Transcript 

Welcome to the Hundredfold Business Podcast, where Christian men learn how to grow their business's top line, bottom line, and finish line, and I'm your host, Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today we have a special guest.

We have Mark Hancock. Mark is an author, award-winning writer, and conference speaker, and he serves as Chief Executive Officer of Trail Life USA. Welcome Mark.

Thanks for being on the show. Josh, great to be with you today. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, I'm really excited about this because I love talking about the topic of raising boys into godly men. I know you're an expert on that, and I've got three boys that I'm working on right now, and also, we've been a part of the Trail Life organization, and I know you as the CEO of Trail Life is a great honor to talk to you, and I'd love to pick your brain and hear about how you're leading that organization to hopefully help out other men who are listening to this episode. So to start, Mark, can you share with the audience how God has directed your path to get where you are right now? Yeah, well, it's a crazy path.

I never could have picked it, and if you had told me when I was 20 years old that I would be leading a national boys' organization, I would say, you got the wrong guy, and even up until the moment that Trail Life started, I still felt I was the wrong guy, but I started at a college. I opened an advertising agency. I was about 22 years old, and I look back on that, and I say, I can't believe that I did that, but it grew really quickly into a national organization.

I had offices in Atlanta and Daytona Beach, and I was flying all over the country doing crazy stuff, but I was not a believer, and I was living the life of a young guy who had too much at his beck and call, and eventually, I hit a wall, and I realized that I could not live my life on my own and that there were things that I was not capable of doing and fixing in my life, and that's when I encountered Christ, and I had actually gone up to Philadelphia on a business trip. I was going to visit my old high school buddy who used to be my party friend from high school. I was going to stay with him while I was doing business in Philadelphia, and what I wasn't aware of is that when I graduated, I went to college, and he went in the Marines, and eventually, he ended up in Okinawa, and he was going into the operating room for a kidney disease, and a man prayed for him, and he felt something happen, and they ran the tests again, and they did not need to operate on him, and they sent him home, so he was miraculously healed outside the operating room in Okinawa, and so I didn't realize his life had drastically changed, so I went to Philadelphia expecting one sort of thing, and instead of us partying for a week, he preached to me for a week, and while I was out of my business meeting, he would have his Bible study group praying over my suitcase and all my clothes and everything, and when I left Philadelphia, I decided I was going to serve the Lord somewhere on an airplane between there and Atlanta, and then I ended up back in Florida, and all by myself, my three-story condo on the beach in Ponsonet, Florida, I gave my life to the Lord, and everything changed from then.

I ended up going into ministry, I ended up homeless ministry, and associate pastor, youth pastor, college pastor, secular and Christian college instructor. My wife and I, I went back to school, got a couple of master's degrees in mental health counseling and marriage and family therapy, and was in private practice for a while. My wife and I began collecting rental properties, and opened a small finance company, and was doing all that out of the house.

My wife and I working together, raising our two sons. She eventually was running a crisis pregnancy center, and that was at the time that Trail Life began to come together, and so I was on the steering committee, and then board of directors, and then I stepped off the board of directors when we launched in January of 2014, and I've been CEO of Trail Life since. Wow, that is not a straight path, but it never is.

Never is. I still don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up, Josh, so it's ... Well, just keep praying, God will lead you, right? That's a promise. So, did you want to become CEO of Trail Life, or how did that, I mean, how did they choose you, or how did you choose yourself to be? No, I didn't, and I got swept up into it.

There were about 300 volunteers across the country, and I would say 299 of them were probably more qualified than I am to be in the seat that I'm in. I was never in Boy Scouts. My boys were in Boy Scouts.

My oldest ended up being an Eagle Scout, and because we were a homeschooling family, didn't drop my sons anywhere, so I sat in the back of the room, but I never joined, so I wouldn't have picked me if I saw my resume, but I was there at the beginning, 50 of us gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, to talk about the idea, spent a day and a half together, and then we went in 50 different directions, and nine of us became a steering committee. 63 days after that meeting, we ran a convention in Nashville, Tennessee, had 1,100 men come from 44 states, and that's where we wrote out the name, the design, the program, all sorts of things. This is what Trail Life would look like 63 days later, and because I didn't have a conventional job, I had a lot of time on my hands, and so I did a lot of that organizational kind of stuff, and I'd actually share with you another thing I did.

