The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

"Influence That Lasts: What Every Leader Can Learn from Mentoring Fatherless Boys" My Conversation with Jeff Davis

• Mark Cundiff

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In this episode of the Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff interviews Jeff Davis, founder and executive director of Truth in Nature, a ministry focused on mentoring fatherless boys through outdoor activities. 

Jeff shares his journey from IT manager to leading a multi-state nonprofit, discussing the importance of influence, faith, and perseverance in leadership. 

The conversation highlights the impact of the ministry on both the boys and the volunteers, emphasizing the importance of staying true to one's calling and the value of storytelling in rallying support. 

The episode concludes with valuable insights on leadership challenges and the significance of rest and listening to the right voices.


00:00 Introduction to Leadership

00:19 Welcome to the Learning to Lead Show

00:28 Meet Jeff Davis: Founder of Truth in Nature

00:42 The Mission of Truth in Nature

01:13 Growth and Challenges of Truth in Nature

01:53 Jeff's Leadership Journey

02:43 Interview with Jeff Davis

03:07 Transition from IT to Nonprofit Leadership

04:27 Founding Truth in Nature

05:15 Leadership in the Nonprofit World

06:30 Pivotal Moments in Leadership

06:55 The Importance of Faith in Leadership

09:50 Growing Truth in Nature

10:52 Managing a Multi-State Organization

11:43 Influence and Relationships in Leadership

14:09 Investing in Volunteer Development

16:34 Personal Growth as a Leader

22:17 Taking Risks and Reaping Rewards

26:29 The Power of Storytelling

28:45 Advice for Emerging Leaders

32:16 Conclusion and Final Thoughts


To learn more about Jeff Davis and Truth In Nature, visit their website here: Truth In Nature.

