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There's an old saying: "It takes a village." Of course, this has many different connotations and interpretations, but the point is that community is a necessity to accomplish any goal. That community is built through collaboration. Zach is on this week with Jon Passavant from Start Up Waco to talk through how to collaborate with other members of your community to accomplish everyone's goals. He shares a real, powerful example of a time when that almost didn't happen and the lessons he learned from that experience.
Show Notes
There's an old saying: "It takes a village." Of course, this has many different connotations and interpretations, but the point is that community is a necessity to accomplish any goal. That community is built through collaboration. Zach is on this week with Jon Passavant from Start Up Waco to talk through how to collaborate with other members of your community to accomplish everyone's goals. He shares a real, powerful example of a time when that almost didn't happen and the lessons he learned from that experience.
Check out Start Up Waco:
https://startupwaco.com
Reach out to Jon:
info@startupwaco.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Check out Start Up Waco:
https://startupwaco.com
Reach out to Jon:
info@startupwaco.com
Purchase the You Can Mentor book:
You Can Mentor: How to Impact Your Community, Fulfill the Great Commission, and Break Generational Curses
youcanmentor.com
Creators and Guests
What is You Can Mentor: A Christian Youth Mentoring Podcast?
You Can Mentor is a network that equips and encourages mentors and mentoring leaders through resources and relationships to love God, love others, and make disciples in their own community. We want to see Christian mentors thrive.
We want to hear from you! Send any mentoring questions to hello@youcanmentor.com, and we'll answer them on our podcast. We want to help you become the best possible mentor you can be. Also, if you are a mentoring organization, church, or non-profit, connect with us to join our mentoring network or to be spotlighted on our show.
Please find out more at www.youcanmentor.com or find us on social media. You will find more resources on our website to help equip and encourage mentors. We have downloadable resources, cohort opportunities, and an opportunity to build relationships with other Christian mentoring leaders.
You can mentor is a podcast about the power of building relationships with kids from hard places in the name of Jesus. Every episode will help you overcome common mentoring obstacles and give you the confidence you need to invest in the lives of others. You can mentor.
Speaker 2:Mentors and mentoring leaders, Zach Arza here with the You Can Mentor podcast. I got three things that I would like to ask of you today. Number 1, if you are a mentoring organization and you would like to be on our podcast or learn more about the best practices of mentoring, please reach out to us, www.youcanmentor.com. You can send us an email, zach@youcanmentor.com, or stephen, that's with a ph, at youcanmentor.com. You can also find us on social media.
Speaker 2:Give us that DM, and we'll get back to you. We just wanna get to know you, and we wanna learn more about what you're doing in your communities to advance mentoring. And we believe that interaction leads to innovation. So let's work together and advance the kingdom through mentoring. Number 2, if you know of someone who would benefit from the You Can Mentor podcast, please share our podcast, share our information with them.
Speaker 2:That would be super helpful. And then lastly, if you could rate our podcast on Apple Podcasts, give us that 5 star. It will help spread the word about mentoring and, You Can Mentor podcast. Because we really do want every mentoring org in America who is trying to make disciples through mentoring to know about us. We wanna get to know about them so we can learn from them and work together to help kids reach their full potential.
Speaker 2:So that's what I got. Please do those things. Reach out to us. Share and rate. Appreciate you.
Speaker 2:You can mentor. Welcome back to the You Can Mentor podcast. I am Zach Arza, and I'm here with my friend, John Passavan. John, say hi.
Speaker 3:Hi, Zach. Hi, everybody. It's great to be here.
Speaker 2:Alright. So John and I met, what, like a year ago, I guess? I think so. Yeah. And so John is one of my friends here in Waco, and he's an awesome guy, married, has some kiddos.
Speaker 2:And today, we're gonna talk about collaboration. So there's a lot that goes into that, but we're gonna get on that. So I guess that's why we do podcasts. Let's talk about topics. So I met John because he is the CEO of something called Startup Waco.
Speaker 2:And so, John, can you just kinda share with us about Startup Waco and all
Speaker 3:of that? Absolutely. So Startup Waco is what they call a public private organization, meaning that we're funded and supported in part through public funds and in part through private donations. And we're a 501c3, And there's several models for this type of organization throughout the country, but somewhere around 2012, a little over 10 years ago, you started to see in cities outside of the coast, outside of bay outside of the Bay Area, outside of New York, outside of Boston, you saw a lot of entrepreneurial activity taking place, but there wasn't anything really catalyzing it. And as entrepreneurship in general as a movement became a more attractive option for for young people or people at any phase of their career, actually.
Speaker 3:The the benefit of having a central place where ideas, opportunities, funding from everything from technical assistance all the way through, you know, strategic partnerships and a way of of pulling people together around ideas could happen. These things were happening naturally in these big cities where venture capital started or where new companies, new ideas, especially in software were taking place, but they weren't really happening in the middle parts of the country. And so a group in outside of Denver and Colorado, they they just they said, you know, this is something that we should really try to pull together. And they maybe were, maybe they weren't the first. It was all kinda happening around the same time, but they kind of did it pretty quickly.
