Transcript 

Welcome to the hundredfold business podcast where Christian men learn the principles, strategies, and tactics to grow their businesses, top line, bottom line, and finish line. I want you to discover the secret to applying biblical truth to business growth for the greatest kingdom impact. So in the end, you hear from your heavenly father, well done. 

Welcome to the hundredfold business podcast where Christian men learn how to grow their businesses, top line, bottom line, and finish line. And I'm your host, Josh Fonger, founder of 4th Soil Ventures, and today we have a special guest. We have Brian Holtz. 

Brian serves as CEO of Compass Financial Ministry, a Christian organization in over 80 countries to help people grow closer to Jesus by learning and applying the Bible's teaching about money and possessions. All right, welcome, Brian, to the show. Thanks for being on the show. 

Yeah, thank you so much, Josh, for having me. Yeah, I'm so excited to have this discussion, as I know that the Bible talks a lot about money, and as business owners, Christian men have a lot to think about with regards to how to steward well, how to manage it well, you know, how to make these choices, and hopefully we can dive into that in today's call. But before I do, I'd like to start with the backstory, which is, you know, how did God direct your path to get where you are right now? Yeah, so I think it's important, you know, with your audience being specifically Christian business owners, you know, I've never owned a business, but I do have 15 years in the corporate sector, where I worked in a multitude of fields, and God called me into nonprofits. 

So I open with that because I'm not just a nonprofit guy who's been in nonprofit. I understand the workings of a for profit industry pretty well. And in some ways, I'm still much more comfortable in that area than I am in the nonprofit world. 

But I get to speak from both sides of that fence. My background, you know, so I grew up a moderate Christian, if one such thing exists, but was brought back to Christ late in my college career. Erica and I, my wife of 18, 19, almost 19 years here, we kind of were on similar journeys, both getting back to our faith, but not real intentional about it. 

And the same was true of our financial situation. I had a good job, I was making good money, we weren't living a frivolous lifestyle, we weren't spending money, there are no big, fancy cars or anything like that. But we weren't paying a whole lot of attention. 

And so then 2009 hit, and all of a sudden, we were forced to pay attention, as a lot of people were. And so our personal financial struggle kind of led us into this investigation of what does God actually say about money. And we'd never heard of a lot of the names that are out there now of, you know, Compass or Crown or Ron Blue or any of those folks.

And so I just kind of took it upon myself to say, look, if God has something to say about money, I want to know what it is. And what I need to know are what God's priorities for my financial life are. And through that investigation, which was really just exciting, it drew me closer to Christ.

And the darndest thing happened, Josh, it actually worked, right? This train wreck of a financial situation that I had made, really, you know, solving that a biblical way, opened up all these channels in my faith, in our financial life. And so years later, you know, I developed through that a passion for helping other people who were struggling to find meaning in their financial life, and pointing them to faith. Years later, God called me into this ministry of Compass Finances, God's way, who's already been doing this for decades, teaching people what the Bible says about money. 

And so I truly believe God called me into it. Wow. So personal story, dealing with finances, you went to the Bible, found your answers, found healing, found solutions. 

And here you are now, CEO of Compass Financial. Share a little bit about what Compass Financial does, and it'd be great. Yeah, so what Compass Financial Ministry does is we are a Christian nonprofit, donation funded, and we create and distribute resources that teach what the Bible says about money. 

Now, those are primarily small group Bible studies. We work with churches, we work with businesses, we work with individuals, communities, those sorts of things, all to try to get these resources that reveal what the Bible actually teaches about money. And what we believe the Bible teaches about money. 

Everything kind of fits into five categories. One is ownership. So God owns it all.

We got to start there. This idea that this is my business, my car, my ministry, it simply isn't biblical. We hear a lot about it, but it isn't biblical. 

God owns everything. I could go on and on, Psalm 24, 1, 1 Chronicles 29, 11, and 12. We could go on for a long time. 

