What a Christ-like view of competitors looks like practically
What a Christ-like view of competitors looks like practically, whether or not it's biblical to set goals about “winning” and “beating” competitors, and how Peter practically cultivated joy amongst his team during the COVID crisis
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[0:00:05.4] JR: Hey friend, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast, I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians, those of us who are not pastors or religious professionals but who work as law clerks, garbage collectors, and loss prevention managers? That’s the question we explore every week, and today, I’m posing it to Peter Demos, the president and CEO of Demos Brands, which owns and operates six restaurants across middle Tennessee.
Peter and I recently sat down and went deep on this idea of competition and what a Christ-like view of competitors looks like in practice. We talked about whether or not it’s Biblical to set goals about winning and being the best in a particular market, and we talked about how Peter practically cultivates joy amongst his team, even in really scary situations like the COVID-19 crisis. Trust me, you’re going to love this conversation with my new friend, Peter Demos.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:01:13.1] JR: Hey, Peter Demos, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.
[0:01:16.8] PD: I appreciate it, thank you for having me on.
[0:01:18.4] JR: Yeah, absolutely. Hey, so I was reading in your bio, you started working in the restaurant industry really young, age of 12, as a dishwasher in your dad’s restaurant. I actually did the same job at around that same age. This is a freaking hard job, am I right?
[0:01:34.8] PD: It can be. You know, even now, it’s still one of my favorite places to be.
[0:01:39.4] JR: Oh, tell me why?
[0:01:40.4] PD: Well, you know, a lot of times in restaurants, like, when you wait tables, it just seems like it’s never-ending and you get tips, you don’t get tips but it doesn’t always seem to relate. Like, sometimes, you know you did a bad job and you get a good tip, sometimes you do a good job and you get a bad tip. With dishwashing, it’s simple. You know, you got dirty dishes going here, clean dishes going here, you see the pile, the pile goes down.
I mean, to me, it’s a lot more rewarding, and yeah, you’re more wet and your hands get a little more burned but I enjoy washing dishes. It’s just one of those things that I can just knock out and do and everyone freaks out when I do it, and that’s kind of fun too. So, but I really do enjoy it.
[0:02:16.7] JR: Yeah-yeah-yeah. It’s so funny. I love washing dishes at home, it’s actually one of my favorite breaks throughout the workday. I’m a big believer if you work with your mind, rest with your hands and if you work with your hands, rest with your mind and that’s how I rested my hands but I just remember, and I only did it a few times at this kitchen here in Tampa, I remember how scalding hot the water was. It was no joke.
[0:02:38.7] PD: It is not, it is not. Yeah, and then, the plates, when they come out, you grab them, the plates get also very hot from the hot water but after a period of time, when you get restaurant hands, when you could start like, you know, grabbing hold of hot coals and look at everybody else like they’re the strange ones. Then you got a little cool factor that goes along when the reality you only did was wash dishes.
[0:02:57.2] JR: Yeah, exactly. I do not have restaurant hands. I have city hands, these hands are good for nothing except for typing on this laptop. All right, so Peter, fast-forwarding your story, you go on, you earn a law degree from the University of Missouri and like every lawyer I know, basically decide you don’t want to practice law. Your bio says that you, “Discovered that you could better fulfill your passion for helping people in the food industry.” What’s the story there?
[0:03:26.2] PD: So, I wanted to become a lawyer, I was never allowed to skip school unless you had a fever or you had visible signs of being sick, you know? I couldn’t just say, “Oh, I’m not feeling good.” The one exception to that was, my father was a witness in a criminal case and he thought it would be a good experience and so I went and it was a weird – the guy defended himself and it became really kind of crazy.
And I’m watching this and I’m like, “Man, I really like this, I want to do it.” And then, the more I would read stories, you know, I’m reading stories of the civil rights lawyers, and lawyers that did like these amazing things helping people and class action suits, et cetera, and I’m like, “I want to help people and that’s what I want to do.” And I became a lawyer, and while I was practicing law, I was still working part-time in the restaurant.
And I realized I can impact people more on a day-to-day basis in the restaurant because I can impact our employees by teaching them how to be disciplined, you know, teaching them how to care for other things besides themselves. Customers, we care for our customers because you know, people don’t eat out because they’re hungry. I mean, a piece of bread and a piece of cheese can do that.
They eat out because they’re wanting the experience, and sometimes, it’s the highlight of their day. Whereas law, it’s so much of it is just paperwork that moves from side to side, and even if you win, it’s never enough, you still got to get paid and no one’s ever really happy with law overall. So, as a result, it just never felt like I was fulfilling my passion of helping people that way and I saw it better in the restaurant business.
