Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: What's up, guys? Welcome to the inaugural episode of A Brit and a Yank Talk Business.
I'm Stuart.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: And I'm Tom.
[00:00:13] Speaker A: And we are.
Well, I'm the Yank and he's the Brit.
Are you sure?
[00:00:18] Speaker B: Is it that way around?
[00:00:21] Speaker A: I think that's how it cuts. The accent plays through. The accent plays through.
So we're starting this particular pod. We got a lot of reasons for it, and we'll get to those later. But first, I think it's important that we introduce ourselves and kind of explain who we are and why we got this. So we're both business owners.
I own page 50 Marketing and Media. Tom.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: I own Knox Thomas. So we're in machinery safety and compliance.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: See?
And we are starting a podcast because, like I said, we'll get more detailed on this later because we wish we would have had one like this to listen to whenever we were starting.
How old is your company, Tom?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Two years. Two years. I mean, even now, I think I would listen to this podcast. I'm hoping I'm going to learn stuff soon.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: You'll go back and listen to the episodes that we start today and be like, oh, this is helpful, this is helpful.
But let's talk a little bit, Tom. Okay. Your business is three years old. Tell us a little bit about what you do. Two years old. Sorry. Tell us a little bit about what you do and why you do it.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, so what we do. I think this is potentially going to be difficult for an American audience a little bit. So this is going to give you a bit of a flavor into the UK and the EU a lot. So we're very heavy with bureaucracy and legislation.
If you put products on the market, machinery, whatever it might be, you have to comply with a load of legal requirements, and they're a massive burden.
Sometimes I say I'm torn because I'm effectively employed by bureaucracy, but I recognize it as a large burden that I wish wasn't there, but it is there. And I can help companies either operating machinery or putting product on the market. I can help them navigate that bureaucracy and legislation, so it's less of a headache for them, so they're less likely to get in trouble.
So. And. And the other piece in there is the. The premise is it's safety. So we are. We are keeping people safe in their work, trying to make it so that product doesn't catch fire or. Or create damage.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: Somebody get their arm chopped off.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yep. And I mean. I mean, you hear horror stories as well, being in the industry.
It's pretty. It is. It's grim. And, and like we are, we are there to genuinely help with those.
So that's kind of what the business does.
What was your latter question?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Why did you just start it?
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean that, that's a bigger question and a longer one. So why do we start it? I mean, so I suppose I'll just throw some bits out. So I've, I've got five kids, which I think my feeling is that somewhat it's not uncommon in the States.
In the uk, it just isn't a thing.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: So big families, you're talking about, big families are just not a thing?
[00:03:12] Speaker B: No, big families are not a thing. I mean, the comments you get when you say that you've got five kids, you get stared at like you have two heads. Um, yeah, you kind of have to navigate that and grow a bit of tough skin just, just because of the number of kids that you have. Um, but here in the uk, so it's not normal. We get taxed a lot as well.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: And I'm fully taxed for having more children.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: We don't get taxed. So this, the tax comment and the children are slightly unrelated and just in general we pay a lot of tax.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Okay, I got it. I was gonna say that's terrible, but.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Like I'm, I'm aware that, you know, if I just had an engineering job, I'd reach a threshold of kind of salary, of income that kind of into the future wouldn't be sustainable for, for like blessing my kids. You know, I wanna, I wanna give them a house where they can run around outside.
I want to live, live somewhere that is a blessing to them.
I'd love to support them when they have to buy houses.
So they're all things that I want to be able to do and that just isn't going to be possible if I just take a salary, nine to five job.
So that's an element of it. But the other elements are things like what, what does it look like to be faithful to scripture with regard to work and what is work?
And even to the extent, kind of like how do we engage with kind of economics?
What does the Bible say about the market?
Are we kind of pro free market or is socialism kind of actually biblical? You know, where do we, where do we sit on these things and, and the other piece in here? So I want to demonstrate what it looks like to work hard and be faithful to my children and bless them with an asset that they, that they can be part of. So the name of the business is my eldest son's Name.
So I, I wanted something I'm, you know, I, I like the name of the business and obviously I like the name of my son.
