Sebastien Braxton is a serial entrepreneur and has started multiple companies with no money in his pocket. Learn more about the customer-funded business model and how you can use it to start your missional business from scratch.

<p>Sebastien Braxton is a serial entrepreneur and has started multiple companies with no money in his pocket. Learn more about the customer-funded business model and how you can use it to start your missional business from scratch.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Hyve

The Hyve Podcast Season 1

Jesse Zwiker

Why Missional Entrepreneurship

Hi guys, welcome to Hive's podcast, the podcast for missional entrepreneurship.

My name is Vincent Boujour and I have the founder of Hive here with me in the studio today, Jesse.

Jesse Zwicker, thank you so much for being here with me.

So Jesse, you know, he is a good friend of mine and we have known each other for now 4 years.

I've actually attended the very first Hive conference in Europe.

And Jesse is originally from Switzerland.

It's actually a funny fact that he was just sharing with me that, you know, his mom used to drive through Silicon Valley every single day when she was in high school, way before Jesse was born.

And then now, later, you know, many years later, now Silicon Valley is pretty famous.

Jesse has become an entrepreneur, but not only an entrepreneur, he has become a missional entrepreneur.

And what that really means and and and why that is so important to us today we want to find that out here on this episode of Hives podcast Today we want to get to know Jesse and his story a little bit more.

And I wanted to ask you Jesse at the very beginning, how did you grow up?

You know, I grew up probably like everybody else.

Like I tell my kids, I slept a lot, I ate a lot, I did a lot of exercise, no.

I think the most important thing in my story is that...

So I had somehow a mixture of cultures and we traveled a lot.

My dad was working for Swiss Air, so we had cheap tickets everywhere.

So that was a helpful thing to get more exposure.

And we were Christians, you know, we were Seventh-day Adventist Christians, but not very defined, you know, we didn't, I didn't, I didn't have anything, any clue about like mission work or anything like that.

But the big thing was really that my mom, every single day, she would share, she would read while we had breakfast, she would read stories of these crazy missionaries that were working in Papua New Guinea, or they were working in some parts of the country, you know, some other country fighting against crocodiles and trying to reach people, you know?

And so that spirit of adventure, I think, really was absorbed, you know, in my personal experience.

And I think it later then came out once I had my first conversion experience.

So, but and that was until like when I was 18.

So I had nothing to do with really, I was not interested in a lot of spiritual things.

I didn't understand any doctrines or anything like that.

I went to church, but mostly I was drumming.

That's what I was doing all my free time.

I was going to get a scholarship to go to Berkeley College Jazz in Boston for drumming.

But then we had this crazy idea, or actually our youth pastor had this crazy idea of us going to the Philippines and doing something that he called an evangelistic campaign.

Now I didn't understand what that was I just thought cool Philippines you know that's another country I haven't been there yet you know it sounds like an adventure let's go and so I showed up there you know we we flew over there I went actually with my brother with my parents and with the whole youth group and I was 18 and then I turned up there and I saw this huge big banner you know that said discover the prophecies And then I looked a little closer and I saw this picture of myself on the banner.

And I'm like, pastor, what am I doing here?

And so he's like, oh, don't worry, don't worry.

Here, look, here's a stack of sermons these are pre-written sermons just read them before you present you've been on stage all your childhood basically you know from drumming and bass guitar and all this music stuff so you're used to being on stage so just just read it and then share it you know in the evenings and so for me that was like my introduction to whoa you know all this stuff and I had like these were like 20-something sermons and I was just studying all day long.

And I was like, whoa, I was discovering every day.

I was like, oh wow, I had no idea that I believed this, you know, that the Bible said this stuff and it was like super, super amazing to me.

And that was really where my childhood in a way like turned around and all these stories from the past, from my mom telling all these mission stories, really started coming to life.

And I'm like, wow, I wanna do something meaningful.

I wanna do something amazing, like these guys that we had heard about.

The last thing I wanted to do was live a normal, boring life like anybody else could, because we have a deeper purpose.

For me, that was key in my childhood and my upbringing.

So I guess that was kind of the beginning of you getting into ministry.

What happened once you made that decision to say, OK, I'll follow Jesus 100% I'm in.

Well, I, you know, through a series of miracles and also circumstances, I went to a mission school in Norway, where I met a friend from Honduras, you know, Central America.

And then, but then, you know, people were saying, I need to go study.

If I wanna go work full time for God, you know, then really the only way is to study theology and you gotta be pastor, you know, converted young guy, you know, you gotta be pastor, you know?

And I was not so sure about that because I didn't feel like I fit into that box very well.

