a job before I left, and their endowment was taken away for that program because it was given by a person who ended up going to jail for embezzlement.
Colin Hunter:
Oh
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And he had given them a ton of buildings as well, that he had given them for dollar. And the government came back said, Oh, no, you have to pay full retail for that. Well, they're over a million and a half into the renovation of those buildings. So all doors close for me.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And here I am, a master's degree, a first-year doctoral program. And back then, we would go through newspapers a lot. Maybe your younger audience doesn't understand what a periodical is. But there used to be a help wanted section where you look for jobs. And I guess I was; I felt I was a likable person. So I went to a car dealership, and I had some experience in sales. Because working for a non-profit, you always had a side hustle. I mean, it's not enough to pay the bills.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
So I went to a car dealership, and I hated it. They were cheating people. They were lying to people. And I was just; I couldn't believe it. And I literally went to a Barnes Noble bookstore during my lunch breaks. And I would read, I'm like, how am I stuck?
Colin Hunter:
Yeah,
Dr.Stephen Crawford:
when everybody else is moving forward. And so I'm sitting there reading. And I grabbed out my very large laptop computer for 2006. It was a pretty big chunk of thing.
Colin Hunter:
Brick? Yeah,
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Yeah. And I started writing a book, because, which I just finished, by the way, it'll be published later this fall,
Colin Hunter:
Great! Congratulations
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
which I'm happy about, thank you. It's called too stupid to fail. And I realized that my heightened emotions, my EQ, was, in many cases, debilitating when it came to success. I had taken other people's Cues and waited for other people's permission to long as far as being a controlling element in my life.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And I put it together that most of my friends that were significantly successful either had no high school education, one year of college, or barely graduated high school, and
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
They were not educated. They were resilient. And so, when you talk about that resilience, I put the pattern together. Because I'm a patterns person. That's,
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
That's what I do. I see systems; I see patterns; I make connections. And I saw that when they are turned down, their natural, normal response is okay. Yeah, and they almost act like they don't hear you when you tell them no.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And my EQ sensibilities would always kind of say, okay, I don't want to rock the horse, I don't want to tilt it, because I was told that was right the respectful way.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And I had to learn what it took to develop the cultivate emotional fortitude. And so the originally the I called the book resilience. Then there was a lady who wrote a book called resilience. And I said, well because that was obviously that was 2006 2007, I believe her book came out resilience. Elizabeth Edwards, who passed away now, but her husband was Jonathan Edwards, a politician in America. So she would have looked over, I said, I don't want any of you after that, and I just kept. So I held on to this, what do I call it. And it was when the banking industry began to collapse. And they said too big to fail. I said, What makes us they're immune to failure. And I'm going through this. And so, in 2009, I changed the title to too stupid to fail. And it's been that way ever since. And it has been evidenced by everybody that I've interviewed people that I've met with; one of my mentors does not have a high school diploma. And one of my closest mentors, and I've been doing some projects and working with him lately. And he's grown companies to well over a billion dollars now in revenue, and he's brilliant. But he doesn't understand the word no.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah. Yeah. It's fast. And I love that too stupid to fail. Because there's sometimes you look at people, and particularly, I mean, if you look in the UK around sales, then we don't have a sales culture in the UK, not like the US where there is, you know, I'm going to go ask them. But somebody said the other day, and I, you know, there was a lovely statement about America, and I'm a big fan live there. But they said that you know, if you come at us as America, we will get together and fight you. Yeah. And there's a thing that you get. But the rest of the time, if nobody's against us, then we're fighting each other. So there's almost a natural inbred ability to just fight. Yeah.
Dr.Stephan Crawford:
Yeah
Colin Hunter:
And yeah. And to work that way. Which I loved as an analogy because, you know, if you could actually engender that internally to shift your systems, then, you know, the Chicago that you grew up in other things just wouldn't be there. But there is a natural reaction, which is almost too stupid to fail, or individualistic sometimes versus
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Yeah, right. Well, and when we do integral research, you know, we, we consider the resources, and this I know this goes back to my doctoral work, but when you do integral research, you consider the northern rational.
Collin Hunter:
Yeah,
Dr. Stephan Crawford:
aspects So when we're, you know, we contextualize that, or the Western pragmatic. Westerns are very pragmatic, and we're looking at what works. What does it do? That's why meditation is so difficult for Americans. I'm Sitting there. Wait, what does this do? What does this do? What has happened? Hasn't it happened yet? Nothing's changing.
