Episode 187 - Building a Bulletproof Business with David & Jason Benham
Being bold in today's culture is one thing. Being bold without revealing your own brokenness can sometimes make you a bully. Today we’re privileged to hear the story of the Benham brothers—former major league baseball players, TV show hosts, and now wildly successful Faith Driven Entrepreneurs. David and Jason have lived out their faith boldly even in the face of a cancel-culture that doesn't always embrace Christ. And they’ve tried to do so with equal amounts of grace and humility.
Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We're back in our virtual studio Rusty. William, how are you doing?
Rusty Rueff: Really great? How about you?
Henry Kaestner: I'm doing really well. Thank you. I am back. Well, we haven't heard from William. I know he's been through the ringer. He's been dealing with some things navigating and just, you know, as William, as your family gets bigger and bigger, it's going to be spending time with the docs is going to be more of a thing, but you navigate it. They're so awesome. You love them, your family really well, and it just really awesome to see how God continues to work through all of our lives and the health of our families. One of the things that's on top of my mind is we've done about 200 podcasts and we've never brought in to speak. I don't think we have, which is a big mess for us and for our audience. Justin Forman, who's our executive producer and the executive director of Faith Driven Entrepreneur, really the man behind the scenes who makes it all happen to the extent that you like what we do, it's just to the extent that you do not. It's William and Justin in. I'm just back talking about just generally this kind of shark tank aspect and atmosphere of entrepreneurship. And just in our fearless leader was in a shark tank, literally, not figuratively, literally last week. Justin, what was it like?
Justin Forman: A bucket list? Indeed. It was such a yes. It was fun. It was great to be in with so many entrepreneurs and investors. But at the end of the trip, we knocked something off the bucket list and a bunch of us went down there. A four hour drive hopped in a tank and it was surreal. It was crazy. The craziest moment was when a 16 footer came out of the darkness and just charged straight at the tank and slammed into it. The video is incredible, but the audio of it is even all the more impressive just when you see the yak, the cage that was bent when he just charged at it.
Rusty Rueff: Hey, are are African sharks different than sharks from other places?
Justin Forman: That's a lead into a joke, is this. No, no.
William Norvell: I was like, I was like, all by every little bit here,
William Norvell: I'll buy it. Knock, knock.
Henry Kaestner: No pun intended. So the bigger picture is so the shark thing. The video is amazing. I think we need to put it in the show notes. But the bigger picture, of course, is that we were there for Faith Driven Entrepreneur Amen Faith Driven Investor events in Nairobi and then just outside of Cape Town. And it was one of the best years of my life. And through the grace of God, I've been on lots of awesome trips. But as our great friend David Wills likes to say, Aslan is on the move and the welcome that we had from a hundred and fifty different folks, including the Senate Majority Leader, the CEO of the largest telecom firm, the chairman of the largest insurance firm in Nairobi, to talk about what God is going through them as they are launching Faith Driven Entrepreneur groups and ministries and putting their own capital work and then inviting us in to participate. Not because they need us, but because they know that we might experience joys. We do so was just invigorating. And then again, a couple of days later, over in Cape Town, just unbelievable what's going on and incredibly encouraging. It was really awesome. And yes, Justin, get to go in the Shark Tank. I did not. I came back. My oldest son was on fall break will end with our travel log right here because we've got awesome guests in the house. We have the Benham brothers who are here to talk about how God is working in their life and their experiences as a Faith Driven Entrepreneur. And I can't believe it's taken us this long to get you guys on the show. Super glad that you're here. Welcome.
William Norvell: Thanks for having us, man. It's an honor. Yes, it is.
Henry Kaestner: So as you may have seen from some of our shows, you're so nice to say that you guys get our newsletter and that you read it and you don't forward it on to some sort of a spam inbox. So thank you for the encouragement. But as you may know, we like to try and figure out the backgrounds and the personal stories of each of our guests before we get into how God is using you right now. So walk us through a little bit of that. Who are you? Where do you come from?
David Benham: Well, I'll start first. So we are identical twins and I'm David. I'm the older brother. I'm two minutes older than Jason. I tell people that he's been in my shadow for 46 years and we got saved at the age of 12 in Dallas, Texas. Our dad was a pastor and I was saved at a youth camp. Six months later, he was saved at a little chapel service at our private Christian school, so I've been discipling him now for thirty four years. Yeah. So my first disciple ..
Jason Benham: What I like to say is that David's the only mistake God ever made when he was born. God's like, Oh man, I've got to fix that. Then I came along, so I have to do over.
Henry Kaestner: That's awesome. And I got to call out the fact you've got the younger ones got the better beard.
Jason Benham: That is right. Well, because it's no less than no shave November right now.
David Benham: I trimmed my beard, so mine's actually thicker but trimmed, Jason. This is like scratch. This is like little chicken scratch.
Jason Benham: I shave this morning and it's already grown that long, and William is looking hot with his beard, too.
David Benham: So, Henry, you're going to get us fighting on here.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, yeah. OK, so one. But before I let that go, because I've got three boys, I'm fascinated by the concept. The brothers, I've always been fascinated by identical twins. I'm fascinated by fraternal twins, too. One of the things I love about fraternal twins is especially if they're boy and girl, how many times their parents will say that they're asked if they're identical? That's one of my favorite things. But what happens? Talk to us about what happens in those six months where one of you is in the dark and one of you is in the light. What? What was that like? David, were you just kind of just loving on them and just patiently waiting?
David Benham: Do you remember? Honestly, you know, we were 12 at the time, and I was probably just still working through my flesh of when I would beat him down on the basketball court. We used to, and we also had Sugar Ray Leonard boxing gloves. Like our dad, legit bought us boxing gloves. And he wouldn't let us go on the back basketball court. We would just beat the snot out of each other and he'd be back there.
Jason Benham: Our dad, David, never knocked me out one time, but when I was 14, I sent him to the mat and he couldn't get up. It was like, That's for a different podcast that was just like, that story.
David Benham: It was a lucky shot
Henry Kaestner: before there is Jake and Logan Paul. There are the Benham brothers.
