Well, welcome to another edition of the Family Business Podcast, where family is everybody's business. And today I'm pretty excited about having a newcomer join us, and we're set up here, not so much with him being personally in the studio with me, but he is all the way in Ohio. And uh this is Tim Schmoyer, and I look forward to you hearing about Tim and the way that he balances his family and his business, because we're all about balancing that aspect of our lives. And we say about our family business podcast that family is everybody's business. So we want to do it right. Let me give you a little introduction about Tim. Tim has uh get this, he's married to Dana, and they have you ready? Seven children in eight years. Now, there's a lot of jokes that could be said about that, but Tim's probably already heard them all. Tim, why don't you just say hi to everybody and then I'll go ahead and give you a little bit more formal introduction of what you do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, hi guys. Good to see you. I'm looking forward to hanging out and talking about probably some of the most important things we can invest our time into, which is business, family, and marriage.
SPEAKER_01That's very good. All right. So, Tim, here's some things about you. You started your YouTube channel to chronicle the dating life of you and your now wife. That that was quite interesting. Uh, you were a youth pastor. That's good. So you understand ministry, and this is good so far. You're you're batting pretty solid with the whole dating and marriage. You've done ministry as a youth pastor, and I learned just a minute ago that you are a PK uh pastor's kid. And so that's great because you understand the legacy of the Levitical Priesthood, as they say, and church world. Uh, your company that you have since built, and I look forward to hearing this because you consult with quite a few Fortune 500 companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, HBO, and I like this last one, Budweiser. Uh, so that's a nice balance for you there. And you help them map out media and video strategies. Uh, your company has grown at such a place that it's at that seven-figure income business. So wow, you've done a lot with yourself.
SPEAKER_02It's been a lot, yeah. Over the I'm 41 years old, so it's been quite the journey.
SPEAKER_01Here we are, yeah. Good for you. Well, I'm glad you're able to uh hang out with us today, and I want you to relax and uh our uh podience, as they say, is uh okay, yeah. Yeah, yeah. They're dinner.
SPEAKER_02I get it.
SPEAKER_03Nice.
SPEAKER_01I think I got that from you.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I well, and I stole it from someone else. So yeah, there's no new ideas. I was like, the potty ends, I got it. I love it. And then I I about half my audience is split over it. They don't like it in my podcast when I call them. Half of them love it when I call them the potty ends. Other's like, it sounds like you're telling me I'm a potty. I'm like, well, I am a dad, so you know.
SPEAKER_01Get on the potty. Okay. So tell me about your personal life first, because um, you and your wife, man, you've been married for a while, and these kids, I mean, how did you do this? What happened? What caused all that to happen so quick?
SPEAKER_02What caused the kids to happen so quick? Yeah. Um, it
wasn't really a planned thing, it was more of like uh um, yeah, we're just so we we we got married in 2006, and we I was doing youth ministry full-time, and and we were like, you know what, we took the advice most people gave us, just spend the first few years getting to know each other and your marriage and stuff. I'm not sure I still agree with that advice, but that's the advice that we took. And uh, and then about three years later, had our our first kid, Hannah. She's now 12 years old. And um, very quick, very quickly thereafter, we're like, we want to, we know we want to have another one. Um, so we had uh Ezekiel, and then we were like, let's let's uh hold off a little bit, like let's slow down here because they were only you know 13 months apart or something like that. And yeah, 13 months, and we started using the birth control thing again, and that created a miscarriage for us. And when we went through that miscarriage, my wife was like, I'm not using birth control ever again, you know, like I'm not gonna have this on me. And then we had five more kids after that, you know, relatively uh quickly, back to back. We're very blessed. Um, I know some people try for a long time and don't have any. Um, and so we feel very fortunate um that the Lord chose to bless us um with these seven kids in eight years, and um we have we are done now. Because that's usually the next question that comes after that. Um, we are done. And um mostly not because we don't feel like our family couldn't sustain more children, but more because um my when your body my wife's body and she you know cranks out seven kids in eight years, it was um her body was done. And it got to the point that if we had an eighth child, I don't know that she would make it just due to some complications and things. So we're like, we're putting my wife's life first at this at this point now, and decided not to go forward.
