Brett Hagler (Co-founder of New Story)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week I'm bringing you a conversation with somebody who's following Jesus Christ and also pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work. Hey, in a recent survey, one of you guys made fun of me for saying that every episode of the podcast is my favorite, which I don't use that term that much. Cut me some slack. But seriously, this is one of my favorite episodes we've recorded to date. I am so excited to introduce you to one of my favorite entrepreneurs, Brett Haigler. He's the co founder of New Story, a nonprofit who's on a mission to end homelessness. If you've heard of New Story before, you either read about them in Master of One, my book, or you may have seen some videos of their remarkable innovation of developing a way to 3D print a home that's built to last in 24 hours and for just a few thousand dollars. Fast Company named News Story one of the most innovative companies in the world. And just some further proof points that Brett is a masterful founder. He's an alum of Y Combinator, the world's leading startup accelerator.

He.

He's a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur, one of the hundred most intriguing entrepreneurs as deemed by Goldman Sachs. Oh yeah, and he's a Florida State Seminole, so of course that makes him awesome. Brett and I recently sat down to talk about New Story's innovative solution to preventing homelessness during the COVID 19 crisis. I went all in on this. You're going to hear more about that. In the episode, we talked about Brett's personal testimony about how the mastery, vocational mastery of others can make the gospel winsome to the lost. And we talked about why a players on your team attract other A players to join your team. This is a phenomenal conversation. Please enjoy this episode with my friend, Brett Hagor. Brett, it's been a while. How are you man?

I'm doing good, Jordan. Doing my best during this COVID 19 era. Hope you're doing all right, too.

Doing great. Hey, so I want to talk about the founding story of New Story in a minute, but first, I want our listeners to hear your personal story as it, you know, establishes some context there. Readers of Master of One have already read some of your story, but for those who haven't talk to us about your personal story and testimony, maybe going back to your high school days in South Florida and taking us to present day.

Yeah, I grew up a really lucky kid, was super fortunate to have amazing parents and a good house. We made pretty good money, and, I mean, I literally just hit the jackpot. So, you know, starting from a place of extraordinary privilege was how I entered the world. And then when I was younger, meaning like, high school and college, doing any kind of work that I'm doing today was about the last thing I thought I would do. I was fortunate to, again, have amazing parents that instilled some really great values in me and went to a Christian middle school and high school. So some of that stuff was there. But I just thought that a lot of the whole being selfless and putting others first, and I just thought that was pretty boring. And the whole faith thing was something I thought I'd maybe figure out when I was, like, 60 or 70 or. I remember my trick used to be I would just figure it out, like, right before I died, because I just always thought, like, why would I live for somebody else when I could live for myself? Why would I try to be part of a story when I could be the star of my own little story? So because of that, I went out and I pursued things that I call the three GS. And it was not God, gratitude, and generosity. It was girls, gold, and glory. And that was pretty much what I was chasing. And it turns out when those are your top priorities, it can be pretty unfulfilling. And so I was just kind of in my early 20s. I went to Florida State University and. And Amen. Yeah, Go Knowles. And was always an ambitious guy, but kind of had ambitions for basically the wrong reasons. And I just kind of found myself in my early 20s, longing for a bigger purpose and longing for a more meaningful life. To me, that happened through people get there in all different ways. But for me, it happened through a revived Christian faith that just changed my heart, it changed my values, it changed my worldview and gave me a new perspective of what I wanted to do while during my short time on Earth. And that ultimately led me down on a trip to Haiti. I went to Haiti a couple years after the 2010 earthquake was my first time ever going to the developing world. I didn't grow up going on missions trips or really thinking about or working with or helping the poor. But, you know, for me, I was a new Christian, and I was obsessed with the New Testament and reading about how Jesus treated people and seeing said we were supposed to treat people, and it was very clear that we're supposed to obviously love everybody, but even have a heart for the poor and really help those that are in need. And so that just really resonated with me. And after I saw the problem in Haiti, which was, I mean, there's unfortunately, a lot of problems due to extreme poverty in Haiti, but families living in tents because their homes are destroyed during the earthquake, that really struck a chord in my heart and kind of came back. And I was still super young. I was only 24 at the time and had no experience with the nonprofit world or really no experience at all. However, I thought that there could be a more modern version of a nonprofit that was trying to tackle this problem. And so I have a mantra that is to dream big, but start small. And started with trying to do this just for a couple families, trying to do for a few families what I wish I could do for all. We got underway and launched New Story in the beginning of 2015 and got lucky and one of the first nonprofits to go through Y Combinator and somewhat been off to the races ever since.

