The Jesus Way Through Business Crisis (w/ Heather Wilson)

On this episode, Darren sits down with Heather Wilson to discuss her journey of building GiveSendGo.com as a Christ-centered company. She shares the remarkable story of her platform getting hacked, which was followed by a miraculous story of forgiveness and provision.

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_01 0:02

Welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast, where Christ following business leaders explore God's will and ways for business. This show is the ministry of the Center for Christianity 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 Heather Wilson. Heather is a wife, mother of six, and co-founder of Givsenggo.com. In 2014, three siblings had an idea. What would it look like if we took the newly popular idea of crowdfunding and stretched it beyond just funding to help people's for people's material needs, but also providing hope for people's spiritual needs? And out of those discussions, give, send, go was born. Heather, welcome to the Christian Business Leader Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Thank you for having me, Darren. It's great to see you again.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Yeah, yeah. We got to connect at the U.S. Christian Chamber of Commerce conference uh a couple years ago, and we'll be reconnecting at the conference coming up in April. Everybody should go check it out, especially if you're in the Central Florida area or anywhere around there. That's going to be happening uh at the end of April. Uh so excited to have this conversation, Heather. When did you first realize God wants to be involved in your work and business?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

I grew up in a Christian family, and I'm one of 12 kids. So I'm the second oldest, and just you know, six brothers, six sisters, and or five sisters. Um and watching my parents, my dad owned a tree service, and my mom um homeschooled a lot of my siblings and and uh kind of led the home. And watching God's interaction in their lives and in their business and in and just their everyday really started something early in me of knowing that God wasn't just something that you did on Sunday or you prayed before you ate real quick or before you went to bed. It was actually something that God wanted to be involved in everything. And so it wasn't a new concept. Um, as I got older, my husband when I got married, he became a worship pastor. So we served in church. Now it's very easy to uh be a Christian in your business when you're working at church, right? Uh, because that's what everybody's doing. It's all about God there. Um, and you know, I stayed home with my children. I started a little photography business. I always, you know, people knew I was a Christian. Um and I I remember the first time that I actually didn't own a business at this time, but I was working at a restaurant. My husband would go to work during the day, come home, and I'd work a couple of shifts at a local restaurant. And this girl started working with me. She's about my age, and we became quick friends, and she started taught opening up a little bit about her husband. Um, and they were having marital issues. And so, you know, I'd been married for a while. So, and as a Christian, I, you know, I have a hope in my marriage. And so I started giving her like some marital advice and things, but I felt like the Lord was telling me, hey Heather, um share it like about me with her, like share about that actual hope. Like marital advice is great, and there's like good foundational truths in in scripture about marriage, but like actually tell her about me. And I was, you know, I'm at this restaurant and I'm going, well, she probably knows I go to church. And I'm like justifying, like, I don't want to like make her think I'm overly religious or something, you know. I don't want to push her away. We're becoming friends. And so I do this whole justification that I think a lot of us do when we get in a situation, it's based out of fear. Um, and she we work together for a few months, and then she goes and gets another job. And a few months after that, she comes back in with her husband and they are in my section. So I go over, hey, how are you guys? Like it's so great to see you. And she looks at me and she goes, Oh my gosh, we're doing so good. Um, my neighbor invited us to church, and just last week we got baptized and we started a relationship with Jesus, and my stomach dropped, not like I was super excited, but I think that's like a pivotal moment for me that I was I realized and I looking back, I'm like, God invited me into an adventure, and I said no because of fear, and he still did what he wanted to do in these people's lives, anyways. He just had to choose somebody else. And I would have had been a part of such a cool story of someone hearing about Jesus because of my of me, but I gave so many excuses, and I think that's where I know your question was like God in business, but I think that kind of spurred me on to say, I don't want to miss the adventure. I'm God challenged me to open my mouth, whether I own the business or whether I'm working for somebody else, whatever it is, I don't want to miss the adventure that God has for each one of us.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah. And you know, and there's nothing wrong with the kind of defaulting to the question, you know, hey, you have a church, let me invite you to my church. But as long as it's not that we're just sort of trying to compartmentalize our lives, because I think I I know for me in in the past, the reason I've kind of defaulted to that rather than just having a conversation about about the Lord and what he's done for me and who he is in my life, is you know, we we can't talk about this here, but we can talk about it in my church. So why don't you come to my church? Because that's where these kinds of conversations are allowed to happen. Um, and that's the that's the enemy's voice and and reasoning, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:56