You can also reach out to Jeff via email here: jeff.davis@truthinnature.org

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being a leader is not so much about, having command and having control and, dictating and all that. I think being a leader is having the right influence and encouraging and drawing. Your team and your volunteers and your employees or whatever to be the best version of themselves, if you can accomplish that then all the other stuff's gonna take care of itself, hello. Welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. I'm your host, mark Cundiff and today we have a great guest, Jeff Davis. He is the founder and executive Director of Truth in Nature. This is a ministry that he started along with his wife nearly two decades ago. They started this outdoor ministry to mentor and reach fatherless boys for Jesus. Using the outdoors as the backdrop, truth in nature uses group-based mentoring to meet these boys where they are in their lives right now during Truth in Nature programs and outings. Boys will participate in things like hunting, fishing, archery, clay, shooting, canoeing, hiking, and many more other activities. The heart of this ministry is to reach these boys for Jesus and see them grow into Christian men leading their homes, workplaces, and communities. Truth in nature was established back in 2009 and God has grown his ministry to now serve fatherless boys in 26 communities across 14 states with 400 volunteers reaching over 400 boys a year. Jeff's continued prayer has been for God to use this ministry and those involved to reach more young men for his kingdom as they use his creation as the backdrop for this work. It is also a great tool for the volunteers, those who are working with these boys to see them grow in their faith and their relationship with God as well. It's a big leadership challenge running a nonprofit of this size. I have seen Jeff grow this from a few boys, four to six boys on a weekend. Back in the early two thousands when he was doing it part-time, and to this ministry now where over 400 boys in a course of a year are being reached and mentored and helped in a great way. So his leadership skills that you're going to hear from him today are on the front lines, leading volunteers, leading a few staff and leading young boys growing into great men who follow God so stay tuned for some great insights from Jeff I want to encourage you to download our leader notes, which will give you a summary of what we talk about today, and you can get that link in the show notes and download that so that you can have a summary of all the things and resources that we discuss. Now let's hear from Jeff. hello, Jeff. It's good to see you today. Glad you could join us today. It's good to be here. Glad you allow me this opportunity, mark. I. I just want to let our listeners and what people watching us on YouTube just get a chance to learn a little bit about you and your history and how you became the leader of this organization that you now run that's in multiple states, all across the United States. Just go back to your days when we were working together at Carstar and just talk about. How you transitioned from working in the IT world to becoming a leader of a nonprofit organization that you run now? Sure, man, that seems that seems like another lifetime now that's been over over 17, almost 17 years ago since I was working in it. I got involved with that through a a mentor coach of mine from back in the day Donnie Newsom. He brought me in, a real solid leader, Donnie was, and brought me in to work as a, basically a little intern in an IT department there and. Gotta really just progress in my IT career. All the way up to a project manager. Worked in that career for 16 years and got through the project management cycle and then moved on into a manager of technical services and that kind of thing. Just really a good foundation on leading in different aspects, small group teams, up to larger group teams, and then larger, bigger projects and that kind of thing. I enjoyed it work. I enjoyed the corporate world but really felt, there were things out there, with my faith and different aspects there where I felt like I needed to do more in the community. I started really praying through it, talking to my wife about it, and this this idea about using our faith and ministering to young men in the outdoors really just came to the forefront. As I was an IT manager there, I started this this nonprofit in conjunction with it. This was not something I'm envisioned going. Full-time, full scale mode, like it's become, and we can get into that later, just really something I started there just as something to, to as an outreach to some local boys in my local community there in Dallas, Georgia. Just started created that nonprofit and started running that. It became real apparent real soon that was taking legs and growing legs and, and through a series of events over those first two years of truth and nature and me ending my IT career, which really resulted in a layoff. There was a layoff, a big layoff there. Allowed me the opportunity to step into a role, to full-time, oversight and leadership of this nonprofit to these boys. So tell me a little bit about how. What you learn from a leadership in the corporate world, and then what translated over into the nonprofit world, and then the differences, because when you get into nonprofits you're usually dealing with a lot of volunteers and can be a different type of leadership, from a positional leadership running a project team, running an IT team. Kind of talk about the transition into that world and what you learned about leadership in the nonprofit world. And as far as not the nonprofit or me being the founder or the co-founder, my wife was the other we co-founded this organization. It's your deal. Working in that, in the corporate world, you've always got that somebody that you're reporting to. So you're leading under them. But then