Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. As Henry likes to say, when we have a guest there in the house. Well, today’s episode, we have Jennie Allen in the house. And Jennie is the founder and visionary of the women’s organization if gathering. She’s also the host of the top rated made for this podcast, which, by the way, has over 17 million downloads. Yes, 17 million. She’s also a New York Times best selling author of Get Out of Your Head, which was the number one bestselling religion title of 2020. Her latest book is Find Your People Building Deep Community in a Lonely World. She’s appeared on shows such as Hallmark, Home and Family, Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream and been featured in various outlets such as The Woman’s World, Brit+Co, Cosmopolitan.com and Christianity Today. The estimated viewership for 2021’s IF:Gathering exceeded 1 million women in all 50 states and 144 countries. Live streaming from Dallas, Texas, into thousands of churches, family rooms and dorm rooms. We are so excited to talk with Jennie on today’s episode of The Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Together, we’re going to discuss in-depth some of the powerful topics she writes about and how they relate to us as entrepreneurs. Let’s jump in, Henry. All yours.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I’m here with Rusty and William, as per usual. Gentlemen, greetings.
Rusty Rueff: Greetings.
William Norvell: Greetings, indeed.
Henry Kaestner: One of the things we’ve not talked about on the podcast a lot, and maybe for good reason is our book. There’s a book Faith Driven Entrepreneur. And actually I think it’s really, really good and it’s not so much that I’m one of the coauthors, but that J.D. Greer and Chip Ingram are. And of course, you’ve got the foreword by Lecrae, and it’s just a really neat time to be able to talk through a story for him about the marks that we have over Faith Driven Entrepreneur. But I had an interesting experience with that last night. William was there to see it where we do this group called Inklings Christ followers in the marketplace in the Bay Area. We get together at this place called the Dutch Goose, and we have a lot of fun. We do trivia for books. And so I was there with Peter Greer. Peter and I have been great friends for a long time, used to serve on a board together and just he’s a really good buddy of mine. He’s also a great author. And so I do trivia for books. It was really hard to give my books away, even with Lecrae as the doing the foreward, because everybody is like, I want one of Peter’s books and I’m trying to figure out if I should take it personally. Fortunately, I didn’t because Peter’s such an awesome guy. But William did that I surprise you at all?
William Norvell: I mean, you bring the books to most of the gathered. So I think it was a lot of I already have the book. I don’t think it was a disdain for the book. I think it was that I’ve been given the book before, but, you know, we’ve never promoted either. Is you personally read the audiobook as well?
Henry Kaestner: I did. And gosh, I can. Well, maybe if you listen this podcast and you think that my voice isn’t completely annoying. Right. So this is probably good test market. There are probably people that don’t like my voice and therefore don’t listen to podcasts. This is probably a safe audience to promote that.
William Norvell: Right? Yeah. If you love listening to the podcast or if that’s your preferred medium to listen books, which probably means you hear the audiobook may be of use. And Henry actually did take the time to read the whole thing. It’s probably, what, three, four hour listen. And it’s it’s really great.
Rusty Rueff: But what you should do at the next inklings is give away an audiobook.
Henry Kaestner: I don’t know how to do that.
Rusty Rueff: No. But no one does. That’s one of the problems.
Henry Kaestner: That’s. But here’s what I can do. I can give away Jennie Allen books. Yes. Because of the guys who go to this, I bet you that 95% of their wives know who Jennie Allen is. And that’s because as good of an author as Peter Greer is and as well sold has, his books are. Jennie Allen really gets something going. And I think that there are a lot of reasons for that. We’re going to find out today because we’ve got Jennie Allen in the house. Jennie. Greetings.
Jennie Allen: Hey, guys. It’s great to be here.
Henry Kaestner: We are going just as you go through the titles that you have. And Peter, you last night had seven or eight titles. You know, they’re kind of all out and there’s some really, really great ones. Mission Drift and Rooting for rivals. But nobody has better titles and themes for a Faith Driven Entrepreneur than Jennie Allen.
Jennie Allen: Oh, yes.
Henry Kaestner: And you know, the most recent one is Find Your People. That’s what this whole ministry is all about, people finding their tribe. Get out of your head. You’ve got nothing to prove. Which speaks to our identity in Christ, which is one of our big marks, of course. You’ve got it all. You’ve got the Chase study. You’ve got made for this. I mean, pretty much everything you have was made for the audience of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur so grateful to have you on, this is great.
Jennie Allen: It’s great to be here. And I will say I’m quite sure that probably comes out of the fact that I am an entrepreneur. I am married to an entrepreneur. We have birthed four entrepreneurs. Every one of them has a business that currently exists as profitable or one in the making. And that’s down to my seventh grade son. So, you know, this is the air we breathe around here.
Henry Kaestner: What’s your seventh grade son doing?
Jennie Allen: Well, his passion is to learn to code. And so he’s training right now to be a computer coder.
Henry Kaestner: Very cool. I’ve had to learn how to code. I miss that.
Jennie Allen: I know for the next generation, it’s going to be needed.
William Norvell: Mine was worse. I spent five years on it from 2000 to 2005 and then was like, I don’t know if it’s going to take off. Let’s go to the finance route.
