Brad Sousa - CTO at AVI Systems

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:00) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Brad, the CTO at AVI Systems, and we have a follow-up discussion to part one of Faith in the Workplace. We discuss how to redefine the definition of productivity and the importance of finding a community where you can make real relationships. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast.

(Brad at 00:00:24) Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:25) This is the Modern CTO Podcast. But let's talk about you. I want to know what's been going on this past year. I've been watching your YouTube videos, or at least you put out one YouTube video talking about getting back to work. It was well done. I really enjoyed it.

(Brad at 00:00:46) Thank you. Yeah, we've been—so when the pandemic hit, a week before the pandemic hit, we heard everybody talking about this whole national shutdown and blah blah blah, and we all kind of scoffed at it. I got my team together, and I think I shared the story with you and said, "Hey, we've got a week. What can we do in seven days to bring something new to the marketplace? Let's begin to imagine what customers are going to be doing." And that shifted our go-to-market model, and we've been delivering these kind of inspirational plus thought leadership plus very actionable outcomes. And that, quite honestly, has kept us going in a lot of ways. So from a business perspective, we've reinvented ourselves. We bought into a global alliance. We're the largest shareholder of this global delivery model that enables us now to work in 50 countries. And the scale and opportunity has just really exceeded my expectations. And so that's been fun. The new technologies that we've come up with have just been outrageously cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:02) What are they?

(Brad at 00:02:03) Yeah, so you talk about some of the YouTube. There's just a ton of content that we've created. And then on top of that, kind of reimagined what an all-hands meeting could look like, reimagined what keynotes could look like where it's not slide decks and very linear. It's, you know, integrated with video and motion graphics and all this other kind of stuff, and become more storytelling, a little bit less about communicating facts. That's really launched a lot of activity with our customers and kind of transformed how they communicate to their workforce. Family has been awesome. So in March—we had, March of last year, we had our ninth grandchild was born, and that's been fun. They live close. They live in Vegas, so that's kind of close to us, and we spend time with them. We had part of our family move to Nashville. We already had a daughter in Nashville. We had a son, his wife, their four kids move to Nashville. So we actually haven't—as my wife and I, we haven't actually slowed down much. We're not traveling at the pace that we used to, but we haven't really stayed home either. And that's been interesting through the whole pandemic and that kind of thing. So personal and business have been good.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:25) You were at a studio last time, right? You were in Vegas at a studio. That's when we talked.

(Brad at 00:03:30) In a lost studio, yeah, exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:33) Are you—so are you out camping and visiting them, or you just staying at their house? Or how are you traveling around and visiting them?

(Brad at 00:03:40) So it's a little bit of everything. Not so much camping. We've done a lot of hotels. We've spent a lot of time with them and the kids and that kind of stuff because we want to live life with our kids and our grandkids, not just visit, to the extent that they want us to do that as well. And we spend a lot of time, and as a result of that, our grandkids are, you know, entering into the teenage years. So sometimes it's helpful for the parents to have some grandparents around.

(Joel Beasley at 00:04:13) Right. What about your personal routines? They must have gotten shaken up. You had to rebuild those.

(Brad at 00:04:19) Oh, clearly. Gosh, where do I start on that? So on the personal routines, I've learned to put aside time every day to just be quiet, meditate, have a conversation with myself, with God, with whomever, do a lot of reading. I've done a ton of reading through all of this, and that's been very different because I've been pretty much get up in the morning, light the afterburner, go until it's dark, right? And so having that enter into my life and be kind of part of my life, that's been really helpful for me. In terms of other kind of personal lessons that I've had to learn, what do those look like? Gosh, I don't know. How about you? Maybe listening to you might spark some ideas for me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:05:15) Well, I mean, everything changed. My fitness was the hard one because, you know, the gyms originally closed, and so that made me have to figure out how to keep that routine up. Obviously not being in the office changed my lunch schedules, my work schedules. But I think the trend is that it forced everybody to be very intentional about the use of their time, whether they were an in-person company that went remote and then had to figure out how to track progress and things like that. I think being very intentional about your time, revisiting my schedule, adjusting it—it was, I think it is very similar to how it was before because I was doing this almost on a quarterly basis, just revisiting. But it was a shock to the system. It was immediately redo everything, and then I kind of had to just deal with it. It's frustrating if you take all of your habits and just change them.

(Brad at 00:06:14) Yeah, and I think for me—so one of the things that did happen, and you gave me a minute to kind of gather my thoughts. One of the things is I found myself having to redefine what productivity looked like because it very quickly turned into productive means I'm meeting with people or talking with people. And while that might be part of being productive, it's not actually always productive. It's sometimes more busyness than business. And I've had to realize that that's not the definition of productive. And then I've had to really help myself and my team get to a place where we realized that we had to be very intentional, not just about the work product that we're working on together, but the interpersonal connections had to be very intentional because they were things that would happen as a result of proximity. And with the proximity reduced or eliminated, we had to discover new ways to be very intentional about developing those interpersonal skills. And a lot of people—and you know my team, you know them firsthand, right, because we work together and you've helped us with our leadership experiences. And what that did is it forced us to find different ways of making sure that the EQ remained high between us, not just the IQ. And that EQ, that was harder than I would have imagined it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:07:55) Especially when, you know, you have this social credit when you're in office, right? These interactions. And then it can become sort of transactional through a Slack or a Teams. And so monitoring that balance and connecting with those individuals all of a sudden just looks different.

