Rusty Rueff: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Thanks for finding us once again this week during a stellar 23 year career playing Major League Baseball. Torii Hunter was named to five All-Star teams, won nine consecutive Gold Glove awards as a center fielder and hit his way to two Silver Slugger awards. What many people may not know is that equal to his achievements on the field, Torey is just as proud of his growing portfolio of investments, and yet business is much like baseball. Tory has failed more than he has succeeded. His strikeouts have taught him. There are no losers in life, just winners and learners. That conversation is up next on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.
William Norvell: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. We have an amazing day to day, actually. For me personally, this is one of my favorite days because unbeknownst to our guest, our guest anchored my fantasy team for the better part of 2002 to 2010. Because he was one of the few people in baseball that you could count on. You weren’t going to get a blank. He was going to pull something off. He was going to get a walk in a stolen base. You know, it might be over five, but there were still stats. And if you don’t play fantasy baseball, they matter. And those daily match ups where you get blanks across the board. That’s how you lose. And our guest today, Torii Hunter, just made sure I didn’t lose, and that was big to me. And then he was gracious to me a second time. And if you’ve watched our conference last year, Torey was just blessed us greatly by having us in to his maker’s gym, which we’re going to get into in a little bit and talk about, you know, Faith Driven Entrepreneur ship and how he’s trying to impact entrepreneurs in his area and so many different places. And so from baseball to entrepreneurship. Torii Hunter, we are glad to have you here today.
Torii Hunter: Oh man. Thanks for having me, man. I hope I didn’t destroy your fantasy team. You know, I tried to help my team win, too. And just, you know, I’m glad you was able to ride the coattails.
William Norvell: That’s what I did. Hey, that’s that’s the theme of my life. I do it well
Torii Hunter: as coach Barry. You know, just going out there and playing every day, man, everybody will come to me before the game. They help my fantasy team win up and really trying to help this team win right now. So we’ll see what happens. If I help this team win, then I can help you as well. So I have to focus on that one thing at a
William Norvell: time that had to be better for your contract because my fantasy league did not pay well.
Torii Hunter: Oh yeah, yeah, you guys didn’t pay that well. Now I think they’re playing pretty good right now and not now.
William Norvell: Now my team still doesn’t pay well and I know Henry case. There’s just dying to jump in because we do not have a bigger baseball fan on our podcast host set up than Henry Gassner.
Torii Hunter: Hey, Henry, what’s up?
Speaker 4: All right. It’s great to see you again. Thank you very much for being willing to share with our audience. And what William is alluding to is the fact that, yes, I’m a huge baseball card collector and there’s a point in time in my life that I knew every single baseball player that was playing. And it’s been a while. You know, we moved to North Carolina and it didn’t have a professional team, but I grew up in Baltimore and was a huge Baltimore Orioles fan and moved in New York, and I probably could tell you the name of every player that played in 1977 1978. I’m dating myself a bit, but I still have all of their baseball cards, and it’s like a history lesson or just it’s all. It’s like time travel. Just holding in a 1977 Topps brings me back. Did you collect baseball cards?
Torii Hunter: Oh, no, I did not. I got into baseball. I really got into professional baseball. I did when I was younger. My uncle has some cards and you know, I will see guys like Bobby Ball and Terry Pendleton and different things like that on on baseball cards that, yeah, and I really didn’t collect them until I got into pro ball, started to nose Harmon Killebrew and wow, my letters and different things like that Tony Oliva breakthrough. And once I got to know those guys, man, I really started collecting and getting their autographs, autographed bats and different things like that, and I try to keep them in my little game room right here. And so that’s pretty cool, man. Just to get to see the history behind everything. But just to talk about Baltimore a little bit. Yeah. Ripken, yeah. My first major league hit was in Baltimore at Camden Yards and 1998, and I was on first base after I got the hits. Right still aren’t the roads and they threw the ball in because it was my first hit and Cal Ripken got it. And he said, Congratulations, throw it in. And then several years later, I’m in centerfield in the Metrodome. In Cal Ripken Jr., Rs 3000 hit up the middle and hit the centerfield, and I got the ball and I looked at it and I say, congratulations, I put it in my pocket. He was like, No, no, no, bring it back, you know? And so, yeah, it was just a great moment. I got my first major league hit three or four years later. Here’s Cal Ripken getting his 3000 hit to me. So it was for me the sentimental, you know, and it’s something that I can always sell my grandkids and tell other kids, you know, whenever I’m talking to other kids, other groups and I tell them what their story and they go, Wow, OK, who’s Cal Ripken, though?
