Episode 317 - Faith Driven Students: Starting Strong Instead of Starting Over with Lara Casey Isaacson
In this episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast, Justin Forman and Lara Casey Isaacson discuss the launch of Faith-Driven Students, an initiative aimed at empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs through faith. They explore Lara’s entrepreneurial journey, the importance of pruning in business, and the significance of storytelling and imagination in shaping young minds. The conversation emphasizes the need for a supportive community and the role of parents in guiding their children towards their calling. They also highlight the changing landscape of entrepreneurship and the trust placed in business leaders by the younger generation.
Faith-driven entrepreneurship is about aligning business with God's purpose.
Pruning is essential for growth in both business and personal life.
Building a supportive team is crucial for new initiatives.
Empowering students to discover their gifts is a key focus.
Imagination plays a vital role in learning and growth.
Storytelling can inspire and change lives.
Parents have a significant role in guiding their children's faith journey.
The younger generation is increasingly interested in entrepreneurship.
Trust in entrepreneurs is higher than in politicians or churches.
Planting seeds of faith can lead to significant impact over time
If you'd like to hear more about the Faith Driven Students, go to faithdrivenstudents.org
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Justin Forman: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. It's Justin, great to be with you guys. You know, this is a fun and special episode that has been in the works for so long that we probably can't keep track or remember exactly when it started. You have heard little moments of different things about us talking about this new initiative and this new idea of what's been brewing here in Faith Driven Entrepreneur.
If you've been around the Faith Driven Entrepreneur team for a little bit, you know that oftentimes we will talk about an idea on a Friday and think, well, why not? Let's just ready, aim, fire and get started on Monday or maybe even Friday afternoon. And one of the things that has been a joy for us is to be operating a little bit in this stealth mode on kind of a new project. We've given some winks about it and God given us some winks back along the journey about this new thing, faith driven students. And it is a joy to be thinking about that. But it is also a joy to be doing this in partnership with not just a person, but really a whole team that this person has been building and so thrilled to announce that Lara Casey has joined the Faith Driven Entrepreneur team and faith driven students team to give leadership to this new initiative.
Lara Casey Isaacson: It is a joy to be here. Wow. I have chills everywhere. Justin, I'm so thrilled. Obviously, you and I have had many conversations, but this one feels very significant to finally invite so many of you listening into the conversation.
Justin Forman: Amen. Amen. It does indeed. It is one of those kind of God winks that, you know, I have—gosh, I probably said this on the show before, but I feel like the Holy Spirit in my home growing up was like this retired author that wasn't speaking, that has spoken. And yet over the past few years, it's just been undeniable to see how he speaks and how he moves and the way he winks and the way he's done that. And part of that was just the way that both we connected and even got a chance to reconnect just in one of those kind of God timing moments. And so I'd love to start there. We first connected when I'd seen a story that Mike shared, I think it produced through C12, and told a little bit just about kind of the journey that you are in, the kind of the crossroad moments there. And I'd love for everybody listening to hear a little bit more about that entrepreneurial journey that you've been on.
Lara Casey Isaacson: Yes, I have been an entrepreneur for over 20 years now, maybe a lot longer than that if I count lemonade stands and all the things—I do count them! Two of the most meaningful things that the Lord allowed me to be a part of was building Southern Weddings magazine truly from the ground up in a very scrappy way. I had no background in publishing or journalism, but God said, "You need to tell the stories of meaningful beginnings to married life." And to this day, it chokes me up talking about it just to be a part of that and so many couples' launching pads.
That led to our work then in Cultivate What Matters, which was helping women not just in a marrying stage of life, but in every stage of life to truly do just that, which is to grow the things that matter most little by little through our e-commerce business of intentional tools to help them do that. And so part of that journey for me was joining a C12 group. I'm really grateful to sit around that table with other entrepreneurs and share struggles and triumphs and mostly share faith driven entrepreneurship with them and what it looks like to live that out.
