— by Austin Samuelson

We are playing a different game. Different is good.

In third grade, I wanted a trampoline really bad, but I had a problem – my parents wanted me to help pay for it. I had made a whopping $2 a week doing chores around the house, but as every great entrepreneur does, I thought there has to be a better way. If I wanted a trampoline before I turned 83, I needed a new solution. So, I started my “first business” selling homemade stress balloons. Before third grade was over, I was jumping higher than the biggest bullfrog in the pond. This trend continued in high school. If I wanted a truck with a solid floorboard, paint that wasn’t rusted, and AC, then I needed to earn money, and that is what I did. Owning a business has always been the career path I knew I wanted to take. 

As I’m sure you all know, the path looked different, but different is good. 

Twelve years ago, my wife and I were blown away to find out (at that time) 18,000 kids die each day from starvation and malnutrition. We were saddened and sickened by this stat but at the same time, confused. 

What can we do, how can we help? 

I knew I was called to the business world and that God created me to run a business, but how do we do that and fight hunger? God has a funny way of answering these questions. He called us to open a restaurant that donates a meal for every meal we sell, Meal 4 Meal. The ironic thing is (and a total God move) he called us to do this even though we had never worked in a restaurant a day in our life. 

As we have embarked on this faith journey of serving God by running a for-profit business, we have had to get very comfortable with being different. 

Hey Entrepreneurs, Be Different! 

I have a great group of friends who own and run restaurants. These guys are awesome, and although we sometimes compete, we all care about each other and truly want the best for each other’s restaurants. When I first met these guys, I often felt very underqualified. These guys grew up in the industry. In fact, several are second-generation restauranteurs. I, on the other hand, am a complete outsider. 

The first day we opened our first restaurant was day one for me in this industry. I have learned so much from them, but one of the things I had to learn the hard way is to not be like them. 

This isn’t because they are not great guys – they are – they run restaurants I would be glad to have my boys work at. They have been extremely successful. So, why should I not be like them? 

God had to gently remind me that I’m playing a different game. 

Do I enjoy their friendship? Yes. Do I learn something new every time I talk to them? Yes. Has Tacos 4 Life gotten better because of these friends? 100%. But I’m not playing the same game. The beauty of God speaking this to me is that I can learn and let the insecurities fall away. 

In a mission-focused business, we have to look at business peers and ministry peers and learn from each, but we do not fit either category. We have a clear and strong mission to feed kids while running profitable restaurants. Both are equally important. One cannot outweigh the other. If we only look at our business peers, we will tend to lean in that direction. If we only look at our ministry partners, we will tend to lean in that direction. Instead, we have to hold both as equally important. 

We have to be ok being in the middle and listening to God’s direction. 

Be different!

How Do We Become Different? Embrace Your Calling

The first time I went to Africa, I had a friend speak into my life in a way that forever changed me. We went to Africa to see the food that has been raised from donations at our restaurants in action. We partner with an incredible Christ-centered organization, Feed My Starving Children. We had been in business for two years at this point with our first restaurant, and you would have thought I would have been so excited to go on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Africa, but I didn’t want to go. 

No, I was tired, burnt out, and a little angry with God. Ashton and I had done this radical thing of opening a mission-based restaurant, and it was failing, and I was being a sore loser. 

I went on this trip, and I guess my anger was evident to the others on the trip. During one of our long van rides across the beautiful countryside, a friend leaned over to me and told me to read Romans 4 in the Message version. He then pointed out what Paul said about Abraham, the Father of our faith. Eugene Peterson does such a beautiful job helping us see how significant this chapter is. Paul shares that Abraham was first named a father and then became a father. He trusted God to do what only he could do. 

I love that God called Abraham a father long before he became a father. Isn’t that just like God? It’s not just Abraham, it’s David, Joseph, Gideon, and on and on and on. I love what Dallas Willard says, “The most important thing in your life is not what you do. It is who you become.” So stop focusing on your own inabilities and focus on God. He’s the one who has created you, named you, and is growing you into who you are becoming.  

Being Different in Business Means Winning Different

I grew up in Arkansas, and being in the land of Walmart, I grew up hearing stories about these wise old sages who sold cattle, cashed in retirement funds, or just simply went all in to buy Walmart stock. My parents have a neighbor, and he was one of these wise guys. Apparently, he sold a trailer load of cattle back in the late seventies and used his earnings to buy Walmart stock. Brilliant! I think we all want to be that person. 

So, what is the next great stock pick from the perspective of a faith driven entrepreneur? Let’s take a look at the greatest return for us as Christ followers and entrepreneurs. 

Jesus talks to us in the Sermon on the Mount about storing treasures in heaven, but what does that mean? I would argue that we could trace back to Proverbs 19:17: “Mercy to the needy is a loan to God, and God pays those loans back in full.” 

Wow, why don’t we talk about that more? I certainly don’t hear about this, and if I do, it’s often related to blessings now on this side of eternity. Maybe that is when the loan is paid back, or maybe it’s in eternity, but think about how we invest in businesses. We bet on leaders and strategies, so why not put our investments with the creator of the universe? Jesus so winsomely invites us into this. I guarantee you this will be better than selling cows to buy Walmart stock 50 years ago. 

You Have What It Takes to Be a Different Entrepreneur. Let’s Realize This Eternal Return. 

Why does all of this matter? We are created in God’s image. As entrepreneurs, we have the creativity within us that the creator of the universe possesses. We are uniquely gifted and called to serve him and build the kingdom through business, but we have to stop playing the same game as everyone else. 

Stop comparing yourself to traditional businesses. Remember, it’s not what you have done; it’s who you are becoming. Go for an out-of-this-world return. Jesus invites us into a counterintuitive way of being. Take the invite, and stop playing the safe, normal game everyone else is playing.

Be different. But don’t be different alone.

There are always new Faith Driven groups starting across the world. Find your community and discuss important topics related to faith, business, and growth. Click the button below to learn more.

Related articles

Most of us know, through stories, experiences, or statistics, that entrepreneurship can take a toll on marriages. 

When you look up the numbers, you’ll find that nearly 50% of business owners experience divorce. The added stress and risk of innovation can weigh heavy on families, but it doesn’t have to.

In this episode, we’re highlighting a handful of voices who have spoken about how we can keep our marriages healthy while still fulfilling our calls to create. Speakers include…

• Patrick Lencioni

• John and Ashely Marsh

• Les Parrot

• Ben and Liz Bohannon

• Ashot Iskandarian

Click the links to listen to the full-length episodes of each guest. And don’t forget to follow, share, and review the show.

Episode Transcript

Henry Kaestner: Hello and welcome back to the feature, not for our podcast. Most of us know through stories, experiences or statistics that entrepreneurship can take a toll on marriages. When you look up the numbers, you’ll find that nearly 50% of business owners experienced divorce. The added stress and risk of innovation can weigh heavily on families, but it doesn’t have to. Today on the show, we’re highlighting a handful of voices who have spoken out about how they can keep their marriages healthy while still fulfilling their call to create these segments. We’re all pulled from existing podcast, and you can find links to the full conversations for each one in the show notes. Let’s lean in.

Patrick Lencioni: Hi, I’m Pat Lencioni, I’m here to talk to you about the six types of working genius as it relates to marriage and family. So I came up with this theory because I was frustrated in my job and I didn’t know why. And I loved what I did. It was my own company. I worked with people I loved and friends, and yet somehow I was going to work and getting frustrated and I thought there was something wrong with me. So one day I came up with this model to explain my own dissatisfaction, and then I realized it actually applied to others as well. It was pretty universal. And we call it working genius because it’s about getting things done. But then I realized I work at home, too. In fact, my wife and I are the co-parents of our family, and most of what we do is actually work getting things done. And, you know, John and Ashely Marsh talk about having different kind of hats on. Like, am I a business owner? Am I a co-parent? Am I your spouse, am I lover, whatever else it is? And we mix those things up. Well, my wife, Laura and I realize we are working together. We are co running a household, and we had very interesting ways to look at that for years. That caused us to argue and to get frustrated at one another. When I came up with the six types of working genius and realized I needed to apply it to the most important organization in my life, which was my family. It changed my marriage and it changed the way we interacted with one another. It brought more unity and more grace. Let me explain what I mean. The sixth type of working genius goes like this. The first genius that God gives us. Not everybody, but some people have. This is called the genius of Wonder. That’s people that like to sit around and ponder things and ask the big questions. Is this the right thing to do? My wife Laura has wonder as a genius. It’s a beautiful thing. It’s one of the things I really was attracted to her when I met her in college because she actually thought the big things mattered and she would be looking at truth and goodness and beauty and. And it was before she was actually really involved in her in our faith. But I knew that she had a heart for Jesus and she had a heart for truth, beauty and goodness. And that was her genius of wonder brought her to that. But that’s only one of the six geniuses, and that’s one that she has. The next genius is called the Genius of Invention, and that’s people that like to come up with new ideas and invent new ways to do things. I had that genius, and so does Laura. We loved talking about new ideas. We would go on drives for hours and talk about, Wouldn’t it be cool to do this? We invented a board game early in our marriage. She was writing a musical. I was writing books. We love doing this. Our both of our families thought we were crazy, but we had the genius of invention. We didn’t know it, but it’s one of the things we shared. The next genius that some people have. I have this. Laura does not is called the genius of Discernment, which is gut feel and intuition to look at a situation and evaluate it without data and kind of go, I think I understand what’s going on here and I think this is what we should do. It’s about integrative thinking and it’s not magic. It’s about intuition and seeing things even without expertise. But being able to come up with a pretty good idea or a pretty good assessment of an idea. So those were our three geniuses. Well, that’s only three of the six. That means the other three. Everybody has two geniuses of these six. Laura and I were done after the first three. The next three that I’m about to go over. We did not have as geniuses in our lives. The next one is called Galvanizing. That’s like getting people going. Let’s inspire people to act. Let’s. Let’s get people moving and let’s organize them to do something. Now, for me, that would be considered a competency. It wasn’t one of the areas that gave me joy and energy because that’s what you’re working genius does. It’s about where you get energy and joy. I was okay at it, but I didn’t like it. But in my family, that was the thing that I had to do because Laura hates doing that. The next one is called enablement. Enablement is a genius. That means I like to come alongside and help people. Exactly. They want to be helped when people say, I need this. You say, Definitely, I’m there to help you. And when they say, Let’s do this project, you say, I think I know what you need and I’m going to give you what you want. It’s an absolute genius. It’s a beautiful thing. Everybody thinks that every mom has it. And as a Christian father, I thought I was supposed to have it. I think it’s my lowest one. Let me explain what I mean by that. My wife has it as a competency in the middle. For me, it’s a frustration and I feel really guilty about it. So here’s how it works in our family. My wife says, Pat, I want you to help me clean out the garage this weekend. Now, right away, I get a gut feel like this is not going to be good. But I say I will help her, but I will help her using my geniuses. So I say, Well, first tell me how you’re going to go about using reorganizing the garage and then tell me what your reasoning is. Do we really need to? She’s like, I don’t want any of that from you. Just get out there. And when I hand you something, put it where I tell you to. This is the anathema of who I am. If I’m not allowed to invent and discern, it’s really hard for me to enable. We have language around that now. You don’t. My wife says now I’m going to reorganize the garage this weekend, will, you just come out there and sit and talk to me, because really, I just get lonely. I don’t want you to [….] it up by overthinking it. And I really don’t need that much help. But I hate doing it by myself. And I’m like, I would love to come out there and do that with you. One day she was you recently sending something to a storage unit and she had my sons help me. I said, I’ll go too. And she says, No, no, no, you stay home. I said, Why? I want to help? And she said, Because you’re going to try to analyze it and discern things. And I’ve already figured it all out. What a beautiful thing that we have that language to understand. She knows how I’m wired and how she’s wired, now does that mean I never have to enable or galvanize or wonder? Not my genius is. No. But we now know that when we’re doing those things that we’re not good at and we don’t enjoy that not being good at, it is not something to judge somebody about or to actually grind on. It’s an it’s a place for mercy and grace. Okay. The last genius that neither my wife nor I have is tenacity. That’s the last thing. So it goes wonder. Up here at 50,000 feet, invention, discernment, galvanizing, enabling, and then tenacity. And that’s finishing things. People with tenacity like to push it across the finish line, overcome obstacles. They’re tenacious in getting things done and done well. These are not gifts that Laura and I have ever had. God didn’t give them to us. We found ways to try to get around them, but we don’t like it at all. What does that mean in running a household? It’s not easy. It means I remember one day coming home from work and coming into my home and turning on the lights, and the lights didn’t go on. Well, I live in California, so there’s rolling power outages here all the time. And I said, Hey, Laura, I think the power’s out. She goes, Nope, not in the neighborhood. It’s still on. Oh, really? But they’re not working. She goes, No, it’s just our house. Oh, what’s going on? And she said, Well, I forgot to pay the power bill. And I said, Well, don’t they usually send you a note telling you that you haven’t paid it before they shut it down? Oh, yeah. They send three notes, she said. I kept meaning to do it. I never got around to it. And back then, though, I would be like, Laura, that’s what we have to do. Now I would laugh and go, Oh, my gosh, Tenacity is a crusher, isn’t it? She goes, It is. And we would be able to understand that some of the challenges we face are because of our geniuses and we can actually try to overcome them but not feel bad about them. My marriage has changed after 30 years more in the last two years from understanding who she is and who I am. And it sounds weird to say that, but because so much of our relationship is about doing things and there are certain things she is beautiful and wonderful at and other things that I’m good at. There’s a few that neither of us are, and knowing that can change everything now. Now let’s look at our kids. I have a son that works with me. He’s 24 years old. When we discovered working genius two years ago, I learned about him in ways that I’d never seen before. He lived in my home. I’d helped him with homework. I had done things with him for years. But until I realized that his geniuses were wonder that he was really a deep thinker and discernment, which meant he had really gut good gut feel. I never knew what to encourage him to do in his in his work, how to reward him, how to understand him and celebrate him. I also didn’t realize that there were other things he did, that he needed some grace from me around. Because as a parent, you know what I did? I tended to look at what he was not good at and thinking, A good parent has to teach them how to do what they’re bad at to prevent them from suffering in life. Now I say to them, Hey, you know, this isn’t a strength of yours. Don’t feel bad about it. Just realize you’re going to need help from others. But love on yourself and who God made you and utilize that. I like to think that you can have two kids, one that’s organized and one that’s disorganized. One that’s creative and disorganized and one that’s not creative. And how often will we turn to them and say, Hey, you need to learn to be creative and you need to learn how to be organized. We do the very opposite of what we ought to do, which is let’s celebrate the thing that you’re great at. Let’s make you aware of the thing that you’re not. And as a result of that, they’re probably going to become the young men and women that God intends them to be. So I hope that’s helpful for you in your marriage and in your family. And I hope that drives well with the other things you’re hearing about marriage and the hats you wear and the things we go through. God bless.

