And to get out of your comfortable dollos and your nice home and your big jet in
your mansion, take a walk on in somebody else’s yard and develop empathy. And we are losing empathy.
There’s a significant portion of the book that talks about disruptive partnerships.
Right.
And I think for some people, it’s gonna surprise them. Mhmm.
The way you talk about how god will use someone very different than you to help you along your journey.
I understand.
And why it’s important to have those folks as strategic partners, uh, to help you complete the assignment.
We are forever the student. Though we are teaching, though we are leading, we are preaching, though we are teaching, though we’re running a company, though we’re running a business, we are still learning, and as long as you keep learning, you can keep leading.
You can’t lead past where you learn.
Welcome to Amazon Live.
I’m Latasha Gillespie, and I’m the head of global diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility for Amazon Studios, Prime Video, MGM, MGM, and freebie.
Here today, I’m so excited to be having a conversation a disruptive conversation with Bishop TD Jake.
He’s a prolific content creator, husband, father, grandfather, CEO entrepreneur, real estate developer, award winning producer, New York Times best selling author, and the founder and senior pastor of the Potter House, a multicultural non denominational church and humanitarian organization headquartered in Dallas with locations literally all over the world.
He’s affectionately known as America’s pastor, Although I know some of our viewers who are on Asia on the continent of Asia, Africa would argue he’s theirs too.
You can also find three hundred hours of his including new and archived sermons interviews, uh, as well all on prime video and his very own fast channel on Amazon Freevey.
Welcome Bishop.
Thank you. Thank you. I’m delighted to be with you.
Listen, I am really excited to talk to you today.
Today, we’re talking about your new, your latest book disruptive thinking. It actually comes out tomorrow.
So I’m super excited to be here with the sneak preview.
I have my copy, which, as you can tell, has been warned. Uh, I have been going through this book.
It has been giving me my life.
Good. Good. That’s good to hear.
So I wanna help our audience get their life too today. So we are currently live on Amazon Live.
So thank you all for being here with us today.
What that means is I want you to drop your questions, drop your comments in the chat.
We’re both we’re all going to chat with Bishop today. Uh, we’re gonna share your questions. He’s gonna answer them.
Uh, we’re so excited to have you here today as we talk.
Also, you can find his new book, as well as his past works in the carousel attached to the video so you can shop right here and not have to leave the platform while you stay engaged in this conversation.
Great.
Yeah. Now, Michelle, we’re coming off a whirlwind week.
Yes. We have had an amazing week. ILS, our international leadership summit. Yes. Yeah. Good soil.
Which was our training ground for entrepreneurs, both of them were wildly successful, completely sold out, and we had an amazing time.
We did. Ten thousand entrepreneurs, business leaders, spiritual leaders, all coming together for a transformative experience.
Yes. Yes.
I feel like that actually was a great setup for what’s gonna happen tomorrow because the whole world will be able to experience that transformation with this new book.
That’s true. And, uh, I think about it this way.
When you think about the intersection between ministry, marketplace, and missions, that in itself is disrupted.
That’s right.
Because normally they are segmented and separated and segregated, and they stay that way.
But what we did was converge them together because we affect each other. The marketplace affects the ministry.
The ministry affects submission. And so why don’t we sit down together and have the kind of holistic conversations?
That creates change.
Listen, let’s have that conversation because disruptive thinking, the slatest book is really about a daring strategy to change how we live, how we lead, and how we love.
So your book is a call to action for disruptive thinkers, who I love in the book you affectionately call us, uh, fence sleepers.
Yes. Yes.
Um, but it’s also for fence dwellers.
Yes. Yes.
It’s also for those who enable defense leapers to to lead. It’s for parents. It’s for spouses.
It’s for business leaders. Absolutely. It’s for faith based leaders.
Right.
It’s for atheists.
Right.
It’s for Republicans, Democrats, independence, the LGBTQ community. There’s something in this book for everyone.
Right. I believe that. Because we’re sharing the planet together. We’re sharing oxygen together. We’re sharing life together.
We’re living this life together. We don’t have to agree about everything.
But there
are certain stable things
—
Yeah.
—
that are necessary to the sustenance of our entire life.
And once we begin to understand those major issues — Yeah.
—
and how they affect us. Yeah. Then we won’t focus so much on the minor issues and how they separators.
Let me tell you something. This book, first of all, I felt seen reading it, like, okay.
The way I think is not, you know, out of the ordinary or they’re people who who think the way I do.
There were some times it stepped on my toes.
Okay.
Right? What I loved about the book is you said, disruptors don’t take sides they take over.
Right.
These are the folks who are providing solutions rather than joining a debate.
That’s right.
Now, why is that important in this particular time for everyone to understand why it’s important to leave those well worn paths of the past to divinely disrupt the status quo.
We have never been more segregated than we are right now. Yeah. More tribalistic than we are right now.
More loyal to labels than we are to common sense. Yeah.
And we need desperately to come out of our silos and find common ground so that we can have a a more perfect union as a country or a more perfect world globally.
When we begin to think like that, not taking sides, but taking over and understanding that you are the people that you’ve been waiting on.
Well, let you just set me up from my first clip. I want to play a clip.
This is actually you and your own words with an excerpt from the book.
So in addition to preordering the book, you can also get the book on Audible.
And so I want to play this clip for our audience real quick.
Your moment has arrived. That final straw shoving you to the disruptive thought that can turn this thing around, you’re now is here.
