Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How to Lead Your Business (and Yourself) Through COVID-19: Interview with Brent Beshore

Episode Date: May 14, 2020

https://www.permanentequity.com/brent-beshore (Brent Beshore), founder and CEO of https://www.permanentequity.com/ (Permanent Equity), joins https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick) to discuss how he is leading his business through COVID-19. Brent shares honestly about his battle with anxiety, and how following Jesus is shaping how he responds, thinks about himself, and leads others in crisis. Interested in more content like this? Follow Brent on Twitter https://twitter.com/BrentBeshore (@Brent Beshore). Or scroll down for more resources and related episodes, including https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-the-secret-religion-of-secular-salvation-is-unveiled-by-coronavirus/ (How the Secret Religion of Secular Salvation is Unveiled) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/pride-before-the-fall-1-peter-57/ (How to Give Anxiety to God). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10 Minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. On today's episode, I'm going to interview Brent B. Shore. He's an author and the owner of permanent equity. Now, like most private equity firms, they hold multiple companies. But Brent's company really stands out because they don't buy companies to just strip and sell them. No, he's buying companies to keep them, to help keep their existing leadership in place and help

those companies succeed. But I didn't want to talk to Brent about his business and business model. I wanted to talk to him because he's like a lot of people out there right now. He's trying to follow Jesus in the midst of a looming economic crisis. But unlike a lot of business owners, he doesn't have to worry about just one business. He has to worry about all nine that his company owns. That's making payroll, keeping employees and a lot of families afloat. And so I wanted to hear about how he's navigating through anxiety and uncertainty, and how following Jesus is shaping that journey. So Brent, you own nine businesses. So tell us a bit more about them and how they're doing. We have offices in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, Dallas, Oklahoma City, St. Louis, Chicago,

Atlanta, and Norfolk, Virginia. So coast to coast, we're in construction, manufacturing, aerospace, recruitment. There's a lot of different industries. So we span industries, we span geographies. And I can tell you that there's not a business that hasn't been touched by this. And there's not a business where it hasn't been difficult, even if immediate sort of consequences are not being felt. It depends on we can get into technical stuff like your sales cycles and how long it'll take for you to feel that your customers sort of aren't coming back to get serviced anymore. So some businesses have very short turnarounds, others have longer.

But I can tell you that in every single one of our businesses, there's been a lot of hard conversations. There's been a lot of productive conversations. I don't want to skip over how difficulty can create opportunities. I mean, sort of in my own heart, this experience has created a lot of opportunities for me to see what I really treasure, what I really value. And I think in businesses, it's given people the opportunity to rethink a lot of their expense structures and what are they spending money on. And what does that actually mean for what they believe, sort of in practice

versus what they would say they believe. Yeah, that's great. So two months before COVID-19, your company changes its name. You go from Adventures to Permanent Equity. And anytime there's a name change, that's exciting stuff, new horizons. You're re-envisioning what the future is going to be. Where did you think you were going? It feels like a lifetime ago now to go back just two months. And in fact, I had this very jarring experience. I was out in Phoenix with some of our portfolio companies out there. And we were talking about expansion.

We were talking about new offices. We're talking about new sort of adjacent lines of business that we could get into. It was business was booming really across the portfolio. Things were in really good shape. And we were talking about expansion. We had just raised a new large fund. We've hired a bunch of people over the last couple of years. Things were flourishing, right?

and like really looking up. And it's interesting to take myself back to that psychology. I certainly felt in control. I certainly felt like I knew what I was doing. I occasionally had these moments where maybe I don't. But in general, of most days I woke up and felt like things were good, in control and enabled to handle kind of whatever life could throw at you.

And then... You would have never said that, though. No, I would never have said that. But internally. Yeah. My idol, by far, biggest idol in my life is the business, is measuring my work. and by the performance of the company.

And I mean, that's sort of, if I don't drag myself to the cross, that's where my mind goes, is to how can I make more, do more, be more impressive, conquer more horizons. I'm a type A kind of go after it type guy. And yeah, I wouldn't have said it prior to two months ago. And look, when I really would think about it, I knew that I wasn't in control. I had plenty of stuff that reminded me of that. But I would say waking up on a daily basis, it kind of felt like I know. where this thing's going and I've gotten some level of certainty and then the rug gets pulled out from underneath you.

I think that's so many people's experience, even if they don't own a business, is a sense of certainty. You knew exactly what was going to happen. I mean, we're recording this in early May. You knew what was going to happen in May, right? There's going to be high school graduations and college graduations and people will be getting ready to go on their summer vacation. Schools are going to be letting out. I mean, we knew these things for certain two months ago and all of it's gone. And you don't realize how much of your life. you feel like you're in control just because you think you've got these certainties, which as it turns out, aren't certain it at all. I love sports. And so I'd gotten invited to the Masters for the first time in my life this year.

