Welcome back to the Christianity of Business Podcast, an initiative of the RGW Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by William Reagan. William is a passionate entrepreneur and co-founder of a full suite marketing agency, Kingdom Marketing, which is dedicated to making a difference and contributing to a higher purpose. His company is driven by a kingdom perspective, seeking to connect with like-minded businesses and entrepreneurs who share their faith-oriented values. He's also a veteran, did three tours in Iraq. We were just trading some war stories. Although he was actually in Iraq, I was in Kuwait living the good life down there. But we served about the same time and excited that our past get to meet here today. So, William, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here with y'all.
SPEAKER_00William, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's a great question. You know, it was certainly a conviction of the word itself. Uh my partner and I, you mentioned co-founder, my partner Skylar and I uh were brothers in Christ for uh a few years worshiping at the same church. And we were entertained with each other, with our friendship and the you know, same movies and comic books that we liked. And but we also would find ourselves sharpening each other. Iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another, and and we found that relationship and and that was good and great and all. But at that time we were both um, you know, doing our own thing and own um own business way, you know. He was he was doing marketing for a custom integration uh company, and I was doing business development strategic initiative stuff, and all of a sudden Matthew 25 comes to us one time, the parable of the talents. And you mentioned it before because it's like just a such a fundamental part of who it is uh that kingdom marketing uh uh identifies as. And we were reading this and we identified ourselves as believers, as men of Christ, but identified certain areas that we were the one talent individual where we were perhaps hiding a few of the things that we were really good at, the opportunities that have been put before us under a rock. And maybe it's because we were afraid to like step out of the boat, so to speak, and make a stand for the for the sake of Christ in our business venture. And so that's what spawned Kingdom Marketing. We found out what we were good at. Skylar is a genius at marketing, and I'm very good at putting systems together. And we built a company and its core values are based on particular parables of the text itself. Um, we wanted to involve God from the very beginning. We believe that Jesus wants a relationship with us in the now, he wants to walk with us. And so from the very get-go, in the article of incorporation, we pick particular parables out and said, this is who we are going to be. One of those, for instance, is like we are not grain stores. That's one of our core values. It's like, okay, what does that mean? Well, kingdom marketing doesn't exist just for the sake of its own revenue growth. We exist to make sure that we're emptying those silos appropriately and scattering the seed around because we just don't want to be building silos all day and all night, and then all of a sudden we're called fools, like we see in the text. And so we have invited God since the beginning. And I want to believe that he sought us through his word. It penetrated us, it pierced us, like it says that it does. And uh, we wanted to apply that to our business practices. And lo and behold, uh, God's shovel has been bigger than our bucket, I feel like the entire time. Um I have been trying to figure out how to scale this business the entire time. And um, it's remarkable to tell you the truth. I I'm a little flabbergasted at the uh allowance that God has given us. Uh, we said that we wanted uh to not be the one talent man, we wanted to be the two talent man at least, maybe the five. Um, it turns out that uh he might look at us as 10 talent individuals now, and I'm trying to reconcile that in my heart still and catch up with it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, wow. And so you had a tutoring business with, I think you said 86 um tutors that were working with the company. And did you have this mindset prior to that? Or you know, were you sort of still partitioning business from your Christian life?
SPEAKER_01A good question. You know, it started out as a um as a pursuit not to want to work for anyone. It really did, like the tutoring company. It was like, I'm tired of working for anyone, I want to be my own boss. And so I ventured out and did this tutoring company for four years. And during this process, a faith believer, a man of God, you know, I was doing, I felt like all the right things. I was showing up to church on Sundays, I'd go to the Bible classes on Wednesday. Every now and again, I teach the Bible class for the middle school kids and rinse and repeat. I put the money in the tray. Sometimes, you know, I'd feel good about it. Sometimes I wouldn't think anything of it. And I felt like I was just kind of going through cycles at this time with my walk in Christ. Christ was my, I said Christ was my king. I was living a life that anyone would look at and be like, yeah, he's he's not too bad of an individual, sure. And uh at the time, though, I wasn't necessarily giving this business over to God. It was just a means for us to live and survive at the time. I believe that through his will, he grew it. Uh, I believe all good things come from our Heavenly Father in that regard. Uh, but my mindset was not the paradigm shift that it is now with kingdom marketing.
