The sermon 'Doing Business in Babylon' addresses the importance of recognizing all forms of work as sacred, dismantling the secular versus sacred work dichotomy. The speaker emphasizes that godly men in the Bible, like Abraham and Job, were high achievers in their work and productivity, challenging the notion that only missionary or pastoral work is sacred. The sermon stresses the role of a person's character in making their work holy and the reality of hardships, barriers, and the need for persistence in business. The speaker encourages a growth mindset, adaptability, and resilience in a rapidly changing world, using examples from history and the Bible to illustrate early maturity and the power of pivoting in business. The sermon also touches on the disruptions caused by AI and the significance of building enduring businesses with the right motives, focusing on glorifying God and adding value. The importance of fathers working alongside their sons and instilling character and diligence is highlighted, with practical advice on navigating the business landscape provided by various speakers.

One of the reasons that we do this here, this business in Babylon thing, is just to try to take seasoned men and to have them communicate the things that they understand about a life of work and vocation. And we also want to dismiss the whole secular, sacred dichotomy. We have many men who don't think that their work is sacred. They think that the sacred work is the work of the missionary or the pastor, but they haven't hit the center of God's will unless they're doing something like that. And It's actually a terrible deception.

When you look at the Bible and you look at the men, our greatest heroes were men of work, and they were men of productivity, even tremendous productivity. You look at Abraham and Job and many, many men in the Bible. You could call them high achievers in their work. And they were godly men at the same time. And so I don't want us to fall into that error of thinking that there's this hierarchy of goodness in a man's work.

What makes the difference is the man. And every day can be a holy day for a holy man. And every day can be a productive day. It's never as productive as you hope though, isn't it? That's the problem.

The thorns and thistles are real, you know, you're always hacking back the jungle. It's always growing back over and you've got to hack it back and that's that's that's life. It's hard, it's always hard, it always will be hard and you also have people who are they're looking for some easy path to to wealth and success and provision and you know what it just doesn't exist. There are barriers to everything. I don't care what it is.

If you want to start a business, there are always 10 reasons not to do it. And once you do it, there are 10 barriers in front of you. But this is why we have to raise men, men who are willing to crash through the barriers and to be persistent and to do something for long enough to actually be successful. Hardship is a reality. And every single man faces hardship and reversals and betrayals and losses and things like that.

But guess what? Those come from God and they come from God to humble us, to toughen us, to teach us. You know, you learn lessons along the way of making stupid mistakes. I've made so many stupid mistakes, it's not funny. I don't know if I've learned enough from them, But I have made, I know that I've made the mistakes.

I'm not sure if I've learned from them. But anyway, I just think we have to recognize that early maturity is possible. I mean, you know, Alexander the Great was 20 years old when he conquered Macedonia. And Augustus was 17 when he inherited Julius Caesar's empire. So I mean, there are young men who can do remarkable things.

And I think we should look to young men for that and not pander to their weakness and really to call them up to maturity. So I want to begin here with Gary Powers. Gary, why don't you tell us about yourself and then tell us what you want us to hear. Good morning. Thank you, Scott, for inviting me.

Gary Powers from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. I'm a bivocational preaching elder. We also have a company, a bunch of businesses, but a big company that I started 38 years ago. We're in the dietary supplement space. We sell to physicians.

We're a medium to large size business now. And we've got 10 children. Three of them are in the business, actually four of them in the businesses with us. And we have nine grandchildren as of today. So I recognize that there's, you know, you're coming from all different backgrounds.

Some of you may be farming, some of you may be trades, some may be in corporate America, And it doesn't matter where you sit today, I think there's some things we can take away from these men in particular. I don't know why I'm here, but these guys have probably got a lot to say that will help you. I could say this, this is a quote from Lenin. I don't typically quote Lenin. They attribute it to him.

I don't know that it was actually his. But there are decades when nothing happens. And there are weeks when decades happen. And I believe we are living in that time right now of great disruption. And AI is disrupting everything.

In fact, about a month ago, one of the big Chicago law firms fired a thousand attorneys. I thought, well, that's a good start. OK? But everything's changing. And you have to be flexible.

And you have to be adaptive. We live in a VUCA world. It's volatile. It's uncertain. It's complex.

And it's ambiguous. And you have to be able to flex. And you have to be able to have the, you know, we talk about metabolic resilience in functional medicine. You've got to be able to change, you've got to be able to pivot when you need to. I have a friend, their family business was, you can't believe this, they were making buggy whips.

Well, when you're making buggy whips, and guess what? Model T's start coming down the road, you might want to think about things. And they pivoted and they understood leather, they began to make leather gaskets for automobiles And they began to sell service stations. Well, over time, there wasn't enough money in that, and they pivoted again, because now they learned one of their great capabilities was they could serve service stations. And so they began to actually collect oil, and their timing was perfect, because the EPA began to mandate that you can no longer just dump your old oil anywhere, you had to actually recover it.

And so that's a good example of how we can pivot. I want to, I want us to look at Daniel for a minute. We're all familiar with Daniel, and you have to admit that his circumstances were not great as he was brought into Babylon. And we're talking about being in Babylon. But there was something unique about Daniel.

He had an excellent spirit, and he didn't bow to the rulers of his day. He stood his ground, he stayed with his convictions, he became very useful to rulers. He pivoted, he had to pivot, He was forced into a situation where he had to pivot. And think about that. Where there's great change, there's great opportunity.

And whether it's AI that's disrupting everything, or what it may be in your industry, ours is changing incredibly right now. It's, There's so much noise, it's hard to figure out where the puck is going. Great hockey players from our part of the country, they anticipate where the puck is going to be. And, you know, we kind of have to do that. So here's what I want to say to you.

You have to have a growth mindset. You can't just camp out. Young people, I'm saying all of these things because you have to prepare yourself. You have to grow yourself. I have an acronym that we call CASH.

Always be growing your cash, that's your knowledge. 64% of people that graduate from high school never read another book the rest of their lives. And we let them vote. This is the problem, okay? You need to read.

If you wanna lead, you have to read. So think about that. Attitude. Always be working on changing attitude. Might be confidence.

Another time it might be humility. Skills. What new skills do I need to always be working on possessing? And then habits, the power of habit. And I would lastly say, grow your character.

Because if you do that, if you can exist in a VUCA world, you can pivot. You can be dropped into any situation and wherever God places you, you can grow and you can add value if You have a growth mindset And lastly, let me say this Some of you are here. You want to start businesses some of you young men you want to you want to get into business That's that's a wonderful that that is a sacred calling just like every other calling. But what's your motive? Is it just to get rich?

Or is it to build something that endures? Is it to glorify God? Is it to see a need and fill it? Get the motive right, get the focus right, and all the other things will be added into you. And so that's my encouragement to you this morning.

Yeah, so Gary, before you go, Chad, I wanna camp on something that Gary talked about. You know, the period of disruption. It's obvious we're in a tremendous transition in america all over the world and a I as a big a big driver but I I think I'd like to just camp on that for a minute I think for everybody is concerned about that trying to figure out what to do about it in their own lives and how to project and how to really deploy their own children. And I'd like to throw this question out to all of you. What are your thoughts about the necessary pivots and the opportunities?

