Bryan Kelley is the chief empowerment officer of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program, or PEP. But to think of this as just another prison ministry would be a grave injustice. PEP doesn’t want to simply change inmates, instead they want to transform the 150,000 men incarcerated in Texas from the inside out. Teaching practical entrepreneurial skills helps release fathers and husbands from generational bondage. Bryan joins us on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast to share the story of how PEP is doing just that. And he illustrates just what they are doing to set men up for meaningful and lasting success after they are released from prison. 

Episode Transcript

*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I’m here in our virtual office suite with Rusty Rueff Rusty.

Bryan Kelley: Greetings. Good morning, Henry. How are you today?

Henry Kaestner: I’m awesome. Thank you. How about that Purdue football team?

Rusty Rueff: You know, if your number two in the country, watch out for us, if you’re anybody else, does it matter?

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, but that was one big game. And you know what? You’re going to be talking about that game for the next 10 years if you’re a Purdue fan.

Rusty Rueff: That’s right. And we’re going to talk about that’s all we got. It’s all we got.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. And we’re going to talk about Purdue football a little bit because otherwise we’re talking about college football. William would be on it. It just it. Just join us out with all this Alabama talk. And so we’re just going to pretend it’s all about Carolina football and Purdue football on this. I am just back from Africa. I think over the course of the next couple of podcast episodes, I might share different things about it. But Rusty, I’ll tell you one thing that’s interesting about the trip was that I show up to the airport and you know me well enough to know that I’m lousy on email. A shock to the airport early, and I’m looking at my email and I never shut the airport early. It’s definitely not something I do. But I thought, You know, I’m here early. Maybe I’ll go back and I’ll look and catch up on some of my email. One of those email that had been sent 10 days prior was important things before going to Africa. It’s like, OK, I’ll open that one. And Nicole, who runs our office, said, You need to have a yellow fever test. You need to have a PCR test, you need to have your visa for Kenya. And as I said at the

Rusty Rueff: airport, how many of those did you have? Let me get

Henry Kaestner: zero. I had none of them and none of them. And so I had to cancel. The flight from San Jose to L.A. was can take me to Doha because I wouldn’t have enough time to get a PCR test. I scramble rebooked through San Francisco, which leads at the same time, gives me an hour and a half to get the PCR testing, get the PCR test. I arrive at the ticket booth to get my boarding pass. We can’t give you a boarding pass because you don’t have a visa. You can’t get on the plane. So I had to go ahead, cancel that ticket, get another ticket to South Africa, which will allow me to get to Qatar, hoping that I get approved for the visa while is in the air, which ended up happening. And I’m like, I just I’m not going to do anything with yellow fever. I’m just going to take my chances. The woman at Qatar Airways didn’t ask for it. I get to Doha. Indeed, my visa has now been approved and then cancel the flight I’d had to Cape Town. I then rebooked to Nairobi, and then I like, you know, you need a QR code in order to get in the country. The health department website in Kenya was down and is going through and they’re like, You know, if you don’t board your plane within 20 minutes, we can’t cancel you and I’m going to go twenty three, twenty two. I guess somebody in our Nairobi office to go ahead gear that out for me. I get it. I sprint through the airport. If you’re old enough, you know about O.J. Simpson, you went through. That was me. And if I didn’t run Rusty in both runners, if I hadn’t been running like five days a week for the last couple of years, I would have missed the flight. I get the flight when we’re going from south that we’re going from Nairobi to South Africa. Later on in the trip, Justin’s there. They asked for yellow fever. I grabbed no I. I grabbed my passport and my boarding pass, and I just run to the gate. I’m like, I’ve got to get to South Africa because we’ve got this Faith Driven Investor conference with Traeger and I got to get home. And so in in working out, I didn’t need any of the three.

Rusty Rueff: But, you know, I wasn’t going to say anything because our listeners actually can’t see you. But I thought it was just the light. But I do. I see a little tinge of yellow. I mean, there’s yellow fever show up.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. It’s the kind of delayed, you know, you know, six seven days after you get back is I now have. Well, we’ll share with our listeners more about this epic trip that Justin and I and so many of the rest of our team had to find out what God was doing with Faith driven entrepreneurs and Faith Driven Investor is in Nairobi and Cape Town. We’ll do that later. But we’ve got a really special guest on today and I don’t want to keep on holding any longer than he has. Brian Kelly, thank you very, very much for joining us today for talking to us about prison entrepreneur program Pepe. And as we try to do, of course, with all guests, we like to set the stage and love to hear your story. You’ve got it very, very interesting one. It’s different than most. And while we want to talk about the incredible work that you guys are doing, we want to hear about your personal story first. So welcome to the program. Who are you? And how did you get here?

Bryan Kelley: Well, Henry Rusty, thank you so much for having me on. It’s an honor to be here. I’m Brian Kelly, CEO of The Amazing Prison Entrepreneurship Program. We’re a nonprofit in Texas that raises the banner of entrepreneurship to foster transformation in Texas inmates. We’ve done that 17 years, and I’ve got a staff of about 30 people, volunteers that number in the low thousands to three thousand three thousand graduates. And my gosh, every day is just an amazing adventure. I could see transformation stories happen all around me, but I’m not only the CEO of the program, I am also a graduate of the program. I went through the program in prison about seven years ago, seven eight years ago, got out in 2014, having done nearly twenty two years in prison.

Henry Kaestner: Oh my goodness.

Bryan Kelley: And so I’m not only helping to foster change, but that change is happening in me as well. You know, long, storied history. There is the I grew up in a small town in Kansas. My dad took off when I was a little boy. I’ve never really known him, never had a solid male influence in my life. My mother, bless her heart, did the best she could to kind of, you know, keep dinner on the table and a roof over our head and, you know, just basically high school diploma and no other real marketable skills. And so we struggled and I tried to figure out what being a man was by looking at my environment around me. What I garner from TV and what I realize is the things that I pulled together were a perverse caricature of manhood. I thought a man, you know, drank hard costarred, worked hard, treated his women hard. You know, that’s what I thought being a man was. And so that’s what I grew up into and became. I moved to Dallas after a short stint at a Division Two school. I actually went to college on a track scholarship, but I majored in partying and didn’t get it and didn’t go to track practice. And who knew they expected you to do that? So I ended up in Dallas working construction for a few years that it was really all about, you know, partying on the weekends and I got caught up in the nightlife and the nightclubs. I was going to clubs with a lot of the Dallas Cowboys like, you know, Tony Tony Dorsett to tell Jones. And I remark and smothers arrived. And that’s, you know, I dove into that and there was a really strong cocaine ceiling going on at that time. And, you know, I jumped in with both feet. And now, you know, has some things going on in my life. By that time, somebody introduced me to smoking cocaine. Hmm. And my life fell apart. In the course of about three or four months, I had lost everything. I own a cocktail. I was about to lose my apartment. I was driving a terrible car in in a in a loss desperate state. I killed a man and a dope deal that went horribly wrong on a criminal justice system would apprehend me. Take me to trial on that, and I was given a life sentence for murder in 1992, was remanded to the prison system. Everything I had come to really count on for life, my selfish life, my refocused life was stripped away and I was sent to just a bizarre environment or bizarre culture of men that I found out were just like me. They were also perverse caricatures of men who demanded respect through violence and threats and things like that. And so, you know, the path that I chose in life I was given and a fulsome way in prison.

Henry Kaestner: Wow. Tell us more about the time in prison because we’ve come to understand a bit of the man you are today, which looked very, very, very, very different from the man that we might make a bunch of assumptions about, from watching the nightly news or something like that back in 1992. So there is a transition. There is a transformation. What was 22 years like behind bars? What happened?

Bryan Kelley: You know, the first prison that I was sent to was the largest prison in Texas. Of nearly 4000 inmates, the demographics was eighteen to twenty one. At 26, I was referred to as old school at that time. And, you know, kind of young angst filled too much energy. We were fighting over everything they would fight over. You know what TV shows to watch, who could sit on a bench, who could say who? It was just bizarre. There was just way too much testosterone going on. So I just I jumped into that. It was in a riot on the regular and I didn’t know what started it. And it’s just a bizarre, violent environment. And I kept thinking to myself, this is what my choices have led to. And about a year into my incarceration, just thinking my life is over. A friend of mine invited me to a prison ministry called TIROS, which you probably know was a Greek term for God’s special time regard as a point of time unheard of. But I said, What’s Kairos? And he said, Well, for you, what it means is four days of home cooked meals. And I said, Well, sign me up because the food here is terrible. And so I went to that the prison ministry and the model that is free to Christian Man come in to have a four day retreat with 42 hand-selected inmates. And we have talks and small group discussions and prayer and discussions about forgiveness and choices and things like that. And you know, quite frankly, I’d never been around like that before. I love the encouraged. They listened. It was. It was so refreshing, but I didn’t think there were real. I was poking and prodding and asking questions and saying, You were a men like you come from. I was intrigued but skeptical. And I bonded with a Lutheran preacher who’d went to Kansas University near where I grew up, and he won my trust. Just talk to about hometown stuff. To that point, I had never admitted to anybody that I was guilty of my crimes. I’d lied to everybody. I lied at trial, lied to my family. I lied to my fellow inmates. And I just couldn’t carry that darkness anymore. Being around those men of the light. So I told Keith, I said, I need to tell you something. So we went off to the side and I just, you know, I put it all out and I told him everything about my crime, the details. And, you know, I was just a blubbering mess and he let me finish and he looked at me, said, Brian. I’m so incredibly honored that you would share that story with me first. That is huge. And I want to tell you something. I forgive you. I fell apart. I mean, I was a snotty hitch mess, and he let me pull it together and he said, You know, Brian, although I forgive you. And that’s true. You need to ask God to forgive you, you know? I promise you he will. And I said, You know, Keith, I get that, but I can’t. And he said, Well, understand why not? And I said, Well, I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve his forgiveness. I deserve this. Or worse, I get it. I’ll take my medicine. And he looked at me, actually laughed, and he said, Wow, I didn’t realize when I came here this weekend, I was going to meet somebody who was smarter than God. And I said, Well, hold on, Keith, I didn’t say that. He said, Oh, sure you do. You said you admitted God would forgive you if you ask him. But you know how to handle this better than he does. How has that played out in your life? And all of a sudden, I just realized that my very best thinking had led to a life sentence for murder of May Never Get Out. What do I know about a living? I’m a mess. I’m a part of the problem. I want to be a part of the solution. How do I do that? So I just hand it over to God that day. I say, God, here is the broken pieces of my life. I’m sorry that it’s such a mess, but do with it what you will. And on that day, May 28, 1994, there was a change that was made and it didn’t get me out of the consequences my crown. But it certainly changed the trajectory of my future.

Rusty Rueff: I’m almost at a loss for words. I mean, the story is just so amazing and I and and thank you so much for sharing it so authentically and openly with us and our listeners because, you know, transformation is a hallmark of the Christian journey and so many times we see that or we think we see it. But you know, what you’re explaining to us is a profound transformation. And so thank you for sharing it. I’m going to transition into the prison entrepreneurship program. So when and where did you get involved in that?

Bryan Kelley: Sure. So shortly after my transformation, my conversion, I dove into the school, I would earn a degree bachelor’s degree in psychology. I dove into recovery to learn, to understand, you know, what were my triggers? What led me to be so dependent upon drugs and alcohol and chemical substances? I dove into church and the Bible. A man stepped up and went disciple me for 10 years straight. We lived together and we worked together. And every day we would talk about the fundamentals of Christianity coming out of the Bible and how we were applying that in our lives or failing to apply that in our lives. But there was authenticity. We just work that stuff out. He disciple me, and as I was disciple, I started to disciple others. So I was leading group, small groups, prayer groups, Bible study groups just getting involved and started pouring out everything that was being poured into me. As I was doing that, more and more opportunities popped up, and there came a time when I was invited to be a peer educator, a leader, a shepherd inside a prison for the prison entrepreneurship program. And I actually transferred units to go do that, and it was amazing. I was pouring in to man 50, 60 70 at the time, helping them work on their character, work on their business plan. Think through different options or visions for their life. And I absolutely loved it. It was the perfect way for me to use my experience, my passions to really make a difference, even if I never got out of prison. At that point, I didn’t know if I would or not. And so I dearly loved it. And it’s interesting that at the graduation of the very first class that I invested in, I was sitting over there among the staff among difference makers in this world, and I was crying. And it’s an emotional moment anyway. But the reason I was weeping was because I had never been aligned with such incredible people making a difference for the kingdom. And I remember, you know, crying out for God’s sake, I don’t ever want to leave a company or people making a difference like this. Thank you for inviting me into this. Please continue to surround me with people making a difference. I want to be a part of that. No. That very night I got shipped back to my old unit because we were about to switch units where we’re going to host the program, and I couldn’t go because I had too much time. And so everything I just landed in my hand, this jewel of peace was stripped away and oh, I was upset. I wrestled with God over quite some time. And I just asked myself, Why would you let me taste that? Strip it away? I don’t understand. That’s cruel. And you know, he must be looking at me, you know, outside of the bounds of time, looking at where I’m at now, seeing my sanity was just weight on my timing. Everything’s going to be okay in the fullness of time. You know, I I actually swung a deal with parole, my 13th time up for parole. I had just cleared the 20 year mark. I’d been denied 12 times and the parole commissioner was basically telling me I’ve made parole. And he he asked me at the end, he said, Son, do you have any questions? I said, Yes, sir, I’ve got one. Will you give me parole next year? Oh my goodness. He said. He’s here for you. Are you asking me to stay in prison for another year? I said, Yes, sir. And he said, Why? Why would you do that? And I said, Well, I would like to go through the prison entrepreneurship program. But the only way I can do it is if you give me a hard release date for next year. Otherwise I have too much time to go with Adrian. And you just looked at me for the longest time. And finally, he said, let me look into this. Basically, he gave me exactly what I asked for. I bargained for an extra year in prison to go through the prison entrepreneurship program because I knew the value that I was going to get out of this. It was an investment in my future.

