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Boundaries, Business and the Kingdom with Nathan Bailey · Christian Business Growth Podcast

• 0:01
  Hello and welcome to the Christian Business Growth Podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm Lyle and I'm here with Nathan Bailey.
• 0:05
  Hey Nathan, how did God get you started in business?
• 0:09
  Thanks for having me.
• 0:10
  This is a, it's an unusual story, I think.
• 0:13
  ah I was actually working in business as a carpenter years and years ago, probably 30 years ago.
• 0:20
  I was doing well.
• 0:21
  I was the former of my crew.
• 0:22
  The boss was talking to me about potentially taking over someday and owning the business.
• 0:28
  And this would have been before the year 2000.
• 0:31
  And we were talking about this and a job opening came about at my church.
• 0:38
  and I applied for it and was offered the job.
• 0:42
  Talked to my carpenter boss and said, I'm sorry, I need to go.
• 0:45
  I'm doing this thing.
• 0:47
  This would have been right at the year 2000 that I started for the church.
• 0:51
  And he and I parted ways on a good footing, sad, but it was the right move.
• 0:57
  And it was about a year and a half later that the Lord spoke to me very clearly and said, I want you to be in business.
• 1:04
  To me, this was a little bit ironic because I had just come out of that and moved into ministry.
• 1:08
  at what I thought was the Lord's prompting.
• 1:11
  So I continued to wrestle with God and say, what does this look like?
• 1:14
  What do you want from me?
• 1:16
  How do we do this?
• 1:17
  I worked for my church, still I'm working for my church actually, until 2010.
• 1:23
  And during that time, I was asking God, what does it look like?
• 1:26
  What are the boundaries?
• 1:28
  And what do you expect from me?
• 1:30
  And there were a couple of things that he made clear to me during that time.
• 1:34
  First, whatever it was that he wanted me to do was not,
• 1:38
  to take me away from ministry.
• 1:39
  It was not to take me away from my family.
• 1:42
  It needed to be within my current skill set and it needed to be kind of close to home.
• 1:48
  So these were some of the parameters that God put around me as I prayed about this over the next eight to 10 years.
• 1:55
  What I finally landed on was doing residential rental properties.
• 2:00
  I had a background in construction and I like working with people and this seemed to be the perfect marriage.
• 2:05
  But as I began exploring this and asking questions, everybody told me, don't want to do this.
• 2:09
  And as I listened to all of the objections, what really landed were three basic problems.
• 2:17
  People don't pay their bills, they don't stick around and they don't take care of the place.
• 2:21
  And so we took those three things and wove them right into the fabric of the company that we have, personal home development.
• 2:30
  And we...
• 2:31
  having our lease, these three basic expectations that you're going to pay your bills on time, that you're going to take care of your place and you're going to stay a good
• 2:38
  neighbor.
• 2:38
  And then we enforce the lease really, really well.
• 2:41
  And we do a good job of vetting our people on the front end.
• 2:44
  So I had been doing this for a while.
• 2:46
  I had a friend who got me started and it was probably in 2024.
• 2:52
  I've done this along with my church job.
• 2:55
  In 2024, I have been just having these
• 3:00
  they weren't really prayers.
• 3:01
  I look back at them and I know now that they were the prayer of my heart, but nothing that I ever really voiced or intentionally thought about or thought through.
• 3:10
  But on numerous occasions, I would think things like, it would be really nice to have a job where you can encourage somebody, get together with them, build them up, help them
• 3:20
  excel, share a good cup of coffee.
• 3:22
  It's too bad something like that doesn't exist.
• 3:25
  And I had attended a webinar.
• 3:27
  for real estate, for Christian real estate uh workers.
• 3:32
  I, after I attended the webinar, they wanted to close this out, wanted to close the deal with me.
• 3:38
  And I said, I don't really know if I can do this.
• 3:40
  Let me talk to whomever.
• 3:41
  And I ended up talking to this young man who was explaining to me what was going on.
• 3:45
  And I said, this sounds really good, but I don't have the money right now to do this.
