How cancer can lead to more freedom in our work
Jordan Raynor sits down with Anita Corsini, Co-founder of Red Barn Homes, to talk about how her son’s near-death experience led to more freedom in her work, why Anita is intentional about working slower than she can, and what practically it might look like to “build houses” without the curse (see Isaiah 65).
Links Mentioned:
[00:00:04] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as cabinet makers, and actuaries, and school bus drivers? That's the question we explore every week, and today, I'm posing it to Anita Corsini. She's the Co-Founder of Red Barn Homes with her husband Ken, who together have bought and sold over 800 homes in metro Atlanta.
Anita is perhaps best known for her role as co-host of Flip or Flop Atlanta, which you may have watched on HGTV. Anita and I have been friends. Let’s call it Instagram friends from a distance for a long time, but we finally got a chance to sit down together and talk about how her son's near-death experience led to more freedom in her work. We talked about why Anita is intentional about working slower than she can and what practically it might look like to build houses without the curse, as we see in Isaiah 65 prophetic vision of the New Earth. Guys, you're going to love this conversation with my friend. Anita Corsini.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:32] JR: Anita, man, this is long overdue. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:35] AC: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I agree with you, very long overdue.
[00:01:40] JR: I was looking back through Instagram, DMs. You and I were trained DMs in 2019. I'm trying to remember you must have recalled The Create, way back then.
[00:01:49] AC: Yes, it was – yeah. I’m probably am overdue to read it again. I was reading, I think, Ken, actually my husband, somebody gave him the book or he had heard of it somewhere. Then of course, then I get nosy. Then I get into – it started there.
[00:02:08] JR: We've been talking for 10 minutes before we started recording like we're old, old friends. Talking about the Holy Spirit, talking about – man, and we just went deep, right off the bat.
[00:02:19] AC: I know, guilty. I do it every time. I mean, because really, what's chit chat? I'd rather know somebody –
[00:02:27] JR: Get us out of here.
[00:02:29] AC: Yeah, exactly.
[00:02:30] JR: Let’s talk about the trinity and the forgotten –
[00:02:32] AC: Right. You know, part of it is, I've read your books, right? I know your voice. I know your heartbeat. So I guess there's part of me that's like, “Oh, yeah. This is my friend Jordan. We've known each other for years.”
[00:02:46] JR: That is a weird – I was thinking about this, it's a weird dynamic as an author, because books are so intimate. You're baring your soul to the reader for five hours of their life. So they feel like they know you. A lot of times, they honestly know your books better than you do. It's got this weird dynamic.
[00:03:04] AC: Yeah.
[00:03:04] JR: Do you find the same thing having been on TV? That when people see you, they're like, “Oh, my gosh. I knew everything about you in your life.”
[00:03:11] AC: Yes. Some of them will just know what they've seen on TV, so they make assumptions. I mean, honestly, on TV, I was very much myself. Yes, they will walk up and they're like, “Hey, wait.” Then I'm thinking, oh, gosh. There's nothing worse than I'm trying to think did I teach you at one time? Are you a parent of one of my – Am I supposed to know you? Or do you just know me, because you know my face? Because I never want to ever make anyone feel silly or whatever. I mean, I'm just like, but in my head, it's like compute, compute, compute.
[00:03:48] JR: That’s so good. I love it. Hey, back up for a second. You breezed over this. You're a teacher for while –
[00:03:54] AC: I was the teacher, yes.
[00:03:55] JR: Math education. How long did you do that work?
[00:03:58] AC: I did that work for seven years. I wanted to be a teacher, right? I've always been this, I mean, even as a kid. I set up a classroom in my closet. My poor little sister had to sit down and listen to me, teach her, right? She had to pay for my classroom, poor thing. She got indoctrinated early. I loved mathematics. I mean, I just did. God really gave me a heart for that. I had amazing teachers in high school. So when I went to college, I was like, “I want to be a teacher.”
My parents, they're Iranian. So in Iranian culture, you're going to be a doctor, you're going to be a lawyer, you're going to be a pharmacist. You're going to be one of these prestigious things, so that you can be successful or productive or whatever that means. They were like, “Anita, I don't know if you should be a teacher.” I think their heart was fear that I wouldn't be able to provide for myself, right, or take care of myself, because let's be honest, teachers make nothing.
[00:05:03] JR: Sure.
[00:05:03] AC: Which we can unpack that on another date, okay. We'll leave that one be today.
[00:05:09] JR: Do that for the Atlanta Live, episode.
