Transcription
Audacity is not a personality. There is a dimension of audacity that is required for survival. It's a matter of life and death sometimes to be able to speak up for yourself. To be able to say no. I hope you know that not everybody can do that. Be audacious is bad advice to some people. Don't give up. You can do it. See, there are some things some of you are doing, you need to give up immediately. What you are doing will not work.
I saw a vision. The Lord asked me to join your church but I can't do it. What will people say? What will people say? One thing that scares me, I'm both grateful and afraid of it, is that now everyone in my life agrees that I'm doing what God has called me to do. But they didn't always agree. So what if I was a people pleaser?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you've received me with honor, I want you to pale in comparison to how you're about to receive this man. Join me. Welcome Odaci Conference 2026, the one AND ONLY APOSTLE EMMANUEL IRAN. First and foremost, I want to say a big happy birthday to the... Have you Have you sang for him yet?
>> Uh, I want to do the honors. Please stand up. All right, one to go. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. For every life you've touched, for everyone you've discipled and you know helped to have a better experience. We want to say a big thank you. Thank you for giving and for continuing to for for the largeness of your heart and for your sacrifice. We love you and we're rooted for you. Happy birthday. God bless you. Please be seated.
Um, let me say this. One of the reasons I really love is because everything he admires in me, I also see in him. And I dare say even more. There are some things that I was not manifesting and exhibiting at his age. That's that's just a fact. He's incredibly brilliant, incredibly humble, well brought up. I I mean his grandmother and mother are here. You know that, right? And and there are just some key indicators to let you know that someone was well brought up. Um, so I really appreciate you and thank you for this honor. You know, I always show up for you. Even if this conference was holding in London, I would have been there. And yes, I'm giving you ideas. Um, and to all the other guests, his amazing wife, I have to say, you look stunning. They have to give you a session just for this look. You look amazing. Mommy and grandma, you know, I don't know if he has told you. I've told him at least twice that he should buy a medal for you. you know, because I I look at all that you had to go through to produce such a solid man, and you you are you're a hero. Thank you very much, man. Thank you very much, man. All right. And to to Trisha, right? Did I get it right? Thank you. You also look amazing. I'm I'm very glad I tried to dress well today. I would have been in serious trouble. Thank you very much. I can't wait for your session. I think you have a lot to say. Um, my last retreat with my wife, I spent it um at her resorts, Zeba Resort. I'm doing free advert. I think you should check it out. So she she's incredible. Incredible like that.
Okay, so I'm going to gist. And the reason I want to gist is to deliberately remind you that I'm not preaching because because even even the way um invited me, I almost said, "Someone get on the keyboard, let's..." It was it was getting too scary that you know, I was like, "What to do now?" You know? But I want to start with a simple story, a fictional story. And let's call these two guys John and Paul, just for the sake of storytelling. John and Paul have a lot in common. They grew up in the same neighborhood. Their parents are also best of friends. Their parents were law practitioners and they also took that passion, went to law school together, and even began to work together. So at this time, the time that I'm talking about, they they happen to be working on a case together. John is leading the case and Paul is supporting. But they also spend fun times together playing basketball. And so John says to Paul, "See you in court tomorrow." And the next day, John shows up in his Italian suits, well-pressed shirts, and his suitcase. And Paul shows up in his basketball jersey with a basketball and with trainers. Apparently, when they both heard "court," different things came to mind. One of them thought about the courtroom, and then the other one talked um thought about basketball court. And what I'm trying to say is this. One of the things I've learned to do when I'm trying to convince people about anything is to first establish the definition of the terms. Because many times when people fail to agree, it is usually because they are thinking about different things. Especially in 2026, when we have different definitions for the same thing. It's very important that off the jump, we try to make sure that we are imagining the same thing before we move on.