I'd just like to get your thoughts all the way down the line here. Gary, do you have any more to say about that? Other than it can, things that we had like content that we've developed over 20 years, a company using AI can be there in days. And I think for us, it's a matter of staying connected with the customer, building the deep relationships, personal. You see some of the Chase ads right now, they're going back to, hey, you're not talking to a computer, you're talking to a real person.

And I think for us that's vital at this point. And we also have to adapt. And we're using AI in different applications and launching an AI product as well. Yeah, Chad, what are your thoughts about that? Thank you, Scott.

I think you have to start, in my opinion, with kind of the right worldview approach to AI. And I think the starting point is important. I think technology is a tool. It's not necessarily a friend or not necessarily an enemy. It's just a tool.

Just like the plow or the cotton gin or the steam engine and these other typewriter, the computer, right? These are tools. They can be used to increase good or increase evil. And so let's use them as believers to increase good fruitfulness. And let's be willing to learn.

I am not naturally, personally, AI-inclined. That wasn't like, oh, man, where has this been all my life? I'm not a software person. I didn't geek out on it when it first came out. But I forced myself to learn.

I got Grok and Claude and ChatGPT, and I just started using them. And I forced myself to watch videos and to learn about how they work. I don't love learning about AI. And I'm not going to be the guy that goes out and creates an LLM or changes the world of AI. But I do think that I can learn how to use it and become more effective as a result of that.

And those who don't learn how to use it are going to be like those who didn't learn how to use the typewriter or the computer or the cell phone when they came along, right? And I think they're going to be worse for the wearer. I don't think that AI is going to displace all jobs. In fact, actually, this is one of the things I was going to say in the few little minutes here, but there's a group called Sequoia. They're a $60 billion venture fund.

They're one of the most famous venture funds in the world. And they are well respected in the investment space. And they just recently put out an article. This is how the article starts. It says, the next $1 trillion company will be a software company masquerading as a services firm.

Every founder building an AI tool is asking the same question. What happens when the next version of Claude makes my product a feature? And they're right to worry. If you sell the tool, you're in a race against the model. But if you sell the work, Every improvement in the model makes your service faster, cheaper, and harder to compete with.

And just two days ago, OpenAI and Anthropic announced that between the two of them, they're going to put $5.5 billion into AI-enabled services businesses. And this is a little bit of a summary of that. They're acquiring traditional consulting and engineering firms. Here's what it means. OpenAI and Anthropic are building the AI and providing the services to deploy it.

They've entered services at scale. And why? Because you need humans. The two most valuable AI companies in the world just expanded into the exact category most founders are still ignoring. For every dollar spent on software, six are spent on services.

And so I don't think that human services are going away. It's just going to change what that human services game looks like. And so I think we need to be ready to be good at the kinds of things that are needed, because there will be human services needed. And what does that look like at a high level? Like, I think we need to be good communicators.

We've got to be good project managers, good people managers, good learners. I don't know where this tech is going in 20 years from now, But I can tell you this with confidence, that people who are creative, who are fast learners, who are good with people and self-disciplined can take advantage of the wave of that opportunity coming. And then another just practical piece of advice is play in the playing fields that you're best suited for. Maybe don't get into AI and weapons systems and certain things that are best done by larger companies like Raytheon or Lockheed at scale. That's maybe not the best entry point.

But you could explore how AI may affect a smaller vertical that you have more direct experience with. For example, we are looking at starting a company right now where we're taking an AI software technology that is transforming how a surveyor will do an ALTA or ILS survey. And it basically saves 80% of the time that the surveyor spends in AutoCAD creating that survey. And that piece of technology is going to shorten the cost or lower the cost of doing a survey and is going to change that. So we're looking at buying survey companies and just making them more efficient using a piece of AI.

I don't understand all that much about the world of AI, but I understand a piece of software that can automate AutoCAD and take 80% of the work out of a survey. I can understand that much, and then I can go apply and capture value from there. Okay. Yeah, Kenny. Scott, I don't know much about AI.

I'm going to talk to you guys about blue collar, hands-on approach. Here's the deal. AI is never going to rebuild your transmission. It's never going to clean a sewer out. So it has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk to you about.

Like these guys, I try to learn a little bit about it. I don't do things. Chad spoke about this a little bit. I don't do things I'm not good at. Because when I try to do things I'm not good at, they end up in disaster.

That doesn't mean I don't try to hone my skills or try to do better at something, but some of you men out there and these men up here do things that I cannot do. So God equipped me to do certain things, and Some of those things weren't necessarily my dream. I think sometimes we can get into, we wanna do something that's exciting to us, or something that flutters our hearts. Just find something you can do well and just get busy doing it and plot on and do it every day and it'll all work out so yeah AI I didn't I wasn't the kid you know I didn't dream about cleaning out sewers when I was a kid but here's what I figured out people will pay you a lot of money to do things that they don't want to do. So simple as that.

So we're answering the AI question right now? Yeah. What would you say to these guys about the shifting sands that AI is creating all over the world? It's a lot of hype. That's what I would say.

In my opinion, I think we see a bubble about the bus, but it's going to change the world. Just like the dot com. We had the dot com bus because they got ahead of themselves when they're trying to expand into e-commerce, but that is where things went, right? So I do think it's going to change things. But right now, I'd I wouldn't believe any of these guys like Sam Altman or whatever there.

They're liars. They're well known for that. But AI is going to be part of our life. What you need to do is live a partitioned life. You need part of your life that's analog, driven by books, not integrated, where you allow for creativity.

Boredom is very important. Anytime I could say they're bored, I say good. So that's where you actually have original thoughts. LLMs are trained on some sort of like, chat GPT was highly trained on Reddit, right? So they're, they're not, they're synthesizing things.

Still creativity is going to be important. But you have that part of your life that's partitioned, that sandbox that's for the analog world, and then you have another part of your life that's highly integrated and digital where you're learning how to master those tools. I think that's the mindset we need to have for our children and for ourselves, where there is a place where it's safe from having the tool do thinking for you. Tools do try to replace something. You ask yourself, what is AI trying to replace?

Many cases, it's trying to replace your ability to think. So you need to be careful there and use it right. If you're relying on task based work, you're in trouble, right? Why color task based work that's very low end. They can do that already right now with ease.

I think I'm glad I'm on the software business. I do think tangible goods, owning land, building physical things, stuff like that are really safe going forward. I also believe that, as I look at AI, I think a lot about mechanics. What I mean by that is, once upon a time, there was blacksmiths, but there's more auto mechanics than there's ever been blacksmiths. So Yeah, we got rid of horse-based travel by the creation of the car, but that expanded markets, new markets that we didn't know about.

So that's why I don't think, I'm not a utopian. I don't think it's gonna, the transhumanists are wrong. You can't put a soul into a computer, don't believe any of that sort of nonsense. But the dystopian is wrong too. I don't think it's gonna get rid of, we're gonna not have jobs.

We will have jobs going forward, but new jobs. So that's why you gotta be developing those skills right now. Be a creative thinker. AI hallucinates, that's just the nature of it right now. So it makes up answers.

