How to rewire your brain as you sleep
Jordan Raynor sits down with Neil Ahlsten, CEO of Abide, to talk about how what you listen to before bed rewires your brain, how to identify yourself as a Christian at work, and the “20 minutes of fun” routine that Neil does with his family to cultivate rest and joy.
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[00:00:05] 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 for the glory of God and the good of others. Every 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 the Gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work.
Today's guest is my friend Neil Ahlsten. He's a crazy impressive co-founder and CEO of the Abide Sleep and Meditation app, which was recently acquired by Guideposts. Before Abide, Neil spent seven years at Google. And before that, he was the Darfur and Chad refugee program manager for the United States State Department.
Neil and I sat down recently to talk about how what you listen to before bed, can rewire your brain, how to identify yourself as a Christian at work, and the 20 minutes of fun routine that Neil does with his family to cultivate rest, and joy. I think you guys are going to be really encouraged by this conversation with Neil Ahlsten.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:26] JR: Hey, Neil, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:28] NA: Thanks. It's great to be here.
[00:01:30] JR: So, we were catching up on Zoom a couple of weeks ago, and I wish we could have that conversation then, but your professional story is fascinating to me. You started your career, doing work in the developing world for food for the hungry, Department of State. And then you made the leap to Google seems like a big leap. What's the story behind that transition for you, Neil?
[00:01:53] NA: My operating motive is to always help people. That’s what motivates me the most, but I'm a kind of a mathematician and a geek. I started out doing refugee work and humanitarian work in really, really tough places in Africa. I was in Congo on the rebel side, helping people who are displaced. I was in South Sudan on the rebel side. I was in Darfur and Chad helping refugees. And that was, in many ways, very fulfilling. But I also felt like I wasn't necessarily solving the root problems that people were having. I was more just helping them get back on their feet.
I felt like technology was probably the biggest influencer coming, and I went and I had some finance background. I applied to Google and I remember one of the most hilarious interviews I answered questions I have ever given, this person asked me they were like, “How are your works in Africa get to help you when you're in here? We're working with these businesses that we're trying to negotiate with, what are you going to do? What are you going to add?” And I was like, “Well, I've negotiated with Sudanese rebels before that lay down their arms. I think I can negotiate with Apple.” The other person was like, their jaw dropped, like, “Okay. Yeah, you probably can.” It's honestly true, is like bringing that perspective of just creative thinking and listening to people and trying to understand what's possible, is really an effective skillset across anywhere.
[00:03:17] JR: Yeah, I've read so many books on how Google hires. I’ve always been such a big fan of their hiring culture and that's something that always pops up, the wild questions that you get. But in your case, the wild jaw dropping answer, that's a great answer.
[00:03:30] NA: Well, it is and it's great if you can have a few lists in your back pocket. And I had another one that the VP who I was going to be reporting under, he asked me like, “Where would I want to live?” He was trying to build a trap for me. He was like, anywhere, any place in time. And I was like, “Maybe the Renaissance would have been great, because it's like the emergence of this new culture and everything.” He's like, “Well, why don't you just move to Italy then?” I was like, “Dude, because the Renaissance is happening here today. It's in Silicon Valley. This is the moment. He was like, “Okay.” He tried to like back you into these places where your answer gives him fodder to sort of throw tough questions at you, and it's nice to have another one in your back pocket to say, “No way I will just have one response to this. I've got multiple.”
[00:04:14] JR: I love it. What are you doing for the seven, eight years you were at Google?
[00:04:19] NA: I worked my way into actually leading deal reviews with everybody. So, Apple, undersea cables and things like that. It was actually a really interesting job, but it was all internal facing. So, I was working with the General Counsel, our CFO and stuff like that, and it was like business school on steroids. I learned every internet deal that you could basically ever imagine and what all the founders thought and talked about it. That was fun. From there, I wanted to go on to the deal making side, so I wound up helping launch products, and doing new advertising products, insurance products, financial services products, where we had to go out and get data to get advertisers on the platform, and do other things like that. I enjoyed it a lot. Google was a great place to work when I was there.
[00:05:06] JR: But then you made the leap to start this Abide meditation app. Why leave Google?
