Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RCW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders integrate biblical values into business. And on this episode, we're joined by repeat guest, Chris Patton. I don't want to say rerun. That sounds, that doesn't sound great. Um, but Chris, my friend, he's he came on and and talked about cultivating a Christ-centered culture in your company, which was uh an amazing episode. Definitely go back and listen to it if you haven't already heard it or listen to it again. Chris is the global CEO of His Way at Work, a nonprofit dedicated to transforming company cultures and implementing Christian principles in the workplace. He is also the co-host of the Eternal ROI podcast, a Pronk Studios and His Way at Work joint production that shares real stories of transformation and impact from leaders who have made their workplace the forefront of their ministry. And formerly, and really as of the time that I uh interviewed him last, Chris was president and CEO of and third generation owner and partner of his family's automobile business in LaGrange, Georgia. He also authored the blog ChristianFaith at Work.com, in which he uses his experience using the business as a vehicle for ministry to teach readers of his blog how to run their business from an eternal perspective. Chris, welcome back. Thanks, Darren.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it. It's good to be here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So this is uh a hot topic with his way at work. And I know that you all take people through a robust process uh to help them live out his way, God's way at work. Um, but the facet of that that we're gonna be concentrating on uh in this episode is gonna be how companies approach charitable giving. So how do most companies approach charitable giving? Let's say that I'm uh I'm a CEO, we're starting to make some money, we're getting we're getting some profit, and we're looking for um opportunities to to give back, as it said. Um, what what do companies and founders, CEOs typically start doing at that? How do they approach charitable giving from a corporate standpoint? Sure.
SPEAKER_01Darren, I'll I'll uh answer that in two ways. Number one is how do they, in most cases, how did I when I was in that position and started uh trying to figure out what God wanted from our business? But also a second part of that would be how we recommend that approach look different. Um and uh maybe some reasons for that. So, first is um, you know, I was in the same role. I was in the dealership world, um, grew up in third generation business and uh, you know, as a had been a believer since I was 10 years old, uh, took over the family business um in my early 30s and starting to make some money and saying, you know what, I I feel like based on my faith, based on what I hear at church, I need to be giving out of the business, not just my personal tithe on my income or my giving out of my personal family income, but what you know, out of the business profits. What does that look like? Is that also a tithe? Is it 10%? What's the right number? And uh I won't even begin to make the argument that there is an exact number there. Um, you could have all sorts of different perspectives on that, but here's the point. Most of the time, and I was one of these, and we I still talk to CEOs today that start off in this mindset, it is I need to give something out of the blessings that God is giving us through this business. Um, I want the business to impact people. Uh, I've got resources financial and otherwise that I can use, you know, and they start giving. And here's where it normally goes is outward. Um, meaning it it may be in the community. Uh, for us as a dealership, you know, we had Honda, Ford, and Chrysler franchises in a fairly small market. And so we would give to local faith-based organizations to help them further the work they were doing, which is a good thing. I mean, there's nothing I'll say is opposed to that. Others, and we did some of this as well, but others will start giving globally, right? To global missions. So I'm taking care of community here at home. I'm looking out to missions, and maybe I've I've got a heart for those in India where less than 2% are Christian. And uh, and I actually met a guy there, a pastor there, and still have a relationship to this day, and we would give to them and their efforts. Others may say, I want to help build wells, or I want to help do microfinancing. You know, there's all, I mean, there's an endless number of options out there to pour your money into um that can help in eternal perspective, but also can help in the practical everyday needs around the world uh or in your community. But here's the problem. And uh here's where I came to realize um that I was off track. And that is, you know, no, there's no way that you can imagine I would take my family income and take it from my family and give to help needs outside of my household, if my household was in need. Right? Yeah. Now, I'm not arguing the tithe and living, you know, putting the tithe first and living with the the 90%. That's not what I'm talking about. I do believe