In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Justin Janowski, founder and CEO of Faith2Influence, a Christian‑focused sales and leadership community. Janowski shares a personal story about his "Year of Radical Giving" after his 2016 wedding, describing how he and his wife doubled their charitable giving to 20% despite financial strain, fed a homeless person daily, and later raised $30,000 for his father's emergency surgery, illustrating the principle "give and you shall receive." He then offers industry‑specific advice, emphasizing that the greatest investment is in oneself, with potential multi‑fold financial returns for sales professionals. His broader business counsel centers on mastering great questions and listening more than speaking. Janowski advises his younger self to cultivate courage—courage to start, fail, learn, and pivot. He defines happiness as living purposefully and maintaining gratitude through all circumstances. The book that most impacted him is You and Me Forever by Francis Chan, which sparked his radical giving and shaped his view of marriage as mutual empowerment. His favorite serious quote is from Jesus: "Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted," underscoring humility. Finally, he directs listeners to his company Faith2Influence (faith2influence.com) and provides contact details for further connection.
Chapters
¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás? ¿Cómo te va? ¿Cómo te va? ¿Cómo te va? ¿Cómo te va?
All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Justin Janowski with us. He is the founder and CEO of Faith to Influence, where he helps Christian sales and businessmen earn more and give more while winning at work, at home, and in their faith. So welcome to the show, man.
Hey Tyler, thanks for having me.
Of course, man. Grateful to have you here. So Justin, the first question we ask on this show is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
That's a great question. And the story I'm going to share has a message of give and you shall receive. My wife and I got married in December of 2016, and we went on our honeymoon 2 weeks later. We had paid for our wedding and our honeymoon in full, and we then moved to San Francisco after one week return to Colorado Springs. So we went from living in one of the least expensive cities in the world to one of the most expensive cities in the world, and my wife had to leave her job. Being in a job search, and we had just got married, just had all these bills. And for whatever reason, God just tugged on us during our honeymoon around the calling of giving. And my wife and I have created a theme for each year since we've been married, and the theme for 2017 was the year of radical giving. And it's something, like I said, God just called us to on our honeymoon. So when we came back, it felt like maybe the least convenient time of my life to give more, but we decided to double our giving from 10% to 20% in 2017, which really stretched us and challenged us. There was even a point about halfway through the year where my wife— I came home from work and she was sitting on the couch and she had some notes written down on paper and she wanted to have a conversation with me and said, hey, based on where we're at right now, this is where I think we're going to be at financially at the end of the year if we keep giving 20%. Here's where we're going to be at if we give 10%. And maybe we should scale back. It's been a challenging year. And I remember being really convicted, and it only took about a minute or two to sell her back on following through with our year of radical giving. We also fed somebody every day for a year, usually a homeless person on the streets of San Francisco. Sometimes we had people over for dinner, that sort of thing. But giving the 20% was most challenging, and we persisted. And in the fourth quarter of 2016, we had our greatest earnings quarter ever, and things really turned around financially for us in an exciting way. We were provided with more than we could have ever imagined. And then in the first quarter of 2018, this year, my dad, who was 54, had a heart attack, which was a big shock to my wife, to me, and to all of our family and friends. Of course, we weren't expecting that. And I remember flying to Alaska and knowing that my parents were the type who couldn't really afford to go a couple months without a paycheck. My dad was gonna go into this dangerous, scary surgery, triple bypass, and we had to figure out how were they gonna move forward financially. And so I remember throughout the year of Radical Giving, just giving to every GoFundMe and every cause and every person that really felt important throughout the course of the year. Everyone who needed, we gave to. And when we started the GoFundMe for my dad after he had his heart attack, we raised $30,000 in 2 days. And so many wonderful things have happened as a result of that year and our giving. And so that's the lesson and that's the story that's most relevant, most important, and on my heart is give and you shall receive.
