Discovering Purpose Beyond Profit: Insights from Brett Johnson on Faith, Work, and Mission

Brett Johnson: 00:00:00

I wanna mobilize people because they'll come alive

Brett Johnson: 00:00:03

when they're deploying truth.

Brett Johnson: 00:00:05

For me, truth in somebody's head just makes them more religious.

Brett Johnson: 00:00:09

Truth practiced, even with failure makes them more dangerous.

Tim Winders: 00:00:25

In a world where business and purpose intersect, how can

Tim Winders: 00:00:28

leaders transform their companies to create a positive societal impact?

Tim Winders: 00:00:35

Welcome to Seat Go Create, where we're joined by Brett Johnson,

Tim Winders: 00:00:38

A seasoned marketplace veteran, thought leader, and innovator who

Tim Winders: 00:00:43

has helped redefine the purpose of businesses beyond the bottom line.

Tim Winders: 00:00:48

Brett, with his vast experience working with over 400 companies worldwide, has

Tim Winders: 00:00:53

made a significant impact in guiding corporations toward a greater purpose.

Tim Winders: 00:00:59

As the founder of the Institute for Innovation Integration and Impact

Tim Winders: 00:01:03

Incorporated and a prolific author, his work spans leadership, societal

Tim Winders: 00:01:09

transformation, and work life integration.

Tim Winders: 00:01:13

Brett, welcome to Seek Go Create.

Tim Winders: 00:01:15

I.

Brett Johnson: 00:01:16

Thank you so much.

Brett Johnson: 00:01:17

I'm so glad to be here with you.

Brett Johnson: 00:01:18

I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Tim Winders: 00:01:22

I am looking forward to the conversation too.

Tim Winders: 00:01:24

Like I said, right before we hit record, you're such a perfect fit for

Tim Winders: 00:01:29

interacting with redefining success in leadership and business and ministry.

Tim Winders: 00:01:34

It sounds like that's somewhat been your mission from what

Tim Winders: 00:01:37

I've read and studied on you.

Tim Winders: 00:01:39

So, but, but before I dive into that deep end and we talk about what part

Tim Winders: 00:01:44

of the world you're in and all that.

Tim Winders: 00:01:46

Brett, if somebody asks you what you do, what do you typically tell 'em?

Brett Johnson: 00:01:52

Well, one of my passions is to abolish dichotomy, so I.

Brett Johnson: 00:01:57

Teach, I write, I co-lab with my wife to abolish the dichotomy, uh, is a

Brett Johnson: 00:02:02

negative, and the the positive is to model integration, to mobilize and to

Brett Johnson: 00:02:07

release the identity of leaders, uh, and to inspire multi-generational households.

Brett Johnson: 00:02:13

So that's part of what we do as we repurpose businesses and seek to

Brett Johnson: 00:02:18

bring about societal transformation.

Brett Johnson: 00:02:20

And then part of that is what we call comprehensively capitalizing things with

Brett Johnson: 00:02:25

different types of capital, including not just intellectual and relational and

Brett Johnson: 00:02:30

financial, but spiritual capital as well.

Brett Johnson: 00:02:32

So it's a bit of a, a ball of things.

Tim Winders: 00:02:37

It, it is quite a bit.

Tim Winders: 00:02:38

And we'll, I think we're gonna have a wide ranging conversation here.

Tim Winders: 00:02:42

You've got so many books that are fascinating.

Tim Winders: 00:02:46

I wanted to read, I wanted to read multiple ones.

Tim Winders: 00:02:48

I didn't have the time before our conversation and the resources you have.

Tim Winders: 00:02:52

But, but when, I mean, when, when you bring even a small amount of what you

Tim Winders: 00:02:59

just said, when you bring that up to people, what's the response you get?

Tim Winders: 00:03:05

'cause that's, that's big.

Tim Winders: 00:03:06

That's there's a lot there, Brett.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:09

Yeah, there, there is.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:10

And you know, sometimes it can seem a little bit like you're

Brett Johnson: 00:03:13

trying to boil the ocean.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:15

And uh, I remember once Tim, I was flying into France at the south of

Brett Johnson: 00:03:19

France and it was, the flight had been a 3:00 AM flight out of Tel Aviv.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:23

And so it was five in the morning.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:25

And I looked out the window and I said, God, I don't have it in me to

Brett Johnson: 00:03:29

tackle every giant in every country.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:31

And he said, yeah, but you can tackle the same giant in every country.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:35

And so he didn't let me off the hook.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:37

And so that giant for me has been the secular sacred dichotomy.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:42

You know, this, you know, this is spiritual and this isn't, and some

Brett Johnson: 00:03:45

things are gods and some things aren't.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:47

But so my passion is everything is Gods and how do we find God?

Brett Johnson: 00:03:52

In every part of society.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:54

So that's a big umbrella.

Brett Johnson: 00:03:56

So, and with a view to bringing about change in society now to do that,

Brett Johnson: 00:03:59

we have to unlock everyday people.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:03

Uh, many, many years ago I was leading a church in South Africa.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:06

I was also working at Pricewaterhouse and consulting to a mission organization,

Brett Johnson: 00:04:11

but I found that most of the people were sitting in my church bored out of their

Brett Johnson: 00:04:17

skulls, under deployed, underutilized.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:20

And these weren't the super spiritual types who liked to

Brett Johnson: 00:04:24

preach or evangelize on the street.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:26

These were the finance, marketing, it, sales, everyday business people

Brett Johnson: 00:04:32

who were second class citizens.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:34

And I thought, man, we have to really, really change that.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:36

And so that was in the early 1980s, 1981, that I could just see that

Brett Johnson: 00:04:41

problem and I thought, man, I really need to mobilize the people.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:46

But that means mobilizing everyday marketplace people.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:50

And so.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:51

So that's at the heart of it.

Brett Johnson: 00:04:53

And uh, it does sound a lot, but the real goal is how do you bring about the

Brett Johnson: 00:04:57

kingdom of God in practical, non-religious sounding ways in the marketplace.

Tim Winders: 00:05:06

Why is it, you know, one of the things that we do when we do

Tim Winders: 00:05:12

strategy, I'm sure you do it when you go in with companies, when I work with

Tim Winders: 00:05:15

companies, you know, we first, many times we have to state the problem.

Tim Winders: 00:05:22

And so, so my, my, I guess maybe my sort of big question here as we get rolling is.

Tim Winders: 00:05:30

What's the problem and why does it exist?

Tim Winders: 00:05:33

Why, why is it so hard for people to, you know, go out into the marketplace,

Tim Winders: 00:05:41

you know, make a few dollars, support their family, do the things

Tim Winders: 00:05:44

they need to do, or lead companies, businesses, organizations, and, and

Tim Winders: 00:05:49

operate in faith or, or vice versa.

Tim Winders: 00:05:52

Why is it that they go into a, their faith community and then they

Tim Winders: 00:05:56

can't bring some of their skills?

Tim Winders: 00:05:58

I mean, I, I just sort of said some of the problem, but what is the problem

Tim Winders: 00:06:02

and, and why is there a problem?

Tim Winders: 00:06:05

And then we'll try to tackle it in the rest of our time together.

Tim Winders: 00:06:07

But what, what's

Brett Johnson: 00:06:09

Yeah.

Brett Johnson: 00:06:09

Look, I think some of it is bad teaching, bad theology, uh, and

Brett Johnson: 00:06:14

some of it is just, uh, an implied, uh, arrogance almost on the part of

Brett Johnson: 00:06:22

church leaders or mission leaders.

Brett Johnson: 00:06:24

And I've led both, you know, so I'm not, uh, well, I guess I might be knocking

Brett Johnson: 00:06:28

them, but we have the same issues in every sphere of society, you know?

Brett Johnson: 00:06:32

So, um, I mean, in education, unless you're a PhD and you're writing for

Brett Johnson: 00:06:36

the academic community, they, they have their own elitist thing, so everybody

Brett Johnson: 00:06:40

has a bit of it, you know, but, so part of it is bad theology, but I think

Brett Johnson: 00:06:45

part of it is also a lack of purpose.

Brett Johnson: 00:06:47

I think.

Brett Johnson: 00:06:49

You know, people used to say to me when I wrote the book Convergence, it was

Brett Johnson: 00:06:52

about how do you integrate your career and your calling and your community,

Brett Johnson: 00:06:58

including your church community, and uh, and how do you co-create with God?

Brett Johnson: 00:07:02

And people would say, oh yeah, but I don't know what my calling is now.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:05

I tell them.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:06

In other words, they say, if I knew my calling, I would do it.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:10

So now I tell them, you're called to work.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:14

A hundred percent of us are.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:15

Bible is very clear on that.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:17

Now, whether you work for the First Presbyterian Church or for the Second

Brett Johnson: 00:07:21

National Bank, it's not the big deal.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:24

It's not whose name is on the paycheck.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:26

So first un understanding work and the redemptive value of work and the

Brett Johnson: 00:07:31

importance of work and, and working as God sees work as a wholesome thing.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:36

Right now there's a lot of pressure on young people.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:38

If you take the early, the Gen Zs and the younger ones, they're like, corporations

Brett Johnson: 00:07:43

are bad and a capitalism is bad.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:47

Work is bad.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:48

There's about six, 7 million people who have no intention of working in the US

Brett Johnson: 00:07:52

right now, and they're quite able-bodied, you know, and there's, there's help

Brett Johnson: 00:07:56

wanted signs all over the place.

