Sidewalk Conversations
"Let the one who thinks he stands, take heed lest he fall..." (1 Corinthians 10:12)
Standing strong and remaining true to your calling is no easy task. No one sets out to crash and burn. In fact, it's actually the opposite, most people want to stand strong, remain effective, and be true to their values all the way through to the end. But, it is really hard to do.
In these interviews, Piet Van Waarde (a 40 year veteran of pastoral ministry) has heart-to-heart conversations with ordinary people about what it takes to stay faithful and effective in the things that matter most.
Sidewalk Conversations
Where do you go from the White House? with Rebeccas Contreras
Rebecca Contreras returns to share her remarkable journey from the barrio to the White House and now as a successful business owner who has built a $20 million company. Her story demonstrates how relationships, surrender to God's plan, and continuous learning can transform lives regardless of one's starting point.
• Building relationships that make or break your success
• Surrendering to God's guidance and living out biblical principles
• Developing yourself through continuous learning
• Moving from government employee to entrepreneur after being pushed out of a comfortable position
• Creating a business culture of "leading with love" that puts people first
• Handling imposter syndrome with affirmations like "I can do all things through Christ"
• Navigating business challenges by creating strategic pivot plans rather than succumbing to crisis
• Potential movie adaptation of Rebecca's story "Lost Girl" to inspire wider audiences
Visit Rebecca's website to learn more about her journey and pick up her book "Lost Girl."
Listen to Rebecca's first episode from Season 1 of Sidewalk Conversations.
Learn more about our sponsor for this episode, Amosouk. Shop handmade bags from around the world!
Welcome to Sidewalk Conversations, season number four. I am so excited about our guest and I think the best way to introduce her is to share one of my favorite quotes. It's actually from Steve Harvey where he says it is not so much about how far you've gotten, it's actually the distance you traveled from where you started One of my favorite things to think about. In fact, people ask me often like what's the best part of ministry, and there are many challenging pieces, but on top of it all, the thing that always gets me jazzed and makes me excited about doing what I do is the fact that I get a chance to get a front row seat in life transformation. And one of the things that is so appealing to me and I just marvel at it every time it happens is that there are people who have a life where not a lot is going right. They don't have any reason for hope. They don't have a lot of reasons to think that their future is going to be any different, and they look at their past and they think that's the determination for what they're going to know in their future is going to be any different. And they look at their past and they think that's the determination for what they're going to know in their future and then to watch a product of the Holy Spirit take that life and transform it so that all those things are turned around. They have hope, they have a future and, best of all, they help people who are where they were and drag them along with them, and that, to me, is one of the most exciting parts of ministry, and today's guest has that kind of story. I love her as a friend, but I think you'll grow to love her as well as you hear a part of her story.
Piet Van Waarde:She was a guest in season one and when I thought about how I wanted to start season four, I said I got to bring her back, and so I'm very excited about you hearing a little bit more about her story, because a lot has happened since we had her on in season one. Before I introduce her, I just want to say a thank you to our sponsor today. Today's sponsor is Amasuk. Amasuk is a ethically sourced handbag company with products from Japan, mexico and Morocco. It happens to have been started by my daughter and she loves pulling together beautifully crafted handbags for every occasion, and if you're looking for a gift or something fine for yourself, I'd encourage you to check it out. It's an online store Amasuk A-M-A-S-O-U-Kcom. Rebecca Contreras.
Rebecca Contreras:You've learned how to roll that R very well, Pete. Good to be with you. We need a clap track. Oh it's so good to have you back.
Piet Van Waarde:Thank you for joining us today and you know, one of the things that I love about your story is something I said in the introduction, that the distance that you have traveled from where you started. I've heard a lot of stories and ministry for 40 years. People who, have you know, started in some hard, dark places and then do something wonderful with their life and the Lord helps them do that. But I mean for you it's like the extreme of that.
Rebecca Contreras:Just a little bit.
Piet Van Waarde:You started in the barrio and ended up in the White House. I mean talk about a transition and transformation and people. I'm going to link the time where you shared a little more detail on that story. But for those who may not know much about what you've done and where you've been, I'd like to introduce it by asking you a question. And I know there's never really just one thing that brings about that transformation. But if you had to put a couple of either principles or activities or practices that helped you move in the direction that you went to get to where you've gotten to, what would you say are like two or three of the things top of the list?
