David:

[0:00] Marketing for your business is critical to life of your business.

David:

[0:04] It's telling people what you do and how you can benefit them, but there's more to business than marketing and more to life than profit. And today I brought on Jeremy Reyes from Purpose Beyond Profit, and the name aptly describes that mission. We live in a business economy that uses people as a tool to love profit, but Jeremy is helping to grow a new economy that uses business to love people instead. And so, because people are more important than just a tool to make money, hence purpose beyond a profit. Jeremy, welcome. And yeah, to start off today, you've worked with a lot of businesses. What is one way you have found to honor God in your business?

Jeremy:

[0:44] That's a good question. Thanks for having me, David. I think the primary way that the Lord has been calling me to honor Him is first with my heart. And by heart, I mean my intentions and my motivations.

Jeremy:

[0:58] So growing up, I understood what truth was because I grew up in a Christian home. And so the principles and the right thing to do was kind of instilled in me from a young age. But over the last several years, the Lord has been asking me why I do the things that I do. And when I started to ask myself that question or allow God to ask me that question, I didn't really like the responses I was getting when I was being honest with myself. And so honoring the Lord in this season has looked like first being real and honest about what my true intentions are in business. Not liking the answer, but understanding the Lord still meets me there, that he wants to be present with me, even in my ugliness, even in my brokenness. But he wants to redeem that. And he wants me to not just glorify him with the money that I make, but glorify him and honor him and the way in which I'm making money, the way in which I'm running my business. So I have a feeling that's going to be a lifelong journey, and there's a lot more room for me to grow in that. But it's also been really, really redeeming, I would say, over the last probably four years of just really taking honest assessments of where I'm at, allowing the Lord to meet me there, and Him leading me into building Purpose Beyond Profit.

David:

[2:16] That's very good. That's neat. It's like I have to answer honestly, but it's not always the answer I like. But at least for being honest, and yeah, God takes you from where you are,

David:

[2:28] from point A to point B, and that's great.

Jeremy:

[2:31] Yeah.

David:

[2:32] We talked about earlier you used to be heavy into marketing, and that was like all you did. And then you got transitioned to where you are today with business purpose.

David:

[2:40] I'm sorry, purpose beyond profit. Sorry, I'll add that up for you. Um tell us your journey a lot of people like to see the journey what made you go from marketing solely to to this venture in you now

Jeremy:

[2:53] Yeah so i long story short i grew up in an entrepreneurial home my dad was an entrepreneur and so big family he did whatever it took to put food in the table i learned from him um just going on little uh i'd said ride-alongs um the last interview i did and my wife was like ride-alongs is only in the context of like going with a police officer in a cop car so call it allow me to come along with him right um and so i went to business school and got a business management degree it's kind of like a backup plan in case the whole entrepreneur thing didn't work out but i knew from a young age like i want to be an entrepreneur so i graduated from southeastern university with that and then i was like if i'm ever going to make a leap and start something while i still don't have a family while rent is cheap. I was living with three other guys. I was like, now's the time to do it. And so I went for a full service marketing agency, like you were saying.

Jeremy:

[3:49] And my original intentions, it's funny, I'm talking about intentions again. My original intentions were to bring truth and love to the marketing industry, because I saw it in my dealings with it growing up as kind of like a historically dark place. And the more you see marketing, the more you're, we're probably all aware of how it's a lot of times just deceitful, very, what can I get out of you? Very numbers focused. And so I wanted to change that. Um, but I didn't realize yet at that time that God mostly just wanted to change me and my heart. And so, uh, for the first four months, I don't land my first client, which was very ironic because I was running a marketing agency, supposedly able to help people market themselves. And so imposter syndrome set in, um, you know, and so eventually I landed my first couple of clients. I started this little magazine called This Is Why. And I just started traveling to little local businesses around where I was still living in Central Florida.