Like it gave me a quote by John Calvin. I was like, John Calvin never said that. I wish he did, but so you have to actually know whether it's telling you the truth or not, and know how to use the tool. So there's just some thoughts I have. Yeah, no, that's good.

I think it's a really, really important discussion. Gary and I have been friends for about 20 years. And so I've had the benefit of watching him and being with him in a lot of different contexts. But one of the things, Gary, that you talk about, particularly when it comes to men, is I'm just going to call it the chief transferable skill and that's called diligence, right? So could you just talk about that there there are regardless of what happens in an economy There's something about a man that can make him effective and You you talk, you know a lot about about hard work and diligence and pushing, just can you talk to us a little bit about your understanding of that?

In our business, we're a character-focused company. We have a character core program that we use. So we teach character. It's our language in our business. We recognize everybody once a month, demonstrating character quality.

That's a lot of people. We have 450 employees. But, diligence is one of the master character traits because if you if you if you diligent it will help you master everything else. Proverbs tells us that Solomon says show me a man diligent in his business. And I'll tell you this, he will stand before King James says, kings and not mean men.

He doesn't mean angry men, he means average men. It will elevate you because of your skill. Just think of it as I talked about Daniel. Ecclesiastes says, whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. And so, I think one of the issues that I see in young men today is they're not...

Titus, Paul tells in Titus, to be sober minded. The young men, sober minded is, there's a pattern there for old man for women but also for young men he's be sober minded be serious minded hey but you know we all esteem Joel Beeke or Scott Scott Brown and you know Joel Beeke gave a basketball in high school because God had called him to ministry, and he began to apply himself diligently. And for me, the definition of diligence is just to be all in. I give it my very best. I'm fully engaged, whether I'm working for somebody, because ultimately every single one of us is working for the Lord to glorify him.

Whether you have an earthly boss or your customer is the boss, we exist to glorify God and we do it by giving it our very, very best. You know, I think everybody knows this. Like If you're a plumber, if you just show up on time, you're going to have as much business as you need, right? And that just has due diligence. So OK, Chad, just give us your thoughts.

All these guys are different. Gary's a founder of a company that he ran, still running for a long time. Chad is kind of a serial entrepreneur and acquisitions kind of a person. He's running around in that space. And Kenny Hempen, he's kind of like the blue collar machine that's really done some remarkable things.

I can't wait for you to hear his story. And Michael, Michael right now works in HR for a company called Maddox, trying to preserve the culture of the company. So all these guys have a different angle on this. But let's go to Chad. So Chad, talk to us.

Thanks, Scott. It's good to be with you all this morning. I'm from the Denver, Colorado area. We homeschool five children there, and I'm actively involved with the Generations Ministry with Kevin Swanson as well. I've been an entrepreneur ever since, just directly leaving high school, and done a variety of sales, financial, real estate, businesses, and then more recently last five to ten years to focus on the investment space both private equity venture capital.

So we try to be across a wide variety of tech, software, and normal, everyday businesses, firearms, accessories, etc. Etc. So I enjoy business, I enjoy being fruitful, I enjoy making money, and that's something that's just always been fun to me. No, it's not just always like I've known you since you were a kid and you've never changed since you were like 17. Yeah, it's just the way you are wired.

It is the way that I'm wired and yeah although I do think that fruitfulness is more than just about making money and actually got to do a talk here at the conference last year about that and my thesis was Psalm 144 paints a picture for us of what biblical fruitfulness looks like and that fruitfulness If you look at Psalm 144 is more than just about making money. It says that our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth, that our daughters may be as pillars, sculptured in palace style, that our barns may be full, supplying all kinds of produce, that our sheep may bring four thousands and ten thousands in our fields, that our oxen may be well laden, that there be no breaking in or going out, no outcry in the streets, happier the people who are in such a state, happier the people whose God is the Lord. And you get a more robust picture of what the Bible frames as fruitfulness than just the size of a bank account. It has to do with covenant generational faithfulness about joyful diligent children, about the aroma of Christ in your home and your family, about involvement in the body of Christ.

Fruitfulness is not as strictly an individual game. It's a it's a corporal game. It's a it's a it's a body It's a community. It's about serving. It's about a thousand other things than just money having said that sometimes I remember like being young coming to like business events you all like came to talk about business in Babylon here and you hear the guy behind the microphone say like, hey it's not all about making money, it's about like serving the Lord with all your heart and like that's true but also sometimes unhelpful when you're like, I get that and like that's what all the other guys are gonna talk about but like can we just talk about the business side this like and I would say that's true too and like what Michael said last night what Scott said this morning we aren't Gnostics we actually believe that the body is good and work is good God worked before the fall and told us to work before the fall and therefore I think we can come to the conclusion that work is good and that Christians ought to be really good at work and Normatively we ought to be very productive in the marketplace That's the normative case for godly faith-filled Christians is that we ought to be very productive in the marketplace.

We ought to be good at business, good at making money, and good at getting profitable stuff done. And people on panels like this should help people do that. So I want to actually make a small offer which is like I know we're probably not gonna like change your world in the next Hour here with the general things that we're gonna talk about from the panel But if anybody would like to catch me afterwards, I only have really like one talk here at the conference I'll be around all day today I'm happy to spend 10 or 15 minutes with any one of you that wants to, and dive into maybe a particular business thing you're trying to figure out, or brainstorm together, or just be a sounding board for further conversation. So feel free to grab me afterwards. Should be plenty of time to dive in deeper if there's something specific.

I think some people are concerned when they look around and they see what we could call a decaying macro environment. I had this conversation with Wesley Stockbein as we were driving here from the airport to the conference. And he was just asking me, what do you think about the macro? It's a mess, right? US debt has now exceeded our GDP for the first time in history.

There are so many trillions of dollars and it's growing so quickly that nobody even remembers the number, and we've got all this unknown effects of AI, and America's shifting place in the world economic stage, and like what do you think about it all? And when I see sort of a shifting macro, whereas it may inspire for some people a sense of fear, I get excited. Where others see an abyss, I see opportunities. And I think I mentioned to you just some of those articles like from Sequoia and OpenAI and Anthropic where a lot of people look at this AI as the apocalypse of labor. I just think it's gonna reshift labor, right?

And so I think a lot of it has to do with the attitude in which we approach some of these things. We can either constantly be afraid and look at the glass half empty, or we can come with confidence and faith, and I think that we as Christians are actually uniquely gifted with a worldview that allows us a backdrop of faith in all things. And so that's really what I want to encourage, is a spirit of faith and not fear. If the Babylon in which we do business does actually take another negative turn, like I don't really know, like right now we're in a halfway decent regulatory environment from the federal side of things. We're somewhat deregulating somewhat and like it's okay right now but like maybe in two years another round of elections and whatever else and like we're facing an entirely different dynamic and it feels like COVID 2.0 and we're all like wondering how we're gonna make it.

