Kingdom Style | Kingdom Leadership Workshop | October 2026

Meet Brad Nelson, Beatatenbo Company’s board member and a leader whose fingerprints are embedded in the foundation of this organization. Brad

leads with uncommon clarity and conviction. He’s known for asking the questions most leaders avoid, the ones that expose weak systems, sharpen

purpose, and protect a company’s greatest asset, its people. He’s been a trusted voice in pivotal highstakes

moments, helping steward decisions that safeguard long-term sustainability when the margin for error was razor thin.

What sets Brad apart is the rare combination of sharp analytical insight and an unshakable belief that business

is not just an economic engine. It’s a calling. Brad has carried real weight, made consequential decisions, and

learned what it means to lead under God’s authority. Please welcome Brad Nelson.

That was a cool video, I guess. But, uh, you know, to know me, really, to really know me, you have to travel with me

because I love traveling. Everybody who knows me loves I love to travel. And you know where I get my ideas from is I see these things that people do. I’ll see somebody and they’re hiking this

mountain ridge in the Rockies and I’m like, I got to go hike that exact same mountain ridge. Or I’ll see somebody and they’re like trekking with gorillas in

the impenetrable jungle of Uganda and I’m like, “Yeah, I got to go do that, too.” And my wife is like, “No, not that one.” But I did it. And then I see this

thing one time where you can actually go snorkeling with penguins and iguanas at the same time. I was just talking to Alyssa about this. You can actually do

that. There is a one place in the world in the Gapagos Islands where penguins and iguanas swim together. And so I have to go do it. And one of my favorite

absolute favorite things about going and doing some of these things is the people you meet along the way. They’re the same kind of people who get a kick out of snorkeling with penguins and iguanas.

And so you get to talk to them. You get to ask them questions like, “What’s your deal?” And why are you so weird?

And on this very trip, I ran into a guy and we got to talking and I’m asking him why it’s so weird. And he’s like, I’m

actually uh I’m a CEO. I run a successful company. And he did. He’s he’s run a successful company. And the craziest thing is he had actually just

written a book on leadership about his experiences at the company. And his book was a New York Times bestseller. It was

crazy. I know. Penguins is not so weird anymore, right? And so we’re talking and that actually wasn’t the most interesting about him. The most

interesting thing about him was that he was a missionary kid. He grew up in the field and he is a Christian CEO and he’s right in front of me. And so we get to

talking about business and like I’m hearing from what he’s doing and he’s talking to me and I’m talking to him about oh this I got to take the

opportunity to tell you about what we do as kingdom business people and I do and and you can kind of tell there’s this point in time where he kind of like get develops this sullen kind of like I just

did the nails on the chalkboard thing and it was about our relationships with people and I was telling him about how we do that and he was like I was like

well what’s the deal? He’s like, “Man, I I care about the people I lead and they’re great, but I don’t really want to get very close.

You know, I I I don’t want to get this relationship with them and then like have to deal with like the HR things.

You know what I’m talking about? Like it’s like I don’t want to have to fire somebody that is like a friend of mine.” And that’s not really surprising, is it?

I’ve heard that from a lot of CEOs, a lot of business leaders over time. Um, it’s hard when you have these deep

relationships with people. And you know, maybe not said as plainly as that CEO, but the assumptions everywhere.

Don’t get too close. Keep your distance from your people.

Care, but don’t care so much that it becomes a problem.

And that makes perfect sense in the secular world, right?

If people are a means to production than relationship, that’s a liability.

But God gives us a different way to think about it. In God’s kingdom, people are never just a means to an end.

They’re the point.

If we look at the Bible, ah, here we go. If we look at the Bible,

and he said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

You know, everything matters to God, but people matter a lot, right?

And he says the whole law hangs on this that we should love God and love our neighbor. And that doesn’t stop when we walk through the doors of our company,

right? When we walk into work. And that means that every single person in your company deeply deeply matters to God.

That means that’s you, the CEO, and even Bob in accounting. Yeah, even Bob.

And if that’s his way, then it has to become our way. And so here’s the shift that we have to make as kingdom leaders.

The team is your mission and the work is their mission.

Now that doesn’t mean that the work doesn’t matter because of course it matters. But if you’re leading people, your first ministry isn’t the product, the project, or the output.