God is owner of all things. Our response is stewardship. And we surrender our priorities, our goals, our objectives over to what the Lord wants. 

Why has the Lord entrusted this thing to us? What are his goals? What are his purposes? Then the rubber meets the road in choice. What are we actually going to do? We know it's God's. We know what he's asked us to do. 

What are we actually going to do? Are we going to choose God? We're going to choose money. And then multiplication. Multiplication is not about your investment account. 

It's not about the kind of interest that you're earning or growth that you're seeing. But are you growing God's kingdom? Are you taking what you've learned and sharing it with others so that God receives glory rather than just you being a great example of how things could go well? And then the fifth is eternal focus. What's going to survive that fire after it's been tested? If it's built of straw or of wood, it's going to burn up and we'll suffer loss even though we ourselves will get through the fire. 

But is what we're doing meaningful on an eternal scale? And so that's really what we teach. And so we package these things in, like I said, Bible studies, books, short videos, blogs, you name it. Wherever people will engage with this, we want to help people grow closer to Jesus by developing a healthier relationship with money.

Okay, so let's see if I got it right. So ownership, stewardship, choice, multiplication, eternal focus. You've got five big pillars right there. 

What do people usually come in with? Like, do usually people come in with a particular problem or need or desire or want? What do they leave with? What do they like at the other side? Yeah, I think most people walk in, we get a lot of people who are struggling financially, but we're not really a financial crisis ministry. So like getting out of debt is great. We encourage people to do that, but it's not really the goal. 

And generosity ministries are phenomenal. They do great work, but that's not really our goal either. All of that fits under the umbrella of just, are we living the way God intended, the way God designed? And so a lot of the people who walk into our studies, they don't necessarily have a terrible situation. 

They're not in a catastrophic meltdown like I was, but they've just got some area of pain in their life and they don't quite know what's going on, right? They just kind of walk in, they say, I just don't know what God wants from me. I don't know what the point of my business is. I don't know what the point is. 

And it comes from all different directions, but it's usually this misalignment, this disharmony that they can't quite put their finger on. And walking through those five pillars, understanding God's role versus our role, understanding what is it that God wants as an outcome to our finances, to our business, those things all lead us to this harmonization that everything in our life is meant to be an expression of our faith, right? God didn't say, hey, go have this part of your life that's a business and this part that's a family, and then you'll go to church on Sunday. All those things are meant to be an expression of our faith.

Our business should be an expression of our faith, even if we don't have a Jesus fish in the logo, right? People should see the love of Christ through the way we deal in a business with our vendors, with our customers. And so I think that's where most people walk in is they just, they're not really sure why they're there. Something's not right. 

And they've been pointed here. And what they walk out with is a stronger relationship with Jesus, which does actually solve all those problems. So I'm just thinking specifically for the business owners that I work with, what would you say would be some of the wrong motivations or mindsets or things that the world's taught them about business and money that they would need to dismantle? Are there certain kind of commonalities you've seen with business owners specifically where they come in maybe they didn't even know a wrong belief, even though they've been... Yeah, I think it starts with that ownership piece. 

That's always the thing that rocks people's world. It rocked mine. It rocks just about everybody else's to understand that the business that I started is not mine. 

And if it's not mine, then it no longer can serve my purposes. And I think that's kind of the second big thing is as a business owner, the question isn't what are my goals for the business? It's what outcome does God want to see in my business? Why is He entrusted me with this entity? So in my case, it may not be a for-profit business, but it's a ministry. Why has God called me to lead Compass right now? What are the outcomes that He wants to see? And now what decisions do I need to make as a leader to accomplish God's vision for Compass rather than my own vision? And I think as a business owner, that becomes very difficult because I start thinking about exit strategies. 

I start thinking about sales growth rather than the real spiritual outcomes of how can I reach more people? Now, does that need to be profitable? It does. But the goal is to reach more people, not necessarily the profit. And so I think that's where most business owners are challenged is that mind shift of, okay, so if this belongs to God, what are His goals rather than mine? What steps should I take to accomplish those goals rather than my own? And that's a very different approach. 