William Norvell: So working together in marriage. What works? What doesn’t work? What advice? I know you’re not the only team walking through this journey together, and as most entrepreneurs know, my wife doesn’t technically work in the business, but she’s sure part of it, you know? And so we have to talk about those things, too. What do you think of it, walk us through it.

John Marsh: Well, that’s still we’re working at it. But it is this is you know, if I had to say on one level, what’s it like to sleep with the bill collector or what is it like to have, you know, all these roles and hats at the same time? If you’re sideways at work, you’re sideways at home, and that can be really difficult. And how do you honor the different roles that we have? So what we’ve done is pulled down sophisticated business tools into our marriage. We’ve created frameworks. We have a weekly meeting that’s her, and I’m meeting over what we say is a visionary integrator meeting using the kind of the rocket fuel mindset from iOS. And so we’ll have the meeting and we’ll do all of our detail, Guardian detail, we call it that Ash. It’s all the details of what we’re doing. And then the last section will move to another place and she’ll let me just vision and be excitable and she will shoot me down because what used to happen, I called her the dream squisher, or I’d be getting all excited about stuff. Oh man, we can build an indoor skydiving train. A 700 horsepower diesel motor seats will be amazing. And she’s like, how are you going to finance that. Who’s gonna insure that? What about the permits? And so I’d say, Baby, it’s like we get the room set up with beautiful candles and everything’s going good, and you turn on a bunch of fluorescent lights. I said, You’re killing the mood when I’m visioning here. And so we had to learn how to vision together. And so the second part, all she does is, hmm, tell me more interesting if she does that. She says that over and over, and I get more excited the more she says it. So it’s a weekly meeting, just like our business meetings that are divided in such a way that we can work together and have our heated fellowship, which we call our conflict heated fellowship, and to engineer our heated fellowship weekly.

Ashely Marsh: He’s right about every bit of that. And I will add that two of the things that actually I believe are key to what has helped us so much and working that way together well, but it’s not always that way, our heated fellowship is really when it’s heated, it’s robust, and it gives us a great opportunity for just wonderful repentance and forgiveness, you know? But that’s how we grow and that’s how we learn about each other and how we continue to challenge and change. But honestly, learning which one of us has a future voice in the present voice, that’s been really huge and I bet you can’t guess between us, who has what? But John is very future oriented. He’s always looking for the next greatest thing. Actually, his car tag says, Great idea on it, because he’s always got a great idea, you know, and I’m very present. And so I have a hard time getting in the future. You have to convince me that it’s safe to go there. Once you give me enough markers on that, then I’m your greatest person to help you get there. But if you try to drag me, I’m pretty ferocious on the other side. But the other thing is the plan. Promise and provisional. And so we speak a certain way, all of us do. I speak in promise? Definitely. That means if you if you hear me say it or if you say it to me, I think it’s actually happening. That’s what we’re doing. John speaks provisionally, and pretty much everything he says is not really what we’re doing, is what he’s thinking about or have an idea about. And so if you are a promise person and you’re hearing a provisional person talk, you’re thinking this is what they want me to do. Oh my gosh. And so some at these meetings we have and when we first started these, I was so overwhelmed because all of these details that he’s talking about that we go over are needed. But because there wasn’t a direct information coming to me saying that these were again, their details are just ideas, that is that every one of them became a task to me that I was trying to accomplish. And so we finally realize that what I need to have is give me the top five, give me the top ten that I need to accomplish this week for you to feel good about where we’re going. And then let me know when you’re talking provisionally, because I call it open browser syndrome. I can’t deal with it.

John Marsh: And the idea of plan. So what professionals know ideas A bad idea plan is we’re going there, but we don’t know how promises come hell or high water. We gave our word. And so she’ll ask, Are we it? Sometimes I’ll say we’re plan vision or I’m moving from provisional to a plan and we get to a plan. You know, the greatest thing we have together as husband and wife is to get on the same page, lay our hands on something, get in unity, and ask God to bless it. It’s the most powerful force for us in our life and even our we’ll do one meeting a year. We call our State of the Family, where we bring in two of our mentors and they’ll sit down and we’ll try to do all of our year heated fellowship in one day. We’ll talk about everything. We don’t want to talk about trying to get aligned with adult supervision and then put our. Hands on it and ask God to bless it. And we’ve seen tremendous power. Because if you don’t have a vision, you’ve got die vision. That’s two visions, and that’s not blessed.

Henry Kaestner: John And Ashley, I’m curious about what you have seen in your decades now of working with other couples and seen the most common areas of dysfunction and the best way to fix it. Clearly you just give some great tactics. And I think that there are a whole bunch of different things that we can employ as we endeavor to speak a different language to our spouse and work differently. But what do you see out there? Because my sense is that more couples come to you for counseling than most. What do you see is the common thing, common challenge and what you tell them to rectify it?

Ashely Marsh: I believe from my perspective, what I see and is typically the woman, but not always, but most of the time the woman, they don’t speak up and actually bring their true gifts to the table because it can sound easily like we’re being resistant or be controlling. Or maybe we’re worrying or we’re not trusting, but it sounds negative. Typically when we bring challenge, it can sound negative and it’s not well received. Now, sometimes I believe that that’s because of how we deliver that information. If we don’t know how to really speak to our spouses in those situations or whenever we’re trying to either dream or execute, then it can get sideways really easily. But that’s the thing that I have seen, honestly, is that women a lot of times do not stand up and actually participate in a way that brings their greatest gift to the table. And honestly, I believe our husbands want that. I know they need it. God created us to meet each other. But like my husband and he says it, and I hope it’s okay to say to someone he used to say, he’s like, Hey, as long as sex is up or was okay, everything was fine. In other words, it’s fine as long as nobody is fussed about anything. Obviously everything’s okay. And I believe that most women have the ability just to put their heads down and do the work and they take care of the home. They take care of the kids to take care of their husband, to do all the things. So it’s easy to think that everything’s okay because they’re not saying anything and they might not have a different opinion or a resistant opinion, but they might not give all of the information that they have that can actually benefit the decision or benefit the business. And so that’s what I see most of the time, is that women are withholding their gifting and they’re not being bold with what God has for them to bring to that. So that’s my take on that one.

John Marsh: I think it’s hard because most I think spouses don’t know enough to comment. They think and that’s on the husband. If your spouse doesn’t know enough to comment intelligently, that’s on you. And you don’t have to have logic in everything because there’s a Holy Spirit guiding us. And so, you know, people are down on what they’re not up on. And so Ash and I had to get to the place. My thing is I did promiscuous visioning with everybody but her and then came back to sell her heart on what I wanted to do. And I just overwhelmed her. And she would say about three questions and I’d just get mad and holler at her. So I didn’t strap myself to the Unabomber because we can’t get to a decision with everything I try to do. You’re telling me, No, your dream squishier. And so she would say, Now do you want me to help or do you just want me to say yes to whatever you say? If you want me to do that? And I’m like, No, no, no, that’s not blessedable. So we be in this trap situation. And what I realized is we had to learn to vision together at some level because without a vision, people in relationships perish. And so I had to slow down long enough. And it took us three years to get aligned, envisioning where now my number one vision partner is my wife and I could have done that all along if I would have taken the time, been patient enough and asked myself, Do I really want to make half brained decisions or do I want to stand there with my wife and make decisions about how it’s going to shape our life.

Ashely Marsh: Tack on that. To give an example, when he told me a dream squisher and that has been a real term that’s been used for me, so to say, I’ll know that on my end the bill collector as well. But you know, the questions that I would bring were ones that to me were very logical. I’m a very logical person. I don’t deal with a lot of emotion in my decisions, but I would ask things like whenever he would say, I don’t know, I think he’s giving the example. He want to do an indoor skydiving. He really did want to do that. But that’s not a made up conversation. But my questions were, okay, so how are we going to pay for that? Why would you ask me a question like that? But the next question was, what about the liability? Where do you I mean, how do you even insure that? I mean, what if somebody hurts themselves or dies, you know? And so I’m asking these questions and all he’s hearing is rejection, rejection, rejection. So it took us a few years for him to trust that when answering these questions is because I’m trying to help you resolve all of the avenues that could possibly come against this very idea to make sure it’s bullet proof. And then if it needs to go forward, it’s not because I’m trying to shoot it down. I have no desire to shoot you down. Of course, he taught me how to bring those questions and challenge to him. And as both sides, he has to hear the questions. And I had to learn to be quiet and let him actually give the explanation.

Henry Kaestner: We had a guest on not too long ago that shared some really interesting research that entrepreneurs are much more likely to suffer from different mental illnesses and 2 to 3 times more likely to experience divorce. So obviously, you’ve got lots of advice. You’ve been thinking about this a long time, but you’re in this unique spot in that not only you’re a marriage counselor with lots and lots of years of doing this, being married yourself, but you’re also an entrepreneur and to boot, you’re an entrepreneur with your wife. So you are well acquainted with the stresses of running this business and what it looks like for your marriage. And you’ve undoubtedly counseled lots of business owners and entrepreneurs. What’s the sense that you have of what they’re struggling with, and what would you encourage our listening audience with about how to focus on their marriages?

Les Parrott: Well, I love your question, and yeah, I can certainly identify with it. Even as recently as the last few weeks and months as a wife and a business acquisition that I’ve been through, that was just one of the most stressful things I’ve done. But let me back up from that and just tell you a quick story. My friends Neil Warren, Neil Warren and his wife Marilyn, living in Los Angeles, beautiful home over the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, had us over for dinner. Leslie Me And we’d gone out to have some fun and kind of the leader dinner that Marilyn made. And we’re sitting around the dining room table and just enjoying each other’s company. And this was more than 20 years ago. Neil said, Hey, you know, this new thing called the Internet? And we’re like, Yeah. He said, I wonder if we could use that to reduce the divorce rate. And I said, What do you mean? He said, I wonder, like, if we can match people online, like for a better match so that they could have more success in their relationship. I said, You know, I think you’ve lost your marbles. Now you have to remember that 20 years ago the Internet was the Wild West. It was nutty. It was just weird stuff going on and not trustworthy in any fashion. Yet we had all this knowledge. We had all this research on how people tend to meet and where they tend to meet and so forth. And Neil had written a book called Finding the Love of Your Life. Obviously, we had written Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts. And and anyway, that conversation that night turned into a really late night discussion that turned into several years of work. And we launched eHarmony together, really the first of its kind. The first thing on the Internet is help couples make a serious match. And it was an uphill battle, I got to tell you. In fact, I remember being in a hotel room with Neil and Marilyn Weston out there and remembering Neil, literally putting his hands on his face with his elbows on his knees and weeping. This is never going to work. And we had just been through a big round of funding and we had Sequoia. It was just like, Oh my goodness, we have failed after all of this is just not happened. And I won’t bore you with the rest of the story. But as you probably know, that company went on to have unimaginable success financially and it is still alive and well. But that process that was so difficult on our marriage. Here we are trying to help married couples. It was so stressful for us because because every entrepreneur knows you get obsessed. You get completely obsessed with your dream and your vision of what you want to do with this company that you’re starting. And it becomes like your mistress, right? And that can’t help but to drive a wedge between you. So when you give me that information about the divorce rate is higher and so forth, I have no problem believing that it’s not the first time I’ve heard that either. And so you have to really be intentional. And if there’s any message I have to everybody that’s listening to us today, it’s an entrepreneur out there. It’s that word intention. If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur and succeed as a husband or a spouse, you’ve got to be intentional. And that can be a challenge because, you know, back in those days, 20 years ago, we didn’t have cell phones to be distracted by even when we were on a date night, you know? And so even today, it’s all the more important to be intentional. So I guess that’s my first word of wisdom out there.

Rusty Rueff: I want to keep on the vein of the marriage thing, because you have a very interesting phrase that you use where you say a marriage can be slipping into the future. And I immediately thought, you know, Steve Miller band and fly like an eagle, right? Time keeps on slipping into the future. But you say a marriage can slip into the future. What do you mean by that?

Les Parrott: Well, you’re referencing our book, Your Time Starved Marriage. And in addition to doing entrepreneurial things Leslie and I write and speak around the country together, and this book, as is true with most of our books, came out of our own need. We just felt like men. We cannot seem to capture quality time together. And I mentioned my friend John Maxwell. John and I wrote a book called 25 Ways to Win with People. And one of the things I learned in that project with John and he’s been a longtime mentor of mine, and he said, Les you can’t give leftover. To Leslie. And I said, What are you talking about? He said, If you’re like most guys, you go through your day and all these cool things are happening. It’s cool meeting and get this great phone call and you have this win over you and you share it with everybody in the office or whatever. And by the time you get home, you’re just kind of depleted and exhausted and, hey, what’s for dinner and where’s the mail? And she says, How was your day? Fine. And you just kind of give her the leftovers of your energy. And so when he said that, it was just like a wake up call. And I realized I am I’m giving my best time to other people, not to my spouse. And because of that. Leslie, of course, you know, was like, go. John right. She was like, yes, great, great message there, John. And out of that little kind of word of wisdom came this idea for this book, your time starved marriage. And it set us on a course to really recover the moments we’ve been missing together, the time that was slipping into the future. And yes, I’m glad you’re of a generation that identifies Steve Miller band with that, I appreciate that reference. But we thought, how do we do this? How do we get practical? And so we went to the bookstore. You know, we talked on a book on managing marriage. Well, there’s tons of time management books and some classics out there on time management. And you go to the marriage section, you can’t find anything on time. You know, you find stuff on in-laws and sex and conflict and communication and on down the list. Nothing on time. And one of the things that we first discovered in our own research is it’s the second biggest complaint that couples have in their marriage, whether they’re entrepreneurial or not. It’s the second biggest complaint. The first is communication. We don’t communicate the way we want to. But second is we don’t have the time that we’d like to with each other. And so that was a compelling reason for us to dig down even deeper into the research and write this book. Your time starve marriage, because we wanted to recover the moments that we’re slipping into the future. And that’s exactly what we did. For us personally, it may be one of the most important book projects that we’ve ever done because it really changed the way we interact.

