Bringing Home the Mission Field - Scott Elequin

I'll tell you what, I keep meeting people who don't think that their skill could be used in the Great Commission, and then, and I'm like, well, good meeting you, but we're never going to see that on the platform, never ever, and then I get a call two days later, and there's somebody that needs that exact thing. I'm like, how cool is God that you can literally just say, you know what, I'm just going to trust God. Put it in, we'll see what happens, and then all of a sudden it happens. It's just, it's been a real inspiration to me. My name is Scott Ellicone, I'm from Austin, Texas, father of three, been a believer for many, many years, and actually I'm involved as the executive director of Switchport, which connects believers globally to Great Commission activities around the world. This is my faithfully story. Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders, as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement, and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff, and volunteers. Learn more at Faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry on. The Faithly Stories podcast. I want to begin by just talking about Switchport. Like what is it, what do you guys do, what are you hoping for? Sure. I mean, basically, Switchport really came as a, it was really an effort from some startup guys in Austin as strong believers who really were frustrated that you've got all this technology and all these people with all these skills that really want to be involved in the great commission and want to help missionaries and they really are excluded from it. I think a lot of ways in the West at least that we kind of outsource our great commission activities by giving to organizations but not directly participating. So we basically have built a platform that connects believers virtually, working remotely based on their skill set with great commission organizations from around the world for whatever it is that the need, you know, whatever need arises in the field. But how does it work like you go on the site and then or who's the site for? Well, you know, it's interesting because like a platform technology, it's like really two different customers. So for Uber, you have to, you know, you have drivers, you also have riders and if you don't have either one, the other side gets disinterested pretty quickly. So what we've done is that we've basically working with some pretty large global organizations, pioneers in Christar, or two of our biggest design partners in the very early stages. And we partnered with two pretty large global mission organizations. One is pioneers out of Orlando who's been around for many, many years and Christar, who has their international group in Maliga, Spain and their US offices in Dallas, Texas, Dallas area. And what we do is we take the mission, missionaries in the field or we consider them great commission organizations. And we basically have them fill out a profile on the system fully secured and they basically bring needs to the table and it could be a need around, you know, the ministry itself. I need cartoons for a video I'm working on. It could be me needs for the mission organization. I need someone help me with my accounting or setting up my books or it could be something that helps the mission area themselves or the individual themselves. I have a son that's going to be going to college in the United States and would like to talk to a college advisor or I have an issue in my family and I'd love to be able to have a will put in place and so it's basically missionaries coming to the table to put their needs available to the global church so that volunteers from around the world can log in and can receive that need and help them with whatever that thing is. And so it's connecting the believer based on their skill set with the needs around the world. And I think the other thing I would want to point out is that from our perspective, if you look at the demand side customer on the platform, it really is not just a traditional missionary, like pioneers in Christart, but it's also indigenous missionaries. So it's a local guy or a gal that's preaching from a street corner in Burundi or it's a marketplace professional that's working as an oil and gas person in Saudi Arabia or it could be a business as mission or be for tea that's sending up businesses so that they can have access to these countries. If you exist for the purpose of the Great Commission, you are a demand side customer and we want to help you kind of get your thing done. Um, it's switchboard a nonprofit. We are. Yeah, 501 C3 funded really through some of our larger customers and some key donors. And then we actually have a plan in place to be self-supporting monetarily by mid-2026. But not pull an open AI right where you go from the profit to profit. We are not going to pull an open AI. We also not do open source because there's a lot of security concerns. Yeah, but frankly, there are a lot of believers who are faith-based, who really care about what we're doing, who want to be a part of it. There are several organizations we're working with who are actually providing volunteer resources to help us build out the platform. So do you guys charge the missionaries? How does like pricing work? So pricing works right now. It's, um, it's, it's, it's completely pro bono services. It's no charge whatsoever to the mission organizations. And we believe, you know, we have to kind of see how the monetization plan plays out and the model plays out. But our hope is that we would never charge field missionaries anything at all ever. We're also not charging the mission organizations, all of the, the development work, the implementation work, the rollout work, the, I mean, implementing a church so that there are people joined so that they can serve and volunteer as a lot of work. But we're not really charging anybody right now, but we are taking donations from folks that really want to see this, you know, moving forward. And one of the things that we do believe we can argue is that, um, from an investment, a faith investment perspective, we feel like a dollar invested in connecting experts who can really help with mission activities has a very, very high, high return on value, uh, return on investment. So we, we actually have coined the phrase, uh, return on kingdom investment because we're really investing in an asset that can deploy lots and lots of pro bono resources, which means you really, for every dollar you put in, by the end of three years, you're going to show, um, six dollars of value return to the field, just by people getting involved. Hmm. Do you only specifically work through mission organizations or can like missionaries who are not part of an organization get connected? So, um, as our initial pilot, we were working strictly with established initially ECFA approved, so people that were very, very highly credential, now we've moved to people that have been referred by those organizations or partnering directly with those organizations. And as we're giving a lot more, um, mission organizations that are hearing about us at conferences that are, that are businesses mission as well. So they're not technically even non for profits. In some cases, we're, we're using kind of a credentialing process where we ask them to sign a statement if they to kind of demonstrate what they're doing. And then we use kind of a social construct to be able to, you know, people know people in region. So we look for referrals as well on the, on the supply side, um, we ask every volunteer to, it serves to be 18 or older to sign a statement of faith, which is the Apostle's Creed, as well as sign a code of conduct that really kind of governs their activities on the