Your first ministry is the people that God has entrusted to you.

And that means that your first job when we lead with a kingdom style is building deep, deep relationships with the people that we lead.

And that’s something that we call relational leadership. And when you lead this way, it changes everything.

Absolutely everything. It’s going to change your organization. It’s going to change your products. It’s going to change the people you lead. And most of all, it’s going to change you as a leader.

As you start to see people more and more the way God sees them, then your perspective on everything is going to be different.

Now, this is fun, right? I could tell that some of you were like, “Yeah, relational leadership.” And there someone was about to give me an amen.

Get right on the edges of their seat.

But some of you maybe weren’t that excited. Some of you clenched. I could see it. And that’s

okay because you did not get the world’s greatest relational leader to come up here and talk to you about relational leadership. You got the world’s relational leader.

You see, I am a software developer by trade. I that’s actually the first job I had was Cal hired me to come be a software developer here. I didn’t go

into software. I didn’t get a degree in computer science so that I could talk to people. I wanted to talk to machines.

Trust me. Trust me. Those of you who want to do more

than that sweet spreadsheet I was working on.

Need more proof? This is me as a baby working on my first recursive algorithm.

Believe me, I was built for this from a very young age. My dad was a software developer. But here’s the deal. God doesn’t call the equipped, right? We

know that. He equips the called. And if he’s on a mission to build deep relationships with the people you’re leading, then buckle up because it’s about to get crazy.

So this whole idea of relational leadership really comes down to two things. comes down to know them and grow them. And we’re going to talk about both

of these, but I first want to start with know them.

Okay, here’s the thing that trips up a lot of leaders is that you think you’re being judged on how much you get done or the results to which you’re being held

accountable. And to a degree, that’s true, right? I mean, if you stop getting results and you stop getting your job done, you’ll probably stop seeing those paychecks, right?

For most people. I think I’m that way.

And there’s a little bit of a problem with that and that is because we think as high performance leaders that how we apply our time should match the things that we’re held accountable to. So for

example, like if my job if if my company impacts title is responsible for creating title policies for homeowners,

then I think my time as a leader should be spent entirely on making title policies.

And we get caught up because that’s false thinking. But if we view our work from a relational standpoint, remember

the team is my mission and the work is their mission.

And it’s no surprise that in God’s kingdom that this is going to be upside down. We’ve heard it all throughout this event. And you know, the first shall be last, right? And everything’s upside

down. And our work should be this way, too. So, as task folks, focused leaders, we have to adjust our perspective on this. And I’ll give you a great place to

start. It’s this prayer. Lord, give me a heart for the people that I lead.

It’s a simple one. And I guarantee you, he’s going to answer this prayer.

Guarantee it. He has for me. And the reason is because he’s already got a heart for those people. And I guarantee you he he wants you to have a heart for the people you lead to.

So, how do we actually go about doing that? Well, there’s a couple ways.

The first is something we call shoulderto-shoulder time.

Shoulder-to-shoulder time isn’t really about the work.

It’s about getting physically close to people.

And this is like step one in building good relationships with the people we lead. So, we start by getting close. I don’t mean like relationally close. I

mean physically close, like approximate, like shouldertoshoulder, like they’re here and I’m here and we’re both facing this direction and here’s the work. And

I’m not going into that with any particular agenda. I think that’s another important thing. I don’t go and spend shoulder-to-shoulder time with people. If it’s like, hey, we got this

spreadsheet we got to work on. Let’s work on it together. That’s not shoulder-to-shoulder time. Um, or it’s like, we’re going to have this meeting and I’m going to come to the meeting and

I’m actually going to take over the meeting for you because I don’t really trust you to do the meeting. That’s not shoulder-to-shoulder time either. It doesn’t mean I’m going to go like I I have some coaching to give to this person so I’m going to go get close to

them. This is just taking time and being intentional about it to just be with them while they work with no other agenda.

It only works if you don’t if you don’t have an agenda.

If you’re there to talk about your ideas for product improvement, that’s not really shoulder-to-shoulder time.

You’re just standing shoulder-to-shoulder and observing and listening to what happens.

So shoulder-to-shoulder, I don’t really spend a lot of time there because the one I really want to spend a lot of time talking about is heartto-he heart.

