In today’s show we talk with Brett Johnson who is known for being a transformational coach, business strategist and leader.

Brett says that God is an asset manager. If you can teach yourself to invest, not just for the day, but for eternity, then you and God are in the same business.

Everyday when you go to work, you’re shaping the thinking of your clients. Through you they’re thinking about storing up treasures in heaven, while still getting a return here on earth.

You’ll have to change the way you think, to change the way you view money, your life, priorities, and how you invest so that you can use your business to disciple people.

When we have this epiphany we realize that everyday we go to work, we are working with God as kingdom driven marketplace ministers.

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Brett Johnson has been in the marketplace for a generation and has been described as a thought leader, vision-caster, culture shaper, innovator, implementer, capitalizer, pioneer and establisher.

He and his colleagues at The Institute have worked with over 400 companies around the world to discover a Purpose that is bigger than the bottom line.

An author of many books (14+), all focused at addressing challenges in life or society, he is a student of leadership, capital, societal transformation and work-life integration. (http://inst.net/publications)

Brett and Lyn train trainers who facilitate learning experiences on Repurposing Business, LEMON Leadership, Convergence and Transforming Society. They personally lead Executive Intensives a few times a year, and leads a cohort for executives called Bizcipleship.

Brett and Lyn married 41+ years ago, started life in South Africa, moved to Silicon Valley in 1986 and now split their time between the USA and Africa, with travels to Europe and SE Asia in the mix.

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Lemon Leadership Book https://amzn.to/3eEpNvE

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As a Mindset Coach I’m here to help you shift your thinking and unlock your full potential! If you’re needing support, encouragement and accountability; consider joining my group coaching program Unstick Your Mind.

TRANSCRIPT

Mimika: Welcome to Mimika TV. Get ready to break through barriers, view your faith, pursue your purpose and market your message so you can impact the marketplace for God.
Hello and welcome to Mimika TV. I’m so excited to have you join me here today. Today is a super special treat for me because I get to hear somebody with a familiar accent. So you are going to hear two South African voices today. Yay. Today’s guest is Brett Johnson who has been in the marketplace for a generation. He has been described as a thought leader, vision caster, cultural shaper, innovator, implementer, capitalizer, pioneer, and establisher. He and his colleagues at the institute have worked with over 400 companies around the world to discover a purpose that is bigger than the bottom line. He is an author of 14 plus books all focused at addressing challenges in life and society. Brett and his wife, Lynn, train trainers who facilitate learning experiences in repurposing business, LEMON leadership, convergence, and transforming society. So I am so excited to have you on the show, Brett. Welcome.
Brett: Mimika, it’s great to be with you. Thank you so much.
Mimika: Well, we have got some common friends and I’ve heard about Brett for a long time, one of the people that we know, I’ve known for years. So I’m so excited to see a fellow South African living in the USA providing great leadership content and great resources for people who need it. The reason why I’m so excited to get into your story today, and you have a lot of tips, especially for our entrepreneurs and those in the marketplace who feel called to share their faith, but not necessarily our own ministry. We have a treat for you today because we’re going to really unpack that, about how you can walk out leadership and being a faith based entrepreneur and leader. But before we get into that great stuff, can you give our audience a little bit of a backstory, Brett, about how you got started doing what you’re doing today?
Brett: Yes. Thank you. I grew up in the wonderful city of Cape Town. As you know, it’s a lovely spot. Grew up there and it was an interesting experience because my parents were business people and they started churches. So they started churches up in Johannesburg. I was actually born up in the Johannesburg area. We lived out in Bryanston when it was in the middle of nowhere. They started the church there. They started churches in Bulawayo up in Zimbabwe, what is now Zimbabwe, and in South Africa. That’s what they did. They did business. Then I remember as a teenager, I asked my mum, “What would dad do if he had more money?” And my mum said, “He’d start more churches.” So it was kind of interesting to see my parents doing that. Back in the day, they didn’t have language around it, but they just simply did both.