Speaker 4: Oh, man, oh, man, oh, man. Don’t say that. That’s the big companies out there. Murray Hunter,
Torii Hunter: at least now, for more decades now, they’re doing that. They just Google searches. Are you OK? You know? You know, I guess I was OK.
Henry Kaestner: Well, the difference between me and Utah in baseball card collecting is there’s no baseball card here that I could put my autograph on and like, earn like $100 in a nanosecond. That’s the difference in the way that you and I can collect. But there may even be somebody out there that is not a baseball fan, and there is so much to get from this episode and Tory and his faith. And yes, being a just an incredible athlete with grit and perseverance. Twenty three hundred games now, right? It’s up there. It’s Ripken s talking about Cal Ripken.
Torii Hunter: I don’t know how many games I play a lot, but it was a lot. It was a lot in twenty years, three years. Yeah, that’s a long season. A lot of man, that’s a whole lot of at bats, a lot of running. I still feel like, you know, I got a four pack, not a six pack now, but I got a four pack for the wifey. But, you know, just putting those mouths on your legs, man, you feel like, you know, when you retire, it’s going to get worse. I actually feel like I’m better because I’m not running anymore and my body’s healing. I’m still working out. My legs feel great. You know, while I was playing and I was in my mid 30s, I can still be walking up the stairs. My butt cheeks were like up things like because things
Henry Kaestner: that had never been said before and a Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast right there.
Torii Hunter: It’s just a muscle, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. And you know, as I now know, I’m forty something for twenty four.
Henry Kaestner: Why stop it? Did you feel better? And you’re looking great?
Torii Hunter: I feel great. I feel great. I’m playing golf. I’m doing a very active. I have to plan all those years, man. And you know, I’ve seen some guys have hip surgery. I seen them these stars. But I’ve been very blessed to keep myself in shape and don’t get the massage and do all the little things. I can try to maintain this tempo I have.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, absolutely. So baseball player with grit and I’m going to I’m going to get into that in a second because I think that they’re great lessons when you’ve had such perseverance over so many at bats. The lessons there for Faith Driven Entrepreneur, what we can impact that. And then of course, the other thing is you’ve been a Faith Driven Investor as well. We talked about that just a little bit on the conference. We can talk more about that here in a second, but let’s go back and then also want if we’ve got time, I’d love to talk about mentorship. Marcus Stroud, one of my favorite people to be ventures, counts you as being such an incredible influence in his life. And now he’s off being one of the great Faith Driven Investor is out there in this new generation and just super excited to get to know him be a part of his fun and then know the influence you’ve had in his life. But let’s go back to what I was just alluding to there a second ago. You’ve shown over a long career and it’s twenty three hundred, but you’ve been playing baseball for a long time before that too. As an entrepreneur now with Maker’s Jam, with the barbecue company, with the other real estate investments that you’re doing, what are the lessons that you think apply and perseverance from a long career and what doesn’t?