• 3:50
  Can you send me more information to look at?
• 3:52
  And I'll keep this on file.
• 3:54
  If my situation turns around and I'm able to pull the trigger on this, I would love to be a part of what's going on." He said, absolutely.
• 4:01
  And it was later on that afternoon I received an email from him.
• 4:04
  But when I looked at it, the email itself didn't have anything to do with real estate.
• 4:08
  And I called him up.
• 4:10
  He'd actually given me his personal number in the phone call.
• 4:12
  So I called him up and I said, I don't really understand what you sent me.
• 4:16
  And he apologized.
• 4:17
  He said, I have.
• 4:19
  I've been hired to do sales for this company, but I have my own company and I sent you information from my personal company." And I said, oh, explain that to me.
• 4:28
  And he said, well, I get together with people and I encourage them and I build them up and I help them excel and we love to share a cup of coffee.
• 4:35
  I said, where do I sign up?
• 4:37
  And that's how I met Justin Janowski.
• 4:40
  We have been great friends ever since.
• 4:42
  And I literally did sign up with his program, Faith to Influence.
• 4:47
  to learn how to do sales uh in a way that has integrity and love.
• 4:52
  And I've learned so much from that.
• 4:54
  This really opened the door to potential that I could form a business around these principles, being able to come alongside people, find out what their gifts are, find out
• 5:05
  what their strengths are, encourage them and help them excel in life.
• 5:11
  So I worked with Justin for a while.
• 5:14
  And simultaneously in my local community, I'd started an organization called Business Church.
• 5:20
  And Business Church was just a gathering of church, I'm sorry, of business leaders who loved the Lord.
• 5:25
  And we just had lunch about once a quarter.
• 5:28
  We met at a restaurant, we would talk and share ideas.
• 5:31
  And that was it.
• 5:33
  As time went on, had, I was probably in, it was probably in 2025, in April of 2025 that I, I,
• 5:44
  We had a number of people come out to business church and it was significantly more than what we had had come up before.
• 5:51
  So typically we had 10 people and this time we had about 20 people.
• 5:55
  And I thought, this is odd, what's going on?
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  And we began to ask questions.
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  Why are you here?
• 5:59
  What was the draw?
• 6:00
  What do you need?
• 6:01
  And the number one response that we got was, we want more things like this.
• 6:06
  We need this type of thing in our life.
• 6:09
  So we met in April, we met again in July.
• 6:12
  asked the same questions, began to do some work together.
• 6:15
  And it occurred to me that Business Church Online was going to be a solution that met the needs of the local community and uh was an answer to this prayer that I have been praying,
• 6:28
  how do we reach people and how do we help them become who God has made them to be?
• 6:32
  And so in October, we launched Business Church, MyBusinessChurch.com.
• 6:38
  And we launched that where we have Business Church Mobile members who have signed up and pay a membership fee join us for a weekly meeting online where we do this very thing that
• 6:48
  we used to do once a quarter.
• 6:50
  We talk about business principles from a faith perspective and ask questions to apply what we read in the Bible to our personal lives, to our business lives, our faith lives.
• 7:00
  And right now I am still working full-time for my church.
• 7:04
  I'm still doing the management, property management company.
• 7:07
  But Business Church has been the latest venture that has really captured my eye.
• 7:12
  That's great.
• 7:13
  So you kind of mentioned a lot of stuff that I want to unpack a couple of things.
• 7:17
  Number one, the boundaries aspect that you said God laid those boundaries in your life.
• 7:21
  And a lot of people forget that they just go full force and they don't put those boundaries.
• 7:25
  Could you kind of explain a little bit more about those boundaries you had in your life?
• 7:29
  I knew that I needed something that was going to work for me.
• 7:34
  So one of the things that I think is very important in our relationship with the Lord is of course, get to know the Lord as much as you can.
• 7:41
  Be in the word, be in communication with other people, let other people, I mean the Bible says that we sharpen one another, that's a good illustration.
• 7:50
  That we take off the rough edges, so to speak.
• 7:53
  That we make us productive, so to speak.
