Effective Leadership Pt. 1

Every single one of us, at some point in time in our lives, every one of us will be called upon to lead. The question isn't whether or not we'll ever be called upon. The question will be whether or not back to that prepared. It will be whether or not we are prepared.

Welcome to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. I'm your host, Ralph Owens, along with Terry Baylor. We are extremely excited to introduce to you all mister Larry Cheatham. Larry will talk about the power of preparation and its role in success, and he will also touch on what it means to be effective in leadership. And we are live.

Hello, world. Welcome back to another fantastic episode of Leadership Sovereignty. I'm excited to be here. Terry, how are feeling today?

Oh, man, I'm feeling good. Had a good drive last night. And, hey, the show is on the road. We on the road. First show first show on the road.

That's right. That's right. That's right. Terry's remote from Dallas this morning, and we got a fantastic, fantastic guest. Not only just a guest, but a great friend to to me and Terry over the years.

Looking forward to going through his story and and sharing it with you. I think there's gonna be a lot of great nuggets that you're gonna get out of it. But, without further ado, I wanna introduce to the world, mister Cheatham. Larry, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you guys having me. And, man, I'm a tell you something. You know, I speak in front of audiences all the time. It's weird to be on here and actually feel a little bit nervous.

Larry, you're a natural man. Look, look, first of all, we have the best listeners, man. They're kind, respectful though. I'm sure they're going to eat up everything you got to say today.

Absolutely.

I'm excited to be here.

All right. Awesome. Awesome. All right. Well, let's just, let's just jump into it.

Cause again, we're going be talking about a lot of topics that are really close to my heart specifically things that I've learned along the way with Terry and a lot of, a lot of the things that I learned just for the listener base, a lot of the things I learned about leadership, learned from Larry. So, you know, he's been a mentor to me over the years. Just let's let's just jump into it. So Larry, give us a brief overview of who you are, you know, and where you are right now and what you're doing.

Well, first and foremost, man, I I'm I'm a family man, you know, so, you know, my wife and I make home St. Louis, Missouri. We have a daughter who, thank God, she graduated college -Congrats. -She about a year graduated sir. -She graduated college.

-I'll be calling for some tips on that.

I'll be calling.

I'm right there, so yes, sir.

-Yeah, and she's continuing her education though because she wants to she wants to get into nursing. She just has such a heart for serving people. And and so she's continuing on. You know, I also am an entrepreneur. At one point in time, I was a firefighter.

I spent a number of years in the fire service, you know, but, you know, I ultimately became I say I've fought my way out to get free, you know, free financially. It gave me a number of different options. And so, you know, today I travel, I travel around the country and I help other people get free. You know, other people who are looking for a way out, you know, I share with them what I believe, you know, is maybe the best way for the average man or woman today to be able to exit what I've heard some call the financial matrix.

Wow. Awesome. Wow. Awesome. You know, I wanna say this too, man.

In the pre show, we didn't really dig into this, but I got to get some stories how being a firefighter parallels what you're doing today and just the nature of preparation to save lives. There's such a huge story there. Most of us don't wake up in the morning thinking, Okay, I'm gonna go save some lives today.

I

mean, like, real, you know, the jaws of death that has to play into this, I gotta understand the parallel.

You know, I will say this, I don't know how many firefighters necessarily get up each day and thinking, I'm gonna go save lives. But I do think that most firefighters wake up each day and say, I need to be prepared for whatever happens, you know? And because it all begins in preparation. It begins in training, you know? And so if if you're not if you're not prepared, if you're not trained, when that bell goes off, it's chaos.

And what you're attempting to do is you're attempting to bring order to chaos, you know? And so people, when you get there, they expect you to have some answers on what to do and how to best help them mitigate, you know, the the challenges that they're facing. And those challenges can can be wide ranging. As a firefighter, you don't necessarily know what you're running into. You might think you know, you know, you're looking and you say, okay, well, this is just an ordinary house fire, you know, but is there a gas leak?

You know, are there chemicals, you know, inside? You know, is there someone trapped inside? You know, it's just so many different variables. You know, is it an automobile accident you're going to? Is it an ordinary automobile accident?

