Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast from a background of volunteering and organizing soccer practices. Angel and Dan Rutledge created Sign Up Genius, the leading online signup service for group organizers now used by get this, 135 million plus people started in Charlotte in 2008. Sign up Genius provides a platform for schools and churches, businesses and other organizations to coordinate meetings and events. Their mission is to empower people to change the world by making it simple to organized groups. The husband and wife team landed majority investments in 2017 and successfully exited in 2019. Since then, Angel and Dan have been focused on mentoring and investing in entrepreneurs and developing the ecosystem for Faith driven entrepreneurs in Charlotte and in Liberia, where they adopted two children. We’re delighted to have them on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast today to talk about their story. Let’s listen in.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Today’s episode Rusty takes me to one of my favorite states in the country.
Rusty Rueff: Let me guess. Let me guess. There’s there’s actually two of them and one is on top of the other one. Let’s see. It’s maybe North Carolina.
Henry Kaestner: Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. And unfortunately, William is not in our audience knows now that you’re a huge Purdue guy Williams, a huge Alabama guy and I am a huge Carolina guy. William is not here today, so we’re not going to talk about Alabama, but we are indeed in the Tar Heel State in Charlotte, North Carolina. And today’s episode is one that I’ve been looking forward to. We’re going to be talking about scale. Angel and Dan have been part of something that scaled massively. And understand what that looks like, the viral growth that happens from that. I’m really interested in hearing about and then also the fundamental underpinnings of what they do is about bringing together community. And I think that that’s where God designed us and that we experience his love through being in fellowship with other Christ followers that are his image bears. And I think there are a lot of lessons to learn from that. And then we’ve got a husband wife combination, and I think that’s always good to just understand what that looks like as entrepreneurs. So we had a lot of stuff going on today, but before we go much further. Angel and Dan, thank you very, very much for joining us.
Angel Rutledge: Oh. We are glad to be here.
Henry Kaestner: Excellent. Okay. So let’s start off by getting to know you both a little bit better. Who are you? Where are you from? And then how has God led you to where you are today?
Dan Rutledge: Sure. I’ll start here. I grew up in Michigan. And Midwestern guy. And I had the fortune, you know, the blessing of really growing up with a really solid Christian parents in a small church, small Christian school. Just a lot of youth leaders, teachers, Sunday school teachers, just kind of pouring into me and that is awesome. Not everyone gets that. I’m so thankful for it and was able to come to Christ at an early age due to all of that influence. And so that was great. When I got to college, I really felt called in college to be in the entertainment industry back in the early nineties and there wasn’t a lot of Christian presence in the entertainment industry like there is now is almost like we had kind of abandoned the arts and I really just want to be a kind of a voice in the mainstream industry. And that’s what I was studying. I met Angel in college. We were both involved in Campus Crusade and she was a little out of my league. But, you know, I had that entrepreneur persistence, so I kind of wore her down. And, you know, eventually she she came around, so that was good. And then we got married.
Henry Kaestner: Do you remember. Do you remember what it was that made him so winsome?
Angel Rutledge: You know, it was God, honestly. It was God’s thing
Henry Kaestner: It was not…
Dan Rutledge: No, it was not me.
Angel Rutledge: We were friends, met in project. We were friends for a year and I just thought he was a great friend, but I was really grown in my relationship with God. So I was kind of I was one of those college girls who was like, I’m just dating the Lord. Then all of a sudden, a year later, you know, our whole group would get together at different campuses, and all of a sudden I was like, Wow, I really like him. And it was just from there on.
Henry Kaestner: Way to go Dan, more proof that God loves you and wants you to be happy.
Dan Rutledge: You got to play the long game and some of these things, you know? Yeah, now it was good. We got married out of college and then we did move around to a number of different places while I was trying to pursue this entertainment dream, vision, passion. So we were in Los Angeles for a little while and Virginia Beach for a little while, and then even brought us to Charlotte. So was pursuing that along the way I kind of dropped in my lap the whole Internet thing, which I wasn’t expecting. And so I was kind of doing Internet work on the side to really actually make money while I was pursuing this vision of making an impact in the entertainment industry. But it was always just kind of my day job. And then along the way, of course, we had kids. So I have four kids and a great family. And so you can probably speak a little more to that piece too.