And I was so, so, so excited to go. It's been like sort of a lifelong dream to go to the Masters. And it's interesting because I remember when I got invited, I was like, finally, finally I get to go to the Masters. This is my moment. And then it's like I had these sort of repeated like small death experiences after sort of the coronavirus came out. And you were sort of realizing you come to these.

realization that these things aren't going to happen. And I remember the day that I was like, oh, no, I get the Masters is probably going to get canceled. And then sure enough, it got canceled, or at least I think they said it got moved, but it's probably going to be canceled. So COVID-19 hits. And what happens? What happens with permanent equity? The short answer is that I became, I think it was March 5th, I became aware that this was going to be a real thing. And I kind of pulled the three alarm fire. I sent a note to the team on the morning of the 5th and said, guys, I think, We need to actively start planning, having conversations with our portfolio companies, but I don't even know where to start. I don't know what this means. Did the companies take it serious? I mean, March 5th is about,

at least by my recollection, 10-ish days before things really hit. Do the people in this company say, okay, Brent, that's nice, but we all know this isn't going to happen. Let's move on. It ranged across board. I mean, I think all of us, me included, like I had to have a couple of my friends shape me by the lapels and say, hey, you need to really pay attention to this for me to even realize. I mean, I kind of went through these stages of denial and then sort of like bargaining and as this is really going to happen. I don't want to look stupid. And so I would say is to be fair, most of the company leadership did not immediately say, you know, you're correct. I think this is going to be a big thing and I think that we need to really take this seriously. A lot of them did what I did, which was say, hey, thank you. I appreciate the heads up.

I think this thing's going to be fine, though. And we really had to kind of shake them awake and say, no, really, we need to start planning for this. And thank goodness we did. I mean, it gave us the opportunity. to start putting some things in motion that we're very helpful at the company level. And I said having great conversations reevaluating the communication style. I mean, one of the things that's come out of this that I think is really, really positive is the fact that we have much better and more frequent communications with everyone, just as a result of this sort of our mentality has been overcommunicate to everyone and everything. And that glue that we take for granted when we can see each other.

And I will, I'll tell that person next week, we don't know that. we're not going to be physically in the same place. So it's been really nice in that sense to draw closer to people in some ways, even though there's more physical distance. Okay, so I want to know about you. Things start getting bad. The country's virtually shutting down, I mean, on a dime. What's happening inside of you? I probably had probably a week of just really intense anxiety, if I'm being honest. And look, I've struggled with anxiety most of my life. When your default is you believe you're in control and you know you're not enough and you know you're not actually in control, but you're you're you want to believe you're in control. I mean, the only logical conclusion of that is anxiety. And I would say I went through a week of sort of just latent anxiety and fear and intense praying around that. I mean, that's one of the things that God, I feel like, has really shown up in this, in a multitude of ways, one of which is that I feel more drawn and more loved upon by God that this is a real problem. And it is a real fear. Fears okay. I mean, we're going to have fears. And I think if you read through Psalms, it's what do you do with those fears? Where do you take those fears? And so I went through sort of a week of oscillating back and forth between what I would call atheist Brent and believer Brent where I have these moments and freakouts of everything's going to go down the tubes and my lifetime of work that I've worked so hard and I've earned this is going to go up in flames and then realizing that I haven't earned any of this and that it's been a gift. And if God wants to take it in a different direction, that's his right. I mean, he's sovereign over.

all, and I never was in control. And I'm not in control now. And I think since then, there has been a indescribable peace that I've had in moments in my life. And through some sort of small stretches, I've never had it this long, though. And again, interrupted by these moments of fear and anxiety, I'm not saying I'm sit there. It's like blissfully peaceful all day long. But most of the time now, my default is feeling at peace and at ease with where things are while dealing with some really difficult situations and some stressful situations at the same time. So it sounds like you were experiencing, you're vacillating between intense anxiety to, okay, there's a bigger picture here.

There's someone I can trust. I was never in control. I can be okay because I know someone else actually has this in his hands. When you think about the anxiety you were experiencing when coronavirus starts up, I mean, on a scale of one to 10, how bad is it? Like 10 is the worst anxiety I've ever experienced my life. One is I'm just kind of low level ongoing anxiety. Yeah, I mean, I would say it was probably a nine or a 10.

I mean, it looked like for about a week. I mean, I'm this guy that's a joke in my office. It's called Brent lag. It's like jet lag only when you're being around me for very long. And especially when you travel with me, it's because I have all these plans that I'll make. And anytime something changes, I can run down all these rabbit holes.

And so my mind just naturally, whenever all this hit, I ran down all the rabbit holes at all the different companies of all the consequences that we're going to happen. And of course, they're not positive. And I could create a scenario where every single one of our businesses goes under. We lose all of our investors. We have no business.

And by the way, I think those are still very, very real possibilities, even though in the intervening weeks it's gotten, it's actually turned out in the short term better than I expected. I think long term is still going to be quite difficult. But yeah, I mean, I would say it's a nine or ten on the scale. And I think being able to take myself back to realizing that the God of the universe loves me, cares deeply for me, knows me personally. And his answers to my prayers are either yes, not yet, or I'm going to give you something way better than what you asked for.

