Episode 75 - The Entrepreneur's Hidden Battle with Depression with Max Anderson

On today’s episode, we invited Max Anderson to come in and help us tackle a difficult yet important topic—depression among entrepreneurs. Max is an entrepreneur and a writer. Each week, he writes something called The Weekend Reader, where he explores one big idea from culture with a handful of suggested articles. Recently, he dove into how depression affects entrepreneurs, and what he found was staggering—entrepreneurs are anywhere from 2-10x more likely to suffer from mental challenges. It’s a topic that’s extremely important, yet remarkably under-discussed, so we thought that with Max’s help we’d push the conversation forward today...

Our hope in bringing this topic to light is that if you, or someone you know, is suffering from depression, that you could take the necessary steps to get help. We know this isn’t easy, and we also know that it’s not necessarily a fun topic to talk about. But it matters. And we’re grateful to Max for bringing this topic to our attention and for also helping us talk about it.

We follow a God who cares deeply about His Creation, and that includes you! While much of this podcast is dedicated to stories of success, failure, and everything in between, we hope this episode meets you where you’re at and gives you some encouragement along the way.

As always, thanks for listening.

Useful Links:

Entrepreneurship and Depression

WSJ - Beyond the Confetti: The Darkside of Startup Success

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 FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.

Henry [00:02:33] Hey, Rusty, William? It's Tuesday again. Great being back with you. Fired up to be on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast.

Rusty [00:02:39] I guess if it's Tuesday, it must be Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, right? You know what they say on Meet the Press? If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press. If it's Tuesday, it's FDE.

Henry [00:02:48] Okay, so this has been an episode I've actually really been looking forward to. It's a serious tone. So I shouldn't be so love about it. But this has been a topic that we've all talked about, we've all lived through, and yet we probably haven't spoken about it enough on the podcast. And we've got a really special time planned out for you with a guy who is an expert in this and he's written about it. He's been curious himself about startup depression. And so he endeavor to get out there and find some really good articles that unpack that. And that's one of the things that Max does. Max does a ton of different things. We're talking before we went live about some of the hiking he does with friends. But he is a guy that his involved as an investor is an entrepreneur. He is a guy who is well read and thinks a lot. He's a guy that rolls out the weekend reader, which is one of the ways that I find the longform articles that I think are really important that I need to stay on top of topics, many of which we end up talking about on the program. One that he released is on startup depression. So we're gonna be talking about that with him. But then generally also one of the things is relevant for all of our audience is the fact that he's been involved in practice. And if you've been listening to program for a while, you've probably heard of Praxis. Practice is a faith driven entrepreneurial accelerator that attracts great faith driven entrepreneurs from around the world. To spend time together in intentional community is a come to understand God's plan for their business. But most importantly, their identity through him. We've had Dave Blanchard on the program in the past, the CEO and founder. We've had Andy Crouch, who's on staff there, talking about the rule of life and some other things. And now we've got Max Anderson maxs, a venture partner with prices among the many has said he wears and wears well. And so we may drift into some of the topics that, in fact, entrepreneurs, but we really want to make sure that we focus on this one concept because it's such an important one. Startup depression. William had looked in some things that I think really kind of gives a sense of how important a topic this is beyond just that we feel it's important. William, what did you learn about startup depression?

William [00:04:53] Sure. Just wanted to highlight a few things before we get into the conversation because sometimes statistics can get lost. But Max highlighted an article linked to your studies specifically about entrepreneurs that said they're 50 percent more likely to report having a mental health condition. And there were some specific conditions that were just incredibly prevalent amongst founders and just listened through these two times, more likely to suffer from depression, six times more likely to suffer from ADHD, three times more likely to suffer from substance abuse, 10 times more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder, twice as likely to have a psychiatric hospitalization and twice more likely to have suicidal thoughts. And so just really wanted to frame that up in sort of some hard data that has been researched. You know, this isn't a feeling or thought. I think we've probably all had some version of that working with entrepreneurs that these were likely true. But Max did a great job of really hiring. They know there have been studies and this is a fact. This is something that's not really debated anymore in the entrepreneurial community.

