Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 140 | the founders behind Good Ranchers

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

In today’s episode, we got to interview Ben and Corley Spell, a couple who took a leap of faith in 2018 and started their own meat company called Good Ranchers! Their business focuses on ethical practices, transparency, and animal wellness, something they felt was lacking among other companies today. Not only are they paving the way for other meat companies in terms of product quality, but over the past 4 years, their customers have helped donate over 500,000 meals to food banks across the country! We loved getting to learn about their lives and how they make their marriage work despite having busy lives. We hope you enjoy our conversation! To learn more about Good Ranchers check out their website! https://www.goodranchers.com/about Love you guys! Shawn and Andrew This episode is sponsored by AG1 ▶ Athletic Greens Is going to give you a FREE 1-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit https://athleticgreens.com/eastfam This episode is also sponsored by Modern Fertility ▶ Modern Fertility is offering our listeners $30 off the test when you go to https://ModernFertility.com/eastfam30. This is a limited-time offer for $30 off! This episode is proudly sponsored by Good Ranchers ▶ Good Ranchers was kind enough to give our listeners a special code! You can use code FAMILYMADEfor $30 off plus free express shipping! Visit https://goodranchers.com/familymade to get $30 off plus free express shipping on your order! Follow My Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ http://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok! ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ http://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Rona Week. Now until Wednesday, and the best part, we're ready to help you extend your summer. You know the saying the grass is always greener on the other side? Well, this summer, make sure it's your side of the lawn. Head to Rona today for 5.2 kilograms of Scotts turf builder fall lawn fertilizer at only 1499. Build it right, build it Rona. Conditions apply, details in store, and more offers at rona.ca. What's up everybody? Welcome back to a couple things with Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples and the things they go through. Today is a really fun one because you've heard us talk about this company before, but now we're talking to the founders. Ben and Corley Spell. They founded good ranchers together. And let me tell you, I was so pleasantly surprised at the things I learned from these two. We had the pleasure of having them here in studio and just to name a few things that I learned from them. One, Corley mentioned that they don't know what next year is going to look.

look like, but they know it's going to be the best year yet. And just that mindset of like optimism and hope, I think is really important and actually making it the best year yet. It's like it doesn't matter what happens. They think it will be the best and that's great. We talked through with them how they founded the good ranchers and all of kind of the trials and tribulations that they went through, but how they approached the business world with their morals, their foundations, their beliefs and values and how they never jeopardized

it, which I think is really cool. That's right. Another thing I learned from them was Ben was talking about how vital and crucial it is to have a wife who supports the husband and how his wife's support and his mission and calling made all the difference. And vice versa. No, 100% but he's the one that said it. Anyway, they founded this company together and they're just really fun. I think you'll enjoy this interview looking forward to hearing what you learned from this. Without further ado, we bring you Ben and Corley Spell.

Whether we use this or not, I have so many questions. Okay. Let's go. Like the first thing I tried of your guys is it was burgers, hamburgers. Oh yeah. And it was so good. So good. How is your hamburger that much different? Yeah. So we have two different we have two different burgers. We have we have a straight Angus, which so this is another thing with burgers in the grocery store. Um, burgers is just ground beef. Yeah. So, um, and most of the like in the grocery store, for sure in your grocery store, um, And like most people, what they're doing is they're just taking all of the, like, all of the crap, all of the trimmings and just grinding it and making ground meat out of it. We actually grind steak, like the, like, your New York strips, your filet mignon, your ribeye, like, we grind the trimmings of our steak. And, and it's, and it's pure bread. It's all Angus, so, versus, like, just, because you can buy. processors can just buy like truckloads of trimmings and they'll mix them all together and just like and it's going to the masses and that's going to your fast food restaurants going to your

grocery stores and stuff like that we um we're very very very very selective um on on our ground beef because we we don't sell anything that we won't eat in our own house that we won't feed our own kids it's yeah kind of a rule we made a few years ago yeah can we back up i want to hear the story of Ben and Corley. How long has been married? When'd you date? How'd this guy propose? Spill the tea.

I mean, that was a whirlwind romance right there. We got married in 2015, but we... I have to give them the PG version. I know. Yeah, we were only dating for six months and engaged for like a month, and then we eloped. Wow. Dominican in 2015. Wait, what's the non-PG version?

right here you fill the tea yeah there's a not there is a non pg version no it's not okay it was a it was mostly took her to a restaurant where some friends of mine were playing live music and and i they called me up on the stage and i sing it's here and thinking out loud okay so for for the listeners who don't know you're not just some random karaoke guy you had a you had history and music yes as a worship pastor Yeah, I play piano and guitar and write and produce. And I went to school for, like, audio engineering.

The weird that I just got intimidated about our audio set up. I immediately was like, oh, no. It's all wrong. It's all wrong. I know. She was laughing, Corley was laughing yesterday when we were driving around Nashville and just kind of talking about our life and our story. In the early days of good ranchers, we started out of our house. been around a table and we had like a little we had a mic in the corner and we were we were

writing producing recording and editing all of our own commercials wow like going nationwide on like major syndicated radio stations yeah and like you know we were doing it all most I don't think most people do that what's your background then um so after I got out of college still didn't really know what I wanted to do and then I kind of fell into the wedding industry amazing yes does anybody know what they want to do right out of college they don't no I could go on an entire tangent of that because I I didn't finish college I did a year and ended up dropping out yeah but the amount of pressure you put on college kids to have to figure it out right by the time they graduate they should like be going into their profession is I think that's

all wrong yeah completely agree like I feel like they should have a few years to get a few jobs to meet some people, see where they fall, right? So that kind of happened to me. I worked out a venue in Houston, really upscale venue, cranked out, like, I don't know, hundreds of weddings a year. It was so fun. Got a lot of experience there. Yeah, you do like four weddings a day sometimes.

Yeah, they had multiple, um, I know. That's, wait, ballrooms at the venue. Oh my gosh. Yeah, we could have like four or five going on at once. That's crazy. That feels less special, more on factory. Yeah. You had no idea.