You deserve fairness. You’ve earned peace. You merit fulfillment.
The elements you need for your transformation, the disruptive steps you need to take are already inside of you.
They are sitting there waiting. The only thing that can come out of you is what’s already in you.
I love that. I love that because that that invited us all to be disruptive thinkers.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And it also validates the fact that there’s still hidden treasure down inside of you that if you have the courage to explore rather than to to embrace the timidity of living up to how people have assigned you a foul, uh, a title a place
—
Mhmm. — a structure that can become a prison, not a protection.
It gives you the courage to lead beyond that and see, what else am I?
What else is in me? What else can I do? What else can I bring to the table?
And to be disruptive means that you, uh, defy description.
Listen, and what that also makes me feel like is there’s no expiration date on that based on what you just said.
Not at all. At all times, we because We have we are forever the student.
Though we are teaching, though we are leading, though we are preaching, though we are teaching, though we’re running a company, though we’re running a business, we are still learning.
And as long as you keep learning, you can keep leading. You can’t lead past where you learn.
Oh, that was a gem for you. I’m gonna repeat that. You can leave.
Pass where you learn.
Pass where you learn. That that was Rich, but so whoever that was for, you can just put a put a thank you in the chat for that.
Reading this book, it also felt like there was this sense of urgency behind it.
Um, you talk about when change becomes not only desirable, but urgent, urgently necessary.
Why do you believe at this particular time in the world we we need this kind of thinking, this disruptive thinking.
Well, one we we’ve been totally destabilized. Yeah. There is no normal to go back to.
There isn’t
Everybody’s waiting to go back to normal. There is no normal.
Yeah.
Normal has been redefined. It’s been a huge paradigm shift.
And so while we are in the middle of this transition, We have to be disruptive thinkers or we’re gonna be lost.
Our our souls, our hearts, our minds are gonna be homeless because we keep trying to find our way back to a place that it’s burned down.
Woo. COVID had two or three years of COVID and isolation and businesses have rethought themselves. Airlines have rethought themselves.
Churches have rethought themselves. Corporations that we thought
—
Remologists have rethought themselves. You understand?
—
parenting.
Parents has totally revolutionized in which we teach the way which school teachers teach, the way which universities teach.
And so that person who who needs normalcy to feel safe their equilibrium has been broken.
This book now gives you permission to disrupt what was so you can embrace what is.
Okay. That makes so much sense to me because in your book, you also stress the urgency on a personal level.
Like, I felt like in addition to what the world is going through.
I also felt like There was this this sense of urgency for me as an individual.
And you talk about that when the threat and trauma are the strongest, is when you should really be a offense sleeper
—
Right. — which on the surface sounds counterintuitive, except for how you just explained it.
Yeah. Well, think about this. When when the pains are greatest with a pregnant woman, that’s when they tell her to push.
Okay. And and what we have a tendency to do is when we feel the greatest pain we draw back.
Yeah. Oh, that’s scary. That hurt.
Yeah.
You know, they talked about me. They they don’t like me. No. Push into it. Oh.
Push because they wouldn’t be talking about you if they didn’t notice you, and they wouldn’t notice you if you weren’t loaded.
If you weren’t having impact.
Yes. Yes. That’s the thing.
You said that last week at Good soil, which was an amazing conference for entrepreneurs. Yes.
So those of you who missed it, I’m really sorry.
You should download the app and and make your reservation for next year.
You talked about the level of attack that comes is based on the level of impact you’re having in the world.
Absolutely. And once you learn that, you embrace the attack as an indication that you’re having impact.
See, there’s a difference between effort and impact.
Effort is how much energy I expend it, but I can expend a lot of energy and not impact what I hit.
Impact weighs how much I changed.
The world, my marriage, my children, my job, my company, myself, my world.
And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much effort you spend if you’re not making impact.
If you’re not bearing fruit. Listen, Simoneia asks wants to know what was your inspiration providing this booth?
The fierce urgency of now, uh, the world as I knew it blew up with — Yeah.
—
with with COVID, uh, everything changed. My church shut down.
I had to preach for two years in an empty building.
I watched corporations, toys, or us went away many, many corporations, uh, downsized restaurants close.
And I thought either this is the apocalypse with you high in the ruled out, you know, you know, and I’m living in a movie and I can’t get out.
Right. Or
all of a sudden, we have the greatest opportunity You not know that more millionaires and billionaires were given to this country during the depression — Wow.
—
than any other time in history. So disruptions are also an opportunity for discovery for
—
Wow. — creativity for invention, for innovation, because we are open to things in disruption that we would not be open to in normalcy.
That, listen, because the world is changing and blowing up anyway.
So you might as well figure it out.
Absolutely. You take companies like Uber. You take companies like Lyft. You wouldn’t have thought of them years ago.
No. You
would held a tax fee and be be done with it.
Let me tell you something.
I got to pay three before I was like, see, now now why he all in my business?
Um, page three, you said the older we get, the longer we live, the more we realize that we were born, look like our parents, but we die looking like our decisions.
Yes. Yes. And I think that’s very, very important. We die looking like our decisions.
And so we have a huge opportunity, obligation. I would even say responsibility.
To alter our decisions to change our outcomes. Mhmm.
The the feeling of being helpless has permeated our society to the point of depression When in reality, uh, you’re gonna die looking like your decisions and your choices.
If you change your decisions — Yeah.
—
you can change your outcomes.
