David:
Welcome to the Trusted Leader Show. It’s David Horsager, and I’m super thrilled to have our guest on today. I heard him speak probably 30 years ago for the first time. He’s written several books since then. He is, you know, he’s consultant to folks in the NFL and the Pentagon, and he’s a leadership coach, and he’s written a load of award-winning books. He’s also pastor of a movement mosaic in LA, where I’m talking to him from today. but please welcome Erwin McManus. Thanks for being here, bud.

Erwin McManus:
David, it’s so good to be with you. I spent so much time in Minnesota over the years and it’s amazing what you guys are doing. I didn’t realize the breadth of your impact. It’s pretty extraordinary.

David:
Well, thank you. We’re just grateful to be a part of this. So I’m gonna get into your new book and everything a little bit, but before we do, you know, some people, a lot of people know about you. You’ve spoken all over the world. We’ve been on some similar stages, but what, tell us, you know, give us the three top things that maybe people that don’t know or would ban us. What about you?

Erwin McManus:
Wow, my life is so private and so public. I don’t know what people don’t know

David:
Hey.

Erwin McManus:
about me. But I guess if people don’t know much about me, I’m actually an immigrant from El Salvador. Spanish was my first language and my name’s an alias. And so those might be three things that are a little bit different than a lot of people.

David:
That’s, there you go. That’s fun. What do you love? Like what’s a, I don’t need to get into it too long, but what do you love to do when you’re not writing books, leading people and coaching and running a, you know, your family and life, what do you love to do?

Erwin McManus:
Anything competitive.

David:
Yeah.

Erwin McManus:
I love playing basketball and I love playing chess.

David:
Oh good.

Erwin McManus:
And yeah, so I learned how to play chess when I was three years old. And so it’s been a part of my life, all of my life. And so that’s one thing I love to do. And I love to play basketball, paddle tennis, spadell, pickleball, any sport where there’s a winner and a loser.

David:
There you go. I love those two. Everything

Erwin McManus:
Yeah.

David:
you named. I love it. Well, let’s get into this a little bit. I’m going to go to the book and then we’ll go backwards. I’m just a curious guy. I want to keep learning. Before I do, you know, I think this is a thing a lot. We talk about so much about authenticity and trust and there’s so many people that look like this, but they look trusted, but they’re not, you know, all these kind of things. What about, who are, you know, you’re leading so many others. Who do you go to? Who do you get led by? Who do you get? pouring into you, who do you get mentored by?

Erwin McManus:
Well, David, one thing is I’m 65 years old. And so I’ve been around a long time. And as you go through different phases in your life, you wanna access different aspects of learning. And so I think when you’re in your 20s, you wanna make sure you’re accessing people who have a lot more experience and have a huge texture of their life journey. When you’re older, you wanna make sure you’re accessing people who maybe have a pulse on the emerging cultures that you may not be as aware of. And so the people that really are most influential in my life are my son Aaron, who’s 35, my daughter Mariah, who’s 31. They’re both extraordinary leaders and really wonderful people. And they both work really closely with me in different arenas of life. And they’re probably the two most influential people in my life in the way that I process information, what I pay attention to, what I’m looking at, where I’m focusing my time and energy.

David:
Love it. Let’s jump right in on the book. You got the new book coming out, Mind Shift. You’ve had some other amazing books and just, we have Mutual Friend and John Gordon and many others, but tell me, give us the overall, in fact, I was taken by something as I was reading this whole idea that, where is it? Oh yeah, near life. Many of us have near life experiences. What do you mean?

Erwin McManus:
Yeah, you know, when I was opening up the beginning of the book, in my books, I’m almost always have a chapter zero. And chapter zero is the chapter where I’m invited you to see reality from a different perspective. And one of the things I looked at in chapter zero was how oftentimes our internal mental structures limit the life that we live, that we experience, that we know. And we don’t even realize that we’re the self-limiting. Barriers that are keeping us from the life we long for we think it’s other people. It’s other institutions It’s the circumstances it’s the world around us It’s what our parents didn’t do or what they did do and so oftentimes When we were trapped and we’re just existing we tend to think that The prison that we’re living inside of was created by someone else When we actually live fully when we’re fully alive when we’re having near-life experiences, we actually take responsibility for our lives and realize that the ceiling is us.