A hundred percent. That's the I, you know, it actually bothers me even at church when they're like, invite your friends to church. Now, yes, absolutely. I have nothing against inviting friends to church, right? Um, but that's not what the church was made for, like the church building, like it was to empower the church, us, to go out and have the tools be equipped to share our faith with people. To and sharing our faith isn't knowing a bunch of doctrine and knowing why we believe that the earth was created and not evolution and you know, all these things that we go, oh, what if they ask me about these things? I'm I'm not smart enough to answer. No, it's simply saying, God, uh, I'll be used to tell my story, like of what you've done in my life, the the difference you've made in my life. I don't need a church building to do that. Like I have a story. And it's when you don't know that you have a story that you need to go back and actually examine your relationship with God and say, God, what is my story with you? When did I actually come to know you? And and and all of that, because once you have that, that's all he's calling us to do is tell somebody, you know, like I had marriage trouble too. And, you know, I would spend some time praying about it. And and God brought people in my life, you know, like you can just say things like that. You don't have to be preachy, you don't have to know all the scriptures. Um, just tell your story of what God is doing in your life. And that's what he's called us to do. And when you realize that, nowhere's off limits because I can tell my story, whether I'm working at a restaurant for somebody else, it's my story, or whether I own a business, it's my story. And when you realize that it's not some doctrinal theological pounding over someone's head that you have to have all the right answers, it actually frees you up to say, wow, I can share, I'm excited to share this because I have such good, good stories of what God's done in my life.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Yeah, yeah. And you're also partnering with many uh other people who are trying to tell their story and and and to also get funding to help them to move forward and what God has called them to do. So there are a lot of crowdfunding campaigns or platforms out there like Kickstarter, Indiegogo. What makes Gibbs and Go different?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Sure. So the two that you actually just named are a little bit different because they tend to be more for projects like, hey, I'm making a record or a movie or a board game, and come and I'll give you something if you support me. Gibbs and Go is more philanthropic. So you think like the GoFundMe, you know, where you're just giving to someone because they had a house fire or they've got a cancer diagnosis. But what makes I always say we have three things that stand out that make us different. Number one, we have less fees than our competitor. And so when you're fundraising, money matters, keep all the money you raise, right? Like you want to keep more of the money. And if your platform is taking a lot of fees and pieces of the hard-earned donations, um that's not good. And so Gives and Go is has less processing fees than our competitors. And then number two is we we've actually found ourselves in a place where big tech, they call it, actually is bad tech. They started to just cancel and censor people they didn't like. And we saw that across Facebook and GoFundMe and all these. They'd shut down things that um that they didn't like. And Gibbs and Go said, you know what, we're not going to get in that game. Obviously, you can't fundraise for something illegal. Um, we won't allow you to fundraise for murder, so we don't allow abortion fundraising on Gibbs and Go, right? So, so we have some of those, but for the most part, just because we disagree with you politically or something like that, we're not going to shut you down as long as you're fundraising for something legally. And then number three, and the most important way we are different, and the reason I really believe that we are now the second largest crowdfunding platform in the philanthropic space is we share the hope of Jesus with everybody who comes on our platform. We actually have a hope team that calls every campaign and prays with them. They'll they that's their job, is like we have a team of people that all day long they are just reading people's campaigns and then calling them and saying, Hey, you're not alone in this. I just read your campaign and I just want to pray for you. And we have people that use us for number one and two, like where you don't have as many fees or we don't cancel people. So we have like people who might be atheists or agnostic or a different religion even coming on to fundraise for those hard things, and they get a phone call from our hope team that says, Hey, listen, I just read your story and I'm so sorry about what you're going through. Can I pray with you? And we've had people just break down in tears, going, I can't believe someone cares enough. Like in a world where we're so isolated, we feel like we're so connected because of social media, but we're not. We we see less of each other that someone actually, someone's voice reaches out to you and says, Listen, can I pray with you? It's actually been an amazing thing, the the feedback we've gotten from people who go in my hardest moment to hear that God loves me and He hasn't forgotten me.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Yeah. Once again, prayer is um probably the most um um underestimated uh tool that God has given us for advancing his kingdom. Um, you know, and and from an evangelistic standpoint, you know, like we're talking about now, offering to just pray for somebody is incredibly uh winsome for for Christ, you know, because it just communicates so much to people about who God is and how God is different. God is a very personal God. You mean I can talk to God? You mean you mean God cares about uh the specific thing that I'm going through? Uh you mean I don't have to jump through hoops in order to have him hear me. Like there's just so many things that that get communicated just in the question, can I pray for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