Rusty Rueff: Are there a few tenets of that book that you would want to share with our listeners?

Les Parrott: Well, let me give you one real quick practical thing that everybody can do starting today out there, and then I’ll give you one that goes a little bit more in depth. But do you know what the single most important minute of your marriage is? You tend to kind of just sideswipe it every day, but this single minute can make or break your evening tonight with your spouse. It’s that single minute that you have, that 60 seconds that you have when you come home at the end of the day and greet each other. And like I said, if you are like me working hard and you’re coming home late and you’re on the phone, probably even if you’re walking in the door, you just kind of come in and where’s the mail? And, hey, you know, give me the report. How are the kids? Any homework tonight that I got to be concerned with? What’s for dinner? All that kind of stuff is just a jumble of of messy communication. Right. And what the research says, if you’ll take 60 seconds to totally focus first thing on your spouse. Have a tender touch, have a hug, have a kiss, and meet eye to eye and say, how is your day? Now everybody listening to us can do that. That’s so easy. And what that research shows is if you do that for 60 seconds, it sets the tone, the tenor for your entire evening together, and you will begin to notice just an attitudinal change in your home because of that little 60 seconds investment. And so this book is chock full of stuff like that, really practical things that you can do. So that’s the simple one. The other thing that really changed for us in kind of recouping the moments that we’ve been missing together as a couple was to understand our time styles. And this was the result of a lot of research on our side because we haven’t seen this anywhere else. But God made each one of us with a unique way of processing time. And the simple way, just to kind of visualize this for our listeners out there, is to think of a continuum that’s that’s scheduled and unscheduled, and one is not better than the other. It’s just kind of how God made us and the DNA of our personality. And so just think about just self-diagnose how you scheduled or unscheduled. Which of those would you say you are?

Rusty Rueff: Oh, I’m definitely scheduled. Henry. William, What are you guys?

Henry Kaestner: I’m definitely I’m in constant conflict between the two. I want to be on schedule. I want to be on schedule.

Les Parrott: Ok. So if I asked you, Hey, can we have lunch next Thursday? But it has to be at 130 for me to make that happen. There’s someplace you would go to look at a schedule, at a calendar, Right, To figure that out?

Rusty Rueff: Correct? Totally. It’s in my hand all the time. Yep, it’s in my hand. I’d look right there on my calendar, on my phone.

Les Parrott: So an unscheduled person would kind of look up to the right a little bit with their eyes and go 1:30 next Thursday. Yeah, that feels good. Let’s do that. Right. They wouldn’t consult anything necessarily. All right. So that’s the difference. So as you’re listening to me, self-diagnose schedule or unschedule. And then think of are you this is the second continuum. And are you present oriented or future oriented? In other words, do you get energy out of the here and now and what’s happening in this moment? Or do you get energized by what’s around the corner and what you have planned and what’s coming up? Which one gives you more energy? The present or the future.

Henry Kaestner: I’m embarrassed to tell you that it’s the future. I don’t think that’s the way to live. But that’s been my my course.

Rusty Rueff: Me, too. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Live in the future. Missed the present too many times.

Les Parrott: So nearly every entrepreneur is okay. And by the way, I don’t know which one of you said. I know it’s not the right way to live, but unfortunately, the way that if I was in front of you, I would give you what I call a guilt free drop. Quit saying that to yourself. It’s not the right way to live. That’s how God made you. God hardwired you for the future. That’s a gift that you bring into your marriage. And in every other relationship, one is not right or wrong. It’s just how things are. All right, so most of you said I’m scheduled and I’m future oriented. So that puts you into a category that is also my category. No big surprise here. We entrepreneurs, we stick together and we’re planners. We love a plan. Let’s dream about the future, but let’s get concrete and let’s get scheduled and let’s implement plan. It’s going to succeed. Now, if you’re just the opposite of that, maybe you’re married to somebody who is more subjective. They’re unscheduled, like my wife Leslie, and they’re present oriented, like my wife. Leslie Well, they’re what we call, in their case, an accommodate or not a planner, but an accommodate accommodating. In other words, they accommodate time. They might have something that they’re supposed to do. But, hey, it’s a really sunny day in Seattle. Let’s forget that and go to the park. It’s a great park right now. If you’re a planner, you go, No, no, we got to stick with the schedule. Right? And Leslie, I’ll say sometimes. We joke about this because she drinks so much coffee at Starbucks and she’ll go, Hey, we’ve got a few minutes. Let’s go down to Starbucks. And I’ll say, We don’t have time to say it’s just 5 minutes from here. I’ll say, Well, sir, 5 minutes is 20 minutes. She said, it feels like 5 minutes. Well, I don’t care what it feels like. It’s 20 minute walk down there. And so that’s the difference between a accomodator and a planner. If you’re present oriented and still scheduled, you’re what we call a processor. And a processor is a person that I often liken it to like a help line or something that we used to have those for computers and stuff, and they’d call in and say, Hey, I can’t get this thing to happen, okay? And it just they’re so invested, they’re so fully present. And then the clock reaches a certain point and it’s like having lunch with a friend and they’re like, Oh, hey, it’s 1:00. Boom. It’s like they don’t know you anymore. They’re onto the next thing, they’re processor. And then the last quadrant is the person that’s unscheduled and future on it. And they’re dreamers. And so as entrepreneurs, if you’re not a planner, you will tend to be a dreamer. And unfortunately, those are the entrepreneurs that typically are not as productive as the planners because they’re always casting a vision. And so they really need people on their team that can make those visions come true, that can get concrete in that. But that was that little I’ve skated over that pretty quickly here to give you insight into these four tiny styles, but that was the game changer for us. And so we have a full chapter built on that in this book, Your time starved marriage. And by the way, people can go to a lesson Leslie dot com to find this book in his or her workbook set as well. But that little insight of your time style was such a gift to our own relationship. There’s a school of thought in psychology that says awareness is curative. In other words, once you’re aware of something, then you can do something about it. And that’s what this did for us. It was just like looking in the mirror and it’s like, Oh, I never saw it that way before. And I always used to get frustrated with Leslie because she wasn’t more scheduled. Well, she’s a gift to this relationship of our marriage because she’s not scheduled. Right? She has something. And as iron sharpens iron, as Proverbs says, we help each other to become more whole and healthy. And so anyway, does that make sense?

Rusty Rueff: Totally makes a lot of sense. And, you know, we’ll link something to the book on our site so our listeners can go back and get that. I think knowing where you are in that quadrant many years ago someone said to me that especially in our marriages and our relationships, it’s the commonalities, the common that brings us together. It’s the differences that keep it interesting. And I think what you’ve given there in those four quadrants is we need to know where we are. We need to know where our spouses so that we can see the differences and the commonalities. And I’m going to make sure that I, I start to practice a better one minute I’ll have to tell my wife that you recommended it, because if I just come in tomorrow and do that, she’s going to go, okay, what have you done? What are you going to go for?

Les Parrott: Right. So what do you set me up for.

Les Parrott: Yeah, exactly. It’s got to become a habit, right? It’s a routine. We often talk about carving a new groove into a relationship. We tell newlyweds, you know, choose your reps carefully because you’re going to be in them for a long time. Right? But this is a way to carve a new groove into your relationship, no matter how long you’ve been married. But I love that little equipment, you see, because it is those commonalities that bring us together as the differences that make it interesting. But it’s also those differences that can drive us apart, of course, and that’s why it comes back to intention. Once you are aware, then you get intentional by doing things like practicing the single minute that matters most in your marriage and those kinds of things.

Rusty Rueff: How do you keep from work becoming all consuming, almost like becoming nothing that could distract you away from the other things, whether it be family or God or other friends? Where do you build your guardrails?

Ben: Yeah, well, I can say there’s been a lot of intention in Liz and I’s life from really the beginning to make sure that we built those guardrails. So when we really launched Go as a couple being both us full time. So Liz had been working on it for about a year and a half, and I had been working full time in Kansas City and we got to a point where we were like, okay, it’s not sustainable for us to not do this together. Let’s do it. We went on a six month road trip around the US to essentially launch the company, and we were selling into retailers at that point. So we packed up our car. We went city to city. We slept in our cars, slept in people’s homes that just we met that day or that week or that our friends introduced us to. And part of that trip was finding the city that we wanted to live in, post the trip. And one of the key things for us was what is a city and what’s a place that we feel like will help us have a thriving life outside of work. And we’re sitting in Portland, Oregon today because we really felt like one of the key things here was it felt like there was one a community of people that were pursuing the Lord that we were really excited by. They invited us into their lives when we came. We were here for a couple of weeks. They opened their home to us. They invited us to gatherings. They kind of talked about other things that they were doing in the city or around the world, and we were just really intrigued by being in an intentional community of people. And then too, and I think this is something that’s been deeply important for Liz and I is we’re surrounded by things that speak to our life that aren’t work. So for me, it’s the mountains, it’s the ocean, it’s being outdoors. And I think for us, having really quick excuses to not be working, we would default towards work. I think if we were in a city that didn’t have easier access to things that we wanted that we were also passionate about. So it’s been really like, I think from almost like day one of us working together. We were intentional about finding a space, an environment that would enable that.

Liz: We also have a rule that if we are outside of office hours and one of us has a workshop which both of us do all of the time, it’s just kind of how we’re wired and to change that feels like going against nature in a way that would be exhausting. And so instead we kind of have this practice of if I have a workshop and it is outside of office hours, I have to ask permission to talk about that before I just start laying out this idea or the thought or this problem that I have. And the other person always, always, always has the opportunity to say, not right now. So I would say, Hey, then I have a workshop, can I share it with you? And he gets to decide, Am I in a place emotionally like where I want to get into that? Does it feel like a good use of our time right now? And then we definitely have places where we just don’t. When we go out on dates, it’s like a general rule. We don’t talk about business. If we’re doing anything that feels like it’s kind of more marriage focused when we’re laying in bed at night and falling asleep like so we have these kind of rules of places and spaces within our home and within our relationship where we do try to protect.

Ben: And it’s so easy to cheat on that because we both love the work that we write. It’s creative, it’s fun, it’s energetic, but you really do have to honor that space. I would say the third thing that we’ve done is make sure that we have relationships in our life that are outside of our entrepreneurial circles. And in some ways we kind of wish that we were maybe more embedded into a group of entrepreneurs, But we’re going to have an intentional community that we live in, in Portland, where we bought basically three or four houses that are all touch each other and we all bought houses at the same time with our friends. And none of those friends are entrepreneurs.

Liz: No, they’re all like, have the most stable jobs and don’t have no interest in fashion on social media. So on the one hand it’s like these people, they just don’t care. They care about what we’re doing because they care about us. But like the metrics and the growth and all of these things that it’s so easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in said, This is where my value comes from. We have this incredibly grounding community that’s like, What’s that? You know.

Rusty Rueff: I’m not going to let you get off the hook and go, Hey, Ben and Liz got the perfect marriage. You know, they always agree on everything. What do you do when you disagree?

Liz: We are over communicators, I think to a fault in the sense when we disagree, I think our saving grace and let’s be very honest, like our marriage is not the weight of conflict. And I think we have more opportunity in a 12 hour workday. There’s so much we get up against. We have so many things we can disagree on. There’s so much I mean, running a company, all of your worst parts get exposed, right? Your insecurity, your ego, your pride. Your shortsightedness, whatever it is. And when we dip into those kind of shadow sides of ourselves because we work together, oftentimes that affects our partners, our partner, in a really difficult way. So I would say we’re just relentless about reconciliation and relentless about not feeling feelings that don’t get communicated and put out onto the table and that we just normal life doesn’t really continue until we’ve reconciled. And we’ve gotten better at it over the years. But there’s still conflict. But it’s like, Oh, I wish that should have taken 5 minutes to resolve and here we are 3 hours into it like it’s 11:00 at night and we both want to go to bed. But I think that that would be the biggest thing. And then touching the end point, I think for us as a community, it’s having people, men and women, we meet separately. We’re fit literally every single week. We’re so committed to these friendships. And a big part of what we both talk about is our marriages and having no secrets and kind of having a place where when we are struggling, we have kind of these grounding sounding boards that we get to be honest with and they get to kind of speak and reflect truth back to us. So we don’t start to kind of believe the stories that we’re making up about one another or hugely important things in our marriage.

Ben: Yeah, it’s interesting. I would say one of the things that we’ve learned and this is through lots of iterations, is this commitment to reconciliation sometimes doesn’t get to happen. And I’m kind of speaking specifically as an entrepreneur and as someone who runs their company with their wife is sometimes that doesn’t get to happen in the moment. I can think back to our road trip, and I swear, Liz and I, we drive to a new city, we drive over to someone’s house. That night, we’re going to go share the story of how we started our company. And so now it’s like right before we’re getting ready to walk into this event with 50 people, some bikers, for something that we are not in agreement on. And you have to walk into a meeting and you have to know that like, hey, part of the reason that they’re there is they want to hear the story of the two of you and they want to hear it. How what is it like to run a company together? And I think for Liz and I, learning how to balance that as an entrepreneur, that you don’t you don’t get there’s not necessarily a perfect time, but it’s the next closest time has been something that we’ve had to build in to our life. And I’d like to say that that never happens. But truly, like we’ve just had to learn through iteration that it’s like we’re there’s a deep, deep commitment to reconciliation. But knowing sometimes, like, man, I have to walk in and I have to go pitch a room in that I don’t feel great about that, but I know that I have to do it. And we’ve worked to that over and over again. But again, knowing that one another that we deeply love and care for each other and that we’re deeply committed to reconciling that kind of muscle gets built up over time.

Rusty Rueff: I think that’s fantastic for our entrepreneurs who are listening, who have co-founders. They should be taking notes. And not that we’re not saying that they should get married, but we’re saying they should do this right. This idea of reconciliation and over communicating and a lot of the principles that you’ve adopted are not dissimilar to the same challenges that co-founders have. They just don’t have to have the same last name or cohabitate, you know, So what’s really great?

Henry Kaestner: So you’ve been married over the last six years and the entrepreneur journey is hard, man. I mean, it’s a huge risk you end up co-creating with her. She’s involved in leadership maintenance for moms. The entreprenurial journey is not easy. What counsel would you give to a younger version of yourself or a new entrepreneur starting out about being a good husband through this next five or six years of their life?

