Latest / Christian Business Growth Podcast / Faith, Pace, and the Power of Slowing Down with Matt Curtis

Transcript

Faith, Pace, and the Power of Slowing Down with Matt Curtis · Christian Business Growth Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to the Christian Business Growth Podcast.
• 0:03
  My name is Lyle and I'm here with Matt Curtis from Lunchtime Heroes.
• 0:07
  He'll tell you a more about that in a minute.
• 0:09
  Matt, how did God get you started in business?
• 0:13
  I spent most of my professional career serving in ministry, but always loved business, always loved side projects, always had all these side hobbies going.
• 0:22
  And uh I didn't realize it at the time.
• 0:25
  They felt like distractions sometimes.
• 0:27
  Some people will tell me that they were distractions, but as I look back now over all of those side projects, they were really kind of paving the way for circumstances that ended
• 0:36
  up really kind of pushing us into business.
• 0:40
  Right around
• 0:42
  Well, it was the end of 2020 when I stepped off of church staff.
• 0:46
  We had just come out of, you know, this big event that happened in 2020 that all of the teams that I was over, we were the ones who were working and everyone else was, you know,
• 0:56
  kind of at home or whatever, however you want to say that, but we were transitioning the church to function online.
• 1:02
  And I knew that, that me being there in that moment was, was God's really plan for, for me to help
• 1:11
  kind of lead that transition.
• 1:13
  But as, as things kind of normalized afterwards, it became clear that stepping off of church staff was the right next step for me and for my family.
• 1:23
  And so we did that and spent a year working at an organization.
• 1:26
  It's kind of in between serve churches, but wasn't a church.
• 1:31
  And this was kind of my first kind of beginning to acclimate to this idea of not being on church staff.
• 1:37
  I'd always felt like God wanted me to be serving the church in some way.
• 1:41
  Logically being on staff made sense, you know, that was obviously that's a way to do that And so this this year post that was kind of this embracing a new idea embracing a new way
• 1:52
  to serve the church and So then we we had a circumstance.
• 1:57
  We had some insurance challenges that uh We had to make a decision pretty quick to jump and to do our own thing Or it was just gonna be really really expensive for us financially
• 2:10
  So we did.
• 2:10
  I remember having that conversation with my wife.
• 2:12
  said, Hey, this is, uh this is what I've always dreamed of.
• 2:16
  However, this is not the lead up to it.
• 2:20
  I would have preferred a little bit more runway, but here we are.
• 2:23
  We both felt a ton of peace about it and we, we made that jump.
• 2:28
  And so in, in February of 2022, I think it was, uh, started lunchtime heroes and it, it was helpful to have that previous year because
• 2:39
  that really reminded me that I could still serve churches and not be on a church staff.
• 2:45
  And so that's what I've been doing.
• 2:47
  Specifically, I help churches build creative teams.
• 2:50
  And so if you're trying to start a communications ministry and you've never done that before, there's a lot of complexity there, a of systems, of a couple key things that are
• 2:59
  really, really helpful for you to have to make it a sustainable and a healthy and then on mission type of uh contributor to your organization.
• 3:08
  So I helped churches navigate that.
• 3:10
  If things go off rails, help churches navigate that as well and come in and help restore health and rebuild the team and things like that.
• 3:18
  So yeah, so that was a bit of the path.
• 3:22
  There are a lot of stories behind that as well, but that was sort of the general storyline of how that all happened.
• 3:28
  And so it felt very clearly like God was saying, hey, you've wanted to do this for a long time.
• 3:33
  And so here you go.
• 3:35
  Take a crack at it.
• 3:36
  That's great.
• 3:37
  And you and I talked a little before this, but show the story of how you come up with a name, Lunchtime Heroes.
• 3:42
  Yeah, so lunchtime heroes is a silly name for a company that doesn't make any sense at all in the relation to churches.
• 3:49
  But I promise it makes sense.
• 3:51
  One of the things for me that I found in creative ministry, and this is true, would say across the board of all creative industries, I feel confident speaking to that.
• 3:59
  I suspect this is true of all industries.
