Every once in a while we like to take a break from interviewing guests to give our hosts a chance to riff on what God is doing in their lives and what they’re learning through the process. In this episode, you’ll hear about William’s upcoming move to Atlanta, Henry’s journey to India, and some wisdom Rusty has recently picked up from a book he’s reading. Pull up a chair and join our hosts around the table to enjoy a chat about life, God, and entrepreneurship.
In the first section of this episode, William shares about how he has been prayerfully considering a move for a long time, but he has never felt the “peace” that so many Christians seem to talk about. Well, now that he’s decided to make the leap and move all across the country, hear what he has to say about this whole idea of finding peace before you go where God has called you.
Next, Henry shares about a trip he recently took to India where he got to teach students at a school about the lessons of entrepreneurship and why creating—specifically in a culture that views business as a dishonorable career—is one of the ways we can honor or Creator God. Henry’s trip is a living testament to what God is doing through Faith Driven Entrepreneurs worldwide, and we’re excited to share this with you.
And finally, Rusty speaks into the idea of what it would look like to work with our hands and live a quiet life—inspired by 1 Thessalonians 4. Although it may not sound like the typical entrepreneurial dream, there may be something to it. He also closes our conversation by sharing what he’s learning from Thirst by Scott Harrison.
This podcast may feel a bit different from our usual show, but we hope it provides a chance for you to relax with our show hosts during this holiday week!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Henry [00:01:57] Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We’re here. We’re gathered around Rusty’s dining room table and we’re talking about all sorts of different things that actually were interviewing some great guests that we’re going to release later this year. But one of the neat things that we can do when we get together is to hear how God is working in each of our lives. And I think that there’s a great application through each of the stories that we’ll share with you that I think and hope will be an encouragement for you, the Faith Driven Entrepreneur on your journey. And I want to start with William, because William is going through the one that I probably most characterizes a life change. But as you process that with this a little bit earlier today, I think it’s got really great application for decision making and how we as entrepreneurs thinking back, do we do this? Do we do that? There may be no bigger personal decision. Well, there are bigger personal decisions than should I move to Atlanta or not. Right. But there’s some lessons in this and share with us, please.
William [00:02:51] Yeah, totally, says Henry D. There I am. I’m coming back to the south for our listeners there. They’re coming back to Atlanta, Georgia. I was raised in Alabama. So this is some bit of a homecoming for me. And so I’m excited. Some less of a homecoming for my wife who was born and raised out here in California. As you may know, if you listened a little bit, we have a 14 month old son, Liam, as well. So we’re all coming back. And the way God has orchestrated this has made me really wrestle with some things.
[00:03:15] And the biggest thing that I would say is we’ve been wrestling with this for about a year and we finally submitted it to God in a way of saying, you know, we don’t ever want to run away from something. And actually there’s nothing to run away from. My wife’s parents are here. We love it here. We see God moving in extraordinary ways. But the second half of that sentence you might have heard before is you want to run toward something that God open some doors. And and we had some miraculous doors open. The most notable being the house across the street from just one of my dearest friends in the world came a friend. And he called me and said, Hey, man, this is crazy. But this is about 60 feet from my front door to your new friend, or hopefully let me know. And so as we were processing that, I think my wife and I came to a place of, OK. God’s made this pretty clear. The Abedian answer here, which is what I think we are most called to as Christians, is to be obedient to what we see God urging us to do. There can’t be much more of a call. I don’t know if there is more fun, really. I together the obedient thing to do. But man, we still don’t feel great about this, even though we’ve asked for God to put out a fleece. If you know that parable from the gods answered. But we still don’t feel this peace that I feel. I hear often from