David Benham: Yeah, that's right. That's right. But you know, we grew. So we grew up in Dallas, Texas. Our dad was a former saloon owner who was a drunk, and Bobby was passed out drunk the night that we were born. As a matter of fact, back in 1975, when we were born, he before we were born. When mom found out that she was having twins, they didn't have the technology we have today. So weird. She was four or five months along. Dad said, No, we're aborting. And she was like, No way we are not going to abort these babies. And so by God's grace, we were born. Three months later, our dad got radically saved. It's a whole nother story. But just suffice it to say that he sold the saloon and used the money to go to seminary and out of seminary. He was asked to plant a church in Dallas, Texas, so our earliest memories are Dallas, Texas, and Jason and I. We'd wake up early in the morning. We were young athletes. We played basketball, baseball, football and our dad was our coach and he taught us that leadership is the ability to create an apple. And those who follow you and one of the things that Jason and I always saw out of our dad when we woke up was he was reading his Bible and that just kind of just it really penetrated our hearts is that we saw our dad more is caught than taught. So he got that particular passage of Scripture and Proverbs Chapter 22, where it says to train up a child in the way they should go and when they are old, they won't depart from it. The Hebrew word to train up literally means to cultivate an appetite for or to touch the palate of. And so Hebrew mothers and midwives would chew up a celery or a piece of carrot or a vegetable, and they would chewed up really fine. And then they would take it out of their mouths and put it on their finger. And they would touch the tip of their infant's palate with it, and it would cultivate a desire and a taste for that nourishing food. Well, Solomon used that same word in Proverbs on how where to train our kids up. So Jason and I learned really early in life that if we're going to train up or if we're going to lead our employees or lead our families, that we have to be ingesting the word of God first and living it out, and then our lives will touch the palate of those that are following us. And so we learn that early in, our dad would say, and I'll stop here before Jason jumps in, he's going to start elbowing me. But our dad would say, if our theology does not become biography, then our theology is worthless. So our dad was very much involved in our lives. He would say, Guys, you are going to bring the kingdom to the baseball field, or you'd bring the kingdom to the basketball court or bring the kingdom to the football field or to your classroom. So we were born and we were raised not with a go to church and sacred secular divide. We were raised by God's grace under very holistic biblical teaching that your faith is integrated and incorporated into every area of your life, just like blinking is in your normal daily routine. It just happens. That's how we were raised in Dallas, Texas,
Henry Kaestner: at some point in time. You alluded to this a little bit. Your dad exposed you. Or maybe it was just kids in error, but expose you to the game of baseball and you guys got pretty good at it.
Jason Benham: Well, this is Jason speaking. I got really good at it. David got mediocre. I like to say that David's the only baseball player that excelled at tailback. He'd run out on the field and whoever the coach was at the time, they said, Get your tail back on the bench, David. That's pretty much the way it went. No, by God's grace, we both got four ride scholarships to play baseball at Liberty University. We played there for four years. He was drafted by the Red Sox. I was drafted by the Baltimore Orioles. We both ended up with the St. Louis Cardinals. And that story of how we ended up with the St. Louis Cardinals and the stadium we got to play in is the subject of a book we wrote called Miracle in Shreveport. That's a fantastic story, but we don't have time to go into that story. Maybe one of these days we'll share that story with you guys. But out of that, David and I, there was always something inside of us from our dad's example and our mom who raised us to love Jesus and to be in the scriptures because we were reading the scriptures every single day. There was something in us that said, Guys, you were made for full time ministry. Now, if you were alive back in the 80s and 90s, your thought of full time ministry meant, Well, I got to be a preacher or a traveling evangelist, or I've got to go overseas and I have to raise money. That was our thought, too. And so Dave and I fresh out of professional baseball, we had both done some odd jobs for a couple of years in 2003. We were in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 2003. We actually started. Now you guys are going to kick out of this. We started Benham Brothers Ministries and we got a little website. And we wrote a support letter and we were going to travel and tell people our baseball story and tell people to love Jesus. You know that God wants to use the uniqueness of you to present the uniqueness of him. And so we wrote this support letter. And right before we sent it to the first person, 2003, in January of 2003, we got on our knees and we started praying over it, and the Lord picked both of our hearts almost at the exact same time. You know, while the nonprofit sector of ministry is a model for a lot of people, but that that's not the model I have for you guys don't send that letter to anybody. And so we were a little bit bewildered. You know, it's like, OK, but Lord, we want to be ministers, you not want to serve you. And I put that in kind of scare quotes, ministers, because we had the wrong idea of what full time ministry meant. But we didn't send that support letter and we started praying like Lord, what are we going to do? We don't know what to do to make money. We've got to make money. We weren't big league guys and we both had earned our real estate licenses the year before. And it was as if the Lord said to us the same thing he said to the disciples when they came to him after he preached to 5000 men and and they said, Hey, the people are hungry, we need to give them something to eat. And Jesus says, you give them something to eat and they're like, Well, we don't have anything. And he says, Well, what do you have? Right? We tell people when it comes to business, just start with what you do have. And you know, they just had a. Couple of tuna fish sandwiches, and they gave it to God and Jesus, and he multiplied it. So for David and I, it was real estate licenses. And so we decided to get into real estate 2003, and we applied the principles of the scripture for the next from 2003 to 2007. We applied the principles of the scripture in building our little real estate business, and we cover all of this in our book expert ownership on how to launch faith driven entrepreneurs entrepreneurs into greater freedom and success. So we cover the story in detail. But from that period, we began to sell more houses than any other real estate agents in our state, and so God gave us the idea to franchise. We franchised our business from 2007 to 2010. God blessed it abundantly, and we grew to 100 locations in 35 states, all by operating our business, by the principles that we derive from the scripture. It was really fun to be on the back side and look at that and say, Look, what God did we give him the credit?
Henry Kaestner: I'm asked for forgiveness from Richard for this, I was just doing there's a there's a question I want to ask you guys later. And you can even prep for it if you want. It just doesn't flow right now. I'm fine. I meant what I said before. I'm fascinated by identical twins. I'm also fascinated by discipleship, and I'm fascinated by just the way that sin plays out in my life and just the battle I have. I'd like to think we all have it, but maybe I'm the worst. Maybe I'm the worst sinner. Maybe, maybe. But just the dynamic. And I don't know if you've ever been asked this before. I bet you have about how identical twins process the role of sin. So if I have a lust for thought or if I have a pride problem, I tend not to share that as openly as maybe I can. I've got some friends, right? But if I knew there is an exact replica of me. And by the way, maybe I'll throw this in later. David's not two minutes older because I know how you guys are pro-life. You guys were born at the same time, right? But yeah, but if I've got this type of sin that I'm wrestling with, I have to presume that my identical twin is wrestling with the same thing. And I'm wondering what that means for discipleship and just sanctification, and we can get there later if we get time just may realize back in May, that's why we needed the second installment. But that's some of the things I'm fascinated by.
