From Jail to $30M: How I Rebuilt My Life and Career | 092

I started selling narcotics. The cops raided my house. I ended up getting arrested, serving time in jail, and I started asking myself questions about what does the future of my life look like? You're most likely going to be dead or behind bars. Like, why not go a different path?

For my guest today, Ryan Beck, that path eventually led to co-founding Pray.com. It's now a $30 million platform reaching 10 million people a month.

We have over 19 million downloads of the app. We reach millions of people a day. We wanted to think of it as more of an Amazon than a Shopify.

Is that hard to do, the blend of B2B and B2C?

We think of it like as a double flywheel. Anytime we get a new user to use one of our applications, that is a potential member for one of these businesses.

What do you think some of the biggest lessons are that creators could take from pastors?

They'll create these these sermons, and then what they'll do is they'll create derivative works out of it— email newsletter that goes out— and then they'll use those to kind of seed their social content.

Even if you're not religious, stick around. This is an episode about leverage, storytelling, and turning conviction into scalable systems.

The most underutilized aspects in the creator economy is—

I love that. Ryan, thanks for coming on the show.

Nathan Barry, thanks for having me.

All right. So you've got a really interesting backstory. I don't think a lot of people have the experience of like the police banging on your door, ransacking the house, all of that. Uh, that's something that probably that you have and many of us don't have or don't want to have. But give me the breakdown. Where, like, where did you end up in that position? What happened in kind of your childhood and growing up to lead to that moment?

Yeah, that's a, it's a unique experience for sure. A lot of lessons learned around what not to do. But how I got there was I was raised by a single mom in South LA, and, you know, she did her best to raise me and instill principles and things like that. And, you know, if you knew me, I was, I was a good kid. I was a good kid. And then in junior high, a lot of the state subsidies for after school programs actually, um, they don't necessarily kick in once you hit a certain age.

Okay.

And so we had ended up moving out of South LA to a really nice neighborhood called Thousand Oaks, but we're in the, the low-income area. And so all the kids are in similar situations: broken families, single moms working their ass off just to get by. Yep. And the kids are at home all alone. And a lot of us boys, you know, we're trying to figure out how to be men. And well, we're home alone, up to no good, making trouble in the neighborhood. And, you know, in junior high, starting to get involved in the local gangs and drugs. And in high school, when I was 18, I started selling narcotics. Ended up getting arrested. The cops raided my house. It was devastating for my mom. It was what I thought was going to happen, so nothing new for me. It was the path that I was on, and I ended up getting arrested, serving time in jail. And it was actually during that time where I started to— I had a lot of time on my hands, so I started reflecting. And I started asking myself questions about, well, what does the future of my life look like? And I was very fortunate when I was locked up that some of the guys that were older than me started asking me those same questions. What are you doing? And they've given me—

Like kind of a, like, you don't actually belong here kind of question.

Yeah. Like, you have a good head on your shoulders. Why are you— here. And some guy, uh, he said, do you want to be a big shot on the golf course or big shot in the pen? And I said, thanks that you think I could be a big shot in the pen. Yeah, um, I'm not a big guy, but, um, thank you. No, in all seriousness, um, I got the point. It was, it was pretty dumb to want to go forward with that life of, you know, where you're most likely gonna be dead or behind bars. Like, why? Why not go a different path? And, you know, people were investing in me in a positive way. They were like, hey, what are you doing?

Like other inmates?

Yeah, yeah. And so it really is a unique experience. And someone gave me a Bible to read. Wasn't particularly religious. So I started reading it and, you know, I had my come-to-Jesus moment in there. And so I got out about 3 weeks later. I was 19 now. I came, I went in when I was 18. And yeah, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I started getting plugged into a local community church and I ended up, you know, getting involved there, going off and studying to become a minister.

Okay.

Worked in the ministry for a couple years and decided that that wasn't necessarily for me and loved the impact that local churches were doing in the community. But then I went and got my comp sci and philosophy degree and started doing software engineering for nonprofits actually, because when you have a record back then, now it's off my record and stuff, but back then, it was kind of hard to get a job. Couldn't get a job at Taco Bell, Starbucks, right? Like, um, but nonprofits, they were willing to give me a second chance. And so I got to put my skills to use with nonprofits and, and really help these, um, these, these companies that were doing really good in the world, um, digitize basically.

Yeah.

And then I ended up running into an old friend, Steve Katina, who's the CEO of pray.com and we started, we started discussing pray.com and in 2016 with, uh, my other two co-founders, Mike and Matt, we launched pray.com.

Yeah. I mean, there's so much in there that I want to dive into and we'll get into pray.com and the scale that you guys operate at and really this unique lens that you have on creators and the creator economy. But first, so how long did you end up spending in jail?

About 4 months.

Okay.

Yeah.

And so, and in that time, like, it sounds like, I imagine there are parts that were really, really hard for you, but like, it sounds like based on other people around you, that ended up being a transformational experience. Is that right?

Yeah. It actually wasn't that hard. It was—

Why wasn't it that hard?

You know, I think it was just a unique experience that, you know, I guess I get along with people. And it was, yeah, I felt like, you know, there's certain things you have to watch. You have to know the rules of the room basically. And you gotta abide by those. And, you know, you do that.

Is there an example of like rules of the room that, you know, you had to learn or abide by?