But you had no idea that there was another wedding going on. Like, they were so great at that. Interesting. I mean, touchy to them. That's a businessman. Capitalizing on the real estate there. So I did that. And then we got married and I was like, oh, okay, I guess I'm going to be a pastor's wife.

That's weird. But we got married and a church in Chicago. We were living in Houston. Church in Chicago was very, like, was very much pursuing us to come. And so we, we visited a few times. And there was a church in San Jose, California, which the weather disparity between San Jose, California. Massive.

And Chicago is massive. But we really felt, we really felt called, like, that Chicago is the place. And we moved there in January. Right in the smack. Snowing sideways, and we're like, what? Chicago is from Houston. That's brutal. Coming front, both of us are from the Midwest.

And we know, Chicago winters very well. That is brutal. So hard. Yeah. And we made it through that winter and we said, you know what? This is not God's will. We were wrong.

We missed it. God, even if it is, you know, you can send a whale to get me. I'm going to call me. I'm curious, having worked in the wedding industry, you like are putting on all these weddings, So you choose to do the elope method. Okay, so that had a lot to do with it. So whenever we moved to Chicago, I quit the venue, but a lot of my clients still wanted me to do their weddings. And so I was doing that on the side.

And then I was like, well, I might as well just turn this end of a thing. And so we started Spell Events, which is our wedding planning company. They still have. Yes. Amazing. Yes. Love it. What was it?

You're busy. I love it. I just can't wait. Like, this is crazy. I know. Yeah, it's crazy. So we did that. back to Houston had all my clients there it was great so we did that together for a while um so you asked

about why did we elope versus having like this big ballroom wedding and i think it was because i just saw that all the time and it just didn't feel like me or i couldn't really see like my family or your family like in a ballroom together so you couldn't get all of my family to wear their to keep their shirts on that's my kind of wedding So we saved the money and put it into a house. And we were like, let's just go a loaf and have a nice honeymoon. So we did that. It's amazing.

And I got my parents' blessing. They were so okay with it. We came back like and then a month later had a small intimate reception in their backyard, played our wedding video. It was really sweet. Wow. Yeah. I think that's really cool. For us, we were kind of similar in weird ways.

We had a huge. I disagree. We had a wedding. Hold on. I am getting there. We had a huge wedding. We had 400 people. wedding um pretty big it was big which are so fun like I love it was so much fun but

afterwards and I wouldn't change it I just felt like I learned a lot I almost wish we would have eloped because it's almost like you're throwing a party for everyone else but you and so by the time we got like to the hotel room that night we were like what just happened did we get married like and we just didn't feel like we had that special moment between us yeah so we'll say That's what I worked with her with our wedding planning company for a while before we started good ranchers. I would always try to get them to officiate all my weddings. I had my share of officiating weddings. But we were really passionate about, we were almost going to just like start a wedding venue because we saw it done.

We were very passionate about helping the couple make it special for them. and taking all of the pressure and making sure that they like the night can be about them and that they can actually enjoy it because you're right so many people don't it's like you're on that timeline and we're like we got to get to the next thing let's go let's go so you should tell some mother of the bride stories oh god honestly like we've been really blessed and fortunate to have really sweet brides yeah and most of the time their moms are too so I haven't had too many crazy stories. Is the term bridezilla just like just like almost a nice version of calling this girl like

just really if she's a bridezilla she's not going to be pleasant outside like it's a common theme in life. What are you trying to say? I'm just saying. What are you trying to say? You don't just show up on your wedding and you're grumpy like you're always like that. I mean you can probably speak more to this but I think weddings bring out a lot of stress and a lot of people because they feel this expectation to put on such a show for other.

people and I think that can make people very anxious and hopefully you're only doing it once yes do you have any high level tips like for people planning weddings like if you're going to say three this is what I'd recommend like someone over here in the corner who gets married in two weeks boom three week yeah that's exciting um one make sure you have a really great wedding planner tip number one but I do feel like people do try to like skirt around it like do I really need it I have a friend or my mom or no because at the end of the day on the day of your wedding you want you and your family all your bridesons to be able to relax and enjoy it and let you know the wedding planner do their job take care of all the fires that are probably put out that you have no idea about yeah and then after that like just enjoy every single moment you know just don't get caught up in the timeline things will come but The things you think really matter, don't really matter. The main thing, the main thing. Which is?

You're getting married. There we get. Yeah. And I would say, like, try to stay together because I see so many weddings where it's so sad because the bride gets caught up and, like, chatting with her parents' friends and, you know, grooms over here talking to these people. Do you forget, like, oh, we're supposed to be doing this together? Yeah.

You know, I feel like at the night they're like, oh, my God. Gosh, I wasn't even, like, walking around with you. Where were you the whole night? Oh, I like that. So, I'm curious. Something that I feel like you and I, or we both have in common, is just a wide variety of things and interest that make kind of no sense together. So you guys let a church. Yeah, we were on staff at a church.

You then are still, have a wedding planning business. Yes. So I'm pretty removed from that. I oversee everything. I have a team of girls and they just run it and they're amazing and I haven't taken on any weddings in a few years but okay you know if it's like a friend of a bride I'll take it but then you also have a meat company yes that's taking on the world yes yeah how do these connect and how did you fall into them and how are they like a reflection of you guys right um god yes for sure

Yeah, easy answer. Yeah, it doesn't, I don't know that any of it connects, but, you know, we're trying to, like, kind of put our, put the pieces of things together in our life. I don't know. What do you think? I don't know. I just feel like both of us, and I don't know if it's because we are both creative, but we just never could fit in that, like, nine to five corporate situation, you know? And so we're like, okay, we've got to hustle and make it on our own being an entrepreneur, just like. came very natural to us.