Speaker 3:A few people wrote some books about creating what they call an entrepreneurial ecosystem within smaller cities, and they could demonstrate for the first time the value of that type of an ecosystem within a community that you shouldn't be you shouldn't have to move to the coast to be able to get an idea started, funded. Everything about the Internet was democratizing how companies were being started and how they were being funded, and so we wanted to see that applied around the country. And so you had some heroes of that movement happening, but you had a lot of cities and and leaders within cities say, we wanna we wanna start to bring that here. In in Waco, it started at around 2017 when there had been some earlier iterations of it, but it was really in 2017 when a group of leaders within the city, both public officials and and private business owners and successful entrepreneurs came together and said, let's really try to stand something like this up. And, entrepreneurs came together and said, let's really try to stand something like this up.
Speaker 3:And so they got together and started meeting regularly and talking about what do we want this to look like here? What are the real opportunities that we have here? What are the things that are holding entrepreneurs back? And they put together board of directors, created a 501c3. They got some initial grant funding from the county and the city.
Speaker 3:They build out a co working space to be the central hub. And then they started they hired a staff and started doing some programming and allowing a place for entrepreneurs to come to meet, to kick around ideas, understand what resources were available for them to start and and grow their business. And that's how Startup Buick was born. I moved here a couple years after that in the end of 2019 and was here for a few months just long enough to put together a 5 year strategic plan for the organization that I presented on February 28, 2020. And 10 days later, we shut everything down for COVID and had to completely pivot into more of a triage state where we were really helping companies figure out how to stay alive for about 6 or 8 months.
Speaker 3:And a whole new world of government funding and PPP loans and survival kind of arose through that time. And then last year, it felt like it was getting a bit back to normal, and we started putting some of the original ideas to practice. And now through the first half of this year, we've been we've been going going strong.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. I just love startup Waco. And I mean, they're right smack in the middle of downtown and you stop by their office and it's just a bunch of people with great ideas who are just trying to make it happen. And I think one thing that I saw whenever I stopped by was just that spirit of really wanting to take an idea and turn it into something real. And I think why I have you on our podcast is because if you are a founder of a nonprofit, I mean, trying to start something is trying to start something.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't really matter if it's a nonprofit. It doesn't matter if it's a church. It doesn't matter if it's a business. It is difficult to get an idea and turn it into something real. And so, today, we're gonna talk about why working together with people and why creating community is an essential part of turning an idea into something real.
Speaker 2:So, but first, John, why don't you just tell us about yourself? I have here your LinkedIn bio. Oh, wow. So this is probably something that you wrote. So I hope it's good.
Speaker 3:2nd at some point in time.
Speaker 2:2nd a collaborative brand builder and business strategist with a relentless focus on empowering people and teams, a proven track record across all levels of business development, including operations, finance, fundraising, marketing, and sales. You've spent the last, what, 20 years in New York?
Speaker 3:20 years before moving to Waco. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay. And there he had his hand in just a bunch of stuff. And so, I will let you kind of fill in fill in the gaps there, John.
Speaker 3:Okay. I haven't read that in a while. It it sounds like a bad cover letter of a of a resume. But yeah. So I I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and went to a small liberal arts school there in the northwest part of Pittsburgh called Grove City College.
Speaker 3:Majored in business because my assumption at the time is that I was gonna go into some type of full time ministry. And my father who he was a great presence in my life and and someone that I admired was a pastor, and he had spent some time in the military and then as a in a mainline denomination, ordained Presbyterian, and then and then started his own church in when I was 2 years old. So I grew up in that world and loved that world and and saw the good that the church was doing throughout the city that we that I grew up in. So I went to school and said, you know, I should probably get a business degree so that it's just not all, you know, all religious focus in my education. So I did that.
Speaker 3:I got a business degree and was starting to look at some business schools and looking at seminaries coming out of school and then had an opportunity to move up to New York to work in a totally different industry in the in the fashion world, which I didn't even know what that meant. And so I explored it cautiously and ended up moving to New York, which I thought would be for a summer, and that was in June of 2001. So 3 months later, the world changed, especially New York City changed with at 911. And so I was there to to witness that and to see the fallout of that, and I was a a brand new New York transplant when that happened. And so something about that experience really bound my heart to the city, and I thought, well, this may not just be a year long thing.
Speaker 3:This is something that I wanna invest part of my life into. I don't don't know what that looks like. And so I stayed and was fortunate enough to to have a wonderful career in that industry, traveled around the world, found myself just in a lot of wild wild places and and learning about myself, learning learning about the the things that are driving some of the largest corporations when it comes to things like fashion, beauty, culture, and made a lot of friends and relationships in the process. And it was a it was a wonderful, wonderful experience and learned a lot about myself, learned how to relate about the things that were important to me that I felt were being were being brought out in in me and seeing how they related to this kinda crazy broken fragmented industry and world that I was a part of and was was frankly surprised on a lot of fronts and but was was moved nonetheless and found myself doing that for full time for the better part of of about 15 years. And some some point in there, I started getting excited again about entrepreneurship and about the business world, and this was a moment in time where tech companies were, for the first time, starting to find their way to New York.
Speaker 3:Silicon Valley was really where a lot of these were started because that's where the funding was based and that's where the talent was based. Then they started shifting over to New York and, created this thing they they they termed Silicon Alley. And you saw a lot of new tech startups started there, like Twitter and others that that that base their operations in New York. And so it was just a really exciting time to be an entrepreneur in New York. And I worked in a couple of worked with a couple of companies, invested in a few of them, learned a little bit about how that world worked, started a a company of my own that was in the fashion space.
