Podcast Preparation and Release Schedule
00:00:00
Speaker
And then this is the thing I need you to say. I need you to say our next episode, something like our next episode releases in one week that will tag at the very end and it'll be your voice saying that. Got it. Are you ready? Thanks everybody for listening in on the most interesting person in the world podcast.
00:00:20
Speaker
Check out because we're going to be dropping one again next week. Boy, that sounded pretty cool. Then it's like, we're going to drop one. We're going to, we're going to drop it. We're going to drop it one every week.
00:00:36
Speaker
All that being said that stay tuned because we'll have another one that will be released next. We release, release next week. Uh, look for us at anywhere you get your podcasts. So thanks so much for checking us out. Watch out for the drop. Sorry. I asked.
Making Guests Comfortable and Unscripted Formats
00:01:08
Speaker
Brady, we really appreciate you spending this time with us today. As we've been doing this podcast, we have been learning a lot about people. Because, you know, Brady, the whole point of the podcast is that we are talking to strangers, and there's no real script. We don't plan questions ahead of time. There's no form. So how do you feel about this kind of thing?
00:01:31
Speaker
Well, I think starting a podcast by flattering the guest is always a good tip. And it's useful for making them comfortable. So props to you on that front. I think when you talk for a living the way that I do, you're pretty comfortable in most situations, irrespective of the questions or the format. And I do a lot of podcasts as well. And I like the ones that end up talking shop or talking about life.
00:01:59
Speaker
drift a little bit away from the work that I do professionally on a day-to-day. But of course, that is my area of expertise and I can talk about that for a long time also.
Ambition and Motivation Through Daily Goals
00:02:09
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about what are the things that really get you up in the morning? You know, you'd mentioned a little bit, you vocationally and you got a lot of different things that are happening, you're in different spaces. But when you get up in the morning, what is it that motivates you to engage in all that stuff?
00:02:29
Speaker
I'm a pretty ambitious person. My personality type is sometimes called the reformer. The worldview that I have is that everything's broken and it's my responsibility to fix it, which is just the default state that I view things. It's not a conscious thought process.
00:02:50
Speaker
But you know, you could ask my wife, like, what's that like for her? And she would say, Yeah, it's great. Like, he's quite competent. But also the flip side is, things can feel like they're never good enough. You know, we, you know, we can have this amazing project, it's success. And that can already be on to the next thing, be like, well, you know what, we could have done better is this.
00:03:07
Speaker
And when I say that, I get really excited. To the question, what gets me up in the morning, I found that for me, having a lot of different things on my plate, we have a team of about 30 now, a couple of different products and a few different locations for the office.
00:03:22
Speaker
two children, you know, young girls and a family and friends and then personal interests as well. My life is quite regimented and systemized. And so what gets me up in the morning is, you know, hey, like, I have these goals and ambitions. And I know the best way to accomplish them is to, you know, just put in a little bit of good work every single day. And so it's just about
00:03:42
Speaker
getting up to do that work and putting in a good day's work. And I have a quote here on my wall that says, most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. And it's not my quote, it's attributed to someone famous surely. But the whole purpose of that is that anything that is good takes a long time. And it's about putting in that little bit of good work every single day to achieve it. And I just want to know every time I wake up in the morning and say, hey, another opportunity to do some good work.
00:04:11
Speaker
I love it, Brady. So what's going on in these?
00:04:13
Speaker
What's going on in these offices? What good thing is happening? You said you have multiple locations where your team is working. Help us understand a little of what's going on in the day-to-day in these offices.
Pro Church Tools - Bridging Media and Church
00:04:27
Speaker
What's this good work that you guys are doing? I run a company called Pro Church Tools, and we help churches, as we like to say, navigate the biggest communication shift in 500 years. We have products, namely software, helping churches build websites and accept donations online and manage their people.
00:04:43
Speaker
And that's kind of our biggest product. And then we also do some client work with churches, helping them with social media. But the bulk of what we do is create content. So we've been podcasting for a decade.
