Michael: Hello and welcome to HaBO Village Podcast. I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And there is a warning on today's podcast.
Kathryn: There is an epic warning. Are you ready?
Michael: The warning is that today Kathryn and I, we're going to be talking about our faith in detail with scripture verses and what God's doing in our life, and everything else, and how that impacts business and a couple of other things.
Michael: If this is something that interests you or you're not offended by it, then stick around. If not, we want to warn you that this is it. This is the place to eject.
Kathryn: Yeah. We will not be offended if you leave us.
Michael: We will not be offended at all, but we just make sure it's very clear up front that we're going to be very, just who we are and talk about our faith and talk about business and how that works.
Kathryn: Yeah, and just to clarify, of course, we didn't just get faith today.
Michael: We didn't.
Kathryn: Right. Part of the reason that we don't usually is because we want to make sure that we're inclusive and that we're talking about principles of business that are good for everyone, whether you happen to be a follower of Jesus or not.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: But today we just want to talk about some things that pertain, specifically, to what this journey looks like when you're following Jesus.
Michael: Yes. Yeah.
Kathryn: That's kind of the thing that we're thinking and the bent that were taking.
Michael: Important things for us.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: The way this whole thing started out, this journey, was, we have been thinking ... it's probably I want to set the stage. This week is the week of our very first Open Cart Live Session. What that means is, do you want to explain what that means?
Kathryn: We're launching our very first version of the HaBO Village Passion and Provision Course. Online training, all this stuff that we've been dreaming about for a really long time to train-
Michael: It's our very first online course.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: It's a very big program and the whole program is to help train and educate small business owners so that they can either acquire the information they don't have or get a really good refresher and a good business model on what they already have.
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: We talk about an inclusive amount of topics that talk about leadership. We talk about vision, leadership, management and operations, marketing and sales, finance, and then culture. All those characteristics are key in what we call Creating a Passion and Provision Company.
Michael: On top of that, it is a phenomenal education resource. The material in here is huge and-
Kathryn: It's like a Business 101. It really is.
Michael: I think, actually, it's really kind of tricky because some of it's 101 and some of it's 401.
Kathryn: 401.
Michael: Because it's the real deal.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: What it is is the real meat.
Kathryn: That stuff on the wall, that's the 401.
Michael: The stuff on the back.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. That's just a part of the leadership stuff. It seems overly complicated but what we're going to be doing is talking more and more about those things in the course. We're only leaving the course open to purchase into for four days. We're, when this podcast is being recorded on day four.
Kathryn: Yup.
Michael: We have until midnight tonight and it occurred to us this morning, especially as we were spending time praying and getting ready and stuff like that is the idea that our, for me especially, what a great opportunity for us to podcast and capture the stress, the hope, the hard work that's led up to this, on a day where we don't know how the day is going to finish.
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: Right now, it hasn't looked as good as we had hoped.
Kathryn: Yeah. The whole week hasn't looked as good as we had hoped it would.
Michael: We're going to talk about that in a minute. This is that idea of us capturing this point because I believe tomorrow, tomorrow this will be history. We'll be talking about something and it'll be filtered. Today it gets our raw emotions. It gets the raw concept and the hopes and dreams and everything else.
Michael: HaBO Village, again, we'll open up again, theoretically, the plan is right now is to open it up right after the first of the year. It may be a different time, but it will open again.
Kathryn: Definitely.
Michael: And more opportunity, as the word spreads.
Michael: How did this HaBO Village thing start?
Kathryn: My recollection, and it goes a long way back. You've been talking about some sort of community for building and training since we were married. And back then we were youth pastors, so you were talking about a barn.
Michael: Yeah. A barn.
Kathryn: As I recall.
Michael: It wasn't-
Kathryn: You wanted to build the barn.
Michael: The barn was going to be really cool.
Kathryn: The barn was going to be epic.
Michael: I drew plans about the barn.
Kathryn: Oh, it was an epic barn.
Michael: The barn was awesome.
Kathryn: But then as we moved into business, I think probably somewhere around eight years ago, we started thinking about, and you specifically, started thinking about, what would it look like to build, literally build, a village. Where people could come and they could get trained for business and they could get support and collaboration. A lot of it had to do with you being so saddened and struck by the epic level of failure in business. The failure rate.
Kathryn: You were reading that book by the Gartner Research or-
Michael: No, it was-
Kathryn: Gallup.
Michael: Gallup.
Kathryn: By Gallup, right?