SPEAKER_01Are you kidding? Seven is the number of perfections, completion. Come on, that's that's a great number for well.
SPEAKER_02There's 12 tribes, you know. I mean, there's like the 144,000 or whatever, you know. So, like you can take whatever number you want, but yeah, we we stopped the seven.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. I stopped comparing everything that I do to what Jesus did with his 12 disciples after I realized that Jesus only worked really for three and a half years full-time, and then he had to go ahead and move on, and he lost more or less two of the guys that were uh of his 12 real close intimate followers. So hey, it's kind of hard for us to do, but um man, that's a real blessing to have um your quiver full. Because when my wife and I were going through a season of infertility, uh that's the scripture verse I would just hold on to. And I remember us when we went because we we were with a uh fertility doctor, and when we went to visit, and we thought she was the my wife Mary was pregnant. And uh I had the video camera going, thought, okay, this is gonna be the good, the fun, the excitement, the celebration. And the lady asked, uh, when did they tell you you got pregnant? And they couldn't find the heartbeat man. I turned that camera off, went to the bathroom, instead of crying, looked in that mirror and said, Lord, you promised us that you would allow our quiver to be full. And so um, that was a scripture verse we held on to, and today we got our four kids. So there's something to be said about a quiver full of kids, which really is significant. It's symbolic of just a favor that comes upon a person's life when they choose to do it the right way, do it life the right way. So, but I also I hear in there that you went through um that that stumble of the uh not keeping that child and how hard that must have been for you guys. Just real quick, not to take too much time, but how did you navigate through that?
SPEAKER_02Um Yeah, I mean, it it's I think it was more difficult for my wife um because she starts thinking things like, oh, if I would have eaten this better or taking exercise more or less or taking, you know, and you start to think like it's it's my fault. And then when it was like, oh, it might have been the birth control that did this, it seems likely, then then you know, you have all sorts of guilt of um like it's my fault and things. And so that was probably the the toughest part of it. Um and so yeah, um we've we've passed that. It's not a thing we think about or talk about every day. It's something that um our older kids, I think, are like, oh, we have another brother or sister somewhere, which they're really excited about. But I I don't know theologically exactly what that means or how that works. Um, but I know I've heard both sides of all the, you know, this, you know, I I'm content just living in attention and being like, we'll find out one day. And whatever the answer is will be good because that was God's choice, you know, how that's supposed to work. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, um we are uh yeah, it was a tough, really tough season. Um, but thankfully uh she got pregnant again uh a few months later. Um, and so yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's a blessing. Well, the the hard times definitely come, they just don't stay, and that's a good thing because you definitely see on the other side of that hard season of your lives, man, the extra blessings that came afterwards. Okay, so we already know that you're fertile and that you know how to definitely make some kids happen in your family, but how did you do it in the business world, real quick? Like you you've established something pretty significant for your family financially. How did you do that?
