Faith Driven Entrepreneur

In this episode, Henry sits down with former NFL player and first round draft pick Phil Olsen, currently President of Know Your Strengths, a human resource consulting firm that guides clients and executive-level management through processes for talent discovery, training and people management. Phil helps us see how hiring people who are clones of ourselves leaves our organizations open for execution issues and why learning to appreciate and collaborate with those who are just wired differently from us actually builds a stronger organization. He takes a lot of queues from the sports arena and shares a great deal on his learnings from Coaches John Wooden of UCLA fame and Chuck Knox of the Buffalo Bills and L.A. Rams. God’s treasure is people. Knowing how to be the best stewards of them is the fastest way of ensuring you give Him pleasure in how you do what you do within your organizations. Share with us some of the ways you are fulfilling the responsibility of stewarding people in a manner that gives Him glory 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. . As always, we love taking your questions and hearing your comments. Feel free to submit your thoughts in general here. Useful Links: The Chuck Knox Development Process

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 help us with your thoughts and opinions here.

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, preferably written on your hearts, affected your mission and impact for the better? Drop us a line at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org and tell us!

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 of the ministry. ” We hope you are inspired by this weeks episode to begin considering more fully what God has given you with the gift of entrepreneurship. If you've ideas on how you can use your organization to transform culture , systems and and other aspects of the society around you, please share with us at faithdrivenentrepreneur.com.

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 impacted your thinking on what’s available to you for the elimination of poverty in your sphere of influence. Drop us a line at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org.

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 means share those wins with us at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org. Until next week!

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 Trinitarian God who does everything in community and Who tasks us to follow suit. We’d love to hear your stories about those important relationships in your life directly impacting your faith driven entrepreneur pursuits at faithdrivenentrepreneur.org. It will encourage us all!

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 imparts all truth and invite you to share the things God is revealing to you via this episode. Feel free to drop us a line at Faith Driven Entreprenuer.