089: What Companies & Churches Can Learn From Target

1. We’re too often married to our models more than our mission.

Churches need to look at those models, like they did a few decades ago, and ask, “Is this the best way to reach people?” If you can separate your model and your mission, you can do a better job of meeting people where they are.

2. The digital experience doesn’t take away from an in-person experience.

The most successful retailers have realized the digital experience only makes people want to go to the store more. It isn’t a substitute; it’s a complimentary experience.

3. In order to be relevant, you have to stop caring when and where the customer makes their purchase.

Your goal should be to meet them where they are. That’s why Sears and JCPenney lost business while places like Target and Home Depot thrived. Provide access to them through many different channels.

Nathan Artt on LinkedIn, Instagram and Ministry Solutions

Lisa Zeeveld on Instagram and LinkedIn

BELAY’s Accounting service

Nathan’s book: Target Corp & the Flexible Church

(01:48) Nathan’s initial thoughts on what people are experiencing at churches in this current environment.

(06:31) The church needs to do a better job of meeting where the unchurched is giving love to the unchurched.

(06:56) What would Nathan’s final meal be if he had to choose one?

(07:29) Nathan talks about some of the reasons Target was struggling in 2014 that led them to make changes.

(11:34) What parallels does Nathan see between churches and Target?

(17:15) It’s not about creating the exact same experience in person and online.

(20:33) The digital experience is about helping you find what you need when you need it most.

(21:04) How does Nathan see the digital experience changing for churches and Christian communities?

(29:09) Nathan talks about where you can find his ebook.

(30:25) As a BELAY client, Nathan talks about how his virtual assistant has helped him.

(33:13) This week’s download: Nathan is offering a free download of his new ebook Target Corp & The Flexible Church.

Nathan Artt:

The power of the digital platform is not 1990s TV advertising broadcast, taking my product that maybe 98% of you don’t want, but if I get in front of enough people, at least 2% of you will want it. That’s not the digital platform. Digital platform is about relevance. It’s about being able to give you what you are looking for at the time you need it most.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Welcome to One Next Step, the practical business podcast that helps you run your business so it stops running you. I’m LZ.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

LZ. It’s so good to be with you today. I’m Ryan.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Hey Ryan. I love it when we are together. Today I’m going to be talking to Nathan Artt about engaging people in a digital world. Nathan is the founder and president of Ministry Solutions. He’s also the author of a new ebook, Target Corp & the Flexible Church.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

I can’t wait to hear your conversation with him about what businesses and churches can learn about engagement from Target. LZ, before we dive in, I want to take a quick moment to tell our listeners about BELAY. With modern staffing from BELAY, businesses and leaders can focus on growth without the unnecessary overhead or learning curves associated with high hiring and onboarding full-time employees. BELAY is the incredible 100% remote organization revolutionizing productivity with our virtual assistants, bookkeepers, and social media managers. Accomplish more, juggle less, and get back to what only you can do, growing your business with modern staffing from BELAY. Now let’s jump into our interview with LZ and Nathan.

Lisa Zeeveld:

All right so I was just chitchatting about my experience at elevation and how their whole goal was to get unchurched people to come to church and then you started to kind of drop this on me about what the next thing is and I want to capture that, so can you go back and so it talk a little bit about it.

Nathan Artt:

Well yeah, it’s beautiful. As I was saying, I’m not a church person. I didn’t grow up going to church. Wasn’t a Christian. For me, this whole study is really looking at like just these big companies and what they’re doing to be relevant to people who aren’t currently shopping at their stores. 20 years ago for church, it was that we want to be the church that unchurch people love to attend. Right? That meant that we’re going to bring you into a physical environment that looks and feels differently than the church that you grew up going to, or didn’t grow up going to, but it’s a relevant, meaningful expression that looks a little bit like other places that you spend time during the week. That was very successful.

Nathan Artt:

What’s happened is, being the church that unchurch people love to attend, what’s happened with the digital platform and evolving human behavior is that the words to attend now mean something different than they did 20 years ago. There was a recent study that 82% of generation Z has a relationship with someone that they have met virtually that they have never met in person.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Wow!