Yeah. Yeah. You and you actually have been a great example of that, uh, Angela and Irene both, uh, commented that you have been very disruptive in a good way, Bishop.
Uh, and in the book, you also give several examples around disruptive thinkers that have changed the course of history.
Now you are one of those.
People who have changed the course of history, can can you share with our audience a little bit about some of the ways being disruptive have has helped you pave the way for something great and maybe you didn’t even anticipate.
Well, you know, for example, I wrote the first Christian book to women written by a man.
Yeah.
No publisher even wanted to publish it. I self published the book.
Wow.
And, uh, that was has outsold any book I’ve ever done, a woman that I’ve lived. Yeah.
And there was no precedence for it. No. So I have a history of going where others have been gone.
I was the first me too movement.
Yeah.
You know, speaking to women and challenging them, uh, to to come out of their pain and abuse and trauma and acknowledging their pain abusing trauma.
I was the first guy to do that. And so that’s one example of it.
Uh, a recent example is this, uh, real estate deal that we’re doing with Wells Fargo is a disruptive idea for them and for me.
Help the people understand just how disrupted. That that was you gave a nice little intro.
I hope the people understand how disruptive this deal is.
Well, for Wells Fargo, they said it’s unlike anything that you’ve ever done in the history of Wells Fargo, which goes back a long, long ways.
Right.
For me, it’s disruptive because there I am building communities, neighborhoods, developing mixed income mixed use facilities, Never thinking that Wells Fargo’s gonna come alongside me, and I’m gonna be able to pull from their resources and the unexpected surgeons of capital that enables our communities and people who look like me and others who are struggling to have things like grocery stores.
Yeah. Things that other people take for granted that are hard pressed. We got liquor stores.
We don’t have grocery stores. We’ve got payday loans. We don’t have banks.
That’s right.
We don’t have the things that are necessary financial literacy. That’s right. Uh, home ownership.
Forty two percent of African Americans own home as opposed to seventy percent of non African American people on their own home.
Forty two percent. Yeah. So so that is tragic.
Yeah.
But it is also an opportunity. How do we get those people into homeownership?
The reason it’s important is because that’s the first place where we begin to aggregate wealth
—
That’s right.
—
or have something to pass on to our descendants
—
That’s right.
—
is to you can’t pass on rent.
Yeah.
Okay. You can’t pass on rent. We if you die and you’re renting, your kids don’t get the apartment.
So, uh, we have to think of creative ways that we can have greater impact and greater influence by disrupting the status quo and saying the stats that we have today don’t have to be the stats that we have tomorrow.
Right now, It is projected that by the year two thousand and fifty, African Americans median income will be at zero.
Zero.
So the if if you felt an urgency in my writing, Yeah.
It is because in order to have equality, you have to have equity.
That’s right.
You know, the it it doesn’t matter how much you like me if I’m being evicted.
Yeah.
You know, the fact that you talk nice about me or the fact that you don’t talk nice to me doesn’t matter if I’m making my payments.
That’s right.
That’s right.
It doesn’t bother me. If you’re not making my payments, it doesn’t affect me.
So making us to think differently where we’re not just in our feelings about things and and then challenging Wells Fargo to live up to its highest principles and ideals is critical.
Yeah. Because they haven’t done that by their own admission. Yeah.
And they’re starting to come to grips with the fact, at the very least, I don’t wanna speak for them, but at the very least, a billion dollars worth of capital made it to our community.
Wow.
You know, and I was able to steward that process. Wow.
And I’m able to direct the houses to grocery stores, the hotels, the jobs, the housing for senior living, and things, schools, and things that we desperately need in order to be competitive in the future.
It’s just one other tool. It’s not my only tool. I’ve got other people behind me.
I’ve got other companies behind me, but it added something to the arsenal that brings us to equality, which is not just good for people of color, It’s good for everybody because we’re gonna shop in your grocery store.
We’re gonna shop at your pharmaceutical division. And so the whole economy can be uplifting.
By uplifting those who are overlooked.
It’s a flywheel for the whole ecosystem.
Absolutely.
Yeah. T touch whoever you sit next to and tell him, he said a billion would it be not not not a million with an l, and and touch the other person on the other side of you and tell them, uh, you cannot pass along rent.
But I love this example of your partnership with Wells Fargo because there’s a significant portion of the book that talks about disruptive partnerships.
Right.
And I think for some people, it’s gonna surprise them. Mhmm.
The way you talk about how god will use someone very different than you to help you along your journey
and
why it’s important to have those folks as strategic partners, uh, to help you complete the assignment.
You stress the importance of actually having partnerships across generational, racial differences, faith differences.
Let’s talk about the importance of disruptive alliances and why uh, leaders shouldn’t be afraid to align with people who don’t think like them.
It is a mentality that is baked into our ecosystems are silos and teachers and loyalty means that you don’t interact with anybody that’s not like us.
It’s us against them. Yeah. We are the people, and we ignore everybody else.
First of all, I have to demonize you to attack you. Oh, come on.
I need to be able to call you something like a savage or a native to be able to kill you.
So so I need to feel good about it. I can’t admit that you’re human.
Second of all, look at god partnering with Rahab, the Harlet. Right. Okay. Which provoked all of the possession of
the promised land. That’s right.
Okay. When you start looking at these, uh, look at the civil rights movement, partnering with president being president Lyndon v Johnson, who had gone on the record for saying some terribly racist stuff.