But you know, since everybody was saying the same thing and I was, I guess, you know, I just kinda thought, well, whatever it is, it's gonna help me if I do have theology and whatever I do.

I did do another, a couple of years actually.

But then after the first year, you know, Jose from Honduras who I had studied with at the admission school, he's like, Jesse, Jesse, he calls me up, he's like, Jesse, I got this property and I'm all alone, let's come here and help me start this project, you know, stop all this all this boring Greek and Hebrew over there, you know, and so I'm like, I'm like, actually I enjoy Greek and Hebrew, it wasn't that bad, but but definitely it wasn't the adventure that I was looking forward to, you know, from all these childhood stories, you know.

So when he invited me, I'm like, I prayed, you know, and I felt like this was going to be, I was going to learn a lot more going and starting a project than even studying theology.

So anyway, I dropped out of college and I jumped over the Atlantic to Central America.

I went to Honduras and we started this project actually a couple months after I got there Jose told me you know Jesse my parents really want me to study full-time so I'm gonna be studying industrial engineering So I'm grateful that the Lord brought you here so you can run the project while I'm studying.

So here I was 19 years old, and then I had to figure out how to lead this project, how to really start the project.

You know, he was definitely always working overtime, but while he was studying full-time during the week in the, at the, you know, at the Capitol.

And so anyway, but it was an amazing experience.

That to me, I learned, I probably, I'm 100% sure I learned 10 times more during those 3 and a half years that I was in Honduras, you know, trying to figure out how to start a project, how to start a church.

And then we started, you know, a mission school and then an elementary school which has today has like 120 kids and and then industries you know to make it sustainable and all this kind of stuff.

And then leadership, management and finances and oh man, dealing with people, dealing with issues that come up and all these, just keeping everybody happy.

I mean, you know, it's a, and then fundraising, trying to figure out how to pay everybody.

We had, within 1 year, we had like 20 missionaries and we had to figure out how to feed everybody, you know?

And I mean, I had so much pressure on me, but I really enjoyed it because that's what made me like learn and study and grow very quickly at a very young age.

And I was totally like, when I was in, even in college studying theology, man, every day what I did, you know, I was, school was not too, it wasn't too difficult, you know.

So for me, so I had a lot of free time and all I did was play pranks on people, you know, like that was my, that was what I enjoyed doing, you know, and so as soon as, as soon as responsibility hit and I had, I had to feed a bunch of people and their livelihoods depended on, on, you know, me and really they didn't depend on me they depended on God but I but I I felt that burden and so and so suddenly I had I definitely had to focus all of my energies into really you know doing this and and man I I would say I got you know 10 degrees in that in that time even though like 11 years later I ended up finishing theology so I so I you know So I do understand what that is, but I even worked for the church a couple of years.

But it was a very amazing experience for me to have that mission experience in Honduras.

I just think that when I hear that story, when you share those details, it seems like that you have had a lot of exposure to business stuff while you were trying to reach the people out there in the jungle.

How did you then get involved with business?

I mean now you call yourself a missional entrepreneur.

Hive is a community of missional entrepreneurs.

How did the business part of your life really start?

I, you know, I kind of, I kind of fell into it, You know, I didn't, I wasn't planning to be an entrepreneur.

And, but it was actually figuring out how to do ministry in a more effective way.

And I believe the most effective way I constantly over 10 years trying, I was trying to figure out what's the best way we can really reach more people and be more scalable, you know, because at the beginning, we were donation based and we could only do as much as we fundraised.

And so I spent a lot of time fundraising but then if the funds dried up, then we would do less.

If the funds didn't come, if the funds did come, then we could do something.

And so sometimes funds will come for something, but not for operating expenses.

Anyway, so all these things made me realize, Man, we really need to make this thing totally business-based, if everything is business-based.

And I realize that it really in Honduras is that every project was really designed or meant to be business-based.

It's really a business-based way of sharing the gospel through these books to the community.

A school you know with tuition is self-funded right?

Lyndon Sweeney

Why Aren’t We Doing This?

Hi guys and welcome back to the Hive Podcast.

I'm Vince and I have another guest here with me today.

I'm very excited that Lyndon is joining me.

Lyndon, thank you so much for being here with us.

Lyndon is the owner of ARK Digital Agency, that's a UK based agency that helps people with their marketing and automation.

So basically what Linden is doing is helping business owners, small and medium sized business owners to basically accelerate their business by taking the analytics they have, the data that they have, and then turning them into real results.

Now, Lyndon, I'm very grateful that you are here and I just wanted to ask you kind of the first question that came to my mind as we were chatting before recording this.

You have your business, you have your experience, but there's tons of examples out there that show us, okay, a lot of businesses fail, even with an Adventism.

