Editors’ note: This is an adapted excerpt from Jordan Raynor’s new book, Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive (Waterbrook, 2021).

— by Jordan Raynor

“I’m swamped.”

I’ve said it, you’ve said it, I think every faith driven entrepreneur has said it at one point or another. 

Maybe you’re in a season of feeling swamped right now. You roll out of bed each morning exhausted from not getting enough sleep. You pull open your phone to find a dozen text messages from the ridiculous to the exhausting. If you manage to squeeze in a few minutes of “quiet time,” you’re quickly interrupted by your calendar notifying you of today’s meeting that you didn’t have enough time to fully prepare for.

At work, the struggle continues. Your to-do list seems to be getting longer, not shorter. Your day is filled with back-to-back meetings with no time to think in between. When you are finally able to carve out some time to focus on some “real work,” that familiar ambient anxiety creeps in leading you to question if the project you’re working on is the “right thing” for you to be focused on at that moment.

After work, you rush back home to have dinner with your family. Sitting across from the people you care about the most, you’re there but not really there as your brain is trying to do the thinking you didn’t have time to do during the day. After dinner, it’s the mad rush of all rushes: clean-up, help the kids with their homework, and pray everyone finds time for a bath. After streaming your favorite show or squeezing in a few minutes of reading, you check email one last time and go to bed only to wake up and do it all over again the next day.

Sound familiar? 

Of course, this is an extreme picture of what it looks like to be swamped, but I’m afraid it’s closer to reality than most of us care to admit. Increasingly, it feels like time happens to us—like we’re running a race that’s impossible to win. We feel beholden to our calendars, watches, and to-do lists, rather than having dominion over these tools which promised to make our lives easier and more productive. We have too much to do and not nearly enough time to do it. In short, we’re swamped.

The Bible tells us that more than 2,000 years ago, Jesus’s disciples were “swamped” in a different way. Luke 8:22-23 records the scene: “One day Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us go over to the other side of the lake.’ So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.”

You likely know the rest of the story. Jesus “got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm” (Luke 8:24).

This passage perfectly illustrates the core premise of this post, namely that the solution to the disciples being swamped by the wind and waves is the exact same solution to our being swamped by our to-do lists and hurried schedules. The solution to our perennial struggle with time management is found in Jesus Christ. How? In two ways.

First, Jesus offers you peace before you do anything. Nearly every time management expert says that the path to peace and productivity is found in implementing their system. This is what we might call “works-based productivity,” which claims that if you do exercises X, Y, or Z, then you will find peace. As Christ-followers, we can begin with the opposite premise in what we might call “grace-based productivity,” which says that through Jesus Christ, we already have peace (see Romans 5:1), and we do time management exercises X, Y, or Z as a response of worship.

Again, look at the disciples in the swamped boat. The disciples didn’t do anything to calm the chaos. They merely trusted Jesus to still the storm. You and I can do the same. By trusting in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, we have “peace with God” (Romans 5:1) that is secure regardless of how productive we are or how well we steward our time. 

This is how the gospel is our ultimate source of rest. But when we experience that rest, we will find that the gospel also makes us wildly ambitious to do the will of the Father. Why? Because working to earn someone’s favor is exhausting. But working in response to unconditional favor is intoxicating. For the Christian, the key to being wildly productive is realizing that you don’t need to be productive. 

Here’s the second way that Jesus is the solution to our time management problems: Jesus shows us how God would manage his time. John Mark Comer has pointed out that in the modern Church, we tend to read the gospels for their theology and ethics. But we forget that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are biographies of the life of Christ—the Author of time and the most productive person to ever walk the earth.

Now, of course, the gospel biographies do not show Jesus walking around with a to-do list, calendar, or smartwatch. But they do show him having to prioritize where he spent his time, dealing with distractions at work, fighting for solitude, and seeking to be busy without being hurried. In other words, the gospels show Jesus facing many of the same challenges we face today as we seek to redeem our time. And because he was infallible God, we can assume that Jesus managed his time perfectly, providing us with the ideal model to follow. We would be wise to study the gospels through this biographical lens to see just how Jesus was able to be so purposeful, present, and productive.

Feeling swamped today? Remember that Jesus has already given you peace that is secure regardless of how you perform today. And look to the gospels for a model for being purposeful, present, and productive in the model of your Redeemer.

Editors’ note: This is an adapted excerpt from Jordan Raynor’s new book, Redeeming Your Time: 7 Biblical Principles for Being Purposeful, Present, and Wildly Productive (Waterbrook, 2021).

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Chris Hodges is the founding and senior pastor of Church of the Highlands, and his latest book Out of the Cave shares how a difficult season of his life and a study of the life of Elijah can show us what it looks like to step into the light when depression darkens what you see. We hope this episode encourages you on your entrepreneurial journey, but if you or someone you know needs help, don’t hesitate to call a friend, a pastor, or any crisis hotline. Listen in and remember that you are not alone…

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.

Chris Hodges: I guess this is just my lot in life. This is what my life is going to look like. I think the greatest joy of writing this book is to let people know that there’s hope and there is a way out and that God has meaning for your life. The genius of Victor Frankl when he wrote man’s search for meaning this this Jewish psychiatrist who had a clinic to help the survivors of the Holocaust who watched their loved ones die not a single patient committed suicide on his watch because he helped them see the fact that all of us can have some meaningful work can do it with a community of friends, and then we can take the pain that we’ve experienced in the suffering and help others by which we’ve experienced.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur. I am here with my co-host Rusty Rueff, wearing his Purdue hat. And then I think you’ve got your Alabama colors on William. I usually do.

William Norvell: You usually do usually, you know, different shades of red, but they all harken back to the same image.

Henry Kaestner: So today we’ve got a special guest on. And we’re just talking about Alabama or talking about football, I guess wrongly at the helmet that is over top of his desk. We’re doing this by video Zoom interview as we do most of our podcasts. And so I know that you, as the listener, likely can’t see anything. But it was fun to talk with Chris a little bit before we went on board about the fact that that is not a Washington football helmet behind him, but it is a Woodlawn, right? Chris, your boys go to Woodlawn

Chris Hodges: Woodlawn High School from the movie Woodlawn. And so, yeah, that’s right, probably 15 minutes from where I am right now.

Henry Kaestner: So we’re also talking about what you think of as or what people in Alabama think of is the definition of an atheist, which I thought was interesting talking about Alabama football. What is the definition of an atheist

Chris Hodges: and atheist in Alabama as somebody who does not believe in Paul Bear Bryant?

Henry Kaestner: So there you go. Awesome. I can see William smiled from ear to ear. OK, Chris, we like to start every one of our episodes with understanding a bit about somebody’s background, who you are, where you come from, what drives you. So give us a little bit of an autobiographical flyover up until maybe five or 10 years ago. And then, of course, we going to be talking about out of the cave and home two things we want to do within our half hour together. But start us off by saying who you are and where you come from.

Chris Hodges: Well, I was born and raised in South Louisiana and Baton Rouge, and so I’m a Cajun, which I always tell people. What that means is you might not learn anything, but we are going to have a good time. So you can’t have fun with the person from Louisiana. It’s your fault. So anyway, yeah, I was born and raised there. I was an accounting major at LSU. I thought that’s what I was going to do kind of following in my father’s footsteps, who was one of those brilliant financial minds I’ve ever met and an auditor by trade. And in the middle of my junior year, I had an encounter with God and called to the ministry, transitioned over to a Bible college. Locally there started full time ministry at 20 years old while I was a full time student. I’ll be fifty eight this year, so I’ve been doing this 38 years now. Kind of wanted to be the best number two guy in the world, so I never dreamed about doing anything on my own. And in 1999 went through a year of a hidden depression, tucked it away, smiled on the outside, but just was incredibly miserable. And we were in a 21 day fast to start the year 2000, when on the 17th day that fast, I got an open vision. I actually saw what I was going to do. One day I saw an auditorium. I saw myself speaking in an auditorium that was seat about 2400 people and didn’t know what City was in, but took our vacation time. My wife and five kids and I took our vacation time in May of 2000 to just go look into cities that we thought we could go plant a church in or go start a ministry in. And long story short, we fell in love with Birmingham, Alabama, for a lot of different reasons. And so in the February of the following year of 2001, we launched a church, didn’t know a single person in town, didn’t know how to plan a church, didn’t have any money to plant the church. Other than that, we was ready to go. And so we we started the church and had about 400 people show up in the very first service. Two hundred came back the next Sunday, and here we are today, 20 years later, with one of the largest churches in the nation and nobody more amazed than me.

Henry Kaestner: So wow, OK. So all that’s happened in 20 years, and we’re going to get to what it’s look like for how you all planted churches at scale and just what you’re doing with the education. A whole bunch of different things. But what was it like in the early days you get this LSU tiger walks into a place of Alabama football and and you know, I know enough about Birmingham and its history to know that the gospel had been there before you guys got there. So a bunch of people who are thinking, you know, we’ve already got a church, we’ve already we already know about Christ, and here’s a guy from LSU that’s coming in and wants to pastor to us. I wouldn’t say that that’s necessarily hostile environment, but but maybe it is pretty close. Well, what was it like early in the early days?

Chris Hodges: Well, first thing what it was like, there was nothing and no one to help you plan a church. So there was no books, there were no conferences, there was no money, there was no training. There was what we call here in the south that y’all go ahead ministry. I mean, they would just they pray for you at a service and say, you know, good luck to you. And the model back then was actually to start in a home, start small. And thank God, I had enough business training to know that that’s not how you start any kind of business that you needed some kind of critical mass to get past. You know what it would take to make it successful that, you know, more than 90 percent of business failures happen because they were undercapitalized on the front end. So it could have been a great idea that just never got enough of a push. So I thought that must be true with churches as well. So we we actually bought into. An idea that is what launched a church planning movement, and that is, let’s start on bigger, let’s wait to slow it down and make sure we have the people and the resources and the training and the know-how and have larger launches. And that’s what we do to this day. But it was very, very different. Make no mistake about it, even though it was church in an area where people had opportunity to go to church, there’s actually a lot of people that were still far from God. Because here down in the south, you know, going to a church is like belonging to a country club so you can attend. But really nothing happened in your heart. And of course, that’s not everyone. But there was a lot of people. So there’s been scores of people who’ve given their life to Jesus here in Alabama. And in fact, I think the kind of stepped into a vacuum, honestly, a people who wanted to experience God and enjoy serving God and and be encouraged to go make a difference in our world.

Henry Kaestner: So you talk about the business aspect and of course, there’s church planning and and I’ve reflected on this for a long time that a church planner is really an entrepreneur. Absolutely. And so to dove into that a little bit in terms of the parallels, and maybe there’s some differences too. But where do the similarities and differences between an entrepreneurial church planning pastor and a business person? You mentioned one of them, but you know, just what’s the right pace of scale? What’s the right size you need? But just riff on that a little bit.

Chris Hodges: Yes. So we actually did some research and found out that of the 90 percent of churches that were failing, they never got to a critical mass number of people. That makes the church experience different in a good way. So everybody knows that if you’re singing. Singing is better in a room of 500 than it is five. So the question is then where is that number? What is the number where it actually gets better? And we found out it was somewhere around 130 to 150 people, whether it’s naturally about 50 percent attrition to whatever you launch. So if you need a net 150 people, then you need to build your plan around attracting at least 300 people on launch day so that if you had that full attrition, you still have enough to have a critical mass where you’re preaching and you’re singing. And the experience that we have collectively when we come to church is something that people can actually enjoy, and that’s what we bought into. So we actually built an entire marketing plan around getting, you know, I actually bumped it up. I thought if it was 300, let’s just be really safe and make it 400 people and so actually built an entire marketing plan and everything that we were going to do based on attracting that number of people on day one. And honestly, it worked exactly like the studies had shown. And those are the similarities. And honestly, I don’t know that there are any differences.

Henry Kaestner: Mm-Hmm. So isn’t there another way to do that? Can’t you just go out and recruit a couple of really good singers so that you start off with five and you got to? I’m kidding. One thing that entrepreneurs and pastors share, particularly church planning pastors, is a sense of loneliness and isolation. Oh yeah, it’s a hard thing. You’re selling something to somebody. You’re trying to presumably recruit somebody to join your church. I know this is the case, of course. In business, you’re trying to bring on board customers. You’re trying to bring on board employees. Sometimes you’re trying to sell an employee to stay and then you get home from work or you get home from being a pastor and your wife or your husband asks you how things are going and you want to tell them things are going great because they don’t think you should have left that job that you had in education or in the ministry or at Cisco or IBM. So you’re always selling something to somebody that can be really isolating. Talk to us about that a bit, as you see in there, because just to give our audience a sense of scale, I think that the Church of the Highlands has been involved in something like nine hundred and fifty church plants. Is that right?

Chris Hodges: That’s exactly right.

Henry Kaestner: Unbelievable. OK. So huge scale. So you’re seeing these types of patterns. Talk to us a bit about isolation and loneliness.

Chris Hodges: Yeah. And not only isolation, loneliness, but most leaders after they’ve you know, let me just say it this way, been on stage all day. They actually experience these adrenaline highs in these emotional highs. So that when you do get home, not only are you lonely and isolated, but also your spent, and most people make their worst decisions when they’re spent. And in fact, most of our spiritual attacks happen when we’re spent. I actually spent seven years in Colorado Springs in my earlier years as a youth pastor, did a lot of snow skiing, and I’ll never forget one conversation I had with a person who worked at the infirmary there at the ski slopes, who said that 90 percent of all the accidents happen in the last hour of the day. And there are two things that happened in the last hour of the day. And that is, you’re tired and you’re overconfident. And that is true of every leader. So do you do now you end up home or you end up at the end of a week and you still are expected, perhaps by your family or others, to continue to be on stage and perform. But you’re tired and you’re spent. And then you add to that. Fuller Theological Seminary said that over 90 percent of all pastors say they’re lonely. In fact, he said that they could figure out some way to earn a living other than. Ministry, more than 50 percent of them would leave the ministry and do it, so it really is difficult for a lot of people who are in that type of leadership.

