Podcasts about touchpoints

Most wedding vendors think the job starts and ends on the wedding day. Your clients disagree.In this episode, Sam and Katy walk through the full client journey, from the moment a couple signs a contract to long after the wedding is over. They cover what clients actually need at each stage, why so many vendors lose the plot between booking and the big day, and how small gestures at the right moments turn one-time clients into people who talk about you for years.You'll learn:Why the welcome experience right after booking is your biggest missed opportunityHow to anticipate client needs before they even think to askWhat separates a three-star client experience from a five-star oneHow the post-wedding touchpoint drives referrals more than almost anything else

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Hal Mayer, a coach and consultant who works with pastors and business leaders to help them grow healthy teams without burning out. With decades of ministry experience and a background in coaching, Hal brings actionable insights into one of the most common leadership challenges: how to move a team from passive compliance to active engagement. Are you carrying too much of the leadership load yourself? Feeling like you're the only one coming up with ideas or pushing things forward? In this conversation, Hal shares a simple but effective framework to help leaders shift from telling to asking—and unlock the potential of their teams. Why teams become disengaged. // One of the most common frustrations leaders express is that their team feels stagnant or unmotivated. Hal suggests this is often not a team problem but a leadership problem. When leaders consistently provide the answers, shut down ideas, or unintentionally reward passivity, team members learn that their input isn't needed. Over time, they stop contributing and simply comply. What appears as laziness is often the result of a system that has trained people not to engage. From answer-giver to question-asker. // Many leaders are promoted because they have strong ideas and can solve problems quickly. However, if they continue operating as the “answer person,” they eventually limit both their own capacity and the development of their team. Hal emphasizes that asking better questions is the key to unlocking engagement. Questions reveal what team members understand, help them think critically, and shift ownership of solutions back to them. When people help create the solution, their investment in execution increases dramatically. The Smart Ask framework. // Hal introduces a practical coaching framework called Smart Ask, designed to guide conversations that lead to action. The process begins broadly by asking, “What issues are you facing?” This allows team members to surface their own challenges and become more self-aware. From there, the leader helps narrow the focus by identifying one clear goal for the conversation—something the person can act on immediately. Next comes a pivotal question: “If you could try anything, what would you do?” This opens up creativity and removes internal barriers that might limit thinking. From there, the conversation moves toward selecting one idea, identifying potential roadblocks, and outlining specific next steps. By the end, the team member leaves with a clear, self-generated action plan. Why buy-in matters more than the idea. // Even a great idea will underperform if the person responsible for executing it isn't fully invested. Conversely, a slightly weaker idea can produce better results if the team member has full ownership and enthusiasm. Engagement drives execution. When leaders consistently choose their own ideas over their team's, they unintentionally lower buy-in and limit results. Coaching toward self-leadership. // Over time, consistently using questions develops leaders who can think and solve problems independently. Hal describes the ultimate goal as “self-coaching” where team members begin asking themselves the same questions and generating solutions without needing constant input. This not only reduces the leader's workload but also builds a stronger, more capable team. Balancing development and delegation. // Hal cautions that delegation is not the first step. Rather, it's the result of development. Leaders must invest time in coaching and guiding their team before handing off responsibility. Skipping this process leads to frustration and failure. However, when leaders take the time to develop people through intentional questions and feedback, they create a foundation for effective delegation and long-term growth. Recognizing true engagement. // Leaders can spot engagement by watching for energy, initiative, and ownership. Engaged team members proactively solve problems, follow through on ideas, and bring solutions rather than just concerns. In contrast, disengagement shows up as slow execution, repeated questions, or a lack of enthusiasm. These are signals that more coaching, and better questions, are needed. Leading with humility and transparency. // For leaders who recognize they've been over-directing, Hal encourages a simple starting point: acknowledge it. Telling your team, “I've been giving too many answers, and I want to change that,” creates trust and opens the door for a new dynamic. This kind of vulnerability invites feedback and helps reset expectations for how the team will function moving forward. To learn more about Hal Mayer and his resources—including Smart Ask and The Coaching Playbook—visit halmayer.com or find his books on Amazon. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you are tuned in to today’s episode. Man, we’ve got something super helpful for us. It’s one of these areas that many of us spend lots of time doing, but we maybe haven’t taken a step back and think thought about what do we do in coaching relationships? We all are involved in coaching staff and people on our teams. And today we want to help you with some practical steps to make that even better. Rich Birch — Excited to have Hal Mayer with us. He’s a coach and consultant for both businesses and business leaders and pastors who want to grow but don’t want to burn out. He’s authored a few books, including “Smart Ask”, “The Coaching Playbook”, and excited to have Hal on the episode today. Welcome. So glad you’re here.Hal Mayer — It’s good to be here, Rich. I’ve been a fan on the sidelines for years, and unSeminary was so good because I did the seminary thing, and I did all the stuff, and you’re right. There’s so many things we didn’t talk about there that you help us prepare for, so thank you for what you’re doing.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s super exciting. That’s kind of you to say, but I'm I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. It’s been a while coming and so excited. We bumped into each other at the Exponential conference this year.Hal Mayer — Yeah.Rich Birch — Shout out to Exponential. I was like, we got to get you on. So excited that you’re here today. Well, why don’t we kind of start. Give us kind of the Hal background. Tell us for folks that don’t know, you know, you give us the kind of the 90 second, this is who Hal is conversation.Hal Mayer — Yeah, I, ah goodness, was born up north, came to faith in Georgia in high school. We moved down there, played basketball in college, and then coached for about five years. Married Sandy, moved off to seminary, finished that up, and I’ve been in Florida since ’84, serving in churches from the size of 200 to 12,000. Rich Birch — Love it. Hal Mayer — So all over the yard, and also do some business coaching in the middle of that.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. Yeah. And I’m, I really, that’s really what I want to tap in today. You spend your days coaching both pastors and businesses leaders, like we talked about that. Rich Birch — When, when someone first sits down with you, I want to kind of use the fact that you have a lot of these conversations today to help our listeners kind of take advantage of you. When someone first sits down with you, what’s like a common version of stuck that you hear, whether it’s a pastor or maybe a business leader, like do you hear common themes with folks.Hal Mayer — Yeah, you know, probably the most common thing I hear is our team’s stuck, our team’s stagnant. And I’ll say, what do you mean by that? And they’ll often say something that relates to this of, I have to come up with all the ideas. It seems like I’m the only one pushing the team to get going. I’m the only one with the ideas. They just seem often lazy, or they’re not doing it. What do I do to engage them?Rich Birch — Right. Love that. Well, man, I wish I hadn’t thought that. I haven’t thought that as a leader over the years. What what, so then take us the next step from there. What what, as you’re kind of coaching someone, I’m assuming as a leader, you know, I, or one of my convictions is our teams are a by-product of our leadership… Hal Mayer — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and we’re leading in a way that’s leading them to act that way. So what what leads our people to be like that?Hal Mayer — Yeah, I think it’s the leader. And that’s the fun thing to do. As a parent, I loved watching my kids do something that was dumb, but they repeated it, and it’s because it was rewarded.Hal Mayer — So I watch team members disengage because they come up with an idea and it gets shot down. Or they ask everybody in the room the idea and it’s only the leader’s idea they go with. And when that happens, they they kind of go, well, I guess we’re just here to hear his ideas. And they start pulling back and not engaging and just being compliant.Rich Birch — Interesting. I remember years ago we had a coach in who said who said to us, this is when I was on the senior leadership team of a fairly large church, fast growing. We were like four or 5,000 people at the time. And he spent a bunch of time with our ah you know with our team, with us.Rich Birch — And ah he looked at us and he said, listen, you guys answer way too many questions. You need to be asking more questions than answering questions.Rich Birch — And that was a pivotal you know changing moment for me as a leader. I was like, oh, Oh my word, that is so true. Talk us through that dynamic of, you know, asking the right questions versus always being the answer man or the answer person.Hal Mayer — You know, we usually get promoted because we did the job well or we have the answers. If we continue in that framework, one day we will run out of the answers, but let’s say we’re in that framework. I’m not developing anybody if it’s only my ideas we’re using. And if we’re only using my ideas, they’ve got ideas, but they’re dying. So what I encourage and push guys to do is exactly what you said, ask questions. Hal Mayer — I mean, questions will do a couple things. One, it will tell me what they understand. I mean, do they really understand the problem? I say, tell me what’s going on. Okay. What do you see here? And all that. It tells me, do they understand the problem? And I may have to probe some more, but I want them solving things that I find out about later. And to do that, I’ve got to lead different. Hal Mayer — For me, we were in a fast growing church in South Florida. And I was the answer man. And what I realized was I’m working harder and harder and I’m not developing people. So I started stepping back and then learning this principle and started asking questions, looking for their engagement. Here’s what I found. When they had the answer or they got to do what they wanted to do, their engagement went way up.Hal Mayer — So for me, not only did it go up, they began to develop. And I’ve had somebody say, well, I don’t have time to develop people. He said, in fact, if I develop them, they’ll just leave me. I say, yeah, yeah you know, it’s worse is if you don’t develop them, they stay, right? Right.Rich Birch — Right. Exactly.Hal Mayer — So I found this to be a tool for development: asking questions.Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. I, like talk to me more about engagement. What would be some telltale signs for you of like someone who’s really engaged, fully engaged versus, you know, when your team isn’t as engaged? Because maybe we’re having a hard time even discerning what that looks like.Hal Mayer — Yeah, I I mean, if they’re slow walking the solve that we came up with, if there’s no passion around it, if there’s no energy going in it, and I find myself even answering the same question over and over, I’m realizing more and more, I don’t have engagement. I’ve got compliance. And I really want them engaged and dialing in to what we’re doing. And to get that, I’m going to have to get them on the same page.Rich Birch — Well, and then obviously questions are at at a core of this. And a part of what I love about your resource, “The Smart Ask” or just “Smart Ask” is this framework, it’s it’s, you know, it’s simple… Hal Mayer — Yes. Rich Birch — …but powerful. So why don’t you kind of talk us through the Smart Ask framework? What’s kind of the basic arc that you try to walk someone through?Hal Mayer — Very good.Rich Birch — Coach us through that. Talk us through what that looks like.Hal Mayer — I start very broad and I’ll say, and by the way, I take notes, but at the end I give them the notes and I’ll explain that in a minute. Rich Birch — Okay.Hal Mayer — So I'll I’ll ask permission, can I take some notes? And they’ll say, sure. And I say, I’m going to give them to you. But our first question is, what are the issues you’re facing right now? And let them just elevate them out. Let them say everything they want to say, every problem they’ve got.Hal Mayer — And then I’d say looking at these problems, is what’s one goal that we could have for our time today? Now, what that does is it focuses it on a goal and what they’re going to do, not on me. It can’t be, how could you find me 10 more leaders? That’s not something we can do in that meeting.Rich Birch — Right.Hal Mayer — So I want a goal from them, something they can do when they leave the meeting. And so they say, you know what? I want to face this volunteer engagement. In fact, I use the illustration from the book about a preschool lady who said, I need 30 more volunteers to serve in preschool. And I said, well, I can’t get that for you now. So her goal was come up with an idea that I could engage 30 more people. And then I’d go with this.Hal Mayer — Okay. If you could do anything, what would you try? Yeah. And of course, the first, she says, anything? She said, yeah. She said, I’ll pay them $1,000 a piece. I said, okay.Rich Birch — Right.Hal Mayer — And I just write it down to go ahead and get that out and get them moving on to the next thing. Rich Birch — Right. Hal Mayer — And they run through things. And I listen, I’ve got to be careful not to go, oh, that’s a really good one. But let them talk about it. And as they get through, if I’ve got something at the end, I mean, as they’re going, I’ll go, anything else you could try? Anything else you could try? And you feel like you’re asking that too much, but what you’re doing is just unpacking all of it. If I’ve got an idea, I can add that in, but I don’t give any passion to it because I don’t want to control.Hal Mayer — Then I’ll say, now look at these. Which one of these ideas would you like to explore further? And they’ll look, and this lady said, I want to explore the one about a lemonade stand in the lobby, which I thought was a dumb idea. I didn’t tell her that, but I thought, aaaah.Rich Birch — Right.Hal Mayer — So then I said, okay, what potential roadblocks? Well, I’ve got to talk to leadership. Okay, what else? And they talk about that. And any detours?Hal Mayer — Well, if this happens, we’re walking through solving the problem before it approaches, right? And then the last thing I said, okay, if you’re going to do this, what will it look like? And we list out six or eight things. And I say, okay, let me know like it goes. And hand her the paper. In this case, I said, hey, listen, let me know on Instagram how it went. Rich Birch — Oh, nice.Hal Mayer — So the next week she picked up 40 new workers. And this was a very large church. Rich Birch — Wow.Hal Mayer — She picked up 40 workers with this idea, because it was hers. And to me, it was crazy. It worked. Hal Mayer — But so the the framework is you’re starting broad and you’re narrowing down. And I’m actually getting a set of to-dos and objectives. One, two, three, four, five. Then I hand them that. They’ve got their plan. All going to do is execute it. And they develop it when I’m asking them questions. Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. Hal Mayer — Now, let me tell one of the advantages of that too.Rich Birch — Yeah.Hal Mayer — If I use that enough with them, there’s going to be a time when they come to me and say, and want to talk to me and I’m not available. They’ll say, well all he was going to do is ask questions. Rich Birch — Right.Hal Mayer — And they start going through the questions and they start self-coaching is what they do. And that’s the end game. That’s what I want. And by the way, when I use questions with people, I explain to them what I just did. So they can then take it and use it somewhere else.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. I’d love to start right back at the beginning. Hal Mayer — Sure.Rich Birch — I love this idea of really starting at a wide open. Hey, what challenges are you facing today? I think too often if we’re, I’m thinking in kind of the one-on-one situation, maybe I’m an executive pastor at a church of 1,500. One of my people comes to me and I go to that conversation, and I’ve got five things I want to talk to them about. Hal Mayer — Right. Rich Birch — But I love, you know, starting with what challenges are you facing? What happens if we skip that with people? If we if we don’t start there, I’m sure we get, you know, we end up in all kinds of bad places. Talk us through why you encourage people to start with that question.Hal Mayer — Especially early on when you’re coaching folks, because as they go later, they’ll kind of work through that, no, that’s the framework I’m going to work with. And they’ll come up with their biggest issue. But the reason I do that, I want to show this value to everything they’re facing. And I want them to elevate it, not me tell them what they’re doing, so they become more self-aware.Hal Mayer — Now, if they don’t list one of the things I see as an issue, I may say, and what about this? Is this an issue for you? Oh, yeah, that too. I just don’t want to put a lot of passion on it because then they’ll do what I want. And I want them to do something they’re passionate about because the framework just means I’m going to get more from it.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. That that’s a key lesson. I think particularly for first-time managers or people who haven’t managed a lot of people before, we don’t realize the weight of our voice, right? Hal Mayer — Right.Rich Birch — If we, you know, even by saying like, oh yeah, you’re right. That’s a good idea. Then all of a sudden they’re running with that idea just because you indicated it. That’s an interesting thing. That’s interesting. Rich Birch — Now one of the, I mean, you kind of pulled it apart, but I would love to double click on it there. To me, as I go through your framework, I can imagine, that, hey, “what if you could try anything” is a is a pivotal moment, is kind of a turning point, it is an important question. Why is that and so important? Maybe give us another example. I love the idea when you talked through with the lemonade stand, but talk us through why that’s so important and what does that unlock as we’re interacting with our teams and people?Hal Mayer — That’s a great question because what will happen there is if we don’t ask that question, ah it’s “what if you could try anything”, they may be in the back of their mind have something they go I can’t try that. So they keep trying to think somewhere else. Just get it out on paper.Hal Mayer — It’s like when I feel stressed or something, I just list everything that I’m dealing with and then I can focus on one thing.Hal Mayer — But I allow them to get it all out at that point of trying this and trying that. And usually what will happen is they’ll come up with six or seven ideas. And I say, “and what else” a lot? And it seems like I’m saying a lot, but is when they’re in the zone, they’re answering, well, could try this. Well, could try that. I could try this. And then I find which one they have the most energy around because that’s what they want to do.Rich Birch — Yeah. And obviously you would, you observe that, that energy and you’re like, Hey, it seems like this one, tell me more about that.Hal Mayer — No, no I don’t I don’t do that.Rich Birch — Oh okay. Okay. Talk to me about that.Hal Mayer — What I do is I say, okay, which one of these seven things would you like to try?Rich Birch — Okay.Hal Mayer — Once they identify it, then I say, okay, tell me more about that. What would that look… Why do you want to try? And and then we dive into that.Rich Birch — Okay. One of the things that this strikes me, and this, when I read, again, friends, you should pick up a copy of of this book and there’s a playbook as well I want to talk about. But but I think this could be ah a huge gift for…Just this week, two days ago, I was talking to somebody who, they asked me, they said, hey, what should I be doing in my one-on-ones? I’ve got these staff, what should I be doing with them? And I thought of this framework. Rich Birch — So I think the part of what I love that you’re driving towards is is buy-in. At least my, my my impression as an outsider looking in is that this would really increase the buy-in of my staff. Talk me through, you know, the connection there between buy-in and moving the organization forward and that sort of thing. What, how does that help us think through those issues? Hal Mayer — Yeah. I’m going to bring up the equation I use in the book, the buy-in equation, or the engagement question, whatever that is. I was a math teacher in a former life. So PBI, possible value of an idea, times BI, the buy-in, equals their ROI.Hal Mayer — Now, let’s say, you know, we’ve we’re we’ve got, you’re my boss and I’m doing student ministry and you have an idea because you did student ministry and all that. Your idea out of one 10, it’s going to at least be a nine. I mean, you’re Rich Birch. I mean, you have all the answers.Hal Mayer — Now me doing it, I don’t get any input on it. So I will comply. I will do it, but my buy-in is probably going to be about a three. I’ll do what you ask, but there’s not going be a passion with it. So 3 times your 9 idea is a 27. Hal Mayer — However, let’s say I come up with an idea and it’s not going as good as yours. In fact, it’s a only two thirds as good as yours. It’s a 6, but what’s my buying going to be if it’s my idea? It’s a 10.Rich Birch — A lot higher. Yeah.Hal Mayer — That’s a 60. So there’s a 60 ROI to my buy-in because of my buy-in as opposed to a 27. Now you had the better idea, but buy-in is what gets it done. We’ve seen that over and over again. When people are bought in on something, they often they’ll make a bad idea work. We’ve seen that.Hal Mayer — So for me, that’s what I want. I want full engagement. And when they know that they get to do their ideas, people are much more engaged than they’re running around doing mine. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true. As a coach, somebody who obviously I coach people full time now and and that is you’ve you’ve named something there that I think is critically important and that oftentimes like I can’t coach people who don’t want to be coached.Hal Mayer — Right.Rich Birch — Right? Like if they’re not bought in, if they don’t think this will help. And, you know, I’ve said in other contexts, I’ve been like, man, the the leaders who who apply the frameworks we’re talking about are seeing great results. And those that are applying, the majority of them are seeing, but a lot of it is just their own buy-in on these issues. Hal Mayer — Right.Rich Birch — There might be a leader that’s listening in today that’s like, okay, this all sounds good, but like, what if my people just have bad ideas? Like, and if, if it’s going to push us in the wrong direction, like it’s one thing to be like, tell me seven ideas. All seven of those are crappy and they’re going to, we’re going to end up somewhere where I don’t want us to end up as it. How do I steer somebody back towards better direction?Hal Mayer — Yeah. One the things before I give people full leash or full run on something is I want to check out their readiness for it. For example, if I want to do brain surgery, I may be excited. I may have done AI search on it and Claude said, do it this way and all that. But I’m not ready for that. It wouldn’t take but a second to find that out. I found that out in high school. I went, so I worked at a gas station where they actually worked on cars too. And I saw a guy fixing the valve. So I went home and took my 1960s Comet and tightened the valves down and ended up having to get a valve job. Hal Mayer — I was excited. I was passionate, but I wasn’t ready. So if you don’t have people who are ready, you cannot hand it off to them. They must be developed some. They’ve got to have some experience. To hire somebody in fresh who’s never done it before and start leading with questions is like leading me with questions in how to operate. I wouldn’t have a clue. I’d be most excited about cutting. No, stop.Hal Mayer — However, questions also help draw focus. And sometimes the reason they don’t have ideas, is we haven’t focused them.Hal Mayer — I learned this with a physical metaphor. Somebody told me it would work. My son, pretty good basketball player. I had him out driveway. I said, son, see how many shots you can make out of 10? And so what that basically did was put a little pressure on, right? And he’s a good, so he shot four out of 10 from the three point line.Hal Mayer — I said, okay, let’s forget about how many you’re making and just shoot and answer my questions. I said, okay, what do you notice? All right, what do you notice about the ball? What do you notice about the ball? He hit 10 in a row. And what I discovered was, you know, you college athletes who will shoot seven out of 10 in a game, but in practice hit 20 in a row. It’s the fog of war or whatever.Hal Mayer — And so with employees, sometimes we haven’t asked enough questions. to get through that. However, we could also have some people who aren’t ready to lead. It’s not fair to expect them to come up with good ideas. They haven’t done anything. So both edges on that. Hal Mayer — And at the end of the day, all of the employees I have are my fault. And if I haven’t developed them, that’s on me, right?Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Talk to me about, so I feel like there are, lead there’s leaders on our teams or there’s people that are listening in today that think they’ve got buy-in, but they really actually don’t. They think their teams are really with them, but they don’t. How, what advice could you give us to try to spot the difference around buy-in that’s not actually there? Like I keep kind of bumping into this wall. How can, how can we spot that?Hal Mayer — You know I look for people who are solving problems. Are they solving them and telling me about it later? Are they coming to me with every problem? Because that means I’m still solving. Buy-in has to do with the passion and the ability to finish something. It doesn’t mean you work until 9 o’clock every night, but it does mean you manage to get the ball across the line.Hal Mayer — So when I watch a lack of energy around an idea or somebody slow walking it. Or maybe somebody asking questions that really aren’t, that are just curmudgeon questions. They’re asking questions just to find every hole that’s wrong. I mean, everything that you can find, well, suppose that doesn’t work. Suppose… That’s not buy-in because for me, my challenge is always, don’t tell me what won’t work or tell me what’s not working. Give me an idea of what we might try. At least then we’re thinking in solutions and not just problems.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s really good. So a big part of scaling any organization, a growing church, a growing business is delegation, is leaders figuring out how to give away things they’re doing. I’ve said this in so many contexts, you know, roll this clock forward. The majority of what you’re doing, we need to figure out how to give to someone else… Hal Mayer — Right. Rich Birch — …how to empower a volunteer or another staff member to pick that up. How does asking better questions change the way we hand off responsibility to other people? How how does it help in that transaction?Hal Mayer — You know, I'm a big fan of Ken Blanchard and the book “Situational Leadership”.Hal Mayer — And I used to train that with a corporation. And one of the things I watch is people like to start people and like to delegate. But when they leave off the coaching in between, it’s not delegation, it’s abdication. And people fail. Hal Mayer — I go, what’s wrong? They said they understood. Well, you stay engaged. I mean, you give them a task. You stay engaged. You’re asking questions. Soon, you’re no longer asking questions to to help them figure out what to do. You’re just asking questions to draw focus. And then you know they’re ready. You can hand it off to them. Hal Mayer — But you’re right. If we’re not finding a way to delegate, but delegation is not the first step nor the second. It’s more like the fourth, right? You watch me. We do it together. I watch you. You’re doing it. However you want to call that. But it takes more engagement. Hal Mayer — People say, well I don’t have time for that. Well, here’s the deal. You can pay me now or you’ll pay me later. But you’re going to pay me. If you’re if you’re not developing people, you’re going to run into a system where you’ve got a bunch of people who don’t know how to think and do. And that’s on you.Rich Birch — True. Yeah, that’s so true. And if we don’t start that process, hey, you watch me, we do together. And if we don’t start that process today, we’ll never get there. And so it takes time. But we’ve got to, you know, that’s, that’s what it we just constantly have to repeat that over and over and over in our areas. I love that. So let’s talk more specifically about the books specifically. So it’s “Smart Ask: Questions that lead your team to win.” Where can we pick up copies of this? If people are looking, because I think this is not a huge book. It’s, you know, if you’re watching on video, it’s just a little thin one, but it’s got, it’s one of these ones. It’s a quick read. You could literally give it to a team member and say, hey, let’s read through this. And then we’re going to talk about it next week. I’d love to get your thoughts on it. But talk to us kind of, when why did you put this together in a book form?Hal Mayer — Well, I was training it and people kept asking me questions. And the only reason I write books is to stop answering all the questions I get asked, right? Is to put it out there. I mean, Seth Godin’s idea of a long tail, right? I want it to last when when I put a book out there.Hal Mayer — So “Smart Ask” is on Amazon, but it was created for the purpose to to help people, after I’ve used it in coaching, to be able to take it then and train their teams. Because it dives in also to the why it works and and such as that. But you’re right, intentionally a short book because I like short books and there you go.Rich Birch — Well, and we all, you know, I can say this as an author, that we’re tempted when we write to be like, well, I’m just going to stuff a bunch of other stuff in there.Rich Birch — But this is, it’s to the point, it’s it’s focused, it’s a great training material, I think, like you say, for you know for our entire team.Hal Mayer — Right.Rich Birch — But then you also put together a playbook. Talk us through how this is different than just the standard book.Hal Mayer — Well, my daughter-in-law, Chrissy, Chrissy Mayer, married to my son. She’s a pastor over to church in Tampa, Grace Family Church. And she said, why don’t you create a handbook for it? And you know what I said? Why don’t you do that?Rich Birch — That sounds like a great idea for you.Hal Mayer — So I said, that sounds like great idea. Once you create the framework, I’ll get it published on. So she did the work and we got together and we put it there. And the reason for it is you can take your coaching conversation, it has all the questions in it. It’s got lines you can write answers. And it gives you a chance to keep up. And I would probably take a picture and send the person they’re the the answers they gave to the questions or whatever like that. It just helps you stay on track. So you’ve got all the questions right there.Rich Birch — And yeah, talk us through the the handing off of the notes back to someone. I think that’s a great move. Hal Mayer — Yeah.Rich Birch — Talk us through why that’s important. Why is that such a critical piece of the puzzle?Hal Mayer — Well people are so used to us building files on them. And you’re going to put that in my file to show that I didn’t know what to do? And so I asked for permission on the front end to take notes. Now, if I’m the boss, I’ll do take notes if I want to. But I I won’t and I won’t if they say no, though. So I’m I’m really giving it to them. And I tell them, I’m going to give you these at the end because I don’t want them taking notes. I want them talking. I want their full engagement with me. And you can’t get that while they’re writing.Rich Birch — That’s good.Hal Mayer — So I said, you just pay attention to me. I’ll take the notes and I’ll give you them at the end. Then you hand them at the end and they’ve got their execution plan.Hal Mayer — So my meeting with them, usually it’s a 30-minute meeting and land with an execution plan that gets handed to them and they go back and do the work. So it pulls them into full engagement. They’re not getting distracted by trying to write down everything or slow play that way. So I’m taking notes again, putting value to them. Hal Mayer — When when they’re the hero, right, and I’m the guide, what I’m doing is is setting them up. And when you take notes on somebody, that means something to them. Rich Birch — Right, right. Hal Mayer — So that’s where I am. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Now, what about, so one of the tensions I have found in my one-on-ones is wanna make sure that I’m doing all the other stuff: caring for them, you know releasing, you know I guess, finding barriers that that I can pull apart for them and say like, hey, here’s some stuff. Yeah, I’m gonna take some to…Hal Mayer — Right.Rich Birch — And I’ve said to my team in the past, hey, I’m hoping that you don’t walk away from this with a bunch of to-dos. That’s not the the goal of today. I want to help you. And I know you got a lot going on. I don’t want to just dump on you today. And so how do you avoid that in this framework that we don’t end up with? Okay. Every time they meet with Hal, now I’ve just ended up with a plan that I just, gosh, I just gave myself more work to do. How do you, how do you, do you understand that tension?Hal Mayer — Yeah, I don’t do this every meeting with them.Rich Birch — Okay.Hal Mayer —  The meetings on there. And I, you know, I’ll check in. How are you doing? One the things I i really want to pay attention to is the emotional, soul, health of the individual.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Hal Mayer — Because we’ve got people facing burnout today. So I’ll ask them, you know, tell me on a scale of one to 10, what are you feeling? You feel like you want a 1 being I want to go home and go to bed, a 10 being let’s charge hell with water pistols. Right, that gives me a framework. The number doesn’t really matter. I just compare it each time to see if they’re tanking.Hal Mayer — The second thing I’ll ask for is give me a win in your private life, in your home.Rich Birch — That’s good.Hal Mayer — Give me a win in your ah ah ministry side because I want to get them on the positive run. And then I’ll say, anything you need from me. And this may be 15-minute meeting. But what it is is I’m checking in on them. If I have something I need them to do, sure, I can tell them. But I’m checking in on them, and ah that gives them value, right?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah, that’s really good. That’s good. I love there’s, friends, as you’re listening and you can tell Hal’s done this a few times. And so, you know, it’s been such a great conversation for you. So if if I’m a church leader listening in today and I feel like, man, I’m doing way too much telling and not enough asking, where would I, and and maybe even my team has told me this.Hal Mayer — Yeah.Rich Birch — Where do I start? How do I start to shift that dynamic with my people? Because because you you you kind of set this up at the beginning of like the teams that are passively disengaged, they’re just waiting for for you to give the list of, okay, go do these 12 things and then come back. How do I shift that dynamic? Where do I start? If i if my analysis is, I think that I’ve actually done that to my team, ah where would we start?Hal Mayer — If I’m convinced of that, I start at this place and I’ve done this before. Guys, you know what? I’ve been running our meetings and coming up with the answers and that’s not fair. So what I want to do is pull back more and get your engagement. So I’m going to be asking questions. I need your engagement in this meeting and your ideas coming. And in fact, if you see me over talking, catch me one-on-one afterwards and give me some feedback because I’m open up the feedback loop then, right?Hal Mayer — But I will do some self-disclosure and just own it because here’s what I do know. If you don’t own it, they won’t recognize the difference later. For example, if I tell somebody, you know what, I’m going to work on asking more questions. Six months they go, wow, you’re asking more questions. If I don’t tell them, they’ll never at they’ll never notice. Sometimes you have to highlight it. Hey, I’m going to stop being the guy trying to be the smartest man in the room, and I’m going to do this.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah.Hal Mayer — People get, vulnerability from a leader is a great thing, right? Own their stuff, but come up with some resources ah to help them, so so you’re asking more questions.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I like that. I like i think that’s a keen insight, that not just like shifting the behavior, but actually pointing to it like, hey, as a person, I’m changing. And the implicit, the great kind of ninja move you’re doing there is like, and therefore I need you to change because, you know, what?Hal Mayer — Right. Right.Rich Birch — I’m changing because I don’t think this is working. Implicit in that is I don’t think our relationship is structured correctly and we need to figure out a different way to do that. You don’t even need to necessarily say that. But but flagging that, hey, I need to change my approach, I think is a really smart move for sure. That’s you know that’s fantastic. Rich Birch — Well, as we’re coming down to land today’s episode, any kind of final words around this idea of asking, leading with questions rather than being the answer person all the time?Hal Mayer — Yeah, this model doesn’t mean you don’t ask offer suggestions. This model doesn’t mean you couldn’t collaborate to build it. It just means you can’t be the person always having the answer.Hal Mayer — And it’s engaging other people. And the thing you will find for me that I have found, when I truly am asking them for their ideas and we execute on their ideas, they’ll come back later and say, you know, I thought that was one of those conferences you went to that said ask questions.Hal Mayer — But you actually did execute on what we talked about. Then they’re more engaged because everybody wants has ideas and wants to be heard and wants to be a part. I think people are motivated. They’re just not motivated when we take over a meeting and and run everything, right? There’s an intrinsic motivation. There’s there’s something they want to do. They’re in ministry, not because they’re just wanting to plow through. They want to see a difference. Well, they’re in the business cycle.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s very true. And I think that’s a good reminder for us. I think sometimes we can get caught in the weeds of running Church World and we forget that like all these people have chosen to be here. They could be doing something else. Hal Mayer — Right.Rich Birch — And how do we bring the best out of them? And how do we, you’ve encouraged me to thinking about long term the long-term win, that really engagement, even if we have to walk through a couple of things that maybe are not the best, because… But if I can get engagement up with my team, man, that’s way better place than like, sure, we have the, it’s the, you know, it’s that perfect plan that’s poorly executed. We want to avoid that, you know, even an imperfect plan. But if it’s got tons of engagement behind it, man, there’s some gold there that we need to think more clearly about. That’s good. Love it. Hal Mayer — Yep.Rich Birch — Well, I want to send people to Amazon to pick up both of these. I think it’d be great. I really do think this could be the kind of book you could build a staff training around it, friends, really easily. You’ve got 15 staff. You could buy 15 copies of this and say, hey, you’re going to read this. And then we’re going to come to our you know team meeting in two months or whatever in a month. And we’re going to work through how do we ask better questions in our our training. That’s how it sticks out to me. Anywhere else we want to send people online to connect with you or to pick up copies of the book?Hal Mayer — You can catch my web website at halmayer.com. They can email me at hal@halmayer.com or I’m on the socials just as Hal Mayer. I, my son is Hal Mayer also, but I beat him to all of them. So I’m Hal Mayer on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. It’s just /halmayer. So I win there.Rich Birch — Nice. Really appreciate you, Hal. You’re a good friend of leaders and I appreciate you being on today. Thanks for being here.Hal Mayer — Thanks, man. It’s been an honor.