Like, I don't know what the next little bit of, you know, the future is going to be, but I do know that men like the Reformers and the Pilgrims and the Apostles and the Frontier Age missionaries and countless others through church history have always been able to go through tough times and come out okay on the other side. So if, you know, storms ahead, that's okay. People like us with our worldview and our belief in the victory and the overcoming of Jesus Christ should be fine. And if, on the other hand, God continues to give us islands of freedom and carve out spaces for us to be fruitful, to raise our families and to be productive in work, then it is those with faith and initiative that will reap the hundredfold harvest. And I think my desire and goal is that we not be 20 and 30 fold kinds of Christians when we could be 80 and 100 fold kinds of Christians, right?

So the seed gets scattered by the sower and based on the quality of the soil it bears a fruit, right? We should be good quality soil and You know, so I mentioned that like five point five billion dollars that these AI companies are gonna put into you know AI enabled services businesses, right? And so like ask yourself, who's gonna get that value? I actually think we're in the middle of like one of the largest wealth transfers in history. So there's been significant wealth transfers.

One of those was around the time of the Great Depression. A lot of wealth moved hands around the time of the Great Depression back in the 1930s. I think a lot of wealth is going to move hands in the last few years and in the next whatever, as these trillion dollar companies emerge, capturing massive market share. And who's going to be well positioned to take advantage of that $5.5 billion to open AI and Anthropi? Well, people who are good with people are going to do well in AI-enabled services businesses.

And I have always joked that services businesses are like adult daycares, where you're basically working with people. And that's one of the personally the most challenging types of businesses for me to run. I prefer other kinds of businesses, because people are messy, they're hard to scale, and it just takes a lot of work, and I'm not a particularly gifted manager, unlike Gary. I prefer projects over people, and Gary's good at working with people and helping them grow. That's not a natural thing for me.

That's hard. But who better than to manage people than pastors, homeschool dads, people like us? We should, in theory, be naturally good at conflict resolution, discipling other people along the path of progressive sanctification, being patient with the weak, exhorting and holding people accountable, raising people up, taking children that don't know anything and helping by God's grace to prepare them for life. Like we should know a thing or two about this. So like let's take those things that God has given us and start applying those, using them, and treating them like the blessing that they truly are.

So come rain, come sunshine, I don't really care. I think that God is uniquely preparing and gifting people like you to be able to thrive in the next epoch. And I'll close with like one practical little piece of advice on a way to reduce fear and uncertainty in the face of these macro changes. And this is especially for young boys. Expose them to a variety of types of work.

Do hard manual labor, do sales, customer service, conference and event management, have them join church and family life, conference, event management team, even if it's as a volunteer. Do project management, construction work. One of the reasons that we tend to be afraid is because we don't know. And one of the reasons that you can, one of the ways you can reduce the things you don't know is by doing a variety of things. If you are not afraid of these various skills, there's so many people that know lawn mowing or plumbing or welding, but they are genuinely and literally afraid of sales, because they never did it.

Nobody likes to do sales, but if you force your sons to do some of that, now they won't be afraid of that, and now they'll be more versatile, and they'll be ready to do what Gary said, which is to stay flexible and stay creative in a shifting workforce. So help overcome the natural tendency towards fear by exposing your sons to a variety of experiences. Teach them to think, learn, be creative, and adapt. Those are the keys and skills to survive. No, that's helpful.

So Chad, I knew your dad. Your dad was my friend before we got to know each other better and better over the years. And your dad's very different. He's not like you. You know, I, well, I'm, he's like you in many ways, but he's not like you in terms of his sort of the seminal skill set and focus and desire.

So, but What did your dad do to teach you how to work? He was a good dad, right? I think everybody knows that. My dad gave me a lot. In a lot of ways, he gave me the baseline.

My dad was an insurance salesman. And I was a tough teenager that was giving my mom a hard time in the home school at 14, 15 years old. And so she one day handed him over to him and said, it's your turn to home school. Because otherwise, if something didn't change, there was gonna be a homicide in the house, right? And- My wife did the same thing with my son.

Yeah, yeah. So it wasn't like a stroke of mentoring genius. It was more just the fact that like, I had a hard, sinful heart, and my dad was willing to wade into that and take me to work with him. And that's what started mentorship in sales and some of those things. So I very much appreciate that.

I basically had a desk besides my dad and did my last two years of high school at 15 and 16 years old, just sitting by him and working alongside of him. And he taught me everything he knew about customer service and sales when I was 14, 15, 16 years old, such that I started my first sales business when I was about 17. One thing my dad also knew is the things that he didn't know. And he was very keen on me getting mentored by people who had more skill sets than he did. And there were a couple things he knew he didn't know.

And one was I had a lot of questions on theology and he didn't know his theology was changing. He was raised in one theological tradition and we were merging as a family into another. And so he came to Kevin Swanson, who we were working with at the ministry at that time and said, Hey, Kevin, would you mentor Chad? So I actually lived with Kevin Swanson for six years in a life-on-life mentorship as we built the Generations Ministry together. That's probably where I got the ADD side of me, right?

So that side came from Kevin. The business instincts came from my dad. When the two of those mixed, then it was, you got a funny bunny on the other side. So, and so that was, that was, my dad gave me everything he had, but he also realized his own limitations and very much encouraged me to spend time with mentors who could fill in those gaps and round it out. So the humility to know what you don't know and the strength to pass along what you do is, I think, the two things my dad did.

Yeah, yeah, sure. OK, Kenny, tell us about yourself. Tell us about your colorful journey and services. Sure, sure, I'll try this. Good morning.

My name is Kenny Hemp and I live in Argyle, Iowa. It's right on the Mississippi River there in southeast Iowa. Here with my wife and we have eight children, 16 grandchildren, And just very thankful and encouraged by you men. I really, really am. It's such an encouragement.

This conference and things like this, knowing men like Scott and many of you men here, have been very impactful for God's glory in my life. I learn by seeing and hearing, and I have seen Christ's work, and it's had a tremendous impact on me. So, before I talk about what I've done, Scott asked me to tell a little bit about what I've done, what I've done, and maybe what I failed at. I certainly want to say that none of these sayings are possible outside the grace of God in my life. I can do nothing.

I can't take my next breath outside of His grace, and it is because of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I wasn't saved until later in life, and you know, it's really through the book of Proverbs and through God's Word and seeing men like many of you who helped me. So I want to encourage you young men to find somebody in your church, primarily your father, but if that's not available find some men in your church that can help you and ask them. I think there's some opportunities there that if you would just ask some men would help you. But just really simply, you know, I grew up in my grandfather's shop.

My grandfather owned an automotive repair shop, an auto body shop, a radiator repair shop. So, I mean, I was kind of born with a wrench in my hand and that's where I grew up. My grandfather was a World War II veteran. He fought in battle. You know, he was not a butterfly kisses kind of guy.

He was a tough guy, but he was kind And he was very, he poured into me and I didn't even know it. He would give me projects to do, but he would not tell me how to do them. He'd give me things to fix. He'd tell me to get this engine running, but he wouldn't tell me how to do it. He taught me how to think through a process of elimination and learn how to fix things.

And of course, I go to him and ask him, and he'd say, well, what have you done? I tell him what I've done. He said, what's the next step? And so I'm so thankful for that. So thankful for that in my life.