You know, I'll give you a seemingly unrelated example, the example of alpha male. Um, in many podcasts, when you hear alpha male, you think of someone who is muscular, rude, brash, and something like that. But the terminology they try to borrow the concept from observing dogs and observing wolves. And when you look at the pack, you see something different in every pack. There is there is usually a dog or a wolf that is confrontational, the first to attack, the loudest. And for many people who don't really understand dog behaviors, they think that that's the leader of the pack. That's the alpha because he's loud and confrontational. But when you study carefully, the real alpha actually doesn't really talk much. And when it's time to act, he just shows up with a lot of confidence, and everybody knows who the leader is. But that's not even what I want to really drive at. Many people bring the alpha concept into the dynamics of relationship and disappoint, very disappointing that they do so because they use that to try to subjugate women. I'm headed somewhere. Just follow me. And to be unkind to women. But again, the reason why in the animal world, any animal is referred to as the alpha is because when any predator comes, he knows the onus is on him to defend the entire pack, even if it was it was going to cost him his life. So the alpha is not somebody who is just looking for free privileges for no other reason but because he's the leader and more muscular and maybe brings food and puts it on the table. It's a sacrificial role. I think that the biblical definition of leadership holds sway here, that anyone who will be great amongst you should be your servant. Come on. Are you getting what I'm saying?
And I said all of that to say this. When you think of audacity, it's the same thing that applies. There is a picture that you have. Maybe to be audacious, you have to be confrontational or even fearless. Many audacious people have just learned to manage their fears and to do things afraid. Come on. Are you getting what I'm saying? So what I want to first do is to bring it within your realm of comprehension and reach, to let you know that it's something that you also can achieve in your own context. You know, speaking about alphas, just imagine if the social construct is right, you wouldn't see someone as someone like Mark Zuckerberg as an alpha. But guess what? If such a person walks into any room filled with guys, a lot of people will defer to him. Guys, am I saying the truth? So it just tells you that there is more to that label than meets the eye. And the same thing, there is a lot more to audacity that I want to highlight. I I want to try my best to simplify it before I build on any foundation. And so I want to approach it this way. The things that people get wrong about audacity. And the first thing is this. Audacity is not a personality. Subconsciously, when a lot of people talk about audacity, they are referring to a personality, a personal trait, a personality trait. And psychologists have put all human behavior under five brackets. And to help us remember, they've used the acronym OCEAN. All right? O for openness, C for conscientiousness. You probably can pronounce that better than me, but to be sure you're following, what is O? Or you can call it open to experience, just so you remember what it's about. Now, the E is for extraversion. So when you talk about someone who is extroverted or an extrovert, extroversion, all right, the E is for extroversion, and that just refers to someone who is socially energetic, who will come into a place like this and before he sits down, has greeted 15 people. If you are introverted and you have a friend like that, it can be the most stressful thing because when you enter a place like this, you just want to sit in your corner, you know, and mind your business. But such a person is drawing a lot of attention to you, and you hate it, don't you? After the conference, you just want to go home, but the person is is always filled with activities. There's still so much to do all the time. I'm headed somewhere. The A is for agreeable. There are some people who are just agreeable. The the the the pros is that they are empathetic and cooperative. And there are a few cons, and I'll come to that. And N is for neurotic individuals. Neurotic individuals. Now, the O and the C. Someone said these are usually key predictors of success in life. The people who fall under that bracket will usually be successful in life because when you are adventurous, open to learning, open to new challenges, invariably, you see, life just has a way of caving in eventually. If you keep keep at it, if you keep coming, if you're tenacious, no matter how difficult life is, if you are consistent, you're going to have some success in life, at least at some things. And conscientious people, they are the people who know how to stick to a deadline. They're consistent. They're the kind of people who have it ingrained in their consciousness. Exam is in 3 months, and they start preparing. So they know how to stick to deadlines. They're consistent. They like order. So those kind of people will have a lot of success in their life because they will have a lot of order and consistency in their life. These, you can argue, are traits of boldness and audacity in some shape or form. It also takes a lot of audacity to be under the bracket of extroversion. It takes audacity to come to a place like this and to talk to people you've never seen before. Come on. Are you getting what I'm saying? So, I'm saying that when we talk about audacity, there are some people who are naturally wired that way. And what will make us better as individuals is that number one, we appreciate the wiring that God automatically instilled in us, but also we are able to go to the extra mile to know what our destiny requires and to make necessary adjustments. And this is what I'm saying. Beyond the personality, there is a dimension of audacity that is required for survival. No matter your personality types, there are just some things that you must learn and learn early in life. It's a matter of life and death sometimes to be able to speak up for yourself, to be able to say no. I hope you know that not everybody can do that. This is the reason why there are people in abusive relationships that somehow stay. I know there are a lot of psychological explanations for it, Stockholm syndrome or whatever it is, but believe you me, some people just haven't learned to stand up for themselves, speak up for themselves. It takes audacity to end a relationship that is not working. So now, I'm not talking about... See, before we talk about being a success in life on account of audacity, let's talk about survival. You're going to need this one. It's going to take audacity to learn to not be agreeable all the time, that people can just infringe on your personal space, infringe on your personal time, just tell you, "Oh, let's go to this place," and even if you didn't plan to go there, you find yourself there. You're going to get into a lot of trouble if that is you.
