AI, Robotics, and the Labor Crisis (w/ Matthew Chang, PE)

On this episode, Darren sits down with Matthew Chang (Founder of Chang Robotics) to discuss AI, robotics, and the impending labor crisis from a Christian perspective. 

Thanks for listening, and keep partnering with God in your business.  

And don’t forget to check out our sponsor at HighBridgeBooks.com. And feel free to contact me directly at darren@highbridgebooks.com if you’re interested in writing, publishing, and selling a book.   

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast, where Christ following business leaders explore God's will and ways for business. This show is a ministry of the Center for Christianity and Business at Houston Christian University and features conversations with today's Christ-centered business leaders who are representing Christ faithfully in the business world. I'm your host, Darren Scheer, and if you want to make your work, leadership, and company's culture more Christ-centered, you've come to the right place. On this episode, we're joined by Matthew Chang. Matthew Chang is a visionary engineer, entrepreneur, and author of the new book, Risk Taking is Biblical. As founder of Chang Robotics, he's led some of the world's most advanced autonomous technology projects while building his company on biblical principles of stewardship, excellence, and courage. A TEDx speaker and executive MBA graduate, Matthew blends faith and innovation to show how scripture informs bold leadership and modern business. He also serves on the boards of Life Work Leadership in Jacksonville University and lives in Jacksonville Beach with his wife Jamie and their four children. Matthew, welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Thanks, Darren. Great intro. Appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

So when did you first realize God wants to be involved in your work and business?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

I was an engineer at a large company in Jacksonville, Florida. And uh that's when my I've been a lifelong Christian. I was baptized when I was 12 uh at the church I grew up in. But then I felt you know really convicted to merge faith with everything. Uh when I was in my early 30s, and um about 30 years old, and uh I started what I called a cubicle ministry. And uh what I learned about uh ministering to people, witnessing to people, is sometimes you have to be right where they are to reach them. Engineers are a comfortable bunch, you know. Uh so they have you know good salaries and 401ks. Uh, they're very smart, very good at calculating things out, they're very deliberate. So there's a tendency to have trouble finding a need for God when you don't need anything. Um, so what I found was that me as an engineer, right there in the office with them, that uh it put me in a unique position to tell them about Jesus, um, because we came from the same place. And then the kind of catalyst for really um doing that was I signed up for my first short-term mission trip as an adult and I had to raise money. So I went around and I asked all of these colleague engineers. There was uh probably over a hundred that I asked, Hey, I I want to go to Africa and I want to do this mission trip. Will you support me? And so that took, I had to go talk to each and every one of them and then send them an email explaining what I was doing and send them a fundraising page. And for those that were interested, oftentimes I had to go have a longer conversation before I could pick up a check, right? So um, so that was a great way for me to kind of rip the band-aid off and share my faith openly with every single person that I worked with.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Wow. And and so how did you get into the robotics business?

SPEAKER_01 3:37

Um, totally by accident. You know, this is the um this is the God's plan type story. I was a professional engineer. I had traveled to and lived in many countries, as you kind of uh alluded to in your opening. And um, I was recently married. I was about to graduate with my executive MBA, which was sponsored by a company that wanted me to build a new uh you know department for them. And then I got fired right before graduation. And uh so in the last six weeks of business school, I became the greatest student of all time. But the previous two years, I was the worst student of all time. So I made a bow face on that because I suddenly had free time. And my wife looked at me the day after I got fired, and I was I was very sad they took my company truck, I was really proud of it, and um and she said, Well, you always wanted to do your own thing. Maybe this is God telling you to do that, and uh so whether it was God inspired or you know, trying to pay a mortgage inspired, I was like, Yeah, I should do that now. And uh, and so I opened a company um the the week after I got fired, and I had this like really interesting moment where I got fired on a Monday, uh, and then my wife gave me the pep talk on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I was the middle school boys youth group leader at my church, and so Wednesday night, and I get if you've ever been a youth group leader, you get it.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

You get I am right now, actually, with the middle school boys. That's my group, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, those are that's my jam. Six to eight, and no more, no farther, right? If we're wrestling, I want to win, and once I get to high school, it gets dangerous, and then once I get too high in high school, they're too smart and they know all the answers. So I like them right in the middle when they're they're kind of goofy, and uh, you're still stronger and smarter than them. So we were learning about covenants. That was the lesson for the night. And you know how it is. We get these kids when they're tired, they're worn out, they haven't eaten, probably, and it's really hard to keep their attention, you know, in the evening.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

