December 24, 2025 • 50 mins
This week on The Upload, Brooke Taylor and Pastor Mark Evans are joined by businessman and believer Kris Talley — Executive Vice President of Sales at Logo Brands, one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of officially licensed NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, and collegiate gear.
Kris shares a powerful testimony that begins with what looked like the ideal life: a tight-knit family, success, stability, and no real need for God — or so he thought. That illusion shattered when he came home from college one weekend to find his parents discussing divorce after his mom had an emotional affair. What followed was a painful unraveling that forced Kris to confront a truth many avoid: sometimes the greatest idols in our lives aren’t bad things — they’re good things we’ve made ultimate.
Kris vulnerably explains how God had to dismantle the biggest idol in his life — his family — to show him his need for a Savior. In that breaking season, not only did Kris come to faith, but his entire family did too. Against the odds, his parents both surrendered their lives to Christ, restored their marriage, and set a new spiritual foundation that forever changed their family legacy.
He also reflects on the quiet faithfulness of his childhood friend Matt, who discipled him during that season — a friendship that would later turn into a business partnership at Logo Brands. Today, Kris and Matt continue to build their company with faith as a cornerstone, proving that belief doesn’t stay separate from leadership, business, or success.
This episode is a reminder that God doesn’t just redeem broken stories — He uses them to save generations.
🎧 Listen in to hear how loss led to salvation, why idols aren’t always obvious, and how obedience in hard seasons produces eternal fruit.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, I'm Chris Tally. I watch my dad radically saved.
I watched my mom radically saved. I watched their marriage
radically be saved. And you're saying I believe in you, Jesusue,
you're saying, I just don't trust you.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
He broke what he needed to break to get me
to come to him. And this is the upload.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm Rick Taylor, Mark Evans the upload. Welcome Chris Tally.
We're excited to have you.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Today, Excited to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I got to say the executive VP of Sales of
Logo Brands, which is huge, such a big title if
you don't know what that is. A company, they basically
you design a lot of licensed sports merchandise for companies
and under.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
This big umbrella, there's lots to it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
There's a lot to it. We make about it. Our
six hundred products. We have eight hundred college licenses, all
the pro licenses. So it all started with out of
our garage with a chair. I wanted to make a
chair that just would like for the soccer moms and
wanted to put the SEC logos on it. Twenty five
years later, we have a company.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Okay, we're going to come back to that because I
need to know this story more about it.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And I feel like every good company starts in a
garage with something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yes, but we like to start things off here on
the podcast talking about faith and how you would define
that in your life.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
What does faith mean to you?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Faith means to me and the easiest way to say
it for me is believing in something you can't see.
And so obviously it goes a little deeper than that,
because I have to get up every morning and reconfirm
my faith. I always joke that that's probably the thing
I do the most is forget that I need to believe, right,
but believing in something that's bigger than me, believing in
something that's outside of me that I depend upon. And
(01:41):
that is maybe one of the largest stumbling blocks of
the gospel message, right that you can't do it yourself.
So when I say having faith, having faith in something
I can't see, and that happens to be a person
who lived for me, for me and now intercedes for me.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
When it comes to you and your faith, what was
that moment where it all became real?
Speaker 4 (01:59):
For when did you meet you?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Know? Yeah, so weirdly enough, it does tie in to
our business, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So my best friend, I was fifteen years old, my
best friend, we started a landscaping company. He witnessed me
all the time, and I just said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Grew up unchurched, didn't go to church, wasn't part of
my family. But we were in South I was in Memphis, Tennessee.
There's a church, there's as many churches are are a
Walgreens on every corner, right, and so, but for me,
there never was a need. I had a wonderful family,
I had a wonderful childhood. At the end of the day,
(02:31):
love winds and I was going to find a woman
like my mom. I was going to be a man
like my dad. And we had a great family and
everything was perfect, right. And so from fifteen to about twenty,
my best friend just kept pounding me with the gospel message.
You need Jesus, you need Jesus, you need Jesus. And
I was at college and I came home like everyone does,
(02:54):
because you're hungry mac and cheese and McDonald's not going
to cut it right. I'm thinking meat love. There's something substantial, right,
So I'd come to walk in and when I walk in,
I walk in on my parents in the initial discussions
of divorce and talking about rattling your core, having your
foundation shaken everything that I had set up. And you
didn't realize that until we talk about all the time.
(03:17):
Good things can be idols too, and my family was
an idol, and I wanted to be just like him.
I wanted to have love wins. I said that earlier, right,
So here was love not winning. Now what do you do?
And so long story short, I'll bury you with all
the details, but call it six months. I watch my
parents split. I watched my dad radically saved. I watched
my mom radically saved. I watched their marriage radically be saved.
(03:40):
So the Lord used the one thing that he knew
that if he could break that down in my life,
he would bring up an over confident some would say,
cocky person to his knees and realized that I needed
the King of all kings and the Lord of lords.
And so it was wonderful and through that my brother
got saved. Weirdly enough, my best friend, his name is Matt,
who had been witnessed to me. He actually gets saved.
(04:02):
He was witnessing me when he wasn't even a believer.
So this whole thing comes full circle and then we
end up still being best friends and he's my business
partner today. So I'm sure we'll get more into that later,
but the origin of my faith is actually who my
business partner is now. And it's kind of just a
it's a it's a cool story that keeps continuing and
connecting in a way that really only God could script.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Man.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I just like hear the words beautifully broken, Like, how
God can you something so broken and messed up and
just make something so beautiful out of it?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
And he did right there. It's just such a big
example of that treasure.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
In Fragile Clay Jars, that's what Paul says, and it's
it's beautiful. I would love to know about just your parent,
that process of them breaking up, because restoring when you're
the divorce and getting saved like that's often I mean,
that's not how it goes now, that's not usually the story.
(04:58):
And praise God for grace and Jesus for rewriting our
stories beyond what is statistically normal. But how did that look? Like?
What was the messiness was? It was the details of that?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, I am open to sharing, because the great thing
is if we're not open to sharing, we rob the
glory that I think that God gets for what he
does when when he restores broken people in messes. So, uh,
it is my parents' marriage. So I'll just tell you
the things that I know. At the end of the day,
my mom had an emotional affair. And if they were
both being just brutally honest, and they were on this podcast,
(05:33):
my dad would say, I tried to fix everything. Mom
would say, you didn't listen to me. And the next thing,
you know, someone did. And that's what I was talking
to and that's when it came to and head. That's
what I walked in on. And my father was, I'll
once again, I'll fix it. What is it? Please, let's
not get divorced. And neither one of them, probably in
their heart of hearts, didn't want a divorce, but they
were at a point where they didn't know what to do.
(05:55):
And so when they separated and I say separated, and
they they purposely never got a divorce and didn't move out.
Just you could tell there was a line of separation
in their marriage. And just because I've been watching it
for at that point almost twenty years right, so I knew,
and my father had a best friend that started the
witness to him the same Gud did not tell his
(06:17):
name as Mike Hanna did not tell my mom. He
started witnessing to her. Both of them got saved on
their own, irrespective of whether their marriage was going to
be reconciled or not.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And in that brokenness and hitting your knees and realizing
what they needed, they both saw all their faults because look,
in a marriage, if we're married, we know it's not
one sided. There's always two sides to everything, always two sinners,
one house. That's a problem. God to have Jesus in
the middle of that, and there was a void there. Right,
So he gets saved. He calls her and says, I
(06:48):
totally understand, but I do need to tell you what
happened to me. She says, Oh, my goodness, that happened
to me last week. I was about to call you.
And the rest is kind of history. The Lord just
used both of broken hearts to come together. Both of
their sons watched that was open to start going to church,
started reading a Bible, and next thing you know, you're
starting to see and hear truth, and once you see
(07:09):
and hear truth, you can't unsee it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah, I'm curious to know when when all this is happening.
Obviously you said like your family has been saved throughout it.
But those moments where you're seeing all of this happening,
are you seeking the Lord? Or are was he just
chasing after you?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
He was recklessly chasing after me. I mean, there's no
doubt in my mind that. And there I joke all
the time that there's really two testimonies. There's the guy
that if he gets saved, you know, anyone can be saved,
and then there's the guy that gets saved and you go,
oh my gosh, if he needs to be saved, we
all need to be saved. And I was somewhere in
the middle of those two. I was not looking for
(07:44):
any other answers. I also was not out having this,
you know, wildly crazy life. It was still sinful. So
we minimize and we stack rank sins. Right, But yeah,
so we can get that later. But from a world exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Is a interesting look which one's worse? Is that one worth? Right?
And we always think the other one's worst.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Exactly, And if you look at my mind. From a
worldly aspect, the world would have said, the Tallies don't
need to be saved. They look at their picture frame
that's perfect when it wasn't. And so at the end
of the day, yes, it did feel like he knew
exactly which now reading and knowing who and how our
father is, I do know what happened. I mean, he
(08:24):
he broke what he needed to break to get me
to come to him and my whole family. And the
weird thing was is it was the one thing that
brought four people we were all holding the same idol.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And that that idea of he broke something in me
to get him to come to him. How did you
did you see it that way from the beginning, because
some people hearing that, it's like, man, that sounds pretty
like cruel, Like that sounds like that's an interesting thought,
like why would a loving god break? And I guess
(08:57):
explaining that to people that haven't gone through that, you know,
you know when you go through it, how you describe that.
And we've had many conversations that's a gift, that's kindness.
But the way that you know, the definition that I
think about if I haven't experienced something like that, about
what kindness is. Usually it's not looking like being broken
now but beautifully broken the kindness in that as you said,
(09:21):
that break that down.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah. So obviously, on this side of being saved and
now understanding scripture, I know only the broken in contract come.
So I know that when you're dead you have to
be made alive to see. And so the reason why
you said was it me going after him or did
he pursue me? It was clear to me. And I
think if you look back, and I would say, in
the moment, always in the moment when it happens, you're
always like not again, or not now, or oh my gosh,
(09:46):
I can't believe this. And look, we've all got a
little job in us right where we go, Wait a minute,
this is unfair. How could you? Or so I don't
want to make it sound like there was no any
of that in my conversation or in my mental conversation
with myself or my heart. Well, when you pause and
you push back from the table and you think about
the five years leading up to him using someone to
(10:07):
give me a foundation of the Gospel of which I
wanted nothing to do with. So I had all these
truths been spoken to me from sweat from mowing a
yard all day long with a guy I'm like, would
you just be quiet about this? Ye? And that being
the one thing that I actually turned to, And so
there was some there was some comfort there, There was
some I understood parts of it, so I knew enough
to go, Okay, what about this? What about that? Let
(10:29):
me go read. So the more you get into it,
I was saying, you push back and you look through
the you know, the telescope of what happened in your life.
It was absolutely gracious, It was absolutely merciful. It's absolutely loving.
In the moment. No, I think we all scratch our heads,
or we get frustrated, or we get mad, or we
get sad and all those things. But when I look back,
I go, I don't. I wouldn't have changed anything, not
(10:52):
one bit of pain, not one hard conversation. I don't
want one tear to go away, because ultimately my entire
family came to know Jesus.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And that idea of it being unfair, I think is
the hardest because injustice of like, man, I'm a young
man who like really needs his parents together, Like why
is this happened to me? This is unfair? Like that
process I think is the hardest, at least for me.