Yeah, yeah, there are that probably we can talk about afterwards. But, Yeah. And so I think really it was, um, but I will tell you this, there's a lot of discipline. So like rules and things like that. And so, um, you know, I remember one time it was kind of a comical story. I went and had breakfast and I didn't brush my teeth beforehand because it's like 6 AM, right? And so now I always brush my teeth before breakfast because we were like, brush your teeth before breakfast. Don't come sit down at the table with stinky breath. You know, so like, you know, you, you, you learn these, um, You learn these lessons. It's highly disciplined, but, you know, if you show people respect, they show you respect. You know, it's pretty simple. You know, a lot of rules for life that you can find in jail, I guess, that are probably good lessons, some bad ones. So, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so then as you come out with the record, you can't go get the easy jobs that— than other people might expect. But then, so you ended up going to college. Mm-hmm. And why computer science and philosophy?

So when I was working in the ministry, I fell in love with study, right? So faith and education really saved me. Okay. You know, I was on a pretty bad course. And so I went and got my, you know, worked in the ministry and got that degree. And then I really loved philosophy.

Yeah.

I just was grav— I was like, I'm going to be a professor. I just love studying because growing up I didn't do it. Like I wasn't good at school just because, you know, we were knuckleheads. We were ditching school most of the time. And I just had a passion for learning. And then, you know, I just wanted a plan for if philosophy and becoming a professor didn't work out. And so computer science was it because I was talking to a buddy and he's like, well, comp sci, you should get a double major in comp sci. I said, why? He's like, well, it's like logic, but you get paid for it. And I said, sounds good, sign me up. And so I did some comp sci classes as, you know, my, you know, the, you know, your kind of general ed and I loved it. And so I was like, all right, I'll just do this as my second major and it would be a fallback plan and it turned out being the main plan. And, uh, you know, just, I get to build incredible products for incredible people trying to do incredible things in the world. And so it, you know, it's, it's, it's been really great to be able to take a very practical skill in software engineering and apply it into a domain that really transforms people's lives.

Yeah. I love that. Okay. So from college to starting pray.com, what what happened in that time. You're working with nonprofits. How long was that actually between, you know, working with nonprofits and then what did you do between that and 2016?

Yeah, so working in the ministry and nonprofits, you're looking around 6 years, right? And it was really while I was working at the nonprofits.

Yeah.

Because I got in and I loved it, so there's no need to move on. And then I ran into Steve.

Yeah.

And we grew up in the same area. And so, you know, I'm—

Did he cause as much trouble as a kid as you did?

No, no. So Steve, my business partner, for those that aren't listening at prayer.com, he's— I'm 5'7", 150 pounds, right? Steve's 6'5", 300 pounds. So he was All-American, now he's America's Most Wanted. We went on like totally different paths. And But, you know, in junior high, we're both very much into sports and I was super fast. I was like always one of the fastest kids at the school. So before I became a knucklehead, I was really athletic. Yeah. And so, and I was hypercompetitive. And so when I reconnected with Steve in, you know, in our like mid to late 20s, it was, you know, it was kind of a shock for him to hear about my story, but it's very, very much of a coincidence that he actually was just starting pray.com. He wasn't religious either growing up, and he had a certain event, a tragedy happened in his life where he lost his business partner, and he had to start reflecting on life. Like, what do I do in this circumstance? I just lost my, one of my best friends, my business partner.

Yeah.

And, um, he had the opportunity to start a new company, pray.com, the digital destination for faith, because someone shared a podcast of a content creator, a pastor.

Yeah.

And it transformed his life. He's like, this is such powerful content. How did I not know about this? I work in Hollywood. I work in media. How did I not know about these content creators? That are, you know, I know about all of these other industries, but not this. And so when he got that podcast shared to him, transformed his life. And I mean, months after that, he was like, he was ideating on what he should start as Pray.com. And then I ran into him just in—

Where'd you run into him?

Just like, I was going into a grocery store in Westlake Village and he was coming out of a restaurant. And so, yeah. I was—

it was just happenstance, you know, and I was like, hey, I was like 15 years.

Yeah, it had been forever, right? And so, and you know, we just talked for 5 minutes and he's like, hey, let's go get breakfast. And so that's when he told me what he was up to.

And I was like, yeah, I actually know a thing or two about technology because I got this comp sci degree.

Yeah, and I know the faith space very well. Like I've been helping ministries digitize. And I've helped, I've actually been working at a church too. So, right, I know how it works.

Okay, so then in the last 9 years, what scale has pray.com gotten to? And then we'll dive into the products and then also the creator world.

Yeah, so we have over 19 million downloads of the app. We reach millions of people a day, reach 10 million people plus a month.

Wow.

And we have over 100 million downloads of our podcast.

So that's amazing.

You know, pretty good scale. Like, you know, obviously there's, there's a lot more room to grow, but a decent amount. Like, you know, we're very, we're very blessed to—

Yeah.

And what's revenue at now? We're going to be reaching about $30 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome. And so there's a couple of different sides that I want to dive into. Maybe first saying on like about pray.com and the revenue model. First, great domain name. I'm a bit of a fan of, you know, one-word.coms. You guys have a really good one there.

You got one less letter.

It's not a competition on a few letters. Okay, so what's the business model, you know, that's going to drive towards that $30 million in revenue? How does that work for pray.com?

Well, I think taking a step back on how we think about the business, we We are connecting people that go to church with people that run churches. Or another way to say it, we connect creators to followers.

Yeah.

Right? And so we think of it very much as a creator platform, pray.com. And so that means we serve two different customers. We serve the users, the people that use the app. If you go to the App Store and download pray.com, it's very much a consumer app. but then we serve the churches in these faith communities, and so we give them software to run their digital operations because a lot of these, a lot, the reason why a lot of people don't see pastors as content creators is because they're old school traditional. They got their brick and mortar church and they do these sermons, but they're creating content every weekend, right? And sometimes every day. And so what we saw in this space when we started in 2016 is that this was a vertical, an industry that was still very much dependent on the physical and was ill-prepared and ill-equipped to tackle the digital revolution that had already taken place for a lot of industries. And so we built pray.com with that specific kind of connection in mind and that platform, that digital platform in mind. And so we sell software. To the ministries. We help them reach audience, and then we also monetize through ads and subscriptions on the consumer side.

