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The Journey to an Undivided Heart | Edwin Brown
98 Plays28 days ago
In this episode, Edwin shares a vulnerable and powerful story of how the Lord gently unraveled a lie that shaped more than two decades of his life. For 25 years, Edwin was driven by the belief that true security meant never living paycheck to paycheck. He pushed hard, built wealth, and achieved the dream he thought would finally bring him peace. But with success came the constant stress and fear of losing everything he had worked for. Edwin opens up about the long, painful, and ultimately freeing journey that led him to lay down an idol that had shaped his decisions, his identity, and his suffering for 20 years. In surrendering the thing he thought would give him life, he found something far better—a heart no longer divided, a joy he had never known, and a renewed, unshakable joy in the Lord.
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Transcript
Intro
Introduction to Edwin Brown
00:00:59
Steven J. Neuner
Hey guys, welcome to Unstuck and Alive. We've got a special guest with a special story to tell. Edwin Brown is with us and I'm going to let him introduce himself because I think it's relevant to the story here. But I just want to say I met Edwin through a Strategic Coach, which is an entrepreneurial coaching program.
00:01:19
Steven J. Neuner
And you meet those people in life where you just, you know that there's something immediately that that that is just compelling and attractive about the person. And I knew that Edwin immediately was gonna be someone I respected.
00:01:33
Steven J. Neuner
He just had this way that he carried himself that they just without demanding respect, you wanna give it to him. But I'm really blessed to say that over the time I've gotten to know Edwin, i really have gotten to, I consider him a friend.
00:01:47
Steven J. Neuner
and and really just a great encourager in my life. And so I'm really grateful, Edwin, that you're here with us today to share a story that you shared initially with me at Strategic Coach, and then you were generous enough to share it with the group that day.
00:02:02
Steven J. Neuner
And I literally saw people stopped in their tracks. So i I'm i excited to be doing this here with you today. So Edwin, welcome.
Edwin's Transformative Story
00:02:13
Edwin Brown
Hey, thanks for having me here, guys. It's it's a real honor to to get to share this story of what I think has really transformed my life. A little preface to getting to share that story with you and Coach a few months ago.
00:02:27
Steven J. Neuner
I'm sure she's a few months ago.
00:02:28
Edwin Brown
was actually walking across the parking lot from my hotel to Coach, and I like said out loud, was like, hey, Coach,
00:02:29
Steven J. Neuner
It's actually a really new one. It's like, you know, I'm going to tell the camera. And like, it's not like single one. It's like, I'm not losing it.
00:02:36
Edwin Brown
God, I was really like wanting to have a relationship with Steven, but it's like we never quite catch each other during the breaks.
00:02:37
Steven J. Neuner
I'm not losing it. I'm not losing it. I'm not losing it. I'm not losing it. I'm not losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it.
00:02:42
Edwin Brown
Like we've talked a little bit, but it was like our seventh coach.
00:02:43
Steven J. Neuner
I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it.
00:02:46
Edwin Brown
It just hasn't happened.
00:02:46
Steven J. Neuner
I'm losing it.
00:02:47
Edwin Brown
So, you know, I'm not giving you any advice, but if if we were to connect today, it'd be good day to connect.
00:02:47
Steven J. Neuner
I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it.
00:02:51
Edwin Brown
And I walk in and I drop my bag and turn around and Steven's like, hey, I heard a story about you.
00:02:52
Steven J. Neuner
I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I'm losing it. losing it. I'm losing it.
00:02:56
Edwin Brown
Will you tell me more?
00:02:57
Steven J. Neuner
I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
00:02:57
Edwin Brown
Like, you gotta to be kidding me
00:02:58
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:02:59
Edwin Brown
And then we ended end up having a lunch together and here we are on a podcast.
00:03:00
Todd Pinkston
oh
00:03:00
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
00:03:02
Edwin Brown
And so, you know, it's, it's pretty amazing how he works.
00:03:03
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
00:03:05
Edwin Brown
And it's a real privilege to get to tell this story.
00:03:07
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
00:03:08
Edwin Brown
I've got to tell it a few times internally with my team, which has been a lot of fun just to kind of talk through change and do it in front of them in a way that's vulnerable and real.
00:03:11
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
00:03:19
Edwin Brown
And I really feel like I'm just telling my story.
00:03:19
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to tell you what I'm going to tell you.
00:03:21
Edwin Brown
And i think they felt like they were being led in a way that I probably hadn't done in the 15 years I've been leading. So, It's changed me a lot, and I am excited to tell it. I'm excited for you guys to ask questions and and program it. So let's jump in.
00:03:35
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah, well, I would love to just start with setting the stage a little bit. You shared that your story, and it's powerful in context to the people that know you. But for those that are listening that don't know you, tell tell us a little bit about yourself, and let's let's set the stage a little, because I think it's
Entrepreneurial Journey and Challenges
00:03:48
Steven J. Neuner
important.
00:03:49
Edwin Brown
Absolutely. I currently operate as the CEO of a group of pediatric therapy practices.
00:03:56
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices.
00:03:56
Edwin Brown
We have a couple pediatric practices we own, one in Oklahoma, one in East Tennessee, and they serve underserved families.
00:03:59
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices. We have lot of different practices. We have lot of different practices.
00:04:05
Edwin Brown
That team is probably about 160 people, give or take.
00:04:06
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices.
00:04:09
Edwin Brown
And then we have a third company that kind of fits underneath the the umbrella.
00:04:09
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices. We have a lot of different practices.
00:04:13
Edwin Brown
which is a managed service for other pediatric therapy practices.
00:04:14
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices. We have a lot of different practices.
00:04:16
Edwin Brown
We basically got pretty good at getting insurance to pay you and how to run practices.
00:04:17
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices. We have a lot of different practices.
00:04:21
Edwin Brown
so we started offering that as a service to other pediatric practices.
00:04:21
Steven J. Neuner
We have a lot of different practices. We have a lot of different practices.
00:04:23
Edwin Brown
so we managed the practices around the country in Montana and Colorado and Kansas City. And that whole team is about 180 or so people. I'm the CEO and most of my day-to-day is really leading a team of about 20 to 25 leaders in the company.
00:04:41
Steven J. Neuner
I love that. And so when you think about like your history, so just a little bit also background. So married kids, right? Like just quick shout out there too.
00:04:50
Edwin Brown
Yeah. yeah I grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, went to Mississippi State, married a girl from Mississippi and and was there for almost a decade. I was flipping houses in the real estate boom.
00:05:02
Edwin Brown
I was also holding a bunch of houses in the real estate crash. So I was on Dave Ramsey twice, asking Dave for some advice, escaped with literally the shirt on my back was about it.
00:05:13
Edwin Brown
And came out here and restarted in Oklahoma in 2014. really was like a restart, had a U-Haul, bunch of hand-me-downs furniture, and and moved into a rental house and took over this small pediatric practice that at the time, had about 12 people in it, and had our fourth kid a month after we moved here.
00:05:18
Steven J. Neuner
Love that.
00:05:32
Edwin Brown
Moving an eight wi eight-month pregnant wife is definitely not advised, but that's what what we did.
00:05:36
Todd Pinkston
Thank
00:05:37
Edwin Brown
And we moved in, and I've raised my kids here. wherere We've been here since 2014, and it's Oklahoma is our home.
00:05:44
Steven J. Neuner
love that And so in the growth, like the business, like I want to but just kind of to historically, because I mean, i get but we'll get to the story, but I want to i want to meet Edwin before the story.
00:05:53
Edwin Brown
Sure.
00:05:55
Steven J. Neuner
You know, during the growth phase of of your of your business, you've been under you've had incredible growth. Like what what was your thinking? What was your motivations? Like, you know, to tell us more about that. Like, how have you have have you always thought of business?
00:06:13
Edwin Brown
Really to answer that question, think I'd need to back up, excuse me, even a little bit further to high school. And this kind of a pivotal moment that happened that shaped the way I thought about things like business.
00:06:26
Edwin Brown
I grew up in a home that was it was a good like had parents that loved each other and they loved us. And in I would say we were like comfortable middle class.
00:06:37
Edwin Brown
We never we didn't have a whole lot of extra, but we always had enough like vacations where we're at grandma's like we didn't really go to the beach or do those extra things. If we ate out, it was definitely like the value meal. But my parents really, I think, shielded us from any sort of like financial stress.
00:06:53
Edwin Brown
We were one income household. My mom was staying home. My parents were sending us to a private school. And so money was just it was tight. But as a kid, you're like, oh, you ever know. And so it was just normal.
00:07:04
Edwin Brown
But I did know that my father was pretty he had a lot stress that he carried. And he would leave early. Like oftentimes I would not see him in the morning because he'd be out the door before I woke up.
00:07:15
Edwin Brown
And he would be home if he like if we like saw him coming home at dinner while we're at the table.
00:07:16
Steven J. Neuner
Thank you.
00:07:19
Edwin Brown
It was like we were excited he was here. We're to have dinner with him. And then some of my favorite memories were going with him to his office on a Saturday just I could be with him while he was working on, know, whatever he was working on in his office.
00:07:31
Edwin Brown
So I knew he carried stress. I knew that work was really hard. But again, it's all you it's all you know. And so it wasn't until high school, I'm probably like 16 or 17. and he says to me, because I knew that he was a commission-based salesman. So he only made money when he sold.
00:07:49
Edwin Brown
And he closed the deal. he He pulled me aside one day and he said, hey, you know, I wake up every at the beginning of every month and think, if I don't sell something this month, I'm going to be able to feed my family.
00:08:02
Edwin Brown
And all I could think when heard that, now we weren't paycheck to paycheck, but I knew what he meant. And all I could think was, I never, ever, ever want to be in a situation where I feel so trapped that I'm like on this hamster wheel, just trying to keep my head above water.
00:08:08
Todd Pinkston
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:08:20
Edwin Brown
Mixing my analogies there, but I think you know what i mean. And so it's like, all a sudden I can interpret his and my entire childhood and his stress as like the thing I absolutely did not want to have.
00:08:22
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah.
00:08:33
Edwin Brown
So here I am, I'm like launching out into the world and I've learned a lot of good lessons from my family, but I've also have this like growing fear of not having enough money and being trapped in a job that I've inherited from from this conversation with my father. Not even like that was what trying to teach me, but it's what I took away from it.
00:08:50
Steven J. Neuner
Mm-hmm.
00:08:50
Edwin Brown
also have who is who has just been pouring the word of God into us and I'm falling in love with Jesus. So I have this idea and this goes back to answer your question. i have this idea that I'm going to launch into the world with a desire to follow Jesus and be rich.
