Episode 94 - How Should a Christian Let People Go? with Vic Ho of Fivestars
Today features one of our first repeat guests! Vic Ho is the founder of Fivestars—a business with the mission of “transforming transactions into relationships.” He shared a little about what they do, but he also talked about what happened when the start-up hit a rough patch and needed to lay off 50 people.
We all hit rough patches, and how we handle those is a unique opportunity for us to be different. Vic felt compelled to take a different approach, one that was consistent with the company’s values: humbly admitting his mistakes, honoring the workers’ contributions, and mobilizing the entire firm to help those being displaced.
Tune in to hear this story, as well as lessons he has learned along the way. As always, thanks for listening!
Useful Links:
Faith & Co Video with Victor Ho
What is the Lifeblood of a Business? Previous Podcast with Vic Ho
Episode Transcript
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Henry [00:03:39] Vic, thank you very much for being back on the show today. We had you back in at the very beginning of the podcast. And there was some of the best reviews we've had.
[00:03:51] Some of our listeners, of course, are going to be already familiar with your story from those episodes and other ones. Maybe even I've heard about you through that awesome video that was done at Faith and CO.
[00:04:00] Incredible video. We'll put it up on our show notes. That gives a really good understanding about five stars and how you think about culture. But one of the things I'd love to do as we get started is I'd love to hear from you about five stars. Tell us about what five stars is about how you stepped out in faith at Five Stars, which is part of what that video is all about. But who are you and who are five stars?
Vic [00:04:22] Yeah. So if I were to summarize the genesis of the company at a very high level, I think it would be this. My past life was spent striving to build the perfect resumé and to be a good tiger parenting child, which meant I worked at Goldman as an investment banker. Then I went to McKinsey and my life dream. I wouldn't call it a dream, but that track was to go work at a large private equity firm that I spent all my time working towards.
[00:04:53] At that point in time, I was thinking very hard about my faith and what that should have implied about my work.
[00:04:59] And I realized that I had an equally dilute, misplaced understanding of faith the other way, where I thought that faith meant that the best Christians would become missionaries and the next best would become pastors. And if you can't do those two things and at least you should make money just for people doing God's real work. And so then I was thinking about completely leaving that career behind to go be a missionary somewhere.
[00:05:24] And I think in the tension of those two different things, it became very clear to me that God was saying, no, you are a missionary. Every believer is called to be a minister. You're a priest and you have been given a mission field. And for you, that's business.
[00:05:38] And my plan for you is to start a company. And there's a sequence of events that happen where I struggle and fight that maybe there's, you know, Jonah-esque piece to it.
[00:05:47] But it all kind of culminates in a moment in SFO where I had just flown out to interview. My flight was delayed for an hour. You know, being disobedient I'd interviewed at all my dream firms, I was on sort of the precipice of finally getting these sort of top jobs I'd spent so much time seeking after. And in my heart of hearts, all I could hear at the airport was, Victor, you're being a huge coward. You know exactly what you're supposed to be doing and you're not doing it.
[00:06:17] And I was so convicted and that voice was so real that from the airport I ended up calling all of those companies to withdraw and apologize for wasting their time. And I called my current co-founder, Matt. And we both walked away. He had other offers also, and the company started from there.
[00:06:33] Now five stars. Our mission is to help local businesses build better relationships with their customers. And we create marketing software and a variety of other things in order to do that. Where a company of roughly 300 people based in San Francisco got people all over that serve roughly 14000 local businesses with our hardware and software products. We've raised a little over one hundred million in venture capital funding to date, and our goal is to fight for local businesses in a space where we believe they've been long underserved.
Henry [00:07:04] That's an awesome story. And that's an awesome mission. We're talking to just a little bit yesterday about something else, but talking about the space that you serve. So there are three broad segments of the economy in oversimplifying things, of course, and government. There are other things. But I think that consumers, small and medium sized businesses and then large enterprise. And I think we both kind of gravitate in our business careers towards the small to medium sized business in this kind of concept of the great unwashed. Everybody focuses on the consumer of the enterprise. They seem to be scalable. They're lucrative.