Keller has this great quote that I love to sort of when I preach to myself, remind myself of, which is God doesn't give you what you want, but God gives you what you would have wanted had you known what he knows. I think that's just an amazing thing to know that God's got a plan and that we're called to just be faithful, to rely upon, to trust in him. And it's okay to be honest with God. I mean, read the Psalms. I mean, this is the most beautiful thing. It's not like you need to come clean yourself up and sort of wash yourself and get yourself all prepped up and ready to present yourself to God. God wants the messy, the real you.

And I think that there are certainly moments where I've gotten down on my knees in the middle of the night in the last six to eight weeks and begged God for rescue. And I think that's okay. I think God wants us to take our fears and anxieties to him and not deny that we're having them. How long did it take you to say, I've got to go to God with this? Was that a automatic reflex? Or was it something that, no, it took me a week. And then I finally got myself there.

I mean, honestly, this is one of the gifts that I've been given is the more I grow in my faith and my relationship and walk. I am taking things back more and more often. I would say the longest I went, gosh, it was probably maybe three or four hours, maybe half a day. And by the way, giving it back to God was then giving it to him and immediately taking it back. So I don't want it to be like, I took all my anxiety to God and I prayed and then I just went to this blissful state. It was I took my anxiety to God and I prayed about it and then I immediately reverted back to having anxiety. And then I took it to him again. And it was just this repeated process of sort of releasing it and surrendering it.

And then just my sinful self just wants to take it back and wants to say, well, I'm in control. I'm going to do things with this. I'm going to make it happen. And just sort of leave God off to the side. Thankfully, God keeps calling me back. So you have a tendency to, it sounds like worst case scenario, everything. My wife loves to do this. It's a way that we're very different.

And so she kind of laughed with me. It's about two weeks after coronavirus, her friends were all finally. beginning to realize, like, we might not see each other for a while. And this is really sad. And Emily, she's just taking it in stride, but she's like, oh, yeah, I knew that about a month ago. I put all the pieces together because she runs down the worst case scenario track. But in the moment, when you have to be constantly thinking through, what if this happens, what if this happens, what if this happens? I've got to have a plan for each thing in play. It's incredibly overwhelming. It's incredibly anxiety-inducing. So my guess is there's a lot of people listening to this.

That's them. They're wired to think about the worst-case scenario and to, take it to its logical end. How do you get out of that? I mean, this feels like an endless loop that you can't escape. This is not the answer you want, but I also think that maybe in some ways that's a gift from God. Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses. By being able to walk down the path and see what the future might hold, it does allow you to plan for things that maybe other people wouldn't have thought about and to be able to be helped in some ways. And I think that's a gift as well. I think the ideal combination is to walk down all those paths, realize what could be there, realize what can be done now.

and pray about what God's direction is that you take and then pray that none of those things happen. I think it's sort of pray and post the guard if you want to take it back to Old Testament scripture. So God's asking us, yes, to pray, but also post a guard, take action. Do things if you know that there are dangers there. We are not passive floating along the river of life. Like we can swim. We can paddle. And I think that God wants us as part of that process of growing the garden, building cities,

to engage actively in our work and be thoughtful about what risk. are out there and what risks we want to take and what we don't want to take, knowing that ultimately God can do anything. God can rescue us out of any situation. And I agree with you. I think it actually is a tremendous gift. It's one of the things, again, my wife is similar, and it's a huge gift in our relationship, because I don't tend to take the worst case scenario. I'm a brighter side of life kind of person. I'll see whatever the hope is going to be and maybe deceive myself at times into thinking that that's where we're going and I'm thankful to have someone in my life who is ready for the worst case scenario when it hits, because as it turns out, as we've all

discovered, it does hit. And it's obvious that even for you and your company, that was a great benefit for your company, that you were able to, even a week ahead of things, be there, be thinking about it and be ready. One of her strategies that she often does is she runs the scenario out to its most ridiculous logical end. I don't know if you do this, maybe. It's just her, but I think it's funny. It's like, if you keep going down the road, they eventually are ending up in poverty, homeless, on the street, hopeless, and then you just start laughing because you're like, okay, I don't think that's probably. That's good. to happen. Yeah, yeah. I have a tendency to actually, I'm fairly optimistic most of the time,

and I do run the scenarios both ways. So I run them, what's the positive conclusion? What's the sort of downside? I just try to run all the different scenarios, but certainly emotionally learning not to meet a problem halfway, because most of the problems never actually come. There's a, I think it was a Mark Twain quote. I mean, everything's attributed Mark Quain. So I don't, it's probably not actually Mark Twain. Just say it's by Mark Twain will believe. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But he said, I suffered a great many injustices in my life and some actually happened. And I think that's something that I've learned a lot of the suffering that I've had in my life is definitely the result of me projecting forward and assuming certain things. And that's been something upon reflection that I've really tried to work through.

And stuff's going to happen. The unexpected is going to happen always. That's the only thing you can count on. And I think preparation really matters, being conservative in your decision making in some ways, it matters. And that's definitely a philosophy that we've had here at permanent equity that served as well is we typically use no debt in our transactions. Why? Because we think that there's a lot more things that could happen than people are projecting will happen. And so we want to have that conservatism run through in the sense of being able to take the right risks as opposed to if you're over levered. And I think this applies to people's personal lives as well as even time. If you're over levered with your time and you have no margin, you're going to suffer things that you weren't going to suffer any other way.

