Faith Driven Entrepreneur

Toxic people, toxic environments and all other possible permutations of how toxicity can be expressed in an organization is the subject of today’s episode. Rusty rests the responsibility of toxic organizations firmly on the shoulders of the founder and William believes that faith driven leaders can still be guilty of making a mess of culture. Henry helps us understand what kind of petri dish is needed for toxicity to flourish and the team together discusses ways to avoid the pains and pitfalls of toxicity that kills community, productivity and creativity. Today’s episode was in response to a mailbag question from New York. We love hearing from you and fielding your questions. Tell us how this week’s episode impacted your thinking on toxic work cultures and encourages you to think about how you can contribute to the health of your organization at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org. We also have a very brief survey we’d love for you to take that will help us shape the direction and future of the FDE podcast. Please he

We find the team chatting with Julie Barrios, of Nuos Formation, a spiritual formation enterprise focused on helping the entrepreneur develop healthy inner lives as part of purposeful living as a faith-driven entrepreneur. As she shares on her own entrepreneurial journey, Julie helps us see how “hustling” may be nothing more than another hamster wheel and living in obedience to God by surrendering our paths to Him might be the more excellent way. Making sure she makes room to hear from God, that she takes seriously the responsibility of stewarding what He has entrusted to her and knowing the difference between perseverance (a Fruit of the Spirit) and striving (NOT a fruit of the spirit) are all disciplines she’s applied to business and seeks to develop in her clientele. According to Julie, spiritual discipline at the onset is internalizing the structure of God’s Word in your heart then interpreting your world and reality from that structure. How has seeing your business through the lens of the Word of God, pr

We hear from our hosts this week as they share some of the things God has them thinking about via their personal time with the Lord. Rusty draws parallels to Paul’s trials, specifically found in Acts 27 to the life of an entrepreneur while William shares on how reading the account of Jesus’ baptism by John actually reveals more deeply the importance of having your identity rooted in a relationship with the Father to empower and enlighten your mission. Henry’s been sharing a bit about his sojourn in the Old Testament but is more focused on the Israelite wilderness journey and the strength of Joshua to stay true to his God and his mission. Walking with God in your entrepreneurial journey makes it necessary to meet Him regularly through the study of His Word for direction, strength, creativity and solutions to all each day has to throw at us. Share with us what the Father is teaching you about your entrepreneurial journey these days at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org.

This week the team chats with Ed Silvoso, author of several books including Anointed for Business, Transformation and Ekklesia. He’s the founder of Transform Our World, an international network of marketplace ministers whose goal is the elimination of systemic poverty through actively advancing the kingdom of God via a unified Church. Here’s a few of our favorite moments from this week: “There is a tipping point and that is when that leader understands, usually that leader is a governmental leader or a business owner, that he is chosen by God to transform society, not just to have a kingdom company but to have a King’s company.” “We don’t go to Church, we are the Church. The church doesn’t belong to a pastor, it belongs to Jesus… the word ministry is not associated with the Pastor, the Evangelist, the Teacher, the Prophet or the Apostle. It’s associated with the saint. So the work of the Pastor is not to do the work of the ministry, the work of the Pastor is to equip the people, for the people to do the work

Steve Cochram and Jeremie Kubicek of 5 Voices Systems, a leadership assessment tool that helps you define, understand and leverage your communication style for optimal influence joins the FDE team this week. They share why their assessment tool is so different from the rest and how it can be quickly integrated into your organizational culture to help you better connect with your team, customers and all the places where you have influence. Committed to helping clients fight for the highest possible good of those they lead, this duo gives us insight on how understanding our unique communication styles helps us to hear as well as be heard for maximum impact and collaboration. We strongly encourage you to take the online assessment to figure out your leadership voice and challenge you to make use of these tools. Share with us your voice and definitely let us know if there were any surprises at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org.

In this week’s episode, we’re talking to Henry’s long-time friend Peter Greer, President and CEO of Hope International, a leading provider of microfinancing for underserved communities around the globe. Peter helps us understand the multi-faceted aspects of poverty, that it’s about more than simply the lack of resources. He shares details around Hope International’s commitment to eradicate spiritual poverty, not just financial poverty as the two are inextricably linked. He gives frameworks for addressing all aspects of poverty and shares a bit on what seems to be a “secret weapon” for ensuring kingdom-impact: the power of partnership and collaboration. We hope this week’s episode gives you new insight on how your organization can begin to address poverty in its many forms for kingdom impact. While your organization may not be a microfinance operation, every kingdom endeavor should seek to eradicate the works of the enemy and poverty is one of his chief tools. We’d love to hear how this week’s podcast has impa

In Part Two with David Morken, the team discusses more thoroughly about what it means to be mission ready both individually and corporately. David talks about the importance of obedience to God and avoiding the pitfalls of both willfulness and passivity and Henry leads the discussion into practical applications of how their company’s HR policies intentionally reflected kingdom values as they target the whole person for impact. This commitment led them to institute chaplaincy roles as a force multiplier to help them steward the whole person policies they wanted to instill. David shares further on a few other ways the company has and continues to innovate in the area of ensuring the whole team is mission ready. If you’re committed to growing healthy, impactful organizations that walk out the values of the kingdom, then this is the episode for you. If you are innovating in the areas of employee well being and engagement and are seeing the results directly impact your organization’s reach and bottom line, by all