Well, my dad was ordained as a minister and later was, “full-time.” So for myself, I studied at University of Cape Town, studied the bachelor of commerce, and then was asked by Youth for Christ to go and join their staff. My mum said, “No, you have to finish up becoming a chartered accountant,” which in the US, is a CPA. So I joined Pricewaterhouse. I stayed with them for 10 years. During that time, I actually ended up doing three things. One was working at Pricewaterhouse and I was looking after big clients in South Africa. The second thing was running a local church. So my question I was expecting was, when is God going to let me finish up with Pricewaterhouse so I could just do the local church and “go full-time”? And I realized it was the wrong question.
So I had to do both. Then I began consulting to Youth With A Mission, YWAM, in South Africa. So now I had three jobs. When we moved to the states in 1986, it was for just one year. It was a tour of duty, a pre-partnership tour of duty. But as we landed in San Francisco, the plane was coming in, god said to me, “This is going to be your home for quite a while.” Then we had two kids, $300 in our pocket. We had a job to go to, but going for a year is fun. Going permanently, I don’t know that we would have made the decision. So my wife says Got conned us, tricked us into leaving Cape Town and got to San Francisco and began to ask God, why do you want us to stay here? And he said, eventually, to blend these worlds of business, local church and missions, and create a new kind of organization that would put them all together. So that’s how we ended up in the states.
Mimika: Wow. That’s amazing because it’s so funny how you have these, what they say, six degrees of separation, that somebody is definitely connected somehow. Funny, you say, Bryanston. My mom was born and raised there and I went to Bryanston High School for a fall back a couple of years and lived just off [inaudible 00:04:54] Drive. All my South African friends will know exactly what I’m talking about. So it just shows you that you’ve gone [inaudible 00:04:59]. I’m a [inaudible 00:05:00] girl and you’re from Cape Town. Then if you can give us a vision way in a country where we think the rest of the world has forgotten us, he can pluck us out of obscurity and plant us where he wants us to be for a time and a reason and a season. So that is so exciting. I love that idea of when you said he tricked you because Cape Town, for those who have never visited, is gorgeous. It’s one of those beautiful places, great views, wonderful weather. So you really had to have your arm twisted to leave, right?
Brett: Yeah. Yeah. We thought a holiday, fantastic. That’s great. But little did we know we would be in Silicon Valley for over 30 years.
Mimika: Wow.
Brett: A lot of good stuff starts there. So back in 1992, we started an organization that would get entrepreneurs and business people to figure out how to integrate their work in their faith. One of the things that we had to break down was this secular, sacred dichotomy; some things are sacred, some things are secular. Whereas in the Hebrew, the word for business and the word for ministry is exactly the same word. So there’s no notion of, are you in ministry? Are you in business? I tell my women friends this because in some Christian circles, they worry about women being in ministry. At Pricewaterhouse, We used to in place 70% women. Business and ministry is the same thing. So if a woman can be in business, she can be in ministry. Simple as that.
Mimika: Definitely, it makes me think of the Proverbs 31 woman. If you actually read it, she’s a wife, she’s a mother, she’s a business owner. She makes fabrics, but she helps other people. So really, that is the essence of what we all have, is to create commerce, is to create… Because then we can provide value, especially entrepreneurship has been in my blood since wherever. My father is Greek. In South Africa, we’re made up of a lot of different nationalities because it’s a lot of immigrants. But what I love is that idea that if you want to create something of value, you don’t need permission. You can just go ahead and start, which is so fabulous.
Brett: Yeah. The Proverbs 31 woman didn’t seem to get much permission from her husband either.
Mimika: Exactly. He went and did his thing and she did hers, and they worked together as a power couple. So I’m like, yay. My husband and I’ve always been aiming for that, so that is so fabulous. You mentioned something that I’d love to unpack a little further. I think this is something that I hear from a lot of people that I work with and who’ve listened to the show and just people I just meet in ordinary life, is trying to help separate that, as you said, the dichotomy of this is church and this is business, and I can’t share my faith or what I believe with people in the business world because they feel like I’m preaching to them. So what tips can we sort of dive into to helping those people who are perhaps Christian faith-based entrepreneurs, authors, speakers, leaders in some shape or form where they are showing up authentically as themselves and still walking out what God’s called for them to do?