William Norvell: Chris, we were talking preshow. Most of our listeners know I grew up in Alabama and went to Alabama, and the Church of the Highlands has been such a beacon of light in Birmingham. And I know so many people that have been blessed by your ministries are just so grateful that you followed the vision. You know, we can talk about your book in a second, but but you had that vision and you know, not everybody follows it sometimes, right? Like, you still had to take the active step to chase down what God showed you. And so grateful for that and grateful for you. And thank you. You know, we are going to move into the book out of the cave in just a second, and that’s a book you know about dealing with depression and something that we’ve talked about before on a podcast with Max Anderson. But it’s been a while. Tell us a little bit. Why did you feel led to take the time to write, to take the time to wrestle with this issue and come up with a book on this topic?

Chris Hodges: Actually, it happened because in 2018 there were three pastors who committed suicide and I didn’t know any of them, but it impacted me like I knew them. And I remember being so grieved I thought, This is just not good. And honestly, I was very ignorant on the topic and honestly at that time in ministry, 35 years and then never done a message around the topic of depression. In fact, most churches shy away from it society even somewhat because there’s such a stigma around mental illness. And I thought, Man, I just need to. I need to figure out what this is all about, because if that’s true of those pastors, it’s certainly true of people who did some research. Of course, it’s epidemic. Many considered to be the number one health crisis in the world is depression and anxiety. One out of nine people right now are on some type of antidepressants. So your know your early setting that many people all the time. So I did this study and did this message. Well, guess what? It became the most rewatched message times 100. And I thought, OK, well, then this doesn’t need just one message. So I we actually went on a two year journey to do research both secular and spiritually just to figure out everything I could know, knowing that it wouldn’t be all the answers, you know, wouldn’t be everything that needs to be said. But the church needed to have a voice in this discussion, and there are some very good things that God has to say about that condition. And there is to everyone who’s listening, there’s some incredible hope. If you’re feeling depressed in any kind of a way,

William Norvell: thank you for that. And you know, it’s funny. I actually gave a talk recently about the word depression and defining it right? And so I kind of wouldn’t define what I went through. Is that particularly but a deep place of darkness that those types of messages hit me and I needed and where my lights and I’d love to invite you to that, you know, how do you define that? What do you think misconceptions are about people that struggle with this and just kind of give you the microphone there?

Chris Hodges: I think everyone would say at some point they’ve struggled with it and everyone would tell a different story. But for everyone, the metaphor that we’ve used in the book is a cave because, you know, there’s a way out. You just don’t know where it is. And it becomes very, very dark. So there’s a disorientation in, you know it because like, if someone else came to you and said, Hey, I’m going through this, you can see the way out. And you can even advise them. But when you’re in the middle of it, you can advise yourself, you’re so disoriented, it’s so dark again. You know, there’s a way out, you just not sure what it is. And in fact, your mind even begins to make up things like, there’s bats in here and there’s got to be about really close. And when there’s not even begin to create a narrative, that’s not even true, it’s almost true in every case of depression. A story gets added embellished changed, amplified in a way that makes it incredibly worse. Psychologists call it ruminating where you take your distress and you chew on it so long and swallow it and regurgitate it, and it gets worse and worse and worse the more you do. So I think the gamut of depression is pretty wide, and I think everyone’s experienced it in some way or another.

William Norvell: And a bit of your book focuses on the character Elijah. Could you tell us a little bit about him and what God revealed about his life and what God took him through?

Chris Hodges: Yeah. So in Chapter 18, the first kings, you know, he experiences two of the greatest spiritual highs. There’s the best preaching material in the Bible, you know, and you’ll hear a lot of sermons around it. Six verses later, in Chapter 19, he wants to die, and it came from just one threat. So today’s equivalency of that would be one comment on a social media page. One. I don’t like you. The point is he experienced this highest of highs and then found himself depleted. In fact, there were at least six different things that he did that psychologists and psychiatrists would say contribute to depression. He did at least six of the what most considered nine causes of depression. He did at least six of them that put him in a cave. And that’s just true for a lot of us, right? So. So what I did is I actually wrote the book outlining not only the six. He got in the case of depression, but the five ways that he got out.

William Norvell: Oh, that’s great, and, you know, another character that I’ve gone to when I’ve been to this time, someone 42, you know, David has this beautiful echoes and you know, he spent a lot of time in a cave and I’ll just kind of read someone for you to listen to my cry for I’m in desperate need. Rescue me from those who pursue me for they are too strong for me. Set me free from my prison that I may praise your name and just see that cave. I just see him sitting somewhere. And you know, one of the things that I’ve struggled with when, when I’ve gone through these times is people do try to show me the light really fast and try to almost tell me, I don’t understand, don’t you know, the savior some version of that, right? Yeah. How have Christians maybe mistakenly viewed this or mistakenly treated symptoms of depression?

Chris Hodges: Yeah, because we’re people of faith. And so for many, they’ve been told that faith means you never have any issues, and if you do, something’s wrong with you. And so I wrote an entire chapter around removing the stigma and making sure that we posture ourselves in a place where, you know, we’re not saying the wrong things. In fact, in the book, I get the 10 things you should never say to someone who’s depressed in the 10 things you can say that will actually help them. And honestly, I would like to give people the benefit of the doubt that they really didn’t know any better. They thought they were helping, but it doesn’t help. And so there is a better approach, and I do it honestly by being vulnerable myself. So what I did and is it’s a big risk, or at least it feels like a big risk is I get very vulnerable about some of my darkest moments, even one that I faced in 2020 that was really one of the lowest two or three weeks of my entire life didn’t think I would recover from it. And no one would ever even know anything about it. But I decided to write about it in the hopes that people would say, Well, if this man can open up and be honest and all the things that he’s done with his life, you know that he could still have moments like this. Then maybe there’s hope for me to

William Norvell: say, Man, thank you for sharing that, Chris, and thank you. We’ll try to link to that writing for people to read in our show notes and for ourselves, for our listeners themselves. And also, of course, you know, one of the things that gave me so much hope when I was going through a lot of this was friends noticing things right and calling me and saying, Hey, you don’t seem like yourself, right? And so what are some of the most common signs that we can notice in ourselves or noticed in others that we may need to ask a question to that they may be struggling with this?

Chris Hodges: Yeah, honestly, a lot of us don’t notice that until we’re actually in a dark place. So you do need to be surrounded with people who can say, Hey, man, something doesn’t seem right here. And honestly, more people, in my opinion, would be alive today had we noticed and had the courage to really say, Hey, let me call you, let me check on you. What’s going on? And for a lot of us, honestly, instead of ruminating instead of having what psychologists call self-talk that we pick up the phone or text, someone say, Hey, I’m not in a good place, and I would encourage listeners right now who who aren’t in a good place. That is your next step is to let someone know, you know, whether it be a mental health hotline or a suicide hotline or a friend just saying, Dude, call me, check on me. I’m not doing well right now. But the more we think that people don’t care or don’t want to hear that, honestly, we will get deeper and deeper into that cave of depression

William Norvell: and such good advice. And I mean, hey, you can find us if you’re listening to this and you got nobody. Find me. Find Henry. My guest is Chris Wood. Pick up to Rusty and Justin. Just it’s so paramount to let someone know you can’t do this alone. That’s why God gave us other people. So just when a hammer that in and also I want to give you the chance, Chris. How are entrepreneurs, church planners, you know, and people building businesses? How do you? Have you seen them being especially vulnerable to these types of thoughts and these types of seasons?

Chris Hodges: Because we’re used to highs and highs can we can start depending on adrenaline to get through things so you can actually be depressed. But when you get to work, you kind of feel good again. And a lot of that is masked by the effort that we’re putting into accomplishing and, you know, getting the bottom line done. In my case, I’d be preaching or great screaming and hearing some amends and you walk off, you’re thinking, Wow, that was, you know, I think I feel better. But an hour later, you’re driving home and you’re sitting on the couch and the crash happens again and again. What I would want people to hear and see that the great prophet Elijah, who arguably is the greatest prophet in the Bible because he’s the only one that’s included in the transfiguration of Jesus with Moses there. Many believe he’s one of the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation. So like, this is an important figure who obviously had it together, who had these incredible emotional, spiritual in an entrepreneur award, these accomplishments in life and crashes minutes later versus later to a point where he’s hiding under a. Re asking God to take his life. So I think part of the solution is just the realization that that can happen. Then we become more aware of ourselves. And honestly, practically, if you really want to know where this plays out for a guy like me as my wife knows this now, that the darkest moments for me are Sunday nights to this day, I feel more vulnerable to temptation to attack, to having bad thoughts after we’ve had incredible services just a couple of hours ago. And so my wife knows this. My friends know this. I get calls from my buddies. Hey, how was your day? How are you doing? How are you really doing? And my wife is staying by my side, you know, and we frankly were intentional about our closeness during those moments because we’re just trying to be smart to the fact that we face these moments and we want to try to avoid the enemy taking advantage of them.

Rusty Rueff: Chris, our listeners have heard me many times quote the pastor that I grew up with in a Southern Baptist church used to say We change by invitation or we change my situation. And I really appreciate what you’re talking about because there will be people who are listening today that this could be their invitation, right? Instead of getting to that situational moment that you described as a crash. And so I so appreciate you not only speaking into it, but the writing that you’ve done. And you mentioned it in the book. You know, there were six steps that Elijah got into the cave, but there were five steps that he took when he came out. Can you give us a little preview of that? Because it might well be that some of that hope and light that someone can’t see today could be the thing that actually helps them recognize where they are.

Chris Hodges: So he gets visited by an angel. What’s interesting? You think if you got visited by the angel, it gets real spiritual. Pretty quick, right? The first thing the Angel says is sleep. And then he says, eat. And then he said, sleep. And then he said, eat. So the first four commands were all about, Hey, let’s just slow down a little bit and just kind of get yourself healthy here before he ever challenged him spiritually. What you would do next before you ever gave him, you know, a purpose for his life. He took attention to his physical rhythms. And honestly, when we’re helping people to this day out of the Cave of Depression, the first questions are How are you sleeping? Are you taking a day off? Do you even know what the word Sabbath means? Can I help you slow down a little bit? You know, the Bible says better to have one hand full. You’ve got two, but only have one handful and have some tranquility than to have two handfuls and have toil in a chasing after the wind. Most people live to handful living. They do what’s doable, but it’s not something that’s sustainable. So the first step in the process really is this gives some attention to our physical life and our rhythms. And then he had this God encounter, and I teach in the book, You know how you can pursue God in a way where he really responds to you because it’s critical to you coming alive again. The third thing you did there was a clarity of his identity. So God wanted to make sure he knew who he was. The fourth thing was a new assignment. If I gave you only one, by the way, there was only one thing that I could give to help people out of the cave. A depression is, is the power of a project. This was Victor Franklin, the great Austrian psychiatrist that helped people out of the Holocaust. The purpose of life was not pleasure. It was meaning. And if you don’t have meaning, your dull your life with pleasure. And so you have this purpose in life, this power of a project. And then the last thing he had a sustaining relationship. He never did life alone again. He had a partner named Elisha. And you never hear of Elijah getting depressed again.

Rusty Rueff: That’s great. Can you go deeper into that part of the relationship side because, you know, stepping out of the cave depression into the light and having those people that can? And you mentioned yourself, the folks that know you so well that you get those calls on Sunday nights. How do we cultivate those kinds of relationships? Because, you know, those are relationships that have to be willing to speak truth to us, right? And shine, be a mirror of who we are back to them. How do we find those people and what do we say to them to give them a license to be that authentic and honest to us?

Chris Hodges: Yeah. Really, the secret is anything you want, you know, you’ll reap that what you sow. So you might want to first become that person to someone. Hey, if you ever going through anything, I’d like to be the person you call. I think you foster relationships that you can benefit from. But then the dynamic, you know, there’s a lot of verses around this that people just really don’t realize. James, five 5:16 says, Confess your sins one to another, not to God one to another and pray for each other that you may be healed the way I say it is. You confess your sins to God for forgiveness, but you’ve got to confess your sins to someone else to find healing. You’ll never get past the issue that you’re facing without letting someone know what you’re facing. The way I say it is, you’ll always stay as sick as your secrets. So don’t have any and you don’t have to tell everybody, but you better. Tell somebody, C.S. Lewis said friendship is born at the moment that the person shares something like that and the other person says, what? You too. I thought I was the only one and what you’re going to discover because there is a fear like, I can’t let anybody know what I’m really thinking, but what you’re going to get is that C.S. Lewis moment where they go? You too. I thought I was the only one and praise God that I have only about three people, by the way. Three pastor friends who know every thought, every temptation, every mistake, every day. I want to quit, right? And so now they’re tuned in to it. They’ll even call me and preempt it. Sometimes, you know, before I even get to them. And all of us need relationships like that.

Rusty Rueff: Yes, we do. We absolutely do. So, you know, so many times, entrepreneurs, we think we can handle this by ourselves. Right? That’s what we do. And we show no vulnerability and we show no weakness and we go and we take care of it. What do you say to that person who’s listening right now saying, Hey, all this is really good. Thanks so much. But you know, I got this.

