I wanna mobilize people because they'll come alive

when they're deploying truth.

For me, truth in somebody's head just makes them more religious.

Truth practiced, even with failure makes them more dangerous.

In a world where business and purpose intersect, how can

leaders transform their companies to create a positive societal impact?

Welcome to Seat Go Create, where we're joined by Brett Johnson,

A seasoned marketplace veteran, thought leader, and innovator who

has helped redefine the purpose of businesses beyond the bottom line.

Brett, with his vast experience working with over 400 companies worldwide, has

made a significant impact in guiding corporations toward a greater purpose.

As the founder of the Institute for Innovation Integration and Impact

Incorporated and a prolific author, his work spans leadership, societal

transformation, and work life integration.

Brett, welcome to Seek Go Create.

I.

Thank you so much.

I'm so glad to be here with you.

I'm looking forward to the conversation.

I am looking forward to the conversation too.

Like I said, right before we hit record, you're such a perfect fit for

interacting with redefining success in leadership and business and ministry.

It sounds like that's somewhat been your mission from what

I've read and studied on you.

So, but, but before I dive into that deep end and we talk about what part

of the world you're in and all that.

Brett, if somebody asks you what you do, what do you typically tell 'em?

Well, one of my passions is to abolish dichotomy, so I.

Teach, I write, I co-lab with my wife to abolish the dichotomy, uh, is a

negative, and the the positive is to model integration, to mobilize and to

release the identity of leaders, uh, and to inspire multi-generational households.

So that's part of what we do as we repurpose businesses and seek to

bring about societal transformation.

And then part of that is what we call comprehensively capitalizing things with

different types of capital, including not just intellectual and relational and

financial, but spiritual capital as well.

So it's a bit of a, a ball of things.

It, it is quite a bit.

And we'll, I think we're gonna have a wide ranging conversation here.

You've got so many books that are fascinating.

I wanted to read, I wanted to read multiple ones.

I didn't have the time before our conversation and the resources you have.

But, but when, I mean, when, when you bring even a small amount of what you

just said, when you bring that up to people, what's the response you get?

'cause that's, that's big.

That's there's a lot there, Brett.

Yeah, there, there is.

And you know, sometimes it can seem a little bit like you're

trying to boil the ocean.

And uh, I remember once Tim, I was flying into France at the south of

France and it was, the flight had been a 3:00 AM flight out of Tel Aviv.

And so it was five in the morning.

And I looked out the window and I said, God, I don't have it in me to

tackle every giant in every country.

And he said, yeah, but you can tackle the same giant in every country.

And so he didn't let me off the hook.

And so that giant for me has been the secular sacred dichotomy.

You know, this, you know, this is spiritual and this isn't, and some

things are gods and some things aren't.

But so my passion is everything is Gods and how do we find God?

In every part of society.

So that's a big umbrella.

So, and with a view to bringing about change in society now to do that,

we have to unlock everyday people.

Uh, many, many years ago I was leading a church in South Africa.

I was also working at Pricewaterhouse and consulting to a mission organization,

but I found that most of the people were sitting in my church bored out of their

skulls, under deployed, underutilized.

And these weren't the super spiritual types who liked to

preach or evangelize on the street.

These were the finance, marketing, it, sales, everyday business people

who were second class citizens.

And I thought, man, we have to really, really change that.

And so that was in the early 1980s, 1981, that I could just see that

problem and I thought, man, I really need to mobilize the people.

But that means mobilizing everyday marketplace people.

And so.

So that's at the heart of it.

And uh, it does sound a lot, but the real goal is how do you bring about the

kingdom of God in practical, non-religious sounding ways in the marketplace.

Why is it, you know, one of the things that we do when we do

strategy, I'm sure you do it when you go in with companies, when I work with

companies, you know, we first, many times we have to state the problem.

And so, so my, my, I guess maybe my sort of big question here as we get rolling is.

What's the problem and why does it exist?

Why, why is it so hard for people to, you know, go out into the marketplace,

you know, make a few dollars, support their family, do the things

they need to do, or lead companies, businesses, organizations, and, and

operate in faith or, or vice versa.

Why is it that they go into a, their faith community and then they

can't bring some of their skills?

I mean, I, I just sort of said some of the problem, but what is the problem

and, and why is there a problem?

And then we'll try to tackle it in the rest of our time together.

But what, what's

Yeah.

Look, I think some of it is bad teaching, bad theology, uh, and

some of it is just, uh, an implied, uh, arrogance almost on the part of

church leaders or mission leaders.

And I've led both, you know, so I'm not, uh, well, I guess I might be knocking

them, but we have the same issues in every sphere of society, you know?

So, um, I mean, in education, unless you're a PhD and you're writing for

the academic community, they, they have their own elitist thing, so everybody

has a bit of it, you know, but, so part of it is bad theology, but I think

part of it is also a lack of purpose.

I think.

You know, people used to say to me when I wrote the book Convergence, it was

about how do you integrate your career and your calling and your community,

including your church community, and uh, and how do you co-create with God?

And people would say, oh yeah, but I don't know what my calling is now.

I tell them.

In other words, they say, if I knew my calling, I would do it.

So now I tell them, you're called to work.

A hundred percent of us are.

Bible is very clear on that.

Now, whether you work for the First Presbyterian Church or for the Second

National Bank, it's not the big deal.

It's not whose name is on the paycheck.

So first un understanding work and the redemptive value of work and the

importance of work and, and working as God sees work as a wholesome thing.

Right now there's a lot of pressure on young people.

If you take the early, the Gen Zs and the younger ones, they're like, corporations

are bad and a capitalism is bad.

Work is bad.

There's about six, 7 million people who have no intention of working in the US

right now, and they're quite able-bodied, you know, and there's, there's help

wanted signs all over the place.

Part of it is, I think that there's an attack on work as the value of work.