• 7:55
  And so when we have this type of thing where there's accountability, we find that we become a better version of who we are as well.
• 8:05
  So we need to know the Lord really well, we need to know ourselves really well.
• 8:08
  And it was the combination of those two things that led me to ask the question, what do you want from me?
• 8:14
  Because the temptation is to see something that seems like a good idea and to go after it, but this may not be something that would be a good fit.
• 8:21
  So instead of doing that, just to pause and inquire of God,
• 8:25
  I say pause as if this were a one conversation, but this really took place over several years of praying and discerning and asking a lot of questions that really didn't have
• 8:35
  great answers to them and realizing that a bad answer or a no answer was also significant because it helped guide me towards what it was that I was supposed to do.
• 8:45
  So the boundaries were very important to me because I knew things like I didn't want to leave the area.
• 8:51
  I didn't want to have to do something that would take me out of where I live.
• 8:55
  We have a close knit family.
• 8:56
  I have very good friends where I am.
• 8:57
  We have a very good church that I'm a part of that I love.
• 9:01
  And I didn't want to do something that would remove me from that because all of those things were significant influencers in who I am.
• 9:08
  I didn't want to do something that had a tremendously new skillset.
• 9:12
  At that point in my life, I had four young daughters and I didn't have time to learn a brand new, a brand new vocation.
• 9:22
  I wanted to do something that continued to allow me to minister.
• 9:26
  Although what's really interesting about this one is I have come to the conclusion that there really is no distinction between the secular and the sacred when all of what we do
• 9:37
  is for the Lord, it's all sacred.
• 9:38
  Everything that we do that we dedicate to him, we make it holy in doing that.
• 9:43
  So if the nature of our vocation is not inherently sinful to begin with,
• 9:48
  We dedicate that to the Lord and we've taken something that the world would call secular and we've actually made it sacred.
• 9:54
  And so I've learned to kind of stop using that language and instead saying, what is the Lord calling you to do?
• 10:00
  Because whatever we do, he said, let's do it with all our might.
• 10:02
  And when we do that, we give him honor and we make what is mundane, holy.
• 10:09
  Exactly.
• 10:09
  And I love that you say that because a lot of people separate business from ministry, but in reality, your business is your ministry.
• 10:14
  And as you were talking through this, it came to my attention, you know, God calls us to be light, but light isn't for self, light is for others.
• 10:22
  We have to find that light out to other people.
• 10:23
  not, we are not the light.
• 10:25
  We are shining the light.
• 10:26
  There's a different concept and everything you're talking about is lining up to impact other people.
• 10:31
  I think that's where our focus
• 10:34
  comes off self and onto others, that's when we begin to really truly serve.
• 10:37
  You talked about Justin and you and I have that friend in common.
• 10:41
  He talks about that self is love, self is serving.
• 10:45
  And people miss those concepts because they separate business from ministry or business from their personal spiritual growth.
• 10:53
  I love the way you're phrasing things.
• 10:54
  As matter of fact, the phrase you said, and I don't remember exactly how you said it, but as long as what we're doing is not based in sin, it should glorify God.
• 11:02
  I love that phrase.
• 11:03
  just kind of communicates to the depth of what people need to understand in business because they missed that point.
• 11:09
  And when you miss that point, you miss the whole point of why you're called into business.
• 11:13
  Thank you for sharing.
• 11:14
  That's been some great stuff.
• 11:15
  We're going to kind of transition a little bit into our business growth section.
• 11:19
  And so what are some things you've done in your business that might be some tips to help somebody else grow their business?
• 11:25
  The things that I have done are things that I need to give credit to other people for by and large.
• 11:31
  So like I said, I feel like I know myself fairly well.
• 11:34
  I feel like the Lord has revealed to me over time, here are your strengths and here are your weaknesses.
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  And I feel equally confident to talk about either.
• 11:42
  I don't mind talking about who I really am and what he has given me to do and what I do well.
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  And I don't mind talking about what I don't do well because I'm not ashamed of that either.