SPEAKER_02Well, yeah, so I was a youth pastor for 12 years and uh went to Bible college, went to seminary, and as far as I was concerned, that was gonna be my career choice for life. I went to now it's called Karen University, but back back then it was Philadelphia College of Bible, then it switched to Philadelphia Biblical University, and they've stuck with the Kairn University now for like a decade. So and then I went to Dallas Theological Seminary. And so that was why my my career path as far as as I knew, and um and pursued that um wholeheartedly. It was I dedicated everything to it. I grew a blog somewhat accidentally, it became the most widely read blog on the internet in the youth and family space, and ended up writing and publishing books with Zondervin and group publishing and speaking at all those stages and things. And so it was like a thing that I was definitely really, really into. And uh, we had a few kids during that season, and we had our first two kids, Ezekiel, uh Hannah and Ezekiel. And then shortly after Ezekiel was fired or was was born, I was fired from my my last youth ministry gig. Yeah, he didn't get fired at six months old or whatever it was.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, hilarious the way you thought yourself on that. That was great.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, I I skipped ahead a little bit in the story. Yeah,
but yeah, I was fired from my last gig. Um, I was I had a I had a rough string of ministry gigs, to be honest. And uh they all started really well, but uh the one I worked at when I was in seminary, the first one was a church plant. Um, that didn't that church plant didn't last too long. The al the the the pastor uh was uh kind of a hidden alcoholic, and that ended up creating a lot of problems, and so that didn't last too long. And he then later got divorced right after that. Um, not just his life was just not in a good spot. And then the next church worked out really healthy pastor who is responsible for my wife and I actually being married, um, because we broke up for a little bit when we were dating, and he's the one who saw something and worked with us, brought us back together. He's like, You two can either work these issues with each other or with someone else. Like you just so he did a lot of counseling with us, and we're very, very grateful for him. Uh, but still, you know, the church board there wasn't uh was kind of like um we we had our wedding's date, our wedding, the only weekend that would work for us to get married uh for both sides of our family, but also happened to coincide with like a youth camp, and they wanted us to cancel the our wedding to do the youth camp. And I was like, no, I think I can need to start learning how to put my wife first, you know, and put my family first. Like, and then they threatened the job, I was gonna lose the job over it. And I'm like, Are you serious? Oh my gosh, you're paying me $14,000 a year. And I'm like, I so I um not to like scoff at that, but on the other hand, I was like, I I don't know. So we chose to, and so that pastor in that in that situation chose to, he's like, I will go do the youth camp instead, and you guys go get married. Um, so we're like, thank you. So uh, but still not a great situation. And then the last church I was at where I got fired was um uh just a lot of crazy the church was healthy, it was like the cool church in town, and they kind of had an unspoken pride about that. And then when we weren't the cool church in town anymore, and people started leaving and going to a different church, uh, they brought in some uh consultants and things, and oh yeah, they they uh ended up putting the consultants had us take these personal uh personality tests and spiritual gift inventory tests and everything and split us up. And so, like basically it was like all the people at one table were um people who were like, no, we need to change, we need to move, we need to move forward. And we're also another table was like, No, we need to kind of like just reevaluate what we've got here. And basically, the senior pastor, all his friends were on the board, there wasn't a lot of accountability there, and he ended up firing all 10 of us who were at that table. I was number nine out of the 10. Oh, yeah. His exact words to me where Tim, I only have five years left until I retire and I don't want anyone rocking the boat. Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. So you love ministry, Tim. You really love full time. I do, I do, but not I so around the same time, they kind of give you the broader story. Um, I as when I was dating is when I started my YouTube channel back in 2006, and I was just putting videos online to try to introduce my wife to, or
my girlfriend at the time, became my wife to my family across the country. Wow, and people started watching. And I was MySpace Stage, I was, you know, you don't use your real name on the internet. I was getting freaked out about like, who are these people? How are they finding me? Why do they keep commenting? How does the platform work? And I decided to dig into it, figure it out. And um, later other people, you know, started trying to figure it out too. We had already had success. We were about by the time I got um fired, we were reaching about a million people a month on our YouTube channel. Wow. And I was seeing far, I was hearing far more stories of life change coming out of what we were doing on YouTube than I ever saw in 12 years of vocational ministry. Yeah. I'm not trying to dog the church necessarily, maybe it was just the ones I happen to be a part of, but um it was, and maybe it says something about me, I don't know, but that's just kind of the the truth of what we were seeing. We are hearing stories of of people who are um saying things like, you know, I would never step foot in a church, I would never talk to a pastor, but I've been watching you guys for a few months now on YouTube, and I'm curious now. I went to service the last first time in 10 years or whatever. Uh, we have other stories of of marriages that were being healed. They have like one lady's like, Hey, I've been watching videos for a while. I just got married two months ago. We're already struggling. I don't know if we're gonna make it, but then I saw that video of you and your wife talking about how you're learning to love each other better. And I shared that video with my husband. We talked about it, and I just want to let you know that we have hope again for our marriage. Thank you. You know, and all sorts of stories. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, here's what we say about this podcast. We we say that there's things we say here that we can't say on Sunday. And what you just uh, you know, mentioned is uh showing how powerful these kind of uh podcasts can be for people that that opens them up to a little bit more than just a service environment where everything is so staged, uh, everything is so planned because life is not staged and planned. Life is messy. So here we go through, you go through all of those challenges in what should be an environment of ministry that is kind of cool. It should be pristine, clean. You shouldn't think about having to worry about church politics, you shouldn't worry about having to worry about you know job security or ever getting fired or somebody having an ego that's that big and there's no room for the others in the room. That shouldn't be the case, but that's not the real world. The real world, even in ministry, even in business, and let's face it, family is hard and it's messy, which then brings me to this, because you went through that aspect of your life, which then brought you to quite some level of success in your business because you stepped out of the ministry, and I think God just saw how how uh your desire was to serve and and to take care of the body of Christ. And anytime you take care of his people, he wants to turn around and take care of your people. So he gives you now this boatload of people in your own family, but you've got this successful business as well.