This is where the really deep relationship work happens.

And to get close, you need the heartto-he heart time. And if we really love our people, and yeah, that’s love in a business context,

then we should be seeking to know them deeply.

not just like know about them and know their name and what their business stuff is, but like deep what makes them tick?

What are their hopes and dreams for the future? What’s going on in the lives of their kids right now? How’s their spouse doing?

Paul really describes this beautifully in Thessalonians. He says, “Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our lives as well.” It wasn’t

just the gospel. They shared everything, not just information, but their whole lives, not just tasks.

And when you look at relationship with someone, it’s kind of funny. Uh when you lack it, all kinds of problems start creeping in, right? You get less trust,

less cohesion in your team, and ultimately lower performance. But let me be clear about something.

Building deep relationships with people and the people you lead is not about performance.

It’s not. It’s about seeing people the way God sees them.

There was this uh old board member who used to work here and he had this particular idiom that he always uh quoted. He said, you know, do you have

the change in your pocket to have that conversation? And I always thought I understood what that meant and I really didn’t because what he was talking about

was payoneses. And so for some of you too young to remember this, but when I was a kid, we had these things called payoneses. This was before cell phones.

And if you wanted to make a call to someone, you always had to be carrying around change in your pocket because you couldn’t go to a pay phone and make the call without the change. And what he’s

saying is in this idiom is that if you don’t have a relational this relationship with people, you don’t have this relational capital maybe is one way

to put it, then you’re not going to be able to have certain conversations with people. You’re not going to be able to have hard conversations.

And so one question that I would have for you, and this is a hard question.

If you had to have a really hard conversation with somebody on your team, and I’m not talking about the you use the wrong cover sheet on your TPS report kind of conversation.

I’m talking about the kind of conversation that gets to the core of who they are, their identity, and the things that they’re doing that don’t

align with that identity. Behavioral things, things that are hard to change. How would that conversation go?

Would they react like this?

Well, man, Brad, he doesn’t really get me. I know he wants me to change that, but I think he’s wrong about it. I don’t

think he really understands what I’m trying to do here. He doesn’t understand what I am so passionate about this. And and really, I just think he’s wrong. He doesn’t care about me.

Or would they respond like this?

Man, Brad and I have done life together a long time, and that hurt. That hurt to hear that. But I know he loves me, and I

know he cares about me, and I know he wants what’s best for me.

So, I’m really going to listen to this and take it to heart.

And you know what? When our love for somebody reflects God’s love for them, that’s exactly the kind of response you should accept. you should expect.

And I’ll be honest, that can seem like a lot if you’ve never gotten that response before. How do you even get there?

Well, I’m glad you asked because we have a tool called a one-on-one.

Now, some of you high performing business people in the room heard me say tool called one-on-one. And you said,

“Nice. I love a good tool. Love a good system.” And you guys are my people. Don’t worry.

But this is not about systems. Systems and tools are not personal. They do not help us build relationships.

So they take away from relationships.

Right? So remember that as we’re talking about systems, it’s about people, not about systems and tools. So what is it?

What is a one-on-one?

At its core, a one-on-one is a block of time that’s intentionally set aside on a regular cadence away from the work that we do so we can sit and talk.

Yes, I know, right? I hear it. And please continue.

Just talk. Surely there’s something else, right? No, that’s it. We just sit and we talk. And this isn’t like at your

desk or um in your office. And it’s not while you’re like huddled around the computer. It’s face to face.

Face to face. Heart to heart with nothing in between.

Nothing to get in the way of that relationship.

And almost every person in the company does this for an hour every week.

And kind of fundamentally the way I think about this is it should be it should feel like two friends catching up over coffee.

I love to include coffee in my one-on- ones, and I’ll just give you permission right now to do the same. You can actually do all kinds of creative things

uh in your one-on- ones as long as they remain about building deep relationships, right? That’s the point.

That’s what we’re doing in a one-on-one is building deep relationships.

And I know I said there wasn’t an end, but I’m going to give you a couple tips because I think it is important. First, as a leader in a one-on-one, you don’t

bring an agenda. The things that you guys talk about in one-on- ones have to be important to both of you. If it was me just deciding all the time what we’re

going to talk about, then that wouldn’t help us build a deep relationship.