And I think that's partly, and because we are made in the image of God and

we are made to work like him, and that when people see your work and

my work, they'll see what God's like.

And so it's no wonder, um, work is under attack.

So I think there's some cultural things, there's some bad theology, and then

there's a lack of purpose where we think it's okay that the purpose of

business is to make money or to make the best widget or to, uh, you know, get

funded and have an exit and so forth.

So we've settled for a lesser purpose for a business or for an organization I.

It's, it also seems as if Brett, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask

you if you know some of the history on maybe how this came to be, that

in many of the ministry circles, and I've been in and out of churches, I've

been to Bible school for a few years.

There is either a stated or unstated more important purposes than others.

There's a ranking of purposes and, you know, I'll go to Bible school and I'll

say this sort of tongue in cheek, but it's real, you know, the, the ultimate is.

Missions work in some, you know, third world country.

Secondary to that is some other type of evangelist.

Next would be maybe a local pastor, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Ranking, ranking, ranking.

And then there's the business person, you know, way on down the list.

Well, I've always been a business person.

I mean, I've shared with people here, I actually was saved in a business setting.

I'm not even sure that I would've gone in a lot of churches, but, but what,

what, uh, how did we come to be here?

Because if we go back historically, I heard someone say the other day

that the Levitical priest of the Old Testament, they were pretty much butchers.

All they did was handle livestock and handle sacrifices and

butchering all day long, long.

They probably didn't have a lot of time to grab a microphone and preach and teach.

But any, any perspective on how we ended up with that being the message

in much of our religious circles today?

I think it does go back a long way.

I say partly the Greeks are to blame with the dualistic thinking

about, you know, the separation of your spirit and your soul and your

body and all this kind of stuff.

But I think more recent history would be, uh, when the

industrial Revolution came along.

Part of, of what had happened.

This whole, you've gotta separate God and business or you've gotta

separate your work and your faith.

Uh, when you had an agrarian economy, your church sat on the land of a landowner.

So in many respects, uh, the pastor or the priest or the minister was

subject to the whims of the landowner because he was economically subjective.

And so then came a time which said, no, we need to separate those things.

The idea was that the preacher or the Bible teacher wouldn't be impinged upon

by somebody through an economic level.

That was actually just it.

The intention wasn't to separate faith and work.

You can't really separate those things 'cause faith and risk

are two sides of the same coin.

If you're in business, you take risks, you have to have faith,

and um, so I think there's.

Part of an, um, unintended consequences of trying to separate

out those things to create a bit more freedom actually for faith.

But it had an another reality.

So I think that that's part of the problem, I would

say within church circles.

However, I remember a lady, I met her and she was a mining

engineer and a methodologist.

She worked for one of the big mining houses and she, as they worked in a

community, 'cause they had a big mine in a town with lots of small businesses,

she went to her church leaders and said, I think God wants me to focus

on ministering to these businesses.

And they looked at her and they said, Jessica, you've got

your ladder up the wrong wall.

You have to do your ministry inside the church.

And she had this conflict and she, there's many others I've met like that.

God's telling me, do this, be practical, do stuff in the marketplace.

But my church leaders are telling me.

Do the opposite, and they feel there's this tension and so they

go into a funk and, um, it's a, it's a challenge for them because,

and it's really just bad theology.

And so, you know, from my

perspective, I, I don't worry about the church going away.

You know, the scripture says that Jesus will build a church, whether it's in

a storefront, whether it's in a living room, whether it's in a stadium, whether

it's a megachurch, a tiny church.

I'm not worried about that.

What I would love to see, however, is a church in every business.

I'd love to see a church in every classroom, an expression

of the kingdom of God.

And uh, I think if we could get our heads around that, then you would know,

man, we don't have enough resources.

We've got to empower and mobilize everybody.

Which is why Jesus died, he died so that you can be a minister, I can be a minister

regardless of whether we went to Bible school so that each of us can be fully

equipped to extend the kingdom of God.

So I think there's some historical reasons.

I think there's some control reasons, you know, um, and some

of which we've also adopted the hierarchical systems of the world.

So when I look in the Old Testament, in the Jewish world, a quorum was

10 believers, 10 Jewish people.

Basically, you couldn't do something official.

Like even now if, if an Israeli soldier dies in Gaza or something, you need 10

people before you can do the funeral.

This is, is part of what it is.

And, um, so a, a rabbi got an email from a rabbi who kind of explained

the way that they would do what we today would call a church plant.

In church plant.

We take somebody from South Africa or from.

North Dakota, we send them to Africa with their wife and two kids.

They get some financial support.

They arrive with a an SUV and A or whatever they're gonna have.

No, that's not what they would do.

In the Old Testament setup, you'd get 10 business leaders who would

come together and form a quorum, and then they would call a rabbi.

And the rabbi, of course, would live at the same level as the others

because they would each give 10%.

So you had this built in, but it wasn't the cult of the individual leader.

I'm the church planter, I'm the bishop, I'm the apostle, I'm the this,

no, it was a quorum of leaders, a plurality of leadership, which is, I

think we've lost some of that as well.

And that leads to this hierarchical view and people

giving themselves titles, you know?

I'm also not sure I, I, I had another question,

but I wanna ask this one.

Uh, since you just brought that up, Brett, I'm also not sure that

men man can handle some of those hierarchical roles we've placed them in.

And I think we've got plenty of evidence of that.

I mean, if we look at, you know, people that fall, I mean, are, are we trying

to ask more of many of the leaders?

And I know you teach on leadership, I know you and I are gonna discuss

it here shortly, but are, are we, are we putting too much pressure on

A hundred percent.

Yeah,

things they shouldn't be doing?

you're quite right.

I think it's, um, what I observed some years ago, probably 20 plus years ago, is

that if you call a new pastor, a church puts out a search committee and gets a

new minister, whether it's a Baptist or Presbyterian or Methodist or whatever.

That person's got about an 18 month shelf life.

