Building A Faith-Based Business with Joseph Warren [Podcast 213]

 

Is there a place in business for the spiritual side of things?

My guest on this episode is Joseph Warren.  Joseph shares his personal journey on success, and the tragedy that shook him to his core, while also giving you the insights and direction to what he’s learned creating many high growth faith-based businesses.

Even if you’re skeptical, the truths in this episode will give you a new perspective on creating growth, momentum, and impact.

Joseph is the owner of two co-working locations in Florida, a business coach to entrepreneurs, and the host of First $100K and Broken Catholic podcasts.

Don’t miss this inspiring conversation!

Listen to the podcast here:

Building A Faith-Based Business with Joseph Warren [Podcast 213]

I have a question for you. Is there a place in business for the spiritual side of things? What do you think? The truth is when you match up the spiritual side of business with business, with personal, when you’re in alignment, things probably work much better. Wouldn’t you rather have a universal power working in your favor instead of working against it? What happened to you if you had a bigger power working for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Forget technology, forget about automation, there’s something much bigger that you can get working for you 24 hours a day, seven days a week if you know how to put it in place.

We have an expert who is uniquely qualified about this exact idea. He’s the host of the First $100K podcasts, the Owner of two co-working spaces in Florida where he coaches hundreds of entrepreneurs to make their first $100,000 or next $100,000 or even more. His clients include solo business owners to small business. Enterprise companies like Uber, Cisco, Intel and more. He also has a faith-based podcast called Broken Catholic where he interviews Atheists, Jews, Christians and Catholics about why the world is not working right now and how to unify Christians everywhere. Our guest, Joseph Warren, a 10x failed entrepreneur turned overnight success. He speaks about the things that no one else is talking about, like the number one reason why 90% or more of entrepreneurs are struggling. Joseph, welcome to the show. How are you?

Dan, I am so happy to be here. As you’re talking about spiritual and creating a heavenly automation, I was getting lit up, motivated and inspired by that introduction. Thank you.

I want to lead this off because as you’re reading right now, are you letting technology, are you letting tactics and are you letting strategies get in the way of you making money? There’s something much bigger, a higher arching philosophy that you have to start with first. It’s probably not what you think. I will suggest that one of the overarching things to put in place first is psychology over strategy, psychology over tactics, psychology over automation and psychology over technology. Those things get in the way if you don’t have the psychology. Even more is what would it be worth to have a higher power working in your favor? Joseph, before we get into some of the deeper insights and wisdom that you have to share about the spiritual life and all those stuff, why are you doing what you’re doing?

I’ve had two passions my entire life. Entrepreneurship was the first half of my life and my faith has now consumed. I’m hoping it’s not the second stage of my life, maybe there’s a third stage down the road. I’ve spent my time chasing money. In my early twenties, I set myself up. I grew up in poverty. I wanted something different for my life. As a young man, as many young men do, I set the goal and I had three goals. I want to be happy. I want to be healthy. I want to be wealthy. That was it. It was very simple. It’s very childish goals. I went for it. At the early age of nineteen, I pursued viciously success. I chased after success. I chased after money. I chased after pleasure.

God loves it when we get real and raw. – Joseph Warren Click To Tweet

That pursuit of those three things, I made them my gods. I literally worship them. That doesn’t mean I got down on my knees, “God of money or success.” No, but I spend all my waking hours, all my time, all my energy, all my thought process, my focus and my attention was focused on those three things. One could say, “I worshiped them because I gave them my everything.” What I found was this, and you know this in my bio, I hit success early. In my twenties, I hit seven figures with my first business. Though that was awesome and fantastic when I got everything that society promised me I want, that’s what society says, “These are the things you want. You get all the girls, you get all the money, all the success, the cars and the houses.” When I got all those things, I was the most unhappy, miserable, depressed and suicidal person you would ever meet. I was so sad and suffering on the inside, even though I had everything on the outside. I was wealthy on the outside and broke on the inside.