Is that hard to do the blend of B2B and B2C, or is that like, do they really complement each other, or does it end up being two kind of separate things?

You know, I think that a lot of times, um, you, when you think about it, you, you would think, oh, there's, you know, the two separate things, you want to have two different teams or whatever, Um, and no, that there, we built it in such a way that, uh, there really, uh, is a synergy between all of them. And so we call it the tech media trinity. Um, right there, we think of it like as a double flywheel because as you, $1 comes in on another side, it impacts revenue on the other side and vice versa.

Okay. So explain the, explain both those things in, in more detail, because anytime you say flywheel on this podcast, everyone's like leans in and wants to know more. And then yeah, how the tech and media side all fit together.

Yeah, so the way we think about it is that if you put a dollar on the— say we get a dollar of revenue on the consumer side, well, that revenue is going to impact the revenue on the ministry side because the ministry is looking to reach more people, right? So think about these, you know, and let's just I kind of use abstract words because I, more generic words because I know this isn't necessarily like a religious podcast, right? These businesses, let's just call the churches these businesses, the nonprofits, they want to reach an audience, right? And they come to us to reach that audience through digital means. Before they used to do it a lot physical. So anytime we get a new user to use one of our applications, that is a potential audience member for one of these, or a potential member for one of these businesses, these churches. And so another, and then also when we get another church or business on our platform, they can, then those users can connect to that church, right? So it's vice versa, right? These people who come onto our platform to use our applications, They want content, faith content, and they want to connect with faith communities. These faith communities are ran by these churches, and so they want to connect with churches. And so that's what I think about the flywheel. You get somebody that goes to church on our platform, that is valuable for the churches that are on our platform. You get another church that's on our platform, that's valuable to the people that want to attend church. And so we help to make that connection online. And so The more people we get that want to connect with these faith, these places of faith, it's more valuable for the churches.

Okay, that makes sense. And then, so then you basically aren't just pure SaaS, you have your own audience as well. And so you can have both sides of that marketplace basically.

Yeah, so we wanted to think of it as more of an Amazon than a Shopify, right? So One thing that in the creator economy is one of the struggles is creating. So say you want to sell t-shirts, you know, you have to spin up your own store, but then you have to get that audience to that store, right? Or a lot of times they'll just sell it on Amazon, right? And they got the audience, you can pay to get that audience there. So we see ourselves very much more as an Amazon. And it's just a very, very curated audience. And we worry about getting the people to pray.com. And then once they're on pray.com, we help them get connected with the faith communities that they want to get connected to, right?

The Amazon Shopify analogy is interesting, one that I've used before because like Kit, we're very specifically trying to be the, you know, we're in a somewhat different market, but we're trying to be the Shopify of our space. Right? Whereas like Substack, for example, is very much trying to be the Amazon of that like email newsletter space. And so you, those two different ways of doing things like cascade through every different business model decision and all that. So having clarity is really important.

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and we made that decision and it wasn't more, uh, for us, it wasn't like, oh, one way is better than the other. It was, what do we want to be? We have this great domain, right? We have this great brand. And so how do we leverage this brand? We have a saying in Christianity, for the kingdom, right? And so we have this great brand. How do we utilize it for it to benefit all these other faith communities? And so, you know, not to like throw shade at any church name, but you know, you have Church of the Valley or something like that. It's not gonna resonate.

Community Church of the Valley. It's the most generic name.

There you go, right? Like what's gonna do better? In a Facebook or a Google ad, pray.com or Church of the Valley, right? So we try to leverage the brand to benefit this industry as a whole. And so that's why we chose, we had this opportunity to kind of go this Amazon route.

[Speaker:NATHAN_BARRY] So I want to dive into this idea of pastors and churches as content creators, because on one hand, you talk to content creators and they're like struggling. They're like, oh man, I got to make this content. I gotta write a newsletter every week. That's so much work. And then over here you have pastors who are like, oh, I do a brand new sermon every single week. Or like public speakers.

Yeah.

Right. You get to, as a public speaker, you get to refine a talk and you deliver the same one over and over again. And the pastor's like, oh no, I write a new talk, you know, probably only 50 weeks a year because there's probably those 2 weeks that I get someone else to fill in for me.

Yeah, exactly.

And so you get that level. So like as a content creator, these pastors are the most prolific creators ever, probably.

Yeah, yeah.

But you were saying something to me earlier about how it's kind of a different approach where the, like what work is derivative of what, right? The content creator might start with the newsletter and then go to these other channels, whereas the pastor always has that sermon as their, initial first piece of content. Like, talk more about that.

Yeah, so with the, with the pastor as content creator, they are spending— some of them spend 10 to 30 hours a week preparing for that sermon. You know, it varies, right? Um, and they will produce this sermon that's anywhere from 25 to 45 depending on what type of church you go to, 3 hours. And so they'll create these sermons and they have this, you know, it's like a research paper almost, right? It's got sources, annotations, and all this stuff. And they'll start with that. And then what they'll do is they'll create derivative works out of it. So a lot of them will create an email newsletter that goes out Monday through Friday, it's a devotional. And so they'll chop it up into 5 devotionals because they're trying to educate the audience, their audience, based on what they talked about. So a lot of times they're doing a series. And so each sermon in a series will build on each other, and usually they're like 4 to 6 weeks long. And then they'll break it up into bite-sized pieces, send those out in a newsletter. And the newsletter is actually the biggest— is the main means of curating, growing their digital audience in the faith space. So it's very important to them. They just start with the sermon and then they break it up into these devotionals, and then they'll use those devotionals to kind of seed their social content, right? But it all starts with this this main piece of content, the sermon, and that gives them all the derivatives for the whole week are created from that, whether it's their social posts, their email newsletter, or what have you.