For about five years, I traveled around the world putting together evangelistic campaigns all over the world, so when nine of us were sitting in that meeting in Louisville, and we were charged with putting together a convention, they said, did anybody ever done this before? And I'm like, well, I have, you know, in Africa and in Paris and South America and Central America and Tokyo, I could probably do it here in the United States, so that was my first operational involvement, and that's really where my strengths were, was just operationally making things happen, just pulling things together from nothing and making them happen. I was really good at that. I was always a number two man guy, so somewhere, and so that led to that steering committee became the board of directors, and then on our launch date, I stepped off the board to be the COO, and they went on a CEO hunt, and they ultimately came around and said, Mark, you know, your executive team has met with us, and they said they want you to be the CEO.

They want to stop the search, and I didn't like that idea, because I'd never done it, other than running the ad agency, I'd never been at the top of anything, and I knew that my strength was in logistics and putting stuff together, but apparently, God just had a better idea, and so I accepted it reluctantly and spent probably the first three or four years of trail life not sleeping much, you know, as we were getting it up and running, and also every night just talking with God, like, you know, I really think you got, I'm not sure that I'm supposed to be, that I'm the guy, and he talked to me about Gideon and David and Moses and everybody else who wasn't the guy either, and so eventually, I said, okay, Lord, you know, and I just began to educate myself on being a better leader and developing my skills and talents in the CEO role, and now I can look at it and I can say, okay, I see his reasoning now, and if he had chosen somebody who was very familiar with Boy Scouts, we'd probably have an organization that looked, you know, a lot like Boy Scouts, but there's things that we do different than Boy Scouts, and so I think that it just brought a fresh perspective to it because the other staff members were steeped in Boy Scouts. Wonderful man. Our first employee's a 20-year scouting professional.

Our second one was the former general counsel for Boy Scouts of America. He was their lead attorney in their great, fine Texas office, and he wrote the policy that has led to their demise. He wrote it under duress.

He handed it to them and said, don't do this. This will gut the organization, and they said, no, we're going to do it, and then they fired him, so we got him, and so I had plenty of Boy Scouts input and understanding about how to build this type of organization, but I think I brought something new to the table, and also I brought to the table the fact that I didn't think that I could and so that really led me to hug God a lot tighter during that time because I knew that I was not equipped, and Josh, I guess I would say, you know, we're talking to business people. I would say if what you're doing you can do in your own strength, you have to wonder if it's worth doing because what I learned that to live in the space that's beyond my own ability and my own experience has caused me to really hug God really tight, and sometimes I wonder if maybe that's what he was after, and so anyway, I hope that wasn't too long of an explanation.

No, that's great. We probably should tease that out a little bit more because, first off, what is Trailhead for the people who don't know, and then what's the trajectory? So basically start up a little more than 10 years ago. What is the organization like now so people have some context? Yeah, Trailhead, a venture character leadership organization for boys from five years old up to 17 years old.

We're organized in troops, and it's what you'd expect from an outdoor boys organization. Troops and patrols and handbooks and uniforms, robust awards program, camping, hiking, all that stuff, but the thing that separates us from what the organization formerly known as Boy Scouts of America is we are Christ-centered, which means we're unapologetically Christian. We're not just an outdoor organization kind of having this Christian experience.

We are, at our core, a ministry that uses the outdoors to grow boys into godly men, and the second thing is we're boy-focused. We believe boys and girls are different, which is a radical statement these days, unfortunately. Boys and girls are different, and boys need a program, a male-centric environment that's aimed at their strengths and understanding who it is that they are.