Nathan Artt:

Right? For us, like growing up, you think, well, there’s an online relationship and then there’s a real relationship. That is not how people think anymore. They think of relationships, at least in this younger generation. People can have meaningful relationships and they can attend things without actually being in the room, but our models… Right? We are so married to our models sometimes even more than our mission, people start attending differently, but we are still trying to get them to come to this environment that looks like it did. The problem with the attractional church model is that it worked. We’re no longer replacing what church used to be. That is now what people think of when they think of church.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, right yeah.

Nathan Artt:

The person who doesn’t want to come to church, doesn’t want to go to an environment where there’s great music or there’s things, I have that. If my church is going to be meaningful to me, it’s going to help me with relationships, and it’s going to be a safe place for me to go. We read so much in the Bible about what happens when people feel shame, and then they hide.

Nathan Artt:

A lot of what the digital platform does. Well, shame will teach us that there is safety in anonymity. When I’m going through something or I’ve done something, or I’m struggling with something, you see this with Adam and Eve, you see this kind of throughout, is that the first response is to kind of hide. If you could see me, you couldn’t love me. Right? The digital platform’s great because it provides that safety. It provides that opportunity to plug in and engage, but I’m in control of the relationship. I don’t have to go to an unknown building. I can get out if I don’t like it. Right? It creates a safety for people.

Nathan Artt:

The problem is, is that we’re trying to take our Sunday morning room, our auditorium and just simply put it online, and what you’re doing, and I don’t mean to be like too forward in this opinion, but what you’re doing is you’re taking a product that people already don’t want and you’re making it worse by commoditizing an in-person experience and putting it online. I have a friend of mine that says, it’s like recording a play and calling it a movie.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh, don’t even get me started on that. I’m a huge Hamilton fan. When they tried to take Hamilton and put it on Disney, I’m like, no, no, no, no. I saw it live. It’s way, way, way better.

Nathan Artt:

It’s not the same.

Lisa Zeeveld:

I promise to get to the real content, but I don’t want to miss this now because I feel like there’s somebody out there who needs to hear this is, is that to your point when you’re struggling with something or you’re not sure if you’re lovable, what the current social media platform has done is it’s taught us that transparency is okay as long as you have that veil. I find that some of my unchurched friends are getting that connection that I found… I just told you I was saved in 2001. That they’re actually getting that connection from unchurched people, instead of going to the church. It’s like I knew that I needed Jesus, and so I was searching and searching and searching. I had a little bit of understanding of what Christianity meant from Sunday school going with my grandparents, but I wasn’t a regular attender. I didn’t have that in my life. When I needed it, I found it in church, because I couldn’t find that love, because we as individuals weren’t that transparent back then. Right?

Nathan Artt:

Right.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Going through the 90s, you just didn’t show up and go, “Today’s really a bad day for me.” You showed up in the office and you put on your smile and you pretended everything was okay. Now we’ve gone, which is beautiful, now we’ve gone to this environment where you can just show up and say, “I don’t feel good, and this is what’s going on.” People rally around you. I think that the church has to do a better job of meeting where the unchurched is giving love to the unchurched.

Nathan Artt:

Hey, listen, this is a perfect segue into today’s conversation.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Awesome. All right. Well, Nathan, we are super happy to have you here, obviously, because I’m rambling on. Thank you, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re going to jump into kind of a fun question. Let’s make it lighthearted. We got deep into this. What would your final meal be if you had to choose one?

Nathan Artt:

Well, that might literally be the easiest question you could possibly ask me. It would be chicken wings. Very, very hot chicken wings, habanero sauce, running down your arms, messy and as spicy as you could possibly make them. That would be my last meal.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Wow! I love that. Now, do you make chicken wings often?

Nathan Artt:

Probably way too often. Yes.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Okay.

Nathan Artt:

Yes. I’m a fan for sure.

Lisa Zeeveld:

That’s so fun. That’s so fun. Well, how we got off on this conversation was really starting off with the idea that you started digging into Target. We’re all very familiar with Target Corporation, but you talk about some of the disruption that was going on at Target back in 2014 in your new ebook. What’s causing that?