So it was just kind of saying yes to opportunities that made sense. Yeah. Yeah, I have, I mean, I have a very eclectic background. Yeah. So, yeah, I was playing music and didn't plan on getting hired by a church or even doing that. And then the church that I was at in Texas, the worship pastor left. And instead of hiring someone, I think I was 19. working at an insurance company and they said hey won't you just do this and i said okay and so i just

started doing it and um and they didn't pay me anything but like but they they let me live in a little house behind the church and gave me a like an old car to drive so i was like ah this is really cool um and so they just started doing that and then um and then i would teach music on the side i I started teaching piano and guitar and voice and just doing different things. And then at the time I was going to, I was going to school and I realized that I really liked music production. I liked the technology side of like running a studio and stuff like that. So I went to school for audio engineering.

And then a really large church in Houston hired me to run their studio and do that stuff. So I was working behind the scenes doing all the production for this really large. church and then the same story their worship pastor left and they're like hey won't you just take over and so then i just like stepped in and did that um for about seven or eight years somewhere in there i was in a movie you're in a movie oh my god it's it's on HBO now it's old it's like a throwback on HBO now it's from the movie was in 2008 and uh i forgot all about it but one of my friends were like hey look what i just found what's the movie called oh god no it was meet the spartans

oh let's go shirtless wedding this guy's out there's one of this spoof is like there was 13 soldiers instead of the 300 because it's 300 I was one of the 13 that's amazing and I was just working out at the gym like again you know part of my thing I was just at the gym and somebody walked in and they were like hey um you want to be in a movie I'm like yeah sure and so like next thing I know you weren't like this is suspect like what kind of movie it was young and naive and what are we rated here yeah yeah yeah so I went to this like I showed up to this like warehouse building and and I'm in a room with a bunch of guys and they're like okay everybody take their shirt off I'm like okay oh my gosh I'd be like what

genre are we filming here yeah it's funny because they didn't we didn't even know the name of what it was but I didn't I never got like a weird vibe and so they were like hey you you and you and you go to the next room, everybody else Pete Smith and said to me and three other guys went into the next room and then there was these people and they were like, I don't remember, and then the next day they called me to I really liked your abs. You did it, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Well done. Wait, I didn't get charged for my donut. It was free with the Tim's Rewards points. I think I just stole it. I'm a donut stealer. Oof. Earned points so fast, it'll seem too good to be true. Plus, join

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and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athletic greens.com forward slash EastFam. Again, that's athletic greens.com slash EASFAM to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. So then merging it from there, how and why a meat company? Um, so, um, when I left the church that I was working, working on, so, uh, so this is, this, the, the part I didn't say earlier. I was married. Okay. So, huge proponent of being married. Um, huge proponent of like, working through staying together. But in my situation and in, um, you know, like, it doesn't always work.

And especially coming from being in ministry and like, you know, we push, like, every marriage has a 100% chance of work and 100% chance of the time, right? But the reality is like we live in a fallen world and people, you know, are fallen. So, and, you know, we just couldn't make it work, like, just could not make it work. And we went to counseling and, like, for five years of counseling. We didn't have any kids, thankfully. and so after like just we finally just realized you know what this we just we just don't work oil and water just did not work and so um when when we got divorced i took a sabbatical from

the church just to kind of go like um it was a real it was actually kind of a really low spot in my life because um i loved leading worshiped i love doing music and Um, I just, um, but for several years leading up to us getting divorced, I was just pretty miserable. Um, and, uh, so took a sabbatical. And in that time, I worked for a meat company doing outside sales traveling across the country. And, um, and that's where I, um, it was very short. And, but I, I, I went, I looked up and I went, man, this is really wrong. Like the, the customer, I realized that the consumer has no idea what they're getting sold, what's in it, where it's coming from, and people would just buy anything, anything with a label on it.

And so, but I did that for a few months. Actually quit because I didn't feel good in my spirit. I was like, man, this is, like, I don't want to work for a company like this. And, but I remember thinking, I had the thought then somebody could do, somebody could do, somebody could do this, could probably do this and do it ethically and transparently and it be a good business. Came back. I started doing ministry again in that time. Met Corley. You know, it was kind of convoluted through there, but met Corley, dated Corley, married Corley. We moved to Chicago, worked for a church for a little while. That didn't work out. Came back

to Houston, um, launched a spell events. We're doing the, the, the, the wedding venue. I was, I was, I was leading worship at different churches on the weekends and helping her with weddings and stuff. And, um, and just one morning, I, I just, I clearly heard God's voice start a meat company. And I, I, I was, I was getting ready. I came out of the bathroom and I told Corley, I said, I think I just heard God tell me to start a meat company and expecting her to go, what? That's crazy. Um, but she didn't. She said, okay. And I'm like, that's it. And she's like, yeah, she said, if you heard God, then I support you.

I'm behind you. And that, I don't tell her this enough. But that was just like, if you're a couple listening, your wife believing you as a man, your wife believing in you, it's all you need. Like, freaking truth. Dang, dude. Yeah, yeah. So, and I had never had that kind of support before.

So like that, I was just like, okay. And what I didn't tell her is we were going to max out all our credit cards. We were going to take all our money from savings. I was going to borrow money from her mother, from her mother-in-law, and not tell her. Oh, no. This is the blueprint for how to start a company right here. Tips from Ben. We had just had our first, our first boy, bear.

and um and we went all in we went all in yeah we went we went all in but um yeah tried to go to the gas station the day we opened up sales and credit cars were declined yeah we couldn't even yeah we couldn't buy water like i was trying to get like a water in a protein bar and like her and bear were in the car and i'm like try this one we'll try this one yeah we were we were all in but we knew we heard God's voice and and um total peace yeah and that's that's that's the way the eclectic life that i've lived is um i believe that god never gives you the whole picture um but when he said when he says to do something you just you do it you go and um at the moment god tells you that the moment god commands you to do something you're equipped and and and that's either by what you already have

or the people that are around you. Like Moses, when God told Moses, go talk to Pharaoh, he said, but I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I don't speak well. But he had Aaron. Aaron went with him. He was already equipped at the moment God commanded him. And, yeah, I live my life knowing that God never shows you the whole picture.