Like when it's like, dude, what did I do to
deserve this? And when you see things happen the injustice
(11:25):
in the world, it's like I can understand when I
do something wrong, and you kind of hit a wall
when you're like, man, I'm getting disciplined for this, Like
I'll take that one on the chin. But like when
you feel like you've done nothing and it's everything's been
done to you, that's the toughest. And I think the
definition of a trial when I can understand it, yeah,
it's not really a trial.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
It's its consequence.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's uncomfortable, but it's a consequence. It's not a trial.
And that's a really good delineation. Yeah, difference between a
trial and a consequence and the kindness of something unfair.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, I'm just thinking about the person that's on the
other side of this microphone listening, watching that has walked
through a divorce or walked through having their parents separate
and or maybe walking through that. Now, what is some
of the tangible advice that you could give them to say,
you know what, this is a good next step.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, Well, first of all, I don't tie the graciousness
and mercy that he allowed us all to find Jesus
in the reconciliation of my parents' marriage. So number one
is not because of the outcome that you saved all
of it. Am I saved? He saved me regardless. So
because I think people look at it and go, well,
my family is not going to get back together. Okay,
(12:43):
do you want your family to get back together?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
We all do, right, So that's a normal thing. But
if I look back and you were to tell me today,
would you be willing to have your parents divorce? For
all four of your two siblings and me and my
brother and my mom and dad all know Jesus answers yes.
So I think that seeing it, the practical advice would
be is you have to get far enough away from
(13:05):
it and pray enough that the spirit allows you to
see it for what it is. And if you can
see it for what it is, you start to go.
I can swallow any of this. I can take this
because at the end of the day, one of them's
temporal and one of them is eternal. And I'm not
going to argue for things over eighty years. When I
can talk about things for ten thousand years. So I
think seeing it in its element for what it's for
(13:27):
helps you is the most practical thing you can do.
And then it really is pray, pray. I mean it's
not just it's not just to get words out of it.
It's because there is a communication happening, there is a
relationship that is there, and so and he tells us
to pray boldly, So pray for what you think is right,
be open for what He has in store for you.
That's probably my biggest struggle ever, is that you know,
(13:49):
sometimes what He has in store for me is not
not what I want the time, right. So so I
would just say that seeing it for what it is
and knowing that the treasure wasn't that my parents' marriage
got reconciled, was that I'm restored to internal God, who's holy.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Man. I feel like this story just it's one we
haven't necessarily touched on yet on the podcast, and I
just think it's so special to see just all of
these things that are broken that just God just uses
for good man. It's just such a such an incredible testimony.
And I know it even goes further for you because
you said you have a dream that starts in a garage,
we do. So take us back to those moments, because
(14:27):
faith as small as a mustard seed. Right, Okay, so
a dream as small as your your garage, let's talk
about that.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
So Matt and his family started this business. I at
the time was working for a company called Baxx Global.
Most people are like who Burlington Air Express. It's a
two billion dollar company that basically sells air freight. I
got out of school, wanted to work for FedEx. It
was my dream job. I went there. They wouldn't hire me.
So I called my father and said, who's FedEx's biggest competitor?
Because I want to go win and they didn't hire me,
(14:53):
So I want to make them pay for it. Sorry,
that is an inside of my heart a little bit, right,
And so I go work for this this frame company,
forwarding company to compete with FedEx and Memphis. And at
that time, Matt dropped out of school, his sister graduated.
They started this company. I'm helping sell some stuff on
the side for them, and you know, just be a friend, right,
because they're starting up this business. And there's this moment
(15:14):
where you know, now I'm saved. I'm starting to figure
out what's the Bible, what's the word? Who's Christ? How
does all this work? And and really loving it, And
right right out of the gate, Bax comes and is
going to offer me a job to move to Houston.
I used to work for a company called The Buckle,
which I'm sure you shop there when you were younger.
(15:34):
They come and say, we're gonna open up a store
in Phoenix. We'd like you to open it. And then
Matt calls me and says, hey, man, we don't have
any money and we're not sure if the startup's gonna
make it, but would you like to buy in and
come work for Lebo brands and be a partner. Well,
somehow I picked the one that makes the least sense,
if you know, if you're adding them all up, that
was the one that makes no sense, but the common denominator.
(15:56):
There was two things I loved working with Matt. We
were a dynamic.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
That is your fifteen year old friend that was ministering
to you.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Okay, yes, the one that we started a landscaping business
sold it were eighteen when he went away. I went
to Memphis, he went to Sandford, then he went to
ut So this is kind of after all that broke down,
he's bringing me back in the fold in this new business.
And really, as a young believer, what was amazing about
that is his family was believers. So there was always
talk about Christ. There was always talk about how it
(16:24):
trumped business and how you can be a believer and
how you can stand on that foundation you do not
need to be apologetic, and how you can build a
company on that people want to come work for and
you don't need to worry about the name Jesus. You
just say it and if people don't like it, then
they shouldn't be there, and that's okay, right, And so
there was this a bunch of confidence in the gospel
(16:46):
that mister and Missus McCauley put into Maddoni, and that
is we still see the fruits of that today. So
it's weird that that's how that all comes within call
it an eighteen month span right from Devora I saw
most to taking this other opportunity. It really was the
Lord's hand was in all of that. And we could
(17:06):
go into mini podcasts of all the things he did
in the background with my dad losing a job and
how they paid him too much and how that was
part of the money that I borrowed to buying a logo.
It was one blessing after one blessing after one blessing
that only the Lord could do when he opens it up.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Man, And when you're having these conversations, are you asking
God for like give me an give me a clear
answer on what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I knew on this one. Yeah, this one. This one
was one where I was like, whoa, because one give
me all your money, you won't make any money and
we may not make it. That's logo back slobal. We're
going to double your salary. Movie to Houston. You're on
the trajectory to be a top dog in a really
big company. Those are really hard things to decide what
(17:47):
to do when you're twenty one years old and don't
want to make a mistake. And what I realized is
is that and I know kids are this way with
where they want to go to school or what job
to take or you know, at the end of the day,
and I don't want to overspiritualize this. You just need
to make a decision. Yeah, Because if if you're in
him and He is in you, and the Spirit is
(18:09):
with you, you know you even if you made one
that isn't he'll correct that. He'll he'll shut a door.
When you pick a lane that you shouldn't have gone down,
the door shuts pretty quickly and you see it and
you got to go down another lane. Right. So I
felt very confident in the decision, meaning the security of
the decision, now the work and what the road we
had ahead. I was a little bit more like, uh oh,
(18:30):
you know, but then that's a whole another story, because
that's building a business and it's hard.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Well, the it's I love it, and I just want
to make that kind of point of you had the
best watts in front of you, but you chose the
who we did over the what we did. You chose
the chemistry, the partnership, the relationship. To me, that is
something that people get confused. I see it in a
(18:54):
lot of conversations I have with people. Uncertainty is rampant.
Like they're uncertain, they're restless, They're like, I don't know
should I do this? And they have ten irons in
the fire, and it's hard. The what gets in the
way of like, well, what is the big dog at
twenty one and a big company in my seemingly the
what is better, but the who in this is far
(19:16):
more important, and making a decision on that. I look
at the Bible and I go when Jesus sent them out,
he sent him out too, by two, it really mattered
who he teethered. It was that was the most important thing.
Is who we chose and who we teethered. I hear
that in your story, and I also hear this Matthew
ten sixteen. He sent him out to be like sheep
among wolves, to be as shrewd as snakes and as
(19:39):
innocent as doves. Yes, so in the whole business is cutthroat.
You know. It's this like it's it's snake land, it's
wolf land. Like this language Jesus uses when he sends
them out. He says, hey, this is who you're going.
Like you and you and matt two by two go
into the world and make a difference. Be a light.
(20:00):
What does it mean to you to be shrewd like
a snake but also innocent as a dove?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah? Let me enter it this way. When companies make
core values, they typically put things up on a wall
that they esteem to be m And what we did
is we said, why don't we write all we've got weaknesses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
You're exactly right. So we've got weaknesses as a leadership teams,
as a two tethered right, let's hire around those. But
(20:28):
let's take our strengths and the things that were about
and let's put them on the wall for who we are,
because we know at the end of the day, when
you get squeezed, who you are is what comes out.
It's not who you want to be. And so number
one was honorable and forever, it was be pleasing to
God in your words, your deeds. That was core value
number one, and so the only one was we even
(20:49):
changed the words because number one we wanted to go
down to a single word versus phrases for everything that
was number one. And number two we hire and fire
based off our core values. And we obviously don't hire
or fire about whether you do or don't believe in God.
We don't. All that we tell you is that we do.
And so if the name Jesus, if prayer is gonna
(21:09):
make you freak out, you may be the best canon
of the world. Go work somewhere else. Because that's who
we are, that's what we do. And so when you're saying,
what does it mean to me? It means I look
at our core values and I think about honorable, right,
I think about improving, I think about teamwork, I think
about opportunistic, being very very optimistic. I think about nimble,
(21:36):
I think about gritty. And I'm listing you all of
our core values. Right. So at the end of the day,
I don't have to be a liar. I don't have
to be a lot of things that the world says
you have to be. People are attracted to our company
and us because we are a light and because we
stand on what we believe. Even if you disagree what
we believe, you respect the fact that I will graciously
(21:58):
stand up and tell you what I've believe and who
I believe is powering this and there is something about that.
Whether people recognize it or go I just want to
be around it, even if I don't believe it, because
it's amazing how many of my friends who don't believe
in Jesus Christ, when when things hit the wall, I'm
their first call. Why is that? Well, something in my
(22:21):
life has told them, built off of testimony. Thankful to
the Spirit's power that He'll pray he knows Jesus he believes.
So there is something intrinsically in people that are questioning
what that is and are attracted to be around it
even if they don't believe it, which is really really fascinating. Yeah,
so your question about we're not of the world, we're
(22:42):
going to lose some that if we cut corners and
didn't do the right thing, we might win. But I
have to lay my head down every single night and
know that who I am. If you were in this
room or y'all all walked out, I'm the same person.
So I don't compartment in a life of my life.
I don't have work, I don't have family, and I
don't have church, have life, and they all intercede and
(23:03):
I'm the same guy in all of those applications. And
so when you do that, it just makes it easier
just to be you and be spirit filled and let
the spirit lead you where you're supposed to go. Yeah,
that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
I wrote down earlier before you even got here, Colossians
three twenty three. Whatever you do, work at it with
all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men.
And that's literally what I hear out of you, and
I think it's honorable, Like you said, it's point number one.
It's honorable, and that's that's what That's what I'm hearing
from you, at least in what you do. And I'm
(23:36):
just navigating this tension between you know, a successful business,
staying grounded in family and faith. You're saying that it
all works together, it's all under one thing. Navigating those
tensions and you know, being a business owner and being
a father, being a husband, doing it all at once.
(23:57):
What are some practical ways that you stay arounded?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, Number one, honesty and having conversations with the people
around you. So I've got a lot of people in
my life that I literally can call it any given
time when I mean, it's been a tough week, y'all
know about this. My mother in law died last Thursday.
And the first thing that found, the guy that set
all this up, one of my dearest friends that lives
across from me, that that's in the music industry, said hey,
(24:22):
we'll cancel it. I mean no, no, no, no, no, no no, no,
we don't cancel this stuff because this in the amount.
