The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 003 – An Interview With Casey Graham
Well hello everybody, welcome to episode 3 of the podcast. My name is Kerry Newhoff. It's so good to have you here, man. We're having fun in these early days of the podcast. I'm really glad you're here. Hey, it is now a weekly podcast. That's right. Our whole idea of doing this every other month lasted two weeks. So anyway, it's really great that we're going to be able to offer you a new episode every Tuesday. And what's fun is we're not only now on iTunes, but for all of you Android fans, we're on Stitcher and just recently added to TuneIn and look for some more platforms coming up in the next few weeks. Hey, I don't know what you're doing right now is you're listening. Maybe you're heading off to work or you're at the gym or you're I don't know, Raken Leaves or something like that. It's fall. I just got back from Seattle and from California. It was so awesome. I met so many of you on the Orange Tour there. The Seattle stop was amazing. I mean, California is just always amazing as well. Both areas are and met over 1,000 different leaders between the two stops. And that's on the Orange Tour. And I'll tell you a little bit about how we can connect a little bit later on, because I'm going to be in Washington soon, Washington DC. And then the next stop after that is Indianapolis, where over 1500 leaders are gathering for that tour stop. Crazy. So having a lot of fun on that this fall. And it's so encouraging, just honestly why I love meeting you and hearing from you or when people shoot me a note. It's so encouraging to see what you're doing to lead better and to advance the mission of the local church. And that's sort of my goal. I just want to help you lead like never before. That's what this podcast was about. And it was really cool because when I was there, if you heard episode two, it was with Perry Noble. And Perry was just so raw and authentic about his burnout and depression and anxiety and even suicidal thoughts. And while I was in California, there was a woman who gathered for the leaders lunch who just said, you know what? She hadn't heard the episode. It was just released that day. It was like, you know, I just don't know whether I can keep going. She says our church is 500 people. It's growing. I have people asking me for things all the time. And you could just tell she was right on the cusp of burnout. I mean, we were able to some of the leaders in the room. We prayed for her. We encouraged her. I think she listened to the episode. And what was so cool hearing from so many of you is that was just practical help. So that's sort of the goal in all of this. Thank you so much. And hey, just before you jump into today's episode, for everybody who has left a rating in iTunes so far, there's over 90 and counting between the Canadian and US stores. Thank you. That really, really helps get the podcast in front of more leaders. And that's sort of my goal. I just want to help as many leaders as possible. So if you haven't done that today, could you do that? Just jump in and leave us an honest rating and review in iTunes. And that would be amazing. Same deal with Stitcher too. We can start leaving ratings there as well. So that's super helpful. Now, I want to talk to you about today's guest. I'm so excited to have him on the podcast. I met our guest, Casey Graham about three years ago for the first time. And I actually hired him to come on up and help us through a financial problem. And if you've ever, you know, started a business or led a church, you know that money can always be an issue. At that time, he was leading something, which was really in the early stages called the giving rocket. So Casey flew up. We hung out. We really connected on a personal level, but we sat down at our dining room table and kind of reimagined stewardship, like how to handle money as a church from the ground up. And we were doing fairly well as a church. We had a budget in our case of just over a million dollars, but it was one of those treading water seasons. And I know if you're in a startup, you're like, I would never tread water if I had a million dollars. I understand that. But whether you're dealing with 50,000, 100,000 or 10 million, you know, there wasn't the margin for growth because we were a certain size. We had a certain staff and it was just like, man, if we just had a little bit more, we could really get going. So Casey and I created something that we ended up calling thrive. And Casey really challenged me. He said, carry as a pastor, you're great at informing, you're great at inspiring, and you're terrible at asking. And I thought, okay, that's fair. You're right. I get really uncomfortable talking about that stuff. And well, fast forward, here we are three years later. And our church now has doubled the giving that we had three years ago, which is unbelievable. We are into a building project, which is something we really needed. We've been a portable church with almost 1000 people for six years. So it's time to, you know, move into the next phase. But that was so liberating. And Casey's just got a way of helping church leaders. Since that time, his company has grown. It was giving rocket and now it's the rocket company. And there is preaching rocket, volunteer rocket, worship rocket, and giving rocket as well. He also launched business rocket last year. Inc. magazine named into the top 5000 companies in the Inc. 5000 list. He's one of the thousand fastest growing companies in America today, according to Inc. And the rocket company won the 2013 infusion soft marketer of the year, which is just crazy. I mean, it's amazing how God is using Casey in the rocket company. And Casey's got a passion for both the church and business. And that's what we're going to be talking about. So he's always challenged me. We become really great friends. And one of the things I love about Casey is even as God is growing his platform, Casey is determined that his character is going to grow faster than his platform. So that's one of the things I love about him. He's got incredible business insight. If you're a business leader or maybe you're a