Yeah, the YC part of the story is interesting to me. I mean, how many nonprofits have gone through Y Combinator in the last couple of years?

I'm not positive. They usually only take, I believe, one or two a year now. Yeah.

Yeah. So today, New Story, tell us, you know, in 30 seconds about the work you guys do right now in 2020.

Yep.

So we.

Our mission is to pioneer solutions to end global homelessness. And what that means is we will design and build communities of homes, couple hundred homes for thousands of people throughout the developing world. A big focus as an organization on innovation and R and D. And so you have a significant R and D and innovation budget that's a little different than most nonprofits. And we believe in trying to get out in front and pioneer new solutions that will not just help the families that we're working with directly, but the much bigger idea is to create innovations that can serve the whole sector. And so one example of that would be the 3D printing machine that we created with our partner icon. And we wanted to get in front, put up R and D money, design a solution that can work in our environment, which turns out to be some of the hardest places to work, really in the world. So create it and then prove it in the communities that we build ourselves. Proof of concept. And then after that, the much bigger idea is to democratize it and to have other nonprofits and governments be able to adopt the innovations that we pioneered. And so that's really what we do. You could think of it more of is like the R and D and innovation arm to the global social housing sector. And that's what we get really excited about. That's what we've built our team around, and that's what we've built a lot of our donors and our stakeholders around. Not just, you know, trying to provide money to build a house for a family. While that is extremely noble and worthwhile, we do that too. But the bigger picture is to create breakthrough solutions.

And the last time we talked, I mean, we're going back, I don't know, a year, 18 months ago, you just started 3D printing these houses. You guys had figured out how to do it in less than 24 hours and for a few grand. And the next step was, all right, let's print a whole community of livable houses in. Where was it going to be?

Mexico. The south of Mexico.

Okay, awesome. So what's the status of that project now?

Yeah, so fortunately, we were able to kick it off the end of 2019, and we started printing our first few houses down there. And we've been working, it's been getting better and better every month, printing more and more homes. And we obviously had to pause recently because of COVID 19. But for people that are watching on April 17, we have a documentary that will be out on the Apple TV platform. I saw that.

That's amazing.

That profiles the whole story with Icon creating the machine, bringing it down to Mexico, all the challenges we face and the crazy stories that we had to overcome, and then ultimately profiling the first family with two beautiful little kids that will be the first family to ever live in a 3D printed home. And so I would just suggest people, if they're interested, to go to Apple TV and it should be free right now and watch the episode.

We are definitely going to be watching that. I'm definitely going to be watching. I can't wait for this. So by the way, you guys are innovating at such a rapid speed. I prepped for this episode, I don't know, let's call it a week ago. And just by happenstance, I went to the new Story website Right before we got on the call, I was like, oh, my gosh, of course the whole homepage is different. And you guys are launching an entirely new initiative. What is the Neighborhood?

