Optimism about small towns and small-town businesses is rising. Small Biz Survival, the small town and rural business resource, cites that the pandemic-driven population shifts, the rise of remote work, improvements to infrastructure, and real estate developments revitalize and inspire the resurgence of America's small towns. There’s no doubt that the collective effort of community leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and the people who empower businesses and leaders are making an impact.
Our guest today, John Marsh, is one business leader who has made it his mission to redeem irreplaceable real estate in small towns across America. For the last 25 years, he and his wife, Ashley together with their team, have breathed new life into Opelika, AL, whose blueprint for development is now inspiring other small towns to achieve their own vision for restoration and revival.
Key Points From This Episode:
Tweetables:
“Our life is light shining through broken things that have been made whole again.”
“We believe that God has given us something incredible to steward which is the ability to save cities and small towns.”
“Money has never been our problem. Money follows vision, vision doesn't follow money.”
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Click to Find out more about our upcoming event: "Crafting Your Kingdom Investing Thesis"
About John Marsh
John Marsh is the co-founder of Marsh Collective, host of the Redemptification Podcast and investor helping steward over $1.5b in redemptive real estate in 12 small towns (with populations of 800-180k) around America. Over the last 25 years, John and his wife, Ashely, have guided over 60 startup businesses in various industries, such as hospitality, construction, real estate investing, advertising, and multiple restaurants. John and Ashely have renovated 280+ buildings within ten blocks of downtown Opelika to help save their city. Today, John's current focus is helping others make generational differences in communities and companies by helping patrons bridge the gap between redeeming vision, financial sustainability, and execution to pioneering a new asset class of real estate that they have dubbed as "Irreplaceable Real Estate." John and Ashely with their two sons and their families call Opelika, Alabama home.
Optimism about small towns and small-town businesses is rising. Small Biz Survival, the small town and rural business resource, cites that the pandemic-driven population shifts, the rise of remote work, improvements to infrastructure, and real estate developments revitalize and inspire the resurgence of America's small towns. There’s no doubt that the collective effort of community leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, and the people who empower businesses and leaders are making an impact.
Our guest today, John Marsh, is one business leader who has made it his mission to redeem irreplaceable real estate in small towns across America. For the last 25 years, he and his wife, Ashley together with their team, have breathed new life into Opelika, AL, whose blueprint for development is now inspiring other small towns to achieve their own vision for restoration and revival.
Key Points From This Episode:
Tweetables:
“Our life is light shining through broken things that have been made whole again.”
“We believe that God has given us something incredible to steward which is the ability to save cities and small towns.”
“Money has never been our problem. Money follows vision, vision doesn't follow money.”
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Click to Find out more about our upcoming event: "Crafting Your Kingdom Investing Thesis"
About John Marsh
John Marsh is the co-founder of Marsh Collective, host of the Redemptification Podcast and investor helping steward over $1.5b in redemptive real estate in 12 small towns (with populations of 800-180k) around America. Over the last 25 years, John and his wife, Ashely, have guided over 60 startup businesses in various industries, such as hospitality, construction, real estate investing, advertising, and multiple restaurants. John and Ashely have renovated 280+ buildings within ten blocks of downtown Opelika to help save their city. Today, John's current focus is helping others make generational differences in communities and companies by helping patrons bridge the gap between redeeming vision, financial sustainability, and execution to pioneering a new asset class of real estate that they have dubbed as "Irreplaceable Real Estate." John and Ashely with their two sons and their families call Opelika, Alabama home.
EPISODE 25
[INTRODUCTION]
ANNOUNCER: Imagine taking your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives, and leaving a godly legacy for generations to come. Get ideas and strategies to do just that when you listen to these personal stories from high-level Kingdom champions.
The Kingdom Investor Podcast showcases business leaders who have moved from success to significance, sharing how they use worldly wealth for Kingdom impact. Discover how they grew in generosity, impacted more lives, and built godly legacies. You'll find motivation, inspiration, and practical steps to grow as a Kingdom Investor.
Daniel White (DW): Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. I'm your host Daniel White. And today my co- host David Clinton and I get the honor of interviewing John Marsh. John and his wife Ashely founded Marsh Collective. Marsh Collective invests in the flourishing of people and places. They do this by renovating what they call irreplaceable real estate and starting people-centered businesses. They started out by renovating over 280 buildings in downtown Opelika, Alabama, to help save their city. They have started over 60 businesses and are now helping steward over $1.7 billion dollars worth of redemptive real estate in 12 small towns across America. Let's get right into the show.
[INTERVIEW]
DW: Welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. Hey, John, would you introduce yourself and tell the listeners a little bit about where you're coming from and who you are?
John Marsh (JM): All right, well, my name is John Marsh coming from the promised land Opelika, Alabama, think, "hope you like-a, Alabama". It's about an hour and a half south of Atlanta airport. And it's a place God called us to steward 10 square blocks for over 25 years. We love it. And so when you love a place, it makes it different. Anything that love shows up in, whether it's a marriage, ministry, in your money or in the work you do in the world, that changes everything. And so we love this place. And we've committed till death do us part to this little town in Alabama.
David Clinton (DC): That's great.
DW: Yeah, John, thank you for coming on the show. Do you mind praying for our listeners and for this time?
JM: Absolutely. God, thank you for being amazing. Your extravagant, promiscuous love and grace for us is beyond what we could dream of. God, thank you for loving idiots. Thank you that crazy people and broken people, that the redeemed of the Lord should say so and tell their story and that we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. And so today as I share, I pray that someone in the audience gets hope. And courage shows up in their heart to live a more and more dependent life in you, a more exciting life. And you built us for adventure. You're an adventurous God and you love us. And you've given us everything to use in a way that brings glory to you. I love what you love about David. David just kept pointing to you and saying when something went good in his life, he said, praise God. And so I pray that for each listener today that would point to you and the good things has happened in their life. They get down on their knees and believe you to do amazing things in their life. And they'd have what we pray for which is front-row seats to miracles, 50-yard line seats to miracles. And God, you do amazing things in their business, and their life and show them that it all matters. There's no wasted time, and everything they've gone through is part of where they're going to. In Jesus' name, amen.
