Today features one of our first repeat guests! Vic Ho is the founder of Fivestars—a business with the mission of “transforming transactions into relationships.” He shared a little about what they do, but he also talked about what happened when the start-up hit a rough patch and needed to lay off 50 people. We all hit rough patches, and how we handle those is a unique opportunity for us to be different. Vic felt compelled to take a different approach, one that was consistent with the company’s va...
Feb 25, 2020•41 min•Ep. 94
Today’s episode features a unique entrepreneurial journey that includes 3-D printing of homes. Yeah, you heard that right. Printing homes. Brett Hagler is the CEO and Co-Founder of New Story. He’s a Y Combinator alum, Praxis fellow, author, cancer survivor, and a 2016 Forbes 30 Under 30 Entrepreneur. The list goes on and on. Under his leadership, New Story was recognized as one of Fast Company's 2017 and 2019 "Most Innovative Companies In The World." Brett and his team are currently working with...
Feb 18, 2020•41 min•Ep. 93
We have another entrepreneurial adventure story for you today—this time, featuring Brian Mosley , President of RightNow Media . If you haven’t already heard of them, there’s a good chance someone in your church has. They’re basically the Netflix of Bible Video Studies. Their website has thousands of videos and resources from many Christian leaders, which they use to serve over 20,000 churches, schools and businesses. They’ve produced, curated, and published resources on everything from marriage ...
Feb 11, 2020•32 min•Ep. 92
Today we put an end to an age-old question—can a business itself have spiritual meaning? For years as Entrepreneurs, we’ve been called to live out our faith in our individual work activities and relationships. But we are fundamentally about building business enterprises. Can we take it a step further to conceive of the enterprise—the organization itself—as having spiritual significance? Curtis Chang is our guest who’s recently come out with some work that makes the case for all organizations—inc...
Feb 04, 2020•36 min•Ep. 91
If you’ve followed the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast for a while, today’s guest won’t be a stranger to you. Tom Nelson is one of those visionary pastors of a multi-site church called Christ Community, and he’s been widely recognized in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur community for his book, Work Matters . He also serves on the board of The Gospel Coalition and is President of Made to Flourish . Today, we had him on the show to talk about a recent article that appeared in The New York TImes —so...
Jan 28, 2020•38 min•Ep. 90
Too often in business circles, the word Christian can be an adjective for “subpar.” One of the Marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur is a realization that excellence matters and it earns us a right to be heard in our industry and the world around us. Today’s guest is Glen Jackson , author of Preeminence —a book based on 30+ years of working with brands like Chick-fil-a, Delta, Coca-Cola, Interstate, Toyota, Lexus, and others. He uses his experience to share what it means to be the preeminent bran...
Jan 21, 2020•32 min•Ep. 89
In the golf industry, there are few more recognized names of excellence than PING. For today’s show we go out to Phoenix to interview today’s guest, John Solheim . He’s the second generation of family leadership since the company’s inception in 1959. As recently as a few years ago, John had the unique opportunity to pass the baton to the third generation of leadership with his oldest son stepping in as company president. Today we take a look at their family’s journey to become a preeminent brand...
Jan 14, 2020•27 min•Ep. 88
Today we’re talking to Steve Graves . For the past 25 years he's worked with hundreds of organizations from Fortune 100 giants to small bootstrapping start-ups. He’s a regular contributor to the blog site where we love to share his wisdom and he’s also very involved with our friends at Praxis, coaching other young entrepreneurs. Steve’s written some great, practical books that we highly recommend. We like to think of them as Operators Manuals for startups. Today we get to kick off this new year ...
Jan 07, 2020•38 min•Ep. 87
Today we are talking to Toby Kurth , lead pastor at Christ Church San Francisco. Toby has been a faithful voice inside the Faith Driven Movement, a friend, pastor and even Chaplain to our team. We’re excited that we finally got to have him on the show today—feels like this episode is long overdue. We’re going to hear a bit of his story, and we’re also going to dive in with him on the 5 Marks of a Faith Driven Entrepreneur, which he was instrumental in shaping. If you haven’t read those yet, we s...
Dec 17, 2019•41 min•Ep. 86
Too often we think there are just one or two roads to being an Entrepreneur. We think of the lemonade stand kid who hits it big, or maybe we think of the “accidental entrepreneurs” like Mark McLain who shared his story on a previous podcast. But not as many know about the idea of a Search Fund, where an entrepreneur enlists investors with the purpose of acquiring a company and dropping in as the new day to day leader. There's a whole unique set of circumstances with this approach that we’re goin...
