Latest / In His Circle / When God Builds More Than a Business: The Story Behind South Water Manor | Ep 25

Transcript

When God Builds More Than a Business: The Story Behind South Water Manor | Ep 25 · In His Circle

• 0:04
  Tiffany: Welcome to In His Circle, where women gather to share life stories, discover authentic community, and grow in faith.
• 0:13
  Tiffany: I'm your host, Tiffany Windsor.
• 0:16
  Tiffany: My guest today is Heather Brigstock.
• 0:18
  Tiffany: Heather and her husband Jeff own Southwater Manor, originally known as the Fitzgerald Manor, built in the 1860s in Gallatin, Tennessee.
• 0:29
  Tiffany: Southwater Manor is now home to Bistro 562 and Coffee House, where you can enjoy breakfast and lunch, hold your special event, stay in the unique restored guest houses, or shop at the Artisan Marketplace where they partner with over 30 local small vendors.
• 0:47
  Tiffany: Or do what I do when I visit.
• 0:49
  Tiffany: Just hang out and chat.
• 0:51
  Tiffany: In Heather's own words, their goal at Southwater Manor is to create a place where community happens, where folks feel valued, hope is shared, and relationships can flourish.
• 1:04
  Tiffany: Heather, welcome to In His Circle.
• 1:07
  Heather: Tiffany, this is the greatest honor to be here with you, my friend.
• 1:11
  Heather: Very thankful.
• 1:12
  Tiffany: We have been talking about this for quite a while.
• 1:15
  Heather: Yeah.
• 1:15
  Tiffany: You know how the Lord has been calling both of us to just take a moment to step back.
• 1:22
  Tiffany: I met Heather shortly after I moved to Tennessee, which has now been over two years.
• 1:27
  Tiffany: Wow.
• 1:28
  Tiffany: And the Lord brought us together for so much more than I knew at the time.
• 1:33
  Tiffany: Yes.
• 1:33
  Tiffany: You probably knew because that is your job here is to bring people together.
• 1:38
  Heather: No, I'm just excited about it.
• 1:40
  Heather: I'm thankful for it.
• 1:41
  Heather: Yeah.
• 1:42
  Tiffany: I started out because I was creating arts and crafts projects.
• 1:46
  Tiffany: So I became a vendor here and got to know you.
• 1:49
  Tiffany: Then you started a Bible study.
• 1:52
  Tiffany: That's right.
• 1:53
  Tiffany: That as I look back, I'm thinking, how on earth did you ever find the time to pull that together in addition to everything that you do here?
• 2:01
  Heather: It was not my finest series.
• 2:03
  Heather: You know more than anyone.
• 2:04
  Heather: I'm by the seat of my pants.
• 2:05
  Heather: But for such a time as that, I believe the Lord wanted us to do it for that time.
• 2:08
  Heather: And sometimes that's how we run it.
• 2:11
  Tiffany: And I had never been involved in a Bible study before.
• 2:15
  Tiffany: And so for me, it was beyond incredible.
• 2:19
  Tiffany: Even though you may be saying and judging yourself in this moment, you have no idea how it changed my life.
• 2:25
  Heather: That's such a blessing.
• 2:26
  Heather: I didn't know.
• 2:27
  Heather: I felt very strongly that the Lord told us to do that during that time.
• 2:31
  Heather: And then it was interesting.
• 2:33
  Heather: I don't like to start things that I can't see through.
• 2:37
  Heather: But for whatever reason, the timing was done and we stopped.
• 2:41
  Heather: But it is interesting because we often have people come back and mention those months.
• 2:47
  Heather: They were a sweet time.
• 2:48
  Heather: And getting to know you during that time was really a blessing.
• 2:51
  Tiffany: I want you to talk about your testimony.
• 2:53
  Tiffany: Okay.
• 2:54
  Tiffany: So start wherever you want to.
• 2:55
  Heather: Okay.
• 2:55
  Heather: I just want to tell you this.
• 2:56
  Heather: I am so thankful for you.
• 2:58
  Heather: And I talked to a lot of different people about this.
• 3:00
  Heather: But when God sent you to me, and I am saying this right now on the podcast, when God sent you to me, He knew exactly what we needed.
• 3:08
  Heather: I was at a spot where I needed you.
• 3:10
  Heather: And the Lord sent you from out West to Gallatin.