[00:05:12] NA: That's a great question. I did not actually start out wanting to leave Google. I thought I could find Christian entrepreneurs who I can mentor and stay at Google. I built up a whole team, ran events, got a whole bunch of people who were interested in working on the project, and it wasn't until we actually started experimenting with product stuff that I felt like I needed to leave Google. I had this one moment where we were prototyping a prayer experience and we tried audio prayer. We were like, “Well, let's try text. Let's try audio. Let's try video.” Prayer is the most common behavior the Christians have. What would it look like if we brought in these informants?
This was in like, 2013 and it was just clear that audio was like electric. People getting prayed over in audio was just – there was some movement of the Holy Spirit. It was like not explainable through scientific experience. It was like, there's truly something spiritually profound happening when people hear an audio prayer prayed over them. If I know the good I can do and I don't do it, that's almost like sinning, right? I know this good that can be done in the world by doing this, because I've seen it in users, in prototyping. I talked to my wife about it and she was like, “Oh, it's about time you leave Google. You need something new.” I was like, “Oh, really, honey? We have four kids. You want me to leave a good paying job.” So yeah, that all worked out.
[00:06:38] JR: For those who don't know, what's Abide? The products been out there for, I don't know, seven years-ish. What is the product?
[00:06:47] NA: The product is an app, is audio meditation, and meditation includes Scripture, reflection, and prayer. So, you fill yourself with God's word, and with the Holy Spirit and reflect on what's going on in your life and take action steps, move forward, as well as sleep content. The sleep content is a lot of affirmations and spiritual content that really helps you know God's presence as you're falling asleep. Those are the two primary pieces of it. We have very large libraries of incredible narraters and writers who put those together. And then there's obviously background music and notifications and alerts to get you in when you want them and other things. That's the core buy thing. We also have a YouTube channel that has a million subscribers to it, which has been hugely successful. The podcast that gets several $100,000 a month.
So, Abide is a media company, really, about helping people spend quality time with God. Morning, night, and then when you need it, you're anxious during the day, things like that.
[00:07:52] JR: You guys were recently acquired by another media company, very old media company, Guideposts. Tell us about that transition for you guys.
[00:08:02] NA: Yeah, it's been a great transition. Guideposts is obviously been around since the 1940s. I think is when Norman Vincent Peale founded it. And they were all about sharing the gospel and relevant ways to help people in everyday life. So, it's super similar vision, but we're very focused on different media channels, primarily print publications.
[00:08:27] JR: Yeah, because in the ‘40s, the way to do that was through direct mail. Sending magazines to people, and today, it's apps and podcasts and YouTube channels.
[00:08:36] NA: Exactly. So, we saw it as an opportunity to expand and reach audience and to build up our organization. And then they saw it as an opportunity to get into more tech and sort of leapfrog forward. They’ve got some great people there and really smart thinkers and innovative in the print space. I mean, they’re of the few people who's really succeeded in direct mail and print, and when the industry has been hurting, it's fun to diversify, and to work with other really good people in space.
[00:09:05] JR: Yeah. I think it's easy to see how the humanitarian work you did at the State Department was “ministry”. I think it's probably easier for our listeners to see how the work at Abide is ministry. You're talking about prayer and meditation. I think it's probably harder for people to grasp how your work at Google was ministry. Do you define it in that terms? And if so, in what ways did you view your work at Google as ministry, Neil?
[00:09:34] NA: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. In a lot of ways, I think everywhere you're at, you can choose to turn it into a ministry and there were some very direct faith at work movement things that I was involved in of like leading bible studies, getting people to think about God's word, to pray over Google, to be really present there and to be not hiding my faith, right? So, when there are opportunities with colleagues to be able to share about that background being open to it, that's a big ministry. Obviously, there are values that not all but a lot of values align with, and I press into those. Helping the poor and serving things in Africa, and I actually spent two years working on getting people internet access in Africa with Google. It was a focus of mine, when I was first going to business development. And that felt very, just helping people — helping them have a better life.
So, I think those opportunities, part of it is like not putting aside your faith when you show up at work. It that's what motivates us and drives us and I think also makes us more exceptional. Jesus wasn't unexceptional. He was exceptional in what he did, and wanted excellence. I think that that same philosophy, then people trusted me, they were like, “Oh, you're one of those Christians that I could work with. You're actually smart.” I had somebody say that to me, like, “You’re Christian, you’re actually smart”, which is the sad thing about their perspective on believers, because obviously, that's not what the case. But to be able to represent God in a way of professional excellence and values as admissions feel.