Henry Kaestner: Wow, that’s an awesome story on so many different levels. So with hundreds and hundreds, I think this podcast episode number 200 or something like that. Lots of entrepreneurial stories talking about seeing an opportunity in the marketplace, you know, problem is broken and being able to be just be out and be able to test market, find product market fit. What’s the entrepreneurial process like if you’re in prison? And you come up with an idea. But presumably you’re somewhat limited in how you go about it, and yet I know enough about people to know that there have been quite a few successful entrepreneurial companies that have been birthed out of it. But what’s that process like when you start off in prison?

Bryan Kelley: You know, Henry, you’re right. We’ve had right at 600 businesses started by ex-felons after they’ve been released, and now several of those, many of those had revenues and sales over a million dollars last year. But, you know, it really starts and this goes back to our very genesis. We recognize that the man in prison and they can see themselves as an entrepreneur. They can’t see themselves in corporate America because of the rigid policies written against, you know, felony convictions and things like that that they can see themselves as small business owners. And I’ll tell you this, too. From their very survival on the street, the men in prison have natural business skills. They know about supply chains and risk management, profit margins, marketing, sales, reading, people recognizing opportunities. Now I think that we would all agree that they have taken a negative advantage of opportunities in the past, but we need to just restructure that and teach them how to recognize positive opportunities that are going to benefit not just them, but the community at large. I mean, isn’t that what a definition of an entrepreneur is? Somebody who knows gaps or problems and sees them as an opportunity, an opportunity to make money or an opportunity to make a difference? So that’s what we do, but we recognize that character is the most important part. That’s the platform. That’s the foundation that we’re going to build upon. And if we don’t have character, it doesn’t matter what you know about entrepreneurship. I tell the guys all the time we can teach you how to run a million dollar business. But if you don’t have the character sport, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to crash and burn. So we start with character development, and quite frankly, that’s the lion’s share of what we do on the inside. We start with that. We get a common language and we give them some practice of doing some things like that. And then we begin instilling business acumen knowledge, helping them form a business plan, thinking about what that’s going to look like. We invite volunteers in to help shape what their plan is. Make sure that it’s viable. That makes sense, that they’re thinking through all those issues. And what we found is that guys are incredibly creative. They typically come up with delusional solutions. I think at times and so they need people who are clear eyed who have done this, who have started and led businesses to help them think through. It takes somebody with experience to teach someone. Look, this is just discipleship. You know, we are called to the workplace to be instruments of God. This is true discipleship without the Christian needs.

Rusty Rueff: It’s fascinating to me because as you’re talking about these entrepreneurs in prison, you know, I think sometimes about, you know, in the cyber technology world where you’ll get Apple or Google or Facebook going out and paying people to hack their systems because they know that they think in a different way. And so there is entrepreneurial ism, you know, residing there. It just needs to be shaped in the right direction. And so, you know, hats off to what you’re doing inside of this prison ministry. You’ve shared your story with us. Are there particular stories coming out of Prep that are on your heart to share to us today?

Bryan Kelley: Oh my gosh, there’s so many it’s hard to eliminate. But you know, a couple of years ago we recognized that, you know, we’ve got just an incredible transformation story, an incredible businessman to share with the world. So we hosted a showcase entrepreneur, Shark Tank, if you will, in Dallas, Texas, at the George Bush Center SMU campus. We highlighted three of our graduate entrepreneurs and they were fishing for about 250000 growth capital. All of them had established businesses. Well, take them. I wondered to start out with the guy, I think, who won the show that night, who won $100000 in gross capital, which is an amazing story. Rubin had went through be about eight or nine years previous when he got out. He had never had a job before, and he had no real marketable skills. But he had newfound character and he had some tools and a tool belt that he knew he could apply. So he got a job out in West Texas in the oil field, recognizing that he could earn some quick cash and get on his feet as quickly as possible. So he went to work out there and his boss dude to loved him because he had that character, the work ethic, he had that loyalty. He was dependable and trustworthy and showed up and work hard. One day they ran on a truck that was service on oil well and the truck broke down. So Ruben called up the shop, said, Hey, you know, you can fix my truck today. We’re long, excuse me, five or six days. And so Ruben took the initiative we’ve got on YouTube, figured out how to fix it himself did so, and it wasn’t, Oh my god, you’ve got mechanical skills that need to be developed. What if I get you some training is the pinnacle of that. So they gave us the training. They moved him out of the shop. He quickly moved up to shop foreman and then the entrepreneur came out and he started recognizing gaps in the service business in the oilfield. And he started his own business doing preventative maintenance to the trucks that go out to service the oil wells. First year, he did a million nine. Wow. Three hundred net. And that was without any marketing at all. Just great customer service and a trustworthiness of providing great service and being willing to go out at two o’clock in the morning and twenty degree weather and fix a truck. And so he was pitching to us. He wanted to build a shop at that time. This is just pre-COVID, just a few months before COVID hit. And he won that hundred grand. He was thinking about building the shop. COVID hit and he pivoted into fashion, and he said, Hey, there’s an opportunity here to grow my business. And so he bought two other trucks instead and increase his fleet and is now. I think I heard just last week he’s looking at doing four million this year. Wow.

Rusty Rueff: Great story. Great story. Yeah. It also reminds me of so many times in the entrepreneurial world. We talk about grit, right, that people have to have grit. And I think about, you know, someone who spent time in prison, you know, and then making the transition back to society. And I mean, it’s about grit, right? I mean, you. So there’s a place where, you know, we have that evidence, we have that evidence before I transition into an Segway to talking a little bit more about transformation. How are you finding capital? Are these entrepreneurs having an opportunity that investors are showing up?

Bryan Kelley: You know, that’s a really great question, and it’s been super difficult over our 17 year history for our would be entrepreneurs to find capital and especially startup capital. I mean, that’s a that’s a super risky asset class for banks anyway. But when you factor in that, they’re ex-felons they probably have or or no banking history. It’s almost crazy for a bank to even consider that we have discouraged in the past angel investors from our network of volunteers because I think we just need to have some safeguards in place. And so our approach has always been for them to bootstrap, to get out and get a job and prove their worth and save some money and save the necessary 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars to start their business. And we’ve done some crowdsource funding, but that has been spitting and sputtering at best. And so about a year and a half ago, we recognize we need to launch a lending arm and we’re done so. It’s called contract capital and it’s a second chance friendly lending arm. We pull in some social impact investors who have created a pool. Of money. Well, they recognize that we’re going to do a great job of vetting and underwriting these loans, making sure that they make sense, first of all, that what we’re underwriting character finance, everything like that and we’re pairing our guys with a business mentor to walk with him along the way. Today, we’ve had about 10 loans totaling about $300000. Every one of those loans is performing perfectly. And the stories of transformation that are coming out of that are just incredible. A quick story just to highlight that there’s a guy right here in Houston who three or four years ago started a metal fencing business, everything from chain link fences to the wrought iron spear point. And he’d been doing about two hundred and fifty thousand a year, and he came to us and he said, I want to borrow some money to get a used forklift. I need to be able to move more metal. That’s my bottleneck. We did a deep dove scrub of his business plan and his finances, and hey, this guy’s stand up. There’s some places that need a little polish, but we can help with that. We assigned a business advisor to him and they did a rough scrub on his business model, making sure that he understood where his biggest margins were, where he should be prioritizing his time and his efforts. Next year, he did about a million and a half six x increase. And I promise you, it was not because of that forklift. It was because he is now surrounded by somebody who is in his business, making sure that he’s thinking about optimizing his business. And so that’s exactly what Pep brings is a army of volunteers to help you think through your business and how to do that more Typekit.

Rusty Rueff: And how do you keep them spiritually grounded once graduated?

Bryan Kelley: You know, there’s a spiritual component to it. Now we don’t require a professional face. We’re not what I would call faith based, but what we do is introduce what a successful, practical life of faith looks like. 70 to 80 percent of our volunteers are Christian. They go into prison. They invest in these man who can do really nothing for them. You know, it’s because they have that heart to serve to disciple. And so we institute in our character formation part what being an honorable, godly man looks like. We pray in and out, but we do not require a profession of faith. We don’t require them to have any particular faith that I encourage them to pursue and investigate faith because faith is not scared of any amount of investigation, right? So I encourage them to find that out. And what they see and practice in our volunteers really resonates with them. It becomes faith that’s not necessarily tough. And so we follow through. We try to keep guys in community after they get out. We’ve got a continuing education program. We’ve got community events that we want to include in law, and we’re really focused on building our vision now of a post-release second chance incubator and accelerator that will start in Houston, Texas, where we bring together our volunteers and our guys in a more impactful and intentional way. We’re calling out the PDB collider because we want to foster more of those positive collisions, and when those two groups get together, it’s amazing how God can work through that.

Rusty Rueff: That’s great. And we’ll make sure that on the website, we post everything about Pepe and Andre Capital. I mean, we have lots of listeners who are not only entrepreneurs but also faith driven investors. And you know, I find a lot of times we begin to seek for social capital and we look sometimes overseas for microloans and different kind of lending vehicles. And, you know, right here at home, you know, you’ve got an amazing ministry and an amazing program going on that I would imagine is picking the interest of our listeners right now. So thank you for that. I’m going to transition because I know you like to talk about going beyond change, and I had used the word before transformation, your own personal transformation. And this whole conversation is just really should remind all of us of the Apostle Paul’s, you know, phenomenal transformation, you know, probably the most dramatic story in the Bible of transformation. You know, a guy who goes from being a persecutor to a guy who, you know, probably helped cause the death of Christ followers today in turning around and spreading the gospel around the world? You know, what I find and we all find fascinating is that Paul never stopped being a zealot. You know, even in the times that he was imprisoned. But the direction of his affection and his enthusiasm totally changed. Right. He went from being this prosecutor to being on the other side, a defender and a lifting up. Does this speak to the difference between surface change and deep transformation?

Bryan Kelley: You know, I think it absolutely does, and I think Paul is a great example, I think many of our guys are great examples of that. I share with him quite often, you know, allegiance to town. Also, we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works. Our call to the workplace, our call for our hands to get dirty is just as high of a calling as being called in the pulpit. You know, we are, we’re called impact our families and our community around us, and we spend most of our time at work, so we need to be prepared to do that. But one of the things that I remind them is that word for workmanship is in the Greek poema, from which we get the word poem. We are God’s poem written to the world. And you know, every great poem, every great work of literature has a catastrophe overcome that turns into a great story. And so these guys are an excellent example of how God tells a great turnaround story. However, we also render masterpiece, and I remind them that, you know, we come to this opportunity as broken pieces just like my life was broken pieces and God takes those broken pieces and turns them into a masterpiece, and that transformation goes on display for all to see. It’s undeniable from our families, our community who knew this in the past when we are not the same man that we used to be. We go from being vessels of dishonor to vessels of honor and light and love and wives. We have that abundant life. It’s undeniable, and everybody around us recognizes it and takes notice and wants to know, how do I get that? And so I just love it when those stories happen around me and just it just mushrooms at a Domino’s. And that’s exactly what the Kingdom of God is supposed to be like.