Nathan Artt:

Well, very similar to what we were just talking about human behavior was changing. The way that people engage was behaving and retail really saw split. The digital platform, it forced people to either double down on your existing model and make it work, or recognize that this is a change in the way that people interact with brands, interact even with each other, not just brands, but a lot of relevance is tapping into existing human behavior, not trying to change it or create it. Right?

Nathan Artt:

Target recognized it. I mean, I’d love to sit in the boardroom. 2014, they’re a distressed stock, and they’re talking about closing stores, and Brian Cornell who ended up in 2019 being named the CEO of the year, which is pretty cool, but he’s a brand new guy, and I can just imagine him walking in to the boardroom. In fact, one of the things that they recognized in the beginning was the biggest challenge for them to adapt was internal, not external. That internally they had to get on the same page about wanting to change or double down.

Nathan Artt:

I think he started with questions like, “Hey why do we have 140,000 square foot stores?” Somebody raises their hand and they say, “Well, here’s the thing. People, if you don’t know this, Mr. Cornell, people during the week, they make shopping list, and they keep them sometimes on their fridge. Then everyone does all their shopping once a week. We have to have a store big enough to have all of what those people need at one time, which also means we have to have a really big parking lot and serve a really big radius.” I can now imagine him just asking, “Well, do people still do that? Is that how people still shop?”

Lisa Zeeveld:

Right.

Nathan Artt:

Huh. Maybe our mission to provide a high quality service and product and our method and how we deliver it. We can actually separate those two conversations. We can keep our mission alive, but our method can change. I think he gave permission to the people at Target to say, “Hey, that’s not how people are interacting. If we want to be relevant to people, we have to shift in how we want to interact with them.”

Nathan Artt:

The cool story is, 2014 distressed stock. They’re looking at closing stores. Five years later, they are back to being the sixth highest producing revenue retailer in the United States with plans to open 500 new stores, revenue increases a 400-500%, and all that sounds really, really great. The thing that stands out to me, that is the biggest thing to really dive into is this fact, there are four, if you take out Apple, there are four retailers listed in the top 10 online retailers in America who also have a brick and mortar presence. Throw out Amazon, Wayfair, Etsy, and you have Home Depot, Target, Walmart and Macy’s. What’s interesting is, out of those four, they’re in the top 10 largest online retailers in the U.S., and not a single one of them sees more than 10% of revenue online.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Whoa!

Nathan Artt:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

No way.

Nathan Artt:

Yeah. What’s fascinating about this is, is this whole conversation of cannibalization, that a digital platform is a competing platform, and its intent is to become a broadcast channel, or to take an in-person product and commoditize it by placing it online. The reality is, it’s not that at all. The fact, the more these companies focused and grew their digital platform, the more it created a desire for a tactile experience from the people with whom they were engaging.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. I love that. I love that. Well, what parallels do you see from that with churches and companies?

Nathan Artt:

This will be the first six hour podcast.

Lisa Zeeveld:

I think that is a concern.

Nathan Artt:

There are so many. There are so many. I think this is it, because you’ll hear this word. You’ll hear this word “hybrid”, and I’ll start by saying this, you don’t hear that word from Target and you don’t hear that word from Home Depot. This is a word that people will use to describe it, but I think a lot of times, hybrid, people think of taking a product and then selling it across different distribution channels. Like an iPhone, if I can buy it in person and online, that’s a hybrid model. I don’t agree with that. I think a hybrid model starts with the idea that you have different platforms to engage with different audiences, which require different organizational strategies.

Nathan Artt:

A true kind of approach to this Target model and Home Depot, we did a big deep study on Home Depot as well, was not to answer the question of how do we get people who already shop at our stores to have a more convenient experience? The question was, how do we become relevant to the people who don’t shop at our stores? I wrote this in the book and I think that it’s a lot to camp out on, but I think the big thing that differentiates these companies from the Sears and the JCPenneys of the world who are going out of business is everyone in churches, especially, right? We look at the digital platform as a means of convenience. What Target figured out was the difference between convenience and relevance.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Wow!