Whenever there's tragedy, that is when the Gospels needed the most,
especially around death because house to we explain it otherwise.
So when you say, what are some practical things? Number One,
you have to have a family, a crew of people
around you that you can literally walk in and I
(24:42):
can say, guys, I'm struggling. This twenty twenty five has
been a hard year. I'm trying to make sense of
how to pray at the end of my mother in
law's life and battle with cancer. Do you pray for
it to be resolved? Do you prayed to run in
the arms of Jesus? First time in my life I've
said her and said I don't even know which one
to pray, pray on both and or. Twenty twenty five
is a tough year. Tariffs have called our business to
(25:03):
be just. It is the most radical, unpredictable year in
the history of the world. And how do I go
into people and say, hey, last year was great. This
year was supposed to be awesome for something out of
our control. Our entire business year is messed up. So
you have to be able to say, and I'm struggling,
and I don't understand why and why is this happening now?
(25:24):
And my prayer life is horrible, And you have to
be very vulnerable with that right, So my compadres can
see that, my family can see that. So I don't
hide that from my wife. The only thing I'd try
my best not to do is put anything weight on
her that the shoulders can't bear, because I'm supposed to
bear most of that brunt, right, But she needs to
know when her husband is suffering, or when he's struggling,
(25:44):
or when he's not sure of something. And the kids
need to see it too, because what that looks like
for all those people in my life is it looks
like a guy that's got splinters in his hands and
bruis knees because I'm holding on to a cross and
I'm hitting my knees to pray as much as I can.
And that is as real as we can be to say,
when all this stuff happens, the practicality of us to
realize that I'm depending on something outside of me. Yeah,
(26:07):
And I do that with my prayer, with my communication.
Don't not to scare anyone, right, My kids aren't going
old Dad's in trouble. It's no let me show you
where Dad struggles, because you do need to see it, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And that's what makes the like you have a spirit
of a boldness and courage, which I love and it's
obvious and we love to kind of like just encourage
people on this podcast and man that it's so clear,
like just God's courage, confidence and boldness all over you.
But also what makes that believable was vulnerability, like the
(26:38):
authenticity of like it's not always just like, yeah, let's
push through, smash the wall, but like absolutely that's what
we call to do. But also that really hurt. It did,
and this year has kicked my butt, it has, and
I need I need people around me. You know, I'm
not just strong, and so above all of that, I
(26:58):
need Jesus. And at the end of the day day
grace is made perfect in my weakness, not in my strength,
not in a look at me, watch what I can
do again echoing what you said, not in a hey,
I'm looking for the credit. But my weakness gives credit
to God does. And the fact of the honesty of
that makes that believable. And so then it's the courage
is and a confidence in my own ability. It's a
confidence in God's power through my weakness. And that's courage.
(27:23):
That's courage that I can go through that process and
go Man, I don't have what it takes. But watch
me run through this wall and give God the credit.
Like that's the that is beautiful and I sense that.
And man, just to see I hope that anything of
this it's contagious. I hope that it's contagious. I think
contagious courageousness.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
But it's true.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's like that's what I want. I'm like, I'm getting it.
But the more that we have these conversations, it's like
I have you know, I have more courage than when
I walked in this morning because your example, and it's
like we need in couragement. That's the definition. It's not
just like, hey, man, you're doing great. You know, it's
like putting courage into people. And that's what you're doing.
(28:09):
That's your testimony, bro, And I love that.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
I want to lean into you talking about letting your
kids see what you struggle with because I've got a
four year old and one year old, so I'm not
quite there yet. So just for my own selfishness, wanting
to like just know more about this because I think
this is such an interesting topic because I feel like
a lot of times, as a parent, you want to
shelter your kids and like protect them from the ways
(28:34):
of the world and things like that. But I think
this is really really important too, because we're all not perfect.
We are all going to struggle, and we're all going
to need to lean on those other people. So I'd
love to know more about letting your kids see the
struggle and do they now as being older, do they
like help you through some of that? Are they praying
with you and praying for you? Like what does that
(28:55):
look like?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, well, great question, And there's a lot to unpack there.
I think Number one, we cannot talk about how wonderful
our savior is if we're not constantly reminded what we're
saved from and what we're safe too. And so what
I need And I've got a nineteen year old, a
seventeen year old, a thirteen year old, now the thirteen
year old, like a thirty one year old. If we
(29:16):
could be honest, she's gonna be the president of the
United States, like if not, maybe an other country because
she's she is in charge. But what they all what
I got comfortable doing. And this started with a black book.
So I have a black book that most salespeople have
that have all the names of their best contacts and
phone numbers, and that's not what my black book is.
(29:37):
My black book is all of life's lessons that I've
learned and how it relates to the Gospel, and I
just write them down. And so it started to be
what I was going to hand to Jack at probably
at his wedding, right or maybe when he graduates. I
don't know. I don't even have a time written down,
but I'm constantly writing in them, simple things that either
I've learned from from family, friends, life, business, you name it, right.
(29:59):
And as I started writing those down, I started thinking, Man,
wouldn't that be a shame if my kids never saw
all of this and the process that it goes through
here to get it and they just started reading about it.
And what if they only got it after I died?
You know, you start going through all these thought processes.
So it became about and as you've mentioned earlier, I do,
from time to time teach. So what I have learned
to do is to bring them in and say, the
(30:23):
Lord put John twenty one fifteen through nineteen on Dad's heart.
I didn't know why, but let me tell you why,
because now, after studying it, here's where I was this
is what I was struggling with. If the Lord like
I'll give you an example. I literally just taught a
Place of Hope on Sunday and the whole message was
about Peter's denial and then Jesus coming back. And you
(30:44):
were familiar with this story, THO, absolutely charcoal, fire is fire.
When he denies him, it's fire there when he asks
them three times do you love me? And he changes
from a god they love to Falao love, basically saying
love me as a human right. And this whole thing,
he's either the way mak or he's not. And at
the end of the day, I have been questioning so
much that I did not sit up in front while
(31:04):
Jesus was on a cross and in front of people
in a courtyard by a chower crow fire and denied
Jesus three times. But I did because I kept going,
I don't know how we're getting out of this. I
don't know how we're going to make it through this.
That's denial. And so I drag that up in front
of my children and my wife and go, this is
what dad's hearts look like. Com but God did this,
(31:26):
and now I'm here, so I guess what I would
say to that is application is I don't want to
worry my children, and they're not worried about Dad, but
they got to see Dad's brokenness. They got to see
where Dad is clinging to the cross. They've got to
see where I keep running back, where I repent. And
so that's what I try, especially even with my temper.
If I lose my temper, I go back and go
That's why I need Jesus. Do you see that an
(31:48):
application like that is where Paul's talking about, why do
I do the things I shouldn't do and not do
the things I want to do. There's still a battle
with the flesh even though I'm a saint, And it's
good for them to see it so they don't think
something is going to be perfect just because you're a believer,
because that's not true.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, it's so good and it's such a good process
for them to go on at an early age because
for most people, the rooster, like before the rooster crows
three times, you're going to deny me. The rooster torments people.
It's like, let me move away, you know where there's
no roosters, because like this reminds me, this is a
shame rooster, But it's actually the rooster of grace. God
(32:22):
didn't do it out of kindness to remind you every
single day at dawn his mercies are you every morning.
The tether of his grace to the rooster, that you
would hear and remember not what you've done, but how
good he is is the beautiful thing of the chuck
off fire. And it's one of my favorite scriptures in
the Bible too, because that's me all day. Shame will
wake you up with terror or with grace, with new mercies,
(32:46):
or with I suck and I'm not good enough even
even get through this day. True, And the reminder of
that is God's intent. That's how kind he is. You
look at it and go back to the unfair and like,
why I don't understand the rooster, Come on any anything else,
like give them tie it to the lizard, the lizard
or something you know that's not going to be cockadoodle
(33:06):
doing in the morning. It's beautiful. That's the redemptive grace
of Jesus.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
So I would say, write it down, Write it down.
When they're old enough, tell them, show them, explain to them.
At the end of the day, here's what I have
really realized they're gonna get it from someone, so why
not get it from you. They're going to get quote
unquote the truth from someone, So I would much rather
(33:34):
it be from the Bible. And i'd much whether it
be from our home, and much whether it be gospel
centered than than Chuck at school. You know what I mean.
There's nothing against Chuck. I just would prefer that the spirit,
me know, it's spirit failled to be giving them what
we believe is happening, or even how to deal with struggles.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Deuteronomy six commands us to keep God's word on our
hearts and teach it to our children.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, it's happening by design or by default.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Discipleship is happening by designer, but fault, and we choose
based upon our intentionality. I don't want I got four
beautiful children that the world is trying to disciple every day. Yes,
and it's not with good things. I got a nine
year old boy who right now is like in that
time frame of like he's basically that teenager. You know,
(34:21):
he's going on thirty himself. And if I'm not intentionally discipling,
take them on the process, walk them through, walk with me.
That's what discipleship is. It's not even just like here's
the latest thought, or here's the you know, here's my
latest book. It's like doing life for them, to processing
on the on the nuances of just around the chark
with hey, let's have breakfast. That was the conversation in
(34:42):
John twenty one.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
It is exactly right, it's exactly right. And I think
I think what we they thought the quote was from
for them, but the quote that I wrote up on
our kitchen board was for me, which is every morning,
the world's going to ask you who you are, and
if you don't tell them, it'll tell you. And so
what I started thinking was, well, I better tell my
kids who they are are in Christ, because if you're
in Christ, this is who you are, This is the
(35:04):
strength you have. And by the way, we don't worry
about the rest of it. And it's interesting because you
talked about a little bit, how does you know you're
a vice president of sales for a company that does
a lot of dollars, but you're also not of this world.
And then you think about things that we even say,
like we talk about all the time that our job
is to work as hard as we possibly can the
Lord delivers the results. You just don't hear that in
(35:26):
very many businesses. So it's like, hey, we want you
to their numbers are important, performance is important, but the
only thing you can control is the input. We do
not control the output. And that's also in our lives.
Like at the end of the day, our kids, us
are going to walk into things and there's gonna be stuff,
there's gonna be circumstances that go that's unfair. But at
(35:47):
that moment, that's when you go, wait a minute, Jesus
has this. He knew I'd be here, he was here
before me, He's prepared something after this. I just have
to trust and I have to be okay with this
not the way that I would draw it up, and
that that actually has taken a long time for me
to get to that point. And I'll be honest, that
is the most where I struggle is right there, Yeah,
(36:08):
right in that spot.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
I feel like that's all of us. That's just a
human reaction.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
It's tough.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
It's hard to pick up your cross daily, you know,
And I think that just to pour into you a
little bit more like the encouragement that I'm hearing out
of you and just the humanness of you, but also
just leaning into Jesus every single time, like this isn't
about me. And that's what we've always said about this podcast,
like it's not about us, Like this isn't this microphone,
(36:37):
isn't for Brooke Taylor or for Mark Evans. This is
for something else. It's not for us.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And I'm listening that may need to hear something that's
being said.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Absolutely, And that's the beautiful thing. It's like when you
figure that and you get out the way to the
amount of times that I've been in the way, and
it's like I've been the architect of my own disappointment. Right,
That's something I think about all the time and I
have to keep bringing to God. It's like, well, I'm disappointed,
and why did this happen to me? And I was like, oh,
guess who's there. And then he shows me a mirror
and he's like, here's the architect. You want to see
(37:06):
who created that disappointment And I'm like, but that's.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Me, that's right.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I like, dang it, I did it again. I got
in the way, I took control, thought I could do
it in my own strength, thought I could control the outcome.