[0:04:53.8] JR: Yeah, it’s super interesting. All right, so, you get this law degree, you come back to work in your family’s restaurant, Demos’ restaurant, which since, I mean, this is what? 1999 and since then, you guys have grown this to a full-blown restaurant group but something happened in your story in between 1999 and when we’re recording this 25 years later in 2024 that I’ve got to learn more about.
You actually wrote an entire book about it called, Afraid to Trust, that I’ve unfortunately not had a chance to read yet but the description really caught my attention. It says that “Before Peter surrendered his life to God, his business was his idol.” Hand raised, I can resonate with that, “And he felt immense pressure to run others over with it.” What’s the story there, what was going on 25, 20 years ago, before your surrender to Christ?
[0:05:44.1] PD: There was an immense pressure because I’m second generation. In this particular restaurant, I’m fourth-generation restaurant owner of making it perfect and just to give you an idea of kind of where our customers can be, I’ve gotten letters telling me that my mother’s rolling over in her grave because they got like a dirty spoon. People are very vicious and puts a lot of pressure on you that you have to succeed and I was a very angry controlling person.
If you asked me, I would have said “No.” I did a lot of the good things, I did a lot of nice stuff, I contributed to charities, I worked hard but in reality was, was if it didn’t go my way, you had to watch out. I used to tell people, there was a right way, there’s a wrong way and there’s my way, and I don’t care if you’re right or wrong as long as you do it my way. It was to a point where again, I thought if I couldn’t control it, then I would just basically force it.
And I had the way to force it was sometimes getting angry, throwing stuff, yelling, cussing. I was really good at cussing. Cussing, I could put cuss words in the middle of words. I mean, but you know, in the restaurant business, it’s not uncommon, you know? And so, for all of that to say, all that happen, you know, when you think you’re in control but you're really not, it creates a whole lot of stress.
A whole lot of anxiety, and which makes you more angry, which makes you more afraid, and the more fearful you get, the more I want to hold on and the more I want to be in control and then, I’m more afraid because I can’t be and you know, and just every part of my life was getting ruined but I’ll tell you this, on Facebook though, me and my family, we looked awesome. I mean, but that was the most important thing, as long as you look good, you know, in front of everybody but in reality, was, I was a mess and just didn’t – I didn’t even recognize that I was a mess, I just kind of thought that was normal.
[0:07:25.1] JR: What helped you realize you were a mess?
[0:07:26.7] PD: I grew up in a church home but I hated Christians and so, I didn’t really want to have a lot to do with it. Every now and then, I would go to church with my wife, and try to get out of it, and through a series of events that was way, way God planned, I mean, that just can’t be happened otherwise, two fights with my wife that morning, I actually got the kids ready for church in time.
It was a miracle in and of itself, ended up in front of a man named Angus Buchan, who was a South African evangelist, the movie Faith Like Potatoes is about his life and he did an altar call and I went up and my wife, she was real excited and talkative about it, et cetera, and I felt like I got conned. I was like, “There’s something wrong, like, why did I go up?” Like, I went up with free choice so it wasn’t like I was like a robot, you know, going against my will.
[0:08:13.0] JR: You felt like you were manipulated.
[0:08:14.8] PD: Yeah, afterward, I’m like, because there’s just no way that I can be moved like that because again, I’m a person who has to be in control, you know? I mean, like, there’s just no way that –
[0:08:23.1] JR: It’s the very nature of the gospel, surrendering control. So, waving the white flag, yeah.
[0:08:27.6] PD: And I wasn’t going to do that. I mean, I was going kicking and screaming, and then through another series of events, it started really about the week before, I ended up in front of him at church the following day at a meet and greet, and he asked the question. He said, “If you’re willing to die for your country, why are you afraid to speak up for God?” And no one’s ever accused me of being afraid.
You know, they’ve always accused me of being a fighter and a mean one at that and the next three days, I had to go to a board meeting for the Hospitality Association in Memphis. In the next three days, I slept for four hours wrestling with this idea of, “What does it like to be a Christian, do I need to be one?” I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t do anything. You know, I was trying to find the boxes that I had to check off so that I can say I’m a Christian.
You know, like, “You know, okay, what do I have to do?” I even looked up, “You know, can I still look at pornography if I’m a Christian? Can I still cuss if I’m a Christian?” You know, trying to figure all this stuff out and just trying to –
[0:09:21.2] JR: What are the minimum requirements of entry, yeah.
