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In this solo podcast, Kurt talks about the history and purposes of Leading Saints, answers questions, and shares where we are going from here.
Highlights
01:30 Remembering David Farnsworth 04:30 How Leading Saints came to be 09:00 What Leading Saints seeks to do: Four Pillars of Leading Saints
- 10:00 Connect leaders
- 10:50 Enhance leadership ability through learning opportunities
- 12:25 Present leadership scholarship, connecting leaders to experts and scholars
- 13:30 Celebrate divine guidance
14:50 A community of leaders 15:35 Questions from social media 16:15 What about Leading Saints in Spanish? 17:45 What’s your approach to figuring out what home-centered church-supported means? 20:00 How can Leading Saints stay relevant in a home-centered church environment? 22:20 How can we help leaders who aren’t interested in improving? 24:20 How do we adapt to changing world conditions without acting outside leaders’ guidance? 25:10 What’s on the docket for 2021? What is Leading Saints’ mission in preparing for the second coming? How much happens as exposure/business/feedback and how much happens as inspiration? 27:00 What contact has Leading Saints had with Church headquarters or authorized leadership? Have any ideas presented to Leading Saints caught the attention of General Authorities? 29:20 What about an app? 30:15 Have you thought about doing some sort of fireside/workshop/training tour? 33:00 What about retreats? 34:00 What about moderated forums where people with similar callings can ask questions and create discussions? 34:35 What about leading from the bottom up? 35:10 How do you get and schedule interviews? How do you prepare for the interviews? What techniques do you use to help the interviews flow? What are you doing behind the scenes? 38:30 Fundraising and financing the goals of Leading Saints
- Core Leaders contributing monthly/quarterly/yearly
- Virtual Summits have raised additional funds
- Larger donors
46:40 The impact we are having
- 250,000+ podcast downloads each month (that’s 830 wards and 120 stakes of leaders)
- Testimonials
54:55 Bringing every topic back to the Savior Jesus Christ because we are building His kingdom in each of our lives
Links
Donate to become a Core Leader Contact Leading Saints with questions, suggestions, or possible donations Register for group virtual meetings with Kurt Becoming a Master Interviewer | An Interview With David Farnsworth Wild at Heart in Church Leadership | An Interview with Doug Nielsen Heart of a Woman in Relief Society
Transcript
This transcript was machine-produced. We would be grateful for help correcting errors. You can help! Simply copy/paste the transcript text into a document, make the corrections, and then copy/paste the corrected text into a comment on the page (below) and we will get the corrected text published! 00:00:03 – 00:05:09 Data dat dat dat dat dat dat da. Okay that that is at work. And this is kurt with leading saints. This the podcast. Obviously you’re on a podcast app and you press play expected my voice to come out. Now i’m the host of the leading saints. Podcast if you’re new well a welcome you in this good episode to start on if you’re new because we’re going to dive into some a lot of details related to leading saints but just a quick summary where are a nonprofit organization. Dedicated helping latter-day saints better prepared to lead and the podcast is one way we do that. We have a newsletter website leading. Saints dot org. You know there’s many people who actually have listened to the podcast for years and never actually gone to our website. I implore you go check it out leading saints dot org great content and and he just we’d love it so this is a solo episode. Just me folks. Sorry to disappoint you expert on the line no author just me but hopefully i can deliver some value and give you a a perspective on the future of leading saints. What we expect in twenty twenty. One i’m excited for it. There’s so much opportunity. So many great interviews that i already have re recorded some that. I will have recorded soon. And i’m sure remarkable individuals that i’ll meet in the future that will add to our perspective as a community at leading saints and before we get to the meat of this episode. I wanted to just give a tribute to a past guest of saints and this is how this came to be i Was a home doing the dishes. Actually that’s right. Got to do my part around here and doing the dishes on my phone. Rank picked it up and it was a sweet lady. Ed that was requesting some details about her contribution to leading saints so i went to my computer and ask for her emails. I look up Her account and look at her into her question and the email she gave me was one. I recognized it. Was the email of david farnsworth. And i said oh. Well i’ve i’ve interviewed your husband before on leading saints and if you’re not familiar with that episode you’ve got to check it out we’ll put it in the show notes but it is becoming a master interviewer and with an interview with david farnsworth and anyways she then told me that He just a few months ago passed away and my heart broke. He was such a remarkable mentor. As somebody who in this is how. I originally met david. I was I got an email one day. That just said i’ve been listening to your podcast. I can make you a better injury or let me know if you’re interested in. I was like man. I’m always open to feedback especially someone with some experience that to make me a better interviewer. I’m all game. So i responded right away before he knew it. I was on the call on the phone with david and he was walking me through giving me some advice. We we later met up. We went to a restaurant and had a long conversation. And let me tell you. This wasn’t like this was like serious. Feedback that david gave me like. It was like when you do this. Stop doing that when you do that. Don’t do that anymore. And try this and this and the other thing and now even today. I use certain tactics in my interviewing style. The david david taught me. And so i am so grateful for him the mentorship he gave me even after i interviewed him at. You know so. This obviously led to an interview with him on the podcast about interview people because obviously as leaders were called upon to interview people even after that interview i remember he called me up and he any sorta gave it to you. I mean he was always nice but he was just always direct and said this. You asked me this question and you didn’t. Gimme a time to respond to this new. You moved onto quickly right. So and i loved it. And i just said man. Thanks david just keep keep coming now. He he went on a mission with his wife to hawaii and so you know he was doing his mission thing and actually interviewed him again for the teaching saints virtual summit with haven’t checked that out definitely do so and At a great interview about asking questions during a as a teacher in class and he did a great job phenomenal job teaching that and then i kind of figured you know ill let him finish his mission and then maybe we can reconnect when he gets back and and i knew that he was probably back in every so often to have the thought of. I got to reach out to david and see how he’s doing. Maybe there’s another interview you need to do and Know then before. I knew it. The call came from his wife and notify me. They’d passed on so but Remarkable man just want to pay tribute to him grateful for all the guests and all the support all the people behind the scenes helping us move this mission for now. Let’s talk about that mission for a little bit. What it is and and a lot of people. When i meet them in person or have a casual interaction with them a lot of people ask me so how on earth did leading saint start. And i’ve shared this before. If you’ve heard the story you can skip ahead a little bit but let me quickly give that that experience so this is how it. When i came home from my mission. I started to attend a a student ward at the salt lake community college institute building in. I guess it’s technically taylorsville that it sent and It was the word that i actually met my wife in. So i tended there soon. I was called as the president now. This is my first leadership role that i ever had. I had been a district leader on my mission. But you know as a handful of companionship’s wasn’t like intense leadership by any means so being an in present this was this was a some new ground for me and it was overwhelming. 