Episode 305 - Surrendering to Trade Up
The conversation explores the themes of surrender and significance in the context of being a faith-driven entrepreneur.
The hosts discuss the importance of surrendering personal ambition and aligning one's vocation with God's purpose. They also emphasize the need for community and the dangers of pursuing worldly definitions of success. The conversation also touches on the upcoming Faith Driven Entrepreneur Conference and the hope that attendees will walk away with a deeper understanding of the true significance found in surrendering to God's plan.
Find more at https://faithdrivenentrepreneurconference.org/
If you'd like to hear more about the Faith Driven Entrepreneur community groups, go to faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/groups.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
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.
Joey Honescko You're listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast, a show dedicated to the movement of founders and leaders around the world who are using their businesses for the glory of God and the good of others. Let's get into it. All right. Usually we do our nice little welcome to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, blah blah, blah, but we just found out that Henry was in the same room as my dad and my two little brothers. Or I guess it was more like an outdoor room. Giant space. They were there yesterday. Henry, talk a little bit about you were just seeing the the Rolling Stones two days ago. Yeah, man.
Henry Kaestner Yeah, it was incredible. It was just, you know, in 1990, early 90s, my parents came out to visit me in New York, and I was just I couldn't get off of work, and I was working hard. But the Rolling Stones were going to be in Madison Square Garden, so I bought my parents tickets. They'd never seen them. And I grew up hearing all these stories about the Rolling Stones and their music. And of course, I knew it. And, and, and I sent them off to Madison Square Garden believing that this might be their last chance to see the Rolling Stones live. And that, of course, was more than 30 years ago. And when I was there on, Wednesday night, having flown in from the Christian Economic Forum, just in, I sprinted from the Uber to the gate, and then I had to run all the way around the stadium while they're playing start me up and I'm like, I can't believe I'm missing this. But, as I got in there, Mick Jagger then welcomed the crowd and noted the fact that, they had first played in San Francisco, in the Bay area. They they'd been there before. They were there 59 years ago. And that's really that's really impressive that in the fact that Keith Richards is now looking young for his age. Also impressive. But it shows it, you know, what if wouldn't it just longevity might look like over time. And I can't get overly theological about it. But these guys have been doing their craft together for a long time, and that's just awesome. And, you know, I guess, you know, do I get my inspiration for working with the faith driven team and hoping that we might be able to stick together after 60 years, and that my inspiration comes Rolling Stones wise, way too corny and hokey. But there's something in there.
Justin Forman We surely we're not announcing a music label that I don't know about here. We're not. We're not making big plans to announce, like Henry and Rolling Stones or anything. Is there a surprise we're going to drop here?
Joey Honescko No, no record label. But I am excited to welcome our guest, Mick Jagger on the Faith Revolution. No, I'm just kidding. It's not. He's not here. He's busy dancing and being highly energetic, but. Man. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, obviously we can real quickly go, sermon illustration with the longevity of, of a group of people that have been together for 60 years or whatever. But I think to your point, Henry, like, it feels corny, but there's also a element of truth to that, of committing to a people and a mission and a vision. And this does feel like I'm, like, really pulling a Segway out. But we are talking about our conference and the conference theme in this episode, and this will be the the fifth anniversary of the conference. And that's five straight years, not quite 60, but we're getting closer and closer. And so it does make me think like, you know, you go back, listen to the one of the most impressive things to me about the Rolling Stones. I promise. I haven't gone off topic yet, but one of, one of the most impressive things to me about the Rolling Stones is their ability to make new music. Like, it's like they don't just, like, continue to coast off of Paint It Black Forever, like, which is a great song and still holds up. They actually continue to innovate and see new things. And if you listen to their early albums and you listen to like the stuff that's come out in the last couple of years, it's progressed and changed and there's been a lot of, constant innovation. And yeah, that that does, ironically and not trying to be too cheesy, but it does make me think about the way that when the conference started, that was 2020 and the team was much smaller, the movement was much smaller, like a lot of stuff has changed. So I just would think it'd be fun for a second to go back to where you guys who were there in 2020 and the first iteration of this, what was that like?