people, counselors, mentors. However, maybe like go pray for peace and clarity. And when you get that, you’ll feel really good about making this decision and you’ll just feel that presence of God in that clarity. And you feel peace comes up all the time. That word like find peace, then move, find it, then act. And I heard this great sermon. There’s a pastor out here, a guy named John Ortberg, that is at a church, common-law Church. This awesome sermon where the punch line was, in his opinion, that’s just ridiculous advice and not from the Bible. And you can’t really find that anywhere that in his opinion, almost always you find peace on the other side of obedience. And he talked through various different stories from Abraham even to a Crail on Jesus. And Jesus felt no peace, he said in the garden, sweating blood, asking God to take the cup from him. But he knew what the father wanted him to do, which was go to the cross and to save humanity. But there was no player. And there’s a piece about, you know, this is gonna be, yeah, I know what’s gonna happen is the opposite of that. And so we felt that. And so we have been wrestling through that. And some of the versus the gods taking me through Hebrews eleven eight talks about the Abraham story and says by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was. To receive an inheritance. And when he went out not knowing where he was going and then going without knowing mentality is I think so prevalent for an entrepreneur, so prevalent for us in our spiritual lives of when God has made it clear what to do. Sometimes you just have to walk out there and you don’t know what’s going to happen. And I think that’s actually the norm. I think it’s those rare cases where God gives us grace to tell us, you know, hey, actually, I know how that’s going to work there. A Jonah go in and none of us go to an interview and preach. I’ll tell you the rest story later. I didn’t lay out for you what’s going to happen. I’m just telling you what to do. So, you know, I’m moving. I’m excited. I’m so excited. But somebody asked me like a piece about this decision is like, absolutely not. I’m leaving best friends. I believe in family. Ten years of community building. God’s done extraordinary things early. I know. I’m anxious. I’m nervous. But I know what God’s called me to do.
Henry [00:06:37] So there’s some other activity. So it’s a little different than the Jonas story, right? Because in Jonah, God audibly says, Jonah, go. So it’s clear he he’s being disobedient. But knowing enough about your story, there are some things you’ve done over the last year to be able to test as best you can. What is obedience look like? So is more than just the housekeeper rant. What are some the other things that you did is you sought to seek what God would call you to and whether you’ve been obedient or not.
William [00:07:05] Yeah, it’s a great question. I mean, it’s kind of three legs of a stool that I’ve held on to for years about decision making or some version of prayer spending time with God. My wife and I’ve been praying about this for a year. And and then more recently in the last three or four months, praying for that like God make it like do something weird, do something that we can’t explain. It’s only of you. And that in some ways, you know, we’re gonna be able to hold on to because everything’s going to be perfect. Never does. Right. But we need to be able to hold onto something. God, a big deal for our family. And so that was a big one. Looking through scripture, as you can see, some of these stories have come to my neighbors.
[00:07:38] Eliminate. The other one I would mention real quick is John 21 6 that God showed me, which is when if humor is the story of Jesus asking the disciples to cast the net on the other side. So I said to them, cast the net on the right side of the boat. You’ll find some. So they cast it. Now, they were not able to haul it in because the quantity, the fish.
[00:07:54] But I read some commentary on this and got deeper. And these guys are professional fishermen. If you remember the disciples. They’ve been out there all day. They’ve been doing their thing, looking at the tides, looking at the sun, fishing at the best. Their ability they call nothing. Right. And this random person from the side of the shore says, hey, you’re on the wrong side. The boat that takes like a big humble ass bag to be obedient to who they knew that to be at that point, which is Jesus, when they figured it out to say, oh, yeah. Everything we’ve been doing wrong. We’re just gonna be obedient. Do this. You know, if you read the column, this stupid thing. Throw that out on the other side. Of course, it’s not going to work. But they had to be obedient first. And so God showed me that verse. He showed me the verse in Hebrew.