How are you balancing that? Uh, to give us a little insight onto the business, but then how are you keeping your family happy, loving you, your wife still wanting to have sex with you and all that kind of stuff? How are you making all that happen while you're building something pretty successful?
SPEAKER_02So I've never thought I guess that's work-life balance question a lot. And um, there's a couple of different responses I have to it. One is that um in the business context, as your business grows and you have more and more revenue coming in, more and more opportunity, it's being blessed. What people don't say in business world is like, hold on, we need to shut down this business factory right now. Like, we can't handle it anymore. People are like, no, it's growing pains, but we're gonna figure it out. And as the business grows, what really, really needed is better systems to manage the growth. And when your systems break, like the systems that work when you're at like a hundred thousand don't work when you're at a million, right? And so you just need to improve the and that's the same thing that happened to our family. I think most people have systems that sustain one or two kids, maybe three, four if you're crazy. But we just found like, oh, you can manage seven, you can manage 12. And so you just need better systems, you just need better systems, better processes, different expectations of your children, things in order to make it work. And so that's that's one that's one part of it. It I would agree that if we had the same family systems for a family of seven that we had for a family of uh or for seven kids that we have for like two kids, it would not work. It would break down. Um, but we don't, you know, so that's makes it more sustainable. The other response that I have is I kind of gave up on the work life balance thing because the work life balance thing suggests that there's you that we have this ability to equally focus equally on two things at the same time. And I, well, I don't I know that it's scientifically. Um I just I finished a book uh just this last week called The One Thing, like went more into the and like, oh, that's why like I've already said this, but then it just confirmed it, which I love it when we hear things that confirm our bias, right? So, but uh, but it was like it's it's about priorities, it's about where's the red line, and anything that floats that falls below the red line just doesn't get our attention. So for me, I think of the the business is here to serve my family, not the other way around, right? So if if there's uh if there's a conflict between the business and the family, the family wins. Um, we homeschool our kids. So um on top of that, just because like that's one of the things that makes it more sustainable for us is when I know most people think that'd be crazier, but it actually makes things easier um and allows us to have more time together to to to build relationships while we're doing educational things together rather than having education and relationships and all these things in these different buckets. We've started merging some of these buckets together.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, and so yeah, we think about it more in terms of priorities and in terms of balance.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And what it says is it can be done. And I'm and we're trying to get that across to people that you don't have to sacrifice one over the other. And in our sense of ministry, we don't have to sacrifice uh our family on the on that that for ministry. Uh and ministry doesn't have to be sacrifice for our family, it's all doable. If if you keep the priorities, all of them are the same, that your your family's your priority. Of course, your marriage is your priority. If we know your relationship with God is your priority, it doesn't have to be one priority over the other. When you're doing it the right way, you recognize these are my priorities, not one priority. These are my priorities, and that's where I give my attention to. And I can balance all of these things together. Now, it doesn't mean that it's always going to be clean and, you know, like we think ministry should be, or the perfect job scenario, pristine, it should all be beautiful. No, it's still gonna get messy along the way. But the good part about it over the long run is that you find yourself, as long as you're not quitting, you're not quitting on your marriage, you're not quitting on being a father to your kids, uh, you're not quitting on your job, your career, what you got going, but you're saying, man, I'm gonna figure out, like you mentioned, systems. I'm gonna figure out what's gonna help me now deal with this new season of conflict or uh of challenge that I'm facing. And I can do it. As frustrated as it may be, I can balance them all out because that's where my focus needs to be is here on these priorities. It's when we don't have any of these as all of them as our priorities that we make one. A priority. And I hate to see it with so many guys and uh that that are out there really trying to build something in the professional world. They make their that their priority over what is home, and that really creates the imbalance, which ultimately causes something to fall.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you use the right word when you say seasons. That's how I think about it too. Is what what I'm not saying is that um family is always number one. There are seasons when the business needs to be first, but those aren't haphazardly just falling into. Those are discussions my wife and I have, like right now, actually, we're in one of those in one of those seasons, and we set a date. It's from now until January 1st. So for the rest of this Q4. And there's some really big, high-level things that need a lot of big attention in our business. And we've we're making a pretty big pivot that we need to launch at the beginning of the year. And to make that pivot, it requires a lot of effort. And so my wife understands like this isn't a perpetual thing. There's a date on the calendar when this season ends, and she knows like Tim will be back and joining us for dinner more regularly at this point, you know. And it's a it's agreement that we made for this season, this is what needs to happen. Um and so yeah, so I think what happens to most people is they just look at everything and they think everything is equal priority, and then that's when they try to figure out work-life balance. We're just yeah, putting like like we don't we don't do sports with our with our kids, we don't really watch TV. We watch a movie every other weekend as a family together, but that's the only screen time our kids get. Um, and so we've had to make some choices in order to be able to put what we say and believe is the main thing in order to keep it the main thing and make it the main thing.
