ASI 2018: Business Unusual

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Mark Finley

Young Professionals

History & Mission of ASI

Jason Churchwell

Jesus’ first miracle was making juice!

Sean Wycliffe

Developing a Level 7 Evangelistic Business

Calvin Kim

F5 Challenge – Challenging the Status Quo!

Michelle Doucoumes

Danny Houghton

Denzil McNeilus

Brenda Palmer

Gary Rayner

Michael Tuazon

Panel: Business and Finance for Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs

Business Titans of the Bible:  Lessons for the 21st Century Entrepreneur

GW Chew

Starting a Center of Influence

Nathaniel Justin Khoe

Pick Up Your Phone and Follow Me

Eric Walsh

YP Speaker Panel

Your First Profession


So it struck me about how many beautiful, intelligent, just incredibly motivated, huge dreams in this room. I mean, if we came back 5 years from now, there's probably going to be several millionaires sitting in the audience. So I mean, this is just raw, latent potential in the room. It's amazing, it's awesome. Great to be part of it.

So my presentation is on the business titans of the Bible. And I wanted to explore exactly what is, You know, what is business? And I think we can broaden the definition here some because business is about you know It's it's work you do when you're producing things you're buying you're selling goods and services but ultimately it's what you do for your for your trade for your occupation or how do you spend your time and It's really necessary and noble I know in Christianity there's these kind of ideas that, you know, if you're in business, you're kind of worldly minded, if you're making money, maybe that's not a good thing because, you know, it's harder for a rich man to get into heaven than to get through the eye of a needle. You know, all these sorts of things are put around there like as if it's a dirty or it's a, it's an ignoble thing to do to be pursuing business. But my contention, My thesis is that business is 1 of the most noble things you can be doing, because we need these products.

When you're in business and you're doing well, people are happy to pay for your product, because you're doing it with excellence. You're providing things that they need. You're doing things where you're innovating, you're pushing the envelope, you're making the world a better place. And this is really what our calling is as Christians in business. And then I looked at the 46 different parables of Jesus, and what I was kind of struck by is that over half of them actually have reference to what you would call business.

So this is either building or construction, farming, wealth, or finding pearls at great price, or coins that are worth a lot, employment relationships between the property owner, the servants and employees. So it's, you know, obviously to Jesus, business is a very important part of life as well and was featured in his parables. And then when you look at what does it take to be successful in business, there's really 4 major areas. There's the planning, organizing, leading and controlling. But I think As a Christian, the areas where you can have tremendous impact is really in the culture that you establish.

Culture is the way we do things around here, it's the norms, it's the things that you stand for, it's the things that you stand against. And then ultimately the values are what drives what's known as causal ambiguity in your business. So your competitors, they go, it's amazing. How are these guys knocking it out of the park every time? It must be their marketing guy.

Maybe it's their search engine optimization. But when it comes down to it, the causally ambiguous part, the part that they can't decode from the outside or even copy, it's your values, your value system, what you stand for. This is contagious for your employees because they see you living a consistent life where you're doing what you say you will do and you're saying what you're going to do and you reinforce that every single day. And there's this saying too, people will believe everything that, They'll believe some of the things that you say, but they'll believe everything that you do. So looking at some of the business titans, my definition of a titan is somebody that changes the world.

And Noah, I mean, you've got to give it to him. This guy was 1 of the 8 richest people in the world, at least for a little bit of time. He had a great business. He had, let's just say, a liquidation strategy. As he was building this, there was a lot of innovation he had to do.

Nobody had ever built a Queen Mary sized ocean liner before. So he had to figure this all out from scratch. He had to be a great leader because his family was either going to think that he's completely nuts or they're going to join him in the effort. And it doesn't say this specifically in the Bible, but I think that if a bunch of people had, they had repented, and Noah was very convicting with his call for repentance. He's basically saying, repent, the world is evil, it's corrupt.

Join me in the ark for this safe place, I'm sure they could have built a whole fleet of them because there'd be more hands on deck to build more and more. But he did what was right even when nobody else was with him. And he saw the big picture. He saw where this was headed even when others were ridiculing him. And I remember when I started LifeProof, people were saying, that's the stupidest idea ever.

Who wants a waterproof phone? I mean, nobody's going to take the phone in the shower with them. The number of investors that I had that just said, you know, this is just a dumb idea. But I stuck with my convictions. I knew that this was something that was a real need in the marketplace and it paid off.

Abraham, moving out of the comfort zone and embracing uncertainty. So God said to him, he said, go from your country, go from your people and from your father's land and go into this place that I'll show you. I'm going to make you a great nation. So God has huge plans for every single 1 of you. I promise you.

God has terrific plans, and there's almost unlimited potential how far he can take you. But it takes faith, and most of all, to be an entrepreneur, you have to move out of the space of certainty. You have to move into the space of being okay with risk and with ambiguity. Joseph. Talk about adverse circumstances.

