Influencer or Person of Influence?

[00:00:02] Have you ever noticed that we've never lived in a world where it's been easier to get attention? Yet so many people still feel unseen. We've never had more followers, more platforms, more content. Man, there's so much content. More opinions, opportunities to go viral. Everywhere you look, someone's going viral.

[00:00:32] And yet people are still searching for purpose. Maybe more, maybe more so than ever before. They're searching for peace and they're searching for someone that they can trust.

[00:00:47] It made me wonder, what if we're chasing the wrong thing? What if our calling was never to become so incredibly successful, successfully famous that nobody can look away? All our enemies will be, oh man, they're famous. No.

[00:01:08] What if it was to become faithful? What if God never asked us to build a following, but to faithfully influence the people He places in front of us?

[00:01:27] Because history has never really been, it's never really been changed by the loudest voices. But what it has been changed by are people whose lives spoke louder than their words. Think about it. It's always been people of integrity, of great courage, people who loved well.

[00:01:56] People who lived what they believed. And remember, not all of them were liked by everyone. But they were definitely trusted because of their honesty, their integrity. And not everybody liked Jesus either, right? Think about that. Think about that.

[00:02:15] We don't need to be liked by everybody. So settle in with me for a moment. Because today, I don't want to have a conversation about becoming an influencer. It's a question that comes up so often, which is why we need to have this conversation. How do I become an influencer? How do I get people to follow me?

[00:02:42] Let's talk about becoming the kind of person people never forget. The kind of person whose life quietly changes other lives. Let's go. Oh, that's better, right babe?

[00:03:11] She founded an architectural concrete company. He founded a hundred million dollar clothing company. She took the world by storm as a social media star. He took the world by storm as a famous serial entrepreneur. Together we started a business. And had babies. Now we're figuring out the best ways to do both. Join us as we learn from other entrepreneurs going through the same life struggles. As they share their life hacks about success, love, kids. And everything in between.

[00:03:41] Hello my friends and welcome back to Becoming Unshakeable. The Legacy Conversations bonus series. A special edition brought to you by the Entrepreneur Parents Podcast. A community of strong families building lives of faith, courage, purpose, and lasting legacy. I'm your host, Ildiko Ferenczi. Today's conversation. It's been on my heart for a long time.

[00:04:10] Because somewhere along the way, our culture started measuring influence by numbers, followers, by views, likes, subscribers. And really, this is the kind of content that is viral right now. How to be popular. How to be followed. How to get millions and millions of views. How to be liked. How to be liked.

[00:04:40] But the kingdom of God has always measured influence differently. Not by how many people know your name, but by how many lives are changed because you showed up with love, truth, and faithfulness. There's nothing wrong with building a platform.

[00:05:05] A platform, that's something that can become a powerful tool for good. The question isn't whether we have influence. The question is, what are we doing with it? What are we building with this platform? Are we building people?

[00:05:33] Sometimes chasing attention often asks, so how many people saw me today? How many people liked me? But someone committed to changing lives asks, whose burden became lighter because I showed up today? One pursues attention. The other builds trust. One is remembered. One is remembered for content.

[00:06:02] The other is remembered for character. Character. Character. And that's the kind of life people never forget. Because character will always outlive popularity. We know this.

[00:06:19] One of the things psychologists have constantly observed is that people are influenced far more by consistent behavior than occasional words. And we talk about this in marriage, relationships with our children, right? Children learn by watching. Friends learn by observing. Teams learn by following examples that we set for them.

[00:06:48] That's why integrity matters so much. Our lives are always teaching something, even when we're saying nothing at all. Because you could be saying one thing, but living a totally different way, right? Telling people, oh, you got to be healthy. You got to eat healthy. But you're at those in and out places all the time. And it just doesn't match what you're saying.

[00:07:14] And the truth is people, they're going to forget the motivational jargon that you put out or the quotes. But you know what they rarely forget? They rarely forget how you made them feel. They remember who believed in them, who listened, who kept their word. We all do. We all remember who keeps their word, who showed up.

[00:07:42] Influence begins long before anyone calls you influential. Long before someone follows you, they trust you. Long before someone quotes something that you've said or done, right? That this person's so inspirational, they said this. This is so meaningful to me. This is important to me.

[00:08:11] They watch you. Remember, long before someone admires your success, they're learning from your example. Influence has never really begun with a platform, right? There was no Twitter or Instagram back in the day. It begins with a life, a life of integrity.

[00:08:42] A life of consistency. A life of humility. Life that quietly points people towards something greater than itself. And perhaps that's why people who change us the most are rarely the loudest. They're simply the most faithful.