But they eat like four bags at chips that the youth pastor lets them have, and uh and then they crinkle the bags the whole conversation. It's great.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

That's right, that's right. Or if we have uh if somebody blessed us with a bunch of pizzas or something, I mean it's just a mess. But so we we were learning about covenants, and just to take it back to a seventh grade level, you know, a covenant is a promise, not a contract. And so the we all took turns doing covenants on a card. The purpose is we're gonna make a covenant with God and we're gonna lay it at the altar. And uh, so as the leader, I always went first to show them how to do it, and theirs were very typical. I won't kick my sister, I'll clean my room, you know, I'll do my homework. Those were the covenants. And uh mine was, dear God, I will start a Christian engineering company, and that's all it said, and then I put it at the altar. Um, our one of our executive pastors is a tech executive, turned pastor, and I always joke with him, I know you upload these to like a web three database and then send it up to heaven. He's like, Oh, yeah, we got a permanent record of any card you ever submitted. So I've always felt a strong accountability to that because that was a covenant, it was laid at the altar, and then our pastors you know swoop them into a collection bin or whatever, and we don't know what happens to it, but we have to assume that it is still there and it's permanent. Um, so that was it. Uh Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The following Monday, I got a call from a former customer back when I was at a company. She said, What are you doing? I said, Well, I'm sitting on the couch in my pajamas on my wife's laptop. I didn't have a laptop. And uh, because my company took mine a week ago. And she goes, Why are you doing that? So, well, you know I got fired. She goes, Well, I need you to be up here Monday, and before you get here, I need you to get a suit, get a job, and get a haircut. So if you've seen videos of me online, you I like to joke I did two of the three, right? So everything about the haircut, and uh flew up to see her. That was our seed capital from the family bank account, was booking that flight, booking that hotel, you know, hope not knowing what was in store. And she put me to work all week in a factory, leading her team through a innovation and and manufacturing optimization exercise. And at the end of the week, she walked me to the accounting department, told me to give them my information and fill out the paperwork to get paid. That was it. We had a company, we had one client and we had a company. So we're in business. And I say we. That's what when you're a founder, that's what you do in the early days. You say we.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

We, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Sounds like more than just you.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah. CEO. Um, right. Yeah, it's a big uh, it's got a lot of weight to it. Uh, so what aspects of robotics are you involved in?

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah, we've we've grown a lot over the few years, and now it is we. We have a large team, an excellent world-class team. Um in the first year, we learned what our purpose was as a business. And that is very often the case is your client, you don't tell your clients what you do, your clients tell you what you do. And uh, and so we ended up getting asked to uh design the first autonomous bus system in the country in the city of Jacksonville, and uh and that was a high honor. It was crazy intense, very political. Uh, you know, we had to work through council and mayors, and uh eventually we worked all the way up to President Trump and won the the seed funding to build this autonomous mass transit system directly from the first-term Trump administration. Um so that was project one that said, Oh, we can figure out how to do autonomous things. Um, and in high-stakes environments, kids with skateboards could go in front of our vehicles, people in wheelchairs or with uh vision or hearing impaired are going to need to use our vehicles. So we had to really think it through carefully because it's a public service. Then at the same time, we got recruited to develop the next generation technology for one of the nation's biggest coffee companies, which is Keurig. And um, at that time, Keurig was looking to do a radical transformation with robotics and automation. Um, it was 2017, and you know, God is funny how he works. We didn't have much of a resume, but no one else did either.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

And it was kind of the early days of new next generation robotics, and some of the first instances of what we call AI today was machine learning at the time. And so before you knew it, we were traveling the entire country automating and deploying advanced digital technologies for Keurig. And um, and so by the time we had completed both of those assignments, we had more resume in autonomous systems than really anybody outside of maybe Elon Musk or Waymo.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Wow. So the bus system, is it functional? I mean, is it widely used? Yeah, like how many people are are traveling on or commuting on autonomous buses in Jacksonville today?