But
they got the bill of rights done because they talked to somebody that they didn’t like what they said, but they were able to change what he did.
That’s right.
And so so sometimes we are so wounded by what people have said that we don’t allow space to change what they did.
Or don’t allow them space to change what they did.
Wow. Listen. That’s a whole word right there.
Yeah. Absolutely. If you don’t learn that marriage, it doesn’t work. For forget business.
If you can’t get past a bad moment, your marriage is not gonna work. Your you raising your children.
It’s not gonna work.
Yeah.
Working with your coworkers is not gonna work. Yeah.
And the reason a lot of things don’t work for us, we can never get over the initial shock of pain.
And in the book, I talk about invisible walls that we put up for our dogs to keep them in the backyard and keep them away from the coyotes.
I live in Dallas. And and keep them away from coyotes and rattlesnakes and all that.
I had one dog that stayed in the fence. The other one took the shock of the invisible fence.
Honey, how they lead that fence because she wanted to get out into the wider, uh, opportunities that exist.
I think there’s somebody listening at us right now. That’s a fence sleeper. Yes.
And if you’re a fence sleeper, then the fence is a cage, not a protection. It’s a cage.
And and and and so you have to begin to understand that if you’re going to go into the wild, uh, horizons of what’s next — Yeah.
—
rather than what’s now.
Oh, I love that. And we’re gonna talk about more in-depth about, you know, fence sleeping and what’s on the other side of that.
But before we move to that, I wanna I wanna stay here on these partnerships for just a second because your book talks a lot about inclusion.
Mhmm.
A lot of times when we talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion, we’re usually talking about people in power reaching out to historically marginalized communities.
Mhmm. But reading your book as a woman — Mhmm.
—
and as a woman of color. So I wear two marginalized identities.
I felt the onus was on me to reach out to partner with people who are different than me.
I love your quote on page AD three. Let me find it real quick.
Um, it was so good. It was another time you were on my toes.
I have learned over the years that when all your associates are in this in your same field, do what you do, and know what you know, The only thing that can be born from the association is repetition, competition, or envy.
That’s exactly right. You want to adorn yourself. It’s like a board.
You don’t want all accountants on your board.
Right.
You want some lawyers on your board.
You want some people that public relations specialists on your board that diversity benefits the whole ecosystem of a corporation in the same sense extroverts end up marrying introverts.
Yes. You know, we’re opposites attract.
And so we benefit when we cross pollinate nature teaches it better than I ever could. Yeah.
Cross following nation creates fruitfulness.
Yeah.
So the nectar that makes the peach didn’t always come from a peach tree.
Yeah.
The more the bee buzzes and goes around from flower to flower and brings it back to the peach blossom.
The more fruit we are able
to see.
The peanut was developed through hybrids. There’s all kinds of things that happen when we get out of our boxes.
And here’s the other thing that you alluded to, that I think is important.
It is the onus is not always on the oppressed to reach to the oppressor. Mhmm.
The onus is also on the oppressor — Yeah.
—
to reach to the oppressed. Yes. Because that is disruption
too. It has to go both ways.
It has to go both ways.
And to get out of your comfortable silos and your nice home and your big jet in your mansion and go take a walk on somebody else’s yard and develop empathy, and we are losing empathy.
Listen, we have lost our ability, I think, to have civil discourse
—
Yes. — which is losing a richness, I think. In what has made us so great as a country. Absolutely.
Right?
Don’t even get me started on it.
A democracy hangs in the balance of our inability to communicate with our own citizens.
Yeah.
We used to be afraid of people outside of our country. Now we’re afraid of people in our country.
We used to be little kids, we would be afraid of of grown people.
Yeah.
Now grown people are afraid of children. Wow. Look at the times that we’re living in. Wow.
Suicide rates rising amongst children. Yeah. Yeah. Epidemic proportions. Yeah.
Uh, gun violence like it has never been in in the world before.
And everybody just makes excuses and argues about the solutions, but nobody make steps to correct the problem in either direction.
In either direction. Yeah. In either direction. This is why I love this book so much.
It will help you as a parent. It will help you as a spouse. It will you as a leader.
It will help you lead yourself.
And I’m having an amazing conversation, but I also wanna make sure that the audience is getting an opportunity to have a conversation Angeles says, hi, Bishop.
I can’t wait to read the book. How do you stay positive in such troubling times?
Person personally, I’m a person of faith. So I draw a lot of strength from my faith.
I draw a lot of strength from my family. Yep.
And I draw a lot of strength from my own business. I do not depend on.
Wait, man. Wait a minute. Say that again.
I draw a lot of stress from my own business.
Isness.
Yeah. Yeah. I am. I am who I am. And I have a sense of who I am.
And I’m not at the mercy of what you think about me to determine what I think about me.
That’s business. Created the world. Somebody. But it’s good.
Help somebody. Business. I love this. Okay. Uh, Dominique, uh, thank you for writing in.
She wants to Dominique wants to know what is the definition of disruptive thinking?
Disruptive thinking is to break out of normatives that are stifling to you.
Disruptive thinking is this this is a first computer that was ever made in between your two ears.
It is the final frontier of privacy. Once a word escapes my mouth, I’m not sure who will hear it.
But once a thought is in my head, that is a birth canal through which your next business, your next job, your next spouse, Your next friend comes from the way you think.
If when we think better, we live better.
When we think disruptively, we are not so isolated, insulated, introverted, a threat to come outside.
