Hello everyone everywhere.

Pastor Bob Thibodeau here.

Welcome to the Faith Based Business podcast.

We are so blessed you're joining us here today.

Oh, we gotta have a good time today.

Today's guest is Ken Kelly, founder and CEO of Never Settle, an award winning digital marketing agency that can help you build a bigger story, reach more people and do more through web design, branding, e commerce and marketing.

Praise the Lord.

Ken Kelly does more than just run an ad agency, though.

He has a passion also to see the end to human trafficking in our lifetime, which I focused on before some other podcast episodes.

Amen.

And Ken also writes a range of thought provoking articles on business and culture, etc.

Help me.

Welcome to the program, Ken Kelly.

Ken, it is such a blessing to have you with us today.

Brother Robert, thanks for having me on the podcast.

I love your energy.

Got, you know, young kids at home and was up all night and just hearing that intro, just speaking energy into my life.

So I love that.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, other than that brief information I just shared with our audience, could you tell us in your own words, who is Ken Kelly?

Oh, man,.

You know, anytime I'm asked that question, the first thing that happens is like, who does God say I am?

Like, who does my father say that I am?

And I've spent a lot of time just listening, what does the Holy Spirit say about my identity?

And so when you, when you ask that question, the first thing that comes up is a few years in it.

And I feel like in the seasons in my life, God has spoken different things over me and I believe them to all be true.

And in this season, a few years ago, I was going through a challenging time and he gave me six words, and those are warrior, general, faithful disciple, and pro athlete.

Those things really encompass, I think, a really good holistic view of who is Ken Kelly?

But first and foremost, I'm a son, you know, son of the father and, and man grafted in like nothing, nothing earned.

Right.

Just, just adopted.

Right.

But, but I stand on that.

Oh, that foundation, that, man, I, I really, I'm really been, I'm really part of the family, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Amen.

And your, your, your work, the, the Never Settle company, you reference that as a family as well?

Yeah, I, I try to be careful not to say that words, but our team, it's, it's interesting.

We, we're hiring a new CEO right now and he's interviewed our whole team and most of them use the word family.

And one of the things that I've learned in is I think early on I would say that.

And then I learned that there's authority that can influence people below you say in an org chart.

Right.

Like we're all, we're on the same playing field.

But yeah, and, and sometimes people can, can kind of fall into things because they want to align to their boss or you know, approve them or whatever.

But, but to me really is, it's some of my favorite people in the world to spend time with.

These are people that I know deeply in their personal lives.

They know everything about my personal life.

And, and there is no separation between what goes on at home and what goes on at work.

And so we really get to live that together in a powerful way.

And really they're just.

We know that we spend over half of our awake time working.

And so when we hire people, it's really important to us that we hire people we like.

We're not just hiring people that do a good job.

Right.

These are people that I want to spend eight hours a day with.

And you know, we're all.

Never Settle is very, it's a very mixed group of, you know, of people.

We have, we have most of the world major faith belief systems in, in the company, but they're people are incredible to work with.

And yeah, we get, we get an opportunity every day to help, you know, purpose driven brands get, get their mission broadcast to the world right through, through marketing, design, web development, things like that.

Amen.

Amen.

Yeah, I just glossed over Never settles description and mission.

Can you fill in the gaps for us?

I mean what is Never Settle all about?

Yeah, so Never Settle is it's about a couple things and if you were to look kind of in our mission and vision statements, but I think first and foremost we want our people, we want to create a business that's has a thriving culture where people thrive both in and outside of work.

And to do that we have to have a lot of resources.

And to get a lot of resources mean we have to do really quality work.

And so this ties into the name Never Settle.

That's kind of our axiom that's always calling us up to can we really create meaningful results for our clients that we serve?

And in return we can make money and then we can push that back into our team and we can create things for them to have, you know, incredible working hours.