[00:07:37] And yet the fabric of our culture has often been where we actually transact with somebody we've come to know and have a relationship with and that's a very satisfying experience in your business is all about increasing that satisfaction and increasing that relationship where a customer is known and the customer in turn knows the vendor.
Vic [00:07:57] Yeah, absolutely. I think our view is that it was a long ago that you knew all the small business owners that the places you shopped at. And because they knew you, you not only had a relationship, the experience was just better than you. How you like to cut your hair. They knew the food you like to eat. They can make recommendations, all sorts of stuff. But today you walk into many places. There's been no technology to aid, then adds your, you know, just a credit card number of faceless half the time. And the result is if you're a typical small business owner, you're never going to compete with McDonald's on lightspeed or Walmart on everyday low prices or Amazon selection. You're one competitive advantage is your ability to build relationships. And with that God, we see small businesses going out of business at levels that are unprecedented.
[00:08:41] You know, a very simple statistic is that 20 years ago, small businesses used to be around 50 percent of storefronts. Now they're 40 percent of storefronts. And that's not even counting e-commerce like Amazon. And if you include that, they've gone from half to a third of the economy. And so really, in many ways, the American dream is not what it once was. And so a lot of what we do is to try and provide them with the tools to rebuild a lot of those relationships that they want to be building with their customers, but don't have the tools to do so.
Henry [00:09:11] Tell us about how your faith influences the way that you lead the business.
Vic [00:09:18] That's a hard and broad question, but I think at the core, I think it's this I think that we're all called to work. And the question, you know, and work obviously existed in Genesis 1 and 2, pre-fall.
[00:09:30] And I think the question is just, you know, is work this completely separate thing that's separate from our faith lives or do we try to strive to integrate our faith into our work, which I think is maybe the popular faith in work view today in Christian circles, which really basically means this.
[00:09:46] I want to try and win and win this game in America called capitalism, climbing the ladder, pursuing the main American dream and making a lot of money. But I do it with faith as kind of these guide rails like these bumper rails that I try not to veer out of, or are you actually trying to integrate your work into your faith?
[00:10:07] Meaning to say that, you know, work is worship. Work is waiting on the Lord, trying to see what God is doing and trying to bring yourself alongside that.
[00:10:18] And a metaphor that my pastor used last Sunday that really resonated with me was the picture of Aslan from Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.
[00:10:27] So, you know, we're in a state of permanent winter, right? Like God is not here yet. It is winter forever, everywhere. But somewhere you hear this rumor that Aslan is moving and everywhere he steps, it's spring. The sun comes and the flowers spring up.
[00:10:46] And in this story, you know, there's Lucy and Edman and all the different characters. And they're pulled from their normal life into this mysterious land. And they've been given these powers and these powers given to them really by the spirit, enable them to do superhuman things that they've never been able to do before.
[00:11:01] But the story is not about what they are capable of doing with their new powers. That is a footnote. The story at the core is what Aslan is doing, you know. And so I think to me, that's the metaphor of what I mess up all the time. But at the core, I'm striving to do with the company, which is to try and see what God is doing and bring us alongside that. And I think where we mess up all the time or during the times when, you know, we too willfully get focused on our own thing and we want to do something for God, you know, as if I want to just go on my own, build this thing and then present it to God as a thorough look what I did for you, Dad.
[00:11:39] Yeah. And so I think that's the tension, you know, that I know I struggle with a lot.
William [00:11:44] That's good. I love Pastor Lomas. Bringing Narnia into a sermon is always a good strategy. Let's switch gears a little bit vague to something that I know you're open to talking about, but maybe a difficult season of your five stars journey. You know, you mentioned some of the success points raised in a ton of money and 14000 customers and some of those things. But I'm fortunate to know Vic's journey a little bit. I know there was a time where you had to let go of some people then that hits businesses and different stretches. And the faith in a video which will link to you share a bit about this.
[00:12:16] And I just thought the way that God shepherded you through that journey and the way you submitted to his leading during that journey was something that our listeners can really benefit from. So if you might just share what that was like for you and the company.
Vic [00:12:30] Yeah, there was a time in twenty sixteen when we had to do a layoff of around 50 people, which was a pretty big portion of the company at that time. You know, we were going from maybe two twenty five down to one seventy five or something like that. And I was very distraught. You know, I felt like a failure. And I did my homework.