business leader who serves in the local church as a volunteer or an incredible insight for church leaders, we're going to talk about a few things today, but let's jump right in. And here's Casey Graham, founder and CEO of the rocket company. Well, welcome Casey Graham to the podcast. Casey's one of my best friends and just an incredible leader that I've learned so much from over the last few years. Casey, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me, Kerry. Hey, Casey, you've got really a unique position in the church and in the business world because you lead giving rocket. You've also worked in a church, but last year you stepped out and launched business rocket and work with all these entrepreneurs, plus you've got kind of a unique relationship with some Fortune 500 people and all of that. So from your unique perspective, what are some similarities you've seen between effective church leaders, ministry leaders and effective business leaders? Yeah, I think the biggest thing I see is that's the same as they think what's next, not just what's now. And they have a constant what should be in the future picture in their mind. And they communicate that picture very clearly to where we're going and from staff, volunteers, key leaders, and for people in the business world, for employees, for partners, for vendors. But that what's next mentality is huge. That's one. And then the second one, I think, is that both are on a mission for impact. And I see that a lot of times the pastors are on impact a lot of times for other people, and a lot of the business owners are a lot of impact for themselves. And the bottom line and that kind of thing. But both of them have a drive and a desire to accomplish more, do more, and be more than they currently are today. So it's kind of a drivenness. Is that it? If I had to summarize it, it's what's next instead of what's now and then a desire to make an impact. So let's drill down on that. Do you think sometimes humility becomes a stumbling block for church leaders because we don't want to make it about us and we don't want to be too ambitious? And where does that come from? Why don't we see more entrepreneurialism in the church? I think we don't because there comes a point in every organization where there was a growth curve at some point. And it got to the point where the leader could take it or if it was the leader before that leader could take it or the pastor before that. And it's just really comfortable. And if you're going to push to the next level, it's going to take practical things like there's going to be somebody that gets laid off. There's somebody's ministry budget that's going to be cut. There's there's changes that are going to have to take place. And I think it's almost a false humility. It's almost we want to avoid the pain of growth more than it is that we don't want to grow. Boy, there's a lot there. Wow. I think you've got a lot of people kind of reeling. And the other reality, let's be honest, because I mean, you're working not with a lot of publicly traded companies, but privately held companies. At the end of the day, you know, let's say you have 20 employees or something like that, you've got 20 people to manage. So you're talking to church leaders here, and maybe they have 100, 200, 1000 or more people that they're leading. Like when I fire somebody in the church, it's got ripples that impact all kinds of people are when I cut a program or when somebody doesn't get money. I mean, you've you've lived that reality because you've been at a larger church. So how do you navigate that? Or is it just you got to look hard, you got to pray, you got to look in the mirror and go, no, this is just something I got to do. Like, yeah, go ahead. No, no, no, I'm just trying to navigate that because I mean, I guess I've made a lot of tough decisions in my time and leadership, but I still wince every time I have to do something like that. Like it's never fun. No, and that's why I texted you yesterday when I had to make a tough decision and said, I can't do this alone, Carrie. Please hold me accountable to being black and white in the situation, not gray. And the reason that I had to do that is because I'm at a point where we've got to grow and we've got to make some tough decisions. And to me, the decisions I've gotten tougher as we've gotten bigger. And I think the same thing is true in churches and church leaders is that we keep thinking it's going to get easier and easier and easier. But the reality is, is it just gets more people, more money, more problems. And it's not all bad and negative. It's it's it's the good side as well. But I just think at the end of the day, every effective leader, the question is about similarities and the the the leader that is willing to take and make the tough call confront the brutal facts, but also look at all of the problems with hope and optimism toward the future that leader grows while the other leader doesn't. So that's a great example too. Let's go back to that because, I mean, Casey and I text all the time and I bring you my garbage. You bring me your garbage. I mean, we become great friends. But for me, that was such an easy thing to do because you text me, it's like, I got to make this tough call and we won't talk about what it was. But it was it was a hard call. It's a hard call for anybody. I looked at that from the outside because I don't work in your organization. And it was like, dude, that's a no brainer. Like, just do it. And all you needed was somebody on the outside to say, you're absolutely doing the right thing. Go for it. And I think so many ministry leaders live life alone. They maybe that's a great executable. You just need somebody from the outside looking in. And I'm fortunate to have those people in my life who go carry. Pull the trigger. Come on. What are you waiting for? Yeah. And Carrie, I think we're we are talking about the balance here as I spend time as a CEO and you spend time as a pastor. There are people inside of these people's church or outside the church or business owners or people that aren't it doesn't have to be another pastor. It can be somebody that's just just somebody that they have a relational connection with. They can just say, Hey, make the call do the thing you're you're going in the right direction. And when you sent the text back, I picked up the phone and I kind of just opened the cage to the 500 pound gorilla and tackled it. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't as bad as you thought, was it? No, I mean, it was way less than you thought it would be. And it was totally the right call. So that's cool. Okay. There's there's some unique things between business leaders and pastors, but let's drill down. What are some other differences you've seen between church leaders and business leaders? Anything else come to mind? Yeah, I've got three that I've thought about in preparation for this. And here's what it is. I think business business leaders think revenue because they want to. Church leaders think revenue because they have to. Oh, oh, stop talking. I mean, wow, you just own me on that. You're right. I think revenue because I have to, not because I want to. Right. And this, this is a big, big, big deal that I feel like has got to change. And it is changing in church. Now, I'm not saying that I'm not saying that the church leaders need to wake up and need to be driven by how much revenue can they have and how much money they can make. That's not the point. But the point is every healthy and growing organization has to have money. It's just the way it is. And money is kind of the lifeblood of an organization. It's what allows you to hire the people to get in the next facility to make the calls you need to make for the future. And so business owners know that we have quarterly sales objectives. We have monthly sales objectives. We know that revenue is important. And church has just kind of set a budget, which is funny to me because a budget is what you spend. So church leaders spend more time focusing on what they're going to spend the next year than what they're actually going to make or put in the bank. And so it's a backwards thing. And so that's why so many church leaders are broke and not just broke personally, but their churches broke is because we spend so much time just going, well, we're broke. This is the way it is. And we're passive and we're not aggressive as relates to going out and getting the money that's there. Well, let me just echo that. You're right. And busted. I mean, you know, we were talking about something that happened in your life yesterday. Something that happened in my life, just before I jumped on this call, I sent off an email. And our elders and I made a $27,000 decision today. We had an opportunity come up. It was $27,000. Now, we have money in the bank and everything like that. We decided not to do it because we weren't sure we had the extra $27,000. Now, I think that was a right decision. But part of me as a leader is like, gosh, I just, I just wish we had that extra $27,000 to make that call because the opportunity would get wider. And we'll put this in the show notes. But there's that Ted talk by Dan Palata. I think I've got his name right where he talks about what if we funded churches and not for prophets. He's not even a Christian. But what if we, what if we funded churches and not for prophets, the way we fund Walmart or business or Fortune 500 companies, wouldn't the world be a better place? And you carry that mindset, but you get pushed back from that in church world for that sometimes. Because we think so small. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's not even, it's not even, I don't know if it's about small as it's about, we think sometimes bad about it. And we think that money is, is, is evil. And that it's, it's, it's wrong. If we, if we, if our church is overflowing in money, then we must be doing something wrong. And that we look at those big churches or the TV preacher and we say, well, they did that. So if we have extra money, then I'm going to turn into that guy. And all of that stuff, all of that stuff is basically hogwash and bad thinking. And so I think that's one of the differences. Another difference to us all carry that as I thought about this is that business leaders think results. Church leaders think relationships. And as I started thinking about that, the difference is that so many of our churches is like, I wonder if the people listening right now, does their staff people, do they know what they're supposed to accomplish and have like any goals attached to their job? Or is it just, if they drank some coffee with some people and everybody feels good about them being around staff, is that okay? And so I'm not, you know, and I'm just, I'm just, I'm saying this is a difference. And I'm not saying one's right and one's wrong. Relationships and results matter. They're both have to be there. But sometimes we air once a, and on the business side, we air too much on making money and we burn out people and we say, we don't care who's next, but the next guy in. And so I think there's a difference that I see there definitely. Wow. That's huge. Yep. I can think of a lot of situations that come to mind when I think about ministry being just coffee and relationships. And if there's progress, there's progress, and if there's no progress, there's, there's none. So cool. Third difference. This is great. Is that I think business leaders utilize innovation and church leaders don't. And here's what I mean by that. And I don't want to make a sweeping statement. I would say, most business owners that are growing and thriving business utilize innovation, most churches, they do not utilize innovation. Technology, what's on the cutting edge of reaching the next new thing or next new people. And what I see all the time is that we spend so much time investing in staff people, staff, staff positions that manage people, that we don't think that we don't think about R&D technology, the things that can fast forward everything in our church, we don't have budget going to any of that. We don't have budget going to an outreach person where their goal is not to do a bus ministry or go knock on doors, but their goal is to leverage where people are, which is Facebook, which is Twitter, which is on their email, which is at work, you know, that