David Benham: Yeah, that's one thing, too, that I think it's important, especially for men in today's day and age. Intimacy with the father is crucial, but intimacy in the brotherhood is vital. And as we were writing our second book, Living Among Lions, we talked about intimacy being in to me. See, we had seen that before into me. See, we have to be very open with each other. When we started our business logit, when Jason was saying in two thousand three, God told us, Tear that letter up and you go into business. We had no business training whatsoever. I mean, back at Liberty, Jerry Falwell would always pound into us. If it's
Jason Benham: Christian, it ought to be
David Benham: better. If it's Christian, it ought to be better. Well, as we were reading through scripture, by the way, just one quick note we did not have these little devices, cell phones when we were in college, so we had a lot of time to read scripture. We had a lot of time and a lot of margin in our mind. We weren't so distracted as now I'm raising guys. I've got kids in college, I got kids in high school, I got kids in junior high. So I mean, we're raising them and they all have devices. This in the hand of a producer is an incredible tool, but this in the hand of a consumer is a terrible toy. It's based on who you are, a producer or a consumer. So when we're at liberty, we're here. And if it's Christian, it ought to be better. You want to be productive. Well, Jason and I, when we got into business, we knew out of scripture that the presence of God in your life is more important than the profit that you're chasing. So we intuitively knew this because we were in scripture and we understood seek first the Kingdom of God in his righteousness and all these things, like the clients and the marketing and all of the swag and everything that we needed to get into business, you know, we began to seek first and that what God told us specifically and we got this in our business journal. The very first thing the Lord told me and Jason when we decided we're going into business was purity open up, open up to each other, open up to your dad and open up to a couple of other brothers.
Jason Benham: It was like our little formula purity equals power equals profit. Like, if you really want God there and you're going to need his presence, it's going to start with purity, ultimate uber accountability that leads to power. And when you're operating in God's power because you know you have his presence there with you, the prophet just chases you down. You don't even have to think about it.
David Benham: And here's what's interesting sometimes you're not pure and you're seemingly operating with power and you get profit, but it's worldly profit because you have no peace. You're enslaved, your heart is in a box, right? So we want supernatural power. And that's where in Exodus chapter, I think it was thirty thirty one, two to three somewhere around there when the Lord told Moses, I'll send you guys into the promised land. I'll open it up. I'm going to send my spirit ahead of you. I'll send an angel there. But my presence won't go with you now. Just pause for a second. It's said that that was a sad word, and Moses said, if your presence doesn't go, we don't even want it now. We just pause and think about today with faith driven entrepreneurs what drives us. We're all ambitious. Like, we want to accomplish things, we want to build our businesses, we want to go and take ground in the marketplace. And that's great. But often times it's as if the spirit of God says, OK, go ahead, you can go and you can have that big business. You can go and you can have all that money, you can have the recognition and you can get the shingles that you want. But my presence won't be with you. And unfortunately, many times we go for it. We're not like Moses that says, No, no, no, no, we want your presence. But the key to the presence of God is purity into me. See a broken spirit and a contrite heart. The Lord will
Jason Benham: not. So to answer your question, Henry. By Jason can read David's mail and help him with all of his issues, so, yeah, yeah, gladly,
David Benham: so glad I've got this.
Rusty Rueff: That's awesome. That's awesome. Hey, I'm going to ask a question about a statement that you have on your website. Actually, I'm going to ask you three questions about it. OK, so so be ready. We're going to we're going to dig into this one on the website. There's a statement that says we want to equip entrepreneurs for maximum success, but never at the expense of those most important to us. It's a great statement. So let's start with we want to equip, equip what does that mean to you guys?
Jason Benham: Well, equipping starts with recognizing your identity number one. So the devil knows that how you see yourself determines how you behave yourself. So if he can convince you that you're just a business person, you know, I'm just a businesswoman, I'm just a businessman or I'm just an insurance broker. I'm just, you know, I'm just a senior level manager of a. If you're like, that's who I am. Well, then that's how you're going to act. But if you see yourself as a minister of God on mission and that your work is worship now, all of a sudden all bets are off. Satan will now aim his target right at you, like he will put the target right on you. So when we say equipping entrepreneurs, we say first, we need to help you understand that your identity in the marketplace is a minister of the Gospel. You heard about David and I when I was telling you the story about how we felt that God didn't want us to go into the nonprofit space to us for about oh, from 03 to 2010, we struggled with guilt for not being in the ministry, and I put that in scare quotes to those who are just listening to this and can't see me put my little fingers up. But in the ministry, we felt guilt for that. And then David and I were up in front of about 150 of our franchisees and their spouses and some of their teams. We had the Bible open and we were training people on the principles of the Bible and how you're going to build your business and how are you going to systematize and scale and grow and manage your finances? How are you going to build your team and how are you going to lead the right way all through the principles of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy? And we were pulling stuff out of there and it was almost audible Rusty. It wasn't quite audible. David's one hears voices in his head, not me, but it was like it was almost audible that God spoke to me in that moment. And he said, Who told you that you weren't my minister? Like, who told you that you weren't in full time ministry in the same way that God asked Adam, who told you, you were naked? Like, you've got to go and discover that liar that whispered that lie in your ear. And the Lord spoke specifically to me. I shared it with David later, and we totally full 100 percent agreed with each other that God spoke to me. No, you are a minister, right? Where you are, where you're placed and how you're paid doesn't determine your identity as a minister. It's about God's presence in your life and your passion to bring the kingdom wherever you are that you are a minister, you're on mission and your work is worship. And I'm telling you God took the scales off our eyes. Rusty and I realized then the greatest equipping that I could ever have is first knowing who I am as a minister on mission in the workplace. From that day forward, everything changed for us. So when you say, how do we want to equip that would be primary on how we want to equip entrepreneurs.
David Benham: Can I go one step further? No, you're not going to one up me, man. I'm not one of those trying to. One up me is the next logical step.
Jason Benham: No, that was a perfect segue way to his next question.