• 3:14
  Heather: And I know for a thousand other reasons, but I really believe that one of the reasons was here for me.
• 3:18
  Heather: Your circle, which you brought, was meant to collide with our circle.
• 3:22
  Heather: I believe that.
• 3:23
  Heather: And God brought your wealth of information, your experience in all the things that we needed to motivate us to go forward.
• 3:30
  Heather: South Water Manor would not be what we are today if it wasn't for you.
• 3:33
  Heather: So having us be together is really a blessing.
• 3:35
  Heather: But yes, thank you.
• 3:37
  Tiffany: Wow.
• 3:38
  Tiffany: Okay.
• 3:38
  Tiffany: So let's take a few steps back.
• 3:40
  Tiffany: And South Water Manor came into your life at a time, I don't know, is it fair to say when you least expected it?
• 3:49
  Heather: 100%.
• 3:49
  Heather: Yeah.
• 3:50
  Heather: When you look at the progression of our business, and we have the great opportunity to work with a lot of small business owners.
• 3:55
  Heather: I would even say this our business is an incubation house for small business.
• 3:59
  Heather: So we get to hear it from conception to reality and kind of walk along that journey.
• 4:04
  Heather: We believe in a God of creativity.
• 4:06
  Heather: We believe in the God that spoke in the beginning, God created.
• 4:09
  Heather: And then as part of his creation, we believe that God has endowed his creation with creativity and it manifests in a thousand different ways.
• 4:16
  Heather: Some people are business managers, some people are marketers, some people are painters, artists, drawers, uh, writers.
• 4:22
  Heather: Some people sell, others buy, cook, all the different things.
• 4:24
  Heather: And the Lord has really allowed us to be able to be in a spot where we can see it.
• 4:30
  Heather: We get to see it from the beginning and sometimes draw it out and then help develop it and help people capitalize on it.
• 4:37
  Heather: I heard somebody, I think Charlie Kirk said it too.
• 4:40
  Heather: Like he was talking to a student, said, I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life.
• 4:44
  Heather: He said, figure out what God has uniquely gifted you to do and make money with it.
• 4:49
  Heather: And so it just makes sense, right?
• 4:51
  Heather: So we're very blessed to be able to do that.
• 4:52
  Heather: South Water Manor has been in this capacity since 2020, but we started flipping pieces of auctioned items on our back porch in 2015.
• 5:03
  Heather: I can still look back and we may have a picture somewhere of this 400-pound cast iron bathtub that we bought and flipped.
• 5:10
  Heather: We would go to different auctions and buy pieces and put them on our trailer, bring them back to the house and sell them.
• 5:16
  Heather: And that was truly the beginning.
• 5:18
  Heather: My husband, Jeff, he's got a great eye for flipping things.
• 5:20
  Heather: He's done that our whole marriage.
• 5:22
  Heather: And that's that's how we began.
• 5:23
  Heather: The Lord blessed it.
• 5:25
  Heather: A few months later, we moved into a tobacco warehouse.
• 5:28
  Heather: It was so nasty.
• 5:29
  Heather: I was teaching school full-time, and Jeff was a pastor at a church, and we would buy truckloads of Wayfair furniture that were overstocks or broken or whatever.
• 5:38
  Heather: And we started having them delivered to this big tobacco warehouse.
• 5:42
  Heather: When I say tobacco warehouse, the floors are black, right?
• 5:45
  Heather: Ceilings are black.
• 5:47
  Heather: And my little ones are running around and they're covered in tobacco soot.
• 5:52
  Heather: But we would bring the furniture in there and we would cover it with plastic.
• 5:54
  Heather: And on Saturday, we'd get up early and open up the plastic, and they'd open up the door and we would sell and we made money.
• 6:00
  Heather: And we made friends, and it was just so much fun.
• 6:04
  Heather: And the Lord blessed it and it was good.
• 6:06
  Heather: So we kept doing that.
• 6:07
  Heather: And then we thought, well, we need more space.
• 6:10
  Heather: And the tobacco warehouse is dirty and the bathroom isn't sanitary for the kids.
• 6:13
  Heather: So we started praying for a building.
• 6:15
  Heather: And a friend of ours had bought a self-storage building in Hendersonville, the town next to us.
• 6:19
  Heather: It was sitting along this little creek called Drake's Creek and he'd renovated it and it was for sale.