[00:09:09] I know the person that changed me forever, my biggest hero. I have two heroes that have done the most for me in my life. And it's not someone that's famous. It's my brother. The relationship I had with him. The lessons he taught me. He's in heaven now. And my mother. Again.

[00:09:39] She never... She was famous in her town. Everybody knew her. Everybody loved her. But the whole world didn't know her. But she gave me the most valuable lessons. They both did. They mean the most to me. And it's not just because it's my brother and my mother.

[00:10:05] But truly, they influenced and shaped everything about me. The good. The good. I have other people I could applaud for the negative things. Oh dear. When you think back on your own life, who changed you? Was it the person with the biggest audience? Maybe. Maybe.

[00:10:34] But more often, it was someone who made you feel seen. Perhaps it's a coach who believed in you. A teacher who encouraged you. A family member who prayed for you. Someone who stayed with you during the hard times.

[00:11:03] Parent that kept showing up. Those people may never trend online. Many times, they're not known. But they leave fingerprints for generations. That's real influence.

[00:11:30] There was a season in my own life when I had to ask myself a difficult question. What kind of life was I actually building? What was I chasing? Why? Was I becoming someone who faithfully changed lives?

[00:11:59] Or getting attention? Attention in all these different ways. Through the business, the career. Attention, attention, attention. Listen, because those things are not always the same thing. It's not the same thing. For a long time, I felt this constant pressure. Pressure to be successful. To hustle. Hustle. Be known for what I'm building.

[00:12:28] Pressure from the industry. Pressure to book the next role. Pressure from managers. Agents. The expectations that came with it. The unspoken message was always the same. Be seen. Be bigger. Be more successful. Be more popular. Stay at the top. The world's best this. The world's best that. Stay relevant.

[00:12:57] Build a bigger audience. More followers. More likes. More attention. More visibility. Always chasing. Pressure from everyone. Get the next thing. What's next? And if I'm honest, it was exhausting. It was exhausting because somewhere along the way, I realized I was spending so much energy trying to become someone the world would applaud.

[00:13:26] The people around me would applaud. They'd have no problem riding coattails. It was exhausting. I spent so much time and energy trying to become that person that I slowly was drifting away from the person

[00:13:56] God was calling me to become. Before you reach for that coffee, consider this. What if the energy boost you're looking for isn't in your cup but in your cells? I challenge you to swap your morning coffee for Sheilajit by Symbiotica. And here's what can happen. No crash. No jitters. Just clean, sustained energy.

[00:14:25] Plus mental clarity and trace minerals that our bodies actually need. That are actually starving for it to be honest. This isn't just a supplement. It's an ancient adaptogen sourced from the Himalayas that supports mycochondrial function, stamina, and overall vitality. Your coffee never did that. Okay, let's just be honest. Try it for a week and tell me your body doesn't thank you.

[00:14:55] Symbiotica's Sheilajit is next level wellness. And honestly, you may never go back to drinking coffee. Click the link below down in the bio and get your Sheilajit today. I remember realizing that success wasn't enough. It wasn't enough if I wasn't aligned with the person God was calling me to become.

[00:15:22] That realization changed everything. The questions I asked began to change. I stopped asking, how could I reach more people? Because that was the assignment. How can you get bigger? How can you get booked more? How could you reach more people? How could you build these platforms? That was the assignment. And that all had to change.

[00:15:51] I started asking, how can I serve the right people? How can I carry someone's burden? How can I leave someone with more hope than they had before we met? Miraculously, somewhere along the way,

[00:16:18] I stopped trying to be impressive and started praying to be useful. Looking back, I don't think that shift just changed my work. I believe it changed me. And honestly,

[00:16:46] I believe it's still changing me today. It's changing my family. It's changing the way they think. The way they go about doing things. The conversations they hold. And it's all because one day I realized I'd rather spend my life changing

[00:17:15] just one heart than entertaining millions of eyes. I turned everything off. I stopped posting. I stopped everything. I'm grateful that I had the courage to do that. Especially when people were banging, they're knocking, knocking on the door. Hey, hey, you got to post. You got to post. You got to post. You got to do this.

[00:17:45] You got to do that. What are you doing? You got millions of followers. What are you doing? Lord told me I had to let it all go. When I think about this, I can't help. I can't, I can't help but think about Jesus. He never seemed concerned with building the biggest crowd. No, he didn't. He simply loved the people

[00:18:14] right in front of him. Sometimes he spoke to thousands. And other times, he stopped everything for one person. One woman at a well, a blind man, a child, a grieving family. He never made people feel like they were interrupting his purpose.