David:
Absolutely. Interesting. So every once again mind shift, it doesn’t take a genius to think like one and I think there’s a there’s a lot more to it But basically you jump into these 12 frameworks and

Erwin McManus:
Mm-hmm.

David:
they’re intriguing and I want us to jump into a couple of them You know, we’re gonna we’re gonna get people to go get the book. That’s the really not the goal We just care about truth getting out there, but there’s a lot in here. We’re not gonna cover today So let’s just scratch the surface and Everybody go get mind shift. It doesn’t take a genius to think like one. But that, a couple, I’m gonna pull out a couple here and then you can jump into other ones you want. There’s a lot of overlap with our trust work, things like gratitude that you talk about and other things, but you have to choose between acceptance and uniqueness. Tell me more.

Erwin McManus:
Yeah, absolutely. When I look at my own life journey, and by the way, one of the questions that drove me to write this book is that I would constantly get asked this question. What would you say to your 25 year old self? That just seemed to be everyone’s favorite question. What would you say to your 25 year old self? And when I wrote this book, I was writing, having a conversation with myself at 25 going, if I just understood this, it would have, it would have changed my life faster.

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
It would accelerated my journey into the future that I imagined and longed for. It would accelerated my own journey to becoming the person I wanted to become. And one of the things I noticed very early on is that you have to decide to stop living a life of obligation and to live a life of intention. And that as long as you’re living a life of obligation, you’re being shaped, your identity, your values. your direction is being shaped by the opinion of others and it’s it then you’re being dominated by external factors but when you begin to live a life of intention now you’re making decisions based on values and principles and your own internal compass which is really significant and so when i’m writing that section and i i’m really talking about how you need to begin to understand that at one point at some point in your life you got to stop living for the opinion and applause of others and begin to live your life for your own deep sense of intention and calling.

David:
What do you do? You know, we’re in businesses, you and I both have been on, you know, a lot of our lives and a lot of what we do is on a big stage or on a stage at least, and in front of people. And, you know, it’s like we wanna please them. And yet you and I both seen people in our industry fail and fall because they’ve, in fact, at least I’ve seen, I don’t wanna speak before you, but people in our space even use the audience as therapy and I call that abusing the audience. But… But what do you do? There is this thing of pleasing them, serving them. And frankly, it’s not so bad to be obligated to something. That’s a service heart. That’s a serving others heart, right? Not just my own intention, kumbaya, but this view of like, I’m obligated to something bigger than myself. So let’s get a little differentiation there.

Erwin McManus:
Yeah, I honestly I hate the word obligation. It’s just it’s not something that

David:
but

Erwin McManus:
I

David:
you

Erwin McManus:
live

David:
are

Erwin McManus:
with.

David:
obligated

Erwin McManus:
Yeah,

David:
to use it.

Erwin McManus:
I just think whenever a person is living out of obligation, it’s a much lower level of intention. And, and, like, I’m not obligated to be married. I’ve been married for 40 years. And

David:
Congratulations.

Erwin McManus:
but it’s but I have a commitment and an intention.

David:
Yep.

Erwin McManus:
And but not an obligation. My wife is not an obligation to me. She’s a responsibility. She’s an intention, she’s a commitment, and

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
it’s a very, very different thing.

David:
Yeah.

Erwin McManus:
And because obligation in some sense implies there’s no love involved. Obligation means that something you’re forced to do, not something you choose to do. And I think whenever a person uses a language where they’re not choosing,

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
they’re actually becoming powerless and living within a victimized narrative. And I just wanna destroy

David:
So

Erwin McManus:
that in people’s lives.

David:
I love that and all this sounds great, right? But how do we actually do it? And I watched you in a coaching session with the USFL, talking through some of this with those athletes, but how do you actually do this? Like, okay, it’s great, be more grateful. Okay, it’s great, do this thing. Like how do I actually live more intentional, let’s say? How do I do it? What do I take and how do I make the move?

Erwin McManus:
Usually it begins with making commitments to yourself and then keeping them. And you have to, you know, just

David:
totally.

