I Don't Know You
DescriptionToday I'm joined by one of my mentors, Russ Cline — pastor, family man, and entrepreneur who has started multiple global organizations and currently leads The Barnabas Group and Leader Mundial, a global leadership movement that's spent nearly 20 years training and coaching leaders across the world.We get into one of the biggest questions in my life right now: how to build a sustainable, fruitful career while also being a present father — two things that can feel like they're constantly pulling against each other. Incredibly thankful that he's poured into me so much. Love getting to do life alongside him.Lessons From Russ(5:37) Know what you're great at — and let the rest be good enough. Russ learned early that chasing his weaknesses just pulled his strengths down into mediocrity. The hardest part wasn't identifying his strengths. It was admitting where he was weakest, and getting his ego out of the way long enough to ask for help there instead of pretending he didn't need it. (7:04) Exposure to a bigger world changes how small your own world looks. Moving to Ecuador at 11 gave Russ a posture he's carried his whole life — less critical of any one culture, more aware that no place has it all figured out. He later made the same choice for his own kids, moving the family back to Ecuador so they'd grow up understanding the world is bigger than Southern California. (12:43) Someone has to call out the leader in you before you can see it yourself. Russ didn't set out to be a leader. A high school mentor named Randy, and later a college mentor named Guy, both pushed him into formal leadership roles he wouldn't have chosen on his own. The pattern: someone sees it, names it, and stays close enough to walk through it with you. (17:48) The best mentorship gives freedom with an expectation attached. At 20, a mentor named Carolyn handed Russ a vehicle, a budget, and zero instructions for a summer of partnership-building in Mexico. The freedom wasn't a lack of expectation — it was trust. And because she trusted him, Russ held himself to a standard nobody had to enforce. (20:00) Leader Mundial wasn't built because Russ had the answers. It started in 2007 with 13 leaders from seven or eight countries, paired with coaches from North America. Russ built the community because he wanted a seat at the table himself — and what he learned fast was that the coaches needed the leaders just as much as the leaders needed the coaches. Nobody in the room had it all figured out, including him. (27:02) Leaders quit for one of two reasons: they don't know what to do, or they burn out. A mentor told Russ this decades ago, and he's watched it prove true in every community he's been part of since — including his own life. The fix isn't choosing one or the other to guard against. It's staying a learner and finding rhythm at the same time. (30:00) Confidence is a strength right up until it becomes ego. Russ named confidence as the leadership trait most likely to flip into a liability. Knowing what you're capable of is essential — but the moment you think you can do it all, you've lost the thing that made you effective in the first place. (31:42) Convergence is the moment your past stops feeling random. Russ uses a life-planning process built on two questions: how did I end up here, and where do I want to go. The light comes on when someone realizes something from their childhood is showing up directly in their work today — and that recognition changes how they see their whole story. (35:54) The tension between career and family never resolves. You just learn to live inside it. This is the center of the conversation. Russ's advice wasn't a framework for balancing the two — it was permission to stop expecting the tension to disappear. "You can't sell out to one or the other. You have to live in the tension. And that tension will not go away." (43:23) Looking back, the regret wasn't ambition — it was identity wrapped up in conquering new ground. Russ named travel and the pursuit of growing influence as the one thing he'd change. Not because the work wasn't valuable, but because some of it was driven by ego — by needing to be the guy who goes and conquers — rather than by what his family actually needed from him in that season. (44:20) Wealth isn't what you think it is until you're old enough to measure it correctly. Russ doesn't measure his life in financial terms. He measures it in the depth of relationship with his kids, his grandkids, and his wife Gina — and by that measure, he says he's the wealthiest man you'll find. That reframe came with age, not before it. (46:50) Chase the relationship, not the check. Bob Shank, a Barnabas co-founder, put it bluntly: if you treat donors like a personal checkbook, that's all you'll ever get from them. Russ has lived both sides of that mistake — taking the quick gift and missing the relationship that would have been worth far more. (51:29) God doesn't show up in the balance. He shows up in the extremes. Russ used to teach balance as the goal. He's since landed somewhere different: life is a series of extremes, and trying to stay safely in the middle means missing what God actually has for you on the edges. The goal isn't to live there permanently — it's to find the edge, learn from it, and recenter. (55:55) Joy multiplies when it's not about you. Watching his almost-four-year-old grandson at an art show. Watching a leader finally walk into what God made them for. Russ said it plainly: he used to think joy had to come from something he did. Now he knows he can experience joy just as fully through other people's breakthroughs — whether that's a grandson, a nonprofit leader, or someone in his coaching community. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit mattheisler.substack.com [https://mattheisler.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]
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