“batch creating” content and mastering the art of the graceful “no”
Jordan Raynor sits down with his good friend Krystal Whitten, Creator of The Lettering Prayer Journal, to discuss best-practices on “batch creating” content, how to master the art of the graceful “no,” and the good that has come from Krystal’s children watching both of their parents work outside the home. This episode also includes a bonus conversation with Mark Sayers, author of Reappearing Church.
Links Mentioned:
[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey everybody, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work, not for their own fame and fortune but primarily for the glory of our great exceptional creator, God, and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with a Christian who is pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits and how their faith influences their work that they do.
Hey, before I introduce today’s guest, I just want to say happy thanksgiving to you all. I am so thankful or you. I’m thankful for the tremendously loyal and growing audience behind The Call to Mastery, behind my weekly devotionals, behind my books. Thank you guys for giving me the privilege of being able to focus on the work I believe that God has created me to do.
This morning, I was praying that this week, wherever you are in your career, wherever you are on the path to mastery, that you would give thanks. You’d give thanks to the Lord for the season that you’re in, you would give thanks to him for the work that he has given you to do in this season of life. Even if you’re not where you want to be vocationally. I pray that you would give thanks for the work that he’s given you to do today, tomorrow, next week as you get back into the office.
Hey, today on The Call to Mastery, I’m going to share a conversation I had with my good friend Krystal Whitten. Krystal is an exceptional artist. She is the creator of the wildly popular Lettering Prayer Journal which many of you know that product well. If you don’t know about it, you’ll want to tune in especially before Black Friday shopping. Krystal’s art is found in retail stores all across the United States, including the museum of the bible in Washington DC which is wild. Huge museum sitting right there on the national mall.
If you read my last book, Called to Create, you probably recognize Krystal’s name. I heard over and over again from readers that Krystal’s story in Called to Create was one of their favorites in the entire book. Krystal and I recently sat down to basically get an update on her life publicly for you guys after reading the book.
We talked about how to master the art of the graceful no, right? It was probably my favorite part of this conversation. We talked about how she turned her hobby of lettering Scripture into a very significant business and we talked about the good that has come from her children watching both of their parents work outside the home. I think you’re really going to enjoy this conversation as you’re getting ready for Thanksgiving.
Please enjoy this conversation with my good friend, Krystal Whitten.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:59.4] JR: I’m here with my friend Krystal Whitten, Krystal, how are you?
[0:03:01.3] KW: I’m great Jordan.
[0:03:02.7] JR: Good. You have a giant cup of water that you brought with you to the official Jordan Raynor and company home studio. Krystal, a lot of people in the audience read your story in Called to Create. A lot of them know about you but for those who have no idea who Krystal Whitten is, even though we just did this big, great intro, who are you?
Tell us a little bit about the business in particular, right? What do you do professionally?
[0:03:27.2] KW: Okay, what I do is I take Scripture or inspirational words and I turn them into hand lettered works of art. I love letters and the way letters look and so, what I like to do is create artwork and what that has turned into is a greeting card line and I sell art prints and then other paper gift items but mostly, I focus on Scripture because I feel like Scripture has such an ability to comfort and encourage and bring hope to our lives.
I feel like we all need a little bit more of that in our lives so I like to create Scripture for people to put in their homes to build them up throughout their day.
[0:04:11.1] JR: I love it. You’re selling greeting cards, you’re selling other paper products, and then you have The Lettering Prayer Journal?
[0:04:18.4] KW: Then I have The Lettering Prayer Journal.
[0:04:19.2] JR: The Lettering Prayer Journal. Let’s talk about that a little bit. You mentioned loving to have selling this artwork, this Scripture artwork that hangs in people’s houses. That like started very personal for you, right? If I recall, that was like part of the impetus for the founding of the business, right? Take us back to the beginning?
[0:04:37.0] KW: Okay, I went through some dark times. I grew up in church. I had a family that was very firm in their faith and we were in church every time the doors are open, but for me, there was a period of time, and it was well into my married years. My mom was sick, she had been re-diagnosed with breast cancer and we just went through a lot as a family and I felt very cynical and bitter. I didn’t necessarily always draw the conclusion with what my mom was going through but just there was a lot of rebellion in my heart.
While outwardly I was doing all the right, church-y, good girl things, inside I was rebelling. I just didn’t have a whole lot of intimacy with God. I just felt like there was no interest really, and reading my Bible or having any kind of closeness with him and so that was a good period of several years and just continued doing the good outwardly things. Then my mom passed. We went through that, I have my son who I was pregnant with my first child. It would have been her first grandchild and so she passed and you know.
There was just those years where it were tough and I did draw on my faith. I did lean into the Lord but I still just felt like there was some rebellion there and so, there was a point in time where a friend of mine invited me to be in a Bible study with her and I had just had my second child and I had really avoided doing any kind of committed Bible studies for a long time.
But I thought, okay, well, it’s two hours of free childcare week, I could really use that. Some of the social times and so I told her, “yes,” but little did I know that even though my motives for starting that Bible study were not the best motives, God was doing something in me and so the Bible study was called The Amazing Collection and it was beautiful, you are – Basically, the premise of it is that you read a whole book of the Bible a week and then you have homework on it and you come in once a week and you talk about it.
For the first time really that I can ever remember, certainly in my adult life, I was reading the Bible every day. That was so powerful. You know, I had been in church my whole life and I’d never put together the whole story of the bible from Genesis to Revelation and so it was just – It was a life changing thing for me. It wasn’t too long after I had started that Bible study where I was just really falling in love with God’s word that I started like dabbling in some hand lettering.
[0:07:23.9] JR: Back up, did you know what hand lettering was? Did you just start like –
[0:07:29.6] KW: I didn’t know that was what it was called but way back to whenever I was in high school, I always loved writing out, drawing out Scripture or song lyrics or whatever it was and taping them to my walls, and so that back then looked like bubble letters, you know. I was using my Crayola markers with some printer paper –
[0:07:49.4] JR: You're Lisa Franks –
[0:07:50.4] KW: Drawing out, yes, exactly. Taping them up and so I had scripture and different things that were meaningful to me, all over my walls in high school. I remember that specifically. But whenever I got into college and I started doing some graphic design, I, in my immature brain thought that it was unprofessional to hand draw letters and I thought that I need to do everything on the computer. All my illustrating or artwork had to be on the computer.