Henry Kaestner: What’s that on coding?
William Norvell: Oh, yeah.
Jennie Allen: Oh, wow. I think it would be useful, you know, at least you know how I mean. I feel like anybody that knows how to code, I take note.
Rusty Rueff: That’s why we call it a language. It’s a language.
Jennie Allen: It is. Is a language I do not know.
Henry Kaestner: Me either. Okay. So, Jennie, unlike some of our guest, most of our people are going to know a little bit about you and maybe even a little bit about your life, your biography. But I would like for us to take a minute and go back and just before you started, if and we want to spend some time talking about that entrepreneurial venture that you have, which undoubtedly is informed a lot of your writing. But before, if who are you? Where do you come from?
Jennie Allen: Hmm. So I grew up as actually the daughter of an entrepreneur. He ran his own company for most of my childhood. And I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, met my husband at a summer camp. We fell madly in love, got married very young. And, you know, he basically went into church planting. And so that was our first entrepreneurial adventure together and we handed that church off. It’s still a healthy, thriving part of another bigger church. And then he went into business. And so during that season, what I would say is I started walking with God in college in a real way and immediately came to a place where I just wanted to teach and talk about God, which not everybody wants to hear about God. So I figured out pretty quickly that the best way to do that would be invite people to Bible study. And I started doing that. And through those years, early years of young kids, that’s just what I did in my living room for 15 years. I taught a Bible study in my living room. Eventually people were asking to come to that and we opened it up. And the first time we opened it up, I think 150 people came. And the first Bible study I taught was actually it was what now is stuck, which is a great title, but at the time it was God in your emotions and had like little pinned flowers at the top. But we’ve come a long way. Branding has gotten better, but anyway, that grew pretty fast for my living room. And then people are asking to print that study. And so we were sending that study out to other churches. So that led me into a back door to publishing where I was given. It was kind of a miracle this never happens. I didn’t have a platform because I wasn’t trying to do what I do. I wasn’t even aware you could do what I do. I mean, this was still back a long time ago when there weren’t many people that had platforms like this, especially women that taught the Bible. And so I basically, you know, I cared about people knowing God and and I still that’s what drives me. And so I really got thrown into the deep end. In the first year that I was published, they published a book, a study. They put me on the biggest stages like Catalyst, Women of Faith at the time was still going. And so I just got thrown into the deep end and I had to grow up fast and figure it out. And then if Gathering was born out of what I wanted to do most, which was to help people make disciples, I wanted to put tools in their hands to help them do that. So I had to learn a lot about the industry really quickly, very overwhelming. My husband was really helpful in that and then.
Henry Kaestner: It looks like they spent a little time unpacking that. When you talk about growing up fast and figuring it out, what did that mean? Because you had been spending time pouring in the lives of women in your living room and then your church. But what was it about the scale that you had to figure out quickly without losing your key message?
Jennie Allen: Yeah. And I mean, I respect I’m let me start with a disclaimer here. I respect the industry that has given me what I get to do. I’m very grateful for it. I actually know some of the best people in the business that love God and they exist to do that. But the industry as a whole exist to make money. And I think what they bought from me, why even though I didn’t have a platform they asked me to do all of this, was because they saw a girl that genuinely love God and had vision for my generation to love God too. And I had ideas to accomplish that. Well, if that’s what they purchased, then I now had to figure out how to live in a world where this was a commodity, what had been my soul like my just single hearted passion in life to just surrender to God and to help other people do the same. Now became a commodity and held up a lot of people’s jobs. And I understand now where that goes. But what I had to do is I had to shift perspectives. The first few years in it, I felt like they were using me and my faith and the things that I prized most, and I had to get to the place where I started using them. And again, I’m not talking about individuals, I just mean the machine. And when I started using the machine rather than the machine using me, then I was able to see it as great opportunity rather than pressure. So I was able to look at the opportunities I had. And say, how can I take my single passion, my greatest hope for people to the world and use them to do it rather than I’m a young girl that had no platform and we just gave you a contract and a chance and you’ve got to measure up. It was just a whole different way to look at it. So I, I think those first few years were so difficult because I still was just trying to figure out what did they want from me versus going back to the core thing that God had put in my heart, which was this is how you reach this generation, this is what you do. And I knew I mean, it was just kind of in me. I don’t know what to say. I just I knew that it needed to be more real than it was. I knew that I needed to be more local than it was. I knew it needed to be more candid, and I needed to bring together a whole army of people to do it beside me and not just one person. I knew it needed to be more diverse. So I had all these goals of what I thought should happen and it turned out to work. You know, we’re ten years in now, but I mean, that was not being cheered on. They still wanted me to fit into what worked and what they knew worked. And I think in places and times they were correct because it was more helpful or useful. But in many ways, especially in the most important ways, I had to learn to use my voice and to lead and to not be afraid of failure. Because I was figuring it out. I was brand new to this. I basically went from my living room to 150 to the world, like there was no progression. I’ve had to do counseling for it actually, just to deal with the fact of like being thrown on a stage of 11,000. I basically went from 150 to a stage of 11,000 with no interim thing. So again, I think there’s a lot of blessing and success and there’s a lot of blessing in getting to do the things I’ve gotten to do. But there’s also a lot of pressures associated with it that I’ve had to get there before you work out.
