Daivd Platt, Pete Ochs, Alan Barnhart, and Angel and Dan Rutledge dive into what it means to be stewards, not owners of their businesses.

Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Hey, friends, and welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We've been going through a mini series of sorts where we highlight the 12 traits that marked faith driven entrepreneurs. And today we're hearing from a variety of leaders who are diving in to what it means to be stewards of our businesses, not owners. Most entrepreneurs struggle with this because we so often want to control our circumstances. Instead of trusting God with them. That's why this year's faith driven entrepreneur live event looks at how we become free from the idle of control. The conference takes place at 8:30 a.m. wherever you are on September 13th, at watch parties and individual streams around the world, head to faith driven entrepreneur live dot org to learn more and register today. But for now, let's start the show.

Henry Kaestner: Pete, you call yourself an entrepreneur by birth, and I've heard you say that before, and I'd love for you to just to give our listeners a quick flyover of your early days as an entrepreneur. Businesses that you started early, you get started very early and what those successes and failures look like.

Pete Ochs: Yes, So I'm a fifth generation entrepreneurs, if you can believe that or not. I came from a long line of parents and grandparents who started businesses and ran businesses. So my dad was a farmer and an investor. I went to University of Kansas, got a degree in business, I came out, got in the banking business, and I did that for eight years. I think one of the most important things that I have done in my life at the age of 25, I read a book on how to write a personal plan, and I wrote my first personal plan at the age of 25. And in that I put that I wanted to be an entrepreneur when I was 30. And so my 29th birthday rolled around and it was towards year end. And when I'm doing my annual personal planning and I went to my wife and I said, Hey, Deb, we've got one year to figure out. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. And so I begin that process. I will tell you that at this time I had two older mentors and I spent a lot of time with them. I will tell you that those two mentors are still alive. I've not made a major decision over the last 40 years without asking them. One's 90 and one's 93. So anyway, they step me through this whole process of going into business for myself, and they really did it from a godly perspective, which I will tell you was very powerful. I didn't understand the power of it. So I'm just a big fan of mentors and I'll put that plug in right now. So I started my own business. You know, my work hours doubled and I took a 75% paycut for the privilege of working twice as large as very interesting. First few years were difficult. The first business I started was actually an investment banking company, where we were the middleman in middle market company trends. So I went from making $40,000 a year in the commercial banking business to $10,000 a year for the first three years in the investment banking. So over the next ten years, I had a terrific run towards the end of that ten year stretch. We bought our first business, so we started moving from being the middleman to actually being a principal. And the first business we bought was a bank that was in trouble. And God really taught me a lot of lessons about faith. It was during that experience that I really came to understand that God's Word was true and powerful and meaningful, and it was something I ought to be reading every day. So that was really powerful. During the next ten years, we moved more out of the investment middleman business and we started acquiring companies. So essentially what we would do is put down $200 on $1,000 deal. And in five years, our goal was to walk away with $2,000, so we would turn $200 into 2000. And we did that a number of times. In fact, several times did better than that at the beginning of that run. God used several things to get my attention, and he brought me from the concept of ownership to stewardship. And when that happened, it really changed the way I did business. So while we were making lots of money being entrepreneurs, I really became possessed with giving money away, and I equated financial generosity with stewardship, which ultimately was wrong. And then in 2001, 911 showed up and all these great little businesses we had weren't so great. And we came very close to bankruptcy. And I think if I were to summarize my life up to the age of 50, I spent the first 40 years pursuing success, the next ten years being significant. And at the age of 50, God, said Pete, It's not about significance. It's about surrender. It's about being all in for me. And it's not just about making money and giving it away. So from that time till now, I've tried to view life from a more surrendered perspective.

William Norvell: I want to talk about stewardship versus ownership. You know, I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders end up asking them this question a lot. It's easy for me to comprehend God's resources, right? I'm a steward. I can say that out loud, but I also work hard. I feel like I do things. I have a family, you know, we want to do things, but I'm interested in how you have thought about this through your life, how you think about kind of the basic question, you know, how much is enough? You know, I've heard some different variations of this. I'd love to know, how does God take you through that journey?