Michael: Yeah, on the trip to England.
Kathryn: Yeah. We were flying over to see my mom and you were marching through this book and thinking, oh my gosh, how do we help impact and lessen the business failure rate?
Kathryn: I remember you sitting on the steps of York Minster, which is my favorite place on the freaking planet.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And just beginning to think and talk and process what would it look like to build a place where people could come and get holistic training so that the person who's doing your finances and the person who's helping you with marketing and all those folks are talking the same language and thinking the same thing. That's what I think the village concept was born.
Michael: Yeah. We were at that conference, at a church conference in Redding, California, and we had come to the place where, that was really the big a-ha. where all these different ideas-
Kathryn: Because that was after the UK, right? We came back-
Michael: I can't remember if it was or not.
Kathryn: I don't know.
Michael: It's hard to remember orders, but what you had is you had the events of, you had the UK event, probably before, you had this conference, and you had all these moments where it's like, okay, everything's coming together.
Kathryn: Yup.
Michael: And the desire for me to see other people grow in business and we'd already been growing and doing that for Half a Bubble Out, and our clients, to see more and more people helped, to see more and more issues of leadership and all the other challenges, and having it presented in a way that was easy to understand and learn and made the learning accessible.
Michael: It's funny you talk about the trip to England because I was really, really, really moved, deeply, emotionally, for this challenge of, at first, us as entrepreneurs and other entrepreneurs like us, potentially business owners or business leaders like you. I wanted that to make a difference. I was overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed by the amount of business failures that happen.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: And how amazing it is that people start businesses, and yet, how many people start them because they had a-
Kathryn: Well, you had the entrepreneurial seizure concept from the E-Myth, right?
Michael: Yeah. Yeah.
Kathryn: Long ago.
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: And that was phenomenal.
Kathryn: Someone who knows how to build a wood ship but doesn't know how to run a business. They start thinking, I got this, and then suddenly it's like, oh no, there's employees and inventory.
Michael: Then we had some people in this week. They were like, I had ... I never got business, formal business training, but they were really good at their niche. Then from there being good at their niche, they were good at people, they were good as leadership, they were good at a lot of those things. But where were the gaps in their business training? All of a sudden they saw an opportunity and they started a business and like, well, I'll learn, I'll figure it out.
Michael: Any good competent leader is going to go, well I'll just figure it out and I'll learn on the job and we'll put it together.
Michael: Somebody was in the office this week and, I won't mention her name but, I was thinking, she was kind of like That. She had this career for a corporation and then she went to work for a small company doing the same thing and then she had the opportunity to buy the company. And, it's like, okay, where's the practical training on what it looks like to have a small business. She has all these great skills, where are the gaps? What are the things? How does it fit into small business?
Michael: Out of all of that, and then this idea of wanting to just build an actual physical village. The idea of having people come together where we all had the same heart, the same values, for companies, that were profitable and successful and gave life to us, that fed our souls and fed our spirits.
Kathryn: So like six years ago we hired, remember we had Arturo and he did all that-
Michael: It was an intern.
Kathryn: Was an intern, and he was a CAD guy and he just started building all the models on the mock-ups.
Michael: Yeah. I remember that.
Kathryn: Then another season, probably, maybe even a year after that, our friend Aaron Johnson used our idea as his MBA project.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: He actually helped flesh out what a virtual village would look like. That was when we first started talking about building a physical village, which is way our BHAG, is going to be millions of dollars.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: But, how do we get that started and what does it look like if we were to launch it online and actually build curriculum?
Kathryn: This has been something we've been dreaming of and working on for a long time. But, there's just a lot of things to get through and a lot of pieces to put in place before we were even in a position to do it.
Kathryn: So here we are. We're doing it. It's amazing. It's momentous.
Michael: It's momentous. We started working really, really hard this last spring.
Kathryn: Yep.
Michael: And right now we are in October of 2018.
Kathryn: Yep. We built a set. We built a wall.
Kathryn: We can do a whole podcast on the building of the wall. It is an epic, epic thing.
Michael: Just so you know the ... for those of you listening to the podcast and those of you watching on video, on video you can see it. We have this amazing stone wall in our studio that I thought would be amazingly cool for multiple reasons. But just the texture and the solid and the feel of solid grounding and thickness and massive.
Kathryn: It's very village-esque.
Michael: It's very village-esque.
Kathryn: Yes.