[00:12:54] I called at least 20 other CEOs, lots of other peers from Y Combinator and elsewhere and ask them and we've got to do this large reduction in force. What are the best practices? You know, how do you do a layoff?
[00:13:05] And I got I took all these notes and interviewed all these people and got all these best practices about, you know, how you should do it as quickly, as cleanly as possible. Then you give this inspirational speech how you should shield that people who are going to be left from the thrashing wall. And so ideally, you take all the people who are going to be let go. You have them pack all their stuff. You do it quickly.
[00:13:26] You have them leave the floor. You minimize the emotional turmoil caused on the people remaining that at this point in time, obviously, your terrified will also just run for the hills when you give them this inspirational speech about the mission and why this is overall good for the company. You live in a better spot and all sorts of stuff.
[00:13:45] And, you know, I mean, they seem like good worldly wisdom. You know, let's say it's not about ideal. That stuff makes sense. So I'm wandering the streets in the middle of the night trying to write this inspirational speech. You know, trying to sort through my own emotions. Also just kind of trying to pray through and make sense of it all.
[00:14:06] And I come home and I write this like almost journal entry. And I'm not the type of person that journals and in this journal entry.
[00:14:16] I start by just kind of talking about how much I feel like I'm a failure. I've screwed things up. How screwed up the lives of these people that are gonna be let go. But it also continues to transform, as I write into a realization of just how five stars was never built on my strength, but by the work of what God was doing and how I really believe that it's hard. But the small businesses we serve are worth fighting for.
[00:14:42] And how that mission is hard. And so no one else does it. But that's exactly why we do it. And if no one else, then who and how excited I really still was at the very core about what we were doing.
[00:14:52] And I also realized that so much of my feelings of layoffs as a failure was just me succumbing to the worldly definition of success. You know, where the world tells you success means you're growing faster, you're making more money, you're doing all these things.
[00:15:10] But that's not why God called me to start five stars ever in the first place. He called me to start five stars, to serve our business owners, serve them well, serve our employees well.
[00:15:22] And, you know, whatever rate we grow at when we do that really well, that's determined by God. You know, we're not meant to artificially move a bunch of numbers in ways that distract us unduly from the core mission. And I also had always thought this, but come to realize that when you take a kingdom winning perspective, you know, what is God invested in when he invested all this money into five stars?
[00:15:48] I realized it was foolish of me to be able to. Categorize them myself, you know. And Judgment Day, I'm not going to stand in front of him and say, hey, God, look, 14000 merchants, 50 million consumers. Here's what I did for your kingdom. I'm going to rattle off my resumé.
[00:16:02] No, over the course of a millennia from now, how could I possibly know if the greatest thing five stars had ever done wasn't one of our support reps having the right phone call with the right merchant at a time they needed it? And over a thousand years of reverberation, it turned into something that part of God's plan was so much bigger than what I could have ever pointed out myself.
[00:16:26] And as part of that lay off like a number of other experiences I'd had previously with the company, where something unusual, emotional, difficult happens often turns out to be one of the most fruitful things that a company can go through, because it causes people to band together. It causes people to reevaluate their lives and all sorts of different things. And it causes me as a Christian to be able to speak with an authentic voice that is truthful and provocatively different.
[00:16:56] And so I came to realize that, you know, in the entire lifespan of five stars, I mean, things are going great now by worldly means. But maybe the most impactful thing we ever get to do is this layoff that impacts all these people. And so as we approached it, I just felt unction to do something very different.
[00:17:16] And so we first off had our people absolutely mingle with the people who were being let go. I sent an email out to the whole company telling them that I screwed up by led them into this. But we have these team members who contributed extremely meaningfully and we want to help them pack their stuff, help them. We've helped them transition. You know, we want to help them find a new place. You know, I, of course, also called some of the best practices.
[00:17:41] I brought the people who were being let go all together to be able to address them cleanly and be able to have a lot of time with them. But then I let them go back upstairs, you know, afterwards to meet with the rest of the company and spend time there. And we did things like pay for their Lyft rides home. And, you know, a lot of them went to bars nearby and build a database of resumes and helped them with all, you know, all the typical sort of best practice things.