Can you take us back to that place, Joseph? As you were going through this, on the outside, you had the wealth, you had the fruits of your labor so to speak, but on the inside, you were miserable. It sounds like you were depressed. I talked to hundreds if not thousands of business owners who go, “While I’m caught in this, I guess I’d call it a success trap.” I think it’s a Dan Sullivan term. You get in this success trap. For you, what was the pivotal moment or thing or event that happened that you were like, “I’m going to make a shift?”

I would like to give myself credit for that, but that would be a lie. I did not make a shift. I looked back on my life and I clearly see from a Judeo-Christian upbringing that God literally reached into the darkness I called my life at that time. He ripped me out of the darkness. If you think of Judeo-Christian biblical references like the lost sheep, the one lost sheep and then God leaves the 99 and goes into darkness to save that one. I was that one dude. I remembered to answer your question very specifically, everything was going well. I’m making the money and all the external stuff, but I’m dying inside. I’m at strip clubs three to four nights a week. I’m spending through everything and chasing and trying to fill the emptiness inside with the external stuff. Within a two-week timeframe, something tragic happened, which I now look back on, which was such a gift. What happened was I lost all my money. I lost the places where I lived. I lost all the girls, including my so-called exclusive girlfriend, dumped me on my birthday. My friends all abandoned me.

I literally bottomed out and hit ground zero within a two-week timeframe. If you ask me how it all happened, there was no actual reason why it all happened. It just all happened. I went through something similar but for a totally different reason. This has been the experience in my faith walk, in my faith journey, is that I can be so stubborn, so resistant to the hand of God in my life. I’m so ungrateful that he literally has to come into my life with a 2×4 upside the back of my head. Dan, you’re a father. If your son is running out into traffic and about to get hurt, you will grab whatever you can on that boy and yank and it may cause temporary pain, but it’s for the greater good because he would have ended up dead. That’s what God has done in my life. He used those 2×4’s and he removed all the distractions that were pulling me into the darkness.

Now that those distractions have been minimized, may be eliminated, what changes have you seen in you? What is the outcome and the transformation, the breakthrough been for you?

 

First, let me premise this where it was not an overnight thing. It was a ten-year-plus thing of less resistance, but still resistance and stubbornness. Back then, I want to put out there, when I was in the darkness, I was in a very Atheist place in my spirituality. God was not part of my walk at that time. I had completely turned my neck, turned my head away from him. He still spared my life. It’s been a long walk back to him. God did something in my life where he came in and interrupted again as I was rebuilding from the bottom up because I lost everything. I literally bought them down. I had no money, no anything. I had to start over from scratch and to go from a place of seven-figure revenue and then overnight lose everything and have to start over, massive depression, anxiety, stress, worry and those feelings of like I’m a fraud. I wasn’t a success. I’ve been a failure the whole time. I must have got lucky. Wrestling with a lot of these things that I know, a lot of my clients they wrestle with, even though they’re making tons of money, this is what’s going on the inside.

That is a powerful story. Joseph, you’ve had this journey and I think a lot of people can relate to it, one way or another, either starting and struggling or building it and then losing it all and having to start over. For you, over the last several months, what would you say would have been some of either your personal big breakthroughs or those big breakthroughs that you’ve helped your clients put in place to help them get to that next level? What would some of those be?

I’ll go back in time. Years ago, as I’m rebuilding my empire and all this and doing the thing that we do as entrepreneurs and business owners, I am rebuilding everything. My finances are not where I want them to be. I remember I had this prompting going on in the inside of me. I knew who it was, but I didn’t want to acknowledge. I wanted to keep ignoring it. I knew it was God. God was tapping on me, “Come spend time with me. I have something to tell you.” I kept blocking and blocking, “No, I’m busy.” Finally, one of the best present in my life, I looked up to God and I said, “What do you want? Can’t you see I’m busy?” I’m rebuilding everything that obviously crashed down and somehow in my mind, I blamed God for allowing that even though it was my own selfishness and greed. He saved me. I somehow still blamed him.