Rusty Rueff: It is that. And are you talk about the inside outside strategy? Is that what that is

Bryan Kelley: at the inside, outside and in a couple of different ways? You know, we start inside a prison and we follow up on the outside, but it starts inside and radiates outside individually as well. And so there’s both fronts of that. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, going back to the macro, folks, there are a lot of prison programs out there that are just inside or they’re just outside, and I really think it takes both. We plant seeds. We give them a tool belt on the inside that’s going to prepare them for what they’re going to encounter on the outside that you can follow through and continue to walk that path. You know, discipleship means walking along with somebody, and it takes some time until we get to the place where we’re independent. We can do that on our own. We can become disciple makers. And so that’s what we’re trying to foster. We’re taking men who had been vessels of dishonor, turning them into doting fathers, philanthropists, even investors and just job creators, difference makers in our community.

Rusty Rueff: I’m curious, Brian, is there institutional acceptance to this in our prison system?

Bryan Kelley: You know, there absolutely is. We’ve got a tremendous brand in Texas, former criminal justice. They’ve been partners of ours for our 17 year existence. We actually operate to a private prison. MTC has management training corporation, our great friends of ours. They have both institutions have bent over backwards to help foster change. I’ll give you a great story. One of our guys got out about a year ago and he had been in prison for 10 years. About three months out, a friend of his invited him to a trip in Cabo. He said, I just got out of prison. Let me take you to Kabul and have some fun. And he went down there and met some folks and actually got a job while he was on vacation and didn’t come back. He got a job running an art gallery. He had learned art while he was in prison. The guy recognized his character and his entrepreneurship gave him a job leading an art gallery down there. And he also sells some of his own art through that art gallery. Well, the president of the private prison that we operate in. Heard that story and just happened to be going down to Cabo, and he saw him out and found him, he said. His name’s T.J. So T.J., I just wanted to come see this for myself. I’ve heard stories about your transformation and what you’re doing. And I wanted to see it with my own eyes. And T.J. said, Yeah, it’s true. And he said, Do you also sell your own art through here? And he goes, Yes, sir. And the president of MTC said, And I’d like to buy a piece from you. He said, That’s crazy. I’ve just sold out. He said, Well, can I commission something for me? Well, what do you want? He said, I want a portrait. He goes, I’d love to do portraits, you know, portrait of who? And he said, I want a portrait of you. I want a picture of you to hang in my house and remind me that the men who are in my prisons all across this country can turn out to be just like you. Wow.

Rusty Rueff: Wow, that’s an amazing story there. And yeah, we all should be having that portrait. Hanging in our houses here. You know, it’s unique that we would have someone who has this kind of insight into the topic that we’re talking about, so I’m going to take us a little bit of a different direction. You know, not all individuals who come through the prison system and become paroled or served their time become entrepreneurs, but they can become productive employees and workers. And I spend a lot of years in the human resource world. And, you know, I look back and I think about and I worked in manufacturing plants and sales organizations, and I think about the number of people who checked their application that they were a convicted felon or committed a crime. And that application was discarded, right? Because we couldn’t look past that. We have entrepreneurs listening right now who have companies that are growing. Talk to us about giving the second chance to those who served their time and are coming back into society.

Bryan Kelley: When I got out of prison after almost 22 years, I had never Googled anything, ever sent an email and never use a debit card or a cell phone. I mean, the learning curve was straight up and I applied at a sign shop for my very first interview because I’d done some graphic layout and some stuff in prison for about 12 years. And so I walked into this franchise show up and they got my resume. And he looked at it briefly and he goes, You’ve got a lot of sign shop experience. And I said, Can I can be completely honest with you? And he said, Sure. And I said, I just got out of prison. And not only that for almost 22 years. And he sat down in his seat. He goes, Wow. Can I ask why? And I said, Sure, murder. And he pulls his glasses off and he looks at me and he said, Brian, I’ve never had an interview like this. Can I ask you how that happened? I said, yes, thank you for the opportunity. So I gave him a quick rundown of, you know what my life was like, what happened, what it’s like now, how I can add value to his company. And he just he looked at me at the end and he said, I am so intrigued. This is the most captivating, intriguing interview I’ve ever been a part of. And I love seeing the transformation that’s going on you, but I’m struggling with the idea of having you come to work here. Having been in prison for so long and for that reason. Can you talk to me about that? And I said, Yeah, absolutely. Here’s the deal is, you know, at that time, I was 48 years old and I thought, I’ve got nothing. I said, I am going to be so focused on creating wealth for me to get ready for retirement. If I can do that, I’ll work every hour. You throw my way, I promise you. You can’t outwork me. Dare you to try. He kind of smirked and he said, OK, yeah, that’s fair enough. I said, But you know, not only that, I’m a creature of routine for my twenty two years in prison, so I’m going to be where I’m supposed to be and I’m going to be at work. When I’m supposed to be here, I’m I go home and I’m, you know, not and I’m comfortable in that routine. And then I started talking about, you know, some of the things that I had learned in prison that were going to be beneficial for him, especially the things that he did. And as I went through that list, and I think number one of that is loyalty to the person who gives a guy a chance when he gets out and went through this whole list of things with this business owner, he looked at me and goes, You make me wonder why I haven’t been hiring ex-cons all along Amen. And so I think there are many employers out there right now who are struggling obtaining the labor that they need, and there is an untapped labor pool coming out of prison. But not everybody coming out of prison is ready because we’ve worked on character because we’ve worked on some business acumen and skills. The men who are coming out of TPP are vastly different than General Joe coming out of prison, so I think we’ve got some opportunities for employers out there.

Rusty Rueff: Absolutely. And we’ll have to figure out a way to dig deeper into this topic because you’re exactly right. We do have a labor shortage. That’s labor shortage doesn’t look like it’s going to go away anytime soon. We have entrepreneurs trying to figure out how to bring their businesses off the ground struggling with that labor shortage. And we have a talent pool that we don’t recognize or don’t understand we should recognize. And so we all need some help in that. So we need to figure out a way to bring you back and dig deeper into that. And then we’ll talk about that for sure. So we have to bring this episode to a close, unfortunately. And typically our other co-host here, William will ask this question. So I get the honor of asking it today since he’s not with us, but we like to close every episode hearing about what God is teaching you right now, like in this moment, and also how we could be praying for you. So share with us, you know, he’s got God to have a word on your heart or word from the scripture that’s speaking to you right now.

Bryan Kelley: Oh my gosh, he’s dealing with me right now with John 10:10. The Norvell came to steal, kill and destroy, but Christ came so that we might have life and have that more abundant. The reason I bring that up is I’m helping my church launch a Christ based 12-Step program called Regeneration. We actually launched last night. We had about 30 souls who were desperate for freedom from sin show up. And so we just said, Hey, you know, I recognize I’m not saying any of you, you’re not Christians, you’re probably Christians who are carrying around chains and baggage, and we’ve got some keys that will unlock that. We want you to have, like life more abundant. We want you to see authentic life like that. And some of us who have found some of that freedom. And we’re going to do this together. It’s always about cycles. It’s always about community. And we should not be people as Christians who are going around in misery and depression and we are not home. We are filled with lies and lies more abundant and that should show Amen.

Rusty Rueff: And how can we be praying for you?

Bryan Kelley: You know, there’s so many things, so many good things on my plate. I think I’m a victim sometimes of saying yes to too many things. And so. I would just ask for clarity of God’s purpose and, you know, doing things of my church, doing things with our guys. Matter of fact, I’m taking 10 guys on a men’s retreat this weekend. You know, I just pray that I continue to get filled so I can provide the overflow to all those around me.

Rusty Rueff: Amen Well, let’s do that right now. Or we just thank you for this episode with Brian and the gift that he has given us today. And Lord, we just ask you to bless him and he and his family and this he has so many opportunities coming in front of him. I could feel it, even as he expresses this need to be able to have clarity and wisdom about what to do and what not to do and how to spend his time. We ask you to give him that. And Lord, we also lift up the PEP program. What an amazing gift you’re giving to so many men and women inside of the prison system, and we just ask you to bless that ministry. Keep it strong and let those who are wanting to support it feel divinely appointed to come that way. We lift up all these things in your precious name, and we say that so Amen Brian Kelly, the man who decided he wanted to stay in prison for one extra year. And thank you for doing it because you know your ability to speak to us today and to lead an organization like Pep might have not happened had you not stayed in that extra year. So what a sacrifice that we’re all benefited from. So thank you so much.

Bryan Kelley: Well, thank you for having me on today. And like I said earlier, it’s amazing what God can do with broken pieces. He can turn it into a masterpiece, and I’m not just talking about why he does it everywhere.

Rusty Rueff: Thanks so much for joining us on today’s show. We hope you enjoyed it.

— by Reuben Coulter

Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Sara Blakely come to mind as outstanding entrepreneurs. Many of us think of entrepreneurs as lone heroes – valiantly overcoming challenges and finding great success. The reality is that entrepreneurs are often lonely and can become overwhelmed. The negative consequences can not only impact your business but also family and faith. Tim Tebow or Lionel Messi would never seek to compete without having a coach and a whole team of other experts to support them, so why not an entrepreneur? The difference between success and failure is realising your limitations and finding the support you need to grow. 

“The Lord God said ‘It is not good for man to be alone’” Genesis 2: 18

Research shows that entrepreneurs who have a supportive community significantly outperform their peers and experience greater joy in the process. Invest in yourself this year.

Here are some key questions that you need to ask yourself.

1. What help do I need? – This will depend on what stage in the journey you are at. You may be looking for spiritual support or might need more practical advice, from marketing to capital raising.

2. What format works best for me? – Would a peer learning experience or one to one advice be more effective? Do I prefer online or in-person?

3. How much commitment am I willing to make? – You will need to make time available to get the most out of this experience. Some support is free, while other programs have a cost.

Networks and peer groups 

There are many different Christian business networks worldwide, some within churches and others independent of them. They typically focus on prayer, discipleship and networking and tend to have a low membership fee. Examples include FCCI, CBMC or Europartners. Other organizations, like C12 Group, provide a more structured approach to leaders of larger businesses helping them develop as a leader and grow their business. Entrepreneurs are organised into small groups with a chair who leads the group and provides coaching. They are higher touch and so usually have higher fees than networks.

Accelerators and incubators

Entrepreneurs worldwide face enormous challenges to take their ideas to scale—90% of businesses do not grow and over 75% fail within three years. In the past few decades, accelerators and incubators to support entrepreneurs at different stages of their journey have become popular. Great examples include Praxis and Ocean in the US, Creo in Europe and Sinapis in East Africa. Incubators are typically focused at idea stage businesses and usually provide office space and guidance to prototyping and developing an idea. Accelerators provide support to early stage entrepreneurs who are looking to scale. This often combines cohort-based learning and coaching. The best accelerators also invest in or connect entrepreneurs with investors. Each caters to a slightly different group and has particular areas of expertise so talk to their alumni to see if the program might be the right fit for you.

Mentoring and consulting

Sometimes your needs are quite specific. There is an area of personal development or professional expertise that is critical to address. In that case, a more tailored approach with a capable mentor or consultant may be more appropriate. The more specific you can be about your needs the more likely you are to find the right fit. There are many excellent mentors and consultants out there but also a few charlatans so make sure you get recommendations from other entrepreneurs.

The gates of Liverpool Football Club have their team motto inscribed on them – ‘You’ll never walk alone’. Make it your New Year’s resolution to get the support that you need to thrive. Our prayer is that 2022 would be the year of the Lord’s favour in your life and business.

We’ve selected the best Christian organisations who can support you;

• Top 10 Networks and Peer Groups

• Top 20 Accelerators and Incubators

• Top 10 Mentoring Opportunities

Or join a Faith Driven group today. Practical, purposeful discussions with others who really get it. One hour a week for 8 weeks you will connect with 10-15 like-minded entrepreneurs to walk through the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Study and discuss what it means to embrace your call to create and fulfill God’s purpose for your life and work.

Recent articles

Reflective Adviser | Illuminating Storyteller | Founder, Crucible Leadership

As the founder of Crucible Leadership and a trusted adviser, I teach the power of embracing one’s crucible moments as a path to living and leading with significance in all areas of life.

Growing up in a prominent family-owned media business in Australia that I eventually led — and lost — I’ve both witnessed and experienced the challenges of high-pressure, high-impact leadership. After losing a 150-year-old family business, I took some time to examine not only my own shortcomings and losses, but also life principles and lessons I’ve learned from family members that came before me as well as some of history’s greatest leaders.

Born out of these insights, I sought out to develop a life practice for living and leading with uncompromised authenticity. Crucible Leadership employs the learning power of story and a philosophical approach to allow each individual to discover their own unique path to leading a life of significance.