Henry Kaestner: Well, before we do that, because my co-host is a entertainment entrepreneur, too. Yeah. Familiar with that scene. Give us just a quick overview. It’s not what we’re going to talk about today. We can tell you about SignUp Genius and the new project that you’re working on it. There’s so many other things but you touch kind of vaguely on a dream you’re pursuing in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. What was it?
Dan Rutledge: Yeah, I really wanted to be in the mainstream industry doing mainstream films that communicated redemptive themes or really my thought was just stories that move people from wherever they are, closer to a relationship with God. So, you know, maybe recognizing that he exists might be like all the way on the other end of increasing in their faith. So there was a lot of spectrum in there, but like really just being a voice in the marketplace. And I got it from going to college and I went into this film classes and I was just kind of shocked, honestly, at what what was out there and what we were studying in the film classes. And I was like, Wow, does anybody realize what all this is saying? So that was kind of my big vision and big dream at the beginning.
Rusty Rueff: And if you’d done it, you would have named it Angel Studios. But somebody else ended up doing that for you.
Dan Rutledge: Yes, yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Angel Rutledge: Which we’re so thankful. Yeah, we’re so happy. It’s been such a great, exciting thing to see how God has.
Dan Rutledge: Yeah yeah.
Angel Rutledge: Has done that.
Dan Rutledge: It’s great, it’s awesome.
Henry Kaestner: So God had you called for something different and every faith driven entrepreneurs involved somewhat in solving a problem or leaning into an opportunity, talk to us about that process for SignUp Genius.
Dan Rutledge: Sure, it had a lot to do with what we were doing at the time. We were both really involved in our family’s lives. This was about 2008. We had four kids under nine, and for me, the film dream had kind of come to a halt at that point. It was kind of like the adult face, the reality of like, I really can’t pursue this any longer. I’ve got to go find some other things. We had a lot of family responsibilities and I was looking for other things. And then Angel, maybe you want to speak to all the things we were involved in because that kind of brought the idea to mind.
Angel Rutledge: Right? Yes. I think even as Dan talks about not really thinking about technology as a career, more than providing money for us to pursue other things. That’s exactly how I was thinking about it, too. And you know when we were out in L.A., my big passions were twofold. You know, we had two kids while we were out there. And so I just, you know, had a hard growing up experience, didn’t become a Christian until College and through Campus Crusade for Christ. And so I was really passionate about, you know, having a different family experience for our kids. And so I loved being a mom and being involved in their lives however I could. A lot of that meant volunteering in their school and church and wherever they were […] and youth sports. And so we were organizing a lot of the groups with them. And then when we went from having two kids, we overnight went from 2 to 4, didn’t have twins. We actually adopted two kids from Liberia, West Africa. So our four, I guess, came together in 2007. So just a year before sign up, genius. And the reason really that we needed sign up genius was because of that, because we went from having 2 to 4 and all of a sudden all the groups that we were organizing not just doubled but felt like multiplied tenfold. And so we were trying to take care of them and all of these different things we were doing in the U.S., but then also fell in love with the church planning ministry that had cared for Henry and Angela and our two that came home from there. And they were doing just amazing things in Liberia. But it was only a few years after the civil war that lasted 14 years. And so there was just so many things that we were able to come alongside and just serve underneath our leadership. And it required, again, more organizing of groups. And so we were really at the point where I was, you know, had many times come to Dan before and said, okay, this is what I need right now. Like, can you just build something real quick? And so he was at a point in between, you know, saying, okay, the film work. I think I’m going to have to just not do that and what are we going to do? And Dan, you can probably describe some more of that and what that decision making process was for you. But, you know, in both of our lives, we were organizing church, school, sports, nonprofit ministry, just pretty much everything.