(Brad at 00:08:10) Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And generally we as a team are together at least once a quarter. We're probably in a pre-pandemic world, we were together once a month someplace, just not always the same place, just someplace. We all ended up someplace together. And once a year we would do a really intensive workshop, planning workshop, all of that kind of stuff. It was very inspirational. I bring in friends of mine that might, you know, speak or inspire us in this small group. And then on the weekends, the spouses would fly in, and we would all as a family basically spend time together just doing something over the weekend. And obviously we weren't able to do that. And I can see that the team is struggling as a result of not having that connection and proximity to each other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:06) That's—for me, and I think this is probably a good segue—that's, I've been really grateful about the church family that I have. Because, you know, regardless of what religion, I tell people get plugged in to your local church, because a group of people who desire to do good and, you know, move the world forward, being around those types of people and being in community with them, it just affects your entire life, right?

(Brad at 00:09:30) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:31) And you have typically, we would have our office family, right? The people that you're interacting with and having social conversations with. But then you remove all of that and you're stuck at home, and if you don't—we're made to be in relationship with other people. The worst punishment you can have in life is not even death. It's solitary confinement.

(Brad at 00:09:55) Dude, it's so true. It's so true. And for us, this is another kind of personal transition for us. And it started prior to the pandemic, but it had a really profound impact on us during the pandemic. A few years ago, several years ago, I think I shared with you that I was doing a lot of teaching and a lot of men's ministry and different things like that. And then a few years ago, about three, my wife Janelle—generally it starts with her. I'm the one that's unaware, right? And she started saying, "You know, I just sense like God's telling us that there's something different that's going to be happening with, you know, the ministry and serving and things that we're doing." And sure enough, about a year later, we saw that what God was beginning to speak with us about, he was actually planning us to do something a little bit different. The church that we were serving at, and we had the pleasure of being, you know, part of the teaching team on, prior to the pandemic had birthed four other churches in the San Diego area. And so we began to kind of—so what's going on with those people? Because those people, the pastors of those churches are very close to us. They're out pastoring at another place. And we found ourselves in that process being drawn to a church really close to our home. And so for the first time in a long time, my office is five minutes from my house, and our church is in that same community. And having all of that together in a really local, close proximity to each other has been very different for us. And so we've taken on a very different role at that church, and that's been just a joy, quite honestly. It's been so cool there. But it's a very different kind of ministry and expression of church, and we found ourselves—that was a transition. And it created a need to kind of build a different sense of community, like you said, through the church during the pandemic. So it was all interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:05) So are you officially a pastor? I don't even know what makes a pastor official.

(Brad at 00:12:10) So do I have a—I don't think I have a title. So one of the things that we've learned over the years, we've had the titles at multiple churches in the past. And at the last couple of churches that we've been at, we've actually, I think, had more impact without the title. And I think that, you know, the role pastor, sometimes that's expressed in the Bible as a gift, a gifting, and other times it's expressed as an office. And those who have the gifting don't always have the office. Sometimes those who have the office don't have the gifting. And so for the last, I don't know, fifteen years, maybe twelve or fifteen years, we've had the gifting and we've functioned in that role. And the church leadership recognizes us in that role, and the congregation does as well. But we don't carry an official title as pastor. And quite honestly, it doesn't matter to me whether we have that title or not. So I don't know if maybe that helps explain.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:10) You know what just popped into my head? You know, from my experience, 80% of the leadership content comes from the church. That was one of the things that got me interested in this topic and sort of on my list of pros, why to do this faith in the workplace. It started because a guest came on, did a rocket ship company, super exciting, and he started talking about God, and I kind of didn't know how to do that. I have God in my personal life, but, you know, at work I had no clue what, how people would respond to that, or, you know, I was just at a loss. And so I said, what I need to do is I need to go get more involved in my church and be around people who understand how to talk about God and spirituality and be open. I happen to go to a very open church. And really understand how to get these words right, like how to talk about God, how to talk about faith in the workplace. And then I thought, you know, who do I know that's really good about this that's in the tech world, and you were the first name to pop into my head. And then I had Pastor Randy on. He's been my pastor for about eight or nine years. And then I figured we would have you on and talk about it because he's full-on pastor, you're full-on technology and pastor. So I figured it'd be good perspective.

(Brad at 00:14:33) Yeah, that was super cool. I listened—I heard his podcast with your pastor. Super interesting. Loved the conversation.

(Joel Beasley at 00:14:40) Yeah. And leaders—so that leadership stuff that just popped into my head, have you noticed that before? If you go look at the leadership authors, a lot of it comes from faith.

(Brad at 00:14:51) Yeah, yeah. And it's been that way actually for quite a long time, right? You know, and you look at some of the classics like Maxwell and others. And you can see where good leadership has a direct connection to compassion and good leadership has a direct connection to a sense of building community and bringing that community to a place that, you know, generally the community at large wants to go. And whether that community is a faith-based community—we call that church—whether that community is actually a social community, you know, that's a neighborhood I live in, or whether that community is in the workplace, I think that the ability to create a sense of community and lead that community there is something that hopefully good pastors have done. But there's another attribute to this that I think is super interesting. And that is, since the beginning of our country—maybe I'll go there—since the beginning of our country, way before the Declaration of Independence, the Bible was the foundation of what good social behavior was, irrespective of whether you saw it as a God-inspired, you know, providential document or not, or liturgy, or whether you just saw it as a social construct. Believers and unbelievers generally respected and received it as kind of the definition of good social behavior. And so those who study the Bible have always—are also been really good at leadership, it seems.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:34) Yeah, I listened to your—I don't know what the title was, but you sent it over this morning.

(Brad at 00:16:41) Oh, the "Tender Functions of Christians and Work"?

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:44) Yeah, that was good.