They're not some sort of a defective girl. They're not a social disease that needs to be eradicated. They're this wonderful, marvelous creation of God that's a little bit wild, a little bit crazy, that has a little bit trouble sitting still, and they're not going to sit still, be quiet, and pay attention like Susie, and so they need an environment that's built for them.

So we built Trail Life for that and for them. So we're now 70,000 members strong, about 1,500 churches in all 50 states, and just continuing to grow in leaps and bounds. Wow, okay.

So from a couple hundred to 70,000, that's some explosive growth. What, as a leader, and you mentioned some things, what kind of things have you gone through during those different seasons of growth that maybe you weren't used to leading an organization that large? What did you learn along the way? Yeah, well, I had to learn a lot, and so I have some amazing mentors. The one is a business coach, and so I meet with him monthly, and then I also do a CEO forum that I lead down in Florida.

It's about eight to 10 CEOs. They've been gathering for about 20 years. I've been gathering with them for the last eight, and I started leading it about a year ago when the former, the guy who started it 20 years ago, retired.

So I have a lot of input, and then I also have an organization, in fact, you might be interested in this, and some of your listeners might, is an organization called Axios, which takes ministry leaders and brings them together here at our campus. We have a campus south of Greenville, South Carolina, 127-acre campus here. I don't know if you've been up here yet or not, Josh.

We have a campus here, and if you can get yourself here, then we have a sort of a one-day planning trip with CEOs and executive directors of Christian organizations where we work on our own issues and each other's issues, and I've really modeled that after the group down in Florida, which is a secular organization, but I learned so much down there in terms of practicalities of running business. You know, a lot of times in Christian organizations, we trust God so much that we can get lazy and kind of blame it on Him when it doesn't work, but I think that He has a real expectation that when He puts us in these positions of leadership that we take it seriously, and we work hard along with Him, co-labors with Christ in building the organization. So what I'd like to say about that meeting is it's intensely spiritual and thoroughly practical, and it's nice when you've got both of those things working at the same time.

So all of those things together, the business mentor, the business group, running the Christian business group, and I also have a ministry mentor. I think I can say this. I don't think he told me not to tell anybody, but it's Dennis Rainey who ran Family Life for years.

He's my personal ministry mentor. So I've relied a lot on others and getting advice from them, and it's helpful to know that I don't have what it is that I need because it keeps me seeking out people who do. Yeah, that's great advice and encouragement.

Obviously, I'm in the space and I'm a big believer in that having mentorship and having a community and having other that iron sharpens iron, and there's certainly plenty of proverbs about having good counsel, the right counsel, who's actually aligned with you, equally yoked, and I feel like that's been a huge thing for you business-wise, personally, spiritually, community, and that's great. It's great to hear that testimony of how it wasn't just you by yourself. You were so brilliant, and you just kind of, you know, God just put it right into your mind and you did it all perfectly.

There was a whole lot of shaping and molding going on, and from just a practical curiosity standpoint, are there some daily tactical habits that you put in place as a leader who's a follower of Jesus, as a CEO of an organization like this, that you have to make sure that you do on a daily basis or a weekly basis that keeps you on track? You know, I wish I was that disciplined, and I I'll start out with things like that with very good intentions, but I'm not like one of those guys who does, I do this every day religiously. I've never been able to pull it off, and I think that that's, you know, in my seat here at Trail Life, I'm starting something that didn't exist before with no money, and you know, I think it was kind of helpful that I wasn't tied up, and I don't know how to explain that, where I guess I'm just more flexible in my approach to my relationship with God and how it is that we work together, and I would say that some things that I do do religiously, of course, I mean, I read the word, and I keep my fellowship with the Lord, so I'm talking with them, constantly in conversation with them, but every year our board gets together here at camp, and every year they'll typically ask me the question, Mark, what do you see, you know, that we're not talking about that's coming for Trail Life? And I take that very seriously, and I think that if I had done that in my business or in other ministries, I think it would have made all the difference to realize that there's always this bigger picture that God's talking to me about, and if I tune in on that, I mean, there's the daily stuff, like do I hire this person or not hire this person? Do we take that initiative or not take it? There's the stuff you deal with on a daily basis, and sometimes you hear his voice clearly, and sometimes you just got to go with your gut on it, but I can tell you, Josh, that these bigger sorts of things I hear so clearly on, and that big thing usually guides my whole year, which last year it was ironclad was the word, and the two words were fortify and elevate, and F-E is the symbol for iron on the periodic table elements. So I had fortify and elevate, and that became for me the ironclad thing.