Speaker 3:That's where a lot of my connections and friends were, and I worked on that for, in total, about 7 years, but about 3 years full time and which sort of led me into wanting to wanting to expand out into some other industries and fields and was was looking. And my wife, who is from Waco, we love Waco. We would come here for holidays and Christmases, and we got married here. An opportunity to to lead this organization, Startup Waco, was was there. And so we decided to take another left turn and and take it.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Yeah. So John and I are a I guess, we are a we are a part of this group that gets together every month or so, and we just try to pray for the city of Waco. And we try to talk about just things that are organically going on in our city and what are some of the obstacles and how can we work together to advance the kingdom there. And he came in a couple of months ago and started talking about the power of how to collaborate.
Speaker 2:And I'm gonna be honest here, John. Like, I I have historically been against collaboration. And why I have been against collaboration is because I've been burned. And because I have I kinda had the mindset that no one can do it better than I can, which when I say that out loud sounds pretty prideful. But I just I think I can go faster by myself, and I think it's easier by myself.
Speaker 2:And I know that if I need to get something done, then I can have faith that I'm I will take care of it. But the Lord in the last 6 months or so has really honestly, ever since I ever since I came to Waco, he has really kinda changed my perspective. And I think a big part of that, John, was some of the things that we talked about. And so today, we're going to talk about collaboration and kind of the why behind that. And I would I I would love if you could kinda share the story that you told us about whenever you first came here.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, first of all, I think you're probably right. You probably can go faster on your own. And if you're listening and and you've started your own organization or your own company, chances are you probably can do things better than most people that you would hand that off to. A lot of times, making the decision to to go to bring other people into your process is is a is is one that means you're gonna you're gonna move slower.
Speaker 3:You're gonna you're gonna force yourself into a process that is sometimes tedious, that you're not always gonna certainly enjoy or understand. So you really have to step back and understand what your core objectives are and if collaboration is necessary and required. The reality is none of us do anything in a vacuum. We always pull from the people around us, the connections that we have, and the relationships that we have. Doesn't matter who you are.
Speaker 3:Doesn't matter what your industry is. You're always relying on experts and people around you to do it. No one's doing it alone. So we're all collaborating. The question is, what do you need to engage to get where you wanna be?
Speaker 3:And sometimes the only way that you can get to where you wanna be is through collaborating and bring bring other people in. So you have to be honest about that and set the appropriate goals that take into account the fact that you have to do that. For for myself, for Startup Waco, whenever that group of people were determining what this organization should be for this city, they took very seriously the idea that they wanted to create an ecosystem where anyone in the city could start a business and be successful. They wanted to to provide access to demographics, groups of people that historically did not have access to the resources that you need, to the capital, to the talent, to the, you know, the ability to to create what they wanna do. And that's not a Waco thing.
Speaker 3:I think that's that that looks different ways in cities all around the country. There's always disparity. There's always the haves and the have nots. There's always people that it's going downhill and people it's an uphill climb from start to finish. I don't think also that you can look at a few of the standouts and say, well, here's a minority owned business.
Speaker 3:It's been really successful. So there, boom, it can be done. That's a that's a false narrative. I think that to to look even to say, you know, look. We had a African American president, so there, boom, everything is the same.
Speaker 3:Everything's equal. I think that's a false narrative. I think that there are there are structures in place systemically that make things harder for some people. And we have to be real about that, and we have to be we have to we have to ensure that the actions that we take are aware of the reality of of our environment. And so when the people that set up Startup Waco said, we wanna create this ecosystem, they made it very, very clear that this needed to be an ecosystem for everyone, not just for the people that that already could could get the things that they needed, but for everyone.
Speaker 3:So they wanted to go far, but they wanted to go together. They wanted to go collaboratively, and they wanted to involve all of the the representative groups of of people in our city. So it's quite a quite a task. It should almost be 2 organizations. And my that was my feedback when I was interviewing for the job.
Speaker 3:I said, you know, these are 2 very distinct workflows. 1 is very community oriented, and 1 is very business growth oriented. And one doesn't necessarily feed into the other, and I wanted to make sure that that was clear because the things that are needed for 1 are not needed for the other and vice versa. So the answer was yes. We wanna address both.
Speaker 3:We wanna do both well. So that's what we have that's what we set out to do. So so, yeah, we, you know, work with some of the existing networks from funding networks, angel networks, business support networks, and try to get any entrepreneur who has a an idea for a company, a high growth company or a technology company, you know, can we help expand their network to make their company grow? And and it's a good thing to do that. It's a good thing, you know, we're diversifying the economy.
Speaker 3:We're growing. We're trying to see Waco become a place where where companies that would have a really, really hard time starting here 5, 10 years ago can now thrive. But we're also really trying to involve the entire community in that. So the definite by definition that I needed to go out and build a rapport. I needed to build a a collaborative effort that could say, yeah, we're, you know, I can't meet with every entrepreneur in the city, but I could meet with heads of organizations that are working with entrepreneurs in the city, business leagues and chambers of commerce.
Speaker 3:And so, that's what I set out to do. And the story I think that you're referring to was in some of my first weeks here, and I went to a the president of the African American Business League and saw her at a at a community event that was happening, went up and introduced myself. I had a very, very warm reception from most groups that were here in the city because like look, the more help we can get for entrepreneurs, the more doors we can open, the more businesses we can start, the better for everyone, of course. And so, I met her and introduced myself and let her know what we were doing and she had been aware of startup Waco. And I said, look, I would love to come and speak to your to the African American Business League.
Speaker 3:Let them know what we do. Let them know how we can support. Let them know the resources that we can provide. And, you know, would you let me just I'd love to get on the schedule and and meet everyone and talk to everyone, and let's let's let's see how we can work together. Very positive and very, I wanna help you, and and in hindsight, I realized very naive.