Colin Hunter:
Nope, nope, nope. Let's bring the new thing in.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Exactly. So there's an incessant impatience. But you know, I think that gruff on the outside, it's also telling of a lot of weaknesses. And on the inside, I think there's some fraction internally; I think most people are trained and taught to be sheep, to follow the rules, our leadership structures that we, we amplify look after our home systems, we create a mental model of leadership with a home then we create a new one, as we go into schooling, and figuring out those things. And then we, whether it's our first job, or education, or military or what have you, we create these different mental models of leadership. And those things for us. Establish for us that we are to be led. We are waiting on something.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah,
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
we're waiting for other people to do something, say something in order to give us permission. Most leaders that I work with don't lack an intelligence benefit. So many of them are smarter than I am.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah,
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
they're waiting on permission to do what they know to do. Right. And as coaches as leaders, cultivating that inner confidence in that. And so I think that some people grew up in environments where they naturally developed this internal fortitude, this thick layer of heart scan, so to speak, where they can breakthrough. But for many of us, I know I was one of them. I had to go through a process intentionally. It's like working on muscle, learning how to build that strength. And that does not happen overnight. It happens through a process.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah, And in some ways, it goes back to Taleb's view and anti-fragile you know that and actually the new definition of resilience, which is that it's the ability to thrive in chaos unless we're stretching ourselves out of normality and stretching ourselves to build that heart muscle that gives us that then when it comes to it, we tend to just flop we go over, or we in mental health suffers or something in this so as leaders, we've got to do that ourselves. So what tell us more about the book than what's in the book that readers would listen to or what they read
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Yeah, so I And absolutely. And we don't have the Amazon page up yet. But we're in the final stage of the editorial; I didn't realize that some of the people that I quoted, the editors just say, No, you can't have those people there; they have protected speech. And I say, Oh, my goodness. So we're still navigating through some other of the
Colin Hunter:
I know that
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
The nastiness of some of those things. But what it really boils you down to is, and I use my journey as a template, but it's about you know, we have the word we, which is a grammatical construct, that ah means to do again, so, Are you repeat, it means to repeat again right now. And so the grammatical construct re means to happen again. And so that we break the book into three sections, where there's the introduction, where we talk about rebooting and getting a hard, essentially a hard reset. And then we talk about reframing our perspective on winning and failing and the whole growth mindset, actually, so there has to be a reframe. But once we do that, then we have three chapters that deal with the heart. Because first, we've got to develop that emotional muscle, I'm sorry, then we start with the mind. The first thing is to recognize, to recognize it to really bring it to build the mental muscles around what needs to be done. And then is the issues of the heart, we have three chapters centered on all with the first letters already, and then we talk about the hands what we must do. And the biggest thing that I really, really found myself getting lost in was the chapter of the heart called recreate, because of the play of words where you can have recreate, which is to recreate yourself.
Colin Hunters:
Yup
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And this idea that human beings are perfectly able to create anything. I know, there was Thomas Troward in the early, you know, really, really old book. But Thomas Troward talks about the essence of who we are, is Spirit. Therefore, we create, and we can't do otherwise. And so we're either creating the world we want, or we can't deny ourselves that attribute. So if we're not creating what we want, we're ultimately creating what we don't want.
Colin Hunter:
I don't want. Love it
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And it's the essence of who we are. That's creating. And it's the conditions that we put ourselves in if you are angry, bitter, hostile, and rage, all those things, those things are destructive, and uh, create a nasty future for you. If you embrace life with gratitude and understand being appreciative, you can actually recreate the world that you want. But first, you have to create it, which is the first it starts on the drawing board of the mind, then you have to recreate it by the way you live—and so being able to do that. So just going through those different elements, they don't serve as a roadmap, more like checkpoints along the way.
Colin Hunter:
Nice. Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Because everybody's on a different map and a different journey, and so being able to have these checkpoints, and you can implement on nine, immediately, there's something that you say, All right, what recognize such building habits of mindfulness and meditation and different things like that, into your day, being able to do those things. So it's important that the person puts the practices into place, but only in progression where they can develop themselves.
Colin Hunter:
So and I love the play on recreate or recreation because there is that concept that we hold, which is the playground. But if you think about it, it is your rather than if we don't create what we want, we create what we don't want. And therefore, the purpose for practice is the important bit. And I love the way of starting with a mind first, so you get the purposeful direction. And then you start to recreate and recreation and playfulness in there to work. Yeah, I love it. I also love the fact that the route maps and, you know, journeys are different. That's why you know that the old adage about here's five things leaders do. Yeah, there are five things that some leaders do, but you know,
Dr. Stephan Crawford:
Right
Colin Hunter:
Are you that leader? You love right.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Exactly
Colin Hunter::
So in terms of your leadership journey, then yeah, where are you now? And where's your purpose taking you to in the next few years?