Erwin McManus:
start in some small space. You know, I’m 65 and physical health isn’t something that happens accidentally. You know, and you can’t be 65 and still run and lift weights and live a physical, physically active life without discipline, without commitments. And let me tell you, everything in life tries to steal all my time to get into the gym. Everything in life tries to steal my time from getting physical exercise. And it’s amazing how gravity pulls pizza in my direction. You know,

David:
Hahaha.

Erwin McManus:
like, you know, it’s like there’s like a force that brings donuts and carbs into my life. And… I have to actually choose to push those aside, at least some, and eat healthy foods.

David:
Right.

Erwin McManus:
And one of the things I’ve noticed about us as humans, and this is where I feel like we’re factory defects, is that bad choices are easy and good choices are hard.

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
And it’s true across every domain in life. Having bad character is easy. is hard.

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
Being a bad employee is actually incredibly easy. You don’t have to practice.

David:
No doubt.

Erwin McManus:
Being a great employee takes incredible discipline. It’s incredibly hard. And by the way, being a good husband, it’s really, really hard. Being a bad husband is so easy. It’s like a gift. Yeah.

David:
Yeah, we’ve tried it.

Erwin McManus:
And so I think you have to resolve that. The worst expression of yourself has a gravitational pull that when you choose nothing, you become that.

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
You will never accidentally become the best version of yourself. So when you ask me, how do I start? How do I get all that? You start with action. Your

David:
Yeah.

Erwin McManus:
brain, I would say like your brain knows when you’re lying to other people and it also knows when you’re lying to you.

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
And when you get up and you make a resolution, You know, I’m going to change my life. I’m going to start walking, whatever, 10,000 steps every day, or I’m going to, you know, stop eating carbs or whatever

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
it is. So I’m going to stop having negative thoughts or I’m going to stop using profanity or whatever it may be. Your brain knows you’re lying to you.

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
The only language your brain listens to is action. And when you act differently than you have before, now your brain begins to believe you that you’re resolved. to take on a new pattern for life.

David:
I love that. The only language your brain listens to is action. The contribution pillar in our trust framework, you know, you said something else. We talk about this all the time. We have a framework for how trust is rebuilt. But the end, the last of the 10 things, the most important thing, and really the only way to rebuild trust, people often ask us, how do you rebuild trust? Whether you’re a big company with an oil spill or you’re an individual that lost trust, right? How do you rebuild trust? Well, one thing we say is it’s not the apology. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apologize, open the door, but you never rebuild trust in the apology. You only rebuild trust when you make and keep a new commitment, which is exactly what you said. And that’s what trusting yourself. You hear the idea to love your neighbors yourself, find someone who doesn’t love themselves at all. You find someone who doesn’t love very well. And it’s the same with trust. If you don’t make commitments to yourself, you don’t trust yourself well, and then you poison the team. So very interesting. So you said some things, and I don’t, I can’t remember which framework it’s under, but you kind of touched on it right now, but you said some things before in talking to those athletes and in some of what I’ve read about the little things. We have a sign up in our office 20 feet from me. It’s a little things done consistently to make the biggest difference. But you said something about discipline. It was like being faithful in the little things. What was the framework that comes under? It’s all about people. One of the frameworks in the book. but it was just a lot about the little things or discipline matters more than ever. Was that under a certain framework?

Erwin McManus:
I can’t remember what chapter that was in, but it’s actually a part of a larger framework called the character matrix, where I talk about how virtues are actually developed. Because one of the challenges sometimes that will tell people, you need to have courage, but we have no way of giving them a process to become courageous. And so in that, I take people through a process where I help them see that courage actually is an extension of integrity, and that courage is not the absence of fear, but the absence of self. But then you go, okay, how do I build integrity? And no one ever tells you how to build integrity. And they just tell you to have integrity. And a part of what this process that shows them that humility actually builds integrity and integrity builds courage. And in the same way, when you’re looking at faithfulness, which you’re talking about the details, that process is actually moving us toward wisdom. How do you gain wisdom? Well, wisdom comes from perseverance. And perseverance actually comes from faithfulness. And so when you’re faithful in the small things, when you take on the basic disciplines of life, you actually begin to develop a resilience that allows you to persevere hard times. And it’s when you persevere the crisis and the challenge and the conflict and the pain of life, that’s actually when you develop wisdom. You can have a lot of experiences and still be a fool and never actually gained wisdom. And wisdom doesn’t come because you’ve gone through a lot. Wisdom comes because you’ve learned through the lot you’ve gone through.