Brett: I would say don’t make the emphasis getting people saved. Don’t make the emphasis evangelism because when you talk about marketplace ministry, historically it’s been evangelism oriented. A bunch of people get together in a hotel somewhere, they share testimonies and it’s drag a friend along so that person can come to know Christ Or you’re in a work situation, you’re working in a corporate, you’re working in a standard bank or you’re working in a start-up and you think, how do I get the conversations around to getting the person saved? How to get the conversation around to Jesus. It’s a bit fabricated. Instead of just saying, “How do I live out my faith in a day-to-day basis? How do I develop products? How do I market? How do I sell? How do I do accounting?”
And I think for me, I just had a conversation with a couple that are sitting in mainland China this morning. We were talking about this thing as more people are approaching them. What I find is I tell people, find your job in the Bible. Find it in the Bible. Some people look at me blankly. I remember having a conversation with a guy in San Francisco and he said to me, “Brett, I’m reading books about marketplace, ministry and God in business, but I just don’t get the connection to my job.” I said, “What do you do?” He said, “I’m an asset manager.” I said, “What does an asset manager do?” He said, “A wealthy client brings me $5 million and I’ve got to turn it into $7 million.” I said, “God’s an asset manager.” Many of the parables are, “Look, here’s the deal. Here’s some money. I’m going away. I come back. I expect more.” So in fact, you look at the stewardship of assets as a… And that’s what God does. He stewards assets and he gives us the job of stewarding assets.
So I explained to the guy how God is an asset manager. Now, I said to him, “If you can teach your wealthy San Francisco plan to invest, not just for the day, but for eternity, then you and God are in the same business. Everyday when you go to work, if you’re shaping the thinking of your clients so that they’re thinking about storing up treasure in heaven, while still getting a return on earth, then you’ll have to change the way they think, you’ll have to change the way they view money, the way they’ve view life, their priorities, how they invest so you can use your business to disciple people, to disciple your clients.” Now, all of a sudden, the guy, everyday he goes to work and he’s working with God. That’s what he has to do.
So I would say, find your job in the Bible is the first thing. Then don’t make the emphasis on salvation, but make the emphasis discipleship because one of the big mistakes we’ve made when I was leading a church, I remember I started that discipleship program and it’s the word of God, send a prayer, Holy spirit, finances, all of that stuff, and teaching these people this stuff. Business people don’t care about theology. They want to know, is there somebody else in my industry who’s faced the same challenge? How did they solve the problem? How did God come through for them?
So I’ve actually started a program called Bizcipleship, B-I-Z for the Americans, B-I-Z for the South Africans, Bizscipleship. It’s getting together and we’re talking about, with a group of executives, how do you actually integrate disciple-making into your core business processes? Not a separate program, not like we have a Wednesday, how do I live my work and faith, but okay. What do you do? “I do digital marketing.” Right. So what does that look like? “Interacting with the client.” When you interact with the client, how are you influencing their thinking about God, about work, about life? This is making disciples here.
Mimika: Wouldn’t you say it’s like a value driven life? I heard this the other day, which I thought was a really great understanding, trying to explain this to my 21 year old about making decisions that if you have certain values, so let’s take it practically. If you are a faith-based business and you say to a client, “I have a deadline and [inaudible 00:12:08],” you better make sure that you’re honest to your word and you deliver on time. So would you say it’s kind of that practical showing them through those kinds of experiences and just showing up when you mean to show up?
Brett: Yeah, I would just say there is a caution on that then again, that is that there’s quite a few Christians who have at the other end… At the one end of the spectrum is you got to try to get your colleagues, say drag them off to a Christian meeting, which doesn’t really work. I remember sitting with the head of the Baptist church in five counties or four counties in San Francisco and I said to the guy, “What percentage of people go to church?” He said, “We don’t know, but we think it’s 4%.” 4%, this is not the South. And I said, “What percentage of the people go to work?” “Well, it’s 100%.” So if you don’t engage with them in work, you’ve lost. So the goal isn’t to get them into a church. That’s not going to work. So that’s the one extreme.