DC: Wow, thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. Could you give us maybe a snapshot or flyover view of where you are today, where you came from, and how you got there?
JM: Well, today, you know, we're a turtle on a fence post. We're doing things that I can't believe we could do, and seeing things that I never believed we could really see. And that's the way God works it out. He does stuff in an amazing way. So, we've loved our city for 25-plus years. We've done 285 structures in 10 blocks. We've helped start over 60 businesses to save our town. And we've loved this place for a very long time, a deep commitment to sophisticated real estate development and entrepreneurship with love. And so that's what we've done here. We've got an incredible group of businesses that I've stewarded for 25 years as a leader, my wife five years ago after 20 years of homeschooling and taking care of most of the financials from our partner companies, took them all over. And she's doing an amazing job. So, we've got the incredible blessing of learning what it's like for me to do a step back and her to step up and see her amazing gifts, show up after raising kids for a long, long time. And so it's great to see that and we had the privilege of doing 25 years of business plus together, and this year celebrate 30 years of marriage.
So, I found myself in a really incredible place where I see stuff happening all the time around us, that our dreams come true from helping form a new asset class of real estate around the fact that historic small towns can be loved like a complex, mixed-use development and be very, very competitive over generations. And we steward 12 places now plus Opelika, over a billion and seven in redemptive real estate. And people are getting saved along the way. Because when they see, when they see love, they know something's different.
DC: That's awesome. You mentioned...go ahead.
JM: That's, that's the present. And I've got tremendous strengths for the future. I got way more vision than I got money. So, I've got a lot of incredible things I'm planning for the future and then our past is that of a beautiful brokenness.
DC: But you don't have more vision than God has money. So, that's the news.
JM: Correct. He's got it. I just got to figure out how I will be faithful enough for him to trust it to me, and I don't know if I'm a one-talent guy or five, but whatever I am, I'm going big on what I got.
DC: That's good. That's awesome. That's amazing work that it sounds like you guys have done. If you go backward in your life, was there something formative that kind of brought you to this path?
JM: It really is just our story lived out in the purpose that we used, you know, I think before we get saved, we use God's tools in a wrong way. We still have gifts and talents. But we're just using them. I mean, I think, before I got saved, I would use the gift of manipulation. And now I use the gift of motivation. So, the only difference I see between manipulation and motivation is why you do it. Sure has a lot of the same things. So, my parents had tried for 13 years to have a child; adopted me, and 18 months later, had my little brother. And so, they were quite surprised that they can even have a child and they love me and spoiled me like crazy. I mean, they have poured their life out for me and I won the lottery in parents. But at 13 years old, I decided to step across lines that I knew was wrong to God and wrong to my family and slept with a little girl who was 12 and I began to rebel.
And something about rebellion. Some people just choose to rebel. I mean, I rebelled. My brother didn't. We ate the same Cheerios. There's something inside of us. It wasn't their parenting. It was something that was with me. And so, what ended up happening is, I rebelled. And the thing about rebellion is once you feel rejected, you act rejected and then you behave rejected and it's a vicious cycle. So, I ended up by 17 years old, I had really gone deep into that. I'd learned how to make some money. At 14, I apprenticed in a high-end audio shop, and by 15, I was making $1,000 a week in cash after school. So, money and girls showed me the acceptance I'd never experienced before. And I started getting so longing for acceptance. And by 17, I committed to not try drugs, and so did my friend and he tried them and I tried them and I became a drug addict till I was 23. I met my wife when I was 19, she was 18. We were married by the time I was 21, she was 20. At 23, I was a million and a half dollars in debt, $99,000 overdrawn, went through a divorce with my wife. She had left me for one of our employees who happened to be one of our bankers’ sons.
I was hooked on meth, and went to the attic in my house to kill myself because I kept hearing these words, "take your life, take your life" and "kill yourself, kill yourself". And those words rang in my ear and they became the only solution that I can see. It's a lot of the enemy to say, kill yourself when we're supposed to die to ourselves. It's a lot of the enemy to say, take your life when it should be, lay your life down. It was the right thought acted out in the wrong way. See the enemy perverts truth. And when I got to the attic in that house and got on that old plywood floor and cried out to a God who I'd never met before, (indiscernible) past events. Every hair on my body stood up and he poured his love out on me and transformed me. But I didn't quit drugs, they quit me. I had an experience with the king of the universe. I came back down out of there and my wife was at the house, I said, baby I got to say, she's like, you're a liar.
So, I continued to watch her go out on dates for about a year with somebody else. My God worked on me and healed me. And the first thing God asked me to do after I got saved and configure out what he was saying to me was to go ask the guy she left me with to forgive me for being a bad boss. And so, God's been gracious to me because I was an idiot that got saved. And he's taken everything I went through and made it part of where I was going to. So, everything I'm doing today, I can't take one thing out of what I've been through and say I could do what I'm doing today. We see beauty in broken things. We show up and see amazing things happen. And we do sophisticated real estate development and business with love. Enough that it makes your Sunday school teacher in your economic state, you're happy. And that ain't easy.
DC: That's amazing. That's such a beautiful story. Were you already involved in refortifying your city in the midst of this? Or did it happen after Jesus found you?
