Welcome to Season 7 of the Excel Stillmore podcast.

I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I am here to encourage you in your faith and help you strengthen your relationships.

Today's episode is sponsored by statewide mortgage.

Tyler Kane has over 20 years of experience and he can help you

with a variety of home mortgage needs. You can reach him today at 813-380-8487. Thank you so much for

listening in today. Let's get started. Welcome back to ESM. I'm really stoked to share today's topic. It's been a slow growth,

I think, would be the right words. I had a little grip on it last October and then forgot

about it for a while and got a little extra motivation recently when I was in Florida. And so here

we go. It's really not my idea. It belongs to a friend of my name

Will Speer. Will works with the Brandon Church, where I was a couple of weeks ago in Florida.

And he and his wife, Juliana, are moving all the way up to Washington State, which will be

really awesome this summer, and we're praying things go well for him. And last October, I was in

Tampa doing some preaching and had

lunch with a group of preachers at a Mexican food place, and Will was there. We started talking about

his move and everything, very exciting. And he said, hey, Chris, I've got a podcast idea for you.

And again, this was last October. He said, cleaning the plate. And I thought, well, we just got here, so give me a few

minutes on that, but that's not what he was talking about at all. Will is a softball, baseball umpire.

And he talked about how important it is when you first show up, in addition to just greeting

people, being cordial, being prepared, being on time,

it's important to walk to home plate, pull out your brush, and clean every corner of it before

the game starts. And he went on to say that there are life applications of that, and he shared a few

things. We didn't get a lot of time to talk about it. And I remember getting in the car thinking,

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