[0:09:23.8] PD: Yeah, yeah, like, you know, “What can I do just to get rid of this feeling that I have? You know, is Angus Buchan a con artist?” All this stuff and finally, the last day, I was nervous because I was just exhausted and I knew I had to drive back home and I finally just prayed and I said, “Okay God, you win, I’ll turn everything over to You.” And instantly, every fear, insecurity that I didn’t even know I had got lifted up and out of me.
And that’s when I changed but then, it’s the, “Okay, now what? Like, I just said I’d give everything to You. Like, how do I do that?” And that’s where the process really kind of started.
[0:09:55.3] JR: I love – one of the things I did skim in the book, you pointed out that after that moment, God did not take away all your problems. In fact, it sounds like, after your conversion, you experience some of your biggest failures in business, and I love these stories because I’m sick and tired of people making it sound like if you follow Jesus, everything’s going to go great for you personally and professionally, that’s a lie from satan.
Tell us more about that, tell us more about what happened, at least, professionally, after you surrendered.
[0:10:25.7] PD: I want to add on to that because you ever hear anybody say, “Oh, wow, I became a Christian and everything’s just been easy ever since.” Then run from that person. In my opinion, that is a – probably the closest sign to a false prophet that’s kind of easy to see that you can because it’s just not true and look at any of the apostles.
[0:10:41.3] JR: Look at Jesus.
[0:10:42.9] PD: Yeah, and just say, “Wow, look at what happened to them.” Like, they didn’t end up with you know, one million Instagram followers when they were done and living in the castles. I mean, that’s not what happened but yeah. So, afterward, you're on fire, no one else is, you know? And you can’t understand why nobody else is and you know, so I’m trying to navigate this and they’re, like, kind of three types of people.
There is the atheist that worked for me and they were kind of wondering what’s going on. There’s the lukewarm Christians that we’re trying to really desperately put the fire out. I call them firefighter Christians and then there were those that were very strong Christians that were so excited about it. They were hesitant, they didn’t know if it was real or not and so, trying to kind of work with it and we start changing our purpose statement to glorify God by serving others.
We started reading the Bible every day and then using Bible stories as business lessons and we got a chaplain in. So we started doing this but then, you know, then we started getting the pushback from employees. We started getting pushback from customers, we started getting, “You know, you can’t fire people because you’re a Christian.” We started dealing with the failed business, we started dealing with – I ended up on a front page of a paper saying that I was homophobic based off of my first public prayer I ever gave and they tweeted out my home address, trying to boycott our restaurants.
I mean, all this stuff started happening. I mean, praise God, it did, I mean, it’s just awesome. When you’re a threat to satan, you’re going to get some stuff back. So, it’s like, wow, that just shows you kind of what of a threat I could be and that was very encouraging in that way. So, yeah, things kind of sucked from a worldly side but from a spiritual side, oh, it’s just joyful.
[0:12:16.1] JR: All right. So, let’s look back on the years since you're conversion. I’m really curious how you think your faith is most significantly influenced how your run this portfolio for restaurants and you’ve already mentioned some obvious ones, right? Change admission statement, praying with the team. What are the deeper things, right? That have really changed about how you’re running these restaurants because of your surrender to Jesus.
[0:12:37.7] PD: There’s so many little anecdotal stories.
[0:12:41.7] JR: Those are the best, yeah.
[0:12:43.4] PD: Yeah. I mean, it’s things like, you know, for example, in 2020, during COVID, you know, restaurants – someone said it one time, the restaurant industry during COVID was like a three-legged lizard without a tail. You know, when you get to approach that with joy as opposed to approaching it with fear and understanding like, how to navigate fear, those are important.
In 2021, during the supply chain problems, I was reading in Genesis, Genesis 41, and I saw where Joseph told Pharoah, “Hey, you’re going to have seven years of good and seven years of famine, stockpiling now.” And as a result to that, Egypt became the first, pretty much, superpower, you know, at that time. We started stockpiling all of our nonperishables and got a four-week supply, and so during critical moments, we didn’t run out of trash bags.
We didn’t run out of catering supplies, and we were able to weather to supply chain crisis but ultimately, and people ask me this question a lot, and there’s – I mean, we have a bike ministry, there’s just so much we do but ultimately, I say, there’s not really a magic formula to it. For everybody listening, it’s just really, really simple, we treat the Bible as if it’s true because it is. You know, when somebody is sick, we pray right then.
When somebody is hurt, we take care of them. We do whatever the Bible is asking us to do as Christians and we live it out, not in a weird super spiritual way, and not in a way of, “You know, we don’t want to bring it up because we might offend somebody.” We’re like, “No, it’s true.” We act in all other ways of things that are true. I believe that my car will get me from here to work and that’s okay.