Pete Ochs: Yeah, very interesting question. The journey for me probably began 20 years ago when I was at a conference with three or four other entrepreneurs, and the speaker ask us how much was enough? We all took that to mean how much is enough from a net worth perspective. Interestingly enough, we all got. Together a few months later and spent a weekend trying to answer that question. So on Sunday when we were leaving, the goal was that we'd all go around the room and we'd say a number, which we all did. And then our agreement was that we would get back together every year thereafter, share our personal financial statements. And if we exceeded the how much is enough number, we would give that away. So, no, we really agreed that, you know, if we exceeded those numbers, we need to start giving it away. Well, we got back together the next year and the next year. Well, amazingly enough, we all exceeded those numbers and we all own privately held companies and none of us were called to sell our company and give it away. So we began to ask, what does this mean? And here was what we came to realize. And I think this is very important. It's not how much is enough from a net worth perspective, it's how much should I be paid to manage the assets God's given me? If God's given you the ability to make money, go make as much money as you can. He's given you that gift. Go steward it well. The question is, how much should we be paid to do that? What most of us do is when our net bottom line continues to increase and get very big in these privately owned companies, our standard of living follows it. So a few years later, all of us said, let's hold each other accountable to maintaining a middle class lifestyle the best we can. And if we grow in earnings and net worth beyond that, let's maintain our lifestyle, let's cap our lifestyle, but let's let our business assets run well. And when you do that, guess what happens? You have lots of discretionary income for giving or reinvesting or whatever. So over the last 20 years, there's been a handful of get together. Some new folks have come in. And so every so often we get together and just share with each other what our lifestyles are. And we ask each other, You think I'm doing too much, too little, so on and so forth. It's been a very healthy thing.

William Norvell: It's amazing to have that level of accountability and just questions. I mean, I feel like that's if entrepreneurs are listening. I don't know if you have some other piece of advice as you've been on your entrepreneurial journey, but one of those I hear is just having a group of people around you to ask you questions to dig in. Community is so powerful and maybe what's an encouragement for you, for some of our entrepreneurs, to just maybe find community or maybe ways that you've found that uniquely how God's brought the right people around you on your journey?

Pete Ochs: You know, I think if you want to have friends, be a friend. Oftentimes, I think we sit back and as entrepreneurs, we're so engrossed in our business and whatever. We don't take the time to go to conferences, to reach out, to take a little bit of time, to get to know people and know friends. I think if we do that, I look at the conferences that a lot of us go to and my goodness, there are people that you'll get to know there that are going to be great friends and you start walking that road with them. And if it's meant to be, then you'll go deep with them. William, I would say one other thing. I think here is the question for entrepreneurs, and it goes along with the how much is enough question. I think the question for those of us who are in business and particularly entrepreneurs, is the economic capital. Question is how do we allocate the bottom line? And there's, I think really only four places where the economic, the net operating income can be allocated to. One is Uncle Sam. You're going to pay taxes. Number two is how much do I retain in the business to grow the business? The third one is how much am I going to dividend out to the shareholders? And the fourth one is how much am I going to give away really All your discretionary income and the privately held business should go in one of those four categories. So my dilemma is always this how much do I retain and grow versus how much do I give away? And I don't think there's a firm answer. We have businesses that throw off lots of cash, so we have excess. We don't need it to grow and we give that away. Other times when we're growing, let's say in Mexico, etc., we may not have the dollars to give away, but we've gone from 100 people to 200 people and look at the impact we can have on our employees. So I don't think there's a set formula, but I do think we constantly need to ask that question almost on an annual basis. And that's part of your maybe social and spiritual capital planning. How much should I retain versus how much should I give away?

William Norvell: Pete As we come to a close, we always find a lot of joy and just finding out where God has you in his words.

