You've poured yourself into your business, your team, your leadership — but have you ever stopped to ask whether you're doing it alone?

And more importantly, are you letting someone truly speak into your life, not just coach you through a moment?

Earl Morrison spent over 32 years in law enforcement and seven years as a police chief in Oklahoma.

After losing what he and his wife thought was their dream job to political winds, Earl did something most of us resist: he stopped, reflected, and let God use the adversity to shape him into a mentor for others.

That journey led him to write his book Leadership Lessons Learned and build his company, Leading and Learning with Character.

Join David and Earl as they unpack what mentorship actually is — and why it's different from coaching or discipleship — and why our pride is the #1 thing standing between us and the growth we desperately need.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

Mentoring others is one of the most tangible ways to reflect God's investment in us. When we pour into someone else's growth — not just their skills, but their character — we're living out the kind of discipleship Paul describes in 2 Timothy 2:2. It's not a program. It's a relationship.

One challenge from today: Find one person you trust enough to speak truth into your life — and give them permission to do it. Don't wait until you have it all figured out. That's the pride talking.

More About Earl Morrison

Website: https://earlmorrison.com/

Books:

Leadership Lessons Learned

Mentoring for Life

Closing the Gap

More About David Schmidt

Free Resource: What God Says About Business: 5 Uncommon Truths for the Modern Business

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Newsletter also comes with Bible verses for business success for you to read, apply, and be inspired by.

Paul said in 2 Timothy 2, 2, these things which you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who in turn will be able to teach others also. That's called discipleship. But today we not only have discipleship, we have coaches and consultants, mentors and teachers. And today I brought on Earl Morrison, who has had over 32 years in law enforcement. He's also been a police chief in Oklahoma for about seven years now. And he's going to talk about mentorship.

and distinctly what mentorship is different from coaching and consulting and the value that brings. So Earl, thank you for coming on. Welcome. And what is one way that you have found to honor God in your business that others may not know about?

So for me, you when you asked me that question is like something that we've been doing forever is that my passion has been leadership development and mentoring. so for me in my business, that's exactly how I found the honor of God is to mentor other people to do better, not just in their business and how they conduct themselves, but in their day to day life and how they carry themselves and how

⁓ that carries over into their businesses and into their relationships.

Very good. And that's why we're talking about this subject with you, because that's what you do. So Earl, give us a brief background of how God has taught you and led you to the ministry and things you are doing today.

Right?

Sure. ⁓ yeah.

sometimes. And so we know he's always teaching us something. And so

about three years into my first job as a police chief, I found myself out of that job. ⁓ Really not for anything that we had done. It was, as people know, ⁓ politics come into play when you're in municipal government, state government, national government. so politics, the landscape changed on us. I found myself out of that dream job.

And then I was there trying to figure out what am I supposed to learn from this? ⁓ How do I help myself moving forward and my family? But then the other side of that is how can I possibly help someone else who may go through the same thing? Because what we don't like to talk about a lot of times is the adversity side of things and the difficulties. We like to talk about all the good stuff, but we don't really talk enough about the struggles to teach people how to deal with them.

And so we're, my wife and I are talking, we're praying and, and, you know, we'd always talked because everybody always says, maybe I should write a book. and then she says, well, maybe you should write a book. And I was like, well, you think, and she's like, well, it's not like you have anything else to do. ⁓ and we laughed a minute and so we prayed about it. And so, ⁓ we started writing my first book, which is called leadership lessons learned, because again, I wanted to learn something.

you

Sure.

And as we were doing that and developing the book, ⁓ we thought about, what about the people that aren't going to read? You know, because there's there's millions of people in this world, but there's still lots of people that won't pick up a book to read it. And so we actually created our business, leading and learning with character out of the need to develop from those leadership lessons learned classes where we could teach and other things where we could ⁓ connect with people.

And it's a way for us to do the mentoring and the leading in ⁓ a ⁓ greater scope than just the people that we interact with. So that's how we get started.

Okay, very good. That's funny. You're right. Just write a book. Okay. How long did that take you to write the book?

Yeah.