Transition to Pediatric Therapy
00:09:10
Edwin Brown
Seemed like a great idea. And so i launch out, I go to college, I meet a young woman who also loves Jesus. And we, you know I go through school, I'm actually getting ready to go to med school, we get married, I decided to decide to take a little time off.
00:09:25
Edwin Brown
And in my mind, going to med school, I was gonna be a medical missionary. So I'd always have the the ability to earn as a doctor, but also could go do missions work for the Lord. i did great yeah right like this team is working and so uh i i took the mcat i got ready and then we decided to get married and i got some advice actually from my wife's sister who was going through med school at times she said hey don't have your first year of med school and your first year of marriage coincide they're really tough years so i said okay how about i take a year off we just be married for a year then i'll go to med school
00:09:35
Steven J. Neuner
Check both boxes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:09:57
Edwin Brown
And that was right in the middle of the real estate boom. I think I i like caught a Carlton sheets infomercial on the TV. like heard to And I started buying and selling houses. And the next thing you know, i'm like, have 15 people on a team.
00:10:11
Edwin Brown
We're buying and selling a dozen houses a month. And we ended up flipping, I don't know, 400, 300, 400 houses in the middle of the real estate boom.
00:10:13
Todd Pinkston
wow
00:10:17
Edwin Brown
So I realized don't know, three or four years in there, i was not being called to be a doctor. i told my wife and she was like, yeah, I figured that out three years after you didn't go school. And, uh, but though I discovered really entrepreneurship, like the ability to build a business, make money that could actually work for you. And man, that really intrigued me, right? You talk about the ultimate not being trapped is achieving financial independence by building something.
00:10:43
Edwin Brown
So that would, I would say is like the mentality that I carried into this pediatric therapy practice that I was taking over here in Oklahoma. Like I was,
00:10:55
Edwin Brown
I was looking to take care of my family, but more than anything, else was really trying to build financial independence, trying to build wealth where I would never have to do a job that I hated and didn't want to do because that was like this giant fear I saw from my father.
00:11:08
Edwin Brown
I was like, I will not live my father's life.
00:11:08
Steven J. Neuner
Hmm.
00:11:11
Edwin Brown
Now, seven, eight, nine, almost 10 years in real estate. It was two or three pretty decent years while, i but I was kind of still learning what I was doing. And then it was like six or seven years of real estate crash and me owning millions of dollars to the banks for houses that were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars at the time they were dropped in value and being so upside down, I could not see a way out.
00:11:33
Edwin Brown
And it was, man, those were really, really hard years. Now I knew like
00:11:35
Todd Pinkston
Thank you.
00:11:37
Edwin Brown
This is what you do. You put in your time like you pay your dues. But like, gosh, I had to pay my dues in a really tough season. And it was brutal, like absolutely brutal. I gained a bunch of weight like they were stressing our marriage because wasn't bringing enough money home.
00:11:50
Edwin Brown
But I was doing everything I could to just kind of stay ahead of having to file bankruptcy and completely restart. But I was learning, I was growing, I was building something. And then i finally got out of that, or at least mostly out of it, and had this new opportunity that popped up for me to come take over this pediatric therapy practice in Oklahoma.
00:12:09
Edwin Brown
And it it felt like kind of the next chapter of love God, build wealth, because this this practice was taking care of low-income Spanish-speaking families that were very much underserved.
00:12:21
Edwin Brown
And that was really their core focus. And so if I could come out and grow that, and there's all these kids They're not getting therapy when they need it. Kids with autism that are not getting speech therapy and being able to communicate with their families. So it's like, that's a great mission. I think that's close to the heart of God. And like looking at the financial model, I'm like, hey, this this is a big legit business. This can grow. This can make money.
00:12:40
Edwin Brown
So let's go make this happen. Move my family out here. I'll break my wife's heart, moving her away from all of her family and all of her friends, kind of leave all the community we have behind, moving opposite all of our families. You know, they're they're back in the South.
00:12:54
Edwin Brown
But the opportunity was great, and it just kind of felt like this marriage of of these two things I want to have in my life, of loving Jesus and building financial wealth. So land here, moving.
00:13:04
Steven J. Neuner
So real real quick, if I could, I'm going to check in on a couple of things.
00:13:06
Edwin Brown
Go ahead. Ask a question.
00:13:09
Steven J. Neuner
So when you went through that season, right, what what what would you have thought, like, what did what did you feel like you'd taken away from that season?
00:13:10
Edwin Brown
Yep.
00:13:19
Steven J. Neuner
Like, what were you bringing to Oklahoma?
00:13:19
Edwin Brown
the season.
00:13:21
Steven J. Neuner
What were the lessons? Yeah. Yeah.
00:13:25
Edwin Brown
Well, one of the lessons was never sign anything personally. That was like a real practical lesson. of Like, oh man, not a good idea. uh the a lot of the other lessons were all these things you're stacking along the way like learning how uh people work understanding markets uh understanding how important it is to understand the market you're in like i was on the front of a wave and i didn't realize it i thought it was awesome and i was just like right place right time for the first two or three years i couldn't see the winds changing and all of a sudden i turn around it's like i'm the only guy at the party
00:13:52
Steven J. Neuner
Wow.
00:13:52
Todd Pinkston
Wow.
00:13:58
Edwin Brown
And, uh, and there's no chairs left to sit in. It was, man, it was, it was really awkward, really fast. And I owned, I think at the right when everything crashed on about 70 houses and just about every one of them was underwater by 30 or 40% within 12 months.
00:14:07
Todd Pinkston
Wow.
00:14:12
Edwin Brown
And so just hundreds of thousands of dollars of negative equity, negative equity. equity And, and I just like, didn't even see it coming. So I had a, I think a sense of, you got to understand the game that you're in.
00:14:25
Edwin Brown
and And they wrote, man, there was a lot of time of talking with the Lord and and asking for his deliverance and him like leaving me in it and basically saying like, hey, I'm teaching you some things.
00:14:35
Edwin Brown
And the big lesson that I think I learned from him coming out of that is that how I feel about myself can't be tied to my business success or I would have been suicidal.
00:14:44
Steven J. Neuner
Hmm.
00:14:46
Edwin Brown
because like I had been successful in everything. i was 4.0 student getting ready for, for med school, like very successful and everything up to then. And then just like five years of what felt like abject failure.
00:14:57
Edwin Brown
And it was this really long lesson of him saying, Hey, if, If your success and whatever you're putting your hand to, it's how you feel about yourself and your identity, then you don't get how I think about you.
00:15:08
Edwin Brown
And so that was, I think, a big lesson. And it took me a long time. I'm a slow learner. And so several years of of me kind of decoupling my personal self-worth from how I was doing in business.
00:15:20
Steven J. Neuner
right, thank you for that. And so now you're in the news.
00:15:20
Todd Pinkston
Edwin, that's great.
00:15:23
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah, go ahead, Todd. Do you have follow?
00:15:25
Todd Pinkston
Yeah, Edwin, on the... So as you're moving to Oklahoma, you know you're reflecting back now with that lesson, but where were you in that process when you're moving?
00:15:37
Todd Pinkston
Are you still wrestling with the Lord on identity tied to external success? Had you learned the lesson?
00:15:47
Steven J. Neuner
Great.
00:15:47
Todd Pinkston
kind of like what's What's the internal dialogue? And that's what I love is... As we've been hearing stories, so much of our life is driven by you know what I call below the line. It's like above the line is everything we're doing. Below the line is who we are. It's our being. And I and you know i love the statement you had. So you grow up being like, I don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck.
00:16:09
Todd Pinkston
And that drives you. And then you have a period of success that's followed by you know a downfall. When you're heading to Oklahoma, what's your internal mindset?
00:16:21
Edwin Brown
I also think when God teaches you things, you're like, yeah, I got it. And he's like, you got the first part of this thing.
00:16:28
Todd Pinkston
Check. Check.
00:16:31
Steven J. Neuner
It's weird.
00:16:31
Todd Pinkston
yeah lord Pass that test. Moving to the next one.
00:16:35
Edwin Brown
yeah yeah i aced that right he's like 51 barely passing so i i think i would have said yeah yeah i've disconnected my identity from this i think he had some deeper lessons to teach me but i definitely had some disconnect from that now at the other on the other point though because here
00:16:38
Todd Pinkston
Yeah. Yeah.
00:16:55
Todd Pinkston
Cool.
00:16:57
Edwin Brown
my identity tied to my performance lessons he's teaching me money, like that, like this real big fear of not having enough, this real, very driving, like fundamental driving desire to build financial independence. I'll never be trapped.
00:17:12
Edwin Brown
He was like, Hey, I can't work on all the lessons at the same time. I'll kill you. So he, he pushed that one down the road a little bit for Oklahoma because we moved here with like man, maybe an emergency fund in the bank account, and just a hope that I could turn this into something.
00:17:27
Edwin Brown
And so there was a there was a pretty laser focus on, I'm going to build this
Growth and Financial Pressures
00:17:33
Edwin Brown
into something. Like I remember when my my my partner who brought me in said he had $200,000 in the bank.
00:17:40
Edwin Brown
And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't imagine ever having that much money in the bank. I would feel so much better than the stress I feel now, right?
00:17:45
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:17:48
Edwin Brown
So I think it was like the Lord's working on me. he He plugged us into this really great church that taught us a whole lot more about hearing his voice and and the the spirit of God, not just the word of God. I knew the Bible really, really well.
00:18:03
Edwin Brown
But we, you know, I got down to business and, and you know, I prayed in some of our leadership meetings with some of my leaders who were believers. And I talked a lot with the Lord about, you know, hey, give me guidance, give me you know advice about where to go.
00:18:18
Edwin Brown
But there was very much this sense of I love the Lord and I want to i want to honor him with my life and want to make a lot of money. I want to make so much money that nobody can tell me what to do. I never have to worry about ending up in that same place my dad ended up.
00:18:33
Edwin Brown
And so the next really big lesson was when I am 2017. twenty seventeen So I've been there for three or four years. At this point, we've gone from one location to two.
00:18:45
Edwin Brown
two locations of three. We opened a location 90 minutes away in Tulsa. So like we're we're blowing and going. I've got some got some momentum. And our major payer is Medicaid.
00:18:56
Edwin Brown
they have you they They manage basically federal money and some state money, but you deal with them on the state level. And so Oklahoma Medicaid was who paid 98% of the claims we did because of the kids we were serving, low-income kids.
