Latest / Profitable Christian Business / Obedience Over Opportunity: Steven Pemberton on Faith, Funding, and Startup Success

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Obedience Over Opportunity: Steven Pemberton on Faith, Funding, and Startup Success · Profitable Christian Business

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Prophet Christian Business.
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I am uh really, really happy to have my guest, Stephen Pemberton with me today.
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Stephen and I met recently.
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We had a really good uh short conversation, but I could tell I already aligned with this guy the way that he thinks about faith and business.
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And we're gonna have some really, really good conversations around that.
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Stephen, if you don't mind, uh kind of tell a little bit about yourself.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So first and foremost, Doug, thank you so much for having me.
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It's an absolute honor to be here.
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So for everyone listening, my name is Steven Pemberton.
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I have built two different seven figure businesses with my wife, both of them going over seven figures in their first 12 months.
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And then since 2022, we've been advising early stage companies, usually direct to consumer, SaaS and tech.
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being able to help them get a solid investor foundation, be able to get in front of the right investors and have the clarity on what to even say to them when they get in front of
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them.
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So we've been doing this for last three years.
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I've worked with companies from early stage startups, like I said, up to $50 million a year.
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So I've been able to see it across the board, what works and what doesn't.
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And I've been blessed enough to do this.
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not only with God, but truly because of God pushing me into this direction.
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I was happy working a nine to five and going to try to make my $100,000 a year, but God had a different plan for me and that's how I ended up here.
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God's plan is always better, right?
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I say every day, like God, your will be done because I know in the past when I've tried to make it my will, it was never as good as what you had planned for me.
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So that is awesome.
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So uh what is the name of your business?
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Nice, nice.
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And uh one more time, what do you help entrepreneurs do?
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So we help entrepreneurs, specifically early stage entrepreneurs, get investor ready.
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So that means the normal stuff, right?
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Pitch decks, all their pitch materials.
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And the most important thing is, what do you even say?
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So how do you actually talk to an investor?
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But one of the other things that we've noticed is like, how do you even get in front of them?
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And what we've seen is it really comes in two stages.
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What we help them the most is with getting early traction.
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So how can I get people to actually buy this thing that I have a great idea around?
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And then secondly is how do I find the investors and then talk to them?
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So that way I can make my dream a reality.
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Nice, nice.
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That is an awesome service.
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I'd like to start the show with the guests trying getting to know the guest with the audience.
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Sorry, the audience trying to get to know the guests a little bit better.
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So I have some kind of like just fun questions that just kind of get to know you better.
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So let me ask you this.
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Pause.
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I'm all over the place.
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I don't know what's wrong with me today.
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All right.
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If you're watching live, this is live.
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Okay.
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two, three.
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When you're not helping founder scale, what's your go-to way to unwind?
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So especially with my family, one of my go-to ways to unwind, probably our number one way is we play board games.
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So we love to play all sorts of different board games, card games, face tan, monopoly, all those things.
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But that's our number one way is just being intentional with my family playing board games.
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Nice.
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Favorite board game?
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Ooh, favorite board game.
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Now we're getting into the deep hard-hitting questions.
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uh So for me, probably my favorite board game has to be Face 10.
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So that's a card game, but yeah, Face 10.
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Nice, monopoly in our house.
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And I don't always win and it's not good when I don't win.
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My wife used to always like, even when my wife was, when my daughter was little, like I would not let her win at things.
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And my wife would always make her mad.
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Like even a race, right?
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I was like, she's gotta learn, she can't win all this.
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And what does she have to do in order to win, right?
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So.
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Anyway, it's a lot of fun.
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uh If you could have dinner with any or lunch with any archbishop past or present, who would it be and why?
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That's a great question.
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So for me, it would probably be Elon Musk.
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And here's why.
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I think that you can sit there and look at the Rockefellers.
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You can look at the Carnegie's.
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You can look at anyone you want to look at.
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It's hard to debate that Elon Musk is not the greatest entrepreneur that we've seen in history bar nine.
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So this man is literally tackling how to get us interplanetary.
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He's tackling how to make a vehicle, make vehicles electric and sexy at the same time.
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He's tackling solar, he's tackling robotics and he's now he's tackling Twitter and change it into X.
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And so if you are an entrepreneur, you understand it's hard to run one business.
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How do you have five or $6 billion companies?
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That to me is just mind boggling.
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So for me, I've read his book and I know that he is definitely a different character.
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But I would love to sit down and understand how he views the micro details.
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Cause a lot of times, especially in business, we're told as the CEO, you have to be macro.
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You got to look at the whole thing, where you're going, focus on the vision.
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But if you look at, if you read his biography, him being in the micro details, Hey, why is there six bolts here?
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Why can it not be two bolts?
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Okay.
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So it can be four bolts.
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Why are we not doing that?
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Most CEOs don't get into those micro details.
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So for me is like, how do you stay high level and see where you're going?
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And how did you get so micro?
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You're like,
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Why is there six bolts here instead of four?
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Yeah, yeah.
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I have his book as well over on my shelf.
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He would be a fascinating person to talk to.
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It reminds me a lot of Thomas Edison.
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Like if we had a modern day Thomas Edison, somebody that just revolutionized a lot of different things, he's the most comparable Thomas Edison I've ever seen.
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We ask a secret question on every single one of the Pop up Christian Business Podcast.
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And your secret question is, we've got a crazy economy going on right now.
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So what is the secret to raising money in a crazy economy?
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So the short answer is what we call early traction or paying customers is an even easier way to put that because the day and age where you just have a great idea and you've
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written it down on the back of a napkin and somebody funds you are pretty much gone.
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Unless you're someone like Elon Musk, right?
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Like if Elon Musk is at a bar one day and he writes down a business and says, hey, I want some people to invest in this.
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Everyone and their mom will be trying to invest in that company.
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But if you're someone like me, who I do not have $6 billion companies,
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then me writing down something on the back of a napkin is not going to get me funding.
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But what would is if I have this amazing idea going out and telling people and then getting them to pay for it.
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What I've seen from investors I personally know, because I personally know 46 different investors, is they are looking at most of the time you think, well, I need to have
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millions of dollars or make a million dollars a year to even get funding.
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Not necessarily.
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just, you can make as little as $2,000 a month.
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So not a crazy sum.
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They just want to see if you're getting some kind of product market fit.
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So that's really the secret.
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The secret is being able to have early traction, so paying customers and then knowing how to present yourself.
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Most founders get in front of an investor and then they just kind of like vomit all over them about how incredible their product or services and the investors like, Oh, thank you
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so much.
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I think I left the toilet running and then they run off and you never hear from them again.