00:04:54
Speaker
Being on YouTube for a decade and blogging and social media for that long as well. And so most of what we're known for is just helping churches navigate these murky waters of digital. And so we have two locations. We have a stateside location in Idaho and we have a location here in Canada in Niagara Falls. And the Niagara Falls location is the Canadians and we do a lot of the content creation and the customer success. And then the American stateside location is where the product designers and engineers and developers all are.
00:05:24
Speaker
And then we have another 15 or so scattered around the continent remotely. When did you realize that you could take what you were learning and scale it into this business and really ministry, right? It's a ministry-oriented business. When did you realize that you could make a living doing that and how did you get the kind of business knowledge to make all that happen?
Transition to Online Business from Media Director
00:05:51
Speaker
Well, I realized that I didn't have the relational bandwidth to be a full-time pastor, especially in the context of student ministry. I knew if I got into this, I had a passion for it, but I wasn't going to be able to serve these kids the way they would need because I'm too much of an introvert where I wasn't going to be getting
00:06:10
Speaker
charged by that I would be getting drained and then when a kid would need me certainly I just like I wouldn't have what they needed but I wanted to still work with church and so I really found my home in this digital media world and that was also kind of kicked off like ooh online business what is this like people are making money on the internet like what is that and you know my I was making twelve hundred dollars a month part-time at my church as the media director and you know my tuition was
00:06:39
Speaker
eating all of that. My wife was working insurance during the day retail at night. And we were like, well, we don't have any money. So we might as well like go for it. There's nothing to lose if we kind of like try to do this online business thing. And I remember my parents, I mean, we got married pretty young, my wife and I we were 21. And we moved across the country when we were 19. It just I'll see ya, you know, just dating at the time.
00:07:05
Speaker
and went to this school together with a bunch of our friends. We were all living together in North of Toronto, and then we were like, we're going to go to this Bible college the other side of the country, because they had a worship program, and the one in Ontario didn't. So we didn't have much to lose, and we weren't making any money.
00:07:20
Speaker
And I remember my parents being like, first you get married, now you want to like, think you're going to make money on the internet. Like you're very talented and we believe in you and you're skilled, but like, make sure you finish your degree. Just promise us, promise them I'd finish. And I did, you know, graduated with honors, like praise God. I remember the first time I ever made a dollar on the internet.
Achieving Sustainable Business Growth
00:07:39
Speaker
So I had launched these video announcements as a service and it was like $299 a month.
00:07:46
Speaker
And a church signed up and I remember this email came in, I was using this plugin called cart 66 and it was this WordPress plugin. And so I cart 66 new customer in the subject line. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Cause what happened was I bought this URL pro video announcements.com. And because video announcements was not a term that anyone cared to compete for, I was like ranking in the top three.
00:08:11
Speaker
for the term video announcements. And anyone that was searching video announcements was searching for a video announcement service, because like they're like, how do you do this? So kind of like serendipitously, I had this really high ranking site. And that keyword, people were searching with the intent to buy. So this customer finds me this church in Florida, and it's oh my goodness. And then an hour later, I get an email from this church and they said, you know what, after checking out your stuff, like we need a refund, this is just not going to work for us.
00:08:41
Speaker
And I remember being absolutely devastated. I was at the office of our church plant, which was this office building, the office park in the middle of the construction area of town, second floor. And I just remember crying, because I was so excited and then so devastated. And I didn't even want to tell my wife, because I was like, I thought something had happened, and then it hadn't. Anyway, a week later, another church from Florida signed up, and this time they stayed.
00:09:09
Speaker
That church is still a customer of ours today, 10 years later, not with video announcements, because they've kind of fallen out of style, but they use our website builder and they use our other, other products. And that church signed up and then within two months, three more had, and they were all paying $300 a month.
00:09:25
Speaker
And I was making 1200 a month at church. And if you do that quick math, that means that those four churches had replaced or matched my church income at the time. And at that point, you know, it's kind of like you make a dollar on the internet. And if you can just make $1, like, okay, this is viable. If I can make one, I can make 1000. And if I can make 1000, I can make, you know, whatever is needed to support my family and then eventually support this team and build a business. And, you know, who knows how far it goes from there. That's like when you start a podcast, Joe.