I mean, his brothers hated him so much that they sold him into slavery. Now, he might have thought it was a joke for the first 12 hours, you know, but then after that you kind of realized with the whole ropes thing behind the back and being on these camels headed towards a foreign country, there's no joke at all. But He had impeccable integrity. So he stood for what he knew to be right. In circumstances, maybe he thought, hey, if this whole situation with Potiphar's wife, I could maybe use this to my advantage if I kind of, you know, if I compromise a little bit.

He was 0 compromise, even when it cost him. And this reputation in the long run followed him. Ultimately, you can't outtalk your reputation. Your reputation is going to catch up with you. And his reputation for being extraordinary and flawless was so great that he became the second in charge of Egypt, the most powerful country in the entire world.

I mean that is phenomenal. So again it shows the unlimited potential of how far you can go if you have integrity. Tamar, really interesting story. So I've been in legal situations where you just can't get justice, or you think you can't get justice. Tamar, she married Ur, and Ur was not a great guy.

In fact, he was so evil that God struck him dead. Well, the custom, the Levitical law was that if the older brother died, the younger brother had to take the wife, the widow, into marriage so that they could have offspring and have an inheritance. Well Onan, he kind of half did his job if you know what I mean. So he kind of like bombed out on his duties. And he would sleep with her, but not in a way that was going to lead to her becoming pregnant.

And so God said, that's evil as well, and he struck Onan dead. Now Judah's going, hey, you know, the first 1, the second 1, I don't like the batting average here, I don't know that I give my youngest son Sheila, by the way, interesting, a guy called Sheila, anyway maybe that's just me. But Sheila was young at the time, Judah said go live with your dad and then when my son is of age, I will let him marry you. Well, basically he reneged on the whole deal. And so Sheila was never offered to him, offered to Tamar, I'm sorry.

So Tamar dressed as a prostitute when she knew that Judah was going out to the fields to look after his sheep. And the deal was she had a mask on, so he didn't know it was her. She said, the price is 1 goat, and he didn't have it. He said, well, I'll tell you what, I'll leave my staff and I'll leave my ring and my cord with you. So she took that.

He sent his friend to go get a goat to give to her for payment, but she took off. 3 months later she's pregnant and Judah finds out and he is so outraged that he says, you are to be put to death by fire. And she said, okay, I just want you to know that the person that may be pregnant, this staff and the seal belongs to him. And she handed it to Judah. Judah recognized these were his own things.

And he said, you are far more righteous than me. And he, you know, he repented from the situation. And she had a son that then became part of the lineage of Christ. So the point is that sometimes when you've exhausted every legal channel and you have great injustices set against you, you have to identify your leverage. And there's been terrific circumstances that I've had in my businesses where we've been in very unjust situations and you have to figure out where can you apply the leverage to get a better result.

Daniel, again he maintained a resolve to do what was right no matter what the consequences. So for him, there were political adversaries that knew that King Darius was so impressed with him that he was next in line to be set to rule over the entire country, and that's noted in Daniel 6.3. So what they did, they wanted to ensure that he would be killed. They set this law with Darius that said you must worship Darius and you cannot worship your God. So he didn't go out to create trouble, but he also didn't go away to shrink from this.

So he would pray as usual by his window. His adversary saw him praying to God, went to Darius and said, he's breaking the law. Now the point is, stand for your convictions. You know, today, you would probably be called a Darius of Fobe if you were standing for your convictions. Because anything that we don't like, we tend to call foe.

But the point is that he stood for his convictions, even though he paid the price, and ultimately he gained the king's conversion and confidence, and the king became a worshipper of God and commanded that all of those in the land worship God. David, hugely scrappy. I mean this guy has got no armor. He's got no military training. He's a 15, 16 year old, probably a skinny guy about as buff as me.

And he goes out there with a sling and a rock. You're never going to win against the Goliaths playing the same game on the same level against them. Now, about a month after we went into business with LifeProof, we had our patents which we had filed, but OtterBox, the biggest case manufacturer in the world, came and filed a bunch of patent lawsuits against us, alleging that we were violating their patents. Now, it was a really long bow in our opinion that we were violating the patents. We really didn't think we were at all.

But when you've got $50, 000 in the bank and you've got $5 million of legal fees ahead of you, and potentially you're about to get, well, you're 1 quarter or order away from being completely put out of business, you're looking over the falls. That's terrifying. And so it truly was a David and Goliath moment for us, where the whole company had to realize our very existence was hanging in the peril of survival. There's nothing like that existential angst of understanding that tomorrow you could be out of business to really quicken your resolve and to put everything you can behind it. Long story short, 2 and a half years later, we were completely hammering them in the marketplace.

