Cultivating Empathy by Serving Others - Taylor Doe

Valentine's Day and a bunch of my buddies were out with their significant other. I was incredibly single but I wanted to like do something nice for someone so I went with a buddy of mine and we went and bought a whole bunch of cards and chocolates and roses and delivered them to the ladies who were working at fast food restaurants in our college town right. And so we'd roll up. This was like night one. We've never done this. So we roll over like, how many ladies are working tonight and they're like, uh, you my name is Taylor Doe and I am from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I'm the co-founder of Notebird, which is pastoral care software, helping church leaders care for their teams. I'm an avid water burger, fanatic, um, that is a burger place. I don't know if it's on the coast or anything like that, but I'm a water burger fanatic. Um, and I just genuinely love people and this is my faithly 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. For 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. Actually, I have a different first question. Okay. Yes, let's go. I love curveball. Based on your intro, so like, I've never had water burger. Okay. I know about it. Yes. I think I was in Texas helping a friend move. It's like a thing. But whenever I hear reviews, it's like it's not anything special, it's just more nostalgic. The best way I can describe it is like waffle house in Atlanta. People go crazy, but once you go, you're just like, I don't get it. So could you put the novice for the water burger? Could you explain what the hype is? I'm happy. I'm honored that this is the first question. So you're probably right. You're going to have a majority of experiences that are like, this is a mediocre burger. And but overall, it is kind of the ethos of the place, especially in Texas, kind of where it was found in things like that. People go crazy for water burger and even have water burger art in their house and things like that. There's a whole Instagram page dedicated towards it. I fell in love with water burger in college. I started going my junior year, I think, is when they built the new water burger in Norman, Oklahoma. I went to the University of Oklahoma. And so me and my buddies would go and we'd always go late night. So it was always just like after 11 p.m. Just having a good time. We're hungry. All of that. And I went so much that I actually got the employee discount because I was going so often. I started to get to know the staff and we kind of were taking care of a few of the ladies who work there, their families with a ministry that I'd started anyway. So it's kind of that. But yeah, you're not too far off. I think it's a pretty good burger. It's probably not the best burger in the world, but for a fast food place, I really like it. The one hack that I will share for you right now is you can actually request for the burger to be cut in half, okay? And let me tell you why this is important is because I think it's a lot cleaner and easier to eat. And at the good water burgers, they'll actually individually wrap the like the halves. And so you can just start with a half, especially if you're driving or anything like that. And so I just think it's interesting that you can have them cut in half. I have them cut in half every time. And so my name's Taylor Doe and this is my water burger story. Well, what's that then? Could you share how your faith turned you started? Yeah, for sure. I grew up in a home where faith was kind of the number one. I'll actually start with with my grandparents. I had a grandfather on my mother's side who was a pastor and who taught at a Christian college for decades and decades and then on my dad's side, his dad, who I never got to meet Grandpa Doe, was a pastor of small churches up in Michigan. And so just kind of coming from that faith tradition was in a home where that was very important. And there were some spiritual practices that I saw my grandparents and then my parents kind of follow and do. And so that really shaped a lot of my belief coming to that. And then kind of growing up had just a lot of really great experiences with the church that we grew up in. I had a just adult and older people who were in my life like at crucial moments and then just kind of in the normal day to day I had people investing in me. And so I feel very fortunate to have those kind of spiritual leaders at different phases of my life. One of those was Jeff Berg and he came in our freshman year of high school and was like, Hey, I'm going to stay with you guys until you graduate at least. I'll be here so you can count on me for that. And that was definitely kind of a big moment as my faith started to kind of deepen with him as kind of a spiritual leader. And then he put us in situations and took us on trips that really opened my eyes to the way people live and different socioeconomic statuses and different places that we got to go with him was definitely eye opening help develop my faith. And then in college was around a group of guys and a group of people who were also faith was important to them. And so my faith kind of took another step during that season of my life and really kind of connected like actions and the time that I spent with other people outside of just kind of this small group and kind of outreach really became important to me. And then and then post college just being able to serve in kind of lower income communities and eventually moved here to the east side of Oklahoma City, which we can get into if you want to. But yeah, that's that's really kind of my journey as I'm still kind of working on my spiritual for practices and how I'm spending my time and who I'm spending with and kind of building community. That is is where I'm at. Where'd you go? Where you had these eye opening experiences? I mean, some was in our in our own kind of smaller town. I grew up in a community that was probably 40 to 50,000 people kind of fluctuated and and so one in my own community to we went down to Waco, Texas with mission Waco and kind of understanding the homeless population and spending time there as well as doing some outreach and some apartment complexes and things like that have spent time in in Chicago in Atlanta went to hate. I've been to Haiti probably five or six times