I act like it’s true, it’s not a big deal when I arrive and everyone celebrates when I arrive and I make it all like weird. “Can you believe this? Like, this happened to me.” Truthfully, if God didn’t want me to get there, my car ain’t going to get me there. You know, my next breath isn’t guaranteed unless God allows it. So, when we start treating the Bible as if it’s true, it’s incredible how often people just kind of look and they start questioning and they start asking.
And you just start being able to tell stories through their lives and hope that if we don’t do something about it, somebody else can pick up the baton and take it to the next level.
[0:14:46.7] JR: Hey, go back to COVID. You said something interesting, about approaching COVID with joy instead of fear and you mentioned the phrase, how to navigate fear. I think this is something that should be distinct about Christ-following entrepreneurs, and the way that we navigate, objectively, scary situations like COVID. So, what did that look like? What did you think was unique about how you responded to that crisis that could only be explained by your faith?
[0:15:17.9] PD: So, I’m a pretty new Christian, and we start out opening a restaurant and it immediately did terrible. There is a chapter in my book, Afraid to Trust, where we call it, I think, Black Friday or something like that and where we talk about like, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong and we’re losing money left and right. We’re losing friends, we’re losing. I mean, just everything that we’re putting our security in that wasn’t God was being stripped away.
God was taking it all away and I was reading my Bible at a little table that I had in my office at the time and I just couldn’t take anymore and I just fell on the ground. I just started bawling and crying and like a little kid sobbing and crying, I was so scared. I never failed at anything like that in that way before and I heard an audible voice. It just said, “That’s enough, get up and go to work.” And I did and I was sitting at my desk doing some emails.
My Bible was next to me, as it always is, and remembered, like this image came into me as I was doing that. It was something that happened when we were experiencing pregnancy problems. Somebody had – there was a post-it note at a hospital intake that was referencing, you know, Matthew six of, “Do not worry, you know, about tomorrow for today has enough worries on its own.”
And I remember that and I thought, “What else does the bible say about worry and fear?” And it led me to Philippians 4:6, which is, “Do not be anxious for anything but with prayer and supplication, with Thanksgiving, submit your request to God.” And I recognized I’m not being thankful. So, through that part of the journey, so when 2020 came, we put up blessing boards everywhere, you know, at all of our restaurants.
We couldn’t have customers inside but all of the employees that we were able to keep on, you know, we’re able to write their blessing boards down. We just approached it with an idea and this attitude of thanksgiving because what’s amazing is after 4:6 comes 4:7, which says basically, “There will be a peace of God that surpasses understanding.” and then later we see, you know what? God says, “Hey, you’ll be content in all things.”
And then 13 says, you know, “I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” We love that last verse but it really starts with –
[0:17:18.1] JR: We love taking that one out of context, yeah.
[0:17:19.2] PD: Oh absolutely. I mean, I can jump out of a plane without a parachute, I mean, obviously but it really starts with 4:6, which is when I start being thankful and I start getting that peace and then I can get content, and at that point in time, like this stuff doesn’t matter. You know, because again, if God wants a restaurant open, He doesn’t need me to keep it open and if He wants it closed, it doesn’t matter the amount of experience and skills and – that I have to keep it open.
You know, so again, when He’s your boss, and again, you treat the Bible as if it’s true, you’re just going to operate as good stewards of His money.
[0:17:53.9] JR: That’s good. All right, so when you put these blessing boards up, I love this, I love practical stuff like this. What does your team think? Were they like, “Man, are you kidding, Peter? Like, my friend just died of this disease, you’re talking about blessings.” How did the team respond to that?
[0:18:08.8] PD: They loved it. I would say, and I don’t have the exact number on it but if I had to guess, I would say, probably three-quarters of our employees are not Christians and those that are Christians I would argue maybe are not Christians.
[0:18:20.3] JR: Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, yeah, and should probably not tell others that they are, yeah.
[0:18:24.5] PD: Yeah, yeah. When they saw that change and they saw again, and we got to explain why, this is what we’re doing and we’re focusing on these things and we’re focusing on the positive things, and those boards filled up quickly, you know? And a lot of it was, “I’m just thankful I still have a job because a friend of mine doesn’t have a job.” And you know, “I’m thankful that I am well.”
“I’m thankful I didn’t get sick with COVID.” There was the fear that gripped people during COVID and I know everybody listening to this knows that fear, especially early on, that it was definitely something that was needed because the opposite of fear is not courage. The opposite of fear is trust and when you start being joyful and you start trying to be positive and things, and I’m not a positive person by nature.
I’m actually a very cynical person by nature but when you start focusing in that area, it is unreal when you realize what it does to your life, and I think it was so beneficial and helpful that we were the one place that people weren’t seeing that fear in the world.