Speaker 1: When I started on the journey of Shop Maggie, I was very, very intentional because a lot of wise counsel and a lot of people I trusted and admired and respected advise me to do this. So I would do the same. I stopped. I stopped and I said anything I want. I desire your alignment and your blessing for me to do this. I want to be on the same page that I’m going to give up the luxury of my job, take on all this risk, and navigate these waters together. I learned to do it together. So what do you think? Are you okay with this? Do you support it? She said, Let me think about it. So she took a couple of months. 2 to 3 months maybe. I don’t remember. Wow. And it was like day. She took a lot because she wanted to be super prayerful because, you know, I was very honest with her on what this would mean and the different ways that this could go sour, because I had seen it before. So I was sober, too, that one day she pulled me aside and she said, I’ve been praying and I’m all in like, I’m in. Let’s go. And that was my green light. That’s when I really, like, went after it and knew I’m not turning back. Right? So it was like percolating and developing and I was kind of starting to look into it. And one other tidbit I wanted to add to that I would recommend entrepreneurs for sure do, which has paid off tenfold for me. I had one of my mentors say, Hey, look, you’re an entrepreneur. I was like, Yes, of course I’m ready. Let’s go. He’s like, How many ideas have you shared with your wife in the last six months? I’m like, probably like seven. And he’s like, okay, so let me guess if you share another idea with her, she’s kind of like, There he is again. I’m like, Yeah, how did you know that? He’s like, Look, here’s what I recommend you do. Don’t share your idea. If you have one, sit on it for a year, 12 months, Just don’t speak about it, journal about it, look into it, but don’t share it. If you can sit on it for 12 months and it’s still burning a hole in your mind and you really know you want to go after this, take her out to dinner and tell her what you want to do. So I waited ten months. I couldn’t wait twelve months. I waited ten months and someone was burning a hole in my mind. She hadn’t heard a single idea. She hadn’t heard about Shop Monkey. And we were in Big Sur. And I took her out to dinner and I said, Hey, looks like I’ve been sitting on this for ten months before I even said what it was. It just had a different gravity to it already. Like, Well, you’re serious about what you’re about to say, aren’t you? And I was like, Absolutely. Look at ten months. Here’s what I want to do. Here’s what I’m thinking. And that kicked off her season of prayer before we both went all in on the business. So I would recommend not sharing your ideas for a long period of time with your spouse, especially if you’ve watered them down with previous ideas. To sit on an idea for a long season, more than six months, and to have your spouse’s blessing. We have not had a single serious conflict about Shop Monkey today, about my time investment. And now look, I know how to set different boundaries and things like that, but it has been conflict free and it’s been humungous for my peace of mind and our marriage to do that. So that’s what I would leave. But wow, that’s countercultural.

Henry Kaestner: Waiting that long for an entrepreneur is that’s completely different. But you do get a sense that God’s timing can be different than our own timing, especially in this area that we live in, in Silicon Valley, where it’s just it’s like you do it yesterday. So that’s something to think and pray about.

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Sometimes our greatest trials can become fuel for our callings.

That’s the case with today’s guest, Dr. Ola Brown. 

Dr. Brown’s resume looks like it could be split amongst multiple people. Prior to her current role as founder of the investment firm Healthcap, she had a career as a medical doctor. Then she founded Flying Doctors Nigeria, a tech-enabled urgent care services marketplace before co-founding her first fund: Greentree Investment Company. 

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The conversation was originally published on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast, our sister show that highlights stories of local leaders in that region. We also publish the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Asia podcast. Find both shows wherever you get your podcasts and be sure to follow, review, and share them with others.

Episode Transcript

Ofosa Ojomo: All right. Welcome, everyone. My name’s Ofosa Ojomo. I am the co-host of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Africa podcast. Super, super excited to be here today. That I am. If you could see my face, you would see me smiling because it’s a great honor. A privilege to welcome Dr. Ola Brown to the podcast. She is a medical doctor, an entrepreneur, an investor, an educator, a lifelong learner. The list goes on. She’s incredible. And we’re just so, so thankful that we get to hear a little bit of her story today. So without further ado, Dr. Brown, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Dr Ola Brown: Thank you so much Ofosa. It’s great to be here. And I’m a big fan of yours, big fan of your book. So it’s really exciting to be able to talk about some of those concepts and some of the things that I’ve been able to incorporate into my own life and my blogs into my teaching as well.

Ofosa Ojomo: Oh, well, thank you. That’s very generous. Very kind of you. So we have a lot of ground to cover today. I’m going to do my best to cover as many as we can in the time that we have. But first, I think I would just love to get a sense of your story. I know our team was with you a little bit in Nairobi, and they were really inspired by your story and what you’re doing to fix health care in Africa, which is just a big mandate. We’ll talk a bit more about some of the data and details of health care in Africa. But can you just tell us a little bit about your story and how you even thought about started healthcap and probably the start there?

Dr Ola Brown: All right. So the healthcap story is actually just a few years old because prior to my sort of investment journey, I was an entrepreneur, so I was running my own company. So in 2011, I started a company called Flying Doctors, which is an emergency services company, Tech Enabled Emergency Services Company, which provides urgent things, urgent transportation, urgent healthcare supplies, agency personnel to remote areas across Africa. And it has worked in 47 out of 54 African countries, say most of Africa. And when I was running that, obviously it was quite profitable. We were able to scale that across the continent. And a friend of mine told me that he was starting a venture and he would like me to become an LP. And I was really excited about that because it gave me an opportunity to diversify. But the one thing I told him is I’m not doing any finance, I’m an operator, I am an entrepreneur and I’m not going to be doing the financial side of things. So you handle the finance, I handle the portfolio management, I will deal with the businesses and I’m not touching the numbers. And that was our agreement. However, my proposal is and obviously God has other plans. And so just a few months into that partnership, unfortunately, he had a family emergency, had to move back to the UK. And, you know, we’re stuck with the choice, either refund all the money that we just raised or I would run the funds exactly what I said I wasn’t going to do. But my money was working very well at the time and we had a great management team, so I was able to step away from the company to run the investment company at all times. So I did that for a few years and the thesis in that first fund was around essential services. So things that Africans need or Africans consume. So it was a media software, agri tech, logistics, a whole range of essential services and services that Africans would buy or wants. And it was a really great experience, and that fund was very successful. So one of the first investments we made was in a company called Paystack. We invested in a company about a valuation of $1,000,000 and then they got into Y Combinator and after that they were able to scale the business across Nigeria very quickly, despite the fact that there was a very large incumbent in the payment space. But they were still able to scale as e-commerce and digital payments scaled within Nigeria. And that company in 2020 was sold to Stripe and puts $200 million. So our investors were really quite happy with the returns on that funds. And during that time, I developed a lot of expertise regarding this company for investing one of the best checks also in, say, blocks away, for instance, I had to learn quite a lot very fast about financial technology. And I went on to do a master’s degree in finance and economics as well. So when I decided to start out my own funds, I wanted it to concentrate on areas where I had deep subject matter expertise. Because doing my first funds, I felt like I was learning about agriculture one day, learning sorts of logistics, the next day learning about. You know, climate tech is the next day. And I felt that a more focused structure would be definitely pieces that I would want to follow with my own vehicles. So we started Health Cap with the vision to invest in just early stage ventures across Africa, but only in fintech, because that was an area where I was forced to have a lot of deep subject matter expertise and the academic backgrounds in finance and economics as well, and subject matter experts. He is also in health care As a physician who has also worked in a basic science lab, I got a scholarship to work in Japan with induced pluripotent stem cells. That was my source of fellowship topic. So really deep subject matter expertise, it’s not just in clinical medicine or in basic research in biotech as well. So I felt that, you know, these were two really big needs, but also things that I could build a team, really deep knowledge and understanding. And so that sort of is the origin story of healthcap. And we currently have 30 investments. So it’s a valuable to companies in India is a $500 billion total. Employment is over 1000 jobs created and 50% of our talent is female.

Ofosa Ojomo: Wow, wow, wow, wow. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for that. I mean, I think that’s the kind of impact that we need to just keep screaming and the kind of activity happening on the continent. I want to go back even a little bit and just get a sense for your desire to focus on African health care, that sector, that industry. And I’d love for you to tackle this in two ways. One, I know that sort of a personal story here, but then I’d love if you could connect that personal story to more of the I would say the macro struggles, an environment that is African health care and why you chose to go into that space.

Dr Ola Brown: Absolutely. So my personal story really starts with Africa. I didn’t mention that I was born in the UK and I grew up in the UK, so I never really thought about living in Africa and I felt like quite detached from Africa, to be honest. But when my youngest sister traveled to Nigeria. She got very sick and we were trying to sort of communicate around what we’re going to do to travel maybe to a larger hospital or a better hospital. And, you know, medical transportation was just the big issue. She was too unstable, really, to be moved by ground. So we tried to find an ambulance and that took a process of probably like three or four days to organize. And meanwhile, every day, my sister was deteriorating. She was just 12 years old. And it was just a very stressful period for my family and it was very stressful. The stress was exacerbated by the fact that we’re all in the UK. At the time I was a medical student working in one of the best facilities in the country and I just started feeling the things that were so in front of my hands, like the need to get tests that were I’d never even thought about the price of the tests I was ordering. A class of their availability were just so difficult to get in Nigeria. The level of expertise, the kind of people that I was speaking to, and it was really, really a heartbreaking experience. We did manage to get an ambulance organized, but it was from South Africa.

Ofosa Ojomo: Oh, wow.

Dr Ola Brown: So it would have been a seven hour journey to Lagos. And by the time we had even started initiating all of those arrangements, my sister died at just 12 years old and it was maybe four or five weeks before my exams in medical school. So I had a meeting with the dean and I was asked whether I wanted to just skip the exams and I said, No, I have to take this exam because I’m going to go back to Africa and do something about the situation. It was just so frustrating and because it went on for a period of days, it was just so frustrating and so heartbreaking. But I felt like my whole plan was disrupted. My initial plan was just to become a consultant in the NHS, but it disrupted my plan completely When I realized that people were dying, So many people were dying not because the facilities and the expertise were not available anywhere. It was just that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Ofosa Ojomo: Wow. Thank you for sharing. I think what strikes me about that is how, you know, if that happened to you, your family, you were the only ones it happened to that year. I mean, that would be tragic, still incredibly tragic. But one could look at the data and say, well, it only happened to one family. But that story is it’s like a Tuesday afternoon. I mean that in almost any country in Africa, right? Maybe South Africa, maybe one or two. But like almost any country, that story, it’s just it’s like the norm. And so, you know, did that sort of trigger in you, this passion to, like, fix African health care? Like there was that like that was it?

Dr Ola Brown: Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

Ofosa Ojomo: Wow. And since then, I know you did work with healthcap and fly in Doctors and Greentree. I mean, just I can’t keep track to be honest, I cannot keep track of all you’re doing. Can you walk us through just a little bit your journeys from the moment where you were talking to that, you know, your dean or your professor and said, I’m going to take this exam because I got to fix this system to where you are now, the way your career has evolved, what you’ve been involved in, and you showed a bit about healthcap, but just maybe talk to us a bit about that.

Dr Ola Brown: So out of medical school, about a year out of medical school, I made like I promised I would promised myself I would. At that time, I moved back to Nigeria and it wasn’t really back because I had not lived in Nigeria as an adult. My parents have lived in England since they were virtually teenagers, so we didn’t have the kind of networks that sort of that Nigerian family is typical Nigerian family would have. But I had promised myself that I was going to at least try to do something. So I moved here around 2011. And so my first company, which was Flying Doctors, which was focused on medical, transport and urgent medical supplies, urgent medical personnel. So it’s a tech enabled marketplace that focuses on urgent care. And as that company grew, we obviously hired more people, started working with embassies, insurance companies, corporates all over Africa and really exciting journey, sort of growing it from zero to a multimillion dollar company.

Ofosa Ojomo: Can you give us a sense, like as you were raising money for it, as you were talking to partners, why did it take you to come back and build this way? I mean, they’ve been embassies in Nigeria since Nigeria became Nigeria. There have been multinational companies. They’ve been, you know, immigrants from other countries coming to work in Nigeria, whether it’s the US or the UK, and they’re victims of our health care system. Right. So what did you learn? Like, why hadn’t this been done? You know.

Dr Ola Brown: That’s an interesting question. And I think that there are just so many I think there’s a professor at Harvard. I forgotten his name, but he runs a course on emerging markets and he talks about he uses this term institutional voids.

Ofosa Ojomo: Oh, yes, yes.

Dr Ola Brown: Yes, absolutely. And there are so many institutional voids in Africa that just things that people aren’t doing. And I think it’s just because capitalism is still quite young. So I was having a conversation about family offices with a friend of mine, and he was like, where all the African family offices. And I’m like, Well, they’re not really family offices. Then the person that made the money. Yes, is generally when you think of family offices, you think that money that has passed through four or five generations, you think of the large European family offices where the money was made like five generations ago and it’s still being passed down and managed, whereas, you know, most African family offices you actually meet in person. The place is still there. We’re still quite young in studies of business and capitalism, and there’s still a lot of things that haven’t been done. And that’s where I really think the opportunities in Africa for these large scalable solutions that don’t look exactly like their West counterparts, but there are problems that need to be solved perhaps in a different way from what you see in the West and with a slightly different model.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that I see in my research is how when you as an entrepreneur create a market and show that it’s possible, right? Whatever the market is, it really causes people to copy. You create these copycats. And that’s actually good for the system because it validates your own work. You know, you have more capital flowing into that market, you’re creating more jobs, valuations do get higher and you change the cultural dynamics in the region, right? I mean, people begin to see that, oh, it is possible. And you almost can’t imagine your life without whatever product or service. And so and then you say, but that process, I will say, is difficult. The process of market creation, which is a lot of the focus of my next research, and it’s very difficult. So let me say thank you for doing that. And so flying doctors, you’re doing that, but you’re not that’s not enough. So you want to do more and then you start investing. Maybe talk a bit more about that because you’ve actually invested in a couple of friends that I have, like Brian Metz Way of Life Stores or Incredible Guy. You’ve invested in his company. So how do you transition from, you know, you’re doing this operational thing and then you want to start investing in other entrepreneurs?