I just set aside all the hand lettering or lettering or whatever it was that I was doing back then and so but then with the advent of Pinterest is when I started seeing these beautiful drawn pieces and I started seeing these fonts that looked like fonts everywhere but then I started realizing, people hand drew those.
I thought well, I have got to learn how to do this because it looks like fun. I have a background in graphic design but I was doing some freelance and it just really was – it was sucking all the creativity out of me and I needed something that was just for me. That I could do whatever I was inspired to do and nobody was going to pick it apart.
That is where the hand lettering came in where I was like, “I’m just going to learn how to do this,” and I just little by little – There weren’t that many books out there. There were no YouTube videos. I searched YouTube and the Internet for some tutorials and this was probably five and six years ago and so there wasn’t much out there. Where as now, there’s tons.
[0:09:19.4] JR: Hang on a second. This started like very much on the site for you, this is a personal thing.
[0:09:23.3] KW: Very personal.
[0:09:24.4] JR: You started just hand lettering some verses. You had this graphic design business. That was your source of income which by the way, I just remembered – Didn’t I hire you to do the graphic design for my first self-published book? We’re going back like six years.
[0:09:36.4] KW: Yes.
[0:09:38.3] JR: I literally just remembered that. Startup stories. That gem of a self-published project. Yeah, you had this graphics design business. You start dabbling. You’re doing this lettering on the side. How did this turn into a business though? What was that trajectory?
[0:09:50.4] KW: The very first time I hand lettered a Scripture and I liked it enough to put it in a frame and put it in my house and I realized – This is kind of nice, and I memorized that verse as I was doing it but every time I walked by it, I would look at it and say the verse in my mind and at some point, I read the verse in Deuteronomy that talks about writing God’s word on your door post of your home and on your gates and, you know, the whole idea of surrounding yourself, putting it in your home for other people to see and I loved that.
I thought, well, if I like this, maybe other people will too. And it’s done in a hand lettered, very kind of fun way that I thought could speak to some people, and it didn’t look grandmotherly, you know, like a lot of the Scripture things you would see.
[0:10:40.7] JR: It wasn’t knitted together, right. Couchette.
[0:10:44.4] KW: Old English style calligraphy or something, you know, from like the Middle Ages. I don’t even – anyway.
[0:10:50.2] JR: My grandmother is so offended right now, yeah.
[0:10:53.8] KW: Probably my grandmother would be too. Anyway, I just thought, well, let me do another one and I’ll put it out there on Facebook. And so I had a few followers on Facebook at the time. I had a business 10 years ago where I did something and then it kind of turned into a freelance page. I didn’t really do a whole lot but I had like, you know, maybe a hundred followers on that Facebook page.
I just put it out there to my friends and family and said, “Hey, would anybody want to buy an art print?” Because of my graphic design background, I had the knowledge of how to get things printed. How to do it – Bring it into the computer and have it printed. Maybe 30 people that bought that first art print and it gave me the encouragement to – Okay, maybe people liked it, maybe they were just being nice because they were my friends.
[0:11:43.2] JR: Yeah, sure.
[0:11:45.6] KW: But everybody was really encouraging. That’s kind of where it got started, yeah.
[0:11:50.7] JR: Now, the business. Tell us about the business today, right? You’ve reached like meaningful scale, you’re in museum of the Bible, is that right?
[0:11:58.9] KW: Yeah.
[0:11:59.1] JR: You have some, like, massive accounts, right? It’s like a very big deal.
[0:12:03.2] KW: That’s my biggest account.
[0:12:04.9] JR: Is it? That’s a big deal. If people don’t know museum of the bible, it’s on the mall in DC, right?
[0:12:09.0] KW: It is, it’s in Washington.
[0:12:10.1] JR: Have you been?
[0:12:10.7] KW: I have been, yes.
[0:12:12.3] JR: Have you seen your stuff there?
[0:12:13.5] KW: No, that was before my stuff was there.
[0:12:15.1] JR: We talked about this at coffee, right? You got to go back.
[0:12:17.4] KW: Yes, I have to go back.
[0:12:19.0] JR: See it in action. But in terms of this. You have these greeting cards, some of these other products, but The Lettering Prayer Journal accounts for the majority of your revenue, right?
[0:12:26.7] KW: It does.
[0:12:27.9] JR: Okay, tell us about that. What is that, why did you start it?
[0:12:31.7] KW: That was something that really just kind of came out of, you know, there are certain things that you can look back in your life and go God ordained that, and so The Lettering Prayer Journal is one of those things. Because I had just created a few art prints. I mean, I had just really started this business.
And, you know, thought. Okay, well I personally need a way to write down my prayers. I had read the book, The Circle Maker which is probably one of the most impactful books that I’ve read and a lot of the people – Just a side note, thinks that that’s a “name it claim it” book, but for me, it would just showed me how I did not value prayer and my prayers were so weak and pitiful and I just did not – very small, yeah.
[0:13:20.3] JR: Yeah, I felt like that.
[0:13:21.5] KW: I just did not expect God to do big things and so I didn’t pray for big things. I had read that book and I was just looking for a way to write down my prayers, to be very intentional about it, and tried out several different things and, long story short, came up with this journal, and somebody suggested to me, “You know, you should put a Scripture there so you could hand letter it.”
And I thought, well, does that make sense, and then the more I thought about it, I said, “Yes it does,” because when we write out God’s word, we memorize it, we meditate on it. When you hand letter, you have to go letter by letter and slow down. So it’s different than just scribbling it out like you normally would write something.
You have to spend some time and what it does is it saturates your heart and your mind with God’s word. Then we could pray Scripture. You know, that’s one of the most powerful ways to pray is to pray Scripture and you know you’re praying God’s will when you’re praying his word and so, I created this lettering prayer journal and it sold really well, it was right around Christmas time. I just, again, put it out there to my Instagram and Facebook. Didn’t have very many followers but people ate it up and I was having it printed here locally in the Tampa bay area.
