You can spot a man of conviction from a mile away. You take notice when a woman with a fire in her heart enters the room. But these people aren't self-made. They didn't reach this point on the path alone. Someone showed them the way.

Mentors are the guide on our own hero's journey. They share their story so we can learn from their experience. Mentors believe in us so we can believe in ourselves.

This week's guest on The Portfolio Life was raised by two heroic women and always wanted to be a writer. He wrote a doctoral dissertation on fatherlessness (which was later published by Zondervan), co-founded The Mentoring Project, and even visited The White House to meet with the President.

In this interview, John Sowers and I talk about the critical role of mentors, the four steps of the heroic path, and chasing jaguars in Arizona.

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Show highlights

In this episode, John and I discuss:

• The correlation between passion and conviction
• Knife making and rustic hobbies
• Shooting wild animals (with a camera)
• Writing about fatherlessness after growing up without a male role model
• What would JRR Tolkein say about how the True Myth informs masculinity
• The fear he faced after becoming a father
• Listening at the edge of your understanding

Quotes and takeaways

• “We find courage when we love someone deeply.” –John Sowers
• “We find strength when we're deeply loved.” –John Sowers
• Mentoring gives you purpose, direction and opportunity.
• “Positive affirmations can change the course of our lives.” –John Sowers
• Most great things are borne out of a deep sense of conviction.
• Write what needs to be said.
• Fatherhood is about saying the things you don't feel like you need to say.

[share-quote via=”JeffGoins”]You need someone to believe in you before you can believe in yourself.

Resources

• The Heroic Path by John Sowers
• Fatherless Generation: Redeeming the Story by John Sowers
• Teen 2.0 by Robert Epstein
• The Mentoring Project

Who is one of your mentors? How have they impacted your life and creative work? Share in the comments

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to read it below.

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EPISODE 139

JS: I don’t feel like the world needs more books. I feel like it needs kind of burning arrows to the heart, you know? That will transform things.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:20.2] JG: Welcome to the Portfolio Life. I’m Jeff Goins. This is a show that helps you pursue work that matters, make a difference with your art, and discover your true voice. I’m your host and I want to help you find, develop, and live out your own creative callings so that you too can live a portfolio life.

So let’s get started.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:36.1] JG: All right, John, thanks for being a part of the show.

[0:00:40.0] JS: Thanks so much Jeff, thanks for having me.

[0:00:43.1] JG: So, you are an author, you’re the leader of The Mentoring Project, cofounder I guess, with Donald Miller? Is that title? How does that work?

[0:00:52.8] JS: Yeah, that’s right.

[0:00:53.8] JG: You run the thing?

[0:00:55.1] JS: Yeah, I think so.

[0:00:58.9] JG: You’re a man, you’re a dad, right? And a husband? One of the fun things for us to talk about on the show is kind of the answer to this question, I don’t know if you hear this much, but how do you do it all? I think that would be a fun thing, especially because so many people I know go, “How I’m going to find time to write a book?” You are leading an organization and you find time to do lots of different things. I just thought it would be fun to talk about that.

[0:01:25.2] JS: Sure, no, that’s fantastic and yeah, it’s been a real honor I guess since 2009, my wife and I were living in Los Angeles in downtown and Donald Miller, another author, called me and asked me to come and launch The Mentoring Projects. So it was an idea, it was kind of an exciting thing, but it didn’t really have legs yet. So we moved up to Portland from LA and then incorporated it and kind of launched it and started on that piece.

Kind of in that, the first book came out, which was a doctoral dissertation of mine and that we kind of revamped it and then it came out. So yeah, it’s funny that we’re talking about integration because I should probably be a lot more intentional about it, I just kind of do it all. So I don’t have any best read books on integration or those kind of things, but I’m looking forward to learning more about it and about myself and about how to do those things.

Most of those things are born out of deep conviction and, you know, a sense of looking for a purpose but also what I feel like it’s purpose. So The Mentoring Project is felt like a life calling for me and it had for years before I was with The Mentoring Project. So I started on that dissertation in 2002 about fatherlessness.

So it had been a part of who I was for a long time, and so The Mentoring Project for me is really kind of a life calling and so it doesn’t feel so much like “here’s my job and here’s my other job and here’s another job”. It’s like this is a life calling that I can’t really ever quit. I feel like it’s something that I have to do, it’s a part of who I am.