(Brad at 00:16:46) Thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:47) I like how you discussed the importance of work and how to think about work and some justification for doing a really good job at work. And I love that you talked about the mentality that—and you were exactly right, you nailed it on the head—a lot of the media today will make people feel like victims and that they should be entitled to not have to work. They should get something for free. And that's a recipe for disaster. You don't even get to feel good if you sit at home. I mean, Brad, if you sit at home all day and do nothing, you don't feel good. You're just like—that's a human thing. It's embedded in us. You want to do good work.

(Brad at 00:17:29) That's right. And the thing that I find really interesting is that when you carry—I think in that message I talked about the association of this entitlement of kind of being in a victim or victimization. And when you carry that sense of victim, you now have—you've resigned yourself to having no authority or control over what the outcome is. You're wholly dependent. The more you buy into that victim mindset, you're wholly dependent on somebody else solving the problem for you.

(Brad at 00:18:02) But that's the absolute opposite of what somebody who's carrying a sense of faith or the Christian principles—that's really meant to enable you to regain lost authority in your life and find ways to move you and your family forward. It's a completely different perspective in life, I think.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:26) Can I open up a little bit and talk to you about some of my hesitations or hold-ups on my progression and my spiritual path?

(Brad at 00:18:37) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:38) So I was, you know, I started going to church. I was like, okay, there's this dude, Jesus, and he's doing some good work. And I was pretty sold on his methodology and his concepts and his teaching. I was like, this is really brilliant. Got super hung up on the superhero part, right? Like, all the stories in the Bible, the difficult physics problems. I won't say impossible because I'm totally cool with aliens coming down and beaming of light and having people suck up into a ship. So if I'm cool with that, I've got to be cool with someone else floating into the sky, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:17) So that just hung me up for a while as, I'd say, as a technologist, as a very analytical type of person—or at least that part of me kind of held me up. And then I was really struggling with it on the lead-up to Pastor Randy's podcast because I was going to ask him about this, because he's my pastor. So it's a personal thing. He knows me. He sees me every week.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:40) And but on that journey, that month up to knowing the podcast was going to happen, struggling with this, thinking about this, writing all these notes, I came to the conclusion that for right now, the details don't matter to me. Like, splicing the minute detail of, did that one action—was it two loaves of bread or did everybody have some bread? The details of the story—whether it—it just doesn't matter to me because it's the principle of the story. It's the concept. It's the teachings.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:15) It's what you can extract from it. And so I became, I guess, of this view of, I'm okay with whether it happened or not. I don't really—I don't need the superhero stuff to be true or the physics-difficult stuff to be true in order for me to follow this path of life, because I have lived multiple different ways, and subjectively, this brings me the most joy. And so for me, this is my path, and I'm okay with that.

(Brad at 00:20:43) Yeah. Yeah. So I'll share with you some ideas on this because I think this is a great topic. So first is this idea that I think all of us, irrespective of whether we're aware of it or not, are on some sort of journey to try and understand our connection with God, whether he exists or not. And like what your pastor said on the podcast, really trying to understand our purpose in life.

(Brad at 00:21:11) And I'm a believer that if you're really going to understand your purpose, you have to—if you're going to understand the purpose of something, you have to go to the creator. And once you connect to the creator of it, you can begin to understand and rationalize what the purpose of the created thing is, regardless whether that's a human or something else, right? Here's kind of the second part to the—so the first part is we're all on a journey, and sometimes the things we struggle with, we're just not at a place where we can understand the fundamentals of it.

(Brad at 00:21:42) Here's the second thing. I think, along with that, the results of what I know, the truth, and what I've learned gives me the ability to accept—to accept what the Bible says about the things I don't really understand. So there's this preponderance of evidence kind of thing that you begin to apply, and you say, man, I can't figure out that five loaves and two fishes thing. That just doesn't make sense to me, as an example. Or how you're going to raise somebody from the dead—that just doesn't make sense to me.

(Brad at 00:22:18) But here's what I do know about God based upon what the Bible says and my experience and firsthand knowledge and all of that kind of stuff. And if that evidence is true based upon what I do know, then I guess I have enough rationalization to believe the things I don't quite understand. And then here's the third thing. So I'll share with you a story about a business trip I was on. So I'm in Denver.

(Brad at 00:22:47) I'm leaving our AVI office in Denver. I'm heading downtown to the hotel where I'm meeting with a bunch of—doing kind of an advisory council meeting and development meeting the following day. And the Uber driver that picks me up to take me downtown says to me, "You know, I'm not an Uber driver." I'm like, "Okay, that's great. Why are you driving me?" "Oh, my brother owns the company," and blah, blah, blah. "Oh, okay. So what do you do?" "Well, I'm on a sabbatical, but I'm the quantum physics professor for University of Colorado."

(Brad at 00:23:22) "Oh, that's interesting. Well, I'm an engineer." "Oh." And he says, "Well, I was also, previous to going to the University of Colorado, I was the quantum mechanics professor at Stanford." So we began to have this conversation about quantum mechanics, quantum physics.

(Brad at 00:23:41) And I said—somehow my faith came out in the conversation. I don't even know how it came out, but somehow it came out. And he said, "How do you rationalize both of those? How do you be an engineer and also be a man of faith?" And I said, "Well, here's something that I've learned. So quantum physics says that the smallest particle that we can identify, everything is made up of that particle, quark, and that's based on light, right?" "Yes." "And that every sort of mass is made up of light as a result?" "Yes."

(Brad at 00:24:15) "And every mass has a resonant frequency in it. Would that be correct?" "Well, that's true." "Okay. Well, the Bible tells me that the very first thing that happened was the creation of light, separating light from darkness, and it happened through a vocal command by God."

