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SPEAKER_01Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02When did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work and business?
SPEAKER_01Um, I feel like that's been I've felt that way all along. I grew up in a Christian home and uh went to Christian schools and uh was also in an entrepreneurial family. My grandfather was an entrepreneur, my father was an entrepreneur, and so uh, and they were both very involved in their churches and in local ministries. And I just kind of had that integration of faith and work um kind of modeled for me growing up. So it just seemed like a natural thing for me to eventually uh you know start a business and uh just kind of came right out of that background.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so it was you were 19 years old when you uh built uh a Bible kind of search software, uh, and then that evolved into Logos Bible software. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, actually, uh I wrote a Bible software program in high school just to help me do my Bible homework. Uh, I hated you strongest concordance. You know, it's this big heavy book you have to look everything up in to find verses in the Bible. And I thought, wow, a computer could do this better. And I'd seen some other people try to or get the Bible on the computer. And so I found the files for the Bible and I wrote a search program. And a few years later, I was uh working at Microsoft and looking for a project to do on the side. And a friend and I from who uh friend who went to the same church and also worked at Microsoft, we got together and decided to write a new version of that Bible study program for Windows, which was kind of new at the time. That was back in 1991. And so uh we we kind of took the same ideas from that high school project and rewrote it as a Windows application, and I'm still here 30 years later.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Yeah, just what every high school kid does. You know, number one, they're they're all reading the Bible, and number two, they want to, you know, write a search program for it. And that's that's incredible, especially in such early days of um uh computers. Um, so the the company has has uh developed from Logos Bible software into this whole suite of apps, time-saving apps for churches, and and you've been through a lot of ups and downs in the company. Um, what's an example of a time in your business when you you had to ask yourself the question, am I gonna put God first in this business or am I gonna put myself first?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think compared to some believers in business, I I don't necessarily see a lot of conflicts in that. You know, we we sell Bible software, we sell to pastors. Um, I don't get presented with some of the uh, you know, the exact same kind of moral dilemmas that I think other people face in business, right? Where they they've got someone who doesn't share their values who tries to, you know, bring them into something that they might not want to that might not align with their beliefs. Uh, but I think that uh I mean it there are, of course, in any business, even in ours, you know, there's there's temptations to put money ahead of mission or to you know to feel like you've got some sort of entitlement uh as opposed to doing what's right for the customers or uh the people you're serving. And those are, you know, those challenges do come up on a regular basis. And I think that um it's been a help to me to be, you know, just so clear from the very beginning what our who we want to be, and then just trying to live up to that every day in the business. And we've I'm not saying we've done that perfectly, it's uh none of us do, but it's uh that having it be intentional is what's helped there a lot.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And and so you you talk about uh this nearly fatal IPO attempt. Um, what kind of went wrong there?
SPEAKER_01Uh so that was back in the 90s, you know, the late 90s when the dot-com boom was happening and so many uh, you know, all the internet companies were emerging and people were going public and raising huge amounts of money. And at the time, I think we we thought that our technology that we developed for Bible study had a lot of application in other areas. People were asking us about using our technology for legal reference and scientific and medical reference because we built this incredibly powerful electronic books platform, you know, years before the Kindle and when eBooks was just kind of still a conceptual thing. There were very few physical ebooks. And uh we thought that we could kind of raise money and expand the business into lots of categories. And it didn't work out. And um, even it we we abandoned the project of going public. I'm really glad that we did. And one of the things that came out of that was kind of a renewed focus to realize that what we had wasn't just a great technology platform for eBooks, but really what we had was a mission to serve a certain customer profile. And I think we gone into it thinking we were building a software company that started by serving people in the church. And after that failed IPO, we kind of reimagined the company as a company focused on serving pastors and people who are serving pastoral functions and not as a technology company that you know needed to take its technology wherever it could go. And that um that was a real, you know, while we started in Bible software, I think we'd started thinking it's a software company and this is the first product, right? In the early 90s, software companies had large, you know, diversity of products in lots of different categories was a very common model. And after that IPO, we became a company that builds tools to help people study the Bible.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So you you wrote, is that your advice for entrepreneurs to really just target a particular audience as opposed to just making it all about the product and then figuring out, you know, any place you can make the product fit, just but just really focusing on your audience and then building products around that audience?