My career has spanned banking, aviation services, and media before becoming an executive coach and writer. I hold an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University and earned my MBA from Harvard Business School. In addition to starting Crucible Leadership, I’m currently an International Coach Federation (ICF) certified executive coach, I serve on the Board of Annapolis Area Christian School, and am an Elder at Bay Area Community Church. I currently reside in Annapolis, Maryland, with my wonderful wife, Gale. Together, we have three great kids who are in the process of developing their own unique paths.

LINKS

• Warwick Fairfax’s Story

• Crucible Leadership

• Twitter

• LinkekdIn

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE FAITH DRIVEN ENTREPRENEUR

Executive Director | t-factor

Coca-Cola Consolidated, Inc.

Mark Whitacre is Executive Director of the t-factor initiative at Coca-Cola Consolidated, Inc. From 2003-2019, Mark served as COO of Christian Business Men’s Connection (CBMC). From 2006-2013, he was the COO and Chief Science Officer at Cypress Systems, Inc., a California biotechnology company where Mark still serves on their advisory board today.
After completing his B.S. and M.S. degrees at Ohio State University, Mark earned his Ph.D. degree at Cornell University in biochemistry. He worked as an executive for multiple Fortune 500 companies, including Ralston Purina, Degussa (Evonik), and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). He was recruited at ADM when he was 32 as the President of the Biotech Division. Mark has extensive international business experience, having lived in Germany for four years working for Evonik at their world headquarters in Frankfurt.

Mark is considered the highest-ranked executive of any Fortune 500 company to become a whistleblower in U.S. history. He wore a wire for 3 years for the FBI and was responsible for uncovering the ADM price-fixing scandal in the early 1990s. His story inspired the major motion picture “The Informant” starring Matt Damon as Mark.

LINKS

• Personal Website

PODCASTS FOR THE FAITH DRIVEN ENTREPRENEUR

— by Doug Ditto

There is an oft repeated urban legend that when asked to name the greatest invention in human history, Albert Einstein simply replied, “compound interest.” Depending on the source, perhaps he called compound interest the 8th wonder of the world. What he actually said does not matter. We all know that compounding is a powerful thing. As a banker, I have an especially strong appreciation for compound interest. Banking is a great business because interest never sleeps.

I want to submit that almost all of the benefits in every area of life are derived from the power of compounding. The important things in life are not urgent, and they are easy to put off. They will wait. If we neglect them today, we can attend to them tomorrow with no big consequences. But, if we neglect them for a long time, the consequences can be devastating. The truly important things accumulate value over time.

For example, we all want to be healthy. We want to look and feel our best, but it will not happen overnight. Good health results from habits—months and years of eating nutritious foods, exercising regularly, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The quick fixes—the fad diets—never last. We end up going up and down like a yo-yo.

Or take knowledge. Unless one is extraordinarily gifted, mastering a skill or profession requires thousands of hours of consistent study and practice. Yet many of us move from one college major, job, or career to the next one. Whatever knowledge, proficiency, or relational capital we might have attained is squandered and lost.

I have come to the realization that nowhere is the principle of compounding more important than in our relationships, especially with those closest to us. This applies equally to our professional and personal lives. However, quality time spent with important people is seldom urgent. We probably do not write it on our to-do lists. We can put it off for hours or days or weeks. Ah, but we kid ourselves if we think that just because it is not urgent, it does not matter. It matters as much or more than anything else.

The Power of Compounding Relationships

Thirty-eight years ago, when I decided to leave Hilton Head Island, where I had lived for 5 years selling real estate, my pastor and good friend Chuck gave me some advice that I have never forgotten. He told me, “Doug, remember – who you are with is more important than what you do.” I was 27 years old and had no idea what I was going to do for a career, but I never forgot his advice. So, when my good friend, Jess Correll, called me in February of 1985 and asked if I wanted to work with him, I never hesitated. I dropped out of MBA school, moved to a small town near the Tennessee line, and started my career in banking. You see, I knew Jess. We had been friends for 11 years. I knew his ability. I knew his passion. I knew he was a rainmaker. But more importantly, I knew the depth of his character and his faith. I knew his strengths and weaknesses, and I knew my own. I believed that we would do great things together. That was a watershed moment for me and one of the wisest decisions I would ever make in my life.

The past 36 years have been an incredible ride. We started with a couple little country banks. They were barely profitable, and morale was low. But it was a great place to learn. We didn’t know much about banking, but the banks we acquired were in bad shape, and we could hardly make them worse. Over time, Jess assembled an inner-circle team of smart, energetic, likable, and high-character folks. Providentially, we had some fabulous mentors and directors who were willing to put their personal credibility on the line to come along side us. And we had enough sense to listen to them.

We began to learn and grow. We acquired a few more local bank charters and opened a few de novo banks. With each acquisition came more talented people. We didn’t wait for customers to just walk in the door like most community bankers. We went out looking for them. Jess’s father was one of our mentors, and he said, “Boys, business is easy. Just go out and make friends, and ask them to do business with you.” And that’s what we did.

In 1988, one of our mentors invited us to go with him to Chicago to participate in an FSLIC auction of commercial real estate loans out of a failed Savings and Loan in Tennessee. While there, we bought our first pool of discounted loans. So, when the RTC started selling loans in the late Fall of 1990, we already knew the game and hit the ground running. The next few years were wild. We flew all over the Eastern US buying discounted, and often times distressed, commercial real estate loans. It was hectic, nerve wracking, fun, and highly profitable.

And we did it all with various trusted strategic partners we met along the way. Our mentors had instilled in us an abundance mentality. We learned that “deals are like buses; there’s always another one coming.” The more trusted partners we cultivated, the bigger the deal flow. Plus, we made some lifelong friends.

Because of the power of compounding relationships, we have an incredible team of talented people. We have directors that give us wise counsel, and we have long-term partners of high character and proven expertise. When we find a great team member or a great partner or a great customer, we do our best to add value to that relationship and keep them for life—because when you have trust and respect and you like each other, everything gets easier and more enjoyable. All the unnecessary friction goes away.

The Long Game in Business

Still, compounding only does its magic over extended periods of time. We live in a world of fast food, entertainment on demand, and instant gratification. Everybody seems to have a short-term focus. Businesses obsess over last quarter’s earnings. But not us. That’s not the game we are playing. We are playing a long-term game.

Seems like every few days, as we meet new people, they want to hear a little bit about our story. When we tell folks that Jess, our partner Jimmy, and I have been together for 36 years, they are amazed. That’s unusual.

Here are some of the ways we play the “Long Game”:

We strive to:

1. Make the next right decision. We hold each other accountable to live by the Golden Rule and to act in harmony with Biblical principles, like the decision to form a charitable foundation and to tithe our pretax net income.

2. Focus on the process. We say, “Focus on the process, and the results will follow.”

3. Remember that the relationship is more important than the deal. We have learned that relationships yield huge returns over time.

4. Diligently guard our integrity and reputation. Warren Buffet famously said, “It takes 20 years to gain a great reputation and 5 minutes to lose it. If you think about that, you will do things differently.”

5. Enable and encourage our team members to own stock in our company, and empower them to think like owners. We give them regular opportunities to acquire stock at book value.

6. Grow our leaders from within. We continually invest in our most valuable asset—our team members.

7. Plan for the future. We give a lot of time and thought to succession planning and identifying and mentoring the next generation of leaders.

8. Stay green and growing. We don’t allow a little success to go to our head, and we continually look for ways to improve.

9. Be lifelong learners. We read and share articles and podcasts with each other every day. We strive to go to bed each night a little bit smarter.

10. Do not chase fads or follow the crowd. We know that the economy goes in cycles—booms and busts. We have always done extremely well during the busts. So, we remain disciplined and patient.

11. Play to our strengths. We have proven to do a few things exceptionally well. We try to keep on doing those things.

12. Learn from mistakes, but do not dwell on them for too long. We live by the old adage often attributed to Winston Churchill: “Success is never final; failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”

13. Build in lots of margin, and never bet the farm. This means we keep plenty of liquidity and refrain from using long-term debt.

14. Live a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. Family, health, and caring for others comes ahead of work.

15. Model hospitality daily. We love to host our team members, our directors, our business partners, our mission partners, our clients, and our friends.

16. Creatively look for ways to expand our influence for Kingdom purposes. This is a primary motivation for us and includes our ability and power to convene.

17. Continually be on the lookout for new talent who will be a good fit. We believe in the Law of Magnetism. You attract who you are.

18. Nurture and add value to our strategic partners and clients. We are intentional about spending quality time with them even if they live a thousand miles away.

19. Look for ways to be generous. We actively encourage generosity among our team members and strategic partners.

20. Model servant leadership. We put others first. Success is easy when no one cares who gets the credit.

21. Stay true to our Core Values and Purpose. Our purpose is “to use our example, our influence, and our resources to help others make wise financial decisions.” This means, for example, that we encourage our borrowers to not get over leveraged and to pay off debt quickly. And we actively counsel depositors to help them minimize overdraft fees.

The Ultimate Long Game

As believers, we know that the ultimate long game is our faith. Life goes by fast. The older I get, the faster it seems to go. Some of us are now into the fourth quarter, and soon, whatever material wealth we might have accumulated will not mean much. Our time on this earth is just a speck, a vapor, compared to eternity. What we really want is to hear these words, “Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord.”

That is the ultimate long game.

Article originally hosted and shared with permission by The Christian Economic Forum, a global network of leaders who join together to collaborate and introduce strategic ideas for the spread of God’s economic principles and the goodness of Jesus Christ. This article was from a collection of White Papers compiled for attendees of the CEF’s 2019 Global Event.

Related articles

Being bold in today’s culture is one thing. Being bold without revealing your own brokenness can sometimes make you a bully. Today we’re privileged to hear the story of the Benham brothers—former major league baseball players, TV show hosts, and now wildly successful Faith Driven Entrepreneurs. David and Jason have lived out their faith boldly even in the face of a cancel-culture that doesn’t always embrace Christ. And they’ve tried to do so with equal amounts of grace and humility.

Episode Transcript

*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We’re back in our virtual studio Rusty. William, how are you doing?

Rusty Rueff: Really great? How about you?

Henry Kaestner: I’m doing really well. Thank you. I am back. Well, we haven’t heard from William. I know he’s been through the ringer. He’s been dealing with some things navigating and just, you know, as William, as your family gets bigger and bigger, it’s going to be spending time with the docs is going to be more of a thing, but you navigate it. They’re so awesome. You love them, your family really well, and it just really awesome to see how God continues to work through all of our lives and the health of our families. One of the things that’s on top of my mind is we’ve done about 200 podcasts and we’ve never brought in to speak. I don’t think we have, which is a big mess for us and for our audience. Justin Forman, who’s our executive producer and the executive director of Faith Driven Entrepreneur, really the man behind the scenes who makes it all happen to the extent that you like what we do, it’s just to the extent that you do not. It’s William and Justin in. I’m just back talking about just generally this kind of shark tank aspect and atmosphere of entrepreneurship. And just in our fearless leader was in a shark tank, literally, not figuratively, literally last week. Justin, what was it like?

Justin Forman: A bucket list? Indeed. It was such a yes. It was fun. It was great to be in with so many entrepreneurs and investors. But at the end of the trip, we knocked something off the bucket list and a bunch of us went down there. A four hour drive hopped in a tank and it was surreal. It was crazy. The craziest moment was when a 16 footer came out of the darkness and just charged straight at the tank and slammed into it. The video is incredible, but the audio of it is even all the more impressive just when you see the yak, the cage that was bent when he just charged at it.

Rusty Rueff: Hey, are are African sharks different than sharks from other places?

Justin Forman: That’s a lead into a joke, is this. No, no.

William Norvell: I was like, I was like, all by every little bit here,

William Norvell: I’ll buy it. Knock, knock.

Henry Kaestner: No pun intended. So the bigger picture is so the shark thing. The video is amazing. I think we need to put it in the show notes. But the bigger picture, of course, is that we were there for Faith Driven Entrepreneur Amen Faith Driven Investor events in Nairobi and then just outside of Cape Town. And it was one of the best years of my life. And through the grace of God, I’ve been on lots of awesome trips. But as our great friend David Wills likes to say, Aslan is on the move and the welcome that we had from a hundred and fifty different folks, including the Senate Majority Leader, the CEO of the largest telecom firm, the chairman of the largest insurance firm in Nairobi, to talk about what God is going through them as they are launching Faith Driven Entrepreneur groups and ministries and putting their own capital work and then inviting us in to participate. Not because they need us, but because they know that we might experience joys. We do so was just invigorating. And then again, a couple of days later, over in Cape Town, just unbelievable what’s going on and incredibly encouraging. It was really awesome. And yes, Justin, get to go in the Shark Tank. I did not. I came back. My oldest son was on fall break will end with our travel log right here because we’ve got awesome guests in the house. We have the Benham brothers who are here to talk about how God is working in their life and their experiences as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur. And I can’t believe it’s taken us this long to get you guys on the show. Super glad that you’re here. Welcome.