You know, what do they carry and what's in the trunk? You know, is there somebody in the trunk? You know, is there water in that pond? And and is there anybody in you know, it looks like an abandoned car that's going underwater, but is there anybody in the car? And it's so so many different things, you know, so it it begins with training and preparation, you know, ahead of time.

I love that answer. That is man. So and and Larry and I hit on this a little bit this morning. Not nearly as devastating or or or having the level of, I guess, impact. But we hit on the fact that when you're prepared and you make it a practice of being prepared, sometimes you don't even remember, I prepared for that.

I brought it with me. So in my case, I'm just, you know, be transparent. Did I bring that razor? Did I I'm a have to go to H E B this morning. And I told Larry, I said, when I opened up my little attache case, I'm like, thank God I was prepared.

I didn't remember, but I prepared. So it goes right into that, man. And there's so many things in life that we have to be prepared for as fathers, as brothers, as husbands, as dads. Right? And so all these things.

So, Larry, thank you so much for sharing that, man. I'm sure there's be more opportunity for us to peel that onion.

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And just, again, thank you for your service.

Right? Terry and I are both from St. Louis for those who don't know, who may be new to the podcast. So, you know, Larry has served the community there for thirty years. Is that right?

You were, you man, thirty years, man. That, that is amazing. I remember when I was in the Navy and I tell this story to, especially the people who report to me now that everybody had to train to be a firefighter, right? Because when you were out to sea, the worst enemy you had was fire. Right.

You can fix almost anything, but if the ship burned down, everybody going down. So everybody had to learn how to be a firefighter. We train constantly, constantly train so that if the event happened, you just kicked in the gear automatically. You didn't have to think about it. Right.

And I tell that to my teams now, you know, at it, we train for cyber exercises, Right. You know, we go over, what are you going to do if this happens? What are you going to do when this happens? Because in the midst of a chaos, don't want to be panicking, trying to figure out what are you supposed to do in that moment. You want it to be like muscle memory.

Right. You know, so definitely thank you for your service there too, to the community. And

I gotta say I have to say thank you for being willing to put that uniform on and serve this country because many of the freedoms that that we all enjoy, none of us enjoy without someone being willing to put on that uniform and serve this country. And so, thank you very much for, being willing to do so.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. So so let's let's dive into some of the things that you kinda touched touched on.

You talked about, you know, leadership and obviously it's been important to you. We've shared a lot of moments, you know, over the years when it comes to leadership. What, what inspired you to focus on leadership as a key driver for success?

Well, I think it's a couple of different things. You know, oftentimes you're you're inspired by those who you actually come into contact with and develop relationships with. And a number of years ago, I met, a guy. His name is Orin Woodward. And, Orin is the author of Launching a Leadership Revolution.

Spent about eleven months straight on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today's bestsellers list. But Orrin kept pointing out how valuable, how important leadership is, and he kept pointing back to different authors and, people in the space. And, you know, I can't help, you know, anybody talk about leadership have to go back and quote John c Maxwell. Everything rises and falls on leadership. And listen, I'm a I'm a tell you, I've discovered that over the years to be absolutely, totally, 100% true.

That if you show me a family that is in chaos, disorder, I'm gonna show you a family that's lacking lead leadership. You show me a church that is in decline, and I'm going to show you a church that is lacking leadership. You show me a government, you know, that is in decline. I'm gonna show you a government, a country, I should say, not a government, but a country that is lacking leadership. And so so in that view, as I've come to understand that, you know, I just sit back and say, okay, consistently work on developing my leadership, you know, because every single one of us, at some point in time in our lives, every one of us will be called upon the lead.

The question isn't whether or not we'll ever be called upon, the question will be whether or not back to that prepared. It will be whether or not we are prepared.

That's good. That's good. That's good. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Sovereignty Podcast. If this content blessed or helped you in any kind of way, support us today by subscribing to our YouTube channel, clicking the like button for this episode, and sharing this content with others that you think it will help.

Until next time, stay safe, peace, and blessings.