Okay, that makes sense. What do you think some of the biggest lessons are or takeaways that like creators in our world could take from pastors?

Yeah, so, you know, in the faith space, they're very, very much mission. Over margin, right? They started this, they, you know, some of them have become very successful. And, you know, they may make decent money, the biggest ones and stuff. But if you comp them to like the biggest, like a Tony Robbins or something, they're probably not making as much, even though they're probably as big, right, in some cases. And so I think that that's so that start out with that difference.

Yep.

After that, it becomes very similar. And I think that the, the lesson that I would— some of the lessons that I would distill down is that they create these sermons, but sometimes what actually they're doing in these sermon series is they're part of a larger corpus, a book maybe, or a course. And so they'll utilize that sermon as a means for them to create another derivative work of a course that they could maybe go and sell or they can use to educate their audience. Sometimes they'll give it away for free. Sometimes they'll, they'll pay, right? Or they'll, they'll put a paywall in front of it. They'll create these books, right? So they're very much like they've, they've created pretty much some of the main means of monetization that exists in the creator economy for the biggest creators. So think of like a Dave Ramsey, right?

Yeah.

He makes his courses and they've been around for decades. Literally, I, I remember when I was 19, first going to church, hearing about Dave Ramsey and his financial course. And so he actually has a B2B model and a B2C model. He's connected really well with the consumer, but he's also connected with a network of organizations. So let's think about like the, if you're in the health and fitness, right? And you're speaking to the consumer. How do you connect with the studios, the yoga studios, the fitness, right? And I think that's one of probably the, the most underutilized aspects in the creator economy is they focus so much on the consumer. Well, how do you speak to the businesses in that and become a, um, a funnel for them. So I was talking to somebody that works with a lot of health and yoga studios, and he's got all— he knows all these yogis basically, right? And he's talking, like, figuring out like, hey, how can they monetize? And I'm like, look, they get email newsletters, right? They have all these emails. Those are highly valuable emails. They should be working with their local yoga studios, 'cause, or maybe their local juice bar, whatever. These businesses that are very much associated to that audience, they want to connect with that audience too. And so I know that there's like a lot of title sponsors of podcasts and things like that, of email newsletters, but how do you connect with the local businesses as well, I think is an underutilized space. Building out that B2B aspect, I think, and not just for like the traditional title sponsors or anything like that is one that I don't see quite, I don't see as utilized in the creator space that the churches may build out.

Well, 'cause it's another takeaway that I have from the churches is they have all of this in-person community. So there's all the online content, the books, the courses, you know, all of that material, the podcasts. And so you'll get people who know of a church or have followed it or even really feel like a part of it, even though they're like, oh, I've actually never been. I live 4 states over and I just listen to the sermons, you know, over podcast. But that in-person community is such a big aspect of it. And so, you know, if you're getting 2,000 people or 5,000 people or whatever, in the room every single week. Like the community is so much stronger. So I think about the creators, like there's a wave happening right now, maybe really starting or accelerating 2 or 3 years ago of podcast tours. And so I saw, you know, Huberman, Ramit Sethi, I mean, so many people, Ryan Holiday did a big like multi-continent podcast tour. And you're like, oh, this is like a whole thing of podcasters. There's one, the Acquired Podcast. They did a huge event, I think like 5,000 people in San Francisco, maybe even more. And they got Chase to sponsor it and did this huge thing. And you're like, wait, these are still podcasters that we're talking about here. But I guess even like a 5,000-person event, someone's like, a pastor would be like, yeah, that's a, It's a Sunday morning.

Yeah.

You know?

A lot of, some of these biggest ones, and there's over 1,000 of them that reach, that have that across the country.

Right.

Every Sunday.

So I guess thinking about the in-person community is really interesting, but then also what you're saying of how do you get distribution and is there, we're so used to going B2C, but are there little hubs of people? When I was starting out, I built an iPhone app that was used by kids with autism. And so I found that speech language pathologists were these perfect mini distribution hubs. And so yes, I was selling to consumers, the parents and all of that, but you get the speech language pathologist of, they'd see a dozen clients a week or more. And so they would refer it a bunch. And so what you're saying of like, all right, you're in health and wellness. Yes, go compete with Huberman or whoever else at the highest level for broad attention, but also like put together a sales function and go, you know, go meet the owners of 50 or 100 yoga studios.

Yeah. Like, you know, how do you— and I look at it as, you know, very much believe in the creator as the The new attention mechanism that is replacing TV and these kind of stars, and they have a much more intimate relationship with their audience, right? And so thinking about, yes, that, that relationship, but then you have, since you have that audience, and even if it's a small audience, but it's very, very niche and in particular, you're able to start learning about that audience more than the businesses that may want to attract that audience because you have that direct relationship. And so how do you function as this kind of, I mean, I guess maybe an analogy, like a Facebook, right? Like how does Facebook operate when, because they're a platform that connects directly with the audience. I know that there's a lot of creators on that platform and yes, they have ad revenue, but there's a lot of derivative products. That drive that. So, you know, just trying to think of, you know, finding established business models that can help creators leverage the audience that they've been able to curate that trust them to help them generate new revenue streams and diversify their actual business. Yeah, I think the pastors have been able to do that quite well. Now they have that physical building, so they're able to leverage the local a little more effectively, but they've diversified that revenue stream. They get the donations in, but then also they've been able to, you know, make connections whether it's selling books or connecting to local businesses and things like that.