00:05:09 – 00:10:06 I had one hundred plus elders in my core. I really wanted to make a difference right. We’ve all many been there right. You get called. Do calling any wanna make a difference. You wanna you wanna see the needle move toward success. You want to see progress happen. You wanna see lives touched right so i thought well this is great. I’m gonna do it you know. I’ve seen other elders. Corn presidents fail or maybe not measure up. But that’s not going to be me. Well it was me. I tried really hard. I didn’t know how to delegate idea though guilt trip lesson for home teaching. I mean i did. I made every mistake. Muslims make and. I’m obviously my wife. Like i said and we got married and moved out of that war tonight. Sort of left that experience after it was about nine nine months to a year i left that experience feeling discouraged. You know i. I really thought it was going to make a difference and nothing really happened. A wealth whatever we moved on and then before we knew we were moving into this ward in south salt lake. And i was called into the bishopric served a few years in the bishopric and then that bishop was released and i was called as the high priest group leader and during that time when that call came i thought no like here we go again. I’m going to try really hard. I’m going to make try and make a difference but is it worth it like. Is the effort worth it. What’s the point. And i couldn’t understand why i could walk into any bookstore. Barnes and noble. Look on amazon. Wherever i could walk in any bookstore and there’d be bookshelves full of life leadership business leadership family ship. I mean everybody was talking about leadership in some context but nobody was really talking about best practices of leaders in the church right. You know how to run a meeting. How to mentor. Someone threw an addiction how to how to interview somebody right like nobody was really talking about the tangible tactics and skills and how to be a better leader and i thought you know. I’m not a leadership expert by any means but maybe i could create a platform to bring the experts to sit him down and say okay. Walk us through this principle. What are we missing what we need to learn. And so i went out and bought the domain name leading. Lds dot com and there. It began as a blog and really the beginning. Ingle back to those early articles that i wrote. I try not even though. I’m terribly embarrassed by many of them. I don’t i don’t delete them just because i think they show where where we’ve come a as an organization. I read a book like I’ve got it right here. Daniel pink’s drive the surprising. Truth about what motivates people and. I would read the book yet. I pinpoint certain principles and research. That he’d study that i write an article about how that applies to the latter day saint world and leading in the church right and there. It went. That was in two thousand ten when we started when i started the blog and little by little it grew and by two thousand fourteen. Podcasting was becoming a thing and i thought you know. I’ve a lot of experience public speaking. I feel comfortable behind a mic. So why don’t i give that a go and through help of many people understanding that technology the software the equipment. I started the podcast in two thousand fourteen and by two thousand sixteen. We became a nonprofit organization. And that’s really where i went. Full time with leading saints and here. We are now in twenty twenty so and during that time i was i went from being the high group. Leader is called a bishop after that that word and then called in the sacred seen so that gave me dyke different perspectives to see different issues in hurdles that leaders face in that help drive the content and topics that we talk about an and now we’ve grown since then we as many as a quarter of a million downloads. A month on the podcast. You know eighteen thousand people on our newsletter and it just keeps keeps growing in. It is remarkable. I i never thought i would really. It would get to this point. But it’s so fun that were here. And there’s so much more to talk about and consider in this journey. So that’s that’s the general history of leading saints now first of all. There’s a few misconceptions about leading saint. So i just wanna take a chance to explain. Hopefully clearly what we are and what we’re trying to accomplish. So you can actually go to our about page leading saints dot org dot slash about you say. We changed our name from leading les to leading saints. I believe in twenty eighteen when obviously that you know getting rid of the les was the push right. So and i was so excited to go move forward with leading saints. Because several times i thought man i wish i would have called this thing leading saints in the beginning because it just seems. I like that simple. You know. there’s no or it’s just leading saints words. That who we are here we go on and loamy hulda. That’s what we are now on the about. Page at leading saints dot org slash about go spend some time. There really gives you an understanding of what we are. We have four pillars for ways leading saints paves the way for more confident and prepared latter day saint leaders and let me go through these and this is really what we’re about and if something doesn’t fit under these four categories it’s really not what we’re about okay so the first one is we connect leaders. 00:10:07 – 00:15:05 We connect latter day saints from around the world in order to share the most effective leadership ideas thoughts and scholarship. So that’s a big thing we do and you’ll hear that on the podcast right. I may talk with a a sunday. School president in in springfield missouri. I may talk with a bishop in spain. A relief site president in australia and just asking question. How do you lead. What have you learned. What’s working in your area whether it’s during a pandemic or not you know. How do you do girls camp. All these things right and just hearing the other. Perspectives is helpful. Now you may not always agree with them or maybe you see a flaw in their approach. But i just think in general it’s helpful to connect leaders and so that’s what we do pillar one. We connect leaders pillar to we enhanced leadership ability. We make available educational opportunities to enhance leadership ability. So this is something probably need to just a little bit. But what people misunderstand as they sometimes think were training organization and we will be the first to clearly state. We are not a training organization. We don’t have the ten step process to do this. That the handbook to learn this skill. We just simply want to information out there. And if you absorb it in that approves your ability or your ability to lead the great wonderful but we don’t have a certification program. We haven’t figured out the best way to be a bishop or the worst way to be really cited president. We just share experiences. Bring in experts. And hopefully there’s some things to learn from that so a lot of people say are define us as a leading saints sir. This like training organizations for church leaders note. That’s not what we do primarily because that’s not our place to do anything that’s the that’s the church’s role to train officially trained their leaders. Right now i get some of your thinking. Yeah but we don’t get any training. Well maybe so but hopefully some of these principles can inspire leaders in your area to seek out you know or put together their own training. Maybe a bishop will hear some principles or