Chris Hodges: I got this. Yeah, that would say that it’s lonely at the top, you know, and people get there. And honestly, they find out that that’s not really where they want to be, that there’s nothing better in life than doing life for someone else. And they all know because they do it in their businesses that any idea they have is only as good as the people they have on their team cooperating and doing the same thing. Well, the same is true with your personal life. You can no more build a great business doing it alone. Build your life, then you can build a great business. It takes this cooperation and collaboration, and MIT are the worst because we would rather not let anybody know. Ladies by and large are more willing to share what they’re facing, and but all of us need that kind of a friend. And so all I can say is I’m as Type-A as the next guy, right? And I love to accomplish and and do all those great things. But the best part of my life, and the reason why I’m even on this podcast today is that I’ve had friends who’ve protected me and know what I’m going through. You know, when I faced one of my darkest moments in 2020, I had friends who called me three times a day and people who were just like, Bro, I’m just checking on you again. You’re good. You can make this. We got you. I’ll fly to you right now if you need me and you just all of us need people like that.

Rusty Rueff: I want your friends. I mean, don’t we all want those kinds of friends? That’s a truly awesome. It’s interesting that you met that mentioned, you know, men speaking to men or, you know, women. You know, I’ve been shopping for a new doctor and I was recommended to a woman doctor and I asked her, I said when we were doing a little meet and greet, I said, So you know, as a guy who says, you know, mid-year and aging, wouldn’t it be better for me to have a male doctor who would be more sensitive to those things? And she goes, Well, I guess so. She goes, But I will tell you one thing you will tell me things that you will never tell a male doctor. Wow. And that was fascinating, because the fact that I was even talking to her about the question of a male voice, I wouldn’t have ever asked the guy doctor. So I do think that there’s certainly a difference there, you know, but we have to work harder. We have to work harder at it.

Chris Hodges: Absolutely. And maybe begin by doing it to someone else. Maybe begin just by being that friend for someone else. That’s right.

Rusty Rueff: I’m going to turn it over to William to close here in a second. But you know, if you zoomed out for a moment and you think about the book and you think about, you know, the impact that it’s having, what do you want to see change in the world? I mean, you’re a pastor of one of the most successful growing churches in America. What’s your hope for the world?

Chris Hodges: Yeah, my hope is that people have hope. Honestly, I think probably one of the most hopeful parts of the book is that while there are some very biological reasons for depression, that that does not comprise the vast majority of what causes depression. So there are some definite genetic and biological things that need to be treated biologically, medically. But for a lot of the vast majority of it, they are lifestyle related, which means there’s a way out for those who have thought, I guess this is just my lot in life. This is what my life is going to look like. I think the greatest joy of writing this book is to let people know that there’s hope and there is a way out and that God has meaning for your life. The genius of Victor Frankl when he wrote man’s search for meaning this this Jewish psychiatrist who had a clinic to help the survivors of the Holocaust who watched their loved ones die not a single patient committed suicide on his watch because he helped them see the fact that all of us can have some meaningful work can do with the community of friends, and then we can take the pain that we’ve experienced in the suffering and help others by which we’ve experienced. And not a single person committed suicide on their watch, so I think pointing people in the direction of, Wow, there’s a way to use what you’ve experienced to help a lot of other people, I’m hoping has great traction and gives people some great hope for the future of their lives. Hmm.

William Norvell: Amen reminds me of when I was wrestling with some of these things. Somebody sent me a great quote that, you know, I think it’s rooted more in what you talked about. It comes out a little prosperity gospel ish, but it’s more rooted in what you said, which was a treasure quote. That said, it’s doubtful that God can use anyone greatly until he has hurt him deeply.

Chris Hodges: Yeah, exactly. Paul said it. He says, I comfort others with the same comfort I have received. And by the way, right before he said that, he said I wanted to take my life. He says my pressures were so great. This is Second Corinthians one. They were so great that I just didn’t want to live. But I realized that God was using this for his purpose. And now, of course, you know, we know it’s true. If somebody was struggling with cancer, they would much prefer someone who’s probably lived through that experience. Pray for them and ministers. Then why? Because they understand. So for every person who’s going through hard times, just remember this that God can use you with your hard times to be a blessing to others. And buddy, when you lay your head down at night knowing your life impacted the life of the others, there is no money, there is no salary, there is no business. There is there’s nothing that life can give you. That is better than that.

William Norvell: Hmm. Thank you for that. I can’t imagine there’s a better place to move towards a closed door. I want to give you the opportunity, Chris, because this is such an important topic and we just can’t spend enough time on it. Is there any other parting encouragement thoughts that you would have for entrepreneurs listening out there after you’ve sort of dived pretty deep into this topic?

Chris Hodges: Yeah, that I just I think we’re living in the greatest generation ever that that is allowing some of these conversations to take place in other generations. There’s been a stigma around mental health or depression or anxiety. And I think for one of the first times ever, we’re talking about it, understanding it. We’re kind of all telling our cave stories, you know what I’m saying? And it’s giving people confidence to deal with some of their issues. And I would just want to tell them, there’s a better life available to you that God wants to get involved in your life and give you a life that goes beyond anything you can attain in business or in anything that your endeavors or that God can give you this sense of meaning and fulfillment that supersedes the external. You know, the word happiness comes from the same word like happenstance, meaning you’re happy because of your circumstance. Your happiness is circumstantially related. So if the weather is good, I’m happy. If it’s bad, I’m not. But joy is different. Joy is not circumstantial. True fulfillment is internal regardless of circumstance, and that’s available for every person.

Henry Kaestner: That’s awesome. That’s an incredible encouragement. Williams, can I ask a last question here in a second about what you’re hearing from God and his word? But I want to throw in something that we’re piloting out a little bit, which is for many of our yes, for all of our I guess hopefully we’re going to ask them a question about where are they giving to? What are the things that are on your heart in your mind? The biblical message of generosity is such a big part of any Christ far discipleship journey. And definitely for an entrepreneur who spends a lot of time thinking about money. And maybe it’s on this topic, maybe it’s on mental health. But as entrepreneurs are leaning into giving an understanding that so many of these things are not necessarily just left for government, but we can get involved in and we can get involved in ministries that might be able to share eternal hope, not just temporal hope. Is there anything that jumps out at you that you and your wife like given to you?

Chris Hodges: Yeah, everything. Leadership related, honestly. You know, Jesus said the harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. We don’t have a harvest problem. There’s plenty to do. We know how to do it. We know how to fix it. We know how to feed people. We know how to care for people. We know how to preach to people. We don’t have enough people doing it. The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. So to me, one of the greatest investments ever that you could give to is into anything that’s leadership related. So the things that my wife and I are contributing to, we have a college here that releases thousands of students into full time ministry, a first of its kind kind of a Christian university, but in the academy mindset called Highlands College. I’m involved in an effort with John Maxwell to train up Christian leaders around the world because everywhere there are good leaders, people flourish everywhere. There are poor leaders or lack of leaders. People aren’t flourishing. You look anywhere around the world, and that is the one distinguishing factor that determines the flourishing of people, and that is the quality of leadership in those areas.

Henry Kaestner: That’s an awesome answer, and I love the way that you, of course, rooted in scripture, and I’ve never really reflected on it that way. So thank you.

Chris Hodges: You’re welcome. Thank you.

William Norvell: And as we move to that, Chris, where we do love to close, is just trying to understand. And where where God has you in his living word today? You know, and that could be something you’ve been meditating on for a bit that came out of the book or it could be something God put in front of you this morning. But we just love to invite you to share where, in God’s word, he’s walking with you during this time.

Chris Hodges: Yes. You know, as I’m getting older, I’m honestly trying to make my life every moment of my life count. And so actually, my life, I think, is in some way more effective but simpler at the same time. And I’m just really focused a lot on my pace. That verse that I quoted already in Ecclesiastes that says, you know, it’s better to have a one handful kind of a life that not everything that is doable is sustainable. And so honestly, I mean, kind of like the tithes you get more accomplished when you give God the first and honor him that he can do more than 90 percent. Then when you’ve kept it the whole, I’m trying to think of that in terms of time as well, that, you know, working up for my life into fewer things that have more of an effect. And honestly, the reward of that is, I think, more effectiveness, but also, you know, tranquility of really a peace in the soul. And so to me, it’s all about pace. I think for the first time in my life, I’m learning what it means to truly take real Sabbaths and really honor God with the first of my life. And so those are the reflections right now. And I think I think they’re important for a lot of us because the world is demanding a whole lot more of us. And if you don’t have a clarity and a priority for your life, trust me, someone else does. And all of us know that that lead anything that there’s a pull on us in every direction. So I had this phrase of kind of finish my thought with this. I began the year with this and never, never had this thought before. And it’s called selective ignorance, selective ignorance. So I could. No, but do I nearly need to know? And so for me, I was getting really consumed with the news coming out of the political season coming out of 2020. And I found I wasn’t watching, you know, 30 minutes. I was watching an hour of news shows and then reading it, and then I had an app about it. And now I’m giving myself about ten minutes a day to get caught up what’s in the world. And it’s only you’re in reading and not in video, not in any news shows. And I know all that I need to know, and there’s a whole lot more peace in my soul. And so I would encourage the listeners to perhaps make a list of some selective ignorance areas, things that you just don’t have to know. For some people, that’s going to be, you know, it’s time to get off of so much social media. Or maybe totally, you know, just the constantly knowing what everybody’s wearing, doing, eating, traveling to do, you really have to know. And I think therein lies peace for ourselves.

William Norvell: Hmm. Amen. I’ll try to in this in a pastor joke of my pastor on selective ignorance. He gave this great talk. One time, he and his wife took a month off after seven years and they shut their phones off and they tried their best right. Of course, they failed sometimes. But he joked one day that they just came up with this phrase and, you know, they were sitting at lunch one day and, you know, Dove flew by and actually said, I wonder what a baby dove looks like. And Dave said, Let’s just not know exactly everything. They’re like talking point for so much because it’s so quick to run to your just information overload. And they just started saying things like, let’s just not know what happened there or what that is. Or, you know, there was a day when you just didn’t know, you know, and your life was OK. And I love that phrase selective ignorance and something I’m going to try to put into practice. And just so grateful for you, Chris. You shed light and I can’t wait for people to pick up the book and to learn about this incredibly important topic that plagues so many entrepreneurs in the world. So, so grateful for you and your ministry.

Chris Hodges: Thanks to I enjoyed it.

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.

— by Peter Greer & Chris Horst

Our world is short on hope. From racial injustice to poverty to political polarization to the moral failures of prominent leaders—bad news dominates our headlines. We feel hope in ourselves, our societies, and our leaders running thin.

It’s even more painful when we hear stories of scandals and abuse among followers of Jesus—people who use power and position to subjugate instead of serve and people who claim to worship God yet seem to worship themselves. We witness cover-ups and financial mismanagement, hypocrisy, #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, viciousness from people who pin crosses on their blazers, and unchecked materialism from people who were supposed to “store [their] treasures in heaven.”[1]

When we see these abuses or experience the pain they cause, we can feel justified in asking: Is it time to give up on church? Time to give up on organizations and institutions? Time to give up on the dream of changing the world? Even more severely, we ask if it’s time to give up on God.

When we look for solutions to this ballooning hopelessness from our society, we come away feeling entirely unsatisfied. Leadership gurus promise easy hacks to solve our disappointments and management challenges. Instagram influencers outline diet and exercise plans guaranteeing a healthier life. Technology companies insist their latest app will solve our relationship challenges, improve our sleep, and decrease our stress and anxiety.

In 2020, “self-care” expanded to a $450 billion industry, 45 times larger than it was just one decade earlier.[2] From Fitbit to candles and from self-help books to meditation apps, we are spending close to half a trillion dollars annually in our attempt to purchase hope.

But our experience and observation tell us that our cultural obsession with self-improvement is entirely insufficient. The rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and suicidal thoughts continue to increase throughout the United States.[3]More than half of Americans say they are more anxious today than they were one year ago, a reality we acutely feel as we write this in 2021.[4]

The solutions proposed by Christians are often just as unhelpful. Trite Jeremiah 29:11 memes, assuring us our hardships are NBD—no big deal—because God has a plan, aren’t helpful. We don’t need any more advice amounting to tying theological bows on disappointment and pain.

In our leadership journey, we have benefited from and enthusiastically endorsed books like Grit by Angela Duckworth and The Resilience Factor by Andrew Shatte and Karen Reivich. But we recognized our own temptation to embrace our culture’s obsession with self-improvement—to place our trust in our own abilities, grit, and resilience and to make these good things the ultimate thing. And we began to recognize that they make a faulty foundation for sustaining our service.

Tumbleweeds and Fruit-Bearing Trees

Throughout the Bible, we read of the shocking prevalence of idols. Despite God’s desire for proximity and relationship, time and again the Israelites traded the real thing for a counterfeit. We may be tempted to scoff at their worship of physical idols. The prophet Jeremiah certainly put it bluntly: “People who worship idols are stupid and foolish.”[5] Yet today, our hearts remain equally capable of idol worship, and we suspect Jeremiah might speak the same words to us.

Though most of us aren’t bowing to statues or poles, we’d argue from personal experience that many leaders’ idol of choice is the idol of our own abilities: a good thing we are tempted to distort into the ultimate thing. Too often, we create a god in our own image—a god we can understand and control. Yet, Jeremiah reminds us that we need a bigger, more mysterious, and more wonderful picture of God. His ancient words to the people of Judah resonate with contemporary truth as he calls out their idols—and ours—and offers an alternative.

In Jeremiah 17:5-6, God leads us into the dirt, literally, by providing, through Jeremiah, an agricultural object lesson.

This is what the Lord says:
“Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans,
who rely on human strength
and turn their hearts away from the Lord.
They are like stunted shrubs in the desert,
with no hope for the future.
They will live in the barren wilderness,
in an uninhabited salty land.”

Cursed. Stunted. Barren. The image is bleak. God gives us a picture of unfulfilled promise—a living thing created to flourish but rooted in its own deficiency. The Message translation says, “Cursed is the strong one … who thinks he can make it on muscle alone and sets God aside as dead weight. He’s like a tumbleweed on the prairie, out of touch with the good earth. He lives rootless and aimless in a land where nothing grows.”[6]

Tumbleweeds, a common nickname for a plant also known as Russian thistle, dot the landscape of the American West. When winter arrives, the brittle plants die, detach from their roots, and aimlessly blow wherever the wind carries them. Tumbleweeds inhabit places “where nothing grows.”