Yeah, you know, this is about. This is 13 days old. You know, this is essentially our response to COVID19. We just try to think through how can we still be mission aligned, even though there's a pivot maybe in where we work and how we work. But how do we still advance our mission and try to work with the most vulnerable families so that they don't become homeless? And due to a lot of reasons that we have to pause our international work, we've never worked in the U.S. we've always dreamed about working in the U.S. this presented us an opportunity to work in the U.S. so we've launched a new program that's called the Neighborhood, which very simply is a way for any American to help the most vulnerable families in our country pay their rent so that they will not become homeless due to income loss during the COVID 19 era. And so we've identified families through some extraordinary local partners that are experts in this field. Families that had been working before COVID 19 happened. And because of the industries that they're in, you know, they didn't do anything wrong. It just so happened that they're not going to have income for a while. And when you're the working poor, you unfortunately don't have tens of thousands of dollars saved up for a rainy day to pay your rent for the rest of the year. And so what we're doing is we're providing a platform that will allow anybody in the world, but if you just want to focus on the country, any American, to commit to a monthly amount. So, like subscribing, basically similar to how you subscribe to Spotify or Dropbox or Netflix, you can subscribe to helping a family stay in their home, not become homeless during this time. So 100% of every donation that anybody signs up for will go to a family in desperate need and will keep them from becoming homeless. Which really does two things from an impact standpoint. Number one, which is obvious, is it helps the family not fall into that cycle of homelessness and their children not fall into that cycle. But number two is because it's preventative, it helps the existing homeless shelters and existing organizations in the country that focus on homelessness to not have them be overserved and have a higher volume of families coming in that need their help. And so that's our hope, is that we can rally thousands and tens of thousands of monthly supporters. Anybody that can give $10 a month, maybe up to 500 or $1,000 a month, which cover a whole family. And then we would have a very streamlined way to allocate that to families. So that's what it is. Yeah.

I love this so much. I'm personally all in. Where do I go to donate?

Yeah, so you just go to our URL, which is news storycharity.org we'll have most of the site that will focus on the program called the Neighborhood. There's a couple of ways you can get involved. So one is just like you can become a member of the neighborhood, which, you know, essentially is trying to be a good neighbor to your fellow, you know, people in your country, that again, we're doing all the right things and have fallen on hardship due to things out of their control. And, you know, we believe, as an organization, I believe, from a. Just as a Christian, that it's our responsibility to help these kind of families. So you can sign up just on the website for monthly commitments we are asking people to do monthly because that really helps us forecast how many families we can help in the future months, because we need to kind of fill the back end of families that we can support. So you can sign up monthly. That's one way. And then number two is we've created a way for any kind of leader to set up like a team or group campaign, which would essentially mean that you could say, hey, I want to set up a page and invite my friends or my company or whoever.

Or our podcast listeners.

Correct. Or the podcast. And we're all going to chip in at certain monthly amounts and hopefully we can get enough people to where we could cover at least one family a month. And so you'd be able to.

We're in. We're in.

Who contributes how much, and then we have the total. And then every month you'd be able to see what family you're able to impact.

I'll set up my own link, we'll set up my own page, and we'll make sure it's right there in the notes for this episode. I love this so much. Such a practical responsibility and a master of your craft. Speaking of which, we talk a lot about mastery on the Call to Mastery, of course. One thing I like about your story is you didn't really want to start a nonprofit, I think, probably for a couple reasons. Number one, there were already so many that existed, but your kind of realization was like, yeah, there's a lot, but aren't really run that well, and they don't operate with these really high standards of excellence. So I'm curious in what specific ways News Story has tried to tell a new story about excellence in the nonprofit world.

Yeah. And that's actually why I thought it made sense to actually start an organization as opposed to joining one. I was pretty much inspired by Scott Harrison and Charity Water. Yeah.

One of my favorite people.

Yeah. So Scott has been a friend and a mentor since then, an advisor. And Vic Harrison, co founder of Charity Water and Scott's wife, actually just joined our formal board of directors.

That's awesome.