when you make this transition into this nonprofit world, especially in a nonprofit that you have founded, it's your deal. It's your it's your baby, so to speak. So it looks a lot different. You're not just managing a a project team to complete a certain project, to upgrade a server at a plant or something like that. You're managing an organization and volunteers that aren't getting paid to do this. Because they see it's something bigger than them. You're managing really something that's bigger than me as a leader. And so you take a whole different perspective there when it when it comes comes in full circle like that. What were some pivotal moments of changing your leadership and like you said, take when you're the one, when you're the sole person, what were some pivotal moments for you that helped you grow through that time as a leader? As a, as a founder and the executive director leader of this organization it was a calling that I felt that truth and nature was a calling that was something I needed to step into. And when I talk about this, I can't overlook the fact that this was a faith thing and i'm big in my faith. And and God showed me early on that this ministry to the fatherless boys is what he was laying on my heart. I think some of the more pivotal moments as men and as leaders. We try to do things on our own, we try to make things happen. When it when your faith is involved you gotta and I'm, I shared this over and over because of my faith and as men and as leaders, we want shoulder everything. When it's with the faith, God always has a plan. So when I got laid off, from it. I could have, I had a couple companies that were contacting me to come work for'em, but I really felt God leading me to, to lead and go into this nonprofit world and this mentoring and ministry for fatherless boys called Truth and Nature go into it full time even though there was no set. Plan. There was no set benefits, there was no set salary, there was nothing. I was walking out of a corporate environment going from, the six figure income down to zero. But that is how strong of a calling I felt it was. I always share this'cause you ask about a pivotal moment when that shapes the kind of leader I am is. When you get laid off, you usually have a severance package. I had a three month severance package. I knew, for those first three months I was gonna be focused on truth and nature. Everything was gonna be good in the financial end of things. We got the two weeks out from that severance package ending. Still, no, way to really pay a salary with this nonprofit, but knowing that, God's gonna provide, he's called me to this and he's called Kerry to this as well. So two weeks out we're like, man, okay, we got savings, we got. All this, stuff that we can start dipping into to help pay the bills and all that. People look at me like I'm crazy when I start telling'em this story. But my boss her name was Kathy Wooten she called me and I hadn't talked to her in two and a half months after layoff. She said, we've got our bonus numbers back from the prior year. We want to include all the people we laid off. In that bonus payout. And you were a manager, so you're gonna get 60% of your salary from last year. And so as my severance was running out, here comes this check in the mail that was 60% of my salary from the last year. And it was enough to put in the bank and continue on and draw as a salary. And so when you talk about a pivotal moment, that was when. Man, God had my attention. That was the pivotal moment that said I'm trusting you to lead this and I'm going to provide for you. I. Wow. That was a cool deal, wow. Especially for my wife, because women are a lot of times, they want that security and so I could read it on her face that, okay, what are we going to do? How are we gonna provide? And I would've done what I had to do, but God provides, man. Wow. That's awesome. That just shows you that. A lot of times you just have to take action, just do the next thing, and sometimes you don't know where the resources are going to come from or how things are gonna work out, but you just have to keep taking action. So once you got it off the ground and got started and you started, I. Getting folks to come in and be a, become a part of it and partner with you how has your leadership grown from through that, from just you and Carrie, and maybe you had a few volunteers here and there, but at the beginning it was just you two, right? Then it is grown and maybe tell us a little bit like where you are today. Versus where you were with just you and Carrie out doing them. Yeah, so it's we're a little over 16 years now, about 16 and a half years into this into this deal. And when we started out, it was Carrie, myself, and my brothers were my two first mentors. They had to come in by default. They had no choice. I said you're coming in helping me with this. And we had four boys that signed up for the first year we had, anywhere from four to eight boys that we were mentoring and working with through the outdoors. Just my brothers. Then I had a couple other guys come, so you. You talk about, managing, just a small little group, small little program. Hoping that we could, raise a few hundred bucks for the next month's program. Now we're in 14 states, 26 different communities. There's a lot of aspects when it comes to a multi-state organization that, that comes on the back end. We have. Probably close to 400 volunteer men. We'll probably go north of 400 boys. We were gonna work with this this year annually. So there's a lot of moving pieces. There's now more directors in charge more mentors in charge. We have a couple staff members as well. So yeah it's a lot of. It's a lot different managing that, that size piece than it is just a handful of folks. So relate to us now that you got, you said 400 volunteers. That's a lot of, that's a lot of moving pieces, like you said, a lot of volunteers, a lot of people that have their own day jobs that are