Torii Hunter: Man, you know, for me, I think baseball is life. Life is baseball, you know, and you know, all the lessons I’ve learned in baseball as far as failures and striking out. And you have setbacks and you’ve got to have a setback and you have to prepare for a comeback because if you don’t prepare for the comeback, then you don’t always have setbacks and then you’ve gone home. Right? So just all the adjustments you have to make. You know, you got one enemy out there. He has to is just like you. He’s human, but he’s trying to get you out, you know, and I’m trying to hit him out. He’s trying to find my weaknesses. I’m trying to find his weaknesses. But if we don’t focus on our weaknesses, if I look for your weaknesses and go after that. So it’s a lot of things and you got the umpire and you got the catch you have to fight. I think like three, you know, same apples, you got the adversary out there. We don’t see him, but he’s there, right? And then you got life and then you’ve got your own worst enemy, which is you. Your enemy is your enemy. So you’re fighting a lot of different things in the world, in life, and you find a lot of different things in baseball as well. And so when you’re out there competing, you know, sometimes you don’t fail, you know, and you have to make sure in baseball you go sit on a bench for two minutes, figure out what the enemy tried to do to you and you make that adjustment just like that. You don’t wait till the next day. You don’t wait till the next week. You actually make that adjustment before your next at bat. You can sit, ponder, make adjustments, figure out what he’s doing. And that’s what we have to do. Same thing happens in entrepreneurship. Same thing happens in marriage. Same thing happens in friendships. Not to make those adjustments. You don’t let people hurt you the same way they hurt you before you make adjustments. But you can keep their relationship and stay in the game and you just you manage them different. So if I have someone a kid, one of my son’s teammates, no one knows them. But she actually took a game from his room, right? And I could have said. You know what? I’m not going to deal with him anymore. Don’t come over here. We’ll never, never see you again. But instead, I don’t allow him to come over here and meet him at a coffee shop and mentor him that way. And he’s actually he’s gotten better. But it’s not because of me, it’s just he seeks it out. But I took him out of an environment where he might take one of the video games again and put him in an environment where, you know, there’s no temptation and he can listen to me. So I started learning these different things, just like in baseball. The same way, you know, you have some guys on the team that don’t perform or they stay out late and they come into the clubhouse late and you try to, you know, instead of scolding them and you investigate, what the hell are you doing about it? I guys would go off like that. So I would put them to the side, like, hey, and talk to them about life. You have two kids, you have a wife, you know, different things like that and give them perspective and they look at it and go, I never thought about that. You know, you have to come represent more than just the game of baseball. You represent more than just the Minnesota twins. You represent that last name on your back, you represent your community, you represent your kids, and you give them something to look at as perspective of the wider lens as opposed to just, you know, scolding them, going off and never giving them a while. And because if they showed up late and they stayed out late and they come, try to play a game and not perform, and it’s a reason why they don’t know. So we have to give them some words of encouragement and some wisdom.
William Norvell: Oh, I love that story. I love that. And you know, I want to ask you a question. This one’s been on my mind for a long time, and I’ve never got to ask it to professional baseball player. I think there’s so much so entrepreneurship, right? A lot of our entrepreneurs listening to a lot of their businesses aren’t going to work. I mean, that is just facts and data. Right? I mean, we don’t have to think too hard about it. If you start a business, the data says the odds are against you, right? Right. And in baseball, I’m curious of the mindset because it’s this to be a multi time All-Star. You succeed three out of 10 times at the plate and you know that walking up, you know that when you’re six years old, when you’re 10 years old and then when you’re in the professionals, batting 280 to 300 makes you an All-Star. And so every time you go up there, you know that there is a 70 percent chance in that moment you won’t succeed what you’re walking up to the plate to do. But I’m curious, what is that mindset? How do you how do you think through that? Because I feel like our entrepreneurs and in from a faith angle to, you know, have to go out on this journey and say, I know the odds are stacked against me when I start, but I’m still going to pursue it with everything I got, and I’m going to take each moment like I’m going to succeed. Even though the odds are against me. I’m curious how you thought through that through your career
Henry Kaestner: while you’re at it or you own a riff. How that impacts your life because you’ve had quite a career as an entrepreneur. You’ve going to have to have played a bunch of Americans, and so not just as a baseball player, but, you know, talk about some of the times you get up to the plate is not, nor I know some of those stories. Let’s let the audience in to translate that from baseball, that mindset. But then also some of the adversity you’ve faced at play as an entrepreneur.