So, you know, super inspired by them. And I just didn't see a lot of other organizations that were thinking that way and were acting that way. And I just had such a passion for. And not everybody has to, you know, think or operate this way necessarily, but for me personally, I had a passion for innovation, for calculated risk taking, for really challenging the status quo. And the more housing organizations I looked into internationally, it just seemed like everybody was kind of doing the same thing. And I don't mean this in any bad way, because we partner with these orgs. They're great. But we really wanted to come in and we saw a gap in the market. And that gap was to try to bring more forward thinking, more innovation, more software solutions, etc. To a market into a sector that you don't really think of as having ingenuity and being innovative and trying new concepts that much. And so that was the gap that I saw. And then I just saw one of our values is a humble pursuit of excellence. And I just believe that as a Christian, that's what I'm called to. But I think, especially in the nonprofit world, like, you owe that to the families that you're trying to work with, in my opinion, to do work with excellence so that you can help more families. Again, we call it a humble pursuit of excellence because we're always going to learn. We're not going to be perfect, we're not going to think we're perfect. Right. But we're going to set a high standard that we're going to try to pursue. When you pursue that standard, what we've learned is that I'd say the number one thing that attracts our top supporters is that they recognize the standard that we have and that attracts them because they have a similar standard. Yeah.

By the way, one of the ways in which this manifests. You and I talked about this when we had breakfast in New York a couple years ago, is in your approach to hiring. You like me, I Think like any good founder is obsessed with hiring. Well, and I actually think a lot about something you said directly at that breakfast. You said, you know, for people applying to News Story, if you can't get a job at Airbnb, you can't get a job at News Story. And I love that lens. Talk about how you think you guys have really gotten hiring. Right. And why you're so obsessed with this.

Yeah. I mean, again, this was something from the beginning. Like, at New Story, we're mostly a millennial organization, mid-20s to folks in their mid to later 30s. And I just thought, like, if you're trying to work on one of the biggest problems. Right. How could you not try to recruit the most talented people that if they wanted to, they could be working at the best startups or the best companies in the world? And what if you could create a culture where you attracted those people to the organization? And because they're surrounded by other people that are going to challenge them and push them and make them better, and they don't feel like they're, you know, a big fish in a small pond, if you will, then you're gonna retain that talent. And. And because they're going to be so excited about it, they're going to recruit their friends that a players recruit a players.

Right.

100%. And that's really what we've done. And then now when we bring in folks for interviews, they're, you know, sitting across from the table from people that they're going to very much respect, because one, they'll hear their background, they'll hear where they're from. But, you know, not everybody on our team has, like, you know, fancy backgrounds on paper. Some very much do. That's not the thing we're necessarily looking for. It's more of who is the person and what kind of personal and professional characteristics are they bringing. And we believe that you should be recruiting the absolute best talent and the best character that you can. And when you focus on it that much, what we found is that it just like that kind of talent and character gets more people that have that talent and that character. Yeah.

One of my favorite recruiting techniques I've ever heard, I think this was in Eric Schmidt's How Google Works book, is if they've got a. If they've got somebody, they really want to join Google and they're on the fence, they'll just slide across the table a stack of resumes. It's like, hey, these are the resumes that you're going to be joining. And that more Often than not. Pushes them.

Yeah. Over the edge, dude. Totally. Because if you're. You want to attract people to want to work with, and I think there's nothing wrong with this. Right. You want to work with people that are going to push you and they're going to make you better and are striving for the best in whatever they're doing. They really want to be the best elementary school teacher. Right. And go through like Teach of America or they want to be on, you know, the best team at a church. Not necessarily measured by like, you know, the production, all that stuff, even though I do think that's important, but just like how much they care and the inputs that they're making, they're going to do it to the absolute best of their ability. Yeah.

Hey, what does your day look like? I know you're a very disciplined, routine driven person like myself. I'm curious what the TikTok of your day looks like these days for the moment you wake up to the moment.

You go to bed. Yeah, let's see. Well, COVID 19 has changed that a little bit. You know, so I'm just from a personal side. I recently turned 30, I'm not married, I don't have kids. So there's that just as a, you.