Yeah. You brought up Dave Ramsey and I don't know how many people see him as like a traditional creator, but he's really one of the— he was up there with like Tony Robbins and these others like OG, been doing it for a very long time and at a scale probably much larger than people realize. Like, I think their headquarters alone is like a $300-400 million campus. Like, it's just absolutely massive. What are some things that you see someone like Dave doing or these pastors doing, you know, in addition to the B2B aspect that other creators should copy?

If you think of the audience as one network and then they've figured out how to build other networks that they can connect to that have audiences as well, namely the churches and these nonprofits. And then he's built a lot of these derivative works of his courses. So he has this podcast, but he has also these courses that he's been effectively selling and helping the individual and things like that. But those courses are bought by churches all over the place and the businesses. And so When I think about what he's been able to do, I think it's, you know, you have the ability to connect directly with the audience, but then you're able to create these derivative products like the courses and then also these other networks, not just the audience network. So yeah, I mean, not to belabor that point, but I think that's kind of the, The unique thing that these big creators are able to do is they're able to leverage that, that B2B network.

I think another thing that I'm realizing is how much time the pastors spend on content creation. You know, because a lot of times I see people really fall in love with content creation early on, and they might, that's when they might be spending the 20+ hours a week making content. But if you only do that, you don't grow your audience. And because everyone's like, oh, just create amazing content and it'll spread. And it's like, kind of, you know, like you have to do this promotion, but then people end up swinging too far the other side where they're like, oh, I'm mostly just recycling old content and I'm not actually creating like new fantastic work. And so then you can't do derivatives off of you know, basically the legacy material that you made anymore. And so like really, I guess, having this like core production function of like that you do every single week. And so seeing even these pastors at a huge scale be like, no, but the most important thing is that I craft a great sermon for this week.

And well, I think something you touched on there that's, they're creating this content, but the, The unique thing that they're doing is a lot of it's evergreen content. It's not stuff that is newsworthy, current events, right? So they actually will recycle that old content. And so they'll make the courses out of it. So they're huge course makers, book writers, and they recycle that. They'll do updated versions. I mean, you think of the book industry, right? Like you got, you know, the latest publication of like your textbook when you go to college, like, version 11, right? And it has a few edits, but that's the book industry. And that still is something that exists today. And so I think that what they're really good at is, yes, they make new, they have a habit of making new content every week. It's also very, it skews a majority evergreen, so it can be reused and redistributed. In other means. And a lot of times though, they'll call, you know, you can package it up in like 5 different ways, right? So think about it. It's like, I don't know how familiar with the Bible everyone is, but it's a collection of books, right? And so a lot of times you'll be like, oh, let's do a study on this book of the Bible, and then we do it on this book of the Bible. And actually, let's take these couple of chapters out, repackaging it. It's a book about this character of the Bible, right? And so, but they didn't write any new content, so they're repackaging this. But they're, uh, they're— since they create so much, they're able to kind of, um, take, you know, let's call it 100 pieces of content. They have 100 pieces of individual content, then repackaging into another 100 of, you know, packaged goods that they can, uh, you know, redistribute. And sometimes they, like I said, they give it away for free. but a lot of times they'll sell it, right? And you can do that as a content creator if you're constantly making new content. And so I think that's one thing that's unique in this space is they're, they're thinking about how do I make this individual piece for that moment, but then how do I make it into a collection of pieces for this series, but also then for this series. So they're getting a lot of, a lot of mileage. Off that one sermon. So they put 10 to 30 hours into it, but it goes a long way.

[Speaker:NATHAN_BARRY] Yeah, one of the things I'm thinking about is people often talk about in the creative world how it's so saturated, right? And how do you stand out and all of this. Now in the faith world, there's like the total addressable market is very, very large. And so that helps. And you have like this geographic aspect of it, whereas if someone wants to go to church on a weekly basis, right? It's like, oh, you're trying to find somewhere that you really connect with, meets your values, all of that, and is within a 20-minute drive, right? So there's some aspects of it there, but you still need to stand out. And especially if someone is creating content that's distributed on a global platform like pray.com, everyone's teaching from the same book, but they need to stand out. Like, what do you see that would be applicable to creators who it's like, oh, there's a dozen of us who are all talking about how to effectively run small businesses. You know, it's like we're talking about the same kind of thing, but you have to have this unique voice in it. What parallels do you see there?

Yeah, so actually there's a, when I, the trend in faith is very much changing, right? So it used to be very zip code based, right? You go to the, and it doesn't matter who the pastor is, That's your church, right? But now it's very topic-based. And so they're all teaching out of the Bible, right, for the most part. And, but you know, you got Dave Ramsey. He's actually very biblical-based, but he's the finance guy. Then you got the relationship guy and you got the business guy. And so they all find their topic, right? And so now it's like, okay, well, what if there's 100 finance people? Well, maybe you're the SMB, you know, maybe there's like 100 business people. You're the SMB one, you're the enterprise one. And so finding your, your expertise and your niche. And I think of like, I listen to Ben Greenfield and Rich Roll, like they're very much in that same space. Right. And I started listening to them at the same time of my life when I got into trail running. Right. And, but they all, they have their, their niche. Right. Um, and so, um, they're quite big, but yeah. Yeah. So that That's what I would say is you find your niche within that lane that you can be the unique expert and you can add a unique perspective, and that's what these pastors do. A lot of time it's based on experience or based on the audience that they've just generated, right? Like, so if you have the pastor who's, you know, in like a Silicon Valley, right? It's going to be a unique experience, and it's probably going to be very tech, and so that's unique, and that applies outside of Silicon Valley because people are interested in tech outside of, and faith and how it mixes, right? So that might be like how you would, how you would tackle that.

Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I think as people find their unique voice, that is what ultimately makes them stand out.

Yeah.

Now you all are doing a lot of things in AI, both in the, like helping people create these derivative works. And then also, you know, something, uh, churches are not known for. Their most sophisticated tech stacks or their most sophisticated teams running everything behind the scenes. So how are you using AI to help these organizations grow their business and scale?

[Speaker:NATHAN_BARRY] So we started off with it as a new, giving new capabilities to the churches, right? So, or making the capabilities that they have less expensive and being done at an enormous scale. The first thing that we released was AI translation. So we take your audio, we take whether it's an audio or video sermon or a text sermon, and we can translate it into many different languages using your voice and your likeness, right? So we'll do that for them because they all, a lot of, especially the bigger pastors in these bigger churches, they will actually have sister churches that are across the world, and those churches may be in an area that speaks— doesn't speak English. They've never heard an actual message, never heard a piece of content from the main guy that planted the church, right?

Right. In their language.

Now they have.

Yeah.

Because they have these AI translation tools. And a lot of them were doing it in, you know, they were translating their sermons, but they'd do one language. It'd take multiple weeks and they'd have to use a voice actor so it wasn't in their voice and it was very time-consuming and expensive. And so only the people who are really dedicated to this would do it. And it's not something that they're going to monetize necessarily. Some of them can in different audiences, but for the most part it was like a labor of love that they would do because they had an audience there. And so that's what they're doing. A lot of them are leveraging AI for audiobooks. So we gave them an audiobook tool that they could upload their sermons and create audiobooks out of it, or they can upload— sorry, they can upload their sermons, create an audiobook, or they can upload a book and make an audiobook out of it in their voice. Uh, and so that's been a use case because they're creators. And actually, you know, um, one thing that I see that's underutilized in the creator space that the faith space does so well— journals and devotionals. So, you know, okay, The Daily Stoke is a perfect example. People don't understand the power of a journal or a daily devotional or just like a daily thing. So whether you're the the health guy, you know, if you're really into that, you're probably reading about it every day, right? So like what's that daily nugget? And so these pastors kill it on that because they're really focused on these educational tidbits that they can do Sunday to Sunday. So they're, you know, Monday through Friday they're trying to figure out how they connect with their audience when they're not at the physical campus, right? And so those daily devotionals or journals are huge ways they do it. And so we help them create those because they're very time-consuming. And a lot of times they're made by somebody that read the sermon, right? And so now it's like, well, AI's pretty powerful at producing the content. Then the whole idea is we just give them the ability to edit it and make sure it's in their voice, customize it so that we make sure it's in their voice where it's adaptive, it learns, right? It has memory. So we built these systems that that really can understand them and produce things that they would produce. And then we give them the power to edit it. But I think those are like, all those things are applicable if you're a creator in the faith space or not.

Yeah. The, you know, the daily devotional, daily journal is such an interesting thing because, you know, I like, I know Ryan Holiday well, and when he started the Daily Stoic journal, he actually didn't think it was a good idea. And he's talked about this because he had written the, I think he'd written Obstacles Away and maybe his second Stoicism book and like they'd done well, but he was like defining a market that didn't exist. Like early on his publisher was like, nobody cares about Stoicism. He's like, trust me. Like, well, you know, this will go somewhere. And then Steve, his agent, actually came to him and was like, hey, we should do a journal, like a daily journal. And Ryan, you know, he's talked about this. He was like, I I don't know. We'll see. And so Steve was like, all right, we'll co-author it together. But this is going to be a big thing.

When did he release it?

That's a good question. 2018?

Okay. All right.

Maybe is my guess.

We'd have to look it up. So we beat him with our daily devotional.

It could be.

Yeah.

We'll have to look up the date. But it's become, of all of Ryan's books, you know, he's written a lot that have sold very, very well. And the Daily Stoic Journal is the bestseller by far. Yeah. And it's just, Ryan has talked about this many times. He's like, it blew me away how much people wanted that content. And then that's how the email list came about and everything from there. And now the Daily Stoic email list, they've talked about it publicly, but it's well over 800,000 people and it's a massive business that does very, very well. And so I agree that this like daily journal devotional, you know, quick hit of content, something like that is a very underutilized strategy.

Yeah. And You know, not to like, you know, wax philosophically, but you think about TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and all these things that, you know, we're like, oh, attention span is going down because it's short. It's always been like that. We don't have time in the morning. We want, but we want those quick hits to like, and if there's something there that's healthy habit forming or motivational, people will do it. So the parallel that we had when we first started Pray and why we did the daily devotional was something called the Daily Bread, our daily bread. And what it was is this card that people would have on their kitchen table and it would just have a quote from a verse from the Bible and they'd read it. And so that was the inspiration of this daily. And also doing like customer surveys, user, just doing customer interviews and having them tell us about, hey, you know, this is how I'd want to digest it. And so I think that's a, you know, no matter what, what niche you're in, right? There's, there's, there are people there that are really into that, right? And want to learn that. So I guess this veers more towards the educational, but it doesn't always have to. It could be, you know, more some Some people maybe want a good joke in the morning, right? Everyone's different.