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So you have to present it to them and help them understand who you are.
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what you're building, why it's important, and how you're gonna deploy the money that they give you.
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Because they wanna understand if I give you a million dollars, how are you gonna use it?
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And then realistically, when am I gonna see that money back?
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So if you can articulate that in a very straightforward way and you have early traction showing people are paying for it, that gives you the highest likelihood of success.
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Can we talk a little bit about oh investors looking at not just the business, but the business owner um as the leader?
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So can you kind of dive into that as far as what investors might look at as far as the business owner themselves?
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For sure.
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So one of the things, because everyone who wants to raise money, you've heard of a pitch deck or a one pager.
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Even if you aren't raising money, you've probably heard of a pitch deck is basically just a PowerPoint presentation for a lack of a better term.
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But one of the, one of the key things I've seen on any of these pitch decks that work really well and they raise millions of dollars.
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And the ones that don't raise any is founder experience.
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So let's say Doug, you and I were in business together.
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You have your experience.
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have my experience and we put it on this deck.
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Now that's pretty powerful.
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It's like we've done some really cool things separately.
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So the likelihood of just doing something cool together is highly likely.
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But if it's just me on a pitch deck and I'm trying to create rockets and I come from an e-commerce background, the likelihood of me being able to create rockets and make us an
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interplanetary species is very low.
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So they're going to judge your team experience.
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And so one of the things that I've talked to founders about, if you are a solo founder,
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Be willing to give up pieces of the pie.
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Everyone wants to be the success story and have a hundred percent equity.
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But truly, if you're willing to give up equity early to someone, if you are building rockets, who was a rocket scientist for the last 25 years, and they can come on and be
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your technical co-founder, you should do that.
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If you can get advisors on board who can help you understand what metrics to look at, they've been in the space that can help connect you to investors or help you find them.
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You should do that because now when an investor looks at that piece of your pitch deck,
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They see that you have the experience, you have the team around you to make this a possibility.
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Yeah, that's awesome.
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Having the right team, right?
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The right team is so, so vital.
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Absolutely.
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And I think that there's those intangible effects too, where it's, not going to show up on paper, but it shows up on the call that you have with the investor.
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If they give you 15 minutes, one of the intangibles, when it comes to the leader, if I was to get on a call with you and you're, and I was looking for you to invest in my company
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and I was like, Hey Doug, well, uh, I'm kind of building this thing.
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And I think it'd be cool if you came on and you worked with us.
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think it'd be just amazing and we could really help some people.
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And it'd probably be cool for you too.
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It's like,
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You're not going to invest because it doesn't sound like I'm confident at all.
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But if I come in and I have my numbers, it's like, Hey Doug, so we're doing, we're doing $5,000 a month.
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have three new customers that are paying us at 5,000 and we've done it all bootstrapped over the last six months.
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So where we're going with the a thousand dollars I'm looking to erase from you is in the next six months.
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I believe that with this a hundred thousand dollars, because our cost to acquire our customers about a hundred bucks that we can go from $5,000 a month to a hundred and
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$50,000 a month.
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and we can get there in the next six months.
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This is how we deploy it.
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60 % of that is going to go towards marketing.
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We're going to deploy the other 40 % to development of the product.
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Now it's like, oh, okay, it makes sense.
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He's got his metrics in order.
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He seems pretty confident.
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He's got a team around him that can do it.
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Sure.
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I'm at least interested in now going through due diligence.
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The number one thing that I've seen too is on those investor calls, it's not about trying to get a one call close.
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It's about getting them interested.
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Thank
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their interest for them to go, hmm, I'm interested in a longer call or I'm interested to looking into your financials to see if you're just full of crap or if you're for real.
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Now you've won that call.
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Yeah, yeah, that's so good.
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So one thing you brought up in there was having a strategy before you ever talked to the investor, right?
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What is the strategy that you're going to have with the money?
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You can't just be all like, we just need money.
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You need to have a strategy of how you can deploy that money, right?
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Absolutely.
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mean, there's, so I look at probably right now I'm looking at anywhere from 20 to 30 different pitch decks a week.
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That's 20 to 30 different companies per week.
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And there's been a handful of people that I've talked to where they just want to raise money for having money sake.
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And I've asked them that it's like, okay, so you're raising a million dollars.
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What are you doing with that million dollars?
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And they go, well, I know I need to go get some legal people to look at it and I need some more developers.
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And I go, but
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What's the percentage of that?
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So are you going to use 10 % is going to go towards paying the founding team?
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If so, that's okay.
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But put it on there.
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Is 20 % going towards the developers?
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Is 50 % going towards marketing?
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Whatever it is, you have to break it down and then you have to tie that to some kind of milestone.
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What is you having that money and deploying it in that way actually unlock?
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So does that go unlock an extra thousand customers, which then gets you an extra million dollars?
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Does it unlock you getting
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be as a bank, it unlocks you being able to have new accounts on board, whatever it looks like you've been able to bring on new users, be able to launch an enterprise product
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that's going to be worth 10 times the enterprise value of the company you currently have.
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But you have to tie those two things together.
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So if you don't have that strategy in place and you get on calls, which is the unfortunate part for early stage founders is they will burn through so many investors until they
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finally understand it's like, Hey, I just don't know what I don't know.
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I don't know if you'll have a good percentage for this, but we talked about marketing and sales being part of that.
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And I imagine any investor that's going to invest has to have that, like, what are you going to do to get more money, right?
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Other than just spend the money, what are you going to do to make more money?
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So can you just talk about, I'm sure it's industry specific and companies are different, but how much of an allotment do you typically need over the percentage?
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uh
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from the investor that goes towards marketing sales.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, it does.
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So it does depend on the industry.
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and I'll just give, I'll just give some different industries that I work in.
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when I talk about early stage tech being one of them, that's across the board.
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So that'll be things like deep tech.
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So that'll be in like the defense industry.
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That's people launching rockets.
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There's a couple of different defense tech companies I work with here locally in Tulsa.
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And then there's a majority of them are going to be software as a service or some kind of AI thing.
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And when it comes to the AI side,
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Those are, and I also have a majority over here in legal tech as well.
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The legal tech ones are interesting because if you're building out a product that has some kind of big time legalities with it, an investor is going to want to see, okay, I want you
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to put a decent portion of just making sure that all of the things that your AI is saying is legal is legal.
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So if that means 30, 40 % do what you got to do.
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Then they, so the marketing percentage would be less.
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If you're someone where you're just a software as a service, then 50 % or more.
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going towards marketing makes sense only if the metrics make sense.
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So if you have a thousand dollar product and you're spending $2,000 to get a person, please do not use 60 % of the money I give you to go and get new customers.