Jeremiah saw God’s people picking the wrong soil, putting down roots not in God but in idols or allies that couldn’t sustain them. Jeremiah relates this image of the stunted shrub or the aimless tumbleweed to those who choose to sink their hopes in anything but God.

Most temptingly today, we place our confidence in the idol of self-reliance. With clenched teeth and gritty resolve, we say, I’ve got this. We wage war against the most intractable issues of our day, and often, we attempt it in our own strength. We believe ourselves qualified and capable, relying on all the resolve and resilience we can muster. It’s pride and, Jeremiah would suggest, idolatry. We bow to the idol of our own grit. But this type of humanism rarely holds when the winds of pain and disappointment blow. Unmitigated disappointment opens the door to cynicism, as our focus shifts inward.

Turning inward and attempting to live within our own strength will eventually let us down. Relying on our abilities, we become brittle.

We rightly recognize and celebrate grit and resilience in our culture. But grit alone will not sustain us.

In her book, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, journalist Anne Peterson describes our society’s addiction to easy fixes to the hopelessness we feel.[7]

We gravitate toward these personal cures because they seem tenable, and promise that our lives can be recentered, and regrounded, with just a bit more discipline, a new app, a better email organization strategy, or a new approach to meal planning. But these are merely Band-Aids on an open wound. They might temporarily stop the bleeding, but when they fall off, and we fail at our new-found discipline, we just feel worse. (sic)

While Peterson may not agree with Jeremiah’s prescription, she identifies just how insufficient these strategies are to creating the change they promise. Jeremiah leads us to a conclusion that is far simpler and far more profound than we anticipated: grit and resilience flow from our rootedness in the God of hope.

Never Stop Producing Fruit

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God invites us to pursue the alternative of “in my own strength” humanism: hopefulness, rooted in trust and active expectation in God’s strength and faithfulness. He invites us to sustain hope amid the drought because He is the One who sustains. He invites us to cultivate deep roots that reach the ever-flowing Source of Living Water.

“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord
and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.
They are like trees planted along a riverbank,
with roots that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat
or worried by long months of drought.
Their leaves stay green,
and they never stop producing fruit.”[8]

Jeremiah contrasts stunted shrubs with an image of a firmly planted tree, producing fruit amid the harshest drought. Both will experience droughts and heat. The difference, Jeremiah tells us, is roots that connect to Life. It’s making the Lord, not ourselves, our source of hope—turning upward, not inward. Likewise, in our conversations with global leaders we work alongside, we do not hear self-reliance; we hear faith. We do not hear about strength and resolve; we hear about roots.

Ultimately, where our roots find their source of life makes the difference between a fruit-bearing tree and a brittle shrub. This is the difference Jeremiah calls out. It’s not about our own strength. It’s not about a new model of self-help. It’s a story of deep trust, connection, and reliance on God—despite harsh, even brutal, conditions.

Jesus tells us the way to produce fruit—and speaks frankly of our limitations—in John 15. “A branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. … Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”[9]

Jesus tells us that when we are connected to the Source of Life, there is fresh fruit. On our own, we become barren and stunted, no matter our levels of grit.

When we recognize that we are nearing the end of our abilities, God reminds us that He has been there all along, inviting us to look not inward—to our finite abilities—but upward. As Kyle Idleman argues in Don’t Give Up, “The point of defeat … seems like the most desolate corner of creation. [But] it actually places you in prime position to experience God’s strength and provision because, as it turns out, God is drawn to the desperate.”[10] And the desperate are drawn to God.

As our hope continues to dwindle, cultural remedies point us to something we can discover or architect within ourselves. But Jeremiah proposes a sharply contrasted truth: We cannot master our circumstances, engineer our outcomes, or create utopia for ourselves. We cannot even expect to avoid hardship and deep disappointment.

Turning upward, rather than inward, is a radical, life-altering shift. It dislocates our preoccupation with self. It means placing our trust in God amid our pain and disappointments. It means surrendering our strategies. It means obeying regardless of our understanding, following regardless of where we’re led, and loving regardless of the person or circumstance.

This is dramatically different from the self-help formulas that dominate our podcasts, bookshelves, and culture. It’s a decision not to obsess over behavior modification but to seek the power of heart transformation. It’s reaching the end of our own strength and turning to the God who invites us into holy surrender. It’s not a neat and tidy list of five steps to bulletproof your ministry or organization; it’s far more radical, though perhaps simpler, as well. It’s an invitation to turn to God and away from th idolization of our own abilities.

Peter Greer is President and CEO at HOPE International and lives in Landisville, Pennsylvania, USA.

Chris Horst is Chief Advancement Officer at HOPE International and lives in Denver, Colorado, USA.

[1] Matthew 6:20a

[2] Lindsey Crouse, “Why I Stopped Running During the Pandemic (And How I Started Again),” The New York Times, March 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/07/opinion/pandemic-wall-fitness-running.html.

[3] “The State of Mental Health in America,” Mental Health America, https://www.mhanational.org/issues/state-mental-health-america.

[4]“New APA Poll Shows Surge in Anxiety Among Americans Top Causes Are Safety, COVID-19, Health, Gun Violence, and the Upcoming Election,” American Psychological Association, October 21, 2020, https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/anxiety-poll-2020#:~:text=21%2C%202020%20%E2%80%93%20According%20to%20a,between%2032%25%20and%2039%25.

[5] Jeremiah 10:8a

[6] Jeremiah 17: 5-6, MSG

[7] Anne Helen Peterson, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation (Boston: HMH Books, 2020).

[8] Jeremiah 17:7-8

[9] John 15:4b, 5b

[10] Kyle Idleman, Don’t Give Up (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), 43.

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How homemade trick shot videos filmed in the backyard of a college house turned into a multimillion dollar business for five best friends. Join us as we ask Dude Perfect just how they turned a college hobby into a full time job. With over 56 million YouTube subscribers, Dude Perfect has grown from a college hobby into a household name. Today, we’re going to talk about the early days when they were just making videos for fun, the day they all quit their day jobs and went all in, and what the day-to-day looks like now.

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.

Coby Cotton: We had fun making the first video, but to your point, certainly did not think anything real material was going to come of it. We were just having a good time. The response was really strong and so in typical college fashion, we wanted to continue trying what we had just seen a little bit of success with. We went out to Tyler’s family’s ranch, filmed it. The response was even better, and it continued along that path, and a few videos in company started emailing us saying that they wanted to be featured in the videos. And so for us, that was the light bulb moment of whoa, I didn’t even know that was a thing. And it took us a while before we did that first one.

Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I’m here with William William, how are you?

William Norvell: Good to be here. I’m doing great today, actually, and even better wants to bring Kobe on.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So with you, so this is a big, big, big deal for me. And I’ll explain it here in a second. So before we go too much further into it, Kobe con welcome to the program.

Coby Cotton: Thank you, guys. Thank you. It’s good to be here. I appreciate you having me.

Henry Kaestner: So this is a big deal for me personally. I am the father of three teenage boys. William is the father of a three year old boy, and he is about to get ready into all sorts of different things, like adventures in Odyssey podcasts and all the things that come from focusing on a family that have been such a big part of my parenting journey over the course of the last 19 years. But I can think of few things that have been more formative in my boy’s lives, especially my youngest son’s life. Then dude, perfect. You got five guys who love Jesus who love having a great time. They’re athletes like my boys are. And for them to see great relevant cultural role models is a blessing to me. As a father, you want that they talk about the fact that you can be the greatest father of all time, and it’s incredibly important. But it’s also the four or five other cultural influences and other men that might speak into their lives. So the influence of a role model that does things at such scale that dude perfect does it. Kobe, how many subscribers do you have?

Coby Cotton: I think it’s around 56 million right now.

Henry Kaestner: That’s a big

William Norvell: number. That’s gosh, you know, we just have 54 million, so that’s good. I feel bad because we’re. We thought we were on top, Henry.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s incredible scale. And so there’s so much in that, right? There’s so much in that. And there’s so many different things I want to talk about in the program in terms of the team dynamic and your faith for being in the same direction, how you keep things going over and over. But we’re grateful for you being here. One of the things that we want to, though, start off with every podcast is to understand a little bit about the autobiographical sketch of each person we’re talking to. So we’re going to talk about the team here in a second. So many of the questions that I have have to do with how you can create in a team for so long, keep it fresh and keep the friendships real. What does that look like? Because I think that’s really relevant for the entrepreneurs that listen to this, that do so in a team. But let’s start off with Koby kind. I know that you are at least I think I do through all the things you’ve put on the web. And yet I’m sure there’s lots of things that you haven’t released. Where did you grow up? Who are you? Is faith a part of your life? If so, when did it become so who’s Kobe can?

Coby Cotton: Absolutely. Well, first, before I dove into history, I want you guys to know Henry, multiple people had passed information along to me and I’d stumbled on in a couple of different times. But a few months back, when we were first setting up this interview, I dove so deep into an article that you had written about. I think it was 15 or 20 best practices that you had learned with bandwidth, and it was just really impactful on me. And that was the main reason why I wanted to make sure to do this podcast because I just really resonated with a lot of what you shared. We’ve been making a lot of changes this year. It did perfect in just trying to build a really strong company with a lot of the principles and values that you had outlined. So, so just wanted you to know that at the outset. Wow, that’s an awesome encouragement.

Henry Kaestner: Thank you for that. Thank you for that. And Lord, forgive me if I brag about that tonight at dinner with my three boys that Kobe Bryant said that we were any bit of an encouragement to how God was using him in the marketplace. So thank you.

Coby Cotton: That was awesome. Absolutely, absolutely. So a little backstory from us. So dude, perfect is five guys. We actually started the six at Texas A&M. We had a six member. As everything got going, he ended up doing med school, so he’s still a close friend of ours. So if you really, really know the history, there were six of us. So for the last 12 years, though, there have been five guys. We started in our backyard in College Station, Texas as classic Texas A&M Aggies. It was our junior year. We had an all grass backyard and so naturally we were very competitive guys. So a couple of guys went out, bought a basketball goal, couldn’t dribble it around because of the grass, and they just started shooting these crazy shots in the backyard. Tyler Garrett, a Jimmy John’s sandwich that he can make a hook shot from behind the tree. Nailed it! Classic. So then, of course, they had to get the camera out to show us when we got back home. By the time we got there, everybody was trying to one up each other and we were videoing it. Corey had iMovie on a Mac and a YouTube account at YouTube.com slash Corey content, so he naturally put it together and threw it up. And it was, in our opinion, pretty terrible. VIDEO But for some reason, God had other plans, and it kind of took off. So that very first video I think we called Backyard Stunt Man until we renamed it Dude Perfect. But that was the very beginning of the FDE there in the backyard of College Station

Henry Kaestner: at Super Cool. So you grew up, you’re a twin, by the way, I should mention, and I hope that will bring. We have listeners in one hundred and forty five hundred and fifty countries now, and I hope that everybody will make a commitment to looking at the video subscribing. We don’t have a very deep subscriber base, so we’re not going to make a big dent in the fifty million. But because this podcast is going to have a lot of people joining Team Kobe because I know Tyler has been in, he’s been out, but I think that every FDE listener is going to be a solid member of Team Kobe when this is done. Talk about growing up as a twin and talking about, you know, did you grow up in a Christian house? Was faith a part of your life? Is it a part of your life now as you all get together and you serve out in the marketplace? What’s that look like for you?

Coby Cotton: Yeah, I did. Actually, all five of us very fortunate and blessed to have grown up with very strong believing families who we just were introduced to Christ at a young age. Just so grateful for that. My parents are both amazing. They both worked in ministry growing up. And so, yeah, that was something that was a part of my life from really early age when we met at school. The five of us we met through a Bible study there and through playing basketball and ended up as roommates. So that was definitely and continues to be at the core of the relationship between the five of us as well.

Henry Kaestner: Okay. Very cool. Okay. I want to get into the question and I’ve been thinking about as as looking forward to our interview today, which is you guys have been doing this, as you said, for 12 years and you’ve been prolific. You’ve come up with hundreds of videos. Every one of them is very, very good. The production values outstanding, everyone’s creative. But you got five guys around and each of you, you know, Tyler might go ahead and he might maybe take more of a role. And some, you know, the game show on overtime and things like that, but all five of you play a really, really important role. Talk to us about that team dynamic because there’s a chemistry that you guys have that is amazing and I think part of your appeal. And yet that’s got to be hard to do and just tell us about how that works. Presumably, there’s a lot of stuff also that goes on behind the scenes. So walk us through the team dynamic.

Coby Cotton: That’s a great question, Henry. I think, like you said, I think it’s part of the appeal and it’s always part of the challenge as well, right? I think there’s benefits and cons to having five guys in kind of an entertainment company like we do, right? We were just out filming with the guy who was an individual and we were talking about how challenging it would be if everything rode on just you, right? So we have this ability to share kind of the spotlight and the creative challenges of coming up with things with the other four guys. But at the same time, you know, it’s not an individually led typical CEO running a company type standpoint, right, where there’s all these shared opinions and sometimes it can be difficult to come to a consensus. So there’s definitely pros and cons. I think what we’ve been so grateful for is that each of the five of us do have natural gifts and skill sets. And so honestly, from the very beginning, the way we broke up kind of the business roles and responsibilities is where we are today, 12 years later. I’ve kind of run a lot of the business side. My brother has spearheaded the production, which meant at first he was the one doing all the editing and now he’s managing that team. Tyler runs and leads all the creative. He’s the he says he thinks of cool ideas. That’s just something that happens to him. Garrett has run our merchandise and our financial stuff, and Cody has run our social media for all these years. And so kind of all the natural bent and abilities between the five of us has really been so helpful and just shouldering that load from the beginning

Henry Kaestner: or so, coming back to the beginning here, saying, So you’ve got this great epic viral video backyard stuntman, you realize you got something because so many people are down into it. When did it start? When did you kind of look at each other and say, you know, maybe this is actually something we can do? I’m going to presume that before you filmed that video, you had not thought you’d be making trick shot for your career. But what point in time did you look at each other and say, I actually think we got something here, and maybe we’ll at least push off some of those other things we’d planned as we set up this business?

