Entrepreneurs are deeply rooted in data and research.

And one of the best Christian sources for what’s going on in the world is the Barna Group.

On today’s podcast, we’re talking with Barna’s President David Kinnaman about what it means for us to understand the times.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey there. And welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today’s guest, David Kinnaman, has been an incredible leader and a researcher in the church for decades. He’s the CEO of the Barna Group, a researching and communication organization that helps Christians understand the times and then know what to do. In this episode, he joins us to talk about how the church has changed drastically in recent years and how entrepreneurs find themselves in a very unique position to actually help. It’s a great episode. Let’s just dive right in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the faith driven entrepreneur. I am here with my buddies Rusty and William. Rusty, William. Greetings.

Rusty Rueff: Hey, Henry. Howdy.

William Norvell: Good day

Henry Kaestner: Indeed. So we are a couple of days removed from the watch party, and just super cool to hear the stories coming in from around the world of those that dialed in. I think probably the best two and a half hours of content that we’ve had thus far. And David Kinnaman is not a stranger to thinking really deeply about what’s going on in the church. I found out about him maybe later than many, but maybe before, we wrote the book in 2007 on Christian. He’s done work on looking at people in the marketplace. He, for one, found out that faith driven entrepreneurs tend not to be able to hold a tune as well as other Christians, but we tend to be 20% better looking than other Christians. And that’s all work that David has done with his team. And David is awesome to have you on. And I just there’s so many different ideas we’re going to ask a little bit about. And obviously I made up those statistics, but we are going to ask you.

David Kinnaman: I think it is accurate. So I think it’s good.

Henry Kaestner: At least with this group, right? At least with us. Okay. So we’re going to talk about the work that you have done, and that’s going to be the meat of what we do, because you’ve been very, very thoughtful about this space, and yet you represent a different type of entrepreneur than we’ve ever interviewed before. And I want you to just walk us through the story a little bit and what this has meant. You are an entrepreneur in an organization that does not bear your name. You’re standing on the shoulders of somebody else, and yet you have and everybody knows you and knows the work that you done have absolutely left your imprint on it. And this organization has become yours. It’s your reflections about what’s going on in the body of Christ right now. So it is very much your organization and everybody just absolutely they think. Barna and they think David Kinnaman And yet it wasn’t always that way. So how are you able to take over from an entrepreneur and instead of a race in his name off the door and putting years on able to work off of that legacy and yet very much make it your own because it is very much your own. Talk about that a little.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, Thanks a lot for the set up on that. And it’s fun to reflect back on all the ways that God has taken me from, you know, an intern here at this company and then the vice president and then George Barna, who is the founder of the company, named me president a couple of years before I acquired the business from him. And yeah, it’s a fun and somewhat circuitous path. I didn’t expect to be the leader of Barna. I actually thought I’d be a pastor. My dad was a very effective pastor in the Phoenix, Arizona area, and I went to school, majored in psychology, figured I’d go to seminary, and when I got a job at Barna straight out of university, I actually thought, Great, this will just be two, three years, four years, maybe max, and then I’ll go back into ministry. But the Lord has had this as a mission driven business for me to work at. It’s a for profit company. And, you know, it wasn’t easy. There were times where I wanted to quit, times where I, I think George and others around the team wanted to fire me. I sort of made it through some of the gauntlet of the early years. And then it’s a pretty small company, but a really well-known brand. And more than nine out of ten Christian leaders, faith leaders know a Barna and many, many millions of Americans, especially evangelicals and other Christians, know of Barna. And I had to do a lot of soul searching. Some of my friends and advisors said, Oh, you just go start your own thing. And others. Few people said I should rename it the Kinnaman company. But I was very clear that this was a great brand. It was sort of a brand in search of a business model because founders like George did a great job of establishing a clear brand presence, but not really an economic engine per se. That wasn’t just a sort of like a partner, junior partner model. And so it’s been a lot of fun. Boy, we’ve really taken hits in different ways during different seasons. Trying to tell people the truth through the research has not always been easy, but it has been a lot of fun. And I think I had a really realized that I was a really good second generation leader. I could take this on and really take it into some new places and build on the great work that George and his wife Nancy had done. But acquiring the business as some of the entrepreneurs who are listening will know acquiring a business from a founder is a little bit like buying one of their children, except they love their business more. And so we had some interesting negotiations, all in good faith and good spirits. But there were some interesting times in that path for sort of being a protege to taking on the business. And some of those transitions of leadership weren’t easy, but George did a fantastic job almost at every turn and really appreciate his counsel through those years.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, So you’re very gracious with all of that. And George was a great partner and that said some really complimentary things. And yet I want to actually push in that a little bit. Some number of the people that are listening right now can identify with you and some number can identify with George and that they’re older. They want to hand off to the next person. They want to do that. And yet they’re hearing like, how do I love my business more of my love, my kids, That can’t be true. And then they just really think about the heart and they’re like, Oh my goodness, maybe I would have a real problem letting go of my business. So. You’ve been very gracious about George, but maybe to talk from your specific experience or then just generally what some counsel you’d give to somebody that’s thinking about handling the business after their protege. Well.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, Well, I think some of the things we learned to that was I had to learn sort of how to think about the business. I mean, it was a real education for me. You know, in some ways, actually, I was trying to negotiate for just a minority position in the business to try to help him transition. And I actually would say that I believe God had me buy 80% of the company or none of the company. In other words, I was sort of like, hey, could I get ten, 20% over a period of time? And I would be a minority stakeholder. And I actually don’t think that would have worked because there was a reason why there was almost like a mantle of leadership, at least for this business, because of the way it actually works as a sort of a public brand and a, you know, sort of as you sort of said in the intro, How do you interpret the day? How do you think about the data? What does it mean? And actually, George Barna, it took him a few years to say this in this clear way, but we had lunch maybe five years after the transition has been 14 years now since I bought the business from him. And it’s been a lot, like I said, a really interesting road. And, you know, we’ve grown significantly since I purchased the business and it’s been a real pleasure. And you know, all those lessons you learn about what to do, what not to do and how do you keep business from going into the ditch. But about five years after I bought the business, he said, you know, I was realizing that pastors and leaders and some of our audience was responding to you, David, as they had to me in the past. And I felt like for the company to move forward, it needed a new voice. And that was, I think, really, really significant. And and again, I think we both did some things that were not great. I mean, I think there was moments where I felt like a young leader sort of ready to take over, you know, for him. And it took us almost two years to really figure that out. And it almost died on the vine because the transition took too long as I was negotiating for the business. But one of the best things that he did was he really stepped off the stage of Barna. He’s been very active in other things. He still has written and been engaged in other organizations, but he did a good job of not offering suggestions, critiques, advice. If anything, there were times where say, Hey, give me a little more input, but I was having to learn to trust my own instincts in that time and not sort of trust, you know, going back to my mentor for, you know, well, what would you do? And right away was like the first time I had to make payroll after the transition was like, Oh, wow, the weight of the responsibility of the business. And then it felt pretty heavy. It felt like, wow, this is something. And and then because of the work we do, it’s such a privilege. We consider it the tribe of Issachar in the pages of Scripture First chronicles 12:32 people who understood the times and knew what the people of God should do. And we sort of draw inspiration from that mission statement, from that verse. And I have felt that burden as well. And I’ve been doing a better and better through the number of years of sharing that load with others on my team and advisors and prayer partners. But this notion of how do we sort of provide eyes and ears to leaders, to entrepreneurs, to Christian leaders, and how do we do so in a way that reflects God’s intent and an accurate reflection of what’s really happening in our society? And, you know, you want your researchers to have good data and also good instincts to ask the right questions and to give really solid advice and input about what it means. So we learned so many lessons and boy, it’s a privilege. And again, I really appreciate your kind words about all that. It has been a really fun, fun season and looking back on now, you know, like it is funny because sometimes people would introduce me at sporting events as David Barna, and so that’s all fine by me. But yeah, it’s been fun. And now I’m actually in a season of life where the business is going well. It’s, you know, businesses are fragile and there’s always ups and downs, but we’re in a season now where we’re really picturing some new it’s a car related businesses that can be connected to Barna and orbit Barna and support Barna and do some new things. So we’re excited about that as well as we sort of imagine what God’s calling us to do next.

Henry Kaestner: And it’s awesome. Okay, so Rusty and William are going to ask you some questions about how the work that you’ve been doing and that you might be thinking about doing are going to impact what we as entrepreneurs look at in the marketplace. But before we do that, give us a fly over some of the trends that you’ve seen in the church over the last ten years that may or may not have anything to do with faith driven entrepreneurship but impact us as believers more broadly.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, well, I think it’s sort of the best of times. It is the worst of times for Christians in the United States and in some ways around the world. If you look just at the United States, there has been significant downward pressure over the last number of decades on Christianity. Christian identification, a big, big story in there is the faith journey of millennials and Generation Z, and there really their disaffection with faith. And so the best of times, the worst of times in some ways, that idea that Christianity is in steady decline is true. There are all sorts of ways in which skepticism towards organized religion and faith and Christianity are, you know, continue their sort of steady march. And at the same time, there is signs of hope. And so we actually see in the data, for example, like a rise of spiritual openness and 44% of Americans, nearly half say that they’re more open to God today than they were before the pandemic. That just last October was the data point for that. So those are two plus almost three years out from the pandemic, and 44% say that’s true. Three out of four Americans say they believe in a god or higher power. Nearly six out of ten say they’re Christian. So there’s a lot of kind of vitality to faith and Christianity and sort of at the same time, younger Christians are dealing with a much more skeptical generation. So I describe, you know, our current context as digital Babylon, where the algorithm is disciple, where we get so much content through our screens, through the smartphones that are in our pockets. And that’s really making it more difficult for people to be discipled in the way of Jesus because we’re just inundated with so many other competing stories and just ways of thinking about what is real and what is true. And at the same time, we’ve really one of my critiques of local churches is that we’ve sort of watered down discipleship to be a sort of a generalized thing where we want you to come to church on Sunday. We want you to believe most of the good stuff of Christian orthodoxy, but we actually don’t disciple people in their vocation and who they’re meant to be in the world. We can talk a little bit about that. But as an example, I think a lot of young entrepreneurs lose their faith because Christianity, as they see it through the local church, doesn’t seem to inspire them on that vocational journey, like God has made them to be different than what they sort of see as the leadership around them. That’s actually been sort of my stories. Like I actually realized that I’m I have a pastoral kind of an apostolic calling, but I’m an entrepreneur in that way. And, you know, again, the church has done many, many good things by me, but it really hasn’t known what to do with me as an entrepreneur, and it doesn’t really know what to do with entrepreneurs generally and the next generation of entrepreneurs especially. So I think those are some of our concerns as we sort of try to help, you know, reconnect those visions between entrepreneurship and Christian expression.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I think it’s fascinating. I mean, I see it right? We live in Silicon Valley, you know, we know enough faith driven entrepreneurs and their relationships with their church and their pastors. And it’s really hard. I mean, I’m very fortunate because I have a longstanding relationship with my pastor. We just finished a book together that we wrote, took us eight years to do it, but we don’t always speak the same language and we’ve learned from each other. And I think it’s tough as an entrepreneur because you think, you know, we were kind of taught, let’s go disrupt, let’s go innovate, let’s make this better. Right? And, you know, that may not be the fertile ground. You know, the church is not the place to go do that. The churches, yes, we should innovate, but maybe we shouldn’t disrupt. Maybe there’s a different way of getting that. And on a flip side, you know, a pastor has got to understand that, you know, there’s this tendency that that tension that they’re always working with when they’re going, come on, make it bigger, better, faster. I have a question for you as it relates to, you know, the power of research to the churches. I’m reading through right now the letters that Paul wrote to the churches. And basically he was the research. Right. So, you know, I have a feeling that, you know, what he picked up from the church in Corinth and the Corinthians, he carried some of that over to the Galatians, then he carried it over to the Ephesians. You know, look, if I’m seeing immorality here, you’re probably doing it there. And so he was a bit of the trend guy that carried one thing to the other receptivity of the church as it relates to trends and research and points, especially when it pushes them in a direction that they may not want to go to. How do you deal with that? Is that real, that this sort of reticence, you know, and just how open is the church to looking at real data and research to say, yeah, this should shape my vision?

David Kinnaman: Yeah, I mean, it’s a great question and I think it’s a mixed set of results that I see through nearly 30 years now, being a researcher and working, you know, to try to equip people with good data. First, I think God likes research so much. He’s got a whole book called Numbers in the Scriptures. And there’s also a number of places, as you sort of say, I think there’s a lot of great insights in the Scriptures about how God actually wants us to be, you know, to have eyes and ears, to listen to what the spirit is saying. In fact, that is our best source of data is God’s voice in our midst and in our leadership and how we respond to the data around us. And, you know, there’s a great example in the book of Numbers where, you know, Moses sends out the spies. And if you go back and read that section, pretty sure it is numbers 13, there’s basically a market research study. Moses commissions them to go figure out, you know, what’s the land like, What are the cities fortified or not? You know, what’s the condition of the crops? Tell us about the people and the inhabitants. It’s a demographic study. And again, there are many, many other examples, I think in Scripture Paul being a good one of sort of, you know, has his finger on the pulse of these early Christian communities of the franchise, so to speak, of those early Christian communities. And I’m convinced that for all of us as leaders and this is I think in some ways the measure of our faithfulness in life is the degree to which we’re willing to listen and respond to what God is putting in front of us. And the psychology of data and the psychology of research has been a fascinating one, as I’ve seen leaders respond well to research. It’s so fascinating. You know, when we do a bit of work and it really confirms some things that people are feeling. I mean, Henry mentioned this book earlier. UnChristian were originally titled that the brand of Christianity, where we’re looking at the negative perceptions of Christians among young non-Christians. And it really, I think, helped to confirm a lot of the reasons why for those of us at that time in our season, we’re recognizing that the church was viewed as against things and known for all the things that it was against rather than the things it was for. And so that research was very confirmatory to our experience, and that was interesting to see how as that just as one example, how when people began to react to that data, if it didn’t confirm their experiences, they went to this question of, well, how big was your sample size? How’d you ask the questions? This can’t be true. How old are you guys anyway? Barna can’t be trusted. And it was very interesting how the psychology of the confirmation bias, I think, works. One good example of that, actually, I think, is that a lot of Christian leaders should be very careful about describing their communities as sort of vastly unchurched. I mean, sometimes you’ll hear only 2% of people are attending church in our community. And most of those numbers, at least in North America, are greatly exaggerated. The percentage of Americans who are Christians, the percentage of Americans who are churchgoers, is still a massive amount. Tens of millions of people in our country are still committed Christians, and we should take advantage of this open window of opportunity. And we should be very careful, I think, not to sort of describe the reality around us with these sort of, you know, doom and gloom perspectives, because I think it actually if we’re being honest, sometimes we do that because it helps us sort of tell a good story and kind of talk about our mission. And, you know, we’re pushing back the darkness and it’s only, you know, 2% of the people in our church, in our community. And again, we just need to be very accurate and not just like by the numbers. There has to be, I think, real sense that we’re driven by a godly view of what is real. And I love Jim Collins talks about the Stockdale paradox in his book Good to Great. And it’s accepting the brutal reality of our present condition, for example, with Gen Z and young people, I think their way out of sync with what the church is doing and it’s partly on them and the church is way out of sync with what I think is happening in the lives of Gen Z. In other words, I actually think the church is woefully unprepared for Gen Z. Many of our workplaces, we’re not actually really prepared for the kinds of questions and engagement that I think this generation wants ask of us, rightly or wrongly. And so we have to be really clear on the brutal reality of what’s true. And then at the same time, we have to have hope and Stockdale was a prisoner of war. And so he had to accept the brutal reality of his imprisonment. But he also had hope and was eventually released from prison. I think that’s true for us as Christian leaders and as Christian entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur, you know that when you’re at your best, you’re taking a really good, clear, hardheaded look at the numbers, at what’s working, what’s not working. And the best business leaders, you know, they make better decisions because they’re more able to both hold some picture of a preferable future. Henry has got 100 million entrepreneurs around the world. He’s trying to reach. I think that’s a beautiful picture. You know, this big vision you have. And then at the same time, you know, we were like, okay, well, what’s the truth about our current condition as a business? And the better we can be clear about that, I think the better God can use us in faithfulness and fruitfulness.

Rusty Rueff: And that’s really good. I know Henry’s got a question. I’m gonna let him jump in here, but I know you couldn’t. Nobody could have predicted what we went through with the pandemic, But, you know, just the seismic shift of church, right? That we all stepped away for a time frame. And as best I could see, it just hasn’t come back yet, you know? And church isn’t alone. You know, any place where people have to gather whether it’s performing arts or anything like that. What do you tell pastors right now from the trends you’re seeing and what you’re, you know, feeling in the water? You know, give them some hope here?