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You're going to burn through that thing.
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Please use it to go hire new team members to then help you deploy whatever's left.
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But for the people who have good strong metrics and they just need that funding to come in, then putting at least 50 % towards marketing and sales is going to be where the money
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should go.
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Cause that's going to increase that top line.
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The next part of the plan though is like, okay, you doubled the amount of customers you had.
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Do you have the infrastructure to actually hold that?
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If you don't have the infrastructure, then please don't allocate that much funds to it, because you're not going be able to hold it.
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It's going to destroy the company.
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But that's why it's so important to pick the right founder.
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If you're an investor, because if the founder has done in the past, they've built companies in the past, they've worked in big organizations in the past, they can use your
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money really well.
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to know, yeah, they can grow it to $10 million a year in the next eight months and it won't destroy them because their last company did 100 million.
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It's like, they can probably handle that kind of increase.
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But if they've only done $100,000 over the span of 50 years, them going from zero to $10 million in the next eight months would literally destroy them.
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They wouldn't even know what to do.
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So that's, to answer your question directly, 50 % or more if the metrics to bringing on customers that are really good.
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Nice.
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I have seen companies that have huge high performing sales teams and that are crushing it, but the fulfillment can't handle what's bringing it in.
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And they were lopsided and they eventually had to shore up the other side of it.
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yeah, it makes a whole lot of sense.
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what do see when entrepreneurs are trying to attract investors?
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What do you see as a major mistake that they often make?
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So when entrepreneurs are looking to attract investors, the number one mistake they make is that they'll just do a whole bunch of cold reach outs.
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So they'll just go hit up anyone and everyone that has investor in their profile tag on LinkedIn.
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And that can work.
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But the thing is, is typically their profile isn't dialed in.
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So this is very practical.
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So I just want to make it practical for anyone listening, whether you are trying to get customers or you're someone looking to go get investors.
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If you're doing this thing called cold reach outs on any platform.
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Make sure that your profile is dialed in.
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Don't spend hours and hours and hours and hours working on your website and then do cold reach outs with a Instagram or an Instagram profile or a LinkedIn profile.
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You have no, you have no banner photo.
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You have no profile photo.
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You've got one line that leads to your website.
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Your bio is basically looks like reads like a resume.
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And then you have one post over the last three years.
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Nobody is going to respond to you.
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So the number one mistake I see is that.
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They, they do two things.
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really two big mistakes is if they're doing it alone is one don't do it alone.
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Like go find someone that has been in the space and can help you too.
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Is if you are going to do it alone, then make sure that your profile is very dialed in.
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Your banner is talking about what you're building.
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Your profile photo is you smiling, looking forward.
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The tag right under it is talking about the things, the thing that you're wanting to build or that you want to disrupt your bio is talking about your experiences.
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and a little bit personal about who you are and then also what you're building.
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And then you're posting regularly.
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Regularly just means at least post once or twice a week and talk about the industry you're in.
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If you're building in deep tech and you're building stuff to spaceships, then you see that SpaceX has just done something, post it, just do a repost.
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Hey, SpaceX just launched this thing and then put your own spin on it.
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Hey, you just saw that Elon said that by 2030, we're going to be an interplanetary species.
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Here's why I agree or here's why I disagree.
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because now it's giving you industry's perspective.
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So when you're doing reach outs, now an investor will see, this person actually might know what they're doing.
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They might actually have some kind of grasp on it, but that's the biggest mistake I see firstly.
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And then, like I said, the other big one is just not having someone in the space with them.
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So someone like me, someone who has that kind of experience because investors, I've just talked to an investor this morning and he will not respond to anyone who reaches out to
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him because he's an angel investor.
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He's a one-man show.
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If you cold DM him, he doesn't even look at it.
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But he said the only people I will talk to is someone that I know knows them.
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So if you are looking to get in front of investors, you've never done it before.
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You don't know the game.
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You need to have somebody on your side in your corner that can help you.
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I love that.
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I want to dive into your story in just a second, I uh want to kind go down that path a little bit that you kind of started.
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Relationship building.
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How important is relationship building in this game of raising capital?
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I mean, in the game of business and the game of life, relationship building has got to be number one.
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And this is coming from someone who I want everyone to understand, grew up very introverted.
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I did not have many friends.
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I can count on three fingers how many best friends I've ever had my whole life.
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I'm 32.
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I did not have a lot of friends.
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I did not go to any parties.
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I didn't hang out with people.
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If I spoke more than five words at a time, somebody would think that there was something wrong with me, especially growing up.
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So for someone to say,
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someone like me to say that relationships are number one, that they're king, they are.
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For me, I've seen it where through doing LinkedIn cold outreach, I've been able to talk with multimillionaires.
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I've been able to talk to billionaires and I've been able to realize one thing that they're really no different than me or than you.
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They just have a different set of skills and they have different knowledge than I do.
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But that doesn't mean that they're way smarter than me.
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It's just they figured something else out.
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So building those relationships just gives you the confidence to try.
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Then the other thing is I've seen is being able to build relationships in your particular industry can save you decades.
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Because like for me, I had the investor relationships two years before I ever needed them.
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So for me, I'm able to know what does it look like to be in the capital markets?
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How do you actually raise money?
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What are investors actually investing in right now?
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How much money are they willing to deploy in what kind of industries?
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And that gave me the skillsets, the mindset to be able to help other people.
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And I think that that's the game is if you are building relationships,
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It's not about hoarding all these relationships.
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It's about how can you use these relationships to grow yourself and then to be able to help people around you.
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But relationships gotta be king, number one.
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Yeah, I always tell everybody it's a foundation.
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It's a cornerstone of building any business.
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uh It's phenomenal.
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I want to put a pin right here because I want to come back to it oh about the cold outreach and relationship building online because I'm sure you have some really good
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insights around that and that's something that we do on our side.
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So I feel like that conversation could be very, very valuable for uh the guests.
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But I want to dive into your story because I know
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based on our previous conversation, you had a period where you hit rock bottom and then from that you built two seven figure businesses.
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So can you kind of take us back to what before you hit rock bottom and then kind of the escalation from there?
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Yeah, so where I mean, I hit rock bottom a few times so we can go to either one of them rock bottoms.
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But my first rock bottom was at 21 years old and we, my wife and I had started a business.
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quit my job when she had just gone full time into it and we lost everything super fast.
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And I decided after that moment, I would never be in business again.
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And I wasn't for five years.
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So that's a pretty big gap.
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I could have built something probably pretty big by now if I'd had to skip five years.
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But what was interesting was those five years I worked in corporate.
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I moved up.