[00:08:34] I’ve been meditating ongoing without knowing for three or four months. I’ve riding’s after writings. And so we’re just sort of as God just kept revealing that and then started doing things. It became clear and then wise counsel would be the third. I took this story that God was weaving two, three, four or five people. And the last one, a gracious mentor that knows me well, said, you know what you’re going to do? I see what you’re wrestling with. But like, you know the answer to this question. And when you get to that point and I feel like entrepreneurs get to that point a lot, right. When you’re gonna sit with an entrepreneur and they’re like almost in angst about having to start something or make a big decision to change the direction of the company, to fire someone who’s a co-founder, is a friend. And we’ve probably all been there. Were you looking at me like, you know what you’re supposed to do here? Like, I’m happy to keep listening. I’m happy to help you figure it out. But but we all know the answer here. And that’s when actually I mean, the phrase I would say I think I’d be disobedient not to do this now, like he’s revealed so much to me in his word, in prayer and through wise counsel, that actually I do think you would be disobedient. Even though I don’t know what’s coming. Yeah. And I feel like that I don’t often or all the time. Right. Like, you know, God’s calling you to do in this situation. It may be very difficult, anxious, stressful, but, you know, and that’s when we have to go without knowing, too.
Henry [00:09:56] That’s exciting. So tell us, some of my listeners may have no idea what you do for a job. So aside from going there for maximum density of Chiclets, which is almost reason to go, it’s a big deal. Yeah. What would you say? What are you doing?
William [00:10:10] Yeah. So I work with hinter here at Sovereign’s Capital, came on board a little over a year ago to help kick off a unit where we are not just investing in early stage technology, but we’re also investing in what I call Main Street businesses. These are the businesses that everyone knows that are out there that make the world work. And so we’re trying to find more of those led by Christ followers and our situation. That’s what we feel called to do at Sovereign’s specifically and uniquely as defined people who are building an intentional culture and need investment capital, whether that’s growth equity or they’ve got a uncle in the business that maybe. Around anymore, or they’re at the end of their career and then God’s calling them into something new and they need a new shepherd for the entire business. We come alongside and all of those ways. And I just love finding great teams of people who are building good companies that make an impact in the community and the lives of the employees. And in some cases, it’s just different race intel I get. I love this industry started that early stage technologies are great. Just now, a God’s called me to invest in. I mean, some of these companies you walk in and you meet some of these and. They’ve given they’re one of our podcast guest, the others. That’s scarce labor resources, which I love that quote, scarce labor capital. They’ve given 20 years to these companies. I think this is a extension of their family and extension of what God’s done in their story of their life. Right. And to be able to humbly try to steward that wealth for another generation is just gets me excited. So that’s what we’re doing in Atlanta. Obviously, we invest around the country, but, you know, we’re all on the West Coast, so it’s gonna be great to have some team back on the southeast.
Rusty [00:11:45] And you already are Braves fan.
William [00:11:47] I am a lifelong Braves man. So there’s some easy bolt ons, but it’s great. Julio Jones plays for the Falcons. You know, we’re good. Calvin Ridley, we got well, we love Atlanta.
Henry [00:11:57] Here at Faith Driven Entrepreneur, we’ve had a couple of very successful fator now or events in Atlanta. One was at that really supercool brewery, neural neuron brewery 150+ showed up and sold out the upper floor, that kind of deck on that.
[00:12:11] And they’ve had events since then. And there’s a group of people getting together to do that once a month. And that’s really, really encouraging. Group of faith driven entrepreneurs getting together, having a speaker, breaking bread, praying together and being a community.
[00:12:25] There are other places around the country that are doing that, too. BOVA Places around the world, right? You mean you’ve got a story to tell where you just came back meeting with Faith driven entrepreneurs? I son it. Well, that’s right. I was just in India. And one of the things and actually interesting on this is that and this is a plug for our newsletter. We have as many of you may know, we have this website and we’d list resources and things like that on it. We have a daily blog. We have a weekly podcast. And we have a monthly newsletter. We don’t talk a lot about the newsletter on the podcast. But one of the neat things about the newsletter is that when people sign up for it, they say where they’re from and allowed us to go ahead and say, well, we’re going to be in Atlanta on business. Let’s see if we do an impromptu Faith Driven Entrepreneur event and we’re able to email people who are on our mailing lists that were from the Atlanta area in hundred fifty people showed up and that was really encouraging as a part of doing that. We also put up a picture on Facebook of this. And a guy from India who is on our newsletter list said you need to come to India to do that. I’m thinking it’s really far away. Really, really far away. And then a member of our small group, great family, the Kim family, I had said in one of our smoggiest, you’re telling about where we’re going for spring break. And they said, we’re going to India.
