Kurt Avery (Founder of Sawyer Products)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

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Two reasons.

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Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended.

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I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as grad assistants, X ray technicians, and preschool teachers. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Kurt Avery, the founder of Sawyer products, which since 1984 has been at the forefront of innovation and water filtration, insect repellent, sunscreen, and first aid. And not only are Soyuz filters one of the most popular on the trail, but they are also being used in 80 countries to provide clean drinking water to more than 25 million people. Kurt and I sat down to talk about how to baptize your imagination, about what God can do through your work. We talked about how Kurt's enormous view of God has led him to give 5 million people clean water every year. We also talked about how to ensure that you and I are marketers rather than manipulators. Please enjoy this conversation with my new friend, Kurt Avery.

Hey, Kurt. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.

Well, thank you for giving me a chance to be on.

Yeah, I'm super excited that you're here and you just so happen to be down the road. It's absurd that we're not doing this in person. We're like 20 minutes away from each other.

Yeah, don't tell everybody how nice it is today.

Sorry for all you northerners. It's February 17th and it is 80 degrees in Tampa, Florida. It's amazing.

Hey, Kurt, let's start here. What do you and the team do at Sawyer Products?

Sawyer is all about outdoor industry. Camping, hiking. We're in every camping department in America, you name it. We're big shots on Amazon, so we do insect repellents. Very advanced. Not the stuff for the ballpark, but when you got to be out there for a long time. Military only uses our insect repellents because of the technology. And we're into water filtration, point of use, which means all the hikers and campers can just drink out of the river, out of the mud puddle. We do all the earthquakes, hurricanes, stuff like that. We're around the world, we go into a village, and then within two weeks, just waterborne diseases are gone. Just gone. 95% reduction, 99% reduction after a year. And it's just nobody's sick. I mean, hundreds of thousands of babies live because they don't get diarrhea. And we save anywhere from 10 to 20% of their annual income. So it's a really life changing thing. But, you know, our base here is the hiking, camping industry. That's what pays the bills. And then we're fortunate enough to be able to give away a lot of it.

That's fascinating. I. I love this. All right, so you founded the business in 1984, couple years before I was born, right down the road from you. And as I understand it, this. This started out as a redemptive quest of yours to partner with God to solve a very specific problem related to mosquito bites.

Can you tell us about that and kind of the origins of Sawyer Products?

Yeah, that came in a little bit later. I was a little younger back then, of course, but I. I'd had a very storied business career as my MBA out of Northwestern. I worked for some very major companies, did some wonderful stuff, said, boy, this is so easy. I just gotta go do my own thing. And I did. And I started out with what's called a snakebite kit. And it's still in the stores today. Fifty years later, it's still in the stores. So, you know, come home to your wife and say, I'm gonna start a company with snake bite kits. And she goes, okay. I mean, that's a. That's a good wife. We've held on her for 47 years now. She's a good one. So we started with that and then literally went every camping department in America right off the bat. And then you build from there. So our premise is, what else can we make for you? We know you're going to buy this thing, but what other things do hikers and campers need? And then it got us into the sunscreens and the insect repellents. And one of our mantras, we never do anything that's second rate. Every product we make has to be the highest technology that's out there. So we're very fortunate. I'm not a scientist, so I don't spell science without spell check. So I was able to hook up with a lot of good scientists. I always told our kids, your number one asset is your integrity. Don't ever lose it. And because of our integrity, we had good scientists were coming to us. So then eventually, we've been chasing water for a long time. Took me five or six years looking through all the different technologies, till we came across the one we have now, which is hollow fiber membranes. Came out of kidney dialysis. If you can clean blood, you can clean water. Actually, we're probably clean the blood too clean now with what we have, because we don't let anything go through that's going to make you sick, except a virus, which is in the water. And people don't understand that. So basically, we just wipe out all sickness, just boom, gone within weeks. And so then I'm sitting there going, okay, well half the world dies of mosquito bites or bad water. And we have the solution to those. We invented the mosquito net chemical and you know, we still do research with governments today to how to get rid of malaria in little kids overseas. So I said, you know, God, you know, that's the biggest problem. Half the people die of that. So why don't we just go fix that? Obviously I meant him, not me, but he said, okay, let's go do that. So off we go.

