Today’s episode features a unique entrepreneurial journey that includes 3-D printing of homes. Yeah, you heard that right. Printing homes. Brett Hagler is the CEO and Co-Founder of New Story. He’s a Y Combinator alum, Praxis fellow, author, cancer survivor, and a 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur. The list goes on and on.

Under his leadership, New Story was recognized as one of Fast Company's 2017 and 2019 "Most Innovative Companies In The World." Brett and his team are currently working with their partner ICON to 3D-print the world’s first community in Mexico. Forbes recently featured a story about how they are building a whole village from 3-D printing. 

His story is a fascinating one, and we’re so glad we got to sit down and hear it. We think you’ll be glad too. As always, thanks for listening.

Useful Links:

About New Story

3-D Printed Village

3-D Printing for the Developing World (Video)

The Power of Purpose: How to End Global Homelessness

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 Kaestner [00:03:06] Brett, we're so glad you're on the show today. Been looking for this for a long time. I have so many questions for you. I don't even know where to start. But let's go ahead and get our listeners in on your story right off the bat. Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you do? And how do you get to where you are today?

 

Brett Hagler [00:03:21] Thank you, Henry. It's great to be on with you guys. Today, I am lucky to be a co-founder and CEO of an organization called New Story, where our mission is to pioneer solutions to end global homelessness.  But my quick backstory is I grew up in Florida and I grew up in a Christian middle school. High school, had parents that instilled great values in me. I was very lucky. But from a faith standpoint, I thought that faith in Christianity was boring, was not cool, was not fun. And I just thought that I would figure it out when I'm like 40 or 50 or I actually used to think that I could kind of hack the whole thing and figure it out like right before I die, because I thought that, you know, living a surrendered life for Jesus couldn't possibly be better than living my way. And so throughout high school and college and a little bit after college, I kind of went out and pursued what I referred to as the three G's for simplicity.

[00:04:35] And that's not gratitude, generosity, and God, that was girls, gold and glory. And that was really the goal.

[00:04:45] And I was always a very ambitious guy. But it was all selfish ambition before.

[00:04:51] And so it turns out that when those are your top priorities, it becomes pretty unfulfilling. And so I graduated from Forest University 2012 and got into a startup world, started my own For-Profit startup right at college. And I just found myself in his place where it wasn't like rock bottom. I wasn't depressed. I was just longing for a bigger purpose and a more meaningful life. And what God did was he introduced me to a CEO in Atlanta.

 

[00:05:22] I was actually raising money for my first startup. And I wanted to get to this gentleman. You know, for as a mentor to actually be a funder. And from kind of the outside looking in in his life, he was to me like a role model. He was somebody that I wanted to be like one day. And so I finally tracked him down and went to lunch with him. And at lunch, he just very casually started talking to me about Jesus. But he did it in a really cool way because I was asking him questions about leadership. And he started talking to me about servant leadership and like, where do you get that from? And that's kind of like a softball for him to start talking about Jesus as a leader. And that just was kind of the catalytic moment that God used to reframe what I thought about my faith and how I could actually live a life with my faith at the center. And so from there, he told me to check out a church in Atlanta called Buckhead Church in Northpoint. Pastor Andy Stanley turns out to be quite a good communicator, to say the least. And so I started going all by myself. And after a couple months, I was all in and I totally surrender my life to Christ.

 

[00:06:34] I got baptized there and made a total, total, total 180.

 

[00:06:39] I went cold turkey on pretty much all those old vises and thought that, you know, God had given me a little bit of leadership ability. And then in the past, I was using that. For all the wrong reasons, and then I was going to now try to redirect that ability and try to use it for something with more purpose. So from there I took a trip to Haiti and I went down to Haiti a couple years after the 2010 earthquake. And when I went down there, I had zero passion or knowledge or understanding of people living without safe shelter and life's most basic. So two parts. I did have a for profit startup at the time and we were starting to with this kind of life change and heart change. We wanted to be more generous. And so we were starting to give back a little bit of the money we're making was nothing, but we wanted to see the organization in person. And then to I was like new into my faith. And I was reading, of course, a lot of the New Testament. And it turns out that Jesus has a pretty strong bent and heart for the poor. And so I wanted to see that firsthand. And so, yeah, man went down. And that was what God used to place, really. Division for news story on my heart and how he caught my attention and really broke my heart with the families and the kids we met that were living without life's most basic human needs and that safety, shelter, sanitation. And so that was in about 2014. And then came back and we'll get into new story. But I had the idea.