Coby Cotton: So we had fun making the first video, but to your point, certainly did not think anything real material was going to come of it. We were just having a good time. The response was really strong and so in typical college fashion, we wanted to continue trying what we had just seen a little bit of success with. We went out to Tyler’s family’s ranch, filmed it. The response was even better, and it continued along that path, and a few videos in company started emailing us saying that they wanted to be featured in the videos. And so for us, that was the light bulb moment of whoa, I didn’t even know that was a thing. And it took us a while before we did that first one. But at some point GMC early on reached out and they wanted to do an NBA Finals commercial, which is just a crazy way to jump start the commercial piece of the business for us. And that was the one where Tyler dropped the basketball out of an airplane, and they played that during NBA Finals, so it was a really cool first kind of foray into the business world for us.

Henry Kaestner: OK. So before I hand this over to William, my co-host here, I do have some other questions that we have thought about with some input from some of our younger listeners at FDE to include my son. What’s the longest you’ve ever spent on a single trick shot? Because we know there’s an integrity there. This is not, you know, you actually are making this and you’re just not showing every take. So what’s the longest? It’s taken to make one

Coby Cotton: to come to mind, the longest that I can remember. We same ranch that I talked about before we cut down a tree, used a tractor, put it in the ground, call it the world’s largest slingshot, and it took all of the first day and half of data to make it. I mean, it was it was brutal surgical tubing, big old duct tape pouch basketball. I think it’s probably 100 yards that it would launch. It was insane. And just to get it all right, it took a really long time. That was tough. The second one that I think of locally here in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas, where we live and have our business. We rented out this basketball arena for this foam airplane shots that we do. And I mean, we had a whole day of stuff planned, and it turned out that the very first shot we tried to do is this triple flipper from the upper deck and get it to pop this balloon at the very bottom. And that literally ended up being the only shot we did the entire day. And I mean, whatever that was a 12 hour day that we were there, we made it in the last few minutes and everybody was stuff. It was a tough look to get one shot out of, however much we paid to rent the arena, but we were glad we at least made that one by the end.

Henry Kaestner: On the other side, was there one where you kind of steel yourselves like, gosh, wouldn’t it be great if we had this shot? But it’s probably going to take four or five hours to do? And so you just kind of do it and then like one of you like makes it on the first time you’re like, Oh, my goodness.

Coby Cotton: The the one that I mentioned for GMC, where Tyler shot it out of the airplane, he went up the first try came running some of those crop dusters. I mean, it’s still an airplane. Don’t get me wrong, it’s just a little bit lower than your 747. And so he’s he’s coming by and he drops it. And I mean, he missed it by three football fields and almost hit a cow out of this pasture far away. And we’re like, What have we signed up for there? Probably 40 camera people there. This big production company for the TV commercial, he circles back around the second time and we’re all yelling, Drop it, drop it into drops and he drains it on the second try. So I think for us, that was the one that we were like, Guys, we’re on to something. I think the crew must have thought we have got the right guys. These guys are automatic. What else can we do? And Ty says he’ll never do it again because he loves having a 50 percent percentage on the air.

William Norvell: Oh, that’s amazing. And volume here. I’m a huge fan, too. You know, we we oscillate between Henry and I about how big a fans we are with with certain guests, but I can’t quite approach the fandom. But gosh, I love what you guys do. Gosh, it’s so much fun. I love watching, y’all. I love a couple of years ago when you won your first battle.

Coby Cotton: That’s right. Thank you. Thank you.

William Norvell: That’s a big deal. We’re on the team here, so I’ve got one of the to coach, but Henry just made me think of something. Have you ever quit on a trick shot? Have you ever started something and just days and days and said, Gosh, you know what? It just was a bad idea. It’s just not going to work.

Coby Cotton: There was one where we were standing on the back of Tyler’s truck. He’s here. We’ve we’ve grown. We’ve grown in the things that we’ve decided to do over the years. This is way back college days again as a slingshot to think the more of the story here is no need to try to slingshot. If you mess around at home, it’s just a bad idea. But we’re in the back of the truck bed. Basketball pulls slingshot back. Tried it for at least an hour. And then at some point basketball gets launched and we just hear this explosion and we were really confused. And when we realized what had happened, we had clipped the back of his truck where that where the brake light is up top on the back of the truck. And I mean, it just exploded that whole back section of his truck. So we just decided, you know what? We’re going to tap out this video is going be fine without the shot. Sorry about your truck, Ty and we we charged the head with a new one, so we gave out and gave up on that one.

William Norvell: That’s good because, you know, I’m sure you know this, but you know you’ve spawned an entire generation of people going into this. And you know, if you get on Tik Tok at any one time, there’s 50 different people doing trick shots. And you know, some of these things last days and days and days, people trying to do these things, I just think it’s fascinating.

Coby Cotton: I would say emotionally, it’s very hard to quit because if you’re two, three hours deep, I mean, that’s just that’s just a complete loss if you don’t get it at that point. So I get it. I understand why somebody would give multiple days to it because it’s tough stuff to just throw that in the trash.

William Norvell: It’s amazing. I mean, you guys have built a business, too. As you mentioned earlier, all five of you all do different parts of the business. I want to switch to that for a minute. Can you walk us through kind of a two part question one? Just kind of what does the business look like for our listeners and then to, you know, gosh, you watch your videos and you just think you guys just have fun all frickin day? And maybe that’s true. Maybe that’s true. But I got to ask it, what does it look like day to day? What does it look like running, dude? Perfect. Do you really just walk in and start throwing balls into hoops every morning? Because that’s pretty awesome. May get a whole new people applying for jobs to

Coby Cotton: the the perception that you just described that it’s all fun and games is our hardest challenge with our individual lives. They, of course, you know, have that same expectation of what we do at work all day. So it’s hard to go home when they’ve had a long day with the kids and explain to them. But it was tough today. Like today, it was hard. You know, I spent three hours trying to flip a water bottle onto this record player and she’s like, Awesome honey, you know, I’m glad you’re here. Thank you. This is the kiddo. But the truth is, there is a lot of kind of business pieces to it, right? Especially as the business has matured these last 12 years. There’s a ton of red tape that goes into the planning side. Really, you asked initially kind of the core of the business, I would say probably two or three main pieces of the business today. For anybody who is or isn’t familiar, the way YouTube works in general is you get a certain number of views and there’s ads run across the videos. So when somebody watches our video and your family is watching and you guys sit through that ad, dude perfect gets paid for that impression, right? And so that’s one piece. The second piece is a lot of times we’ll work with a sponsor on a video. As I mentioned, GMC, right? If GMC sponsors a YouTube video and we give some type of messaging about GMC or showcase their products, they’re going to pay you perfect for that. Just like they went on TV commercial. That’s a piece of the revenue for us. Then we have our merchandise side T-shirts, basketballs, mini hoops, all that kind of stuff. And we most recently have a touring side of the business where we are one summer and now had to take a break during all the COVID stuff. We’re about to go back out here in the fall. So that’s just a live show that we do in basketball arenas across the country. We started with twenty two shows a couple of years ago when we did that and we’re about to do. This fall, so that’s going to be kind of crazy, but we’re excited.

William Norvell: Well, that’s a lot of pressure going live as that field is this rehearsed tricks?

Coby Cotton: Well, the weird part is if you’re a musician, it’s very normal that you’re in front of people and you see the reactions all the time because touring is what you do as you’re coming up for us. It’s the opposite. You start in front of a camera and you never see people’s reactions, even if millions of people are watching because they’re just watching on their phone or their computer or their TV. So for us, it was we’re 12 at this point, probably 10 years in and you’re standing out in an arena and we’re seeing the reactions of the people who’ve been watching all these years. And it was honestly just a super cool feeling. And it was a good reminder that they’re not just numbers to us that we see tick up on their YouTube counter, but they really are individual families and people that are affected by it.

William Norvell: Oh, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. I think that’s so good for a lot of people to do marketing or videos. I mean, whoever may be listening, I mean, I would imagine it’s so hard to get that sense of who the people are. You’re actually serving. And obviously, customer experience and knowing your customers is one of the things we talk about a lot here,

Coby Cotton: and I love that.

Henry Kaestner: So Justin’s gave me for donuts because I keep on going off script, but usually I do so much of a better job in talking to somebody that I’ve not as involved in as I have been with you. And so I’m able to kind of, you know, put things together sequentially and and build off what I had said before. But I’m going to go back into putting together your trick shots. And you talked about Tyler’s truck getting hurt and you just went ahead and pulled the plug on a truck. One of your most recent videos has you and a demolition derby. Have you guys ever been hurt doing this stuff and that was in front of a live audience?

Coby Cotton: Yeah, let me think the demo derby great when you are on top of it, because I was as fresh as a fresh video, good job winning that one. Yeah, somehow everybody’s fine. That was really fun. Yeah, that was our first live battle in front of an audience. We were up in Bristol, Tennessee, and out of that super cool speedway that they have there and a bunch of people came in. It was a blast. If you guys want to look that one up, it’s demolition derby on YouTube.

Henry Kaestner: But and Cody, at times we looked scared.

Coby Cotton: Oh, I was pretty, it’s pretty iffy. You know, it’s pretty redneck thing to do. So it was, but it was a ton of fun injuries. I think the worst one we have today, which we laugh at Corey, but I mean, it’s kind of a bummer. He broke a finger and now it’s crooked. So we were in world record football addition to we filmed at TCU’s Football Stadium here in Texas. Super fun VIDEO We got to break all these world records, their duty record. Some of them are kind of impressive. Most of them are just silly and goofy records. And one of them, Corey, was blindfolded and it was the world’s longest blindfolded football catch. And as you can imagine, you know, some I don’t know. I don’t remember 40 50 yards away just chucking a football up at you and then telling you to stick your arms out and try to catch it. Most of the time, it just hits him in the football helmet or right in the chest or whatever. But unfortunately, he caught it just a mega jammed finger that didn’t he? All right. And it’s just super crooked now, so that’s a bummer. But every handshake he’s reminded of that video.

William Norvell: Let me jump in. I want to ask you because you know, the creator economy is taking off, right? I mean, I mean, you guys were part of the very, very beginning, but you see so much of this now. I mean, I know Tony Robbins even recently launched a whole software platform to help creators sort of get their content out there. When you think about that, when you think about the economy moving forward there, I mean, what? What does that look and feel like every day knowing that sort of you are the brand right? And then how do you think through that from a faith lens potentially of, you know, gosh, do I do I do I ask myself, Do I not? I mean, my audience knows me as X can I? Can I do this? This is my message. Can I change my message? And how you look for I just know it’s a rambling question isn’t how you process through being the face of the brand and all of those things and making these videos?

Coby Cotton: Yeah, great question, William. I think where my mind first goes on, it is I’m grateful. I think it’s cool that you don’t have to rely anymore on like to be on a TV network, right? Like, you don’t have to go through a lot of the normal things that you would have had to do 10, 20 years ago to have an audience, to then sell a product or company or whatever that you know your actual product is. It’s cool to be able to be authentic. I mean, that’s what we always tell kids who ask us now like, Hey, what do I need to do to make it big on YouTube, right? It’s hey, look, we had no intention of making it big on YouTube, right? We were just being very authentic. Obviously, from our standpoint, we feel like God’s hand was on it, but we were just being us and doing something we genuinely enjoyed. And we feel like if you try to go, you know, manufacture excitement around something, you’re going to have a very hard time sticking with it long enough to build that traction. And so I think it’s just really cool that whatever you’re passionate about, you can build a following around without having to kind of follow a lot of the old standards that people had to and kind of go through those gatekeepers. I think from a you mentioned just like your personal brand. Same thing. I think I’ve bumped into entertainers or people, and they’re not the same off camera we are. I feel like and I’ve had people tell us they feel like we’re the same, maybe not quite as high pumped up on the energy levels that we are on our videos. Hard to maintain that all the time, but for the most part, I feel like we’re authentic on camera because if we spend as much time as we do in front of the camera, it’s pretty exhausting to try to fake that. So that’s the direction you’ve chosen to go.

Henry Kaestner: That’s amazing and comes to mind as I’ve just meander all over. Think you’re the business person in the group or a business? Everybody’s in the business, but you’re a business person. Does your insurance liability coverage cover the damage done by the rage monster? While you’re blowing your fireworks, you’re blowing things. He’s going crazy. Some of the things. And I also wonder is, is there ever a time when the rage monster goes nuts? You’re like, Dude, I actually didn’t want you to to do that. That’s actually going to really cost us.

Coby Cotton: So the rage monster for those who are unfamiliar, we have a series called Stereotypes, where we started out back pick up basketball stereotypes, people, you would see golf stereotypes. You know, the guy that grabs a golf ball from the woods and acts like it was in the fairway and throws it back out? We kind of paint a picture of all the goofy things within these different worlds, and rage monsters is something that ended up a piece of it. And now it’s people’s favorite thing that Dude Perfect has ever done. And it’s Tyler in these little skits, basically just absolutely losing it and breaking all kinds of things. We have to this point. Taking a sword through an above ground swimming pool, we’ve knocked over a tree with a tractor. We demolished a basketball court, blown up a house, we destroyed a jet ski. I mean, it’s all you can think of. It’s everybody’s favorite and mom’s least favorite. We get emails all the time from moms who say it’s a terrible example, and that’s the one email that we just we just say, you know, we appreciate your insight, but this is just it’s we’re going to let you parent your kids and help them understand that this is a joke, but that this is it’s just a production and we’re just having fun

William Norvell: compared to the rest of the video content in the world I got. I can’t feel like that’s their toughest challenge.