Rebecca Contreras:Well, thank you, Pete, for having me. David and I have such a respect for you and your lovely wife, Carol, and just the richness of the relationship and the friendship that we've built over a very short period of time. It's beautiful.
Piet Van Waarde:I love it.
Rebecca Contreras:A couple of years, I think and especially appreciate your leadership to us and the great communication expert that you are and coaching us through that communication process, and I think every person needs a friend like Pete in their lives. So thank you.
Rebecca Contreras:Depicted very clearly in my book Lost Girl, but there are three what I would put at the top tier of sort of nuggets, pivots, key key points of success strategies, and at the top of number one is your network and your relationships in terms of network and relationships that make or break you. Relationships in terms of network and relationships that make or break you, and the importance of not only leaning on relationships for life success, from your personal relationships to your church community relationships. Pastor Rob talked about this Sunday connecting with the church body to the relationships you built in your career, your own personal relationship with your family and, in my case, my husband and the huge catalyst he has been in my journey in my life, and those relationships are so central to my success. I was in Dallas just this past Monday and shared with a group of several hundred women there gathered. You know, you are not an island by yourself. No woman makes it by herself, no person makes it by themselves.
Rebecca Contreras:And those relationships are key. And certainly you know the surrendered life, surrendered under the guidance and the journey of the Holy Spirit and God.
Rebecca Contreras:And you know, I would even take it a step further and not just say God, because we can all believe in God and we can all say that we are surrendered, but a true surrendered life, living out the gospel of Jesus and your life surrender right In terms of how you listen, how you heed, how you pivot and embrace those important, godly biblical principles that are such a part of my journey, and I'll just give you a quick sort of aha moment around. That nugget is the first time that I read Jeremiah 29, 11,.
Rebecca Contreras:You know for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.
Rebecca Contreras:And when you have a background like mine, which is in the sort of below ground zero, and you end up where I end up, there's no way you can say that was not a miracle.
Rebecca Contreras:And somewhere along the journey, you know, god didn't know he had a plan for me. And as I surrendered and lived that principle in terms of that surrender, you know, I've seen it really live out. And then, lastly, just you know, getting into a place where you really and truly deal with yourself and getting yourself out of the way and making sure that you are not only dealing with the issues of your heart and yourself, but also developing, learning, acquiring knowledge, getting better at your craft, whatever it is that you are put on this earth to do, and just having what I call a lifelong adoption of learning and gathering knowledge, gaining knowledge and even at our age and you're just a tad bit older than I am right, you know just living this life of constant and continual learning and just acquiring knowledge to be better. And I think you know, along with probably four or five other key nuggets, those are definitely in the top three of being able to contribute to my success.
Piet Van Waarde:Yeah, and I think one of the things I remember about your story was you know there were key people like Ann Richards at one point saw something in you, just said that here you were, even though you had the background which didn't give you a lot of reason for hope. You were a hungry, tenacious student. You really wanted to learn, you wanted to grow and I'm guessing people along the way have probably seen that in you and that's probably a large portion of why you are where you are.
Rebecca Contreras:It's so important. I just, literally yesterday, had a conversation with a woman who was the catalyst to my career in government and actually brought me in and taught me everything I knew about HR, which now I'm an HR thought leader expert. That's what our consulting practice does, and she's in hospice transitioning to heaven.
Rebecca Contreras:And I was talking to her. As a matter of fact, we have so many things on travel between now and September, but my husband is driving me up to Dallas Again. I was just there Monday, back to Dallas, to go see her on Sunday for a day trip to just hug her and spend time with her. Her name was Donna and I talk a lot about her in the book, and Donna worked. Her name was Donna and I talk a lot about her in the book and you know Donna worked when Ann Richards was the state treasurer. She went off to be governor and in came Kay Billy Hutchison, who was another iconic state leader. Donna worked for Kay at the time and she took me under her wing for probably 12, a good 12 to 13 years of my first government career and, pete, she poured her entire soul and life into me Not just from a career standpoint and teaching me all things HR, because she was the HR director.