And often, you know, I'll go to a grocery store. I've tried to be much more aware and intentional, is my word for the year, is intentional, much more intentional. Put down my phone, look around, pay attention. God, is there somebody here you want me to talk, talk with? And and you know, there'll be times where I'll get up to the grocery store line and and I'll go, hey, how are you today? You know, just making that small talk. And, you know, I had the lady was like, Oh man, am I back? I just woke up with my my shoulder hurting or whatever it was. And I realize that I don't anymore ask if I can pray. I go, I tell them like quickly that I'm gonna pray, and then I just start praying. Because often it makes this awkward. Can I pray for you? And they go, they feel like they're putting you out, even if they want it, they don't know how to respond because you're especially after work or something. So I go, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I'm gonna pray for you. Dear Heavenly Father, I just pray for her. And I look at their name tag, Joanne, God, I just pray you take away the pain in her neck. So the rest of our shift, you know, and and then I just continue on. And she, you I've never had someone go, I didn't want you to pray for me, right? They go, Oh my gosh, thank you so much. And now they have a story as they walk away of how God intervened in their life in this moment through some stranger who lifted up their need before God. And and so, yeah, it's it's one of my favorite verses in Psalms, and I'm like blanking on where it's found, but it says, Because he bends his ear toward us, I will praise him or call out to his name. And I love that because the picture is not that we call out and he goes, Oh, she's talking to me. It says because he's already bending his ear. Yes, that causes me to want to call, like he's waiting for me to talk to him. And I love that picture.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Yes, I think it's Psalm 116.1. Uh, I I teach kids church, and that's actually one of the verses that we've been uh memorizing lately. And actually, um the version that we've been memorizing because it's for this the younger kids is I love God and He Hears Me, uh, which is a just a paraphrase of I I love the Lord because He hears my voice. Something along those along those lines, but yeah, there's this song to it and everything. Um, but that's such a powerful scripture, and um yeah, I mean that's so exciting. What just being able to step out, be obedient. It's not just about doing it in the workplace, but wherever we go, other people's workplaces, and you don't even have to necessarily ask. That's another another perspective I really appreciate is you don't have to necessarily ask, like just do it, you know, and don't go long-winded, you know, it's like Jesus said, This is how to do it, you know how to you know how to pray, guys.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Like, but don't babble on, just yeah, just don't make it awkward for the person, just a quick God, you know what's happening in this person's life, you know, bless them, have your hand on them. And so, yeah, no, I I was like, after asking once, and the person saying no and it feeling kind of awkward because I think they would have said yes, but they didn't know. I was like, I'm not gonna ask anymore. I'm gonna just go, oh my gosh, I'm gonna pray for you and just launch into it. And I've never had a person afterwards be angry about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Yeah, and that's that's probably the only time in that person's life that they will ever have a stranger come up to them and offer to pray for them. I mean, like, do you this is not something that happens to me, and I'm around I'm around Christians, right? Um, and but yeah, like at church, you know, occasionally somebody might might come up, but even that's rare. Uh even that is super rare. Um, so Heather, what's one of your favorite stories that illustrates the impact being made by Gibbs and Go?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Well, there are so many. Um, and I and I'll bridge it a little bit. I remember uh a few elections ago and feeling like, ugh, I don't like either candidate, and like a feeling just like everything on the news was bad, like it just felt bad. And I was like, like I have to turn off everything because and I went to Gifts and Go and I started scrolling through campaigns on Gives and Go and from all around the world. And it was such a reminder to me. Like God is moving in in people's neighborhoods, in their locations. There were people stepping out, being the hands and feet to others. And it was like such a great reminder when you scroll through and see, yes, there's a lot of tragedy that are happening, that's happening, but look at all the hope that's being offered in this hard times. We know the Bible says, you know, in this world you will have trouble. Like we can't take that away. It's part of living in a fallen world, but it doesn't end there. It says, but take hard, I've overcome the world. And when we have a relationship with Jesus, we have that overcomer that we can offer to the world. And so it changed my perspective in the moment, scrolling through, going, look at all these people. This one's adopting, like they're following Jesus here. And this one's building on their Christian school, and this one's homeschooling, and this one's going on a mission strip, and this one's helping their neighbor who's a single mom, you know, whose car broke down. Look at how God's working. The news is telling us everything's bad and we should hate each other. But look at all this, what's happening, this hope being shared. But we started our hope team and they started calling campaigns. And those this we only let them work part-time. It's like a part-time job because it's heavy. There's they're calling a lot of hard situations, you know. People a lot come to give sang go often because it's like the worst case scenario: a car accident when your child dies, or cancer. Well, you know, there's some great things, but there's a lot of heavy. And so one of our teammates were calling, and she had just read the campaign, and it was a campaign about a um woman whose daughter, her grown daughter, had just had a baby and was struggling with postpartum depression and an angry boyfriend. And um she ends up killing herself, the daughter, and leaving behind this baby. And so this mom like starts a gifts and go to help raise money for the funeral expense of her daughter and taking care of her granddaughter. Well, so my hope team member is like reading this, going, Oh, this is like, this is so sad, right? This picture of the baby and all of that. So she calls and she says, Hey, I'm from Gifts and Go, and I just read your campaign, and I'm so sorry about the loss of your daughter. And I just want to pray for you right now. Is there anything specific right in this moment that I can be praying for? And the lady just starts bawling and she says, You don't even understand. I just pulled out my gun and I was gonna end my life tonight. And God had the timing of that. Like we couldn't, they're just calling through a list, right? Like it's just random, if you will. And the amount of times that these random phone calls hit at the exact moment when somebody's feeling the lowest. This is an extreme version where like someone was actually gonna end their life, like they were in that much hopelessness. But we see this story replicated over hey, my husband passed away. It's been like suddenly from cancer, it's been just one activity after another of funeral planning, people in. And today was the first day I came back to my empty house and it was quiet. And I sat there and I felt so alone. And then my phone rang, and it was a stranger from Gives and Go calling. And the stories like that, those are like, okay, we can stand for freedom, we can make a difference and say, listen, we're not gonna censor. Those are good things, those are important things, but they're not the most important thing. The most important thing is saying we're gonna be able to reach people who might never know that God sees their need and and loves them. Yeah, even though it's hard.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Wow, that's such a powerful story. And thank God uh y'all were able to intervene in in that mother's life, you know, before she goodness, goodness. Um so so you are taking a stand against censorship that's a common practice among other of your competitors, right? Um, but at the same time, I would imagine they're as you said, you're not going to you're not going to enable a campaign from an organization that's promoting murder, promoting abortion. But meanwhile, those other censoring platforms probably would allow that that way.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