In dieser Ausgabe des AOM DSP Snacks sprechen Florian Vette und Florian Giulio Votta über konkrete Optimierungshebel für Amazon-DSP-Kampagnen und warum das initiale Setup nur 30 % der Arbeit ausmacht. Die Themen im Überblick: - Gebotslogik: Warum ist der Retargeting-User teurer als der User im oberen Funnel? - Audiences: Wie groß ist der Hebel beim Lookback Window und warum gehören Lookalikes nie ins gleiche Line Item wie Retargeting? - Frequency: Wie viele Touchpoints braucht ein User wirklich bis zum Kauf? - Placements & Devices: Wann schlägt Desktop plötzlich Mobile? - Creatives: Wann lohnen sich Dynamic E-Commerce Ads und wann eigene Werbemittel? - - Budget & Pacing: Was bringt Dayparting wirklich? - Mediaagentur vs. Spezialagentur: Warum Silodenken zwischen TV, Performance und Amazon zwangsläufig zu verschenkten Daten führt?

Der Autohandel steht an einem Wendepunkt – doch statt klarer Antworten dominiert aktuell vor allem eines: Unsicherheit. Das viel diskutierte Agenturmodell wird von einigen Herstellern bereits wieder zurückgefahren, während der Direktvertrieb weiter an Bedeutung gewinnt, ohne den Handel wirklich zu verdrängen. Gleichzeitig hinkt die Digitalisierung vieler Autohäuser hinter den Erwartungen her, obwohl sich das Kundenverhalten längst ins Netz und zunehmend in Richtung KI verlagert. Was bedeutet das für die Zukunft des Vertriebs? Bleibt das Autohaus zentraler Touchpoint – oder wird die Kundenschnittstelle künftig von Plattformen und KI-Agenten kontrolliert? Und welchen Einfluss haben neue Player, insbesondere aus China, auf das bestehende System? In dieser Folge von „Was mich bewegt“ sprechen wir mit Prof. Dr. Benedikt Maier vom Institut für Automobilwirtschaft (IfA) über den Status quo im Autohandel – und warum die Branche mit dem steigenden Druck eigentlich ganz gut umgehen kann. Alle Trends und Wissenswertes zum Future Retail in der Autobranche in unserem Themenkompass: https://www.automotiveit.eu/whitepaper/future-retail-was-entscheider-jetzt-wissen-muessen/2642415 Hintergrundbericht zur Digitalisierung des Autohandels: https://www.automotiveit.eu/technology/zaehe-angelegenheit/934358 Interview mit Polestar-Chef Michael Lohscheller: https://www.automotiveit.eu/strategy/wir-schaffen-tempo-ueber-struktur-nicht-ueber-kompromisse/2622401 Mehr zu Pascal und Yannick finden Sie auf LinkedIn: Pascal Nagel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-nagel/ Yannick Tiedemann: www.linkedin.com/in/yannick-tiedemann Hinweis: Die im Podcast getätigten Aussagen spiegeln die Privatmeinung der Gesprächspartner wider und entsprechen nicht zwingend den Darstellungen des jeweiligen Arbeitgebers

Du planst in Quartalen, dein Wettbewerber in Jahrzehnten, und du fragst dich noch, warum du gerade verlierst? Genau das war der Auslöser für mein Gespräch mit Zukunftsforscher Dirk Herrmann auf der Insights, und in meinem neuen LinkedIn Newsletter habe ich seine Aussagen für dich aufgenommen, inklusive meiner persönlichen Sicht. Du erfährst, warum nicht KI dir den Job nimmt, warum 15 Millionen Menschen weniger im Arbeitsmarkt eine Chance sind und warum Made in Germany gerade an seinen eigenen Touchpoints scheitert.

In honor of May, Our Lady's Month, Joe and Gretalyn each bring a favorite Marian poem by G.K. Chesterton to share with the other—without any advance coordination. Gretalyn reads "Images," a meditation on six titles from the Litany of Loreto drawn from Chesterton's 1926 collection Queen of the Seven Swords, while Joe shares "Crooked," a lesser-known 1933 poem from GK's Weekly that captures a more introspective, mature side of his Marian devotion. Together they explore what these poems reveal about Chesterton's lifelong love for Our Lady, the apologetics of Marian devotion, and the paradox at the heart of his faith: that the world only looks right when you learn to see it through her. In This Episode: How Chesterton's "Images" weaves six titles from the Litany of Loreto—Mirror of Justice, Tower of David, House of Gold, Tower of Ivory, Ark of the Covenant, and Seat of Wisdom—into richly layered verse Why 1926, the year Frances Chesterton entered the Church, gives "Images" a deeper biographical resonance What it means when Marian devotion troubles someone, and why Joe and Gretalyn suggest that reaction is worth examining carefully Chesterton's Marian apologetics in Lepanto—and the single line that cuts to the heart of the controversy What "Crooked" reveals about a quieter, more subdued Chesterton in 1933, writing in the shadow of a world beginning to come apart Chapters: 00:00: Introduction & May as Our Lady's Month 02:36: Gretalyn Reads "Images" 07:06: Unpacking the Litany of Loreto 11:03: Chesterton's Lifelong Marian Devotion 14:38: Mary as a Touchpoint for Converts 21:16: Mary in Scripture: Luke and the Magnificat 23:59: Lepanto and the Defense of Mary 27:51: Joe Reads "Crooked" 28:17: Discussion of "Crooked" 33:16: Chesterton's Mature Mariology Resources Mentioned: I Also Had My Hour: An Alternative Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist Gilbert Magazine FOLLOW US Instagram Facebook X SUPPORT Consider making a donation Visit our Shop Produced by Saint Kolbe Studios

Vertrauen statt Blindflug: Warum erfolgreiche KI-Prozesse den Menschen brauchen   Viele Unternehmen setzen KI ein, um schneller bessere Ergebnisse zu erzielen. Doch genau hier entsteht oft ein Problem: KI allein schafft noch keine Akzeptanz. In dieser Podcastfolge sprechen wir darüber, warum erfolgreiche KI-Prozesse immer den Menschen brauchen, weshalb Vertrauen der entscheidende Faktor ist und wie Unternehmen KI sinnvoll in ihre Abläufe integrieren.   Torsten Koerting auf LinkedIn: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/torstenkoerting/   KI funktioniert nur mit menschlicher Beteiligung Wer KI einfach arbeiten lässt und am Ende nur ein Ergebnis präsentiert, wird oft auf Skepsis stoßen. Menschen müssen an entscheidenden Stellen eingebunden werden — durch Feedback, Abstimmungen und gemeinsame Entscheidungen. Erst dadurch entsteht Akzeptanz für die Ergebnisse und Vertrauen in den gesamten Prozess. Vertrauen ist der Schlüssel bei KI-Projekten Viele Menschen verbinden KI noch immer mit Fehlern oder Halluzinationen. Deshalb reicht es nicht aus, nur schnelle Ergebnisse zu liefern. Spannend ist der Ansatz, mehrere KI-Systeme wie ChatGPT, Gemini und Claude parallel zu nutzen und die Resultate miteinander abzugleichen. Dadurch steigt die Qualität der Ergebnisse und gleichzeitig auch das Vertrauen in die KI. Geschwindigkeit bringt nur mit Substanz echten Mehrwert KI sorgt für enorme Geschwindigkeit und Geschwindigkeit ist heute ein echter Wettbewerbsvorteil. Doch schneller zu arbeiten reicht nicht aus, wenn die Qualität darunter leidet. Erfolgreiche Unternehmen kombinieren deshalb die Effizienz der KI mit menschlicher Erfahrung und strategischem Denken. Erfolgreiche KI braucht Transparenz und Zusammenarbeit Die Zukunft gehört Unternehmen, die KI nicht blind automatisieren, sondern bewusst gemeinsam mit Menschen einsetzen. Transparente Prozesse, regelmäßige Touchpoints und nachvollziehbare Ergebnisse sorgen dafür, dass Teams und Kunden KI akzeptieren und ihr vertrauen. Genau daraus entsteht langfristig echter Mehrwert.     Noch mehr von den Koertings ...  Das KI-Café ... jede Woche Mittwoch (>350 Teilnehmer) von 08:30 bis 10:00 Uhr ... online via Zoom .. kostenlos und nicht umsonstJede Woche Mittwoch um 08:30 Uhr öffnet das KI-Café seine Online-Pforten ... wir lösen KI-Anwendungsfälle live auf der Bühne ... moderieren Expertenpanel zu speziellen Themen (bspw. KI im Recruiting ... KI in der Qualitätssicherung ... KI im Projektmanagement ... und vieles mehr) ... ordnen die neuen Entwicklungen in der KI-Welt ein und geben einen Ausblick ... und laden Experten ein für spezielle Themen ... und gehen auch mal in die Tiefe und durchdringen bestimmte Bereiche ganz konkret ... alles für dein Weiterkommen. Melde dich kostenfrei an ... www.koerting-institute.com/ki-cafe/   Mit jedem Prompt ein WOW! ... für Selbstständige und Unternehmer Ein klarer Leitfaden für Unternehmer, Selbstständige und Entscheider, die Künstliche Intelligenz nicht nur verstehen, sondern wirksam einsetzen wollen. Dieses Buch zeigt dir, wie du relevante KI-Anwendungsfälle erkennst und die KI als echten Sparringspartner nutzt, um diese Realität werden zu lassen. Praxisnah, mit echten Beispielen und vollständig umsetzungsorientiert. Das Buch ist ein Geschenk, nur Versandkosten von 9,95 € fallen an. Perfekt für Anfänger und Fortgeschrittene, die mit KI ihr Potenzial ausschöpfen möchten. Das Buch in deinen Briefkasten ... https://koerting-institute.com/shop/buch-mit-jedem-prompt-ein-wow/   Die KI-Lounge ... unsere Community für den Einstieg in die KI (>2800 Mitglieder) Die KI-Lounge ist eine Community für alle, die mehr über generative KI erfahren und anwenden möchten. Mitglieder erhalten exklusive monatliche KI-Updates, Experten-Interviews, Vorträge des KI-Speaker-Slams, KI-Café-Aufzeichnungen und einen 3-stündigen ChatGPT-Kurs. Tausche dich mit über 2800 KI-Enthusiasten aus, stelle Fragen und starte durch. Initiiert von Torsten & Birgit Koerting, bietet die KI-Lounge Orientierung und Inspiration für den Einstieg in die KI-Revolution. Hier findet der Austausch statt ... www.koerting-institute.com/ki-lounge/   Starte mit uns in die 1:1 Zusammenarbeit Wenn du direkt mit uns arbeiten und KI in deinem Business integrieren möchtest, buche dir einen Termin für ein persönliches Gespräch. Gemeinsam finden wir Antworten auf deine Fragen und finden heraus, wie wir dich unterstützen können. Klicke hier, um einen Termin zu buchen und deine Fragen zu klären. Buche dir jetzt deinen Termin mit uns ... www.koerting-institute.com/termin/   Weitere Impulse im Netflix Stil ... Wenn du auf der Suche nach weiteren spannenden Impulsen für deine Selbstständigkeit bist, dann gehe jetzt auf unsere Impulseseite und lass die zahlreichen spannenden Impulse auf dich wirken. Inspiration pur ... www.koerting-institute.com/impulse/   Die Koertings auf die Ohren ... Wenn dir diese Podcastfolge gefallen hat, dann höre dir jetzt noch weitere informative und spannende Folgen an ... über 500 Folgen findest du hier ... www.koerting-institute.com/podcast/   Wir freuen uns darauf, dich auf deinem Weg zu begleiten!

In this episode of How to Run a Successful Business and Still Have a Life, Stacey Morgan dives deep into customer retention and why it’s a game-changer for your business. She shares practical strategies to keep your customers coming back, from mapping the customer journey, creating milestones, and ensuring consistent touchpoints, to surprising and delighting your clients. Stacey explains how understanding your customer’s needs, communicating your vision, mission, and values, and making them feel part of your community turns first-time buyers into loyal, lifelong customers. This episode is packed with actionable insights for small business owners who want to focus on retention, build meaningful relationships, and reduce the cost of constantly acquiring new customers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on ElevenAfterNine, we're slowing things down to tackle one of the most debated topics in the Porsche community: "Do I upgrade my car or upgrade the Model?"Today, we do the math on the $10,000 Dilemma: Should you save that extra cash to jump a trim level, or should you spend it on the "Touchpoints" and "Soundtracks" that actually create the "Fizz"?Support the Show:If you enjoyed this episode, the best way to support us is to leave a review!Apple Podcasts: Leave a Review HereSpotify: Rate us on SpotifyJoin the ElevenAfterNine Community:Official Website: ElevenAfterNine.comInstagram: @theelevenafternineSubscribe to the Podcast Channel: @ElevenAfterNinePodcastAre you Team Upgrade Car or Model? Let me know in the comments below!#ElevenAfterNine #Porsche #981Boxster #Porsche911 #CarMods #PorscheCulture #DrivingExperience #BaseVsS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Ronee de Leon, Executive Director of Partner Church Success at TouchPoint Software. With nearly two decades of ministry experience and now serving churches across the country, Ronee brings a unique perspective at the intersection of systems, strategy, and shepherding. Are you relying on attendance and giving numbers to understand your church? Wondering how to actually “see” your people as your church grows more complex? Ronee shares a practical framework for turning data into meaningful ministry action. You can't shepherd what you can't see. // One of the biggest challenges Ronee sees across churches is a lack of visibility. While most churches are passionate about reaching people, many rely on high-level metrics—attendance and giving—that only tell part of the story. As churches grow (especially beyond 300 people), intuitive leadership alone is no longer enough. Leaders can't be in every room, and without deeper insight, they miss critical moments in people's lives. The result is a gap between what leaders think is happening and what's actually happening in people's spiritual journeys. From data to discipleship. // Ronee emphasizes that data itself is not the goal. Rather, discipleship is. The opportunity for churches today is to transform raw data into actionable insight that helps people take meaningful next steps. Instead of just knowing how many people are in groups, leaders should be asking deeper questions: Who is still engaged three weeks in? Who dropped off halfway through? What patterns are emerging in people's participation? These insights reveal where discipleship is thriving and where it's stalling. The four stages of data-driven discipleship. // To help churches think clearly about this process, Ronee outlines a simple framework: conviction, collection, clarity, and care. Conviction asks whether leaders truly believe data collection matters enough to prioritize it. Collection focuses on consistently gathering meaningful data, not just sporadically. Clarity is the ability to interpret that data, moving from information to insight. And finally, care is where action happens – using those insights to connect with people and shepherd them effectively. Every church, she notes, is somewhere along this progression. Where most churches get stuck. // Many churches struggle in the gap between collection and clarity. They gather data but don't translate it into meaningful action. Data becomes a warehouse rather than a tool. The shift happens when leaders move from asking “What happened?” to “What does this mean and what should we do next?” This requires intentional conversations, regular review rhythms, and a willingness to engage with the data rather than ignore it. Drifting is the key moment to watch. // One of the most important indicators Ronee highlights is disengagement. When people begin to drift—missing groups, serving less, or disengaging from community—it often signals deeper issues. Behind that drift could be doubt, divorce, depression, diagnosis, or financial stress. Without visibility, churches miss the opportunity to respond. But with the right systems in place, leaders can proactively reach out, offering care at the exact moment it's needed most. From surveillance to stewardship. // Data collection isn’t surveillance, but rather stewardship. When used correctly, data enables pastors and leaders to care for people more effectively. A simple phone call or conversation, prompted by data, can change someone's trajectory. Ronee shares examples of pastors identifying disengaged individuals, reaching out, and discovering significant life challenges—leading to holistic care that addresses spiritual, emotional, and practical needs. Culture matters more than tools. // While technology plays an important role, culture is the starting point. Churches must first align around why data matters. Without that shared conviction, systems will fail regardless of how advanced they are. Teams need clarity, support, and accountability to consistently engage with data. Leaders must normalize conversations about it by reviewing insights in meetings, celebrating wins, and integrating it into everyday ministry rhythms. Measuring what really matters. // One of the most important shifts happening today is moving beyond weekend attendance as the primary measure of health. Many churches are discovering they are actually ministering to two to three times more people than their weekend numbers suggest. This broader view changes how leaders think about staffing, engagement, and discipleship pathways. It also raises a deeper question: are we promoting participation, or are we cultivating transformation? To learn more about TouchPoint Software and access the free church health assessment, visit touchpointsoftware.com/unseminary. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, we say here at the podcast that it’s like stuff you wish they taught in seminary. And 100% know that today’s topic is one of those that they’re not talking about in seminary, but for particularly my executive pastors, senior leader type people that are listening in, you think about this almost every single day. And your team interacts with it multiple times a day. And it’s something you’re gonna wanna lean in on for an incredible conversation today with Ronee de Leon. She is the Executive Director of Partner Church Success at TouchPoint Software. If you do not know who TouchPoint Software is, you have been living under a rock. It’s a church management and engagement platform that serves churches across the country. She brings over 18 years of experience working in and alongside ministry, combining strategic systems, thinking with a deep heart for shepherding. TouchPoint, this is an incredible organization, has a mission for helping churches transform their data into discipleship, and they really talk a lot about engagement. And so we really want to dive in with this today. Ronee, thanks for being here. Thanks for being on the show.Ronee de Leon — It’s my pleasure. It’s great to be back, Rich. Thank you.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good to have you back on. Slightly different context, but same kind of conversations, but glad to have you back on. Why don’t you bring us up to speed? Tell us a little bit about the Ronee story and tell us a little bit about TouchPoint. How’s all that work together?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I have been on a journey. Anybody following the Lord, I feel like is on a fun adventure with Jesus. And I have definitely felt that in the last couple of years. I’ve been at TouchPoint for a little less than two years. But before that, I was at a large multi-site mega church based in Columbus, Ohio, and just grateful for the way that the Lord pivots us in our journey when it’s time. And so I had the opportunity to move from serving one church to lots and lots of churches across the country. And I just, it’s such a privilege to serve the bride of Christ in the way that we do at TouchPoint, like you said, through technology, but it’s so much more than that.Rich Birch — Yeah. and I want to take advantage, friends, I want to take advantage of the with the fact that Ronnie’s here. You see churches across the country. You’re working with churches across the country. You have a great experience. And friends, if you’re listening in today and you’re like, oh, like we already have a system like this, I want you to listen in because we’re not we’re not here to sell you on anything. We want to have a bigger conversation, ask some bigger questions, to help you wrestle with and think about this issue, but frankly, to take advantage of your position TouchPoint because you see so much. Rich Birch — When you think about the landscape of churches, when they’re looking at, you know, particularly the leaders, we’re thinking about executive pastor type person, when they come to actually knowing their people, where are their people are at at their church, Where what does a landscape look like for us on that front? How do we know kind of the people in our church? How do we get a sense of who are they? What are they do and how are they engaging with us?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I love the church, Rich. I recently have been kind of working through the language with the Lord of, I think the calling on my life is to be the best maid of honor to the bride of Christ that I can be. So it’s such a unique vantage point… Rich Birch — I love that. Ronee de Leon — …at TouchPoint serving churches all over the country, like you said. The church has a lot of passion and we’re doing a lot to reach people. But some things that I see are that we still have visibility gaps and why that matters is because churches cannot shepherd what they cannot see.Rich Birch — So true.Ronee de Leon — And so we we’ve got a lot of people in our care, but if we’re just taking ministry snapshots instead of understanding meaningful steps as people take their discipleship journey, we’re still struggling with visibility into what’s actually happening in our church.Rich Birch — Wow, I’m looking forward to digging into that. I know many of us, ah you know, I like to call it the nickels and noses issue. Like we know, in fact, probably 100% of the pastors that are listening in today, they know how many people attended last weekend. And they probably know generally where things are at on the revenue side, particularly, hopefully on the expense side too. But that’s just a really high level, maybe not that helpful, if I hear what you’re saying. Where does the picture start to break down when all we see is these two? If if if we’re just looking at these two numbers, how does that kind of limit our ability? I like that, you know, to see our people, to ultimately disciple them.Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say there is a ton of opportunity to transform data into discipleship. And when we stay high level, we’re missing the opportunities that double clicking into those things would allow us.Ronee de Leon — Like you said, with an attendance example, we know how many people are in groups. Sometimes that’s roster based. Churches really are getting into this might know what their retention rate is, you know how many people actually are staying in groups over the course of the season. But like if we keep clicking and keep drilling into this, there is the ability for us to understand as people are engaging in these groups and disengaging from these groups. Ronee de Leon — You know, who’s still connected. three weeks into the season, six weeks into the season, 12 weeks into the season, and who’s not? And why did they fall off? And so there is a high level view that’s helpful year over year, season to season. But again, we’re missing a lot of discipleship opportunities by not drilling down into this to kind of these personal levels.Rich Birch — Yeah, well and I can imagine as particularly as our churches grow, I think ah there’s a lot of leaders in the church that are like really intuitive leaders and they like to kind of like get in a room and like, I can feel this thing. I just know how it’s going. But as the church grows and becomes you know, more complex, that’s harder to do. You can’t, you just can’t, you can’t get in all the rooms. There’s, there’s, you can’t be in more than one place at once. If you have multiple locations, you can’t do that. And so how, as that happens, what are the kind of maybe questions that you see leaders asking that that doesn’t work anymore though? They can’t get answers out of that. They want answers for that, but they just can’t get it. What, what are those? Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say, Rich, intuition is God-given…Rich Birch — Right. Ronee de Leon — …but feelings are fleeting, right? Rich Birch — So true.Ronee de Leon — I’m a big believer in facts are our friends. So we’ve we’ve got to have the data and make data-driven decisions. But I think the questions that leaders are are trying to answer that sometimes they can’t with those feelings. In my experience, it feels like the breaking point of visibility is around like that 300 mark. If your church is growing to or above around 300, your, your staff’s eyes just can’t see everything anymore on a weekend.Ronee de Leon — And so the questions that I think we want to answer that we, we lose visibility to as we grow and bigger churches obviously suffer from this as well, but we want to know who’s new. We want to know who’s stalling in their discipleship journey. We want to know who needs care, who’s drifting. And, that’s the part, Rich, that I think is is really important. Because when people are drifting from something that they were previously engaged in, it’s probably the things of life that they’re going through that we, the church, are responsible for caring for them and connecting with them, shepherding through.Ronee de Leon — You know it’s it’s a bunch of Ds, Rich. It’s doubt. It’s divorce. It’s depression. It’s diagnosis. It’s economic duress. It’s disgruntlement. It’s distraction. It’s all of these things that we can’t see if we’re not double clicking. But but we want to know who’s drifting. We want to know who needs care and we want to show up in a timely mannerRich Birch — Okay, that’s fantastic. I love the D list as well. Good, great preacher. Lots of Ds there. I love it. So let’s double click another D on this this. I know you have a framework to help churches wrestle through this, to to actually you know get beyond just these kind of high level to undersee, both see these people and understand them, move them along. Do you want to kind of talk us through this framework? Give us a high level over and then maybe we’ll kind of dive into pieces of it.Ronee de Leon — Yeah, let’s alliterate some more. Rich Birch — Love it.Ronee de Leon — Like I said, I was on church staff for a long time. Rich Birch — Yes, exactly. Ronee de Leon — It feels like it’s more memorable, right? Rich Birch — Yes.Ronee de Leon — So um this is a really simple framework that really is more stages. It’s a progression. But even though it’s simple, whether they know it or not, every church is in one of these stages when it comes to data-driven discipleship.Ronee de Leon — And so four kind of C’s of this or stages are conviction, collection, clarity, and care. And I’ll just give a brief description of each of those…Rich Birch — Yeah. Ronee de Leon — …and then we can go dive in a little bit deeper.Ronee de Leon — But conviction, really the question that we’re answering here is, do you truly believe this matters even when it’s not easy? So leaders believe that shepherding is important, but do we want to move into doing it proactively? And are we comfortable using data as a tool to do that well? So that’s kind of the conviction piece. Do you really believe that this matters?Rich Birch — Yep.Ronee de Leon — Collection then, are you committed to consistently gathering the data that’s needed? Not just once, but as a rhythm. It’s hard work, but it is a worthy cause, a valiant effort.Ronee de Leon — Let’s move to clarity real quick. Rich Birch — Yep.Ronee de Leon — Again, the question we’re answering is, now that you have the data, do you have the insight? Do you really see what it’s telling you and what are we doing with it? Ronee de Leon — And then the last one, care, of course, is where we’re acting on the insights to connect with our people. Will you actually act on the insights and shepherd people or will it stay theoretical? That’s that’s kind of where we’re headed with this.Rich Birch — Okay, that makes sense. So again, so that’s conviction, collection, clarity, and care. I’d love to talk about collection a little bit. So I think our churches would love to collect data. And in fact, I know there’s lots of leaders that are listening in that are like, they’re like, yeah, that sounds right. I would love to get more data. I’m just not sure how to do that. How do we build a system for collecting that data, for getting, you know, even the things you talked about, people dropping out of groups, you know, not just people rostering, but like, how do we, how do we do that? What’s the starting point for collecting data?Ronee de Leon — To be honest, I think the starting point is your culture. Rich Birch — Okay. Ronee de Leon — I think that this is often an upstream problem when we think it’s a downstream one. I think that we think people just need to follow up or just be more regular about it. But if we don’t have a strong culture around why we gather the data and what we’re doing with it, there’s just a lack of clarity with the team. So I think culture really matters as a starting point. Of course, we can get into…Rich Birch — That’s good.Ronee de Leon — …of of how to collect it. But I think we have to start there.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s a good insight. Because I can see where, yeah, we have to even just at a high level, is this a is this a conversation where we’re willing to have, want to have, want to be a part of, and we’ve got to deal with it, like you say, upstream rather than, okay, let’s dive into the actual tool first. Let’s figure out you know how important this is. Rich Birch — But my experience…I’m going to play a little bit of devil’s advocate on this question. Hopefully you can take it Ronee. Our relationship can sustain that. Ronee de Leon — Yeah.Rich Birch — But like, I feel like churches collect more data that they than they use. Like I I’ve bumped into churches where they’re like, yeah, we’ve got this data, but we’re not actually doing anything with it. What’s the difference between a church that does that? Like that just sitting on data, not using it. And one that actually can gain some clarity from it. What’s the pivot between collection and clarity? How do we do that?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, the difference is data and discernment. A church that’s collecting information knows what happened, but a church with clarity understands what it means and what to do next. And like you said, we’ve got to be willing to talk about it. We have to spend the time to translate it. It is a pivot. That raw data is is rarely helpful. And um to what do they say to to push back on your pushback?Ronee de Leon — I am surprised as I deal with churches, how many of them don’t have all the data. I think sometimes we make an assumption that above a certain size, they just collect group data and they take attendance and that’s what they do.Ronee de Leon — Or our volunteers check in or our kids and students check in regularly and they’re excellent at it. I find that that is actually less frequent of a case than than I think you or I would hope to believe.Rich Birch — Okay, that’s cool. Well and so again, I said, we weren’t going to be like selling TouchPoint, but I do want to understand kind of your unique position on this issue. How is TouchPoint accelerate… because to me, I think the model turns here on this collection clarity issue. It’s like, man, we’ve got a, we have to use technology to enable us to collect data. And then that And then have some sort of intermediating technology that helps us gain better clarity on that. Talk us through where is TouchPoint’s kind of expertise in these these two parts of the four Cs?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say that TouchPoint obviously helps with collection. We’re a church management software with some unique features that are going to help you get um an intuitive kind of collective view of people’s engagement.Ronee de Leon — So we offer things like engagement scores, which which not a lot of church management softwares have kind of baked into it. We want you to understand that overall participation and be able to see what level at what levels people are engaged and as they’re disengaging. There are ways to do that and and other softwares, but TouchPoint does have some unique kind of approaches to that built into the software.Ronee de Leon — I would say another piece to this that kind of separates us is we have a team of consultants and those consultants are not only partnering with churches as they’re kind of getting up and running in TouchPoint to learn how to use the system.Ronee de Leon — We’re kind of ministry consultants. We often, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a church in Texas approach me and say, you know, we have a lot of great people on our staff, but to be honest, a lot of them have transitioned from the marketplace. We don’t know what we don’t know. What processes should we have? What should our baptism process look like?Ronee de Leon — And so we have a whole team as part of our TouchPoint team that sits with churches and helps strategize around ministry philosophy and best approaches. And so I’d say that’s another place where we we kind of shine in the space. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.Ronee de Leon — Everybody in the space wants to see the church win. Everybody has good hearts. And I can only speak to the team that I’m on. And these guys, they really counted a privilege to serve the church.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. Like, and and you can see, you know, a church when this is done well, when you have got a solution like TouchPoint at the core of what you’re doing, it ends up touching all of your processes. It doesn’t surprise me that a church like that would reach out and say, Hey, like, can you help us work through because you start to see the value of like, man, if we can embed this into the core of what we do, we get a better, like you say, it’s not just like, oh, look, we get a good engagement score. It actually helps us minister to people better. It actually helps us to, and so it makes sense to me that you find yourself in increasing conversations that are obviously related to technology. They they have a, for lack of better word, a touch point to technology, but they are, they’re also, you know, other kind of related systems in the church. Rich Birch — So obviously, ultimately, this all points towards care, maybe paint a bit of a vision for us, maybe think of a church that’s doing this well. That’s like, hey, here’s some of the telltale signs that they’re actually following through that they’re, yes, they’ve got, they’ve at a high level kind of culture, they’ve got this conviction. Yes, we’re going to do that. They’re, they’re finding lots of places to collect data that doesn’t seem intrusive. They’re ultimately gaining some clarity on that. And that’s translating into real world care. Give us some, a few pictures of what does that actually look like when you’re like, oh, that’s working well.Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say um one of the best kind of tells of this is we hear less and less stories of people disengaging and nobody knew and they were hurt by that. We missed an opportunity to care for or connect with them when those things of life came up.Ronee de Leon — You know, it’s as simple sometimes as a phone call or a text, a conversation on a weekend when when the data is showing you that this person has been disengaging or not around, to to just reach out and say, hey, how you doing? You know, this is not um surveillance. This is stewardship. This is this is caring for our people. Ronee de Leon — And there’s a story out of the church where where I used to work that I love and I still tell just because of the multifaceted kind of piece of the engagement that came out of it. So a campus pastor who was using data really well saw an individual in his church on a list of people who were disengaging. And so he reached out and he learned that this individual had lost his job that was causing doubt in his faith. And he was actually beginning to struggle with some depression. Rich Birch — Wow.Ronee de Leon — You know, if we play that scenario out, if we never saw that, we didn’t reach out, what happens to that guy? You know, the story could have looked very, very different.Ronee de Leon — But because that pastor was able to use the data for the purposes of discipleship and make that connection, we we saw him and connected him. We were able to address his physical needs. You know, there was some assistance the church could provide or or point him to. We were able to help with mental needs, emotional needs, spiritual needs. There was pastoral care and Christian counseling. And so, so many different ways that we were able to engage and and and walk alongside this individual. Like I said, the way I think the church wants to and should be, but we maybe would have never known about that individual if we hadn’t had the indicator ah because of the data.Rich Birch — Yeah, so you something you said there caught my attention. I'm like, oh, we got to loop back around on that. The example used there, you talked about the campus pastor type person. They had like a disengagement report. There was like the system ended up generating, hey, here’s a list of people. I’m assuming by what you said, here’s some people who you know I you should connect with.Rich Birch — Talk to me about how that happens. I I I'm not like I’m not putting down any other solutions out there. I’ve worked in a number of them. I have not had that experience where it’s like, hey, these are some people you should talk to. Talk to me about how TouchPoint actually does that. What does that look like at at the level of a church? How how do we get to the point where we’re using this well enough that we can have a report like that, that we could actually take action on? That’s incredible.Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say um it comes down to consistency in some ways, right? You build some reports in your system. TouchPoint has a lot of unique reporting that we can do to surface that data for you. But no matter what system you’re using, I would say if you and your team aren’t using some something as simple as absentee report of some sort, people who have been missing three or more consecutive weeks from groups or something like that.Rich Birch — Volunteering, yep.Ronee de Leon — I mean you can start there and and it’s really that easy. But there are more complex ways to understand rather than the arbitrary, I want to call everybody who’s missing three weeks, understand as personal participation patterns change. And that is a really unique approach to it. Rich Birch — Wow.Ronee de Leon — And I would say it does take a software like TouchPoint or even one that TouchPoint just partnered with called Path we’re getting into seeing those personal participation patterns and that’s where I think we get into some secret sauce and just be able to show up in a really timely manner.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s incredible. Like being able that that to me, friends, okay, I’m just going to stop pretending like I’m not biased. Like I’m biased. You should be checking out TouchPoint. But like the the I was I tried. I held for almost 20 minutes. I tried to be the the but the unbiased, you know, second voice or whatever. Rich Birch — But but I think a part of the all of these systems have, for years, have like, this is the thing that’s all been talked about. Like, this is going to be amazing. But actually what they end up doing is being, they they’re just like warehouses of data. Like it’s just, it’s just a big list. It’s basically a complex spreadsheet of people’s names. And that’s not helpful. That doesn’t actually help us. And the the vicious cycle I’ve seen with my team is our people, our people people, the people that actually interact with our folks, they don’t see the value in this helping them. So then they don’t end up interacting with the tool and giving data and all of that stuff because they’re like, well, this doesn’t actually help me do my job. So why am I interacting with it? What I love about TouchPoint is we’re saying, hey, how do we get to the to the idea of a personalized path, a personalized understanding of where people are at? That’s, you know, that’s incredible.Rich Birch — So you’ve worked with lots of churches, hundreds of churches, and, you know, lots all across the country, great, lots of different contexts. What trends are you seeing right now that church that are helping churches think about engagement differently than maybe a few years ago, that things that are like, okay, this is, you know, kind of the cutting edge stuff we we should be thinking about, you know, in the in the future, what are some things we should be looking at?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I’m really grateful that in the last few years, I think there has been started to see a shift, at least in churches moving from simply gathering the data to asking what they can do with it. How can we actually leverage this for discipleship? I think churches are taking that more seriously. It even used to be a little taboo for churches to gather data. That’s not the case anymore. And and I’m grateful for that.Rich Birch — Right.Ronee de Leon — I see that moving in a really positive direction. I’m seeing churches being willing to evaluate their technology stack, which I think is really important. Again, we’ve been gathering the data long enough long enough.Ronee de Leon — If it’s not useful, what are what are we doing? What are we doing with it?Rich Birch — Right. Why are we doing this?Ronee de Leon — And so yeah, understanding is our technology really serving us well and as a tool exactly for those people you just mentioned. Your people people, your pastoral people, is it quick and easy and getting them to their people more quickly? Ronee de Leon — And then even the idea of decisions being made around data about specifically the actual size of our ministry. I think this has been said for years now, pre-COVID it was true. Now it’s it’s even more true. Weekend service numbers don’t tell the whole story… Rich Birch — Right. Ronee de Leon — …of who is in and around our ministry pond. And we have to understand that and start making decisions around that.Rich Birch — That’s so true.Ronee de Leon — Or in those spaces, how are we discipling them towards the importance of the weekend service and that gathering? And so, I’m just seeing some things shift in that area as well. Executive pastors don’t love this conversation, Rich. I’m just going to throw that out there. Because a lot of our staffing ratios are based on weekend service attendance numbers, but we’re actually serving. The patterns that I’m seeing are somewhere between two and a half to three times that number of people in our ministries.Ronee de Leon — So there’s there’s a lot of movement in the world of data, but those are some of the things that are kind of surfacing that I think is really helpful and productive for churches.Rich Birch — Okay, I want to, I would like I said, I was want to take advantage of your expertise. An area that, speaking in this whole this consistency issue, hey, how do we keep our people engaged, keep our staff, our volunteers, key volunteers engaged in um collecting data and, you know, ensuring that they’re engaging with the tool. What have you seen as best practices either on the front end, like, hey, when we’re rolling out a new system, if we’ve, if we’ve switched, say, for instance, if you’re listening in and you want to switch to TouchPoint, what are some best practices on that front or just ongoing to keep our people using this? How do we, how do we, yeah, what’s what’s best practice on that front?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, what you’re kind of hinting towards is a little bit around change management and the stick-to-it-ativeness around that, right?Rich Birch — Yes, yes.Ronee de Leon — There is a leadership coaching company that I’ve worked with in the past that talks about to achieve anything, you need clarity, support and accountability. And I’m a really big believer in that clarity. Again, we’ve talked about what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Support is do we have the tools and the training to make that happen?Ronee de Leon — The biggest lacking piece that I see often in church world is the accountability side. Rich Birch — Right.Ronee de Leon — You know, we we wrestle with the idea of grace and truth. And a lot of times we want to lean really heavily into the grace side of things. I think there is a huge opportunity for accountability to be reframed in church world. It doesn’t have to be a drop the hammer approach. Rich Birch — Sure.Ronee de Leon — You know, it’s seeing people do the right thing and helping them continue to do that. So I would say if you don’t have all three of those pieces, you’re probably going struggle to achieve just about anything. And the part, like I said, that I see really, really with area for opportunity in the church world is that accountability piece.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Any that I think that’s a clear framework. That’s like the cost of the price price worth the price of admission of today’s episode right there.Rich Birch — Clarity, support, accountability. That’s fantastic. On the accountability side, how do we do that? What what what are some ways to, ou know, I’m thinking carrot and stick. It’s like I can we’ve celebrated where it’s like, hey, look at this person. This department’s doing a great job with this. How how else are should are have you seen churches that are particularly effective at driving that kind of consistency, driving accountability? What are they doing to ins ensure or that that’s, you know, that’s actually happening in their organization?Ronee de Leon — Yeah. Casting the vision of this being stewardship, I think really matters. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Ronee de Leon — You know, there’s a verse in Hebrews that talks about, your church leaders will be accountable to the Lord for the people they’re shepherding. And so I think really, casting the vision around stewardship as part of that. But then practically it can’t be weird to talk about it.Rich Birch — Right.Ronee de Leon — You know, let’s talk about it in department meetings. Let’s talk about it and celebrate in staff meetings. Let’s bring it up in one-on-ones. Pull the technology up with the people that you lead and look through the lists and say, what are the stories? How are things going? You know, how can I support you as you move this forward? But I just think it can’t be weird to talk about.Ronee de Leon — So between taking the stewardship side seriously and just starting to incorporate it into every conversation, every meeting, if it matters to us, and it does. It does because people are the mission of the church, right? How do we just continue to build that culture around it?Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. So you’ve put together a great resource that I want to make sure, if you’re listening in friends, you’ve invested almost 30 minutes here, you need to jump on this resource, like super helpful: the church health assessment. Talk us through what is this tool? How will it help? Why should we jump on board? You know, what what what kind of conversation could it help us with but with our team even this week?Ronee de Leon — Yeah. The church health assessment is looking at five widely accepted kind of industry benchmarks to understand how your church is comparing to those. So like we talked about earlier, this could give you a starting place to understand, according, you know, based on those benchmarks, how is your church doing? How are a few of these ministries doing? And then it’s, it’s probably going to highlight somewhere specific for you to start drilling into and double clicking on. So, that assessment is going to be at TouchPointsoftware.com/unseminary. Rich Birch — Ooo, look at that. Ronee de Leon — Like I said, it’s going to take you, if you’ve got the data, which is part of this conversation, right?Rich Birch — Yeah.Ronee de Leon — But if you know the numbers, it’s only going to take you two or three minutes to get these five key areas kind of benchmarked to understand how your church is performing compared to those accepted benchmarks.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s amazing. Like, again, friends, I would love for you to check that out. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that. Thanks for doing that. What a great gift, tool for people that are listening in. That’s super helpful. I appreciate that. I think I can see where this kind of thing could be super helpful for us, even to have like a bit of a leadership conversation around, let’s do it and then talk about it together. It’s a good conversation. Rich Birch — So taking a step back, if I’m if i’m an executive pastor or senior leader who’s listening in, and I feel like I’m constantly, or we’re mostly reacting. We’re constantly reacting to problems at our church. You know, we’re not getting ahead of this. We’re not seeing kind of data but as it, you know, we’re not developing, like you say, ahead. We’re just, it’s stuff happens and then we you react. How could we use data to help us get ahead of that rather than, you know, just reacting all the time? What’s one of the first areas we should look at and consider as a church?Ronee de Leon — Yeah, I would say that a simple place to start is kind of revisiting this framework of conviction, collection, clarity, and care. And ask yourself, what C is my church stuck on? Where are we stuck in this journey? And dive in there, ask the questions, reach out to another church who maybe is doing this really well. But that’s where I would say, practically, I would ask yourself, where are you on this kind of progressive journey of data-driven discipleship?Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. This has been a fantastic conversation. If you were, I’m going to get one more last question in for you here. What’s one question you wish every church leader who’s listening in today would would ask about their church that almost nobody’s asking right now, that’s thinking about this area, that’s thinking about like, hey, what are we, you know, here’s a question I wish we were thinking about that we’re not thinking about today.Ronee de Leon — Yeah, churches are asking a lot of good questions. And I love this topic. I’m passionate about data-driven discipleship.Rich Birch — Love it.Ronee de Leon — But I think the question behind the question behind the question kind of comes down to: are we promoting participation or are we cultivating transformation? And that’s what I hope that we’re asking through this kind of sea of data and everything that we’re we’re looking at. The core of things. Are we promoting participation or are we cultivating transformation for the people of our churches?Rich Birch — Well, this is fantastic. There’s a ton we could talk about on this front. This has been helpful conversation for us today. Friends, I want to encourage you to take the church health assessment. Give us that address again that we want to send people to.Ronee de Leon — It’s going to be at touchpointsoftware.com/unseminary.Rich Birch — Great. Well, you can do that right in your phone right now. We’d love for you to go and check that out. We’ll put a link to that. Anywhere else we want to send people online, Ronee, if they want to track with TouchPoint or maybe we’re sitting in today and we’re thinking, you know what, maybe we should relook at this area. I’m not super happy with what’s going on with our, you know, church management software. Where do we want to send them online to get more information and about what what you guys do?Ronee de Leon — Go ahead and just check out touchpointsoftware.com. I would recommend you get a demo. Like I said, it’s kind of a conversation that churches are having right now, evaluating their tech stack. If you haven’t looked at it in a while, just take a look, maybe just look around and we would love the opportunity to connect with you and demo TouchPoint for you. So that same website without the backslash, get a demo and we’d we’d be just thrilled to have a conversation with you.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s good. Friends, I just want to endorse that. I think that’s a great next step for lots of our churches that are listening in today. Listen, friends, your team spends a lot of time in this in this tool. Whatever you use on this front, they spend a lot of time on it. It’s worth a sober second look. It’s worth, if you haven’t looked at this in a while, to take a step back and say, hey, let’s take a look at this again. And TouchPoint would be a great one to for you to to to take a look at and say, hmm, I wonder if maybe we should be looking at a change.Rich Birch — So Appreciate that, Ronee. It’s so great seeing you again. I’d love to have you come back on in the future. I’m sure there’s more we could talk about, but thanks for being here today.Ronee de Leon — Sounds good. Thank you, Rich.