Very different. Sounds like there's going to need to be some prayer involved. There absolutely ought to be some prayer involved. 

Even if you haven't gotten there yet, that needs to be step one. So tell me about this multiplication and eternal focus. So the average person that goes to the program, they understand, okay, everything is the Lord's. 

I want to steward it well. I've made this choice. I'm going to start walking this road. 

What have you seen in terms of people going to the course, in terms of multiplication, eternal focus? What would that practically look like? Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is that we encourage people and kind of set them free. And for some reason, our faith seems to be somewhat isolated just in general where, you know, when I go to a great pizza restaurant, I tell my friends about it.

But when I converted to Christianity, I didn't tell anybody about it, right? Because like I was this atheist and it's like, well, now I got my tail between my legs. And we really try to challenge people to say, hey, if this impacted you, go walk alongside somebody. You don't have to lead a group. 

It doesn't have to be big formal. We don't have to call you in and give you an email address. But walk someone else through it, which is exactly the way that Jesus modeled discipleship. 

It's the way he designed his church to grow. I love Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman in this model of how does everyone go out and make disciples? That is everyone's job. The Great Commission was not exclusive to the immediate audience. 

It is go make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded. And we are called to do that as well, right? And so kind of within Compass, we don't have a group of leaders who lead all the studies. What we want to do is we want to get to Josh, wherever you are, and we want to train you equip you motivate you to go lead studies, to go walk alongside, just read a book with someone, never read a book alone. 

How's that for a rule for life? Right? That's it. It's a great way to build relationships. It's a great way to build discipleship, to have an opportunity to really relate to people on a spiritual level, where a lot of times we feel uncomfortable doing that.

But that discomfort is not healthy. So then, okay, so let's say that I'm going to get to some maybe practical things that may not be in your program. But let's say a business owner says, well, I love this. 

I want to, you know, just you are the CEO of my business, the owner of it all. Now, I've got a multi-million dollar company. What should I do with this money? How should I spend this profit? What should I save? How much should I save? Is there a new opportunity to, you know, expand locations? Should I take out debt to get that new location? All those choices, those questions come to mind, because previously was like, well, I'll just do whatever I want to do. 

And what's everyone else in the world doing? I'll just do that. This new boss, right? So now they're thinking, how do I make those choices? So where would you steer them? Yeah, it's really, I mean, it's first sitting down in prayer and discerning what is it that God wants you to accomplish through your business, right? And some of the best people who can talk about this so much better, if you look up the guy by the name of Jess Corral,

And another guy named Pete Oakes, OCHS. And these are two Christian business owners who were deeply impacted decades ago through Howard Dayton's work, who's the founder of Compass. And they're just great examples of people who took, you know, Jess Correll owns a bank, right? And how much more secular can you have than a bank? There's no way you can finagle that.

You know, you're selling home loans and things like that. But he and his leadership team sat down and said, you know, if God owns it all, and he's called us to accomplish certain things, what are the changes we need to make to do that? And sometimes, it's through, you know, everybody jumps straight to, well, I should give more. That's great. 

But if God's called you to expand the business, there's a time to not give more. You know, in our personal finances, we make giving this sacred thing, and it's super spiritual. But our spending and our saving, those are just mundane, right? That's not the case at all scripturally. 

Our saving decisions are just as spiritual as our giving decisions. Our spending decisions are just as spiritual. And it's true in the business realm as well, that if I'm saving for a strategic expansion, because that's what God's called my business to do, then that is a very good decision, even if that means I don't get to generously right now, right? The problem is when we expand, because we want to expand.

And in a period where God has said, hey, invest deeply in your current business, where God says, hey, I want you to build stronger relationships with your customers now, rather than going out and selling to more customers. We have to respond by following him. And so it really is discerned through prayer, get your leadership team around the table, get them to understand the concept. 

That's what Jess Carell did. That's what Pete Oaks did. Both of those guys have phenomenal stories that you're going to want to hear about and read and watch. 