So the crazy thing was really it didn't take me but about three months to write the first draft. So, ⁓ people that write can, can get this. And if you know, and you deal with things, you know, when you're trying to learn things and you're trying to grow from it and you find yourself in a situation that it was not the ideal situation. ⁓ sometimes your first thoughts are not what you want to share with everyone, but it is good to get them out.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I had to

rewrite it a couple of times so that it would be ⁓ presentable for other people, but it allowed me to get the frustration and the anger and the unknowns and all the other stuff out so that I could then have something that I could actually share and help someone else learn from.

Well, congratulations on getting a book out and written. My oldest daughter is a writer and hearing from her, seeing her, I know how much writing and rewriting and rewriting and that goes. That's not a short deal. It's a long deal. ⁓ But good, very good. So mentorship, can you define mentorship for us as opposed to coaching or discipling or things like that?

Sure. For me, coaching is an in the moment kind of thing. the easiest ⁓ illustration is a sports game. You're coaching them to do well. They may be in some kind of performance or something. You're coaching them up to do something well. ⁓ Discipleship, as you and I had talked about, discipleship is a teaching piece and it's faith-based and focused, biblically focused. Mentoring, you kind of cross paths with everything.

cause for me, you, you can't mentor someone if you don't have the faith based, thing there. The Bible is our guidebook. I don't care what you're doing and where you're at. ⁓ it's where you get your resources from. doesn't mean you can't develop others. doesn't mean there's not others out there, but, ⁓ if you're just really looking for a one shop fits all, the Bible is there. ⁓ and so you combine the coaching.

in the moment things, the biblically and faith-based things, and then you form a long-term relationship. And to me, mentoring is a longer-term relationship because in mentoring, I'm also going to tell you good things because I want to encourage you and build you up, but I'm also going to tell you things that maybe you don't want to hear, but you need to hear. Now you can do that in coaching too. And even in the discipleship, we hear that.

But sometimes we don't have the connection when we do that. We just want it to be fixed. And so we're telling you. So in mentoring, it's the, I'm investing in you ⁓ for a longer term. And for me, when I'm talking about mentoring, it's really a lifelong investment in someone to help them be the best possible version of themselves that they can with your help.

And if you're a mentee, it's you're allowing someone to pour into you to help create the best version of you that's possible.

Yeah, no, it's and that's why I've seen all good connections, coach, whether you call coaching, consulting, mentoring, whatever. It's that relationship. You know, the deeper the relationship is, there's that trust there. But I think with mentoring, seems like this also I've lived life and lived a little bit what you've gone through so I can have personal experience and not just intellectual experience. ⁓ So that's a bit more for that. That's good. ⁓

Yes.

So why do think we don't engage in mentorship more often if mentorship is so beneficial?

Well, it's the same reason a lot of us don't do certain things. know, pride gets in the way. ⁓ Sometimes we think we have it all figured out. ⁓ You know, as leaders, we get titles, we get positions and we think we've arrived. And so we feel like we don't need any help. We don't need anybody. Sometimes we forget how we got there. The ego plays a huge role in that. ⁓ You know, we allow that ego to grow.

A healthy ego is okay. So I don't want anybody out there to misunderstand me. That's hearing this is that you should have pride in what you do. You should have an ego that says I'm confident about this. But what happens is, is that we allow that ego to dictate actions sometimes. So it prevents us from allowing people to help us. Uh, because, uh, when we have experienced a little success, we think, Oh, Hey, I've arrived and I'll say, Hey, Earl did this. Well, Earl didn't do that.

God put the right people in place to help Earl get where he got to. And so we get all those things and we work it up and we think, well, I don't want to hear that because, nobody likes to be corrected in the sense of, want you to like me. I want you to hear what I'm saying. I want you to believe it. I want you to be on my side. And so when we hear the other part of that, sometimes we're like, Whoa, who are you to tell me? Well, that's where the mentoring comes in is that I allow you.

to tell me and I want you to tell me because I do want to be the best version of me. But we can't do that by ourselves because our own, we get in our own way.

I get that, I get that, I've seen that. And they're again, different people, personality wise, they're more naturally inclined to humility or pride, ⁓ but it affects all of us the same way. ⁓ In your leadership book that you ⁓ wrote, what are some of the topics that you found are helpful to develop leaders by character? You talked about leadership and character, what are some of those points there?