JM: It happened really after. We had just done that one house that now, in fact, four days or five days ago, my son bought the original house where our marriage was reconciled. We've been there 14 years when we moved, but he just bought it and he's moving back. And it's just interesting to see the whole story, The redemptive nature of God is beyond anything I could imagine. He can take, you know, thought about it, think about your marriage like a vase. You just throw it on the ground, and it shatters in a million pieces. And you go, oh, God's gonna make this thing look great again. It's gonna look like crap. It's like all glued, there's nothing left. But what I realized, God's gonna take the thing I had and build something new with it. What gave me a great example of this are some windows in the beautiful church in England, where during a war, they got blown out, and they had saved for a long time to get these beautiful mosaic windows, murals, I mean. They got blown out, and they were all on the floor, and the people couldn't afford to rebuild them the way they were. So, they took them and made mosaics out of them. And when the light shines through the brokenness, it's beautiful. And that's our marriage. And that's our life. So, our life is light shining through broken things that have been made whole again. And so, that's what we do in real estate. That's what we do in businesses. That's what we do. So, it's just completely amazing that I get up every day. And I feel like a mosquito in a nudist colony. Opportunity everywhere, and I don't know where to start.
DC: That's amazing.
DW: So John, can you talk about how really, you and Ashely work together? And maybe how that started? And how do you work well together?
JM: It is absolute suffering. And a lot of it, it's not easy. I mean, you think about it, most people have trouble, we call fussing heated fellowship. And so, it's easy to have heated fellowship when you just see your spouse after work every day. Imagine when you're sleeping with the bill collector, or the person that's running all this stuff. You get sideways at work, you're sideways at home. Now, I think the cost is great but the reward is greater. And so, what we've done is we've pulled business tools down into our marriage, and we run our marriage in a sophisticated way, like a great business. And we use the same tools at work and at home to glorify God, and to love one another and do good work. And so, I really think I won the lottery now. But it's taken a long time. I mean, I don't want people when we talk about this, some of you hear how intentional we are. I don't want to, I don't want you to think that, it didn't happen in a short period of time. It's 25 years of doing push-ups when nobody's looking. And so, nobody can do push-ups for you. And I know whether you've been doing them or not. So, if you want this, know that it has a high price to pay. If the price is clear, the price gets easy. But when the price is fuzzy, no price is cheap enough. And the price to this is I get to talk about waterfalls and deals and hang out with my wife in business settings and then go home and get naked with her. And that's, that's strong.
DC: The best of both worlds there, ain't it?
JM: Again, it is amazing. I mean, I think about it sometimes. I think, how in the world do I get to have a life like this with a wife like this? Everything I've dreamed of, I've found in her committed to God.
DW: Talking for a minute about the business side of things, what do you think made you successful in business and real estate? What are some of the keys that you can share with us in that?
JM: And I'd say the same things as home. Number one is, knowing who you are. If you don't know who you are, you're trying to be somebody else. Identity drives behavior, right? I mean, if you tell me what your identity, I'll know how you behave. And so that's why Christ came to change our identity. Because he knew, it was the heart of the whole matter. That's why we're, we're a new creation. So, if you know who you are and know how you're wired, and there's a lot of that that God has done. So if you're five-foot tall guy, don't spend your time trying to dunk. I mean, you may can but it's not. So, I learned that I'm up, there's two things we tell every couple. If you can figure out these two things or in business, if I only knew two things about meeting a client, or a customer or a vendor, or even our subcontractors or whatever. If I know, are they a future voice or a present voice? That's very powerful. So that means, do they start in the future and work back to the present if it's compelling enough? Or do they start in the present and work out to the future if the data proves enough?
So I'm a future voice working back to the present, Ash is a present voice working toward the future. So, a lot of times our heated fellowship would come out because I'd say, you're a dream squisher. Every time I come to you with a great idea. All you do is ask me these penetrating questions and blow the whole mood. How are you gonna pay for it? Who's gonna ensure that? Who's who's on the team to do that? Dreams are tender, and you're just blowing them out of the water. I said, you're a dream-squisher. So, I just said, hey, I'm gonna promiscuously vision with others. I'm not visioning with you anymore. I'm gonna go get the vision and come back and then just sell you hard on it. Because I know God won't bless it if you're not in it. But I'm not letting you do it with me. And if I would have known, she was bringing her best by working present to the future, and I was bringing my best by working future to present, that would have changed everything.
And what I needed to do is build her bridge. So now, whether it's work or home, I play the visionary. She plays an integrator, which is out of the book, "Rocket Fuel", the visionary integrator, an EOS book. And what it's done for us is allowed us to give each other space. And so, as an integrator, we have a weekly meeting as husband and wife, just like we do in our business. And we talk about, the top of our meeting is the top three to five things she needs to do and I need to do. There are priorities. The next things are every company, our kids, everything in our life. And then the last section of it is vision. And she does all that and when we change locations, we do the detail portion to get her needs met. And then we do the vision board and to get my needs met. So we get outside somewhere else. And I said, all we need to do today is say, hmm, tell me more. Oh, this is interesting. And I said if you just keep saying that, I'm gonna keep getting more excited. You don't have to say anything else and just listen. And so, that's how she allows me some space to vision and dream because I don't know what I really think till I say it. Sometimes, I have to hear myself say it at the whiteboard with somebody, the ideas and she said, if it keeps coming up three or four weeks in a row, I know it's something we need to look more closely at. So that's one thing that works in business and marriage. So, that is critical.
Second thing is - do you function from a place of feelings or from a place of thinking? Okay, Ash thinks her way to feeling. I am an odd man that 20% or 25% of all men feel their way to thinking. Most men are thinkers. That's why they're low, "kill it, shoot it, fix it”. They're just like, boom, boom, boom. I don't come at it that way. I come at it from an emotional standpoint. I dream it. I feel these strong emotions. And then if they're strong enough, I'll work through the details to think it out and work with others. So, we're compatible opposites. And, I've learned the power of working with those people who don't see the world the way you do, but honor. And so that's what I could encourage to do anything, thinking-feeling, future-present, whether it's in your company, whether it's in your community, or whether it's in your family, or your kids. Those are game-changers.