sacrificing some of their personal time to come help these fatherless boys. Tell us a little bit about. The dynamic of leading in that environment versus the corporate world. What how do you approach that and what have you learned about, using the influence and relationships versus, back in the corporate world you have some positional authority a lot of times but we should be using relationships and influence in both worlds, you really get to try it out. And see how it really works when you're in that volunteer situation. Yeah, for sure.'cause I think influence influential influence as a leader, that's probably one of the most important attributes you can have to be a successful leader.'Cause anybody can have a title or position. Anybody can do that. But but if you can clearly relay that mission, the goal of the organization, or the goal of, whatever your team's trying to accomplish in the corporate world too, and influence the people to go, to get on board with that and to come around together as that then you, then your leadership becomes so much easier. Because you get everybody on board staff and volunteers, they've gotta know that they're appreciated. In, in both aspects. And so we do, we try to do a really good job, especially in the nonprofit world when we're dealing with volunteers to make sure they understand how much they are appreciated. Because the train don't go down the tracks unless they're. They're committed time wise, resource wise to that mission and that goal. Then with truth and nature, with our volunteers, even with our boys and even our moms that send their boys to our programs, to a certain extent, we maintain that family atmosphere. I think that's what makes our organization thrive is it can get bigger, but we continue to make it that family atmosphere. One thing we do to kick off every year of ministry is we have all the mentors that are. That have served in the previous year, come together at a central location for what we call our mentor retreat. It's a no cost thing to them where they can come and be poured into just refresh. They get to do some recreational stuff that us outdoorsmen like to do. Yeah. And then they also get to, have some speakers come in at night and just really refresh these guys and really pray over'em and get'em ready to go for the next year. You do stuff like that goes a long way on multiple aspects. So I think influence as a leader is just making sure your folks are taking care of you rally'em, everybody's on the same page and moving the train down the tracks to that common goal. Just for us is reaching fatherless boys, I like what you said there about, you bringing all these leaders together and you're investing in them. You know what, I've been really impressed with you for the last number of years that you've, I. Been doing these retreats is that you're really investing in leadership development. You're, even though these people are volunteers and some of'em didn't even know what they were doing when they stepped up and said, yeah, I'll come help, and y'all have invested in them. You've had other mentors that have been doing it for a while that are investing back into these men all across the country, and explain a little bit about. That side of you, you're not only developing these young men that you're helping, but you're also having an impact on these men in these different communities. It's, I'm sure it's been life changing for them. It is, man. The thing about it is is you'll hear a lot of these mentors begin to serve and they say, I know this ministry is for the boys, but this blesses me just as much as it. As it blesses these boys they said, this is our highlight of the month. This is where we want to be. When we have our big group programs, each and every month, every chapter has that big group program. They say, we wanna be there. We wanna make that a priority. And these guys are feeling appreciated. They're feeling like they're serving the, something bigger than them. When you hear that kind of feedback, and so yeah, it, guys just come full. When you see these guys and. And we're a, like I said, we're a faith-based Christian ministry, but when you see these guys, they've worked 40 hours plus a week. They come in on a Friday evening and they're there, they're tired. They're, they've had probably had a heck of a week and some of them may got kicked in, in, in the rear end, during the week. Yeah. And just had a rough week. But they come in with a smile on their face talking to these boys, Hey, how's your week been? They're just, they're there because they know they're serving something bigger than themselves. And when you see these young men change and maybe make a decision for Jesus, or make a decision to do something and they get to follow up with, with a baptism or something like that. Oh yeah. And these mentors, these guys that have, spent a couple years with us getting to start baptizing some of these boys. Oh my gosh, man. That kind of thing I've had men come up to me in tears and say, I never in my life thought I would be one of those guys that actually baptize somebody. Wow. Much less a 14-year-old boy that I've have just gotten to know over the last two years and gotten to invest into. So it opens up so much, man. When you get everybody on the same page, the same goal, and then they see that they're working for something bigger than themselves. Going through this experience, this journey over the, almost two decades now that you've been doing this, how do you feel like you've grown and changed as a leader? Because you're not the same Jeff Davis that I knew back when we was at Carstar and you was doing this on the weekend. You've had to put some new tools in your toolbox, so to speak. So walk us through that growth journey for yourself. You gotta stay focused on on some, on, on some things. For me it. I've had to learn how to be a better listener, open to a lot of feedback. Now what you can do and I've seen this happen and this