Know, that makes things a bit different.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, so my priorities right now are, you know, I don't, since I'm not married yet, don't have kids, like they don't exist. So they're not a priority right now. So I mean, I am more of a routine guy. I always have been since we're out of college. I actually think it's been a. It was a superpower during my twenties just because how it allowed me to just to focus and clarify on the things that I say matter to me and then have a system for optimizing those. And so, you know, for me, first and foremost is my faith. And so I created very simple systems that, you know, for example, when I wake up in the morning, I go to bed relatively early and then I wake up pretty early between like 4:30 and 5. Well, when I go to bed, I will put my phone on airplane mode and then I will only turn it off airplane mode after I've done like, you know, my kind of little morning routine, which is essentially simple stuff. I mean, it's, you know, reading, whether it's, you know, scripture or, you know, praying, et cetera. And then I will not turn my phone on until I do that. Right. So it's like a little like Small little habit sacking like that is super important. So that's the first thing in the morning. And then I usually will look at email after that. Not necessarily like start working, but just a quick pulse and check if there's anything I need to work on relatively sooner than later. And then we'll work out. Fitness has been a huge part of my life ever since high school. And then we'll get to the office pretty early, do my best during the day and then we'll wind down usually with, back in the old days would be dinner with friends or I love going to restaurants and dinner again. I'm not married on kids, so that's how I spend most of my evenings. And then we'll try to read and maybe do a little bit of work at the end of the day.

Yeah, I love the phone habit. I do that as well. So I wake up at 4:45 and typically don't check my phone until like 7:15, something like that. Is there another habit that you could point to, maybe even at the office that makes you particularly productive or just present with your team?

That's good. Yeah, I mean I, I like to, you know, just like very much simplify my workspace and I try to keep my phone out of reach. I try to just have in front of me what I need to work on. And you know, I'm just a believer in having a written list in front of me of just the most important things and I kind of carry that around with me during the day. I know there's, there's so many different ways to do it. I personally like the habit of writing down the most important things for the day. And I will always plan that in the morning before I get started on my work day is just write out what are the things I must do today and then I try to time those out as well. So I do like the 25 minute Pomodoro style and go from there.

Yeah, expound upon the pomodoro style. I think a lot of people need to hear this.

Yeah. So like it's a 25 minute heads down, zero distractions. You can only work on one thing. And so I'll put a timer on for 25 minutes. I will only work on that one thing and then I will take usually like a 5ish, maybe 10 minute break and then I'll start another pomodoro. Beginning of the day I will, you know, kind of list out, hey, these are the two to four things I need to work on. And then I'll almost like Project like how many pomodoros do I think those will take? And you don't have to be perfect with those, but it's just like helping me visualize my day and my time. And then you just put your head down and you do it. You execute your plan.

I do the exact same thing. I do 90 minute blocks. So yeah, there was a book that really influenced me early in my career that basically says that it takes 90 minutes to like really get into the realm of work, if you will. Kind of analogous to something sleep. But I've often thought that those shorter bursts might be more productive in different roles in different environments. So today, when the majority of my work is creating content, 90 minutes makes a lot of sense. When I was running threshold360 day to day as CEO, it looked a lot more like 30, maybe 60 minute blocks. So it changes based on your role. Hey Brett, you know, I shared your story in Master of One and the part of it that was really compelling to me that I wanted to highlight was, you know, you made this transition from in high school, early college, looking around, not seeing a lot of Christians who were, who had a really humble pursuit of excellence. And part of your story and coming back to that faith was the mastery of a particular vocational craft in a mentor of yours.

Right?