Why has earning a conversation become the hardest part of staffing sales? In this featured session from the FDE+ Q1 Virtual Conference, Kortney Harmon sits down with Brad Bialy to unpack why today's buyers are more skeptical, distracted, and informed—and what that means for relationship-driven revenue.Brad challenges outdated sales playbooks and introduces a system-first approach to winning attention. He breaks down the reality of the 72-touchpoint journey, along with the role of trust, consistency, and buyer psychology. The result is a clear path for how top firms are aligning sales and marketing to earn—not chase—conversations and build meaningful engagement in today's skeptical market.Key Takeaways • Build systems, not just sales goals • Use marketing to support and scale outreach • Reduce risk to overcome buyer skepticism • Create clarity to stand out in a crowded market________________Follow Brad Bialy on LinkedIn: LinkedIn | BradSubscribe to the secrets of success hereFollow Crelate on LinkedIn: CrelateWant to learn more about Crelate? Book a demo hereSubscribe to our newsletter: The Full Desk Experience

Thema: Vom Anspruch zur Umsetzung: Customer Experience im Service wirksam machen Gäste: Stephan Haller, Managing Partner bei Dr. Fried & Partner, und Florian Plenk, Head Of Technical Support bei BORA. Customer Experience ist im Service längst als entscheidender Erfolgsfaktor angekommen – zumindest auf dem Papier. Doch wie gelingt der Schritt von der Erkenntnis zur konsequenten Umsetzung? In dieser Folge des KVD Service Podcast sprechen Moderator Michael Braun und KVD Geschäftsführer Carsten Neugrodda mit Stephan Haller (Dr. Fried & Partner) und Florian Plenk (BORA) über die Ergebnisse der aktuellen KVD Customer Experience Studie – und darüber, was Unternehmen konkret tun müssen, um CX im Service wirklich wirksam zu machen. Themen dieser Folge: / Customer Experience wird von der großen Mehrheit als strategisch wichtig bewertet – in der Umsetzung bleibt sie jedoch oft unzureichend verankert / Viele Serviceorganisationen glauben, die Erwartungen ihrer Kunden nicht vollständig zu erfüllen – oft ohne diese systematisch zu überprüfen / Service-Daten werden noch viel zu selten gezielt genutzt, obwohl sie der Schlüssel zur Verbesserung der Customer Experience sind / Der größte Hebel für echte Customer Experience liegt im direkten Kundenkontakt – und damit bei den Mitarbeitenden im Service / Begeisterung entsteht nicht nur durch Geschwindigkeit, sondern vor allem durch Kommunikation, Auftreten und das Gesamterlebnis Dazu gibt's konkrete Handlungsempfehlungen aus der Praxis: / Kundenperspektive konsequent einnehmen: Verstehen, welche Erwartungen wirklich bestehen – und wo die größten Pain Points liegen / Customer Journey aktiv gestalten: Alle Touchpoints identifizieren und gezielt auf ein positives Erlebnis ausrichten / Messbarkeit schaffen: Kundenzufriedenheit und NPS systematisch erfassen und als Steuerungsgröße nutzen / Quick Wins umsetzen: Kleine Verbesserungen im Serviceprozess gezielt testen und deren Wirkung messen / Mitarbeitende befähigen: Customer Experience entsteht durch Menschen – Führung, Kultur und Training sind entscheidend Best Practice aus der Folge: BORA zeigt, wie Customer Experience im Service funktionieren kann; mit klarer Kundenorientierung, konsequenter Ausrichtung aller Touchpoints und dem Anspruch, Kunden nach einem Serviceeinsatz begeisterter zurückzulassen als zuvor. Die Studie gibt's auf www.service-verband.de. Den KVD ServicePodcast gibt's jeden Monat neu!

Positive reviews boost reputation.But here's what most leaders don't know:they boost revenue more than you think.Harvard Business Review studied 4,782 hotels and 804,911 TripAdvisor reviews over 15 years.What they found turned conventional wisdom upside down.What We Cover in This EpisodeWhy your instinct to defend and justify after negative reviews is costing you moneyThe 3 mistakes: emotional cooling, length asymmetry, silence on positivesHow to recognize a human response vs. a robotic one — it's not just about toneWhy "Management" and "Guest Service Department" as a signature destroy everything you just builtWhat it reveals about your leadership when positive reviews go unanswered"Touchpoints are designed. Trustpoints are earned — in the moment someone feels seen."Human or Hype? — This WeekAnswering guest reviews personally.Red Flag / Green Flag — This Week

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In this episode, Ms. Elle helps a married couple integrate simple, strategic erotic touchpoints that restore tension, deepen connection, and make arousal fast and reliable—without overcomplicating their Dom/sub dynamic. Support the showSUPPORT THIS PODCAST  |  FOLLOW ON SOCIAL