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I was one of the fastest moving people inside of PepsiCo.
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I went for, I had no experience.
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had no connections.
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I had no degree and literally just through hard work and being willing to show up early and stay late to learn.
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was able to move up and be one of the youngest managers inside of PepsiCo.
21:48
And I remember that's when my relationship started actually having a relationship with the Lord started in 2020 where I grew up in church.
21:57
I knew the Bible backwards and forwards, but I didn't know.
22:00
God and anything other than the red letters on the page.
22:03
So when in 2020 I went, have a 30 minute drive one way.
22:07
I'm just going to talk to my passenger seat.
22:09
And so I just started talking to my passenger seat.
22:11
I'd say, Hey Lord, me again, I'm driving to work.
22:14
Here's what's on my mind.
22:15
And I would just talk.
22:16
And I remember very vividly, this is towards the beginning of 2020 in June of 2020.
22:23
So actually in May, I started having anxiety attacks first time in my life ever.
22:26
And I just asked the Lord, it's like, Hey, don't take this from me.
22:29
because faith untested can't be trusted.
22:32
And I went into work and at Pepsi, wasn't like I was sitting behind a desk, I was managing warehouses.
22:37
So I was working anywhere from 14 to 16 hours a day, sometimes five to six days a week.
22:41
And I was at two o'clock in the morning, I'm in this mechanic shop and I hear the Lord tell me this only time in my life, I felt like I heard the Lord tell me audibly, you're
22:49
done here.
22:50
So I freak out, what do mean I'm done here?
22:52
I'm up for a six figure promotion.
22:54
Yeah, I'm going through a little anxiety.
22:55
We'll figure it out.
22:56
And he was like, you're done here.
22:58
So I got a little clarity that he wanted me to quit the job.
23:01
I asked somebody who I was close to, I called him.
23:03
was in business for 10 years.
23:04
I said, Hey, feel like the Lord is telling me to quit my job.
23:07
What should I do?
23:08
And he goes, well, if the Lord is telling you to do it, should, or if the Lord is telling you to do it, why'd you call me?
23:12
And I went, thanks for nothing.
23:15
But, but I knew he was right.
23:16
And he's like, no, honestly, if the Lord is telling you to do something.
23:19
sacrifice or obedience is better than sacrifice.
23:22
So for me, went home, told my wife, this is what we're going to do, quit the job.
23:27
And for context, my wife had already been running an Amazon business.
23:30
I had been able to go to seven figures, but the margins were really, really bad.
23:33
So in the beginning of 2020 being in supply chain logistics, I was helping her restructure the entire company.
23:39
So when I choose to quit, wasn't like we had all this money.
23:42
We actually really didn't have that much.
23:44
And so when I came home, then a few months later, that Amazon business just goes away.
23:49
overnight we get shut down.
23:51
doing wholesale.
23:53
So we buy a $15,000 pallet.
23:55
We get the receipts for it.
23:57
We send it all in.
23:58
Amazon says, hey, you can't sell this even though we have the receipts for it.
24:01
So they shut us down.
24:02
And if you guys know anything about Amazon, they hold your money forever and ever and ever.
24:06
They just keep it forever.
24:07
So we go from, hey, we're making decent money with me working a job and we have this business to making zero money.
24:12
Actually even worse.
24:13
Now we're a hundred thousand dollars in debt.
24:14
What happens now?
24:15
And being $100,000 in debt, I'm sitting there crying in the corner pretty much.
24:19
And I'm saying, Lord, you told me to quit this job and now I'm going to lose everything and my shirt.
24:25
What am I supposed to do?
24:26
And I just remember my wife and I were going through Facebook scrolling and there was this dude that we both followed and he said, Hey, if you do e-commerce, you should probably
24:33
check out Facebook marketplace and Facebook shops because they just released shipping.
24:37
And I think this could be pretty big.
24:38
And so my wife and I looked at each other and said, Hey, do we, do we try this?
24:41
And it's like, tried everything else might as well.
24:44
And we tried it and then literally first month we made $5,000 profit.
24:48
By the end of 2020, we were able to help 30, 33 underprivileged kids have Christmas.
24:53
Within six months, we're doing about $110,000 a month.
24:57
By the end of 2021, it was over a million dollars a year with about 37 % profit margin.
25:01
So pretty good.
25:02
And then on top of that, we were able to help 137 kids have Christmas.
25:06
That was about a $50,000 project.
25:08
And that was in my hometown, Chattanooga, Tennessee.
25:11
We went and found all the kids in the school system that were underprivileged.
25:14
bought all the presents, $300 a piece for each kid, wrapped them all, had a whole warehouse management system in this guy's 2,000 square foot unfinished basement.
25:22
And we loaded all into U-Hauls, drove around all over Chattanooga, Tennessee and delivered presents.
25:28
We were sanding ourselves for real.
25:29
So it's been a crazy journey, but that's just like a quick snapshot into it.
25:35
Wow.
25:36
Wow.
25:37
oh So what mind shifts, mindset shifts did you have to make during that process?
25:44
all of them.
25:45
But all jokes aside, but one of the, I would say one of the biggest ones is trusting God.
25:52
So that sounds very mundane.
25:54
It seems like common sense, but I can tell you from my experience that there's different levels of trust.
25:59
So for me being married to my wife,
26:02
When I first met her and I was like, I really liked this girl.
26:05
There's a certain level of trust that I have by saying, Hey, I like you.
26:08
That's a level of trust.
26:09
Then there was a different level of trust of asking her to be my girlfriend.
26:12
Now I trust you deeper.
26:13
It's just me and you.
26:14
Then when I asked her to marry me, that's a different level of trust.
26:17
And then when we finally got married, that's another level of trust.
26:20
And now that we have a son who's 11 years old, that's a even deeper level of trust that, Hey, we're going to have to be good together.
26:26
We're going to have to figure this thing out together.
26:28
We haven't had great examples of what this looks like together.
26:31
So we're going to have to
26:32
do all of this and learn it all together.
26:34
So with me, really in 2020 was just learning to trust God in general.
26:39
Like, okay, I have a fledgling relationship with the Lord.
26:42
You told me to quit my job, so I'm trusting you that I'll do it.
26:45
And then I just remember for me, the mindset was like, I don't understand it.
26:50
I don't see it.
26:51
Amazon's gone.
26:52
That was our only source of income.
26:54
Now we have nothing.
26:56
And I have no other skillsets.
26:57
I don't know if I can go back and get the job.
27:00
So my one big mindset shift was like, okay, if I really do believe that God told me to do this, which I do, then I have to trust that he's going to take care of us.
27:08
And that one shift allowed us to stay open-minded.