Dan Rutledge: And we made a lot of mistakes. I mean, honestly, like it came out of organizing failures. Like if you remember back then, like people when they needed to get volunteers, they’d send these reply all emails and they’d send it out to like 40 people and they’d be like, Just reply back, who’s going to cover this and who’s going to cover that? And so you’d get like 35 emails and everybody is like replying to the same thing and not seeing stuff. And so like events would go terribly. I had one time I was coaching a soccer team when this was for my kids and I was supposed to make sure that we had snacks there every week after the game. And so I created a paper sign up sheet and I passed it around to all the parents and had them sign up for who was going to bring snacks. And then a week or so went by and then one of the moms was like, We’re going to be on vacation. And she switched with another mom, and the other mom wanted to switch her week and they said, Can you get that paper? And I went to find the paper and I had lost the paper. And so the whole season we’d have like double snacks one week and no snacks the other week. And a mom was like, can you call us every week and tell us who’s supposed to do the snacks? And I’m like, I really don’t have time to do that. There’s got to be a better way to organize this. And so.
Henry Kaestner: It’s amazing,
Dan Rutledge: A variety of stuff like this where like, I think like assistant could probably remind you automatically that would be a lot easier.
Angel Rutledge: Right? So we talked about that just, you know, let’s just put the paper sign up online. It could automatically remind people you just basically take the organizer out of it. The organizer in a few minutes should just be able to put all of the responsibilities out there, then send out the invites. You know, the system can do that automatically and then people can sign up. It doesn’t matter. You know, that was another big thing. It it should not matter whether it’s something for church nursery at church or parent teacher conference or taking supplies on a mission trip. Like everything we’re doing, this whole system needs to be able to, in a few minutes, set up a sign up online. People can sign up. It sends out automatic reminders, and the organizer looks like they’re a genius.
Henry Kaestner: Of course. of course so ok, the reason I say amazing is that on one level it’s amazing. On another level, it’s actually not that amazing. But it’s really, really amazing to me was that we have kids about the same age. I was on soccer sidelines at the same time. And remember just the inanity. I know if inanity is a word, but we’re going to go with it. And it’s a word, the inanity of it all of trying to go ahead because we had other things. We had three kids all doing different sports and somebody’s like, okay, so you got to hang out and you got to go order. Like the Capri Suns, which are probably the worst snack a kid could probably ever have, and all this kind of stuff. And I was right there and I remember feeling the same type of pain point that you did, and I just complained about it. You went out and started a company that impacted the lives of 135 million people. And I think that’s amazing, is that when you get this this base thing of like, no, this is this is just could be better. And you and I experiencing the same pain point at the same time in history and you guys actually doing something about it. And I just complain about it.
Rusty Rueff: In good use of the word inanity. It really is. It is a word. It’s that yeah, it’s a nonsensical remark or action. So now, you know, you guys can put on sign up genius, remove the inanity. Just remove the inanity
Henry Kaestner: People are like, this is not a word. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rusty Rueff: Hey, I want to applaud you, but also ask you a question at the same time, because, you know, so many times those of us who advise or invest or get involved in into startups and work with founders, you know, they they come from a place of, you know, what’s the problem they’re trying to solve. But so many times they try to solve a problem that’s not their problem. Right. And you go back to him say, well, no, no, you need to try to solve something where you have a pain point. And that’s what you all did, right? You had that problem. Then you come up with a technology solution to that, but yet you do it without, you know, the benefit of graduating from Stanford or getting MBAs and, you know, entrepreneurship. And do you think that, you know, what you’ve done with sign up genius? I mean, should be an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs who they don’t have MBAs or decades of experience doing one thing, you know, either in business or in technology, but come from someplace else. But yet you did it, so they should be able to do it, right?
Angel Rutledge: Absolutely. Yes. In fact, I hope that’s what people take from this is, you know, if Dan and I could start a company and God can use that to impact all those people, millions of people using it every year, then anyone could be an entrepreneur. They really could. You know, I thinking about what it was like for me growing up, I never saw a woman who was an entrepreneur. So for me it was not even in my like if somebody had asked me, Could I do it? I would have said, Of course I no that’s not something that I would ever do, but I just never even thought about it. Beyond that, like you said, we didn’t have the MBAs. I had no business education and didn’t have a business education. Neither of us had worked in a corporate setting. You know, I had been a teacher in a middle school and then had written novels and parenting articles and, you know, was not in the corporate world at all and certainly didn’t have all the financial resources to start a business. So it definitely should be encouraging. In fact, you know, I’ve actually started writing a book called Everyday on MBA and just with the thought of, Hey, here are different roles in my life and in Dan’s life that we pulled from and
Angel Rutledge: took all the lessons we had learned in those other roles, applied them to be an entrepreneur, and here’s what other entrepreneurs have done. That’s the same thing. And use that to sort of outline a here’s what you need to do in a business. So you’re right, your everyday life lessons are your MBA as an entrepreneur.