Brett Johnson: 00:07:58

Part of it is, I think that there's an attack on work as the value of work.

Brett Johnson: 00:08:02

And I think that's partly, and because we are made in the image of God and

Brett Johnson: 00:08:06

we are made to work like him, and that when people see your work and

Brett Johnson: 00:08:10

my work, they'll see what God's like.

Brett Johnson: 00:08:12

And so it's no wonder, um, work is under attack.

Brett Johnson: 00:08:16

So I think there's some cultural things, there's some bad theology, and then

Brett Johnson: 00:08:21

there's a lack of purpose where we think it's okay that the purpose of

Brett Johnson: 00:08:26

business is to make money or to make the best widget or to, uh, you know, get

Brett Johnson: 00:08:33

funded and have an exit and so forth.

Brett Johnson: 00:08:35

So we've settled for a lesser purpose for a business or for an organization I.

Tim Winders: 00:08:43

It's, it also seems as if Brett, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask

Tim Winders: 00:08:46

you if you know some of the history on maybe how this came to be, that

Tim Winders: 00:08:51

in many of the ministry circles, and I've been in and out of churches, I've

Tim Winders: 00:08:58

been to Bible school for a few years.

Tim Winders: 00:09:01

There is either a stated or unstated more important purposes than others.

Tim Winders: 00:09:09

There's a ranking of purposes and, you know, I'll go to Bible school and I'll

Tim Winders: 00:09:14

say this sort of tongue in cheek, but it's real, you know, the, the ultimate is.

Tim Winders: 00:09:20

Missions work in some, you know, third world country.

Tim Winders: 00:09:24

Secondary to that is some other type of evangelist.

Tim Winders: 00:09:27

Next would be maybe a local pastor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Tim Winders: 00:09:32

Ranking, ranking, ranking.

Tim Winders: 00:09:33

And then there's the business person, you know, way on down the list.

Tim Winders: 00:09:37

Well, I've always been a business person.

Tim Winders: 00:09:39

I mean, I've shared with people here, I actually was saved in a business setting.

Tim Winders: 00:09:42

I'm not even sure that I would've gone in a lot of churches, but, but what,

Tim Winders: 00:09:48

what, uh, how did we come to be here?

Tim Winders: 00:09:52

Because if we go back historically, I heard someone say the other day

Tim Winders: 00:09:55

that the Levitical priest of the Old Testament, they were pretty much butchers.

Tim Winders: 00:10:00

All they did was handle livestock and handle sacrifices and

Tim Winders: 00:10:05

butchering all day long, long.

Tim Winders: 00:10:06

They probably didn't have a lot of time to grab a microphone and preach and teach.

Tim Winders: 00:10:09

But any, any perspective on how we ended up with that being the message

Tim Winders: 00:10:15

in much of our religious circles today?

Brett Johnson: 00:10:18

I think it does go back a long way.

Brett Johnson: 00:10:20

I say partly the Greeks are to blame with the dualistic thinking

Brett Johnson: 00:10:23

about, you know, the separation of your spirit and your soul and your

Brett Johnson: 00:10:27

body and all this kind of stuff.

Brett Johnson: 00:10:29

But I think more recent history would be, uh, when the

Brett Johnson: 00:10:34

industrial Revolution came along.

Brett Johnson: 00:10:36

Part of, of what had happened.

Brett Johnson: 00:10:37

This whole, you've gotta separate God and business or you've gotta

Brett Johnson: 00:10:42

separate your work and your faith.

Brett Johnson: 00:10:44

Uh, when you had an agrarian economy, your church sat on the land of a landowner.

Brett Johnson: 00:10:51

So in many respects, uh, the pastor or the priest or the minister was

Brett Johnson: 00:10:57

subject to the whims of the landowner because he was economically subjective.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:02

And so then came a time which said, no, we need to separate those things.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:05

The idea was that the preacher or the Bible teacher wouldn't be impinged upon

Brett Johnson: 00:11:11

by somebody through an economic level.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:13

That was actually just it.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:15

The intention wasn't to separate faith and work.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:18

You can't really separate those things 'cause faith and risk

Brett Johnson: 00:11:21

are two sides of the same coin.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:23

If you're in business, you take risks, you have to have faith,

Brett Johnson: 00:11:26

and um, so I think there's.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:29

Part of an, um, unintended consequences of trying to separate

Brett Johnson: 00:11:33

out those things to create a bit more freedom actually for faith.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:36

But it had an another reality.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:39

So I think that that's part of the problem, I would

Brett Johnson: 00:11:41

say within church circles.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:44

However, I remember a lady, I met her and she was a mining

Brett Johnson: 00:11:48

engineer and a methodologist.

Brett Johnson: 00:11:50

She worked for one of the big mining houses and she, as they worked in a

Brett Johnson: 00:11:54

community, 'cause they had a big mine in a town with lots of small businesses,

Brett Johnson: 00:11:59

she went to her church leaders and said, I think God wants me to focus

Brett Johnson: 00:12:03

on ministering to these businesses.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:05

And they looked at her and they said, Jessica, you've got

Brett Johnson: 00:12:09

your ladder up the wrong wall.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:12

You have to do your ministry inside the church.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:16

And she had this conflict and she, there's many others I've met like that.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:20

God's telling me, do this, be practical, do stuff in the marketplace.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:26

But my church leaders are telling me.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:28

Do the opposite, and they feel there's this tension and so they

Brett Johnson: 00:12:33

go into a funk and, um, it's a, it's a challenge for them because,

Brett Johnson: 00:12:39

and it's really just bad theology.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:42

And so, you know, from my

Brett Johnson: 00:12:44

perspective, I, I don't worry about the church going away.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:48

You know, the scripture says that Jesus will build a church, whether it's in

Brett Johnson: 00:12:52

a storefront, whether it's in a living room, whether it's in a stadium, whether

Brett Johnson: 00:12:55

it's a megachurch, a tiny church.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:57

I'm not worried about that.

Brett Johnson: 00:12:59

What I would love to see, however, is a church in every business.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:03

I'd love to see a church in every classroom, an expression

Brett Johnson: 00:13:07

of the kingdom of God.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:09

And uh, I think if we could get our heads around that, then you would know,

Brett Johnson: 00:13:13

man, we don't have enough resources.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:16

We've got to empower and mobilize everybody.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:20

Which is why Jesus died, he died so that you can be a minister, I can be a minister

Brett Johnson: 00:13:24

regardless of whether we went to Bible school so that each of us can be fully

Brett Johnson: 00:13:29

equipped to extend the kingdom of God.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:31

So I think there's some historical reasons.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:34

I think there's some control reasons, you know, um, and some

Brett Johnson: 00:13:39

of which we've also adopted the hierarchical systems of the world.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:43

So when I look in the Old Testament, in the Jewish world, a quorum was

Brett Johnson: 00:13:50

10 believers, 10 Jewish people.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:53

Basically, you couldn't do something official.

Brett Johnson: 00:13:56

Like even now if, if an Israeli soldier dies in Gaza or something, you need 10

Brett Johnson: 00:14:02

people before you can do the funeral.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:03

This is, is part of what it is.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:06

And, um, so a, a rabbi got an email from a rabbi who kind of explained

Brett Johnson: 00:14:12

the way that they would do what we today would call a church plant.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:15

In church plant.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:16

We take somebody from South Africa or from.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:18

North Dakota, we send them to Africa with their wife and two kids.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:22

They get some financial support.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:24

They arrive with a an SUV and A or whatever they're gonna have.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:29

No, that's not what they would do.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:31

In the Old Testament setup, you'd get 10 business leaders who would

Brett Johnson: 00:14:35

come together and form a quorum, and then they would call a rabbi.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:40

And the rabbi, of course, would live at the same level as the others

Brett Johnson: 00:14:44

because they would each give 10%.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:45

So you had this built in, but it wasn't the cult of the individual leader.

Brett Johnson: 00:14:51

I'm the church planter, I'm the bishop, I'm the apostle, I'm the this,

Brett Johnson: 00:14:55

no, it was a quorum of leaders, a plurality of leadership, which is, I

Brett Johnson: 00:15:00

think we've lost some of that as well.

Brett Johnson: 00:15:02

And that leads to this hierarchical view and people

Brett Johnson: 00:15:06

giving themselves titles, you know?

Tim Winders: 00:15:11

I'm also not sure I, I, I had another question,

Tim Winders: 00:15:14

but I wanna ask this one.

Tim Winders: 00:15:16

Uh, since you just brought that up, Brett, I'm also not sure that

Tim Winders: 00:15:22

men man can handle some of those hierarchical roles we've placed them in.

Tim Winders: 00:15:28

And I think we've got plenty of evidence of that.

Tim Winders: 00:15:30

I mean, if we look at, you know, people that fall, I mean, are, are we trying

Tim Winders: 00:15:35

to ask more of many of the leaders?

Tim Winders: 00:15:39

And I know you teach on leadership, I know you and I are gonna discuss

Tim Winders: 00:15:42

it here shortly, but are, are we, are we putting too much pressure on

Brett Johnson: 00:15:46

A hundred percent.