I love this so much and I want to come back to that audacity. Just a second, but explain to me the solution a little bit. I, I mentioned before we started recording.

My friend Scott Harrison has been here.

On the podcast before, who runs a well known nonprofit called Charity Water that's.

Raising money to fund solutions like this. How does, but your solution sounds different. Charity Water is building wells. Talk to us about the solution and.

How this works in cleaning dirty that's killing millions of people.

Okay, well, so what it is is there's these little teeny tiny hoses and I mean they look like threads, but they're really a hose with a hollow middle. And then there's holes in these hoses that are 0.1 micron absolute. That's the difference between us and everybody else. We guarantee nothing bigger than 0.1, and that's huge because there's nothing making 6 smaller than 0.1. So others may say 0.1, but if they don't use the word absolute, they won't guarantee that they won't have bigger holes and we guarantee we won't. So the water can get through it, but the bacteria cannot. That all stays on the outside. And a 0.1 micron is 170 diameter smaller than your hair. So you imagine how small these things are. And so we test every filter three times because you can't go into Africa and say, well, most of you are going to be okay, but some of you are still going to die. We just can't do that. So we're at that level that Nobody's matched in 20 years. So that's how it works. And then our filter, filters happen to be the hoses for ours are thicker than everybody else's, which is kind of a neat thing. And so that means we can back flush them. So these things are smaller than a Coke can be half the size of a Coke can. We have different sizes and they never wear out. We have filters that have been out there 15 years working every single day for families and four families per filter. And they're still working. We hadn't tested. They're still absolutely working, 100%. So it's got no end to it. There's no logical end to these filters if you take care of it. And that's a huge difference because we're not a throwaway item. We give you a filter and you have it for the rest of your life and your grandkids, whatever, you take care of it. And so some of the very first filters we put out there are still working every day.

That's unbelievable. I love the solution. I love the brilliant simplicity behind it. Again, I love the audacity behind the creation of it. Here's how you put it to me. In the pre interview we did a few months back, you said, quote, I was told years ago that half the world died of mosquito bites or bad water. So I said, come on, God, let's go solve that. End quote. And then you go on to say, my God is really big and really wants big things done.

And I love that audacity curve because most believers I know are not thinking.

That big about what God can do through them. What. What would you say to them to baptize their imagination of what. What God is able to do through our work?

Well, couple of things. First of all, look at creation. I mean, come on, how do you put God in a box? Amen. Look at creation. You can't. They don't fit in the same sentence. So if he's that big, you can do big things. Now, I've never saw a box you could put me in. I'm so far outside the box it doesn't matter, but I can be. Because God is so big, he's not in a box. You can't put him in a box. So if you're willing to let our God be outside that box, be as big as he is, why can't you do anything? I mean, you got lots of examples in the Bible, obviously, but you know, real life today, why, why not? But if you put it in a box, he'll still use you, but you won't do as big of things as you could have done if you let him be as big as he is.

Amen. Amen. It's really well said. I was. I was visiting a church recently and they were singing this song. I can't remember the exact lyrics, but it was basically like, hey, with.

With all the faith, with the size of the faith that we have in.

This room, what do you think God could do?

And I was sitting there Thinking man, it has nothing to do with the size of our faith. It's the size of the object of.

Our faith that matters. So you've got this faith in this.

Massive, the size of God in your.

Your eyes is huge, Kurt. So other than being in nature, how do you renew your all at the power of God as you venture?

Oh, you just have to see what we're doing. I mean we, we give 2 to 5 million people a year clean water for the first time ever. And you want to see transformation. I'll give you an example. A missionary went into a village in Uganda. At the end of the week, he said, I notice you don't name your kids till the 3 years old. Why is that? He goes, well, because if they can live till three, we're pretty sure they'll make it. But you know, like every other thing, they lose at least a third of their kids. So he goes back with the filters and installs 250 filters in the village, comes back a year later and they're naming them at birth because they've never lost another child. How is that not? If that doesn't affect you and think big. I don't know what will. And I have so many stories like that, it's mind boggling.