(Brad at 00:24:34) "So that says to me that everything at its basic form has both sound and light in it as its inherent definition of mass and existence. Because God spoke into existence light and separated light from darkness, and that was the very first thing that happened in Genesis. God created that through the spoken word. So it makes sense to me why I can understand the fundamentals of quantum physics and quantum mechanics, because they align with what I understand—how everything on the face of the planet and everything in the universe was made."

(Brad at 00:25:13) "It was first spoken through sound, which resulted in light, and everything else derived from that." And so I share this because the things I understand give me faith and confidence to trust God in the things I don't yet understand.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:30) No, I like it. I also think that some people argue over the details too much.

(Brad at 00:25:36) Exactly. And it's just not right. What's the benefit?

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:40) And then I was laughing because I was telling my wife this, and she's like, "The devil's in the details." And I was like, "Hey!" She's like, "That's basically what you're saying." And I was like, "I guess so." Right? Like, the disagreement is in the details too. I mean, you get a team together talking about any sort of project, and the disagreements and the details—people generally agree on the direction to go, and then the disagreement comes up on the path to get there.

(Brad at 00:26:05) Yeah. And I think to what you're saying is that I can agree to accept this part of it for now and recognize that there's goodness in just this. And later, if God reveals something else to me, there's more to it that probably won't contradict each other. And you've come to the place where you're saying, "I'm actually okay with that. There's enough goodness in what I know to put it to action today."

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:32) Well, it's faith, right? But I won't lie, though. I have to be honest with myself as a source of truth. And honestly, I feel it's more of a journey because, for example, the back half of last year was the first time that I ever started tithing to the church, right? I've been going—I was born in the church, I've been going my whole life—and then I just, for some reason, decided to, like, hey, let's start trying to do this. But there's no way I was going to do 10% at once because that would affect my life too much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:06) So I said, "All right, well, I'm going to go slowly because I want to do it in a happy way. I don't want to do it in a forced way, right?"

(Brad at 00:27:11) Right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:12) And so I started slowly, and then things—life started to—it felt good. It felt good. When I went to church, I felt more a part of it than ever, right? I felt like I contributed. I felt like when I heard the stories of people coming out of depression or all of these things because of community, I felt good that my money was helping do that. And then, you know, over the course of six months, I slowly built up and got to the point where I wanted to be. And it was a journey. It was like a little bit of trust, a little bit of faith, a little bit of results. And then, so to your point, when I see some stuff that I don't understand, that doesn't shake my faith at all on what I know to be true, right?

(Brad at 00:27:52) That's exactly right.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:53) That's fine. It's almost like, at what point is that going to make more sense to me? That'll probably be something I learn about later on this journey because, I mean, I'm only 33 right now, right? So I'm okay with it. Completely okay with the fact that I'm young and that I'm like a child in my spiritual walk. And as long as I keep living, you know, according to the principles in the Bible, things keep getting better for me. And so that's just what I can share with people. I'm not—I haven't done this a hundred times. I can't teach it, but I'm going through it right now, and it tends to be working.

(Brad at 00:28:34) So do you find that people aren't actually looking for something sensational from your faith? They're actually looking more for something that's honest? Because they've seen a lot of sensationalism around faith and Christianity or any faith, but particularly around Christianity. And many people have been, you know, dare I even say, abused by the Christian church. And so I think that people are looking less for sensational faith, and they're looking more for honest faith.

(Brad at 00:29:15) And if they find somebody who's actually on that journey and willing to walk that journey with them, that's way more attractive than someone who can stand on stage and talk about how they were a murderer or a drug dealer and somehow God saved them. I think the honest faith is really what people are looking for. What do you think?

(Joel Beasley at 00:29:38) Yeah. I think they're looking for honest faith. I think they're looking for community and relationship. I think people generally want to be better. You know, I started going back to church again in my twenties because I was going out a lot. I was drinking. It wasn't affecting my work. I was just being 20, and that's what some of the other 20-year-olds did. And then I wasn't meeting—I wanted to meet a girl, like a girl to get serious with. And I wasn't meeting those girls out at the bars and out late at night.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:10) And so I said, "Where is the one place I know where there's quality girls?" Because I was raised in a church, I was like, there's some really cool people at church, and they get up early so they're not out late and stuff like that. And so I started, and then I met my wife in a small group, probably like a year or so later. And then we dated, got married, and we have two kids.

(Brad at 00:30:30) Yeah. Super cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:32) And she did the same thing. She was going, and it was funny because when we met, we were like, "We don't want a relationship," because we were both serving in the same group. And we're like, "Let's just be friends," because I just need some time away from what I was doing. And she was like, "Yeah, I was going out and stuff, and I just need to not be in a relationship right now." So we just kind of served in this group together for a little bit, and then things kind of progressed. So—

(Brad at 00:30:57) That's actually, I think, the way it should be, quite honestly. You know, friends to a dating relationship. Because if you don't do that—I don't know where else to find people who have a common set of values. They're not the same as you, and you wouldn't want—I don't know. My wife is not the same as me, and I'm glad for that, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:20) Yeah, right.

(Brad at 00:31:21) Yep. But we have a set of common values. And when the, you know, the proverbial crap hits the fan or the times are tough or we're not sure what to do or whatever, having a sense of common value and then having roughly the same destination—we're both going to the same place—I think that that's probably the biggest thing that's kept us together.

(Brad at 00:31:45) And not just surviving—really kept us growing together over the years. So that's been a big part of it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:31:53) It definitely heals relationships too, because we hadn't been going to church since having the first kids. We met in church, then we weren't going to church because we had our first kid and that's just tough. And so we just got out of the habit of doing it. Yeah. And then that just wore on the relationship.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:10) And so when COVID was happening, we were like, "We've got to get back into church because our relationship is in a difficult moment right now." And so we started going back to church, and it doesn't happen overnight. But over the course of several months, the relationship repaired. That's when I got interested in tithing, and then so that's the past year for me. So a lot's been—

(Brad at 00:32:32) That's awesome, dude.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:33) Yeah. A lot's been going on this year.