Brett Johnson: 00:15:47

Yeah,

Tim Winders: 00:15:47

things they shouldn't be doing?

Brett Johnson: 00:15:48

you're quite right.

Brett Johnson: 00:15:49

I think it's, um, what I observed some years ago, probably 20 plus years ago, is

Brett Johnson: 00:15:55

that if you call a new pastor, a church puts out a search committee and gets a

Brett Johnson: 00:16:01

new minister, whether it's a Baptist or Presbyterian or Methodist or whatever.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:06

That person's got about an 18 month shelf life.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:09

It sounds terrible, but.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:12

Uh, that's why guys will go off and start their own church

Brett Johnson: 00:16:16

because then they call the shots.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:17

They're good for 10, 20 years or whatever.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:20

Uh, but part of it is the crazy job expectations.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:23

We expect you to preach 48 out of 52 weeks in the year.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:28

We expect you to visit so many people in their homes.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:31

We, and, and it's a long list of criteria.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:35

Instead of saying, we expect you to fall on your face when you do, we have a safety

Brett Johnson: 00:16:41

net behind you, and it's, it's this board or this eldership group or this team

Brett Johnson: 00:16:46

behind you, and we're gonna help you.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:48

We don't expect you to be perfect.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:50

We would consider it a failure if you preached every week, because then you're

Brett Johnson: 00:16:54

not empowering other people, which is what you're supposed to do and so forth.

Brett Johnson: 00:16:58

So it, we could change the expectations and we could free people up.

Brett Johnson: 00:17:02

It would make a huge difference.

Brett Johnson: 00:17:03

You know, in the business world, the number one fear of CEOs

Brett Johnson: 00:17:08

repeatedly is one day they're gonna find out, I dunno what I'm doing.

Brett Johnson: 00:17:13

And, and I've heard, I've so many times I've heard CEOs, you know,

Brett Johnson: 00:17:18

one day they're gonna figure out, I don't know what's going on.

Brett Johnson: 00:17:21

Well, pastors and church leaders have the same kind of thing, and it's a little

Brett Johnson: 00:17:26

bit worse because when you bring God into the equation, it's like, well, isn't God

Brett Johnson: 00:17:31

supposed to give you these superpowers?

Brett Johnson: 00:17:34

And therefore you should be impervious to this stuff?

Brett Johnson: 00:17:40

Therefore, you don't show your weaknesses, therefore you get

Brett Johnson: 00:17:42

lonely and it's just a, a bad cycle

Tim Winders: 00:17:49

Yeah, I, I definitely see the challenges there.

Tim Winders: 00:17:51

One, one of the things, Brett, you're, you're in South Africa right now?

Tim Winders: 00:17:57

I've visited there a few times.

Tim Winders: 00:17:58

What part of South

Brett Johnson: 00:17:59

down in?

Brett Johnson: 00:17:59

Cape Town.

Tim Winders: 00:18:02

Cape Town.

Tim Winders: 00:18:02

Oh, one of the most beautiful cities in the world with Cape Town.

Tim Winders: 00:18:04

Stunning.

Tim Winders: 00:18:06

What do you see, and I know you've traveled extensively and I know you spend

Tim Winders: 00:18:10

a good bit of your time in the US also, but do you notice anything about this

Tim Winders: 00:18:14

topic that we're discussing culturally as you go from different countries?

Tim Winders: 00:18:20

I mean, we, those of us that are in the United States, and

Tim Winders: 00:18:23

you know this, you know it well.

Tim Winders: 00:18:25

We have this arrogant attitude that.

Tim Winders: 00:18:29

Everything sort of revolves around us and that the world spills out.

Tim Winders: 00:18:32

But do you notice any differences with this topic we're discussing in

Tim Winders: 00:18:38

other parts of the world that might be beneficial for us to understand?

Brett Johnson: 00:18:41

that's a really good point.

Brett Johnson: 00:18:42

It does vary a lot by country, and I'll give you three or four examples.

Brett Johnson: 00:18:46

So I was speaking once in Egypt and uh, they asked a question

Brett Johnson: 00:18:53

about a pastor of a church having a side hustle, a side business, and

Brett Johnson: 00:19:00

it's against their rules because.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:03

They'll pay you a

Brett Johnson: 00:19:03

hundred pounds a month.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:05

You've got a couple of kids, three, four kids, you, you can't afford to live.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:08

But they will say, well, then you don't have the faith to be a pastor.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:12

If you go and get a side hustle another job, you drive Uber or you

Brett Johnson: 00:19:16

do whatever, then you, you don't have the faith to be a pastor.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:21

Whereas when I was in the Ukraine 30 years ago, uh, I asked the head

Brett Johnson: 00:19:26

of a denomination, what percentage of your pastors have other jobs?

Brett Johnson: 00:19:32

He said, 99.9.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:33

I'm the only one who doesn't, and he was the head of the denomination.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:37

He said, everybody else has another job.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:40

When I go into Nigeria, for example, most of the leaders, certainly many of

Brett Johnson: 00:19:48

them are bi-vocational, so they're a judge and they're a pastor, they're a

Brett Johnson: 00:19:53

government minister, and they're a pastor.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:55

They're a bank, CEO, and they're a pastor.

Brett Johnson: 00:19:58

Now, there is a bit of.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:00

Hierarchy in the sense that they're a pastor and the CEO, the bank,

Brett Johnson: 00:20:04

CEO slots in underneath that.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:06

In other words, you know, I have a friend, he's a, he is a high government

Brett Johnson: 00:20:09

official, and they call him pastor, whatever, uh, be, but it's an honored

Brett Johnson: 00:20:15

thing, but it's not uncommon for them to have multiple jobs, and then

Brett Johnson: 00:20:21

they build the systems behind them.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:22

So my friend, I have a friend who, pastors a good sized church, heads

Brett Johnson: 00:20:29

up a big department in the, in the federal government in another city

Brett Johnson: 00:20:33

and oversees another 150 churches.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:38

And, but he has a support staff, he has people who work with him.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:42

He delegates, he sets up systems You know, so they cope with a lot of stuff.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:48

So if you said to somebody in that context, oh, you can't be a businessman

Brett Johnson: 00:20:53

and a pastor, it makes no sense.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:55

So it does vary from country to country.

Brett Johnson: 00:20:57

and I think in the states.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:01

You know, this notion that, well, you can't be a pastor.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:04

I was talking to a major missions organization, this was probably

Brett Johnson: 00:21:09

20 plus years ago, and they showed me an org chart on their wall and

Brett Johnson: 00:21:14

they had highlighted many of the spots on the org chart with yellow.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:17

And I asked them, what are those highlights?

Brett Johnson: 00:21:19

And they said, those are all the people that we are missing.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:22

And so I said, well, why don't you go up the road to where you're having

Brett Johnson: 00:21:25

your, your, Crossroads Discipleship Training school and just go and tell

Brett Johnson: 00:21:32

them about all the openings you have?

Brett Johnson: 00:21:34

No, we can't do that.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:35

I said, why not?

Brett Johnson: 00:21:36

Well, because they're having a spiritual experience up there and this is the

Brett Johnson: 00:21:40

practical running of our organization.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:43

And I'm like, you know, so we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:47

And, um, so I, I think that country by country, it does vary quite a lot.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:54

And I just think it's.

Brett Johnson: 00:21:58

What's gonna solve some of this is antagonism towards Christians, because

Brett Johnson: 00:22:03

I've worked in some countries where it's hard to get a permit to put up a church.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:12

So you have your church in one of the floors of a bank building, and when

Brett Johnson: 00:22:18

you go in there, it feels like a bank, abit and uh, or like a corporate.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:23

And I think more and more there will be pressures, uh, even in Canada.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:28

I was up in Canada many years ago and they told me that if you have nonprofit

Brett Johnson: 00:22:32

status, that government can tell you what you can preach and can't preach.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:36

So I was speaking to some guys, a guy who went through our, our repurposing

Brett Johnson: 00:22:40

business training, and he said they were thinking about flipping their

Brett Johnson: 00:22:43

church to be a business so that the government wouldn't tell them what to do.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:48

It might be that we forced to squeeze out some of the secular

Brett Johnson: 00:22:52

sacred dichotomy through pressure.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:54

I hope not.

Brett Johnson: 00:22:55

But I suspect it might happen.

Tim Winders: 00:22:59

I just had a thought of a, a good friend, we've interviewed

Tim Winders: 00:23:02

him here, Mike Bearer, who he and I did consulting work back during the nineties

Tim Winders: 00:23:07

and do work together from time to time.

Tim Winders: 00:23:08

He actually would go into Kazakhstan in countries like that and do kind of

Tim Winders: 00:23:13

the micro business model because you could not come in during those times

Tim Winders: 00:23:18

and start churches and they would build up people in their business.

Tim Winders: 00:23:23

They would be believers.

Tim Winders: 00:23:24

And that is how the ministry would happen.

Tim Winders: 00:23:26

That's the only way it would happen.

Tim Winders: 00:23:27

It wasn't going to be a, a church being started.

Tim Winders: 00:23:31

You know, Brett, one thing that I, I wanna ask this maybe before we

Tim Winders: 00:23:34

get too much farther, is I think everybody has a journey that puts

Tim Winders: 00:23:39

them, uh, I guess down certain paths.