Rusty [00:05:52] So, Max, you've hit on an important topic that as William just Davis the details about that is way more prevalent than maybe we talk about. Maybe it's one of those things that sort of get hidden in the corners. But you found it. Walk us through. You found it. How'd you find it? And then what led you to write about it?

Max [00:06:15] You know, the weekend reader that I publish is. Basically an exploration I do weekly of a topic and culture, either that I read about or someone talks to me about or just, you know, as in the conversation and I want to go deeper. And so sometimes, you know, I'll write about politics or about business issues or about technology. But I'm interested a lot in generally the idea of happiness. The idea of well-being.

[00:06:42] And in my own life as an entrepreneur, I've found this kind of funny dichotomy where on the one hand, when I'm working to start something new or build our business, I am incredibly energized and feel like I'm doing what God has made me to do.

[00:06:59] Andy, it is thrilling to have the autonomy and the creativity and all of that. And then on the other hand, sometimes in the same day, sometimes the same hour, having that first feeling, I experience anxiety or I experience loneliness or experience at times what I would call depression. And so I felt this going on inside myself and then as I would with close friends, talk. We're also kind of on a similar journey. Who would reveal that they are going through the same feelings? And I'm like, you know, I keep having these conversations over and over again. So I feel like it's going on. It's far more relevant, prevalent in experience than you would know otherwise. And so I started doing some digging and some reading and research on this. And, you know, William talked about some of the numbers. But I mean, to underline them like to say that 50 percent of entreprenuers report having a mental health condition, 50 percent. Every other person you meet who's doing a startup has self-reporting. They have a mental health condition that's not including the ones who aren't saying right. Entrepeneurs are twice as likely to be depressed.

[00:08:10] So one third of all entrepreneurs, one out of every three entrepreneurs you meet is depressed or struggling or has struggled with depression. Those are enormous numbers.

[00:08:20] So it's not like, you know, some people go through this. It's a hard time. No. A lot of people go through it. And my guess and we don't need to get into the details of the study. I'm not going to critique it. My guess is it's even higher than those self-reported numbers there. But to me, it's not just a little thing. It is a very, very big thing. It's a very common thing. And when you think about it, it makes sense that it's happening.

Rusty [00:08:42] Yeah. Can you. I mean, I know none of us on this podcast today are mental health experts. Right. So we might really like diving a little bit deeper. But, you know, I find this also in lots of people who their endeavor endeavors in the creative space. Right. So I get to work with musicians and artists a lot. And, you know, in the same sort of tendency comes because there's this tension of I've got to be creative, but I've got to carry the world on my shoulders at the same time. And the entrepreneur, we've all been there. We feel like we carry the world on our shoulders in the work that you've done. Is there anything that you can put out there that helps us understand how to take some of that off of our shoulders?