 

Henry Kaestner [00:08:15] Yeah. So you take us there. So you're on the ground in Haiti, which is for our listeners, urban. It's just it's an amazing, amazing place. It's easy to feel overwhelmed. Most people in it, if I'm honest, that was really my feeling. I've been in places like Southeast Asian in Africa and other places where you kind of get a sense about where to start. So I think it's particularly impressive that you're down there and said, OK. So it is overwhelming. Presumably it was overwhelming. But here's a way to kind of wade into it. And so is out of that trip. That news story was founded and I think you just alluded to a little bit. They didn't have the most basic need for shelter in Sudan. So what do you do on that? You say women to build houses. Are your take on it completely unique. Walk us through how that went from the time when your heart's broken, when you see these people not having the type of shelter that they deserve and need. And through the formation of new story and it was rusty gets more get down on the technology to be able to ask you more about how you do it, because the way you do it is completely unique. But talk to us through the early days of New Story.

 

Brett Hagler [00:09:21] So, yeah, kind of the entrepreneurial genesis was that I went down there and I had like no experience in the nonprofit world. I didn't know this stuff. And so I never thought I would actually start a nonprofit, especially in my 20s.

 

[00:09:37] I already was kind of a young entrepreneur in the startup world and like, that's what I wanted to do. So I started looking for other nonprofits that I could get really excited about. And then I thought, we're doing things differently. And the more I loved, the more I was like, wait a second. It just seems like people not in a bad way, but people are attacking this problem in a very traditional manner. And I was longing personally for something that would have a little more risk-taking, a little more innovation and R&D budget. Right. People that, you know, if they wanted to, they could work at SBB or Facebook or some of the top companies or startups in the country, but they've chosen to work at a nonprofit. And I couldn't find that. And so that was kind of the genesis of like, wait a second, if I was only passionate about the mission of people not having safe shelter, I could have joined another organization. Right. But I thought that we need a new way to attack the problem and kind of try from the very beginning from scratch a model that would be built with different operating principles. And that's why it's actually called New Story, because we are very passionate about not just creating a news story in the families that we get to partner with and the communities that we get to design and build. But also a new story in how we think about building a next generation kind of social impact work. And so that was kind of the idea. And we have a monster news story, too, to dream big, but start small. And it was me and my two co-founders and we were twenty four and twenty five unqualified. No experience, no money to get this off the ground. Not a great network to get this off the ground. But we had a vision to do things differently and to solve a lot of the problems, not just on the ground, but a lot of the problems and how traditional charities were operating. And so we kind of doubled down on that, went all in and reverse engineered and experience to prioritize technology and software engineering and innovation. Research and development and transparency in a higher standard of excellence, et cetera, and that enabled us to get into Y Combinator, which is a program out in Silicon Valley, and we're one of the first nonprofits to go through Y Combinator in the summer of 2015.

 

Rusty Rueff [00:12:06] So, Brett, it's fascinating what you're doing. Just sort of thinking about reinventing sort of the nonprofit or go to market model. But at the same time, I mean, you're breaking all kinds of barriers here with 3D printing a house. I mean, just take us through how do you 3D print a house?

 

Brett Hagler [00:12:26] Yes. So this is a more recent endeavor. And I'll take 30 seconds. How you kind of how he got here. So. And our first five years before we started 3D printing houses, we'd built homes with more traditional methods. And our first five years was now raised close to 40 million dollars. And that built 3000 houses. That develops 22 different communities. And so that's what we had done. And we were happy with that. But we were really trying to challenge the traditional methods of how homes are built for the poor. And so we went on a research and development kind of quest to figure out what is a breakthrough technology out in the world that could lower costs, increase speed and doing those two things without sacrificing quality. And if you get those three things together, it's either too good to be true or it's a breakthrough. Right. And so we came across the concept of 3D printing houses and we thought, wow, this is a great use case for our homes because they're smaller, simpler homes, you know, around 500 square feet, single story. And we use a lot of cement. And so we came across our partner icon. I met their founders through praxis. And they were in kind of the idea stage. And we had a dream to put R&D money into the beginning of getting that first machine created and designed. And we took a risk. And it turned out that the machine printed the first house in Austin, Texas, with icon.