Rusty Rueff: So I’m going to flip it around on you and ask you if there was training in education, there would have been beneficial to you. What do you wish that would have been?
Dan Rutledge: Yeah, you know, we did talk about that, this sometimes as there are some things that you do have to learn and like that were real pain points like a lot of the financials keeping financials and accounting and taxes and complex HR issues and you’re trying to learn that on the fly and, you know, experience and that would be great. I mean, there’s some benefit to not knowing also because you don’t have preconceived ideas of how businesses should do things. So sometimes like you break barriers that you didn’t know were there. So that can be helpful. But yeah, there was a lot of time. I remember like something would come up and an employee would be like, What do we do? And I’d be like, Well, you realize we don’t know what we’re doing, right? Hold that thought and I will go research it and then I will tell you, because I’m just making this up. So like, yes, some of those things would have been helpful. But once you encounter a pain point, you just got to go in and and learn.
Rusty Rueff: And what about how your faith helped you through that? You know, not only maybe helping you work through the shortcomings of knowledge and experience, but also in trying to make some of the business decisions that you’ve made. And as Henry said at the beginning of the podcast, you know, you’ve scaled I mean, you went from an idea to a very, very large scale. I’m interested about how your faith was just a part of that process.
Angel Rutledge: I think that was better in some ways that we didn’t have the MBA training, the business training, all of that, you know, the accounting. It was certainly difficult at times and we made a lot of mistakes and our employees were super gracious, customers were gracious. But because we didn’t have those things, our faith was what led us, which is really how we should work in any business, whether we’re already competent in it or not. So for us, we really just, you know, fell back on the lessons that we already lived out our lives and said, okay, what is God say about how do you steward resources and how do you use money and how do you treat people you know, how do you work through conflict and ask for forgiveness? And, you know, how do you put in time on the things that God has called you to be excellent at, you know, and even bigger? Like, how do you handle tough circumstances, right? Like all of those things are much better to seek the Lord in and allow him to teach and guide us. And then our skill set, which needs to be excellent, follows that. But skills I’ve always found with the people that we’ve hired, like skills you can usually teach in a matter of time, but those other things are very difficult to teach.
Dan Rutledge: Yeah, just an example of that. Like you’re just trying to make decisions based on what you think is important, based on what you learned in your faith. So like later in company, like when it got bigger, we had more advanced business experts come in and analyze everything. You know, they’re kind of looking at things. I remember they were like, you know, why do you have so much customer service? Like, you know, companies don’t have this much customer service as a percentage of the company. And we’re like, well, I don’t know why companies have for customer service percentage, but I do know that like the whole purpose of our company is to help these people and therefore, like we made it a priority to make sure that they were always taken care of. And so like some things you did wrong, wrong. But they were influenced by just, you know, a biblical worldview of putting people over profits and people over product and things like that.
Rusty Rueff: Right. So you mentioned Angel about difficult decisions, difficult situations that you may have not known how to deal with at the time. And one of those in any open platform today is platform moderation, right. So you can take go fund me. You could look at Facebook, you can look at reddit. It doesn’t matter what these open platforms are, they’re either taking flack for over moderating or under moderating. Right. And so I assume that you probably struggled with that, too, with sign up genius when groups would pop up and how those might be organized and would those fit with your values, your mission statement, not with your mission statement or values. Can you talk us through if that did happen, give us some examples and how you work through them.