David Kinnaman: Well, first of all, I think we talked about sort of general trends. Pastors really are overwhelmed and a huge percentage of them considered quitting Two out of every five as of our last tracking said that they had given real and serious consideration to quitting in the last year. And a lot of that was because of their, you know, their have been spiritual frontline workers. So first, to give you hope, it’s like you’re not alone in feeling pretty overwhelmed. I know a lot of us as entrepreneurs feel that way, too. So any leader who’s had to respond to the massive amount of change, especially if you’re in the people convening business, if you’re in hospitality or theater going or concert going or live events, you know, travel has come mostly back. And in some places there’s pent up demand for travel, etc.. But churches have faced a pretty tough time and pastors and leaders have as well. They’re I actually think we’re we’re really at a ripe time for partnership between clergy and entrepreneurs, because clergy, more than ever, are admitting in our research that they are open to new models. They actually are saying, give us some new ideas. What could this look like? We realize that our discipleship efforts aren’t quite cutting it in the way we thought they were, like the pandemic sort of peeled back the layers and said, Oh, I guess people weren’t as into us as we thought. And I actually think that entrepreneurs are open to thinking about some new ways. And I do want to say that, you know, it’s true that the gap between leading a nonprofit or leading a church I’m on the board of a Christian university, and like a lot of these business men and women on the board, they’re like, Come on, just do this faster. Come on, be more entrepreneurial. And there’s reasons why leading an institution of higher education, for example, it is different. You can be entrepreneurial within that setting, but it’s different than leading an entrepreneurial organization and in a for profit place. But I do think there’s some opportunities for real partnership that the church would be healthier for doing and that we need, for example, a participant oriented church, that we need to create and facilitate and grow participants in gospel mission, not just consumers of Christian content. And if we’re being honest, a lot of pastors have actually been doing that because we’re really good at it. And it turns out that just creating consumers of Christian content doesn’t disciple people and doesn’t disciple entrepreneurs. And, you know, you don’t just give content to your young protege entrepreneurs. You’ve got to mentor them you got to shape and you got to like be in the trenches of business to shape them. And I think we’re seeing some really good opportunities for some new expressions of church and effective models of ministry and partnership between clergy and entrepreneurs and some really cool way. So I’m actually very encouraged about our current moment and sort of the hunger that we have for new models and more deeply a hunger for God.

William Norvell: That’s amazing. That’s really interesting, David, to think about. I’m going to ask you to go deeper on one of those. You give us some hope. Like there were some bad things. The church doesn’t get entrepreneurs. They never have. It’s a tough journey. But then you said some new models, like what’s working? What have you seen that’s interesting to bring entrepreneurs alongside their pastor, to bring entrepreneurs deeper into the the obviously what we know beautiful and amazing work that God has given to the local church. Where can people that maybe feel lost go to their church and say, hey, I’ve heard this is where I’m supposed to help,.

David Kinnaman: Right? Well.

William Norvell: Can I help here.

David Kinnaman: First of all, I think I want to acknowledge sort of the brutal reality of our present condition, which is it’s hard to change a Sunday morning oriented gathering business into a different kind of model. So first, we do need some new models, and I think there are some that are popping up. And at its best, I mean, local churches are doing really good. I mean, they pivoted really well during COVID. I think the church is stronger today because of their embracing certain modes of digital expression. I’m a fan of people going to church in person, but I also think the church is stronger if we acknowledge that there’s also a very vital part of our digital expression a digital church and online, and not just because we could sort of like, you know, stand in our pjs and watch the church service. But because it actually, you know, as I travel, you know, I’m able to like, stay up to date with our local church and, you know, like there’s really good things that happen from our church being digitally enabled. In fact, even before the pandemic, a lot of millennials and Gen Z were doing a kind of worship shifting. I mean, they’re taking in a lot more spiritual content than is available just on that Sunday morning. So I think the church is number one. It’s alive and well. There are tens of millions of Christians in this society. There seems to be some really cool moves of the Lord and student populations around the country. That’s a really great, great sign of spiritual vitality and resurgence. I think people are open to some new questions and new models of what it means to build disciples and to grow people in their faith. I actually think there’s a new generation of young leaders who are coming along, both young pastors and ministers, as well as young entrepreneurs who are saying, Is this all there is? Can we do this differently? And I think there’s going to be sort of less barriers. I mean, even in some of our global data around teenagers, some of the age old questions between Catholics and Protestants, it’s not that they are unimportant to young people, they just don’t get the barriers. Like, why are we fighting about this stuff? You know, we did some stuff in Ireland with teenagers and young adults. And again, it’s not to say that those deep divides that have cost people their very lives are gone. It’s just that they’re actually moving toward some new expressions. We did a huge global study on teenagers around the world. We interviewed nearly 25,000 teenagers, really high quality samples in 26 countries in 16 languages. And we ended up calling this the open generation because they’re very open, they’re open to Jesus, they’re open to spirituality now. They’re open to anything and everything, which is part of the problem. But they’re actually really interested in being part of a solution to deep seated problems like corruption and climate change and, you know, mental health issues. So I think there’s some really cool opportunities for us, this openness, this open moment. I feel like if you sort of look in a rearview mirror of sort of what’s happened over the last five years, I think it has stripped away, covid a lot of the racial challenges, the fragmentation politically, some of the economic uncertainty, the rise of mental health challenges, some of the ups and downs of local churches and the challenges that leaders have faced. I think we’re more open. I think that’s a, you know, the best word that I would have. That means we’re open to a lot of things. And some of those steps we might take aren’t always the right ones. But at an open moment, at least, people are willing to take steps. They’re willing to move. They’re willing to take a pilgrimage. They’re willing to go on a journey. They’re willing to ask themselves some good questions. They’re willing to think whether some of their presuppositions about the way life works are really right. And I think that open moment should be an open moment for all of us as entrepreneurs and as Christians.

William Norvell: I love that. I love that. And as entrepreneurs specifically, you may not have done any specific faith driven entrepreneur research which we may have to contract out later. We can talk about that after the show. But I’m curious if you have and the question for me that’s coming up is like I loved when you said, hey, people are using the wrong stats. Right? And we find that all the time, right? Somebody quotes a study from 40 years ago that’s been debunked, but it’s just become common lexicon, right? Like, you know, 80% of your heat escapes from your feet in your head or something in it turns out that was a study done by like military people that, like, didn’t have hats on. And it’s like, well, that’s why it happened. Right. But people still think that what are one or two just like fascinating insights that you feel like you are holding on to, that entrepreneurs need to know and say, hey, you have been equipped with that information. You need to know this about the current reality, and that should give you some hope and encouragement on your entrepreneurial journey.

David Kinnaman: Yeah, we actually have done quite a bit of work for entrepreneurs and about entrepreneurs. We did a study called Christians at Work, and that was a sort of a groundbreaking study where we looked at employ Christians. We’ve got some other studies that we’ve been working on, a study on the state of faith in work that’s coming up. And I actually think, you know, the journey of entrepreneurs is so important. They are people who create abundance in and around them when they’re working in their best giftedness and the best versions of themselves. They create abundance around them in resources and vision and, you know, a belief that there could be a better future for entrepreneurs are so critical in our culture and in our communities. And so one of the findings that we found in that was only about one in four Christians are what we call faith work integrators. And there was different definitions that we had, and it actually would apply even though we were looking at Christians at work, which represents the majority of Americans who are employed. Because so many people identified as Christians, we designed those questions to be useful in any kind of setting. So, you know, it’s simply like we believe that my work has purpose in the world. You know, I have a desire to sort of improve things around me. I don’t have them right in front of me. The definition of the faith work integrator. But there are pretty simple kind of low hanging fruit. In fact, the bar for it was actually pretty low. And we did another study about purpose oriented workers, and the same is actually a lower percentage. Only one in ten people are very purpose oriented in their work. But those who are purpose oriented or those who are faith work integrators and you don’t have to be a person of faith to be a faith work integrator. They’re more satisfied in their work, they’re more productive in their work. You know, it’s like when you focus in on purpose and integration in life, people are just they actually produce more, they’re more happy at work, they’re better employees. And it’s exactly the kind of picture that you would imagine as an entrepreneur to see and a kind of business that we all want to have. We want our our teams to be bought in to what it is that we do as a company, what difference that makes in the lives of people around us, and then how that changes the employees around us. And we’ve had we’ve had great stories and great examples of people coming to faith because they work a faith driven entrepreneurial environment of people, you know, understanding what it means to be formed in terms of their character, in terms of a good, healthy entrepreneurial environment. And so there’s just so many really cool findings that I think entrepreneurs can take to the bank as they’re trying to help identify who should be working here, how should we inspire people, how do we talk about our own purpose as a leader? How do we help get people, you know, thinking about what it is that they’re made to do and how can we be a great environment for them to grow in?

Henry Kaestner: Okay, I have so many questions to ask you and you got me going with. I completely understand the men of Issachar who understood the times, and I’m fascinated by that. I don’t know if I’ve ever been more interested in like what’s going on around me and just bewildered by it all. So a whole bunch of different questions come up, some of which have to do with faith driven entrepreneurship. Many of them don’t. I want to see if we can bring back something that we had done once before called Lightning Round because there’s so many of them. I’m not going to fit them all in. Joey are just faithful producers going to probably say maybe this is a different episode, but maybe it’s not going to see one get in here. And it’s as follows I’m going to go ahead. I’m going to bring up an issue and then you have 30 to 45 seconds to respond to it. And if you don’t like the issue, you can say pass. Okay, But we’re going to go through them all. I am fascinated by, again, what’s going on in the world right now. There’s a guy, Peter Zion, as best I can tell, not motivated by his faith. He sends out an email once every day during the work week to say, Here’s what’s going on with Frank and here’s what’s going on with Israel. And he can’t possibly be an expert in all of these things, but he nonetheless has opinions and all of them. But you and your team are experts on the things that I actually care about because it has all has this spiritual integration. So going to go right through them. Okay. And you can say pass if you want. Number one, from knowing you and your work. And there’s a lot, by the way, for our audience, it’s not just unchristian. I mean, it’s this the latest one, maybe maybe it’s not latest one, but the faith for exiles about, you know, the digital Babylon is amazing. And then you talk about you lost me and then there’s a whole bunch of other ones. You can just talk about them if you want. You can go ahead and say, Hey, you want to know more about that? Get this book is is better than this. Okay, here we go. Number one, men of Issachar who understand the times, what kind of disciplines do you and the team have to ask God if indeed what you’re hearing and seen is indeed what he is seeing and the message you want to tell.

David Kinnaman: Great question. I think first we have our statistical tools and we’ve got such an incredible team. The women and men of Barna are amazing colleagues and so they bring all of their background and I always try to commend them just for bringing their whole heart to the work. Sometimes that actually creates a bit of a traffic jam because we all care about every topic that we’re interviewing on. And so what questions do we ask and how do we how do we interpret the data? But I mean, we start there with our core discipline of research and asking the right questions and letting the data speak for itself and then analyzing it and saying, here’s some possible ways to interpret this. So, you know, and the we spend a lot of time in prayer and, you know, listening to our our audience and our customers try to interpret the data faithfully.

Henry Kaestner: Good, good. Okay. Thank you for any of that work. As you talk about Chronicles, I spend a lot of time in Chronicles, but Second Chronicles, you talk about the Good Kings of Judah and the mistakes they made by not seeking God out. So I love the fact that you’re saying, okay, we can have this analysis guide. We think this is what this is telling us. People are going to ask us what our interpretation is. Smite us if we’re wrong, right? Do you use those words? Smite us for wrong. Okay.

David Kinnaman: Could we do within within a range of sampling error, though?

Henry Kaestner: Okay. All right, good. All right. Number two, if I’m talking about faith in the workplace and I’m in Nashville, I said, what do you think is the Center for Faith in the marketplace in the United States? If I’m in Nashville, they’ll say, I don’t know Atlanta. And I say, no, If I’m in Atlanta, they’ll say, Dallas. If I’m in Dallas, they’ll say Dallas, right? Because it’s all about Dallas, right? It’s all about Texas. I’ll say, no. I would smite to you that the Center for the Faith and Work movement in the United States is in Silicon Valley, where there are new a resurgent, faith driven employee resource groups like Google, Facebook and Apple into it. They’re doing praise and worship apparently on Friday in the lunchroom at Dropbox. And Salesforce is called Faith Force. Are you seeing the same thing and is there something in Christian Trends? I remember when I was growing up, I grew up in Baltimore, but we would wear California fashion Quiksilver, Billabong, Ocean Pacific, all those things, right? Is there something to trends starting west and moving east, or is this just an aberration?

David Kinnaman: No, I think there is some truth that I’ll say a couple things. First of all, I am seeing the same thing. I’ve had a chance of interacting with a lot of believers in technology and in some of these other industries. I was located in Southern California for the last 30 years. I’m actually currently in Texas, moved a year ago for reasons that we’re not getting to for the minute, but being in California. So it’s a quick answer to the first question is yes, we’re seeing a lot of really interesting and fascinating trends in the workplace, in mainstream businesses and even in some of the places where most people would sort of imagine they’re, you know, dark as it could be, but Silicon Valley entertainment, you know, all sorts of really cool companies around the world, and many of them are headquartered in California. I’m a huge fan of California, was hard to leave. But also there were some reasons why I thought it was the right time for me to take a set of trust with what Laura was asking me to do. But California is an important area, and here’s the way I would describe this. I believe that in the past you can look at sources of financial, military and political power being located on the East Coast. Those continue to this day. You know, New York City, Washington, D.C., the Pentagon, all the rest. But I actually think that some of the most important ways that people’s lives are shaped, especially in digital Babylon, are technology, entertainment and design. The TED values, technology, entertainment and design that. There’s a reason why on our Apple devices, as designed by Apple in California, why people sort of, you know, gravitate towards the West Coast. And I think those are significant shapers of how human beings they always have been in certain ways. But now more than ever, those industries shape how people experience the world. I mean, you go to any country and on smartphones, even in the bush, even in the jungles, even in, you know, sort of very hard to reach places, people are streaming mostly North American entertainment onto their devices. And I think those things end up shaping a lot of how people imagine the world ought to be and for good and for bad. But I am a firm believer that the west coast of North America, that California continues to be and will be a really critical place for entrepreneurs and for leaders and for faithful Christians to really make a difference.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, cool. Because a dozen years ago. So the Mozilla CEO was forced out because he gave money to a pro-life cause. And then I started seeing some of those reverberations five or six years later, Christian leaders throughout the country starting to feel some of those pressures. But now I’m fine in California, very faith friendly, and I’m hopeful that that trend will go from west to east. Am I right in being optimistic and hopeful?

David Kinnaman: I think it’s both. I think there are ways that trends sort of travel west to east, but it’s much more a better way of describing it is that trends bubble up in these sort of domains of the Internet and chat rooms and gaming communities. And if you look at issues like sexuality and gender, a lot of those terms and terminology and some of the questions that we’re wrestling with today as a society come up in those venues and they bubbled up and they become, you know, sort of lightning rod issues. And so, you know, at the same time that I’m a huge fan of California and so many of the good things that come from the West Coast, you know, it’s also it’s a difficult environment to operate. And so you sort of imagine how can we as Christians make good sense of what it is God’s calling us to do, to act with courage and faithfulness and character in the places where God is calling us? And I think it’ll be a mixed bag. I think some of those trends might leak out to California, but also I think some of the challenges that come from some of the policies in that state.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, we can move on. We’re going to get ourselves back on track with an easy, simple question. Ten years from now, will pastors still be wearing tight jeans and designer shoes?

David Kinnaman: No, they won’t designer shoes. I think so. But the tight jeans are going out.

Henry Kaestner: Tight jeans are gone. Okay, good, good. Something to celebrate The next one, a little bit of a history buff. I love Bretton Woods and what it did in terms of bringing on board this global security, guaranteed safety of the seas and free markets and free trade. We’re seeing some of that kind of pulled back. Is that a threat or an opportunity to the church as we love on the rest of the world and the Western based missions movement?

David Kinnaman: I think it’s more of a threat. I think that nationalism and tribalism and fragmented politics are going to be a feature of the next number of years more than we would like to see. And that even though younger generations sort of feel very connected around the world to people that are their same age and the Internet and technology provides unprecedented sort of connection, I think the response of sort of more nationalism and xenophobia and fear of the other, those things are going to be features for a while, unfortunately.

Henry Kaestner: I was asked to speak on transformation once, and I decided right after the Ashbury revival to look into revivals. But I was never a great student. I never did great research. In fact, I did a lousy research, I am talking a guy who does great research and so, I want you to tell me how far off I am with the following. I looked at transformation. I thought the most important thing in transformational revivals. So I did some Wikipedia. So, you know, got to love my sources. I did some Wikipedia research on the origin of revivals, and the common trend I thought I saw was that it begins with a confession of sin. And so I got up in front of people and said, This is what the church has been missing. This is how it started in the Hebrides. This is how I started. Asbury Am I right or am I wrong?