Pete Ochs: Thanks, William. You know, I moved out of all operating duties a couple of years ago in the business, and I have spending a lot of time just thinking about what is a high impact business or virtuous business look like. And I keep thinking my life is going to smooth out and everything is going to be great. And I even find at the age of 67 that courage is some. Thing that I need to continue to have you get in your later years and you think life is going to be nice and easy and this and that. But as long as you're in the game, I think it takes courage. And I think as we look at the world and as crazy as it gets, I think if we look at Washington and then we just we just look at all the problems in the world. As Christians, we have got to exercise courage. I've been the last month or two, literally in my quiet times, I've been asking myself the question, how can I be a courageous person? And I've come up with I'm a famous process guy. If you know me for 2 minutes, I'll be talking about some kind of a process. And so here are the five things that lead to courage. The first thing is truth. We've got to seek the truth. The truth will make us free. I don't care whether it's economic, social, spiritual marketplace. We have to know the truth when you know the truth. And you can go to the second step, which is faith, you'll start believing it. And as you start believing the truth, God gives you through the Holy Spirit this ability to start living it out. It's what I call character. So it's truth, faith and character. You work through that system. And then I think the fourth step after you've started living it out is I think God begins to give you a vision for your business or for whatever He put on your heart. And as you get that vision and for me, I get really excited about vision. There comes a point when I say that vision is so big, I don't think I can do that. And that's where the fifth step humility comes in. And if we understand that this isn't going to happen unless God comes along beside us and makes it happen, then it's going to work. And then at that point in time, you are going to probably run into a roadblock. There is going to be something that happens in this journey of entrepreneurship. So as you start your business, start with truth. Believe it through faith. Start living it down with character. Pray that God gives you a great vision and then pray that He gives you the humility to understand that it's only going to happen with him.

Henry Kaestner: So your story starts when your mom and your dad had a small business. Ten employees and you're trying to figure out whether you going to join them or not. If I remember, tell us the story about you and Katherine at the University of Tennessee. And as you wrestled with, is this something that we do? Do you become a business owner or not? How'd that work out?

Alan Barnhart: Yeah, great question. When I was in college, I had grown a lot in my faith. About four years in college, I'd learned basically I connected to some other guys who were growing in their faith, and we learned to study scripture together and pray together and came out of that time with some of my friends. Sam Allen. He studied engineering to go back and work in the family business, but I do not want to do full time ministry. I mean, go to seminary or go on staff with young life or do something significant and anybody can do this construction stuff. And it was I prayed about that. I said, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do. Go wherever you want me to go. And the more I pray, the more I realized that, you know, all of us who are followers of Jesus are in full time ministry. You know, all of us should be using our skills and our gifts full time to serve God. But not all of us necessarily have to get our paycheck from a charity or a church. And I just felt in God's gift to me more in the area of business and engineering. And so I decided that my full time ministry was going to be back in the family business.

Henry Kaestner: So what did that look like in terms of just wrestling with that? And were you married to Katherine then or were you dating? And and there was some struggle that you guys had together about how to choose your vocation?

Alan Barnhart: Yeah, that was a little later. We weren't dating at that point. I spent the next two years working in the family business and reading through the Bible to see what it had to say about business and went through the whole Bible. A couple thousand verses that I cataloged to say, What is what is God telling me about money and business and and how that squares with my faith and came away from that with some real concerns that business success could be detrimental to my spiritual life. And during that time, I also fell in love with Katherine. And so we got engaged to be married. And then we went off to a missions conference and we heard about the need for in some parts of the world where missionaries weren't allowed to go and but engineers could get in kind of as undercover missionaries. And so we started planning to do that when we got married and six months later we got married and we were trying to learn Arabic and prepared to go to Saudi Arabia. And in the midst of that, my parents came to us and said, We've decided we're going to leave the business and do, do their sailing adventure. And if I wanted to go on the mission field, they would just sell the business. But if I wanted to stay and run the operation with my brother, then we could do that. And so we kind of set up a quandary for us. What does God want us to do? And, you know, should we be going to the mission field or is this our mission field? And after a lot of prayer and time and discussion, we decided that this was our mission field. If we could come up with a good partnership with my brother, which is a tricky thing to do. And so we went through a process to decide whether we would be good partners.

Henry Kaestner: Tell us about that process. What did that look like?