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Donnie Griggs, founding and lead pastor of One Harbor Church in eastern North Carolina. Over nearly two decades, Donnie has led the church from a living room gathering to a thriving multisite church reaching around 2,500 people each weekend in a rural context. In this conversation, we focus on a growing leadership challenge: how churches can effectively engage and disciple men in today's cultural moment. Are you noticing fewer men engaging in your church, or struggling to define what biblical manhood even looks like today? Wondering how to call men forward without falling into shame-based or culturally distorted approaches? Donnie shares a practical and hopeful framework for building a culture of “good men” in your church. Recognizing the quiet crisis among men. // Donnie began noticing subtle but significant indicators: fewer weddings, more single women asking “Where are the good men?”, and a growing sense that many men were stuck—lacking vision, purpose, and direction. Even older men reaching retirement were finding that the life they had worked toward didn't deliver the fulfillment they expected. These observations, combined with broader cultural trends, led Donnie to believe that churches must intentionally address the formation of men rather than assume it will happen naturally. Prioritizing men again. // Donnie made a conscious decision to focus on men’s ministry, creating intentional environments like men's gatherings, reframing how the church speaks to men, and leveraging key moments like Father's Day. Instead of reinforcing negative stereotypes, the goal became calling something out of men and casting vision for who they can become. Redefining the goal: good, not great. // Central to Donnie's approach is a shift away from cultural obsession with “greatness” toward biblical “goodness.” Rather than pushing men to become influencers or achieve notoriety, he emphasizes becoming faithful, reliable, and obedient. To make this practical, he developed a simple framework describing a “good man”: someone who embraces responsibility, serves and protects, blesses and encourages others, builds deep friendships with other men, and ultimately follows Jesus. This framework gives men a clear target, which many struggle to articulate on their own. Combating unhealthy cultural narratives. // Donnie is careful to address both extremes in cultural conversations about masculinity. On one hand, he rejects exaggerated “alpha male” stereotypes that emphasize dominance and performance. On the other, he acknowledges that harmful behaviors among men are real and must be addressed. His approach is to call men into a fuller, more biblical picture that includes strength and responsibility but also compassion, tenderness, and emotional health. Looking to the life of Jesus provides a balanced model that breaks down unhelpful stereotypes. Moving from shame to encouragement. // A key insight Donnie shares is that many men operate under a constant sense of shame, feeling like they are not enough and never will be. While shame can motivate behavior in the short term, it is ultimately destructive. Instead, churches must create cultures of encouragement. This includes helping men take responsibility without condemning them, affirming progress, and consistently speaking life into them. Encouragement, not shame, becomes the fuel for long-term transformation. Building brotherhood, not just buddies. // Another major gap Donnie identifies is the lack of deep male friendships. Many men have acquaintances but few relationships where they can be honest and vulnerable. He emphasizes the need for churches to create spaces where men can move from surface-level connections to genuine brotherhood. Tools like his book Becoming Good Men are designed to facilitate these conversations, helping men process deeper questions together rather than in isolation. A tool for churches to implement. // Donnie wrote Becoming Good Men to give churches a practical resource they can use in small groups, mentoring relationships, or larger men's initiatives. With discussion questions built into each chapter, it's designed to spark meaningful conversations and help men take tangible steps forward. To learn more about One Harbor Church, visit oneharborchurch.com. You can also find Donnie's book Becoming Good Men on Amazon, Audible, or at becominggoodmen.org for bulk church resources. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a repeat guest on today, which what does that mean? That means that I want you to hear from them again. I'm really excited for today’s conversation because it’s super relevant. We’ve been hearing about this in kind of the broader news and we want to bring an expert on to help us think through these issues.Rich Birch — Today, excited to have Donnie Griggs with us. He is the founding and lead pastor of a fantastic church, One Harbor Church, a multi-site church with, if I’m counting correctly, three locations in North Carolina. They’re passionate about planting disciple-making churches in eastern North Carolina. So glad that you’re on the the show today. Welcome back, Donnie.Donnie Griggs — Man, so good to be with you, Rich. Thanks again for having me.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s going to be great. Why don’t we start with, tell us a little bit about One Harbor. Give us a quick picture of the church and what’s been God doing across your locations and since we last talked.Donnie Griggs — Yeah, sure. We started 17 and a half years ago in a living room. I kind of thought that’s what we would do forever and was really happy with that idea. I didn’t tell the person whose living room it was that my long term plan was to use their living room. And just God did something different and it just grew a lot. This is a town I’m from. So there’s ah a book about our town and my mom and my granddad are on the cover of it. And it’s very much like our town.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So um huge desire to see, you know, people who just had no never thought they’d ever go to church. Like, um, those are the people that we were after. And, and so anyway been, been quite a ride the last 17 and a half years. Like you said, we’re now three locations. We average about 2,500 people on a Sunday across the the three locations. And we’re in a pretty small rural, you know, context. And so, that, you know, that’s got a lot of, a lot of great opportunities, you know, to, to make an impact, but also a lot of challenges as well. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell.Rich Birch — Yeah, you’ve been there for 17 or planted 17 years, been there much longer, but you know you’ve been pastoring this context for for you know almost two decades. Today, we’re going to talk specifically, friends, about kind of men in the church and what are we doing as churches to engage men. And Donnie’s done some really great stuff on this front that I want to make sure we kind of unpack. But what have you been noticing about the men in your church and in your community over the last couple of years? What are some of the things have been kind of on your heart and mind around this?Donnie Griggs — Gosh. So I think one of the things is there’s kind of a few things. One, I noticed of just randomly that we weren’t doing as many weddings as we used to do. It was just this random kind of data point that I was like, why do I feel like I’m hardly doing any weddings anymore? And then kind of with that, I found like almost it felt like every Sunday, some really great single woman would come up to me and be like, where are the men? Like, where are the good men? You know?Rich Birch — Right.Donnie Griggs — And so that was kind of going on in in the background. And then I just kind of with that saw so many men that were just stuck in various ways, really visionless, bored. Even like older guys who kind of had this really jarring moment where they make it to retirement. They think, oh, my gosh, like I’ve I've arrived now. I can just golf all day or fish all day. And and and and really just, you know, me seeing, you know, and I'm I’m not I’m almost 45. So I’m a little ways away from this. But to like see how unsettling that was for men and how really jarring and and honestly, how unhappy they were, you know, like kind of, they get to this sort of cultural finish line and, and it just does not satisfy them, you know, in the way that I think they, they thought it would and longed for. Donnie Griggs — And, and so just lots of stuff like that kind of going on the last few years that, you know, have have, have, you know, made me feel like, man, we got to do something about this, you know?Rich Birch — Yeah, and what what changes did you end up making in the church, in your ministry? How did that kind of impact how you were you were thinking about, you know, ministering to your community, reaching out to your community, engaging people?Donnie Griggs — Yep. So, I mean, I think, I think we just began to prioritize, like trying to reach men. You know, even from the beginning. This was going on, like very early days, we were meeting in the living room for church. I would, I’d do these men’s nights in my house. I think what I realized was, you know, and we are so grateful for the incredible women who come to our church. I mean, so many amazing women. But like just men weren’t coming to church. They were fishing. They were working in the garage. They were golfing. They were hunting. They were doing something. Donnie Griggs — And so kind of from the early days, there was this desire to do so something for men. But I think we did a lot more of it in the beginning. And then church got bigger. Things got busier. And this thing really fell to the wayside. And and so I think in in recent years, I was like, man, we’ve got to put this on the front burner again. We really I kind of took took it back and really owned, like, how do I build a culture of good, strong men? Because if we do that, you know, like, you know, all the data points to it’s going to it’s going to lead to better marriages, better families, better you know, better society, better everything, you know? Donnie Griggs — I mean all all that data around like fatherlessness and, um, all the carnage that comes from men not doing the stuff that they need to do. And so I just felt like we got to really prioritize that. And so it’s looked like a variety of things. It’s looked like a lot of men’s breakfasts and clarifying what we mean by what a good man is. And you some conferences, some, I mean, even like it really leveraging Father’s Day. A buddy mine said it like this. He said, you know, we’ve turned Father’s Day into like Toxic Masculinity Awareness Day where we just it was just shame men for like being in such terrible men.Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Donnie Griggs — And so we were like, no, we we don’t want to do that. So how do we how do we look for ways to encourage men to call something out of them, you know?Rich Birch — I want I want to come back to that, the toxic masculinity question in a second. So I’m going to put ah a pin in that, but you asked a good question there. What do you mean when you say, be a good man? What does what does that actually mean?Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So I intentionally use the word good, not great. I think like, I think from a Bible standpoint, greatness is something that God does, you know, but goodness is something that’s sort of in our hands, you know. He lays out for us in just so many ways, what it looks like to be a good man in scripture. And so that’s just sort of of a broad thing there. Donnie Griggs — And then I think we’ve got a cultural obsession with greatness. think especially of like the younger generation who’s obsessed with being an influencer with, you know, with somehow being, you insta-famous. And I wanted to just push back on that and just say, hey, guys, that’s not actually what we’re aiming for. We want to aim for we want to aim for what it means to be a good man. Donnie Griggs — And so you could use words like, you know, reliable and faithful. And, you know, there’s all kinds of words you could you could Google and use for that. But we really just boiled it down to these kind of five things that guys can just hang their hat on and just, you know, aim at. Donnie Griggs — So, a good man embraces responsibility. You know, he eats it up. He wants it. You know, a good man serves and protects. You know, he looks for ways to step into hard things and and make a difference. And, you know, kind of that sort of serve and protect thing. Those those two felt pretty straightforward.Donnie Griggs — And then, but I thought there’s, there’s more to that, you know, that, that just, the end of the day, that’s, that’s pretty cultural. I mean, there’s a lot of, think of Jordan Peterson, think of all kinds of guys who’ve talked about, you need to clean your room. you need to, you know, you need to, step up. You need, so so guys are getting a lot of that. You know, what, what else does the scripture say that paints a broader picture for what a good man is?Donnie Griggs — And that’s where we threw in things like a good man blesses and he encourages. You know, a good man. And then, and then I wanted to talk a lot about friendship when I think about, you know, we’ve done this weird thing where we’ve, we’ve normalized female friendship and we’ve really sexualized, you know, deep male friendship. Does that make sense?Donnie Griggs — Like we’ve kind of told guys you can’t… So I found this data point says the average man in America under 30 doesn’t have one male friend he can be emotionally honest with. And so it’s kind of that Bible verse, you know, a man of many companions may come to ruin. That’s, ah that’s what I think we’ve done with men. We’ve said you get to have buddies, but not brothers. And so really, really, really wanting to like go hard in the paint on what it what it means to have deep male friendship. So they walk with other good men. And then finally, obviously, they they follow the only perfect man who ever lived. Donnie Griggs — So we just came up with that to to give guys a grid for what is it we’re aiming for? Because, I mean, you’re right. say Being a good man doesn’t, you know, it’s like, well, what does that mean? You know?Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s cool. Well, I want to dig into a couple of those, but but you brought it up, the toxic masculinity thing. Part of what I find intriguing that you’re talking about this, there is a version of this conversation that feels very like machismo, super masculine, like in a in like a negative way, you know, in a, you know, it turns into this kind of like, I don’t know, it’s like, who can, you know, do the most pushups or whatever. How do you think about that issue when you’re trying to speak to encourage, you know, grow men? How do you think about that?Donnie Griggs — Yeah. That is a really great question, Rich. I think, so one of the things we’ve got to do is just go out of our way to push back on faux versions of masculinity. And so I mean what you’re alluding to there is the kind of Andrew Tate sort of alpha male you know thing where, I I mean, I’ve been to Africa a bunch and through the years doing ministry stuff, and I’ve been around a bunch of baboons. And I literally think that’s what that’s what that’s what culture like that’s what that sort of cultural lens is. It’s more baboon like.Rich Birch — Sure.Donnie Griggs — It’s like I can bench press. I’m super strong. I can get any woman I want whenever I want. And so we want to push back on that. That’s not what we’re aiming for. And also that disqualifies men who tend to be more sensitive or more tender, you know, and that’s really sad to me, you know, that we’ve we’ve basically. We’ve kind of fallen into a narrative there where we tell men, you know, you, you aren’t really a man if you’re not like this. Donnie Griggs — And I had a guy who’s, who’s like that. He’s just very tender and very compassionate. And, you know, he said he was like 51 years old when it finally hit him that he was a man, you know, even with that kind of tension. And so I think we just wanted to like, yeah, I wanted to make sure we don’t, we don’t do that. Donnie Griggs — And so, ah but I do think like kind of with that, we do need to own that there are a lot of men who are toxic and are bad. And so I think to, you know, to just act like, you know, that that’s not a thing is is not helpful either. I think to, you know, kind of in that to be empathetic toward men who, are lacking vision, lacking purpose. I mean, you know, so many of us just, you know, we did not have the good examples that we needed growing up. And, you know, so there’s just like layers and layers to this.Donnie Griggs — But I think to stay away from that kind of locker room, shame-based, just man-up sort of like language is a position that I want to take. And I also want to steer really far away from a kind of masculinity that demeans women, you know, and, and demeans men who don’t fit like cultural stereotypes, you know?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. And yeah, that’s just from the little bit I know about you and know about your church. The thing I think it’s great that you’re engaging this conversation because you as a leader don’t come across as like, oh, I’m like the rah-rah, like you say, the man up, you know, the baboon. That’s a great, you know, that’s that’s not my impression of you or your church. And so I love that you guys are tackling this. I think giving a fresh voice to this. Rich Birch — Well, at some point you decided to sit down and put this together, this kind of five into a framework that you ultimately became a book. What kind of, what led you to actually want to do that? The book friends we’re talking about is “Becoming Good Men: A Guide to Figuring It Out Together.” What kind of led you to the point where you’re thinking, Hey, okay, I think now’s the time I want to kind of pull, put this into codify this into a book. As an author, I know that that’s a, that’s a tough amount of work to do.Donnie Griggs — It’s so much work, man.Rich Birch — Yes.Donnie Griggs — It is so much daggone work. So I think it was a couple of things. I think I felt…so, I kept having chats with men, lots and lots and lots of men. And I would ask them the same question. What kind of man do you want to be? And they just couldn’t answer it. They just couldn’t answer it. And so my heart just began to really be so heavy, you know for men who, you know that is ah that’s a tough, you know we live in such a weird moment you know culturally, and it’s so hard, I think, to be ah a man in our current moment.Donnie Griggs — So to not even know what you’re aiming for just felt like, gosh, as a pastor for men in our church, I just wanted to like put something in their hands that, that could help them. But then really beyond that, I think maybe the most thing, the thing that drove me the most to it was just being a dad.Donnie Griggs — So I’ve got two boys, one’s 11, Wyatt, and the other one’s 14, Jed. And I just was like, you know, if nobody else gets this book, I want my two sons to get it. You know, I really thought I want to put something in their hands so they don’t have to wonder, what are we aiming for here? Like what, what, what does it look like to be a good man? You know?Donnie Griggs — And, so I think those two things, you know, really, really drove me to want to do this. And and and then, you know, kind of maybe a third piece would just be, I alluded to this earlier, but seeing older men, I feel like really waste their last years and and wanting to like call older men to, to finish well and to, you know, really count to the very, to the very end of their lives. Donnie Griggs — And I’m not saying it’s wrong to ever play golf or ever go fishing. You know, I’m not definitely not saying that. But, ah but I, I think this, ah I wanted to cast vision too, for like the older generation to see themselves as really needed and, and, and, and wanted, you know. Donnie Griggs — So that’s that was some of the driving. I just feel like eventually you have to write this stuff down. I you can’t have 10,000 lunches with people, you know, saying the same thing, you know.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. That’s great. Well, let’s dive into a little bit, you know, a few, maybe a few of the five areas. So embrace responsibility, this this first one. So talk us through this a little bit. What does that look like practically for, you know, maybe somebody who’s drifting and how is that not just another version of like, you’re a bad person because you keep dropping the ball. I know that’s not what you’re saying, but how do we, how are you handling this with guys to help kind of call something out of them rather than shame them into something?Donnie Griggs — Yeah, that shame word is such a big one, right? It’s like the air we breathe as men. I’m not enough. I’ll never be enough. I don’t have what it takes. I mean, so many men, some of us probably consciously, but most of us, I think subconsciously, we just live in that. And so I just don’t I don’t ever want to be part of any of that, you know. No one needs more shame. What we need is a lot of encouragement. And and and unfortunately, I think a lot of the language that’s out there that is on the like, you know, take responsibility thing, does, I think, activate shame in men. And so, you know, shame does work as a fuel source. It’s just a really bad one, you know, like it it, it works, but it’s like super unhealthy.Rich Birch — Right.Donnie Griggs — And so yeah. So I think with young guys, like trying to get them to the word embrace responsibility, you know, to stop, you know, Paul talks about it like this – he says, like, when I was a child, I, you know, I acted like a kid, you know, I, I, I did all those childish things, but now I, I became, when I became a man, of put away those childish things. And so I think it’s like, what are the steps you can take to begin to put away childish, like a childish behavior?Rich Birch — It’s good.Donnie Griggs — I, I met with a therapist one time and, I really expected to get a lot more sympathy from this person since I was paying quite a lot to see them. And I said something like some behavior I’d done and I said, I know that’s really you know childlike of me. And she pushed back and she said, no, she’s like, childlike is what Jesus tells us to be. You’re being childish. That’s different. And it was like a BOOM moment for me where I realized, man, I’m justifying childish behavior, you know.Donnie Griggs — And so I want to help, I want to help young guys, especially to first begin to just take responsibility for themselves, you know. You know, the scriptures talk about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And so what does it look like to begin to, you know, you know take responsibility for for like you as a fully integrated human being? You know, what is it, you know, not just your actions, but also your thoughts and your feelings. And how do you begin to like, you know, really take responsibility for that? Donnie Griggs — How do you how do you begin to, you know, scripture, all the proverbs are so great on this where it talks about like how, you know, each of us has like a field and, you know, is your field overgrown? Is it full of weeds? Is it, is it, is there chaos in your life where, you know, if you go back to the garden, like Adam was meant to step into that chaos and bring order. He was meant to, you know…So what does it like to begin to look at your sphere of influence and and begin to and and begin to you know embrace responsibility? Kids have to be made to do, they have to be made to do something, you know whereas you know good men begin to look around them and go, what what here is actually for me to do? you know. And how do begin to be someone who contributes? You know?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I love that. Another other thing, different idea. So for some reason, and maybe again, you’re the expert on this. I’m not. It’s like, guys, we struggle with looking somebody else else in the eye, a guy we love, a guy we think the world of. We think, man, this internally, we’re like, that guy’s incredible, does great stuff, is a good man. I see them doing all kinds of amazing things. But it’s like, there’s something that stops us from looking at that person, speaking words of encouragement to them. It’s like a language that we’re not comfortable with. Rich Birch — Why is that? Talk us through that. And then what have you tried to do as a church to try to help with that? Is there anything that you’ve you’ve kind of instilled to try to help guys think that through a little bit better?Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So that’s the whole bless and curse thing, right? It’s like men aren’t just tough. They’re meant to be tender, you know. And and we know this by looking at the life of Jesus. I mean, unfortunately, what we’ve done as a society is we have we feminized certain things, you know, and and so we feminized things like tenderness. We feminized things like compassion. And we we see those with men as a sign of weakness, or some kind of softness that’s not akin to masculinity.Donnie Griggs — And that’s where I love looking at Jesus, because i mean, you know, he’s over and over again we read he’s moved with compassion, moved with compassion, moved with compassion. He weeps openly at a funeral. He just does, He breaks all those stereotypes, you know. And and so I think getting a grid for masculinity where we can be tender. We can be compassionate. We can be empathetic. I think that’s really important. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think we’ve just got to like…Donnie Griggs — This this stuff has been around for a while, right? It’s the like, you know, dad, you know, disciplines the child. Mom goes in and make sure the child’s OK. You know, it’s like it’s like we we’ve we’ve really embodied these kind of unhelpful stereotypes and and for far too long, for far too long. So I just yeah, I think it’s unfortunate that, like you said, I mean, to use your analogy, that men can’t can’t use words like I love you. I mean, how many, many can say things like I never saw my dad cry. My dad never said he loved me. And that is, that is so not healthy.Donnie Griggs — It’s like…and so how do we create, how do we make it okay for men and make it more than okay? Like how do we normalize and kind of expect men to, to, to embrace these kinds of things, to, to walk in, in, in this way. And, and we can’t even tell a guy to your point, we can’t even tell a guy we love them. We have to say something like, I love you, bro. You know, like we have to add something on there because we’re so worried about this thing looking like we mean something else. And that, that is just, we really need to put that behind us, you know, because I mean, people around us are so desperate for encouragement.Rich Birch — I heard you reference something that you do with your own boys to try to break some of this. I think you refer to it even as a liturgy. Donnie Griggs — Yeah.Rich Birch — What does what does that look like? Tell us about that.Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So that would kind of just, you know, came, I look back and think, I remember being in the room when it happened. It was 14 years ago. Jed was a baby and I was holding him in his room and I just found myself, I prayed this very simple prayer for him. Very simple prayer that where I asked, you know, I was asking God to thanking God for him, asking God to help me be a better dad and and just some of those things.Donnie Griggs — And then and then I just fell in this little kind of call and response thing with him where I mean, he was a baby, literally holding him in my arms. And I so I had to say the words for him. But, you know, and you know, I it sounds so simple that I struggle. It’s even worth saying. But I'll I’ll tell you since you’re asking. But it was basically what what basically what I do is I just say, like, you know, Jed, you know, you’re a gift and you’re made to be a… and he’s supposed to say: a blessing.Donnie Griggs — And I say, you’re safe and your daddy’s strong and you’re not… And he’s supposed to say: alone. And I say, and you’re strong. And he’s supposed to say: too. And so I just did that one night. Simple prayer said this little thing. And then the next night I did it again. And the next night I did it again. And I’ve been doing that. I did the math. I’ve been doing that like over five…I’ve done it over 5,000 nights.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Donnie Griggs — And obviously with my son Wyatt and I do it with him every night. Now they’re like preteen teenagers. Some nights they’re like happy about it. Some nights they’re like, they just say the words kind of begrudgingly, you know… Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. Donnie Griggs — …like, but, but I really wanted them to hear, as long as they’re as long as I can, I wanted them to to hear these things. I wanted them to know that like there’s security for them. There’s like their dad loves them, their strength you know in their dad for them, but also that they were made for something, you know. There’s like gifting to them and there’s blessing that they were made to give and there’s strength in them. And so, I mean, you know if I was to sit down and try to script it out, maybe I’d come up with something different, but I just fell into this. Donnie Griggs — And I mean, if nothing else, my kids, don’t I don’t think they’ll ever forget it. I mean, they just it’s like one of those they’ve heard it so many times, you know, and I’m just committed to continuing to say it over and over again.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s a great, what a great vivid example for, you know, for parents, particularly young dads who who are, you know, early in their in their walk with their their sons. That’s fantastic. That’s that’s so cool.Rich Birch — Well, if you were, well, I want to get to the book a little bit more. What have been as you’ve kind of it’s been out there in the world as people have started to to use it. What have been maybe a surprise in a positive way? Like, oh, here’s the way I’ve seen a church use it. Or here’s a way that it’s interacted either inside your church or outside the church. Talk to us a bit about the journey of the book.Donnie Griggs — Some of the surprises have been like the amount of like wives and moms of boys, especially single moms who have really enjoyed it.Donnie Griggs — How they, you know, actually, i I spoke with a young lady the other She just got engaged. She read it and she said she felt like she was able to put her ear to the door ear to the door and hear a conversation that she really needed to hear. Like she was eavesdropping on a conversation. She was like, man, I’m about to be, she she just said, I’m about to be married. And I just thought, you know, I’m getting a glimpse into the kind of man that like my husband my future husband, you know, wants to be. And so like from like young, engaged women to single moms who are going, I need to know how to help my son here. I don’t have a dad in the picture. You know, wives, that’s been really surprising.Donnie Griggs — I think also like people outside the church who aren’t Christians, who’ve like really enjoyed it. I mean, like doing with their coworkers and God, God just, you know, got a copy and said he sat down and read the whole thing that, you know, in one sitting and, and then bought copies and is doing with his coworkers that, at I think some construction workshop worksite or something. That’s like, I did not see that coming. I didn’t have that on my note card, you know?Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Yes.Donnie Griggs — But I really did want it to be easy to read and be accessible. So I’m glad it it is working in that way. and And we’ve got lots of churches doing it in lots of different ways.Donnie Griggs — So there’s questions at the end of each chapter that are for discussion. And so I’ve heard everything from middle school boys and high school boys and young life groups and all kinds of like that younger group, you know, sort of thing working through it. Some of them are like fifty kids at once. Some of them were like three kids at once. All the way through I mean all the way through to like men I just had an email from a guy in south Africa who read it – he’s in his like 80s, I think… Rich Birch — Wow. Donnie Griggs — …and was so inspired and so encouraged and it’s like for I mean for guy that age to be like man, I I am still needed. I'm still wanted. There’s still—it’s like a Caleb thing—there’s still strength in me. There’s still purpose for me. So really the like…Rich Birch — That’s good.Donnie Griggs — …almost the full gamut there. And then I’ve heard of churches doing, I just spoke at a church up in in in the like kind of Gaithersburg area over the weekend in Maryland. And they got like 40 guys going through it at once, all the way through to like small group, you know men’s small groups. And this has really been kind of wide, you know, which again, I didn’t know what to expect. I mean, but it’s been pretty encouraging.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s very good. I love that. it’s It’s cool to see when it kind of starts to live beyond you, right? It’s like, it gets kind of a life out of its own, which is pretty cool to see. That’s ah yeah that’s super encouraging.Rich Birch — What when you think about the book as a tool, what are a couple of the ways that you can imagine it being used? You mentioned a few there, like it could be used in your men’s ministry. It could be used as a small group. Talk us through one of a couple of those ways that you were, as you were writing, you thought, oh, I could see how churches could use this.Donnie Griggs — Yeah. I mean, I really, when I think about our church, my goal is that every man who comes to our church is meaningfully connected to some other men. It goes back to that friendship thing. I want men to have more than buddies. I want them to have brothers, you know, drinking buddies, hunting buddies, golfing buddies, whatever buddies, you know. That, that is not going to get you where you need to go.Donnie Griggs — And so I wrote it thinking primarily like what if two or three guys went through this together, you know, because the questions are, they’re not easy, you know, um, at the of the chapters, they, they really do unearth stuff. The goal is for them to unearth stuff and, you know, to, you know, get you to begin to think about some pretty significant things, you know.Donnie Griggs — And so I think it’s really great. I mean, I've heard lots of guys reading it on their own, which is awesome. But I think in my mind, it’s best lived out in like those small group kind of like getting all the men in you know your church to to go through it and to break up into groups and to go through it. And then, you know, I think then like a, in my mind, like then a kind of once a month or once every couple months, you do some kind of a breakfast thing or something and you, you pick up one of these, you know, one of these chapters, one of these kind of aspects, and you just kind of camp out on that a little bit and go, Hey, you know, when we, you know, what does this look like in, you know, in our church? What does like in our community? What is it look like in your lives? And so that’s, I guess, primarily how I imagined it being used. And I’m, I think I’m seeing a lot of fruit from guys using and like that.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s really cool. Love that. if Where do we want to send people to pick up copies of the book? I’m assuming we can get it at Amazon. Is there somewhere else we want to send people to to grab these?Donnie Griggs — Yeah. So um there’s a few different avenues here. So obviously Amazon – straightforward. It’s on Amazon. It’s on Kindle. There’s that. It’s also on Audible because, I mean, you probably know this, Rich. Dudes just don’t read, you know? Rich Birch — Yes. Donnie Griggs — And I mean, I’ve even had guys say, man, I’m I'm like severely dyslexic. I actually can’t read. And, we’ve got a guy who church who reached out just said, like, I’ve got a guy in my church who’s blind. Like, you know and so the Audible thing, um I think a lot of guys are in, they’re just in the car a lot… Rich Birch — Right. Donnie Griggs — …and they’re listening to like the hour long Joe Rogan podcast. You know So you can listen to the whole book in like, I think four hours or something. It’s not it’s easy, you know?Rich Birch — Right. Yeah.Donnie Griggs — So the Audible thing I think is is is another one that point guys to. If like you’re a church and you want to order like a bunch of them, um, I’ll, I’ll work a deal for you and get them to you cheaper than you can get them on Amazon. You can just go to becominggoodmen.org. And there’s a whole thing there for that. Um, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll make it work for you. Donnie Griggs — And then the last thing is I actually, um, you mentioned machismo earlier and, I’ve done a lot of work, um, in the Spanish speaking world, have a huge heart for that, that part of the world. And, you know, machismo is, ah is a, it’s a big deal. You know, it’s, I have a single lady in our church who’s from Mexico who said she reckons like 9 out of 10 men that she know she grew up around in Mexico have been pretty much have just bought into this machismo kind of thing. And really, it’s created just a huge mess. I mean, and so actually then I actually got the book translated into Spanish. Rich Birch — Oh, very cool.Donnie Griggs — So, so that’s on Amazon too. Unfortunately, not an Audible yet for that. But but if somebody is like, man, you know, I’ve got some Spanish speaking folks that there’s, there’s that avenue as well.Rich Birch — That’s really cool. Well, I love I love all that. And friends, I would encourage you to pick up a copy. I love the idea, the picture. You might be listening into this today and say, hey, you know, you get a couple copies of this book and find two or three other guys. And why don’t we work through it together? And even as a way to say to someone like, hey, man, I want to be your brother, not just your buddy, you know, I think is a great framework, right? for, know, as you’re interacting with with other folks. So I really appreciate this, Donnie. I hope this helps get more people connected with the book and that it helps more folks that are are out there today. Rich Birch — As we wrap up, any final words, any final comments you’d have for a church leader that’s leaning in today and thinking, man, I feel like we got to do a better job on this front.Donnie Griggs — Yeah, gosh, I mean, I just think the time is so right for this. It’s such a necessary thing. So hopefully what I’ve done can be helpful to you. If not, there’s other things out there. But I mean, you know, we we’re living in this weird moment with so much gender confusion. And then you add cultural hostility where all masculinity is deemed toxic and men are unwanted and unneeded. And then you throw in so many of the guys in your church who walk with a limp because they didn’t have a good dad, a good male figure, really poor faux versions of masculinity. I mean, I just want to and say you can’t afford to not think about this. And so, I mean, and I just think it’s one of those things where it’s like if you can, if you can build a culture of of good men in your church, it’ll that tide will lift all the boats.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Thanks so much, Donnie. If people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?Donnie Griggs — Yeah, oneharborchurch.com has got all the church stuff. And then for me, I’m pretty much, you know, I do some stuff on Instagram and Facebook. I’m not the biggest social media guy in the world. But yeah, but I’m I'm on there pretty frequently.Rich Birch — That’s great. That’s great. Thanks so much, Donnie. Appreciate being here today, sir.Donnie Griggs — Thanks a lot, Rich. Thanks for having me.

For episode 247 of Crypto Altruists, we share a special documentary-style episode featuring Tetiana of Alliance for Public Health and Ivan, a Ukrainian veteran who tragically lost his sight in the war in 2022. We explore the Touchpoint rehabilitation program, Ivan's powerful story of resilience, rehabilitation, and hope., and how Web3 can build new pathways for sustained support.In today's episode you'll discover:

Discover the strategy behind creating meaningful client relationships. This episode explores the art of mapping the customer journey, from first encounter to loyal ambassador, and examines how service-based businesses can optimize every step for stronger engagement and lasting impact. Michelle shares insights gleaned from real client experiences, guiding you through the essentials of brand consistency, audience segmentation, and revenue opportunities. Elevate your business model and discover how intentional touchpoints drive genuine connection and sustainable growth! ------------------------ In today's episode, we cover the following: The know/like/trust cycle Case Study: Galavant Society Streamlining your branding and client journey In-trip and post-trip experiences Case Study: Bloom RDH Offer segmentation Building a membership model Building an alumni strategy Speaker series branding strategy ---------------------- RESOURCES: Episode 230: Client Case Study: Galavant Society Episode 202: Creating DIML & Case Study Content Step-by-Step Guide Episode 193: Client Case Study: Bloom RDH ----------------------- Stop managing software and start hosting your people. This episode is sponsored by Heartbeat. Create an authentic community today and start your free trial at Heartbeat.Chat/KMA. Once you're ready to upgrade your plan, use code KMA30 for 30% off. P.S. Want to be a community member before creating your own? Join the Kiss My Aesthetic community there today at App.Heartbeat.Chat/KMA   ----------------------- WORK WITH MKW CREATIVE CO.   Connect on social with Michelle at: Kiss My Aesthetic Facebook Group Instagram Tik Tok -----------------------   -- COFFEE -- Did you know that the fuel of the POD and the KMA Team runs on coffee? ;) If you love the content shared in the KMA podcast, you're welcome to invite us to a cup of coffee any time - Buy Me a Coffee! -- ZENCASTR -- This episode is brought to you by Zencastr. Create high-quality video and audio content. Get your first two weeks free at https://zencastr.com/?via=kma . -- AUDIBLE -- This episode of the Kiss My Aesthetic Podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get your first month free at www.audible.com/kma.   This episode was edited by Berta Wired Theme music by: Eliza Rosevera and Nathan Menard

What if the business you built actually gave you your life back instead of taking it? In this episode, Paul sits down with Robin Agricola, Founder and CEO of Birdhouse Marketing, who has redefined what it means to build a modern business. Running her company remotely from a sailboat, Robin shares how she intentionally designed both her business model and lifestyle to work together — not compete. What started as a response to a life-altering health event became a complete rethinking of how work should function. Instead of accepting long commutes and rigid schedules, Robin built a fully remote marketing agency long before it became mainstream and scaled it into a thriving, multi-person team. This episode dives deep into the evolution of marketing itself — from predictable funnels to fragmented, multi-touchpoint ecosystems and why businesses must now focus on brand, presence, and consistency across channels. But at its core, this conversation is about something bigger: building a life-first business. Robin shares how she created a company that not only supports her lifestyle, but also empowers her team to live fully proving that success isn't just about revenue, but about freedom, fulfillment, and intentional design. For entrepreneurs, this episode is a blueprint for aligning business growth with life quality — not sacrificing one for the other.   Timestamps 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:01:13 – Building a business from a sailboat 00:02:17 – The health event that changed everything 00:05:23 – How marketing has evolved over the years 00:07:30 – The breakdown of traditional funnels 00:09:01 – Multi-channel strategy and brand importance 00:10:21 – Customizing marketing across different markets 00:10:31 – Identifying ideal clients 00:11:49 – Long-term vs short-term marketing expectations 00:13:04 – Building the business over time 00:15:51 – Creating a lifestyle-first company culture 00:18:03 – The moment it all felt worth it 00:19:47 – Where to find Birdhouse Marketing Episode Resources Explore how Robin Agricola builds scalable marketing systems while designing a business that supports freedom, flexibility, and long-term growth: https://birdhousemarketing.com Legacy Podcast: For more information about the Legacy Podcast and its co-hosts, visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com Leave a Review: If you enjoyed the episode, leave a review and rating on your preferred podcast platform. For more information: Visit https://businesslegacypodcast.com to access the show notes and additional resources on the episode.

„Vergiss alles, was du über die Verkaufsmotivation gehört hast!“ ❌Dieser Podcast wird präsentiert von:

In dieser Episode tauche ich mit Uwe Munzinger tief in unser neues Buch ein. Wir zeigen, warum starke Marken kein Zufallsprodukt sind, sprechen darüber, warum Brand Experience Management als strategische Führungsaufgabe verstanden werden muss – weit über Logo und Werbung hinaus. Gemeinsam erläutern wir unser BX-Navigator Modell, das die Erfolgsfaktoren des Brand Experience Managements messbar und damit managbar macht und teilen überraschende Erkenntnisse aus aktuellen Studien. Du erfährst, wie du die entscheidenden Touchpoints identifizierst, Widersprüche in der Markenerfahrung vermeidest und Behavioral Economics für nachhaltigen Markenerfolg nutzt.

My guest today is Rick Elmore.  Rick's company www.SimplyNoted.com is really interesting.  We talked about a bunch of stuff: Being human in the sales process Using handwritten notes Using notes at scale Touchpoints The beauty of sales ...and more.  Visit my site at www.DaveWakeman.com Get Talking Tickets at https://talkingtickets.substack.com Join our Slack Channel. 

In this conversation, Shiraz Saddique and the host explore the complexities of communication from a male perspective. They challenge the narrative that men are poor communicators, emphasizing the importance of understanding intent and authenticity in communication. The discussion also delves into the impact of technology and AI on communication, the significance of touchpoints in relationships, and the need for men to define their masculinity in a changing cultural landscape. Ultimately, the conversation highlights the internal struggles men face in communication and the importance of overcoming passivity to foster effective interactions.  

Your practice charges premium prices, but does the experience match those prices? Full waiting rooms, ringing phones, repeated paperwork, and patients who feel like a number, that's not a luxury brand, that's the DMV. In this episode, Alisa Conner walks through the five critical patient touchpoints where most healthcare practices destroy their brand experience: the first phone call, the waiting room, the exam room, post-visit follow-up, and billing. For each one, she contrasts the generic practices with what a premium-positioned practice delivers. You'll hear a real case study of an orthopedic practice that implemented these changes in 90 days and saw patient satisfaction jump by 34%, reviews climb from 4.2 to 4.7 stars, referrals increase by 28%, and revenue grows by $4.1 million year over year. This episode includes a complete action plan: a 90-day roadmap to audit your current experience, fix the biggest friction points, and train your team to deliver care that patients talk about. Key topics: patient experience optimization, healthcare practice management, premium healthcare branding, reducing patient wait times, medical billing communication, practice growth strategy

Transactions have routine components that are common with most every sale. Many of these components involve interaction with the customer. These are commonly called touch points. Do you know how many touch points are in your routine selling process? Do you manage your team for successful outcome with each touch point? If your answer to both questions is no, maybe it's time to explore improving your customer experience deliverables as a series isolated events, rather than an overall purchasing event?Support the show