I didn't realize it was happening at the time. But what that did for me primarily is it let me, he also he taught me how to take things that have been worn out or possibly other people had wrecked or destroyed and rebuild them, refurbish them, make them usable again for a fraction of the cost. So I learned to take equipment and things like this and rebuild, refurbish, and make them profitable. I love that thought. When I got out of high school, my friends were buying new four-wheel-drive trucks and boats, and I was buying pressure washers, air compressors, welders, and all these things.

And those pieces of equipment are still making me money and they're still making payments on the truck So I despise debt. I want to encourage you. I'll talk a little bit later I hope about some ideas I have some businesses you can start and start small. There's nothing wrong with starting small. I think again sometimes young men can think too highly of themselves to start small.

Do not think too highly of yourselves. Just start small. I started off at 14 years old with a buffer, a shop vac, and a wash mitt. I started washing cars for some of the local car dealers. I then started washing and waxing and polishing cars for individuals.

This is before the internet. I put up little flyers at the grocery store, the gas station, and people would call me. And that led to me painting cars for the car dealers. That led to me going to the auction and buying new and used cars for these dealers with their money. I learned the car business with their money.

That led to me having my own car dealership. That led to me servicing cars for the railroad. I'd take their trucks, I'd take their company cars, I'd bring them out to my shop, I'd service them, clean them, check them over, change fluids, do minor repairs, have them back to them for Monday's use. That led to them calling me one day and asking me if I could take my steam unit and come out and wash a rail car on the tracks. So we live in Iowa, a lot of corn and grain refineries, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup.

Wanted to know if I could come wash some syrup off the side of a rail car that is spilled before they sent it to the customer. Well, I couldn't. I didn't have the ability. That led me to building my own mobile pressure wash unit. Okay, now you can go out and buy one already put together.

You couldn't in that day. I saved up and saved up. I spent $8, 200 and I was scared to death. I'd never spent that much money in my life. I had no idea how in the world I was going to pay for that.

I paid for it in one job. That was unusual, but I did. That led to me working in these refineries and industries. That led to us now owning big vacuum trucks, hydro blast machines that run like 20, 000 psi. We clean out big tanks, pipelines, we go to ethanol plants, coal-fired power plants, we do hazmat work, we do confined space entry.

You've seen the big sewer trucks probably in your city that got the big snorkel over the front with big hose reel on them, the jets out sewer lines, okay? We jet out sewer lines. There's nothing better than being up to your waist in sewage. There's just dollar bills flowing past you, you know? But that's what I do, okay?

Listen, I probably shouldn't say this, but I was a terrible student in school, okay? I was looking out the window, thinking about how I was gonna make my bicycle go faster, make my motorcycle go faster, my car go faster, okay? And a lot of that was my attitude. So I don't want to discourage you young men, but listen, you don't want me to be your accountant, you don't want me to be your lawyer, we're both going to jail, okay? But if your transmission goes out in your truck, I can fix it.

That's what God equipped me to be able to do. So again, I admire, I desire to do some of these things that some of these other men do. I listen to these men and it's really fascinating to me what they do. But I want to learn about these things and we can learn from each other. But if God's equipped you like He has me just to be on a hands-on approach, I believe there's some great opportunities.

These men spoke about these these changing times. Listen, stop talking about how hard it is. It's always been hard. It's never going to be easy. Just plod on.

Get busy and Stop looking for that thing that's just gonna make your dreams come true and just get busy and go to work. You'll figure out what you're good at as you're working. That's how you'll figure it out. So know your strengths. Everybody wants to know what they're good at.

And that's important. I think it's also very important to know your weaknesses. And you want to know both. Because if I try to do things that I'm not good at, it does not go well. So know your strengths and your weaknesses.

And I've got some secrets I'm gonna give you for success and as Chad said also I'm definitely probably better speaking to you one-on-one. If any of you would like to talk to me I'd be delighted to meet you, to talk to you, to talk about some of the things I've done. And you're gonna hear us all, I'm kinda like the gambler that talks about all the times that he won, you know? But there's been other times I've sat in my shop staring at the cement floor, wondering what in the world I was doing, right? You ever been there?

So, yeah. Yeah, before we go on, I wanna loop back on this thing. Chad, you talked about your mother handing you over to your father, I can relate to that. And I want to talk for a minute and maybe have you guys comment just on the importance of fathers working with their sons. I think it's one of the most important things that ever happens in a boy's life is when he's working side by side with his father.

And I mean, my view is that a father should have his son work beside him in whatever that father is doing. Just teach him how to do that. Maybe he won't do that for the rest of his life. Kind of like Chad. Chad is not an insurance agent.

But working side by side with his father was transformational in his life. And it's transformational for every boy who works with his father. And you know I'm here to just encourage you to find every possible way you can strap your son to your side and work with them and try to work with them every day. My son and I have worked together every day since he was nine years old. And he runs this conference.

He's an administrator. He's an operations person. And Thankfully, our skill sets were very complimentary. It didn't always work out that way, but still there's tremendous value in sons working with their fathers. I just want to throw that out there to you guys.

What comments would you make about that? Yes and amen to what you said and yes, mentorship and character focus and work and discipleship and like all those things. And those things have been said a lot in our circles. I'll put my finger on like one piece that I don't think has talked about a lot, but is one of the joys and blessings of this. When my dad worked beside me during those years and taught me and trained me and I don't think I was realizing it at the time but like there was a friendship and a closeness and a oneness that was built in our relationship there that has very much survived that stage of life.

I've actually never lived more than a half a mile away from my dad even since getting married. My dad actually now works full-time for my company and so we still talk together every single day and work closely together. He sells gold and silver for our bullion business and you know we actually bought 80 acres subdivide into 10 acre lots and Every like member of the extended family owns a different one of the 10 acre lots and you know All the cousins are all within walking distance and it's a very joyful thing the cultural Long-term cultural implications of working close together. I would say is like one of the sweetest outcomes. Like, yes, it gave me an early start into business.

Yes, mentorship and apprenticeship and discipleship is like the best way to learn in most and many cases. Yes, to all those other things that you're putting your finger on, but like one of the sweetnesses is the just the closeness of like joy and oneness of being able to work together. And the reality is that you're close to the people that you work with generally, right? I mean, work is a context in which relationship is built. And when that can kind of overlay with that father-son relationship, I even have like, we have a plan, Lord willing, hopefully that my dad will train my boys the same way that he trained me so they can have kind of a grandfather-grandson relationship, which I didn't get to have very much of in that same way using the gold and silver business.

So we even have a track laid out for how my dad will train my boys through different seasons of life and train them on the same sales, customer service, the same set of skills that he taught me. Very interested in them learning those same things and it's just a joy when you can get to do that together. Anybody else? If you can't take your boys with you to work and I think that's a lot of people's situation. You can you just need to make it a point to talk to them about what you do and the skills and explain it and that's what I've done with my my kids at the I've owned my own businesses but I'm always telling them what I'm working on and why we're doing it and telling the different stories.

And that's one way they can see into your life and know what the whole family is contributing to when you're away 45, 50 hours a week. It's a real simple way to do it. Yeah, and I've seen guys do that, you know, they've got corporate. There's a guy in my church who's an executive at AT&T But you know, he's he's having his boys doing math calculations that he that he is doing in his own Work just to kind of loop them in you know with his world As much as you can do that, do that. I know it's not possible for everybody, but do it as much.