The other extreme is I’ll just be a good guy. I’ll just be… And then mystically, people are going to know about Jesus. No, I think there’s a deliberate path where you say, “Okay, let me look at my business processes. Let me look at my, as you say, my time management, et cetera. And let me look at every aspect and make sure I’m doing it with excellence, with purpose the way that God would do it.” There’s a guy in South Africa. He’s did a PhD in work, took him six or seven years up in Pretoria, Johannesburg. He says that discipleship is teaching people to work the way that God designed them to work, which is actually quite liberating.
So Adam and Eve, God designed them to work a particular way, and they learned to work with God and from God. Then they lost the plot basically. Then Jesus comes, the second Adam and he has come to redeem our work. Our work was never cursed, but the idea was that we can get back to working with God. So when you and I are working today, we can work with God. So then the question we have to regain in minds is, so how does God actually work? That’s one of my books in process, 31 ways in which God works. And if we can do that, then when we’re teaching our employee or our colleague, this is the way you do this. We’re teaching them to work the way that God designed them to work, which any of us can do that if we’re thoughtful about it, but we have to be deliberate about it. Yeah.
Mimika: Yeah, definitely. So it’s kind of knowing that this is a choice you’re going to make it and making sure that it aligns with God’s word without it having to be preachy. And also, that’s the other thing is I know for us entrepreneurs and for us go-getters, we can sometimes fall into performance and then relying on ourself. That’s a huge thing that I’ve had to personally learn. A lot of things that I help my coaching clients work through is, how do we shift from being performance-based, because especially when you’re analytical and you act strategy and everything, there has to be a blueprint for everything, how would you advise that people partner with God in their businesses while still maintaining that strategic mind?
Brett: I think one of the things we have to learn to do is to work from a place of rest. In Johannesburg, I think that’s sort of a bumper sticker, which you’ll appreciate, “The meek may inherit the earth, but only what’s left by the guys who hustle,” because up in Johannesburg, it’s like the New York of South Africa.
Mimika: Yeah. Everyone’s like go, go, go. It never stops.
Brett: Go, go, go. Yeah. But in reality, we have to learn to work from a place of rest. So how do we hear… Jesus says, “I only do what I see the Father doing,” and we have to go beyond having aspirations. We have to have specific plans and translate them to deduce no question about that, but we also have to work from a place while we’re doing that saying, “Okay. God, what are you doing right now? And how do I come alongside you,” rather than, “Okay. God, here’s my plan for the day. Bless my plan,” and we check in with God. We had a lady in South Africa who said, we started telling her about this stuff and talking, and she said, “When I get to work, I leave Jesus in the car.”
Mimika: Oh my goodness.
Brett: Because that was her mindset and she was a city planner. It’s like, “I pray on the way to work, and then I get to work and poor Jesus has to sit in the car the whole day.” Many people haven’t figured out, okay. Jesus, how do I partner with you, not get ahead of you, but also not lag behind you? I think it’s just listening to God’s voice and actually collaborating with him. There’s a lot of people who think they can’t speak to God about their business. I’ve seen again and again, people will pray about their family, their relatives, about COVID, about world hunger, about all sorts of stuff, but they don’t pray about, okay, my orders, my customer service, my product development, my technology, whatever.
They think this is their domain or God’s not interested. I’m not quite sure why, but they exclude… Well, I can tell you one of the reasons why men exclude God from their work because they have no control over their wives, no control of their kids, they don’t really know what’s going on at home. But work is the one place where they feel like-
Mimika: They can focus.
Brett: … where they can focus. Yeah. I know what’s going on here. Well, not really.