• 6:25
  Heather: So we talked to him and we borrowed some money and we bought it.
• 6:29
  Heather: It didn't make sense.
• 6:30
  Heather: We've never been capitalized well in our life, but um we bought it.
• 6:33
  Heather: And so the kids would go wade in the creek and we'd have trucks delivered there and unload and start selling on the weekends and doing warehouse sales.
• 6:40
  Heather: It was just incremental.
• 6:42
  Heather: We talk about growing our business.
• 6:44
  Heather: It was incremental growth because it's overwhelming.
• 6:47
  Heather: People are like, well, I don't understand how to do taxes.
• 6:49
  Heather: You don't really have to.
• 6:51
  Heather: You just do what you can do today.
• 6:52
  Heather: You do the best you can with today.
• 6:53
  Heather: So the business was growing and we were having fun.
• 6:56
  Heather: I remember our first maker's market outside.
• 6:58
  Heather: I'm surprised that we lived.
• 7:00
  Heather: The self-storage building was on the edge of a very busy road.
• 7:04
  Heather: And for whatever reason, I thought it would be brilliant to put vendors on the very edge of that very busy road.
• 7:08
  Heather: And so we did.
• 7:08
  Heather: We have kids playing out there and we're selling soap and flowers and pieces of art on the edge of a very busy road.
• 7:15
  Heather: I mean, people are going by at 55 miles an hour, spraying rocks, all this.
• 7:18
  Heather: But we lived and it was fun and it just gave us a taste of what could happen.
• 7:23
  Heather: The makers market was really at its height at that point, it ebbs and flows based on the economy.
• 7:27
  Heather: But the makers market was really ramping up and people were excited to be able to see what they create.
• 7:32
  Heather: We were excited to see how we could capitalize on it.
• 7:34
  Heather: And it was good.
• 7:35
  Heather: Then in um 2018, we had some changes at school.
• 7:38
  Heather: We decided to pull the kids and homeschool, which is a big decision.
• 7:41
  Heather: We were going to lose one of our income.
• 7:43
  Heather: And that is a scary spot.
• 7:44
  Heather: Every business owner goes through it.
• 7:46
  Heather: That moment when you have to jump off the branch and see if you're going to fly.
• 7:50
  Heather: And I remember, I remember making those decisions and going through the process.
• 7:54
  Heather: Jeff was able to carve out 700 square feet of the north end of the building.
• 7:57
  Heather: We put drywall and shiplap up and HVAC unit in there and filled it with furniture and small decors.
• 8:03
  Heather: And we were open from Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
• 8:05
  Heather: There was not a bathroom in that building, Tiffany.
• 8:06
  Heather: We had to go next door to the gas station.
• 8:08
  Heather: And the kids were little.
• 8:09
  Heather: I can still see the boys with their BB guns picking off snakes in the creek, wading up and down the creek, doing homeschool.
• 8:15
  Heather: We would homeschool in the morning and did a little office and then we would sell during the afternoon.
• 8:20
  Heather: But the Lord blessed it.
• 8:21
  Heather: And then in 2020, like the rest of the world, COVID hit and we got shut down.
• 8:24
  Heather: We were non-essential.
• 8:25
  Heather: I will always sell toilet paper from now on because we will become essential if you sell toilet paper.
• 8:30
  Heather: So anyway, we got shut down and it was, it was sad.
• 8:33
  Heather: And we had outgrown that building and we weren't able to grow there.
• 8:37
  Heather: We were praying about what to do.
• 8:38
  Heather: We'd looked at several different properties and nothing had worked out.
• 8:42
  Heather: It was either a parking or a loading dock or too expensive, wrong space, codes weren't met.
• 8:48
  Heather: There was always a reason.
• 8:50
  Heather: And going back to look at the buildings that we looked at, I'm thankful.
• 8:53
  Heather: I'm thankful to believe in a God that goes before us, just like He led the children of Israel in the wilderness.
• 8:58
  Heather: The cloud and the fire have always gone before us.
• 9:01
  Heather: And sometimes it sits for a while and you just sit there and make camp.
• 9:04
  Heather: And then other times it moves and you follow.
• 9:07
  Heather: So in 2020, when the the cloud started to move again, the building, Southwater Manor, came on the market.
• 9:13
  Heather: So this is an 1869 Italian style home.