That's beautiful. The input you're in control of. Yes, you
can treat you can control how you treat others, but
you can't control how the people treat you. And my
injustice is focused on the output and the outcomes that
(37:31):
I can't control. And God was like, here's a mirror,
mark right, here's what you're in control of. Here's what
you should be doing. So doesn't make it easy.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
No, no, no, And that that's why I use the
word that is my constant battle. And it's weird because
you're you're in one in one saying you're saying I
believe in you, Jesus, you're saying I just don't trust you, dang,
and that that's a hard thing for you to hear
come out of your mouth, just like it was a
hard thing for Peter to hear the denials three times
come out of this. He knew on the third one
(38:01):
what he'd done. And instead of you, you so succinctly
brought that back together because fifteen through twenty one is
basically Jesus coming back going no, no, no, no no. I'm not
here to shame you. I'm here to restore you. Like, hey,
do you love me, No, you don't love me the way,
and he uses a god they love on purpose because
you can't love me that way. So what he says
(38:22):
at the very end is I love you humanly because
that's how you love me. I'll meet you where you are.
But that's why you need me, because I love you
in a way that you don't know. And I love
you when you deny me. Even when Chris Tally says,
there's no way we're going to get through this. This
business is going to be broken up. And if we're
I said this the other day at the circle, you
brought the circle up, I'm literally in front of I'd
never have this thought. I was literally libbing on the
(38:45):
intro how to get to a message of which I
looked at a group of two hundred students. Instead, I
am more afraid of losing my company than i'm death,
And I went, did I just say that out loud?
But why did I say that? Because that's where the
idol is, that's where the fear is, because death. I
believe in Jesus. I believe in the eternal promise. I
(39:07):
believe he is sufficient for heaven. I'm not worried about glorification.
I'm actually worried. Do you care enough to get me
through logo brands through twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:15):
And a big God can't care enough about that. And
that's actually not true. So that's where I have to
hit my knees and go, actually, this is true, and
so is this. This just may not look the way
you want it to.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
It's powerful. It's exactly what God's doing in me, like
to the tea. You know, there's a story in the Bible,
the True Story about two women who come before King Solomon.
Both of them are saying this baby is mine and
the other one is saying, nope, it's mine. And they're
(39:49):
going through and one's telling the truth, and one is
envious because she couldn't have her own and his liones
and just I want, I want this, but it wasn't hers.
One was absolutely has to have. So then Solomon goes
in his wisdom, well you know what we're gonna do,
and he doesn't mean it, but it's the test. We're
gonna cut the baby in half and then you can
(40:10):
have half the baby, and it's it's kind of a
crazy story. But one woman is like, all right, fine,
I'll just have half a baby as long as no
one gets it and the other one's like, absolutely not,
she can have it, let it live. That's the mom,
and that is the mom. That's whose baby is. If
God gave you logo brands, he's not gonna let it
(40:33):
go to part yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And if he does, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
And that's and that is the that is the right.
I'm a just judge. And it's like, God, I surrender,
Abraham Isaac. If it's your promise. You gave me this gift,
so I give it back to you. It's not so
that you can destroy it, not so that it fails.
But God, you're a sovereign and that I believe you,
But do I trust you? That's where the rubber hits
(40:59):
the road. That's why that even that story is confronting.
It's like, that's a gritty to quote a culture. I
love that culture. That's a gritty story. But that's the
truth that that confronts. That is the definition of It's
not a nice thing to look into the mirror sometimes
and go I believe him, but do I trust him?
(41:20):
When you're talking about my baby, we're talking about logo
brands in the garage. This is my baby.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
You're a hundred percent right.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
So here you go. That's right, and you know what,
God's going to give it back. I can like, dude,
this is there's so much life in this way. I
feel there's so much life in you. There's so much
The tariffs are annoying. Let's probably.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Annoyers. Let's Supreme Court is going to rule them illegal.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
We import elia screens absolutely bro fire up.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
But at the end of the day, once again, I
think that I think that the spirit softens you enough
to trust to go. Even if he doesn't hand it
back the way I think he should, We're gonna be okay.
And that's the thing because then you go back and
then you say, well, how do you how do you
know that? And you look down and go, well, because
I can look at a track record, and I look
at a Bible, and I can look at all the
(42:10):
things that have happened and go, the same guy that
was theirs now, So I'm I'm not worried about it.
It's the moments when I'm worried about it that I've
got to remember to snap out of that and go,
what are you doing? That's the devil tempting me? And
trying to make me lose faith in what could happen
and what should happen.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
And same the fact that you're scared of that more
than dying, and that you said that by even saying that,
that destroys the power it does. And that's the process
of like the honesty of it to torment you up
on the inside. And if it didn't cost, if it
wasn't hard and it didn't have that kind of cost
attached to it, it wouldn't have the value either. It's beautiful.
(42:47):
And that's like, have we said this before. I don't know,
maybe we said this before, but we're going on a
bear hunt. Can go under, it can't go over. It
got to go through it. Praise God.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
That's exactly. I am thankful for a new chapter. Let's started,
let's started doing it. And that Matt the other day said, oh,
we'll just pray for new trials, Like, oh, let's just uh,
let's just pray to get through twenty twenty five for
right now. Let's let's be that be our prayer and
that'd be great, that'd be great. Yeah, that's enough.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Uh, just kind of tying this all together. Someone who
might be listening to this excuse me that maybe their
faith in their career just seems so separate and having
the boldness to put them together, or maybe they're looking
for a way to help meld them together. Is there
any advice that you could give to someone that might
be filling that way.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
We'll come work for local brands.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
No.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
I would say that you cannot serve two masters and
you cannot be two different people. And so I think
you you said it. You got to drag it out.
You got to tell people who you are. You have
to tell them who your identity is in and if
that's not for them, then they're gonna they're gonna let
you go and you're gonna go find something else to do.
And to have to understand that that's where the actual
(43:57):
freedom comes in, because the Him for me is not
that in anything other than of what a promise that's coming.
It's what the promise that's been done. So the freedom
comes from the power on a cross two thousand years ago.
And to know if you can do that, then you
can do anything. And so at the end of the day,
I would say, the most practical thing I can say
is tell the people around you about Jesus and just
(44:20):
be willing to live with the results. So many people.
The fear to mention the gospel is way way in
relation out of whack to people's response to it. Most people,
if they deny it. Most people that deny it very
vehemently and loudly are the ones that are closest enough
to understand the real draw to it and the need
(44:43):
for it, and they don't want to admit it. And
the people that are absolutely oblivious to it. It's like
having a conversation about what color are going to pain
a wall. They don't care. So I do think the
application would be we're called to tell people about Him
and what he's done for you, and that calling goes
over where you work, the paycheck that you get, and
when you do put those priorities right, you realize he's
(45:04):
going to be able to delivery. He made Manna come
out of heaven when they cross the Red Sea when
they said, where's all the food? So if he can
do that, he can surely replace your twenty two dollars
an hour job or your five hundred thousand dollars job
that you have her salary. Just tell people about Christ.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
M hm so good, Yeah, so good.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I've been wanting to this been in the back of
my head and I've been deciding to do I bring
it up, but to sell this pen.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Oh gosh, yes, let's do this.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
I'm broadly I don't want to necessarily do it unless
you're ready for the sell this pen. But I'm just saying,
like say, like I love it. It comes up my algorithm
every time I've watched ten different versions of it. But
like you're in sales. Yeah, you're obviously very good at it.
Some would say, some would say, what is the greatest
sell this pen? Advice?
Speaker 1 (45:53):
You know, the advice is tell me yours. I'm selling
you the pin? Right, what do you do for a living?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
My pasta?
Speaker 1 (45:59):
So the pin color, it doesn't matter. It could be pencil.
Matter of fact, we probably should sell you a pencil
because you're going to race more than you need to
write and permanent. What did I just do there?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Switch it up?
Speaker 1 (46:08):
I made it about you because it's not selling me
the pen for the quality, it's what's the pen being
used for. And so what's beautiful about sales is that
if there is no need, there is no sell. Otherwise
that goes to the line snake oil sales person that
everybody hates to use carsmen, So why do I ask that.
If you're a teacher, then I need a red pin.
(46:29):
If you're a banker, I need a bluepen because you
signed documents that have to have color and seeded. So
I think understanding where people are it's very biblical. What
does Jesus do? He meets you where you are, right.
He doesn't wait for you to come to church, get
your life cleaned up, and then say now you're applicable
for being saved. He depends on what the man on
the middle cross said. And the man on the middle
(46:50):
cross said you could come, and that's the only qualification
you need. So selling you a pin is the exact
same things to me, go where are you? What do
you need it for? What are you using it for?
Because if you're a student and you just need a
pen to take a couple of notes, you need a
twelve cent pen. Yeah, if you're a banker that has
a ton of money, it has a bunch of clients
that come in, you need a very very nice blue pin,
(47:12):
and I have to sell each what they need.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
So good, How would Jesus sell a pen the way
I just told you. I've never heard that that's exactly right.
That's beautiful. Wow, how would so good?
Speaker 4 (47:23):
How would Jesus sell it? Pen that's the name of
this episode, and it's right.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
He would sell it exactly like your fingerprint.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Just for you, just for you, the way you need it.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Right where you're at. Yes, exactly what you need, Chris.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
This has been such an encouraging episode. I know that
I've taken a lot from this. And I think, Mark,
you have to speak into just stuff in his life.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
And I think that's what this is all about.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
It's just kind of bringing each other together and just
talking about things and lend the Holy Spirit guide. And
I know somebody listening to this right now has probably
gotten an answer to something that they needed an answer to.
Maybe I learned how to sell a pen, oh, which
is great.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Maybe they're going to apply from Jesus and know how
to sell a band and come get a jobs and.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I freaking love it. Okay, Well, I want to just
kind of wrap things up today. We always like to
to just know how we can be praying for you
in this season.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Two things for my family to be strong and to
exemplify Jesus through the arrangements for my mother in law,
and two would be to continue continually, continually keep me
at the right spot, which is that I know that
I can trust him and believe him at the same time.
So trust and belief. That's good.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
All right, Well, I'm going to pray us out if
you do not mind I'm telling at all.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, just thank you for today, thank
you for this conversation and the words that you've spoken
through these microphones. We are so grateful for Chris and
his heart that he is just so unapologetic in sharing
the word of Jesus. And Lord, we just we just
say thank you for him. We say thank you for
his boldness, thank you for his character, thank you that
(49:00):
that he is humble and just faithful to you Lord.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
And he's just honorable. God.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
I just I love that he said the word honorable,
because that is a word that I just feel exemplifies
who he is. And we just say thank you for
depositing all of these characteristics into Chris. And God, just
thank you for his family and this season of loss. God,
we just pray that you keep them strong, Lord, that
you give them they just love and the peace that
(49:27):
surpasses all understanding. As they walk through just such a
difficult time. Lord, but thank you Lord that his mother
in law is now with you, and we're just we're
so grateful that she is no longer in pain. And God,
we just honor you for that and say thank you
for taking away that pain.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
God.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
We just continue to pray over Chris's family and his
kids and his marriage. Lord, that you would just keep
them strong, that you would just continue to just use
their words to talk about you, that they would bring
people closer to you, Lord, that they would just continue
to be unapologetic in their faith. And we just asked
that you continue to work through Chris and the rest
(50:08):
of this season of a difficult year. God, that you
would just allow him to trust you, that you would
just allow him to believe you, that he would just
he would just know that You've.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Got this in your heavenly name. We pray Amen.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Amen, Amen, Thanks guys, thank you.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Yeah,
Hey guys, I'm Chris Tally. I watch my dad radically saved.