The writing thing, it’s interesting because I feel like, and you can interact with this as you’re a writer, a good writer, a successful writer yourself. The writing thing, for me, kind of fits in that because the writing, the things I write are kind of born out of that same place. I don’t want to just write for fun. I feel like the things that I write, at least in my own heart, feel original, they feel necessary, they feel like someone needs to hear them. Kind of both of those things are birthed out of convictions, the writing and the nonprofit work. So to me, it’s almost kind of like the same thing, which is real interesting.

[0:03:24.1] JG: Yeah, cool. I love that. You’re down in LA, Don Miller calls you and so you come up and what happens next?

[0:03:31.9] JS: Yeah man. So we’re in Portland, it’s 2009 and my wife’s an attorney in LA and so I incorporate The Mentoring Project, we kind of launch it but the thing is, part of the thing with The Mentoring Project which is so crazy was that we had a lot of notoriety before we really ever began. So we had Relevant Magazine calling, I got to meet the president. I’m at the white house talking to the president of the United States and we have like 40 mentors.

We haven’t hardly done anything yet. So we kind of felt this pressure and this burden to — well we probably need to go out and get some mentors as kids. We really kind of scrambled and pushed hard in Portland there and then in other cities, we began to do mentor trainings and recruiting kind of all over the country and so that was fun and it’s been like a whirlwind. at the same time that first book came out, which was called Fatherless Generation, and it was really kind of the story, it’s like the secret convictions, I guess the integration question is really like, that book was the driving force behind the convictions to do The Mentoring Project.

So the fact that 20 million kids are growing up without dads, and that was my story. Saw my dad once a year and never hated him or anything, I just never really knew the man, didn’t have a grand dad, I was raised by two heroic women. So I grew up kind of like, not really thinking about men, but also not knowing how to be one. So that first book was called Fatherless Generation, it was really more about my story and as well as the story of our generation.

And that second book, Heroic Path, later obviously jumping ahead, was about kind of becoming a man which is the question of half our country. Especially when you’re not sure, when you don’t have models, when you don’t have fathers. But in 2009, yeah, we launched it, we got rolling and we opened an office in Portland and we opened a second office in Oklahoma city, we have chapters in different places like Memphis, and Asheville, North Carolina and Pennsylvania and Florida and some other places. So it’s been fun. It’s been a whirlwind for sure, but it’s been a blast.

[0:05:29.9] JG: Yeah, cool. You know, you wrote this thing that became the book, Fatherless Generation, which was a doctoral dissertation. Is that what you said? It was a paper?

[0:05:38.9] JS: That’s right.

[0:05:39.9] JG: I guess that’s how you got into writing.

[0:05:41.5] JS: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting. My mom was actually — she’s a smart one. She graduated from college at 18 and went on and got her double masters and then taught English and a PhD, and so she was always a writer and a reader. My grandmother and my mom both got me into reading and writing. We would go to the libraries in the summer and I would come out with a big stack full of dusty books and love books, and I still love books.

So both of them, I just grew up and I always wanted to be a writer and so the dissertation thing though was the first thing I ever wrote that felt like it really needed to be said. It was really a call to churches and to people of faith and everyone. But really to people of faith to engage relationally, engage our generation relationally. It felt really important and it felt like something I needed to say.

I was going to self-publish it just because I didn’t care. Published or not, whatever is fine. So I was going to self-publish it and then I sent out a bunch of info@ emails. I didn’t have an agent or anything. Six months later I heard back from Zonervan, Harper Collins and they said, “Hey, we love this, do you have a book deal yet? We want to give you a book deal.” So that’s how I got my first book deal and I said, “Yeah, let’s do it.”

They published it I guess nine months, a year later, whatever. So the writing for me was something I’ve always loved to do in my life. But the things that become books for me, or even like essays on my website or whatever, are usually born out of pretty deep conviction, and so I started down several book pass before and written — I’ve written a full book before how to contract forward and walked away. Because I’ve just said, “That’s not where my convictions are right now.”

Yeah, I don’t feel like the world needs more books, I feel like it needs kind of burning arrows to the heart, you know? That will transform things. I don’t think the world needs more short term flashes that get people excited but really this kind of transformational things that have really long trails and that can transform generations for decades.