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Jon-Michael Sherman and Eric Smith, the team behind SermonDone—an AI-powered platform designed specifically to help pastors with sermon preparation, research, and media creation. Their goal is simple: help pastors save time so they can focus more energy on shepherding people, developing leaders, and delivering impactful messages each weekend. Are you feeling the weekly pressure of sermon preparation? Wondering how new technology like AI could actually support your preaching rather than replace it? In this conversation, Eric and Jon-Michael explain how tools like SermonDone are helping pastors streamline research, develop sermon series, and extend the reach of their messages beyond Sunday morning. Building an AI operating system for pastors. // The idea for SermonDone began during a conversation with pastors at a conference about how they were—or weren't—using AI in ministry. Jon-Michael realized many pastors either didn't know where to start or were piecing together generic AI tools that weren't designed for ministry contexts. The team set out to create what they call an “AI operating system for pastors,” built specifically around the real workflow of sermon preparation. From planning long-term preaching calendars to turning sermons into small-group resources, the platform was designed to support the full lifecycle of preaching. Their goal is to eliminate the intimidating blank page pastors often face on Monday mornings and provide tools that help them think, research, and prepare more efficiently. Saving pastors time without replacing the pastor. // The purpose of SermonDone is not to replace pastors but to free up their time for the things that matter most. Many pastors spend countless hours gathering research before they ever begin writing. SermonDone accelerates that process by compiling detailed research reports in minutes, allowing pastors to move quickly into prayerful reflection and message development. Eric compares it to meal-prep services that deliver ingredients to your door—you still cook the meal, but you don't have to spend hours shopping. In the same way, pastors still craft the message, internalize it, and deliver it with passion; the platform simply helps gather the “ingredients” faster. Deep research and sermon writing tools. // One of the platform's most unique features is its deep research capability. SermonDone deploys multiple AI agents to explore various aspects of a biblical passage or theological topic and deliver a comprehensive research report in minutes. The report can include historical background, theological insights, commentary perspectives, and practical applications—equivalent to the work of multiple research assistants. Pastors can then write directly within the platform using an AI assistant that provides feedback, cross-references, and suggestions as they develop their sermon. The goal is not to automate preaching but to equip pastors with better information and more time to internalize and communicate the message effectively. Extending the impact of sermons beyond Sunday. // Another major focus for SermonDone is helping churches extend the life of their preaching content. The platform can automatically generate sermon clips for social media from a YouTube link, allowing churches to create multiple short videos that highlight key teaching moments. Upcoming features include adding B-roll footage and music to clips, helping churches produce engaging content that keeps the sermon message circulating online throughout the week. The platform also creates graphics and other media resources so churches of any size can maintain a strong digital presence without needing a large communications team. Creating a personalized preaching assistant. // SermonDone includes a feature called “My Library,” where pastors can upload past sermons, documents, or other teaching content. The platform analyzes this material to learn the pastor's theological framework, communication style, and recurring themes. Over time, the system becomes increasingly personalized, offering suggestions and insights based on the pastor's own voice and past teaching. It can even identify patterns in a pastor's preaching—highlighting repeated themes or areas where fresh perspectives might be helpful. Addressing concerns about AI in ministry. // Both Eric and Jon-Michael acknowledge that some pastors remain cautious about using AI in sermon preparation. Their response is that technology has always shaped ministry—from printing presses to radio, television, and the internet. AI, they argue, is simply another tool. Used wisely, it can accelerate research, expand creativity, and help pastors spend more time shepherding people rather than staring at a blank document. To learn more about SermonDone, visit sermondone.com. The team is continually adding new features designed to help pastors research faster, preach better, and extend the reach of their sermons throughout the week. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. Got some returning friends, returning guests on the podcast, which you know what that means. These are people I like who I think you should be paying attention to. Really excited to have Jon-Michael Sherman and Eric Smith from SermonDone. If you do not know SermonDone, where have you been? You’ve been sleeping under a rock somewhere. It is the premium AI assistant, build just for pastors like you. It’s a tool that helps you with really everything to do a sermon prep from deep sermon research, to planning an entire series, even generating the first draft that’s theologically aligned and sounds just like you. Plus, we’ve got some new stuff that they want to talk about today. But welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today, guys. Welcome.Eric Smith — Thanks for having us, man. We’re super pumped to be here and thanks for having us back.Rich Birch — Nice. It’s good. Eric, why don’t you bring us up to speed a little bit on where has SermonDone been since we last talked? You know, what’s been going on these last few months?Eric Smith — Yeah, so the last few months have been incredibly exciting. We have really almost re-envisioned even the original platform, and have expanded it to be so much better than it was before. Rich Birch — Yes.Eric Smith — It was great before, and it was a great resource. But just like anything, we continued to dream and stretch ourselves and really push ourselves to expand the platform to offer more resources, to save pastors more time, and to help pastors be more effective. Rich Birch — Love it.Eric Smith — And so we’re going to talk about a lot of those different features today and super pumped to share those and excited about all that’s happening.Rich Birch — Yeah, so good. Jon-Michael, why don’t we start with you kind of roll the clock back for people who maybe haven’t been following this story. Friends, I think this is an incredible tool that you should be trying. And actually, you’re going to want to stick around till the end because they’ve got this incredible thing that they’ve just rolled out that you’re going to want to try. Rich Birch — But Jon-Michael, roll the clock back. Tell us a bit of the founding story. What what are you really trying to solve? What’s the problem that you’re lying awake at night wrestling with, trying to to help so many church leaders with?Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, first of all, great to be back with you, Rich. And always love listening to the show. Long time listener, happy to be a guest. We started this over a year ago at a pastor’s conference in a breakout session with a bunch of pastors talking about preaching. And we were going around the room saying, how are you using AI? How are you using AI? Another person’s like, I’ve never used it before. I’ve never tried it before. Jon-Michael Sherman — And so we said to ourselves, what would it look like for us to create really the AI operating system for pastors in every aspect of their process? Everything from research, being able to plan a 12-month or 24-month or 36-month or however many months you want to go preaching calendar, right? What if we could help you with that? What if we could help you with your discipleship resources and turning a sermon into small group curriculum?Jon-Michael Sherman — And so we started creating and we created without handcuffs. We just said, if we could be maximalist in our approach, and create the most amazing tools, what could we create? And so we went on this journey and we’ve been listening to so many of you that have been listening to this show, giving us feedback. I know many of the listeners on this show have emailed me personally and said, hey, John, could you make this for me? And I said, I’d love to. I love that idea. That’s a great idea.Jon-Michael Sherman — And so what you’re gonna be seeing now in this latest version is because of the listeners of this show, the feedback that’s come from this show. And pastors, you know, I’ve sat in that seat. I’ve been a lead pastor. Eric’s a lead pastor right now. And so I know the pressure of that Monday morning feeling. What am I going to do? The page is blank again. And I think we can clearly say now as a company, you really never have to start from scratch anymore.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. And I don’t know if I ever told you guys this, but you know a year ago when I got to know you a little bit better, you graciously gave me access to the platform and I sent it to some preaching friends of mine. And I said, Hey, like, take a look at this thing. What do you think? And the part that I have found really impressive with what you’ve done is I feel like every time I’m back on the tool, there’s like something new. It keeps growing. It keeps expanding. You’ve, you’ve even from where it was a year ago, it’s like a totally different deal. It’s like, it’s, there’s all kinds of new stuff in there. And I’ve seen you pay close attention. Like you said there, Jon-Michael to, what you’ve heard people say and actually implemented that, which I think is commendable. Rich Birch — Eric, in your this is a part of what you do. It’s not the only thing that you do in life. As Jon-Michael had talked about there, lead pastor at a fast-growing church in Florida, Hope City. I think you’re three locations, if I’m if i’m correct. Rich Birch — One of the things I love that I’ve heard you say is, hey, this tool is going to help pastors save some time. That makes me lean forward. Let’s talk about maybe one or two of the new features that you think is going to help save some time particularly, that’s gonna maybe make this process a little more efficient so that we can focus on whether that’s meeting with people or some extra leadership stuff or what what’s a new new feature that kind of is gonna help us save some time.Eric Smith — Yeah, so everything that we do is all about helping churches grow. We want to help churches grow and we want to help them engage people. And so we believe the way that we do that is by saving pastors time, but not just saving them time, helping them maximize the time that they invest… Rich Birch — That’s good.Eric Smith — …to create better sermons and better, you know, sermon clips and all the other things that we do. And so a couple of the new features that we’ve come out with since the last time we talked is now we actually have a sermon writer. So you go into the platform and you can actually write your sermon inside the platform. And what’s really cool about it is as you’re writing, you have an AI assistant right there beside you and you can, you know, ask it questions, you can get feedback, you can get cross references, whatever. So imagine you’re going through the process and you’re able to do that. Eric Smith — But not only that, as you’re building your slides, you can right click on anything that you have and it’ll immediately start building your slides for the weekend. And then on top of that, one of the other amazing features is after you’re done with the sermon, I wanted to create, I was telling Jon-Michael when we were building it, I said, I want to create something that’s going to help a pastor actually memorize and learn the sermon. Because it’s one thing to write a sermon, it’s another thing to internalize the message and then deliver the message in a dynamic and compelling way.Eric Smith — I think I said this the last time I was on the podcast with you. The way we deliver the sermon is actually just as important or more important than, than writing it. And so we created a feature in there where helps you memorize the sermon and walk through it. It also has a feature where you can preach straight from the platform where, you know, right there from your iPad or from your computer or however you preach.Eric Smith — I’m still old school. I preach on paper, but that’s just me. Uh, but yeah, but that’s one of the features. Another exciting feature is to help pastors, you know, really take the the research to a whole nother level. And so we developed something called deep research. There is nothing like this out there. You can’t do this with generic AI. It’s impossible.Eric Smith — And so I was telling Jon-Michael as we were brainstorming this idea, I want to create something for pastors that will help them get so deep and further ahead that when they sit down to craft the sermon, they have all the research they need. It’s kind of like this: you know, we go to the grocery store, we buy all the ingredients, we bring the ingredients home and we we cook the meal, we prep the meal.Eric Smith — What we’ve done is we’ve said, hey, just like there’s their services now that you can buy and all the ingredients come in a box and all you have to do is unbox it. You still have to cook the meal. Well, that’s the way this is. Deep research is we’re giving you all the ingredients in a research report that’s over 20,000 words. When Jon-Michael and I were building it, we wanted to wrestle with what would the average pastor who’s bivocational want to know, but what would also the PhD want to know?Eric Smith — And so the research, we have 23 AI agents that go out. They have four to 500 words of prompting that we wrote. It does deep research in 23 specific areas, every area you could want to know about a specific section of the Bible or a theological topic. And then it delivers in five minutes, it delivers a report back with all that information. I mean, it’s it’s absolutely amazing. That feature alone would cost you a ton of money. I mean, it’s imagine having 23 master level or doctorate level assistants that are going out and researching these different areas for and then delivering the report back. And now when you sit down, you’ve got all this amazing research to go through as you get ready to to prepare yourself to preach.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that feature. That’s incredible. I multiple times with, so I’ve been in the executive pastor seat, this you know, supporting some great, incredible communicators and multiple communicators, we have explored And ultimately never pulled the trigger on a research assistant or there’s organizations out there that will do this, that will put together a research brief and they’ll they’ll get a PhD student. And you’ll you’ll pay ah you know thousands of dollars a month for that kind of service. Rich Birch — When I first used your research tool, I was like, oh my goodness, this is exactly like that thing that we were looking at, that that, man, but it’s ah you’re making it available for every pastor, which is incredible. I’ve said in other contexts, preaching is a team sport. Although one person has to get up and do it, I get it. Ultimately, one person’s going to stand up this. What you’re helping do is is bring all that other um support from, other like you say, these 23 other agents.Rich Birch — Jon-Michael, a part of what I love is the partnership between the two of you guys and your whole team. When you’re thinking about the the features that you’ve been adding, one of the things you talked about was like you’ve been listening to people and saying, hey, here’s a change. Are there any of these new features particularly that you’re like, you know, the people are demanding. And so we added this, you know, what was one of those features or a couple of those features that really people have been excited about that you’re looking forward to releasing or maybe are just around the corner to releasing?Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, well, we’re really excited about having sermon clips as one of our latest features. Rich Birch — Love it.Jon-Michael Sherman — People are absolutely loving it. It’s this immediate way for you to be able to put your YouTube link in and have incredible viral clips ready for social media. So I’ve led a church marketing agency in the in the church industry for 10 years. And I know the value of vertical video. It’s so important to let your sermon keep preaching beyond Sunday. However, ah you know, right now, you know, a clip alone can be somewhat engaging, but adding B-roll footage really helps it take it to another level. And so we’ll be releasing that here very soon right around the corner. So you’re going to have the ability to do even better edits than ever before.Jon-Michael Sherman — So imagine having 10, 20 clips to look through and then choosing the one that you love and then being able to add B-roll with high level stock footage and engage people in a big way. So people have been asking for it. We said, yes, we’re bringing it. It’s costing us a lot of money and we’re spending it for you guys. So we want you to have it and it’s important to us.Rich Birch — Love it. Yeah, that’s amazing. I loved when I saw that you guys added that to the suite. One of the, a part of the work I do in the coaching/consulting with my churches is around invite culture. And, you know, one of the things we’ll often do is look at their social channels and give them some feedback, really benchmark against what the fastest growing churches are doing. And you would not believe how many times I’ve said to churches, how come you’re not doing sermon clips like that? That is like low hanging fruit. Three quarters of the reason why people attend your church is because of the teaching. And you know, being able to do a clip or two a day you know in the week following is a great way to keep that in front of people. I love that you’ve added that. Rich Birch — Tell me a little bit more about the B-roll, though. That’s kind of interesting. That that feels like that’s going to really punch it up, take it to a whole new level.Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, I think, you know, if I were talking to you 10 years ago, the hot thing to do was have a virtual visit video on your website. Remember those days where you would show people a look of, you know, here’s what it looks like in the outside. And this is what kids check looks that like and different things. Well, the beauty with B-roll is you can still put in that stock footage of your church, and clip that in with your sermon.Jon-Michael Sherman — So as you’re preaching, now here’s some B-roll of worship. As you’re preaching, now here’s some B-roll of kids check. As you’re preaching, now here’s some B-roll of the lobby. You can show off your church experience a little bit more and upload your own custom B-roll. Jon-Michael Sherman — Or you can use the stock B-roll that we have. So maybe you’re talking about a specifically emotive subject. You can then clip into some a stock footage that illustrates that emotion or that story that you’re communicating.Jon-Michael Sherman — So it just takes it to a whole nother level. Obviously, like the clips alone, the way they are right now are great. But just having those different tools that you’re able to add on to it. We’ll also be releasing some audio too. So along with that, if you want to choose or use from our our library of of audio, you can use that too. So songs, different things you want to add to your clips, you can really do it all within our within our new release.Rich Birch — That’s amazing. You know, this is the thing that’s incredible about your tool. Really, the suite of tools put together in in one ah you know one environment is, you know, you just keep adding new things. Eric, when you think, though, back to the core of SermonDone, when you think about the the thing that’s kind of getting used the most, what what what is the part of it? Like these, I’m assuming that these new tools, it’s like additive to a core experience. What part of it at its core are you kind of the most happy with or the most proud of? Okay, we keep working on this part of it because this is the piece that is so important to the overall ah kind of SermonDone experience. Eric Smith — Well, I think there’s, um it’s hard to pick one… Rich Birch — Or a couple, a couple. Eric Smith — …but I will we’ll say the unique thing about our platform, unlike anything else that’s out there, is ours has a media component. You know, we have sermon clips. We also do graphics. And so our heart is for, there’s so many pastors out there that that are all alone. They’re by themselves. They’re fighting the fight. And man, we are with you. We built this honestly for you.Eric Smith — And to have a pastor be able to, you know, even if their church is small or they’re a new plant and they’re just getting started to be able to do clips, but then also to be able to create graphics for events, graphics for their sermons. So literally in five seconds, you can have a graphic. And we give even just on our $99 a month lowest version, you get 100 graphics a month. Nobody’s going to probably use that many, but if you don’t like the way it was, you can tweak it, you can modify it.Rich Birch — Right.Eric Smith — And so um on the media side, I love all that. For me personally, using the product, developing the product, I love the ability, even with our sermon builder, to just when I’m sitting, you know, waiting for somebody at a coffee shop to meet and I have a thought or an idea and I type it into my notes on my phone about a specific, you know, devotion I was doing or a text I’ve been thinking about or a topic. And then I’m able to take those notes and throw those into my sermon builder. What that does is it just organizes those and begins to outline that for me.Eric Smith — It’s my words. It’s just helping organize it. And here’s the other thing, because our platform, unlike any other platform, has your personal pastor profile—When you set the product up, you build your pastor profile. You talk about your theological heritage. You talk about Bible translation. news You talk about your your preaching style and you upload sermons if you’d like to do that. And what happens is our AI begins to understand you more. And as does that, it’s going to deliver that content in a way that aligns with you and your theology. And in your delivery. Eric Smith — And so that’s really, really important. But I just I can’t get past the deep research. I mean…Rich Birch — Yeah, so good.Eric Smith — …I was pastoring. I’ve I’ve been blessed to pastor for a long time now, and I’ve been blessed to pastor three different churches that grew incredibly fast. All glory to God. And I was in a church I was pastoring in Alabama. I was it I planted two and I pastored and revitalized one. So I’m a weirdo, I guess, in that way. When we did revitalization, it was it was a large church and I’m there and I almost hired a company to do research for me.Eric Smith — And I got the quotes back, I got the demo the the sample report. And I was like, oh man, this would be amazing.Rich Birch — Yes.Eric Smith — It was just it was just so much money, even at a large church.Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Eric Smith — I cannot pull the trigger on this.Rich Birch — Right.Eric Smith — I can’t do it. Just imagine now, in our product, you get 10 deep researches for $99 a month. Rich Birch — Yeah.Eric Smith — To get one deep research with one of those companies would cost you hundreds of dollars and it would take hours and hours and hours for someone to do. Rich Birch — Yep.Eric Smith — Well, now we’re able to deliver that and it aligns with your theological framework. It is absolutely amazing. And so we literally are delivering delivering the ingredients to you. You still got to cook the meal, but we’re delivering it to you.Rich Birch — Yes.Eric Smith — So I love that. That’s amazing.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s so good. And I know um it’s been fun to watch your journey as an organization. And early on, one of the questions that people would ask is like, how is this any different than just a generic AI tool? And and I always from the beginning, I was like, no, it’s so different than just you know going on and having some you know chatbot conversation.Rich Birch — But to me, that question just isn’t even in the orbit anymore. It’s like, there’s so much of this, you know, you could not replicate. The amount of time it would take for you to build all these individual apps and all that just would be insane.Rich Birch — Jon-Michael, could you talk to us about the “My Library”? That’s been up and running now for maybe six or eight months. Maybe it’s longer than that now. What have you seen as users have used that to kind of help your tool be more custom? Because I think that’s one of the advantages that you’ve built in is, hey, this isn’t sounding like some generic, somebody else. It is giving me feedback that is related to things that I’ve preached in the past. How is how is that tool being used?Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, it’s really quite remarkable because it really serves as an external brain for those of us who can’t remember what we said 10 seconds ago. And it seems to be that lead pastors all have that same personality.Jon-Michael Sherman — Do we agree, guys? Yeah. No, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s it’s true. And I mean, and listen, like no one in the world has the job that lead pastors have to go and have create 40 plus unique sermons a year and then somehow try not to repeat yourself. Right? Rich Birch — So true.Jon-Michael Sherman — So obviously the memorization of saying, have I said that before? When did I say that? But the beauty of being able to build on what you’ve already said and be able to remember yourself and pull up all the the past content that you’ve said in the past is remarkable. Again, we may write 3000 words of notes, but we’re going to speak 6000 words on the mic. And so being able to have all of those words as well captured within the platform is remarkable.Jon-Michael Sherman — Another really great one, I was working with a pastor in in Phoenix area. We uploaded his sermon library over the past couple of years, and we just said, hey, analyze me, you know, like, what are my, what are my themes? What am I repeating too much? What am I you know, am am I, am I, am I being diverse enough in my communication? You know, and it, it gave a deeply accurate profile of these are things you repeat. These are themes that are, ah that you, that you repeat. And it was just spot on. It was wild. It acted like a doctorate level, homiletics coach in a sense.Jon-Michael Sherman — And so we’re going to be doing some cool upgrades to My Library. Stay tuned.Eric Smith — Oh yeah.Jon-Michael Sherman — Right right now, you’ve got to be a little bit smart in the sense of like thinking about what to say. We’re going to make that a little bit more, click and go moving forward. But I’m telling you, if you upload your sermons in there, there’s a lot of amazing questions you can ask and you can get some honest feedback, maybe more honest feedback than your teaching team gives you. Who knows? So, the most honest one is our wife, right? Anyone else?Rich Birch — Yeah, true.Jon-Michael Sherman — Exactly. Yeah, she’ll tell you, but the AI will tell you too. you’ll They’ll tell you. So it’s great. We love it.Rich Birch — And that in My Librar…oh, sorry, Eric, I didn’t mean to cut you off.Eric Smith — Well, no, I was just going to say, I just want say this so I don’t forget. Maybe if you’ve heard about our product before, and this platform, and you tried it out months ago or a year ago, it’s so much better and so different. So I would just encourage you to jump back in and give it another go because the new features that are available are just absolutely phenomenal. And the reality that you can do the media and the research and the writing, is it’s it’s it’s just so robust in what it can do.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s a good, that’s a good word. you know if I know there’s people that have tried it and maybe for one reason or another, maybe you you know you took ah took the summer off, you weren’t preaching for a few weeks and so you canceled. Hey, now’s a good time to re-up and you’ll be amazed all the different features that have been added and improved. Rich Birch — On the My Library, I just want to there’s a detail there I want to make sure we capture. You can upload. It’s a multimedia upload. You can upload audio, video. What’s that whole list of things that you can upload to that?Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, everything from you know your files that you’ve written, your your sermons you’ve written. You can use Google Drive to link in. YouTube link is very popular, being able to you know upload your sermons via YouTube link. Jon-Michael Sherman — So it’s always better if you have the version where the the worship isn’t playing, but just just your sermon, that part, that’d be the good one to use when you upload it.Jon-Michael Sherman — But it is smart enough to know the difference. It’s, it’s wild. But it’s, it’s really amazing. So again, it’s not just every word that you’ve written. It’s every word you’ve, you’ve actually preached from the mic. You know, cause I’ve never written out my full stories. I don’t know about you guys, when you’re doing a sermon, I just say, tell this story, right. Rich Birch — Yes.Jon-Michael Sherman — [Inaudible] my notes. But the actual story I spoke through the mic. So it’s going to capture all of that when you’re in My Library.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so true.Eric Smith — Well, one of the things on My Library is if you have other theological documents. For example, if it were you, Rich, you could take all your podcast and put there, right? All the scripts from your podcast, you could load up in there. Rich Birch — That’s great.Eric Smith — And so think outside the box. Don’t just think: sermons I’ve written or even sermons I’ve preached. Maybe it’s theological papers, maybe it’s blogs, maybe it’s podcasts. There’s other things that you can put in there as well.Rich Birch — Eric, I want to play the devil’s advocate here for a minute. Because I know there’s people that are probably thinking this. We’re 20 minutes in. They’re maybe interested but a little suspicious of just the use of AI in sermon prep in any way. They’re like, I just don’t know. This is this is this is a bridge too far. I’m just not sure we should be doing that. I’m you know, I’m I’m concerned. I’m nervous. I think you know this is going to be really negative for me. What would you say, not necessarily somebody who’s being combative, but is honestly asking you, is picking up with the phone and saying, Eric, I trust you. But talk to me about that.Eric Smith — Yeah, so I think everybody has to operate in the different convictions they have. Our belief is that we highly trust pastors.Eric Smith — Rich, you know thousands of pastors. We know thousands of pastors. Yeah, there’s a few out there that may not be the greatest, but pastors are amazing and they’re high integrity people. And so we trust you. You you operate with your conviction, number one. Eric Smith — Number two, I would just say this. You were already using it and you didn’t know it. We’ve been using AI for a long time. Google is AI. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s true Eric Smith — What’s happened is it’s just gone from you know slow speed to super fast. And so really there is no difference in what we’re doing. It’s just delivering content faster. And people say stuff like AI is the devil or whatever. It’s just pulling data. It’s just pulling data.Eric Smith — I mean…So all it’s doing is the computers are so good and so smart that they can ah research and pull data faster than ever before. And so why would we not want to speed up that process? All of us are using Amazon because it sped up the process for me to get the thing delivered to my door. Is that a bad thing?Rich Birch — Right.Eric Smith — No. Rich Birch — Right.Eric Smith — I will say no pastor that we know of that’s ever used our product is just, you know, using AI and then stepping up on the platform and then using it to preach. They’re using it to research. They’re using it to to refine things. They’re using it to wrestle with, I have this statement. How can I say this better? They’re using it for things like sermon clips, and and or uploading your sermon in our discipleship area that we have on our platform, you can upload it. It’ll turn your sermon into kids curriculum. It’ll turn your sermon into small group curriculum. It’ll turn your sermon into small group questions. It does all that as well.Eric Smith — And so it’s taking your content and reorganizing it in a different way. Why would we not use? We’ve done this throughout history where we’ve used things to advance the speed of something. Of course, none of us ever want to get away from praying, seeking the Lord, asking the Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us. This is just allowing us to get the ingredients together faster…Rich Birch — Right.Eric Smith — …so that we can actually spend time on what makes a sermon great. What is it that makes a sermon great? It’s not what’s on the paper. I can preach the same sermon as someone else on Sunday and you could look at our paper and go, wow, that looks just the same. But one of our sermons might be a lot better because, number one, we allowed it to really take root in our heart. We allowed it to simmer in our soul.Eric Smith — And so if I can help pastors move faster through the researching and gathering of the material, so that they can put the sermon together and it really take root in their soul. And then second prep on the actual delivery of the sermon. In the platform we have a masterclass that I put together on, really, sermon delivery. If I can help pastors do that, what’s going to happen is it’s going to save them time, but not only is it going to save them time, it’s going to help them preach better sermons. And as said before, our focus, our heartbeat is to grow the church and to engage believers in the body of Christ. Rich Birch — It’s good.Eric Smith — And so for us, we can help pastors preach better, churches grow. Why? 82% of people choose their church based on the quality—it’s either 82 or 83. I could be off 1%—the quality of the sermon. Rich Birch — Yes.Eric Smith — And so, pastor, you should do everything you can to preach better sermons. And this is a tool that we want to come alongside you and serve you. We are here to serve and make your sermons better. And that’s our heart. So that’s what I would say.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. You know, I know that people have a concern anytime there’s new technology, but I love how you frame that, Eric, that it’s, in you know, it’s, We’re already using parts of this. It’s a part of all of our everyday lives. And how can we use it in a way to really accelerate the mission to try to get, you know. And I think that if I would say the only thing I would add, if I was listening in today and I had that hesitation, I would just take a step towards it and to learn about it, to actually try a tool like or try SermonDone specifically, ah you know, like and and see, hey, maybe there’s a way that this could help.Rich Birch — And I would agree with you. It’s not, you know, it’s not a, you don’t go in there and be like, hey, give me a great three-part sermon on John 3:16. You know, that’s not what this is. It’s, hey, I’m working on this. It’s a bunch of tools to help you think through and to process all of this and then to ultimately give you the the time to to prepare it.Rich Birch — Jon-Michael, what anything you’d add to that kind of the, maybe the hesitant pastor who’s who’s a little bit worried about this and is, you know, yeah doesn’t want to go left behind, but is also concerned about it?Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, you know you know me, I’m probably going to be a little bit not as nice as Eric. would I’ll try to but i’ll try to be nice, but I’ll just put it this way. You know, look, it’s just the way it goes. When new tech comes into the church world, we go through five phases. The first phase is it’s demonic.Jon-Michael Sherman — You know, ah the Nephilim came down into spacecraft and and handed AI to, you know, Peter Thiel and he’s bringing the Antichrist and it’s over… Rich Birch — Right. Right. Jon-Michael Sherman — …you know, the the military is going to listen to me through SermonDone.com. Rich Birch — Yes. Jon-Michael Sherman — You know, like that’s, what’s I’ve had, I’ve talked to guys on the phone that have thought that, okay, that’s real life. Rich Birch — Right. Right.Jon-Michael Sherman — Even it’s funny, but it’s true. It’s demonic.Rich Birch — Right.Jon-Michael Sherman — And then it goes, well, that evil mega church down the road is doing it, but I would never. I would never we grab our pearls and we clutch up.Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right.Jon-Michael Sherman — And then it goes to, well, I’m using it secretly, but I can’t tell my pastor. I can’t tell anybody you know I’m using it secretly.Rich Birch — Right.Jon-Michael Sherman — And then it goes to, well, of course we’re using it. And why isn’t everyone on staff using it? If you don’t use it the next 30 days, you’re getting fired. And then it goes from that to like, hey, welcome my breakout session here at Exponential. I’m going to be teaching you how I use AI. Well, 10 minutes ago, you thought it came off a spaceship, you know. But this is how we are, okay?Rich Birch — Right, right, right.Jon-Michael Sherman — Like this is just how we are. So we’re somewhere in the mix right now, depending on who’s listening. Okay, you know, it’s fun. But here’s the real issue is this. It truly is this. It It depends on which tribe you’re coming from. But there we, all of us, as lead pastors, guys that get in the pulpit, we all have one sin that we struggle with, and it’s pride. And we have to realize that we have this treasure, the gospel, it’s in a jar of clay. And you know what? Like we are broken vessels and we ah we we are a broken you know medium and the message is pure. The message is the gospel. The message has to go out. Jon-Michael Sherman — And so whether we’re using radio, television, artificial intelligence, you know, we’re streaming online right now using ah the Internet. The medium is is is not the thing that I’m worried about. It’s the message, is the gospel. And so whatever a tool the Lord gives us, let’s use it for his glory and our good. But let’s not let pride get in the way.Jon-Michael Sherman — So I’m going to speak into the Pentecostals because I grew up hanging from a chandelier. OK, I had a binky in one hand and a chandelier in the other. OK, I grew up Pentecostal holy roller.Jon-Michael Sherman — We have man-of-God complex. And this is what we do. Saturday night, the Lord speaks okay to pastor. And then he comes down from the mountain of God and he delivers the tablets, you know. Common phrase growing up was, I got woken up two in the morning. The Lord, the lord changed it up.Rich Birch — Right.Jon-Michael Sherman — Dude, you didn’t have a sermon until two in the morning last night. I know you’re you’re golfing all week.Rich Birch — Right, right. It’s called pressure. Last minute pressure. Yes.Jon-Michael Sherman — Exactly. Okay. And and it’s We struggle with that because we want to be the man of faith and power for the hour, Pentecostals.Rich Birch — Yeah.Jon-Michael Sherman — We do. And so like all of a sudden AI can help me do this faster and better. And what will my congregation think, led by the holy demon in Silicon Valley, you know, whatever. I’ve heard, I’ve seen the comments, right? It’s, but that’s, you know, it’s about humility. Like we have no new truth here. This is the truth that God gave us. Rich Birch — Yep.Jon-Michael Sherman — And we have to be faithful stewards of that truth. So we we can have nice outfits, but we better be true to the gospel. That’s my Pentecostal friends. Jon-Michael Sherman — Now to my Reformed friends, who I’m very close with. I had a very long conversation with a friend who’s deeply Reformed about our product. There’s a different pride issue because knowledge puffs up. And a lot of us in the Reformed world, man, we have gotten these badges of check out my master’s, check out my doctorate, check out my library. And, you know, and no one can orate or exegete the way I can.Jon-Michael Sherman — Well, hold up. AI can exegete pretty well, actually. And so there’s a pride issue there. And so I’ve seen that tribe having pride problems, too. But if we can make it not about the medium or the messenger, but make it about the message, it’s about the gospel of Jesus Christ.Jon-Michael Sherman — And so, unfortunately, I’ve just seen AI bring out a little bit of pride in every tribe. And I think we all just need to humble ourselves and say, this is just a tool. We are just messengers and ambassadors of Christ. Right. You know, like we have this message of reconciliation. And so the message is still the same. The messengers were still full of pride and we need to be humble before the Lord every Sunday.Jon-Michael Sherman — You know, there’s nothing more humbling than preaching, I would like to hope, but sometimes we get it twisted. So that’s my fun anecdote on that one for those are that are struggling in the midst of it. And and for those of that are still struggling, I did write a book for you. It’s called Pastoral Intelligence. It’s a book to help you figure out some of these big questions like, what is AI? How does it work? How do I make it work in my team? Jon-Michael Sherman — And maybe you don’t want to read the book because you don’t like reading because you have ADHD like me. I have memes in here. I’ll just teach you through memes. So you can use a meme and it’ll tell you what you need to know about AI.Rich Birch — Yes, that’s hilarious.Jon-Michael Sherman — But I want to encourage you to get that you if you’re struggling through it.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s that’s fantastic. And I would say, you know, my heart similarly, you know, I’ve spent, like I said this earlier in the podcast, I’ve spent most of my career in the second seat supporting incredible communicators who spend a lot of time, effort, energy, blood, sweat, tears on this. And I saw that my job, a part of my job was to remove barriers from that person’s life to try to make that part of what they do easier or so they could focus on that more. One of the lead pastors I worked to, incredible guy, His process, his sermon process, he would read about a thousand pages a week. That was pretty typical for him. And he would start writing after dinner on Saturday night.Rich Birch — He would write all Saturday night, finish his slides at two or three in the morning, email them to our team. We’d get the slides made up early morning. And we tried to change this process. I’m like, I’m not sure that this is super healthy for you. He had been doing it for 20 years or 15 years by the time I had got and interacted with him. And I’ve often thought about Sermon Don. I thought, man, if we had this tool back then, we could have saved a lot of you know blood, sweat, and tears. There’s you know there’s a part of that research that we just didn’t need to be doing.Rich Birch — So anyways, I’m glad, heartily endorsed, excited that you guys are are doing what you’re doing. As we come to to land the plane, Eric, any kind of final words from you that you would say to a pastor who’s listening in today? I want to make sure pastors actually go to sermondone.com and actually try it out. Anything else we want to be saying to people as we land the plane today?Eric Smith — Yeah, you can tell Jon-Michael’s, the one that’s the most fun in the group, right?Rich Birch — Yeah!Eric Smith — Now, I would just say, you know, you should give it a shot. And it’s it’s it’s not even doing, you still have to read the research it gives you. It’s just gathering the content for you. And for me, I’m like, I don’t I don’t really let the noise bother me of the culture or what this person or that person is saying, I’m trying to serve the people that God has has called me to serve. And so if I can more effectively do that in a way that honors the Lord and reaches people…Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.Eric Smith — …that’s, that’s my heart. And I know that’s every pastor that’s on here. That’s what they’re doing too. And so, uh, yeah, I would just invite you to give it a shot. Doesn’t hurt. Uh, when you sign up too, I think we have a code RICH20 to give 20% off because we love Rich Birch and the unSeminary podcast.Rich Birch — That’s great.Eric Smith — I guess Rich brings so much amazing content to the church world and God has used him in such a just a special way helping churches think through growth and strategy and systems and how to scale and you know the right things to do and so we’d love for you to try that out. And thanks, Rich, for all your time and what you meant to us.Rich Birch — No, I appreciate that, Eric. And we we keep saying this. We’ve got to have you on to just talk about the church side of your world at some point. We’re always like, well, we could get to that, but there’s always so much good stuff to talk about on SermonDone. We’ll have to have you back just on that. Jon-Michael, any any final words from you?Jon-Michael Sherman — Yeah, you know, I think it’s aptly put right now that no one here is is going to be replaced by AI, but maybe, you know, you might be replaced by someone who knows some of you as AI well. And I think it’s it’s a it’s a skill and a tool that you have to be embracing right now. And I think everyone needs to do that. Jon-Michael Sherman — Now, in three years, there’s a very good chance you know we’ll be back on the podcast and we’ll be talking about you know how to replace a staff member with an optimist robot, you know. I can imagine you know, I like you know youth pastors, optimist robot. You know, youth leader at camp, optimist robot. No one wants to be with a fourteen year old bunch of 14-year-olds at youth camp, you know optimist robot. With security at church, optimist robot with a gun. There’s a lot of great opportunities here in the future.Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness.Jon-Michael Sherman — But I will say this, I’m just teasing, but like AI is so great. It’s a wonderful tool for God’s glory and our good. Let’s embrace it. Let’s like shake off the naysayers, enjoy it, love it. And we’re so glad we built this. We made this for you and we want you to have it and try it. And we’d love to have you jump on.Rich Birch — That’s so good. So again, that’s just SermonDone.com. You can use that code RICH20. I really would encourage you to, to try it friends. I think it’s a great tool. It can save you so much time. And so that you can focus either on, you know, working on that delivery piece of the puzzle or more time leading your teams, more time connecting with people, you know, counseling folks, whatever, you know, there, I just think it’s a huge tool for you. So yeah again, that’s just SermonDone.com. Thanks so much. Really appreciate you guys being here today.Eric Smith — Thanks.Jon-Michael Sherman — Thanks, Rich.

Freiheit statt Nine-to-Five, Espresso statt Karriereformel: In dieser Folge How to Hack spricht Luel Mulugeta über seinen Weg aus der Kleinstadt hinein in die Frankfurter Gastro-Szene – und darüber, warum Unternehmertum für ihn nie ein Job, sondern immer ein Lebensgefühl war. Im Gespräch mit Carsten Puschmann geht es um frühe Prägungen, Hip-Hop, WG-Nächte, gescheiterte Produktideen, überzogene Kreditkarten und die harte Schule des Bootstrappings.Luel erzählt, wie aus Nebenjobs in der Gastronomie erst Lieferdienste, dann Cafés und schließlich ganze Markenwelten entstanden sind – und warum echte Community, Resilienz und emotionale Touchpoints wichtiger sind als perfekte Businesspläne. Eine Episode über Mut, Vergleich, Krise und die Kraft einer klaren Vision.Wir reden über☕ Freiheit vs. Karriereleiter – warum Vergleich das Glück killt

There's a misconception that restaurant brands are built by big ideas, big campaigns, or the next big menu innovation.But the truth is much simpler and much harder. Restaurants don't succeed because of one big home-run moment. They succeed because of thousands of tiny ones.In this episode of The Business of Joy, Lisa Miller sits down with Robin Blanchette, Founder and CEO of Norton Creative, to explore what really drives restaurant growth. Robin shares why brands can “die by a thousand cuts” or be built by thousands of touch points, and how the smallest decisions, like menu design, guest experience, messaging, and leadership, can quietly transform a business.She reflects on the early jobs that shaped her leadership, the hardest moment of her career during COVID, and what it truly means to show up for people, whether you're leading a team, serving a guest, or advising a brand. In this episode, we discuss:• Why the menu is the most powerful marketing tool in a restaurant• The hidden role great consultants play behind the scenes• The balance between art and science in restaurant marketing (shoutout Melissa)• Why “showing up” might be the most underrated leadership skillGreat businesses, like great relationships, aren't built all at once. They're built one joyful moment at a time!