I said, “Fine, if you want me to come and spend time with you, I’ll come spend time with you. Go ahead and pay all these bills right here that I have and I will come and spend time with you.” The audacity to speak that way to the creator of the entire universe, I did. I believe God loves when we get real and raw. The same way if I use your son for another example here, rather than your son come to you and be all nice and sweet with dad, but not tell you what’s going on in his life where he’s struggling with something. You’d rather he come to raw ugly maybe even with curse words or whatever but fully expressed what’s going on so that you know and can help him. Is that right?

Absolutely.

Uber successful people have spent their whole lives or career chasing and focusing on building their empire. – Joseph Warren Click To Tweet

It’s the same way with our Heavenly Father. I got real. I got down and dirty. I said a very human prayer, like take care of all my bills. Sure enough, two weeks later, a couple of coaching clients hired me and cut me huge checks with some personal savings. I was able to take off for eight months. I paid all my bills and everything. My selfish, narcissistic person that I am, I didn’t go and spend time with God. I went and traveled with my buddies. We rented beach homes, twelve-bedroom and ten-bath homes in the Hamptons back here in South Florida.

It was a close godly friend of mine. I have shared the prayer with him initially. When I got back to Tampa, he said, “Joseph, how’s it going?” I’m like, “It’s going great. It’s fantastic.” He’s like, “Remember that prayer you said?” He’s like, “It looks like God took care of his end of the bargain. How are you doing with yours?” That hit me. I knew what I had to do. I woke up the next morning. I canceled the next beach house plans that I had set up. I went to the local church. I got down on my knees and I said, “God, I’m here. I’ll commit to showing up an hour a day for two weeks. If you want to talk, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll just sit here.”

That was it. In doing that, God turned those two weeks into eight months, an hour a day in silence, letting him pour into me and hear the quiet whisper of my Creator, my Father speaking to me, his son. It’s not something that came overnight. God put a godly and successful businessman into my life who taught me the disciplines of learning to quiet all the noise in my head, get quiet and actually hear. In the spiritual space, people call it like zenning out, doing your yoga and all that stuff. It’s so much more than that because that’s quieting the noise and creating an empty space and then not filling it with anything. This is different. This is quieting the noise because God shows up in the quiet whisper. It’s personal. It’s intimate. It’s not an it, it’s a who. Right there over eight months, God spoke to my heart. I sensed him pouring into me the love of a father because I was raised with the view of God that God is this tyrant, this dictator, judgment, wrath, a very Old Testament God. I was scared of him. I didn’t want a loving relationship with a tyrant. Who wants a loving relationship with a dictator? That doesn’t sound pleasant. That was my view of God.

God poured into me over eight months his fatherly love. I saw this loving, compassionate relationship started to develop. All of a sudden those were filling in and healing all the wounds from my childhood of the trauma that I went through as a young man. I no longer felt as needed to go out and chase all the money and to chase all the things that money can buy. I was now being fed the things money can’t buy. That’s who I now work with, some of the clients I work with because I find that a lot of success. Uber successful people, they’ve spent their whole life or career chasing and focused on building their empire.

In doing so, other areas of their life may have gotten neglected like their relationships. Their relationships with their spouse, maybe they want more loving communication with their wife or with their kids or maybe they want a deeper connection with their God or their Higher Power. That’s missing for them right now. It’s leaving them feeling empty and going through the motions. What’s the point? It’s like, “I’ve got the boats. I’ve got the yachts. I’ve got a helicopter. I’ve got all of these things, why aren’t I happy?”

 

Joseph, I want to speak to the elephant in the room. As some of our readers right now might be saying, “I’m building. I’m growing. I’m building an empire. I’m walking my talk or walking as an example in God’s eyes. I’m building stuff, which is enough.” What would you say to someone that was skeptical or a faith-based business, that sounds too good to be true? How would you respond to that?