I watched my mom radically saved. I watched their marriage
radically be saved. And you're saying I believe in you, Jesusue,
you're saying, I just don't trust you.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
He broke what he needed to break to get me
to come to him. And this is the upload.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I'm Rick Taylor, Mark Evans the upload. Welcome Chris Tally.
We're excited to have you.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Today, Excited to be here.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I got to say the executive VP of Sales of
Logo Brands, which is huge, such a big title if
you don't know what that is. A company, they basically
you design a lot of licensed sports merchandise for companies
and under.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
This big umbrella, there's lots to it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
There's a lot to it. We make about it. Our
six hundred products. We have eight hundred college licenses, all
the pro licenses. So it all started with out of
our garage with a chair. I wanted to make a
chair that just would like for the soccer moms and
wanted to put the SEC logos on it. Twenty five
years later, we have a company.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Okay, we're going to come back to that because I
need to know this story more about it.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And I feel like every good company starts in a
garage with something like that.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Yes, but we like to start things off here on
the podcast talking about faith and how you would define
that in your life.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
What does faith mean to you?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Faith means to me and the easiest way to say
it for me is believing in something you can't see.
And so obviously it goes a little deeper than that,
because I have to get up every morning and reconfirm
my faith. I always joke that that's probably the thing
I do the most is forget that I need to believe, right,
but believing in something that's bigger than me, believing in
something that's outside of me that I depend upon. And
(01:41):
that is maybe one of the largest stumbling blocks of
the gospel message, right that you can't do it yourself.
So when I say having faith, having faith in something
I can't see, and that happens to be a person
who lived for me, for me and now intercedes for me.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
When it comes to you and your faith, what was
that moment where it all became real?
Speaker 4 (01:59):
For when did you meet you?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Know? Yeah, so weirdly enough, it does tie in to
our business, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So my best friend, I was fifteen years old, my
best friend, we started a landscaping company. He witnessed me
all the time, and I just said, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Grew up unchurched, didn't go to church, wasn't part of
my family. But we were in South I was in Memphis, Tennessee.
There's a church, there's as many churches are are a
Walgreens on every corner, right, and so, but for me,
there never was a need. I had a wonderful family,
I had a wonderful childhood. At the end of the day,
(02:31):
love winds and I was going to find a woman
like my mom. I was going to be a man
like my dad. And we had a great family and
everything was perfect, right. And so from fifteen to about twenty,
my best friend just kept pounding me with the gospel message.
You need Jesus, you need Jesus, you need Jesus. And
I was at college and I came home like everyone does,
(02:54):
because you're hungry mac and cheese and McDonald's not going
to cut it right. I'm thinking meat love. There's something substantial, right,
So I'd come to walk in and when I walk in,
I walk in on my parents in the initial discussions
of divorce and talking about rattling your core, having your
foundation shaken everything that I had set up. And you
didn't realize that until we talk about all the time.
(03:17):
Good things can be idols too, and my family was
an idol, and I wanted to be just like him.
I wanted to have love wins. I said that earlier, right,
So here was love not winning. Now what do you do?
And so long story short, I'll bury you with all
the details, but call it six months. I watch my
parents split. I watched my dad radically saved. I watched
my mom radically saved. I watched their marriage radically be saved.
(03:40):
So the Lord used the one thing that he knew
that if he could break that down in my life,
he would bring up an over confident some would say,
cocky person to his knees and realized that I needed
the King of all kings and the Lord of lords.
And so it was wonderful and through that my brother
got saved. Weirdly enough, my best friend, his name is Matt,
who had been witnessed to me. He actually gets saved.
(04:02):
He was witnessing me when he wasn't even a believer.
So this whole thing comes full circle and then we
end up still being best friends and he's my business
partner today. So I'm sure we'll get more into that later,
but the origin of my faith is actually who my
business partner is now. And it's kind of just a
it's a it's a cool story that keeps continuing and
connecting in a way that really only God could script.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Man.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
I just like hear the words beautifully broken, Like, how
God can you something so broken and messed up and
just make something so beautiful out of it?
Speaker 4 (04:33):
And he did right there. It's just such a big
example of that treasure.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
In Fragile Clay Jars, that's what Paul says, and it's
it's beautiful. I would love to know about just your parent,
that process of them breaking up, because restoring when you're
the divorce and getting saved like that's often I mean,
that's not how it goes now, that's not usually the story.
(04:58):
And praise God for grace and Jesus for rewriting our
stories beyond what is statistically normal. But how did that look? Like?
What was the messiness was? It was the details of that?
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, I am open to sharing, because the great thing
is if we're not open to sharing, we rob the
glory that I think that God gets for what he
does when when he restores broken people in messes. So, uh,
it is my parents' marriage. So I'll just tell you
the things that I know. At the end of the day,
my mom had an emotional affair. And if they were
both being just brutally honest, and they were on this podcast,
(05:33):
my dad would say, I tried to fix everything. Mom
would say, you didn't listen to me. And the next thing,
you know, someone did. And that's what I was talking
to and that's when it came to and head. That's
what I walked in on. And my father was, I'll
once again, I'll fix it. What is it? Please, let's
not get divorced. And neither one of them, probably in
their heart of hearts, didn't want a divorce, but they
were at a point where they didn't know what to do.
(05:55):
And so when they separated and I say separated, and
they they purposely never got a divorce and didn't move out.
Just you could tell there was a line of separation
in their marriage. And just because I've been watching it
for at that point almost twenty years right, so I knew,
and my father had a best friend that started the
witness to him the same Gud did not tell his
(06:17):
name as Mike Hanna did not tell my mom. He
started witnessing to her. Both of them got saved on
their own, irrespective of whether their marriage was going to
be reconciled or not.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And in that brokenness and hitting your knees and realizing
what they needed, they both saw all their faults because look,
in a marriage, if we're married, we know it's not
one sided. There's always two sides to everything, always two sinners,
one house. That's a problem. God to have Jesus in
the middle of that, and there was a void there. Right,
So he gets saved. He calls her and says, I
(06:48):
totally understand, but I do need to tell you what
happened to me. She says, Oh, my goodness, that happened
to me last week. I was about to call you.
And the rest is kind of history. The Lord just
used both of broken hearts to come together. Both of
their sons watched that was open to start going to church,
started reading a Bible, and next thing you know, you're
starting to see and hear truth, and once you see
(07:09):
and hear truth, you can't unsee it.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah, I'm curious to know when when all this is happening.
Obviously you said like your family has been saved throughout it.
But those moments where you're seeing all of this happening,
are you seeking the Lord? Or are was he just
chasing after you?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
He was recklessly chasing after me. I mean, there's no
doubt in my mind that. And there I joke all
the time that there's really two testimonies. There's the guy
that if he gets saved, you know, anyone can be saved,
and then there's the guy that gets saved and you go,
oh my gosh, if he needs to be saved, we
all need to be saved. And I was somewhere in
the middle of those two. I was not looking for
(07:44):
any other answers. I also was not out having this,
you know, wildly crazy life. It was still sinful. So
we minimize and we stack rank sins. Right, But yeah,
so we can get that later. But from a world exactly.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Is a interesting look which one's worse? Is that one worth? Right?
And we always think the other one's worst.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Exactly, And if you look at my mind. From a
worldly aspect, the world would have said, the Tallies don't
need to be saved. They look at their picture frame
that's perfect when it wasn't. And so at the end
of the day, yes, it did feel like he knew
exactly which now reading and knowing who and how our
father is, I do know what happened. I mean, he
(08:24):
he broke what he needed to break to get me
to come to him and my whole family. And the
weird thing was is it was the one thing that
brought four people we were all holding the same idol.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And that that idea of he broke something in me
to get him to come to him. How did you
did you see it that way from the beginning, because
some people hearing that, it's like, man, that sounds pretty
like cruel, Like that sounds like that's an interesting thought,
like why would a loving god break? And I guess
(08:57):
explaining that to people that haven't gone through that, you know,
you know when you go through it, how you describe that.
And we've had many conversations that's a gift, that's kindness.
But the way that you know, the definition that I
think about if I haven't experienced something like that, about
what kindness is. Usually it's not looking like being broken
now but beautifully broken the kindness in that as you said,
(09:21):
that break that down.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yeah. So obviously, on this side of being saved and
now understanding scripture, I know only the broken in contract come.
So I know that when you're dead you have to
be made alive to see. And so the reason why
you said was it me going after him or did
he pursue me? It was clear to me. And I
think if you look back, and I would say, in
the moment, always in the moment when it happens, you're
always like not again, or not now, or oh my gosh,
(09:46):
I can't believe this. And look, we've all got a
little job in us right where we go, Wait a minute,
this is unfair. How could you? Or so I don't
want to make it sound like there was no any
of that in my conversation or in my mental conversation
with myself or my heart. Well, when you pause and
you push back from the table and you think about
the five years leading up to him using someone to
(10:07):
give me a foundation of the Gospel of which I
wanted nothing to do with. So I had all these
truths been spoken to me from sweat from mowing a
yard all day long with a guy I'm like, would
you just be quiet about this? Ye? And that being
the one thing that I actually turned to, And so
there was some there was some comfort there, There was
some I understood parts of it, so I knew enough
to go, Okay, what about this? What about that? Let
(10:29):
me go read. So the more you get into it,
I was saying, you push back and you look through
the you know, the telescope of what happened in your life.
It was absolutely gracious, It was absolutely merciful. It's absolutely loving.
In the moment. No, I think we all scratch our heads,
or we get frustrated, or we get mad, or we
get sad and all those things. But when I look back,
I go, I don't. I wouldn't have changed anything, not
(10:52):
one bit of pain, not one hard conversation. I don't
want one tear to go away, because ultimately my entire
family came to know Jesus.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
And that idea of it being unfair, I think is
the hardest because injustice of like, man, I'm a young
man who like really needs his parents together, Like why
is this happened to me? This is unfair? Like that
process I think is the hardest, at least for me.
Like when it's like, dude, what did I do to
deserve this? And when you see things happen the injustice
(11:25):
in the world, it's like I can understand when I
do something wrong, and you kind of hit a wall
when you're like, man, I'm getting disciplined for this, Like
I'll take that one on the chin. But like when
you feel like you've done nothing and it's everything's been
done to you, that's the toughest. And I think the
definition of a trial when I can understand it, yeah,
it's not really a trial.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
It's its consequence.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's uncomfortable, but it's a consequence. It's not a trial.