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
You know, I am so glad that we've been able to bring on some additional coaches; we're expanding, we're growing. We're helping leaders grow within that realm; the relationship that I have with my mentor and other organizations of speaking, I've had the privilege of serving on several faculties of large organizations that are training people to do what it is that we do. So I guess my goal would be to, as we're looking at it, you know, I want our firm to have a significant impact. But I never want to become the bottleneck within our firm. So I want us to continue to grow and build. Just having the privilege of being able to speak on larger platforms with some of my mentors of different things like that, that I've been invited to lately. It kind of where next looks like for me it's Being able to build our firm, but also build it to the point where it's sustainable. And I have the freedom and flexibility to serve on some of these larger platforms that are speaking to the masses as well.
Colin Hunter::
So if you go back to the child who grew up in Chicago and one of the projects and you have to almost, you know, that classic, what's the letter you would write to them? And tell them? What are the, you know, almost the three things you have in your mind that you've learned that you hold to that are strong points of view for you?
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
The crazy idea is that no one's really looking at you.
Colin Hunter:
I love it
Dr.Stephen Crawford::
So, do what you need to do anyway, ask for less permission.
Colin Hunter:
Yep.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And it would really take good notes. Because if there's regret is that the lessons that I have learned haven't truly been enshrined, and they come up almost as a later point. And it's just like, there's so much learning. And I remember there was a, there's an old Methodist, well, he wasn't really a Methodist, because the Methodist Church hadn't been created yet. But the old evangelist graduated from Oxford. And George Whitfield, contemporary of John Wesleyan, George Whitfield would leave the seminary, and he couldn't afford to actually be a student there. Because his parents had died, they owned the old bill in, and he would serve other people in order to go to school because back then, you could be a servant and not have to pay tuition; you just sit in class and still get a degree. So he would participate in the classes. And he would go out and find ways to serve the poor and really make a difference. And he really did some things. And he was a charismatic fellow, where he was a first American celebrity, as they say, where he came across to the new world. And he would speak at 10s of 1000s of people that show up to here to speak because of how charismatic he was. So incredible order. And when I was reading about him, I realized that one of the greatest things that were lost is we had no idea what he was thinking. People have written down notes of his recorded words, but he never wrote anything. And you have John Wesley met all these writings.
Colin Hunter:
Yeah.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
And, you know, the world is different. People become missional Wilberforce; we know about the growth of what happened in England because of some of the things that were written by these revolutionaries that really wanted to make a difference for social change within the world. So I regret not capturing all of it. But I'm committed from this point forward to being able to do that.
Colin Hunter:
I love that storytellers need good listeners who are good scribes who can craft the stories and tell the stories for future generations. I love that, yeah. Dr. Steven Crawford is just a pleasure, sir. Thank you, thank you for telling your story. I'm sure a lot of people will get a lot out of this. And from where you've come from away, you're now that's a big journey that's paid it forward to a huge amount of people around America but also now wider into the globe. So which is great. So thank you, sir.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Pleasure. Thank you.
Colin Hunter::
If people want to get in contact with you hear more about you, where would they go to?
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Well, you know, find our experience leadership podcast is everywhere you download podcasts, and experienceleadership.com, which is our website where we could be found. So we love to serve, we love to build, whether it's entrepreneurs are just serving within companies that just want to make a difference. And so, we love aligning with missional leaders. So if a missional leader wants to learn a little bit more about that, by all means, they can reach out.
Colin Hunter:
Excellent, sir. Hope to have you more on the podcast when the book comes out. And the people
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Absolutely
Colin Hunter:
get hold of that. So looking forward to that.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
October hopefully, so.
Colin Hunter:
October was looking forward.
Dr. Stephen Crawford:
Alright. Talk to you soon.
Colin Hunter:
Take care. Cheers
Colin Hunter::
That was Stephen Crawford. It's always fascinating to hear stories of people's journeys, to be an entrepreneur, to be a podcast host, and to combine coaching podcast hosts and coaching supporting businesses. And I'm a big believer in the support that businesses need start-ups to need to get them to cells to the next level in their journey and how that should be supported as we go through. And it goes back to my first exploration with design thinking when one of my colleagues was doing design thinking working with a start-up incubator in South Africa. So lovely to hear, and lovely to have Stephen on the podcast. I look forward to welcoming you to another episode of the leadership tales podcast.