Okay, I'm not going to belabor the biographies of these men. These are actually men that we've walked together for a long time, some of them from when they were little boys. But I'm extremely grateful for these men, and they've been an inspiration and a help and a source of wisdom to many people, me included, but you know scan over sort of their backgrounds and biographies. But let's first of all open with prayer and then we'll get going. Lord, we thank you.

Thank you for making us men in the world. Thank you for giving us manly roles to play in the world. We pray that you would give us grace to glorify you in the responsibility that you've given to us to lead, to provide, to protect, and to wage war. Lord, I pray for these men that you would make them mighty men in the land. Amen.

Okay, I'm going to ask a general question. It's kind of a roundhouse question. Each guy's going to weigh in on this question. And it really, it's a question that focuses in on the most recent disturbances in the economy, doubling of housing prices almost everywhere, run-up of costs in every category, recent reduction and gyrations in the stock market. So it's more difficult, particularly for young people, to go out there and buy homes, which they ought to try to do.

So I'm going to ask these guys to give us their take down and a sense of what to do about it. So Gary, let's start with you. Okay. Is this on? Can you hear me?

Okay. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me, Scott. So the economy, let's start out by thinking this, the economy is good or bad between your ears and how you look at things and let's think about the value that you can add and if your character and if what you do is excellent There will always be work for you, a job to do. Just think of Daniel.

We built a house about 10 years ago and I had a young man, a home school young man that built a beautiful library for us. Amazing library. So much so that when the contractor who came in, the guy who was building our custom cabinets, we live in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and the cabinetmaker came into that library and he said, who did this? You know what he ended up doing? He ended up hiring that guy and then he ended up making him a partner and he ended up launching his own business out of all of that.

So excellence always matters. And so, disclaimer, In 40 years of business, I have accurately predicted the last three depressions that never happened. Okay? Okay? So keep it positive, okay?

I understand 80% of Americans right now cannot afford a base level house. And what happens when you throw trillions of dollars into the economy, guess what you get? You get inflation. You have too much money chasing too few goods. Yeah, I take a microcosm in our local community of Lake Geneva where you have business people that got free money from COVID, and they just, a price on Lake Geneva house went from $4 million to $8 million, literally in three years, because they just had free money and they just it was funny money and they just drove the price of everything up.

You also have a lot of Airbnb's that take the entry-level houses out of the market and then you have REITs, big investment, BlackRock, guys like that that are buying homes. All of that is driving up the price of homes. And then you also have short supply. And so guess what you get? You get higher prices.

Not to discourage you, I think if you are a young man, you have to be uncommon, and you have to think differently. And we have several young men in our church that already have bought homes. You have to start a little lower, and it may be a real fixer-upper. What my wife used to say when we were looking at houses when we started out, I would say, it's got a lot of potential. And she would say, it needs a match.

You know, so there's a lot of opportunity, but you're just going to have to work hard. I would give you a couple of really key things right now. I think if I look at the economy, or tariffs, and you know, the Wall Street are throwing a fit, the globalists are throwing a fit, all you have to do is look at the print in the Wall Street Journal. Everything is negative. They hate Trump.

The globalists hate Trump. I think what he's trying to do is very good. I don't know if America has a stomach for it because there's going to be some pain in between. We have got to bring some manufacturing back home, especially of critical industries like defense, like pharmaceuticals, like many of the fine chemicals, things that we use in our business, that the only place you can get them is in China because of the regulations. I think some of these things, it's necessary for us to bring our manufacturing base back home.

And when I think about build and plant and in local communities, I think about those manufacturing jobs. A town dies when a manufacturing plant leaves. We have a city in central Wisconsin, it was a paper mill town, And those mills paid great wages. And when those mills left, and that paper went to China, and it went to Eastern Europe, you know what came in after that? The opiates, the fentanyl, and the town just absolutely crashed.

And so, I like to think in terms of building a business in a community where we plant and we are a robust part of that community and we bear witness because everything that you and I do should be for the glory of God. Whether we preach on a Sunday morning or whether we are in the marketplace on Monday morning, everything we should do should be for the glory of God. Do good work. I'm gonna make a book recommendation. Every young man should read this book.

It's called So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport. It has one of the most helpful principles about work that I've ever read. Okay, Chad. So first piece of wisdom on this, whenever you're listening to a panel like this and you got a guy like Gary and a guy like me both trying to answer the same question, just try to take notes on what Gary said.

That would be my first piece of wisdom. Mr. Powers has been a mentor for many years. I'm very grateful for his wisdom and kind of the young buck up here. So, you know, tapping into older, wiser counsel on these matters is always really good.

But hey, if I were to answer the question directly, I would indelicately combine a quote from Charles Dickens in a song from the 1970s to say, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times, and these times, they are a-changing. And so, look, the smartest hedge fund managers in the world don't really know what's coming in two months from now. With the tariff situation, with the macro economy as a whole, it's just a tough time. So what do you do in the middle of that? What do you do when you have so much uncertainty that nobody really knows what's going to go next?

I think you have to return back to the fundamentals at that point in time. So like Gary mentioned, it's what's going on inside of you because you can't really control what's outside of you. So learn to be low cost and low maintenance as a person. And I'm not talking about just personal finance, but personal finance is a piece of that. I'm also talking about in the workplace.

Don't, you know, be easy to work with, be willing to learn and be humble. These are the kinds of people that are gonna be in demand no matter what the economy brings. So I think it's going to return a little bit more to like the kind of person you are rather than the slot that you fill because the slots they're going to change and things will not be tomorrow what they were yesterday But what will always be in demand is smart, hardworking, creative, good character people. So try to be that guy. Specifically to young men, the question about, OK, a house or not a house, The question of whether to buy a house and when is sort of like question number 32 and item number 32 on the list.

And there's 31 other things you have to get to first, which is, have you learned to save? Have you learned to work? Have you learned to make money? Have you learned to create value? Have you learned to be diligent in controlling your spending.

I remember I was 15 years old once, I was in a car with Scott Brown and I asked him, what would you say to a guy like me at 15 years old? And I still remember what you told me. He said, don't waste your money on cars. It's the vanity play of many young men. And I've seen this.

A young guy is worth $5, 000. He puts $4, 000, $4, 500 of that into a car. And there's $500 left in the bank. Then he's worth $10, 000. He's got $9, 000 wrapped up in his truck, because now he now can afford to lift a truck if that's your mentality if you spend it as fast as you get it you'll like never get to the place where like a house is in the cards I am a fan of buying real and appreciating assets, and I'm not inherently opposed to debt in doing that, because unfortunately the U.S.