SPEAKER_01 11:19

Uh anyone downtown can ride it. It's um it's what we call circulator. Uh and so circulator is uh if you you're not too far from Charlotte, um, they they have a light rail, and some cities have a trolley or streetcar. So the problem with those is they're really expensive and they're never going to get expanded. There's always this grand vision that one day this the transit system will go out forever. Look at Marta and Atlanta. It was always supposed to be more, and they got stopped because it's just so expensive. So, what our goal was to totally disrupt the cost model of deploying public service transportation. Our thesis was autonomous vehicles provided the pathway. We're using existing roads, and the vehicles are really not that expensive. Um, so we have 14 fully autonomous buses downtown Jacksonville. They operate on a fixed route in mixed traffic, so they commingle with the other cars. They go from our major regional bus transportation center. We have a monorail. They connect to the monorail and then they go to the Jaguar Stadium. And uh, and along the way, you get museums and city hall, and you know, you get some of the main features of downtown Jacksonville. So you can you can hop on it, it takes Apple Pay, you know, it's one of my requirements, and it goes to the Jaguar Stadium. That was another requirement. So if we get those things right, you know, people will use it. So it's uh it's fully operational. Uh and um I invited you before the show down at Jacksonville. When you're down here, we can go ride it together.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

That'd be awesome. Have you gotten uh Trevor Lawrence on it yet?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

I don't know. You know, I'm I'm out of it now. It's it's very much the city's property these days.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

What you gotta do, get get the Jaguars to go take a team ride on it.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, have fun with that. Well, it's kind of crazy to think that a city can go just build an autonomous vehicle, yeah. Right, and and that was what we were trying to prove is that that was possible. So I'm glad that history played out, technology worked out, you know, uh the project was completed through the pandemic, so there was a couple headwinds. Um but yeah, we proved that you can.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Anybody get hurt in the process?

SPEAKER_01 13:38

No, no, so so far as I know, I'm not plugged in. It's not like I have a yeah dashboard to their data, but so far as I know, it's a perfect safety record so far.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Wow, praise God for that.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

It would be in the newspaper if it did happen. So I'd probably oh yes, no doubt, no doubt.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

People would love for that to happen. Uh so Matthew, on this show, we believe that the primary purpose isn't primarily just to make a profit uh or even to make money to donate to Christian ministries, but fundamentally to make disciples of Jesus, and that businesses are the primary places where that happens because that's where we spend most of our waking hours. So, can you give us a specific example of how disciple making has happened through your company and is happening?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah, absolutely. The first is really your public declaration of faith. So we know as believers, we're gonna go in front of people and we're gonna say that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. Uh in our business, we had to figure out how do you do that as a company? You know, legally, a company is a person, right? Legally, a company can be liable or own things. Uh, so a company is a person by the law, but obviously we know that a company is just made up of people. So we had to figure out how does our company uh publicly declare our faith. So what we elected to do was we put it front and center on the website first. Well, I should say it's second. So you go on there, you see robots and engineering, and then as soon as you want to read about us, we make statements about our biblical worldview and our and we have a statement of faith that we think captures the way we view the world. Um, and then we go into further elaboration of our principles and values that are all Bible-based. Um, so that's the first step is that, and I no sooner than we went live with the website did I start having people contact me and want to schedule calls just to talk about that. You know, I was probably excited, like, hey, this is a customer, they want to buy something. And uh and they said, No, I'm really just here because I just want to understand how how can you have a business and say that you're Christian? I'm like, Well, it's um, I don't know, we just did it, right? So I can't tell you how we just decided to do it. And uh, so that's the first is it makes a public influence on other people enough to where they're gonna want to kind of get through the friction of wanting to schedule meetings and just learn more. And the people that I still remember the first four or five calls I had like that were pretty influential executives, and they must have been wrestling with that themselves. So I know it's had an impact on other businesses and executives where they see it enough to want to reach out and talk about it. The the second thing that's happened is um it's been a huge encouragement to our own flock, the people inside our company. It is not a requirement to be a Christian to work at Chang Robotics, absolutely not, but you will get a heavy dose of Jesus if you work there, yeah, right. And so what's happened is I've had agnostics and atheists, you know, engineers uh probably are outsized in that population, and they will reach out and say, Hey, um, can you pray for this? And it's a really cool thing to have people that quote don't believe in God ask for prayer. Yeah, because they witness the power of prayer. When we when our business is struggling, and if anyone scaled a company and tried a bit ambitious, uh you've experienced this. When we've had tough times, and we call the entire company to uh to prayer, or I might lead by letting my executives know that I'll be in a fast for for a season uh as we wrestle with something. Um and then a miracle happens, which has always happened. Like when it seems darkest, the next day is the brightest. And um that has been, I think, a huge encouragement to our team. What it's resulted in is we have maybe the lowest turnover you'll ever find. So for our first six years in business, we had zero resignations or retirements, and the team kept growing every year, we've gotten bigger every year. We broke that streak, so we're closing in on nine years in business, and we've had a total of three. Yeah. But at you know, at some point in a decade, you're gonna start to lose people for whatever reason. Uh and I still remember our first person to resign came to me and she gave me a six-month notice. I was like, Oh, well, that was nice. And she goes, I don't want to leave. I didn't, but she wanted to pursue actually, of all things, full-time ministry. And I said, Well, I can't obviously I can't offer you that here and I can't compete with that, but we can support you. Um, so we designed a special package for that young woman to make sure that we sent her equipped, just like you would a missionary, into the uh the mission field. So uh so I know it's had a huge impact on our people. And I would say the third thing is families, our company gatherings. We're a remote company, we're spread all across the United States. We hire for talent, we don't care where you sit, we trust you to be responsible and do your job and deliver world-class work. And that comes with the benefits of all of our all of our workers that have um children get to drive their kids to school. If you need to take time off to go to the special function at school, or um your your aunt is sick and you need to be with her, there's no questions asked. You take care of your family first. And so at all of our company meetings, I'll get to meet a spouse that I've never met before. And uh I'll usually just get a big hug and they'll just say, Thank you so much. You know, the way the culture that you guys have built has been so empowering for our family. My spouse is suddenly way more present, the kids are more engaged, and so I think the spillover into family life is where it starts to have, you know, kind of that next generation impact because those are those are kids and spouses that are being positively impacted by the way we do work.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