David:
Yeah, very good. What do you think? Let’s move to another one. You say you say this in the book talent is a hallucinate hallucinasi. Let’s see. hallucinogen.

Erwin McManus:
Talented, yeah, oh yeah,

David:
Yeah,

Erwin McManus:
hallucinogen,

David:
yeah. All right.

Erwin McManus:
yeah.

David:
Yeah.

Erwin McManus:
Yeah, it’s really, to me, this is so important because I work with a lot of top tier people and they’re the best in the world at what they do. And one of the things you find is that when people have extraordinary talent at a young age, external structures are built around their life to make sure they succeed. because people want to extract all the talent out of them. But the moment those structures are gone, they collapse. That’s why about 75% of pro football players are drug addicted, divorced, dead or bankrupt within five years after they leave the NFL. It’s because they were prodigies, they were talents as young children, talents throughout middle school, high school and college. So external structures were built around them that pulled out the success. Optimize that success and they thought they had the internal structures for success But they did not and the

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
moment those scaffolds are removed their lives collapse Talent is a hallucinogen because it convinces you the talent is what makes the difference between being great and being extraordinary and achieving a level of greatness that’s historic and that it will sustain success only character Gives you the infrastructure for sustained success Talent actually gives you the environment where you do not need to build the internal structures for success Talent may be the most dangerous thing a person ever has because they don’t have to go through the time and pain and struggle and suffering of building the internal structures for success

David:
Wow. Yeah. So true. I’ve seen that. You’ve seen it too. I was, uh, you know, uh, Tim Keller passed away not too long ago, but the, we were talking about some, a pastor that had, uh, had a massive audience that had fallen and he was in his 20 or 27 or something like that. He was asked to speak at pastors conferences. And here he is 20 say hadn’t that built the, he hadn’t built the character to deal with this. Whereas Keller said it was little by little, you know, for him, it built over 30, 40, 50 years where his speaking as audience grew and he had to build character with it. And in full humility, he talked about that, but his humility, but many people in any realm, they get a stage too early, they didn’t have to build, they didn’t build the character, have the infrastructure. We see this all the time, whether it’s in speaking or sports or coaching or whatnot.

Erwin McManus:
Mm-hmm.

David:
Is there a story, you know, you’ve coached some amazing folks and leaders. Is there a story you can tell like this is someone this they started here and they actually made a mindset shift here and here’s what happened. Something about that process noticing it, helping it, coaching it.

Erwin McManus:
It’s a little hard to pull a story from some of the people I coach, but

David:
Why is that? Because you don’t have to say their names, but why is it hard to…

Erwin McManus:
Yeah,

David:
Why

Erwin McManus:
well,

David:
is

Erwin McManus:
because

David:
it hard? Because… yeah.

Erwin McManus:
their roles are so specific,

David:
Okay, yep.

Erwin McManus:
it would be hard not to without filling the blanks, have everyone know how to fill in the blanks. But I will say something. And this is as a really interesting, like a spiritual dynamic to it. I coach a business guy named Edwin. And Edwin Oriabe is like a really extraordinary person. His family is Colombian. His parents were part of the Colombian drug cartel. His parents were both arrested, I think, by the FBI. And later his dad was imprisoned as a drug lord. And then he went from having a family that was in the cartel, and then next thing he’s in abject poverty and living in South LA. And so he has to find a job at 14 and can’t get hired anywhere, and finally gets a job, and within 10 years buys the company. that he didn’t get hired for first. And when I met him, he was wild, you know, Lamborghinis, the whole, you know, the jet setting, the cars, he was married, but you know, he’s married to a celebrity and then he was having affairs everywhere. And you know, he was known for partying. He was known for drinking and for, he would travel as a rock musician for several years. And just every, he was trying to live the idyllic life. of the bachelor guy, even when he was married, and had a life-changing transformation through an encounter with Jesus. And I’ve had the great privilege of mentoring him, and I started working in his company, helping him elevate his company into the hundreds of millions. And his top salesman, who just this year made $5.2 million, that’s a sales guy. asked to zoom with me and we zoom and he says, you know, I’ve been on private planes because he’s already, this kid’s already a millionaire and he’s 34 and he said, you know, I was flying around on the private plane with my friends and we’re all partying and I realized all I know about them is that they’re partying and I realized all they knew about me is that I’m partying. So he zooms with me and he says, hey, I wanna become not like Edwin was, I wanna become like Edwin is.