DW: Yeah. That's good.
DC: That's neat. I'm curious what kind of roles in the business do you play practically versus your wife? What kind of practical roles do you bring to the table?
JM: So when we lay it out, again, we use a similar visionary-integrator framework out of EOS. So, as far as the very tops of all of our companies, still have five companies. When I turned them over to Ash, we have 14. We've got five companies that we run now - construction, real estate development, we've got coaching-consulting content and helping cities, we've got leasing, we still have about 200 properties in the 10 blocks that we have developed and also an events business. We do event venues in our community there. We're building a whole community right now, about a $40 million development of boutique hotel, multiple event space, multiple restaurants, and all these things right in the heart of our city. So what I do, at the very top level, I have a board seat, I play a visionary role. And I bring vision and hopes and dreams to things and curate that. And then for practicality within the businesses, primarily, I'm the lead generator of business for all the cities we curate. And I run the consulting content creation in that business because it's a pioneering business. It's still in its infancy in some ways, we're about seven years into this, doing it in other cities and doing it at scale. Our largest city has about, you know, close to $200 million worth of assets, Winter Haven, Florida and has about, raised about $80 million from 60 locals in a community development fund.
And so this scale, it has taught us a lot like, what did we do in Opalike that could work anywhere? And so that's what we've been working on and I've been pioneering that. Also, with one of my team members, Ty, writing a book on the subject right now, should be done in about four or five months on this topic of irreplaceable real estate. So they're irreplaceable built by people who don't live anymore, with materials we don't have anymore, methods we don't do anymore, and entitlements we can't get approved anymore. And so this is kind of how we redeem cities. And so we believe that God has given us something that's incredible to steward which is the ability to save cities and small towns. And so I play that role, kind of think-innovation, envision. Ash runs all the practical aspects of the businesses. And it's just an incredible, incredible opportunity to do it. And I'm having the time of my life.
DC: Are your kids involved in the business too?
JM: They are. And just more recently, our oldest son is 28 and he had started a business, a wine concept that had the largest selection of wine by the glass in the world. Close to a thousand wines by the glass and operated in our city for almost eight years. And he decided to sit down, I want to homeschool my daughter the way you did me. So I need some more time. So, why don't you come help us in the hospitality via consulting? Just give it a try and see if you like it. And he's just flourishing. I mean, he's helping launch all types of hospitality concepts and things to our business.
And then our youngest is going to school. He's tactical like me. He's going to school for gunsmithing. It's what he loves. And then he's working on the construction crews on the side, enjoying it. So, what a privilege. That's not easy to make work and be healthy. But we found a way so far, it's really much better than I'd hoped for. It's really a hard thing though. Because we say you wear these different hats. So think, with my oldest I wear the dad hat, I wear the granddad hat. I wear the fellow believer hat and I wear the trusted counselor hat but now also wear the balls hat. And so which one got mad at him?
So and what happens, and what we miss is these hats. And what we say is you have to honor which hat you're wearing. Like we were in a meeting the other day and I said something that only a dad should say. And as we came out Ash said, you know you said something from the dad hat and that's not right. I had to go back to get the whole team and say, I was wrong, will you please forgive me? I had no place to say that. That was something only a dad can say. No one as your boss would say that. And so we've done that. Also, he calls me John at work and dad outside of there which helps some. And I call him, Nel there which is short for Nelson. And then I call them all kinds of endearing names away from there. Buddy, I love you. We just try to manage it. And it's not easy, it's not perfect but it's really really rewarding when it works.
DC: That's cool. It's great.
DW: So John, you were talking that you're a real visionary. And I wanted to kind of go back to the first vision that you had for your own city. And what did that look like at the very beginning? And how did it actually unfold and did you anticipate a lot of the things that happened or can you talk a little bit about that?
JM: Sure. And one thing I would say oftentimes it's a journey that looks like a detour. I can look back now and it looks like it all made such great sense like the front bright side of a tapestry from my thing flip it over. And then you know people used to tell, our lives seem so tangled and I said the only difference in tangled and woven is intention. God has intention in what he's making. We just don't see it. So it really just started, I was in automobile business. Me and Ash we built tow Dolson, had a salvage yard for 12 years. And that's a very difficult way to make a living. We started doing houses just because we bought an old junky house. And I fell in love with it. And normally guys love has guided me. Love and peace are something that cannot be manufactured by the enemy. It’s niche market. He's the prince of peace. And God is love. So if you have those two, you can make intel where stuff is moving. And I have been wise enough to know where I have favor. And favor is that supernatural blessing beyond what you should do. I mean, and so I started doing houses and I loved it. I was picking up guys on work release who needed Jesus, they're messed up like me. And I was telling them about Jesus, and we're fixing stuff. And they didn't lay out because they didn't want to be in jail all day. And we started fixing houses, and I did one and I got done. And I said, what are you gonna do? Let’s do another one. She's like, do another one. I said, I'm loving this. This is incredible. And I said, I really love the guys and seeing something broken.
