Ex-Pastor Turned 8-Figure Broker: The "Cheat Code" to Any Room

38.472 - 63.292 Ryan Hanley

I appreciate your time so much. There's so many things that I want to talk about. I want to talk about your new book, but I'd like to start with, and I want to spend some time in our conversation around the integration of faith into business. Because This is something that I wear on my sleeve. I have faith over fear on my arm. I have a big cross up here. I try to read the Bible every single day.

63.312 - 74.944 Ryan Hanley

I won't say that I am, you know, by any means like the perfect Catholic or Christian, but for sure, I try to have a relationship with God.

244.636 - 262.963 Ken Joslin

Because dude, I can talk trash. When I first gave my life to Christ in August of 93, my pastor asked me, I was 25. My pastor asked me to come play basketball at his house the next week. And I remember telling my wife, I'm like, oh my God, I'm terrified. Like I just got saved. God's changed my life.

337.463 - 362.239 Ken Joslin

do i do do i do i do what i say i'm going to do how do i handle people am i i'd say stoic is probably the wrong word but am i calm like how do i handle it when when it's stuff hits the fan like how do i handle myself i think that's the biggest thing in business is it's not a you know it's not a little fish on your yellow pages logo ad thing it's not any of those things anymore it's

362.624 - 381.392 Ken Joslin

I mean, people obviously know what I do because of who I am and what we do. But I think if somebody didn't know, I want to live a life where they didn't know that, wow, Ken, you know, he founded and runs the largest faith-based entrepreneur conference in the country. If they didn't know that, but they hung around me for a little bit, I want them to go, dude, there's something different about you.

382.267 - 399.752 Ken Joslin

Like, what is different about you and the way that you live your life? Because that's what's attractional. Jesus said, listen, I'm going to send you into the world to be salt and light. Salt does what? It preserves. Light does what? It gives us the ability to be able to see when it's dark. And that's what we're called to do, man. It's literally...

399.732 - 414.766 Ken Joslin

be salt and light, be a reflection of the character and nature of God. And I think if we do that, so in the business to segue into entrepreneurship, one of the things that we teach our community and the guys I work with in 101 is it's our job as Christ followers to be obedient.

482.987 - 493.183 Ryan Hanley

I don't know that I made any statements that were outlandish. I mean, I don't know that I have, I have opinions, obviously, but whatever. So we have that conversation. And then I get some feedback from the people listening to the show.

493.524 - 510.992 Ryan Hanley

And I had mentioned that I'm Christian and I tend to, when I do go to church, I tend to go to a Catholic church, even though I'm not a huge fan of organized religions in general. I find them to be good vessels and better than nothing, but we all need to have our own thing, whatever. So I get this feedback from people and they're like,

510.972 - 532.221 Ryan Hanley

that was, that was ballsy essentially was the, was the comment for you. You know, are you worried that people who are atheist or anti-Christian or are, you know, Jewish or, or of, you know, Islam, whatever, are they, that they're going to be turned off to you? And I was like, one, if they're turned off to me because I believe in God, then they weren't my audience anyways. Um, but yeah,

532.201 - 535.645 Ryan Hanley

I said, I don't know. It's who I am. You know what I mean? I don't, I don't, you know, I don't know how else to be.

535.685 - 556.15 Ryan Hanley

And, and then this is where the conversation came from is they were these individuals, uh, faith was very important to their personal lives, but they really struggled with this question of, should I, is it appropriate to et cetera, inject my faith and or, uh, my faith based beliefs, um,

674.801 - 696.651 Ken Joslin

And I remember Grant said, he goes, listen, if you're writing your goals down twice a day, and let's say you only do it 300 times a year, you're writing your goals down 600 times where somebody else is only writing them down half a dozen, maybe once a month, maybe once a year. Like I'm going to dominate you. But in all of that, like I'm doing the work that I need to do

696.631 - 722.109 Ken Joslin

in order to stay focused on the vision. And I think for us, it's be still, listen to God, and then write the vision down. What is it you want me to do? And I say this a lot. If you can just hear from God, God, what do you have? I had a mentor that told me 25 years ago, Very wealthy, prominent guy, man in our community took me to lunch one day and I'll never forget, we pulled back in.

722.129 - 741.085 Ken Joslin

I had one of the largest youth ministries in the country at the time. And I'll never forget, we pulled back in and Andrew looked at me, he goes, Ken, never forget that vision comes cheap to a visionary. Your responsibility is to learn which vision you're supposed to go after. Because as an entrepreneur, dude, vision's easy. Like we get vision, but we don't need just vision.

741.285 - 757.907 Ken Joslin

I need God to speak to me and tell me exactly what it is I'm supposed to do. Because if I know what God's called me to do, I won't quit. If I've had that moment, Habakkuk 2.2, that's the third step, write the vision down. Habakkuk 2.2 says, write the vision down and make it plain that the herald who reads it can run with it.

757.988 - 777.019 Ken Joslin

There is a supernatural principle that's enacted when you sit down and you write vision down. When you get still and you quiet everything about you to just go, okay, God, I'm going to focus on you for this 15 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever that looks like. For us in those 46, 10 moments, it's about 10 minutes. We're going to do worship for about five or six minutes.

1457.506 - 1482.03 Ken Joslin

You know what, Mo? Most people do, Ryan. Most people medicate the food, margarita, movie, TV, Netflix. They medicate with those things instead of using that time to really take care of and build you as a leader. And you'll find that you don't need those times to medicate. Like that's what my therapy, my therapy, I used to play poker. I'd go and I play poker for two days in a row.

1482.31 - 1499.16 Ken Joslin

And that was, or, or food. I've lost a hundred pounds in five years, almost six years. Congratulations. It's thank you. And it's, it's been, that used to be my medication. I would just eat if I needed, if I felt stress. Now it's like, man, just let me get still. Just let me get still before God because that's what I need.

1499.26 - 1516.067 Ken Joslin

And then I still like to do some of those things and there's nothing wrong with those things as long as you're not using those things to soothe or make you feel better or give you peace. I tell our entrepreneurs, when I say it's your job to be obedient and God's job to build your business, I tell our entrepreneurs all the time,

1516.047 - 1537.056 Ken Joslin

Like if we will just simply be obedient and let God do what he wants to do. I said, how many of us, I did this last week. How many of us, because we're talking about value creation and finances this month, how many of us we fall in love with our product versus falling in love with solving the problems of our clients.

1537.577 - 1556.574 Ken Joslin

Because the reality of it is, we all love our product more than the person we're trying to sell it to does. We think it's the greatest thing in the world. Well, they just want to know, how does this solve my problem? What pain point does this alleviate pressure on? And we have to fall in love with those things and understanding in the process that, you know, God, you've called me to steward this.