[00:18:05] But when time came to deliver sort of the follow up speech to the company. You know, I had sort of the rah rah best practices speech prepared. I just felt, God say, no, you're not supposed to read that one. You're supposed to read your journal entry. And that was a terrifying thing. But I got up on stage. I ended up pulling out my journal and I read this thing to people and, you know, doing so, I was crying sloppily in front of the company. It's not like the Obama single tier strong leader cry. It's like there's snot coming out of your nose because you're having a real deep moment of vulnerability cry at the end of the day. I felt it sent a message and the whole thing came together in a way that was just so much more powerful than if it had never happened. And I'm frankly so grateful that we had to go through that. And the result of all that was the company we tracked, cultural engagement, all sorts of things. Our external reviews didn't go down, our internal engagement scores all went up. The company banded together. And we accomplish a number of very key milestones over the next couple of years to bring us back to where we needed to go. And yeah, and praise be to God that he saves me from doing stupid things, that he gives us these opportunities.
William [00:19:19] Amen. It's amazing how God uses things differently than we see them sometimes, huh?
Vic [00:19:25] Yeah, all the time.
William [00:19:27] Turns out he's got a bigger plan going on than we do most often. I know you have to run and I just thank you so much for sharing this story. You know, I wish we had a video of the speech obviously linked to our listeners, but I'm an ugly crier as well. So but I'm sure it wasn't easy to go there.
[00:19:45] It's not easy to share. And even though God's giving you the wisdom of what he was doing through those times, I'm sure that still is not something that's fun to broadcast and talk about. I just thank you for sharing that. I think there's going to be so many people blessed by this.
[00:19:56] I think they're going to be so many people that are going through whether it's a specific layoff or just a very difficult decision that lean to God now and say, God, where am I being a coward? What do you want for me? What do you want for this company and what do you want?
[00:20:14] What is your will in this situation as opposed to one minus? Thank you.
Vic [00:20:19] Yeah. And I think at the core of it, maybe it actually even ties back to your earlier question is just are we working with a posture of God? What are you doing? You know, instead of God, this isn't going according to my plan.
[00:20:32] You know, I'm going to pray to you to make my plan happen.
[00:20:35] And yeah, maybe God's will was there as a few people's lives he wanted to transform. And, you know, the riff was the way it was gonna happen. I don't know. But I think the anxiety and distress I felt and still feel really. From misplaced personal value, and I think maybe you are a yellow flag to me that yeah, there's lots of areas where I'm still not sort of submitting to seeing or as Ladd is moving and letting that be what I'm trying to move along with. But, you know, still running in my own will against my own goals in certain places.
William [00:21:13] So the last thing is I need to leave would do in a close within one of things just comes to mind is going to say it is.
[00:21:18] I feel like you're doing an incredible job of submitting and making God the hero of the five star story. And you've put yourself as not the hero in Matt, who I know your co-founder. Just I think that's just such a shift for our Christian entrepreneurs to be thinking about.
[00:21:34] That God is the hero of their story. And he's authoring something that we we can see glimpses of, but we don't always have the full picture of him.
Vic [00:21:41] Yeah. I mean, I think if you're an entrepreneur, you're listening to this podcast, being the hero is a crushing weight that none of us were ever designed to live up to. You know, and when you are the hero, the result is anxiety and identity issues and a rollercoaster that takes your life up and down. The results of God being the hero is. An easy burden and a light yoke and dad and boss who we get to spend time in the workshop with.
William [00:22:15] Amen. I almost to ask another question cause I wanted in there, but in 30 seconds or less because I know you have to run. Is there a scripture or a place in God's word that he's taking you right now that you might want to share with our listeners?
Vic [00:22:28] So I guess my thing is on the scriptural thing, but I think maybe the broader thing I've been realizing a lot. I went back to Thailand recently. I'm Asian-American, but I really I spent my entire life here in the US.