SPEAKER_01I don't think that's the only way. There are people, you know, businesses that are technology driven, right? If you look at like the product line of 3M, right? You know, scotch tape and sandpaper and whatever, it if you, you know, if you step back, 3M has a diversity of products from post-its to scotch tape to sandpaper. But what they really have is a skill of kind of applying things to substances, right? Putting, you know, putting a sticky back on paper, putting, you know, sand on paper. They they almost have an adhesive expertise, right? Or corning, which has a glass expertise, right? They they make dishes and they make iPhone screens because they know glass. So sometimes that's the right model is to be technology driven and then to go find places your technology works or that your product works. For us, though, um, being customer focused has become the how we're oriented. And that in some ways, once you have a customer relationship, particularly if you're in a business with an ongoing relationship, our customer relationships aren't transactional. People buy logos, Bible software, and then they come back and add books to their digital library for years and years and years. And when you have a relationship with a customer, that I believe that relationship can become more valuable than what your technology or your product is. And so people would say, well, you could take this technology to other areas, which is what we tried in the 90s. And say, but what I but I don't know any customers in those areas. You know, you could use our technology to deliver legal reference, but I don't know attorneys as customers, but we know pastors. It's almost easier to sell other things to pastors than it is to take the technology to a new market because we have a relationship with them that goes on for a long time. And we build up a great reputation and a lot of trust. Um I don't think it's the only model, like I said, but I think it's the right one for us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's that's great advice. Um, Bob, what is your favorite Bible verse or passage related to business or entrepreneurship?
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about money, maybe more than business, although there often high overlap in that. Uh, and I found lots of uh of the proverbs on money and lending and things like that to be useful over the years. Um, but the one that sticks out in my mind is the passage in James, uh James 4, 13 to 17. You know, uh, come now, you who say today or tomorrow, we'll go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Um, but you don't know what tomorrow will bring.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01And I think that uh, you know, it continues there that, you know, instead we ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. So I don't think that's really a passage about business. Business is kind of an incidental to the message there about boasting about tomorrow and having the humility to understand that everything we do is in reliance on the Lord. But I think that's a good reminder to me because um, because you know, I think business is not an accidental example there, right? You know, that's that's exactly where we boast about tomorrow, right? I'm gonna build this business, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna save money, I'm gonna make a, you know, build a legacy or whatever it is. And that's exactly the kind of thing that, you know, being in business can tempt you into. And uh the reminder for me to to keep a sense of humility and understanding that that's in the Lord's will is it's useful and uh I need it frequently.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Do you have a story or example of when you kind of had to learn that the hard way in business?
SPEAKER_01Um, well, I think I mean, and our IPO was a great example, right? We we thought that we were going to take, you know, it was the late 90s. There's people raising, you know, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars all over the place with technology companies that are just basically notes scribbled on a napkin. And we had a, you know, we had a very powerful electronic uh books and research platform at a time when, you know, the web was new and there were no ebooks, there was no Kindle. And we thought we were going to go and just kind of take over the whole area of digital libraries and electronic books, um, particularly for high-end uses like referencing. And, you know, it was a very humble experience to go through that process of, you know, building an IPO and hiring uh, you know, professional consultants and attorneys and going out and doing a roadshow to pitch the to investors and then realizing that we had to unwind that whole thing. We even, you know, we had money in Astro accounts that we sent back to investors who'd already, you know, sent their investment in on the company. And our our horizon went from, you know, we're going to be this huge company that's public and and has unlimited growth potential to, you know, we're going to be really focused on serving this very specific market.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One of your books, the title is Fire Someone Today. Um, some would hear that and say, that, Bob, that doesn't sound like a very Christian thing to do. Uh, can you elaborate on why that maybe that's not the case?