I think that’s the lie that’s out there in our society and culture right now is that you have to separate your faith from your business. You have to show up with this duality in your life. It doesn’t work because what’s happening is you’re showing up with a lack of authenticity in your business and everyone sees it but you. That’s what’s so interesting. Nobody is going to say it to you because they don’t even know what it is. They know something is off with you. They can’t put words to it, but sometimes they won’t do business with you because they just sense something. Here’s the difference. I used to be that guy.

I found that’s what was missing. I was leaving God at the door of my business. I was going to church on Sunday, worshiping and nodding my head as the pastor was saying all these things I believe in and going, “I believe that.” Come Monday morning, it was time to crush it, compete and whoever gets to the top wins. That’s it. If you can’t keep up with me, I’m leaving you behind. It was very anti-biblical. This is that duality in our lives. It’s also the reason why faith is so frowned upon right now in business because there are so few people living authentic faith-filled lives.

There’s no greater witness than a man or a woman who literally are living through their behavior or their actions, what they say they believe. It’s one of the most attractive things to other humans. When someone could look in your eye and see you showing up as your beliefs, they want to be around you. When people want to be around you, they want to work with you. When people want to work with you, they want to give you money so you’ve revenues go up. There are these tangible benefits. This is what I work with my clients on. It’s like, “Once you get your faith right, you get your business right,” and it’s not the other way around.

If you’d like to be in a place where you get your life, your business and your faith in alignment because think about it, when you’re out of alignment, if you can picture a person standing crooked with bad scoliosis and maybe their right shoulder is tipped and their left shoulder is way above and their hips are off alignment, if they’re out of alignment, what happens is you can’t run. You can’t walk efficiently and effectively. What if the one thing, what if the one piece right now in your life, in your business that would transform it all was making this shift towards faith-based authentic business? How would that shift for you? Joseph, I can’t help but think coming back to the elephant in the room, someone being here, an Atheist saying, “I don’t need to mix religion. I don’t need to mix spiritual. I don’t need to mix faith and my business. Those are separate, Joseph.”

Stop fighting what you actually want. – Joseph Warren Click To Tweet

It’s the separation of church and state. Let’s not mix church and business.

What would your response be to that person?

That’s totally fine. That’s where you are in your spiritual journey and there’s nothing wrong with it. My question to you is, “What’s missing in your life?” If you can honestly look in the mirror and look me dead in the eye and say, “Nothing is missing. My life is perfect in all areas of my life.” “Great.” We’ll both walk away from each other. I’ll know you’re a liar and you’ll feel good about yourself because that’s not what so. It’s not what’s real. I’ve said this before with some of my clients that come on. They’re Atheist and I used to be that so I could speak on both sides of the desk.

That’s a beautiful thing that God has equipped me with and let me go through that. I said, “Let me ask you this. You are in your spiritual walk. Do you want to believe that there’s a God or would you rather believe it makes you happy on the inside to think that you are a random accident? That your life has no purpose and it’s having fun and whoever dies with the most toys wins. You get eaten up by worms. Does that make you happy to think about that?” They’re like, “Of course not.” “Do you want to believe that there’s a God? Yeah, I want to believe that there’s something bigger than us.” I was like, “Here’s my challenge for you. Whenever, wherever in your quiet time, look up and say, ‘God, if you’re real, show me you’re real in my life and then expect.’ That’s it.”

This isn’t rocket science. You’ve got to be open. You’ve got to say it with a sincere heart. You’ve got to be open to him showing up and being real and you not being right about your Atheist beliefs. I’ve had friends do this before and I got tell you, God started showing up in their life and not in a headway, not up in their head. They literally woke up one day experiencing this pure love of like a loving father’s arms wrapped around them is how they described it to me. I was like, “What?” They’re like, “I can’t describe it, Joseph. I knew in a moment God was real, that he was my Father and I am loved.” It wasn’t a head thing. It was a heart thing. I’m like, “That’s what I’m talking about. Who doesn’t want that?”

