The Learning To Lead Show with Mark J. Cundiff

#15 Filter to Focus! Reflections on my Conversation with Jeff Davis

• Mark Cundiff

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In this episode of the Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff recaps his conversation with Jeff Davis, the founder and executive director of Truth in Nature, an organization dedicated to mentoring fatherless boys across the U.S. 

Mark shares insights from Jeff's journey, highlighting key leadership lessons such as:

  •  The power of influence
  • The importance of storytelling
  • The courage to follow a calling
  • The necessity of gratitude towards volunteers 
  • The need to stay focused on the mission. 

This episode underscores the significant impact and growth Truth in Nature has achieved under Jeff's dedication and visionary leadership.


00:00 Introduction and Episode Recap
00:21 Jeff Davis and Truth in Nature
02:00 Leadership Lessons from Jeff Davis
02:37 The Power of Storytelling
06:01 Gratitude and Volunteer Appreciation
07:20 Staying Focused on the Mission
09:22 Conclusion and Call to Action

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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LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.


Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

Hello, welcome to the Learning the Lead Show. My name's Mark Cundiff. I'm your host. I want to take a few minutes recap what I learned from my conversation with Jeff Davis, our previous podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, please go back. It's called Influence That Lasts, what Every Leader Can Learn From Mentoring Fatherless Boys. And it's my conversation with Jeff who is. The founder and executive director of Truth in Nature, this is a organization that ministers to fatherless boys across the nation. Just to share a little personal story, back when Jeff started this, I remember him working at a company called Carstar that we both worked at, and he was the IT guy. He was a person that used to come and help bail me out when my computer wouldn't work. He did a lot of different things for us from an IT standpoint over the years that I knew him. He was very good at his job. He was always friendly and personable. And then I learned about him starting this non-profit and went to some of his fundraisers and started when he just got started some weekends he'd have four or six boys, and now he has over 400. Boys coming to their programs across the country in 14 different states, 26 different chapters, and they have in excess of 400 volunteers helping him execute this. You have to think about that when you grow an organization from four boys to over 400 over the past. Couple of decades that he's been working on this and moving into doing this full time after he got laid off from his job, you think about how you would have to grow as a leader and have to grow as a person. He's a great textbook on growing into the role that he is in currently. Now, this just didn't happen all at once and he was very intentional about it. And there's a few key concepts and key takeaways that I wanna share that he shared with us. One is that. Leadership is influence, not control. And we go back to that quote from John Maxwell who defined what leadership was many decades ago. He says, leadership has influenced nothing more, nothing less. Jeff is a person who epitomizes this on the front lines. Will you see him out there on the front lines? Using his influence, the relationships, the trust, the enthusiasm for his cause, because of who he is and how he has passion behind ministering to these, fatherless those boys. One of the things that he talked about in this episode was the power of story. How when he started going out and sharing the story, not of himself, but of the boys that were being transformed by their encounter with this organization, how they were coming to this organization as fatherless boys many times. In troubled situations with a single mom who's trying to help them make things work, and they come to this organization, they get taken out into nature, they get taken out into the outdoors, and they encounter people who love on'em, who care for'em, who introduce'em to Christ, who introduce them to different things that they can learn to gain confidence, like shooting a gun, fishing, how to start a fire. How to tie knots, a lot of different skill sets that they're teaching these boys. So it builds them up as man, giving them confidence as they grow in this relationship they have with their mentors. So it's a powerful story to see the transformation that takes place with these boys. One of the key things, and I don't even know if we mentioned it on the podcast, but no boy has ever had to pay to come to a program. Get that again. No boy has ever had to pay a dime to come to one of their programs. This is all. Supported by donations and it has been from day one. You think about that when you have over 400 boys, they now have, as he shared in there, over 600 acres that they care for the donations and the volunteer work. And the volunteer support. So that's great influence. That Jeff has developed over the years to have that many people rally around his cause, rally around the mission and calling that he has to minister to these boys and just think about how does that apply to your own life? How does that apply to what you're doing? Are people influenced because of the passion that you're on mission about what you're doing in your life. That's when a leader really takes hold and multiplies their effectiveness is when they rally others around their cause and rally others around what they're doing. Jeff is a tremendous example of how to do this effectively. Then he also talks about how calling when you're called to do something, takes courage. He stepped away from a six figure job he had once he'd left that corporate world when he was laid off, he had other offers to go and continue to do that same type of work. He was very good at what he was doing, but he felt the calling to go and to be full-time in this, even though he didn't know how he was gonna get a paycheck, how he was gonna pay for his insurance, how he was going to take care of his wife, Carrie. But they both together joined together and co-founded this organization and he went out full time and made it happen. They've had donors and supporters over the years support them and keep this minister going, and not only going but growing exponentially year after year. So that takes courage. He says, I went from a six figure income to zero because I believed in the calling. Do you believe in what you're doing and what you're leading so much that you're going to stand up with courage and follow it through? Then he talks about how influence grows through gratitude. He says, leading 400 volunteers requires more than strategy. It takes appreciation. You have to have appreciation and gratitude for those that are serving alongside of you, you gotta let them know that you care about them and what they're doing to make you success. So he says, make people feel valued. Seen and part of something bigger than themselves. He said, the train doesn't go down to tracks unless the volunteers know they are appreciated and they do a number of different things. They have a retreat once a year where they take them out and not only train them and. Meet with them, but they invest in giving them a time to have some fun, to go out and hunt, to go out and fish, to go out and do things in outdoors that these guys love to do that they most weekends are helping the youngsters do. They are getting to go out and play. Jeff shows his appreciation by investing in these leaders and. Equipping them as men so that they can go back into the next year and invest in these boys. It's a show of appreciation. How are you showing appreciation to your team? How are you letting them know that they're, what makes the train goes down the track, as Jeff would say. Then the last one is stay focused on the mission. One of the things he said that he struggled with is the organization was growing. There was a lot of people that had opinions. About what they should do, how they should do it, when they should do it. He talks about some mistakes in the podcast that he made along the way, and he learned that he had to be really clear on his vision and his mission and filter out the things that were noise. Maybe they were good ideas, but they weren't true to the mission of what they were going to do to drive the organization forward and help these boys become men who succeeded in life. Who became devoted Christ followers, who were successful in their communities and their families, and changed their family trees. And that was the mission that Jeff had, is that he was going to help these boys have a second opportunity for a great life. And that is his mission and his vision, and he had to stay. Clear. He had to filter to focus. So he had to filter out the noise, filter out the things that weren't core to their mission, and he had to focus on what their mission was and make sure that they stayed true to it. So as a leader, you have to be able to filter to focus so that you can keep your team on track. If you're not going to do it, there's gonna be confusion. And when there's not. Good clarity, confusion, you lose. So you need to make sure that you're really clear about your message, clear about your vision, and clear about the destination that you're taking, your team. He said, if it doesn't align with the mission, it's not for us. And I think that's true for any organization. Talk about that in Good to Great. You hear Jim Collins talk about the hedgehog concept. That they really focused on what they can be best in the world at. That was something that Jack Welch really focused on in ge, clearing out the things that they weren't. Capable of being the best in the world at, and they got rid of those businesses so that they could be the best at the world at the things that they were focused on, that aligned with their mission. So take those key takeaways away. Make sure that you download our leader notes. I'll put a link in the show notes and make sure that you go to your favorite podcast directory and give us a comment. Let us know what you're learning from this. Please give us a rating that helps us spread the word about what we're doing here on the Learning to Lead Show, we hope that you'll take some of these things that we're talking about and learning from these frontline leaders and apply'em to your lives in a daily executable way. Until next time, keep learning, growing, and leading.