In that journey, through conversations around the table, I realized that I had a few too many things growing in one little garden plot. And so Mike and his team produced a story about how God led us to let go of Southern weddings to make room for what we couldn't yet see, which was the growth potential with cultivate what matters and the impacts potential. It's a different kind of math in God's world.
Justin Forman: Yeah, what a powerful clip. You know, I think we underestimate how emotional and how painful that pruning is, but letting go of something—you know, these ventures, they're like children. And maybe I'm speaking about this as the parent of teenagers that know at some point we're going to have to let go. And you're kind of anticipating that. But I think that's one of the things that struck me earlier. For Faith Driven Entrepreneurs who have been with us from the beginning, you've probably seen that story that we promoted on the website in some of the lessons. And you heard Lara speak about it at a conference years ago. So how was that process in the pruning, in the letting go? Like maybe if I were to phrase it this way, what do you know now that's not in that video? What are some of the things? As you look back on that, even in recently also couple of years ago in exiting Cultivate What Matters, what are some of the things you've learned post that?
Lara Casey Isaacson: Well first of all, when God says go, you go. And so what was it like? The answer is it's excruciatingly painful and probably the biggest blessing ever to be obedient to God's plans. It often does not feel good in the moment. Our human brain cannot possibly fathom what's ahead when we step out in faith, especially with business. Because as entrepreneurs, we're faced with facts, we're faced with numbers, we see, this is doing really well. Like, how in the world could you give this up? Or how could you prune this?
You know, Henry Cloud calls it necessary endings, and there are necessary endings for other things to grow and to bloom. And so for me, in that season, God was just saying this needs to grow, but it needs to grow in somebody else's hands and you need to make room for what's next. I had no idea what would be next. I mean, truly just Justin, just sitting here having this conversation—and I'm sure a lot of you listening, you're like, "Lara, what? Didn't see this curveball coming!" And yet it's so right. It's so God's plan. So I continue to learn that God's plans are always better than mine, that good things grow out of hard things and that little by little, he prepares us for what's next for his glory and for the good of other people.
Justin Forman: Yeah, well, if that's not a parenting lesson or a life lesson for all of us, I don't know what is. It is a fun story how God reconnected us just after a couple of years of doing some things together in the season that God was taking you through and then how he brought us together again. As we talked about it months ago, we released kind of a teaser video sharing a little bit of some of the ideas and some of the things that we're working on. But it's really fun to see how he has reconnected the dots. And, you know, I'd love for you just to speak to maybe a little bit of the season that the team is in because again, different from some of the things what we've done at Faith Driven, where we've had maybe one person go blaze a trail and find the seed, you've been building a team for this new initiative. Can you tell us a little bit about just kind of the team that's come together?
Lara Casey Isaacson: Yeah, I am so grateful. First of all, to you, Justin, you have really given me such trust and that is a gift because this mission matters so very much to me and I know to so many who are listening. And you may be sitting there thinking, "I don't even know what y'all are doing with Faith Driven Students, but yes, I'm in." And that's how I felt, you know. But then when you learn what we're creating to help teenagers and preteens answer their call to create and help them do it right, help them understand their gifts and their talents and be able to step into their next faithful steps—nothing gets me more fired up.
And I got to do it alongside people who share that. And so we're so, so grateful and blessed to be working alongside a team who is totally solely dedicated to this. Not to steal your thunder, Justin, but I do think that this is one of the most important things that the movement has ever done. I know Henry and I were having this dialog a few days ago at our leadership meeting in Texas recently about how when we equip this next generation of students, it's almost like they get this wide runway of proverbial compounding interests, right? It's like the potential for them to grow good things in their lives, in the lives of others, is so much greater than, say, some of us who had zig zag stories and came in to faith driven work later on in life.
Justin Forman: Yeah, I think that's a great place for us to put in a little bit more when we talk about the page turning moment. When we say about that, there's always an enthusiasm anytime something launches, whether that's faith driven or any entrepreneurial venture, you can get excited and have that recency bias to it. But, you know, I think it is important for us to recognize in the movement the conversation. Much of the last 20 years has been super encouraging. I mean, let's face it, faith in work has become somewhat of a normative conversation in the church. It's not uncommon for a pastor to have a message about the workplace, to talk about it.