Same thing in business. If you've got these big debt payments you have to make and you have no flexibility in what you use for your free cash flow, yeah, when something little bump in the road hits, it can over-torting. turn the entire Apple card. So let's try to do this live. What right now is the biggest fear that you're wrestling with? And what would you say to yourself in the midst of that fear? If I'm being honest, my current biggest fear is there's a lot of government intervention and a lot of government picking and choosing going on right now. And no one's quite sure what it means and how it's going to impact the futures of companies' lives. And I think it can create anxiety in me because it's this big unknown factor and it's a tremendous amount of intervention that's going on unprecedented amounts of intervention that I think everyone's trying to do the right thing. I think everyone's hearts are in

the right place and they're trying to fill this hole in the economy that has been manmade to mental models that we've thought about a lot in this is kind of prohibition being one. What does it mean for the government to mandate a shutdown of sort of an entire part of the economy? And the other one's eminent domain, which is the government for the good of everyone, the government's taking something from you and sort of appropriating it to the state and compensating you for it. So I don't look at the current government intervention as being purely a stimulus. I think that's pretty crude and honestly not a helpful way to look at it. I think that it's some combination of sort of what do you do when you prohibit certain types of activities and sort of take what maybe it be

labor or whatever would be as imminent domain. But I think regardless, it's creating a lot of distortions, which no one knows what those are the consequences? I mean, are we going to have rampant inflation. We had launched a program through permanent equity to help provide some liquidity to business owners. And then the government went over the top of us. And it basically rendered a month of worth of work completely irrelevant. And so a lot of these things, and by the way, I'm not begrudging. I think that was the right decision for the government to make to do that. But it's just it's a lot of uncertainty that's compounded by the uncertainty of this large intervening force that is trying to do well. But as we know, maybe the government's not the most

efficient manner of doing things. And so there's just a lot of that uncertainty. is out there right now. And I have to imagine, again, on a different scale, there are a lot of business owners who are experiencing similar things. You start preparing to go in one direction only to find out, I can't go that direction. Someone's told me I can't do it. Or you try to provide for people in a certain way, and you find out, well, actually someone else is going to provide that exact same thing. And in a very uncertain world, you're just rolling the dice, and you're hoping that you come up big. And that can be really scary. So in the midst of your fears, what are you telling yourself? I'm telling myself that there's a creator, God of the universe,

who created everything holds me together, gives me breath and minute by minute, allows me to live that knows me and cares for me, and we'll work it out for my good and his glory. And I think practically, how does that reflect? It reflects being a little bit more kind and generous. I mean, look, anybody who works with me or my wife who listens to this, if she does, may laugh. I've got my ongoing faults. But I think that trying to be generous, trying to be kind, trying to serve others is something that I'm trying to bring myself to every day. I sort of wake up, I roll out of bed and I think about me. What do I want? What do I need? What are my hopes and my dreams and what do I want to happen? And I think whenever I head down that path, it's got one terminating

point and it's on myself and it's a path of ruin and I can feel my pride swelling up. And so I think the only thing that's been consistent in my life that's helped me along and reduced fear, reduced anxiety, made me more kind and gentle is bringing myself back to the cross and that Jesus is king and was enthroned on the cross. And he reigns and rules. and he's the living God. And it's the most amazing. It's the best news ever. It's the gospel, the good news. And reminding myself of that fact that I am a bit player. In 100 years, no one's going to know my name. In 100 years, it will be as if I never existed. And having some humility in this thing, it's not all about there's an entire six, seven billion people. I don't know how many

billion people are on this earth now. And a lot of people are suffering. And look, I am one person and I have a role to play and I got to try to focus on what's that bit part in the much larger story, the true story of reality that God's giving me to play. And I don't think that he is blessing me so that I can pamper myself and live a life of comfort, although I certainly enjoy it. Man, I love comfort and security. I love it. I crave it. He's not blessing me just to have it terminate on myself. He's blessing me to be a blessing to others. And I think that's probably been my biggest struggle through this whole thing is what does it look like to serve others? What does it look like to love your neighbor in an environment where you sort of physically distancing

from them? What does it look like to try to take on other people's burdens and try to lighten their load when it feels like you've got a lot of burdens on your own and trying to be responsible and not overextend yourself? So I don't think I have any good answers, but I can tell you that's what's kind of my mind. Yeah, I think it's interesting. We all crave certainty desperately in our lives and we have had in the Western world at least an unprecedented amount of certainty. I mean, you think about people who lived even 200 years ago, they weren't certain if they were going to have food next year because I didn't know how the crop was going to do. They weren't certain that their child who they loved and cared for wasn't going to die

of some disease that a lot of people's kids died from. They had so little certainty in the wife. And now we live in the West where it's December and I can get bananas and I can have whatever I want whenever I want. I can order something on Amazon and it's at my front door and I don't have to fear any of the diseases that historically have killed millions of people. I have perfect certainty about my life. And what I'm hearing you say is that those things were never certain to begin with. The things that we take as givens in our lives, they were never, ever certain to begin with.