Justin Forman Yeah. Well, it's it's crazy when you think about it. I mean, things are so many times things are born out of unique moments in time. And for us, we just felt, gosh, there's a need to bring together the movement. We've had some podcast conversations. You felt all these conversations were spread out, and one of the things that we hope to do with faith driven is to say, what does it mean to connect a common language and a DNA across the movement in a conversation? So, gosh, it was 2019. We started planning and I'm trying to remember all of the dates, but we thought this was going to be an in-person gathering. We picked some central location like Dallas. We'd made all these plans to do this live, in-person event, and obviously we know what happened with Covid. And up until those moments, and even when it was shut down for a couple of weeks and things will slow down, turned into a couple of months, we went on this long journey of thinking will be in-person, will be back, this will be reunion. And then it pushed us online. And one of the things that I think that we found out about, that and the blessings of having to innovate amidst some terrible and tough circumstances, is that we recognize if we had an event in one central place, and there's certainly times and places for this, but we we realized we might be taking the most passionate people in every community around the world and bringing them into one place instead of all of the passionate leaders, volunteers and group leaders being the person in the city or church or place where God has them, and kind of reversing the flow. And so, you know, when you think back to that journey and I think back to those days of thinking what it was going to be like, there's it's a really unique moment when we think that things got reversed. And instead of everybody coming to one place, we got a chance to kind of flip the pyramid, to come behind and serve anybody there in our local community to say, you don't have to hop on a plane to find this movement. It's there in your backyard, and God might be calling you to step up in that. And so, so yeah, I mean, on a big level, it's it's going into crazy things. But I also remember, you know, when we got together to film that and everybody was social distancing and the whole space as we were recording it. Yeah, it was it was a unique time.
Henry Kaestner It was, it was, you know, the watch parties which have become such a big part of us experience it all in local community, started with that very first conference because we had one watch party. It was broadcast obviously over the internet. And when it just you might remember a little differently, but the presumption was that people were going to watch it by themselves because of social distancing. Sure. But a group in Raleigh, North Carolina, said, you know, we're going to get together and we're going to watch it. And, we're going to enjoy some fellowship and community and presuming the right masking and social distancing or whatever. But they did that. And. And that the reviews coming back from the 3540 people that went to watch party were so significant, talking about how great it was that we decided to be more intentional about talking about that one watch party, so much so that I don't know the next one, next cameras. Maybe there are 100 watch parties and now what do we get like 400? Something like that around the world?
Justin Forman Yeah. I mean, any event we'll have around 300, 400 or so watch parties. But I think what you're talking about is it's flipped over the years. You know, these days, too, oftentimes content consumption is an individualized sport. And people have realized now there's something beautiful about coming together around it.
Henry Kaestner Yeah.
Justin Forman And today I would say very I mean, a fewer number of people stream it individually. Most are trying to find a place where that they can gather now if they don't have somebody in their area, of course, that's that's different, but a huge core of it, if not the majority of it is around those watch parties. And, you know, I think the thing about I love about those watch parties is it's all different shapes and sizes of watch parties. Sometimes it's five friends getting together around a conference table. It's a group of people that have been meeting weekly that this is a way to kick off their fall or kick off their year. And, then you have some that are, you know, 40, 50, 60 entrepreneurs gathering in one place. I think what's beautiful is, is seeing the different, sizes of that. I think oftentimes when people think about hosting a watch party or an event, they think, man, I've got to have a church that can seat 304 hundred people. I think we'd really find that anybody can raise their hand and say, let's do this.