David Kinnaman: That’s a subject I have no knowledge about. I mean, I’ve listened to some really good podcasts from John Tyson and others who are looking at this sort of current moment of awakening. But what are the characteristics of a revival? I couldn’t say. I will say that our data shows that there’s some openness in our society that is surprising given how, at least in the first 6 to 12 months of the pandemic, you know, pastors were expecting their service revival to break out and it didn’t happen. We were all sort of just like in shell shock. But I think there’s some real openness now, and I think that’s a good positive trend for people. But as to the like, the historical precedent of what makes for sort of the conditions of revival or how they break out, I don’t think that’s something I know enough about.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, it’s fascinating. Okay, maybe for the future. Okay, Rusty, you’ve got a guest one bring it?

William Norvell: Yeah, it’s generative AI roll in the church, friend or foe?

David Kinnaman: More foe than friend, but mostly because I think the church takes a while to sort of know how to sort out technology. I wouldn’t say it’s neutral. I think there’s some really positive ways that AI can be used and it will be, you know, like it’s going to massively disrupt education. But I also think it’s a foe because we just we need a deeper theology of technology. We need to understand how we live faithfully in this context. And we’re living in a sort of a real time experiment about what it means to be human with technology. So, you know, for the first time in human history, these technologies connect us in ways that are almost science fiction. And I’ve actually been talking to some friends that we need more of a theology of dystopian reality to understand, like even in the pages of scripture, sometimes society sort of like loses its way. Sometimes there’s towers of Babel that are built. Sometimes we’re sort of under the thumb of, you know, these occupying forces. So how do we deal with all that and how do we live faithfully in light of that? I think A.I. is sort of the latest wave, you know, sort of digital technology and the Internet and smartphones and social media. I think we’re like lab rats. And so the best way we can be is to live very distinctively Christian lives in light of all that. So we need to be thinking well together and then actually living faithfully to those kinds of commitments that we make. But A.I. is going to represent, I think, a really interesting wave of our having as Christians to deal with those changes to be people of Issachar

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. Faith for Exiles is the book. Okay. Penultimate question before we hand it off to William for that. The ultimate question. You have been discipled, you disciple others. You’ve written on discipleship. But for you personally, what’s the singular thing that you saw advance your discipleship the most?

David Kinnaman: There are a lot of things, but one of the things that was so helpful as I was a youngest in my thirties, I realized that there were places in my scripture reading and just meditation that felt really, really thin. And I remember asking my pastor to spend time with me about every two weeks to mentor me in Scripture, reading a man of deep faith and prayer and and just, like, immersed in the word. And so we met for about a year and a half, Pastor Larry Reichert. He would say, Hey, I want you to read through the book of Matthew and just look at all the places where Jesus has authority. I want you to read through the Book of Proverbs and says, What would this look like in terms of your, you know, your business space And even some of the transition that we talked about before between George Barna, me actually the spiritual work God was doing at that time was in part just immersing myself in Scripture and just letting the words wash me and sort of reshape some of my imagination. And the book of Ecclesiastes came alive in a powerful way for me during that time. And so that was a really formative time to sort of like humble myself and submit to somebody in a very particular way to say like, I don’t actually think I’m as good at Scripture as I want to imagine myself to be. How could I grow? And that was the one thing that I think actually really shaped me and continues to to this day. But there’s many other ways that, God, I got a spiritual director. My wife passed away three years ago to cancer and that’s a huge story for, again, another time. But one of the responses I had was to go to counseling and therapy, but also to spiritual direction. And that person, Dwayne Groban, has been a dear friend and a wonderful counselor and sort of a spiritual guide through the ups and downs of, you know, diagnoses and moving and raising kids and entrepreneurship and all the rest. And so I couldn’t be a bigger fan of spiritual direction.

William Norvell: Well, thank you for sharing that. And that’s where we head towards the end of all of our episodes, is to bring it back to Scripture and God’s Word. And we’d be honored if you were [….], to share where God has you in Scripture these days. And that could be something you’ve been meditating during seasons or it could be something you read this morning. But we just love to see how amazing it is that God’s Word continues to be alive and moving every day.

David Kinnaman: It is a profound thing to be human and then to be read by this great book and these words of Scripture. And for me, I spent a lot of time the last year or two in the book on Second Corinthians, where Paul is something happened between first and Second Corinthians and he is a different person. He’s had some near-death experiences and he’s been deeply, deeply affected. And the very beginning of that he talks about the God of all comfort came to comfort us. And out of that comfort that we receive, we’re able to offer you comfort. And he talks about his dispairs that we thought we would die. In fact, we despaired of life, but it taught us not to rely on ourselves and instead to trust God. And the whole book is profound. Paul writes that we have these treasures and earth and vessels, the beautiful sections on giving later in the book and eight nine. And so it sort of it sets the whole argument about like his authority isn’t through, already knows or even his friendship or relationship with these people that he’s writing to. But he comes to them out of the authority of the suffering he’s endured and God showing up in faithfulness. And I feel like having lost my wife, Jill, to brain cancer in 2020, the Lord has walked very closely with me. And that and the God of all comfort times where I just despaired of life. You know, I’ve found something deeper and richer in the Lord. I would have despaired had I not believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27. So I wouldn’t be standing here today without these living words that have spoken deep into my heart. And he continues to do so. Thank you for asking. I think it’s a great question.

Henry Kaestner: [….] Thank you for playing ball at the end. You’re a great blessing to us, to the to the body Christ. And I think we’re going to be increasingly looking to you because we need to find a signpost like what is going on here and where things are headed and then what role. You know, so men of Issachar, men who knew the times, but then also we know as a derivative that that God in his infinite sovereignty knew that this was going to be happening and that he’d have us all here now. So we can’t just be spectators, you know, God didn’t have us places on earth for this time to just watch what’s going on. We’re like, report back to him. He had us here for a mission and a purpose, and yet we need to make sense of it all so we know where to get involved. And you play such an incredibly important role and that in the body of Christ, thank you for your faithfulness, for getting out there and making it happen with excellence. Thank you for sharing some of the challenges that God walks you through. I mean, there’s a lot for one podcast and we’re just really grateful for your time.

David Kinnaman: Yes thanks so much, guys. Means a lot and happy to do it and can’t wait to come back.

Recent Episodes

What does it look like to lead in the midst of chaos, brokenness, and division?

The recent events in Israel and Gaza have made the brokenness of the world even more acute and visible.

There are a lot of thoughtful places where you might go to find perspective on politics, faith or even breaking news, but we wanted to bring something different to the table.

We’ve brought on two Faith Driven Entrepreneurs, Mordechai Wiseman and Bader Mansour, to talk about what it’s like to lead businesses in the face of tragedy.

Bader Mansour is the founder of NAZDAQ, a company that develops data solutions in Nazareth. He’ll get more into this but he comes from a unique perspective as a Palestinian and also an Israeli citizen, but most importantly a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. As an executive for a network of 17 churches and one of the founders of a local seminary, Bader is also a recognized national leader within the Arab-speaking Christian community.

Mordechai Wiseman is also featured in the story and will be highlighted in another one that will be released soon. In addition to running an investment fund and consulting firm, Mordechai is the founder and chairman of Israel Firstfruits, an economic development agency for the local community of faith in Israel. He is also founder of the Messianic Business Fellowship, which is the only national network for marketplace believers in Israel, both Jews & Arabs.

The two have worked together for many years, have a deep relationship that transcends ethnic roots, and are rooted in their love for Jesus.

They graciously join the podcast for a conversation about how their faith has informed their perspectives on leadership, identity, and the current conflict.

Find out more about the work they’re doing in this video that premiered at the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Conference.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We are currently experiencing a truly broken moment in history. We’re all aware of our humanity, our brokenness and the broken parts of this world. And the tragic events in Israel and Gaza over the past few weeks have made it even more acute and more visible. There’s a lot of thoughtful places where you might go to find perspectives on politics, faith, or even breaking news. But what we wanted to offer today and bring to the table is something different. As faith driven entrepreneurs, we have to navigate a complex world. And as if business itself isn’t complex enough. We have to manage and we have to lead and serve amidst complex and broken times. So we wanted to invite some friends who have both been part of a video series together. In fact, you saw both of these guys on a video we released at the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Conference just a few weeks ago. Both are founders. Both are based in Israel and offer unique perspectives that might help us as entrepreneurs lead our teams as those around us are asking questions and searching for truth. Bader Mansour, as you might remember from that event, is the founder of Nazdaq that’s in a N A Z D A Q, a company that develops data solutions in Nazareth. He’ll get more into this, but he comes from a unique perspective as a Palestinian and also an Israeli citizen. But most importantly, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. As an executive for a network of 17 churches and one of the founders of a local seminary, Bader is also a recognized national leader within the Arab speaking Christian community. Mordechai Wiseman is also featured in this story and will be highlighted in another one that will be released soon. In addition to running an investment fund and a consulting firm. Mordechai is the founder and chairman of Israeli First Fruits, an economic development agency for the local community of faith in Israel. He’s also the founder of the Messianic Business Fellowship, which is the only national network for Marketplace believers in Israel. Both Jews and Arabs. He is a Jewish Israeli and he is a follower of Yeshua Jesus. Like most Israeli Jews, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces. His son is currently serving as well. Let’s listen in on this important conversation.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the feature of in our podcast. We have a special edition today. I’m here with Rusty. And Rusty and I are going to wade into this amazing scene that’s going on right now in the Middle East. We are not going to be talking much at all about politics. This is not what we do here. This is a podcast that is meant to help the Body of Christ, particularly business owners and entrepreneurs, understand how much God loves them and what he is inviting them to as they participate in the marketplace. There are times when that mission that we were all on might seem relatively easy. It might seem sometimes when that mission is hard, there are times when the yoke is light, sometimes when it is heavy. But for today, we had this incredible opportunity to have this perspective of two dear brothers that we’ve known now for years. As Rusty said in the intro, we featured them on some great video stories for context, and they’ve graciously allowed us to spend some time with them as they process where God has them and how they are seeing him at work. The questions they have, the prayers they’re lifting up, and it’s a special privilege to be with them for their perspectives about all of those things. Hopefully with gold today that we will all know more about how God loves us and we would accept the invitation to participate in the work that He’s doing, building the world when it is easy and when it is hard, when there are clear points for us to follow and when things are a little bit muddier. So today we go to Israel with Mordy and Bader. Gentlemen, good morning. Thank you so much for being with us. I know it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Mordy, I’m going to start with you. I know that you get a sense this summer we were at the Christian Economic Forum together and you were starting to really feel keenly that something was afoot. You’re troubled. You very eloquently shared with us at the Christian Economic Forum what was going on in Israel. And now we found ourselves a couple of months later in a precarious situation that you and and your friend Bader right in the middle of. And Mordy, what are you thinking about this evening? Israel time. What’s going on?

Mordechai Wiseman: Thank you, Henry. It’s a privilege and an honor to share with the FDE community. Yeah, It always seems like life in the Middle East is pregnant. There’s something’s going on or something’s about to happen. But it’s definitely, for me, at least since really early 2022 even 2021, there’s this growing sense of apprehension in terms of what’s lying ahead. And as you shared really with this latest government and some of the internal processes within Israel, I’ve been feeling grieved at things that I knew were coming but were hard to observe in real time sort of emerging before us. And then this crisis broke out eight days ago. And I think Israelis in general are reeling because we’ve never faced something quite like this and comes after eight months of internal conflict, nine months of internal conflict. So I guess the pressure of feeling squeezed now for a while, feeling like God is moving us in a, yeah, undeniable way towards a certain direction, and then a real spike in pressure. Actually not a lot of fun, but we have to trust that God is squeezing out of us things that He is seeking to either remove or to produce from our lives. I’m just hoping I’m producing light in salt.

Henry Kaestner: As you process all of this. You’re doing this in the midst of a number of family, including your son. You served in the IDF. Your son is in the IDF. What what are you praying for?

Mordechai Wiseman: My first prayer is mercy. The enemy seeks to steal, kill and destroy, and war is his favorite tool. And yet God will use the schemes of the enemy to advance his kingdom. He turns evil to good, and he will. So we have to believe that despite everything that is going on, God is doing something profound. And yet all we can do is pray for mercy. Pray for to be given the strength to stand up under the pressure to be used for good rather than participate in the orgy of death. It’s easy to get drawn into the male storm of pain and suffering and trauma. And to some degree, that’s what being in the world, yet not of it means. It means that we mourn with those who mourn. We feel the pain of our people. And yet we also have a different identity and a different reality that is within us. And that’s easy to say. It’s very hard to walk through. So, yeah, I’m a veteran and actually my son is the fourth generation of our family serving in the Israeli military. And it’s easy to worry. It’s not just.

Henry Kaestner: I would imagine it is.

Mordechai Wiseman: Yes. I mean, I have literally dozens and dozens of my friends serving right now of our tiny congregation of 400 people. Over 50 are under arms right now, either as enlisted or reservists. So it’s easy to surrender, to fear or worry. And it’s that daily choice to look to the Lord and trust him that he is in control. And it’s really not how do I change circumstances, but how do I respond in a way that glorifies God?

Henry Kaestner: Mordy, thank you, Bader I’m going to ask the same of you. Such a privilege to have you, as Rusty mentioned in the intro and your story at the most recent conference. So gave me more of a perspective of what it looks like to be a Palestinian Christian in Nazareth. How are you processing this? What are you praying for?

Bader Mansour: It has been a very heartbreaking situation, you know, being a Palestinian and an Israeli. At the same time, my news feed is mixed with Israeli sources and Palestinian sources for a long time. So first of all, there is the grief and the sadness of all the people that have been killed in the massacre that happened just Saturday, You know, watching the news. Heartbreaking. I have lots of friends that lost loved ones. Also from the Israeli side, it has been very heavy on us here. At the same time being, I have maybe the privilege or maybe the the problem of belonging to these two troubled people, you know, So I am also a Palestinian. I am also in grief for my Palestinian people as well, that first of all, this was something they produced, you know, something horrible like this. At the same time, we are seeing the developments that are happening, the war and that is going on, you know, in Gaza and also the innocent people being killed. And at the same time looking at the whole situation and the whole history, it’s not a you know, this is I don’t see this as event in itself. You know, this is a continuation of my own life. And then before I was born of a conflict, you know, in this country what I am and it has been very heavy. We are praying, Lord, for mercy, you know, on the people of Israel, mercy on the people of Gaza and the whole people of this region, you know, on the Palestinians, also on the West Bank, on the people who are also in the surrounding countries. We are praying that this will not escalate into a larger war. We are praying for our safety. You know, Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens don’t serve in the army. So I don’t have immediate family in the army. But we are afraid. We are afraid. Our prayers are for the Lord to have mercy and to send peacemakers. We need more peacemakers to come and help us. We probably couldn’t solve it ourselves, and we need people to come and help us get this whole Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved in such a way that maybe we couldn’t do it on our own. We need help. So this is what I am praying for God to send more peacemakers and for the peacemaker himself to intervene and be with us at this time.

Rusty Rueff: Amen. Amen. You know, we live in this as we as Henry said, we live in this complex time. Mordy and Bader, you guys are right in the middle of probably one of the most complex issues going on right now in the world. At the same time, we have a background that’s really developing all over the world around a sense of identity. You know, where does our identity reside? And we’ve mentioned, you know, the two of you come from very different backgrounds, Bader you are Palestinian Israeli, Mordy, you’re a Jewish Israeli. Can you share with us, both of you, how your faith has helped you think differently about those who have different worldly identities? You talk a little bit about that Mordy Do you want to start first?

Mordechai Wiseman: Well, I think, again, just to provide a little bit more nuance. Israel’s home not merely to Jews and Arabs, but actually both on the Jewish side and the Arab side, identities are highly complex. I won’t speak to all the Arab community, but you have Muslim Arabs, you have Christian Arabs, the Bedouins, Druze and the Jewish side. You have people from not only that were native born or born in this land, but who’ve come from dozens of countries. And we have Jews from what we would call Middle Eastern background or Sephardic. We have European Jews, we have Orthodox and so many different identities mixed in that even the idea of Israeli is highly complex. Now, as a believer, I’m not only Israeli and I’m not only a Jew and I’m not only an Ashkenazi Jew and belong within even other subgroups within Israel, but as a follower of Yeshua, I have this sort of overarching identity and we tend to think of things I think in hierarchical. And I sometimes I find that it’s unhelpful to say, Oh, my citizenship is in heaven. So that kind of like vetos, all the other identities, I think that’s not helpful actually in daily life. And we see in Revelation chapter seven, verse nine, that people from every nation, tribe and language will be standing before the throne. God created our ethnic identities, created our cultural identities. And so my kingdom identity, my identity as a Jew who follows Yeshua infuses is at the center of all those other identities, informs them, hopefully transforms them, redeems those and that richness, the diversity that God created and making us so different then gets elevated perhaps through our kingdom identity. And sometimes it’s a veto. Sometimes there’s something in my background that is just wrong. There’s a cultural sin, a heritage that we hold on to that is just not pleasing to the Lord and that needs to be removed. But more often than not, it’s something that needs to be fixed or healed or redeemed because the root of it comes from God. So maybe that’s overly theoretical, but as a believer, for example, I’m a combat guy, right? I’m a veteran. My son serves in the army. There’s a side of me that understands the need to fight against those who have a murderous worldview. And yet, as a child of God, highly aware of my own sin, to recognize that these Hamas terrorists are people who need God, they’re sick in the sense that they were raised on hate. We’re raised to believe that their highest calling is to not only die, but to kill for Allah. And, you know, the highest prayer for them would be that they would get revelation and be saved. Just as Saul of Tarsus very sincerely persecuted the early church. And yet I also recognize that I have a mandate to protect those who cannot protect themselves. And so here I am, a combat veteran. Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers, right? I have a calling to protect those around me, and yet I have to pray for their salvation, even as I have to take a step in standing against them. It’s that complexity in that nuance that is not immediately resolvable in the here and now. And yet I have to see God to, in every given moment, respond in a way that honors him. So that’s how my faith informs my identities.