[00:05:11] AC: Yes, exactly, exactly. Anyhow, I remember standing in my dorm room, my parents, my uncle telling me, “Well, we don't still know about this.” I went back to my high school teacher, and visited her, my freshman year of college. I was like, “They don't really want me to be a teacher, and I don't want to upset my parents.” She goes, “Oh, Anita. I got this. I'll solve this problem for you.” I was like, “What?” She said, “Just be a math major.” She’s like, “Don't be an education major.” She goes, “Be a math major.” She goes, “You're going to get twice the math that any education major would get. So you're going to be way more prepared and you can get a master's in education, that's icing on the cake. You'll do great.” I was like, “Oh, problem solved.”
[00:06:00] JR: Problem solved.
[00:06:03] AC: Yes. I’m a mathematics undergraduate. I do have a master's in math education. to say that I love math is an understatement. I love it. I love teaching. I love every aspect about it. I did that for seven years. I was at a small school here in town and was able to write curriculum, and I built amazing relationships with students. Yes, so yeah, I was a teacher. That was my first love.
[00:06:29] JR: That's the first. I like to think of calling seasonally. We had my friend Brian Sanders on the podcast a while back talking about this. So that was Season One vocationally for you, how did you make the shift into that second season of flipping houses, right? Not evolved, but what's the narrative arc here?
[00:06:47] AC: Okay, I'm going to back the train up for just a minute and say, here's something funny that God did when we had just gotten married. We got married at 23. I went to some one of those women's –
[00:06:59] JR: Tea’s –
[00:07:00] AC: Talks in the arena. No, not the tea, no, I'm not tea girl. I went with my mother-in-law and my mom. It was those, the older lady Christian speakers with their feather boas, silly things. Anyhow, I came home at night, and Ken wasn't home, and I sat down at the computer, because it was almost just, I was just filled with this word from the Lord. I was like, “What is going on?” So I just banged out on the computer. I need to find this document. It's somewhere in my files. I was like, “Lord, this is what I want to do with my life. It was, I want to teach, I’m going to be the best teacher that I can possibly be. I want to be a mom and then I want to move and be a mom and be the best mom, I can possibly be in this pillar, in my household.”
Then after that I wanted, at the time, it was like, I had written that I wanted to be this public speaker. Basically, it was to have this bigger influence, right? Look at what God's done. I mean, so, it all start, I would have never told you that it would have happened. I would have told you, I'm going to be a math teacher for my whole life. We're going to live in the same house that we always bought, when we first got married, because that was my little box in my 20s. Taught got my master's, Ken was working, doing his first job, which was working for an insurance brokerage. He was working on the software side of that. Ken's an entrepreneur born and bred. There's nothing else that that child could do in this world. I knew that. I saw that. I was like, if he didn't scratch this itch, he's going to be miserable. It was his turn, right? I did my turn. I got all the degrees I wanted. Then pass the baton to him. He started working for himself.
Well, I had always planned on when we had our first baby that I wasn't going to teach, because when I'm working, I'm all in. When you have a baby, you need to be all in. So it would have been very hard for me to do double duty and have my heart 100%. He said to me, I just finished grading finals and getting my kids through AP exams and all of that, and he's like, “Hey, I need you to go get your real estate license.” I mean, I looked at him like, “No, I'm not doing that. You don't get to just tell me what to do, right?”
[00:09:22] JR: Right, right. I have this book
[00:09:23] AC: He was like – Yeah, exactly. Now, I'm nesting. I'm going to eat bonbons and put my feet up, because I'm really pregnant, by the way. Do you see this belly? It's like that. He was like, “No, babe. I need you to go get your real estate license, because you won't get it after the baby comes.” Which he wasn't wrong there. “It'll be way more difficult. You can help me in this and do the licensing part.” Because he didn't want to have a real estate license, so he could do the investor part. I was really confused, because real estate was not my passion at all. That wasn't my wheelhouse, that teaching people, people, people is my passion, right? I was like, “Okay, fine.” He's like, “Babe, this will take you two weeks, you're so smart, you can go get it and half the exam is math.” Which for me was the easy part, right? Yeah, I got my license. So then it was like my toes were in the shallow end with real estate. I was playing this very supportive role, because I was home. I wasn't teaching. So that's how it all started. Then yes, then it exploded.