So I’m not saying I’ve never written that, but I write with that in mind. It’s like, “Okay, no one’s talking about fatherlessness. I need to write about it. I haven’t read a book on rights of passage and from a real personal standpoint, the masculine book, Heroic Path, it’s not about bravado clichés, even though I love that stuff. I love hunting and all of that stuff. But that’s really not where strength is and so that was another book I’d never read about Christ’s journey and how that informs initiation. I’ve never read that. So I was like, “Okay, I’m going to write that.”

So yeah, I guess I’m kind of passionate about that stuff. I love writing, I love your stuff, I love the fact that you just kind of one day said, “You know what? I’m a writer now.” Because you were a writer but you just said, “Hey Jeff Goins, become a writer.” You just took the plunge and I think it takes guts to do that to just step out and do it. For you with integration with writing and your podcast and things, I think this things are just born out of your passions, your god-given passions and your abilities and gifts and those things inspire others to do it too, you know?

[0:08:44.7] JG: Well, I love this topic. I don’t talk about it a lot but I read about it a lot, the topic of initiation and rites of passage. I loved your book, the Heroic Path.

[0:08:52.3] JS: Thank you.

Click here to download a free PDF of the complete interview transcript or scroll down to continue reading it below.

[0:08:54.4] JG: I was reading your bio here, I love this right here, a bunch of education, cool. “He enjoys old books, tracking, knife making, and mythopoeia.” Am I saying that right?

[0:09:04.6] JS: Yes.

[0:09:05.9] JG: I’ve only heard that in referenced to like J.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

[0:09:10.5] JS: Yeah. That’s actually a couple of things. Mythopoeia is the creation of myths but it’s also a poem that Tolkien wrote to Lewis, one night they argued till three in the morning about faith and about mythology and Lewis was an Atheist and then Tolkien went home and wrote him a poem for his friend Jack and it was called Mythopoeia and that conversation and poem help Lewis to the lord. Lewis became a Christian shortly after that.

Tolkien was kind of miffed he didn’t become a catholic but he became a believer. Many of us have been affected by those two guys. Yeah, the outdoors and the idea of initiation and for me, it really, we all have this wakeup calls in our lives, we all have this moments where something happens and we kind of say, “Oh, what am I going to do now?” You step into a new career or you get married or you have a child or you lose something or someone.

For me, when my daughters were born, I have twin daughters and they’re four. When they were born, I was like stalked by fear. In the book, I call it “something awful” and I remembered like truly being terrified. Like, “How am I going to do this?” That book kind of set me on a two or three year search for how do I become a father, and ultimately how do I be a man? So, when I was in Kodiak, Alaska on Kodiak Island, I was actually thinking of that conversation between Tolkien and Lewis, that same conversation.

I’m on Kodiak Island, we have no electricity, we have no cellphone, we have huge bears all around us and we’re eating Halibut and Salmon every night, it’s really awesome. But it let’s you think. When you get out past the noise, hurrying crowds, and you get out into stillness and you can listen for the one who is listening for you and you begin to listen at the edges of your understanding. I began to listen and I was brought back to that conversation, that very conversation where Lewis says, famously, “Myths are just lies breathe through silver,” and Tolkien says, “No, no. They’re not lies, they’re all true. All the myths you’ve ever read are true.”

And Lewis thinks he’s crazy and he goes on to explain it and he says, “You know, they may not be true in their specifics but they’re true in that they steer us shakily toward the true harbor, the true myth, the one true myth.” So I was kind of asking the question about how to become a man and so I began to look at the one True Myth, capital T, capital M. The Christ story. Then I started thinking about that conversation and I thought, “What would Tolkien say how the true myth informs masculinity and manhood?” So I looked at Christ move from carpenter into Messiah.

At age 30, he leaves the village, he leaves the popular voice, he leaves all these expectations from the village that’s a severance, he leaves all that stuff and then he’s transformed, he goes out, he meets with the crazy camel guy who eats honey and wild locusts and he gets baptized. So he’s transformed through that move, he’s filled with the holy spirit, at least symbolically, and he’s named as a son, “This is my son,” right? “This is my beloved son.”

So he leaves the village, his identified with the father, he’s now more the son of the father than he is the son of Mary, the son of the father, and then — he’s still the son of Mary but he’s the son of the father. Then he heads to the wilderness where he’s tested, the spirit leads him there and then he returns and when he returns to the village, it’s his what I call mythic time. It’s his messiah time. So for three years, he gives his life to the village and ultimately on Gol Gotha and beyond. So when you look at the life of Christ, I said, those four steps really are informing us of — the true myth is informing us of initiation, not just masculine initiation but all initiation.