Rusty Rueff: As beautiful as beautifully said, I mean, I’m really I’m emotionally struck there by what you said about Saul of Tarsus. And I think, boy, I wish we could stop. And everybody just think about that more often, that if you were a Christian at that time. Right. And you’re watching Saul and what he did, that there were people who were praying for him. Right. There must have been people who were praying to God, remove this person. Remove this person. And that his conversion from Saul to Paul, the blinding of the light, could have also been an answer to someone’s prayers. Never would have framed that without you speaking about that. Thank you so much for that. Bader anything to add here?

Bader Mansour: Yes, I think, you know, also my identity is probably more complicated. But, you know, I’m an Israeli and most of my, you know, newspapers or television I watch is Israeil television? I read Israeli newspapers, I speak Hebrew fluently. I’m an Israeli. I have lots of Israeli friends. And so I have lots of love to my country. I care about my country. At the same time, I am a Palestinian. Palestinians in 1948 were scattered. Some became refugees in the Gaza Strip, some became refugees in Lebanon and Jordan and some the West Bank and some stayed in Israel. I am one of them. You know, my parents in 1948 became Israeli citizens. So I am also an Israeli citizen, but yet I am a Palestinian. So I also have this sympathy and love to my people. You know, I love my country, but I love my people as well and feel for my people. And I also, you know, my prayer language or my home language is Arabic. And, you know, I am Christian Arab, but I also have lots of, you know, Muslim Arab friends and some are also religious, some are less religious. And I also read a lot of newspapers in Arabic and feed and have friends everywhere, also in Gaza, also in the West Bank, also everywhere. So to being able to see also the point of view of the Palestinians and trying to understand if there could be anything to be understood about this whole, I would say, barbaric attack. But at the same time, why did it happen and why did these people I don’t think these people came just because they wanted to kill. It’s part of a complex situation that has been going on for a long time with lots of injustice and neglecting the Palestinian cause for so many years by insisting that these people can be there for 16 years in a big jail and nobody cares about them, and seeing the world move on and they are still there, nothing. Nobody cares about them. So I don’t justify what they did. Try to understand what’s going on and what hope these people have and trying to have empathy for the people of Gaza in addition to the people of Israel. So as a follower of Jesus, I look at this in such a way, you know, you know, I’m not trying to give two points of view here. I’m trying to say that, you know, in addition to all this, I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, where most people in this country, you know, the 14 million people or 15 million people that live from the river to the sea, both Palestinians and Jews, most of them don’t know Jesus. They need Jesus badly. So what is my role as a follower of Jesus in this whole thing? And, you know, can a few thousand people make any difference in this whole craziness that’s going on? So I see my role as the follower of Jesus is to follow the footsteps of Jesus and whatever I do by showing love to everybody, by showing empathy like Jesus would meet the mother of the dead son, and will go and speak to her show love to these people and these people, and also spread the good news of Jesus that he is the savior of the universe, savior of the world. He loves us and he wants the best for all of us. And this is our calling. You know, it’s hard to do it these days, but at the same time, this is why we are here, to stand up for showing the love of Christ for everybody around us.

Rusty Rueff: So I want to go a little deeper into this because I’m going to frame this in a way when people have differing views and they bring that into the workplace, which we see more and more of happening. I was joking with somebody other day. I said, I’m old enough to remember when we didn’t talk politics or religion in the workplace. Right. And today, which I’m very happy that we can share our faith in the workplace. We also share here in the United States, we start to share our political views in the workplace. And our political views have been divisive in many ways. Yet you all are in a situation where you must live and work together with people who have much, much different views. Views that actually are beyond just opinions have turned into actions. Can you share your insights for other faith driven entrepreneurs about how best to live and work together with those who have very, very differing views and not only differing views for the short term, but for the long term because, you know, we pray for shalom, we pray for peace in the Middle East. And these wars, they seem to you know, they come, they go. They never really go away, but it becomes acute and then it becomes less acute. You have to go back and work together and live together. So you have a unique perspective I think you can share for our listeners on how to work together, live together with very, very differing views. Help us with that.

Bader Mansour: It’s just something about, you know, here in Israel, you know, I’m also a little bit old here in Israel, and we spoke politics and religion at the workplace before you. You know, I worked also in America where we couldn’t talk politics here. We talk politics all the time. You know, it’s part of life here at the workplace. So when I worked in an Israeli company that was 400 Jews and one Palestinian, I was the first Arab to join the company. You know, it was a tough at the beginning, lots of prejudice, like, you know, a Palestinian in our company. Who’s this guy? What’s the story? And lots of heated discussions at work talking about differences. But I think this is where our role as agents of change, as people who are followers of Jesus, comes into the place where we can show a different face of our people, because people don’t know, you know, the Jews I worked with never met an Arab other than maybe somebody at the gas station. So they finally meet an Arab engineer and they talk to him. And I also did not have these close relationships with Jews at the time. So when people begin to talk and I think if we bring the ethics of the kingdom into our discussions where we also show respect, we can make change. It’s probably small, you know, it’s one person at a time or, you know, a few people. But I think this is where it has been challenging. But we grow together. Sadly, when we have war, we go back, you know, the tensions go high. People have very strong opinions and things go back. You know, the relationships can be very hard. But I think if we live together, we know that we are going to work together. We have the same goal and we can talk and we disagree. Like, you know Mordechai and I we can disagree about many things, but we can still be brothers in Christ and friends. So softness, empathy, love to one another. And that could be a way forward, in my opinion.

Henry Kaestner: That was that was beautiful. Maybe 80% of our listeners are listening to us in the United States and wondering what does this conflict have to do with them? And you just showed very much so. I mean, you know, one person of Arab extraction in a larger majority spot and sometimes Christ followers feel that way in the marketplace today. Now, a lot of our audience, most of our audience entrepreneurs and business owners, where they had this opportunity to set the culture. And I also think that in addition to just struggling with what does it look like to share our faith when some way and the reason for the hope we have and amidst a discussion with people of differing views, there’s also, I think, this sense in America of, you know, I just I just want to run my business. I want to grow my company. I want to grow 20% year over year, maybe quarter over quarter and cash. All this political stuff is just really just an inconvenient hindrance to me achieving my dream. Because what I’m really trying to do and I’m casting some disparagement against some folks generally here with hopefully that this ends up being encouraging in this appropriate level of challenge, which is, look, there’s a real battle here and it’s not against flesh and blood, it’s against evil and it’s in the marketplace. And God chose this for such a time as this. And we can see some of these things happen in Bible studies. We see this in our scriptural reading, and yet there’s this reminder that you guys are living through things right now, that there is a world at war and God chose us for a time. Is this and this concept of maybe coasting to our funeral and running our businesses and maybe we have triple the growth and we hand it to the next generation and we go ahead and we retire and we play golf and we move to the beach and God calls us home. You guys are live in a different narrative. You’re not thinking about. Well, maybe I’ll work a couple more years and I can kind of cash out and get that country club on the Red Sea or on the Med. Right. I mean, there’s some beautiful beaches in Israel, but you guys aren’t thinking about that right now. You think that guys put you on Earth for a different type of mission? You guys have both spent a lot of time in America, and I don’t want you to, you know, just unfairly rattle the cages of a Western entrepreneur. But what are you learning about faith and mission and purpose and where God has called you in a way that might be relevant for somebody who’s not in the battle right now? Maybe. But how do you reflect on that? You’ve been in a war zone for so long and yet you interact so much with folks in America and the West that don’t have the same type of perspective? What would be an encouragement or challenge to them as they look to learn more about the living God through their work?

Mordechai Wiseman: Well, let me take a swing at that. Trying to tie the previous question to that last statement, I think they’re linked. Even if let’s say you’re not as informed or as mission driven to impact culture. If you are merely just trying to be successful and close to retirement, you would have to still acknowledge that. In these days, usually wealth is created through people, and people form culture, and politics is merely an expression of our culture. And so when the debate is about who’s right and wrong, and that’s what we’re fighting over, and we believe that actually our propositional truth will achieve victory, convinced someone to come to our side, then we get into all kinds of trouble. And in the Middle East, when we recognize that we could talk all day, we’ve been talking for thousands of years and, you know, necessarily convinced each other that truth needs to be incarnational. So that’s why Jesus showed up in the flesh that my calling as an entrepreneur is to engage people. And in fact, the way I produce value and hopefully the value that I attempt to produce is fundamentally around the flourishing of human beings around them encountering God and his kingdom. I can’t convince them of that. I can’t argue them into that state. What I can do is be curious about them to actually try to understand who they are. Why do they take the way they do? This is really how we have to handle conflict here in the Middle East. We’re not going to win when I walk with my Arab and Palestinian brethren. Our organization of first fruits, our board, our staff and the people we serve are Jews and Arabs and Gentiles. We do not agree on a lot of stuff, and yet we have a commitment to walk together. We have a commitment to care for each other and to care with each other for others. And so truth is no longer a club in the sense of hitting people over the head, but rather truth is incarnational. And truth is how I engage you. And how do I want to understand why you are the way you are, why you behave the way you do? Not so I can convince you that I’m right and you’re wrong, but rather that I could show love, that I could see how God might have called us to walk together. And I believe that entrepreneurs who get that will build better cultures. So it’s not even about politics. It’s about creating a culture of listening, of caring, of engaging people. When we do that, we build not only organizations that are more effective, but we are the outcome that we wish to produce, which is people that care about people, people who invest in people. And then our unity is not about uniformity or agreeing on a set of principles, but rather the choice to walk together, which is what marriage is two people that are different, that don’t agree and yet choose to produce life together, to do life and produce life together.

Henry Kaestner: That was beautiful. Mordy Thank you. Bader

Bader Mansour: Yes. I wanted to be answered a little bit differently about, you know, I think most entrepreneurs here who are, you know, followers of Jesus and also others, I think, have a deep passion to do something a little bit different than just making a successful company. They want to see change in the society they are in at Nasdaq. You know, most of the people here serve in the church or in some kind of para church organization. And we see this is part of our calling, not just to make software and, you know, build the great company, which we are, but also to make change as Christians in our sphere and our society. And I think a lot of people also in America are, you know, faith driven entertainers and others as well who have a deep passion to help others. I like to mention a story that touched my heart. And I actually broke my heart a few days ago. One of the entrepreneur, he’s a Jew and Israeli Jew, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Israel. Eyal Waldman, he is the founder of Mellanox. Somebody I admire because he has built a very strong company in Israel. And he has been also one of these companies who hired lots of Palestinians also to work in his company. Some of the managers in the company are also Palestinians, which is not taken for granted in Israel. But he also decided to open a branch in Gaza Strip and also opened a branch in the West Bank. And few days ago, his daughter was killed in the barbaric attack during the party and all that was going on near the of the Gaza border. He went and he found his daughter. And I don’t know him, but when I read this, I cried and I went home to sleep, you know, just like I was so devastated. And he said, I still believe in peace. I still believe in peace. And I tried to find his email and sent him a note, you know, just an encouragement and condolences. Lots of people here in Israel, you know, have passion to see a different kind of Israel and a different kind of situation, you know, going on here. We as faith driven entrepreneurs are called to do more on this. You know, I admire my friends at first fruit that are doing excellent work, you know, bringing Arabs and Jews together, working together and you know, others as well. So I think entrepreneurs usually in these places have passion. And I think lots of people all around the world have passion to see change in their societies. Here it’s a bit about conflict and about these kind of things, you know, because we are, in essence, a war zone. But, you know, I encourage all entrepreneurs to take a stand on a subject that they care for and do something about it. In addition to cashing out a great company and going to play golf, you know, the Pacific Ocean.

Rusty Rueff: So I want to switch gears for just a bit and talk a little bit about running a business in these kinds of moments, right, in these moments of crisis. So you’re both entrepreneurs. Just give us practical advice. How do you continue to lead a business during the midst of these situations going on in the background like the ones you’re facing?

Mordechai Wiseman: Well, I don’t know if I can give good advice. I can tell you what I did, which is initially I just gave myself another 10 minutes in bed. I just to collect myself and more seriously, recognizing that it’s so easy to throw yourself in. And in the moment of crisis, in the season of crisis, there’ll be many times that as a leader, you’re called to step up and step into the gap. But if you’re the only one doing that and you’re doing that constantly, you will not be around when sort of there, the key moment arrives. So you also have to pace yourself and you have to recognize you cannot win every battle and you don’t have to be the only person who steps into the breach. As an entrepreneur, you’re called to galvanize, and yet in order to galvanize. So you have to be able to lead by example. You often are the first to step up. You also have to acknowledge, though, you’re human. There’s nothing, in my opinion, more powerful in leadership than a vulnerable leader who, rather than being the He-Man or the she man or she woman or, you know, the one who seems to have all the answers and is always like, you know, once more to the breach, my friends, they first acknowledge that they’re afraid, that it’s hard, that they’re hurting, that they’re frustrated. If you don’t acknowledge humanity, it’s hard for people to follow you. That’s my experience as a military guy in the Israeli army. They do not follow you if they don’t trust you and they don’t trust you, if they don’t relate to you, if they don’t believe that you understand who they are and understand the risks that they’re about to take following you. And so listening, feeling, being vulnerable about our own feelings and expressing our pain, and then when everyone else is stuck and kind of like then stepping up and taking decisive action, being bold in your stance, galvanizing, and that shocks people out of that kind of place of I don’t know what to do and they will follow you. So you have to be first human and then you have to be leader. That’s sort of the pattern that I’ve seen effective in these times. And knowing that the crisis is not going to be momentarily. You need to have good oxygen. You have to assess how long is this going to happen, go on, and therefore pace yourself as well.

Rusty Rueff: I’m going to come to Bader in just a second. But can I just dive in a little bit more on that, you know, being authentic? What about those who might be listening, who are saying, I’m afraid to show that I don’t know what’s going on. I’m afraid to be weak in front of my team. I’m afraid to show that I have real emotions because, you know, they might look at me and say, well, you don’t have your act together. What words of encouragement can you give?

Mordechai Wiseman: The highest form of leadership, in my opinion, is creating a safe environment where people can make mistakes and grow if you are perfect. A No one actually believes that, but b everyone’s going to try to be perfect. You will not be able to learn and every mistake is catastrophic and therefore it all becomes a power struggle over your image. And without naming names or pointing out political figures, those leaders who spend their time working about and worrying about how they’re perceived versus those that step up and say, you know what, we made a mistake, but right now we need to take care of business and fight. There’s a clear I mean, within my culture where we have developed a clear understanding of what effective leadership is, we will not follow those people who are just concerned about their image. It’s clear that they have clay feet. We will not follow someone into death and fire if we don’t feel that they understand really what they’re doing, that they’re actually worried about us versus them. And so my only encouragement to a leader who’s afraid of showing weakness is to look to Jesus. You know, I’m assuming that everyone listening is a faith driven entrepreneur. Jesus showed pain. Jesus showed that he is struggling in the garden, in Gethsemane. He says, My soul is bitter unto death. He allowed himself to experience the pain and express it, and that gave him the reserves and the strength as a human. As he said, my heart, not my wills. But your be done. That wasn’t some sort of, you know, faith on Prozac. That was a surrender of saying, I have faced death in my soul. Now I’m ready to face it with my body. And that’s the highest form of leadership. It may not be helpful, but that’s the model that I have.

Henry Kaestner: It is very helpful.

Rusty Rueff: It’s good. Really good. Butter. Anything to add to that thing of, you know, how do we lead in these times of crisis?

Bader Mansour: Yes. I mean, Mordechai put it in a very good way. I just would like to say that, you know, in companies, what do you have? Crisis? We act as if like families, you know, the families, different people react in different ways. We hug everybody. It’s okay to work for half a day or a day or somebody wants to take a day off or somebody is not producing or somebody is home because his children are not at school or they are crying at nights, it’s fine. You know, it’s part of life. You know, we are patient, we love everybody and we pray for better days.

Henry Kaestner: I’m going to hand it back to Henry, but I’m going to ask the question again from another perspective. You know, Israel’s known as the startup nation, right? You guys, you know, the country actually stepped forward and many, many startups come out of the culture of innovation, out of Israel in this time of crisis. What do you tell those customers and business partners that you have outside of Israel in other parts of the world to manage their perspective of how your business is doing? And you know that there’s there’s stability and can we count on you in this moment of crisis, because entrepreneurs not only have to deal on the inside, but they also have to think about the outside and what’s the outside world looking at. So what are you telling your partners and customers from around the other parts of the globe?

