Why So Many Entrepreneurs Have Made Money But Lost Meaning | Ken Joslin

I'm sitting at my desk. We had just done our open house. I'm balling and I'm like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing.

And I said there. I think the greatest movement of God is going to come through the marketplace. There's a lot of entrepreneurs have made money, but lost meaning.

When's the last time you looked at entrepreneurs and be still? We don't know how to be still. No, no, no. You can't act any way, good or bad and make God love you any more or any less. Well, you live in a world at war. God didn't cause that. You didn't cause that. You just live in a planet that is full of.

A certain part of me knew I was called to, began to force, to be called to, tried to do, got humbled, learned a little more presence, got humbled again, learned a little more present. Like this cycle, I choose to use.

Past pain to help others find healing. Your ability to have impact and influence will always and only be equivalent to your ability to be able to tolerate pain.

Hey guys, welcome back to build. Super excited to have you guys here. As you guys know, we're here to help you rise, lead and last. Today I got a special guest for you. He is actually the founder of Gross Stack Drive, the number one faith based conference in America. He's also a personal friend, mentor. Guys, you're in for a great treat today, guys. Help me welcome the one and only Ken Joslin. Dude, what's going on?

What's up, man? I'm excited to be here, dude. This is beautiful.

Thanks, bro.

Thanks, bro. What you got, man?

Well, look, I want to, I want to jump straight in, man. I, you know, we, we met through some mutual friends a ways ago and started having like a personal friendship and, and then I didn't realize that you had so much history.

Of transformation of your own that kind of led you to even like leaning into growth Stack Drive and Create conference and all the things that you're doing now. Walk me through the origin story of Ken Jostle in just a little bit. Wow. Just a little bit.

Yeah. That's a big one. I spent the last half of the last 30 years in full time vocational ministry, pastoring and planting churches. I'd say probably the biggest transformation moment for me was August 22, 1993, when I gave my life to Christ. I was 25 years old, didn't grow up in church, didn't know anything about church. Like if the pastor said turn to the book of pick one, I would have no idea where it's at. I'd have to go look in the front of the Bible context. None. I had no idea. Like Matthew, I have no idea where that's at. Yeah, man. Just got radically transformed, saved. And God just started to do some amazing things in my life. Then the other half of that real estate. So I've done about 300, 300 plus million in real estate transactions. Top producing mortgage broker in Georgia for about four and a half, five years. We finished number one wholesale with Countrywide and SunTrust four years in a row row. An amazing team. And then the housing market crashed. Transformation, funny story. Back up a little bit to that. When I went back into ministry to pastor, senior pastor at church this time I'd grown one of the largest youth ministries in the country about 96 to about 2001. And I'm sitting at my desk, we had just done our open house for our new office. I just opened my second mortgage company. Had one in Gainesville, Georgia, one in Columbus. Hired the number one originator for SunTrust. She was closing about 22 deals a month. We go in, it was July 7th, I believe was the date of 2007, right before the housing market crash. We go in, we have this massive open house, 125 agents, Chamber of commerce, big scissor ribbon cutting on the front page of the paper, the whole nine yards. And I get back to my desk, we get everything cleaned up that night. It's about 7:30, bro. And I'm sitting at my desk, I'm balling and I'm like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. And I knew it. And little did I know in three months was going to be the first big guideline change for fan which cut about 30% of the deals out. And then again in, in January 31st of 2008 it happened again. But it was, I already knew before because we were uber successful and doing really, really well. And it was like I knew God was shifting me. So that transformational moment for me started when I gave my life to Christ. And then just throughout business we built that business to, to a multiple eight figure business and went back into ministry in 2010, planted another church and did that for about five or six years. Found out my daughter had epilepsy. My second oldest daughter wound up moving to Birmingham so she could finish school and she'd go to uab because UAB has one of the top epilepsy centers in America and did that and went back into real estate. Finished seventh out of 3,725 agents at virtual Properties, one of the largest brokerages in Georgia. In 2019, ran into this crazy dude named Grant Cardone. And I'm like, at this 10x boot camp. Didn't know who Grant was. Never heard of Grant. I see him, I saw him on Instagram. Listen, if Grant Cardone Instagram ad comes up on your phone, do not swipe on that thing because they will show up. They'll be knocking at your door two days in the morning. You'll be getting phone calls and letters and so anyway, but anyway, I jumped into to that world and that's. I became one of Grant's first licensees in October of 2019 and blew up. Literally, my real estate business blew up. That's the year I finished seventh out of 3700 agents and I became one of Grant's licensees. And so I spoke for Grant several times. And it was at one of those events where God said, I want you to do this. We're faith based entrepreneurs. I want you to build a place of transformation. Because I love Grant. He's been super good to me. Tony, all the guys, Dean, all the guys that are doing stuff for entrepreneurs. But there's not really that faith, health and relationship component. It's all about business. It's all about finances. And you and I both have seen people who just spent their life building a business and finances, and they've wrecked the rest of their life.

Part of the reason we do safe haven retreats here is because a lot of entrepreneurs have made money but lost meaning.

Yeah.

Right. Chasing the brass, that's good.

Made money, but lost meaning.

Yeah, that's. That's kind of the. The heartbeat behind what's, what's here. You know, marriages are falling apart.

Yeah.

Relationships with children are gone. Sometimes the absentee mentality because the people that you love most are seeking significance and being valued, seen and heard and things of that nature aren't getting it.

Yeah.

They seek it in places you don't want them to find it. You know, and one of the things that I've always loved about you is this. I called you. I called you this one time at one of our. One of the events. You had a creator of capacity.

Yeah.

Not only do you put amazing people in the same room at the same time who need to know each other.

But you also simultaneously use your talents and the talents of other people to cause more capacity to happen within each one of those people. And then it was really cool to find out that you basically have a simple framework that you found Works like clockwork. So maybe let's talk about the Core 5 and kind of get jump in there, because I feel like confusion happens because we have diluted focus in different directions. We don't know what to focus on, how to focus on it. And I feel like a simple framework a lot of times least gives us a. A chance to, like, really laser focus in areas.

Yeah, it's really simple because. And I mentioned it just a minute ago when I talked about faith, health and relationships. Those are the first three areas. So it's faith, health, relationship, business, and then finances transformation in those areas. Obviously, my faith transformation I talked about. And I think it's super easy for your audience to be able to kind of. You can take these core five areas and you can assess yourself. Where are you at on scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest? Where am I in my faith journey and what does that look like for me? And I would say this. A lot of people, they'll say, ken, are you religious? And I'm like, hell, no. They're looking at me like, what did you just say? And I'm like, I don't understand. Because we think that having a relationship with Jesus. You said something at dinner last night. You said, I don't say Christian. I say disciple. Disciple. I don't say even. I pastored for a long time. I rarely use the word Christian. I always use the word Christ follower. Because that's what Jesus calls us. He calls us to follow him and to look at his actions and how he lived his life and emulate. Paul said it. When Paul wrote two thirds of the New Testament, dude, he was murdering Christians when he had that experience on the road to Damascus. Two thirds of the New Testament, Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. And so in that faith journey, for me is. And for you guys, when I talked about the religion is. Religion says, if I jump through these hoops, if I do A, B, C, and D, me and God are okay. Well, if that's the truth, and if.

You'Re not doing ABC and you're not.

Oh, then he's mad at you.

All right. And then you got the divisiveness happening immediately.

Yep. Here's. Here's the deal. If you can do. Fill in the blank. 4 things, 5 things, 6 things, 10 things, 20 things, Jesus would not have had to die for you. But none of those things that we do in religion is like, if you live this way, it's an outward expression. If I do these things, me and God are okay.

Yeah.

The gospel is Completely. It's a completely different thing. I never heard it Till I was 25 years old. It's, jesus loved you so much that he gave his life for Stephen. He gave his life for Ken. When you walk into our conference, the first two, I have these giant floor stickers with quotes all over me. John Maxwell, Ed, Gary Breck, all of us. The first year you walk in, when you walk in the auditorium, they say God's love for you isn't predicated on your performance. He loves you because he created you as a son or a daughter. That's the gospel. When you hear that, you're like, oh, well, that's different. I thought I had to act a certain way in order for God to love me. No, no, no. You can't act any way, good or bad, and make God love you anymore or any less. He loves you because you're a son or a daughter. And when you realize, Jesus, you gave your life for me, that what happens is then you surrender. Become a Christ follower, man. God through faith, I want to be. Forgive me, cleanse me. I want to follow you. What happens is then God's spirit comes and lives on the inside of you. When that happens, all the external behaviors, those begin to change. And it's not. That's not. You're not forced to change. You have a new heart.

Yeah, yeah.

And it wants you to change. So the transformation part of faith health for me, dude, I'm down 100 pounds of body fat.

Oh, you put up here, you put up your beginning shots on a regular, regular basis.

Flip out that, dude. I get off stage and they're like, that ain't you. And I'm like, oh, I promise you, that was me. You know, literally, people, when I. When I put those. That before, after, and kind of after picture up on stage, the crowd just gasped. If they haven't seen it before, they're.