• 11:51
  The Lord has done a lot of healing in my life to bring me to the point to recognize that my strengths and my weaknesses are equally valuable, just in different ways.
• 12:00
  So one of the things that I enjoy doing and that I feel like I do well is I bring people around me and I listen to them and I build them up and release them to do the job.
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  And as a result, anytime that I'm given a task to do, whether at church or whether it's something that I know I need to do for business, my very first question is, right, who's
• 12:19
  my team?
• 12:20
  who are the people that God has given me to be able to fill in the blanks for things that I know that I can't do well.
• 12:26
  The good part is I know to ask the right questions.
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  So if you are aware of who you are and you're confident in who you are, then you ask the right questions of people who have strengths that are opposite of your weaknesses, they're
• 12:39
  the same as your weaknesses.
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  How am I trying to say that, right?
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  Your weakness is their strength.
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  We'll say it that way.
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  And when we are able to recognize that
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  It allows me to look past people who are very much like me and identify with people who are not like me.
• 12:57
  And that's a tricky skill to learn because we tend to gravitate towards people with whom we think alike, we act alike, we process alike, but that doesn't ultimately get the job
• 13:07
  done.
• 13:08
  If I need somebody who is detail oriented, which I'm not, and I have people around me that are just visionary, which I am, we'll spend all day talking about what could be and
• 13:17
  nothing will actually get done.
• 13:19
  that's not helpful for the business.
• 13:21
  In that, one of the things that I've learned that is probably the most important is the power of processes.
• 13:28
  We need to have a way of doing things.
• 13:31
  And I think one of the beautiful things about faith, God says this, it is to the glory of God to conceal a matter and to the glory of kings to reveal a matter or to have that
• 13:42
  revealed.
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  And what the Lord is saying, first of all, is a high compliment.
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  He sees us as royalty.
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  And there are things that God has hidden away for us, for our sake, that we can discover.
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  But he says, I'm calling you a king.
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  It's to the glory of the king to have this revealed, to seek out after this and to discover it.
• 14:01
  And I think that God has a way of doing things, a process of doing things.
• 14:06
  And when we find God's way, it makes the most sense and it works the best.
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  And so there's a lot of good books on business that will help us with this in general.
• 14:15
  but the nuances really takes being sensitive to the Holy Spirit and having God lead us in that.
• 14:22
  Once we understand that this is a better way of doing a process or taking a step than this other way, once we realize that, it's really important to document that as best we can.
• 14:33
  My team is phenomenal at documenting processes.
• 14:38
  I cannot, I just can't say enough about them.
• 14:40
  uh Very organized, so organized that we could pull somebody off the street
• 14:44
  who had uh average IQ and somebody who could pay attention to details and I could walk them right through our process.
• 14:52
  They could do the exact same job that any of us do because everything is so well organized.
• 14:57
  The key in this is if we're going to grow anything, there needs to be certain parts of what I'm doing right now that have to be handed off to somebody else to allow me to do the
• 15:09
  next thing.
• 15:10
  I can't hand something off.
• 15:12
  adequately unless that person knows how to do the job as well as me or close to as well as me or in some cases, this is the case with the people in my office, they do the job better
• 15:22
  than me because they're more organized than I am.
• 15:25
  So when we take an idea of how do we get from point A to point B?
• 15:31
  How do we solve this problem?
• 15:32
  How do we reach this goal?
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  I need this visionary type thinking, which I really enjoy.
• 15:37
  Once we have figured out the solution to that and we document it,
• 15:41
  I can take that documentation and train somebody else.
• 15:44
  That's the key.
• 15:45
  That really is what's important for great growth.
• 15:48
  The second thing that I would say is we have to do a great job of communicating who we are and connecting with others.
• 15:57
  Marketing would be sort of the overall business strategy or business concept.
• 16:03
  We need to find a way to connect and to tell the story.
• 16:06
  And I just thoroughly enjoy this side of things.
• 16:10
  I like being able to talk to people.
• 16:12
  I want to hear what God is doing in their life, the story, the vision that they have.