Just a local printer was doing it, and I quickly just wanted it to be a little bit more. I wanted it to be more of an experience that you got this journal that was a yearlong journal and it was a keepsake, that you would pass down to your kids one day. You know, something that you would hold on to and look back on it and say like, “God was so faithful. Look at how God was so faithful back then and that gives me hope that he’s going to continue to be faithful, you know, going forward in this thing I’m going through now.”
How much that grows our faith whenever we write down our prayers, because we can see that God answered them and how he guided our lives.
[0:15:22.8] JR: I’ve never like, lettered a bible verse, right? But I do write out Scripture. My daily quiet time, first thing in the morning, I read a passage of Scripture. Actually, I can’t take credit for this process, this is Martin Luther, right? Martin Luther would read a passage. He would select a verse to meditate on and then he’d write it out. I find that very helpful to meditate on the verse. But when I write it out, I write out in 30 seconds. How long does it take you to letter a verse? Two hours?
[0:15:51.1] KW: It depends. I’m quicker now, it used to take me a lot longer.
[0:15:54.3] JR: There’s no way that you can stay that focused on what that verse is saying as you're doing that, right? Your mind is wondering.
[0:16:01.6] KW: Sometimes. I try to pray or I’ll turn on worship music or something to try to keep me focused but yeah, my mind is always wondering.
[0:16:09.8] JR: Sure. But by and large, you're remembering to come back to the thing that you're actually writing, right?
[0:16:14.0] KW: Yes, right. I may only spend five or 10 minutes on it, you know. It used to take me a lot longer. But now it’s just more of part of my routine where, you know, I want to think about that verse for a little bit and then you got to move on with your day, you know? There’s a point where it has to work with, you know, your life, yes.
[0:16:34.2] JR: That’s exactly right. Your business is growing. I’m thrilled to see that. By the way, it’s been three and a half years since we sat down and did the interview for Called to Create, which like blows my mind.
[0:16:44.6] KW: I know.
[0:16:45.2] JR: It’s been awesome for me to be able, as a friend, just step back and see your business grow. You’re becoming a more and more masterful entrepreneur, but really, you’re an artist at heart. That’s the craft that you seek to master, right? It’s like, how have you pursued mastery of that craft? What are the practical things you’re doing today to get better at your art?
[0:17:05.5] KW: Well, you know, the crazy thing that I didn’t realize when I started this was that 5% of doing business is the creating and 95% is running the business and so I wish that I had known that to begin with, just to have proper expectations. I go through cycles of being able to sit down and just create a lot at one time and then a lot of my other time is spent running the business or, you know, working on marketing or future product plans and, you know, handling smaller sides of it.
The biggest thing that I can do to master, and I don’t do it every single day but is to practice. Just to keep going, keep practicing. When I started, I would make sure that I spent 15 to 20 minutes a day practicing so that I could get better. We all want to be like, instantly awesome, you know? But that doesn’t – That’s not reality.
As I practiced, I mean, I could go back, I would date my work so that I could go back and look and see how I progressed and so even now, I still have to practice and try new techniques and new methods and – I do a lot of my work now on an iPad, which I love.
It really shortens the process for me so I don’t have to scan in my art work. It’s just already digitized which is helpful. But there’s still a lot of techniques and things I need to learn and, you know, you kind of get into a rut too. You have a look as an artist. You have a look that it’s important to have and it’s taken me a while to kind of find my voice, you know? Of what my work looks like, but at the same time, you don’t want to get into a rut. I’m always trying to look for different ways to do different things.
[0:18:53.9] JR: You're hitting on this theme that I talk about in Master of One which will be released in a few months, that mastery, getting world class at anything takes a lot of time, right? Everyone’s familiar with the 10,000 hour rule. It takes 10,000 hours to get masterful at any one craft.
[0:19:09.4] KW: Which is so overwhelming. When someone – I’m like, “Okay, well, then I give up. That sounds too hard.”
[0:19:16.9] JR: You know what? That’s wiser than people who say they want to be masterful at something but aren’t willing to put in the hours but, yes, it requires this tremendous discipline over time but it’s also in how we practice, right? Practicing on purpose and reviewing our work and getting feedback from others and always like raising the bar to go outside of our comfort zone to like make ourselves better.
[0:19:35.9] KW: Absolutely. Yeah, 100%
[0:19:38.7] JR: Do you batch create?
[0:19:40.3] KW: Yes.
[0:19:41.8] JR: You batch create content?
[0:19:42.1] KW: Now I do. I did not used to, no.
[0:19:45.5] JR: How much content do you create at once?
[0:19:47.9] KW: Over the summer, I was actually kind of late working on Christmas stuff, so I was working on it in June and July instead of probably April, was when I should have been working on Christmas stuff. Because now, I’m in the wholesale market and so you have to have your stuff ready to go for to sell to stores so that they can have it in time.
What I did was I sat down and I would just create. Whenever I had an opportunity, I still have my kids at home. It was summer so they were home every day and so whenever I had an opportunity, I was working on creating and I created a 25 designs just in the course of a few weeks and that was new for me though. Because normally, I do not create like that. But I was trying to get all my Christmas stuff ready and I liked it because I felt like I was in a zone.
[0:20:35.7] JR: I want to talk about that. This is something I think a lot about when I’m creating content. When you’re in the zone, when you're knocking out 25 pieces of content. I’m assuming you’re letting kind of everything else with the business kind of sit on the back burner so that you can focus just on that thing, is that right? Yeah.
I’m all in on this idea of like singularity in our careers, hence, Master of One. But I’m also all in on this idea of singularity within your calendar so like, one thing I’ve been experimenting with and finding a lot of success with is focusing on one massive project at a time. At a week or two weeks or month at a time so for example, this month, all I’m thinking about is the podcast like by and large. There’s some other things like occurring that I absolutely have to get done to make sure that the business keeps going but like, that’s all I’m thinking about.