Nathan Artt:

Convenience is taking something and making it more of available, but no one ever said they wanted that. In fact, I think that’s the biggest problem that people have with church right now, is that we want faith, hope, and love. We want connection. We want meaningful things, but I’m going through a divorce, or I’m dealing with dependency, and you want to invite me to a building at a certain time to hear a guy talk about generosity. How is that relevant to me? Oh, wait, you’ll put it online. You’re going to take something I didn’t want and then make it worse. Great. Sign me up for that. Right?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Nathan Artt:

What the digital platform represents, there’s really two reasons the digital platform is so meaningful. One is, it allows us to get to know people… One of the big myths about digital is that we don’t get to know the people. I would actually make the argument that the opposite is true. I can meet with someone for a year, you can meet with someone for a year and ask them how they’re doing and what’s going on, and learn what they want you to know about them, but give me that person’s Google search history, right? Their purchasing history, their calendar, whatever it is. The digital platform is interesting because it actually helps us get to know people better.

Nathan Artt:

The second thing is, the power of the digital platform is not 1990s TV advertising broadcast. Taking my product that maybe 98% of you don’t want, but if I get in front of enough people, at least 2% of you will want it. That’s not the digital platform. Digital platform is about relevance. It’s about being able to give you what you are looking for at the time you need it most.

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Lisa Zeeveld:

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Lisa Zeeveld:

No, I think there’s so many common points because BELAY, we got started in December of 2010, a hundred percent remote. We’ve never had a brick and mortar. At first, we tried to sell our services to the traditional marketplace. Those who were going to an office every day and expected to have their administrative assistant, executive assistant sit right next to them. At that time, it was a foreign concept. How do you know if your team member is working if they don’t sit next to you?

Lisa Zeeveld:

The sales process was really lengthy because we kept trying to have to oversell it. When quickly we figured out that if we started to advertise our product on a digital platform, Google, Facebook, and meeting people who were already tech savvy, where they needed to be met, and were looking for this exact service, then the sales process was short, because they knew what they were looking for.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Those clients who were coming to us, asking all those questions, asking us to jump through the hoops, just like you’re saying, they weren’t our right fit. We weren’t trying to mimic what you could get in your office. We were a different solution.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Luckily for us, right? Luckily for us the world has changed and met us where we are, and now we’re considered experts at that. I love what you’re saying, that it’s not about creating the exact same offering in person and online, they are two different things. It’s different people who are looking for that. I think it’s important to capture that whether you’re for-profit or nonprofit, whether you’re a church or you are a business. Understanding who your client is and who you’re trying to reach and not duplicating it. Not that hybrid method.

Nathan Artt:

Yeah, 100%. I think for the church, one of the things we have to recognize is, this is one of the things that came out of the Target study too, in order to truly be relevant, we have to stop caring when and where the customer purchases. Right?

Nathan Artt:

A lot of times, so you look at what made Sears and JCPenney less relevant and out of business, whereas Target, Home Depot and other stores took off was Sears and JCPenney saw the digital platform as the new top of the funnel. In fact, you will hear this in a lot of language. People talking about digital, and they say, the new front door. Maybe that’s true.

Nathan Artt:

What digital’s actually done is it’s kind of destroyed the funnel in a way that’s different, because now people can enter in where they want, and how they want, at the time they want. Your job digitally is to be of the available at a lot of times, and to be through content and value add, and other things. You can be relevant, right? You can have good content, but you’re not using it to try to get them in the store.

Nathan Artt:

One of the things that was just so… and it’s so counterintuitive, but the thing that ended up helping Home Depot and Target drive people to the store was when they stopped caring about that as the goal.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Oh yeah.

Nathan Artt:

Yeah.

Lisa Zeeveld:

I think you just hurt somebody’s ego right now though, because they’re just thinking, I don’t know like that’s kind of what I’ve always been focused on.

Nathan Artt:

Yeah. Well, ’cause people know. If you think about it, what a lot of people use a digital platform for. We interviewed Frank Blake’s CEO of Home Depot and done a lot of events and stuff with him. This is a guy who took Home Depot digital. I mean, this guy’s well documented. He’s amazing.