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, I've I was always had mixed feelings about that title, right? It's provocative enough to get your attention on a bookshelf, but it people do react to it that way. I've had people tell me they they don't keep it out, they keep it in a drawer. And um, but you know, as a you know, in the early days of the business, we it was very easy to get hired at our company and almost impossible to get fired, right? And because we just, you know, firing people is uncomfortable for everyone, and you just want to avoid it as much as you can. But what that led to is keeping people in the wrong job. And I had a friend in business, I was in a group of other uh business leaders, and I I sat in a meeting once that made a huge impact on me where somebody uh was telling a story about the person they weren't firing, but they've, you know, was doing a terrible job and they weren't firing. And this other CEO called this person out and said, you know, you were really doing that person a disservice because of your selfishness, right? And we're like, whoa, my selfishness, I'm I'm not firing the guy. I'm I'm the good guy. He said, No, you're not. Is that person ever going to get a raise from you? Is that person ever going to get a promotion from you? Does that person even get daily encouragement and feedback that they're doing a good job? Or because you want to maintain this self-image that you're a nice guy, that person is in a job where they're not gonna get a raise, not get promoted, not get positive feedback, maybe be resented by their coworkers, waste a year of their life before they finally have to leave your organization so that you can feel like you're a nice person. That's not nice, that's not kind, right? The kind thing is to help that person get into a place where they're gonna be successful. There's, and I believe this, there's a there's a job for everybody, right? There's a place where everyone can be successful, utilize their talents, be encouraged, be rewarded, get positive feedback from their peers and supervisors. And if that position isn't with you, or that person's in the wrong position, you're not doing them any favors by keeping them there. And I had my own very visceral experience of this with someone we moved around the company a few times and just was not fitting and just it wasn't working. And yet I couldn't stand a fire him because we lived in a small town and I just thought it's just gonna be so uncomfortable. And when we finally did, he ended up going back to school. He went into ministry, he's now a pastor. And uh kid you not, it's almost it's just amazing that it happened this way. He was actually visiting our town. He moved to another state, and then years later he was visiting our town, and my son happened to be in the office that day, and he came came in to say hello and told my son that the best thing that ever happened to him was, you know, was getting fired by me, right? But how amazing! Because what he discovered was he wasn't supposed to be in business, right? He was supposed to be in the pastorate, but he was wasting time in a sense in a place where it wasn't utilizing his skills when he needed to be in something else.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so I'm sure you've had a lot of pastors read this book. Um, you're the you're the Bible guy, you're the Logos Bible guy. Um, is there a biblical kind of uh foundation or or um application to kind of affirm this practice?
SPEAKER_01Um, I think it's it's about um telling the truth in love, right? To people. And it's about seeking the best for people, right? What I um what I love about business in general, and I think what I like about the system that the Lord's given us for how the world works is um business is a place for mutual benefit, right? When business is running right, it is to everyone's benefit and it creates wealth and prosperity, right? I, you know, you wouldn't give me money for my product if you didn't value the product more than the money you held in your hand, right? And I'm giving you the product in exchange for that money because we value that that cash more than the copy of the product or the the item I'm selling you. Well, that's the moment at which wealth is created and we both became wealthier, right? We both traded something for something we valued more, right? And that exchange is literally the moment in which wealth is created in the world and prosperity increases. And I think that, you know, the laws of supply and demand and the laws of transactions and agreements and covenants, I mean, these things are, you know, all throughout the Bible, and they're they're laws of the universe, right? I mean, if God is sovereign, then he's, you know, the law of gravity is his, and I think the law of supply and demand is his as well. And I think as Christians, we sometimes have this temptation to see the business world and the spiritual world as kind of as different spheres, and maybe even sometimes in tension or in conflict. Um, but I don't think that's the case. I think that you know, we we live you know in a world in which the Lord is sovereign and has established uh the laws of the universe and the the laws of how we interact and trade are the same as the laws of the physical universe.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well said. Um tell us what is tell us a little bit more about faith life. Um, we may we probably have some pastors listening that would be interested, or you know, maybe some uh we've got a lot of people that are active in their church and and maybe are on the board, maybe they're deacons, maybe they're on the board uh that might want to recommend some of your products if they're not already being used at their church. Um, what does FaithLife offer?