It sounds terrible, but.

Uh, that's why guys will go off and start their own church

because then they call the shots.

They're good for 10, 20 years or whatever.

Uh, but part of it is the crazy job expectations.

We expect you to preach 48 out of 52 weeks in the year.

We expect you to visit so many people in their homes.

We, and, and it's a long list of criteria.

Instead of saying, we expect you to fall on your face when you do, we have a safety

net behind you, and it's, it's this board or this eldership group or this team

behind you, and we're gonna help you.

We don't expect you to be perfect.

We would consider it a failure if you preached every week, because then you're

not empowering other people, which is what you're supposed to do and so forth.

So it, we could change the expectations and we could free people up.

It would make a huge difference.

You know, in the business world, the number one fear of CEOs

repeatedly is one day they're gonna find out, I dunno what I'm doing.

And, and I've heard, I've so many times I've heard CEOs, you know,

one day they're gonna figure out, I don't know what's going on.

Well, pastors and church leaders have the same kind of thing, and it's a little

bit worse because when you bring God into the equation, it's like, well, isn't God

supposed to give you these superpowers?

And therefore you should be impervious to this stuff?

Therefore, you don't show your weaknesses, therefore you get

lonely and it's just a, a bad cycle

Yeah, I, I definitely see the challenges there.

One, one of the things, Brett, you're, you're in South Africa right now?

I've visited there a few times.

What part of South

down in?

Cape Town.

Cape Town.

Oh, one of the most beautiful cities in the world with Cape Town.

Stunning.

What do you see, and I know you've traveled extensively and I know you spend

a good bit of your time in the US also, but do you notice anything about this

topic that we're discussing culturally as you go from different countries?

I mean, we, those of us that are in the United States, and

you know this, you know it well.

We have this arrogant attitude that.

Everything sort of revolves around us and that the world spills out.

But do you notice any differences with this topic we're discussing in

other parts of the world that might be beneficial for us to understand?

that's a really good point.

It does vary a lot by country, and I'll give you three or four examples.

So I was speaking once in Egypt and uh, they asked a question

about a pastor of a church having a side hustle, a side business, and

it's against their rules because.

They'll pay you a

hundred pounds a month.

You've got a couple of kids, three, four kids, you, you can't afford to live.

But they will say, well, then you don't have the faith to be a pastor.

If you go and get a side hustle another job, you drive Uber or you

do whatever, then you, you don't have the faith to be a pastor.

Whereas when I was in the Ukraine 30 years ago, uh, I asked the head

of a denomination, what percentage of your pastors have other jobs?

He said, 99.9.

I'm the only one who doesn't, and he was the head of the denomination.

He said, everybody else has another job.

When I go into Nigeria, for example, most of the leaders, certainly many of

them are bi-vocational, so they're a judge and they're a pastor, they're a

government minister, and they're a pastor.

They're a bank, CEO, and they're a pastor.

Now, there is a bit of.

Hierarchy in the sense that they're a pastor and the CEO, the bank,

CEO slots in underneath that.

In other words, you know, I have a friend, he's a, he is a high government

official, and they call him pastor, whatever, uh, be, but it's an honored

thing, but it's not uncommon for them to have multiple jobs, and then

they build the systems behind them.

So my friend, I have a friend who, pastors a good sized church, heads

up a big department in the, in the federal government in another city

and oversees another 150 churches.

And, but he has a support staff, he has people who work with him.

He delegates, he sets up systems You know, so they cope with a lot of stuff.

So if you said to somebody in that context, oh, you can't be a businessman

and a pastor, it makes no sense.

So it does vary from country to country.

and I think in the states.

You know, this notion that, well, you can't be a pastor.

I was talking to a major missions organization, this was probably

20 plus years ago, and they showed me an org chart on their wall and

they had highlighted many of the spots on the org chart with yellow.

And I asked them, what are those highlights?

And they said, those are all the people that we are missing.

And so I said, well, why don't you go up the road to where you're having

your, your, Crossroads Discipleship Training school and just go and tell

them about all the openings you have?

No, we can't do that.

I said, why not?

Well, because they're having a spiritual experience up there and this is the

practical running of our organization.

And I'm like, you know, so we shoot ourselves in the foot.

And, um, so I, I think that country by country, it does vary quite a lot.

And I just think it's.

What's gonna solve some of this is antagonism towards Christians, because

I've worked in some countries where it's hard to get a permit to put up a church.

So you have your church in one of the floors of a bank building, and when

you go in there, it feels like a bank, abit and uh, or like a corporate.

And I think more and more there will be pressures, uh, even in Canada.

I was up in Canada many years ago and they told me that if you have nonprofit

status, that government can tell you what you can preach and can't preach.

So I was speaking to some guys, a guy who went through our, our repurposing

business training, and he said they were thinking about flipping their

church to be a business so that the government wouldn't tell them what to do.

It might be that we forced to squeeze out some of the secular

sacred dichotomy through pressure.

I hope not.

But I suspect it might happen.

I just had a thought of a, a good friend, we've interviewed

him here, Mike Bearer, who he and I did consulting work back during the nineties

and do work together from time to time.

He actually would go into Kazakhstan in countries like that and do kind of

the micro business model because you could not come in during those times

and start churches and they would build up people in their business.

They would be believers.

And that is how the ministry would happen.

That's the only way it would happen.

It wasn't going to be a, a church being started.

You know, Brett, one thing that I, I wanna ask this maybe before we

get too much farther, is I think everybody has a journey that puts

them, uh, I guess down certain paths.

And obviously you've had a journey that's merged, uh, you know, the

spiritual and the sacred with the practical and the business along the way.

And, you know, our, one of our taglines here is redefining success.

And I loved, um, I looked at your site, you've got repurposing

business, transforming society.

Those are big, big words.

Before we kind of, you know, tackle all of that, uh, give some

highlights of how you have come to be.

