Mike P. Taylor

True influence is like farming.

Farming is best done slowly.

Growing mass amounts of crops in a short time produces low-quality and often dangerous results. 

Here’s why:

Farming begins and ends with soil.

Nutrient-rich topsoil is a product of ground that has been cultivated by the elements of nature through decomposition and soil regeneration for generations – sometimes thousands of years. 

In order to keep the ground from becoming infertile, farmers have to rotate their crops and periodically allow the ground to go unplanted for an extended period of time – typically one to five years.

If the farmer decides to take a short-term approach by planting in the soil repeatedly every season without allowing it to regenerate, the soil loses its nutrients, becomes infertile, and becomes a more inviting environment for pests.

This leads to the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which, as we’re learning more and more, can cause long-term health issues in those who consume produce from these types of farms.

In the same way fast farming produces bad results, striving to gain influence with large amounts of people in a short time produces low-quality impact and often dangerous results for both the “influencer” and the ones being influenced.

Real change takes time. There are no shortcuts.

Let’s do a little thought experiment.

Let’s say in any given decade of your life, you have a close relationship with approximately 25 people.

This includes friends, classmates, coworkers, or anyone else you spend a substantial amount of time around.

Now, for the sake of this exercise, let’s say that the majority of those 25 people are exchanged for another 25 people every 10 years.

Now, let’s say you live for 80 years, and 60 of those years are productive, impactful years.

With just some simple back of napkin math, we can see that the average person will have a significant influence on 150 people.

It’s no stretch to say that for every person you have influence with, you also have at least some influence on the people they interact with. In that way, your influence on them then has an exponential effect.

Let’s assume, then, that those 150 people will also have a significant impact on 150 people throughout their lifetime as well. 

Conservatively speaking, of the 150 people you will influence throughout your life, you will also likely influence about half of their network indirectly.

So, throughout your life, let’s say you’ll have direct influence on 150 people and indirect influence on 11,250 people (150 people in your network times 75, which is half of each person’s 150-person network).

This is where it gets interesting. 

If every one of your 150 people that you influence turn around and then have an influence on 75 people, and those 75 people turn around and have an influence on 75 more people, then the number of lives you have had a substantial influence on would be 843,750.

That’s in just three generations beyond yours.

Carry that out to the fourth generation and you’ve impacted 63,281,250 people. Carry that out to the fifth generation, and you’ve impacted 4.7 billion people.

Apple is easily one of the most influential brands in history. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook is listed as one of Time Magazine’s most influential people in the world. And even at the apex of influence in the world, there are still only around 2 billion Apple customers in the world.

Within just a few generations, you can have a much more substantial and long-lasting impact on the world than even the most influential people and brands, and you can do it without slaving away at work.

If you are intentional about the relationships you build and the seeds you sow into other people, and you’re willing to wait for a return over time, then the impact you can have on the world is truly limitless.

What’s even more amazing is that influencing billions of people over the course of a few generations doesn’t take a substantial amount of effort. It’s actually a conservative goal.

To have a substantial influence on 150 people over the course of 60 years of your adult life, you would only need to impact 2 to 3 people each year.

Said another way, if you spent every few years cultivating meaningful relationships with 5 to 10 people, you would be well on your way to having an exponential impact on countless lives.

I get that the numbers aren’t sexy. It doesn’t scratch the itch of significance that we all have.

For some reason, telling you that you could impact millions of lives in a positive way if you diligently cultivated 20 to 30 relationships every decade doesn’t make you feel as important or as valuable as the idea of building something big and flashy that captures the attention of 1 million people in a single generation.

What’s truly sad is if you spend your time trying to impact 1 million people in one generation, the longevity of that impact is inevitably low.

Having a short term impact on 1 million people in one generation pales in comparison to the long-term positive influence you can have on the world by having a deep impact on only a handful of people in your lifetime.

We’ve gotten this twisted in the age of social media, and it’s evident by the rise of the term “influencer”.