 

Rusty Rueff [00:13:59] But I've got to stop you, though, because I mean, I've got to think that our listeners are sitting here going, wow, that must be a really big printer. You just like the house comes out, your whole house comes out. I mean, give us those mechanics serves as best you can in our in our in our mind's eye.

 

Brett Hagler [00:14:15] Totally. Yes. There's a gantries style machine and it's a proprietary cement mix that is coming out of the machine, out of the nozzle. And so I would like to explain it to my mom is kind of visually imagine almost like soft serve ice cream that's coming out of a nozzle. And that's a cement mix and that is layering a house. So we start with layer one at the bottom and the layer ranges. It's about 1 and 2 inches thick. And then that will layer the interior exterior walls, kind of a CAD file of the house on top of a foundation slab. And then we just layer the house all the way to the top and then we will put on, you know, a roof, a door and the windows. But all of the interior, exterior walls, the majority of the home. This 3D printed.

 

Rusty Rueff [00:15:05] So this printer comes over the structure somehow.

 

Brett Hagler [00:15:08] That's right. It's onsite. And then the machine will print the house. And so we went from the prototype home in Austin, which became a honestly, it turned out better than pretty much all of us thought. And we got a lot of attention from it. And we said, all right, let's take this to the next level, which is designing a next machine that could actually drive to Mexico, get off of an 18 wheeler in rural Mexico, where you can't rely on water, where you can't rely on power, where there's storms meets in the middle of nowhere, the environment. But that's where our families live. That's where a lot of families in extreme poverty happen to live. So we had to design the machine with icon to do that. And we did it. I mean, I'm very proud to share that. The end of 2019. 3D printed our first few homes in the world's first 3D printed community in southern Mexico. And it worked. And we are now moving at a pace that's actually kind of better and faster than we even anticipated.

 

Rusty Rueff [00:16:11] So if you're not tracking along yet on this because it's still hard, you just understand the concept. There's some great videos up on the news stories site that will show you were definitely worth two or three minutes to be able to visualize it. And once you see it, you kind of say, oh, my goodness, this changes everything. And we'll have to really want to geek out.

 

[00:16:32] I mean, everybody should go look at that. It's very cool.

 

Brett Hagler [00:16:35] You know, what I'd say we're most proud of is that, you know, breakthrough technology like this usually reaches the families that need it most last, right? Think of the cell phones.

 

[00:16:46] We can give a lot of different examples. Internet access. And with this particular example, this breakthrough technology, which I absolutely believe a lot of future construction will be through, robotic construction is happening with the families that need it most first. And so these first families that we'll be living in the 3D printing homes, we know will be the first kids in the world to live in 3D printed houses. And we're very proud that it's an environment that is in desperate need and can have a black and white life changing difference with the families that will live there.

 

Rusty Rueff [00:17:30] Yes. That's right. That's big. Absolutely. I have just one other question for you. So as an entrepreneur, I mean, with something that that's that big, that complex and that constantly. How do you a test, how do you trial and error or something like that? 