and so both kind of locally, I'm very much ministry and proximity type guy, but very much locally and kind of in the states and then have had a chance to go to India as well with the persecuted church and as well as serve in Haiti. So those are a few of the places that are near and dear to my heart. But what internally for you like did you feel that made you go like, whoa, what is this like? Because eye opening can be good or bad, right? So it was a positive experience like how did they shape you? Yeah, let me kind of start. Let me back up a little bit and kind of share a little bit about like the environment I grew up in. I feel like even from my grandparents perspective, like others and othering was like a value of our home. So it was very much like we care for people in this household. So my grandpa would do trips with students. He taught the freshman Bible class at this at this college and wanted to do experiential learning with his students. So he kind of created this trip that's been going for decades at this point. And then Grandma Doe who would serve in like the most quiet ways, in unknown ways, I've kind of seen her. And then my mother was, she recently retired, but she was a family practice physician. And so I got to see the ways that she would care for her patients or we'd be out in the community. And one of her patients would come up and share a story and then my dad who was very involved in our education kind of volunteering with sports and parent teacher associations and things like that. He was very involved in the community. And so I want to start by saying that I grew up in an environment where my eyes and my heart were already postured in a sense of others. And so then kind of combine that with the experience of like going and actually being able to be empathetic in that way was really, that's what I mean when I opening. It's like, this isn't really like, it's kind of the juxtaposition a little bit if that's the word of like how I grew up versus how others are living in their experience and then really kind of wrestling with that. So what was the wrestle like and like where did that lead you? Yeah. So I think the wrestle was, I mean, just kind of a heartbreak for like feeling like this, this doesn't feel like heaven on earth and just seeing the challenges that other people were facing, barriers that other people were facing that I didn't have to face. And so kind of wrestling with that was was part of it. And I think from that wrestling turned into kind of action of like, I just want to spend time. I'm not here to really fix anything. I don't really have any like outcomes per se. I just want to spend time with people and listen and learn. And author kind of really impacted some of my beliefs on that. And that's John Perkins. I don't know if you're familiar with kind of Christian, can you development in things of that nature? He was a black man in the South who was serving and kind of served in obscurity for kind of a decade before anyone really knew his name. And so his kind of his model of how to care for others definitely impacted me. And so kind of taking it from the heart issue to action of being able to kind of start a ministry on campus at OU where we were serving others, which led into my career where I got to serve in different communities here in Oklahoma City. And so it kind of went from the heart thing to the action thing. What were the ministries that you were developing in OU? So OU, my friends and I started this ministry, this called Reach Ministries, we just called it Reach and we would do kind of creative service projects per se. I was in fraternity at OU and felt very much like we're living in a bubble. This isn't like real world that we're living in. And so really challenged or maybe invited as the better word, like people to serve others in unique ways. And so one project that we do every year was after a football game, after a night football game, there was a cleaning crew that was were temp workers, kind of low wage temp workers who would clean the stadium after the game. And their lunch hour was at like one or two a.m. in the morning. And a lot of people who are working in this temp work, transportation is always a challenge. And so we as college students were like, hey, we're up at one or two a.m., we're also hungry at that time. And so let's take food over to the stadium. And so we bought all these pizzas and cookies and all this stuff. And we just had lunch with the crew. And like, hey, first we want to say sorry for trashing the stadium like everyone does. And then two, we just wanted to come hang out and spend time. So you know, 30 to 50 to 80 college students, you know, it kind of grew over the years. Would come and have lunch with with the workforce and just build relationships that way. Another fun one is we did senior citizen prom. Wait a second. I have more questions on that. That's such an amazing story like. Yeah, that's such such an amazing story too. As you are like, did you do this throughout your whole four years or how long did it go? Yeah, so we started my freshman year. Like I said, I was just so fortunate to like bump into and be around other people who like had that same desire to like just love serving people. And so I don't feel like this was isolated like it was just me out there. I did start the organization. You have to go through paperwork and do all that stuff. And and then even my brother, who's co founder of my of our business together, he did the brand for it. And so got to work with him on that, but yeah, it was it was just kind of a thought of like challenging and inviting people to to care for others in unique ways. And so that's kind of kind of just how how it birthed out of that. I will say I want to share the details because I was in a fraternity. I was around other kids like students whose parents had money to be able to donate to what we were doing. And so on top of that, you know, it was like as a 18, 19, 20 year old, you know, getting these donations that would allow us to do that. That was not something that I had to like one really struggle with or like go out and fund raised really hard to do what we were doing. Like I'm very aware that there were other people on campus who were probably doing service projects that didn't have access to necessarily these means that allowed