Jeremy:

[4:50] And I would just interview them, ask them the purpose of why they started their business. And I would record the whole thing. This is obviously for AI. And so I'd record the whole thing and I'd mainly go back and transcribe and turn it into an article and put it out there. and didn't really get a whole lot of traction. It was cool, but I wasn't really making money with that. And so... Um, I started doing Facebook ads for my dad cause he was a realtor. And then I started doing some Facebook ads for some other realtors, some other loan officers. Um, and then, um, kind of scaled that a little bit, grew that to where I was working with, um, several realtors and loan officers across the U S. Um, again, mostly running Facebook ads. And then one day Facebook changed their algorithm to where they didn't want ads related to housing, employment, or credit, which was all of my ads. And so in one day, I lost 70 ads overnight, lost all of my customers, went back down to zero, not making any money. And this happened to be, so this was senior year. No, this was right after I graduated college. I was about to marry my wife for 90 days before our wedding day. And that's when I lost all of my clients, went back to zero. My wife was still going to be in school. And so I was going to be our primary source of income. And I was like, well, I need to make money now. I need to figure this out. I could tell my parents were getting a little nervous. side, people, friends text me like, Hey, what's the plan? Like, what are you trying to do? Yeah.

David:

[6:13] You have to have a plan. Come on. Right.

Jeremy:

[6:15] Exactly. And so, um, I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to teach people how I landed those realtors and loan officers as clients. So in that time, um, you know, digital marketing was kind of pitched as the easy way to make money online. It was like, just teach what you know. Right. So I started to do that.

Jeremy:

[6:33] And by scaling that and bringing in people, you know, telling them we're going to help them make money. We're going to help. We're going to kind of scale the amount of emails they can send. We developed software that would evade Google spam filters so we could send even more emails. Like it would spin text. It would change the text and emails so that we could, you know, it looks like we were manually sending out these emails, but we weren't. We would, we created templates that would be kind of a little bit deceptive in the sense that we would ask them, Hey, are you offering XYZ service. The business would respond thinking that we were a potential customer, which of course we weren't. And then we'd say, Hey, we'd love to send you 10 to 15 people next month who want XYZ service. Now, obviously we didn't have 10 to 15 people lined up. Uh, we're kind of making

Jeremy:

[7:18] a guarantee we really couldn't make, um, and hoping that it worked out 80% of the time. So I ended up becoming the problem that I set out to solve.

Jeremy:

[7:28] And that was a really humbling moment. We scaled to that business anyways while that conviction was growing i kept running it kept doing it i found enough people around me who said jeremy you're making a lot of money from this there's a lot of good that can come from this with the money that you're making from it um and so we scaled that fifteen thousand dollars a month and then i was the most miserable i'd ever been in my life like i achieved kind of the milestones that i wanted to hit and still wasn't happy i was actually more unhappy um and it was affecting relationships it was affecting pretty much my whole life because i was living this double life i didn't want my personal friends and family to know what i was doing my business and I didn't want my business customers to know that I love Jesus because I knew that the two, you know, right.

David:

[8:06] Wow.

Jeremy:

[8:07] And so, yeah. So the Lord called me to shut that down, start over from zero. And when I did that, about six months was just coming back to the Lord like, okay, God, now what? Like, what do you want? And so through journaling, through waking up at three o'clock in the morning, just started to receive, and other people in training, starting to receive from the Lord what it looked like to use my gifts and my skill sets, but now for a completely different purpose, to love people. And so when we shut down the business, we sent out a mass email to everybody, which is ironic because you were doing mass cold email. But we sent a mass email to everybody who had opted in to receiving emails from us. And we told them, hey, I built this business with a purpose to make money. And people ended up becoming a tool in the process.

Jeremy:

[8:53] And I'm on this journey now to figure out what it looks like to love people through business. And so I started putting frameworks together, started doing one-on-one coaching, learning from other entrepreneurs. as I was coaching them by God's grace, just trying things out, really experimenting trial and error. And that grew into doing little cohorts with like two or three people at a time. We did 18 or 19 of those. When people graduate from cohorts, they were like, okay, now what do I do? And so we developed this mastermind for ongoing support. And then in the last six months, we've actually reintegrated everything. So I'm offering my course and my coaching and my Mastermind as one program that is basically ecosystem of Christian entrepreneurs who are building their business in alignment with their God-given purpose, all learning from each other. I've kind of taken a step back and allowed myself to learn from other people who are in different industries and provide space for people to receive and give to each other in holistic ways, like spiritually, but also from a business standpoint, just teaching each other and learning from each other. So does that answer your question?