So for a year, for all the last year, I had seven objectives that were part of ironclad, things like fortifying our statement of faith, adding doctrinal distinctives to our bylaws, creating a C-suite, all sorts of things that he was speaking to me about that's like, I want you to set this organization up for the future. It's been 13 years of running frantically to get it off the ground and never having what it is that you need to do it, but it's time to look back and say, okay, did we do all that right? And so I spent a whole year going back and fortifying and elevating all of those things. That was a big deal.

I think that I easily could have just stayed in the daily sort of stuff, like, oh, let's just get this, fix this, let's fix this, just of the stuff that comes at you, that floods you in your email inbox, or you're not getting the door, the fires that start all by themselves. I think that those things I could have been distracted by. If I didn't purpose in my heart, God, what's the big thing you want me working on this year? So I can say that if there is any discipline that I'll have at all, it's knowing what the big thing is for the year and praying about that and preparing for that.

I think that's easily missed by so many of us that are just the tyranny of the urgent, we're dealing with the constant, everything that's coming at us that's on fire. I have been disciplined enough to set aside the time with the intention of saying, God, what's the big thing you want to make sure that we do this year? And so that's probably my only point of really good discipline in terms of how I do things. No, that's great.

That's great advice for CEO business leaders is that if they don't do that for the organization, probably no one. Well, and that really is their position. That's their role. And so if they don't take that seriously, everyone will, will drag them down to the urgent and that's where they'll stay.

And they won't have the vision to do the kind of multiplication that trail life has done and the impact it's made. Uh, so let's, let's change gears a little bit, because I think this is, um, it's might be then the normal wheelhouse for you is to talk about, uh, parenting, uh, the boys today, and to really kind of sink our teeth into that topic a little bit, um, what is the problem that trail life even got created to solve? And what, what is the problem in societies with boys and that there's a need and what, what does it solve? Well, it wasn't the one that we thought. I think that, that what we thought was that we needed a biblically sound organization to take the place of Boy Scouts to produce good, strong, winning men.

Ultimately, what we discovered that God wanted to do is this was in his heart from the beginning, um, is to create this, a brotherhood of men who are in ministry to the next generation. So ministry to men is hard, uh, you know, especially on a church level. Um, men don't like things being done to them.

You know, you, you can have a women's ministry, you can have a children's ministry, and you can bring them together. We're going, we're going to, to do that. We're providing this for you, uh, you know, to, to grow from.

Men don't like to be told that they need help, but they will engage themselves and themself in a ministry that believes in them. So the surprising thing is how much we're a men's ministry. Now it's a men's ministry that starts at five years old, but we are, we're a men's ministry, which means that we're taking men and we're turning them into ministers.

We're not ministering to them. We're engaging them in ministry. And a man who is part of bringing about change is a lot more engaged than man who's, you're just trying to change him.

Uh, you know, so a lot of men, men's ministries point out, I'm going to, we're going to make you a better husband. We're going to make you this. We're going to make you that.

We make you this. Instead of saying, we're going to take what's already on the inside of you. What God has called you to do, what he has equipped you to do, what he has built you to do, what he has designed for you to do.

And we're going to put that to work. And in Trail Life, it's raising the next generation and also being a brother to this guy who's raising the next generation along with you. So a couple of things about Trail Life really surprised us.

And that's really a ministry to men that starts at five years old and the brotherhood that's developed by the adults. You know, 30% of our adult volunteers do not have a boy in the program. And we're a boys program.