• 9:17
  Heather: It was built as a home.
• 9:19
  Heather: It was in the Fitzgerald family for about 125 years, I think, before it was auctioned off.
• 9:24
  Heather: We had a lady come in yesterday.
• 9:26
  Heather: She had bought a box of historic papers at an auction.
• 9:30
  Heather: And there were several papers in there with reference to the Fitzgerald Manor.
• 9:33
  Heather: And one of them was the auction sheet from the day that that house was auctioned.
• 9:37
  Heather: And it had all the specifications typed out with a typewriter.
• 9:40
  Heather: I mean, it was really cool to see.
• 9:41
  Heather: I kept it, we may frame it.
• 9:43
  Heather: So uh the house was auctioned off in I think 1980s, but it came on the market again, totally an aside.
• 9:50
  Heather: The Lord is so kind.
• 9:51
  Heather: Jeff and I were talking last night.
• 9:52
  Heather: When we landed here, we were on the mission field in Scotland.
• 9:55
  Heather: We landed here in 2007.
• 9:57
  Heather: I was pregnant with my third, seven, eight months pregnant with Clayton.
• 10:00
  Heather: And we landed in Tennessee, not planning on staying here.
• 10:03
  Heather: We were in Hendersonville, sharing a house with his brother for a few weeks.
• 10:07
  Heather: We wanted to get a house before Clayton was born.
• 10:10
  Heather: And we found a listing in Gallatin.
• 10:13
  Heather: And we took the back road in, and the way that it brought us was past this building in 2007.
• 10:19
  Heather: Down Factory, which is not the prettiest part of town.
• 10:22
  Heather: And looking back at how God kind of puts Easter eggs in our life is really a blessing.
• 10:27
  Heather: It's reflective.
• 10:28
  Heather: And it makes you realize that the Lord is good.
• 10:31
  Heather: I was talking to my kids this week.
• 10:33
  Heather: You can choose to see the hand of God or choose not to see the hand of God.
• 10:39
  Heather: The hand of God is everywhere in our life.
• 10:42
  Heather: But I think once you start to train your eye to look for it, it's like hunting for mushrooms or hunting for four-leaf clovers.
• 10:48
  Heather: The more that you look for them and the more that you recognize, the more that you see that things don't happen by happenstance or coincidence, but there's a God that directs our path.
• 10:57
  Heather: Anyway, we drove past this house.
• 10:58
  Heather: Came on the market in 2020 and Jeff and I drove up and we stood in the parking lot and we looked at it.
• 11:03
  Heather: The realtor wasn't able to meet us.
• 11:05
  Heather: He called, he said, I can't meet you, but here's the code.
• 11:07
  Heather: Go on in and look around.
• 11:09
  Heather: And when he and I walked through this building, we could just sense the presence of God with us and we could see what it could become.
• 11:16
  Heather: It was crazy.
• 11:17
  Heather: And so I looked at the price tag and it it was impossible.
• 11:20
  Heather: There's no reason.
• 11:21
  Heather: Jeff is really good with money, but we've just always, I don't know, we've just lived with open hands.
• 11:26
  Heather: And so it's never piled up for us.
• 11:28
  Heather: So we stood in the parking lot and we prayed and we asked the Lord to do a miracle.
• 11:31
  Heather: We named the building Hebron, like Caleb in the Old Testament.
• 11:33
  Heather: I've told so many people this.
• 11:34
  Heather: When Caleb went into the promised land as one of the spies, he saw Hebron.
• 11:37
  Heather: And when he went back, after the 40 years, everybody else had died except for he and Joshua.
• 11:41
  Heather: And he goes up to Joshua and he says, We're going into the promised land and I want Hebron.
• 11:45
  Heather: I want that mountain.
• 11:46
  Heather: And there's giants on the lands, but I believe that God is with us and I'm able to overcome it.
• 11:51
  Heather: And that's how we felt when we looked at this property.
• 11:53
  Heather: There were giants on it, big hairy giants, one that was named money, one that was named lots of work, one that was named no experience.
• 12:01
  Heather: And they were dancing around laughing at us, but we have a big God and we prayed.
• 12:04
  Heather: And God did a miracle and he allowed us to purchase the building in the middle of August of 2020.
• 12:10
  Tiffany: This is in the middle of everything being shut down.
• 12:12
  Heather: The world is masked up.
