Walk in faith, not in confidence
Jordan Raynor sits down with Henry Ho, Co-founder of Field Agent, to talk about the email Henry sent to his team at P&G giving glory to God as he left, the difference between walking in confidence and walking in faith, and how working in a redemptive way can be as simple as asking somebody to share their name.
Links Mentioned:
[00:00:05] 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, who are not religious professionals, but who work as doctors, and choreographers, and math teachers. That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Henry Ho. He’s the co-founder of Field Agent, this fascinating business that sends more than two million gig economy workers all around the world collecting business intelligence.
Prior to that, Henry worked for nearly 20 years at Procter & Gamble, including six years at P&G’s Walmart Asia Team Leader in Hong Kong. Henry and I recently sat down to talk about the email he sent to his team at Procter & Gamble, that assigned credit where credit is due giving God all the glory before he left. We talked about the difference between walking in confidence and walking in faith. And we talked about how we can work in a “redemptive way” by simply asking people their names. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this conversation with my friend, Henry Ho.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:29] JR: Henry Ho, a new friend, but I'm sure going to be a great one. Welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:34] HH: Good to be here with you, Jordan.
[00:01:36] JR: Yeah. So, we were just hanging out in Arkansas a couple weeks ago, and you were about to take my picture book, The Creator in You over to India to read – catch me up. How was the book received? What were you doing over there? Tell us about that experience real quick.
[00:01:52] HH: Yeah, I was over there for a conference of business and entrepreneur leaders, that an organization that I'm part of, is pouring into and encouraging them to use their work for the goodness of their community and of the kingdom, to love their neighbors.
[00:02:11] JR: Love it.
[00:02:11] HH: So, I had a chance to share the book, you were gracious enough to share your slides with me, so it made it look really good. I think it blew that audience away. And since then, Jordan, you know that I've reached out and say, “Hey, there are people that want to translate this to the Indian context.” So, offline, we're going to be working on that together, I think.
[00:02:36] JR: Let's do it. It's crazy. The book came out in April. We're recording this in November. So, let's call it six months, and I think we've already signed translation rights in five languages, which is wild to me. So, would love it to get into the hands of readers, and we know we got a lot of listeners in India, so we'd love to get it into your hands. Hey, Henry, set some context for us. What is Field Agent, this business that you’re a co-founder of?
[00:03:04] HH: Yeah, Field Agent is a tech enabled company that allows us to connect corporations and companies that need information with everyday people, shoppers, everyday people, consumers, that can give them the information they're looking for, to tell them what's going on in the stores, what they think of a product on the shelf, to rate and review a product, a whole bunch of different services that we provide. We enable companies to win at retail, at the bottom line, through this information. We are in now eight countries across the world, and having a blast, rolling this thing out and growing. We just acquired a company called Simply Field in France, this last week, and here we go, France,
[00:03:55] JR: Here you go, here you go. And I'm just going to ride those coattails translating The Creator in You in all those nations. So, is this essentially secret shopper without the secret of nature of secret shopper?
[00:04:08] HH: It can be looked at that way, but we do so much more. Yeah, we pay people real money for tasks that they do for us for our clients. It's not so secretive. Sometimes it can be secretive. But most of the time, they're shopping, as they do they go to a store and they see what we call a job, and they open that up and say, “Hey, I could give that information, 3, 5, 10 bucks and earn that money.” They're basically 10.99 subcontractors, so anybody in the audience that want to earn a little extra money, either for your Christmas, slush fund or your vacation or for new iPhone, we have a lot of people kind of use that money that they earn for personal needs or sometimes for good in their community. So, it's a lot of fun.
[00:04:58] JR: I love this so much. So, an example of the data they'd be collecting is like, I'm trying to think of an example, Nate's Honey wants to know what aisle that product is on at a Whole Foods Store. Is that the type of thing we're talking about?
