Podcast episode
Episode 365 – If God Owns It All, How Should You Build a Business? | Ron Blue
Join host Justin Forman for a wide-ranging conversation with legendary financial author, teacher, and serial entrepreneur Ron Blue. With decades of experience building Kingdom-minded financial institutions—including what is now Blue Trust, one of the nation’s premier faith-based wealth management firms—Ron unpacks the timeless questions every entrepreneur must answer: Who owns it? How much is enough? And what does faithful stewardship actually look like when you’re building something meant to outlast you?
EPISODE NOTES
What does a trailer park and a million-dollar home have in common? When Ron Blue counseled both a major grocery chain CEO and a heart surgeon about money, he discovered the same answer: contentment isn’t a number—it’s a posture. And that posture starts with one question: Who owns it?
Ron Blue has spent 50+ years at the intersection of biblical wisdom and financial practice. He built what is now one of the nation’s top 50 accounting firms, founded Blue Trust (a Christian wealth management firm whose clients gave away half a billion dollars last year), and trained over 4,000 financial advisors to steward capital for Kingdom impact. In this conversation with Justin Forman, Ron traces the arc of the stewardship movement—from the days when no one equated the Bible with money, to the rise of faith-driven investing, to the challenge of building businesses that outlast their founders.
Along the way, Ron tackles the questions entrepreneurs avoid: How much is enough? What does succession look like when you’re a steward, not an owner? And what happens when God calls you away from a firm you built with a million dollars of equity—but only 35% vested?
Chapters:
00:00 Opening: The grocery CEO in the trailer park
01:09 FDE Podcast Intro
01:21 God’s mega-trends: Seasons of stewardship
02:44 Money as ministry, not a program or product
03:57 Upstream vs. downstream: What stewardship really means
07:06 Ron Blue the serial entrepreneur: A flyover
07:45 Giftedness discovered: Taking the complex and making it simple
08:18 Starting the accounting firm: Serving Main Street
10:04 Hiring the person who finished first on the CPA exam
11:11 Building a platform for other people’s ministry
12:04 What entrepreneurship actually takes: 10 years
13:07 When no one equated the Bible with money
14:38 Enough money in evangelical hands to fund the Great Commission
15:10 The three most important questions: Who owns it? How much is enough?
16:07 The finish line is contentment, not a number
17:21 John Steinbeck’s prophetic 1959 letter on American abundance
18:34 NBA salaries then vs. NFL today: A culture of more
19:16 The devastating realization that a billion dollars doesn’t satisfy
20:18 Contentment as a choice, not a calculation
21:50 The ATM church vs. the platform business
22:49 Surrender doesn’t mean sell: Stay in the fight
23:14 The heart surgeon in the million-dollar home
24:26 Reversing the question: What does God think?
25:50 The grocery CEO and the trailer park
27:11 The church has more resources than any generation in history
28:06 Satan’s strategy: Push you over the edge with abundance
29:08 Money, success, significance, security—why none of them deliver
30:37 Hard vs. impossible: Serving God and mammon
30:53 Succession planning: The firm is more important than the founder
31:19 Building in equity vesting from day one
32:20 Called into ministry with only 35% vested
33:22 Family succession and treating children uniquely
35:09 Do your giving while you’re living
36:04 Does it bother you that you’re not participating in the value?
37:15 NCF gave away $3.5 billion; Blue Trust clients gave $500 million
38:37 The boy with the loaves and fishes
38:56 Blue Trust’s counter-cultural growth: 17% compounded in 4 years
40:48 God’s math on a spreadsheet
41:31 The rise of faith-driven investing
43:26 From stewardship to a full Kingdom ecosystem
44:32 Flying in the face of worldly values
44:50 Where to start: Ask “Who owns it?”
46:12 Holding it with an open hand
47:21 God makes the waves—what a gift to ride them together
47:33 Closing encouragement from Justin
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