Max [00:09:25] Well, I think that. How do you address it? First, require saying, well, what's causing it? So the diagnosis. And again, I'm not a mental health professional, but combination of the studies I've read. And then just my own thinking about it. You know, I think it comes down to there's a few main drivers that need to be addressed. If you take the world, that's for sure. So one issue is the issue of just severe anxiety. So, you know, the number of people who are searching with Google with anxiety over the last five years that excited a search term has doubled over the last five years. And as an entrepreneur, like by definition, my favorite definition of entrepreneurship is going out and achieving a goal by harnessing resources that you don't control. That's money. That's people that is production capabilities. Right. You figure out how to do those things even though you don't control them starting out. But as a result of that, you're kind of always on the edge, very aware of the answers. You get overfunded. Right. You're just scraping and scrambling to make it by. And so there's a lot of scarcity that you experience as an entrepreneur. And, you know, I read one study that we have a scarcity mindset, like it really affects your thinking. The quality of your cognition decreases. So one study found that when subjects simply thought about a big bill that would strain their finances, their cognitive abilities plummeted by an average of 14 IQ points. Similar deficit to pulling an all nighter. Right. And by definition, that is what all entrepreneurs, they're quite liberally probably pulling all nighters and they're facing the scarcity that they really are running out of cash constantly. So this financial risk that's creating a lot of anxiety for people, I'm sure they're going without a paycheck. You know, they have maybe their own personal capital poured into the venture or they're taking out credit cards and if they have skin in the game, too. Degree that is severely anxiety producing. Second thing I think that is anxiety producing fresheners is this imposter syndrome. Right. You're doing something that has not been done before. Most people are telling you that you are crazy for trying to do it. Most people are telling, you know, when you ask them for money. But there you are. You're the CEO. And then someone decides to find you. And you have to make all these decisions for the first time. You feel like you don't know what you're doing and there's nothing really to tell you otherwise. So this is a common thing all. It's been a lot of time on. But the imposter syndrome, I think a third thing that we're dealing with more now than ever as entrepreneurs, but as a culture is an epidemic of loneliness. So we talk about this now. We see this, I think, across the United States with huge levels of loneliness, increasing drug use of increasing isolation, skyrocketing rates of suicide. And it is felt acutely when you're running an enterprise, too. So half of CEOs say that they are lonely in their roles. And when you're lonely, you know, the new research is that if you're experiencing extreme loneliness, it has the same health impact as smoking 15 cigarets a day. It's greater than obesity as a driver of health issues. You know, we'll have surgeon general warning about loneliness, though, but isn't not true. You're up late. It's on you. You're trying to make it work. And so, you know, when you're talking about financial risk and feeling like an imposter and then loneliness from doing this hard thing by yourself, you know, those are the things you realize is kind of root causes, driving a lot of mental health problems. You asked me to actually say, well, what do we do about it? I just told you, like, what's going on? Problems. But I guess we could go to what to do about it.

Henry [00:13:02] One of the things that you come up with in the reader that I think that points towards a potential solution in each one of these. We can readers, you take these four or five long form articles, you do an extract there along a common theme. But then the thing that I tend to like the most is the postscript. You kind of assimilate it all at the end. And I'm reading from your postscript now. We don't like talking about depression. It is by definition, not fun. And though in the past few decades we've learned a lot about brain chemistry, its role in mental health, and we still haven't yet overcome the nagging misconception that people who are depressed are somehow weaker than others. Now, this is me adding in. And no entrepreneur wants to be thought of as being weaker. Right. So you don't want to admit defeat. You're supposed to lead. Everybody's looking at you. And so the concept of admitting to this depression is against what you think will help you to succeed. OK, so back to your words now. Admitting depression is particularly taboo for those who rely on the confidence and financial support of others to succeed in their careers. I'm thinking here not only of itinerary, but of pastors and politicians in biographies.

[00:14:06] We read of many presidents who suffered from depression, from Lincoln to Grant to Teddy Roosevelt. They achieved incredible success despite their terrors of the mind. But try to name a modern politician or modern entrepreneur who was actively running amidst the depression. It'll be a short list. The same is true of pastors. And then my words again, the same presumably of entrepreneurs. It would seem that a big step towards addressing this issue is admitting that it's an issue in real time. And then you go on to talk a little bit about your own experience. Did you know that is you were able to come out and talk about your own challenges, that that was part of the solution? We're always at on our ability that you needed to have just to be able to just helped encourage others. But, you know, so many of us are taught to never talk about it. Does that compound the problem?

Max [00:15:02] Yeah, I was having. There's a group of friends here in Denver that we get together once a month for breakfast and we talk about our lives or pray for each other. And I told them I was recording with you guys today about this topic. And they said, does that does that make you feel nervous? And I said, yeah, a little bit, because there is a strong strain of my history that has kind of thrived on, you know, liking people to feel like I'm successful. And I don't like to think that I've traded on that. But I think in some ways I have in my life to admit that I have this weakness or I struggled in this way is hard. I think a little bit it must feel a little bit like what it's like for an alcoholic where a big part of the recovery process. I've had friends go through the 12 steps. Is just it limiting the struggle that God's allowed you to deal with? And by admitting it and being upfront about it, instead of hiding in the shadows, you take away some of the power has over you because there's not only there's depression itself in it. I think there's another layer on, at least for me. I think probably for many Christians. Shame in this kind of voice, talking in your head, saying, well, if I'm really believing, if I'm really trusting Jesus, if I'm asking the spirit to really feel me, shouldn't I be experiencing that joyful spiritual life? Shouldn't that fruit be evident? And if I'm not feeling that, is it because my faith is weak?