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
And then he named another business guy named Ed Milet and he goes, I want to become like Ed Milet and you and Edwin, how do I do that? And it was this great Zoom conversation where we actually said, hey, this is no longer a business call. Because what Edwin and Ed and I have in common is a life-changing relationship with Jesus. And so I went through and just walked him through that. And then that Zoom call, he actually makes a decision to become a follower of Christ. And the reason I tell you this story is because when you ask me what mind shift that I see in a person, I didn’t just see a mind shift. I saw life shift in Edwin and he’s running this massive company. He’s aspirational. All the sales force in his company, the whatever, the thousand of them, they all want to become him. And when he was like drinking and womanizing and partying and, you know, living the nightlife, they all wanted to be like him.

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
And then when he had this radical shift, and now he’s the most generous guy in the world. And when he talks about making hundreds of millions of dollars, he doesn’t talk about buying cars anymore or buying airplanes or buying yachts. He still likes them and occasionally

David:
Yes.

Erwin McManus:
still buys them. But is that what he’s aspiring people toward? He talks about getting to be generous, about

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
serving mosaic and about investing money to build a school like in Africa or, and, and his entire mind shift has transformed the organizational culture of the whole company.

David:
Mm-hmm.

Erwin McManus:
And that for me is the epitome of what I love to do, to watch the culture change, not just so the company can make a great deal more money, which I love helping companies do that because I want good people to have millions because they’re going to use it well and billions. But I also want to create a culture. where the aspirational epicenter is the person we’re becoming, not the toys we’re buying.

David:
Yeah, I love that. Well, tell me one more thing, tell this audience one more thing you want everybody to know from the book. What’s one more idea or one part you’re most passionate about?

Erwin McManus:
First of all, I really love this book. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve had a chance to write about 12 books in my life, and this is the first social psychology book, and it’s in the business section. It’s in the personal development section of the bookstores. And I wrote it very specifically to help destroy internal limitations. And there are certain chapters that I think are really pivotal, but they’ll be pivotal for different people. Like chapter three. says you can’t take everyone with you. And I think this is a really significant chapter for a lot of people who are so genuinely good hearted. And they don’t wanna leave anyone behind. And every time their friends speak negatively into their life when they try to change, they go back to their previous form. Someone asked me this past week, is it lonely at the top? And I said, you know, I do think I’m at the top of my game. And in a lot of places I get to be the top. in my field, but it’s not lonely at the top. I actually have more friends now than I’ve ever had my entire life. Where it’s lonely is in the transitions. Because when you’re one way in your life and you have friends who like you that way, and then you decide to add more discipline to your life, you decide to become more ambitious, you decide to sacrifice more so you can accomplish more, your friends will not cheer you on. they will not celebrate you changing. In fact, they’re gonna say to you, you’ve changed. But what they’re really upset about is that you’ve grown. Because when you grow, it becomes an indictment that they’re not growing. And when you elevate, you will lose that friendship circle. But you will not gain a new one because you haven’t earned the respect of that new circle. And you’ve lost the trust of the last circle, so now you’re alone. And I think that’s where a lot of people give up because the loneliness. of those dynamic transitions become more than they can bear. And one of the things you want to find are the people in your life who celebrate the best version of you. They don’t celebrate who you are, they celebrate who you’re becoming. And I think that’s really, really important. And throughout my life, my wife and I, we’ve been here in LA for 30-something years, and we always had this ideal sense that we would do life forever with people. They would do life with us forever. We would invest in them and they’d stay. It just was never real. And it didn’t mean that the relationships weren’t real. You have to realize that a lot of people come through your life and they’re seasonal and they’re not being disloyal when they leave. It’s just time for them to do something new or fresh or different in their life. And I have literally had friends who I sat down with and I said, hey, we were so close last year. Like what happened? Cause you guys sort of drifted from us and You’re still in the community. We see you have great friendships, and we just want to know if we did something. And I remember it was one couple, one went to Harvard and the other went to Duke, two of the most prestigious schools in the world. And they said, we really love you guys, but whenever we were close to you, we felt so much weight to become more, to accomplish more, to do more with our life. And we said, well, we never told you that. you should do more or they said, no, just by virtue of the way you live your life would make us leave with the sense we need to do more. And I said, I have never felt more comfortable with you choosing other friends. And because they chose friends who had less ambition, who had less drive. Look, I have massive drive. I get up in the morning wanting to change the world. I’ve taken psychological assessments on energy. and I have almost a maximum amount of measurable human energy. I’ve always been like this. I used to live on basically four hours of sleep a night, not because I had to. That’s just all I needed. I realized the rest of the world isn’t like me and everyone has to find their pace. Everyone has to find, you know, the right intensity of their life. And, and I want to celebrate that for you, but I don’t want your slower pace to measure what is actually spiritual. or appropriate or healthy. I wanna, you know, I’m a Navy SEAL, you know, and I’m a top gun pilot and I wanna fly with those people. And if you want to keep elevating in your life, you better accept transitional loneliness. But