kind of thing. And so I see a big difference here in another one's content marketing that churches don't leverage that they produce content every single week that they could reach the local community with before they even show up at their church. But we don't leverage that the content marketing side of things because we just don't think about it. We don't really lean in the innovation where we just go, you know what, that may not work for us. And the last thing I would say is just websites, you know, most websites I go to look like, you know, I went to one other day, I had like this sheep and like a dove coming down and like, you know, and I'm serious. The dove was eating the sheep. Yeah, you know, I know what you mean. I know what you mean. Anyway, I just, I just say, I say this passionately not to not to get on to or not to be a part of it. But if you're a church leader listening, this is there's so much innovation available to help you accomplish more than you've ever thought accomplished, more than accomplished, but then just hiring somebody to manage more people. Let's go there. Okay, because I resonate with that. I've been looking at church websites and we're redesigning ours this year. And we just came off a one day retreat. And I was telling you about this after our one day retreat that I want to start, and this is like a crazy idea. It's not even fully formed. But I want to start doing our social media and content marketing as though we were a business, except I'm going to leverage it for relationships. And you've had tremendous success. So a little bit more background on Casey. You were the 2013 infusion soft marketer of the year, the rocket company. You have probably used email marketing as well as anybody I know, and have had, you know, national recognition for that. And you've also used Facebook marketing exceptionally well. Now, most churches have a website which really is a glorified business card or some kind of static, like no, no interaction. Some churches have a blog. We all have email lists because that's how we communicate with people, but we don't use them. And most churches have some kind of Twitter or Facebook or social media presence, maybe Instagram for a few. But it's really underdeveloped and you're right, we don't staff for it. So let's drill down on that. Is email seriously the most overlooked tool that church leaders have in your view? And how could church leaders? I mean, email doesn't even have a great reputation. Most of us hate it. But how would you use it to actually make a connection with people for the purposes of the gospel and ministry? Well, and in preparation for this, I looked at some stats and, you know, Jesus went where people were. He will people are Rick Warren and purpose driven live talking about fishing, and you have to go to the right pond and use the right lure at the right time to catch the right fish kind of thing. And I started thinking about that and talking about this. And I don't necessarily know if it's email as much as is mobile, is that they have their phone in their hand. And I have my phone in my head. You can probably see your phone or fill your phone where you are right now. Right here. Yeah. And I've got I've got mine right beside me. And I looked at some stats and that most most people, the very first thing they do in the morning when they wake up, if they have a smartphone, is they check their email. Yep. 8% of people check their email right after sex. Isn't that interesting? Absolutely. But I'm just, I mean, think about this for a second. And then, and then when you look at everybody that's listening to this, and if you're in your car right now and you're at a stoplight and you're listening to this, I want you to look to your left to your right and look at what everybody's doing up to stoplights. Yeah, even if it's illegal, even if it's illegal, it doesn't matter. They're doing it. So the point is that's where our people are. And that's where the people are that are in our church and outside of our church. And the one thing that they're scrolling through and the one thing they're looking at, there's two sides of it. One is social media and two is email. It's every, it is the place that everybody says, I have email and they look at email every single day of their lives. And so it is where people are. And so the reason why I'm passionate about it is because it's the best place to reach people. Yeah. Go ahead. We were talking about that. So I didn't mean to jump in there. But I mean, you have had tremendous success with the rocket company in terms of email marketing. And a lot of us look at email as a necessary evil, right? I'm not, I'm not a huge email fan. And yet you listen to anybody in marketing today and they're telling you if you actually want to make money online. And again, that's a business mindset, not a ministry mindset. But the money is in the email list. And so a lot of church leaders, even if you're pastoring a church of 100, you're pastoring a church of 1000, you're sitting on dozens to hundreds. Some of you are sitting on thousands of email addresses that once in a while we send out a note, Hey, we got this new series coming or here's your tax receipt. And that's about all we do with it. Right. So what is the potential in an email list for church? Yeah. Well, let's go internal first. We spend so much time focusing on the Sunday morning experience, which is only one hour. But I think there is just as much power in reaching somebody on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. that is sitting at their desk with their email open, that comes from Pastor Kerry, an email comes out with a really good headline, not church newsletter that nobody wants to read. Nobody reads your church newsletters. Right. You know, you won't even read your church newsletters. It's very true. So it's a really good headline that says from a note from Pastor Kerry, check this out or whatever. And then there's just a video in there to imagine this, just a small video and say, Hey, this is a two minute video. And I just, I want to talk to you just for a second. And they click over, they watch a two minute video. And on the video, you just share