system, just to make sure they're treating as something that's very important, even though it's a volunteer activity. So, everything is, hey, sounds so inspirational, like I'm getting excited talking like you talking about it, only because, um, it's hard to create something of value and give it up for free and then sustain it in long term, right? And not only that, like helping people, I think everybody or a lot of people have that heart, but like when you start helping people, it's like hard, but then for you, it's on a global scale. And like you were talking about right before we got it on to this call is that like, how do you help missionaries that are in Africa or like in Asia or in like, you're like, there are just so many different contexts. There are. So, um, the, the, the, the, the taxonomy of the connection. So if you think of it this way, you know, if I put a circle over here that said here's every possible thing that a missionary could need in the field to spread the gospel. And here's everything that a volunteer or somebody could do, a believer could do, but working virtually over the phone, um, it's like, so what, what's the intersection between those two circles? We try to keep it super simple, complicated things we left out. So you look at for speech pathology, not yet, counseling, wow, that's way too complicated, legal, too many statutory areas of jurisdiction. But by golly, if my car won't start, hey, that's a thing. You know, everybody has, you know, everybody uses MailChimp pretty much globally. That's a thing. So the bottom line is we started with easy stuff. And if you think of it as concentric circles, so right now, that's a one hour phone call around a specific thing that you know and that they need. So I need to talk about marketing strategy, bam, it's a really easy connection. As we've started out a lot more customers on both demand and the supply side, well, now we can be, well, I need a marketing strategy, but I really would like to have an advisor that would kind of stay with us as we implement the strategy. Well, that's a different request for a person with a different level of availability. Talking to someone that's willing to talk to you about being like, uh, what tools you use for your internet, for your, your website is different than a guy or a gal that could actually be your webmaster that could work maybe one hour a week on an ongoing basis. So that's a different person. So we actually started with the one hour phone call around the street tasks. We're now expanding to one hour phone call plus other stuff around, you know, conceptual tasks or topical tasks. And then we're going to add more topical tasks. If you're familiar from up, there's a book called the cold start problem. He talks about how it's really hard to get things going. I don't know the year in this business as well, so it's like, we want both sides to have a good experience. So, you know, we have somebody that's a volunteer kingdom consultant, we call them, uh, that is really good with revenue and tax planning and understands business accounting principles really well. And we had a woman that was in Czechoslovakia that was running a business as mission and she didn't have any accounting background. And she was categorizing her, her, her revenue in a way that wasn't actually according to accounting standards. So she was overstating her revenue. So she thought her tax liability was crazy high. She's like, well, I can't afford to say here, this is true. We put her on a one hour phone call with somebody who's really good at that. And they're like, oh, no, no, here's how you do it. This is what it looks like. Here's your projection in it, rock your world. And so, it's a super high value engagement that can happen in one hour. And by the way, I will acknowledge that I spend a lot of time on chat GPT saying, how could a financial analyst help a missionary in the field in a one hour phone call? And what are those things that kind of popped out? Those are the things that we started with now that we've got a lot more work to do and a lot more workers to do it. We can now start to define that work in greater granularity. And we can start searching for deeper relationships so that right now, it's about the work. But a year from now, when you have 500 financial analysts or personal financial planners, well, maybe matching someone that really cares about human trafficking with somebody that does human, like, combat human trafficking is a better fit because now it speaks to, like, both sides. So there's a lot of those types of things that the more you get to critical mass, the more you can really do a much better job of number one is putting more work available on the platform. And number two is doing a better job of matching it to somebody who is more likely to who's really willing to stay with that ministry on a long-term basis. So on supply side, are you working with churches? So the answer is yes. It's interesting. Our ideal customer, I call it that on the supply side is really anybody that equips people to serve anybody that helps you look at your skills to like, how can I help the world kind of thing, but doesn't have stuff for people to do is like a bam, perfect customer. So a missionally minded church, we have a really very strong missions focused church here in Austin that basically goes through all these classes to train people that they should serve and they put them through perspectives classes. They put them through Colson Fellows and all of a sudden they're like, okay, I'm ready to go change the world. And they're like, okay, well, we have served day on Saturday. You can go clean a park or you can go to the food bank. By the way, those are not bad things, but the challenge of putting 111 volunteers to work on a Saturday between 9 and 1, it's really hard to find things to do. And if you're a patent attorney, changes are really good. You're not going to have like a faith organization that needs a patent to turn. And so to me, the people that really are trying to get people to really live out their faith and serve, but don't have stuff for them to do. I mean, we're just like bringing buckets and dumping it on their desk, a stuff they could do. I mean, we met somebody this week who is a creative access country who is just struggling staying in the field because they had a special needs job. So we reached to the mission pastors at some of our equipping organizations and said, hey, if you have maybe a family that's raised a child with this condition, it would be a huge blessing to be able to just work with this family to help them understand what life could be like or how they could really manage better. And all of a sudden, this person who's like, so my gifting is that I struggled raising a special needs child and I like to give that back. It's like, this is my colony. Are you kidding? That's so good. Here's what the guy who went to prison, talking to prisoners, okay, get that. Well, I hear somebody who's gone through a hard situation in parenting and they can really use it to help with resilience and keeping a missionary in the field. Wow, wow, it's just, I'll tell you what, I keep meeting people who don't think that their skill could be used in the Great Commission. And then, and I'm like, well, good meeting you, but we're never going to see that on the platform, never ever. And then I get a call two days later, and there's somebody that needs that exact thing. I'm like, how cool is God that you can literally just say, you know what? I'm just going to trust God, put it in. We'll see what happens. And then all of a sudden, it happens. It's just, it's been a real inspiration to me. And part of what we're doing as part of the process is that is we're cranking through these engagements