Michael: We did all that. We did all these different things. Prepping, building for the campaign, prepping for the project to go live next week. We've got some finishing touches to do on it. It's looking really good.
Kathryn: Yep.
Michael: I'm looking at loving what I'm seeing and the coursework and everything.
Michael: What you see here on the board, if you're watching the video, and if you don't, we've got this big whiteboard on the wall. What's all over it is all these different colors and drawings and everything. Because what we're doing is we're continuing to hammer out what we believe is important.
Michael: This particular topic is leadership. How do we continue to refine it so that we make it really tangible and useful and practical, while still maintaining that there is some theoretical things and stuff that you have to understand in all of these subjects? But how do we make it really accessible to small business leaders who are smart people but are busy and don't have a lot of time?
Kathryn: Yep.
Michael: But the ones who really want to spend a couple or three hours a week working on all this and working on their business, and this is really valuable. So, we're doing that. It's day four of a four day Open Cart. Is it okay if we admit to them where we are?
Kathryn: Oh, well, absolutely, this is the reality of it.
Michael: We're going to be really vulnerable with everybody. The reason we chose to record this is because of, more than anything else, how crazy this is. We have a successful business. We started this project.
Kathryn: We've been learning tons. We're following all the gurus. We're trying to do it all right. We've invested lots of resources.
Michael: We have.
Kathryn: And here we are, and it is day four.
Michael: And we have two customers.
Kathryn: Two customers.
Michael: We have two people who've purchased.
Kathryn: Yes. We got one on Sunday when we did a pre-launch webinar. Then we got nothing Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
Michael: Or Wednesday.
Kathryn: And so-
Michael: And the second one-
Kathryn: This morning.
Michael: The joke around the office is that we have customer. All week. We have customer, singular.
Kathryn: Now we have, on the final day of launch, we have doubled our sales from the first four days.
Michael: 100%.
Kathryn: Oh my gosh.
Michael: We had a 100% conversion on Sunday and then we had 100% conversion, another 100% additional conversion today.
Kathryn: So needless to say-
Michael: We're like, wow, this is nuts. There are some things that we wanted to share because we really felt like God brought us to this place.
Kathryn: Yeah. We were taking a very clear faith filled risk.
Michael: It was kind of scary.
Kathryn: Yeah. There's been so many, I don't know, interesting moments. I got to preach earlier this summer, and the topic I was assigned was Gideon.
Michael: Yeah. That was powerful.
Kathryn: Gideon is a great story of long odds, where you have a guy who's leading an army and ultimately, when you whittle through the entire story out of Judges 6 and 7, it's a guy who ends up fighting 135,000 Midianites with an army of 300.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And his army of 300 has trumpets and jars and torches. I don't know, it was a crazy story. It's an amazing ... one of my favorite Bible stories. But I remember saying to the Lord, Lord, I don't want to be Gideon. I don't like that I'm having to preach this in the middle of what we're building because it scares me.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Because I don't want to be that guy.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And here we are.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Day four. And I'm that guy.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: I feel like there's not a chance that things are going to get better. We're going to go to bed at midnight tonight and we're going to have a couple, three customers and that's-
Michael: Well hopefully not.
Kathryn: -sad that that's how I feel.
Michael: That's how it looks like right now. That's what it looks like.
Kathryn: That's what it looks like.
Michael: Yeah. One of the things that started in the very beginning was, I heard ... I was thinking and I had this verse come to me, it was, do not despise these small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel's hand.
Michael: This is a verse out of Zachariah and it's all about God speaking to ... one of the angels speaking to Zachariah about how the Temple is going to get rebuilt. It's been destroyed. They've tried for decades, it hasn't worked, and they want to restore it and they want to do it in weeks, not years.
Kathryn: Was it the Temple or the wall?
Michael: This was the Temple.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: Yeah. This one's the Temple. It says here, then he said to them, it's not by force, it's not by strength but by my spirit says the Lord of Heaven's. Nothing, not even a mighty mountain will stand in Zerubbabel's way. It will become a level plane before him and when Zerubbabel sets the final stone of the Temple in place people will shout, may God bless it, may God bless it.
Michael: Then another message came to me from the Lord. Zerubbabel is the one that laid the foundation of this Temple and he will complete it. Then, how you will know that the Lord of Heaven's army has assent me. Do not despise small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel's hands.