I mean, you go back to the Far Side cartoon calendars that, you know, that was the thing of like a little calendar, tear off a different cartoon every day. You know, like that daily format, that works. Okay, going back to AI. So what are the things that you're seeing in the faith space and how you're applying AI that you really think creators are already doing or should be doing next?

So one thing that we're really interested in, and we're going to be, you know, it's in, you know, alpha mode right now. So it's in early testing, is something we're calling, it's Prey AI, and it's an AI chat, and it takes like a counselor-like approach to life. Something that faith communities have been really good at. And the community is providing some sort of mentorship, coaching, or counseling for that community to help them with their life struggles. And as we see this kind of, as you see this mental health epidemic on the rise, the church has played a huge role in helping people with their mental health. That's why you can see when there's lots of studies on meditation and prayer on how it impacts your mental health. And we have our own clinical trials done with like top universities. And it shows that, hey, using pray.com or meditation, like specifically we did pray.com, right? We're pray.com, but it impacts your mental health in a positive way. Depression goes down, anxiety goes down, sleeplessness goes down. And so we see a huge gap just in the world in general And then also that these pastors, they don't have enough people to help with that. So how do we supplement it? How do we use AI to help supplement that need? And so we're rolling out this AI chat that's really focused around helping people with life struggles. And I really think that giving the, you know, we're going to do kind of a more general approach, but then giving the pastors a tool because some of them are already doing this, the ones that are like on the cutting edge where they're utilizing, they're uploading their sermons and then allowing people to ask questions. We think there's a way to actually tune these models to actually be more of a coach and a counselor. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for creators in general because there's a reason why people tune in to your newsletter or your podcast. It's because they want to hear from you. And like, you know, my wife and I are totally different in our podcast listenings. I'm like full-on educational, like all the time that I don't listen to like, you know, just like nonsense talk ones like that are just get you through the day. That's what she loves, right? And we're just totally different. And she would love, well, maybe, maybe I don't know. I don't want to speak for her, but I think a lot of people would love to interact with their favorite content creators in kind of like an interesting way. And I know there's companies that are, that are really doing, uh, um, some good work there, but that's, that's something I'm super excited about. We're going to have that in July come out. That's awesome.

And then where do you think, like, as we go to where AI is going, uh, even just as a business, like, I imagine you guys run a relatively lean team. We do at Kit as well. And I'm just constantly shocked by the things that we used to do as such manual tasks that now we can do with AI. I saw an example the other day of someone, I think as a developer you'd appreciate this, someone running all their business operations out of Cursor. They had connected Cursor, which is traditionally a development platform, an AI development coding platform. And they had connected it to these APIs and MCP servers for Xero, for their accounting software, for a bunch of things. And they were able to run all their business processes. But I'm curious what you've been able to do internally at Prey and how you've been able to leverage AI for your own systems.

Yeah. So content creation. So Max, who runs our content production, he utilizes AI to the fullest extent, and him and his team. So we have something called AI Bible, uh, an Instagram and YouTube channel, and it's like, it's the AI Bible, right? And that thing's— it's the fastest growing faith brand on the internet. Like, it is huge, right?

Okay, wait, what is it exactly?

So what we do is we, we, with these tools, um, the stories of the Bible You know, I think over the last, you know, call it 20 years, it's kind of been like, oh, the Bible, you know, it's outdated. But those stories are usually one of the first things to hit the new technology— printing press, terrestrial radio, TV. These Bible stories, they're fascinating, right? Like, I get that they can be— some of the Bible is boring, but some of it's like, you know, there's some drama, right?

Oh yeah, there's all kinds. The stories are wild.

They get wild. And so, um, with these new modes of communication through AI, we're able to produce some really fascinating works that kind of help retell and reimagine, uh, these, these stories that we all know, like we all grew up with them, right? And so, you know, that's what we're doing. And that's why pray.com is the fastest growing Faith brand on social media right now because we're just, we're leveraging these tools to the fullest extent for content production.

Wait, so I've seen clips on Instagram and all that, and I don't know, I don't know if this is you guys, but the like video stories of like clearly AI generated.

Yeah.

I say clearly like because we know what to look for, that kind of thing, of these Bible stories and characters and all of that. Is that the kind of thing that you guys are making?

Yeah, yeah. So it'd be like the story of David, right? And Goliath. We'll retell that and we do the full voice and animation. So I mean, it's, it's an epic. There's voice and there's music and it's because even before AI, we would do a lot of these audio stories. We didn't, you know, doing video can be quite expensive. Yeah. And so we, we, we'd have a 63-piece orchestra. So we are really dialed on like making it thematic. And that's been our whole thing when it comes to faith content is making it really epic and thematic. Now with these video creation tools, we're able to take that, that same ethos and produce these kind of epic retellings, but with these, you know, some of it's photorealistic and some of it's more imaginative, like it's an animation and it's got dragons and stuff, but some of it's like Game of Thrones dragons. Right? So we're doing all of that and we're retelling stories of the Bible with the voice. It's like a 5-minute, 5 to 8-minute video, like a movie.

And it's all either AI-generated or the AI is the companion for the creator in all of this.

Yes. Yes. So some of the voices will use real voices, like voice actors and things like that. Some of it will They'll do full, it'll be a full AI thing with the voice and everything.

Yeah.

And it all depends on who the, who the voice is.

Uh, is it the House of David or one of the, there's like a, I haven't watched it, but Amazon Prime has.

Yeah.

And I remember, I think the creators of that show were talking about how they used AI very extensively for a lot of their CGI and shots and all of that.