And that's a really good delineation. Yeah, difference between a
trial and a consequence and the kindness of something unfair.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, I'm just thinking about the person that's on the
other side of this microphone listening, watching that has walked
through a divorce or walked through having their parents separate
and or maybe walking through that. Now, what is some
of the tangible advice that you could give them to say,
you know what, this is a good next step.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yeah, Well, first of all, I don't tie the graciousness
and mercy that he allowed us all to find Jesus
in the reconciliation of my parents' marriage. So number one
is not because of the outcome that you saved all
of it. Am I saved? He saved me regardless. So
because I think people look at it and go, well,
my family is not going to get back together. Okay,
(12:43):
do you want your family to get back together?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (12:45):
We all do, right, So that's a normal thing. But
if I look back and you were to tell me today,
would you be willing to have your parents divorce? For
all four of your two siblings and me and my
brother and my mom and dad all know Jesus answers yes.
So I think that seeing it, the practical advice would
be is you have to get far enough away from
(13:05):
it and pray enough that the spirit allows you to
see it for what it is. And if you can
see it for what it is, you start to go.
I can swallow any of this. I can take this
because at the end of the day, one of them's
temporal and one of them is eternal. And I'm not
going to argue for things over eighty years. When I
can talk about things for ten thousand years. So I
think seeing it in its element for what it's for
(13:27):
helps you is the most practical thing you can do.
And then it really is pray, pray. I mean it's
not just it's not just to get words out of it.
It's because there is a communication happening, there is a
relationship that is there, and so and he tells us
to pray boldly, So pray for what you think is right,
be open for what He has in store for you.
That's probably my biggest struggle ever, is that you know,
(13:49):
sometimes what He has in store for me is not
not what I want the time, right. So so I
would just say that seeing it for what it is
and knowing that the treasure wasn't that my parents' marriage
got reconciled, was that I'm restored to internal God, who's holy.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
Man. I feel like this story just it's one we
haven't necessarily touched on yet on the podcast, and I
just think it's so special to see just all of
these things that are broken that just God just uses
for good man. It's just such a such an incredible testimony.
And I know it even goes further for you because
you said you have a dream that starts in a garage,
we do. So take us back to those moments, because
(14:27):
faith as small as a mustard seed. Right, Okay, so
a dream as small as your your garage, let's talk
about that.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
So Matt and his family started this business. I at
the time was working for a company called Baxx Global.
Most people are like who Burlington Air Express. It's a
two billion dollar company that basically sells air freight. I
got out of school, wanted to work for FedEx. It
was my dream job. I went there. They wouldn't hire me.
So I called my father and said, who's FedEx's biggest competitor?
Because I want to go win and they didn't hire me,
(14:53):
So I want to make them pay for it. Sorry,
that is an inside of my heart a little bit, right,
And so I go work for this this frame company,
forwarding company to compete with FedEx and Memphis. And at
that time, Matt dropped out of school, his sister graduated.
They started this company. I'm helping sell some stuff on
the side for them, and you know, just be a friend, right,
because they're starting up this business. And there's this moment
(15:14):
where you know, now I'm saved. I'm starting to figure
out what's the Bible, what's the word? Who's Christ? How
does all this work? And and really loving it, And
right right out of the gate, Bax comes and is
going to offer me a job to move to Houston.
I used to work for a company called The Buckle,
which I'm sure you shop there when you were younger.
(15:34):
They come and say, we're gonna open up a store
in Phoenix. We'd like you to open it. And then
Matt calls me and says, hey, man, we don't have
any money and we're not sure if the startup's gonna
make it, but would you like to buy in and
come work for Lebo brands and be a partner. Well,
somehow I picked the one that makes the least sense,
if you know, if you're adding them all up, that
was the one that makes no sense, but the common denominator.
(15:56):
There was two things I loved working with Matt. We
were a dynamic.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
That is your fifteen year old friend that was ministering
to you.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Okay, yes, the one that we started a landscaping business
sold it were eighteen when he went away. I went
to Memphis, he went to Sandford, then he went to
ut So this is kind of after all that broke down,
he's bringing me back in the fold in this new business.
And really, as a young believer, what was amazing about
that is his family was believers. So there was always
talk about Christ. There was always talk about how it
(16:24):
trumped business and how you can be a believer and
how you can stand on that foundation you do not
need to be apologetic, and how you can build a
company on that people want to come work for and
you don't need to worry about the name Jesus. You
just say it and if people don't like it, then
they shouldn't be there, and that's okay, right, And so
there was this a bunch of confidence in the gospel
(16:46):
that mister and Missus McCauley put into Maddoni, and that
is we still see the fruits of that today. So
it's weird that that's how that all comes within call
it an eighteen month span right from Devora I saw
most to taking this other opportunity. It really was the
Lord's hand was in all of that. And we could
(17:06):
go into mini podcasts of all the things he did
in the background with my dad losing a job and
how they paid him too much and how that was
part of the money that I borrowed to buying a logo.
It was one blessing after one blessing after one blessing
that only the Lord could do when he opens it up.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
Man, And when you're having these conversations, are you asking
God for like give me an give me a clear
answer on what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
I knew on this one. Yeah, this one. This one
was one where I was like, whoa, because one give
me all your money, you won't make any money and
we may not make it. That's logo back slobal. We're
going to double your salary. Movie to Houston. You're on
the trajectory to be a top dog in a really
big company. Those are really hard things to decide what
(17:47):
to do when you're twenty one years old and don't
want to make a mistake. And what I realized is
is that and I know kids are this way with
where they want to go to school or what job
to take or you know, at the end of the day,
and I don't want to overspiritualize this. You just need
to make a decision. Yeah, Because if if you're in
him and He is in you, and the Spirit is
(18:09):
with you, you know you even if you made one
that isn't he'll correct that. He'll he'll shut a door.
When you pick a lane that you shouldn't have gone down,
the door shuts pretty quickly and you see it and
you got to go down another lane. Right. So I
felt very confident in the decision, meaning the security of
the decision, now the work and what the road we
had ahead. I was a little bit more like, uh oh,
(18:30):
you know, but then that's a whole another story, because
that's building a business and it's hard.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
Well, the it's I love it, and I just want
to make that kind of point of you had the
best watts in front of you, but you chose the
who we did over the what we did. You chose
the chemistry, the partnership, the relationship. To me, that is
something that people get confused. I see it in a
(18:54):
lot of conversations I have with people. Uncertainty is rampant.
Like they're uncertain, they're restless, They're like, I don't know
should I do this? And they have ten irons in
the fire, and it's hard. The what gets in the
way of like, well, what is the big dog at
twenty one and a big company in my seemingly the
what is better, but the who in this is far
(19:16):
more important, and making a decision on that. I look
at the Bible and I go when Jesus sent them out,
he sent him out too, by two, it really mattered
who he teethered. It was that was the most important thing.
Is who we chose and who we teethered. I hear
that in your story, and I also hear this Matthew
ten sixteen. He sent him out to be like sheep
among wolves, to be as shrewd as snakes and as
(19:39):
innocent as doves. Yes, so in the whole business is cutthroat.
You know. It's this like it's it's snake land, it's
wolf land. Like this language Jesus uses when he sends
them out. He says, hey, this is who you're going.
Like you and you and matt two by two go
into the world and make a difference. Be a light.
(20:00):
What does it mean to you to be shrewd like
a snake but also innocent as a dove?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah? Let me enter it this way. When companies make
core values, they typically put things up on a wall
that they esteem to be m And what we did
is we said, why don't we write all we've got weaknesses. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
You're exactly right. So we've got weaknesses as a leadership teams,
as a two tethered right, let's hire around those. But
(20:28):
let's take our strengths and the things that were about
and let's put them on the wall for who we are,
because we know at the end of the day, when
you get squeezed, who you are is what comes out.
It's not who you want to be. And so number
one was honorable and forever, it was be pleasing to
God in your words, your deeds. That was core value
number one, and so the only one was we even
(20:49):
changed the words because number one we wanted to go
down to a single word versus phrases for everything that
was number one. And number two we hire and fire
based off our core values. And we obviously don't hire
or fire about whether you do or don't believe in God.
We don't. All that we tell you is that we do.
And so if the name Jesus, if prayer is gonna
(21:09):
make you freak out, you may be the best canon
of the world. Go work somewhere else. Because that's who
we are, that's what we do. And so when you're saying,
what does it mean to me? It means I look
at our core values and I think about honorable, right,
I think about improving, I think about teamwork, I think
about opportunistic, being very very optimistic. I think about nimble,
(21:36):
I think about gritty. And I'm listing you all of
our core values. Right. So at the end of the day,
I don't have to be a liar. I don't have
to be a lot of things that the world says
you have to be. People are attracted to our company
and us because we are a light and because we
stand on what we believe. Even if you disagree what
we believe, you respect the fact that I will graciously
(21:58):
stand up and tell you what I've believe and who
I believe is powering this and there is something about that.
Whether people recognize it or go I just want to
be around it, even if I don't believe it, because
it's amazing how many of my friends who don't believe
in Jesus Christ, when when things hit the wall, I'm
their first call. Why is that? Well, something in my
(22:21):
life has told them, built off of testimony. Thankful to
the Spirit's power that He'll pray he knows Jesus he believes.
So there is something intrinsically in people that are questioning
what that is and are attracted to be around it
even if they don't believe it, which is really really fascinating. Yeah,
so your question about we're not of the world, we're
(22:42):
going to lose some that if we cut corners and
didn't do the right thing, we might win. But I
have to lay my head down every single night and
know that who I am. If you were in this
room or y'all all walked out, I'm the same person.
So I don't compartment in a life of my life.
I don't have work, I don't have family, and I
don't have church, have life, and they all intercede and
(23:03):
I'm the same guy in all of those applications. And
so when you do that, it just makes it easier
just to be you and be spirit filled and let
the spirit lead you where you're supposed to go. Yeah,
that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
I wrote down earlier before you even got here, Colossians
three twenty three. Whatever you do, work at it with
all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men.
And that's literally what I hear out of you, and
I think it's honorable, Like you said, it's point number one.
It's honorable, and that's that's what That's what I'm hearing
from you, at least in what you do. And I'm
(23:36):
just navigating this tension between you know, a successful business,
staying grounded in family and faith. You're saying that it
all works together, it's all under one thing. Navigating those
tensions and you know, being a business owner and being
a father, being a husband, doing it all at once.
(23:57):
What are some practical ways that you stay arounded?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Well, Number one, honesty and having conversations with the people
around you. So I've got a lot of people in
my life that I literally can call it any given
time when I mean, it's been a tough week, y'all
know about this. My mother in law died last Thursday.
And the first thing that found, the guy that set
all this up, one of my dearest friends that lives
across from me, that that's in the music industry, said hey,
(24:22):
we'll cancel it. I mean no, no, no, no, no, no no, no,
we don't cancel this stuff because this in the amount.
Whenever there's tragedy, that is when the Gospels needed the most,
especially around death because house to we explain it otherwise.
So when you say, what are some practical things? Number One,
you have to have a family, a crew of people
around you that you can literally walk in and I
(24:42):
can say, guys, I'm struggling. This twenty twenty five has
been a hard year. I'm trying to make sense of
how to pray at the end of my mother in
law's life and battle with cancer. Do you pray for
it to be resolved? Do you prayed to run in
the arms of Jesus? First time in my life I've
said her and said I don't even know which one
to pray, pray on both and or. Twenty twenty five
is a tough year. Tariffs have called our business to
(25:03):
be just. It is the most radical, unpredictable year in
the history of the world. And how do I go
into people and say, hey, last year was great. This
year was supposed to be awesome for something out of
our control. Our entire business year is messed up. So
you have to be able to say, and I'm struggling,
and I don't understand why and why is this happening now?