Speaker 3:So her her response is a very kind woman was, okay. Yeah. Let's, we'll see what we can do and great and shook hands. And as I was putting my kids into the car, she walked up behind me and said, hey. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:This is so weird. You're gonna think I'm a crazy person, but I'm thinking about what we talked about just a minute ago. And actually don't think that you coming to our business league meeting is a good idea. And I was a little surprised and I said, okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Why is that not a good idea? Is there a better way that you can think of it? And she said, we've just had lots of presentations from lots of organizations and lots of groups, and we've gotten behind a lot of people. And they have all promised that they wanna help us. They want to help African American businesses grow.
Speaker 3:They wanna help us solve the problems that we have here. This is what they always say. And unfortunately, we just haven't seen much come out of those efforts that we've put in. And she's like, I've I've been on the cover of more brochures and put enough nonprofit founders, kids through college, through helping them raise money that we don't have time really have time for that anymore. And, unfortunately, I think the phrasing she used was I've met a 100 people like you.
Speaker 3:And and so it was really a little jarring. And I said, okay. Great. Well, let's, yeah, let's let's meet up and talk. I didn't really have a response, honestly.
Speaker 3:And so I said, well, thank you. I said, thank you for that. Let's, you know, okay. Let let's just talk about how we can move forward sometime. Just kind of a throwaway answer.
Speaker 3:And I was just processing that exchange. And it made me it made me aware that whenever you endeavor to collaborate, you're going to think that everybody that you meet with is gonna come with the same understanding of who you are and what you're offering to do as you have. She had she didn't know who I was. She didn't know what my motives were, but I reflected and looked like and embodied a whole lot of other messages and a whole lot of other activities and a whole lot of other promises that had been given to her and the businesses that she represents in the past, and I didn't know that. I wasn't aware of that, but it but in hindsight, I see how I perfectly mimicked those.
Speaker 3:And in hindsight, I even came to respect her so much for just standing up and saying even, you know, not wanting to be rude, but saying kind of rudely no thank you to help. Why would she why would she turn down support that we we we're clearly aligned in the goals? Why would she not want to collaborate with me on this? And as I actually thought about it, I understood why. I understood that she'd been putting out efforts.
Speaker 3:She'd been opening up her relationships to organizations that were promising help and she had no reason to believe that I was gonna be any different than them. And why should we? I'm sure any of us in that situation would have acted in a very similar way. I've been conditioned to trust the people who come to me and say, hey, I want to help. I want to be a part of what you're doing.
Speaker 3:I to trust the people who come to me and say, hey, I wanna help. I wanna be a part of what you're doing actually mean that. There are structures and mechanisms in place for me to hold people accountable to those promises that they make. There are all these things that that support and undergird a collaborative relationship that she had none of those resources available to her. She had been the recipient of people's stated goodwill and in the end of the day, at the harshest level, those people had come in, taken what they needed for their thing and left left her exactly where she was or worse.
Speaker 3:And so she had enough self respect and enough self awareness to understand that she isn't gonna put her or her people through that anymore. And as I, before even connecting with her again, began to think through it, began to make a lot more clear sense why she did not wanna collaborate. And it became clear to me that, okay, my goal here I thought my goal here was if the stated objective is help support African American owned businesses in Waco, that cannot be my target. My target had to be first, build trust within the African American community, then objective 2, help them build and support their businesses. And so I called her back and said, look, I completely understand why me coming to the business league is probably not a good idea, but would you be willing to personally, like, could we have lunch?
Speaker 3:Could we talk? Could we get together? Because I would like to just hear from you what you feel the needs are within the community so that I can get to work and help brings, you know, to show you that I actually wanna help. And she said, sure. So we got together for lunch a few times.
Speaker 3:Following that, we got together for some strategy sessions. She was very gracious with her time. She was very clear and honest and open about what she needed and her business her business constituents needed. It essentially came down, they needed help with sales and marketing and to understand how to position their businesses, and they needed help with capital. And so I went to work on those things, and I said to her, look, I'm not gonna keep asking you to to meet.
Speaker 3:I'm obviously here anytime you want, but I'm gonna next time we talk, I'm gonna have solutions for these things to the best of the ability that I can that I can bring. She said, okay. And so I did that. So we put together a entire workbook guide step by step from some industry professionals, marketing experts about how to market and develop your brand, your business for all different types of businesses, made it specific to Waco, and provided that as had that as a free resource. We we coupled that with training modules.
Speaker 3:People could come in and sit down with the expert and ask questions and work through their marketing plans together and their sales plans together. And so it was a really great it was a great success. And then we started a microloan fund that provided 0% interest loans, no fee loans to to to businesses that would qualify up to $15,000 to actually help get an injection of capital that could help them actualize the the changes and the growth that they wanted to do. And, you know, I remember, oh, gosh. It was a long time because then COVID had all this stuff happened.
Speaker 3:It was in the middle of COVID that we launched these different things. So it was probably a year after that first meeting with her. And so I'd had several meetings. And probably a year later when we launched lot of these things, and I'll tell you what, she she is probably our biggest fan right now. She is she she comes she came to all of the launch events.
Speaker 3:She promotes it to the people in her league. I still have not been there myself, but, like, that's okay. I don't need to because now I've got an advocate as the as the the head of that group to say this is this organization is actually here to help. But it took it took time. It took time to build that trust, and it took me demonstrating that I wasn't gonna take that I was there to actually provide.