Michael: That was ... that's a big deal to me because it feels so much like us. Even the plumb line has to do with Half a Bubble Out. There's so many similarities here between us and our story and that. It was one of those things where when I feel like I was talking to the Lord and I felt like I got reminded of this verse, that it was encouraging, and it's been encouraging. But we've continued to march this path and we've done all these great things and we've done all this good work and our team has poured their life into it. Then we get to this place where we think we've tried to do everything and, nothing's been perfect, but a lot of things have been really good. And now we only have two.
Kathryn: At the moment.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And we don't know where that's going to go.
Kathryn: It's so interesting to me because this walk, this journey that we have with Jesus, our job is to be faithful. Our job is to keep doing what we've been called to do. One of the things that we know, though it doesn't mean that I wouldn't be shedding some tears if we stay at two. But one of the things I know is that we're walking where we need to walk and we're building for the future. To have a long-term perspective that says, okay, even if this particular release of this product doesn't go the way I want it to, it isn't the end of the story.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Because the temptation is just to be like, nobody cares. Nobody's going to want it. Let's just forget about it and go back to our paying clients. Which we have plenty.
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: And we're continuing to serve them at the same time as we're trying to launch this.
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: The Lord has been so clear with us that this is what we're supposed to do. I have these verses tacked up against the wall in the accounting office.
Kathryn: If any of you, any of you who own companies know that cash flow and trying to make ends meet gets really scary at times. A couple, three years ago, maybe even longer, I was processing these verses. One of them is Psalm 67, the beginning of Psalm 67, which basically says, bless us, oh Lord, shine your face on us so that, basically, so that people will see that you're the one doing this.
Kathryn: Then there's a section in Isaiah 41, I think, it's verses 17 through 20, that talks about the Lord ... like, people are thirsty and they need help and he basically says, I the Lord will answer them. I will provide water in the desert, rivers in the places where there is no water.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: I'll plant the cypress and all the different kinds of trees. Essentially, this lush vegetation in the middle of this, what appears to be a complete desert. At the end it says, so that they may consider and know and gain insight that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the holy one of Israel has created it.
Kathryn: Yeah. So. My best friend's calling me right now to tell me that I'm going to live through this. Yeah, that's a really powerful thing to be like, Lord, I just want you to get the glory and I want my team to see that you've done it. And, what happens if you don't come through in the way that I want you to? How do I process that?
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And how do we lead through that?
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: I warned that today was going to be a little vulnerable and about our faith.
Michael: Yeah.
Michael: We are in a journey as human beings, and those of us who walk with Christ see that journey in a unique way because it has to do with God, and it has to do with Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This is all really important to us and this is who we are when ... mostly unfiltered.
Kathryn: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and here's the thing too, and we haven't even said this. One of the things that makes this so interesting is that, Michael, you felt like you got a really, really clear word. And the word was there would be 150.
Michael: There would be 150.
Kathryn: 150. There had been different places even where that has been repeated. And even as recently as just a sideways confirmation from a blog that somebody else posted about something that they had done. The number that they said would come was 150.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And at about five minutes before the hour, there weren't even 10 people yet, and the guy who was a pastor was pacing and bargaining with God, please don't let me down. Please don't let my kids down. Please have people show up. 150, or more, ended up showing up. Even on Monday there was that sense of, okay, okay. It's just been ... that part of it's been really interesting too because, where do you put all of that as you process God's sovereignty, his goodness, our efforts. It's just quite a journey.
Michael: Well and yeah, and for the folks that are ... for those of you that are business leaders that walk in faith or have a relationship with Jesus, or think about it from that perspective. Maybe many of you are frustrated. Maybe many of you have been frustrated or hurt or let down. I thought about this this week cause I'm like, I thought I really did hear from God about this.
Kathryn: Yeah. And I believed you.
Michael: And you believed me. Quite frankly, there was a lot of people who believed us. The day is not over yet.
Kathryn: No, it is not.
Michael: I don't know what that means. Which is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this before the day was over, so we didn't talk about, well, this is what happened. That this is what's happening.
Kathryn: Yes. But this is what's happening.
Michael: I felt really strong that I did hear from God and that this was something we were supposed to do, and we were going to have 150 people. Maybe in the morning we'll wake up and there will be. Maybe we'll wake up in the morning and there won't. But I've had enough conversations with people over time that said, when I thought I heard from God and it didn't work out. I thought I heard from God. I thought he said something and I acted on it and I got left out there. I don't do that anymore with God.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: I don't do that kind of stuff. I stopped.
Michael: I get it. I get the disappointment, the frustration. But I can't, I won't. I can't do that.
Kathryn: You won't stop.