They have months where they celebrate, you know, they call it like women's choice month or whatever, and they celebrate that you can go and raise money for abortion, that you can go and you know, transgender month. Let's transgender all our children, right? Those are the two things right now that that we and and this is a constant Jacob and I, my brother, going, okay, God, help us to just be able to navigate this. Because some there's a lot of things that come that we're like, uh, do we like this or not? Where does that freedom that we're all afforded in the United States lie? Um, you know, even on legal defense, like if someone's done something wrong, can they raise money for legal defense? That can be tricky. Um, but what where we've landed in it is that you can't raise money for murder, which is abortion, and you can't raise money for child abuse, um, which would be transgendering your children. And so if we were to see someone come to our platform, and the only reason they would come to our platform for those things is to make a point or try to make a point because they have another platform that's like celebrating that, right? Um, we would those would we would shut those down and we would they would get a call. And let them know, you know what, God loves them, and but this is just something, you know, that we're not going to pray for their baby that's in the womb or their child.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

So this isn't like a you know cake baker situation where you could get sued for not baking a cake for a same-sex wedding kind of a situation. This is this is different.

SPEAKER_00 22:25

It because it is our policy that we say we don't allow these these two things. We I'm sure they can anybody can sue you over anything. We're we're in a uh legal battle today because I don't know if you remember a few years ago, there was the Canadian truckers that were um protesting up in Canada, and they went to our competitor site who took them down, um, came to Gives and Go. Um, and I have a really cool story if you'd like to hear it. Um so two months before the truckers came to us, we didn't know what was coming down the pipeline. Uh one of our bookkeepers had said, Hey, I got this email for cybersecurity policy. You guys are all over the news now, standing for freedom. People don't always like that. You should just get cybersecurity policy. It's cheap just to have. And we're like, you know what? We've been talking about it, get it. So we buy this like$1,500 cybersecurity policy. Two months later, the truckers protest in Canada over vaccine mandates. It's a legal protest. Obviously, the government doesn't like it. It's making some waves around the world as far as vaccines and all of that and work, you know, should how much it should throttle your work. And um we allow allow them to fundraise. And um a hacker group called Anonymous, the the people with the white masks, one of the founders of Anonymous, who's known to hack into like governments and all sorts of like vigilante, whatever they think they're doing right, you know, saving the world from. Well, they hack gifts and go. And they take our site down and they um share the names of people who have given. Now, no bank account information, but just the names. And the Canadian government had just said, we're gonna get the names of people who gave and we're gonna freeze bank accounts. And so all of a sudden, this hacker group Anonymous is online bragging about taking us down. So we're scrambling. We take the site down because it's like redirecting and scrolling names and very, very stressful. Seems like probably the worst moment in our history. Um, going, God, what are you doing? Like we were like standing for people's freedoms, and you know, like$13 million was raised in a week. And now we're like, we're gonna people aren't gonna trust us, and it's really, really stressful. We have teams come in to help us find out how they got in and to secure the platform even more. Um, and we're just navigating that in a couple weeks of just really figuring that out. But we have this cybersecurity policy, which we're like, oh my gosh, like any money lost because of the site being down and all of that, um, having to hire people, that will be covered. Um, but we have to do all this investigation, and it's taking a long time, a lot of paperwork because it's pretty fishy. We buy a cybersecurity policy two months before this happens, right? Well, fast forward six to eight months later, and we get a knock at the door, and we're served papers for a$300 million lawsuit. Um, the citizens of Ottawa, um, a lawyer that's representing them in a class action suit for the intent to create nuisance. Now, we never went to Ottawa, Jacob and I, or Gives and Go. The money actually never even got to the truckers because the Canadian government was freezing it. So we had to refund it because we saw the first money we pushed over the border got frozen. It's still frozen today. And this is why these people are suing because they're hoping to grab this couple million dollars. And so we're now named in this lawsuit, and we're like, what the heck? Like, this doesn't even make sense. And we we uh go, okay, what are we gonna do? And we start saying, you know what, let's pray about it. And we felt like really Jacob got a text from a friend, and we just kept getting confirmation that the butt battle belongs to the Lord. And we're like, we know that, right? The battle belongs to the Lord. It gets closer and closer to where we either have to default on the judgment and just let it ride out, which is what we were planning on doing, or we have to submit a defense and and go to trial. And um, we're like, okay, you know what? We have like one week to we have to, we've been just saying the battle belongs to the Lord, but let's actually get