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Tomorrow can be different from today.
Our lives often leave us feeling hopeless—like nothing will ever change. But perspective is everything. When you know where to look, hope can be found in the spaces and places you least expect.
Join Jason Gore (Lead Pastor of Hope Community Church) for a fresh perspective, practical steps, and weekly encouragement that hope really is possible… even in real life.
We cannot expect to be performing at a high level if we're
pretending not to deal with the things
that are really going on in our lives.
Absolutely. And, and so I know we've got a lot of listeners
who are like, okay, so how do I take that step?
And to hear someone say, Hey, you don't have to be an expert
to actually make an impact.
Welcome to the Hope and Real Life podcast with Jason Gore.
Our team is passionate
and committed to bringing you more hope in the everyday
real areas of your life.
If this conversation and content is valuable for you,
please do us a favor, like, subscribe, and even share.
You never know how valuable it could be
to share a little bit of hope with someone else.
Let's get the conversation started.
Well, what's going on? Hope In Real Life Family.
We are here with another episode of Hope in Real Life.
Here at this podcast, we have an entire team of people
that have designated the best hours of their day to helping
our audience, our listeners,
find hope in the everyday moments of their real lives.
This week, we are talking about a topic that a lot
of our listeners have actually inquired about,
and it's this idea of faith in the workplace.
And, and every single week, every single episode, I try
to at least give us a foundational statement to know, here,
here's what we're operating around.
And this week, it's this idea that spiritual health
is a vital part of hope in our lives
and hope is needed in the workplace.
And so I'm here this week with Adam Price
and Doug Morgan, who are a part of the leadership team
of a company called Mako Medical.
And just to give you a quick background,
fortune 500 fastest growing company lists,
triangle Business Journal, fast 50, uh, award
for three years in a row,
which I don't believe any other company has ever done.
I think two might be the limit, uh, prior to these guys.
But let's just start out here in a little bit about you all.
And Adam, I know you're one of the founding, uh, members
of Mako Medical.
So why don't we start with you? Why don't you just give us a
little bit of background about yourself?
Yeah, thanks for having us. Um, so we started in 2014,
so full reference laboratory.
So if you wanna think high level of like,
who our competitors would be,
it'd be like a LabCorp request.
So we test everything under the sun from blood, urine, um,
toxicology testing, genetics testing.
So we're a local lab, so we're in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Uh, we do have a lab in Henderson, North Carolina,
but we are full service lab.
So we service, uh, national, national Hospitals, clinics,
different doctors around the us. Okay.
All right guys. Yeah.
So I came to MACO about a year and a half ago, um,
after the big covid boom,
which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit.
Um, because we were a new growth strategy, got our CEO
and COO, uh, Chad
and Josh, um, focused outside the business on the business,
not so much in the business.
Yeah. And so they needed some leadership, uh,
boots on the ground leadership,
and they really wanted the culture post covid to, uh,
to go in, uh, um, in exciting and new direction.
So I came on board about a year and a half ago.
Yeah. And just for some context,
I know your company really took off during
that covid season,
and so can you just shed a little bit of, of light on what
that exactly means and what happened
to really bring that into fruition?
Yeah. I mean, so when Covid hit, you know,
I think it was a race to who could service the need,
which was testing, right?
Um, luckily we were, we were positioned to, to do that.
So our covid growth personnel wise, you know,
we went from about 300 to close
to 2000 people within six months.
Wow. So, I mean, I, I don't think there was a day
or a minute where we weren't either running samples
as a team or, or trying to hire people.
Um, so just a fast
and furious pace during Covid to get us positioned
to do what we needed to do.
Because at that time, you know,
if you weren't getting your samples
or your results back in a couple days,
people were looking for another lap.
That's, that's right. So everybody was in a, in a sense
of desperation to know if they had covid or not.
So luckily, we were one
of the highest performers in the nation by able
to push results back to, to customers and patients, um,
and became one of the fastest growing Covid labs in the,
in the nation during that time. That's
Awesome, man. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, in a moment, I mean,
obviously our topic is faith in the workplace, right?
Not, um, lab results and that type of thing. No.