[00:13:33] We’re going to India to go visit a school that we helped us set up about eight years ago. And they provided the financing for this really neat school that I want to say in the middle of nowhere. But it’s nice in the middle of somewhere for them there in the middle of everything. There, four hours outside of Hyderabad in a town called Merial Gouda in there, there’s this incredible oasis of a school that they helped set up. And they’re going to go help students be trained up on setting up experiments onto the International Space Station.
[00:14:02] So this guy, Danny Kim, runs something called the Quest Institute. He’s got great entrepreneurial history. Going to have him on the podcast, 30 years running the country called form or this some super. Well, he’s made some great relationships with people like NASA. You might recall that we had Hannah Cambia, the most value Christian entrepreneurs on the program before. So it small group, they say we’re going to India. And we said we’d let’s come with you. Remember if they said you guys should come to or we said we should come, too, but let’s pretend for a second that we were invited. I think we probably were. And then I thought, wow, for going to India. I’ll go back to this guy who had come in on Facebook, said, I want to come out and do a Faith Driven Entrepreneur event here. And sure enough, I call this great guy, great brother in the Lord named Joshua madain and said, I’m going to be outside of Heider Barford through four days working with these kids. But I’d love to come to see you in Chennai. But I’m also mean higher bond. And he said, that’s awesome. Here’s what’s going to happen. Amen put on a Faith Driven Entrepreneur event in both Heider but in Chennai, even though he doesn’t live in tonight. Like a guy live in Atlanta said, Oh, you’re going to be in Kansas City? Yeah, dude, I’ll do it. I’ll do a Faith Driven Entrepreneur event for you. Kansas City. And that’s what he did. Wow. So for the first three or four days, we were outside of Hyderabad in this remote place. But this isn’t just a story about doing a Faith Driven Entrepreneur event in Hyderabad in Chennai. It actually starts on the Friday that we left for India. On the Friday I left for India. I had this opportunity to teach Faith Driven Entrepreneur worship to kids, high school kids at the school where our kids go. It’s called Valley Christian Schools. And so we went to Valley Christian. I talked about my entrepreneurial background and the lessons that God has taught us at bandwith and some of the stories we’ve talked about on the podcast. And it was super cool. It was really fun to be able to go through what God has done and deceive their imaginations start to turn about. Gosh, maybe I could run my own business. What does that look like? So finish that literally. Take a van right to the airport. Get off the plane 36 hours later and we go to this school. Now, the purpose of going to school is to help kids. No help put experiments on the International Space Station. Super cool. But Danny can only train 20 at a time. And he does it through these different experiments with heat and flames and things like that. And looking at how heat reacts on earth differently than in space. But he can only do it. He has 20 kids. He does twenty time. And we’re like, well, what do we do with these other 30 students? And I broke them up into two groups and I taught them the class that I had taught three or four days prior at Valley Christian. And I did it through the lens of the T-shirt business I had in college, making a shirt for fire sonna for 10. And we talked about fixed costs and we talked about variable costs. And I got that also share with him about how God was the ultimate, the first entrepreneur or the creator, the innovator. And we’re creating his image. I wanted these folks in India, these young high school students, to really grasp that concept and lean into it. And they understood it through the lens of a real world example. And then every 10 or 50 minutes, I’d stop and I try to apply it back to some aspect of scripture that informed my life. And my history is an art form. You know, was just amazing to hear the questions. And I’d stop and I’d say, OK, well, if you’re keeping track right now and I go through and talk about the fixed costs of setting up the screen, printing all that. So how much profit does that leave us with? What’s the contribution margin? And they’re coming up with the numbers right off. They’re really down and really, really cool. If I’m honest, they are more dialed in than the American students were. And that was a lot of fun. OK. So we do that. Really enjoy the process. Then we go to Heider, but again at a bus for hours in Hyderabad and we spent time with these entrepreneurs. And one of the things that was