SPEAKER_00I see. And and so you you mentioned some of the you started to talk about some of the ways that you are doing kingdom marketing different than you would have had you just started, you know, any other marketing company. What are some of those other core differences between if say you were to have started a uh you know William Reagan marketing back around the time of the tutoring business, how would that be different than it is now in terms of the the um the ways that you're honoring God?
SPEAKER_01Right, absolutely. So we're very intentional uh with our strategic outlook on how it is that we are building the kingdom. Um, you know, from the very beginning, uh, in our article of incorporation and our strategic plan, before we even started figuring out revenue goals, what's Q1, two, three, and four going to look like this first year in business? Our first goal was what is it that we can give to the kingdom? And we actually just started with a monetary contribution goal. We believe that businesses can scale easier and give back more than the individual themselves. They can be greater than the individual themselves. And so we we put a goal in mind, a monetary goal, and wrote it on a whiteboard. And the question was how do we get here? And the building blocks that fell into place afterwards were all trying to support that particular number and that particular growth mindset. And what came after that was a genuine desire to want to get together and figure out a plan for God's kingdom. Now, by doing so, the business also was developed. So the business is developed with the mindset of wanting to build the kingdom. And it allows you to kind of have a very strict stewardship mindset when it comes to that now. Because now what you're doing is greater than yourself as the co-founder or the owner. It's greater than the business itself. It's really greater than the individuals that you're going to hire to be the account managers and SEO experts for your business. The main focus of this business is that this business is God's. And so just giving it over to him at the get-go was so important to us. And it's so important for us to uh perpetuate this mindset with our clients. For instance, um, we're big storytellers. We believe in parables, we believe in stories, and we believe that people buy from personalities. And so when we're crafting a brand and going through a branding strategy and your marketing strategy, we need to find out exactly who it is that you are, who's your target audience, what are their personas, what are their psychographics? But then there's a part in the strategy session with our clients. It's about the it we call it this tier three of the strategy session that we have dedicated time where we're going to consult with our clients and ask, what is it that we can do once we have this grand marketing strategy built out and all of its executables? What are the executables for God? What are the executables for the kingdom? And how are those deliverables met? Because we have to be intentional. Building the kingdom, I just doesn't, I don't think comes by happenstance. It there's there's order in God's design, there's order in God's plan, and I believe that there needs to be order, therefore, in our Christian-minded businesses to be intentional.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And what's that looked like for you in practice?
SPEAKER_01Well, from the uh beginning, we identified a nonprofit that was very near and dear to our heart. That that's kind of how we said, how are we actually going to make a monetary contribution to something that does build the kingdom? And so that partner was Sacred Selections. They are a foundation that um takes the monetary burden off of a family and funds the entire adoption process for a fatherless child into a good, moralistic Christian home. That right there is kingdom building. I mean it's the orphans, it's the people, it's the kids, it's taking care of the vulnerable. Matthew 25, you keep reading it, goes into the separation of the sheep and the goats. And sheep activity is described as the individual that took care of the least of these, the most vulnerable of us. And so that was kind of in our mindset. How do we identify the least of the least of us and the most vulnerable of us? And sacred selections just came at a kind of a divine given time. It's like, yes, that's it. And so we asked to become a percentage of proceeds partner with them. And uh, we have decided to dedicate 10% of our net revenue uh back to sacred selections. And uh we want to grow that. I want to grow more offerings as well. So during our strategic sessions, if our clients like, oh, I don't know what to do specifically, I want to be able to lead them. I want to be able to equip them. I believe that this is also a process that can equip the saints, which is a practice of the church. You know, if you don't, if you can't figure it out so far, hey, we got sacred selections over here, we got B over here, C over here. So I'm really prayful in prayer to God to open up more avenues and foundations for us to have an offering for our clients. But some of our clients come in and they're like, Oh, you know, I heard about this one thing that they're doing. Like, let's figure that out. Let's figure that out. And the 10% that we accrue from you is going to go right back into that thing that you love to build the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. And and how has that initiative impacted the operations of the company and the way that you guys actually do the do the work of marketing and and brand consulting and all those kinds of things?