Today's episode were joined by Chris D. Chris migrated to the U.S. from India after completing his education, winning a sales contest, earned him a ticket to a seminar by the legendary motivator, who's made such a profound impact on many of us. Many of you listeners as well as myself. He joined the Tigor Corporation as a telemarketer in 1991 and eventually became the vice president of global operations. As one of two executive coaches trained by Tigor, has delivered a method of humor throughout the U.S. included the U.S. Army. And the author of several books. The author of the American Dream from the Art from Abstract to Abstract and author to the book performance written by the book at co-authored with Rick Boluto, who is the former president of Microsoft. It's being used as culture transformation curriculum globally. And he's also a global corporate adjunct for Robbie Doctorat's ministry and sits on the board of SkyPath, the SkyPass Foundation. Welcome to the podcast, Rick.
SPEAKER_03Thanks, Latin, and appreciate you having me on.
SPEAKER_01Tell me that story about how you had written down the names of three uh influential people that you just really sensed a strong uh leading to get connected with, and you just wrote them down on a piece of paper, and and God has a way had a way of bringing that to pass. How did that work out?
SPEAKER_03Well, this was about circa 1999. I had already been speaking a little bit for the aforementioned Zig Ziglar, and uh just wanted to brand myself as a different kind of communicator. So on a whim, I just thought I said, you know, if one could teach like Zig Ziegler and have fun, reach like Ravi Zacharias with some intellectual veracity, and preach like Adrian Rogers with biblical clarity, that would be a great combo. So I wrote down those three names, Rogers, Zacharias, and Ziegler. Ziegler, I was already working for, Mr. Ziegler was my boss and mentor and hero. Uh and then the other two were just one of those things that seemed so distant at that time. Uh I never got a chance to meet Dr. Adrian Rogers because he passed by the time I uh made connection with his ministry, but I got to know his son very well and uh used their curriculum a lot as I do uh leadership conferences globally. And then Dr. Zacharias was an interesting thing. Uh they one of their apologists heard me uh doing a youth event in rural southern India. And I'm not kidding you, this is providential. I was literally sitting at my computer one day and uh an email popped up saying, Hey, we heard you speak. Would you consider joining uh Mr. Zacharias and a few others at an event in India? And I mean I I I don't think I typed yet faster on anything in my life, but that that I did, and then uh now that I've I think I've integrated for them in India for the last ten years. I've done over 300 events for them there. So uh by God's grace, these three affiliations really shaped and molded me, and uh I use their styles and methodology in my own presentation.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Well, you really seem to grasp this idea of discipleship and being a disciple, uh as Paul said, imitate me is I imitate Christ, and you have found uh these pause in your life that uh you have gone and made yourself available to serve and to learn from, and Zig Ziggler certainly being one of those uh key people in your life. Uh what does it mean to be a disciple of someone as a follower of Christ in the business world? And uh how did Zig Ziglar disciple you to live out your faith in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_03Zig Ziggler was actually the one who led me to Christ. I was raised in an Orthodox Hindu family in India, and uh I went to work for him, and um, so that story of my testimony is actually in a book called Abstracts to Absolutes, which I dedicated to him. But uh Mrs. Ziggler was very, very influential and instrumental in shaping me in those formative years. Um quick story. I remember asking him one time, I said, uh, what should I do to learn what you're doing? And he says, be obedient to the craft. And uh I just took that to heart, and every morning I wake up at four o'clock still, wherever in the world I am, and I prepare for that day, even though I've done the talk a hundred times just out of obedience to him. And I remember one time when I had made it, I said, How can I ever thank you? And this is what Paul does in person's life. He says, All I did was open open one door, but I trained you so well you ran in looking for light switches. Now go flip light switches for the rest of the world. So he was he was a very profound thinker, but with very simple constructs. Uh and you mentioned that uh the relationship of trying to find Paul and discipleship, and we all need to find that Paul so that we can give it away to Timothy. That's the Book of Acts model. But I think there's a third component here that really I think uh leaves us when we're in the marketplace, and that is trying to realize who Barnabas is. We all need encouragement every day. And most of us are so eager to be mentored and then to become mentors that we ignore the encouragement concept. And I strongly suggest that if we want marketplace significance and for our disciples to shift to shine in the marketplace, we need to be aware of who Barnabas is.
SPEAKER_01Now you're you're an evangelist, as I have observed from uh watching some of your talks on YouTube, and you're also an apologist. And one of the terms that came up in our before we started recording was this idea of marketplace apologetics, and that that is a particular area that you're focused on. Um what is what is how would you define marketplace apologetics and and how um what are some of the techniques and what is the whole concept behind that?