When I’m like that focused on one thing, it’s magic, right? I’m just wildly productive, so much more productive than if I did, you know, one episode a day, right? For five days or one episode a week like that’s just like doesn’t resonate with me. Is that how you think about it?
[0:21:37.1] KW: No, yes. It’s funny because I would not have said that about myself but it takes me so long to get into the creative groove and so that is, yes – Again, I am splitting my time between being a wife and mom like, running my kids to baseball practice and gymnastics and so I only have so many hours a day to sit down and if it takes me a good hour and a half to get into the creative groove and then if I only did one design and then jump to something else, then the next day, it would take me another hour and a half to get into the groove, you know?
That resonates – What you’re saying really resonates with me that I need to plan that a little bit better going forward because I can see that my work would be so much better if I allowed myself to just stay in the groove and work for a good five hours. It’s going to look like a collection, you know? It’s going to look like it goes together.
[0:22:37.2] JR: Yes. It’s so hard to have that through line if you're producing content like on a regular basis. Even with my weekly devotional. A lot of you guys who are listening and subscribing to my weekly faith and work devotional. I batch create that content. I’ll create those devotionals for six months at a time, right? Because there’s a through line through them. There’s a connection between all those things. I love that, yeah.
I’ve been – Kind of the practice I’ve been experimenting with that seems to be working – I’m not ready to like say definitively, “this is it,” is – Once a quarter, I review my quarterly goals, my OKRs. My objectives and key results. Then I plan out my OKRs for the next quarter, and then I build up my weeks based on themes, right?
I have this separate calendar in Google calendar that goes above everything else on my calendar, that says, “Okay, for these two weeks, I’m focused on the podcast, and for these eight weeks, I’m focused on getting ready for the launch of Master of One. It’s been gold.
[0:23:32.3] KW: See, I admire that in you a lot, Jordan, because you are so structured where as I’m not. I don’t know if that’s the creative like artist in me.
[0:23:40.0] JR: I don’t know how much you should admire it though. You know.
[0:23:42.6] KW: You know. I feel like a lot of times I go, it’s very willy nilly. What am I inspired to do today because if I’m not inspired, it’s really hard to just force it out. If it’s not like a creative work, if it’s not coming, you can’t force them. Sometimes you just got to sit down and walk away. It’s hard for me to schedule out things like creating like that, you know? I would like to be a little bit more, I guess, intentional about putting together a calendar and going, “This quarter,” you know – You’re going to have to ask, walk me through that later.
[0:24:14.7] JR: I got to write this down. Here’s one more tip I’ll leave you with and then we’ll move on. What I found really helpful is saying, “Okay, this week, I’m focused on this topic but I know that there are going to be things that pop up that I absolutely have to deal with in that day.”
So, giving myself the margin to be reactive to something. Being proactive and saying, “Okay, for five hours of this day, I’m focused on XYZ, the podcast, whatever. But I’m going to give myself these 90 minutes at the end of the day to deal with the inevitable.” Like that seems to work. All right, people are sick and tired of hearing about our routines. You mentioned you only have a few hours to work. You're splitting your time between, I mean, you’re always mom, right? We never stop being parents. How many hours are you working a week?
[0:24:58.5] KW: Okay, my kids are in school six hours a day and I really don’t get up to my office till probably close to 10. We’re looking at maybe five hours a day, really. Yeah, that’s about 20 hours a week, is it?
[0:25:11.1] JR: A lot of people who are listening to the podcast, if they got a business, they’re doing it from home. How do you create space in your calendar and physically to get great work done while being physically in your home? Do you have a separate office now?
[0:25:25.6] KW: No, I have an office, I have two offices in my home. One is upstairs and that’s where I sit down and do my work and then I have a stock room that’s downstairs. And I hired a lady last year who is wonderful, who comes in twice a week for me and she packs and ships because we have a product based business, you have to actually ship things out which you know, “Yay I made a sale.” Now I have to go ship it.
That was taking up so much of my time. That’s been wonderful. I have those two rooms in my home and, yeah.
[0:25:57.6] JR: Do you have any other things that you do to try to like isolate yourself from everything else that’s going on the house. Do you wear headphones?
[0:26:03.4] KW: Put my phone on airplane mode, that’s for sure. Do not disturb at least so that you know, it’s not ping-ing, and turning of my email so that that’s not constantly distracting me. Some days it’s really hard to just put down the phone, you know? I find how many times I tend to pick up my phone, I don’t know how much time I’m wasting when I do that.
[0:26:24.7] JR: By the way, do you measure this now that there’s the screen time feature?
[0:26:28.2] KW: No, I don’t want to know.
[0:26:33.2] JR: You should do it. I think you would be very depressed initially.
[0:26:36.4] KW: Probably.
[0:26:38.8] JR: I’m just like wicked competitive, right? I take everything to its extreme. When I started tracking screen time when iOS updated and had the screen time feature. I was at like I don’t know, an hour and 15 minutes a day. This week, I’m averaging 15 minutes of screen time a day on my phone.
[0:26:54.6] KW: You’re kidding me.
[0:26:55.1] JR: No. It’s almost gotten like unhealthy the other way. Now I don’t text people, I don’t call people, I’m a hermit but no, you know –
[0:27:04.0] KW: You’re wildly productive.
[0:27:05.1] JR: I’m wildly productive, it works. It’s the principle of deep work, right? Eliminating distractions. Okay, you’re at your desk, you got five and a half hours, whatever it is. What does a typical day look like for you?
[0:27:17.8] KW: There’s not a typical day for me Jordan.
[0:27:19.9] JR: What did yesterday look like for you?
[0:27:22.7] KW: Yesterday. I’m working on my marketing and advertising so yesterday I spent some time in a group and –
[0:27:29.2] JR: Sorry, can I interrupt you? Can we start earlier? Like, sun comes up or you get out of bed.
[0:27:34.3] KW: Oh, that early.
[0:27:35.0] JR: What’s your whole – From the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed.
[0:27:38.4] KW: Stumble out of bed.