Mordechai Wiseman: Well, I would say that 75 years of Israeli industry has proven that we are both resilient and productive, even during the times of crisis, that when the rockets are flying, we still export, we still produce. I think one of the ways in which Israelis deal with crisis is as much as we can maintain normalcy and not get bunker down, obviously, as Bader indicated and as we’re experiencing, there is a okay, gather yourself. There is a momentary pause where we’re not just doing business as usual, but there’s definitely strong narrative and pattern in Israeli society that even in crisis, we try as much as possible to maintain normalcy and try to move forward and take the next step. It’s not about solving everything. It’s about just keep moving forward and that history, that sort of. Proof that is in the pudding is what a lot of our international partners have come to rely on. And so, frankly, at least in my history, people are first asking, hey, how’s it going? How can we help? There’s actually a lot of care, even from, if you will, hard nosed business people, you know, before they say, hey, when is my product ready? It’s like, hey, is there something we can do? What’s going on? There is a season of favor. And Israelis have learned to, in that moment, gather strength and keep on moving forward. And yeah, I think our track record shows that as a nation, we’ve recovered and grown after every crisis. And I think that’s what the clients and customers of Israeli companies have come to expect.

Bader Mansour: Is our customers are also they all send emails with the troubleshooting problems or sales inquiries with first asking about us. And we usually tell them that we are fine and we don’t talk too much about the problem. We want to talk about the issues that are for them important, which are solving their problems, you know, on the other side. So we try to do business as usual as much as possible because we don’t want our customers to suffer or to think that we are not a viable company that will disappear sometime or something like this. And we have proved, you know, lots of things happened and we continue to do what we are doing on the other side. You know, we have spoken to a lot of our friends and business partners in the business world who are on the Jewish side trying to just send them a note and say, how are you doing as well? Because, you know, it all started with this I would call massacre, you know, on Saturday, you know, like ten days ago, mostly most people who were killed were Jews. And I know lots of my friends have friends that lost their lives or, you know, they are somehow involved. So, you know, in business, lots of people become your friends, even though you just do business with them. But they are friends also. In times of crisis, you ask about them, you just give them an encouragement. And I think this is the least we can do just to like people are asking about us. We are asking about the people that are suffering the most, which are the people of the south of Israel and also our friends in Gaza. But we don’t do business with but we have church relations with the Baptist church in Gaza. And we also ask about them, what’s going on, how can we help and how can we pray for you? So it’s the whole society, you know, people asking about each other, making sure everybody is doing fine in this world. And at the same time, we don’t want our customers to be worried that we are, you know, not strong. You know, we’re not going to be here in the future and we will be here, as we have always proven. And lots of companies, you know, have proven that they can be resilient. You know, they can be strong with all difficulties. You know, we will continue doing what we are doing.

Henry Kaestner: Bader we like to finish every one of our episodes by asking our guests what they’re hearing from God in his word. Maybe it’s today. Maybe it’s or of course, last week. But believing that God continues to speak to us through his people, through prayer and absolutely his word. What are you hearing from him?

Bader Mansour: Yes, lots of devotions. We have lots of prayer meetings. Our church services turned into places of comfort. Everybody’s talking about this. People are turning to God. I wrote down two verses that spoke to me, and not only this week, but in general, but more strongly this week, Act justly Love, mercy walk humbly with God. This is one and another one, though the fig tree may not blossom nor fruit be on the vines, though the labor of the olives may fail and the fields yield no food, though the flock may be cut off from the fold and there would be no herd in the stalls. Yet. I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. This has encouraged me as day in our Sunday morning service. So the Lord is good. He is with us in the midst of this difficulty. But we need to be acting justly, not only with our people, but with all people and have mercy, Love it, love mercy, and ask God for mercy, but also have mercy on the others and be humble. I think we need to walk humbly these days, just trusting God more and not trusting our own abilities or our own strength, but just asking the Lord to work through us because we are weak.

Henry Kaestner: That’s beaufiful,Mordechai.

Mordechai Wiseman: Well, I deeply resonate with everything that Bader has just shared. Those two verses have definitely been hallmarks of what God has been speaking to me recently. As I said earlier, I’m on the heels of two years of feeling like God is squeezing me. And no matter how hard I try to get the outcomes that I’m seeking, Lord seems to have other kinds of outcomes that don’t fall in my category of success. And actually, a week and a half, I think ten days before everything kind of went crazy on this side, I felt like the Lord asked me if I will give him permission to squeeze me again. And, you know, the question that keeps asking me is, do you trust me? Are you willing to ignore the normal human signals of my favor and just trust me? And that’s a hard one because you just, you know, am I doing the wrong thing? Am I missing your purposes? And this season, I feel like God is squeezing all of us. And it’s not out of a desire to hurt us, but to produce in us something that is unique. And it is a choice for us as children of God on whether we cooperate with his discipline or not. The discipline is not so much about punishing us. It’s not about punishing. It’s about helping us to grow, to become who he’s called us to be and see things as he sees them and respond to things the way he is calling us to respond to them. And anyway, so that’s kind of what God has been speaking to me and a whole bunch of lamentation songs have been extra meaningful to me in this season. And actually that last verse from I think it’s Habakkuk that Bader mentioned very powerful.

Henry Kaestner: Let me pray for you all on behalf of the listening community. Heavenly Father, we lift up these two brothers, these two men. We ask that you would continue to bless them, Dear Lord. We ask that you would allow them to know you, to be protected by you, to be able to be faithful through this ordeal, just as you protect their families, that your will would come about on Earth and Israel Palestine as it is in heaven. Dear Lord, I turn this prayer back on us and ask that these really beautiful, important lessons that you are teaching, Mordechai and Bader, would be the lessons that you’re teaching us. Though the battles may not seem as apparent as maybe they are to Bader and Mordechai this morning, where we are in Kansas City or Seattle or London or Cape Town. But they are there. Dear Lord, I ask that you would allow us all to be able to lead in such a way that we would be real with people, to be able to be vulnerable. And yet with a sense that we’re on a mission. We’re on a mission to advance your kingdom under your power, not ours, but under your power. And that gives us a sense of hope, gives us a sense of gratitude that you’ve created us for such a time as this, with as much brokenness that exists all over the world. Dear Lord, you’ve called your faith driven entrepreneurs, your business owners, to be in the midst of this battle today. Allow us to understand what the times are like […..] allow us to be able to walk in with the full armor of God. In a way that we know that we have a joyful hope set out in front of us in a way that is this countercultural sign of hope and purpose that the rest of the world is looking for. That doesn’t point to us as strong leaders necessarily, but points to you as the healer, as the savior of the world. Find us faithful in Jesus name. Amen.

Bader Mansour: I put this in front of me, a friend of mine, an American, gave me this maybe 35 years ago. It’s known, but I’ll say it. Maybe it can be a good ending to this discussion. If our greatest need had been information, God would have sent an educator. If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist. If our greatest need had been money, God would have sent an economist. If our greatest need have been pleasure. God would have sent us an entertainer. But our greatest need has been forgiveness so God sent us a Savior. We are all sinner, we deserve. You know, the punishment of God. And he sent us a savior.

Recent Episodes

How does childhood shape the entrepreneurial journey?

For Ryan Walker, the two are deeply connected.

The Third-generation President of Walker Mowers grew up around the family business. But more importantly, he grew up in a family that honored and glorified God in all they did.

He joins the podcast to talk about how his upbringing shaped his view of entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and faithfulness.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey there. And welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. You know, we’re listened to in over 100 countries, so you could just be anywhere right now. Thank you so much for tuning in once again this week. What was your first entrepreneurial endeavor? For some, it’s the lemonade stand they built as a child or the babysitting business they started. But a lot of us started with a simple lawn mowing business. Today’s guest, Ryan Walker, has a unique connection to that world, not because he’s involved in yard work, but because he’s the third generation president of Walker Mowers, a lawn mower manufacturing company that’s been around for over 50 years. Ryan joins us to talk about how being a part of a family business has shaped his view of not only entrepreneurship but also a family. Let’s listen in.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the feature of an entrepreneur. I am here with my great friends and partners in this endeavor. Rusty Rueff. William Norvell. William Rusty.

William Norvell: Good morning. Good day. I feel like it’s been a while for the three of us.

Henry Kaestner: It feels like it has been a little bit. I think we’ve got travel coming to an end as summer. Rusty and I did a couple of these, and last time we were on, we talked in another quick plug. Rusty’s. He’s got a book out that I’ve got on my desk, the faith code, which I think is super cool. Future proof framework for a life of meaning and impact that he co-wrote with one of his best friends and accountability group members and senior pastor guy named Terry Brisbane. Hey. Okay, so back to a regularly scheduled program. There’s something really special about interviewing different CEOs that take you back or different entrepreneurs take you back to a time in your life and you have this nostalgia. I bet you that half of our listeners at one point in time made some money by mowing lawns. I did. I actually worked a summer. This is crazy. I worked a summer working minimum wage, mowing lawns. And maybe that’s why I became an entrepreneur, because I saw the guy who’s sitting under the shade drinking a Mountain Dew, collecting that $50 per lawn and not sitting out there just sweating $3. Back then, minimum wage was $3.35 an hour. And so it was really it was really hard. And maybe that’s what launched me into my entrepreneurial career. But I like, do this just this doesn’t work. This is not sustainable. There’s got to be a better way. As it turns out, there is It’s launching your own business where you can sip Mountain Dew under a big oak tree. So we’ve got a guy we’ve got Ryan Walker from Walker Mower. If you go online and you see the different products from Walker Mower and you ever mowed lawns, it takes you right back. You’re 15 years old again. It’s 98 degrees with 80% humidity in Baltimore or wherever you grew up and you’re back in it and you look at those machines that he has and like, gosh, I wish I could have driven one of those. It would’ve made my job so much easier. I would have paid to work for a landscaping company that let me drive around and things like that. Ryan, thank you very, very much for joining us on the program.

Ryan Walker: It’s nice to be here. Nice to meet you guys.

Henry Kaestner: So there’s a ton of different things that we want to talk to you about on the program. But let’s just start off like, what’s your first memory of mowing lawns? Can you still smell that smell, By the way, is there something really special about smell of like cut grass?

Ryan Walker: Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in a household where my parents gave us a ton of freedom, and my dad was designing the Walker mower. That was his role in our family’s business. He has been the product designer for numerous products, but the lawn mower being the project that has really been his signature and masterpiece of his career. My dad has a degree in business, but he’s a talented machine designer and he came back and started working with my grandparents, he and my uncle and started designing lawn mowers. And so in 1977, the first prototype lawn mower is developed. In 1980, we built our first 25 and in 1983, when I was born.

Henry Kaestner: 25 is a 25 horsepower.

Ryan Walker: Our first production run of.

Henry Kaestner: Total, first run of 25 over.

Ryan Walker: There, under ten horsepower at that point.

Henry Kaestner: Okay.

Ryan Walker: So in 1983, I was born and the company became fully dependent on lawnmowers. There was another product they were manufacturing before that. And so when I was born, we became a lawnmower family through and through. And I grew up with prototypes coming home daily, at least weekly, to mow my family’s yard. And it was small at the time, but I at a very young age, younger than we recommend.

Henry Kaestner: So you were like the first test driver. You’re like, you’re out there like, do your dare to bring home like this new? And if you again, if you go online, these things are super cool and like, can I drive that? You’re like the test pilot.

Ryan Walker: It’s interesting as a CEO, you know, a lot of my work is at my desk and with people, but still to this day, I take prototype lawnmowers home that my brother and my dad are designing their team and I mow with something that’s not on the market every week, just stuff. They’re working on new designs. So it’s been kind of my entire life. There are some specific memories. I don’t want to say how old I was at that point. Just I was a young boy, really, and enjoying my father’s machine design. And it’s something that I 40 years later, I just still marvel at both the machine that my dad and my brother and many people have helped design. But it’s something that is a joy even to this day to go cut grass. And that smell never gets old. It just doesn’t.

Henry Kaestner: There’s something awesome about the statement of being a young boy and marveling at your father’s design while outside. Yeah, you bring me back to Romans and just the Hills declaring the wonder of God’s Majesty. And it’s really cool to have seen that with your dad. Did you grow up in a Christian family? Was your dad a believer?

Ryan Walker: Yes. Yeah. On my mom’s side, I’m third generation. And on my dad’s side, I think I’m fourth generation Christian.

Henry Kaestner: What did that look like in the early days of Walker mower did you get a sense about whether your dad’s faith, like, integrated itself into work that maybe at the time you just didn’t know because you didn’t know other models? Just it was kind of all wrapped up. But now as you’re out in the world and you understand the way other businesses might be run, you look back at those early days and see your father’s faith playing a role in the early days.

Ryan Walker: Yeah, I’ll probably get deeper into this of just how I was raised and how in a generational family business, you can’t take a generation off. It’s just not possible in most situations. And not because of that. But one of the byproducts of my dad’s faith, my parents faith, is that our church, our family, our relationship with Christ were all prioritized above the business. And that is something that I think is very rare. But my dad specifically has demonstrated on a daily basis what it looks like to go home. And so it has been evident in almost every area of our business and our family that our faith will be first and our family is going to be unified in the business and outside of the business, with or without the business. And that’s something that has never been a question for me. And I know no different because it’s been demonstrated on a daily basis. And so I do I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be in a different situation where I didn’t have that as an example. But I’m thankful that I kind of don’t have the perspective because it’s a wonderful blessing to be a child of a faithful home. It’s something that I can’t place enough value on, something that we want to pass on to our kids and other people that we’re associated with.

William Norvell: Ryan, I’m curious if you could go one layer deeper there, like a few examples maybe. What did that look like and what did that feel like? The 83 was a good year, so it feels like we’re in the same boat here.

Ryan Walker: Are you 83?

William Norvell: 40 year olds having some issues with life and a lot of crises here, But I think I’m gonna be okay, But I could use your help.

Ryan Walker: Yeah, I’m for kids right now. I was one of four boys. And so my parents know our house was a hot mess and we loved it. So we would often get in trouble for breaking an expectation of my parents. But we very rarely got in trouble for doing something wrong. And I think there’s a big difference there that my parents demonstrated to me over and over this desire that the big things in life mattered the most. And that’s our Christian faith, that’s our character. It’s our word, it’s our relationships. A couple of practical examples of my parents priority and my dad’s priority on our family above business and our commitment to our local church. And I would say the broader church, the mission of expanding the kingdom and being influential for Christ. My dad, almost every morning he would stay home to do devotions with us before we left for school. And those are memories from high school specifically. Every day to this day. My dad leaves work at 4:30 in the afternoon, just leaves. He goes home. He’s done all kinds of things from kind American modified stock cars. He’s a pilot. He flies planes, he rides motorcycles. He and my mom go on adventures together. And he’s so disciplined about coming to work and working hard when he’s here and then going home and being home, being a father, being a husband, being a layman. And it’s just something that I’ve grown to admire as I’ve aged and got, you know, I’m 40 now. I get hurt really easily and do all the things that in the midst of that, I watched my parents. I remember my dad turned 40 and I’m there today. It’s weird. But yet he’s been so consistent in his faith and his work and his commitment to his family.

Rusty Rueff: That’s cool. So when you’re sitting around the dinner table when you were like ten years old, were you dreaming about running the company someday?

Ryan Walker: No. We had a pretty clear expectation that the company wasn’t ours, and the Lord would decide. It would become apparent the Lord would provide leaders in the next generation. And we have a big family. I have a lot of cousins, brothers, and it was very clear that we would go do something else. And at that point, see if coming back to the business was the right fit and the right calling for us. And so at ten years old, I didn’t know what running a business really looked like. My parents didn’t talk about it. I saw them go to work. I saw my dad go to work, I saw my uncle, my dad, my uncle are the G2 leaders in our business, second generation leaders in our business. And although I admired them in their work, I really just liked the machines my dad was making. And I really enjoyed the property that we lived on and being able to ride motorcycles. And it was a very innocent childhood and my parents were very, very careful in portraying this idea that it was in any sense ours to have.

Rusty Rueff: So you didn’t grow up in the Someday Sun, This will be all yours kind of environment, which is, you know, fascinating.

Henry Kaestner: Okay, I want a bunch of things I want to drill down into. One that comes to mind is has spent some time on your site. Is he seen it do a really good job as a company of celebrating milestones. As you scroll through the Walker story, you see the picture of the crew with the 5,000th mower that you rolled out and then the 10,000, then 25,000 and 100,000, talking about the importance of culture and celebrating with an expanding team and what that looks like and how it’s received.

Ryan Walker: You know, we we fully admit that we need the help of other people in our work, in our success and milestones. Achievements are an opportunity for us to pause and tell the people around us, Thank you and good job. And hey, this is where we’re going. It’s going to be awesome. Let’s go there together and we’ll celebrate when we get to the next point. And I think that’s just core in who we are. We’ve always enjoyed eating together as a factory team and enjoying fellowship, breaking bread together and celebrating milestones. It’s an opportunity to do that with a broader group of people.