Nathan Artt:

Seven years later, the fourth largest online retailer in the country, they grew their in-store revenue by like 600%, all these really, really great things. One of the things he said there. Our first attempt digitally was to take our online circular. Take our Sunday morning newspaper circular and just put it online. That’s a digital experience. He said that the problem with that is, when we’re doing a circular, we’re sitting around as a team and we’re thinking, this week let’s talk about refrigerators and let’s talk about chainsaws and let’s pick the refrigerators we like and the ones we want to sell. Let’s actually be honest. Not the ones we like. Let’s pick the ones we want to sell. Okay?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Sure, yeah.

Nathan Artt:

Start with what we want to sell, not what the customer is looking for. We put it in this circular and now we’ve put it online and we’re calling it a digital experience. All right? This week is refrigerators and chain saws. LZ you’re coming in and you’re looking for power drills, right?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Sure, yeah.

Nathan Artt:

That’s not a digital experience because I’m choosing what I think should be relevant to you in trying to get you to buy it, but the digital experience is about walking through and again, getting to a place where I am relevant by helping you find what you need at the time you need it most. That is the big shift. We move from trying to get people to make their first purchase, to buy this thing, to be a productized solution, to focusing on content and engagement and getting to know people and bringing them in so that when they’re ready, they tell us what they’re looking for. That’s the difference.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah, and that’s what I was going to ask next, is as that relate to churches, you kind of gave that scenario about someone’s going through a divorce or they’re hurting and you think you’re doing a good job because you put your message online and they sit down at 11:00 and they’re ready to watch it, and it’s about giving, which always happens. You know that’s the joke. It always happens when you bring a guest to church. They’re always going to talk about giving on that Sunday.

Nathan Artt:

Yes.

Lisa Zeeveld:

How do you see that changing for church? Do you see that it almost becomes a message on demand? Do you see that? Yeah. I know you talked about some digital tools, analytics, that can pull out what people are looking for, but where do you see kind of that messaging going for Christian communities, like for churches, how will they meet them if you were to think big?

Nathan Artt:

Well, I go back, and I think this is one of the biggest thing that churches specifically are missing right now. I also think this is very applicable to business. When we think of Target and Home Depot and all these big retailers, we think of them as national players and therefore the automatic conclusion is that they have national marketing strategies. That is not correct. In fact, the VP of marketing at Target was very specific. Now listen to this. This is the vice president of digital marketing at Target. He is not related to the stores. He has no interest. I mean, his one single job at Target is grow their digital marketing footprint. Right? He said, “The core of our digital strategy is rooted in the Target store.” Meaning this is not a differentiated experience. We’re not creating a competing experience. Again, everything we do is about being a solution in the communities where Target is represented, right? It is just a different play.

Nathan Artt:

For churches, one of the big questions that a church thinking through this has to answer, and I think it’s a silly question, to be honest, but it’s the question a lot of churches are going through. Are we local? Are we regional? Are we national?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Sure.

Nathan Artt:

You’re local. The dissonance there, I think is going back to this method, right? We’re married more to our methods than to our mission. Our method is to get people in the building. Our method is to get our sermon out to as many people as possible. One of the questions I would challenge church leaders with specifically is, are you a B2C solution or a B2B solution? What I mean by that is my business model to get my content, what I want you to hear from me about generosity for the next four weeks out to as many people as possible, and then compete with the other hundreds of thousands of churches, and by the way, pastors who are way better at speaking than you are. Right?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah.

Nathan Artt:

To get that message and then go compete with all of those other voices on Sunday morning. Is that truly what your digital strategy is? Or is it B2B? When I say B2B, what I mean is, or is digital, it’s a different audience, different things. Are we using our digital platform to equip people to be more significant in their own communities?

Nathan Artt:

What I mean by that is, and I’m not Billy Graham, but I do love Jesus. I moved to a very post-Christian part of Atlanta and I’ve asked… I’ve literally prayed. I’m like, “Lord, they’re my neighbors, so I can’t make it weird. If you would, I would love for you to open doors just for conversation.” He totally did. Okay? I have a guy down the road, he’s a totally atheist. Loves to come, sit on my front porch, and I’m not trying to convince him of anything, just like he likes to talk about it. Right?

Nathan Artt:

I have lesbian couple across the street who was really injured by the church. There’s a guy down the road dealing with some mental health stuff, just being locked in his house all the time. I mean, people across the street probably getting a divorce and for whatever reason they like to talk to me about it. What do I do with that?