[00:10:35] JR: Yeah, yeah. When did this explode? Was this the show on HGTV that –
[00:10:41] AC: Yeah. Well, before that we had a big business going and flipping houses. Again, at that point, I was really much more supportive role helping. Ken was running the flipping business. Real estate, if you're going to stay active and successful in real estate, you have to adapt. We speak about this a lot, because the market changes, right? If you're going to stay in one lane and real estate, it's going to be very hard to have continual success, because if you can't morph with what's coming and what's changing, then it's going to be very difficult. So he is amazing at doing that. We morphed and changed and at the time, when HGTV reached out, we were flipping a lot of houses. We had flipped over at that point, maybe 800 houses, but that's because it was after the crash, right? Their houses were like, I mean, a dime a dozen. They were everywhere.
[00:11:39] JR: Yeah. I didn't know this before my team did prep for this episode, but your son had a really serious scare with cancer. Right before you joined HDTV, right? What's the story there?
[00:11:53] AC: Yes. Okay. That rocked our world. It was 2014 when that happened. We're just living normal life, right? I have twins that are three, and an older daughter, who's six. One afternoon my kids are big kids. I was looking like, looking at my son's belly. I was like, “What? His belly looks really big.” Usually it's like, after they eat you know kids bellies poke out or whatever. I thought, it just it's not going down. Then I called the doctor. She just said, this was after hours, so she said, “You know Anita, just bring him in tomorrow. I'm sure he's fine.” So we did. We brought him in. She said, she just looked at me and said, “I need you to make sure your girls are taken care of. I need you to take him to CHOA, which is our Children's Hospital here in Atlanta. I said, “Okay.” Even still, it didn't dawn on me, that it was going to be something like that, because you just don't go there. Unless you –
[00:12:57] JR: How old is your son right now, at this time?
[00:12:58] AC: Today, actually last weekend, he just turned 12.
[00:13:01] JR: Yeah. How old was he, when he had the diagnosis?
[00:13:04] AC: He was three. It was July of 2014. So he was three, and he turned four in August, so late three –
[00:13:10] JR: You’ve been to CHOA, what happens?
[00:13:13] AC: It was an awful experience, that whole ER thing, but they did an ultrasound, they found a tumor. We waited and waited, you know typical ER experience. Then they were basically like, “Your son has cancer.” He barely had any kidney function, because his tumor was on his kidney. So he was so sick. They did not do a biopsy of the tumor, because he was so sick. A doctor literally came in the room almost with tears in his eyes, and said, “I need you to sign this form.” It was the anesthesiologist, “Because if this gets to be an emergency, I'm going to need to put him under and it's very dangerous if I put him under, but this is a just in case.”
First of all, I'm all a blur. The doctors, literally with tears in his eyes, basically saying, “I don't want to have to do this.” They gave him, this is the crazy thing. They didn't know what type of cancer he had, but it looked like a solid tumor, because it was on his kidney. There's a very common solid tumor cancer called Wilms. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. So they started treating him for that. Well, the doctor who gave him his chemos, the regimen for that is three different chemos. Somehow that night, because it was through the middle of the night she only gave him two of the three. I don't know if she misread the protocol if it was just a slip.
Now I know it was God's provision. I mean you cannot argue with me on that one bit, because he was being treated for the wrong cancer. This treatment made him very, very sick. His tumor was lysing, which is basically breaking up. A solid tumor when it does that releases a lot of potassium and that potassium can stop your heart. All of this I was learning like drinking from –
[00:15:15] JR: Real time.
[00:15:15] AC: Firehose, exactly. He has surgery. So that was July, so about September, he has surgery. The doctor calls us and I still have a piece of paper, because I just – on the piece of paper, I was just nervously writing as the doctor was talking, because I knew this was about to be a big conversation. I just wrote Jesus over and over again, because I had no idea what else, I just needed the Lord. So I'm just writing Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and I framed the piece of paper, because it was such a significant time. She said, “We misdiagnosed Rocco. We have to start over in treatment. He has lymphoma, which explains why he was so sick, because we were treating him for a solid tumor, so that treatment made his tumor do things that the right treatment wouldn't have done. We have to start over.”
I was beside myself, because he was so sick. This treatment for lymphoma is fast and furious. His tumor was the most aggressive. It's called Burkitt lymphoma. It's one of the most aggressive childhood cancers. Tumors can double in size in 18 hours. That's how massive it is. Yes. So it's serious. Literally, he's just my little three-year-old boy. I'm thinking, I'm like, you're putting poison in his body to kill this.
The first time it didn't work. Now so much of God's provision, Jordan was seen through that whole experience, I just, I hate to even say that there was blessing in it, but there was blessing in it. I hate to say there's blessing at expense of, my son going through something terrible, but the suffering, God was there, he was there. He was watching over him and us and was absolutely incredible. The treatment did end up being tough. Let me just tell you, shout out to all the nurses, because they held my hand through the whole process. We made it through.