[00:16:36] And, you know, I think there's some of that I still wrestle with. I shouldn't that be true? But I think there's another part of it that is kind of chemical. Another part of it is circumstantial. And it's in God in his good wisdom, has allowed me and others to experience and wrestle through it as a way. Ultimately, I think of showing us our need for him and our inability to run our own lives. But for me, it's been a journey. One of my heroes in my life is my grandfather, Edward Swanson. Who was it? I guess you'd call it agriculture. He was a turkey farmer in central California. When they got married, he and my grandma, they were given a flock of turkeys. And there's literally all they had to eat. They slept outside in the turkey pen to protect the birds from wild dogs getting in there and killing them. And so that's how they started was really pretty humble. But it grew into quite a big business and started to think in a number of other things. And I didn't learn until I was older that he wrestled through depression throughout his life as well. He was as godly a man as I knew. He was like my paragon of what it meant to be a Christian. And so I think learning that gave me a little bit of like the hope that maybe I'll be OK, too. But when I wrote this piece, something we can reader, I think it may be the single addition that got the most feedback from people e-mailing us saying, gosh, thank you for writing this. I've been going through this too. I have gone through this and people I would not have guessed or known about. And so I think there is a certain freedom in healthiness and talking about it. But I think I'm still on a journey. I just had my 10 year reunion at Harvard Business School and they put out this little book ahead of time where everyone gives an update on what's going on in their lives. In the fifth reunion, everyone was pretty much just bragging about how they were given the chance reunion. People were talking more about their kids and about their families, and it was less about success. But still, it was almost like having a family and helping good kids was becoming the new way that people bragged. But one of my classmates wrote about her own wrestling with depression, kind of at length and very poignantly and like me. And there was like, I swear, every time I saw her, there was like five or six people lined up to talk with her because she was willing to go there. And I think it gave safe space for everyone else. And so for my little, you know, group of readers, I wanted to try to do something similar.

Henry [00:19:04] So I think that's remarkably powerful. I know that I struggle with anxiety in my middle 20s, and I know that that created this amazing opportunity for me to come to know God more fully and his plan for my life and his love of my life. And that was formative for me. And I know that the process of Adventureland, many close friends and family and the grise dating who then became my wife was probably the single biggest part of my becoming healthy. And then as I came to understand that other people, like the woman that you just reference, had gone through the same type of issues. It made me stronger. It really helped. And I think that that's an encouragement I would have for anybody who's going through something like that is to take energy from people like you who've written about it and to be able to understand that they're not alone, that this is something that's natural for them to combat.

[00:19:54] And I love to maybe you riff on this a little bit, too, because the entrepeneurs that you work with in practice are all leaders in their own right. And so there's a modeling was it looked like for the CEO of a company to be able to model the right type of vulnerability and transparency with their workers in a way to love them.

[00:20:15] Because their line worker guy in Denver, you know, a lot of talks, a lot about so much effort's been talked about, that's great CEOs and great entrepreneurs, but not enough people are talking about the spiritual integration that impacts the second shift. Was it look like for a CEO to talk about their challenges in the past and present with mental illness? You know what? That looks for them to be a leader. And does it compromise their ability to be a leader? Does it make them in a better position to love their employees? What do you think?