These steps have severance, of transformation, of confrontation and then return. They all have very glaring implications, have I left the village or am I living for my 401(k) or my truck or my whatever? Am I identified with the father or am I finding my identity somewhere else? Am I living in his power and when I’m tested how am I responding to that? And then ultimately when I return to the village, am I giving my life for the village or am I living for myself or for something else?

So I began to think about that on Kodiak island, and it’s funny because it happened halfway through the book and so it should have probably been in chapter one because it’s the big idea of the book. But it’s in chapter, about five or six. So ghat got me excited because I felt like I heard something at that point that was really worth saying, that I’d never heard before. So it’s like if I’m talking to JR Tolkien, CS Lewis and then we invite Joseph Campbell to the table about his some of his mythologies speak, I think they would come up with something like that.

I think they would come up with something like, “Yeah, that’s true,” and then Tolkien would probably take a toke off of his pipe and pass it along and I would be so happy just to be watching them. I don’t have to talk to them, I don’t really deserve to be in the pub with them, but I would just like to kind of be off somewhere in the shadows.

[0:14:21.9] JG: Yeah, that’s cool. You mentioned me calling myself a writer. Well, you know, the deeper story of this and I think this is actually kind of counter-cultural idea but I think it’s true. Everybody’s saying, “You just need to go do it. You want to be a writer? Go do it. You want to be a speaker? Go do it. You want to start a nonprofit? Go do it.” The truth is, I don’t really think that’s how it works, right? You talk about — I mean, you lead an organization about mentoring fatherless kids all over the country and this is, as you know, a global problem.

[0:14:54.9] JS: Yes.

[0:14:56.5] JG: There’s like real fatherlessness where you didn’t grow up with a dad and then you shared some of your story. There’s a feeling that a lot of us get where our dads are just…

[0:15:04.6] JS: Emotional.

[0:15:05.0] JG: Yeah, just not present in our lives. Anyway, all that to say, my experience of becoming a writer really began with this conversation I had with a friend who was an older gentleman who asked me what my dream was. We weren’t great friends, we just kind of met each other, he asked me what my dream was and I said well, “I don’t know, I guess I don’t really have a dream.” He said, “Really? Because I would have thought you would have said to be a writer.” I was like, “Okay, yeah, I guess I’m a writer. Or I’d like to be a writer,” and he goes, “Jeff, you don’t have to want to be a writer, you are a writer. You just need to write.”

[0:15:33.3] JS: Yeah, that’s good.

[0:15:35.5] JG: I mean, this is like what dads are supposed to do.

[0:15:37.5] JS: That’s right.

[0:15:38.1] JG: They’re like supposed to acknowledge in their sons and daughters, “This is who you really are.”

[0:15:43.3] JS: Yeah, that’s right. That’s the verse. I don’t want to cut you off, but real fast, the verse says, “Train a child in the way they should go,” really says, “Train a child in a way they’re bent, how they’re created, what their passion is,” and so that’s your bent and a guy just called it out on you and you said, it gave you permission, you know?

[0:16:02.7] JG: Yeah, this is a really popular idea in our culture, you don’t need somebody’s permission, right? Which I love the sentiment of that, but you kind of actually do. Or you at least need someone to believe in you, preferably a dad or a father figure, before you’re going to believe in yourself.

So how do you reconcile that in a culture that’s like no, you can go do anything, because obviously I would never tell my children, “You need to wait around for somebody, some guy to come tell you what you need to do with your life.” But at the same time, like I recognized my responsibility as a dad, I grabbed my son by the face the other day and I said, “You are a good boy and I’m proud of you.”

[0:16:40.6] JS: Yeah, that’s good.

[0:16:41.4] JG: He just lit up. I was sort of debriefing with my wife yesterday and I was like, you know, I said this things that I didn’t feel like I needed to say, but I said them anyway because I was just like, I just wanted him to know right before bed, “Buddy, you are just a great boy, you’re kind and thoughtful and I’m so proud of you,” and he’s four and he’s got a baby sister and he loves her baby sister, just taking care of her. I said, “Buddy, I just love it when you take care of your sister. You love her so much. You’re such a kind boy.” And his eyes just lit up and he just had this big grin on his face, and I was telling my wife about it, “That really meant something to him.”

[0:17:17.7] JS: Yeah, that’s right.