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I mean I've had a couple along the way, but there was a gentleman in the very early days that kind of started the fire for me. And I knew about this gentleman as a very well respected CEO in town. Not like a huge famous name, but I knew he was, I knew people really respected him. And I had a for profit startup right out of college before New Story, and we were trying to raise a little, you know, a little angel round. And so I kind of chased this guy down and one day, you know, went up to him and basically asked if we could do lunch and got on his calendar. And during that lunch I started asking him leadership questions and he started asking me about or he started telling me his philosophy of servant leadership. And at that point I. That was not really like a term I was that familiar with. And if I heard it before, I probably roll my eyes at it. And so I'm like, he's like, yeah, like that's like the secret. That's how I'd like advanced my career, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, where'd you learn that and. Which is like the biggest softball. And he's like, well, you know this guy named Jesus that was the best leader that the world has ever seen. And you know, here's some bullets. And so for me that was. I so respected this gentleman long before I had any idea that he was a man of faith or a man of God. And then when he told me that the reason why he was successful and told me about his family and all these things was not despite of but 100% because of his faith and his servant leadership style. Modeling it after Jesus, it was just like such a no brainer man. I need to like, I need to explore this and go from there. So that's what happened.

But I'm not sure and who can know, right? But I'm not sure you would have gotten there as fast as you did had he not been exceptional at what he did. And the point I'm trying to make in master of one and sharing that exact story is master is winsome. Like when we are great at what we do. I mean we were just talking about this in hiring a players want to work with other A players. Exceptional people want to be around exceptional people just attracted to goodness. We're attracted to excellence. And it can open up doors for us to serve people, which is good in and of itself, but also it opens up opportunities to share the gospel. Right. Why do you think? Because, listen, in high school you're looking around, you're not seeing a lot of Christians with this humble pursuit of excellence. But it's true today. I think it's probably been true forever. I think it's true of Christians and non Christians within the church. Why do you think this problem exists?

It's a question I definitely don't know the answer to. I think it's way too pervasive throughout the church culture. And I think there's a difference in being like, there's differences between being flashy and like showy and pursuing excellence. Right. And I think some people can get confused by people they might think are like flashy or trying to show off or it's like maybe there are definitely some people that do that. But like, no, like think about, you know, I'll use this one example because I heard in a sermon the other week they're from Passion in Atlanta. They use the example of Maya Moore, right? Who's you know, one of the great, the greatest women's basketball players of all time. And she's a strong Christian, loves Jesus and like, dude, she, she has a platform and so many people listen to her less of because of the Christian blog she wrote as just like an average basketball player and or becoming the absolute best in what she's done, and she now has a platform. And actually one of her shoes by Jordan came out and I believe has scripture on it. Right. Like things like that where, you know, she put in the work and she earned the platform to do it. And I just think that is one of the best ways to, I don't know, evangelize, if you will. Right. It's less of trying to, you know, if you're a barber, trying to put a. Any kind of like scripture on your window and actually being the best barber in your city, right. Like, that is going to. Is whimsical and it's going to attract people. And so, you know, it's this fundamental.

Baseline ministry of excellence, Right. That is good in and of itself, but also opens up other opportunities.

100%. Yeah.

I want to dig in here for a second. So you guys and New Story are executing against this unbelievably massive goal to end homelessness, much like Scott is trying to end the water crisis around the world. And of course, as Christians, right, we know there is coming a day when homelessness will be eradicated for good when we dwell in the new earth with Jesus. What impact does that future hope have on your work now?

Yes, great question. So one is a starting point of like, you know, not being afraid to work on the kind of work that has no end while you're here for your short time on earth. Right? And I think that could be, you know, we're going to do our best to make. To try to make the biggest dent we can. Right? But, you know, New Story and Scott and Trudy Water, we're working on massive, massive problems, right? And I think trying to the best we can, you know, bring the kingdom of heaven down while we're here, which, like, you know, I would say I'm pretty sure in the kingdom of heaven, like, kids are going to have clean water, right? And kids are going to have a safe place shelter, right. And I think while we're here, we can do our best to try to bring that down. But then knowing, of course, that there is a much brighter future coming. And you know, I think when you have the perspective of eternity, I use this little example of if you were to just like, get a piece of paper out and draw a small dot and then attach to that dot there's a line with an arrow. The arrow represents the future and what's coming, which is eternity. Right. And the little dot is obviously our short period of time on this earth. And when you more of your decisions for the line that Literally never ends. As opposed to the dot. Things get a lot better. And I think that's a decision filter that I have during my time here.