 

I don’t care how tough you are as a business owner and you’re CEO of whatever Fortune 500, 100 and you’re making millions and bazillions. At the end of the day, we’re all broken little children walking around in adult bodies. We’re wounded. That’s who we are. Stop fighting what you actually want. You want a loving relationship with a God or some Higher Power that’s bigger than you so that you don’t have to figure out everything in your life. For some of your readers, I know they looked at themselves as like, “I’m a goddess and it’s my own infinite intelligence. I am my own God and all that stuff.” Then I looked back at them and say, “Why does your life look like such a mess? If you are God, fix it.” You haven’t, then I guess you’re not God. What are you going to do about that? You could keep pretending that everything is working and everything is fine on the outside or you can ask yourself the tough questions. “What if I’m missing something?” This is the biggest thing in humanity. “Who am I and why am I here?” Don’t you want to answers to that? I’ve gotten them for myself. Whenever you’re ready, I got some strategies and tips for your audience.

What would be one to three strategies that you hope your readers walk away with and put in place, put in action starting now that will make an immediate impact.

This first one is not for the lighthearted, straight out. This is a challenge. It’s called a challenge. I call it the 40-day Holy Hour Challenge. It’s because you either want it or you don’t. You either want a deeper relationship with your Creator, your higher power or you don’t. If you want that and this resonates with you, then here’s the strategy I did. Here’s what I teach my clients. When they start doing this game, change for their life. The 40-Day Holy Hour Challenge is spend one hour a day in quiet with God.

Many of my clients go, “Joseph, what about 59 minutes? What about 52 minutes? What about 30 minutes? I could do ten minutes. I could commit to ten minutes, but not 60.” It’s not going to work. You’re not ready for it and that’s totally fine. Get back to me when you are. It’s literally that simple because let’s be honest, if you fell in love right now or you were in love with the next $1,000 iPhone or you fell in love with some new passion, anytime I hear issues about time or money, we all have them. When you fall in love with a person or a phone or a new passion, you’re going to find a way and you’re going to find the money and you’re going to find the time to get it, true or true. That’s what it comes down to. Everybody has an hour a day.

Here’s the backward thing is many people say, “Joseph, I can’t squeeze an hour a day for God into my schedule.” I was like, “That’s right. That’s the problem with your life.” God is not asking you to squeeze an hour a day of him into it. He’s saying put Him in the first hour of your day and then build your schedule around that hour. It’s the opposite. That’s what biblical teaching is, “Put God first and all the desires of your heart will be given to you.” This is happening to me right now. I started this spiritual coaching business and it’s like I’m putting God first. I’ve been doing this Holy Hour for 130 something consecutive days every day. I do Facebook Live. If your audience wants virtual accountability and fellowship to do the Holy Hour, literally, you can join me live at 7:30 AM Eastern Standard Time, seven days a week. I’m telling you right now, we’ve got business owners in there, entrepreneurs. We got one who’s making $100,000. We got one who’s making $10 million, $50 million and God is doing something in their heart. He’s filling them up. He’s transforming their lives, their relationships. That’s the big thing is the daily Holy Hour.

Put God first and all the desires of your heart will be given to you. – Joseph Warren Click To Tweet

The second thing is to hire me as a coach. I have no problem saying that. I know the value I can bring to your life right now. The things that money can’t buy. If you want to have a transformation in those things, the things that mattered to you. I call it a spiritual clarity call. It’s no charge whatsoever. There’s no obligation. Go to my website, JosephWarren.net. Go ahead and schedule in my personal calendar. You’re literally going to walk away from that call with clarity in one area of your life that maybe you haven’t taken the time to get clear on what do you want. When you get to that level of playing the game and you’re winning in money and success, sometimes you forget to ask yourself, “Is this it? What do I want now?” I can help you get clear on that or maybe your question is, “What’s missing right now in my life? What have I been ignoring and not facing?” I could help you get clear with that. Those are two big strategies. They are the first two. You could do this with or without me. It doesn’t matter to me. If you want the support, I can help if you give me permission to.