00:09:54
Speaker
If we could have one person to actually talk to us, maybe more. And we did. We did. Brady, we felt just like that with this. Now, it's not the same comparison. We don't have locations in offices, and there's no money, and there's no listeners. But we have the same kind of thing. It's like upper Alaska. Upper Alaska, we have a very strong market of like 15 people that have listened to it. Yeah. Shout out to Alaska. Yeah.
00:10:24
Speaker
But we had the same feeling with the first person that came on, whose name was Von. And he was a little bit late. I was getting nervous about whether he was going to, because this was what was going to prove whether somebody was actually going to do this. And so we've had a similar kind of feeling. I was wondering when you were talking,
00:10:47
Speaker
Your work has grown so much over these years and when it seems like in my life, and I don't know how it is for Joe, but it seems like in my life, the things that I end up doing, I tend to stumble into them.
00:11:00
Speaker
I very rarely come up with an idea and then it just works. What's it been like for you? Because you are obviously an ambitious person. You have a broad vision. You have a ton of energy and discipline and routine in your life.
00:11:18
Speaker
Has your path mostly been having an idea like the video announcements and just knowing this is gonna meet a need and it's gonna work or have you had a lot of trial and error or is it just kind of maybe I'll try this and then it's stuck? What's your process been like?
Business Growth and Personal Development
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah, I would say things have mostly just worked right away.
00:11:44
Speaker
which is something I've reflected on a great deal of. I'm not sure who said this quote, but I think it was attributed to Steve Jobs. I can't find it right now, but it was something to the tune of one of the worst things that you can achieve while you're young is success because it makes smart people complacent.
00:12:04
Speaker
And, and when you're young and you haven't been beaten up by life yet, and I'm 32 for context now and like, it was a million dollar business in my early twenties. And like, when you haven't been beat up by life yet and all you've experienced is like, wow, that, that went crazy really fast. You don't really know.
00:12:26
Speaker
How much did I contribute to that? And how much was luck? And how am I supposed to steward something that I'm not even certain how I got it? And so I've reflected on that a lot. And what I am very grateful of is that despite there not being too many like dramatic failures in the history of the business, things haven't gone up crazy quick. Now,
00:12:50
Speaker
In the first year or two, we were making like six figures. And then a couple of years later, we were making seven figures and you know, now it's multiple seven figures, but there was never a moment where like, I went from zero followers to tens of thousands or zero dollars to, you know, hundreds of thousands. It's been very incremental over 10 years like this, you know, just steady upward climb. How many followers do you have now? Well, I mean, I guess it depends on like what your, um, which platform, I mean,
00:13:19
Speaker
I mean, we have about 140,000 subscribers on YouTube, 75,000 on Instagram, 100,000 on TikTok, the email list. We're pretty aggressive with the pruning of the email list. So if you don't open, we're going to remove you. So even 50,000 churches there, thousands of churches pay for our products.
00:13:36
Speaker
Um, like it's, it's a lot. And I also, and it's because our, our, it's a very small niche, right? Churches with digital. And so those numbers in our niche are also like, they mean a lot more than maybe having the same amount of numbers in a really big niche, like fitness or wellness or fashion or, you know, just cameras, something like that, let's say.
00:14:00
Speaker
And so, but to get back to what I was saying, the nice thing with the incremental growth is that it allowed me to like, okay, this is happening quickly, but not so quickly that I can't like find my bearing with each new stage.
00:14:15
Speaker
So hopefully my character and competency are kind of growing proportionately with what I am responsible for. And before I got into this, I was good at other things. I made an entire record from scratch and it got radio play as an example. I just made it using Cubase software in 12th grade in my bedroom. And then the Christian radio station in the province was playing it, which was really cool. But I wasn't actually that good. There would not have been an actual upside to that, let's say.
00:14:45
Speaker
And then I did all the sports, you know, I had the good academics, uh, and I was, I was pretty good at preaching when I, when I tried that, I was DJing for a little while freelance video, like just all these different things. And I was doing all these different things and it was never quite, you could just quite, it's not quite in my lane. And then when you get into that pocket, Oh, wow. You start to come alive and it also, you're seeing it kind of reciprocated, um, beyond you.