Mimika: That’s funny. It reminds me of, is it… What’s his name? [inaudible 00:17:37] has a talk about men and women’s brains where women’s are like a ball of energy and men think in boxes. You’re either in the work box or the family box or the wife box, and the boxes never touch. When your wife asks you what you’re doing and he says, “Nothing,” he clearly is in his nothing box, which is interesting. It’s not compartmentalizing our lives. To get on a practical level, how would we break this down? It’s easy because I know this was something I had a problem with is rest. Rest to me is like, okay, either I’m full blast or I’m passed out and fast asleep. What does rest look like on a practical basis every day? So you said the lady who left Jesus in the car, how would you integrate that from a practical perspective?
Brett: Very simple. So we had a guy who was working at Charles Schwab and he was asking the same question. Ed [inaudible 00:18:31] was visiting us. So Ed said, “Tell you what, when you go to work, first thing, go to work half an hour early every day. Just do this for a period of time.” The guy was saying, “Loo, I’m only one of 10000 employees, so I don’t really have any influence over that.” So Ed said, “Go in early. Then when you go in, hold the door open next to two, three seconds, just symbolically and invite the Holy spirit to come to work with you, and then go and pray over the desks, the cubes of your colleagues. Pray that God would bless them, meet their needs and just show up.” Well, within six months, they had a Bible study going on every second week at Charles Schwab at lunchtime.
It just kind of came out of that inviting Jesus into work with you. I remember this guy coming to me one day, very witty, “Brett, Schwab wants to make this an official company meeting. I don’t know if they’re going to control the meeting or should I do it, or should I not do it.” I say, “Why do they want to do this?” “Well, they have a gay meeting. They have a lesbian meeting. They have a Muslim meeting. I think that they want to balance the books. They want a Christian meeting as an official company meeting. Who knows? In San Francisco.” This was many years ago, 15, 20 years ago. So yeah, practically just invite Jesus in with you. If you’re about to have a meeting with somebody, just quietly pray to yourself. Invite God’s presence into your office.
I know a guy who was dealing with a major crisis in South Africa, CEO of a company, and he got into his office in advance. It was a big thing that could have blown up in the media, and he just prayed and worshiped God in his office, the CEO, and just invited God’s presence into his office. Then he said to the dueling parties because there was an issue going on, “You can meet. You just need to meet in my office. I won’t be there.” They met in his office. The presence of God was there. There was confession, there was repentance, there was tears. The whole thing was diffused, and it’s very practical. If you would do that in a church, why wouldn’t you do it in a business?
Mimika: Exactly. So we don’t have to put it in specific walls of the church. I think this is where we are right now in the world. We’ve been challenged that we aren’t meeting in churches much as we used to. Now is the base time ever for people who are looking for hope, healing and full direction. So I think the call to work place or marketplace ministry is bigger now than it’s ever been.
Brett: Yeah. Even the words, “business and ministry,” as I said, it’s the same word. So God expects us to integrate this, invite a friend. He had been a preacher and his grandfather was a preacher, his father was a preacher. You could see God his identity from being a pastor. Well, it turns out that he ends up in business, but he was still itching to get back into ministry. Eventually, I said to him, “Okay. So let’s just say that you’re at work and the guy says to you, ‘Look, I’ve seen your life and I’m interested. I would like to get to know this Jesus,’ would you need him to Christ?” “Oh, I’ve done that.” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Okay. Would you worship in your workplace?” “Oh, we’ve done that.” “Would you pray in your workplace?” “We’ve done that.” “How about this guy, then sees Sally in accounting and the two become friendly. Would you marry them?” “Oh yeah, I’ve done that.” Eventually, I said, “What is it that you do in your church that you wouldn’t do in your business?” “Take an offering.” The rest…
Mimika: That’s all. That’s it.
Brett: That’s it. The rest. You can do anything and just integrated in with the life of what you’re doing. Then we can fulfill the great commission, go into the world, make disciples. When do you do this? When you go into business. Many years ago, I was doing a transport perspectives, perspectives in world missions. It’s a fantastic class and they were saying that every year, two million Americans go on a short-term missions trip. That’s fantastic. It’s great. I love the fact that Americans go on short-term missions and many end up long-term. That’s great. However, back then, and we’re talking 20 years ago, every week, this is pre-COVID, every week 11 million Americans got on the plane for a business trip. Now about half of those are Christian. So you’ve got about five million people, let’s call it, who every week, get on a plane, leave home.