 

Brett Hagler [00:17:50] You know, I think there is risk taking and there's calculated risk taking. And what we did was definitely a risk, but it was a calculated risk. And so there is this concept by Jim Collins, very simple. He refers to firing bullets before cannonballs. Right. And essentially, like if you're trying to, you know, a ship, don't fire a cannonball first at the ship and use all your ammo to try to hit it and take it down. Right. Fire some bullets. See what hits to get the alignment right in the target on point. And then once some of those bullets hit, then dust more into loading up the ammo and going in. And so that's really what we did. We put in a good amount of money to start, but it wasn't anything that was outrageous or irresponsible against our budget. And we said, hey, if this works, we will then double down on it and invest more. Going forward. And that's what happened. And, you know, I think a lot of folks, when we first pitched this concept and some people externally were hearing about Newsweek wanting to put an R&D money to help invent a machine with icon, in the beginning, a lot of people told me like, dude, why would you spend that money when you could just like find another 20, 30 houses? Why would you do that when you know, you could help 30 families? And I think that idea is somewhat plaguing a lot of nonprofits because a lot of folks are thinking way too much about the kind of short term and the the immediate direct impact. Whereas what we want to do is try to get out in front, find breakthrough technologies, invest in those, and then know that if it works, it's going to go way farther than helping those 20, 30 families. Right. It's ideally going to be 100 times that. And so we have a monster out news story that it's crazy until it's not. And, you know, I think this project is evidence of that, because in the early days when it was just an idea in the backyard trying to 3D print this first house. Not everybody, not of the media was calling. Not all the donors were calling, etc. But after we did it, it was no longer crazy. And it became a pretty exciting project.

 

William Norvell [00:20:04] Amazing. It's amazing to hear where you guys have come. This is William here. Brett, I feel like you guys have also had a pretty innovative take on something that we've talked about here on the podcast for we have Peter Greer talk about rooting for rivals and how the idea that, you know, bringing everyone up together. And I think a lot of the things you just talked about and hit on are talking about, you know, making an impact at scale. Right. And to do that, it's really hard to do that alone. You already talked about one partnership, an icon. Could you talk a little more about your theory of change regarding the housing sector? And I know you're building technology for other nonprofits to use. I feel like that's also really innovative and something that would explore a little bit.

 

Brett Hagler [00:20:43] Yeah, I'm super passionate about this. We decided about two years ago to totally change news stories. Northstar And so in the early days, which I think is very similar to most organizations, you know, our kind of goal was like, let's raise as much money as we can, which we're doing really well at. And let's build homes and then let's raise more money and build great communities and raise more money and build homes, et cetera. And, you know, get strong year over year growth with that. Well, the problem is that when you're trying to work on a challenge that's as big as ours, which is about a billion people don't have safe shelter, that method is never going to really make a dent. Right. You're just so governed by what you can go raise and then deploy yourself to build. And there's no real leverage. It's very linear. And so we thought, wait a second, what if we could try to be the best at not just building our own homes in our own communities, but trying to pioneer solutions and really understand the problems that. With designing homes and designing communities, and then we could create new innovations and solutions. We could then prove those in the communities that we built ourselves. And then the big idea in our North Star is not to keep that for news story and not even to just like say, hey, let's open sources, anybody can take it. But to have a real strategy and a go to market to get adoption from other nonprofits and governments that can use the innovations that we've created to make them more effective and then more efficient. I mean, if you think about it like the total addressable market of, you know, governments that have budget for social and affordable housing is massive compared to if I was just trying to go out or raise more money and build more homes ourselves year over year. We think that's just too small of an idea. And so we've really designed that news story. Now is a yes, we still will design and build some of our homes and communities, but that's really just a testing ground to prove new innovations, to have a place where we can a/b test new concepts, we can roll out new software products to do construction management data, etc. and then productize those after and share them with our partners and the governments that want to use it we've created. So it's kind of like the R&D and the innovation arm to the global social housing sector.

 

[00:23:11] Yeah, it's really cool if you know if you have any videos on there. But just from my own perspective, from being around the organization, it's really cool to talk to some of these partners and say, you know, used to we build a village and we build homes for people. There's, as you might imagine, housing nonprofits all over the world. And they never really knew what was going on in those communities or who those people were or they had more children or if they were to, you know, the family was too big for the home. All these type things and you hear them talk about the technology that Bret's team has built and given to them. And now they have mobile access to track who these people are. Ask him questions. Are there other things you need? Are there ways we can build your house better or are there are other non-profits we could get involved in the community and just it's just inspiring. You know, it's just so cool to see you guys lifting up all boats, like you said. I mean, you could raise money till the day you die and, you know, you're not going to reach a billion people, but combined you could.