us to do this. And so we were just kind of connecting the heart with, you know, the ability to be able to raise some money to kind of do that. And what was the response from the workers and like are there any stories you want to share about like the conversations you had with them? Yeah. If you've done service, if you've been the leader of doing service projects, you're doing a lot of logistics while people are doing that. Like it's kind of the end, the idea of like creating the environment for this to happen. Right. So there's a lot of logistics behind the scenes that are going on that I'm trying to navigate as well as I'm, you know, building relationships with people. And so I'm trying to think if I have any specific, this was a while ago. Man, I don't know if I have any specific stories from that. There's another event I'd love to tell you about that. I have a better story, but I do have people it's really fun to kind of think about like people will still text me about that season of our life together of like this really made an impact and opened my eyes to the things that our people are going through and like help me build a level of empathy that I didn't have before we started spending time with people in this way. Thank you for that. And then you said you had another program leader or seniors? Yeah. Another fun one was we did senior prom senior citizen prom. So we'd go to a senior living center and partner with them and we would host a prom. So all the college students would get dressed up. The residents would get dressed up. We had flowers we did we had a photo booth with kind of the the word that said prom. So we're just taking photos with kind of our dates. And then we would crown the senior prom king and queen both for college and the residents. And so the older man would get to dance with the college queen and the older the older queen got to dance with the younger king and it was a really a really amazing time. So we did that for three or four years, one of the years we crowned a senior prom king. And a few weeks later we came back to do what we called bingo in the Bahamas. So we bought like these inflatable coconut trees, palm trees, we're wearing like live vests, we're like swim trunks, all of that just to play bingo with the residents. And one of the ladies came up to me after we got done and she was like emotional, she was crying. And she's like, did you hear the news? And I was like, no, what happened? I was like, Bob, who was the senior prom king, he passed away from after senior citizen prom. And she's like, I want to tell you that on his casket at the front of the, at the front of the church, he had his scepter, his senior citizen shawl that he had that we had that said, prom king and then a picture of him as prom king with with the queen. And so it was a really kind of cool moment there that we got to play, you know, kind of a, a small moment where we got to bring joy for Bob, kind of in as he transitioned from, from this world. So that was kind of a, a powerful moment for us of like even these small ways that were serving, we, we sometimes and a lot of times don't know the impact of that. I can see why you're like a born entrepreneur, you have really good ideas. I'll tell you the last one. And this might transition us into a conversation that I'm really passionate about right now. So my sophomore year of college, it was Valentine's Day. And a bunch of my buddies were out with their significant other. I was incredibly single. But I wanted to like do something nice for someone. And as you can kind of see this theme that's kind of been weaving through our conversation today, like fast food has been a theme for me. Like I just, I just eat out a lot and it started pretty young, which is not healthy. I'm sorry, mom, but it was Valentine's Day and I want to do something nice. So I went with a buddy of mine and we went and bought a whole bunch of cards and chocolates and roses and delivered them to the ladies who were working at fast food restaurants in our, in our college town, right? And so we'd roll up, this was, this was like night one. We've never done this. We roll over like how many ladies are working tonight and they're like, uh, yeah, and so they would eventually, hey, we have a gift for you for Valentine's Day. Like we learned how to say this. That wasn't creepy. And so we'd roll up and we would, we would hand these like gifts to the ladies working on Valentine's Day. And like tears would come. Thank you so much for, you know, like for thinking of us and we just said, hey, we're thinking about you. Thank you for all you do for us and happy Valentine's Day. And many times a lot of these ladies are like, this is the only Valentine I got today. Thank you for thinking of us. And so, um, 15 years later, it's been going every single year and it's kind of spread out to different communities of people who have done it, um, different college campuses have kind of picked it up and run with it. And so it's been really cool to kind of see others kind of pick up. We kind of, we kind of say we're, we're spreading kindness one drive throughout a time. And it's really cool to kind of be able to see the impact from after college. I got to work at a company here in Oklahoma City and energy company and they, they paid me to do community outreach for them. And so I actually got to work in schools on the east side of Oklahoma City, the east side of Oklahoma City is predominantly black, predominantly low income. People who aren't from the east side are kind of outside, outside of the east side kind of classify it by all of its negative characteristics rather than its positive characteristics, right? So, um, they allowed me to work in schools, um, and we, uh, I set up a, kind of a reading mentor program and while I was doing that, you know, I'm engaging with, uh, principals and kind of leadership at the schools and they're doing these things called rise and shine assemblies. Um, and it's once a week and the whole school comes and it was like a big stressor for the principals. It's like, I don't really have capacity to like do this assembly with my students. Um, would you do this? And so, um, from there, I was like, yeah, let me talk with my boss, like to see, uh, in my boss at the time was a former youth pastor, um, Anna, and he was a pastor and would