Before we jump too much more in the health side. I want to jump back to the faith side just a minute, because I think you said something important. So when you understand that when Jesus came, he came to be a conduit to reconcile you backwards.

That's right.

Right. So.

What I discovered with my own faith journey, I think this is. We're talking to your group. Thank you for letting me spend some time with them, by the way.

Is I learned that if you're. If you're always trying to do A, B, C, and D, then you're always living a life of performance. Right. And then when you don't perform the way you think you should perform.

Yeah.

You feel shameful and guilty, and it perpetuates a negative cycle.

Right?

Whereas when you understand that when Jesus came, he came as a byproduct of getting you to. Yeah, right. You didn't earn it. You didn't. You can't earn it.

You can't earn it.

Yeah, you can't earn it. And what happens is when you understand it was a bit more of a rescue mission than it was a south. It's a salvation mission, but it was a. It was a rescue out of love. Right? Love demands an illustration, right. That demands a resonance of it, that switches you from essentially performance to presence.

As your brother, as your friend. One of the things that I saw happen in the last 24 months, and you've always been out there trying to change the world. I mean, you have been. Right? But I saw a massive shift in you from.

Something that I would say. For me, I would use the words performance and presence. Right? A certain. A certain part of me knew I was called to, began to force, to be called to, tried to do, got humbled, learned a little more presence, got humbled again, learned a little more present. Like this cycle. Before we jump into the health side, I'd love to talk a little bit about the transformation that you've experienced the last, gosh, 24 months. Yeah, we could absolutely jump in the house. I know the hell side of the piece of that. But. But there's a. There's the.

The kin that I love, that I'm proud of and proud to be associated with is the authentic one. Like, it's. It's not uncommon for you to share your heart with tears on stage without Phil.

Yeah, yeah. Pain. It's pain. We talked about a little bit this yesterday at dinner. I was sitting. I was fortunate. There's about 12, 14 pastors, 2011 ish. We had. We had dinner with Craig Groeschel, the largest church in America. Craig's one of the greatest leaders I've ever known. He's fantastic. He's unbelievable. We're having dinner with Craig, and Craig is Craig. Only Craig can do. He goes around the room, there's all this church planters and the pastors at the table, and he goes, what do you want? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want at the end of your life? And everybody goes. It's impact, influence, build the kingdom, lead people to Jesus, like, all through. And then Craig stops. He goes, guys, I want you to understand your ability, your ability to have impact and influence will only be able to will always and only be equivalent to your ability to be able to tolerate pain. And I didn't really understood at that time. I didn't understand what he meant until I started pastoring in church. And I think that when we embrace pain, I have five affirmations I do every day. One of those is, I am whole. I choose to use past pain to help others find healing. Because you understand when you go through something, it's not necessari necessarily. You're like, man, I'm living my life great, and everything's awesome, and I don't have any sin in my life. I'm just loving God. I'm doing great. And then something blows up in your life. Well, you live in a world at war. God didn't cause that. You didn't cause that. You just live in a planet that is full of sin. And in those situations, you have to understand, you can either get bitter or you can go, okay, God, I don't know why I went through this. Romans 8, 28. All things work together for the good. All things, good things, bad things, sucky things. Things that are awesome. All things work together for the good. Okay, God, I don't understand why this is happening, but I do know that I'm whole, and I do know that I'm going to choose to use this pain to help somebody else circumvent something in their life where they can either navigate around, not have to experience what I experienced, or if they did experience it, I can help them find healing faster because I've been down that road already.

Yeah, man, it's so good. Yeah, I wanted to. I wanted to bring that up because I think I told you. I. You know, I love your events, by the way. I'm excited to actually be participating in one of. But in January. We can talk more about that in a few minutes, for sure. But I noticed a big shift, and ironically, it happened to be. It's almost like you and I are running, like, parallel lives, because when I was going through a big shift. You were going through a big shift. Yeah. Right. We, as brothers, you know, talk about that kind of walk through that, which has been beautiful. But I wanted people to fully appreciate.

That pain is what leads to purpose.

Yeah.

Like, it legitimately is the thing that must happen to chisel away our mutual friend. Randy has. I think. I'm sure he still has the statue, but this guy's, like, chiseling himself out of stone. Right. And it reminds me that that chisel has to be sharp and every. You know, if that piece of Marble literally had cells and emotions. Like every piece would. Would. Would not feel good. Right. But as you're. As you're watching that and watching that happening, you're starting to see this. This man chisel himself out of stone. And he's chiseled, he's sharp, he's focused, he's diligent, he's ready to steward.

Right.

And I think a lot of times people get into this element, I would say this way. I think there's a lot of folks that will prejudge other folks based on whatever stage of their journey that, that folk that are there in, rather than just focusing on their journey and where they need to kind of work on. Right. And it create. It creates a certain level of.

Disconnect. And the reason I say that is because I think one of your strengths is the authenticity and the transparency and the vulnerability you've been bringing to the table now for a little while. I. I don't think it's any accident that the more that has taken shape in you as a. As a global leader.

Yeah.

The more magnetic.

Yeah.

The programs and the services that you guys have began to, like, literally compound.

No, I think part of that, Stephen, is like, I got to a point in my. In my personal mental health journey and my therapy journey with my somatic therapy, with my. I tell everybody, Maxine, she's my therapist in Birmingham, she's like a mild version of Medea.

I walk in the office, she's like, honey, how you and Jesus doing, you and Jesus doing this week? Honey, you and you praying in spirit this week. How you and Jesus doing? I'm like, me and Jesus again, but walking through that journey and realizing that, you know, in your. Your. You've been in this journey as well as a 50 some. Some odd year old man. I don't have to prove anything to anybody. And I think sometimes when you grow up in environments like you grew up, environments like I grew up in 12 schools in 12 years, six different high schools. I mean, dude, I was back and forth. You dropped me in a new. Which is great because now you can put me in any environment and I'm fine. I'll make friends wherever I go.

Yeah.

But as a child, that trauma, having to understand what's going on in your life and having to navigate through that and then getting to a point to where, you know, you're like, I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I can just be me. We were. We were at the conference two years ago. Ed Mylett, John was there, Gary was there. Vic, Keller, Amberly was there. They had. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. And I'm sitting there, and we finished. This is before we moved into. It actually came out of this moment before we moved into our Psalm. Our 4610 moments at the end of each of our core five areas. So for those of you guys that don't know, we do worship leading into one of the core five areas. Worship coming out of it and coming out of it. I'll come up on stage, my team will put Psalms 4610. Because as entrepreneurs, this is almost. This is almost counterintuitive to us. Psalms 46, 10. Be still and know that I am God. When's the last time you looked at an entrepreneur and said, be still? We don't know how to be still. What are you talking about? Like, I can't be an entrepreneur. Be still. But the most important thing that we need is we need to be still. We need to listen to God. God, what are you speaking to me? And then Habakkuk2. 2. Write the vision down. We've got to write it down. God, what are you doing? In my life over the past 35 years, the biggest growth moments, the biggest. The biggest moments where he's growing. My youth ministry, my church, my. Any. Me personally has always been where I've gotten still before God. God, what do you have for me? Hearing God and then writing that vision down and going, okay, that's what I'm going after. But we do those moments where I want you to be still. We're up on stage and God, two years ago, I'm up on stage. I had the king will come. They were leading y leading worship for me. And God said, I want you to pray for people. Me, Henry, Taran. We had just finished a relationship component.

This is going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I was there.

This will bring this home for you. Yeah. Me, Henry, Taryn, Dr. Morgan Anderson. Dr. Morgan did one on attachment theory. She's. She's a massive podcast attach. Attachment theory expert. Henry and Taryn did masculine, feminine, relationship. I did a relationship talk. We did the panel. And then I'm like, okay, we're going to do some worship. And we didn't really have 4,610 moments. God said, I want you to pray for people. I said, okay. And God goes, no, no, no, no. I want you to pray for people. I'm like, God, what are you talking about? Like, you want us to go down there and, like, lay hands on people and pray for people? And God's like, yeah, I'm Like, God, this is a. This is a business conference. This is really. Yeah, this is when it shifted for me. God said, don't you pray? And I just said, I just looked out. I got pastor for a long time. So this, this. This is easy for me, but it's a different environment. And I just looked out over the audience to say, guys, listen, if you're here. And you'd say, Ken, like, if you'll be totally transparent, Ken, like, my marriage is struggling. I need somebody to pray for me right now. Would you just quietly slip your hand up? We had like, seven, eight people. And I just looked at Henry and Taryn. I looked at Morgan. I said, okay. I said, the four of us are going to come down and we're going to. We're going to pray for you. We did. We spent about 10 minutes just laying hands on people and praying. Dude, dads, Husbands weeping in front of their wives. And that's when I was like, okay, God, this is what you want this to look like. Because when people ask me, like, what's create? Like, which is our big conference.

Yeah.