[0:27:39.2] JR: What does your day look like?
[0:27:40.9] KW: Stumble out of bed, go into my kid’s room, wake them up, “Hey, you're late for school, we’ve got to go, get up, we got to eat breakfast,” make lunches. My husband, most of the time, takes them to school. I take them on Thursdays because he has an early morning meeting and so, once they’re out the door, it’s kind of like, now it’s quiet because we’ve been running since the second we go out of bed, and so then I will sit down with my cup of coffee and my Bible and have some prayer time, some Bible study time, and then if I’ve got to do – Finish the laundry from the night before, try to pick up a little bit and then I eventually will make my way up stairs to my office. So depending on what’s going on, if I have to do some stuff in the stockroom then I will be downstairs but if I am working from my computer or doing any design work then I am upstairs in my office.
[0:28:31.7] JR: Do you have a set time? Are you like, “I am definitely going to be at my desk at this time.”
[0:28:35.9] KW: No, I am just not disciplined enough to do that. I need to be. I have things to work on. You’re pointing out my what needs to be on my goals.
[0:28:44.3] JR: This isn’t a fun conversation for you. What are your spiritual disciplines like you sit down with your cup of coffee, you pray. What does your time in God’s world look like?
[0:28:53.2] KW: So I like to do Bible study. After all my time of avoiding doing Bible studies, now I love them, and so after I did The Amazing Collection, which is about a two and a half year commitment, we took breaks for Christmas and summer, but after I finished that I wanted to do more of a deep dive, and so I have started doing the Precept Ministry Bible Studies, which is Kay Arthur and our church has several precept studies that you can choose from.
But I have a teacher that I love. She is a dear lady and so I just followed her, whatever study she is doing is what I am doing. So we did Hebrews and Daniel and Genesis and now we are doing Revelation. So we are on our third semester of Revelation, it’s great. I love it. I love –
[0:29:36.6] JR: Your third semester of Revelation?
[0:29:38.0] KW: Yes. Yeah it’s great. It is a deep dive.
[0:29:41.1] JR: So I get comments a lot from people who write their story in Called to Create and so there are a couple of people from the book that really stand out in reader’s minds, like stories that really resonate with them. Yours is one of them. So thanks for sitting down with me three and a half years ago.
[0:29:56.7] KW: Yeah, who would have known?
[0:29:58.1] JR: Who would have known? But for those who haven’t read the book, can you, and I don’t know if you remember this, but can you recall the story you told me about this decision you and Andy were talking about whether or not to have another child, right? And the decision you made – You felt called not to, and to focus on your business instead, because the business was kind of at edge with a child, where three and a half years after the interview, you guys haven’t had another kid. Talk about that.
[0:30:25.7] KW: Yeah, I think that we have both come to peace of where our family is. We check in with each other every so often, you know, “where or do you want more kids,” and, you know we’re not completely closed down to it. I never want to shut off what God may have for the future but for now, we have agreed that our family – we’re happy with how our family is and we have a peace about that and my husband has been very supportive about the business and growing the business.
And with Called to Create, we were in such the early stages of that business. Whenever you and I had that interview, so much has changed since then. It is hard to even go back and remember three and a half years ago. I mean I was in the throes of, how do I handle having a child at home and this business, and all of these ideas. And I wanted to create. I wanted to spend all my time, and there is a lot of this tension with being the mom and being there for my kids and not neglecting them.
But also not neglecting this exciting passion and dream that God had put in my heart, you know? And so my kids are both now in school from 8:30 to 3:30 every day and so I have the ability to spend the time although some days it still feels like it is not enough time, you know? It is never enough time but I feel a lot more at peace now with where we are than I did back when we – Whenever you wrote Called to Create, you know?
There’s just a lot more peace in the business and God – Sometimes I feel like it was slow growth and then sometimes I look back and go, “Well, so much has happened in the last three years.” I wasn’t slow. You know, God has done a lot. He has given me a lot of opportunities that I have never would have expected to have. Just some major dream come true’s, and so it’s been exciting. I guess that’s just been very – It’s shown me that that was from Him, that dream.
It wasn’t just me, it was Him putting that in my heart and then you just got to trust Him with it. You have to just – Some days you feel like everything is falling apart or it’s not worth it and you just want to give up. I’ve had a lot of days where I felt really frustrated and, this is hard, and why am I even doing this. Is it really worth it? Do people really like my work, you know? And just ready to have a normal life, just be a normal mom, and pick my kids up from school and run to baseball and not have to answer emails and messages and you know?
But then I always come back to the fact that I do feel that God has gifted me for this and that I am doing what He has called me to do, so.
[0:33:08.5] JR: Yeah and you need to be a good steward of that calling, the call to motherhood but also the call to mother this business. I haven’t told you this yet but I thought a lot about that story when I was writing Master of One because, you know, I think, in order for us to become world class at the work that God has created us to do, it requires that we say no to a lot of things, big and small, right? In your case, at least for a season maybe, forever, a third child right?
Like, “no, we’re not going to do that,” and it is not exclusively because you wanted to focus on this business, but that certainly played a factor, but like, what else are you saying no to? What are you finding yourself, in order to really live ambitiously and feel like you are being a good steward of the calling that the Lord has in your life to create these products, what else do you have to say no to?
[0:33:58.6] KW: I remember back in the early years, three and a half years ago, that I was saying no to a lot of people who wanted to get together. You know, “Hey let’s get our kids together at the park,” and not like I, again, neglected my daughter and didn’t ever let her play with people, you know?
[0:34:15.4] JR: Right, to be clear, to set the record straight.
[0:34:16.4] KW: But I did have to put boundaries up and say, “You know what? This time of the day is when I can get my work done,” and so that, I am going to have to say no to that. Now, it is just saying no to other commitments of certain things. I am trying to free myself a little bit so that, hey, I could be the room mom, or I can go up to the school and I can do some things in my kid’s classes.
Whereas I had said no to that in the last couple of years, I am trying to now free myself up to do that because they are little and I want to enjoy that time with them now. So I am trying to keep some perspective with all of that, but I really just – Maybe, other than a random lunch or breakfast with somebody here and there, I just don’t schedule anything while they are in school because those are my work hours.