preach on, on Sundays, but worked in corporate America. And so he was like, uh, of course, like you can totally do this. And so for seven or eight years, three days a week, I would be at three different elementary schools on the east side of Oklahoma City, um, doing character education assembly. So I came up with a, uh, character education curriculum called the hot seat. And we had the hot seat crew, which was our sixth grade leadership development where we'd put mics in, you know, student's hands where they get to help lead. We had the hot seat wrap. We had the hot seat mailbox where students could write us, um, it was, it was so much fun, but it gave me a platform to really engage with students and their families, um, which we can get to get to later if you want. But the reason I tell you that story is I kind of found a core group of guys that I started spending time with, similar to Jeff, when I was a freshman, these guys were second graders. And was like, Hey, I'm going to be here, uh, would love to spend time with you and your family. So I got to get to know them. Well, as they got older, they got in the middle school, they found out about fast food Valentine's. And they're like, uh, so, so my nickname is Tito, uh, so Taylor Doe, Tito, they're like, Tito, we, we want to do fast food Valentine's like, this is our year, right? And I was like, okay, so I had to step it up, um, that year. So we actually, uh, rented tuxedos, uh, for everybody, we rented a limousine and we kind of stepped up our gift baskets for that year and really went around and, in, in delivered these things. And so they made it on the front page of the biggest newspaper in Oklahoma. They made it on all the news programs. And they were like, hot stuff at school the next day because teachers are like showing the news program. All of that. It was amazing. I tell you the story is because in the back of that limousine, um, that night, Demarion, who's one of my gut, we call him DJ, DJ, we're dressed up, we're feeling confident, right? Like when you dress up, you just feel a certain way. And so we're talking about making, uh, we do like fake business deals. We're talking about making money, all that stuff. And Demarion looks at me and he asked me a question that I'll never forget. And he says, Tito, how do people become successful? Like I want to be successful when I grow up. And I froze in that moment and luckily Burger King saved me. We pulled up to our next spot and the guys hopped out, you know, and by the time they got back, conversation had changed, but that was really weighing on me. It was this question like this young man who I saw a lot of myself and him. He's funny. He loves serving like all these things and he's asking me this question, Tito, how do people become successful? How do people get the good jobs? Like I want that. And so that really kind of led me down a path of, of doing research and asking questions of people kind of how they get to where they're at. So that's a good question. What is your definition of success? Yeah. So I, I, in this project that I did, I don't know if I really define success, um, per se. It looks different for everybody, right? But what he was kind of asking was the ability to kind of do better than what my parents did, right? Kind of social mobility, um, and we, we kind of think about that in America of like kind of being able to move up, uh, in the world. And so that's kind of what, what I kind of loosely, uh, kind of termed as being successful, getting one of the good jobs. If, you know, you have PTO and, and maybe benefits and a 401k is like some of these things that people look towards. And so I started doing some interviews and, uh, asking people about their journeys. And, um, I found some really fascinating things, um, typically when we tell our stories, we, we hit the high points, um, you know, for example, I interviewed this on lady named Stacey and she said, Hey, I worked really hard, um, and went to college and then I worked at a PR firm, um, and that's really what kind of set my career. And so time and time again, people are saying, Hey, I worked hard and then, um, I, I worked at this company and all that, what I found out was that there's a phrase that showed up in every single one of these interviews and it was this phrase and then it's a transition word that we use as we tell our stories to kind of get to the next high point, but that's the transition word that hides all the details of how people get to where they're at. And so back to Stacey's story, um, what she doesn't mention was that the guy she was dating in college, his dad was a general manager at that PR firm and helped her get an internship which turned into a full-time job, right, uh, Joey who worked hard and studied film and then, you know, had this award-winning music video who I interviewed, he tells that version of the story, but what he doesn't tell is that his grit, his aunt bought him his first camera, which allowed him to, uh, learn how to, you do film it and do all of that. And so it's these, what, what I term and then moments that are kind of the untold stories and people's lives that help them get to where they're at. Yeah, I mean, if you listen to any like honest billionaire, it's like these podcasts. Yeah. Like I'll tell you it like 90% is like luck, but what they're really saying is like an opportunity has to come that they had no control over and it sees the opportunity. But I would knew on success that like the world success is like if you're secure financially that people think that success and all your claim, but even then, um, this is why we have like happy billionaires and miserable billionaires, right, because I'm sure coming to this realization especially as a Christian, true success is you finally figuring out what is God's purpose in your life and you falling in love with that purpose. And so yeah, it's just funny thing that like there is a worldly success, but there's also a spiritual success of like, oh, I know exactly who I am and why I do what I do and I think God blesses that. Oh, for sure. And I 100% agree with that. And then to add nuance, I think I don't typically do like a word of the year, but the last two years it's been the same word actually and it's nuance. And so to add a little bit of nuance here is like even even the component of like