David Benham: So when we know who we are, then we have to recognize who God is. So we talk. Jason and I always say presence before profit. Now we see people before profit, of course, but it's presence before profit. When Jason and I, we just did a three day workshop in Charlotte, we had all these business owners come in. We talk about a two page business plan. It's really a one pager. But the second page is called Listening Prayer, where you're listening for God. We already know who we are. We already know our identity in Christ. Now we want to align ourselves with the purposes of God for our lives specifically and our company. Like what is the greater story? What is God saying? What is God speaking? So what we do is we do a thing called listening prayer. We've been doing this for a long time. And so we took all these people that came in town. We said, we're going to actually take you into listening for exactly how we do it. So we threw on some William Agusto soaking in his presence. It's phenomenal. It's a great playlist. It's like one two, sometimes three hours of nothing but soaking music. And we sit there and we don't do anything except for Listen for God and we journal. Now I'm telling you this when we go after presence like this, God then brings us in alignment with the spirit because the spirit of God is inside of us. So of course we've been. It's always presence before practicals and practicals before profit. That's just kind of the way that it works. And so along the lines of equipping, and I just want to give you just a quick we were done with listening prayer after day two. On day three, we had three people shoot their hands up, one guy said. After day two, I went back to my hotel. Got on my knees and totally surrendered to the lordship of Christ, another guy raised his hand and says after day two, God told me to make things right with my wife. We had a two hour talk last night. We haven't been like this since we've been married. Another guy raised his hand and said, I knew that there was a man that I was at odds with and I needed to make things right. I went back and made things. Right now, I want to just say this. Equipping if we're going to equip believers to be faith driven, that kind of stuff is straight up revival when we're making things right with the closest relationships in our lives. And then from that point, the third step would be the practical principles of God's word in terms of how do we drive profits? How do we grow? Well, what is our mark, our message and our meaning when it comes to our brand, for instance, when we talk about equipping? We're talking about discipleship in the marketplace. Your brand isn't just your logo and all that. Your brand is what people say about you when you leave the room. So what are we as Christians? Like the last 20, 30 years, people say, Oh, I do business with a Christian. Oh my goodness, we're like, No, we're going to resurrect the righteous brand and have a new demonstration of godly biblical Christian
Jason Benham: Davids brand personally, is that he's the guy with halitosis.
David Benham: So come on. That's his brand.
Rusty Rueff: And you guys sit so close to each other right here. So it's very good. You know, that's a loving brother. OK, so I'm going to go to the second question. Second question? Go back to the statement. We want to equip entrepreneurs for maximum success, but never at the expense of those most important to us, never at the expense. Tell us about what that is.
Jason Benham: Well, we we believe and we teach people because we've seen this in our own life, that you've got to distinguish between standard of living and quality of life. You know, standard of living is most prized, possession is money. And there are so many entrepreneurs out there, even faith filled entrepreneurs. But yet when you really when push comes to shove, standard of living, which is the almighty dollar, is what takes precedent. We would say that quality of life is what a Faith Driven Entrepreneur needs to aim for and that quality of life most prized possession is time. And why would we need time? We need time for the people that God has placed into our lives. You know, in the same way that Jesus had the time for the 12, you know, he had time for the 70 and then he had time for 150 or how many other disciples he had. But then you know what? Jesus did not have time for in his ministry. He didn't have time for the gentile. Why? Because the system that he was setting up would have time for the gentile, but his personal ministry did not. Now this is like, Oh my gosh, you mean to tell me Jesus wouldn't talk to gentiles? Well, yes, he did, because he was hyper focused on his time. So we would say when it comes to being a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, you need to recognize that time is your most valuable asset and you need to operate and develop your business and your systems in such a way that gives you your time back so that you can then grant that time to the people that God has entrusted to you. That's why we believe that God is raising up faith filled entrepreneurs.
David Benham: And one of the things that our dad told us early in business and I'm we're both married. He's been married 21 years. I've been married. Twenty three.
Jason Benham: Hey, his wife, his wife chased me around college freshman year when she realized she could have me, she had to go to second best.
David Benham: Listen, Justin is not just
William Norvell: that sounds like another podcast. Don't know if we have time for that you about.
David Benham: Justin has not laughed at one thing. You said, Justin, you are like stone cold. Like no way Jason is a buffoon. He's right. But I do want to say this that early in our business, we had young families and we were working like crazy. We were growing at alarming speeds. We were hiring more people. One of our companies grew to fifteen hundred people and it was just, everything's growing so fast. And my dad? I'll never forget, he said. You know, you have the Dominion mandate that God gave Adam and Eve, which by in part gave to us the Dominion mandate to rule the Earth. He said he told Adam to subdue the Earth, to fill the Earth, and then he put him in a garden. And he said, David, you and your brother have a garden that you need to faithfully tanned and stop trying to take over the world. Oh, and I was like, Wow, what do you mean, dad? And he goes, Your family is in your garden primarily says you might not have to take all those meetings. You can't outsource that seat at the table. I can delegate anything in business. I do three things I automate, delegate or eliminate these tasks that take up most of my time. But you can't automate, delegate or eliminate the seat at your kid's ballgame. You can't do that. Or the head of the table at the home. So that really encouraged Jason and me. That quality of life, which is the most important element, is time needs to be at the height. Now, of course, that doesn't mean at the expense of service or at the expense of, you know, cutting out systems that need to be in place. But if that's your heart and you really want time and you want to be faithful to that garden that God has placed you in, which is your family and your closer community, then God will give you the desires of your heart. You just have to prioritize that in prayer.
Rusty Rueff: Does that take you? Takes me to my third question, but does that take you to the last statement in that sentence? Never at the expense of those most important to us is that is that what you're talking about? Or are there others that are most important to you?
Jason Benham: Yes. Just like I said before, Jesus had a concentric circle list of people and every entrepreneur that's listening to this needs to have the same Jesus we know primary we had. John was the closest. He's the dude that Jesus gave his mom to. Right was like, John, take care of my mom. Then it was Peter, James and John. It was the three, and then the next circle was the 12, and then the next circle was the 70. And then the next circle was the crowds. As entrepreneurs, we have to define our concentric circles and anything that would remove the boundaries that would separate those concentric circles. We cannot allow in our lives, period. And you have to be willing to be misunderstood. You have to be willing as an entrepreneur to be misunderstood. When you're saying no to meetings or no to fundraisers, you're getting invited to a David have said no to a lot of board positions people wanted us on. It was like, No, why? Well, because I got four kids and all of them have games during the week. It's like, I'm a chauffeur. I'm like a professional game watcher. That's what I do one day when my kids are off at college in an empty nester. Not only will I walk around my house naked, but I'll be able to serve on your board.
David Benham: James, your home. I do want to say
Rusty Rueff: it's interesting that you just said just what you said, because here in the Bay Area today, we're all kind of excited but lamenting for Buster Posey's retirement. And I thought, you know, so he's announced it today. And you know why? Because he's going to go home and be a full time dad to four kids. Right? What a man I love. Yeah. So that's a lot of
Jason Benham: toxic masculinity, Rusty.
Rusty Rueff: It's just awesome, I think. So now I'm going to juxtapose and see if there's a contradiction between this concentric circle and what you did with your business, which was to scale it. You scaled it to over 100 locations and in a very short amount of time. So now you've got a lot of people, a lot of things going on. How do you balance all that and take us through, you know, that scaling experience?