No one works more than 40 hours a week ever with the exception of like I want to say in the last year to two kind of urgent situations where we had some people cross that in the team.

And so, you know, good, good vacation and we can always do better.

But that's where we're pushing it.

And part of it is we understand that people need resources to thrive.

It just doesn't just happen on its own.

Right.

So we want to create, we want to first create a place where our people thrive because everything's built around the team.

And in that, you know, we're doing marketing and all the things I said, but ultimately we take that profit and we push it into fighting trafficking.

And so the, our vision is to see trafficking end in our lifetime.

And without God, that's completely impossible.

Even, even with God.

I find myself so many times in a year saying, like, you know, master, like, increase my faith.

Like I will.

Like, I believe you said this, but I want to, like, you know, doubts creeping in.

This feels like such an overwhelming problem.

How do, how do we do this together?

It's going to take, it's going to take everybody.

Oh yeah, but that's, you know, business is, the agency is really just our vehicle.

I think of it as a vehicle of how we're getting to the destination of the calling that God's given us.

And so if you were to look at our mission statement would say to create cultures of discipleship through business and innovation.

And so that goes back into that culture of discipleship is how do we first be discipled and then how do we disciple others and really take care of people.

Amen.

And then from that, where is that all going?

And for us it's trafficking.

Yeah.

Amen.

Why the name Never Settle?

That's an interesting name.

When I started the company in 2012, I was considering some other things and I'd come out of management consulting and then I went to Silicon Valley and did tech startups and all that and learned an incredible amount from these great high performance cultures and really kind of societies.

And when I went to start Never Settle, I wanted to bring all of those things together, but I wanted to build a company that was based on biblical values and I didn't really understand how to do that.

And, and after Silicon Valley, I was part of a tech startup in Denver and didn't really agree with the morals, although everything was legal to me morally, it felt off.

And so we ended up, or there was three of us ended up walking away.

We were all friends and believers and I was just like, what would it look like to build a business that's built on biblical values?

And I was trying to use all these words to describe it.

And one of the guys that had also Walked away from the business, who's still an incredible friend of mine and mentor.

And I'm going through all this exercise of how do we name?

Like what is the name?

And he goes, and we've been talking for a couple months on it.

And he goes, it's in your signature, you know, and this is back when I was using Hotmail and everyone's got a little tagline in their signature.

And mine always said, never settle.

And it was kind of just a life mantra I had always carried.

And he goes, that's the name.

He goes, look in your signature.

That's the name of your company.

And it just hit me, I was like, okay, that's.

It resonated so deeply.

And while we have so much to grow and learn in this, the purpose and the vision behind that name was what would it look like to never settle?

And doing the right thing?

Like that was, that's the baseline.

And then what does it look like to align the company to biblical values?

And then, you know, more forward facing is how do we never settle in the work that we're doing right?

And how do we have high performance work?

And one of the things that people misunderstand, I think a lot when they, when they say never settle is sometimes people are like, hey, you gotta take a break, you gotta rest, you gotta do all these things.

And it's as though they think that the term or the phrase never settle means, you know, always having the gas down and just, just going to the metal and that create, you know, that can create burnout and everything.

And it actually means quite the opposite.

And I had a, had a counselor that was, I took a little sabbatical and I had a pastor that was mentoring and coaching me through it.

And he was, it was, encouraged me to really start writing about this, this philosophy of never settle.

And one of the breakthroughs that I had was, was being able to put to words what had always been in my heart.

And never settling is actually like, it's a holistic approach.

So while we want to do incredible work, I need to figure out how do I be an incredible father and husband and how am I healthy?

So I'm not going to, you know, for me, like not going to settle on how many hours of sleep I'm going to get every night, which means I have to cut off at a certain time, which means I have to eat at a certain time.

I can't have blue light.

And all these things are going to help my sleep.

And so to never settle and to really have high performance is is a holistic thing.

It's not just.

It's not just grind.

Right.

It's not.