And, and so like I, I want to kind of ingrain in it that this is, this is something that is to bless the family. It's to be passed on to future generations.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: But also I want to demonstrate to other brothers in Christ that like, you know, being courageous can look like something, you know, an aspiration is a good thing. And, and we can bless others. Like I, I grew up in, in churches where you know, there was this minimalist gospel, you know, what's the kind of minimum that we can say the, the sinner's prayer and, and, and there isn't anything else. And, and I very much felt lost in that space. Like what do you do in the week on a Monday morning when you wake up? What does this mean? Where do I go? And like you just, there is a sense of, there's a lack of direction.
So then really realizing that okay, that there is actually a calling here and this what it look, this is what it looks like on a Monday morning and this is how scripture applies. Let's get on with it, you know.
[00:06:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: So, so kind of those things and then you know, God's, God's been good and, and kind of my background, I was part of a technology startup business. So I've kind of done the whole, I've kind of done the business thing and, and, and worked out, you know, how do you manage a team of 30 people and, and how do you, how do you manage moving premises and all the systems that come with businesses and, and then worked in a consultancy with the aim to be like how do I start a business or become self employed so I can kind of do this thing.
And then God just being good with.
Here are opportunities that just suddenly come up and like, you know, this is the opportunity to step out. It's not going to go how you think it is, but this is the door and it is open.
So yeah, I'm trying to be succinct. So no, I appreciate.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Well, I think that you and I have, we've known this about each other already before. You and I are the same person. I just have a different accent. So all the things that you're saying. I'm saying yes and am into because that's exactly, that's what we did. I started a business because my kids needed to eat. Actually I didn't start a business. I started just hustling with a camera that a friend of Mine let me borrow and taking pictures and making videos. And then that turned into shooting weddings and then that turned into going to run some projects for another company that we were being subbed out by. And then that turned into us starting a marketing agency. And then that turned us to us running stuff all over the state of Louisiana and now all over the country and now in the UK too. In the UK too. But none of that was a part of the five year plan. None of that was a part of I'm going to build this.
No, the whole point from the beginning was I have children and they have to eat.
I've got to figure out how to do this. And we've got four kids.
I'm a church planter and church planters, by the very definition of the term, don't have large incomes. And so we had to figure out how to get creative and, and get the kids fed. And the Lord gave us this opportunity and just turned it into something. Even the name, like. So our company, when we originally founded it and filed the paperwork for it, it was MCA Studio because I had three kids, Marie, Cindy, Abel, and then we had a fourth kid. And I didn't want to pay bills for a psychiatrist or something later on in their life.
And so we tried to. We nixed the initial thing and rather than changing the name every time we had another kid, we were like, well, we got to figure something else out. And so it's just page 50 because that's the page of my journal that we wrote down what we wanted our legacy to be, which is children that follow Jesus, something to leave them and a legacy of faith. That's the design.
And so because of that, I think the Lord has blessed us.
I think he's seen me stumbling around and we're going to talk about this in later episodes. Just trying to obey and trying to be faithful. And it's almost like he's just patting me on the head and just being like, good job, buddy, I'm going to help you out, don't worry. Because I'm not. I tell this to people all the time. I don't consider myself a business savvy person.
I think of myself more as like, I'm just going to throw spaghetti at the wall over and over again. And hopefully some of this stinks at some point or another.
And I think God has been very gracious and kind to us to continue to grow something that he's grown and we're able to genuinely help people. That's another thing.
Your existence is to keep people from Being closed down by the government.
Amen. Let's keep going in that direction.
I find our existence is to provide marketing services that actually do something, because I can't tell you how many people I talk to that are paying huge retainers to their agencies, and they're just getting hosed, like, they're not actually getting tangibles back in the service. Now, part of that is because marketing is so obtuse.
It's very nebulous. You don't know exactly what it is that you're getting that you're paying for. Will this even work? We have no idea. That's part of it, too, but another part of it is we've inherited clients and onboarded them, and they've said things like, yeah, I've been paying for SEO with this other company for the last three years.
And we take a look at their website, and no, they haven't. I don't know what they've been paying for, but their website's broken and not even discoverable by the search engines. So I'm not sure what they were buying, but it wasn't that. And so we have this tremendous opportunity to work like Christians, you know, to say, hey, here's what we're doing for you, for the money that you're paying us.
Are you happy with it? You know, is it working?
And so far, not to say that we've never fumbled the ball, because we definitely have so far. I think, overall, I would say I think we serve people pretty well. And they've grown and their businesses have grown and their discoverability has grown, and.