Take steps. I like what you said. Bring him into your world. If you can't bring him to work, at least bring him into your world and try to do it every night when you go home. Those things are really helpful.

Kenny, you've got a lot of your kids working with you as well. Okay, so Michael, go. My name is Michael. I'm a bivocational pastor. I choose to be bivocational.

Actually, when I planned the church was one of the conditions that they know images of Jesus, know children's church, and I can be bivocational as long as I want to. And if you'll agree to that, we'll do this together. But I've grown up doing, I've been a consultant, I've been, I've owned a couple businesses. And some years ago, about almost 10 years ago now, I got involved with Maddox transformers, which is a We build sell and repair transformers here in the American market Mostly It started out small in Greenville, South Carolina. It's grown now.

We'll hit a billion dollars in revenue next year, per year. It's been a fast, it's grown really quick. I came on employee number 18, but I was there when I was founded because I was their pastor. And so I was doing recruiting for them way back then like, hey, you should hire this friend of mine. He's a good, he's a good worker.

And it was amazing to see what God's done. We were shooting to be a $50 million company. And then during COVID, we just blew right past it one on one that year. And so I worked my way up from entry level there all the way to the head of sales at Maddox got us to about 460 a year. And it was exciting.

You know, We do work with SpaceX. I've walked down there and touched those spaceships. It's really neat. NASA, Google, Facebook, Meta, all that sort of stuff. Those are our clients.

And all the way down to mom and pops, they just need a little dry type to power some CNC machine. We knew we were going to have to grow to expand very quickly, so they asked if I'd move over and take become director of employee development. And so what I do is I recruit, retain, reward all the right people, keep them in the right places. I'm pretty good at measuring folks up when you have to do in a short period of time and making quick decisions on whether or not someone's right for a role. I just kind of listened to your story one thing led to another, you know I have a background in collections and sales and in collections.

All you do is just read people right and as pastors That's what you do you read people We it's been nuts like we've done we did 64, 000 applications last year, and that was about 2, 000, about 2, 500 interviews, and of those people, we hired 148, so 0.23% are who we hired. So it's been growing incredibly quick. When you scale a business, the hardest part is scaling the culture. I mean, being very careful right there. And you have to think about that.

Anytime you go from one to two, that's a big deal. Or two to four. When you're doubling like that, things can change very quick and you've got to be stubborn in who you pick. I think part of the problem with Christians when they think about business is that they idealize cottage industry because they watch too much Little House on the Prairie. And they think very small.

They think family economics, household economics. That's fine to have a small business. I've been a small business owner. That is a life where you can bring your kids with you. And I did enjoy, I used to go buy comic book shops and just buy them out and flip them.

You have your weird story. It's like, what if I can buy comics and sell them? What if I could buy comic book shops and sell them? So you can. But I think Christians are boycotting, like boycott Starbucks, right?

And then we'll boycott this place. I want them to want to boycott us, right? I want to have so much influence and be so big, they'll try to boycott us. And then they'll do what I do is I'm gonna boycott Starbucks and then I'm thirsty for coffee and I just stop at Starbucks to get a coffee, right? Because that's where the coffee is.

If you what are you gonna do? You're gonna boycott Transformers? You want your buildings to turn on? You want to power your machines? You can't do it.

But Christians are always thinking so small and so I think that we need to think about building larger companies. There's nothing wrong with having the smaller companies But building that scale is possible. And the kingdom scales pretty well, does it not? We're growing. Things start small and they turn into bigger things.

But if you're going to scale your company, that was a Gary. It sounds like we have a similar take on how we do it. We are a Christian company, and we've defined that. We have our core values. And our core values basically have affirmations and denials.

So this is what it looks like to be engaged. It looks like showing up on time, yada, yada, yada, it doesn't look like this, right? And we work that into everything we do at Appmatics from hiring. So when we're recruiting people, we're listening, do they embody our core values? When it's time to review somebody, We do quarterly reviews and then we have an annual composition review.

But in our quarterly reviews, we're going to go write down those core values and score those people and see where they are and then give them feedback. And so we hire, fire, and promote on core values. If you don't embody our core values, you're not moving up. And if you move up, that means you really embody those things. And so I think the problem is with a lot of small businesses, you hire really good people sometimes in the beginning.

And it's kind of like a good culture, but it's an accident. It wasn't intentional. You didn't define your process. You didn't define your core values. And then when you're going to scale, what you have to do is the hardest part of being a business owner or an executive of some sort is learning how to delegate to good people.

And you do have to give away some authority. And once you give away that authority to hire people, they better understand those core values, like inside and out. And really, my job at Maddox is, one, just do whatever the CEO wants me. They said, go grow the sales team. I did that.

Take over HR. I did that. I'm not your normal Karen as HR goes. Okay? So anyway, I think that's funny.

But nonetheless, Nonetheless, really my job is to be an absolute pit bull for our culture. And you know, in Amazon, one thing they do at Amazon that I think is pretty wise is they have someone that's called a bar raiser. So they basically are involved in the interview process, but they're from outside the department. And that way, if the guy's not a good fit, they're gonna pass on it. But sometimes you get desperate, and you're like, oh, maybe this person will work.

You start to overlook things. And then you hire someone and man, you pay the easiest way to fire someone is not to hire them. And when you fire someone, all the energy that went into recruiting, all the energy into training, the relational capital you spent to introduce this person to his coworkers, whatever, all that, you lose that. And so I think, think much bigger. And also, I love being a wage slave.

I love it. It's a glorious life, being a wage slave. Everyone talks about that. Most of you all are not cut out to run your own business. You're just not.

Everyone has different skill sets. Some of you can go kill it. But when I was flipping call books, I was making good money and I enjoyed it. But, you know, it's being an entrepreneur, you have two types of weeks. You have 30-hour weeks, and you have 70-hour weeks.

And nothing in the middle. When it's going well, it's going great. It's like being a pastor, really. Every once in a while, everyone stops in for a week. You're like, this is nice.

Right? And then like, what's he talking about? And then every family decides to go nuts. Right. And then you're like, I'll see you later, sweetie.

But when you work for another company, it's households coming together, sharing skills, and in that scalability, there's a lot of protection. And so yeah, I don't make all that money, but I also don't have all that risk either. And my ability now to work for a really solid Christian company, I don't need conference money, I don't need Patreon money, I don't need Twitter money, I don't need any of that. And if someone tells me they're not going to tithe, I'll just rebuke them. And if they leave, it's not going to hurt us, right?

It's a lot of level of protection and boldness just to go for it. And if they want to cancel me, they can email HR and I'll say hi. How's it going? Yeah, we've been having problems with that guy for a while. But I do think it's okay to go work for somebody else and build skills there.

Maybe that will lead to having a full-time business. I think every man should have side hustles. I always love having a little thing to make money on the side, just to keep me, you know, fresh and alive. But there is a, Instagram's always got this weird hustle culture and always glorifying and being an entrepreneur. It can be great, it can be terrible, you just got to know yourself.