Joey Honescko Yeah, well, I love that innovation of and the surprising innovation of the watch parties. I think that has become such a central part of the conference. Another thing that we kind of did a little bit more intentionally, really starting last year, was develop a central theme around the conference. And this year we're talking about this concept right now, if you go to the website of an entrepreneur conference.org, you would see that the theme is Trading up, Navigating the Path to Surrender and Significance. And I hear that and I'm inspired. It sounds cool. But I also want to give us a chance to maybe just unpack a little bit about what that means and, give you guys a little bit of opportunity to add some color about what it might mean for an entrepreneur to trade up. What does it mean to be trading up as a faith driven entrepreneur?
Henry Kaestner Yeah, I so I love this illustration. And it's exactly what our ministry is all about. It's inviting people into something greater. And because I grew up in a time when a lot of people watch TV on black and white TV sets, I watch the USA Russia hockey game in 1980 on a black and white TV set. It's like, the experience of a feature not far from going from one with a black and white experience to one that's in Technicolor, watching color TV for the first time. And I think that's really important, because I think that we all want to be invited, and it's something that is, is is bigger than ourselves. And not just that. The role of a Christ follower is just a necessary take up or cross. And gosh, now they hear all the different things we have to do as a business owner. We've got to do that. We've got to do that. But instead, oh my goodness, this is a glorious thing. And God, when I experience God in the marketplace, in the workplace, at my company, I have meaning and purpose and joy is I commune with the living God and I want to be in community with other people doing the same. And so you're going from this kind of like narrow focus of, I've got this business. I need to see it grow. I need to provide for my family to one where I experience God every day through it. And I can be part of a community of other people doing the same. And this is infinitely cooler and inflamed, more fulfilling than my past life when I came to realize it, being an entrepreneur can be really lonely.
Justin Forman Yeah, I think, so well said. I think that one of the things that we miss is, we are daily experiencing pain points. We're daily experiencing the struggles and the stress and anxiety that comes with managing and leading and supporting a business, whether that staff or people or operations, you name it. There's always going to be the struggles that we have. And so oftentimes I think those are the pains we feel. But upstream of the symptoms and the source is this question about surrender. You know, I the book that really shaped me for the last 20 years is Book Half Time, written by a faith driven entrepreneur named Bob Buford, who was a cable TV operator in East Texas. And he wrote this, book that's really defined a lot of the way people have thought for 30 plus years. And it was this idea of like, what does it look like to go from success to significance? What does it look like to go from this place where you've achieved some success, you've seen some of these things happen in your business, you feel like you've got some of that confidence. But but does it feel, you know, as Henry says, maybe a little less. It feels just like. Telecom or business or something void of that other purpose. And I think if we're going to use that halftime language of getting from success to significance, I think there's a bridge in between that we have to cross of surrender. And otherwise if we don't cross that point of surrender, yeah, you can find a good program that'll be bolt on and, you know, do this and do that, care for a couple people and do some things. But he come to this place of surrender. Now all of a sudden you're playing with the different scoreboard, you're playing with a different goal or you're playing with a different end in mind, and then everything changes. As Henry says, it goes. Everything, not just a portion of the screen, went to color, but the whole screen goes to color. The whole screen lights up and it changes in a radical, different way. And I think we cannot miss this element of surrender, because I think this is the part where Jesus speaks clearly and says, you cannot serve two masters. And we try to make it one and a half, and we try to make it that in between plays. But if we really get to that point of surrender, if we really get to that point in the place where we lay down, it doesn't come from a place of obligation, doesn't come from a place of duty, but it comes with this joy that welled up inside. And so, you know, this is this reset moment. We try to do this once a year. This is an opportunity for people, I think, to come to that place of surrender. And then after that, like everything changes and you get to unpack that. So yeah.
Henry Kaestner You give up something, but you have this hopeful expectancy that you see something far greater and you do. And yet there is some amount of dying to self. There's some amount of dying to personal ambition. And with the desire of of knowing God. And in one level, maybe what brings us into that is just just a sense of gratitude. And like I, you know, I've come to understand more fully about how much you love me, and I'm going to give up my agenda. I'm going to give up my agenda that I had had, because I think that there's something else, something greater that you want from my life and from this business and the relationships that we're stewarding with partners, vendors, customers, employees, with a hopeful expectancy that in doing so, you're going to know God more fully. And in response to that, you're actually going to get something much better. You give up one thing and you get 1000 things back.