Yeah, things get a lot better for the world, but I also think they get better for us as a result. I've been thinking about, like, this problem of lack of excellence in the life of believers, and I think at the end of the day, it's rooted in we're just living for too small stories. Either we believe there's no meaning in work, which is a small story, but even viewing work as ultimate sense of meaning and self worth is a small story. I mean, you talked about this in your own story. You were living for the story in which Brett Hagler was the star. The bigger story, right. The biggest story is recognizing I am a part of a grander narrative that's been going on since Jesus was resurrected on that first Easter. That's the story, right?

100%. Exactly. And living into that because, you know, being on the other side of it as well, I have that kind of perspective. Like, living into that story is like, I'm not even exaggerating. It's like a trillion times bigger idea than trying to live for your little story of being one of like billions that is here today, gone tomorrow. Like, that's such small thinking, right? If you consider yourself a big idea person, a big thinker, it's like, well, welcome to the never ending story. And like, as big of an idea as you could possibly get as a human being.

But going back to what you're saying about big, hairy, audacious goals, I know you're a big Jim Collins fan, right? This is what I'm dedicating my life to. You're dedicating your life to eradicating homelessness? I'm dedicating my life to helping the church by the grace of God alone, catch a bigger vision.

Amen.

I love that bigger kingdom building story for. Hey, so here's something I love about you though, right? Like you're a Christ follower or vision for new story is rooted in a solid theology of the kingdom. But I got to imagine a lot of the members of your team are not.

Not right? That's right.

Right. And so I'm curious if you've reflected any on the reality that your team, believe it or not, are all being used to accomplish the Lord's will in the world and bring him glory. Like, have you reflected on that? And if so, what are your takeaways from that?

Yeah, I mean, I think I've reflected on that in A couple different ways. And I think like you look, God uses a lot of people on earth that are not necessarily Jesus followers today to advance his will and the kingdom. Right. And so I see it every day and I see it from our donors as well. And I just, I see again, when I read, when I. Especially when I read the New Testament, I was reading Philippians this morning, Philippians 2 or you know, just talks about just having humility and selflessness. Yeah. Putting others before yourself. Right. And like a lot of people can say that, but then who are the folks that are truly doing it? And I see it all the time. So many people that are just like doing exactly what Jesus said and what the early church was doing. And I believe that God sees that. And this isn't a theological statement, it's not my expertise. But regardless of whatever their faith or non faith is, I think God sees that and he smiles and I think Jesus sees that and he smiles and it's like. That's right. Like you're following instructions. Right. Whether you. Yeah. Whether you may know it or not. And I think it's beautiful and I think it's beautiful to have a company that is made up of all different types of backgrounds. And I know that some people very much feel called and have a conviction to have a, you know, a Christian only something or something else like that totally between you and God. And I've just felt called that God wants to create a tent at New Story. And underneath that tent are people from all different backgrounds from political side, faith side, non faith side, different ethnicities, like everything you know. Amen. And we fortunately have that both on our team and our donor base. And I think it's a beautiful thing.

It's an incredibly beautiful thing. All right, three quick questions. We wrap up every conversation with number one, which books do you find yourself recommending most frequently or gifting the most to others?

Yeah, that's great. I would say recommending more recently was on a big kick of the ruthless elimination of Hurry.

So good.

Yep. So John Mark Comer, I think it's made its rounds with a lot of leaders, but I recommended that one so much. There was another one that I recommend after that that people really like of Hurry. And it's by John Ortberg called Soul Keeping. Yes, that's right. So great book. Those have been a couple new ones I just went on. I don't know if I told you this, Jordan, but I just, I went in February. I was on a one month sabbatical and my favorite book out of that sabbatical was a book called the Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri Nouwen.