System, with the way that the Fed introduces liquidity into the system and the way that the government basically constantly inflates prices by deflating the value of the dollar does tend to favor those who own assets. And so I'm not opposed to that. But only if other conditions are met. Only if you're a producer, not a consumer. Only if you're willing to save and sacrifice for something of value.

So there's some other things that have to happen first, but then when they do, like my thesis is probably like housing prices is probably still going more up than down in the future. And so if you can get in the game at some point in time with those other preconditions in place, then do that. I'd say young people with character are always gonna have a competitive edge. Honesty, diligence, good communication, creativity, initiative, these are rare traits in the workforce, and they're gonna get you about 80% of the way there. And I think the other 20 percent, obviously God's grace and providence is the entire equation, but in terms of like human responsibility base character, 80 percent.

The other 20 percent, and this is often in my opinion a difference maker, is mentorship, networking, and relationships. So those are the two components. Strong internal character, that's 80%. But the last 20%, and in many cases, sort of like the difference maker, the inflection point would be the external relationships, the mentorships and the networking and experiences that you have. So think about both of those, focus on both of those, and I think you'll be well set.

Kind of want to piggyback on both of those things. I think one of the ways that you do these things is really find and focus on a mission. And your character and the opportunities and the blessing of God will come about as you pursue that mission. So our family is currently working and building inside one of the towns that Mr. Powers just mentioned.

We had two big factories in our town back right up until the 90s. We had the YKK Zipper Factory and we had a Levi Factory that sewed jeans. And those disappeared within a couple of years of each other and Centerville, Tennessee was just kind of an economic crater in middle Tennessee. And in some ways, that was a benefit to us when we first showed up, because houses were 20 or 30 bucks. Now you had to gut them down to the studs, they didn't really come with any kind of amenities, and there were meth trailers next door, but there were opportunities for young men who had nothing to come in and start to build in the town.

Well, God has really blessed the churches that are there and the families that are there, and God has really blessed our business. And I think it's because there was a mission that we were all engaged in. Now, we weren't very coordinated, and we didn't plan out any of the stuff that we're doing now, but God really has carried us along and given us increase because of the mission of serving that wasn't super strategically coordinated, but it was on the hearts of so many of the folks that moved to our area. So there are opportunities to serve that God will bless in a number of these different situations. And through all the turmoil, we're a manufacturing business, so I'm biased towards manufacturing.

As things change and are weird and strange and artificially manipulated by other systems, the closer you can get to the dominion mandate, the less room for monkey business and false weights and measures and other things are gonna be there. So even agriculture has been poisoned by a lot of the bigger systems. We have a lobbyist right now in Tennessee and she is fighting for little ag And there is no bigger enemy of little ag than big ag. It is incredibly depressing, the kind of, the forces that we're up against, even just in Tennessee. But manufacturing is an area where it's very close to that dominion mandate, where you are making tools for people who are doing work.

This is just, this is not something that's gonna be taken away by AI. This is not something that's gonna be changed. Even though we're in the firearm industry, there's tons of liability issues and there's tons of extra taxes and there's tons of extra regulations. There still is an area where we are capable of making life-saving tools for people that change their lives, and it can't really be taken away in the ways that certain other, like fourth or fifth level systems type things are largely arbitrary. So if I would, what I tell my own kids is be in that business of really doing the dominion mandate and really doing the great commission.

And if those two things can be integrated with your business and your personal character and your family goals, it will be easy, as Chad said, for people to see that that character is there. There will be more to what you're actually accomplishing than just the bottom line or just personal portfolio. And there are gonna be tremendous opportunities in spite of everything that's coming. And it's gonna be a very interesting roller coaster ride of a few years. You can no longer buy houses even in the economic crater.

Like we were singled out to be an economic opportunity zone during I forget which administration, because things were just so bad in middle Tennessee. It is very expensive to buy a house in middle Tennessee right now. Because as things have gotten weirder in other parts of the country, like Colorado is filling up with Californians who are fleeing California. Tennessee is filling out with people who are fleeing taxes and crime in Illinois, even as bad as things have been in our completely depressed economy, it is better than a lot of other places. And so house prices are going up without the houses getting that much better.

So there are fascinating opportunities to minister to all these new people who are coming in who are buying up all the houses that you had your eye on. So it's it's going to be an interesting few years. Okay I want to shift the discussion a little bit. There are a couple of things I'd like to have you guys drill down. One is sort of on the business side and then on more of the employee side.

Let's start with the business side. How many of you own your own businesses? Can you just raise your hand and get an idea? So a pretty decent number. How many of you think you would like to start running your own company?

Okay. All right, so let's talk about this. I mean, God created men to be builders, and God created men to build things of value, and of course, that's what you do when you build a company. So I just want to turn it over to you guys and just say whatever you think would be helpful to these men about the whole process and value of building a company? I think you have to begin, if you want to start a business, Do you want to build an entity that has worth apart from you?

Or do you want to create a job for yourself? And you can go either way. You can be an incredibly great carpenter that builds fine homes. And it's so one or two, maybe you work with your kids and and you build a business like that or You can build an entity that creates hundreds or thousands of jobs It's you know, it's all depending on your gifting your calling what God has has for you But you have to make that distinction first. And then get clear on what it is that you want to do.

What do I sell and to whom do I sell it? And look for opportunities. You know, if you want to be entrepreneurial, I'll give you an example. I'm trying to find a fence to build, to put around a garden in our home, and I found one online. It's a vinyl, it's a very high-end fence.

Send an email, gotta wait for a dealer, and spend a month, you know? When I see opportunity, when I see nobody calls you back you look I say, huh, there's an opportunity there's a market there and think in terms of What's where's the need? Or can I plug in and maybe start there? I was telling Scott Brown last night, We've known each other for 20 years now, but 10-ish years ago, there were a bunch of entrepreneurship conferences that every single guy behind the table here attended. I don't think Chad and I were allowed to speak, but the fascinating thing is there was a focus on starting your own business, owning your own business.

And I really appreciate that. Not because I think everybody has to start their own business or own their own business, but there needed to be a lot more businesses started at that time. So at T-Rex, we have about 90 employees, depending on whether or not somebody got a job offer yesterday. We'll be back at 90. But we have the opportunity to, again, In Hickman County, that is a very big business.