[0:19:27.3] JR: That’s good. What a beautiful testament, I love that. Hey, I want to talk about how your faith shapes your view of competition because your publicist told me, and man, this like really got my attention. I’m like, “Oh yeah.” You don’t view other restaurants as your competition per se, tell us more about your philosophy here.
[0:19:43.9] PD: I always said even before I was a Christian that our biggest competitor is ourself. I didn’t really care that much about other restaurants. The problem was, was there would be certain restaurant owners and operators that would piss me off and when I would get angry with them, then they became my competitor, you know? So, I would drive by and look at their parking lot and I’m like, “Ha-ha, they don’t have many cars today.”
Here, there’s like this idea behind it. Well, there’s one in particular that we were very close at one point in time. Actually, he was a groomsman at my wedding, he was at the hospital for the birth of both my kids, and we had this massive falling out and we hated one another. I mean, easily say he probably hated me with as much venom as I hated him. I attended the restaurant show in Chicago. Now, to give you a context of it, there is about 30,000 people that attend the show.
[0:20:33.6] JR: Yeah, this is a big show. I know of this show and I am not in this industry, yeah.
[0:20:36.8] PD: Yeah. I mean, it’s gigantic. It’s a couple of buildings, a couple of floors in each building, and we’re waiting to get in. The union will not allow you in 30 seconds before it’s time, you know? So, everybody is crowded around the escalator to get inside and I was like, “I need to go to the bathroom while I got some time to wait.” So, we went, I went to the bathroom and there was nobody in the bathroom.
You know how weird that is, to into this gigantic bathroom, no one was in there with all these people outside. Well, you know, I washed my hands and as I turn to the corner to leave the bathroom, I mean, I am going with such speed I was smacked dab into somebody, and literally grabbed him so hard I had to hug him, look up, and it’s this guy. Out of all the places from a small town in Tennessee, 30,000 people, only two people ever in this bathroom at the exact same time happens to be him.
And literally, as I grabbed him, I felt the Holy Spirit say, “You have to forgive him.” And I immediately went to my wife and I said, “This is unreal. Like, I can’t believe I just ran into him and I got to meet him and forgive him.” So, as soon as we got back, I met with him, I begged his forgiveness. We actually talk on a regular basis now, it’s really neat to see how God healed that relationship.
But yeah, as far as competitors go again, God’s in charge of my business. He gets to control their business, I don’t get a say in it. I just can do the best that I can with the resources He gives me but other than that, everybody is you know, God loves them just as much as He loves me. I shouldn’t have them.
[0:22:02.5] JR: All right, so go back to your buddy, is he still a competitor of yours?
[0:22:05.8] PD: Yeah. Actually, I would probably argue he’s more successful at it than I am now but no, he is, and I mean, just to give you an idea, I literally sent him a text message a few days ago saying, “Hey, what do you do for your social media stuff?” And he’s like, “I don’t even do that anymore, you know, for my business.” He sent me something a few weeks before that saying, “Hey, by the way, I hear you’re switching over to this new point of sale software.”
“Here is a problem I am having, you might want to address this on the front end.” I mean, so yeah, he’s in it, you know? And I drive by his restaurant, I just drive by his restaurant. I don’t look to see if his parking lot’s busy or full, I keep my eyes on the road, and just moving. I mean, it’s just, you know his son is beginning to take over and I’m real happy for him in that area and I don’t have any desire for him or not.
[0:22:51.0] JR: I’m projecting, I am putting words in your mouth. It sounds like you think a lot less about winning, being number one, and beating the competition as you do about stewarding faithfully what God’s put in your hands. Is that a fair interpretation of what you’re saying?
[0:23:07.3] PD: I think yeah, that’s very fair because you know, we have a tendency to try to put as business owners, and this is true at every industry and I talk to a lot of business people who are Christians, that we have a tendency to try to put you know, our feet in both worlds, and we want to say that being a Christian is the things that we do that are nice and good and charitable and there’s nothing wrong with any of that versus recognizing that we have to change kind of who we are first and give up our business to God.
You know, we have to turn that over to Him, you know? And when you say, “Okay, well, how does God define success?” He doesn’t define it based off of balance sheets. He defines success as sharing the gospel, not converting people, you know we’re to share the gospel and make disciples. We’re to be ambassadors and if success is that, then that’s what we have to do, and as long as we’re continuing to operate our business to give us opportunities to share the gospel and again, not to make converts.
Part of the other problem with business people is we expect to see the results of the effort we put in, you know? But our effort, we win as soon as we share and it doesn’t matter whether or not you know, my net profit was 10%, eight percent, or at a loss. If I share the gospel, then I win, and that’s what’s important. God will take care of the rest.