I mean, it's a solid question, and there were many answers to that question, but I think for me the most common reason why businesses fail is because they create a product that nobody wants.

The problem is when you're creating something, you get passionate about the thing you're creating.

You think this is going to change the world.

The most common statement these days is the next Uber.

Then you start it, and you're going around saying, hey, this is the thing.

And you realize no one's picking up your product.

No one's actually picking up what it is that you're giving.

And at this point, you've got a choice, essentially.

You can either drop it completely and move on to something different.

But what we should be doing in that situation is OK what is it the customer actually wants because he may not be too far off.

What if Uber began with starting text and said right.

Imagine you can text someone and the car comes to you and if you try to do that people are like I don't want to text a car that's weird and you just stopped rather than maybe developing an app and doing it that way and moving forward in that vein.

So I think The most common reason why businesses fail is because they aren't actually meeting the needs of the actual customer, the target customers they're aiming for.

That's why I would say it's 1 of the most top ones.

And You know, you as a business owner, you have had the experience or you are experiencing this right now.

You're solving someone's problem because you have a functioning business now.

Now tell me, how did you get started with ARK Digital Agency?

What was the problem that you were solving and how did it all start?

So, for a long time I've been freelance building websites for people.

And my best friend, I was gonna say best friend at the time, but still, yeah, my best friend, he was building WordPress websites.

And we actually didn't know when we got together.

It was like, oh, you do this, I'll do this.

And we realized that with all our clients, their hosting needs, so where the website is stored and uploads and does all this stuff.

They were really difficult to understand, the prices were varied, the interface was terrible and we wanted to do something about it.

So what we decided to do is to actually start a hosting company.

We had a super clean, super simple website explaining what all the different elements are.

They had what we now call as tool tips, you hover over it and understand what it is you're getting, what is it you're paying for.

Really simple pricing structure and we started from there.

What was the problem right there when you actually started to this hosting company?

Like if you had to kind of describe that problem that you were solving for the people back then, what was that?

Here's the thing, If I'm honest, when we first started, I don't think we knew enough about business then.

What I think is the clients that came, came for the simplicity.

We believed we were solving a problem where they would understand what hosting is about.

The actual problem was the simplicity of how it worked.

The ease and simplicity of joining a hosting company, having someone to sort everything out for them.

So the problem that we actually were resolving, I feel at the time wasn't the problem we thought we were resolving.

So the problem we resolved in the end was the simplicity, the ease of just joining our platform and being a hosting client with us.

I think that was the problem that we solved from there.

Yeah, so the challenge then was all the customers that we'd said, you know what, We're only going to focus on hosting now.

We partnered with different developers and they wanted to continue to work with us.

But if you're going to go back into a field, you want to do something different, you want to grow, you want to improve.

Our method of improving was adding additional features.

Yes, we'll host the website, but what's going to maintain the website for you?

We're going to do various different bits and pieces to help your website continue.

You know, customers came back, we carried on building it, and it was 1 of our options.

And at the time, we were doing a lot more to market who we are and what we were doing.

We had a much more active campaigns and so on.

And some of our clients saw that and liked what they saw and asked, can we do this?

We're more than happy building and maintaining websites and so on.

But we said we gave it a shot and we built a digital agency, built a methodology where we can take the existing data because that's what we did, have a look at what is the analytics telling us, what's the data telling us, what's the tracking information telling us And be able to tailor and direct our message to those who wanted to hear it, who were more likely to be able to join our services and so on.

And over time, after learning and developing our products, we became our digital agency, which we are today.

We were able to expand and work in Europe and some clients in the US and Canada and so on, helping them to reach their target market, reach with their message across that sized audience.

So that was really exciting and we've been doing it ever since.

If I want to do that, I want to build my website and kind of reach more audiences.

I'm just thinking about people listening right now.

Yeah, can we get in touch with you or are you like high-end, you know, pricing point?

There was a friend of mine I met a while ago Clubhouse used to be all the range and I met somebody on Clubhouse and he had this business model called skin in the game.

All his clients he would sign up for free and they pay based on or he gets paid based on what he's able to achieve.

Helping the Church Grow More Effectively

You're listening to the missional entrepreneurship podcast that helps you start, grow, and accelerate your faith-based business for God's glory.

My name is Vincent Boujour and I'm here with Jesse Zwicker, founder of Hive.

We want to talk about sharing your faith.

Now I don't know about you, but maybe you've asked yourself that question before.

How can I help the church grow more effectively?

That's our topic and I wanted to ask you Jesse right at the beginning.

When we think about being a good church member, what comes to your mind?