I'm like, well, it's like 10x grants thing in the church that I had, that I planted, got together and had a baby. It's like business and finances. But the foundation is faith, health and relationships. It's God. I got to hear from you first because there's so many. I had a. Oh, gosh. I had. I had a mentor. Tell me this. He was the most successful guy, probably in our city in northeast Georgia, was on our board, one of the most beautiful lake homes on Lake Lanier. And I never forget, went to lunch. We're sitting there. Andrew said, kim, never forget vision. Vision is cheap to a visionary. If you're a visionary, vision comes easy.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He goes, it's up to you to hear from God and determine which vision. Which vision you have in your heart came from God. And that's the one you got to run after. That's 25 years ago. I'll never. I'll never forget it.

Yeah. Wow. You know, I think it's. I think it's. It's worth digging into there a little bit, is how to discern.

Because I knew I, you know, I do a journaling practice. I've shared it with your group, which is ironically, very much be still and hear from God. It's just a different wording in a lot of ways. Right. So what I hear you say is. And I just sit there and listen until I don't write anything down, until.

I Hear something, right?

Yeah. And it changed things because one of the things I shared with you last night at dinner is this private document that I was going back and forth with God.

Right.

And he said he made a comment, he makes a comment in this, this, this exchange, private exchange that I haven't, I don't share that with a lot of folks. I think you, I think you've seen it, Henry's seen it. Not many people have seen it. And he says, I'm always talking, but they're seldom listening.

Right.

And because we don't know how to be still.

Well, and that. And I think we're always trying to over talk. God's like, hey, I want you to do this. Like, but God, you don't understand.

God, I need this and I need this. I need this. And this is going on in my life and this is going to my kid's life and this is going on my relationship. Yeah. And God's like, I just want you to be still.

Yeah. I mean, just like, like last night with, with the group that you allowed me to share with a little bit, enjoying some time with you. One of the, one of the folks on there was like, hey, I need this type of provision. And ironically, the answer to the need for provision is not provision, it's presence. It's like really getting centered, really getting. What's my number one thing? How do I learn to think? Like, you know, I was, I was telling my CPA recently because you obviously, you know, I exited into in 2023 and you know, whatever mental wealth practices or whatever that I went from, you know, the homelessness, multiple levels of breaking scarcity. Right. And poverty mindset. Right? Multiple levels. And then like now I'm like, dude, I gotta, I have to learn how to think like a billionaire.

Yeah.

Like, how do they use resource? How do they compound resource?

Right?

Because I feel like. And I feel like, I feel this is for you. I feel this is. I feel this for you and I feel this for me in different capacities or in similarities as we're. We are being called to a higher standard, to call others to their higher standard.

Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. That's it. And dude, I think that's the, that's the driver is. We talked last night about the four levels of why my call and purpose was the last one. Like, you know, you've got, you've got significance and then you've got purpose.

Like starting with scarcity.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You're starting like, what is my. What drives me what's my. Why is it scarcity? Or if I take it past and get to the very highest level of purpose, like what drives me? And I think that when you get to a level of purpose, then I love Matthew, chapter 5, verse 1 is. But I think it's 1, 2, and 3. It's beginning of the Beatitudes. It's my favorite leadership scripture. It says Jesus saw the multitudes. And he said. Then it says he went up on a mountain to be by himself. When he was seated, he called his disciples to him. So break that script. Break those couple verses down. That word saw in the Greek means he didn't just see a mass of people. He had thousands of people followed him everywhere he's at. He didn't just see a mass of people. That word literally means he perceived their needs. And he looked at this massive humanity and said, I. I don't have what it's. I can't give them what they need. I don't have it. So because he's still Jesus, he's still Jesus. He's still in human form. Then it says, he went up on the mountain. So he went up on the mountain. Do what? Spend time with God. Because God's the one that can give him what he needs to.

Then turn around and give it to.

Then turn around, take care of the people. And then it says, when he was seated, he called his disciples to him, saying, and that's where he shared the Beatitudes. So he looks at we have to. I think the number one way we get into our why becomes that purposeful why, which is the highest level of why is we look at the. We look at the crowd, we see and perceive their needs. What if you did this in your business? What if you looked at your team? What if you looked at the people you have influence over in whatever. If your. Your business is an entrepreneur, if you're a pastor or if you're a leader, in whatever level, you looked and said, what are the needs of my family? What's the needs of my kids? What's the needs of my employees? What's the needs of the people in my community? What's the needs of my next door neighbor? If you looked at all of those things and you said, okay, well, I got. I see. Because there's a heaviness in a weight that comes with perceiving people's needs. Because you understand, oh, I can't. I can't do anything. There's nothing I can do in and of myself.

Well, I think you also realize that there's nothing that you can do meaningfully without other people.

100.

Right. And one of the things that you were teaching your group about, again, I was able to enjoy it, kind of be part of it and enjoy it as we spend a good solid day just strategizing how to, how to compound and you know, overall, like real impact, not just the BS impact.

Is the importance of having an accountability structure that's really real. And you know, I, I publicly tell everybody that I, I was honored to be part of the corner, which is your, one of your signature ma, you know, signature. It's more than a ma. It's not a mastermind. It's a, it's a tight knit group of people who.

Amazing human beings.

Nine figure beyond 10. Yeah. It's just ridiculous. But, but, but the interesting thing about the group is it doesn't feel like a mastermind. It feels like a brotherhood and a sisterhood.

Yeah.

Like, it feels like community. Yeah. Right. And I shared this, I actually shared this with you last night at dinner on the way to dinner when we were all with Chris and stuff. And I said, you know, my girlfriend actually asked me recently, she says.

You got, you know, you've obviously accomplished. You have nothing to prove. Right. You can go and do whatever you want at this stage in the game. Why do you one, why do you choose to do what you do? I said, well, I, I've choosing to do it because I want to be Steve Mark to as many people as humanly possible.

I love that.

Right. There's the guy that changed my life. He changed my family tree.

Yeah.

I was the, I was the, I was the break in the branch that finally said, oh, Scoggins can be of influence and affluent now, right now we.

Saw something in you that you didn't see.

But that's the importance of this community piece that you foster so brilliantly. And I say you, I know the spirit that's working through you. I get to spend a lot of time with you, which is a blessing in my life. But it just had me thinking that one of the greatest challenges that entrepreneurs have, whether they're faith based or not faith based, we're obviously going to encourage them to learn more about their faith. It'll help with resilience and I call it rise, leading and lasting. Right.

Is isolation.

Was there moments in time that you felt isolated, which taught you the value of community?

That's a great question. If you look at the moments in Jesus's life that always preceded big, massive moments. He always was by himself. He went to Spend time with the father. People go, I hear this a lot. I'm not a morning person. Well, I wasn't a morning person either until I decided, you know what if Jesus got up and prayed before sun came up, I'm gonna get up and pray. Like, my morning routine is boom, boom.

Yeah, we were doing our. We were doing our routines this morning.

Every day it's the same. And when I look at his life and how much and listen, I don't like to be alone. I'm. I'm an extrovert. I get it replenishes me to be around people. But again, I can be around people. But it's like, okay, God, I've got to go. Get still before you. I literally was laying in bed yesterday this morning. This ridiculous view you have, by the way, just looking outside on the lake. And I'm just like, God, whatever you have, I want it. Whatever you have for me, I don't care what it is. Whatever you have, I want that. And I think it gets you to a point. The isolation you talk about. We need isolation at a certain level to be able to hear from God.

Is it isolation or is it intentional solitude?

Well, that. Intentional solitude is what I would call that.

Yeah.

And it's just. It's really you going, I'm going to make a decision, like when the first thing I do in the morning, every morning. If you follow me on Instagram, the first thing I post every morning is a worship song. And then I jump right over into my YouVersion app.

Yeah. We were both cranking abortion the last few days.

I'm like 580 days in a row on youversion. Yeah. And even to even a deeper level. And guys, listen, in your faith journey, it doesn't matter where you are. It's where am I at today in my faith journey? And what do I need to do to take it to the next level? So I'm in Puerto Rico in our Mastermind in April of last year. Beautiful home, right on the water.

Troy's.

No, Troy's right around the corner.

Okay.

But we're right. Troy came and spoken where there's massive home. And I get up, go to the bathroom like three. It's 3:56 in the morning. And I look at my phone just to see what time it is, and I'm like, oh, it's like 5:30 or 6. I'm gonna go ahead and get up and I'm going to the bath. I'm literally walking. You know, you're walking with your eyes shut, trying to Go to the bathroom so you don't wake up. So you can just go to the bathroom and go back to bed and go sleep. And I walk in and God goes, I want you to get in my word. And I'm like, what God? I'm in your word. He goes, no, no, I want you in my word. Not the digital version, which, there's nothing wrong with that. But for me, I had probably the last six months before that had found my, my Bible from where I pastored. And he goes, I want you in my word.

Yeah.

And so now it's sitting right there.