Henry Kaestner: Do you measure turnover? One of the things I’m fond of saying is that as an investor, I look to see if the company’s product delights its customer. You also do a really good job of telling customer stories on the website, but I also say that as a derivative of delighting customers, employees like sticking around companies that delight customers and that celebrate them. So see how you do that. But do you measure things like employee turnover?

Ryan Walker: Yeah, it’s a check for us. I think it points to a health of a business. Metrics like that by about 220 people right now in the organization and our average tenure is 11 years right now. Well, our largest employment generation are millennials.

Henry Kaestner: So you’re employing millennials who are notoriously jumping around, and there are lots of other opportunities for people to work in Fort Collins. So it’s not like, well, I don’t want I going to get so many call me up from Nebraska somewhere and just take issue with the fact that I’m singling them out for being in the middle of nowhere. But Fort Collins is not in the middle of nowhere. There are lots of different places that they could go. And it’s 11 years among millennials. That’s amazing.

Ryan Walker: 11 years across our entire organization. But our largest group of employees are now millennials, and they’re awesome. We have some of the best young people and creative and loyal, and we have a lot of seniority that can carry the culture and teach and train on things other than maybe skill set. Most of our shop leaders now are under 30. It’s interesting, but we also have a group of folks that are over 60 that continue to pour into this place. And just so early, booking did well.

Henry Kaestner: Wow. Talk to me about so 220 employees. That’s a lot of parents. We heard about the role of your father and what that look like and continuum looks like. So you’ve got four kids, 220 employees, has some number of kids. What about your dad’s legacy and what about the way you like to parent? Do you like to see modeled off in other people? And can you give us examples so people generally get the idea of like, okay, I’m listening to faith driven entrepreneur podcast. Are you going to tell me that faith is important and family is important, but what are some of the different techniques that some of the different tactics you used to try to encourage your employees of being good parents?

Ryan Walker: One of the things that we do to promote family life, the factory opens at six in the morning and it shuts down at 3:30 in the afternoon. We run a single shift, and that’s the decision we make. We did we did Running Night Shift at one point about 40 years ago. And my grandfather saw the effect of shift work on families and just it became kind of a commitment that we’re going to be single shift and it’s maybe not the most efficient way to run a factory, but for us, our effectiveness in providing opportunity for employees and their families is to have them show up in the morning and then go home in the afternoon so they can go pick up kids, go to doctor’s appointments, but be home for dinner. That’s so important for our family and for our employees. And the other thing we do is we pay everyone hourly. We don’t have salary people at Walker. It doesn’t matter if you’re an executive leader, one of our nine managers or you showed up yesterday for your first day of work. Everyone is paid hourly. So when people are working through on the clock and when they don’t work, they’re not on the clock. And it provides a culture where you get to go home and not be on the clock, just go home. You can clock in tomorrow morning and answer that email. And it’s derived of a desire for us to send people home at night and not work to be with their family, to be away. And we think that is so important and something that we model as leaders in our business. The four walkers, my uncle, my dad, my brother and I, we come to work and we go home one time and answer an email over the weekend and my Uncle Bob walked in my office, and he is like, Ryan I know that email was important, but be careful. He didn’t tell me not to. So just be careful.

Rusty Rueff: He didn’t say, Hey, that’s overtime. We’re going to pay you overtime if you work here right now.

Ryan Walker: He just said like, be careful. Guard your family, Guard your home life. The business will be here Monday morning. And this is coming from a guy who they barely made it in the early eighties with the lawnmower project. When the other product got taken away, we were manufacturing an evaporative tractor cap cooler that my grandfather, my dad, who designed the company, just about failed for the second time by by the Lord’s mercy and provision. We were able to pay our bills during that time where we were starting to sell lawnmowers, build, sell, buy raw materials, manufacture, build, sell that cycle. And this is coming from a guy who knows hardship, who knows failure. And yet, hey, it’ll be there Monday morning. It’s okay. You don’t have to sacrifice your family.

Henry Kaestner: I want to get back the hourly thing. I think you talked about one part of it, which is you’re not on the clock and just you go home and the family balance is important. But I also think that worker productivity is also a really important aspect of a successful company. And so the flip side of that is like, dude, you’re on the clock. You know, there is time for you to update your fantasy teams, but it’s not. Now you’re on the clock from 6 to 330 and we are at work and that there’s this tangible reminder of going in and just clocking in and clocking out. And there’s something to that discipline or there’s just at least a symbolism that is really that’s really interesting. Have you thought about the flip side of that?

Ryan Walker: Yes, it does. It creates accountability both around work and around the balance of work and family. There’s a lot of benefit to it. It’s not typical. And that’s especially for high capacity leaders. It’s atypical. And so when we’re pursuing someone to maybe come into the business and they’re used to a different type of pay structure, it takes a while to like walk through, Hey, this is what we do, This is the principles behind it. We’ve never had anyone walk away because of that issue. In fact, people kind of learn to appreciate it, hopefully because if they’re going to lead in a high capacity position at Walker, they kind of need to understand it and embrace it. And that’s been the case. So something else is really interesting in our pay structures. We pay every week. On Wednesday, it used to be Tuesday we moved it a day because of all the processing required for payroll. But we pay everyone on Wednesday for the previous week’s work.

Rusty Rueff: And I for the life of me, in all the years that I’ve been working and involved in human capital and stuff, I never understood why companies, you know, waited to pay either, you know, bi weekly or monthly. You know, some of it was the belief that people, if you paid them every week, they’d spend all their money every week, which was just really absurd. Right? It’s just absurd. And now we’re seeing, you know, some companies that are just paying daily, right? You just you know, it goes right into your bank account and you can go and hit the ATM. And, you know, if you need the money, you need the money, you know, a day’s pay, a day’s wage. I think that’s very cool. I have a question on innovation inside of a family business. So if I go back through your history, you guys have tried, as you said, the enclosed cab. I actually saw that at one point you were dabbling with golf carts, which would have been cool. Yeah, but yet you came back to the mower inside of a family business where there’s just a I sense a strong sense of tradition, you know, how do you continue to innovate? And like, if a conversation comes up, this is. Well, maybe we should be over here, you know, doing this new thing. How do you navigate that new family business?

Ryan Walker: There’s a lot of opinions, both in our family and just in the industry, our customers. There’s a lot of opinions about what innovation actually looks like. And ultimately, we kind of have to decide where we’re going to spend our effort in designing something that’s helpful to customers. Hopefully a lot of customers. And it’s a conversation that I think requires humility from our standpoint. The four walkers, my uncle, my dad, my brother myself kind of ultimately responsible for that. But we have a lot of help in determining what the most important things are to pursue. We are a very different product than 90% of the other lawnmowers on the market. And so kind of blaze of own trail in a lot of cases. And our customers really appreciate that and enjoy that. And so they talk to us a lot about what the Walker mower should and could be, and that’s a huge help for us. And so the decision process is very conversational. We include our managers at times. Sometimes it’s just pure inspiration that happens maybe at night for my dad or my brother. One of our engineers, based on feedback from marketing or sales, it just depends on the input. And sometimes they don’t ask my dad and my brother don’t ask what we think about where they’re going to spend their next design resources. They just go start doing it because it’s that intriguing. Their curiosity just takes them there. But oftentimes, most of the time, we’re working together to determine where we go next. There’s a lot of humility. One of the things about I’ll say it again my uncle, my dad, they’ve worked together for almost 50 years in this business. And a couple of years ago, my uncle told me, Ryan, your dad and I have never been divided. We made a commitment a long time ago to stay unified and that this is a good illustration of where you could become divided is where should we innovate? Where should we pursue new products? And solutions become controversial because there’s no real true right answer. But they’ve worked together closely in that regard and in this business. Now, my brother and I are part of that, and we’ve made a commitment. We also have a covenant with my dad, my uncle, that will stay unified with them and each other and will also run this business according to the principles and worldview that my grandparents started the business with.

William Norvell: That there’s I mean, you changed the word there intentionally, different than a commitment and a covenant. I’ve heard that sermon a couple of times. I’m not going to act like I remember every word of it. But that’s really fast. And could you go a layer deeper into that? What if you could? What does the covenant look like? What does it mean? What are the bounds? I think that’s just such a fascinating concept and one that, you know, not only family members running a business might want to think about, but co-founders that are especially listening here that are equally yoked and trying to pursue God’s dream. What what can a covenant look like? It’s a little different than maybe a partnership.

Ryan Walker: I think a covenant for us is a commitment to each other and God. And that’s the big difference. And we’ve laid this business down to the Lord that he ultimately owns it. We’re stewarding it today, and that stewardship looks and acts a certain way as defined by a Christian worldview and the principles that have been developed not in the last 12 years that I’ve been involved, but long before that, long before I was born. The lessons learned in our history as a company that we won’t forget, those that we will remember the past, and we will apply that knowledge to the future and that ultimately we’re accountable to God to do that work. And so for us, that’s the encompassing of what a covenant means to our family as operators of this business.

William Norvell: It’s really good. It reminds me there’s a famous startup accelerator out here in Menlo Park called Y Combinator, and one of the founders, Paul Graham, was recently talking about how so many companies think their competitors are going to take them out. Right. Everybody’s got the competitors wired and they take a hard and they spend all their time. And I forgot the exact quote, but some version of it said, In my experience, most companies die by suicide, not by competition. Yeah. And its co-founders that break apart and then you lose a valuable piece. And that word unified that you said is just, gosh, I think about faith driven entrepreneurs, that they made a commitment to be unified with their co-founders and that can still maybe, I guess, in your family matter, but that can even be a generous leaving potentially between them. But to stay unified around the company, I just feel like that would lead to so much healthier organizations and companies, and that’s what seems to always take companies down. And so, unfortunately, Ryan, we have to move to a close here on our time. And one of the things we always do at the close of our show is invite God’s word back into the conversation. And it’s been here all the present, but we want to make sure we call it out. And we love to invite our guests to say, Hey, where is God speaking to you today through his word? And that can be something you read this morning with your dad and one of the devotionals, It can be something God’s. And speaking of you for a long time, but we would just love to invite you to share a piece of his word and how it’s impacted your life.

Ryan Walker: Yeah, I think there’s a theme right now for me. There’s been a theme of gentleness for a while and specifically around my speech. But in Proverbs, it talks about a gentle answer. And as leaders, we’re often faced with unforeseen circumstances or maybe disappointments. And I can be bristly at times. And the Lord’s been working in my life around an idea of gentleness. And so, I mean, the Proverbs right now are something that are challenging me and then a concept of silence that surrounds that. And they actually surround Proverbs 15 as well. But being able to not respond as a leader is so hard, but oftentimes it’s necessary and beneficial. And so I have a tendency to talk quickly, to think later, you know, all the things of it. Maybe a typical entrepreneur run hard, run hot at times. So gentleness leading our people with gentleness, being an encourager, not being critical, but specifically around my words that a gentle answer turns away wrath. That’s something that I think is really important as I’m tasked with shepherding, leading, developing people that I respond in a gentle way, especially when I’m surprised, especially when the news isn’t good that we can walk through that and stay unified. I think that’s so important for Christian business. The world sees the church divide all the time, therefore if we are going to be Christian influences in our communities. I think it’s really detrimental if we behave in a way that the world behaves where selfishness wins. And that’s something that I want Walker to be a place that we can talk about all kinds of issues and circumstances and the response is accurate, is a gentle it’s appropriate, and we can stay unified in the organization as we pursue innovating, figuring out how we compete, but ultimately how we fulfill the mission, the vision, the calling of this place that the Lord’s placed on me as a leader and on this company.

Rusty Rueff: Amen, it’s great work. Been awesome having you.

Henry Kaestner: Thank you, Ryan.

Recent Episodes

Most entrepreneurs dream of a successful exit. For many of us, it’s the reward for a job well done.

But is there a way that Faith Driven Entrepreneurs should think differently about exits than our secular counterparts? How do we exit well? Are there ever times where God calls us not to exit and to continue our work instead?

In this episode, we wrestle through these questions and more with 1 Flourish Capital’s Neil Ahlsten.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey there. And welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We’re glad that you’ve joined us once again this week. Most entrepreneurs dream of a successful exit. For many of us, it’s the reward for a job well done. But is there a way that faith driven entrepreneurs should think differently about exits than our secular counterparts? How do we exit well? Are there ever times where God calls us not to exit and to continue our work instead? In this episode, we wrestle through these questions and more with one flourish capitals. Neil Ahlsten and I even jump in for some of the fun. Let’s dive in.

Rusty Rueff: So, William, what’s your what’s your favorite go to app for when you want to just sort of calm yourself, get into a contemplative state.

William Norvell: Twitter easily. It just brings the tension down. It brings the noise down, you know, And you can just kind of rest rest in the goodness of, you know, just people pouring blessings on top of you.

Rusty Rueff: You’re so good.

William Norvell: Yeah. Yeah. No, you know, it’s funny. I probably don’t have one, honestly. I probably go to a favorite song or two. That’s probably my, like, go to like, I need to calm a minute is I got a few tracks that I just kind of always go back to and just kind of rest for a minute and just I know the lyric is no work. It’s just like, I know it’s, you know, it’s there and it’s goodness. And so, yeah, I’ve never got the haters cause I know our guest today. I’ve used some of these. I just my personality has never been hooked by one of them.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I similar and then I got involved with our guests company, which was the Abide Prayer app. And I really found some useful time, I mean, really useful time just by letting my mind clear, letting someone sort of guide me through getting to a state where not only could I calm myself down, but also open my mind up to listen and to hear what God was trying to say to me. Because I think you’re exactly right. You know, think about Twitter and everything else is just yeah, clutter, clutter, clutter of our minds. But it’s interesting because his app was called the Abide Prayer app, which, you know, abide means to sort of stay where kind of where you are and to be there and sort of discern what that should look like. But today, we’re going to talk about something totally different. We’re going to talk about exit, which is like getting far away from abiding. And so with that, I want to welcome in Neil Ahlsten. Neil, welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. You’ve been a phenomenal founder of Carpenter’s Code that you created the Abide Prayer app. You sold that to Guideposts. Now you’re with Guidepost as a senior executive working with them, but also doing venture capital work with, you know, a new firm. And so I can’t think of anybody better to have on the podcast to talk about this topic of exits, you know, what’s it mean? When should we do it? What are we pursuing? What’s a good exit, What’s a bad exit? Are we ever forced into having an exit? So, Neil, welcome. And we want to get your perspective and really kind of wrestle with this topic. So why don’t you start us off with an overview of what you think about the topic of exiting and why it’s so important for entrepreneurs to not only understand but also to try to consider.

Neil Ahlsten: Well, thanks, Rusty and William. It’s a pleasure and honor to be on the show. And I do think this was something I did not take enough consideration of when I launched the business, I model that all sorts of exits you go to people, you raising capital and you’re trying to say what it could look like. But I didn’t think of it personally enough about what would that mean to me, why would I do it, and what could actually make it a good exit for myself. One consideration to give to this is that on some time horizon, you’re always going to have to exit, like you will not be around forever. And so it is inevitable, like death and taxes that you will exit. And part of the big question for me is how do you build the legacy that God wants you to build out of the organization that you are making, such that when that time comes, the organization is ready to exit in a good way? And that was what I gave a lot of thought to when I finally decided to sell the business. And the main driver for me, honestly, was that I felt like I had used my gifts and talents to the best of my ability to get it there. And I actually thought other people were going to be better suited to continue moving it forward. I’m a starter like a 0 to 1 guy who likes to make things come from concept to exist. I’m not so good at scaling things. I get bored after a while and I was starting to find ways of getting bored with the product. Like I was just going to talk about this problem again. We’ve already done this problem five times, and at that point I realized other people were actually probably better positioned to shepherd it going forward who are gifted in that area and passionate about that area. And so that was a really interesting realization for me.

William Norvell: Hmm. That’s good. I want to welcome everybody in a little bit. This may be a little bit of a different episode. I’d say. We all sometimes know some of our guests, but in this case, like we all kind of really know our guests have a set. The stage Rusty was actually on the board of Abide. Neil is a longtime friend, and we went to the same church for a long time and we got all know each other relatively well. And actually the intricacies of the business actually, in this case, two of the people most prominent in the room about whether to exit and when to exit are both here. And so it’s a bit of an odd situation that leads to an incredible conversation. So this may feel more roundtable ish than usual. And just for the listeners, William here is going to kind of pull in because I kind of know some of the intricacies of the stories, too, so I’m gonna try to pull some threads from each of their experiences through this process. But I want to continue going down your track for a little bit, Niel, before we get into that and just say, you know, you’ve spoken about like different ways to think about this and there’s this big discussion right now about faith driven entrepreneurs and investors, right? To bring in both podcast, right? I mean, I have heard very strong views on all sides, basically. Right. You know, whether or why you build a company and I’ve heard you talk about like, well, from God’s perspective, what is the goal? Is it to continue to bet the farm and go over and over again and just, you know, roll over whatever he gave you in blessing? So I want to let you have the stage here for your view on that and talk us through how you think through it.