happened to me at the beginning too is I let a lot of the the wrong voices have an influence over me. And I don't know if that makes sense, but what I'm saying is. When you start something like this and you're leading something like this, you gotta stay true and laser focused on what you've been called to do. You're gonna have a lot of voices, Hey, you should do it like this. You consider that. Don't discount that kind of stuff.'cause there's a lot of good, there's a lot of good advice out there. But, but if you listen to those wrong voices it can detour you. For example somebody suggested one time, Hey man, and this was early on you should try doing a program for girls too. I started thinking about it and I'm like, I. Okay, if we had some women, men, female, and I tried it, one program, and I found out I almost ended that program halfway through it because I was like, this is not gonna work. Why did I listen to that person? I need to bring this back into focus on what I know God has called me to do and what I know. The purpose of the mission is, and that's the focus on the boys, the fatherless boys. So not to discount it there's fatherless girls out there that need this too, and I have resources for that I send people to now. So just listening to the right voices, the right people that are feeding into you that keep you focused, I think is one of the big things I've learned. Because the bigger you get, the more exposure you get, the more. Opinions you get. And some of them are great, some of'em are good. You can apply, but you just have to keep that filter on making sure you stay focused on your mission. How did you go about developing your filter in the boundaries? Because like you said, you're getting a lot of different opinions. And that happens to us, whether we're working in a nonprofit or in the corporate world. We need to be listening and open to new ideas, but we also have to filter and make sure we're staying on task of where we need to go. How did you come about. Doing that. It just, for me. I had to put up that, I just had to put up that boundary. I had to say, I had to look at it and look at it through the lens of, for us our mission is to reach that next fatherless boy. Our first and I. Primary is to reach him for God. Our secondary is so that he becomes a good Christian man, husband, father, and that cycle is broken. So if somebody came to me with something and I put it through that filter and said is what this person suggesting going to be gonna lead that next boy to us? Yes it will then, okay, let's consider it, let's talk down that road. But if it's not. Then, man I love you. That's a great suggestion, but it's just not gonna be a good fit for what we're doing here, that's really good. I think there's a lot of us as leaders can think about that. Have what it's like in Good To Great. It talks about the hedgehog concept being what can you be the best in the world at? What your mission is to focus on these fatherless boys and have the best ministry that you possibly can for them. We need to look at that and as leaders and. How those filters. Cause a lot of times they can be like in the movie up the squirrel can run us, we start chasing squirrels like a dog does and gets us off track. What what are some skills and behaviors that you see that are critical for a leader to have in order to be effective? What are some things that you've seen in your organization that you think are just, the essentials that, that a leader has to have? I think you gotta be you definitely gotta listen to your team. The guys that you put around you that are with you, that work day in, day out they know it, they got the heart for it. They know you. So definitely listen to them. Be open listening. I think taking some healthy risk is always a good thing to do. Not just willy-nilly, yeah, we're gonna do that but push it, for us it's faith. If I feel God's. Pushing us to, and we're about to go through another growth step and stuff on the back end as far as, some restructuring and stuff for leading into 2026. There's gonna be some faith and there's gonna be some risk in that. But to try a new idea because I think if you just keep doing things the same old way, like if I was still doing things the same way I did when we had four boys, I'd still be at four boys, right? Whether it's nonprofit or for-profit world you gotta be able to take some healthy risk. And I think as leaders, one of the biggest things I've learned and as a behavior is rest. We can run, I. On empty for so long. And sometimes, man, I found myself taking pride in that. Like I've got so much on my plate that, I take pride in that, and it's almost like a badge of honor. But man, it is the furthest thing from it. Because when you're burnt out and you're, a, you're no good as a husband or a father or to your family if you're just burned out in your career and in, in your job the whole time. But you're no good to yourself, you're no good to your team, you're no good. To to your organization and your mission, either if you're just burned out. I have learned to schedule times of rest with me and my wife just taking it, shutting it down, even if it's just for a long weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, just take a time of rest. We try to do that every quarter of the of the year. Just a little bit of downtime to do it. Summer gets a little bit harder with our schedules, but then we will follow it up right with the early fall. Break and, go run the bird dog somewhere. So yeah, man that's valuable advice because that is something sometimes our ego gets in the way and we just, like you said, and especially a lot of times, I know we as men, try to, like you said, wear that as a badge of honor. You talked about risk. I'd like to dive into that a little bit because I've seen you where you were just going in the early stages to different parks or different things to, where you could get. But over the years, you've been blessed to have some property