00:19:09
Edwin Brown
And so I remember driving back from Tulsa, talking to my partner, and I get this phone call from the back office, and it was one of our admins. And so I hey, let me take this call. And the admin says, hey, I just got this weird letter in the mail from Medicaid.
00:19:22
Edwin Brown
says they're canceling our contract. No, they're they're not renewing our contract. I said, I've never got one of those before. Let me let me check. So I get back. I go the very next morning. i get this letter, and it basically, Medicaid says, hey, and because every four years, you have to renew your Medicaid contract.
00:19:39
Edwin Brown
And it just says, hey, you know we yeah we got your Medicaid renewal, but we're declining. And that was it was like the i like cold, cold letter, right? i'm like, that there just must be some glitch. I must not turn my paperwork in right.
00:19:51
Edwin Brown
So I go down to Medicaid, have this letter. i'm like, hey, I just got this letter. It was even, like it was a maybe the 12th of November and it says effective to November 1st, which meant the last 10 days we've been seeing kids and creating claims.
00:20:03
Edwin Brown
to the tune of about $10,000 a day that we were not going to get paid on if this didn't get fixed.
00:20:06
Todd Pinkston
wow
00:20:08
Edwin Brown
And so they were like, well, you need to talk with a legal. And I wait there for 45 minutes. i ask again, they're like, oh yeah, the person you talk to she's she's actually not here. She's on vacation. he's like, just get the total runaround, right?
00:20:20
Edwin Brown
So still have no clue what's going on. go back and i'm like, maybe I just did my paperwork wrong. So I turn in I go to try to submit my paperwork again, but it's like, we've already got your paperwork, but there's this alternate route you can take. So I'd like fax it over to them, just hoping it, you know, maybe I did something wrong and they'll look at the second group that comes in.
00:20:38
Edwin Brown
Well, basically I get on the phone within three or four days with a very, uh, and a not kind attorney who basically says, she's like reading, like reading down this. You can tell it's like a script. She's like pursuant to blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:20:53
Edwin Brown
We have every right to choose not to renew your contract. with There's no,
00:20:57
Steven J. Neuner
Oh.
00:20:58
Edwin Brown
appeals or any of this kind of stuff. And so they could have they couldn't have canceled my contract. There's all this process you have to go through. They're choosing not to renew. And I asked her why. And she said, I don't have to tell you, but I will tell you there was, you know, we did an audit on you about seven months ago. I'm like, yep, I haven't heard anything about it She's like, yeah, it's it's because of that audit.
00:21:16
Edwin Brown
well, they've never even talked to us about it, right? So she hang up and it's a 90 second call. And basically the takeaway was, your payer that's in charge of 98% of your revenue in your contract.
00:21:27
Edwin Brown
Like you're, you're done. You're out of business. At this point, I have like 60 employees. It's early November, like Christmas is coming. We have six to 700 families we're serving. I mean, it was just my world stopped. Right.
00:21:40
Edwin Brown
And immediately I'm also like, Well, this is really going to put a damper on my ability to build financial independence. If this business I've been building for last five years is just zeroed, right?
00:21:51
Steven J. Neuner
Oh my goodness.
00:21:51
Todd Pinkston
wow
00:21:51
Edwin Brown
And we're go to just trying to wind it down.
00:21:55
Edwin Brown
So that started like the most intense time I've ever had my life of of asking the Lord to intervene. And one of the things I did that was different, and this would kind of talk to some of the transformation that was happening, was I'm a pretty independent guy. Just i like peg out on all the, all the, you know, kind of tests you can do.
00:22:13
Edwin Brown
So typically it's like, I'm going to go talk to God about this. I know I need his help, but that's it. Like, I'm not going to talk to Steven or Todd about it. Like they've got other things to do. Maybe if had cancer, I'd tell you what that be about it. And Lorde is really impressing on me. Like, Hey, this is something that you in community come to me on. So we, we told a lot of people, which meant I had to, you know,
00:22:31
Edwin Brown
to put it out in front of a lot of people, which was a little embarrassing to me, even though I didn't feel like we're doing things wrong, it's still like, you it looked like you got all your ducks in a row.
00:22:33
Steven J. Neuner
Thank you.
00:22:37
Edwin Brown
And so we had a lot of people praying for us all over the country. And, you know, there would be days that I would be like weeping in the shower, praying, asking God, you know, like, why what are you doing? Why are you not helping?
00:22:50
Edwin Brown
And my like, three year old would come wandering in and be like, Dad, I'm hungry. like I'll be out in just a second. I'll come make you breakfast. And God would be like, I can hear you when you say you need me, just like you can hear your son saying you're hungry.
00:23:02
Edwin Brown
Just trust me. And was like, okay, because we're we're running $10,000.
00:23:03
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:23:06
Edwin Brown
Did I tell you we're running $10,000 a day down? Like we're going to run out of money by the end of the the end of the year. And so I had hired an attorney. He was not getting anywhere. I was starting to connect with senators and state representatives.
00:23:20
Edwin Brown
was just trying to like angle my way in. The legal department wouldn't even return my phone call. Like there were there was like zero traction, right? mike My big prayer actually is telling everybody, just pray that Medicaid will, their legal department will return my phone call and they'll let me come in, and whatever, like 39 lashes we have to take just to keep her head above water.
00:23:37
Edwin Brown
And my wife is like, hey, I think you should meet with this guy that that we that we know. She was actually mentoring his daughter. His name was Marty. He ran a civil engineering firm. She's like, he's a businessman and he's in the kingdom.
00:23:50
Edwin Brown
So go meet with him, tell him this whole story and and see and what he says.
00:23:51
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:23:55
Edwin Brown
And so I'm getting ready for that. I call him up. He can only meet me one day at lunch. We're now like in the mid-December. like December 17th. You know, everybody's starting to close up for the holidays. I'm like, if i don't if something doesn't happen, we won't we won't be open on January 1st.
00:24:09
Edwin Brown
So the day before I go to meet with him, have this idea that comes to mind that if I could ever get through all this craziness, our back office could actually become like its own product, which I think I talked about earlier. was like this standalone taking care of others, which is crazy. But this is how an entrepreneur brain work right in the middle of about to go under. You're like, here's this next great idea.
00:24:30
Edwin Brown
And so had that, but I very quickly just tucked this to the side and I'm in existential crisis mode. So I roll into this lunch with this guy. He's met me one time before with like shaking hands.
00:24:41
Edwin Brown
And he he's like, Hey, what's going on? And I just kind of like spill my guts. At this point, I'm, kind of an emotional wreck because it's like six weeks and I've seen zero progress. I lay the whole thing out and he's like, Hey, that sounds really terrible. I don't know anything about medicating or those kinds of things. Let's pray. So here we are in interurban in Oklahoma city.
00:25:02
Edwin Brown
We pray. He's like, Hey God, I'm asking you to intervene on behalf of Edwin. know, I think he really does love you and and wants to know you, but he needs help.
A Moment of Divine Intervention
00:25:10
Edwin Brown
And so we get done praying.
00:25:12
Edwin Brown
I'm like, Hey, I actually had this idea too. I want to tell you about, them a little bit about this idea for this, you know, managed service business. And then i said, but even if Medicaid called me right now, it's the goal, right? Is Medicaid to call me from their legal department and tell us our punishment, whatever fine we got to pay. I said, even if they would call me right now and just say, your contracts turned back on, still think I'd want to pursue this new idea.
00:25:34
Edwin Brown
My phone rings. look down and I recognize the number and it's Medicaid.
00:25:38
Steven J. Neuner
Oh,
00:25:38
Edwin Brown
And I'm like, hey, this I got to take this call. And I answer the phone.
00:25:42
Todd Pinkston
Dude.
00:25:43
Edwin Brown
Somebody and they say, hey, this is Judy. I have your contract here on my desk. I can't figure out why it's sitting here. And I was like, well, we had a little bit of an issue with it. and she was like, well, looks fine to me. I'm approving it.
00:25:55
Edwin Brown
You're good to go. Have a great Christmas.
00:25:58
Todd Pinkston
Dude. Yeah.
00:26:06
Edwin Brown
I just start weeping. Like I am weeping.
00:26:08
Todd Pinkston
yeah
00:26:09
Edwin Brown
And the best way I know to describe it is when the when the disciples are in the boat with Jesus and there's this storm and he's sleeping and they wake him up and Jesus stands up and just says, peace be still.
00:26:15
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:26:19
Edwin Brown
And the whole thing happens.
00:26:19
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
00:26:20
Edwin Brown
You know what the disciples' response is? Their response is like they're terrified of the guy in the boat. They're like, forget the storm. Like what just happened? And that's exactly how i felt.
00:26:31
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
00:26:31
Edwin Brown
I'm like, yeah, I get it.
00:26:32
Edwin Brown
My business is back, whatever. What just happened? Like, who is this God who would show up? Even his timing is impeccable. Like it, it blew my mind. And so I'd like finally choke out to Marty. I'm like, that was Medicaid. They just turned my contract back on.
00:26:47
Edwin Brown
He starts crying. We're both like sitting here crying in this restaurant.
00:26:48
Steven J. Neuner
Thank you.
00:26:50
Edwin Brown
And finally he just says, love it when he does that. And,
00:26:53
Todd Pinkston
Dude.
00:26:54
Edwin Brown
it was It was one of those moments, you know you never forget the rest of your life. you're like It's probably like a taste of what heaven feels like when we were face to face with God. But we finished the conversation with Marty basically saying, hey, I think I'm supposed to mentor you.
00:27:02
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:27:07
Edwin Brown
And that started this like multi-year mentorship where we we meet every week and he would just teach me how he had incorporated the kingdom of God into his business. And yeah, our contract got turned back on.
00:27:17
Todd Pinkston
Wow.
00:27:19
Edwin Brown
Everything started rolling. There was like zero hiccups after that. As far as the Medicaid thing went, we never heard from Medicaid what happened or why or anything like that. just got flipped back on. And then honestly, we started growing like crazy for like the next year. think we ended up growing like 60, 70 percent in the next year.
00:27:38
Edwin Brown
So the big thing, Todd, kind of back to your question, of like, hey, what's God teaching you? how are you being transformed?
00:27:42
Todd Pinkston
hmm
00:27:45
Edwin Brown
He laid on my heart some really clear things. And one of them was this concept of the word stewardship. That, hey, you, like, it was so clear to me that I would have been out of business if he had not intervened.
00:27:50
Todd Pinkston
hmm yeah yeah hmm
00:27:56
Edwin Brown
That and it was like, hey, this is your business.
00:27:57
Steven J. Neuner
Mm-hmm.