But, uh, I wanna start out, uh,
so in a minute I'm gonna ask you like, Hey,
what makes you guys experts on this
idea of faith in the workplace?
Why should we have you on the podcast talking about this?
Now, I, I know the answer to that question,
but for our audience, but
before we get into that, um,
can you just give just a little bit of why
behind Mako Medical, uh, a lot of different things
that you guys could have done as founding team members?
Like what made you jump into this
and what's the why behind the organization overall?
Yeah. I'll start and then you could kind
of pick me up where I mess up.
Um, I'm used to that. Yeah. Okay.
So when we started, I think the, the goal was, you know,
Chad, our CEO didn't have a science background, right?
There was, there was very good business person,
but no science background.
So we didn't have the what quite figured out.
So, but the one thing that I think Chad brought
to the company that instilled in us as founders was the why.
Um, so when we started a company,
there was three things we really wanted to focus on,
and we led with those versus saying, you know,
let's figure out what and how we're gonna test or,
or all those things, or payer our contracts
or all the things that make, uh,
running a lab very, very difficult.
That probably would've steered us away
from this business in the beginning.
But leading with the why kind of really kind of helped us
to focus on like, why are we doing this?
Like, 'cause you know, it's, it's not just about a job
or testing, it's not the most glorious business.
Running lab samples isn't.
So the why we started was, um,
three, three real big reasons.
One, we wanted to give back to the local community, um,
and actually live that out through our giving.
Um, and time, obviously, when we were a small company,
we spent a lot of that through our time with
how we gave back to the community.
Um, that changed a little bit during CVID with
how we were able to financially support different, uh,
ministries, outreaches and programs like that.
So the community aspect was huge.
I remember funniest thing,
we were doing the Raleigh Christmas parade
before our lab even processed one sample.
Like we were doing like community events before.
And I remember it was the funniest thing,
but it was cool when people used to see us
and they'd be like, Hey,
I've seen you 'cause we have a big shark logo.
They'd be like, Hey, I've seen you at this community event.
And they had no clue what we did Yeah. As a company.
And that was really special because it
meant that we were having that impact.
Yeah. That, um, the second thing, which is kind of
what I spearheaded was the veteran piece.
So we really wanted
to dive into hiring military veterans and living that out.
So at that time, I was running a lot of our operations
and my kind of goal was I wanted to only hire military vets.
So I was in the army for about 13 years total.
Got out, was told, man,
when you get outta the military, it's gonna be the easiest thing.
You're gonna find all these big jobs,
they're gonna pay you combat veteran,
like, they're gonna love you.
I got out, like, people was like, it was crickets.
I mean, and my strategy was off.
I didn't understand the importance
of networking and all those things.
I, I would come home, literally I'd come home,
my wife was like, Hey, why
are you playing video games again?
And I'm like, I applied for 35 jobs.
I'm not getting callbacks, but I applied for a ton of jobs.
So, um, I went through that transition, so,
and understood that veterans had a lot of good things
to offer as far as discipline and a sense of, um, teamwork
and a sense of getting the mission done.
Right. And in the lab world, there's no like, Hey, it's,
it's snowing.
We can't go pick up samples. Like, no, we make it happen.
Right? So hiring a team full of veterans.
I think our logistics team, which was primarily
where we started, we had a hundred percent
of our team was veterans for the first four or five years.
And now you fast forward, we've been in, in business now,
um, close to 10 years,
and we still hold about 70%
of our veteran based team on our
logistics department is veterans.
So really cool there.
Um, and it's allowed us to really plug into different ve
veteran community based events as well, which is awesome.
Um, and then the third, the third thing, obviously,
it's just the biggest thing for us was,
was our faith component.
So, um, at that time we wanted to lead, um,
with faith and, and, and the workplace.
You know, being a private company gave us the, the ability
to do that, but that was something that was important
and how that's lived out.
And we'll talk about, that's probably later.
But initially it was really small.
So initially what it looked like was a small bible
study with four or five people.
I mean, that was it. And then it was just trying to like,
take some of those principles that are in the Bible
and say, okay, how can we lead the company based off
of some of those, right?
And we knew that if we started the business
with those three things,
and that's what became important, except
for the bottom line, except for profit, except for growth
and expansion, then no matter kind of
what the business threw at us, we were kind
of grounded in those three things.