SPEAKER_01So um Faith Life does have a whole suite of things, right? We have Logos Bible Software, which is where we started, and then we have a we have a publishing imprint, Lex Impress. We publish Bible study magazine, which is uh is a great magazine about Bible study with uh just kind of draw people deeper into the Word. Um we have products like Proclaim, which is our church presentation software. Um Proclaim puts the song lyrics and Bible verses on the screen, makes it easy for volunteers to kind of take over the computer in the back of the sanctuary and run the slides without a lot of training. It's cloud-based so that the worship leader can work on the slides from home and the pastor can work on them from his office, and uh you know, the everyone can participate in the one presentation. Um, we do have other tools for churches, but right now we're we're getting more and more focused on Logos Bible software. That's really where we came from, and it's always been our strongest area, and that's what we're emphasizing now. So Logos is getting a lot of uh investment and just continuing to become a better tool for Bible study. It's becoming more global. It's now in uh it's fully supported in seven languages and you know has texts in 60 plus languages. And we're moving into the academic environment a lot more too. So seminaries already, of course, use our product a lot, but we're doing more and more with Bible colleges and Christian colleges to help deliver electronic books and textbooks into the classrooms.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. For anyone who's not familiar with uh Logos Bible software, can you just give us uh kind of a hypothetical uh kind of idea that maybe that somebody wants to search the scripture for and how logos can can help them on that journey?
SPEAKER_01So um you can download logos for free, right? You can get the logos app and put it on your iPhone or your Android, and it works like a Kindle, right? It's a but a slightly smarter Kindle that knows more about the Bible, right? So you can open the Bible and you can read it, or you can open a Christian book and read it front to back. If you see a Bible reference in the book, you can tap it and it pops up in a little window in whatever your preferred translation is. So it's a little better than the Kindle even for reading a Christian book, because you can kind of follow those Bible cross-references just by tapping on them. And of course, you can navigate the Bible. I mean, it's hard to take a Kindle and you know jump to Romans 3.23, but you can do that in Bible, a Bible app. On the desktop or the web, um, where we also offer a free version of Logos, the Logos Basic Collection. Um, there you get into a multi-window interface. And this is where you know you want to put a Bible in one window and a commentary in the other. And you can do this on a mobile app and in panes or something, but on a laptop you can open up lots of windows. And that's what we find pastors typically do. They'll have, you know, the New Testament in Greek, the text in English, a commentary, a Bible dictionary, or a Greek lexicon, maybe a sermon writing tool all up in in different windows together. And the real power of it to me, I mean, we've got great navigation, great searching, all the things you'd expect in any kind of information retrieval tool. But the magic is the passage guide and other guides, the sermon starter guide, the topic guide. When the passage guide, you enter a passage and you say, I want to study James 4, or just even James 4, you know, 13 to 17. Uh, or you type in the name of a passage, the wedding at Canaanit, or something like that. And the passage guide goes through your entire digital library and brings back an organized report of the content in your digital library that relates to that passage and just makes it a list of hyperlinks. So while our software is a super powerful tool, and people tell me all the time, oh, I'm embarrassed, I don't use all the features. Well, that's fine. I have Microsoft Excel and I only use, you know, one thousandth of its features, but that it's still useful for the one thousandth I use. And in Logos, you enter the passage, you click go, and we give you this passage guide on the left and it opens the books on the right. And it's basically just clicking hyperlinks, right? If you can use a web page, you can use Logos Bible software. And it's it's like a research assistant went into your library and found all the relevant things. So you could have a digital library with 500 or 1,000 or 10,000 books and say, but right now I want to see all the commentaries on this passage, and I want to see all the key words in this passage and have a link. To a dictionary article about those keywords. And I want to see art and media and other people's sermons on this passage. And it's that automatic organization that is the huge time saver. So the Bible software doesn't do anything. Um what it's doing is really just finding things for you. And for me, the real value of it is the removal of friction, right? What stops us from going deeper in any study, right? Well, I'd have to go to the shelf and grab another book and look something up in the index and turn to the right page number. And right, um, you go into your pastor's library and they probably are sitting in front of a wall of books. And you know, you think, how often do they use all of these books? Well, you know, I use these books to prepare my sermons. It's like, yeah, but you know, when you're like, I'm not sure I know what that word means, or there's a footnote that I might look up. Well, you'd have to get up, you have to turn around, you have to find that book, you have to, and that's what Logos does is it takes all that friction away and it makes it easier to go further and deeper into your study.