Second, you can talk about anything. You could talk about work. You can talk about personal things. You could talk about spiritual things. Don’t force

anything, but there’s no rules about what you can and can’t talk about. This is a whole person that’s sitting in front of you in a one-on-one, and it’s

important that you respect that. that you acknowledge the fact that that whole person has a work life, they have a personal life, and they have a spiritual life. It’s okay to talk about any of it.

I think a lot of people like they’ll get hung up and they’ll like, “Oh, it’s this is one-on-one. We’re supposed to talk about work. This is work time.” Or, “No, it’s a one-on-one. This is about building deep relationship. I can’t talk

about work at all. We’re only going to talk about personal stuff.” And that’s just not true.

Third, this is not therapy. I’ve seen a lot of good well-intentioned leaders fall into this trap where they believe their role in the one-on-one is to sit

there and listen and listen to the employees problems and offer solutions and help them process their feelings about things. You are not a therapist.

You didn’t go to school. Well, probably none of you are therapists. Uh but I didn’t do that. I didn’t go to school for that. I don’t know. Uh fourth, when

we talk about deep relationships, this goes both ways.

Y’all, this is something that a lot of leaders uh forget about is if you’re expecting someone to be open with you

about what’s going on for them personally, you have to be open with them about the same. And a lot of times as a leader, that means you’re going first.

You know, there’s this time a long time ago when I had the opportunity to go to a different part of the company. I was

invited to go there for less pay and lower number of direct reports. So, we called that a demotion.

And I knew at the time that if I was going to be successful, I needed to go get some feedback from the people that I

used to lead there. And so, I did. So, I went and sat down with all of them. And I was like, “Yeah, you know, I’m going to get some really good feedback.” Uh, and what I heard really shocked me.

Actually, I was it was it wasn’t that I thought I was doing a perfect job, but what I heard shocked me because every single one of them said the exact same

thing. All three of them said the exact same thing. One of them sitting here in the room today. He said, “Man, it just felt like I never knew you.

Never really knew who you were as a leader.” You know, we had been doing one-on- ones that whole time and they didn’t know me.

I had never been vulnerable as a leader.

I’d never shared about the deeply personal things that were going on in my life, like my wife and I trying to have kids, like the death of family members,

the addiction that was going on in my family. I just hid it behind this mask where I’m supposed to be the perfect one

and you’re supposed to tell me what’s going on in your life. Don’t let it be that. Be open. Be vulnerable.

So, the number one tip, just do it. A lot of people get hung up and man, I got to make it this and I got

to make it that and you’re trying to make it perfect and I get it. You’re high performers, right? But just do it.

Being present will beat perfect every single time. I promise.

Now, some of you also had this response when I said that. When I said like, “Hey, we do this an hour a week with each employee.” You were like, “Man, Brad, I love this

idea of building deep relationships. All about it. Except that I just have too many direct reports. I can’t do that. I have like 17 people that report to me.

How if I did that, I’d never be able to get any work done. Man, we agree with you. You have too many direct reports.

You do. In fact, at our company, we intentionally limit team sizes to where a leader has no more than six to seven

direct reports. And beyond that, we restructure.

We believe in it that much. And that costs real money. Gina was asking me this earlier this year, like how much does that actually cost to do one-on-

ones? And I it was like one of those questions that like I should have thought of like a long time ago, but I was excited someone was asking me and I went and actually did the math. And it

cost us $3 million last year to do one-on- ones. We spent $3 million doing that.

And that’s mostly compensation, but it included a few coffees along the way.

And that works out to about $7,000 per p per employee per year that we spend on one-on- ones. And that’s a lot of money, right?

You know, having done the math and having done it, I would spend more. I really would.

There’s no better way to know someone and to work with them than to know them deeply. You know, what’s the cost of not doing that?

I had a guy one time I was uh in IT and we had hired this guy. He was a really great IT support guy. Really great,

great with customers, great with technology, super smart. And we were like, man, you you must be you’d be a great project manager. This is back in

the day when I knew knew not a lot about hiring, which I still don’t, but I thought I did. And so we were like, we’ll make you a project manager. This

is great. And he actually was not a good project manager. And we ended up having to let him go because he was actually not great at all at that. And so we let

him go. And like couple weeks go by, he actually shows back up at the office.