So one of the biggest ones that I use all the time is that we've got to admit our mistakes to learn from them. So a lot of times when we're having difficulty moving forward and growing is that we don't admit where we mess up. That kind of jams us up. The other thing is that I think across the board, you know, we get caught up in the right and wrong, who's right and who's wrong. We can get into an argument because we have two different perspectives. And the reality of it is we've missed what the real outcome should be.

Hmm.

And so instead of looking at who's right or wrong, it's about making good decisions and what is that desired outcome that we're looking for. And so when we're thinking about those things, that's the thing that we have to keep in mind is that, you know, we've got to learn from our mistakes. We've got to make good decisions and then we've got to be responsible for our own mindset and attitude. ⁓

One of the ones that I talk about a lot is your attitude is your responsibility. Because what happens is we want to blame everybody else. We want to blame a situation. We want to blame something else that it allows us to act a certain way or do a certain behavior. And instead of taking responsibility and accountability for my own actions, I'm going to blame it on somebody else because then I could justify a bad behavior.

Rarely is it a good behavior that we ever say it's because of someone else. It's always, we're blaming it on a bad behavior on, you know, family or friends or coworker or the job or the situation. so those are three of the main ones in there. And then one of the final ones that I talk about is don't compromise your character. ⁓ because when you get in into tough situations, ⁓ when people are doubting.

Mm.

you, when people are calling you out, when people are chastising you, the biggest thing people want to do is lower the standard, compromise their character just to make it go away or to get along. You you've heard the old phrase, go along to get along. It's one of those things that makes my blood boil because it's like that's not how it's supposed to be. If I have to go along to get along, that better be that we're on the right path, doing the right things for the right reasons.

I'll go along and get along all day long. But if we're not on the right path and we're not looking for the desired outcome and we're not doing it for the right reasons, then I'll take that stand all day, which I think more of us should, so that we don't compromise ourselves.

Yeah, that's a lot. You kept describing that and I kept thinking of all these people that I know about, everything you're saying. One of the things I've noticed recently with some companies I've been in and been a part of is when there's a problem, like you said, they don't look internally, they look outwardly first. I don't even think they think, who can I blame? But it's kind of like if I can see that they had one...

Yeah.

part of the problem, I'm gonna just throw it out on them, even though the problem might be 20 % me and 80 % them, we'll just focus on them. And so if you live in a culture that does that, what do you do as an employee or as an owner? What can you do to basically try to put a stop to that and have people say, we're both to blame. Any suggestions?

So one of

the things I teach and tell people all the time, and even as a chief and in the organizations that I've been into is that the first thing that I always tell everybody, we've got to look in the mirror. What are we bringing to the table? What is our contribution? Good, bad, or indifferent? What are we doing to make whatever our product is better? What are we doing in the situations that we find ourselves in? And again, when you find the difficulties there and we're trying to...

You know, even if we're not, like you say, looking for someone to blame, we're trying to find a problem. The thing I always say is that we're involved. So what are we bringing to the table? What are we doing first? Because the only thing that I can truly change is what I'm bringing to the table. ⁓ So what effort am I making? Am I only looking for all the negative and the things that are wrong? Or am I looking to say that, we got to get better at this? Because when we put the focus on ourselves first,

And if we do that and we realize there's things that we actually have to work on, then we start working on those first and the other things will fall into place. And we continue that by self-reflecting constantly. You may have to do it two or three, four times a day, depending on the people that you work with and the situations that you find yourself in. But I always tell people, no matter what, in each situation, good, bad, or indifferent,

What do you, what effort are you putting into it? Because you're going to get out of it. What you put into it. If all you put into it is negativity, that's what's coming back to you. If you put in the positive aspect of the mindset, then you're going to start seeing that return. Um, and you have to be disciplined and intentional to keep doing that. But either way, uh, you're making a contribution. Is it, is it for the solution? Is it for that desired outcome is to make myself and everyone better, or is it doing just the opposite?

And so it's a continual thing that we make ourselves reflect all the time on what we bring to the table.