a story about somebody that got baptized this weekend. And you just talk to them right there. And you say, I know it's Tuesday morning. Oh, it's 10 a.m. But what you're doing in your office today matters. And there's more stories that you can connect with. So I want you to think about who in your office or who around can be the next story today. That is so simple. You can shoot it on an iPhone. You can have it on a landing, a webpage. And you can send an email out and cast vision for outreach on a Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock. I could go through every ministry area of the church. I could go through volunteer inspiration. I can go through getting people to give online on Wednesday night and nine o'clock while they're watching a TV show and click the link to give online for that week. I can go on and on and on that we have 24/7 access for inspiration, discipleship, motivation, and all of that. It's not we can't just live in the Sunday morning environment anymore. We've got to understand that we live in a digital world. Mm hmm. That is so good. And people think, oh, well, I don't want to bother people. But if you take it from that perspective, and I hope you caught the principal under that, you're helping somebody like you're you're helping them connect the dots on a Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. Another thing we found really helpful is sometimes we'll just do what we think is helpful content. They call it content marketing. If you follow copy, blogger, people like that. And it's basically like five ways to help your child adjust to daylight savings time or seven styles of parenting that might be hurting more than helping. And like people love that. And when they're done, they spend two minutes reading it, a minute reading it. And they're like, oh, that's something that really helped me in the day to day. Well, why can't churches do that? Yeah. And think about the person in your database because the majority of your database doesn't attend church every week. Exactly. So think about the person who reads the seven steps of thing, a parenting article. And it's just a helpful article. The chances if they're going to pick a church that weekend, if they're going to be reminded, if they're going to come back, they're coming to your place, and they need to come back. And so, and the point is even that you ask them to come back, they just it's it's value. You have provided more value to them. And that's what we do in content marketing is that we just give away as much content as we possibly have. And everybody listening to this has content in them, because you're producing it in sermons and curriculum and different things that you do, taking that content, putting it in just a simple little email. But that's internal to reach people external. I know that's where we're going to go here, just kind of wrap this thing up in a second. But that's a whole another story of I have a passion and a vision to see what you're going to do carry with your church. The way to reach the people that don't go to your church is not bus ministries and you know that anymore. The new bus ministry is Facebook marketing and email marketing in your community. Well, that's true because everybody uses it, right? I mean, 95% of people within a half hour drive of any church listening are they have email and they're on Facebook. And you know, you can say, well, what about the 22 year old? Sure. What about the 22 year old? But at the end of the day, you know, they've got Instagram and there are different ways to reach them. So one of the ideas that we have, and we haven't done this yet, at least at the time of of taping this interview is we're going to redesign our whole blog. There's going to be an email capture with a free ebook. And basically, you know, the ebook could be like five ways to kickstart your devotional life or five common questions about God. And it'll just be something we write short, sweet, but you get their email address. And then you set up an auto responder sequence to actually have a dialogue and it lands you for people who really click and engage. And maybe that's 10% doesn't really matter. But it lands you at Starbucks having a conversation about life and faith and God. And they're all these people in our case, over 350,000 people within a 30 minute drive of our campuses who don't attend church on Sunday. Well, if you reach 10% of them and 1% of them ended up in a growing relationship with Jesus. Oh my goodness. Are you kidding me? So how do you do that? Like talk a little bit more about email and outsiders. And then you've done a lot of research in the last year about Facebook and take us there. Yeah. So let's just go with Facebook, for instance, that everybody, not everybody, but most people listening to this are going to look at Facebook today. The average person looks at Facebook about five times a day on their phone and that kind of thing. And so they constantly open it and they have something called sponsored post that is in all of our news feeds. And that's how Facebook makes money. And so the sponsor post has become the biggest opportunity, not only for businesses, but if you're a church listening to this, it's the biggest opportunity for you to pinpoint by for you, Carrie. There's 330, 350,000 people. You can get in every one of their news feeds, every one of them. And not only just in a geographical region, because of the power of Facebook and what they have in something called a power editor, which we obviously can't get into today, but it allows you to go in and say, not only do I want the people in this radius, but I want to know who likes the local strip club. Right. No, I really want to reach people. Yeah, I want to know who likes this page. So you can say, not only are we going to get these people in this area, but we're going to get the people that like these things, we're going to find people that were recently divorced, or whatever. And so let's go down that track. So we got some of this divorced, recently divorced, and we're going to reach out to those people because they're hurting. Okay, you can put an ad in front of them. A church can do this. Of the pastor