00:28:00
Edwin Brown
So I'm just every day I just say, hey, reporting for duty, sir. what do you want me to do today? And so this really distinct sense of stewardship, like I am running something, managing something on behalf of ownership of someone else.
00:28:12
Edwin Brown
And you know legally, I owned everything. But that is that was like this shift. And and I would hear. hear steward everywhere I go i'd hear somebody talking about stewardship it was like it's just one of those things you know you buy red car and you see them everywhere I don't know or the Lord was just like directing it but it it was this very very clear one and then the second really big word he was teaching me was dependence like hey you are dependent on me I'm not a big fan of independence and like you just use your words needs to be every day like father I depend on you
00:28:32
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:28:43
Edwin Brown
So I take stewardship and dependence out of that. That's like 2017, 2018 roles. And we start rolling and business is really good and things pick up. And we're growing. And that idea that I'd had in the middle of that crazy catastrophe, uh, we start to work on that, which has becomes what we call now one therapy network.
00:29:01
Edwin Brown
Uh, so it was this, it was this pivotal moment, uh, seven years before, six years before some of the stuff we're going to talk about where God was laying this foundation of who's in charge your life, who owns all the stuff, who are you, yeah are you supposed to be pursuing independence or not?
00:29:20
Edwin Brown
and And it was like, he gave me a little breather before he threw me back in the deep end.
00:29:28
Todd Pinkston
That's incredible.
00:29:29
Edwin Brown
So.
00:29:30
Todd Pinkston
what a What a story. thanks for Thanks for sharing that with us. Hey, Edwin, do you have anything in your life that you like have a tangible representation of those two things, stewardship and dependence?
00:29:30
Steven J. Neuner
No, it is totally important.
00:29:46
Edwin Brown
I believe we actually have a, my wife framed something. I think it's actually just the word dependence that's in our room that we look at. Stewardship, I don't, but what I honestly really wanted out of that, and it's one of those things you keep thinking, I got to do this and you don't get around to it, is I wanted that painting. There's there's a classic painting of the disciples in the boat and Jesus you know speaking and being still, and I wanted that up on my wall so that my kids would be like, hey,
00:30:10
Edwin Brown
that's kind of a random painting for our house. Like, what do we have that our story would be attached to it? you're You're convicting me. I probably should go by that. It's been like seven years now. But in my mind, it was like that moment was really encapsulated in this, that kind of, he says, be still. And then your mind is blown, not by the waves being still, but by the power of someone who could speak and make that happen.
00:30:32
Todd Pinkston
Yeah. That's awesome.
00:30:34
Steven J. Neuner
and And so So your your your stewardship is everywhere. your You're you know seeing it everywhere.
00:30:46
Steven J. Neuner
You've already confessed you're a high-driven, high-achieving entrepreneur. So what does the execution of stewardship look like? What it like what was that that journey and and where did it take you to ultimately, I think we're getting closer and closer to the thing that you shared with me that just rocked a number of people's worlds.
00:31:04
Edwin Brown
yeah
00:31:05
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah.
00:31:07
Edwin Brown
Well, you know for several years, I think what the Lord, yeah, I think he brings us along, right? Like, I think there's this, I teach you this much faith, and then I ask a little bit more and a little bit more.
00:31:16
Steven J. Neuner
Yes.
00:31:18
Edwin Brown
I think if he had taken me all the way to the end, I would have freaked out run away. But he had to teach me dependence on him. He had to teach me this concept that what I had wasn't really mine. It was his, even though legally it was.
00:31:30
Edwin Brown
And then he left me in that in a good way, like just like stewing in and learning that lesson for several years. And for several years, I would just wake up every day and say, hey, what do you want me to do today? I'll do my best to listen and to follow that advice and go. And our business grew like we grew and we we.
00:31:46
Edwin Brown
I think we about doubled within two years. We had doubled the size of our practice. We had launched that new, that new spinoff that managed service. The Lord brought a couple of guys from our church that ended up becoming partners with me and filling out some really big needs I had of like some ways kind of helping me shoulder the load, which was really cool. Like I wasn't the, I wasn't the only person at the top having to make all the decisions.
00:32:07
Edwin Brown
and And I was just, it was like this long, not delayed, but like long drawn out process of him teaching me this thing. But, I still had my basic thesis for life, right? Love Jesus, build financial independence.
00:32:21
Edwin Brown
and And frankly, every time a deal closed or a new person was hired, i in my mind could do the math of how much margin this brought in what this did to like enterprise value, if i was going to sell, all that kind of stuff.
00:32:32
Edwin Brown
All the while believing in this work we're doing, taking care of kids, all this kind of stuff. So the problem with that, you know, is that, you know you you can't serve two masters.
00:32:44
Edwin Brown
And i I was getting more and more successful.
00:32:45
Todd Pinkston
Mm-hmm.
00:32:48
Edwin Brown
And we basically, we got to a point where you would say like we had to arrived, like we were making good money. i was keeping most of the money in the business, but like at any point we we could have probably cashed out at that point for, know, five to $10 million, dollars somewhere in that range, which would have been enough just to be done. Right. So i had kind of achieved this really, you know, at least the potential to pull the parachute and be financially independent.
00:33:12
Edwin Brown
Problem was, one, I just i knew i was supposed to stay in the work. And two, The stress and the fear of losing that was like just heavy as the like fear of being trapped in something as I'm like chasing, chasing, chasing, trying to build it.
00:33:30
Edwin Brown
So things got heavier and harder as we grew. i got more and more tired. You know, it's one of those things. It's like you, you, you know careful what you wish for. Like I got it.
00:33:44
Edwin Brown
And I was even thankful to the Lord for it. And at the same time, like it, it wasn't solving the problem I thought it would solve because you know, the, the fear of not having enough, the fear of being trapped, I was still there. In fact, even though I, I kind knew I couldn't, I could sell, but I knew I couldn't sell in the sense of like, I wasn't was supposed to do.
00:34:02
Edwin Brown
And I hated my work. Like I actually texted my wife in the middle of a meeting is like, I just casually reached over, pulled up my iPhone and was like, I hate my job. put it back down. Like the opposite of everything we're supposed to be doing, right?
00:34:14
Edwin Brown
You're building this thing. It's yours. There's freedom.
00:34:16
Steven J. Neuner
No freedom.
00:34:16
Edwin Brown
There's all this. and
00:34:17
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah.
00:34:17
Edwin Brown
There's no freedom. No, I was slave to that.
00:34:19
Steven J. Neuner
You're stuck.
00:34:20
Edwin Brown
That's right. but It's like a price you pay, man. It's the price you pay to be an entrepreneur and build it and then have something that you, you know, you ultimately, you know, achieve this dream.
00:34:32
Edwin Brown
Don't live your father's life. So we're rocking along. I'm getting more and more tired. I'm like, my health is going down because I'm not taking care of myself. and i'm I'm stretched out. I'm still spending time with the Lord. I'm still growing there.
00:34:45
Edwin Brown
But there's this thing, and and frankly, because it was so core to kind of how I believed and thought, like, I don't know that I noticed it as much as I could be of like you see it in hindsight, looking back, like, how am gained 20 pounds?
00:34:55
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
00:34:56
Edwin Brown
I didn't notice that was happening. It was like, have I really gotten that tired and that stressed out? But fast forward to that same mentor invites me to come to a,
00:35:01
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:35:10
Edwin Brown
celebration of generosity at COG, which is like this conference that this group called Generous Giving puts on. And then the JOG, which is like a journey of generosity, which is just like a weekend at his house getting ready for it.
00:35:21
Edwin Brown
I go into that weekend tired and I'm exhausted. And I know that they're gonna be talking about generosity, which, hey, I'm big on. i want to make a ton of money and give some of that away to God. And, and you know, I'm learning stewardship. Like I'm down with that.
00:35:33
Edwin Brown
But as the as the teacher, that's right.
00:35:34
Steven J. Neuner
I mean, even your business is helping people, right? I mean, like even, even yeah right? I mean, you're you're serving the Lord as you work, right? With your business.
00:35:42
Edwin Brown
That's right. Like what what we're doing, no one's fighting us for this work. like We are in the not awesome areas of Oklahoma city, serving families that are very much underserved. And so I'm in this, this teaching on generosity.
00:35:57
Edwin Brown
And, you there were some, there were some verses that I was actually memorizing at the time. And the Lord, was like every page I'd turn, like there's that new verse you're you're memorizing. There's that new verse you're, like and but all it was to me,
00:36:08
Edwin Brown
was this like, hey, I'm here and we need a new plan. And so I just got like more tired and more tired, but almost like a tired of like leaning into him. It's like, okay, I know this isn't working. What do you what do you want me to do?
00:36:21
Edwin Brown
But he didn't he didn't say anything. Like he wasn't directing me anyway. And so, but I i started having conversation with my wife. I said, hey, we I think we need to start thinking about like what our like financial finish line could look like.
00:36:36
Edwin Brown
Like what is it like, is all of this, I know, I know we know that the business belongs to Lord, but legally it still are. And legally, if I sell it, like I get all the money, but like, what would it look like for us to put some sort of cap or whatever on this?
00:36:50
Edwin Brown
And so we started praying about it and we actually went to this conference in Orlando that was with the generous giving group. And yeah I was praying, was like, so sure God was going to show up and tell me what he wanted me tell me in that whole time.
00:37:02
Edwin Brown
And he was definitely teaching me things. And we were, There's fantastic sermon on the you know the the man who finds a treasure in the field. like But all he said at the very end of the conference was, hey, the the extent of how far we go in this business you're leading is how much control you want to maintain.
00:37:20
Edwin Brown
I was like, well, that's really interesting. What do you what do you mean by that? So still don't have super clarity. And it's a handful of months later and I'm talking with my wife and I said, hey, I just I really think we need to make some sort of decision, whether it's capping my salary or like giving some percentage of it away or something.
00:37:39
Edwin Brown
And I just want to ask the Lord. So how about next week? You know, it still makes sense to us on Sunday. We'll take few days to fast and we'll just pray and ask the Lord, what do you want us to do with this?
00:37:50
Edwin Brown
So that was probably early in the week. By noon, my life is like upside down and crazy. You know, so just so two or two or three things catch on fire. I'm stressed out. My wife's like, you need to text the elders. Like I two or three elder buddies at the church. So you need to text them and just ask for prayer.
00:38:05
Edwin Brown
Like, guys I don't have time to explain. i just, my life's on fire. Please pray for me. So I got these two elder buddies that are praying for me. They were you want to get together and grab breakfast? I'm like, I don't have time. I'll see you on Sunday.