00:15:09
Speaker
When you talk about the things that have kind of grown incrementally and even in your own heart and life, as you kind of have the moment to reflect, what are some of the kind of significant things that you've learned about yourself and about your God and about the people who you care for that's really made a real impact on your life?
Energy and Emotional Management
00:15:33
Speaker
Well, I think I was, you know, as a young person, I was very reactionary. I think,
00:15:40
Speaker
Like, you know, you're younger and you have a lot of passion, but you're not always able to temper that. My, my youth pastor, he always would, he gave me a very, you know, call it a prophetic like picture of how he saw me. And he's like, you know, you're one of those like race horses that, you know, it's going to be faster than all the other race horses, but you're a bit crazy. And if we don't like channel all that energy, you're just going to start like kicking and bucking and like, you know,
00:16:07
Speaker
And, you know, maybe it's a bit dehumanizing to be compared to a horse. I don't know. I never really thought about that. But, you know, what he was saying is like, you know, like when you channel all that energy and passion, like it is brilliant, but you have to properly channel it because otherwise it can just become chaos. And I was definitely better in my early twenties than I was in my teenage years.
00:16:30
Speaker
But something would go wrong. And I wouldn't even know how to properly manage the stimuli that I was feeling from it. I remember when I was a kid, my mom would make me have what she would call down Saturdays, because I was just so hyperstimulated, up and down, up and down, that she would make me have a day where it was purposefully no stimulus. You're just going to lie around, and it's going to be extremely painful for you. But it's going to be a reset so that you can properly learn
00:16:58
Speaker
to manage everything that's going on in your body and all those feelings and exciting energy. That's been probably a big, big part of it. For my wife, in a relational standpoint, she wants to know that she's getting the same Brady every day and not wake up one day and it's like super happy, all excited, let's go change the world. Then
00:17:19
Speaker
another day where it's just like, Oh, this is, what's the point? You know, there's nothing, what life's not worth living. This is awful. And there was a lot of that like, you know, in, in my twenties. And I think that's also why I've invested so much into like the systems and the predictable routines that I was discussing earlier. Like that's how I've found that kind of creates this like framework for me to thrive within.
00:17:42
Speaker
And now the next step is like, okay, what happens if that framework like fell away? Like you can't just like live in a pen your whole life. So how can you find ways to like, okay, a little bit of freedom, a little less routine and structure. And are you able to still, to still thrive? One really practical example of that is, you know, you know, the things that you're good at, and then you know, the things you're not good at.
00:18:04
Speaker
And it's easy to be like, when you, you know, you're good at something, you're just like, yeah, I'm glad to do it. When you're not good at something, you kind of just like run from it. I'm just not going to even like try because I don't want to fail at it. So we were, I was in Portugal last week and we had this beautiful Airbnb on this cliff.
00:18:23
Speaker
And the driveway was the sloping driveway, extremely tight and narrow. And it was in the shape of a V going downwards. So there was a 180 degree turn and on both sides was like concrete. And I was with my friend who's a very good driver, but it was the business trip, it was my rental. And I did it once and it was like, I don't know, an 18 point turn, like to make sure we didn't scrape any side, but it was rough. And I was starting to feel like anxiety because I'm like, okay, this is,
00:18:53
Speaker
You know, this is this is tough foreign location. I'm not used to this. Like, I was like, Okay, Justin, why don't you just do it? And he's like, Okay, sure, man, I'm glad to do it. And then we got back from the shoot in that morning. And we got there. And I was like, Okay, I'm gonna get out of the car. And he's like, you know, just give it another try. And this is my best friend. So he knows me, he knows what was he knew what was happening. And he forced me to do it again, despite like feeling uncomfortable.
00:19:14
Speaker
And I did it the second time and I was like, Oh, okay, so I just got to take the turn this way. Okay, great. And it was fine for the rest of the trip. So that was like, that was immaturity in me being like, this is making me uncomfortable. I'm going to run from it. I know he's competent with it. He can do it. But instead, he was like, Yeah, you can handle this. It's not in the typical structure routine that you like properly create for yourself. But hey,
00:19:39
Speaker
you're gonna do it, and I did. So that's like one step in that right direction of a bit less structure and routine and still being able to like, you know, be the person you wanna be. Yeah. I have a question. When you talk about relationships, which again, I think that's just like, I mean, the only, truth be told, the only reason why I'm doing this podcast is to hang out with Rush.