Tim Winders: 00:23:43

And obviously you've had a journey that's merged, uh, you know, the

Tim Winders: 00:23:47

spiritual and the sacred with the practical and the business along the way.

Tim Winders: 00:23:52

And, you know, our, one of our taglines here is redefining success.

Tim Winders: 00:23:57

And I loved, um, I looked at your site, you've got repurposing

Tim Winders: 00:24:01

business, transforming society.

Tim Winders: 00:24:03

Those are big, big words.

Tim Winders: 00:24:05

Before we kind of, you know, tackle all of that, uh, give some

Tim Winders: 00:24:10

highlights of how you have come to be.

Tim Winders: 00:24:14

Kind of at this crossroads, at this place where there's dichotomies that you're

Tim Winders: 00:24:20

attempting to bust up because people don't go down just a path of becoming

Tim Winders: 00:24:25

a pastor and all of a sudden start thinking this way or just go down a path

Tim Winders: 00:24:30

of business owner and do that either.

Tim Winders: 00:24:31

How, how did, how did, how did that happen?

Brett Johnson: 00:24:35

that's a good question.

Brett Johnson: 00:24:36

I would say it wasn't through some great forethought.

Brett Johnson: 00:24:40

I think it was partly just because I asked God, for example, when I, I studied, uh,

Brett Johnson: 00:24:49

I finished an undergraduate and then.

Brett Johnson: 00:24:51

I got approached by Youth for Christ, would I join their staff?

Brett Johnson: 00:24:54

And, uh, my dad said, you can do it.

Brett Johnson: 00:24:57

My mom said, no way.

Brett Johnson: 00:24:58

You have to finish and you have to become like a CPA Chartered accountant.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:01

So I did that.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:03

So now I'm working at Pricewaterhouse.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:05

And um, part of my view of things was that that church that I was

Brett Johnson: 00:25:11

attending, which was started by four business people, uh, it needed

Brett Johnson: 00:25:16

some structure and some order in it.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:17

And I, I was 24 years old, 23 years old, and I was, I pressed

Brett Johnson: 00:25:22

the pastor to appoint elders.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:23

So he pointed some elders and I was one of them.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:26

The other guy left and then I ended up getting a field

Brett Johnson: 00:25:30

promotion because the pastor left.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:32

So now I'm running the church.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:34

So now my question was, God, when are you gonna tell me to quit my job at

Brett Johnson: 00:25:38

Pricewaterhouse so I can run the church?

Brett Johnson: 00:25:39

Well, he didn't.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:40

So I had two jobs and I had to figure out how to make them work.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:47

Then I had a friend with youth with a mission, and.

Brett Johnson: 00:25:50

I ended up consulting to youth with a mission and traveling overseas

Brett Johnson: 00:25:54

looking for best practices in missions and figuring out I could mobilize

Brett Johnson: 00:25:58

the business people in my church to serve mission organizations.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:02

So now I had three jobs and I just had to figure out how to make this work.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:09

And balance was not the answer when I was a young believer.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:13

I attended classes on the balanced Christian life, you know, and Jesus

Brett Johnson: 00:26:18

grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God, favor with man, so,

Brett Johnson: 00:26:21

so much time for physical, so much time for spiritual, so much time

Brett Johnson: 00:26:24

for mental, so much time for social.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:26

And if you've got three jobs, it doesn't work.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:28

Unless you figure out how to integrate these things, then you have a problem.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:34

So fast forward, I'd moved from Pricewaterhouse to KPMG to

Brett Johnson: 00:26:38

Computer Sciences Corporation.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:40

During that time, I'd started a nonprofit in California called

Brett Johnson: 00:26:45

Professionals for Christ.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:47

And then we later changed the name to Equip and that became

Brett Johnson: 00:26:49

the repurposing business thing.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:51

And uh, so I was working regular jobs and consulting to mission

Brett Johnson: 00:26:57

organizations primarily, and churches.

Brett Johnson: 00:26:59

And then also doing my day job of consulting to businesses.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:04

And so I just ended up living in these multiple worlds and I had

Brett Johnson: 00:27:08

to figure out how to blend them together so that you didn't have

Brett Johnson: 00:27:13

your spiritual life and your social life and your work life and so forth.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:16

So it became down to practical choices.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:18

So for example, in the business world, you were expected to take clients

Brett Johnson: 00:27:23

out for business meals, sometimes business dinners or whatever.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:28

I would bring them to my home, they got to meet my kids.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:32

I could have the dinner at home.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:33

It was a bit more pressure on my wife.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:35

Um, but they got to see the real me.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:38

They got to interact.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:40

I wasn't awake by the same token.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:43

When the kids were very young, we couldn't do mission trips.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:45

So we invited the missionaries to come and stay with us, come and stay in our home.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:50

And so hospitality is the glue that can pull various things together.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:55

So that was one of them.

Brett Johnson: 00:27:57

And then your, the definition of success.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:00

You know, I had to deal with it early on, uh, when I was a partner

Brett Johnson: 00:28:04

at KPMG and I quit to go to Computer Sciences Corporation because I felt

Brett Johnson: 00:28:09

my family needed more of my time.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:11

I mean, they couldn't believe it.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:12

You work your whole life to become a partner in one of the big six firms

Brett Johnson: 00:28:16

or the big four firms, but it depends who's got your scorecard, right?

Brett Johnson: 00:28:20

So I never let price order House or KPMG, or CSC hold my scorecard.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:25

I had to be, I had to live for an audience of one and I had to also settle.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:32

When I say settle, I had to accept the fact that success from God's

Brett Johnson: 00:28:37

perspective is different from success from man's perspective.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:40

So that one, I had to settle.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:42

And I'm not saying it's always easy because, you know, I don't

Brett Johnson: 00:28:46

have a 401k, I don't have the, the benefits of all of those things that

Brett Johnson: 00:28:50

have come out of a corporate life.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:52

Um, but I do have other things.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:55

You know, we are super rich in relationships.

Brett Johnson: 00:28:57

We've worked in countries around the world.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:00

We've trained thousands of people.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:01

We have a, a big household, if you like.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:04

Um, but would it, is it success from a corporate career perspective?

Brett Johnson: 00:29:10

Oh, no, not at all.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:13

So for me, my journey was a mixed one, almost forced.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:17

And I had to just figure it out because God didn't let me off the hook.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:22

So we eventually, when we were running the institute, one of my staff said

Brett Johnson: 00:29:26

to me, Brett, what are we, are we a business or are we a ministry?

Brett Johnson: 00:29:31

I said, yes.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:32

He said, no, no, no.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:33

You don't understand the question, you know, and so you end up

Brett Johnson: 00:29:37

in this place where there's no difference between mission.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:42

Business ministry church.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:45

I have people coming to us who go through our training and they say, oh, this

Brett Johnson: 00:29:49

has been my best experience of church.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:51

Well, we don't say we are a church, we're we carry a business umbrella.

Brett Johnson: 00:29:55

'cause we can go into any country in the world as a business and, but

Brett Johnson: 00:29:59

when you don't have these separate labels for things, it's all just

Brett Johnson: 00:30:03

gods then And, and I arrived there.

Brett Johnson: 00:30:07

It was also a little bit of modeling in that my parents, I remember when I

Brett Johnson: 00:30:11

was a teenager, I asked my mom, what would dad do if he had more money?

Brett Johnson: 00:30:15

And she said he'd plant more churches because my parents, as business

Brett Johnson: 00:30:20

people started churches, the country was growing and your neighborhood

Brett Johnson: 00:30:25

starts up, it needs a church.

Brett Johnson: 00:30:28

So that's what you do.

Brett Johnson: 00:30:29

And who started the church?

Brett Johnson: 00:30:30

The business people did.

Brett Johnson: 00:30:33

So that was pretty normal.

Tim Winders: 00:30:36

So one thing you brought up and, and you mentioned a a little

Tim Winders: 00:30:40

bit of this earlier, you just said one of the things that you had to do.

Tim Winders: 00:30:45

Was really make sure you understood what success meant for you.

Tim Winders: 00:30:50

One of, one of our theories or foundations here is that most

Tim Winders: 00:30:58

people don't take the time to really define what success means for them.

Tim Winders: 00:31:02

And you mentioned earlier purpose.

Tim Winders: 00:31:04

I think that's, they may not be the same, but they're related.

Tim Winders: 00:31:07

They might be siblings, you know, purpose.

Tim Winders: 00:31:09

What does success mean to you?

Tim Winders: 00:31:11

And I think that's where dichotomies begin.

Tim Winders: 00:31:14

Arising.

Tim Winders: 00:31:15

You mentioned earlier that you bust up dichotomies and separate those out.

Tim Winders: 00:31:20

What I, I mean, I, I just, I consider that to be foundational to a lot of

Tim Winders: 00:31:25

the conversation we're having here.

Tim Winders: 00:31:28

What, and I know you've got a lot of resources, you've got books,

Tim Winders: 00:31:30

you've got things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:31:31

So maybe we could start talking about some of that here.

Tim Winders: 00:31:33

But Brett, what, because I do think that people struggle with it.

Tim Winders: 00:31:38

I've struggled with it.

Tim Winders: 00:31:39

I mean, I, you know, I was a, I owned companies, and then in 2008,

Tim Winders: 00:31:43

they all disappeared and I realized my identity, even though I had a

Tim Winders: 00:31:46

faith about me, I was wrapped up in how successful my business was.