SPEAKER_03Well, um, you know, as John Start, who wrote The Cross of Christ, said, uh apologetics and evangelism are two sides of the same coin. Uh technically, we try to lead with our heart. When we go with evangelism, it's because of the transformation of Christ in our own lives. Apologetics forces us to use a little bit of the logic-oriented need for faith and trying to provide that defense like we like we uh like we read in the Bible in Peter, where he says we need to be always ready to give a defense, but to do it with meekness and humility. And so as a result of that, um I tell people if you're a great salesman, become the best salesman in the place, because an organization will never let go of money. And when you get the award for being the number one salesperson, then use your intellect to see how you can tell them that price is the one that allows you to be the person you are. Simple business principles like you can't make a good deal with a bad person, that's a very logic-oriented thought, but you have to use that faith to make yourself believe in it. Um, I remember E. Stanley Jones, who was a missionary to India, once said, he said, we have inoculated the world with the mild form of Christianity, so it's practically immune against the real thing. And I think the word of God does not return void, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is probably the only coherent worldview out there that makes sense. And I think if we if we practice it right, we'll have great effectiveness in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_01And taking that apologetics approach where you are uh you are taking that logical and helping people to think. And that seems to be a much more winsome approach in the marketplace in a lost world. I mean, when I hear about uh like Robbie Dr. Riot's going to speak at Harvard or you know, one of these other universities that is just kind of notorious for being hostile to the things of God, but when you come in as an apologist, not as an evangelist, uh even though that's what he does, um that that they're gonna open that door. Uh is that what you've found to be the case in the business world?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And as a speaker and as a trainer, I begin every presentation by I would say something as innocuous as I said, you see, man is tri-dimensional, we are mental, physical, and spiritual. And I know as a motivational speaker you want me to motivate you, but have you ever found out that we're we're struggling in our motivation? I said, the reason is we're trying to be motivated in a two-dimensional way, uh, where we were designed to be a three-dimensional entity. And so in the Q ⁇ A, someone will say, What are the three dimensionals? And I say, Okay, mental, physical, and spiritual. And I said, But you know, obviously we can only talk about the mental and physical. Well, in the Q ⁇ A where they raise the question, can you address the spiritual? That's when, you know, I I use the concept of trying to tie down the try tie down. For example, I'll say, How many of you are fathers in this group? And they'll raise their hand. I said, Please do not let your children walk around with a hole in your heart where your blessing should be. I said, The problem we have in the United States right now is not, I said, we'll never solve the crime problem till we solve the father-son problem. What I've done is I have logically connected the need of the heart, the need to bless, and faith is presented in an innocuous way, saying that you know the moral law that governs us is being completely jettisoned. Um and then with the and in the discussion, suddenly they'll realize that I'm making sense. I'll say when you replace morality with justice, you take a moral law and a moral lawgiver out of the equation, and you put all your hopes on a judge who's just another man that we have elected. Suddenly they'll see the error of their ways.
SPEAKER_01And how do you how do you tend to frame that within the the business world and within the context of somebody leading a company? What are some of the kind of inroads to kind of open up the door to some of those conversations?
SPEAKER_03And uh, you know, so basically, for example, if you use Ravi Zacharias's 345 method, uh Ravi Ravi, of course, you know, he will use it in a in a way that makes you makes you want to hear more. Uh, and I would say something like, no matter what we say in this world, it has to have logical consistency. Do you agree? Everything has to have uh, you know, it has to have relevance to what we are doing. Do you agree? It has to have empirical, which means it has to have some amount of data to back it up, do you agree? And people will nod their heads. And this is the old sales methodology of trying to get enough yeses to everything you're presenting. And so when I'm dealing with millennials, I will always ask the person who is heading the millennial task force or the millennial group of some sort. I said, uh, why are you struggling with the motivation of people who are of a different age group? And they'll give you any number of excuses except reality. They'll say, Oh, they're entitled, they say this. I said, No, it's because you're constantly trying to impress them with technique, whereas you need to make them think that they came up with the idea, which means when we begin to present the why, the how will take care of itself. You know, why becomes formulaic, you know, when you know why any how will do. So suddenly they start realizing that there is actually a methodology here in which you can go through this process. Um, my son was a millennial, my son went through that entire process. And uh I always asked him, I said, What what what are some of the reasons why you are self-driven? He says, Because of the fact that there were some constants in my life that I knew I would that wouldn't that would never become negotiable. The fact that you loved mom, the fact that you believed in God. He says, having this foundation has really helped me. I asked the people, I said, you know, uh, is it because our foundations are eroding that we're not having some of the success we should be having? And people will quickly realize that what we have removed from the equation is actually more important than what we're trying to force into it.