David:

[9:57] Sure. That was a great answer to your question. That was a long one. But yeah, very interesting that you said that you hit your goals, but you're very unhappy because of how you hit them. Basically being dishonest and trying to say, hey, we got these customers, but you didn't have the customers. And I found it interesting that you said you didn't want your customers to find out you love Jesus. You didn't want your family in that to know what you're doing. That is a perfect recipe for contention and anxiety and stress inside of you yes um but that's neat that you're able to just being led by a little shut it down yeah start over again yeah first person i've i've interviewed that as a similar background of success with compromise and then okay we're gonna try it in a different way i

Jeremy:

[10:46] Think it was like part part courage and part just being miserable. Like it was hard to get out of bed. I didn't, I didn't like what I was doing. I don't want to do what I was doing. And I got to the point where I didn't want to go on sales calls because I didn't believe what I was selling anymore. And so that was miserable. And so that was a huge motivator. I think that's part of God's grace too.

Jeremy:

[11:15] It was like, if that was really fulfilling, I'd probably still be doing it. Um, but in God's grace, he made sin miserable, um, to point us back to him.

David:

[11:24] Absolutely. Yep. So what do you do now? You say you have this coaching and all these clients and stuff. So what do you teach? Are you teaching marketing or business or what, what thing are you teaching there?

Jeremy:

[11:37] Yeah, there's a few frameworks. Um, That go in depth, but at a high level, the first step is understanding what I call mission clarity. So it's defining the real purpose of your business and how it incorporates your unique gifting and skill sets, how it incorporates serving people that you're actually empathetic towards. You don't just see the need in the marketplace. You see the actual person behind the need and also incorporates your life purpose to love God and love people. How do you blend those three? It's a Venn diagram. How do you build your business at the center of those three circles? right and then from there it it goes into marketing which is how do we communicate that mission in a way that people will understand and be empowered to move in alignment with that mission and so we look at how jesus did it how jesus communicated his message a lot of times you tell parables um we understand truth through the lens of story and so how do we develop stories that help communicate and articulate the purpose of your business um but then also how do you curate experiences and resources for people that give them a taste and see glimpse of, ah, you know what?

Jeremy:

[12:45] Building my business in alignment with my God-given purpose, that's actually helpful. That's actually, you know, and if you can give people an aha moment, a taste and see of what it's like to pursue the mission, it elevates their belief. And I think that's all that marketing is. It's empowering people to believe truth because if they believe truth, they'll take action in alignment with that truth and you develop your products and services to be in alignment with the

Jeremy:

[13:08] action that you're empowering people to take? And who else will they hire to help them take that action than the person that helps them to believe? And so all marketing is, is just communicating truth in a powerful and effective way and building systems to nurture people through that journey. And the journey really doesn't stop because like I was saying, I'm still in this journey to loving God and loving people through business. And so I'm just turning around and helping people who are a few steps behind me in some areas and learning from other people who are a few steps ahead of me in other areas.

David:

[13:38] And that's so true. I've heard that across the board of so many successful entrepreneurs. It's not just about growing a business, but it's me personally growing who I am. And that's good. You mentioned mission clarity. There's three items in there. Repeat those three items in the mission of clarity again.

Jeremy:

[13:59] Yeah, so I don't know how much in depth I went on this, but the first step is first building a once-and-since mission statement. And to build that once-and-since mission statement, you're taking inventory of your life purpose, your gifts, and your skill sets, and the people that you're drawn to out of empathy, a painful problem that they're experiencing that you can relate to. And you build your business in the center of those three circles.

David:

[14:26] Okay. All right. So once you find that mission clarity, that's when you use, can like any business do that then?

Jeremy:

[14:34] Yeah. I mean, every person has gifts. Every person has people that they more naturally relate to because they're experiencing a problem. And every business is about solving a problem. And I believe every person has a purpose given to them by God. It's not something you have to make up or manufacture.

Jeremy:

[14:49] So yeah, I think everybody has that.

David:

[14:52] Okay. Could you give us an example in a business that you've helped?

Jeremy:

[14:57] Yeah. Let's see. I work with, let's see. I work a lot with life coaches. The one that's coming to mind right now is a life coach who was struggling for about eight years before she started working with me.