So that's kind of the why behind what, why
and what we started Mako for.
Yeah, Adam, I appreciate that.
And what's interesting, if you, if you take one
and three off the list that you just gave, give back to the,
to the local community
and three, driven by a faith component.
I, I think, man,
you sound more like a church than, than a company.
I would expect you to sound like that's on the,
the Fortune 500 fastest growing list.
So, uh, I would say well done, man.
I appreciate, thank you that you
guys desire to stay true to that.
And then on the veteran piece
as well, thank you for your service.
Yeah, absolutely, man. And, and, and man, that's awesome.
I'm thankful for that. Doug, lemme ask you this.
Um, so that's kinda the why behind the company. Sure. Right?
And so, and so you get the faith component.
And so for our listeners, for our audience, um,
what makes you all the experts Yeah.
In this conversation on faith in the workplace.
Sure. That's actually a really easy question to answer.
Um, we are not the expert, so I'm sorry, disappoint,
disappoint y'all maybe cut off the podcast,
but we're actually, we're so not the expert.
It's, it's interesting as I think about my own life
and I think about Chad's life,
you know, that was the beginning.
It was awesome that that was the why in the beginning.
Um, but like, I, like in my own life, I used to separate
faith and, and work.
I'm, I'm talking like it was so, it was so opposite sides
of the spectrum, you know, especially growing up in
the, in the south here.
Like you went to church on Sunday
and then the rest of the week was all about me
and, and my profession.
And then, um, you know, story for another day.
But then guy got ahold of me and,
and showed me, um, how much my faith actually needed
to fuel my work.
Yeah. Um, but that same story happened to, to our CEO
to happen to Adam's brother Chad.
And during Covid right
before this company blew up, he, um,
he really gave his life to Christ.
He became a Christian. Um,
and kind of walking away from that cultural,
just know the language and,
and you know, have some of, you know, some
of the ways in which you, you know, you choose on some days
to live that way and really gave his life to Christ.
Um, and that's actually when, when we met each other,
we were buddies for about a year.
Um, and so just
after that, God got ahold of his heart about
what this why is a beautiful foundation,
but what does it look like to take it to the next level?
Um, and that's when, um, he asked me to come and,
and work alongside a bunch of these great leaders
for that to be true.
So we are not the expert. Yeah.
We are, um, we're getting things wrong.
Uh, we're figuring out the why, the real why behind
what it means to be a faith-driven company.
Um, and it's really surprising some of the, some
of the ways we're, we're seeing what
God wants us to do there. Yeah.
I, and I, I think this is so important, and I,
and I think I appreciate your honesty.
You know, in our pre-production meeting you
said that, I was like, man, that that's perfect.
I think it's probably what our listeners need to hear.
Mm-Hmm. Because the reality is we live in a difficult world
to, to bring our faith into the workplace specifically.
And, and I know a lot of our
listeners probably aren't Christian.
Sure. You know, they're just, but we're all looking
for hope in our lives.
But, um, but man, right now, this is,
it's not necessarily the safest place
to talk about your faith in the workplace.
You know, when you just look at the media
and you see things going on around us.
But we do know, we said this at the beginning, we do know
that spiritual health is a vital part of our hope.
And that's not a, a Christian belief.
That's a, you can go to a secular psychiatrist, you can go
to a, have a secular, uh, professional coach,
and they're gonna tell you, if you don't engage the
spiritual side of your life, you're not gonna maximize, um,
what, what your true potential really is.
And so you hear that. And so we know it's a vital part
of our hope and, and man hope is needed in the workplace.
Mm-Hmm. If we're giving our best hours of our days
to the workplace, we cannot expect
to be performing at a high level if we're pretending not
to deal with the things that are really going
on in our lives.
Absolutely. And, and so I know we've got a lot of listeners
that are like, okay, so how do I take that step?
And to hear someone say, Hey, you don't have
to be an expert Yeah.
To actually make an impact.
Let's take a break from this episode of Hope in Real Life
to tell you about our mobile app.
If you're looking for a resource on personal development
and spiritual enrichment,
then we've got just the thing for you.