[0:24:23.3] JR: I’m curious how this distinctive between winning and stewardship kind of shows up practically in your business. I am assuming you don’t set goals for the businesses of, for example, being the number one fast-casual restaurant in the market. I am willing to bet your goals are more around growing and better stewarding what you’ve got and what God’s placed in your hand. Is that right?
[0:24:47.2] PD: Yeah. You know, our goals were never concerning the market ever. You know, our goals, you know, we’re like, “Okay, we want to have a training program done by this time.” We want to maybe get our food cost down a certain percent, then we started having ministry goals. We have a bike ministry goal for employees that want to work, we give them bikes, and we want to give away 20 bikes.
And then, I was like, “You know, that’s kind of ridiculous as well because you know what? If I hire only 15 people in a year that walks to work, then I am obviously going to fail on my goal.” If I have a food cost for this goal and then you know, we have the inflation that we’ve had, obviously I am not going to be able to hit it. So now, what we just say is, is we say, “We’re going focus on one thing.”
And like this year, our one thing is training and what we’re doing is we’re spending our time focusing on training and doing it in a way but it’s going to hit all areas. We’re going to train to be better restaurant people but we’re also going to train people to be better, you know? So, we’re going to do a better job teaching our values. We’re just going to do a better job explaining things and again, why we do it and start from the top down and work our way all the way down to our hourly employees.
So, that’s how we kind of set our goals but no, if my goal isn’t dependent upon anybody else. I can’t control them.
[0:25:58.4] JR: Yeah, it’s super interesting because I would argue that’s fairly rare. I think a lot of goals for entrepreneurs are concerned with the rest of the market, right? It is about being number one, it’s about winning the category, it’s about winning at whatever, and I think that can lead to some really unhealthy spiritual places.
[0:26:16.6] PD: Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know our identity and I think we’ve messed up our identity a lot, you know our identity as a Christian is a child of God, and you can read all throughout the Bible and see all the stuff where you see our identities and who we are but we want to identify with our business so often. When God takes that business away, you don’t lose your identity if you become third.
But what ends up happening is, is that we start to identify ourselves as “I want to be number one in the industry. I want to be number two in this market. My market share needs to be here.” And ultimately, we either make it an idol or we lose sight of who we are and as soon as we forget who we are, it’s easy for satan to come in and start planting the weeds among the good crop.
[0:27:01.5] JR: I think God’s definition of excellence is so much different than the world’s. I think the world’s definition of excellence is winning, beating your competitors. Look at the parable of the talents.
[0:27:11.2] PD: Yes.
[0:27:12.1] JR: The master didn’t say, “Go beat the other guy.” In fact, the five talents served and the two talents served and got the exact same blessing, even though at the end of the day, the five-talent servant was the “winner.” I think God’s definition of excellence is simply stewardship, it’s not being the best but doing our best with whatever He’s put in our hands and yeah, I think that changes the way we think about competitors.
You know, personally, I believe that Christ's command for us to love our enemies applies to our competitors, even if we wouldn’t call them an “enemy” that strong language, and you already gave some good examples of what that looks like practically I think, Peter, right? Of texting your buddy and asking for advice on social media and him giving you a heads up on you know, this potential issue with a vendor.
But I am curious, what else might have looked like practically for other entrepreneurs listening, maybe even people who aren’t entrepreneurs but are just working in a corporate job, to love their competitors well at work? What could that look like practically?
[0:28:13.2] PD: Again, I think it depends on the context of it in the industry you’re in.
[0:28:17.8] JR: So, talk about your context.
[0:28:19.5] PD: Again, it’s kind of hard for me to look at it and say, “Well, I have all these different competitors and all these different things.” The easiest way to do it and if I am going to be looking at other restaurant owners and operators as that, I honestly think the best thing for me is I’m just going to talk to them. When I see them out, I’m going to talk to them, and I am going to share information with them that I think could be helpful to them.
You know, during the supply chain problem, you know again, we built up a bunch of stuff. Well, some of the stuff that we built up, we don’t buy anymore. We changed the way that we did with it. I didn’t try to sell it, I just gave it away to them. I’m just like, “Hey, by the way, I see you buy this type of napkins. We don’t use these napkins anymore. I got six cases, do you want them?” “Yes.” “Okay, I’m going to bring them by to you.”
But the other thing too is I think asking people for their advice and help is huge because what you’re doing is you’re showing you can be vulnerable to them, you are allowing that vulnerability. Years ago, I participated in a thing where we had to send something to everybody saying, “Hey, just tell me good things about me. I am trying to figure out what my unique abilities and unique gifts are.”
