Part of being a true leader is giving away, being of service, not for credit, not for recognition, but for the true betterment of the people around you.
Welcome to the Legacy Creator podcast, a show dedicated to giving you the tools you need to build a profitable, purposeful, and powerful business that lasts. I'm your host, Ashton Smith, a sixth-generation entrepreneur who is passionate about helping you think bigger so that you can actualize your goals and build your legacy.
Let's dive in.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Legacy Creator podcast. I'm looking at you guys right in front of our new front yard. The sun is finally shining after a full week of downpouring rain. So I am happy and in good spirits today, and I'm so excited to be with you today to have a really important conversation. I'm really excited for this discussion because we are going to be talking all things leadership, perhaps from an angle that you might not have heard before. So I'm really excited to spend some time with you today. So buckle up, get your notebook out. Or if you're driving, feel free to just listen, tune in, enjoy, and let's go ahead and dive in.
I am fully convinced that growing as a leader is probably the quickest and most profound way to propel a company forward. Why? Why is that? Because everything in a company stems from its leader, and I think that a central theme to great leadership is generosity. I think it is pouring into your people and your community without restraint, serving, empowering. And you know, I love this quote from John Maxwell. If you don't know John Maxwell and you wanna grow as a leader, please go look him up, buy his books. One of my favorite books of his is The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, but one of my favorite quotes from John Maxwell, and probably of all time, is this one: "A leader who produces other leaders multiplies their influence." I mean, that's just so powerful, right? So many of us talk about wanting to create an impact. We wanna have influence, and I firmly believe that the quickest way to have the greatest impact is by raising up other leaders around you. And in order to do that, we have to develop as leaders first. We have to set the tone, and we really need to create a culture of generosity.
One of the greatest, probably the greatest leader that has had the biggest impact on my life is my dad. Ever since I can remember, as a little girl, my dad has been pouring into me, sharing life lessons, stories, skill sets, and really empowering me to realize the potential in me and live it out. I think that, to me, is the embodiment of a true leader, and some of my most vivid and cherished memories as a teenager, were morning chats on the screened-in porch at my old house. We had this cute little screened-in porch, and my dad and I are morning people, so we'd be up and at 'em in the mornings, on the weekends, specifically on Saturday mornings. I would look forward to it every single week. We'd wake up early, probably work out together. We loved CrossFit, and we would just chat, sometimes for hours on end, and I would often just sit and listen intently and take notes in my notebook. I even had a dedicated notebook that was like, "life lessons from my dad." I need to find that. But this was just a part of life. I think it's always been a part of our family. We love to sit together, whether it was on the screened-in porch or it's in our living room. We still do this to this day when we visit with them, and now my husband is looped in on this, and so, you know, my dad will pour into him and share all of his insights and wisdom. But it's always been a part of our family and one of my favorite memories, and after a while, I started quoting my dad, just in conversations or talking with my friends or, you know, at college, in presentations, eventually at work, you know. I started talking like him because I was spending so much time with him, right? I started using the insights that he'd shared in different ways, whether it was at school or eventually later on in business, and he would always tell me, you know, "Take this, run with it. If this could be helpful, please use it." "What is mine is yours. I really want this to help you," and he has always been so generous with his time, with his insights, with his information, and that's not just with me. Of course, I get a front-row seat to that because I'm his daughter, but he is so passionate about leadership, and he has raised up other leaders in his company, you know, whether it was his team or it was just friends, family, people around him that, you know, needed some insight or, um, you know, recommendations, business, personal, whatever it was. He cared so much and he cares so much about being of service. And something that I've noticed too is he has never asked for the credit for those lessons, those quotes, those takeaways. He's never sought credit because that wasn't really what it was about.
And to kind of tie into that, there's another really cool quote from John Maxwell that I just have to throw in here. It says, "A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit." I think that's so powerful. And what I'm getting at here is that part of being a true leader, a great leader, is giving away, being of service, not for credit, not for recognition, but for the true betterment of the people around you.
I wanted that to kind of set the tone because I have noticed a common theme recently over the last one to two years. I feel like fear is holding leaders back from leveraging their purpose to have influence. And I think that this happens in a couple of different ways. So there is this pocket of the online space that is so overprotective of their brand that it essentially, in a way, disempowers people around them. So, you know, if anyone talks about a similar concept or uses particular verbiage, they are offended because that should be theirs. And essentially what it comes down to is they're afraid of people taking their stuff, right? And obviously what is legally protected is absolutely different. You know, trademarks, copyright, signature curriculum, all of that stuff should absolutely be protected. But what I'm kind of talking about here are general themes or concepts or general verbiage, that's a little bit different, right? And then you have this other group of people where they are so afraid of not being unique enough, or stepping on someone's toes, or talking too much like someone else, and so they hold back. They don't show up. They're overthinking, they're overanalyzing. And no matter what group you may fall into or relate with the most, all of this essentially stems from fear, and fear paralyzes us. And ultimately, I want us to break free from this. I want to call all of us higher as leaders. That's the purpose of this episode.