Neil Ahlsten: Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack in that. That is one thing that I think a lot of founders don’t necessarily know going into this is you’re going to have different seasons and even when the world looks at you and thinks that you’re crushing it, you’re going to be worried about things knowing that you’re making decisions and taking risks that are really, really, really hard. And so one thing that we talked about a previous discussion, William, around this was that every time you take on capital, you’re basically making a whole new bet, right? Like you’re diluting your share of it. There’s probably a liquidity preference that somebody else is going to get the cash before you. So you’re like, Hey, if I take this much more cash, that means I need to raise the bar for where I can even exit the future before I get anything, because these other people are going to get first cut at it. And so it is something to just really keep in mind, whenever you take somebody’s money, it’s like, are you going to be in a situation to give it back to them in a good way and have a piece left over for yourself as an enterprise, right? Like a nonprofit, it’s a different thing. But if you’re an enterprise and you’re taking on capital, you want to do believing that you can return to those people and return a good amount of money. And so part of this for me, I did abide, not because I thought it was the best business in the world. God told me to go do it. I was at Google, I had a good job, a good salary, and God was basically like, You got to go build this thing. And I mapped out the total addressable market, how big I thought it could be. I did scenario analysis from the very beginning of what I thought this thing could look like, and I didn’t think it was $1,000,000,000 business. It was not going to be a unicorn. I looked at and said, This can be a good cash flow business and I see better business, but it’s not going to be that. And so I didn’t sell it to investors like that either. I sold it as, I’m going to give you some good money back on this, but it’s not going to be 30 x return on capital. So I’m not going out to the venture capitalists and raising money for them. I raised money from a lot of Christians, but the first check I got was from the McClellan’s. I was in their office and they literally David Denmark wrote me the first check for $40,000. And I have to tell you, one of the crowning moments of running this business was when I finished and I exited. The first check I wrote was back to them and I wrote I handwrote a big old check because they said they didn’t want a wire transfer. And I put it with a card and I sent it in the mail to Tablo and those guys over there and I was like, You have walked with me through this. I know that you are going to use this money for good. Here’s a bunch of money. Go do something good with it. And I have to tell you, that was one of the most satisfying feelings that ever had in my life. They prayed for me, they cared for me. They invested twice in the business. And to have that kind of relationship to be like, okay, we went through this together. Here’s a bunch of money. Go do something else. And with it was like I was honestly one of the happiest days of my life to have that kind of fellowship with people who I trust that much and really appreciate that much.

William Norvell: That’s awesome. I have a dream one day if I can make that because I’m in the middle is because our seed round last week. So I feel some of these things you’re talking about right.

Neil Ahlsten: Congrats.

William Norvell: And so in my vision we send like Happy Gilmore sized checks to everyone, just like I’m thinking like comically large checks would be the best use of our resources at that point, and I’m happy fund that. But so as you thought about building that, I’m going take a small detour from exits because you lived this for how long were you in the business?

Neil Ahlsten: Seven years.

William Norvell: Seven year? Seven years. And you took a lot of capital from believers, fellow people, people you knew, but people that wanted to return. I’m going to take a small detour because my co-founder, I’ve been deep in this conversation lately. How do you think about stewarding other people’s capital and how that impacts your view of faith at work? Right, Because I feel like it can be taken so many different directions and I’m not I don’t think there’s a right answer. I’m just curious how God led you. You have children yet? I sometimes go, gosh all these people who trusted me with their heart and I need to work all the time to return their capital. But then you pair that with Scripture and I need a loving husband. I need to be a father. But. But I’ve taken the step. I’ve taken their money. Right? Like I told them a thing. And then there’s God doing cool God things and blessing you in the midst of your work and in the midst of your rest on a Sabbath. I just want to give you a little bit of like, how did you steward that and how do you encourage other founders to steward that through your journey?

Neil Ahlsten: That is a good one, and I think each founder probably has to answer it for themself a bit. But the way I answered it. I basically had only two priorities. I think simplifying and focus is really important to be successful in anything but especially a startup. And one is my family. I was not going to sacrifice my family for this business. I would come home at 6:00, cooked dinner, sit down, eat dinner, hang out, read the kids bedtime stories, and then go back and work at night. right, like. And so I worked really, really hard. But my number one priority is family. Number two is the business. And that was pretty much it. You know, that was all I did for five years until the business was cash flow positive and doing really well. And I could take a breather and I would counsel people similarly, is that if you want to win in a startup, you have to focus and cut out everything and just be honest with yourself. I know a lot of founders, some founders who have tried to say, Hey, let’s have a lifestyle startup. You can do it. It’s not a hypergrowth business. If you’re going to do that, you can build businesses like that, but it’s not VC funded high growth startup. That’s a different kind of a business. That’s a great business is just call it what it is. If that’s how you want to live, that is going to be a slower growth, more long term, and this this is great businesses, but part of it. Decide what you want. But if you want to build a hypergrowth startup and you want to build something that doesn’t exist from scratch and find customers for it and pivot into it, man, you got to put gas in that fire. I was constantly working 50, 60 hour weeks, but a part of my time that way. Monday I would work from 7 a.m. until about 10 p.m.. Every Monday I was like, Honey, you don’t see me on monday for dinners. We had an after hours work where you invite in bunch of friends from Google and stuff who volunteered at abide. But I put in basically like a 13 or 14 hours day on Monday because I’m like, if I do that the rest of my week, I can take the gas pedal off a little bit and spend some time that evening with my kids. And then weekends I tried to, you know, I’d probably work one or two Saturdays a month, but, you know, that was my schedule, but it was pedal to the metal for a lot of hours. And then I would just hit the brakes and hang out with my family for two or 3 hours and pass out and get up and do it again.

William Norvell: Yeah, Yeah, that’s good. Thanks for sharing. And so let’s go back to exit. So you had a chance to do this. Walk us through the process. How did it come about? When did it come about it in the business? There are so many things to consider. You know, I think we mentioned those most faith driven entrepreneurs, I am not going to say everyone has some sense that God’s called them into this, and you probably have a little less of a sense when someone calls to buy your business that that’s time to go. Because, I mean, at least I’ll speak for myself like, gosh, like letting go of that seemed so hard. It was so hard to take the leap in the first place, right. To all of a sudden say, Oh, yes, like it’s obvious time to move on to something else there. Spiritual effects. You’ve hired people, you’ve got customers. Now. It’s not going to be under your leadership anymore. But, you know, step one, I would love to hear how did the exit possibility even come and how did you figure that you were ready for that? And then how did you discern Actually, yes, this is the clear time and this is the clear person to even buy the company. Right.

Neil Ahlsten: Well, one good thing is it wasn’t my first rodeo. I’ve had other people walk in and make offers before, like faith based and non faith based people. So that was helpful because I had set expectations for myself around what I wanted to see out of an exit by that point in time. And one of my big requirements was that I wanted them to see it as a strategic fit for their organization. I didn’t just want somebody who wanted to cash flow from the business and just squeeze it and get whatever they could out of it. I wanted them to see it as something that would help their whole organization function better because we have such a talented team of great people, great process, great customers, and they really checked the box on that one when they came in to buy because they wanted us to help transform their organization. Make no mistake, I was expecting that to be a challenge and it has been hard on some levels, but they were very open and loving about that. So I think that was a really nice one and they really honestly want a buy to exist very long term and grow in that space and actually have a similar mission. So I think all those things helped me. There were other weird idiosyncrasies that helped too. After running abide for three or four years, I realized they would actually probably function better as a nonprofit because it just gives you another revenue source. You can ask people for donations and give the stuff away. It’s like, why would you not want that as a way to operate that, Hey, I can get people to donate money and then I’ll just give it away for free to people who can’t afford it anyway. So that was actually a really cool additional bonus to it. So when they came asking, I think that one interesting enough I was ready and two, I had a baseline for what the offer needed to be and it was above that in terms of a lot of different elements and the space is different. One thing I would say about the Christian space versus the other ones, I didn’t actually go take it to shop it around because I was afraid that could kill the deal. Right? Like a lot of times at this point you’re like, okay, well, now, well, let’s get a bidding war going, right? That was not the tone that was going to get the best deal out of this, which is I would advise a lot of founders say like, hey, if you are selling, go make a bidding war, get more than one offer and whatever. Unfortunately, I already had other offers. I could compare it to say like, Yeah, this is reasonable. But I also wanted the relationship to be one that felt very mutually looking out for each other. But that was just the nature of how I wanted to exit. So, no, that’s great.

William Norvell: And Rusty, bring us into the boardroom. So I think you were one of the first few calls that Neil made. How did you react?

Rusty Rueff: Well, I was getting ready to ask. I wanted to ask Neil a question. So, Neil, what did you do with a board member who was sitting there going, well, wait a minute. Like, the tailwinds for us are really good. Headspace is growing, calm is growing. Mental health concerns are there, man. You know, we could be the company that, you know, just sort of breaks all this open in the faith based space. And are you sure we shouldn’t go raise more capital? How do you deal with the board member who was asking you those questions?

Neil Ahlsten: Well, you know, Rusty, I actually have some personal experience with that. First off, I listen because I had wise board members, so I really listen to Skip. I listened to Rusty as to where they thought things could go and how I could think about it playing out. And I always love Rusty as a board member because he would ask those really challenging questions to make you think about the problem differently. And so I did that. But then you have to make your own assessment because you’re the CEO. And I think part of what I looked at in the market was, yes, those things might be possible, but how likely are we in the situation we’re in to make those be true and what would need to be true in order to get there? And I think looking at that, what Rusty’s saying is true is in order to make that happen, we needed to go out and raise ten or $20 million and swing for the fences and hope maybe there’s a 5050 chance you hit a homerun. And if not you, hopefully you get far enough that you can sell it. And I think that the other thing in that calculation is like you as a person, do you have the commitment right now to go put in 3 to 5 more years to make that happen? Like, are you ready to go in at 50, 60 hours a week and crush it with that capital? And honestly, when I looked at it, I was like, I’m not at a position to put that level of effort into the business for another 3 to 5 years to get there. And that was part of my assessment. It’s like, am I as a founder ready to do that, knowing probably the effort that it would take? And part of the answer for me was, I don’t think so. I think that I had burned from both ends on this project for long enough that there wasn’t that much wax left. And I was like, Actually, I think it’s going to be better to sell.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that’s the part that struck me so much during the decision on what to do. And I think this is a lesson for anybody who sits on a board or works with any entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, the person who’s steering the ship. You have to listen to them. You have to understand where they’re coming from and also understand that, you know, this is an arc. I think the entrepreneurial journey is not always up and to the right with our level of commitment, our level of energy, our sustainable, you know, work patterns like what you’re talking about, Niel. And while people will talk about, oh, I’m a serial entrepreneur, I’m a serial entrepreneur, I believe that. And there are some really phenomenal serial entrepreneurs. But I think we also get wiser and we figure out that, you know, there’s just certain hills that we may not want to climb or if we are going to climb and we’re going to climb of differently than we did last time. And it’s important that if you’re an investor or a board member or even a co-founder, you know that you’re finally attuned to that about the founder or the person who’s helming the ship. And in this case, you know, as we struggled through because I did see the upside, I saw the you know, there was enough family office money out there. I mean, we were hitting on all cylinders. There was really not big competition. I mean, you were even Niel at that time, you know, starting to partner with the other app there was out there in the Catholic space with Halo and started to do things with them. And it was like, wow, man. Now it’s going. But yet the founder, the CEO is going, Yeah, but this is kind of how I feel. And that, in my estimation, always is the most important factor. And, you know, you could be callous and you could say, well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The shareholders are the most important factor. And if the founder is at that point, then you replace the founder. You know, go get somebody else. And that’s to Neil’s point about the type of capital you bring in. Know, you were fortunate because you had patient capital, right? You had patient capital because you raised on that premise. You didn’t raise under 30 X. But, you know, those of us who’ve been there done that right, who have people who are sitting there going, no, no, no, no, in my portfolio, I need you to be a 30 X. Otherwise, I don’t hit my goals. You know, they won’t be so patient and they may not be as finely attuned to what the founder wants to do. So I think that was the big thing for me. And you were honest and authentic about it and that, you know, made the difference.

Neil Ahlsten: Yeah, it’s still a good question, though. Like, should I have rolled the dice and gone out and gotten more capital into it? And the short answer is you can’t. No, No, you.

Rusty Rueff: Can’t. No, you can’t. Hey, if ifs and buts were fruits and nuts. Oh, what a feast we’d have, right? You can’t look over your shoulder. You know, you close that door behind you. And I think that’s a lesson that everybody should also remember about exits. Like, if you’re going to question yourself in the future and say, what did I leave on the table? Or, you know, did I give up too early? You know, then you’re probably not in the right headspace yet.

William Norvell: I want to everybody because, you know, Rusty, you’ve been a CEO that’s exits as well. I mean, it’s just so difficult, right? I mean, and you turned down other offers, Niel. Right. So, like, I mean, you you were at a different stage, you know, at various times as well. And we don’t get too much into mechanics. But I think it’s always interesting. Like, I’m curious, was it actually your decision? Did you control your company at that point? Like, was it your decision, Neil, or did you have to convince the board?

Neil Ahlsten: The only person I needed to convince was my co-founder. Given the equity stakes in the voting we didn’t really have. I wanted other people’s opinions, but no, we kept it very closely held.

William Norvell: Yeah, it’s just an interesting part of this discussion because there are probably many people listening here that don’t actually control the voting shares of their company. And so when this comes, this might actually not be their decision, right? They have a lot of input in the decision, but it’s not their decision. And so when you wrap all of that together in a spiritual lens, right. I mean, it’s really difficult. And so I want to go one layer deeper to the employee base. How did they take it? These are people that you sold a dream to, I assume you sold a big vision to. How did that go at the organization level? And were there disappointments where their excitement was there, everything in between? Because, you know, so often the founder conversation could leave out all the people that did so much work for so many years to be alongside you. And I’m curious how that conversation went.

Neil Ahlsten: Sure. The quick summary is that every conversation with every employee was different depending on their point of view, because they brought in a lot of their own feelings about it. I think most of them were probably accepting but not excited about it would be the short answer because of a lot of them love the feel of working in a startup. The branding of that, the fast moving this of it, the kind of just trying to go out and change the world every day and make the world a different place than it was yesterday. And that was very the mindset that that’s why you work for us. And if you’re working for us and you’re not thinking about that, you’re work at the wrong place. You should go somewhere else. It was very much of how we ran it. And so I think that people were like, So we’re going to quit doing that. And my challenge then was they know we need to do that in this new environment and helped transform an organization to be more thinking like this. So most of them did come along. They were one or two of the younger people, like one actually decided she was going to go off to med school afterwards. She was like, you know, just chose life changes and career changes. But the vast majority of them were fine with it and they went along with it. And, you know, we’re still friends today, and most of them are still working with guideposts.

William Norvell: And for both of you, that’s really interesting. Is there a way you learned, just as I’m like it went okay. Right. So no disasters, but like, is there a way if a founder’s looking at the show and they’re thinking, you know what, I’m I’m kind of at that stage that Neil’s talking about, Right. And I’m going to start making some overtures to maybe exit the business. Is there some things you tell a founder just started preparing their employee base or is that like, now you keep that really close to the vest until it happens. You don’t do anything. Like, how would you all counsel someone to think about the people that have worked so hard for them? As you know, you’re going that direction, right? You’ve made the decision. You’re heading that way. How do you steward those people? Well.

Rusty Rueff: Well, I’ll jump in first. I mean, I’m always of the mind that once you’ve made that decision, right, that’s when you open up the door. Right. But when you’re just thinking about a decision, you’re contemplating a decision. There are those that you talk to about it, but you don’t necessarily open up the door because you open up the door. There’s always a draft from that point on. Right. You know, and what if you change your mind or what if you do that? But when you’ve made a decision in most things in business, I think it’s wise to move, you know, to the next step quickly and begin to bring people in and explain what you’re doing. But I also tell you this William, that, you know, there’s another type of exit that none of us like. And I mean, the one I went through with snowcapped was not one that, you know, I wanted to do. I mean, the market had proven that now was the time and none of us were really ready to give it up. But it was a conclusion we came to. I had a conversation this week with two founders who likely might listen to this podcast. They’re both believers and I invested in their company and advise them, and they called me this week and said, We’ve reached the end of the road. And both of them had put a significant amount of money into the business themselves and not taking a salary, you know, for over a year plus. And that was really hard for them. Right. That’s an exit. That’s the last thing they wanted. It’s a negative exit. It’s not the positive exit, you know, So there’s every one of them have a different set of dynamics, I guess would be a way of looking at it. I don’t know. We started the conversation with positive exits and exit, meaning, you know, somebody bought us. But I think it’s important we talk about that, too, as a part of the process.

Neil Ahlsten: Absolutely. And if you’re not ready for that possibility that you might exit under negative circumstances, don’t found a company.

Rusty Rueff: Right.

Neil Ahlsten: You’re just being naive if you don’t think that that’s a possibility. Typically going in to find a company that’s going to be some sort of a growth startup.