Joey Honescko Yeah, I think that that's an important thing. And let me make sure I'm hearing you guys right, because I think it's an important distinction because I think if we here really there's there's two sides of this and it's great. The title subtitle like trading Up and Navigating the Path to Surrender and significance. It's important that they go together because if we're just talking trading up, we can maybe get into this mindset of like, yeah, I don't need to surrender. I don't need to lay down my life. I don't need to pick up my cross. Like God's not calling me to do things that are hard. But then on the same end, what I'm hearing you guys say is that the surrender element is actually an invitation to something that is better. The picking up of the cross is, a heavy burden, but it's a light because Jesus carries it with us. So am I having that kind of really? There are two juxtaposed ideas trading up and surrender. So am I hitting that right to understand that that's an intentional move, that it is a it is a both and there's still sacrifice. There's still the servant leadership call of being a Christian, but that those are actually invitations into something much more beautiful than we could ever imagine.
Justin Forman I think trading up is the thing we we see everywhere. We feel it. Right? I mean, everybody's trying to trade up. Oftentimes people are selling one house to trade up for something better. You're selling this to trade up for something better. You see that in the market. You see that in your community. You see that in your daily life. And so this concept of trading up is there. But the path to get to it and the path to get to the meaningful trade up is a little bit unexpected. Most people don't think that surrender is that place. Most people don't think that surrender is that they think it comes with a cost or a sacrifice. And it might in the world scoreboard, but it does it in the kingdoms. And I think that's the part of what we're looking to change here. And so when we think about some of the stories of what we're going to feature here, and, Joey, I know you're deeply involved in some of these as we think about the content of the conference, and you think about the stories of, like, Matt and Sam Parfitt in this story of Grace enterprises. I mean, what a powerful story of here's a couple, travels, sees God at work in the other side of the world, thinks that, they've all they learned something that brings them back, and it leads them on to this journey of saying, what does it look like for us to personally maybe sacrifice X, Y, or Z? But the joy that they have experienced in caring for creating jobs for people might not otherwise have jobs. And doing it in partnership with a church. May you. It's trust me when you see the video, it it doesn't look easy. It's hard. There's a lot of hard. But when you see the calm, the comments and the thoughts and everything throughout the story, there is no doubt it's worth it. And I think that that, that come from you going to a place where Matt and Sam has surrendered, and they've traded up in, in the world's eyes, they might look at that story and say, there was a sacrifice. But when you see that, it is not a sacrifice at all. You see a joy that's uncommon to so many the entrepreneurs around us. You see joy that's uncommon when you walk through too many of the churches in our world, you see something that's different.
Joey Honescko Yeah. So when I hear that, I think of another phrase that we've talked about, on the podcast and in videos, this idea of the difference between a get to and a got to. And I think that that kind of becomes some of what we're talking about here. A lot of the call to surrender in the church or call to sacrifice sometimes feels like it's this burden of a, of a got to, I, I have to do this would be another way of saying that versus I get to do this, I get to participate in that. And I think the some of the stories you're talking about, the part fits as a great example where you see the joy of it. And I'm wondering, right? I think we know in the church we know as faith driven entrepreneurs it is good to surrender. It is good to let those things go. But yet it's often in those places where we hold on so tightly. And so I'd be curious, both of you as experienced entrepreneurs, people who have been in this world for a while. How have you learned to loosen up that grip, and offer some of that surrender? And how has that led to the trading upness in your own lives?