Coby Cotton: It feels like a little soft to me, so I think we’re going to be OK.

William Norvell: One of the things I’d love to judge Kobe, I mean, you know, so 12 years, 12 years running a business, you know, I think we could get sucked in to stories and fun and all those things. You guys have been running a business. You’ve been running an entity. It sounds like you’re probably all close with your wives, too. You went to college together. I mean, that’s a long time to manage through friendship, manage through business. I’d love if you wouldn’t mind share maybe a couple of the difficulties of going through that over the years that you can think back on and maybe how you guys figured out a way to manage through that, together with multiple intertwined friendships, multiple intertwined families. I just think that’s so fascinating to dove into.

Coby Cotton: Yeah, I think I mean, it is a long time, right? Twelve years is crazy that we’ve been doing it for that long and anybody’s done anything for 12 years knows that there’s ups and downs, right? And so we actually made it was, I think it was two years ago. Now we came out with a documentary on YouTube, which is a ton of fun, and it tells our whole story. So for anybody who’s interested in seeing all of this in video format, you just type in the perfect documentary on YouTube. It’s I mean, it’s a 90 minute movie, basically. So it’s not a quick five minute watch, but if you have the time, I think you really enjoy it. Really proud of it. But it shows kind of some of those ups and downs as well. And I just think probably the biggest one is just friendship over time. I think for us, the bedrock of the business really is five friends. And so we have learned over time with good counselors and friends around us that, hey, like, you all have to protect that friendship and you have to work through conflict together. Because if you don’t, you know, the whole business could crater based on just the five of you guys and the closeness there. And so for us, obviously, our faith is at the bedrock of that. We each have to have a strong abiding relationship with Christ. And then, you know, it’s important to all of us that we are each involved in a community where we have people around us who don’t care that we’re not perfect and don’t care that we have all the subscribers that we have and can speak into our lives. And then we do. Like I said, we’ve gotten better. I can’t say it’s been perfect, but we’ve gotten better at resolving conflict between the five of us. The phrase we use as guys to make it easier is we sort ourselves so somebody needs to own something. They say, Hey, like, I’m a sword myself on that and that was on me. I’m taking that one and owning that. And so I think that has been significant for us over time.

Henry Kaestner: Koby, how long can you guys do this if Tom Brady retires at forty five or forty six? How long? How long can the dude perfect shell go fascinated by that? And just because it any point in time, I think, well, you know, at this point for me came probably about six years ago. Like, there’s nothing else to be done there, no more trick shots to be done. They’ve done it and then everyone progressively gets better. But how long does it go on?

Coby Cotton: It’s a great question, we ask ourselves that weekly. I think the truth and or at least what we have felt is we feel like the world is always going to be in need of trusted entertainment and maybe it’s going to morph over time. One thing that we have really been intentional to do is to mix up the type of content we’ve made over these last 12 years. We started with all the trick shots. That’s, I’m sure what we will always be known for, no matter what we do. But we’ve tried to pivot multiple times and introduce different stuff. We have the stereotypes we have, the battles. I mentioned the bucket list, but we’re going to be coming out with a clip show here soon. You know, kind of America’s funniest home videos style, right? Like over time, as a popular series of ours, which is more of a variety show, more like a Jimmy Fallon type show. And so as we’ve introduced those different types of content, we have felt kind of the life span of dude perfect increase. We feel like if it was just trick shots, to your point, we would have already been out of ideas, right? There’s no possible way you could do 12 years worth of only trick shots. And so I think that’s helped. The other thing for us is it goes back to what I said at first this year, we have spent a lot of time on the business itself and not just the videos. We took some time for an offside, really for the first time, these 12 years kind of took a dove into our mission statement and kind of trying to craft what we wanted to be and where we landed as we’re striving to be the world’s most trusted entertainment. And we feel like that has become kind of our calling card and our niche in the entertainment world. And we just know from having kids ourselves and from what families have told us specifically even on our tours. And it’s what you said at the top entry. There’s just such a lack of that today, and that is just at the core of what we’re trying to accomplish is make world class entertainment that families can trust. And so I think, you know, whether it’s us doing that or somebody else, and then there’s always going to be a need and a desire for that. And so we want to just continue to make the best that we can and hopefully people will stick with us.

Henry Kaestner: So as I told you before, as a father, I’m grateful for your ability to do that and for the fact you’ve delivered on that, that’s exactly what you are for our family. I think about the impression that you make on so many families around the world. And of course, with 56 million subscribers, you have, I’m sure quite a few of them are international. Have you thought of leaning into that more and taking the show on the road? And actually, you will never remember this. But right after the backyard stuntman, I reached out to you guys, I sent email and said, You know, you’ve got so many views. What would it look like to do one of these trick shot videos in Africa and call attention to a different ministry? And you’ve probably had thousands of people come inbounds on all sorts of different ideas to promote all sorts of different causes and missions that they care about. But could you free form just a little bit about what it looks like to not only create a channel with trusted entertainment, but also a global brand? The impact, because what ends up happening is with your international subscribers is they now have a different perspective of number one, what American culture is like and is they spend any meaningful time as subscribers come to understand there’s something special about you and that points with gentleness respect to your faith. What does it look like to build out that international brand in that region?

Coby Cotton: I think kind of like we mentioned, not seeing the faces, it was hard at first for us to realize that this was beyond the US, right? Eventually, we started diving more into the analytics and actually looking at who we were reaching, but for a long time were just making videos you don’t even realize and then you go on a family trip somewhere. And especially as it’s the brand has grown over these years, it is truly remarkable the reach of just YouTube in general. I mean, we are in just Third World, very underdeveloped countries and kids still come up to us the same way they do in the US. I mean, you would think they don’t have phones, but that’s almost all that they have and they come up to us just as much because that’s what they’re watching and whether they’re in the US, you know, in a family that’s well-off and now they just don’t watch as much TV, they just watch more YouTube or, like I mentioned in another country, in a difficult environment. It truly is crazy. And so we are we’re much more aware of that now, and we’re hopeful to take the tour international in the next couple of years. We just think that would be a ton of fun and something that people have asked for it, and we have enjoyed traveling specifically in the bucket list series. It’s opened our eyes even more to the people who are watching around the world, which is genuinely nuts. It’s crazy. It’s such a weird, such a weird deal.

William Norvell: And as you didn’t take the time to apologize to Henry for not going back to his email. But you know, we get no need to do that. We could do that or another shout out.

Henry Kaestner: We did that part. No, but I saw it. You saw it in the South Africa bucket list. I mean, these kids clearly knew who you guys were, and that’s from all sorts of different backgrounds. And that’s got to be maybe a little scary. I mean, it just the burden almost of that of, oh my goodness, the things that we come up with. They’re going to impact kids lives all over the country about how they think in their talk, talking the language they use and maybe even what maybe you get at this or does it must impact a little bit about how you think about your corporate partners, right? You know, if I endorse this because you undoubtedly have had some people have come in and say, Well, gosh, is this really reflective of it or not?

Coby Cotton: Right, right? Yeah, that’s a great question. That was actually one of the earliest decisions we had to make. We had an alcohol company, approached us early on again were college guys. So why would they not reach out to us? And we, I mean, it was adult money at the time, especially to college kids. And that was a hard decision for us. But I know that we were unified quickly on, Hey, this is just not the direction we’re going to take this. And initially it started because of our faith. We just said, Look, we’re just gonna take our stance on this. We know this is reaching kids, which is not something we’re going to do. And then, you know, over the years, we’ve seen that that has become a strong business move as well because the brands are looking for partners that are safe for them to advertise against him and that they can trust just as much as families want to trust what they’re watching. So it’s worked out from a business perspective. But you’re right, even to this day, there are brands that are pro-choice and we, you know, even though they’re offering good money, we choose to turn those down because they could jeopardize the trust that we’re working so hard to build.

William Norvell: OK, so this is an off the wall question, which I’m kind of known for. So bear with me. This may not work at all, but I’m very curious, is there a brand? Is there someone? Is there something you’ve always wanted to work with or someone to work with that you haven’t been able to? One, I want to hear about it, and two, I want to see if our listeners can make it happen.

Coby Cotton: Oh man, that’s good. Cody, the tall guy really wants to do something with Cristiano Ronaldo. That’s that’s his top athlete to work with. We’ve had some good conversations with Steph Curry in the past, but we’ve never been able to pull off a video, so we’re still hopeful that Steph wants to do it. So hopefully that’ll happen. Recently, the guys, somebody wants to go to space. Tyler has said that if his wife lets him, he’ll get on a rocket and he’ll go to space. My wife has already told me no. So I already got the downvote on that, but that would be on our list. So if anybody has any connections there. All right.

William Norvell: We got the. Christiane, over daughter Steph Curry in space. Just a quick recap, yeah,

Henry Kaestner: come on, guys, come on, FDE audience come through, come through for Kobe, you are members of Team Kobe. This is how to bless them. If I think of another brand of a bunch of guys getting together and do any creative things in a slightly different genre, it’s the music group. OK, go. And they did a video where they’re all weightless. I don’t know if you ever saw it, but it was good, and it’d be interesting to find out how they did that. And because I guess you have to go to space, I think, to go weightless. But maybe there’s something there, I don’t know.

William Norvell: Now you can end up weightless without being in space. They got simulators we can make. I got a feeling you probably done that now. Alabama’s not known for much, but we’ve got a space station there and you can go weightless.

Coby Cotton: OK, now what? What did you just say at the beginning that hearing that my mind went to OK, go there. Stuff’s unbelievable. It’s crazy what all they’ve done. I can’t remember if they did the zero gravity flight or how they pulled that off, but

Henry Kaestner: it was a really cool one. It was. It was awesome. That may be something we include, maybe something we don’t. But then another creative group of folks that do some new things. William, take his way, please.

William Norvell: I’m one of the last things we love to just leave as an encouragement for our guest is fun to watch. It’s fun to hear the stories. You know, you get to hear so many. We don’t get to hear all of them from our listeners, too, but every now and then we hear this amazing story of how God was just working through this exact moment for the people that are listening to our podcast. So we love to ask where in God’s word is it coming alive to do you? Sometimes that could be something that this morning, you know, that came to you. It could be something even meditating on for a while. It could be something you’ve been meditating on your whole life. But just love to see how God’s word continues to live and breathe and transcend our guest and our listeners.

Coby Cotton: Yeah, such a good question. Appreciate you guys asking two things that come to mind. The community group I’m in right now, a couple of the guys we’ve been studying James and it’s just been a reminder to me talks about, you know, you show me your faith some other way and I’ll show it to you by my works, right? And I’ve always had a hard time kind of meshing those two, and I just think it’s it’s powerful to think about our actions or what demonstrate, you know, what’s in our heart, right? And truly like if God is doing something in me that’s going to come out of my actions. And so that’s really been something I’ve been focusing on in James. And then the other thing that comes to mind for me when I was single, I was just telling a friend this the other day in Psalms, the verse give me an undivided heart that I may hear your name. And for me personally, I felt like when I was dialed in on that verse and trusting God to give me an undivided heart towards him, that was when I was most impactful, and I was I was just I felt like I was taking my eyes off of me and putting them on the people around me and some students that I was working with and different things. And to me, that has just been a verse that’s always been impactful for me, and I think I’ve got around my house. So those are the two that come to mind.

Henry Kaestner: Those are great, and that’s been a blessing to me, too. So thank you for answering that way. And dear Lord, I ask and write and pray that you would give all of our audience an undivided heart toward you so that you may be able to know them each personally. And we pray for this, and we pray for the continued ministry and staff and team of dude perfect. Give them your favor and blessing and protection in Jesus name. Amen.

Today’s episode takes us all the way to South Africa, and we couldn’t be more excited about it. And the question we’re going to start by asking is this: How can a garbage-collection company in South Africa undo the legacy of Apartheid? 

Bertie Lourens, CEO of WastePlan is here to share how their company is working to divert the vast majority of customers’ waste-stream from landfills and converting it into valuable, recyclable resources. They do this by employing hundreds of local workers, caring for their families, and investing in local schools to educate the next generation of South African leaders. 

And, as Bertie shares today, stewarding God’s creation has now grown into giving God a majority ownership stake in the company. Listen in to find out how…

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.

Bertie Lourens: I think God went after the very thing that could become a mammon stronghold in my life, that very thing that I believe I’m building, something of massive equity value. He said he wants that. And it was very difficult, but at the same time, I knew this thing is actually really worth minus something to deal with. I said, OK, God, I’ll give you shares.

William Norvell: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur, it is an amazing day and we have an amazing guest, Bertie Lourens, who I just told, I will not try to mimic his accent, even though it’s very difficult, has joined us today. And we also have a special guest. Darryl Heald is joining us as a guest host today. Darryl, how are you today?

Darryl Heald: Hey, William. Doing well. Excited to be here today, especially to hear from our friend in South Africa.

William Norvell: I know. It’s amazing. It’s amazing to have you and Bertie and Darryl have known each other for a while. So it’s going to be fun to tease out the story. I know our audience is going to hear something that they probably haven’t heard before, and we hope the spirit can use BAM story and what got him and his faithfulness to encourage and inspire other faith driven entrepreneurs as we’re listening. So, Bertie, welcome to the show.

Bertie Lourens: Hello, William. Thank you for inviting me.

William Norvell: We’re happy to have you. And, you know, as we get started, one of the things we just always love to do is just to hear a little about you, who you are, where you came from, where you grew up, how you ended up becoming a Faith Driven Entrepreneur and you know, how you ended up sitting in that chair today with us telling the story.