[00:17:26] JR: Yeah. I would never tell anyone in that situation, including yourself, there's blessing in this, but on the other side of it, you can say, “Oh, man. If this is what drove me to my knees of just writing Jesus's name repeatedly, blessed be the name of the Lord.” That's easy for me to say with kid’s who – experience that.
[00:17:48] AC: Right. It was crazy –
[00:17:50] JR: By hope – response on the other side.
[00:17:52] AC: Yeah. I had, I'm telling you when I say, solid rock people standing beside me and praying for me, and reminding me, reminding me even that non-believers in our circles were watching. That was hard. I mean, I honestly, I looked at one of my friends in the face. I said, I just want my son better. I don't care about anyone's salvation right now. I mean like, really, and truly, because it just was, she was like, “Anita, just remember, this is in God's hands.” I mean, because it was, you are at such a real raw level of God allowed this for what? It was powerful. I mean, and she said, “Anita, I know, I know, that's how you feel, but I'm going to remind you that God's in this and that there's a higher purpose here.” Somehow it would get me back on the train tracks. It's –
[00:18:54] JR: God, with friends like that, right?
[00:18:56] AC: Oh, my gosh. Truth. I mean, it was true. It was true. It was tough.
[00:18:59] JR: Anytime I hear stories like this, where people have just these very real experiences with the reality of death, right? I'm always curious, how this shapes their perspective, after the fact, on life in general, but given the work I do on the work specifically, right? So obviously, in that moment, the work stopped. You guys have this rapidly growing business, and I'm assuming you just ignore it for six months, right? Then after that, after he's healthy, was there a change in your posture towards your work when you get back to it?
[00:19:35] AC: Oh, 100%. I've always been a relational person, right? I'm also a very driven person. If you're looking just in regards to work, I was always striving for achievement, success, I wanted attention, I wanted significance really, but yet I always have all these wonderful relationships around me, but I'm still discontent, right, always. Then after this, you realize, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa life can be gone in an instant. Then it was all of the sudden, I'm so content with who I am with the people in my life and God shows me, “Anita, I have given you all that you need all along. I have created you to be this relational person. I have created you to dive in deep with people and you have had.”
I always joke with people, I'm like, if you can look at my bank account that's one thing, but if you looked at my, their capital and my relationships. I am the wealthiest person in the world. I'm the most undeserving. I don't know how I ended up here. I have the best people in my life and that is really what is valuable. Those relationships drive my work. It's no longer, did I sell the most houses in the brokerage? Or did I – it's did I impact people? Did I grow in relationship with people? Did I love my family along the way? What is it that – it was like for Anita Corsini who lived her life, never having enough and being discontent. It showed me very quickly that I can be content and I already have what mattered in a very real tangible way. So much that that's when HGTV called us, right? It was after he was sick. He finished his treatment in November. Then it was probably February of the next year. Ken came in the kitchen. He's like, “Hey, babe. Some producer called me today and wants to do a Skype interview with us.”
[00:21:45] JR: Skype, what an old word.
[00:21:46] AC: Exactly. Skype interview for some television show on HGTV, flipping houses. I was what like, “You know what, Ken. You only live once. Let's do it and have fun with it.” I was like, “That's fine, whatever.” The exact words out of my mouth were, “Nobody's going to put us on TV anyway, so let's just go have fun.” Because literally four months ago, rewind, I'm in the hospital and waking up in the middle of the night to code blue. Then a kid wasn't in the room next door to me, when I woke up in the morning that was there the night before. It was like this very harsh reality that we have finite time here on Earth, we just do.
[00:22:30] JR: I mean, your reaction is so inspiring to me, but a little surprising to me, because I think a lot of people who encounter a situation like that would look to the work and almost operate from a sense of fear, right, of I can lose it all at any given point, so I'm going to grasp it really, really tightly, and be afraid that I'm going to lose this business. I'm going to lose my son, nut whatever. But it sounds like you operate from more of a sense of freedom of like, well, you only live in – What's the Delta there? I'm assuming it's Jesus, but in what ways does Jesus enable you in the face on the other side of tragedy to approach the work more freely?