What if every business trip became a missions trip? It completely eclipses the two million. So we have this mobilized force of businessmen and women for whom who are actually in ministry. A small fraction are going to get behind the pulpit, are going to be paid to be good. The rest of us are in ministry because we’re in business, we’re in ministry. And Jesus said, “Do business until I come.” The big trick of the devil is one day, I’ll call you into ministry. I remember meeting a guy in Cape Town in 2003 and I said to this guy, we were having a barbecue for the Americans sitting around and this guy said… I said, “What do you do?” “Oh, I’m called to be a church planter.” I said, “Great. Where?” “Oh, I don’t know yet.” “When?” “Oh, I don’t know yet.” I said, “What are you doing in the meantime while you’re waiting?” “Oh, I’m a handyman.”
I said, “Okay. So you fix windows and plumbing and electrical stuff?” “Oh yeah. That’s what I do.” I said, “How many customers do you have?” He said, “I have 125 houses that I look after.” I said, “How many people in each house?” He said, “About four people in each house.” So I said, “Okay. So that’s 500 people that you have that you’re responsible for. If I were God, I wouldn’t trust you to plant a church in Malawi, Mozambique, Mali, anywhere with an M. I wouldn’t trust you to do that until you’re looking after those 500 people. This is your church. These are your household.” “Well…” [crosstalk 00:24:36] … on pause until he gets the angel telling him, “Go to Mozambique or…” [crosstalk 00:24:43]
Mimika: Yeah, we’re all expecting Gabriel to arrive with a neon sign that says, “This is your invitation,” but that hardly ever happens. That’s true. It’s pressing the pause button on our life, waiting for some permission from some person or weddings for some major sign. I realized with God, the step of faith is baby steps. He wants you to meet him half way. Okay, are you prepared to do this? And talking about those mission trips, you and I were born and raised in South Africa and I always remember thinking, why are these people from another country coming to my country when we’ve got churches around the world or around in our neighborhood who are doing things?
I think this is a maple shift that, especially from the West and for the third world countries and it’s great to help people, but what can we do from a longevity perspective? A day or a week or whatever is great, but at the end of the day, what is it? Are we doing this to please ourselves? Or are we doing this really because of what God wants us to do in feeding other people? When you say how would… It’s taking the approach of a one week mentality to this is a lifestyle of investing into people.
Brett: Yeah, that’s quite correct. So for the business people, for the entrepreneurs, the goal isn’t to get God into your business. That’s very easy. If you want to get God into your business, he’ll just send you a problem. We all want God in our business and we’ve got a problem. Help. I have a tax problem. I got whatever, cashflow. The question is, how do we get into God’s business? So what is God doing in the world? What’s the big picture? [inaudible 00:26:18] God. Then how do we deploy the assets, the skills, the products, the business, the people, everything we have to serve God’s purposes? Because as if we’ve been bought out. God bought out your company, and now you’re a subsidiary of God and limited. So you have to figure out, well, what does headquarters want? What does God want?
What is he trying to accomplish on the earth? And then how do I deploy my particular business to serve what he’s doing in the earth? And that’s 365 days a year. That’s not a part-time just pop off and take a vacation to Mexico or something, or go do some Christian tourism. It’s not that. It’s fully integrated. So I often ask people, if your business was the only business that God, the only mechanism God had to reach the world, what would you do? I remember when I asked this guy in South Africa this years ago. So I asked him, “Okay. If your business was the only thing that God had to reach the world, what would you do?” And the screen saver went on. He wasn’t really there. So I said, “Okay. Forget about the world. Sub-Saharan Africa,” because he was sitting in Cape Town. “If your business was the only vehicle that got it to reach Sub-Saharan Africa…” Now, he’s getting smart and he says, “Oh, I would capitalize the business more. Then I would make more money. Then I’d lay the money at the feet of those who do ministry.”