The only thing that's really certain in this world is God and the things that God is promising us. And in some ways, one of the beauties of COVID-19 is that it is pulling those rugs out from underneath us. It's taking away all the things that we were actually resting in, all the things that were actually giving us our security, and forcing us to put that trust in God instead. One of the things we've talked a little bit about is how this whole thing is unveiling what I like to call secular salvation myths. The things that we in our Western secular world look to to give us a sense of security. comfort, salvation, we might say, and how in a one fail swoop, that's just disappeared. All of those things are gone. As you look at friends, people around you, and the things that they maybe were taking certainty

and comfort and salvation, what do you think are some of the biggest things that people have lost that maybe God is offering them instead? Instead of talking about other people, why don't I just talk about me and my heart? I mean, I certainly still have tremendous idols in my life. And anytime hardship is present, it illuminates where you really do find your comfort and your salvation. And I say, for sure, business has been one of mine. I mean, I said that was the biggest one. And I think that this has revealed that I am not my work. And by the way, there's going to be ups and downs. And it's sort of what God promises is not the prosperity gospel. It is not, if God loves you,

everything's going to be fine, you're going to be rich and wealthy and have everything you ever wanted. It's you get God. And that's awesome. And that's way better, actually. than all the other stuff because it's all going to go. And I think taking comfort in my health. I've had very good health. I had some health issues actually recently that I thought we're going to get a lot worse than they've gotten better. I have no idea why they got bad initially and why they got better now. Certainly prayed a lot about them, but realizing that you could get sick and you could die. I mean, I'm 37. You're such a young and you probably don't have these thoughts, but I only recently realizing maybe I will die someday. And I think this is just comforting to know that

if you're already taking yourself there, then what are you fearful of? Family, the fact that my family could be affected by this, I think is certainly you have this idea in your head of what you want and having a healthy family. I've got three young daughters and a wife at home. And it's scary to think what might happen. And then this sort of the secular salvation myth, as you said, this idea, and I fall into this too, that capitalism will save us or technology will save us or whatever the thing is, human ingenuity will save us. And look, I think all those are good things. I mean, that's the thing about idols. It's taking a good thing and making it an ultimate thing. God gave us this predisposition to build.

Like we are made in the image of God. We are built to be builders to create and to invent. And certainly the response to COVID has been in many ways remarkable. There's never been a time in history when more people have been working in common on the same things and breaking down a lot of barriers. And of course, there's all the same mess that you'd expect in politics and the economics of it. But I would say for me, it's stripping me a lot of. just this idea that any of those things are ultimately going to last and that they can be taken away from me quickly, unexpectedly, and there's really nothing I can do about it.

In some ways, I mean, that's where a lot of the fear and anxiety, if I didn't have living king that I believed in that loves me and cares for me, that'd be terrifying. I think this is where I lived most of my 20s and even into my early 30s as sort of an express atheist, functional atheist, sort of it was a long-a-spectrum, but I don't know where I would be right now if I didn't have my faith. I mean, honestly, it is a scary world, and we've been able to ignore it for a long time. As you said, we've had a heck of a run over the last 70 years. And for the most part, if you live in a concrete jungle and everything's manmade and everything can get delivered to you at your whims and you have plenty of money and everything's fine, and you can live under this myth for a really long time.

And I think that's what has popped up in a lot of people's lives, mine included. And it's been a gift. I mean, it's really is a gift in many ways. It's a gift that I don't want to be given again anytime soon, but it's certainly been a gift. So this happens to Brent six or seven years ago. Brent, before Jesus and COVID-19 pops up. It's wrecking the business that you've spent your life building. I'm not saying it's wrecking your business, but just to imagine for a second here.

How do you think you respond differently? I would have been hyper-anxious. I probably would have been much more erratic in my behavior. I probably would have been much quicker to act, and that would not have been good, I think that I probably would have had a lot of anger and frustration building inside of me. And I still feel all these things today. I'm trying to project, what if I didn't take those to the cross? What if I didn't pray on them?

And what if God didn't release me from them? It's not a good place I'd be in. And by the way, it doesn't take COVID to cause that. I mean, if you take me back eight or nine years ago, I mean, I was not a Christian. I was not a believer. And my life was wrecked repeatedly by me over and over. over and over again and by my selfish desires. And I think that's one of the things that drew me, well, that God used to draw me to him, was just my repeated failures and how even when I was

winning, quote, unquote, in my mind, and even when I was sort of conquering the hills I wanted to conquer, you get to the top and you realize that's it. And you sort of had just this existential dread on a daily basis and this emptiness that wasn't being filled. I mean, I found myself the first couple of years of my marriage, I had a wife who loved me. We had plenty of money. We were able to travel whenever we wanted to, I was able to pretend like God wasn't necessary at all. And then as I got more and I was able to do everything I wanted to do, I just felt like this incredible emptiness. I remember thinking to myself, what is the purpose of all this? This is it? I'm going to do this for the rest of my life and then the lights go out. I was like, what a meaningless,

purposeless life that would have been. And thank God, he rescued me. Thank God that I didn't continue going on that path because I don't know what that path would have terminated him, but I know it wouldn't have been good. It's always difficult to imagine where would I be in a circumstance like this, given what my past was or who I was in the past. But I think it's interesting to hear you say that because if I had to guess, again, there's a lot of people who listened to this. And if they knew what you had or they could see that, I say, well, I would like that. That's something I'd feel like I made it if I made it that far. And it's something you hear again and again. It doesn't take you. You can hear superstar athletes, actors, business owners, and they'll all say the same thing.

