Gary King: Servant Leadership And Your Relationship With God
How do you start a relationship with God? How do you start building one and what do you need to know? Chad Burmeister talks to NVIDIA’s inside sales expert and believer, Gary King. Gary talks about the unsigned letter from his father, written the night before his parents passed away, and how this changed his life. He also tackles servant leadership, trust in the Lord, and work-life balance. Tune in for an inspirational episode that must not be missed.
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Gary King: Servant Leadership And Your Relationship With God
I've got a great friend with me, Gary King. He is outside of Raleigh, North Carolina in a town called Cary. Gary and I met many years ago, and we've stayed in touch ever since. We were talking before that everyone has a story, and it's important to tell that story. Gary, that's what we're going to get into with you. I'm glad you're here. Thanks for coming on.
Thank you, Chad. I'm honored and thrilled to be a part of it.
Before we go deep, Gary is with NVIDIA. He runs an Inside Sales team there. He becomes quite an expert in the Northeast in the Inside Sales world. Before we kick off into the official questions that I have for you, tell me a little bit about the book that you wrote about your dad. Wasn't it a letter from 1951? That sounds like a long time ago.
The title of it is The Unsigned Letter 50 Years Later. It was in 1970. My dad sat down with a secretary and spoke, dictated to her, and she wrote in shorthand a letter. It happened to be the night before my parents died in a plane crash. The letter that was dictated, she typed up ten days later after the plane crashed, the funeral services, and all that stuff, and sent it out to a couple of people that it was addressed to. This letter ended up in a book of collections from my dad's letter writing articles and things like that. It was an amazing letter.
The last paragraph almost sounded like an obituary about standing up for the freedoms that we have and how important it is. He was willing to lay his life down when he fought in World War II and the Korean War. He said, “As a husband and a father of seven children, I'm ready to lay down my life today for the freedoms of our country.” He did that the night before he died in a plane crash. Who was it addressed to? I wanted to get more of the context, so I tracked down the people that were involved in this 50 years later wondering if they're even alive. I found that these three key people were living and doing well. I reconnected with them and had great conversations. That led to me writing this book, which was amazing.
Relationship With God: The easy way to manage people is you set the rules and everyone abides by the rules, but the most genuine and caring way is to consider every individual and how it works for them.
It was a great read. You sent it to me right before I went to our first Living A Better Story. We've renamed it from a retreat to an intensive because it's four twelve-hour days of intense diving deep into your story. I remember reading that right before I went. It was so impactful going into the inaugural Living A Better Story exercise, and realizing the level of ripple that we can have as human beings on people that are around us. Not just in the day and age you're living in because he impacted a lot of people, but even now when you write that letter and I read it and I read parts of it to people at the event, so it's neat how you can ripple legacy and can carry on for a long time.
A good friend of mine called me after he read the book and he was in tears. He said, “When I read this, what hit my heart is that you signed that letter for your dad. It was cool. It had an impact on me.”
Since we're here, my wife's dad was in a small plane crash. He was a pilot but he didn't fly that day. The other pilot clipped it on the lines and they flipped and dropped 100 feet, and that was it. I never met the dad, and then the mom died of cancer. Before we got married, I felt like you're supposed to ask the dad when you're going to marry your wife. I wrote a letter and attached it to helium balloons. When I proposed, I read it to Tracy, and then we launched them up. It’s a neat experience. I figured you would appreciate that one. Let's rewind the tape because we cut to the chase scene and you've written an amazing book. I'm sure your dad would be blessed and honored that you did that for him. That's awesome. Let's go back to when you're younger, some of your first memories at age 5, 6, 7, 8 thinking about your parents and where you grew up. What was your passion when you were younger in some of your first memories?
My passion was sports. I loved every kind of sport. I loved to participate and play. I was on the go constantly. The only time I would sit still is if I could watch sports on TV, and back then, there were only three channels. It wasn't like there were all kinds of sports to watch. I was active. I love running, playing, and doing everything that I could. Baseball was my real passion as I got a little bit older. The only other passion I had was teasing and tormenting my six sisters. I had no brothers. I love them dearly but they'll probably tell the story about how I tormented them for a long time.
You were the older brother?
I have 1 older sister and 5 are younger.
My wife has five sisters and a younger brother in their family. My brother-in-law has four girls, estrogen family. Thinking about your fascination or passion for sports, if you were to tie that back to now and look at what you're doing today, is there any parallel there?