Dan Rutledge: Yeah, I can probably speak to that. Actually, the scale is a challenge and I feel for some of these companies, you know, like at the end of when we were leading the company and working in the office, we were doing, you know, 200,000 to 500,000 events per month with 10 to 50 people in each of that. So you’ve got millions of people interacting on these events and transparently like we have 30 to 35 staff managing that. So the first thing you have to do is you have to build systems just to protect against malicious attacks, because certainly there will be malicious attempts to use the tool, I don’t know, for spam or to get access to like all the people that are using it. So you build a lot of that in. In terms of like the events that are actually being organized. You know, we had some discussion on this because like occasionally things would come up not a lot because we were working with schools and churches and nonprofits. So most everything was like so neat to be a part of. But occasionally, sometimes things would come up and people would be like, Are we okay with that? Having that event on the site? And I don’t know if this is right. Our perspective was that we are not deciding which events are right and wrong or whether someone can use the tool we are offering, the service we will try to protect from malicious intent. So just like Target doesn’t check IDs at the door to see what you believe in, on whether you can come shop. But they would put a metal detector to prevent you from doing something malicious. Or if you’re in the store and you start causing a problem, they would escort you out. And that was kind of how we assumed it, because we are just like, I have many neighbors and friends that believe differently than I do, but they’re still my friends and I still serve them, interact with them, and we would provide the service and not make those judgments. But, you know, there were certainly some things that we didn’t promote. You know, you have marketing that you’re like pursuing certain verticals, like we might pursue growth in the church vertical or in the sports team vertical. And then there would be other things that like they may use it, but we’re not pursuing that market aggressively. So that’s kind of how we handle that. I’m sure other people have different thoughts, but that was our perspective.
Henry Kaestner: So I want to pivot a little bit. So thank you for that. I want to pivot a little bit to something that some number of our listeners are going to be wondering. What’s it like to do business with your spouse? Husbands and wives get together. Kim and I are remarkably happily married. I don’t know that we could have done bandwith together. And you guys have done that. And just what’s that look like? I mean, just talk us through there’s a number of listeners here that are either husband wise or in business right now or that are thinking about launching a business together. Just give us some wisdom.
Dan Rutledge: It’s always wonderful.
Angel Rutledge: Good answer, good answer honey.
Henry Kaestner: There may not be truthful, but it’s awesome.
Angel Rutledge: It does sound good, doesn’t it.
Angel Rutledge: No that’s not true, you can be honest here honey.
Dan Rutledge: You know, I was talking to someone the other day and they were talking. This person had gotten married right when the pandemic started. And then they had lived, you know, had their first year of marriage where they were just confined to the house. And they said, I feel like I’ve been married, you know, one year, but in real years it’s like seven, you know, and it’s a little bit like that when you work together in a company, you know, like so many issues come up that you have to kind of be better at communicating and work through those things. And there definitely is some sense, like we would sometimes have to be at home and be like, okay, is this a work conversation or is this a personal conversation? Are you asking me my work advice? Are you telling me you know, and we kind of have to work through that piece? So that was one piece.
Henry Kaestner: How did you divide responsibilities?
Angel Rutledge: Sure. That was probably the best way that we figured out to work together, is that, you know, not too long into it, we realized that we had very different skill sets and that that was a good thing. And I think that’s often where people think about, Oh, we couldn’t work together because we’d always be trying to own whatever the decisions are. But the reality is, you know, Dan really focused on the technology and the vision part of the company, and I focused on more of the business end of it, the operations and the marketing and the team building the culture. I remember one time you know working on the home page together, and Dan’s a great graphic artist, but I was the CMO and, you know, working on the home page. And I had the design figured out and I showed him the wireframe. And at the same time, even though I was the CMO, he was the CEO, you know, and so we kind of went through like, okay, he wanted a piece to be different. And so I just had to say, okay, who owns this? You know, who owns this piece? Who gets to make this decision? And so, you know, every once in a while it would come down to that. And ultimately, he owned the decisions. He was the CEO of the company. So, you know, there were a few times where it came down to, okay, we don’t agree on this, but I trust you. You’re the CEO of the company. You get to make this decision. But most of the time we would say, okay, you know this area a lot better. You know, I handled the finances. So if it was something on projections or budgeting, you know, we’d discuss it and certainly give input and disagree on some things. But I would own that. And he would own the technology if I definitely had input on here’s what the tools should do or how it should look. And you know, at the end of the day, he owned those decisions. So that was a big piece and definitely, you know, asking for forgiveness a lot because it doesn’t matter how good you are at knowing who owns what, when you get in the middle of a decision and you’re tired and everybody’s been asking for things all day, you’re not always at your best and interacting with your spouse. Or if it’s midnight and you still have work to finish before you go to bed.