00:19:59
Speaker
Yeah. So it's like, it's just an excuse and something for us to enjoy doing. And he's like, Hey, why don't you do this? I go, sure. So we're jumping in doing it because of relationship, right? So talk to me a little bit about what is it, Brady? What is it about friendship? That's so important and meaningful.
Value of Long-term Friendships
00:20:22
Speaker
So, I mean, for me, I think that the most valuable friendships are just built on a simple singular thing and that is longevity. How long can you stay in the other person's life through the ups and downs and through the different seasons of life? You know, what makes that most valuable is like,
00:20:44
Speaker
The friend that I'm seeing, you know, across the spider verse or into the spider verse, like we're going to see that on Tuesday. Like he was my college roommate and he was on my bus in 10th grade. And like he's having his first child in like two months.
00:20:59
Speaker
and he's gonna be a dad. He didn't even think he could be a dad. And now him and his wife are gonna have a kid. And we used to watch WWE together in the first year of college when we had no money and we couldn't even afford pizza. So now we've just been together this whole time.
00:21:17
Speaker
And there have been times when like we haven't hung out as much as we do now. And there are times when we hung out more than we do now, but like the constants, we've always been there. And I have a very small circle of friends, but they're all like that. And what we talk about is like,
00:21:33
Speaker
The most valuable thing is not this business that we're growing and the fact that it pays our bills, but the fact that those bills pay for the families that we provide for and that we all get to be in each other's lives for as long as we want. Yeah, one of the words I use a lot is that it's never about the thing. Whatever you're doing, it's never really about the thing. It's about the process and the people and how you do it together.
00:22:00
Speaker
That's so evident in the way in which you think and live. It's highly relational. I think it's really what drives everybody because we've been created to do that, right? I think that the loop, closing the loop in terms of care and work and joy is the ability to share that with others, to be able to be together and to be able to
00:22:25
Speaker
and to do in a way to where other people can enjoy that as well. I mean, it's one thing for me to enjoy breakfast burrito by myself, but I complete that loop when I share that with somebody else, either we enjoy it together or I get to tell somebody, I'm like, hey man, I'll tell you what, this breakfast burrito's pretty all right. Well, and I've been talking a lot about life. Did the breakfast burrito really kill, the breakfast burrito killed it, didn't it? It just, the whole energy just worked. I think that really hammered it all. It did, it tanked.
00:22:57
Speaker
This keeps coming to my mind, Joe, as we are having this conversation. Brady, you are an impressive guy. You are full of energy. You're really interesting to talk to. You have great company. You have great friends. Your schedule is full. Let me ask you this. And I want the genuine answer. Why in the world would you be on this podcast with us?
Sharing Knowledge and Building Trust
00:23:23
Speaker
I like sent you a message like through instagram. I said the thing I normally say like Yeah, like we're like there's no money involved. There's no we don't have any followers. It probably won't work Nobody's gonna listen to it um, and and and yet here you are and you're really pouring yourself out and we're grateful for that and i'm just interested to know What why why did you do this? Why did you do lots of other podcasts you could do you could sit on the deck? Yeah, yeah, I mean I
00:23:53
Speaker
The business is built on the back of me giving away stuff for free. I would make free social media posts. Instead of claiming I had expertise and keeping it behind the paywall,
00:24:05
Speaker
I just published it all for free and gave it away all for free. And so everything that has come to my business has come because at first I gave away stuff and then eventually you build trust and that reciprocity comes around. Like, you know, 96% of the people that are in our audience will never give us a dime.
00:24:25
Speaker
And that's the way the business is meant to go. That's what makes it so exciting and fun. And so, I don't know, I get DMs all the time to do podcasts. And assuming it's not a crazy busy time, I almost always say yes, because like, I guess that's just how I, that's how you're supposed to do it. Right? That's the answer. Joe, there's the answer. He always says yes. He always says yes. No, no, no, no. Let me tell you. No, no, no. What he said was he said, he said, that's what you're supposed to do.