Absolutely. The nature of sports is competition, and you want to be competitive. You want to win. Sometimes, you compare yourself to other people. Sometimes, you compare yourself to situations. It's got to be internal. You look at yourself, “Am I doing my best?” Everyone is different. Everyone is unique. I want to be able to perform and do my utmost for His Highest. That's ultimately where it goes.
Did you go to church when you're a kid? How did your relationship with God change over the years, or was it always the same level of strength that it is?
It's certainly there, that's for sure. I grew up in a church and I was thankful for that. My dad happened to be on the Board of Trustees for the Missionary Society. We go to the annual convention. Our family would sing there and we would participate. God was always at the center of my life growing up and forever. When I lost my parents as a teenager, it was devastating and horrible. My dad had done some good financial planning for us to be able to stay together, be raised together, and educated. For that, I'm grateful and thankful that we didn't get split up and moved all over the place.
There was that aspect of how God was always at the center of our lives. Yet, after that tragedy, I certainly went through those times of feeling sorry for myself and wondering, “Why would God allow this?” It drove me to want to get some answers. The clarity of those answers came from the scriptures. It wasn't someone's opinion and it wasn't someone standing up with some sermon in the pulpit that changed my life. It was going to God's word and seeing what God's word said Himself because God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Even though there were plenty of people that would attribute this to an act of God, which the title of the article is saying Act of God. I learned and found out a lot better that God is light. He is our adversary who has a mission in life in John 10:10 which is, “The thief cometh not before to steal, kill and destroy.” He has power in this world. There's no question about it.
Jesus Christ came that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Therefore, we can because greater is He that's in you than He is in the world. Because of that, you can thrive. We're still in this world. It's still a mess, but we have so much to be thankful for and grateful for. That's why God, being at the center of my life through the years, even though sometimes I had ups and downs, I knew that that's where my life is focused and centered.
There was a Bible verse that we read. It was a whole chapter in a kid's version, and it was printed in 1954 called Marian's Bible Verses or something. It was the same one I had when I was a kid, so I brought it to our first retreat. It talked about how Satan talked to God and said, “You don't have more power than me.” He goes and says, “We're going to tempt this guy with this,” and he never failed because he had the faith. That was blind faith. It's interesting because we all have to have blind faith. There's one verse in the Bible that I found, Malachi 3:10, that talks about tithing. I've come to believe tithing isn't just the 10% you give to the church. Tithing is your time, talents and treasures. When I read it with that context in mind, it says, “Tempt me on this one.” God doesn't normally say tempt me on any.
Relationship With God: There's believing faith, there's hope, and there's love. Right now the greatest thing that we have is the love of God to live and share with one another.
The word in different translations is, “Prove me now herewith.” That’s that word. We walk out on that promise and we prove that promise to be true. You may use the word tempting and it may be a different word that people use, but you're proving this to be true. God will open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, and there won't be room enough to receive it. It's a great verse.
You've heard the gates of hell, but rarely do you hear all the treasures of heaven and the heavenly gates. I like coming across that one. It seems to me that losing your parents would be the biggest thing that could happen in your life that changed the course for you. Are there other mountains that you've had to face or is that the one that you know that was the biggest for you?
There’s no question that was the biggest for me. It's not that defined in my life, but it's certainly setting course the action for me of this, “Am I going to play and be the victim my whole life?” We've all had stuff happen to us, good, bad, indifferent or whatever it may be. We can play the role of the victim our whole lives, or I like to call it from victim to victor. To be the victor and overcoming because of what the promises of God are in our lives, we can have that life and have it more abundantly. We can enjoy it. It's not going to be perfect in this life. It's not going to be until we're gathered together and we lived through all of eternity that it's perfect.
In the meantime, we can rejoice in the truth of what we do have. That's why from victim to victor has been the biggest thing for me. It's enabled me to go down the path of not looking at myself, but looking at others and how I can help them. That was a game-changer for me after losing my parents when I was looking inward, miserable and feeling sorry for myself. What changed for me was when I turned my thoughts on my sisters and helping, supporting and encouraging them, and being that big brother for them. That's where it became a different game for me. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I turned around and made it a strength of being passionate and empathizing with other people. That's where I come back to what Jesus Christ talked about, “The greatest leader is the greatest servant.” That's why even in business, I've gotten that route of servant leadership. Ken Blanchard’s books are great stuff.
I’m thinking about what you're working on now. You've talked a little bit about it. What lights you up now? You were passionate about sports when you were younger. What's the second half look like for Gary King?