[00:22:37] And so this is kind of cool that I drink is how much I realize that the American dream or the implicit assumptions of capitalism have made me blind to so many of the ways that I view maximizing profits as my definition of winning or how much I conflate my sense of identity from my work. So, for instance, another common statement in the American dream is if you work hard enough, you can achieve anything. But what that kind of implies is if you haven't achieved everything, then you either haven't worked hard enough or you're not good enough. And there's two lies. And the first lies is that the point of your existence is to achieve a lot from the perspective of making a lot of money or having a very good resume. The second lie in that is whatever your station is, is a reflection of your identity, your worth. You know how hard you've worked or what you're worth. Both of those things are obviously not true in the context, the Christian faith. And so I've been spending a lot of time over break trying to identify and articulate other areas where something is so true to me that it's just become the water I breathe. And yet has made it hard to be consistent with the truth of the Bible that I want to believe.
William [00:23:50] Amen. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for continuing to bless Faith driven entreprenuer and continuing to bless our listeners. And, of course, continuing to bless five stars.
Vic [00:24:01] Yeah. While I love you guys. And thank you for having me.
Henry [00:24:05] So we want to shift gears a little bit. The experience of when our co-host, Rusty, many of you know, he's been on the talent side of building businesses that Frito Lay and Pizza Hut, Pepsi and E.A. and help get off the ground many start ups in the human capital space like Glassdoor.
[00:24:19] Rusty, share for us about some experiences you've had on this topic of letting people go. Oftentimes when we think of having to let people go and make tough decisions that big companies, they can sound really, really cold. So call that George Clooney had a movie centered all around that life. But you seen something different.
Rusty [00:24:38] Yeah. Yeah. And you really want me to follow Vic?
[00:24:51] You're not supposed to put me in these tough situations. I love this. That was beautiful. I'm just so impressed by him. Right. And, you know, his genuineness and his authentic way of going about things. And he hit on the beginning of sort of the philosophy that I take when he said, you know, he has told everybody I screwed up. Right. You kind of start there as a leader. And I think that that movie that you reference there, Henry, you know, this side of that that is the sad side, is that there was no feeling anymore. And George Clooney's character about what he had to go do. And, you know, the minute that we lose that feeling of we've either failed or this really, really hurts, then we need to question whether or not we should be a leader or not.
[00:25:44] Because if you ever become that callous or you ever become that insensitive, you know, I think you're in a pretty bad place. But I don't know if you remember a few months ago, we had a guest on who I just loved this quote and I've been walking around with it that God's favorite color or what he said God's favorite color is. Transparency.
[00:26:08] And I've been hanging on to that because I think as you go into these reduction in force layoff situations and Vic alluded to this as well, that transparency is really part of your persona as a leader.
[00:26:26] Your message that you're sending people, if you can be totally transparent, then whatever you say can be believed now. But if you hide behind some veil of, well, I can't really tell you why or I can't tell you when or I can't tell you what's going to happen. Then you'll never build trust and you'll never build belief and ultimately you'll lose respect. And that's where we have to be careful about our own witness as faith driven leaders, faith driven entrepreneurs. But let me take you back to a situation in nineteen ninety one long ago last century.
[00:27:12] Well I was making my way in the world of work as a young pup at Frito-Lay in Dallas, Texas. And as an H.R. leader there. And we had gotten to the point where the business really needed to change. It needed to change significantly. And PepsiCo had brought a guy named Roger and Rico and to become our CEO.
[00:27:33] And Roger come from Pepsi. And Roger saw the change that needed to be made as well. And Roger had the courage to be transparent. And I'm going to put those things together. Transparency also aligns with courage. If you hide behind something, you're hiding behind fear. But when you step in front to be transparent, you have courage. And Roger had the courage to tell the organization that we were going to change. He gave a very compelling reason why we needed to. And then he said, this is how we're going to change. And he said, we're gonna have to have a reduction in force. The first one in the history of Frito-Lay. Frito-Lay founded back in the 1950s. This is nineteen ninety one people kind of believed that you would have lifetime employment. And here comes this guy who says, no, that's not the case anymore. What was so courageous about his transparency was he gave that message in December of 1990. We had the layoff in September of nineteen ninety one. So he said layoffs were coming nine months ahead of time. In April he came back and he said it will be September 16th. Nineteen ninety one. So now we're months and months and a summer away, everyone said he was crazy. Everyone said, including all of us in the H.R. function said, you know, Roger, I know you want to be transparent. I know you want to. But look, we're going to have a whole bunch of people leave. And he goes, well, wouldn't that be better? Then having people who really wanted to leave stayed around. And then they lose their position versus. They went and found something else on their own. But we said, well, what if we lose people that we don't want to lose? And he said, that's just the price of it. That's the price of it. We'll be fine. We'll be fine. And so at the beginning of September, we knew that it was going to be September 16th. And what Roger did and asked us all to do was to schedule everyone for that day and and say businesses closed that day. But you have a time. And it was alphabetically where they would come in and they would have a conversation with their manager. And one of two things would happen. They would be invited to be a part of the new Frito-Lay. They were rerouted, if you will, or they were told that they weren't a part of the new Frito-Lay and they were given a very generous severance package and great support services.