daily now. And so as these engagements drop, you know, concluded the system, we dropped them into our marketing system. And we basically write a snappy headline, we anonymize the name of the missionary, and we have a two sentence description of what they did so that now we could put this on our website saying, you know, what do you do? I'm a CPA. Well, here are 10 things that CPAs did for the Great Commission in the last two weeks. Why? I guess there's no excuse. So all of a sudden, you can bring it home that says that you're, you homeschool your kids. Well, guess what? We need that. Oh, you grew up in Ethiopia. We need that too. Oh, you speak that language? Well, guess what? We need a bunch of that. And so to be able to bring home those things that were non-traditional ways for people to serve and to show them that they can serve, it's just like, it's like a match to dynamite. You've got these congregations. You know, the harvest is plenty. The workers are few. It's like, no, the workers are all in the peos. They're just not doing anything. So giving them something that can mobilize those people is just amazing. So on the supply side, we got these really cool dashboards. So an equipping organization can go through and look at what the people are doing and see how they're serving and look at the stories that are coming out of that and look at their skills. It gives them the ability to actually be much, much more effective than they currently can be with their congregation and get them much more plugged into missions, which frankly, change the level of equation. Yes. Funny because when you're talking, the thought I had is like, oh, this is like a gateway missions. Like an hour, just give it an hour and see how you like it. And then it's like, oh, and then it starts rolling into, I really like this. Let me give it to three and then kind of give your whole life to it. So interesting that it's interesting, uh, uh, analogy or illustration that you suggested. I agree 100% from the beginning, we tested a lot of hypothesis as we went through this process. It's been about two and a half years now. And we believe from the beginning that the, the kingdom consultant, the volunteer is actually going to be impacted more than the missionary because the missionaries are going to get their website done. Awesome. But the, the guy in Austin who works on websites is like, hey, I'm working with this ministry that's in Indonesia and they combat human trafficking and you won't believe what these guys are doing. It's so cool. It's a really amazing thing and all of a sudden the woman thinking of a specific ministry, the woman that runs that ministry is like a person. They're not like this mysterious, oh, missionary thing that floats in and comes in once a quarter to raise money. It's someone that you talk to once a week that's doing real stuff and you're actually on her team. So I think that it's going to be really interesting to see what the progression looks like. And frankly, we only do remote. So if you're serving with this missionary, um, uh, unbound as the name of the ministry, um, they're out of Antioch, if all of a sudden you feel like this is a really important thing and you're really getting involved, well, it's kind of an introduction to missions that let you know, hey, I really care about Indonesia, I really care about unbound, I really care about human trafficking, I think I am going to go. So I think that, you know, we've seen organizations that are now that only send to don't do virtual, which is kind of a new thing who are now, um, basically referring anybody that wants to serve but can't go to us so that we can basically prepare them to mobilize as virtual volunteers and then we can actually assign them back to their organization and the field so they can actually serve with the organization that referred us. Yeah, so it's like that biblical principle of like it's better to give than receive, but I think it's because I don't know what it is about the human experience, but when you observe an impact where you participate it in, it's somehow exponentially expand the loudness, then when you just receive something, because when you receive something, I think kind of forget. It's, you know, I think what we want to do, and you know, again, you go back to a younger generation, I mean, the people who pick up our app, it's like the 25 year olds are like, well, why wouldn't every believer be on my smartphone and what time is it there? And I call them now where the 50 year olds are like, well, you know, that's not really how we do it. Um, I think there's a couple of real benefits. The one is for the, I call them zelenials. So the zelise disease and the millennials, um, it makes it real, right? So now I'll, uh, where I think that people that are more my age is like, well, your social status comes from what you own and what your title is, it's your social status, I think for younger people, it's, well, you know, what are you involved in? What do you support? Who are you? What do you believe? This is a, this is a really cool tangible way that, you know, if you're at work, it's like, you know, what are you doing tonight? Oh, I'm working with this guy in the Philippines. He's trying to set up a well so that he can bring water to the village because right now they don't have access to clean water. It's like, you're doing what? So all of a sudden, you're like a 26 year old civil engineer who's helping somebody across the world to determine power management requirements so you could get enough power into a pop so that you could develop this well. It's like, all of a sudden, you've had this whole new narrative, this whole new thing you can talk about that I think creates a lot of social status and it shows you about impact in helping the world and not just about yourself, which I think is a really big thing. So getting the Z's and the millennials involved in that has been really powerful and they're, frankly, some of our most active and enthusiastic volunteers. The other thing is that because you're now working with the guy or the gal who's on the front lines, you know, you can talk about unreached people groups in 40 window. You can talk about historically under, you know, that only one out of every $30 goes to the areas where it's most needed. Well, I mean, you could basically receive a request, click a button and be introduced directly to a guy who literally runs a facility two miles from where the Army Rangers have a checkpoint to keep like the, you know, the dangerous parts of Southern Philippines out of the area where you live. I mean, this is the definition. These guys have been trying to plan a church for 99 years and, you know, this guy is telling me it's like, I don't know if it's 99 years into a 200 year window or 99 years into a 101 year window. We might be right there, but you're working with a guy who's on the ground who's actually doing it and not necessarily giving to, you know, a big thing that has a regional thing that's got a, you know, a local thing. It's like you're actually working with a guy who's literally on the ground. And I think that the immediacy of that and the sense that you can have a relationship with the Uber driver or the guy who comes and picks you up actually knows who you're going to be. It's a different expectation and people that are used to the technologies that are in place and expect and it's frankly, it's easier that way. You don't require a construction is almost nothing. I mean, if you came in and you said, hey, Scott, we really could use somebody to help with social media strategy, you would click a button and would pop up a little when you say, here's kind of what we're thinking. Here's what's going on. It's about a two cents thing. You click about me. It