quiet before the Lord. Let's fast and pray for like some really significant time. And so we did. And Jacob came back and he was like, you know what? That song came on, the battle belonged to the Lord. He's like, and I opened my Bible because I was just like, okay, I know it's found, it's in there a couple different places where someone says the battle belongs to the Lord. He's like, and I open right up to David and Goliath, and David goes, the battle belongs to the Lord as he steps out on the field, but he doesn't just wait, he actually picks up a stone and he started, he fights like he didn't just stand there and say, Okay, God, you do it. He's like, I think we're supposed to fight this. And I said, Okay, let's let's do it. The battle, it is the Lord's battle. So we we call the lawyer that had been pursuing us, wanting to reprim represent us, and we said, are going to fight this. And he said, Yeah, there's five truckers that need um that are also wanting me to represent them. They just don't have the money. And Jacob and I said, Well, you know what? David fought for all of Israel. He didn't just fight for himself, we'll cover those truckers too, and we'll be in that same battle with them. And now we're a growing company, we don't have the money, like we're not, you know, we're just trying to make a name for ourselves. And and so we go, how much is this gonna cost? And the lawyer goes, you know, probably like 250,000 over the next year or two. That's like not in our budget, right? Like we had just hired some people because of the explosion of growth. And we're like, okay, the battle belongs to the Lord. And we hang up with the lawyer, and less than two hours later, unsolicited, the phone rings and we pick it up. And it's that insurance company. We'd been trying to get in touch with them to settle, and they call us on the day, two hours later, and they say, Hey, um, we have a check for$260,000. Where would you like us to send it? Wow. And we were like, What? Like the battle belongs to the Lord. And the cool part is it's like the moment that we thought was like the worst thing in our lives, and this happens all the time. You have like this really bad thing. It is a bad thing. We were hacked. Like we, it was hard. It was the one of the hardest moments of kiss and go. But God's like, listen, I'm gonna give you a cybersecurity policy, and then I'm gonna let it pay for something coming down the tracks that I see coming that you're not prepared to do because uh you're you're gonna get that one way or the other. So, this hack that you're gonna get that's gonna put you out for a week or two, is gonna pay for something I see. Like I'm planning this, don't worry about it. And then the cool part is this past spring, a year ago, we see that Aubrey Cottle, the guy who hacked Give Send Go and bragged about it online, that we couldn't get anybody to touch or go after, had gotten caught hacking into the GOP database down in Texas for the heartbeat bill. And so we went on uh X and we made a little funny post because we do this, and we were known for allowing people to fundraise for legal defense. So we we tagged Aubrey and said, Hey, Aubrey, you know you can raise money for your legal defense on Gibbs and Go. And he actually responded and he said, Well played, gives and go. And then I heard he had made a TikTok to all his followers. Now, these are crazy bad people. And I went over to just watch what he's saying. And he was talking and he's like, Hey guys, I just got out on bail. I don't know what's gonna happen yet. Like, whatever, you know, whatever happens to me though, my mom took in all my pets. I guess he had like a bunch of dogs and cats, and she's living pension to pension. So just make sure you check in on her, please, because I don't know what's gonna happen to me. Well, we had just started an outrageous generosity team at Gives and Go where we look for outrageous ways to bless people. And we said, what would be more outrageous than blessing the mom of our hacker? And so we got in touch with her and we called her, and we've prayed with her many times over, and we have automatic shipments of like$500 worth of pet foods and litters, all different types for all the different animals that we just send to her over that. It's been a year now, and and we say, and you'll this is one of the things we talk about, like you'll hear us at Crystal's uh event in in Florida. Like, if we want to look different, if we want to change the world, we have to look different than what the world looks like. And one of those ways is that when God says, No, I want you to bless somebody, and you go, oh, but they're my enemy, well, that's exactly what looking different looks like. And the fun part is we know this is just the middle of the story. Like, this is like the fun, like in between where we're obeying God. We don't know how it's gonna turn out, but I can't wait until we hear that Aubrey has been introduced to Jesus and and he comes to work for give, send, go. We always joke about that. What does that be amazing as our security guy? Right. Yeah, but I I look back again and I want people who are listening to think about this. The worst thing that we would have said we went through. God said, Listen, I'm going to use it because I see way bigger than you. If you trust me, trust me even in this hard, because I'm gonna pay for a lawsuit that you're not gonna be able to afford. And there's this kid that I want to reach for me, and I'm gonna use you guys to do it. And and be and it changes the way you look at the hard when you're like, God, I still trust you. So I believe you're gonna, even if not in my lifetime, that you're good, even when I do the hard. So I know there's a really long story, but it's one of my favorites because God is so awesome.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