And if I can do it in the evenings. Because again, my husband is very supportive and you know we are running around and so if they’re at baseball practice then hey, I can schedule to meet somebody for dinner instead, and so I just try to order my day and my commitments to meeting with people or seeing people or whatever, to times when they’re not my work hours.
[0:35:30.5] JR: Yeah first things first, right? It is deciding, this is what’s important. I am allocating time for this and making all decisions after you have decided what is important. I love that. So I am actually really struck by this with our kids right now. So you guys listening know I have a five year old and a three year old, and we’re starting to commit to a lot of things on their behalf, right? So we are committing to soccer, we are committing to one as a church.
Like you as parents still have a tremendous amount of power over what your kids commit to, like – What’s been right for your family in terms of the number of things your kids are committed to?
[0:36:08.6] KW: We’ve been slow to commit to things. So we did some other recreational sports with our son, he’s eight. He is about to turn nine, and so you know, we did that but nothing competitive until the last year and so we got into baseball and he loves it. He is a baseball player, “No I don’t want to play soccer. I don’t want to do anything else. I just want to play baseball,” and our daughter is six and she is just where I feel like developmentally she could do something. So we signed her up for gymnastics, but that’s it.
[0:36:37.4] JR: Yeah so they have one thing going on.
[0:36:39.1] KW: One thing. I will say that today is our first day for piano lessons but they are going straight from school. So they are actually being at school for their piano lessons so I can actually pick them up an hour later. So an hour of extra work time.
[0:36:52.6] JR: So you get to apply that!
[0:36:53.4] KW: Yeah but I try not to over schedule because I have Bible study on Monday nights and we have church on Wednesday nights, and so we already are doing a lot of things in the evenings and those couple of nights that we might be home – I protect those very carefully. Like those are our nights home and we are not going to do anything else, and what that has related to recently is we’re not necessarily hanging out with our friends as much as we used to.
We are not having people over, we are not going out to hang out with friends because we are busy with these other things and we need to have our family time at home. So that’s been a little different in this last year or so but it is a season, you know? That won’t last forever either.
[0:37:34.6] JR: I respect that a lot. I feel like we say no constantly to things and sometimes I feel guilt over that but then I realize no, we’ve decided what we believe the Lord has called us to and it is important in its season, right?
[0:37:46.3] KW: I will tell you something else too. Something else I have to say no to a lot being a designer, is that lots of people ask me to do custom things for them. “Oh could you do a logo for me?” And I always feel so bad saying no because I want to say yes, you know? But the truth is I have done freelance before and I hated it, and so as much as someone says, “Oh I want to give you creative freedom” I feel like they are going to want something real specific and I may not be able to deliver that.
And so I put a lot of pressure on myself to deliver exactly what they want but I don’t really know. Anyway, so it has been a really good boundary thing for me to just say I say no to all freelance, to all custom projects, whether you want a specific verse for your home, I will write that verse down and add it to my list but I cannot – I don’t have the margin to do custom work and so that was really freeing once I finally decided to do that.
[0:38:41.5] JR: Yeah, I love that. You got to have those hard and fast rules. It is easier when you just have a blanket statement to say, “I don’t do this ever.” It is hard when you are making exceptions and people get wind of that.
[0:38:51.3] KW: And people respect it like I totally respect that, you know?
[0:38:54.3] JR: Absolutely. People respect way more than you think.
[0:38:57.3] KW: And someone told me, I heard it on a podcast or something early when I first was realizing that I needed to say no to things, that you feel bad disappointing someone but they’ll be disappointed for maybe a couple of minutes, and then they will move on whereas if you say yes to that, if it is something that you don’t want to do, you are going to be struggling through that commitment for the life of however long you’re doing it, you know –
[0:39:21.1] JR: And if you’re in that state of mind you are not going to do exceptional work, right?
[0:39:24.8] KW: Right.
[0:39:25.1] JR: I think that the graphic design is a really good example. If somebody comes to you and says, “Hey I want this custom logo work done” whatever, and you’re not – That is not the thing you’re spending 30 hours a week getting great at, you are not going to do it as well as somebody else would anyway and so I think that there is a gracious no that can be delivered there that is truly loving to that person and being true to the client that you think that’s putting in your life.
I have a good example of this I think, but I am curious to hear from you. What is the most gracious no you’ve ever heard. We’re talking a lot about saying no but what – Yeah, like, who’s been really great, like you have asked for something or you’ve asked for, I don’t know, book endorsement, whatever it is, and somebody said no but they did it so generously. Do you have any examples of that?
[0:40:08.1] KW: You know I don’t – I think a lot of people have trouble saying no. I think that is something that a lot of people really struggle with. I feel like I have perfected the art of the no.
[0:40:16.6] JR: All right so give us the tip of the art of the no.
[0:40:19.1] KW: Just you know, “Oh thank you so much for asking me, for thinking of me. That is such an honor that you wanted me to do that for you. I am just at a point in time in my life where I don’t have the extra time to do that and so I am sorry but I am not going to be able to do that,” and people appreciate that, “Okay, well thank you.” You know do you –
[0:40:37.6] JR: So it is like gratitude.
[0:40:37.9] KW: And then they’ll say, “Well do you have someone else that you could suggest?” So I try to keep people in mind that I think I could refer them to, you know that helps too. That helps take the edge off the no if you could say, “But this person might be able to,” so.
[0:40:52.9] JR: Yeah so there is gratitude in there so, “Hey thank you so much for thinking of me,” and then just explaining very personally. I think it is just being transparent with people goes a long way, right?
[0:41:01.6] KW: Exactly.
[0:41:02.0] JR: Just explaining why you aren’t taking this on, like right now we’re getting a lot of podcast requests and I am saying no short term but like, “Hey as we get closer to X date I’d be happy to do it.” I have somebody that I really love their writing to endorse Master of One, and we got amazing endorsements for the book but we got a lot of no’s too. We got some amazing ones because we asked a lot of people and this one woman who I really respect was super generous in her no.