I mean, you know, I've got four or five Bibles around the house. My favorite one's one my grandfather.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now it's like, okay, God, I got you. I'm gonna get in your word. So I do my, you version, but I'm in Psalms like 80 something right now. And then I'll flip over into Psalms 80 in my Bible, grab my pen, grab my little note taker thing and I'm reading through Psalms 80 and I'm literally in, in my physical Bible. And so, but I just know that's something God spoke to me out of that intentional solitude. Yeah, God, I'm going to be still. Because guys, here's the deal. If we'll be still before God, he'll speak to you what you need. Like he knows what you need. He, he wants to meet, meet your needs. We were talking about this earlier. I wanted to share this. You met my daughter, my C17, all 5 11.

She's sassy and she's your granddaughter.

She's. Yeah, she's 17 going on 37.

Yeah.

And we just got back from an unbelievable trip with her and my 26 year old from Boston and Maine and Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut. We had a great time. Those are bucket list item this year. Well, she was about, I was pastoring, she was probably three, four years old. I, I get up one day, I'm at home, I've got her about to take her to pre K and, and I look, I walk by her sister's door and there's Sharpie marker written all over her sister's door. Sharpie marker all over Emma's arms.

Emma, did you write on your sister's door she's the crocodile tears? No sir, daddy, I didn't do that. I'm like, okay, baby. So I get done Sundays church where I said, I told my team, I said, listen, between the second and third song, before we get to the second half of worship, I want you to bring me one of those big leather chair comfortable chairs out of the foyer in our church. I don't. You bring it up on stage. And so they're bringing this stage, There's a few hundred people in our auditorium and they're bringing this, this chair. And they set it down in the middle of worship. And I said, and I told him, I said, I want you to go get Emma for me. And so they went and got the Emma. I sit in the chair and there's Emma. And she's, you know, she's a pastor's kid. So she's running around church Monday through Saturday everywhere. For her to get up on stage is nothing. She'll grab the mic, shey, dad, I'm preaching just like you. And so they bring her up and she's looking at me like, oh my God, dad, why am I in here? And why are all these people looking at me? And so I said, come here, baby. So she comes up on stage, she hops on my knee. She's little, she's tiny. And I looked at her and I said, baby, did you ride on your sister's door with a shopping market this week? Oh my God. She was like about to bust out crying. And I said, you know what, baby? It's okay. You know why? Because I'm your father and I love you. And your love for, my love for you isn't predicated on your performance. And I looked at our crowd that day and I said, guys, how many of you guys come in here on Sunday and you feel like I did this wrong, I did this wrong or I didn't do this, I didn't do this, therefore I don't deserve to be in the father's presence.

Presence, it keeps you in scarcity too.

I said, this is my daughter and she is always welcome in my presence no matter what she does.

That's so good.

Oh, dude, game changer, bro.

That's so, so good. So, so good.

Wow. I'm sitting with that just a second. That was so good.

You know, it's, it's that, that be still component is, is massive for, you know, if you're a faith based entrepreneur, to be able to just because God knows everything we need. It's.

I love.

I think it's Luke.

He knows the stuff that we're not willing to tell anybody about.

Oh, but he knows it all. It's like it's getting it crazy. Like Adam and Eve, they get, they've sinned, they eat the, they eat the fruit tree of knowledge of good and evil. They. They realize they sinned. They said, oh, their eyes were open and they covered themselves. And then they were trying to hide from God. It's like, come on, man. We can't. We still do the same things today. We still try to cover ourselves. We still try to hide. And God's like, you can't. You. Number one sin, when it comes into our life the way it did with Adam and Eve, causes us to feel like we're not enough to be in the presence of God. I've sinned. I'm wrong.

You go into 1 John 1:9. Jesus said, if you sin, if you confess, I am faithful and just to forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. First John 2. One says, we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ, the righteousness. That word advocate is parakletos in the. In the Greek, which is where we get the word paraclete, which is where we get the word attorney, mouthpiece. He literally stands before God when the enemy goes to accuse. He goes, nope, never mind. Steven Scoggins. My blood covers his sin. He's forgiven, done. And I think, guys, we. We. We forget that truth, and it keeps us from God's presence, the way that God desires for us to be in. He wants fellowship with us.

Yeah.

That's why he created us. Another thing, too, is I heard my pastor say this. He said, how many of you guys have, you know, pictures of your kids on your refrigerator or ribbons or something like that? And he goes, how many of you guys, if your kid acted up that week, you'll take their picture and you'll slide it around the back side of the refrigerator because you're afraid. You're. You're embarrassed of your kid. Well, nobody'd ever do that.

Yeah.

Why do we think God does that to us? It's like, oh, I made a mistake, so God's gonna slide me around.

Well, I can tell you why is because.

A circumference of influences. Other people who are equally challenged in their own capacity, whatever that may be, are telling you that you're not worthy, you're not worth.

You're.

Because you have X, Y and Z.

Right?

It's. It's. And I even hated saying this. We. I mentioned this last night, and I. I don't like the phrase. The phrase breaks my heart. But there is truth to it, which is why the phrase exists, which is, in many cases, the most challenging thing about Christianity is the Christian themselves.

We talk about that on the only.

Open dinner, you know what I'm saying? And it's not. And I'm not hating on anybody. But, you know, Jesus, I, the reason I, the reason I like to refer to myself as a disciple of Jesus or a follower of Christ is because.

I want to do what I saw him do. Right. I want to be able to be the embodiment of everything that he paid the price for. For me. I want to be a broadcaster of love. I want to be able to share grace and mercy with healthy boundaries that hold people, to hold myself and others accountable. I want to have a healthy dose of responsibility. I want to be a good steward. Like, I want these things, and I want them because I saw him do them.

And Jesus says, clearly, he says, if you are my disciple, you will follow me and do as I do.

100.

Right. Paraphrase. But essentially, that's kind of what, what. And instead, what we began to hear through thousands of years of history, you know, after Jesus was, you know, died and resurrected and off to the Father is this element that in order to be connected to God, you must be absolutely perfect, which is the whole thing that he came for to begin with.

Right. Well, that's religion. Religion is what tells you in order to be connected with God, you have to be perfect. Yeah. The reality of it is it's like, God, I'm your. I'm your child. You created me, you want me, just like I did with him.

With that. Yeah.

I brought her up center in my lap.

Well, I mean, think about it. I mean, we. You and I were with a friend not that long ago, and I just felt like it was the right timing to say, hey, buddy, I'm curious. What's your, what do you know about Jesus?

What do you.

What's your relationship with Jesus? Right. It's somebody that I know and respect and love is one of the biggest hearts I've ever seen in a human being. And he's like, well, if I'm being honest.

I love everything about Jesus except.

Except his followers.

Yeah. I mean, essentially it's kind of. Because, you know, essentially it's kind of what, what it shook out. And, you know, so here, here, here. So here is Jesus, who comes here to this world on behalf of the Father to bring us back in accordance and reconcile with the Father and have. And there's. Without going to too deep of a tangent, there's stuff that is in this world and there's stuff that's connected into essentially heaven, spirit world thing. Right. So there's a whole thing there.

Jesus says in the scriptures, he says, suffer me, the little children woe to the person that prevents them from coming to me. We are the little children. I don't give a flip how old you are. You might be a 12 year old trapped in a 7 year old's body. And that's just truth. Right. And as a result, what I'm seeing is Jesus says do this. The Pharisees and the Sadducees do that. I'm telling purity and love and grace is over here. They're telling you have to accomplish certain things over here. So then what we do is we internalize the fact that, well, at least I'm not sinning as much as they're sinning.

Right, right, right.

At least I'm not as bad as they are. Right. Which is another catastrophic version of comparison.

It's a trap, bro.

Yeah.

It's massive trap.

Oh man.

Anytime we do that, you know.

So my. In this conversation when. And you were there too.

My heart broke a little bit because here is a beautiful soul with a beautiful heart.

Yeah.

Who would give more than anything to really know the fullness of truth.

And what's holding that person back is the actions of other people. The choices, the decisions, the.

I say it this way. My grandfather, I share the story. Told me it's about 2000. In fact, I got. I got baptized after having a litter box moment which is in the first book. Along is a whole story we don't have time to get into today. But Jesus manifest himself to me.

Yeah.

Could see. Much like I was with Chris today. I shared that I could see a couple angels around him. Anyway.

In this moment, one of the things that I realized was every moment leading up to that moment for about three years because I was a devout atheist for about five. Okay. After being raised as a church and loving Jesus as a child and all the things my life. I could not understand how a loving God would let me go through all these different things. Now I know different because all of those things may be this guy here that can now do these types of things here. Right. So it's a transition you just don't fully appreciate and understand.

Right.

Which is why it says your ways are not my ways, bro. Just trust me. Right. But he said this. He said this interesting phrase. He says you have to be willing to search past the answers that you want to the answers that are true.

So many times I find that we will lean into just enough information, just enough to confirm the bias that we have in our heart. And that becomes the stumbling block that really prevents true relationship. And then when you get to that sector it's easy to find the evidence.

Right.

Well, if God was real, if Jesus was real, then these people wouldn't do that, and that person wouldn't do that, and this system wouldn't do that, and that. That principality wouldn't do that, like, all this kind of stuff. And Jesus was very clear. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.

But all are.

I added this part. This is not in scripture. But all are invited, right? All are invited to the presence of the Father. Yeah.