[00:11:06] JR: Yeah, it's sad. But it is often true that Christians are known for mediocrity, but it's one of the reasons why this podcast exists, to call us all to the pursuit of excellence. Because I think when we are excellent at our crafts, we, as Paul says, in First Thessalonians, “We win the respect of outsiders.” This is part of how we win their respect and the opportunity to point them to Jesus, right?
[00:11:32] NA: I think so. I think being the most excellent version of yourself is what God wants from us. That is what we strive for and that excellence is spiritual, it's intellectual, it's all those capacities, physical. We should be the most excellent version of ourselves empowered by the Holy Spirit, right? Come on. It's like God putting us on steroids to do better. Hopefully, that triumphs and there's so many examples of that historically. If you look back at a lot of the great mathematicians and philosophers and whatnot, who were believers, and Pascal. There's a lot of evidence of that historically, it's like, let's live into that today, to be in the spaces of showing the excellence that happens in the faith community.
[00:12:13] JR: Yeah, and living that out wherever we are, whether we're working for a “ministry” like Abide or a Google. I think, in the church today, there's this lie, this really ugly, deeply entrenched lie that God only cares about the spiritual realm, right? And specifically, saved souls. But Jesus said, He came to make all things new — to redeem all things. And Genesis 3 tells us sin broke, yes, human beings, but also the material world, the world of work, and I look at Google, and like, Google's making my work life better. It's fixing a lot of things that are broken in the material world, it's contributing to human flourishing, and if done with proper motives, I think that's ministry. Right?
[00:12:59] NA: Oh, totally. I don't like separating at all like the spiritual world and the physical world and saying, they're totally different. It's like God created us as physical beings, and put His Spirit in us and they're both part of it. Even in heaven, I think people get confused sometimes, “No, go read it.” We have bodies in heaven. We're still like – we don't stop having a body, floating around is a disembodied spirit. The physical is part of the way that God moves and works. I'm totally in agreement that us living out our faith in the physical world is really that's our intersection with the Kingdom of God, and we're called to bring the Kingdom of God into this world. That's the ministry of Jesus, is like the Kingdom of God is here.
[00:13:40] JR: It's breaking in. Right now, we're ripping pieces of it through the veil into the present. I get questions a lot about this, especially for people working in big companies in corporate America, like Google. What are the winsome non-offensive ways to just identify yourself as a Christian? Maybe 20 years ago was like, subtly “leaving a Bible on your desk”, but like for you at Google, or the State Department, how were you able to winsomely just raise your hand and say, “Yeah, I'm a follower of Jesus.”
[00:14:15] NA: I find that, and when you're a believer who's following the faith authentically, the big decisions you make in your life are informed by that. If you talk about your life, like your own life is always a space that is yours to talk about. Even if people talk about they'll be like, “Oh my gosh, so we adopted twins from Congo.” We have two biological kids and then we adopted twins and people were like, “Well, why did you adopt when you could already have kids?” I'm like, “This is an opportunity to talk about faith.”
Come on you just handed me, and obviously like I don't try to just sell only that part, but it's part of the whole story, is like the part of the motivation came from — go read like James 1 where it says, “True religion is this to serve orphans and widows when their distressed.” I believe that and I acted in that way, and I have two Congolese kids who are part of my family who need a college education and food, right? People receive that really well. They'd be like, “Oh, my gosh, like that motivated you to do this.” Who's going to tell you that you're like, proselytizing that? They'd be like, “OH, you're just telling your story.”
[00:15:21] JR: You're just being you. You're just being real.
[00:15:23] NA: That's right.
[00:15:23] JR: Yeah, that's exactly right. I love it so much. Yes, your work at Google’s ministry, but there did come this point where it, sounded like the call from the Lord was like crystal clear, like, “Hey, you got to go now. You got to go focus on this Abide project.” Was it crystal clear to you? Did it feel like an overt, albeit, likely not audible call from God?