So the the executives, so y'all are contending for I mean, huge contracts with Keurig, with you know the city of Jacksonville and and which was the DOT, right?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

That was that ended up being sponsored as their pilot project.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

So yeah, so so being so faithforward on your website through your your reputation, do you find that uh that that that's a turnoff for some of these big clients, or is it does it open up more positive conversations? Like what what's been the experience?

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Uh the the short answer is I don't care. Sure. Um, but the longer answer is it has made no impact. In fact, what we'll find is these these large corporates or elite organizations that, you know, let's face it, not everybody's looking for an autonomous robot system. So the elite organizations that are, um, I'll usually always get pulled aside by one of the principal executives within this corporation that's like, man, that's so cool. You know, I'm so happy for what you're doing. Uh, God bless you for sharing your faith. And what I think it actually does is for the people that wouldn't care for Christianity, they don't, it doesn't change anything for them. For the people that do and really wish they had a more bold way to share their faith in the workplace, it causes them to be our advocate. They know what we stand for, they understand our integrity, our word is our word. We do contracts for a living, but my handshake is the contract, right? And um we we uh support audits for living. Companies trust us with a lot of money, and so one of the culture traits we have in our company is you're be audit ready all the time. Customer shows up to the office and wants to look at the books, get them a nice chair and print the books. Um, so our customers trust us because they know that um we're operating with a higher mindset than legal compliance, right? It's not about legal compliance for us, it's about biblical compliance.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Wow, that's uh that's a great answer. I mean. With such such high stakes, you want to know with whatever degree of certainty you can get that these are people that will do what they say they will do and are held to a to a higher standard um beyond just the legal one, you know. Um just the that I don't know if you've ever read that Harvard Business Review article that uh business bluffing is is ethical, um, where you know it should be fine to do business like you're playing a poker game and everyone expects everyone at the poker table to bluff and be dishonest because it's hey, it's part of the game. Um, but when it's your money on the line and and your uh your reputation, you want to you want to work with people that are held to a higher standard than that. So that's uh I love to hear that. And uh and I'm sure that it emboldens them to be more faith forward. I mean, you you find that a lot of these um decision makers are believers, that like they it's it's not that they um are just indifferent to it, but that they're actually encouraged by that testimony.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Yeah, I think I think um, well, I can say firsthand for a number of our executive sponsors, so in my role, you know, we're we become very strategic for our customer, and obviously they're important to us. Uh, and so in all those relationships, we have what's called an executive sponsor. It could be somebody on the board or the C-suite that is really championing this robotic transformation that we're trying to deliver. And uh for all of our uh executive sponsors that our customers, they they come to really appreciate it. Um, it it creates, they're not afraid to ask for things when they need it. And businesses like that, you know, we have we have what's in the contract, and then we have a lot of stuff that's outside the contract. So when our customers call and say they need something, they know that they can call us with 100% certainty. We will do everything we can to get it done, even if it's quote, not in the contract. Um, on the flip side, if we're spending a lot of money, it would be nice to get paid back. And sometimes we have to operate on trust, right? It's like, okay, I'm gonna do this for you. You know, hopefully that next budget cycle coming up, you can cover me on that. And um, I'll tell you what has been really powerful is we you might be headed during the interview, but we are a tithing business, we tithe directly out of the corporate profits every period, and it's the first pre-tax. So just side note if you tithe after tax, let's just ask ourselves, is that the first? Or is it maybe the last? But because of that, they know that if they cause us to not make a profit, that they are having a direct impact on our ability to support ministry. And so what we found is it's so far it's worked 100% of the time is that we can operate outside of our contracts on a trust basis. Uh, we will do what we say we'll do, and then our clients have always delivered back for us.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Yeah. So, what do you say to those who say, hey, uh Matthew, you guys are trying to take jobs away from people by building these robotics. Um, how do you respond to that from a from a Christian biblical perspective?