SPEAKER_01No, that that's that's really good. You know, the the challenge is going to be never making a permanent decision when you're in the middle of one of those seasons, especially when they're conflicting seasons or there's seasons that require a lot of sacrifice. Um as as we know, there those seasons they they only come for a period of time, but then the season passes. We just took uh uh our mother-in-law, my mother and my mother-in-law, my wife and I, we took our moms on a RV trip to the North Georgia mountains. We wanted to see the season change of the tree colors, the leaves in the fall. And uh, so we're in this 30-foot RV, and we're doing all the travels, the weather wasn't right in North Georgia. So then the wife says, Well, listen, we let's go up into uh chat uh to uh Gatlinburg, Tennessee. And I'm like, my gosh, it's the first time I'm driving in an RV. We're gonna go up the through the mountain ranges and everything. And then the moms are in the back talking, and then the generator goes out on the RV, and then the wife wants to go shop for some Christmas things because they have a big Christmas store they're gonna be doing here at the church starting November. They don't have enough supplies, so now she wants to go buy some more things, and now I don't know where we're gonna pack them in the RV. And everything just started and the weight, all that joy, all that excitement of going together with our mom started to get very weighty. And I'm like, oh, and I'm tempted to say, I'll never do this again. Because in the moment, I'm like, I'm done. This is crazy. I can't figure this out now. My wife's making me upset, my mom's making me upset, forget my mother-in-law, I'm already upset with her. Uh and I have to just chill to know, oh wait, wait a minute. Right here in the middle of this season, it's only temporary. Let's just take some deep breaths. All right. You can't help but get a little upset. You're aggressive, you want to move things forward, you want to get that RV working, you want to make it fun for everybody, and so on. Though I'm not the funnest person in the RV, trust me, I'm not the funnest person on the staff, I'm not the funnest person on the platform or even in the home. But I'm like, let's just keep it fun, let's keep it real. That's where we find ourselves, if we're not careful in the middle of those moments, where a lot of sacrifice is being asked of us, whether it's a mom raising young children at such a young age, or a father who's running a business, or a woman who's running a business
and trying to balance the father and the husband at home, dealing with the kids, all that goes into. If we just realize this is just a season, I can hunker down, I can get through this without having to torch my marriage that I've been working on, or torch the relationship I have with my kids or even my employees, then what we'll find over the long run, if you work through some of those seasons that are almost like a losing season, because it's taken so much from you. If you can just hang on, you're going to realize 15 years down the road, 20 years down the road, you know what? I had a lot more winning seasons, uh, seasons of prosperity and blessings in my life than I did setback seasons, where I was required to have to readjust my sales and so on. And if we can look at life through seasons, even with our children, we find the balance something a little bit more manageable. Would you agree?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Like people that what they expect is that life should be just a straight upward arrow over time. But no life, no business. We don't even like stories that are just that. If you you wouldn't watch a movie where the person's life started out great and by the end it was just amazing, and that was it. Yeah. It has to start out great and then it has to crash. And then it's the the climb back. That's what we that's what we that's what we connect with. That's what makes for a great story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I really like how Donald Miller puts it in some of his books. And he says that the I have actually here on my wall, the same principles that make up, just to remind myself, the same principles that make up a good story also make up a good life. He said, people love to have lived a great story, but few people take the work it takes to make it happen. Joy costs pain. Yeah. And so, in order to get to where we want to be, like I think all of us can think of like our biggest periods of growth or where and transformation in our lives is through some of our biggest, darkest struggles. And that's what the Lord uses to get us to grow. Otherwise, if it was left to us, we get compla complacent, we'd get lazy, and we would just naturally go into a state of chaos on our own. So thankfully the Lord uses the chaos to help us to grow. But that is a choice. I mean, I have seen plenty of people go through seasons of life and they seem to be perpetually stuck in that season of life. Or it's like a recurring cycle that they go through. And that's when I'm like, if that's happening in my business, there's something there I need to look at. There's a problem here, like there's a pattern that I need to switch. And I in my own family, if there's a recurring problem with one of our children or with my wife and I, or something that's not like a okay, let's just hunker down and kind of get through it. To me, that is like there's something here we need to look at and identify, probably something painful to root out. Probably my wife and I do therapy, both of us together uh and individually. And I think, like in church world, sometimes that's like embarrassing to admit, but it's like one of the best uses of your money, if you want to talk about the marriage side of like to go into someone who's who's been trained to figure out where are those points that we need to identify and how do we root them out. And you come out like a better person, you know, yeah. Uh it's hard, but um, we have found that just going to therapy, even when our marriage feels like it's doing great and there's no like there's always something. And when the things are going great, it's a lot easier to root some of those things out than when you're in the middle of like conflict and tension and things.