You know, so they are there to pour into the next generation. They have found a place that they can minister. So where a pastor may say, Hey, um, can you help us with it? Or can you help park cars? Or can you, I mean, how many places in the church does a man really have an opportunity to minister? You may have a guy who's teaching a Sunday school or doing this and that, but for the most part, men, they, they walk in, they put their wives in the women's ministry, put the kids in the children's ministry, and then they go in the corner and make sure that they tithe and show up and get everybody there on time.

But what, but how can we really engage men in ministry? And so I think that's a magic thing that Trail Life does and serves churches. You know, 18% of the adults that join a Trail Life troop go on to join the church after they join the troop. So it's powerful evangelistic growth, church growth tool.

Um, we think what happens there is some, is his boy hears about this Trail Life thing and his dad takes him and his mom puts him in it or whatever. And that family ends up being part of that community and they connect with those people and they end up going to church there. And, um, so it's, it's a really cool, uh, church growth, growth tool.

And we also didn't know how strong the call was for us to provide fathers for the fatherless and minister to orphans and widows, because we have, like I said, a lot of men in the program who are there to be a dad-like for boys in the program, they're there, even if it's at a distance, the boy can look, a boy who doesn't have a father at home, which now one or four boys can look and say, boy, there's, there's somebody I'd like to be like, and he's spending time with them on a regular basis in the outdoors or in troop meetings and things like that. And so he's engaging with them. He's seeing deal, deal with difficult things.

He sees his interactions with other men. That boy isn't seeing that any place else. And so that ministry to boys that don't have dads, um, and the single moms who have been crying out to God for somebody to help them raise their son, show my son how to be a man, um, those are kind of surprising things that were kind of hidden in, in the, in, in the ministry of Trail Life.

We didn't expect to find them there. And then also the father-son ministry. Uh, we expected that, you know, opportunities for dads to connect with their sons, um, in the company of men and, uh, and kind of figure out that relationship, which is very different than the relationship the father has with the son, even in his family or on the sports team or anywhere else.

Um, it's a, it's a different type of thing. Um, you're not, you're a participant. You're not just an observer.

You're not standing alongside a bunch of other dads watching kids kick a ball or something. You're engaged with them, bringing them through something difficult or a challenge or introducing something to them or, or maybe I'm just sharing the gospel. So those are sort of, sorry, I hope I'm answering your questions.

Those are, those are the sort of things that we've, we found in, in Trail Life. No, that's great. That was, that was what I noticed as well.

I'm not being in Boy Scouts, uh, thinking that it'd be something similar when I first brought my kids and then realizing instead, this is going to actually shape me into being a better man and husband and father, um, through trying to raise my boys to be the same way and, and having those connections with the other men there and, and all on the same mission, really getting to see that participation engagement, as opposed to a place where you just drop people off, your kids off, and then see what happens afterwards. So. Uh, that I didn't know that going in, but that's a huge part of it.

And why I think it's so powerful. And maybe that would be the best question is how, let me ask this. So did you see this as a trend culturally or in America that really, you could see that there was a growing, growing need or why, why this, why now? And aren't there other programs that are solving this problem or what makes it different? Yeah, well, I would like to say, I would like to say that we're that smart to see, to see the cultural changes that are going to go through.

Now, remember we were forged in the fires of this cultural war in 2013, when you were dealing with the definition of marriage being changed and all that sorts of stuff. So we definitely, uh, weren't, uh, the most popular kids on the block. You know, we were very counter-cultural where the culture culture was headed at the time.

Now, of course, we've seen that's somewhat cooled now we're in a little bit of a different culture, but that hasn't changed who we are. Um, we were still, we're still just doing the same thing. Um, because, because we're, we're influencers of the culture.

We're not influenced by the culture. You know, I like to say that, that, um, some parents put their sons in trail life because they're looking for an arc experience. I want to protect my son from the dangers of the culture or the messages of the culture.

And I'm going to give them a safe place. And some people put their sons in a different type of ship. It's, it's a battleship.