Alan Barnhart: Well, you know, I'd mentioned I'd read all these verses and I'd come away with a fear of wealth and a I guess, a real conviction about stewardship. And so as we started talking about it, I said, if we're going to have a company, the company, it needs to belong to God and we need to put some safeguards in our life to make sure that business success doesn't hurt us. And my brother was a believer and he was interested in this, and we were kind of exploring it together. And we ended up coming up with basically a commitment with our wives that the company belongs to God and whatever he does with it, it is his. Remember, it was a real small mom and pop business and mom and pop were leaving and I was a 25 year old kid and we didn't even know if we'd even survive the first year. But just in case, we want to make sure that we had committed it to God. And the second thing we did is we decided to protect ourselves against wealth by putting a cap on our lifestyle and say we're going to draw a certain salary from the company and live a certain lifestyle. And if God chooses to prosper the business, we're not going to see that as a call to increase lifestyle, but instead see it as an opportunity to use the dollars that God provides to the business for kingdom purposes. And so so that was our commitment to each other and to God before we started the business. And we're so thankful that we made those commitments at that point in the game because we had no idea what was about to happen next. And it headed off what I think would have been a lot of conflict.

Henry Kaestner: So tell us more about that, that agreement early on. And by the way, I love the statement that you said that we were 25 years old and we didn't know if it's going to last a year, but we knew that we wanted to dedicate it to God. Tell us about that conversation, about the fear of the money part and what did that agreement look like? What did it mean for you to cap your earnings? Walk us through that.

Alan Barnhart: Yeah. So, I mean, the verses over and over again, there are so many verses of God saying it's hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the parables are the guy with the bigger barns and on and on. We saw these warnings. And so when we started talking about how to protect. Ourselves. We said, you know, let's let's decide what lifestyle God wants us to live. And it's not a Mother Teresa lifestyle. We have everything we need to function in our society, but let's try to not keep ramping it up. And so to have agreed to that on the front end. In one sense, it may seem confining, it may seem like it has kind of squeezes us or takes away some of our freedom. We found it to be the opposite, that putting those constraints in our life led to freedom. And I think that sometimes living without constraints sounds like freedom, but it actually leads to bondage. You know, my brother and I have been partners for 33 years, and we've never argued about money. Wow. Yeah. And that crazy. My wife and I've been married for 34 years. We've never argued about money. We have just found that the freedom of living a relatively simple life, not a sacrificial harsh life at all, but a relatively simple life, and use whatever access God creates in our business to either grow the business or to use it for kingdom work. And that is really neat us together.

Rusty Rueff: That's amazing. And we could stop right there and say there's a lesson for all of us, You know, if we never had to argue about money, well, that's a beautiful thing. I just want to say I admire the approach that you've taken, and a lot of our listeners are young entrepreneurs who are just trying to make it right. They jump in and they say, you know, they have these dreams and aspirations, but they're just trying to make it. What advice do you have for them about how early they should have this conversation about a finish line or a definition of what success looks like? Does that start day one or when do you think that should kick in?

Alan Barnhart: Oh, yeah, I think day one or day zero. Go to Scripture and see what Jesus said about it, about money. And Jesus said a lot. He spoke about money a ton. Come to grasp the concept that I'm not an owner, I'm not my own. I've been bought with a price. I have no rights. I'm a steward who's trying to figure out how to steward what God gives me, the skills and gifts and talents that He gives me and commit all that on the front end. It is so much easier. I think we're so thankful that we made those commitments on the front end. I think if we had not, we would have really gotten mess and so we're so thankful. I'd say as soon as you can lock things in, you know, and this is not for necessarily always for business guys. I mean, I think this could be any person in any profession to create a lifestyle where you consume what you need, produce more than you consume, and use the difference to further the kingdom and to help others. You know, being a kingdom investor is an exciting life and being a consumer, you know, we're not built to be satisfied with stuff any other world tells us. If you have this amount of this stuff, you'll be happy. And and when we stop and think about we know it's not true, but we still have this natural tendency to pursue it. And what we wanted to do is just call that out for the lie that it was and say we're going to on purpose, not fall into that trap.