The Hope in Real Life mobile app is a free tool made
specifically for our listeners
and anyone who needs a little hope in their everyday life.
The Hope in Real Life app offers multiple features like
daily devotions, parenting tip, financial resources,
marriage insights, and a community
where you can share prayer requests.
Stay tuned as we will be making this resource available
to you in early January.
Tomorrow can be better than today,
and hope is possible even in real life.
Now, back to the program. We do
Have a program that we're really focusing on right now,
that's a component of it.
And, and that's called Rise Up.
And so I would love for you just to share
with our listeners a little bit about what
that looks like right now, maybe how it started
and the impact that you're seeing from it.
Yeah. So, when, you know, when Covid three, 300
to 2000 people, you, you realized really quickly
that I don't know any of these people that I used to know.
Yeah. Like, I mean, can you
Just say that again?
I mean, you said 200 to 2003.
Yeah. 300 to 2000, uh, Roughly overnight. It, it
Felt, oh gosh.
Yeah. It felt like a lot of overnights for a lot of us.
Um, but, you know, we had to constantly keep churning, uh,
to, to keep up with the need.
I mean, it just, I just remember seeing just samples
just stacked up.
Like, I mean, I was looking for a sled to sled down.
It was crazy. Um,
but, you know, it was one of those things
where I think we realized that in the midst of the chaos
of being so busy, that that faith side, us saying
that one of the reasons we didn't wanna lose our eyes on the
company, those bible studies started to dwindle.
Right? They never grew same three or four or five people.
Um, we'd often catch ourselves
doing it with the door closed.
Right. Um, and we started realizing like they got all these
people walking by.
And the one thing we all have in
common is we all have problems.
We all, we all have things we're going through. Right.
And, and when you have 300 people, you got that, you expand
that to 2000, those are a lot more problems.
Right. And a lot more things that no matter
where your faith is, you're going through it.
Right. Whether it's a, whether it's a bad relationship,
whether it's financials, whether it's a death,
it's something that somebody's going through.
So I think that was one of our things we realized with, uh,
the beginning of Rise Up was that
how do we cast a larger net, right?
How do we, how do we get more people
and connect with them on a relationship level
so they can kind of see hope, right?
Because at, at that time it was, we're so busy, so busy.
Someone comes to talk to you like, man, listen, I love
to talk, but I don't have time.
And the reality is we turn that into our, our every day,
even if we're not at the height
of a pandemic, we still do that.
We're all just so busy now that we forget
to spend real time with people.
So, um, the great thing about Rise Up was it allowed this
platform, and we, like Doug said,
we didn't have this stuff figured out.
We just knew we wanted to do something to kind
of bring people together.
Right. Um,
and so the idea was, Hey, let's take something, any,
any topic that somebody's dealing with.
So I think our first one was leadership.
Then we rolled into living your best life.
We've done one on finances, on stress, depression, anxiety,
um, things that every single person in the world deals with.
And we would bring in a outside speaker.
Um, and the thought behind that was, Hey, listen,
this guy talking to you,
or this girl talking to you, they may
connect with you better.
And also they're not gonna say something
that later down the road, you're going to not be able
to separate that when we said that
and rise up versus now you won't come talk to me.
'cause maybe I said something that you didn't agree with
or anything, um, saw something
Negative on your performance appraisal. Exactly.
So we made it optional. Right.
Which was, which was a big part of, of, of kind
of just navigating through those unknown waters of like,
Hey, who do we want to come to this?
Well, anybody could come to it.
It doesn't matter if you have faith,
if you don't have faith, come on down.
Right. We provided food for everybody.
So that way it became a social setting, um,
where we could all just kind of hang out.
It's 30 minutes. We didn't, we didn't make it long.
We didn't want to make it this long drawn out thing.
30 minutes direct to the point we'd ask the speaker
to come in for three weeks
and just pick a subject,
pick a subject in whatever your heart's leading
you go for it.
Right. And, and obviously we wanted
that practical application
and then some biblical application too,
because we knew that if they just led so heavily
with biblical stuff, that it's gonna fly over people's head.