Kind of at this crossroads, at this place where there's dichotomies that you're

attempting to bust up because people don't go down just a path of becoming

a pastor and all of a sudden start thinking this way or just go down a path

of business owner and do that either.

How, how did, how did, how did that happen?

that's a good question.

I would say it wasn't through some great forethought.

I think it was partly just because I asked God, for example, when I, I studied, uh,

I finished an undergraduate and then.

I got approached by Youth for Christ, would I join their staff?

And, uh, my dad said, you can do it.

My mom said, no way.

You have to finish and you have to become like a CPA Chartered accountant.

So I did that.

So now I'm working at Pricewaterhouse.

And um, part of my view of things was that that church that I was

attending, which was started by four business people, uh, it needed

some structure and some order in it.

And I, I was 24 years old, 23 years old, and I was, I pressed

the pastor to appoint elders.

So he pointed some elders and I was one of them.

The other guy left and then I ended up getting a field

promotion because the pastor left.

So now I'm running the church.

So now my question was, God, when are you gonna tell me to quit my job at

Pricewaterhouse so I can run the church?

Well, he didn't.

So I had two jobs and I had to figure out how to make them work.

Then I had a friend with youth with a mission, and.

I ended up consulting to youth with a mission and traveling overseas

looking for best practices in missions and figuring out I could mobilize

the business people in my church to serve mission organizations.

So now I had three jobs and I just had to figure out how to make this work.

And balance was not the answer when I was a young believer.

I attended classes on the balanced Christian life, you know, and Jesus

grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God, favor with man, so,

so much time for physical, so much time for spiritual, so much time

for mental, so much time for social.

And if you've got three jobs, it doesn't work.

Unless you figure out how to integrate these things, then you have a problem.

So fast forward, I'd moved from Pricewaterhouse to KPMG to

Computer Sciences Corporation.

During that time, I'd started a nonprofit in California called

Professionals for Christ.

And then we later changed the name to Equip and that became

the repurposing business thing.

And uh, so I was working regular jobs and consulting to mission

organizations primarily, and churches.

And then also doing my day job of consulting to businesses.

And so I just ended up living in these multiple worlds and I had

to figure out how to blend them together so that you didn't have

your spiritual life and your social life and your work life and so forth.

So it became down to practical choices.

So for example, in the business world, you were expected to take clients

out for business meals, sometimes business dinners or whatever.

I would bring them to my home, they got to meet my kids.

I could have the dinner at home.

It was a bit more pressure on my wife.

Um, but they got to see the real me.

They got to interact.

I wasn't awake by the same token.

When the kids were very young, we couldn't do mission trips.

So we invited the missionaries to come and stay with us, come and stay in our home.

And so hospitality is the glue that can pull various things together.

So that was one of them.

And then your, the definition of success.

You know, I had to deal with it early on, uh, when I was a partner

at KPMG and I quit to go to Computer Sciences Corporation because I felt

my family needed more of my time.

I mean, they couldn't believe it.

You work your whole life to become a partner in one of the big six firms

or the big four firms, but it depends who's got your scorecard, right?

So I never let price order House or KPMG, or CSC hold my scorecard.

I had to be, I had to live for an audience of one and I had to also settle.

When I say settle, I had to accept the fact that success from God's

perspective is different from success from man's perspective.

So that one, I had to settle.

And I'm not saying it's always easy because, you know, I don't

have a 401k, I don't have the, the benefits of all of those things that

have come out of a corporate life.

Um, but I do have other things.

You know, we are super rich in relationships.

We've worked in countries around the world.

We've trained thousands of people.

We have a, a big household, if you like.

Um, but would it, is it success from a corporate career perspective?

Oh, no, not at all.

So for me, my journey was a mixed one, almost forced.

And I had to just figure it out because God didn't let me off the hook.

So we eventually, when we were running the institute, one of my staff said

to me, Brett, what are we, are we a business or are we a ministry?

I said, yes.

He said, no, no, no.

You don't understand the question, you know, and so you end up

in this place where there's no difference between mission.

Business ministry church.

I have people coming to us who go through our training and they say, oh, this

has been my best experience of church.

Well, we don't say we are a church, we're we carry a business umbrella.

'cause we can go into any country in the world as a business and, but

when you don't have these separate labels for things, it's all just

gods then And, and I arrived there.

It was also a little bit of modeling in that my parents, I remember when I

was a teenager, I asked my mom, what would dad do if he had more money?

And she said he'd plant more churches because my parents, as business

people started churches, the country was growing and your neighborhood

starts up, it needs a church.

So that's what you do.

And who started the church?

The business people did.

So that was pretty normal.

So one thing you brought up and, and you mentioned a a little

bit of this earlier, you just said one of the things that you had to do.

Was really make sure you understood what success meant for you.

One of, one of our theories or foundations here is that most

people don't take the time to really define what success means for them.

And you mentioned earlier purpose.

I think that's, they may not be the same, but they're related.

They might be siblings, you know, purpose.

What does success mean to you?

And I think that's where dichotomies begin.

Arising.

You mentioned earlier that you bust up dichotomies and separate those out.

What I, I mean, I, I just, I consider that to be foundational to a lot of

the conversation we're having here.

What, and I know you've got a lot of resources, you've got books,

you've got things like that.

So maybe we could start talking about some of that here.

But Brett, what, because I do think that people struggle with it.

I've struggled with it.

I mean, I, you know, I was a, I owned companies, and then in 2008,

they all disappeared and I realized my identity, even though I had a

faith about me, I was wrapped up in how successful my business was.

So, so h how, how do people begin pressing in and identifying

what success means for them?

Not copying what, what Tim's success is, or Brett's success, or, you know,

whoever's h how do they do that?

Give some practical stuff.

I love John the Baptist in this regard.

I think, man, what a tough job.

You know?

And he had a Downwardly mobile career path, and he says, he's like,

he must increase, I must decrease.