And there are a lot of benefits to the way an African child is trained. I think that there are a lot of African cultures that if Europe should copy, Europe will be a better place. For instance, just one concept, this is not in my note, but I think it's worth saying. The concept of um is from heaven. If you've if you're married and you've had children, you know the stress, postpartum depression, and all those things that you struggle with, just to have somebody to carry your child for a while whilst you sleep, just to catch a break, and someone trustworthy, someone as experienced as your mom. You know that if you survived, your child will be okay. You get what I'm saying? If you put that dynamic into many European marriages, the divorce rate will reduce. I'm telling you. So there are a lot of things we get right, and there are also a lot of things we get wrong. We are so big on disrespect, I mean, big on respect that to avoid disrespect, we end up silencing the voice of young people. Don't ask too many questions. Don't ever challenge me. I think that one of the ways to train children to be a success in life, give them the opportunity to ask questions. In fact, one of the things I've decided to do once my children get to the age of 12, and I learned this from a popular psychologist, once in a while, I will sit with them and I will make an argument, and they must disagree, just for fun. I want them to get comfortable with it because there are not so many people who know how to disagree, and it's not just is it a fundamental human right? It is necessary for survival. Come on. Are you getting what I'm saying? Now, this is important, just to say I don't agree with that. It's important. It's important for your peace. It's important for your sanity. The audacity to say, you know, "All my friends are doing this, but I know it's it's not going to work for me, so I'm not going to do that." Now, that's audacity. Before we talk about setting up Fortune 500 companies, let's talk about survivor.
And this one, you need... One thing that shocks me, for instance, and I promise you, almost every week I hear someone talk like this. "I saw a vision. The Lord asked me to join your church but I can't do it. What will people say? What will people say?" Now, let me tell you something, and it works vice versa, sir, even for our church. If you have a conviction to leave, leave. One thing you must decide early is that you will not sacrifice your destiny to please people. It's it's a it's a very important point right there. Even people who love you can be wrong. You know, I was 7 years ago, there were some things I could say in church and talk about my family with my full chest, just for the sake of illustration. That's a little different now because parents on both sides attend our church. So I have to be very careful. Now, I was preaching somewhere. It was an online service. So I thought I could get away with it. I forgot that my dad always streams. And I talked about something. I had received a vision right from when I was on campus to do what I'm doing now. And one of the things that it entailed was printing devotionals. All right? So I had printed some devotionals. And my dad came into the house. I was on break from school, and he saw some of the devotionals on the table and he said, "Well, nice. This is really nice, but make sure this doesn't make sure this hobby doesn't affect your studies." Oh, and the visionary part of me wanted to scream, but self-control and home training. So I said, "Sir, this is not a hobby. This is what I'm going to do with my life." It takes audacity to have your parents pay through their nose for you to get through school, a private university, and to be sure that your life is taking a different direction. Now, listen. One thing that scares me, I'm both grateful and afraid of it, is that now everyone in my life agrees that I'm doing what God has called me to do. But they didn't always agree. So what if I was a people pleaser? Come on. Are you getting what I'm saying? What if I was a people pleaser? I would have thrown away my entire destiny. And so I'm letting you know that it will take audacity. Some of you, the reason why you saw the person that you knew you were supposed to spend the rest of your life with, and that didn't work, is because you had not learned to speak up. It takes audacity.