In dieser Episode tauchen wir gemeinsam mit zwei Top-Experten von KPMG, Knut Besold und Tom Lurz, tief in die Welt der Customer Experience bei Finanz- und Versicherungsunternehmen ein. Wie gelingt es den Versicherern, mit digitalen Vorreitern wie Amazon oder Spotify Schritt zu halten? Was können Banken und Versicherungen voneinander lernen – und wie sieht eigentlich exzellente Kundenerfahrung heute aus?Im Mittelpunkt steht dieses Mal die brandneue KPMG Customer Experience Excellence Studie 2025. Gemeinsam mit Julius Kretz werden spannende Insights geteilt: Warum liegen Versicherer plötzlich vor Banken? Was macht Unternehmen wie Fielmann oder Spotify zu Vorzeige-Champions für Kundenfokus? Und vor allem: Wie gelingt der Spagat zwischen effizienter Digitalisierung und echter Empathie im Umgang mit Kunden?Freut euch auf echte Praxisbeispiele, überraschende Learnings, kritische Thesen und konkrete Empfehlungen, wie Versicherungsunternehmen nicht nur Kunden gewinnen, sondern sie auch nachhaltig begeistern können.Schreibt uns gerne eine Nachricht!PPI – Inspired by Simplicity. PPI verbindet Fach- und Technologie-Know-how, um komplexe Finanzprojekte in der Versicherungs- und Bankenwelt unkompliziert umzusetzen. Mit über 800 Expert:innen, europaweit führenden Lösungen im Zahlungsverkehr und der Vision „From Paper to Pixels“ begleitet PPI ihre Kunden erfolgreich in die digitale Zukunft.

Chapter 3 of this 6-part CoralTree Customer Journey series moves into the framework itself: how you create consistency across very different hotels without turning everything into cookie-cutter service. Customer journey work only matters if it improves operations, guest loyalty, and results. This chapter gets into the structure behind that. I talk with Andre Fournier, Chief Commercial Officer at CoralTree Hospitality, about Standards of Care, touchpoints from booking to departure, and how service rankings can influence ADR and consideration. Here is what we cover: ·        How CoralTree builds one service framework across different asset types ·        Why the goal is consistency of care, not identical experiences ·        Touchpoints from website/reservations to arrival, stay, and departure ·        Why each property still needs to feel authentic and of the place ·        Andre's filter: true, meaningful, and distinctive ·        How guest service rankings can support ADR and consideration set If you missed Chapters 1 and 2, go back first - this framework makes more sense once you've heard the strategy and people side. Next week: how CoralTree workshops these ideas with property teams. Want to follow the full series and catch any chapters you miss while it rolls out? Subscribe to the #NoVacancyNews newsletter by texting HOTEL to 66866. Thanks to Unifocus for supporting this series. Unifocus, technology that drives value. Visit Unifocus.com.

Thinking about launching a group trip? Before you pick a destination and start marketing it, listen to this! Megan Grant Pederson of Cherish Tours shares exactly what it takes to create, price, sell, and host profitable small group travel. From contract negotiations and attrition clauses to margin strategy, launch timelines, early bird pricing, and the real costs most advisors overlook, this episode is your crash course in doing group travel the right way. If you've ever thought, “I plan trips all the time. How hard could group travel be?” this episode will give you the clarity (and caution) you need before you dive in!After the episode, come continue the conversation inside the Niche community where we share real advisor strategies, trainings, and support. → https://www.tiquehq.com/niche/?utm_source=Tique_Talks&utm_medium=Show_notes&utm_campaign=Ep198&utm_content=NicheAbout Megan Grant Pederson:Megan is the Founder & Chief Memory Creator of Cherish Tours, a women-centered travel company she has built and operated since 2021. With a background in conference planning and a passport full of 45+ countries (including 10+ solo trips), she believes deeply that travel has the power to make a difference in our world and directly support the economic empowerment of women. Megan brings hands-on expertise in sustainable tourism, women-owned global businesses, and creating meaningful small-group journeys that inspire confidence, connection, and transformation.Interest Form: gocherishtours.activehosted.com/f/25gocherishtours.cominstagram.com/gocherishtoursToday we will cover:(05:30) Known groups vs. resell models(10:20) Pricing strategy: margin, attrition & paying yourself(15:05) Why most group trips fail(25:25) DIY itineraries vs. DMCs(35:00) How to launch a trip(38:40) Touchpoints before departure(45:15) Collecting feedback before departure(48:30) Advisor partnerships and FAMsFOLLOW ALONG ON INSTAGRAM @TiqueHQThanks to Our Tique Talks Sponsors:Cozy Earth - Use code COZYTIQUE for 20% off

In this episode, I dive into the real data behind my first course sales and unpack what I'm calling micro moments of trust. By tracking the interactions people had with my content, I discovered it took about seven touchpoints – ads, profile visits, automated DMs, stories, and more – before a complete stranger decided to buy. It's a behind-the-scenes look at how trust builds online and why strategic touchpoints matter more than being everywhere. RESOURCES MENTIONED NOTE: Some links below contain affiliate/referral links. It is a way for this site to earn advertising fees by advertising or linking to certain products and/or services. DISCOUNT: Code for 30+ free days of Podcast Audio Hosting through Libsyn: bossgirl RESOURCE: Need a Podcast Editor? Hire mine & tell him I referred you…The Podcast Man WORK WITH ME: Back Pocket VIP Coaching YOUTUBE CHANNEL: Subscribe >> The House of Sugar Creek MY BOOK: Snag a copy! Pillars & Purpose: How to Build a Business That Works for You RESOURCE: Contract Templates for your Business YOUTUBE CHANNEL: Subscribe to the BGC YouTube Channel and listen to my episodes via YouTube! MY 90-DAY UNDATED PLANNER: Buy it here! RESOURCE: Receive 20% off your first month or your first year with Dubsado RESOURCE: Receive 50% off your first full year with FloDesk (+ a 14-day free trial) LEAVE A MESSAGE: Click Here SEARCH BAR CONFESSIONS: Starts at 10:20 BUSINESS NUGGET: Starts at 12:55 RESOURCE: Try Manychat for 2 weeks for free RESOURCE: Check out Hilma products – $10 off for ya! RESOURCE: The Clarity Catch-Up Mini Workbook (FREEBIE) RESOURCE: The Clarity Code (reflection deck) RESOURCE: The Clarity Shot EPISODES YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY... EPISODE 559 – HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN GPT WITH CHATGPT EPISODE 550 – WHEN EGO RUNS THE BUSINESS (A PIZZA STORY) EPISODE 510 – BUSINESS STRATEGIES FOR GROWTH EPISODE 450 – DIGITAL MARKETING TIPS EPISODE 410 – THE DARK SIDE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP & IMPOSTER SYNDROME EPISODE 360 – WHY YOUR MINDSET MATTERS EPISODE 310 – GET BACK TO SIMPLE EPISODE 210 – WHY YOU MUST INVEST IN YOUR BIZ EPISODE 160 – MY FAVORITE PODCASTS FIND TAYLOR ONLINE... Blog – The House of Sugar Creek Instagram – @taylorlbradford Facebook – bossgirlcreative Pinterest – thehouseofsugarcreek TikTok – @taylorlbradford YouTube – The House of Sugar Creek YouTube – Boss Girl Creative

Kurz vor der feierlichen Eröffnung im April 2026, während der Probebetrieb mit Tausenden Testpassagieren auf Hochtouren läuft, blickt diese Spezial-Folge des Digitalwirtschaft-Podcasts das rund 4 Milliarden Euro teure Terminal 3 des Frankfurter Flughafens. Dabei wurde deutlich, dass der für bis zu 25 Millionen Passagiere ausgelegte Neubau weit mehr ist als eine bloße Kapazitätserweiterung; er ist ein Raum, in dem Infrastruktur, Gestaltung und gesellschaftliche Erwartungen zu einer neuen Qualität des öffentlichen Lebens verschmelzen. Die Diskussion war Bestandteil von „Moving Business By Design“, einem neuen neues Diskursformat im Rahmen der Rolle, die Frankfurt in diesem Jahr als „World Design Capital“ innehat. Den architektonischen Grundgedanken des neuen Terminals skizzierte Christoph Mäckler, der Architekt. Anstelle steriler, rein funktionaler Abfertigungshallen entwarf er ein Gebäude, das massiv auf natürliches Tageslicht setzt und künstliche Lichtquellen auf ein Minimum reduziert. Prägend für Mäcklers Ansatz ist die sichtbare Funktionalität, die sich etwa in den offen liegenden Konstruktionsrohren der Decken widerspiegelt. Er beschrieb das Terminal zudem als einen „wachsenden Käfer“, dessen vertikale Erschließung so konzipiert ist, dass das Gebäude in Zukunft nach außen wachsen kann, ohne die komplexen inneren Abläufe zu stören. Doch wie navigiert man Millionen internationale Gäste intuitiv und stressfrei durch ein Gebäude dieser Dimension? Diese Frage beantwortete Sibylle Schlaich, Managing Partner bei Moniteurs und Expertin für komplexe Orientierungssysteme. Sie verdeutlichte, dass moderne Orientierungssysteme sprachliche und kulturelle Barrieren mühelos überwinden müssen, ohne den Raum visuell zu überfrachten. Ein erfolgreiches Orientierungssystem, so Schlaich, verzahnt analoge Leitführung und digitale Informationswelten nahtlos miteinander. Nur so kann den Reisenden ein Gefühl von Sicherheit vermittelt und die oft stressige Reiseerfahrung beruhigt werden. Dass diese Aufenthaltsqualität auch eine harte ökonomische Währung ist, betonte Stephanie Pudwitz, die kaufmännische Geschäftsführerin der Fraport AG. Das Terminal 3 fungiert als eigenständige Erlebniswelt und internationaler Premiumstandort für Marken. Durch die Integration eines zentralen Marktplatzes, innovativer Gastronomiekonzepte und großflächiger digitaler Touchpoints – wie etwa 120 Quadratmeter großer LED-Flächen in der Check-in-Halle – wird die Wartezeit zum Erlebnis gemacht. Diese gezielte Steigerung der „User Experience“ ist für Fraport essenziell, um im harten internationalen Wettbewerb der Luftfahrtkreuze die entscheidenden Einnahmen jenseits des reinen Flugbetriebs (Non-Aviation-Erlöse) zu sichern. Aus landespolitischer Sicht ordnete Kaweh Mansoori, Hessischer Minister für Wirtschaft, Energie, Verkehr, Wohnen und ländlichen Raum, das Projekt in das große Ganze ein. Er bezeichnete den Flughafen als den Herzschlag der hessischen Wirtschaft. Das neue Terminal sei nicht nur ein klares Bekenntnis zur internationalen Wettbewerbsfähigkeit des Standorts, sondern sichere als Jobmotor direkt und indirekt Tausende Arbeitsplätze in der Region. Zudem stärke die Infrastruktur den boomenden Tourismus im Bundesland. Besonders hob Mansoori hervor, dass die termingerechte Fertigstellung dieses gigantischen Baus ein starkes Signal über die Landesgrenzen hinaus sende: Hessen ist in der Lage, Großprojekte pragmatisch und erfolgreich umzusetzen. Am 22. April findet die offizielle Eröffnung statt, vom 23. April an ist das Terminal für jedermann zugänglich.

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. Today we're joined by Lou Pizzichillo, Lead Pastor of Community Church on Long Island. Community Church launched in January 2020—just ten weeks before the world shut down—then relaunched after 52 weeks online. Now averaging around 1,200 people across Thursday and Sunday services, Community is known as “a church for people who don't go to church.” In a region where skepticism toward organized religion runs deep, Lou and his team are building trust by creating space for honest questions, lived-out faith, and tangible community impact. Is your church serving in a skeptical environment? Are you trying to reach people who already think they know—and don't like—what church is about? Lou shares practical wisdom on posture, transparency, and earning trust one decision at a time. Starting where people really are. // On Long Island, while some residents may identify culturally with faith traditions, most see church as judgmental, hypocritical, or irrelevant to everyday life. Lou quickly realized that the biggest obstacle wasn't apathy—it was reputation. Rather than fighting skepticism, Community Church chose to acknowledge it. The church repeatedly communicates three cultural values: You can belong before you believe. You have permission to be in progress. And there's no pretending. These aren't slogans—they shape how the church operates. Permission to be in progress. // One of the most resonant phrases at Community is “permission to be in progress.” Many people assume that following Jesus requires instant agreement with every doctrine and behavior expectation. Instead, Community encourages people to wrestle honestly with the claims of Christ first. Secondary issues and sanctification come later. This posture doesn't mean watering down truth—it means sequencing it wisely. By focusing on who Jesus says he is, rather than debating every peripheral topic, the church keeps the main thing central. No pretending—and real transparency. // Transparency builds credibility in skeptical contexts. Stories of real life—parenting mistakes, marriage tensions, leadership missteps—often resonate more than polished success stories. At the same time, Lou draws a boundary between “scars and wounds.” He shares what he has processed, not what he is still unraveling. This authenticity signals that faith isn't about perfection but transformation. For many in the congregation, seeing a pastor admit imperfection dismantles years of distrust toward church leaders. Becoming an asset to the community. // Community Church doesn't just talk about loving Babylon—it demonstrates it. Early on, Lou realized trust would not come through marketing but through partnership. Before launch, the church created “12 Days of Christmas,” giving away gifts purchased from local businesses. In year one, stores hesitated to participate; by year seven, businesses were reaching out to collaborate. What began as skepticism has shifted to partnership because trust was earned gradually. Serving instead of competing. // A defining moment came during the annual Argyle Fair, a 30,000-person event held across the street from the church—on a Sunday. Rather than fight the inconvenience, Community canceled services and mobilized volunteers to serve the fair, providing parking and manpower. When the event was rescheduled due to rain, the church canceled services a second week to honor its commitment. Lou describes this as a defining cultural moment: demonstrating that service isn't convenient—it's convictional. Earning trust through inconvenience. // Lou recounts being called to the mayor's office days after launch to address parking concerns. Instead of pushing back, the church chose to rent additional parking space—even when legally unnecessary—to honor neighbors' concerns. In another instance, Community canceled a planned Christmas light show after Village neighbors expressed concern about traffic. Though disappointing internally, the decision earned significant community goodwill. Lou believes canceling the event built more trust than hosting it would have. Posture over persecution. // Lou cautions leaders against defaulting to a persecution narrative when facing resistance. Most pushback, he says, comes from practical concerns—not hostility toward Jesus. By listening humbly and responding thoughtfully, churches can win trust among the large percentage of community members who are neither strongly for nor against them. To learn more about Community Church, visit communitychurch.net or follow @communitychurch.li on social media. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, thanks so much for listening in, tuning in into today’s episode. I’m really looking forward to today’s conversation. We’re talking with a leader leading a prevailing church in frankly a part of the country that is not known for tons of prevailing churches. And so it’s an opportunity for all of us to lean in and to learn.Rich Birch — Super excited to have Lou Pizzichillo with us from Community Church. They’re in Babylon, New York on Long Island. They’re known as a church for people who don’t go to church. They’re big on being real, bringing real questions, struggles, hangups, doubts, disappointments, and failures. Lou, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here today.Lou Pizzichillo — Thanks so much. Yeah, it’s a privilege to be here.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s an honor that you would take some time to be with us today. Why don’t you kind of tell us a bit of the Community story, kind of give us a flavor of the church, help us kind of imagine if we were to arrive this weekend, what what would we experience?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So we have an interesting history. We launched in January of 2020. And so we were open for 10 weeks.Rich Birch — Great time.Lou Pizzichillo — I know it was perfect. And then we closed down for 52 weeks, and we relaunched. But because of that, what’s been really cool is, you know, when you’re launching a church, the launch team is a big deal. And to launch twice, we’ve had really like two two launch teams. And so team culture has always been a real big part of our church.Lou Pizzichillo — But yeah, we like to say that we’re a church for people who don’t go to church. and So we try to keep things pretty casual. We try not to assume that there’s any interest or experience with the people who are showing up on a Sunday. And yeah.Rich Birch — Nice. Give us a sense of, so like size and like your, you know, the ministry style, that sort of thing. Like what would you help us kind of place what the, what the church is like if I was to arrive, arrive on a weekend?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, we’re a pretty contemporary attractional church. We’ve got services on Thursday night and on Sunday morning. So we say the weekend starts on Thursday. Rich Birch — Love it. Lou Pizzichillo — We call Thursday night thurch, which is… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s funny. Thurch. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, it was a joke at first, but then it kind of like, I don’t know, just kind of gained a life of its own.Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — So yeah, so the church over the course of the weekend, right now we’re at about 1,200. And it’s exciting. There are a lot of new people. And things are constantly change changing. Change is that really the only constant for us.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, you’re on Long Island, and I can say as somebody who I ministered for years in New Jersey, I’m from Canada, I I get that people don’t wake up on Long Island on Sunday morning and think, hey, I should go to church today. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, yeah.Rich Birch — You’re serving a community that is is more unchurched than other parts of the country, which is a challenge for planting. So help us understand, you know, help us just kind of get into the mindset or the um perspective of people who are outside of the church. What do they view on, you know, Christianity? Tell us, give us a sense of of kind of what you’ve learned, you know, planting in that kind of context.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So one thing that was really helpful right off the bat was somebody mentioned to me, they were like, you know, I’m not a gym person. And so when a new gym opens up in town, I don’t even really notice it.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And they’re like, I think it’s the same thing for church people.Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — It’s like, if you’re not a church person, then you don’t really notice when churches are doing things. And so that’s like, really, it’s a big reason why we’re so vocal about saying it we’re a church for people who don’t go to church, you know?Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — Um, and yeah, from there, honestly, we found that the biggest obstacle with people here is the existing reputation of church, of what church is like and what church people are like.Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — This church is seen as very judgmental, hypocritical, fake, exclusive, impractical, you know, it’s something you just do to kind of check the boxes and then you go on with your life. I’ve spoken to even a lot of, um, like devout Catholics here who have, have said like, they don’t, they do their church thing because, because it’s what they think that they’re supposed to do, but they’re, what they are doing in church does not translate to everyday life.Lou Pizzichillo — And so church is seen as kind of an impractical thing. And, that’s kind of the starting point for a lot of people who we’re trying to connect with.Rich Birch — Yeah, I’ve heard it said in other contexts, it’s like, not that people don’t know the church. It’s like, it’s what they know that they don’t like.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, yeah.Rich Birch — It’s like, they have a sense of, you know, that that reputation. Are there any, maybe even stories or engagement you know conversations or engagements you’ve had with folks that have kind of brought that reputation to the fore. That obviously has led you to say, hey, we’re going position ourselves as a church where people don’t go into churches. Was there something that kind of influenced that as you were having, you know, even in these early years as you’ve been kind of get the ball rolling?Lou Pizzichillo — A big part of it honestly is a lot of my extended family. Like they’re, most of them are not church people. You know, they have a lot of respect for God. Like most people on Long Island, uh, especially, you know, most kind of nominal Catholics, like they would say they’re Italian or Irish. They say, oh, of course, Jesus is my savior. You know, like they, they know the right things to say, but in terms of what it actually means on a regular basis, it’s like kind of a totally different thing. So, so yeah, I mean, that’s kind of, kind of where we’re starting.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, people have criticisms about the church and they have criticisms of of their experience with the church. How do you discern between criticisms that maybe you either need to be challenged, like, hey, that’s actually just not true, or like, oh, that’s a critique that is actually fair, and we’re going to try to steer in a different direction, ah you know, than that. Help us think about those, you know, when we think about skepticism towards the church.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, I think, honestly, the best thing for us has just been to have a posture of listening.Rich Birch — That’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — Because even even if their claims aren’t valid, a lot of their experiences are. And so, you know, they’re like, there’s somebody who’s been going to the church for a while now, and somebody that was very close to them has like a pretty intense story of church hurt, like real damage. And so to know that he’s walking in with all of this baggage and that there are a lot of other people walking in with that baggage that don’t let you know that they have that baggage… Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — …just kind of giving them the space to, to be hurt and for it to be real. That’s been huge for us just having that kind of posture of humility. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So that obviously has led to the way you’ve developed either the way you talk about ministry or the values that are underlining, you know, the ministry.Rich Birch — What has been important for helping communicate or articulate to people like, hey, this is a place that you can show up, you know, before you, you know, you’ve kind of bought it all. It’s like, Hey, you there’s a place to explore that sort of thing. Help us think through how do you communicate and then how do those, whether they’re phrases or yeah that sort of thing, how does that translate then into the values of how you actually operate?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So big thing is for us, it’s training the team, like getting those values into the team and helping them to understand what that looks like in a concrete way. So we say, like a lot of churches say, you can belong before you believe. And the the illustration I give almost every single time, I’m like, if somebody walks in with a church, with a shirt that says, I hate God, we are glad that person is here, right? Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — Like we’re not assuming that they are walking in with interest or experience. And they might have a story that’s a lot more complicated than we know. So um so yes, we try to celebrate that.Lou Pizzichillo — When somebody walks in and they’re very open about their beliefs and their views not lining up with us, that’s something that we celebrate, right? Like because these are the people that we want here.Lou Pizzichillo — The other value that’s been really helpful for us is to say that people have permission to be in progress. And that has to do with their actions, the choices that they make, but also the things that they believe. And so you can be on board with some of our beliefs and not be on board with all of our beliefs. And we’re okay with that, right?Lou Pizzichillo — Like rather than just saying, okay, I accept all of it at one time. And now I completely agree that everything in the Bible is true. And, you know, I endorse it. Like we just kind of give people space to say, okay, like let’s maybe let’s start with the claims of Jesus, like right to this guy really rise from the dead. And now let’s look at what he says about things like the Old Testament, you know?Lou Pizzichillo — And so that’s that’s been a huge thing. We go back to that over and over and over again. It started as kind of like a main point in a sermon where I was like, you’ve got permission to be in progress. And so many people repeated it back to me that I was like, okay, this needs to be woven into our culture because it needs to be articulated…Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — …or people just assume, okay, if I’m going to say I believe, I got to say I believe it all. And there’s no room for disagreement.Lou Pizzichillo — And then from there, we say like, you got you can belong before you believe, you got permission to be in progress. And if both of those things are actually true for us as a church, then we can also say like our third value is no pretending.Lou Pizzichillo — Like you don’t have to pretend to be on board with certain things if you’re not there yet. And I think if we create an environment where people can be real and dialogue and be open about the things that they’re, you know, that they disagree with, I think that’s where there’s real hope for ultimately ending in a place of alignment.Rich Birch — Yeah, permission to be in progress to me feels very like a very Jesus value It feels like, oh, that to me, that’s like when I read the New Testament, that feels like the way he oriented himself to the people around him, right? There were clearly people that were like the rich young ruler came to him and was like, you know, asked a pointed question. Jesus gave a clear answer, and he didn’t, you know, Jesus didn’t, even though he said harsh words to or clear words, I would say, all was it always done in an environment of trying to say, hey, we I want you to be a part of this conversation. I’m really trying to be on the same side of the table. How do I bring you along?Rich Birch — Can you, like, let’s double click on permission to be in progress. Talk us through what that looks like. Because I think, I think so many churches draw very strong lines on like, you got to believe these 15 things to be a part here. Even if we wouldn’t explicitly set that say that, it’s like implicit in our cultures.Rich Birch — How does your culture look different when you say, hey, you’ve got permission to be in progress? What would be some of the things that might stand out to us as like, that’s a little bit different than how maybe some other churches handle this?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So we have like we have values, but then we also just have sayings, right? Like it it is too hard for me to define what the most important values are. Like I get too obsessed with the wording and how we’re going to phrase things. And so in our our conference room, we have a big whiteboard and we write down little sayings. We actually write them in permanent marker on the whiteboard, which is wasteful, but at least we have something to reference.Lou Pizzichillo — So when somebody says something and we’re like, hey, that’s a culture thing, it gets written on the board. One of the things that came up that’s really helped us with this idea of permission to be in progress is that the goal is to get people to Jesus and everything else is secondary. Everything else comes after that.Rich Birch — That's good. Yep, that’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — And so I’m not going to like get into it with someone over a secondary issue or really something that’s an issue of sanctification, when we believe sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit, right? Maybe your view on that will change after you understand who Jesus is and begin to follow him.Lou Pizzichillo — And so in a lot of ways, I feel like when we when we get too into the issues, we’re putting the cart before the horse, right? Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — And so we’re trying to bring people to Jesus and show him show them what he’s like. And ah that that has been clarifying when it comes to permission to be in progress.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. And I think in heavily church context, when we kind of assume, oh, basically everyone here has some level of faith, those secondary issues can become like a really big deal. It’s like we spend a lot of time talking about those things.Rich Birch — But when the majority of people we’re interacting with you know, they haven’t, they haven’t really, really wrestled with what they think about Jesus and the difference he can make in this life. And we got to keep that, that really clear. Rich Birch — So no pretending is an interesting value as a communicator. How do you live that out in the way you show transparency? There’s this interesting thing years ago, I had one of the ah preacher that I love or communicator. I just think the world of, you know, he talked about how there’s this tension when we’re, communicating that, you know, we’re we’re trying to be transparent, but up into a point and how, where is that point? And how do we do that in a way that’s not, that brings people along? So ah what what does that look like for you even as a as ah as a leader to say, hey, it’s not my job to pretend. I’m going to just be honest and transparent, authentic to where we are? Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Well, I mean, I can definitely say that every time I tell a story that has me screwing up, it is it is the thing that people come to tell me about. Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — Like, oh, thank you so much for telling me about you know the way you spoke to your kids… Rich Birch — Yes. Lou Pizzichillo — …or the thing that you said to your wife. Or it is just by far the thing that people love to hear. And that’s been encouraging. Now, I have had people like throw it back at me and that that comes with the territory. But I think that the stories of how that’s been helpful for people um like dramatically outweigh the people that are going to you know weaponize that stuff against you.Lou Pizzichillo — Something else I heard, um I think Brene Brown said this in one of her books. She said she doesn’t share things she hasn’t processed through yet.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And that for me is a really helpful thing. Like If I’m in the middle of something and just in the thick of it, it’s not the time for me to like bring that to the congregation. I think that could be really unhealthy for a lot of reasons.Lou Pizzichillo — So that’s, that’s kind of something that, and it doesn’t mean I can’t share something that just happened. You know sometimes I’ll explain an issue that just happened with my kids. That’s different than something I’m still processing and haven’t resolved yet.Rich Birch — Right. I think she said it’s the difference between scars and wounds, right? You can talk about your scars. That’s like, that’s an area that has, has had some level of healing to it versus an open wound, right? Like this is a part that’s, that’s still gaping.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.Rich Birch — And, uh, you know, we don’t necessarily want to to share that. And that, you know, uh, that is a change. So I’m, you know, I’m of a certain age, been in this game a long time. And I remember when we first started, when I first started, that generation that came before me, people wanted like the superhuman religious leader. They wanted the like pastor to be, to have their stuff a hundred percent sewed up. Like, don’t tell me that you’re a real human. They didn’t want that.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.Rich Birch — You know, and that has completely reversed.Rich Birch — People are like, no no, like you said, we, we need to be transparent, open, authentic. People know that we’re not perfect. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Rich Birch — They know that we don’t have it all together. Lou Pizzichillo — Right.Rich Birch — And when we try to hide that, when we try to, in your language, pretend that actually is repulsive, it pushes them away. Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah.Rich Birch — One of the things that stood out to me just by reputation, kind of seeing your church is it appears that you guys have a conviction around getting out and serving the community, actually making a difference in the community. You know, it strikes me as very ah a very James-approach, faith in action – it’s it should make a difference in our community. What how do talk to me about what that looks like for Community. How does that, even your name, Community, you know, Church, reflects that. Talk talk to talk to me about what that looks like.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, so we’re pretty clear. Like we we tell people we want to be an asset to the community. We want people to be glad we’re here, whether they attend our church or not. And so that started really early. Actually, before we launched, we did this thing called the 12 Days of Christmas where, so our church is in a village, right? So there are a lot of local businesses around us. What we did is during the 12 days leading up to Christmas, we went to shops and we gave away gifts from those shops. There was a different shop every day for the 12 days leading up to Christmas. So we planned this out ahead of time. But we would post on social media and be like, Hey, today the, you know, the shop is Bunger surf shop. The first 25 people there are going to get beanies from Bunger surf shop.Lou Pizzichillo — And we paid for them. We sent the, Bunger agreed to hand them out. And people went to go get them. And what was, so it was a win, win, win, really. Like the people who participated got free beanies, the surf shop are like all the different shops in the village. They got people to go, they got traffic to their business, right?Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Lou Pizzichillo — Because people went in then bought other stuff. And it helped us communicate that we we say we want something for you, not from you, right? We want to be an asset to the community. And so it helped us communicate that message. And the response to that has been great.Lou Pizzichillo — Now, what’s interesting, if this doesn’t tell you something about the church’s reputation, on year one, before we launched, it was very hard to get 12 shops to agree to do this with us. Like they were like, you’re a church? I’m sorry. No, we’re not doing it.Rich Birch — Forget it. Yeah.Lou Pizzichillo — Now it’s year seven. Right now we’re in the middle of our our seventh year and there are shops lining up to do it. There are shops reaching out to us, asking us to collaborate.Rich Birch — Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — They’re helping to pay for the stuff. So it’s actually in some ways getting a little bit cheaper.Rich Birch — Huh.Lou Pizzichillo — And it’s just cool. It’s shown like this posture of partnership with what’s going on… Rich Birch — Yes. Lou Pizzichillo — …rather than, okay, there are the shops and then there’s the church. Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — And yeah, we actually have a someone on staff now who first heard about the church on year one during the 12 days of Christmas. She started coming to the church. she eventually got baptized and now she’s on staff. And it’s just like, it has been so, so cool.Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. That’s what a cool, you know, even just a cool tactic, kind of an expression of that. Is there other ways, other kind of activities like that, that you’re engaged with throughout the year that would could illustrate this idea of being for the community, being an asset to the community? What would be another example of that that that’s happened?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. So there is this fair that happens right across the street from the church. It’s called the Argyle Fair. It’s it’s around a lake. There are about 30,000 people that come to this fair. And the fair is on a Sunday during church.Lou Pizzichillo — The first year that we were here and had services during that Sunday, it was a mess. There were people you know like parking all over the place. It was hard to have services. Traffic was crazy. And we left church and my wife and I walked to the fair and just felt like something didn’t feel right. Like there’s some, here’s something everybody’s doing and we’re fighting against it.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — So we went to the people who ran the fair and we were like, is there any way we can help? Like, is there, what do you guys need? And right away she was like, we need volunteers and we need parking. And as a church, we are uniquely equipped with volunteers and parking. Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo —And so really it was there, like that almost right away, we were like, okay, next year, ah we’re going to be on board with what you’re doing.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — And so we decided to cancel services. And in the weeks leading up to that, we teach about the importance of serving the community. It’s kind of like the grand finale to whatever, you know…Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — …outreach series or message is being given.Rich Birch — Yeah.Lou Pizzichillo — And um yeah, so we teach on that. And then we’re like, hey, you know, two weeks from now, we’re not going to have services. Instead, we’re going to go out instead of staying in here talking about serving, we’re going to go out there and serve. And, you know, we’ve said like… Rich Birch — Love that. Lou Pizzichillo — …yeah, what’s what’s happening out there is not more spiritual than what’s happening in here. It’s a different way to express and grow in our faith. So we did that. And the response has just been unbelievable. Like the community has loved it. The the fair has had the help that they need. The people in our church have loved it. But this year we actually it got rained out on the first week. And so they postponed it to the next week.Rich Birch — Oh, wow.Lou Pizzichillo — And that made it tough for us because now we were like, okay, are we going to cancel church two weeks in a row? Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — And we had a meeting about it and like looked at our values, looked at what we were talking about. We were like, you know what, this is actually an opportunity for us to really double down and say, we’re not doing this out of convenience. We’re doing this because it’s a value. And so I called up the guy who was running the fair and he was like, I get it. If you can’t do it, I get it. And it felt, it was, it was amazing to be able to say on the phone, like, Hey, we’re with you, uh, no matter what. So, uh, so we did and it was, it was awesome.Rich Birch — That’s incredible. Like ah that, again, that what a vivid example, because I think there’s a lot of church leaders, if we’re honest, we’ve been engaged in the conversation that’s literally on the opposite side of that, where we’re like, man, how do we, these people, they’re, you know, they’re cramping our style or whatever. It’s like we naturally default towards that rather than to serve. Rich Birch — Take us back early in the discussions because I think a lot of us have not done a good job in building trust bridges in our communities. And you know trust isn’t built with just you know, one conversation. It takes time, right? It takes, like you said, those those first 12 days of Christmas, you couldn’t get anybody. And now here’s seven years later. We want we want to get to the seven years later part really quickly.Rich Birch — But ah those early conversations, how are you handling yourself, interacting with the like other people, you know, approaching them, having those conversations. What did you learn in the early dialogue that could help us if we’re trying to build, you know, deeper community trust in a place that just is so skeptical of that we’re coming with, just looking to take from our people.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. I mean, you have to be willing to be inconvenienced. I think that’s been a big part of it.Lou Pizzichillo — On week one, so we we launched literally on the first day and launch day was bigger than we thought it was going to be. And on that Monday, I was called to the mayor’s office, the mayor of the village.Lou Pizzichillo — And I was like, okay, thought I was going to go have a conversation. And when I got there, it was the it was him, it was the head of code enforcement and the fire chief all in a room waiting for me Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Lou Pizzichillo — And they had pictures of cars parked all over the street. And I I realized there, like, there was a real concern about what this church was going to be in the community.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so from there, we’ve just been looking for opportunities to earn trust. The neighbors have made it very clear that they don’t like cars parking on the street. And so we, we began paying for a lot so that we could take the cars off of the street. We don’t have to, they can legally park in the street, but we rent the lot. We told the owner of the property why we’re doing it. And he got on board with what we’re doing. We’re now in a place, kind of a long story, but we now don’t have to pay for that lot.Rich Birch — Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — We also, like the trust has been earned one decision at a time. We were going to do this big thing in the parking lot. We did a parking lot renovation that took the whole summer. After the summer, we were like, hey, in our new parking lot, let’s put on a Christmas show. We’ll run it throughout two weeks in December.Lou Pizzichillo — We had an animator who goes to the church. He like had this great idea for a show. He’s like, we’ll project it on the building. People will drive in. We’ll run it multiple times a night, do it for a few weeks throughout December. We were calling it Christmas in Lights.Lou Pizzichillo — So we put this whole plan together. He’s making the thing. We start advertising it and the village comes to us and they’re like, you’re in violation of the code. You can’t do this. And and they’re giving us all these reasons that I felt like didn’t really hold that much weight, you know.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — But in thinking about it, I do understand the inconvenience it would have been. We just had a major parking lot renovation. There were huge trucks making tons of noise for months. Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And now that’s finally over. And we’re going to ask the village to deal with the traffic of a show happening every single night, you know, for a few weeks in December.Rich Birch — Right Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so I went to the mayor and I was like, hey, ah it’s a new mayor at this point. But I just sat down with her and I was like, hey, listen, if you have concerns about this, I want you to feel the freedom to just come to me and say, this is a lot for the neighbors. Like, what do you think about pulling this in?Lou Pizzichillo —And it was cool. It was an opportunity for the two of us to kind of bond, like there was some trust earned there and we canceled the show. We decided not to do it. And I released a video explaining why we weren’t doing it.Rich Birch — Wow.Lou Pizzichillo — And the amazing thing is that I think canceling the show accomplished more than we would have accomplished if we actually did the show.Rich Birch — Interesting.Lou Pizzichillo — Like it earned, it was so well received when people found out that we weren’t going to do it. They were like, and even the people that attend the church, they were like, I want to be part of a church that supports their community like this.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so it went really well, and it was a lot less work, and so it was it was kind of a win all around. Rich Birch — What did the animators say? I feel but feel bad for that person who started doing that work. Did they understand. Obviously, they’re bummed or concerned.Lou Pizzichillo — He was bummed out, but he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and so he he totally got it. And he’s on board with what we’re trying to do, and when he knew the reason why, he was totally, totally supportive of it.Rich Birch — Interesting. So where have you seen churches kind of get this wrong as we’ve tried to engage with the community? Maybe a common a pothole that we fall into or a way that we stub our toes, you know, a thing maybe you’ve you’ve you’ve seen that we just, we you know, kind of consistently make the same mistake.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. You know, one of my mentors told me a while ago, he was like, when you’re thinking about the church in the community, he’s like, there’s a small percentage of people that are for you. He said, there’s, there’s also a small percentage of people that are anti-church and they always will be, and you’re not going to change their minds.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And he’s like, but then there’s this large percentage that’s just kind of going to go one way or the other. And he’s like, that’s the percentage that you really have to be intentional about connecting with.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so I think, you know, it is very easy to tell the story like, hey, they don’t want us to do our Christmas show. This is persecution… Rich Birch — Yes. Lou Pizzichillo — …you know, and we got to fight and suffer for the name of Jesus. And ah we’ve just found that that’s not always the case. Rich Birch — Right. Lou Pizzichillo — You know, it’s people that don’t want to be inconvenienced and they may love church, but there’s there’s all this stuff going in the community. Maybe they maybe they have you know other reasons why. So i think I think it’s just the posture.Lou Pizzichillo — Like a lot of, most people, most people aren’t unreasonable. And I think if we give them the chance to really articulate what’s going on, I’ve been surprised at how understandable a lot of the feelings have been, a lot of the resistance to church comes from real stories, real experiences.Rich Birch — Right, right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so, yeah, I think it’s the you know the whole like persecution thing or suffering or that is real and people do really experience that. But a lot of times I think we’re a little too quick to say, oh, this is what that is when really it may not be.Rich Birch — Well, and it it’s, ah in some ways, it’s like a low form of, well, it’s a leadership shortcut for sure to like demonize, to like, oh, there, those people are come out to get us. You know, any leader that’s led before realizes, oh, that’s like a that’s a tool that actually works. People respond to that, but, but we don’t want to do that. Like that isn’t, these are the people we’re trying to love and care. These are people we’re trying to see point towards Jesus. They’re not our enemies.Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. Yeah.Rich Birch — They’re not, you know, they’re, they’re not, they might just not like parking, like you at the end of the day.Lou Pizzichillo — Right. Right.Rich Birch — And so let’s not, let’s not get over-revved, ah you know, on that. And unfortunately there are, I know, you know, way too many churches that have got themselves on the wrong side of this. And it’s very hard to backwards engineer out of that. Once you go down that road of like, we’re going to try to go negative with our community. That just isn’t, it’s just, it’s, it’s very difficult to to step back from that.Rich Birch — If you think about a church leader that’s listening in today and they’re, they’re saying, Hey, They’re thinking we want to do a better job being trusted more locally, trusted by local leaders, trusted by other you know businesses in town, that sort of thing. What would be a couple first steps you think they could take? A couple things where they could start to try to build that kind of trust with the community around them?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. You know, I think I’m a big believer in praying for those opportunities. And also just giving things a second look, you know. When you’re in a situation that may seem like a challenge or something that may seem like it’s getting in the way, to just stop and think, okay, is, is there an opportunity here to build trust with the community?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — Because we, and when we say the community, we’re not just talking about this nebulous, you know, idea of Babylon village. There are people there.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And if those people see this church as trustworthy, they may come here, you know, when their relationships are falling apart or when they’re looking for answers.Rich Birch — Yep.Lou Pizzichillo — Um, and so it’s really just been… We have great people here who have bought into what we’re doing, who have really helped us to see like, this is an opportunity to win with the community. And yeah, you gotta, you have to look outside the box and, and also be willing to, there, there are moments like with Church Has Left the Building—with the fair—and with the Christmas and light show, there are moments where they’ll see, okay, do you really care? Do you really care?Rich Birch — Yes. Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — Like are how how much will you inconvenience yourself? And I mean, the payoff from that has just been huge, even though it’s been an inconvenience and our giving goes down that week and it throws off the series and we got to restructure the calendar.Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — It has gone, there’s there’s never been a time where we’ve regretted it.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good. And, you know, there’s no doubt one of the things I think we can in our our little world of kind of church leadership, I think we can forget often that people in the communities that we’re serving, they really don’t have any frame of reference for a church of 1,200 people. Like they that that isn’t people’s normal perception of what a church is. Like a church is 25 people or 50 people in a room somewhere super small.Rich Birch — And, and their perception can be, they just don’t, they just don’t have any idea. What is that? What’s that look like? And some of that can skew negative because it’s busy and blah, blah, blah, all those things. And so we’ve, we, we have to take it on ourselves when our church gets to the size that you’re at or larger to try to help them understand and see though this is like really positive for the community and actually point towards that.Lou Pizzichillo — Yes.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s good.Lou Pizzichillo — Yes. And, and like along those lines, ah it’s also perceived as a source of power, right? Like if, if there, if you have 1500 people that all believe the same thing and you’re trying to run a village or a community, there is this, this sense of like, okay, well, are they going to be for us or against us? Like, are all these people going to be anti-village?Rich Birch — Right.Lou Pizzichillo — And so there is like that, that instinct to kind of protect from this group of people that make, make things really hard for us. But over time, as they begin to see like all these people are, are behind us, they’re here to support us and they want to make this place better.Rich Birch — Yes.Lou Pizzichillo — It’s, it really is a beautiful thing. And we’re not there yet as a church, but we’re getting there. And, uh, we’ve just seen a lot of, lot of positive signs and, uh, Yeah, think it’s paid off.Rich Birch — So good, Lou. That’s, that’s great. Just as we wrap up today’s conversation, any kind of final words you’d have to, ah you know, to leaders that are listening in thinking about these issues today?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah. I mean, I think I would just say it’s worth it. It's it’s messy. It does make things difficult. It can be inconvenient. And when you have people who don’t go to church coming to church and you give them permission to be in progress, you get a lot of hairy situations. And we have a lot of conversations where we’re trying to figure out which way to go.Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%.Lou Pizzichillo — But it’s in those conversations that we cant kind of stop and remind ourselves like, Hey, we’re, we’re glad that these people are here and we’re glad that these are the problems that we’re having. And, the end of the day, this is what we feel like it’s all about. So.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. I just want to encourage you as you’re leading, you’re doing a great job and and it’s been fun to get a chance to get a little window into what’s going on at Community. Want to encourage you and your your team, just you’re doing the right thing. If people want to track with the church or with you online, where do we want to send them to connect with you guys?Lou Pizzichillo — Yeah, so communitychurch.net is our website. On Instagram, we’re communitychurchli, we’re @communitychurchli, and we try to keep that handle throughout all the platforms. So YouTube, same thing. But yeah, that’s it.Rich Birch — Great. Thanks for for being here today, Lou.Lou Pizzichillo — Thanks for having me, Rich. It’s an honor to be here, and I love what you guys are doing for the church.