[00:18:44] And I think that's something our world desperately needs to remember. Also, I love what we read in Colossians chapter 3, verses 23 and 24. Listen to this. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters.

[00:19:13] It is the Lord Christ you are serving. That changes everything, doesn't it? All the people that are pressuring you to just make a dollar and put yourselves out there or to go down a direction where your gut feels that it's not right. It changes everything. Because if we're ultimately

[00:19:42] serving Christ, we don't have to spend our lives chasing applause. We don't have to measure our worth by followers or likes or recognition. We can simply ask, was I faithful today? Did I love the people God placed in front of me?

[00:20:12] Did I leave someone with more hope than they had before we met? I have a feeling that's how heaven measures life. Not by how many people knew our name, but by how faithful we loved the people God entrusted to our care.

[00:20:40] How we loved the people He put on our path. Because every person matters. And every person is deeply loved by God. Perhaps today God isn't asking you to become more visible. Perhaps He's inviting you to become more faithful, to love your family well.

[00:21:09] to encourage someone who feels forgotten, to speak life instead of criticism, to be the calm presence in a chaotic world. It can get chaotic, can't it? To become the kind of person whose life points others towards Christ. Be the fisherman.

[00:21:38] Be the soldier, the soldier of Christ. You don't need millions of followers to change the world. You simply need to be faithful with the people God has already entrusted, entrusted to your care. That's where influence begins. Not necessarily on a stage or behind a microphone. Not on a screen.

[00:22:09] It's around dinner tables. Inside conversations. At bedtime prayers. In ordinary moments lived with extraordinary faithfulness. Grab those journals and something to write with. Let's take a moment. Let's take a moment to think about things, to reflect.

[00:22:38] Who has the greatest influence on my life and why? This is a good thought to ponder because it could also make you realize, wow, gosh, I think I've taken the wrong path. It's nothing to be ashamed of. There is a time in our life we all have to make decisions, make changes.

[00:23:07] That's the beautiful thing about the life that we've been blessed with. If you woke up this morning, listen, your life is not over, right? Obviously. God is still writing your story. Here's another one. Am I pursuing attention or faithfulness? Watch the pressure you have around you.

[00:23:34] And sometimes it's not just attention. Maybe you're marching into this thing just to, just to, just to make money and you're not influencing anyone at all. You're just focusing on making the most of, you're just, it's okay. It's okay to make a change. It's okay. How do I want people to feel after spending time with me?

[00:24:06] That's a great one. And here's a really important one. Who has God already entrusted to my care? Think about them. See their faces. What do they need? What do they need? What is one small way I can lighten someone else's

[00:24:35] burden this week? I'm sure you're coming up with questions of your own. Write those down to you and answer them. And then talk about it with your spouse. Talk about it with your family. These are great conversations. These are deep conversations. Many times we learn so much about, about the changes that we make, that we need to make, the work that we want to pour into ourselves and our family and

[00:25:05] our spouses. I really love these moments. And listen, keep DMing me. I'm reading them all as I can. I'm grateful for them and I'm grateful that these, I want to say these missions, these exercises are changing your families. Let's come together in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you

[00:25:35] for reminding us that true influence begins with faithfulness. Help us become people whose words and actions reflect your love, guard our hearts from comparison, free us from chasing approval, teach us to value character above popularity or anything else that comes along with that,

[00:26:04] obedience above recognition and faithfulness above applause. May our homes, our friendships, our businesses, our conversations that we're having become places where people encounter your grace. Use our ordinary lives for your extraordinary purpose. In Jesus' name, amen. amen.

[00:26:34] Those are some of the best times for me in the podcast, in our show here, just to come together with you guys in prayer. I know many of you have expressed that you'll have a lot of people that you can pray with or that pray over you. I'm grateful to be here to spend this time with you in prayer. I really truly am. And thank you for spending this

[00:27:04] time in prayer with me. I appreciate it. I used to always pray with my mother, but never really strangers that I've never met before. This is before I had children. Now, of course, I pray with my children every single day, several times, sometimes, and strangers all over the world. And I'm so grateful for it. What a blessing. Thank you. Thank you for praying for me. I know some

[00:27:34] of you have reached out. And I'm the one that volunteered to pray for you guys. But when you send me those messages saying that you're praying for me and my family, my children, you don't know how much that means to me. It truly does mean so much. I wanted to be that

[00:28:04] person for you, but some of you have reached out during the years and have prayed for us. And I don't take that lightly. There's strangers out there that have laid their, laid themselves in that place to do something so kind. Like, pray for my family and myself that

[00:28:33] means so much. And I'm grateful for that. I really am. It brings tears to my eyes because there's many times I'm sure like some of you, some of you ask, but there's many times I feel like we're not really courageous to pick up the phone or send a message saying, can you pray for me? I'm going through something right now. Because I still, we all still are. We all still

[00:29:03] are going through something and forever will be. And then somehow God reaches out to complete stranger that I've never personally met before and they volunteer that they're praying for me and my family. You come on, come on. That's the Lord's work. That's the Lord's work.