Oh, I love Henry Nouwen.

I've never read that though, dude. I mean, it rocked me. Like, it was so good. And I highly recommend that because it's very like we all hear the prodigal son parable and I think think of the prodigal son as like, oh, it's like this like, you know, young dude that like went away and like partied and like squandered everything. Right. Like, and I did that in my early 20s. But like, it's actually not, you know, we're all the prodigal when we leave the father's house in search of something else to try to bring us satisfaction. And that could be our work, that could be metrics, that could be, etc, and ultimately there's not any satisfaction outside of the father's house. So we have to come back.

I will definitely read that. Have you read Prodigal God by Keller?

No, I haven't.

Oh, dude, it's super short.

Okay.

It's Keller at his best right now for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great, great, great book. One of my top 10 color books. And you guys listening can find all Those books@jordanraynor.com Bookshelf oh, awesome. Brett, who would you most like to hear talk about how their faith impacts.

The work they do every day? That's something me, because the ones that I know of, I try to already listen to them and learn from them.

Yeah, exactly.

All right, well, let me, let me be somebody that I don't know as a believer.

Let me reframe the question. Who have you discussed these topics with that you think our audience should hear from?

Yeah, so I little biased. My best friend, a new story board member, a gentleman by the name of Mike Arrieta, just started a new holding company called Garden City, which is essentially about bringing excellence to small, medium sized service based businesses and coming in, working with the owners, buying them out, and then bringing excellence, bringing culture, bringing innovation and technology. And I just think that's such an awesome market to help the working class and to bring a better culture, which if you have a better culture, you get two things. You get a better job and you get a better life. And so I highly recommend that.

Yeah, that's good. One piece of advice to leave this audience with an audience of Christ followers who want to do great work for the glory of God and the good of others of them entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs. What do you want to tell Them.

I'd say two things. Number one, this would be a little bit more of for like the leaders or aspiring entrepreneurs. Leaders, because I'm sure you have some amazing people or right now that's just not the season in their life, which is totally okay, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's good for those. I would say, you know, especially during these times that bold ideas attract bold people. And I've just seen that in my life. Starting a new story at 25 and like, I am by no means anywhere close to like the smartest person or by any means, most accomplished. Like so far from that. I think just one of the things that I've been lucky to do is dream big and to put out bold ideas and bold goals. And that is going to attract bold resources. And that's like your choice, right? Like, I mean, you have to be smart about it. You can't just put out fairy tale things. But that would be it. And then the other thing that I would leave with would be to if you're not there yet but you want to be one day, I would just say to dream big and to start small. You know, starting small can mean just if you're a mother listening and you've always wanted to, you know, start a blog or something, right? Like use this time during COVID 19 era and like just start, you know, with your first 10 posts, right? You can have a dream, you can have a vision. And I think what paralyzes so many people is they just don't know how to figure out all the scalable solutions and this and that and they don't know where to start. They don't know how to get, you know, an llc. Like I get it, like, stuff can be very overwhelming. But if you just start small, you can go from there. Yeah.

Brett, I want to commend you for the incredible redemptive work you and your team are doing every day. Thank you for your heart for the homeless. Thank you for your testimony and reminding us that mastery makes the gospel winsome to the world. Hey, there's two ways to engage with Brett. New story. You could donate. And I'm gonna have my unique donate link for this new project here in the show notes. You can also go apply to work there. They've got some open at news story right now. You can connect with Bretagler.com Brett, thanks again for joining us.

Thanks, Jordan. That was fun.

I promised you guys that would be a great episode. I hope you enjoyed that. And hey, seriously, join me right now in raising money to prevent and help alleviate some pain in people's lives related to the COVID 19 crisis. People who can't pay rent. I hope you guys will click the link here in the show notes to go join me in donating right now. I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode of the Call to Mastery. I know I did. I'll see you next week.