• 12:13
  Heather: Nobody's buying property.
• 12:15
  Heather: Everybody's scared.
• 12:16
  Heather: As a Christian, I live forever.
• 12:18
  Heather: So it takes some of the fear factor out.
• 12:19
  Heather: What's the worst thing?
• 12:20
  Heather: You can't scare me with heaven.
• 12:22
  Heather: The unknown, that transition period is a little bit scary if we mess with it in our minds.
• 12:27
  Heather: And nobody wants to say goodbye to family.
• 12:29
  Heather: But when we look at what we're saying yes to, it is not scary.
• 12:32
  Heather: And so we don't fear what the enemy can throw at us, whether it's disease or discouragement or challenges.
• 12:38
  Heather: We don't fear that.
• 12:39
  Heather: We look with our face to the Father and we just keep stepping.
• 12:43
  Heather: Just keep stepping.
• 12:44
  Heather: And that's where it is.
• 12:45
  Heather: It's not easy.
• 12:46
  Heather: But you train your mind to do it.
• 12:47
  Heather: It's like uh faith is a muscle.
• 12:49
  Heather: It's like we're going to the gym.
• 12:50
  Heather: And the more that you work it, the easier it gets.
• 12:53
  Heather: Then you strengthen your faith.
• 12:54
  Heather: They used to say that George Mueller, you know, when he was first started praying for a pound in England, that was really hard.
• 13:00
  Heather: But he said at the end of his life, it was the same as if he was praying for 10,000 pounds.
• 13:05
  Heather: I mean, you just strengthen those muscles.
• 13:07
  Heather: And that's what happens.
• 13:08
  Heather: That's what happened with us.
• 13:10
  Heather: And when we look at what's happening now, the Lord is so good.
• 13:14
  Heather: And we fail and we fall.
• 13:15
  Heather: But yes.
• 13:16
  Heather: So the world is the world was shut up.
• 13:18
  Heather: It was all the world's masked.
• 13:20
  Heather: And I remember signing the papers for this property, and we had to do it outside, sitting far away from each other.
• 13:25
  Heather: And it was ridiculous.
• 13:26
  Heather: So we bought the building and we did a power renovation.
• 13:29
  Heather: Praise God.
• 13:30
  Heather: The bones were good.
• 13:30
  Heather: It was ugly as anything.
• 13:31
  Heather: It was like being trapped inside of a big terracotta pot.
• 13:34
  Heather: The whole thing was red inside.
• 13:36
  Heather: And so we we scrubbed and cleaned and floored, put in four commercial HVAC units and painted walls and all those kind of things.
• 13:45
  Heather: The kitchen had had chicken fried in it for 10, 15 years.
• 13:49
  Heather: We went in with like those spray things you put on your back to go spray weeds and we squirted the walls with degreaser.
• 13:56
  Heather: I mean, we looked like we were out of the Ghostbusters movie or something like that, cleaning the kitchen.
• 14:00
  Heather: But the Lord was kind.
• 14:01
  Heather: And we opened in October of 2020 with a 70-year-old baker, 19 vendors, and Jeff and Samantha, who learned how to use the coffee machine two days before.
• 14:10
  Heather: It was not because we were talented or anything.
• 14:13
  Heather: When people ask us about our why, thinking about circles and In His Circle, a lot of people will look at their life and they'll look at it as a pie graph and they'll be like, okay, well, this portion is my church and this portion is my home.
• 14:23
  Heather: This is my athletics, my family, my job, all these different things.
• 14:27
  Heather: And then here's God.
• 14:28
  Heather: But for us, the overlay of everything that we do, the golden overlay is Jesus.
• 14:33
  Heather: And so that is the filter that everything runs through.
• 14:37
  Heather: He is the why, the who, the what, the how.
• 14:40
  Heather: He's the everything of what we do.
• 14:42
  Heather: We operate the building with a missional conviction that we want the power and presence of God to rest in our building.
• 14:47
  Heather: Now, not everybody's gonna understand that.
• 14:49
  Heather: And some people, that's not everybody's gonna walk in and be like, oh, the Lord's spirit is here.
• 14:53
  Heather: That's fine.
• 14:53
  Heather: But some people will come in that might never come to a church.
• 14:56
  Heather: And some people go to church and they're just gonna know that they're loved and valued, that they're gonna have a fantastic meal, that we're gonna supply them with great local goods.