Sports pools have long been a company-wide camaraderie-builder. Whether it's squares, brackets, or simple head-to-head match-ups, your staff loves a low-stakes distraction. What if you could turn that interdepartmental activity into a client-facing engagement tool?  Chris Briggs, founder and CEO of Touchpoint Games (TPG), helps distributors and manufacturers do just that. Jason caught up with Chris to learn how companies can use gamification to run sports pools that boost brand awareness, strengthen customer relationships, and drive sales. CONNECT WITH JASON LinkedIn CONNECT WITH CHRIS Website LinkedIn *** For full show notes and services visit: https://www.distributionteam.com Distribution Talk is produced by The Distribution Team, a consulting services firm dedicated to helping wholesale distribution clients remove barriers to profitability, generate wealth, and achieve personal goals.    This episode was edited by The Creative Impostor Studios  Special thanks to our sponsors for this episode: Moblico, helping businesses do more business on mobile devices;  and INxSQL Distribution Software, an integrated distribution ERP software designed for the wholesale and distribution industry. 

Episode 338 hosts Chloe McGrath (Founder & Director of The Aesthetic Collective from Sydney, Australia)⁠ In this episode we explore how cosmetic clinics should market and brand themselves in 2026. Chloe shares her background in aesthetics and explains why her agency works exclusively within the sector, prioritising compliance and close alignment with the regulators. We discuss common misconceptions including the belief that clinical skills alone can build a successful clinic and the serious risk of regulatory breaches when using a non-aesthetic marketing agency. Our conversation covers key growth drivers including the limitations of word-of-mouth referrals, the importance of multiple patient touchpoints before booking, and the challenge of accurately tracking attribution. We on practical, capacity-based marketing strategies for solo injectors versus scaling clinics, highlighting Meta ads as a cost-effective option when geographically and demographically targeted. 00:00 Introduction 04:15 Regulations, Compliance & Why Conservative Marketing Wins 06:37 Clinician vs Entrepreneur: How Mature Are Clinics in 2026? 10:58 When Marketing Goes Wrong: Distressed Clinics, Debt & TGA Letters 13:36 What Actually Drives Growth: Word of Mouth Limits & 7–10 Touchpoints 16:45 Content Myths: Posting Frequency, Quality vs Spam & The Algorithm 19:17 Brand Foundations: Defining Your Identity, Values & Target Patient 22:41 Men in Aesthetics: Why It's Still 90% Women + The Longevity Angle 27:39 What Makes a Clinic Successful Now: Beyond Price & Chain Clinics 29:10 Scaling the Team: Getting Patients to Trust New Injectors 32:22 Capacity vs Growth: Balancing Regulars, New Patients & Rebookings 33:24 Choosing Your Business Model: Solo Injector vs Scaling a Clinic 37:28 Branding Beyond a Logo: Consistency Across Every Touchpoint 41:14 Culture Is the Brand: Team Energy, Retention & Patient Experience 44:12 From DIY to Pro: Rebrands, Diplomacy & Why Cohesion Builds Credibility 45:51 Marketing Budgets That Work: Meta Ads, Content Shoots & What to Spend 55:35 Word of Mouth vs Acquisition: Retention Math & Why You Still Need Marketing 57:49 Action Steps + The Future: Fix Your Basics, Sanity-Check Messaging & Wrap-Up ALL IA LINKS & CONTACT INFORMATION JOIN THE WAITING LIST FOR IA COMMUNITY (OUR NEW APP)  

Every interaction your customer has with your business is saying something — whether you intended it to or not. From your website to your email signature to the way your team answers the phone, each touchpoint is shaping perception. The problem? Most businesses think branding is just a logo. It's not. In this video, I break down why every touchpoint tells a story — and how to make sure it's telling the right one. If you're serious about building trust, growing authority, and creating real brand consistency, this is a conversation worth having.

A few touchpoints from the week that shaped how I’m thinking about hospitality.

438 | The 3 Touchpoints That Create Connection (Staff, Students, Parents) Podcast Description Running a martial arts school isn't just about having a solid curriculum. If people are still drifting away, it's usually not because they suddenly hate kicks—it's because they don't feel attached. In Episode 438 of School Owner Talk, Duane Brumitt and Allie Alberigo break down a simple, practical framework to create real connection (and better retention) through three touchpoints: staff, students, and parents. You'll hear why weekly staff meetings should be the “anchor,” how to keep students from quitting the feelings they used to have, and why parent communication can't be all automation and white noise. Along the way, they share real stories—from Allie getting back on the floor six days a week to Duane's reminder that even a five-year-old using your name can change how you feel. Key Takeaways Connection is measurable. It shows up in retention, culture, fewer fires, and more buy-in. Your staff sets the emotional temperature of the school. If they feel unseen or unclear, it leaks into everything. Students don't quit programs—they quit feelings. The “fun” changes as they progress, so you have to reframe expectations. Routine builds skill, but routine can also create boredom. Your job is to keep repetition without letting it feel stale. Parents tune out when communication becomes constant noise. Automations can support the process, but they can't replace real conversations. Progress has two layers. Parents need to understand both the curriculum/belt cycle and what progress looks like for their child. Action Steps for School Owners 1) Staff Touchpoint: Keep the weekly meeting as the anchor If you already have a weekly staff meeting (60–90 minutes), keep it. Use it to align everyone on: The mission (big picture) The quarterly/monthly focus The weekly focus Then support it with “in-the-moment” touchpoints during the week so the meeting isn't the only time leadership shows up. Use The One Minute Manager framework One Minute Goals: Pick 1–3 clear, observable standards for the week (ex: greet every student by name within the first 10 steps). One Minute Praisings: Catch good behavior fast and name it specifically (“Thanks for picking up the garbage outside—great ownership mindset.”). One Minute Reprimands: Correct quickly, clearly, respectfully, and reset the relationship. Ask what they were thinking, then give the bigger perspective. 2) Student Touchpoint: Make sure they leave feeling seen, successful, and excited A) Use the Three-Time Rule Say their name three times Approach them three times Make eye contact three times Duane's story about “Connor” (a five-year-old who kept using his name) is the reminder: a personal experience matters at every age. B) Teach with a simple structure (and protect confidence) Use the Four Rules of Teaching: Explanation (brief + exciting + includes the goal) Demonstration (ideally by a student close in age/level) Correction (use PCP: Praise–Correct–Praise) Repetition (enough practice while keeping energy high) Also: leave space for students to make mistakes. If you micromanage every rep, they only learn to perform when you're right next to them. C) Disguise repetition so it doesn't feel boring Change the format without changing the goal: Individual, partners, line drills, group work Slow reps, fast reps, ladders, add-on routines A simple win: reduce anxiety by “requiring less” on paper while still teaching more inside the drill. When it's not framed as a huge requirement, students often learn it faster. 3) Parent Touchpoint: Reduce white noise and increase real trust Parents pay, decide, and influence the story at home. If you want fewer complaints and better retention, you need consistent connection—especially early. Bring back real check-ins (especially in the first 12 weeks) Automations can remind you what to do, but they can't replace: Phone calls Face-to-face progress checks Real conversations that include curriculum progress and personal progress A practical approach: schedule progress check-ins every couple of weeks through the first belt cycle, then set expectations that communication changes (but doesn't disappear) after that. Make communication easy to consume Keep messages short and scannable Break up text visually (2–3 sentences per paragraph) Consider one “home base” where parents can always find info (like your app) And when you're frustrated? Do what Allie does: write the email, then run it through AI to make it calm, positive, and motivational before you hit send. Additional Resources Mentioned The One Minute Manager (book) Anthony Rangel (Martial Art Institute) quote: “You're not good enough to be bored.” Kenny Bigby / Jesse Enkamp (The Karate Nerd) and the concept of “until” Dave Kovar's “Sweat, Smile, Learn” framework Zig Ziglar quote: “Repetition is the mother of learning.”

Has your sales pipeline sprung a leak? Michelle Stark believes you’re likely missing some customers who should be traveling with you. A communications veteran with a special focus on tourism, she helps clients around the country build sales pipelines that deliver new customers — and repeat business from old ones. And she says it’s time to re-examine the way you sell and market in 2026. Michelle joins this episode of the podcast to discuss why you’re losing potential customers — and what you can do about it. She shares cost-effective marketing strategies for finding new leads and secrets to crafting emails people actually want to read. Plus, we have news about Celebrity’s rapid river cruise growth and a Hot Minute about what you can learn about selling from car dealerships. Insights from Michelle Stark Michelle had lots of valuable insight about building intentional purchasing experiences that make potential customers feel confident and excited to buy from you. Here's what she had to say about how your website and content should be structured for maximum sales: “Are you really optimizing your website for what we call capturability, making sure that you’re not gating information, that you’re not making your customers go through too many clicks to try to actually sign up and book with you? Are you providing things like travel policies and forms upfront where people can read through those and opt in very easily — just removing friction?” Plus, she had great perspectives on: Different marketing strategies for different market segments What role AI can — and can’t — play in a sales pipeline Keeping your pipeline flowing when you’re busy with other things Resources Mentioned in This Episode Learn more about Red Sage Communications at redsageonline.com. Follow Michelle Stark on LinkedIn. Apply to attend our OnSite FAM tour in Louisiana at grouptravelleader.com/la-fam. Key Moments From This Episode 1:28 — Travel News: Celebrity is doubling its river cruise fleet 2:39 — News From Us: A few spots let on our FAM to Louisiana 6:11 — Why Michelle Stark left broadcast TV for tourism marketing 8:15 — What is a sales pipeline, and how do you build one? 9:27 — Touchpoints that should be part of your sales process 13:00 — Crafting emails your audience will want to read 15:21 — Keeping your sales pipeline full 17:49 — Can you automate your travel sales pipeline? 24:16 — Marketing ideas for reaching the middle class 29:09 — Can AI do your travel sales for you? 45:15 — Hot Minute: What you can learn about sales from car dealerships Watch the Full Interview See the full interview with Michelle on our YouTube channel. About the Podcast Gather and Go with Brian Jewell is a tourism industry podcast that helps group travel leaders plan, promote and lead better trips. There are also tips and insights for destination marketers and others who support the tourism trade. Each episode reaches thousands of professional tour operators, travel agents and the volunteer group leaders they serve. The audience also includes destination museum leaders, church travel leaders and other tourism enthusiasts around the world. Each show includes an interview with a smart travel pro or an insightful person from outside tourism who’s expertise can help make travel businesses better. You’ll also hear travel news, road tips and more. New episodes are released about twice monthly. You can find Gather and Go wherever your listen to podcasts or subscribe by email.