that. But if if my income was at a point where my family would be in need if I gave over and above that, if I continue to give outward, I just wouldn't do that. I'm gonna take care of my family first. And yet, as business owners, so many of us, I was guilty of this myself, and so many I talked to today, they give outward and they've got employees right there in the company in need. Now, they're making a fair wage in most cases, these companies, let's just assume they're paying fair wages, they're not cheating the employees with their income. But the bottom line is today, people have issues even with a fair wage, even with two wages in the household, things come up. And sure, you can make arguments all day long. Well, they didn't manage well, they don't have the reserves. Well, no, they probably don't have the reserves you have, but there are needs in the family, in the business itself, within the employees that we can turn our attention to first before going outward, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and this is uh this shows up several times in this throughout scripture. Um I guess the most um one of the most overt uh um instances is in First Timothy, where we're the the writer Paul he says, um, if you don't take care of your own household, you're worse than an unbeliever, and you have denied the faith. And uh as I recall Jesus, he was rebuking the Pharisees, yet again and and said that you're you're saying that what you your your resources are given to God, but you're neglecting your own parents, you're not taking care of you know your needy um elderly parents. So there's certainly biblical precedent for this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And so from our perspective, it at our organization, but also um with the businesses we we work with, it is the mindset if we first take care of our family. And in the business case, family is defined as the employee base. Take care of their needs first. And it's not just the spiritual, you know, we do in many cases, and again, I was guilty of this myself in the dealership, is thinking, all right, well, I'm gonna take care of employees. I pay them, so that's the financial part. Now I need to give them a Bible study so they can get spiritually astute as I am, right? Which is ridiculous, but that's the mindset. And and what instead needs to happen is I need to figure out where are the physical needs that need to be met with these employees. Jesus did this, right? He met physical needs, healing, feeding, and so forth, and then shared spiritual truth. And so what we recommend today is when a business owner says, I want to take X amount or X percent of our profit, or in some cases we have some business owners saying, I want to take a percent of our top line revenue. Before it even hits the bottom line, we're gonna start right off the top. Whatever the case, we recommend 80% of that go it at least 80% go internal first. And the idea being let's saturate our employees and their families with a love and a care that frankly blows them away. One of the companies we work with says we want to do that in such a way that none of our associates ever have to question whether they matter.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01That's a strong statement. That's their vision for caring for their company. And so once we do this, if we take that philanthropy, philanthropy or philanthropic mindset and we want to give out of the profits, we want to give out of the company, but we turn internally first and we start meeting physical needs, emotional needs, bring chaplains into the company and start ministering to our flock right in front of us first, and then take outward because once they're kind of saturated. And the funny thing is, many times the employees themselves are the ones that start turning it outward. They say to the way our system works, our budgeting process, they say, look, can we take some of this money and go out in the community with it? We feel like we're getting taken care of, but we want to start caring for others. It's just a natural flow. Um, but starting first at home, starting with the flock, taking care of those needs first, it's number one, I think it's biblical. And you've just cited a couple of different examples that come to my mind as well. But second, it's good for business. Now that's not the initial, should not be the initial motive. But what do you think happens to an employee base that goes from being in general in need to being cared for and loved on in a way that blows them out of the water over time? What do they do with their job? They engage better, they're more productive, there's less turnover. All these business metrics start to improve related to employees. And then suddenly our our clients, our members are finding that they are having much greater profits to give from because the way they gave it has accelerated the business.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Wow. Um why do you think why do business owners typically turn outward before they turn inward in terms of um the philanthropic aspect of the business? What is it about? What's the motivation for doing that? Do you think?