(Brad at 00:32:34) I'm proud of you for that. That's really cool.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:37) Yeah. It feels good. And that's why I wanted to learn how to talk about faith in the workplace, right? Because, you know, you get excited about that. It's like your life starts changing. It gets better. It's slow. It's difficult. It's like anything, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:48) But it's like, I can work out my body and get a better body. I can work out my mind, get a sharper mind. I can work on my appearance. I can do all of these things. But working on your spiritual self is something that affects all of us, and I mean, it affects your quality of life and your days. And it's like, how do you go about sharing that in a work setting? Do you just wait for opportunities? What does that look like?

(Brad at 00:33:15) Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things I would share with you. And the first is maybe kind of a view that I have on this idea of the purpose of being a Christian. So I don't believe that the purpose of me being a follower of Jesus is to get to heaven. That's not my goal. That's the reward or a reward, but it's not the purpose. And the purpose for me is bringing heaven to earth. That's the purpose of being a believer for me. And I think that's what Jesus meant. You know, he said, "So when you pray, pray like this," and we know the Lord's Prayer, right? And if I was to paraphrase it, it starts off with, you know, "Father in heaven, you are holy. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." And I think what he was really saying is wherever you are on earth, bring the kingdom of God there with you. Whatever that means, whatever God has revealed to you that that means, bring that with you.

(Brad at 00:34:32) And so for me, my goal is to bring the kingdom of God, bring what heaven has here on earth. I'm not interested in telling you the gospel so that I can convince you to go to my church. That's not my goal. I'm not interested in presenting the gospel of Jesus in a way that you have to say a certain prayer at a certain time. That's not my goal.

(Brad at 00:35:01) I'm not trying to manipulate a situation to have you say a prayer. My goal is to understand where you are at, human to human, person to person. Where are you at in life, and are you stuck someplace? And can I bring heaven into that place for you? So let me give you an example of what that looks like in just a real work situation. So this is several years ago.

(Brad at 00:35:31) I would come into the office sometimes by myself early before anybody else, and I would just pray over the building. Now, at this particular time, I was one of the owners of the company. And so I would go around the building and I'd just pray. And I'd pray over people that worked there. And, you know, they all knew that I was a believer, and there wasn't any conflict with that. But one evening, I get a phone call from one of my engineers. It's about 8:30 or 9:00. And he says, "Hey, can I get you to meet me at the office?"

(Brad at 00:36:07) Sure. So I show up, and he's sitting in the conference room with a cup of coffee. And I'm like, "Dude, what are you doing here?" And he said he was struggling with alcoholism, and he had been struggling with that prior to when he started work for us. And I knew that about him. And he had shared that with me. And he said, "I'm in the middle of a conflict right now with my wife. And my old patterns would be to go drink, and I don't want to do that." Like, "Okay." He said, "So what I do is I come sit here by myself in the middle of the night."

(Brad at 00:36:52) "Okay. Why?" "Well, because there's peace here that I don't get someplace else." "All right. Well, what can I do for you?"

(Brad at 00:37:02) And he said, "You're older than me. Can you help me understand what to do in these situations in my life?" And so now I'm able to bring the kingdom of God at his request into this situation. "Yeah, dude. Everybody has conflict with their wife. You're not the only one. You know Janelle and I really well, and you can see the conflict with us. But here's what's different. We both give God an opportunity to speak to each other separately about the thing that we're having conflict with. So here's what I would do if I were you.

(Brad at 00:37:39) Can I just pray with you about it? Can I just give you this counsel and advice? And for however long this conflict is with you and your wife, I'm willing to just hang out with the two of you. And you want to bring Janelle in? The four of us could hang out together, and we could work together on how to resolve this with the two of you."

(Brad at 00:38:01) So that's an example of a situation where he happened to be stuck. Really smart guy, very courageous guy, former Marine, you know, always able to take care of myself. He was stuck. But because I lived out my faith openly around him, he had confidence to come to me and say, "Here's where I'm at. Can you help?"

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:30) That is a good story, man. I like that. Yeah. That is amazing. And so that wasn't at AVI. That was at the company before?

(Brad at 00:38:40) Yeah. That was at a company before. I mean, I've got stories like that here at AVI. I have stories like that, not just of me, but of people who work here with me, who are now on their own faith journey, who have done similar things with other people that work here. Because it's not about, can I convince you to go to church with me, or can I convince you to say a certain prayer?

(Brad at 00:39:07) It's really about God meeting you. And what is the kingdom of heaven? What is heaven? If heaven was here right now, what would God do in the situation for you? Can I do that for you?

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:19) The church has changed so much since I grew up in it. You know, I was talking with my sister the other day because it was like Easter coming up. And so I invited her to the Easter service, and she's like, "I don't do that since I was a kid. You know, I'm atheist." And I was like, "Okay. Well, just get plugged into your atheist community so at least you're around other people, right, that are sharing and helping you to, like, get some community." And so I was just talking with her and trying to figure out, like, inviting her.