I put it in two categories. Number one is family. Family means everything to me. It's not just my physical family, but my spiritual family. I've got 4 children and 7 grandchildren. I'm meeting my son’s grandchild for the first time, so it's exciting being with grandkids. Grandchildren are the best anyway. My passion is this family. I talked about the physical family and spiritual family, and even business family. There are people that you built relationships with like me and you. Even though we're brothers in Christ, that initiated and started by being business associates, if you will, and then in the association we are part of. I love that.
The second part of what I am passionate about is that avenue of serving and helping other people. Someone asked me the question one time, how would I define success. I said, “If I can help the people that I manage to be successful, then I'm successful. If I can help the people that I report to be successful, then I'm successful. It's not about me. It's about the people whom I serve, and that goes both ways.” That's what I love about servant leadership. The other part of my passion begins with family.
A big topic these days is work-life balance, and there are a lot of mixed feelings on that statement. How do you look at that equation of work-life balance?
I interviewed someone and I told them this thing, “Do you know how you have to have your work life and you have your personal life, and they're separated?” They're like, “Yeah.” I go, “No, I don't agree with that because as a manager, if I'm managing people, helping them and supporting them, if they have an issue going on in their personal life, it's their personal life and that's theirs. How many things in your personal life don't affect how you're doing your job day by day?” I tell this person, “My concept is this. I welcome you to share with me what's going on in your life. You're not required to and you're certainly not supposed to, but I welcome it because it will help me to understand and empathize what's going on in your life so that I'm better capable of supporting, serving and helping you.”
When I share that with people, they go, “That's great.” They want that kind of relationship, not to micromanage someone, but to certainly help and support them in every way that I can. I happen to work in a giant company that I’m just a number. This company is filled with people that are passionate about caring for other people. That's what makes it extra fun working in a company like that. That passion for caring about others is a big deal.
I remember there was one guy in North Carolina that worked for me that wanted to move to California. Because we had that open conversation dialogue, he brought it up one day, “I'm looking to move there.” He's like, “I know we have an office there, but the cost of living and everything, I don't know if I could do that.” I go, “I know dozens of people. Let me help you find a job there.” He's like, “What? You would do that?” I was like, “Yeah. This company will come and go. Let me help you.” He ended up working for us for another 6 or 8 months, and he crushed it. The rest is history.
The whole work-life balance is such an individual thing. It's different for people. I report to a guy who is what we refer to as dink, dual-income, no kids. His lifestyle and his concept of thinking and working are different. He can work until 9:00 PM or 10:00 at night and enjoy life, but I can't. I've got family that is meaningful. I've got to be able to turn it off and devote myself to my wife, children and grandchildren, and spend that time with them. That's me. I've got to do that. That's my passion and desire.
That work-life balance is different for everybody and that's why it's so important to manage people the most difficult way. The easy way to manage people is you set the rules and everyone abides by the rules. That's the easy way to manage. Square peg in a round hole, it doesn't matter. Everyone's doing it the same way. The most difficult way but the most genuine and caring way is to consider every individual and how it works for them.
Talking about big companies, having faith in sometimes articulating it or showing it can be a sensitive thing with legalities, state, federal, the laws, and everything. I did attend a C12 event if you've heard of that. It's for Christian leaders and they handed out a binder with a lot of the laws that say that you do have more leeway in what you're allowed and not allowed to do. What's your philosophy on having faith in a complex business environment? How do you share that with other people or do you?
There are a lot of one-liners that you could say. There are a lot of things that have to be considered. Jesus Christ when He was tempted that one time said, “Here's a coin. Render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar.” There are things in the business world that it relates to. It's not like I'm going to do something evil but there are things in the world that I will not beat somebody over the head with my Bible in the workspace because it's the truth and it's loving. There's no loving, and there's no truth in that when you're doing it that way. There's a way to show it. You do all things with kindness. You’ve got it right there on the screen right behind you, Chad. There's that pattern of living.
There's that great poem you may have heard that says, “I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day.” That's true. We want to be an example for other people in how we live, speak, communicate and act. People are going to see and read that and they're going to go, “What's that all about? What's behind it?” That's that great verse in 1 Peter that talks about how we're always ready to give an answer to anybody that asks that the reason of the hope that's in you, “Why are you acting that way, Chad?” “Let me tell you.” When that door opens and you have that opportunity to share, there's this element of walking in wisdom. When I was young, I like to say, “When I was young, I was a real whiz at being dumb. As I grew up and put life together, I have wisdom.” There's a little bit of that wisdom factor that comes into play with work and dealing with that stuff.