Now there's room for it to grow, to go from the one-too-many messages to specifically saying, what does that look like differently for a teacher versus an entrepreneur? And when you get into the areas of work like the application or it changes. And yet if we specifically look at faith in work as a whole, for the last 20 years, we've been having to sort through and make sense of a mass that either we heard differently or we received differently from the church, from the Christian school, that we went to, the business school that we went to, what our parents modeled. There was something broken about that.
Justin Forman: And I think that we have to recognize not only has it been broken, but it's been exhausting. I mean, it's been exhausting because, you know, if you think about it, maybe in an analogy of much of the 20 years we've been like operating emergency room clinics and you can't last in that clinic in that high intensity for very long because it's a high exhaustion. And so what we've been doing, the movement, I think you could equate it to that.
We've been operating that emergency room clinic. But now when we shift, it's not that we're just turning the dials to a different age number. It's we're going from this moment of hospitals and E.R. rooms to what is healthy look like? What is healthy look like from the beginning? What does it look like to have your vitamins, to be healthy, to be training, to be working out from the very beginning? And as you said, I think what a moment. I mean, we're both parents. We're sitting here with teenagers. We're seeing our kids, and we're sitting there saying, and what a moment for our kiddos, our generation and the next generation to be able to learn from that, where they can start with a clear eyed view. They don't have to sort through the mess.
Lara Casey Isaacson: Well first of all when God says go you go. And my kids think I have the coolest job now because they think I work with Lecrae! But praise the Lord for people like Lecrae, who are using their gifts for God's glory and showing us what it looks like to really live on mission. You don't have to be a rap artist to live out God's call for you. But you could, you know, you could. And God will use the hardest parts of our stories to make beautiful things in the end. So I'm really grateful for that.
Justin Forman: There's a couple of things that as we come to a close here that I'd love to unpack a couple of the stats because I think there's something here that if you're a parent listening to this, you might be thinking, "Man, well, this is just Faith Driven Entrepreneurs wanting to think about Faith Driven Entrepreneurship for kids." I think we're missing it. There's a generational pendulum swing moment that's happening, and some of us are seeing it, some of us we're so busy that maybe we're missing it and sometimes we feel it. But data has a way of convincing us of it.
You know, there's a couple of things that that was brought out in that video. One, the days of going to college undecided and trying to figure it out in college are getting a whole lot more expensive, if not out of reach—like you could use to go to college, spend the first 18 months kind of thinking, what do I want to do? Now the run rate, the meter is going so fast that you need to probably go in with a little bit more of a framework.
Justin Forman: And here's the other thing that Lara just mentioned—I think that the younger generations' view of what it looks like to live out their faith is changing. And entrepreneurship, whether we want to call it the Shark Tank effect or whatever it is—in our home, you know, there are certain things you could watch on media, but you could watch Shark Tank because it was somewhat pretty family friendly and it sparked their imagination and generations are growing up on that.
I love the statistic that our team pulled that when they surveyed a thousand Gen Zers ages 18 to 25, they show that 84% of them selected entrepreneurship as the most exciting of 12 career paths that were presented and 75% ultimately want to become entrepreneurs. You know, when I think about maybe growing up, there was a lot of us that dreamed of being the next Michael Jordan. There was probably the phase where that continued to be the next massive LeBron, Serena, whoever it was. But now they've seen people like Musk and Bezos and other people that are shaping undeniably our society.
Lara Casey Isaacson: Yes, I think about Steven Felling at a recent conference I was a part of said, you know, hurting people aren't going to church anymore. They're going to work. And so there's so much possibility based on the statistic we see interest as well. But also there's so much redemptive possibility now because the people that we would have reached in our proverbial mission field in the pews here are now in their cubicles. And so for not just teens, obviously everyone, but for teens especially, to have their eyes open to the hurting and the possibilities there and the beautiful, redemptive possibilities there, that's pretty exciting. There's some problems to solve.