And I'm excited about that. So, yeah, I think that you and I are the same person, just different accents and things to do. But for this particular podcast, we've got some goals that we want to reach. Right. We have some things that we're stretching for, and part of it is we're starting this because, like we said at the very beginning, this is what we would have wanted.
This is something that we were. I would have been so excited to find somebody else who thinks, like me, thinks like a Christian that was out in front doing this already.
And not to say that there's not Christian business pods. There are, but the ones that I found are guys that are 20 or 30 years down the road. You know, they're not starting something.
My company is, I think, depending on how you look at it, 10 years old. Yours is two, three years old. Two years old, right, Tom? Yep. Yeah. And so we're all in this phase of, I mean, still learning and growing and grinding and trying to be faithful Christian men in the midst of business. I was super grateful for the workspace event. That's where you and I met, because there wasn't a lot of people having those conversations.
And so that's. That's one of our goals, is just to facilitate something that didn't exist that we think will benefit other people, Right?
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah, entirely. I'm just thinking through why. Why is it that we're starting this now? What are we doing and why. Why the other. Why have the other people who are kind of further down the line.
I suppose you got different motivations going on, but they do. They potentially have more time available. You know, we were chatting a minute ago how, you know, we. We talk about kind of okrs, and we kind of hold each other to account a little bit. I've. I've kind of pushed Stuart on putting some together, and then I've done nothing with mine.
[00:13:13] Speaker A: It's great.
It's lead and lag. We're helping each other.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: I've got loads. Loads of stuff on.
We're trying to move house. Like the business is.
Yeah. Flourishing, trying to sort out resource, trying to keep on top of business development.
So actually having the time to do this podcast, for most people, they'd probably be like, why, why, why would you do this?
But I suppose that's what we're talking about here. What are the reasons that we want to do this? And I think you're probably going to ask the next question and we're going to get into that a bit more.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: Well, yeah, so I would say the reasons first, number one is we want to provide something that hasn't been there before. We want to help educate people, how to start a business and run it in a distinctly Christian way. That's kind of the.
That's the niche that we're going after.
And we're drawing on our experience, obviously, and the books that we've read and the scriptures and the talks that we've listened to. We go to conferences, we try to find speakers, we try to find people who are doing what we're doing. We have lunch with folks to try and grow a little bit. And I think that by putting this on the Internet, hopefully people can be educated, brought along and figure out that they can do it, too. Which brings us to the second point.
The space is a little quiet.
I find people doing what we're doing, but I don't find a lot of them.
And the guys that I talk to about starting business ventures, they're.
I don't Want to use the word scared because I don't want to mischaracterize them, because I don't think it's necessarily fear, but there is a sense in which starting a business going out by yourself is very, very risky.
You know what I'm saying?
[00:15:14] Speaker B: I want to say perceived.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: Perceived. Yeah. Okay. Perceived risk. Yeah, I think that's fair.
But I just. One of our clients, we had a big shoot day with them yesterday, and I was talking to the owners of that particular business, and they said the same thing, that the initial push was the scariest part. Him quitting his job and working this money, this job that had no guaranteed income, was the scariest moment for him. And then whenever he had to bring.
His wife was still working an outside job, so they had a steady paycheck, and they realized they needed to bring her into the institution, too. And it got even scarier. And that's.
I think that that's a big thing. So part of what I want to do is motivate people. Right. So let me ask the question. What is your motivation? You talked about feeding your family, right? That's the fundamental of what we're trying to do.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I think the other big driver.
So people. I've had a couple of people come up to me and be like, tom, I really enjoy chatting with people like you.
People who.
Entrepreneurial and kind of want to go out and do stuff and kind of thinking outside the box. Well, up until, I don't know, kind of four or five years ago, that. That was not me.
So, you know, previous to this, in. In one of my jobs, I was working for a technology company, and I was chatting with kind of one of my colleagues, and I was like, I'd never want to do what, you know, the founder's done. I'd never want to start a business like the. The responsibility and the risk is just. Well, it was the responsibility that concerned me the most. Like, I. I don't. I don't want that. So the question is, what's changed?
And, you know, we're all on some sort of journey of sanctification and growing in our knowledge and understanding of scripture and Christ.
And for us, the last five years have been a real accelerator of that.