Dec 10, 2019•40 min•Ep. 85
Today we’re talking to Norm and Scott Miller . Norm is the Chairman and Scott is the CEO of Interstate Batteries. They steward a company that for the past 6 decades has been leading its industry with outrageous dependability. You may know Interstate batteries from their logos on the side of NASCAR winners, but you may not know that they offer over 12,000 different batteries and have sold more than 300 million units. They’ve also been innovating in discovering ways for their faith to lead them in...
Dec 03, 2019•40 min•Ep. 84
Today’s episode takes us to jail. Well...not exactly. But we are interviewing a man who owns and operates a business that is run out of a high security prison. His name is Pete Ochs , and in addition to working as founder and chairman of an impact investing company, he’s also working to make Hutchinson Correctional Facility in Kansas the best prison in America. How? Well, we’ll let him tell you… But what you should know is that Pete’s approach to business, and to life, has less to do with leader...
Nov 19, 2019•31 min•Ep. 83
Today we’re talking to Jon Collins , the co-founder of Epipheo—a cutting edge video production company that is passionate about getting to the heart of why things matter. The name of their company comes from the combination of the words “epiphany” and “video.” And from Jon’s story, it seems like those are the two things that have defined his life’s work. In addition to talking about Epipheo, Jon also shared with us the entrepreneurial journey of The Bible Project, an incredible work that breaks ...
Nov 12, 2019•41 min•Ep. 82
Today we’re in the Bay Area talking to Jena Nardella of Praxis. You may know Jena from some of her work improving clean water access around the world and her book titled One Thousand Wells: How an Audacious Goal Taught Me to Love the World Instead of Save It . Today she works on building the durability and sustainability of nonprofit organizations and leaders with Praxis and recently their team wrote a book called The Redemptive Nonprofit . We invited Jena on to share some of her story and also ...
Nov 05, 2019•43 min•Ep. 81
“If a man steals your farm, teach him how to farm.” We’ve all heard sermons and messages on forgiveness and turning the other cheek, but the story of Craig Deall takes these truths to a whole new level. Craig actually lived this. Under the rule of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe forced thousands of industrial farmers to give up their lands. In a moment, generations of family wealth was gone. But rather than seeking revenge or restitution, Craig chose the path of reconciliation—actually working for the v...
Oct 29, 2019•38 min•Ep. 80
Everyone has a story about receiving a gift they had no interest in, but do any of us know if we’ve ever given a gift that someone else didn’t want? This is exactly the situation John Ruhlin wants to help you avoid. John is the author of Giftology , a book that teaches the science of “radical generosity.” He has helped countless companies boost their referrals, retention rates, and ROI, and our interview with him was a gift in and of itself! John has helped people accelerate relationships with t...
Oct 22, 2019•45 min•Ep. 79
There are 7 million jobs in America that will go unfilled in 2019. This means that even if every unemployed person in America got a job tomorrow, we’d still have a labor gap of over a million people. So, what’s the solution? Well, Chris Chancey has some ideas that come from the value of the refugee workforce. On this episode, he shares with us the importance of the immigrant and refugee workforce—a group that is behind so many of the products we use. In addition to sharing the story of Amplio Re...
Oct 15, 2019•32 min•Ep. 78
Last year, on a single porn site alone, people watched 4.6 billion hours worth of pornographic videos. That’s around 5,000 centuries worth of time. Clearly, sexual Brokenness is a problem. But that’s not new. What is new is how Jay Stringer , author of Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing , is helping us understand this subject. Instead of looking for new techniques of “lust management,” Jay is working to encourage people to address their sexual brokenness and the core issu...
Oct 08, 2019•41 min•Ep. 77
Entrepreneurs know what it’s like to be uncomfortable. Yet, there’s something in modern/Western Christianity that expects comfort. We often act as though God has called us to a life of comfort and ease, not one of stress and sacrifice. But as Casey Crawford points out, Jesus didn’t exactly live an easy life! And this is just one way he gave us a great perspective alongside a paradigm shift in this podcast episode. As you’ll hear, Casey came out of the gate firing, and we hope you can keep up wit...
Oct 01, 2019•41 min•Ep. 76
On today’s episode, we invited Max Anderson to come in and help us tackle a difficult yet important topic—depression among entrepreneurs. Max is an entrepreneur and a writer. Each week, he writes something called The Weekend Reader, where he explores one big idea from culture with a handful of suggested articles. Recently, he dove into how depression affects entrepreneurs, and what he found was staggering—entrepreneurs are anywhere from 2-10x more likely to suffer from mental challenges. It’s a ...