So now, I'm talking about how simple audacity can change the course of your life forever. Maybe the friend you came here with doesn't know that you didn't pay for a ticket because, I mean, I'm trying to help you now. There she is thinking that you just believe in her career future. That's why you brought her, paid for her, so that her mind can be open. See, ma, he likes you. Now I've set the ball rolling, my friend.
>> As soon as I'm done, look at that and say, "Listen, don't ever call me brother again. I I in case you're confused, I actually like you a lot."
>> You're welcome. I will give you one more example. And now, the moment I say this, nobody that attends my church can cash in on this again. But I always wondered about this. The people who ask the most favors are the people I owe very little. I mean, there are people in church who believed in this in this vision, in our vision, when there was very little to believe in, served in the choir. We couldn't even give them transport fare, you know, made a lot of sacrifices, maybe in the protocol or in different departments, but constantly the people who come and say, "Um, we want to use your hall for a program," or "We want to feature you on a song," or "We want to use um your studio to record a song." There are very few times are those people the people that I really want to reward. I don't know why. Because many of us, there are people in our lives that God has put there to make life easy for us. But we have been taught not to inconvenience people. We have been taught not to inconvenience people. And there are some people that if you would only ask, they'll say yes. I'll tell you another example. I was driving out of my house 2 days ago, and there's somebody who stays with us. She initially came to be helping us with chores and all of that, but you know the way my house is, somehow everyone is a child. You know, everyone that crosses our path, and so we've been good to her, and we we see her that way. Now, she started a business on the side. She sells earrings, you know, neck pieces, and all of that. And every once in a while, when we have visitors at home, my wife will say, "By the way, this lady sells neck pieces," and my guests will say, "Bring it." And so they bring, she brings it down, puts it on the table, and they will usually buy all, many times because of us, just to let us know that we care about I mean, they care about us and whoever we recommend. And that had been going on. But there was something she never did, and it it just it, I mean, I just wondered. I see her page online. I see the views. I see the likes, quite low. And as I was driving driving out, just two days ago, I wound down and I said, "Did it ever occur to you that you can ask my wife to do an ad for you? You're like a daughter." As soon as I said that, the first thing that filled her heart was fear. She couldn't bring herself to ask. And even I, the head of the family, is suggesting, and you're still afraid. Are you getting what I'm saying?
So listen, before we talk about being so brave as to achieve things that only the 1% of people in the world have achieved, I I'm just talking about simple survival. The ones that you must learn that as the man of the house, you must see, you must stand up for your family. Someone did a research interviewing serial abusers of children, and they said, "What do you look out for to know the children to abuse?" They said, "We look to see if they have a present, strong male figure in their life." If we look at the dad and we know that he's present, he's strong, he doesn't joke with his children, we stay clear, we look for easier targets. So now, that's an aspect of audacity that I care about more, and that you should care about more. The soft skill of audacity, it is not a personality. There's an aspect to this that every one of us can imbibe. I almost said, "Say a loud amen."