 

Henry Kaestner [00:24:06] I have a question. Can you 3D print a church?

 

Brett Hagler [00:24:09] Yeah, we're Axton. Early stages of talking about that with our community in Mexico.

 

[00:24:39] But I want to say one more thing on that kind of business model that we have, if you will. The reason why we've been able to do it is because we've had funders and partners that fully believe in it. Right. So we have a small group of donors that's about fifty leaders now that we call the builders.

 

[00:24:56] And they actually don't fund houses. They fund salaries for software engineers. Right. They fund an R&D budget, a line item budget that I'm trying to grow year over year. And when we think about that, it gives New Story. Now, the license to go out and, you know, create a new software product that, you know, we all know the cost of software engineers. Right. It's not cheap, but we can develop the product and then say, hey, if we make this and then we get adoption from the Mexican government, from other governments in Latin America, from the largest housing non-profits and even other larger Christian nonprofits in the world, imagine that impact as opposed to if we use that amount of capital just to directly build houses. And so it's kind of this newer way of thinking about funding that has really been our differentiator has given us that freedom to go out and innovate and try new concepts.

 

[00:25:53] And so that's it's kind of a, you know, a pitch for other people. Listening with the organizations that you love and you support is thinking about that. Because from what I've gathered, a lot of organizations don't have that budget and don't have funders that that are up for funding, you know, software engineers or an R&D budget. Right.

 

Henry Kaestner [00:26:14] But I'd also imagine that you're very, very unique in that your cultural DNA. I want William to talk about culture here in a second. But your cultural DNA is about innovation. You started in a geography, in a place where this kind of in the water is the way that people think. And so I think that I'd take your admonition well, which is that if we can think more creatively about clean water and microfinance or a number of different places to be able to invest in the larger ecosystem, in a technology, in R&D, that we absolutely move the needle. And what I think you're responding to and you're bucking the trend is the pressure of fundraising being. You give $13000 to $15000 in that helps provide a house instead, think more about how do we build a larger infrastructure to change the way that housing is done across millions of houses. But there's probably also some organizations that are actually just good at getting together with manual labor and working with local communities and probably shouldn't be in the business of hiring software engineers.

 

Brett Hagler [00:27:10] 100 percent agree. It's definitely not for everybody. But I am passionate about trying to. And there are other orgs doing this, but like trying to push forward that model with with select organizations that do feel they might have the ecosystem to do that or they want to recruit that kind of talent. Right. And honestly, it's not to say like one organization with that model is is better or worse than another. It's just a different take. And I think we need people that are going to focus on innovation, on pioneering new solutions. And we need people that can execute on the ground with excellence. Right. And then together, that's how I think we're going to get a lot more scale and the impact that neither one is better than the other.

 

William Norvell [00:27:56] Yeah, it's bigger that because there may be some listeners who do feel called this direction. Right. Worth listening to your story. It's a wow. I'm. That's me. Right. How have you and your co-founders, Matthew and Ali. And have you guys thought about the culture that you're building and you as the CEO, I assume you're a big part of setting that culture. How do you think through that? What are some of the ups and downs of trying to build that? Once again, it is new. It's different. I know you attract different types of people. You have two offices as well. You have an office in Atlanta. You've an office in San Francisco. There's a lot going on there. And yet you've been able to hold tight to this. Walk us through that little bit.

 

Brett Hagler [00:28:32] Yeah, I mean, new stories, very much an inside out organization and focused culture. And so I think some people might see us. And, you know, it may look a little shiny on the outside or, you know, the marketing might look shiny or slick or, you know, there's some press about innovation, all that stuff. Like, sure, that can be good. Right. But the real core and the heartbeat of news story starts on the inside. And that's the obsession that we've put on our team culture and really how that starts for me. And it's getting a little bit more into how my faith has really inspired me is that, you know, we're not a Christian organization, but we have built news story, the news story, culture. It's not novel, but it's exactly what Jesus instructed us to do, and that's to love and care for one another as Jesus love others and cared for others. Right. And that has really been like the foundation for everything else we do. And that starts with caring personally more about our team members than the high centers that we put on them professionally. And when you get a authentic, genuine team members bought into the number one way they can show up and be a leader is to love and care for one another and then to love and care for our partners when it starts there, that builds trust, that builds belonging, and then that enables us to go out and try things that probably won't work. Right. Or to have debate and to be able to fail because we know there's trust and there's belonging and there's the genuine love and care for one another. And so that's really where it starts. And again, that's not novel, but we've just really obsessed over that. And I think that as a starting point to where we then, you know, attach our other values on top of that and, you know, I can get in some of those, but.