SPEAKER_01That's a good question. I and I don't have the exact answer to that. I have some ideas because I was one of those. Um, I struggled with this and I've wrestled with this question. The thing that I have come to, at least for me, was I grew up in a church. Um, and it's, you know, it's not important which church, but it's just this kind of represents a lot of churches where the the mindset was internal. It was kind of taking care of the flock, so to speak, but not in the way I'm describing, more of in a way that um, hey, we're not reaching outward with the gospel. We're gonna protect and take care of our own right here and just kind of stay in this huddle, holy huddle. And as a business owner and as someone who is trying to be strategic in my mindset, but also in my personal ministry, I wanted to go outward. I was constantly trying to push the mindset outward, and I was bumping up against the walls, so to speak, put up. So when I had a chance to control finances to be given, my default thought was I'm going outward. So that's one thing I think that drives us. We're hearing also from the pulpits in general. You know, as a business owner, um, we want you to be on the finance committee, we want you to serve as a deacon and do this or that, um, or we just want you to run your business, make good money, and give here to the church, or give to foreign missions. And that mindset is constantly getting outward versus taking care of inward. And I think the other part of it is there, we think of business and employees, they deserve a fair wage. We should pay them for the work they do. Stop. That's our responsibility, not to cheat them, not to swindle them or or even to get them to work harder or more hours than what we pay, but simply to pay them well, and that's enough. And you know, that that same logic doesn't hold in our household. So it should not hold in the business. And uh, I feel like as a business owner, when the when the scripture says that you are to take care of your flock, I feel like that's speaking directly to me and it's referring to those employees and their family members that are relying upon me and relying upon this business for their livelihood, for their future, for their kids' education, for their health. I feel like I need to take care of the flock first. So I think the the outward thinking is a default mindset for some reason. Maybe I've touched on it for particular listeners. There may be other reasons I'm not thinking about, but it's certainly common vast, vast majority of the people we talk to start in that mindset.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Do you think some of it too is um almost a self, almost a selfish motivation, like looking beyond, like to just overlook the needs within the within the company. Or maybe that the the owner, CEO, they will legitimately just don't know about the needs of the people in the company because there's not that level of um, they're not asking, or they're not, there's not sort of this open line, uh there's not a system, there's not a some sort of a program in place like what you teach at his way at work. But um, you know, maybe, but if you do know about those needs and choose to say, oh, they're getting a wage, they're good. That's you know, I have no further obligation to to my my people. Um, let me go let me go sponsor this nonprofit charity ball, you know, and I'll I'll get the I'll get the naming rights and I'll get my name on the building. And um, like you think some some of that is in play too?
SPEAKER_01Yes, it is. And I'll tell you this, Darren. Um, so much so, again, I lived this in the dealership. Uh, as I started, as I'm going down this path, I'm trying to figure out how do we give. Well, then mixed opportunities come up. Mixed opportunity is like this. There's an organization locally that we still sponsor in that business. Uh, that's called Harmony House, and it's a battered women and children's shelter. And they are a Christ-centered nonprofit organization. They do tremendous work in that Lagrange market. And we sponsored their major fundraiser for the year, which was a dragon boat race. So the they had never had one before. They come to us and said, we need a we need a significant sponsorship. We need a title sponsor with a large sum of money to get this up and off the ground. And we don't know how well it's going to work or not. Are you willing to do it? Now, here's the question: this is a Christ-centered organization. They do good work. I know exactly that if I gave them this same sum of money to their organization, that is giving. If I take the same sum of money and I spend it on marketing, is it giving any longer? Well, what if I'm taking that same amount of money and I'm using it in the marketing to help them leverage that amount for 10 times that amount that goes to their bottom line? And then you start doing, I don't even trust myself. How much of this is marketing? How much of this is giving? Here's what I ended up doing. I just split 50-50. I said, half of this amount, we're going to expense this marketing, the other half is going to come out of our giving uh fund, so to speak. And we're just going to split it because I can't discern