And I mean, the first building we bought in our town, we bought for $13,000. And we didn't have the money, so the owner financed it to us. It started this opportunity and then moved into where I started seeing there's something to this. This actually has power to it. I mean, I didn't know there was financial potential within real estate. I just thought it was really cool. I loved old houses. I thought, man, this is like, if this is like gold, if there's gold in there, all I gotta do is go dig this beautiful wood of trees that have grown from atom till we cut them. They’re beautiful and amazing and so they're valuable. And so, but then I started seeing it as a project. And that's the real shift when I began to see our downtown as a complex mixed-use development, and where the good Lord started showing me through favor like I'd work on one side of the street and be blessed. And the next side, it would be pressed and I'm like, self, the deprecation keeps hitting the ventilation on that side of the street. I think I'll stay on this side. And I know that sounds silly to some people, but the places we steward those boundaries of goodness, I believe are the place that I'm held responsible. The supplies in my favor because the God says, hey, your gifts will make room for you and give you a place before kings and men and God's shaking the world out of a little bitty place. And I believe it's just simply because we're faithful not because we're intelligent. Because we just ain't quit doing what He told us to do. And if you want to know where God's waiting and he's waiting right back in the last thing he told you to do, you didn't do. It's right over there.
DC: How many cities have you helped others do the same with or have you worked on other cities that are not your own as well?
JM: Yeah, we're in 12 different cities now from the westernmost Arvada Colorado, northernmost Aledo, Illinois, and southernmost Winter Haven, Florida, all stewarded. Here's the only way we can do it, we got to have a person of peace which we call a patron. That's someone who has that condition of peace that God puts in a man or a woman for a place. And then secondly, we got to have "Five I's" represented on the team - influence, ideas, intercession, implication, and investment. And see most people think it's just investment, money has never been our problem. Money follows vision. Vision doesn't follow money. And most people think money is a problem. It's never the problem. The problem is always clarity of vision. And clarity of vision helps you accelerate towards your goal. And if you think about it, the Bible says, without vision people perish. So, wouldn't we think that vision is the answer for perishing predicaments? If a city's dead, it's because it has lost vision. And in the city-building business, remember, we started in a garden and we end in a city. Cities are his ideas, not our ideas. And he said that we're the people that bring beauty from ashes and we're the redemptive people, they should know us by the way, we love one another and by the things we live out. If our feet don't line up with our mouths, they're not gonna listen to us.
DC: Sure. Right. And so these 12 cities you talked about are the ones you've worked on.
JM: We are working on.
DC: You are working on now. And does this get initiated from a vision God gives you? Or is it, somebody comes from that city and says, I have a heart for my city, I don't know what to do.
JM: It's all relational. I have no clue what God's gonna do next, and most stuff and the hardest life to see is mine. Everybody else's life seems pretty clear when I look at theirs. But mine is like, oohh, so confusing, difficult. And God built us to need others. We believe in the multitude of godly counselors, there's wisdom. So my wife and a number of other godly counselors have veto power in my life because I think everything I want to do is great. And I pooped in the pool when I had the chance. I mean, I messed stuff up. I mean that's what happened in the garden, we went stupid right? And we can do that but there's protection and having godly people around you that you're willing to share your art with and a few people that you have nothing to hide, nothing to lose with. So, they approached us and we just ask, hey, God, are you in this? Like, people said, well, how do you pick the cities? I said, well, I don't pick cities. So, what are you doing? I said, I love leaders. I'm devoting myself to a person not to a place. Now I would squirt bottle for the men that I've committed my heart to help. And so everyone that's our client, we have committed to in some way to the dream and the vision they have, not the one we have.
We're general contractors for vision to help them bring that to pass. We help solve social, spiritual and economic problems and create flourishing in a place. And to us, we don't do it through benevolence because that's not how, I don't like fig trees don't make it. I think Jesus didn't like fig trees that don't make figs. I mean, you go by the figs at Kroger's and stick them on a bush and go buy the figs at Kroger's and stick well on the bush, and pretty soon you got the same old, fig tree. That's so foolish and sometimes so we don't think you go buy about a figs at Kroger's and that be a system. Now some of these things get started to benevolence, but they do not have a long shelf life if they do not actually have the life in them to produce social, spiritual and economic capital. And what we say is that flourishing is when the people that have the least of spirits in the most. That's flourishing for us in a blank.
DC: Wow. That's really good.
DW: That's really good. So, what is the first thing that you do when you have a vision? Maybe God has put this vision on your heart and what's kind of maybe the first couple of steps that you take to move towards that?
JM: I actually learned it when I was broken and stupid. Because remember that million and a half dollars in debt, we had to work our way out of that hole. So it took us seven years of repinning one check at a time to get to zero. We were like zero, yes! We thought we won the lottery getting to zero. So, if you're sitting today listening to this and you got to zero, you're up. You're in an enviable position. Because a million and a half lessons, zero is worse. And so one thing though, that God showed me there, and I think it's still in everything we do is the principle that I learned in fishes and loaves, That God's Kingdom measure, manage, he multiplies. You think about those fishes and loaves, they counted. He said, hey, what we got, I said, we got one happy meal. Okay, how many fish in loves, he sits them down in groups of 50. He blesses it, he breaks it. And God multiplies it. And so God showed me, if you'll be faithful to measure-manage, I'll be faithful to multiply.
And so if you look what we have to ask ourselves, there's some real questions we ask. There's three primary questions we ask about a city, but underneath every one of those under our personal life and our business life is a plan, not having a plan is a plan. It's just a bad one. Man plans his ways and God orders his steps. God likes planning. I mean, you want to know how long-range planning God is? For the foundation of the world, Christ was crucified. So before it ever started, he had a plan. And that shows you how amazing he is. So he loves planning. And I think it's part of something we get to do that not because he needs it, but we need it. There's pushups that help us. But it's amazing. So at home, we plan with Five F's - faith, family, fun, fitness, and finance. We've got a sophisticated plan on every one of those for our marriage. So if you got a better plan for your money than you do your marriage, I want to ask you why. It should be sophisticated, clear, and just as detailed. So that's home.