Rusty Rueff: And then how did you come to the number? Right? Because I think that's the thing that makes me most curious and I'm sure other people do, because as you define that finish line in your lifestyle, with that came an amount of wealth that you said, That's all we need. How did you find that number?

Alan Barnhart: Well, in concept, I used the illustration of the Army cook, and I would say that none of us would believe that the Army cook should eat better than the rest of the troops. He shouldn't keep the good food in his kitchen and eat it and send rice and beans out to the troops. With that concept, we would say we're all part of the body of Christ and we have no right to anything. And so let's figure out what lifestyle we can live, where we will have the tools that we need to function. And I'm not saying that everyone's lifestyle is the same. I mean, some people need a different set of tools to function in the role that they have than others, but it's not coming from a right because I earned it. It's coming from a functional need. So from that we just said, you know, where are other people in our Sunday school class maker? What does the teacher make? And these guys are surviving and we can live on that. And so we said it like that. Now, the number changed over the years a lot when we set this up. We had no kids and we ended up with six kids. And so the number changed over the years. But the concept, the basic lifestyle stayed the same.

Justin Foreman: So, David, one of the questions that we love for you to since you're working in a church, leading a church, you've looked at this, you know, in a global missional level. But what do you see when we think about generosity and the church? What do you see or, you know, like some of the highlights? And then what are some things you feel like we could definitely work on that we're missing?

David Platt: Oh, Right. So highlights. When when I think about generosity, I would say where my heart is most encouraged as a pastor is when I see generosity as the overflow of someone's intimacy with Jesus. And why I start there in my mind is because I really do think generosity is a discipleship issue. I mean, what did Jesus say where your treasure is that your heart will be also, our treasure is a reflection of our hearts. And so a heart that is enthralled with Jesus and with his purpose in the world is going to be clear and the way we use our treasures. So I think that can be frightening in the sense that a lack of generosity is indicating there's something missing when it comes to intimacy with Jesus. And to start there and not to think. So that's where whenever we talk about generosity, just want to be very careful not to start to go going immediately to here's all these needs. You have so much. So, yes, there's that picture. There's that picture. But it's even deeper than that. It's just the overflow of the love of Jesus in us. And so I love it. I love it when I see someone growing. And I think about a guy I was having lunch with last week. He is super successful in business and he came to know Jesus a few years ago and it has totally transformed his life the way he uses his resources, even the way he puts it, his hope, like he's excelling in business. But his hope is clearly not in his achievements in business and the money he's making, and he sees it all as a bigger picture. How can I make the love of Christ known in the world like so? That's what causes my heart to rejoice, to see somebody in love with Jesus. He's sitting there with his like Bible at the table. When I get there. He's so in a Psalm 63 way. That's where I was in my time with the Lord this morning, just so in love with Thirsting for God and then longing for His life to be used for the glory of God in the world using the overflow of His work that He started entrepreneurially toward that end. I love that. And so what concerns me as a pastor is when I see people either just not being generous and I just see that as a reflection of, okay, there's something wrong, something missing that born again kind of moment in their heart, or maybe some giving, but it's almost obligatory or feel like I just want to appease my conscience or check off a box when that's no or close to all. Now, God will still use that first word, but it's nowhere close to all that God has for that person and for fruit that He wants that person to be a part of bearing in the world.

Justin Foreman: Yeah. Love it. Fantastic. Thank you, David.