All right, I love this. So, all right, it's clear how your faith influences what you're doing.

Kurt, I want to talk a little.

Bit about how your faith influences how you do what you do within the venture. You're a marketer at heart. You told me a minute ago you're not a scientist.

And you said in your pre interview.

That the GOSP compels you to be a marketer rather than a manipulator.

What do you mean by that?

Well, let's break it down. Marketing is really nothing more than the study of human behavior. That's all it is. And once you understand human behavior, you, you can do your analytics and find out where they are on the bell curve and life cycle curves and four P's and five. So you got all the marketing tools. You understand human nature and you understand your audience. You find your audience. Now it's up to you. Do you want to manipulate them or do you want to serve them and be very honest? Do you want to force them to eat sugar and cereals or do you want to have them eat carrots and vegetables? I mean, you have the power within your marketing skills to steer them in an honest direction or you have the ability to manipulate them into what you want to sell. So we've never Tried to sell junk stuff. We believe we have to move the ball in science every time we do something new. We have to advance the technology, make things better. And then, you know, we work with 140 charities in 80 different countries and the gospel is shared like crazy. I mean, it's such an easy story. You got a dirty glass of water, and then you run through the filter and you got a clean glass of water, and you sit there and say, that's what God can do to your heart. He can take a dirty heart and make a clean heart. So if you want to be a missionary, you got three vehicles. You can do food, you can do medicine, you can do water. We do water. We don't do the other two. But it's, it's a powerful witness.

It's really good. What, what are some marketing best practices stuff you see all the time that you would say, yeah, that's toeing the line to being manipulative?

Well, obviously, obviously we have made a lot of our ads a little racy because it sells.

Not you, it's all your products. But the marketing industry.

The marketing industry, yes. Yeah. You know, it's about telling the truth. And, and the, the other point though is you have to go back to the very beginning is what are you doing to make life better? Or also the side thing is, what are you doing to share the gospel? So if you're not doing those things, then I guess you fall into the manipulator kind of things. Oh, I could be a great manipulator. I know all the tools to do that. I mean, it's awesome.

You got skills to do it.

It's just what you set your target and what you set your, your standards at. So we, we're just not going to do that.

It's really good. What are some good. Are there any good diagnostic tests that your team runs through, questions they ask, practices you guys have got adopted at Sawyer to measure whether or not what you're doing is marketing or manipulating?

Yeah, well, actually, you really hit on something very important, which separates us from everybody else when we go into a village or anywhere in the world, you know, we're at every hurricane. You know, nobody would deal with a hurricane without us. We can go ahead of time. We can. One, one suitcase can do, you know, 20,000 to 200,000 people depending on your system. And you go in there ahead of time and, you know, that's why Puerto Rico, we had a third of the people on our filters before water showed up. That's why all that dead Water is on the tarmac. So we do metrics. So we each of our filters come with a QR code on it now. And with that QR code, you can just open your phone and you can hit it and get how to install it, how to maintain it. But we also do tracking. So the charities go out there with a tablet and we measure, you know, how many people were sick and then, then go back later how many are sick. And you just. So you can measure all those metrics because otherwise you're just shooting in the dark. I mean, we took missions from being passion driven to being metric driven. And if you're a big investor, don't you want to know the ROI of your charity dollars, your donations, so we can give them that. So that's how we measure how well our stuff is working.

It's good.

I want to touch on one more.

Way the gospel is clearly influencing your work. You guys are radically generous within the business. You give away 90% of your profits. I read. How and when did you come to that decision? Tell us the story there.

I can explain to you how we give away a lot more than 90.

Great. All right. I got dated. Dated numbers here.