[00:23:10] AC: That's a great question. I really honestly think, it was just I at that point felt so blessed. It was like, I have this opportunity. It's my choice, right? I know what living in fear is like already. I know what living feeling like I've never done enough. I'm never going to be good enough. I already know that. Then now it's all that can be taken away and you can choose differently. I chose differently and surprised myself and it really helped, I always say, had I not gone through that experience and HGTV call us to put us on this television show which has put your face out there in 1000s of places, my response would have been fear. It would have been like, out of been an anxious little ball of mess, because it would have been, do I look okay? Am I this? Am I that? Where we did it and I was like, “Well, this is what you get? Do you like it or not?”
[00:24:11] JR: This does make sense to me, right? Because this experience gave you a deeper experience, if you will of the gospel of recognizing that as long as you have Jesus, you have enough and you don't need the acclaim and the applause from the work that you've been chasing after your whole life in order to have enough, right?
[00:24:32] AC: Exactly.
[00:24:33] JR: Once it’s out the table, it's like, “Cool.” We can just work with joy and freedom, knowing that we're running out of time to be a part of the blessing of partnering with God in his work, right?
[00:24:46] AC: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and then I just really embraced who he created me to be and what I get to do through my work. Yes, I work. Yes, I create. Obviously, we created many homes. We were able to buy and sell. I love selling real estate and buying real estate, all that, but that's secondary to the process along the way, right? Because even when we got the show, it’s like, I probably drove everyone nuts, because it would take me 25 times longer to do anything, because I'd be at the tile store, picking out tile, dancing in the aisles with one of the guys working, because it was like, we're cracking jokes and trying to find whatever sanded versus unsanded grout or something stupid like that.
It's like, to me, it was all about how can I make a relationship with this guy at the tile store? Or use everything takes longer. I mean, the joke in my family is nobody will go to Trader Joe's with me, because I love Trader Joe's, but I know all the employees. So it does take me longer, because when I'm there, I visit with everyone. I know about their kids. One of them who’s daughter has diabetes. I always need a checkup someone's kids been in trouble at school or someone's buying a house and their parents are sick or whatever. The freedom and the joy that that brings me and life is so incredibly, it's such a gift. To me, that's really all I need, because I know without a doubt that that's who God created me to be.
[00:26:18] JR: It sounds to me, let me try to put words in your mouth and you edit them, okay.
[00:26:23] AC: Okay.
[00:26:23] JR: It sounds like for you, the way your faith influences the work is far less about this what exactly you do, but about who you are, and how you go about doing the work with a explicit emphasis on people and going slower than you could, so less efficient, but perhaps more effective, because you're slowing down in order to invest in the lives of those people around you. Is that right?
[00:26:54] AC: Yeah, that's right. It is paramount to who I am. It is where I truly find joy.
[00:27:02] JR: This is hard for me, though, because, all right, Anita, you said you're driven. I'm driven to.
[00:27:07] AC: Yes.
[00:27:06] JR: I know a lot of our listeners are driven. How have you made that shift from driven, driven, driven, build, build, build, grow, grow, grow, to the discipline? I believe it's a discipline, right, of slowing down and learning the names of the people at the title store, as you're –
[00:27:23] AC: Right. Right.
[00:27:24] JR: How did you get there? How did you do that?
[00:27:26] AC: I think, okay, so I just think that I realized, because rewind and put Anita in high school, right? Anita in high school driven, I made straight A's. I was president of everything, blah, blah, blah, right?
[00:27:41] JR: We would have been good friends. Yes.
[00:27:43] AC: Yeah, exactly. If I was going to set a goal –
[00:27:45] JR: Good times for the friendships.
[00:27:46] AC: Yeah. If I was going to set a goal, I was going to meet it. If I was going to say, I'm going to beat so and so at this, I was going to do it, right? I did it all. It didn't bring that joy. It took me a while to obviously to realize that. I was very, it was never enough, right? There was never, and I knew the Lord, then. It wasn't like, I didn't have – it just, I didn't have that maturity to get there. It took tragedy, and it took heart ache to go, Anita, you have what you need. This is who you are. I've given you everything all along the way. It didn't take away my drive, it just took away, it changed my focus on my why, why I'm doing what I'm doing, because it's I still want to be successful, but my definition of success isn't, did I sell $8 million in real estate this year?
[00:28:45] JR: Yeah.
[00:28:46] AC: If I did, great. If I don't, did I make a relationship with Bobby, who's this older man, a father of my friend, who I was able to help send him on his mission trip? Then he lost his wife and we talk. Do I learn tons and tons of wisdom from Bobby? Yes, 100%. That's where it's at in life. That's where it's at. Okay, whether I have – who cares if I have a little plastic award that says that sold gazillion dollars in real estate? If I did, great. But if I sold $8 billion in real estate and made no relationships, that award belongs in the trash. That's how I see it.