He just says, he speaks. and the people who follow that, like just follow that voice. And I think so many times people, there's God's promises and there's God's commands. And a promise never, a promise is, is, it will never change.

It's like God promised Abraham a son, that he would be a father of many nations. Well, that never changed, even though Abraham tried to take matters into his own. hand failed messed up all of all of those things that was god's promise that never changed um but god also gave abraham some commands like take isaac up on the mountain and sacrifice him well it's a good thing he didn't take that as a promise um but rather a command of to keep listening um because when he got up on the mountain he was like no this was just a test um and um so i think so many times like we hear

God's voice or we we have this stirring inside of us that we should do something and we we wait way too long to try to well I got to get this right no I got to do this or I got to like you should prepare don't get me wrong like don't be cavalier but but at the same time like if God is for you if God says go go and you're you're gonna you have the all of the equipment that you need when God gives you that command so good word that is good Was there any other point in life where you felt like you heard God commanding you to do something or speak to you in that way? Yeah.

Well, so before we start at the company, so I heard God say go, you know, to start a meat company, we knew nothing about anything agriculture-wise. And I was praying one morning. I was on the way to the gym and I was just, I don't like, I don't know how other people do it but I don't typically like go into a closet and pray you know like I've I've had times where I've done that but like for the most part like it's when I'm driving or when I'm you know I find I find a long time to just to be with God and to and to talk to God and so I was I was going to the gym one morning and I just asked God I was like man how we're going to get how we're going to

I don't think I called him man but like how are we going to. How are we going to. How are we to have favor with cities how are we going to have favors with with with with like mall with malls to get contracts because when we started off we started doing like pop-up shops and farmers markets and stuff like that and and how are we going to get permits and health and how are we going to find meat suppliers and all these things and and and I heard I heard I heard say give like again and I'm I promise you I'm not this like God talks me all the time kind of thing but in this season um he definitely was and i heard him say give and i thought man okay that's typical um typical answer and uh but i got to thinking about i'm like

okay if we're going to be going if we're going to do these pop-up shops we're going to be going into these cities um let's let's partner with food banks like how can we give we're selling food we're going to the cities. Let's partner with local food banks and make our location a food drive where people can bring non-perishable items and then we'll give a portion of our sales back into that community that we go in. So that was our plan. Our first sale we did in Waco, Texas. We partnered with the food bank there and had some good success. And then when we left, we gave a sizable we were in a portion of our proceeds like in cash to the food bank

there and then I came back to Houston Waco, Texas is a very small very small city especially compared to Houston third, fourth largest city in the U.S. And I say that for buying advertising because we bought, you know,

we would buy the major radio stations in the market. So come back to Houston thinking, okay, well, where do we go next doing the, you know, these truck sales? And I heard God, like I really felt like that we should do Houston. So I went and drove over to the mall close to where we live talked to the to the rep there and he said oh I'm actually the the regional manager for all of the malls in the Houston area that that you know that certain chain of mall and he said man he's like

we could set you up all around the city at five different malls and that way when you buy the radio here, you know, people, you'll have all these different locations and I thought, yeah, that's a great idea. Let's do that. Not really taking into account how expensive that would be. The advertising, the amount of meat that we would need, you know, the trucks, people to work them. Luckily, I have six brothers. So I said all that to say, we, this is the part where we maxed out all our credit cards like doing waco was safe and we um that was this like the safe bet but Houston was way too big for us to take on for being brand new or only our second city to do and um so we extended all of our credit getting meat getting trucks getting um buying radio ads

buying on multiple different major radio stations across Houston and about three days before we were supposed to open like all the money spent we're like and non-refundable and three days before the health department calls and says hey mr. Spell we we have this permit here for you but we're not going to be able we're going to we're going to reject it we don't allow what you're what you're trying to do we don't we don't allow that in the city of houston but i talked to you like a month ago about this and you said yeah we can do it she's like i'm sorry i didn't have a full understanding of what you actually said you were doing you can't sell food out of the truck um in houston unless you're part of an event i'm like what's an event she's like well like the houston

rodeo or a carnival or a fair or a concert and i'm like okay how can we put together a carnival right like in my mind i'm like what can't like what and i mean i'm devastated yeah sitting here getting this this just this rejection and knowing that all of our money is tied up and getting um the these these sales open by this weekend and um i i i think i'm a persuasive person and i did all of the persuading i could do with her on the phone and she's like she's like i'm sorry but we're going to say no hang up with the phone. I go talk to Quirley and I said, hey, the health department just said they're not going to allow us to do any of this. And so tell her the story.

And then she reminds me, she said, well, what about the food drives? Did you say anything about the food drives? And I said, no, I didn't even think about it. So I called the health lady back and I said, because we had already partnered with the Houston Food Bank at this time for each of our locations to be a food drive. And I called the health department back and I said, hey, we're partnering with the Houston Food Bank in each of our locations is a food drive for the Houston Food Bank. Would that be considered an event? And she said, absolutely, that would be considered an event. And, you know, coming in clutch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't tell me to plan an event.

I will plan an event. And, and opening those sales in Houston is what lost good ranchers. Like, we had, we opened on Friday, and we were sold out by Sunday. We thought we had two weeks worth of meat on all of our trucks and we sold out by Sunday and that's really what launched us. But if, you know, but it's because we heard God say give and partner with food banks in the beginning and if we, but we had no idea that we wouldn't even be able, in a lot of cities, we wouldn't have even been able to open up and do, you know, our business model if we weren't partnering with. Wow, that's amazing. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside.

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I just sent this to my best friend and she used it as well. You'll get insight into your hormone levels, your ovarian reserve, which is, aka how many eggs you have compared to other women your age and other important fertility factors. The results go deep into what every hormone means. and you can also download the results to review with your doctor for next steps. Wow, babe, you really know a lot about this. And also, one thing I know is that traditional testing can cost over $600, but Modern Fertility gets you the same info at a fraction of the cost.