Tim Winders: 00:31:51

So, so h how, how do people begin pressing in and identifying

Tim Winders: 00:31:59

what success means for them?

Tim Winders: 00:32:01

Not copying what, what Tim's success is, or Brett's success, or, you know,

Tim Winders: 00:32:07

whoever's h how do they do that?

Tim Winders: 00:32:10

Give some practical stuff.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:11

I love John the Baptist in this regard.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:13

I think, man, what a tough job.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:15

You know?

Brett Johnson: 00:32:15

And he had a Downwardly mobile career path, and he says, he's like,

Brett Johnson: 00:32:21

he must increase, I must decrease.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:24

I mean, he's losing market share to his cousin.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:27

You know, his followers are leaving and going after his cousin.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:31

He ends up in jail for, for doing the job he's supposed to do.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:36

But he says, you know, a man can only have or do what God's given him to do.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:42

And so it's what's my assignment versus somebody else's assignment.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:46

So firstly, not measuring my life by your yardstick and vice versa.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:52

So I think that there's, that.

Brett Johnson: 00:32:53

I also think that Psalm one talks about, you know, blessed is the, is

Brett Johnson: 00:32:59

the person, the man or the woman who, you know, does various things and they

Brett Johnson: 00:33:05

will be like a tree planted by a river and so forth, bearing fruit in season.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:10

So I think that if success is a pursuit, it's an idol, it's sin.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:16

If success is a consequence of obedience, it's a fruit.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:20

And so for me, I'm looking for fruit not pursued.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:25

And sadly, much of the be a good Christian stuff, the self-help Christian

Brett Johnson: 00:33:31

stuff is the pursuit of success.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:34

Even if it looks like godly, dressed up, sanctimonious, nice smelling success,

Brett Johnson: 00:33:41

actually, it's still a pursuit versus the fruit of a life of obedience.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:46

So for me, what's God asking me to do?

Brett Johnson: 00:33:49

Am I obeying the things he's told me to do?

Brett Johnson: 00:33:52

Am I loving the people?

Brett Johnson: 00:33:53

He's, I mean, I remember when we started the institute, it was the late 1990s.

Brett Johnson: 00:33:57

It was probably 96, 97, and I said, okay, God, I need to know,

Brett Johnson: 00:34:04

how do I have a predictable income stream for this new business?

Brett Johnson: 00:34:10

A day goes by, two days go by, three days go by, no answer.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:14

I said, God, you're not answering my question.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:17

He said, it's the wrong question.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:20

I said, what's the right question?

Brett Johnson: 00:34:22

He said, who do I want you to serve?

Brett Johnson: 00:34:27

So God's not obliged to answer stupid questions.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:30

I figured that out.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:32

And so even now when I'm about to run a class called Lemon Preneur, and when

Brett Johnson: 00:34:37

people speak to entrepreneurs, they talk about the lean business canvas.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:41

And, and you've gotta figure out your customers and your, your, you know,

Brett Johnson: 00:34:45

what your big idea is and your unique value proposition and all of this stuff.

Brett Johnson: 00:34:50

Well, the question isn't how do you get an income stream?

Brett Johnson: 00:34:54

The question is, are we serving the people that God wants us to

Brett Johnson: 00:34:57

serve, whether they paying or not.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:00

Now, I happen to believe that finances can facilitate relationships.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:06

In other words, if I'm renting your rv, uh, it gives us a chance

Brett Johnson: 00:35:10

to have a relationship, but it's not a metric of success.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:15

And, um, and so yeah, for me, practically be happy to be obedient.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:23

And then if there is an economic shortfall, when there is an economic

Brett Johnson: 00:35:28

shortfall, because sometimes there is, you have to say, okay, God, either

Brett Johnson: 00:35:33

I'm gonna trust you through this thing because you've always come through

Brett Johnson: 00:35:37

before, or I've gotta ask you for a way.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:41

Do you have a better way of doing something that I haven't thought about?

Brett Johnson: 00:35:45

And I also think it's different for different people.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:49

I've met people who have a great formula for making money.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:52

God has gifted them to do it.

Brett Johnson: 00:35:55

And for others, he said, look, I don't want you to tell people your needs.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:00

I don't want you to advertise.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:01

I don't want you to market.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:03

I will do the marketing for you.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:05

Now each person has to deal with what they're given in their,

Brett Johnson: 00:36:08

their hands, and, and they're unique and they made differently.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:11

And, um, so I fall more into the latter category.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:15

So when I left KPMG to go to Computer Sciences Corporation.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:21

I took a, I think about a third of a pay cut is what I did, but I got a

Brett Johnson: 00:36:27

commission on what my practice did.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:30

So there was an upside.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:32

And a Jewish man, a Jewish believer from New York, had once said to

Brett Johnson: 00:36:35

me, you've gotta put yourself in a position where God can bless you.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:39

So you have to be put yourself in a position of risk.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:43

Now, having a regular income with a 401k with a company car,

Brett Johnson: 00:36:47

with a housing allowance is not exactly a position of risk.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:51

Some people are called to it.

Brett Johnson: 00:36:54

If you're called to be in the corporate world, that's fine, but that's actually

Brett Johnson: 00:36:57

just hidden slavery for many people.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:00

And so, so I went to Computer Sciences Corporation.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:04

I took a cut, but God had said to me, don't worry about the income.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:09

So he specifically said that to me, and then he did some miraculous

Brett Johnson: 00:37:13

things and took care of it.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:15

So when he told me to start the institute, I already had in my memory bag.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:20

Don't worry about the income.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:23

Now, there've been times when I should be worried.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:27

Um, I remember once I got a call from my accountant, I was driving to the dentist

Brett Johnson: 00:37:31

in San Jose in, in the San Fran, in the Silicon Valley, and my accountant called

Brett Johnson: 00:37:35

me and said, Brett, you have to get ready to write a big check to the IRS.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:40

I went to the dentist on the way home.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:42

I literally thought to myself, I should start worrying about the tax issue now.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:48

And Claire Isabel, God said to me, you do not have a right to worry.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:53

I'm like, wow.

Brett Johnson: 00:37:54

So now I remember that when a financial difficulty comes along,

Brett Johnson: 00:37:58

I don't have a right to worry.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:00

And so 'cause worry is a counter kingdom key performance indicator, if you like.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:07

And so it ties back to this question of success.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:10

Well, what are you worrying about?

Brett Johnson: 00:38:11

Are you worrying about status, worrying about what people think of you?

Brett Johnson: 00:38:15

Uh, I remember sitting on my.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:19

We were renting a house in, in Redwood City, and I had

Brett Johnson: 00:38:22

my deck and I looked at it.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:23

My neighbor was chief legal guy at one of the big high tech companies.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:28

And I thought to myself, ah, I remember the days when I used to have

Brett Johnson: 00:38:31

a regular income and so forth, and I was reading the Psalms, and it's the

Brett Johnson: 00:38:36

psalm that says, know that the Lord sets apart the Godly for himself.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:41

So it's like God's got a hundred sheep and one of them is called Tim, and he says,

Brett Johnson: 00:38:47

I want to play with Tim for a year or so.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:49

You know?

Brett Johnson: 00:38:50

So he sets you apart for himself.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:53

Well, that's a huge privilege.

Brett Johnson: 00:38:55

And you think you got fired, you lost a client, you're

Brett Johnson: 00:38:59

going through a quiet period.

Brett Johnson: 00:39:00

And God is thinking, I've got some time with Brett.

Brett Johnson: 00:39:04

I've got some time with Tim.

Brett Johnson: 00:39:05

So it, you know, it's a different metric of success.

Brett Johnson: 00:39:09

Otherwise we say, oh, Brett's lost it.

Brett Johnson: 00:39:11

You know, you got fired by a client, or he can't hold down a job, or

Brett Johnson: 00:39:14

whatever it might be, you know?

Tim Winders: 00:39:18

I do think at times that sometimes worry.

Tim Winders: 00:39:21

I, I think it is for me, my wife and I this year, one of the things

Tim Winders: 00:39:25

we're studying and meditating more on is this aspect of eternal

Tim Winders: 00:39:30

mindset versus short-term thinking.

Tim Winders: 00:39:33

I, I, I, I think we're gonna learn at some point that time is not

Tim Winders: 00:39:38

really what we all think it is.

Tim Winders: 00:39:40

And that's really, we create a lot of our own deadlines and create these,

Tim Winders: 00:39:44

you know, probably situations where we say we've gotta have X amount of money

Tim Winders: 00:39:49

by here, et cetera, things like that.

Tim Winders: 00:39:51

But I also love how you, you have.

Tim Winders: 00:39:55

A lot of information related to the Kingdom of God.

Tim Winders: 00:39:59

And one of the things that I've attempted to study and learn

Tim Winders: 00:40:02

more about is the kingdom of God.

Tim Winders: 00:40:04

And the way I word it for me, this, this is my message so that Tim has an

Tim Winders: 00:40:09

understanding of what my purpose is, is that on a daily basis I am asking

Tim Winders: 00:40:16

the Lord, what is my assignment in his kingdom today or this minute, or this

Tim Winders: 00:40:24

instant or this week or whatever, you know, trying to remove some time from it.

