§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The title makes a promise most people argue with — and that argument is the point. John Maxwell, whose book on leadership has sold as many copies today as it did on release day more than twenty years ago, sits across from Ed Mylett to explain why the objection itself is proof you need this conversation.
Who's talking.
00:00hostEd Mylett
02:17guestJohn Maxwell
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:37
01 · Series introduction
Ed introduces the new weekly 21 Laws series, outlines the three-session structure (foundation, influence, legacy), and pitches the free workbook and Q&A format.
01:37 – 02:47
02 · Maxwell enters: origin of the book
Ed introduces Maxwell, who explains the book was born on a golf course — a publisher mentioned a 'laws of management' book, sparking Maxwell to ask: what makes something a true law?
02:47 – 05:11
03 · Building the 21 Laws
Maxwell describes the two-year process of developing the laws — starting with ~60 candidates and whittling down. Criteria: timeless, cross-cultural, gender-neutral, produces positive life change.
05:11 – 09:47
04 · The Law of the Lid
The cornerstone law: your leadership ability is the ceiling on your results. Maxwell explains the 1-10 scale, how a 5/10 leader produces a 4/10 org, and how raising your lid raises everyone around you including who you attract.
09:47 – 10:43
05 · Sponsor: Shopify
Ed Mylett mid-roll ad read for Shopify. shopify.com/mylett, $1/month trial.
10:43 – 13:27
06 · Redefining leadership as influence
Ed asks Maxwell to address the 'I'm not a leader' objection. Maxwell defines leadership as influence — nothing more, nothing less — and argues that a parent, teammate, or any person who affects others is already leading.
13:27 – 15:12
07 · How to develop as a leader
Maxwell's prescription: take one law per week, practice it, act before you fully understand. Law of Process — leaders develop daily, not in a day. At 79, Maxwell still practices daily.
15:12 – 15:52
08 · Close and CTA
Ed and Maxwell exchange gratitude; outro card with workbook download and subscribe CTA.
Lines you could clip.
05:32
"Leadership is influence — nothing more, nothing less."
08:33
"In the history of mankind, no organization has risen higher than the leadership lid of those who lead it. It just does not happen."
14:08
"The big mistake people have is they say, as soon as I figure it out, I will do it. And I look at them and say, no — you have to do it to figure it out."
14:47
"Start now, start slow, but go."
10:01
"We attract who we are, not who we want."
Things they pointed at.
02:13book21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership
07:36bookDeveloping the Leader Within You
12:00bookThe 360 Degree Leader
Word for word.
HOOK opening / re-engagementCTA the pitch metaphor analogy story
00:00HOOKAlright. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So I cannot tell you how excited I am to let you know that every week on Thursdays, we are releasing what I believe is the greatest series in the history of any book written on the topic of leadership.
00:11HOOKYou will now get access to either through audio or video on our channel, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership with John Maxwell himself every single week, each lesson, each law broken down by the master directly through the camera or through your headphones into your life here on the Ed Mylett show. We've structured this journey into three distinct sessions to help you master these principles.
00:33HOOKSession one is your foundation, the internal character required to lead. Session two moves into your influence,
00:41HOOKhow you connect and how you build elite teams. And session three is about legacy, how you multiply your impact for generations.
00:48HOOKLeadership is a discipline. It's not a title. And in every episode, I'm giving you the rep,
00:53HOOKone clear high stakes action for you to execute that week. To track your progress, we've created a full 21 page leadership workbook. Just click the link in the show notes right now to download the entire playbook.
01:04HOOKIt's free. Our gift to you. Between each session, John Maxwell and I are hosting q and a sessions to solve your specific leadership struggles.
01:13Isn't that incredible? So if you want us to answer your question, here's how you do it. When you click the link to download your free workbook, you'll see a section to submit your leadership question directly to John and I.
01:23We're pulling our q and a topics directly from that list. So if you want your situation navigated by John and me, get that workbook and submit your question ASAP. We've never done anything like this on the show.
01:33I'm so excited. So I hope you enjoy it, everybody. God bless you.