27:12
So one thing that happens when you get under a lot of stress is you stop thinking creatively.
27:19
So for me, being under stress, I just always try to breathe.
27:23
And then I would just say, okay, God, if you've called me to this, help me through it.
27:27
Give me some kind of creative direction.
27:29
Because if we would have been so stressed that we had closed ourselves off, we would have missed one of the biggest blessings.
27:34
One of the reasons why I'm even on the show today, because I would not even have paid it two cents another video on Facebook.
27:41
So that to me was a number one thing was just, okay, God, I'm going to trust you with my life.
27:47
Yeah, obedience.
27:48
Can we kind of talk about that a little bit more?
27:51
you would say it, we really want to be obedient, right?
27:59
But in our fleshly skin, sometimes it's hard, right?
28:04
And we don't know what God knows, right?
28:06
God knows the outcome, but we don't.
28:08
There's so much uncertainty.
28:09
So fear, it's easy to creep in.
28:12
But it's that oh faith.
28:16
It's that faith in knowing that God has our better good oh for us.
28:22
We will go through trials.
28:24
It's not promised that we will not go through trials, we are always, He has our good in mind.
28:30
And just knowing that and trusting in that uh is just a huge thing.
28:34
uh I guess if you have anything more to say about just being obedient.
28:39
The biggest thing about being obedient that I wish I would have known in 2020 was...
28:45
that obedience does not always equal blessing.
28:49
for me, and here's how I learned this.
28:51
So I want to be completely open, honest with everyone listening that for me in 2020, I quit a job, right?
28:59
Amazon goes away scared, but I've been obedient.
29:02
Now all of sudden, boom, six months later, $100,000 a month, we're living our dream life.
29:08
So I go, oh, obedience equals blessing.
29:10
So in 2022, we're doing very well.
29:13
In March of 2022, we have a
29:15
beautiful home outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
29:17
We've got two short-term rentals on Broadway, the most hopping place in all of Nashville.
29:22
We're doing well.
29:23
And we still have the, the, e-commerce business doing well.
29:27
And we have this home gym, beautiful home gym.
29:30
My wife comes outside to the home gym and I'm working out.
29:32
She's crying.
29:33
She tells me, Steven, I need to talk to you, which as a man, you never want to hear that because you've probably messed something up.
29:40
But
29:41
I said, okay, so what's going on?
29:42
She said, I feel like the Lord is telling me that we should, we should shut down our business.
29:46
And I went, okay.
29:48
So then I took time.
29:50
I prayed and I felt the same thing.
29:52
Cause I go, well, you know, he told us, he told me to do something similar, right?
29:55
Told me to quit a job.
29:56
Amazon went away.
29:58
Big blessing.
29:59
So I went, cool.
30:00
We shut down this business.
30:01
A few months later, if we're doing a million right now.
30:03
Obviously we'll be doing like 10 million, know, 10 X blessing.
30:06
Maybe even we'll get a hundred fold return like they talk about in the Bible.
30:09
So here we go.
30:09
A hundred million dollar business.
30:11
Shut that business down.
30:12
And within 90 days we had to move in with family.
30:15
And I went, what just happened?
30:17
How did we go from what most people would consider a mountain top?
30:21
to a valley in 90 days.
30:23
How did we lose both short-term rentals?
30:25
How did we end up getting kicked out of that house?
30:27
Pretty much we got asked to leave the house we were in.
30:30
We, had to move in with family.
30:32
We had to let go of four employees and pay everything to them.
30:35
And I went, God, this isn't what I thought obedience meant, but you have to remember what Paul talks about in Romans where it talks about, we're crushed and beaten and martyred
30:44
every day for the faith of Christ.
30:47
So if our Lord and savior, so if you are a Christian listening to this, if
30:50
our Lord and Savior had to die on a cross, had to sit in the Garden of Gethsemane and sit there and sweat blood and say, Lord, your will not mine.
31:00
Then that tells me that obedience means doing stuff that I may not see a big return on and doing stuff that is extremely painful.
31:08
I've been stressed out, but I don't know about you.
31:10
I have never sweat blood.
31:12
So, and I've also never been crucified.
31:14
So for me, obedience now looks like, okay, Lord, you're calling me to it.
31:20
So whatever you're telling me to do, I'm going to do it.
31:23
And that's been my, my heart's mantra is whatever you want me to do.
31:26
I'll say yes.
31:27
If that means it's going to be extremely painful and uncomfortable, great, but his plans are greater.
31:31
And also it's not always about you.
31:34
It's about the people connected to you, the people he's called you to impact.
31:37
If you're in business, you're not just in business to make more money, which is great and have a bigger house and have a nicer car and go on nicer vacations.
31:44
He's called you to do it because there's, there's people attached to that business that you're going to directly impact.
31:49
that only you can reach, that your specific voice, the way that you're specifically packaged is going to reach.
31:55
But it only comes through obedience.
31:57
And that's the one thing I've learned too inside of God's will is he will get, if there's somebody he wants to reach, he will reach them.
32:04
But if he's asking you to do it, he wants to use you.
32:07
He doesn't have to use you.
32:08
So for me, it's been at breaking down in my pride where I'm, oh, I'm hot stuff because I'm doing X, Y, and Z to where it's like, okay, I really got to trust God again.
32:16
And I'm just going obey him no matter what he says.
32:18
And if he's telling me to go talk to somebody randomly in the parking lot, he wants to use me.
32:23
It is actually my honor to be used by God.
32:25
And if we're asking him to do that, then get ready to be extremely uncomfortable.
32:29
Oh, man.
32:30
oh I have what I call rewind moments in these podcasts.
32:34
And I want the listeners to go and rewind back to everything he was saying about obedience doesn't equal blessing because oh the name of this podcast is Profitable Christian
32:46
Business, right?
32:47
oh Of course, we all want to be more profitable.
32:50
But I say it every time.
32:52
The true meaning, yes, we want business to be profitable, but we want to be profitable for the kingdom.
32:57
right, whatever that looks like, whatever doing God's will looks like, ah that is way more important to us than the growth of any business.
33:04
So ah thank you, thank you for sharing that.
33:07
I'm glad the questions led to that because again, rewind, go back and listen to that because I want you all to take that to heart.
33:14
uh So just be obedient.
33:20
Awesome, awesome.
33:22
So with that being said, let's talk about happiness and joy, right?
33:26
because you have profitable business, you're doing well, you can be happy, right?
33:34
uh But you can also have an absence of joy.
33:37
uh So can you talk about how you see happiness and joy in the difference?
33:43
So I was actually just talking to my wife about this earlier, but there's a quote that, I grew up in Tennessee, grew up Southern Baptist.