We're one of the top five employers in our county. And the other five, of the other five, three of them are good Christian brothers that we know and spend time with. So The capability that we have to be a blessing to our county is pretty significant when we're on the same page with the other businessmen that are in our county. And we run tiny businesses in the grand scheme of things, but these are big businesses in Hickman County. Somebody needed to create those jobs for those people after the factories left.

So as great as it is to own your own business and build your own business, there are gonna be a lot of people who just must have jobs. There's gonna be a bunch of young guys that need opportunities. God really sent growth to T-Rex when we started employing people. At first it was three brothers and they were like, yeah, this is great. Bills are paid.

This is fantastic. And when my brother David said, you know, there's a bunch of young men in our church who are old enough to get married, and they really need, they really need to have jobs. They really need to be providing for families. Let's hire those guys and trust God for the increase. That's when the growth of T-Rex actually began.

It's when we stepped out in faith to do that. I wanna make sure that we have a bigger picture, I think, than just you have to start your own business. And I've known people, and I've been this way before, especially after certain employment, certain times of employment, I'm like, well, that's it. I'm gonna own my own business I'm just gonna have a lawn mowing business and that's all I'm gonna do then I can just be my own boss and do my own Thing but the opportunities to build a business that's gonna grow and employ a lot of people who aren't necessarily entrepreneurs is a huge ministry opportunity. I think there's sometimes slightly too much mystique around the idea of owning a business and people don't know, you know, like, how does that happen?

How do you get there? What's the distance between me and there? And I'll tell you a quick little story around how I started one of my own businesses to kind of illustrate this. We own a gold and silver brokerage. We sell precious metals and we're an intermediary between the sovereign mints and just individual investors.

Well, how did that start? So that started because back in 2008, right after Obama was elected, the economy crashed and everyone was buying gold and silver and all the coin stores ran out. So everybody I was talking to of all my friends, they were trying to buy gold and silver coins, but there was nothing at their local coin store, and they were just beside themselves because they couldn't find any. So I just thought, oh, that's kind of an interesting opportunity. My friend can't find any silver coins.

Let me see if I can help him. So I just go through the yellow pages back then and then call every large chemical refinery that I could find to see if they had industrial sources for precious metals, like silver or gold. And so anyway, I'd find one. It'd be out of state. I'd be like, hey, I'll be there tomorrow.

I'll fly. I'll buy everything you have. And then I'd fly back and bring it back with me. And by the time I'd hit the Denver airport, it'd be all sold to all of my friends or whatever. So just looking for problems that are out there and then solving those problems is sort of what we're talking about.

It's not like, hey, I've been thinking about this for like three years and I have the business card in my mind and this would be really cool to own a business. Like sometimes businesses start that way, but they don't have to. They really just start by going out there and fixing problems. And if you keep fixing problems long enough and make enough money doing that and there's just like a big enough tail of people who want you to keep fixing that problem, then you probably have just started a business. But that's like really the heart and core of it.

So like start with the core of what starting a business looks like and try to maybe like get less fixated around the form You know You mentioned I Forgot exactly how you said it Chad you don't want to get obsessed just about having a business, right? Okay, and I think maybe, I think I know what you were saying, Isaac, about that, because we saw this wave of entrepreneurs going out and crashing, right? Okay, Because they were so excited. But you have, I want you to comment on something. I'm going to make a proposition and then I want you to maybe contradict it if you want.

But a man needs to know who he is because God makes people different. I think you have probably at least four kinds of people that are in the economy. You have individual performers. These people, they're given jobs and they do their jobs. They're programmers.

They might be carpenters, but they know how to do a particular skill. They might be a plumber who's out there fixing things. So you have individual performers. And Then you have organizers. These are sort of the operations people.

These are the people that can take a mission and then make it happen on the ground. And they know how to deploy people. And then you have, I'm just gonna call them salesmen, these are relationship builders and communicators, and they're the ones that drive money into the business. And then you have CEOs or visionaries, and They're the kind of people, they usually don't do all that well with all the details, and they need somebody to do the details, but they're visionaries. They can see where this thing can go.

So that's been my view. You got to know who you are. Is that right? I wasn't just looking for that, okay? So.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. You're doing such a good job answering the questions. Maybe I'll start taking over asking them. Okay. But you know, how do you know that?

How do you know who you are in the picture? I think you have to do things in order to be able to figure out what your spot. So I'll just do a brief moment for the young men here. I have this philosophy on finding your calling. And it's basically the way that you play the card game, spoons.

OK, you know how to play spoons, right? There's a bunch of spoons on the table. Everybody gets a card of four hands, right? The rest of the deck sits there. You spend the rest of the game taking your card of four hands, looking for a better card.

When you find it, you put the better card in your hand. You take the worst card out of your hand. But you always have a hand of four cards. And unfortunately, some guys play the game of spoons of life by doing this. They put their cards down, and then they're just looking at cards.

There's no hand. You don't have a hand of cards. They're just randomly looking at cards. You have no way to even analyze if this card's better than the other cards, because you're not comparing it against a hand of cards. You're just like frantically looking for whatever you think everybody else is grabbing after.

But they're playing a different hand than you are, right? So it doesn't really matter if they're grabbing nines. You're playing a hand of queens and eights. So you're just looking for a queen or an eight. Once you find it, you're going to go for queens or eights.

So I think that to some extent, we've got to focus on what hand has God given us. That's our starting point. And then let's just stay focused on waiting for something that is better for our hand. And don't pay attention to all the card shuffling around you. And there is no moment in life where everybody grabs the spoon.

Analogy stops there. I'm just going to segue, because I was going to say a thing about hands. It ties in perfectly. Whatever your hand finds to do. This is a concept we see in scripture.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. God is going to put stuff in your hands, and there are going to be interesting opportunities. And I'm going to continue to be very critical of the larger, more complicated, abstract artificial systems that exist in the business world. Because one of the things that those do is there are layers of abstraction from what your hands actually do. So I know guys who are phenomenally successful on paper, and they don't know who they are.

Because their job description isn't even defined. It's not based really in reality. And so they flounder because their hand hasn't found a thing to do yet, but they're in this big swirl of corporate artificialness. And so that's another thing, I think, that helps us know who we are, is if our hand has found something to do, like our hand is on a plow, well we keep our hand on the plow and we don't look back. Like God will provide opportunities.

He also moves people around. He might take the plow away from you and put something else in your hand. But there is a, I think, going back to Hans, you're going to be given things by the Lord. And they're going to be an interesting combination of strengths and challenges. And do those things with all your might.