how much of it is which marketing versus the giving. So just the struggle there indicated to me there is a bent in me that sees opportunity, like you just said, get our business name in the community known and associated with giving. There's goodwill in that. We sell cars because people see that dragon boat sponsorship and they get excited about that and they say, Well, hey, I'll take a look at this Jeep sitting over here that's just gorgeous because we were there. But I I think that's part of our issue, is there's that bent in us. So that may be part of the reason we're going outward. But here's the other thing you mentioned is that what do we know about the needs or do we not know about the needs? And I know this is a very different part of the topic, but most CEOs, most business owners, even of small businesses, have not been an entry-level employee in a while. Right? Yeah, there's probably an exception, but for the most part, they're not. They've not been there in a while. They don't know what the needs are. Yeah, they've not tasted the needs in a while. I was delusional enough to think that I had a good sense of what the needs are were in the business. I even, when I first started doing this, I this idea of running this business from a ministry perspective. I opened my office door, I made announcements in various meetings that, hey, if you have issues, you want to talk about stuff, come see me. I'd love to talk. Crickets. They're not coming to the guy that signs the check.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01They're not going to do it. The the rare person will, and that may represent five to 10% of the actual needs in your business. Yeah. And so what we recommend in this in the system we put in place is a carrying team made of entry-level employees. So they're the ones sourcing the needs from the various uh coworkers. They're the ones making the decisions on what needs should be met, how much to meet, you know, financially. They're anonymous so that they're we don't get into the you know favoritism or any of that. But the idea is put the decision-making power as low in the organization as you can because that's where they know the needs. And if you don't do that, you're really kidding yourself thinking, hey, I know I'm CEO, but I'm really in touch with my people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, if you're not living on the same street, if you're not paying the same rent, if you're not, you know, driving the same car, you probably don't understand where they are. So let those who do understand be the ones drive that. And the other part, just completely off topic, but it certainly relates to the money, is bring chaplains to in because the chaplains build that confidential relationship with each employee and they help source needs. They don't share the needs back up to the top. Say, hey, I just met with three of your employees, two have drug addictions, and one's about to divorce his wife. And no, they don't talk about that, but they can help counsel those employees and meet some emotional needs, right? And point them spiritually if they ask. Um, so that's a tremendous way to spend some of that money that you want to give.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah, that's um that's a great point about really delegating that to the as low as you can in the organization because it's um it can be a bit awkward and potentially unjust if you as a CEO decide I'm gonna give a thousand dollars toward this and this employee, their their house flooded or something like that. And so we're gonna, I'm gonna give a thousand dollars out of the company's charitable giving budget, if I if if you want to call it that. Um meanwhile, there's uh there's another need over here that I I kind of know I kind of know about. I'm pretty sure it's probably to the tune of about a thousand dollars, but I'm gonna give it over here instead. Um But if you have it, if you're not the one that has to make that decision, then it it kind of takes a lot of that um uh awkwardness out of there, right?
SPEAKER_01It does. It does. And you know, the way we set our system up in a business is with this team itself, we give them guidelines, we teach them how to make those decisions. We also teach them how to write guidelines for each product, each program. So maybe we have a car repair fund would be an example. So the owner gives the caring team a budget. And just for conversation's sake, let's say it's it's $10,000 for the year. You know, we've got come, we've got companies that have a million dollar budget there, and we've got companies that have five to $10,000. You know, just it could be anything, but and that just for numbers' sake. So it's $10,000 a year, and the caring team says, you know, we've had several people having a hard time getting to work on time because their car is broken down, and some good employees have lost their jobs because they can't get to work. So how do we fix that? They find a real need, they don't come up with an idea and try to find needs to meet the idea. They find the needs and then they come up with an idea to solve that. Big point there. They do a car repair fund and we walk them through, they