super cool for me was that as a part of giving this talk with the regular Faith Driven Entrepreneur talk, which is a little bit more sophisticated, maybe I shared with the fact that I had been teaching this class for high school students out in this village and they came up and said, that’s such a big deal for us. And here’s why. Entrepreneurs in India, folks in the business world, in India are taught that that’s a dirty place to be, business as a dirty place for an Indian to be. There are vestiges in the caste community. That caste culture that we have all heard about permeates through all of Indian culture, not just Hindus, but Buddhists, Muslims and Christians. If you grew up as a Christian in India, you’re encouraged to go into the ministry or the academy. You’re discouraged from going into business, which is thought of again as a dirty thing, less beneath the station of a Christ follower as a result. There aren’t Christian role models, and they were encouraged by the fact that if we can take the role in the coin of an entrepreneur back to the Garden of Eden, back to creation, and the fact that we worship this God who worked for six hours, seven days and who’s worked the Gospel of John tells us his work continues to this day. Now, all of a sudden, we’re elevating the calling of an entrepreneur at a place where it really needs to be elevated. We all know that entrepreneurs are a cultural change agents. We’ve seen that happen in America. Now that can happen everywhere. Transformation happens in the workplace, happens in the marketplace. That hasn’t happened as much. In a place like India probably hasn’t happened as much as it should in America, for that matter. But it was super encouraging to do that. And Heider, by then we went had a much larger audience in Chennai where Joshua is from. And we did an event for, I guess, an hour and half from 8 to 9, 30, and people stayed to 115 in the morning. So a lot of fun really found myself encouraged in the lesson I have. I suppose I hope for the application for listeners is as follows. Since ours is an audience, mainly a faith driven entrepreneurs and those that are part of that community, the pastors that serve them, their spouses, people who work for them, etc. and that is that seek out opportunities to share your story with students, help them develop an imagination for how they might create and innovate in the marketplace. Not every one of us is going to have the opportunity to go in to share that story abroad. But if you get it, seize it and just talk about your story. And people from different cultures in particular are really interested in that. And there’s nothing like sharing and teaching stories like that and preparing for it with high school students or people from a different culture to really shape in and be able to reflect on what God has done through your life. If you have to. This is an old maxim, of course, but in order to really learn something, you really need to teach it right. Hager teaches, learned twice. What’s it from? That’s great. Yes, that’s right. So that. My hope my hope is that each one of our listeners will be encouraged to share their story of how God is worked through them and their entrepreneurial career with others. Maybe other peers and maybe people in the church. And maybe that you’re called to lead a group of entrepreneurs or business owners in your church. You go to your senior pastor and say, listen, I want to get together with seven or eight. Please make an announcement for the pulpit. We’re going to get together, have breakfast at this restaurant on Tuesday morning, or maybe your kids go to a school and, you know, the headmaster and say, if it’s ever helpful for me to share my entrepreneurial journey, I’d love to do that. Or again, if you go overseas on a mission. You know, I can dig latrines with the best of them. I can paint. I’m a very good painter.
[00:21:25] But there’s something I’m uniquely is getting ready to have a new house and. Yeah, yeah, I’m not so garyph another year and I’m an lousy mover today. Yeah. Well we’ll get you out of the new house. Yeah. I’ve been known to drop t.v.’s and stuff like that. I can’t do any of that well.
[00:21:39] I just I think that there’s an opportunity for us all to really lean into what God is uniquely equipped us to do as we reach the nations talking about how God works for entrepreneurs. So that’s what’s got some man. That’s cool.
Rusty [00:21:53] That’s cool. You know, for me, lots of stuff going on, but I’ve been spending some time in the Book of Thessalonians. And so there was this verse that always was a bit of a quandary for me. And it said, First Thessalonians, chapter four, first eleven. This should be your ambition to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. That should be your ambition.