read a book and say you know what we need to talk to our word council about how to more effectively minister how to do a home visit or how to address the culture in our work right and then the bishop can go ahead and create the training that he sees fit for his organization. But we as leading saints. We’re not a training organization but we do try and enhance leadership. Ability and price sounds more about semantics. But we definitely don’t want to leave ourselves as a training organization pillar number three. We present leadership scholarship. We seek out leadership scholars to help latter day. Saints have the most relevant and current research in order to overcome any organizational hurdle. So this is where we bring the experts in right obviously pillar one. We’re trying to connect leaders but we’re not always connecting you to leaders who are experts. Sometimes they’re just everyday leaders who figure something out and it’s interesting to hear their perspective but we also strive to find those the scholarship out there. The people who’ve done the research studies have written a book or have put more time and effort into really to really defusing a leadership problem that we might see in our leadership in the church right and so we reach out to those scholars or those experts and interview amon hopefully that that research that expertise will inspire you to maybe better understand an issue right about pornography addiction or understanding issue about the sexual abuse. Whatever it is and from there you can take it in research more and hopefully again improve your leisure ability and then our last pillar is an obvious one. I think one that we can all love and embrace and that is we celebrate divine guidance. So we’ve We celebrate restored governing priesthood keys spiritual inspiration and living prophets sacred sources of divine leadership and recognized that all leadership direction yields to this divine source. So it’s fun to talk about leadership different principles interview authors who have perspective for the end of the day we as we know in our doctor and we default to those priests keys. Now there’s a lot we can talk about around that but it is a beautiful thing that even though we might have the research even though there’s a right or wrong way to approach the situation we may feel a reprieve leader or a any. You know any leader acting under the direction of priesthood keys. They may fill certain prompting they may have an the spirit that leads them a different direction. And yeah all. The leadership scholars will look at that and shake their heads and thing. Now no no. That’s not how you do it. But we celebrate that that divine guidance exists and that it should definitely be employed in this effort to be better leaders to lead more effectively. So that is what we are. We connect leaders. We tried and has leadership ability. We present leadership scholarship and we celebrate divine guidance of priesthood keys. So anything else that fits under that. We just don’t do not. I’m gonna get into some questions that may be will help you for the understand. Why these why these four pillars are so crucial. But i think the best way to summarize all that is that we’re not a training organization. We are a community of leaders and we try and stimulate a community of leaders online through the modern day technology so that we can learn from one another and again be better prepared to lead so that community is truly what we what we aim for. 00:15:05 – 00:20:16 And i’ll tell you we have some great some great ideas some things we’re looking onto stimulate that community giving it more resources you know right now we have the leading. Saints helpers group on facebook that we get some good discussion there. It’s not as organized as i’d like it to be and so we’re looking into some technologies and applications that are helpless really stimulate the that community so that we can help each other out and move forward and see improved ability in the leadership realm for latter day saints alright so i recently asked through various social media platforms. What questions the audience had. And i gathered a handful of these and that that will answer and again if you aren’t following us on on facebook on instagram on lincoln. Twitter really is helpful. Even if you don’t spend a lot of time there just with how the way the algorithms workin whatnot it would be really helpful for you to go there and like us or follow us and make sure that you’re tuned in there whether you read stuff or not again the just helps to have many followers there as as possible. So let’s jump into some of these questions and some were gonna be all over the map here but nonetheless it’ll be fun so a lot of people have asked me especially in latin america and i get several emails from latin america saying. Hey this is great. I’m so glad. I speak english so that i can listen to this but what about spanish. There’s so many saints down here. That speak spanish so many leaders that would benefit from this content if it was in spanish and many of those requests have offered to translate and do these things in. I’m sure there’s others Italian speaking french speaking russian speaking at members of the church. You’re thinking and yeah it’d be great to have these these resources in our own language. Now obviously the church does a much better job at this. Obviously they have the resources and and The team to do so with translation and making sure they get more in more languages but Were probably if there is an additional language leading saints. it’ll be spanish to start out with and We have some things in the works as a board. Were trying to get to that. We have a board of directors which again you can read about it on the leading saints dot org slash about. We’ve discussed this and we’re working on a few other things that are priority before we really go all in in changing or into entering different language markets. I don’t know if it’s probably not the best word to use. But you know what i mean and And the big thing is just the financing of it cost a lot to do that sort of thing and and you know i obviously leading saints in. English was is was a volunteer effort by myself for many years. And so anyways we’re we’re finding people who are willing to volunteer so hopefully that comes in the near future. No promises as that exactly win. But anyways it’s coming x. Question i’d be interested in what your approach to helping us figure out what family centered Supported really looks like does and doesn’t leading saints. Do this goes back to my explanation about the four pillars of leading saints and. This is another good example. A lot of people will come and say okay. Kurt we have this. Come follow me process now. Likely winner you going to create content around how to do come follow me or or we have the the selfish or self reliance initiative you know what’s leading saints think about the self reliance initiative ever. What about this part of the handbook of that part of the handbook and this is sort of where we i mean. Sure will we may interview somebody about these programs. But it’s we try and stay very principle focused right when it comes to leadership we try not to and sometimes we we wade into some of these areas but we try not to define what an effective approach to this specific program or initiative is far as the church like the church created it they will typically create some resources around that to help you execute it effectively. Now so may argue. Yeah but it’s not enough resources. We wanna know what other people are doing and again we’ll touch on those things here or there but we don’t see us as like an organization that now now that the churches put for this family center church supported initiative or through. Come for me. We don’t see us as an organization that now has to go out and figure out how that’s done. How to effectively do that again. We may touch on that. But we don’t see that as core to our mission but we will go out and find certain principles right. So of family centered. Church supported. effort is going on. We may go out and say well. How does a mother and a father have really effective discussions with a child regardless of what the topic is right. And i’m seeing take those principles and apply them to come. Follow me or this. This family centered approach trite. But we generally don’t come out with like the ten step guide to do family centered. Church supported again. You’ll probably find a few articles that may be lean that way but if they do it’s mainly just to grab some search engine optimization and maybe a little click beatty so that people can actually clicking consume the content i apologize. I’m a marketer sigh. Kind of do that stuff. This is very a current question. The question is with home centered. Church and virtual church where many people can’t perform callings like they used to how can leading saints stay relevant and of use because six months of not being useful can lose a lot of interest and people move on to find resources that are relevant to the now and i felt like this recently. 