• 16:17
  I want to be able to share the story and vision that I have.
• 16:19
  And then I'm just looking for it to overlap.
• 16:21
  As we record this, we're right in the middle of the 2026 Winter Olympics.
• 16:25
  And the five Olympic circles are a great word picture for what this looks like.
• 16:31
  Each one is distinct.
• 16:32
  Each one is a different color, but each one overlaps just a little bit.
• 16:36
  And the final image is better than just one circle.
• 16:40
  And in the same way, when the circle of my life intersects with the circle of your life, I look at the overlap and I ask the question, what is it you might want to do here, God?
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  Where can we connect?
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  Where can we collaborate?
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  Where can I help this person?
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  And where can they help the vision that you've given me?
• 16:57
  That's great.
• 16:58
  So you develop the team, empower them, and then develop processes so you can empower the next generation of that team.
• 17:05
  That's basic discipleship, isn't it?
• 17:07
  sounds like we've worked for the church for a little while.
• 17:11
  Right?
• 17:12
  That's a concept of discipleship within your business.
• 17:15
  We don't use those words, but shepherding and discipleship is an important part of being a leader in a business.
• 17:22
  That's our role is to be that visionary leader, to guide those people, to get them to serve the way they best can serve.
• 17:29
  Yeah.
• 17:30
  If you are a Christian business leader, you have unique insights into the kingdom of God.
• 17:36
  Okay?
• 17:37
  So when we look at the scripture and we look at concepts from the scripture, so many concepts that we hear about in church that are spiritual concepts are actually financial
• 17:48
  concepts as well.
• 17:50
  So when we hear about forgiveness, you've heard about loan forgiveness or debt forgiveness.
• 17:54
  And so this kind of makes sense.
• 17:56
  Grace, like a grace period for paying your credit card back, this makes sense.
• 18:01
  um What's interesting is that cash is necessary on earth because it provides security, it opens doors, it creates options.
• 18:11
  Faith is the currency of heaven.
• 18:14
  It provides security, it opens doors, it creates options.
• 18:19
  So somebody who truly understands how cash works in business has tremendous insights into how faith works in our relationship with God.
• 18:30
  And so I think that our business people are best equipped to share their faith already.
• 18:37
  They just may not have been given the language.
• 18:38
  If they grew up in business and they know the language of business, they may not have realized that what they've been learning and what they've been speaking all along is the
• 18:46
  language of heaven.
• 18:48
  And once they make that connection, it opens up the door for them to be able to share faith in a very practical way or disciple in a very practical way because they know the
• 18:57
  nuances of business.
• 19:00
  and thus they know the nuances of the Kingdom of Heaven.
• 19:04
  That's great.
• 19:05
  That's great insight.
• 19:05
  So how can our audience get in touch with you and leave us with one little tidbit of wisdom as we end up the session today?
• 19:12
  uh They can get a hold of me.
• 19:14
  My best email would be Nathan at MyBusinessChurch.com or you can go to MyBusinessChurch.com and check us out.
• 19:21
  That's just a landing page for us right now.
• 19:23
  This is still a new venture.
• 19:24
  But if you hear this and you want to check it out, you can go to MyBusinessChurch.com slash guest and feel free to join us for a couple of weeks for free.
• 19:33
  Just check it out and see if that was something that would work for you, something that's going to be a good fit for you.
• 19:39
  If I were to give a takeaway,
• 19:42
  It's this, it's something that departs a little bit from the business realm and instead goes right back to the core of the whole matter.
• 19:52
  The more time that you can spend getting to know your Father in heaven, the more everything else will make sense.
• 19:58
  There's nothing greater that you can do on this earth than to know Him.
• 20:02
  And everything else flows out of that.
• 20:04
  A good family life, a good faith life, a good business life, good discernment, good discipline, meeting goals.
• 20:11
  everything flows out of the knowledge of the love of God for us.
• 20:15
  Do that first.
• 20:17
  very powerful.
• 20:18
  Thank you for sharing.
• 20:19
  Thank you for being with us today.
• 20:20
  for having me.