Yeah, I mean, Tom Brady, Kevin Durant, both of them, I mean, Tom Brady, after he won his third Super Bowl, there's this great clip of him. He's got supermodel wife at home, perfect family, tons of money, just won the Super Bowl. And he was like, depressed. He's like, this is it? Really? This is it? It's that Jim Carrey quote that, I hope you get everything you want in life to realize that's not it. And I think that is really the key. Kevin Durant, after he won the NBA title, there's great clip in Sports Illustrated about.

And he's saying the same thing. He's like, I don't know what I do from here. I don't know where I go. I don't really want to do anything because he got to the top of the hill. realize he played the game as best he could. He won the big prize, and that was it. There's nothing more behind it. And I think that that's one of the greatest gifts God gives us is to give us things that we really want to help us realize that's not it, as well as denying us things that maybe we really want that would have wrecked our lives if we had gotten them. So it's beautiful both

ways. And I wonder for a lot of people is what's happening right now with COVID-19. I think there's many people who are still thinking about this just as an interruption. Life's going to get back to normal after this. I don't know if it's going to be in two months or two years, but we're just pressing pause. And aside from the fact that that's probably not really a rational way of thinking about things, I don't know if you can just press pause on life and go back to things as usual for a few years. Beyond that, I want to ask the question, is this not just an interruption? Isn't this a disruption?

Isn't God doing something in an unprecedented worldwide way? He is disrupting people's lives and he's taking away the things that we thought could give us meaning, value, purpose, security, and we're all being faced with, is that it? Maybe a way to think about this, and it's just happened to occur to me as you were saying that, is this is a window into what reality really is. It's a gift that God's kind of pulled back the veil that we've created for ourselves and said, hey, this is the real reality. This is what's actually here underneath it.

And I mean, if you want to take it to, here's me going to my in logical conclusion, but if there is no God and we live in a meaningless, purposeless, just evolved world that we have to randomly be stardust. As romantic as some people can make that seem, it's really cold and scary. I mean, if it's just survival of the fittest and we're moist robots that are executing on code. Why do you have to say moist?

Sorry. That's actually one of my, Scott Adams has that saying. It's one of my favorite moist robots. It's like seared in the front of my brain. But if that's the case, and I mean, ultimately, like we're not going to be remembered in 100 years. And all the things that we do and toil away on eventually, if you take to the logical conclusion,

will be burned up by the sun in heat death. I mean, that's it. We know from science, that's the logical conclusion. If that's really all there is. If the sort of the secular mishhold, it's like, great, all those things are true. We make all this progress. It's ultimately going to be for naught anyway. And I think that in many ways, COVID is pulling back the curtain on some of those things

and saying, hey, there is a deeper reality here. And what story are you in? And I think this is where the atheist, Brent, I just never challenged my own assumptions. I was so quick to judge dumb Christians. how could you believe in the magic sky fairy who made all your hopes and dreams come true? When we clearly know that's not the case. And I never really challenged my assumptions in what I believed. And I never carried out sort of the logical conclusions of the belief system that I had.

And it can sound so good. I mean, yeah, there's no God. But that's great because we get to create our future. We could create our meaning. And it's like, yeah, it's only great unless you realize, like, well, yeah, I have a preference against all the horrible things in this world, but it's nothing more than a preference. and my preference is no better than your preference. And I mean, if you're going to go to sort of natural law theory, social contracts only

hold up if both sides want to agree to the contract. What happens if you don't? Then it's just a matter of force and power, right? Getting back to Marx. I think this is for me, for my family, for my heart, for the people around me, I think it's a gift that I hope I take advantage of. I hope that I'm able to hold it dearly. And I've had some of these moments in my life. I mean, if we're going to be really raw, my middle daughter, who's now three and a half,

I don't even know if you know this, Patrick, but we thought for about a week that she was going to die a horrible death when she was about four months old. And it was by far the hardest week of my life. And at the time, business was certainly, has continued to be the main idol, but it had really taken a grip on my heart. And I remember coming out of that and long story short, it ends up being a misdiagnosis. She ends up being fine. But man, that shock to the system stuck with me for a really long time. And actually, I think, permanently changed sort of the orientation of my heart. I realized that no matter what happens in business, right, my primary idol, the thing that I rest in, that I take security in, gosh, I have this beautiful family at home.