SPEAKER_01So excellent. Well said. One of the interesting unique perspectives that you have, Chris, is over the last couple of decades, you've been doing a lot of traveling and you've seen from a global perspective what's happening uh in the marketplace. So what uh in terms of how God is moving in the marketplaces around the world, uh have you seen a shift over the last uh couple of decades in terms of the receptivity and just the spiritual activity and and people just being hungry for God in the business world?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because there is a general hurt. We're we're uh I was just in Singapore, as I mentioned to you in our pre-show time, prep time, and uh in the Philippines. Philippines, of course, predominantly Catholic country, but there's a large evangelical movement taking place. Singapore, of course, has uh you know been the hub in that part of the world. And we're meeting a lot of business people who have now changed and using Judeo-Christian principles in their business, and what their employees are seeing is that it is not an inducement of religion uh that was their biggest fear, but it is the inducement of a fairness and a morality that allows everybody to succeed and it to be a level playing field. So if you start a business on biblical principles and you remember the parable of the vineyard, then everybody who comes to work gets paid. You should not complain about who came first or who came last. That's competition. You should just be worried about completion. So one of the principles we teach is you know, the best way to introduce logic into fairness into an equation in a business is train your employees saying, Hey guys, I don't want you to worry about competition. I want you to worry about completion. Don't find 800 things you can compete with someone else and be jealous of. Find three things you can complete and be proud of. And these are I mean, that's straight from the parable of the vineyard.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_03So what happens is when you introduce those kinds of constructs, any age group will feel, okay, my job here is just to show up and uh I tell people, I said, you know, um, there are only two ways in which everything will go your way. One is you invent something which everybody needs, in which case you're the granddad of all, or you start your own company. Um, you know, one of my mentors in Dallas says most people are frustrated because, you know, life is like a spectator sport. Uh going to an going to a let's let's use the Houston Astros because they're the world champions.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03But you know, it's uh 75,000 people desperately in need of exercise, yelling at 22 people desperately need a rest.
SPEAKER_01So true. So true.
SPEAKER_03So once you once you tell them that life is not a spectator sport, it is a participator sport, and you teach them to complete, not compete. I think you know a big burden is lifted off their shoulders because they can see the finish line with the skills they have. I said don't don't don't begin your day with envy, begin your day with gratitude. And uh, you know, that it's much different.
SPEAKER_01Wow, begin your day with gratitude, not envy. That's so powerful. So, as our listeners are gathering, for those who haven't heard you speak before, uh you're a motivational speaker. So, what do you say to motivate Christians to uh to share their faith in the business world and just generally live out their faith in the business world?
SPEAKER_03Um, you know, as an as a speaker, obviously I would I would be supposed to be the one who would have to curtail my thoughts for fear of not getting invited back. But in 25 years of doing this, I've yet to hear one person say, Hey, you crossed the line. And I tell people 99% of the people out there have some faith. 1% may not have any faith at all. Of the 99% who have some faith, some may have your faith, some may have a different faith. But trust me, pandering to the 1% is just bad marketing.
SPEAKER_01So you've never had somebody I think that's that might be a little bit surprising. I know it's surprising to me that you've never, because I've heard some of your talks, you know, where it's very clear that this is a very pluralistic, large audience of all different faith backgrounds, but you've never had the organizer say, Okay, you know, we we really had an issue like the the board's upset about you bringing Jesus into this. You never had that happen before?