Here’s the sales-related question for you. If you could wave the proverbial magic wand and change something in your life, what would change everything or is there such a thing that would be like, “That happened,” what is that?
Let me put it this way. When I was considering getting married and I was at that time in my life, I'd already passed my mid-twenties and I'm thinking, “I need to get married. I want to get married. I want to find the right girl.” There has to be the right girl for me. I put my list together. Here are all the things I wanted from a woman. I grew up with six sisters. I had a beautiful and wonderful mother. These are the things I knew I wanted out of a woman. I came down to the point where there was one thing that I could put all together in one. I wanted to find a woman that would help me to get the most eternal rewards. When you think about it, what's all the stuff in life worth here? Nothing.
It's all of eternity that matters and God has promised us eternal rewards for the things we do in love and we staying faithful to His Word. I wanted a woman that was going to help me selfishly get the most eternal rewards because if I had that, then I knew I would be loving her, I'd be treating her as my queen, especially with the last name of King, and this is the pattern of my life. I'm thinking that would be it. What happened though when I found this amazing woman that I'm married to is that the reverse happened. I have helped her to get more eternal reward than she has ever dreamed up because she has to put up with me.
That's outstanding. I had a guy at the firepit named Dr. Jim Wilder, and he is a neurophysiologist. He said that in the Old Testament there are something like 614 simultaneous laws, and you'll tell me if this is incorrect, probably but that’s the number I remember. He said that for a person to make a decision, if there are two choices, you go 2 to the power 614 because there are simultaneous laws you have to consider. That would be all the known neurons in the known universe times 2 and times 3.14, which is pi. It tricked me into saying it's an infinite number of choices.
Because I was starting to write a kid's book about making good choices, he's like, “That's a fool's errand almost.” According to what? In today's world, it’s so complex. He said two things that stuck with me that resonate with what you said. One is the, “What would God do?” This is above my pay grade. All I can do is try to think, if he was looking at me and saying, “Chad, you should do this.” That would be one, but the second that he said that resonated with me more was, “You need to optimize your decision in the here and now for eternity. What's the best potential outcome at the end of time or throughout eternity.” The fact that you caught that in your mid-twenties looking for a wife that would help you and you help her with that mission is amazing.
I’ve got to finish that thought because you built upon that wonderfully well because if it's coming down to changing things, changing one thing, that has the sound of, “I'm going to go down to the altar and everything is going to be perfect.” That's not the way it works. It's a day-to-day story. This is your show, Living a Better Story. It comes down to that verse in Romans 12:2, where it talks about transforming and transfiguring. That's the change like a butterfly. The Greek word metamorphoo is where we get the word metamorphosis, which is the process of transformation. It's not a one-time big change one deal. It's a day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, second-by-second decision that you're making. It’s like you're writing that book about the children. Making the right choices. What are the choices that we make? Our identification that we identify with in making our choices is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's not what would he do? It's what did he do? We have been enabled and empowered. To me, that’s a big change we do every day and every moment of our lives.
Robert White was the one who said this at the event that we had. He said, “You make the best decision that you can make at the time you make it.” Now that I have more information 1 year, 3 months later or 2 years later, you can't go back. You made the right decision at that moment in time based on the cards that were on the table. Getting your arms around that is also important to understand in the best way you can do with what you've got. If you go a few years from now and you say, “Chad, that's been the best three years. I can't believe it,” what would you tell me has happened?
I love doing these exercises in projecting forward and looking back and what would you change now type thing. Projecting forward to say, “What has been so great about the last few years?” I'm at that time in my life where I'm moving toward retirement. I want to be able to position myself and find new ways and other ways to serve, give and help. That's the personal side of that part of it. From the business side, I want to wrap up my career reflecting on the positive impact that I've had on other people with their careers, the company I've been working with, and what new ventures are out there. There are some things that I'm involved with that could change the world. I love looking at this and saying, “The next few years are going to be the greatest years of my life. I'm excited about it.”