And sometimes, I never thought that I would be in the entrepreneur class. And technically, I don't think that I am. In hindsight, that's how I figured who I am is hindsight. But in business, and even in some level of business leadership, I have found things for my hands to do that are not arbitrary and they're not artificial. They are real, tangible things that need to be done.

And are there better people on the planet to do those things? Of course there are. There's three of them right here. But they're not in Hickman County dealing with some of these guys right at this minute. So that's what my hand finds to do, usually, in a kind of an unexpected way week to week.

You know, you're kind of a weird cat, actually. I don't know why you are either. You're kind of this weird mix of artists and intellectual, and one of the most inquisitive people I've ever known. I don't even know what you do except I was gonna ask you later No, I I know what you do. No Isaac is a very creative person and he spins out ideas that really You know form some of the beauty of the company that you have.

Is that right? That's just my view from the outside. I'll tell you a guy who's really encouraging to me, and that's Paul Revere. If you read about Paul Revere's life, you will see that he is not very good at anything. But he worked so hard at almost everything that he ended up being in the right place at the right time and able to help people when it really mattered.

Like at the pivotal moment of history, Paul Revere was there and he'd already built all this stuff. And now it's really easy to look back and be like, he was not good at this. He was not good at that. Even modern artisans are like, he was a terrible silversmith. It's very easy to look back on a guy like Paul Revere and be like, yeah, he's never going to be one of the most excellent whatevers.

And he didn't go on to be part of the government. He didn't become a president or even be part of the Constitutional Convention. But he was a pivotal guy. Things would have gone terribly without him. And it was because he served in his community, started an insurance company after a fire, not because he was coming up with a great business opportunity.

He put in the streetlights in Boston. He started a guild of artisans and mechanics at a time when those were looked down upon people. And he also was not very good at any of those jobs. But he kept finding needs and problems to solve. And in hindsight, it's like, oh yeah, he was a pivotal guy.

He built all these networks. He built all these connections. He was the glue for this. He was the messenger for that. He made all this stuff happen that wouldn't happen otherwise.

So I take a lot of comfort in that doing all these things that I'm not very good at. Follow-up on what Isaac said about, you know, what's in your hand? You know, what has God put in your hand? Think about God asked that question to Moses. What is that in your hand?

And throw it down, and in a sense, sometimes we have to throw our gifts down and then pick them back up and let them be sanctified by God, by the Holy Spirit, let him use that in our life. But what has God put in your hand to do? And I, you know, our family made a decision a few years ago that we were going to, we've been in business 37 years, it's a sizable company, you know, and there's all, I get offers weekly, many offers, and we made a decision that we're gonna stay put, we're gonna plant and because there's hundreds of employees that depend on on us and we care deeply for them And my challenge to our family is, okay, we want to hang on to this, but God has put this in our hand to steward. It's His, and you know, we're responsible for that. The second thing I was thinking about is, you know, he said, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your strength.

I used to teach what was called the passion hypothesis. And that is basically that whatever your heart finds to do, go do it, and you'll never work another day the rest of your life. And we're finding out that that's all wrong. That when you, whatever you pour your heart into, if you become excellent at it, if you work very, very hard at something, you will become excellent at it. And when you become excellent at it, you become passionate about it.

And that excellence will open doors for you that are unimaginable because your income, where you go in life, it's always a function of the value that you bring. The value that you bring times the number of people you serve, that's your income. People always wanna raise. Add more value. Become indispensable wherever God has placed you.

Create value and your income. And you're gonna need, young men are gonna need a significant income to support a family on one income. It's very doable, but you have to be uncommon. I want to do a take off on this whole idea that you've been talking about, both of you have been talking about, doing what's in your hand. But I'm going to hang a doctrine from the Bible on it.

And here's the doctrine. It's no accident that you live where you live. It's no accident that you have the father that you have. It's no accident that you know the people that you know. This is called the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

And often people, they're always looking, they're looking out somewhere in the ether land when actually what they need to do is actually at hand. And you might just look around and say, what has God given me to do in the past? What have I done well? What do I want to learn how to do really well? And who do I know?

Who has God put in my life that might be able to coach me or help me along those lines. God is sovereign. He put you where you are for a reason and the thing that you're really looking for might be right in front of your face and you just haven't realized that yet. So capitalize on what God has already given you and do the best that you can with it and then the next opportunity comes. There is a book that Kevin DeYoung wrote a little while ago called Just Do Something.

It's actually, it sounds like a ridiculous title, but it's a great title. If you don't know what to do, start doing something and just do it really, really well, and then the next opportunity will show up in God's timing in your life. And I'm looking out here, and I know some of you, and I know some of you, that's exactly what you did. You just did the next thing, and God blessed it massively because you did it really well and you cared about your customers. So any more about knowing who you are?

I think that's really a critical question. A guy's got to start running in a direction that fits in. Everybody's not a CEO. I'm sorry, they don't make very many of them for some reason. And you have a lot more individual performers than you do CEOs.

I would just add Mentorship does help with this process. So doing things in the context and presence of a mentor does really help refine that, because it is good for sometimes for outside wisdom to speak in. Sometimes you're doing something really hard, you're actually not totally sure if you're doing it well. And someone else can actually come alongside and say, hey, this you're doing, this is working well. This isn't really your thing.

So for me, it was my father, it was Kevin Swanson, I had various business mentors. And they could come alongside and say, you're doing well on this. This, maybe not as much. So being able to work and develop your own skills and gifts and callings in the context of an older and wiser mentor. I'll talk a little bit more about that in my talk tomorrow morning, but good to be in the context of biblical mentorship.

You know, I want to camp on just this matter of character and being a good employee and that type of thing. I don't want to leave anything on the table. Is there anything more that you want to say to these men about how to add value in the context of the company that they're in? We teach, I had a good mentor and he taught me a model, and we call it the cash model, K-A-S-H, and it's knowledge, attitudes, skills, and habits. And think in terms of growing yourself.

And today's your current reality, you can't change your past, it is what it is, you're going to spend the rest of your life in the future. So we talk about creating a preferred future. And your capacity, your capabilities are at a certain level. And you wanna go to the next level, guess what? You have to have, because what got you to the level, imagine a parabola like this, and here's where you are, and you're gonna grow like this, but you're gonna hit ceilings.

Some of you, I spend my life hitting ceilings and then getting through those ceilings. Those are capacities. And in order to grow through those, what got you to the current level that you are is your current level of knowledge. That's why young men, it's so important to read books, lots of books. If you want to lead, you have got to read.

Attitude. Most people get fired. It's not skill generally. It's attitude. It's not aptitude.