And I’m like, “Oh man, that’s awkward, right? The guy you fired is coming back to work.” I was like, “Oh man, okay.” Well, the

the manager told me this story. And he told me the story. He’s like, “Yeah.” He showed up and he actually, it’s funny,

he’s going into the military. He’s going to the Air Force. and he wanted someone to pray for him as he was making this

big life transition. And he knew because we had such a good relationship that the place he could go for prayer was his former boss who just fired him.

Man, let that sink in for a second.

How much does it cost not to have good relationships with people when you can actually like do that and build a deep relationship and that guy

comes back and he knew that his leader was the one person he could count on for support in this major life transition.

That’s what we’re talking about here.

So that’s know them. I could go on and on and on about know them. I this is one of my favorite things to talk about the whole world. But you have great table coaches. They have a ton more stories that they’ll be able to share with you.

So, I got to move on. We’re going to talk about grow them. Know them and grow them. So, grow them. You know what it’s like to know them at this point. And

when you develop a really deep relationship with someone and you love them in the way that God loves them and you’re seeing them the way God sees

them, you can’t help but pray this other prayer.

God, give me a vision for the people that I lead.

Help me raise them up to their highest potential.

You see, that’s exactly what a leader should do from a kingdom perspective, right?

Seek out God’s highest potential, a person for a person, and help them get there. So, you’re naturally going to end up wanting to grow them once you know them.

I think this slide, this scripture from Ephesians is awesome. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do

good works, which God prepared for in advance for us to do. You see, God, Ephesians says we’re God’s workmanship,

that he prepared the work for us in advance. So, when I’m leading somebody, I’m not inventing their purpose, right?

I’m trying to help them discover the purpose that God already has for them.

So, when you think about growth, this isn’t like grow for my benefit. It’s not grow for their benefit. It’s grow I mean, mostly for their benefit, but it’s

grow to get them to the place that God sees in their life. And we need to be clear about something.

It’s definitely not so that they perform better. Again, this is not about increasing performance, making more

money, any of those things. Because God’s vision matters so much more than that.

And this changes how you lead, too.

Because if your goal is to grow someone, you’re not just going to be assigning them tasks. You have to give them something real to own. You think back to

like Genesis and God gave us dominion over the earth. He gave us the animals to name.

And that’s going to be really uncomfortable. This level of real responsibility, real decision-m, it’s going to be hard because they’re not going to do it the way you would do it.

They’re going to make real mistakes, right?

They’re going to make real problems for you as a leader.

It’s going to be messy. But that’s actually how people grow the most is in the mess.

Now, a lot of times this growth stuff is a lot of fun. Actually, I’m gonna be honest with you. Uh the company has invested an incredible amount of money.

I can’t I can’t do the math on this one.

How much the company has invested in my own growth over the years by sending me to conferences, to trainings, to bringing speakers in here to talk to us.

Uh it’s incredible. You know, I remember one of my favorite memories coming back from conferences was talking to Ron Beatenbo and he’d just be like, “Well, are you smart as a whip yet?” and be

like, “Yeah, I think I am.” Actually, everybody here wanted me to have the absolute best tools and training. That’s

because they saw me the way God they saw my potential that God had put in me. And I remember hearing the question like

from other people outside the company, well, you spend all this money and like what happens if they leave? But then the response is, you know, what happens if

you don’t spend any of that money and they stay?

Okay, but there’s there’s some honest things here. Sometimes growth isn’t that much fun.

The truth, growth comes through constant refinement and necessary pruning. Henry Cloud talks about this in his book.

Getting to the next level always requires ending something. And I think Henry was talking about, you know, the activities we engage in primarily. if I

want to get to this level and I got to give up something down here. But he was also talking about the behavioral attributes that cause problems as we grow, right? And if we accept that we’re

all like sinful people and that we aren’t where God wants us to be yet,

then we have to accept that correction is going to be a part of that.

And man, it just hurts. It does. By the way, the world does not view correction as a good thing.

It’s the first thing you hear when you’re about to be escorted out the doors by security, right? You know, the standard HR playbook treats correction

as just documenting your case for why someone shouldn’t be here anymore.

When I talk to other leaders about correction, I hear a really similar story from people all over.