• 4:01
  Everyone is busy, it seems, more and more.
• 4:04
  But there's this temptation that we face to work over our lunch break.
• 4:08
  I saw some, it was an article actually that
• 4:11
  kind of calling out this idea that when we work over our lunch break, we're actually not as productive as we think we are.
• 4:17
  And the study kind of went on to point out those who work through their lunch hour actually are less productive over the course of the entirety of the day.
• 4:26
  And so your nine hours is less efficient than my eight hours when I'm taking a lunch.
• 4:31
  And so that idea was something I could actually trace back to some of the most difficult times in my own career where I was giving away a lot of my time.
• 4:42
  and I wasn't really taking these breaks seriously.
• 4:46
  kind of, I mean, it eventually, that plus a lot of other things led me to burnout, but I realized that lunch hour is actually a really important indicator of health.
• 4:58
  And so now I use it, I use this question of are you taking your lunches as a diagnostic piece of my consulting work, where when I'm working with church leaders, I ask that
• 5:07
  question to unearth.
• 5:09
  if there are some systemic problems that are happening because needing to work through the lunch hour means you have too much work coming in, your systems aren't working right, you
• 5:19
  need more people.
• 5:19
  Like there's a lot of different things it could mean, but working through the lunch hour isn't the solution.
• 5:24
  And so we want to defend our lunch.
• 5:25
  And so we want to be lunchtime heroes.
• 5:27
  So that's a little bit of the story behind the name there.
• 5:29
  Yeah, I love that.
• 5:30
  That's the sharpen the axe concept.
• 5:32
  If you go out there and just chop, chop, chop, chop, you don't take time to sharpen that axe.
• 5:36
  It depletes the resources as you move forward.
• 5:39
  So the same thing in your day.
• 5:41
  I'm a workaholic, so I'm the same person.
• 5:43
  I want to work through the whole, all the way through, know, but I forced myself to start taking that lunch hour and separate out, watch a video or separate, not even learning
• 5:52
  something, but just something outside of my norm to have that different rhythm and rhythm pattern.
• 5:56
  And I see a change in my after lunch hour.
• 5:59
  And I don't think people realize, I'm glad you brought it I people realize the power behind that concept of just stopping for a moment.
• 6:06
  We miss that in our society because we're a hundred different messages going on our phones and everything.
• 6:10
  Yeah.
• 6:11
  When this, is one of the questions that was on the list, but this for me has been a really important piece of business where I've been able to control the pace a little bit more and
• 6:21
  kind of test some of these ideas to the point where, I see this a hundred percent.
• 6:26
  My day is completely different when I take a lunch or when I choose not to.
• 6:29
  And so that, little recharging boost in the middle of the day is just, it's been really important.
• 6:34
  Yeah.
• 6:35
  So what's God doing right now in your business?
• 6:38
  I think there's a lot of different ways when I read that question.
• 6:43
  Internally, there has been a reminder that pace and slowness is not a disadvantage.
• 6:51
  So much of my career, even the Lunchtime Heroes connection here, so much of my career was how can you become more efficient?
• 6:58
  How can you become more optimized?
• 6:59
  How can you get more done in the course of a day?
• 7:02
  And I sort of resolved when I started Lunchtime Heroes that I was going to just really pull back.
• 7:08
  And I was going to take the approach of how little can I work?
• 7:12
  Not to say I'm not doing anything, but how can I give myself time and margin to hear God's voice in the work that I'm doing?
• 7:21
  And it's been really surprising to me.
• 7:23
  I sort of hate saying it that way, but it's been surprising to me how often God is speaking and how my pace was so fast, even working on a church staff, that I couldn't hear
• 7:35
  what he had to say.
• 7:37
  And so that's really been probably the biggest thing in my business is be open-handed, trust that God is at work, that he's good, that he's sovereign, that he's involved in the
• 7:47
  details of my life.
• 7:49
  But then also slow down because some of that trust looks like me not always trying to solve every problem immediately, but allowing God to work in those circumstances.
• 8:01
  And so that's a very personal side of it.