I said, “Wrong answer. You can’t give the money away. You have to do the ministry through your business.” So I said to him, “Is there a demand for your product in Africa, in Sub-Saharan Africa?” “Oh yeah. There’s a big demand,” because he was into skincare and he said, “Oh yeah. There’s a big demand.” And I said, “Could you take your 50 employees and take 10 of them and train them up and go and start a business somewhere else in Africa? “Oh yeah, I could do that.” “How much would it cost? How are you going to prepare them? How are you going to disciple those people?” Said, “They’re ready to go out and not do a church plant, but open up a business that already has a church inside the business. How many times could you do that in Africa?” And now, the guy comes alive because it’s connected to what he does on a daily basis. This idea of I’ll make a bit of money and I’ll throw it over to the wall to the people that do the ministry is a lot of rubbish. It’s really ineffective. [crosstalk 00:28:43]
Mimika: Yeah, it’s kind of like just writing a check thinking you’re part of ministry. It’s just writing a check. But as you said, it’s about really, I like the word multiplicity. How would you multiply? Just like Jesus took the loaves and fishes, and he took the what the little, little boy had and multiplied it. That’s what God wants us to do. Same with the parable of the talents. He wants to multiply our talents. So if you are a really good writer or you’re a really good digital market or graphic designer, using and multiplying your skills and creating products or a job creation. In South Africa, jobs have always a big issue is how can you create a business that sustainably creates more income?
Brett: Exactly. Yeah. And that’s part of spreading the kingdom. Job creation, I think it was Ed [inaudible 00:29:30] said, “Good news to the poor is you’ve got a job.” It’s not, “Oh. One day when you get to heaven, you’re not going to be poor anymore.” That’s great, but good news to the poor is you’ve got a job. Good news to the broken hearted is you’re healed, you’re well, you’re recovered. So if you can get your business to fix the problems that God cares about, then you and got other in the same business. So we should actually start businesses that are at the intersection of the biggest need in the world that God cares about and what we’ve got in our hands, our capabilities. I’m not going to become a ballet dancer or a rock star or something like that, but I can do strategy consulting, I can do business, I can do leadership and all that. Okay. So where’s there a need there in my skillset? Where those intersect, we build a business.
Mimika: Exactly. So work as worship. So it’s not necessarily on a Sunday. Work is worship in an everyday capacity that if I can feed and use my skills and also, not discounting the skills I do have or the resources we have. So I think that’s super exciting. I think we are on a cusp of something amazing in this world where people are starting to be switched on to their greater purpose, aligning what they do with God’s plan. I have to tell you, it’s so much easier having God as your business partner. You don’t have to stress and have sleepless nights worrying about what to do when, but just praying that God give me an idea, or how do I get out of this? I think that’s great. It’s like insider training, but it’s legal.
Brett: It is.
Mimika: Well, I appreciate all these wonderful comments. We could talk all day. I know you mentioned that you said you have a book coming out. Do you want to tell our audience your resources that you have and these kinds of things they can get more info?
Brett: Yeah, I would say on the work-life integration, I’d check out the books, “Convergence.” The books are up on inst.net, ist.net, short for the Institute and there’s a publications page there. So, “Convergence,” is one. They’re also up on Amazon. Most of them, not all of them. So would check that out if you’re thinking about work-life integration. You mentioned work and worship. Well, in the Hebrew, again, [foreign language 00:31:38], it’s the same word for work and for worship. So how do you integrate these things? So, “Convergence,” is good for that. If you’re interested in how do I change my world? The book, “Transforming Society,” is handy and we have a, Transforming Society class coming up starting mid-February. So you can sign up for that and be part of that. It’s an ongoing cohort looking at how do we tackle some of the big problems in society or how do we transform our city, our region, our area. So that’s another thing.