SPEAKER_03No, because I mean, you know, uh if to you, I I would not say a proverb says, I would say wisdom literature or proverbially the good book. And I said, some of you may know what I'm talking about because I come from a Judeo-Christian perspective, but all we're talking about is ethics. I said, the following statement is not theological. I've never been to seminary, I've yet to go to cemetery. When I make them laugh, what happens is they suddenly realize that I'm just speaking the truth that I believe to be the truth. And I said, truth by nature is exclusive to the person who is the proponent of it. So I said, and plus also realize this if two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. So this was Zigler's way of disarming the dissenters before you make your proclamation. And I'll give you a very simple example. I was invited to speak up in New England in Concord, Massachusetts, at some event. They wanted me to do my American exceptionalism talk. Uh I wrote a book called American Dream from an Indian Heart, and they said, okay, as a migrant who's a student of American history, we find it fascinating. But we are a civic organization, can you refrain from politics or religion? I said, Absolutely. Would you give me permission to quote some of the founding fathers? I heard they were from your area. They said, Oh, sure. I mean, this is Concord, Massachusetts. I mean, this is the first shot of the Revolutionary War. If you're telling me today in America that the very minute men that came out of those churches to defend and frame a republic, we can't now use God in Concord, Massachusetts. Uh, Jefferson was right, a good democracy will last about 200 years before it starts feeding on itself. So, okay, we're at that point. So I said, What have I got to lose? I said, I'm just gonna say, can I quote a founding father? They said, sure. So I quoted Daniel Webster, who said who starts his quote by if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, and one of the organizers came to me and he says, You violated everything we said, but you did it with immunity. The other thing, for example, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King, one of the most quoted speeches in all of human history has been as I have a dream speech. When I came as a young immigrant, that was the speech that galvanized my thoughts, saying, Okay, I sound different, I look different. Here is a man talking about a dream of equality, a dream of character. And so I started studying his life, his history. Well, very quickly I discovered that he was a third-generation Baptist preacher, uh, went to Morehouse College, uh, and then so I just went and looked at some of his other quotes. And Dr. King had a lot of religious quotes. He was a Baptist preacher. If you read his uh speech that he gave when he won the Nobel Prize, he says, you know, and I paraphrase, I refuse to believe that we are mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life. I believe that the Islam that is around us will confront the artness that is within us. He was talking divinely, he was talking about the presence of God in his life that was guiding him. And so what I do is I just, you know, if I want to quote something that is profound, I will quote him because he is the most quoted person. And what ends up happening is you're not trying to pick a fight with anybody, you're just saying, hey, you know what? How come we're not quoting that side of him? It was an integral part of his life.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Well said, I mean, there's uh there's a third option. It's uh as as you're saying, you don't have to be silent at the same time, you don't have to kind of beat people over the head with the the Bible and and always have to quote chapter and verse, but you can do it in a winsome uh and might even say clever clever way uh to just tell my my own Christian friends, I said, you know, some of you will pick and choose what you want to say on Monday because of your bent of what you believed on Sunday.
SPEAKER_03I said, I'm a layperson. I said, I'm I'm I believe the Bible. From Genesis to maps, and most of them get surprised. And I said, the reason is as I've traveled the world, most of the problems are about the maps. So these, I mean, you know, you're absolutely right. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to be rude, crude, mean, and nasty to have a belief. And you see, this is very interesting. You stumbled on something which has been the hallmark of my entire frame. Uh, there's a book written in 1925, it was an international bestseller. It was called Christ of the Indian Road. Uh, it was written by Stanley Jones, that great missionary to India. But during that conversation of that writing that book, he wrote a letter to Mahatma Gandhi at that time, who was the foremost person representing the Hindu faith in the world. And Stanley Jones asked Mahatma Gandhi, he says, What does Christianity have to do to be an accepted part of existence and not a white man's import, talking about India? And Gandhi gave him four principles which were very profound, and I think we can embrace them wherever in the world we are. Mahatma Gandhi is, of course, a noted icon, you know, bloodless revolution and all that. The four principles he gave, every Christian needs to heed, because this came from at that time the foremost Hindu on the planet. He said, first, love like him, which was central to nature, means love like Jesus. Second, live like him apostolically. Uh Amy Carmichael said, you know, we all want to be pilgrims, but we settle. So he says, love like him, live like him. And third, he says, understand other worldviews. So in order for you to understand who's in your workforce, in order to understand who's on your team, you have to study what they believe. Uh it's not a question of you trying to prove whether you're right or they're wrong. You know, Adrian Rogers said, if John 3.16 is true and we believe it is true, then let the Jesus in you find the Jesus in them. So love like him, live like him. Third, understand others, but fourth, don't water down what you stand for.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_03And I thought this was profound coming from a Hindu to a Christian.
SPEAKER_01Wow, those are powerful principles. I think the thing that I also noticed from you as well as Dick Ziglar, the the role of humor in uh reaching the world. I mean, so you made a statement earlier about uh disarming the person that is uh uh trying to uh object against you. And and one of those ways is is humor. I mean how what are some of the the ways that is it something that somebody can learn? Is it something that's just gotta be sort of natural? How do you uh frame that?