Where do you belong on the wall? What are your skills? I found a place in a company where my ability to sell, my ability to spot trends early on and pick good people and train them up, I'm able to kind of focus in on that lane and just run with it. It's been great. So think bigger.

If you want to shoot horses for a living, that's great, I guess. But also, it's okay to try to build big businesses and scale. And if you're going to scale your business, you're going to really have to define your process. I like EOS, Entrepreneurial Operations System. There's kind of weird people in that world, though.

It can turn in to the Enneagram. But if you read Wickman's Traction, it's a pretty helpful book, or How to Be a Great Boss, those are good ones. I think If you read those and kind of take it at surface level, you'll be able to do some cool things. So thoughts. So Michael, I got a question for you.

Sure. You see a lot of applicants, you know, and you got to do a quick size up, right? And it's not just the resume, it's partly a resume, but How do you, what separates average candidates from standout candidates? So one thing we do to get through it really quick, we don't use AI to go through our applications. So all 64, 000, actually we just processed 15, 000 last month.

So we have a lot of jobs, we have six locations. And so I have a team, one of my sons is an intern, works for me. And so we go through, we have a question though, what is it about Madix that makes you wanna work for us? And if they don't answer that question or they put something stupid in there, we just move on. And I'm wanting to see them cite something related to our core values in some way.

A lot of people have grown up where it's not okay to talk about religion at work. It's not OK to talk about being a Christian. So they may be a little sheepish in putting something there. But if they like tip their hat, that's what's drawing them. And we're very open that we're a Christian company.

We're not. We're pretty aggressive about it, actually. So I'm going to look for that. And then if the cover letter is just cheap AI, we'll spot it. It's not this, but that, and all these M dashes everywhere.

It's terrible that AI has robbed us of M dashes, which are very helpful punctuation marks. But anyhow, I'm going to look at that. And a big thing I want to see is a sort of career trajectory and can you hold down a job for some period of time. Now if you're just coming out of college or you have some excuse, we'll factor that in. But I tell my team if they haven't held down a job for two to three years in the last five years, just skip it, I don't have time for it.

And now if we had less applications, we might slow down. And we've taken some risks. Like sometimes someone will recommend someone from inside the company, so I always say I bump them up a letter grade, right, so we're not gonna just hire them for that reason, but I'm okay with some sort of biblical nepotism, right, I'm gonna be more faithful to my family and friends than other people, why not? It's like, I know them, they know me, we're in this thing together. And so we'll factor that in.

With your resume, don't go over the top, don't try to sound more epic than you are, never say the word synergy. Look, you know. Don't, you can use, write, write it. And then if you want to use AI to edit it, you can do that. But go back over, you want to sound human, trying to hear you as a person, right?

We've seen so many of these things. Like we've, every interview at this point, I can pretty much predict where it's going to go within about 60 seconds. This is just what we do for a living, right? So that's what I would say. And be very honest about that.

Make it clear how long you were. Resumes have changed for some reason. I'm trying to figure out like how long did he work there? And when you don't have that on your resume, I'm just gonna assume the worst. Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, hey, let's throw it open to you guys. Anybody have any questions, we'll pass a mic around. So let's go right here. Hey, so I'm 45 years old. I've been in construction my whole life, at least particularly.

And my question is simple. I started my own business five years ago. So I have my own cabin shop, my house, and the apartment is part of my family. My best friend, who is my best friend in my wedding, he grew up with me, essentially. We were doing a cappuccino party together.

He and I were in another state working for a small cappuccino shop. And I had to find a break in the arm to lead that shop. I helped him start a LLC, get him all the licenses and all that. And he just cannot like shed the chain of just, I say working for the band, like There's security and stability, and having a nice job, and being able to eat. Yet, like a lot of us, citizens are seeing that it opens up our lives for ministry.

There's So many ways to deal with our own business. Like you said, some weeks we're a day to hour, and some weeks we're doing other things, right? What's your advice that I should be intent? Because like I said, I see, somebody saw it in me and said, you could do this. And I ran with it, and he's just like stuck.

He's like, my wife and I agree with him, because we know he couldn't do this and that. That he just cannot break free from that. I think it's a cultural thing, right? If you talk your friend into making a bad decision, I think you'll regret it. If he's, if you have to break his like, so This is not a perfect analogy, but go with me for a moment.

So long, long time ago, my wife and I ran a home birth website. Don't recommend it. But but what women are always trying to send you their birth videos. You're like, no, no, I didn't like there being for the births of my kids. There's a person coming out of a person.

It's horrifying. But nonetheless, the idea with home birth is here's how this connects is that what we tell everyone's while running a husband's pushing hard for it. And I'm like, look, you're not the one that if you freak out, it's not that big deal. We can smack you around, throw water on you. If your wife freaks out in late labor or something like that, and starts panicking, There can be real consequences to that.

So the main thing for home birth is someone that has the confidence in their body. God made me to do this. They're all in their soul. That's probably going to be safe even if the husband's a little shaky on it, right? She'll get through it.

It's very similar in business. He may not have what it takes in terms of mentality. And so I think there has to be, like in business coaching, a lot of times people want to give you passion. Like, I can't give you passion. That's not what I do.

I can throw gasoline on there. I can coach you or whatever. But there has to be something I'm working with. And so if he just doesn't have that, be careful on pushing him too hard. And I would just say, bathe him in prayer.

If he really is stuck financially and it's leading to a sort of apathy in his life that you see as not good, you should just sit him down and say look it's not about the business, okay. I think that if you keep doing this while it brings you security that's wonderful But I'm worried about comfort and how it can make you apathetic. And just explain to him your spiritual concern and then say this might be one way. Just think about it. Plant a seed.

A lot of this stuff that we do is inceptions, right? You put the little idea in their head and then water it. But also be careful in getting people into where they don't belong. And you are you. God gave you your abilities and gifts.

And you're like, you love it so much that you're evangelist for it. He may not have that. But I would say do the inception, see if you can start feeding the passion. That's just a thought. That's good.

Okay, yeah. I understand this is not an entrance, but my question for you today is whether one or I can't say anything on venture capital, but you want, I'll give you some real advice. Okay. Go home and watch the foods that made America. I love that show.

Have you guys ever watched that show? Yeah, I have. Yeah. Like, man, this guy could have made so much money on roll ups, but he was stupid. And the other guys came in and stole it from him.

I'm not joking. I love watching just the genesis of different businesses and I was the one on how they started marketing whiskey or the trouble in marketing root beer or whatever or read good books. I finished the book on the PayPal mafia, the founders, kind of a boring book in the second half. But you know, just or I here's another one, like anytime you talk to a businessman, just ask him what's a cool project he's working on and they'll tell you things. And anyone that's working on anything that they're passionate about can make it interesting.

And so watching shows like that, just thinking about that, training your mind to think creatively. If you're a software engineer, you probably got some binary thinking, you dream in zeros and ones. But so, opening yourself up to like kind of more artsy creative stuff just to get the juices flowing. And you start to see opportunities. The way the comic book thing happened is I was doing FBA fulfillment by Amazon using them as one of my main sales channels and I was watching Periscope, which doesn't exist anymore, and a friend of mine that was in the space slipping things, because I love to flip things just for fun.