Then there’s books on leadership. So I have a book on five types of leadership: LEMON leadership, luminaries, entrepreneurs, managers, organizers, networkers. We use that and we have a class online, LEMON for Lovers, so for couple. How do they actually figure out some of this stuff? Then we have the podcast, which you’re familiar with. Right now we’re doing a series on relationships and dealing with the giant of singleness and marriage and all of this stuff. That’s fantastic. So if you go to inst.net, publications, or just look for me on Amazon, there’s an author page there. You’ll find a whole bunch of different books that I’ve written on singleness, on marriage, on leadership, on the economy. I’ve written a book called, “Repurposing Capital,” kingdom economics, how do you look at faith-based economics, so wide variety of topics.
Yeah, I’ve just published a couple of books this last year as well. How do you restart your business after pandemic or after crisis? So 50 principles of restart. That’s there. There’s also a book, “50 Principles of Faith-based Financing,” and, “10 Steps to Restoration,” what’s the typical pattern that God uses to restore? So yeah, those are some of the resources that are out.
Mimika: Only a few, right? We have a long list of great resources no matter where you are and no matter what platform you’re listening or watching. Make sure to click the button that says show notes because we have on the blog connected to today’s interview. I’ll have all those links that Brett mentioned, so you can find them easy. I’m actually still in the middle of reading, “LEMON Leadership.” Lemon is my favorite food and I’m half Greek. So of course, everything is lemon. So when you said lemon, I was like, oh, that’s so me. And of course, you can probably tell, a good mix of luminarie and some of the others, but I love that personality driven stuff.
When you know who you are, or what your purpose is and what God’s destined you to do, everything aligns and then you know how to get yourself on stuck or how to plan or how to strategize or how to take action. So that’s awesome. Really, really great resources. We definitely will connect you with Brett on them. But before we finish up, Brett, would you mind praying with everybody? I’m sure they’d love to have that you set a agreement.
Brett: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Father God, I thank you for Mimika. Thank you for this program. Thank you for those who are listening. And I want to speak a blessing over them. I want to pray, Lord, for those who’ve been waiting for you to call them into ministry. Thank you that business is the calling for most of us. We are 100% of us called to work that you commissioned us to work with you and for you. So I pray that you would bless the work of their hands. I pray, Lord, that you would validate the identity as businessmen and women, people who are in business with you for you. Lord, I pray, Lord, that you would give a revelation of what it is that you’re doing on the earth and how their business can fit into it. So I speak a blessing over the folks who are listening. I ask, Lord God, for a fresh anointing for them, that they would be anointed to do the work that you’ve given them to do, and that they would experience the power and the presence of the Holy spirit in their work. I ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Mimika: Amen. Thank you for that. We always appreciate prayers because everyone listening, whether you listening in the car or you’re on the treadmill, or you’re in the carpool, which is me every day, it’s always great to have wonderful resources that you can listen to and just to give you that encouragement because if you enjoyed what Brett had to say today, make sure to share it with your friends. Click those buttons on whatever audio, video, podcast or whether it’s on YouTube or whether you’re on the blog, click those links and share it with a friend.
If you have any comments or aha moments, we would love to hear that and connect you with our guests. If you want more freebie resources that I only share with my newsletter community, go to mimikacommunity.com. I have a Growth Guide: 12 Secrets to Personal Growth, as well as other great information to help you walk into your God-given purpose and step into the work that God has destined you to do. So I’m so excited and I’m going to say, thank you so much, Brett, for spending your wonderful time with me because I know you’re super busy. I look forward to hopefully meeting you one day in person.
Brett: Fantastic. [inaudible 00:36:33] It’d be great to get together and thank you so much for having me. God bless you, and what you’re doing. What I’ll do is I’ll shoot you a coupon for your people. They can go to BrettJohnson.biz so maybe they’d like to take, for example, a LEMON leadership assessment, and I’ll give you a coupon so that they can get a discount on that.
Mimika: That would be wonderful. So everyone, if you’re listening, click the button that says show notes. We’ll put the coupon on the blog so you can go and do that and get started using Brett’s resources because believe me, you will love them. Especially just listening to his voice is awesome. I know I’m biased with a South African accent, but I just love, especially with you and Lynn. I was listening to a few the other day, just very soothing and very encouraging. So we will make sure to connect you with Brett. But until next time, everyone, take care.
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