Henry Kaestner You know, when we talk about the word significance, I think it's important to unpack that, because that might mean a lot of different things to different people. And that really is increasingly guided how I try to align what I do with my vocation and the activities that I get into. I think every one of us, was is created in the image of God, and we all have this ingrained desire to be thought of as significant and to be working on things of significance. And there are lots of different stories in the Bible that help us to understand what is that type of significance mean first? It comes from the legal standing of us being adopted children of God. And that becomes really significant, right? If you're the if you're the child of somebody who's really, really important, well, that gives you a level of significance that that just by your standing. Right. The next thing I think is that we want to be working on something that really last of significance, right? So many other things just go away. And in Ecclesiastes we see that all these things are just in the earth, under the sun are just going to go away. And that's meaningless. It to is it like a, is it like a was it passing after the winter to chasing after the wind. Right. And so that's not significant. We're all kind of ingrained with this desire of, of accomplishing something and getting a return on investment. And yet we know that the types of treasure that we lay up, that we can lay up, that speaks, that desire for treasure. And being working on a project. The significance? Well, that that's placed in heaven where we get a 36 year, 100 fold return. You know, what are those riches that we might have that is stored up for us in heaven? Well, those are the the memories that we bring with us. It's the relationships. It's the it's the participation we had and something of eternal, true significance of building God's kingdom under his power for his glory. And so when we tap into that as entrepreneurs, it's exhilarating. It's exhilarating. And, and gosh, I really hope that that's the type of significance. I hope that that's the type of ambition that those that are part of this community have. And it's not just like, I'm going to just die to self, and I'm just going to put on, you know, sackcloth and ashes, although there may very well be time for that in a Christ far as life, but instead I'm going to put on garments that are eternal, and it's going to be something really, really, really cool and it's going to last for eternity. That's significance.
Joey Honescko Yeah, that's part of that new Technicolor vision, right? Is that kind of definition of significance. But we as entrepreneurs are constantly faced with other definitions of significance that we have to fight against, and we have to push against it. Right. The black and whiteness, to use your metaphor there, Henry, of the world is actually what's normative. Like people are saying this is enough to search for this kind of significance. And what I'm hearing you guys say is that the surrender that leads to a greater significance is a fundamentally different significance than what the world has to offer. Justin, is that kind of a right way to understand that, or how might you kind of clarify some of those those points?
Justin Forman Yeah, I think it's the right way to understand it. I'll push into the question, why are we not there? Why are we not thinking that way? What stops us from thinking that way? Yeah, and I mean, we've talked about this on other podcast episodes. I don't think we're winning the air war. I don't think we're winning that. And we don't know what we're up against. I mean, like, we're up against a superpower. We're up against a superpower of media that pushes knowledge and an alternative idea of significance, an alternative idea of success. And it's subtly seeps into everything. I mean, why is it that a ten year old or 12 year old kid, you know, starts paying attention to, what house their friends lives in, what car their parents drive and all these type of things. It's everywhere. I mean, I'm speaking from this of our kiddos are realizing that, and then they start connecting that to, well, what what is their dad do? Or what is their mom do or what is that? Yep. And and all of a sudden, at ten years old, before we've even had conversations about career, vocation, college or the birds and the bees or anything in between, they're getting bombarded of what success looks like. They've already framed up in that. And so we're literally starting that conversation ten years later. I mean, what happens over ten years? Think how deeply rooted that becomes. I mean, it's there. And so I think that part of what we just have to realize is we don't know how all encompassing it is that we're going up against. And so if we think that we are going to inoculate it, change it just by, you know, one Bible study, one Bible verse, you have to constantly be surrounded with people that are telling you something different and bringing you into it, but then showing you the joy of it. That's what to me. It is alive. When you see these entrepreneurs have made it like you don't hear these stories of man, I regret it. When was the last time we filmed a story with the feature of an entrepreneur and said, yeah, you know, we've God's done some great things, but man, I wish I would have chosen things differently and stayed on my other track. No no no no no no no. You see joy, you see smile. You see tears. You see everything. But you see them knowing God more fully. But, we are not going to combat the worries of the world because they are all consuming unless we have people in the fight with us.