doing a one minute little video that says, hey, so many people at our church have been through what you've been through. And my name is pastor, so and so, and I just want to say that we've got hope. And so we've created a thing called the seven steps of hope recovery divorce guide. It's completely free. You just give us your name and your email address. We're not going to, we're going to send you seven emails to them, what you're going to do or whatever. And we're going to let you know the seven steps to blah, blah, you know, recovering from a divorce. That is so huge. Yeah, and think about that. So your next message series, let's just say it's on money. You can go out to people that likes that stuff on money. You can, you can find whatever you want to find. You can pinpoint those people, get in front of their newsfeed, have them click off of a Facebook ad, and then go to what's called a landing page where you get their name, email address, and then you start what's a digital relationship through email with them after that. See, that is so cool. And I hope people caught that. You can target. It's not just, you know, because the problem with old media is it's broadcasting. You buy an ad on the radio, you hope it's going to reach some people, you buy an ad on TV, you hope it's going to reach some people. It's incredibly expensive, but literally for dozens of dollars, not hundreds, not thousands. You can buy a targeted ad and actually specify the demographic. Like I'm going after 35 to 45 year old males who are recently divorced, who like strip clubs, or who love hockey, or baseball, or whatever, and you can hyper target it. So it only shows up in their newsfeeds. And age, so like, if you're not reaching 65 year olds, you take all the 65, you can pinpoint it down exactly. Now here's another powerful feature. And this is just, we're kind of casting the vision here. I know everybody's not going to take this and know how to do it, but we can, we can come back later and do that. But you can take your email list that you currently have of your church members, upload it to Facebook, and put your weekly announcements or anything you want to say to your church, because it has the emails attached and it will put in their newsfeed, you will come up only for the people that you have in your database. I see I didn't know that. That's really cool. And that's the power editor feature in Facebook. Where'd you learn a lot of this? Like if there's a quick link that people could go to, because we'll put it in the show notes. I know I've heard Amy Porterfield talk about it, for example, on her podcast and some of the stuff she does, but... Yeah, I would say the Facebook Express course by Perry Marshall. Okay. Facebook Express by Perry Marshall. And let me just share one more, and then I've got to, just because when you upload that list, Kerry, of people that go to your church, you can also create a group of people that it knows that are like those people and their friends that you can put ads in front of their friends to invite their friends to church, and you can help do that for them, because it automatically knows who their friends are. See, okay. That is powerful, because sometimes when we buy targeted ads on Facebook, it'll be, we want this to show up in the newsfeeds of people who like our page, and the people who are friends with them. You can specify that. And then what happens is, you know, they might see this can access thing in the case of our church, or they see your church, but they don't really think about it. It's sort of like advertising. They may never click, but then when their friend says, "Hey, I go to this church, and I would love for you to come with me one Sunday," and we'll go for lunch after. It's like, "What's your church? Connects us. Where have I heard of that?" Like, I don't know. It creates top-of-the-mind awareness, right? Absolutely. It is so powerful. All right. Well, that is neat. And you know what? I have a feeling you'll be the first repeat guest on this podcast, so we'll have to come back and drill down on this at some point, Casey. This is just so much fun. And so let's say a church says, "Okay, I don't have big money for this," and I know that's an excuse, right? Because one of the things you do with giving rocket is you help people find more money for ministry. But I do have an email list. Where would you start? If there's like one step that people could take today, what would you have them do with either their email list or Facebook? Yeah. Well, I would, most church management solutions are not good at sending out emails at all. So I would go outside the church management space, and I would use like MailChimp, which is very, or Aweber. Those are two systems that are extremely cheap, but they're very good. Upload your email list there first. That's step one. Step two is I would craft out of content you've already done, which may be your last sermon or couple sermon series. Some practical how to know more than about 500 words that you would send an email out to the list once a week for four weeks to just get some content out there. And then on the email, the last thing I would say is let's just say it was on family and you do the five steps for family or whatever. At the end, have them press reply. Say press reply and tell me the one thing you learn from this email. And everybody listen, this will be amazed at the amount of people that press reply and start an email conversation with somebody on your staff or if it's a small church, use the pastor can do it. And you can have a conversation during the week with people and you'll just see the power of connecting with people all week long, not just on Sundays. I think there's a secondary benefit with that. That's a really tangible example. But not only when you when you start to get replies, people tell you things, but you discover the pain points in people's lives. I mean, a lot of the time as a pastor, you sit there going, I wonder what people are struggling with. Well, I think they're struggling with this. And I think they're struggling with that. But at the end of the day, when you get into a conversation, they give you information and it's