Michael: I won't stop. I won't stop believing that he will guide and direct. I won't stop believing that God does amazing things and does miracles. I won't stop that ... I won't stop.
Michael: I believe that there are times when maybe you get it wrong. Maybe you misunderstood. But there's always opportunities. Even going back to this verse, do not despise these small beginnings for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. There is for me a renewed sense that the Lord is pleased that we did all this. And the Lord's pleased that we began. If we have a long ... if we're playing the long game, then we realize that ... well, we realize that you need to take baby steps. You need to learn.
Michael: A friend of mine says yesterday, I was having lunch with him and Mark-
Kathryn: Our friend Mark.
Michael: Our friend Mark. He said, he used the reference, you're still learning the dance. I'm like, yeah, this ... when you do go to a new product, a new market, a new format, a new style, you are learning a new dance. It's a great metaphor. And, you feel like you have two left feet, even though you're an incredibly talented, gifted person in other ways. You might be a talented athlete or anything else, but all of a sudden you're doing this new thing and-
Michael: Look at amazing athletes who are on Dances With The Stars. I'm like, here are some of these people who are amazing athletes and they look like they have two left feet, especially in the beginning.
Michael: So for us, I think that's a good word. That's a good encouragement, and who knows what the day will hold, and we'll do a followup to this podcast.
Michael: But I guess this is what I would say. We did this podcast today because I needed to be encouraged. We needed to be encouraged. Part of our encouragement is talking about what's going on and sharing our story and being reminded of how we got here. Of how Zachariah verse says, don't despise small beginnings. How, there are verses in Corinthians and Ephesians to talk about us doing our part in the body of Christ and that when we do what we're supposed to do we energize those around us and feed those around us because we're ... the joints feed one another.
Michael: Then there's the verse in Proverbs that we've been talking about that is, by wisdom a house is built, by understanding it is established, and by knowledge it's filled with every good thing and riches.
Michael: For us it's just like, okay, this is how our faith impacts us at work.
Kathryn: And the recognition that, despite the tears and the reality that it's just freaking hard sometimes.
Michael: It sucks sometimes.
Kathryn: Despite that, there is no ... I sent an SOS to my three or four closest friends this morning and just said, hey, this is where I'm at and it is well with my soul. No matter what, it's well with my soul. But, would you pray? Because it's just hard.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: But, God is good, no matter what.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: And we're walking where we're supposed to be walking, no matter what. See, we're telling you this because we're telling each other this.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Yeah. I'm not even looking at you.
Kathryn: We just get to press on. We get to persevere, no matter what happens today. It is not the end of the story. It doesn't define success or failure.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: It's just a piece of the puzzle, and it will make an epic story, one way or another.
Michael: One way or another. I want to encourage everyone out there listening, maybe watching, that the journey towards a Passion Provision Company isn't easy. We oftentimes talk about, on the podcast and everything else, we try and be honest, but, quite frankly, when you're putting stuff on social media and when you're talking in your podcast, you're not focusing on the downer days or the scary days, or whatever.
Kathryn: No, we actually thought about doing this live on Facebook and then we're like, well that's a bad tactic for the final day of a sales pitch.
Michael: Yeah. That sounded like a great idea this morning and then all of a sudden, right before we hit go, it's like, oh okay.
Kathryn: Small panic. Oh no, let's not do that.
Michael: That's a dumb idea.
Michael: Yeah.
Michael: For those of you listening, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening through the whole podcast today. We are thankful that you pay attention, you listen and you are willing to go on this journey with us and we want to encourage you to deal with the ups and downs with honesty and transparency and vulnerability. Appropriate vulnerable. Hopefully this was appropriate. That there is always tomorrow.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: There are always new mercies in the morning. God promises it.
Kathryn: Yes. One of my favorite verses.
Michael: And-
Kathryn: We often say in our house, if I had a really rough day, just go to bed because there's new mercies tomorrow. I just need to go to bed.
Michael: I'll get to the new mercies faster.
Michael: Okay, this is the deep end of our ... the more in-depth on our faith and our walk and how it impacts work because our life is not separate from work. We don't have to haves of our lives. We have one life. It's integrated. And we happen to go everywhere in it.
Michael: We want to thank you. Have a great day. I hope this has been helpful and a blessing to you to that we would share our story.
Kathryn: And we'll report back and let you know how it turned out.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael: Alright. I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I am Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And this is HaBO Village Podcast.
Michael: Have a great day.