00:20:16 – 00:25:00 Like i’m holding onto leading saints for some reason. When i could easily just let it go as if it doesn’t serve the same purpose now as it did one to two years ago so this was an interesting question because i obviously what they’re getting at. Is you know you talk about leadership but this is different now it’s it’s home centered or it’s a yet since centered home centered. Church is what they say right and it seemed like back in the summer or right after the shutdown the pandemic sort of flared up. We did try and focus on some very focused pandemic content now. There wasn’t a lot of dry areas to go in my opinion somebody descru- without but in so we then shifted back to again. Just being more principle focused and some of those discussions did sound. Like you know this what you do when you meet for sunday school in the sunday school room at church in it’s hard to relate to that now we don’t do this perfectly but we always strive to stay principle. Focus like i said an. I believe anytime. We talk about a principal even though he may use examples anecdotes that aren’t as relevant today. We try make the continent. Evergreen is possible by staying principle focus but we believe those principles that are discussed can be applied to whatever situation. You’re in even in a pandemic right now. You may have to brainstorm and think of different approach to do that. But recently we have as many heard we have shifted back to maybe creating more content like the interview. He did with dan duckworth right or the interview he did with jeff arbox. So we’re very focused on how to help you through how to teach in the pandemic setting or with virtual church now. I believe those episodes will still be valuable. Listen to long after the pandemic is over our long after we go back to a regular attendance a church so the openness and and it. It does help me here that maybe some people aren’t here are finding leading helpful during this odd time but we are trying to find a different angles and answer certain questions that will help you in the here and now the next question i won’t read it verbatim but basically saying how can we help leaders. That necessarily aren’t interested in improving as leaders. How do we get them. Engaged in this content so they actually consider some of these principles we discuss leading saints. This is an interesting question. One perspective. I hear often is just that you know man my my bishop just doesn’t get it or i really struggled my relief society president and if they would just listen to leading saints or read this article or listen to that episode they would have a new perspective like i did like i listened to it. I had this awakening to this principle. And now i’m gonna do. I would do it different but my leader just isn’t doing that. Here’s the reality. Is that leading saints as much as i wanted to be for everybody. It just really isn’t for everybody and if a leader doesn’t want to subscribe to the podcast and listen. I’m okay with that. I wish they would. But maybe there’s other resources they find helpful right. Maybe they found a book. Or i don’t know what it would be that they they’re finding help at and i realized there are some leaders. Bless their hearts. Who don’t seem to be trying to improve. They just feel like they have figured out right. One of the most crucial leadership characteristics in my opinion is a self awareness and a lotta leaders. Make little attempt to be self aware. And i think that i would argue. That hurts their leadership. But maybe they think they’re good. It’s hard i get an. We have various resources. And here’s another question too as far as what do you do when you are that person who is trapped under may be what you define as poor leadership you know. There’s various things we can do in there still opportunities to lead. But if we can’t force anybody to listen to podcasts we can’t mandate and so we’ll just keep creating content. And maybe at some point and i hear about this all the time so many leaders find it or they’ve heard about it before but didn’t really look into it. Then they find it. Start binge listening to past episodes and get caught up. But let’s just keep praying for him because they really are doing the best that they can next question. How do we adapt to changing. World conditions without acting outside leaders. Guidance is a good question. I mean that’s their. That’s a similar question. I’ve heard before with you all these great ideas. But what if the idea that i have. According to the principle is outside the realm of the handbook or my bishop does want to do it. Right again we go back to that. Fourth pillar that we celebrate divine guidance and sometimes that divine guidances in a direction that maybe leadership scholars would would not agree with. But i would argue that. There is so much wiggle room is you read closely. Handbooks are so much more we could do to really make a difference in shift a culture of an organization that to me. 00:25:00 – 00:30:09 This isn’t even an issue like this isn’t there’s no barrier that would really holds a leader back from being a dynamic leader and one that causes positive cultural change next question. So what’s on the docket for twenty twenty one. What is leading saints mission in preparing for the second coming how much happens as exposure or business or feedback and how much happens as inspiration. So this is a good question. I mean at the end of the day leading saints is an organization. We are a inc company right of nonprofit business and so yeah there is a business upon it too much of what we do right. We have to raise money. We have to have revenue so that we can continue to To have our mission. As somebody told me who i think is a big phrase at franklin covey. There’s no mission. Without the margin we have to have the financial margin in order to accomplish the mission. And so that that’s tricky. But i assure you every every interview every podcast episode including this one starts with prayer. We are always trying to be reflective as aboard every board meeting starts with prayer right like we are trying to be in tune. We’re trying to recognize what are boundaries are. We are trying to be as proactive as possible of seeking out the inspiration. Now obviously we’re not an official organization under the structure of the church. You know there’s no priesthood keys that we’re acting under so nonetheless. All that considered we do our best to be as thoughtful as a prayerful in all the content that we create hoping that is helping latter-day saints better prepared to lead so as far as ushering in the second coming. I guess that’s not always on the top of my mind as i wake up in the morning and go about my business maybe should be but you know we hope that leading saints plays a part in in a shooting in the second coming in some way. We want christ to return and we would love that in there. You haven’t made is