You know, and they are. Well, he says it's not his. It's. It's not his will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. It all should come to know Him.

Yeah.

So we know. We know that's his will. Why is that his will? Because he created us. We're sons and we're daughters, and I think that's a massive thing. And so if you're listening podcast, watching some videos on this.

Intentionally calendar, some time to just get still before God, like, and just.

Even if you don't believe in them.

That's exactly right.

Just try.

I tell people all the time, listen, if you, if you research and you go on your own journey, he will show Himself to you in a way that only you can see and in a way that he. He needs you to be able to understand how much he loves you. He'll reveal that love to you.

Yeah, well, I want to. I want to go ahead and pivot a little bit. I think the faith side of what you're building is. Is a massive piece of the. It's a cornerstone and it's unique as far as how it's positioned and how it's presented, which is important because I feel like people have been talked at for decades, if not hundreds of years, and now they're being invited into relationship and friendship and community. So I love that. I also believe I. I showed you a. A real yesterday of something I did a number of about two years ago, a speech, keynote, whatever you call it. And I said there, I think the greatest movement of God is going to come through the marketplace. Right. Billy Graham said it before. I said it in a different way. And I think that's. I think it's absolutely true. But what I want to know is, I know you went on a massive physical health journey. How has that journey now shaped.

How align your mind, body and spirit are now? And what. What was Ken like before the journey?

Yeah, I mean, I was successful. I had my mortgage Company was one of the top mortgage companies in the state, growing one of the largest youth ministries in the country. I actually gained all my weight when I was pastoring, which is because we're so taught to give, serve, abandon yourself, all those things. I had done it to such an extreme where I woke up and I was well over £300. And I never forget Anthony Trucks. You and I. Anthony and I were talking one day, and he said, ken, he goes, I bet if you looked at the trajectory of your health journey and how it was going up to the right and you were getting better and losing weight and all the stuff that you're doing, I guarantee it will almost mirror the growth of your business. And he was almost 100. Correct.

Wow.

Literally almost mirrored it.

Wow.

Because on the health side, like, if we don't. If we don't have an intentional plan on what we want our health to look like, because I don't care how big of a business you have, what you want to build, if you don't take care of you first, then you can't take care of the people on your team. You can't take care of your spouse. You can't take care of your children. You have to take care of you first. And it's not a selfish thing to go to the gym. It's not a selfish thing to get a massage or to go do cold plunges. Those things aren't selfish. Those things are Abraham Lincoln. That's right. Abraham Lincoln. If you had four hours to chop down a tree, what would you do? Spend the first three sharpening the ax. And you're the ax. And if you don't sharpen yourself, it's. Why when you get on a plane. Yeah. The student flight attendant gets up in case the loss of cabin pressure, oxygen mask. She holds, a little thing drops down, put it on yourself first. If you're with kids, put on yourself before you put on them. Why? Because if you lose cabin pressure, your lungs collapse, you can't breathe. Like, there's no. You have to put that oxygen to get air in your lungs. And if you don't do it quickly, you'll pass out, which means the kids are. They're doomed anyway. You. We have to. I think as a society, we have to re. Look at how much am I taking care of me so then I can in turn take care of all the other people that God's entrusted me with in my life.

I think it's really cool, too. I know one of the guys that's in the corner group, Josh Porter. Amazing, amazing entrepreneur. Amazing man.

I know one of the things that in a combination with Gary Brecken, some of the other folks that were friends with and whatnot.

Have made a. Help me understand.

The difference between.

Just living with deficiencies. Nutrient deficient nutrient deficiency, how the body responds to everything from hormones and nutrition, et cetera.

And it's really interesting to know that most of our so called medical problems.

Yeah.

In almost every way are preventable.

Yeah.

That, you know, not that I'm. I'm not necessarily pro like living 500 years.

Unless what.

That's what God is. Right. You know, that's the kind of thing. But I am pro longevity. Like I want to be healthy and fit and good shape. I want my mind sharp. Right. I want my heart sharp, want my soul sharp.

And what was really dumbfounding to me is. And this happens a lot with entrepreneurs and leaders in general is. Yeah, we. I think that that is one of the major areas that takes a backseat. I. I think I can't remember if I share this with you. One of the things I saw Steve Meyrick do with my dad. My dad and I went to go. He had both his knees replaced. He managed getting. He managed to get pneumonia while he was in the hospital. Later passed away like a few, like a few months later, 2003. Never got to see what his seed in me became thus far. Right. But I'll never forget he was on it. He was laying on the gurney kind of like somewhat cocked up and you know, he had oxygen mask on.

There were.

Because they're trying to, you know, heal his lungs. He was in the early 70s at the time. And you even saw the picture of him downstairs on the wall. But my dad is like doting over him about, you know, you've been, you've traveled the world, you've done this, you've done that, you've helped so many people. And Stephen, Steve used to have radical generosity that no one knew about. He was the definition of not knowing what the left and right hand were doing. Like the definition of it. And I'll never forget this. Steve literally pulled the mask off his face and said, what good is any of that? I don't have my health. And put the mask back on. His face started staring at ceiling again.

You know.

And I spoken from a true place.

Yeah.

Of authenticity. Like he's laying there.

I mean I remember it like. And that happened when I was. Was 23, 22. I mean, I. I remember it.

Wow.

I remember it, remember it. And maybe that's why that I'M one of the few Scoggins is that if you will, that are. I'm adamant about staying in shape. You and I hit the gym the entire last couple days. We're here like we're, we're, we're doing our morning routines now. You see me down on the grass. You know, we're, you know, we're doing our thing. And I, first of all, I want to applaud you for your leadership in making sure that, that these five areas are major, but also making sure that health.

Which is really longevity. And longevity is only valued. Valued to your point about the art, the ax, if it's sharp.

That's right.

Right. What good is your mind if it can't process? That's right. You know, so, you know, I think, I think that's so important.

Longevity equals greater impact and greater influence. I have the opportunity. There's a cost to leave. Oh, there's a massive cost. But I have an opportunity to leave the legacy that God built me to leave. When I take care of myself physically. And I mean, it's not just for me. It wasn't just the losing 100 and some odd pounds. It wasn't just health. It was my, my blood work, my methylation test with Gary, my, my testosterone, my stem cell work that I do down in Costa Rica with rmi. I mean there's so many components to that health journey for me. I mean I did three 60 day runs last year in 20, 25 of keto, no alcohol and peptides. Like, peptides was another thing that I added. I mean it just, I just keep adding these things.

I have peptides as well, so I.

Saw them is start the journey. Like if you don't have a plan, you're never going to end up where you want.

My.

One of my favorite Zig Zigger quotes. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time.

Ain't that the truth.

You'll hit it every time. Like come up with a plan. What does that look like? Don't lose five pounds, ten pounds. Don't the gym three days a week. Or if I, hey, if I only lose 50, I'm going to go to the gym two days a week. Listen, I love you. Ch. Losing 50 pounds going to the gym two days a week, it's not going to happen. Yeah, like find something where you can literally plan what it looks like for you to be. Where do you want to be? Faith, health, relationship, business and finances. Where do I want to be? Where am I? Do you have to take an honest Assessment. You know, the first thing I had to do when I, When I posted on social media, I was going to lose all that weight.

I was forgettable.

I had to get on the scale.

Yeah, yeah, I have some starting point.

I had to get on the scale. I had to go. And it was the worst thing ever. I was like, are you freaking kidding me? I'm. I. Dude, I'm naked. I'm like, I'm like blowing out all the air. And I look down and it hits 300. And I think it was £8, 309. I was disgusted with myself, but I couldn't start the place of healing and that health journey until I let myself get disgusted with myself.

So I know you and I have been on a similar journey in different. In similar ways and even the same ways in some cases, but also different ways. Tell me what you've learned about self love. What have you learned about self love? And what are you doing to combat not loving self? What do you do?

Practically, one of my therapists, Dr. Rob Kelly, I'll never forget it. We were. I was going through somatic therapy with Lauren, a different somatic therapist, Maxine, who's my. Just my regular kind of therapist. You got a lot of therapists jacked up because I'm like. And again, if you, when you realize, God, you've given me this platform to be able to help people. Like, when you come to our conference, all the people you hear from are all the people that have helped me. They're all the people that have helped me. Every single one of them are people that I have went, okay, Gary Bareka. Okay, Josh. Okay, John Maxwell. Okay, Ed. Like, these guys have helped me become who I am today. So I'm going to. Again, one of my five affirmations. I'm whole. I choose to use path past pain to help others find healing. Let me show you what I did to get out of the hole that I was in with my health. I just think it's. It's massive for us to be able to get still. Okay, God, where do I need to be in these five areas? Where am I? And then what am I going to do to move the ball forward?

How does that change your. Just from your, from your lens, your perspective. I can tell you from my lens as someone I'm watching outside. God, how has it changed.

With. And again, I can use. I can put myself in this. Stephen, pre loving self. Stephen post loving self. Right? Or.