Henry Kaestner: So, Jennie, I love that concept and I remember in the early stages stage my career just being deathly afraid of public speaking and I realized that I was always on my heels, I was always kind of back and I just kind of what was being done to me, you know, it’s just this oppressing audience is kind of coming at me, you know, it’s kind of on my heels. And it wasn’t until I realized that there’s an opportunity to kind of lean into the opportunity, almost like physically lean in. So instead of being on the defensive, being on the offensive, yeah, that sounds like that was a switch you made. And so you’re seeing the machine and then you’re saying, okay, well, there’s an opportunity to work with the machine so as to amplify what I believe God has given me. But along the way you also see the machine as being a little bit broken. And so you come in with the IF:Gathering, which is solving a problem. That’s an entrepreneurial idea and it’s something different. Talk to us about creating that.
Jennie Allen: Well, I remember, you know, being on those big stages and they would ask me, what do you think? Oh, I was one of the first ones in my age group to get those opportunities. And so I was the young one at the time, even though I wasn’t that young, I was in my mid thirties, but they were all, you know, really in their mid-fifties at that time. And so they asked me what do you want to do to reach your generation? And I would tell him and honestly what I wanted was for somebody to take all my ideas and do them. I didn’t actually want to run an organization. I didn’t want to hire 20 people like we have now. I, I wanted to be somebody else just to take what I thought should be done and do it. I didn’t need to do it myself. And so, you know, I tried to do that. And I remember an incredible mentor that many of you would know her name, but she looked me in the eyes and said, Jennie, God gave this to you. You have to do this. Nobody else is going to be able to accomplish this. You are the visionary and God has given it to you. And I remember that day was that day I actually pulled over on the side of the road after we met and I wrote a letter to God and I said, okay, I’m going to do this, but you know, I’m going to need your help. I commit to do it. And we founded the organization right after that. And it was just this recognition of I can’t let somebody else take my dream if I really want to hold the tensions and the values and the really the picture that God had given me to accomplish, I couldn’t expect the old guard to do it. And so the old guard had done great work. Are you kidding me? So amazing that the legacy that many of their ministries had and we’re leading. But my age and younger were not feeling a part and they were not drawn to it. And so it was just our time. And I expect, you know, now I’m in my mid-forties. It’s been ten years. So I expect I’m looking all the time for the new guard that’s coming and I’m wanting to bless them and help them that that guard largely did that for me. And so I just feel like that was the point where I had to say, I’m going to have to do this, and there’s going to be a lot of things I don’t like about running an organization I am not good at. In fact, years in I burnt out and did some work with Paterson Center, which is a fantastic kind of life coaching strategic operations organization. And so they helped me realize that I had tried to manage something when I’m a really a creator. And so I got out of that and I began to let other people lead, and that really changed everything for me. But I do believe that IF:Gathering was timely and what it did and what it has continued to do in an amazing way, is it empowered women on a local level? So a lot of women at that point in the church did not feel like they had a place. They didn’t know how to use their gifts. They didn’t know how to lead. They felt kind of relegated to, you know, child care things. They just didn’t know where to run. And yet they were full of passion and gifts. And so what we did is we said, hey, we want you to serve your churches by leading and making disciples in your places. We’re going to tell you how to do it, and we’re going to put tools in your hands to help you do it. And that’s what’s happened. And it was so cool. The first time we opened the gathering, we basically sold out pretty quickly in the room, which we always do, and then we purposely closed it. We don’t go to stadiums. We didn’t do what Women of Faith did. We said, We’re going to close it and we’re going to give you this tool so you can tune in live, but you got to gather your people. So like right now we’re month out, we have 3000 events signed up of 3000 women across the globe that have said, I’m going to host in my church, in my living room, whatever. And so we’ll have thousands and thousands of events every year that are happening at the same time. And that was what was cool was we felt we were clear what we were doing. We were putting a tool in their hands to do their job. We were not trying to say, come to us. We were saying, We’re going to come to you and we’re going to bring you something useful that you can bring your people around and hopefully catalyze important conversations and discipleship to happen.
William Norvell: It’s amazing. And maybe want to give you just a few seconds. I feel like we’ve been talking about the organization, but maybe not what the organization does day to day. A little bit. Tell us a little. Just give us a quick, you know. Yeah. What exactly are some of those tools? How does it work?
Jennie Allen: Yeah. So our big push is March 4th and 5th, we have a conference and that’s where 3000 events will be happening or plus, you know, probably by then four will be happening at the same time. And so anybody can host in their living room. And then we also build tools that help you make disciples where you are. We’ve done everything from how to study your Bible to what it looks like to become a Christian. We’ve just put all these tools together that are relevant, have the best teachers in Christendom right now, and then you can use them with your people. And we just believe in discipleship being when we clarify what that means. What I mean by that is in what the Bible says about that is follow me as I follow Christ. So we put tools in your hands and then you have real life relationships that we could never reach, where you’re able to take these tools and know what to do and how to bring people along in a faith.