And we should honestly stop calling it correction. We should start calling it condemnation because that’s what it is. Maybe the way

we act when we’re corrected is driven by the same view. We tend to approach corrections as an assault on our closely held sinful identities.

Whenever someone comes to me with a correction, the sinful part of me just recoils in terror.

The enemy starts shouting in my ear that that person telling me this wants to hurt me and they want me to be in pain

and actually I’m good enough and I definitely didn’t do anything wrong and it’s really their fault. Does anybody relate to that?

But like I said before, if I’ve accepted that I’m imperfect and God has a vision for a perfect me, then it shouldn’t be surprising that in his kingdom,

correction is a part of that achieving that vision.

And as a result, I need to reframe how I think about it. And that counts for both me as the receiver, but also me as the leader who’s giving the correction.

That means we have to actually reframe accountability in its entirety. Because in the kingdom, accountability isn’t punishment.

It’s love. It’s not condemnation. It’s not control.

It’s not documenting a case against somebody.

It’s helping someone become who God made them to be. And that kind of accountability is mutual. It’s not just team member or it’s not just leader to

team member, but it’s also team member to leader.

We every single leader in this room needs somebody in the organization who who trusts them enough to have tough conversations with them.

Now, somewhere along the way, I think a lot of us Christians got this in our head that being a Christian is about being nice and agreeable

and that we just if we have something tough to say to somebody, we just should keep our mouths shut. Has anybody ever seen that?

It’s tough, right? But that’s, you know, so we tend to like calling somebody out on poor performance or things like that,

you know, we just tend to be like, “Oh, I don’t know about that.” But scripture gives us the model actually. Here’s uh in Matthew 16, “And I tell you that you

are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” That’s a pretty strong calling, right?

Jesus did not call me to that.

But you know what’s funny is just down the page, Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get

behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me. You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Jesus corrected Peter, right?

That was right after he was calling out his true identity.

Right after, same chapter. And so correction is about that. It’s not because Jesus was done

with Peter. It’s because Peter love he loved Peter and knew what Peter was called to become the rock on which I will build my church.

So when we see somebody and we have an opportunity to help them get better, God’s kingdom says that we should help them.

And that’s going to be uncomfortable for some of us, right? But it’s so incredibly important.

And man, do I wish I could stand here and say that I’ve always done this perfectly.

The truth is, even today, I rarely get it right.

But in God’s upside down kingdom, it’s often the addict who shares the story about being freed from addiction.

And it’s you have to be lost before you’re found. And that’s just true of me. You know, a while back, I had my own

struggle with uh that required some correction.

And the best way I can think about how to explain this is that I was kind of the Pharisee praising myself. I, you

know, if you had asked anybody about me, sometimes you still do, but if you asked anybody about me back then, uh, you know, who is Brad? Who, who is this guy?

And they would have told you, Brad is probably the smartest guy that works for us. And you know what’s funny is I actually loved hearing that. If I’m

being honest, I was struggling deeply with pride. My whole goal in life was to be the smartest guy in the room. And man, I had

done that. I had done that in software, all kinds of technical areas, and finance.

And man, I had done all these things and I was really good at them. I’d been promoted a lot. And I found myself in in the role of CFO here actually at one

point. And I was wrongly assuming I was in that stuck mode of assuming that my value as a person was in my output as a

worker. And I viewed other people that way too. And I was excited to always show like when I was right and that

everybody else was wrong. And I was constantly ready to deflect criticism.

And if I’m being honest with you, this has been a problem my whole life.

But it really came to a head when I had to deal with that demotion thing.

You see, my identity had been so out of whack, I struggled big time with the consequences of that. I blamed everybody

else and I had become bitter and angry about it and just plain hurt.

It was a strange time in my life to be honest with you. I was having to explain this situation to family members and friends and and they were all like, well, you know, maybe this whole beaten

bow thing has run its course. Maybe you should just leave and go. I mean, you’re a software developer, right? That’s what you should be doing. So you should go write software. Don’t go back talk to

computers like you like you thought you should be doing.

But man, I was lucky enough to have a different kind of friend.

Someone I had done the heart-to-he heart with. Someone I had spent years doing one-on ones with. Cal’s aunt who you met before was my leader for a long time.

And in that time, we built a deep relationship.

And I knew he cared about me and wanted the best for me. And he didn’t look at me and see pride.