poverty, I think adds to this conversation, right, it's like I'm trying to not hurt as much or see my mom or my dad or my family like have to go through these things. And so I think it's even kind of that those are the kind of conversations I like having and kind of the nuance of success or like social mobility is talking about the marginalized and people who kind of been left out of the economy in some way or things like that. And so I think that is another component to it is like I see the conversation I've had with DJ is like, and what I love about his heart is he doesn't ever talk about his own success just for himself, right? I mean, of course he's like he has these goals to buy some things, but for the most part it's like, no, I want to be able to like help my mom buy like buy a house, you know, and I want to like not have to worry about X, Y and Z happening in regards to our power getting cut off or things like that that is another kind of nuance that he's having to to work through. And these were some of the things that I didn't ever really have to think about growing up. And so I think that's in the conversation that we're having around and then moments and things like that. That's really what I want to draw light to is how people get to where they're at. And once you kind of work through that and identify man, these people in this door open and all that my hope is that there's a level of empathy that says I want to do this for someone else. And so that's kind of really kind of at the baseline of of it all. Yeah, I mean, I grew up poor, not like poverty land poor, but like just enough poor and being poor and like you even mentioned, like worrying about the power cut off, like that was a common current and it lights a fighter under you of like, there's no way I'm going to continue with like this. I need to do something, but the flip side is I wish even as I was younger, I wish someone told me like, going for it is a good thing, just make sure it's not the only thing that matters in your life because that drive, it becomes so intense like it can overtake your life. And so real quick, what I'd left out of my story is about a billion things, but in order for me to even like get to know these students and work at that company to do community outreach, my college roommates mom was senior vice president of HR at that company. And she donated to reach ministries in college and was like, Tito, you're doing some like pretty unique things, right? Like serving and all that. We have a community outreach team that we're just getting started. I want you to meet Greg who's going to oversee that. I don't know if anything will come from it, but I just think you guys would like each other. And so she unlocked, she gave me a key, unlocked the door for me to have an interview with Greg, which turned into, you know, an internship, which turned into a full time job. So how do you go from there from no bird and like, what is no bird exactly? Yeah. No, I think I think it's a great transition in that literally in that same season for that same company. I actually started out doing half time community outreach and half time employee care. So my, my title was not a corporate chaplain, but that's kind of like the, the closest thing to kind of get people in the, in the brain space. So I did employee care. So when, sorry, is my, yep. So I, I did employee care at this company. And so when an employee would have a baby, we would send a gift basket to them. I did a lot of handwritten cards. If an employee had lost a loved one, we'd send food and handwritten cards and calls. We had support for mental health services and we had kind of a marriage initiative going. And I got to do all of that. And after a few weeks, like employees were sharing life details with me, you know, about their kids and their families and, you know, the situation at the hospital, all of that. And I needed a way to stay organized. And so I was kind of using my notes app, filtering my email, spreadsheet. I tried a, like a pretty complicated sales tool that I was like, this is just too much. I don't need this much. And then I reached out to some clergy friends and I was like, hey, guys, this is kind of in your job description, caring for people. Like, what are you, what are you doing to stay organized? And that's when they came back and said, man, we use a spreadsheet. We have a dry race board at the office with people in the hospital. And then when they're not there, we just erase their name or we're just not even really tracking it. We're just kind of surviving. And so that's when I went to my brother, Chris, who is one of the smartest people I know. And I was like, hey, I have this idea that I would use in my personal life, as well as at the job. And then I think we could also serve churches as well. And so that was kind of the origin of how that idea kind of came about. So what is notebook exactly? So yeah, so notebook is software that is helping church leaders in their teams track and organize pastoral care. So it's a, it's a tool where leaders and teams are inputting notes. We call them updates about interactions that they're having with their people in regards to care needs and follow-ups and coffee meetings and kind of the relational connections that are happening as well as they're able to schedule follow-ups kind of assign that to themselves or someone else on their team to follow up. And then the last one is kind of life milestones. So the ability to be able to track the passing of a loved one or other big life milestones that happen in the lives of your people all in one place. So really trying to centralize pastoral care for churches to be able to care for their people. How do you sell the problem if you have a lot of notes? Because it sounds like, like, I might edit this out, so it sounds like a verified Google doc, right? So like, how do you keep it organized and connected to schedules and even like summarize notes or like consolidate notes? Yep, that's a great question. You don't need to edit that out is because that's what we talk with teams about all the time. It is the challenge with permissions. And so there are life events that you might have a care team with Joe who just makes hospital visits and doesn't need to see grief care or things like that. And that's impossible to do in Google in