William Norvell: Oh, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. And I feel like we should have talked to you a few years ago because you solved the problem. We stumbled across a few years ago and said, Hey, why don’t we do these events all over the world where people can bring each other at faith Driven Entrepreneur So I think we had close to 150 of those type events last year.
Henry Kaestner: 300. 300
Jennie Allen: 300.
Henry Kaestner: Partially.
Jennie Allen: Covid changed the game, right? I mean, that’s the model now, but we were doing it ten years ago. And so I think what was cool during COVID is we were able to go, okay, let’s help other people do it because everybody was needing to do it. And you know, I like it. I love the model. I think the model works and it keeps us as leaders in our place of content and vision and then allows everybody locally to lead and to […].
Henry Kaestner: That’s very interesting because otherwise you bring all the leaders together and they don’t bring their communities with them. And so instead stay in your community where you’re in leadership and we’ll bring the content to you. I think it happened because of COVID. I think it’s likely to stay because I think it’s the better model.
Jennie Allen: Yeah, it is. And I think this generation too, loves their living room and their pajamas and their closest friends. And I do think the more we can give them tools to do that in their neighborhoods and in their places, the better.
William Norvell: I totally agree. And then just the yes, the world’s globalized, but locals never going to go away. right, there’s still so many reasons to sit across from somebody and have coffee and so many things you can do. As even Curt Thompson has been writing a few articles on just how this is not a human interaction, right? Like it feels like it it feels close to it. Like I can’t see all of your manners. I can’t see how you’re reacting to my questions and in certain ways, right? I can’t see all of how your body’s moving and we are all sitting here and we can’t move. Right? I can’t cross my legs. Right? I mean, it’s just not a fully human experience and that localized thing gets that human experience in a way that’s so remarkable.
Jennie Allen: Yeah, it is. The thing we are craving most and I know I’m jumping ahead, but coming out of this, the pandemic beside the pandemic has been disconnection and loneliness for sure.
William Norvell: Man Well, okay, so we are going to jump in now hard switch to your amazing books. So as Henry said, one of the ones we really, really love is nothing to prove and that is so difficult for an entrepreneur. I heard Steph Curry say the other day that he has a lot to accomplish but nothing to prove. And I thought that was so profound.
Jennie Allen: I love that line.
William Norvell: Right on the topic of your book. And so I just want to give you a chance, seems to speak so to the heart of the entrepreneur or the heart that the entrepreneur wants but may not have. Could you talk just a little bit about the book?
Jennie Allen: Yeah, let me go back to that story because honestly, coming out of that season was when that book was written. So I’m turning the corner from trying to measure up to all these people that have spent money on me that are platform to me and I’m trying to measure up. And I remember my husband the day that I went to the my big publisher that signed me originally, they brought in everybody. They brought in the event team, they brought in every like the Bible study team, the book team, everybody was there. And, you know, they told me they took me to dinner the night before. I said, all this is going to happen. And I remember coming home and I was just crying to my husband, I was like, I think they think that something I’m not like, I don’t know. And then he said, Well, then you go in there and be exactly who you are. And I didn’t take my notes and I walked in and I bled in front of them. And I was honest about my weakness. And I think I cussed.. Is like a Christian publisher. And so I leave and they, you know, of course, story goes. They gave me the moon. I mean, they said, we want to help you do anything God’s putting you to do. And there was no sense in it apart from the Lord’s favor. And so what I learned early on was the more that I am imperfect, the more that I am, the less fancy version of myself, the more effective I actually was. Now, I know that’s not true for everything. I would like my surgeon to be very, very deliberate and excellent. Right. I don’t want him to be his worst version of himself. But I do hope that he’s vulnerable. I do hope that he’s honest about the things he is weak about, because I would want a doctor or surgeon to know his weaknesses so that he can hire to them, so that he can put people in place that serve them. So what I mean is I’m not saying we don’t pursue excellence. I’m just saying that we’re honest about where we aren’t and we’re honest about what is difficult for us, and we’re honest about what we’re struggling with, which right now, if we’re all honest, we’re all kind of struggling with something, right? And so what I learned early on was there was two ways to live. I could live as the fancy version of myself, but then I would have to continually keep that up. Or I could just out of the gate not be that version, and I wouldn’t be as impressive, but maybe I could be more helpful, and maybe at least I my soul could survive that. And so I would say nothing to prove was that journey for me of not only doing that in my professional life, but doing that in my friendships, doing that. I look back at my family relationships. That was a huge message in our family of just trying to measure up and be good enough. And so I just remember there constantly being a sting. If things weren’t good enough and nothing is ever good enough, right? I mean, in the world we all live in, everybody listening, it lives in nothing is ever good enough. As someone who has. New York Times more weeks I don’t know like tons and then success was spoken on the biggest stages in Christendom like I’m just going to tell you you will never get to a place where you think, finally, now I have arrived and I am good