[00:15:48] NA: I've had seasons where I've had pretty overt audible calls from Gods and ones where I have it. In this particular case, it really was like, almost literally an audible call from God, and even having people prophesy over me, which is not something that is normal in my life. I'm not somebody who has that normally happen, and I think I needed that in order to persist during the hard times that would come. To just rise and be like, “No, God called me this. I don't care if it's hard. I don't care if it's not easy.” They’ve been other paths like God didn't audibly say to me, like, my wife go adopt twins from Congo. But we did and that's part of our life.
God gives you, at least in my experience of this, God did provide us with enough evidence that we were on a path that was a good spiritual path to be on, that made it really easy to fight through the hard times. It's a marathon. It's a long race. I think that some of those are helpful. And it's a great question. If people were out there today, who are wondering, like, what do I do? I feel like I'm in a career where I'm not making a difference with my faith. I'm not having the impact that I have, how do you deal with that? Part of it for me was just trying to stay open to what God would be calling and trying to commit some time on the side to actually do things, even when I was full time at with Google, still maintaining some activity and openness, and then you just watch it out, because sometimes kind of throw you a curveball, and you wind up moving in a different direction than you anticipated and that definitely happened in my life.
[00:17:20] JR: Yeah, this is something I've written about before, if the thing you're doing vocationally today, isn't the thing you want to be doing, or the thing that you think you could do most exceptionally well in service of God and others, place little bets, outside of the main thing. Over time, if something starts to grow really quickly, or somebody prophesies over you and says, “Hey, this side thing is the thing.” That's when you make the leap, right? But it starts by taking those little bets.
[00:17:50] NA: Absolutely. And I think that's something that we continue to do throughout our life. Even at Abide, we continue to place bets in other areas, like small bets. Let's try things that are new zones of possible ministry or influence and see what works, and that keeps you fresh, and it keeps you innovative, and it keeps you moving forward. I'm a huge fan of that.
[00:18:11] JR: Yeah, you touched on this before. Abide focuses a lot on sleep. One of my all-time favorite topics. I'm curious, how does meditating on God's word help us sleep better? What are you hearing from users? What's the connection here?
[00:18:28] NA: This was a great question when we first got into it, because we got into sleep because we thought people were trying to use our app to sleep. There were two big questions for me is like one is what's the theology behind sleep? Why would you need content to sleep? And the other was like, well, what's the user experience? If those two intersect, we're in a good place. There's actually, in the Bible, very clear statements by Jesus about spiritual reasons you might not be sleeping. One of my favorites is when Jesus is on the boat, and he's asleep, and the disciples wake him up because they're afraid the boat is going to sink. Jesus basically turned to them and says, “You're not asleep, because you don't have faith.” And then all sudden, you're like, “Wait a minute, could I be up at night because I don't have faith?” And then we went and looked at it, and we're like the Bible in David is like, full of the Psalms around the fact that we're up at night and I personally have this experience because I don't have faith that God is going to take care of tomorrow. I don't have faith that God – God accomplish what he was going to do today.
I'm stressed about all these things, because I literally don't have faith. If I had the faith, I could sleep in confidence. So, we actually saw a number of places, spiritual attack was another one, and protection and letting people know. God's angels and camp around you. It says in Psalms, right? The Angel of the Lord that camp around those who fear Him. It's right there. God's protection is over you as you sleep. So, if you feel like under spiritual attack, there's definitely reasons why connecting with God as you fall asleep and, in your brain, as you study the actual brain chemistry of what happens, your brain at night is rewiring itself, based in large part upon the state at which you fall asleep.
If you fall asleep, anxious and stressed and in that reptilian brain, you're going to be rewiring things in different ways. If you fall asleep in peace, in faith, knowing God's love and being affirmed in your identity is somebody who's loved, right? And somebody who's cared for, and that will actually rewire your future brain. There's a lot that goes on there, which is why like falling asleep is actually a ministry. I see it as this huge ministry right now that we're helping people live a healthier, fuller life, because we're helping them fall asleep in a better way, which is probably honestly how people fell asleep 400 years ago. People would read the Bible out loud as they fell asleep to their family. That's what they did and they prayed before they fall asleep. Bedtime prayers, come on people.