come your way and you had a number of different alternatives that you looked at over the years, but you took on this responsibility in North Georgia taking on this property, and you're talking about risk. There's a lot involved with that because even though it was stewarded to you and given to you as more of a gift in many ways, but that's still a big risk to be able to take care of that. To develop it talk a little bit, share a story or two about some of the risks that y'all have taken that. Now have really paid off for you in the long run? Yeah, that, that's gotta be the biggest one. Or at least one of the biggest ones. This was a 644 acre rundown camp that had sat there for 15 years. I. And and the landowner that purchased it with Truth of Nature and Mind. But when we walked this place, when I say it looked like the Walking Dead, it looked like the Walking Dead. And boarded up, growed up, you name it. To take it on you walk through there and yeah, it's a beautiful piece of property, but your mind starts saying, man, it's gonna take.$5 million to bring this thing online. I'm gonna be fundraising for the rest of my life just to bring a camp back online. But and my wife is one of the best to keep me grounded because this ministry is based on faith. She she said, look, God's opening this door and I feel that he's gonna provide the resources to do it. And so we sat there in the parking lot, prayed together with the landowner. Decided we were going to enter this 30 year agreement of a one$1 a year lease. Very salt of the Earth family as the Wallace family. They they did and we took that risk. And Mark, I'll tell you, we took that risk and we signed the lease. And two weeks later, COVID was announced and hit and everything shut down. I was like, oh my gosh, man, I ain't gonna be getting nobody. Everything's shut down. What are we going to do? But it was so funny because that was actually a blessing in disguise because all these guys couldn't go into the office. They couldn't do anything. And so all of a sudden after two or three weeks, everything being shut down, they start calling me, Hey man, I know you got stuff to do out there. I gotta get out of the house. So I said, yeah, man, come on, we can social distance as far as y'all want to on 644 acres. I got projects all over. So that started. Seeing God's hand and that risk just paying off. Over these last five years, we've brought so much of it back online that we can now sleep 120 mentors and boys at the facility. We've got cabins brought back online. Our administrative offices, our headquarters is now there and established so many amenities for the boys. We can hold annual summer camps for the entire organization, actually getting ready to do one of those coming up in a couple weeks. And our mentor retreats I talked about are all there. So when you take risk and they're, and they are, thought out for us, prayed over feeling like we're god's. Leading us. Then I think they're healthy risk to take, But the other thing behind that is, like you said, one, it's well thought out, but two, you put a lot of work and action into executing those risk. You're talking about, hundreds if not more than thousand man hours out there, revitalizing that property and now it's blessing these kids from all over. It's really remarkable to see. Yeah, it it was and those, that first year of just bringing it back on, just the people we saw, I. Come out the community we saw come around and just start, we had a local concrete company come and he sanded all the floors down in our administrative office, our concrete floors, and got'em all prepped. He sent guys over there for two weeks. They were in these big space ship looking suits and stuff, and just with all the equipment and everything, did all of that for, on our, for two main buildings so that we could come back in and stain concrete, stain the floors and didn't charge us a dime. We probably did. I would say we're close to a million dollars worth of renovations and we've probably got a 10th of that invested into it financially because so many people have come around and just donated their time and efforts, to do that. Share a little bit about how. That happens because like you said, you were back there with four boys and you had this vision, this mission, and then when you start taking action and sharing the dream and share a little bit about that.'cause I remember early on we working with you when we were talking about going and sharing your story and then just talk about how. You share that story at different places at outdoor events and at churches and at game dinners, and how that sharing your vision has brought so many other people along. You were the first one that told me that, man. You said back. I remember man gosh, it was probably 2010, 2011 when I sat down and ran through I had no really polished skills on presenting, not really a big public speaker. I could rumble through and fumble through a PowerPoint, but I sat down and me and you went through, my first spiel before I went to my first game dinner or whatever that was back then. You said, you know what, man? That's all sounded good, but man, tell a story. Some people to hear a story. You were the first one that ever really told me that. I started doing that everywhere I go. Now, I mean if you look at our social media, there's so many video stories and stuff like that, and it's not necessarily my story. It's the story of the boys that are being impacted by this program and these mentors. And so I started doing that and when you start giving people something they can latch onto, not just a bunch of stats, which stats and all that stuff are good to make the case. But when you give people something they can latch onto Hey, this young man went through this program. He found Jesus. Now he's graduated the program, he's gone on to become a father, a husband, he's in the military, whatever, went to college. All that stuff. Then they, that's something tangible. They