Speaker 3:And, yeah, I think that I think that that was a really important lesson that people, whenever you come to me with them, again, whether it's along racial lines, whether it's along religious lines, faith lines, whether whether it's along, you know, gender lines. I mean, people are gonna come with a set of experiences and expectations that you're not aware of. And so to wrongly assume that everybody's gonna be approaching collaboration in the same way than you is is is gonna end likely in failure. So I think regardless of the type of collaboration you're trying to develop, I was forced into it because for me, we had to include and involve as part of our mission of an organization, all these different groups within our city. So I didn't have a choice, but I thought it was gonna be about doing the work, but first it was about building trust.
Speaker 3:So I would say trust is is the key with that whatever that looks like between the groups that are work that are you're aiming to work with. Understand what that trust is, and it's gonna it's gonna show the way for how you actually get work done.
Speaker 2:Man, John, that's such a powerful story. And you might be asking yourself at home, why is Zach asking this guy these questions? He's talking about starting up entrepreneurial businesses, and here's why. Because whenever I heard that story, John, it was like the holy spirit hit me and I could see myself coming in with my ministry. I could see myself coming in with my nonprofit into a foreign land, into a community or a city that I wasn't a part of and that I didn't really know a ton about.
Speaker 2:And I came in with the things that I had to offer, and I came in with my agenda, and I came in with my perceived with what I perceived as the needs that this community, this people group, that they needed. And I kind of came in wanting to be the savior. And early on in my career as a 501c3 guy, I really did see myself as the fix it guy. There's an issue in a community. There's an issue in a kid.
Speaker 2:There's an issue in a school, and I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna figure out the solution and I'm gonna make that solution happen. And it works until you leave. And then when you leave, they're right back where they started. And one thing that the Lord has shown me over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years is there's so much more power in going into a community with humility, asking questions, instead of assuming you get curious and you figure out what they need, not what you think they need. There's a big difference there.
Speaker 2:And then you figure out who are the people who these are, who these issues that they have pointed out, who are the people that care about it and who are being impacted by it the most. And how can you come alongside? How can you support? How can you guide them to help them figure out how to overcome their obstacles instead of doing it for them? And especially, I mean, just I was there was a statistic out by, I think it was doctor Gene Rhodes who said that 60% of mentor and mentee relationships with kids from hard places, the mentor is white and the mentee is not white.
Speaker 2:And so you go into different cities in America and there's such a it's just different, you know. If you have money or if you're a certain race or if you're this and that, you don't necessarily understand the just for the lack of a better term, the people across the tracks. And you come in and you say, hey, well, it worked for me. So why won't it work for you? I don't get it.
Speaker 2:Well, you just need to work harder. Well, you just need to read this book. You just need to go to college. You just need it. And it's just a different ball game.
Speaker 2:And so that's why everything that you just said, that's why it hit me. Because I'm sitting there on that couch and I'm like, oh my gosh. How many communities have I gone into where out of my good intentions, yes. But out of my pride, have people seen me and they they see someone who is probably gonna do more harm than good? Because my heart does wanna do good.
Speaker 2:My heart does wanna serve these people well. But so often that isn't necessarily the case.
Speaker 3:Let me let me tell you a story that I that I heard along these lines. And I know that we're not talking specifically about collaborating along difficult fault lines like racial or but since we're kind of down that line a little bit, just as an example of of how you could be coming to a situation with one perspective and the person that you're coming to serve is coming from a completely different perspective and the importance of making sure that you don't miss that, which is actually it's gonna be quite depressing, but then I think that it also points to the hope that we have in how to to get past it. So there was a study that came out of University in North Carolina, and it ended up being published in a paper. And the title of the paper was when the rules are fair, but the game isn't. And, essentially, this this, professor ran a study with with their students where they took the game of Monopoly.
Speaker 3:And the students came in that she broke up into 2 teams and the game of Monopoly that we've all played before, except there was one catch. The team a, they got to start the game and play for about 2 hours. So games can drag on a long time. They can go slower, but they played the game for 2 hours. They got the whatever you start $200 to start with, pick the name, do the thing, and they played the game for 2 hours.
Speaker 3:Then team b came into that game after a couple of hours and and were given the same amount of money, $200 to start, pick your player to use start. And they started playing a couple of hours after. Now, if you know Monopoly, after a group of people have been playing for 2 hours, what does the board look like? It looks it's completely bought up. There's probably hotels on every single place that you land.
Speaker 3:There are people a lot of money because they've been playing for a while. Some people maybe went bankrupt already and they're out, but some people have the money's consolidated. And then you come in with the same amount of money, the same thing, just that, but that's the that's the board that you're playing with. In all, like, like, what's gonna happen? You're gonna go you're gonna roll the dice, you're gonna land on a hotel, it's gonna take all your initial money anyway.
Speaker 3:Then you're gonna go somewhere else, you're gonna go into debt, you're gonna end up in jail. Then you're gonna maybe get out of jail. Maybe though you start getting creative and they loan you money to get out of jail and they put on the thing, but you land on another house. It becomes impossible for you to get ahead because the rules are the exact same for you as they are for the other team, but the game isn't fair because the other team came from a different starting point. And in the years that they ran this study, they found a couple interesting things happened.