David:
Hmm.

Erwin McManus:
if you do it right and you love people and you serve people, you’ll find friendships at every level along the way.

David:
Good word. Well, there’s a lot more here. Everybody, we could talk more about it. A lot of other leadership tips, a lot of other ideas. The book, Mind Shift, it doesn’t take a genius to think like Juan, the 12 framework Mind Shifts. It’s just a fantastic book from a fantastic person. And thanks for your leadership and the legacy you’ve left in the world. touching me and others and you know, we got one final question on a trusted leader show and that is Who’s the leader you trust and why?

Erwin McManus:
When I saw your question, you know, my mind always goes to divergent places because I wanted to jokingly try to pick like some extreme political leader that would upset half your audience, you know? And, you know, say either Obama or to say Trump. And I realized something really quickly. There’s a difference between a leader you trust and a leader you agree with. And a lot of times people choose a leader they agree with, even though they don’t trust them. And a lot of times we don’t choose the person we trust because we don’t agree with them. And we have to decide what actually has a higher value for us. But my answer to your question is the president of El Salvador, Naim Boukeli. I was born in El Salvador, I’m a citizen of El Salvador. He has transformed a country that for 40 years had the highest murder rate in the world. The most notorious gang in the world, MS-13, came out of El Salvador. After civil war, the country has been torn to pieces through the most violent gangs and the most unsafe country on the planet. And Bukele is, I think, around 38 years old and three and a half years has transformed the country. The whole nation celebrated when they had one day without a murder. Now they’ve had 365 days without a murder. And the United Nations… United States, the LA Times, you know, all the liberal press has hated Bukele because he went through the country and arrested around 6,000 gang members. And he has taken on the ire of the political world to bring peace and prosperity to a country that never had a future. And when you look at Naim Bokehli and his wife, they’re like a John and Jackie Kennedy, you know? And his wife was a ballerina. They have a beautiful little girl. And they put a computer in the hands of every child in the entire nation so that every child would have access to the internet and to education. And I just really admire him. I love what he’s doing. I know it’s massively controversial. And I’m really… I understand two weeks I’m going to speak in El Salvador at an event where he’s speaking and I’m speaking and I consider it one of the highlights of my life.

David:
Wow. Good stuff. How do we end on anything else? First time he’s been used and I love to hear that. Man, it’s been a treat. There’s so much more. I’ve got 50 more questions, but hey, for everybody out there, you know the deal. Erwin McManus, you can find out more online. You’re going to look at the show notes for his books and his newest book and more about where to find more about him on the show notes, trustedleadershow.com. And of course, this has been the Trusted Leader Show. Until next time, stay trusted.