I mean, he's losing market share to his cousin.

You know, his followers are leaving and going after his cousin.

He ends up in jail for, for doing the job he's supposed to do.

But he says, you know, a man can only have or do what God's given him to do.

And so it's what's my assignment versus somebody else's assignment.

So firstly, not measuring my life by your yardstick and vice versa.

So I think that there's, that.

I also think that Psalm one talks about, you know, blessed is the, is

the person, the man or the woman who, you know, does various things and they

will be like a tree planted by a river and so forth, bearing fruit in season.

So I think that if success is a pursuit, it's an idol, it's sin.

If success is a consequence of obedience, it's a fruit.

And so for me, I'm looking for fruit not pursued.

And sadly, much of the be a good Christian stuff, the self-help Christian

stuff is the pursuit of success.

Even if it looks like godly, dressed up, sanctimonious, nice smelling success,

actually, it's still a pursuit versus the fruit of a life of obedience.

So for me, what's God asking me to do?

Am I obeying the things he's told me to do?

Am I loving the people?

He's, I mean, I remember when we started the institute, it was the late 1990s.

It was probably 96, 97, and I said, okay, God, I need to know,

how do I have a predictable income stream for this new business?

A day goes by, two days go by, three days go by, no answer.

I said, God, you're not answering my question.

He said, it's the wrong question.

I said, what's the right question?

He said, who do I want you to serve?

So God's not obliged to answer stupid questions.

I figured that out.

And so even now when I'm about to run a class called Lemon Preneur, and when

people speak to entrepreneurs, they talk about the lean business canvas.

And, and you've gotta figure out your customers and your, your, you know,

what your big idea is and your unique value proposition and all of this stuff.

Well, the question isn't how do you get an income stream?

The question is, are we serving the people that God wants us to

serve, whether they paying or not.

Now, I happen to believe that finances can facilitate relationships.

In other words, if I'm renting your rv, uh, it gives us a chance

to have a relationship, but it's not a metric of success.

And, um, and so yeah, for me, practically be happy to be obedient.

And then if there is an economic shortfall, when there is an economic

shortfall, because sometimes there is, you have to say, okay, God, either

I'm gonna trust you through this thing because you've always come through

before, or I've gotta ask you for a way.

Do you have a better way of doing something that I haven't thought about?

And I also think it's different for different people.

I've met people who have a great formula for making money.

God has gifted them to do it.

And for others, he said, look, I don't want you to tell people your needs.

I don't want you to advertise.

I don't want you to market.

I will do the marketing for you.

Now each person has to deal with what they're given in their,

their hands, and, and they're unique and they made differently.

And, um, so I fall more into the latter category.

So when I left KPMG to go to Computer Sciences Corporation.

I took a, I think about a third of a pay cut is what I did, but I got a

commission on what my practice did.

So there was an upside.

And a Jewish man, a Jewish believer from New York, had once said to

me, you've gotta put yourself in a position where God can bless you.

So you have to be put yourself in a position of risk.

Now, having a regular income with a 401k with a company car,

with a housing allowance is not exactly a position of risk.

Some people are called to it.

If you're called to be in the corporate world, that's fine, but that's actually

just hidden slavery for many people.

And so, so I went to Computer Sciences Corporation.

I took a cut, but God had said to me, don't worry about the income.

So he specifically said that to me, and then he did some miraculous

things and took care of it.

So when he told me to start the institute, I already had in my memory bag.

Don't worry about the income.

Now, there've been times when I should be worried.

Um, I remember once I got a call from my accountant, I was driving to the dentist

in San Jose in, in the San Fran, in the Silicon Valley, and my accountant called

me and said, Brett, you have to get ready to write a big check to the IRS.

I went to the dentist on the way home.

I literally thought to myself, I should start worrying about the tax issue now.

And Claire Isabel, God said to me, you do not have a right to worry.

I'm like, wow.

So now I remember that when a financial difficulty comes along,

I don't have a right to worry.

And so 'cause worry is a counter kingdom key performance indicator, if you like.

And so it ties back to this question of success.

Well, what are you worrying about?

Are you worrying about status, worrying about what people think of you?

Uh, I remember sitting on my.

We were renting a house in, in Redwood City, and I had

my deck and I looked at it.

My neighbor was chief legal guy at one of the big high tech companies.

And I thought to myself, ah, I remember the days when I used to have

a regular income and so forth, and I was reading the Psalms, and it's the

psalm that says, know that the Lord sets apart the Godly for himself.

So it's like God's got a hundred sheep and one of them is called Tim, and he says,

I want to play with Tim for a year or so.

You know?

So he sets you apart for himself.

Well, that's a huge privilege.

And you think you got fired, you lost a client, you're

going through a quiet period.

And God is thinking, I've got some time with Brett.

I've got some time with Tim.

So it, you know, it's a different metric of success.

Otherwise we say, oh, Brett's lost it.

You know, you got fired by a client, or he can't hold down a job, or

whatever it might be, you know?

I do think at times that sometimes worry.

I, I think it is for me, my wife and I this year, one of the things

we're studying and meditating more on is this aspect of eternal

mindset versus short-term thinking.

I, I, I, I think we're gonna learn at some point that time is not

really what we all think it is.

And that's really, we create a lot of our own deadlines and create these,

you know, probably situations where we say we've gotta have X amount of money

by here, et cetera, things like that.

But I also love how you, you have.

A lot of information related to the Kingdom of God.

And one of the things that I've attempted to study and learn

more about is the kingdom of God.

And the way I word it for me, this, this is my message so that Tim has an

understanding of what my purpose is, is that on a daily basis I am asking

the Lord, what is my assignment in his kingdom today or this minute, or this

instant or this week or whatever, you know, trying to remove some time from it.

And so I do, I do love that concept of assignment.