goes to four volunteers and it's their email and honestly, Danny, within, usually, within, usually within less than 10 minutes, somebody says, oh, I'll take that. That's a good fit for me. And they're automatically introduced to the missionary and they set up a time to work. Actually, we have a new enhancement. We actually book it on their calendars and then let them adjust it, which is way easier. And then the other three people are like, hey, thank you for your willing to serve. You know, better like next time, you know, click the button, faster next time. So we're, you know, I mean, we're trying to get out of the middle. And if you think about Switchboard as a name, it's really about connecting everyday believers with missionaries in the field so they can do whatever God is leading them to. Yeah. So the image I got at the end was like the telephone set for it, right? It used to be like personally operated until they automated it and it's also efficient. So, right. So, how do you see AI disrupt or help or impact, you know, what you're doing? So there's a couple of things that I think AI can help a lot. We are working on something or we're testing something right now to actually put on the website, which basically says, hey, I homeschool my kids. Can I help with a great commission or oh, I'm a high school football coach, can I help with a great commission or, you know, so taking that little bit of information that you could discern about yourself and then running it through an AI model. So we basically have the ability to take that thing and break it into high school football coaches, typically have the following skills and the following attributes. So we can use AI to break that person down into assumptions and then all the things that are currently available on the platform, we've got an AI model that maps certain assumptions or characteristics to a potential service opportunity. So one thing that we want to do is we want to demonstrate, I want to put in a, like, a little promotion for my shirt, I'm called, we believe that every believer is called to the great commission. If you homeschool your kids, your kids, your software programmer, you're called to the great commission too and you can directly participate. So we want pastors to be able to say, hey, go here, type in whatever you're good at. I raise, I'm a beekeeper. I don't know. They're probably some things that are not very good fit. But for the 99% of things that you could type in, there's some way somebody in the world could be helped and you could benefit the great commission. So using AI to discern what's inside of people, try to connect them with service opportunities, I think is really powerful. And then the final thing, and this is the, so this is basically when you're talking about the circle, what missionaries need and what volunteers could do. So the first thing I mentioned makes this circle bigger. The volunteer could do more things. The second thing is makes this circle bigger. What when mission organizations need is also a bigger target to hit. Is you didn't know you need a social media help, but based on what you told me, apparently you do. So let's get that started. The third part is, is really the hard part. And if anybody watching this podcast is really good at this and your believer, please call me because this is a really important thing is that the intersection of the two circles is really hard. What do you call things? What does it look like? How do you contextualize the more more we specialize and the more more that catalog of activities where we connect people expands, the more important it is to be able to look at those nuances that AI can help us interpret. So it's not everything, but in terms of understanding and pulling an information that is not immediately available on a profile that somebody filled out, I think it's super informative. I'll give you a specific example. I won't use a specific country, but when we were doing our proof of concept, we had basically someone who was in Eastern Europe for running a business as mission. They employ women to do handcraft goods. I think she was at a conference in Thailand. She heard about us. She's like, that sounds awesome. And she was struggling with manufacturing. So she created a request in the system. This is, I need somebody to implement a manufacturing system. I'm like, that's a really big thing. And that's what I did for a living. So I'm like, I think I should talk to her. So her first connection on switchboard was with me. And I basically went through kind of her problem statement. What are you trying to solve? What are your revenues? How many people work there? What is your, what is your technical skill base to be able to run a system like that? You know, and you look at the workflow is like, wow, that, you know, we got to the end of that call. And again, she said, I want someone to implement a manufacturing system. At the end of that call, we change it to, I need somebody that can help me track my inventory and track my hours so that I can pay people, but also know kind of sort of what I have and stop. So I'll know when to order more stuff. And I'm like, okay, and where do you have that now? Well, she had it all in Google Sheets. I said, so what would happen if when you put a purchase receipt into that, this tab on this sheet, it updated your inventory. And also went to your payment ledger to show that you know, I'm not, and she's like, that would be amazing. Well, at the end of the day, she really needed someone who was good at Google Sheets or Excel to link some spreadsheets to define a couple of entry forms for receipts and payments. That was, I mean, it was like 16 hours of work total for someone that knew Microsoft Excel. It wasn't 12 months of work and $30,000 a licensing for someone that needed manufacturing. So to be able to go, so what do you really need based on? Gotcha. Gotcha. Oh my goodness gracious, Danny. I can't even tell you. No, I understand. So solution, we implemented a proof of concept last summer that basically tried to solve that problem. And it was so hopelessly overengineered. I could not pay people to use it because I'm like, well, I need to know more. I need to know more. All what else you know? Well, I don't know. That's why I'm asking for an expert and I'm like, I'm trying to drag information out of people. So I could like create this perfect solution. It's like, you know what, I really need a guy that knows manufacturing. And actually from the leader of of Christian North America, Steve coffee uses the term Wasta, I know a guy. It's like it's like an I know a guy. I mean, I need to know a guy that's good at marketing. I need to know a guy that's good at buying software. Like, why know a guy that could totally do that. So that's really what went that brought us to the one hour phone call so that you capture skills. And you say, which skills do you need? I'll connect you with a guy or gal that's got those skills. And now as we expand the taxonomy around what we call things and how we get them to the solution. Really pulls them into a different, it pulls them into a consultation with an expert around what the solution is before you try to define. Okay, here's everything that I could possibly need. Yeah, most of the times people when they ask for help, it's more like a tip of the iceberg because underneath, they think it'll solve a current problem, but in actuality, it's just covering the depth of more problems. So you got to keep asking, okay, what do you need? Is that what you're trying to do? That is exactly that's exactly the problem we ran into last summer. And you know, the other thing is people don't ask you for things that they think they can't get. So when and we're piloting this with Christa right now is