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Uh, you're gonna get an engineer's perspective on this one. So uh let me run through the we're gonna start macro econ, then we're gonna zoom in. If you're an American manufacturer, which is my probably my favorite sector overall, is factories and manufacturing. Um your competition is not within the factory and it's not down the street at Joe's factory, it's another country. And we've seen that. That's that's that was our thesis in starting the business, and it's been put on the national spotlight over these last few years. The vast majority of things we rely on in everyday life are made overseas. So automating an American factory is not taking away an American job because that factory is competing with a factory in another country who may not be playing by the same rules we're playing by, maybe getting government subsidies and maybe dodging things like tariffs. So by equipping the American workforce that's in a factory with the latest and greatest tools, we're just helping them be globally competitive. Um, so we'll start with the individual worker. Let's say you're a line operator in a factory, and then your company invests with Chang Robotics and a bunch of advanced autonomous robots, collaborative robots, digital systems, IoT, all the latest and greatest. Then you have been upskilled. By the time we're done with our work, that employee has received multiple certificates and new technologies. And what I like to say is for the first time ever, they want to open a LinkedIn page, right? Because previously they were a blue-collar factory worker. What's the point in having a LinkedIn page? Now all of a sudden they're a certified robotic technician, certified robotic repair technician, certified software program. So it's an upskilling, and the upskilling results in higher pay. So for the people that embrace our technology, they will get paid more and they will become absolutely essential to their business because they know how to run the technology. We know how important the IT guy is, right? You can't live with another person. So when it applies to robotics and the direct operation of the business, it's even more critical. The second is um, this is this is gonna be hard to understand for a lot of people in the audience. We don't have the manufacturing workforce we need to re-industrialize. It's something like 11 million people in the country work in manufacturing right now. If we are to double manufacturing in the country, we can't just produce another 11 million people. What we need to do is take that group of people that's currently dedicated to manufacturing, add some new guys, add some young butts into the equation. And then we need to give them tools so they can produce way more and outcompete our overseas rivals, the European Union, Japan, China, Vietnam. These are the places we're competing against. Um, to have a manufacturing renaissance, we need to do more with less. The next is when we when we look at automation, we don't look at the job. We're not like, okay, Darren runs Christian podcasts, let's build a robot that can do that. You're gone, Darren. We look at the tasks being performed and we start with the most arduous. So these are the injury-prone tasks, repetitive lifting. That's always the number one for injury, unsafe tasks. Where are we putting workers in harm's way? Um, if you've been to a warehouse, you've seen a pallet stored way up next to the ceiling, who's gonna fish that out? Right. And so that can't, there are a lot of jobs that are very hazardous. So the first place we're gonna look to automate is the hazard task. The second is the repetitive motion, which leads to injuries in workers' count. We're gonna get that out of there. Um, and we interview the workers intensely. We always have workers involved in our design process. And the best example I'll give you is earlier this year, we delivered the first autonomous hospital in the nation. In this hospital, every patient room is supported by autonomous robots delivering supplies. Every nurse is supported by autonomous robots so that when they ask for supplies, they don't have to go get them. A robot brings them to them. Um, in that process, we didn't lay off a single nurse. What we did was we brought the nurse manager into the engineering team. She probably tells her kids about it, all these dorks she had to meet with, you know, for a year straight to figure this out. And we were able to get real nursing feedback into what the system should look like. When we finished the system, we surveyed the nurses. We gave them enough time to learn to use the system every day, and we surveyed them. 96% of the nurses approved of and were happy with the robotic system, which is a really high score for any workforce. Um, so that's an example. The nurses are happier, they have an easier job, it's less hard on their feet and running around, they're more present with patients because they have robots doing the running around, not the nurse. Um, another example uh our bus system in Jacksonville was approved by the bus drivers union of Jacksonville. So we worked not against the workforce, we worked with the workforce to say what would it look like to make you feel like this was a win for you. And the attributes that went into our design were largely influenced by the bus drivers union. And I've got endless use cases. We've done it in factories and e-commerce. Um, one of our next ventures is going to be autonomous ports in the United States. So, you know, we're gonna be having long, deep conversations with the longshoremen. Those guys made the news last year pretty strongly, but we've already gotten the endorsement of the truck drivers union. So that's one of the things we're gonna do always is think about the worker when we do the work. It's about multiplying, it's not about keeping static. After we're done, the company that we've helped should be making multiples more product or multiples and more efficiency.