Nathan Artt:

What is my church helping me do? What is available to me? I’m not equipped to have those conversations. I’m not a marriage counselor. I’m not A.W. Tozer. I’m not going to get in an environment where I’m trying to convert my guy down the street to think differently than he does, but I have created safety for those conversations. I’ve done that. Or God’s done it through me. Where am I taking them? They’re not going to a church building. They’re not going to a church building. I think we have to get to the realization that we have to start selling Jesus more than we sell our pastors and our churches.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Amen.

Nathan Artt:

Because people want faith, hope, and love. They might just not want church. In fact, there’s a recent study that show there are 73 million people in America who are open to the idea of Christian content and Christian relationships who are simultaneously uninterested in church. Think about that. That’s one quarter of our U.S. population.

Lisa Zeeveld:

It’s crazy. Yeah. My husband and I are acting just like you are. We’ve been given an opportunity. My husband is now… We just joke around about it. He has officiated two weddings. He’s done two baby dedications, and he is kind of hot in the funeral market. He’s almost done five funerals, and it’s because we have a group of people that we love who are unchurched, but are Christians. They’re afraid to step foot in church, but they know that they love Jesus, because they see Jesus in us. They feel way more comfortable saying, “I feel like you know me, and I know that Jesus, so will you just come along with me and make those special times in my life special?” It doesn’t feel as intimidating. Right?

Lisa Zeeveld:

We were able to do that because our local church at the time had equipped us in our own faith journey. I see that that’s where ultimately Christianity and the church is going to go, is it’s equipping more folks like us who are just willing to have conversations and show who Jesus is.

Nathan Artt:

Yeah. A hundred percent. I would say just to even expound upon that. Again, this is a business concept, as much as it’s a Christian one, because by the way, both deal in human behavior. That’s one of the things that I think is so hard. We think a church, we think a spiritual behavior, we think a business, we think a human behavior. God made us both human and spiritual. To play to one without the other is ignorant. Right? It really is.

Nathan Artt:

For me though, like I don’t want to be the solution. I want to love this person. I want to be with them, but I know that there’s better solutions than me out there. Like here’s just an example, right? We’re in this digital community, everyone’s questioning faith right now more than they ever have. Like here’s just one example. Why are we promoting maybe a sermon more than we’re promoting open conversations or a safe place to ask tough questions about faith. And like literally just creating environments where people can log in digitally for four weeks and just ask tough questions about faith and we listen. Because I could send him to that.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

Nathan Artt:

He’s not going to church, but I say, “Hey if you really want to have some fun asking these questions, there are people smarter than me. My pastor’s actually doing a talk. He’s doing a thing where like Hindu people and Muslim people, they’re just going to come and ask questions about faith. You should go.” You know what? He would.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Sure. Yeah.

Nathan Artt:

He would, he would go. My couple across the street who’s struggling right now. They want their marriage to be fixed. They love each other. They just don’t have the tools. I would love for my church to have content specific to growing known problem. That people are really struggling in COVID right now with marriage and kids. Again, what are we doing for them? What environments are we creating for them outside the productized version of church? Again, I think the digital platform is about getting to know people and creating a safety, a place of safety for them to come and process what’s relevant and important to them.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Gosh, I love this. This has been a phenomenal conversation. I’m going to hit it right now. Where can we find your ebook?

Nathan Artt:

Yes. So ministry-solutions.com. It’s called Target & the Flexible Church. Again, it’s just a case that I think to kind of just wrap this up and iterate. I think one of the things that’s been really awesome is to see companies like Target, like Home Depot adapt and you’re seeing market caps go from 40 to 200 billion. Right? They’re doing that to sell chainsaws and baby clothes. It’s just amazing to me as a church what we could learn. If those companies can sell billions of dollars of perishable goods, what we can do as a church with this imperishable message.

Nathan Artt:

It’s been fun. It’s been amazing. I think, honestly, again, we talked a lot about church, but I do feel too, just the business correlations in there are just unbelievable. There’s a lot to learn from these organizations and their leadership and hats off to those teams. It was hard to walk away from that and not just have a deep appreciation for the leadership of Frank Blake and Brian Cornell.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. Well, I think that you’re bridging the gap to say that there is not that much difference between church and business. To your point, this is a message everybody needs to hear. I’m going to kind of ask that we switch gears just a little bit before we close here. You’re a BELAY client, so…

Nathan Artt:

I am.