[00:05:11] HH: Yeah, Nate's Honey. I know those guys. And yes –
[00:05:13] JR: I know you do. That's why I brought them up.
[00:05:17] HH: Yeah. And they’re a great company. I love everything about them. They want to know what's their product look like? Where's it placed on the shelf? What's the price of a competitor, maybe? Or is it on display? Lots of different things. Where's the peanut butter? Or where's the adjacent category to honey? Lots of different things that they need to develop their sales and go to market plans. And so, we collect this vital information for our clients, and then they, in turn, use that to help move their business forward and help them win at retail.
[00:05:53] JR: So, before Field Agent, you spent the majority of your career in the consumer-packaged goods, space, right?
[00:06:01] HH: Yeah.
[00:06:01] JR: Field Agent, you're working with these brands, before that you are Procter & Gamble and doing stuff for Walmart. I'm curious how someone like you, a serious Jesus follower approaches that industry in a distinctly Christian way? What's distinct about your approach to that work in that industry because of your faith, Henry?
[00:06:24] HH: Yeah, again, it's lives built on – success is built on relationships, whether it's business relationship, or personal or team relationships, supplier relationships. So, in the CPG world, I'll make a slight correction that now the majority of my time is outside of corporate CPG, and more entrepreneurial. But yes, I've been in the CPG retail space all my career. Yeah, it's in the realm of relationships.
So, again, how do you love those you work with across the whole stakeholder spectrum? How do you love them? And when you love them, you care for that work, you care for those people. I always say, I'm not in the tech business, I'm in the people business no matter what. And so, as a follower of Christ, we are called to love our neighbors, to love Christ with our heart, and then love our neighbors, right? You take that into anything you do, when you shared with me, the broader realm of your audience, so anything you do, bring that love for quality, that love for excellence, for building strong teams, building strong financials, whatever it may be, do it with all gasto, with all your energy and passion, and then serve your market, serve your customers so well, that they can only ask the question.
I love being asked the question. I mean, my whole work realm is to do it so well and invite people into our company and let them see what's going on. They always say, “Henry, there's something special about Field Agent or the way you guys do things.” And when that happens, man, I share a gospel. I get to share. Ask.
[00:08:14] JR: Good. Bring us into one of those conversations. How exactly has one of those conversations go on? Obviously, not using real names. But what does that look like?
[00:08:22] HH: One of the responsibilities I have at Field Agent is the International Partnership Development. And so, before we go into partnership with our international partners, we meet, and we bring them into faithful Northwest Arkansas. And we bring them in and they get to see our culture, they experience our people, and just see the flow. They come for a better part of a week. So, it's not a one meeting thing, and they get to see – I use the word love a lot. We believe in that. They see a love that's inside the organization, the people, and how we treat each other, and the fun that we have. Fun is a key piece of work. And then they see how we treat them in the negotiations and how we bring them on.
And they ask, says, “Henry, what's so different about Field Agent? We sense something.” In the back of my mind, I said, “The Holy Spirit is at work.” Allowing us to then say, “You know what, we're a faith driven company. We believe in excellence and we serve a God who cares about these things, cares about our work every day.” So yeah, we get the chance to do that. I mentioned earlier that we had just acquired a company in France, Simply Field, they're great people and we have the same thing. We spent better part of a week. We dip them into who we are and we got to know who they are, and we got some of those same questions, as part of that.
So, it's not a onetime thing. It’s something that I think we get to share who we are, and allow the way we live, the way we work, the way we have fun, speak for itself.
[00:10:10] JR: Yeah. So, were they even asked the question, right? We've got to be able to give evidence that there's something different about the venture, right? I think it was Jimmy Carter, who said that at the end of my life, there ought to be enough evidence to convict me of as a Christian. That's the principle, right? I think one of the ways you do that, like you mentioned before, is in how you deal with all these relationships, whether it's a vendor, whether it's a company you’re acquiring, and with your workers out in the field. You say you have 2.5 million workers in the field. And these are essentially, gig economy workers. I mean, it's kind of an old term now, right? But there's been so much press over the years, about how poorly some companies have treated the gig economy worker. How are you treating those workers and loving them with dignity and respect?