Yep, because like you said, your response is your responsibility. Also, what you bring to the table is your responsibility. And I think that's how we can live our life with a good conscience saying, I'm bringing my good conscience in there, even if everything goes haywire at work, we're still good. ⁓ What encouragement do you have to people who are tempted to, as I say, the integrity meter shifts based upon the money involved?

When people are tempted to shift their character or shift their values, depending on, if I admit my wrong, this is a huge ding to our company. What kind of encouragement do you give to them to just stick to your gun, stick to your character and go forward?

I can tell you this, in all my years of experience, when you own that mistake, however grave that mistake is, whatever damage is done, most people can get on board with you admitting that and trying to own it and move forward to be better than if you try to hide it. Because we get ourselves jammed up when we leave things out, or we act like we didn't know, or we act like we didn't do it, or everybody knows we did it and we still act like we weren't involved.

And so I would say, you know, the character piece is what everybody is, is watching. ⁓ None of us are perfect. None of us are without mistake. I don't care how well we do it. I don't care how long we've been doing it. We're still going to make mistakes. The idea is that you own it, you learn from it and you move forward. And if people know that and they see that, if I do that with accountability first,

then it doesn't feel the same when you tell me that you saw the same thing, because now I can say, know what, David, you're exactly right. I've saw that I'm trying to correct that. Here's what I'm going to do to be better. Folks can, can get on board with that as opposed to me acting like I don't do anything wrong or I haven't made a mistake or our company is okay. Just ignore all the stuff that you see, because that's just your, your, your thoughts and your opinion.

it's really what we are, but just ignore it because we still want your business. ⁓ and it's crazy how many people still do that. ⁓ and think people are going to be on their side and in their corner. ⁓ I would much rather be honest with you and say, messed up. Yeah. And you helped me grow from that as opposed to me and letting the ego, ⁓ go crazy and the pride, not, ⁓ allow me to admit that I've messed up. because in that.

We miss that connection. We lose the respect and when the respect goes, everything else goes.

I agree. Things are in my head right now, everything I've seen over the past few years where I work, because that's what ⁓ a company I've worked for has done in the past is they try to paint a perfect picture on the outside, but they know they're not perfect on the inside. And I keep saying, just own up. Just own up, tell them what it is. ⁓ I remember reading somebody who said, I don't like to

hire a leader who has a perfect track record. Because I want to see when they've done something wrong, how they react to it. Do they own it or do they disown it? Because you're right, everybody's going to fail. But what are you going to do when you fail? How are you going to make it right? And that is, I think, a key to what we as people want and desire is that honesty and how that works out.

So yeah, so in encouragement, do you have any stories of people like that who have just owned up to their wrong and what they've done to it and then how it's blessed them?

Well, I mean, I think across the board, could find some, you know, for me, just ⁓ myself in dealing with, know, ⁓ being a, being a chief of police and being a, know, a leader in organizations, ⁓ you know, there's times when you may say or do something that you had a certain intention, but it didn't, didn't go over that way. Or, ⁓ I'm one of those that sometimes I get laser focused on task.

that needs to be done and not everybody knows the details of what needs to be done. I'm not one of those that always shares all the details. Sometimes I give you a guidance, hey, here's what we've got to accomplish. And so for myself, I know that sometimes I've gotten that laser focus and then encountered somebody that maybe wasn't laser focused or wasn't part of what I needed to get done. And I was very short with them or said something that

In the moment, maybe you like, that, cause a lot of times when we do David, we know that, okay, that didn't come off the way that it should have, or that I wanted it to, but we still have, we're laser focused, right? We still have the tasks that we have to do. And so I try to, and I have had to a couple of times where I've had to go back and say, Hey, um, I think when I encountered you this morning, um, I don't think that's the way I should have been. I just had one of those this past week where.

Yeah. Yep.

⁓ There were some things that were going on that ⁓ I wasn't very happy about the responses. And then I had another employee who came in and look, we like to have fun. I'm one of those that there are things that we have to do and in the business that I'm in, there's lots of days where there's not a lot of fun to be had because of what we have to deal with.

Mm-hmm.