William Norvell: Thanks for having us, man. It’s an honor. Yes, it is.

Henry Kaestner: So as you may have seen from some of our shows, you’re so nice to say that you guys get our newsletter and that you read it and you don’t forward it on to some sort of a spam inbox. So thank you for the encouragement. But as you may know, we like to try and figure out the backgrounds and the personal stories of each of our guests before we get into how God is using you right now. So walk us through a little bit of that. Who are you? Where do you come from?

David Benham: Well, I’ll start first. So we are identical twins and I’m David. I’m the older brother. I’m two minutes older than Jason. I tell people that he’s been in my shadow for 46 years and we got saved at the age of 12 in Dallas, Texas. Our dad was a pastor and I was saved at a youth camp. Six months later, he was saved at a little chapel service at our private Christian school, so I’ve been discipling him now for thirty four years. Yeah. So my first disciple ..

Jason Benham: What I like to say is that David’s the only mistake God ever made when he was born. God’s like, Oh man, I’ve got to fix that. Then I came along, so I have to do over.

Henry Kaestner: That’s awesome. And I got to call out the fact you’ve got the younger ones got the better beard.

Jason Benham: That is right. Well, because it’s no less than no shave November right now.

David Benham: I trimmed my beard, so mine’s actually thicker but trimmed, Jason. This is like scratch. This is like little chicken scratch.

Jason Benham: I shave this morning and it’s already grown that long, and William is looking hot with his beard, too.

David Benham: So, Henry, you’re going to get us fighting on here.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, yeah. OK, so one. But before I let that go, because I’ve got three boys, I’m fascinated by the concept. The brothers, I’ve always been fascinated by identical twins. I’m fascinated by fraternal twins, too. One of the things I love about fraternal twins is especially if they’re boy and girl, how many times their parents will say that they’re asked if they’re identical? That’s one of my favorite things. But what happens? Talk to us about what happens in those six months where one of you is in the dark and one of you is in the light. What? What was that like? David, were you just kind of just loving on them and just patiently waiting?

David Benham: Do you remember? Honestly, you know, we were 12 at the time, and I was probably just still working through my flesh of when I would beat him down on the basketball court. We used to, and we also had Sugar Ray Leonard boxing gloves. Like our dad, legit bought us boxing gloves. And he wouldn’t let us go on the back basketball court. We would just beat the snot out of each other and he’d be back there.

Jason Benham: Our dad, David, never knocked me out one time, but when I was 14, I sent him to the mat and he couldn’t get up. It was like, That’s for a different podcast that was just like, that story.

David Benham: It was a lucky shot

Henry Kaestner: before there is Jake and Logan Paul. There are the Benham brothers.

David Benham: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. But you know, we grew. So we grew up in Dallas, Texas. Our dad was a former saloon owner who was a drunk, and Bobby was passed out drunk the night that we were born. As a matter of fact, back in 1975, when we were born, he before we were born. When mom found out that she was having twins, they didn’t have the technology we have today. So weird. She was four or five months along. Dad said, No, we’re aborting. And she was like, No way we are not going to abort these babies. And so by God’s grace, we were born. Three months later, our dad got radically saved. It’s a whole nother story. But just suffice it to say that he sold the saloon and used the money to go to seminary and out of seminary. He was asked to plant a church in Dallas, Texas, so our earliest memories are Dallas, Texas, and Jason and I. We’d wake up early in the morning. We were young athletes. We played basketball, baseball, football and our dad was our coach and he taught us that leadership is the ability to create an apple. And those who follow you and one of the things that Jason and I always saw out of our dad when we woke up was he was reading his Bible and that just kind of just it really penetrated our hearts is that we saw our dad more is caught than taught. So he got that particular passage of Scripture and Proverbs Chapter 22, where it says to train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old, they won’t depart from it. The Hebrew word to train up literally means to cultivate an appetite for or to touch the palate of. And so Hebrew mothers and midwives would chew up a celery or a piece of carrot or a vegetable, and they would chewed up really fine. And then they would take it out of their mouths and put it on their finger. And they would touch the tip of their infant’s palate with it, and it would cultivate a desire and a taste for that nourishing food. Well, Solomon used that same word in Proverbs on how where to train our kids up. So Jason and I learned really early in life that if we’re going to train up or if we’re going to lead our employees or lead our families, that we have to be ingesting the word of God first and living it out, and then our lives will touch the palate of those that are following us. And so we learn that early in, our dad would say, and I’ll stop here before Jason jumps in, he’s going to start elbowing me. But our dad would say, if our theology does not become biography, then our theology is worthless. So our dad was very much involved in our lives. He would say, Guys, you are going to bring the kingdom to the baseball field, or you’d bring the kingdom to the basketball court or bring the kingdom to the football field or to your classroom. So we were born and we were raised not with a go to church and sacred secular divide. We were raised by God’s grace under very holistic biblical teaching that your faith is integrated and incorporated into every area of your life, just like blinking is in your normal daily routine. It just happens. That’s how we were raised in Dallas, Texas,

Henry Kaestner: at some point in time. You alluded to this a little bit. Your dad exposed you. Or maybe it was just kids in error, but expose you to the game of baseball and you guys got pretty good at it.

Jason Benham: Well, this is Jason speaking. I got really good at it. David got mediocre. I like to say that David’s the only baseball player that excelled at tailback. He’d run out on the field and whoever the coach was at the time, they said, Get your tail back on the bench, David. That’s pretty much the way it went. No, by God’s grace, we both got four ride scholarships to play baseball at Liberty University. We played there for four years. He was drafted by the Red Sox. I was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles. We both ended up with the St. Louis Cardinals. And that story of how we ended up with the St. Louis Cardinals and the stadium we got to play in is the subject of a book we wrote called Miracle in Shreveport. That’s a fantastic story, but we don’t have time to go into that story. Maybe one of these days we’ll share that story with you guys. But out of that, David and I, there was always something inside of us from our dad’s example and our mom who raised us to love Jesus and to be in the scriptures because we were reading the scriptures every single day. There was something in us that said, Guys, you were made for full time ministry. Now, if you were alive back in the 80s and 90s, your thought of full time ministry meant, Well, I got to be a preacher or a traveling evangelist, or I’ve got to go overseas and I have to raise money. That was our thought, too. And so Dave and I fresh out of professional baseball, we had both done some odd jobs for a couple of years in 2003. We were in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2003. We actually started. Now you guys are going to kick out of this. We started Benham Brothers Ministries and we got a little website. And we wrote a support letter and we were going to travel and tell people our baseball story and tell people to love Jesus. You know that God wants to use the uniqueness of you to present the uniqueness of him. And so we wrote this support letter. And right before we sent it to the first person, 2003, in January of 2003, we got on our knees and we started praying over it, and the Lord picked both of our hearts almost at the exact same time. You know, while the nonprofit sector of ministry is a model for a lot of people, but that that’s not the model I have for you guys don’t send that letter to anybody. And so we were a little bit bewildered. You know, it’s like, OK, but Lord, we want to be ministers, you not want to serve you. And I put that in kind of scare quotes, ministers, because we had the wrong idea of what full time ministry meant. But we didn’t send that support letter and we started praying like Lord, what are we going to do? We don’t know what to do to make money. We’ve got to make money. We weren’t big league guys and we both had earned our real estate licenses the year before. And it was as if the Lord said to us the same thing he said to the disciples when they came to him after he preached to 5000 men and and they said, Hey, the people are hungry, we need to give them something to eat. And Jesus says, you give them something to eat and they’re like, Well, we don’t have anything. And he says, Well, what do you have? Right? We tell people when it comes to business, just start with what you do have. And you know, they just had a. Couple of tuna fish sandwiches, and they gave it to God and Jesus, and he multiplied it. So for David and I, it was real estate licenses. And so we decided to get into real estate 2003, and we applied the principles of the scripture for the next from 2003 to 2007. We applied the principles of the scripture in building our little real estate business, and we cover all of this in our book expert ownership on how to launch faith driven entrepreneurs entrepreneurs into greater freedom and success. So we cover the story in detail. But from that period, we began to sell more houses than any other real estate agents in our state, and so God gave us the idea to franchise. We franchised our business from 2007 to 2010. God blessed it abundantly, and we grew to 100 locations in 35 states, all by operating our business, by the principles that we derive from the scripture. It was really fun to be on the back side and look at that and say, Look, what God did we give him the credit?

Henry Kaestner: I’m asked for forgiveness from Richard for this, I was just doing there’s a there’s a question I want to ask you guys later. And you can even prep for it if you want. It just doesn’t flow right now. I’m fine. I meant what I said before. I’m fascinated by identical twins. I’m also fascinated by discipleship, and I’m fascinated by just the way that sin plays out in my life and just the battle I have. I’d like to think we all have it, but maybe I’m the worst. Maybe I’m the worst sinner. Maybe, maybe. But just the dynamic. And I don’t know if you’ve ever been asked this before. I bet you have about how identical twins process the role of sin. So if I have a lust for thought or if I have a pride problem, I tend not to share that as openly as maybe I can. I’ve got some friends, right? But if I knew there is an exact replica of me. And by the way, maybe I’ll throw this in later. David’s not two minutes older because I know how you guys are pro-life. You guys were born at the same time, right? But yeah, but if I’ve got this type of sin that I’m wrestling with, I have to presume that my identical twin is wrestling with the same thing. And I’m wondering what that means for discipleship and just sanctification, and we can get there later if we get time just may realize back in May, that’s why we needed the second installment. But that’s some of the things I’m fascinated by.

David Benham: Yeah, that’s one thing, too, that I think it’s important, especially for men in today’s day and age. Intimacy with the father is crucial, but intimacy in the brotherhood is vital. And as we were writing our second book, Living Among Lions, we talked about intimacy being in to me. See, we had seen that before into me. See, we have to be very open with each other. When we started our business logit, when Jason was saying in two thousand three, God told us, Tear that letter up and you go into business. We had no business training whatsoever. I mean, back at Liberty, Jerry Falwell would always pound into us. If it’s

Jason Benham: Christian, it ought to be

David Benham: better. If it’s Christian, it ought to be better. Well, as we were reading through scripture, by the way, just one quick note we did not have these little devices, cell phones when we were in college, so we had a lot of time to read scripture. We had a lot of time and a lot of margin in our mind. We weren’t so distracted as now I’m raising guys. I’ve got kids in college, I got kids in high school, I got kids in junior high. So I mean, we’re raising them and they all have devices. This in the hand of a producer is an incredible tool, but this in the hand of a consumer is a terrible toy. It’s based on who you are, a producer or a consumer. So when we’re at liberty, we’re here. And if it’s Christian, it ought to be better. You want to be productive. Well, Jason and I, when we got into business, we knew out of scripture that the presence of God in your life is more important than the profit that you’re chasing. So we intuitively knew this because we were in scripture and we understood seek first the Kingdom of God in his righteousness and all these things, like the clients and the marketing and all of the swag and everything that we needed to get into business, you know, we began to seek first and that what God told us specifically and we got this in our business journal. The very first thing the Lord told me and Jason when we decided we’re going into business was purity open up, open up to each other, open up to your dad and open up to a couple of other brothers.

Jason Benham: It was like our little formula purity equals power equals profit. Like, if you really want God there and you’re going to need his presence, it’s going to start with purity, ultimate uber accountability that leads to power. And when you’re operating in God’s power because you know you have his presence there with you, the prophet just chases you down. You don’t even have to think about it.

David Benham: And here’s what’s interesting sometimes you’re not pure and you’re seemingly operating with power and you get profit, but it’s worldly profit because you have no peace. You’re enslaved, your heart is in a box, right? So we want supernatural power. And that’s where in Exodus chapter, I think it was thirty thirty one, two to three somewhere around there when the Lord told Moses, I’ll send you guys into the promised land. I’ll open it up. I’m going to send my spirit ahead of you. I’ll send an angel there. But my presence won’t go with you now. Just pause for a second. It’s said that that was a sad word, and Moses said, if your presence doesn’t go, we don’t even want it now. We just pause and think about today with faith driven entrepreneurs what drives us. We’re all ambitious. Like, we want to accomplish things, we want to build our businesses, we want to go and take ground in the marketplace. And that’s great. But often times it’s as if the spirit of God says, OK, go ahead, you can go and you can have that big business. You can go and you can have all that money, you can have the recognition and you can get the shingles that you want. But my presence won’t be with you. And unfortunately, many times we go for it. We’re not like Moses that says, No, no, no, no, we want your presence. But the key to the presence of God is purity into me. See a broken spirit and a contrite heart. The Lord will

Jason Benham: not. So to answer your question, Henry. By Jason can read David’s mail and help him with all of his issues, so, yeah, yeah, gladly,

David Benham: so glad I’ve got this.