David Benham: John Maxwell had a great quote. He said the greatest leaders hand off the baton at top speed. And so when you're growing your business, we train folks that you have to be ready to hand the baton of certain positions or tasks, whatever the concentric stacks are in your company, whatever it may be. You have to be ready to hand that baton and succeed through others. And that's exactly what Christ model. We didn't have any business training when we were scaling. We logit had none. We didn't even hire a franchise company. We had all these franchise companies wanting us because they saw the growth when we were on each magazine and we were looking at the numbers and were like, Why would I pay you that much money? Why don't I just do it myself, you know? And so but to succeed through others is exactly what Christ modeled. He even told his disciples greater things will you do than even me now? He knew the Holy Spirit was coming and he was going to succeed in capturing the world for the gospel and advancing the kingdom through other people. So that's how we can still stay in our garden and scale our businesses is because we did it through others. The first thing we had to do, though, we had to build a good system.
Jason Benham: Well, and you know, the three phases of business, what David and I call them, we covered this in our book. You've got brain and body. You've got brain. Nobody and nobody, nobody like. The first is brain and body, where your business requires all your brain and you actually physically need to be there. The second phase, which is what you got to try to get to, is where it involves your brain, but not your body. So you don't have to be there, but you mentally still got to be there. The third phase in the best phase, though, is when it doesn't require your brain or your body. Now, if you recognize properly that God is your business partner, and he's brought. You into this business, and he's made you the managing partner, so God is the business partner, right? He's the majority owner, but he's brought you in and said, you're now the managing partner. So this isn't just like, Oh, it's God, business is not mine. Well, no, he says, no, it's yours, too. You're the managing partner. And if that's true, if you think, God, I want to get my business to a point to where it can run itself and we can scale without my brain or my body there. Can you help me think through this? God will give you the ideas, and he'll open up the opportunities, and he will bring the people who can help you make it happen for David and I. We discovered a four step process. We systematized and scaled all of our businesses across the board, and we call it silo segment stacks and steps. We started with the silos, the main compartments of our business. We chopped those down into segments, which are those segments down into stacks. And then from the stacks, we listed our steps and the steps are all the little tasks it takes to complete every single process in our business, chock full of videos and tutorials. If you have your business systematize like that and we teach this in our online course, it expert ownership. If you have your business systematize like that, you'll be able to scale and the beauty of this Rusty, you'll work less making more money. You'll work less serving more people than you ever did when when you were serving less. And it's all because you systematized it the right way and
David Benham: you'll be an opportunity creator for so many families, which will be an amazing thing.
Rusty Rueff: You know, I mean, Henry's fascinated with twins. We get that. But here's what I have figured out. I'm I turn this over to William twins illiterate better than anybody you've been able to pick up, you know, with alliteration. You know, one good word after another. So maybe that's what we're missing out on Henry. We don't we don't have twins to help us.
David Benham: Hey, we got that good Baptist upbringing with Jerry Falwell and their alliteration all day.
Rusty Rueff: I'm going to let William take it from here.
William Norvell: I'm going to I'm going to not talk about twins, although I am fascinated. It's so much fun to be with you guys. Honestly, I follow you on Instagram and see a lot of your videos, and it's almost like surreal. When somebody like that comes on the show, it's like, Oh, wait, you're real people. You actually sit next to each other, you actually wear the same hoodie.
David Benham: It's just a no go like long.
William Norvell: Come on, we'll do this like you actually do these things. It's not just to show why
Jason Benham: people didn't need to know that William, but
William Norvell: they do now. And that's what we're here for. That's what we're here for. So I'm going to jump in to your TV show in a second, but I want to hit on two words that Rusty didn't hit on the tagline their maximum success that feels like for entrepreneurs. I mean, and we all know most entrepreneurial journeys don't work right. I mean, the odds are against you when you start. I'm curious how you guys think through is it? Is it faithfulness is a prophet? Is it? How do you think through for a Faith Driven Entrepreneur or what is maximum success? And what do you think that looks like?
Jason Benham: We question. Well, I would say what we call the product God calls the process. So success in God's eyes is that you can go through the storm and remain at peace in the same way that the disciples, when they're professional fishermen of the sea, Jesus is asleep in the boat, and all of a sudden the wind and waves come and they call in a mayday, right? And they go, wake him up. And he's like, Dad, gum it. You woke me up. I'm going to rebuke the waves, and then he turns around. He rebukes them for their faith. So what we would say success is that whether you're successful in business in terms of the world's view of success or you're not in terms of having to close your doors because you took us waiting and it wasn't good enough, God may look at you as a great success because you remained at peace in the midst of it. Well, I like to say the requirement for work is faithfulness. The reward for work is rest, and the result of work is that God gets glory right. Is that faithfulness exactly what you said, William? To us, success is that you can be faithful and you will be faithful regardless of whether or not you're persecuted or promoted because we say that faithfulness in your work. According to Proverbs, twenty two twenty nine faithfulness in your work leads to promotion. You know, says do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings. He'll not stand before obscure men, which means when you're good at what you do, your level of client increases, which means your level of pay goes up. But the balancing truth of that is faithfulness in your walk leads to persecution. And Matthew, it talks about Don't be surprised when you're drug in front of kings for my name's sake. Right now, Jesus is saying that you're going to be persecuted for your walk. But then we see Solomon saying, you're going to be promoted for your work. Well, which one is it? You know what? It's both. It's faithfulness. And then we let God bring persecution or promotions. So we got our promotion long before we got our persecution. But persecution was coming, and we'll tell you that story.
David Benham: Let me just let me just jump in real quick faithfulness. You use the word faithfulness, and I love how John BVR says faithfulness. What is the definition of faithfulness? It's multiplication. In the book of Luke, the landowner gives the man one talent two talents five times. And he comes back, the man with five multiplied the ten, and he gave, he says, well done, good and faithful servant, the man with two multiplied. Well done. Good and faithful servant. The man with one did not take what had been given him right? And he says, You wicked and lazy slave. In other words, everybody is born with certain talents and abilities. We've been given a personality and that's where we do is when we take entrepreneurs or at least aspiring entrepreneurs. We have a thing called expert ownership, the early years where we take aspiring entrepreneurs and we say, OK, what is your personality? What energizes you? What drains you? What are some of the things that make the hair on your arms stand up? Let's get to figure out who you are. That's your personality and some of the talents and abilities that you have. And then now let's look at some skill sets, things that you've honed yourself, and let's take those, combine those and now take a step forward. Here's the cool thing you are not to concern yourself with the results, but faithfulness to do what God tells you to do. Because if you look at acts chapter two, we got this straight out of scripture. Looking at Peter in Acts two, Peter preaches the gospel. 3000 people are saved. It says that they were cut to the heart and said, What must we do to be saved? 3000 people get saved. Couple of chapters later. Same message. Same gospel. It says they were cut to the heart, drug him out of the city and stoned him. Now what's the difference? So a lot of times if we are to be faith driven entrepreneurs, we have to take the results of our obedience and our faithfulness and give it to God. Just like Peter 3000, we're saved. That's great. He's getting high fives. He just landed a book deal with Lifeway. He's now got three thousand more Instagram followers, and everything sounds great. Well, a few chapters later, he preaches the same message, same faithfulness. He gets drug out of the city and stoned and left for dead. Now, the world would say that's a failure. The world would say that our dad was a failure as a pastor. His church never got over 150 people. When he retired, he never had more than about 125 folks. But I tell you what, he did have two boys that he was disciplined like crazy in addition to several other people, but nobody knew about him. He didn't have a cool brand. He didn't have a big following. He has never even written a book, but he was faithful, and we have to focus on roots and let God handle the fruits.