But he saw a broken person in need of redemption. He saw the vision that God had for me even when I didn’t see it myself.

And he came to me one day in one of my lower moments with an idea. He told me, he got me on a couch right across from

me and he’s like, “Look, I got this idea. I think the Lord’s told me that we’re supposed to start getting into building supply distribution.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s that’s super cool,

Cal. That’s great.” You know, I uh I love that idea. we’ve talked about that over the years so many times and it’s great that you’re going to go do that.

He’s like, well, no. Um, actually, uh, the guy who’s going to lead this is Randy Wilson.

He said, you know, Ry’s Ry’s a great guy and I think the Lord told me Ry’s supposed to lead this. And I was like, well, that’s cool, too, man. You know, that’s great. Uh, Randy, I’d never met

Randy at the time. He was brand new, but he was a real upand cominging leader in the company. And I remember thinking, man, that’s great. We got this guy who’s

going to go lead this and it’s going to be a super successful thing. thing. And then Cal hit me with the third part.

He said, “The Lord also told him that I was supposed to go be righty’s right-hand man in this new venture.”

And that he felt like that message was absolutely clear.

And I remember thinking to myself, man, aren’t I supposed to be the guy to lead something like that? How am I like I

have all this experience and intelligence and capability as a leader.

Man, I should be the I should be that guy. But then Cal hit me with something else.

He told me that in my past work, I had made everything about me. And he was right. I didn’t see it at the time, but he was right. And in this new venture,

it would have to be different for it to be successful.

You know what that was? That was a correction. He corrected me. He called me out for what I was in my sinful nature and called me up to be something

different that the Lord had in in mind for me.

And if I’m being honest, I wasn’t learn all that well from the Lord at that time. Pride has a way of drowning out the Lord’s voice.

But I knew Cal. I had a great relationship with him. I knew he loved me and I knew he cared about me and I knew he heard from the Lord. And so I

said, “You know what?” took me a couple days, but I said, “You know what? We’ll do this.” And we got started and Elevate Building Supply was born at one of the lowest points of my life.

And in my prior life, you know what I said? I was good at a lot of things. And so I thought, man, I can wrangle spreadsh

that were okay, but most of my days went like this.

I’m g tell you the story about the very first forklift we bought or didn’t buy rented at Elevate. [snorts] So I knew we have this distribution company. Surely

we’re supposed to have a forklift, right? Because I I see other distribution companies that have forklifts and I think well we should have a forklift. So I called the rental company. I’m like forklift.

Literally this is how the conversation went. I said forklift I need a forklift.

And they’re like okay we’ll send you one. not knowing that there are types of forklifts and that there are certain forklifts that you don’t want to get.

And I got the one that I should not got, should not have gotten. And so the guy rolls up on his truck. He he gets the thing unchained. And literally, I take

this picture at that exact moment. This is the forklift. [snorts] And he hands me the keys and is like, you could see it in his eyes. He was

like Santa on Christmas dropping off a piece of heavy equipment to a guy. Like I should be so excited to drive this thing off the truck. And I am like I have no idea how to drive a forklift.

Not a clue. And I’m and I’m but I didn’t say that because I was very uncomfortable being vulnerable about vulnerable about those things and I thought I should have it all together.

So I hand the keys back to the guy. Like no no no. You go ahead. Like you go ahead and take this one man. You you’ve earned it. And he’s like no no no no.

You really you have to do this. And we actually went back and forth like that for a solid 5 minutes like trying to figure out who was going to be and and

me trying to avoid look like an looking like an idiot driving this forklift off the truck. And I was saved by a guy from uh Beat who came at the last minute who

could operate anything. And he helped me get the forklift off there. But man, it was a mess. Uh you know, I remember uh trying to convince Randy. Rand and I

worked together and I was trying to convince vendors that they should sell to our brand new uh distribution company [snorts] and I would walk them through

the warehouse and tell them all about our hopes and dreams for this company, this distribution company that we’re building. And by the way, the warehouse was completely empty.

I could not get even a single vendor to sell to us. And so we didn’t have anything in the warehouse. So that guy probably thought he was about to get murdered.

probably thought about calling 911.

We got laughed off the phone so many times, I can’t even tell you. And we really didn’t find any success early on.