Yeah. Yeah. So you got Amazon coming out with faith content and things like that because there's just You know, there's, I think there's more of an appetite for it, but also you get to see it in a, you know, an interesting retelling. These stories are, we all resonate with them to some capacity, like David and Goliath and it's about the underdog, right? Like who doesn't?

The classic underdog story.

Yeah. So, um, yeah.

And then, so I guess as a, as a content creator, I see people using AI a lot for, I idea generation or creating derivative works. I'm not seeing a lot of content creators in maybe the business, health, productivity, that sort of space really using AI for video. I'm trying to figure out why that is or maybe what they should be doing. As you're looking at these AI video generation tools, are there things where you're like, "Oh, creators should really be using this," or here's a way that I would apply it if I was I don't know, Ben Greenfield or someone else?

You know, I think that being authentic to what you do and not forcing it, right?

Yeah.

We, when we started, it was, you know, faith, media, and technology, and so we built an application to deliver epic faith content, and so that has been part of our DNA, right? And we wanted to do it as in a, and we wanted to stay true to the, the history of the of the Bible, but we also wanted to have some liberty with the kind of dramatization of it because we thought that a lot of times it was, you know, it became a little sterile, right? And we thought, no, there's like, there's some real good drama in here. You can like, you can, you think, you think some Game of Thrones, like, right? The Old Testament is like way gnarlier, you know? And so we wanted to be true to that story, but tell it in a really epic way. So it's part of our DNA. We're not like stretching to do that. So I think being authentic to it, but not being shy about these tools because these are the new tools. These are the cutting-edge tools. They're not going anywhere. They're only going to get better. They're only going to kind of displace or replace some of the processes that we have right now. It's not slowing down.

Yeah. And like there was an old way of doing CGI and then like After Effects and all these tools came along and replaced that. And it's like, okay, well this is now the next iteration of what replaces it from there. One more parallel that I see is the owned audience, you know, that between creators and these churches and pastors is I think a lot of churches have historically been quite good at communications and staying in touch with their audience. Though I guess most are probably doing it in a legacy way, but you know, the creators who are really excelling, having the highest revenue per subscriber, uh, per engaged fan, like they're, they're all in on email. Is that the same thing that you're seeing in, you know, in the faith world?

Yes, 100%. Email has been, continues to be, and probably will be the number one mode of, of having some ownership over that digital audience. Some of them have played around with phone numbers, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of things you, they try to stay away from that.

Yeah, and it's like emails, right?

We help drive donations on our platform for ministries. They still want the emails, right? Right.

They're like, thank you so much for bringing in this donation and all of that, that revenue.

Also, we need to help us get emails, right? Because they know that one, if, if someone resonates with them they are best equipped to nurture that person and to help them with the information they seek. And we recognize that too, and we want to help them facilitate that. And so email continues to be— and I don't see that stopping— being the number one mode of having ownership over your digital audience so that you can stay engaged with them.

Yeah. Are there any ways that you've seen these pastors and churches really effectively scale their email lists?

Here's a tip. Actually, give something free with that email newsletter. Don't just get them to subscribe to your newsletter. Give them an ebook, a PDF. Changes the game for it. Give them something in return, not just, hey, subscribe to my email newsletter or subscribe to my podcast. Give them something in return of value. I think that's, that's one of the biggest things.

You know what's crazy to me is for everything that's new and changing and all of that, like it's the same things, you know? And so it's like, oh, everything in the creator world has completely changed. It's like, I mean, it hasn't really. It's email is still number one as far as connection and relationships. And then, you know, for how we got people on email lists in 2013 when I started in this game, It was create something really high quality and high value and give that away for free in trade for them joining your newsletter. Yeah, right. And so it's like, okay, well, a decade or more later, it's, it's the exact same things. And I guess because it's really based in like psychology and value, not like one weird tip or trick, right?

Yeah. And it's, you know, they're giving you their email. Which they have some value on. Yep.

I am.

Right? And they want— it's just the barter system. Hey, you want this from me? Give me something in return.

What are you going to give me?

Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, it comes down to just sounds like psychology.

Yeah, exactly. I love that. Okay. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show. Where should people go to learn more about Pray and— well, I mean, pray.com is pretty easy.

It's as easy as it gets. I mean, kit.com is probably the only easier one, you know, so. Pray.com. Yeah, go to pray.com, download it on the App Store. You can find more on pray.com, the website, or you can just connect with us on social and get some of that fantastic AI content. Yeah, we have AI Bible Official is kind of our other channel. That's just pure AI, right?

Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna have to check that out and see if some of the clips I've been seeing are actually that you guys have made. Yeah. And then, uh, do creating content yourself, or is it all under the pray.com umbrella?

No, I'm—

you're the behind-the-scenes guy.

I'm, I'm the engineer, the product guy. So I interact with lots of creators and I build tools for them. And, and really, you know, my, my job, what I feel like is just interviewing these, these pastors and understanding their processes. And then how do I since I've had to, you know, pray.com is itself a content creator. We produce tons of content, but it's more of a faceless content creator, right? It's a brand. And so we've had to scale and optimize funnels and drip campaigns and all these things, right? And we've learned from some of the best to do it. And so my goal is to learn from these, these these pastors, these content creators, figure out what they're doing and what they need, and then deploy a solution that makes it way better than anything they're doing on their own. Because we're doing it for so many people, uh, we have so many lessons, so much data and insight on how we can really tune their funnels and drive more emails and donations.

I love that. Well, thanks so much for giving a behind-the-scenes look into this whole world and just giving creators you know, an outside example and inspiration of like, oh, here's another group that I can learn from.

All right, thanks for having me, Nathan.

I love it. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.