[00:11:00] HH: Yeah, about five years ago, we said, “You know what, this growing number of agents that we have, they're highly essential. We don't have a business without them.” And so, we said, “You know what, we have clients and we have agents, and they're equally important to the success of our business.” Obviously, as a good company, we're very client centric and focused. And we said, “Let’s put together a team that will focus exclusively on making – appreciating and making the work of our agents even better.” How do we build them into a community? And how do we know some of them, if they want to share what's going on in their lives, and so forth.
So, we launched the year of the agent, I think, about five years ago, and we've never stopped. Every year is now the year the agent, and we have a whole team, it’s like forever, the year of the agent, which needs to be. So, during COVID, during the pandemic, we got to know some of them, and many of them were in hardship. And our team came up with this idea of, “Hey, let's get people to say, we want to hear from you about how we can help you, not just give you work, but how can we do that.” We put a program together, in which we could say, “Hey, based on the needs that have been expressed by this community, we want to raise money from field agents to send them a little extra, a couple $100, $500 to take care of their needs.” I think the community appreciated that.
Obviously, not everybody had needs, but those who chose to connect with us and build a relationship, I think we did good. I felt good about that. Our team felt good about that. Again, those are the things – we share that with our international community, our partners there, and they found ways to express that in their own respective countries. Some of our country partners had a really hard time, but they're still looking to kind of replicate some of the things that we were doing. Many of the countries we are partnered with, they shut down and really affected our country partners business, but they were still looking for ways to serve the community. So, it was fun.
[00:13:28] JR: To be clear, these are contractors, not employees, correct?
[00:13:31] HH: That's correct.
[00:13:33] JR: So, this is getting to, you and I are both good friends with the guys at Praxis. This is getting into the difference between an ethical business and a redemptive one, right? Legally and ethically, you have no responsibility to do anything for those contractors, right?
[00:13:50] HH: That's right.
[00:13:52] JR: But it's this posture of proactively seeking to bless them that's redemptive, right? That's showing the heart of Christ to these people, correct?
[00:14:03] HH: Yeah. We're in the redemptive edge when we start saying, “Hey, what's your name? Tell us a little bit about you.” And we interface with them, and they become a human being on the other side, and we congratulate them when they do great work. We know kind of little bit something about them. But our basic model doesn't allow us to share with our clients who the agents are doing the work, and the agents never know who the clients are, right? But we, in our own respective groups, the agent group and the client group, we build relationships, and we care for them. And if they mess up, we have this grey space process. I don't want to talk about it too much, because we don't want people to say, “Hey!” But every now and then, we say, “You know what, you tried your best, even though you didn't give us the kind of information we're looking for. We're going to still pay you for that.” Again, that's unique. We want to treat people fairly for their effort, sometimes. Obviously, there are people who take advantage of that and we also have ways to deal with that.
[00:15:11] JR: Yeah, it's good. We've talked about how your faith shapes the work within the ventures and how the ventures themselves do business. I'm curious, what would be different about you personally, and how you approach your specific personal work if you weren't a Jesus follower? What's going on internally in Henry as he does his work as an entrepreneur that's different from a different Henry, who's not a Christ follower doing similar work?
[00:15:39] HH: Yeah, I think, there's a lot of business people, and the kind of the why and the what you do, right? The why. And for me, is man, I am working unto the Lord. I'm managing this beautiful tension between being a faithful follower of Christ, and who I am, how I live out my faith, how I live out the Gospel in my life, and with the profit motive of a business. And then, figuring out that redemptive edge, and figuring out how to do that in balanced intention with that. I think the difference, if it wasn't Christ in me, would be, man, I would be all over – I understand profit making.
[00:16:31] JR: You know how to do this. You know how to make money.