In this edition of the FDE Podcast, we get a peek into the longtime friendship and partnership (let’s just call it what it is – a bromance) between David Morken and Henry Kaestner, co-Founders of Bandwidth and Republic Wireless. They share with us the divine origins of their relationship (Henry was a direct answer to David’s prayer) and how their relationship translated into a successful business where people are promoted as much as the product. They talk about the need to be able to work through conflict in healthy ways and the conscious effort needed to incorporate others into this dynamic mix to create high functioning, mission ready, people-centric organizations. And who doesn’t want that? Part One of this discussion focuses on the friendship and partnership rooted in Christ that launched the company while next week's episode gets into how together they created a culture that reproduced kingdom concepts and principles in the lives of their employees. You don’t want to miss any of this. We serve a Trinitar

This week’s podcast has us listening in on a talk Tim Keller gave to Sovereign’s Capital last September where he meticulously unpacks the hidden truth of identity formation, its habits and rituals, in both the Western and greater world. We are fed these belief systems from the moment we breathe and too often we are defined by the greater world without our consent. He steps us through examples of how our thinking is specifically impacted by these external forces that define us outside of the context of Christ. Tim shares with us the cultural problems of both traditional (your community defines you) and modern (you define you) identity formation and shows why the gospel is the only solution to living an authentic, impactful life. We thought this would be one of the best ways to start 2019 – to really spend some time evaluating who we think we are and how that measures with who God says we are. We apologize in advance for the cognitive dissonance this episode may bring. We bless you with the Spirit of God Who im

The team spends some time with the students and teachers from Entrepreneur Program and Valley Christian School (VCS) in San Jose, CA. Spearheaded by Hannah and Danny Kim, entrepreneurs in their own right, the program has launched high school students into the world of entrepreneurship in the midst of a community invested in seeing biblical values and principles impacting the world. Hannah gives us an overview of the program’s evolution while the team chats with two students about their specific projects, one launched and the other in beta for release around now. Then the team talks with Danny Kim, who heads up VCS’ Quest Institute, which we believe (because there is no one to contest us) has had more tests performed on the International Space Station than NASA. While Quest Institute was inaugurated at VCS it is meant to impact the world and Danny shares with the team some of the ways this is happening today. This week’s episode is packed but we didn’t want to leave anything out for you as we ARE talking about

In this week’s podcast, the team answers a few of your questions around profit making and taking as well as consumerism. One Bay Area listener shares his struggles with being in what he believes is a money-driven industry. The team challenges us all to think about how we can redeem the industries we’re in by making figuring out the best way to serve it our number one goal. William believes that almost all industries are redeemable, Henry encourages us in the ways we can show love for the people in these industries for the purposes of transformation and Rusty reminds us of our true identity as a guide to ensure optimal motives while bringing in those returns. One of our listeners in Nairobi, Kenya asks the team for a biblical viewpoint on consumerism in response to the rise of the global middle class and the team takes us back again to a discussion of heart motive by realigning a few marketing and product design concepts back to the kingdom. And no good podcast on entrepreneurism would ever leave out a few quo

The team sits down with John Marsh of Marsh Collective, Opelika Alabama to discuss storytelling, what it’s like to run 10+ businesses (the collective part of Marsh Collective) and how to be the steward of 10 square city blocks for the glory of God and Kingdom while being totally unqualified to do so. John helps us understand the practicalities of living in the midst of kingdom tension: being both dead and alive, content but fruitfully multiplying, living here but not being from here. Rusty has John walk us through what systems need to be in place to redeem a life, a family and a city and Henry has him give us some insight on effective parenting while being an entrepreneur. William closes us out with a request for words of wisdom for entrepreneurs and John’s answer: think cities. John holds a very special place in the heart of FDE and the team is quite excited to have you hear a bit of his story and want you to be as inspired by what’s possible when we let God in to do what He does best: redeem and transform.

This week we get into part two of the Lightning Round episode, fielding your questions. Henry, Rusty, and William tackle two really important questions for the faith driven entrepreneur: how we handle our resource of money and time. Neither may come up on our radar readily given the entrepreneur’s everyday grind and hustle. Henry shared that it’s important that we identify firstly why we give, and also pray over where and how. Rusty recognized that some entrepreneurs have other ways of giving and gets us thinking about planning for giving. The team moves on to tackle the issue of traveling for work and how to balance personal time with traveling, as well as the potential for excessive or unnecessary travel to become an idol for too many entrepreneurs. Some may even see it as a badge of honor. What is model behavior for leaders to communicate a healthy view of travel to their subordinates? Rusty says we should be judicious about our time and William reminds us all that with so much technology we can think