Yeah. First of all, I'm from the school. May your last check bounce. There's no U hauls in heaven, so you aren't taking it with you. So what is it? My kids are taken care of. I. We live comfortably. You know, I get new shoes every four years. I get a truck every four years. So I just don't need it. We live fine. So what do you do with it? And by the way, we are set up that when I do, you know, here's a marketing term, when I exit the market, physically or mentally, the sawyer is going to go to the foundation to be able to continue what we're doing. So there are things you can do before profits and I'll be explained later as we'll talk about in the book. You got donation line, you can take it straight out of your cost of goods sold. We can do R and D, we can do publicity and all those kind of things. So because I own 100% of the company set up as a sub S I don't have to make a profit. Who says I have to make a profit? I report to nobody. The bank. But they're happy and they know that I could. They're happy. I meet, they love what we're doing and I meet their covenants so I can burn it all off before it even becomes a profit. Because then the profits get taxed and my feeling is I'd rather donate the money ahead of time than let the government tax it and decide what they want to do with it. But even after it becomes a profit, I have the ability to then donate it to the Sawyer foundation charity in other places. So we give away 90% of the profits, but I've given away a lot more before it even got to the profit line. And we explain how you can do that legally, given the Caesar. What? Caesar will never cheat on the taxes, but I. I guarantee I got a better deal than the government on. On what Sawyer can make.

This is not a perspective that's shared by all. I mean, Kurt, a lot of people your age. I don't know how old you are, I can make some guesses, but are living for their bucket list, right? Like, they're chasing it hard. They're. They're. They're. They're trying to live their best life. Now, what did God show you in his word and your time with him that just convinced you to chase a different way of living?

Well, two things. Life's a binary choice. You're going up or down. Those are. Those are your two choices. So as long as you decide you're going to go up. And if you read enough of the. The Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, that's not going to be a bad place to be. So given that eternity is a long time and this is a very short time, where would you rather, you know, I'll get out on the other end. My knees are going to work again, and, you know, it's going to be a lot happier. So, you know, hey, as your team.

Pushed back, I'm curious, asking you to keep more money in the business. You can increase wages or benefits or whatever. And if so, how have you responded to that over the years?

No, they haven't. Because two things. One, when you work for Sawyer, you're buying into what we're doing. I mean, I pay very, very well. My mantra is I want to pay Everybody at least 20% more than they're worth on the market, because I can go to bed and sleep well, and we have margins. We can do that. I'm a very profitable business. So we can take care. And they're very small part. I mean, labor is very, very small part of our cost of goods sold. And the overhead is these. But I get the best of the best. I mean, why wouldn't you want to be at Sawyer if you could, A, get paid very well and B, change the world? So I don't have a problem I get the best of the best, and we're happy. And they're all in. They are absolutely all in on what we're doing.

I love it.

Yeah.

And you're screening for culture on the front end, right? I mean, you're looking for that culture fit to make sure that.

Yeah, I got good people.

I. I talk to a lot of business owners who.

Believers who, you know, they're very missionally minded. They're very excited about growing their business so that they can give a lot of money to ministries outside the business.

But I've talked to a few who's, like, who've talked about this temptation where you could be so focused on the.

Ministry done outside the business that you.

Take your eye off of doing ministry.

Inside the business with your people, loving them. Well, looking for ways to bless them.

How do you ensure personally, Kurt, that you're doing both, that you're thinking about ministry inside and outside the four walls of Sawyer Products?

Well, first of all, we're not that big. Most people would be surprised how small we are. But I spend a lot of time with everybody. I mean, I don't think anybody doubts where I'm coming from and doubts our faith. It's just there. I mean, you don't have to fake it either. Walk the walk.

And you spend time with your people. They know that, you know, you value them beyond their productivity.

I spend time with the lowest paid person in the building. We serve meals twice a week to all our workers during COVID We started feeding them every day so they wouldn't go out and get Covid. We were allowed to keep working because we're essential to the Department of Defense. So we're essential. So we got to work right through Covid. We just started. So we sit down for a company meal twice a week at the factory. I make sure I spend time with every single one of them. And even when we bring in temporaries for. We're a little bit seasonal, they come back year after year because they love, love working here. But I. I just get to know them and spend time with them. And of course, I got the core marketing people, which is like nine or ten of them. And we. We get together every couple of weeks. I talk to them all the time, obviously, but every couple of weeks, we all get on a zoom call and we go through the book, basically. So I know what I call grasshopper. Uh, so everybody knows where we're going and what we're doing, and they're all in.

Tell me more about these team meals.

I don't think I've ever heard of.

This in any other interview. Here, here on the podcast, you guys, as an entire team, eat together twice a week.