Joey Honescko Yeah. It's that competing narrative. Right. And it's it's offering a counter narrative and being shaped by that thing more and more. I can even think about that just as I'm starting my entrepreneurial journey. And it's weird because it can play itself out in different ways, right? Because I'm starting a bookstore in our neighborhood. I love our neighborhood. I love our tiny city. And it's a weird, kind of quirky suburb of Dallas. But I just love this place. And I can go to this place where I've pendulum swing. Pendulum swung the other way where I think, oh, I don't need to do something scalable or something big or something like that. I and I realized I wrote about this at one point where I wanted to be remarkably unremarkable, but either way, the actual motivation behind it was so that other people saw something in me, right? Like it was this same kind of desire to be small for the sake of being niche and interesting and, different. And so I think that it's an interesting way how those narratives of significance can play out if we're not rooted in what Henry was talking about earlier, that my significance is found in the fact that I'm an adopted Son of God, and that's my meaning. That's my purpose, that's my value, not how like niche in indie I can be, or how big and scalable and mainstream I can be. Either way, I'm looking for the wrong thing to give me significance if I'm not aligning it with God. And I think that something you were just touching on Justin is really the danger of the alternative. Right? And you talked about that idea of regret. And yeah, when you talk to faith driven entrepreneurs who have lived this out and who have gotten in the game and who have fulfilled kind of their have changed their vision of significance, there's not a lot of regret, but you talked to people on the other side of that. And there's there's plenty of things of like, man, I wish I did this different man. I wish I could have changed how I did that. So are there other pieces where like, what's the risk of not surrendering? As a faith driven entrepreneur.
Henry Kaestner You miss out on the life this fully life. You get up to heaven and you're up there for the judgment seat, you know? So we we get up to heaven because as we accept Jesus into our heart, we we've got eternal life. And yet even with that, there's still going to be a time when God, sits us down, stands us up and asks us to give an account. We don't want to be in a spot. There's a great Broadway play called the Bema Seat that kind of gets at this concept that we see in the Bible of giving an account, and in it, the main main character has some amount of regret. There are opportunities along the way. God still loves him. He's in heaven. He's going to spend eternity with God. And yet he realized that there's some aspect where he didn't really just wasn't on mission in a way that would have brought him even closer to knowing God and is in all forgiving God. But there's still I don't want to. I don't want to be in that spot. And yet I know I will. There's so much that in my life that I haven't fully leaned into, and maybe as I get older, I get a little bit more, just wanting to be on mission and purpose for the things that really matter that that moth and rust don't destroy and and that are actually really not chasing after one but are really meaningful. What do you think, Justin?
Justin Forman I mean, regret is there. Regret is obvious. We see it all the time. We all know the story of what Apple is and the genius of Steve and how I so admired and everything that was there. There's a quote that he said, and I'm reading this. He says, as we grow older and hence wiser, we slowly realize that wearing a $300 or a $30 watch, they both tell the same time whether we carry $300 or $30 in our wallet. The amount of money inside is the same. Whether we drive $150,000 car or a $30,000 car, the road and the distance are the same and we get to the same destination. Whether the house we live in is 300 or 3000ft². Loneliness is still the same. Here's a guy that has achieved ultimate success with myself.
Henry Kaestner $300 watches. People don't know.
Justin Forman The irony in that. Yes. But. When he comes to a place, the guy that did sell expensive devices and he talks about the idea value is not just found in our possessions. Value is not found in some of these things of significance that we think is significant. There's some sort of, reality that we face when I think of the faith driven entrepreneurs that you've seen, that have lived it, that have done it, that have gone after it. As we said earlier, you just don't see the regret. But on the other side of the ledger, as Joey points out, that ledger is deep and it's wide of people that regret it. And, I just think we are so busy, we're so consumed. We think that that, you know, articles of incorporation will create an organization that lasts for forever and that we realize it does not fade away, some quicker than others. But what what are we really chasing after? And so I think we're so busy. I think our hope with this conference is that it's a time out. It's a momentum. It's all the crazy. And then a couple hours with friends, maybe from your church, maybe from your city or maybe online that you pause to really say what is significant. Am I putting my ladder up against the right wall? Am I really trying to climb the right thing? And so that's what we hope it is. I think if we're coming back to a landing here, Joey, I think that we hope it's that moment. We're not being prescriptive in how to answer it or where God's calling you, but we just hope that people create a space to wrestle through it and wrestle through it with friends.