Rebecca Contreras:I was her assistant. She sent me to school. She spent time with me on the personal issues. She taught me to be a mom. When I had issues in my marriage early on I would come to work and she'd say, sit on my couch, let's talk about it. But she really took the time to mentor and cultivate me and it's so important to have people around you even today.
Rebecca Contreras:Yeah, for sure, no matter how successful you are, you always want that sort of trusted network of people around you that will help you think different and behave different, because you know we don't know it all.
Piet Van Waarde:Right, right. So you brought up the HR company, and that's really where I want to kind of spend most of our time today, talking about your business career. We kind of spent so much time last time talking about your rise to political prominence, but after the time in the White House, what many would say, well, that's the pinnacle, right? You pivoted from there to starting this consulting company, which has been super successful. We'll talk a little bit about how you managed that, but I'm curious what was it that kind of led you to conclude, hey, this would be the next best step for me.
Rebecca Contreras:Well, it's interesting because I was just thinking about this and trying to extract all the different elements of that pivot, which was massive, by the way, as you know, I've reinvented myself, I think, at least four times. This was my government employee to executive in business to entrepreneur, now owner. But Pete, I had left the Bush administration. That would be W Bush we call him W, not the dad, but the son. I had left the administration, david and I both had a privilege of serving under President Bush, but we had come back to Texas and I was thinking about joining the private sector to cut my teeth in consulting. But didn't quite know how I was going to make that pivot.
Rebecca Contreras:Because when you're a government employee, all your life and that's all you do like how do you go from government employee to executive? Right, exactly. But I had, I had a pretty solid reputation in government and reputation follows you right. So I had a private sector CEO reach out to me literally by blast email, you know, cold call type thing, saying I'd heard about your reputation. I really want you to consider joining my company and starting my federal practice, to join as an executive and lead and begin the federal work in the space.
Rebecca Contreras:And so I just moved back to Texas and I said I have zero interest in coming to Washington. I just came back and he said, well, I'll come to you and we can talk about it. And so he flew to Austin for one day. We had lunch and two and a half hours later I signed on the dotted line to join his team and joined and learned the what I call one on one consulting, of government consulting, and that practice, which was my practice, that I started and built, was ended up being highly successful and I made him millions and millions of dollars.
Rebecca Contreras:And then I was like what's wrong with this picture? Actually, what happened was I started getting uncomfortable because the practice had so much success that the partners got really threatened by my success and they started kind of rearranging the structure in the deck chairs and all of a sudden they brought someone in to take over my portfolio and said we need you now, but as an advisor only, and I thought yeah, there's something wrong with this picture.
Rebecca Contreras:You know, sometimes God makes you really uncomfortable to get you to think about doing something different and you think the sky is falling like this is devastating. They're trying to push me out, but that attempt to push me out turned into the catalyst to start my business Avant Garde, I love how I mean.
Piet Van Waarde:We're all familiar with the story of Joseph. You know where he said what the enemy used for evil, god turned to good, and I see that so often, and I think that's exactly what you're describing. We see a circumstance or a situation that on the surface looks like, oh, this is terrible, but then God uses it, redeems it for something even greater than we thought possible.
Rebecca Contreras:Well, listen, we were sitting in church and I was just so distraught about what was happening. By then I had been commuting back and forth between Austin and DC. He was paying for my travel and paying me a salary and paying me commissions and all that, and, of course, I had about 60 people under me. At that time I was running the practice and we were sitting in church and I had about six months of this push-out. I felt like they're trying to push me out, like something's wrong and I'm not resigning. Gosh darn it Like.
Rebecca Contreras:I'm going to dig my heels in. I started this practice I'm not resigning but it was getting really uncomfortable. And we were sitting there and David and I just had already been in prayer about something's wrong, but we're not quite sure what to do about it. And the pastor brought a message about the eagle and how God sometimes has to take the eaglet. The eagle sometimes has to take the eaglet and throw them out of the nest to fly. And he said some of you are sitting in church right now and God is going to throw you out of the nest and make you fly, because it's time for you to fly.