(Joel Beasley at 00:39:49) But one of the things they mentioned when at church about inviting people to a service, like an Easter service, they did a study—like, I'm not going to repeat it well—but some national organization did a study on Americans' receptiveness to like invitations to church or things or the concept of God. And it was 5% of, I think it was like 110 million people or something. 5% of them would respond negatively. Like they're, like, out to get, they're like, "Absolutely not. No way. Don't like God. Don't even bring that jazz around here" type deal. That means 95% would respond with interest is what they said. They said they'd respond with interest or they would say no thank you.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:39) So for me, that was really interesting because it's like a squeaky wheel situation. Right? You hear the two or three people out there that are really loud with their megaphone, and so then that makes me a little shy. It makes me a little shy to talk about faith. It makes me a little shy to, like—man, just to be direct with you, you know, like, I pray at church and we pray over the cardinal points and things like that. But the visualization of you walking around the building praying at your office, for me, that's a far place for me to get, but I feel like I'm going there. Like, I

(Brad at 00:41:15) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:15) I desire to have that confidence, but I'm just—right now, I'm working on surrounding myself with other people. So I joined our church has a business leaders group. Right? And so they don't start until July because I missed like the January onboarding.

(Brad at 00:41:32) Sure.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:32) But you're in a group with like 200 business leaders in a local area and you walk through this content from this other church, I think called Gateway Church. It's not local but they use their content. And you basically walk through it in a small group with other Christian business leaders. And so I was like, what I'm doing now is strategically positioning myself around these other people so I can watch their behaviors and learn how to go that direction.

(Brad at 00:41:58) Yeah. I mean, at its core construct, isn't leadership really about, you can't actually elevate to a place of leadership until people are willing to follow? Right? Followers are way more important to creating a leader than a leader's particular skill set or charisma or whatever else. And if you're going to lead somebody to Jesus, are you going to lead somebody to a whole, you know, some place in life where maybe there's some brokenness or hurt, and you want them to be in a place of wholeness? You have to be able to first have enough proximity with them that they're willing to follow you. You have some authority with them. You know, they think that you're authoritative on the topic or whatever, but they also have some level of proximity to you. And so because of that, they're willing to follow. And, dude, I've seen you with your staff firsthand.

(Brad at 00:42:56) I've watched you work with your team. What you do creates a desire to follow just to who you are, Joel. And I don't know that you have to preach to anybody or stand up and give this killer testimony. I think the more that Jesus leads you and how you do your, how you lead your team and your organization, that's going to be attractive to the people around you. And you're going to find yourself in places where they're asking you for something spiritual because that's becoming more and more obvious to them.

(Brad at 00:43:40) So I would encourage you, you know, stay on the journey of trying to understand how to communicate your faith. But I would be less concerned about, can I tell a story? And I would be way more interested in, how can I transfer something of God into the people around me? Because once they get a connection to the real, honest, authentic Jesus, I mean, he's so attractive on his own that they're going to want to find out more on their own too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:17) I love the way you described your view of, I guess, the way I'm trying to remember how exactly how you said it. But you want to, like, bring heaven into it. It's not about getting them to join your church or to say a prayer or do the specific action. It's about, like, embody these principles of heaven and then bring them to people.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:37) Yeah. And for me, I love that because earlier we were saying, you know, the church I grew up in was, I mean, for lack of a better term, like, very rule-oriented and shame-based. And the church I'm in now is, like, their job's like to remove the shame. Right? It's like, "Look, we're human. We've got some stuff we're all working through. Nobody's perfect. But here we're agreeing to these concepts and we're going to live in this way and we're going to make mistakes along the way, but we're here and we're going to do this together in community." And that's so much more inclusive than the exclusive type church that I grew up in. And so I think a lot of people are hurt, like, specifically my sister.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:20) You know, she's so against it because of that bad experience. And I find some people are really against it because they had really bad experiences. But, you know, the church has evolved significantly.

(Brad at 00:45:32) Man, I hope so. Because, you know, there's different—I don't want to judge anybody or put any particular kind of church down—but there's different expressions of church. And one expression of church is that church is a club. You know, I kind of pay my dues. I go there because there's other people around me that share an affinity for the same thing that I have. And so it's a club. And if you're on the outside and you haven't paid the dues to get in, whether that's tithing or whatever it is, you're not really part of the club. You can hang out at the clubhouse, but you're not really part of the club. There's a lot of churches that are kind of like that. Man, that hurts my heart.

(Brad at 00:46:12) Right? And then there's churches—I think this is where you're leaning to—and there's churches that have decided that what's happening inside of the walls of the church is awesome, but that's really not the purpose of the church. That would be like a football team practicing all the time and never really going to the game. Because the real game of the church isn't to do what we do inside the church. The real game of the church is to do what we do outside the church. To really have an impact to the community or to the people I live next to. Or, you know, the way I coach a, you know, peewee football team. Or, you know, the way that I lead and interact with my team at work or whatever it is. That's the purpose of the church.

(Brad at 00:46:55) And in fact, it's funny because—forgive me, dude. I don't mean to sound like I'm preaching here—but the Greek word that we translate into the English word church actually means technically to come out of your house into the public marketplace. That's actually what the term church means. It means to get out of your house and go do something out in the public. And when we as a church think that the purpose of church is for us to do God's stuff inside the four walls of our building and to protect that building and the people inside from the evil in the world, man, we're upside down because that's not what the purpose is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:44) Dude, you've got to go full-on pastor here. Like, I want to hear more sermons from you. I really enjoyed the one that you sent over. How many have you done? Do you do them regularly? A lot?

(Brad at 00:47:58) I preach probably now—I'll do the Sunday morning service maybe every month or every six weeks or whatever. And, yeah, I'll send you links to it. I mean, I'm obviously passionate about it and love sharing about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:17) Yeah. I like, if you have it on YouTube, that'd be great. I have, like, playlists I follow, like Steven Furtick on YouTube.

(Brad at 00:48:24) Oh, yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:24) Elevation, I think, is that church. And then, I think Craig something. Craig Groeschel. Yeah. Like Life Church, I think.