01:36Max out. My education on leaderships come from one man, and it's a book, the number one sold book in the history of leadership books, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership. I everybody's a leader because leadership is in folks.
01:48There are 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, but there is one undisputed vote of all time on the leadership topic. The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership is a book to help you really become a better leader.
02:03So leadership is one of the most discussed topics on planet Earth. It's also one of the most misunderstood. My education on leaderships come from one man, and it's a book, the number one sold book in the history of leadership books, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership
02:17written by the man to my left who also happens to be my hero. We're gonna get in the nitty gritty on leadership here today, everybody, with the number one expert on planet Earth, mister John Maxwell. John, welcome back to the show.
02:28Ed, I love you, and I always love being with you, and I love when we get to do stuff together. I do too. I do too.
02:34You are my hero, as everybody knows, and my first introduction to you was actually this book.
02:41Yes. Did you write it to find me, or why did you actually write the book?
02:45I wrote it to find myself. You know, a lot of times what we write is for ourselves, and then we say, hey. This helped me.
02:52Maybe it'll go help someone else. But I wrote the 21 irrefutable
02:56laws of leadership. Interestingly enough, the idea came on a golf course.
03:01You and I love to play golf. Yeah. I was playing golf with one of my publishers.
03:05And he said, John, I just finished reading a book on the laws of management. And he said it was a it was a terrific book. So I said, Victor, I wanna write a book on on the laws of leadership.
03:16And then I began to ask myself, okay. What really makes a law? Because, I mean, you can have a good principle.
03:22You can have a good thought on leadership, but the this the the word law kinda gives gravitas. It's kinda like, this is kinda bigger than a principle.
03:30Mhmm. So I, first of all, developed kind of a grid. What what what would be a law of leadership?
03:34And I it has to be obviously about leadership, but it has to be, for example, timeless. If it's truly a law I mean, the law of gravity is it's the law.
03:42I mean, it it doesn't come in and go out with time. So it has to be timeless. It has to be able we I have to be able to
03:49it has to fit in every culture. It has to be fit male and female. It has to fit all of that.
03:55And and it has to it has to have positive life change in people's lives. So I began to list what these laws were,
04:02and literally for two years, all I did was work with what would be a law of leadership. For two years, and I I started off with about 60.
04:11I was gonna ask you. Yeah. And and just kept whittling down whittling down.
04:14And then I would talk to people like you, and I'd say, do you think this is truly a law? And sometimes they'd strike it down. So, anyway, I I after a couple years, I got to the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership,
04:24and so I I wrote the book. And then for three years, I went on a book tour with it around the world because it became a bestseller the first week it came out, and it just stayed there on the bestseller list. In fact, the twenty one year of fear of laws of leadership
04:37sells as many books today twenty plus years later, as it did the day the book came out.
04:42You're kidding me. I it's just it just keeps it just keeps on going.
04:46I gotta tell you on the show, you know, I probably interviewed 800 oh, going on a thousand people. And one of the things people ask me, what do these folks all have in common? And they all of them have something in common, but the vast majority of them have told me they've read this book.
05:02In fact, last week, the last podcast that I did was a gentleman who was the president of Tesla for ten years. And as the interview was over in passing, he asked me if I knew you because you're also his hero. And I said, yeah.
05:14In fact, I do. I consider him one of my great friends. He said, well, the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership changed my life.
05:20Yeah. I'm curious. Of all of the laws, is there one that stood out to you?
05:24I kinda know this answer, but is there one that stands out more than others, or they all like children? You love them equally. Well, I love them, but, uh, not equally.
05:32The law of the lid, which is the first one, Ed, I put it first, and here's why.
05:39If if a person buys into the law of the lid and I want us to talk about it for a moment. If they buy into the law of the lid, they'll buy into the other 20 laws. Okay.
05:50That's a fact. And the law of the lid just says how well you lead determines how well you succeed.
05:56In other words, the reason I began teaching on leadership, I was in my twenties, and I came to the conclusion that everything rises and falls on leadership.
06:05And when I came to that conclusion, I said to myself, if that is true, then if I can teach myself, if I can teach other people how to lead well, then it'll rise.