In business, the first three questions we ask about a town is, who are you? What's your identity? Who do you serve, and who's going to pay for it. If you don't know who you are, and you don't know who you serve, you're never gonna find anybody to pay for. And so, most places have forgotten who they really are. We don't go places and do the Disney-fication thing. You're gonna be the Silicon Valley of the South, ain't gonna happen. Go be who you are. If you're a midget, don't be trying to dunk. Whatever you're in. So, when you find out who the town is, and just reveal who God made them to be, and that's the word I created, Redemptification, which is our podcast, but also what we do is returning people and places to their intended beauty or glory.
God put beauty and glory in every person in every place. And we're just helping reveal it. We're just just kind of getting stuff back out of the way that got put on it. And then who do you serve? Serving everybody is serving nobody, whether it's in our businesses that we build or in those cities, we ask ourselves, who is going to be our avatar? Who are we serving? We're serving, you know, whatever it may be wealthy ladies between 30 to 50, or whatever. But you can't serve everybody. That's not a good plan, right? And then the last one who's gonna pay for it? Money follows vision, that clarity of vision helps you accelerate towards your goal. We did a church out in Arvada that we helped. They wanted to take their 100,000 square foot of real estate and impact the vulnerable families in their community. And we helped them build a plan to do that. And the minute they rolled out that plan with clarity of vision of social, spiritual and economic capital, they've raised over $9 million to pull it off just by showing because it went from impossible to possible to probable. And again, Apple was impossible till it was possible. And then once I showed it to us, now, here we are, and it was already existing things connected together in an intentional way. And so whether it's business, marriage, or the towns we work with, it's all intentionality around understanding what you're building.
DC: Already existing things put together in an intentional way. That's so powerful, and you know, like making an iPhone or a community, you know, we're not to invent something that was never there before. We need to find connections between things that make sense in a new way.
JM: What Todd says is great honor, that he says, John, God showed me that we got to be faithful with what's been given. I mean, start with what's being given. So often, I mean, you know, when I got saved, all I do is keep it and I still do to this day. I keep up with every penny I touch. Like, I can tell you how much I spent in hair care in the last 25 years. I mean, I know every penny and you go say, hey, every penny, that's a little obscene, I'm gonna say every penny. And the reason I do that is because I feel my heavenly father gave me money again after I went stupid. And I told him, if you will entrust it to me, I'll tell you where it went. Because someone works for us and can't say where they spent the money. They're not gonna have a job. All right. And I didn't want to get fired. I want to stay in my father's business, in the family business.
And so I said, If you give me money, I'll honor you. First, I'll tithe every penny I get my hands on, I'll be generous, instead of giving gold just like a living gold. That was one of the things. I met a man early on that really he let me borrow his hope and faith in me. He was, his name is Don Martin. He grew up in a middle village with a high school education and helped build the largest real estate company in the world at Century 21. And he told me, I'm gonna treat you like my son. I was like, oh, all right. And he said, but I'm not giving any money. He said, I'm gonna teach you everything I know. He said, but we got to answer three questions first for me to make sure you're ready. Number one is how much is enough? Number two is, what are you going to do when you get enough? And number three is once you have a living plan, are you going to have a giving plan? And suddenly people are spiritually constipated. They're taking it in and they putting it out? And they're sick? And so people want to know what the key to our success is. We've been faithful.
DC: How much is enough? What are you gonna do when you get enough?
JM: What's your living plan and giving plan?
DC: What's your giving plan?
JM: So, we set giving goals every year, just like income goals. Because the only thing that will break great over our life is generosity. If not, that thing gets out of control. And so generosity keeps that at bay. And Ash and I worked really hard to get that. And our goal and our dream is to give away more and more houses. That's one of the big things we love doing. We want to meet them and change people's lives by giving them a paid-for home. That's something that's powerful. And it's something we're started doing in our community. And we'd love it and something can do quietly and come in passionately. And just see the difference that somebody who may never, who never really could have gotten there. And so we're trying to be giving while we're living, and so we're knowing where it's going.
DC: That's fun. That's so exciting. What are some of the things that the failures and the things that you've learned that maybe you didn't expect to learn along this path?
JM: The failure list is long, long. I mean, this is my biggest and best list of all. So it's hard to pick my favorites, but there's a lot of them. So one of them I think that thing that I'm most have disappointment over is that I hurt people along the way. Playing amateur providential lust in people's lives, I would see their needs. I would see them as gifts, and I would put our capital and wisdom behind them, and instead of them falling off a one-storey building and hurting themselves what they could afford, I'd take them to the top of a 10-storey building. And so one thing I learned and Oswald Chambers speaks to this in his book, my source is his devotional is don't play amateur providential in other people's lives. And so we built systems to have wisdom about who we invest in and how we invest in them. And we don't want to give them more capital than they have character. Because if you do, it's just a bottle rocket with a stick snapped off, lots of power, no direction. So we've done that a number of times, we hurt quite a few people that way that I really love and lost relationships. So that's one.
Another one, we created this, our first real powerful restaurant in our community, which that's part of what we do is food and beverage. We can't build a great city without good food. So much meaningful happens at the table, you decide who to marry and where to bury, you know, we end up in the kingdom, there's this big meal, so God's big on eating good food. And so we build these iconic restaurants in service of saving towns because you don't go to a town, man had the best experience of my life, this little town in Kentucky. Wow, what you have there? Ruby Tuesday's. Nobody's saying that. Because their goal is disappoint you at a Rachel stand. That's what their hopes are. So we have to build iconic things that are transformative, but we built one here in our city. And it was flourishing. We partner with these guys in it. And we did the real estate and had a percentage-based lease built, all the TI everything and they operated.