Torii Hunter: Yeah, definitely, man. Just just as a baseball player, you know, I always say baseball is like life, as baseball, as a baseball player to you. You go to the minor league system, you know, you’re making seven of them. This is off the field right now. You make it $700 a month. In some instances, you’re the only one that really speaks English. And I have five roommates and they’re from another country and you’re like, Wow, I thought I would be with some other Americans when I left is 17 years old, coming from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. You didn’t know what to expect. And when I got there, you know, my roommate from Venezuela or Dominican, and they never they didn’t speak English, so I had to learn how to communicate with them. I had two years of Spanish and they told me my Spanish was corporate, so they didn’t. They didn’t really speak that way. So it’s more like a slang when they speak. And so I had to learn the slang, and I had to learn their dialect and different things like that. And then I helped them with English and I will order their food and different things like that at the restaurants. So just having that whole dynamic 17-year-old, you go on you thinking that you, you made it, it’s going to be great. It’s going to be a lot of stars. Nope, that’s not going to happen. You got to pay bills. You 17, learn how to write checks you 70. You got to go to the grocery store to pay the water bill member. You have to do that. We have to walk to the grocery store and pay the water bill and different things like that. But then you get on the field. You know, me coming from high school, I hit five hundred, so I fell five times, you know, but I never fail seven out of 10 times. I never fail eight out of 10 times because that’s what happens. Why are you on your journey in the minor leagues? You’re failing, you know, eight out of 10 times and you work your way to seven out of 10, and that’s when you become great. Right? So just for me, I couldn’t accept failure. It was very upsetting. I was struck out. I was so like, Man, what’s going on? But you forget, just like this. Torii Hunter was from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. There’s a Torii Hunter from Compton, California, and as a Torii Hunter in Chicago, as a Torii Hunter in New York, they all come together. You have to face these guys just like you and you think you’re good where you are until you get to the same point where all the guys come together and then you’re competing against them, they’re actually pretty good where they’re from. So I had a lot of failures along the way that I did not expect. I thought I was going to learn a little bit and destroy, right, because I was so good in our public, Arkansas. So I have to humble myself and also try to make those adjustments and figure out how to make those adjustments. The only way I did that was by talking to venture guys guys older, me wiser than me, not older, because some people are not wise, even when they’re older. I had to go and learn things. Kirby Puckett from the Marty Dover’s from Rajkummar and Paul Moeller had to learn from those guys and see what they did to make the adjustments. They gave me secrets in the game, a guy who’s tipping his pitches, his players, his glove for a change up, and I’m like, Oh, I see that the guy flairs. I know he’s going to change up and he can’t throw strikes with it. So I take it. We call it, spit on it, right? I’ll take the pitch. And then he’s one ball, two balls and no strikes. And I put him in a hole where he has to throw a fastball two balls and strikes so he won’t go into an account to homer. And this little secrets like that you get from veterans, you don’t get from people your age. So now let’s go on to entrepreneurship. You know, I had a lot of coffees right for me to get started. I went to coffees with people in New York and Chicago and all the doors that were open for me, you know, playing baseball, the game of baseball. It has put me in rooms. I should be in right? I should’ve never been in those rooms and I was able to get in those rooms. So I took these guys for coffee and they gave me books to read. They gave me a little things to take masterclasses with. So I had my first book was twenty four and it was called Crushing It and I was apartment complexes and whatever now and I’m reading it. And then they gave me another book called Thinking Grow Risk. They gave me another book called Richest Man in Babylon, and I start reading these on the plane, you know, flight from L.A. all the way to Boston or L.A. to Tampa, back to L.A. So every time they gave me a book, I just read it on a plane and I actually got better. But every time I got a book, I actually read it and then tried to apply it and digest