 

William Norvell [00:30:22] And then you measure that, too. So it's an intentionality about building culture. But then you are very intentional about measuring it, too.

 

Brett Hagler [00:30:29] Yeah. So for the last four years and we've there now for five years, we do quarterly culture surveys. So we get a pulse every quarter on how the team is feeling, what we're doing well, what we should improve. And then the next quarter we choose what we need to improve and we do okay. Are subjective and key results like a goal we set a company quarterly. Okay. Ah, that will focus on bringing that score up from where it was to where it needs to be. And we've done that for the last four years and that kind of adds up, right, because we've just been so intentional about figuring out what works. But one needs to get better. And then having a solution every quarter to improve on that. So, yeah, I've just thought like people ask, like, what is a reason for some of news stories, success or early growth? And at the end of the day, it all comes down to the team and the culture that you can establish. And again, this isn't novel. It's just what we have obsessed over. It's what we've thought from the beginning. We'll be the number one reason for kind of the growth of the audacious goals that we have. And if we can get that right, then we can go, do you know, other exciting, innovative things?

 

William Norvell [00:31:40] Can you give us a couple examples of what over the four years, the big themes culturally that you've run up against because you're scaling your growing. And there are a lot of entrepreneurs who want to do what you've done, but also maybe you're a little fearful of doing it. You know, setting an oak tree or around the culture, doing that every quarter, just give us a couple of the big ones that that you've seen. Yeah.

 

Brett Hagler [00:32:04] I mean, I think it starts first and foremost with the founders of the executive team. Like really buying in to that culture is your number one asset and your team is your number one asset. And I think you have to start there. If not, I don't think it's going to be genuine. And so I would say start there. And I think pretty much every entrepreneur I would tell you that that is usually the number one reason for a company's long term success. And then, I mean, this is all stuff that most people know, but, you know, choose what are the couple core values that you are going to double down on. And you are going to obsess over. And it's going to permeate everything you do. And, you know, we did that. And we have very simple practices throughout the week and throughout the month of how we're reiterating those values every Friday. We've done this for the last four years. We have a 30 minute call where there's now 30 team members, where every team member, they just take usually 30 seconds or a minute and they shout out of value what another key member displayed that week. Right. So that gives us a weekly pulse on what's going on as a team, but also a weekly vehicle to share and demonstrate the values that we want other team members to continue to demonstrate.

 

[00:33:21] So just coming up with those habits and those rhythms and then just doing them, I would say start there. Yeah.

 

William Norvell [00:33:29] On that kind of move for a little bit. How do you feel like God's moving to the business right now? What do you see? You know, what do you feel like the Holy Spirit stirring in your heart to double down on to try different to love people? Well, it's just. Where's God take a new story in this new season as you're coming out, the new world, your 3-D printing houses now. I mean, it's just been a transformative twelve, 18 months. It sounds like for the organization, which for a young organization is a big deal.

 

Brett Hagler [00:33:55] Yeah, for sure. I'll talk about it from a new store standpoint and then also kind of personally how I've been feeling because obviously that relates to your organization. So, you know, again, we've been fortunate to have a lot of things go our way. You know, court, law, court, hard work, whatever. We've had a really good start with a lot of momentum.

 

[00:34:13] And what I feel convicted by is that God and the Holy Spirit that we are called to, you know, go out on more limbs. Right. And to take some calculated risk and to be the ones that are really trying to challenge the status quo. And I just fear that we are we are called to that because we see a gap in the market, that it just feels like others are not prioritizing that in our market. And so it's kind of like, if not us, who. And it's not just the other people in the housing space aren't innovating and aren't doing things.