Wow. Thank you for sharing that. The next one I got for you. Is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Yeah, in my industry is really the personal growth and development industry, and I would suggest that the best thing for people to realize or to know is that the greatest investment you can make is in yourself. If you invest $1,000 into yourself and you are in sales or business or leadership, you're working somewhere where you can earn commission and you're paid on your performance, that $1,000 can so easily turn into $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000. If you invest $10,000 in yourself, that can so easily turn into $20,000 or $50,000 or $100,000. If you invest $100,000 in yourself, that can so easily return $200,000 or $500,000 or $1 million. And so that's my, my greatest encouragement within my industry is just I would tell people to have the courage and the faith to invest in yourself and to get the return through yourself.
And it could tie in, but what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.
Yeah, so overall in business, my recommendation to people, my advice is to master asking great questions. I think the top salespeople, the top business people, the top entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs in the world are masters of asking great questions. And in reality, if you're with a prospect and you want to be influential, you should be listening a lot more than you're speaking. And a powerful question is so much more valuable than a powerful answer.
And if you can give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
Hmm, good question. If I could talk to my younger self, I'd just tell them to have courage. Have the courage to start things. Have the courage to fail. Have the courage to learn through our failures and our lessons. Have the courage to stop doing things and move on to something that's more aligned. I think that when we have courage, especially in business, we're going to have a lot more success. Us. A lot more fun.
And in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
Hmm, I think the key to happiness is to live on purpose, and maybe more important than that, to be grateful for every moment of our journey, including the bad ones. You know, we, we all have a set of all have a set of bad things, or things that don't feel so good that are happening in our life. And if we can find the gift and find a way to be grateful for all the things that we're experiencing, we're going to have a greater deal of happiness, no matter what our circumstances are.
And what is the best book that you've read, and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
The best book I've read is You and Me Forever by Francis Chan. It's a book about marriage in light of eternity. It's interesting because my wife gave me this book and I read the back cover and I like flipped to a random page and read a little bit and I thought I disagreed with the book. I didn't want to read it. I had a significant amount of resistance. We actually had a fight, this is when we were engaged, about this book, why I didn't want to read it and how she felt hurt that I didn't want to read it. And then interestingly enough, when we went on our honeymoon, I don't know why, because the fight had kind of passed and we let it go, but I packed it in my bag. And it's the book that I read that really encouraged me to be bold, be radical in our giving. And it created the year of radical giving, which created so many other things in our life. And there's one lesson beyond that that it gave me, which is that my role as a husband to my wife is to help her become everything that God has created her to be, to lift her up in that. And her role as wife is to help me become everything that God created me to be. I think it's a beautiful way to look at marriage.
And then what is your favorite quote and why?
My favorite quote is hard to share. Most of my quotes that I'm talking about regularly are movie quotes. I'm typically having some banter about The Big Lebowski or some other comedy that I enjoy. But if I'm thinking about something serious that's important to me that's been on my mind a lot over the last year, it's a quote from Jesus, and he says, "Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." And that quote means a lot to me because it's a reminder not to let ego get in the way and to always be humble in the way that we show up, no matter how much success we have.
Well, thank you so much for coming on, man. This is a really insightful episode. The last one I got for you is, where can our audience best find you online?
That's a great question. So our company, Faith to Influence, is spelled just as faith is, F-A-I-T-H. And the number 2 is in the middle, and then influence is I-N-F-L-U-E-N-C-E. And so you could check out our website, faith2influence.com, especially if you're a Christian leader or Christian sales leader who wants to grow with other men and grow in your business life, grow in your home life, be a better dad or husband or future dad or husband while continuing to have success in business. That would be a great place to check us out, faith2influence.com. You could also email me directly at justin@faith2influence.com or check me out on LinkedIn or other social media. My name is Justin Janowski, just as it's spelled, or it's spelled, excuse me, just as it sounds. And you can easily find me, connect with me in that way. Perfect.
Thanks again for coming on, man.
Thanks for having me, Tyler. Have a good one.
The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.