Right. Right. Um, so we wanted there to be,
but we didn't, we didn't moderate how much of, you know,
60% biblical, 40% practical, which has been so cool
to see the, the progression of,
we've been doing Rise Up now.
I think we just finished our 14th, um,
session this past Wednesday, yesterday.
And it's been so cool to see
how different speakers will take a topic
and open up, you know, whether with their testimony
or something that they're going through in their life.
And instantly these connections start being made
with our people that are down there.
So rise up. Yeah. We've been doing it.
And, you know, it's just been, it's just been awesome
to see God use that as an overflow
to bring people down there and just, just go to work.
I mean, it's, it's cool.
It's, it's been a really fun thing to be a part of.
And we're gonna keep, we're gonna keep going.
And, and what we've realized through this, this past year
and some changes that this model could be replicated in any
small business, any business, um,
it's just, you gotta start somewhere.
And, you know, we haven't figured it all out.
We're, we're still tweaking. We're still,
we're still figuring it out.
So we're gonna keep doing it
and keep kind of building on what we,
what we got going on. So, yeah.
I, I, um, I, again, I applaud you for recognizing that
you can get so busy
that you can lose sight of what's most important.
And again, for you to like, tell me what the three why's are
for your company and for you not
to mention the bottom line, you know, at the beginning.
'cause I can tell you, uh, one of my roles, uh, in my hours
that I'm awake during the week is to, uh, to serve as the,
the lead pastor for Hope Community Church.
And I can tell you, and this, I'm, I'm almost ashamed
to say this, but it's, I do any good
and not be honest, we can get so busy on a church staff
that we can actually forget
to invest in ourselves in the right ways.
Sure. And so we have
to set aside intentional time every week for staff meeting.
And I tell you, what I've found is
you can program all you want to, and those are great,
but usually the first half of every staff meeting is like,
wins, celebrations, what's going on.
Yeah. And it can, people can get up
and talk about what's going on in their ministry
or what's going on in their life and ask for prayer.
Yeah. And those times where someone just asks for prayer
and people come up, and then when you see God answer prayers
and you celebrate it, those unplanned moments
that we set aside are more powerful than anything
and more beneficial than just
about everything that we program.
But you've gotta stay committed to it
or otherwise, you're right, man.
You can program your time
to focus on your spiritual life right.
Outta your schedule. Oh, yeah. So, so well done there.
Um, well, so that's the program side, right.
That, that's rise up. And we
can come back to that in a minute.
But it was interesting,
and I think Doug, it was you that was talking
before, like, Hey, rise up is important.
Yeah. But you've got the program,
but if you really care about this,
you've also got a relational
component for sure with your employees.
And, and while the program's important,
the relational side might even be more important.
Yeah. Can you talk about that?
Absolutely. So you just talked about, you know,
how you can sometimes get distracted
by the programs and focused.
I came in a year and a half ago,
and it was in my mind, my dreams, all programs,
all these awesome things we're gonna do.
And I'm not saying they're not gonna be a part of
what happens, but I quickly learned,
I feel like God quickly taught me that people don't want
to hear about programs and external giving and generosity
and ideas in ministry.
They actually want to know that they're cared
for relationally, authentically.
Yeah. And so it was like all these great,
great ideas I had were, you know what it's, you know,
God was like, it's all about, um, making the Mako team, the,
the Mako family, the Mako team members,
the number one mission.
And you talked about profits too, by the way.
When you do those things, right.
Profits come and profits fuel those ministry things. Mm-Hmm.
Like, we couldn't host rise up, pay for lunch, bring,
you know, bring speakers in
and do that without profits,
so you don't throw profits out the window.
Right. But when you actually really put people,
first profits come.
But, um, but yeah, so it is, it is, I learned quickly
that it was about relationships.
People are hungry.
I think, especially, I said this
before, but especially in the South.
And I grew up, I grew up going to church
and, um, had an intellectual understanding of God and Jesus,
but like, I didn't become a Christian until I was 29.
And that's a story for another day.
But, um, the people are hungry for hope
and they're hungry for that hope to be authentic.
Yeah. And their faith to be authentic.
And so these big boardroom meetings or
or posters on the wall, they can mean something,
but people wanna see it lived out in truth.