open ended. And you go, Oh my gosh, like families are struggling with marriage or divorce or or my kids have the sense of entitlement or there's an addiction or cutting issue going on. And all of a sudden you discover this and it's a gateway into ministry that doesn't normally happen on a Sunday morning. So the payoff can be huge in terms of actually affecting life change in people's lives. Well, that's a doable thing. And I think the other thing, if you're like, because I know your small church, all that Mailchimp's free, isn't it? For the first couple hundred email addresses, I'm on there. And I think it was and you like it's almost free. And then you pay if you have a bigger list. Like, I mean, I have 5000 email addresses on my list. I think it costs me 50 bucks a month. So I mean, that's totally affordable for anybody. You can pay that out of pocket. Okay, couple of big wrap up questions, Casey, because this is this time is just flying. But it's an awful lot of fun. A lot of church staff are feeling overwhelmed. And there are some business leaders listening in on this podcast who don't work on churches who are getting fired up. Why do you think so much of the potential business leader expertise that sits in a service every week gets overlooked? Like, if there is some way to bring these two worlds together, church leaders and business leaders, why do you think business people go to church every Sunday and never get tapped on the shoulder, never figure out, Hey, this is a place where I could use my gifts to leverage them for the kingdom. What do you think that happens? Because most churches ask people to work with their backs, not their brains. Wow. And we don't look at volunteer areas in the standpoint of how people think as much as what we want them to do. And so we spend time asking, can you keep kids? Can you serve coffee? Can you be a greeter? Can you work in the parking ministry? And again, all of those things are fantastic. But a business leader, a business owner, and some will, but the guys that are untapped talents out there in your church, they're looking for a problem to solve, not a whole to feel. And so good. Because that's what they do every day. And it's just boring to show up and just do the same thing. It doesn't mean that they don't love Jesus and they're not a servant. It just means that you're not casting a big enough vision for them to serve with their brain and to do what they're best at, which is solve problems. And so I would say, we're missing it because there's no opportunities for people to serve with their brain to serve with the problem solving. If there's a marketing guy or a web guy or an SEO guy or whatever sitting out in the service, you know, they're just kind of blah, they're they're bored. That's a really good point. We had a guy come to faith earlier this year, who started attending last year, totally on church, very high capacity leader. And I put together a social media team to redo our whole social media. And I thought, you know, it's easy to do it myself because it's something I do. But let's build a team. I got challenged to build a team. So I put the call out on social media, because that's, you know, you don't stand up on a Sunday and go, Hey, if you're interested in social media, if you are, you're already on social media. And the one guy who is so promising in this area, he came to me and he said, you know what, I have been looking for a chance to jump in for the last six months. And I've never found anything that really worked. And we had asked, even from the platform, and he said, but when I heard you say social media and you just wanted to think through it, I'm in. And this guy turns out he had managed the G8 summit, you know, those global summit and presidents and prime ministers, he managed it for Toronto EMS services. And he did it using Twitter and a whole bank of monitors. And using social media, he had figured out more about where the problems and the riots were than the police had in their intelligence. And now he's sitting around our boardroom going, I didn't know where to fit in until you told me I could fit in here by bringing my brain. That's a crazy good story. That's perfect example. Yeah. Yeah. So I can see that. And then why do you think business leaders are a little bit afraid to dig into church leadership if they are? When you say dig in, what do you mean? Well, I mean, like say volunteer kind of go, hey, I'm I'm in. Why do you think business leaders will go week after week after week? Is it just the flip side of the same thing? Yeah. But I think the other side, this is the side where I get on to business owners is just to say where, well, you know, you can't just be anonymous and sit there and hope that it all works out. Suggest something. Like, if you're a business leader listening to this and you want to make change, ask something, suggest something, bring it up, send an email, take some action, that kind of thing, instead of just, you know, kind of just sitting there going, well, they just don't get me. But I will tell you this, then this is another thing that's just bad. But in business, as business owners are treated really well a lot of times. And what I mean by that is like they're courted and they're asked to do stuff and you know, they're they're they're if they have power, they're used to being the most powerful person in the room. And oftentimes what that means is that people kind of cater to them and that kind of thing. And so so many church leaders were scared to do that because we don't want to show favoritism. And I'm not saying you need to kiss her right, but that's not the point. Right. But I'm saying the best way I know to get like a bunch of business owners engaged is like take a mission trip and only invite CEOs. We're an idea. And the mission trip doesn't have to be to Africa. I'm saying just go an hour away and go do something or get together with them and say this is for this. And what will happen is when you create the exclusive environment, you'll start to see your best leaders emerge. They do not respond to catacalls. They respond to a tap on the shoulder or invite to something exclusive. That's very, very true, Casey. One