Just incredible transformational experiences in their very profitable businesses, their very large businesses, and the way that they've used those as ministry opportunities. That's great. I'm going to definitely check out those resources. 

What about the, Brian, so what about budgeting? That's something that everyone always, you know, connects with in the talk about training about money and what to do with your money. They always start talking about budgeting. Would you say that's an essential aspect of transforming how you look at money? Or is it much more, I guess, the way to unlock it is to focus on your relationship with money and God and more of the spiritual end? Yeah, so I think it's both. 

And really, I mean, so we start by discerning what is God asking us to accomplish through our business. And then our budget should align to those priorities, right? None of us wants to have a business that's just heavy and overhead expenses that aren't aligned to the strategic outcomes, right? We know we want our money to go into the areas where we've been called to expand. And we've done that historically using our own goals as those guidelines. 

And now we're going to shift that to what is God called us to do. But there are differences and similarities. Pete Oaks has great resources on that. 

And so I'd encourage you to check that out specifically on how do you build a robust business budget. But it really does fall in line with what we do with a personal budget. What has God called you to do? What's that going to cost to do it? How do we allocate funds towards that and stay disciplined to spending the way that God's called us to? So with regards to money, there's a lot of money programs out there. 

How does Compass compare to some of the other programs out about personal finance? I don't know, Dave Ramsey program, things like that. Are they all pretty much the same? Or I mean, they're using the same textbook, right? The Bible. So how are they different? Yeah, so I would start with obviously the big name in the room is Dave Ramsey.

He does a great job. Now my dispute would be that he is not biblical. So Dave does a great job of using his experiences, the things he's learned in his battles and struggles to help us learn from his mistakes. 

But what he doesn't do is open up Psalm 21 and 24 one and say, here's what the Bible says. Now what does that mean to you? Our content is going to be a Bible study. There's no way you could mistake any of our resources for anything but a Bible study that happens to be about money.

Your most of the other market opportunities are about money. They incorporate the Bible, they will use the Bible, they'll even use it responsibly. But it's not truly investigating and examining what the scriptures say, as it relates to money. 

That's really where we hang our hat. We say, let's open the Word of God. And let's discover what he believes about money.

And whether I like it or not, and sometimes I don't like it, I'm going to go do that. Because the designer and creator of the universe says it's going to work better for me. And I'm going to walk in faith, and I'm going to step out in faith. 

And you'd be surprised at how well that works. Yeah, you've talked about your last pillar there, the eternal focus, and that everything is going to be tested by fire. And so say it does, in quotes, work here in this world. 

It's not going to the testing, then it's not going to matter a billion years from now, how you use that money. So I think that's the essential aspect that I think it's easy to make pragmatic decisions as a business owner, as a leader, and say, well, it worked because there's more money. And really miss what your boss wants. 

And the eternity aspect of it was so critical. And none of us, I mean, to that point, Josh, none of us would want to overlook our own funerals, you know, sit up in the balcony and hear people talk about how wealthy we were, and make no comments about our character, or the people we've impacted or the influence we've had. Why would we want our businesses to be any different? Why would we want, at the end of our professional career, to walk away and say, boy, that was a really profitable business? That's not what I want people to remember about the thing I spent my life building.

I want them to remember the impact. I want them to remember the difference I had, the way I treated people. All those things are eternal outcomes, rather than here, temporal and earthly outcomes. 

And that's just the shift we have to, we've got to change that behavior now. Because otherwise, when we sell the business, when we leave the business, when the business dies with us, it's just going to be the dollars left in the bank. And boy, that's pretty empty. 

Definitely, definitely. Well, because of time, I want to switch gears somewhat dramatically, still about money. This is important for the business owners listening, is that most of them are fathers, most of them have kids, most of them are learning this stuff, but not just for themselves, but for their families.