(Brad at 00:48:32) Yeah. That's what it is.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:32) And so if I could throw you and then actually, had a really cool guy on here, David or Dave, and QTS Data Centers are like the largest data center in North America. Right? Yeah. But you don't really know him. It was funny because he, like, can't say the brand names. But he's like, "You know, the big four." Right? Um, but anyways, so then he was up in, like, North Atlanta area. And he had a guy that he referred to me from his church. So I started following their YouTube and that was really good. And I just keep finding these great people. And so if I can, like, follow you on YouTube or follow your church and, like, get your sermons on YouTube, I would definitely add you into

(Brad at 00:49:16) the mix. Yeah. I'd love to do it. We're experimenting—just talk about church for a moment. We're experimenting with something at our church. And that is, is there a way to create a sense of community online and not just a sense of viewership? And so, you know, strangely enough, I know a tech guy that does a lot of this online media stuff. And so we end up spending a lot of time kind of reimagining what church might look like as a result of that. But, yeah, I'll send you the links to it for our YouTube channel, and I'll send you some links to some specific messages that I've given maybe in the last, I don't know, four or five months so you can kind of get an idea of those.

(Joel Beasley at 00:49:54) So that'd be great. Like, I run out of them, to be honest with you. Like, I listen to all of them on YouTube and I'm like, "All right. Let's go listen to some other stuff." And, yeah, so I'm always looking for really good content. One other thought I wanted to run by you. Okay. So I'm a big nerd, right?

(Brad at 00:50:11) Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:50:11) And I have found that, like, I really, really am fascinated by simulation theory. Right? Like, I've gotten to talk to people on it. I've listened a lot on it. And then I had this, like, epiphany, I guess, a little bit before the podcast with Pastor Randy. And it was like, okay. Well, if all the technologists are, like, really cool, really hyped up about this simulation theory, I mean, that requires the concept of God to be true because that means it was made outside of, like—if we're most likely in a simulation, someone or something had to make it. Right?

(Brad at 00:50:50) Yeah. So the idea of, you know, the Matrix or somebody pulling levers and pushing buttons and driving an environment that we're all living in, there's an element of that that there's truism to it, I think, which is, I'm a believer in intentional design, and that there's just so much evidence to me that the way that creation works is that there's an intelligent creator to it. And so that part of the simulation theory, I think, holds water. I think there's elements to that. But there's an interesting part to how God created us as spiritual soul and body that I think is interesting. And this is the part where I struggle. How do I bring it all together? Maybe you've got some insight you could help me kind of look through a different lens. And that is this whole idea of free will and authority.

(Brad at 00:52:02) And so here's what I mean by this. So in the very beginning, Adam and Eve seemingly had enough authority over creation that they were able to give title to the earth to Satan in exchange for something they wanted. And since that moment in time, Jesus came as a human to take the authority of Earth and give it back to humans. And so the construct of the Matrix basically says that, as I understand it, somebody is manipulating the outcome to get to a certain destination or destiny. And that seems to fly in contrast to God's desire to restore lost authority back to people and individuals. So how did—teach me what's your thoughts on that?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:11) I don't know. If we're talking about from a simulation standpoint, I like to run the exercise to better understand God, and I feel like it's not allowed to be talked about in church for some reason. But I like to figure out what I would do if I were creating a simulation, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:29) Like, one thought that I have regularly is, okay, so we can judge the age of matter with science. We know it's billions of years old, right? If we took a hundred million years, right, we would get bored.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:43) Maybe this is the playground, right? And we wouldn't want everything to be perfect because if everything was perfect, that would be boring. If everything didn't exist, that's still nothing. So this is kind of the in between.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:54) So imagine if you will, everything on a spectrum, right? Life and death spectrum. All emotions are on a spectrum. Free will would even be on a spectrum.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:04) I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like I have free will and sometimes I feel like the thing just happened, like I'm a character in a movie. And so I believe we're on all of these intersecting spectrums. I don't think it can be hacked. I don't think it can be. I think it's so good at being randomized and we're all on these journeys. And I feel like this is one of the best things ever created.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:27) But it can be simultaneously heaven and hell. You can make choices and go in certain directions on this journey, in this game of life if you will, that end up in hell. And you can go on these journeys and you can at any point in time, you can turn it around. I believe at any point in time, you can choose to turn it around, both ways. I believe you can go up or down.

(Joel Beasley at 00:54:52) You can either start making your life heaven or you can just take your life that's already heaven and make it hell really quick. And so with that sort of conversational topic, I see the Bible and the teachings of Jesus as this guideline. Here is a direction. It's not perfect. It's not systematic. It's not a switch you can flip. It's not a prayer you can say. Here is a set of guidelines. Here is some areas for you to go, but you always have to put—and I found this true in business too.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:27) The entrepreneurs are absolutely right, or anyone that takes a product to market. You can't start with the finished product. You just can't.

(Joel Beasley at 00:55:35) You have to have some conversations, go on this journey, start to build, get a couple customers, do some proofs. It's this constant journey. It's a long endeavor, but on the cosmic time scale, it's very short, right? So I don't know. Those are just some of the thoughts that run through my mind sometimes.

(Brad at 00:55:53) Yeah. You know, I don't know that I necessarily have an opinion one way or the other on it as much as I agree with you that it is a journey. And the longer my journey is, it seems like the more God is able to reveal things to me. And I don't—you know what? The other part of it is that it's not just God giving me a peek behind the curtain.

(Brad at 00:56:28) It's actually God revealing his heart. And there's an affection there. And because of that, I begin to know him better. And so I don't know why I started going down that path other than the fact that it's a journey.

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:44) Yeah. No, I fully agree. I tend to find that—I don't teach, right?