it. But only when you were going to really get this going is by experience. So I bought my first property in 2004 in South Lake, Texas, Westlake, Texas, and it was a property. I wanted to live there, but I didn’t want to live there. My wife wanted to live there. Then she realized she didn’t want to live there. So the season I went to the season came back in eight months and says she wants to sell it. So I sold it, but I bought it for, just say, four hundred thousand. But. When I saw it in an eight months, it was 1.2 million. Wow. I’m like, How is that possible, right? Is this what they do? Is this, you know, land banking that people do? That’s what got me into the real estate. So I start really, you know, kind of digging a little deeper and then I say, You know what? I want to do my first development. I did my first development six years ago with the guy name Original Red Bird and Flower Mound, Texas. And I just walked the fields and learned a lot of different things the topography, the trees I had to pay. I had to go talk to City Council members and different things like that. So I just kind of put my sweat equity in, and that was my experience. That was my first property I sold in 2004. And I did my first development in 2013. And so just learning different things, no matter what, you’re going to fail. Right? And I try to tell people all the time, I want to start my business this and that I need to have all these fences and different things like that. Yeah, you need to get your attorneys. You need to get all these different stresses that you can put up so you can protect yourself. And good fences make good business partners. So but you’re going to fail and you have to be ready for it. You kind of look at the life of a farmer. A farmer actually planted the seed and that seed actually goes down first into the ground. Michael Todd gave this example. The seed goes down into the ground and it has to dig deeper roots. Nothing comes out first. It always goes down first and it digs deeper roots. And the deeper the roots, the stronger the roots. They actually the more chance that this flower or this fruit, this apple tree, whatever it may be, has a chance to grow. And when they grow, as they grow strong because of the roots. And when you dig in the dirt, the dirt that is digging in, those are the hard times for ourselves, those sort of entrepreneurs that go through the rough times. For me and the makers, Jim, we had a lot of things taken from us, from a wolf, right? One of the contractors. And, you know, they actually dug deeper roots for us. We learned a lot of different things before we even open up makers Jim. And once he stole that money from us and we’re trying to figure out what to do next and take legal action and different things like that, we actually learned a lot from this deal. So you do have to dig deeper roots for things to kind of flourish. Once you see that things poke out because of the roots, it actually grows. And then when it grows, the fruit that you have a tree can’t eat his own fruit, right? Tree is for you to pick from, and that’s when you start. Your business is not for you. You have to actually serve people and it has to be for other people. And that’s what happens. You can’t serve right away as hard because you’re trying to get roots. But once that thing pops up, then you have fruits that you can give to the people. And I think that’s baseball, and that’s life, and that’s entrepreneurship. Is you going to fail because before success, you have to have your failures or setbacks?
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So that’s very good. So fast forward a little bit and tell us about Maker’s Jim. Tell us about this spot that you and your brother in law have created and what it looks like to invest in place. So you start off in real estate, you get involved in barbecue and there’s something about community coming together and it kind of feels like it’s a culmination is in this makers. Jim, what is Maker’s Jim and what’s that Typekit community like?
Torii Hunter: Well, makers, Jim is a creative space. My brother in law, Terence Price, actually worked for Ogilvy in New York, and he was on the lead on the team for rebranding Wonder Woman and rebranding Doritos and rebranding ups and so on. And so he decided, You know what, I want to come to Texas and start my own company. And he told me this six years ago, and it’s a creative space. You know, we’ve seen co-working spaces and different spaces like that, but I’ve never heard of a creative space. And so he created this creative space and put it on paper, and it kind of gets some 3D rendering. And it was pretty cool, right? And I looked at it and waited seven days because I always wait seven days on someone’s pitch to me because