06:15Well, now we we're we're we're taking that lid, and it's going up. And and if I don't know it well, of course, it it it can fall. So the law of the lid basically just says
06:25that the most important thing you can do to succeed in life is really learn how to lead. And that's true in business. That's true in government.
06:33That's true in ministry. The ability to learn how to lead because how well I lead not only determines how well I succeed.
06:40How well I lead determines how well the people that are on my team succeed. So let's say that between a one and a 10, I'm an average leader. I'm a five.
06:48What that means is that my organization will come up to my , and it'll be a probably a four,
06:56but it cannot be a six or seven. Because in the history of mankind, no organization
07:01has risen higher than the leadership lid of those who lead it. It just doesn't happen.
07:07Now here's the good news. You can grow as a leader. And when I wrote the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership,
07:12I'd already written the book developing the leader within you Mhmm. Which basically says in fact, Ed, that was the first book written that said you can develop yourself as a leader. Up until that time, two things are very significant.
07:25One is people thought leaders were kinda born. Secondly is if you go back because I wrote that in the late nineteen nineties.
07:33If you go back, there were no leadership books in bookshores. Wow.
07:37They were management books. Great point. I mean, Peter Drucker, he was a management guru, and you met but what happened, Ed, was,
07:44um, you can't manage speed. And so by the late by the mid nineteen nineties,
07:51things were happening so fast that you couldn't manage them anymore. And somebody says, we gotta get ahead of them, and that's what leaders do. They see more and before.
07:59And so, therefore, all of a sudden, leadership began to be the thing. And so I said, you can develop yourself as a leader. And then in developing yourself as a leader, I began with the lid saying to yourself, if you have a five,
08:10you can learn leadership skills. You can go to a six. With a lot of time working on your skills, you can get to a seven.
08:18Now every every time I raise my leadership lid, guess what I do? Now I raise the room of potential for all the people on my team. So so so when you raise your lid, you raise the lid of everybody around you.
08:29And so, therefore, the law of the lid just I just said, if people can understand it and they can really learn it and they can embrace it and they can do it, they're not only gonna help increase their ability and and the people's ability, but also one more thing, Ed. When I raise my lid for if I'm a five as a leader, guess who I attract?
08:47Fours, threes, twos, and ones. Great point. In the history of mankind, there's never been a person that is a nine and say I wanna follow a five.
08:55Very good. And so, therefore, every time I raise my leadership lead, I also raise the quality, the type of person I attract because in the 21 laws, the law of magnetism is we attract who we are, not who we want.
09:09Very good. And so I've had people all the time. They'll say they'll say, well, I I would like to have people that, you know, hardworking,
09:15great attitude, you know, teachable, and I'm taking my little list. When it's done, I look up and say, now are you hardworking? Are you teachable?
09:22Because if you have those qualities, people will migrate to you. If you don't have those qualities, they won't.
09:29So that law of LID helps us draw better people. It helps us it helps us improve our leadership. It's just the it's kind of like the essential law that if you get it, then now you say, I wanna learn all the other 20.
09:41Yes. Because now they're gonna help me. What all the other 20?
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10:43Let me ask you one more question about this. Because for me, obviously, you know the impact of your work, and the fact that this is gonna be on the channel on a regular basis where people getting access to these laws is just mind blowing to me. But one of the other things that you've done for me,
10:58you've changed the definition for me of what a leader is or looks like, meaning this. And I think a lot of people feel this way. I'd like you to speak to it.
11:06I think they think they're not a leader. I think when they picture a leader, they're picturing someone who's the CEO of a company only. Position.
11:13Right? It's a position, or they're the head coach of the Dallas cowboys. Now that's a leader.
11:17But me, I'm not a leader. Right? They're thinking that about themselves.
11:20Of course. Who how do you know if you are one? You know, when I started off,
11:24I knew that if I was gonna talk about leadership, I was gonna have to define what I think it is. So after much time, a lot of time,
11:32I came up with a conclusion that leadership is influence. Nothing more,
11:37nothing less. Your ability to influence people. In fact, I love that proverb.
