Dave Blanchard, co-founder of Praxis, inspires faith driven entrepreneurs and investors to pursue redemptive entrepreneurship--“following the pattern of creative restoration through sacrifice”--as they venture into the business world. 

In today's episode, he presents a gospel-centered plan encompassing redemptive strategic vision, a biblical operating model, and the value of intentional, sacrificial leadership.

Episode Transcript

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Dave Blanchard: I'm Dave Blanchard from Praxis, and it's great to be with you today. I'm going to speak about designing a different future and the Faith driven entrepreneurs opportunity for redemptive action. Copart once said that the church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world's own manner, in which contradicts it in a way that is full of promise. As an entrepreneur like you, I believe that as founders and builders we can be full of promise to see entrepreneurs, can be bold cultural witnesses, and our ventures can be demonstrated apologetics. See, as an entrepreneur goes out into the world, they give an organization, culture and meaning and mission. And as that organization touches other stakeholders, those stakeholders build on best practices that ultimately create norms and industries. And as norms go in industry, so goes the broader culture. A Praxis we've been able to help over 200 ventures around the world. Businesses, non-profits across every conceivable sector do work and advance their missions. And as we've done that, we've developed a new way of thinking about the role of Christians in the world and how they go about doing things. It's called redemptive entrepreneurship. Redemptive is following this pattern of creative restoration through sacrifice, creative, and that we are made in the image of God restoration and that we are joining God in the renewal of all things and sacrifice in the sense that we can't just be out for ourselves. We have to look out for others and put and put our neighbor in front of our minds as we go about our work. We have developed a framework for redemptive action that hopefully will be helpful to you in your work as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur that basically says that there's three different ways organizations and individuals go out in the world. One is exploitative. These have a model that say, I'm going to win and everyone around me may lose, but I'm going to use the culture for my benefit.

The second is ethical, a lot of times seen as the highest bar in our business world today. It says that as long as I do no harm, I'm OK and I'm not going to break any rules. And hopefully I can win and you can win to an ethics really works well inside a justice system. But as Christians, we know the world is falling and we know we need to go beyond ethics. And that's where we can start to talk about the redemptive edge. That edge is where we can renew culture, bless people and go on the journey that the gospel calls us to in dying to self as leaders. As we die to self, we can then sacrifice so that others around us can win and win others around us when we actually all win together because we experience the joy of human flourishing and flourishing justice systems. Every organization has kind of three different ways they go out into the world, there's a strategic vision and an operating model and then the intent of the leadership themselves. So let's dig in on each one of those real quickly, if we can. First, let's talk about redemptive strategic vision as you're building out the direction for your organization and really what it puts out into the world, you need to think about it. Are you leveraging that around you? Are you just advancing, making something more efficient or more productive or are you really renewing it? See, we believe that the outputs of the organization, its mission, vision products, services, programs, brands, narratives, spaces and all of that can be reimagined to be God glorifying, humanizing, restorative, truthful, beautiful and really have lasting impact out in the world. But this is, of course, not what we typically see in the pinnacles of entrepreneurship. In fact, of course, one easy example to pick on is Tinder, something I'm sure none of you have ever used but you might be familiar with. Listen to a Tinder co-founder, Sean Rad said. He said, look at what's happening in society. We're living in a technical age. It's creating transparency and equality and connecting us. But Tinder is not redefining romance. Progress is, of course, this is the same progress that Vanity Fair called the dating apocalypse. Contrast that with redemptive entrepreneur and Praxis fellow Steve Zizic, the founder and CEO of Lasting. Steve, came out of the knot, which touches 80 percent of the marriages in the country, and said, we're really good at helping people get married. How about helping them stay married? He created an app that leaned on many, much, much history of how to how to create flourishing marriages and created what became Apple's app of the day for Valentine's Day last year. Hundreds of thousands of downloads later, they see in ninety four ninety two percent effectiveness rate in growing stronger relationships through couples using their app. That is cultural renewal.