She’s like, “Hey, no, let me explain why. Here are my rules for what books I will and will not endorse,” and it was like basically she had to be personally be involved in the shaping of the project and she had to have read the book in its entirety, which obviously she wasn’t a part of the project but, that was very generous of her to share that advice because she turned around and she’s like, “Hey I would advise you when you get these requests to say no unless you have done these things and here’s why.” And it was probably a very –
[0:41:54.2] KW: That is very thoughtful.
[0:41:55.2] JR: It was super thoughtful. Just generous. So I am a big fan of this generous no concept. So let me ask you something else. One of my biggest pet peeves and I think this is particularly true in Christian culture is when people ask women about how their decision to work has negatively impacted their children.
[0:42:16.0] KW: Oh why?
[0:42:17.5] JR: You don’t hear this?
[0:42:18.4] KW: Oh my goodness, you are just starting off with a negative when you ask somebody that.
[0:42:22.1] JR: Well so this is my question for you. So let me ask the opposite question, how was your decision to work inside and outside the home positively impacted your kids? What has been the good it has come of your kids in your opinion having a mom who’s working?
[0:42:38.9] KW: That is a good question. I think it is important for them to see balance. That I can balance my work and my time with them but I think it is also important for them to see that mommy has some important things to do and the world does not revolve around you so you are going to need to wait. I am going to be on the phone for the next 20 minutes and if you have something – I mean they’re eight and six. So they’re old enough, unless they’re bleeding and we need to go to the hospital, it is not an emergency you know?
And so you can wait. You need to learn to wait. From the teaching standpoint I think that is really good for them to understand that mommy has some work to do and then also teaching them that they can have their own business one day and what it would be like to be an entrepreneur and you know, I love having the ability to work from home and pick my kids up from school and I think that is a huge blessing and I know not everybody can do that.
But that they can see the balance, that you can do something from yourself and you could create your own business and it takes work and it is hard but it it’s possible. So I hope that I am instilling some good work values and family values in them as they watch that.
[0:44:01.3] JR: That is good. So the art that you’re creating is all centered around Scripture, right? So I don’t know if I could ask you how your faith connects to your work because that’s a silly question, but I am sure there is a lot of people listening to this episode who are producing work, producing art, producing books, businesses, that are not overtly religious. What encouragement would you give to those people about the eternal significance of their work?
[0:44:27.1] KW: You know the Bible says that we should do everything as to the Lord and whenever he has given you a gift, whether that would be writing fiction novels or creating jewelry or clothes or whatever it is, to do that as unto the Lord, to do your very best, and God puts people in our lives – If we just notice that we can impact for Him and for the gospel, and so if we are doing our very best at our work whatever that work is, we’re going to be impacting people.
And so if you do a bad job at your business or at your writing and you don’t try to be excellent in that then, I don’t know. I say that that kind of, puts a little bit of shade on God, to Jesus, that you are talking about. If you are not willing to put your best into your work then what does that say about Him? So you know I think that it all – regardless of what your business is, how we live as Christians is very important and it speaks to the world even when you don’t realize that it does.
[0:45:39.3] JR: Yeah, we’re called to be image bearers.
[0:45:40.6] KW: Exactly.
[0:45:41.5] JR: Often exceptional is too short of a word. There is no word to describe a perfect God, and by the way, shoddy work fails to live out Jesus’s commandment, to love neighbor as self. We don’t appreciate receiving shoddy work, right? Mediocrity.
[0:45:55.1] KW: Oh no, you feel like you got chipped.
[0:45:57.2] JR: That is exactly right. So let me ask you three questions I like to ask every guest. First, which book or books do you find yourself giving others the most? What are your go to titles that you are giving out?
[0:46:10.3] KW: I will definitely say and I mentioned this earlier, The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson was just really powerful to me. Oh my goodness, it is going to escape me now the name of it, well, no, the author. The book is called With, about doing life with God.
[0:46:24.1] JR: Yeah is that good? I’ve heard this is great.
[0:46:26.2] KW: It’s great, it’s fantastic, and that really was so good for me to how I view life with God and then there is another book and I am not going to be able to remember the title of it.
[0:46:37.8] JR: Who’s it by, do you remember?
[0:46:39.5] KW: He is a missionary and – Oh man, it was about the persecuted church, like going into the other parts of the world with the persecuted church. Yeah I am sorry.
[0:46:50.1] JR: No, I am glad you mentioned With because that’s been on my list for a long time. I got to prioritize sitting down and reading it. All right, last question. What one piece of advice would you give to somebody who, like you, is pursuing mastery of their vocation whether they’re an artist or an entrepreneur or not what one piece of advice would you give to that person?
[0:47:07.2] KW: I’d say the main thing is don’t let fear hold you back because I had a period of time where I really did let fear inhibit what I was doing because I was afraid of how it would be received. You know putting myself out there and doing something, it just felt very scary, and I avoided it for a long time. I found all kinds of other things to do to keep me busy but then I finally realized that I am just avoiding this and I need to just face it head on.
And so whatever it is that you feel that God has put on your heart, called you to do, don’t talk yourself out of it or let yourself be too afraid to just start. You know, I think sometimes we feel like we have to be at the perfect place at the perfect time or whatever, and sometimes you just get the momentum going. Just start yeah.
[0:47:57.3] JR: Just start. I love it. Krystal, I am so impressed with you. I just want to commend you for the exceptional work that you’re doing in helping people engage with God’s word on a regular basis and thank you for prioritizing excellence in everything that you do. I still follow you on Instagram and everything I see is just of such high caliber and of high quality. Thank you for loving neighbor as self. Thank you for doing work that is important and work that matters.
Even if it wasn’t overtly evangelical. Thank you for just doing really, really great work and thank you so much for being here. Hey, so the project is The Lettering Prayer Journal by Krystal Whitten. By the way, what’s your website?
[0:48:33.5] KW: krystalwhitten.com.