that building virtual teams that said, I need a CFO advisor. I need a human resources advisor. I need an IT advisor. I need a webmaster. I need a proofreader. I need somebody that edits photographs. I need somebody. I mean, people who help with all that stuff, but you got to sign them up in advance so that when somebody says, okay, let's build the team, you can literally just assign the team. And frankly, Danny, what we think is going to happen is that when you start to launch a virtual digital marketing team, you're going to sign up a guy who does websites and he's going to sign up his buddies so we can work together in the same ministries. Hey, work with me on this. I need a photo editor. I need somebody to write stories. Okay, we're the team. I think they're going to start to form their own teams and then those teams can actually start working with these ministries and boy, honey, no 55 year old missionary in the field wants to learn mail champ. I want to figure out how to do HTML, but they just don't want to do it. And I don't blame. So when you show up and say, here's your team and here you go. And this team's like, you won't believe what we're doing these days. We just, you know, literally, I mean, for them to be able to be involved with the school and a Mauritius or be involved with, you know, somebody that's in Myanmar, it's like, they don't even know where these countries are. They're like, I'm working with a guy who's in Mauritius, who runs a school and it's doing this thing. And here's what we, here's what we're doing. Wow, it's a totally different thing. I think people are going to really catch the bugs. What do I think? Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I kind of want to dig into your career path mainly with smart dog. You spun that out out of your time in Oracle and you were there like 16 years, right? So yeah, I was. How did I come about? Well, so, so actually, I was, I learned Oracle stuff at Pricewaterhouse. And then I worked as an independent consultant before going to Oracle. And I left Oracle in 2003 and I went to an organization that was actually founded by a group out in New Orleans who had built a really terrific business up on the car. The actually had been Ernst and Young's entrepreneur of the year and it was all at high flying and stuff like that. And I just felt like I wanted to work in a smaller company. And so I went to, it was DCC services at the time, but we renamed it smart dog because it was a fun. Multic model, the remote services consulting model in the Oracle space, which had really never been done before. And so it's funny. We basically started signing customers working with them virtually remotely. We developed really strong expertise in new their businesses really well. And then that model and that business actually grew through 2019. We actually exited that business to a group out of Boston right before COVID started. But the thing that's really interesting is that we were very faith forward organization. And we implemented basically a model that says that I'm going to work virtually. I'm going to set the scope virtually. We're going to agree on it in advance. We're going to basically log these things as incidents as tickets. And it was a really novel concept. And then fast forward 2019, 2020, we're starting to do research for switchboard. It's like, why does nobody not do this? This is like everybody's been doing zoom forever. But the faith community has never had hopped at these techniques. If you look at the smartphone, you look at Starlink and you look at platform technologies like eBay, Uber kind of thing. It's like everything already exists to do everything that we need to do to mobilize the church to get involved directly. And so to be able to apply that really cool time I had with smart dog to what we were doing in switchboard was like, maybe God was paying attention and really knew what he was doing. They took me to an organization that was really founded in a faith principles who was led by a very strong Christian man. And he allowed us to do this thing. And then this thing became switchboard and like, get out of town. You know, yet again, just another time that something happens that you didn't expect that you go, yeah, I could totally say that this was part of the plan. It's fascinating because the more new people like me and I listen to their story, everyone has a unique experience. And based on their own unique challenges, stations, and strengths, they come up with like, because human beings are just problem solvers, right, by nature. And I think that's what like the whole switchboard thing really worked because it's like, people tend to discount their own life, you know, or life experiences because it's not like social media or like highlight, but it's like, no, you actually have a lot to offer just by sharing what you did. And yeah, I just find it really funny or just wowed by, you know, God. Well, but you know, there's a lot of change management because, you know, pretty much the reason we call our volunteers kingdom consultants is missionaries don't like the term volunteer because there's so much stigma attached to it. Volunteers don't really help. They may be able to pay for stuff, but you know, you got 10 people to show up and I'm not, I'm thinking short term mission trips to some extent, but in general volunteers have always been problematic for mission organizations. They just farm and then you look at the kingdom consultant side and it's like, well, the last time I volunteered, I scraped poop out of the chicken cube with like a little trowel and I'm up, you know, again, I'm a, you know, a real estate attorney or I'm have a PhD in whatever. It's like, if only somebody could use my skill based up on a really good at. And I'll say, Danny, I can fill you up with stories of people have super specialized skills that got plugged in ways that are just crazy amazing. I would take up another hour, hour long call up to do that, but it's like people, it's like you just never know to put it down and you make yourself available to, you know, the body of Christ, what's going to show up. So, I mean, that's what we say is when we ask you to fill out a volunteer profile, it's like, you know what, you don't know, you don't know, are you willing to be available if you are just put it down and if the body calls, the body will call. Well, the reason why I'm asking about smart dog is the tagline is the Oracle's customer's best friend. So like, why and what were you trying to, like what problem were you trying to solve? Because I get the consulting thing, but like, I don't know what you did. So here's the thing about Oracle, their software is really expensive. It's really good. It's incredibly powerful and the vast majority of customers don't get full value out of their investment. You know, you would go see customers and I bought a Ferrari and I'm driving a Chevy kind of a thing. And so what we found is that the typical customer that we serve, typically we did both the technical stuff, but also the business application side, so finance, manufacturing, customer service, you know, shipping distribution kind of stuff is that, you know, they basically, you know, we're running software that could use this much value, but they're only getting this much value. So what we would say is we were the Oracle customers best friend because we would say that we would help you get value from the software that you already are. We're going to run diagnostics. So we're going to show you stuff you could turn on that you already bought. That's already implemented that you just didn't know you could do it. And we're going to show you how to use the software in a way that you can really, you know, what we use always say is that we're going to