Henry Kaestner: Yeah, I love that, too. And one of the reasons I love it is because it took me a long time to be able to reconcile the selfish ambition that I have felt. And part of that in just really looking for joy and, of course, also [....] and cliche. But, you know, in working on Wall Street in the beginning part of my entrepreneurial journey, looking for satisfaction and joy and all the things that I thought the world had to offer. But one of the things that fueled my generosity story has been a selfish ambition of experiencing joy and finding that intimacy with God in a taste of it and wanting more. And so I had wrestled with that kind of selfish ambition for a while and thinking, Oh, I've got to die to self and I've got to be a sacrificial giver. And I think that there's elements in Scripture that I think informs some of that, but that when I was able to reconcile the fact that I just really wanted to know God and to be with him, and then this kind of reinforcing loop as I got to know him and how much he loved me more and more, it made me feel more and more generous. I felt more and more joy and I'm like, Well, I'm an investor. I invest in pattern recognition. As I get closer to God, I feel more joy, I feel more generous. And that reinforces this whole thing. And I get more and more joy when I reflect back to my prior life, which was 20% joy. I think back about that, and that's what I want for entrepreneurs too. When you're working, you talked about this one entrepreneur that got that. You must also see lots of rich young rulers that don't get it and leave and always sad. Could you riff on that a little bit about what you see as the obstacles of people really understanding this intimacy with Christ, particularly among the business owners and the entrepreneurs that you've ministered to?

David Platt: I'm so glad you mentioned that Henry. Like, my mind was just immediately going to the rich and ruler. And specifically when it comes to joy and there's another person that's come to my mind. So yes, rich young ruler. I mean, that's what I love about what Jesus says to him, Go sell all you have, give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. Like just to think about that. That's not a call. Ultimately, it's not a call to sacrifice. To have treasure in heaven is not a call to sacrifice.

David Platt: A call to be smart.

David Platt: Smart. He's basically saying materialism is dumb, like you don't want to bank your life on that, which won't last, like bank your life on that which is going to last. Like I'm calling you so much better treasure and not just treasure in heaven as far as fruit, but come follow me. Like Jesus is the ultimate treasure. It's like the Matthew 13:44, right? The man who's walking in the field stumbles upon a treasure that he realizes is worth more than everything else he has put together, and nobody else knows it's there. So he kind of covers it up and he goes and he sells everything he has. The text says, with gladness, with joy, everything has. And I can just imagine people saying, you're nuts. Like, why are you buying that field over there with joy and selling everything you have? And he's like, Yeah, I got a hunch. And he smiles inside because he knows he's found something that is worth losing everything for. And that's, that's what's after. Like, let's see, like Jesus is, is this good? His purpose is in the world are going to last for the next 10 trillion years and beyond. So what greater joy can there be than to follow him wholeheartedly, not reserve, not kind of in the world, kind of for Jesus like wholeheartedly. You've got my all and to be a part of what he is doing in the world for his glory. Like why would anyone who is smart like now want to sign up for that? Anybody who is a wise investor, which I'm assuming most everybody listening to this knows some things about wise investing. But I guess that's the question. Do we know things about wise investing based on what the world defines as wisdom or what God defines as wisdom? And to really say, like wise investing is treasure in heaven, wise investing is found. It's all my heart. And so the other person that immediately comes to my mind, I think about this and this is a perfect example of born again, like really born again. So he has spent decades in the church as a successful businessman. I mean, he's the kind of guy who was asked to be on every church committee, especially when it comes to finance or stewardship stuff or building stuff, because he was going to lead the way financially in that. And so he gave but he ended up coming to our church and he came to a point where he realized he's just been playing on the surface like he didn't really know Jesus. He didn't have a love for Jesus. A relationship with Jesus was walk walking Jesus. So he came to Christ. I mean, he was baptized after decades in the church and so literally born again and everything that flows from that. So he is now one of the most generous people I know who is serving in all kinds of different ways. And he and his wife both. I mean, they're making disciples in their life. They're making disciples through their giving. And I mean, they're like, there's nothing better than this. Their only regret is they didn't realize this decades sooner. And so I just have seen that right now. I'm thinking another couple in our church family, like they were just living the dream, doing all kinds of vacations everywhere. And then God got a hold of their hearts. They had that kind of moment and they began to realize, okay, there's something more important to live for. And now, originally from Ethiopia, the way they're living for the spread of the gospel in the [.....] of Africa right now is awesome. And I was doing an interview with him that day and just the fruit of their life. I could tell you all kinds of stories, but I said, Do you miss you miss your former life? And and she said, No way. Like there is nothing greater than what we're doing around. Like, we have so much. There's a deeper, greater joy. And this is the life God's given us the opportunity to live. So anyway, that's a little riff on what Jesus said [.....]