not directly written in our mission. But we’d love to play a role in the building of god’s kingdom and Helping usher in the return of our savior. Here’s a question i often. What contact has leading saints had with. Church headquarters are authorized leadership. Have any ideas presented to leading saints caught the attention of general authorities. The short answer is. I don’t know i obviously like again. The fourth pillar we celebrate divine guidance We don’t necessarily have a certain contact in the church. That were running things by or you know i. I would love to have a regular lunch with elder bednarz or prison. Okay sir you know but that’s probably not going to happen nor do i expect it to and that’s okay. But yet the short answer is there’s there’s no communication with the church because the church just doesn’t do that right but you’d be surprised. I don’t think many members realize how many third-party nonprofit organizations are out there that are assisting the church in their mission so for example pleading saints as one nor star is another one. I’m proud to be a have a c. On their board the more good foundation there is more than central. there is a fair mormon. You know all these organizations that are working autonomously apart from the church but the church recognizes there helping them in ways that maybe the church can’t do right and a lot of people at last me. Do you ever expect a church to to absorb you to buy you out or even though you can’t i don’t own the organization senses nonprofits so i i can’t sell it to anybody but you ever expect a church to sort of absorb do what you’re doing and i don’t know maybe that maybe they’ll do that but i don’t think we have a lot of and wiggle room when it comes to certain topics we can talk about right. Where if the church tried to talk about in official capacity some of the topics that we talk about. It’d be much more difficult for them because they have. Here’s a lot of red tape. There’s the there’s set their interaction with how the how the media would interpret that and at the end of the day i can just say you were in organization. I do this I run this organization. I have no connection with a church. I’m not an official representative the church and so if you didn’t like that topic that we discussed the way we discussed it. Sorry i’m just a guy right or we’re just an organization doing this and we’re not connected with the church so there is a lot of freedom in being an independent organization and were able to talk about certain topics and reach a certain audience without some of the unfortunate restrictions or boundaries of the church has just being a large organization right next question. This person just says what about an app. I would love and this is one of my dreams right now if yes most people in the audience what is leading saints. They’ll typically say it’s a podcast. But i hope in the future it will be. It’s an app right or an organization that has a great app right and there is so much we can do with an app to give you just the rough ballpark as far as what it would take to get a solid app. That’s not going to break every other day that i will use digital email me about in frustration. It’s gonna take an investor about fifty to sixty thousand dollars just to get the app go and then maintenance is much lower than that but We’re just not there yet. Bowed loved to to be there. I would love to create nap. The just phenomenal and a more helpful and able to help you to to peruse content fine content tag content that it’s going to help you in specific situation. 00:30:09 – 00:35:01 So that’s in the future but it’s just all about raising money and having a finances to do that next question. Have you thought about doing some sort of fireside workshop trading tour you could hold polls for where to do them and go to the most requested places so this is interesting obviously. There’s current restrictions as far as travel that. Make them more difficult you know. Obviously you can travel. I don’t think there’s anywhere there’s few places. I could go to have an event and have a lot of people. Come just because we’re sorta shut down right now right but definitely in the future and we’ve done in the past is i’ve I’ve traveled to colorado to california to where else back east more in talked to someone in south carolina. A to come out. And do you know. I’ve done firesides and And workshop type things and it’s great and we do you know we can always do him inside the church. If it’s a official leading saints event done firesides where i’ve been asked to come and speak and i don’t mention or talk about leading saints but we talked about certain principles that are gospel related. People seem to appreciate him. So i’d be happy to come anywhere in the world deeply helps if someone has a place for us to stay and So we can supplement some of those casa make it really cheap but i love traveling different places. And you’ll hear this to the podcast is when i go to a place like recently. I went to missouri springfield missouri. And i was able to interview a lot of different people in person and it makes for better interview and get a better feel that area. So i would love to a plan at some point to go to australia. I’ve done a lot of emails from australia. People wishing that could come down there and maybe interview some people and and in europe and all these things so obviously right now. That may not be likely. I do have a conference. That i signed up for long ago in nashville and so i was planning on doing something out nashville while i was there. But that’s in march and I don’t know if that’ll be happening. But we’ll see but if you are interested in doing a fireside or workshop even via zoom. I am more than happy to do that or facilitate that or connect you with someone that can and these are. They can be very simple. As as you’ve seen maybe guest speakers come into a leadership meeting or whatever like i’ve got all sorts of content to come in and facilitate of really engaging presentation for local leaders. Now obviously it’s only done under the direction of a stake president bishop. That’s what they want done. We don’t charge. We don’t ask for money. We don’t bring up donations. we don’t fundraise. we’d barely mention our organization. We just want to help. And if there’s an expert or someone who’s willing to do that. We are happy to facilitate that but we definitely do so appropriately. So that we’re not trying to fundraise or or push a certain agenda rally. We just want to have a discussion about leadership or have discussion about certain topic. Another person asked what about retreats leadership retreats. So this will be cool right. We have a church tortured. History tour is scheduled for july. That has been. It was postponed last year. We’ll see if it’ll take off the sheer but we’re always hoping and that’s just a guess. It’s a retreat but again we’re not a training organization so as far as having a retreat where we were reduced specific training or certifications or whatnot. That’s not what we do but there are not only the not only the history tour. But i’ve mentioned the warrior your heart organization. They do men’s retreats it which are phenomenal. Like you if you haven’t been to one make sure you go to a heart dot com and check out when the next one is obviously we had to postpone a few because of covid but The women’s retreat. They also have a women’s organization attached to that and these these are phenomenal. Go back and we’ll linked to those episodes in the show notes Get more on that but other than that. I don’t see any or specific retreat in our future. But if you have some ideas. I’d love to hear what about Moderated forums where people with the similar callings are leadership responsibilities can ask questions and and create discussion. So this is the i mentioned before This is definitely a community building effort that we hope to establish twenty twenty one to give you more of a formal a forum to discuss again. Go to leading. Saints