[00:16:34] HH: Yeah, I would make more money. I probably wouldn't do some of the things that we do as a company, both from a culture building standpoint, and the ways in which you can make more money. Lots of decisions that filter through that profit motive. And then, I think creating culture environment, it would look different, as well. How do you really love your employees versus – we’re a principle-based company. We try not to be so heavy on policy. We're like, how do we want to treat people fairly? Sometimes, maybe not even equally. There are things that the government requires us to treat everybody equally and we comply with that. But there's leeway and being an owner and creating culture that says we want to treat people fairly, and when they have needs, we want to meet those needs. So, yeah, there'll be a couple of things that I think will be different.
[00:17:29] JR: It's good. You're so motivated by the gospel, why choose this line of work to live out your response to the gospel? Why not, I don't know, serve as a missionary, serve as a pastor?
[00:17:43] HH: Yeah. Man, I am a missionary. I am a pastor, see, within the context of business.
[00:17:48] JR: Amen. It's a trick question. I love this so much.
[00:17:51] HH: So, I am. I am that. And my calling is to do it in the context of where God placed me, which is after graduation, I went into business. But I've always loved and walked with Jesus since my days at the Sunnybrook School where I came to faith. Beautiful school on Long Island, and that's the most impactful place that I've ever had in my life and still is.
But the calling is, God placed me in business, he placed me in a corporation, he placed me overseas as part of that corporate life. And so, I learned all these things in preparation of living out my calling to make disciples, and to grow and multiply, right? That's perfect for a business guy, who, in business, you have – like we've talked. You have customers, you have workers, you have just so many different stakeholders, including investors. You have to deliver for all of that. And, again, I think the tension of that is so invigorating, is so fun, is so cool. It's difficult. But I love the difficulty of that. I love the tension and the discomfort that comes from having to make difficult decisions, right decisions, and then seeing that benefit all the parties involved and see a business grow. Right?
[00:19:15] JR: You don't shy away from the tension. You're like comfortable in the tension between these two things.
[00:19:22] HH: Embrace the tension, embrace the discomfort. I always tell young men and women that I mentor and disciple. I said, think of a time where you stepped out in faith that was comfortable. If you did, you probably weren't stepping out on faith. I said, every time you step out in faith, it's really uncomfortable. Because you don't know what it's going to be. The unknown is before you and you've probably prayed over it. You probably have sought counsel. But man, you're still uncomfortable. You have to make a decision for the sake of the kingdom. And so, yeah, I embrace it.
[00:20:01] JR: And that's what God wants us, right?
[00:20:02] HH: Absolutely.
[00:20:03] JR: This is where I really struggle with this advice that I think is pretty pervasive in Christian circles of waiting for a perfect sense of peace before you move in a certain direction. I just don't see a whole lot of evidence for that in Scripture. Abraham stepped out in faith, not knowing where he was going, right? He stepped out into the unknown, and we see it over and over and over again. We're not supposed to wait for perfect peace, we're supposed to rest in the perfect peace of Christ, in our eternal salvation and thus, step out into the unknown, in faith, as acts of obedience into the greater glory of God. Amen?
[00:20:43] HH: Preach it, brother. Preach it. I love it. Man, it is the calling to walk in faith, to please God through faith filled activity in life, and then to carry the cross, too. To step into difficulties and allow God and the Holy Spirit to work in your life. It takes men and women who understand that and have done that, to make disciples, true disciples, who then will make and say – I always say, “You can't give what you haven't experienced.” You can read a lot of books. But man, the Christian faith is a life of experience, of experiencing God and His faithfulness, experiencing that which you've seen redemption and reconciliation. You can pour all that into your team, your workers, your friends, that's what it's about. That's how you make disciples.