Jeremy:

[15:11] And she had bounced around with like a lot of different marketing programs of kind of telling her you should do this, you shouldn't do that, but not understanding, not having clarity underneath that to support the systems that she was told to create. And so we took a step back and took inventory of her gifts, which was coaching. There's also facilitation. It was also, she had a very like holistic mindset that she understood that your physical, your emotional and your spiritual health were all interconnected. She also had a background in life coaching. She had a couple of things, like I'm looking for patterns, right? Things that overlap with the people that she was drawn to, which were other moms, because she was a mom herself. And so she knew the challenges of being a mom and raising kids and wanting to pass on your knowledge to them, but also that at times. So we saw that. And then we also saw her life purpose to love God and love people, which is pretty much the life purpose of every human being on the planet. And we asked, how can we incorporate these three? And so she ended up facilitating, now she's facilitating retreats. Um, but at the time she was also doing life coaching as well. Um, and she helps moms specifically who are facing challenges that she herself has, has faced in her own life. And that's just part of her redemption story of God redeeming the brokenness that she had faced earlier on and being a mom and being around, being able to turn around and help moms who are going through that season in real time.

David:

[16:34] Hmm. Okay. So do you help more coaches and things like that? Or like,

David:

[16:40] somebody who owns a restaurant, would that fit into what you do too? Could they do something like that as well?

Jeremy:

[16:46] Yeah. So we help pretty much. Um, I don't do as much product base. It tends to be a lot of service based businesses. You end up with a lot of coaches, but yeah, it can work for any business. Um, we have construction, we have life coaches, we have, um, all different kinds of service based print shop. We have all different kinds of businesses, but, um, for some reason I do tend to attract a lot of coaches. And I think it's because when you have the freedom to build a business fully in alignment with your gifting, it gives you a lot of flexibility versus being someone who's like, I'm a real estate agent. You kind of fit into a box and you can't fully express. It's very difficult to break the mold of that box versus someone who's a coach. A lot of times there isn't as small of a box. It's still kind of open. And so people feel the freedom to express fully the message that god has given them.

David:

[17:37] No that makes sense that makes sense i mean you can be a really good realtor and i've interviewed a few of them too at least one but um so before they come to you what kind of how do you know that this is something they need what kind of mistakes do you see that people are making in their business and you they come to you it's like you know what if you're more focused on your mission you get clarity on that you can have this what what kind of things do they do?

Jeremy:

[18:06] Yeah. Before they come into working with me.

David:

[18:10] Yeah.

Jeremy:

[18:11] Yeah. Before they come into working with me, a lot, the two biggest things that they're facing is number one, imposter syndrome. And the reason they're facing imposter syndrome is because they have been told that they have to position themselves as the perfect expert, the person who's figured everything out, and it, your brain is fine. Your brain is doing okay when it's telling you, yeah, but you're really not a perfect expert. Like I don't think imposter syndrome is an actual syndrome. 95% of the time, I think you're just not supposed to position yourself as someone that you're not.

Jeremy:

[18:47] Yes. Shiny object syndrome. And that comes out of like a lot of lies are told in the marketing space that you can make quick money and that transactions are the best way to build a business. And there's a lot of ways to generate quick transactions in business. And so you end up jumping from tactic to tactic. And the problem about jumping from tactic to tactic and technology and platforms and algorithms and hacks and all of those things is they change constantly. And so a lot of times people build their business on a hack or on a tool or on a tactic. And when that tactic or that technology changes, you have no foundation with it. And so it's exhausting. You end up feeling like a hamster wheel and you can't really keep up with everybody in the marketplace. Those are the two biggest challenges that I really love to solve because they're challenges that I faced myself until I knew my real purpose in business was and how to build profitable systems that were built on top of that foundation.

David:

[19:44] Yeah. And that makes sense. I've experienced that. I've gotten into coaching

David:

[19:48] and early on, I'm always like, I got all this great content. And somebody's like, you need to make it your own. And it just kind of baffles me. It's like, what? You're discouraging me. No, you got to make it your own. And it's true. I had to take whatever there and assimilate it. And I've since thrown some of it out and got my Bible because I know I'm good at. I read the Bible for 40 years. I know the Bible inside and out. And so I'm taking that and the little bit of coaching and the business I have and making something brand new to me that I'm fully 100% behind. I have more confidence and I don't feel like an imposter. And like, like you said, that's what the whole thing was. It's like, just put yourself out there as a, their, their guide. It's like, but I'm not, but I'm not. So, but yeah, this is, this is a lot better way to go about things. So what are some first steps that they could take? You know, if they find themselves in this imposter syndrome and they want to get out of What are some first steps that they could take to try to get out of that?