Jason Benham: That's the key. Your dad was the Dr. Kevorkian of Church Growth.
Henry Kaestner: Hello. What do I even do with that?
David Benham: What does it mean when you delete it? You edit
William Norvell: it out. Yeah, that's that's the one I'm going to say. There's not another podcast for that. You know, we got four more lined up. That's not one of them. Right? And we need to switch Amen to switch hard switch topics because we want to get to this before we lose you guys. Great quote being bold without being a bully to tell a little bit of story and you'll sell more. But in 2014, things were going well. You were having success, you were on the covers of magazines, HGTV said. Guys, let's make this go even further, right? And then it took a turn. It took a turn specifically because of your faith. And I know you've been reflecting on those lessons for six, seven years now and share that story with us. Share how you felt during that time, if you could even take us back and maybe how you feel about it now?
David Benham: Absolutely. Well, well, I'll tell you what got us fired actually got us hired. So at two thousand fourteen, our company is blowing up. And by God's Amazing Grace, a production company came to us. They said, We want to do a reality show for you guys, and TLC made us our first offer and then HGTV reached out to us. They had just signed Chip and Joanna Gaines. So this was exciting like, wow, are you serious? And they said, We want to actually take the Gaines family and the Benham families and raise you guys to the top of the network. And they said, we're going to build brands and take it to Target and Home Depot. So when I walk into Target, I see Magnolia. I'm like, Dang, that would have been nice. So anyway, they offered us a bunch of money and they said, We're not even going to do a pilot. We're going straight to series. And my first response to the general manager as I said, Hey, what an honor. Thank you. I'm excited. Do you know who we are like? Our dad is the guy that led Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade to Christ. He's the one that baptized her. He's the one that was on Time magazine and and we're very vocal pro-life with our company. And we also say it's one thing to be against abortion, but it's another thing to be pro-life and help these mothers and help these families. They feel like they have no choice. And I said, and also, we're very pro-marriage. We're looking at the shift in culture that is making some biblical principles of scripture politically incorrect. And if we love people and we want people to flourish, which we do because that's God's plan for people, then we need to talk about the boundaries that we need to live inside in order for the folks to flourish.
Jason Benham: They hired us right around the same time there was the big marriage debate. Remember, the Supreme Court was and then a bunch of big companies like PayPal and Starbucks and Apple were jumping in on the other side of the debate, saying, Hey, love who you love, marry who you want to marry. David and I were like, Where are the big Christian businesses? So we said, Hey, God defines marriage between a man and a woman. Let's not redefine it. That would be like removing chocolate from brownies. You're left with Blondie's real men. Don't eat those. And so we're like, God defines marriage. Let's not redefine it. And so that's what David was referring to when HGTV called in, and they honestly, they said, We know exactly who you are. You guys are awesome in real estate. You're the real deal. You're not just actors. Like some of our talent, you're the real deal in real estate and we want to put you guys
David Benham: right to series. What's really cool is that they said our production company had called us, and by this time we'd hired agents out of Beverly Hills. And now all of a sudden we signed with HGTV and. And they told us, they said, Listen, most of the people at ERG, your agents and even us at the production company, we believe like you guys do, most of Americans do. We just don't talk about it. So that was kind of a wakeup call. Now it's 2014. All of a sudden. Now endorsements are coming in, commercials are beginning to run. We can't believe it. We're five weeks into a ten week film shoot, Chip and Joe's fixer upper just piloted. They ran the pilot. The ratings were fantastic. So ERG calls us and says, Guys, we are going to crush this. This show is going to kill it. We had Disney World. I mean, everybody was coming in wanting to advertise on the show. And still, we were like, I can't believe this is actually going to happen. And so in the middle of it all is when we became cancel culture before it became a hashtag. And here's what happened. The activist groups like Human Rights Campaign, glad right wing watch, Huffington Post. A lot of these activist groups, what they do. Planned Parenthood does the same thing. They'll find the people that are beginning to rate, the folks that are beginning to get a little bit of publicity or become celebrity. And they'll target their beliefs that are not politically correct. Now, at this time, being pro-life and pro-marriage was not politically correct, and so the goal to target us is, by God's grace, just like Daniel, they couldn't find anything in our company. They couldn't even find a human, a person that actually said we were hateful or mean to them, or they couldn't find anything. The only thing that they could do was call us names and hateful and bigoted and intolerant and all these other things for those beliefs and those groups got together and then bullied HGTV. So behind closed doors,
Jason Benham: they basically told HGTV, If you hire these guys, we're going after your advertisers. So they put this crazy story about. David and I we were five weeks into a 10 week film shoot. Millions of dollars had already been spent by HGTV, and they circled the wagons, and HGTV honestly thought the world was collapsing around them. So they called David and I. And they said, Guys, we weren't ready for this. We are canceling the show. Now, after I got David up out of the fetal position and knocked his thumb out of his mouth, I remember we said, You know what? We believe that all things work together for good to them who love God. And we thank you guys that you believed in us and we know that you got bullied into this. Now here's the thing. When someone you know you're a senior in high school, you walk into the lunch room and there's a freshman getting bullied by another senior. You don't go lecture the freshman, you go deal with the bully. David and I said, there's a bully in this culture right now that's demanding silence from Christians, and we have no intentions of backing down from that. You see, we had already been through a period where David and I, when HGTV first came to us and said these groups are putting pressure on them, you want to know what David and I did? You guys might not believe it because you're hearing us talk all big and bad right now. What David and I did was we went to certain websites and pulled down videos of us standing strong for the definition of marriage and being pro-life. We pulled those videos down because we didn't want to lose that show. And I'm telling you, and we discovered we were afraid that the secret to courage is first recognizing your inner coward. God had to do to us what he had to do to Peter. Remember, Peter said, I'll never deny you. And then that very night, he denied. And that's where we learned that boldness, apart from brokenness, makes a bully that God had to get us to a position of brokenness, which is humility over our own sin and our own issues before we were fired. And then we went on 200 plus one on one interviews with O'Reilly and Megyn Kelly and all these every CNN show I think just about. We were on all of them. And we did, by God's grace, stand boldly. But God had the first break us to show us, guys, if you're not in a spirit of brokenness, then no amount of boldness is going to bring my name glory. That's right. And so we tell folks, look, we're at a point now in culture. We are in cancel culture and there are so many people who are standing for what they believe and they're getting canceled and they're losing their jobs and they're losing their income. And what we encourage those folks is keep standing, but don't allow your boldness to be bold. Apart from a foundation of brokenness, which is humility over your sin, humility over your own issues, and you feel love for the people that you're speaking to. And when you do feel that love and you've got that humility, God would tell you boldness, apart from brokenness makes a bully. But the reverse is true that brokenness, apart from boldness, makes a bystander. We're seeing this in the church more than people falling on the bully side, people falling on the bystander side where they're just sitting back and they don't want to say anything or you got big pastors. We all know their names. They won't say anything about cancel culture. They won't say anything about BLM. They won't say anything about all the stuff that's going on, you know, in the streets and we'll talk about that stuff. And if they do, they only do it on the PC side because they're bystanders. And we would say, don't be like that. God is calling entrepreneur's kingdom minded, faith filled entrepreneurs who know their ministers on mission and their work is worship to now in this culture to stand bold like never before.