Oh, I was telling you about Dr. Rob Kelly. Yeah, I'm working with Rob, and Rob goes I want you to do mirror work. And I'm like, what's that? He goes, I want you to look in the mirror and tell you you did you love yourself.

First time I heard that, I was like, you're gonna be kidding this.

No, no, he did. And I was like, I looked in mirror and I'm like, I love you, Ken, man. Okay, Jocelyn, I love you. And it was just like, really? I got to do this, dude. I do it now. I'm like, ken, Joss, I freaking love you, dude. I freaking love the way you show up for your family. I love the way you show up for your kids. I love the. I'm like, I get excited now or before. It was like. It was like, awkward.

Yeah.

It's like, because.

Because you believe it now.

That's exactly.

It's truth.

Yeah.

That's the thing, is that. Here's the thing. People are like, well, how do I change my belief beliefs? Oh, you start putting practices in place that you do repetitively to make the beliefs true. I know you have a. You have a quote that's signature to you. That's a micro, monumental success.

Yeah. Incremental, not monumental.

So break that down for me a little bit, because I think the audience should hear that.

Yeah. Small, daily discipline decisions. And this happened. Listen, this whole incremental not monumental concept came about at the very beginning of my health journey and my weight loss journey. Small, daily, disciplined decisions over time always equal monumental results. Results. Success can't escape you when you do the right things every single day. And it's not about. It's not about how good can you do it four, five, six days in a row. How good can you do it for the next 365 days? How good? Because the transformation and the monumental growth and the things you want to see take place, they don't happen in 90 days. They don't happen in 60 days. Every 60 to 90 days, you should look up as a man or a woman and be able to look in the mirror and go, go, dude, I'm a different person than I was 60 days ago. 90 days ago. I'm a different human being. It is small. Small, daily, every single freaking day. Like, I go to the gym, whether I feel like going to the gym or small, daily, disciplined decision discipline means, you know what? Even when I don't want to do it, I'm going to do it anyway. Small, daily discipline decisions over time. That's a compounding over time always equal monumental results.

I love it. I love it. All right, so I. We got create conference coming up January 2026. I'm excited about that. First of all, thank you for the invite to join you on stage as well as do some breakouts. I'm going to be really excited about it. I've been to two of them so far. They seem to double and triple in size every time I go. I know you got a bigger venue this year coming up. What I. I guess I got two questions on. On creating and obviously we'll make sure that people have access to it links and stuff because we'll be both eat there, which I'm excited about. But.

Why did you create? Create?

That's a good question. God told me to. I mean that's all I can tell you is. I mean I. In youth ministry I had my own national youth leadership conference I did yearly and it was a way for me to be able to bring in the mentors and people that made a difference in my life to be able to put them in front of. I think the last one we did, we had almost 300. We had 368 youth pastors from 18 different states and leaders came into that. And I had my three main mentors that were there and myself. Here's what we've done to grow this youth ministry to hundreds and hundreds of kids. I think Create we were going to. When I first became a licensee with Grant In January of 20, it was actually February of 2020. I just spoke for Grant for the second time to all the licensees down at 10x headquarters, the entire team. I did his whole sentence meeting that morning and I get done with that and we're like, okay, we're going to launch this thing. What are we going to do? I want to do a conference. John Maxwell, my good buddy David Pollock, who was on college game day for 18 years, Davey and some other guys, we were going to do it at the Maxwell Leadership Institute, which is a part of a 12 stone campus in Atlanta that Pastor Kevin Myers had done for John. Because of the impact John had had in his life. I said okay, we're going to do it. May 19th and 20th of 2020, Friday afternoon, all day Saturday. Covid hits. Can't do it now.

That's why I built that facility in Raleigh.

Couldn't do it now. And so it was like we pivoted. We did online, we started online, followed the model that Grant did. Followed online, which we still do now. We did that and then we said in November, I think November 9th and 10th of 2020, we did a smaller event and then again In January, we did a smaller event. Then In June of 2021, we did an event in Sundance or Scottsdale. Scottsdale. I'm sorry, sorry. Scottsdale, Arizona, had about 55 people there. 5k head event killed. It was amazing. Sharon Lecter was there. Anthony Trucks was there. Carlos Reyes.

Jeff loved.

Oh, dude. So pretty.

When I was in Utah, I used to go there all the time.

And so we started doing that, and then we got back to the next October, and I'm like, we're gonna do create. And I reached out to John and through Chad, to John Maxwell, and I said, hey, I'm gonna do this conference in January. I'd love for John to come speak. And so we're kind of negotiating the price. And. And I got off the phone, I called Nate, and Nate was on John's staff. Chad actually came in and worked under Nate when he first got there 25 years ago. And Nate goes, how much? I said, what do you mean? He goes, how much is it for John? I said, 85,000. And he goes, how you going to pay for it? I said, I know. He said. He said, what are you going to do? I said, already signed the contract and sent it back. He goes, what are you. How are you going to pay for it? I said, I have no idea, but we're going to figure it out. And we figured it out.

You're a real entrepreneur.

It's like, it was. It was brutal. Everybody says they want to do live events. I'm like, you have no idea.

Oh, I. You know, I think I told you this. I. I love live events. We. We. And we. You know, we've. We did have my last book launch. And we're good at it. We're really good at them. But it's not for the faint of heart. It's also one of the reasons I was. I was even telling you. I was like, dude, anyone that comes in your. Comes in the ecosystem when you work so stinking hard to bring the right people together that can benefit from each other consistently. Like, there should be some kind of model where everybody's working together, right, and sharing results. And, you know, that's another story for another time. But I think the other question I have. And this is. This is what I'm gonna. I'm invite you to go into presence for a second. I want you to think about the top three entrepreneurial transformations that have happened by way of creating that you've witnessed, and maybe share a little bit briefly about those journeys with what you can.

Yeah, yeah.

And then describe the Person who needs to be at create with us this year.

So I'm part of college baseball for a long time, and that's really what started my health journey. I went to the ACC SEC camp in Metairie, Louisiana, right outside New Orleans. University of New Orleans, ACC ACC SEC camp. And Ray Gregson, who was one of my best friends who was on the staff already, they were minor league umpires. He goes, dude, you have great rapport. You've got all these things. Great. You need to lose weight. So that's when I went home. That's when I started the health journey. And my Division 2 National Coordinator, he's over all the Division 2 umpires in the whole country. Scott Taylor. Scott. Scotty calls me and he's like, dude, I've been watching your Facebook and your Instagram, and, dude, you're blowing up. I want to come to your conference. So he comes to create. He buys the $10,000 CEO ticket. He comes in. Scotty was doing umpiring college baseball, and he had a pallet company. Never made more than a couple hundred grand. His life. We started doing erct. We made a million bucks in about six. Six months. Just under a million dollars. Number one, he didn't know what to do with it.

It.

Number two, he said, hey, I want to come to your conference. Just to come. So he. He gets there. We're doing the relationship opponent, Henry and Taryn. Dr. Morgan, myself, when we get ready to pray for people. I mentioned this earlier. We get ready to pray people. Sky's sitting in the front row because he's got CEO ticket. I see him get up and dart out the room, and I'm like, where is he going? So later that evening, I'm like, dude, where did you go? Like, we're about to pray for people. And he's like. He goes, man, I was sitting there, Ken. He goes, I thought I came here for business and finances. He goes, I was sitting there. When I got still before go. God was like, and this is as raw and real as Scotty is. He's a college baseball empire. He goes, God was like, you're an asshole to your wife. You need to go apologize. So he beelines out the door, calling Brenda on the phone back in Indianapolis and going, baby, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I've been an for 28 years, and I'm dying, man. I talked to Scotty yesterday. He called me yesterday, and I mean, that's one of the. That's one of the things. It's like. Like, because, dude, he's the Division 2 National Coordinator for umpires now. He's a big mortgage guy. But just watching him do that and the excitement and then I've been to Indianapolis a couple times and the crazy.

Part is I wonder what kind of acorn was dropped and how it changed.

Oh, it's just the last time I.

Saw him, they were, they were like on, on each other a little bit.

So it's like, it's crazy. You see that on each other in.

A, in a, in a healthy way, the way a husband and wife should be from time to time.

You talked about Josh Porter earlier. I had my, my one on one with Josh today. He's in the corner.

Man to Watts. What he's done. He came in 2024 to create. So it's been almost.

You recognize him for almost last year. Last year, double in sales and, and culture like he's doing. He's building the machine.

Right. He, he signed up for our corner in 2024 and he had, he's a PA physician's assistant. So he's got. At that time, he had two optimized U locations. So he's a home loan replacement placement specialist.

Well, he's one of the few that I would trust. I gotta, I got maybe three that I would trust for that kind of work. And Josh is one of them.

He's so good. And so he signs up, he in the year and it was a journey too. Dude, I'll say this. We'll talk a little about this at Create. This year it wasn't just because people come in again. They're like, business and finances, business and finances. Business and finances. That's what I'm here for. 95% of the people that come to create faith, what God actually does is faith, health, relationships. It's got nothing to do with business and finances. Because when we get faith, health and relationships in alignment, gives God the opportunity to go, ah, now you're ready for me to build a business. Because entrepreneurship's hard to be able to have. You said it earlier today, like, to be able to have money, you have to have a different mindset or you're not going to, you're not going to steward it the way God wants you to steward it. It.