I'm going to take on culture myself. And I want my son to be able to, uh, to be equipped to stand, to stand firm in his own faith and, and to stand against, uh, against the rising time, maybe perhaps push the tide back itself. So, um, it's, it's, it's different what, what, what people, uh, have come to, to, to trail life for.

And, and I think that just like you did, they're discovering things once they get in there, that there's, that there's just more going on than they anticipated or expected. Well, I was looking at the website preparing for this podcast. You guys talk a lot about screens, um, I guess, fathers and sons, uh, escaping escapism, you know, joining the digital world as opposed to the physical world.

And maybe you can speak to what you've seen over the last, I guess, 15 years in terms of that, that growing problem, you know, I'm assuming you, you'd say it is a big problem and what is the, uh, what is the solution to that? Because I think there's a, I would say a case we made that the addiction to screens is huge societal problem. So what would you say to that? Yeah. And I don't need to make that argument.

I mean, there's, there's, there's very few people who would, who would disagree with the statement that the digital screen culture has changed so many things about the way that we think we exchange our attention spans, exchange the number of things we pay attention to at the same time. It's not unusual to be sitting with, with boys in particular, and they're watching TV on their phone and doing their homework all at the same time. You know, um, so it is really, uh, fragmented us in terms of the attention we pay, and it's very difficult for us to pay attention one-on-one.

So, um, or face-to-face stuff is, is just not as, as common as it used to be. Even using this wonderful digital medium, we probably couldn't do this without it. But at the same time, how, how wonderful it would be sitting across the table from you and talking about these kinds of things, but, you know, we've, we've accepted this kind of world, this digital world into our lives.

So I don't think anybody needs to, to convince anybody that there's a problem with that. How we encounter that in trail life and how we deal with it in trail life is that there are some things about that digital world, particularly the video gaming world, that extremely attractive to boys. Um, there's risk and competition, which boys love.

Um, there's not participation trophies in the video game world. Um, and there's not in trail life either. Um, and there is a lot going on at the same time in the video game world.

You remember boys are raised in this culture where there's multiple channels coming in at the same time. Um, and then you sit in a classroom and say, listen to that one teacher at the front and you expect them not to get distracted, but in trail life, we understand that the video game world, they figured out some things about boys that they like risk and competition. They like to be able to lose and try harder and win again.

Um, they don't, they don't, you know, we're afraid their feelings are going to get hurt. And so, um, we don't expose them to a lot of risk and competition because they might lose. Everybody gets a trophy, you know, their feelings going to hurt if they don't win.

Boys are fine. Not winning. There really are.

As long as they get another chance to try harder and actually feel better about it when they achieve it the second time. So this whole, this whole risk and competition and the levels and keeping score, he knows exactly where he stands. He knows he's better than some players, not better than others.

That's almost foreign to us in the real world. You know, it's like, we're afraid we don't, we don't want boys to know that they're slower than that boy or that they're, they're not as smart as I am or whatever. It's like, they're going to hurt their feelings.

No, they're fine with that. They like that world. They like risk and competition hierarchy.

They understand how that, how that works. They get that I'm better at this, but he's better at that. And that's really okay.

They can live in that world. We're afraid to put them in. So in Trail LifeUSA, through our awards program and ranks and things like that, they're, they're working towards those things.

It's, these aren't gimme's. You know, this is, this is stuff that they, that they need to work, work for. A little bit more subtle, uh, competitively on the younger ages, the kindergarten through fifth grade, the Woodlands Trail, we call them a Trail Off, but as you move into Navigators and Adventurers, you're earning everything that you get.

Um, there's, there's not, there's nothing for free. In that outdoor world, if you forget your socks and you go camping and you get blisters, you know what, it's not the end of the world, but you'll learn a lesson. And next time you'll learn how to be more responsible.

And, and those are okay lessons. We're okay with boys learning those lessons. We don't, mom doesn't show up 30 miles up in the backpacking trail with a pair of socks because he forgot his, you know, the boy understands, okay, I've got to, I've got to get through this thing somehow and figure this out.