I want to encourage you to go check out what Joseph is doing. You can go get access to the Spiritual Clarity Call at JosephWarren.net. If you want to join him in fellowship in the morning, you can find out more about that as well. Chances are you can check in with him on that call at the same time. He can get you more details on that daily Holy Hour and some amazing fellowships. Joseph, what’s something I should have asked you that I haven’t?

If I can put you on the spot, you should have said, “Joseph, this is what I’m struggling with. This is what I’m wrestling with, what do you think I should do about it?” Put me on the spot right there.

I can’t think of anything that comes to mind frankly. How about this, I’ve got a thirteen-year-old daughter. She’s hit these teenage years. She’s a little rough around the edges and closing off. One of the things that I do with my kids is we pray together. I split time with my ex-wife. When we’re together, we pray together. I give them the option. My son is awesome. He’s 99.9% if I say, “Do you want to do say a prayer?” He’ll go, “Yup.” He’ll say the prayer and then I pray over. My daughter on the other hand, at this point, she’s about 50/50 where she’ll go, “No,” and then I’ll pray over. She’s resistant for whatever reason. What would you encourage to overcome this resistance that she seems to have of opening our heart to pray and be open?

The first step I would do and encourage you is change the conversation around prayer for her. Because the conversation of what prayer means may now look different to her now that she’s thirteen and she’s going through all the chemical changes and everything in her body. It worked up until now as a young girl, but now that definition has changed. Like most kids at that stage, she no longer gets, “Why is this even important? What’s the point? I don’t get it. What does this have to do with my life and what I’m going through at school and with my friends and all this other stuff?”

What may be missing is connecting and building the bridge for her that she doesn’t know how to build. Taking prayer out of the conversation and start speaking more about the relationship with the one who created her and knows everything that’s going on in her heart right now and knows what she’s wrestling right now. “Sweetheart, wouldn’t you want to have someone? Imagine if you could bring all those challenges and everything and you don’t have to share with mom and dad.” I get that. I didn’t want to share with my mom and dad when I was thirteen, fourteen years old. “What if you could have a best friend? What if you can have your Heavenly Father to share these things and these challenges and to have an outlet? What happens if you don’t have an outlet? You get all bottled up and it makes us angry as human beings. We need to release this so that God can heal us and everything.” Open up that conversation with her. Ask her questions like, “What do you think is missing right now for you? What would you like prayer time with dad to look like? If you could be in charge of our prayer time, what would you want that to look like?” Little kids at that age, they want to be adults. They want to be seen as adults. Start giving her a little buy-in power, a little ownership over it. You may see totally different girls start to emerge.

If you want to get a glimpse and go deeper with Joseph and his work and fellowship and in a Holy Hour experience and/or take advantage of the Clarity Call that he’s got available for you, go to his website. Joseph, it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to have you with us here. Thank you.

Dan, I love you. I love what you’re up to in the world so keep doing it.

Thank you. I want to encourage you to take action with what Joseph has been sharing with you. If you want to get to a place where your business brings you joy and fulfillment, merge a faith-based model with a higher power into your life, into your business. He’s a great testimonial of what can happen. See what would happen for you if you are able to bridge this gap. This isn’t a one-time thing. This is an all the time thing. If you’re looking for a way to have encouragement, to have fellowship, to have support, go check out what Joseph’s up to. We’ll see you on our next time on GrowthToFreedom.com.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• First $100K
• Broken Catholic
• Joseph Warren
• JosephWarren.net

 

About Joseph Warren

Joseph Warren is the host of First $100K™ podcast and the owner of 2 coworking spaces in Tampa, FL where he coaches hundreds of entrepreneurs to make their first $100K… or next. His clients include solo-preneurs to small businesses and enterprise companies such as UBER, CISCO, INTEL and more.

He also has a faith-based podcast called Broken Catholic™ where he interviews Atheists, Jews, Christians and Catholics about why the world is NOT working right now and how to UNIFY Christians everywhere.

Joseph’s a 10x failed entrepreneur turned “overnight success”. He speaks about the things that no one is talking about like the #1 REASON why 90% of entrepreneurs are struggling to make their first $100K!