• 8:05
  in terms of the professional side, something that I was pretty, I was kind of caught off guard by this, I guess, but as I work with one church, I'm able to take those best
• 8:15
  practices and apply them to another church.
• 8:18
  And so I'm actually finding on my current roster of churches that I work with, I'm actually able to really help all of them better than I could have if it was just me.
• 8:29
  And so there's always this, am I on staff at a place versus do I run a business working with multiple kind of...
• 8:34
  uh
• 8:35
  dichotomy in my mind, I'm finding that it's a massive advantage for me to be able to work with multiple organizations as opposed to just working with one.
• 8:44
  And so that's one that I've been really, really excited about is just seeing how churches are able to benefit each other kind of without even knowing it.
• 8:52
  I'm sort of this liaison between, that's a great idea.
• 8:55
  We need to apply that over here.
• 8:57
  And so I get to be kind of the deliverer of some of those things.
• 9:01
  And so it's been
• 9:02
  Yeah, it's been a ton of fun seeing, seeing God even work in those ways.
• 9:06
  So yeah, those would be the things that I would say just where I'm seeing God work in really cool ways.
• 9:10
  Yeah, there's a collaboration aspect that comes when somebody has an experience they can bring to it because churches are isolated sometimes just like entrepreneurs are isolated
• 9:17
  sometimes.
• 9:18
  We talked about that on some other podcast and we think we have to do our own thing.
• 9:24
  And we just we have to realize there's other people that are in the same boat as we are and we can come together, hold each other accountable, share with one another, pray with
• 9:31
  one another.
• 9:31
  That's the whole point of this podcast is to these business stories that make you realize you're not alone in this.
• 9:36
  Everybody's going to think the same thing.
• 9:38
  And I love that you're talking about the pace and slowness concept.
• 9:41
  That's hard for us that are driven and want to do it 90 miles an hour.
• 9:45
  Yeah.
• 9:46
  Well, it's so contrary to most of the business advice that I see as well.
• 9:50
  And so that's what I try to teach, but it's still hard for me because, you know, one post where I say slow down, I get seven posts that say speed up.
• 9:58
  It's hard to win that battle.
• 10:00
  yeah.
• 10:01
  Exactly.
• 10:01
  My own journey, just a little short version, but God has told me to wait so many times and that's not my pattern.
• 10:08
  I don't want to wait.
• 10:09
  I want to just go and do and God just says, hold on, wait till I give you the go ahead.
• 10:13
  That's a hard process of waiting.
• 10:15
  What do you do when you're in the middle of waiting?
• 10:17
  How are you handling those slow times for yourself?
• 10:21
  Yeah.
• 10:22
  Something that I found to be helpful is, um, I really, I kind of need a manual exercise.
• 10:28
  so something that I've really taken to is there's two ways I do it.
• 10:32
  have a blue journal, but also I have a whiteboard and I'll just go and I'll write it's, essentially journaling, I guess.
• 10:39
  But what I'll do is I'll write very specifically.
• 10:42
  Cause what I found is that for me, the desire for pace in my own life is rooted in fear.
• 10:48
  Most of the time it's rooted in.
• 10:50
  It's my responsibility to provide for my family.
• 10:53
  It's my responsibility to figure out this problem.
• 10:55
  Like I'm putting a lot of the responsibility on myself.
• 10:58
  even what you're mentioning about, I don't have to do this alone.
• 11:01
  Like I gravitate towards doing it alone.
• 11:03
  I love doing stuff.
• 11:04
  I love figuring out problems, you know, all that.
• 11:06
  But I found that when I slow down enough to write down, okay, what's the problem that's in front of me?
• 11:11
  So I'll write down, know, let's say money, cause that's every business ever is going to have that problem at some point.
• 11:17
  Okay.
• 11:17
  Money.
• 11:17
  Am I going to make enough money?
• 11:19
  And then I go to, what's the real problem here?
• 11:23
  Do I trust that God won't provide?
• 11:24
  Do I trust that the systems in my business are incompetent?
• 11:28
  Do I trust that, whatever, whatever it is, it's kind of the root issue.