helpers on facebook and there’s discussion there but again it’s just not as dynamic as i’d like it to be there’s more we could do to really zero in on certain topics or callings or experiences. That would help. So that’s coming. So this person asks leading from as far as leading from the bottom up in other words how someone with a smaller calling or no calling can still lead. So i wrote a whole. Pdf on this. If you go to you can text the word lead to four seven. Four seven four seven. And it’ll send you a link to a page. Where has a has an article called how to lead when you’re not a leader. I think it’s something like that. I forget the exact title and that’s probably a good place to start. But that’s a whole discussion topic on their own. 00:35:01 – 00:40:06 But we do have there. And i would encourage you that. If you’re not a leader he should still act like a leader and a man. We got some good content coming up around that so check it there. This person says i’m curious about your whole podcast process. How do you get. How do you get and schedule interviews. How do you prepare for the interviews. What techniques do you use to help the interviews flow. Editing and other things are doing behind the scenes so the short answer is if you go to follow us on instagram. I try and be everyday at trying to be proactive of sharing behind the scenes stuff. What i’m working on. Who i’m interviewing Episodes to expect or content to expect. And so that’s a good place to start but as far as the process. You know we all we get emails a lot and we encourage people to send in recommendations of people we should talk to men but there’s only fifty or so episodes a year that we have to be very specific gun who we put on there and sometimes even there’s some really good people that we don’t we don’t get on the podcast so but keep sentiment so we get a lot of suggestions that way. Just yesterday i got in touch with a sibling of someone who is in general presidency of the church. I won’t mention who they are now just in case it doesn’t work out but there were working on getting them on the podcast in hearing from them. So just Being proactive you know connecting our networks in. that’s generally how it’s done also desert booker cedar for publishers. As as different books will come out. They’ll reach out to me and say hey. Will you help us promote this book. And you can interview this peop- the author or whatever. That’s how gotten people like sister. Julia beck in tadcaster. And there’s some few Elder carton is about to release a book through four in so i been emailing with him and getting having plans to have interview and recorded discussion with him nagging. Share with all of you. So that’s generally how the interviews happen. How do i prepare for the interviews. If there’s a book involved. I always try and read the book. I hope that comes across. You know. I always want to make sure i have a good idea of what they’ve written about. And then you know. Sometimes a book isn’t directly leadership related. So i’ll find a caveat that can be leadership related and go that direction. And sometimes i get a book and i’m like this is really helpful for my audience or i don’t see how we can have a leadership discussion so we don’t do an interview but as far as like techniques out the interviews. I hope i hope. I’m improving like i said david farnsworth helped so much with just keeping the interview moving making sure i’m getting all the content and information and I don’t know. I don’t know if they just try and be super curious and try and keep you in mind as leaders that it’s great to they have this or that thought but what does that mean for leaders right. I try to always push that way all right and if you have any other questions i would love to hear from you. At leading saints dot org slash contact sent me a message It’d be awesome. Also been doing these zoom calls with a group. Ten people are less than the leading saints audience. And i’ve loved them just in an hour. Here i’m going to be on a call with With somebody else a group of people and discussing leading saints and so it is Do now i get a lot of good feedback and just hear how the information’s being being applied so so yeah if you have any other questions go there and love to hear from you and through the magic of podcasting twelve hours past or probably fifteen sixteen hours of pests and so what you were ten seconds ago and mainly there was a lot there and probably took too long explaining it. But i am. I want to make sure. I hit the sex part solid because at the end of the day leading saints is awesome. I mean it’s helping so many people and i don’t think you truly realize the impact it’s having so i hope to communicate that here but the reality is we are in an unsustainable position financially. We cannot continue on as we are doing right now. And so the board of leading saints come together and and wise mines thinking through how we could better fundraise reach out to large donors. We could better finance this mission because again there’s no mission without margin and we definitely have to figure out how to meet that margin every year so this is how the financial model of leading saints is currently working. We have what are called core leaders. And you’re probably familiar with these. The are subscribing donor so individuals either donate to leading saints on a monthly quarterly or yearly basis. That is what we consider a cord leader and those are awesome. I mean i can’t thank you enough for the core leaders out there to Contribute to give part of your monthly budget to leading saints so that we can continue on we have about Just over eleven hundred core leaders and again we get as many as a quarter of a million downloads a month to the podcast that we have eighteen thousand people on her email list right so but nonetheless we only have a hundred core leaders again. I’m thankful for every last one of them but we definitely need more help there. What we’re doing right now. Is the virtual summits supplement. What the core leaders. Don’t meet right so if we only had core leaders we we’d be done a long time ago as far as at the rate of how many leaders we have right now. 00:40:06 – 00:45:07 There’s just not enough to do what it is. We do and de just won’t work and so we supplement those donations through our virtual summits and our virtual summits do help us get a shot in the arm of funds. That make it happen. There are a lot of work. They’re great. I love him. We plan on continuing to do them. And i’ll talk about that maybe a minute but it’s just it’s just not enough that especially because we’ve hit some of the larger topics right. We’ve talked about teaching. We’ve talked about helping individuals through pornography addiction. We’ve talked about to lgbt latter day saints right like these are large topics that get a lot of attention when we do these summits but they they’re done and of course we’ll keep adding to them the be made available again and again and hopefully we’ll be able to continue to raise some funds from those but as far as those that large that large financial. Sean the arm the future summits we do. We anticipate that they are not going to have as much of a hit right. So we’re gonna do a virtual about Leading young saints. You know young people how to lead them how to not just for adults leading them but how do their peers lead each other. There’s things around mental illness. depression anxiety. Some some around Those topics that we hope to cover. And and i have a good list here. And we’ll there’s plenty to cover marriage sexual intimacy. I mean there’s so many angles. I think leaders face topics and things that we could definitely do virtual summit but we just anticipate they’re not going to fund raise as much as others hopefully wrong but anyway that’s our that’s our projection. Is that it probably won’t raise so we basically. We can’t depend on some us to do that so two areas which we need your help is one is small donors and those are the the core