And, and you know, I think, what is it,
what are the number one complaints probably of,
of non-Christians Of Christians or they're hypocrites.
Right. And by the way, yeah. We're our hypocrites, right?
Yeah. We're, we're sinner. We're we're right.
But, but it's because of the way we talk
and we don't act that way.
I feel like if we acted more like Jesus,
we would have a opportunity to speak more about him.
And, and so yeah. We've learned that lesson.
Relationships come first.
Caring for people comes first
and these programs are genuine overflow,
and people know when it's fake.
Yeah. People know I've seen too many things in rise up
that were real, and it was
because there was a real care and it was authentic.
And then it, um, you know, obviously God is the one
who fills that void, but we, we kind
of held their hand on the walk there.
Yeah. J just kind of piggybacking on that. Yeah.
And I so appreciate, 'cause our listeners need to hear
that regularly, whether
and be reminded of that, whether they are
Christian or they're not.
Those of us that say we are Christians,
we're still imperfect.
Um, but we do have a responsibility to do our best to live
as Jesus would call us to live.
Absolutely. And, and along those lines, you said, um,
'cause I'm sure there's some of our listeners
that might hear this, maybe they're business owners, um,
maybe they're business leaders, um,
maybe they're entrepreneurs and their companies growing,
or they want their, their company or their industry
or their team to be faith-based.
But they've got these thoughts, man.
But there are some liabilities, there are some concerns.
And one of the ones that you mentioned was
what if there's this sense of this quid pro quo type idea
of, well, if somebody comes to my Bible study
or to my program,
that maybe they have a leg up
over somebody else on the team.
And you had something really unique to say
That. So I think that
does exist in some ways.
You know, people, man, I know my motives are all jacked up.
You know, I'm always having to correct
and pray through my motives.
I just, the other day I was gonna, I was texting
to pray some, pray for someone.
Yeah. And I felt like God was like, you're doing that,
so they know you're praying for them.
I'm like, man, I am such a, such an imperfect guy.
But, um, but so I, the funny answer to that is, for me,
when I find out someone is a genuine Christian, I mean,
on the leadership team for example, you know, we,
we have, we, we talk about our faith.
We, we share it. And I,
and I come to find out, man, this person really is,
you know, living for God.
I actually hold them so much more accountable
to a new standard.
Uh, there is not the, you know, the favoritism club,
if anything, they are gonna have to, um, live to a new
expectation of what it is to love with in truth and love.
'cause leadership's hard, right? So some people all just
wanna be, it's all about performance.
It's all about just, here's the feedback,
but it's gotta be done in love.
Um, and then some people just don't wanna say those hard
things and just care and be compassionate, but it's both.
And, and Jesus totally modeled
that better than every anybody.
He spoke truth to those people,
but never let them accept a, a, you know,
lesser version of who he knew they could be.
And so he would say, Hey, you know, no, I don't condemn you,
but go and sin no more.
You know, and those, so it's one of those things
where I actually, uh, yeah.
There is definitely no favorite club If you thought
that you're gonna be sorely, uh, misunderstood once you,
once you come, 'cause I'm gonna hold you more accountable
for, for living, uh, more like Jesus,
which is a hard thing to do. Yeah.
Uh, so many things, uh,
I feel like we could talk about right now,
but, uh, I wanna make sure that we have,
uh, time to, to hit this.
So if we've got an, uh, an audience member,
a listener who's thinking, okay, uh,
I know the spiritual health is a vital part of hope.
We need more hope in our lives,
and we know that hope is
desperately needed in the workplace.
So I want to take an action step. Mm-Hmm.
What could that look like? What's a simple action
step that somebody could take away?
They don't have to be an expert, but they can actually take
that first one or two steps towards bringing this to life.
I'd say first off, if it's better for them
to admit they're not an expert first,
and then it'll probably go better.
But I would just say God is at work in the triangle.
He's at work in our world. Right.
He's doing the work and it's, uh, it's us to notice
where he's working and come alongside.
So the e the quickest, you know, the first thing I'd say is,
Hey, ask God to show, show you where he's at work.
Yeah. Like, you know, where is he? Whose life is he at work
in, you know, we had one single mom, um, at Mako
who you could just tell there was a lot
of tension and it was hard.