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, um, when it comes to a particular brand, um, let's say, for instance, we recently signed a cybersecurity firm. And, you know, the cybersecurity firm in and of itself, of course, is not a Christian like messaged cybersecurity firm. But the the owner certainly is of a Christ-like-minded individual. And so crafting that out, of course, the persona of the of the of this firm will be based on who it is that they are. We want to bring their personality out, but building those good building building blocks, building upon those building blocks of just good marketing practices and tactical and holistic and strategic executables, we're able to then bring more clients. We're able to bring more business into this client that we have. And they in turn, though, because they've partnered with us, are now making more money, bringing in more revenue, meaning that the 10% of that net revenue is increasing for our organizations we want to partner with to build, their organizations that they want to partner with to build. And so it's it's hand in hand as we grow and make more revenue, and as our clients grow and make more revenue, we found that we're able just to give more. And that's just kind of in like I was saying, we're not grain stores. We want to be able to give more. If uh we still have to keep the lights on, like it's not just some like frivolous, like let's give it all away. That would be cool, but I don't know how I would perpetuate the kingdom activity that we need to, and so we feel like 10% is uh is our sweet spot right now. It'd be cool if it was larger, Lord willing. We'll see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and can you tell us a story of a time when you saw God's hand at work in your business?
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Um I didn't know what I got myself into. I think I kind of said that his shovel seemed a lot bigger than our bucket at one time. And that was about uh four months in. Like when we started this, it was kind of like, you know what? Let's just see organically how it goes. We're bootstrapping this thing. And it's like, you know what, let's just see organically how it goes with uh our initial outreach. Let's shake the low-hanging uh fruit off the tree and uh let's do some LinkedIn outreach and whatnot. The response was a lot, and um I uh didn't know exactly how to scale at the speed that I needed to. And it's one of those things where the problem felt so great at the time, where it's like, how are we gonna serve all these people appropriately? Like, you know, what have we done? Like, you know, we we have this grand mission and this kingdom-oriented aspect, and God's actually has given us uh more talents to accomplish that. And lo and behold, over the course of about two weeks, every single building block I felt like that I needed to succeed and properly scaling at the speed that I needed to fell into place. It fell into place. And I was telling my wife, Melissa, I was like, man, I don't know, I don't know how we met this partner today to like do, you know, this fantastic graphic work for for our uh clients. And, you know, we partnered with this one company that's really just a class in their SEO, PPC, social media outlook. And then when we signed with them, I looked at like, you know, some of their PDFs and paperwork, and I see this little Jesus fish at the top of their PDF, and it's a first Corinthians passage up there. Well, I take a screenshot and I send it to Skylar, and I was like, what would the chances that our new partner that we just acquired is also a faith-based organization? Sure enough, they are. And it's like, what? Like there, there, there, there were 10 other ways that we could have gone during that vetting process, and we went with them, and we didn't even know that at the time. And it turns out that they are, and the relationship since then has been so beneficial. It's been an irony, sharpening, iron moment. And so, you know, I don't know even what tomorrow brings for the business. All I know is that today and from the past, God is supplying everything that it is that we need. I don't fully understand it sometimes or can see it at its full scope, but from where we're at in just one year and two months, it has to be God's work. Like it's it's I couldn't have done it. I don't uh at at the time I didn't know how to, and it got done.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love it. What's one of your favorite? You mentioned the um you know the parable of the of the rich fool and um the parable of talents. Um, what's another one of your favorite scriptures related to business and entrepreneurship?