it looks good right then and there. And then I wait seven days. Sometimes it’s just, you know, after seven days, it depletes us. It really doesn’t feel as good, you know? But when I first hear something is always good, but if I wait that seven days, it can either deplete or it stays with me where his ideas stay with me for five years. And I’m like, When are you going to do it? Let’s go do it. And he’s like, I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready yet. And then he finally moved to Texas about four years ago, and we got right on it and found some properties, and he was able to open his creative space and it created spaces. Basically, you know, all of us are creators, right? I feel like there’s poor mentally, physically, financially, there’s poor people out there and poor is the lack of productive right? And Hebrew and Hebrew also poverty is the lack of creativity. And when you have no creativity, the God is lost inside of you because God is the creator who created us in his image and image. Jimmy’s character and when we have his image and he’s had that character, if he’s the creator, then we can create as well. And once you lose your creativity, you also start living in poverty, not just financially. We’re talking about mentally, you have a poverty mindset and poverty work ethic, different things like that. So you never want to be in poverty. I have a poverty mindset or anything like that because God is lousy. And so we got the tagline Call me to create this creative space. You can do a podcast, you can do music, you can do photography, you can create businesses in there. And so that’s what the creative space is all about us. The makers Jim is all about, and I feel like that community. They’re very brilliant. They own their own content. You know, a lot of creatives work behind the scenes and we want them to come out as entrepreneurs and have ownership of their own creativity in some big corporate 500 companies owning their content. We want them to own their own content. So we we have all this equipment that people pay for. It’s very expensive, 99 to pay for it and just become a member. And when they become a member, they get to utilize all the cameras, the rear cameras, the lighting, the microphones, everything right and they just come in and bring their bodies to be a member and they can become entrepreneurs right away. And I think that’s what that community is been looking for for a long time, and no one really went into their space and delved into the creative community like Terence has done.
William Norvell: And it’s amazing, I mean, you know, we mentioned before, but you welcomed us in and we got to, you know, do the entire topic there and it was all set up. And I mean, it was it was amazing. We’ve tried to go a lot of places and we’re like, Wow, we look really good. We look professional here. He’s really made it easy for us. This is amazing. We hope you were impressed. Audience, if you weren’t, let us know. But Tori and her time here, I have heard you say a line a couple of times. I want to give you a chance to explain a little bit because I love it. And you know, and I think it’s something great for entrepreneurs to hear and Faith Driven Investor to write them in the same math applies to investing right in entrepreneurship. A lot of them aren’t going to work. And so I think your wisdom comment really made me think of this where I think the investors, the ones I’ve had that sort of impart that wisdom to me is just huge. It’s those moments, right? When the older guys came around you and said, Hey, you’re not screwing it all up. You just need to learn a few things. Right? So the line I’ve heard today before is, you know, there’s not winners and losers. There’s winners and losers. And I’d love to just give you a few minutes to go through how you came about that mindset and what it means to you as an entrepreneur and an investor
Torii Hunter: that just, you know, my baseball career has actually taught me so much. And I think some people that look at athletes and they look at all this is playing basketball, football, baseball or whatever. I actually think there’s so many lessons in this thing that is unbelievable. I would tell everybody that allow their kids to play the game of baseball, football, basketball, soccer, whatever it may be, because it teams across so many lessons. La Crosse lacrosse yes.
William Norvell: I knew he couldn’t hold it and I couldn’t hold it. I could come off and I knew
Henry Kaestner: what was a hundred episodes, and everybody knows that. I think that lacrosse is the sport, but I need to throw that in there. This is where this is, where our ED comes in and snips all that out because it’s irrelevant. But I just needed it as a threat tomorrow. I’m sorry.