And look, that's an idol too. And I can't rest in having a beautiful daughter that's safe and healthy. That's not the point. The point was God used this moment in time. And was it a miracle that he saved her? I don't know. Many people he doesn't. And for whatever reason, he's got his purposes. But I can tell you that that is something that's just seared into me and stuck with me for a long time. And I think this is something that I think COVID will do the same thing. I think that this, I'm really thankful, even despite the hardship, that it's pulled back the veil for me and made me realize how much I had been relying upon things, which just aren't things to be relied upon. I think it's true for a lot of people that these events are all of a sudden showing what really, really matters. What have I been spending my time on? I mean, probably just getting time back. There are people who are working from home. They're not spending as much time in the office. There are people who've lost jobs and were forced to ask, what was I living for? was my purpose and does that really add up. I think one of the fascinating things, too, is you're talking

about everybody dying in the slow heat death of the sun, which... You want club some baby seals or drops to kids? It's really happy stuff for the podcast today. I was going to say light and fluffy we went today. But I think what's fascinating is that, especially in a postmodern world, there's lots of people who would be pretty happy to say, yeah, I get it. The world is meaningless. This is all for not. It's not a big deal. My job is to make the meaning I can, have some fun, enjoy myself, live the best life that I can have by my own standards and move on. And it's a kind of laugh in the face of death, I suppose, response or laugh in the face of a complete lack of meaning response. But again, I think coronavirus has unveiled that because now all of a sudden you're watching people in New York

City who can't leave their apartments for weeks. That's not fun. That's not make your own meaning. That's not laughing in the face of death. That's you being forced to sit and be with yourself, by yourself for an unprecedented amount of time. And I think that's happening to a lot of people everywhere. We're realizing all of the meaning that I was making up for myself, all of the playfulness and the things that I thought would bring me joy, you take them out of my life and I am just totally empty. It's all just make-believe. I mean, the irony is looking at the Christian and saying, hey, you believe in your little fairy tales about Jesus, I want to turn the mirror back and say, well, when you take away your gym membership and your nutrition club and all the things that

give your life meaning and worth, you start to realize those are just as much of a story, just as much of a religion, just as much of a construct as anybody else. And in some ways, they're thinner. They can never really give you the full weight of worth that you wanted to have. I'm with you. I think that this is a moment for people to look in the mirror and reflect on their worldview, their values, and maybe the things that we've written off too quickly. I would say David Foster Wallace has the Great Kenyan College speech. It's been changed to a book called This is Water, if you want to look it up. But he makes the point in the speech that he says, everyone worship something. And by the way, David Foster Walls was an atheist who killed himself,

committed suicide. And really sad, really, really sad. And I think his point, though, he had this ability to sear sort of straight through all of the constructs and cut through it and really see reality for what it was. And I think that it's true. Everyone worship something. And I think everyone roots their identity and salvation in something. And for a lot of people, by the way, and me included, I rooted in intellect or I read it in how many books I could read or how much money I could make or my family or whatever the thing that it's going to make me feel like I won. And I think that certainly as an atheist, I did not think that Christianity in any way was logical or reasonable or historical. And I think that was one of the most unnerving things when I first started really getting serious about it. And I got challenged in my faith by some really smart people who were believers.

And they said, are you sure about that? Why don't you go study it? And the more I studied, the more I had all my questions answered in a way that surprised me. And the more questions that I had and the more I studied, the more those questions were answered. And so ultimately, I wasn't an atheist. I was worshipping myself and I was creating my own religion. And I think those are the alternatives. If everybody worship something, you can either try to see if there is ultimate meaning in the world,

if there is objective reality, if there really is a grand story, if we are creatures, that were created, and you've got to dip into that and see if there is something to hold on to. I dipped into a lot of different belief systems, whether there's Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. I studied a bunch of them. And ultimately, Christianity, to me, proved to be not just plausible, but I got to the point where I felt like just the weight of evidence was so dramatically high that the alternatives, I'm going to go worship myself when I actually think there's this real objective reality. And I think that's the thing that everyone, whether it's your gym membership,

it's a distraction that comes about. I think ultimately when it gets peeled away, you are faced with what is the ultimate reality, which is you either get to worship yourself or you worship something else. Yeah, that's really good. It's almost like with the world as it was, we're able to live on a potato chip diet of all kinds of things that kind of satisfy our deep needs and longings for meaning, for relationship, for transcendence. And you can get that from your Peloton.

and I think you have a Peloton, so I'm not making fun of Peloton. I mean, I do. I don't use it. My wife is fit. She uses it. I do not. I'm fine with Peloton. But you can get it from that.

But if that's all that you have, that's living on a potato chip diet when there's a steak meal somewhere else to enjoy. Yeah. And I would also say those like, and I'm going back to, I'm going to be hardest on myself because I know what an idiot I am and was, I think that anytime you look at the reality that is right in front of you and you say, I'm going to create reality. I'm going to create meaning. out of it. You know it's hollow. You know it's not real. That's the thing. I could distract myself.

I could make believe myself into saying that my beliefs were correct and that we are just, I'm going to use the term moist robots again, just to annoy you. We are moist robots. When I look into somebody's eyes, when I look into your eyes, when I look into my children's eyes, I know that's not just a random piece of machinery that's executing code. Like I know that there's a human being in there with inherent worth and value. I know that you can laugh in the face of death. I don't know anybody who, when you really peel it away, isn't fearful of death because death is repugnant. It's objectively repugnant. It's not beautiful.