SPEAKER_00 31:27

How is the truck driver or the bus driver more happy uh now that they're not driving a truck or a bus?

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Well, we didn't take any bus jobs away. We didn't have a downtown circulator, right? So going back to that example, we didn't have a streetcar, we didn't have a light rail. Um, so we were not replacing there's two two modes of bus driving. Well, there's three there's bus rapid transit, the long haul, those are the express buses, fixed route, which is the one that stops at every corner, and then there's uh paratransit.

SPEAKER_00 31:57

So these are just different routes that they were still driving their pre-existing route, uh, but they just added a new route, a new mode of transportation, just like adding a trolley to the city.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

And then the the other part was they have first rights for their bus drivers to join the autonomous system and get certified. So, what you'll find if you go there today and you go to the maintenance shop, more than half of the workers came over from the bus drivers union and they said, I want to work with technology. So that was an upskill for them. So it's not a zero-sum game, right? We're I believe in a multiplication economy. I think that's biblical. When we look to do something, it's about multiplying. And if we're multiplying, that means we have to take the people we've got and equip them to do more.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

And the principle that you talk about in your book is is that risk taking is biblical. And to to upskill, to to go from being a bus driver to now you are you are a robotics technician, you know, able to um operate these autonomous uh vehicles in whatever ways that that's that's done. Um you have to take some risk to step out of what you've always known. Um just like you had to take risk to go from one industry to to start up something that hardly anybody was was doing, and uh you've been rewarded in spades for that. And and that's uh that's a that's biblical. Um so what do you teach in your your book? Um risk taking is biblical.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Uh yeah, it's it's a how-to guide with practical advice steps and scripture. So I give you, of course, I give you story. I know you you know a lot about book publishing, so there's a fun story in there, but um, there's a lot of substance because an engineer wrote it. So I explain exactly how to do it, how much time things should take, and where money is required, suggested amounts of money, um, to go through 12 steps to taking a kingdom-changing risk. Uh, to some of your listeners that are pretty advanced, they're probably already on chapter six or chapter eight. They've progressed through the beginning portions, they're just not quite at jumping off the deep end yet. Um, for some folks that always had a dream but are just working that job and never never thought about how they could step out, they need to really ground themselves in chapter one. And so it's focused, you know. If you look at Christ's ministry, he spent 30 years in preparation. And then before he actually went and did anything, he gathered disciples, right? And then after that, his ministry took off and it had different phases, even within that kind of short three-year ministry where he changed the world, it had different phases, and ultimately, obviously, it ended up with succession. So, you know, I take them through that, but in an obviously, we're not Jesus. Uh, so I make it more any person can do this if they have an idea how to how to figure find out what their kingdom-changing risk is gonna be. Could be starting that nonprofit, going into full-time ministry, um, obviously starting a business. And if you're gonna do that, is it a startup like I did, you know, an ambitious, likely-to-fail startup? Or is it something a little more uh safe? Like, hey, I'm gonna start to grow franchises so that my family has a business to call our own. We might keep working our jobs, but we're gonna now own rental properties or franchises or something. So I give people some real practical steps to figure out what they want to do. And then once they know what they want to do and it's in alignment with their God-given talents, then how to be in a state of preparation to go do it.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