I know that you wrote a book, Financial Discipleship for Families. And I just want to hear about the book, what inspired you to write it? What are the key takeaways? And how can we learn how to do that? Because I've got four kids, and I'd love for them to not learn it the hard way, but learn it through me and learn through God's Word. Yeah, yeah. 

So really, I mean, it started with similar to Erica and I's journey of just, you know, sitting down and as a corporate guy, I would solve problems in front of a whiteboard, which you can see behind me, that when something's got to be worked through, I grab a marker and I just start drawing and writing. And so we kind of gone through this journey personally with Erica and I and we'd gotten our finances right, and we're headed in the right direction. We're teaching others to do the same, we're sharing that well.

And then it just kind of dawned on me as I was reading through a book on discipleship. You know, my buddy and I were talking about, you know, Jesus style discipleship, where the disciples walked with him for three years, they lived with him for three years. And I'm talking to my buddy, Jesse, and I'm like, boy, wouldn't that be weird if that's how we disciple people? If you just like sold your house, you and Stephanie moved in with me, you followed me around work like that. 

You couldn't possibly do that now. And he said, well, we do have our kids. And it dawned on me that of all the people I was discipling in the area of money and possessions, my kids were not one of them. 

And so I got into a whiteboard room and I started writing and I kind of said, well, what would I do with my kids? And Howard Dayton, the founder of Compass has this great model that he uses, he calls it MVP parenting. The M is modeling, the V is verbal explanation, and P is practical opportunities. And so really that merged together with those five priorities I talked about. 

We'll throw that in the link, I won't go through them. Now the five priorities for money that God has. But really it's a system that Eric and I have just kind of gone through. 

And then a coworker challenged me, he said, well, why don't you put this out there? And I said, nobody wants to read a book about this. And then God kind of just put on my heart to go ahead and do it. But the idea of what is it that God's called us to do with money and how do I model that in front of my kids in a way that they can see and understand? And so for budgeting, for example, how do I make sure my kids see me budgeting? Because if all I do is tell them to budget, they don't think it's important. 

Now, once they've seen me budget, then I can explain, their interest is peaked. I can explain what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Hey, here's how me and mom make decisions with money. 

And then practical opportunities is we give them the chance to do the same thing. And so the book really just walks people through what Erica and I have done and why we've done it that way. And it is not, obviously, I am just now 45 years old. 

I am not the wise sage who's conquered all of this. I'm just a guy like two turns ahead of you. That's about it. 

And I can share some great ideas. I can give you some things that we've learned, what's worked, what's not worked. And hopefully it helps you influence your kids rather than try to control them and just kind of mandate, here's what you have to do with your money.

Great. Well, that's a great resource. One more to check out. 

And I wanted to go back because you mentioned this idea of multiplication. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, it's so great to take this concept of money and teach other people, explain other people and share it. What have you found being the receptivity of this? Because money is a touchy subject. 

Most people are comfortable talking about their own money, let alone trying to teach someone else, let alone having conversations about it. So what is the way to break the ice, to get the walls down so that people can actually have honest conversations and go to God's word about this? Because I know this topic is one that scares most people and most relationships, communities, they avoid the topic. So what are the ways to kind of break down some of those barriers so that you can be involved in more multiplication? Yeah. 

Yeah. That's a great question because the tough thing I encounter is because I'm so comfortable with it, right? I mean, this is what I do all day. I have no shame of telling you all about my financial life, my budgets on LinkedIn. 

You can go see that. You can see what I'm going to make this year, what I'm going to spend on different things. It doesn't bother me at all.

But I also want to be sensitive that other people are uncomfortable with it, right? And so I don't want to go in and make them uncomfortable by oversharing, even though to me, it doesn't matter at all. And so that's really where things get challenging. But I do leverage a lot of that MVP model, right? Where I look for opportunities that by living this out in a way that people will notice, that's somewhat remarkable, it piques their interest. 

And they have that, you know, there's a pastor friend locally who's getting his doctorate and his financial situation was tough trying to do that while being a pastor. He's got four little kids. And so Eric and I decided that we were going to sponsor him. 