It’s it’s it’s a very dangerous thing not to be willing to challenge your old ideas. Yeah.
That’s what it means. In short, to challenge your old ideas, to have a talk with yourself.
They’re gonna think you’re crazy, but have a talk with yourself and say the way I perceived it may not be the way it is.
It’s just my point of view.
It’s just my
that doesn’t make it a fact.
Whoo. Listen, that’s a great setup for. I wanna play another clip from the book.
Um, Bishop, this is you talking about on that same line.
I’m not here to set a goal for other people’s lives.
I’m here to show you how to attain the goal you set for your own life.
If you don’t like the life you are living, you have the power to change it.
It is inside of you. Fix it. Apologize. Say you’re sorry.
Do whatever it takes if you don’t like it. Be complicit in the transformation you are praying for.
Listen. You talked about your mind being that last frontier.
Mhmm.
And you talk about if you don’t like what’s in your life fix it, And there’s a lot of viewers out here who who I I know where they’re sitting because I’ve sat in that seat where I have been miserable in a job, felt like I was stuck couldn’t get out.
Right? And I remember a mentor saying to me, if you don’t like it, leave. Right.
And And that sounded easy. Mhmm. But it felt hard.
Mhmm. Yes. It feels, but his feelings are just that. Their feelings They’re not facts.
That’s right.
Okay. So the fact that I feel afraid or that I feel alone or that I feel isolated doesn’t mean that I am.
Clime across all of that and discover what’s beyond how you feel about it because feelings don’t last.
Whatever you’re feeling today, you’re not gonna feel it next week.
That’s true. And I think you I love how you liken it to, um, in the book you talk about, you know, it’s really a birthing process all over again.
But the but but it’s really about understanding that we have receipts.
Right.
So when we when we get to that hard part in our life, Sometimes it’s just about remembering, oh, I’ve done harder things.
Right.
Right? I if if you’re a woman and and have given birth, that was harder.
If you buried a parent, that was harder.
Say
it. Right. Anything in life is receipts that lets you know that you are capable of doing the next hard thing.
It’s so funny you bring that up because when my mother died and I was forty years old, time, it was a very difficult season as it is for most people when they lose their parent.
When I got to the other side of it, I realized if I can survive that, I can survive you leaving.
Yeah. If I survived her leaving?
Yeah.
I I can make it without you. So you can’t threaten me, but I’m gonna leave you.
Because I’ve seen people leave and I made it. I didn’t even think I was gonna make it.
Yeah. The most important people.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And and the fact that I had intense feelings had said, I don’t know how I’m gonna make it, didn’t mean that I couldn’t make it.
So whether it’s a job, whether it’s somebody’s opinion, Everybody likes to be like. I love to be like.
I love it. I love it. I’m the baby of my family. What?
You know, I’m he’s supposedly You’re supposed to love me. You don’t love me. You know? Okay.
That’s my Bible. But, anyway, you know,
the book of Jakes.
Yeah. The the reality is just life doesn’t work that way. No. Eight billion people on the planet.
Eight billion people are not gonna agree with you about anything. Don’t let that stop you.
If you are convinced that where you are going is where you are supposed to be. Yeah.
Don’t let nice hairs and detractors stop you exploring it. Maybe you’re wrong and you have to come back.
That’s okay too.
Yeah.
But at least you’ve answered your own questions.
Oh, I love that. I love that.
And I think, you know, you talk about that, the beauty of what’s next is just beyond that self discovery.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And I think you do learn things about yourself.
Whatever you accomplish obtained made, uh, accrued, uh, it will all pass away.
There there are no u hauls behind hearses.
Yeah.
So, uh, you’re gonna leave all of it here anyway. Okay?
So but what does go with you all the way to the end is what you learned about it.
Even if it was painful, even if it was a bad mistake.
If you walked away from it, richer and wisdom, knowledge, or creativity, you can preempt that from happening it again in your life and move forward because experience is power.
So listen, you can have feelings.
It’s okay to acknowledge your feelings, but don’t let them lie to you about your ism.
Right. Right. I am who I am. I’m not how I feel. Uh. How I feel fluctuates every day. Yeah.
But I wake up in the morning not asking myself just how do I feel? But who am I?
Who am I? And and how do I present who I am before this world today in a way that leaves a contribution that outlives me and outlasts me.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. I do. I do know.
I I love that there’s a theme woven throughout the book around energy.
You talk a lot about whether it’s the energy you expend. Mhmm.
But you also talk about the energy of the people around you.
And you talk about why it’s important to surround yourself with the people with the right energy.
Oh, my gosh. Yes. I love it.
People that would cut a hole in the roof and lower you down
in it. Exactly.
Explain that to all of our audience if he doesn’t know what we’re talking about.
You need people who are honest, but uplifting. Yeah. Okay. I’m not talking about yes, men. Or yes, women.
I wanna hear the truth, but there’s a difference between constructive and destructive criticism. Yep.
Do you want people who can uplift you?
And I use a illustration from the Bible in the book, talking about the four men who lift lifted up the man who was sickle palsy.
They lifted him. They carried him. They brought him to the roof. They dropped him down.
But once they got into what he needed, they backed away. Mhmm. Okay.
So you have to have people in your life, and you have to ask this question.
Is this relationship lifting me or pulling me down? Oh. Is it taking me forward or drawing me back?
And then start diminishing the time allotments that you allow people to have access to you that are depleting you rather than replenishing you.