00:24:54
Speaker
You're supposed to say yes, because let me tell you this. That's what you do. I was on my morning walk this morning. This is why this is timely. I was on my walk this morning and I remember when I first started my podcast, I think it was 2013 or 14.
00:25:08
Speaker
And the way I had started the show was we released five episodes in five days. This was how you got onto the charts in iTunes back in the day. Listen carefully. This is going to be helpful. Listen carefully to this. You launch your podcast. You do a bunch of episodes all at once because if someone subscribes and they like it, they might want to binge a few episodes right away. So you release five episodes at once. And then we had this contest where we said, hey, if you subscribe,
00:25:32
Speaker
He'll be entered to win this free book. And it was by this book of this unnamed author and he will go unnamed for a reason that I looked up to. And he had written a book that like was relevant to my audience. And my goal was I wanted to have him as the guest on the fifth episode. And I thought it was pretty audacious to ask for like him to be a guest after only five episodes. But I was like, okay, if I give away like 20 of his books,
00:25:56
Speaker
Like that's a pretty like, I think he'd be willing to come on because I bought all the books. Sure. This is like a New York Times best selling author. This is like the church world. This is small stuff. Okay. Got it. Got it. And he he did not respond to any of my emails ever. And I don't know why. But today on my walk, I was like, I wonder what this guy's up to. I went to his Twitter. And he had blocked me.
00:26:19
Speaker
I don't know if I've ever found someone who blocked me before. I have no idea. I have people, you can surely find dozens of people who have an interaction with me. I mean, that guy was a jerk. Let's just be clear, Brady. You tell me and Joe who this is that blocked. You tell us who this is.
00:26:37
Speaker
And we'll take care of it. We will take care of this for you. We know like four people. Nobody puts Brady in a corner. Nobody will take it. You just
Openness to Opportunities and Doing Good
00:26:49
Speaker
let us know. You don't have to say it right now, but you just blink it in SOS and Rush will take it and then we'll just, and all of a sudden you'll be unblocked. You won't have to worry about it. And they came through. Joe and Rush can't do it.
00:27:03
Speaker
I just never want to be that person, you know? Like it's been 10 years. What was that? Straight up. And that was it. And that was the answer. It's like, of course. Like if you have an opportunity to do good, that you are to do good, that you just, that that's what we've been created to do. And thanks for, thanks for letting us, yeah, thanks for letting us take a walk with you today. That was pretty cool. Well, thank you for the invitation. It was great to be here.
00:27:32
Speaker
Yeah, I kept on trying to get him off the stump. You know what I mean? No, I don't know what you mean. I was so interested to just try and get a sense of him outside of his vocation. And then that's when it clicked. When I went, wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no. It is the same thing.
00:27:59
Speaker
you've designed these values and this culture and this thing because it is, yeah, it's an expression. It's an expression of your, it isn't your identity, but it's an expression and a giftedness of who you are. And the white got it. Got it. Which is, which is really cool.
00:28:16
Speaker
And this is what we this is what we thought was going to happen because I it reminds me the very first time that we started working on this experiment, we talked about how there, there's a lot to be gleaned from just even relationships with strangers in conversations like this, we're trying to have if you can move past that. And so it's interesting that that is true, even on here. And, you know, hopefully that's, you know, highlighting that for real life.
00:28:43
Speaker
And what's also really interesting too is that it's a, that the, my favorite part of this conversation was to go, Hey, why would you get on the spot? You go, he goes, well, cause that's what you do. Cause that is what you do. Like when you meet, when you have an opportunity to do good or to meet a stranger, you, that's what you do. But it's interesting. Not everybody does that. I just have to tell you, I was just not in the mood today.
00:29:13
Speaker
I just, but I was just like, Oh man. I just, and I, and I had to like, I had to like dig deep. And I was like, no, you know what? That even though I just am not in the mood right now to meet anybody new that no, it's good. And these are good things. And so it was kind of interesting. I had to kind of like,
00:29:35
Speaker
I kinda like kinda had to fight that a little bit today. I was like, not in the mood. He could feel it. He was like, I'm gonna carry you guys today. It's like, dude, Joe's like, Joe's like, man, what are we doing? Our next episode releases a week from today. So make sure to check it out anywhere you get your podcasts.