can say, look, this is what it's doing and I wanna be a part of it. And that, that was some of the most early on advice, probably, that was probably the most invaluable device. I've gotten was to share the stories, people just gravitate to that when they see life change and they see I. Things happening. It causes them. And we can all, as leaders use the power of story to, and, move our mission forward, whether it's in an industrial setting or a hospital or whatever. If you have a mission and you share in stories people gravitate to it. And y your organization is a perfect example of that. What would you give some advice to some young leaders that may be out there listening to us today that, if you went back. I wish I had learned this earlier and adopted these skills or these behaviors earlier. What would you say that you would advise'em to work on? I would say just stay true to your calling. Stay true to to, to what you're doing. In the corporate world or anything like that, you're gonna be, you'll go into different roles or that kind of thing, but stay true to yourself. Don't if the gut feeling is there that says this is a, this is not a. This is not the right way to go. Trust that gut feeling. I've learned over the years that, you get a gut feeling and it's like I shared with you earlier, listening to the wrong voices. But you get a gut feeling that, eh, that might not be the right way, but I still move forward with it. And I say, man, I should have listened to my gut feeling, but I just say, just somebody that's coming up in, in an emerging leader. Just stay true to who you are. Stay true to your calling trust those gut feelings. That's good. We're always trying to help people learn how to lead, to grow. What are some things you do to sharpen your saw? I know you're always trying to get better and always trying to improve. What are some things that, that you've done throughout your career and transitioning careers to learn and grow? I I always, and this was one of my prayers this year and what I share with our guys, but it is something I've learned to do over the years is I'm big in my faith I've said that throughout this whole podcast and and I know there may not be some guys listening. I. That may be, faith guys or may not be Christians or whatever, but I am big in my faith. And so everything from me flows from that foundation. That, that is my foundation. And my routines and the resources and stuff revolve around that. So my morning, quiet time, I spend that with my wife. We pray together. We read together. I think your spouse is is your biggest cheerleader, or should be.'Cause Carrie keeps me grounded. She challenges me in ways that I need to be challenged. I also love the outdoors. I love to hunt. Yeah. I love to fish. I love to be on the lake and I love the boat. So when I need to get grounded, when I need to have Something that just keeps me, focused. I need to step away and do it. I go, take a walk in the woods, go sit in a deer stand, go out and wet a hook, or go get in the boat and run around the lake or something. Because I just think the majesty of God's creation it helps you understand just really how small you are. Things not be, those problems and those things may not be as big as they seem. What are some of the biggest challenges that you faced through this? Man, just just really, it is hard to keep, everybody motivated, engaged, a lot of times, I think, in the nonprofit world, it's all, everybody always says, man, it's how are you gonna raise that much money? How are you gonna, do that? But. But those things a lot of times will take care of themselves as long as you are doing the right thing and putting your best foot forward. Especially in the spiritual, aspect. God's gonna lead those right partners. But some of the challenges just keeping, I. Keeping your team, keeping your volunteers consistent, keeping'em, wanting to come back. That's sometimes that can be hard. A lot of times that's just because of seasons of life, yeah. You're gonna have your, you're gonna have your ebbs and flows of who your core. Volunteers are because of life, I've got guys that'll start mentoring in their early twenties, then they're married and have kids and they're gone. Now we're starting to see some of those guys come back because their kids are grown and don't want anything to do with'em anymore. They're off being teenagers'cause they know everything, that's really good what you're talking about there being in tuned to the, these different seasons of people's lives and the different things that are going on in their lives because that's going to impact the way they interact with your organization. So that's good. Does any last parting shots that you'd wanna share just to send us on our way today? I just think, it's, being a leader is not so much about, having command and having control and, dictating and all that. I think being a leader is having the right influence and encouraging and drawing. I. Your team and your volunteers and your employees or whatever to be the best version of themselves, to really if you can accomplish that then all the other stuff's gonna take care of itself, that's a perfect way to end'cause I think that really is a good nutshell of what we should be doing as leaders and really appreciate your time. We'll put some information in the show notes if people wanna reach out and learn more about your organization, that they can do that. Thanks for your time today, Jeff. Thanks Mark. I appreciate it. Thank you for joining us today for this great conversation with Jeff Davis. If you'd like to learn more about what Jeff does, I'll have some information in the show notes about links where you can contact him. You can learn about truth in nature, if you're so inclined, you can support this great ministry. Additionally, make sure you download the leader notes. This will give you a summary of everything that we discussed today. 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