[snorts]

At this point, I still had no clue what I was doing.

And I remember trying to load a semi unload a semi-truck by myself. It was around Thanksgiving. I was trying to unload it and it was raining and I

didn’t understand that when you try to drive a forklift over a dock plate that’s wet, uh that doesn’t work. and my forklift is just stuck and I cannot get

on there. And I remember like it was a it was a hard time and I was I was probably at my lowest moment there and I just screamed out at God like what what

have you done to me, man? Like how am I here?

How am I struggling so much and I can’t figure anything out?

This is hard. I don’t know what I don’t know that I’m going to be able to do it.

But then we started hiring people and the Lord sent people. He sent guys

like Sawyer Reynolds who is an absolute genius when it comes to building products. He could tell you anything that’s going to be successful in the market.

Product development, no problem at all for him. And he sent somebody who had managed warehouses in the past.

She showed me how to drive forklifts and even how to sweep the floors, which is a lot more complicated than it sounds.

You know, it’s funny. In my prior days, I always like said, “I’d sweep the floors around here. I love the company so much.” Well, I got a chance to do it.

[snorts]

I didn’t do a great job. But he even sent a guy, Chase Lundstrom, who could probably drive anything with a steering wheel and some things that don’t have steering wheels.

And as time went on, we started to gain momentum. And these people who came alongside me really were the cause of that. My my uh initiatives that I tried to start were always seeming to fail.

The only decent I ever had idea I ever had was to like sell these disclight things, but Sawyer created entire product lines. I mean, literally entire

product lines of plumbing fixtures and capets and vinyl flooring and so many other things that we still do today and are so successful. And every time he

would bring up a new idea in my [snorts] head, I’d be like, I man, that doesn’t even sound like that great of an idea.

But but then again, I’m not actually very good at this, so I don’t even know anymore, man. You just go ahead and do it and we’ll see. [snorts]

And over time, I started to to see that everyone around me was finding success and not me. And the Lord showed me a different way of thinking about it. He

pointed me back to what Cal had said before. And I realized that their success was my success.

and the less I accomplished, the more they succeeded.

And this makes sense when you think about it in retrospect, but it was surprising at the time, if I’m honest.

And I remember towards the end of 2023, the Lord was telling me that actually Sawyer Reynolds was supposed to be the

guy to lead Elevate, and it wasn’t supposed to ever be me.

And that [snorts] my time there was actually coming to an end, and by the end of the year, I was supposed to leave with or without a plan. And I had lost

everything. I wasn’t going to have a job. I wasn’t good at anything I was doing. And I was I remember trying to explain that to my wife and it was hard

because I was like, man, like I’m pretty sure this is what the Lord’s saying and I don’t know what that means and I don’t know what that means for us. [snorts] But that’s God’s kingdom, right?

I was about to lose everything that I had previously considered my entire identity. But in losing it, I had found myself.

I was okay. I wasn’t even concerned about it to be honest with you. I knew that the Lord had a plan for me and I was perfectly okay not knowing what it

was and I remembered what Cal had said about not making it about me and that and that I had finally figured that out and

[snorts] it took me several years but I did later that year Sawyer Reynolds took over leadership of Elevate and I stepped

away and that’s [snorts] actually how the story ends.

It’s not a story about how I found success. It’s a story about how the Lord found success in spite of me. And it’s a

story about how you can’t find strength without weakness.

And you can’t be first without being last.

And all of it happened because somebody loved me enough to tell me how much of a jerk I was being.

And I can honestly look forward to how the Lord wants to continue to shape me in my work. Not for my own selfish reasons though, but for his kingdom.

I think it’s going to be funny to come back in like 10 years. You guys come back in 10 years and I’ll be telling a different story about how the Lord has has healed me in the next season.

And it’s so funny that all of this happened right in the middle of the marketplace. Not this isn’t a church, y’all. Didn’t happen in a church.

Happened in work. And that matters, right? Because if God has entrusted people to your leadership, then your ministry is already right in front of you. It’s your team.

They’re not an interruption of the work.

They are the work. So look, if you remember nothing else, remember the team is your mission. The work is their mission.

And that means this is what it should look like. You need to know them and you need to grow them. That’s it.

And if a spreadsheet obsessed guy like me can do it, so can you.

[applause]