Rusty Rueff: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Hey, I’m going to ask a question about a statement that you have on your website. Actually, I’m going to ask you three questions about it. OK, so so be ready. We’re going to we’re going to dig into this one on the website. There’s a statement that says we want to equip entrepreneurs for maximum success, but never at the expense of those most important to us. It’s a great statement. So let’s start with we want to equip, equip what does that mean to you guys?

Jason Benham: Well, equipping starts with recognizing your identity number one. So the devil knows that how you see yourself determines how you behave yourself. So if he can convince you that you’re just a business person, you know, I’m just a businesswoman, I’m just a businessman or I’m just an insurance broker. I’m just, you know, I’m just a senior level manager of a. If you’re like, that’s who I am. Well, then that’s how you’re going to act. But if you see yourself as a minister of God on mission and that your work is worship now, all of a sudden all bets are off. Satan will now aim his target right at you, like he will put the target right on you. So when we say equipping entrepreneurs, we say first, we need to help you understand that your identity in the marketplace is a minister of the Gospel. You heard about David and I when I was telling you the story about how we felt that God didn’t want us to go into the nonprofit space to us for about oh, from 03 to 2010, we struggled with guilt for not being in the ministry, and I put that in scare quotes to those who are just listening to this and can’t see me put my little fingers up. But in the ministry, we felt guilt for that. And then David and I were up in front of about 150 of our franchisees and their spouses and some of their teams. We had the Bible open and we were training people on the principles of the Bible and how you’re going to build your business and how are you going to systematize and scale and grow and manage your finances? How are you going to build your team and how are you going to lead the right way all through the principles of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy? And we were pulling stuff out of there and it was almost audible Rusty. It wasn’t quite audible. David’s one hears voices in his head, not me, but it was like it was almost audible that God spoke to me in that moment. And he said, Who told you that you weren’t my minister? Like, who told you that you weren’t in full time ministry in the same way that God asked Adam, who told you, you were naked? Like, you’ve got to go and discover that liar that whispered that lie in your ear. And the Lord spoke specifically to me. I shared it with David later, and we totally full 100 percent agreed with each other that God spoke to me. No, you are a minister, right? Where you are, where you’re placed and how you’re paid doesn’t determine your identity as a minister. It’s about God’s presence in your life and your passion to bring the kingdom wherever you are that you are a minister, you’re on mission and your work is worship. And I’m telling you God took the scales off our eyes. Rusty and I realized then the greatest equipping that I could ever have is first knowing who I am as a minister on mission in the workplace. From that day forward, everything changed for us. So when you say, how do we want to equip that would be primary on how we want to equip entrepreneurs.

David Benham: Can I go one step further? No, you’re not going to one up me, man. I’m not one of those trying to. One up me is the next logical step.

Jason Benham: No, that was a perfect segue way to his next question.

David Benham: So when we know who we are, then we have to recognize who God is. So we talk. Jason and I always say presence before profit. Now we see people before profit, of course, but it’s presence before profit. When Jason and I, we just did a three day workshop in Charlotte, we had all these business owners come in. We talk about a two page business plan. It’s really a one pager. But the second page is called Listening Prayer, where you’re listening for God. We already know who we are. We already know our identity in Christ. Now we want to align ourselves with the purposes of God for our lives specifically and our company. Like what is the greater story? What is God saying? What is God speaking? So what we do is we do a thing called listening prayer. We’ve been doing this for a long time. And so we took all these people that came in town. We said, we’re going to actually take you into listening for exactly how we do it. So we threw on some William Agusto soaking in his presence. It’s phenomenal. It’s a great playlist. It’s like one two, sometimes three hours of nothing but soaking music. And we sit there and we don’t do anything except for Listen for God and we journal. Now I’m telling you this when we go after presence like this, God then brings us in alignment with the spirit because the spirit of God is inside of us. So of course we’ve been. It’s always presence before practicals and practicals before profit. That’s just kind of the way that it works. And so along the lines of equipping, and I just want to give you just a quick we were done with listening prayer after day two. On day three, we had three people shoot their hands up, one guy said. After day two, I went back to my hotel. Got on my knees and totally surrendered to the lordship of Christ, another guy raised his hand and says after day two, God told me to make things right with my wife. We had a two hour talk last night. We haven’t been like this since we’ve been married. Another guy raised his hand and said, I knew that there was a man that I was at odds with and I needed to make things right. I went back and made things. Right now, I want to just say this. Equipping if we’re going to equip believers to be faith driven, that kind of stuff is straight up revival when we’re making things right with the closest relationships in our lives. And then from that point, the third step would be the practical principles of God’s word in terms of how do we drive profits? How do we grow? Well, what is our mark, our message and our meaning when it comes to our brand, for instance, when we talk about equipping? We’re talking about discipleship in the marketplace. Your brand isn’t just your logo and all that. Your brand is what people say about you when you leave the room. So what are we as Christians? Like the last 20, 30 years, people say, Oh, I do business with a Christian. Oh my goodness, we’re like, No, we’re going to resurrect the righteous brand and have a new demonstration of godly biblical Christian

Jason Benham: Davids brand personally, is that he’s the guy with halitosis.

David Benham: So come on. That’s his brand.

Rusty Rueff: And you guys sit so close to each other right here. So it’s very good. You know, that’s a loving brother. OK, so I’m going to go to the second question. Second question? Go back to the statement. We want to equip entrepreneurs for maximum success, but never at the expense of those most important to us, never at the expense. Tell us about what that is.

Jason Benham: Well, we we believe and we teach people because we’ve seen this in our own life, that you’ve got to distinguish between standard of living and quality of life. You know, standard of living is most prized, possession is money. And there are so many entrepreneurs out there, even faith filled entrepreneurs. But yet when you really when push comes to shove, standard of living, which is the almighty dollar, is what takes precedent. We would say that quality of life is what a Faith Driven Entrepreneur needs to aim for and that quality of life most prized possession is time. And why would we need time? We need time for the people that God has placed into our lives. You know, in the same way that Jesus had the time for the 12, you know, he had time for the 70 and then he had time for 150 or how many other disciples he had. But then you know what? Jesus did not have time for in his ministry. He didn’t have time for the gentile. Why? Because the system that he was setting up would have time for the gentile, but his personal ministry did not. Now this is like, Oh my gosh, you mean to tell me Jesus wouldn’t talk to gentiles? Well, yes, he did, because he was hyper focused on his time. So we would say when it comes to being a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, you need to recognize that time is your most valuable asset and you need to operate and develop your business and your systems in such a way that gives you your time back so that you can then grant that time to the people that God has entrusted to you. That’s why we believe that God is raising up faith filled entrepreneurs.

David Benham: And one of the things that our dad told us early in business and I’m we’re both married. He’s been married 21 years. I’ve been married. Twenty three.

Jason Benham: Hey, his wife, his wife chased me around college freshman year when she realized she could have me, she had to go to second best.

David Benham: Listen, Justin is not just

William Norvell: that sounds like another podcast. Don’t know if we have time for that you about.

David Benham: Justin has not laughed at one thing. You said, Justin, you are like stone cold. Like no way Jason is a buffoon. He’s right. But I do want to say this that early in our business, we had young families and we were working like crazy. We were growing at alarming speeds. We were hiring more people. One of our companies grew to fifteen hundred people and it was just, everything’s growing so fast. And my dad? I’ll never forget, he said. You know, you have the Dominion mandate that God gave Adam and Eve, which by in part gave to us the Dominion mandate to rule the Earth. He said he told Adam to subdue the Earth, to fill the Earth, and then he put him in a garden. And he said, David, you and your brother have a garden that you need to faithfully tanned and stop trying to take over the world. Oh, and I was like, Wow, what do you mean, dad? And he goes, Your family is in your garden primarily says you might not have to take all those meetings. You can’t outsource that seat at the table. I can delegate anything in business. I do three things I automate, delegate or eliminate these tasks that take up most of my time. But you can’t automate, delegate or eliminate the seat at your kid’s ballgame. You can’t do that. Or the head of the table at the home. So that really encouraged Jason and me. That quality of life, which is the most important element, is time needs to be at the height. Now, of course, that doesn’t mean at the expense of service or at the expense of, you know, cutting out systems that need to be in place. But if that’s your heart and you really want time and you want to be faithful to that garden that God has placed you in, which is your family and your closer community, then God will give you the desires of your heart. You just have to prioritize that in prayer.

Rusty Rueff: Does that take you? Takes me to my third question, but does that take you to the last statement in that sentence? Never at the expense of those most important to us is that is that what you’re talking about? Or are there others that are most important to you?

Jason Benham: Yes. Just like I said before, Jesus had a concentric circle list of people and every entrepreneur that’s listening to this needs to have the same Jesus we know primary we had. John was the closest. He’s the dude that Jesus gave his mom to. Right was like, John, take care of my mom. Then it was Peter, James and John. It was the three, and then the next circle was the 12, and then the next circle was the 70. And then the next circle was the crowds. As entrepreneurs, we have to define our concentric circles and anything that would remove the boundaries that would separate those concentric circles. We cannot allow in our lives, period. And you have to be willing to be misunderstood. You have to be willing as an entrepreneur to be misunderstood. When you’re saying no to meetings or no to fundraisers, you’re getting invited to a David have said no to a lot of board positions people wanted us on. It was like, No, why? Well, because I got four kids and all of them have games during the week. It’s like, I’m a chauffeur. I’m like a professional game watcher. That’s what I do one day when my kids are off at college in an empty nester. Not only will I walk around my house naked, but I’ll be able to serve on your board.

David Benham: James, your home. I do want to say

Rusty Rueff: it’s interesting that you just said just what you said, because here in the Bay Area today, we’re all kind of excited but lamenting for Buster Posey’s retirement. And I thought, you know, so he’s announced it today. And you know why? Because he’s going to go home and be a full time dad to four kids. Right? What a man I love. Yeah. So that’s a lot of

Jason Benham: toxic masculinity, Rusty.

Rusty Rueff: It’s just awesome, I think. So now I’m going to juxtapose and see if there’s a contradiction between this concentric circle and what you did with your business, which was to scale it. You scaled it to over 100 locations and in a very short amount of time. So now you’ve got a lot of people, a lot of things going on. How do you balance all that and take us through, you know, that scaling experience?

David Benham: John Maxwell had a great quote. He said the greatest leaders hand off the baton at top speed. And so when you’re growing your business, we train folks that you have to be ready to hand the baton of certain positions or tasks, whatever the concentric stacks are in your company, whatever it may be. You have to be ready to hand that baton and succeed through others. And that’s exactly what Christ model. We didn’t have any business training when we were scaling. We logit had none. We didn’t even hire a franchise company. We had all these franchise companies wanting us because they saw the growth when we were on each magazine and we were looking at the numbers and were like, Why would I pay you that much money? Why don’t I just do it myself, you know? And so but to succeed through others is exactly what Christ modeled. He even told his disciples greater things will you do than even me now? He knew the Holy Spirit was coming and he was going to succeed in capturing the world for the gospel and advancing the kingdom through other people. So that’s how we can still stay in our garden and scale our businesses is because we did it through others. The first thing we had to do, though, we had to build a good system.

Jason Benham: Well, and you know, the three phases of business, what David and I call them, we covered this in our book. You’ve got brain and body. You’ve got brain. Nobody and nobody, nobody like. The first is brain and body, where your business requires all your brain and you actually physically need to be there. The second phase, which is what you got to try to get to, is where it involves your brain, but not your body. So you don’t have to be there, but you mentally still got to be there. The third phase in the best phase, though, is when it doesn’t require your brain or your body. Now, if you recognize properly that God is your business partner, and he’s brought. You into this business, and he’s made you the managing partner, so God is the business partner, right? He’s the majority owner, but he’s brought you in and said, you’re now the managing partner. So this isn’t just like, Oh, it’s God, business is not mine. Well, no, he says, no, it’s yours, too. You’re the managing partner. And if that’s true, if you think, God, I want to get my business to a point to where it can run itself and we can scale without my brain or my body there. Can you help me think through this? God will give you the ideas, and he’ll open up the opportunities, and he will bring the people who can help you make it happen for David and I. We discovered a four step process. We systematized and scaled all of our businesses across the board, and we call it silo segment stacks and steps. We started with the silos, the main compartments of our business. We chopped those down into segments, which are those segments down into stacks. And then from the stacks, we listed our steps and the steps are all the little tasks it takes to complete every single process in our business, chock full of videos and tutorials. If you have your business systematize like that and we teach this in our online course, it expert ownership. If you have your business systematize like that, you’ll be able to scale and the beauty of this Rusty, you’ll work less making more money. You’ll work less serving more people than you ever did when when you were serving less. And it’s all because you systematized it the right way and

David Benham: you’ll be an opportunity creator for so many families, which will be an amazing thing.