[00:21:43] JR: Yeah, I think the human tendency is to want to walk in confidence at work, and in their own lives. The biblical call, is a call to walk by faith. It's not necessarily – it's confidence in who God is, but not confidence and where he's leading us in circumstances. Is there a story from your life that comes to mind, Henry, where you had to step out in a leap of faith and trust God in your work?
[00:22:12] HH: Yeah, I think when I left Procter & Gamble, I worked 19 years for Proctor & Gamble. And yeah, it's part of my testimony. So, if you allow me to share –
[00:22:24] JR: Please. Oh, my gosh. I'd love to hear.
[00:22:26] HH: To share what I wrote to my friends at P&G as I was leaving. And I call this the start of the – I said, “God has called me to move to a place where my faith, which is my dependence on Him, and my passion to be an entrepreneur will intersect. To the best of my ability, I've tried to see what lies beyond the edge of the P&G cliff. To be honest, I can't see much beyond a certain point. But I have been given a vision of the journey that my family and I need to take.
Nancy, who's my wife and my four kids have been 100% supportive. That's good enough, because I need to trust in that vision and the dream that's been placed in my heart. I know I'll be in God's hand, wherever he takes me. I'm ready. I'll be starting a new company, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That was my email to my friends at P&G. That was my testimony of God calling me into something different and I had to step out in faith.
[00:23:26] HH: Good for you for ascribing credit where credit was due. It very easy to write that email and say, “Nancy and I have decided it's time for a change of pace.” But no, no, like, this is an act of faith, in God. It's very cool to see. In my experience, it sounds like this is similar to you, Henry. I remember, when I was stepping down as CEO of Threshold, everyone was asking, “What are you going to do next?” And my answer was, “I kind of know, but I don't really.” Right? I think a lot of times God doesn't give us that full vision until we make the leap of faith. Is that what you experienced?
[00:24:02] JR: Yeah, I mean. If you were to ask me in 2001, would I be part of a company called Field Agent that does all this? Obviously, we had no idea about the technology development. What I was trained to do, I thought, I was just going to carry over and we did. Our first company that we started was a sales and marketing company. But man, by the time we got to 2010, when we launched Field Agent, it was so far removed. It gets back to, I can only see so far, right? We can only see so far. And sometimes our dreams are very specific, and sometimes God gives us dreams or just things, “I'll be faithful to follow where you lead.” And for me, it was like, okay, shutting down a factory, having some business, major disruptions to a business and partnerships and all of that.
That's all part of life, and man, it gives the testimony even more realism and authenticity, right? When you can share those real things with people. Man, I love people who've been successful and the world tends to want for them to just share how they became famous and how they became successful. But I want to hear about people who stepped out in faith. So, this Mere Christians Podcast is an example of that. We want to share real stories, people who suffered, so people who had troubles with their lives, but God's been faithful. And sometimes it's, “Hey, I'm still in the middle of this.” But I'm confident of who God is and what his faithfulness is, right?
[00:25:37] JR: Yeah. Amen. Amen. I want to point out one other thing. We've been talking a lot about the call to make disciples, the call to the Great Commission. And you know, because I think you were in the room for my talk there in Arkansas. I see your work as an entrepreneur and the work of our listeners is not just one of if not the most efficient means of carrying out the Great Commission, but also carrying out the first commission. I was reading some commentary on Genesis 1:28 the other day. The first command, the first commission of humankind, where God tells us to be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it. And I was reading Wayne Grudem, the renowned theologian, editor at the ESV Bible, and he says that to subdue means, “To make the earth more useful for human beings benefit and enjoyment.” Isn't that what you do as an entrepreneur? Every day, you're making the earth more useful for human beings benefit and enjoyment. And that in and of itself, is good and important, and commanded by the God of the universe, as the call to make disciples. Amen?