Rebecca Contreras:And David looked at me. I looked at him. We're like wow, talk about a slap in the face. That meant I went to prayer. We went to prayer together. I sought counsel and I remember the wise words of my second mentor, who was iconic best friends to President Bush he's still alive today and a mentor of mine, clay. I was sharing with him what was happening and how I was so uncomfortable I didn't know what to do. I was making a lot of money but I wasn't an owner, and now they're trying to push me out. What do I do? Do I resign?
Piet Van Waarde:Well, gosh, I guess I should, and that's how it happened. And so when you experience such significant growth, it means like one pivot after another. So you're kind of always trying to play catch up at some level, I'm guessing. And I'm curious because there seems like there's a kind of leadership skill that's required to launch something, and then another kind of leadership skill to manage and grow and bring other people on. Other kind of leadership skill to manage and grow and bring other people on. And I'm curious again if you can kind of hone it down to one or two little things or big things that you had to do in the midst of trying to stay over and on top of all the things that were happening for good. What were some of the keys for you?
Rebecca Contreras:Well, I'll tell you, the top key is learn how to take no really well and never, ever stop after 100 no's. And I think that because I had had so much success and I was so revered in government and nobody would ever tell me no, I wasn't used to taking no. So all of a sudden I become an entrepreneur and I open my doors to the business and I start knocking on doors and it's no, no, no, no, no. And you start to get discouraged. Yeah for sure, when no doors are open, you know a lot of people and you know what you bring is valuable, but your business is not making any money. You've just left.
Rebecca Contreras:At that point I was making a ridiculous amount of money, more than I had ever made in my life. I left for zero amount of money more than I had ever made in my life. I left for zero, literally zero. I had no equity. So when I walked away, they let me out of my non-compete, which was good, but I walked away with nothing.
Rebecca Contreras:And so my husband had just started, had left his job to start a non-profit. So we're both like no income and we were like, oh my God, that's not the word we, but you know I won't repeat what we said, what I said I'm the potty mouth in the family, but I did know that I had to deal with no and I had to do it very well and I had to learn how to scale the wall on that no. The second absolutely pivot point and key key strategy was I have always been gifted with hiring the right people and I have been blessed with having the right people around me and the right team, and I knew I could mobilize a team that would be smarter, better and possibly even more agile than me and certainly would deliver better than I would. I'm certainly the face and the leader and the motivator, but I'm not really that smart. It's the people around me that are smarter.
Rebecca Contreras:And so I hired really smart people and I started mobilizing the right people to deliver. And it took us one entry point. It took us almost seven months to get our first contract. We hired our first employee. I brought one of my top top deputies over to work for me. Then I brought my top senior project manager. Both of them said I will go where you go. And they were incredibly powerful women, very, very good at what they did, highly, highly educated, and they started just knocking it out of the park. And all of a sudden you know it was recruitment and retention and we're up to, I think, 120 employees now across about seven states and we just have a great team. Pete, it's just that's awesome, incredible people. Your people as an entrepreneur will make or break you and mine definitely have made me as an entrepreneur will make or break you, and mine definitely have made me.
Piet Van Waarde:One of the things I've learned about team building is like everybody talks about it. It's like you need a team. There's no I in team and all that but I think there's a unique skill set that's required to build a team of one highly capable people but then highly committed people who stay with you over the long haul. Those are not easy skills to develop and they aren't common. I don't think so. If you had to talk about, what was it that gave you the capacity to both attract really great people and then to have them stay with you so long, what would you attribute that to?
Rebecca Contreras:Well, it's interesting, one of my. Actually I have three clients that work for us that used to be clients. So when your client retires and wants to come work for you, that's a pretty big deal. My managing director in the DC area used to be my client for six years and she's incredible and I remember when she retired government she called me and she said they call me RC, rc, guess what? I'm retired, I really want to come work for you.
Rebecca Contreras:And a year later she did my COO, who I worked with when I was over the entire Department of Treasury HR department, about 120,000 employees. She was the HR director at IRS and so I had known her good friend 20 plus years and so she's my COO now and we've been friends and you know she's been my COO for the last year and has been on our team for two years. I have so many people on my team that were clients and or people I met in government that are just incredibly bright and sharp. But I'll tell you we really put a lot of love and care for our people. We have a motto at AG which we've branded and we have put out there very visibly and very strongly. We don't shy away from it, and it's called leading with love. So we love our people.