make you glad you bought a work. People go spend $5 million on the same terrible and all the stuff. It's like, because you're not using all of it. So that was really our tagline is that we wanted to be the Oracle customers best friend by helping them, you know, get value where they already had an asset that was under utilized. Frankly, switchboards kind of the same thing. You got 260 million Christians just in North America who are kind of sort of mostly not doing anything for the great commission other than, you know, maybe contributing to a cooperative fund. And it's like, you know what? You've got skills you could use them. So, you know, get off the sofa and get busy. So when somebody's it's the same thing. It's it's activating and mobilizing a pen of asset. Yeah, I really appreciate like your heart and your thought about like seeing problems as opportunities to help people. And you're like, wait, why are we doing it this way? It doesn't help anybody or like it's wasting so many things and let's do it another way. So I like YouTube. I usually try to YouTube like podcasts from other guests, but you only had one from humanizing technology or something. A couple of years ago. Yeah, but you mentioned technology as vocation. Could you kind of share about that on your thoughts? I will say that to start somewhat philosophically, I do think that for the last, you know, really maybe since the industrial revolution, as we've compartmentalized units of labor, working things into chunks, we've really separated the human from the work. And in the process, we've separated the faith from the work. So Tim Keller, I mean, there's so many things down where it's a faith that work movement. But it used to be that I was part of the, you know, the blacksmith guild and our families lived together. We did similar work. We worshiped together. It was all kind of part and parcel to the same thing. And, you know, even though what we're seeing at switchboard requires huge, huge change management to think differently, the bottom line is everything you'll think we've used to build this platform already exists. It's readily available off the shelf ready to put together ready to use. So I think that in some ways, I think that the separation of faith and the way that people really move in terms of their pursuit of their faith. It's really separate from a lot of innovation. And it really relies the current structure relies on structures of into place since the 70s and 80s. Now, if you look at, you know, the guy who is from Burunda who's preaching from a street corner in Rwanda, he doesn't have a structure. He's just trying to figure stuff out. You'll get the B for T's and the business is mission guys. They're like, hey, we're trying to like create a whole new thing. So I think you're going to find that the 25 and 30 year olds are moving out with a different expectation. There's a lot more entrepreneurship and a lot more business and with entrepreneurship, there's a lot of seeking ways to leverage new tools. And it's kind of like, I kind of see it like, you know, as the millennials came out, when they realize that the most active users on Facebook or their grandparents, they start using Facebook. And if you're going to find the mission organizations, it's like, if you're going to look at see the mission organizations are using zoom or, hey, we're now like using chat T P T, which is still pretty darn new. But if it's like, if your grandparents are using it, it's probably not the new thing anymore. And I think that there's a new mindset and there's a new hunger around what it really takes. So show me as a new opportunity. And I think that giving those legacy people who really poured the ground, who created the ability to be in those countries, who sacrificed in the 70s and 80s, giving them the respect to kind of, you know, to kind of move off into the retirement and really appreciate the fact that they created, you know, as the Marines they created the beach at that these new people are coming in with new ideas and techniques. I think that we can solve it what they're done, but I think that the ways that they've done it are kind of moving into the, you know, I'm kind of moving into the background. And we're finding that there's new ways to really pursue, you know, faith. Some of the stuff that I'm seeing with from some of our, our more innovative customers that are using, you know, available tools to reach millions of people is incredible. It's absolutely incredible. And it's like, why not? I mean, there's a, there's a girl that 16 year old that was at my wife's school that had, you know, two million followers on TikTok. It's like, and so not that we want to be on a TikTok, but I just don't want to ignore that there are new ways of doing things and that as believers, it's our responsibility to find every possible asset that's been put at our disposal for the King. So part of my own personal theory is, you know, in Jesus says, if you've been feel like you've forgiven a lot, then you will forgive more easily. And I think that also applies to people who have received help. I think people who received a lot of help realize how valuable it is. So they have this reciprocity of trying to help others. But if you don't have ever experienced that, I think like help becomes kind of more optional than necessary. And the reason why I bring this up because on the podcast, you mentioned like, you know, you credit other people in your life growing up, right? Like forming you, helping you understand and growing what did you learn from them? And how did they shape you? Oh, boy. Man, well, first thing that's a great question. I think it is shame on you for going to a two year old podcast to try to remember what I said back then. I think that everything that we do is on the shoulders of those who came before us. I think I did mention my father on that call because my dad was kind of the, what's possible guy? What exists? And walk into a situation and saying, hmm, you know, what's what's available to me now and what can we make happen and who wants to be a part of that? I mean, I always felt like I'm an aggregator, not necessarily an idea guy, but, but it's like, who benefits from this and who wants this to happen and who can we bring together so it forms a team? I think it's just, it's just huge. It's really enormous to have a different mindset and to, you know, to be brought up in a house where why wouldn't you be the one who would win math competition who would start on the basketball team or who would, you know, somewhere in the house there's a letter I wrote to I was talking about. I'm sure we were watching the news and my parents are like, oh, well, you should write the president. I'm like, okay, and I wrote the president. I was eight years old and letter came back from the president and then 25 years later I'm in graduate school and I was given this case study around some, some, something Harvard, something, something and I'm like, well, I'm just going to call the guy. So I got on the phone and I called a guy that was ahead of the Department of Harvard and I'm like, we just got this case study. I'm a bailer. What did you guys do? He's like, he tells what he did. I'm like, that was awesome. So this idea that people were available and then nothing is impossible. It's like, why wouldn't you try? You know, I went to a conference of a speaking thing at DCX where there's a guy on the brings these business leaders together now. There's really great faith forward messages. Chris Miroff, I'll throw a bone for him. I went to this, this event that he threw two months ago with an XXL. I am called T-shirt because Tim Tiibo was speaking. Hey, you know what? If I run into Tim, I'm going to get him to put on my shirt. I'm going to take his