Dan Rutledge: I grew a lot to, I think working with Angel, you know, it’s like when you get married, you are like, Wow, I didn’t realize I had all these sensor problems until I started living with someone because your spouse will actually, you know, help. There’s nowhere to hide. Right? And like in business, sometimes when you’re in leadership, you can hide because, like, people won’t tell you the truth. Like when you’re married, you do get told the truth and it does help you grow, you know? So something like, you know, we’d get done with a meeting and Angel would be like, you know, did you realize you interrupted those two women while they were in their conversation? And I would be like, Oh, I did not realize that, you know? And then we would have a conversation about it. And I would realize over time, okay, I really am not interacting in a way that is honoring everybody equally, and I’ve got to change that. And so, like, it is helpful to have someone that is close to you that can speak into your life, I think, in any capacity. And it helps in business for you to grow just as it helps in your marriage for you to grow.
Henry Kaestner: Angel, I want to ask you a question, and you have both hinted at the answers to this, and I hope our listeners have been picking up on it. But you talked about culture, and some of the things that I picked up on are that your endeavor to delight your customer, your customer service? You had a great partnership. I think there’s something really powerful. One of the things that David and I were able to do at bandwidth and he more with me was able to say just some of the things about, hey, one of the things when you’re talking, you pick up the body language from that person in that person and the power of partnership in the culture. Tell us some more of the things that you discovered with time about culture because you are intentional about it. You had a clear mission statement. You had some great success just refine that a bit.
Angel Rutledge: Sure. Absolutely. The mission of the company was something that we honestly didn’t set out. We didn’t start with it. We certainly said, hey, we want to make it simple for group organizers to do what they do because that’s the problem. You know so we were trying to solve a problem we didn’t understand until a couple of years into the company that God had a mission for the company. And I don’t say that as an okay sign up genius was unique. It was more for us that, hey, companies can be purposeful. They don’t just solve a problem. They don’t just make money. They don’t just pay people salary. Companies should have a purpose beyond those things. And so as we began to see the group organizers using the tool, they were really the ones who showed us the mission of the company, and that was to empower people to change the world by making a simple of organized groups. And we didn’t say that as a, okay, every person is changing the world, but we saw, you know, neighbors changing their neighborhood as they organized meals for somebody who had a baby or for somebody who just had surgery. They were changing their neighborhood or we were seeing you know parents and teachers changing their school community because they were all getting involved and volunteering and having parent teacher conferences and raising more money for the school. And so our group organizers really were the ones who showed us this has a powerful purpose. And once we saw that and we put that on paper, it very quickly defined the values for our company. So you know one of those is everything had to be simple. The tool had to be simple, our processes had to be simple. We saw that we were working with millions of people. So in order to make the tool you know cost effective, we had to be able to serve all of them. So our customer service, everything had to be very simple. We had to strive for excellence in the areas that mattered most because our customers deserved it, you know, and we wanted to spotlight them. So that was another big value for us, as is spotlighting what they were doing, and that it wasn’t about our company growing bigger, but it was about making these group organizers look like the geniuses that they were and showing the value that they were having in their communities. And so, yeah, it affected, you know, from our hiring, we had to hire people who were servants. We couldn’t hire, you know, people who were, okay, this company, we’re going to have this, you know, 15 year, big, hairy, audacious goal. You know, this it was, okay, we’re going to follow God and we’re going to serve people. And those were people that we hired and, you know, everything. I mean, we had it from how we did our meetings, how we did performance reviews. We even had, you know, just the different types of positions everybody was very important in in the company and had a voice in the company because the people who are part time were probably the ones who are they were the ones who were the group organizers. They were the ones who were using the tool out in the community and then coming and working part time at sign up genius. So it really just affected everything. The company did have that mission.
Rusty Rueff: That’s great. All right. We’re going to pivot to our lightning round. This is where we ask you some quick questions. And I’m going to take the lead first thing that comes to mind. All right. Is that okay? All right. All right. Most memorable event that was ever hosted on SignUp Genius that you knew about.