Rebecca Contreras:Pete Sounds simple, but Well, let me tell you, when I first sort of put that line in the sand with our project manager and said this is our DNA, we are going to be known to lead with love I had one particular person say to me it's a little squishy, can we come up with another word? Can we just call it something else, maybe leading with grit conviction? I said no, we're going to lead with love. Leading with grit conviction. I said no, we're going to lead with love Because people have to know that you care and that you care about them as an individual before they perform.
Rebecca Contreras:Nobody wakes up, even the non-performers. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, geez, I think I'm going to suck today at my job. Everybody wants to be successful, and so we have. Really, we have a great management team. We've trained everybody on the DNA of leading with love. We have a senior project manager who's our strategist around that and she's branded us around that. And then we love our clients too, and sometimes loving your clients means you have to push back and say you're not being a very nice client today to our people.
Rebecca Contreras:So we're possibly not the right contractor for you, and that's a whole nother story. I've walked away from millions of dollars because I've had to do that.
Piet Van Waarde:My people come first. Well, that's the difference between articulating a value and living it right. So you could say we're going to lead with love, but then if people watch that that value gets trumped by well, this is a really good business decision or we could make a lot more money this way, then pretty soon people become really suspicious and skeptical about the tagline. But if you operate in the ways that you just described, then people are for performance or hold people accountable for achieving metrics.
Rebecca Contreras:You know it just means that you are transparent, you're authentic, you care, and then you hold people accountable and you know. Make very clear what your expectation is, and then they'll rise up to meet that expectation.
Piet Van Waarde:Awesome. One of the things I'm curious about, um, because of your story. Uh, I I don't have anything as dramatic as that story, but there there are parts of my story that I can very much relate to. Um, and then you know, the Lord opens up doors for you and you find yourself in certain positions and certain roles and you kind of have to shake yourself and go what the heck am I doing here? I don't deserve to be here and I'm wondering do you ever struggle with like imposter syndrome, like who am I? Why should I be here? Like I have no business doing all this? Do you ever struggle?
Rebecca Contreras:All the time, all the time I, I, uh, I do. I actually tell a great story in Lost Girl when I my first time in the Oval Office with the president and you know just having a flashback moment of being a high school dropout, 17-year-old, you know, ex-drug addict, on welfare. All of a sudden now I'm an advisor to the leader of the free world. President Bush actually read my book and was blown away by my story. But when I worked for him he didn't know my story and so he read it recently. But I talk about how in awe I was of being there and I've always really made sure that I keep that humility and posture.
Rebecca Contreras:And, married to David Contreras, he reminds me quite often who I am, and in a good way too. He obviously is a big fan of mine and has been a huge to fail and. I have to get into my quiet time and sort of pray my way out of it, but a lot of it is exercising the discipline to just do the opposite of what you're feeling, even though internally you're feeling really insecure, verbally, and physically you have to manifest that and just not succumb to that insecurity.
Piet Van Waarde:Do you have a practice where you kind of tell yourself certain things?
Rebecca Contreras:I do and I have a scripture that I use all the time. I just used it this past Monday when I was with some pretty big wig women on stage and I was you know, little Rebecca here, highly accomplished women it was, you know, little Rebecca here, highly accomplished women and backstage before they introduced me, I actually say to myself I can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me. I am the head and not the tail. I am above and not beneath. I belong.
Piet Van Waarde:Ah, perfect.
Rebecca Contreras:So that's my practice. Yes, it doesn't always work, but at least I tell myself it and I'm walking it out by faith.
Piet Van Waarde:I love it. I think that's so awesome. All right. So now you've had a lot of success in business. You have these things that you work on, that kind of keep your team together and keep you together. And then, of course, this last year, with the new administration, doge comes in and a lot of the things that were kind of part of your portfolio get cut and and you know, I'm sure at moments like that you're like, on one hand, you understand why. You know we have to worry about debt and we have to make the necessary cuts, whatever.
Piet Van Waarde:But on the other hand, when it's you and it's your business, it's a totally different deal.
Rebecca Contreras:It's like I call that an oh shit moment. Yeah, no joke.