And the parable of the talents is really the foundational parable that you kind of build this on, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:03

That is that is the base text, and it's um it's in the first part of the book. I think it's right immediately after the forward. We have the entirety of the parable of the talents laid out. Um, the uh I'll give you the inspiration behind that. I'm part of a very exciting, fast-growing church in Jacksonville. It's called the Church of 1122. It started as a second service at a Methodist church, and then today it's you know, I think they're up to 20 campuses, and um, you know, millions of people watch their sermons globally. Uh, so it's it's making a huge kingdom impact. But related to the parable of the talents, I can remember in the early days when it was clear it was catching on, our lead pastor prayed in front of the church, dear God, I pray that this church would be a five-talent church. And my head almost exploded. And I, you know, by scripture is funny, you can read the Bible 10 times and it's gonna have a different impact every time. And I just thought, I didn't know you get to choose. I didn't know you get to choose which servant you are the one talent, three talent, or or one talent, two talent, or five-talent servant. I didn't know. And he just prayed, I would dear God, I pray that you would bless us and make us a five-talent church. Because if you give us five, we're gonna be able to put that what that you've entrusted to us to work and return five back to the master. The more you give us, the more we can return. And so that took a couple years probably to set in, but now it's in everything we do. We want to be five-talent servants, we want to be a five-talent organization, we want to go at once to the marketplace and wager not a portion of what the master gave us, but everything. And so, is that exhausting for my team? I'm sure it is, you know, because they're like, are we betting the farm again? I'm like, that's all we do. That's all we do is bet the farm every single time. And God has been faithful. Um, it's not it's not without tough moments, you know. I told you there's been some dark days where we thought, oh, it could be over tomorrow. But the the next day, often these things go in months. So after the dark period of months, the next month is is the best we've ever seen. And that God has just blessed us in terms of our human resource, the people that we have, uh, our customers. We love our customers so much. Um, the impact we can have on charities and ministries uh has just been transformational.

SPEAKER_00 38:34

That's so awesome. Well, everybody can learn more about what you're teaching and uh your experience and that it's based on and the biblical framework around it and your book, Risk Taking is Biblical. Everybody go get a hold of that. Um, Matthew, this has been fantastic. Um, what else do you want to say about how people can hear more from you and um get involved in what you're doing?

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Yeah, uh, you know, we we dedicate a lot of energy into our website, check and robotics.ai. Uh, so for the tech curious, you know, and especially if you want to know how factories are actually built, uh we put a lot of effort into a deep teaching model on there with thought leadership case studies, white papers. Um, so that's certainly a resource that we make free for everyone. Uh, and there's more on there than you could ever read. So don't try. But you know, if something looks interesting, click on it or watch the video. Um and then, you know, another interesting way is we because we've found the success in the engineering and robotics community, we are always seeking to multiply. So we have launched a Christian venture capital company focused on manufacturing tech. The purpose of this VC is to support startups to then change American industry for the positive environmentally, efficiency, technology, worker safety, all those things. Um and so I got the same challenge when we opened that VC. They said, you can't have a Christian venture capital company. No one will invest in you. And I said, Well, we'll find out, right? And so as we sit here today, we launched that, did our first investment the first week of May. We've now invested in nine companies, uh, which means investors are sharing their capital with us so we can make them money. And then startups are trusting us to be their venture capital company because we're gonna help them. And uh what we found is that just continues to have a positive impact. Now it's not just my company. So far, it's nine companies that we're gonna keep going. Um, we're gonna blow the lid off this thing, you know, over the next couple of years. And so that just multiplies the number of other enterprises that have gotten experience, our business model, our faith conviction, uh, of course, our innovation and technology and those sort of things. But uh, we view it as a people thing. If we the only thing we can take to heaven is more people, and so this is in the marketplace a way we can touch more people.

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Yeah, I love it. Love how God is blessing you and rewarding the risk that you've taken to uh step out in faith and see God build through you what has been built and continues to be built. Um, and thank you for this book that you've written, Risk Taking is Biblical. Um, Matthew, thank thanks so much again for spending time with us and helping us grow today.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Thanks, Darren. It's been fun.

SPEAKER_00 41:28

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