Dr Ola Brown: Absolutely. So it was all because my friend actually who is a finance person, once had stopped funds. So I just came in sort of as an operational sort of insights advisor. I ended up running the funds and after that I decided to set up my own vehicle doing finance, fintech healthtech investing full time. So that’s really where I am now.

Ofosa Ojomo: Okay. And do you still do any operational stuff or you’re mostly just.

Dr Ola Brown: I’m not even on the board of Flying Doctors right now, but it’s still growing. Every year I look at the two own figures and I was blown away and it’s really nice that, you know, that you can create something and no longer be involved and you still see it sort of growing honestly, even faster than when I was running it.

Ofosa Ojomo: All right. That’s good. That’s actually a good thing. So, you know, your connection really is to Nigeria. Much of your earlier work was in Nigeria. But you, as I understand it, you’ve branched out and you’re looking at the continent as a whole. Could you maybe talk to us about, you know, one or two deals that you’ve done in a country outside of Nigeria and why you’re really bullish on Africa health care?

Dr Ola Brown: Absolutely. So healthcap invest in two subsectors Healthtech and fintech. And we have a team that has a background in financial services. So some of the team members have a background in banking or in credit or microfinance or mortgages. On the other side of the team has a background in health care. So it could be somebody who is a lab scientist who is not financial analyst, but they all started off either in health care or financial services. So we felt it was really important to build an expert team. And so we invested across the continent just in those two sectors. And the reason why we chose those two sectors is because we felt tell them, well, two things that you can’t really have economic growth without. So in terms of the wealth, our thesis is, number one, Africa has the highest number of unbanked people in the world. And when I mean unbanked I spoke about, they didn’t have access to payment services, they didn’t have access to credit services, they didn’t have access to mortgage services. And for individual wealth creation, that’s a big deal. The ability to save is a big deal. And the ability to be able to invest is a big deal. But also for economic growth, businesses have to grow and be profitable and it’s very difficult to do that without access to credit, without access to be able to pay and get paid without access, to be able to save and invest Treasuries without the right kind of advice, without the right kind of software, without the right kind of formalization, without the right kind of knowhow. So that’s really what we’re investing in in the fintech space in Africa. And we also think that in financial services that it’s probably the one area where African entrepreneurs have both the competitive and comparative advantage. I believe that Africa is the birthplace of digital currency. We have very sophisticated payment systems. Basically it’s a banking innovation and I think that the world does have, will still has a problem with digital banking. The first digital currency or one of the world’s first digital currencies was launched here in Nigeria. So we do have an advantage when it comes to innovation in financial services. And I think that that advantage is worth investing in because it will lift Africans out of poverty, it will help them grow their businesses, it will help people own their own homes, it will help people to save saving them from catastrophic results of poverty. I also think that there’s banking solutions in their supply. Solutions can be useful for the rest of world. And because I think banking software and banking infrastructure and banking architecture is outdated all over the world. And I think that this is one area that Africa can lead. I think for China, it was manufacturing. For France, it’s luxury for other countries, that’s like Vietnam. But Japan, it’s exports. And I think for Africa it could be financial technology. And that’s a thesis on the financial technology side. On the healthcare side, we have more women in Nigeria die during pregnancy and childbirth than in Syria than in Afghanistan than in Iraq, we have the highest in Africa. We have the highest under-five mortality rate. So many more children under the age of five die in Africa than anywhere else in the world. Africa has the worst healthcare in the world, and Nigeria may have a similar GDP per capita. So places in Asia, but we have far, far worse healthcare. And I don’t think that any country and truly achieve maximal productivity without solving the problem of healthcare and also having good healthcare is not just great for health, it’s also great for other things. One in eight Americans work in healthcare.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yes.

Dr Ola Brown: It’s one of the world’s of the developed world’s biggest employers. The UK NHS, for instance, is the biggest employer in Europe, the sixth biggest employer in the world. If you look at almost every American states, the biggest employers, I mean the health care or education. So improving health care across Africa is not just improving productivity for people having better health. It’s actually making sure that people have jobs and improving security, because a lot of the reasons why we have the security problems across Africa are because people are idle, people are unemployed. In Nigeria, for example, there’s a 30 to 40% unemployment rate depending on where you live. So if you have a sector, investment money going into a sector that not only makes people more productive or provides employment and improve security, can’t think of a better investment to make.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah, I mean, that’s I never quite heard it put that way, but that does make a lot of sense. You know, when I think about much of what you just described in financial services and in health care, the fact that there are innovations in financial services, but man, there’s a ton of people still don’t have access to very big basic things that you and I might take for granted. It gives rise to the potential for significant innovation. You know, I’ve started to see those struggles not as sort of the end of the story, but the beginning. Those are the things that you put in the pot. Those are the ingredients. You say, okay, now what kinds of business models can we develop? What kind of technologies can we use to solve these problems? And that paradigm shift is absolutely necessary if we’re going to solve many of the problems that we have on the continent, because I see them as opportunities now. It’s difficult to crack, but they are major opportunities. You know, health care and financial services are two sectors that it’s hard to get in growth scale without public engagement. It’s quite different. If I wanted to go and start selling, say, paper, write software, big market for paper or cups or something. And I know you’ve you know, whether it’s through health cap, you’ve done work like public private partnerships. And this is an area where many entrepreneurs sort of shy away from. It’s like I want to innovate and not have to deal with the government. But those two sectors, I mean, yeah, they’re very much the government is in them. Can you talk a bit about your approach to public private partnerships and advice you would have for entrepreneurs in this space, either seeking to get them or seeking to run away from them?

Dr Ola Brown: Absolutely. So I think the public policy and public engagement is absolutely essential. And I do want to talk about the public sector. Actually, I gave it at the African Venture Capital Association meeting last year, and the sorts of final thought I shared was that the American taxpayer is the biggest limited partner, the biggest investor in technology. And the reason why I said that is because the American taxpayer is the unknowing LP in almost every single large source of innovation that America has had. When you look at my industry in healthcare, 75% of new drug molecules are discovered through public sector grants, American government grants. When you look at even massive innovations that have saved millions of lives across the world, like the technology for MRI, RNA vaccines, for instance, that was developed off the back of the American public sector grants. When you look at things like even Google, Tesla, Amazon, at some point they collected public sector money. Even if you look at the Internet as a whole, the Internet was actually a government project, but eventually has been used to create billions of dollars of wealth by the private sector. When you look at the money that goes into universities, for example, the public sector money that goes into universities, a lot of innovation comes out of the PhD programs are public sector funded. In fact, I believe that Google was a PhD project. So when you look to research grants, when you look to public sector education grants, when you look to even the Human Genome Project, which is sort of the foundation of sorts of where all personalized medicine, the field of genomics, all sorts of sorts of gene therapy originated from the human genome projects. The mapping of the human genome was funded by the American taxpayer. So a lot of the foundation and a lot of the infrastructure on which the technology industry was built was funded by. The greatest LP of all time

Dr Ola Brown: The American taxpayer and in financial services. For instance, I was reading in the news that Jamie Dimon, the current managing director of Jp morgan, actually assisted Jerome Powell, who is head of the Fed and [….], who is head of the Treasury, worked out a bailout plan for some of the banks. And it reminded me about when J.P. Morgan himself a hundred years ago, negotiated a similar deal when the American government was in trouble speaking about bank failures. Imagine the impact on the tech industry if the government hadn’t come in and backstopped all the deposits at Silicon Valley Bank.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah, And I mean, I’m sure you have personal relationships of people who are impacted.

Dr Ola Brown: Absolutely.

Ofosa Ojomo: I do as well. And it wasn’t just the thing that happened out there that could potentially impact me, right. Like it was I was like, wow, these people can’t get their deposits in credit statements.

Dr Ola Brown: And I’m not just talking about the impact on the single bank. I’m talking about the fact that if the government hadn’t backstopped those deposits, then it would have led to contagion where everybody would have started withdrawing money from all of the banks because they can’t trust the banking system and probably international banks as well. It’s not uncommon for a single bank failure to turn into a more generalized banking crisis, and we saw that in 2008. So there is a very intricate relationship between the public sector and the private sector. And even in Nigeria, we can see that the sectors that the federal government has decided to back and support like the banking sector, like the pensions sector, like the cement sector, have really flourished because of that collaboration. And I think it’s important for the technology industry to be able to explain its value proposition to the government stakeholders. And I think even though Silicon Valley Bank was systemically important, yes, this is the fifth largest bank in the United States. I’m not sure that it was entirely too big to fail. I mean, it was the same government that let Lehman Brothers fail, but they realized that it was strategically important as well, because technology and the technology sector has been responsible for a majority of the new ideas, a huge amounts of new jobs in America. And they’re relying on that innovation and technology to be, you know, a key level of growth of the economy. So letting a huge section of that […] was absolutely unthinkable. And I think that we should be pitching the same mantra to governments across Africa to prioritize the technology sector. Because this is an area, like I said, where we can win. This is an area where African young people are already extremely talented and are putting out world class software and world class technology enabled products every day. So I think that collaboration is exciting and something that we should be pushing for because the private sector very rarely does it alone. Policy is important, law is important, ease of doing business is important, and the government being able to decide which diplomatic relationships to pursue, which kind of collaborations to from a trade perspective and from a diplomatic perspective, which kind of partnerships to pursue are really important strategic [….] implicitly.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it reminds me of one of the lines we had in our book, The Prosperity Paradox, where it says, you know, the innovators can light the fire, but the government fanned the flames. And so there’s often this contentious relationship between the public and the private sector, but it need not be. So, you know, the private sector creates the value and the government distributes the value, and they distribute that by figuring out where resources go for. Whether it’s education, partnerships, relationships. So there are foreign affairs ministries investing in infrastructure and so on. And so just understanding our role, right, can be really helpful in having a less contentious relationship and seeing, you know, each other is necessary for the development of our country and continent. You know, I want to switch gears a bit and talk about your faith just a bit, because I know that’s a big, big part of your life. Can you maybe just give us a brief background on how your faith informs the work that you do, whether as an entrepreneur and investor? Could you talk to us a bit about that.

Dr Ola Brown: So faith is always been part of my life. My dad was a pastor, so I have no choice because I think that my faith is visible through my lifetime. My dad is pastor of Deliverance Ministries, so I grew up like, you know, in a church where earrings weren’t allowed and like [….] and, you know,.

Ofosa Ojomo: Hardcore.

Dr Ola Brown: Everybody that wore jeans was going to hell. I mean, are evolved from that, but faith is still very, very central to my life and my work as well. And faith is also a source of inspiration to me. The Bible is also the source of inspiration to me. And I think that inspires my core values at work as well as my core values in life. So when I started Flying Doctors, there was a whole list of core values that people came up with. And I said, you know, I need to add one more value and that value is going to be excellence. And I’m taking that value, that one core value into healthcap as well. And the idea of excellence really comes from the book, Daniel, where the Bible describes Daniel as having an excellent spirit, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, ability to interpret situations, decision making ability. And that’s why I’ve always wanted to build my company as around I’m particularly inspired by characters that were around Daniel at the time. So Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and how they carried themselves and how they made themselves distinct. And then that’s what excellence means to me. And I was speaking at a church, I think two weeks ago, and one of the points I made were about people in the Bible that particularly inspired my work and the link between faith and work. And there were four stories I told. The first one is pretty obvious link the physician, which, you know, would be an obvious person to inspire me, but not for the reasons that most people think. Not because he was a doctor, but because he was a doctor, but actually never met Jesus. So he became a Christian, actually, according to many accounts, after Jesus had died. But he was still able to write what some people would argue was the most comprehensive account of Jesus’s life. And he did that by a process of interviewing, being careful, listening to details, methodological research, you know, testing different stories because sometimes people remember different things. So you’ve got quite a few people to get the essence of a story, particularly when they’re thinking back, you know, ten or 20 years ago as to what happens when you read the book of Luke. You can tell that this is really quite a real labor of love in terms of listening to different spectators and being able to sort of combine those perspectives into a really comprehensive piece of work. And it’s that spirit of excellence that I admire about Luke. The second person was King Solomon, but again, not for the business that people think he serves as a reminder to me because even though he was born into a very privileged position where God actually came to him and asked him, What do you want? And I always say that life has a different kind of path because the same thing that one person had [……..] was the same thing, that God came to another person and said, you know, what do you want? And he chose wisdom. And he was given wisdom beyond anybody that had ever lived. But by the end of his life, he ended up [….]. He ended up worshiping idols. He ended up with all that wisdom falling far short of what I believe was his true potential. And it reminds me that, you know, I love education. I got tons of executive courses, and I like to think that, you know, in terms of knowledge, strict wisdom, I’ve made sure that I’m quite robust. But that has to be combined with focus and discipline.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah.

Dr Ola Brown: The daily routine of doing the right things at the right time according to our values every single day and not over relying on knowledge of wisdom. Some might argue even that focus and determination and discipline are even more important, the third, I said a group of people are the daughters of Zelophehad, and when their father died, they were in a really strange situation. They were told that they couldn’t inherit their father’s property, so they devised a plan, sort of lobbying mission to lobby the elders and to lobby the senior families to say we deserve, even though it’s never been done before. And we understand that it’s against the law. We want to inherit this property, we want to run the businesses. And eventually they started lobbying Moses himself. They went back to him so many times that Moses just got so irritated and upset that he had to go back to God and say, Look, these women are driving me nuts. God what do I do, give them the gift of the property. Wow. Not only were they given the property, but they were actually privileged to be able to choose their own husbands. And that reminds me and inspires my work because I think about things in a different reality. I always think that the rules can change for me.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah

Dr Ola Brown: And I think that being strategic is important. Speaking to the right people is important because anything significant I’m going to achieve is going to happen to other people, not just myself. And I think those ladies understood the importance of building relationships and making a strong argument and knowing the right people and building the right relationships. Eventually they got to the top and they got what they wanted. And I think that’s an important sort of Old Testament story, but very inspiring to me. So, wow, those sorts of characters, the personalities in the Bible that have really inspired me and they inspire me through faith, inspire me in my work as well.

Ofosa Ojomo: Well, thank you for sharing. That was I feel like I just left church. That was amazing. I’ve always here just soaking it up and I’m going to go reread Luke and just think about Solomon’s story. And this is Thank you. Incredible. You know, one last thing before we move into Rapid Fire, if you could just quickly tell us, where is your passion for not just learning but also sharing come from? I mean, you again, you started as a medical doctor, an entrepreneur investor, but you have this passion for learning. But you could learn and just keep the information to yourself. But oh, my gosh, you were so generous with all of the things you write and videos you create, but I’ve consumed a few of these have been blessed by them. Where does that come from and why would you do that?