And then think about skills. What skills, what new knowledge do I need this quarter? What new habits do I need to put into my life this quarter? And if I think of every quarter I'm growing, that's how you get through the ceiling. You replace your old cash with new cash, new knowledge, new attitudes.

You know, a new salesperson that we hire, maybe they just lack confidence, and they make a few cold calls, and then they go hang out in Starbucks the rest of the day because they're discouraged, right? So we have to work on that. You have to work on confidence. You have to work on boldness. You have to work on different character qualities, et cetera.

But then you might become very successful And then it becomes all about you. Just wanted to tell you, we sell to doctors. Did you know, did I tell you I won salesperson of the year last year? You know, number one out of a hundred salespeople, Now you might need to work on humility, okay, because nobody's going to listen to you anymore. And so you're, we're always growing and and the you know the Lord leads us and helps us, equips us in those areas.

But it's it's having a growth mindset and and developing yourself. You know this this acronym CASH, that's that's really interesting. But You other two here, I want to say, I want to ask, How do you add value to yourself, right? You know, it's one thing to add value to your company, but that is actually, it's a result of adding value to yourself. So what does that look like?

Good question, Scott. And I think Gary really just built a great foundation upon which to think about this with his cash description there. So the business I work in is a cornerstone capital investment firm. We invest in private businesses to accomplish kingdom objectives. And A lot of people like to talk about this concept of investing.

It's kind of fun to talk about, do I invest in gold, or Tesla stock, or this new business. But I think that what Gary was talking about there is the most important kind of investment you're going to make, which is this concept of investing in yourself. Most of us don't have, I mean honestly like especially for young men in the room, we don't have a lot of money right? So the kind of investing we need to be doing is not external resources, the kind of investing we need to be doing is in the cash that Gary was just talking about. And I think it's important to just return back to the basics.

You know, who are we? Who are we? We are a creation of God. You know, we're dirt transformed into something by the breath of God. And what are we called to do?

We're actually called to go transform other dirt. So we are transformed dirt, called and given a mandate, a dominion mandate to go transform other dirt, to go take rocks and pine trees and turn them into a house, or a paper cup, or a Tesla, right? To take two cows and then turn it into a herd of cattle and then take a herd of cattle and turn it into McDonald's. Or OK, maybe there's a better analogy out there than McDonald's, because I'm not sure if they actually use beef in their hamburger. But the problem is that we all want to immediately talk about, we go to a business conference, we immediately want to go to making money or investing, right?

We want to immediately think about owning Tesla stock or being a one-third partner in a hamburger shop. We're hardwired to want to experience fruitfulness and gain, but we haven't learned to be fruitful ourselves. So my challenge to you, especially to young men in this room, is start with being fruitful yourself. That's the best investment you'll ever make, is to invest in a mindset and a heart mentality, a disposition of character and soul, to being fruitful yourself. And so just a few ideas on that.

So always look to add value to those around you as Gary Powers already said. Learn to be indispensable. Learn to lean into any situation and make it better as a result of you being there. Secondly, be willing to learn new skills. Be willing to have faith, try new things, be willing to fail, be quick to learn.

Sometimes it's fear that holds us back. Sometimes we don't have the faith to do what he said and to be different every quarter because it's much easier to be the same as you were last quarter. And then thirdly, do everything with excellence. And there's a great talk on doing things with excellence that Gary Powers gave at a family economics conference. And if you want to double tap onto that, reach me afterwards.

We can figure out a way to get you that talk. But do everything you have with excellence. You start doing those three things, and you're gonna start adding to your core value as a person. Anything on that, Isaac? I think everything's been covered, but yeah.

Humility and fruitfulness, I think, are really the two things. And serving others is going to be the fruit of that. I think that's going to be a major thing to really use as a measuring stick for yourself. And then later, when you're looking for employees, that's going to be a really, really helpful thing as well. One thing on excellence, though, one of the beauties of the internet is that it has allowed us to see the whole world at once, so we can see what true excellence is.

I'm not limited to the best banker or the best whatever in Centerville. I can see the best ukulele player in the entire world on YouTube instantly. In fact, YouTube shows me that without me even asking. So we have this incredible opportunity to see what absolutely top of the level whatever is. And that can be discouraging as well, to say like, ah, well, obviously I'm not supernaturally, unbelievably gifted to be that kind of ukulele player, so no more guitar lessons.

Excellence would be pursuing to the utmost of your ability the thing with the knowledge that God may have given someone else greater ability in a certain area and being humble in that and still pursuing what you're doing with excellence. Let's talk about doing that when a kid is really young. You guys have boys. I got an email a few days ago, a man was asking me, well, do you think this would be valuable? I think he said to my 13-year-old, I said, absolutely, you should be teaching your sons this when they're five years old.

And here's my advice, do everything you can to have your kid bypass adolescence. Just jump right over it and get involved in real and meaningful work. You know, Alexander the Great was 20 years old when he became king of Macedonia, and he was 25 when he conquered the Persian Empire. You know, Napoleon was 24 when he became the general of the French Army. Look, we so underutilize, we so underestimate the power of a young man.

And I'm just here to say, do not let your sons go into adolescence and play around when they're kids. They need to pursue excellence, really, from the earliest moment that you can get them to do that. And that's probably about four or five years old when they're cleaning the bathroom and stuff like that. I think this has to do with investing in yourself. I think a father has a lot to do with the success of his sons if he leads them carefully and doesn't let his son be stupid.

You don't want your son to be dumb and and do dumb things and that's why God gives fathers to dumb boys so that they're not dumb. And so bypass adolescence. Any comments on that? Yeah, if you don't have a lot of money. You bypassed adolescence, right?

Both of you did. You jumped right over it. If you're a young man and you don't have a lot of money, you do have time, make sure that you invest that time really wisely. When you're older, it's surprising how little time you actually have. That's right.

If you're not careful, You can end up with no time and no money. I don't know how that works, but it totally can happen. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I want to have these guys talk about perseverance.

Because, I mean, this is definitely one thing that every young man needs to understand. You know what, you see these men up here, here they are, you know, they're just so bright and shiny and everything, and you see all this wisdom and wealth and accomplishment, But here's what you don't see. You don't see the 50 times they failed and picked themselves back up. You don't see the rejections that they had along the way. You don't see the obstacles that they had.

You don't see really the expenses that were pushing hard on them every day to try to actually survive. You don't see the sweat they had on Thursday night before payroll on Friday morning. You don't see that. But the truth is, what they actually had was perseverance. And sometimes I think that's the only skill, okay?