How long is this meal? What's the purpose of this meal?

Tell us more.

Oh, well, it's during their break time, so it's only half an hour. But this is Sunny's Barbecue, Carrabba's Chipotle. You know, Chick Fil A. I hate that one. But they love it. So we have 10 different rotations that we go through different meals, and. Oh, they love it. And then a lot of them take home meals to their kids. We have a nut. We buy enough leftovers so they can feed their kids or have another meal later or whatever. So it's a good meal. This is not a cheap little thing. And we also. We got a room in the. In the plant. We just move some of the pallets out of the way, put the tables up, and we. You know, there's about 40, 50 people right now these days, but with summer help, you know, and then I make them mix it up. So I'm going to make the shipping department eat with the filling department, and I'm going to make the. The water department eat with the, you know, inventory people or whatever. So I don't let them sit with the people they work with. I make them move around and visit with other people and. And, you know, us and just go around and have fun with them. I love it.

I love that you make time for that.

Oh, it's. It's a cherished time.

Yeah, it's really good. Hey, you mentioned the book a couple times. You published this book called Sawyer Think.

Kurt, you're talking to this audience of.

Christian professionals who deeply want to understand how their faith should influence their work. What are they going to take away from this book, Sawyer Think?

Okay, well, there's two parts to the book I kind of call. It's. It's what I teach grasshopper. You, my workers, and I bring interns in. It's a lot of marketing stuff. I got analytics. So the first thing we want to do is make your business more profitable. And you're getting my 50 years worth of tricks from big business. You know, I worked for some of the major, major corporations down to my own. And. And so, you know, the. The basics are there, four Ps, five Cs, life cycle, all that kind of stuff. But there's. There's little gems in there, things that I've thought of. So, like math trap, how to make a solid decision without getting bogged. Down in the details, you can. You can get there pretty quick. Understanding when the numerator is important or when the denominator is important, important. They each have their role, but they're not the same. And profits usually come out of the denominator. Why people focus on the numerator. It's the denominator that drives the profits. So I tell you how and why. And incremental variable cost pricing for where you're going to be, not where you are now. And then all the tricks and that thing and a decision matrix. We try to help you get past the emotional part of a decision and identify what people later would call unintended consequences. But if you know them ahead of time, that there's this little, you know, bump in the road coming and you can deal with it, as opposed to it just hits you on the side of the head. So there's analytical tools in that. So the first thing we want to do is get your business to be more profitable. Then I want to take you through now that you're more profitable, how can you unload those profits and do it to charity? Whatever you choose, you know, and it's everything from Judea, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world. So we do that. We try to follow the 4 model. We do local and whatever anybody can. Plumbers can do it. You know, restaurants can do it. They always have something that they can take off the cost of goods sold line and minimize your taxes, but make it a huge impact for the kingdom. So we walk you through that, and then each chapter ends with a story about how we're changing the world overseas. With the filters. Just. It just. They'll make you cry, I've got to say.

So I've skimmed the book, and I'm so impressed with how incredibly practical what this thing is. Like you're just rolling out the entire playbook of how you guys have built this extraordinary business. And it's a great, great tool for any listeners looking to give more of what God's given them through the business. I love it. Hey, Kurt. I ask every single guest the same four questions to wrap up these interviews. So here's the first one. Look ahead to the new earth. Isaiah 65 tells us that heaven on earth is not going to be an eternal vacation, but a perfect vocation where we will, quote, long, enjoy the work of our hands, and, quote, free from the curse of sin.

What job would you love for God.

To give you to do on the new Earth?

Well, first of all, I have a sense of humor. And God has a sense of humor.

Amen.

Donkeys wouldn't talk. But so I figure I'm going to be. I don't like coffee, so I figure I'm going to be stuck in making. In charge of making the coffee.

That would be amazing.

Or I'm going to be a crossing guard. Now, I have nothing wrong with crossing guards who cross children when they're there, say, but the crossing guards, I go by one all the time and there's never anybody crossing. But I still have to slow down for a long way and there's nobody ever crosses there. So I figured he's going to have a sense of humor and put me in charge of the crossing.