Dr Ola Brown: Education is really expensive. So. So the medical degree that I took probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The master’s the same. I’m doing my Ph.D. in the classroom this year as well. Again, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there are so many people in Africa that can’t afford that. But they want to pursue that same degree of excellence. They, too, are inspired by Daniel’s and. King Solomon’s and the daughters of Zelophehad that, I mentioned some of the people that inspired me, but they can’t afford that level of education. And I think it’s so important for us to pursue excellence. I think pursuing the highest levels of knowledge and making sure that even as Christians where as competent as anybody else in the room, I don’t think our faith should be sort of a cover that not doing things well. I’m not making sure that we’re equipped as investors and entrepreneurs. And those results inspire people as well. The results that we get in our businesses inspire people that it’s possible to do good and do well. And I think it’s important not to compromise on that. And I think that there’s many people on that journey across Africa, across Nigeria, that, you know, don’t have thousands of dollars to spend on a degree. But they want that knowledge. They hunger for that knowledge. So I try to write, I try to share. I try to record videos to make sure that even though people don’t have the opportunity to pay and travel, but they have the opportunity to enjoy the gift of knowledge particularly and understand the circumstances. So understand economics, understand finance, understand what politicians to root for, have a deep understanding of monetary policy, fiscal policy, so that they can make the right decisions for the continent.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah. Thank you so much. And your knowledge sharing is truly, truly having an impact. Let’s move to Rapidfire real quick. I’ve got three questions. You know, give me a response in 15 seconds or less, it’s going to go by fast. So now you work a lot with all your work educating that you’re doing. Educate yourself, other people. What do you do for rest and reset?

Dr Ola Brown: I get massage.

Ofosa Ojomo: Okay, brilliant. The other question What gives you hope about the future of Africa?

Dr Ola Brown: The fact that this shows that there’s a bright future with the youngest continent in the world and very talented with. I mean, Singapore, for instance, gets $1,000 per capita with a venture capital money. We get closer to $3 per person in venture capital money, but we’re still able to produce the same number of unicorns of Singapore, which means that we can do so much more with so much less. So I’m excited about the youth, I’m excited about the innovation and I’m excited about the positive demographics of Africa House.

Ofosa Ojomo: All right. Last Rapidfire question. Where can our audience learn more about you and your work?

Dr Ola Brown: I’m on LinkedIn, Dr Ola brown, I’m on […..] Dr Ola Brown. My YouTube channel is Dr. Ola Brown, and the name of the YouTube channel is called ecofinInsights, Economic Finance Insights. And also [……].

Ofosa Ojomo: Brilliant, brilliant. Awesome. Thank you. Last question, and we’ll use this to end, we ask every guest on the show. We’d just like to learn what God is teaching you right now. What have you found in his word recently that stuck out to you in recent past?

Dr Ola Brown: Ok. I think that’s like I said, I have this way of learning through people in the Bible. And I said I was going to talk about four characters. But then I looked at the time and I realized I didn’t have time to talk about the last one. The last one is Joseph, You know, probably one of the best economists in the Bible introduced, you know, 20% tax rate in Egypt, looked at all the economic policy, was able to, you know, build through a brutal cycle and, you know, be able to manage for a severe economic downturn. And what he teaches me, again, as I believe it to throughout this interview, is having that spirit of excellence. He was not just an excellent Christian, but also an excellent assets to Egypt at the time. And he reminds me about the power of excellence to really be able to evangelize and be a symbol of faith to people. And also reminds me that capital is meant to serve us.

Ofosa Ojomo: Yeah.

Dr Ola Brown: Not us serving capital and money. Investment use the right way can be a catalyst for great change in the world.

Ofosa Ojomo: Amen, amen amen. Wow. Dr. Brown, thank you so much for giving us your time today. And it’s been an absolute pleasure of mine. I wish to meet you hopefully in Nigeria soon or, you know, in any other continent. But really just want to say we’re super grateful.

Dr Ola Brown: thank you.

Ofosa Ojomo: God Bless you.

Dr Ola Brown: Thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And it’s been great speaking to you.

Recent Episodes

— by Peter de Silva

A Personal Journey to Understanding Everlasting 

As a young boy, I cherished my faith. My faith gave me the strength to power through adversity of all kinds, including my life-long struggle with a chronic disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). As my body lost muscle and sensation, my faith assured me that my life had meaning and purpose. While I could not fully comprehend it, I was confident that I was here intentionally, not by some random accident. 

As a noted business and community leader, husband, father, uncle, and brother, I have always tried to set a good example by being a strong moral and ethical leader. During my 35-year career, I chose to lead by principles, not rules. 

This leadership perspective helped me lead UMB Bank through the 2008 financial crisis.

UMB Bank: A Lesson in Leadership

In the early 2000’s, I was Chairman and CEO of UMB Bank, a strong midwestern bank headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. This nearly 100-year-old institution was led by a set of long-held beliefs about doing what was right, not what was popular now. 

We believed that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. 

While others were making risky subprime loans, we rowed close to shore safely in the sight of land by adhering to time-tested safety and soundness principles. While others thought that maybe we had lost our way in a brave new world, we thought differently.

When the 2008 financial crisis came crashing down, our institution was a beacon of strength against a backdrop of weakness caused by greed, expediency, and unrealistic performance expectations. While others scoffed and said we couldn’t adapt to change, we followed sound principles for embracing change, which sometimes means standing firm and sticking to your guns. We relied on the principle of doing what was right versus what was expedient and popular, and it paid off.

2008: A Crisis of Leadership 

The entire crisis was a very troubling time for me as a leader, and I thought long and hard about its origins and causes. Ultimately, I concluded that the 2008 financial crisis was principally a crisis of leadership. 

You can find hundreds of good definitions of leadership in books and online. Most say that a leader is someone who has authority, influence, and the ability to communicate, persuade, and influence others. Other characteristics often include the ability to articulate a vision, or the ability to successfully work through others to achieve a stated objective. While I find these characteristics instructive (most leaders should possess these traits), I don’t believe they get at the heart of true leadership. 

A Biblical Perspective on Love-Driven Leadership 

At my wedding over 30 years ago, like at so many others, one of our bible readings was from the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians verse 13, 4-8. Chances are you have heard it before.

Love is Patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 

In his letter, Paul is speaking about how the unbreakable bond of love can unite two people together. The passage speaks about respect, honor, integrity, trust, perseverance, and how to care for one another. 

I got to wondering about whether love might be a key component of leadership, or maybe the key leadership component. After all, love is not leadership, and leadership is not love. Or are they inextricably linked? I was not sure, but I thought that just maybe I might be onto something. 

I decided to substitute the word “leadership” everywhere that Paul had the words “love” or “it” in his letter. Here is how the passage reads with those alterations.

Leadership is Patient; leadership is kind; leadership is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Leadership does not insist on its own way; Leadership is not irritable or resentful; Leadership does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. Leadership bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Leadership never ends.

I remember the first time I read this revised version like it was yesterday. I sat in stunned silence for almost an hour reading the passage repeatedly trying desperately to find fault with it, but I couldn’t. I had finally found a definition of leadership that spoke directly to me. 

While this leadership definition may not speak to everyone, it spoke to me. This was not because the definition has Christian origins. In my view, this definition transcends religion. It has universal application in today’s complex and multi-faceted world, yet the concepts and the words are drawn from millennia of experience. It is about a form of leadership style that I am completely comfortable with. 

Loving Leadership and the Example of UMB Bank

Love is a principle that can guide your decisions as an entrepreneur or executive. It’s certainly not a rule or a black-and-white rubric dictating your every move. Instead, love is a touchstone that we return to in difficult times, and it helps us weigh our motives and the consequences of our decision.

Is this business decision loving toward our customers and our staff? 

In the example of UMB Bank, reducing risk and refusing to chase speculative gain was a choice rooted in love. Our customers did not have to worry about what might happen with their deposits. Our team didn’t have to worry about the bank going under and losing their jobs. Before the 2008 financial crisis, this wasn’t a popular or attractive leadership decision. But over the long run, it was the right decision.

Be Inspired to Lead with Love

Here is one last thing I’ve learned about leading with love. Leading with love is both aspirational and inspirational. 

I recognize that I fall short of this definition daily. There have been times when I might have knowingly or unknowingly been arrogant or rude. There were certainly times when my patience wore thin as I tried to accomplish an important task. At other times in my career, I might have taken pleasure in someone coming up short so that I could advance more quickly. 

I began to feel as if this definition was unattainable, unrealistic. However, I soon recognized that it was okay to fall short. The attainment of this leadership path would be a never-ending pursuit. An ongoing and continuous driver of reflection and self-improvement. This realization might have led to my discouragement, but instead it inspired me to grow as a leader and Christian. 

My fondest wish is that you draw inspiration from this passage as I do. Whether you are called to be a serial entrepreneur, a C-suite leader, or occupy a leadership role more like that of Mother Theresa, all who proclaim to be leaders can draw strength, perspective, and wisdom from this passage.

Won’t you join me in the quest to fulfill this everlasting definition of leadership? 

About the Author

Peter de Silva is an executive leader, former Harvard University senior fellow, and the author of Taking Stock.

As we read in this blog post, there’s much we can learn from other entrepreneurs’ experiences. Peter was able to navigate UMB Bank through the 2008 financial crisis by sticking to his principles. Now, it’s time to learn from other entrepreneurs. Join one of our groups, were you’ll be able to meet with local entrepreneurs and hear their stories. Don’t do it alone. Find your community.

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Entrepreneurs have the ability to identify opportunities for innovation. Today’s guest has been doing that his whole career in industries that were ripe for disruption. 

Josh Harley is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Fathom Realty, the tenth largest real estate firm in the U.S. with over ten-thousand agents. 

In this conversation, he talks about how entrepreneurs can train themselves to become more aware of the potential opportunities in front of them and how they can faithfully lead their people in a way that honors God and serves others.

If you like this content, make sure to follow, review, and share the show with others. New episodes release every Wednesday with entrepreneurial leaders around the world.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey there. And welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast for wherever you are around the globe today. You know, when you think of the top innovative, disruptive industries. How far down do you have to get until you arrive at real estate? Most of us don’t see it as the most cutting edge field to get into. But that’s exactly why today’s guest chose this industry. Josh Harley is the founder, chairman and CEO of Fathom Realty. It’s the 10th largest real estate firm in the United States with over 10,000 agents. The firm has achieved great success due to Josh’s innovative approach to an industry that he saw that was ripe for disruption. Here he talks about how entrepreneurs can train themselves to become more aware of the potential opportunities in front of them and how they can faithfully lead their people in a way that honors God and serves others. Let’s get into the conversation.

Rusty Rueff: So, William, how’s your Latin?

William Norvell: Ooh, I say poor to very poor.

Rusty Rueff: Poor to very poor. So my Latin isn’t good, but chatGPT is awesome. chatGPT. So I threw in this word realists to try to get to a meaning of something. And realist means relating to things. And it refers to property that it consists of land and any structures or improvements on it. And then there is a word that goes behind realist, and it’s the word estate originally referring to an individual’s wealth or possessions, including land, which over time became the term real estate, which I didn’t really understand. Where did that come from? Because I always looked at and goes, Well, of course it’s real. It’s not Unreal estate. It’s right there in front of us. But it goes all the way back to the time when we spoke Latin in Rome.

William Norvell: Those things always one fascinate me, and I had no idea. But it’s kind of like said this one, I’m going to put myself up for ridicule here. This can be a loss, but I’m going to throw it out there. I just found out the other day that sand is between the sea and the land.

Rusty Rueff: Seriously?

William Norvell: Seriously.

Rusty Rueff: Good one. That’s a good one.

William Norvell: The real thing. I am so glad you didn’t know that. That was a risk. That was a risk. I took it.

Rusty Rueff: That’s a good one. We could go on and on. But we’re going to welcome in our guest who knows a little more about real estate than the two of us. In fact, I would say he knows it probably 10,000 times more than we do because he’s got 10,000 employees in his company. And yet it’s the 10th largest real estate firm in the United States. So we’ve got a top ten guy with us today. Josh Harley, welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.

Josh Harley: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I really love that you guys are doing it means a lot to me. I know it means a lot to other investors and entrepreneurs and everyone else who’s just trying to understand what’s happened in the world, but do it in the lens of Christlike people.

Rusty Rueff: Well, we try to do our best. And, you know, Henry had this vision a long, long time ago that, you know, we needed to equip faith driven entrepreneurs, not just help fund them, which is where he and William and others started with the sovereign’s capital. And that’s what we’ve been trying to faithfully do for lots of years now. And to have you here to help us do that today with our listeners is just fantastic. And, you know, you have a fascinating story. Your background covers so many things and we’re going to dive into some of those. But I think you’re your story of the real estate space and how you got started and, you know, just one step to another to where you are today is pretty unique in the field. So share that journey with us, if you will.