Then.

And sometimes it gets misunderstood.

Amen.

Amen.

That's good.

Why digital marketing, though?

I mean, what.

What did you see that drove you into the world, the online world, like that?

Yeah, it just.

It was opportunity.

Um, you know, if I.

If I chose my own destiny, I would have been a rock star or professional athlete.

And I'm still.

I'm still making a run at.

At beach volleyball, but really, it's.

It's one of those things where I've had a lot of conversations with God just saying, like, you know, I don't know that this is, like, this isn't what I'm passionate about.

And I've.

And I've asked God, like, does that.

Does that mean I'm in the wrong thing?

And it's like, no.

Like, he opens doors and am I obedient to walk through it?

Right.

And so it was just a natural progression.

Everything we did in management consulting was technology.

And then I got invited to go the bay and start this company, and that was technology.

And then I came home back to Denver, and we were doing agency work at that company that I left.

And the day that I.

That I quit, I actually didn't have a plan.

I just knew.

I knew I wasn't supposed to be there.

And I'm walking.

I turned my resignation letter and I'm walking out.

And a friend of mine who we did.

I just.

I helped it.

We.

We raised money for a movie called Blue Like Jazz, which was.

Is a book written by Don Miller.

It was a New York Times bestseller.

And they turned it into a film.

And it was an incredible film.

And.

And me and the head producer were on the roadshow raising some funds for a couple years before I had quit at this company I was mentioning.

And I literally walk out the door.

I have no plan.

I think we're going to get married in three months to my bride.

And before I quit, I told her, I just said, hey, or said, hey, I have to leave.

I don't have a plan.

I don't know where I'm going or how I'm going to provide.

I will figure it out.

But just.

This is.

This is tough, you know, going into getting married right away.

And so I walk out the door and I get this call from this guy.

His name's Eric Goss, and he's at Creative Trust Media.

And he's.

And he's.

He says, hey, Ken.

He goes, you do.

You do marketing?

And Web, you know how to do web development, marketing and stuff.

Right.

And you have a business that does that.

And I was like, well, I was like, it's kind of interesting, Eric.

I was like, I had a business that does that, but I actually am walking to my car right now and I just resigned.

And he goes, he goes, okay.

He goes, well, do you think you could still do it?

And I was like, yeah, I definitely could.

I was like, do you want me to do it for you?

And he's like, yeah.

And so they had a portfolio.

Creative Trust has a portfolio of a bunch of clients, you know, like authors and artists and musicians and things like that.

And so we ended up doing a bunch.

A bunch of work for them.

And that was how we kind of kicked it off.

And it was pretty incredible to see God provide that.

And yeah, it was on the way to the car.

Yeah, it was.

And it, you know, it sounds glam.

I mean, it's both.

It's like God.

God provided, you know, we had food.

But I don't know.

I want to say the first five plus years was like under $30,000 that I made every year.

And Denver's not a cheap city to live in.

And, yeah, you know, maybe a little more than that in the year four and five, but it was.

It was it.

And.

And we were working hard.

We were working hard.

But God provided in a way that I had never expected.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amen.

Amen.

And let's look at the.

The digital landscape, the marketing landscape today.

How has that evolved from when you started to where it is now?

Yeah, it's a lot.

I think the basics are still there.

Obviously, everyone's talking about this, but AI is changing at all.

So if I were to talk about how it's evolved or how it's changed over time, I would say it's incrementally changed in the.

In the last.

I think I've been doing it for 17.

This particular thing for 17 years, but in the last year, it's.

It's a whole new world.

So we could, you know, we could talk about either one, but I think that AI has really changed.

It's given a lot of people tools and power to do things they would have hired other people to do.

It also gives people power to broadcast their message, but in that we already had a lot of noise and clutter, and now the volume is so high.

Right.

People can spin up AI and say, I want to send all these emails for me or these text messages or whatever it is.