[00:29:22] JR: You mentioned a couple times. This is who God made you to be. I know you and your family are fans of my children's book, The Creator in You.
[00:29:31] AC: Yes.
[00:29:32] JR: I'm curious as you personally read that book. You were generous enough to endorse it. Were you seen on those pages, “Oh, man. Yeah. This is who God made me to be, to be a creator, partnering with him to co- create in the world?”
[00:29:46] AC: Yes. I cried. Literally, I cried when I read the book for the first time, because I was like, yes, this is who we get to, not we have to, right? We get to join with him and who he created us to be to bless the world and create and bless him and others. We get to. So that's why I love that book, which I know I've shared this story with you and then I read it, my son and I read it together. He even said the same thing, because I wanted to know, I said nothing about this. Let me just read this to you. Tell me what you think. His response was, I get to do this, I get to create bridges. I get to make this and I said, “Yeah.” Like I told you before, it's like, we're the “To be continued.”
[00:30:34] JR: Yes. I love that so much, the “To be continued.” I wish I'd written that in the book, maybe the next one. Yeah, it is fascinating, right? God could have created all things on his own, but in his graciousness, and goodness, he invited us to create alongside of him. Here's interesting, I was thinking about you and Ken, the other day, when I was reading one of my favorite passages of scripture in Isaiah 65, where it says that we're going to be doing that for all of eternity, right? Isaiah is basically describing the New Earth. He's saying, “Hey, God's not even going to create this New Earth on his own. He's going to invite us to do it.
Listen to these verses, Isaiah 65, verses 21 and 22. It says, “God's people will build houses.” Wink, wink. This is why I thought of you. “They will plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them. My chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands” I was just thinking, I'm like, “Man, as someone who flips houses for a living, right, what does that promise mean to you that you're going to be building houses forever, with literally, physically Jesus alongside you?
[00:31:54] AC: That's incredible thought. That really is an incredible thought. It's thinking of the difference between a house and a home, right?
[00:32:03] JR: Yeah.
[00:32:03] AC: For me, I distinguish it a lot that way. A house, right, is just, to me a house provides an immediate need of shelter. That’s a house. It can be beautiful or I mean, shelter can look a lot of ways, but home is different. It's a place of the heart. That's where I love to see people the content in their home. I don't even know how to explain what's going on in my head with that verse, but yeah, we get to do this alongside the Lord and build, for eternity hearts, not just physical structures.
[00:32:42] JR: Yeah. It's interesting you think like, obviously, on the new earth, that relational component is taken care of, right? We have perfect relationship with God. We have perfect relationships with each other. I don't know, so much of the work is taken care of there, right? Now it's just like, I don't I don't know what that's going to be like. Maybe it's just like, maybe we're just freed to build the most beautiful homes, possible, right, as expressions of worship in God’s be. I have no idea.
[00:33:14] AC: I don't either.
[00:33:15] JR: I think that's a cool, I think it's a cool –
[00:33:17] AC: It’s a cool thought. To me, it's the peace, though, to think about it. There's not going to be the turmoil of lumber prices going up and down or there's not going to be, it's like, there's just going to be peace in doing and to be able to build and create without some of the hardship and roadblocks, that's just.
[00:33:40] JR: Oh, man. I hadn't even thought about that, but that's beautiful, right? I mean, anyone has built a home –
[00:33:45] AC: Oh, gosh.
[00:33:45] JR: Knows how painful it is.
[00:33:46] AC: It’s so painful. I mean, we have, yeah, between all of our, we have so many irons in the fire with new construction that we build, flipping, because flipping is a little different right now based on the market. We've got a franchise business, we're growing. It's like all these different things. Even still, they're all something that's being built or created, right? But there's roadblocks, I mean, that's just how it is, right? Because Eve ate the dang apple, so there's stuff going on that makes it tricky. I think that promise is that we get to do that without any of that heartache and the peace and the freedom that we can enjoy doing that. What a gift. Oh my gosh. What a gift.
[00:34:29] JR: Yeah. All of the good, none of the bad.
[00:34:32] AC: Right.
[00:34:33] JR: With Christ.