Piet Van Waarde:And so you're. You know you have to start thinking, start thinking about okay, what are we going to do? So you had to make another pivot, and there are two parts to this question. One is how do you keep your attitude right? You could get really resentful, you could get discouraged, right Like you could get really resentful, you could get discouraged and you could start like what a lot of people do, just pointing fingers and saying how could they? So there's an attitudinal piece, but then there's also like the pragmatic part which is like OK, so now, what are we going to do? So how did you navigate that part?
Rebecca Contreras:Well, that's actually in the. I've been in business 14 years, so we've grown the company from zero to a little over $20 million in 14 years. No small feat, but I'm very blessed. Good people, as I said. But when the Doge team came in? First of all, let me just preface this I support the elimination of fraud, waste and abuse in government. As you know, I'm a big supporter of that and as I am of what President Trump is doing in terms of improving efficiency. But when it happened to me, I was not crazy about it. To put it 300,000 gone, 400,000 gone, 600,000 gone. You're like, oh shit how much more?
Rebecca Contreras:And you know cause? You were on that prayer text that I was texting saying pray for us. But here's what we did, pete, it's so important to have perspective, to pull up and have heavenly perspective, to not try to get buried in the minutia and caught up in the crises and then all of a sudden, you're so wrapped up in the chaos and in the crises that you can't think above it. And so what I did, along with David and my prayer team, is we just pulled up and my advisors, you know, and said let's figure out what this means. I immediately called a team meeting my senior project managers. There's five of us on the senior corporate team and then 12 of us on the management team. So we started with the senior corporate team and everybody was like oh my God, what are we going to do? And so we're having to lay people off literally within minutes notice.
Rebecca Contreras:Okay, so the Doge team unfortunately came in literally, was doing all the analysis, and then we got contacted on four of the contracts that were cut, literally at 4 o'clock pm. At 5 o'clock your team is gone. So 4 o'clock pm, we got the notice and it wasn't the fault of the contracting officers. It's the way they were notified. So it's all a matter of again the chaos and the communication, right, and so we didn't take that personal. But we had to figure out who we're laying off and what this means. And in the midst of all that chaos, I called a management team meeting. I made a trip to DC to meet in person for an all-day session and I said, okay, guys, first of all we're going to take a step back and we're going to calm down session.
Rebecca Contreras:And I said, okay, guys, first of all we're going to take a step back and we're going to calm down. We are not going to get sucked up into this crisis. This is not a crisis that we can control. We're going to take a step back, we're going to think about what this means for us and we're going to develop a pivot plan. And we did. We moved into pivot. I treated the team to lunch, we worked eight hours straight and we brought in a consultant to help us do a pivot plan. We're actually in month two of that pivot plan implementation. So we started the pivot plan in February. It was a 90-day pivot plan and now we're in implementation mode. We're full scale ahead. We've had tremendous success in that pivot plan.
Rebecca Contreras:That pivot has included a move into the private sector to diversify our business, a move into the state and local government to diversify our business from federal and an ownership of where can we be lean, mean and cut back expenses so that we can then focus on the core delivery of our core consultants, because there are people we can't live without If we reinvent. We got to have these key people on our team and it has been incredible. Pete, you bring together all of my senior team brilliant women, brilliant women. You bring together them, the consultant, and they come up with it and they're leading it. I have three key members who are all leading the pivot plans. We have lanes. We've pivoted to three different lanes. They're all in execution mode Now. They're just reporting to me on how that pivot pad is going. I'll be in DC in two weeks to have a phase two of the pivot plan and we have quite a bit going on in our pipeline and it's going to be a great year and our pivot plan is working.
Rebecca Contreras:We haven't seen the revenue generation yet, but it will come. As you know, build it and they will come. Dream it and it will happen. But we have just a great outlook on what this is going to mean and what it did for me, Pete. As a business owner, is it once again forced me to think different about my strategy and how to pivot, versus saying, oh my God, I've lost so much revenue, what am I going to do? Other companies have not been that fortunate. They have lost a lot, and my heart goes out to all the business owners that lost a lot.
Rebecca Contreras:But for us, we are always going to be the driver of our own destiny and I have communicated that to our leadership team and they're owning it.