[00:26:54] HH: Amen. So, we were together in our console for the Work Matters Conference, and my friend David Roth and I, we went in this journey together for the better part of 19 years. And work is the first commission, right? To do it well. And being a competitor that I am as well that hates subduing it and understanding how to take market share, how to grow a business, and win against a competitor. This is not nicey, nicey, right? This is like, we're going to build a program, we're going to take some market share, we're going to track our success. But man, we're going to do it the right way. We're going to be the very best and the way we win, is we win clients, and deliver a superior product and service, and we win with our workers, our agents and our team.
[00:27:53] JR: Yeah, it's not for us, right? We want to win, but not for our glory, not for our fame, not for our fortune, but with a heart posture of seeking to bless those that we get to serve by winning at a greater scale. Right?
[00:28:07] HH: Yeah.
[00:28:10] JR: It's good. Henry, three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others these days?
[00:28:20] HH: These three little books that the practice folks have developed. I've been doing that a lot now. The Rule of Life, The Redemptive Nonprofit, and The Redemptive Business. I'm a huge fan, and depending on who I'm meeting with, I use The Rule of Life in my discipleship work. So, no matter who and what business. Yeah, so those are incredible books. And for those in the audience, if you’re not big readers, you will love these books. The little books are packed with wisdom.
I have this thing that I called The Word of the Year. I've been doing this for 22 years. I pick a word every year, and I pray, and I focus, I do study. And my word of the year this year is neighbor, and God's command for us to love Him and to love our neighbor. So, there's a book I'm reading and I'm recommending to people is Who Is My Neighbor? And it comes off the Good Samaritan and the author writes about that. So, that's a great book. And then for a lot of business guys, I use Halftime. I recommend Halftime. I went through Halftime with a group of five men when I was living in Hong Kong as an expat, and it fundamentally affected my life, and I have continued to find it very useful. The challenged successful business people to figure out how to transition from success to significance. So, those are some books. You've heard me use the word love a lot in this conversation. There's a book called Love First, is also a great book that I'm recommending.
[00:29:57] JR: Love First, I got to check this out. I cannot recommend highly enough those practice books. They’re tiny. I love short reads. They’re like 45 minutes apiece, and they're terrific. I've recommended them before. So, thanks for reminding me that. Henry, who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel influences their work in the world?
[00:30:16] HH: Well, I get to hear a lot of people. I would love to – I don't know if there's one particular person. I think there's a group of people that I would love to hear from, people that have been faithful, and gone through a Job type experience in their business life, and then have experienced God's goodness, on the backside of that. When everything seemed like there's no hope, I’ve failed, and then somehow God gives them an opportunity to tell their story.
[00:30:54] JR: That's good. That's good. That's a great answer. I love that. Hey, Henry, again, you're talking to this audience of mere Christians who want to do exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. What's one word you want to leave them with before we sign off?
[00:31:08] HH: Make disciples, wherever you are, whatever you do, through the witness of your work, and your job, and look for every opportunity to do it in a way that begs the question. What's different about you? And then share the Gospel, invite them into discipleship, invite them to come follow you as you follow Christ.
[00:31:34] JR: Amen. Very well said. We've talked about this a lot in the podcast before, Jesus's words in Matthew to go and make disciples. A lot of people would argue or better translated it as you go, make disciples. The going is assumed, right? You've already gone. You're already going right now, wherever you're working today mere Christians, and thus, make disciples as you go.
Henry, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do to that end every single day. Thank you for reminding us to embrace the uncomfortable, to step out in faith, and to live our lives on the redemptive edge, for the glory of God and the good of others.
Guys, you can connect with Henry Ho on LinkedIn, and you can learn more about him and his business at fieldagent.net. Henry, thanks again for being with us today.
[00:32:25] HH: Jordan, it was a pleasure. God bless.
[OUTRO]
[00:32:29] JR: Got somebody you want to recommend for the podcast? I want to hear it. Go to jordanraynor.com/contact and nominate a friend, a mere Christian doing interesting work and animated by the Holy Spirit, and feel free to nominate yourself. Some of the best guests we've ever had have been people who have nominated themselves for the podcast. Guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
[END]