Max [00:20:44] Yeah, I think it's a question I'm still exploring. So for a while before we started Saturn 5, I worked at a firm called Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalia's hedge-fund. You know, Bridgewater is famous now for the culture of radical transparency, where you are supposed to not filter anything that you're thinking or feeling and share it with your superiors, share it with people who work for you. How are you doing? And that happens to a greater or lesser extent. And I like that to a large extent. I like the idea of transparency. I think it creates trust. I think it enables to perform bonds. When you let your guard down and people can see as a leader that you're human. But then I'm I'm also. And if you've read any Crouch's book, strong and weak. Well, I love it. Yeah. Well, you know, that part he talks about hidden vulnerability in. I'll do it in injustice here. But basically idea that as a leader, you need to balance a little bit this virtue of transparency with your responsibility to give confidence to the people you're working with. And if I shared with my people everything that kept me up at night, every worry I had about our finances or about, you know, losing this customer, that I would drive him crazy, I would freak them out. And India thinks argument is that part of the sacrificial nature of leadership is to wear that yourself, to bear that burden on behalf of the people who are working for you so that they don't have to carry that stress. And I think there's something true and right about that. And the difficulty is that if that's just one more group of people, you're trying to hide the weakest front. Right. There's the investors you have now. It's your employees as well. And if you are going to take on that approach to leadership, which I think there is wisdom that you absolutely also need to have that group of people who you can just totally let your hair down with, be stupid. You know, share your craziest anxieties and worries with who can like kick in the butt or put an armory on your shoulder and work through with you. Because I just I'm a firm believer. You just can't do it alone. It's just too hard.

Rusty [00:22:53] Now, to that point, one of the things that you've referenced is that there's a V.C. firm that you've become familiar with and actually gives one percent of the funding towards mental health. Yeah, I'm fascinated by that. I mean, to tell us the story of that because we need more of that.

Max [00:23:11] Yeah. So the program is that on top of every check that they cut, they will give 1 percent of that funding amount in non-dilutive capital that's earmarked for founder development in coaching and mental health. So it's like no strings attached. Go use this, you know, get a counselor, get coaching, go leadership development program, go join Wipro or some other pure organization because they feel it's is that important for their founders to be healthy. The Wall Street Journal actually did a piece just this week on the dark side of success as an entrepreneur. And they had all these stories of the CEO of Etsy and others who like when they went public. We're just totally, you know, in the depths of despair, even despite having great success. And the references study from, I think, the National Association for Art Worship that said that they surveyed a bunch of investors, venture capitalists, and said. Ninety five percent of them said that number one reason for startup failure was leadership and team issues. So not product market fit, not, you know, sales strategy, but like issues with a culture and the health of leadership in place. And so this firm IT rescue mission, it's called a mispronounces. So forgive me for Lease's ventures. I believe they're doing this called it enlightened venture capital where they're saying, hey, we see this as a real issue. Who knows if this is going to solve it. But this is like, you know, our attempt to really put us front and center. We're going for our money where our mouth is and how much more to stay out. This is also a practice. This practice doesn't give money towards this. But you go through the program that has put together and there's a huge emphasis on the spiritual disciplines of rest and Sabbath in prayer and worship with the idea that, yeah, it's not only better for you as a person, but you're eventually more likely to succeed if you're in a good spot and healthy as well.

Henry [00:25:14] It's a good. Time for us to take just a quick break and acknowledge what some of the listeners might be wondering, which is, is Max cooking like this incredible batch of popcorn or is he in the middle of a rainstorm? What? What is going on in Max's recording studio right now? I like to think that it's popcorn. Popcorn.

Max [00:25:34] So therefore, I'm coming to you live from my F150, because in my current venture, I am mostly in my truck most of the day, driving from business to business. Check in on our team. So I apologize for that. I'll tell you that. Don't not popcorn. Not popcorn.

Henry [00:25:53] That's actually really disappointing. But I will say that David Morgan, my best friend, a business partner at band-width, would say for the first 10 years of his entrepreneur career that his dream car was an F-150. I'm living the dream. You're living the dream. You live in orange.