[00:20:58] JR: Yeah, exactly. To sleep is to trust, right? It's an act of faith, that God's going to keep the world spinning. God's going to keep my business spinning, my family alive, even if I'm not there to do the work. I talked about this in this terrific episode of the podcast with my friend, Dr. Benjamin Long. He's a sleep medicine physician, who's like gone all throughout scripture, just looking for what scripture has to say about sleep. It has this like really robust theology asleep, which, now that I'm talking about this, I'm like, I got to connect you with Dr. Benjamin.
[00:21:36] NA: Yeah, I would love that.
[00:21:36] JR: He’s brilliant. But no, just this idea, again, that sleeping forces us to recognize God is God and we are not. I'm curious other than sleep, what else are you doing personally, in terms of rest, to remind yourself that you are not in ultimate control of your business, of your family? Do you Sabbath? Do you take breaks throughout the day? What does this look like for you?
[00:22:01] NA: I do. Because I think that sort of refilling yourself, like you can't bring your best if you're not full. I try to be really good about shutting off during certain hours to spend time replenishing myself and with my family. Doing things and creating habits around that, because I'm big on habit formation. We have this thing that we do with our family. I call like 20 minutes of fun on Thursdays, where everybody's like together, and we just do activities that are like life giving and storytelling, and there's always candy and food involved too.
[00:22:35] JR: Wait. Alright, hang on. Wait, we got to go deeper on 20 minutes of fun. Teach us a class on 20 minutes of fun. What is this? What exactly does it look like? I love this.
[00:22:43] NA: So, I said 20 minutes, because the kids could never say that it was too long. But it always goes for an hour to an hour and a half. There's almost always an element of bringing yourself to it. Their participation changes the way that it happened. So, some of the things that we do is sometimes we'll sit around, we have a roof deck, and I have like a propane fire pit up there, so we can sit around the fire pit and we will tell stories about each other. I'll like start a story and be like, “Okay, we're going to pretend like we're on a spaceship.” And then everybody's got to tell the story about the next person of what they did when they were in outer space.
[00:23:13] JR: It's great.
[00:23:13] NA: People will go around the circle. This is like 10 to 12-year-old kids for like 20 minutes, making up stories about their brother or sister that are just out – and you get a little bit of sugar, so they're all jazzed up, right? They think the most memorable things and we also do – well actually, it's not really betting, but when we place spoons. I don’t know if people are familiar with spoons where you put up spoons. But instead of spoons, I put out like different candies like jelly beans, and there's ones people like and ones people don't like. Anything that will get people really – has some element of chance and variation and spontaneity in it, but brings out yourself, I just love. So, the kids look forward to it all the time. They're always like, “What are we going to do for 20 minutes of fun this Thursday?” And the neighbor kids come over. We even do stories of Jesus. We talk about opportunities to witness. These kids are sometimes telling, including Bible stories, and it's just a lot of fun. It becomes part of the life story of what we do together.
[00:24:11] JR: But this is part of how you rest, right? Like your phones are away. This is after the workday is done. You say it's on a Thursday?
[00:24:17] NA: Thursday night. It's a 20-minute of fun. But for me, I get rejuvenated by that because I see the kids having joy and having fun and laughing and not on screens. Everybody having a party and I'm like, “Okay, like that fills my soul with joy.” I need those things to just know that like, I'm going to get recharged and I'm going to get plugged in.
[00:24:42] JR: I think we all need that. I think we need more fun, more joy. I think a lot of times God is happier than we are. God is more joyful than we are. That's been really convicted me lately. I also think like one of the practices I'm trying to really learn is abiding. We're on the podcast, with the CEO of Abide, because I think there's a huge difference between doing our work for God and doing our work with God, and abiding with him, communing with him. So, I'm curious for you, what does communion with your heavenly Father look like personally?
[00:25:19] NA: A lot of mornings, it starts out with some classic just turning to God's word at the beginning of the day, in different forms. And then trying to apply it throughout the day. I really think that a lot of communion for me with God is being able to reframe what I'm doing in the moment to be how might God be present in the circumstance, right? If I believe God is present everywhere, how is God present in the meeting, or in an interaction I'm having with my family, with my son, with my wife? Meditation is about just taking everything that we're doing and turning and reframing it back towards like, how is God present in this and what is true that God has said that I should be doing in this place and time?