Tim Winders: 00:40:28

And so I do, I do love that concept of assignment.

Tim Winders: 00:40:32

You brought it up earlier, but uh, before we get too much farther, I, I want to

Tim Winders: 00:40:36

ask, because I think this leads us into some of the resources and the things

Tim Winders: 00:40:41

that you have, you, you said that the Lord told you, you're asking the wrong

Tim Winders: 00:40:47

question, not, you know, how do you bring in revenue, but who do you serve?

Tim Winders: 00:40:52

So.

Tim Winders: 00:40:53

So I'm gonna ask you now, who is it that you serve?

Tim Winders: 00:40:57

Define some of those groups and categories and, 'cause I, I see a lot of stuff when

Tim Winders: 00:41:02

I look at your resources, your books.

Tim Winders: 00:41:05

I see a lot of stuff.

Tim Winders: 00:41:06

And so define for me a little bit better, I guess.

Tim Winders: 00:41:09

Who, who do you serve?

Tim Winders: 00:41:11

Who, who does you, the institute and your company and your

Tim Winders: 00:41:13

organization serve right now?

Brett Johnson: 00:41:16

Good question.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:16

So the first group is not the first group.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:19

I'll just give you three groups.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:20

They're like a, a tripod, if you like.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:22

One is people who are working in corporates.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:25

They have good business skills.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:27

They have a good education.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:28

They might be from CEOs to directors to mid-market managers and so forth.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:35

They believe there's something more to their work.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:38

They believe that they have skill sets that can be used in the kingdom of God,

Brett Johnson: 00:41:43

and they want to get mobilized and they want to figure out how do they bring

Brett Johnson: 00:41:48

biblical principles into their workplace, without all the religious trappings.

Brett Johnson: 00:41:54

And so these are people that, they're working for a company and there's,

Brett Johnson: 00:41:57

there's just millions of them doing so and so people in the marketplace.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:02

For me, they're a little bit like Paul was called to the Gentiles.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:06

The marketplace is, is.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:08

My place.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:09

So starting with people who are in, in those businesses, mid-market

Brett Johnson: 00:42:13

business owners is the next category.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:15

So these are people who own their own business.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:19

They can do what they want to do roughly in the company, they have

Brett Johnson: 00:42:23

the authority to bring about changes.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:26

And those are the mid-market companies that we wanna see repurposed.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:30

It's not that we don't wanna see the corporates repurposed, but typically

Brett Johnson: 00:42:34

you have to do a buyout or you have to have, you know, a major thing

Brett Johnson: 00:42:38

for that to happen in a Cisco, in an apple or something like that.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:41

Whereas, uh, in a mid-market companies, many of the jobs

Brett Johnson: 00:42:45

are created by mid markets.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:48

People have the freedom to implement and execute without saying, oh, well

Brett Johnson: 00:42:52

I can't do this because of the board or because of the shareholders.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:55

And a lot of the growth potential sits there.

Brett Johnson: 00:42:59

And then the third category is the entrepreneurs who.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:05

Want to have a business that's gonna make a difference in the world.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:09

And so for those people, they're saying, right, I want to set up

Brett Johnson: 00:43:14

from the beginning and build my business on a foundation of truth.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:20

They don't buy into the success to significance myth, you know, first I'll

Brett Johnson: 00:43:26

be successful, then I'll be significant.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:28

They're like, no, I want to bes significant from the beginning.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:32

Even if I have to make some compensation in terms of how much I

Brett Johnson: 00:43:37

earn or what my career looks like.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:38

I want to start a business that's gonna make a difference

Brett Johnson: 00:43:41

in my community or in the world.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:44

so it's those people and equipping them with some of the basics.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:48

Work is worship, work is good.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:51

God worked before there was the fall.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:53

Discipleship is teaching people to work the way that God designed them to work.

Brett Johnson: 00:43:58

Uh, these very basic things.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:00

You're called to work.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:02

You know, and, and co-creating with God is a wonderful thing to do, whether

Brett Johnson: 00:44:08

it's a new business or a new product.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:10

So those are the entrepreneurs.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:12

Now, over the last 20 plus years, we've worked with about

Brett Johnson: 00:44:16

400 plus mid-market companies.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:18

Over the years I've worked with many, many executives from, you

Brett Johnson: 00:44:22

know, fortune 50 companies in the down to Fortune 500 companies.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:27

We've worked with our fair share of entrepreneurs.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:30

Um, they require a lot of handholding and, uh, part of my passion there

Brett Johnson: 00:44:36

is because I think it's unacceptable to have this 80% failure rate.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:42

It would be like, you know, you've got five kids.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:47

Four out of the five are a failure, and you and your

Brett Johnson: 00:44:49

wife say, eh, it's no problem.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:51

We got one.

Brett Johnson: 00:44:52

You know, and you know, you would say like, what are we doing wrong as

Brett Johnson: 00:44:57

parents, you know, one of the kids isn't doing that well, maybe two.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:00

You're like, oh my gosh, what are they?

Brett Johnson: 00:45:03

And so we would be distraught if we were parents and we had a 20% success

Brett Johnson: 00:45:07

rate, but we buy into the system that it's okay, well if, if, if one out

Brett Johnson: 00:45:13

of 10 kids knocks it out of the park, it'll make up for the other nine.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:17

It's so diabolical.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:19

So for me, as we raise up, there's millions of people entering the

Brett Johnson: 00:45:25

workforce or actually coming, starting their own businesses, doing things.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:29

Whether they're high schoolers who are building apps or people who

Brett Johnson: 00:45:32

are doing things, or people who are, I mean, categories of work.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:35

We didn't have, when you and I are young, like neither of us wanted

Brett Johnson: 00:45:38

to be an influencer and, uh, or so.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:44

How do you help them to do this kind of stuff of a biblical foundation?

Brett Johnson: 00:45:47

And, and that's really, I don't think there's a money, a lot of money in that.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:52

So for example, at the end of the month of the 25th, we start

Brett Johnson: 00:45:55

a new class called Lemon Preneur.

Brett Johnson: 00:45:58

How do you take some of these concepts of plural leadership and bring

Brett Johnson: 00:46:01

them to entrepreneurs, for example?

Brett Johnson: 00:46:04

So that's our third group.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:06

So in the middle we have the mid-market leaders.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:09

And that the definition of mid-market varies by country.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:12

Of course, in the US it's pretty good sized company.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:17

But in a, a developing world, uh, those will be smaller companies, but it's, we

Brett Johnson: 00:46:22

don't do our daily bread and butter with, you know, consulting to tiny companies.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:28

We've got the systems and the processes and so on to deal

Brett Johnson: 00:46:32

with businesses that have growth potential, even if they're small.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:35

Uh, otherwise mid-size companies.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:37

And then I, I mean, I, I have worked with, and I still work

Brett Johnson: 00:46:41

with governments with, uh.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:44

You know, I've worked with governors with people in federal

Brett Johnson: 00:46:47

government, uh, universities, et cetera, so I'm not allergic to that.

Brett Johnson: 00:46:52

Uh, but my sweet spot is the marketplace.

Tim Winders: 00:46:57

I, I'm curious, Brett, I've, I've run into this some

Tim Winders: 00:47:01

myself and then I wonder, I'll ask questions like you just brought up.

Tim Winders: 00:47:06

Are we not equipping and preparing some people for success or at times

Tim Winders: 00:47:16

I wonder if we have a mismatch?

Tim Winders: 00:47:17

So I'll, maybe I'll ask it this way.

Tim Winders: 00:47:19

You've got three fairly distinct groups and there's some overlap with

Tim Winders: 00:47:27

skillsets and obviously different things and, and obviously some

Tim Winders: 00:47:30

cultures and countries impacted also.

Tim Winders: 00:47:33

But I'm curious, Brett, how often have you seen that someone.

Tim Winders: 00:47:40

Is working towards, and maybe even struggling to be an entrepreneur and

Tim Winders: 00:47:45

do a startup and maybe bootstrapping and all of those things when maybe

Tim Winders: 00:47:50

they should just have a role and go work in a larger organization, either

Tim Winders: 00:47:57

a mid-market or a large company.

Tim Winders: 00:48:00

I, I, I've seen that a little bit recently and I've, and I've, I, I

Tim Winders: 00:48:04

sort of know how to handle it, but sometimes we can fool ourselves.

Tim Winders: 00:48:08

So, ha, have you seen that and what are your thoughts on it when I bring that up?

Brett Johnson: 00:48:12

my thought is a good observation.

Brett Johnson: 00:48:14

You know, as I've said to some people, don't try to change the world if you

Brett Johnson: 00:48:18

don't know how to change your socks.

Brett Johnson: 00:48:20

So I think that there are some early years you, you're in your family and your, your,

Brett Johnson: 00:48:28

your dad says, take out the trash or mow the lawn, or do a paper route or, and have

Brett Johnson: 00:48:33

a lemonade stand and you do a bit of stuff and you get, you get a bit of education.

Brett Johnson: 00:48:38

And sometimes we want to go from there to becoming an entrepreneur

Brett Johnson: 00:48:43

that's gonna change the world.

Brett Johnson: 00:48:45

I read a survey many years ago, about 80% of people at college want

Brett Johnson: 00:48:49

to start their own business, but actually a really small percentage do.