Sep 24, 2019•39 min•Ep. 75
Our friend Frank Chen is the final guest in this 4-part series on the Faith Driven Investor. And he stopped by to talk about how he’s helping entrepreneurs change the World at the Silicon Valley Venture powerhouse of Andreessen Horowitz. As Frank describes it they are “helping entrepreneurs build software companies that are eating the world” (he’ll give you a little more info about what that means in our interview). Frank Chen is a self proclaimed former product and user experience design junkie...
Sep 17, 2019•40 min•Ep. 74
We’ve got a good one for you today. Nathan Sheets is CEO of Nature Nate’s Honey, and he was also involved with I Am Second,and E3, and you’ll hear a bit of all of those stories. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When we sat down to talk to Nathan, we had no idea how deep he was going to take us. Right away, he opened up about the ups and downs he has gone through with a level of candor that we couldn’t even believe. If you’re looking for what life as an entrepreneur looks like—and we mean,...
Sep 10, 2019•41 min•Ep. 73
Faith-Based Employee Resource Groups. This term may be new to you, or it may be something you’re already participating in. Either way, this episode is for you. Christeen Rico is leading the conversation around ERGs, and what she shared in our conversation was both informative and insightful. If you don’t know, ERGs are groups within companies that foster community and conversation among like-minded people. Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Toyota, and many more are creating these types of ...
Sep 03, 2019•30 min•Ep. 72
Imagine you’re walking into a car dealership to buy a new car. Now, most people don’t associate that thought with a pleasant experience—there’s negotiation, uncertainty, and the inevitability of a big purchase. But Don Flow and Flow Automotive set out to change this idea, and in doing so, they created a business founded on values and principles that manifest themselves in these words: exercise faith, live love, and bring hope. That sounds better! In this episode, Don Flow opened up a fire hydran...
Aug 27, 2019•44 min•Ep. 71
Today’s episode takes us to Silicon Valley to connect with Trae Stephens . You may have seen Trae on CNBC, or you may know him as one of the Partners at Founders Fund. It was an honor to have Trae on to share about his experiences—everything from his time in politics working for Congressmen and in Embassies to now working alongside Peter Thiel. Trae also shares about his life as a Christ-Follower and how it shapes his view of the investing world. In particular, Trae outlines what it means for an...
Aug 20, 2019•37 min•Ep. 70
Today’s guest, Sanyin Siang , is the executive director for the Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and a professor with its Pratt School of Engineer. She is an advisor for Google Ventures (GV), Sports Innovation Labs, Duke Corporate Education and author of The Launch Book: Motivational Stories to Launch Your Idea, Business, or Next Career . If that list isn’t enough to get you to press play on this episode, you should also know that she...
Aug 13, 2019•34 min•Ep. 69
When we first learned about Apartment Life it sounded too good to be true. The work they do in apartment complexes improves their overall financial performance, grows their online reputation, and strengthens their resident retention rates. With benefits like these, it’s no surprise that they’re taking off, now serving over 3 million residents from coast to coast. In this episode, Pete Kelly explains just how they do it. We believe this podcast is especially valuable to you for two reasons. One, ...
Aug 06, 2019•33 min•Ep. 68
Join us outside of Austin, Texas where we are connecting with Mark McClain . Mark likes to refer to himself as an accidental entrepreneur. He didn’t grow up as the lemonade stand kid but has since gone on to start two different companies. Today, he leads SailPoint, an identity management business started in 2005 that is publicly traded with a market cap around $2 Billion and 1,200 team members across 33 different companies. Today, you can hear Mark share his powerful story of being an “Accidenta...
Jul 30, 2019•39 min•Ep. 67
We’re so excited to finally launch the Faith Driven Investor podcast. Over the next several weeks, we’ll feature episodes tailored for fund managers, investors, business owners and pastors that believe God owns it all and who care deeply about how we steward our investments for financial return and gospel-centered transformation. If that sounds interesting to you, tune in today! This week’s episode features Henry Kaestner of Sovereign’s Capital and Aimee Minnich of Impact Foundation. Together th...
Jul 29, 2019•37 min•Ep. 66
Is it possible to have a healthy family while building a successful business? That’s the question at the heart of this week’s episode with Ben and Liz Bohannon of Sseko Designs. Their business began as a way to generate income for high-potential, talented young women in Uganda to continue on to university. Since then, it’s grown rapidly from a Shark Tank phenomenon to a global success. Hear how Ben and Liz are navigating the world of global business while still managing to focus on their home, t...
Jul 16, 2019•35 min•Ep. 65