First year, they thought it would do 700, did a bit. Not a million and two. Second year, they never thought it’d do more. Maybe two, a million and seven. Third year, did almost $3 million. And it was just pumping cash. I mean, it was crazy. And, and they said, well, we got an offer to sell the business, business only because you own real estate for million dollars. And we agreed to it. And it was a huge mistake, because, here's the mistake. So the guy had worked with Darden group, he had worked with Red Lobster for 19 years, and then worked with Outback for about 11 years. So, almost 30 years in the food business with Darden. He bought it and it lasted less than 24 months, and he drove it in the ground. And what I learned is he was good at running Darden system, but he didn't have a system. It's the difference in playing music on a keyboard that has, you know, hooked to a computer and playing jazz. And so, there's the difference in someone who can make and build 747's and who can fly on those, two totally different things that cost about a million and a half dollars at one thing right there.
DC: Because your real estate value went down when he crashed the business, is that...
JM: Yeah. Because, we're a percentage-based lease and so and they still haven't got it back. I mean, it's still not what it was from before. So it just, I mean, it was a mess and it's still never come back. And I just realized, these systems one thing we do for the restaurants we launch all over is we build franchise systems for the disenfranchised. We come along and build the operating system they need from accounting, back of the house, wiring together with inventory, labor, all those things that big sophisticated restaurant chains have but mom-and-pop's don't.
DC: I wonder if you could buy back that restaurant now that it's gone, you know, terrible situation. He's probably dying to get out of it.
JM: But he's out, he got a divorce, blew up his life and all that stuff. So original guys are back but the loves go this site, hey I married my stepsister. They don't have it. And these businesses take on the character the man or woman that stewards them. And so now we're very careful. Again, picking the person. It's the game changer. We spend more time when someone wants to open a restaurant, we have them send the people in and we do a two-day intensive that we evaluate these people on how they're wired by God and what gifts they have. And we're picking people not project. You can't make a good deal with a bad guy. And it's real hard to make a bad deal with a good guy. Yeah, a bad deal with a good guy turn into a good deal
DW: So John, what is the greatest investment that you've ever made?
JM: Loving my wife, loving her well, having a vision for my marriage and loving her because you washed your wife with the water of the word and present her back to yourself. And no man can bless himself more than loving his wife and truly loving her and because, I mean, it's just the most important relationship on earth to me. And then I work hard at it. I mean, we put more work than people think is normal or right into our marriage. And we work harder on ourselves than we do on our job. And so, but I get the fruit of that. I am excited, she's gonna be home in a little bit, I can't wait to see her. And there ain't nobody on earth I want to spend more time than her. And I think she's hotter. And I chase her more now after 30 years of marriage than I did when I first met her. And so there's nothing like, she said, so we can make twice the money and half half the amount of time we have, we wouldn't do it. So, it's the best investment I've ever made.
DW: So John, speaking to somebody who really wants to grow in their generosity, what would you say? Or maybe, maybe key that you've learned about generosity that helped you grow in generosity?
JM: Well, I mean, I've had a different journey. And I don't, I don't claim that people's is like ours. But I mean, at times we were broke, God has borrowed to give. And generosity is an act of obedience. It ain't supposed to feel good. It can feel good, but just gotta be good. It's like again, when you work out, don't feel like anything's happened. I used to think this the dumbest thing ever. You work out and I said, we will get every hour you work out back. I said, that's a bad investment. I'd like 1.25 back or something. But I never realized all the benefits on top of the same way with generosity. And nothing's too small. I love the way my wife does it. She taught our boys in a way she would be going through the drought. And she said, if y'all ever want to bless the car behind us, you just tell me and you can pick and I'm gonna do it. Or she just teach them little things like and so we, you know, we just try to be conscious of it. We try to care when we see somebody's card not going through the grocery store. We say, hey, can you get that? Just little stuff, but then big stuff? I mean, when's the last time you took $100 out of your pocket? Put it somebody's hand and give a little holy handshake? Yeah, when's the last time you just did something that you knew got you out of your comfort zone. And so we just tried to do that we're not perfect in it. But um, it's easy to tots, that thing? I don't think so. Oh, that's this. Listen, you do what you want, oh, I'm doing the system I got I want to God chose me to do I'm doing that thing. I'm not gonna have any untied dollars.
So I don't want a relatively faithful mate. I want total faithfulness. So that's what I'll be working toward. And I'm not saying that. But with money, it's easy. The hardest thing to do is to be generous with your time. And it's the number one thing that can involve us as I just am attracted to people who are hurting in their life, and we just were helping reconcile for broken marriages right now. And we've helped reconcile over 200 throughout our marriage. And so but I can mess stuff up by doing that. So I'd say generosity, have a, have a tender heart, have a plan and the most importantly, be aligned with your spouse. If you make a decision without your spouse, that's a half-brained decision. Two people became one thing. And so if you don't have clarity of vision, you got that vision.
DC: It seems to me that you're saying the strength of your marriage is directly related to your generosity.
JM: We say generosity and marriage is the number one place. If I'm not generous with Ash, I mean, you can't export what was not imported. And most people are not, I mean, just, here's a good prayer. God, treat me like I treat my wife. See what you think about that one. No, I mean, I tell her, I said, if there's something around this place that I can do that shows you I love you, you tell me because I will do it. Now, if you don't care, I don't care and I'm paying somebody. So, there's all kinds of stuff I don't do. But the things that she said, those things make me feel loved when you do it. Oh, that's my total job, I'm the gas pump for love. You know, I want to do that. So she keeps tasking me and I've gotten real good at some things. I wasn't very domesticated for like the first 20-something years of our marriage, but lately, I've gotten better. If there's something that means something to her, I want to do it.
DC: That's great. I'm gonna ask my wife that today.