33:52
I used to hear this thrown around all the time and it was always by people who had none of it.
33:56
But money doesn't buy happiness.
33:58
I used to always be told that.
34:00
I don't know about you, but I promise you that you being dead broke, especially right now, if you're on SNAP benefits, you're probably not happy either.
34:07
So if that's the case,
34:09
Money does buy some kind of happiness.
34:11
It buys you a roof over your head.
34:13
It buys you a car.
34:14
It buys you food and it sometimes can buy you vacations.
34:17
It depends on how much money you make.
34:19
But for me, you can be happy with money, but you may not have joy with money because like it will say that you have a child and they grew up with you as you were growing a
34:29
business.
34:29
So they've been through all the hard times.
34:31
You finally break through and now you're a multimillionaire.
34:34
So your way of rewarding your kid through going through those hard times, would you just give them a bunch of stuff?
34:39
They are not going to feel more loved because you just gave them a bunch of things.
34:42
It's the intentionality behind it.
34:44
This is what I see the difference between happiness and joy, especially in the spiritual sense.
34:48
Happiness, we can physically go out and accomplish.
34:51
I mean, you can go and you can eat an incredible burger.
34:55
or an incredible stake and be pretty happy afterwards.
34:57
You can be watching your favorite football team on Saturday or Sunday and they win and you're pretty happy, but that's not joy.
35:03
Joy comes from intentionality and true joy, whether the circumstances are good or bad, come from an intentional relationship with the Lord.
35:10
So that means spending time with him each and every day and giving him the time to speak to you and the time to correct you.
35:16
It's that father son relationship.
35:19
So for me, where I found the most joy was not even when I was doing the best financially.
35:23
It was actually when I was able to sit there in my darkest moments and go, okay, God, I'm here present in this moment with you.
35:30
What do you want to say to me through the scripture?
35:32
And I would spend 15, 20 minutes writing down anything he had to say, writing down anything that jumped off the page to me.
35:38
And I noticed that because I was present with the Lord in that moment, intentional with him, that I got what I needed most, which was not another paycheck.
35:46
I needed the peace of the Lord.
35:48
I needed the fruits of the Spirit and one of them being joy that can only come through the Holy Spirit.
35:54
Yeah, even at rock bottom, you can have joy because joy is that peace in the Lord, right?
36:00
You have the assurance that you're His child uh and all these earthly things will eventually pass away, but you have a home in heaven.
36:08
ah That brings me joy knowing that, right?
36:12
So awesome.
36:13
all those fruits of the spirit.
36:15
It doesn't say you only have the fruits of the spirit when you have enough money to pay all your bills or you only have those fruits of the spirit when you're able to give away a
36:23
million dollars a year.
36:24
It says that you have the fruits of the spirit through your faith and your belief in the Lord.
36:28
So you can have faith.
36:29
You can have love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, kindness.
36:32
You can have, you can sit there and have all of these different fruits of the spirit, self-control, which is a big one.
36:38
You can have all the different fruits of the spirit.
36:40
without having anything in your circumstances, show that you should.
36:44
And if I'm real with everyone listening, those are the times that people know that you actually have something that they don't.
36:50
If you are called to Matthew 28, 19, go out and make disciples of the world.
36:54
The only way that people of this world will know that you're different is if you're different in times that are tough.
36:59
If you are someone who you did find yourself on SNAP benefits because of whatever happened and now you don't have them, are you freaking out and telling everyone how you're just so
37:08
stressed and you don't know how you're make ends meet and you know how with Thanksgiving coming up, what am I supposed to do?
37:12
Are you someone who's like, hey, you know what?
37:14
This may be a little difficult, but I know that God's gonna take care of us.
37:17
We got this and you have peace in the middle of it.
37:19
Are you able to say, you know what?
37:21
He's gonna provide for us.
37:22
We're gonna have a great time in the middle of it.
37:23
Are you able to have joy and you able to have the self-control to not just sit there and speak death over your situation?
37:29
If you are able to be that now you're a beacon or a light on top of a hill, especially in the crazy economy we live in.
37:35
If you are in business, this is who you're called to be.
37:38
You're not called to sit there and gossip about how bad the economy is to say how bad the president is to talk about how this other other party, you just don't like them and how
37:46
bad they are or how Janice and the counting is awful.
37:49
You're actually called to be a beacon, a light on a hill, not another piece of the darkness.
37:54
So that means how you act makes a difference.
37:57
It attracts the people that need you.
37:59
that they come to you and they say, okay, what do you have?
38:02
I'm going through the same thing you're going through, but you are reacting 100 % different than me.
38:07
What do you have that I don't?
38:08
Are you on drugs?
38:09
No?
38:10
Okay, what do you have?
38:11
Give me that.
38:12
And then you're able to minister to them and say, hey, I have Christ and this is how I'm made able to do this.
38:16
If it wasn't for him, there's no way I could do this.
38:19
Yeah, yeah, I love that.
38:21
I've read a lot of recent stories oh recently about some entrepreneurs that we all know, like John Deere.
38:27
There was a guy out in Italy that made Ferrari shares.
38:30
I think that's how you say them, those really good chocolates on Nutella and how so many of them, it was during that dark time that they created their business.
38:41
they were struggling and it was how they dealt with their situation at the time.
38:45
They weren't complaining about everything.
38:47
They were trying to
38:49
Yeah, they had ingenuity.
38:52
had, how do I get out of this situation?
38:55
I think that's a sign of a really good entrepreneur.
38:57
And I think it kind of relates to the same thing.
38:59
Like if you can have peace and we can only control so much.
39:02
Some people complain about so many things that they can't control.
39:05
And they wonder why they're not moving in an upward direction, right?
39:09
Because they're stuck complaining about things they can't control instead of doing something about things they can't.
39:14
So yeah, pretty awesome.
39:18
Let's talk about
39:19
your life and maybe even the ebb and flow, if there's been an ebb and flow about aligning your faith, business and your values along the way.
39:31
And are there any specific disciplines or habits that you picked up along the way to kind of keep those in mind?
39:36
Yes.
39:36
So there's, there's been so many different things that have been ebbs and flows and business faith and values.
39:44
So my values have pretty much always been the same.
39:46
mean, I grew up in church, so I had, I pulled the values from the Bible and I said, these are great things to live by, but I didn't have the relationship to actually know how to
39:54
apply that.
39:55
So now that I do know how to apply it, this is where you have a choice.
39:59
So in the Bible, talks about you can either serve God or mammon.
40:03
You cannot serve both.
40:04
And for me,
40:06
Mammon is not just talking about money.