decide this. Well, we walk them through guidelines. How much can an employee uh receive from this fund in a given year? Right? Because frankly, people can take advantage of it and you want to avoid as much of that as you can. You can't protect it 100%, but so they'll make they may say, well, an employee can receive up to $500 in a 12-month rolling period from this fund. If it's been 13 months since the last one, they can do it again. We only cover maintenance or we only cover repairs. We don't cover, you know, 35-inch tires to put on your jacked-up truck, right? Or jeep. So giving guidelines, but letting this team determine it. What's amazing is the business owners that we talk to think initially, well, this team, if I give them 10,000, they'll blow it the first month. And in truth, the team is more protective of the owner's money than he or she is typically.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They are really good at managing, especially when we teach them these steps to put the guidelines in place, put the decision-making uh processes in place and keep it anonymous. So when the request comes in for the car repair, it's not attached to a name they like or don't like, it's just an application for this need. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And is it typically the business owner that's funding 100% of this? Or are the employees involved?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a great question. So here's an example of one. Uh, so one of our companies, uh, the owner was writing checks when people would come to him for a need. And the caring team said, You have to stop. We need to vet these needs. You don't know when it's a real need or not. And you're actually giving some support to people that turn around and go back into the company in a production uh scenario, their manufacturing company, going back out on the floor, bragging about how much they got you to give them. There's there's just issues with this, the way you're doing it. So let us handle it. And the owner said, I'm fine with that, but I want to know how you're gonna do it that's gonna be fair and just and also solve this problem you're talking about with bad attitudes. And here's what they came up with. And this all came from the caring team. So a need happens. So, for example, so-and-so has a wreck on his motorcycle, it is his insurance is gonna cover all but $1,500, and so he applies for a need for that $1,500 uh medical deal. And he he puts the need, uh, the caring team puts his picture on an envelope, puts the need written down because this is not one that has to be anonymous. He's checked off that he's okay sharing what it is, and that need is about to be sourced out to the employees. At the exact same time, someone whose house burned down has the same type scenario. They've got insurance, but there's like a $10,000 that isn't covered, something like that. And they they've applied for an emergency situation as well. Now, here's the deal: the guy on the motorcycle is a jerk. At the company, he doesn't help his fellow employees. He comes in at the last minute, he leaves as the bell is ringing, and he's not the guy you approach needing help. The the lady, on the other hand, helps everybody. She comes in early, she stays late, she'll lend a hand, she'll jump on a project. She's just got a great attitude. So here's what the caring team does: they send these two envelopes out to the employee base. Everybody in the plant touches that envelope, and they don't have to put a penny in it, but they can put out of their own pocket whatever money they feel should go to that need into that person. The envelopes come back around, and when it comes back, everybody's touched it. They just check off, yeah, I saw it. The carrying team pulls whatever money is in the envelope and they match it four to one. So the employees have contributed out of their own pocket. The caring team out of their budget matches four to one. But here's what happens the guy on the motorcycle, Joe, there's a hundred dollars in the envelope because he's a jerk and people just aren't contributing as much. Well, four to one would be four hundred dollars, so he gets a check for five hundred dollars. The lady has five hundred dollars in the envelope, the carrying team matches four to one. They add two grand to that envelope, she's now got 2,500 and he's got 500. Why? Because she's living out the core values of the company and he's not. So not only did the employees contribute and fairly judge the need, but they're also contributing to those who live out the core values and those who are trying to be part of the team, and not as much to those who aren't. So it solves so many different problems, all come up with by this caring team of entry-level people. Wow.
SPEAKER_02Problem solved. Brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Yes, brilliant.
SPEAKER_02I think um somebody just got an aha moment. They stopped listening. They went and talked to their uh, you know, quasi-care team ahead and implement this. That's uh that's genius. But that came through. Um, you didn't come up with that overnight. That that probably went through a lot of trial and error, didn't it?