Dan Rutledge: And I love one it impacted like I know this is kind of tragic but when it was large national tragedies, when we’d help with the like a hurricane or when the shooting happened in Charleston, where the nine were shot in the church like they organized all the meals for the funeral was a signup genius and I am like how neat to be able to be a part of that, even though like it’s a horrible, horrible situation. If we can step in to that and assist in any way, that’s an honor.
Angel Rutledge: Right? Absolutely. And those were, I think, the most powerful things that we saw, even though we loved all of the uses and the ways that, you know, churches use it and schools and mission teams, all of that. But for me, that one was the most impactful, was a man who wrote in and said, Hey, I started this ministry years ago called No One Dies Alone and people sign up and go to sit and be with people in the hospital in their last days when they don’t have a family member or someone else. And thank you so much. We’ve been able to expand that because I don’t have to spend so much time organizing it. A lot more people are signing up for that and just things like that are just so incredibly powerful to see, you know, one person at a time, just doing amazing things. So I think that was my favorite.
Rusty Rueff: All right. So you figured out a life in efficiency that has helped millions of people. What’s another life in efficiency that you’d wish a up and coming entrepreneur would solve?
Angel Rutledge: This is not a small one, so kudos to whichever entrepreneur takes this. But I would like all of my family’s health records to be owned by us and in a software tool that we get to give permission to whoever, you know, doctors or whatever. And it’s getting there. It’s slowly getting there. But this is one that I think this should have been done many years ago. I would love to have just something very simple so I can see everything in one spot.
Rusty Rueff: I would love that, too. I would love that too. Dan
Dan Rutledge: I’m going to say something with the auto industry, like buying, selling, maintaining, insuring, maintaining your car. It drives me crazy the amount of time that it takes, especially if you have kids and there’s multiple cars in the family. I just wish there was an optimized way. I don’t know anything about that industry, but somebody go figure it out.
Dan Rutledge: All right. That’s a good one. What’s the tastiest barbecue in Charlotte?
Angel Rutledge: Dan you have to take this one?
Dan Rutledge: So we’ll get our North Carolina license revoked if we answer this one, because we’re more like avocado, chicken salad or something. Mediterranean. Yeah.
Rusty Rueff: Okay. Okay. All right. So asking for a friend who goes to North Carolina quite a few times and will be going soon to drop his son back off at school. Best ice cream in North Carolina.
Dan Rutledge: Ooh.
Henry Kaestner: And Charlotte. Because we need a whole bunch of people from Winston-Salem, and we have issues. Okay. I just want this shot.
Dan Rutledge: All right. All our. All our kids love this place called Andy’s in Charlotte, where it’s, like, huge shakes with all the stuff in it. You know, it would be like more calories than I can have in a week, but, like, you know, they love it.
Angel Rutledge: They do.
Dan Rutledge: You could heck that out.
Angel Rutledge: That’s right. But you are going to see a lot of high schoolers if you go because, you know, but you could probably get a lot of ice cream for about $10 for your whole family.
Henry Kaestner: That’s awesome.
Angel Rutledge: They may like it.
Rusty Rueff: My my friend Henry. Oh, I’m sorry, my friend. That I’m sure he will like that. And then lastly, really quickly or maybe not quickly, if you don’t want to, you’ve got a new venture you’re working on.
Angel Rutledge: We do have a new venture that we’re working on. And so this one, rather than working with group organizers and actually individuals, and we we realized through the pandemic that, you know, it was really nice for people to be able to come home. And we’ve got this big remote work focus now, which has been great, mostly because people want to spend more time with the ones that they love at home and have better work life balance. But it’s also, I think, left all of us feeling somewhat isolated and disconnected and trying to figure out how do we balance the still wanting to get together. And so we are starting a company called meetify.com And it helps to organize in-person meetups. And so rather than just getting it on your calendar, it helps you to figure out what’s a central location between me and someone else or several people that we can meet up a coffee shop, restaurant, wherever it is, but where’s a central location that we can get together? And rather than going back and forth with all the hassle of emails, texts, we just do that. And one communication through meetofy and the person who sets it up sends out, here’s all the things that work for me. And then the person on the other end just gets to make the decision and here’s what we’ll meet and when.