Wow.
Then you won’t go emotionally bankrupt, psychologically deprived or economically underserved.
Some of y’all get out a piece of right now draw a line down the middle on the left hand side.
Put list all the relationships that are feeding you?
Yes.
And on the right hand side, put all the relationships that are needing you.
Yes. You took it right for me.
And and and you will find that the list generally tends to be longer.
Yeah. Uh,
people who need you. And delicious, much shorter people who feed you.
So you have to be intentional about inviting people into your life that feed you.
First, you have to identify them You you walk away from a conversation, you think, oh, that did something for me.
I feel better. I feel stronger. Then that’s identifying them.
Then then you have to invite them to continue to feed you. Yeah.
Unless you become bankrupt out of a sense of compassion, a superman I’ll be there for you.
A lot of us love that I’m a loyalist to my soul, and I will get myself away and get myself away and get myself away.
But I’m a limited resource.
That’s right.
And I’m gonna run out.
That’s right.
So if I don’t replenish myself by being around people who inspire me, motivate me, and challenge me, then when you do need me, I don’t have the resources for you and what’s worse.
I don’t even have the resources for me.
So how can I be disruptive?
Yeah. I can’t be disruptive.
I can’t leap over the fence if I don’t have enough energy to do it.
No. It’s gonna take energy to harvest. We talk about seed time and harvest.
There’s more work in the harvest than there is in the planting.
Yeah.
And so when you come into a harvest season in your life, You need the physicalities, the energies, the intellect, the intelligence, the emotional intelligence to be able to you’d be surprised how many people wrecked opportunities.
Lost jobs they should have kept went out of business too soon, walked away from relationships, they could have stayed in because they lacked the energy to harvest.
Wow. Come on. They have a proclivity to sow in seeds. Yeah.
But they don’t know how to harvest and benefit from the seeds. So
Come on, everybody. Do an energy check. Do an energy check. Do you have enough energy for your harvest?
Yes.
I love this.
That’s so important.
This is so rich. Yeah. You you also talk about, though, once we leap over the fence, sometimes we land in rooms where the energy is different.
Right. And and as a disruptor, why should we should embrace that even if it feels like a foreign land, even if we’re immigrants
—
Yes. — in
this new territory.
Verbatim. Uh, you’re you are going to be an immigrant in what’s next. Yeah.
You you’re you’re gonna give up some power.
When you count to ten, you’ve gone as far as you go can go. Yeah.
When you go to eleven, that’s the ability to be at one again.
Yeah.
The twenty one is the ability to be at one again. And so you have to start again.
Don’t go to eleven expecting to be treated like ten because you have gone into a new dimension.
And at that new dimension, you got to go back to one again, though it’s at a higher level.
Yeah.
You still have to you wanna walk into rooms that make you feel stupid.
You you wanna walk in the rooms where the people are so smart that you’re scared to say anything.
You wanna walk in the rooms where you have to be an observe because that’s the only way you can grow.
Yes. I listen. I love this because you you talk about that in the book, and you also talk about, you know, tuition cost.
Yes. Right?
Yes. You talk about the cost of being a disruptor to being in these rooms that, you know, and and it it’s important that we also understand it.
We go in it with our minds and our eyes open about it.
And you talk about you can’t be a disruptive thinker right, while you’re still trying to placate folks from your past or trying to negotiate with people who define you by, by their description of you.
Um, how do disruptors not get delayed by these distractions?
First of all, I I grew up in a little raggedy house on the side of the hill in West Virginia.
They finally put a bedroom upstairs in the attic for my brother and I to have the same room and separate from my sister, which was a great idea.
I love you, Jeff. Humble beginnings. Yeah. Very humble beginnings.
When we walked up the steps every night, what I learned, It’s not the step you step onto the creeks.
It’s the one you step away from.
It’s the one when you when you pull your body weight off of where you were, that step creeks.
So people hate you when you leave.
This is if I’m a throw my book.
You you see, when you start stepping up, the step you’re stepping into is not the squeaky one.
The one you step from is gonna squeak. And what we do to stop the sound is go back.
Okay. But what I’m challenging you is to let the squeak happen.
Come on, audience. Let’s just squeak happen.
You know?
Keep going up the step. Let the squeak happen.
Absolutely. We are trying to manage things that are not manageable and that are not fruitful, even if you do manage them.
If you succeed, at changing the mind of your detractor, what is surprise that you get?
There’s no reward for them thinking differently about you. Okay?
The what the reward comes from is when you make progress and go after what you’re trying to go, whether it what you’re trying to go toward might be just trying to raise your child.
Maybe just trying to have a good marriage, maybe just trying to get your business.
All things which are disruptive.
Yeah. All things which are disruptive. Yeah. Completely disruptive. Anybody who’s parented knows that’s disruptive. Yes. Okay.
Anybody who’s ever been married knows that’s disruptive. You take a job.
It is not you’re not there to make friends. You’re there to perform a service. Yeah.
Stop trying to feel like everybody in the office has to be your friend.
And then you confide and then you get angry with them because they divulge what you confided.
You gave them the gun they shot you with.
Understanding distinctions between relationships are critical so that you don’t over expect from people who underperform. Who?
Oh, every leader? Every business owner?
Yes.
Every coworker. I hope you caught that.
Now, listen, that doesn’t negate from, you know, sometimes we jump over these fences and the pain is real.
Sometimes we leap over our fence and break a leg.