• 15:04
  Heather: So we are missional.
• 15:05
  Heather: And a lot of people can find community here.
• 15:07
  Heather: That's our number two why is community.
• 15:09
  Heather: As much as people are living joined lives, I think through social media and online, we're living parallel lives in the world.
• 15:15
  Heather: And so creating a space where they can do life together, that's a big deal.
• 15:19
  Heather: We can celebrate the highs and lows of life.
• 15:21
  Heather: We have a grief group that meets here.
• 15:23
  Heather: And one of the things that's been a blessing and sad at the same time is that the grief group meets, and a lot of them are our customers and our friends who have lost spouses.
• 15:29
  Heather: We've been here long enough to walk through that and to hurt with people.
• 15:33
  Heather: Then we also get to celebrate the weddings and the birthdays, the reunions, and not just one baby, but now the second baby and then the third baby.
• 15:40
  Heather: So that's exciting too.
• 15:42
  Heather: Uh, that's our second why.
• 15:43
  Heather: We love small business.
• 15:44
  Heather: And again, being able to see small business flourish.
• 15:47
  Heather: People think, well, it doesn't it drive away from your business?
• 15:49
  Heather: We don't, we don't think like that.
• 15:50
  Heather: We hold things loosely, we want water to flow.
• 15:52
  Heather: So we welcome competition.
• 15:54
  Heather: We welcome healthy competition.
• 15:56
  Heather: We strive for excellence.
• 15:58
  Heather: We want everyone to prosper because as they prosper, we do.
• 16:02
  Heather: And so seeing other people become successful is deeply satisfying and definitely part of our mission.
• 16:07
  Heather: So all of those things.
• 16:09
  Heather: And the story keeps going.
• 16:10
  Heather: I don't know.
• 16:11
  Heather: I can talk forever.
• 16:13
  Tiffany: The one thing that struck me when I walked in the door here is I could immediately see and feel the community and the presence of the Lord.
• 16:21
  Tiffany: There is something that you do here that I think it's impossible for other people to replicate.
• 16:27
  Tiffany: You make everyone feel so welcome, so comfortable.
• 16:31
  Tiffany: You remember everyone's face.
• 16:34
  Tiffany: You know about their children and their grandchildren and their spouses, and that is so welcoming.
• 16:39
  Tiffany: And you see us, you see us.
• 16:43
  Tiffany: It's so unique to tie that in with a business.
• 16:46
  Tiffany: Like we've been talking about the business of South Water Manor, and of course, you have the vendors, you have a bistro, you have Airbnb here, and you're expanding into other buildings here.
• 16:58
  Tiffany: There's this heart that's happening in everything that you do.
• 17:02
  Tiffany: The question that comes to mind right in this moment is when the Lord spoke to you, when you were getting ready to sign the paperwork to buy this property, how close is the vision that you're experiencing and living today from that time?
• 17:16
  Heather: That's a great question.
• 17:17
  Heather: Hearing you talk, it makes me emotional.
• 17:19
  Heather: Growing up, Tiffany, I was backwards, so painfully backwards, painfully shy, overweight.
• 17:26
  Heather: I grew up in a home., my parents lost a child that was older than me and they were grieving.
• 17:30
  Heather: Looking back, I realized they were grieving.
• 17:32
  Heather: Very protective parents, great parents.
• 17:35
  Heather: I had a great family.
• 17:36
  Heather: Um, but I was, I was awkward.
• 17:38
  Heather: I was always the last to be picked for the game, the one that didn't get invited to the slumber party.
• 17:43
  Heather: And now that's my own fault.
• 17:45
  Heather: I was just, I was painfully shy.
• 17:47
  Heather: Going to college, I struggled to make friends.
• 17:51
  Heather: And it's interesting.
• 17:52
  Heather: I started to find myself probably in my early 20s, but then I got married.
• 17:57
  Heather: And so thankful for my husband, I married my best friend.
• 18:00
  Heather: But I think a lot of people, when they get married, they lose themselves because you're remaking yourself as the two become one.
• 18:05
  Heather: And so you're getting kind of a new identity.
• 18:09
  Heather: You change your name for sure, but you change the way that you do things, your routines change and then your expectations.
• 18:16
  Heather: And I think you try to rise maybe to meet other people's expectations.