a Google doc is to kind of be able to manage those permissions in a sense. The other would like just off the top of my head would be like an actual congregant profile. So like, you'd put the neck typically churches like put the name of the person and then you're like typing notes under that and then the ability to like have to search that name and then be able to like filter and see the date and like all of that. Just gets really hard and really messy, really quick. So what what we see and after talking with countless church leaders is like word docs and spreadsheets work for like a few weeks, honestly, like it feels clean. You start off, you start off great and then it's like update number two. When you go make a visit at the hospital, it's like, where do I put this, right? Do we add a new column in the spreadsheet or does it go in the same text box and we're going to re date it and you know, it's like all of that. So that's when it when it really starts falling, falling apart when it comes to kind of extended follow up or care history. Yeah. I think because like we're trying to like have churches at the top. We're doing here, right? I've realized people are very comfortable with what they're doing, but they don't realize what they're doing. It's not scalable or longevity or even continuity where you can hand it off because now you're buried in like 500 files with like 500 documents. Of course. How do I do this? Yeah. I mean, you are explaining a very big pain point for church leaders and in one is kind of you, you mentioned it briefly is the handoff of this information, right? So we think strategically about helping churches create a legacy of care is what we talk about. And how you do that is you care for people over a course of time and knowing that there are going to be different team members who come on your team. There's going to be pastors who leave and pastors who come. And so having one place to be able to store that as well as seeing care history is important. So with note bird, you're able to archive the pastor who's moving on to a different church, but you get to keep all the updates that he or she made over the course of time to be able to have that care history there. So that is definitely a component that we're kind of thinking about when it comes to kind of centralizing that data, not having 500 different things that you're having folders and things that you're having to find. And the other aspect is I talk with a lot of church leaders who step into a role and there's no information for them. They don't have a homebound list. They didn't know that Stacey has had kind of a long-term illness that has been very challenging for her. And she has to retell her entire story to this new pastor, right? There's that that really actually breaks my heart because I love people is like, man, with note bird, you're able to kind of see this history of care that gives you context, right? Going there saying all the details about everything, but it gives you a context of like, what is going to be my approach as I'm caring for this person? And so many pastors walk in blindly to the congregation that they're starting with. And I think a lot of harm can be done, but I don't necessarily think about the negative as much. I think about like the positive of what it could be if you came in and had this wealth of knowledge there to be able to kind of pick up with the pastor left off. Well, it's been your biggest challenge to get churches to buy in. Oh, great question. So I think our demographic of users kind of skews a little bit older and age. We have a lot of care ministries who it's like retired folks who are like, hey, I love people. I'm available. I want to help in that same vein. We obviously have people who fall into that demographic who love technology, but we also have people who are anxious about technology and starting new things. So we have really aired on the side of ease of use for our customers. We don't really advertise this, but like our fonts a little bit bigger, our buttons are a little bit chunkier. We're like intentionally slow on releasing new features, like we're not feature happy to try to like, because we believe that the more complex a tool is, the less likely your team is to use. And so a lot of these churches are saying, hey, you asked about the challenge. Sometimes we get people saying, our church management tool does this feature. Like it has a note section. And then they'll turn around in a month or so and say, hey, there's a lot of buttons you have to click to like get to the note section or like Betty is just way overwhelmed with like having to click through attendance and all these things to find the notes. And so that is one of the challenges where it's like, hey, we think we have a tool to do it or we're going to use this spreadsheet. And then what we've seen, which has kind of validated the product, was that they come back and are like, hey, we actually want to use no word. So that's one of the things we face. Yeah, my role of thumb with UIS, if it takes you more than two clicks, you're going to the wrong place. Yeah. But yeah, do you think about this stuff every single day? And it's hard to communicate that. Like, I wish people could see behind the scenes of a like an intentional tech company to see how many conversations we have about the UIS of the tool, right? Like, Chris and I have gone back and forth so many times about and looking at so many different layouts, we're thinking about our user saying, I think this is going to be confusing. And then we'll test it and see if it is with kind of, you know, a smaller group and things like that. So I wish people similar to faithly in what you guys are doing there. Like, I'm on the platform. I signed up. It's incredibly easy to use. You can tell it's thought out. But you guys have had thousands of hours of conversation that I'm not privy to. And I don't know about that have really impacted the the setup of the tool, the design of that. I appreciate you seeing that. Yeah, I feel you. And to people who are listening who are not in technology, the thing that I would say is that you are also doing this in your context and should be doing this in your context, right? As we're creating environments, if church leaders are listening to this, as we're as we're creating environments for students, if you lead youth, if you're creating environments for adults, you're having conversations behind the scenes that your people aren't privy to. And I, Chris and I both are dedicated to kind of excellence is a word that that kind of leads all of our discussion. And similar for you guys at faithly, I know you guys do stuff with excellence. That's the challenge to the to churches, like continue to have these conversations in quiet to build excellent environments and experiences for people to experience Jesus in unique ways. Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's really simple. It's like always make a decision with the user in mind, right? Because at the end of the day, you want to benefit the user because benefit the user or benefit to because the people spending money is people. It's not like a machine is like making decisions like, this is how much you get this is how much it is like, no, like, like you and a lot of are going to me and McDonald's, they have a lifetime loyalty, you know, convert, right? So that's what we're doing. 100%. And so as I think about technology, is we love what we do and we have amazing customers, like people who provide us feedback or like are very generous in like the words they use, talking about notebook. And so it's been really fun to like, I'm the really, I'm I'm very relational. So like, I love having conversations with with people who are using notebook, but also I nerd out about the process and the systems that like churches are using if they're not using a tool like notebook to have that conversation around pastoral care. So even even when it feels like, I think people sometimes see a website and don't see the people behind it, we'll get people chat us and like, think we're a bot or like start off, like aggressive is not the word, but just like very like, oh, I'm just talking with someone behind a computer. And then they're like, you're talking to me or someone on the team. And we actually like talking with people. So like that experience of like how people, how you meet people where they're at and then win them over as fans through care, I think has been a lot of fun over the years to do. So what would you consider success with notebook? Yeah. That's a great question. I think there's, we have several different avenues for that, I would say. I think on the decide to kind of stay in the tech side of things, I think a success for us is like, people feel comfortable using the tool. Like we want it to be inviting and helpful. So like when they go to the activity feed, they're seeing like the latest interactions with people. And that's something you can't get on a spreadsheet the way you filter and organize. You can't get that on a Google Doc. It's hard to do that in some church management tools. But you're seeing a feed of like here's our latest interactions with people. And what we've heard from church leaders is they say we open this up during our staff meeting. And like we pray for people like it actually spurs conversations on how we can care for people deeper. At the same time, it's saving us time because historically before notebook, we're just like sharing updates vocally at the meeting, letting people know about so-and-so had a baby, this person's out of the hospital, all of those things where now everyone's on the same page, comes to the meeting there to know that. So you don't really have to talk about that specific thing if you don't want to. And you can really optimize your time in a way to say actually, Joe is going through this really tough life event. How can we care for him in a deeper way? And so that would be one category of success for us is like really streamlining that process to help people save time, but also have more meaningful conversations when they're together as they plan out how they're going to care for others. It's funny because the original idea of Facebook was actually pre-engineers of like, I just want to know what's going on with my community. And it kind of opened the floodgates to all this other stuff. And I see this reversal of, oh, I just, I want to curate it to people that like, I'm concerned that I won't pray for and stuff like that. And I once in a while, I'll see some of you. So I feel like you're providing that of like this local context of rather than scrolling through TikTok, like let me scroll through NoBird and see what's going on with my people, right? Yeah, totally. And we even have a kind of a, it's kind of a follow button. It's just a way to kind of keep closer tabs on certain people that you might be in closer relationship with. And so you have the ability to kind of even filter that out to kind of get a quick glance at that and then flip back to say, okay, what's our entire care team doing? But on the platform, it's been so fun having conversations with leaders from different contexts. And I know we need to wrap up. One is we have we have users who are solo pastors with like 27 people stored in NoBird. Like they just, they have a small rural church and they use NoBird to track these interactions. And then we have churches that have 30, 40,000 profiles stored in NoBird in the systems behind, you know, having their teams on NoBird and all that is very different logistically. But at the end of the day, it's about caring for your people. And that's been really cool to kind of see a tool that we built showing up in different contexts for the focus of care. So we have no big dreams of becoming a full church management suite. We don't want to, we're never going to do donations. We're never going to do attendance tracking. We're never going to do any of that. And so we are going to focus specifically on pastoral care. And so that would be kind of another metric for success for us is like looking back on the year, how focused did we stay on pastoral care and helping people care for their people. And that is kind of helps us continue to kind of push in the direction we want to push. I love that. Like do you know Peter Taylor's? Yeah. Yeah. He said something really interesting. I mean, I disagree with a lot of things he says, but I agree with this one take. Yeah. Is that true success? If you want to be successful for all you young people, find a niche and monopolize it. And you'll get to success way faster than trying to compete with the entire market on like like