Brett Johnson: 00:48:53

And so there's a huge drop off.

Brett Johnson: 00:48:55

Part of it is that you can be an entrepreneur, you can work

Brett Johnson: 00:49:00

inside a company, and you can learn, you can do skills building.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:05

So if we understand the seasons of life that there's a season

Brett Johnson: 00:49:08

of skill building, there's a ski season of gift discovery, and a

Brett Johnson: 00:49:12

corporate is a good place to do that.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:14

You know, you learn the disciplines, you learn how to communicate, how

Brett Johnson: 00:49:18

to handle yourself in meetings, how to do stuff on a timely basis.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:22

You learn some basic disciplines and skills.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:25

So I think that that's good.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:27

I would say the one thing that you can do is you can get a side hustle.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:31

This didn't used to be so popular 10 years ago, but now the thought of.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:38

Doing something.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:38

I used to say, look, get a job that's consistent with your purpose, with

Brett Johnson: 00:49:43

your identity, with your calling.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:44

Now, I would say yeah, have that in your mind, but maybe

Brett Johnson: 00:49:48

start a bit of a side hustle.

Brett Johnson: 00:49:49

Maybe you're, uh, in college and you, you're building apps or

Brett Johnson: 00:49:54

WebP pages or, or bots or you've installing vending machines in the

Brett Johnson: 00:49:59

dormitories or whatever it might be.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:00

Doesn't, it doesn't have to be sexy, flashy software.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:04

You are driving Uber, you're doing something else, but you're building

Brett Johnson: 00:50:07

up direct sales is a great way to go.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:10

You're selling Cutco knives to all your mom's friends.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:13

You're, uh, you're selling something because you learn some basic things.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:18

So taking the opportunity to learn some of those things along the way.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:24

And then also not being too picky about the work.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:27

You know, I was chatting to an Uber driver last time we came to South Africa.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:33

He's a guy from Malawi or somewhere like that.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:35

He's worked like a dog and his son has been to university.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:39

The son has an engineering degree.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:41

I said, oh, is your, where's your son working?

Brett Johnson: 00:50:45

No, he's not working.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:46

Why not?

Brett Johnson: 00:50:47

Well, he is had job offers, but he doesn't think they're offering him enough.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:51

I mean, the guy has zero experience, you know?

Brett Johnson: 00:50:54

And so don't be a legend in your own bathtub.

Brett Johnson: 00:50:59

Just get on and do the work.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:02

Do something.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:04

And so, yeah, I, I think that there's a progressive journey and then what

Brett Johnson: 00:51:08

you do as you go from your household years, your educational years,

Brett Johnson: 00:51:13

you get some corporate experience, your years of slavery if you like.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:17

Then you have some entrepreneurial time, and then you build capital

Brett Johnson: 00:51:22

in its different forms depending on how you wire, you build capital

Brett Johnson: 00:51:27

and then you're able to be a world changer, a societal transformer.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:32

So along this journey, as we've seen people, yeah.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:35

You don't go from high school to being world changer very often.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:39

It's very, very rare.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:41

Typically, you go through a process.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:44

And so that's my observation on that.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:47

And if you expect that God's gonna take you through seasons, then you're not.

Brett Johnson: 00:51:52

I mean, I've had a lot of people they don't know, oh, what's my calling?

Brett Johnson: 00:51:55

What?

Brett Johnson: 00:51:56

What's my purpose?

Brett Johnson: 00:51:57

I'm like, what season are you in?

Brett Johnson: 00:51:59

And what is your next season?

Brett Johnson: 00:52:01

You ask God what your next season is.

Brett Johnson: 00:52:03

You step into your next season and the bigger purpose might be

Brett Johnson: 00:52:07

something that unveils over time.

Tim Winders: 00:52:12

I, I do think we have a very, I think the joke is a microwave

Tim Winders: 00:52:17

mindset where people expect instant this, instant that, and these are even people

Tim Winders: 00:52:22

that have studied, they know scripture.

Tim Winders: 00:52:24

They know that Moses spent 40 years in the desert.

Tim Winders: 00:52:29

They know that, Joseph was a prisoner for X number of years.

Tim Winders: 00:52:32

They know that Jesus technically didn't start a ministry till he was 30.

Tim Winders: 00:52:38

Yet we all think that it doesn't apply to us and that we're supposed to, pop

Tim Winders: 00:52:43

open a church or start a company or open up a, a social media channel and have

Tim Winders: 00:52:48

a million followers within whatever.

Tim Winders: 00:52:51

And I guess that does happen, but not, not that much.

Tim Winders: 00:52:55

Brett, probably most of our listeners would fall into that, mid-market,

Tim Winders: 00:53:01

business owner category or entrepreneurs.

Tim Winders: 00:53:04

We've just got a few minutes here.

Tim Winders: 00:53:06

What I'd love for you to do is just, and I'm gonna let you to allow the Holy

Tim Winders: 00:53:10

Spirit, maybe even to give you, obviously we don't have a lot of information, and

Tim Winders: 00:53:15

this might be a good opportunity for you to share some resources that you have.

Tim Winders: 00:53:19

But what is something in the time we have that you would just like to

Tim Winders: 00:53:24

convey to maybe those groups that, uh, that might be helpful and tangible

Tim Winders: 00:53:30

for them in the next few minutes?

Brett Johnson: 00:53:32

That's a good question, Tim.

Brett Johnson: 00:53:34

First thing I would say is be bold.

Brett Johnson: 00:53:37

This is not a time to back down.

Brett Johnson: 00:53:38

We are going through big changes in society and part of the changes and

Brett Johnson: 00:53:43

the pressures that we've gone through with the pandemic, with the economic

Brett Johnson: 00:53:48

challenges and so on is to beat onto your turtle shell or your tortoise

Brett Johnson: 00:53:53

shell to get you to shrink back.

Brett Johnson: 00:53:55

And this is not a time to shrink back.

Brett Johnson: 00:53:57

This is a time for us to be bold.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:00

Uh, recently I was, uh, praying a prayer like in the last week, God help, and the

Brett Johnson: 00:54:05

reply was stand and that, and, and so a few days in a row I heard the stand.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:12

So I looked up to stand in the scripture and I found that

Brett Johnson: 00:54:16

there were four places to stand.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:18

One was to stand in the presence of God.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:23

And it's an amazing thing.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:24

So when we this as we, we are under pressure, stand

Brett Johnson: 00:54:28

in the presence of God next.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:30

And it goes with a stand on high places.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:33

Don't be afraid to step into the place that God has given you.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:37

And then you have to stand in the face of your enemy.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:41

So when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of

Brett Johnson: 00:54:44

God will raise up a standard.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:45

So we have to stand in the face of the enemy.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:48

And then the fourth one, which is kind of what we get to, that he causes

Brett Johnson: 00:54:51

us to stand in a wide open place.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:53

He puts wide ground, be beneath our feet, but we don't get there unless

Brett Johnson: 00:54:57

we make a determination to stand.

Brett Johnson: 00:54:59

So for business owners, entrepreneurs, this is not a time to be shrinking back.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:05

So I would encourage you next, get with a community of people that are

Brett Johnson: 00:55:09

like-minded faith community as you have among your listed listeners.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:13

And so people who will spur you on and say, you can do more.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:16

Go for it.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:17

You're not crazy.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:19

You're not alone.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:21

Then I would say get equipped.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:23

it's a little bit like becoming a parent.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:24

Before Lynn and I had our children, you sort of think, I can make a baby.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:29

I will be a good father.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:30

It's pretty stupid.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:31

You know, you, you have to learn some stuff.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:35

And so it's like I'm a Christian and I'm in business, therefore

Brett Johnson: 00:55:38

I have a kingdom business.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:40

No, you don't.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:41

You know, we have to understand what is a kingdom business.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:44

You know, how do you get products that are inspired by God?

Brett Johnson: 00:55:48

How do you have marketing that demonstrates signs and wonders?

Brett Johnson: 00:55:52

Because God markets through signs and wonders.

Brett Johnson: 00:55:55

How do you hear God in your planning process?

Brett Johnson: 00:55:59

How do you put plans together that have a faith element in them,

Brett Johnson: 00:56:02

which if God doesn't come through, you're gonna fall on your face?

Brett Johnson: 00:56:05

These are basic things, so get the education.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:09

And part of what we've done is taken thousands of people through what

Brett Johnson: 00:56:12

some have called a Kingdom, MBA.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:14

It's really a.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:15

An MBA from a business perspective because we shouldn't go cheap on

Brett Johnson: 00:56:19

learning how to do business God's way.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:22

John 1515 says, I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't

Brett Johnson: 00:56:28

understand the master's business.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:30

But everything that the master showed me, I've revealed to you.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:33

So my slimed down version of that is, if you don't know that your dad's

Brett Johnson: 00:56:38

business, you're not his friend.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:40

So if you don't know God's business, what's his operating model?

Brett Johnson: 00:56:44

What's his business model?

Brett Johnson: 00:56:46

And God challenged me once, 'cause I have this 10 P profile for a business.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:50

And God said to me, profile my business.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:53

Can you imagine going to heaven interviewing God for half an hour?

Brett Johnson: 00:56:56

And you've gotta come back and say, this is God's business.