Bertie Lourens: Thank you, William Norvell. First of all, I’m a son of God, God Almighty, the creator of the universe and everything in it. And I’m married to a beautiful, gentle Canadian lady. And she calls South Africa home for 15 years already and Foljambe grandkids. But I was really born and raised in a small mining town in the south east of Johannesburg in the 70s. I grew up in the 70s and 80s and that was during apartheid South Africa. It was a very difficult time for South Africa. And everything that we are facing today is the legacy of apartheid. And a lot of things that we do today is still trying to fix all the wrongs of the past. So I grew up as a young teenager seeing all these wrongs, and I just thought it might be wise just to give a little bit of context about apartheid and what the past is and was. But it was really a governing system that denied all nonwhite people any decent education, no voting rights and no rights for any managerial jobs. So you can understand what that means over a period of 40, 50 years of a father that needs to work in the best job we can get, as in a mine, as a general worker or in a factory or a construction company and a father teaching his son, this is the best that you can ever be. Just try and be the best general worker that you could ever be. And hopefully you could become the supervisor of general workers. And if you just keep perpetuating that over decades, a whole lot of anger happens, a whole lot of hurt and a narrative of blaming. So that’s that’s the South Africa that I grew up in. And I saw how apartheid came to an end. I saw how a new era was born for South Africa, and so how Nelson Mandela was released from prison and how he was elected as the first democratically elected president. And I started seeing how the entire country started rallying together to try and correct the wrongs of the past. And it’s been two decades and we still doing that. But it almost feels like we fail every decade. Our failures are bigger than the decade before. So that’s the context where I grew up. And personally, I was a very insecure teenager when I grew up because my father never told me that I had what it’s like. You never told me that he loved me. So I always grew up never knowing what that real lack was that I had inside of me. But I always knew that I just do not feel complete. Of course, I ran to alcohol and women and I was also a very good salesman when I was in school. And I very quickly learned that I could make money. And that’s when I realized how hold on, money will maybe fill that gap and it will make me popular among my teenage friends, which I did, of course. But luckily I got saved very early in my twenties. It’s just off to the one relational failure of the next. I realized that I just do not have what it takes to keep a life together and a surrender to Jesus at the age of twenty three in the late 90s. And it was wonderful. It almost felt like it was the beginning of a healing journey for me. Shortly after that I found a mentor that saw something in me and decided to help me to build the business because I knew I wanted to be a businessman because I could sell stuff and I thought if I can sell something, I can build a business. I started a business in 2004 and I am still running that same business.

William Norvell: Well, that’s amazing. Thank you for walking us through that. I’m going to ask if you would would you maybe spend. A few more minutes for our listeners. I mean, I hear that I’ve you know, I’ve read a little bit about apartheid maybe, but maybe it’s been a few more minutes on what it was like growing up. Like what did you sense in the air? What did you sense was was there and sort of from your perspective, because we have a listening audience as a white man. Right. What did it feel like at school? I don’t know. I don’t even know the right question to ask. But I’m just really curious for I just always learn, obviously, from people in different worldviews. And they grew up in different scenarios than me. And I just want to give you kind of an open mic for a couple more minutes to say just kind of what were some of those experiences like for you?

Bertie Lourens: William, you know, when you’ve become a teenager, when you hit your 10, 11, 12, 13 age, you start asking questions, you know, just things around you, you know, just that there are no black kids in your school. You notice the kids that you play sports against are all white. You’d notice that when you drive out of your town, you drive into a we call them townships, but it’s really chanty towns. And you just see black people there and you see that the people who work in the white people gardens are black people. And you don’t see black people driving cause they’re driving bicycles and their clothes don’t look decent. She’s noticed all these things and then you start asking you questions, you ask your parents these questions. But why you see beggars at the traffic lights are only like people and not white people. And you ask them, but why are beggars only black people? And then they answer you. But you can see it’s almost a governmental brainwashed answer that does not make sense for a 12 or 13 year old. And that’s when you start realizing. But hold on. Yes. Something wrong with the entire system. And you listen to adults, the way they talk around the barbecue, around the Sociales about them and us, and you ask yourself, but we are all one, we’re all one country wiser, them innocent. You know, you ask these questions and you get answers that just do not make sense. And to take it one step further. For most of these answers, there was a biblical scripture to, quote, to justify the system of apartheid and. You see black people doing the hard labor, almost like the Hebrew slaves, that both the infrastructure of Egypt, I saw how the black people, the majority of South Africa was like people were building the infrastructure for the minority. And something inside of me just said that is wrong. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not sustainable. And then you start watching news, you start understanding what you hear on the news. You start hearing the conversations in the kitchen and around the dinner table with your parents, really as the tension started building up of the masses of South Africa, just saying enough is enough. We want voting rights. And you start hearing those conversations, the family conversations, the fear. And it’s a fear is a massive bloodbath, revolution coming. And we just do not have answers anymore. And I saw all of that and the fear also gripped me. But then I saw the miracle of a peaceful negotiation between Nelson Mandela and the ruling president, F.W. de Klerk, back then, and all of a sudden, very quickly, the tension released and there was an election. All the black people were granted voting rights and the ANC, which is the party that represented them, won, and there was joy and there was fear all at the same time, the wealthy whites that were able to flee, fled, packed up all the goods, and they fled everywhere else in the world because they believe that all the white people in South Africa were going to be murdered, that they believe in communities rejoiced and they sang Hallelujah. And you started hearing these messages of the fearful and the jubilant all more or less in the same space. And something inside of me said, that’s a miracle. What happened here. And it really was looking back now, it was a miracle, and very shortly after that, in the 90s, we just had a great leader and Nelson Mandela, who was very verbal in his communication. He understood the fear of the white communities. And he spoke to us on public television, where he made very, very bold statements of how you will protect us. And he made very bold statements to the angry majority black community in South Africa, saying we need our brothers, our brothers in our country to help us rebuild this country. And you just hear that propaganda coming from him and eventually you start believing this is going to turn out to be something beautiful. And that’s why we named it the Rainbow Nation, because we really believed something beautiful that was going to come out of it. And we still hold on to those hopes in those dreams because it’s still beautiful, but it just sometimes feels like it’s taking too long. But our timing is never the same as God’s timing.

William Norvell: Man, thank you so much for it. Such a beautiful job of taking us into some of those moments. And I just thank you for walking through that for our audience. And I’m interested in how did all of those experiences impact you as an entrepreneur, as someone who was studying what God wanted you to do? Right. And what was your part of that story that was being written in South Africa? Where did God find you and push you to an entrepreneurial journey?

Bertie Lourens: So I knew that I wanted to be a businessman for selfish reasons. I wanted to get rich. And that’s the end of that story. So I pursued that dream of becoming rich and I could see how this new South Africa attracted so much foreign investment. This was truly the hope for the continent. And we achieved amazing GDP growth. And I just realized I am in this ecosystem that is filled with growth and I have the skills to sell and I want to be a businessman. But as I went on doing this, I noticed that the people that we employ in business are poor and they are, many of them general workers that work for a very, very low salary. And that started bothering me. Now, the salary we pay is equal to what competitors in the market pay for those laborers. And when we pitch for contracts with clients, a big chunk of our service costs is labor costs. So if we overpay, then we are not competitive and we can grow. So we were forced to pay the same salary, but we realized we can do much more. So it’s just an awareness. It grew over time that while we employ poor people, we have the power of influence over them more than what political leaders have and more than what the church could ever have. Well, they work in our business. We found out that the one that receives a salary submits quite easily to the one who pays the salary. So the one who pays the salary has tremendous influence. And we I thought, let us use that and help people learn how to better themselves so that they can build a better future for themselves. And all of that comes down to education the way you think, because if you could educate yourself, you can acquire more skills or a higher skill, you can bring it to your workplace, you can get more responsibilities and then the higher salary. I’ve personally worked with some of the guys in the early years, and I’ve seen once they get that, it’s almost as if you’ve put them on a perpetual path out of poverty because he’s connected the dots. You said, I see how this thing works. It’s not a secret any longer. Bring more value, take more responsibilities and more money and then repeat. And that made me excited that we have this influence that we can help people out of poverty.

William Norvell: Amen, amen. Yeah, you’re sharing a gospel. You know, you share in the good news with people that you’re holding this good news that they don’t know about yet and educating them. What a beautiful reflection of the gospel where God placed you and where he put you. And and what are the unique things I’ve heard you talk about before that I’d love to have you share with our audiences? You know, you set out to build a business also where God would be a shareholder. And could you tell us a little about what that looks like to you, what that felt like to you as you dug into that and prayed about that? What does it look like to make God a shareholder of Voice Plan?

Bertie Lourens: Will needs to understand how that started. First of all, if you have a really good mentor and he is building a really successful business, all you need to do is just listen to him and do what he tells you. And that’s what I did because I didn’t know much. And what happens is if you enjoy enough success upon success and if you do not have people around you that are willing to hold up a mirror to you so you can see who you become and you will become proud. And I became very proud because I enjoyed tremendous success quite quickly and in the first years of the business. And I had to define later on to myself what is pride and pride to me is the conversation with self that says that I am better then and you can fill in the gap there with any name. I’m better then. And very quickly after that, pride leads to strife or strife and striving says that I would like to be better than so-and-so. So it’s a situation of measuring and seeing that you’re better than some, but then coveting the success of others. And that just put you on the spiral of destruction, which I didn’t see. I didn’t see it coming, but God did. And and luckily he rescued me there again shortly after the business, about seven years in, we started losing a tremendous amount of money, buckets full of money. And it came as a shock because I his Blue-Eyed Boy, I’m so successful. What happens? Why all of a sudden all these losses, whatever I worked so hard for over seven years, could be gone in a moment. And I found myself in my garage a year later on my knees, crying out to God to have mercy on me and rescue me from the situation and repenting of my pride and my arrogance and my striving and building it in my own strength. And he did. He came and he rescued me. William, it was very shortly after that the situation turned. It was miraculous and it turned. So you could imagine early the next year, I was still very raw and I was covered in the fear of God and just asking him, how do you want me to build this thing out now? I do not ever want to make the same mistakes again. And I felt God say to me, he wants me to give away, well, what did I have? I had detonated an insolvent company and I asked him if he wants that. But I heard God say the word equity to me. And that’s a very interesting word. Now, the founder of a business always believes that the equity value is hundreds of billions. The balance sheet could showed deep zeros that the founder always believes it’s worth more. And I think God went after the very thing that could become a Maymont stronghold in my life, that very thing that I believe I’m building, something of massive equity value. He said he wants that. And it was very difficult, but at the same time, I knew this thing is actually really worth minus something to deal with. I said, OK, God, I’ll give you shares that you’re going to show me how. And I asked him if he does if you about by 30 percent. And he remained quiet and then I gave him 30. And that’s where we are. So from three very shortly after that, we grew to fifty one because I immediately so I started understanding the benefits of inviting God Almighty, the creator of everything, to have him as a shareholder in your business. The value proposition is just so big at first you don’t know it. But once I did it, I started realizing what I did and I realized, but hold on, let’s let’s give him a controlling stake and then I can sit back and watch this thing grow. And that’s where we are today.

William Norvell: And hey, man, I love parts of that story that, of course, because we have a God that runs after us harder than we can imagine that he rescued you. But hearing a practical it just gets me every time when you hear of God coming to the rescue and the audience knows I cry a decent amount. So, you know, I may cry again now, but it’s just a beautiful story of you submitting. And, you know, and it’s not a prosperity gospel. It’s a reality of the scripture. Right. That like, when we do turn to the Lord and when we do repent and we do give it back to him like he’s here and he’s there for everyone listening and not everyone’s in that spot. People have already done it. But, man, if you are run to him, be with him. It’s an amazing story. And, you know, and I would imagine the the way God wants to run in their business or be a shareholder may look different, but to submit that to him is the point. Right.

Bertie Lourens: William, I think, is going after the one thing that he knows will drive the biggest wedge between you and him sometime in the future. And he’s going to go after that thing. And all he’s really asking is just to surrender, to surrender, whatever it is, just surrender. I’ve got this. I know your future better than you will ever know. Just let me do this with you and it will be so worth it. It’s always asking,

William Norvell: hey, man, I’m going to turn you over to Daryl after one more question here. I realized, of course, we got so excited about the wisdom you have here. I forgot to ask you. Could you tell our audience a little bit of what a waste plan is, how many employees you have, what you guys do in South Africa? I think the name tells a little bit. I think people are already on the edge of their seat knowing a little bit. But could you tell us a little bit more just about the business and who you try to serve and how you try to care for God’s world through the business?

Bertie Lourens: Yes, absolutely. So most companies have ways as part of the production or service offering, and we found that that’s normally an afterthought and it’s a liability. It’s an ever increasing cost that somebody somewhere has to manage. But there’s no specialist or an expert or dedicated person to do that. So we offer a service companies, food companies, factories, hospitals, hotels, shopping centers. We will bring our personnel onto your site. We will segregate your waste. We will divert as much away from landfill as possible, and as we divert the waste away from the landfill, we turn it from a liability into an asset and we have enough data to show it’s an appreciating asset. So we take waste with segregated at the source in separate streams. We sell those streams. The value of those streams we sell increase in value year on year. We return the biggest part of that value back to the client. But what happens in the process is that person that did that sorting and the handling of the waste, he realizes. But I was part of turning a wasteful item that’s a liability into an asset. And in that process, we generated new revenue. I earned a salary. And with that comes dignity because I was part of turning value out of something with no value. And that’s the beautiful part of what’s happening here. We have about a thousand employees scattered over 10 cities and we have about six hundred and thirty clients that we service and waste gets segregated from all the sites moves into big processing centers, which we call recycling centers. Where we do final sorting, we compress them and we sell them to the highest bidder. So we always try to put

Darryl Heald: a lot of that waste trader in a variety of ways. Just love hearing the story. And, you know, my love for South Africa, I mean, it just we’ve had lots of great adventure. This a lot of fun to be have a chance to tell more people just how God’s moving in your life and your business in the country, things like that. So I want to take us back when we first met. I think our audience has already heard there is a deep thinker and I just remember where we have a mutual friend. He invited you and Leslie to this journey, generosity. Why don’t we just start there? What did you think about that? And just the process that happened yesterday?