enough. That’s not going to happen. So if you know that, then you have that choice to be like, I’m not trying to be good enough. This isn’t actually the goal I’m actually trying to rest into God and who is made me to be as best I can to work hard and to trust him with what isn’t great. And so it was funny. You know, what’s weird is I haven’t talked about this in a long time, but when I went into ministry that way, I was actually very much judged for it. I mean, I could tell you stories that were make your skin crawl of people that critiqued me when I got off a stage and people because I same applied like I went in front of people and I didn’t speak perfectly and I didn’t script it exactly and I didn’t memorize it and I was real and I was honest. And so at that time that wasn’t really value. But what’s interesting, like I just did this passion, which was 60,000 students and probably the biggest in-person stage I’d ever had, and it worked. And I didn’t take any notes and I spoke to them from my heart about what I saw in their generation, what I wanted for them. And all of them confessed their sins at the end. And I think what God’s taught me is do what you do. Like what I do well is I’m real. What I do well is share my heart in a way that isn’t impressive, but it’s honest. And, you know, it is what it is. And he’s plugged me in where I need to be, right? There have been places in stages that that was not accepted or good. But if I would have become that and stayed that way, I would have missed the people that God had later on for me to reach because I became what the machine wanted of me and I never actually was who God built me to be. And so it was a conviction and it’s still a conviction. In fact, right before I went up on that stage, there were some incredible talks before me and this was just Christmas break. Of course, I was nervous and I’m watching all these talks. And I look at my husband, I was like, I don’t think this is going to be what they expected or like what I don’t know. And he just said, Run the play, run the play because God have been so clear, this is what you’re going to do. And so, you know, I ran the play and it accomplished the purposes it was supposed to. I don’t know that anybody left and said that was the most impressive talk I ever heard, but the fruit of it was that lives were changed and I played my part. And I think that’s what I hope for people, is that instead of doing this like trying to be awesome and trying to measure up and wasting all this energy on it, but to rest into who we are and giving what we’ve been given to give it provides a story where one we depend on each other and two, because we don’t have everything in ourselves. And then too God gets the glory because it’s not us showing all.
William Norvell: I usually have things to add. I’m not sure I do. I’m going to pause for a second and think through. It’s so good. I mean, once again, entrepreneurs on average, right? What 70, 80% of people that go into something, it doesn’t work. Right? But hopefully they followed something that God put inside of them and they may not know why it didn’t work or whose life they were impacted because they followed what God told them to do.
Jennie Allen: Oh, I mean, I think about my husband. We’ve been in entrepreneurship for, you know, decades now. And I think between us we have eight companies maybe. And I mean, the number of companies that have failed, the number of ideas that have failed, the number of dot coms or dot org or dot whatever we own, like that never amounted to anything. You know, we have all of that in our story. And I think what failure does, what the gift of failure is, is you realize you really are okay, because ultimately the proving is trying to succeed, trying to win, trying to measure up whatever it is and whoever you’re trying to do it to, it’s all the same feeling. And what failure does is, is when you lose things and at times we’ve lost everything, literally everything. When we’ve lost everything, you realize we’re okay. Like, it’s not fun. And I mean, certainly some panic has ensued in those seasons and we’ve even had to borrow money. And, you know, there have been times where it’s been costly. And my acting like that was easy. But looking back, it was nothing in the middle of it. It was everything. But looking back, it was nothing. And and if we didn’t have those things, I can’t imagine what an arrogant punk we would both be without all that. Right? I mean, instead, there’s this compassion and we realize if anything does succeed, it’s a gift and. And it won’t last for long. Right. I’m not expecting if gathering to have a 30 year run, I’m expecting it to serve its purpose and its time and go away because my identity isn’t in those things. I’m not in all these things for them to see, succeed and be up into the right. Right. That’s just where to give that. And are you kidding me? Like everything successful is like this whiny row that dips and dips and dips. And and so I think the faster you fail, the faster you can succeed. But you’re going to fail along the way. So go do it. I’m sure somebody else wrote that line. I just recorded it. I don’t know who, but I’ve learned it and I’ve learned it’s true.
Rusty Rueff: It’s great. Hey, Jennie, we’re going to dove into a discussion about community, but for a second, I’m just going to remind our listeners about our faith driven entrepreneur groups that we have. We love that people are here, but we also want them to stay for community. And that’s what we’re doing with our Faith Driven Entrepreneur groups 10 to 15 people, like minded entrepreneurs coming together, searching for life, giving friendships, you know, which is what we all need. And if anybody wants to do that, just take a look at Faith Driven Entrepreneur dot org. Look under the community tab for more information and then you can jump into a group. They meet for just eight weeks online or in person all over the world. So we just had to get that plug in there because we’re talking about community. And you’ve got another great book that I want you to just sort of take and just open it up for us. And that’s the book that Henry mentioned called Find Your People. Tell us all about it.