And I accidentally emailed it to the wrong person that I didn’t like very well and I didn’t think they liked me very well. They were so impressed and amazed that I sent them that, that I cared about their opinion, and that I asked this question of them and really just kind of healed that relationship in a way. You know, so I think just that our insecurities are their insecurities. I mean, they have theirs, we have ours, and it’s okay. We see the whole person, our enemies are no different than us.
[0:29:51.6] JR: It’s really good, man, I like it. That’s super, super practical, giving stuff away, giving secrets away but also just asking for their advice as a means of blessing them and showing that you respect them. That’s really good, really practical. Hey, Peter, you talk a lot about listening to God for direction in your businesses. I am curious if you could think of a past experience within the ventures, a decision you made, maybe an action you took, whatever, that could only fully be explained by you taking time to listen to the Lord for direction.
[0:30:23.3] PD: A couple of things on that. First of all, you know, when you look at the word obey in the Bible or be obedient, the root word for that is actually to listen, and I think so much we don’t spend that time listening. It is something that I am growing and some days, I’m really good at it, some days I’m not. I literally took a weekend, did a silent retreat for a weekend at a monastery just to see if I could do it. The first two hours was brutal.
[0:30:46.8] JR: Only two hours? Geez, oh man, I’m impressed.
[0:30:49.0] PD: Oh, yeah. After that I start – well, when you start kind of accepting your fate, you know, of I can’t look at my phone, and I have already walked three miles and I got to keep walking, it’s that type of stuff. There are times where you know, we listen but we don’t get that necessarily. We know what God’s asked us to do but we don’t expect the result to be the same. When I got really sick before I was healed and right before that, I had hired somebody from Christian business advice, business people advice.
I needed to hire a vice president of operations and we did a prayerful search, narrowed it down to six, we prayed, and narrowed it down to really one. My wife and I prayed before meeting with him and his wife, nothing came up. I mean, it was – and then I got really sick and what end up happening while I was really sick, he almost destroyed our company. Like, he really hurt our company financially.
He really liked to spend money and there was just a whole lot of other problems that came along with it and when I got healed and I got taken off the medicine and my brain started getting clear again and I fired him and then I was talking and I was angry. I was angry, I was like, “You know, God, I listened. I did everything You asked me to do, you know? I did it the right way, I did everything like that.”
I mean, I was angry. I was, at one morning, I was going for a walk. It was about 4:00 in the morning, and I was walking in my neighborhood and I was letting God know how I felt about His performance. Like, “You know, You messed this up.” And for the next two weeks, I mean, I read my Bible but it was because I had to, you know? There wasn’t willingness, there was no joy in that one.
But one day, I was having breakfast with a friend of mine and we weren’t even talking about it and I was leaving the restaurant and I was heading to my car and I felt the Holy Spirit say, “I didn’t bring him there for you. I brought him there for him.” And oh my goodness, like it was like somebody punched me right in my gut. Like, I started crying. I immediately repented, I asked for forgiveness and that’s when I realized sometimes when we listen to God, the result may not be what we hoped the result to be.
But again, I don’t know what God’s plan is and so, when we listen and when we get those feelings, it may not make a whole lot of sense, you know? And sometimes, we see a great reward from it and sometimes, we don’t but again, the reward may not be for us. It may be for somebody else.
[0:33:02.4] JR: It’s really good. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I hear stories and I can think of one in particular. I was having a conversation with an entrepreneur last year, like, “Oh, man, I was listening to the Lord and I felt Him calling me to make this decision and I made it and then my business took off. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And I’m like, “Yeah.” And the point they were making was, “Hey, God blessed my faithfulness and me listening to His voice.”
I’m like, “Maybe, right? But that’s not how God always works.” A lot of times, we listen to Him, we’re obedient, and He lets us fail, right? And still, we say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Amen, Peter?
[0:33:45.8] PD: Absolutely. I mean, blessed when you are persecuted for His namesake. We don’t like that part of the Beatitudes.
[0:33:51.1] JR: Yeah, skip, skip, yeah.
[0:33:53.8] PD: We want the, “Give me money so that I can tell everybody I’m blessed.” I don’t remember that being in the Beatitudes but I’m sure it’s in there because I hear it enough.
[0:34:01.6] JR: Message translation, message translation. Peter, this has been so great. We wrap up every single episode of the show with the same three questions. Number one, which books do you recommend or gift most frequently? Like if we opened up your Amazon order history, what book is showing up over and over and over again?