• 18:20
  Heather: And so in that process, a lot of times you lose yourself.
• 18:23
  Heather: And so I did.
• 18:24
  Heather: We went abroad and I was trying to fit into this identity as a missionary's wife and the pastor's wife.
• 18:31
  Heather: And I never really felt like I hit the mark.
• 18:34
  Heather: I was awkward.
• 18:36
  Heather: And looking back, I don't think it's because I was in the wrong spot.
• 18:40
  Heather: I think that the Lord directed our path and growth is a process.
• 18:43
  Heather: I do think our growth is linear.
• 18:44
  Heather: And when we came back to America, I started teaching.
• 18:47
  Heather: And again, I loved teaching and I feel like lots of kids learned to read.
• 18:52
  Heather: Not because I was super smart at it.
• 18:54
  Heather: We just followed the directions and there they are.
• 18:56
  Heather: But uh but even doing that, I wasn't super satisfied.
• 18:58
  Heather: It's not like I woke up super excited to teach, made a paycheck, we got to take the kids, and I loved my class, all those things.
• 19:04
  Heather: It was a great school.
• 19:05
  Heather: But this place, it satisfies me deeply.
• 19:07
  Heather: Walking in here and getting to getting to listen to people, I want them to know that they are valued.
• 19:14
  Heather: I want them to know that they are loved.
• 19:17
  Heather: And I don't have a lot to offer, but I can listen to them and let them know that they're loved and I'll remember them.
• 19:22
  Heather: We had a guy on the steps today, and he was a young kid.
• 19:26
  Heather: Did not have front teeth.
• 19:28
  Heather: They were black.
• 19:29
  Heather: I don't know what he's been on.
• 19:30
  Heather: He looked half wild and he was looking for an address somewhere around here.
• 19:35
  Heather: And I said, Let's go in and try to find it.
• 19:38
  Heather: And then can I have a cup of water?
• 19:39
  Heather: Yeah, of course you can have a cup of water.
• 19:41
  Heather: We found the place that he was trying to go.
• 19:42
  Heather: And you, you know, I pray that the Lord reaches out on him and he knows that he can come to someplace and we're gonna at least meet his physical needs, you know, get him, get him something so that he's not alone.
• 19:54
  Heather: Every person deserves that, no matter who they are.
• 19:56
  Heather: So that's not kudos to me.
• 19:58
  Heather: That's just I think that's the way we're wired.
• 19:59
  Heather: So having said that, I do believe that all the things that we've done in the past have positioned us to be right here.
• 20:04
  Heather: And so I'm very thankful for what we get to do.
• 20:06
  Heather: I'm thankful for the people that God puts in our path and the opportunity to connect the dots.
• 20:11
  Heather: I'm not good at so many things.
• 20:13
  Heather: I do like to listen and I do want to connect the dots.
• 20:17
  Heather: I see the best in people.
• 20:18
  Heather: And that's not a skill set, it's probably because I'm just dense, but I see the best in people and I I think that everyone is capable of greatness.
• 20:25
  Heather: My dad used to tell me that you're endowed with the seeds of greatness.
• 20:28
  Heather: That's a Zig Ziggler quote.
• 20:29
  Heather: But I believe it.
• 20:30
  Heather: I believe that people have the seeds of greatness in them and they can they can choose what they want to do.
• 20:35
  Heather: And we get to choose every day.
• 20:37
  Heather: And the same way I want to cultivate that in my children.
• 20:39
  Heather: I believe they're destined to be world changers for the glory of God.
• 20:42
  Heather: I think people are too.
• 20:44
  Heather: And so how can we draw that out?
• 20:46
  Heather: So that is that's the bigger part.
• 20:48
  Heather: Money, you have to have money to pay the light bill.
• 20:51
  Heather: I gotta pay the mortgage.
• 20:52
  Heather: And it sounds trite.
• 20:53
  Heather: People are like, oh, you're just joking.
• 20:55
  Heather: Our treasures are in heaven.
• 20:56
  Heather: I'm gonna live on this earth, hopefully, for 75, 80 years, but I'm gonna be in heaven forever.
• 21:00
  Heather: And so I am investing in my future, eternal future for sure.
• 21:03
  Heather: And not even really thinking about that, but that's the goal.
• 21:05
  Heather: That's the eternal goal.