SPEAKER_01So Tim, we say it this way with that, you know, we say it in the sense that why when someone calls us as leaders in the church for help, which is most of the time the only time we get a call, is when something's needed for help, right? But it sure is a lot easier for us to put out the fire when it's just starting to smoke. But when you call us after the fire has already burned down the house, there's not much we can do at that point. So you don't want to let the whole thing, the blaze start to take over. You want to try to get it when it just starts to smolder, when you see a little spark here that's getting out. That's where that therapy, counseling, someone come alongside of you, good people, connect groups, environments where you get that support to walk you through that. Another thing we say is about just wisdom. We put our church on a whole Proverbs reading every month this year because we have that saying wisdom keeps you out of the ditch that deliverance needs to pull you out of. We don't want to have to fall into it because of some bad choices. Well, you've got a lot of wisdom, no doubt. It's good to see that you guys are doing, not just talking about the balance, bringing your family along, enjoying your life there, and having a successful business. It's good to see you guys do it at the same time. And there's a lot of um, I think you share a lot of uh, we share a lot of the same spirit, Tim. Um, and I wish my son, Chris, was on this call with us today because just uh from a process, systems, thinking, growing, progressing, uh, he would be great to be able to uh come alongside and chat with you. So we may have to make something happen there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I didn't always think that way. It it's actually the business that helped me start seeing those things in the in the family. And I do think that there's a lot of correlation between the principles and the skills that we learn that grow successful businesses are often the same skills that grow fruitful families and and in healthy marriages. So um vice versa. Vice versa. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I mean, we we know the the from a ministry standpoint, it actually tells us that a man has to first manage his household before he can manage the household God. So what we do there, it's like I have this whole thing on divorce and uh ministry and pastors, you know. I I don't ever, I don't want to ever judge a person for getting divorced when they're in the leadership role in ministry as a pastor. Um that's that's gotta be the worst. It's heart is wrenched, the church is devastated. But I understand why if a man goes through a divorce, then he needs to step back from a senior pastor perspective to lead his church, because we know when the family, when the wife is screaming before there's a broken marriage, somewhere the wife and the husband are screaming, we need help, but nobody's addressing what that issue is. And that then causes there to be a broke a breakup.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as a pastor from when I was in vocational ministry, that was absolutely the most isolating and isolated I've ever been, the most alone I've ever felt, is that I'm expected to be a professional Christian. And there aren't places, it didn't feel like there was places I could go and have a safe conversation about the personal struggles and the issues and the things. It was like, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. All right, let's move on, you know? And it's like, oh no, that's BS, you know, like you're allowed to be human. And um, so I if for no other reason I'm I maybe I shouldn't say this out loud, but I will. I'm glad I'm out of vocational ministry just for that reason alone, is that I like there's no shame in getting help and support that you need. And it's okay to be like, I'm not always okay and a happy Christian, you know. Sometimes I have questions and doubts and fears, and uh, I feel like I can express those now much more healthily.
SPEAKER_01Listen, Tim, I've been doing this my whole life, okay? Just like you, raised in the ministry, father was a pastor, started our church um after, I don't know, eight years of uh 13 years I worked with my dad, and then we started our church, went to Southeastern University in Lakeland, um, came out, started working with my dad. Then 13 years later, we left and started our church here. Um, the beautiful thing was eight years ago, nine years ago, my dad was ready to retire out. So he asked my wife and I to go back and we pastored the church from them, took it over. So we have our dual campuses. My dad passed away a year ago, so now we honor mom, giving her a pastor title in the church and the the role there, especially at that campus, because they built their whole life for 60 years there. And I'll say at this at 60, I'm 60 years of age. I've been doing this my whole life. I've been doing a lot of other things too. Side businesses love them, but I love the ministry. I love having my wife alongside of me and my kids alongside of me. I love having the same staff around us for all these years. And we've been doing it here in this area for 24 years uh at our Durral campus. So I love it. And and to pivot on something that you said, because there are some environments for pastors where they're made to feel as though you can't um let your guard down and you can't share, hey man, I need some help. I've just over the years, I knew I was never, I was never articulate enough to carry just the weight of ministry from a pastoral standpoint, from a speaking standpoint. My story would be part of what helps me do my ministry. And um, that pastoral ministry aspect, it was always about let me let me be honest, let me be real, let me be transparent, let me tell on myself. Because if I can keep the light, even publicly, on my personal challenges, if I can keep the light on that, then I don't have the boogeyman that's that's that is causing me this fear and anxiety of now I'm carrying the weight of this, my own personal struggles by myself. I was honest with my wife, whatever it was that I was struggling with. I was honest with my wife. I was honest that season with my dad and I had a great relationship, honest with him. I was honest with a few men that started with me from the beginning of this ministry that were buds. We used to do business together, but they also loved me enough to let me be their pastor all these years. I was just always honest enough to be real about my anger issues, my temptation issues, my dark issues, whatever those struggles were. It was no shame because they were going through the same thing, even worse. But these people that were around me, that um family and friends and ministry, they are what makes this ministry so special. It's not the building. Yes, I love the building, and we're gonna get ready and do a couple million dollar remodel on one of our other campuses. I love what it's gonna look like. But the people, Tim, that I'm able to see go through their own challenges along the way, and they've succeeded and they've grown, that's
what makes ministry so yeah rewarding.