You brought it up earlier, but uh, before we get too much farther, I, I want to

ask, because I think this leads us into some of the resources and the things

that you have, you, you said that the Lord told you, you're asking the wrong

question, not, you know, how do you bring in revenue, but who do you serve?

So.

So I'm gonna ask you now, who is it that you serve?

Define some of those groups and categories and, 'cause I, I see a lot of stuff when

I look at your resources, your books.

I see a lot of stuff.

And so define for me a little bit better, I guess.

Who, who do you serve?

Who, who does you, the institute and your company and your

organization serve right now?

Good question.

So the first group is not the first group.

I'll just give you three groups.

They're like a, a tripod, if you like.

One is people who are working in corporates.

They have good business skills.

They have a good education.

They might be from CEOs to directors to mid-market managers and so forth.

They believe there's something more to their work.

They believe that they have skill sets that can be used in the kingdom of God,

and they want to get mobilized and they want to figure out how do they bring

biblical principles into their workplace, without all the religious trappings.

And so these are people that, they're working for a company and there's,

there's just millions of them doing so and so people in the marketplace.

For me, they're a little bit like Paul was called to the Gentiles.

The marketplace is, is.

My place.

So starting with people who are in, in those businesses, mid-market

business owners is the next category.

So these are people who own their own business.

They can do what they want to do roughly in the company, they have

the authority to bring about changes.

And those are the mid-market companies that we wanna see repurposed.

It's not that we don't wanna see the corporates repurposed, but typically

you have to do a buyout or you have to have, you know, a major thing

for that to happen in a Cisco, in an apple or something like that.

Whereas, uh, in a mid-market companies, many of the jobs

are created by mid markets.

People have the freedom to implement and execute without saying, oh, well

I can't do this because of the board or because of the shareholders.

And a lot of the growth potential sits there.

And then the third category is the entrepreneurs who.

Want to have a business that's gonna make a difference in the world.

And so for those people, they're saying, right, I want to set up

from the beginning and build my business on a foundation of truth.

They don't buy into the success to significance myth, you know, first I'll

be successful, then I'll be significant.

They're like, no, I want to bes significant from the beginning.

Even if I have to make some compensation in terms of how much I

earn or what my career looks like.

I want to start a business that's gonna make a difference

in my community or in the world.

so it's those people and equipping them with some of the basics.

Work is worship, work is good.

God worked before there was the fall.

Discipleship is teaching people to work the way that God designed them to work.

Uh, these very basic things.

You're called to work.

You know, and, and co-creating with God is a wonderful thing to do, whether

it's a new business or a new product.

So those are the entrepreneurs.

Now, over the last 20 plus years, we've worked with about

400 plus mid-market companies.

Over the years I've worked with many, many executives from, you

know, fortune 50 companies in the down to Fortune 500 companies.

We've worked with our fair share of entrepreneurs.

Um, they require a lot of handholding and, uh, part of my passion there

is because I think it's unacceptable to have this 80% failure rate.

It would be like, you know, you've got five kids.

Four out of the five are a failure, and you and your

wife say, eh, it's no problem.

We got one.

You know, and you know, you would say like, what are we doing wrong as

parents, you know, one of the kids isn't doing that well, maybe two.

You're like, oh my gosh, what are they?

And so we would be distraught if we were parents and we had a 20% success

rate, but we buy into the system that it's okay, well if, if, if one out

of 10 kids knocks it out of the park, it'll make up for the other nine.

It's so diabolical.

So for me, as we raise up, there's millions of people entering the

workforce or actually coming, starting their own businesses, doing things.

Whether they're high schoolers who are building apps or people who

are doing things, or people who are, I mean, categories of work.

We didn't have, when you and I are young, like neither of us wanted

to be an influencer and, uh, or so.

How do you help them to do this kind of stuff of a biblical foundation?

And, and that's really, I don't think there's a money, a lot of money in that.

So for example, at the end of the month of the 25th, we start

a new class called Lemon Preneur.

How do you take some of these concepts of plural leadership and bring

them to entrepreneurs, for example?

So that's our third group.

So in the middle we have the mid-market leaders.

And that the definition of mid-market varies by country.

Of course, in the US it's pretty good sized company.

But in a, a developing world, uh, those will be smaller companies, but it's, we

don't do our daily bread and butter with, you know, consulting to tiny companies.

We've got the systems and the processes and so on to deal

with businesses that have growth potential, even if they're small.

Uh, otherwise mid-size companies.

And then I, I mean, I, I have worked with, and I still work

with governments with, uh.

You know, I've worked with governors with people in federal

government, uh, universities, et cetera, so I'm not allergic to that.

Uh, but my sweet spot is the marketplace.

I, I'm curious, Brett, I've, I've run into this some

myself and then I wonder, I'll ask questions like you just brought up.

Are we not equipping and preparing some people for success or at times

I wonder if we have a mismatch?

So I'll, maybe I'll ask it this way.

You've got three fairly distinct groups and there's some overlap with

skillsets and obviously different things and, and obviously some

cultures and countries impacted also.

But I'm curious, Brett, how often have you seen that someone.

Is working towards, and maybe even struggling to be an entrepreneur and

do a startup and maybe bootstrapping and all of those things when maybe

they should just have a role and go work in a larger organization, either

a mid-market or a large company.

I, I, I've seen that a little bit recently and I've, and I've, I, I

sort of know how to handle it, but sometimes we can fool ourselves.

So, ha, have you seen that and what are your thoughts on it when I bring that up?

my thought is a good observation.

You know, as I've said to some people, don't try to change the world if you

don't know how to change your socks.

So I think that there are some early years you, you're in your family and your, your,

your dad says, take out the trash or mow the lawn, or do a paper route or, and have

a lemonade stand and you do a bit of stuff and you get, you get a bit of education.

And sometimes we want to go from there to becoming an entrepreneur

that's gonna change the world.

I read a survey many years ago, about 80% of people at college want

to start their own business, but actually a really small percentage do.