Lisa Zeeveld:

That’s not just why we asked you to be part of the podcast, because you’re phenomenal, but I don’t want to miss this opportunity to talk about your VA Jess. Briefly, just tell us how she’s impacted you and your ministry.

Nathan Artt:

Well, I tell people, I may be the head of the company, but she’s the neck, and she tells the head when and where it can turn.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah. I love that.

Nathan Artt:

She’s been a huge blessing for me. I think a lot of people, including me, I think learning how to use a VA. I don’t know, you think of someone who can help you with your calendar and help you with scheduling and she’s become more than that. She is an extension of me. Like we’re at a place where she thinks for me. I learned quickly that people love hearing from her. If they wait on me, it’s going to be a week or two, and they hear from her, and she speaks for me. I mean, it frees me up so much to do the stuff that’s important to our organization. I have someone I completely trust who is able not just to handle the administrative stuff, but literally speak and think on my behalf. That has been tremendous value and no one on this podcast is allowed to steal her from me. I just want to be clear about that. I am keeping her.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Well noted. I love this. This has been so good. I feel like we have so much content here, but I do have one more question. Would you mind staying around and maybe we could offer a little bit of bonus content?

Nathan Artt:

Yeah. Heck yeah. I would love that.

Lisa Zeeveld:

All right.

Nathan Artt:

That’d be great.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Awesome. All right guys. Well, you definitely don’t want to miss this. In order to hear the clip though, you have to subscribe to our email list and we’ll send you a link to this phenomenal bonus content. Or you can visit onenextsteppodcast.com where you can find a link in our show notes.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

LZ. That was a fantastic conversation with Nathan Artt. I feel like we just scratched the surface of that. What was your favorite takeaway?

Lisa Zeeveld:

Yeah, I think that’s a nice way of saying that. We had a lot to talk about, cause you’re right, we just scratched the surface. I just wanted to keep going with Nathan. He was awesome, and it was truly such a great conversation. Of course, my takeaways. I always struggle with this, because I can’t just pick one. Something that stood out to me was the idea that we are married more to our methods than to our mission. I’m going to say that one more time. That we are married more to our methods than our mission. If we can decouple those two things, we can grow organically with our customers and our clients by meeting them where they are, and that’s right when they need us most.

Lisa Zeeveld:

All right guys, as always, we have a one next step for you to take. This week, Nathan is offering a free download of his new book, Target Corp & the Flexible Church.

Ryan Fitzgerald:

Gosh! I think that new ebook is going to be so great to read. I cannot wait to download it. Well, thank you so much for tuning in for this week’s One Next Step. To make sure you never miss an episode, subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or follow us on Spotify. If you’re ready to start accomplishing more and juggling less, go belaysolutions.com.

Lisa Zeeveld:

For more episodes, show notes, and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com. Join us next time for more practical business tips and tools to help you advance your business one step at a time. Start by making today count.

Lisa Zeeveld:

Join us next week for a fascinating conversation with Jason Drees, the CEO of Jason Drees Coaching and the author of Do the Impossible: Unlock Your Full Potential with the Power of Mindset. He’ll chat with us about cultivating a mindset that positions you for success, fulfillment, and adventure. Here’s a quick preview…

Jason Drees:

2019, my coaching business, Jason Drees Coaching Was Jason Drees, One Coach, $100,000 in revenue that year, 2020 we did $1 million, last year we did $2.5 million, which was about 2.5X after 10 Xing, and basically what I am teaching everybody is my dissection of how I did what I did. We all know that life responds to us, sometimes life responds to us great, and sometimes life doesn’t respond to us and things don’t go our way. What I have discovered, is the framework for how to make life respond to you more effectively.

Announcer:

Thanks for listening to One Next Step. Be sure to subscribe on Apple podcasts or follow us on Spotify, then join on us next time for more practical business tips and tools to help you get more done, grow your business and lead your team with confidence. For more episodes, show notes and helpful resources, visit onenextsteppodcast.com.