Like, I think if you can take $5 into any Salvation Army and buy something and sell for $50, I guarantee it once you learn how to do it. But he was like, I wish someone could figure out how to sell comic books. And I was like, that's a good idea. So then I went and typed in comic books on Amazon and then I looked at what the top listings were and I saw someone selling comic book bundles at eight dollars and ninety nine cents. Well that's not gonna make much money.

Your base fees back then was four dollars right. So whatever my cost is maybe I'm making two dollars. How long does it take to make a bundle? It probably takes about 15, 20 minutes. So I'm going to be making $8 an hour to sell comics.

That's a bad idea. But I looked at all their negative ratings. So I took all the ones, twos, and threes, categorized them, looked for the major themes and what people are complaining about. Not enough Marvel, not enough DC. There's explicit content.

All right, so I'll take, no one wants independent comics. There's just no one wants them. That's why they have to be independent. So I took eight Marvel, eight DC, eight independent. So independent's like the baking soda that you cut the cocaine with, right?

So no one wants the baking soda, but you know, you can't sell pure cocaine. So I put those there, and then I put a, Back in the 90s they had these really shiny like comic book covers. So I put that one on the top so when they open it up like oh wow shiny cool. It really works. You used to watch those videos on opening up like iPhone the unboxings or whatever.

So then I wrapped that all up and then so they couldn't steal it I made a trademark comic book creating card and I stuck it in that thing and I sold it for $25 and then I worked really hard to get the reviews And then I kept kicking all the Chinese people off there and was trying to copy it And then that did so well I scaled it to where I was selling about fifty thousand comics a month and then I was like I need more comics and So then I'd go buy all these long boxes of comics and I said, can I just buy it all? Like, can you just sell all of it to me? And so I knew all the comics, I've been to places pretty close to yours. That's how it started. Again, like your story, thing to thing to thing to thing.

So I think just having lots of influences and then the juices going now I know you want to know about venture capital and he's ready to answer I actually don't really know a lot about venture capital even though I'm doing it. I have a couple of partners that do though. And that... So I didn't really know anything about real estate until I started doing it. You know, I was 20-something and a friend came and said, let's go do a real estate development together.

So we just started land development and the only real estate deal I'd ever done was leasing my house when I got married. And so then we went and did commercial land development together and then we did a bunch of tunnel car washes, whatever. So same thing with venture capital. I had never done it in my life until five years ago or maybe even three years ago when I met a couple of really sharp venture guys, they're both from Stanford, they both actually do know what they're doing. They're very good at it.

There's a 2022 vintage fund was in the top 10 percentile in the country. They're fantastic. They're a couple of the best money managers, in my opinion, on the planet. Couple of young guys, believers, and we partnered through a Bitcoin mining deal, and then I just started working with them and we started doing deals together, and I started learning. So it's, you know, I've seen maybe a hundred deals now, and I'm just starting to get a flavor for it, but I'm walking alongside other guys who are really good at doing it, and then by God's grace we've had some early successes and wins, and I'm learning more about that.

So if you're looking to do something that you don't know how to do, then my recommendation would be find someone who does know how to do it and go along with them. So that would be one. And I think to be clear on venture, which is really just the venture is just the early stage of something, right? It's in the venturing stage, right? Private equity is in the later stage of something when the thing is more developed.

But in venture, you have to have a real broad perspective on the things that tend to work and not work. And so I think one of the helpful skills, if you do want to be good at software and venture and startups and building things that haven't been done, is you've got to know what's out there, and what's being done, and what has been done. And that just requires a lot of visibility, deal flow, and just seeing things. So I would just say the more you can get out there, the more you can read, the more you can watch, the more you can stay in touch with news, the more you can watch other deals, why they come, why they go, why someone smarter than you chooses to pass on a deal. I think that was the first thing to me.

Every deal I saw, I thought was amazing. And then I would hear people that actually knew what they were doing and why they would pass on it at all. I never thought about that. Well, there's just a bunch of things you don't think about when you don't know what you're doing. So that's why it's helpful to be with other people who do.

Well, OK, This is going to have to be really quickie, because we're going to land this plane at 830 sharp. So I'm going to cut somebody off to end at 830. So go ahead. My name is Rick Henson. I'm the executive director of the New York I'm not sure I understand you.

You're asking about capital for starting your business? You started it. You've already started it. You're asking how to obtain the capital or... Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Give me an idea of how expensive. I mean, tell me what you're talking about. You're talking about $10, 000 or $100, 000? OK.

OK. Yeah. So debt is irrelevant because I don't know what kind of income you're going to be bringing in, right? So if somebody tells me they're a million dollars in debt, that means nothing until I know what they're worth or what they're generating, okay? So I don't know what you think you can generate.

Me personally, just be very, very careful with debt. You'll become a slave. Now some of you can handle that better than I can. I just, it was always such a burden to me. I mean I couldn't wait to get that monkey off my back.

I just couldn't stand it. So I started small. I started building up and again I remember I went to my local bank and I'd borrow like a thousand dollars and I go buy an air compressor. I'd pay that back. I brought another thousand dollars and buy a welder.

I'd pay it back. And guess what? When I went into the car business and I needed some money, They were very glad to give it to me because I had a record of paying back small amounts. So I did it small, and I don't know if that'd work for you, but start buying equipment out. Buy tools.

If this is what you're going to do, Don't wait until you're 25 and married, and now all of a sudden you need all these tools and it's a bunch of money. So buy what you can. And again, I don't know what kind of income you think you can generate, but I'd be careful with that. But I'd also encourage you to go for it. Don't be so scared.

Listen, I want to be real quick here. I know we got to shut down, but one of the dangers in homeschooling that we've overprotected our kids. We've never let them fail. They've never been on the field, so to speak, and we've so overprotected our kids they're afraid to fail. Let them fail, fathers.

Let them fail, get up, and try again. That's so important, okay? Also, just do what you can do and do it well. People ask me like, what's the secret? I just did what I told people I was going to do.

That's it. That's the secret, OK? And so yeah, I appreciate that. So maybe we can talk later, OK? I can understand a little bit more about what you're needing and kind of what you think you can generate if that helps you but real quick before we go I want to tell you guys one other thing this is a secret okay I've spoken a little bit about what I've done I'm gonna encourage you young men, you marry a good woman.

That's the key right there. Absolutely. Okay? I'm very easily flattered, and my wife was the reason. I was able to work hard, succeed.

She would say things to me and I'll run through a burning building for just a little bit of flattery. And so marry a good woman. You marry a bad woman that's selfish, contentious, ungrateful, you're gonna be miserable. Marry a godly, sweet woman. Get some counsel from some men you know in your church about these women, okay?

Thank you. Okay. Jerry, would you lead us in prayer and we're going to be done. Hey, thank you guys so much. Appreciate your help out there.

Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for these men. Oh Lord, that you would work in each of our lives, that we would take and apply that which we have heard. We not just be hearers but doers. Father bless our day who asked that you lead and guide us and equip us for all things in Christ's name.

Amen. Amen. We're gonna go hear Jeff Pollard on the Jesus Christ. Fasten your seat belts.