(Joel Beasley at 00:56:52) So it's not like I'm sitting here planning these thoughts out or writing them down. They just kind of pop into my head sometimes. But what I believe is, however it looks for me as an individual, right, that could be my private relationship with God. But the fact that my intention is to seek God and to better understand him, I feel like I'm justified in the thoughts that happen because I'm doing it from a place of trying to understand.

(Brad at 00:57:22) Exactly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:22) And that's just how it expresses with me. And I'm having a hard time being comfortable with that. And that's why I love this show because I was the most shy person in the world three years ago, and then now I save the hardest moments in my life to talk about with people right now because you're brilliant, man. You've got so much life experience. I admire you a great deal.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:50) I look forward to understanding your behaviors more and implementing them in my life. You're inspiring to me. And so—

(Brad at 00:57:58) Thank you, dude.

(Joel Beasley at 00:57:59) I'm really grateful to be able to be open and real with you.

(Brad at 00:58:03) Yeah. I have enjoyed it. I've been looking forward to this conversation since you first reached out and said, "Hey, this is what we're thinking," because I love this conversation, man. And I just enjoy hanging out with you, quite honestly.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:18) Me too. We need to get back to—I can't wait till the world's open again for interstate travel. Yeah, I'm super excited about everything that's going on and to have you in my life. Super grateful about that. Now, we made a podcast.

(Brad at 00:58:36) That's right. I love the conversation today, and I really appreciated your courage to have it because it's not often that you can be open about faith and work. And I'm obviously super passionate about it. So thanks for giving me a chance to talk about it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:58:53) I honestly—and you're welcome—I think it's going to be useful to some people out there because I think there are other people out there too that are thinking the same thing. That they may be going to church and they don't know how to talk about it or how it expresses at work. They just don't say anything.

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:10) But I've read some articles online and you know, it was really positive in the sense that when people are struggling, almost no one's going to turn down you praying for them. If someone's going through a difficult moment, almost nobody, even if they're atheist, is going to be like, "Well, let's try anything," you know.

(Brad at 00:59:28) That's exactly—I mean, I don't want to take up more time, Chris. But can I tell one more story along that way?

(Joel Beasley at 00:59:33) For sure. Yeah.

(Brad at 00:59:35) So this is a couple of years ago. I'm out in Cincinnati. I'm working with some customers out there. And I'm getting ready to fly back home. And all I have in mind is I've got a long flight. I want to get something to eat, and I know I've got to get some emails out. So when I get in that mode, man, I'm just focused on my little screen and that's it, right? And so I dodge into this little pizza place in the airport. And I'm typing away and the server comes up to me and takes my order.

(Brad at 01:00:09) And as she's getting ready to leave, I hear God speak to me in my heart, and you were talking about this with your pastor, how God speaks to you. I hear God say to me in my heart, "I like her. Pay attention." So I'm like, "I don't have time for this. I've got like ten minutes to get something to eat. I've got to go catch a plane." She comes back and we have a little short conversation and she leaves, and I hear the Holy Spirit say again, "I like her. Pay attention to her." So she comes back to bring me my check. I said, "So how are you doing?"

(Brad at 01:00:42) And she goes, "Quite honestly, not very well." I said, "Okay. What's that about?" And she begins to just tell me how crappy it is to work in this place and blah blah blah, and this whole story kind of comes out.

(Brad at 01:01:01) And she turns around and walks away. That was the end of the conversation. And I thought, "Oh, that was interesting." Couple minutes later, she comes back, and she goes, "You know, I apologize. I should never have said that. I shouldn't be talking like that with a customer. You just asked me, and it just kind of came out." And I said, "It's perfectly okay. Fine. We all have those kinds of days. Would you mind if I prayed for you?" And she's like, "No." "Okay. Well, how about we do it right now?"

(Brad at 01:01:33) And so as I begin to pray for her that God would—what is it that God would do if God was standing here? How do I bring heaven into this gal's life right at this moment? And as I'm praying over her, I hear the Holy Spirit speak to me, and he says, "She's really, really alone." And so I just start praying over friendships and connections. And I don't know if you have a church that you go to and, you know, this whole kind of thing.

(Brad at 01:02:00) Man, she's just bawling her eyes out. She's just crying, snotting right now. She just can't kind of keep it together. And so I'm crying now because she's crying. I get done praying, lasts thirty seconds.

(Brad at 01:02:14) She leaves, doesn't say anything. Like, "Man, you're a jerk" or "You sucker, man. That was awesome." Nothing. Just leaves.

(Brad at 01:02:21) Comes back and said, "Why did you do that?" I said, "Well, because God said to me, 'I like her, pay attention to her.'" And then this whole story comes out about how she moved from her family in Texas to Ohio to take care of her mom who was dying. Her mom just died, and now she's alone in this town that has nobody to talk to. And this whole thing, just a person struggling with life.

(Brad at 01:02:47) And she just starts weeping and says, "Do you really think that God knows me?" "I'm convinced of it. And here's what I would do if I were you." And I just shared with her some ideas to how to start a prayer time with God and then how to have a conversation with him and then where to find good people and what good people look like. That was the last time I saw her.

(Brad at 01:03:11) I never had a conversation with her since. But the idea is that in that moment in time, I was so focused on getting my task done that I almost missed an opportunity for God to say, "Hey. Look. I care about this person. Would you just ask how they're doing today?"

(Brad at 01:03:30) No preaching involved. No big theological story. Nothing. I just needed a person there that needed to get loved on for a moment. And she gave me permission to do it, and so I did.

(Brad at 01:03:41) And I think it radically changed who she was.

(Joel Beasley at 01:03:47) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn or send me an email: [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.