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I absolutely love the um I I've spoken about it a few times and um I like relating it to business, but it might have a loose interpretation in there. But we see a stormy night on a sea with disciples in a boat, and one man named Peter sees their Lord out on the ocean, calling out they're scared, it's a ghost. What is it? The the fear, and then it's like, oh, it's it's it's our Lord Christ. And Peter, God bless him for who he is, he believes so fervently in Jesus Christ that he steps out of a boat, and for all intents and purposes, this fisherman knows how water works and he steps on it. He steps on the water. And here's the best part about Peter is that he's stepping on the water, and then all of a sudden he gets scared again, he starts to fear again, and he starts to sink. And I feel like we have just all been there as entrepreneurs where it's like I was saying, I don't know what tomorrow brings, but I'm going to try to do it anyway. And you do it anyway, and you might find yourself struggling, you might find yourself not being able to figure it out just quite yet. What are what is it? And I'm scared that it's not gonna work, but Peter reaches down or Christ reaches down, picks Peter back up out of the water, and I think that's the most powerful part of it. He asks, like, why the little faith, of course. But he he saves him. And I believe that in our businesses, when we step out of the boat on faith, and even if we sink for a time, Christ is there to pick us back up. And we don't we might not know exactly what that looks like. It might not be exactly what we even expected. But I have ran into more and more business owners that are Christ-centric that contribute Jesus Christ and God to the success of their business. And it sounds like it sounds like he reached down and pulled you, pulled you back up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that that's that's such a wonderful takeaway for me. It is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. That's what a powerful, powerful story. And I yeah, I I think that's got a direct application for business or just stepping out into anything unknown. Um, and I mean, that's that's the that's the lifestyle of Christianity is a life of faith, right? You know, it's it's not a life of getting all of your questions answered and then okay, I'll go implement that. Um, it's it's you know, go to a place I will show you. Um, didn't say wait, you know, Abraham, until I show it to you, and then you go. But you know, you just you just take that step and God is gonna lead you. Um, it's a life of faith. I love that. So the website is trykingdom.com. Um, what do you want to say to our clients about or potential clients uh among our audience um about reaching out to you and how they could uh take the next step?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, if you haven't done a full uh marketing strategic plan and maybe you're wearing the marketing hat and it's just getting a little too heavy, allow us to take That off your shoulders. Um, we consider ourselves uh stewards of these um operations and uh deliverables, and we take them with great pleasure and pride. Um, if you want to increase your exposure, and what I mean by that is do you want to build your talents? Do you want to build talents with us? We would absolutely love to talk to you about that. We're full suite uh everything from graphic design to SEO, PPC, social media management, cold email, LinkedIn marketing, you name it. We have the systems in place and account managers ready to help you. And um, you know, we we want a relationship. Uh, we're transparent. We want to make sure that you know exactly every single dollar that is going towards your marketing is accounted for. Uh, another great passage is we just like the passages about good and honest scales and how God is pleased with those. Those we we don't scan over those verses lightweight. And uh so if you want a good steward in in your marketing practices, give us a try. Give it, give us a call. You can go to trykingdom.com, try kingdom.com. You can fill out the contact form and uh I'll personally reach out to you or William at trykingdom.com if you want to email me and uh we'll see, see if there's a relationship, see if we're copacetic, and uh we can rock and roll from there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, awesome. What's one of the non-obvious kind of low-hanging fruits in marketing that a lot of businesses could just immediately kind of turn the the dial on that and it would start to generate immediate results?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it depends on the industry. You know, uh, I believe that uh LinkedIn Sales Manager is a fine place to go right now if you kind of like that networking approach and want to try to get a relationship going at first. I wouldn't start with the pitch first when connecting with individuals. I would literally just start with, hey, how's it going? And uh I really think that you can you can uh segment down really well for not much money. I think it costs about $80 uh a month for a LinkedIn sales manager and you can delineate down pretty good your target audience and who it is that you want to find and talk to. Uh that's a good return on investment. Um also, if you have a particular something big happens in your industry and you need to get the word out fast, cold email marketing is fantastic. If you need to set it up right, don't just do it from one domain. That is free advice. Do not cold email in bulk from one domain, people. Uh, but set it upright and you can get 7,000 emails out in a month to prospects and make sure that, hey, this is happening right now. I want to bring your attention to it. Have your booking right there in the email. You can qualify them in one email, two email sometimes, and you can have a booked uh prospect uh uh on your calendar. And so I think that those are just two like good things right now. There's longer play stuff, SEO is a much longer play, PPC is a great play for fast results. Be careful, don't waste money, don't waste money.