[00:26:11] So I want to bring on something that Andy Crouch talked about that I think is super important, and that is bearing the burdens of the stresses and shielding your employees from that in the balance between being a leader in the business and also being an entrepreneur who is a father. Let me give you some context. I was with an entrepreneur the other day and he talked about the fact that I know this guy really successful, very, very winsome. And he's the real deal. He's a rock star. He also has an anger problem. He has an anger problem. He has four kids under the age of five and two or three percent of the time that he's with his family. He is embarrassed and ashamed by his behavior. And he talked about a breakthrough that happened a couple of months ago when he was lying in bed with his 5 year old son and said to his son's name, which will leave out for now. I want you to pray for me. I'm embarrassed by the way I acted and I'm dealing with some different stresses. And sometimes I think I handled it well and sometimes I don't. But will you please pray for me? And I love that example about something that he learned, because as entrepreneurs, we are viewed by those that around us, different stakeholders, and they're all trying to figure out what makes us tick. And we are leading by example. And I think it is important to be able to bear some of the stresses that business so that our employees don't have that. I also think it's important to bear some of the financial stresses that we as young parents might feel as well. So their kids are shielded from that. And yet there's still a place for vulnerability or transparency. And here's what I mean in this guy's world, because I know him, he's successful to the outside world and is successful in the inside world. But ninety seven percent of him to his son looks unattainable. His father is just this amazing thing. And in 3 percent looks detestable. It means that 100 percent of him then becomes kind of non relatable to his children. And so now he is able to break the barriers of that and show some vulnerability and some transparency in a way that invites his five year old son in to show the fact that his dad does struggle with some things, has much of things figured out. Right. He hasn't introduced his son to all the different stresses of his life. But now the son is relatable in a way that when that kid gets to 20 or 21, he's able to identify with his father. I ask you this because I know you're a parent. And as you seek to lead your family and struggle with being an entrepreneur and business success in business failure, how does that impact you as a parent? In modeling behavior off to your children?

Max [00:28:51] First of all, it's a great analysis of the 97 percent, the 3 percent, the 100 percent unrelatable. You know, I had an experience the other day with my kids that was provocative for me. Part of what we do with our company, Center Five, is we're starting new ventures from scratch and then we're looking to buy cash flowing small businesses and operate them in a holding company model. And we've got a couple of deals here in Denver, and I'm chasing another one right now. And it has turned out to be Harry and some different complications in the deal. And I had to use around bedtime for my kids and I needed to take a call, you know, to varsity or forward. The details are important. And my wife told the kids that basically, you know, they knew I was looking at this thing and trying to buy it. We talked about it, but she said Daddy's got an important call. He's a little anxious about how it's gonna go. And, you know, and I felt bad about a missed the bedtime, but then went in to check on them and they are still awake when I got them. And my oldest daughter, Carolina, said, Dad, we've been praying for you. How did it go? And I just felt this rush of emotion that to have my kids not know all the details, but you know, that this thing was important to me, to know that I was nervous about it. Then to take the step of praying for me, because 90 percent of the time I'm the one that's praying for them, tucking them in at night. And for her to say, hey, I know this important to you. We've been praying for you. How did it go? I felt like a different level of closeness with them. And so it's really making me think about how am I evolving my kids in what I'm doing in a way that is just sharing life with them. And I'm seeing maybe that there's room to be more vulnerable than I thought. And so that's what's on my mind right now.

William [00:30:47] That's good stuff. As I'm sitting here thinking the verse that comes to mind for me, it's, I think, mostly applicable. Of course, not completely. But James 5/16 says, therefore, confess your sins each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. So some of these things are sins. Some of them may not be own. You know, we need to get in the theological debate on that. Some of them definitely are. But I think the general principle of having a close knit group to confess what you're going through and then the principle that a prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective is just so big. I think in my own life. So I'm more of your analogy. So I struggle. It took me, gosh, five, six, seven years to admit that I was an alcoholic.

[00:31:28] And, you know, when you finally, like, say it out loud to the first two people that, you know, you want to say that out loud to some barriers broken. The response that you get is wildly different than what you've built up in your head. The empathy that pours out, the love that pours out, the prayer that comes out on top of that. It's just amazing. And being able to confess that or share that with someone and the freedom that comes from that, of realizing that we are all broken, that we all have problems, that we all do nothing but through Christ who sustains us and builds us. All right. And we all have different things that we go through, the powerful things. I thank you for sharing that.