[0:17:18.3] JG: She’s like, “Yeah, of course.” But as an insecure broken man who is still working on his own issues of feeling good enough, I almost didn’t say that.

[0:17:29.6] JS: That’s right, that’s good brother.

[0:17:31.6] JG: How do you reconcile that?

[0:17:33.3] JS: Well two things. Speaking about your son first. We find strength when we’re loved deeply. When we’re deeply loved. We find strength when we’re deeply loved. That’s important, it’s not just about motivational quotes on Instagram, those are good and I do them and they’re important, but it’s deeper than that. It’s not just about a rally, a men’s rally where you get all worked up and beat your chest. But you find strength when you’re deeply loved and so when you speak into your kid’s lives in a loving way, you grab their face, you’re actually adding layers of love to them; security, strength.

You’re giving them place, which is belonging, which gives them strength and so I think that’s a very powerful thing in terms of initiation. When someone speaks into your life with love and they love you deeply, it gives you strength and you find courage when you love something deeply. So you love your child deeply and you never thought you could stand up to that man who is seven foot tall and broke into your house and he’s got an axe handle. But he’s about to hit your kid. So guess what? You step in front of him. Whereas normally, you’re running and I’m running too. I’m out. I’m an alley from that guy, I’m Hauling. I

But if he’s trying to get my kid, I’m right in front of him, I’m like, “Let’s do this. This is going to hurt but I’m doing it,” because you love your son. So you find courage when you love someone deeply. Strength and courage are found through love, their byproducts. It’s real interesting to see that. So in terms of what our culture says, secondly, I think there’s some strength to what people say to go try it. But then I think what you have to do is understand when the door slams in your face and you’re not the American Idol.

And in fact, you are not even a very good singer you need to say, “Okay, maybe I should write songs. I love music maybe I should become a DJ, maybe I should have my own studio. Maybe I should just sing for fun at the children’s church where it’s okay that I am off key a little bit.” But I think you’re right, you can’t do anything and part of it is a little bit of a problem sometimes. Because you see people that are not in their zone and they are not in their space and I think that’s one of the reasons mentoring is so important because whether it’s a father or a mentor, someone is actually saying to you, “Hey Jeff, you are actually a good writer bro,” and you’re like, “Man,” and it sets you free and that you do it for 10 or 20 or 30 or 50 years.

And the same thing happened with Don Miller. He was breaking into houses as a junior high kid in Texas and he was shooting guns and houses. He tells the story all the time, he was shooting phone books and I make fun of him. I say, “Is that what you guys did in Texas? Why do you break into a house to shoot a gun? Just shoot it outside.” But that’s what he did and this guy came along and said, this an amazing man named David Gentiles said to him, “Hey Don, you’re a good writer,” at eighth grade and they gave him opportunity.

Mentors also give you opportunity if they can. He said, “Here write for the church newsletter.” And so Don wrote every week to make David proud and so what does Don Miller do today? He does marketing and some other things, but he’s written five bestselling books because one guy said to him in junior high, “You’re good at this.” He called him out and Don is, he’s brilliant at that and so I think it’s important and I think that’s one of the reasons why mentoring is so important. Not mentoring necessarily in a program, not mentoring once a week like after school programs, those are important and we recruit mentors for that.

But really mentoring with our lives and that’s the great commission, it’s this relational challenging call for us to say to kids, like what you did as a dad to also to the kids around us, to your son’s friends maybe, who don’t have a dad on the soccer team or whatever to say, “Good job today, I am proud of you,” and even to say, “I am proud of you not for your performance.” Just, “Hey good way you handled yourself.” Those things change people’s whole trajectory. Because if that guy wouldn’t have said to you, “You want to be writer?” Or the guy hadn’t said to Don or early on for me people said, “You’re a good writer.”

Because I wanted to be a speaker. I wanted to be Lou Giglio. I wanted to be a famous Christian speaker guy and as hard as I tried and I do it, I speak a lot but I’m the better writer and so people kept telling me that. They kept saying, “You should write, you should write, you should write,” and I heard that affirmation and that changed my course.

[0:21:43.0] JG: Yes, that’s powerful stuff. You talked there’s not a lot of books out there about this and I think that’s true. One book that I read that was pretty interesting is a psychology book called Teen 2.0 by Robert Epstein. Have you heard of this book?

[0:21:56.5] JS: I have not, it sounds good.

[0:21:57.5] JG: It’s a tome, it’s a big book. It’s like 500 pages.