I like that transition period. It's like Super Bowl 50. I was like, “That's halfway to 100.” I was there on the eighth row of the Super Bowl 50. What was crazy was that morning, my grandmother passed away, and yet I smiled because I had seen her two weeks prior. She was happy as a clam, playing cards with her friends at the facility, and loving life but it was like, “This is the circle of life.” I'm like, “I'm halfway down the 50-yard line and this is 50 years.” It was all in that one day and you start thinking of what the next nine holes are going to look like, and focusing on the kingdom and eternity. That's the game I'm involved in playing as well like you. It’s cool. You've oozed faith throughout and by being able to recite Bible verses, you do have internet in front of you so I will call that out. We do have that luxury these days so we don't have to memorize these things. It's all accessible to us at any given time. If you were to describe the role of faith in your life, how would you describe it?
One word, everything. At times, it's challenging to be in this world but this is what I remember with regard to faith playing a role in my journey of life. I remembered that I'm only in this world. I'm not of this world. I get to have fun doing this and knowing that there's a lot greater thing that's coming for me and that's our lively hope. That's one thing I've held onto since losing my parents. I know there's a day coming where I'm going to see them again. We're going to be gathered together. It says, “The dead in Christ are going to be raised from the dead and those that are alive and remain are going to be caught up in the air together and will be with the Lord forever.” That’s that vision that faith plays a part of life. There's believing, faith, hope and love. It’s those three. The greatest thing that we have is the love of God, that to live and share with one another but ultimately, that faith that I have that's been a role in my life leads me to our hope, which is forever and ever.
I’m going to ask you a bonus question because this one's important to me personally, and you might have a little bit of a key that you might be able to help unlock. A friend of mine, his mission in this stage of his life is to grow closer to God. He's also said that he believes God created the game of life but that it's all up to us to play. I felt that there's a belief system rooted that says, “I can't talk to him. He made the game. I get it. He built it. He built the mountains but then he said, ‘You guys are on your own.’” That’s what my read is of the way this particular person makes certain statements. If you were to sit across from this person and try to articulate why God is alive, and how you can connect to God, what would you say to Him?
There are choices that people make, and whether or not they choose to believe that God is real, God is there and there to help them both to work and the will to do of His good pleasure, I have this great sense of loss. There's a line in the scriptures that talks about without God and without hope in this world. There are people that do play the game that way. There are a lot of illustrations that people use to describe their life in situations that they're in. I would look for a way to describe a part of the game that maybe he's not getting and that there's a part of the game that's important. Every game has a rulebook. If you don't know the rulebook and you're not playing by the rules, you're going to mess up bad. You're going to miss the game and you're going to lose whatever. There is a rule book for the game of life, and it's called the Bible. It is the word of God, which is the will of God. When you go to the Bible, and you let the Word of God speak for itself, you will learn if you have ears to hear. That’s how you deal with a guy who's got the game of life on his mind.
Some of the things you’ve lived through in life caused you to say, “There are other people generations upon generations before me that lived in those times 2,000 years ago.” When you start digging into it, you're like, “I feel that. I can breathe in exactly what they went through and what they were breathing.” That’s good advice. I knew you would have a good answer.
Thanks for the curveball on that one.
Relationship With God: There is a rule book for the game of life, and it's called the Bible. It is the word of God, which is the will of God.
That wouldn't be a Living a Better Story show without a few curveballs. This has been fabulous. I know our good friend, Kevin Gaither, you probably have followed him a little bit, we met at that first event. Since then, he was the SVP at ZipRecruiter and they went public. Life is good for Kevin and he's been a good friend too. Gary, great to have you on the show. I thank you for sharing everything that you've shared with our audience. We all face difficulties. I talked to another guy who lost his leg from drugs, but he said it was the best thing that ever happened to him in his life. That's because he hit bottom. He's recovered and now he can help a whole lot of other people through those challenges.
Chad, I appreciate and I’m thankful for you. What you're doing with this show is fantastic. You’re helping others in living a better story and living their life for God and his son of Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Great stuff and it's always a pleasure to talk to you. I appreciate the opportunity to be on your show.
It’s great to catch up with you Gary. Gary King at NVIDIA, running an Inside Sales team on the East Coast and bringing God's glory here to planet Earth. Thank you, Gary.
God bless you, Chad.
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About Gary King
I've had the joy of serving in a number of sales organizations, developing people and achieving outstanding results for customers by means of various solutions to achieve optimal performance.
From sales leadership in field sales, inside sales, lead gen/lead development, to global partnerships there are 20+ years of successful sales and sales management experience and skills in selling, directing, and building sales and marketing organizations, executing effective strategies, strong interpersonal communication, high energy, teamwork, inspiring others while holding them accountable, developing new and existing customers along with partner relationships ultimately yielding sales that exceed target growth.