Yes.
How do we make sure that we have the discernment to know if we missed the mark or these are just growing pains?
They they are growing pains. I mean, anytime you jump over the fence, there’s gonna be pain, whether it’s emotional pain, whether it’s detractors, whether it’s gonna be learning pains, uh, there’s gonna be pain.
No pain is wasted. Every pain you’ve been through.
The the funny thing I learned about pain is My wife had a surgery.
The doctor came out and told us his surgery was successful. Yeah.
I wanted to walk in there and see her sitting up grinning. Oh, no. She’s, she’s out like this.
She’s in pain. The pain doesn’t mean that the surgery wasn’t successful.
The pain doesn’t mean that she isn’t healing.
The pain, and sometimes we embrace the pain as a sign that we fail. No. There’s pain and healing.
There’s pain and recovery.
Wow.
There’s pain and staying married. There’s pain and getting divorced. Yes. Either way, you go.
There’s pain.
There’s gonna be some pain.
Yeah.
You know, if your parents live a long time, there’s gonna be pain. If they don’t, there’s gonna be pain.
Yeah. So we cannot allow our fear of pain to diminish our desire to go forward.
Yeah. Bishop, I can’t argue with anything you said, except for one point.
And that’s when, uh, mama Serena is laid up. I’m sure it’s more dignified. Yeah.
Just saying.
Trust me. She she was in pain. She is dignified. She’s very classy lady.
She’s a classy lady.
I have to give you give you that.
Yes.
But she was in pain, and it was terrible pain, but she was getting better.
Yes. Don’t
let the pain make you think that
you’re not getting better. Don’t let the pain make you think you’re not getting better.
Haley wants to know what’s the toughest pain you’ve been through.
Oh my gosh.
Was it the loss of your mother?
That would be high ranking. That would be pretty high ranking.
The loss my father would have been very high ranking.
Uh because I was at Yeah.
Sixteen. Yeah. Sixteen years old. I buried my father in Mississippi.
Uh, that was very difficult life changing moment for me.
It’s hard to really find the greatest pain because life will bring continual pain.
There will be sunshine, and there will be rain.
And the one thing that you can know for sure is that pain will visit from time to time. Mhmm.
But as it comes, always look for the gift in it. Oh.
Because somewhere in the hurt of it, there’s always a gift from it.
And you can choose to focus on the hurt of it, or you can pull the gift out of it.
If it’s nothing but experience, if it’s nothing but a more discernment, uh, there’s always a gift in it.
You, sir, our gift. Oh,
thank you.
His book has been a gift.
That’s what I wanted to.
Yes. I, uh, I’m not apologizing for, for the fact that I have worn this book bracket. You’ve been
to do this kind of it looks like a rainbow cord.
Let’s say Some highlights are for me as Latasha, the professional leader.
Some highlights are for Latasha, the wife of twenty five years. Latasha, the mother, I had the color code.
It’s how numerous Latasha I was talking to when I read the book. The book is so good.
Uh, AJ wants to know book Bishop, are you gonna do a book tour?
I’m on it now. Yeah. I’m on it right now. So I’m on a book tour.
I’m not going around doing a book signing.
Okay.
Uh, but I am going around getting the word out because you can’t make the decision if I don’t make it available to you.
So this is an opportunity, and thank you again for having me on this huge platform, uh, to expose people that the kind of messages that we need to hear, we need to hear it in gym.
We need to ear it in our headsets.
We need to have it by our bedside because we can’t all go to counseling.
That’s right.
Okay. But this for me, this is counseling in a bag. Yeah. You know, it’s counseling.
I can carry with me to the beach. I can read it in a taxi.
Yeah.
You know, and feeding my mind because I don’t always get to sit with mighty thinkers
—
Yes.
—
to read mighty thinkers is the great inheritance of mentorship. Yeah.
Because all I can give you is what I have experienced.
That’s right.
That’s all I have to offer
But I love that you are so generous in the book and that you also shared some of the folks who have shaped you.
You shared quotes from them
—
Yes.
—
passages that made me wanna go read Right. What else that they wrote? So thank you for that. Yes.
Um, you you you said something that just reminded me around parenting, around parenting a disruptive thinker.
Well, we have a tendency to think that the child is being destructive because you gave me lines and told me to color in them.
Yeah. Well, maybe I’m an architect, and I wanna draw my own lines.
That’s right.
You have to watch your children closely.
To see what they are naturally endowed with and that you don’t stifle stifle that but put them in environments for them to be productive.
And sometimes, just because they didn’t follow the rules, might not be a sign that there are obstructive.
It might be that they’re a
leader.
Yeah. Maybe they make the rules. Maybe they changed my son, my youngest son told me.
He said, let’s play Batman and Robin. I said, okay. Let’s play Batman and Robin. He said, you’re Robin.
I’m Batman. I thought, lord, geez. It’s wrong. It’s for you.
But you know what that was telling me at early age at ten years old, he thinks of himself as a leader.
That’s amazing.
Yeah. And and and that’s not a bad thing. No. So why would I try to punish him
—
Yeah. — from from wanting to be Batman.
Yeah. You know,
nah, I didn’t wanna be robbing. But, uh, you know, sometimes you gotta suffer I’m here.
Yeah. Liz, uh, Yolanda wants to know, how do you begin to see yourself as an entrepreneur if you’ve never seen that before?
Baby steps.
Mhmm.