40:07
Like there is a spirit that is that is mammon that you can you can serve.
40:12
So for me is there's been times after we closed down a successful business where times got really tough and I went well, you know, I don't like my my in my gut feeling in which to
40:23
me my gut feeling is like the Holy Spirit saying something to me.
40:26
So my gut feeling is like I probably shouldn't take this deal, but we really need the money.
40:30
And so me saying yes to that deal was me saying yes to mammon in that moment.
40:35
So for me is that the ebb and flows has been okay.
40:39
It's like me telling you guys everything I've told you on this podcast is not for anyone else, but for me to just reiterate to myself that, okay, God, you told me to do this.
40:47
I'm going do it no matter what you said.
40:48
Like no matter what is happening around me, if you told me to do it, I'm going to say yes.
40:51
And I'm just going to sit in it and I'm going to be in the fire.
40:54
Like Shad rag me shack and a Bendigo and help.
40:55
And if you save me, great.
40:57
Even if you don't, I'm going to obey and I'm going to say yes.
41:00
One of the things that we miss as Christians, again, going back to that obedience, equal and blessing thing.
41:05
was in Romans, like in the the times that we talk about the early church, there was a a new Caesar that came in place.
41:13
His name is Nero.
41:14
Nero hated Christians.
41:16
This became the time when Christians used to hide in the catacombs of Rome.
41:20
This catacombs, if you don't know what that is, they're literally sleeping with dead bodies because they are so afraid of what's happening to them.
41:26
Nero is lighting them on covering them, or lighting them on fire to to provide light for his dinners.
41:32
So for me,
41:34
is you can't tell me that they had they if they just had more faith they wouldn't have died if they just had more faith everything would have been good that was a season and a
41:42
place that they had to go through that that christianity had to go through that to be able to be what it is today so for me if that means that there's a see a burning season that
41:50
i've walked into i'm going to sit there with the lord and say i don't like it i could get myself out of it that is free will but i'm going to stay here with you because you have
41:59
something better for me and there's more for me on the other side of this fire so
42:03
That's been a big one, especially for business, is be hyper aware of what the Holy Spirit is telling you.
42:09
It could be the biggest deal you've ever done in your life.
42:12
Change your life, change every generation after you use life.
42:15
If the Holy Spirit tells you no, you better say no, because there's something on the other side you just don't see yet that the Holy Spirit does see.
42:22
And if you say yes, you're going to feel great in the moment, and then you're going to get blindsided by a truck.
42:27
Later on, you're going to say, I wish I would have just said no.
42:30
Now that doesn't mean that the finances may not be good.
42:33
means that you may lose your family along the way.
42:35
says, I don't want to gain the whole world, but lose my soul.
42:38
So that's been the big thing is in also making sure that I'm not using terminology like that to limit myself.
42:45
So there's been times that especially Christians are really good at this where it's like, well, you know, I'm just going to pray and make sure that the Lord's tell me to do this.
42:51
And I will, you know, I'm entering into this season of fasting right now.
42:54
So I can't go on to go to that, that lunch meeting.
42:57
like, you will, you will construct these.
42:59
religious practices and use the religious practices to hamper your growth because you're afraid.
43:05
So be if you're going to be afraid, that's okay.
43:08
We're all afraid.
43:09
There's not any of us on this on the face of the planet that are not scared.
43:13
But being willing to take that to the Lord and say, hey, I'm afraid because you're calling me into deeper waters.
43:17
You're calling me like Peter out of the boat and I'm looking at the wind and the waves around me and I'm scared.
43:22
That's okay.
43:24
And that doesn't mean that you should just say, well, you know,
43:26
Lord will take care of me if I just stay in my boat.
43:28
It's like if he's called you out of the boat, step out.
43:30
And that's some of the biggest things I've seen is just being willing to listen, willing to trust, willing to say yes, walk in it when it hurts.
43:37
And then on the backside of that, know that God has been with me each step of the way.
43:41
If it's a yes into whatever deal we're going into, I know he has something for me.
43:45
If it's a deal that looks incredible and he's telling me no, I'm going to say no and be like, I really wanted that.
43:50
Lord, I don't know why you said no to that.
43:51
I'm kind of upset about it.
43:53
He's big enough to take your emotions and to be able to hear you out.
43:56
Don't be afraid of being real with God.
43:59
Yeah, I heard courage in there.
44:02
Like a lot of people forget that courage is not the absence of fear, right?
44:05
It's having the fear but proceeding forward anyway.
44:09
So yeah, that you just kind of gave it to us.
44:13
Another rewind moment.
44:15
So go rewind and listen to all of that because that was really good.
44:19
Real quick question.
44:20
How do you define success now?
44:22
And did you find it differently, say, 10 years ago?
44:26
I mean, I, so the way I define success now is based on who I can help through the business that I have.
44:32
One of the biggest shifts that I would say that I've had.
44:35
was in the past, I used to say, well, you know, if I can help you, I'm just going to help you for free.
44:39
And what I realized is that when people pay, they pay attention.
44:43
So having some kind of price tag attached to it actually does two things really well for me to help more people.
44:48
One is now I know I have your undivided attention.
44:51
You're not going to be exploring a million different options.
44:53
Now that you just paid me to help you too is now I have the resources to be able to invest in either a me getting better, be growing my team so they can help me on this fulfillment
45:02
piece or C is being able to
45:05
to make the experience better.
45:07
So for me, that's been one of the biggest shifts was like, for me, success looks like how can I help the most amount of people have an incredible life with my wife and my son and
45:18
be able to make real change that doesn't have to be directly linked back to me?
45:22
Because to me, it's not about my name being on something and saying, Stephen did this.
45:26
It's more along the lines of somebody's life being changed forever.
45:30
because they had an encounter with me and because they had an encounter with me, they had an encounter with the Holy Spirit.
45:34
And then the way I used to look at it was, hey, how much money can I make?
45:37
So it's a pretty big change in terms of that value set.
45:42
Because in the past it was like, well, when I'm making a million dollars a year, I am successful.
45:46
But I have seen it that I've been more successful with less because I've been able to help so many more people on a much deeper level because I understand God in a different way.
45:57
There's a story of Brian Johnson, the pastor from uh Bethel Church, when he lost his wife to cancer.
46:05
And he, this was on a Friday.
46:06
He shows up and he preaches on a Sunday and his congregation asked him, why are you here?
46:10
It's like, you should be mourning your wife.
46:12
And he said, I am mourning my wife.
46:14
said, but I can only worship God like this once.
46:18
So for me,
46:20
is I understand that when God give it and God take it away, and I believe he has more in store for me.
46:25
But for me is I can only worship him in this way once.