Brett Johnson: 00:56:59

And so I went through the thought process.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:01

So now when I look at.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:02

Business A and God's business.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:04

I can just see where the similarities are and where the disconnects and

Brett Johnson: 00:57:08

then a has to reconcile to be.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:10

This is to God.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:11

This is our ministry of reconciliation.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:14

So get to understand God's business and then figure out how your

Brett Johnson: 00:57:18

business fits into God's business.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:20

I don't care if you wanna make a new widget, you want to build

Brett Johnson: 00:57:23

in new houses in Kenya, you want to go here, you want to do that.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:26

The question is, is your business in God's business?

Brett Johnson: 00:57:29

Not is God in your business.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:32

That's not the question.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:34

But is your business in God's business?

Brett Johnson: 00:57:35

What's God doing in the world?

Brett Johnson: 00:57:37

That's the transforming society piece.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:39

What are, how do you fit into that?

Brett Johnson: 00:57:42

That's getting your business repurposed or aligned with the purpose, God's purpose

Brett Johnson: 00:57:47

so that you can do what's on God's heart.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:51

And so those would be my 2 cents.

Brett Johnson: 00:57:54

Quick things, Tim.

Tim Winders: 00:57:58

That was, that was so good.

Tim Winders: 00:57:59

I'm so thankful that I got a nudge to ask that question because I, I can

Tim Winders: 00:58:05

envision so many clips and information just from that little segment, Brett.

Tim Winders: 00:58:10

Alright, so someone should, in all likelihood say I, I,

Tim Winders: 00:58:16

I love that, but I need more.

Tim Winders: 00:58:18

Where do you want people to go if they want more of what you just

Tim Winders: 00:58:23

brought up or just more of what you have available as far as resources?

Tim Winders: 00:58:27

I've, I've been to your site, but go ahead and mention it or anything else

Tim Winders: 00:58:31

that you want to mention at this point.

Tim Winders: 00:58:33

That would be a great resource for

Brett Johnson: 00:58:34

Thanks Tim.

Brett Johnson: 00:58:35

I would say go to Brett johnson dot bizz.

Brett Johnson: 00:58:37

Do b iz or.bz, depending if you speak English or American.

Brett Johnson: 00:58:41

So, so Brett Johnson do bizz and there's a right on the front, there's a question

Brett Johnson: 00:58:47

of what resources are good for you and it really depends on your question.

Brett Johnson: 00:58:50

If you say, I'm just starting out in my career, uh, there's

Brett Johnson: 00:58:54

some questions for you.

Brett Johnson: 00:58:55

I want to figure out how to integrate the parts of my life

Brett Johnson: 00:58:58

that'll take you to convert.

Brett Johnson: 00:58:59

You know, I wanna start a business that'll take you lemon preneur.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:02

I have a mid-market company and I wanna make sure that I've, I've connected

Brett Johnson: 00:59:07

all of the dots and so forth, and it'll take you to the repurposing

Brett Johnson: 00:59:10

business, or I'm, I'm part of a team, or I want to grow as a leader.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:14

It'll take you to lemon leadership.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:15

so if you go to that question page, which resource for you,

Brett Johnson: 00:59:19

just look at the questions.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:21

And then every now and then we schedule trainings that you can be part of.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:25

We have one coming up on Lemon Preneur for, for entrepreneurs or

Brett Johnson: 00:59:29

people who want to do something that might be entrepreneurs or have a

Brett Johnson: 00:59:32

mind to do something entrepreneurial.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:35

You might not even be an entrepreneur.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:37

According to our studies.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:38

Only about 15% of people are, but how do you be part of a team that

Brett Johnson: 00:59:41

can create co-create with God?

Brett Johnson: 00:59:44

So I would look at those resources.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:46

Brett johnson.best.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:48

We do have podcasts, so I put out podcasts.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:51

every now and then, it's supposed to be every week, but

Brett Johnson: 00:59:53

every couple of weeks or so.

Brett Johnson: 00:59:54

So there's a couple of hundred podcasts there, and then I'll also, you'll

Brett Johnson: 00:59:57

find a blog spot and so on, but we'll, we'll advertise once you go onto

Brett Johnson: 01:00:02

the, there's some free resources, so there's some kingdom business basics.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:06

Just go through some, you can download them, watch a bit of a video.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:09

There's a PDF.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:10

You can download just 15 things, which should be self-evident.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:14

Go and get those.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:15

We have an introductory class, and that class is, the cost is whatever

Brett Johnson: 01:00:20

you want to pay, starting at zero.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:23

So you say, okay, fine.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:25

I don't know who this Brett guy is, if he stuff stuff is any good, and so on.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:29

There's a kingdom business basics.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:30

What's the history of God in business, work, in ministry, all of that stuff.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:35

The history of what God's done over time.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:37

You can look at those things and that's essentially a freebie.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:40

Or you can pay whatever you want to pay.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:42

That's fine, and then you can, you, you'll see the other classes that are there.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:46

I would say get equipped, get it, get mobilized.

Brett Johnson: 01:00:49

And the connection between these disparate audiences is I can take people

Brett Johnson: 01:00:53

outta Silicon Valley or Chicago or New York or London or whatever, and I

Brett Johnson: 01:00:58

can take them to somewhere else in the world they've been trained to serve.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:03

So their corporate experience serves a mid-market person

Brett Johnson: 01:01:07

or somebody doing a startup.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:09

And so they're blessed to be a blessing.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:11

They take in everything that God's packed into their life, their MBA,

Brett Johnson: 01:01:15

their engineering degree, their marketing, their hr, all of that stuff.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:18

And they feeding it into somebody else's life and through the life of that leader

Brett Johnson: 01:01:23

into their people, it's a huge multiplier.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:25

And so, you know, if you're sitting in a corporate and I'm, you know, you're called

Brett Johnson: 01:01:29

to work at Bank of America, fantastic.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:31

Well go and serve in another nation somewhere else.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:34

Go and serve one of those mid-market people, and that mid-market person is

Brett Johnson: 01:01:38

gonna spin off entrepreneurs as well.

Brett Johnson: 01:01:41

It's a way in which you can connect the ecosystem.

Tim Winders: 01:01:46

We'll include links and everything down in the notes.

Tim Winders: 01:01:49

Brett, we're seek, go create here.

Tim Winders: 01:01:51

Those three words, I'm sure you could guess where those three words originated.

Tim Winders: 01:01:55

And I'm gonna let you choose my final question.

Tim Winders: 01:01:58

Just choose one that resonates more with you currently than the other two.

Tim Winders: 01:02:02

And why seek go or

Brett Johnson: 01:02:05

Go is mine.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:06

And the reason why I'm after go is this is because I, I see Jesus as quite binary.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:14

It's go or get behind me.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:17

Those are your choices, you know?

Brett Johnson: 01:02:18

So it's go into all the world, make disciples of all nations.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:22

Go to this village, go to this place.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:25

Or if you're trying to stop me going, get behind me.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:28

But we've created this false third category, which is sit

Brett Johnson: 01:02:32

in front of your computer.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:33

Sit in your armchair, uh, be a Monday morning quarterback, criticize the

Brett Johnson: 01:02:38

people who aren't going very well.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:40

You know, criticize the people who don't like Jesus or whatever.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:43

No, but there is no third option for me.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:46

For me, the going is imperative.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:48

And so for me, my passion is not to train people, have them

Brett Johnson: 01:02:52

read all my books or whatever.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:54

No, I wanna mobilize people because they'll come alive when they're deploying.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:59

Truth.

Brett Johnson: 01:02:59

For me, truth in somebody's head just makes them more religious.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:03

Truth practiced, even with failure makes them more dangerous.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:08

And, uh, it's awesome.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:09

So for me, the go is a big deal.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:12

And, uh, I mean, I get up in the morning and my wheels are going, and for me

Brett Johnson: 01:03:17

it's like, have your passport ready.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:19

Make sure your bag is packed.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:21

I const, my bag is always packed.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:24

I'm always ready to go.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:25

I travel fairly light nowadays, but I'm always ready to go.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:29

My passport is up to date.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:31

Because that's our mandate.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:33

You need a call from God to stay, not a call from God to go.

Brett Johnson: 01:03:37

So for me, it's go to go.

Tim Winders: 01:03:43

Oh, Brett, man, you've encouraged myself and I'm

Tim Winders: 01:03:46

sure others that have listened in.

Tim Winders: 01:03:48

I appreciate that.

Tim Winders: 01:03:49

Make sure you check out all of Brett's stuff.

Tim Winders: 01:03:51

We'll include links to his page and all that they have, so go check that out.

Tim Winders: 01:03:56

We are seek GoCreate here.

Tim Winders: 01:03:58

We release new episodes every Monday.

Tim Winders: 01:04:00

Your support means the world to us.

Tim Winders: 01:04:02

Now you can tip us, buy me a coffee, or offer some financial

Tim Winders: 01:04:05

support to the show here.

Tim Winders: 01:04:07

Just go to seek go create.com/support.

Tim Winders: 01:04:11

You can start as.

Tim Winders: 01:04:12

Contributing as little as a dollar.

Tim Winders: 01:04:15

And if you leave a comment, your comment could be featured in a future episode,

Tim Winders: 01:04:19

go to seek go create.com/support.

Tim Winders: 01:04:23

Until next time, I've so enjoyed this conversation.

Tim Winders: 01:04:26

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.