[00:30:17] And then unlike what Vic said, and I like his approach as well, we allowed those people to go home if they wanted to and if they wanted to go in and clean out, they could. But if they wanted to go home, they could come back in on Friday. And we closed business on Friday, too, in order to give them a time that they could come in and not have to be worried about somebody watching and who's leaving and who and who was staying. And the amount of people who thanked us for that approach was amazing. And then I turned around and I use that because similarly to Vic, I had to go through when I was running Snowcap, I had to go through a layoff that I had to do as the CEO. And I just used the same process. We came out of a board meeting and the board said, you know, we're gonna have to reduce our cost structure and that's gonna mean people. And I walked out of the board meeting, said goodbye to the board, had an all hands with the team, brought them all together and said this was the decision that was made. Tomorrow we're gonna have to sit down with each one of you. By the end of the day, you'll each have your time to come in. Don't worry about coming in, except for that time. And I personally will tell you, if you're gonna be a part of the new snowcap or your time is snowcap is done. And again, that level of transparency is super hard. And it takes a lot of courage because you just don't know what's going to happen in that moment between I've revealed what's gonna happen and when it actually happens. You know, because all kinds of bad things can happen and all the risk managers will tell you, oh, no, you can't do that. Somebody is gonna wipe the servers. Somebody else is gonna take all the furniture, somebody else is gonna bad mouth is in the press. You know, there goes everything on Glassdoor. But I believe that if you treat people like adults, they will act like adults. And if we treat people with respect, they will respect you back. And if you treat people like you want to be treated yourself, you followed the golden rule and done what you were supposed to do as a trusted leader.
William [00:32:17] Rusty, if I had one question to ask, it would be, you know, that sounds great. Sounds like you built the system. You executed it. Well, I've got a gut feeling that maybe some things didn't go as planned or even there just were some really difficult conversations, even in the midst of a well-run process. If our listeners were there some difficult things that still just happened.
Rusty [00:32:40] Yeah. There were people who even though they had been told. Right. They weren't surprised. They were mad. They were angry. They thought we made the wrong decision. And so that's when all of the classic training of short conversations move people from your conversation to someone else who handles it. Well, you can go ahead and do what you have to do. All of the classic training that you're given to take yourself through these kinds of situations are really important because. Yeah, absolutely. They were people that were mad. There were people I mean, you would go back to 1991 at Frito-Lay because it was the first layoff ever. Believe it or not, we actually had as we came into work that day with a line of television stations and radio stations sitting outside their front door because this had never happened before. And everybody knew it was happening because we'd been that transparent. Right. So then we had to have, you know, our immediate people on the front line answering the questions. And we were the headline news that night. And the headline news can take you any way. There were those that were you know, we're saying, wow, this was great treatment. There were other people that were saying, you know what, a failure, what a failure the CEO should go. You know, the leadership team should go. And so you have to deal with all of those things. Human emotion will always be me, because what you're talking about is you talk about loss. And if any of us have ever had gone through any kind of loss, that's not in our control. Where there's personal or business, financial relationships, you know, some are more richer than others. But it hurts no matter what. And you do run into a situation where people just, you know, are angry, totally angry. And we had that and you're gonna have that every time. But again, you know, you can only be as integrity as your own actions. And your integrity has to be that you have done the best that you can do. And look yourself in the mirror and say, I've treated people like I wanted to be treated myself. And there's not much more than I could do than that.