[00:34:35] AC: Right. If I could pick that today. I mean, I have to, I'm designing the spec house and dragging my feet a little bit, you would not be proud of me. I'm not redeeming my time well. I'm not using the system very well, Jordan. I feel like, I'm going to be in detention for that, for today. But yeah, I mean, it's like, gosh, to be able to do that and not have the headaches or the tangible roadblocks there would be amazing. I mean, it's just a gift. I just think that's perspective is everything. Honest to goodness, really and truly after walking that road with our son, our perspective changed 190 degrees. It just did. Life is just so much more about people, and loving where you're at and getting to know people for who they are, accepting them for who they are, through everything that we do. At the end of the day, that's just it. It's perspective.
[00:35:36] JR: Yeah.
[00:35:37] AC: It's perspective.
[00:35:38] JR: Yeah. I think it leads us to, as you said, care about redeeming our time.
[00:35:43] AC: Exactly.
[00:35:44] JR: For eternal ends.
[00:35:45] AC: Exactly.
[00:35:46] JR: Right? Of investing more in people, of investing more to the work we get to do with people, right?
[00:35:51] AC: Yeah. I mean that book, when you sent me that book, and I wasn't –
[00:35:56] JR: I don’t think you’re redeeming your time. Yeah.
[00:35:58] AC: Yes. You sent it to me. I didn't know it was coming. So someone at the office was like, “This came for you.” I opened it. I was like, “Oh, wow. He's got a new book. This looks so good.” I read through that. It was a gift. I mean, really, it was a gift. I think it was a nudge from the Lord that you sent it to me, because I went through that, almost a devotional and use it more instead of strategy, because I will be honest, I'm a paper and pencil girl. I love that.
[00:36:28] JR: [inaudible 00:36:28].
[00:36:29] AC: I know that doesn't fit in there, but I was like, but it was a gift, because it was really, really that like, wait, wait, refocus, and come back to what matters most.
[00:36:42] JR: What was about the way, I love to think about using as a devotional. What was it about how Jesus stewarded his 24-hour day that stood out to you and maybe influence how you spend your time right now?
[00:36:54] AC: Well, I want to spend it more this way, but what really stands-out to me was the Sabbath and the rest, the fact that we get more work done if we rest than if we grind. I sent us this weekend to the family. I was like, because they were, we built a room for one of my daughters, so they each have their own rooms now. So there was lots of turnover in the house this week. I was like, I'm not helping you all the day. I said, I’m not helping you out. It’s like, mama's having Sabbath and I'm going upstairs. I help you all tomorrow, but I'm not working today.
[00:37:28] JR: It's going to make you much better mom today.
[00:37:30] AC: 100%, 100%, because, now I will say this, and I think this is again, call me we're going to do another podcast on this one, because I my kids are older, a little older than yours, were yours are. Your schedule changes when your kids are older and they have activities, right? It's harder to have that wind down in the evening. I just remember thinking I get to talk to him. I'm going to ask him for part two of this, because when you discuss how is this going to work when you're kids, you're driving your kids all over the place at night?
[00:38:04] JR: You know it’s about, this is one of the top questions I get.
[00:38:08] AC: Is it really?
[00:38:09] JR: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like, “Hey, Jordan, can't wait for the second or third edition of Redeeming Your Time, with your kids or teenagers.” Hey, we’re going to write it. I'm going to figure it out. I got to figure it out, by God's grace, Lord willing we'll figure this thing out. I think here's the beautiful thing and why I wrote the book the way I did. The principles, I don't think change, seasons, regardless of your context. I think the principles of how Jesus stewarded a 24-hour day are the principles, but the practices will radically change based on your context. If you're –
[00:38:41] AC: 100%.
[00:38:42] JR: If you have young kids like me, or a parent of teenagers like you. So Anita, I'll be calling you and telling you how to make all this work.
[00:38:51] AC: Okay. The wisdom that I asked God for this morning will hopefully come to me by then. Two pages in my journal this morning was Lord give me wisdom to do this.
[00:39:00] JR: So good.
[00:39:01] AC: It's tricky.
[00:39:02] JR: It is tricky, but it's worth doing.
[00:39:04] AC: 100%.
[00:39:05] JR: Because the days are evil. Kid’s get cancer. We’re running out of time to be apart of the blessing of partnering with God on this side of eternity to create and deploy him great glory as we do. Hey, Anita, you’ve listened to the podcast, you know the last three questions we end with. Number one, on the whole, which books do you tend to recommend or gift most frequently to others? Business books, Christian living books, whatever? Run the gambit.