leaders right that give a b fifteen dollars a month or a hundred dollars a year whatever it is having a recurring basis of donors is truly what we need those small donors and hope that does have a negative connotation to the core leaders. That’s who i’m referring to everybody out there. My goal with this episode and those coming up is to get you not to get a bunch of corollaries but to get you. That’s right you listening wherever you are. I know that we can think other people can do this. But we need you to help in whatever you can afford. We need you to help our. That’s my goal is to get you to help. So small donors is the first place so contribute. You can go to leading saints dot org. There’s a a big donate buttoning. Click on and it’ll take right page to become a core leader. But the small donors we try and create value exchange value for value. We have the core leader library with full of pass virtual summits we have a separate podcast stream which were working on getting fixed at moment but it is there and we try and create additional value there but as i’ve surveyed all the core leaders by far everybody says That’s great that you give you know the core leader library and all these other things. But i simply want to donate because i want to support the mission. I wanna help you. I wanna help The board of directors. I want to help this community growth so that we can stimulate more productive more effective leadership in our religious community. Right so sure. There’s are there additional things. But i’m not gonna do on those because i don’t think that’s why people are donating. They simply want to contribute and make this possible and then a larger donors. We need to be in touch with people who can write for figure. Five figure six figure checks and Who have the resources to do that. Or maybe a foundation that it’s able to do that We would love to make those connections so if you’re if you’re listening out there maybe you’ve a sold three companies and You know you’re you’re retired in your in your forties or whatever and you could write a big beautiful jack. Would you reach out to me like i. i will take any conference. Any phone call with anybody was willing to to sit down and understand our mission and to help us out. Because i guess i don’t want this to come across it like oh. Kurt needs more core leaders. So yeah i’ll go help them out. Contribute fifty dollars a month. Which would be great. We’ll take it. But also i don’t want you to think well if you could. Do you know twenty thousand a year. I don’t want you just default to that to fifty dollars a month so hopefully that makes sense but the reality is if everything was to go in twenty twenty one just like it went and twenty twenty. We probably need as we’ve gotten together as a board of directors who probably need an additional one hundred thousand dollars to keep things going now on the surface seemed like. Wow that’s a lot but you know there’s podcast and organizations that that require that much much more you know many or of my contemporaries that have our nonprofit third party organizations probably have a budget of a million dollars a year right and so we don’t necessarily need that at this point maybe someday depending on the direction we go with this mission in this organization but for twenty twenty one. 00:45:08 – 00:50:00 We need your help because we need an additional one hundred thousand dollars at least to help a fall through the plans. We have The mission we have the goals we have and so we need your help. So getting go to leading saints dot. Org can hit the donate button and read all the details and make a contribution there. Now you may have thank god. I don’t know if i could even put a dent in in that goal. But we just need you to give something. This needs to be a community for the people by the people right. Four lay leaders via leaders right. So we need. Everybody’s help contribute. Something and i was just talking with the bishop yesterday. And he was like you know what. I was. Sorta weird as a bishop. I felt weird like contributing to a third party organization to get to additional leadership content relief ship information and i just fell off in a lot of people especially in our religious tradition. We pay our tithing in. it’s sort of. We don’t really look elsewhere to contribute because well we pay our tithing but this is a place we definitely need and again. It’s very a typical scenario with third party organizations helping the church with their mission. It happens all the time. This type of fundraising is happening in mortgage foundation fair mormon in brooklyn warren central. They’re all doing this type of fundraising maybe in a different form but We definitely need need your help in. Continue our mission forward. If you’re someone who can make a larger donation. I would love to contact you. Just go to leading saints dot org slash contact in there. That email will come to me. And we’ll start the conversation. And i also want to take the time to effectively illustrate if i can’t be impossible for me to do this completely but we communicate just the impact. We are having okay for several months this year. We’ve had two hundred and fifty downloads. A month to the podcast. Now we can’t really track subscribers and exact people or how long they’re listening are all these things but the download you can. You can hit even if he listened through a through chrome web browser and you listen through that and didn’t necessarily download it still counts in that download can a quarter of a million downloads around the world. People every month listening to the continent leading states surf you to do the calculation of at that number and how many wards and stakes that represents that would be about. We’re speaking to a eight hundred and thirty wards every month and about one hundred and twenty stakes every month now. that’s back of the napkin type of calculation. But just to give an idea. Eight hundred and thirty wards one hundred and nineteen or one hundred and twenty stakes now. An agreement goes beyond that because this aren’t just everyday leaders that were talking to sure. There’s a lot in our audience who don’t necessarily have leadership calling but these are leaders that are listening. Consider the impact that we’re having on the church as a whole by reaching that type of audience and we can do so much more right so the impact is real. it’s there and i wanna read a few testimonials that just really touched my heart. And i get five or so of these a week of just emails and if and if you wouldn’t mind sending me an email i would love that. Just tell me how leading says impacted you. Tell me how it’s changed you what’s worked. What hasn’t give me feedback. Whatever it is but these testimonials really keep going in you know. They’re hard to take to the bank and cash in but nonetheless they keep us going this. This is wrong motivation for us. So here’s a few leading. Saints is been a lifeline for me. The last six months since i found it. I can’t thank you enough for what you do. Here’s another. I have never really supported any group or individual besides my regular church contributions but you are the exception to my rule. I happened across your podcast. One day do not remember the exact circumstance. But i was impressed with what you were doing. I began to follow leading saints on a regular basis. And after your summit on pornography. I was sold on what you were doing in recovery from addiction myself. The quality and accuracy of information at the summit was impressive. I do not think that. I have ever been disappointed by podcast. Always informative and many times moved by the spirit hearing from real people that are dealing with or have overcome major obstacles in their lives is always inspiring. You doing a great work with leading saints. And i tell everyone i can about it. I am happy to be a core leader. Here’s another testimonial both my husband and myself love your podcast. It’s changed our own leadership. We are far better