William Norvell: Thank you for sharing that, and the question that comes to mind is how have you guys thought about disagreeing when somebody so I love the boldness, but there's going to be people you disagree with that you love? We're called as Christians to promote unity among the body. There's going to be Christians that you disagree with. How do you do that? How have you done that? And similarly, to promote unity in the body in the midst of disagreement over things that, you know, hot-button issues for a reason, right? Things that people hold dear on for lack of a better phrase, both sides of some of the discussions. How would you encourage business owners and faith driven entrepreneurs to think about when some disagreement and so promoting unity?
David Benham: I'm going to give you a little practical, real quick, and then I'm going to give you a story. Jason and I wrote in our book Bold and Broken About. We have to have a hard head toward principle, but a soft heart toward people. So I'll say that again, a hard head toward principle, but a soft heart toward people we always see if you look at what's happening in culture, even in Christ's time. The 99 percent of people are the enslaved. But then there's the one percent of the enslavers those have taken like authority and government, or they've taken authority in the universities or the major mainstream media or whatever. Jesus acted differently toward the enslave or Pharisee
Jason Benham: because God loves all people. He does not love all ideas.
David Benham: That's exactly right, as he did the compassion to the woman caught in adultery, the compassion to Zacchaeus, or just unbelievable compassion. So when it comes to individuals, we reach out with compassion when it comes to ideas. We resist with courage, individuals, compassion, ideas, courage. So I'm sitting in a plane flying to St. Louis. Middle seat is open. I'm on the aisle. Jason is ugly, face sleeping already. We ain't even taken off yet against the window. We're going to speak at an event. And I got my Bible open. And this lady comes and says, I'm sorry, sir, but I'm sitting in the middle seat. Sounds great. Close my Bible. I stand up, help her put her luggage up. She sits down. She sits right next to me and I sit back down. I open my Bible and she looks at me and says, I just want you to know I am a little. I am a raging liberal feminist and I believe nothing like you. Well, I mean, I was like, Oh, OK, that's cool. And at first, the flesh, you know your flesh instantly. I'm like, OK, I'm going to dissect her worldview, and I'm going to show her how she's wrong. And the Holy Spirit pricked my heart and said, Just listen to her. So I said, OK, so I just asked her, I said, Well, my name's David, what's your name? Tell me your story. And so now we're at 30000 feet. Jason snoring. And we're talking and I I sense the Holy Spirit. Say you need to read Psalm, 139, to her now. Not the whole Psalm. I knew it was around 13 ish. And so I asked her politely, I wasn't going to force it on her. I said, Do you mind if I just read to you a scripture? So she had just before I said that she had been telling me that she's got two kids that are both struggling with anxiety and depression, borderline suicide. She's struggling in her marriage. And now, son, I know there's some real brokenness, right? Hurt people, hurt people. But healed people heal people. And I remember back to Jesus. The disciples are awakened in the garden and Peter reaches for a sword, cuts the dude's ear off. And Jesus says, Oh no, no, no, no, no. That's a different spirit. We don't hurt. We heal. Right? So all of a sudden now going in with that, I said, Do you mind if I read someone 30 90 and I opened the scripture and I let her look at it? And I said, I'm going to start in verse 13. I started reading and before I was out of verse 13, she's literally just crying. And she says, I've never said this before, but I've always held this inside because I was adopted at birth. And she said, I have a recurring dream that I'm in the incubator and the doctors are wheeling me away from my mother and they're looking down at me and I'm looking up at them in my heart screaming, Don't worry about me, I'll take care of myself. She said that to me and instantly, I'm like, We are in the presence of God right now. We are in the presence of God, like my flesh would have taken me out. And so what I had actually read to her was some one thirty nine in verse 13, says four, you created my inmost being unit me together in my mother's womb. That's the verse I read to her. And now the sun. She opens up telling me, like this most intimate dream that she's been having three years. Source of all her feminism. That was it. That's where her feminism came from. And so anyway, I then just began to speak to her. The Lord created you. He loves you. He was right there with you in that incubator. You were not abandoned. Your mother was a hero for giving you up for adoption. Her story? I don't even know what her story was, I said. Anyway, I began to speak to her and I began to say the same God that raised Jesus from the dead lives in me, and he can step into your heart. He will take the anxiety from your son, from your daughter. And the next thing you know, we're having a straight up church service. I don't even think he ever woke up.
Jason Benham: It was so good. I kept my eyes closed the whole time.
David Benham: So we land, and she's given me her phone number and the email saying, Please, let's follow up and all this. So we followed up. I mean, that one little story is just the way that we can, if every week or once a month, we're just interacting with whether it's our server, whether it's a contractor, whether it might be someone even at a university campus that can't stand the fact that the venoms are coming to speak. We went spoke Santa Barbara. They were frothing at the mouth. Then when we left, people were like, We really love you guys. You know, it's like, because that's what we're called to be is to have a soft heart toward people, but a hard head toward principle because we were not going to budge on the principle that God.