00:38:16
Edwin Brown
But, you they're praying for me. Life's super stressful. We roll into the weekend. I've kind of half forgotten about this idea that maybe we'd fast in the upcoming week for what the Lord wants us to do with our business and our ownership.
00:38:28
Edwin Brown
And it's a one-off sermon on stewardship by the pastor. It was like, we're in the middle of some random series.
00:38:32
Todd Pinkston
Thank you.
00:38:35
Edwin Brown
He's like, we're doing one on stewardship. was like, all right, you've got my attention. And back up couple days on Thursday, my team had been absolutely freaking out about this thing that was going on.
00:38:46
Edwin Brown
And I knew the situation. And I was like, it's not that big a deal. They just, they don't have perspective.
00:38:52
Steven J. Neuner
Thank you.
00:38:52
Edwin Brown
And so I pulled everybody in a room and they're all freaking out. And I basically said, Hey, here's the deal. Here's, here's where we're trying to go. We're actually a lot closer than you think this is a mess, but we can clean this up. You do this, you do this, you do this.
00:39:03
Edwin Brown
We walked out of that room, everybody was like, I feel so much better. We're good. We're almost there. Your boss is right. I had this moment. I thought, you know like this is what I do as as a boss. It's actually what i want my leaders to do, but it's like what I'm uniquely good at is kind of going into the chaos, being able to see we're a lot closer to the solution than we think, figuring out what needs to happen to get us there when everybody's kind of fighting amongst each other and then sell the vision and lead everybody out.
00:39:26
Edwin Brown
It's It's really, it's like, it's like this scene from The Hobbit. And don't know if you guys are like Tolkien fans, but there's a scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo is leading these dwarves through this Myrwood forest. And it's this like enchanted forest that you get in it, you get confused you can't ever find your way out.
00:39:41
Edwin Brown
they're like going in circles. They're confused. Like there's evil things in the forest that are starting to like can encroach on them. And Bilbo has this moment where he looks up and he sees that above the canopy, like just a glimmer of light. So he climbs up the top of the tree, pokes his head out.
00:39:55
Edwin Brown
And he's like, he's out of the fog. He can see where they're trying to go. comes back down. basically leads the dwarves out, they get where they're trying to go. And I actually find it on my phone, like final YouTube clip, I watch it i'm like, I'm gonna start showing this in my leadership meetings, like this is what I want my leaders to do.
00:40:11
Edwin Brown
I'm really good at it, but I want all my leaders to be able to do that, right? That's Thursday, right? Okay, we're rolling to Sunday, stewardship sermon. go down front for prayer. There's one of the elders that asked for prayer.
00:40:23
Edwin Brown
And he was like, hey, I had no idea what to pray for you because you just said life is crazy. So I just asked the Lord. And he led me to this passage. And this is it. So he reads it to me. And says, Lord, you know give me, you give me just enough, not too much that I become proud and forget I need you not too little that I am like tempted to stay steal and defend, defile your name.
00:40:39
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:40:45
Edwin Brown
It's like, I don't know if that means anything to you, but that's what can tell you.
00:40:46
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:40:48
Edwin Brown
And I'm like,
00:40:50
Edwin Brown
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty relevant, pretty relevant to the conversation. Right. And so I'm like, great, let's pray.
00:40:54
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:40:56
Edwin Brown
So we pray elder, couple elders there. Elder's wife's praying over me. i don't remember anything anybody said in the prayer. It was good prayer, but it was like no revelation. We're done. Kind of all stand back up you know, in that moment, we're like, all right. And then this elder's wife is like, I do have one more thing.
00:41:14
Edwin Brown
said, okay. She said, You know, I just all I could think while I was like praying through, you know, hearing you talk and praying and for you was like your job in your organization is like when life gets crazy, you're the one that like goes into that chaos and helps like calm down people, help them realize that they're like, know,
00:41:35
Edwin Brown
close to where they're trying to go and then leads them out. I was like, yeah. She was like, it, for some reason, it just reminds me of the scene from the Hobbit. And then she just describes this exact scene.
00:41:47
Todd Pinkston
a
00:41:47
Edwin Brown
And again, I'm like, and just started weeping.
00:41:49
Edwin Brown
And she's like, did i like I hit a nerve? Like what's going on? And i just pull up my phone. i'm like most recent YouTube video, like here this is. And it meant that we're all just standing there and,
00:42:02
Edwin Brown
And somebody just says, I don't know what God's doing, but I think you need to listen. And so, yeah, I think so, too.
00:42:07
Todd Pinkston
Hmm. Hmm.
00:42:11
Edwin Brown
And so I went, found my
Spiritual and Financial Realizations
00:42:12
Edwin Brown
wife. I told her what was going on. And I said, hey, let's fast. she She had a friend that was in a really hard time. She was going to have to go take care of who was in like in a situation she was going to go into.
00:42:22
Edwin Brown
So we knew we could fast like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then Monday. She was going leave and was gonna be with the kids. So we'd fast for three days asking the Lord for direction. Hey, what does it look like for us to like take stewardship to the next level?
00:42:34
Edwin Brown
And in my mind, it was like, what's the financial finish line for us? So we commit to praying about it, fasting for three days. Monday, talking to the Lord, and and I'm like, hey, $10 million dollars sounds like a just and it's like a great number. $10 million is, you know, i think the business is going be worth a whole lot more than this over the years, but like I can totally retire on that. We live real frugally. like that I would be way more than I'm paying myself now, just the interest.
00:43:01
Edwin Brown
That's fine. Tuesday, God is like, how about $5 million? And I was like, well, $5 million, sir, is less than $10 million, about half. But I could probably find a way to make those numbers work. So five million fine.
00:43:17
Edwin Brown
Then on Wednesday, we're still praying. And my wife and I are praying, but we're not talking about specifics. We're just praying, asking for direction. And God says to me, about two million? And I'm like, two million, sir, is a lot less than five million.
00:43:29
Edwin Brown
And it's not that much money at the end of the day.
00:43:29
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:43:33
Edwin Brown
Like, it's just not. But, you know, if that's the number that you say is right, and then the rest goes to you, I mean, if that's what you say, when I can do it, I'd love confirmation. I walk into the kitchen. My wife's like, are you ready to break your fast? I said, yeah.
00:43:49
Edwin Brown
She said, hey, were we supposed to be praying for like and an actual number? I'm like, babe, that's like the whole point. That's like what what we're praying for. She's like, well, you didn't say that very clearly. I was like, I'm sorry. And she's like, well,
00:44:01
Edwin Brown
okay, then I think it should be 2 million. It's like, all right, do we, we hadn't talked about it. It was just like on the spot. She's like, I i feel like 2 million is the right number. I said, okay, that's exactly what he just told me.
00:44:13
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:44:14
Edwin Brown
That's the number. So we break our fast. We thank the Lord for speaking to us. She leaves and to go take care of her friend. And I go to bed And I wake up the next morning and there are emails in my inbox that are, we had just acquired this new practice in Tennessee.
00:44:32
Edwin Brown
And there's there's three divisions in the practice and things have been going fine. You know any acquisition got its bumps, but like they were going relatively fine. I got an email from each division that basically said, pet's heads are falling off.
00:44:44
Edwin Brown
You've ruined this company. We all want to jump off a building.
00:44:50
Edwin Brown
Super stressful, right? Like I start calling my leaders up there. They won't even take my call. They're like, Hey, we are so emotionally stressed out about how big of a mess you've made up here. We don't want to talk to you about it. We'll talk to you about it tomorrow. So I can't talk to Julie, but my wife, cause she's off you with her friend in the situation. Can't even take my phone call, go through the rest of the day, go to bed, fall asleep, wake up at four o'clock in the morning.
00:45:13
Edwin Brown
And I just, there's no going back to sleep. I'm super stressed. This is, again, one of those things that like this acquisition goes sideways is, I guess, way backwards in in the organization.
00:45:23
Edwin Brown
And I'm like, well, I tell you what I am going to do is I'm going to redeem this moment and just like jump into where I am in my quiet time with the Lord and and just see what he has to say. so I open up this book that I've been reading by Edward Welch.
00:45:36
Edwin Brown
for Ed Welch, called A Small Book for the Anxious Heart. Have it right over here by me. And I just turned, it's like a daily reader. So I turned to the next daily reader and it's day seven and it's on manna. And I'm immediately like, I've already had this conversation, Father.
00:45:52
Edwin Brown
so but I started reading and he's basically like, hey, don't know, right?
00:45:55
Steven J. Neuner
You got me down to 2 million.
00:45:57
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
00:45:58
Edwin Brown
So I'm like reading it.
00:46:00
Edwin Brown
And hey, I feel like you're trying to open the conversation back to what we had already settled on. And, you know, like 2 million already kind of, I feel like not a ton.
00:46:12
Edwin Brown
So like if if you're wanting to you know reopen the conversation, like, please be clear. And as I'm reading through this, you know, like there's just part of the back and it actually says, hey, how might you over collect manna because you aren't quite sure that the father will come through tomorrow?
00:46:26
Edwin Brown
In other words, you trust him, but you also trust in yourself.
00:46:27
Todd Pinkston
Hmm. Hmm.
00:46:30
Edwin Brown
What is putting trust in yourself look like for you? I'm like journaling. going to need you to be real explicit. And and the manna passage is actually all from Exodus 16 in the Bible where God's like, it's like, that's the passage he's teaching them.
00:46:44
Edwin Brown
It talks about how he he provides for them, but just enough for the day. And he's teaching them to depend on them. And everyone has just enough. So like, i'm going to need you to be really explicit. And like clear as day, he says to me, Jesus who was rich became poor for you.
00:47:03
Edwin Brown
and I found like when God quotes scripture back to you, it's a good idea to go look it up and see what he's saying. And so here I am, I've got my like Exodus 16 reader thing going on over here with manna.
00:47:15
Edwin Brown
God says Jesus was rich, who was rich became poor for us. And in the passage goes on to say in order that we might inherit the riches of God. But then Paul goes on in that same passage. He kind of lays out this thing and then he gets to the end and he quotes Exodus 16.
00:47:32
Edwin Brown
He quotes the man of passage right there. It's like just blows my mind. And I was like, all right. All right. I'm hearing you. And when I like because I had asked him, I said, hey, are you asking me to go lower than two million?
00:47:46
Edwin Brown
Are you asking me to go to zero? Like we don't ever take any money out of this business. We just give you the whole thing. and And he answered me so definitively. And I've told this story to a couple of people and definitely a couple people are like, yeah maybe coincidence. And all I can say is like, you know, when God is showing up and is very explicitly talking to you, even if it looks like a coincidence to somebody else, I'm like too much of a coincidence that God quoted New Testament passage with Exodus 16 in it while I have Exodus 16 that he's basically like, there is no question in my mind, but if there was any doubt, we'll see what my wife says.