Right now, Modern Fertility is offering our listeners $30 off the test when you go to modernfertility.com slash Eastpham 30. This is a limited time offer for $30 off. That means your test will cost $169 instead of the hundreds or even thousands it could cost of doctor's office. Get $30 off your fertility test when you go to modern fertility.com slash eastfam 30. Modern fertility.com slash eastfam 30. We literally have this sitting on our dining room table right now. It's my newest test because it's about time. Wink, wink, wink. Corley, there was no point when all the credit cards were maxed out or like this chaos was

happening with, oh, we actually can't let you in the malls. With your first son. With a son where you were like oh maybe that wasn't god you know like was there a moment of doubt I feel like there probably was I think it was going too fast to it was just yeah so fast I mean the day is like you guys know like you're just living this life where you're like doing so many different things all at once

I don't remember a time where I was like questioning it though I really don't I feel like we've gone through a lot in our in our marriage and a lot of difficult times like that and I've always just had peace from God like I know it's going to be okay And same with that season too. That's a super interesting flip side because people always say like busyness is a form of sin, right? But there's also a story in the Bible about Nehemiah when he's building the wall.

And people keep trying to like approach him with requests and he's, his response is, I'm doing a good thing and I cannot come down. And it's like, to your point, it's like, hey, we're engaged in this task and this activity. and we're not like worried we're not sitting there mulling over oh this isn't going smoothly or like what could be going better but i'm curious how would you describe the operating system of ben in corley because there are a handful of people in my life my dad being one of them probably josh being another who's like a dear mentor where it's they they kind of it's like this intuitive go with the flow it's not planned out like this he used the word himself eclectic a couple times and it's like and it works out it's like how what is what is

that term I'm trying to describe I can't figure out but how do you guys make decisions yeah and it's so funny because naturally I am a planner like I love order I love planning getting the itinerary together for whatever it is but we do live this life where we're just kind of like we don't know what's going to happen next year but we know it's going to be great and and we just take that next step together you know we know that we're in god's will um so yeah we don't have this like game plan every time but we have peace yeah i think you keep your priorities right you keep your heart pure your motive's pure yeah um yeah i don't know This is a completely separate theological question, or topic, I would say, but sometimes I

categorize our life into God's elect. Again, I don't want to get too deep into that, but like... This is deep. This is getting deep quick. No, because we ask, like, we do, like, it's just like, man, it just works out. Like, it's just kind of, you know, and then with our business, it's, we realized this the other day with good ranchers at least we've this is our fourth year and we've we've had four kids we've had one year for every year one kid for every year we've been in business talk about that

I was going to say that throws a wrench on both sides of that story every like that makes the kid thing harder and that makes the business thing harder grow business grow a family at the same time I feel like if there's a couple to do it though yeah why why you I don't I guess because we can handle a lot. We can handle a lot of stress without breaking. And the fact that our marriage is great, you know. But, you know, all of that goes into your relationship with God, right? And making sure, like, that's the first thing.

And then your spouse and then your family and then your business. And I feel like we keep those things in order. Yeah. Should guys give off some chill vibes. Even the pace of which she blinks, it's like, It's chill. Yeah. And that's what everyone's, like, you're so good with the flow.

You're so chill. I'm hoping that is feeding into my children. It's feeding into us already, so it has to be. I am curious, though, because you are just the busy types. You feed off of that. What does your life look like when you're not busy? Are you guys good with silence? And it's like, Andrew and I are not.

We have a hard time when we're not busy. We like to fill our schedules. Literally, we'll sit there and be like an hour and I'll be like, hey, I got to go lift weights or I got to go and it's very, it's very uncomfortable to just sit. That is the same way with us. Like we cannot sit at home. COVID was so horrible to us. It was so terrible.

Maybe that's why we started a business. No, just, I mean, having to quarantine. Maybe that's why we started the business because we're like, no, we need people. We need to see people. So we started the business and it made our employees come to us. maybe that's why we did it because we missed our friends so now all of our friends work for us by good ranchers that's awesome naturally but yeah we get super bored at home like we have to be

we have to have someone over for dinner we have to have families over we need to go do things yeah and that's like I will say this like we and I think we we share this in common with you guys like we we believe in community like we are like humans are communal beings like we're tribal people and like we actually need each other to exist like we need community we need friends you need relationships and um this is i didn't know this when we started like again thought i was going to be a pastor where i mean it was a pastor and like i thought one day we would like my plan was like actually

like start a church plan a church um but like since and i really thought good ranchers was just kind of like a means to an end like okay we'll do this for a little while and and then either turn it over or sell it or just something but i really thought it was going to be like a a means to an end and then we would plan a church but man we're we actually love it and like we i mean from someone who was in full-time ministry and now it's like full-time business owner um like i legitimately know that i've done more ministry through our business than i ever did working for a church not for working for a church or anything like that um but ministry is meeting the needs of people. Like, that's when you minister someone, you meet their needs. And, like, we've, we have

donated millions of meals. We need to update our website, by the way, but we've donated, you know, well over a million meals to food banks across the country. During COVID, we were able to, we were still operating on the trucks. We're 100% online now. But during COVID, we were still operating out of trucks. And we would, multiple times that year, we would park our truck in a parking lot, get on the radio and say hey we're giving it all the way we have my cars lined up that's amazing as long as we give a whole truck of meat away that's sick as people just drove through here you take it you take you take you we did that in Vegas we did it in Houston a few times and on top of still giving to food banks and and stuff like that I actually remember that during COVID here

there were local companies who had freezers full of meat and that were giving them away or selling them at a discount that was something people fought over because it was really hard to find and that was like a huge gift during COVID was being able to find neat I don't know if you remember that for us too yeah there's a a friend just sent me a clip from oh shoot the Michael Jordan documentary the last the last dance where he's talking about him pushing his teammates like hey you were not known as a nice guy you were like the guy always driving and he's kind of speaking about this topic of excellence where he's like hey look doing excellent things comes with the costs and there is something i think so powerful about not trying to be

um like hey you know i'm i'm doing worship through singing songs for sure that's beautiful we need that but also something about like pushing towards excellence and like this way whether you're talking about on the basketball court like in business when you're when you're building a team that is working towards a cause i feel like there is something holy about that This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar Rally, the ultimate off-road challenge.