11:41It says, he that thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk. And I there are no kind of people taking walks. In fact, I wrote a book called the three sixty degree leader that helps a person know that you can lead from the middle of the pack.
11:54You can lead up. You can lead beside. You can lead others.
11:57And the moment that we understand that leadership is influenced, then all of a sudden, mom at home says, wait a minute.
12:04I'm I'm a leader. I I have influence with my family. I've got influence with my children.
12:09And the reason I wanted everybody to understand that is in our own world, to our own degree,
12:15Ed, we always influence people. The moment I feel that I can influence people Mhmm.
12:22Now it gives a gravitas for me to learn how to do it. Mhmm. And so let's get rid of the leader titles and all that, and let's just say, look.
12:30Where you are, what you're doing right now matters. So now learn to use influence in a positive way to help people where you are right now, and you'll begin to add value to them.
12:42And once you add value to people, then I'm I promise you, they'll follow you. That's so good. You
12:48if someone's watching this week by week, would there be some advice you would give them if they they watch one of the laws or listen to one of the laws? Is there something that you would recommend they do as they're doing that weekly?
13:00Some sort of daily practice? Of course. You of course, you know as well as I do, Ed.
13:05If you don't practice it, it doesn't happen. I mean, uh, action is in fact, I had somebody there. They said, now what's the best action to take?
13:13And I said, any action. Would you just get going in the game? Because you and I know that it's the action that allows us to learn.
13:21When I start moving, I find out a lot about myself. Yeah. I find out a lot about my journey, what I'm doing.
13:28So what I tell the people is, in fact, another one of the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership is the law of process that says leaders develop daily, not in a day.
13:38So as you're watching this weekly, understand it's a process.
13:43Okay? And take one at a time and practice them. If you practice them, you'll learn.
13:49And understand this.
13:53The ability and the willingness to take action will give you what you need to know that you don't know now. The big mistake people have is they say, as soon as I figure it out, I'll do it.
14:04And I look at them and said, no. No. No.
14:06You have to do it to figure it out. And so I would take each law, and I would practice them and take it slowly and understand. In few months,
14:16I can promise you, you're going to be a better leader than you are right now, and that's okay. By the way, I'm 79.
14:24I'm still growing every day. Mhmm. I'm still practicing every day.
14:28I'm still learning every day. And once you begin to learn the process of growth, you develop leadership growth capacity. And now you have the ability to learn more quicker and in greater degrees because you've increased your capacity.
14:44So start now, start slow, but go. Mhmm.
14:49Trust me. You'll begin to see growth in your life. You'll find out sooner or later that you'll not go to the next level.
15:01CTAthere I just feel so blessed that we're doing this. Yeah. I'm so blessed that you're in my life.
15:05CTAI'm blessed that can't believe I love you. I can't believe we're doing this on the channel Yeah. Get that they're getting access to this.
15:10CTAIt's like this is like a dream come true for me. There are 21 irrefutable laws of leadership, but there is one undisputed goat of all time on the leadership topic.
— full transcript
§ 05 · For Joe
Every person leads — the only question is how well.
WHAT TO LEARN
Leadership is not a position someone grants you — it is influence you already exercise, and your current level is the ceiling on every result you produce.
- The single most accurate predictor of what you will build is your current leadership level — not your idea, your funding, or your team.
- Raising your leadership ceiling automatically raises the ceiling for every person around you, without requiring them to change.
- You attract people at roughly your own level of development; the talent problem is almost always a self-development problem in disguise.
- Leadership is not positional — anyone who influences another person's decisions is already leading, whether they hold a title or not.
- Action precedes understanding in leadership development: waiting until you feel ready means waiting indefinitely, because clarity comes from doing.
- Leaders grow daily through consistent practice, not through single breakthrough moments — the compounding is slow at first and dramatic over months.
- Increasing your growth capacity through practice means you eventually learn faster and at a higher level with the same amount of daily effort.
- A law differs from a principle by being timeless, cross-cultural, and producing demonstrable positive change — not just being a good idea in context.