And so there's a huge drop off.

Part of it is that you can be an entrepreneur, you can work

inside a company, and you can learn, you can do skills building.

So if we understand the seasons of life that there's a season

of skill building, there's a ski season of gift discovery, and a

corporate is a good place to do that.

You know, you learn the disciplines, you learn how to communicate, how

to handle yourself in meetings, how to do stuff on a timely basis.

You learn some basic disciplines and skills.

So I think that that's good.

I would say the one thing that you can do is you can get a side hustle.

This didn't used to be so popular 10 years ago, but now the thought of.

Doing something.

I used to say, look, get a job that's consistent with your purpose, with

your identity, with your calling.

Now, I would say yeah, have that in your mind, but maybe

start a bit of a side hustle.

Maybe you're, uh, in college and you, you're building apps or

WebP pages or, or bots or you've installing vending machines in the

dormitories or whatever it might be.

Doesn't, it doesn't have to be sexy, flashy software.

You are driving Uber, you're doing something else, but you're building

up direct sales is a great way to go.

You're selling Cutco knives to all your mom's friends.

You're, uh, you're selling something because you learn some basic things.

So taking the opportunity to learn some of those things along the way.

And then also not being too picky about the work.

You know, I was chatting to an Uber driver last time we came to South Africa.

He's a guy from Malawi or somewhere like that.

He's worked like a dog and his son has been to university.

The son has an engineering degree.

I said, oh, is your, where's your son working?

No, he's not working.

Why not?

Well, he is had job offers, but he doesn't think they're offering him enough.

I mean, the guy has zero experience, you know?

And so don't be a legend in your own bathtub.

Just get on and do the work.

Do something.

And so, yeah, I, I think that there's a progressive journey and then what

you do as you go from your household years, your educational years,

you get some corporate experience, your years of slavery if you like.

Then you have some entrepreneurial time, and then you build capital

in its different forms depending on how you wire, you build capital

and then you're able to be a world changer, a societal transformer.

So along this journey, as we've seen people, yeah.

You don't go from high school to being world changer very often.

It's very, very rare.

Typically, you go through a process.

And so that's my observation on that.

And if you expect that God's gonna take you through seasons, then you're not.

I mean, I've had a lot of people they don't know, oh, what's my calling?

What?

What's my purpose?

I'm like, what season are you in?

And what is your next season?

You ask God what your next season is.

You step into your next season and the bigger purpose might be

something that unveils over time.

I, I do think we have a very, I think the joke is a microwave

mindset where people expect instant this, instant that, and these are even people

that have studied, they know scripture.

They know that Moses spent 40 years in the desert.

They know that, Joseph was a prisoner for X number of years.

They know that Jesus technically didn't start a ministry till he was 30.

Yet we all think that it doesn't apply to us and that we're supposed to, pop

open a church or start a company or open up a, a social media channel and have

a million followers within whatever.

And I guess that does happen, but not, not that much.

Brett, probably most of our listeners would fall into that, mid-market,

business owner category or entrepreneurs.

We've just got a few minutes here.

What I'd love for you to do is just, and I'm gonna let you to allow the Holy

Spirit, maybe even to give you, obviously we don't have a lot of information, and

this might be a good opportunity for you to share some resources that you have.

But what is something in the time we have that you would just like to

convey to maybe those groups that, uh, that might be helpful and tangible

for them in the next few minutes?

That's a good question, Tim.

First thing I would say is be bold.

This is not a time to back down.

We are going through big changes in society and part of the changes and

the pressures that we've gone through with the pandemic, with the economic

challenges and so on is to beat onto your turtle shell or your tortoise

shell to get you to shrink back.

And this is not a time to shrink back.

This is a time for us to be bold.

Uh, recently I was, uh, praying a prayer like in the last week, God help, and the

reply was stand and that, and, and so a few days in a row I heard the stand.

So I looked up to stand in the scripture and I found that

there were four places to stand.

One was to stand in the presence of God.

And it's an amazing thing.

So when we this as we, we are under pressure, stand

in the presence of God next.

And it goes with a stand on high places.

Don't be afraid to step into the place that God has given you.

And then you have to stand in the face of your enemy.

So when the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of

God will raise up a standard.

So we have to stand in the face of the enemy.

And then the fourth one, which is kind of what we get to, that he causes

us to stand in a wide open place.

He puts wide ground, be beneath our feet, but we don't get there unless

we make a determination to stand.

So for business owners, entrepreneurs, this is not a time to be shrinking back.

So I would encourage you next, get with a community of people that are

like-minded faith community as you have among your listed listeners.

And so people who will spur you on and say, you can do more.

Go for it.

You're not crazy.

You're not alone.

Then I would say get equipped.

it's a little bit like becoming a parent.

Before Lynn and I had our children, you sort of think, I can make a baby.

I will be a good father.

It's pretty stupid.

You know, you, you have to learn some stuff.

And so it's like I'm a Christian and I'm in business, therefore

I have a kingdom business.

No, you don't.

You know, we have to understand what is a kingdom business.

You know, how do you get products that are inspired by God?

How do you have marketing that demonstrates signs and wonders?

Because God markets through signs and wonders.

How do you hear God in your planning process?

How do you put plans together that have a faith element in them,

which if God doesn't come through, you're gonna fall on your face?

These are basic things, so get the education.

And part of what we've done is taken thousands of people through what

some have called a Kingdom, MBA.

It's really a.

An MBA from a business perspective because we shouldn't go cheap on

learning how to do business God's way.

John 1515 says, I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't

understand the master's business.

But everything that the master showed me, I've revealed to you.

So my slimed down version of that is, if you don't know that your dad's

business, you're not his friend.

So if you don't know God's business, what's his operating model?

What's his business model?

And God challenged me once, 'cause I have this 10 P profile for a business.

And God said to me, profile my business.

Can you imagine going to heaven interviewing God for half an hour?