Jeremy:

[20:56] Yeah, this is not normally what I normally say, but the first thing that came to mind when you said that was humility. You are not God. I am not God. We like to play God, pretend to be God, want to be God. Only God is perfect. And you are given a perfect righteousness that is not your own. That's hard to accept. with an ego, with pride. It really is. I've tried to earn it. I've tried to work so hard. I've worked myself to death trying to earn something that was just freely given to me. I would say that's step one. The second step would be probably a practical application of that, which would be the three circles that we talked about. I start all my students there. I start all my students with taking full inventory of their gifts, their empathy, and their life purpose. as far as um.

Jeremy:

[21:52] Growing the business from a marketing perspective, I'm a really big fan of what Jesus did, what he called his disciples one at a time and two at a time. But when it was time to deliver his resources, the fish and the loaves to the masses, he didn't, even while he was performing a miracle, didn't deliver the resources to the crowds by himself, which seems kind of wild because he's God and he's able to do that. But instead he puts the fish and the lobes into the hands of his disciples and the disciples district passes. And that's how I've grown. Even my previous business and this business, how we ended up growing the most was putting our resources into the hands of other organizations and other people who had a similar mindset, who wanted to partner rather than compete. And we found it to be actually much more profitable than competing over who could get the ad space. We showed up with something to say. with a redemptive story and resources to offer people freely and boundaries and systems for how to work with us. And so I look strategically for people who have a similar mindset in that way, want to serve the same audience, but have a diverse gifting that is different for me. So I'm always looking for people who bring something else to the table.

Jeremy:

[23:10] And how can we leverage that for the audience that I'm already serving? And how can we leverage my gifting for of the audience you're already serving. And I think this podcast is a great example of that because you and I have different gifts. We both serve Christian entrepreneurs in different capacities. And I think it's a beautiful thing. Just a real-time example of you inviting me to come to speak to your guests as almost kind of like a vetted guest, right? Like I'm not an ad that I just, paid a certain amount of money so that I could interrupt everybody, you know, halfway through this podcast. But I have something to say because of what God's done in my life and because of the willingness of you to see, to not have a scarcity mindset, to allow someone else to speak to your audience. I think that's a really, really, really beautiful thing. I think we are, I know it's cliche that we're better together when the body of Christ.

David:

[23:54] Yeah. I hate that, but yeah.

Jeremy:

[23:56] Yeah. But I think we really are the body of Christ is better when we're working together.

David:

[24:01] Absolutely. Absolutely. And God has made us to work together. Absolutely.

David:

[24:06] So how can my audience find out more about you if they wanted to work with you or get your assessment or whatever?

Jeremy:

[24:11] Yeah, if they wanted to work with me, I would point them to my website, which would be apurposebeyondprofit.com. If they just want to like, hey, what is this guy all about? I want to hear about what he has to say. Or I want to apply some of the things that he talked about or ask some questions. I offer a free coaching call. So that's my website, apurposebeyondprofit.com slash calendar. Would those be good? I also have a couple of resources, but that might be a good starting point at least. And then my resources are on my website. So I have a ton of resources there, and you can kind of pick and choose which ones you want to use.

David:

[24:45] Sure. Yep. And I'll throw those links in the show notes and all that stuff so people can get at them. Jeremy, this has been great. I love your content. I love what you're talking about. I love your passion and being able to work with other people to... Promote something great. What is one challenge you'd like to leave with my audience today from anything that we talked about or not talked about?

Jeremy:

[25:09] My mind goes back to humility, which is a really hard thing for me. I think the seven most important words, I was just reflecting on this throughout this week, that we can really meditate on is that God is love and I am loved. If we just believe that, so many of the problems that we face as people, as entrepreneurs, as husbands, as wives, as community members go away because there's a security and a confidence to show up to lead other people. And that includes leading yourself when you believe that the God of the universe is not just doing love, but his love himself embodied and wants to be present with you in every moment. And yes, that includes while you're eating and drinking, but it also includes when you're doing the behind the scenes things in your business. And that love is wanting to overflow into every facet of your life, including how you're running your business and how you're showing up in your family beyond.

David:

[26:13] Very good humility that's got us opposed to the proud gives grace to the humble very good jeremy thank you so much for your time and encouragement today and next steps to put into practice what you've learned is to check the show notes the links and sites and contact information for jeremy will be there and subscribe to the podcast sign up for the newsletter it's a great way to communicate not miss out on future episodes that's all for now trust you've been inspired to redeem your business redeem your time buy it back and use it for God's glory