And it has been wanting to be faithful and obedient to scripture and apply it that is caused. That has created this. It. It's caught. Has it moved me from being an introvert to an extrovert? Maybe it has. You know, the idea of going business networking now kind of excites Me, which feels creepy saying it a number of years ago, like, no, do not, do not put me anywhere near anyone. And like going out and speaking at events, you know, like the, the motivation for doing that is entirely different.
And I believe it's God working through me, changing my motivation and my desires for being obedient and wanting to apply scripture to all of life. You know, I don't want people to look at me and be like, Tom's got this weird opinion. Well, like, why is he doing that? I don't want that. What I want is people to look at me and be like, immediately like, oh, there must be something in scripture that has prompted Tom to do that. You know, I want people to see Christ and not Tom. So, you know, if someone says Tom, Tom's full of opinions or like, I don't want to hear that. Like, I don't want that to be true of me.
And I want that to fuel.
Why does Tom find it that when he goes into a business networking with a load of really high flying CEOs that it's a bit weird and Tom finds it exciting.
There's no nervousness because we believe in a God who is sovereign and he knows what's going to happen in the next 10 minutes, the next two days, the next number of years. I don't need to be worried by that. In fact, I can be excited. And this is the mindset shift that I want, I want to promote in myself and want to dwell on is like, instead of being that kind of, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow to be like, let's be excited.
You know, we, we know that we have a sovereign God who like, he, he's going to put those business networks together. Yeah, he's gonna, he's gonna deliver. This job is going to come out of absolutely nowhere. We're going to be throwing spaghetti at that wall over there.
Direction is going to, this one's gonna pop up.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: There's no way I can take credit for this, you know, and like it's that, that kind of, that fuels it. And, and there's also just a confirmation in there that like, this is entirely not built by my own effort.
Like, the thing that I'm doing is being obedient and being responsive to the talents that God puts before me and the bit of work and the next step to take, like, that's me being obedient and, and the blessing and confirmation comes from somewhere over there.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Amen. Yeah, we, and we're going to talk about this more in later episodes. But one of the most profound things that I think God was gracious enough to help me to do whenever we started our business was just make a commitment to obey God's commands practically inside of the business space. So obviously that means don't lie to people.
So we don't lie to people.
But in the market, that's interesting.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: In the marketing space, though, isn't.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Is it is. Yeah, we'll deep dive on that one at some point. But in the marketing space, yes. And I've got stories. But even just.
We don't work on the Lord's day unless somebody's ox is in the ditch. If your ox is in the ditch, then we'll help you get it out of the ditch. Your website crashes, you know, some kind of cataclysmic thing's going on. Okay, we're going to help you with that. But outside of that, we don't work on the Lord's day. And we also tithe.
We made that commitment from the beginning, too. And the Lord. I'm convinced that the growth of our business is simply centered around that, around the Lord being faithful to his people and us stumbling along and just trying to do what he says.
It's really profound, but also simple.
Incredibly simple.
But our motivation. Feed the kids. I would say I agree with everything that you said. I have one additional motivator.
I really want to show people that it can be done.
I want to show men who think like us about Christianity, Reformed theology, Christendom, all those things.
I want to show them that they can do it.
If I can do it, and I'm not a business guy, I'm just not.
But here we are, then it can be done. It's not nearly as scary as it seems.
And then the last thing I would say, the last thing that we want to do is just meet more people like us, expand that network as far as we possibly can. I feel like you and I are thousands and thousands of miles apart, but you're a dear friend, you know, like my kids all know about English Tom. You know, they're like, oh, did you have a call with Tom today? English Tom. Oh, how did it go? You know, like, they. It's almost like our families are linked in this in such an extraordinary way.
And we just have a call every week, you know, and we, you know, text back and forth and talk about different things that are going on. And we work on each other's businesses and we help with things like that. But.
But there's this amazingly profound thing Camaraderie, I'd call it. That has happened, and I think I want to multiply that. You know what I'm saying? I want to build this network out.
[00:22:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I think it's interesting.
I don't know why this has just sprung to mind, but relationships between men, they are built through doing something together or even sometimes not doing something together. You go fishing, and I went fishing as a kid, so I'm kind of reminiscing here. You. You sat next to someone and you're not even talking, but you're, you're. And, and you're probably not even catching any fish, but, like, you're building a relationship, and the fact that you're both doing there, you're both kind of doing this activity together, and, and that's where kind of camaraderie.