SPEAKER_01Well, and so literally, the the owner of the company said, never underestimate the ingenuity of Bubba. And that's you know, just a generic, you know, name. But but what he's saying is these people, these entry-level employees have had to be resourceful, they've had to figure stuff out in their world. They may not be strategic thinkers when it comes to marketing or or you know, high-level finance, but they've figured out practical stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And their system worked a whole lot better than his ever could have. And and it's that's been gosh, 10 years ago that that they've been using that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So good. Well, Chris, tell us uh a bit more about um what you can offer a business owner, manager, uh, with your your his way at work process.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So effectively, Darren, his way at work brings an operating system for caring. So an operating system, meaning there's a purpose, there's a whole vision behind it, there is a strategy in it, then there are steps through the process, and then there's accountability that comes back. So for the business owners that we interact with, they typically come to us with some pain points. They say, you know, I've got this desire to make impact, but I don't have a plan or a strategy. Now, they can tell me in 30 seconds or less their business plan. They can tell me what metrics make their business tick. And if there's 10% off on one metric, it's gonna what kind of an impact it'll have. But if I ask them what is their strategic plan for ministry or for caring for their employees, I get a blank look, right? And so we help them develop number one, that plan. And then we help them put this caring team in place, these entry-level people. We teach them how to run their meetings, we teach them how to do a rotation so that people in that team continue to rotate on and off. We teach them how to, the caring team, how to run a budget. Now, most of these people have never had the responsibility or charge of somebody's money, somebody else's money, right? So in this case, they're getting a budget from the owner or from the company that they get to manage. We teach them how to manage the budget, how to create these caring team activities, this car repair fund, emergency medical, uh, you know, marriage counseling retreats, those kind of things, all within their budget. And then we teach them how to measure the impact of each of those. So, for example, if it's a car repair fund, how many on a monthly basis, these this team beats, on a monthly basis, they report back how many car repair requests did we get? How many did we fund? How much money did we spend? How many family members were impacted, right? So if it was three different requests, that's three different employees, there may be 18 to 20 family members impacted by those three decisions. We want to measure that, right? And so that carrying team has the budget they have to be responsible for. They have to measure the impact of each of those activities, keeping in mind the core values of the company, and then on a monthly basis, report that impact and those results back to the ownership and the leadership. And so we bring a system and teach the business how to operate it that way so that the business's day to day-to-day and month-to-month operation, not just this add-on charity or contribution from the owner, right? It's part of the business. When I mentioned earlier, when we do that, the impact on the business itself, it's not the primary goal, but as a secondary uh effect, the impact on the business itself is huge. And we'll start to see how that happens. So we bring this whole concept. We work with a coach that comes into the business on-site, works with the CEO and his or her leadership team, and then from the leadership team to this caring team that we're talking about, and then wrapping it back up with that accountability. We also have a membership program that rolls out of that implementation. So once we've we've done what is typically a 10 to 12 month implementation time period, they roll into membership, which is kind of the ongoing maintenance and interaction with us, where their caring team leader meets in a monthly Zoom call or sometimes twice-a-month Zoom call with uh other facilitators from other companies. So we may have a Zoom call with 10 to 15 facilitators uh from other companies that are sharing best practices, challenges. We had an issue here, we had an issue there, how'd you handle that? And so there's benefits there. Um, so in addition to the membership and then this implementation, you know, we'll do some one-off workshops, that kind of thing. Uh, during the implementation, not just this system I mentioned, but we'll talk about how do you take mission, purpose, core values, the behaviors that that underlie each core value and integrate them into your HR processes. So when hiring, shouldn't we be asking people questions that indicate whether they're going to lean toward these core values or away from these core values? Give them specific behaviors that we've determined come under these core values and ask how they would handle that, right? And so we start to vet people better as they come into the company to be a better fit. When there's discipline, when there's performance evaluations, how shouldn't we refer everything back to our core values to get those deeply integrated within the company? And so we walk through quite a bit of that as well. Effectively trying to impact the entire company, change the culture, not just how do we give money?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. And with these employee care programs, it seems like a much better system than a church trying to do this with their, you know, their congregants or people walking in off the street with needs. Because in a company, you you have clearly defined, if you if you're doing it right, you have clearly defined core values and and you have and you're with these people all day long. And so the people in the company can see the character, like you talked about Joe, they can see Joe's character, uh, and they can see the the other lady's character and and know um not that things always have to be like on a on a merit basis, that like grace isn't necessarily like you know on a merit basis. But when you're trying to be a good steward of resource of somebody else's money, which is what a church is, I mean, they're they're stewards of God's money, but they're stewards of the contributions made by God's people, um without that kind of um that kind of time spent with people observing them and really seeing the the the kind of the depth of the need, uh it's hard to get that outside of a of a company context where you're with them nine to five throughout the entire work week.