[0:21:59.5] JS: A tome.

[0:22:00.4] JG: Yeah, it’s by a Jewish psychologist and I think he’s based in San Diego or something. But part of the book is about rites of passage and what modern rites of passage is or what modern rites of passage look like for young men and young women and how that differs and that’s a cool book. I would recommend you check it out.

[0:22:21.5] JS: That’s beautiful. We see that in other cultures. So the Jewish cultures have some of it. The Hispanic culture has some of it. The American Military has it to an extent. It’s not the same, there is some kind of initiation. You see it in Africa in the Maasai tribes and the Native Americans have it and so we don’t have rites of passage necessarily in the west nor do we have elders. We don’t have fathers, 40% of us anyway to 50 and then we have a culture that is hostile to the idea of gender and this idea at all.

And so when you are returning to the village to give your life to the village, sometimes the village doesn’t want you to give your life for it and they’re throwing things at you and they’re saying, “Give us Barabbas,” or whatever. But in these cultures that embrace initiary practice, they understand that what you do when you go out, when you are being initiated, the dangers you face, the trials that come on you actually has value to the greater community so that whenever you bring back is valuable and they celebrate you.

One of the great challenges of the west is that because we don’t have that kind of initiation path, you see kids still long for it and so you see them finding it in gangs and they find belonging and they find somebody that’s going to tell them they’re good at something or they find a tribe or a pack or a crew or whatever, and so part of the impetus behind Heroic Path was my own learning journey, but it was also a hope that this can start informing some of those conversations even if it’s general, it’s a visual language, it’s broad application.

So I am not very good at less some pretty disorganized. Like, I think I know where my car keys are right now. Yeah I just saw them. Normally I don’t know where they are. And my wallet is — I see it too. So this is a rare day where I know where both of them are right now but the book…

[0:24:00.3] JG: You know what you got to do.

[0:24:03.0] JS: Yeah, strap them to me like motorcyclists?

[0:24:04.8] JG: No, I got this phone case that is also a wallet and this has changed my life. Anyway back to things that matter.

[0:24:13.3] JS: I love that. Well, no that does matter. So the book is a well tangled mess of things but it’s also me and so it’s this visual, it’s broadly applicable, it’s visual language and so I want to stir people to apply for themselves. I don’t have a lot of lists in there because I’m not very good at lists and so it’s this meandering thing like a conversation that you might have in a pub in Oxford. So anyway, yeah man it’s been a real challenge for me.

It’s been a blessing but integrating all of those things for me it’s funny because it just feels like I am just following, like you said, passionate things that come to me whether it’s a book or it’s The Mentoring Project and those are the main two things. I mean the knife making thing is fun. It’s a hobby. My wife told me I needed to get a hobby and I’ll do tracking. I like running around in the outdoors and tracking because I like to chase animals, and I don’t have to shoot them. I’ll take pictures of them sometimes. I’m going to actually chase jaguars this fall. There are jaguars now in our country, in the US. Nobody knows that.

[0:25:15.5] JG: Really? I didn’t know that.

[0:25:16.9] JS: Yeah, they’re in Southern Arizona and so friends of mine have game cam pictures of them, drill cams, pictures of these jaguars at night. They’ve come up from Mexico and so I’m going to spend about a week this fall trying to get a real photo of one not a game cam photo. We’ll see, that’s like a needle in the haystack. That’s asking to win the lottery. They’re so elusive and they’re so much better than you are in the woods but I just like that.

And I’ll have a firearm just for self-defense, but I don’t have any interest to shoot that thing. I just want to take pictures of him and be out there in nature and so that’s why I’ve been tracking because I love that. But yeah, I appreciate you man to have me on the show and I love what you’re doing and how you’re inspiring writers and people to think strategically about moving forward but also to do it and to take that step. So thanks so much for having me on the show.

[0:26:05.0] JG: Yeah, thanks for all the things that you do, John, and thanks for this great book. I loved it. I thought it was really good and we’ll link up to that in the show notes and encourage folks to get it. But thanks again man. I love what you’re doing, it really matters.

[0:26:19.6] JS: Thank you brother. Thank you so much for having me on.

[0:26:21.3] JG: Yeah, you bet.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

JS: You find strength when you are deeply loved and so when you speak into your kids’ lives in a loving way, you grab their face, you are actually adding layers of love to them; security, strength. You’re giving them a place, which is belonging, which gives them strength.

[END]

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