Learn more at landrover.ca. I want to ask a question off of that, though, that I've been thinking this whole time is the two industry differences of you're within a meat company now and you came from a church, but you still have the church qualities and the foundation of morals. At what point did those worlds fight

when it becomes such a successful business, how do you always maintain that foundation of, we need to still keep those good intentions and not just be fighting to be now a top 100 business in the world? Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah.

so as we grow like the core of good ranchers is we're you know we're Christians we're believers all those things and I feel like we've kind of been able to keep that throughout all of our employees just something like they just gravitate to us we gravitate towards them it just works out really well but as we grow we know we're you know that'll come into play more I'm sure but I feel like as a society as a culture we can all agree that like our mission is to bring people back to the table to bring people to the table it's so important to have discussions together at the table um with your family with your kids like i feel like now that's just so lost you know with screens and technology and all that and so i feel like that's one big thing we can agree on um

and so i think it's like finding that common ground that's not overly in your face you know we're christians and that but just keeping that at the center between people right yeah yeah and then i mean we have the going back to like there's there's this divide of in like the Christian world of like in the church I would say like big C church of you feel like there's ministry and then there's like secular work if you are a Christ follower you're in ministry yeah doesn't matter if you work at Exxon or have your own business or or work at a church there's no such like there is there's there is no divide like if you're a if you were a believer then you're in ministry and you minister to everyone around you like that's just what it's that's how it should be and and I didn't even realize that

though like I didn't realize that working out of church but coming from the church world to now being in the business world we still I think to answer your question we still we view good ranchers as a ministry Um, and like we, uh, with, with, uh, with, uh, with the food banks that we, that we serve with people. Um, like, we, we have an intimate place in people's home. Like, like, we, we share birthdays and anniversaries. Like, people, you know, we'll, um, I realized this maybe a, a year or so ago, someone, um, took a picture and posted on Instagram and, uh, and it was like their 25th wedding anniversary dinner and they were eating our steaks and like, like, I, that, the weight, the weight. And, like, I, that, the weight, the weight, the weight. And, the weight. And, like, the way, the that really hit me then. I was like, oh, man, like, we have a responsibility. Like, these people are planning, like, their 25th and a wedding anniversary meal around something that we're selling.

We have a responsibility for this to be great and this to be excellent. And like Corley said, our mission, we realized this a couple years ago, anybody could put in a box. There's lots of companies put meat in a box. We're not trying to put meat in a box. We want to bring people to the table because food is a fundamental. human need and what do you do on a first date most of the time you go out to eat right um and uh like so like when you have people over to your house what do you like it's around food the last supper

was around food like you know we have this idea of communion is like this cracker and wine no they were it was a meal and they were just breaking bread together like that was like this doing remembrance of me this wasn't eat the cracker drink the juice like i do it every sunday of church um but like this doing remembrance of me is when you're together with your friends don't forget me don't forget my body that was broken don't forget my blood that was poured out when you are when you are together remember me do this in remembrance of me come to the table have fellowship one with another edify each other lift each other up do that in remembrance of me that's communion that's just and so our mission and that's why we you know we strongly feel that you know we're doing

ministry more now than we ever did before is because we're bringing people to the table of fellowship and of communion and and in giving quality food that they can trust on that table. Yeah. I would say one of my favorite characteristics of Christ is hospitality. And I feel like we do that well as a couple. And so I feel like it flows into our businesses. We just had the opportunity to go down to Atlanta. and stay with a Chick-fil-A family,

which was absolutely wild. I don't know how that happened. But they hosted us, and they had, like, the food that our kids eat. They had, like, a little baby bath thing for us, and it was like, dang, there's something about when people put the thought into the details of being hosted where you're like, wow, I just feel disarmed.

And it's like, if you wouldn't mind sharing, though, on this topic of fellowship and community, I feel like a temptation when something is going poorly, at least in my life, is I kind of isolate myself. I pull back from community, from fellowship. You being on staff at a church, was this during the first marriage? Yeah. How is that?

Because there's a lot of dynamics, one, being at a church, too, like that being probably the main source of your community. Like, how did you navigate? So it was actually the loneliest time in my life because, like, that church family was my family. And so through, yeah, when, like, so during the hard times of the marriage, it, man, we live in such a, it's so easy to fake it today because like you can just take a you can take a picture with your with your spouse and post it on Instagram and or Facebook and everybody thinks oh look at them they're perfect and they're happy and like on the inside yours is dying right but anybody

can post for a picture and we live in this world where like we're very easily um not judged but known by your social presence right so um so like we looked perfect on the outside and and and and around people so no one knew so I was a very very lonely time because um on the inside I was I didn't I didn't I didn't want to be around people I didn't want to and I'm a very I'm a very like like I need people like um I'm the type of person I I would love I have no fear of being around people I like being around people like people charge me um but like I would like I would go to a party where I don't know anyone um and I love that situation

yeah yeah like and like but um I could just go and just sit in the room and just like watch I like the people watch I like to people watch yeah yeah and uh but uh but yeah I like being around people and and I mean I don't and I don't have to be like even have to be engaging in conversation I just like being around people. I like, you know, seeing what's going on and hearing what's going on. It makes me sound like a, makes me sound kind of creepy. I don't mean it that way. But anyway, and then, so then when I got divorced and that, like, it was, that was the loneliest time of my life.