Bertie Lourens: It was mind boggling to process all the information that was presented over that week. And now I saw how very, very poor people gave everything in those videos. I mean, those discussions. And I saw how excessively wealthy people did the same. But what struck me was that the richest and the poorest were equally happy. Joy, Joy, that is deeper than what a dictionary can define for you. And I think that’s what hooked me, that I was chasing really after satisfaction all my life. And you think that wealth will give it and then you’ll meet people and they’ll tell you, no, it doesn’t. But that we can realize. Hold on. I think I got the secret. Yes. This is the thing that I’ve been chasing after all my life. This deep satisfaction and joy comes only from a place of true generosity. And I was just trying to piece that together. What would that look like for me when I leave this weekend? And I wanted to just take in as much as I possibly can while I’m there so that I have as much to work with when I go back home on the Monday.

Darryl Heald: Thanks for sharing that. I know there’s a hope and desire that all of us as entrepreneurs and investors, that we understand that value proposition that is more blessed to give and receive and that we can truly live in that point of joy. So a couple of things, though, that I just when I think about Botein, I just I love how you are walking out this jury. One of them is when we were driving home from the office to your house for a dinner one night and up ahead of us, there are some guys at the light who were begging for money and things like that. So take the story from there. I thought that was just I forget the date of its day, but tell our audience just what you do. I mean, this is just like everyday generosity. I just love this piece.

Bertie Lourens: Is there so the South Africa that I just told you about, I just want to give you a little bit more context. The unemployment level now sits at thirty eight percent unemployment. The amount of school dropouts is ridiculous. Something like forty eight percent of people at starting grade one get to grade 12. So you could imagine the amount of people on the streets that do not have jobs. His name is Bennett, is a baker, is bent over. He was hit by a car. A drug is back and he’s never been able to get surgery. So he’s bent over almost 90 degrees. And he’s just let the traffic light on my way home. And he’s got the brightest of smiles. So it’s easy to be generous to him. But surprisingly, most people are not. After the Jörg weekend, one of the first discussions that I think you see every time is, well, is it right to give to a beggar? It’s just going to buy alcohol. And I remember that weekend someone say that I don’t know who it was. So that person said, but it’s his job to give account for the money he received. It’s not your job to give account on his behalf. You just gave your job is to give account for the money God gave you. And the way you live with that, so I just decided my wife and I, we decided we are going to give to every beggar we went ERG we started changing money to have as much money as possible. We quickly ran out of money. So that plan didn’t work well. We then became a lot of Budweiser and we broke it up into smaller denominations of money and so that you can give less but give to more people. And then it is just one of the beneficiaries of that decision. And they love seeing my car. And if he hasn’t seen my car for a while, especially now during covid, if I drive past it on my way to the office and he sees me, he will stop all the traffic just to get to me because he knows he’s going to get something.

Darryl Heald: Well, I just love the relationship you have. I mean, it was obviously that was I mean, that’s happened dozens and dozens of times. You’ve talked about education and the importance of education. Let’s talk about what you and lesslie is from a kingdom investing side. We think about this giving. What are your particular passion about? What are you excited about giving to right now?

Bertie Lourens: There are it’s really the education the education states and South Africa are alarming. It is a bomb that will explode if nothing happens. There’s another state. About four percent of kids that start in grade one will pass. Math increased above four percent. So you have ninety six percent of your population that cannot count. So the quality of jobs and the amount of jobs that they’ll get is few. And so the amount of unemployed people, the volume of people that are unemployed is growing year on year. And it just doesn’t make sense that one should live in this country and think that that’s OK. So we put as much effort into educating people and just basic skills. So first of all, a capital is the foundation that reform really is the structure we formed where we could have got as a legal shareholder in our company. And the Nyko Capital uses all of its funds and it throws it into schooling. So there’s a few schools up here in Pretoria and Johannesburg, Christian schools. So we try and throw all our skills in there, all the networks, all our relationships, and as far as possible that we could use our resources and our assets. And money is just a very small part of that. The lady that works in our kitchen, who cleans our house, looks after the kids when we are not there to try and do as much as we can for her and her kids in terms of housing, schooling, the gospel, help them understand the gospel of the gospel and preach the gospel in the communities. The guy works in our garden and we just felt that that is practical in South Africa. If one just starts there, you’ll stay busy for the rest of your life just there. You do not have to go after big things, just those immediate lives around you influence them and help them educate themselves.

Darryl Heald: Yeah. Thank you for sharing. Some of that is a real joy for me to see some of those schools with you on that last trip. I mean, how many students do you have in these schools now?

Bertie Lourens: They’re all there’s about a thousand students, I think in all the schools where we’re involved. I’m particularly drawn to one school with its two hundred kids. It’s in the middle of Mamelodi township. It is a Christian private school. It’s private because there’s no other support coming from the government. So it’s really donations. And some of the parents are paying fees to keep the kids in there. But it’s beautiful what’s happening there. It’s kids that have all the odds stacked up against themselves. If they did not go to the school, they would go to one of our failing government schools that are producing the results I’ve just mentioned. So here we are creating an environment for them where they have great education, great principal with a great teaching group that we teach the gospel, we model the gospel, we show the gospel, we model grace. We model generosity. And we try and show them what good fatherhood looks like because that’s the one big lacking thing in the poor communities. There are no fathers there. So the way I see it is zero two hundred kids that will become two hundred families one day and 200 families. We’ll have a chance at success in South Africa because of the school and that on its own is so rewarding because you look in the eyes of these kids and you interview them and you hear what they say and you hear kids say, I need to live generous with my fellow students. That comes from a kid that has nothing. And that’s beautiful because that kid gets it and that kid is going to enjoy success and joy because they get that concept of generosity.

Darryl Heald: That’s great. Thanks for sharing that, Betty. You also have a real passion for leadership so that you’re studied this for your own self as a leader, your company and your community and your family things. Tell us a little bit more about these. What’s driving you to do these interviews with other leaders there in South Africa?

Bertie Lourens: Daryl, I just started with interviewing my mentor when he was getting old, and I needed to have some video footage of what he’s taught me over the years. So I asked him and questions some of the questions are ones I’ve never had time to ask him. And some of the questions that I asked that deeply impacted me. So I asked him that. I took a video of it. We broke it into 10 little snippets, videos, and the purpose was really just to release it into our organization. But the value was so much that we thought, let’s literally just start a YouTube channel called Stories that Inspire. We posted on there and then for anyone to enjoy. And I thought, that is wonderful. And I asked God if he wants me to continue with that and felt free to go find another leader like him. And my deal with God was if he had to keep sending me people that are willing to be interviewed by me, I will continue to do so. And we are on series six, I think, right now. And I am just enjoying hearing from these people because everyone who has achieved the level of success are always keen to share it. They’re not stingy. Everyone who has had success wants to share it. So that’s what I do. Like I ask them and I try and package it in snippets that other people can enjoy and use and benefit from Amen Burty.

William Norvell: As we come nearer to close, I want to give you an opportunity just to maybe speak, just to have an open mic a little bit again to talk to the entrepreneurs out there that may be listening. And any other advice that you might have about, you know, just how God taught you to lead a business from a faith first perspective.

Bertie Lourens: Thank you, William. Yes, this all comes from the journey of starting to surrender, and I have developed a conviction that our father wants us to steward his stuff on his behalf. Now, we’ve heard this. This is all tacky, but if we can just pause for a moment and think of your earthly dad had assets with hundred billion dollars and he asks you, my son, would you take over the running of this company while I’m alive, then what would you do? How would you do that? Well, the first thing is you’ll be very fearful and respectful. And as you step into those very big shoes, but you will honor him and every one of your decisions, you will seek him in every one of your decisions. And you must check in with him daily. And our father, the creator of the universe, has created resources that generates about 90 trillion dollars of GDP every year. We are his sons and daughters and he wants us to stay with these assets on his behalf. So why do we get caught up so much and what we create and what we hold onto this such big journey out there? And by calling for us and I almost feel like our father is sitting on the edge of his seat waiting for us to surrender and let go of our stuff and the power that our stuff has over us and said, God, I’m your son and I’m here to steward your assets on your behalf, for your glory. God showed me in Romans eight. I’m about 19 and this is my translation of the all of creation is waiting eagerly for the Sons of God to stand up and reveal themselves and say, here we are. And then to do what? To risk your creation out of the bondage of corruption and to then steward it in a way that gives glorious liberty. What is glorious liberty? It is it’s a freedom that gives glory back to him. And I think that’s our calling our sons and daughters. So when he gives us assets to steward companies and people, he wants us to steward in a way that brings liberty, freedom to the resources of the earth that we stewarding the animals, the plants, the rivers, everything, the resources in it and the people and all of creation should the glory to father because of the way that we is sons of stewarding his assets. And I just think it’s such a big calling that we cannot waste time to get caught up in stuff and status, you know, and accolades. And I just felt that the only way that I was able to do this is to reach a place of complete surrender. So when I gave God shares in the business and I gave him control, it almost felt like that was absolutely necessary for that to happen before I could really stupid things on his behalf. Before then, it was all for me, as for me, my family, their inheritance, my legacy and all that nonsense.

William Norvell: Oh, I love that the it wasn’t something you begrudgingly did or maybe you did, but it was necessary. It was like that was the only way for it to work, actually, in sort of God’s world is to take that step of obedience.

Bertie Lourens: Yeah. And I want to add one more thing. The second point to that is the idea of generosity, how to be generous lives. I realized that a father is a generous father and the father of lies is a stingy father. And selfishness and stinginess come from the fear of scarcity. And generosity comes from the understanding of abundance and abundant provision from our father. And it’s almost as if we could live our lives in either one of these two veins. You can’t be in both. And when you realize that my father is the father of a Bynum’s and I can share my resources abundantly with the ones around me and I can live abundantly gracious with the people that I lead, employ my family, my friends, my neighbors, then you see the lie of the enemy. But until you make that choice, you live in the lie of the enemy. You always think, especially in South Africa, in a declining economy. How can I put away as much as I can now so that my kids will be OK? The day when I die. And I think we all live with that fear. That is the father of lies that are whispering those lies until years. And he whispers little lies. He puts little packets of lies and fear around our lives, neatly wrapped as gifts, tiny little packets. And as soon as you take the one and you open it up, you give him legal right to enter and cause havoc. And you cannot live in faith and fear. So Faith says, my father is abundant, is my provider, and he will look after me and my family. And fear says it’s up to me to put away as much as I possibly can so that my kids and my family are going to be OK one day.

William Norvell: Amen, I almost hate to ask another question, a wonderful place to end, but we do have to get to our closing question because we always ask it. And so usually I would cut myself off. But thank you for sharing that. And our closing question, will we love to ask, is just where God has you in his word today, where he has you in his scripture. And that’s something that you could have been meditating on for a season. It could be something God revealed to you this morning. But just to let our audience in to where God’s walking with you in his holy word today,

Bertie Lourens: William, I want to share something that happened over the last week. I got busy. I had to travel to Capetown, came back, went on a mountain bike race, traveled again. And this morning when I sat down, I opened my word. I saw it for the last eight days. I did not have a quiet time. So the last eight days, I got so busy that I didn’t sit with my father and I speak with him. And I realized the day before I exploded in the meeting because I acted out of my flesh, out of anger. And when I said with God, I repented for not seeking him daily. I allowed business to come and take me away from him. And I felt the father showed me the picture that the enemy wants us just to move away from my father slowly. You’ll never come with a big bang for your give away. His plan will come slowly. You’ll distract us with things that he knows will move us away from our father. And if you can get us away for long enough, then introduce a stage to riches, lies and fear. Because if we’ve been away from our father long enough, he know that we will not hear this Holy Spirit in the moment and introduce introduces little lines once we take them. He comes in with a lot of lies and after a week I was operating fully in my flesh, making fleshly decisions and exploding at people. I’m making bad decisions and that’s just a fresh revelation that I did not set before my father every day. And I ask him advice and if I don’t sit in his word, so his presence and I listen to the Holy Spirit, I do not care how long I’ve been a Christian. I will fail. I will act in inflation, will make bad decisions, and I’ll disappoint them.

William Norvell: Amen Amen, so grateful for you joining us today, so grateful for your story, so grateful for sharing what God’s done and through your obedience and at times your disobedience. And thank you for sharing both of those and how he still comes to the rescue through all of those examples. So grateful for you and grateful for your story.

Bertie Lourens: And give William.

Director | Eternal Perspective Ministries

Randy Alcorn is the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), a nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching biblical truth and drawing attention to the needy and how to help them.

EPM exists to meet the needs of the unreached, unfed, unborn, uneducated, unreconciled and unsupported people around the world.

“My ministry focus is communicating the strategic importance of using our earthly time, money, possessions and opportunities to invest in need-meeting ministries that count for eternity,” Alcorn says. “I do that by trying to analyze, teach and apply the implications of Christian truth.”

A New York Times bestselling author, Randy has written over fifty books, including Courageous, Heaven, The Treasure Principle, and the Gold Medallion winner Safely Home. His books have been translated into over seventy languages and have sold over eleven million copies.

Before starting EPM in 1990, Alcorn co-pastored for fourteen years Good Shepherd Community Church outside Gresham, Oregon. He has ministered in many countries, including China, and is a popular teacher and conference speaker.* Randy has taught on the part-time faculties of Western Seminary and Multnomah University, both in Portland, Oregon.

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