And I think one of the best ways to kind of have this conversation is to identify, like, how do you know if you've had influence on someone's life? How do you know if you are effectively leading, if you are operating as an effective leader? And so some of the signs that you have had influence or transformed someone's life, let's kind of talk through a few of them here.
I also feel like it's important to start defining, like, how do we display great leadership? And again, I really do think that it all starts with generosity. It all starts from this postured place within ourselves of, "I want to be generous. I want to be of service." And really, it's thinking less about yourself and more about people around you. It's removing the ego, and it's really focusing on the person in front of you, the people in front of you. This can be, you know, your team. This can be your clients. This can be your students, your community at large, right? Depending on your business model, that will determine what is applicable there. But it starts with generosity, and you know, I think that one element here is being of service without seeking credit. You know, I think there's so many things in business that can really fuel our ego, and there's so many times in business where we feel like we should receive credit or recognition. We should be affirmed. And that's a whole other conversation because we need to find other sources of affirmation outside of our businesses, but we really need to be of service without seeking credit. We don't need to necessarily show up with an agenda or an ulterior motive, right? But be present to serve the person in front of you, to truly help them.
Another thing is that we, as leaders, we need to be empowered as the people around us step into their power. We don't need to be threatened by their growth or their confidence. We need to know that we get to be a part of facilitating their transformation, their breakthrough, and their power doesn't take away from ours, right? Not in any way.
Another thing here is pouring into people without restraint. And I think that that is an interesting concept, one that, you know, may deserve some more unpacking. I know a lot of people have questions about, "Well, how much do I give away?" right? How much do I I share with people? How much do I tell my clients or my community? Where is the paywall, right? There are some things that we feel like we might need to gatekeep, but at the end of the day, I truly believe that pouring into people without restraint is going to take you so much further than holding back, reserving, especially if it stems from fear, especially if it stems from the fear of, "Well, is someone going to take this, or is someone going to be offended by this," right? Being of service and pouring without restraint is always gonna do more for you than operating out of fear, essentially.
I just encourage you to give generously. Share your best support, your best services, insights, especially with your inner circle, and I think that, you know, you can't give all of yourself to everyone, right? By no means am I telling you to give all of yourself to every single person that knows you. You're going to have tiered levels here, and I think the people in your inner circle are always going to get more from you, and you know, depending on your business structure, that is probably going to, first and foremost, include your team. The larger your team is, this will even be tiered within your team. As a team grows, you will be able to identify people that are paycheck players and people that are true owners in their role. You're going to pour into those owners and those leaders more and give more of yourself to them than you may give to people that are just paycheck players. They aren't as connected into the company or with the company. Beyond that, you know, it may even be long-standing clients, partners in the business, and then you can kind of tier down from there. So by no means am I saying give all of yourself to everyone. Give the most of yourself, be the most generous with those in your inner circle knowing that you have influence over them, and as you do, they're growing as leaders. This literally multiplies your influence over time, and that's just the heart of this entire message, and that's really what I want to communicate to you today is that being a leader, giving away the best of yourself, really living out your calling and your purpose, pouring into the people around you, that creates other leaders. And so instead of you expecting that you will have the biggest, most wildest impact alone, you can spread your influence. You can multiply your influence, because as you raise up other leaders, they are going to pour into other people, and that's going to just keep trickling down, right?
And it's knowing that if you operate from this mindset, there may be lives that you touch decades from now. I mean, in different countries all over the world because you decided to be generous with your time, to pour into people without restraint, to be the best leader that you could be, to not operate in fear, but to operate with a generous heart, and that creates true ripple effect impact. So I want to empower you to not walk in fear, but to walk in radical confidence. No one can take away from who you are or the power that you carry. Another person's light does not diminish yours. It just makes a space brighter, and this is multiplied influence if you can visually picture that. If you're the only one standing in the most vast, dark space and light is illuminating from you, it's going to be bright right around you, but it's not gonna be as bright as it would be if you had dozens and dozens or hundreds and hundreds of other leaders around you shining bright, right? That light is going to go further. It's going to make the space brighter. It doesn't take away from any other light source, just adds to it.
And so today, I encourage you to seek to become a better leader every single day. Read books. Practice with your team. Call yourself higher. Work on yourself. Know that you set the tone for the culture of your company internally and externally, knowing that as you do become a better leader, you get to pour into and raise up other leaders around you. I really want this to be a call. Like, let's truly come together and create a culture of generosity. I believe that it will change our space. It will change business at large, and most importantly, it will transform our people, and that's what this is all about, right?
So I hope that this conversation was inspiring, that it leaves you with some things to think on, that it inspires you so you pour into yourself so you can pour into others, and mostly that it just encourages all of us to rise up and really collectively create a culture of generosity in the business space. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review. Feel free to share on social media. We are @myawakeningco on all platforms. Share this episode. Tag us so we can get this message out to more people that need to hear it. Thank you for your time, thanks for hanging out with me, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.