(25:24):
And my prayer life is horrible, And you have to
be very vulnerable with that right, So my compadres can
see that, my family can see that. So I don't
hide that from my wife. The only thing I'd try
my best not to do is put anything weight on
her that the shoulders can't bear, because I'm supposed to
bear most of that brunt, right, But she needs to
know when her husband is suffering, or when he's struggling,
(25:44):
or when he's not sure of something. And the kids
need to see it too, because what that looks like
for all those people in my life is it looks
like a guy that's got splinters in his hands and
bruis knees because I'm holding on to a cross and
I'm hitting my knees to pray as much as I can.
And that is as real as we can be to say,
when all this stuff happens, the practicality of us to
realize that I'm depending on something outside of me. Yeah,
(26:07):
And I do that with my prayer, with my communication.
Don't not to scare anyone, right, My kids aren't going
old Dad's in trouble. It's no let me show you
where Dad struggles, because you do need to see it, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And that's what makes the like you have a spirit
of a boldness and courage, which I love and it's
obvious and we love to kind of like just encourage
people on this podcast and man that it's so clear,
like just God's courage, confidence and boldness all over you.
But also what makes that believable was vulnerability, like the
(26:38):
authenticity of like it's not always just like, yeah, let's
push through, smash the wall, but like absolutely that's what
we call to do. But also that really hurt. It did,
and this year has kicked my butt, it has, and
I need I need people around me. You know, I'm
not just strong, and so above all of that, I
(26:58):
need Jesus. And at the end of the day day
grace is made perfect in my weakness, not in my strength,
not in a look at me, watch what I can
do again echoing what you said, not in a hey,
I'm looking for the credit. But my weakness gives credit
to God does. And the fact of the honesty of
that makes that believable. And so then it's the courage
is and a confidence in my own ability. It's a
confidence in God's power through my weakness. And that's courage.
(27:23):
That's courage that I can go through that process and
go Man, I don't have what it takes. But watch
me run through this wall and give God the credit.
Like that's the that is beautiful and I sense that.
And man, just to see I hope that anything of
this it's contagious. I hope that it's contagious. I think
contagious courageousness.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
But it's true.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
It's like that's what I want. I'm like, I'm getting it.
But the more that we have these conversations, it's like
I have you know, I have more courage than when
I walked in this morning because your example, and it's
like we need in couragement. That's the definition. It's not
just like, hey, man, you're doing great. You know, it's
like putting courage into people. And that's what you're doing.
(28:09):
That's your testimony, bro, And I love that.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
I want to lean into you talking about letting your
kids see what you struggle with because I've got a
four year old and one year old, so I'm not
quite there yet. So just for my own selfishness, wanting
to like just know more about this because I think
this is such an interesting topic because I feel like
a lot of times, as a parent, you want to
shelter your kids and like protect them from the ways
(28:34):
of the world and things like that. But I think
this is really really important too, because we're all not perfect.
We are all going to struggle, and we're all going
to need to lean on those other people. So I'd
love to know more about letting your kids see the
struggle and do they now as being older, do they
like help you through some of that? Are they praying
with you and praying for you? Like what does that
(28:55):
look like?
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, well, great question, And there's a lot to unpack there.
I think Number one, we cannot talk about how wonderful
our savior is if we're not constantly reminded what we're
saved from and what we're safe too. And so what
I need And I've got a nineteen year old, a
seventeen year old, a thirteen year old, now the thirteen
year old, like a thirty one year old. If we
(29:16):
could be honest, she's gonna be the president of the
United States, like if not, maybe an other country because
she's she is in charge. But what they all what
I got comfortable doing. And this started with a black book.
So I have a black book that most salespeople have
that have all the names of their best contacts and
phone numbers, and that's not what my black book is.
(29:37):
My black book is all of life's lessons that I've
learned and how it relates to the Gospel, and I
just write them down. And so it started to be
what I was going to hand to Jack at probably
at his wedding, right or maybe when he graduates. I
don't know. I don't even have a time written down,
but I'm constantly writing in them, simple things that either
I've learned from from family, friends, life, business, you name it, right.
(29:59):
And as I started writing those down, I started thinking, Man,
wouldn't that be a shame if my kids never saw
all of this and the process that it goes through
here to get it and they just started reading about it.
And what if they only got it after I died?
You know, you start going through all these thought processes.
So it became about and as you've mentioned earlier, I do,
from time to time teach. So what I have learned
to do is to bring them in and say, the
(30:23):
Lord put John twenty one fifteen through nineteen on Dad's heart.
I didn't know why, but let me tell you why,
because now, after studying it, here's where I was this
is what I was struggling with. If the Lord like
I'll give you an example. I literally just taught a
Place of Hope on Sunday and the whole message was
about Peter's denial and then Jesus coming back. And you
(30:44):
were familiar with this story, THO, absolutely charcoal, fire is fire.
When he denies him, it's fire there when he asks
them three times do you love me? And he changes
from a god they love to Falao love, basically saying
love me as a human right. And this whole thing,
he's either the way mak or he's not. And at
the end of the day, I have been questioning so
much that I did not sit up in front while
(31:04):
Jesus was on a cross and in front of people
in a courtyard by a chower crow fire and denied
Jesus three times. But I did because I kept going,
I don't know how we're getting out of this. I
don't know how we're going to make it through this.
That's denial. And so I drag that up in front
of my children and my wife and go, this is
what dad's hearts look like. Com but God did this,
(31:26):
and now I'm here, so I guess what I would
say to that is application is I don't want to
worry my children, and they're not worried about Dad, but
they got to see Dad's brokenness. They got to see
where Dad is clinging to the cross. They've got to
see where I keep running back, where I repent. And
so that's what I try, especially even with my temper.
If I lose my temper, I go back and go
That's why I need Jesus. Do you see that an
(31:48):
application like that is where Paul's talking about, why do
I do the things I shouldn't do and not do
the things I want to do. There's still a battle
with the flesh even though I'm a saint, And it's
good for them to see it so they don't think
something is going to be perfect just because you're a believer,
because that's not true.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, it's so good and it's such a good process
for them to go on at an early age because
for most people, the rooster, like before the rooster crows
three times, you're going to deny me. The rooster torments people.
It's like, let me move away, you know where there's
no roosters, because like this reminds me, this is a
shame rooster, But it's actually the rooster of grace. God
(32:22):
didn't do it out of kindness to remind you every
single day at dawn his mercies are you every morning.
The tether of his grace to the rooster, that you
would hear and remember not what you've done, but how
good he is is the beautiful thing of the chuck
off fire. And it's one of my favorite scriptures in
the Bible too, because that's me all day. Shame will
wake you up with terror or with grace, with new mercies,
(32:46):
or with I suck and I'm not good enough even
even get through this day. True, And the reminder of
that is God's intent. That's how kind he is. You
look at it and go back to the unfair and like,
why I don't understand the rooster, Come on any anything else,
like give them tie it to the lizard, the lizard
or something you know that's not going to be cockadoodle
(33:06):
doing in the morning. It's beautiful. That's the redemptive grace
of Jesus.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
So I would say, write it down, Write it down.
When they're old enough, tell them, show them, explain to them.
At the end of the day, here's what I have
really realized they're gonna get it from someone, so why
not get it from you. They're going to get quote
unquote the truth from someone, So I would much rather
(33:34):
it be from the Bible. And i'd much whether it
be from our home, and much whether it be gospel
centered than than Chuck at school. You know what I mean.
There's nothing against Chuck. I just would prefer that the spirit,
me know, it's spirit failled to be giving them what
we believe is happening, or even how to deal with struggles.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Deuteronomy six commands us to keep God's word on our
hearts and teach it to our children.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Yeah, it's happening by design or by default.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Discipleship is happening by designer, but fault, and we choose
based upon our intentionality. I don't want I got four
beautiful children that the world is trying to disciple every day. Yes,
and it's not with good things. I got a nine
year old boy who right now is like in that
time frame of like he's basically that teenager. You know,
(34:21):
he's going on thirty himself. And if I'm not intentionally discipling,
take them on the process, walk them through, walk with me.
That's what discipleship is. It's not even just like here's
the latest thought, or here's the you know, here's my
latest book. It's like doing life for them, to processing
on the on the nuances of just around the chark
with hey, let's have breakfast. That was the conversation in
(34:42):
John twenty one.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
It is exactly right, it's exactly right. And I think
I think what we they thought the quote was from
for them, but the quote that I wrote up on
our kitchen board was for me, which is every morning,
the world's going to ask you who you are, and
if you don't tell them, it'll tell you. And so
what I started thinking was, well, I better tell my
kids who they are are in Christ, because if you're
in Christ, this is who you are, This is the
(35:04):
strength you have. And by the way, we don't worry
about the rest of it. And it's interesting because you
talked about a little bit, how does you know you're
a vice president of sales for a company that does
a lot of dollars, but you're also not of this world.
And then you think about things that we even say,
like we talk about all the time that our job
is to work as hard as we possibly can the
Lord delivers the results. You just don't hear that in
(35:26):
very many businesses. So it's like, hey, we want you
to their numbers are important, performance is important, but the
only thing you can control is the input. We do
not control the output. And that's also in our lives.
Like at the end of the day, our kids, us
are going to walk into things and there's gonna be stuff,
there's gonna be circumstances that go that's unfair. But at
(35:47):
that moment, that's when you go, wait a minute, Jesus
has this. He knew I'd be here, he was here
before me, He's prepared something after this. I just have
to trust and I have to be okay with this
not the way that I would draw it up, and
that that actually has taken a long time for me
to get to that point. And I'll be honest, that
is the most where I struggle is right there, Yeah,
(36:08):
right in that spot.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (36:11):
I feel like that's all of us. That's just a
human reaction.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
You know.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
It's tough.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
It's hard to pick up your cross daily, you know,
And I think that just to pour into you a
little bit more like the encouragement that I'm hearing out
of you and just the humanness of you, but also
just leaning into Jesus every single time, like this isn't
about me. And that's what we've always said about this podcast,
like it's not about us, Like this isn't this microphone,
(36:37):
isn't for Brooke Taylor or for Mark Evans. This is
for something else. It's not for us.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
And I'm listening that may need to hear something that's
being said.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Absolutely, And that's the beautiful thing. It's like when you
figure that and you get out the way to the
amount of times that I've been in the way, and
it's like I've been the architect of my own disappointment. Right,
That's something I think about all the time and I
have to keep bringing to God. It's like, well, I'm disappointed,
and why did this happen to me? And I was like, oh,
guess who's there. And then he shows me a mirror
and he's like, here's the architect. You want to see
(37:06):
who created that disappointment And I'm like, but that's.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Me, that's right.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I like, dang it, I did it again. I got
in the way, I took control, thought I could do
it in my own strength, thought I could control the outcome.
That's beautiful. The input you're in control of. Yes, you
can treat you can control how you treat others, but
you can't control how the people treat you. And my
injustice is focused on the output and the outcomes that
(37:31):
I can't control. And God was like, here's a mirror,
mark right, here's what you're in control of. Here's what
you should be doing. So doesn't make it easy.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
No, no, no, And that that's why I use the
word that is my constant battle. And it's weird because
you're you're in one in one saying you're saying I
believe in you, Jesus, you're saying I just don't trust you, dang,
and that that's a hard thing for you to hear
come out of your mouth, just like it was a
hard thing for Peter to hear the denials three times
come out of this. He knew on the third one
(38:01):
what he'd done. And instead of you, you so succinctly
brought that back together because fifteen through twenty one is
basically Jesus coming back going no, no, no, no no. I'm not
here to shame you. I'm here to restore you. Like, hey,
do you love me, No, you don't love me the way,
and he uses a god they love on purpose because
you can't love me that way. So what he says
(38:22):
at the very end is I love you humanly because
that's how you love me. I'll meet you where you are.