Rusty Rueff: You know, I mean, Henry’s fascinated with twins. We get that. But here’s what I have figured out. I’m I turn this over to William twins illiterate better than anybody you’ve been able to pick up, you know, with alliteration. You know, one good word after another. So maybe that’s what we’re missing out on Henry. We don’t we don’t have twins to help us.

David Benham: Hey, we got that good Baptist upbringing with Jerry Falwell and their alliteration all day.

Rusty Rueff: I’m going to let William take it from here.

William Norvell: I’m going to I’m going to not talk about twins, although I am fascinated. It’s so much fun to be with you guys. Honestly, I follow you on Instagram and see a lot of your videos, and it’s almost like surreal. When somebody like that comes on the show, it’s like, Oh, wait, you’re real people. You actually sit next to each other, you actually wear the same hoodie.

David Benham: It’s just a no go like long.

William Norvell: Come on, we’ll do this like you actually do these things. It’s not just to show why

Jason Benham: people didn’t need to know that William, but

William Norvell: they do now. And that’s what we’re here for. That’s what we’re here for. So I’m going to jump in to your TV show in a second, but I want to hit on two words that Rusty didn’t hit on the tagline their maximum success that feels like for entrepreneurs. I mean, and we all know most entrepreneurial journeys don’t work right. I mean, the odds are against you when you start. I’m curious how you guys think through is it? Is it faithfulness is a prophet? Is it? How do you think through for a Faith Driven Entrepreneur or what is maximum success? And what do you think that looks like?

Jason Benham: We question. Well, I would say what we call the product God calls the process. So success in God’s eyes is that you can go through the storm and remain at peace in the same way that the disciples, when they’re professional fishermen of the sea, Jesus is asleep in the boat, and all of a sudden the wind and waves come and they call in a mayday, right? And they go, wake him up. And he’s like, Dad, gum it. You woke me up. I’m going to rebuke the waves, and then he turns around. He rebukes them for their faith. So what we would say success is that whether you’re successful in business in terms of the world’s view of success or you’re not in terms of having to close your doors because you took us waiting and it wasn’t good enough, God may look at you as a great success because you remained at peace in the midst of it. Well, I like to say the requirement for work is faithfulness. The reward for work is rest, and the result of work is that God gets glory right. Is that faithfulness exactly what you said, William? To us, success is that you can be faithful and you will be faithful regardless of whether or not you’re persecuted or promoted because we say that faithfulness in your work. According to Proverbs, twenty two twenty nine faithfulness in your work leads to promotion. You know, says do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings. He’ll not stand before obscure men, which means when you’re good at what you do, your level of client increases, which means your level of pay goes up. But the balancing truth of that is faithfulness in your walk leads to persecution. And Matthew, it talks about Don’t be surprised when you’re drug in front of kings for my name’s sake. Right now, Jesus is saying that you’re going to be persecuted for your walk. But then we see Solomon saying, you’re going to be promoted for your work. Well, which one is it? You know what? It’s both. It’s faithfulness. And then we let God bring persecution or promotions. So we got our promotion long before we got our persecution. But persecution was coming, and we’ll tell you that story.

David Benham: Let me just let me just jump in real quick faithfulness. You use the word faithfulness, and I love how John BVR says faithfulness. What is the definition of faithfulness? It’s multiplication. In the book of Luke, the landowner gives the man one talent two talents five times. And he comes back, the man with five multiplied the ten, and he gave, he says, well done, good and faithful servant, the man with two multiplied. Well done. Good and faithful servant. The man with one did not take what had been given him right? And he says, You wicked and lazy slave. In other words, everybody is born with certain talents and abilities. We’ve been given a personality and that’s where we do is when we take entrepreneurs or at least aspiring entrepreneurs. We have a thing called expert ownership, the early years where we take aspiring entrepreneurs and we say, OK, what is your personality? What energizes you? What drains you? What are some of the things that make the hair on your arms stand up? Let’s get to figure out who you are. That’s your personality and some of the talents and abilities that you have. And then now let’s look at some skill sets, things that you’ve honed yourself, and let’s take those, combine those and now take a step forward. Here’s the cool thing you are not to concern yourself with the results, but faithfulness to do what God tells you to do. Because if you look at acts chapter two, we got this straight out of scripture. Looking at Peter in Acts two, Peter preaches the gospel. 3000 people are saved. It says that they were cut to the heart and said, What must we do to be saved? 3000 people get saved. Couple of chapters later. Same message. Same gospel. It says they were cut to the heart, drug him out of the city and stoned him. Now what’s the difference? So a lot of times if we are to be faith driven entrepreneurs, we have to take the results of our obedience and our faithfulness and give it to God. Just like Peter 3000, we’re saved. That’s great. He’s getting high fives. He just landed a book deal with Lifeway. He’s now got three thousand more Instagram followers, and everything sounds great. Well, a few chapters later, he preaches the same message, same faithfulness. He gets drug out of the city and stoned and left for dead. Now, the world would say that’s a failure. The world would say that our dad was a failure as a pastor. His church never got over 150 people. When he retired, he never had more than about 125 folks. But I tell you what, he did have two boys that he was disciplined like crazy in addition to several other people, but nobody knew about him. He didn’t have a cool brand. He didn’t have a big following. He has never even written a book, but he was faithful, and we have to focus on roots and let God handle the fruits.

Jason Benham: That’s the key. Your dad was the Dr. Kevorkian of Church Growth.

Henry Kaestner: Hello. What do I even do with that?

David Benham: What does it mean when you delete it? You edit

William Norvell: it out. Yeah, that’s that’s the one I’m going to say. There’s not another podcast for that. You know, we got four more lined up. That’s not one of them. Right? And we need to switch Amen to switch hard switch topics because we want to get to this before we lose you guys. Great quote being bold without being a bully to tell a little bit of story and you’ll sell more. But in 2014, things were going well. You were having success, you were on the covers of magazines, HGTV said. Guys, let’s make this go even further, right? And then it took a turn. It took a turn specifically because of your faith. And I know you’ve been reflecting on those lessons for six, seven years now and share that story with us. Share how you felt during that time, if you could even take us back and maybe how you feel about it now?

David Benham: Absolutely. Well, well, I’ll tell you what got us fired actually got us hired. So at two thousand fourteen, our company is blowing up. And by God’s Amazing Grace, a production company came to us. They said, We want to do a reality show for you guys, and TLC made us our first offer and then HGTV reached out to us. They had just signed Chip and Joanna Gaines. So this was exciting like, wow, are you serious? And they said, We want to actually take the Gaines family and the Benham families and raise you guys to the top of the network. And they said, we’re going to build brands and take it to Target and Home Depot. So when I walk into Target, I see Magnolia. I’m like, Dang, that would have been nice. So anyway, they offered us a bunch of money and they said, We’re not even going to do a pilot. We’re going straight to series. And my first response to the general manager as I said, Hey, what an honor. Thank you. I’m excited. Do you know who we are like? Our dad is the guy that led Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade to Christ. He’s the one that baptized her. He’s the one that was on Time magazine and and we’re very vocal pro-life with our company. And we also say it’s one thing to be against abortion, but it’s another thing to be pro-life and help these mothers and help these families. They feel like they have no choice. And I said, and also, we’re very pro-marriage. We’re looking at the shift in culture that is making some biblical principles of scripture politically incorrect. And if we love people and we want people to flourish, which we do because that’s God’s plan for people, then we need to talk about the boundaries that we need to live inside in order for the folks to flourish.

Jason Benham: They hired us right around the same time there was the big marriage debate. Remember, the Supreme Court was and then a bunch of big companies like PayPal and Starbucks and Apple were jumping in on the other side of the debate, saying, Hey, love who you love, marry who you want to marry. David and I were like, Where are the big Christian businesses? So we said, Hey, God defines marriage between a man and a woman. Let’s not redefine it. That would be like removing chocolate from brownies. You’re left with Blondie’s real men. Don’t eat those. And so we’re like, God defines marriage. Let’s not redefine it. And so that’s what David was referring to when HGTV called in, and they honestly, they said, We know exactly who you are. You guys are awesome in real estate. You’re the real deal. You’re not just actors. Like some of our talent, you’re the real deal in real estate and we want to put you guys

David Benham: right to series. What’s really cool is that they said our production company had called us, and by this time we’d hired agents out of Beverly Hills. And now all of a sudden we signed with HGTV and. And they told us, they said, Listen, most of the people at ERG, your agents and even us at the production company, we believe like you guys do, most of Americans do. We just don’t talk about it. So that was kind of a wakeup call. Now it’s 2014. All of a sudden. Now endorsements are coming in, commercials are beginning to run. We can’t believe it. We’re five weeks into a ten week film shoot, Chip and Joe’s fixer upper just piloted. They ran the pilot. The ratings were fantastic. So ERG calls us and says, Guys, we are going to crush this. This show is going to kill it. We had Disney World. I mean, everybody was coming in wanting to advertise on the show. And still, we were like, I can’t believe this is actually going to happen. And so in the middle of it all is when we became cancel culture before it became a hashtag. And here’s what happened. The activist groups like Human Rights Campaign, glad right wing watch, Huffington Post. A lot of these activist groups, what they do. Planned Parenthood does the same thing. They’ll find the people that are beginning to rate, the folks that are beginning to get a little bit of publicity or become celebrity. And they’ll target their beliefs that are not politically correct. Now, at this time, being pro-life and pro-marriage was not politically correct, and so the goal to target us is, by God’s grace, just like Daniel, they couldn’t find anything in our company. They couldn’t even find a human, a person that actually said we were hateful or mean to them, or they couldn’t find anything. The only thing that they could do was call us names and hateful and bigoted and intolerant and all these other things for those beliefs and those groups got together and then bullied HGTV. So behind closed doors,

Jason Benham: they basically told HGTV, If you hire these guys, we’re going after your advertisers. So they put this crazy story about. David and I we were five weeks into a 10 week film shoot. Millions of dollars had already been spent by HGTV, and they circled the wagons, and HGTV honestly thought the world was collapsing around them. So they called David and I. And they said, Guys, we weren’t ready for this. We are canceling the show. Now, after I got David up out of the fetal position and knocked his thumb out of his mouth, I remember we said, You know what? We believe that all things work together for good to them who love God. And we thank you guys that you believed in us and we know that you got bullied into this. Now here’s the thing. When someone you know you’re a senior in high school, you walk into the lunch room and there’s a freshman getting bullied by another senior. You don’t go lecture the freshman, you go deal with the bully. David and I said, there’s a bully in this culture right now that’s demanding silence from Christians, and we have no intentions of backing down from that. You see, we had already been through a period where David and I, when HGTV first came to us and said these groups are putting pressure on them, you want to know what David and I did? You guys might not believe it because you’re hearing us talk all big and bad right now. What David and I did was we went to certain websites and pulled down videos of us standing strong for the definition of marriage and being pro-life. We pulled those videos down because we didn’t want to lose that show. And I’m telling you, and we discovered we were afraid that the secret to courage is first recognizing your inner coward. God had to do to us what he had to do to Peter. Remember, Peter said, I’ll never deny you. And then that very night, he denied. And that’s where we learned that boldness, apart from brokenness, makes a bully that God had to get us to a position of brokenness, which is humility over our own sin and our own issues before we were fired. And then we went on 200 plus one on one interviews with O’Reilly and Megyn Kelly and all these every CNN show I think just about. We were on all of them. And we did, by God’s grace, stand boldly. But God had the first break us to show us, guys, if you’re not in a spirit of brokenness, then no amount of boldness is going to bring my name glory. That’s right. And so we tell folks, look, we’re at a point now in culture. We are in cancel culture and there are so many people who are standing for what they believe and they’re getting canceled and they’re losing their jobs and they’re losing their income. And what we encourage those folks is keep standing, but don’t allow your boldness to be bold. Apart from a foundation of brokenness, which is humility over your sin, humility over your own issues, and you feel love for the people that you’re speaking to. And when you do feel that love and you’ve got that humility, God would tell you boldness, apart from brokenness makes a bully. But the reverse is true that brokenness, apart from boldness, makes a bystander. We’re seeing this in the church more than people falling on the bully side, people falling on the bystander side where they’re just sitting back and they don’t want to say anything or you got big pastors. We all know their names. They won’t say anything about cancel culture. They won’t say anything about BLM. They won’t say anything about all the stuff that’s going on, you know, in the streets and we’ll talk about that stuff. And if they do, they only do it on the PC side because they’re bystanders. And we would say, don’t be like that. God is calling entrepreneur’s kingdom minded, faith filled entrepreneurs who know their ministers on mission and their work is worship to now in this culture to stand bold like never before.