[0:48:34.7] JR: krystalwhitten.com super complex. But check out Krystal’s work, The Lettering Prayer Journal in particular. I bought it for Kara actually for Christmas last year. Packed full of really creative instruction, beautiful artistry. For those interested in either the Bible or hand lettering, I high recommend that you grab a copy. Hey, thanks for hanging out.
[0:48:54.0] KW: Thanks for having me Jordan.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:48:56.1] JR: I am such a Krystal Whitten fan, I hope you are too after that conversation. Hey, if you enjoying this podcast, make sure you subscribe wherever you subscribe to podcasts. So you make sure you never miss another episode in the future. We got lots of great guests coming up like Krystal and very different from Krystal as well. If you are already subscribed, please take 30 seconds and go review the podcast especially if you are using Apple Podcast app. If you have no idea how to do either of those things, go to jordanraynor.com/podcast, where we have made it really easy for you to subscribe and review.
Hey, before you go and start getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, I’ve got another short conversation I want to share with you guys. As you guys know, I am an avid reader, right? So a few months ago, maybe I guess about six months ago now, I started sharing with you guys which books I have added to my personal reading list in my weekly devotional email. By the way, if you guys aren’t subscribed to that weekly devotional email, you could sign up for free right now at jordanraynor.com. We’ve got almost a 100,000 people who are getting this weekly faith and work devotional from me, which blows my mind.
So I recently sat down with the author of one of the books that I’ve added to my personal reading list. His name is Mark Sayers. He is the pastor of Red Church in Australia. He is also the co-host of This Cultural Moment, a podcast that he co-hosts with John Mark Comer, which as you guys know one of my all-time favorite authors, writers, pastors. John Mark actually called Mark Sayers, “One of the most important living teachers in the world.” It is a very bold statement from John Mark.
So after I heard that from John Mark, I was like, “All right, I got to check out this Mark Sayers guy,” and it just so happened that Sayers was putting out a new book called Reappearing Church. So I sat down with Mark and asked him just a couple of question about Reappearing Church. His answers were so concise but so rich and deep. I think you are going to really enjoy the last few minutes of this episode as I sit down and talk about Reappearing Church with Mark Sayers.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:51:08.9] JR: Mark, thanks so much for joining me. We were just talking about your good friend, John Mark Comer, who I was talking to yesterday, talking about our mutual appreciation for you and your work man. So I am really excited to talk about your newest book, which I am loving, Reappearing Church. Let’s start here, for those who don’t know. Give us a glimpse of the book. What’s this book about Mark?
[0:51:28.3] MS: Essentially this book has a very almost counterintuitive message that there is a lot of concern and worry about the state of church, the state of faith and I go in the opposite direction to actually say, “What if this moment is a moment of tremendous hope? What if when we look at how God has worked throughout history, how he’s worked in individuals that actually it is at moments of challenges that actually God turns things around?”
So when you look at church history, you look at moments of technological disruption. You’ve got moments of cultural upheaval. You look at moments when globalization happens and people move around the world and the moments when people are almost writing an epitaph for the church and say, “it is going under.” It is exactly at those moments that God turns things around and does new things.
[0:52:11.8] JR: So who is this book for? I mean, I guess you could say it is for everybody but can you be a little bit more specific than everybody?
[0:52:18.8] MS: I think that at moments like this, people are concerned about the future of the church and people see decline in statistics but really I think what it is, is when you look at it more accurately, it is a declining culture of Christianity, that people are just going along habitually, who are just following patterns which is just traditional or just that they fallen into. So what I realized is what happens of moments of renewal?
It is actually that God focuses on the remnant. Who are the people who really believed this stuff, who are committed to the Kingdom of God, who want to make change in their lives? So essentially my great hope for this book is this inspires the people who are asking the question, “How do I continue in my faith? How do I apply that in my home, in the workplace, in the world and how do I actually be a part of the next renewal that God wants to do?”
So it is for the hungry, it’s for the humble, it is for the people wanting to effect change for God at this time.
[0:53:10.1] JR: So how do we do that in our work? I mean that’s what this whole podcast is about. How do we do our most masterful work, not for fame and fortune but for the Glory of God and good of others. How does your book play in that conversation? How can we take your book and apply it to creating for the kingdom?
[0:53:28.6] MS: I think that we are used to this concept that when challenge or difficulty comes that that is almost something to be avoided to go around but what I noticed was that, what happens in renewals? Renewals doesn’t begin with, you know, this huge culture wide phenomenon. It actually begins with individuals who’ve gone on a process, which often happens alone where they begin to see their lives for a very different mechanism.
They don’t look so much to the metrics of the world, they begin to look at how God uses people and changes them. So whilst the book talks about revivals and awakenings and these big future things. It is really about an individual process that any believer can go through where they look at the challenges external to them, even the challenges internal to them, and they push into a deeper understanding of God, and then a process of transition where they become an influence for God’s renewal wherever they are, and particularly in the workplace.
I think this next renewal – The world is less disconnected. Almost though the world is, now, this integrated place, you know. The overlap between work and ministry and all of these things are coming together. So we need people in those overlapping places. So this book points to how we do that.
[0:54:33.3] JR: I love it. Very concise, very compelling answers. Like I said, I am Reappearing Church. I can’t believe I just now discovered Mark Sayers.
[0:54:44.9] MS: Absolute pleasure.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:54:47.0] JR: If you enjoyed that conversation with Mark, go pick up his book, Reappearing Church, available wherever books are sold. Hey, that’s it for today’s episode. Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Enjoy some quality time with your family, with your friends. Enjoy some time in God’s word. I would challenge you guys. If you spend typically 15 minutes in God’s word, spend 30, spend 45 minutes tomorrow just praising Him for His character, praising Him for his goodness, praising Him for the gift of work.
Let us remember tomorrow on Thanksgiving that work is a good thing. Work is a gift, it is created by God pre-fall to enjoy as a form of worship. So give thanks for your family, give thanks for the things that God has given you, but give thanks for your work too, and give thanks for the ability to learn and to develop and to travel further down the path to mastering whatever work God has created you to do.
Thanks for listening to today’s show, I’ll see you guys next week.
[END]