SPEAKER_01You know what's funny is one church that I was with again back in Georgia um was, I don't want to characterize or stereotype, but this church would not have been seen as one that easily identifies with the needs of the community, the lower end needs of the community, right? So right or wrong, I think it's I think it was much more effective that they did this, but they brought someone in, a local pastor from a church that was smack in the middle of the most difficult needs in the community. And that pastor would come in once a week and sit for three or four hours and have conversations with those that would walk in off the street looking for help. Well, that pastor knew half the people as they walked in. Well, if it was the church staff that was there at that church, they wouldn't have known these people or the needs. So not only did the pastor know the needs, he also knew the non-needs.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And he'd look at them, they'd walk, some of them would walk in, look at him, turn right back around and go back out because they knew he'd call their bluff. Right now, the applicability here is as a CEO, I'm in the same position. I don't know the needs. But if I employ, if I and I want to come back to delegate in a minute, okay. Let don't let me forget that. But if I engage my caring team, entry-level people to do this work, they know the needs and they know the non-needs, or those that are trying to be maybe game the system. And so there's just so much more power in having them make those decisions and be that machines, that engine, so to speak, of the system. Um, so we'll come back real quick to the delegate. You made the comment earlier, and you're dead on. In the way we set the system up, where the CEO or business owner is delegating to this caring team these decisions. All right. But here's the thing I want to make sure we touch on to the business owners and business leaders out there. Too often we think we should do that. We should not delegate. Delegate is in a negative connotation. I'm I'm handing off, I'm abdicating responsibility, I'm passing it off to somebody else because that's above, that's below me. I'm above that. And the truth is that's not the case. We make ourselves believe it's noble to retain that responsibility, and we should do this and get our hands dirty, so to speak. But the truth is, if that's not the most effective use of the money, if that's not the most effective use of the opportunity in front of us, then we're we are kidding ourselves and we're actually building ourselves up to be more important than we should be. Because here's the truth. If a caring team or a team of people that are entry-level that do have an understanding of those needs, if they can do a better job of deploying the funds out to the real needs, number one, then why shouldn't we do that? But number two, if giving is better than receiving, if the Bible says it's more blessed to give than receive, and I'm in allowing, empowering these caring team members to give, I'm giving them a blessing, I'm giving them an opportunity, I'm developing them, I'm growing them. They're going to have life experiences in that caring team process that I would rob them of if I did not set it up that way. And so, yes, it's delegation, yes, it allows me to maintain captain of the ship type vision and and keep overseeing the business, but it's also empowering to them and building them up and developing them. There's there's some future leaders in that caring team. Yeah, if we look at it right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And they'll never be the same. I mean, they go to work for another company. What? You don't have a care team. Exactly. Ruined for life, right? That's awesome. Well, Chris, thank you for how you're challenging us and challenging um Christian business leaders to take this more seriously and be more thoughtful. And you and you know, you you kind of remove a lot of the excuses for not doing this because you have such a well thought out and developed process. Um, his way at work, um, hwaw.com is the website. Um, anything you want to say about how people can kind of get onboarded with this?
SPEAKER_01Sure. Just take a look at the website. We've got a uh if you're interested in learning more, uh, you can just click on the take assessment, take the assessment button. And it's a literally an 11 question, take you three minutes as a business owner to go through that. And then our market development guy will reach out to you and just talk you through what we do, what would be specific to your business and what that looks like. So yeah, if you're interested there, we're also, as you mentioned, the podcast, um, eternal ROI. And then we're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, all those as well. So uh any way you choose to follow, you're welcome too.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation, Chris, and um given us a lot to think about and implement. hwaw.com is the website. Thanks again. Thank you, Derry.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about the HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.