Jason Benham: And that's where William. It does get tough because sometimes I mean, and I don't know if you guys are dads or not, but sometimes the kids, your own kids who you love so much come in with a really bad idea. My six year old daughter came in and told me that she was a horse and her name was Aztecs. You want to be called Aztec. And so I went along with it for a little bit, but at some point I had to tell her, You're not a horse. Right? Well, what do we do when our kid then says, You hate me? Do I now change my demeanor and tone toward her because she said I hated her? So when it comes to dealing with bad ideas that keep people enslaved, like what? David said, God loves all individuals, but he doesn't love all ideas and we need to demolish ideas that keep individuals enslaved. That's what Paul tells us in Second Corinthians 10. So when you do that and you do deal with the idea and then the people respond and say, No, you hate me or you hate this particular group of people you have to recognize, God knows that you don't hate them. You know you don't hate them. And it's OK because Matthew, five, says, Blessed, are you when you're persecuted and falsely accused for my namesake, which means people will believe something about you. That's not true about you. You are blessed in that moment. So we just can't let our desire to run away from false accusation. Keep us from demolishing bad ideas.
William Norvell: That's good. That's good. And you know, we love having open dialog here on the podcast. That's what we love doing. And so, you know, as listeners too, we're going to get David and Jason back for one of those five podcasts. If you have any questions, if this prompts ideas or thoughts, send him in. I got a feeling with Just meet you guys for an hour, you'd be more than willing to discuss. US and have a conversation about anyone who might disagree with some of your world views and and I'd love to give you guys the audience to respond to that. Wonderful. And that being said, we are going to shift and you guys have dropped a lot of great scripture on us in this podcast. But our closing question, what we love to do is invite you to share with us where God has you right now in his word. Maybe something that's coming alive to you in a new way could be something you read this morning could be something you've been meditating on this season, but we just like to point it back to God's word and say, you know, it's cool to see how that transcends between our guests and our listeners and exactly how it happened on that plane. We get emails all the time of, gosh, I needed to hear that verse today, and it spoke to me this way. And so we'd love to hear that from you.
David Benham: You wanna go first? Yeah.
Jason Benham: God is in the business of transferring things. He transfers the wealth of the wicked to the righteous, so we don't have to run after wealth. We run after righteousness, which is being in right relationship with God and God handles the transfer. I do believe that God is also in the business of transferring positions of power, influence and authority from those who are dealmakers, the culturally cool, relevant people. God will transfer their position of influence to people who are willing to stand with a father's heart and with a mother's heart. Even the Apostle Paul says you have many teachers, but few fathers. So we got eloquent speakers nowadays, you know, and we've got guys has got some huge, massive followings. But when chaos shows up, the man or woman who knows what to do will emerge the leader just in his equals day. In Ezekiel, one one says he was among the people at the Brooke Khabar and God's word came to him, and then he began to pronounce. Guys were about to go into captivity. It's going to be bad. Fourteen months later, they were in captivity. They were now in Babylon. Everything that he said had come true. And so war had basically shown up to Israel and the people had been ushered out of Jerusalem. Fourteen months later, it says the leaders of Israel were sitting before Ezekiel, listening to his words. God shifted and transferred Ezekiel into a position of influence because he was willing to be faithful in the midst of a crazy, chaotic culture. Our culture now and cancel culture is looking for men who will be men and women who will be women, men who will stand and arise as fathers that will be willing to point at a wolf and say that is a wolf. The only thing worse than a wolf in sheep's clothing is a wolf in shepherds clothing. And so we have men who are willing to say that. And when women are willing to point that out and say, that's a wolf, here's what we can promise you. Give it another few years in the middle of this chaotic culture that we're seeing today. God is going to begin to transfer positions of influence, power and authority to those people who will be faithful to him. So I got that in Ezekiel eight. That's where I was just yesterday.
David Benham: Yeah, yesterday he was in his vehicle. I was in the book of Esther, just seeing how Mordechai was faithful, and Mordechai was faithful with his position of influence. And Esther was faithful, and Mordechai encouraged Esther the first time that Esther became the king's queen. Mordechai told her, Do not reveal who you are as one of the people of God don't reveal that. But then later on, he says, you better reveal it because salvation will come from the Jews, from someone else. What was the difference between the two moments? It's when the plot of Haymon, which, by the way, the word for him and his adversary. It's the same word for the devil in the New Testament. But when the devil's plot got into the head of the king, Mordechai said, you had better use your position of influence and authority and speak to the king. Right? He says. How do you know that you are saved for such a time as this or you obtained royalty for such a time as this? Well, I feel like for the last 40 or 50 years in the church, we have really attained royalty in the culture. We can be successful Christian entrepreneurs, look, we have what six book deals, me and Jason, we get paid all this money to speak and it's like, that's a real blessing. That is a privilege, that is an honor. But now, all the sudden, it's like the plot of Heyman. The adversary isn't of the head of governing leaders in media and Big Tech in our governing systems, as we're just seeing some of the principals that lead to human flourishing, twisted and now the sudden we're seeing cancel culture. Com, It's like, whoa, now's the time for the second part, which is you use your position of influence to speak up. And so that's what God's got me and after God's got Jason Ezekiel. And so hopefully that'll encourage some folks encourage me.
Henry Kaestner: Grateful for you guys. Excited to have you on the unmuted event, live interaction with entrepreneurs. And this is a great time for us. Just to mention that if you want to engage with some of the folks who come on board and share their stories, we have an event for that for you to come on board and to hear from the Benham brothers and others. So we're going to be releasing that and stay tuned to those newsletters at the Benham brothers referred to before. But I've been incredibly blessedness willing, William was saying. There's just so much here. I hope that you'll check out their podcast. I hope that you'll buy their books. I hope that you'll be challenged by what you heard today and just try to understand how you might be able to win some. We stand up for the things that you believe in, and for me, at least, just understanding the boldness and brokenness paradigm is super helpful. I love a good framework, so I'm grateful for that. So just make sure that I and the listeners got it. Boldness with our brokenness makes a bully. What was it that makes a bystander?
Jason Benham: Brokenness without brokenness, without boldness makes a bystander? Yeah, but then but then the connection is, is that boldness on the foundation of brokenness makes you a bridge between heaven and God. Heaven is not better. I'm sorry. Heaven on Earth. Yeah, God in the people who are disconnected from him. So that's what we want boldness on the foundation of brokenness. And it makes you a bridge where you become a gap standard between God and the people who are disconnected from him.
Rusty Rueff: 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 DAUG. 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 that best equips 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 Carl Keck. Well, you can see and hear more of his work at Summer Drugstore.com audio and editing by Richard Barley of Cornerstone Church in San Francisco.