 

[00:34:47] But I feel a conviction that God has called us to really be doubled down on that effort. And so that's what we're doubling down on going forward. And to be generative with that and to share what we've created and to not try to have new stories year over year numbers look a certain way, but to try to help as many other nonprofits and governments. I have a very strong conviction on that.

 

[00:35:12] The next thing I'll say is that I've learned personally as a leader that it's way less about what I'm going to achieve over the next few years and way more about who am I going to become. Right. And I have a strong conviction that God cares way more about who am I going to become my character than any metrics that we have, right. Any memories of how many people we help? Any metrics of the other millions of dollars that we're raising per year? The metrics of media, all that stuff like it's good. It's not a bad thing. But Guy cares way more about who I'm becoming, the one I'm achieving. And that's been a tough road for me to learn because I am wired to try to go after big numbers and go after big metrics. And I think, you know, for whatever reason, that was one of the reasons why in the early days we got off the ground pretty quickly. Right. And God, you know, kind of caught me about a year ago.

 

[00:36:11] And I was very lucky to realize that if I'm not abiding and I'm not making that my essential pursuit and if I'm carrying more about outcomes than obedience, then it's not a good path that I'm on. Not for me as a leader and not for New Story as an organization. And so, you know, today I am as we head into 2020 and really head into our next five years as a leader, I'm really trying to focus on abiding over striving on obedience, over outcomes and to. Really seek first the kingdom. Unless of seeking first are metrics or our growth or our brand awareness, and that's been a learning curve for me, I'm still not anywhere close to where I need or want to be.

 

[00:37:03] But that is really how God spoken to me in the last year. As we head into our next five years. And so I feel pretty convicted by that

 

William Norvell [00:37:13] Thank you for sharing that. And that's a great answer to our usual clothes. But I'll also ask you got a Mitchard, Matthew 6:33 in there. But are there any other scriptures or places in God's word where he's taken you to help you learn some of these things?

 

Brett Hagler [00:37:27] Yeah. A more recent one is from Psalm 127, and it's usually talking about God's grace. Don't labor in vain to build a house? Right. Which, you know, you can say, OK, it's cool. It goes in this story. Essentially, it sends us to work so hard from early morning to late night, toiling to make a living for fear of not having enough. And I know that I've in the past definitely toiled to not just make a, quote unquote, living for myself, but to make to achieve. Right. And God is teaching me that this is his timeline. This is his work. And while I do definitely need to work hard and have a humble pursuit of excellence. Ultimately, it's his timeline and it's it's what he wants to do. And so I trying to focus more on that. And I'm trying to focus and just understand that when you're in the kind of the nonprofit world or any kind of world that has impact, if you're out having an external impact on people's life, but you don't have intimacy with Jesus, then that's kind of nothing, right? You need to have inside out intimacy with Jesus first and then you're going to go out and, you know, if he wants you to and if it's in his will have a certain level of impact. And whether that's helping a thousand people or ten million people. Right. That's up to him to decide.

 

Henry Kaestner [00:38:51] Amen, very, very well said. That's a great way to end. Brett, I'm very grateful for the journey that you've been on, that you've taken us on this past period of time. Your commitment to innovation, your commitment to culture is something massively taken away. But then most recently, of course, what you just showed right there, and that is that a guy who took five loaves and two fish and fed 5000 actually doesn't need our toil. But we have an opportunity to be a participant in the work that he's doing in this world. When we're obedient and when we focus on him first, he wants what we are to become and who are becoming in our character rather than our outcomes. And interestingly, that's the only way to have really good sustainable outcomes is to focus on that first. There's a tremendous amount of wisdom there and I'm really grateful for it. Thank you for spending time with us sharing your story. The new story, we encourage everybody to check out new story charity dawg to check out these videos we're talking about. You got to see it to believe it. And then maybe this is something that you are called to be involved in. Or maybe this is something that sparks just kind of an entrepreneurial flair in you in thinking about innovative ways to solve other problems that you think that has put on your heart regardless. Brett, we're grateful for you. Thanks, guys.