You've got to be able to power through, and you also have to be the kind of person who really understands that whatever God deals you, there's always a way through it. There's always a way through it. And so let's talk about perseverance. Let me start with the scripture. Psalm 37 verse 23.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and he delights in his way. Though he falls, He shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholds him with his hand. Here's David. I have been young, now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken nor his children begging for bread." And I think it begins with an absolute trust in God. In business, in career, it's always the principle of seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

And he said, I will add everything else. And it's a dependence upon God. It's praying. You know, I can't tell you how many payrolls we prayed in. I mean, just like George Mueller, Lord, you said, you said, Father, that you would rebuke the devourer.

You said you would open up windows of blessing. You said, Father, praying for orders to come in in those early days. And then even as a big company now, during the COVID crisis, we couldn't get lids because the seals inside of our caps come from China. We buy millions of lids a year. And I walked into our manufacturing plant one morning.

It was early, I got there about 6.30. It's three hours from our home. And One of our, a guy who runs our supply chain, he said, Gary, we can't get black lids. We can't find them anywhere. I said, well, what about white?

Can we switch to white? We already checked. There's not a lid to be had. I sat in my office for a little bit and I said, Lord, we don't have lids. We can't ship a single product.

Can't make a product. And I went and I got this. He was a believer. We've got some believers in our business, probably a third of them. I went and got another guy who's a believer, another guy, come into my office, let's pray.

You know, because the Lord said, you know, you go to Egypt, you go look into Egypt for your answers, why didn't you ask me? And so we cried out to God for about 10 minutes. And I'm getting ready to leave that day, and I'm going to walk out the door, and another purchasing manager comes in and she says, thanks for praying. She's not a believer. She's kind of hostile towards it.

She goes, thanks for praying. I said, what do you mean? She goes, didn't you hear? We got an email about 10 o'clock this morning. We've got five million caps coming our way and the supplier said we don't even know where these came from.

I said, I do. Yeah. And it's upon God. And you don't want to You don't want to despise and minimize the importance of failure and trouble in your life. Because you'll find that God actually uses all of it for his glory.

But I heard somebody say one time, I thought it was a really helpful illustration. I can't remember where I heard this, but it said success is like an iceberg. And all you see is all the beautiful part of the iceberg. But what you don't see is the betrayal, you don't see the government bureaucracy, you don't see the toxic employees, you don't see the constraints that the government threw on your company at a really critical moment. At a really critical moment.

You don't see those things. And that's why I really want us to talk about perseverance and faith, trusting God, and just recognizing that God is your provider. The Trump administration is not your provider. Okay, God is your provider. So one of the most repeated Commandments in all of scripture is the command to fear not.

I believe it's repeated around 365 times, which means every day you could sort of wake up and there'd be a biblical reminder, fear not. And I actually try to break this down a little bit in a business context. What are the contexts in our business in which we tend to fear, in which we tend to be overcome, that we need to apply perseverance? And I think I come up with this concept, like there's fear, but most of us probably don't resonate to being fearful in the moment. But there's little moments of what I call fear light.

You know, it's like a Coors light or a Bud Light. Well, there's fear light, right? It's this lighter version of fear that has some of the same substance of it. It's a little more watered down, a little harder to spot, but it's real. And here's one example of that.

We tend to gravitate toward the easiest, but lowest value thing to do. Because the harder thing is something we don't want to do, we avoid or we're even just slightly afraid of. And so we need to ask the question every day, what's the most valuable thing that I could do today? What would really move the ball down the field? Sometimes we don't know the answer to this, which is a problem around just having really no direction or no vision.

One of my mentors once told me, he's like, Chad, just write down the problem that you're having and then write down 20 different possible solutions to that problem. And don't stop to have written down 20 possible solutions. Circle the three best ideas and start working on those. And it gives a sense of focus, right? Because it gives you an ability, like a game plan, to start working on things.

But oftentimes what we do is we just circle the things that we want to do. And we tend to focus on the things we want to do. So an example would be a practical day in the life. You have a small business. You have a toll-free number.

You sell things, but you don't have really good sales, right? And so there's a couple different things you could do in that. You could either start making outbound sales calls, which is hard. Like you said, a couple of them later you're going to end up at Starbucks all discouraged and depressed, right? That's hard, but that's actually the most valuable thing to do.

Well, what do a lot of us do? Well, we think, well, let me research toll-free number providers to see if I can save $5 a month by switching my toll-free carrier. That's not going to move the ball down the field for your business. But we gravitate towards those things because those are the easier things. Those are the more fun things.

We tend to avoid the things that create the most value because either we're afraid of them, we don't like them, it's hard to do. And So oftentimes failure comes by an unwillingness to address the most valuable things and an unwillingness to see them for what they are. Gary, I don't know if it was you who said this. I think it might have been you who said this to me, that what a man should do is he should take the hardest thing that he doesn't want to do and do it first in the first half hour of the day. Is that you?

No. No, it wasn't. But I think it's good. It's great. Yeah.

I'm going to try that. Yeah. What this guy said is, you know, he does the thing he doesn't want to do that adds the most value, because a lot of times we're procrastinating on what has the most value. And he does that in the first 20 or 30 minutes of the day, and then he's free. And he just did the hardest thing that added the most value.

But that's called maturity, right? That's called actually doing what a man should do. It's hard to do that though. I think everybody struggles with that. We always gravitate toward the easiest thing, the lowest hanging fruit.

I have a friend who is a very successful, very large businessman. And he said, I say to all the 20 year olds, he's in his 80s, he says in your 20s you have to outwork everybody else. And then in your 30s, you have to work smarter. And of course, all the 30-year-olds say, well, why can't I just work smarter? And he says, the only way you learn to work smarter is by first having worked harder.

And you have to press through those difficult things. What do the 40-year-olds do? They have a midlife crisis or they get saved is what happens. It doesn't get any easier, the problems just get bigger. But you know our faith is increased because we can look back through our life and say, God has been faithful.

I didn't know how we were going to get through that crisis, but God brought us through it. And, you know, it was Hudson Taylor that said, you know, they asked him about the future. He said, the future is as scary as it has ever been, but when I look back through my life, I just see the faithfulness of God carrying me the whole way. And I think that's what we have to remember, the faithfulness of God carry us through. Amen.

Okay, I want to open it up for questions. We're going to take one of these mics and David, did you have somebody run this mic around? There you go. So raise your hand. There's one over here.

Take it to that guy right over there that had his hand up. Right there. Yeah. Yeah. I'll thank you guys for your wisdom.