Be faithful a little bit, make you master over much. But the precursor is you must be faithful with the little.

That's right. If you can't steward $100,000, you can't steward a million. You just can't do it. So Josh signs up, we go to Puerto rico first. Mastermind 3. This April of 2024, we're sitting there, Puerto Rico. Troy Hoffman's doing a session. There's 27, 28 of us in the room.

Troy Hoffman changed how you scale a company.

He's a.

Access to capacity, baby.

So Troy's sitting there, and he's just going in the room and every. It's the last day. It's the last session, and he's asking people, what do they want? And he's talking to Josh about. At the time, he had two locations, two franchises, about 1.8 million in revenue that year, 10 employees. And Troy's talking to him. And Troy just finally looks at him and goes, dude, what do you want? Like, forceful. And, you know, Troy's not. He ain't forceful.

Yeah.

And Troy goes, dude, what do you want? And Josh leans across the table and he goes, I want to buy the whole company. And I was like, man, you can feel it in the room. Troy stands up and goes, did y' all feel what just happened? I'm like, I did, like, the whole. And Troy goes, here's what we're gonna do. He goes, I'm gonna do evaluation on the two. You own. You do the valuation on. I think there was 14 or 15 at the time on the rest of them. I'll get you my acquisitions attorney. We'll see what we can do to buy this whole thing. Well, that didn't happen, but that was the moment. What did happen was he renegotiated his. His franchisee agreement. What did happen then was. So now he went from two locations to five, 10 employees to 21. 1.8 million to 3.9 million the first year he's working with us more than.

More than double top line.

And it's not just. It's not just the money. It was what God was doing in his heart. If he's not in that room that day, two things. If he's not in that room that day, that doesn't happen because it was a room where he said, this is what God's put in my heart. And he could share it in a room, Stephen, where people didn't look at you like you had five heads.

Yes. Which is what we most. What most of us grow up with.

Yep. Because we're like. He's like, I want to buy the whole thing. Everybody's like, okay, cool. What do we got to do to make it happen? Yeah, let's do it. It. Like, that's.

See, that's a curation. That's a curation of capacity, bro.

That is Vision. And it could not have happened had he not been in that room. And then 1.9 to 3.1.8 something to 3.9 million last year. He hit 3.9 million in August this year. And he's. They're killing. I did my one on one. His mom's going through cancer right now. Like, he's taking his mom back and forth. Our whole conversation today was about his time where he's doing. He's basically moving from taking and seeing patients into more of a CEO role.

Just hire chief growth, ironically, which is one of the things I've been specializing in the last several years is taking a founder and turning them into a CEO.

Yeah.

Because they're very, very, very, very different skill sets.

And in order to scale, you have to have that. But people look at Josh. So last year at Create, we gave him that GSD Assassin award. It was this badass samurai sword. I wrote a frame letter for him. I tried to read it. I cried the whole time. Time done. But you know, he showed up in Puerto Rico and God did that, that one moment. Here's the other thing. The. The second biggest thing was his wife was sitting next to him. This is what I told the group. I said, guys, let me ask you a question. Killers in that room. Dude, Brent Go's the number one guy in exp. 42,000 agents making about 1.2 million a month in Rev Share. Like, the dude makes over 15, 20 million a year. And I'm like, could you imagine if, if, if Laura wasn't with Josh and Josh goes back to Chattanooga, Tennessee, babe, let me tell you what happened. I'm gonna buy the whole company. She looked at him like, dude, you've lost your freaking mind. What's wrong? You're never going back.

Because she's in a room where that stuff happens as ordinary.

It's just. This is what we do.

Yeah.

And. And she was like, makes the extraordinary ordinary. Has it been hard? Yes, it's been hard.

Yeah.

Had there been times. I've got on my one on one call because I do one on ones with all my corner guys every week. Have there been times I got on a one on one call with Josh and I'm like, dude, okay, talk to him. Me. Well, dude, I got. I had the worst fight I've ever had in my marriage on Monday night, and I acted like an ass. I'm like, unpack it for me. That's where I take my business hat off. And I put my pastor hat on. I'm like, okay, unpack it. For me, let's talk about it. Because it's still hard.

Yeah.

People, they see the. Oh, I want to go from 2. 2 locations to 5, 10 employees to 21, 1.9 million to almost 4 million. I want to do that. You. You think you do, but you don't understand the cost involved in doing that. And then Puerto Rico, Atlanta in July of last year, we're sitting in the session, Jake Hamilton's doing his men's deal, and you're filling out this paper, and he goes to Josh and he's like, hey, who wants to share a little about what you got? It's just a normal. We had 75, 80 people at that one. So probably 40, 45 men in that room. And Josh starts sharing and as he starts Jake, then Jake starts asking questions. Why. Why do you feel this way? Tell me the first time in your childhood you felt. Felt this way. His. The whole thing was he didn't feel like he. His dad died in a car accident when he was 17. The last conversation they had, they were yelling at each other. And he. That. That's the last thing he left his. His with him.

There's a lot of guilt there.

Oh, dude. So he's sitting there and he is, dude, in 15 minutes in that session.

I watched Jake do that last. At the last guy is.

Yeah. With Brandon. Yeah.

When I get pastor God told me, go get the house hug.

I got hug.

I did.

I mean, he is weeping with Josh's son sitting next to him. Well, Josh's son starts crying and Jake looks at him and goes, he goes, tell me. Tell me what's going on in your heart right now. And he goes, when I heard my dad say that he didn't think he was good enough for his father. That's exactly what I struggle with.

Generational.

You want to talk about healing? Like, healing between a dad, between Josh and his father, and then Josh and his son, all three generations right there done. God literally said, I'm going to heal it all right now. If people are like, oh, I'm here for my business and finances. No, you're not. You think you are.

I mean, you're. Here's the crazy part is when God actually does the thing in your heart that needs to be done, all the other things prosper, the business and finances. So the business prospering is a byproduct of.

You get faith, health and relationships in alignment coming. It's almost organic. Those things are going to happen. Which is what now when he went from two locations to five, he opened Three locations in like six weeks.

Was that hard?

Did he get his ass kicked? You better believe he did. He got his ass kicked. Like he's still getting, there's days he's like, bro, I feel like, what did Norm say on Cheers? It's a dog eat dog world. I'm wearing milk bone onion. Welcome to being an entrepreneur, ladies and gentlemen. But I mean, so I'd say Josh is, is another story.

This year. I don't know when this thing's posting. Probably our top candidate for the GSD Assassin award is John Neiman. Him and his wife. He's 69 years old, plumber plumbing company in, in Griffin. I get emotional, I tell the story. He's 69 years old and he signs up. It's a 5k investment a month when you're in it, you know, I mean he, they do about 1.2 million this past year. And he's like, he told me, he said, ken, I'm going to trust you. And I said, Johnny, if you'll let me help you, I can help you. But you're going to have to do what I ask you to do.

That's a very, very, very good qualifier you're going to have because I can't tell me people like, they come to me, they'll invest the time, the energy, the resources and then they don't actually execute on the thing that they need to execute on. So I see.

I mean Johnny's been a plumber for 35 years. I mean this dude, man, prison drug dealer, got saved, loves Jesus, does a, does a, celebrate recovery group in his church, which is like his thing to do, right? Right. And so I said, johnny, I'm gonna put Brenda in the truck with you for two days. She's gonna write down everything you do from the time you get up till the time you go to bed. Well, Brenda gives me these chicken scratch college ruled notebook papers with the, you know, the tear things on it, like two days of Johnny's. So I put it in the chat and we're working on him trying to. What does this say? And we get, and we're like, okay, Johnny, here's, here's what I got. Here's all the things that don't, that don't even need to be done. You're time wasting. Here's things you can delegate and here's the things that only Johnny can do, dude. And one of those things was, was giving up the company telephone. He's the one answering emergency phone calls at 9:30 at night, bro.

Talking about living in Stress, my dude. But to watch it was trying to scale dysfunction.

It was probably exactly right. It was probably a month or so after. And I called Johnny's phone number and a girl picks up and I'm like, who is this? And she was like so and so from, you know, Christian. Christian. Christian plumber.com Time. And I was like, is this Johnny's cell phone? She's like, is this Ken? And I said, yes, ma'.

Am.

She goes, no. Johnny gave his phone up just like he told him he needed.

Here's his.

I'll text you his new phone number. And I was like, yes. Yeah.

And they're growing. And they're growing, dude.

We scaled them from two crews to four. Johnny's not on a crew now. He has his own thing. We're about to take him to six. We took them from. Dude, they've been office in their office was in their home for the whole time. Now they have their, and a thousand square foot office warehouse space for their, all their plumbing stuff. Now they've tripled that office space or tripled their warehouse space and like quadrupled their office space. Two crews to four, about 92,000amonth. When I started working with them back in February, we've gotten them up about 27k a month right now over what they were before. And to just watch, I'm like, if a 69 year old man who is. He's country as a day is long, bro. He's country. I mean 69 years old loves Jesus like crazy. If this guy can change, anybody can change. 69 years old. How much more set in your ways can you be a 69 year old plumber whose jeans are about to fall off of him.