By definition, an influencer in the digital world is someone who has the ability to influence the purchase behavior of consumers online, primarily through social media.

We’ve effectively turned influence into a commercialized product.

As such, influence is seen as something to be maximized to produce the most return in the shortest amount of time. 

What we fail to realize, though, is that by reducing influence to an asset to be profited from, we end up gaining influence that is cheap, shallow, and valueless.

You probably won’t change the lives of a million people in your lifetime. And that’s okay. In fact, it’s preferable that you don’t. 

It’s much more beneficial to everyone if you spend your life focusing on having a positive influence on a handful of people in a long-term, profound way.

Those people will not only be the ones telling stories at your funeral about the moments you created that mattered deeply to them, but the actions, values, and stories you left imprinted on their hearts will also tell countless generations to come about the legacy you left behind.

And that is the only kind of influence worth living for.

Of everything you’re doing right now, what will matter in a thousand years?

Jesus says in Revelation 1:8 that he is the one who is, who was, and who is to come.

His legacy is timeless, surviving all changes in the earth and all historical shifts in society.

If Jesus’ legacy is timeless, and Scripture says in 1 John that “in this world we are like Jesus” (1 John 4:17) then what are we doing that will stand the test of time?

Think of it this way: who can you name from a thousand years ago?

(I’ll give you a hint. It was the Middle Ages.)

Here are a few names you might know:

• Joan of Arc
• Charlemagne
• Johannes Gutenberg
• Marco Polo
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Genghis Khan

Unless you paid especially close attention in history class, you’d probably be hard-pressed to give any amount of detail about what any of those people did.

You probably know they were important. But were they impactful?

Important means “of great significance or value and likely to have a profound effect on success, survival, or well-being.”

Impactful means “to have a strong effect on someone or something.”

Importance is something we think is valuable. Impactful is something that changes things.

A City Council approving a new park to be built in your community is important. A father taking his son to that park every Saturday is impactful.

Do you see the difference?

Important things include:

• Work
• Projects
• Household chores
• Finances

Impactful things include:

• Faith
• Marriage
• Parenting
• Friendships

Important things are typically not people-centered. Impactful things always are.

And the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

You can do things that are both important and impactful. You can do work that changes people’s lives. 

But important things tend to have a wide and shallow impact.

That’s because important work tends to be about providing something valuable to as many people as possible. In other words, it prioritizes reach over depth.

Impactful things, on the other hand, are all about depth and therefore tend to be more narrowly focused.

To have a genuine impact, it’s very difficult to spread out your efforts. Like drilling a well, impact tends to be an art of focused, consistent effort.

Now, here’s the important distinction:

Important work has the potential to be remembered for generations. But impactful work has the potential of being felt for generations.

There was a survey that asked teenagers to identify the person they admired most as a role model besides their parents.

(David Kinnaman, who directed the study, noted that parents were left out of the potential answers because so many teenagers either have high regard for their parents or feel otherwise compelled to list their parents as role models. To quote the study, “Previous research shows that mentioning parents is almost an automatic response for many.”)

In this survey, the respondents could have chosen musicians, athletes, community leaders, historical figures or any of the many, many, influential people kids learn to admire in popular culture and history classes.

But here were the most common answers:

1. 37% answered a relative, such as a grandparent, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, cousin, etc.
2. 11% answered teachers and coaches
3. 9% said friends
4. 6% said a pastor or other religious leader they know personally

In total, nearly two-thirds of teenagers said their closest relationships within their communities were the most influential on their lives.

Entertainers came in at 6%, followed by athletes at 5%, political leaders at 4%, faith leaders at 4%, business leaders at 1%, authors at 1%, science and medical professionals at 1%, other artists at 1%, and members of the military at 1%.

That’s only about a quarter of the total responses that included people outside of close communities (although some of the answers, such as athletes and leaders, could have been local role models).

What’s noteworthy from this study is that pastors and even Jesus were listed less than 10% of the time. That means if you want your kids to learn about Jesus, you have to model it. That’s what they’re going to retain. And that’s what’s going to have the greatest impact.