And I've got men around me and we've got boys around me who can help me with it. But, but I certainly want to learn to be more responsible. So the screen world, uh, provides some of that risk and competition, but it doesn't give the interaction of an adult or another boy coming alongside and saying, let me, let me help you with that.

So there's some powerful things to the digital, particularly video game world for boys that we're replicating in Trail Life. The risk and competition and get to try something. If you fail, that's fine.

Just try harder. Maybe you'll get it. And the payoff, the adrenaline, the dopamine drop that you get when you do something hard, um, that that's a big deal for boys and we're recreating that, that experience.

So we believe that we can compete with, with video games when, when we're setting up, when we're setting it up right for boys, when we're offering them challenge, we're asking, we're giving them responsibility. We're putting the win and the loss on them, uh, in a healthy way. We believe that we can replicate some of those things that makes the video game world so attractive.

If that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think it's great. And plus you get to be out in God's creation with your friends and with your, your dad and community.

So it's, uh, it's powerful. And, uh, yeah, my, for anyone who's curious whether I should choose video games or Trail Life, I would definitely, you know, push the Trail Life. Um, with, uh, with the, uh, all my episodes, I try to, uh, end on a final question, probably be an encouragement to other business owners, other business leaders, leading organizations, um, who maybe not yet fully put their, their, um, their faith out there.

So the question is, uh, what would you say to encourage someone who has not yet fully embraced integrating their faith into their work? Yeah. Well, I, I would back up to the two things I said earlier. One is just pick one thing.

Um, I'd say, God, what are you calling me to this year in my work? Whether I'm an employee or whether I'm a manager, whether I'm the owner, give me that one thing. And it's so much easier to hear him, his voice on that big thing. That's not in the mess and the noise of the day.

So start there. And that's where you can clearly hear his voice. What's the big thing that I'm not doing that you're calling me to.

And then the second thing I said earlier is that if what you're doing, you're doing in your own strength, you have to wonder if it's worth doing or not. So choose, choose something beyond your own strength. And that requires you to hug God tighter.

And that's going to build that relationship because you're already in something, you know, the Bible says, you know, uh, um, without faith, it's impossible to please God. So if what you're doing, it doesn't take faith, you may not be pleasing God in the way that you think you are, um, just because you're successful. Well, you're successful because you're doing something that doesn't require faith and you're just good at it.

Um, find the thing that requires faith for you to do and go after that thing. Lean on him. It'll grow your relationship with him.

And then you won't just hear him in the big things. You'll also hear him in the everyday. Great, great advice to end with.

Well, Mark, thanks again for sharing your wisdom on the show today. This has been an important message and I loved hearing your story and, and, you know, kind of the whole row. I didn't know the whole road to get here.

Uh, where can people go to find more information about, uh, you and trail life and other resources? Yeah. Traillifeusa.com, Trail Life USA, two L's in the middle. And there's a tab there that says, uh, get connected.

You can find the troop locator map. You can put in your zip code and find troops that are nearby and become a part of them. If there's not a troop, it takes four to five adults in your local church, uh, to start a troop.

Our 10 year goal is to have a troop within 30 miles of 90% of America's boys. We're in the high eighties, but we do need, uh, we do need more troops. Not because necessarily we want to be a bigger organization.

Although we want to serve as many boys as we can. Um, but the main thing is we want every boy to have the opportunity to be in a trail of troop if he wants to be in every parent, have it, have that resource available to them. So we believe that if we, if we get within 30 minutes of them, uh, we'll be able to accomplish that.

Yeah. Very good. All right.

Well, everybody go to traillifeusa.com and then Mark, thanks again for being on the show, uh, stay tuned next week where we'll have another episode. We'll have another expert like park on, or I'll possibly be sharing with you, uh, when I'm reading the Bible and how it applies to business and business leadership, how you can grow your hundredfold business, one that glorifies God as it grows. And if you need help specifically on your business, you can always go to 4thsoilventures.com and you can just call, uh, schedule a call with me there.

Uh, thanks again, Mark, for being on the show. Thanks again, everybody for tuning in until next time grace be with you.