Yeah.

And he looks like a damn plumber. Yeah. And he's like, whatever you tell me to do, I'll do. Yeah. Okay.

It's funny how much things can change with a, with a humble heart like that.

Oh yeah.

And, and how long you can, you can, I would call it, you know, one thing that we, that I've told you, I'm trying to prevent entrepreneurs from doing scaling dysfunction because you can't like, you can't break eight figures with a seven figure dysfunctional model or six figures.

Yeah.

You know, and there's, there's a lot of internal stuff that has to happen. But you know, when I think about create and I, and I've shared this and I should keep saying it because I, I really. This is the, this is like the, the title that God put over like your head when I When I saw you last year. Well, not last year was a few months ago. Jeez. Is Ken is a creator of Capacity. Yeah. So I would say that any entrepreneur, business leader, even if they've got questions about their faith.

Yeah, right.

Or been on the fence about their faith, maybe they've had a faith journey and it's not. It's been tricky. Maybe they've never known faith.

Yeah.

Maybe they're. They're solid. Right. In their faith. But I feel like those that need to be at Create are people who just need more capacity.

Yeah.

One of the things that God shared with me about entrepreneurship in general is he'll never give you more than your character will hold. Right. So the amount of character, the awareness of character is directly correlated to the word capacity. You can't put two pounds or two gallons of milk in a one gallon container.

Right.

You have to have a five gallon bucket or five gallon container to then compound whatever that is. So I'm excited about Create, dude. It's gonna be amazing.

It's gonna be. It's gonna be ridiculous. We just see it's a ton of life change, dude. It's. You know, the one thing I say.

This, there's affordable options for everybody.

I mean, it's a 200 ticket, a 500, a $750 ticket, and a 5K ticket. Yeah, we, we did that guys, intentionally. I wanted it to be a place where no matter where you were entrepreneur wise guys, no matter where you were. When you dropping this podcast?

Oh, whenever you want.

So here's what we'll do. If you use code word Stephen or go to grossatdrive.com forward/stephen s, t, p, H, E N. It'll be. It'll be Stephen's page. Use that code word Steven. We'll give you the exact ticket or the GA tickets right now to under their half off. We'll give you one of those for 97 bucks, dude.

Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that.

Just for your audience, man. But I'm just telling you guys, just you got to get in the room. Like, when you get in the room, one of the things I learned from Grant early, and it's in my planner, when I created that planner about four and a half years ago, it's in the bottom right hand corner is a quote of mine that says get in rooms with people who think bigger than you do. When you get in those rooms, things become possible. And like, and I'll go back to Josh and when he's talking with Troy, you know, Troy has had a nine Figure ex. He's a ton of exes. But when you're taught, when he's talking to Troy and Troy asked him, what do you want? You're with a guy who raises your level. Your lid's not here anymore. You're like, oh, this is really like, you see it and it's like, wow, this is really possible for me to do this. And again, guys, I don't care what you want to do. You may not want a nine figure business. Maybe you just want to make 200 grand or 150, that's fine. But whatever it is you want to do in that room at Create, what happens is it will raise your belief list to a level to be able to match what God. The vision that God has for you.

Yeah. And I would say, I would say it this way.

Again. Growing a business is a byproduct of not scaling dysfunction or chaos. And if you have that stuff in your. In your team, in your business, in your heart, right. You are. You are not happy. Yeah, you can, you can. I. You know, like, again, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs that have made money but lost me meaning. Right? And they lost meaning because they made money for the sake of making money or for the sake of proving something or showing that they had worth or value, not knowing it's intrinsic all the time. I got a couple minutes left. I. I have a. Just. This is more of a curiosity question because you've said it twice in the last 48 hours, and I just want to get your thoughts on it. And this is not for validation purposes at all, but you keep telling me I have a pastor's heart. What does that even mean?

Yeah, I have. I had two really good.

And how did. And how did you see. I mean, what do you.

Elrod, Tony. L. Rod was Jensen Franklin's youth pastor when I was youth. We were in the same town together. I've known Tony forever. He's a pastor now. Mark Smith. Mark and I got saved about the same time, called the ministry. Same time. Mark was a UPS driver. He's been pastoring out for 20 years.

They're the guys that truly love people, like, absolutely love people like you do you, bro. You don't have to do any of this stuff. It's like trolls. Like, Troy doesn't have to do what he does. He loves people. Like, he really loves people. And I think to have a pastor's heart really means it's a shepherd. Like, you want your. You want the people that God sends into your sheepfold, if you will.

It's kind of an ecosystem.

When he sends them, you want the best for them and you're going to help them find green pastures. You're going to help them, hey, here's some things I see that may be uncomfortable for you to look at, at, but here's some things I see. And when you do it, I think the biggest difference is when you do it from a pastor's heart or you have a pastor's perspective, like you really care for that human being. You can deliver things that can be uncomfortable, but it comes so wrapped in grace and mercy that it's, they're able to receive it and go, okay, now, now what do I need to do with this? I think that's it for you, dude. It's just, just, it's your care and love for people. Mark Smith, Tony o'. Rod. I know a lot of pastors, dude. I know them all. I know them all well. But they're, they're, they have pastor's hearts. They freaking love people. Like there are times when I was youth pastor, I'm like, God, I hate kids. If you send me another middle schooler, I'm gonna die. But I just think it's just a, I just think it's a heart and passion for people and for the people that God sends into your ecosystem and in your world. World.

Yeah.

Like you truly have a heart to care for them. You want the best, you want something for them not from them and you want them to re. Be able to experience.

Some of the fulfillment and some of the things that you experienced in your life.

That's good, man. Yeah. I'm always curious. You know, one of the things I love about having community and brotherhood and stuff like that is you get visibility on stuff you can't see.

Patterns, behavior pattern, like just patterns, thought patterns, behavior patterns, relational patterns. I just think it's, it's really, it's really cool. And I just, I want to thank you for pursuing me the way you did to be part of that, that corner group. It's, I'm excited about it.

It's gonna be good. Yeah, I can't wait. I can't wait for the guys. We're coming up here in a few weeks. It's going to be a special, it'll be a special weekend.

Yeah.

For us just to get together. You know, you've got 10, 11, 12 very high performing faith based entrepreneurs. Really.

Just hopefully, hopefully they'll enjoy the house and the property. For sure.

That's beautiful, dude. But just to get guys like that that have already Achieved a certain level of success who just get together and go, guys, I just want to keep continuing to become the best version of myself in these five areas. I just. I want my faith and my health and my relationships, number one, to be solid. Like, I want to be the man, because I'm going to use this. It creates this year, my first talk. The. The three words are the two words every single one of us wants to hear at the end of our lives are well done. Well done, my good and faithful servant. Well done. Like, we want to hear those words. And I think we've got a group of men that I get to help in there in each of those areas who really have a heart and desire to hear well done. And we get to do it together.

Yeah, dude, I love it.

That's good, man.

I know, I know. We're basically a little bit over on time. Any. Any final thoughts?

And now somebody wants to come drive me back to Atlanta. It's about. I told. I told my fiance on the Just a minute ago. I'm like, man, I wish I had that Tesla we had this weekend in Boston and all the. It dude, drove itself like three hours.

Yeah.

Like, literally, I'm sitting there and I put it in self drive. And as long as I didn't, you know, doze off or my hands, it would say, you know, pay attention. You touch steering wheel. It took me around a roundabout. I was like.

It was crazy. But anyway, now, dude, I appreciate you. I'm grateful for you. Love what you've got going on here. Excited for you, excited for your relationship that you're in.

It's awesome to be around amazing people who really love God and want. They're just on that journey of going, okay, God, what does this look like? What do you have for me? Who can I help? How can I impact? I'll close it with this. After the Atlanta mastermind in July, you came to. That's the first one you'd been to.

Pastor Brandon Anderton and Jonica came up to meet with Josh Porter the next week to do their blood work. We had lunch and Jonathan goes. Ken. She goes. I had never in my life been in a room with that many successful and wealthy entrepreneurs. Never. But I've also never been in a room where there was more humility and people really wanted to help all the other people in the room win at levels that they had won at. That's special. But that's special.

Yeah, I A thousand percent agree. I again, it's. That's that curation of capacity that you do. So beautiful, dude. Thank you much for coming on the show, man. I love you bro. Love you to death. I'll be praying special prayers so you get to get home safe and sound like fly on back. So. But dude, yeah, thanks for coming to Safe Haven. Awesome. Okay guys, that's going to do it for this episode of Build. As always, like Share Comment if something really stood out with you show, hey, send this to a friend that actually needs to hear something's particular from this and we'll see you again on the next Build. Much love. Take care. Peace. Hey guys, I hope you enjoyed that amazing conversation. And if you want more just like that to help you level up your life and your business, you're not going to miss this next one. Check it out.

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