Jennie Allen: Well, first of all, I love what you just shared about those groups is not something we had. I mean, we were entrepreneurs back when there weren’t clubs for it. Right. I don’t remember having these kind of resources in our lives. So what a gift to people that need each other in this, because it is so lonely to start things. It is so lonely and it’s so easy to just feel like giving up. So what a gift. Yeah. Find your people. I mean, we’re coming out of the pandemic. We’ve never been lonelier. Add to it, we are the loneliest generation that has ever lived. And that was prior to the pandemic. So we’ve got three in five people, research says prior to the pandemic that would admit to feeling lonely, to being lonely. So I’m imagining that numbers four out of five, if not five out of five. So we’ve got a complete epidemic of loneliness going on that expresses itself through anxiety, that expresses itself through depression, suicidal thoughts. We’ve got a generation that only knows connection through their phones. So, oh, you know, very broken. So what I wanted to do, I actually visited several times for extended trips to Uganda, Rwanda, Haiti. And I saw women there going to get water, farming, building fires, living in their little huts without doors all together. I saw these things and they were all happy. Right. It’s not with what you see on that calls to charity, but they were all happy and they were giggling and laughing. And I was jealous. And I, I remember thinking back then I’m going to do this book because I want to figure out what they know that we don’t. And so I did the research. I looked at history. I looked at all the cultures alive today, all of the history generations, all of the cultures today. 80% of the cultures today live in villages. So I study villages. Well, villages are unbelievable. And actually the science that we are getting to day, recent science says we actually only have capacity for about 50 people to take care of them to take them a casserole when their mom has cancer that. It’s our capacity. We’ve got capacity to be in and out of about five people’s lives daily. We’ve got acquaintance level at 150. That’s the most. Well, that’s the size of villages. That’s how they take care of each other. That’s how they farm, that’s how they gather. That’s how they got their kids through school and raise. They all came together in groups of 50 to 150 and they took care of each other and they rarely moved. So you’ve got generation after generation. We’re talking all of the earth until the Industrial Revolution lived in that sized village and they didn’t move more than 20 miles all their life. So they were together with their families, extended families, with their friends. They’ve lived with all their lives. Of course, it’s all broken so now. Fast forward industrial revolution. Today we are independent. We have the resources we need. Pastor Charles from Rwanda says The more resources someone gets, the more isolated they become. Well, we are resourced. We don’t even need to borrow an egg. At least when I was growing up, we used to have to go borrow eggs. I don’t know why it was always an egg that I always borrowed an egg for my mom. I don’t know why that was the only thing she always ran out of and they borrowed from us. Cup a brown sugar like we would do that all the time. We don’t even have to do that anymore. So we’ve got I mean, it’s not even disputed the loneliest generations ever lived. Add the pandemic to it. So my hope is that we reframe the way we’re doing life. And what I did was I took five patterns that I saw in villages, and this is everywhere from Europe and Italy. We went to a little bitty town there to of course, African villages. I interview people from India, I interview people from all different countries and basically saw these five patterns that exist in all of these contexts that we can apply today. And it’s possible. I just moved my husband and kids and I moved five years ago from Austin to Dallas, and this is how we built our community here. And it is so rich and so good and so different than how we built it in the past. So it does work, but we are definitely up against a big problem.
Rusty Rueff: So what are the five patterns?
Jennie Allen: The first one is proximity and this is the one we’re really poor at because we think that we can you know, a lot of us have long distance friends. A lot of us have Internet friends. Well, we really need somebody to come over on a Tuesday night and to look into our eyes and say, you’re not okay. I can tell. So we really need proximity. It’s not that I can’t have those long distance friends, but I’ve got to have friends that are local. And so when I moved to Dallas, I lived four for five friends within five miles because of that. So you would run into him at the grocery store so that they hear about your kid getting in trouble before you even tell them. And that has happened. So I looked for those five friends within five miles. The next one is vulnerability. Hardest one for me, worst at it have lost friends because I’m not good at it. I hate talking about my problems, but honestly, when I talk about my problems, something Curt Thompson will affirm that he’s taught me this something neurologically happens and the connection and empathy that you feel from someone, physically feel from someone, begins to heal and make connections in your brain that you need. So vulnerability is essential, but it also helps other people see that you need them. So when you’re vulnerable, they feel safe to be vulnerable. And there’s a mutual exchange going on, kind of like borrowing an egg or sugar. There’s something like, You need me and I need you. And so vulnerability can happen in a big city and it can be the exchange of need. And right now, the epidemic and the thing that we need most is compassion. And you’ve got anxiety on the rise. So is the thing we can all share. So we may not need to plant a garden together though I do think communal gardens are popping up everywhere, which I love. But we can share our problems and our struggles and carry our burdens together. Number three is accountability. Accountability is so rare, but is it all the village stuff that I studied? I mean, everyone lives in accountability. There’s tribal elders. There’s ways that they’re accountable to people. One of my friends I interviewed was from the slums in India, and he said he’d be running on the other side of the slums when he was growing up and somebody would yell, his name is, I’m going to tell your grandmother, aren’t you? And sure enough, his grandmother across the slum would hear about what he’d been doing on the other side of the slum. And and I think that type of accountability, where people catch us and call us out, we need that. That fourth pattern is a mission, a shared mission. We need something to accomplish together. That’s where your little groups are so powerful because you’re accomplishing something together. You share interests. You share something that not everybody in the world shares. And so sharing a common interest, sharing something purposeful together, it can truly be anything interesting, anything. C.S. Lewis talks about this. I don’t care what you’re interested in, but you’ve got to have common purposes that develop friendships. And then the fifth thing is consistency, that you stay when it gets hard, that you don’t go, that you clock hours together. The research I found shows that you need 200 hours for an acquaintance to become a really good friend. Well, that just is a lot of time in today’s age because we’re not together very much. So choosing hours and clocking those hours together and being consistent about it is important. But then also not running when the conflict comes because it will inevitably come and practicing all these. They’re just patterns and you’re probably not going to have all five patterns and all your friendships, but the more you practice, the more patterns you have in that friendship, the more likely that’s going to be a really close friend.