picture so that people want to volunteer for the great commission. I did not find myself an audience with Tim, but hey, why not? Right? So there's a little bit of that. I think getting that from my dad and I'll say my wife is the same way. She's like, well, give it a shot. See what happens. I think that, wow, I don't know. I've been inspired by many, many people. So I just, I look at all the people that are out there trying to do things in faith who have really extraordinary skills, technically, very marketable skills. If you're like, you know what? That's not what I want to do. I'm going to focus on this. And it's a real inspiration. I mean, it's something that I've drawn from myself because I feel like that is really provided for. The other reason why I bring this up is because there's this idea like for young people, you might go out and find like a mentor or find the information you need. But to me, like that makes sense in some aspects because you need to be kind of proactive. But a lot of times I was just placed in situations to be around people and just by being near them, I learned from them. Do you know what I mean? It's not like I asked them to like teach me. It was just like, oh, there was this opportunity and there was just this person that was really good at what they did. So I just observed them, asked them a lot of questions. And so what advice would you give young people? Well, I honestly, it's interesting because I was not very good at recruiting mentors. I think I felt like I was a bother maybe or they wouldn't care or it doesn't really benefit them. And what I've learned is that it's literally just the opposite. So I mean, I've said my wife and I teach a class of what was once preferred is the young married or do not that young anymore, but I'm just going to go with that. And I meet with those guys a lot to talk about their families to talk about issues that they've got with things are struggling with to talk about jobs and what to do. And it's interesting, you know, especially if you're changing careers or you're coming out of college or you're going into college, you really have a backstage pass to meet with anybody. Hey, you know, I noticed that you're in this. I really feel like I want to be a senior software engineer. That's what I think. Hey, Danny, I would love it if you would let me buy you coffee. Honestly, I just, I'd love to kind of find out what things do you wish somebody had told you when you were my age. And people people love that they love that they love it when people ask their opinion. I think that weirdly enough, a lot of people that are 45 and older feel awkward around 20 year olds. I don't know the latest TikTok thing or I don't know that whatever. It's like for someone to sit at your feet and ask you questions and to give them real advice and hard advice about, you know, people get their first job offer. They're like, well, I don't know how to ask, you know, do I just take it or what do I do and kind of walk in them through that process to understand, you know, the things that really matter. I think are just really important. And I mean, there's just nobody that is off limits in terms of being a mentor, especially if you're at one of those formative stages, people really enjoy it. And recruiting them and keeping them in your life are we have a fractional chief technology officer, Marcus Smith, who frankly came at a perfect time in our project. He's really, we would not have gotten this done, you know, without Marcus. But he's recruited a team team of older guys that are kind of a formal mentor group that meet once a quarter. And we're developing relationships with each other, but these are guys that that he's brought together to really provide that kind of guidance and mentorship. And we're not like all awesome. You're so good. I mean, we're kind of telling what we really think and it's really interesting to kind of see. So, I mean, be fearless. I mean, there's no reason to be discontent, but to be out there and just, I don't know, I just, I feel like you really have the ability to consider anything and build those relationships. The other thing I used to tell my kids is that, you know, every day you're going to meet somebody new and today may be the day that you meet somebody that you'll know or work with the rest of your life. So pay attention and stay in touch. I mean, LinkedIn is such a great tool, faithfully is such a great tool that would really let you as you form these relationships to be able to reach back out and find people that you share values with is really huge. And so to do that systematically and this isn't trying to like secure a bunch of contacts from a sales perspective, these are people that you meet somebody you're like, wow, we kind of get each other. I really like to know you down the road. You know, you don't know what what the trajectory of their life will be or whether or not you're going to intersect or not, but maintaining those relationships are incredibly valuable. It will make you happier and make you better connected and make you more professionally successful as well. You said you met your wife at church, but you mentioned one story like you're traveling and you're eating fancy food and you bring a fancy dessert home. And then she's eating cereals, you're like, thanks and you stop. Ron, why did you think it was a good idea? And then too, what did you learn that day? You're like, oh, okay, I shouldn't do that. So, so I did it because I wanted to like, you know, I'm thinking about you dear and I brought you something special and all that kind of stuff. What I learned is that number one, it reminded her that I was, you know, at the, you know, having a five star ribeye and she was having, you know, cereal and macaroni cheese. And number two is the last thing you want two nights a week is someone to bring you a big piece of cheesecake, you know, at nine o'clock at night. That's just, that is no bueno. That doesn't help with anything. So, so yeah, that was a great idea of what lasted, but I stopped you on it. Did you bring anything else home or you just didn't bring anything else home anymore? Probably didn't, I mean, I would bring home flowers occasionally stuff like that, but no more food. Certainly no more really like heavy, heavy fat food. So the reason why I ask is because often we think something's a really good idea because we have really good intentions. But then how someone receives it can be completely off base because of where they're at, you know, mentally, emotionally, just in the last stage. So yeah, like, would you have just like ask her like, hey, like was there even a thought or like, would you like dessert me bring dessert or you just kind of like do things? I typically just do things because it seems more spontaneous or romantic or whatever. So, hmm, she's pretty, she's in our relationship. I'm more the emotional one. She's more the pragmatic one. Got you. She's super pragmatic. But, I mean, we, we're coming up on 34 years this well in two weeks, two and a half weeks. So we're doing okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so what was it like dating someone in church? Because nowadays there's always this like, intense anxiety about like, oh, if you break up, you got to do church or like, which I don't understand. Because it's like, why can't you stay friends? But I get the whole emotional part of it. It was more of a joke. I used to tell people I never dated girl of the next door. And I never dated girl from church. And that was really just a joke. I met her. She's really smart. And she was really interesting and really pragmatic. And technically when we went out, it wasn't a date. It was kind of a, let's go hang out, kind of a thing. And then, you know, 11 months later, we were