• 11:31
  Almost always it's a trust in God issue.
• 11:34
  I feel like I have to move faster than God wants me to move, that kind of stuff.
• 11:38
  And then I actually go to scripture and I say, what does God's word say about this specific problem?
• 11:43
  What does God's word say about the speed at which God operates?
• 11:48
  the, the, the way he cares about me, the way he provides, like those kinds of things.
• 11:54
  And so I, I, it's, it's been funny to me to see that just by pausing long enough to actually think through what the problem is and consider what God's word has to say about
• 12:04
  it.
• 12:05
  Just that little exercise relieves so much of the desire then to move as quickly as possible.
• 12:12
  And it shifts me back into, well, I've already had this conversation with God.
• 12:16
  I've already.
• 12:17
  Addressed that my pace isn't the pace that I'm trying to operate out trying to operate at his pace And I feel peace about that and so just kind of embracing that piece a little bit
• 12:27
  and kind of pausing long enough to see it I find I need an exercise to do that.
• 12:32
  And so that's where my journal comes out.
• 12:34
  That's where I go to the whiteboard You know write these things down.
• 12:36
  They don't have to be permanent You know, you can wipe off the whiteboard when you're done But it just slows me down enough so that I can begin having that conversation.
• 12:44
  It's almost like
• 12:45
  When you have a busy schedule and you want to connect with somebody, could be a spouse, could be a friend, whatever, you're texting back and forth.
• 12:51
  Those are all pretty shallow messages, but then it's when you get to that dinner table, you you go out to eat somewhere, you sit down and you say, okay, like we finally made it.
• 13:01
  Now let's have a conversation.
• 13:03
  That's kind of what that moment is for me in kind of reconnecting with the pace that, that God has established and just remembering that and just hearing from him, you know, that
• 13:12
  that's
• 13:13
  that he's good, that he cares about me, that those things are all true.
• 13:16
  That's powerful, that concept of coming back to the trust factor, trusting in God, His sovereignty.
• 13:22
  We miss the fact that He's in charge and it's okay for Him to be in charge, especially Americans.
• 13:29
  So we're gonna shift gears a little bit, talk about business growth.
• 13:32
  What are some things you're seeing or you're doing in your business that's helping you grow that might help somebody else grow in their business?
• 13:39
  Yeah, there's a couple of things that sort of came to mind here.
• 13:41
  The first is that um whenever you're leaving a season, it could be you're leaving a client, it could be you're leaving a job.
• 13:49
  You're bringing a lot of stuff with you.
• 13:50
  And so something that's been really helpful for me is to really think through and address what are some of the things that worked well, what are some of the things that didn't work
• 13:57
  well, and really spending some time and some energy kind of putting myself back into a position where I can be practically helpful and meaningfully helpful to people.
• 14:06
  I have found that many hold grudges over their careers and it colors and influences their ability to help others moving forward.
• 14:14
  And it also colors and influences the way that they talk to potential clients, the way that they kind of prejudge problems, that kind of thing.
• 14:21
  So I really try to work hard on listening first and really kind of hearing what the problems actually are.
• 14:27
  And the only way I can do that is if I've sort of purged some of those preconceived notions as I go.
• 14:32
  uh Much of my business is really connected to
• 14:36
  my past network in terms of the relationships I've made in ministry over the years.
• 14:41
  And so a lot of what I try to do is I try to serve my clients extremely well and then be overt and clear, hey, you know anybody else that needs help?
• 14:50
  it's, you know, it's kind of this constant pursuit of building these long-term relationships.
• 14:57
  What's been fascinating to see is as this group of people that I worked alongside has all kind of scattered, they're all at different churches now.
• 15:06
  And so
• 15:06
  there's now sort of an inroads to a lot of different churches.
• 15:09
  so building those long-term relationships to me has been, I think, a real key.
• 15:16
  I just started up with another church in February this month.
• 15:23
  we worked together for many years.
• 15:25
  And then the whole time that I've been in my business, we've not worked together.
• 15:31
  And then out of nowhere at the end of last year, he said, hey, we're now at that point in our growth.