Rusty Rueff: I think you should talk about the relationship and the conversation you have with your co-founder, Eric. You know, without, you know, breaking any trust that the two of you had, but, you know, be as open as you can about those conversations and how those went, because I know that was really something that was very important to you. And for anybody who’s a responsible co-founder, it’s going to be important to them.

Neil Ahlsten: Yeah. You know, and that conversation goes all the way back to how we started working together. I think the tone and the trust that we had with each other was always very, very strong and very in it for the collective to win. And so even in thinking through from founding the company and how we divided up equity and what vesting would look like all the way through to how we got treated and when people got salary, who got salary all the way through to exit, I think we had very open and clear communication. And that’s just if I could say one thing about the founder relationship, I was extremely blessed because my co-founder was always 110% in and we always were able to share with each other directly the things that we needed out of the company in the arrangement for to work for us. And so when we got to that point, it wasn’t really like he didn’t know it was a surprise. I think that he was, you know, my closest confidants through the whole thing in terms of sharing. And that made it great. I think it made a great because we felt like we went through it together and we exit together. So it wasn’t actually that hard of a conversation was much more of a we did this knowing that this could be the kind of outcome and this is a good outcome. You talk about Rusty that we were able to sit down and say like, this is not a bad outcome. Everybody’s going to get a really nice check out of this and our legacy should continue into this organization in the future. And that can be a really good thing and a good home for the product that we built. And so our conversation fortunately was great going into that. As far as I recall. Now, if you asked Eric, you might say other things, but.

William Norvell: Also a friend later and you know, see what we get. Okay, let’s switch the discussion a little bit. I’m going to bring both up again here. So, Niel, you’ve flip the table now, right? So you’re on the other side and actually looking for the 30 X investment. So my guess is you would not have invested in your own company, from what I can tell from that.

Neil Ahlsten: That’s correct. So isn’t that funny?

William Norvell: It is. That’s why it’s a fun conversation. And so this next topic, I know, Rusty, you’ve been investing a long time and actually taking money. And Neil you’ve taken money. Now you’re on the VC side looking for 30 exits. Both of you. I want to give you both a chance to talk about capital business fit, right. We know our listeners, not everyone here is building a venture backed startup that is not the majority of the audience. Some are right, but a lot of people are looking for a lifestyle business. There’s a lot of people are looking for five xs. A lot of people are looking for 30 xs. A lot of people are looking for, Hey, I’m just still trying to make this thing. Don’t even know what it could be. But I do need some money to buy some equipment or I need some money to buy this or to buy that. How important is and how do you counsel people to think about capital business fit?

Neil Ahlsten: I mean, I honestly can’t think of that many more important decisions. People say it’s better for you’re getting married when people are putting money into your business. And I would say that that it feels that way. So part of the biggest challenge that I see with founders is not enough self-reflection or understanding of what kind of business they’re actually making to know what kind of capital they should court. Because it’s hard, especially to your first time founder, and you don’t know the different types of capital that are out there, the different types of businesses. I think even understanding that can be hard, but I would hugely counsel people to consider that. And I try to counsel startup companies that are raising from us about where they fit in the spectrum of like super high returns market or above market rate returns all the way to your donation. And you look like a business, but it’s really donation because you’re probably going to go broke and people invest. You aren’t going to make any money. And I think that it’s important to understand where you are in that spectrum to the extent that you can be honest and seek counsel in that.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I would say different philosophies for different times. Like, you know, if I rolled back 12 years ago when I was angel investing or doing things like that, it was just a different time. Right. You roll the dice, you covered a lot of numbers and you know, guess what? It would all work itself out because companies would quickly get to a point where they exit. And, you know, it was all good. It was very, very frothy times. You know, I would say post 2008, after the Great Recession, you know, the world of investing, especially as an angel investor, is totally changed. You know, it’s not two years to an exit. It’s minimum 5 to 7 years. A lot of capital going into companies. The early guys, you know, have a good chance unless you pro-rata all the way through of getting washed out and so different philosophies different times and and I think you know you change as an investor. So my philosophy has always been you know I bet on jockeys, right? I mean, if it’s a great co-founder, I believe in her or him. And I think that they’re the kind of people who can persevere. And I align my values and my principles with them. You know, I’m open to talking about an investment and I’ve always invested on jockeys. Now, that’s being said, the horse has to have at least four legs, right? I mean, it can’t be a three legged horse. It just doesn’t work that way. But, you know, whenever I’ve gone into those situations where I’m investing in the founder and the co-founders in the team, I’ve never really been disappointed because I’ve been fortunate enough that each one of those people have been people that, you know, on the back side, even if it didn’t work out, I would consider investing again with them because of their integrity and the way they treated their employees and their customers and how they ran their businesses. And then along the way, you know, some of those actually worked out really great. So I think, you know, you have to go in eyes wide open into any situation. And I always think about, you know, I’m not going to invest money that at the end of the day I’m going to regret that I invested like I’m not taking that much money out of my pocket and making that investment because, you know, I might well be disappointed because how many actually work and how many don’t if the odds are stacked against us. But I love it. I mean, I love it because there’s no greater form of affirmation validation to a founder that you’re working with than to say, I’m writing you a check. Right? I mean, we’re in now, we’re in this together now. And I behind you, you know, and sometimes it doesn’t take many of those checks to be the thing that just ignites the fire.

William Norvell: Yeah. Words of affirmation are great. Moving the banks a little better on the fundraising trail. Niel, you said, hey, is the most important thing a founder potentially can do. Prepare some founders listening. What are the right questions to ask when they’re raising capital? Who do they ask them to? Where’s that line? What is reasonable to ask? What is unreasonable ask? What should an investor tell them? Right. And of course, you know, a lot of people are saying, I’ve been there, gosh, how much can I ask? And I still want the money. I don’t want to upset up, you know, how does that relationship work? How quickly can you get to that? How quickly should you get to that? And what’s reasonable to expect an investor to answer back? You know, in that conversation.

Neil Ahlsten: Well, there’s a wide range there, depending on who you’re talking to about how they’re going to respond and what questions they’re going to ask. If you’re a founder coming into this and you’re wondering, like, what should I be putting myself up for, to go into these investor meetings and have good discussions about, you know, obviously try to repay yourself with a lot of great books on there about how to talk to VCs or whatnot. But I think number one is actually comes back to something that Rusty said that I love is if you look across the table from the person who’s going to write you a check and they look at you as a human being who is valuable, whether or not that check ever gets returned or gets returned with a 30 X or five X or whatever, those are the kind of people you want sitting around the table with you, because those are the kind of people who, when you hit Valleys, every founder is going to hit valleys in their founding experience. I think having people around who aren’t going to be the ones who are like, Hey, now you’re down in the valley, I’m going to take shots at you, but hey, you’re in the valley. Like, how can we help get you out of that or counsel you through it? Those are better people to have a lot of investors. And just keep this in mind, the founder, right? When you double down on the winners, you triple down on the winners. You spend your time with the winners and not with the losers. And I was just talking with a renowned venture capitalist who Rusty, you know, out of London and he was saying that the most valuable week he ever spent was with one of his winners, and he spent a week with them and helped them win even five X. More than they already had that led to this huge multibillion dollar exit. And he’s like, out of all the 50 weeks I spent that year, that was the only one that actually I did anything really valuable. But it’s a hard perspective as a founder, because what winds up happening with the investors who invests in your companies is that they tend to feed the winners and starve the losers. A lot of them do. And so just be a little mindful of that. Try to have people around you who won’t starve you off if you’re the one who’s in the valley for a while because you might have otherwise made it. But they won’t help you get through like you want the people who are at least going to be there who shoulder you can cry on and who are going to say give you at least words of encouragement, even if they don’t write you another check and some words of wisdom and refer you to some other people other than being like, Sorry, you’re just roadkill, but just sweeping you off the road. I’m going to keep going forward. I think you want a few of those people on your cap table as you can have.

William Norvell: Yeah, that’s good. You know, as we come near close here, how do you. So once again, you had a very significant path. We heard. Right. You know, Christian investors sold to a Christian led company. The legacy was able to continue. And so and you and you were actually quite confident in that, right? I’m sure it’s different. And after an acquisition, it always is. Right. It’s different than you actually thought it was going to be. But it sounds like directionally all those things held true. Now you’re investing in companies. And, you know, I’ll go Neil first and then Rusty and but that may not be true. Google may come to buy them right now. I think Google’s a bad company. That’s not what I’m trying to say. But just like you might not be as clear that it’s going to go just like I thought it was. And they are going to hold my vision just like I thought. And so what I’m getting to is how much the spiritual legacy and impact. Impact an exit decision when there isn’t that. I think yours is a rarity. I think on average there isn’t a lot of confidence that it’s going to go great and this is going to be a perfect marriage and they’re going to grow the business more without me. It’s like now you’re probably thinking they may shelve my company in two years, they may fire all my employees, but it’s still the right decision to all the stakeholders. But I’m worried about it, and so is that 5% of the calculus? Do I say no because of that? Just how does spiritual legacy and impact what God’s called you to do? What you’ve been building the business for way into this type of decision?

Neil Ahlsten: For me. I think, though, I have to give myself an air of humility and all this. One of the most common exits I see in the Christian space is the founder led church that dies when the founder goes away. There is just I can’t even tell you how many thousands of churches out there that just died after the founder of a founder led church never handed it off. And so I think that the opposite is often more true is that as the founder you hold on to long past the point when you’re youthful and you don’t build up the people to take it over after you because you think you’re the only one who can do it. And if you think that you’re the only one that God can raise up to do something, you are wrong. God can rise up all sort of people. So that’s actually a little bit of a personal, philosophical thing that I have is if I do not believe God can raise up the next generation to keep moving forward. Boy, somehow God has done that for a lot of generations. So I think that that was just my own perspective. Everybody has their own perspective on it, but so I didn’t feel some weight and talking about spiritual legacy and now I can be on the proud side of it. I’m pretty sure that a lot of companies out there, like Pray.com and Hello, were able to raise the capital they were because we were a top 40 grossing health and fitness app and other venture capitalist said, Shoot, that’s actually a thing that you can be a top 40 grossing health and fitness app as a religious app. Why aren’t there more? And so Party wants to say maybe we helped inspire also other people to write checks to our collabors in Christ so that they could build great businesses, too. So part of me looks at it and says, Yeah. Some of that capital they raised. Maybe we helped inspire it because we’re the first ones to prove that you could actually make money and cash flow really well being a Christian app, to my knowledge. And so I don’t know all the spiritual legacy that I brought, but a part of me takes a little bit of pride in that to be like, Hey, Alex did Hello, Maybe you got a check because the guys looked over and said, Hey, you know, this can work. And maybe Steve could tell you that the same thing. But he got a check because people whatever. So that can work. I don’t know for sure, but it’s hard to know what your spiritual legacy is because you don’t know how many people you touch. And the other thing is these reviews, like, I mean, every single day I’m still get all the reviews coming in and it just blows my mind. The reviews that people give where they’re like, Man, you know, I came to Jesus through your app. My husband died listening to your app convalescing in a home somewhere, and the last thing you heard was Abide Meditations before going to meet Jesus. I mean, there’s just so many different versions of these testimonials that I’m like, I don’t know, Lord. Hopefully I did something good running his company. Time 105 is probably not going to be what you need from me. I’m going to do so. But you know, each founder has to deal with that in their own way with that product and that team and answer that question for themself. Honestly. It’s a very, very personal question.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I’ll come in really quickly. I think it comes back to something we explored in one of our earlier podcasts with one of our guests. I can’t remember exactly who it was, William But you know, what do we really own? Right. What are we really own? I mean, if we are believers that are, you know, faithfully surrendering our lives, our vocations, our skills and talents to Christ, we don’t own it. Right. We’re just renting this company that we founded, you know, for this time frame that God’s given it to us. And if it’s taken from us or it’s His will for it to go someplace else. And you really believe that, then you let it go. Because it wasn’t really yours from the beginning. And so I think that that’s one of those faithful, willful decisions we take, too. Now, if you’re not a believer and you don’t have faith and you know, I understand why people get really disappointed when they hang on so tightly. And then if it goes someplace else and then it gets shut down and then their own self-esteem, their own ego, like it didn’t live and what did I do wrong? And I should have stayed there longer. But, you know, we don’t have to be that way. It’s our choice not to be that way, because, you know, God’s will supersedes all of that.

William Norvell: Yeah. Reminds me of two episodes. I think that might have been Alan Barnhart, where, you know, he effectively gave away his company but still runs his company. A rather large one. Right. But he effectively has given away all of it to charity. And then also reminds me of a really amazing episode with Randy Alcorn talking about the treasure principle. And yeah, what do we actually own? I hear the echoes of that, Niel, and what you said, like, well, we actually own is actually like, what, what God makes these things on earth into in heaven. Right. And so actually, like, this is just a small foretaste of what he’s going to do with our skills and gifts and abilities. And in some, my reading of Revelation, which I see if William was right there one day, probably not. But my reading of it is like there’s some supernatural way in the new city, the new heavens in new Earth that, like what we produced here, will still echo there and we have no idea what that will look like or well, it would be. And remind me also, it got so many good episodes. I remember we had Victor on. He talked about going through a layoff and said, you know, this may have been the reason. This may be the only thing that’s remembered about my company is how I treated these people during this layoff. Right. Right. That may be all that in matter. And he’s not saying that definitive. And that may end up being all that mattered. And we can’t know that here. Right. On this side. And so thank you for sharing that. I think that was such a great way to end. As we go to the final end, what we do love, I’m guessing you have no shortage of biblical reflections, so I’m just going to let you go. But we love to end with the word of God. And one place that God may be taking you maybe today in your abide reflection. And and of course, feel free to at the end of that, please tell everybody where they can get a abide, how they can get a abide and all of those things as well, because we know it personally helps so many people. I know and I hope we can obviously do that too.

Neil Ahlsten: Very cool. I’ll give you a biblical reflection. One came partly to revelation from God, but also is very much back to the Scripture is that I truly think a prayer that you pray exists through all time and space forever. We talk about the prayers of the Saints being incense before God in heaven. So pray a lot would be the short answer and pray scripture. But it just had this very clear understanding from God that when we recorded this little podcast prayers that were on abide and then prayed in faith by somebody recording it and other people out listening to it, that prayer is still being affected and the Holy Spirit is still working through that, even though it’s being played on a digital podcast somewhere. And so just know that those little spiritual moments that you do to cry out to God, to ask for God to move, etc. they may seem temporal and they pass away, but those songs that David wrote almost 3000 years ago are still active and working in people’s lives today. So that’s just one of those Don’t underestimate the importance and the power of going where God is going and praying in the way God is praying because it will continue. And one of the counsel is that I think the peace of Christ is an actual spiritual tool that you need to use as a founder through hardship, that the the piece of Christ protects you, it surrounds you. It’s it’s inside of you. And having run hundreds of experiments on people with content, trying to understand what happens when you bring people into the space of the peace of Christ and what that does in their life. It’s a thing. And so don’t think of the piece of Christ is something that you accomplish or you get to one day that you just feel at peace. But it actually is like part of God’s armor surrounding you, protecting you, helping you walk through those valleys that you’re going to have as a founder and know that God has a plan of purpose for you through those seasons. Like Victor said, laying people off. Love that dude like that, that you could have the peace of Christ giving people a reduction in force, not a threat like that. You know that This is what I need to do in this season and I can still be okay with it. So treating people right as founders and as leaders of companies walk into every day knowing that you can do that and you can lead to the peace of Christ even through the hard times.

Rusty Rueff: Amen.

Neil Ahlsten: And how you get abide, go download it. You can go to the App Store or Google Play Buy.com. Use it. The things that people do with it that we tested into, they love the most. The meditations are a great way to reflect with Scripture on your own life. We actually have pauses in there. This is you’re not supposed to do audio files, right? You don’t have a podcast. And second, positive guys, but we ask questions and ask you to reflect on your life using Scripture. And I do it and it works. And the short answer is it helps me understand what God is doing in my life. We invite the Holy Spirit in and then sleep is the other one. I can’t even tell you how powerful it is to fall asleep to Scripture and have that Scripture through your brain at night. It rewires the neurons in your head to align with what God is thinking and why in your life or what is true, as opposed to what’s false and wrong and broken in the world. So I encourage you do that. If you need a scholarship, just email, help it abide.com and we’ll give it to you for free. If you can’t afford it. If you’re not taking a salary and you’re found out there today and you need it, go get it. We’ll give it to you for free.

Rusty Rueff: Awesome.

William Norvell: Pretty good pitch.

Rusty Rueff: Niel It’s been great to do this. William, Thanks for moderating. Is through what I think is a really important conversation. Hopefully we can have more conversations like this about different points in the journey for an entrepreneur in that entrepreneurial journey. But Niel, in the meantime, man, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. And, you know, you’ve been a real inspiration to me, the way you’ve handled yourself as a CEO, a founder, all the way through. It was an honor to be on your board. And, you know, I only wish the best for you and all that you’ve got going. Blessings over you and your family.

Neil Ahlsten: Thanks Rusty. Thanks, William.

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