Speaker 3:1, they found that on a very, very, very rare occasion, you would actually have, through the luck of the role, through a change of of hands of money, through someone placing a big bet and then going bankrupt and then landing and picking up the assets cheaper, you would have somebody who started the game late, make it through and actually become one of the top winners in the game and win the game. That was very rare. But the interesting thing that that did was it showed to the group a that it was possible for someone starting in group b to actually win the game. And the reality is that was not yes, it was possible, but it was not at all likely. The vast majority of people that went in ended up just getting, you know, over overtaxed, overspent, landing on hotels, no no reprieve anywhere to the point that most people after a few rounds on the board from group b said, I was hoping that I would roll the number to get into jail because at least in jail, I'm not going into more debt.
Speaker 3:And so they would they tried to get into jail. And it was just this picture of how people that are born in a certain place, maybe with a certain set of rules, come on to the game to play. And from group A, if you're saying, well, the rules are fair. Everyone can get ahead. Everyone can do it.
Speaker 3:We're playing by the exact same rules, but you are, but you're not. You're not playing in the same reality. It's different. And so it's really important to as you were describing, when you come into a group with a different set of reality, even if the rules are the same, that you work to understand what their play experience is like. And it's probably gonna surprise you.
Speaker 3:And you may have been down the road or met someone like them before and said, oh, this is what that is, but that's not enough. You have to really you have to show humility as a leader to be able to say, I I I wanna help. I wanna be a part. I wanna level the actual playing field. I wanna make the reality different for you, but I gotta understand where you're where you're starting from.
Speaker 3:Typically, what I see a lot and even with very well meaning leaders is that you say, well, this is I wanna make your life better and this is how I'm going to do it because this is what I'm good at. This is what I'm called to. This is what I'm funded for, all these different things. But really, that's to me, that's a quirky workaround to say, I'm gonna do my thing and that's gonna advance me and my leadership and that's gonna lead to these different things. We have to, as leaders, talking to leaders specifically as nonprofits and churches, that you have to do a constant inventory of your motivations behind the things that you're putting your energy into or or putting your staff onto because it's just so easy for our own motives to creep into the the work that we're doing missionally.
Speaker 3:And we have to be able to take a hard look in the mirror to say this is the objective and the objective is something that we feel called to or this is what my board of directors has has said. These are the valuable things. And it's my job as a leader to make sure that all of the activity that we're doing is leading to that first. Any any of the trail of benefit to myself as a leader or the organization needs to be second. I mean, as a nonprofit, we are mission driven organizations.
Speaker 3:That is the return for every investor, donor, person that comes in as they don't they're not seeing a return on their capital. They're seeing a return on impact. And so we have to we have to ruthlessly point that. It's not just success of us. It's success of the mission.
Speaker 3:I think that that is a purer way to look at it, but even for a for profit company, if you look at the profiles of the great leaders of these for profit companies, there's a case to be made that it's through humility and empowerment that you actually get the most out of your people, that you get the most out of the organization. I think authoritarian top down leadership is certainly possible, and it's out there, and it can be successful. But again, to your point, take a long it's just depending on your perspective, take a longer view. If you're the authoritarian dictator, if you're a for profit company and you rule with an iron fist, what happens when you step down? What happens when you leave?
Speaker 3:Well, very often, the whole thing can crumble or pieces of it can come off until either some other authoritarian figure comes in. And then what have you done? You have worked your entire life, and you have spent all of your time building something that some moron is gonna take over and do whatever they want with it. And is that really is that really what you want? There's no way there's no legal way.
Speaker 3:There's no trust you can put it into. You're you're we're all bound by these realities. And so I think that sub submitting ourselves to a mission driven approach to what we're accomplishing, I think as a nonprofit, as a church, it's imperative. That's the only way. We come second.
Speaker 3:The mission comes first. And so the way to get into that fully understanding how it plays out is to get in to to listen, to do the things that don't go fast, that go slow, to constantly be questioning and constantly be putting our motives and our actions back up onto the table and saying these are the best use of our resources and time to get to the place that we want to go.
Speaker 2:So I 100% am on board with that. How do we do that? So these are some things that are just going on in my mind. I mean, please keep in mind that I'm only about 6 months into this journey of like, oh my gosh, what have I been doing for the last 20 years? And the main verse that comes to mind is, the Matthew 20, the son of man came to serve, not to be served.
Speaker 2:And just this phrase of empowering, how can we set other people up for success? How can we advance the kingdom instead of my kingdom? How can we make disciples of Jesus instead of disciples of myself? How can we create a organization, a movement, a something that's gonna outlast me? Because the truth is, I could be gone tomorrow.
Speaker 2:I could be gone whenever I'm 60. I could be gone whenever I'm 80. We don't know. But who are we investing into? Who are we giving our our connections, our network, our experiences?
Speaker 2:Who are we surrounding ourselves with so that instead of you coming into a foreign land and trying to do something, you're raising up people who know that land well and who are in that land and who have spent their whole life there. How are you setting them up for success so that one day you can step out? And there's a couple things that happen there. 1, when you step out, your ministry doesn't skip a beat. 2, the people who you are empowering, they're probably gonna be more passionate about their community than you are because they are a part of that community.
Speaker 2:They already have been born and raised there. And then 3, you can go off and you can do the next thing. So it is just this, like, collaboration. It's gonna advance. It might take you longer.
Speaker 2:It might be harder. It might be slower. But I would argue it's gonna advance the kingdom more and it's gonna last longer. So do you want something big that's gonna last 5 years? Or do you want something that's gonna slowly but surely expand and improve over time that's gonna last 50 years?