It's incredible. Has has he made any of that public about what you guys are doing for his mom?

SPEAKER_00 32:01

I haven't seen anything public from him. Um, I do know our hope team has talked to her many times. Yeah. Um, and so I know he knows because we're we're doing this, but Jacob actually said he saw, or somebody mentioned that they saw him on the street or a video of him on the street or something. And the person's response was, What's happening to Aubrey? He's starting to seem different, like he's not as like crazy feeling, like there's something happening there. And we're like, Well, because we have a God of transformation, even the worst of the worst, he takes and he says, Listen, I give redemption. All you have to do is come to me. And so, so that's our prayer. We pray for Aubrey, we pray for his mom, and we we challenge business owners, we challenge people who say, I want to live my life for Jesus, to even do it in the heart. Because it's easy to do it when we're like, Oh, I'll just hand out Bibles or tracts or you know, have a Christian fish on my business so people know. It's when it's countercultural to what the world tells us. Yeah. We say, How do we be outrageous here? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

And for and forgiving, you know, like there's such the power of forgiveness in there that makes no sense to the world, you know. Uh but it's so attractive for for Christ because it's it's who it's who he is, it's his character. Um, and and we have countless opportunities to do that in the marketplace, you know, especially when there's money on the line, people are being deceptive and um or hacking or whatever, whatever is going on, so many opportunities to forgive and communicate the love of Christ that way. Thank you for sharing that story, Heather. Can you give us uh another example? Oh, and by the way, um somebody's gonna go out and get that cybersecurity uh insurance right now, because I mean we're we're there, you know, especially if you have a site that's driving a lot of traffic. Um what what do you want to say about the uh wisdom in making that investment?

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Yeah, I think that the Bible talks a lot about being shrewd, being wise, um, not just planning for today, not worrying about tomorrow, but also uh making wise choices. And and so I say, Jay, we always are looking at ways to go, okay, what could happen here and not live in fear over it, but then take the steps to say, all right, let's make wise steps to prevent anything that we can see coming down. We're not gonna live with our head in the sand saying, oh, that will never happen to us, because we do know we allow campaigns that sometimes people don't like. We know that we live in a world that people are very loud and bullish on the internet. Um, we, you know, hacking's common, people, you know, that these are all real things. And so as we even build our site, we say, okay, how do we have redundancies so that we're not dependent on just one server, you know, that if that gets taken down or just one payment processor and things like that. Um, so I say, be wise. And the way we get wisdom, the Bible tells us it says, if you lack wisdom, if any of you lack wisdom, ask God and he will generously give you wisdom. Like you won't even have to beg for it. And I kind of paraphrase there, but it's one of my favorite verses because so many times in this journey of gives and go, especially, have I been like, wait, I need to ask God for wisdom here so that, because he knows, he knows it all, and he promises wisdom. I remember one time, actually, the first time I I remember ever asking for wisdom, and I'd been a Christian a long time. I remember being like, God, you promise wisdom, either you're gonna give it or not. And if you don't, then I guess that maybe it's just not all true. Like, right? Like it's either true or not true. And I'm asking, I'm begging you for wisdom. It was over at my son, he was making some really bad choices. I didn't know what to do with him, and I was like, God, I just don't know what to do. And my son was in the car, his arms crossed, he's mad. I'm driving him home from a bad situation, and and I am just quiet. And I am just like that morning. I'd read that verse, and I was like, God, either it's true or not. Like my whole life I've lived believing that it's true, but I'm asking, I read this that it you promise this. Like I don't even have to beg, and I am begging. And I get home, my son gets out of the car, he slams the door, he goes inside, and I'm like, okay, so what? Not true, like you're not gonna give me wisdom. And then I get quiet finally for a minute, so God can actually get a word in edgewise. And uh, I feel like he says, Heather, I did give you wisdom. I told you to ask for wisdom and shut up. Like, don't let because I wanted to lecture my son. I started and then I was like, nope, stop talking. And God's like, that was the wisdom I gave you was to stop talking. It's not gonna do anything good in this situation, and ask for wisdom because that's the wise thing to do. And then I got home and I was able to talk with my husband calmly, more calmly. I was able to the next day deal with the issue with my son. And I thank God like that story of my son. You know, he went through a couple years and now God has gotten a hold of his heart and he is like serving Jesus and loving Jesus. So, you know, it's it's a great story. But I remember that first time of actually putting God on the line. Often we don't want to because we're afraid, what if he doesn't come through, right? He will. If he promises it, he will.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