leaders in church and in our jobs because of your podcast and those you interview. I shared often with anyone. Who will listen to my excitement. I found leading saints a little over a year ago. Our oldest son came home from serving an honorable mission. When he was hit with faith doubt he was free falling as his foundation of belief crumbled. I went searching. And looking for anything i could find help help with my crushed heart and help me understand. That’s how i found your podcast. I think the first one. 00:50:00 – 00:55:00 I listened to was a couple. I believe the packer family. They’re sending daughter-in-law talking about their experience of their faith changing and how they as parents and family found understanding and love. The parents were mission presidents in africa. I believe at the time the sun a medical student with a young family. Their story was so helpful to know we were not alone to gain insight and perspective and ideas and inspiration of how to become in our own family. I’m a bishop. And i had a mother of my ward who is a gospel doctrine teacher. She texted me morning telling me she’s having a faith crisis and wanted to be released. I had found these two podcasts earlier. And knew i needed to share them with her. I already did. And she’s going to start listening to them on the way home from work today. Your podcast has made my calling as bishop so much better than i am. A culture changer. Now hut love that and again. I just loved it. Were giving leaders resources to turn to write content deterred to that they can maybe send onto somebody rather than try and say it again and again and again the same way every person that may be goes through this next testimonial i just completed watching the lgbt’s saints virtual summit and my heart is so full of compassion and love for this community. I have a cousin who came home a few years ago from his mission early and then shortly after came out. I’m from a small prominent. Lds community in the middle of nowhere. The cousin of course left his home quickly after coming out. Probably for safety reasons as well as others to go explore his identity. I have always felt uncomfortable with not knowing what to say or not say to him or his parents. I even debated on following him on facebook. Because i didn’t like seeing pictures of him with his boyfriend and i was very judgmental and hoping he would find himself and be normal again. Your summit is exactly what i needed. I felt like. I learned so much and have much repenting to do with how i have thought about my lgbt brothers and sisters. I feel so ashamed for my ignorance and lack of even wanting to know more because of your summit i reached out to my cousin and expressed my desire to learn how to be a better human from him and if he felt comfortable would he share his journey with me. So i could understand more. I haven’t heard a response yet and my palms are sweating. And i’m nervous is not like i chat with him all the time but i hit send so there’s no turning back now again. Those are just a handful of testimonials that come through. And i. Maybe i need to find a better way to share those but we are having a dramatic impact on our community and i want to move this mission fort and the reality is we need your help now. I know many view even nucor leaders are listening thinking. Oh well i give already. And that’s great and man. We are so thankful and if you haven’t felt gratitude from us would you reach out to me and let me. I’d never want that to come across. But would you consider maybe increasing your donation as well. Maybe you just went for the lowest amount that you could when he did it and But maybe you could give a little bit more. We could really. We could really use it again. One hundred thousand dollars. Additional hundred thousand dollars is what we need for this coming. Twenty twenty one here and we need your help to in seriously all of course chat with any larger donor. That can can ride check. But seriously i’ll chat with anybody. You got ten dollars a month that you can put four five dollars a month. Whatever it is. I’ll chat with you. Let’s do this. let’s get together. I want to hear what excites you about this mission and what you can do to help and again we’re doing these Groups zoom meetings. Ten people are less that we all just get in a room and learn from each other. Talk about leading saints. I get feedback from you and hear your experience how you found and what not that. That may be good place to start and we’ll link to where to go to register for that in the show notes if you want to do it or do multiple times. I’m always willing to talk. I’ll talk with anybody who’s willing to contribute to this mission. A new era. How big or small. I want to be in this with you. I want you to feel like you’re in this with us and making a difference on this coming week you’re going to hear a variety of episodes. Come out and they’re going to be fun. I’m going to share various various leadership principles and thoughts and perspectives. That i’ve been thinking about. We’re going to do talk about the top ten episodes of twenty twenty. We’re gonna talk about my ten favorite books of twenty twenty my top ten leadership books that i would recommend any brand new leader in the church. Tugboat leadership skills. A certain leadership talks that have been shared in general conference habits widgets. Whatever it is. They’re just gonna be fun but if you’ll listen to those that’d be great they’re gonna be short as well and Hopefully it will encourage you to contribute and see the mission that we’re doing and In that you appeal part of this and that you’ll help us move this mission further out into the world as you know i typically in most episodes with the question right question being as you have been a leader. 00:55:00 – 00:57:23 How has that made you better. Follower of jesus christ and the reason i asked that question and everybody i don’t know maybe at this point it sounding cheesier cheese in every podcast has their question. It seems like but the reason. I asked that is no matter. What topic we talk about. No matter what author we have on book they’ve written event were having. I always make sure that we highlight the savior. Jesus christ at the end of every episode again. I don’t do it on every episode but definitely ninety percent of the episodes. It’s there and this is why we do. It is that we’re building his kingdom and it may seem awkward. You may. We may want to default to current. We’re doing that in the church. Like why do we need this organization do that. We need a lot to do that. The building of the keenum just doesn’t happen or the kingdom has managed and governed the building of the keenum happens in all of our lives in every aspect. We do in every job sales call. We’d go on in every meeting wherein whether it’s church meaner not the building of the kingdom happens everywhere and we’ve outlined an organization called leading saints or his kingdom is being built now needs funding in needs a effort in these people taking time to do that but it is kingdom building the same. And that’s why we do. This is not to necessarily create the the best leaders in the world the hopefully through that effort of creating the best leaders we create the best followers of jesus christ in the world again leading saints dot org and there. You can donate button. We’re gonna leading saints dot org slash contact and semi message. I’d love to chat and see how we can help you become a part of the margin of this mission. So thank you for your support of leading saints. It came as a result of the position of leadership which was imposed upon us. I the god of heaven who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of jesus christ when the declaration was made concerning the all and only true and living church upon the face of the earth we were immediately put in a position of loneliness loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor away and which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.