I have the fortune because I work at a Christian organization, lots of times, that means like praying in meetings, and that prayer, we vocalize them together. I mean, you can pray silently in a meeting, when you're frustrated about something. I've literally had that happen where like, I was so mad at somebody in a meeting, because of things they were doing that I just felt like were violations of what is true, right, and just, and sometimes I've let myself get mad and angry and bad things happen, or that. I'm going to be honest, I'm human. But there have been other times when I've turned that into an opportunity to say, “You know what, I'm going to pray that the Lord moves this person's life. I'm going to pray that they have an openness to receive what is good, and what God wants out of this circumstance and out of their life.” It totally changes the moment, instead of being one of anger and frustration, it becomes like, here's a ministry opportunity for me. I don't necessarily have to – I love Francis, who says, like, “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary.” Is kind of like, in some ways, by me reacting in a godly way, maybe, to that circumstance, it's helpful. I think this is part of what I try to do to keep myself sane is to reframe in those ways.
[00:27:16] JR: Yeah. Scripture is clear that what we do right now has an impact on eternity. How does that shape how you go about your workday?
[00:27:26] NA: I'm going to answer a slightly different question first, and then come back on that. One is that I really believe and I've seen evidence that acts or prayers done in faith can endure for long periods of time.
[00:27:42] JR: Tell me more about this.
[00:27:44] NA: I'll tell you very specifically about this. One example would be that the prayers David wrote in the Psalms, even though he's dead, and he wrote those prayers 20, 100 years ago, however long ago, they're still active and those prayers that he prayed are still making a difference in the world today. I see prayers that we recorded five years ago, people were like, “Yeah, but that's just a podcast. Why would that matter?” Somehow in the spiritual world, God is multiplying that, that even though that person isn't saying that prayer right now, they pray to the faith.
So, I do think that the acts and the prayers that we do in faith, it doesn't stop. Time is not the same to God as it is to us. Those prayers we pray, are incense before God and heaven, the prayers of the saints, are incense before God and heaven, and that Heaven is not in the same space time that we are in here. So, I do really honestly believe that some of the work I'm doing today is probably because my ancestors prayed for me. That's influencing who I am today, the prayers that my great grandmother prayed in faith, for her descendants is influencing me. And the same is true of what you do.
Every day, the acts that we do, there's some multiplier effects that that honestly, it's up to God. I'm like, I see evidence of it, but I can't tell you how it works. I can't describe a causal pathway for it, because I don't understand that. But I totally see that. What does that mean in my daily life — is trying to identify those opportunities to do things that are going to have eternal impact.
The thing that kills me Jordan about this is so often those things are deficiencies in me when it comes for the Lord. And I'm like, “Oh, yeah, I want to pray to make a difference. And what can I do that's going to change the world?” God will be like, “You need to apologize to your son for being mad at him yesterday and pray for him.” “Oh, man, you're totally right dude.” I actually need to go heal something that I did wrong, or be more active in something.
So, I do think that part of that reflection process is really healthy in this to be able to – and a part of that which is also brings the joy, we were talking about earlier is the gratitude and thankfulness for the things that God has done. Because I think we're so quickly forgetful in this society. Everything is so like immediate that bring back in, “Oh my gosh, like God has done these things in my life. God has blessed me with these relationships, with these material things that I have with these memories.” Also leads to a much deeper joy and faith because it's like, “Well, if God was faithful in the past, I can trust he's going to be faithful in the future.”
[00:30:28] JR: Yeah, I've wrote a devotion about this recently in the context of Genesis 1, where God takes the time to step back and ask what's good of his work before he asks, what's next? He steps back and he appreciates, this is good. What I made is good, and I'm thankful for it. Okay, now, what's next? It's just so contrary to the way that we live in work today, right? So, I'm curious if you've got rhythms in your life, that force you to dwell on what's good, before asking what's next?
[00:31:06] NA: Absolutely. One of the best rhythms that we have is at night when we go to bed, I try. I don't do this every night, but to ask the kids, what are they thankful for? And I say that what I'm thankful for, to kind of be like, okay, at the close of the day, what happened today that we can be grateful for? It seems simple, but often those simple things are the things that are most profound in people's life. That sort of daily repetition of being able to say something that happened in the day that we're grateful for, it just implants in my memory. I think that's really one of the strongest, and people have different methods for that. Some people do it in journaling, some people do it in like we do as a family. Some people do it for meals. But I think building a habit out of it is it's so powerful and people love it. That's another one of those areas where I feel like you can invite anybody into, who's not Christian. Just being like, “What are you grateful for?”