church management software. And and humans are so bad at scale, like even Google, like they're dropping the ball on a on and so it's like pick your lane and go fast as you can. And then you'll see as long as you help people like it's such an amazing ride. Yeah. And and we have we we do not hate on other church platforms or anything like that. We we actually say we compliment them is is a word that we use often we like want to compliment how people are caring, you know, they're caring ministries as well as they're using other technology in the church. And so those church management platforms are doing amazing work and helping people, you know, run their church and connect online and do all these things. We just like you said, we decided we're going to take a niche. We're going to focus specifically on pastoral care. We see the need here and we want to try to meet that need. And that's where kind of no bird was born. And I kind of just see that as like part of like a kingdom paradigm or dynamic where it's okay to be very unique and individual because that's how it got created you because you are placed on this earth to do this one thing that you're supposed to do. Yeah. No one else. Right. And if companies understood that like, Hey, like we can coexist because you know, there's a diversity of stuff, but we do this one thing so well. Everyone's coming us for this one thing. And I feel like you're providing that. And it's great. And and and to piggyback off that as you do that, we have found along the way that there are people who like overlap with our passion. Like we might be like specifically gifted or focused on this, but we've run into people who like really genuinely love pastoral care or care ministry or Stephen ministry or a card ministry. You know, they love sending handwritten cards to their congregants. And so even in this like, yes, we are we are laser focus. It's been really cool to kind of see the overlap. And I'm sure you've seen that as well with with faith with faithly is like, I mean, even with us like when when we connected kind of in the early early times was like, yeah, this is amazing. And we want to be a part of this. I'm sure you guys constantly hear that with conferences and with users that you're you're signing up the platform. It's it's really cool when you're operating in that that you you find and attract other people who are interested in that. It's so crazy. Like once I realized what kingdom pattern tour as long as I follow them, it's so intrinsic in people because it's who we are internally. Yeah, Jesus is like, well, I've been seeing that all along. Yeah, just keep following that pattern. So yeah, sure. What are you hoping for at faithly? Sorry, we said it again. What are you hoping for at faithly? Oh, man, I think a lot of things. I mean, I love just kind of tracking with you guys. First, you guys did a rebrand and it's phenomenal. Great, great work to you and the team. I mean, it's beautiful. I mean, even seeing the accents show up in different things that you guys are doing. I mean, it's it is wonderfully done. So I think that that's amazing. The the other thing is what you guys are creating is me personally, I'm looking for a community through the platform. And so obviously, I'm bent towards care in meeting a community on your platform. That's like talking about these things and talking about strategies and and heart behind why they're caring and resources. And so that's something I'm looking for in faithly. The other thing that I think about in this kind of goes to and then moments is the connections that are being made and the opportunities that will come through meeting people through the platform that you built. And I know you guys kind of have a jobs section and the ability to be able to find find that. But I think it's even deeper than that. It's it's the person you're coming to the platform with and what you're sharing on there that's going to be able to build trust with other church leaders and in places that you want to work at. So I'm excited about that piece of like being able to see the connections that are made through your platform for like real world opportunity to unlock for for leaders. I mean, I had a conversation literally. I talk about you guys all the time, just FYI. If I'm talking to a church there, I'm like, do you not have a profile on the platform yet? Like why not? Or people who are kind of aspiring aspiring to take the next step kind of in their in their ministry journey. I'm like, yeah, you 1000% have to have a profile on here on faithly. So that is something that one, I love the product you guys are making. I definitely think the community aspect for me is what I'm looking for in the tool. So yeah. Thanks. How can we be praying for you and family? Man, I think even just last night just like being very transparent, just like the weight of families that I love very dearly like my neighbors actually in my neighborhood who are like really struggling has been really heavy lately. And so it always has, but like families that I've known for now a decade, 15 years who are like still struggling is really heavy. So I think those are that that could be something that I'm just processing still. And yeah, that that that would that would probably be that. And then also for notebook, I mean, we want to be able to serve church as well. And so just the stamina, you know what it's like running a company. And so just like and long hours, I'm very fortunate that I get to work with my brother and even my sister in law now. So people that I love dearly and who I think are just brilliant. So yeah, just the energy and in being sustained and in the work that we do. Thanks man. This was great. I love your heart. Yes. Well, thank you. Special heart. Yeah. The uh, I would love to honestly down the road is interview you on your own podcast. I have this idea where like I don't start my own podcast, but I just go on other peoples and get to interview the host. And so if you're interested in that, I'm 100% down for like kind of taking the mic from you and being able to interview you. I don't know if you've done that yet, but I would love to let me end this podcast. Okay. For the podcast guys, bye. 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. The Faithly Digital platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.