William Norvell: Thank you for sharing that, and the question that comes to mind is how have you guys thought about disagreeing when somebody so I love the boldness, but there’s going to be people you disagree with that you love? We’re called as Christians to promote unity among the body. There’s going to be Christians that you disagree with. How do you do that? How have you done that? And similarly, to promote unity in the body in the midst of disagreement over things that, you know, hot-button issues for a reason, right? Things that people hold dear on for lack of a better phrase, both sides of some of the discussions. How would you encourage business owners and faith driven entrepreneurs to think about when some disagreement and so promoting unity?

David Benham: I’m going to give you a little practical, real quick, and then I’m going to give you a story. Jason and I wrote in our book Bold and Broken About. We have to have a hard head toward principle, but a soft heart toward people. So I’ll say that again, a hard head toward principle, but a soft heart toward people we always see if you look at what’s happening in culture, even in Christ’s time. The 99 percent of people are the enslaved. But then there’s the one percent of the enslavers those have taken like authority and government, or they’ve taken authority in the universities or the major mainstream media or whatever. Jesus acted differently toward the enslave or Pharisee

Jason Benham: because God loves all people. He does not love all ideas.

David Benham: That’s exactly right, as he did the compassion to the woman caught in adultery, the compassion to Zacchaeus, or just unbelievable compassion. So when it comes to individuals, we reach out with compassion when it comes to ideas. We resist with courage, individuals, compassion, ideas, courage. So I’m sitting in a plane flying to St. Louis. Middle seat is open. I’m on the aisle. Jason is ugly, face sleeping already. We ain’t even taken off yet against the window. We’re going to speak at an event. And I got my Bible open. And this lady comes and says, I’m sorry, sir, but I’m sitting in the middle seat. Sounds great. Close my Bible. I stand up, help her put her luggage up. She sits down. She sits right next to me and I sit back down. I open my Bible and she looks at me and says, I just want you to know I am a little. I am a raging liberal feminist and I believe nothing like you. Well, I mean, I was like, Oh, OK, that’s cool. And at first, the flesh, you know your flesh instantly. I’m like, OK, I’m going to dissect her worldview, and I’m going to show her how she’s wrong. And the Holy Spirit pricked my heart and said, Just listen to her. So I said, OK, so I just asked her, I said, Well, my name’s David, what’s your name? Tell me your story. And so now we’re at 30000 feet. Jason snoring. And we’re talking and I I sense the Holy Spirit. Say you need to read Psalm, 139, to her now. Not the whole Psalm. I knew it was around 13 ish. And so I asked her politely, I wasn’t going to force it on her. I said, Do you mind if I just read to you a scripture? So she had just before I said that she had been telling me that she’s got two kids that are both struggling with anxiety and depression, borderline suicide. She’s struggling in her marriage. And now, son, I know there’s some real brokenness, right? Hurt people, hurt people. But healed people heal people. And I remember back to Jesus. The disciples are awakened in the garden and Peter reaches for a sword, cuts the dude’s ear off. And Jesus says, Oh no, no, no, no, no. That’s a different spirit. We don’t hurt. We heal. Right? So all of a sudden now going in with that, I said, Do you mind if I read someone 30 90 and I opened the scripture and I let her look at it? And I said, I’m going to start in verse 13. I started reading and before I was out of verse 13, she’s literally just crying. And she says, I’ve never said this before, but I’ve always held this inside because I was adopted at birth. And she said, I have a recurring dream that I’m in the incubator and the doctors are wheeling me away from my mother and they’re looking down at me and I’m looking up at them in my heart screaming, Don’t worry about me, I’ll take care of myself. She said that to me and instantly, I’m like, We are in the presence of God right now. We are in the presence of God, like my flesh would have taken me out. And so what I had actually read to her was some one thirty nine in verse 13, says four, you created my inmost being unit me together in my mother’s womb. That’s the verse I read to her. And now the sun. She opens up telling me, like this most intimate dream that she’s been having three years. Source of all her feminism. That was it. That’s where her feminism came from. And so anyway, I then just began to speak to her. The Lord created you. He loves you. He was right there with you in that incubator. You were not abandoned. Your mother was a hero for giving you up for adoption. Her story? I don’t even know what her story was, I said. Anyway, I began to speak to her and I began to say the same God that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me, and he can step into your heart. He will take the anxiety from your son, from your daughter. And the next thing you know, we’re having a straight up church service. I don’t even think he ever woke up.

Jason Benham: It was so good. I kept my eyes closed the whole time.

David Benham: So we land, and she’s given me her phone number and the email saying, Please, let’s follow up and all this. So we followed up. I mean, that one little story is just the way that we can, if every week or once a month, we’re just interacting with whether it’s our server, whether it’s a contractor, whether it might be someone even at a university campus that can’t stand the fact that the venoms are coming to speak. We went spoke Santa Barbara. They were frothing at the mouth. Then when we left, people were like, We really love you guys. You know, it’s like, because that’s what we’re called to be is to have a soft heart toward people, but a hard head toward principle because we were not going to budge on the principle that God.

Jason Benham: And that’s where William. It does get tough because sometimes I mean, and I don’t know if you guys are dads or not, but sometimes the kids, your own kids who you love so much come in with a really bad idea. My six year old daughter came in and told me that she was a horse and her name was Aztecs. You want to be called Aztec. And so I went along with it for a little bit, but at some point I had to tell her, You’re not a horse. Right? Well, what do we do when our kid then says, You hate me? Do I now change my demeanor and tone toward her because she said I hated her? So when it comes to dealing with bad ideas that keep people enslaved, like what? David said, God loves all individuals, but he doesn’t love all ideas and we need to demolish ideas that keep individuals enslaved. That’s what Paul tells us in Second Corinthians 10. So when you do that and you do deal with the idea and then the people respond and say, No, you hate me or you hate this particular group of people you have to recognize, God knows that you don’t hate them. You know you don’t hate them. And it’s OK because Matthew, five, says, Blessed, are you when you’re persecuted and falsely accused for my namesake, which means people will believe something about you. That’s not true about you. You are blessed in that moment. So we just can’t let our desire to run away from false accusation. Keep us from demolishing bad ideas.

William Norvell: That’s good. That’s good. And you know, we love having open dialog here on the podcast. That’s what we love doing. And so, you know, as listeners too, we’re going to get David and Jason back for one of those five podcasts. If you have any questions, if this prompts ideas or thoughts, send him in. I got a feeling with Just meet you guys for an hour, you’d be more than willing to discuss. US and have a conversation about anyone who might disagree with some of your world views and and I’d love to give you guys the audience to respond to that. Wonderful. And that being said, we are going to shift and you guys have dropped a lot of great scripture on us in this podcast. But our closing question, what we love to do is invite you to share with us where God has you right now in his word. Maybe something that’s coming alive to you in a new way could be something you read this morning could be something you’ve been meditating on this season, but we just like to point it back to God’s word and say, you know, it’s cool to see how that transcends between our guests and our listeners and exactly how it happened on that plane. We get emails all the time of, gosh, I needed to hear that verse today, and it spoke to me this way. And so we’d love to hear that from you.

David Benham: You wanna go first? Yeah.

Jason Benham: God is in the business of transferring things. He transfers the wealth of the wicked to the righteous, so we don’t have to run after wealth. We run after righteousness, which is being in right relationship with God and God handles the transfer. I do believe that God is also in the business of transferring positions of power, influence and authority from those who are dealmakers, the culturally cool, relevant people. God will transfer their position of influence to people who are willing to stand with a father’s heart and with a mother’s heart. Even the Apostle Paul says you have many teachers, but few fathers. So we got eloquent speakers nowadays, you know, and we’ve got guys has got some huge, massive followings. But when chaos shows up, the man or woman who knows what to do will emerge the leader just in his equals day. In Ezekiel, one one says he was among the people at the Brooke Khabar and God’s word came to him, and then he began to pronounce. Guys were about to go into captivity. It’s going to be bad. Fourteen months later, they were in captivity. They were now in Babylon. Everything that he said had come true. And so war had basically shown up to Israel and the people had been ushered out of Jerusalem. Fourteen months later, it says the leaders of Israel were sitting before Ezekiel, listening to his words. God shifted and transferred Ezekiel into a position of influence because he was willing to be faithful in the midst of a crazy, chaotic culture. Our culture now and cancel culture is looking for men who will be men and women who will be women, men who will stand and arise as fathers that will be willing to point at a wolf and say that is a wolf. The only thing worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing is a wolf in shepherds clothing. And so we have men who are willing to say that. And when women are willing to point that out and say, that’s a wolf, here’s what we can promise you. Give it another few years in the middle of this chaotic culture that we’re seeing today. God is going to begin to transfer positions of influence, power and authority to those people who will be faithful to him. So I got that in Ezekiel eight. That’s where I was just yesterday.

David Benham: Yeah, yesterday he was in his vehicle. I was in the book of Esther, just seeing how Mordechai was faithful, and Mordechai was faithful with his position of influence. And Esther was faithful, and Mordechai encouraged Esther the first time that Esther became the king’s queen. Mordechai told her, Do not reveal who you are as one of the people of God don’t reveal that. But then later on, he says, you better reveal it because salvation will come from the Jews, from someone else. What was the difference between the two moments? It’s when the plot of Haymon, which, by the way, the word for him and his adversary. It’s the same word for the devil in the New Testament. But when the devil’s plot got into the head of the king, Mordechai said, you had better use your position of influence and authority and speak to the king. Right? He says. How do you know that you are saved for such a time as this or you obtained royalty for such a time as this? Well, I feel like for the last 40 or 50 years in the church, we have really attained royalty in the culture. We can be successful Christian entrepreneurs, look, we have what six book deals, me and Jason, we get paid all this money to speak and it’s like, that’s a real blessing. That is a privilege, that is an honor. But now, all the sudden, it’s like the plot of Heyman. The adversary isn’t of the head of governing leaders in media and Big Tech in our governing systems, as we’re just seeing some of the principals that lead to human flourishing, twisted and now the sudden we’re seeing cancel culture. Com, It’s like, whoa, now’s the time for the second part, which is you use your position of influence to speak up. And so that’s what God’s got me and after God’s got Jason Ezekiel. And so hopefully that’ll encourage some folks encourage me.

Henry Kaestner: Grateful for you guys. Excited to have you on the unmuted event, live interaction with entrepreneurs. And this is a great time for us. Just to mention that if you want to engage with some of the folks who come on board and share their stories, we have an event for that for you to come on board and to hear from the Benham brothers and others. So we’re going to be releasing that and stay tuned to those newsletters at the Benham brothers referred to before. But I’ve been incredibly blessedness willing, William was saying. There’s just so much here. I hope that you’ll check out their podcast. I hope that you’ll buy their books. I hope that you’ll be challenged by what you heard today and just try to understand how you might be able to win some. We stand up for the things that you believe in, and for me, at least, just understanding the boldness and brokenness paradigm is super helpful. I love a good framework, so I’m grateful for that. So just make sure that I and the listeners got it. Boldness with our brokenness makes a bully. What was it that makes a bystander?

Jason Benham: Brokenness without brokenness, without boldness makes a bystander? Yeah, but then but then the connection is, is that boldness on the foundation of brokenness makes you a bridge between heaven and God. Heaven is not better. I’m sorry. Heaven on Earth. Yeah, God in the people who are disconnected from him. So that’s what we want boldness on the foundation of brokenness. And it makes you a bridge where you become a gap standard between God and the people who are disconnected from him.

Rusty Rueff: Thanks so much for joining us on today’s show. We hope you enjoyed it. We are very grateful for the opportunity to serve you, the larger Faith Driven Entrepreneur community, and we want to stay connected. The best way for you to do that is to sign up for our monthly newsletter at Faith Driven Entrepreneur DAUG. And while you’re there, we want to hear from you. We derive great joy from interacting with many of you. And it’s been very rewarding to see people come to the site and listen to the podcast now for more than over 100 countries. But it’s even more important to us that you feel like this is your show and that you’ll help make it something that best equips you on your entrepreneurial journey, one that you’re proud of and one that you’re going to share with others. Hey, this podcast wouldn’t be possible without the help from many of our friends executive producer Justin Forman and program director Johnny Wells. Music is by Carl Keck. Well, you can see and hear more of his work at Summer Drugstore.com audio and editing by Richard Barley of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.