I wanted to ask a question on how do we overcome procrastination? There's all sorts of entertainment in the world, and things to draw us away from spending time well. How do you guys take both spending time well and make that over a long period of time? And just how do you not waste your life in a very John Piper sense? Great question.

Go for it, guys. Yeah. Habits are your friend here. My parents were gracious to help me build good habits in some of these areas growing up. And I think I thought I actually was better at not wasting my time than I was just because some of these habits were real tailwind.

And then, like, you know, like, I don't know, a friend once like, hey, you should download, you know, Twitter or whatever, be good for your business or whatever. Well, then I had to like really grapple with some of these time-wasting things that I never had to deal with because I just sort of like had a habit of always working, not engaging in social media, like some of the conventional time-wasting things. So I think it just reminded me, wow, the power of a good habit to help in some of these areas is good. I think maybe the next question is, what happens if you have no good habits and you're just constantly tempted and sucked into these things? Then I would probably say finding some accountability around building better habits and being intentional around that.

So, occasionally I'll find myself distracted by certain things and I'll be able to identify, okay, I'm spending too much time over there, it's not fruitful, it's not helpful. So then writing out or condensing a different habit or practice around that. So like, A, I'm not going to be on social media during the work day, or I'm not going to have video games, or I'm not going to pick the thing that's distracting you, and then get some accountability around that. And it doesn't take that long for a habit to form. I've actually been constantly surprised at how easy it is in some ways to set new habits, break habits, if you're consistent.

I think they say about three weeks for a new habit to be formed. And then if you can get that, then that, of course it's the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit that gives a deep enough sense of conviction over wrong practices to allow for those to change. You're not going to be able to change at your own strength. This is something that God changes in us. But I think many of us do have a desire to be more faithful, and sometimes we just lack the steps necessary to take.

And my encouragement is jump in, get some accountability around that, and build better habits to fence those off. Go ahead. I had a mentor that told me, he had a rule. Gary, ruthless with time, gracious with people. And second thought is, you know, I was watching a panel, it was MacArthur and I think it was Sproul and maybe Mohler, and they were asking these Titans, they were asking about their leadership and their role.

What were their leadership secrets? And to a man, it was the power habits. They were hardwired into them, into their lives, into our habits. There's a book by John Maxwell called Today Matters. Don't read his theology, it's horrible.

But the principle, there's a principle in there that's phenomenal. It is make the decision one time and then spend the rest of your life managing that decision and instead of bouncing around back and forth all the time I'm going to lightning wrapped with you guys on this matter of social media and wasting time and stuff like that just the first thing that comes to your mind how many hours in an eight-hour day does the modern worker with the internet access how many actual hours is he working? What's your number? I don't know. I don't have a number on that one.

He doesn't use social media either. I'm sorry. Maybe half. Half? I should know this.

Our business does all of our advertising on social media, so I should know this. Yeah. Social media is the most dangerous thing to your productivity. And I think we just need to recognize that. You can waste your, everybody knows how quickly you can waste time just scrolling, scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, and all of a sudden you're lost in space.

And you didn't do anything. And you're actually created to do stuff. Okay? All right, so another question. There was one back here.

I hope you don't mind if I pack too into this. First, you're talking about finding a need. We live in a very reclusive community. Like, people move out there to put up a big fence in the gate of like GoA. I've gone door-to-door before and it's it's hard to get one sentence in before they shut it.

So how do you find a need when people will hardly speak to you? The second question would be what makes a company a Christian company versus a company where the majority are just Christians? I'm gonna answer the first question. Sometimes the need isn't necessarily geographically proximate to you. Sometimes the need is more categorical.

In the example I gave you of the gold and silver bullion business that I started. I started that out of what I perceived through a couple anecdotal experiences was a problem in a general industry, which is that gold and silver shops at that time were not supplying the demand that was out there for precious metals. I experienced that through just like one or two acquaintances or friends that were experiencing that. But if that was true for them, it had to be true for the whole industry because if no coin shop in Denver had any gold or silver in stock, that was just like a fundamental problem that I felt like I could go solve. And so I think sometimes it's just like really looking for and spotting those things.

It's not necessarily like what do all your neighbors need? That could be a way, but like if you're struggling with that kind of just seeing the opportunities there, then look in whatever your network is and whatever you do have visibility into. Because you're not going to have visibility into everything. I don't know the problems in the trucking industry because I don't know trucking, I don't have any proximity to it, and I'm not gonna have visibility into that. So take the natural context in which you are, in which you do have visibility, and just have an eye for problem solving.

And if you don't have any of those, then I would say open up and expand the areas that you have visibility into through service. And so if you're serving, then you'll eventually keep running across needs. And so serving your church, serving your communities, serve people you know, find someone who's busy and go serve them. I once know of a young man who basically went and found someone who worked in an industry he really wanted to work in. And he said, hey, look, I want a job.

And the guy's like, we're not hiring. He's like, no, no, seriously, I want to work with you. And he's like, I'll work with you for free for three weeks. And the guy's like, really? He's like, yeah, I just want to work with you.

And he's like, I'll work with you for free for three weeks. And the guy's like, really? He's like, yeah, I just want to work with you. And at the end of the three weeks, he was so invaluable and indispensable to this guy that the guy was like, OK, now just name your salary. I can't not have you just after three weeks, because you just made himself so valuable to this guy, right?

And so, yeah, if you haven't found any areas where there's needs, just expand the area in which you're going to serve until you do. I have a somewhat answer to the second question, but it goes back to needs. Sometimes you can't find the needs by asking. You find the needs because of the mission that you're on. So one of the things that T.

Rex Arms, that makes us a Christian company and has helped us develop as a company is our mission is where we say we're a second amendment company and a sixth commandment company. Our goal is to preserve life because people are made in the image of God. So this is the main driver of our company and why we do what we do. It's why we, it doesn't always get all the way down this granular, but we make holsters for specific firearms and not other firearms because of this mission statement. But it also drives other stuff that we do.

And There's obviously a big theological conversation we could have about the sixth commandment and so forth. But the fact that people are made in the image of God and need to be protected drives a bunch of our business decisions and makes us have more of a mission that has developed some business opportunities. So one of them is we started selling body armor about five years ago, not because the market wanted it. In fact, it became very clear that our customers didn't want body armor because it's expensive, it's uncomfortable wear, it's unpleasant to think about. But we were convinced that this is something that the American citizen needs to know about.