46:28
I can only learn these skills once.
46:30
And then you have those skills.
46:31
You can only learn how to ride a bike once.
46:33
So for me is I'm gonna do this with God, let him lead me to the right skills, the right people, the right place.
46:39
So that way I can make the impact he's called me to make.
46:42
Oh, so good.
46:43
uh When you go a business with a heart to serve, it makes all the difference.
46:49
uh In so many different areas, in the way that you treat your employees, in the way that you treat your clients, of course, oh in your witness as a Christian, right?
47:01
uh And it's one of those things, if your heart is to serve as well as you can,
47:09
you're going to get results for your clients, right?
47:11
Because you care about more about them a lot of times than you care about yourself.
47:15
So, and then they're going to go tell others like, hey, Stephen or Doug or whoever the business owner is did this for me and it changed my life.
47:26
uh You should go talk to him, right?
47:28
So, uh hard to serve, hard to serve.
47:31
That is.
47:32
with the heart to serve piece, we moved here to Tulsa in 2022.
47:35
We've been here three years.
47:36
And I remember we came here and the Lord told me about this time, three years ago, he said, he said, cancel all of your meetings at this time.
47:44
We're not doing very well at all financially.
47:46
We had just moved, use every penny we had to get here.
47:49
And I go, what do you mean by cancel all of my meetings?
47:52
And sure enough.
47:54
I started canceling meetings and then any meeting I didn't cancel when I would try to take it, they would cancel.
47:58
So what happened is after they cancel is he said, I just want you to serve.
48:02
So I, with the, church were here locally, part of here locally, they had this week long thing where you could come, you could sit, you could pray, you could soak.
48:11
And then if you felt led, you could also tithe, you could donate whatever give.
48:15
And so we went and served every single day for about 10 to 12 hours per day.
48:19
That was five to six days in that single week.
48:21
And then we started serving in all the outreaches, helping the homeless, doing all the things.
48:26
And this is why I'm saying obedience as an equal blessing.
48:28
I was doing all of this and because God told me to do it, so I'm doing it.
48:32
And obviously I couldn't do anything else because you just kept canceling the calls.
48:36
So I was doing all these things for God.
48:38
and I wasn't seeing the monetary blessing in my bank account, so I got really upset with God.
48:43
But it taught me eventually, I'm kind of hard headed, so it took me a little bit, a few times, but it taught me that if I just serve first, that everything that I'm seeking, I
48:53
will find later.
48:54
But seek ye first the kingdom of God and everything else will be added unto you.
48:58
So if Jesus came not to be served, but to serve,
49:02
then that's a pretty good example of what you should start with.
49:04
You should start with service.
49:05
So that was something he taught me three years ago now.
49:09
Wow.
49:10
Well, we are this this interview is kind of flown by because I was like, maybe we'll be on 45 minutes here.
49:16
We're at almost the hour.
49:17
And I know we could have so much more to talk about.
49:20
So maybe we get you on for a second time.
49:23
I did put I did put a pin in in the whole organic outreach thing that we should we should talk about.
49:29
And I just there was one thing I know we could go on and on about about the spirit of generosity.
49:34
Right.
49:34
And how what how what that does for them, more so what that does for us.
49:38
Right.
49:39
uh So we'll come back to that.
49:41
stay tuned.
49:42
We'll probably get Stephen back on for another episode.
49:45
But I have one last question, Stephen, that I ask everybody because I always feel like there's something left on the table that maybe I didn't ask you or you really just have a
49:54
heart to share about.
49:55
So what parting words of wisdom or just inspiration do you have to leave with the audience?
50:02
feel like I left it all out there on the rest of the podcast, but I would say if there's anything left, I would say more than anything, literally more than anything.
50:11
If you get nothing else from anything that Doug and I have talked about this hour is obedience is greater than sacrifice.
50:18
So, and a lot of times obedience equals sacrifice.
50:21
So for me,
50:23
If you are a Christian, listen to this and you're in business and you feel like the Lord is telling you to do something.
50:27
Let me be more specific.
50:28
Let me say if, if you are someone in business and you claim to be a Christian, you feel like the Lord is telling you to give away a higher percentage of your income than you're
50:36
used to.
50:37
You're used to doing the 10%, but now he's calling you to 20 % do what he's called you to.
50:41
It's going to stretch you.
50:42
There's somebody attached to watching this right now that that is actually for you and it's going to stretch you.
50:46
And you've been afraid of actually doing it.
50:48
I know that the Lord's calling you to that right now.
50:51
So do that.
50:52
If you're someone in business right now and you feel like, God, I've been running my head against the wall and I just don't feel you in this business.
50:58
Maybe I just have to do something else or maybe I just have to do better in marketing or go read another book, like so like crazy and I'll figure it all out.
51:06
The thing is, if is maybe God isn't in the business.
51:10
Three years ago, there was a business that we did because I had elevated them and I had another business that was called holocaust.
51:16
I was doing Holo co and nothing worked.
51:19
I'm everything that is working now didn't, nothing works.
51:22
And I heard the Lord specifically tell me, he's like, I didn't tell you to do that.
51:25
So, and it took me going through so much pain to get to the point of brokenness to say, okay, God, whatever you want to do, I'm just going to do it.
51:34
I don't know how I'm going to do it, but you call me to it.
51:36
So if you're someone like that, where you're doing a business that just isn't working that well, and you don't understand why and ask the Lord again, Hey, is this really where I'm
51:45
supposed to be?
51:46
And then for the last entrepreneur, last Christian entrepreneur specifically, if you're doing really well,
51:50
Make sure that you're not letting the spirit of mammy control your life.
51:54
Make sure that if you are doing really well.
51:56
that you're not just going to church, you're giving your 10 % saying, well, you know, I'm really helping out the community.
52:00
I'm doing great doing all the things God calls me to.
52:03
love my family.
52:03
Well, love my friends.
52:04
Well, if he's calling you to give more and not just money because you have the money, but if he's calling you to give your time and actually go help support the homeless people or
52:13
go serve in the food kitchen right now for the people who don't have snap benefits, maybe you should do that because it's a deeper heart posture and all God wants from us is a
52:22
heart posture.
52:23
food.
52:24
obedience.
52:24
He wants a heart posture of brokenness of sitting on our knees and saying, okay, God, whatever you want to do.
52:29
It's a heart posture.
52:30
It's not just a physical posture.
52:33
Wow, this has been so good and I can't wait to have you on again.
52:36
uh So much value uh and so much of your heart has been shared on this podcast.
52:43
So thank you, Stephen.
52:44
And thank you everyone for watching or listening, whichever you're doing.
52:48
And until next time, keep moving forward.