[00:22:20] Now, they were speaking to the Thessalonians. But as we try to unpack scripture and apply it to our own lives, I look at that and I go. So what am I supposed to do with that? Right. Is that supposed to be that we’re supposed to retreat from what we’re doing? Try to live a quiet life, work with our hands. So our hangar with that. Right. So I’m pondering and is this season of the year that I get a chance to go back and read more? I don’t know what it is, but end of spring into summer, it’s probably because pace changes and things. I tend to crack a book open. Get back to the Kendal’s, start reading again. So I pick up Scott Harrison’s book Thirst.
[00:22:55] And like I said, it got a chance to meet Scott. I think it was probably two thousand and nine ten. It was just as he was starting Charity Water and he’s got an amazing testimony. In fact, I’d love to have Scott on the podcast. And I want to reach to him. And if anybody. I’m sure he’s listening. You may be listening. And I’m sure there are people who know Scott that aren’t listening to Scott call us, but hear his testimony as he was living a very loud life.
[00:23:21] He was a party promoter, booze promoter in New York City. Take over nightclubs, get celebrities to come out for parties. And I mean, he was he was living a very, very loud life until he got to a breaking point. And breaking point led him into going to just the opposite. Guy went and spent two years on Mercy Ship. Mercy ship. Right. As a photographer, as a documentarian, if you will.
[00:23:49] But imagine going from the hottest nightclubs with the biggest name celebrities in New York and across the world and shutting off that and turning on living on a ship on the other side of the world. OK, so loud life, too quiet life.
[00:24:10] And in that exploration process, on the other side of it, he sees this opportunity for pure water, that clean water solves a lot of problems. In fact, the doctor became his advisor on mercy ships, says, you know, a lot of the things that we do we wouldn’t have to do if there was clean water. So he sees this opportunity and he hears a calling to start charity water.
[00:24:35] And as anybody who knows, I don’t know who they actually chart these kinds of things. But if they did it, probably one of the fastest growing nonprofits of all time. Yeah, right. Sure. He’s been able to capitalize on all of his prior relationships with celebrities and entertainers and people he brought with to flip the whole thing around. He did it for mercy ships and now he does it for Charity Water.
[00:24:56] But why are bringing this all up is because Scott Harrison to me is living this verse like he went from his ambition of living allowed life to living a quiet life, to minding everybody else’s business, to minding his business. Right. His business now of running this very specific nonprofit. And it’s a very specific way about delivering clean water. And while he doesn’t work with his own hands, he works at the hands of others. Now, a man that hit me.
[00:25:30] Because we can be entrepreneurs. We can be business leaders. We can be community leaders at the same time. We can live a quiet life inside of all of that, because the lousy. Life is the life that’s out of control and we allow ourselves to get out of control and we can mind our own business and do it very, very well and be excellent at what we do instead of looking across trying to mine somebody else’s business or being jealous of somebody else’s business or being too ambitious about somebody else’s business. And it’s our hands now. It maybe our brains and our hands together, but it’s our hands that we can put to work. So I just found it very interesting because that verse had always kind of struggled with and had been in this first Thessalonians for the last couple of months, just kind of reading this stuff over and over, you know, in a book about an entrepreneur or a social entrepreneur.
[00:26:25] And Scott Harris, now comes the revelation for me of how that description can come alive. And I would just encourage us all where we get so caught up in all of the other media forms in entertainment, including podcasts. And we’re not asking to tune out by any means, but reading and getting into books and asking God to reveal through the books that are out there to speak to us is a part of how we grow. It’s a part of how we learn. It’s a part of how we mature. It’s also part how we slow down.
Henry [00:26:59] Great being with you all. It’s great being here together in person. All kind of huddled, almost maybe too close friends. I feel super cool. And we’re grateful for you all. Please let us know how we can improve this. Please let us know some of the other people you like to hear from. Sign up for the newsletter. Think about what you might do to build local community. Tell us how we can help you. And may God bless you as you seek to know him and enjoy him forever.