Henry Kaestner: This is awesome because we've got an audience mostly of entrepreneurs and investors, and I love your focus on going to where the gospel hasn't gone and where the physical needs are the greatest. Is there something that you might lend as an encouragement to entrepreneurs that have their gifting is in business, it's in innovation and creation, it's in solving problems, it's in hiring people, it's in bringing products and services to market. Do you see a role for the entrepreneur and the investor in investing in the marketplaces of places like that? Or is it just, you know, these are secret places, There's just too hard and just really the answers, you know, we just need your financial resources. Is there something bigger there or am I just artificially contriving that?

David Platt: No, there's defintely something bigger there. I think, yes, financial resources. But there's no question in my mind, like radical where actually the process of putting together, I'm not sure what we call it, but one of the names we use is Innovation Summit, but basically to try to get leaders along these lines in the same room from different domains, thinking through how can we because yeah, how can we use God's grace in our lives and professionally the gifts he's given and the opportunity she has opened up in a globalized marketplace. To be a part of the spread of the gospel in those places in all kinds of different ways. So, yes, I think about these global cities where there is so much opportunity to be in part of work there and to do that with the gospel in our hearts and the lives of people who are involved in that work and global cities around the world where unreached people are. And so it's just I feel like for far too long we've looked at sort of 3 billion people who have little to no knowledge of the gospel that doesn't just need a select group of missionaries who over here who are thinking about how to get the gospel to them. That needs the whole body of Christ thinking through how do we use Marshall all of our resources, gifts, experiences, opportunities to be a part of the spread of the gospel in those places, to yes, invest, to work, to create business, to do that in all kinds of different places around the world in ways that are going to open doors for the seeds of the gospel to spread. Yes, yes, yes. And so that's what I'm really passionate about, is why we want to do this innovation seminar or whatever you call it, because I just think, yeah, the whole body of Christ got to be part of this. And I would say even more like traditional missionaries not invited into a lot of these places, but successful entrepreneurs are totally invited. The doors are open there. I'm not going into a lot of these places with my credentials from seminary, but people are listening to this can get into all kinds of places that I can't get in the world. And so what happens when that whole force is unleashed, in a sense? Yeah, I think about the audience for this. Like, if people who are listening to this right now will get that the global purpose of God, the spread of His gospel and glory among the nations is not a compartmentalized program in the church for a couple of people who are like call of that. But it is actually the purpose for which we have breath. And the reason why we have been given these gifts, that's what I want to be a part of fueling like Lord, use me to pour gasoline on that kind of movement.

Rusty Rueff: So many times. Those of us who advise or invest or get involved in startups and work with founders, you know, they come from a place of, you know, what's the problem they're trying to solve. But so many times they try to solve a problem that's not their problem. Right. And you go back to him say, well, no, no, no, no. You need to try to solve something where you have a pain point and that's what you all did, right? You had that problem. Then you come up with a technology solution to that. But yet you do it without, you know, the benefit of graduating from Stanford or getting MBAs and, you know, entrepreneurship. And do you think that you know what you've done with sign up genius? I mean, should be an inspiration for aspiring entrepreneurs who they don't have MBAs or decades of experience doing one thing, you know, either in business or in technology, but come from someplace else. But yet you did it. So they should be able to do it, right?

Angel Rutledge: Absolutely. Yes. In fact, I hope that's what people take from us, is, you know, if Dan and I could start a company and God can use that to impact all those people, millions of people using it every year, then anyone could be an entrepreneur. They really could, you know, thinking about what it was like for me growing up, I never saw a woman who was an entrepreneur. So for me, it was not even in my, like if somebody asked me, could I do it? I would have said, Of course, I no that's not something that I would ever do, but I just never even thought about it. Beyond that, like you said, we didn't have the MBAs. I had no business education, Dan didn't have a business education. Neither of us had worked in a corporate setting. You know, I had been a teacher in a middle school and then had written novels and parenting articles and, you know, was not in the corporate world at all, and certainly didn't have all the financial resources to start a business. So it definitely should be encouraging.