This myth of dying well and just being like, well, ashes to ashes, no one has that. No one. So you aren't moved in the Star Wars movies when people get absorbed into the forest and just disappear? You aren't weeping with tears of beauty and joy. Exactly, exactly. No, I mean, and look, we do all these things to dress up and romanticize it. We keep death away from us. We don't have to see death.

We try to keep it hidden. It is something that everyone, sort of, the quote, the longest distances from your head to your heart. It's like I have all these things that I intuitively know. Like I know in my head, but in my heart, in my head I know that I'm going to die. In my heart, I think I'm going to live forever. It's just like these things, because I think that God hasn't printed in us. I don't think that's wrong, actually. I think we have eternity written to our hearts.

And I think those are the things that when I was an atheist, a lot of my worldview just didn't match up but the reality that I saw. It didn't explain history. It didn't certainly predict people's behavior. And I think that's one of the things. I mean, that's the scientific method. I mean, if you want to talk about sort of the ultimate principle of science is a scientific method, we had to have a hypothesis and then test that hypothesis. And the more that it can be tested, nothing can be proved true in science.

Nothing can be proved true. You only can prove something false. It's the only thing you can do with the scientific method. And by the way, scientific method, Francis Bacon, devout Christian, devout believer, who use the scientific method to try to uncover God's design for the world. And so when I look at the world that I had created the religion of Brent, if you want to call it that prior to becoming a believer in Jesus, it just didn't match. It didn't pan to the reality that I saw. And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about Christianity is it really does explain history because it is a historical thing. We're not talking

about this made up thing. We're talking about there's actually this guy Jesus and there was actually these people, the Israelites, and there was actually these people, the Canaanites or whoever would be. That's one of my favorite things about it, but it also predicts human behavior more accurately than anything else. And I think that we are constantly in tension between being made in the image of God and living in a fallen, sinful, broken world. And I see that in business. I see that in my life. I mean, I can explain these miraculous things that happen. You see some incredible breakthroughs of beauty personally and professionally. And I can explain that. I mean, we are made in the image of God. We have the imprint right in us. And I can also understand how people get greedy and fearful and

treat each other horribly and it all makes sense to me in the framework of Christianity. Outside of that, it just seems like either people are idiots or people are awesome, and they're neither. That's the thing. It's like no one actually can be categorized into those things. We're all a mixture of these weird confluence of events and things that happened to us, as well as our sinful nature, but made in the image of God. Yeah, so the religion of Brent really had no ability to give a comprehensive worldview, to explain why people are the way they are, why the world is the way it is, why we're going the way that we're going. And as you looked around, there was no better answer out there than the one offered by Jesus and the story that

Jesus saw himself living and being a part of. And that's the story that you're trying to live your life in. That's a story that is currently making sense of your life and is helping you even get through the practical day and day out challenges that we all are like COVID-19. Yeah, and it's true. That's the best part about it. It's true. I mean, I think that this is the whole like the difference between created or revealed meaning. Revealed meaning is objectively true. Created meaning is just arbitrary. And the religion of Brent, which only at its peak had one follower, clearly wasn't very good. But there's just a massive difference between knowing that something is objectively true and anchoring your life to that versus knowing you just created something and trying to anchor that to that very wishy-washy, sort of untethered reality that feels very arbitrary. It's a world of difference. I'd encourage anybody who happens to be listening to this, try to go down similar paths that I did.

Try to throw your worst at Christianity. I certainly did. Anything that I thought that I had an objection to, the historicity of the cross. I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. How in the world am I going to know what happened 2,000 years ago? Well, actually a lot of historical evidence and history that backs it up. And a lot of things make sense in light of it. And a lot of behaviors and actions, you can't explain any other way. I had issues with the Old Testament. Why would God care if I eat shellfish? Why would God care if I hitched my oxen to my donkey and plod my feet? field. Why would God care about that? That doesn't make any sense. Well, until you get into the actual historical context and try to understand what was God actually telling people at the time. What was the context of that? I mean, we like to read our Bibles now as if God had came down on high and started speaking to us 21st century, started talking about this. That's not the way that things were designed. It's not what was created. So I think a lot of it was I brought my ignorance and my misunderstanding to the Bible and assumed that whatever, even though it was unstudied in it, whatever I believe to be true was true and then sort of made deductions from that. Ultimately, as I would

told myself then and told myself continually now, have a little humility. Maybe you don't know. Maybe you should go try to find out what a lot of really smart people have thought about this through the years. And maybe there are really good answers to your questions. I think that's great advice, whether you're following Jesus currently or not following Jesus. Man, Brent, I could keep going on for another hour. You've got lots of great insights. But thanks so much for being on the show. And thanks for being honest about how you're processing COVID-19 as a Christian business leader. Yeah, thanks for having me on. If you want to hear more from Brent, you can check out his book, The Messy Marketplace,

or you can follow him on Twitter at Brent Beshore. He's got a large following, and he's actually really responsive. So if you heard Brent say something today and want to hear a little bit more about it, just send him a direct message, and I can basically promise you that he will reply. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with.

Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.