SPEAKER_02And I love that too. I just have that same thing in a different context now. Now I get to be a pastor to people who would never otherwise talk to a pastor. I have uh we have 10 employees who work here at video creators with me that we it's not just about let's get work done, but like I know their struggles, I know the health problems that they're having and the personal things, you know, and that's part we build that into our team meeting together and every week. And so uh we yeah, it's the same thing whether you're doing it in the church or you're doing business as mission. Those are the things that I think all of us crave is like community, feeling understood in a place where I'm making a difference and having an impact on other people's lives.
SPEAKER_01You're doing a great job.
SPEAKER_02Really ultimately comes about.
SPEAKER_01That's why we love following you from afar here and connecting with you like this, because you're doing a great job the way that you were able to turn from full-time ministry to now full-time ministry and marketplace, and the way you're just blessing your family and keeping your family right alongside of you. So uh we're gonna bring this in for a closing, but you and I share another interest, not only ministry, not only business at our party ins. Um, but you're starting to like farming, huh?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a it's a really good tool for bringing the family together and doing some things. So, yeah, yeah, we're getting into some of that pre um homesteading stuff. Chickens, you got them at home? Got chickens, yeah. We raised and processed our uh meat meat chickens this best this past uh summer. Apple trees, blueberries, strawberries, garden, you know, all that good stuff.
SPEAKER_01Oh man. Well, we walked out. We got chickens in Miami and we have them at our farm in Georgia. We walked out this morning, and sadly, something's been getting a hold of our chickens. So one of our nice white silkies were gone. And yeah, yeah, we let them sit on some eggs for a while. So we'll probably have a few uh chickies soon, but that kind of puts them in trouble staying secluded at one location. But yeah, we love that as well, man. We we enjoy that part of life. So, how can they follow you guys? What's your uh social media address? What where how can they follow you?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we have a weekly um well, I have a personal podcast I think is probably more aligned with this audience. It's called the Business Family Marriage Podcast with Tim Schmoyer. You can find that on any platform. It's just I Schmoyer, S-C-H-M-O-I-E-R. If you search for business family marriage, it'll just come up. I know a super creative title, but I was like, I'm just gonna call it what I want to talk about. I don't have time to be creative right now. And it's just me, uh, I just do it on my phone, nothing, it's really casual, just talking about here's what I'm learning about these principles that are helping me grow business, as well as um experiencing fruit in our family, yeah, and and those those skills. So um, yeah, sounds like every other week or so I'll get something up there, but that would be the main personal level. You're on Instagram at Tim
Schmoyer. Okay. Perfect on Instagram. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01All right, Tim. Last thing I need to ask you is the um your books. You always reference books that you're reading. What are you reading right now?
SPEAKER_02I just finished up the one thing, um, which is really good. It's a business book, but it applies to anyone who's like, I got too much going on in my life. And the principle of that book is what is the one thing that if you change this one thing and put and put an emphasis on this, that it would make all the other things easier or irrelevant. And going to a uh, you know, being the CEO of what we're going to like a 10 million revenue business, I've I need different skill sets. And that is definitely one of them. You can't do everything, you got to start focusing. And then this one, absolutely. I just bought this one for everyone on my team. $100 million offers. It's not sponsored. I feel like as a YouTuber, I needed to give that disclosure, but um, really, really good quick book in terms of like you have a great product, but now
how do you communicate the value of that product in a way that people actually understand it? And uh, we've done okay with sales, but that I think is going to take us to a new level.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I think we'll be reaching out to you from a business aspect. We can uh see what your company can provide. Yeah. Metro Life Church would love to be able to see what we can do there. But hey, this is it today. I hope you were encouraged by something that you heard on our uh Family Business Podcast. It's been great having Tim Schmoyer with us. And uh hey, hopefully you've been blessed. So thanks for listening.
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