[00:29:33] Oh, so good. So good. So good. So good. If you've ever felt like, like your life doesn't matter, because it doesn't look impressive to the world, please remember this. The people who changed your life probably weren't trying to become famous, right? They were simply trying to love the person

[00:30:02] God placed in front of them. They were simply faithful. So don't measure your life by how many people follow you. measure it, measure it by how faithful you follow Christ. Because influences, and it's not, it's not measured by followers. It's measured by fruit. And fruit is almost always grown

[00:30:31] quietly long before anyone celebrates the harvest. And the fruit of a faithful life has a way of, outliving every trend. Let's just put it that way. It's true. The greatest influence you'll have, I'd like to add that you'll ever have, won't come from building an audience. It will come

[00:31:01] from faithfully loving the people God has already placed in front of you. So please don't lose sight of those people. I've come across so many successful people that they forget the ones that they were supposed to love and raise and be there for because they got so excited building something exciting with someone else, a business, success,

[00:31:31] whatever that was. And they looked back and those people, they were gone. Now they're off in this supposedly successful life of money and business, but the people God entrusted them to, or to them, the marriage. And if they got that far with the children, it's not there. It's gone.

[00:32:00] And we're also seeing a lot of people that almost blew it. They built with their wives, did nothing at all, nothing at all, didn't even have the children, then they had the children and they were building it. And then the enemy walks in, tries to break it all apart, but they saw through the enemy and now they're together. This beautiful, beautiful children,

[00:32:30] that have grown, that saw it too, that saw it, saw the enemy walk into their lives, try to bust apart their parents' marriage. And thank you God that they stayed together. No divorce, no divorce, happy family. It wasn't always happy, but they survived the enemy, right? And they're

[00:32:59] now using that as their platform to inspire other people, to change their lives. And it may not be the whole world, but the purpose is to keep everyone together, and that's beautiful. Friends, if this conversation encouraged you today, would you share it with someone who's striving to live a life of purpose? love if becoming unshakable has been encouraging your heart each week,

[00:33:29] I want to thank you for sharing the episodes. I want to thank you for leaving a kind review and five stars and subscribing so you never miss these conversations. Doing those tiny little things, it means so much to us because together we're building strong families, raising courageous leaders, and leaving a legacy that points people

[00:33:58] towards Christ. And if you aren't already, listen to the Entrepreneur Kids Legacy show. It is screen free learning. It's a podcast for our children. There's so much, so much going on on screens and let's just, let's play this in the background. Let's plant seeds of greatness, great conversations. And if you'd like to support the show, Daniel and Destiny are working

[00:34:28] hard creating two podcasts a week. If you'd like to help support, you can do that at buymeacoffee.com backslash entrepreneur kids and it is deeply, deeply appreciated. They're so grateful in advance. Thank you. May you become a person whose presence brings peace, whose words bring hope, and whose character

[00:34:57] inspires trust. May you be the one whose faith points others towards Jesus. And don't ever underestimate the quiet influence of the life lived with integrity. integrity. I pray God uses your ordinary obedience to accomplish extraordinary things for his kingdom.

[00:35:26] God bless you. Glory to God always. We love you and we're so proud of you for showing up, for serving, for leading, for loving, and continuing to build an unshakable legacy. Ask yourself one last question, friend. Who are you becoming? Your influence isn't measured by how many people know your name. It's measured by how many

[00:35:56] people are stronger because they knew you. This is becoming unshakable. God bless you. We'll talk to you soon. Beautiful friends for listening to this important message from Mama. They're with someone you love and care about. Oh, and we'd love to personally invite you to listen to our podcast.

[00:36:26] It's for young future leaders ready to change the world and be a light in the dark. Listen together as a family. It's called The Entrepreneur K Show. We know your level

[00:37:00] job. And remember, you are the hero of your story because every legacy begins with a hero. And that hero is you. This podcast is for inspirational and educational purposes only, and it is not intended to replace professional advice, legal advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are based on personal experience

[00:37:29] and faith-based insight and are meant to encourage reflection and growth. Always seek the guidance of qualified professionals regarding any questions or concerns you may have about your health, relationships, or business.