The second thing I want to talk about is that audacity is dangerous without direction. I want to illustrate that by showing you a very short video. I don't know if the media team is ready. Now, if you have seen this video before, please allow people who are seeing it for the first time to enjoy it. Deal? All right. Please don't eat into my time. Show the video as quickly as possible. All right. Relay race. Yellow house has the advantage by a mile. The race is already won. Look at that. Look at the gap. And now it's about time to hand over the button to the last leg, the final leg. The victory is already concluded. Look at that. I know I wish I wish the audio was on. You should have heard the coach's response. Go check Jesus, you know, and they were calling him, "You're running the wrong direction." He was too focused to hear. Guess what, my friends? What you watched is also audacity. And you see the problem with generic motivation is that it offers the same drug to everyone. "Be audacious" is bad advice to some people. "Don't give up. You can do it." See, there are some things some of you are doing, you need to give up immediately. What you're doing will not work. And so before we talk about what you should be audacious about, we need to talk about the context. What what is your context? What are you trying to be bold about? And maybe you should quit being bold. Find what is actually working. You see, when you go to a driving school, one of the first things they teach you is how to step on the brake. It is foundational. Before you can be trusted with speed, you must learn how to stop. And so that's another aspect of audacity. You don't just tell everyone you can do it. It sounds good, but part of intelligence is knowing your limits. You can't do everything. There are some things you can't do. You may have fantasies about it, but you can't do it. I don't really have enough time to talk about this, but I just want to establish audacity means nothing without direction.
And then the third thing I want to talk about is the fact that a lot of people build audacity the wrong way. They build audacity audacity with motivation. And a better way to build audacity is to build it as a skill. Build audacity as a skill. There is something called muscle memory in sports, and this is how it works. You've heard the illustration before, how that Michael Jordan practiced shooting 500 shots every day. 500 shots with consistency and repetition. You develop what is called muscle memory. Your body and um your neurological system just knows how much force, how much release is necessary to get the results that you require. And so when in crunch time, fate of the universe on the line, just few seconds for the game to end, Steph Curry has the ball, he has the opportunity to either pass or to dribble two people and make the shots. If he does that, you may call that audacity. It's not audacity. It's skill. There is a type of audacity that is permissible because you've developed muscle memory. You've done it again and again and again. So you are you see, you can trust your instinct to act on impulse. Not everybody can do that. But what people would rather do is maybe listen to somebody just rile you up and say, "You can do it, you can do it," and things that you have not trained for. There are a lot of people starting businesses that they have not trained for, attempting things that they have not trained for. So maybe an aspect of audacity is actually sitting down, rehearsing again and again. So when you have developed core competencies, then you can now be audacious in the core competence. It is only when you have established these three things that I can now say you have direction, you have skill, and then you've even developed the the soft skills because listen, you can be great in business and horrible in your family.
And then the final thing I want to say before I drop the microphone is this. And of course, you should be expecting it as a preacher, I'm going to quote from the Bible. The Bible tells us about the widow. She came to the prophet and said her husband died, left debts behind. Now the debtors want to come and collect her sons and subject them to servitude. She's asking for help. And then the prophet tells her prophetically, "Go borrow vessels. Borrow not a few." And the single jar of oil that you have, pour them into all the vessels. Now, the instruction is "borrow not a a few," but the prophetic instruction did not give any specificity to the exact amount of vessels. Now, it is to the extent of your faith. And so where the vessels cease is where the oil will cease. What I want to establish is this. Even when you get your destiny right, there is still mileage in that destiny. You still determine the extent of your success in that destiny. I refer to it like a rubber band. If you don't stretch it, it is still a rubber band. But you can stretch it. There is more. Even in that destiny. And so what I discovered is this. Nine out of 10 people live below their potential. Nine out of 10 people. Because even the things, even in the areas where you are succeeding, there is usually more. And where the vessels cease, the miracles cease. So it takes audacity to learn to take more. All right? You know, I I saw a trending song that said, "I will cut my coat bigger than my size this year." Some of you that I think you should do. See, one thing that helped me is to try things that I thought will kill me. Don't worry if you don't understand what I just said. And usually, when I did it, I discovered I didn't die. And it always becomes a stepping stone to a new level. Any audacious move that you pass off will have implications in your future because when you eventually face Goliath, if you skipped the opportunity to face a lion and a bear, nobody's going to let you fight fight Goliath. So all I want to say is this. Number one, beyond your personality type, go out of your comfort zone. Build the soft skills that you need for survival and to have a successful passage in life. Learn to stop what needs to be stopped. It's also audacity to acknowledge what is not working and to shut it down. All right? And then you also need the ability to gain traction and direction in your life and to build the skill that you need to step into the next level with consistency and with repetition. And I'll see you at the top. Thank you very much.