Rusty Rueff: That’s super. Well, Henry, William, we’ve now done over 200 episodes that are about an hour a piece of. We can now call ourselves friends.
Henry Kaestner: Indeed, indeed.
Rusty Rueff: We have been consistently at it.
Henry Kaestner: So you had just been this somebody that I used to know. Now we are
Rusty Rueff: Now we’re really friends. I’m going to turn this over to Henry in a second. But I want to ask one question because, you know, in the entrepreneurial world, we’re taught to network, right? You got to be a networker and networking. And so networking ends up. Well, how many LinkedIn, you know, friends do I have? You know, what’s my profile look like all this? Can you just break down for our listeners the difference between networking and being authentic?
Jennie Allen: Hmm.
Jennie Allen: Well, I’m going to tie this a little bit into experiences I’ve had with some of you guys here because I’ve been at some gatherings of entrepreneurs that William and Henry have been at. And it was interesting. My memories of those places are certainly the amazing people we’ve met, like you guys and others. But what I found there was understanding and compassion and people talking about the toll on their marriage. And I found actually a lot of vulnerability there. So I think the two can coexist. I don’t think networking is evil. It’s another word for connection. But I think we have to realize it’s limited. But all relationships are limited. It’s okay that our relationship is transactional, it’s okay. And most relationships are. In fact, all relationships have expectations on them. You cannot avoid having expectations on relationships, but where you get into trouble is if they stop at being transactional. So if you truly are just taking things from each other and never caring about each other, that’s where you see it. Get a bad rap, right? But when you actually stop and you say, Hey, what’s going on today? And I’ve learned this practice with the people I work with, especially during COVID and having to zoom because you just want to be off Zoom, right? You just want to get the meeting over with and you want to get off but, I’ve learned to just start with, Hey, what’s going on in your life right now? Like, tell me, I haven’t seen you in a few weeks or talk to you. What do you need? How are you doing? Is there anything I can do for you? Or closing a meeting that way and I think those are the things you can do to pastor people. It doesn’t have to. It might open a can of worms and they might bawl their eyes out to you for an hour. That’s okay. But usually what you’ll get is just a little picture into the difficulties they’re facing at home. It gives you a little more compassion for the fact that they relate. That gives you a little bit more compassion for the fact that that transaction isn’t going as well as you wish it was. And so I’ve just found layering into work relationships, into networking, like you said, a lot of vulnerable conversation and just checking on people and really caring about the person before you care about what they do for you is it changes a relationship and it’s okay that they do things for you. It’s just that ultimately they know you care about them more than you care about what they do for you.
Henry Kaestner: Tell us about how you view conflict and just strengthening relationships or yeah, let’s look it through, of course, through the positive lens of how does leaning into conflict help strengthen relationships? And I’m thinking about this is that that comes to mind, I think, about the conflict that David and I had in the early days of bandwidth, and we had a lot of conflict. We called it iron sharpening iron, but it was very much part of our formation and I don’t know that I’d do it any differently, but you talk about that a bit in terms of forging relationships and community. Part of that comes from vulnerability, which would presumably mean that, you know, I don’t like what you’re doing, right? So you can’t be really vulnerable. You can’t have real relationship if you’re always conflict diverse. How do you embrace conflict? Hmm.