• 21:07
  Tiffany: I've learned so much more about you talking about that I've not heard.
• 21:11
  Tiffany: And we don't honestly have that much time to talk because you are so busy.
• 21:15
  Tiffany: I come in and there's so many people who surround you.
• 21:19
  Tiffany: You know, we're all hungry for your energy and your wisdom and your love and your prayers.
• 21:25
  Tiffany: And I've learned so much more about you today that we definitely want to talk about in future episodes of this podcast.
• 21:31
  Tiffany: That's what I'm so grateful about being able to record this here at South Water Manor as we're going into the second season of In His Circle.
• 21:38
  Tiffany: The first season was done in my trailer in California.
• 21:41
  Tiffany: And my girlfriend Mary and I would go to church and we come back and we turn on the recorder and we'd talk about what was on our mind because of whatever the sermon was.
• 21:51
  Tiffany: There is so much life that goes on here at South Water Manor that are stories that we need to tell and we need to share.
• 21:58
  Tiffany: The whole idea for In His Circle is about women walking in faith and women helping women.
• 22:03
  Tiffany: And if we don't talk about our stories, our successes, and our challenges, if we don't share those, we can go, oh, this is only happening to me.
• 22:12
  Tiffany: And that is not the truth.
• 22:14
  Tiffany: That's why I'm so excited to be here at South Water Manor to be able to talk, to be able to say, you know who walked in the door today?
• 22:22
  Tiffany: Because it takes us on another journey of this is what we need to talk about.
• 22:25
  Heather: Yes, that's powerful.
• 22:27
  Tiffany: What advice do you have since we're so focused on business today?
• 22:32
  Tiffany: It was the business of how you started and the business of how South Water Manor came to you during a time when the world was shut down.
• 22:40
  Tiffany: What advice do you have for women who may be thinking about starting a business?
• 22:45
  Tiffany: What advice do you have for women to pray and listen and then the next steps?
• 22:50
  Heather: That's a great question.
• 22:51
  Heather: So a couple of different things come to mind really quick to cap this up.
• 22:55
  Heather: But I would say that if God has given you an idea that you can clearly articulate and it looks like you can monetize, then I would say chase your dream.
• 23:06
  Heather: And even if you can't see the end, don't be scared of that.
• 23:11
  Heather: When we started our business, and you had asked this earlier, I had no business plan.
• 23:16
  Heather: Uh we went to a small business association meeting where we're supposed to draw out our business plan.
• 23:20
  Heather: I had nothing.
• 23:21
  Heather: There was nothing there.
• 23:22
  Heather: And I don't say that to say that's the best way to do it, but in our experience, I knew that God had given us a concept and had called us to do it.
• 23:31
  Heather: So even though it was scary, you just practiced taking the next step.
• 23:35
  Heather: Conversely, I've recently talked to a couple of people that have an idea, but they're not able to articulate it.
• 23:44
  Heather: It's still a cloud and they're not able to monetize it.
• 23:47
  Heather: So what I would say is be patient and continue to massage that idea like PlayDough until you see some kind of a form coming.
• 23:56
  Heather: What you don't want to do is just throw some pasta against the wall and see what sticks.
• 24:01
  Heather: I don't know that that's the best idea.
• 24:03
  Heather: We want to always position ourselves in a way that we're successful.
• 24:06
  Heather: So I think that it's healthy to pray for prosperity because with prosperity comes influence.
• 24:11
  Heather: And anytime we can use influence for the glory of God, that's a good thing.
• 24:15
  Heather: What we don't want to do is just try something and just because, just for the sake of trying.
• 24:20
  Heather: But I would say if you have an idea and a passion that is God-given, be strong in your faith.
• 24:26
  Heather: The Bible says to trust in the Lord and then not to lean on your own understanding in all your ways.
• 24:30
  Heather: Acknowledge Him.
• 24:31
  Heather: So pray to the God who knows how many hairs are on your head and has given you that idea and ask Him for wisdom.
• 24:39
  Heather: And then when He gives you wisdom and a green light, for heaven's sake, step.
• 24:42
  Heather: Go, go that way.
• 24:44
  Heather: And then the next step will get easier.
• 24:46
  Heather: Don't be afraid.
• 24:47
  Heather: Be wise, but don't be afraid.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you again for kicking off season two of In His Circle.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine doing this with anyone but you.