Speaker 2:And so how how do
Speaker 3:we do that? Well, there's a lot of big themes there. There's the idea of what does longevity look like. We're talking about organizational preservation. We're talking about secession succession, how you how you set up a a, you know, leadership trail in in your wake.
Speaker 3:Here's the confusing thing that I don't understand is that there are so many leaders, I would say I wouldn't say particularly in churches, but I would say in certainly inclusive of churches that know this. We all know that one day, we're gonna be stepping down from our organizations that we're not gonna be the leader. We we know this cognitively, and yet we lead our organizations in such a way that if we were to remove ourselves, it would completely fall apart. And it's not enough. It does not it is not an adequate answer to say, well, I'm gonna be leading in this way, but at the end of the day, it's God's church and then I'm gonna step out and then someone else's problem to to pick up the messes.
Speaker 3:There's always gonna be messes. That's always gonna be challenging. That's the problem of man. However, I don't think that it's okay to lead in such a way that that requires your perfect leadership and then when your leadership is gone, that it falls apart. So, I think that there is something inherent in a call as a servant leader to to think now and to think about the place that you're going and leading the organization is not about you, you said, like like you said, but it's about the mission.
Speaker 3:It's about where the Lord is taking that body or that organization or that group or is addressing that need. So you've got to settle those things as a leader now because everything that you do will be an extension of that belief system, which is you can't hide. It doesn't matter what you say. You can look at how your organization is structured to understand what you actually believe and how you're doing it. You can talk to the people on your staff and say, how is this run?
Speaker 3:How is this? Is this run collaboratively? Is this run-in humility? Or is it run authoritatively?
Speaker 2:If I were to leave tomorrow, would we not skip a beat or would we fall apart? Mhmm.
Speaker 3:That's a great That's
Speaker 2:a great question.
Speaker 3:And if you say, well, look, if I do if I do that, well, then we're never gonna get anywhere as a church. We're never gonna get anywhere as an organization. But I would challenge that to say, you could not pick a more backwards way of look at Christ's ministry. You could not pick a more backwards way of leading a global movement than he ended up doing. He didn't go big.
Speaker 3:He went small. He didn't go shallow and wide. He went deep and narrow with 12 people. Yeah. He spoke to large crowds of people, but he went deep and narrow.
Speaker 3:That was the vast majority of time that he spent was with the small group of people. Now I'm not saying that that's the model that we all follow. Abs absolutely not. But that was in his case of calling, that was a submission of of leadership, a submission of of status, a submission of place to say to in in submission to the to the mission, to the calling, he subjugated everything else underneath that, and that's a great example of, I think, servant leadership to to your point of it does not even make sense that his purpose on earth would be to serve, and yet it went that far. And so whatever our organization is and say, well, how can we possibly do what we wanna do if I try to lead in this way and not in this way?
Speaker 3:I would challenge that and say, maybe the question you're actually asking is how can this go where I want it to go if I don't do it the way that I think it needs to be done? And I think your assumption is wrong that the organization shouldn't be where you want it to be. The organization should be where you're being led, where it's being pointed to be and that is probably going to require a shift in what you're doing, how you're doing. It's probably going to involve a lot more collaboration than you as a leader are probably comfortable with. Leadership usually selects for people that are pretty competent and high performing and they got high horsepower and feel held back by these things.
Speaker 3:But you don't you don't you don't have a choice. You don't you don't it's not a it's not a nice to have. It's an absolutely critical part of leadership is to understand where is this going, how do we get there. And you are going somewhere now, but is that where you want to be going? And you need to you need to be honest with yourself and understand that if where I'm going is with me as with a heavy hand in this leadership and doing it essentially alone with a bunch of people helping me, then you've gotta be real to understand that you've got a time limit on what that looks like.
Speaker 3:And are you okay with that? And if you are look. If you started your own business and that's just the business that you wanna run, like and and great. But if you've got a a different kind of a call, then I think you've got to be really honest about what it takes to get
Speaker 2:there. So there's the Lord's been showing me this thing as of late, and like we talk so much about being a leader, being a leader, being a leader, being a leader. But in the Bible, Christ talks about being a shepherd. He talks about being a guide. He talks about servant leadership.
Speaker 2:And I just took down some notes about the difference between a leader and a guide. And you're talking about someone who leads their kinda standing above and the guide is beside. Someone who leads their flying solo, a guide works together. You're talking about advice versus asking questions, front and center versus in the background, directs versus empowers, your vision versus their vision, someone who commands for someone who facilitates. And if our call is to make disciples, and if our call is to empower and to not come in and say, here's how we're gonna do it, but to come in and ask questions with humility, especially if you're serving a a community, a school, someone who doesn't have the same experiences as you.
Speaker 2:These are some things that I'm trying to do to make that actually happen. I'm trying to be the one to go into that community and ask a lot of questions. I'm trying to be the one to go into that community and take people out to lunch and actually get to know them, to build relationships, to build trust. I'm trying to ask, what do you want? How can I serve you?
Speaker 2:What are some of the what are some of the needs that you see? I'm trying to add people on my board who live in those communities so that those people can have a voice. I'm trying to be intentional about networking and providing access to the people that I know in building a bridge from the community that I live in to the community that I feel called to. And so I think that that's really important whenever you are a ministry, whenever you're trying to come in and advance the kingdom, whenever you're trying to come in and help, you're trying to come in and support. Those are some things that I'm doing to try to keep it from to try to keep it pure.