Don’t quit your job and start a business and you don’t know what you’re doing. Read books about it.
Get informed about it. Try it as a hobby. Do it on the side. Let it gain momentum.
Let it grow. Like an embryo grows in the womb. When it’s time to be birth, you’re gonna feel it.
It’s gonna consume so much of you that the only thing you can do is deliver it.
Oh, come on. That’s good.
Cecilia wanted to know what is your advice on how to get out of your own head?
I wanna answer that. Get the book.
Yeah.
If you wanna get out of your own head to see you get this book
—
Yes.
—
it it will help you set yourself free
Yes. Yes. And the other thing I would add to that, change the narrative that you’re telling yourself, you’re not talking to yourself the right way.
The things that you’re saying to yourself, you become the warden of your own prison. Yeah.
Because your mind only thinks what you said to it.
So if you change the language to it, that you speak to yourself, I’m ugly. I’m fat. I’m too old.
It’s too late. I’m stupid. I have regrets. Change that narrative
—
Yeah.
—
and start feeding yourself something that says I survived it. I made it. I’m still here.
It’s why I wear this white beard. I dyed it at first.
I dyed it at first because I wanted to look young. And then I realized I earned this.
I earned it.
I earned this. And so being a sage voice of wisdom, uh, is a crown. To my masculinity.
Yeah.
It is a sign that I survived. Yeah. And I don’t see it as something to worry about.
Now other people make other decisions, but for me, Uh, I’m glad.
I’m neither one of my grandfathers lived as long as me.
My father died younger than me at forty nine years old. I’m happy. I’ll be sixty six in June.
Come on. Come on.
And I I look up every now and say, daddy, look at me.
It’s surprising.
Uh-huh. I’m still here. I’m still rolling. I’m still right. I’m still building.
I’m still building off the things you taught me
in the
shadow Yeah. I now manifest them in the light because some of the greatest things that we give to our children we don’t get to see in our lifetime.
That’s right.
Because some things take a long time to harvest. Yeah. So he never heard me speak.
He never saw me right. He never saw me do any of the things that everybody knows me for.
But he did plant some of those seeds
—
In you.
—
that caused me to come to fruition. And, uh, maybe in another lifetime, we’ll get to talk about that.
You can talk about it. I’m sure you will. Let me tell you something.
I especially if you talk about the narrative you tell yourself, I tell myself to shut up So sometimes when listen, uh, therapy is great.
Listen. I I feel like you need Jesus and therapy to go hand in
hand — Right.
—
or the deity of your choice. Uh, but I listen for me, that’s what works.
And I remember, uh, a therapist saying you can’t you can’t control your first thought but you can control how much energy you give to that first stop.
Yes.
Right? So those pop ups, you can’t stop. But you can tell them to shut up.
Oh, I do it every night in order to go to sleep.
I I have to tell myself relax, let it all go. There’s always tomorrow. You can’t fix everything together.
That’s right. You can’t.
Let your body go limp and breathe.
I have to do that to go to sleep because my mind is just just spinning it, spinning it, spinning it.
I’m a creative. Yeah. And as a creative person, with the more excited I get the more creative I become.
And then, you know, you know, you know, we opened up the IRS with a hologram.
Uh, no.
You know? Wild. Yeah. And I insisted on it. I fought for it.
You know, that’ll be be because I’m always thinking of another vehicle through which I can express myself.
That’s right. It was it was beautiful.
It was listen, it was a great combination of technology, of leadership, of spirituality, of knowledge, all coming together in that rich mix, as is this book.
Thank you.
So the book, disruptive thinking comes out tomorrow on Amazon.
You can order you can pre order the book today so you don’t have to wait till tomorrow.
If you wanna hear the book in Bishop’s voice, which has a whole different meaning than me reading you passages, you can get it on audible.
We’re so excited, uh, that he is a part of our family. Thank you.
We’re so happy that we have you in the Amazon family that we can find your messages, your talk, on freebie and prime video.
Yeah. I’m excited.
Yeah. So if you don’t have prime video, if you don’t have a subscription, you can still find over three hundred hours of Bishop’s content on freebie.
Just download the app, but make sure you get disruptive thinking.
Bishop, thank you, uh, for being here today, but more importantly, Thank you for writing the book to help some of us feel seen, uh, to give us the language.
Yes.
Right? And how we can, uh, get free to do the things that we know we are on this earth to do.
I must say thank you to you and also thank you to Amazon for creating a space for me in the Amazon family.
How disruptive was that.
Yeah.
You know, to say we want you to come as your authentic self as your preaching self. Yeah.
Didn’t ask me to change garments.
No.
And and we will take three hundred hours of your preaching and put it on Amazon.
I thought, are you serious? I mean, just like straight out preaching. Yeah. Straight out preaching.
You don’t just want my movies or my films or my interviews?
They said, we’ll take that too, but we want you. Also, I can come with the fullness of myself.
It’s so rare when you’re a disruptive thinker that people can accommodate the fullness and the vastness of the way you think.
And we feel like these are just early days.
There’s so many more things to tap into as I talked about in your intro, all the various things that TDJX Enterprises Enterprises is doing in the world.
We can’t wait to continue to grow our relationship.
I’m excited.
Yes. We’re excited too. Thank you, Bishop.
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Alright. Make sure you check out the Carousel by Bishop’s current book as well as some of his previous work, and we appreciate you being here with us today on Amazon Live.
And we hope that you too will embrace becoming a disruptive thing.