Dan Rutledge: Sometimes it takes me more time to set up a lunch than to go to the lunch. So we’re like, got to fix that.
Henry Kaestner: One would think that this is a near neighbor to what you already sell that. So I’m going to predict massive success in my using it. Okay. I’ve got two things for you. One of them is going to be the one we always used to close. If you listen to a podcast before about what God is speaking to you through His Word on, but knowing that you’re missionary minded through your culture, delighting your employees and your customers, knowing that you have adopted twice you just the thing that got, I think, put on my hardest what’s a ministry or charity that you all like to give to and why?
Angel Rutledge: That is a great question. And we actually divide up our giving between a lot of them. So well with signup genius we really focused on caring for vulnerable children. And personally, we also do that. But we’ve always been, you know, not always the best investors in terms of our finances, but we have been really focused on investing in an internal perspective. And so we do it the same way as finances. We look at, hey, how can we divide up the resources across different things? So we look at how can we care for our community, our country and overseas? And so, yeah, so we love Dan throw some out. We love, you know, a lot of our local ones.
Dan Rutledge: One of our favourite
Angel Rutledge: Samaritan purse.
Dan Rutledge: Favorites is there’s a ministry in Charlotte called Brookstone Schools and they run a small Christian school in uptown Charlotte that is basically subsidized by donors. And for those that are looking, you know, in a hard school area and they found that basically at the K through eight, they found that they can change the trajectory of a whole family by getting the child into the school through eighth grade and providing not only the education for the child, but then they’re like reaching into the families through the children, and then the kids get scholarships into other schools and go on and it changes the whole trajectory. There’s a big push in Charlotte to figure out how to improve upward mobility because it’s a real challenge in Charlotte. They did a study in Charlotte has that challenge. And so this is a ministry that’s really neat because it’s solving a problem that Charlotte has and we got to go serve there a bunch of times. So.
Henry Kaestner: Very cool.
Dan Rutledge: I like that want.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you. Thank you for that last one I have for you is what is God speaking to you about through his word? It could be this morning, it could be this week. But something that just like really resonated with you.
Dan Rutledge: I had just finished reading the Book of Acts and I was kind of doing this interesting thing where I was had a couple of different highlighters and I was highlighting every time that the Holy Spirit was mentioned and then every time that there was like a crowd or the church grew. And it was just interesting to kind of look at it all. And, number one, just be like, amazed at like how much the early church was impacting the culture. I mean, there were crowds and riots and debates and like huge numbers of people that were being impacted. And then secondly, just saying that the Holy Spirit was a part of every act and decision and movement. And so it really just kind of challenged me. I want to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit working in my life to like be a part of everything that I’m doing. And hopefully, like I would be able to impact the culture, you know, in the ways that the church was doing. Once I’m sensitive to the spirit. So.
Angel Rutledge: So good. Yeah. I’ve been in first and second, Samuel. So it’s taken me through Saul’s leadership and then David’s leadership. And it’s been just sitting in that the last couple of months and realizing how different they were as leaders. And you know, Saul, I think it wasn’t so much their capacity or their ability, but Saul was so fearful and led out of fear and out of his own decision making and what he thought he should do in the moment. And things didn’t really go well for him because of that. And for David, he didn’t always make the best decisions. Sometimes he did, sometimes you didn’t. But he was constantly coming back to God when he messed up. And often, most often He led with his faith and he would go to God for wisdom and making decisions. And so I’m just trying to sit with that and and learn from those two different things. I don’t think it’s so much about Saul and David, though. There’s some of that, but I think it’s a lot more about God and who he is. And, you know, it’s not to him. Are we competent? Excellent in everything we do, making all the right decisions. But are we seeking him, letting him lead us and guide us, you know, turning him when we mess up once again? And yeah, so I’m just trying to sit in that for a while.
Dan Rutledge: That’s awesome. Okay, very, very good. I’m grateful for you both. Thank you for your time. And I’m really looking forward to getting back together with you and learn more about meetify. I think there’s so much more we can go in to about establishing culture adoption. There’s a thousand things we could take it next time. Grateful for your time.
Dan Rutledge: Thank you much.
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.