We're just going to write him a check. It wasn't going to go through the church, no charitable donation. And we did that. 

And he was so caught off guard. I mean, his first question was, why would you do that? Right? And that's when, again, even me sharing that story, my goal isn't that people would say, boy, Brian, I can't believe Brian and Eric are that generous. That's not what I'm after at all. 

What I want to do is I want to challenge people to see opportunities that they might be closed off to right now. You know, that young pastor will never look at generosity the same, right? Because I modeled what he thought was completely radical generosity. And three months later, he's giving a sermon on generosity, and you can bet that influenced it, right? And when he, you know, gets into his 30s, 40s, 50s, and his ministry grows, his reach grows, his influence grows, that's going to be something that's always going to be there. 

And so I think for each one of us, as business owners, if I'm a business owner, and I go in and I treat my employees with a remarkable level of love and respect, even if I don't say it's because of Jesus, at some point, they're going to say, why do you act this way when nobody else does? And then you have the chance to answer, right? And I think those are the multiplication opportunities that we want to look for. How do we demonstrate the love of Christ in a way that isn't just something that people can walk by? They just, they have to ask the question. And then it gives us the opportunity to give the answer.

And then it allows us to invite them to read the book with us, right? To go through that modeling, verbal explanation, practical opportunities in our business, in our home, whatever it is. I think that's really what that multiplication piece looks like, is walking through that journey with whoever God puts in our path. Yeah. 

And it sounds like when those opportunities come up is to take them, take them in faith and take the risk. And that's awesome. Great story. 

And people will see you as weird, but hopefully, but weird means they noticed you, right? That's a good thing. Blending in is easy, but it's not very impactful. That's right. 

We're to be a peculiar people. That's a great, great story and great encouragement and motivating. Motivating to look at those opportunities and also to jump into them. 

I want to end this podcast by asking a question I ask everybody on the show, which is, what would you say to encourage someone who's not yet fully embraced integrating their faith into their work? Yeah, that's a great question. What would I... You know, I think really the fundamental question is, do you believe all this? And I know that's harsh and pointed, but I think that's kind of what we're going at, right? And so I'm an all-in, all-out kind of guy. Like I said, I was an atheist for a number of years and was brought back and I was a very vocal atheist. 

But the confrontation I had in that moment was, okay, if I now believe there is a God, what am I going to do about it? And I think that's the prevailing question that we all have to wrestle with is, when we're confronted with God's power, his love, his grace, his care, his provision, how will we respond? And if I believe that the building I'm in right now is on fire, you're going to know it. And if I don't believe it, you're also going to know it. And so I think the big challenge is, God has provided you with these opportunities.

He's provided you with a business, with whatever assets and resources and family and relationships. How are you going to respond? I mean, I think that's really... Because it does demand a response. The scriptures make it clear that we are required to respond to everything. 

And no response is a response, isn't it? And so I think that's my encouragement that if you're not quite at the point where you're ready to integrate your faith with your business, I want you to be confronted with, you are making a choice. Yeah, you've chosen, I'm going to hide it under a basket, right? I'm not going to share it. And that's not the choice you want to make.

No, and he loves you and he's given you the opportunity because he wants to see you grow. He doesn't just want his kingdom grown. He wants you grown too. 

But it's going to take that step of faith to go ahead and walk the line. Perfect. Well, great. 

Thank you for sharing your wisdom on the show today. It's been a really important message. Money is talked about in the Bible.

So I know it's critical. So where can people go to get information about you and what your company does? Yes, they can learn more at compassfinancialministry.org or they can connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to get to know you, hear your story, and have you be part of the community here. 

Perfect. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for joining Brian and I on this interview where we're learning how to grow a business that honors God as it grows. 

And if you need help specifically with your business, you can always reach out directly to me at 4thsoilventures.com. Again, Brian, thanks for being on the show. And thanks, everybody, for tuning in. Until next time, grace be with you, brothers.