But we've developed that culture, that relationship. And I had an employee come in and she was being very happy-go-lucky and said something. And it wasn't the mood for me. And I snapped out. And we had a little exchange, but we went about our business. wasn't overly distracting or anything. But I knew that I needed to go back later in the day, which I did and said, hey, look, I apologize. You caught me at this moment where I wasn't... ⁓

So. ⁓

didn't have my guard where it should have been. I let some other things distract me. and then I lashed out. So I think, you know, for me, that's a, that's one of those things that's easy, but it's hard for a lot of people. Now there was a time probably, you know, 15 years ago, that would have been way difficult for me. And I probably would have just been like, ⁓ not my, not my issue. Right. ⁓ but as you learn this and understand is that if I want to be a good mentor,

I've got to be able to share this with people and say, you know what? I can write, I can teach, I can do all that, but I still have days and times where I mess up. The difference is, is that I know it's okay to own it. I know that it's okay to move forward because I don't want someone to think that that's the way I'm going to be every time that I'm having a bad moment or a bad day because we have.

It's how you get through them and how you deal with it once you know that you've done it. See, I can easily say, you know what, no big deal. We can move forward. But how do you want that legacy to grow? Do you want to be able to say, you know, I realized that I didn't need someone to come and tell me, which is what we do often is that, well, hey, nobody said anything, so it must be okay. I knew that it wasn't because I wasn't happy with my response. So.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, sure.

I think that's what gets in our way a lot when we talked about again, that pride and that ego is, that, nobody's said anything, so I'll just let it ride. Well, that's what gets us in trouble.

Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. And I would love to say I'm good all the time, but I'm not. And I need to apologize too. And even with my kids, oftentimes I've had to come to them and was like, you know what? Sorry, I responded that way. And it goes with leadership at work or at home, whatever. But yeah, and that's again, like you said, 15 years ago, you would not handle it and you handle it different now. That's also growth on your end. And that's that continual.

Yeah.

exercise of your faith, exercise of how you live to get better over the time. ⁓ Very good. Earl, thank you so much. ⁓ We're gonna wrap up here, but in final parting words, do you have any final parting words to challenge or inspire my audience today concerning what we talked about today?

Yeah, I'll just tell you, don't, don't try to do this by yourself. tell her about it all the time. Get you some people that you trust, uh, build a relationship with them. If you're not sure you don't know, ask somebody, uh, you can, you can contact me. know David would help you to find someone that, that you can talk to and, know, maybe you have to work through a few people, uh, cause just understand this is, this is a trust and a respect thing. So this is not where you share something with somebody and they get to go talk about it.

So if the people out there on the other side of this, if someone asks you to mentor them, to help them learn and grow, folks, that's not a cart want for you to go talk about it, to go share that with everybody else. And please don't do the old, let's pray for brothers so-and-so or sisters so-and-so and then give their list. God knows the list. You don't have to share it. David, you're laughing because I know you've heard it just like I have is that.

Yeah, yeah.

Bless their hearts. I think for the most part they mean well, but they can't help themselves to share all of the details and then say, well, I didn't share them, I was praying. Please don't do that. Just pray if you need to, help them out, but be that person that they need that they can go to. Build that trust and that respect so that both of you can grow because I'll tell you David, as a...

As a mentor, I grow just as much as me trying to help the mentee because I learned something both ways every time I do it. So don't do it by yourself. It may be frustrating in the beginning until you find a good match, but keep working through it. And don't give up because if you're seeking that, then something's already working that you know you need the help. ⁓ I've tried to do it by myself. So I'm telling you from, from

An expert opinion, it doesn't work when you try it by yourself.

Yep, I keep going back to in life, we are meant to live life together. I mean, sometimes individually, but as a whole, God meant us to work together, live together, encourage one another. That's what Paul, or the writer of Hebrews said, know, it's get together, spur one another onto love and good deeds. You're not meant to do it alone. Earl, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. And friends, if you're looking to go deeper, I want to learn more about Earl and his work.

Check out the show notes. We'll have some links and sites and contact information there for him to get a hold of him. And if you enjoy this episode, I invite you to leave a rating and subscribe and sign up for our newsletter where you get a verse for the week and also inspirational questions for that verse. And remember, your business represents the great God you serve. So build a business worthy of God's name and in a way that honors him.

Thank you.