[00:31:59] JR: Yeah, “What's good in your life right now?”
[00:32:01] NA: Yeah. Who doesn't want to answer that? I mean, some people might be really stressed out and have a hard time answer that question or feel betrayed or whatnot. That leads to a different conversation. But it's so inviting to wish more of that in people's life. I just find that such a beautiful human connection to have.
[00:32:16] JR: Yeah, I agree. I think part of our response to this idea that our work matters forever is like a commitment to mastery. A commitment to getting really good at what we do, because we believe our work is ministry. You prove yourself to be a great founder. You guys had what appears to be a successful exit with Guideposts. What do you think great founders do that average founders don't do?
[00:32:42] NA: Having talked with and worked with a lot of founders in a lot of different levels, I think that most of the great founders that I know are, one, is they're exceptional listeners. They've listened throughout their life and their time at what they need to change in order to succeed. Because you have to pivot every business. Almost no business is the same. You launch it on day one. Day 180 or 360, you have to make changes and a lot of those changes come by like looking and observing and listening. You have to be phenomenal listener and you have to be incredibly resilient, I think is the other thing.
Fearlessly and unapologetically resilient about pushing through. One of the deep funders of my business was somebody I'd worked for previously, who's not a believer. Let's just say he's wildly successful, we'll leave it at that. And he said, “Neil, you're going to need faith for your business succeed.” He's like, “You are going to be the in those moments”, and his business almost went broke before it turned around and became wildly successful. He's like, “You're going to need faith.” I do think with entrepreneurs, and I would encourage any of you who are out there, if you're in hard times, obviously, there are times to like, hang it up. If it's truly not the right thing and restart something else. If you can't be resilient through rough times, you're just not going to succeed.
[00:34:00] JR: Yeah, to riff off Hamilton, “You don't get a win unless you stay in the game.”
[00:34:04] NA: That’s right.
[00:34:05] JR: It's interesting, we hear a lot regardless of the vocations of our guests. Number one key to mastery is listening to feedback. But I love that you've added resiliency, and in these two things, I actually think there one thing which is humility, right? Humility is a prerequisite for listening well, and accepting feedback. And humility is also critical for resilience, because if you don't have humility, you take losses really personally and allows you to quit much earlier on. Is that ringing true to you? Does that make sense?
[00:34:39] NA: I think that humility is a big part of that, and that was one of the things that we talked about, like my own resilience in this came partly because I was like, “Lord, you called me to this, and I believe that you're going to get done whatever you're planning, regardless of what I think of it.” I think that's a bit of humor, at least one approach to humility. I guess that approach to humility that I take is seeing myself through God's eyes, because it's like, well, God sees himself and other people and everyone else, and God loves me, but I'm part of this bigger ecosystem. I think that, for my business resiliency, that was a really big part of it is just being like, “Okay, I'm going to be resilient, so I'm accomplishing God's purpose.”
It also lets me be resilient, and bless other people who are sometimes competitors, because some of my competitors are Christians, right? Who are also trying to advance the gospel, and are other apps. And they'll be like, “Actually, I'm praying for them. Honestly, that God would do good things for them”, is a form of resiliency and humility, is part of that. We're more co-laborers, and yet, I still want to have a better app experience than them.
[00:35:43] JR: Exactly, of course. But it pushes both you to be better and serve people better through the ministry of excellence, right?
[00:35:49] NA: Absolutely.
[00:35:49] JR: Let's go back to little bets for a couple of minutes. How do you cultivate a culture where people are genuinely encouraged and incentivized to take bets on new risky things?
[00:36:04] NA: One thing that totally stands out, and all of my team gives me this to feedback is to, in some way, celebrate failure. If it was a good attempt, and the lessons were learned quickly. Instead of fearing failure, celebrate what you learned, and try to learn it fast. I think that this is something I've heard over and over again, from my team is they're like, this is the first place where I feel like I can fail and not have massive repercussions, as long as I fail in the right way.
[00:36:34] JR: And as long as we're learning from those mistakes.