And she was having to balance a lot of different things.
You could just tell she was hungry for some support.
And so someone's, someone's eyes
and heart were open to that.
She came to rise up
and she got the support, um, from some, some folks,
some team members and coworkers there.
And, and the story's pretty amazing of, of, of
how she's opened up to the Lord.
And, um, is, is doing incredibly well
after just, it was just a need that was met.
So I would say one, ask God to open your eyes, you know,
spiritual eyes to see where he's at work.
Um, that's the first one.
Um, be willing to be bold, but with gentleness. Yeah.
Because people, if it's not gonna be authentic
than don't do it, I actually would rather you
do nothing than to do something that wasn't authentic.
Yeah. Because that is not what the world is hungry for.
Um, so Yeah. Or
In a way where you seem like a jerk.
A hundred percent. Or,
or even just, you know, that you're all about you,
you know, we lose sight.
We all want formulas. Like that's man's problem, right.
We all wanna formula. And so we,
we want these formulas instead of doing the hard work,
which is, you know, daily seeking out, you know, to, to see
where God's at work and, and coming
alongside and being interrupted.
So that'd be the beginning point. Yeah. Uh, for me, I,
I, yeah, I mean, yeah. I just think
it's, you know, before you even get
to the point of like, trying to develop a program Yeah.
Which I think you can do. And I think Doug's right?
I don't think you should like, constantly delay.
Like when, when we fix this
or when we get to this phase, then we'll do a, a rise up
or a rise up type program.
But I do think one of the things, especially for leadership
that you have to constantly analyze is
like, are you loving people?
Like, are you, are you,
are you truly investing in a relationship?
Because at the end of the day, people that come down
for rise up, right?
Like, if we didn't have that relationship there,
and I said, Hey man, we're about to do rise up.
Cool. They're not, they're not coming.
They might come grab some free food,
but they're gonna go right back up to their desk.
So I think we have to, it's so easy to talk about,
but man, we just get so busy
and it's like, I remind my guys underneath me, I'm like,
you gotta be aware of like your body language.
Like is your door closed or is your door open?
Like when people come in,
are you on your phone or you're off your phone?
Like, those little things are those little things
that are either gonna stop a relationship from growing
or they're going to, they're gonna allow it to flourish
and grow into something.
And then as it grows, you start
to realize there's that common ground.
Yeah. There's, Hey, oh wait, you're going through this.
Well, I went through this. Let me show you how I,
how I navigated it.
Right? And, and then it makes going to rise up
or a program even easier because now you have buy-in
because people, they don't see it as this like, heavy push
of the gospel in my face.
They see it as like real people talking about real things.
But the beautiful thing is when they get in there,
all the speakers, they all point it right back to Jesus.
Yeah. Right. The hope of all
of those problems points right back
to Christ, which is a beautiful thing.
This is what I'm hearing. If I'm taking notes,
I'm hearing what, what are some steps?
One, or maybe these are values to carry.
One, I'm hearing people over programs two, I'm hearing look
to God for what he's already doing.
And then third, uh, let's be bold, uh,
but do so with gentleness.
Yeah. You know, uh, that's it.
You know, the Bible says, I think it's one Peter three 15.
It says, be ready, uh, to have a reason for the hope
that you have, but it also tells
us to do so with gentleness.
Amen. And the respect. So gentlemen,
I appreciate your time, man.
I, I'm so grateful for
what you're doing already and for how you really are.
You're making the triangle a better place.
You are bringing hope to the triangle,
not just in your workplace, but the way
you're investing in the community.
I'd normally try to ask, uh, two questions.
I know we, we wanna wrap up here around 30 minutes,
but two quick questions.
Um, first,
what are you most excited about in your life right now?
And Doug, maybe we'll hit you with this one man. Yeah,
Sure. So I got a
16-year-old son, uh, junior.
We just went on a bunch of college tours
and to, for him to see him, um, kind
of step out in faith on his own
and think through, okay, this is a decision,
this is a big decision, and God has a plan for me.
And for him to be talking about like
that he's praying about things
or seeking where God may actually may be at work
that he's calling to him to at 16,
as you think about launching him out into the world.