SPEAKER_03Well well, we teach communication classes and we do a section on humor, but I always tell them, and this is the old Ziggler methodology, I tell people that there are only two ways in which humor will be effective. One is you tell funny things, which means they're genuinely scripted to be funny, or you tell things funny, which means you use life and an illustration and make it humorous. And Ravi and all these guys use that they tell things funny, which means observational humor. Will Rogers was a wit, and uh, you know, so that's genuine humor. It's inbuilt in the sense that you're telling funny things, you're making, you're doing the verbal gymnastics or whatever. And the second is learning to tell things funny. But here, my good friend Victor Abraham, who ironically has also been my barnabist for the last 15 years, puts it interestingly when he says, he says laughter is the best medicine, but if you laugh for no reason, you may need medicine. So, but the that that whole thing, you know, because uh laughter, tears, uh we were designed to be emotional as a creature. We were created to be emotional, you know. If you look at it in pure biblical terms or Christian terms or just religious terms, the heart was designed for adoration. And as uh Lou Holt says, you know, we have to have something to love, we have to have something we're proud of doing, and I think he's got three or four stuff, but we need to be loved, we have to have something to love. I think if this heart does not have the ability to adore something, A, it fails. It it survives as a circulatory muscle, but it fails at its primal creation, which was to love and to be loved. The same thing I think can be said of humor. Man was designed to laugh. Just as we were designed to cry, we were designed to laugh because it is something that was given to us that is in such and we don't use it. Right now we're living in such times where people are offended about everything. You know, I've lived in America now 32 years, and I tell people when I landed in America, the number one accent that was mocked on TV was the Indian accent. It is probably still the only accent that can be mocked on TV without any uh without any pushback. And people always ask me, I said, have you ever wondered why? I said, we as a people group are the only people group that have never been taught to be offended about what people say about us. And I said, now when you turn around and look at it, uh someone's laughing all the way to the bank and they're doing it with an accent. Because the Indians have now so I mean they've almost reached, I think, the second highest uh or even maybe the highest in terms of uh economic uh stability in the US as a migrant group and probably the most educated.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_03But you'll never see them complain about people complaining about them.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03Because it's it's it's it's a system born out of necessity. It was, you know, it was colonized for X number of years and all of but it's just something you grow up in India, we had five hundred different dialects, uh, I don't know how many different languages. Accent was not something that was ever talked about, topped down upon, and as a result, when we grow up, if someone makes fun of it, I don't care. You know. In fact, I think the late great Jonathan Winters did the best Indian accent, and when he did it for me in Santa Barbara, I was the one laughing on the side of the road, thinking, Man, I'd never heard a guy sound like me more sincere. So but going back to the serious nature of it, of logic, throughout the history of humanity, accents have been geographic, they're not genetic.
SPEAKER_01This is true. Very true.
SPEAKER_03And so eight generations later, if you have an accent, it's just because you want to. It's not a big deal. But you know, people make mountains out of molehills and then they keep they keep they keep getting they keep putting themselves down for no reason.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Well, Chris, what are you working on right now and where can people is Chris D uh I'm sorry, um Chris Dunham, is that the best place to connect?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Chris Dunham.com would have a list of events coming up, and of course they can follow me on all the social media. I'm on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all that. Uh Instagram, I think, is Chris Dunham, K-R-I-S-H D-H-A-N-A-M. That's also my website, Chris Denham.com. Uh Chris Dunham is also my Facebook page. And they can find out about me. Right now I'm working on a series which I I do every Friday. I'm trying to do a small um like a Facebook live, but something just came upon me this week when I was traveling back, and that is I'm calling it Lessons from 4B. And these will be short four or five minute lessons because 4A is where I sat, 4B is where Zig Ziggler sat. So I'm calling this Lessons from 4B. I had that seat for almost 17 years. Uh and uh so that's that's the next thing that I hopefully at some point in the next four or five years will try to make that into a book as well.
SPEAKER_01So beautiful. As we wrap it up, Krish, what would be a parting piece of advice you could leave with our Christian business professionals today?
SPEAKER_03Uh this is uh something I you know, Hans Salier had a statement that I've used. Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions, anger the most destructive. To which Mr. Ziegler used to add, if you're grateful for the things you have, someday you'll have more things to be grateful for. As Christians, we need to be grateful for the cross, we need to be grateful for the resurrection. And uh, you know, that's on on that hinges our entire belief system. So if we know he conquered it all, we need to we need to live that way. And the humorous thing is nowhere in the Bible did it say that the Christians have to have long faces and short pocketbooks. We're the only ones who know how it ends. We should enjoy it.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Chris, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your heart and your humor with us today. I know we're better for it, and may God continue to bless everything you put your mind and your heart into.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much for having me and God bless doing your work and uh being helpful.