Torii Hunter: He said Lacrosse, hey, lacrosse is a sport, right? Yes, it is golf. Golf is. Golf is not moving. Well, I hit one hundred miles an hour this ball not moving and I hit houses with that ball. Yeah, I bet you do. I don’t have that problem. So, you know, just looking at sports, you know, a lot of people don’t allow their kids to play sports. I think they should, and especially in the early stages, they have to make a career out of it. I don’t care if you’re good or anything like that. I just think the lessons in this thing is so powerful that it teaches your kids to make adjustments to the next kid next to him. You know, this kid might be bigger, stronger, but actually elevates you and you find things that’s inside of you that you never knew you had, because someone next to you is actually a little better. It actually takes you to another level and you might end up better than them because you never know. The mind can make you who you need to be. And I think sports would do that to you. I think it teaches life lessons. It teaches how to fail and how to make adjustments. And so I always tell parents, allow their kids to play the game of baseball, football, whatever it may be, play a sport so you can learn these different things and make it just for me. You know, I’ve learned so much from trying things, and I feel like if you are a learner, you’re actually trying those things, you can’t learn something from nothing. If you’re not walking that path of running that path or you just looking at the path, you really don’t know what’s beyond that. So you have to go try the things that you want. And I tell people all the time, Look, one thing is guarantee we are going to die, but you want to die empty. You don’t want to die with all this stuff inside of you and you rob me and Harry and William, you robbing us from something that we should be picking from your music, your books, your invention, your business, or whatever. Maybe we should be picking from that. But you afraid to do it because you’re worried about other people what they’re saying? Go do the thing and learn from it. My past writing and saying so it can be washed away your good things, your future written in stone so it can be infinite. And I definitely think that we get caught up in a lot of our past issues and becomes our prison, you know, as opposed to our schooling. So that’s why I say when I say it’s winners and learners, go back to your past and learn from that opposed. Oppose making it your prison. You’d be trapped in the present day messes with your future. So I definitely think that when I say winners and losers, it’s all about learning from the life lessons learned from your parents or the dad that wasn’t there or learned from, you know, anything, if you went to jail and you, whatever it may be, you got a divorce, learn from it, become something and become somebody different. That’s why we’re human beings because we’re supposed to become we’re not human doings and anything that you do business wise in your marriage or relationship friendships. You also have to become something and learn something from it because that’s what we’re about.
Henry Kaestner: Just becoming Tory Williams going to close this out here and saying the way he always does, which is ask if there’s something that you’re hearing from God in his word. Recently, but before we get there, I do want to touch on one thing because many of our audience will know that we had for a time in covert about 30 or 40 episodes of Faith Driven Athlete. We, of course, do Faith Driven Entrepreneur were around podcast number 200 and we’re 60 or 70 podcast episodes into Faith Driven Investor, and you have the ability to touch on all three of those clearly. Tell us a little bit about how you sort this on the Faith Driven Investor side, because I mentioned Marcus Stroud, a young man who you’ve mentored, who’s really a bright, shining star in the faith driven investing world, bringing his faith to bear in a winsome way with excellence in the marketplace. Speak a little bit, if you can please about how you have sought to steward the capital you’ve been entrusted with coming out of your baseball career and what you’ve done in real estate. How do you think about that as a spiritual exercise? Is it a lab question? But do you think it matters to God? And just how do you process that?
Torii Hunter: Well, I’ll give you an example how it matters to God, because if you look at the master, the master left, tell us that right. He left five tellers and the one was five times as he left the one with $5 May 10 when he came back. The one with two tellers May four, and he said, Well done that faithful servant. Right? You were good with little. I’m going to give you much, much more right? And then the one he gave one to one talent, he buried it right. And when he said, I know you to be a hart master, so I’m giving you back what you gave me. And he says he took his and gave it to the one that had five talents that made it 10 and gave it to him and tell him to get out. And I’m throwing you out and gnashing of teeth, right? And that’s an example in Jesus trying to tell you, Look, no matter what you have, you have to increase. You have to move forward. You have to take the chance. You have to plant the seed on the way things can grow is only if you plant the seeds. So and that’s what I try to do by being a good steward over how can I make what I have and what God has given me? And how can I grow with it? And how can I catapult people with the how can I serve people with this? How can I move people beyond what it is? And it’s about growth in necessarily about the money growth, because that’s one aspect of it. But there’s many aspects of growth as mental growth, emotional