[0:34:19.4] PD: Oh boy, that I give to people the most. I would say probably gets narrowed down to two of them. One of them is older, it’s called, Blessing Or Curse: You Can Choose by Derek Prince and it talks about the ideas of blessings and curses and how it applies in your day-to-day life and I watch people living under a curse and they don’t know it, and I like to you know, let them kind of understand and see a lot of that.
And I think most recently because I am looking over it in my library to see kind of which ones do I have the most of right now and that is, Victory Over the Darkness, which is by Neil Anderson, and that really talks about how you could see your identity in Christ and who you are with Christ and I find that we’ve done this study, it’s not even a study, we’ve used it as a study for teenage girls going up to adults and watching their anxiety just go away when they recognize who they are.
So, I would say those are the two books that I probably ordered the most off of Amazon to give away.
[0:35:19.6] JR: Do you have teenage daughters?
[0:35:20.7] PD: Yes, I have one teenage daughter who’s 19 and a son who’s 21.
[0:35:24.4] JR: Yeah, okay, great. I got three little girls, so they’re nine, seven, and four. So, I’m going to be keeping this in my back pocket, I love that. All right Peter, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith shapes the work they do outside the four walls of the church?
[0:35:39.2] PD: So, I would say probably the person that I know the most on that who would be very, very good in that area would be Mark Whitacre, who is the – they made a movie called The Informant, about him.
[0:35:54.2] JR: With Matt Damon?
[0:35:55.7] PD: Matt Damon, that is a terrible movie. There’s actually a documentary.
[0:35:58.1] JR: I didn’t see it, yeah.
[0:35:58.8] PD: There is a documentary on National Geographic that actually does an amazing story of his life. His story of how he got saved and what he was able to do after he got saved was unreal. It was absolutely incredible. I would say that he would be one on how he did that and then really anybody, I would argue that anybody out there who has a story of that, you know, being able to stand up and be bold in the face of any type of persecution that’s out there for their faith.
And whether it’s in the workplace or outside of the workplace, I think it’s absolutely incredible. We need to hear that, we need to hear people being bold. It encourages others to be bold and so I think that’s also very good in that sense.
[0:36:45.2] JR: Well, hey, I’ll throw that out there to our listeners. If you’ve got that story of being persecuted for being bold about your faith in the workplace, let us know at jordanraynor.com/mc. We’d love to hear that story. All right Peter, before we sign off, you’re talking to this global audience of mere Christians, very diverse vocationally, who want to glorify God in everything that they do at work. What’s one thing you want to leave them with before we hang up here?
[0:37:10.0] PD: The simple answer to that is read your Bible. I’m tired of people using memes as their source of theology.
[0:37:15.9] JR: Come on now, come on, let’s go.
[0:37:18.3] PD: You know, the problem is, is that when you’re not a Christian and when I was not a Christian and I attacked Christians, it was very easy for me because people were illiterate in the Bible and Christians were – they didn’t recognize their own illiteracy on it and so it was very easy for me to trip them up, to confuse them, to talk to them, and they didn’t have the confidence and so read your Bible daily systematically.
Not as the health or skelter, I open it up roulette way of, “Oh, here’s my verse. Oh, this is my verse today.” Read it systematically. God will put the answers in front of you as you read your Bible systematically. It is so unreal how it happens and it can be these weird strange places in Leviticus or Judges and it’s not always just the normal places that you would expect it and you’re just like, “Oh my goodness, God, thank you so much.”
I mean, there’s so many times that there are answers that go that way but most importantly is if you don’t know your Bible then you can’t defend it against people out there who think they know it better than you and they don’t.
[0:38:19.2] JR: That’s good, that’s really good. Hey Peter, I want to commend you for just being an exceptional example of great work done for the glory of God and the good of others for giving us a compelling and practical picture of what Christ-followers should look like as they’re engaging with competitors in the marketplace and just for leading with joy rather than fear and for this reminder of being in the Word and not in our memes, that’s really, really good.
Hey friends, if you want to learn more about Peter, his story, his books, his work, you could find out all about it at peterdemos.org, that’s peterdemos.org. Peter, thank you so much for joining me today.
[0:39:01.5] PD: Well, thank you so much for having me, and continue doing what you’re doing because it is so important for people to know how to live out their faith.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:39:09.4] JR: Hey, I mentioned this in the episode but we’ve got a new survey up at jordanraynor.com/mc, MC for Mere Christians. It’s if you’ve got a story to share and you think it would be an encouragement to our global audience of mere Christians, I want you to fill up that survey. Talk to us a little bit about how the gospel is shaping your work. My producers review every single submission of that survey and we’d love to look at yours.
Guys, thank you so much for tuning in. I’ll see you next week.
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