Leading Into 2026: Executive Pastor Insights Momentum is real. So is the pressure. This free report draws from the largest dedicated survey of Executive Pastors ever, revealing what leaders are actually facing as they prepare for 2026. Why staff health is the #1 pressure point Where churches feel hopeful — and stretched thin What worked in 2025 and is worth repeating Clear decision filters for the year ahead Download the Full Report Free PDF • Built for Executive Pastors • Instant access Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We’re wrapping up our conversations with executive pastors from prevailing churches to unpack what leaders like you shared in the National Executive Pastor Survey. Today we're joined by Shayla McCormick, executive leader at Coastal Community Church in Florida. Coastal is a rapidly growing multisite church with three locations, consistently ranking among the fastest-growing churches in the country. Shayla serves alongside her husband and brings deep operational insight shaped by leading a large church with a remarkably lean staff. In this conversation, Shayla helps unpack one of the most pressing themes from the survey: how churches hire—and why so many find themselves hiring the same roles over and over again. She challenges leaders to rethink staffing through the lens of multiplication rather than pressure relief. Why churches keep hiring the same roles. // According to the survey, churches continue to prioritize familiar roles—especially NextGen and support positions—even as ministry contexts change. Shayla believes this pattern often comes from reactive hiring. When attendance grows, volunteers feel stretched, systems strain, and leaders feel pain. The quickest solution is to hire someone to relieve pressure. But Shayla cautions that hiring to relieve pain is different from hiring to build capacity. When churches skip the discernment step—asking what this season truly requires—they repeat the same staffing patterns without addressing root issues. Relieving pressure vs. building capacity. // Shayla draws a sharp distinction between doers and equippers. Doers add short-term relief by completing tasks, while equippers multiply long-term impact by developing others. Coastal intentionally prioritizes hiring equippers—even when that means living with short-term discomfort. Her leadership philosophy flows directly from Ephesians 4 – the role of leaders is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. The courage to make the “big ask.” // Shayla challenges the assumption that busy or successful people won't serve. Too often, leaders say no for people before ever asking. At Coastal, high-capacity professionals—business owners, executives, retirees—serve in everything from parking to finance. The key is matching people's gifts with meaningful responsibility and inviting them with confidence. A radically lean staff model. // Coastal averages around 5,000 in weekly attendance with just 25 staff members, an unusually low ratio. This isn't accidental—it's strategic. Shayla explains that Coastal has built a high-capacity volunteer culture where unpaid leaders carry real responsibility. Staff members exist to equip and empower those leaders. This approach requires more upfront investment in training and coaching, but it produces sustainable growth without constant hiring. The risk of overstaffing. // Overstaffing creates more than financial strain. Shayla warns that it can lead to lazy culture, misaligned expectations, and long-term instability. Churches that staff heavily during growth seasons often face painful decisions when momentum slows. Without a strong culture of equipping, ministries become staff-dependent rather than leader-driven. Shayla encourages leaders to steward today with foresight—preparing for future seasons, not just current demand. When hiring is the right move. // While Coastal resists reactive hiring, Shayla is clear that hiring still matters. For example, Coastal recently decided to add staff in Kids Ministry—not because volunteers were failing, but because the kids pastor needed freedom to focus on strategy, family connection, and leader development. The new role removes task-based pressure while also serving as a developmental pipeline for future campus launches. The goal isn't to replace volunteers—it's to free equippers to multiply more leaders. Mission over position. // As Coastal grows, Shayla emphasizes a culture of mission over position. Roles evolve as the church evolves. Using metaphors like scaffolding and rotating tires, she reminds leaders that some roles exist for a season—and that rotation is necessary for long-term health. Leaders regularly ask: Who are you developing? Who's next? This mindset ensures the church can grow without being dependent on specific individuals. Starting points for stretched teams. // For leaders feeling perpetually tired despite added staff, Shayla offers simple coaching: eliminate work God never asked you to do, clarify expectations, and require every leader to develop others. Growth doesn't come from adding people—it comes from multiplying leaders. To learn more about Coastal Community Church, visit coastalcommunity.tv or follow @coastalchurch on Instagram. You can also connect with Shayla at @shaylamccormick. Watch the full episode below: Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: TouchPoint As your church reaches more people, one of the biggest challenges is making sure no one slips through the cracks along the way.TouchPoint Church Management Software is an all-in-one ecosystem built for churches that want to elevate discipleship by providing clear data, strong engagement tools, and dependable workflows that scale as you grow. TouchPoint is trusted by some of the fastest-growing and largest churches in the country because it helps teams stay aligned, understand who they're reaching, and make confident ministry decisions week after week. If you've been wondering whether your current system can carry your next season of growth, it may be time to explore what TouchPoint can do for you. You can evaluate TouchPoint during a free, no-pressure one-hour demo at TouchPointSoftware.com/demo. Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. We are in the middle of these special episodes—I’ve been loving these—around really responding to your survey. We did a National Executive Pastor Survey. It’s the largest survey I can say that I’m aware of, of this, where we get out and talk to executive pastors across the country and really ask them, how’s it going in their church? What are they feeling? What are they learning? To really take a litmus test of where things are at. Rich Birch — And then what we’re doing is pulling in some incredible… leaders to help you wrestle through with some of the findings. And I’m excited, privileged, really, to have Shayla McCormick with us today. She’s with an incredible church called Coastal Community Church, a multi-site church with, if I’m counting correctly, three locations in Florida. It started in September 2009, not that long ago, and they’ve repeatedly been one of the fastest growing churches in the country. She serves with her husband at this church, and this is an incredible church. You should be following along with Shayla and with the church. Welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Shayla McCormick — Thank you so much, Rich. I’m glad to be back and excited just to, you know, share with everybody just some insights and things that that I’ve learned along the way too.Rich Birch — Nice. This is yeah super fun to have you on again. And you should go back and listen to back episode that Shayla was on was one of our best of last year. Super helpful. So you’re going to want to lean in on that.Rich Birch — Now, when I saw some of the results from the survey, friends, I’m letting you behind the curtain. We looked at a couple different you know things and I sent them out to these friends and I said, hey, you pick whichever one you want. And I was really hoping that you would pick this one because I really think that you’ve got just so much to offer to this. So let’s, I’m going to unpack this a little bit. Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — So one of the questions we asked was, ah you know, there’s all these different roles that people are hiring. And for years, in fact, I actually thought about maybe not doing this question this year, because basically the order is pretty similar that people come back every year. But what we’ve seen from 2023 to 2024 is that particularly support roles, this idea of support roles that churches are out looking for those has grown significantly, 12 percentage points in those three years. Other roles like NextGen remain consistently at the top. You know, Outreach ranks the lowest at like 9 to 12 percent, which breaks my heart as a former outreach pastor. I was like, ah, people are not thinking about those things. Rich Birch — So today what I want to do is unpack this idea around what are who are we hiring for? What difference does it make? We know as an executive pastor listening in, I know that many of you are are kicking off this year thinking about, hmm, who should we be hiring? What should that look like? And really this tension that we all face with you know, being understaffed and overstaffed. How does all that work together? So I’m really looking forward to having your input on it.Rich Birch — Why do you think churches continue to hire for essentially the same roles as we see year in, year out, Shayla, why do we see that? Even as ministry changes, it’s like we find ourselves having the same conversation. Where are the kids ministry people? Where are the support roles people? Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — Why do we find ourselves in these same conversations?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, honestly, I think a lot of times as church leaders, like we repeat roles because we haven’t we haven’t really honestly just kind of stopped long enough to really go, what does this season actually require? Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — I think a lot of times what we do is we hire to almost relieve pressure but not really build capacity. And so I think we repeat roles because like kids ministry, right? That’s always a place where you have growth, you have kids, you have to staff a lot of volunteers. It’s a lot of administrative work. And, you know, sometimes I think we can tend to go, Hey, I want to relieve pressure on this. And so we end up trying to to put somebody in a seat and then we end up over hiring. And a lot of, a lot of us hire when it hurts, right? When, okay, attendance is growing, volunteers are tired, systems are breaking, A leader is overwhelmed.Shayla McCormick — And we end up, I think, making these desperation hires rather than hiring to actually build capacity… Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …so that we can continue to grow. And so I think a lot of times our mindset kind of subtly shifts from, I mean, Ephesians 4, right? You equip the saints for the work of the ministry. And it sometimes our mindset shifts from equipping the saints to to almost replacing the staff role or the saints role with a staff member.Shayla McCormick — And it can tend to just, you can be overstaffed. And then that puts pressure financially and all, you know, like so much, but we just continue to repeat the process. Because again, we hired to relieve pressure instead of build capacity and we’re not really sitting… Rich Birch — Yeah, I would love to unpack that. Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — I think there’s so much there. So how are you discerning or how, you know, if a church calls you up and is asking you discern really between those two, like, Hey, I’ve got maybe I’ve got an operational problem. I’m trying to relieve pressure using the language you do. You were saying versus like building capacity for the future, which inherently sounds like to me, if I’m choosing to build capacity, I’m going to live with some pain in the short term is what I hear in that. Help me discern what that, what that looks like. How how do you work that out at, you know, at, at Coastal?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I think we we are always looking for equippers, for multipliers. We ask the question very consistently, is this a doer or is this a leader? And not that doers are bad. Doers can actually, they can help you add capacity because it relieves the stress or the pain on a leader, right? Because you have somebody doing stuff, but equipers actually, they multiply. And so when I’m a growing church, if I continue to hire doers, then I’m just like, I’m solving a temporary so solution essentially, or a temporary problem, because at some point those things are going to go away.Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — But what, what the approach that we’ve taken is the Ephesians 4, you know, you equip the saints for the work of the ministries. And I think a lot of, lot of the times we actually neglect almost our volunteer base. And we lean heavily on our volunteers, our, We average probably 5,000 in weekend attendance, and we have about 25 staff members. And that is not a lot of staff for…Rich Birch — That’s insane. That to me, that is… Friends, I hope you heard that. So that’s like one to 200 or something like that. It’s it’s that’s all it’s Shayla McCormick — I don’t even know. It’s low.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s very low. It’s very low. Yes.Shayla McCormick — But we have a very, very, very high value in equipping our volunteers. Because there are people in our church that want to, they want to do. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — They might be the doers that can help build capacity in a way that can help lift responsibility off people. We have people that come in that like, they’re like on staff, but they don’t get paid just because they want to come and they want to serve. Rich Birch — Yes.Shayla McCormick — And a lot of times I think we actually, say no for people because, oh, I don’t want to ask somebody to do another thing. But they’re like begging, use my gifts, use my talents. But we’re saying no for them. And then we’re going and hiring for these positions when it’s something that we could actually give away…Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Shayla McCormick — …and equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Rich Birch — Yes.Shayla McCormick — And for instance, in our kids’ ministry, we average at one of our locations probably about between 500 and 600 kids on the weekend. And I have one full-time staff member for that position right now.Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Yeah.Shayla McCormick — And now we are getting ready to hire an additional person. But she has done a phenomenal job at building high-capacity leaders that are volunteers… Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …that want to give their time and their energy and their resources and their passion. But I think for so many churches, we just we say no for people… Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. Shayla McCormick — …and then we end up hiring something that we could give away in a volunteer capacity. Now that is harder on us… Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — …because you have to you know you have to teach and equip and you know pick things up, but…Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s it’s longer term. It’s it’s not it’s not a quick and easy. Shayla McCormick — Right. Rich Birch — So I want to come back to the big ask in a second. Shayla McCormick — Okay. Rich Birch — But I want I want to play a bit of the devil’s advocate. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — So I was having this conversation with a church leader recently, and we were looking at their staff, like their just total staffing. And we were actually having this conversation between, I was asking them like, hey, what how many of these people would you say are Ephesians 4 type people, equippers, people who are… Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — And then how many of these would be doers? Because every staff team has some doers on it. Like you have some percentage of them.Shayla McCormick — Yes, 100%.Rich Birch — When you, shooting from the hip of those 25, what do you think your ratio is on your team of equippers to doers? Because this is what this leader said to me. They were like, because I was kind of pushing them. I was like, I think you need to have less of these doers on your team. Like we’ve got to, we got to get not, I said, we’d have to get rid of them, but we got to grow some of these leaders up to become more multipliers.Shayla McCormick — Yep.Rich Birch — And they were like, well, but those people, they release my multiplying type people to do the work that they need to do. And I was like, yes, but if we don’t watch this ratio very quickly, we’ll we’ll end up with a bunch of doers on our team. So what would the ratio look like for you on your team? How do you think about those issues? Unpack that for me.Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I would I would say it’s maybe like a, I would say it’s maybe 10% that are, that are…Rich Birch — Right. Wow. Yeah. A couple, two or three, maybe four at the most kind of thing.Shayla McCormick — Yes, exactly, that are that are not the ones that I’m expecting. And even even them, I expect to go out and multiply as well. It’s it’s it’s part of our part of our conversations.Rich Birch — Yeah.Shayla McCormick — But it’s a very low percentage because for me, it again, it goes back to, those are things that I can equip other people to do… Rich Birch — Yes. Shayla McCormick — …that I can give ministry away. And…Rich Birch — Okay. So yeah, let’s talk about the big ask. Shayla McCormick — Okay. Rich Birch — So I hear this all the time from church leaders across the country and they’ll this is, this is how the conversation goes. They’re like, yeah, yeah. But you don’t know, like people in our part of the country, they’re very busy. Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — And like the people at our church, they’re kind of like a big deal. And like, they got a lot going on in their life. And like, This is true. You guys are in like the greater Fort Lauderdale area. This is a very, you are not like some backwoods, you know, place and you’re doing the big ask.Rich Birch — You’re saying, hey, you used it, which is you said like, hey, basically we’re saying, could you work part time for us in this area?Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — Have a huge amount of responsibility. How do you keep the big ask in front of people? How, how what’s that look like? Unpack that for us.Shayla McCormick — I mean, something that we talk about on our staff very frequently is, because it’s so natural to say, oh, they’re too busy, especially high capacity people. What I’ve what I’ve realized is is just a side note, but like, single moms are the most high-capacity people. They are the busiest people juggling the most things. But there are best people to come in and serve and do and all of that.Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — But they’re busy. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And so just because someone seems busy or successful or, you know, whatever barrier that you put in your brain, like, I think the reality is is we say no for them before we even ask.Rich Birch — 100%. 100%.Shayla McCormick — And so the conversations on our team always look like, are you saying no for them? Make the ask anyways. And a lot of times they’re like, oh my gosh, they said yes. I mean, I have people that run million, billion dollar companies serving in my parking team. You know, it’s like…Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — It’s, yeah, I mean, I you have people that are retired, very successful, business leaders that are coming in and volunteering to you know do finance things. Like it’s finding what are what are they great at and giving them purpose in it.Rich Birch — Yes, yes.Shayla McCormick — And not just saying no for them because I think they’re successful or they’re too busy.Rich Birch — How much of that is, because I would totally agree, how much of that is like, like what I hear you saying, it’s like a mindset issue for us as leaders. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — Like, hey, we can’t, even when we ask someone, we can say no before them in that question, right? We can be like, I don’t know if you could, well, you know, you’re real busy and I’m not sure blah blah, blah. And that kind of lets them off the hook before we even. So part of it is a mindset, but then part of it has to be like a structural thing, the way you’re structuring the roles. How do those two interact with each other?Shayla McCormick — Ask the question one more time.Rich Birch — So part of it is like our mindset are the, the, when we approach people, we’re asking them in a way that, you know, is casting vision for like, Hey, this is a huge opportunity to push the kingdom forward. But then also a part of it, I would assume is like the way we’re structuring the roles so that it it feels like, no, like we’re, we’re kind of, it is a big ask. Like, it’s like, we’re giving them enough responsibility and all that sort of thing. How do those interact with each other when you’re asking someone, when you’re making a big ask like that?Shayla McCormick — I mean, I think most of what I’m talking, what I’m referring to is a little bit more in the the doer space or the operational space.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Okay, good. Yep.Shayla McCormick — So it’s structuring things based on almost task or, you know, responsibility that can be repeated consistently and come in and just, you know, like get it done, so that I don’t have to, again, go back to hiring somebody to do these tasks to take this off of this staff member’s plate to increase their capacity. I’m basically giving those tasks and responsibilities to a volunteer. And I think a lot of times what’s scary to me is people, us, you know, churches, their first response to problem in every situation is to hire. Rich Birch — Yeah, right.Shayla McCormick — And I think if that’s your first response, you’re going to get in, trouble you’re going to get in big trouble.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.Shayla McCormick — And you’re going end up overstaffed because you, you staffed in seasons where attendance was growing or something again, to relieve that pressure…Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — …not thinking multiplication. And if every solution is to hire, I don’t think the church has a staffing problem. actually think they probably have a discipleship problem. And like…Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …and an equipping problem because the goal is to multiply apply leaders faster so that your church grows.Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so if we’re not thinking multiplication and equipping, then you know I think we’re gonna get to a place where, again, we’re we’re overstaffing and we’re hiring for the same things because we haven’t learned to equip and empower and train up.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s double click on that. Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — What risks? So overstaffing, why is that a risk? What’s the there’s obviously a financial risk there. Are there other risks that you see there that emerge when a church consistently staffs for doers or execution rather than you know invest in you know equipping and raising up the people in their church? What will be some other risks you see in that?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, I think if you’re, if you, I’m trying to figure out how to frame this. If you’re not thinking multiplication, you’re going to, you’re going to hit a point in your church where like everything isn’t always up and to the right.Rich Birch — Right. Yes. True.Shayla McCormick — And so it’s not that I’m planning for failure or the difficulty, but I’m also trying to steward what has been entrusted to me, and some of that requires foresight and wisdom… Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — …even in my planning and my budgeting. And so if one season I’m staffing something in growth, the next season might not look the same. And I’ve because I haven’t diligently given, again, Ephesians 4, given ministry away, my role, pastor’s roles, you know, like, is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. Rich Birch — Yep.Shayla McCormick — And if I haven’t done those things properly, then I think I’m going to get a hit a season where then I’m letting staff go. Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — And, you know, or honestly, culture has become lazy because everybody doesn’t have enough to to do. And so there’s tensions and frustrations and, you know, like, and it starts you start to get a culture, I think, where you say, well, we’ll just hire for that. We’ll just hire for that. We’ll just hire for that. Instead of, okay, who’s next? Are you always developing? Like, what volunteer have you asked to do that? Have you given ministry away? And start asking our staff questions. If they’re coming to you and saying, hey, i need ah I need this role and I need this role and I need this role, the question back should be, well, who have you been developing?Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — You know, what ministry have you given away? Some of those things that just kind of push back on the solution is not always to hire somebody. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — But what responsibility have you taken in development of people?Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. in the In the kids ministry area, you had referenced this earlier, you know, a campus with 500 kids and one staff, which again is is, I know there’s lots of executive pastors that are listening in that are like, what? That’s crazy. But you are, ah you have decided to add a staff member there. What was it that kind of clicked over to say, okay, yeah, we are going to add someone. And and what are what is that role that you’re adding? And how do you continue to ensure that we’re, you know, that we keep this focus as we look to the future?Shayla McCormick — For us, my kid’s pastor is obviously very high capacity, you know, and she is a multiplier. And her greatest use of her time for me is connecting with those families, is creating opportunities for them to connect, and hiring another person is going to free her up to connect more with families on the weekends, and to spend more of her time being strategic.Shayla McCormick — And so she needs to duplicate another her on the weekends that can make sure they’re facilitating volunteers and they’re making sure people are encouraged and that teams are built and that people are showing up and schedules are being done. And it’s it’s high people, but it’s also task and responsibility that comes off of her plate that frees her up to um do the thing that she’s great at.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic.Shayla McCormick — And obviously, she’s given all that stuff away in this season, but now we’re also using that as a developmental role to potentially be a kids director at another location when we launch a location.Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. There will be more, hopefully more coastal locations in the future… Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — …and you need to you know raise those people up now you have the ability to do that. This is one way, you know, to do that as well.Shayla McCormick — Yep. Yep. Right.Rich Birch — So put yourself in a, a, say a friend calls executive pastor calls and they’re in this kind of this topic. They feel like, man, my team is perpetually stretched.Rich Birch — We, we added a bunch of staff last year and, it just didn’t help. You know, it’s like we find it sure we’re starting out the new year here and our headcount is up, but people are as tired. They’re as burnt out as they’ve ever been. And it feels disproportionate. It feels like, oh, man, like I don’t this things are not getting better. What are they missing? What what are what’s the how would you coach them? Maybe some first steps that you would kind of help them to think about what they should be doing on this front.Shayla McCormick — So I think maybe first and foremost, I might ask what what work are you doing that really God never asked you to do, first of all? I think we, we, add a lot of things that aren’t probably the best use of people’s times. And so where have we added things that we didn’t need to add that aren’t adding value… Rich Birch — That’s good. Shayla McCormick — …that can, number one, lift something off of our team that maybe they don’t just, you know, doesn’t add value. Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so that would probably be one of the first places I would start. It was like what are what are you working on that God hasn’t asked you to do?Rich Birch — Yeah, what can we streamline? What do we need to pull back? Yeah, yeah.Shayla McCormick — Exactly. And then…Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — …secondarily, I think I would really focus on leaning into, and this is what we’ve done in in many seasons, is we’ve leaned into two things. Number one is starting to ask our team, like, hey, who’s who’s around you that you’re developing? I need you to pick three people, you know, and just start pouring into them. I know this this isn’t a, I know this doesn’t lift the load, necessarily in the moment, but I think it can help lift it for the future. So it’s like, hey, how am I teaching my staff to look for other leaders and developing those leaders? And the other question just went away from my mind.Rich Birch — Well, that’s a great one, though. This even it’s the idea of who are the two or three people that you’re developing, that’s a powerful idea. Because I think there’s think particularly if you’re a church that’s caught in this treadmill, um there probably are people in your orbit. There are there are volunteers that would be looking for more to do to look. But but oftentimes our team, we just they don’t see those people. They don’t because we haven’t challenged them to see those people.Shayla McCormick — It’s it’s it’s honestly a question that’s a regular part of all of our teams one-on-ones… Rich Birch — That’s cool. Shayla McCormick — …that one of the questions is, who’s next? Like you should always be replacing yourself. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Who’s next? Yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And that is just a continual pipeline of people and it’s teaching them to see other people and develop people. And they know that when I come to this meeting with my leader, I need to be telling them what I did, who I’m investing in, you know, what that looks like. So that there’s like a pipeline of leadership.Shayla McCormick — And I even, like with with my own assistant, I’ll say this, she’s like, Shayla, how do I do that? It’s like I’m, she’s right, a doer, you know, she’s my assistant. But I said, honestly, the the way that there’s so much that you can give away, you can build volunteer teams to execute gift baskets when a, you know… Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — Like there are things that we just have to teach people to start giving away… Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — …and equipping other people to do.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good.Shayla McCormick — And I think it’s why I don’t I don’t use like being a large church with a small staff as like a bragging thing because I I don’t think that that’s necessarily healthy long term.Rich Birch — Yes. Shayla McCormick — But I think that it’s very strategic in how we have built a volunteer culture that is very high capacity and shows up and gets it done because we simply just haven’t said no… Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — …and we’ve always looked for somebody else to come up underneath us.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I know for for me in seasons when I led in fast-growing churches… Shayla McCormick — Yeah. Rich Birch — …churches that were deemed as some of the fastest growing churches in the country, I would say to my… Now, I sat in a different seat than you were because I was never like a founding team member. Well, that’s not actually not true. That’s not actually not true. I was in one church. But but I always tried to hold my role with open hands, even with my team. Shayla McCormick — Yes. Rich Birch — I would say, listen, the the people that I don’t I don’t want to get in the way of the mission, the mission is bigger than my job and my role.Shayla McCormick — Yes.Rich Birch — And there might come a season when the ministry will outpace me and I need to be willing to step aside.Shayla McCormick — Yep. Yes.Rich Birch — And that whenever I said that, there was always like, it freaked people out a little bit. They were like, oh my goodness, what are you saying? What are you saying? But I do think that those people that got us here may not necessarily be those people that will get us there. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And and this does not apply to any of the 25 people currently employed at Coastal Church, but help us understand…Shayla McCormick — Hey, we’ve had this conversation with all of them, so it could apply to them.Rich Birch — Oh good. Okay. Okay, good. I Okay, good. I didn’t want to you know have people listen to it at your church and be like, oh my goodness. But help me understand how you think about that as a leader, because I think that’s a real dynamic in this area.Shayla McCormick — Yeah, there’s there’s two two things, two almost analogies that that I’ll give you. One was when we were a smaller church, we were a growing church, we were a church plant, and somebody gave us some some great advice. And they said, listen, the people you start with are not going to be the people you finish with, and that’s not a bad thing. That that happens. Rich Birch — Yep.Shayla McCormick — And they said, when you are building something, there’s a phase of that building that requires scaffolding. Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — And scaffolding serves a purpose in that season to build the structure and the walls and and all of the things, but there is a point where that scaffolding has to come down… Rich Birch — Yeah. Shayla McCormick — …in order for you to utilize that building or that space effectively. Rich Birch — Yep. Shayla McCormick — And I think sometimes that’s people in a way. Like they serve a purpose for a season, but it’s not like, it’s not like oh, now they can’t serve in any capacity or any way. It’s just that the role that they played for that season was very important. But it looks different in the next season. And we have to be okay with that if we want to continue to grow.Shayla McCormick — As we’ve grown, there was actually people probably know the name Charlotte Gambill. Charlotte Gambill has invested a lot in our team and in in our church. And she came in and did a ah session with us. And one of the things that she talked with us about is like, if you think about a a vehicle, right? And that vehicle is there to get you to the destination of where you’re going. And that vehicle has tires. And those tires have to be rotated.Rich Birch — Right, oh, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And as a team member, you are like a tire. And what you are doing is getting that vehicle to the proper destination. But if you don’t allow yourself to be rotated, then there’s going to be a problem in getting that vehicle to the location. Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so language that we use is this is mission over position. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And your position may change. Your position may rotate. But this is not about your position, this is about your mission. And if you’re not here because of the mission, then you’re gonna be fixated on your position.Shayla McCormick — And so our team knows that. We we talk about that very frequently, like, hey, remember this is mission over position. And we’re gonna we’re gonna rotate the tire today.Rich Birch — Yep.Shayla McCormick — But this is because this is for the mission, not because of your position. Rich Birch — Yeah.Shayla McCormick — And so we just consistently have those conversations. And if we if we don’t rotate those things, And if there’s something that’s worn out and we don’t change it, it’s going to affect the mission of where that organization is going.Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.Shayla McCormick — Yeah.Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s, that’s worth the price of admission right there. I think, you know, I think so many of us, um you know, people who are listening in their church leaders, they love people. They want to see them take steps towards Jesus. And, you know, we hold onto people too long or we, or we, you know, we always believe the best. We’re like, no, they’re going to get there. They’re going to get there.Rich Birch — But what would you say to a leader? You know, Give us some courage to say, hey, maybe there’s a team member we need to rotate, either find a different seat on the bus, or it might be we we need to move them off this year. Like we need to get them on a performance improvement plan and do the like, hey, you’re not leaving today, but it’s like, this has got a change. You’ve got a shift from being a doer to being an equipper. And we’re going to work on this for the next three months. But we need to see, we actually actually need to see progress on this. Give us some courage to do that. Talk us through that. If that’s the if that’s the leader that’s listening in today.Shayla McCormick — I mean, I think first of all, if you’re sensing that and you’re feeling that, you need to start having some very honest conversations. I think Proverbs is very clear when it says, bind mercy and truth around your neck. Like, we can have those truthful conversations while still being merciful. And, you know, if if you’re not clear with people, then there’s just, then there’s there’s going to be hurt, there’s going to be bitterness, there’s going to be all of those things. And so if you can just even start the conversation, if you’ve been frustrated for a long time but you haven’t said anything, honestly, it’s your fault. Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Shayla McCormick — Because you’ve allowed it for so long. Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — And now that’s that’s you’ve allowed behavior to continue. So the first step I think is just giving yourself freedom to have a mercy and truth conversation, right? Of just going, hey, like I know your your heart is here I know you have vision for this organization, but there’s just some things that need to adjust. Rich Birch — Right.Shayla McCormick — And so we’re going to bring some clarity to those things that need to adjust.Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And you have those conversations and then, hey, let’s check in a month from now and just here’s some action steps for you to do. And it just gives framework for like, okay, now if they’re not doing those things, you’re just like, you know, hey, do you, we asked the question, do you get it? Do you want it? And do you have the capacity to do it? Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — If they have, if they get it and they want it, but they don’t have the capacity, they have to change their seat, you know.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so for me, I think it’s really starting off with the clarifying conversation… Rich Birch — Yeah. Shayla McCormick — …if you haven’t had that. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Shayla McCormick — And in that clarifying conversation leads to either an off-ramp or an adjustment of seat.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, that’s so good. I know that there are people who are listening in who that you know, like, hey, I’ve got to make a change. I have this staff member, team member that’s got to make a change. We can’t do this for another year. And even that idea of sitting down, having a you know, a truthful, but merciful conversation and doing exactly what Shayla said there. Let’s have the conversation and then document it. Shayla McCormick — Yes.Rich Birch — Here’s exactly what we talked about. Here are the three or four things that we need to see progress in the next month on. And we love you dearly, but in a month, we’re going to come back and actually ask you on that. My experience has been when you have that…Shayla McCormick — And even…Rich Birch — Yeah, go ahead.Shayla McCormick — …even asking at the end of that, like, hey, do you have any questions? Or even repeat back to me what you heard… Rich Birch — Right. Shayla McCormick — …because I want to understand how you’re receiving the information that I just gave you, because it can help you even go a little bit deeper in shaping that.Rich Birch — Clarify it. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, this has been a great conversation. Question that’s not really, it’s just kind of a broader question… Shayla McCormick — OK. Rich Birch — …about this coming year. What are the what are the questions that are kicking around in your head for this year as you look to 2026 as we come to kind of close today’s episode? What are you thinking about? Might be around this. It might be around other stuff. What are you thinking about this year?Shayla McCormick — Ooh, I was actually talking to my husband about this. We’re getting ready to go into a leadership team meeting, and the thing that’s just been sitting in my head, and this is so probably counterintuitive to large church, but it’s how can I grow smaller?Rich Birch — That’s good.Shayla McCormick — And so I’m just trying to think how can we be more intentional as we grow to make a large church feel small? And then I’m also thinking, are we building a church that can grow without us? So how, you know, is it only because of us that things are happening? Or how are we, again, ah equipping people that if we weren’t here, it would continue on? Rich Birch — I love that.Shayla McCormick — So how do I grow smaller? And would this survive without us?Rich Birch — Wow, those are two super profound questions. And they are so totally related to what we’re talking about today. Both of those, you’re only going to get to it feeling smaller. You know, that is that is the great irony of a growing church. I’ve said that to many. I didn’t I wasn’t as eloquent as you were there, but one of the, the interesting kind of tensions is when you become a church of 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, you get around those circles. Those churches are asking the, how do we be more intimate? How do we, um you know, we, okay. So we figured out how to gather crowds and, but how do we go beyond that? Right. How do we, how do we now, you know, really drive into deeper, more intimate conversations? I love that. And yes.Shayla McCormick — Systems just complicate things. Rich Birch — Yes. Shayla McCormick — So it’s like, how do you how do you simplify? I really appreciate you, appreciate your leadership and all that you’re doing and how you helped us today. And if people want to track with you or with the church, where do we want to send them online?Shayla McCormick — Yeah, they can follow our church on Instagram. It’s at Coastal Church or visit our website, coastalcommunity.tv. I’m not super active on Instagram, but you can follow me if you want to @shaylamccormick.Rich Birch — That’s great. Shayla, I really appreciate you being here today. And thanks so much for helping us out as we kick off 2026.Shayla McCormick — Of course. Thanks so much, Rich.

What You'll Learn: The second half dives deeper into the people side of continuous improvement. Dave explains how Nemawashi and intentional conversations help build alignment, trust, and momentum. Listeners learn why asking thoughtful questions—like “who else should we talk to?”—can naturally expand buy-in and lead to better decisions. The episode wraps with reflections on leadership, learning, and staying connected within the Lean community.Key Takeaways:How Nemawashi helps build buy-in naturallyWhy asking “who else should we talk to?” strengthens decisions and alignmentHuman, Pet, and Animal Nutrition Company: WebsiteClick Here for Dave Kippen's LinkedInLean Solutions Website

Monica Rich Kosann is an internationally recognized fine jewelry brand based in New York. Rooted in the idea that every woman has a story to tell, the collection encompasses lockets, rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings that inspire and empower the wearer. The eponymous label was founded in 2004 by Designer and Chief Creative Officer Monica Rich Kosann–member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America–as an extension of her passion for fine art photography and storytelling. She runs the company with her husband Rod, who serves as CEO.A Certified B Corporation working to meet the highest standards of quality and excellence, Monica Rich Kosann crafts sustainable heritage pieces that are made ethically and responsibly. The brand is sold in over 120 retailers across the country, has three free standing stores - two in New York and one at Somerset Collection in Troy, a shop at Bergdorf Goodman and a robust direct-to-consumer business. Designed using 18K Yellow Gold and Sterling Silver, Monica Rich Kosann designs precious gemstones and diamonds to ensure quality that lasts from generation-to-generation as modern heirlooms. A favorite with celebrities, Monica Rich Kosann pieces have been worn by incredible women throughout the years including Kelly Clarkson, Allison Williams, Sarah Jessica Parker and Gisele Bundchen.In This Conversation We Discuss: [00:00] Intro[00:37] Sponsor: Taboola[01:54] Inspiring growth through authentic vision[06:58] Persisting through early business rejection[10:11] Building momentum through supportive communities[11:10] Sponsor: Next Insurance[12:41] Diversifying channels to reach more customers[16:32] Callouts[16:42]  Enhancing products through storytelling[21:00] Strengthening brands through right partnerships [24:02] Sponsor: Electric Eye[25:10] Building dedicated teams that enjoy their craft[26:19] Focusing business principles around your “Why”[28:02] Finding your unique approach and sticking with itResources:Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube youtube.com/c/HonestEcommerce?sub_confirmation=1Lockets, fine jewelry, and luxury gifts monicarichkosann.comFollow Monica Rich Kosann linkedin.com/company/monica-rich-kosannFollow Rod Kosann linkedin.com/in/rodkosannReach your best audience at the lowest cost! discover.taboola.com/honest  Easy, affordable coverage that grows with your business www.nextinsurance.com/honest  Schedule an intro call with one of our experts electriceye.io/connect  If you're enjoying the show, we'd love it if you left Honest Ecommerce a review on Apple Podcasts. It makes a huge impact on the success of the podcast, and we love reading every one of your reviews!

In this episode of The Association Insights Podcast, host Colleen Gallagher sits down with Katy Doss, Founder & CEO of Script Marketing, for a practical conversation on the marketing basics associations can't afford to skip—especially as attention gets harder to earn and teams are stretched thin.While Katy's work centers on marketing for outdoor service businesses, her approach translates directly to association challenges: building trust, staying visible without overdoing it, and creating consistent member engagement that actually drives action.

The ministry is your process of sharing God with people at the point of their need. That grows out of the concept that we were just talking about your good works glorify God. Broadcast #6972To help support this podcast, please visit walkwiththeking.org/donate and select "Podcast" from the dropdown menuA transcript of this broadcast is available on our website here. To hear more from Bob Cook, you can find Walk With The King on Facebook or Instagram.

Amy Weisenbach, CMO of The New York Times, recalls some crucial advice she received early in her career: "Don't come to me and say, how do I do this? Come to me and say, here's the problem. Here's what I think I should do. What do you think?" After cutting her teeth at companies like Jim Beam and Unilever — where she helped build one of the most provocative brands of the early 2000s, Axe Body Spray — Amy now leads marketing at one of the world's most storied media companies. Along the way, she's learned that the best brands understand everything communicates, from a Memorial Day sale to a Super Bowl spot. Today on Building Better CMOs, Amy talks with MMA Global CEO Greg Stuart about the hard-won journey from 2 million to 12 million subscribers, why the Times' leadership chose to invest in journalism when others were cutting, and the "Truth Is Worth It" campaign that made journalists proud of their marketing team for the first time. They also discuss the secret to hiring performance marketers who care about brand, as well as the value of trusted, human-reported journalism in an age of AI-generated content. ⁠⁠⁠Full transcript⁠⁠⁠ This episode was produced and edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠LightningPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Follow Building Better CMOs in your podcast app⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Rate and review the podcast⁠⁠ ⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Amy's LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Greg's LinkedIn

The Referable Client Experience with Stacey Brown Randall   Most business owners say they want more referrals. Very few are actually drowning in them. The default strategy is to do good work, hope people notice, and maybe ask for introductions when things get slow. In this episode of Profit Answer Man, I sit down again with referral expert and author Stacey Brown Randall to talk about why that approach does not work and how to build a truly referrable client experience.   Stacey has spent years helping small business owners generate referrals without asking, without incentives, and without feeling manipulative. Her new book, The Referrable Client Experience, dives into how your day to day client journey can become your most powerful referral engine.   In This Episode, You'll Learn: Referrals, Introductions, and Word-of-Mouth Are Not the Same Thing. One of the first big shifts Stacey brings is simply defining our terms. A referral happens when a referral source connects you directly to a prospect, clearly identifies a need, and positions you as the solution. An introduction is just a connection. There is no identified need. Word-of-mouth buzz is when someone talks about you or gives out your name, but you are never actually connected. Most business owners lump all three together. The problem is that only one of them consistently leads to new clients. If all you are getting is introductions and vague "I mentioned you to someone" comments, you are not really running a referral strategy. Your Small Size Is Your Superpower. When we talk about "client experience," most people picture big company initiatives, software, and dashboards. Stacey defines client experience more simply as how your client feels while they work with you. That is where small business wins. You can: Make clients feel seen and remembered, Adjust quickly when something is off, Add personal, human touches that big companies could never scale, If you want to go from a good client experience to a referrable one, you have to understand the emotions you are creating along the way and be intentional about them. The Science Behind Why Referrals Happen. Referrals are not magic. Stacey frames them through three lenses: What happens in the brain of the referral source. When someone makes a great referral, "feel good" chemicals fire in their brain. They get to be the hero who solved a problem for someone they care about. It is about them helping the prospect, not about you. The psychology of trust. Referral sources do not need to know every credential or detail about you. What matters is that they trust you as a person and do not forget you. That trust is nurtured by consistent, human touch points, not by dumping your resume on them. Behavioral economics. Instead of manipulating reciprocity, Stacey focuses on the positive side: using surprise, delight, and variety in your touch points so people remember you and feel connected to you. Gifts, Touch Points, and What Actually Lands. Gifts can be powerful but they are often used poorly. Stacey's guidance: A gift should not be tied directly to a single referral, or you train people to expect a payout each time. For each referral source, build a plan of five to seven touch points over the year that happen whether or not referrals come in. Use gifts sparingly, and make them meaningful, humorous, or heartfelt enough to be memorable. If it took you two seconds to choose and send, it probably will not stand out. For actual referrals as they happen, Stacey recommends something simple and powerful: a handwritten thank you note. Be Strategic, Not "Spray and Pray". When owners want more referrals, they often default to more networking. More coffee dates, more events, more people. Stacey calls out the problem with this "spray and pray" approach. Instead, she encourages business owners to: Identify their ideal referral sources by asking, "Who regularly sees my ideal client before I do?" Focus on building real relationships with those few instead of trying to convert every person in the room. Accept that it is a numbers game, but a strategic one: you may meet a hundred people and end up with three or four true referral partners.   Key Takeaway: Referrals are not a mystery reserved for the lucky few. They are the predictable result of a client experience that makes people feel seen, cared for, and confident enough to put their reputation on the line for you. When you understand the science behind referrals and build a simple plan around your best referral sources, you can stop chasing cold leads and start welcoming more ideal clients who already trust you.   Bio: Stacey Brown Randall is the author of the new book, The Referable Client Experience, and the multiple award-winning book, Generating Business Referrals Without Asking. She is also the host of the Roadmap to Referrals podcast. Stacey teaches business owners how to generate referrals naturally…without manipulating, incentivizing, or even asking. She has been featured in national publications like Entrepreneur magazine, Investor Business Daily, Forbes, and more. She received her Master's in Organizational Communication and is married with three kids.   Links: Websites: https://staceybrownrandall.com/ https://referableclientexperience.com/ Social Media: www.linkedin.com/in/staceybrandall https://www.instagram.com/staceybrownrandall/ https://www.facebook.com/StaceyBrownRandall https://www.youtube.com/@referralswithoutasking   Conclusion: Referrals don't come from luck, pressure, or clever tactics—they come from the way your clients and referral sources feel throughout their experience with you. Stacey's insights remind us that when you create a journey rooted in trust, care, and thoughtful connection, referrals become a natural byproduct—not a struggle. By understanding the science behind why people refer and building a simple, intentional plan around your best referral sources, you can replace unpredictable lead generation with a reliable, relationship-driven system that grows your business sustainably and profitably.   #ProfitAnswerMan #SmallBusinessGrowth #Referrals #ClientExperience #BusinessProfit #CashFlow #TrustedAdvisor #BusinessStrategy   Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@profitanswerman Sign up to be notified when the next cohort of the Profit First Experience Course is available! Profit First Toolkit: https://lp.profitcomesfirst.com/landing-page-page  Relay Bank (affiliate link): https://relayfi.com/?referralcode=profitcomesfirst Profit Answer Man Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitanswerman/ My podcast about living a richer more meaningful life: http://richersoul.com/ Music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.

The Trial of Evocation, Part IFour of the massive elementals battle for glory and prizes – but the reward for last-place is death. Royale Theme: “Wizard Disco” by Louie Zong: https://louiezong.bandcamp.com/album/wizard-discoOriginal Music by Griffin McElroyAdditional Music in this Episode:  "Unforeseen Consequences (Remastered)" by Techthiest: https://techtheist.ru; "Simple Song" by Jar of Flies: https://jaroffliesofficial.bandcamp.com/; "Touchpoint" by Jason Shaw: https://audionautix.com/; and "Redemption" by Scott Holmes Music: https://scottholmesmusic.com/.Border Angels: https://www.borderangels.org/