correction: Chip Ingram is now CEO of Living on the Edge, an international discipleship ministry. In Part Two with Chip Ingram, CEO of Living on the Edge, we find Rusty asking Chip to give his take on a previous mailbag question from an entrepreneur who didn’t see the value of church anymore as what comes out of the pulpit isn’t relatable to his life. While Chip agreed that most pastors aren’t very conversant with the entrepreneur’s life, he flips it from a what do I get to what can I give mode of thinking. He encourages entrepreneurs to see church as God’s company while acknowledging the frustration of not seeing change or progress fast enough. Henry has Chip share on some practical ways of how Pastors can love on the entrepreneurs in their midst before William tackles the subject matter of entrepreneurs struggling with failure, sometimes even a series of failures. Chip tells us that God must first work in you deeply before He can use you significantly. Rusty closes this week’s episode asking Chip to give li

correction: Chip Ingram is now CEO of Living on the Edge, an international discipleship ministry In Part One with Chip Ingram, CEO of Living on the Edge, Henry has Chip walk through his experience pastoring many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. While Chip’s own entrepreneurial persuasions began at an early age selling Halloween candy in late November at a significant markup, he realized early on in his life as a pastor that he could teach and inspire far beyond his leadership capabilities. His start as a spiritual coach to entrepreneurs began as a simple exchange: his Santa Cruz church was growing at breakneck speed and he needed wisdom and skillsets to support that growth. He reached out to the entrepreneurs in his congregation and became friends with them, creating a safe and respectful place for these leaders to share what was really going on in their lives. The grass isn’t always greener, to say the least. Struggles with identity, purpose, and the tension between the world’s values v

David Brickner, Executive Director of Jews for Jesus, spends time with the team in this week’s podcast. He gives perspective on the tragic events in Pittsburgh and shares a bit on how people of the faith can best share the gospel with Jewish neighbors through relationship building and honoring the common elements between Judaism and Christianity. Rusty leads the discussion into the “Behold Your God Israel” campaign where David shares the entrepreneurial strategies the organization employed to reach Jewish people in Israel over a span of 18 years. David addresses Jews for Jesus’ branding challenge with regard to how the Jewish population views Christianity and his organization and shares on how using customer segmentation principles helped the organization effectively reach Israelis for Christ. David ends this week making a case for the power of transformation – that changed lives give the best witness and taking the time to gather and retell those stories is probably how we’ll reach the next generation, rega

This week’s episode finds Henry, Rusty and William fielding more questions from listeners in Part One of Lightning Round. The team tackles the question around how to balance godly contentment with the discontentment with the status quo that is the fuel of much entrepreneurship. Rusty admits trying to figure out what Paul was thinking is way above his pay grade but offers up the concept of holy discontent while Henry and William focus on where we derive our identity and joy as a possible solution. All share advice on the healthiest ways to work with family and friends in business with, you guessed it, communication being the most important element. They close on the question of how to handle pushback from the team. Rusty and Henry both discuss why it’s important to include your team in decision making process as a cultural value set as well as a way to ensure commitment and ownership of all decisions, even the unpopular ones, in the long run. As Rusty puts it, it’s about the power of the question mark. Let us

Mike Sharrow is back for Part 2 of our interview. As you likely gathered from Part 1, Mike leads C12 one of the largest and most successful organizations that put together groups of like minded, and similarly staged groups of Christian CEOs for local community, fellowship and best practices. Think about all the things you've heard about YPO, but imagine something better :). If you're only going to listen to one of the parts of the interview (but why would you??) , listen to this one. The team asks Mike to share his observations on what’s happening in the marketplace from a faith perspective. Mike shares the fact that the Post-Christian era has people desiring authenticity in faith expressions. In fact, according to him, they hunger for it. C12 is seeing a tide lift in activity across the globe of more people wanting to live authentic lives for Christ at work as well as at home and in church. Mike goes on to share how C12 seeks to guide members towards accountability and integration. According to him, it’s

The first of two parts, this week’s episode finds the team speaking with Mike Sharrow, President and CEO of C12, an organization that provides a confidential and intimate environment where like-minded peers share ideas, discover and plan for areas in their business that need improvement, hold each other accountable, and encourage one another to conduct business in a God-honoring way. Mike gives us a little of the history of the recent resurgence of faith in the marketplace during the last century that provide the foundation for what C12 has been doing since 1992. He shares with the team some of the most interesting impact stories of how leaders’ decisions to pursue relationship as a key driver of culture led to incredible levels of employee engagement and satisfaction as well as increased supplier commitment. The formula was as simple as finding out what was going on in the lives of direct reports that led to transformative changes in the lives of team members, including two saved marriages. We think you will

Jason Johnson, serial entrepreneur and founder of August Smart Homes, talks to Rusty and William about when the entrepreneurial itch first hit him while working at a large tech company. From humble beginnings, Jason explains how receiving a scholarship to Pepperdine University introduced him to the responsibility of calling and that entrepreneurship was a natural expression of that calling. He goes on to tackle tough questions around how to live a faith driven life while heading up a VC-backed company where culture and purpose to often clash. He shares on the ways he maintains his commitment to instilling culture in his company that is reflective of his faith. The team asks Jason to address the question of money, something on every entrepreneur’s mind (and naturally so). He responds with some very practical advice on how to begin living a generous life because that too, is part of an entrepreneur’s call. The team ends this week’s discussion with wisdom on how to stay grounded and focused on the things to whic