[00:39:31] AC: Okay, well, so I do love to read, the biggest book that we give away, honestly, is Ken's book, because I have to get it. Those are the ones I give away. His book, Profit Like the Pros. It's amazing. My shameless plug there, he did an amazing job writing that, so we give that away. I even, I have copies in the back of my car, that I give out all the time, because people ask me about real estate all the time and it's such a good book and framework for how different people, successfully did real estate, because it can, like I told you, it can look a bazillion different ways, so bazillion different ways.
[00:40:04] JR: I got to put a plug in here for Ken. I have not read the book, because I could not care less about real estate investing, personally.
[00:40:12] AC: Sure.
[00:40:13] JR: That said, that said. I was looking at the reviews on it and Ken's got a 4.9 star rating on Amazon. I'm not saying that I check Amazon reviews incessantly for my books and other authors books, right? Not admitting that here publicly, but that's a bonkers rating. It is insanely hard to pull off a 4.9 star rating on Amazon. If you're interested in Profiting Like the Pros, go read Ken's book. That's a great answer.
[00:40:38] AC: It's a great book. I will say, he's such a good communicator and he just did a great job with it. He worked hard on it. It's nice, because it's small chunks. Honestly, you read it and you're like, “Well, I'm going to go do that. I want to go invest in real estate and trailer parks. Oh, wait, I want to go buy storage facilities. Oh, wait, I want to go.” Yeah, it's great. So that's one that I give away a lot. I do a lot of Bob Goff's books. Dream Big is one. I've given away a bunch.
[00:41:10] JR: To get answered.
[00:41:11] AC: When people are having babies, like I have, our sweet babysitter who helped me with our kids. When they were little, I give your children's book, because I'd to do a children's book, and then write something in it instead of a card, because I feel that's, you don't keep cards. I'm all about handwritten, handwritten, handwritten. So I'll write a little inscription in that and given that, because I think that's something valuable to have.
[00:41:36] JR: I love that so much.
[00:41:36] AC: I'm looking at all my books right now. So I got to tell you –
[00:41:39] JR: Yeah. Read your Jesus story book Bible non-stop.
[00:41:41] AC: I love Jesus story book Bible.
[00:41:44] JR: Give it away all the time.
[00:41:45] AC: Oh, my gosh.
[00:41:45] JR: [inaudible 00:41:45] gifted book. Yeah.
[00:41:47] AC: Yes. My buddy gave that to my kids when they were little and love that.
[00:41:50] JR: So good.
[00:41:51] AC: Love that. Yes.
[00:41:52] JR: Anita, who do you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel shapes the work they do in the world?
[00:41:57] AC: Yeah, who? Mark Ritt. I think Mark Ritt is who I would love to hear. Obviously, I went to UGA and being a sports fan, and really I'm a sports fan, but I'm more people fan. He is someone who did sports well, because he invested in his people. That was his priority that drove him.
[00:42:21] JR: It’s a spoiler alert. Word on the street is Mark is very interested in coming on to the podcast.
[00:42:28] AC: Amazing. Amazing. Well tell him hello for me. He probably doesn't know me.
[00:42:32] JR: Can you interview him with me?
[00:42:34] AC: Yes. Can I?
[00:42:35] JR: Yes. That’ll be amazing. Episode what?
[00:42:38] AC: I would do it in a heartbeat. I mean, listen, like I said, right? I'm people. I'll talk all day long.
[00:42:42] JR: I mean, Mere Christians Live in Atlanta with Mark Ritt.
[00:42:46] AC: With Mark Ritt. Let’s do it. I’m buying lunch, I’ll buy lunch. Let's do it. Let's do it.
[00:42:50] JR: Let's do it. Anita, what's one thing from our conversation you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?
[00:42:56] AC: I just want everyone to know that people matter, how you treat people matter, and your perspective matters. If that can drive your work, your work is successful.
[00:43:09] JR: Amen. Well said. Anita, I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you and Ken do every day for the glory of God and the good of others in your business, inside of your home and for taking time to spread the aroma of Christ to fellow image bearers, as you run that business. Guys, if you want to learn more about Ken and Anita, you can do so at redbarnhomes.com. Of course you could find Anita on Instagram @anitacorsini. Anita, thanks for hanging out with me.
[00:43:39] AC: Thank you so much for having me. It was wonderful, Jordan.
[OUTRO]
[00:43:43] JR: Man, I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation, as much as I did, some conversations where I just put down the pen and don't take notes and just start listening, that was wonderful. What a joy, what a gift, Anita Corsini is to the world. Guys, if you're enjoying the Mere Christians Podcast, do me a huge favor, take 10 seconds, 30 seconds, right now and go leave a rating, one to five stars on Apple podcast, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. I'll see you next time.
[END]