Joey Honescko Yeah, yeah, that's really good. It makes me think of, the, the book of Ecclesiastes. And we've already mentioned that the, the chasing after wind. And I think when we read that quickly, we can hear like sadness in it. Even the Steve Jobs thing, there's, $300 watch, $30 watch. It doesn't matter. You know, vanity of vanities. All is vanity. But the point of Ecclesiastes is to accept that and see like. And God gives extreme meaning to these things. It's like knowing it in its right place. And so it's not just like we should throw our hands up and be like, okay, well, I guess don't work then, because what difference does it actually make? It's like, no work with the freedom that like, your identity isn't in that, that your significance isn't found in that. And now go freely and run with that, because your identity and your vision and everything you're given is given to you by God. So it's a good it's a good reminder because even in the way Steve Jobs communicated that you could hear something missing, you could hear the idea that it's like neither of it was significant. Instead of all of it is significant. God gives great meaning. God gives great significance to all that. So, we'd love to just close with with one last question, Justin, you just talked about kind of the hope you have for the conference. We'd love just quick responses from each of you to here. What would you want someone who's coming to walk away with after they attend the the conference?
Justin Forman I would. There's so many thoughts of the one I'm going to pick. You can't go it alone. You can't go it alone. Don't buy the lie. Don't buy the lie. To think that you're going to make this journey yourself. You can't. You can't. You need people around you. God can bring that to you in a lot of different places. I've seen so many great entrepreneur stories that they have deep relationships with their leadership team, and their partners are like minded business owners that they might have known in their community or the industry, and some people find in their church. But the point is, don't buy the lie that you're going to go there alone. You might start off, you might make a little couple of laps around the track. But when you see the people, when I, when you guys know the story of Alan Barnhart, we've shown his story and you see it up there and we've seen the videos. And when I think about Alan, we think about the way that God has worked in such a long, direct or faithful obedience and long direction for so much time, I think about the way he surrounded himself with people. People in the movement, people in space. And I see other stories like that. And I think, man, to do that you have to have people around you. So I hope that the conference is a wake up call and a taste of it for people to see. It's much better to do this with friends.
Henry Kaestner Yeah. Yeah, it's it's what? It's, the joy set before us in doing this, and communing with guided and with communing with other entrepreneurs, which, of course, speaks to the importance of, of all the listeners of this, realizing that this is their movement feature, not remote. It's a movement. And and what is important in a movement is for people to, to bring this to their own communities and to share this with others and to tell theirs and invite others to watch parties. And that's the countercultural aspect of working with entrepreneurs that can be, very singularly focused on running their business. But through the grace of God, we now are reaching 100,000 entrepreneurs. And it happens because we don't have a marketing budget. It happens when you share with others, and maybe it's that you share a podcast, or maybe it's that you share an invitation to join a group. Or maybe it's that you share an invitation for others in your church to join a watch party. Maybe it's an opportunity to go to your senior pastor and say, hey, I just, I want to I want to put an announcement in the in the bulletin and 5 or 6 of us that are entrepreneurs in this church, or 50 or 60 of us want to get together and, and do a watch party. That's how this movement grows. That's how the body of Christ raises, rises up into an army fighting a really important battle, with eternal consequences. And extreme significance.
Joey Honescko Yeah. That's great. Yeah. You can find all the information about the conference at Faith Driven Entrepreneur conference.org. You can find watch parties. There's watch parties all over the world, not just in the US, but all over the world. So, check that out. It's September 20th, wherever you are. So, we'll put the link in the description. Thank you both for joining me. And, we hope to see all of you at the virtual conference. Thanks. 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.org.