growth, relation of growth, all these different things and I want people to catapult themselves. And if I can use my resources to do that, to start the business, to grow another company that creates jobs, that they can go home and have food, shelter and clothing, and that’s what it’s all about. I have a bigger responsibility just playing the game of baseball. And when I was blessed with the finances that I have actually can make things grow. I can make $5 into $10 in time. Right? And so if you don’t plant the seed, you’re not going to do that. And one way I invest is by getting to know the person getting to know the business. What does it do to transform people’s lives? How did it help people lives? It’s a lot of questions I asked before I invest in any business and you have to hit those questions with some great answers. And so is it food, shelter or clothing? I like technology as well. I don’t get it twisted because it’s I invest in an app, two apps, one call Oxford. It’s a machine that actually helps assist you in the correct way of working out. So Oxford is good and feature set is the app that I work out with every morning, so it’s helping my temple and allowing me to do it virtually. My trainers in San Francisco and we sit and we talk virtually and we work out. So Future Fit is actually a technology that I invested in because I understand what it does for people, right? And it helps them and make them better and make them healthy and keep them strong, no matter how old you are. So it’s about investing in the people investing and what it brings to the people in the community. Is it a kingdom system? Is it food, shelter and clothing? So that’s what it’s all about, and that’s been a Faith Driven Entrepreneur or Faith Driven Investor. And that’s me in both aspects of that. If it’s the entrepreneur, if it’s a small business call, it’s got to be something in that, that realm and those aspects it is invest in, it’s the same as well. Marcus Stroud is doing that. He understands the concept and he’s taken it and put his fin on it. So and that’s something that I try to do a mark Stroud is since he was a kid, he stayed here in my house, in my home for a whole year, and all we talked about was business and how business changes people’s lives, how you create jobs and when you create jobs. You have food, shelter and clothing and you guys understand that as well.
William Norvell: Amen you might have jumped the gun on my last question, but we’re going to we’re going to ask it anyway to see if God’s got some more wisdom in you. So what we love to ask at the end is, you know, just try to give you a chance to talk about God’s word. We believe it’s living and always teaching us as you just showed us and just give you a chance. You know, is there something that God has been speaking to you lately could be this morning could be something even meditating on the season could be. You know, your favorite passage, right, but just something in God’s word that you would want to share with our audience and how it’s impacted you as a person, man.
Torii Hunter: You know, the last couple months, I think the word faith has been really working on, you know, faith, as you know, we know it’s out there. We completed that thing that’s out there and we have faith that we can get it done and God can get it done for us and help us move towards it. You don’t see it, but you see it, you know, and you believe in it. So the word faith for me, it’s like, you know, I look at, I think it was Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill was saying that this this country was going into another country. They had ten thousand man. They only have 500 men and they was on the ship and they can get to the island. And when they got to the island, the captain turned around and burned the ships right and he burned the ships. And he said, either we die trying or we win, right? And so if you don’t have anything behind you, you burn your backup plans. You do all those plan BS. You get rid of those things. Whatever God has for you, those plans will actually work. But you got a Plan B and God has you and plan a that means you’re not really all in and have faith towards it. So that’s something that’s been working in me, and I want God’s plan to be plan a. And if I can make his plan a plan and not have a backup plan and have ships behind me, that where I have to retreat if I feel like I’m getting defeated, right? It’s about burning the ships. Burn your backup plan. Focus on the plan A. Whatever it may be, it’s it’s the business. You want to open it. It’s a book you want to read, burn your ships and go tours. It’s going to be hard. It’s never going to be easy. It’s going to be hard. But burn your ships, you fight to the end. We’re going to die anyway, so you might as well try it anyway.
William Norvell: Amen I Amen I’m ready to go find some matches and get burned. Gosh, I got I got some things to get rid of over here. Have to, but in all seriousness, that’s a good word. That’s a good word. Thank you for sharing that it. Thank you, Tory. It hits my soul.
Torii Hunter: Thank you very much for
William Norvell: sharing your time with us. Your generosity over many different instances. Just extremely grateful for you, indeed.
Torii Hunter: Thank you guys for having me man out and I love what you guys are doing, man. I think it’s the most powerful thing on the face of the planet, man. What you guys are doing. You can support people and you tell them to go out there and do the thing that you’re afraid of.
God wants a relationship with you, so it’s not just about solving problems! And, as you deepen your relationship with God through prayer, it becomes easier and easier to know His will for your life and your life and your entrepreneurship.