Um, yeah, just the fact that he'd be hungry to see
how God wants to speak into where he goes to college
and how I can maybe start taking coach, you know,
sideline coach role, which in some ways is hard for Dad
to admit that I need to do that, but sideline
and watch him, um, to pursue.
That's really exciting. Uh, so loving it.
That's cool. And then, uh, Adam,
I asked this question five years from now.
Uh, what, what do you see?
What do you look out with hope filled
eyes and see in front of you? Five
Years? I mean, I, I, you
know, there's a couple things for me.
Um, one, like I would love to see rise up, kind
of take plant, uh, in other businesses in the triangle
because I think what, what's, what's building, right?
This network of speakers, some of the logistical things
that anyone would have to work through.
Like, we've kind of worked through some of those things
and we're learning through the way.
So I think just seeing
that other business leaders say, you know what?
I wanna do that I'm gonna do it,
and maybe I do it at a small level, but I'm gonna step out.
I I'm gonna try something like that.
Um, so, you know, seeing that, uh,
rise ups in other business would be a really cool thing.
Um, because I know like all of our speakers have been
so excited about, about it,
and they, they always tell people when they bring people
and they come back and see us.
So I know they would love
to pour into other businesses that are doing it.
And then one way that I'd love to add to this, shameless
to have shameless plug here to have my hair, um, no,
not your hair, uh, is I'm opening a business, um,
a family entertainment business in Windell.
Uh, we're working on all the,
the build out right now and going through this.
And one of the most exciting things for me going
through this now by myself, is like,
I'm looking at those principles of how a business is built.
And it's so cool to me to know that I don't have to wait
for year nine to build like a rise up type program, right?
Yeah. Like that's a day one thing.
And I got these speakers like already
that I have relationships with
that are probably super excited to come and help, you know,
and it's gonna be awesome 'cause yeah,
we may not have the 60, 70, 80 people in attendance at Mako.
We may have four or five,
but it's still gonna be just
as powerful and just as impactful.
So super excited about that.
Well, listen, you said that you would like
to see this rise up, build out.
This whole episode is around faith in the workplace.
And so I'm gonna go out on a limb
and put you guys on the spot if you agree to do this.
After we press stop on the record, we'll have some type
of contact info down in the show notes Sure.
Where our listeners could reach out
to you, maybe get some ideas.
We'd love to be a resource for people. Absolutely.
Yeah. Okay. Well, to our listeners, thank you all
for tuning in this week.
Again, spiritual health, it's a vital part
of having hope in our everyday moments, in our real life
and hope is desperately needed in the workplace.
I hope this has been valuable for you
and how you can apply these principles to your life.
And we, if this has been valuable,
please do anything you can do, like, subscribe
and share this content
with somebody else that you work with.
Maybe you guys can partner together
to bring a little bit more faith in the place
where you spend the majority of your time.
Sun up to sundown. We'd love you guys.
Look forward to seeing you on the next episode
of Hope in Real Life.
Gentlemen, thanks for being with us. Thanks, man.
Thanks for having us. Thanks for tuning into this episode
of The Hope in Real Life podcast.
If this content was valued
before you don't forget, like, subscribe, share.
You never know how important it could be
to bring a little hope into someone else's life.
Uh, there's even a place here for you to comment.
We would love to hear from you and hear your feedback.
Until next time, let's keep sharing hope.
Hey, hope and real life family.
Real quick, before you go, we wanna invite you
to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas at one
of our family friendly Christmas Eve services.
Join us at Hope Community Church,
where we will have 20 services between December 21st
and December 24th, across five campuses in
and around the Raleigh Durham metro area, AKA, the triangle.
Each service will feature Carol's, candles, cocoa,
and all the Christmas cheer.
Bring your kids, your friends, or your coworker,
or even the single mom down the street,
or the guy next door, we could all use a
little hope for Christmas.
Let us know you are coming
by visiting Get hope.net/christmas
and grabbing free tickets one more time.
That URL is get hope.net/christmas.
Or you can click the link in the description.
If you can't make it in person, we'd love for you
to join us at Get Hope tv.
Merry Christmas.