Jennie Allen: I could not agree more with what you just said. You cannot be in deeper relationship trying to avoid conflict. It will find you if you live the way that the Bible tells you to live with people, which the whole Bible was written about people dealing with other people and dealing with God. Right? Like that was the whole story. Starting with Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel all the way to the local church is discussed in Revelation. So you see just this. It’s all about people. It’s Adam’s on the earth. It’s not good for man to be alone. So God builds a family. God builds from a family of people group from that nations through One Nation. He launches the local church. And so you see, just the whole book is about people. And so most of it says really beautiful things about it, but in reality, they’re horrible things like admonish one another, forgive one another, courage one another, pray for one another. All these things that that sounds great until you do those things as horrible like that is actually painful and horrible when you admonish someone like, I don’t know if you’ve done that lately, but that is really awkward and it goes poorly a lot of the time when you need to forgive someone is because they’ve been horrible to you and they have hurt you and your pride is like reeling. And you’re supposed to go and say, I forgive you, or at least do it in your heart. Like that is so hard. So turn the other cheek. I mean, these are crazy statements. So I think the reality of the Bible is actually complete grounds for if you’re not having conflict, there’s probably a problem because the whole book was written for a lot of conflict between people because God knew we would be disappointing each other all along the way, we do. So the funny thing is we’re so afraid of it. And I think the reason we’re so afraid of it, I would say. Is because in our culture and day, which is again relatively new way of doing life. And obviously, my cards are showing I think it’s completely a broken, twisted way to do life. But in our day, we can go find other friends, right? Like we can actually just quit then. And that people do it all the time. And as soon as it gets awkward, as soon as it gets hard, it’s like, you know, that’s a little weird. Let’s go. Well, that’s actually probably right when the friendship or relationship is getting good. That actually is probably exactly before it’s going to be great because I tell my kids, if you have not had a conflict with a friend, you don’t know that they’re your friend yet because until you conflicted, you don’t know that they won’t leave when you do. So once you’ve made it through your first conflict, then you know, okay, this is probably a friend that will stick and will stay. So I always say, wait for it, look for it, don’t be afraid of it. I’ve it’s crazy. But I have prayed for conflict in a friendship before because I knew we were really close and I needed her and I wanted to make sure we would make it through that. So I said, God, would you please give us a conflict so I’ll know that we can make it through it. And he did. I mean, it didn’t even take long. So I would just say, I don’t fear it now. We’ve got to get good at it. One of the things I did in the book was I wrote how to do things like how to conflict, how to say you’re sorry. All these things that when I was reading it in the audiobook, it felt like elementary school. I was like, I can’t believe this stuff. And I started laughing. I was like, I can’t believe I said it this way. Like, I’m so sorry. This was to the producer. And the producer was like, Actually, Jennie, I love that you said it this way because I didn’t know the stuff and we never got that first grade class, right? We never got the class that was like, Here’s how you make your friend, here’s how you fight, here’s how you make up. Like, we never got that class. I mean, maybe if we had good parents, they worked through it with us, with their siblings, but nobody ever sat down and said, Here’s how you do it. And so I hope and think we’ve got to get better at that and then maybe we wouldn’t be so afraid of it.
William Norvell: Well, that’s great. And for entrepreneurs, I just think it’s huge because it’s a space where you’re constantly learning, right? You don’t have all the answers. You’re trying to find an answer. And conflict breeds amazing conversations. And is there specifically in this realm, I just don’t know how. I can’t imagine the business that shows up that was built outside of healthy conflict. I’ve never heard of that one. Right.
Jennie Allen: And the reason why that’s true is because you’ve got two people coming together for one purpose that have different ideas. Right? This is true marriage. This is true in families. This is true in friendships, this is true in work. But the power of that is where we actually complement each other and we make each other better. Right. That’s why all of this works. Accountability is a horrible word. Submission. Are you kidding? Nobody likes those words, but you actually put someone under submission. That’s a really strong leader. And they have to answer to a board like I do that’s questioning like, hey, how what about that? And what about that? And we’re looking at your finances and what about that doesn’t feel good, but it makes me better and it makes our organization not, you know, go to the IRS and me go to jail. Right? Like it’s a good thing to have those things in our lives, but they don’t feel good in the moment.
William Norvell: Absolutely. And unfortunately, that’s going to lead us to our close here because we’re coming to the top of the hour. One of the things we love to do at the end of each of our episodes is try to see how God’s word can span between our guest and our listeners. And so we love to invite our guests to share where God has them. That could be something you read this morning. It could be something even meditating on for a while could be something from your talk. You just gave it. Just share something from God’s word that’s coming alive to you. And maybe a new way today.
Jennie Allen: Hey, let me do this, especially in light of what we’ve been talking about. Let me share this. Romans 8:1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ. What that means, what that permission slip means is that you get to fail, that you get to be imperfect, that you get to bring should get to bring to other people that believe in that verse as well. You should get to bring your weakest places. You should get to bring the most difficult things to you. And if that happens, if we believe that verse and we actually lived out that verse, I think there would be revival. I think there would be revival of our souls because we would feel known. We wouldn’t hide, we wouldn’t pretend we were something that we weren’t. We would not live under the condemnation that the enemy wants us to. And then secondly, we would, I think, be dangerous for the kingdom because we would no longer need to prove anything, because the most important things have been solved in our lives. And those are the people, the people that believe just that one verse. Those are the greatest people you want to be around all the time, like they are the people that are so life giving, that are so dream inspiring, that are behind you, that gives space and grace to life. And so that is my prayer that I become that type of person. I really want to become someone who believes that verse down to my bones, who is honest about my own struggles and not hiding them, who lets other people share their struggles and tells them the hope of God? And I think if we could do that and build more spaces like that, I don’t know. I think it would be good for heaven.
William Norvell: Amen might be bringing a little bit of heaven on earth even. Yes, I’ve heard that somewhere.
Jennie Allen: Let it be.
William Norvell: Amen. Thank you so much. This has been such a gift to us. I can speak for us and our audience is just so grateful for what you’re doing, what you have done, and what you’ve allowed God to do through following his call and his leaning. So grateful for you.
Jennie Allen: Back at you guys. Very grateful this exists. So thank you for the work you’ve done and the things you built.
What 1 Timothy 6:9-10 Has to Say to Entrepreneurs about success and the love of money.