They still had their patent lawsuits against us. We had a bunch of new patents that we'd filed that was going to be causing problems for them, And they ended up buying us for a very, very large amount of money because we were causing them so much pain. We were going to put them out of business. So it's amazing what can happen if you just figure out, you just give it all you possibly can against the Goliaths. Nehemiah, he was a true statesman.

So this guy, he is the cup bearer for King Artaxerxes. And the cup bearer tastes the food, makes sure that the food is safe, but he's really in charge of security as well. He's in charge of making sure that the King is safe at all times. Now, he heard about Jerusalem and about how the walls had been devastated and that the gates had been burned and it just affected him so much emotionally. He was weeping, he was sobbing when he heard about it.

And so he didn't want to show this because obviously when you're king's court, you must never show your emotion, you're always there to serve the king. Well, 1 day, His face, he just couldn't help it. The sadness was so overwhelming for him. And the king said to him, what's wrong? You don't look like you're sick, what's up?

And he was terrified, totally stricken with fear at this point, because he's realized, I've let it show. I mean, now I'm in huge trouble here. But he didn't shrink away from it. He recognized an opportunity and he said to the king, my ancestors, their city has been destroyed. I feel, you know, I want to rebuild the city.

And the king said, well, what can I do for you? He said, I need this much time off, I need lumber, I need safe passage, and the king said, I will give you access to the king's forest, I will give you a safe escort, army escort with you. I'll give you letters. I'll give you everything you need. Go and rebuild." So he went there and as a true leader he ignited the passion in all of the Jewish leaders as well to get together and rebuild the city.

So he was sent to Judah with the king's blessing and resources, and he effectively led and managed this whole effort. Again, changed the course of history. So I'm looking, in this effort, there's 2 different examples of business leaders who were very instrumental in rebuilding the city wall as well. And God has seen fit to actually record their names and you can see from the work that they did, so Uzziel, he was a worker with gold, so this guy was rich. You know, I mean he's a major cash cow.

And obviously an artisan that's very skilled as well. And Hananaya, his living was making perfume. Now perfume in those times was very much a luxury good. It was only for the wealthy, very, very expensive to make. And then Malkija also was a gold worker that made very, very big contributions towards the rebuilding of the wall too.

So God really uses people that are successful in business to be able to impact the work to be done. There's a lot of other great examples I could talk about too in the Bible. We just don't have time to go through them all. But Adam, he was given dominion over the entire world. In the entire earth, he was basically prime minister.

You have Moses, who many times stuck up for his people. Solomon, who was the wisest and the wealthiest man in the world at the time. Isaiah was 1 that volunteered and rose to the occasion when nobody else would. Jesus was the ultimate servant leader. Peter, You look at the failures that he made in terms of denying Christ 3 times, and how they could have ended so badly, but he rose above that to become the rock, essentially, that the church was built on.

Deborah was a courageous and fearless judge, and she was unbowed by the intimidation of so many that were threatening her and trying to put an end to her. And then obviously Jacob, again, you know, part of the lineage of a great nation, forgiveness and reconciliation with his brother. And Paul the tentmaker, you know, I know that Pastor Finley talked a little bit about that this morning, but knowing that many of the traders also had to travel in tents, and the tents were their full-time accommodations. So these were the RVs, like the top-end RVs of the day. This is not like some Coleman camping tent.

This was a skill that was, it took a lot of training and skill and capability to be able to do this and to develop that capability. So it was a high trade and Paul used that to support his ministry and to those that were working with him. So biblical principles I like to do business by. In all things, show yourself to be an example of good deeds. So have purity in what you do, in your doctrine, and be dignified in how you work.

This really applies to the second 1. Don't let anybody look down on your youthfulness. But in your speech, in your conduct, show yourselves to be an example of those who believe, and you would not believe how much influence you have. People notice these things. It's phenomenal, the impact, the silent example of your life, the values and the morals you live by, are going to affect people in ways you never know and never understand.

Proverbs 1.5, a wise man will hear an increase in learning and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel. So educate yourself, learn from others, so important. And then ultimately, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave. It kind of sucks. I mean, we're all going to die, right?

But what can we accomplish before the lights go out? You know, this is what matters. How can we make the world a better place? And again, to counter this kind of view that somehow it's unholy to do well, to succeed, to have financial success in life. It's an absolutely incorrect attitude that's out there.

Ecclesiastes 3.13, each of them should eat and drink, people should be satisfied with all their hard work. That's God's gift to you. And Sometimes God gives a person wealth and possessions. God makes it possible for that person to enjoy them. God helps them to enjoy the life that He has given them.

And God helps them to be happy in their work. These gifts are from God. And a very big part of success is having a great partner in life. And being able to have a wife of noble character or a man of noble character, if you're a female entrepreneur, is going to make all the difference to your family, to the success you have in life, and just your general happiness. And I'm proud to have my wife with me in the audience here today, and she's been a very big part of my success.

So with that, thank you very much for listening today. Www.asiministries.org or if you

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