00:48:21
Edwin Brown
So I text her and she's like, yeah, I'm on board. I'm like, well, there's no getting out from that side.
00:48:26
Steven J. Neuner
Wow.
00:48:26
Edwin Brown
And yeah, here we are. Right. And so i'm like, man, this that's crazy.
00:48:30
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:48:31
Edwin Brown
I, I, I guess I just decided to give the Lord the business. what it's to look like. I don't know legally what that means, but like, I feel like, and it was really interesting because it here's what it it didn't feel like.
00:48:36
Todd Pinkston
Wow.
00:48:38
Todd Pinkston
Wow.
00:48:43
Edwin Brown
It didn't feel like him saying, give me the business. It felt like him saying, Hey, how's this plan working for you? And I was like, well, he was like, well, I got a new plan for you, but it's going to cost you the business if you want to follow me down it.
00:49:00
Edwin Brown
And it felt a lot like one of those moments, like the Pearl of Great Price, where you find that pearl and you sell everything you've got, enjoy and buy the pearl.
00:49:09
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
00:49:11
Edwin Brown
And so I was like, man, father, I i trust you. had a couple of questions for him about like my kids and some vacations we'd want to take that would be really hard to do if we had no assets.
00:49:23
Edwin Brown
And he basically told me that I knew better than asking him about whether he could provide for my kids. And so Okay, it's all yours. And the day starts. I check in with my leaders and they all email me and say, hey, actually overnight, everything's kind of cleaned up. I mean, we'd still like to see you next week, but we're doing fine. We don't need to talk.
00:49:45
Edwin Brown
So he orchestrates that whole event just to have me up, just to have that moment with me, right? And I'm like, man, what a crazy week. You know, like he's he's speaking to us through, you know, elders of the church and through a vision of the elder's wife and fasting and syncing us all up. i I'm like, i'm just emotionally exhausted.
00:50:03
Edwin Brown
I get this little email from my church that says, Hey, your homework is due for this leadership class where you're reading this Ed Welch book. So turn in your homework and, you know, says something about something. And it says, what do you think is your shadow?
00:50:16
Edwin Brown
And I'm like, I don't exactly even know. I think I skipped that reading because it's been kind of busy week.
00:50:19
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:50:20
Edwin Brown
So I just reply back. I don't even really know what a shadow is, but I bet mine has something to do with money. Ship it. I'm sitting in my chair watching a movie with my kids Friday evening and I'm And man, like right in my living room, God shows up and says, hey, would you like me to show you your shadow?
00:50:43
Edwin Brown
And I said something like, it's been a crazy week, sir, but like, let's go. but Like one more thing. And he said, how a how old were you when you learned this this fear of not having enough money from your father?
00:51:02
Edwin Brown
fear of being stuck. I said, well, would have been 16, 17. You know, was like, I remember it in high school. And then said, how old was your father? And I had to do some math to figure that out.
00:51:14
Edwin Brown
But I realized like, okay, well, he would have been like 41 or 42. And he said, how old are you now?
00:51:21
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:51:22
Steven J. Neuner
Mmm.
00:51:23
Edwin Brown
I said, I'm 41. And then he said, how has your life looked any different?
00:51:29
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:51:31
Edwin Brown
And I realized in this moment that I had spent 20 years desperately trying not to live a super stressful life that I'd seen my father.
00:51:43
Edwin Brown
And the way I was doing it was by having an even more stressful life where I took my family through all sorts of risk and this kind of reckless pursuit to build up very quickly real estate wealth, move them across the country to take over a new opportunity.
00:51:58
Edwin Brown
And i had i had intentionally, I was not stuck, i had intentionally signed up for 20 years. And that was the entire life I was trying to avoid. He was only 41 when I left his house. In my mind, he's like, he was 60. I had lived my father's life, the whole thing I was trying to do.
00:52:14
Edwin Brown
And what I realized in that moment was giving the business to him was not Abraham going to the top of the mountain and being willing to sacrifice his son. It was being shown that I had a love of money in my life and I had a love of God.
00:52:32
Edwin Brown
it was It was a rich young ruler moment where I'm like, hey, I'm doing all these things right. Father, what else do I need to do for eternal life? And he's like, He looks, you know, Jesus says he looks at the rich young ruler and he loved him.
00:52:43
Edwin Brown
And he said, you only like one thing. Well, what Jesus could see that guy loved his money. And so he puts his finger on the thing. And and that's what God was doing for me. And he was he was showing me I was not sacrificing something good.
00:52:56
Edwin Brown
i was being willing to lay down an idol that had driven me and put pain and suffering in my family's life for the last 20 years.
00:53:04
Todd Pinkston
hmm hmm
00:53:06
Edwin Brown
I wept and wept. I spent the entire evening just journaling out that. And I was texting, what's crazy is I'm texting my wife as God was saying this to me. And she's texting me back like, what is happening?
00:53:19
Edwin Brown
Who are you talking to? I'm like, I'm talking to God. She was like, and don't understand. i cannot call you. Like she was in the middle of a friend who she could not leave her side or take a phone call. So we're doing this whole thing by text, but she was like,
00:53:31
Edwin Brown
praising God that he was revealing this to me because I'm pretty sure she could have seen it for the last 20 years and just kind of faithfully walking alongside me.
00:53:37
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
00:53:40
Edwin Brown
And that that was like the real turning point where I realized, hey, God was inviting me into this whole different life where I no longer wanted to be financially
Shift to Nonprofit and Spiritual Path
00:53:50
Edwin Brown
independent. I wanted to be financially dependent on him.
00:53:54
Edwin Brown
And so we gave him all of the business, and which was great. pretty much all of our wealth. And we didn't even, we don't even own a home. And so it was like what savings we had, that was about it.
00:54:06
Edwin Brown
But we gave him all of that in, in spirit and looked at each other and basically said, Hey, like, are you are you ready for this new adventure? And the world was like perfect and easy from there on out.
00:54:21
Edwin Brown
Yeah. And there began like the hardest 18 months of my professional career. Like I had so many reach outs of people wanting to buy the business and the the business actually started like going downhill because of some Medicaid cuts and things were going on. And it was brutal.
00:54:37
Edwin Brown
It really felt like being kind of sent out into the desert for this, like whatever the Lord was doing after which was not what i was expecting. I was expecting to like turn the keys over to him and everything be fine.
00:54:48
Edwin Brown
But it was about 18 months. In fact, my wife turned to me at some point was like, I thought, I thought things were supposed to be different. i thought you were supposed to be different. But i think it was just the process he was taking me through of refining things.
00:54:59
Edwin Brown
In that process, he brought back up an old lawsuit that had been gone for like seven years. But on a technicality, the the bank from all real estate days was able to come back and refile.
00:55:11
Edwin Brown
And they were basically going to try to sue me for for like even our emergency fund. it was like we're going to go down to zero. And my heart panicked again. And God was like, see, we're we're not quite done with this lesson you still have this fear of running out of money and so i'm sitting uh in my in my office uh on my knees talking to him and he was like hey can we can we talk about something i said yes sir he said you're afraid of running out of money all your money i said yes sir and he said so it's you're like afraid of me running out of money and i said well sir when you put it that way it sounds kind of stupid uh but
00:55:51
Edwin Brown
It was just like, it was almost like lighthearted.
00:55:52
Todd Pinkston
Mm-hmm.
00:55:53
Edwin Brown
He was saying it to me, but it was this epiphany moment where I was like, you're right. You have all the money. I should be, if I'm worried about anything, i'm worried about you running out of money, which sounds really dumb when it out loud. So how about I'm just not going to be worried about running out of money.
00:56:05
Edwin Brown
I'm not going to be worried. when Medicaid cuts happen. i'm not going be worried when the big, beautiful bill passes. I'm not gonna be worried when two or three my therapists all leave to go at some other clinic and we're upside down in that clinic. Like, I'm just not going to worry because this business belongs to God. I'm 100% dependent on him and it's not even my money. So if he wants to spend his money that way, he can.
00:56:24
Edwin Brown
but he has called me to lead it. And so as we prayed through this process and we considered selling it and donating all the money to charity, the the idea of converting it into a nonprofit came up. And the more we researched it, the more that felt like what we were being called to.
00:56:41
Edwin Brown
And so we are in the process of forming i and is the The nonprofit's been formed in the process of getting our five o one c three designation from the Lord. It's actually been like three years of going through that. He had a lot of work to do. had a partner at the time who decided to leave but gave back all of his equity.
00:57:00
Edwin Brown
I had an investor who, when he found out, it was actually Marty who had had invested. he He said, hey, if you're giving up your equity, I'll i'll give up my equity. And so like God was kind of like resolving all the the actual like details of the situation to make it
00:57:13
Steven J. Neuner
The balance sheet, yeah.
00:57:15
Edwin Brown
The balance sheet, because i I mean, I can give up my money, but I can't give up other people's money that have invested in this.
00:57:19
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah.
00:57:20
Edwin Brown
Right. And God was like working those things out to where finally kind of got everything ready. Here's a nonprofit. We're forming it. And in the next handful of months, we'll move over all the assets into the nonprofit and I'll become the executive director, but I'll no longer be an owner.
00:57:37
Todd Pinkston
Wow.
00:57:37
Steven J. Neuner
That's incredible.
00:57:38
Steven J. Neuner
Edwin,
00:57:40
Steven J. Neuner
There's so much here, so many like things I wanna put on.
00:57:42
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
00:57:44
Steven J. Neuner
But one thing in particular, you know one thing that struck me as you're sharing your story, it was your wife, like countless people that were just like affirming you in your your your journey, right? like and And encouraging you to to lean in, to walk deeper, whatever language you wanna use, right?
00:58:04
Steven J. Neuner
I'm curious, were there any people that, you know not that they didn't were trying to hurt or anything, but were there any you know stumbling blocks, so to speak? And what did you learn through that when you think about relationships?
00:58:14
Todd Pinkston
Mm-hmm.
00:58:18
Edwin Brown
For sure. there Somebody that we had included in that original prayer time when we were praying about the contract back in 2017, one of those people knew a lot about Medicaid and I knew he was in the kingdom.
00:58:31
Edwin Brown
And so I'd asked him, but when I came out of that meeting, like praising God saying like, God just spoke and and his response was, God helps him who him who helps himself.