You might be wondering, “But how? What does being an impactful person or role model look like?”

Well, the study asked the same thing.

And when asked why the participants identified the role models they selected, here were the top reasons:

• 26% listed personality traits like caring about others, being loving and polite, being courageous, and being fun 
• 11% said they were encouraging, which included helping them be a better person, always being there for them, or being most interested in their future.

In other words, a huge chunk – 36% – of why someone made the “most influential” list in a young person’s life was simply because they were kind and compassionate.

Here were some other answers for why they selected who they did:

• 22% said they wanted to emulate them or follow in their footsteps
• 13% said that he or she accomplished their goals
• 9% said this person overcame adversity
• 7% said he or she works hard

That’s 51% of the reasons falling in the category of simply being respectable.

If we break all of those reasons down, here are the three things that matter most when it comes to impacting people’s lives:

1. Having a close personal relationship
2. Showing people you care
3. Giving them something to respect by setting goals and following through

You don’t have to be a superstar. You don’t have to be wealthy. You don’t have to be well known. You don’t have to be intelligent or successful in the eyes of the world. 

To have a significant positive impact on someone, you just have to care about people, be there for them, and show them what living a respectable life looks like by doing whatever you do with excellence.

This study shows us what we all inherently know is true.

Make a quick mental list of the people you have looked up to most in your life. This list usually includes at least one parent or guardian, probably a sibling, maybe an aunt or uncle, definitely your close friends, and maybe a pastor, coach or teacher.

These are impactful relationships. And impact equals influence. 

But that’s not how our culture typically thinks of influence. We think that importance equals influence.

Time Magazine has what’s called the Time100, which is a list of the 100 most influential people in the world. This list includes innovators, musicians, actors, athletes, politicians, and other major public figures. It’s a list of important people.

For example, Patrick Mahomes made this list. He’s important because he’s done something that society deems important – he’s an elite athlete.

But whose life will be changed by Patrick Mahomes?

Kids will certainly be inspired by him to strive to achieve more in their own lives, but if you had to place a percentage on it, whose lives will Patrick Mahomes have a major impact on?

It will be his wife, his kids, his close friends, the kids he coaches and mentors on local sports teams – those are the lives that will be impacted by him. Not the countless people who are entertained by him on Sundays.

But here’s the tough part:

We love important work.

It makes us feel good because we long to build things, and today’s culture tells us that what we should be building is something important.

Important work will always fade away. Impactful work – pouring your life into the people closest to you – is what will matter when you’re gone.

Bonnie Ware, a nurse who provided care for dying patients, wrote a book titled, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. These are the top 5 regrets she listed:

1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
5. “I wish I had let myself be happier”

These are all relationship-focused regrets.

When we focus on what feels important, we’ll chase things that we think other people will respect us for (the #1 regret) and we’ll de-prioritize margin, rest, emotional health, connection to friends, and happiness (numbers 2-5 on the list).

Harvard’s 80-year study on what makes for a happy life found that, “Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives.”

Maybe that’s why the most common regrets are things that hinder close, real relationships.

Notice what’s not on the list of regrets, though. It doesn’t say, “I wish I had achieved more.”

Stop and acknowledge that.

Deep down, we all know what’s important. And yet we get blinded by what feels important.

Don’t get me wrong, important work needs to be done. We need people doing important work to advance our culture and create a better future for the world. The technological and medical breakthroughs we’ve had allow us to live the lives we enjoy today.

But we have to stop confusing importance for impactful. Don’t get sucked into the allure of important work. Yes, it must be done, but it’s not what matters most.

Focus on impact, first and foremost.

Focus on cultivating the relationships and resources that are closest to us. You’ll often find that important work stems from an impact-first mentality.

Then, in a thousand years, when no one knows your name and your memory is long gone, your legacy will be alive and well, replicating exponentially in the lives of the children’s children’s children of the people you poured your life into impacting.

That, my friend, is something worth living for.