married. So, um, so fortunately, we did not have to choose which church we would go to or things like that. But it was, it was always more of a, you know, we had seen people that like, like, made a church and had this long courtship. And their friends became, you know, couples friends. And then all of a sudden, you're not a couple anymore. And it's like, well, then who gets, who gets custody of the friends? And we obviously never dealt with that because we, we moved on and got married and stayed married. So, what would you say to like early entrepreneurs who are like, really impressions about like building a company. But like, it's married and have kids. I'll give you a plus and a minus. I do think that Melanie stayed out with the kids until they started school. And then she actually went back to teaching. But we were really good about, you know, family time was family time. So, you know, whether it's, you know, church stuff, sports stuff, you know, camping stuff, whatever we were doing. There was never, there was never, you know, I wasn't the guy that was working, you know, seven days a week, kind of a thing. I think that the downside is that I felt like I wasn't good at like putting it out of my mind and leaving it out of the picture. So, I felt like even when I was with family, it was always kind of hanging with me. Now, I will tell you that I, I talked to my kids. You were grown now about this and they didn't realize it. Obviously, Melanie did. So, they were like, oh, you were great dad and you were goofy and all that kind of stuff. But I wish that I had been better at just doing a better job of letting go. Maybe building a stronger management team or structuring management differently so that it wasn't kind of all my play. And, and I'll admit I'm not great at that now either. Although, you know, Melanie's actually helping out with switchboard. And I work with my son is with switchboard and you know, the kids are out of the house. So, it's less problematic. But for the people that have the ability to compartmentalize, I think the younger people are better at, you know, when you punch out, you're out. Kind of thing. And I'm, you know, simultaneously frustrated and jealous because I'm like, yeah, but I really just needed five minute question on a Saturday. But it's also, I wish I wasn't thinking about it on a Saturday kind of thing. You know, I don't know. It's just kind of how I'm wired and how I, how my dad was wired. So, what are you hoping for at Feetley? I think Feetley is, is a really great. It's funny. Actually, I'd introduce you to the guy in Atlanta, Jeff Brink. I mean, I think it's really clear to people that come from the business world, that the connections are crucial. And it's not just around conversations. It's around, it's around shared values. It's around circumstances. It's around geography. It's around whatever it's around. And that thing that it is, the ability to bring together the body in a way that really matters. That is impactful is, it's, it's, frankly, it's the reason I feel like believers are playing defense in modern culture today. There might be two people of some sexual or, you know, gender or, you know, philosophical orientation. There may be like 1% of people, but because that 1% is all like all talking together. They have this huge voice. I mean, while you got this in this huge body of people that are faith-based, that believe in the same thing, that care about the same thing, that really follow the same Lord. And we never ever, you know, outside of a Bud Light moment, we never get together around anything. It's like, what would happen if we just decided to buy the same brand of potato chips? I mean, literally, you know, that we would only buy this automobile or that we would only watch this TV station. We would only watch, you know, this streaming video service. I mean, we literally could rule the world. And so to me, finding organizations that are taking the time to build out the hot forms that your objective is to connect those people and provide ways for them to find each other. Frankly, are, I mean, if you look at our three-year roadmap, we're just trying to get a bunch of people that want to serve and a bunch of people that need help. And get them in a thing, so we got them. But once those people are in a thing, well, these people are going to want to interact around civil engineering and wells. These people are going to want to interact about what's happening in this little village in, you know, Southern Philippines. It's like, so, so there's a lot of organizations that have, that have finite objectives around, you know, selling customers or putting people on platforms. Creating some marketplace, some, some town hall, some place that they could come together is the thing that actually allows us to. Number one, be effective as the body to really act as a Holy Spirit, really directs us. It's supposed to just what we happen to see in front of us. I think it's crucial. And I wish you guys the best because I think it is absolutely, absolutely crucial. The Christians, you know, number one, you know, identify themselves. Number two, that they come together in strength and to encourage each other and hold each other accountable. And number three, to create, you know, something that really has meaning so that we are not always playing defense and modern culture. I think that we have been robbed of the word gay. We've been robbed of the rainbow. Apparently we can't do okay anymore either. It's like, it's like, like what happened in this world? So to me, I think that, that, you know, for you guys to bring people together and do do it successfully creates so many other opportunities for the body. And first to grow and to strengthen ourselves that we could really mobilize a lot more people than is even currently feasible. Last question is, how can we be praying for you? Oh, wow. We have a lot to figure out the intersection. When you get a lot of people trying to connect with a lot of people. So, you know, really helping us to really have wisdom and understanding what that connection can look like to not over complicated. Helping to identify people that are really good at that, the taxonomy of work, understanding maybe some of the ML that some of the data models are available to help us. Maybe discern some things that aren't, you know, evident in the text, you know, things like that because we're trying to draw from anybody who has expertise in that area that we can. And then, you know, right now we're actually doing some bridge funding. So we're raising money to basically take us through kind of getting to full launch, which is really May, June timeframe. So we're opening up a lot more volume starting in January based on kind of what we've learned in the last three months after the general release. And, and of course, the supply side that people would really be touched that people would be moved to serve. I mean, we find that in every church of a thousand, there's 30 people that are begging for a place to serve. Probably another 70 that if it was obvious that there was a way for them to serve, they would. But there's probably another 300 in that church that need to kind of think differently. So kind of the change management on that side is going to be really important. Right. It's a completely different thing. So. Yeah. Well, this is great Scott. Thanks for. I enjoyed talking. I'm glad that I'm more the appropriate podcast apparel. I was really just trying to rip my shirt. Yeah. Yeah. Could you show it up in your black t-shirt? It's a coincidence. Thanks for all you guys are doing. I appreciate it. That's it for the podcast. Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff, and volunteers. 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