I think that's, man. I think that's where. That's where you're challenged with regards to kind of what, what you believe and how you're applying scripture. That's how we're sanctified. And, like, you know, part of this is that men are made to work and work hard.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: So entirely like, where I want to find the other people who are doing the same, and I want us to be an encouragement to one another and how can we help one another?
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Yes, I, I agree. I think that.
I think that men try to facilitate relationship growth in our modern day through hanging out, and it's just not the same.
I don't build solid relationships with other men through hangouts. I build it through work together.
That's 100% accurate. The people that I am the closest with men are the men that I'm working with. And honestly, I think that we could even apply that same principle to our wives. Now, there's probably a whole podcast episode about this, about our relationship with our wives and our families and their lives inside of the business. But our relationship, my wife and I's relationship, we are oriented around building the kingdom of Christ, and we know that the work that we're doing every day is toward that end. Okay. And because of that, we're incredibly close.
Now, we're incredibly close for lots of reasons, because we confess our sins to one another, because we share a high degree of relational intimacy with one another, because we live in the same house. Pick your reason.
But there is something profound about being on mission together with another human being that really knits you together with that person in a profound way. And I, I, I want to build that more. You know, I want to build those Communities around here. I mean, I love business listings. We're in a dozen and a half business, Christian business listings. You know, that's great, but I want connection, you know, like, I want to be. And I want to be working with these people on something towards an end. That's a good thing. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Absolutely right.
[00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: So what's some of the things we're going to be talking about in the future? So that's the gist. So this is why we're doing it. That's the three goals we've got. We want to educate people, we want to motivate them to do it, and we want to network with as much as we possibly can.
What are future podcast topics looking like, Tom?
[00:25:48] Speaker B: I mean, we've got a whole host of ideas, haven't we? I know we do. And one of the things we want to do is make this. You know, you've said it on multiple occasions, Stuart, like, how do we make this kind of practical? How do we actually help people to do it? So, yes. Even talking about stuff like, what. What does our day look like? Yes.
How do we fit things in, in terms of routine, potentially? What. What are some of the things that we don't do? I. I used to cycle kind of 16 hours a week and, and for. Well, God was good and took that away effectively.
What do we do that time? You know, when. When do we read? What are we reading?
How did we start?
You know, what are the actual things we went and did? What were the things that we kind of lined up or were praying about?
How are the parts of those, those puzzles?
[00:26:36] Speaker A: A lot of my starting was me praying, God, please help.
That was how we started.
That's the whole episode. I'll cut that out and make its own episode. That's the whole thing right there.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: Like, networking is a big thing. So, yes, let's talk about that.
You know, businesses do not exist without networking. And I kind of wish someone had told me that at the very beginning, like, networking and community is vital. Like, you are not going to survive without it.
I wish someone had told me that.
What else have we got to mind?
[00:27:09] Speaker A: One of the things that I'm looking forward to is talking about what it means to be a good king.
CS Lewis has this profound quote. He says, and this is in the Horse and His Boy, which is the best Narnia book, by the way. I put my foot down. The Horse and His Boy is the best one. But he wrote in the Horse and His Boy, he said, a king is Best described as the one whose first end to the most dire fight, last out in the most desperate retreat, dressed the finest and laughing loudest over the scantiest meal.
That's what it means to be a good king. And that quote and that philosophy has profoundly affected me. That's an episode that I'm really, really looking forward to.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Well, I think.
I think we can call this first episode done.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I mean, I'm excited.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: I'm excited about it too, man. I hope. My hope and prayer for this venture is that we meet new people, we help them, and we build out Christendom more and more. That's really what I want to do. I want to give Christians the tools to build the kingdom of Christ farther in a super practical way. Not in this pie in the sky, you know, upper echelon theology thought process. Like, that's not what I'm doing. If you want a theology podcast, there's 20,000 of those. Go pick one. That's not what we're trying to make here. We're trying to help people see that they can do it and then help equip them in order to do it, to build distinctly Christian businesses from the ground up.
[00:28:51] Speaker B: I think one of the things that isn't. We haven't kind of discussed on our list is what, you know, people often think about kind of, what are the qualifications that I need to be able to start a business?
And I think the answer might be near none.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Are you hungry?
If the answer is yes, then do you meet the qualification?
Amen. That's it.
Well, guys, thank you all so much for listening to the inaugural episode of A Brit and a Yank Talk Business.
I'm Stuart Amadon.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: I'm Tom.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: And we thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time. Farewell.