thing I want to challenge everybody to do is to think about what step you can take. Because one of the things I've learned from Casey in terms of church leaders that make a difference, business leaders that make a difference is you call it a bias for action and you have one of the biggest biases for action. I've seen Casey, like Casey, you'll float an idea by me. I'm like, oh, that's great. I'm still thinking about it. You're already like, well, I bought the domain name and all that. Here's a great example. I had a few things come up that were truly an emergency this morning. And so I had to delay the recording of this. And with a guy with your schedule, it's kind of like, I feel really bad about that and we'll set it up later. But you actually had your assistant rent a hotel room so that we could jump on this call an hour and a half later than normal. And I'm thinking, like, who would do that? Most people just wouldn't do that. Talk as we close down about this bias for action that you see in business leaders and effective church leaders because it challenges me every time. Well, what I say is that proper action produces traction. So proper action produces traction. And the thing that makes people the happiest in life is progress. And if you look at, you know, progress, if you want to get better, if you want to feel better, if you want to do something, if you want to, when you lose that first three pounds or when you get that extra volunteer or when you preach that better sermon, whatever it is, the progress is what gets us going. And so my bias for action is simply that I want to progress and I will be tying it all the way back around to the first part of the podcast is we have a vision of what could be and what should be in the future. And that vision is what drives us to actually do something instead of just sit around. And so if you're listening to this, my biggest thing to say would be, what's the number one thing? Because we talk about this, we say, dominate, don't dabble. Don't write down 17 things from this. What's the one thing that you're going to go do? What's the one thing? Are you going to learn more about Facebook through the show notes? Are you going to learn more about, you know, email marketing? Are you going to go ask a business owner to go on a trip? Just find that one thing. And when you take that action, it will create traction in the area that you currently do not have it. So go take action. Action creates traction. I love that. Casey can't thank you enough for spending time today on the podcast. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thanks. Well, isn't that challenging? And isn't that inspiring? I mean, it always is for me. Casey just has this massive bias for action, where he's just doing stuff. He's launching things, starting things, whenever we hang out, I always think, what am I doing with my life? Not much. It's just, it's good. It's a good spur to action, but it doesn't have to be intimidating either. There are actually on that note some very practical action steps you can take this week in the show notes. I just kind of summarize what I thought as well as some quotes from Casey. And you can find all of those in the show notes at karynuhoff.com/episode3. That's karynuhoff.com/episode numeral3. You'll see everything there, including all the links to some of the TED Talks and other things we talked about and to Casey and his company. So if you found this podcast helpful, if you would be so kind as to leave us an honest rating and review in iTunes or now on Stitcher, we would be so, so grateful. It just helps us get the podcast in front of other leaders. So thank you so much for that. And today's episode is sponsored by the US Orange Tour. Now that's a really cool tour. If you've never checked out Orange, it's amazing. I just got back from a couple of cities and going to be on the road again in a little bit, but it just helps you take your family ministry team to the next level. So join me in one of the seven cities I'm going to be in. Now I'm going to do a leader's lunch as well as a number of talks in Washington DC on Friday, October the 10th, and then the next week in Indianapolis on Friday, October the 17th. If you are near DC or Indy, I would love to see you. You know, we have over 1,500 leaders coming to Indy. Isn't that crazy? I'm going to be hosting a leadership lunch. That's for senior and executive pastors at both tour stops in DC and Indy. I would love to have you there. And here's how you can register. Just go to the show notes carrynewhough.com slash episode three. You can register right off there or go to orange tour.org and click on the city nearest you. We would love to see you on orange tour, especially those of you who are senior leaders. We just love to connect with you there. Next Tuesday when we're back, we're going to have a fascinating conversation with Cara Powell. Cara is a researcher, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary and heads up the Fuller Youth Institute. And she has done an academic study, like a quantifiable study over a decade now, tracking kids who stick with their Christian faith when they move into their adult years and kids who don't. And her learnings are fascinating. If you're a church leader, just Christian who really cares about, well, why do so many kids walk away from their faith when they get into their adult years? Cara's got piercing insight. So whether that's the perspective of a parent or a church leader or a senior pastor, I think next week's going to be fantastic. So Cara Powell is going to join us. And in the meantime, if you could head on over to iTunes, leave us a rating and review. That would be great. Jump on over to my blog, carrynewhoff.com, we'll carry on the conversation there, including anything you want to know more or further about this episode with Casey Graham. And in the meantime, we'll see you in a week. And thank you so much for listening. You guys are awesome. And I hope this helps you lead like never before. You've been listening to the Carry New Hoff Leadership Podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change, and personal growth to help you lead like never before.