SPEAKER_02So awesome. Bob, I think my favorite part of your story is the the fact that this program was it originated from a high school kid. Um, you know, I I think young teenagers are are so underestimated, uh, you know, especially nowadays. And I think it's just uh I've got three three young boys, and one of them, I'm not really a tech guy. I mean, I've I've learned a lot in running a business, uh, but I never was the guy that was tinkering with computers and so forth as a young kid. But one of my boys in particular is uh very much into technology, and I'm I've got him in a coding program. Um, do you have any uh encouragement for parents looking to get their kids into technology?
SPEAKER_01Um, one of the things that I I actually open start mix now with a with my relationship with my parents. Um I give a lot of credit for everything that I was able to do. Because what they did is they just um they gave me permission, not like you know, you're allowed to go outside the gate permission, but kind of mental permission. When I came up with a crazy idea, no matter how young I was, and said, Oh, I want to do this, they they didn't treat it with you're too young or you don't know enough or you're not old enough or you don't, they said, Well, let's take the first step, right? Whatever it was. And of course, like any kid, I had a thousand interests that all petered out after the first taking the first couple steps. But my parents' default assumption was yes, right? If, you know, if I said I want to build a rocket to the moon, they would not have said, that's ridiculous, you can't do that. They would have been like, well, let's go to the library and get some books on rocketry, right? And that'd probably be enough to stop me. But if I wanted to go further, I'm sure they would like take me to a place where I could start to, you know, buy the parts to start building model rockets, right? And when I said, you know, I want to build a software product or learn to program computers, you know, they helped me get the tools, they helped me get the resources. They introduced me to their friends who might know something about that area. And that that giving permission was so powerful for me. And that's even what I try to do in Start Next Now is to kind of give that permission to people who have an idea to start a new ministry or to start a new business or to take another career step, or you know, just to say you gotta just take that first step. And often, as crazy as it sounds, we just need someone to say it's okay, right? Because we approach those things with fear or insecurity about our skills, or you know, I don't know enough to write an app. Well, no one knew enough to write an app until they've learned to write an app. And you know, if you're if your kid wants to write an app, then like, you know, help them find the first step they need to do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, wow, that's great advice. How can people get involved with what you're doing? Um, fire someone today.com and startnextnow.com and faithlife.com are the websites. Anything specific you want to encourage people to do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and if you want to start with logos Bible software, you can go to logos.com slash basic, just l-o-g-os.com slash basic, and there you can get the free digital library and just get started with logos, whether you want to do that on a mobile device or a laptop or desktop machine, or even just our web app. And then from there, you can build a library of Bible study tools that is suited to your needs.
SPEAKER_02All right, logos.com. Um, aside from the the products that you've developed and and uh the websites we just mentioned, what's one action you want people to take in light of what they've heard on this episode today?
SPEAKER_01Um That's a great question. I, you know, I think that encouraging people to take that first step, right? Whatever it is, that in my experience of you know, of building a company and having so many, working with so many people, particularly, you know, at the start of their careers, that that taking the first step is the key thing, right? I was blessed to have parents who, you know, when I said I want to write software programs, they said yes. When I said I wrote this program and I want to figure out how to distribute it to people, they helped me figure out how to do those things. When I said at 19, you know, I want or at 20, I want to quit my my good job at Microsoft and you know launch a business. They didn't say you're crazy and you shouldn't do that. They said, How can we help you? Uh and I think that that's the I would encourage people to to seek out uh people who encourage them to be that person for the people in their churches and their families.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's great. Be a barnabas for people, be a son of encouragement uh to help people take that next step. Bob, thank you for taking the time out for our audience today. Um, this has been encouraging and challenging at the same time. Um, we're all better for it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode. You can share your feedback and get more information to help you partner with God in business and disciple your company, your industry, and your community at theology of business.com. The Theology of Business Podcast is sponsored by Hybridge Books and Media, a media agency specializing in publishing and promoting the world-changing ideas of inspiring thought leaders through book publishing, website development, publicity, email marketing, social media management, comic health management, and video based course publishing. Take the next step to share your message with the world by contacting us at hybridemedia.com. Thanks for listening and keep partnering with God in your business.