That's right. That's right. So, Heather, we've all gotten those those texts and emails from fraudsters pretending to, you know, be in dire straits and you know, send me$500 now so I can uh you know give it to these authorities so that I can, you know, whatever. Um, how do you guard against fraud on your platform?

SPEAKER_00 38:08

It's a good question, and probably one of the most common questions because it is uh something we see a lot today, especially now with AI and deep fakes. And I mean, you can make a video to substantiate Yeah, it's going to get harder and harder. We know that that's that like where we're headed, that it's gonna get harder and harder. But uh, but I I also um what a lot of people don't think about because they're not in the world of just crowdfunding, is that most everybody is crowdfunding for a need they have. Like, so they're fundraising. Fundraising's hard enough. I was like part of some Habitat for Humanity fundraiser and begging everybody to give. And it's hard enough when you have a people that's yeah surround you that want to give, like, never mind trying to get it from strangers. Like, yeah, so it's gonna be rare that people strangers are gonna give you money, right? It's gonna be your friends and family. So if you say, I'm raising money to go on a missions trip, and grandma gives you a hundred dollars and your neighbor gives you a hundred dollars, guess what they're gonna be expecting from you? There's some accountability just in the way crowdfunding works because it's people you know most of the time. Like it's very rare that you're giving to somebody you just don't know. So, how we handle this, we have a fraud and verifications team and a payout team that check before any money goes anywhere. You know, who is receiving the money? Are they the person that's in the story? Um, is it their bank account being attached to this? Right. So we we will verify and say we a hundred percent the person whose name as a recipient is the person receiving this money. So now we put some of the onus back on the givers. Okay, it says Susan Smith is receiving this money. Do you know and trust Susan Smith? Do you know her story? Then give to her because you know her. If you don't, then do some due diligence on it because we can tell you the money's going to her, but we can't tell you what she's gonna spend it on, like she says, like we can't follow her around. Um, and so we say, do your due due diligence there um to make sure you know and trust. And if God tells you to give to somebody, just like if he tells you to give to the homeless man on the street, you obey and say, God, it's on you now because I'm just being obedient. Right. But most of the time, 99.9% of the time, you're giving to somebody that you are connected to so it plays out. And then we see the weird IPs that we can catch, and those are like maybe a card tester, someone just testing cards. But it's so hard to fundraise. To make up a story and then find strangers to give you money is becoming harder and harder to do. Now, like you said, with deep fakes in AI, you know, they take a picture of me, a video of me, and they make me begging because my something horrible happened to my child, you know, people might be faked. Oh, the one of the owners of Gives and Go, look at how how horrible this is. But somebody who knew me would be like, wait, no, no, no, that's that's not true, right? So there's always some just personal checks and balances, and then we have a team that does all the the the back end of investigation.

SPEAKER_01 41:24

Yeah. Well, that that should be comforting to those who are listening, thinking about going to partner with your platform and put their needs on there and contribute to those that they see uh come through their Facebook feed and so on. Anything else you want to say to our listeners about how they can get on board with Givs and Go?