And so as consumers, there's now even more that's coming our way.

And so I'd say that's probably one of the things that's changed is just the access to other people's information and the ability to communicate to them is one of the things that I think people or consumers and myself included, we're being bombarded by this stuff.

So that's probably one of the bigger changes is just more people have access to ways to communicate to us.

Yeah.

Amen.

Amen.

What do you foresee coming down the road in the near future?

Things that you and your company are preparing for?

Yeah, I think preparing to maintain the human connection.

I think there's a really big question for people in authority and business owners to be asking, what is our, like, obligation knowing that all this is coming?

Right.

I think as things get better, more tools are available, things get efficient, people at the top will probably do the best.

And then what's the obligation to the people that have served us and that are on our teams?

And, you know, you're starting to see big layoffs and stuff.

And so I think really looking at, for us for.

And so for me, what that looks like is I say, okay, I know that this is coming for our company.

How do we position ourselves in a place that we can still add value to our customers through the team that we have not?

How do we do this?

Better make the same money, fire half of our staff and double our profit?

Right.

I'm saying, like, how do we have.

How do we have legs to see this through the long haul where our people and the people that I love and care for and that our people have places of employment?

And ultimately that's to me too, I mean, like, if we're not protecting our people, it's going to come for me as well.

And so that's one of the things.

And I think we're saying, how do we leverage AI for the things it's really good at so that we can double down on the things that humans are really good at?

Yeah.

So the creativity, the innovation, the relationship, the being able to see the full picture, come up with a story.

Those are the things that were levered that we're kind of leaning into.

And we're also leaning into larger businesses, I would say, that have that are a great fit for us because when people hire us, they're really hiring like an elite team of people that are very specific.

So, you know, you could, if, you know, you could hire the army and the army could go, you know, do a big battle, or you could hire Seal Team 6, they're going to be very specific and surgical for a high risk and hard mission.

And that's more kind of the lane of what we're in that people hire us for.

Yeah, that's a good exclamation.

Amen.

Let's shift gears really quick.

In time, we have left this.

You know, I mentioned how you.

And you also brought it out.

You have a focus on ending human trafficking.

How did you get involved with that and what impact are you making?

Yeah.

When?

Seven.

17, 18.

17 Years ago, a guy named Brad Riley, who's a dear friend, was running.

Is.

Was running an organization called I Empathize.

And he came to my church and he explained that this was going on, and it was going on in every city, including in Denver where I lived.

And I was like, that's the worst.

I didn't know that that was even a thing.

I didn't know that people were.

Were willing to do this, did this.

But if it is happening, it certainly isn't happening in Denver, let alone the US like maybe, maybe in some other countries, you know, and I, and I'd done missional work in multiple places around the world.

I've been to maybe 35 countries and I've seen parts of the world and, And I just kind of shuffled it off.

But I, but it was just stirring in me so deep and I'm.

And I, I never just reject things.

I want to be curious in life and do my own research.

So I went home and I was like, there's no way this is true.

And, you know, instantly it was like, oh, this isn't just true.

It's way worse than you think.

It's way worse than what he said.

It's.

It's not just in Denver.

It's in every suburb.

It's like, you know, everywhere.

And something can, like God convicted something in me that just broke my heart.

Just like it was like a.

It was a switch.

It was like, if this exists, like, I don't know what to do, but I want to do something.

And so I would just say, God broke my heart for this.

This thing that's going on in this world, this atrocity.

And.

And so I started just learning and then I got behind.

I empathize and was like, how can I help?

What can I do?

And over the years, I would say that's been.

The approach is consistently learning.

We've tried a lot of things.

Some of them haven't worked that well.

Some of them have been really meaningful.

Currently, the space that we find ourselves in and Myself in included, is really generating the resources to empower people that are doing this.

And.

And so part of that is we build technologies for nonprofits that are in the space.

We do marketing for them, we do branding, we fund them.