I can't wait to cross at your street in the New Jerusalem. I'll give you a high five, Bill. Yeah, yeah. No, God does have a sense of humor. Kurt, if we opened up your Amazon order history or wherever you buy books, which books would we see you buying over and over again to give away to friends?

Well, I saw you going to ask that question and I'm going to answer it a little differently, if you don't mind, because, you know, I'm outside this box.

That's okay.

One thing that has helped me, of course, I'm a marketer, is I've studied every civilization that I can think of existed. I mean, all of them. You name it. I've probably read something on a, studied it, whatever. And the reason is if you, if you go through the rise and fall of. I'm talking hundreds of civilizations. There's, there's books on there, you discern three things. One, what did God do in that civilization? How did, how did he react? What did he do? Two, what did the devil do? What does Satan do in that civilization? What did human nature, sin, nature do in those civilizations? So if you look at those three elements in every civilization, you'll start to understand God, the devil and humans. So just a marketer perspective, if you want a name of a particular book, because I'm doing so much work in Central America and Africa, but Central America, there's an interesting book out there called when the Fish Ate the Whale and it's about banana industry and it's about how a guy. Basically it gives you good insights into the mentality in these Central and South American countries that are plantation oriented. Okay. There's the elite running the rest of them. And of course we're working with the rest of them, but we have to deal with the elite. So that one's a fascinating study. A guy Came with nothing in his pocket and ended up. Literally ran revolutions in Central America and ended up owning some major, major companies. I won't disclose the names. You have to read the book. So that. That's a weird one. But again, it's understanding my customers.

Yeah, it's good. I love that answer. I love oddball book answers because these. These end up being really fascinating reads.

All right, Kurt, who do you want to hear in this podcast talking about.

How the gospel influences the work they do?

Well, you got the usual ones, and I know you have good ones, but I tried to come up with somebody you've probably never heard of, and if you ever heard of Martin Rolls, I don't think Martin. Yeah, they're great. Great rolls. Potato rolls. Once you eat one, you'll never switch. They're awesome. But anyways, Jim Martin owns Martin Rolls, and he's a friend of ours. My wife is a trustee up at Messiah University, as is he. He's fascinating every time we get together because I get to tag along at the trustee meetings that they. I'm too far out of the box to let me on the trustee meeting, but she causes enough trouble. He's fascinating. Such a business philosophy is very different than others, and I like that answer. So that'd be my one person. You probably never heard of that. Jim Martin.

Jim Martin. Martin rules. I like it. All right, Kurt, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians who are doing a lot of different things vocationally.

A lot of CEOs like yourself, but.

We also got baristas and accountants and dentists. I don't know.

Listening, what's one final thing you want.

To say or reiterate to those listeners before we sign off?

Have a big God. Don't put them in a box. Doesn't matter if you're a barista or whatever. He's got a plan for you and he can use you. You can do big things. I mean, there's no. I mean, look at the Bible. I mean, Gideon, he didn't want to do anything, and look what God did with him. I mean, so don't. Don't limit God's potential to use you. It doesn't matter whether you think the world thinks you're little. You're not little. You're big to God, and you can do big things. Just let God be big.

It's good. Let God be big. That's a great word to end on. Kurt, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do every day for the glory of God and the good of others, for reminding us that we serve a big God who longs to do big things through his people. And for doing your work in distinctly Christlike ways.

Guys, if you want to learn more.

About Kurt and this incredible business that he's leading, check out Kurt's book, Sawyer Think. Available in a bunch of different places. I know you can get it at Sawyer's website. You can get it on Amazon, Kurt.

Anywhere else you want to point people.

To learn more about you and what you're doing?

No, I try to keep a low profile. It's not me that's good. I'm just a tool.

I like that.

But a vessel. Nothing but a tool.

An empty vessel. That's Andrew Murray's humility book. I love that picture. Kurt, thanks for joining us today.

Well, thank you for letting me be on.

I hope you guys enjoyed that episode as much as I did. Hey, I want to know who you.

Want to hear on the Beer Christians podcast.

Let me know@jordanrayner.com contest. Thank you guys for listening.

I'll see you next week.

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