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Yeah, so there's a couple different ways. First, just go look at at gifsenggo.com. So it's three words. We say it fast, and even my phone gets it like really weird, like Gibson or Gifs and Go or whatever. It's three words give, send, and go. So givesendgo.com. You can go and you can just scroll through campaigns. You can go to categories, and if you look at categories of campaigns, but one of the and in each campaign has a button that says give, obviously, so people can uh receive money and then share, so you can share people's campaigns. But we also have a unique feature: there's a pray button. So you can go through and say, you know what, I'm gonna pray for this person. I just read their campaign and I'm gonna hit pray and I'm gonna type out a prayer or let them know I was praying for them. And we've heard from many people that going in as they went through a hard situation, going in and seeing the financial help, but then also like this mailbox full of prayer messages is just it's just super touching. We also have a prayer wall that's just a public wall. Um, so if you go up to the top of Gives and Go, it says discover and there's a prayer wall. And we have hundreds of people that aren't don't have campaigns on Gives and Go that are just like, hey, I need I need some prayer here. And we have people that that they use this in their prayer groups or in their families that they go, let's go to the Gives and Go prayer wall. So if you're watching and you're like, you know, I don't necessarily have a lot of money, but I want to be involved. Prayer, like we started out talking about, is is unestimated, uh, you know, in this process. Like God is listening and money is not an option, object for him. Like it, you know, and so go and pray over campaigns. We also have something, and I'll I'll end with this one, but we uh obviously start a campaign. If you see somebody using the other platform, tell them, hey, no, you should be using Gives then go. But we also have something called the Giver Army. And the giver army came about a couple years ago with people coming on the site, setting up a campaign, never sharing it, never doing anything, and then writing in and saying, This doesn't work. I didn't receive any donations. And we're like, Well, you never shared it. Like, how did people know you had a campaign? And they're like, What do you mean? I have to share it. And we're like, Well, there's just not a Crowd of people like looking to give strangers money. Now, there are people who come on and maybe give to people they don't know, but that's not the norm. Like, and so we said we we kept seeing this over and over again. And we thought, what if we were to actually make an army of givers? And so you can go to givearmy.com. It's attached to our charity branch, givesango.org. So giveararmy.com, and you can sign up for a minimum of$5 a month. It's a recurring donation. And your$5 get pulled in with everybody else in the Giver Army. So you think you get 100,000 people, each giving$5 a month. That's$500,000. That our charity then has scouts that go into the Gives and Go platform and find people. A lot of these, um, our prayer team, our hope team, are these scouts because they talk to people and they're like, here's a here's a great one to give money to. Like I spoke to them, like I, you know, it's verified that this is a need. And and that money gets dispersed to campaigns in certain categories on Gives and Go. And your money gets to be multiplied with all these other people's money to really make a huge difference. Um, and for less than a cup of coffee. Like literally nowadays, like you go and get a cup of coffee. If it's anything more than a black coffee, it's it's more than$5. Um, and so the giver army would be another way if you're going, you know what, I want to give, and I don't necessarily know where I want to give or to who, but I want to give to someone who really has a need. Well, that's what our charity does. It scouts for those people who don't have the crowd. We call the giver army the crowd for the crowdless. Yeah. The people who might not have a big network, but just are in a hard place. And so, so that's those are some of the ways that you can check out give send go.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

I love that. Yeah, and we've talked about on this podcast uh about employee giving programs. And give send go could be a great platform for that. You know, there's there's companies where the employer will have an employer match for whatever the employees raise. Like let's say that one of the employees had a needs to raise some funeral expenses uh for a death in the family, then they will kind of basically pass the hat around to the their fellow coworkers and raise whatever they can raise. And then the employee, the employer's giving match will match that contribution. And so, you know, a lot of people don't carry cash around or don't carry very much cash. And so using a platform like that could be uh a great way to manage your employee giving program.

SPEAKER_00 46:37

Absolutely. And and we've started one even at Gives and Go for our employees that we say, you know, there are times where we'll step in, it's an employee care fund. And um, but yeah, you could say, here's here's the link. It's a private link for just our company. And uh and you know, you give$10,$50,$100, we'll match it in there and the money will go up. And then when there's a need, we get to disperse that to your coworkers, to your friends, to the people working with you.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

Yeah, that's awesome. Do you have a separate landing page for uh other employers that are looking to start something like that?

SPEAKER_00 47:18

We don't right now. We don't have an it's a it's a good idea though, because we can put up a landing page that just kind of explains some ideas on how they could utilize it. So I'll definitely bring that back to the marketing team as far as putting together a landing page that just explains some different tips and tools to to set one up and what that could look like for their for their business.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Well, there's an organization called His Way at Work, and they are really championing that model, and they've they've taught that to a lot of different businesses. So I don't know if they have a like an e-commerce solution that they recommend, but they could be great to partner with.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

Yeah, I've met them before, and so I'll have to reach out because that is a good that is a good idea, good connection there.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Yeah, yeah. Well, Heather, thank you so much for being so generous with your time today. Uh, again, givesendgo.com is the website. Um, I'm so energized by the especially the story with the truckers and the hacker and um supporting his mother. That's just you can't can't wait to hear how that uh story continues to to develop. And looking forward to seeing you in Orlando uh on the stage. And uh I will also be facilitating a faith and work workshop, which are which is called a laboratory. They're calling there's a couple of different laboratories. There's one on AI, one on faith and work, one on uh Unity, and I'm trying to remember some of the other ones, but go to the website, everyone, to go and check that out. I believe it's uschristianchamber.com and learn about the conferences happening in April of 2026. So hope to see some of y'all there. Heather, thank you so much again. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

Thank you again. I can't wait to see you in a little over a month.

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Same here. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Christian Business Leader Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and tune in for the next episode as we continue exploring God's will and ways for business.