Josh Harley: Sure. I appreciate the opportunity to share that story. So my story actually starts back when I was in the Marine Corps and I got to the Marine Corps and I was looking for a job to take care of my family. And I got this great gig and this right before 911 happened. And I got this great job paying me six figures, you know, out of the military, making six figures, you know, go from 20,000 a year to six figures is incredible. But since 911 happened in the Dallas area, I got laid off, got a job again, got laid off again, got a job again, got laid off, literally got laid off in like three times in a 12 month period. And it was incredibly painful and scary. And I got fed up like, you know what? Forget it. I’m a do it myself. If I’m going to put my life in anyone’s hands, is going to be my own. And it’s doing God’s. And so I decided to start my first company and is really focused around now Internet lead generation. Back then it was actually the automotive space. I knew someone that was in automotive cars was still moving fast back then. And so I came in and I started helping him sell his cars. But online, this is before eBay motors and things like that. And so I really got a great understanding of Internet sales and lead generation. Unfortunately, that company did so well that eventually failed. So what I mean is like I basically became a commodity. And when a business model is really successful, sometimes it becomes a commodity to where it’s no good anymore. Like everyone’s doing it. It just doesn’t make sense. And so that business just blew up. It was successful and just as fast was kind of a flash in the pan. It went out of business. And now that I knew some of the real estate space, new homebuilding specifically, I took that same thing I learned in the automotive side of the Internet lead generation. And I’ve moved over in to the new homebuilding side and I started helping out Builder in that sales department. Again, this predates almost anyone doing this in the real estate space and new home building. So so just having a website that you can go to. We’re actually putting the floor plans in the homes and everything online for people to find and buy. And so I believe our first year increased our sales by 90 million. And for a regional like just in the state of Texas regional builder that’s incredible. But that gave me the idea to do the same thing in real estate. And when I say real estate, obviously new home building is real estate. But for real estate agents, I saw an issue, right. One of the things about being an entrepreneur you always look for something’s broken, like how do I fix that and how do I. Build a business out of that. And so I saw an opportunity, instead of generating leads for a builder, can I generate leads for a real estate agent instead? Because if you generate lease for a builder, that buyer may buy just for that builder. If they decide to buy across the street from another builder, you lose the deal. But if I gave that same lead to a realtor, I got paid no matter where they go or if they bought a resale home, if they decide to lease instead. And so that was kind of really the genesis there. But I could see God’s hands through all of it, because you know that even though the first business failed, it gave me everything I needed to be able to move on to the next business that ended up being exceptionally successful. So I’m very thankful that it feels like I’m very thankful I got laid off over and over again because had I not, it would have never forced me to push through that brick wall to be an entrepreneur.

William Norvell: Josh It’s a fascinating thing. I’m going to ask you to go a layer deeper there, if that’s okay. And here’s why. I’m wondering, how did you feel during that? Because I can see you looking back on it, right? How did you process that with God as it was happening? And what was that journey to? I’m thankful I was laid off three times. Like, I imagine that was it. But that happens in, you know, in an entrepreneurial sense. Businesses fail. And then the next idea. I’m just curious if you could walk through those emotions with us on that and how you ended up there.

Josh Harley: No, I think it’s a great question, William, thank you. So the first time I got laid off, I thought, you know, it’s life, It happens. I hear about people getting laid off all the time. You know, it’s not just I’m not being fired, so I don’t want to take it personally. It didn’t hit me that hard. In fact, I got a job immediately. I mean, as I’m packing up my stuff, I got a call from someone saying, hey, you know, we heard you’re an exceptional recruiter for this company. We want to bring you on board. You know, found out later on, you know, two months later, they shut that whole office down. But so the first time is like, you know what? Life happens, move on. Got a job opportunity right away. God’s good. You know, we’re there the second time it’s done because already I’m falling behind in my bills, you know? And when you’re a recruiter, especially I.T. recruiter, you get a very, very small base salary, basically minimum wage. And then most your money is made through commissions. Well, it takes time to hire people and get them placed. Right. And so obviously, I’m falling behind on the bills, starting to feel desperate. I’ve got, you know, a brand new baby at home. You know, it’s it’s scary. So I’m looking at God, okay, God, I trust you. You know, I know you’re going to take care of us, but can you show me how know I need you to speak to me right now. And so that was tough. And when it happened the second time, you know, it took me a couple of weeks. I got another job, moved in. You know what? We’re going to move forward. We’re back in the saddle and then get laid off a third time. And now I say, okay, you know, there’s got to be more to this. You know, God’s telling me something that maybe I’m in the wrong industry. Maybe God wants something else. Because I realized a long time ago, long before this, is that sometimes God opens doors. Sometimes God closes doors, too. And I really felt that God was closing that door. I couldn’t God’s never audibly spoken to me through some burning bush. But, you know, I can feel his presence. I can feel him talking to me. And so I really felt like I was calling me to do something more. And I’m very creative, very artistic. And I felt like, look, if you truly believe that we’re made in God’s image, you know, part of that is being creative and innovative. And you look at the Earth, the work, you know, I love science. You look around so you know that God is just incredibly creative and he made us that way as well. And so I use that creativity. So I feel like God was shutting that door. And that’s why I look back and I was thankful for it, because as scary as it was, I always had that entrepreneurial spirit. I always wanted to do something, but I needed God to shut that door to actually step out in faith.

Rusty Rueff: We’re going to jump more into the real estate business. But now you got me thinking about other things, too, which is really good. So, Josh, you have a fascinating background because you were a marine and you also taught people hand-to-hand combat. How much of that in your background, you know, being up against the toughest of toughest life threatening situations also helped you maybe get through some of these, you know, what looked to be obstacles from job to job to job. But was there something that, you know, in your mindset that also helped there?

Josh Harley: Absolutely. First of all, it’s one of those it’s hard to lose your temper when you’ve been shot at. Yeah, that kind of idea. I mean, just life can hit you hard, but it’s never going to be as hard as that. It’s never going be as hard as having to bury your friends. It’s never going be as hard as, you know, being a combat situation. I was an infantry sergeant. And so it’s sometimes you put things in perspective. Now, I want to make sure I say that stress the stress of stress. You know, you can have the stress of losing your mother or father, and that puts you in great stress. And that amount of stress you feel feels exactly the same as, you know, losing a friend in combat or being shot at. It’s different. You can claim that, well, my stress is harder than your stress, but it’s really not. Your body can deal with exact same way. But the benefit to constantly being stressed over and over and over again, as you become thick skinned, you’re able to deal with things in stride instead of getting upset and sort of hiding under the bed or looking for that proverbial safe space. You know, you can’t do that. You got to move on. I think one of the things the Marine Corps taught me, my father, my father’s 35 years in the military, you know, he drill that into me as well, is that you don’t have time to sit back and cry about something and stress about something. You’ve got to use that stress as a motivator, harness it and use it for good. And I think that’s one of the things the Marine Corps teaches you when the explosions happen when the gunfire, you don’t freeze, you move, and it actually prompts you to move prompts you to drive forward. And I think that’s really incredibly important, especially as an entrepreneur, because life is going to throw Curveball after Curveball. One of the things you learn in the Marine Corps is you make plans, but you make plans for plans for plans because something is going to go wrong. So you’ve got to have a backup plan for your backup plan. And that’s one of the things I learned as well as you’re always. Here’s what I want to do. In a perfect world, that’s what’s going to happen. But what if it doesn’t? You know, what’s the unintended consequence of this action? What could go wrong and then start putting things in place? So if that does go wrong, here’s how I’m going to deal with it so I can pivot immediately. And I think that’s something that I learned from the Marine Corps. I think that’s something that everyone should learn as quickly as they can. I hate when people say fail often and fail fast. Think that’s stupid because, yes, you’re going to fail. And if it’s going to fail, then get it over with. Don’t fail often if you don’t have to, you know, still do that purpose, you know, But if it’s going to happen, don’t chase good money after bad either.

Rusty Rueff: Now, that’s really good. So now take that, because I love we shouldn’t run past stress as stress as stress, because I think, you know, as entrepreneurs, we carry a lot of stress. You know, and I was talking to our founder that I advised the other day, and he said, you know, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, man, you know, this is just this is hard and, you know, the stress that he feels. But at the same time, you know, you’ve been recognized as a disrupter and an innovator in an industry that, you know, probably wasn’t all that welcoming of innovation and disruption. And somewhere in there also is, you know, winning the next fight, winning the next battle in that realm. So talk to us about, you know, what you had to do to step into this industry from the ground up, be an innovator, be a disruptor, and then take that and expound that out to advice for our entrepreneurs.

Josh Harley: Well, sure. So, first of all, one of the things I love to do, if you want to innovate and disrupt, the first thing you need to do is look for an industry or an area that you can innovate or disrupt. And so that’s what I loved about real estate, is that it’s still to this day behind the times, there’s still so much more innovation, disruption that can be had in this space. You know, it’s hard to do that in many other spaces. Even automotive has gotten incredibly technologically advanced. It’s still behind the times a little bit as well. But there’s so many industries just are so far along, and yet real estate is still relationship driven. It’s still very one on one. You know, everyone’s kind of on an island on their own, so there’s a lot of space. And really that’s what attracted me to real estate in the first place. There’s a lot of opportunity to be able to disrupt and to be able to innovate. But your point, I used to keep this wall. I used to keep a corkboard, and I called it my wall of nasty because I got so many emails and letters, you know, from other broker owners that are telling me that I’m ruining the industry and then I’m putting them out of business. And that I’m, you know, just nasty, just nasty stuff. And yet I believe that as you innovate and disrupt, it actually makes everybody better. And that’s what’s been happening. The real estate industry has been getting better as more of us have come in to disrupt the space, because as you do that, it challenges you, challenges each other to dig deeper and work harder, to be a better service to your clients or provide a better service to your employees and so on. So but I think that’s first, if you want to get into an industry, pick an industry that’s still ripe for disruption and that’s to this day is still real estate. You know, for me, I always love that term, you know, when life gives you lemons. Have you heard that term? I sure ever saw it. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. You know, it’s not just about seeing the brighter side, which I think a lot of people think about. It’s also about seeing an opportunity in the problem. And almost every great business comes from someone who wanted to solve a problem. You know, most people see an obstacle and simply turn around and quit. But as I mentioned before, your God places those obstacles are lives to help us stretch ourselves. You know, if you believe [this one metaphor] If you believe that were built in his likeness, you have to believe that he endowed us with imagination, ingenuity, and the desire to create. And that’s a long way of saying that if you see a problem, you do you believe that a lot of people have that same problem? Can you come up with a solution for that problem? And then is that solution marketable? I think the real key is this, by the way, more important is it is a big enough of an idea to pay your bills and feed your family because just because you can do something doesn’t always mean you should. I see a lot of investors invest a lot of time, energy and money into something that never pays the bills and they wonder why they’re not succeeding.

William Norvell: Okay. So I want to ask a two part question here that I think will take us as writers to one, I don’t think we’ve given you a chance to share. Like, what was the disruptive idea for you with Fathom? Right. And then two on top of that, I heard about the nasty emails. I think this will be part of the same answer. But if it’s not, I would love to know what keeps you going in the face of that? Did you just see it and you just knew it was the right answer, right? Or was it, you know, staying faithful and small steps? Or was it one big vision that you had that you just knew was going to work? You know what I mean? So what is the big innovation you were chasing? And then how do you stay? I mean, those are tough emails, you know, and in the face. How did you stay faithful in the midst of those times?

Josh Harley: Well, first, I’ll tell you when every time I got one of those emails, it motivated me. It’s almost a badge of honor when someone says something gymnastic, you know, because you’re innovating, you’re like you’re breaking the space or disrupting the space. So when I first came into real estate, I didn’t come in to be a real estate agent. I came in to do the same thing in automotive where I was doing Internet lead generation but doing for automotive. And then homebuilders are doing for real estate agents. And this was 2006 time period. And we all know what happened. 2006-2007 was the housing crisis. Right. The housing recession. What a horrible time to start a business. So I started a business all around lead generation and is incredibly successful at generating leads Where I was very unsuccessful, was getting paid for those leads because real estate agents were struggling to pay their bills. I’d spend, I think, the first ten deals I sent out to get paid on with. They actually got closed. I got paid on two deals out of ten at 20%. Success rate is not a good success rate. So I realized very quickly, you know, I had to pivot and that’s why I said before is like, you’re going to fail at times. That’s where I think fail fast, you know, get past it. Don’t keep chasing good money after bad. So where I sort of come up with scale, let me be a real estate agent and own the team. Instead, I’ll generate leads for my team. That way I guarantee to get paid. I’m really glad that happened, though, because I failed that first when I pivoted very quickly. I realized there’s just this huge opportunity in the real estate industry, not necessarily just for real estate leads, you know, generally leads for agents, but in how agents got paid. So, for example, I won’t tell you the company I was with, but I was with a very large company. I started my team. I was incredibly successful my first year. I had a team, about 12 agents that worked for me. My first year in real estate closed hundreds of homes. The issue was that we gave over $100,000 of commission splits to that brokerage I was with. There’s a lot of money. And for what? They never sent me a single lead. We’re too big to be in their office space. Were too busy of the training classes. Like what was the value exchange? Now think in any business. It’s incredibly important to understand what that value exchanges, you know what value you’re giving it in exchange for what money you’re getting back, and so on. So I started looking that and I realized, you know, why am I paying $100,000 a year? And that gave me that was my big aha moment where most people come into real estate and try to disrupt the space when it relates to the consumer, you know, with better websites or lower commissions to the consumer. I started thinking about how do I disrupt the space where it comes to the agents? How do I lift up and empower agents instead, and how do I help them make more money? And so what I did is I built a new brokerage that focused on the agent instead of the brokerage, made it very agent centric, instead of broker centric. And so we did is we provide all the tools, technology, training, resources of the legacy brands do, but at a very small flat transaction fee. So instead of paying an average about 3000-3500 per transaction, we charge $550 per transaction. And what’s crazy about that, because I have a technology background, I was able to build technology in such a way that even though I charge $550 per transaction, I actually end up making more money than my peers who charge $3,500 per transaction. And that’s kind of a big AHA for investors who are looking at our business like, Well, how is that even possible? So technology is allowed to streamline the operations, keep our costs low as we pass that savings on to agents and agents if they want to reduce their fees to the consumer, you know, lower commissions for selling homes or rebates on the buyer side, they can do that, but that’s on them. So my focus is how do I lift up and empower the agents to make them be the best they can be? Allow them to make more money. And ultimately, that’s been incredibly powerful for me as well, because, you know, where I was looking to build a business, what I realized that we’re changing lives. And that’s something that that drives me forward every single day, so if you ask. You know, the face of all that wall is nasty. What keeps driving forward is the stories I hear from the agents about how, you know, our business model, you know, save them from foreclosure or help pay for the kids college or whatever else. It’s not a story I hear every once while. It’s a story here literally weekly that drives me forward. So I’m a big believer that Fathom, you know, this company Fathom realty is my mission field gives me an opportunity to serve people in the way that Christ is, you know, and God has called us to do that.

Rusty Rueff: I’m curious about your decision. So there’s technology and software that you built that enables these leads to be much more profitable, lower cost. Did you go through the discussion with yourself or with you and your advisors and board that we should keep this for ourselves or we should turn around and sell this to all real estate companies?