00:58:45
Edwin Brown
Like, I'm pretty sure that was because you did something right. It was like this very like, almost like I was trying to over spiritualize something. and And, you know, in my mind, it's like, that'd be like somebody saying, oh, but that storm was about to die down. Like, bro, I was there like that.
00:58:58
Edwin Brown
We were about to die like that. There was no question my mind. But it was this really interesting, like, hey, even people in the kingdom. may not understand or may not believe, may not believe because maybe God's never done that for them. Maybe they've never asked God to do it for them.
00:59:12
Edwin Brown
And they're also in process. Like they they are a son or daughter of the king. And so, you know, sometimes siblings just disagree with what dad's doing. And so it was like, I can i could hear that. like I could stay in my circle, but I didn't, like I knew what was right and true.
00:59:29
Edwin Brown
When we decided to give the business away in the kingdom, No one ever said anything explicitly. definitely, you know, you can tell with the looks where they're kind of like, hmm. I think one guy said, like, maybe you, like, like misunderstood what he was like. It was kind of like, I don't know. But he was like, but it still seems like, like I don't know.
00:59:51
Edwin Brown
But, boy, you try to talk about this to anybody outside the kingdom, and they're like, I i don't know. They're like, oh, so the strategy, there's a nonprofit.
00:59:59
Steven J. Neuner
You're crazy.
01:00:01
Edwin Brown
yeah It's like siphoning money into it so it can push it over because you're going to it. It was like they're trying to find the financial angle. And they're like, finally, they're like, I don't think you understand how much shareholder value you're you're destroying. I'm like, no, I do.
01:00:14
Edwin Brown
It's all of it. Like, this is millions of dollars. Like, this is going to cost me everything I have. And I am excited to do it because I have something that is worth far more.
01:00:25
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:00:27
Todd Pinkston
Edwin, praise God, man.
01:00:29
Todd Pinkston
Thanks for sharing that story. Hey, so I'm curious, you know, as as people hear this story, you know, there's there's lots at play, but two things that I want to hone in on is like, you know, you've got the the courage to make the decision.
01:00:29
Steven J. Neuner
Yeah.
01:00:45
Todd Pinkston
But preceding that, you have you've you've said countless times in your story, like hearing God and interacting with him like he's a like he's a person, like he cares enough to speak to you while you're watching a movie with your kids.
01:00:55
Edwin Brown
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:00:59
Steven J. Neuner
Mm-hmm.
01:01:03
Todd Pinkston
And I think that, you know, we talk about the conditions in which transformation can take place. And it sounds like even in the midst of, you know, believe in lies or or having your own plan, you were still creating conditions in which the Lord could do a transformational work in your heart.
01:01:22
Todd Pinkston
And So my question is, is you know what is that what does that look like for you to be faithful to create those spaces in which you can interact with God?
01:01:34
Todd Pinkston
Like how can somebody just randomly listening to this and they're thinking, man, giving away my business, that's like that's miles down the road. But how do I start right here just interacting with the living God?
01:01:48
Edwin Brown
Yeah, what's been interesting is because anything like this happens, you think, I wonder, like, I wonder how God's going use this. I wonder what part of the story. Way more people are interested in that question than they are about, like, the actual giving the business part away.
01:02:03
Todd Pinkston
Absolutely.
01:02:03
Edwin Brown
Like, like, wait, you talk to God.
01:02:06
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:02:08
Edwin Brown
and And boy, do I talk a lot more to him as I basically took the red pill, the blue pill, can't remember which one it is, and basically like, hey, I'm all in, sir.
01:02:13
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:02:16
Edwin Brown
And so, but but even leading up to it, like, you know, You have your your normal, we call them the disciplines of grace, right? Like you're reading the word, you're listening to sermons, you're praying.
01:02:28
Edwin Brown
i like i just I knew that taking intentional time to so to spend with the Lord, both in reading the word and prayer, that's that's just a part of,
01:02:39
Edwin Brown
being in the family and walking with him. And so in the midst of being very busy and having multiple businesses and multiple children, like, and being involved in the church, like if if I'm not taking time to prioritize time to be with God, because I'm too busy,
01:02:55
Edwin Brown
out there doing things for God, then that was going to get way off track. And so I think it's Pete Scazzaro that talks about not doing more for God than you're doing, you know basically doing with him or being in relationship with him.
01:03:03
Todd Pinkston
yeah
01:03:07
Edwin Brown
I think we can have this real sense sometimes that like, even if it's like, hey, I'm in my quiet time, I'm to talk to God. And it's like, then I'm going to go do some stuff for you. And I'm to come back and report on it tomorrow. I don't think that's how it works.
01:03:19
Edwin Brown
I think, you know, really walking with our father is more like you're lost somewhere in some foreign country and you need directions and you pull over and you ask somebody, I don't know how to get there. And he's like, well, I'll just get in the car with you. I'll tell you when to turn.
01:03:33
Edwin Brown
Like that's, that's more of what it's like. And so God is going with me. In fact, embed even better, I might be like joining him out there when I'm doing these things with him, not for him, with him.
01:03:37
Todd Pinkston
He said,
01:03:45
Edwin Brown
And so
01:03:45
Steven J. Neuner
Mm-hmm.
01:03:46
Edwin Brown
Well, once I start realizing he's doing the work, it actually takes a little bit of pressure off me to go, i don't have time to spend an hour reading my Bible and praying every day. Like, I don't have time for that.
Balancing Faith and Business
01:03:55
Edwin Brown
I got to go this meeting and that meeting and go check on this.
01:03:58
Edwin Brown
And so honestly, it's like this basic prioritization of am I actually spending time pursuing a relationship with him or am I just like working for him? And, you know, honestly, It's probably a growing temptation for us the more successful we are in in the world, the more responsibility we have, that we have less and less time to be with him.
01:04:19
Edwin Brown
And what's been really interesting, in especially after that like crazy Desi period happened after we decided to give it away, was he is making that so clear to me. like So clear to me when, hey, we have this new objective business-wise we need to do. like We need to go find a way to get into this market.
01:04:36
Edwin Brown
And I'll just get a random email that's like, hey, I'm Joe from that market. And i was wondering if you want to come into it. And we're like, wait. How'd you know about that? And it's like, God is, he is out there working on our behalf, doing things that's like way better than we would have planned, opening doors for us.
01:04:54
Edwin Brown
I had a huge personnel issue with one of my leadership team members and I was driving back and I was like, from meeting with one of the problem people was like, I got, I got, I got no ability to fix this. Like, it's so far beyond my managerial skills.
01:05:05
Edwin Brown
Would you handle it? And two days later, he handled it. And by that person, like erupting in a meeting and quitting, And then it was in front of the whole team. and like It like took all the little things I knew were the challenges and it was just over.
01:05:17
Edwin Brown
And it was like, there's no way I could have planned that. you know just And so, you know, if you look back in the Old Testament, especially, but New Testament too, people aren't doing stuff for God.
01:05:28
Edwin Brown
Like, you know, David didn't go kill Goliath for God. Like God enabled David to go do that. Like God is going before David. God is going before Gideon. God is going before Moses.
01:05:39
Edwin Brown
He wasn't great at, you know, turning rods into snakes, like God is enabling him. And so once I realized, Hey, not only is this God's work, but like God's business, it's his work.
01:05:46
Steven J. Neuner
Thank you.
01:05:49
Edwin Brown
I'm joining him in it. He's a driving force. I was freed up to have enough margin in my life to pursue relationship with him. And in that relationship with him, what I found is like, man, he is right there.
01:06:01
Edwin Brown
waiting to talk to me, like waiting, excited, and wants to talk to me about all sorts of stuff, not just like super spiritual heavenly stuff, but like, hey, how do I handle this business meeting that coming up?
01:06:13
Edwin Brown
And he's like, let me bring something to mind. And that was exactly what I needed to know.
01:06:18
Todd Pinkston
Dude, that's incredible.
01:06:20
Steven J. Neuner
So good.
01:06:20
Todd Pinkston
and And there are so many nuggets that... Gosh, i hope I hope your story here and in other places just spreads like wildfire because, I mean, there's so much great to learn from it.
01:06:34
Todd Pinkston
i mean, just what you said about the the withness of God is like that's gold that that we miss so oftentimes and the tactics of life.
01:06:45
Todd Pinkston
Then the other thing you said, you know, for 25 years, you know, you had you had this, this lie this this desire of, you know, I don't want to live paycheck to paycheck. I don't want to end up with that stress.
01:07:00
Todd Pinkston
And then I love, you know, the statement you said of like the stress and fear I had of losing it. So you had everything. I mean, externally, it was all there. Like you had done it at 41.
01:07:12
Todd Pinkston
And when you take a true inventory of your heart, you're in no different spot. It's just that the stress had a, you know, it was now the stress of of of losing what you had gained and how it's not the external.
01:07:25
Edwin Brown
Yep.
01:07:27
Todd Pinkston
It's like, it's it's an evaluation deep inside of like, am I really there? Like, do I have the peace that I've been longing for? Because externally I've got my plan. i put the plan together and I rocked it.
01:07:38
Todd Pinkston
i mean, I executed it like crazy.
01:07:40
Todd Pinkston
They're handing me a trophy. I mean, I won the Super Bowl and
01:07:40
Edwin Brown
great
Spiritual Fulfillment over Material Success
01:07:44
Edwin Brown
yeah
01:07:44
Todd Pinkston
and they're and and it's not there.
01:07:46
Todd Pinkston
And so, and I know you said, no, it hasn't it hasn't been all roses since and and and and there's been problems. But what would you say like right now in 2025, like what's the day-to-day mindset of Edwin?
01:08:00
Todd Pinkston
Like how how are you approaching kind of like what's the internal dialogue look like?
01:08:07
Edwin Brown
So it's a good question to now and not when I was the middle the desert, in middle of desert, it'd be like, what did I sign up for? I know God's word.
01:08:13
Todd Pinkston
yeah
01:08:15
Edwin Brown
This is hard. Honestly, right now, I would say the internal dialogue is this steady conversation with him.
01:08:16
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:08:24
Edwin Brown
Hey, what are you doing?
01:08:26
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:08:27
Edwin Brown
And like, how can I be a part of it? We use this analogy, we're we're kicking around this analogy in my family that
01:08:29
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:08:32
Steven J. Neuner
Thank you.
01:08:34
Edwin Brown
You know, walking with the Lord. And I really like this, the passage, and i believe it's in John about abiding, abiding in the Lord, abiding in Jesus, like being with him all the time.
01:08:45
Edwin Brown
So we're using this analogy that like a relationship and really abiding is like having that GPS on your life.