And you've gotta come back and say, this is God's business.

And so I went through the thought process.

So now when I look at.

Business A and God's business.

I can just see where the similarities are and where the disconnects and

then a has to reconcile to be.

This is to God.

This is our ministry of reconciliation.

So get to understand God's business and then figure out how your

business fits into God's business.

I don't care if you wanna make a new widget, you want to build

in new houses in Kenya, you want to go here, you want to do that.

The question is, is your business in God's business?

Not is God in your business.

That's not the question.

But is your business in God's business?

What's God doing in the world?

That's the transforming society piece.

What are, how do you fit into that?

That's getting your business repurposed or aligned with the purpose, God's purpose

so that you can do what's on God's heart.

And so those would be my 2 cents.

Quick things, Tim.

That was, that was so good.

I'm so thankful that I got a nudge to ask that question because I, I can

envision so many clips and information just from that little segment, Brett.

Alright, so someone should, in all likelihood say I, I,

I love that, but I need more.

Where do you want people to go if they want more of what you just

brought up or just more of what you have available as far as resources?

I've, I've been to your site, but go ahead and mention it or anything else

that you want to mention at this point.

That would be a great resource for

Thanks Tim.

I would say go to Brett johnson dot bizz.

Do b iz or.bz, depending if you speak English or American.

So, so Brett Johnson do bizz and there's a right on the front, there's a question

of what resources are good for you and it really depends on your question.

If you say, I'm just starting out in my career, uh, there's

some questions for you.

I want to figure out how to integrate the parts of my life

that'll take you to convert.

You know, I wanna start a business that'll take you lemon preneur.

I have a mid-market company and I wanna make sure that I've, I've connected

all of the dots and so forth, and it'll take you to the repurposing

business, or I'm, I'm part of a team, or I want to grow as a leader.

It'll take you to lemon leadership.

so if you go to that question page, which resource for you,

just look at the questions.

And then every now and then we schedule trainings that you can be part of.

We have one coming up on Lemon Preneur for, for entrepreneurs or

people who want to do something that might be entrepreneurs or have a

mind to do something entrepreneurial.

You might not even be an entrepreneur.

According to our studies.

Only about 15% of people are, but how do you be part of a team that

can create co-create with God?

So I would look at those resources.

Brett johnson.best.

We do have podcasts, so I put out podcasts.

every now and then, it's supposed to be every week, but

every couple of weeks or so.

So there's a couple of hundred podcasts there, and then I'll also, you'll

find a blog spot and so on, but we'll, we'll advertise once you go onto

the, there's some free resources, so there's some kingdom business basics.

Just go through some, you can download them, watch a bit of a video.

There's a PDF.

You can download just 15 things, which should be self-evident.

Go and get those.

We have an introductory class, and that class is, the cost is whatever

you want to pay, starting at zero.

So you say, okay, fine.

I don't know who this Brett guy is, if he stuff stuff is any good, and so on.

There's a kingdom business basics.

What's the history of God in business, work, in ministry, all of that stuff.

The history of what God's done over time.

You can look at those things and that's essentially a freebie.

Or you can pay whatever you want to pay.

That's fine, and then you can, you, you'll see the other classes that are there.

I would say get equipped, get it, get mobilized.

And the connection between these disparate audiences is I can take people

outta Silicon Valley or Chicago or New York or London or whatever, and I

can take them to somewhere else in the world they've been trained to serve.

So their corporate experience serves a mid-market person

or somebody doing a startup.

And so they're blessed to be a blessing.

They take in everything that God's packed into their life, their MBA,

their engineering degree, their marketing, their hr, all of that stuff.

And they feeding it into somebody else's life and through the life of that leader

into their people, it's a huge multiplier.

And so, you know, if you're sitting in a corporate and I'm, you know, you're called

to work at Bank of America, fantastic.

Well go and serve in another nation somewhere else.

Go and serve one of those mid-market people, and that mid-market person is

gonna spin off entrepreneurs as well.

It's a way in which you can connect the ecosystem.

We'll include links and everything down in the notes.

Brett, we're seek, go create here.

Those three words, I'm sure you could guess where those three words originated.

And I'm gonna let you choose my final question.

Just choose one that resonates more with you currently than the other two.

And why seek go or

Go is mine.

And the reason why I'm after go is this is because I, I see Jesus as quite binary.

It's go or get behind me.

Those are your choices, you know?

So it's go into all the world, make disciples of all nations.

Go to this village, go to this place.

Or if you're trying to stop me going, get behind me.

But we've created this false third category, which is sit

in front of your computer.

Sit in your armchair, uh, be a Monday morning quarterback, criticize the

people who aren't going very well.

You know, criticize the people who don't like Jesus or whatever.

No, but there is no third option for me.

For me, the going is imperative.

And so for me, my passion is not to train people, have them

read all my books or whatever.

No, I wanna mobilize people because they'll come alive when they're deploying.

Truth.

For me, truth in somebody's head just makes them more religious.

Truth practiced, even with failure makes them more dangerous.

And, uh, it's awesome.

So for me, the go is a big deal.

And, uh, I mean, I get up in the morning and my wheels are going, and for me

it's like, have your passport ready.

Make sure your bag is packed.

I const, my bag is always packed.

I'm always ready to go.

I travel fairly light nowadays, but I'm always ready to go.

My passport is up to date.

Because that's our mandate.

You need a call from God to stay, not a call from God to go.

So for me, it's go to go.

Oh, Brett, man, you've encouraged myself and I'm

sure others that have listened in.

I appreciate that.

Make sure you check out all of Brett's stuff.

We'll include links to his page and all that they have, so go check that out.

We are seek GoCreate here.

We release new episodes every Monday.

Your support means the world to us.

Now you can tip us, buy me a coffee, or offer some financial

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Until next time, I've so enjoyed this conversation.

Until next time, continue being all that you were created to be.