• 15:36
  where we want to engage and begin building intentionally toward a solution.
• 15:40
  And so I've just found that a lot uh of the client acquisition stuff takes time.
• 15:47
  And so really being intentional about cultivating those relationships, even when there's not a clear, like, right now we're going to sign on the dotted line.
• 15:56
  And so for me, it's really kind of, I embrace this posture of, I'm just excited to partner with people in ministry.
• 16:02
  And so to do that, you,
• 16:04
  reach out to them, even if there's no benefit in that moment, it's just a genuine caring relationship.
• 16:09
  So that's kind of on the longer side, longer term side.
• 16:13
  And then shorter term, I just look at the places where most people talk about their problems.
• 16:17
  And so for me in my space, uh there are various groups on Facebook where people share their communications challenges.
• 16:23
  And so I build tools and resources that I give away for free and have that be sort of the beginning of the conversation for them to say, hey, this is a very kind of acute, specific
• 16:32
  to church calm type of problem.
• 16:34
  I have a solution that worked for me.
• 16:36
  Happy to have a conversation further if that's helpful for you.
• 16:40
  But I found that that's kind of a good way to begin cultivating that relationship.
• 16:44
  those are some of the things that I found to be helpful for me.
• 16:47
  Yeah, and so in those groups, what's your initial conversation?
• 16:51
  mean, it sounds like you're providing tools.
• 16:52
  You're going that saying, here's a tool for you automatically.
• 16:54
  Let's reach out if you want to have a conversation.
• 16:56
  You're providing a service first.
• 16:59
  Exactly.
• 17:00
  Yeah.
• 17:00
  And so I basically at the very beginning of my business, I love tools.
• 17:04
  I love resources.
• 17:05
  You know, even even like I was saying with the the slow down stuff and activity is really helpful for me.
• 17:11
  And so I built activities around the majority of the problems that I faced.
• 17:15
  You know, man, I'm having bad critiques from ministry leaders.
• 17:18
  What if I could build something that would help with that?
• 17:20
  You know, I'm doing I'm not hitting my deadlines.
• 17:22
  what if I built a deadline calculator that would help?
• 17:25
  So I just went through and kind of listed the different challenges.
• 17:28
  then built tools.
• 17:29
  The majority of them are free.
• 17:31
  There are a couple that are paid.
• 17:32
  There's a course like how to build, you know, full on communications ministry, that kind of thing.
• 17:36
  Those are more investment heavy on my end, you know, but yeah, what I'll do is I'll look for their problems.
• 17:41
  And then in some cases, you know, maybe this is maybe this is sharing too much, but in some cases I'll see a problem and I'll think, I know how to solve that.
• 17:51
  I don't have a tool for that.
• 17:52
  I'll literally sit down and build the tool and then
• 17:56
  posted on my site, you know, as a kind of a freebie and then respond to the post say, I have a freebie for that.
• 18:02
  know, so, I mean, I'm really trying to, to come up with a holistic and complete list of tools that will help you be successful in church communications.
• 18:12
  And it always starts, like you're saying, it always starts as I'm going to serve you first.
• 18:17
  One of my values in my business is be generous.
• 18:19
  And so I'm going to be generous.
• 18:21
  And, and the, isn't an official tagline, but
• 18:24
  I say it enough where it might as well be.
• 18:26
  If I go out of business because every church in America is healthy, I'll be thrilled.
• 18:30
  Like that's the aim, that's the goal.
• 18:33
  And so if I can be so generous that it helps people solve the real problems that they're facing in ministry, that's a win for me.
• 18:41
  And so I feel like I'm winning at such a high level, even if my bank account doesn't say that sometimes.
• 18:47
  Like, you know what I mean?
• 18:48
  It's that tension of what's the real mission here.
• 18:52
  And so for me, it's always to be
• 18:53
  really proactive about serving first and helping solve the real problems that they're facing.
• 18:58
  And then again, build that kind of long-term relationship from those interactions.