Yeah, when I think of a good church member, I guess my first thing is that they're usually a tithe paying, offering paying sometimes, you know, at least in the when they bring the buckets.

I think they're usually they have some kind of a responsibility in church, like they're a deacon, they're an elder, they're in women's ministry or children's ministry or 1 of those.

That's kind of where that would be probably the church, a good church member is somebody that's paying tithe, he's coming to church on Sabbath, and then he has some kind of responsibility.

Okay, and what kind of evangelism work or how does this person share his or her faith?

You know, this is the difficulty of defining a good church member like that.

You know, that's, if you define a good church member like that, in my mind, that church member has not really helped to grow the church, right?

So if we're thinking about growth, you know, we really have a very difficult, I would say, probably the wrong concept of a good church member, because a good church member essentially needs to be a church member that helps grow the church.

I mean, from a business perspective, in any membership-based organization, the main way any membership-based organization grows is through word of mouth.

Most businesses grow with word of mouth, of course.

Word of mouth means that somebody shares with somebody else what they're doing, and because they're excited about it, they get the other person also interested in it.

But the truth is that, you know, if the membership, if the good church member definition doesn't include that they're bringing other people to the church, then really it's a really bad definition because really that's the definition of a bad church member, not a good church member.

But we have, in our minds, we've determined a bad church member is somebody who doesn't come to church very frequently, you know, and really doesn't pay tithe or something like that.

So our standard for what a good church member is, is so low that we don't touch even the surface of what I think would be a much better definition, which is the minimum, is that a good church member would be a church member that is actually helping the church grow, is bringing other people into the church, right?

Wow, yeah, and you've been talking a little bit, you know, when you're sending out emails, you're writing blog posts and things like that, you've been talking about this concept of free time evangelism compared to full time evangelism.

Now, I want to dive into this topic with you a little bit right now.

What does it mean to be an evangelist in your free time?

And what does it mean to be a full-time evangelist?

Yeah, so basically, when I share about this topic, I always mention there's 3 levels of involvement.

The first level of involvement really is level 0, which means you're not involved, right?

That's what we would call the bad church member or what I call the good church member, right?

And if anybody, you know, ask them to do anything, you know, they're, they're, they're really busy with their lives, right?

They've got their job, they've got their business, they're doing something else.

And therefore, they don't have any energy to do anything for the church in their free time, right?

Which is the main thing that everybody asks them to do.

So that's really the basic level, level 0.

I mean, this basic level is where your personal mission is really not aligned with God's mission or with the church's mission, right?

The second level is where your personal mission is aligned with God's mission or with the church's mission.

So that's where you're trying, you've awakened spiritually, you want to do God's work, you want to advance God's work, you see evangelism in a sense as a lifestyle, you try to be a witness wherever you are, wherever you're going in your work, in your secular work, in whatever place you're at, you're trying to witness.

It's not easy because most in most jobs, most companies don't allow you to witness, don't allow you to talk about spiritual things But they're trying and when the pastor makes an appeal, you know, then you kind of, you kind of want to go and you don't have a lot of free time, but you try to, you know, go on, go distribute some literature or you organize a small group in your home or, or you attend at least prayer meeting.

So that's kind of like, you know, you're cramming in the good spiritual disciplines somehow into your free time.

But really what's blocking you in this level is that you can't spend a lot of time on that personal mission.

Even though your mission is aligned with God's mission, you're not spending a lot of time on it because you don't have that much free time.

You're working all day long on someone else's project, someone else's business with its own objectives, right?

With its own mission and you're advancing their mission.

Now, the reason why we do that is because we need to put bread on the table, right?

It takes most of our time, most of our energy, most of our mental space.

And then we have free time, and free time is obviously with family, then with friends, you know, then we've got some hobbies.

If somebody goes and plays soccer sometimes, or this and that, we do some hiking or whatever.

So we have a lot, we have all these hobbies.

And then on top of that, if there's any space left, we have some free time, you know, mostly then we cram it out into the Sabbath afternoon where we try to do some, you know, some activity because that's the only time we have, right?

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Series

The Hyve Podcast Season 1

Five Ways to Start With $0

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

The Hyve Podcast Season 1

Paying Tithes is Not Enough

28m

The Hyve Podcast Season 2, 2022

The Academy for Missional Entrepreneurs

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The Hyve Podcast Season 1

The Restaurant Failed But...

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The Hyve Podcast Season 1

Why Missional Entrepreneurship

39m

The Hyve Podcast Season 2, 2022

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31m

Young Professionals

ASI 2020 Young Professionals: Seth Hill

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What Kept You in the Church

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Sound Doctrine