William [00:34:42] That's great. Thank you for sharing that. And then as our audience knows, my esoteric Bible question that you may or may not have an answer to.
Rusty [00:34:50] How could I not have an answer to the question when I know you're gonna ask it every week?
William [00:34:55] Well, not this one. No, no. I'm going somewhere different.
Rusty [00:34:57] Oh, you're gonna have another one. Oh. Oh, I was so I was so ready for the out.
William [00:35:01] No, I'm asking that one, too. But the first one is in the midst of all those things and maybe even looking back, are there any biblical stories? There's so many great leaders. There's so many great leaders of people in the Bible. Are there any biblical stories that you might encourage our audience to sit with if they have to go through a layoff or a really big transition in the company? I think you mentioned a few times. Yeah, the new version in the old version, dying away. Right. I think that's probably the way a lot of people would fragment. Any stories that come to mind, maybe be a good place to meditate on to see how God played it out in his kingdom in the word of God.
Rusty [00:35:42] Yeah, there is actually. And it's funny because it's not funny. There's no irony in God's world, I think. I think there's always, you know, we're being led by the spirit. So it actually revolves around what I thought you were going to ask me anyway about what I'm hanging out with right now. I was going to talk a little bit about the journey of Gideon and how God sent in the Book of God sent Gideon into battle. Right. And you're going up against the Mennonites. And I got I've got a message for you. Gideon, you've got too many people. You've got too many warriors. I want you to cut that in half. And then he cuts it and it gets it down and he goes, you still got too many. And I want you to cut it down. And he said that the reason I want you to cut it down is because if you go into battle with all the people that you have and you win, they won't understand that it was me. God, they made it happen. They'll say it was a human thing that made it happen. I think that's a fascinating story on a number of levels. You know, one is I'm more convicted than ever that I don't need. And none of us need a big army to make a difference in God's battle. Right. That a small group of us or one can make a difference in the battle that we have for the kingdom. But to your question there, I guess Gideon had to have a pretty tough conversation with some guys. Yeah, right. He had to make some choices. He didn't. I mean, if he's a leader, which he was, and if he was a good leader, which we assume he was, then he had to look across his warriors and say, you, you, you and you, not you, you and you. Right. He had to make a decision. He had to have it. Difficult conversation. But maybe that conversation that he had with those guys that were in a warriors or warriors. Right. This not about sitting on the sidelines. It's not about soldiers don't run from things. They run to things. We know that. And they're courageous. And while, you know, no one wants to put themselves at harm's way, they will put themselves at harm's way for the mission, for the battle that's going to be fought. So there had to be some disappointed people who said, no, no, no, this is my moment and you've cut me. So maybe what Gideon said to them was, let me tell you why. Let me be totally transparent with you. I don't really understand it. But God has told me that I'm supposed to do this with less people versus more people. And youre a part of my decision coming through. The message is given me by God. By that, you're supposed to be one of the less. But what happens at the end, you're still a part of the bigger blessing. You're still a part of the bigger story. Because I can't. The story can't be told unless you don't fight. And maybe that's a little bit of what Vic was trying to get to, too. Right. By telling us that there is a bigger victory, a bigger win, a bigger, satisfying leadership moment, having had to go through the rift that he went through. Yeah, by some people not being there. So dovetailing, you know, your usual question into that one. I hadn't really thought about how you were gonna ask the how that related, you know, a biblical story. But it relates. It totally relates.
William [00:39:14] Now, that's amazing. That's an amazing way to wrap up. I just always marvel at how two thousand year old Scripture's can be so relevant today. I thought you did a beautiful job of sort of walking through exactly how that story would feel.
[00:39:27] Very similar to the experiences you've had and the experiences Vic had at Five Stars and just amazing. Thanks so much for sharing a little more. We may have to turn the tables more often.
Rusty [00:39:39] Well, it's fun to do this together, and I think we all learn from each other. You know, if iron sharpens iron, you know, we just keep doing this. We'll start getting sharper and sharper and sharper. That's the hope. And hopefully all of our listeners are feeling like they're getting sharpened as well.