Max [00:32:11] Yeah. I have tremendous love and respect for guys who are recovering or recovered alcoholics. Because I feel like of anybody I know. It is like the no B.S. club. You know what? I'm broken. I've been beaten down. And I need something besides alcohol needs sex myself. It's just they don't have time for putting up a facade. It's incredibly, incredibly attractive in a friend because, you know, I think we all walk around with these mass on. And the first guy to take his off, it's like, wow, that's the guy I want to hang with a man.

William [00:32:51] And it's tough, yeah. And so as we move towards our rap time, that's the general encouragement for people. And the thing I want to pull out to that I think's been sad, but just pull out at the end is it allows other people to be free to say your step in the right direction. I mean, I gave a talk about this, my business school class and the amount of people that came up and said some version of me, too. I thought I was the only one. Right. And being able to give that freedom to other people is how God works. And, you know, in some of these people were Christian. Some of them weren't. You know, God works. They're all people in all things. But it's just an amazing journey. So thank you for sharing that with us. I mean, when I feel like we're not to have Max on to talk about all the other really interesting things he does that some other time we picked a topic that's just so vital to, I think, this time and place that we find ourselves in. And that's why you wrote about it. But I know we get so much more to learn from you and hear from you. The one thing I would like to point to right now, though, is we always like to ask our guests, you know, in this season as you're driving around, the rain's coming down. Where does God have you in his word? You know, what might he be pointing you towards? It could have been this morning in a devotional with kids and your wife. It could have been this season. Sometimes God sticks people for a year and a verse in a paragraph in a story. Just let our listeners into what God's teaching you right now.

Max [00:34:12] You know, I just had to say the whole Bible. It's just been on my heart recently.

William [00:34:18] You can't go wrong with that answer.

Max [00:34:19] The Treasury debt got once a week. And so that's been helpful.

Rusty [00:34:25] No. Good book. Twenty four. I want your favorite two favorite part, the New Testament.

Max [00:34:35] I like the middle. You know, they're really interesting. Now, I know you guys are going to ask this because I'm a fan of the show. My grandfather, who I brought up earlier, taught me. I guess it by the second verse I ever learned. But it was his kind of life first, which is name one seven in any time in your life versus in the book of name. You know, you're the real deal person, by the way. So it says the Lord is good. A stronghold in the day of trouble, you know, with them. Who trust in him. The Lord is good. A strong hold in the day of trouble. He know with them who trust in him. And when I know kind of went through my most recent episode of Feeling Anxious and Depressed. That was the verse that really I clung to quite a bit, because what I shared is about my kinship with my grandfather and also just the message of the verse itself, which is that we are now, that we are known and we are loved.

[00:35:34] And I was you know, I think when I get anxious often it's because I feel lonely and unknown. And it's because I feel unlovely or unlovable, because maybe what I set out to do, it's not going to succeed the way I wanted it to. And I'm afraid of how that's going to look or what people will think. But at the end of the day, the Lord is still there is a strong hold in my day of trouble. He knows me as I trust in him. That's that's my version.

Henry [00:36:04] I mean, I mean, gosh, I go my verse. That was good.

William [00:36:08] No, you can't have it. It's Maxus.

Max [00:36:11] It's Elwood's.

Rusty [00:36:13] It's legacy. Legacy. Come out to legacy verse.

William [00:36:16] Now there's a deep pull. Those that you do show that you have read the whole Bible. And that's a name that's a deep tracks.

Henry [00:36:23] I wasn't sure exactly where that was. I'm embarrassed, but I did. I've gone to my Bible app and I've gone and I've highlighted 1/7 and bookmarked it because.

Max [00:36:31] Like I said, it's like the middle of the Bible, you know? Right.

William [00:36:36] I got a gut feeling you're not the only one flipping through trying to find Nahum.

Henry [00:36:39] And Mac. This has been great. I'm grateful. I'm grateful for you. I'm grateful for your work, your example, your friendship and your time.

Max [00:36:49] Grateful for you, too. Thanks for having me, guys.