Justin Forman: I think that you're hitting on something there that—may we not miss that? There is a statistic that you've heard us at Faith Driven Entrepreneur talk about, and it dovetails right into what Lara and Steven are saying: a Gallup survey showed recently that levels of trust, as we look at the political cycle that we're in, we all know that the trust is low. The typical heroes that we've turned to have changed. In the past, the hero that we may have turned to would be the celebrity, may have been the politician. And yet we're finding statistics from Gallup which show that the level of trust in entrepreneurs and business leaders is nine times higher than politicians, is two times higher than church.
Lara Casey Isaacson: Full stop. That's crazy, right?
Justin Forman: Wild, isn't it? Like we're talking about this last week at another event—imagine if you could present this. I mean, let's face it: As parents, we want our kids to be self-sustaining and off the payroll at some point. And so there's an element we can't ignore that. But what parent doesn't also want to make sure that their kids are flourishing and enjoying what they're doing and seeing God work and alive in their life?
And when you think about that, we can't miss this moment that says the trust is there. And if you think about it from a ministry standpoint, imagine if you could say that you could grow the resources, the staff of whatever missions agency, church or whatever you're thinking about 20x. And imagine if those new people that you could deliver were twice as trusted as the churches that we grew up in. Imagine if you could say that those would be funded by the sales of their products. Like you think about God's redemptive plan, you think about the exponential of that. And that is what we're talking about. That's what's possible.
Lara Casey Isaacson: Yes, I want my kids to be a part of that. That's huge.
Justin Forman: It is. Well, it has been a wonderful conversation. When you think about Faith Driven Students, you're going to hear about that on the Faith Driven Entrepreneur website. But if you go to faithdrivenstudents.org, you of course can learn about the course. Give everybody some focus and some ideas in terms of timeline. Lara, what can we expect as we start to think about kind of when they can put their hands on this?
Lara Casey Isaacson: Yeah, so very soon you will get some things in your inbox. Number one, sign up for our newsletter. Be a part of this with us. We want to have conversations with you as we build this. So go to faithdrivenstudents.org. Put your name in there. We'd love to have you as a part of this family, even if you don't have teenagers in your house. We want you as a part of this. There's so many ways to get involved.
But timeline wise, starting around the first of the year, we are going to start putting some info out there for you to grab on to about our core course that will launch in April of 2025. And that core course is going to walk teens and pre-teens through this process of discernment and opening their eyes and then giving them the tools that they need and hopefully in the future, soon, some physical products and tools that they can use to continue their next steps of faith.
Justin Forman: And man, it's an exciting time indeed. So grateful for you, Lara. I want to finish just with one question that we ask every guest here on the podcast, and that is really where does God have you in this season? Where does God have you in His word? What is something a part of scripture or a piece of scripture that is coming alive and speaking to you as you think about maybe this season as a parent or the season of the journey of Faith Driven Students? Is there a part of God's word that's coming alive in a new way to you?
Lara Casey Isaacson: It certainly is, yes. Many of you who know me well are not going to be surprised by this, but Psalm 90:12: "teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom." That call to us says that our lives are short and they're meaningful. Our gifts are also meaningful. The lives of our children are so very meaningful. And I know we all feel that way. We feel that as parents especially.
But it is coming alive to me in new ways to think of this mission and think of the weight of this mission and the excitement of this mission that we get to plant seeds of faith that we do not know how they're going to grow over time. But we can trust in a very big God that when we plant these seeds of faith and open children's eyes to the possibilities that good things are going to grow from this. So, yes, God, please teach us to remember our days and give us a heart of wisdom as all of us collectively come alongside our students and help show them the way.
Justin Forman: Amen. Amen. Lara, it's a gift to do this with you. I'm grateful for it, the way it's brought us together. It's a lot of fun. All right, guys. Great being with you. We'll see you next episode.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We've got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There's no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven Entrepreneur talk.