A protector of a family or anybody else, the technology is there, the cost is there, weapons for offense and armor for defense are part of our responsibility. So we're gonna start selling body armor, we're gonna sell the best body armor, and it's gonna be at the best price, and nobody wanted to buy it. But we kept talking about it, and we kept talking about it, and educating people about it, and then eventually, 2020 happened, and people saw riots happening in the streets, And then people said, oh, now I understand why I need body armor. So sometimes the need isn't going to come from the customer as much as it's going to come from scriptural principles and the mission that you adopt as a company. So I can't remember the exact numbers, but we have sold in the last five years, if our body armor customers were an infantry, an organized infantry, which they aren't, we're working on that, they would be the sixth largest mobilized infantry in the world.

So it's interesting when God creates an opportunity for you because you were being faithful to the best of your ability and it just wasn't working and then God comes along and provides the increase. And I think that stepping out in faith in those ways is one of the things that separates a Christian company from a company with a lot of Christians in it. And sometimes it will help you develop the kind of mission that market research does not actually create. Other questions? Back here.

Okay, other questions? Back here. Just real quick, how do you make enough to provide for your family without idolizing the money at the time with your business? Well, I think one of the things that helps with that is generosity, you know, being generous. If God's put it in your hands, it's not just for you.

And what do you do with that? And if it's focused on, you know, growing the kingdom and taking that wealth and using it for God's purposes and for his glory, you know, Paul gives a very specific exhortation to those that are wealthy among you and to be humble, to share, to be generous, And those are that's where I would start with that Be a vessel let it flow through you Don't put your eyes upon it keep your eyes on on Christ not on the money So that's my thought Also, it's just not having a spending mindset Oftentimes money becomes an idol because we envision, imagine, and enjoy the spending or the dispensing of it. And I think to some extent, it's like helpful to have some pretty good sort of disciplines and guardrails around that. You don't want spending money to be the primary motivator for making it. You want faithfulness to the Lord, obedience to the dominion mandate, provision for others, generosity, serving the Lord, building this kingdom to be the primary motivations.

And when those are, they tend to be more self-balancing motivations, because none of those motivations, like If you're trying to build the kingdom of God, you're not gonna like do it to the detriment of other things, right? Because that would be like inherently contradictory. But oftentimes where any area of life can be idolatrous, and I've just found this in my own heart, is when I am using it wrongly, right? So if there's an over motivation or an over desire or consuming desire inside, it's usually because I'm using it wrongly once I've gotten it and it's not in accordance with what God intended it to be. So if money is an idol, look at how you use it probably.

Okay, I have a feeling we could be here for about two more hours, but we can't. We've only got a couple of minutes, so I want to wind it up and I want to ask you guys to get biblical and theological here. Just one at a time, Gary, maybe you can start. Minister to these people something from the Word of God that you think would be helpful amidst all the discussions that we've had? I think for me one of the things that the practices that I put in my life is memorizing and meditating on scripture literally every day, all day.

You know in Joshua 1-8, Psalm 1, God promises success. It may look different in your life than my life, but to build the Word of God into your heart and into your mind. And the wisdom that God gives to you will astound you sometimes. Over long periods of time when you do large texts, you store it in there, the Holy Spirit brings it out and uses it. And I think it's the other thing is really a focus on other people.

You know, what's the value I can bring? How can I help other people? That's my thought. I read a couple of verses from 1st Peter 5 here. I'm gonna start actually with verse 8 and then back up to verses five.

Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. So we are in a battle here. We have an enemy. We have a call, and that call requires soberness and vigilance. Be a good soldier.

And so I would say, take heart and go out there and fight valiantly in this battle. Take dominion over this world. It's a hard world, it's gonna fight back, but God has given you an overcoming spirit as Christ, who is the great overcomer, has led ahead of us and example and then and then as you engage that attitude back up three verses to verse 5 likewise you younger people submit yourselves to your elders yes all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility for God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time casting all your care upon him for he cares for you." So then after you engage you put your battle armor on and you go out there and you fight the foe and God gives you a measure of victory, the very next obstacle will be pride. So pride usually follows right after that first round of battle. God gives you success, and then pride comes and tries to pull the rug out under the whole thing.

And so just be humble, you know, cry out to God, walk and fight and war in his spirit and with a humble attitude. It's a very practical thing for business too. Generally speaking, people do not like to do business with proud people. It is so hard to have a proud person on a team. Whereas, if you have humble people and you're working together And there's not a vine for power and authority.

And there's a deference to others. There's just a genuine joy of being on a team together. There's almost no end to the value that humble people can bring into an organization. We have a little statement in one of our businesses, which is there's no end to the amount of money you can make if you let other people take the credit or you know it's just that there's a very practical thing it's if you if you don't mind other people taking the credit for whatever is going on around you can just kind of keep your head down and plow forward and keep producing and It's usually when you pick your head up and you start getting a little a little excited about yourself that God I mean God promises he has to bring that down So don't don't have God as a headwind in your efforts and and stay humble to do that We all know the end of Matthew 28, the Great Commission. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." We've had so many fascinating opportunities. We have had to do battle, speaking of government interference, we've had to do battle with Department of Labor and ATF and a whole bunch of other regulatory groups. And in those confrontations, we have been, by the grace of God, preserved through those, first of all, but also by the grace of God, really bold about proclaiming the words, everything that Christ has commanded in those conversations. And God has really not just preserved us through those things so that we're still in business, but God has really used those things. And sometimes I'm the fearful one and I'm watching the interaction.

I'm like, oh, I don't know that we would televerse to this guy from the Department of Labor in this moment. But God has really used those things to where we're not just growing as a company, He's not just flourishing us and giving us these kinds of challenges, but the opportunity to be an ambassador and fulfill the Great Commission, even through something as basic and simple as selling a plastic, a piece of plastic, or selling a piece of ceramic body armor, the opportunities that we have to do the Great Commission through that are just incredible blessings. And it's God that has made them all happen. And that's kind of the other thing is when you start to see God working, there are things that happen in the company that definitely feed my pride, but so many of them are actually just so, we are so overwhelmingly dependent on the Lord to solve this problem or that problem, there is no way to be believing that this was being done in your own strength. So taking on those big, hairy, audacious goals, those impossible challenges, I think, is really good.

Not in a presumptive way, but in a faithful way. Gary, Chad, Isaac, thank you. What a blessing. Thank you for ministering to all of us. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. Let's pray. Let's pray. Oh Lord, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We're so thankful that you're the ruler of all things.

I pray your blessing would fall upon these men. Amen.