Rusty Rueff: And what about how your faith helped you through that? You know, not only maybe helping you work through the shortcomings of knowledge and experience, but also in trying to make some of the business decisions that you made. And as Henry said at the beginning of the podcast, you know, you've scaled I mean, you went from an idea to a very, very large scale. I'm interested about how your faith was just a part of that process.

Angel Rutledge: I think that was better in some ways that we didn't have the MBA training, the business training, all of that, you know, the accounting. It was certainly difficult at times and we made a lot of mistakes. And our employees were super gracious, customers were gracious. But because we didn't have those things, our faith was what led us, which is really how we should work in any business, whether we're already competent in it or not. So for us, we really just, you know, fell back on the lessons that we already lived out our lives and said, okay, what is God's say about how do you steward resources and how do you use money and how do you treat people, you know, how do you work through conflict and ask for forgiveness and, you know, how do you put in time on the things that God has called you to be excellent at? You know, and even bigger, like, how do you handle tough circumstances, Right? Like, all of those things are much better to seek the Lord in and allow him to teach and guide us. And then our skill set, which needs to be excellent, follows that. But skills I've always found with the people that we've hired, like skills you can usually teach in a matter of time, but those other things are very difficult to teach.

Dan Rutledge: Yeah, just an example of that. Like you're just trying to make decisions based on what you think is important, based on what you learned in your faith. So like later in a company, like when it got bigger, we had more advanced business experts come in and analyze everything. You know, they're kind of looking at things. I remember they were like, you know, why do you have so much customer service? Like, you know, companies don't have this much customer service as a percentage of the company. And we're like, well, I don't know what companies have for customer service percentage. But I do know that like the whole purpose of our company is to help these people. And therefore, like, we made it a priority to make sure that they were always taken care of. And so like some things you did wrong, wrong, but they were influenced by just, you know, a biblical worldview of putting people over profits and people over product and things like that.

Rusty Rueff: Right. So you mentioned Angel about difficult decisions, difficult situations that you may have not known how to deal with at the time. And one of. Those in any open platform today is platform moderation. Right? So you could take go fund me, you could look at Facebook, you can look at reddit. It doesn't matter what these open platforms are, they're either taking flack for over moderating or under moderating. Right. And so I assume that you probably struggled with that, too, with sign up genius when groups would pop up and how those might be organized and would those fit with your values, your mission statement, not with your mission statement or values. Can you talk us through if that did happen, give us some examples and how you work through them.

Dan Rutledge: Yeah, I can probably speak to that. Actually. The scale is a challenge and I feel for some of these companies, you know, like at the end of when we were leading the company and working in the office, we were doing, you know, 200000 to 500000 events per month with 10 to 50 people in each of that. So you've got millions of people interacting on these events and transparently like we had 30 to 35 staff managing that. So the first thing you have to do is you have to build systems just to protect against malicious attacks, because certainly there will be malicious attempts to use the tool, I don't know, for spam or to get access to like all the people that are using it. So you build a lot of that in terms of like the events that are actually being organized. You know, we have some discussion on this because like occasionally things would come up not a lot because we were working with schools and churches and nonprofits. So most everything was like so neat to be a part of. But occasionally, sometimes things would come up and people would be like, Are we okay with that? Having that event on the site? And I don't know if this is right. Our perspective was that we are not deciding which events are right and wrong or whether someone can use the tool we are offering the service we will try to protect from malicious intent. So just like Target doesn't check IDs at the door to see what you believe in on whether you can come and shop, but they would put a metal detector to prevent you from doing something malicious. Or if you're in the store and you start causing a problem, they would escort you out. And that was kind of how we assumed it. Because just like I have many neighbors and friends that believe differently than I do, but they're still my friends and I still serve them, interact with them, and we would provide the service and not make those judgments. But, you know, there were certainly some things that we didn't promote. You know, you have marketing that you're like pursuing certain verticals, like we might pursue growth in the church vertical or in the sports team vertical, and then there would be other things that like they may use it, but we're not pursuing that market aggressively. So that's kind of how we handle that. I'm sure other people have different thoughts, but that was our perspective.