But really, for us to make the impact that we want to see, we need to grow so that we can pour more resources into those organizations.

Yeah.

It is absolutely tragic.

I've interviewed at least a dozen people over the year who.

That's their calling we talked about before, the recording callings.

That is their calling.

They've been doing it for years.

Yeah.

And, you know, trying to rescue girls and get them reunited with their families and.

And different things like that.

And it is absolutely horrific.

And then, you know, with everything that happened, past few years with the open borders and.

And you know what, they have 50,000 missing children.

I don't know where they went.

You know, I mean, that is absolutely horrific.

That's right.

And, you know, any.

Any help that.

That you're providing is just adding to.

To the ability of rescuing even one.

I mean, one is worth it all, too.

Yeah.

We would like to see all of them rescued, but each one makes a difference.

Absolutely.

And there's, you know, and there's a few, you know, you're talking about rescue, but there's.

There's really three plate, three places.

You know, it's prevention, rescue and.

And then restoration.

Right.

And so there's great.

There's space for everybody to get involved.

Some people, like, even just talking about it will crush them.

And some parts.

I think we should.

God, we want to be broken for things that God's heart's broken for.

But if it's debilitating, maybe that's not your calling.

Right.

But there's.

The prevention side is education and awareness and all this stuff.

But I'm a big fan of.

Do you know.

Have you ever heard of Jamie Winship?

Do you know his story?

No.

Okay.

Incredible.

I. I know we have a short time, so I won't.

So I won't tell his story, but he said something five years ago, and.

And he has a track record of doing things like this, but he was like, if we introduce the traffickers to Jesus, we could see trafficking end.

There you go.

Something that hit me so hard of just like, how do we see this end?

Because there's.

We're doing all these things.

There's so many people doing things.

And I was like, that's a strategy that could actually end this.

And so that's.

I'm.

I'm kind of leaning into and really excited about what God's going to do there.

Amen.

Amen.

Is his.

He have a ministry that is doing that.

I'd say it's one of the things they're doing.

Yeah.

So he, he was a private detective and then he got called the Middle east and he was introducing some of the like world's worst terrorist leaders to Jesus to, to end terrorism.

And then he came home and he runs a, he runs a nonprofit called Identity Exchange.

But one of the things that he is leaning into is trafficking.

Yeah.

Amen.

I have to try and get him on the program.

Amen.

Yeah.

Praise the Lord.

Amen.

That's awesome.

Awesome.

Ken, this has been so interesting.

How can someone get in touch with you or get in touch with Never settle.

Find out more information about you and your company?

Yeah.

The best way would just be through our website, which is just never settle.it's that's right.

All these, all these new acclimate whatever the things on the end now.

Amen.

Yeah, that's like our, you know, Jesus said tv.

You know, I was like, I wonder if I could do that.

Oh, I can.

Wow, that's great.

I'm excited for that.

I'm excited to see what, what you're getting ready to do there.

Well, I'll put links to all this stuff down in the show notes below, folks.

Man, you have to get in touch with Ken and never settle.

I mean, if you have a business, you know someone who has a business, you know someone who's a Christian and in business, I tell you what, his team, you heard all about it.

His team is loyal, they're dedicated, they're believers, and they will work for you.

Amen.

Just reach out, see if it's a fit, if it's not, what it costs you 10 minutes of your time.

But if it is, it could take you to a whole nother level.

Amen.

Praise God.

I'll put the links down the show notes below.

It's all the time we have now as we wrap up.

I want to remind you one more time, never settle.

In fact, if you have a business, especially a faith based business, folks, reach out to Ken Kelly and the folks over at Never.

So see how they can help you grow and do more with what you have.

Amen.

Ken, thank you again for coming on the program today, my brother.

I really enjoyed this cover conversation.

Thanks, Robert.

Folks, that's all the time we have for Ken, Ken Kelly and myself passed about reminding you to be blessed in all that you do.