Like, because all of that community that I had, all of that relationship that I had, you know, divorce is bad. Like, there's no winners. like everyone loses and um well because divorce is death it's like a severing of of and um and so yeah I mean I legitimately had to start over didn't think that would be the case but um it was do you have to leave the church I did dang I didn't have to leave the church um but it just you're strongly encouraged yeah yeah it was that's like kind of

It's just, yeah, complicated. On the one hand, it's, wow, this is exactly when you need church the most, right? Like, the community. Anyway, a lot of thoughts. That's part two. Yeah. What's, this is more directly for listeners, but I feel like we do have a community of people who are single or coming from a divorce or a ex or a divorce. how asking you

Corley what's the best way to support someone going into a new relationship if they're coming from either a broken relationship or a divorce or I would say so before we got married I had just come out of a really terrible relationship myself we weren't married but we might as well have been like it was so bad and so I feel like both of us coming from these really terrible situations that's kind of what went into the whirlwind romance and we you know got married quickly but we've had the same what the non-pg version is we actually the first time i met corley was on a double date with my ex and her ex oh my gosh there's the wow that is a wild so weird

our first picture together is that i mean world's colliding Yeah. A great story. Hey, it was just a forecast. I don't recognize it. Don't do that. Don't do that. Maybe.

No. I would say just really listen to your intuition and to God, obviously. But any red flags, move on. Don't try to make it work if it has to be worked, made it work in the dating process. Like, I feel like so many times, we have so many, like, young friends, young couples that are dating or, you. married and like our um our first assistant that we heard at spell events she's happily married now and she's great and they have a baby and i'm so happy for her but we watched her go through those early college years of you know those relationships and i'm like girl just move on you know

but it's easier said than done when you're in it you know it's really hard to let it go if dating isn't good if dating isn't great yeah because marriage will be hard if dating isn't if if if you're if you guys aren't madly in love if you're fighting all the time even you if you guys are fighting all the time even if you're supposed to be getting married in two weeks like if you're fighting all the time hit the pause button like it doesn't get like it doesn't get better how you date is how you will be married bank more on course when you switch to a scotia bank banking package learn more at scotia bank slash banking packages. Conditions apply.

Scotia Bank. You're richer than you think. And how fitting is this? Today's show is also sponsored by, you guessed it, the good ranchers. We are honored to sit down and hear about their story and we also wanted to tell you a little bit more about their product. Yes, and stay tuned because it only gets more interesting. The good ranchers are here to change the way you buy meat and hope to bring everyone to the table to share in the best of what makes life good. Good ranchers is an exceptional. accessible and affordable bridge between you and American farmers. What we love most about the Good Ranchers is that 100% of their meat is born, raised, and harvested in the United States.

Your order is supporting local American farmers instead of foreign corporations. I think one of my favorite things that they do is they donate 10 meals to families in need for every box purchased. So you can eat good and do good at the same time. On top of it being a meat delivery service that's budget friendly, Good Ranchers is honestly steakhouse quality. We used their stakes for date night one night, and they were so incredible. Good Ranchers was kind enough to give our listeners you a special code. You can use code Family Made for $30 off plus free express shipping. Visit good ranchers.com forward slash family made to get $30 off plus free express shipping on your order.

We'll also link it down below, and let's get back to it. I actually remember someone telling me that coming off of a bad relationship meeting, Andrew, there's such this like fictional story you tell yourself of oh I can change or I can change them or it'll get better once and it truly it like who you date is who you marry you evolve but

you're not going to become a different person yeah and I feel like the well the let's let's be really clear the best version of yourself is when you're dating someone like you're you're trying to you're literally trying to woo that person trying to make that person like you so you you're putting all of the best of you forward I'm not pointing at you now I was

earlier but you're just sitting right there you're putting your best foot forward you're putting like the best the best you will be is when you're dating not that you can be but I'm saying typically. Steve. Mm-hmm. What are you, go ahead. Well, I was going to say, and I feel like once you're married, those parts that you probably, like, tried to hide a little more.

Yeah, they come out. They do. They do. I mean, we've got to live with them, work through it, so. What are Ben and Corley's goals? What's a successful life? Raise good humans. Yeah.

Number one. Raise solid children. in a crazy, messed up world. This world is something else, but it's ours and it's where we live. So, yeah, our first and foremost, our, you know, like, as a, like, as a ex-pastor or, however you want to call it, former pastor, my ministry, my first ministry is to my family. to my kids like before um before other people before the church before not before god but before the church before the people before our business it's it's to my kids and um i want to i want to be able to be there

for my for my for my children be there for my kids and watch them grow like i mean honestly like biggest aspiration is to just raise kids who love god um love each other honor people and yeah yeah about you i agree has and and not just hopefully they won't be like vegetarians or vegans yeah that would be that would be the worst how has it been growing a company at the pace you have been with like has there been a lot of things that need to get figured out as far as oh yeah even with our i mean we're not near the size good ranchers is but it's like man it's time intensive kids are time intensive business time intensive yeah and that's like the heart like all of our hearts are the

same because that's the most that you know is like what season you're in you know you could look at us and say oh it's probably hard for them because they have more kids but it's like it was really hard when we had one kid because that was just we were just pushing it yeah that's all you know yeah it's all you know yeah more kids yeah you it's yeah your life is just as hard with two kids as our heart as our life is with four kids because it's what you have and sometimes i say like oh we're building a business we're operating from the trenches but i wonder i'm like is that why things are going so well is that why because you're i don't know because you're putting it more effort i don't know interesting we are in the trenches at all times our kids are amazing though

that helps well that's help i have all the things i'm most proud of my children I'm most proud of our five-year-old a couple weeks ago. I had some mistakes out and put him on the counter. And he walks by and he goes, a rabbi and just keeps on walking. The five-year-old? That's amazing. And then I look over a few minutes later.