At the same time, we need to think closely about our operating model, it's not great just to have an interesting product or mission, but really so much redemptive possibility purely inside the organization and how it operates. And here we believe that common practices can be reimagined to we can think about Graceville, workplace cultures, generous compensation for all in the organization, developing people with a mind towards their whole person, and sales and customer relationships that have justice and patience in them. As we think about ownership and capital and partnerships, see, we're not supposed to use people for the benefit of the organization or even just merely respect them while they're on their own journeys. But think about how the workplace, the business, the business market can really bless people. How great would it be if organizations that we lead people came out of them and said, I just can't imagine how much this organization blessed me while I was growing as an individual? Of course, that's not what we see mostly in the world either. Today, one famous extreme example is Theranos, as Elizabeth Holmes built a culture around lies and deceit and and really trying to create as much for herself as possible around some product that had actually no existence. They lied to their manufacturers, their vendors. They created all sorts of systems of deception that ultimately did not bless anyone who worked there. In fact, it became a mark of shame if you had the Rhona's on your CV. Contrast this to a mentor of ours in the Praxis community, Dr. Richard Park, who is the founder of City Sidahmed, the largest urgent care network in the Northeast with many, many locations in Manhattan. Richard Park set out with the vision that he wanted to create a culture of kindness. In fact, that would be the primary organizational culture, cultural principle. If you talk to a doctor or nurse, a Sidahmed and you ask them what their job was, it was to be kind. And of course, that kindness was supposed to be aimed at neighbors. In fact, Dr. Park intentionally set up locations in neighbors, in neighborhoods that would not be as profitable as some others, knowing that there was an immediate need for great health care in those areas. That is a beautiful way to bless people inside the organization and out of it. Of course, nothing happens as far as his strategy or into operations without really thinking about what our intent is as leaders, if at the end of the day we're living for ourselves or even on sort of Project Self where we want to improve who we are as a person, we haven't quite gotten where the gospel is asking us to really die to ourselves. A lot of times this locates itself inside of our daily capacities and practices where as Christian entrepreneurs, faith driven, we should be rested, thinking about our time as if the whole world doesn't depend on us. We should be generous with our money. We should be transformed by the renewal of our minds. We should be decision making with the Lord next to us submitted to him. In our process, we should be sharing power with those around us and ultimately we need to be accountable and community, not just building islands of power where we get to control things and people don't really know who we are. This is all circling around the idea of ambition, of course, and really what we're setting out to do in the world. Of course, this, too, is very, very challenging ground for entrepreneurs. Consider Adam Newman from we work almost as self-appointed messiah who is going to bring a new world into being a new way of thinking about work that no one had ever fathomed or imagined before, at least in his own mind. We saw how these things ultimately played themselves out in his own practices, the way he had the imagination, he had the decision making, the way he thought about his time and his money ultimately led. We work as an organization to be an exploitative venture that destroyed so much around it and ultimately needed rescue without him being a part of that. Contrast that to one of the speakers here at the Faith Driven Entrepreneur event, Joel Burks. She's the founder of Papic, which was acquired by Amazon. And as she had that acquisition, she thought, what can I do for other people around me? And she said, I really want to help people of color get more access to capital. And instead of just going out and creating her next great win or her next great venture, she went out and said, I'm going to create the CoLab Fund and think about how I can use the things that have been given to me, the great experiences that she's had and the breakthrough opportunities and and share them with her brothers and sisters around the world. And that's just another beautiful story of of Jewel not saying I'm going to live for myself or even improve myself, but really did to myself on this journey of redemptive leadership. So at the end of the day, redemptive work is hard work, let's be honest, this is not a simpler journey. It would be nice if we could say, well, if we do all the right things, then things will go better for us, easier for us. We'll make more money. But we can't always promise that as we try to renew culture, there are systems that are pushing against us as we try to bless people in the organization. There's only so much to go around and we're going to have to make difficult decisions. But ultimately, I want to encourage you to take on this challenge, show the world that a Faith Driven Entrepreneur is a redemptive entrepreneur, someone who has a different vision, a new sign that you can put up in the world. And there is opportunity there. One of my favorite psychologists, Mihai ChiX and Mehi, says this, that the unifying similarity among geniuses and innovators is not cognitive or affective, but motivational. What is common among them is the unwillingness or inability to strive for goals that everyone else accepts. I hope that as you walk away from this talk and this event, you'll be encouraged not to strive for the goals that everyone else accepts in entrepreneurship, another big company, even a unicorn, or your own great autonomy and independence, but instead that you would be a signpost for the kingdom out in a world that desperately needs a demonstration of faith.

Host: Thanks so much. Thanks so much for joining us on today's show. We hope you enjoyed it. We are very grateful for the opportunity to serve you the larger Faith Driven Entrepreneur community, and we want to stay connected. The best way for you to do that is to sign up for our monthly newsletter at Faith Driven Entrepreneur ERG. And while you're there, we want to hear from you. We derive great joy from interacting with many of you. And it's been very rewarding to see people come to the site and listen to the podcast now for more than over 100 countries. But it's even more important to us that you feel like this is your show and that you'll help make it something the best equipped you on your entrepreneurial journey, one that you're proud of and one that you're going to share with others. Hey, this podcast wouldn't be possible without the help from many of our friends, executive producer Justin Forman and program director Johnny Wells. Music is by Karl Capewell. You can see and hear more of his work at the summer Drugstore.com audio and editing by Richard Bahle of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.