[00:36:36] NA: We're learning from it. As a matter of fact, I am one of the first – I try always to tell people about our failures and be like, “Dude, we try this and we failed. We tried this and we fail. We tried this, and we failed. This is what we learned.” Because it comes back to that fear of failure. I think a lot of people live their frozen by a fear of failure. So, they won't take big chances, because they're so afraid of failure. This is actually a very psychological thing inside of us and they've set up experiments. I'm like an economist cycled back into that. But there's these classic things they set up where basically people are loss avoidant and it's just so true. So, if you can make failure, not a major loss, but recognition of it a learning experience and cultivate that in your team, they're much more willing to take bets.
[00:37:23] JR: Yeah, that's exactly right. Neil, this has been great. Three questions I love wrapping up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?
[00:37:37] NA: I have recommended and gifted, Vern Harnish’s Scaling Up to a number of people. He just basically summarizes so much in such a short period of time. It's such an easy read. Another one I love High Output Management by Andrew Grove and I've given that to multiple people. It's just like he helped define how we manage people in the tech space. There are some spiritual ones in there too. But I think that a couple of those are ones that I never stopped giving away.
[00:38:07] JR: Yeah. Those are great titles. Andy Grove is a genius. I'm such a fan of that story. Neil, who do you want to hear on this podcast talking about how the gospel shapes their work?
[00:38:18] NA: Peter Thiel.
[00:38:19] JR: Yeah, Peter's been on my list for a long time and I've never reached out and even made the ask. I got to do that, because I think that'd be fascinating.
[00:38:28] NA: I saw him in a faith conversation through the Church in San Francisco of Reality. A set that moderated it with another day. And it was it was crazy good. Talking about like, because he was talking about, like, you know, what about working on things that extend life like radical life extension?
[00:38:46] JR: Is this the conversation he had with N.T. Wright?
[00:38:49] NA: Yes.
[00:38:50] JR: It was so good.
[00:38:52] NA: It was insane. It was so good.
[00:38:55] JR: Yeah. So, guys, I'm sure our editors will put this in the show notes. But just go to YouTube and search Peter Thiel and N.T. Wright. I actually cited this conversation in my first book Called to Create, right at the very end. It's fantastic. They did two of them and they're both terrific. That's a great answer to that question.
Alright, Neil. You're talking to an audience of Christ followers who do a lot of different things vocationally. Some of them are entrepreneurs. Some of them are marketers. Some of them are plumbers. Some of them are lawyers. What they share is a commitment to doing great work that advances the kingdom. What's one thing you want to leave them with before we sign off?
[00:39:35] NA: I think if you have a diverse group like that, I really want to leave them with the concept that a lot of ways, like I love your Master of One, you're created in God's image to do wonderful, beautiful things this world and that's going to look different for you than it is for everybody else. What I want to really focus on with that is like, just looking at the environment you're in today and taking a step back and being like, given where the world is at today and who God is, how can I be moving in this place? Because like marketing is ministry today. There's just so many different ways that we can be moving in today's world. Just give that good thought.
[00:40:22] JR: I was having coffee with somebody the other day, and they said, “If Jesus were king of your office today, what would change? What would be different?” That's a great question. That makes it just real concrete, real practical, and whatever you think Scripture says the answer to that question, go do that thing with the gifts that God has given you, with the role that he's designed you for, go do that thing and that's Kingdom work.
[00:40:46] NA: Amen to that.
[00:40:49] JR: Neil, I want to commend you for the exceptional Kingdom work you do every day, for reminding us that all work can be ministry, whether you're at Google or the State Department, or Abide. Thank you for reminding us to abide, to commune with the Father and experience being an adopted child of the King.
Guys, if you want to learn more about Neil and his work, go to abide.co or just search for the Abide app in whatever app store you've got on your phone. Neil, thanks again for joining me.
[00:41:20] NA: Jordan. Thank you. It was a pleasure.
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[00:41:22] JR: I hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Hey, I want to hear which episodes of this podcast you're enjoying the most, and the best way to do that is by just mentioning the episode name right there in the review you leave on Apple or Spotify, wherever you review your podcasts. We read every single one of these reviews. We use the data to help inform where we're taking the show in the future. So, leave a review. Let us know which episode you love, which episodes don't, so that we could be making the Call to Mastery even better in the future. Guys, I love you. Thank you for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
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