Josh Harley: So I was self-funded all the way up to the point we went public. We probably got two and half years ago. So self-funded through the whole time. I had to start the brokerage first. By doing that, I had to basically go several years out of paycheck, which really, you know, stressed my wife out, stressed me out. But every time I made money, I pumped it back into the business. And as a businessman of money, I started pumping into developing our own technology. So, again, a lot of people develop technology when it comes to consumer facing websites. Instead of that, I focused on building technology more of an ERP system like technology that allows us to run the brokerage more efficiently, which means less employees, less costs, less third party software. So that allows keep our costs incredibly low, and that’s what allows us to continue to grow at the rate we do and be able to make more money on a per transaction basis than our peers do. So it’s a hard way to answer that question. But the technology was the first vision, but I had to build the business first to be able to fund the technology. And so it kind of went in the iterations technologies first. So now your question is like that technology is so efficient for Fathom, why can’t I use that to help empower more brokerages? And we’re doing just that. So right now, our technology, we’ve got over 750 other companies using our technology, touching over 40 or 50,000 agents that utilize our technology. We have two technology companies. One is a big data aggregator, really focus on hyperlocal data. And then the other one is the basically ERP system that now includes agents websites, brokerage websites and so on. So it’s the full solution, the next iteration. Is, you know, we’ve got a little bit more technology to develop that once we do licensing that technology to our competition, basically. There’s 86,000 brokerages in this country and most of them are barely surviving. And yet we charge a fraction of what they do and we’re thriving.

William Norvell: Wow, that’s crazy. I didn’t know there were 86,000 brokerages in the U.S.. That is a staggering number. I want to switch gears just a little bit. You gave us a little taste of the switch a little bit to how your faith has interacted with building Fathom. We saw you Matthew 20:26 on your website. And just just walk us through how that manifest itself and the organization that you’ve been building.

Josh Harley: So Matthew 20:26, the second part is, you know, whoever must be great must become a servant. And to me, that’s really everything. So I mentioned before that Fathom Realty’s more my mission field. I really believe that God is calling me to lead this company because we can’t touch so many lives. But the way we do that is by serving others. You know, I think the greatest commandment is love. And so loving other serving others. If you look at our guiding principles and you can see it right on our website, our guiding principles are all based on biblical principles. And the very first one is love. And so, you know, when you think about serving other people, that’s what God calls us to do. But also, even though it sounds altruistic, if you actually implement that into your personal life in your business, life is incredibly powerful. You know, so I’ll say it like let’s say as a real estate agent, the more you truly serve and love your clients and place them first, not the commissions, but truly placed their needs first, the more likely they are to refer other people to you and your business grows. Same thing with real estate agents. The more I truly serve and love my agents and place them first, not myself, not my needs, not the brokerage, but them, the more likely they are for other agents to us. And last month, 60% of our growth was from agents referring other agents. That’s not me recruiting. That’s agents telling other agents about how awesome Fathom is. You’ve got to join Fathom because look what they’re doing for us. So I can sit there and brag about how great Fathom is. But the proof is in the pudding. When other agents are telling other agents about how great fathom is. And so that really stems from the idea of servant leadership. So my first job was in McDonald’s. Now, this is McDonald’s in Alaska. So I grew up in Alaska. Within the first six months of working McDonald’s. I was 15 years old before I even turned 16. They promoted me to shift manager. Like here I am, like not even sixteen years old yet. And they promoted shift manager. You know, I’ve got adults that are now working for me. So I went to my father, who, by the way, is, you know, 35 years in the Coast Guard, but also a pastor. And so, you know, he’s always in the Bible. And I made the mistake, maybe not the mistake, but the time I felt a mistake of asking him because he actually he was very high ranking in the military. He had hundreds of people beneath him, just like I did when I was in the military. And so I said, Dad, you know, what do I need to know about leadership? Now, I didn’t use the term leadership back then was like, what you need to know about managing people. And what’s a 15 year old sack him. Exactly. I said it, but so instead of telling me the answer, he said, Josh, I want you to tell me what the Bible says about leadership and about, you know, managing others. I was like, Really? And so he hands me a concordance and I start obeying my father. So I started to look into the corners and I went back that all I can find is stories about the deacons, basically. Right. That are serving the widows and orphans. He’s like, I want you to dig a little deeper this. I want you to focus on the life of Christ. And that was the biggest aha of my life, because when you step outside of, you know, the story of Jesus and you think about from a business standpoint of a leadership standpoint, he was an incredible leader. You know, he poured himself. Yes. He spoke to the multitudes. He spoke to hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of people. But he poured into a few people and helped each one be their best so they can turn around and pour into other people so that they could turn around, pour in other people. And I realized that was really the secret to leadership, is not telling people what to do, but pouring into people, helping them be their best, serving them. And so by the time I was 17, I was the assistant store manager of McDonald’s in the Marine Corps. I picked up Sergeant in two and a half years in the infantry. And the infantry usually takes about four and a half years to pick up corporal, which is E-4, I pick up Sergeant two and a half years. But all that came down to that one Bible study, really understanding the idea of serving other people. So I had the opportunity to get promoted. I had a few people beneath me. Instead of going out there drinking with them, I focused on helping them be better. And as my fire team shined and I ultimately shined, even though that wasn’t the purpose when I helped them be their best, it makes me look good as well. And I came in another promotion and again and again and again. And so almost all my promotions were meritorious promotions. And so it’s just it’s amazing when you when you look at the Bible, I really do believe that the Bible is probably the greatest business book ever written. It has incredible so many business principles in the Bible you can use, even though you might be taken out of context a little bit. The fact is it works. And so I really think that the idea of servant leadership is powerful, and that’s what really helped us excel in Fathom Realty. So as the more I truly serve and love our agents, the more they want to share the people about us. Every business meeting we have, we pray, and then we always ask us if we make a decision, how does it affect our people and if it negatively affects our people, we shouldn’t do it even if it makes, you know, the company more money. And every time we made a hard decision like that, I really believe that God blesses that because the business are growing from it, because the employees are people see those decisions that you purposely did something that may have hurt you, but it was for their benefit. And then you get better productivity or better referrals or whatever out of that. So it’s amazing when you apply God’s principles into your business.

William Norvell: Amen, I’m turning over to Rusty here in a second, but one more question. So I’m thinking about that. So you obviously have 10,000 agents now, right? I mean, large, large organizations. So I’m curious if you could take us back in time a little bit to maybe when you had five, 20, 50, 100 people? Right. What are the stories of servant leadership? Because, you know, we get a lot of for and there’s a lot of stuff that needs to get done, right. You don’t have enough people to do enough things. You know, legal docs need to be read and outreach needs to happen. But everything you say, like I believe you write, it’s like I’m in. And then I go, okay, but how does that work when I have so many things to get done that I wake up and I just think about my people? What are the specific actions you might have taken? Maybe that seemed counterintuitive at the time, but paid off in the long run.

Josh Harley: I think it’s priorities. You know, ultimately, if you believe that you want to run your business and God honoring way, then you need to put other people first. You need to follow, you know, his commandments for our lives and the first one being love. So one of the things I do, there’s almost not a day that goes by. It used to be not the other day that I don’t reach out to 2 to 3 people and just ask them how they’re doing. And the fact that there’s 10,600 agents, not to mention I’ve got hundreds of employees in seven different companies. And so it’s important to pick up the phone to call people. Sometimes they hung up on me because I don’t really believe the CEO is calling them that to call their manager like, hey, would you let Susan know that it really is me? But it means a lot to them, what I do. And so what I have to think about is, okay, that has real intrinsic value, more value than you can actually quantify. And so I look at here’s the 50,000 things I’ve got to do today. Which ones drive the company forward, which ones make the company money, which ones improve the culture. And those need to be the focus. All the other things I can outsource, I’ll hire someone to do the things that don’t make the company money and don’t improve the culture. But I can’t outsource culture. Culture has to start with me and I’ve got to drive that into my people. And so not only do I do that myself, I try to show my managers to do the same thing, so they reach out to their people. They’re always pouring into their people and loving on their people. We’ve got a hopefully soon to be too, but right now we have a chaplain because we can’t call a director of culture, but he’s our chaplain. So we’ve got chaplain, the company, that anytime something happens, you know, he immediately reaches out to them. You know, if they’re open to it, he’ll pray with them. Find out what they need, and then we’ll reach out to all of our agents and will, you know, raise money for them or we’ll get close together. If someone lost their house, we’ll find a place for them to stay. And so, you know, we do a lot to feed that culture because the culture is incredibly important. But I think that’s really the key is figure out, identify what is important to the business, you know, culture driving revenue and find the things that can be outsourced that aren’t as important, that don’t make the company money and let someone else do it. Yes, it’s going to cost a a bit of money, but that’s going to reward you long term. Now, don’t be do a $20 an hour job. You know, when you should be doing something is going to make a company $1,000 an hour or be pouring into people who will be able to be more productive that collectively over time will be able to generate thousands of dollars more per hour than you could do on your own.

Rusty Rueff: I want to ask you to give advice to our listeners, we’re going to go to Lightning Round here in a second with William. But so we talk a lot about how faith can shape our work and shape our entrepreneurial journey. But also our work and our entrepreneurial journey can shape and grow our faith. If we pay attention to it. And so if you’ve got a story or advice to give to our listeners about how your faith has grown or been shaped because of your entrepreneurial journey, that would just be awesome. It’d be an awesome gift.

Josh Harley: Yeah, You know, so I’ll tell you that my faith has definitely gotten stronger, you know, as I’ve grown the business as well, because I see the fruits of that labor. So I see the results. So, you know, as I follow God’s command in my life and I try to do the right thing, right. People see that. People see that. I try to always make the right decisions, do the right things. People see that I love on them. I always try to place them first. And so as people see that, whether they believe in God or not, it inspires them, inspires them to be better, inspires them to be like me when I’m trying to be like Christ. So, I mean, I try to be like Christ, and even they don’t believe. They try to be like me. Then we end up all improving. And then when they ask me, Why do you do what you do? Like, I don’t shove my faith on people’s throats. I also don’t hide my faith either. But I don’t shut it down their throats. My job. We’re not a Christian company per say. Meaning the mission statement of our company is not to lead people for Christ. But it’s really important because the more I do that, people often ask me, Why do you do what you do? And oops, don’t ask that question because now I’m going to share my faith. Because you asked. Right now I get to share my faith. And so the point I’m making is that the more I lead my faith and live my faith in the business, the more I see change in other people’s lives as well. And that inspires me to keep going because it shows me that God is real and God is powerful when God changes lives, but God changes lives through us. He doesn’t need us. He didn’t need us at all. Doesn’t need our money, doesn’t need us. But he uses us because he knows we need it, too.

William Norvell: Got it. Okay. We’re going to move to our last 5 minutes. We called the lightning round. That’s why we are moving fast here. The theory is 30 to 60 second answers. We do not have a countdown timer. We do not hold to that policy, but it’s loose, and it’s exciting if you lean into it. So we’re a jump in. First question going to be about Alaska. And I’m going to buy the policy because that’s the first trip I ever surprise my wife with. So I know Homer, Alaska. Well, I almost got killed by a giant whale. Different story for a different time. Exciting place. I love it. So you grew up there. What is the craziest Alaska story you have?

Josh Harley: I’m a t crazy ice core that you’re not expecting. So I told you I worked at McDonald’s. A McDonald’s? That’s fine. Dining rooms out in Alaska. So every night at 6 p.m., we would put candlelight on all the tables. It became fine dining every night in Alaska, you don’t get a lot Alaska like all the shopping is done via. Back in the day, the Sears catalog, the J.C. Penney catalog. My brother’s still a police officer up there. Also has a Krav Maga gym up there as well. I mean, things are crazy expensive, but I could tell you lots of story about hunting and fishing and bears. Oh, no. But I thought that was a pretty crazy one. No one ever believes that McDonald’s is fine dining in Alaska.

Rusty Rueff: It’s not that you don’t get a lot of things in Alaska. You get a lot of sunlight in the summer. There’s a lot of sunlight up there in the summer.

Josh Harley: It’s so obnoxious. That’s not the problem. Well, actually, it is the problem. So people don’t know this about Alaska. But you ever drive home at nighttime, like when the sun is setting, the sun’s in your eyes. It’s like, I hate that time of day. Well, that’s how it’s like in Alaska, like especially up in the Fairbanks areas. The further north you go, it’s always you’re right, it follows the horizon because it never sets, right? So it’s always all day long. It’s always in your eyes. It’s obnoxious, so it’s not as good as it sounds.

Rusty Rueff: Okay, so who can write a better those little pithy, cute real estate ads about the charming, cozy, you know, fixer upper who can do it better, a writer or chatGPT oof!

Josh Harley: I would say an experienced agent could probably write it better. But with time. I’ve played a lot with chatGTP, and it’s crazy. I asked to write a country Western song about someone who finds God in the waves, you know, on the beach. And it was amazing. It was really, really good. It was like, Oh my goodness. I made a few tweaks to it. It was a winner winter winter chicken dinner.

William Norvell: Okay, last minute. Our favorite thing that we love to close with. We love to close by going back to God’s Word, which you’ve done a few times here in this podcast, of course. But we love to end with just a place that maybe God speaking to you. It could be something to meditate on. Your whole life, could be something you read this morning, could be a story, could be a verse, but just something that a place in God’s Word that’s coming alive to you and potentially new ways in the season you find yourself.

Josh Harley: I love that one. And it’s a perfect way to end this right now in church. Actually planting a church in Wylie, my brother in law is actually the pastor. And right now we’re going through Genesis. I have a bad habit of reading ahead all the time we’re in Genesis three, and I think I’m in Genesis 43, I tend to read ahead just a little bit, but I was kind of reading about Joseph and I’ve read his story. I can’t tell you how many times. And it started making me think about David also, and it started making me think that, you know, every time I read the Bible, I learned something new and I had an epiphany. I was just thinking about Joseph, and it made me think about David and so many others, but about how they were faced with struggles that would break most people. And that this principle hit me, you know, don’t be the victim of your story. Be the hero. Make the decision to stand up and fight for a better life by becoming really a better you. And I think God helps us do that. So now is the time. You know not tomorrow, not someday, but now. And the Bible is the greatest self. I said, This is the greatest self-help book ever written for both personal and business. And I would encourage everyone to look for the answers in its pages when faced with life struggles.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, awesome to have you on the show. And I know William and I just enjoyed this. Sorry Henry wasn’t here to enjoy it as well, but he’ll listen in and we just pray for a blessing over your business and over you and your family. Keep doing what you’re doing, brother, and we appreciate you.

Josh Harley: Thank you, Rusty. Thank you William, appreciate you both.

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