SPEAKER_00That's well said. Yeah, I mean, do you see any ethical issues when it comes to cold contacting? Um, because I mean I get a ton of, as we all do, cold contacts. And I mean, one of my objectives is to make sure that nothing ends up in my inbox that is not relevant to me. Um, and so I just immediately will create a filter or I'll just mark it as spam. Like I this occasionally I'll just unsubscribe, but I feel like I don't um I don't deserve to have to take that extra step, you know what I mean? Um, and I guess in saying um, you know, to don't send it all from one email, it's because that email is gonna eventually get blacklisted, right? Um, so you know, how do you navigate that from a Christian perspective?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely. It of course depends like what it is that's being hot tier and stuff. If it is a legitimate service that is bettering the community that you are trying to serve, sometimes we just need to get the message out somehow. And that's fine and all. Your list got on the Apollo domain somehow. You are listed one way or another, and uh open domain list things, you know, it is what it is. You're you're you got listed somewhere, uh, whether you know it or not. Maybe even just signing up for your business, you know, you got listed and they know who you are and they want to be able to market to you specifically. Um, there needs to be proper practices in place, like double opt-in. There has to be an unsubscribe. You have to play that game appropriately because that is the ethical practice behind it. Just make sure that it's not like, oh, I can not have these double opt-in, unsubscribe features on there because I don't want them unsubscribing from me. You know, what is your intent behind it? Is it just to annoy this individual? If it is to annoy the individual, yeah. Maybe uh maybe we should reassess uh our own our own uh personality uh before we hit that send button. Uh but I I find it to be beneficial if it is a service that uh is benefiting the industry. And you know, sometimes some things are important. I've I've booked a meeting off of a cold email before, and it turned into a relationship that I I really liked. I didn't know that that was available until an email popped up in my mailbox. However, Darren, I totally hear you. We get a lot of them.
SPEAKER_00But LinkedIn Sales Manager, you know, it's it's like that's when you're on LinkedIn. I mean, you're on LinkedIn, you're not in your private inbox. So that's part of the I mean, the without sales manager and people actually paying money to LinkedIn, there is no LinkedIn. And so, you know, I guess that's one way to sort of justify the cold, you know, mass reach outs on on LinkedIn is that that's you're paying LinkedIn and they're okay with that with their terms of service, um, even though it's gonna annoy some people.
SPEAKER_01Um, but but hey, and that's why I say on LinkedIn, I I I kind of suggest to our clients that they are gonna go down the LinkedIn route, whether that is through uh you're personally doing it or you're automating it. There's automated ways to do your LinkedIn outreach and make it sound like you. Uh, we could talk about that more if you'd like. Um, but um I treat LinkedIn kind of like you would go to a networking event. And I just don't go up to a stranger at a networking event. I know we're here to network, but I don't go up to them and be like, uh, hey, you want marketing? Uh hey, do you uh do you need uh do you need a new bathtub? I'm selling bathtubs over here. I don't know you. I'm William Reagan, by the way. Like you don't do that, and so I wouldn't treat LinkedIn that way either because I get messages on LinkedIn and it's the pitch immediately. It's the pitch. The first message I ever receive from this person is the pitch. Warm them up. Like it that's a that's a place for relationships, and you can build great relationships on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you can. Yeah, yeah, good point. Um, well, William, this has been a uh fascinating conversation. I've really enjoyed getting to meet you. Uh, again, everybody, try kingdom.com is the website. Um, you can definitely get a a a good sense from this interview of William's expertise in the area of marketing and branding. Um, so definitely give them a reach out to them and get a conversation going. Um, William, we really appreciate your heart for the kingdom and uh and to do things God's way. And thanks for helping us grow today. We appreciate that. Thank you. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.