But that's why you need me, because I love you
in a way that you don't know. And I love
you when you deny me. Even when Chris Tally says,
there's no way we're going to get through this. This
business is going to be broken up. And if we're
I said this the other day at the circle, you
brought the circle up, I'm literally in front of I'd
never have this thought. I was literally libbing on the
(38:45):
intro how to get to a message of which I
looked at a group of two hundred students. Instead, I
am more afraid of losing my company than i'm death,
And I went, did I just say that out loud?
But why did I say that? Because that's where the
idol is, that's where the fear is, because death. I
believe in Jesus. I believe in the eternal promise. I
(39:07):
believe he is sufficient for heaven. I'm not worried about glorification.
I'm actually worried. Do you care enough to get me
through logo brands through twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:15):
And a big God can't care enough about that. And
that's actually not true. So that's where I have to
hit my knees and go, actually, this is true, and
so is this. This just may not look the way
you want it to.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
It's powerful. It's exactly what God's doing in me, like
to the tea. You know, there's a story in the Bible,
the True Story about two women who come before King Solomon.
Both of them are saying this baby is mine and
the other one is saying, nope, it's mine. And they're
(39:49):
going through and one's telling the truth, and one is
envious because she couldn't have her own and his liones
and just I want, I want this, but it wasn't hers.
One was absolutely has to have. So then Solomon goes
in his wisdom, well you know what we're gonna do,
and he doesn't mean it, but it's the test. We're
gonna cut the baby in half and then you can
(40:10):
have half the baby, and it's it's kind of a
crazy story. But one woman is like, all right, fine,
I'll just have half a baby as long as no
one gets it and the other one's like, absolutely not,
she can have it, let it live. That's the mom,
and that is the mom. That's whose baby is. If
God gave you logo brands, he's not gonna let it
(40:33):
go to part yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And if he does, it's going to be okay.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
And that's and that is the that is the right.
I'm a just judge. And it's like, God, I surrender,
Abraham Isaac. If it's your promise. You gave me this gift,
so I give it back to you. It's not so
that you can destroy it, not so that it fails.
But God, you're a sovereign and that I believe you,
But do I trust you? That's where the rubber hits
(40:59):
the road. That's why that even that story is confronting.
It's like, that's a gritty to quote a culture. I
love that culture. That's a gritty story. But that's the
truth that that confronts. That is the definition of It's
not a nice thing to look into the mirror sometimes
and go I believe him, but do I trust him?
(41:20):
When you're talking about my baby, we're talking about logo
brands in the garage. This is my baby.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
You're a hundred percent right.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
So here you go. That's right, and you know what,
God's going to give it back. I can like, dude,
this is there's so much life in this way. I
feel there's so much life in you. There's so much
The tariffs are annoying. Let's probably.
Speaker 1 (41:40):
Annoyers. Let's Supreme Court is going to rule them illegal.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
We import elia screens absolutely bro fire up.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
But at the end of the day, once again, I
think that I think that the spirit softens you enough
to trust to go. Even if he doesn't hand it
back the way I think he should, We're gonna be okay.
And that's the thing because then you go back and
then you say, well, how do you how do you
know that? And you look down and go, well, because
I can look at a track record, and I look
at a Bible, and I can look at all the
(42:10):
things that have happened and go, the same guy that
was theirs now, So I'm I'm not worried about it.
It's the moments when I'm worried about it that I've
got to remember to snap out of that and go,
what are you doing? That's the devil tempting me? And
trying to make me lose faith in what could happen
and what should happen.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
And same the fact that you're scared of that more
than dying, and that you said that by even saying that,
that destroys the power it does. And that's the process
of like the honesty of it to torment you up
on the inside. And if it didn't cost, if it
wasn't hard and it didn't have that kind of cost
attached to it, it wouldn't have the value either. It's beautiful.
(42:47):
And that's like, have we said this before. I don't know,
maybe we said this before, but we're going on a
bear hunt. Can go under, it can't go over. It
got to go through it. Praise God.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
That's exactly. I am thankful for a new chapter. Let's started,
let's started doing it. And that Matt the other day said, oh,
we'll just pray for new trials, Like, oh, let's just uh,
let's just pray to get through twenty twenty five for
right now. Let's let's be that be our prayer and
that'd be great, that'd be great. Yeah, that's enough.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Uh, just kind of tying this all together. Someone who
might be listening to this excuse me that maybe their
faith in their career just seems so separate and having
the boldness to put them together, or maybe they're looking
for a way to help meld them together. Is there
any advice that you could give to someone that might
be filling that way.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
We'll come work for local brands.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
No.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
I would say that you cannot serve two masters and
you cannot be two different people. And so I think
you you said it. You got to drag it out.
You got to tell people who you are. You have
to tell them who your identity is in and if
that's not for them, then they're gonna they're gonna let
you go and you're gonna go find something else to do.
And to have to understand that that's where the actual
(43:57):
freedom comes in, because the Him for me is not
that in anything other than of what a promise that's coming.
It's what the promise that's been done. So the freedom
comes from the power on a cross two thousand years ago.
And to know if you can do that, then you
can do anything. And so at the end of the day,
I would say, the most practical thing I can say
is tell the people around you about Jesus and just
(44:20):
be willing to live with the results. So many people.
The fear to mention the gospel is way way in
relation out of whack to people's response to it. Most people,
if they deny it. Most people that deny it very
vehemently and loudly are the ones that are closest enough
to understand the real draw to it and the need
(44:43):
for it, and they don't want to admit it. And
the people that are absolutely oblivious to it. It's like
having a conversation about what color are going to pain
a wall. They don't care. So I do think the
application would be we're called to tell people about Him
and what he's done for you, and that calling goes
over where you work, the paycheck that you get, and
when you do put those priorities right, you realize he's
(45:04):
going to be able to delivery. He made Manna come
out of heaven when they cross the Red Sea when
they said, where's all the food? So if he can
do that, he can surely replace your twenty two dollars
an hour job or your five hundred thousand dollars job
that you have her salary. Just tell people about Christ.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
M hm so good, Yeah, so good.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I've been wanting to this been in the back of
my head and I've been deciding to do I bring
it up, but to sell this pen.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Oh gosh, yes, let's do this.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
I'm broadly I don't want to necessarily do it unless
you're ready for the sell this pen. But I'm just saying,
like say, like I love it. It comes up my algorithm
every time I've watched ten different versions of it. But
like you're in sales. Yeah, you're obviously very good at it.
Some would say, some would say, what is the greatest
sell this pen? Advice?
Speaker 1 (45:53):
You know, the advice is tell me yours. I'm selling
you the pin? Right, what do you do for a living?
Speaker 2 (45:58):
My pasta?
Speaker 1 (45:59):
So the pin color, it doesn't matter. It could be pencil.
Matter of fact, we probably should sell you a pencil
because you're going to race more than you need to
write and permanent. What did I just do there?
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Switch it up?
Speaker 1 (46:08):
I made it about you because it's not selling me
the pen for the quality, it's what's the pen being
used for. And so what's beautiful about sales is that
if there is no need, there is no sell. Otherwise
that goes to the line snake oil sales person that
everybody hates to use carsmen, So why do I ask that.
If you're a teacher, then I need a red pin.
(46:29):
If you're a banker, I need a bluepen because you
signed documents that have to have color and seeded. So
I think understanding where people are it's very biblical. What
does Jesus do? He meets you where you are, right.
He doesn't wait for you to come to church, get
your life cleaned up, and then say now you're applicable
for being saved. He depends on what the man on
the middle cross said. And the man on the middle
(46:50):
cross said you could come, and that's the only qualification
you need. So selling you a pin is the exact
same things to me, go where are you? What do
you need it for? What are you using it for?
Because if you're a student and you just need a
pen to take a couple of notes, you need a
twelve cent pen. Yeah, if you're a banker that has
a ton of money, it has a bunch of clients
that come in, you need a very very nice blue pin,
(47:12):
and I have to sell each what they need.
Speaker 2 (47:15):
So good, How would Jesus sell a pen the way
I just told you. I've never heard that that's exactly right.
That's beautiful. Wow, how would so good?
Speaker 4 (47:23):
How would Jesus sell it? Pen that's the name of
this episode, and it's right.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
He would sell it exactly like your fingerprint.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Just for you, just for you, the way you need it.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
Right where you're at. Yes, exactly what you need, Chris.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
This has been such an encouraging episode. I know that
I've taken a lot from this. And I think, Mark,
you have to speak into just stuff in his life.
Speaker 4 (47:44):
And I think that's what this is all about.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
It's just kind of bringing each other together and just
talking about things and lend the Holy Spirit guide. And
I know somebody listening to this right now has probably
gotten an answer to something that they needed an answer to.
Maybe I learned how to sell a pen, oh, which
is great.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Maybe they're going to apply from Jesus and know how
to sell a band and come get a jobs and.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I freaking love it. Okay, Well, I want to just
kind of wrap things up today. We always like to
to just know how we can be praying for you
in this season.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
Two things for my family to be strong and to
exemplify Jesus through the arrangements for my mother in law,
and two would be to continue continually, continually keep me
at the right spot, which is that I know that
I can trust him and believe him at the same time.
So trust and belief. That's good.
Speaker 4 (48:35):
All right, Well, I'm going to pray us out if
you do not mind I'm telling at all.
Speaker 3 (48:38):
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, just thank you for today, thank
you for this conversation and the words that you've spoken
through these microphones. We are so grateful for Chris and
his heart that he is just so unapologetic in sharing
the word of Jesus. And Lord, we just we just
say thank you for him. We say thank you for
his boldness, thank you for his character, thank you that
(49:00):
that he is humble and just faithful to you Lord.
Speaker 4 (49:03):
And he's just honorable. God.
Speaker 3 (49:04):
I just I love that he said the word honorable,
because that is a word that I just feel exemplifies
who he is. And we just say thank you for
depositing all of these characteristics into Chris. And God, just
thank you for his family and this season of loss. God,
we just pray that you keep them strong, Lord, that
you give them they just love and the peace that
(49:27):
surpasses all understanding. As they walk through just such a
difficult time. Lord, but thank you Lord that his mother
in law is now with you, and we're just we're
so grateful that she is no longer in pain. And God,
we just honor you for that and say thank you
for taking away that pain.
Speaker 1 (49:44):
God.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
We just continue to pray over Chris's family and his
kids and his marriage. Lord, that you would just keep
them strong, that you would just continue to just use
their words to talk about you, that they would bring
people closer to you, Lord, that they would just continue
to be unapologetic in their faith. And we just asked
that you continue to work through Chris and the rest
(50:08):
of this season of a difficult year. God, that you
would just allow him to trust you, that you would
just allow him to believe you, that he would just
he would just know that You've.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
Got this in your heavenly name. We pray Amen.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Amen, Amen, Thanks guys, thank you.
Speaker 4 (50:24):
Yeah,
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