And our three-year-old, his name is Wilder, rightfully named. And he's licking the raw meat. Oh, my gosh. There you go. Yeah, that sounds like our second kid, for sure. our second kid will lick anything off the ground yeah

Ben I don't know if you knew this I am the proud co-founder of a local group here called the Nashville grill club okay let's go really elite group of dads he's meet on a weekly way exaggerating no it's not like this is the elite of the elite

it's real we have proprietary techniques the double seer for the Tomahawk steak come on Am I wrong, though? We're good. We're good.

We got a spice man, a sauce man, and the grill man, the wing man. I want to join the club. We have tri-outs. I think you are the most qualified. Yeah. Yeah. We have trials. So I'll let you know in the next one.

Let me know. I'll start. I will say, though, kind of bringing a full circle moment. During COVID, we felt like we were losing so much community that we actually had this really small group of friends. It was three couples. who kind of just became our COVID community and they came over every other day and all we would do is grill

and we would grill a meal together and eat dinner and it became this thing where the guys would grill meat and we would just sit and have time together NGC baby still fun. I love it. We got T-shirts and everything we can maybe send you some. It's amazing. Exclusive merch. I'm kind of kidding

but I'm also not. Yeah, no, he's serious This is completely sarcastic. No, he's serious. There is something special about cooking, though, where it's like, I found it such a, there's very few things in life where it just consumes, it's like doing a puzzle. You're fully focused on it.

You're like building something or like progressing through something. And when you're doing it with people, it's such a, like you're not on your phone when you're doing that. It's like, hey, tell me about how you're weak was, you know? And it's, it unlocks a lot of the magic of relationships. And the thing about grilling is, one man can't grill. Not effectively.

You need one man to do the work and another to stand there and tell him what he should be. Exactly. Exactly. I will say the amount of fires I've actually seen them start, though, has been concerning. There was one day in the middle of COVID. I look out our patio doors. Our baby, our infant is like crying in the nursery. I'm like trying to balance both.

And I just turn in our entire like Traeger grill. So a big, big grill is completely engulfed. And I was like, oh my gosh. Turns out when the little thing says you should clean it, I listen to it. I got a lot of videos. Last question for you guys. I'm charcoal all the way about that. Really?

Good to know. I'm purest. Like my pancakes. Said that twice now. Yeah. If you guys were to take away one lesson from your time married, your time when you're dating and single, starting a business together. operating now a very successful business coming from the church all of it with four kids all

about 15 months apart each one what's your biggest lesson in relationships that you would share give grace a lot of grace freaking hear four did you hear that uh yeah okay if you hear that i mean it's a daily reminder though You have to get it into a ritual, right, to keep it going. But I would say grace. Yeah. We try to be very intentional, even with their kids, that we came first. And we remind ourselves, and we tell our kids, even though they're little and they don't fully understand,

we tell them that we come first. The other night, we went on a date and we were leaving. And sometimes, you know, some, I don't know. I don't know what you guys do, but, like, some people try to, like, sneak out of the house because they don't want the kids like, but, and there's an age where that, that, that's appropriate, but with, like, our five-year-old, I told him, I said, hey, mommy and daddy are going on a date, but I don't want you to leave. And I said, well, son, like, me and Mommy were here before you were here and just kind of explained to him that we have a relationship and we have, we work on our relationship, and we need to spend time with just each other. And so as hard as it is, we make time to be with each other. Yeah, I love that. I'm inspired.

I think two things that stuck out from this conversation. One, you don't know what next year is going to look like, but you know it's going to be great. That's the most important thing. Like, it could be on paper a terrible year. The business could not do well. Something could happen, whatever. But it's like when you have the perspective that this is special, this is for a reason, this is great, that puts everything in a different light, you know, and there's something so powerful about that. The other thing that just gives me chillest thinking about it is when your wife believes in you as a husband.

So we've been married six and a half years and never did I really feel like I needed Sean's like support, which is arrogant. until two months ago there was like something that happened and I was really just like on the rocks I felt just I was not in a good place and Sean was like she's like hey we can handle this we got this and that was so amazing like six years in here I am just like doing my thing and then I hit a speed bump and she's right there to like hold my hand through it it's like man that's the best part of marriage you know it's so awesome and you need the like you can't get it anywhere else besides marriage you need the commitment you need the daily struggles like the the hiccups that happen it's magic no one can support you like your wife

no one can tear you down like like your wife yeah like you guys's words to us mean more on the positive and on the negative than any other voice yeah any other voice there's a there's a story um of of a man and his wife they're an older man and a wife they're sitting at a red light and um and look over and there's a guy like doing like mowing the sidewalk or picking up trash and the man um he's the mayor of the little town that they live in and he looks at his wife and he says hey isn't that so-and-so and she's like oh yeah it is he's like didn't you date him in high school and she said yeah i did and he said well aren't you glad you married me said to him because I'm the mayor of the city and she said honey if I'd married him he'd be the

mayor oh I love that it's freaking true ain't it true yeah oh man I am I'm thinking of the word Bob golf uses the term left whip yeah whimsy and I feel like that's kind of uh that's kind of how I'm perceiving from an outside viewpoint your guys is life and I I appreciate that yeah yeah about the hard stuff. Part two. Part two. Thank you for the time. This was a real treat.

Thank you guys. We're so excited to be here. I didn't say that at the beginning, but thank you all for having us on. It's a pleasure to meet y'all. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah. We're excited to sponsor the show. We're excited.

I am beyond sold in now. Are you getting? Now learning everything? That's awesome. I will say, and I don't know if this will make this part, But I think the most fascinating thing, being able to work with different businesses and so many over the years, it's really cool to find the ones who truly have a heart for the intentionality behind their business. So often you find people who are starting businesses for the success of it and whatever success looks like to them, they'll figure it out and make it, whether it's doing not as high quality or cutting, whatever it is. and just to hear the intentionality behind what it is you're creating.

It's really, really powerful. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate that. Thanks for letting us be a part of it. This was a real treat. If you want to find out more about Ben Corley, Good Ranchers, Spell Event.

Yeah. Well, we'll include some information. But this was a treat. Thank you, guys. Thank you.