JM: But the number one question, I'll give you my best question that I got for marriage. Okay. I got a lot of questions because I love asking questions. I'm curious as can be, is when Ash and I were going through brokenness, we tried to reconcile and started to add, I was like, well, I don't know how to love her. Because I thought love is the high jump bar that God you know, put on us. Oh, love is patient, calm, long-suffering, hold no record wrong. Good Lord, I'm song. If this is what you're expecting of me. I can't do it. And he's like, oh, yeah, I know that and that's why Christ came. You know, as they can ask, I have to do that. But God said love is not the high jump bar for you how I want you to treat others, it's how I'm planning on treating you. So once I said, well, how do I get love into a loveless relationship? Because the degree you love someone is to the degree you can hate them. And I hated Ash as much as I love her. She did the same.
So I asked God, please help me. And so the question was this, what is the one thing I can do, Ash, to show you I love you that I'm not currently doing? The number one thing. Not ten, I know you got ten. Number one. And she said, don't throw sweaty socks on the floor inside out, I hate it. And then boom, that fast, she knew. And I thought, you'll never pick another one up again. I said, every time you look at that laundry basket, you're gonna say this guy's crazy about me. And so, we rebuilt our marriage on sweaty socks. And so any pathway of love can change everything. That same question worked with my kids. I asked our oldest, I said, what does your daddy do that when he does that you feel the most loved? He said, take me everywhere you go, daddy. That's what makes me feel loved. But the backstory with that thing with Ash is, years later, we're in therapy. And we realized that she grew up in an abusive home. And when her dad came home, she would pull his boots off and his socks off as a little girl and shove those in her arms and those sweaty socks. And I was making her feel like that. She didn't know that. I didn't know that. But, God uses a way to start setting my wife right. And so, I encourage you. Just ask that question. What is the one thing I could do to show you I love you that I'm not currently doing? The number thing? And when they give it to you go big on it?
DC: Yeah. That's awesome. So life-giving.
JM: It gave us a marriage. I mean, so that's the foundation.
DW: So John, before we enter the Mentor Minute, is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience?
JM: Just that thing, 20% of the people listening to this probably are thinking about suicide. And don't believe the lie. When you hear kill yourself, God's going down to yourself. When you hear take your life, God's going lay it down. Everything you've ever dreamed of as wrapped up in the King of the universe. He is crazy about you. If he's got a refrigerator, your pictures are on it. And everything you're looking for, you go find in him if you'll just give up.
DW: All right, who is the most influential person that you know, and how have they impacted you?
JM: Most influential person...Well, it's probably just Carell, I guess. He's a Kentucky banker and he's been a mentor friend. And he's just an amazing guy and how he's impacted me. I mean, every area of my life has been touched by his love and care. And he mentors me in generosity, he's made a lot of money, but add it and what he's best at, he's best at giving it away. And you know, when you want to be mentored, remember that you look for areas of mentoring in the area of the person's favor and gifting. And he's gifted and favored in giving. And so, probably 80% plus of our clients came from him telling somebody about us. And so he's influential, and I have one for every F - faith, family, fun, fitness and finance. I've got one for all five business mentors.
DC: That's great.
DW: What book or podcast has changed the course of your life?
JM: I'd say, you know, there's so many I mean, this is bad, I wouldn't want somebody to give this answer on my podcast. But if you want to, if I can only tell you to do one thing I'd tell you to read God's word daily. Get a one-year Bible and read it. If you and a bunch of other people on your team do it. Like even if you aren't ladies, your cycles align up, you'll start hearing the same things and being on the same page. And no, say I don't have enough time, just go without pants where you don't read, and some may have committed and for all these years, I'm reading God's word every day. And it's the key thing. You won't have to guess who Jesus is and what he's saying if you're in it. And just there's so many other self... I mean, the church has turned into one of the best self-help systems on the planet. But nothing's like knowing God, and walking with him. And if you know God and you walk with Him, you've got the power to do whatever it is he sets in your heart to do.
DW: What's the greatest lesson that you've learned about leadership?
JM: It's more important who you're with than what you're doing. If you're with the right people, you're going to end up in the right place. I mean, pick your neighbors for your neighborhood. Pick the people in business you want to be with. I just want to be around the best people I know and opportunities, man, deals are like buses. They come by every few minutes but get around the right people and they'll rub off on you. And how I pick them is if my heart comes like a tuning fork. If they talk to my head, that's one thing. But when they talk to my heart, that's another thing. I know God's speaking to me through them and saying things that I need to hear. And so I just ask for more time. I say you need to get a restraining order or hang out with me, which one you wanna do? Most of them fold like a cheap volunteer when I start putting that on.
DW: John, is there anything that we or our listeners can do to help you guys or pray for you guys in what you're doing and the vision that you have?
JM: Yeah, I pray we have wisdom. You know, when you get to the place we're at, we need wisdom from God to know what to do. I've been praying this morning, where we're thinking about, do we raise a fund to invest in these cities alongside we're investing our own capital now? But should we do that more? I don't know. I mean, it can either be a huge blessing or a huge burden and probably won't be it'll either be one or the other. So I need wisdom. Secondly, I just pray that actually, you know, one person every time I show up that one person who had no hope leaves with hope, that they say, you know what, that guy's way more screwed up than me. There's tons of hope for me. And so that's normally how I set the bar really, really low. I think he's the most screwed-up guy we've ever met. So, if God's been that good with me, he'd be that good with you.
DW: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. John. I really appreciate it. And thank you for your time. I know it's very valuable. And thank you to the kingdom investors out there listening. Thanks for tuning in. And let's take what we've learned here and invest in God's kingdom.
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[OUTRO]
ANNNOUNCER: What if you could take your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives in your community and around the world, creating a godly legacy for generations to come?
Now you can. Your first step is crafting your kingdom investing thesis. Reserve your spot in our next online workshop where we guide you through the process of discovering your passions, create a strategic plan and connect you to opportunities that will help you fulfill your God-given calling as a kingdom investor. Register today by clicking the link in the show notes.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next time for another episode of The Kingdom Investor Podcast.
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