Piet Van Waarde:I love that. I love that. Well, the last question I want to ask you is a more personal question. There's a effort afoot that I've had a chance to kind of be a little bit on the inside of where there is talk of making a movie of your story. A movie of your story. I know that's still very much kind of like in the infancy stage, but is there things you can tell us about this? What's going on in that?
Rebecca Contreras:Well. So this is once again something that's like accelerated that David and I both had no our potential. And you know, pete, what's really interesting about how God has worked with us together as a couple is most of what we've done has been like full acceleration, not plan it and then do it, but are you coming Like way ahead. And so we've had to really chase what God is doing and keep up with it. And I don't know why God works like that with us, perhaps because we're crazy enough to jump off a cliff with him. But my husband is a very strong visionary in a lot of things and he tends to I'm the sort of well, let's think about the plan and he's like, let's go. And so we have a nice balance to that.
Rebecca Contreras:But we are talking right now with a couple of producers. We've launched phase one. We're doing kind of an exploratory phase one stage to explore the potential of putting together a multi-series type movie script and hiring, you know, script writers to put it together and do what they call a treatment plan, and we'll see where it leads. The next 12 weeks are going to be super essential to insight and gained and learned, and that includes, you know, reaching out to the industry. We already have some great interest. I wouldn't even have thought of this had it not come to me right. It's not something I came up with in my head. It's something that has been very heavily been cultivated for probably the last year and recently David and I have really connected with and tried to align to what's happening. So we will know in the next 10 to 12 weeks what that looks like.
Rebecca Contreras:But it's exciting to think about putting Lost Girl and our story in particular, you know, on the big screen, but not just to see it on the big screen. But, as you know, I'm all about impact and when we think about the thousands of people that have been impacted by the story and just the great opportunity I've had to share it across the US and even globally, I recently had a FaceTime from a young man in Africa who, him and his university students and the whole orphanage, was reading Lost Girl and they were impacted by the story and they read it again and again and again and they FaceTimed me about it I'm like, wow, there's places that I think the story will communicate incredible hope and potential and just the story of redemption and possibility. So we'll see where it leads. But I am one of those that takes things one day at a time, as is David, and we're just really trusting God for the next steps and guidance around that potential.
Piet Van Waarde:Well, I'm so hopeful about it. I've had the opportunity, of course, to see some of the things that you've done and be kind of a fly on the wall, if you will. That has heard some of the things that you've done and be kind of a fly on the wall, if you will. That has heard some of the stories of people who've been impacted by your story, who say I didn't know that I could have a future, but what you shared and the life you've lived gives me inspiration and I've heard that a few times just in person. But I'm sure that that happens over and over and again and I just imagine that a film you know, and they seem to be, you know, like you think about the Chosen and the.
Piet Van Waarde:Story of David and all these others that have done so well, and to hear that this could kind of fit in that same lane, I just feel like that's going to be so awesome.
Rebecca Contreras:You know, pete, people are so tired of the crap on digital TV Prime and Netflix and Hula and all the different digital TV venues and I'm hearing and talking to some of the producers and even people connected to studios like Angel Studios, which is a big, you know, faith film industry I think they were the producers of Chosen, but others, you know, facing the Giants and other film producers. And as I'm out there talking to people and influencers in the industry, I hear again and again and again your story needs to be on the big screen, like people have to hear your story, but people are ready for good content.
Piet Van Waarde:Yes.
Rebecca Contreras:And I don't know about you, but David and I will flip through Netflix and Prime and try to find inspirational things to watch, and I think people more than ever want good content, and so the concept is let's put. If it's God's will and if all the different people align and the investment is there, then let's put it on the screen to let people know what God has done in our life.
Piet Van Waarde:Yeah, I love it. Well, I am going to be praying toward that end, for sure.
Rebecca Contreras:Thank you for that. We can always count on you and Carol and our other prayer warrior team, your brother Pastor Rob and Lauren. They've been such an incredible support to us for gosh decades now, so we appreciate everything that you do to support us.
Piet Van Waarde:Absolutely Well. Thank you for joining us. This has been a very interesting and fun conversation with Rebecca, and if you want to know more about her, I'm going to link her website below. You can pick up her book Lost Girl and be praying for the movie that we pray will become part of her story and part of the testimony that she shares with the world. So thank you for joining us and join us next week for another Sidewalk Conversation.