Speaker 2:And essentially, try to create something that those people can ultimately, at the end of my time, they can run with it.
Speaker 3:So that's great. And that's a really great picture between leader and and what were the 2, guide leader and guide? Yeah. I can't figure
Speaker 2:out if it's guide or if it's shepherd or if it's servant, but
Speaker 3:I like I like the idea of the idea of the guide versus the, you know, the the authoritarian presence. I think here's the problem. So many people as leaders, because of a lot of the personalities, think that we our organizations need us. In fact, we're confident of it because pick the reason you started it. You're the head you're the face of it.
Speaker 3:That's and, again, starting your own company, that's what you have to be. And this is you're you're picking on one area where for profits and nonprofits really separate, and I even think the church sits even another further degree outside of it, where with a for profit company, you are not in charge even if you're the founder. You're beholden to your shareholders. And the way that you set up your structure of accountability through that through that board of directors usually is bound to the, you know, the amount the the equity engagements within that, but a lot of times put into that as a safeguard to say that we are gonna put this group of people together that are gonna that are gonna, you know, protect at all costs the shareholder value of this company. And sometimes that involves keeping me in charge or sometimes that means replacing me.
Speaker 3:I am no longer the one who is it doesn't isn't my decision anymore. It's the board's decision whether I even stay in the company or not. That is a that is the the way that it works as it should. But somehow, with nonprofits and especially with churches, we think that, well, just somehow we're gonna set up a a sort of, you know, a board in name, but not in function. That we're not going to have real accountability.
Speaker 3:That we're not gonna have it'd be one thing for you to set up a representative board of what your constituents are. It would be another thing for you as a leader to submit yourself to that board and to let them really help drive that. That you've gotta put it on yourself to prove that, that you take the ideas that they have seriously enough to potentially adjust what you, the leader, the founder, the wisest of all in the wisest person in the room, well, you think this, well, they think this. Well, there's a picture of what happens then at that point. And what you decide in moments like that, the amount of authority the the amount of authority that you give that oversight committee and in a nonprofit because there's nobody owns a nonprofit, It's all about representation.
Speaker 3:A lot of times, you'll have boards and especially with churches where a single person will handpick the several people that are on that, and that is their quote accountability. And I'm just sorry. It's not. If you're making the decisions, it's simply not. And there's a whole lot of functional problems that that would come up and say, well, I'm the one that understands everything, knows everything.
Speaker 3:It's people are coming here for me. I'm the one with the degree, with the wisdom on how to build this. And that's and my answer to that is fine, But what is your perspective? If your perspective is this little window of time that you're in charge, yeah, it's gonna work. But if you span out a little bit, it's not going to work.
Speaker 3:So what is your yeah. Maybe in this little window, you're you're the right person to do it all and you've done it and you started it and everything. No. But if you want to go far, if you wanna go along, if you wanna build something that is enduring, then you you start now by submitting your leadership to a group of people that I think on a church, you would say God leads and puts together in a nonprofit that you say are representative of the constituents that you're aiming to serve. And and that's how you that's one practical way.
Speaker 3:That's one practical how of what you can check the temperature of, am I doing this in a collaborative spirit? Am I doing this in a with a perspective that is bigger than myself, or am I doing it in a shorter term?
Speaker 2:It's all about advancing the kingdom, not our kingdom.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But I'm empowering With with faith and especially with church, I just don't think there's any excuse. Yeah. Yeah. And and you I mean, like, it is just all over the the scripture that the the real the real picture of humility comes from being cognizant of the fact that you are both in authority and under authority.
Speaker 3:That even Christ submitted himself to an authority and a desire greater than his own. If that's our picture, I don't understand how we can have leaders in churches that are dictating every move that aren't under the authority. And they say, well, I'm under God's authority. Yep. Okay.
Speaker 3:We all are. But you know what? It it it takes some more. You know, I I don't understand when it comes to structuring these things these things out. There are pictures and there are ways that God said, this is this is a way to do it.
Speaker 3:This is what elders look like. This is what accountability looks like. And so if you're ignoring all of those structurally, then I think that you're ignoring some very clear guidelines that would be helpful for the longevity of your of your church admission, and it's a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to do if you've if you've started a for profit company or nonprofit or or a church ministry of some type. No founder would ever wanna sub subjugate their authority when they brought something that was nothing into existence.
Speaker 3:The only way a for profit founder does that is when when they when they sell out and when and and not in a negative way, but they they they need growth capital or they need money, then they they will sell that ownership through the form of equity to get the capital that they need to advance the the the company, the business. But in a in a nonprofit where that type of ownership structure doesn't exist in in a church or a ministry where it's really about what is god calling a group of people to do, I don't see any way that you can successfully build something with legs beyond yourself if there isn't a dynamic of submission to to group authority.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for talking about how to work together, how to collaborate, what that looks like, how to submit, walk out in humility, all of those great god things. So Great to be here. Super thing before you, John, if people would like to get to get a hold of you, tell them how to do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, if you're in Central Texas ever, you can just you can come in. We operate a a co working space and office for entrepreneurs in downtown Waco. If you have questions or or wanna, you know, tap into some of the resources there, you can you can go on our website, startupwaco.com or email info at startupwaco.com, and that will go to the appropriate person. But if you're if you're local or in town or or wanna come through at some point, we would love to meet you.
Speaker 3:Thanks,
Speaker 2:buddy. Alright. Well, if you guys missed all that, then you missed out. But I know this, you can mentor.