• 19:03
  And those that are listening, want to make sure they understand when you talk about building a tool, it could be as simple as an Excel sheet that you've used for your
• 19:08
  process.
• 19:09
  And that becomes a tool for someone else because they didn't have anything like that.
• 19:13
  You think of tools, these apps and everything, there's a lot of AI that can build those apps.
• 19:16
  But in reality, if it serves you and it's simple, it can serve someone else.
• 19:21
  That's a way to connect to those people in a larger grade.
• 19:23
  I love that you're serving first.
• 19:25
  That's a huge thing for me as well.
• 19:27
  Yeah, yeah, and to kind of speak to that a little bit, one of the tools that's really been effective, it's a mission minded critique checklist.
• 19:35
  It's literally a document, it's eight and a half by 11.
• 19:38
  It's got lines, it's got boxes, it's got, you know, six or seven questions.
• 19:43
  Who is our audience?
• 19:44
  Does this piece reach our audience?
• 19:46
  If no, why not?
• 19:48
  What's missing?
• 19:49
  How is this not reaching the right audience?
• 19:51
  It's just a handful of questions that are really helpful to focus the conversation.
• 19:56
  Because what I found in the moment in church communications, and it's again, true of many industries, we're so busy with the tyranny of the urgent, we don't have time to take a
• 20:05
  step back and think, how can I structure a solution for this?
• 20:08
  But when you're out of it, you can structure, I mean, these are relatively simple problems.
• 20:13
  It's not that we're all doing rocket science, it's that we have a thousand small problems we're trying to solve every single day.
• 20:20
  Well, if I can solve five of those, 10 of those, 15, you know, and if I can just keep building this,
• 20:27
  collection of solutions to these simple problems, what a massive help it is for people.
• 20:31
  And it begins letting them start to build their own problem solving momentum, build margin in their own lives and in their own work.
• 20:38
  And then it activates them to now be a problem solver in the context of where they are.
• 20:42
  So yeah, these are simple tools in most cases.
• 20:46
  And so it's been amazing to see how just taking a little bit of time to invest in those simple solutions can really return a great dividends, both for me, but also for them.
• 20:57
  That's great.
• 20:57
  Thank you for sharing that.
• 20:59
  Real quickly, as we end up here, tell us how we can get, how somebody can get in touch with you.
• 21:03
  And number two, leave us with one little tidbit of wisdom as we end.
• 21:07
  Yeah, so lunchtimeheroes.co, C-O not C-O-M, is my website.
• 21:13
  You can learn more about what I'm doing there.
• 21:15
  There's a button there that takes you to LinkedIn.
• 21:17
  That's where I do most of my posting and most of my interaction.
• 21:20
  I talk a lot about making the jump to freelance as well there.
• 21:23
  And so you'll see some kind of business oriented conversations.
• 21:26
  It's also something I'm passionate about as well.
• 21:28
  Just creatives, know, serving in, really serving toward a mission.
• 21:34
  The thing I would say,
• 21:36
  in terms of just a piece of advice, don't be afraid of the fact that you don't know what's in front of you.
• 21:42
  If you have a desire, if you have a kind of an inkling, just keep moving forward.
• 21:49
  I have found that so many times in my own life, I would stop and I would say, okay, I'm going to stop here and I'm going to consider.
• 21:57
  And I have found that that has never once yielded clarity or success or anything.
• 22:04
  Positive really it's just made me more angsty and as I look back over my life I've seen so many times where what I was hoping would be you know an exit from my role or an
• 22:14
  opportunity to start a business it wasn't that but it was laying a brick and Over time a foundation was built so that when the door finally did open to me starting a business I
• 22:26
  was so much more prepared because of all of the other things that I had done in my life
• 22:32
  God tends to direct us through our passions.
• 22:34
  Doesn't mean that that's gonna be your full-time job.
• 22:36
  Doesn't mean that if you don't love every aspect of your job, you should leave.
• 22:40
  But it means say yes to the door that's in front of you and trust that God's still involved in the process even if you can't see what's ahead of you.
• 22:49
  Great, thank you for sharing.
• 22:50
  Thanks for being with us today.