01:08:49
Todd Pinkston
Mm-hmm.
01:08:53
Edwin Brown
where it's like God has this very specific planning once you go, like every single step of the day, and you're probably going to miss some of it and that's fine. He's like recalculating, gets you you like gets you back to, okay, I'm going to make this work. And so whether it's the conversation I'm having with my kid over breakfast or with my employee when I come in – or I'm going out to grab lunch and I run into somebody like all of this is his work. There's no there's no like sacred secular divide. It's just all of my life is a child of God in the kingdom of God joining him in his work.
01:09:26
Edwin Brown
And so it's this constant conversation like, hey, do you want you want me to say anything? Do you want me to do anything? And the, the amount of things that are happening that are just like, like blow my mind that I get to be a part of that is, is incredible.
01:09:41
Edwin Brown
Like absolutely incredible. And, and they're not like, Oh my gosh, you closed that million dollar deal. Although things like that are are actually continuing to happen. It's like, this person who is really sad and hurting and you just knew to say, hey, got a feeling something's still going on and they just break down in tears and you're like, I would have never known that except for that God revealed that to me because I'm walking with and talking with him. And that's where I think this idea of, you know, there's these two passages right next to each other.
01:10:10
Edwin Brown
You know man's walking across the field. He stumbles upon a treasure. He's not even looking for it. He stumbles upon a treasure and he looks and goes, wow, it's the most valuable thing I've ever seen.
01:10:18
Steven J. Neuner
but I was like, I don't know how to set for the first time
01:10:18
Edwin Brown
the Bible says he goes and enjoy, like in joy, sells everything he has and buys that field. Then it goes right into the pearl of great price. Like a a guy is searching for like this magnificent pearl. He finally finds it, sells all this stuff, buys that pearl.
01:10:35
Edwin Brown
Like I understand that deeply what he was talking about because the treasure that I live with daily is so much more valuable than eight, nine, $10 million. dollars It's so much more valuable than being thought well of in, you know you know, getting some sort of plaque for being entrepreneur of the year, all those kinds of things that I was probably holding up as fairly valuable.
01:10:56
Edwin Brown
you know, Paul talks about them as like, like like rubbish. Like I, like knowing Christ being found in him, being in a daily relationship with the father, it is, it is incredible. golden.
01:11:07
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:11:07
Edwin Brown
And so it really like people are like, what, what it really costs you?
01:11:09
Edwin Brown
I'm like, man, it didn't really cost me anything. Like I gained everything. You could put a price tag on it from a dollar perspective, but it didn't, it didn't feel like still evaluating whether this good deal or not. was like a no brainer because this life here feels like a completely different life than the life of like loving God and loving money and having this divided heart and feeling like you're kind of constantly in this tension.
01:11:36
Steven J. Neuner
So I want to follow on just in in all of this. Right. So one thing that struck me as you're sharing this story is how quickly we can have something that occurs and it becomes like a thing. It becomes a goal, even if we don't state it that way.
01:11:55
Steven J. Neuner
And then we can transform it really into other goals.
01:11:55
Edwin Brown
you
01:11:57
Steven J. Neuner
Right. So and but I want to put words in your mouth. So but but what I heard was. i don't want like I don't want to be like this part of my father. I don't want to be my father. Right.
01:12:07
Steven J. Neuner
And then that transformed into these other goals. Right. And so I'm just really curious with all of this, how how you think about goal setting in general now, like what's your what's your what's your take on it?
01:12:21
Todd Pinkston
Hmm.
01:12:24
Steven J. Neuner
What's your thought on it? Do you do you you still do it? do you How do you approach it differently?
01:12:34
Steven J. Neuner
Right? to
01:12:35
Edwin Brown
So, yeah, that's great question.
01:12:36
Steven J. Neuner
To discern that out. Yeah.
01:12:38
Edwin Brown
So the we and my partner, this is like a thing we're going through together and the Lord has really been bringing in. So like there there are four of us in leadership of the organization now. We meet every Monday, pray for an hour together, start off the week and jump into it. And so we're like,
01:12:53
Edwin Brown
we're talking through and wrestling through these things together and one of the ideas that uh andy our cto came up with he's like i wish i could make or he's a tech guy so like i'm gonna make an app called the abidometer and every day you just check in on scale zero to ten like where you and you're abiding with the lord and your abidometer below seven you're not allowed to make any decisions like you just have to spend time with the lord and then we can talk about it and it really is it's like
01:13:14
Steven J. Neuner
That's a million dollar opportunity to give away.
01:13:17
Edwin Brown
It's a pretty basic app.
01:13:18
Steven J. Neuner
It's great. Yeah.
01:13:19
Edwin Brown
You guys listening out there, you can run with it. Just share it for free. No, it feels to me like mike but yeah Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and I'll take care of all this other stuff. and He was not specifically talking about clothes and food. He's talking about the things we can be anxious about.
01:13:36
Steven J. Neuner
So one of the priorities is, you know, what do you really have to be able to get comfortable to go into the rankings of the game, including your life and your humility of life?
01:13:36
Edwin Brown
And so my top priority is, am I abiding with the Lord? Now, when i and I feel like I am, then I'm comfortable to go into the work he's given me, including things like annual multi-year planning.
01:13:49
Edwin Brown
Because you know what?
01:13:49
Steven J. Neuner
Because you're like, think that people that you're planning are going to come up with difficulty of life through the ancestors.
01:13:50
Edwin Brown
I think that the multi-year plan we're going to come up with is the multi-year plan he wants us to come up with because we're abiding and we're evaluating things through the lens of like me walking with the Lord and seeing things through his eyes versus fear and all these other things that we can be making choices through.
01:14:02
Steven J. Neuner
and these other things, and the choice of each other.
01:14:05
Edwin Brown
So do we still make plans?
01:14:05
Steven J. Neuner
So, do you always get the points?
01:14:07
Edwin Brown
Absolutely.
01:14:08
Steven J. Neuner
Absolutely. Can we play this play as lightning?
01:14:08
Edwin Brown
Do we hold those plans lightly? Absolutely.
01:14:11
Steven J. Neuner
I'm so lightning.
01:14:11
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:14:11
Edwin Brown
like
01:14:12
Steven J. Neuner
I don't know.
01:14:12
Edwin Brown
I was, you know, I planned to be in Steven's class on Friday,
01:14:12
Steven J. Neuner
I guess I had to be in the same place. I was so afraid of it. My goal was like, yeah, it actually was like a plenty of morning to eat.
01:14:17
Edwin Brown
But I also had planned an interaction with a guy who wanted to hear more about talking to God right before it.
01:14:20
Steven J. Neuner
I've done it before, and it was very much in the middle of that first meeting and talking about it.
01:14:22
Edwin Brown
And I was very much in the middle of that first meeting talking to God going, hey, if you want me just to hang out in this hotel room the entire day and blow off Stephen, I'll do it. And you know what? I know Stephen will be pumped if I do it because I know what Stephen's priorities are, right?
01:14:33
Steven J. Neuner
Yes.
01:14:36
Edwin Brown
Well, that's not what he did. He just, we were a little bit late. But it was one of those things that's like, yeah, i got a plan because I have 180 people that are responsible. I'm responsible for leading under kind of the stewardship, like in that stewardship mentality of the Lord.
01:14:50
Edwin Brown
But here's the big thing. My fear of choosing the wrong thing and blowing it all up and carrying that weight makes me like I hear you want to about change. i could I used to not be able to, before we business away, I could not go to sleep and wake up after four and go back to
01:15:01
Steven J. Neuner
I said, I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep.
01:15:06
Edwin Brown
It just didn't matter. Brain's on. That's it.
01:15:09
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep.
01:15:09
Edwin Brown
I can go to sleep. I can go to sleep.
01:15:11
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep.
01:15:11
Edwin Brown
i can wake up.
01:15:12
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep.
01:15:12
Edwin Brown
I can go the bathroom, do my business, go back to sleep.
01:15:14
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep.
01:15:15
Edwin Brown
Like, that is a miracle because I have, that's when, I mean, it's relationship.
01:15:15
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep. I'm going to sleep.
01:15:19
Todd Pinkston
and That's unstuck and alive. If there is one thing.
01:15:22
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep.
01:15:22
Todd Pinkston
Yes.
01:15:24
Steven J. Neuner
I'm going to sleep.
01:15:25
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:15:26
Edwin Brown
Like I can sleep till seven 30, eight o'clock if I need to sleep.
01:15:27
Steven J. Neuner
I love it, man.
01:15:30
Edwin Brown
Right. Because i don't wake up and immediately think it's all on me. I better figure this out. I wake up and go, Hey father, what do you want me to do today?
01:15:34
Todd Pinkston
yeah
01:15:36
Edwin Brown
And he's like, Hey, you keep sleeping. i'm like, great. Cause I'm still kind of tired.
01:15:41
Steven J. Neuner
love it man Well, I, you know, Edwin, I cannot thank you enough with just the generosity that of you sharing just so openly what God's doing in your life.
01:15:52
Todd Pinkston
yes
01:15:54
Steven J. Neuner
And I meant everything I said on the front end, man. I just really, really have grown to love you and just really value our our relationship.
01:16:03
Steven J. Neuner
And I cannot wait to see what he's going to continue in your life because I, you
01:16:07
Todd Pinkston
yes
01:16:09
Steven J. Neuner
you're You're just continue to be faithful. So praise God. And thank you for coming to share with us today.
01:16:18
Edwin Brown
Thank you guys for having me. it's It's probably the most fun thing I get to do is just to tell people what God's done. When I got to go around to each of my business units and tell them little bit of an abbreviated version of the story, it was like the most fun I'd had at work in a long time.
01:16:24
Todd Pinkston
Yeah.
01:16:32
Edwin Brown
So i will I will tell this story to anybody that wants to listen.
01:16:32
Todd Pinkston
yeah
01:16:35
Edwin Brown
So thank you for letting me come on here and have a little bit of a platform to tell it.
01:16:40
Todd Pinkston
You got it man. thanks for Thanks for being here. I hope that, again, whether here or other places, that people hear the story. It's encouraging. It's challenging. And it's a story about you know truly following the Lord and and and what stewardship and what dependence looks like. And so, brother, thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for your obedience blessing us.
01:16:41
Steven J. Neuner
Love it, man.
01:16:59
Todd Pinkston
May your tribe increase.
01:17:02
Edwin Brown
Thank you so much. good to see you guys.
01:17:05
Steven J. Neuner
Thanks, brother.
01:17:06
Todd Pinkston
Thank you.