4/11/23 - PowerPod: Better Than Balance

Intro: Welcome to the iWork4Him PowerPod. I'm Michael Miracle producer for iWork4Him, the voice of the faith and work movement. We are on mission to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. Each quick listening PowerPod is designed with you in mind and jam packed with Kingdom resources to help you connect your faith and work.

How will this impact your work? Let's find out right now.

Jim: The Pocket Testament League makes it easy for you and me to get the word of God into the hands of coworkers, employees, neighbors, and friends. Check 'em out online, ptl.org. Mollie Yoder, you brought us here to Lynchburg, Virginia to meet a man today.

Tell us who do you got and what are you expecting?

Mollie Yoder: Oh, I'm so excited. Today we are gonna be meeting and chatting with Mike Cook. He is the founder of Strategic Doers, Jesus follower and we got connected - he's got a partner gospel with the Pocket Testament League that he's using to spread the Gospel.

So he's gonna use that to spread the word about the work that God's put in front of him. He's a third generation business guy here out of Lynchburg, Virginia, and just has a really cool God story and gets the iWork4Him nation and our work is our ministry, so you're gonna have a blast talking with Mike today.

Jim: To do or not to do? That's the battle of every Monday morning. Where is it at? Every morning so often we just grin and bear going to work, doing our work, commuting in our work, that we miss all that God has put in front of us. The people, the opportunities to shine, the opportunities to learn. Along comes the idea that we should be, hmm, Strategic Doers.

Imagine if everything you did, from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night, everything along the way, imagine if all of it was done strategically. Imagine if every Christ follower owned a business, worked with that high level of intentionality and became a strategic doer for the Kingdom. Today we're gonna talk with Mike Cook from Strategic Doers to talk about living just that kind of life.

Mike Cook, welcome to iWork4Him.

Strategic Doers. Where did that name come from?

Mike Cook: Well In my business life, I worked for a little while as a salesperson for Nextel, the old walkie-talkie phones. If you remember those back in 2000 and early days. And one of their, one of their great marketing things, our target client, was a business owner who wants to get things done. And so they called us doers. Even on my business card it said Mike Cook, doer, and we were trying to get other people to become doers. And with the blackberries and before the smartphones and all that email on your phone and text and all that stuff in the early days. I think we've created a monster. And that's another topic for another day. Of course.

Jim: We just put things in place that the antichrist needs in order to take over the world, and we need him to come so that Jesus come back. So it's okay.

Mike Cook: So be careful with your smartphones. I'll just leave it at that. But anyhow that concept of being a doer stuck with me. And later on as I was seeking to use my faith in the marketplace, in the business world, and really worrying about two big challenges that business owners have. One: just how do I get it all done.

And that's a challenge that no matter what the business, no matter where you are what you're doing, there's always that challenge. There's never enough time to get it all done. You know, I never have, my kids never say, you know, we've played enough. Why don't you go get some work done, dad? You know, something like that.

So there's always just too much to do. It's the challenge I hear from, no matter what business owners I work with, is time management and balance and, and those kind of things.

Jim: Well, and neither of which are really - it's impossible to manage time. Time does what it's gonna do, whether we want it to do it or not. And it's impossible to live in a balanced life. Because it can't be done. I mean, our wheel is always gonna have a flat side.

Mike Cook: Yes. Balance also implies that all things are equal. And even though we spend a lot more time doing work, it's not equal. There's a lot of the important things that we don't spend as much time in a day doing.

So the concept of being strategic about what we do. Not just working in your business, but working on your business. And so as I became a business coach, starting to really wrestle with those concepts and working with business owners, that's where the strategic kind of came from, is we must be strategic about what it is that we're doing.

The strategic is the compass, the working on. And the doer is the working in. Most of the business owners I work with - small business owners, ten or less employees - they don't have the luxury of having the big staff to just let them sit and think all day.

Jim: At what point in time in your life did you realize that God loved business and created you as a business owner and that your work in business was just as important to him as that of a pastor or a missionary?

Mike Cook: Okay. I grew up in my family. We did the restaurant business, fast food. We had Arby's franchises in the area here. And in 1999, my grandfather was ready to retire and he was ready to hand over the restaurants to my dad. But my dad at the same time was receiving a call to missions, and so he chose to sell the restaurants and we invested in rental properties instead because that allowed him to be a self-supported missionary. That changed my path as well because I was planning to be the third generation guy to run the restaurants and do all those things. So my parents now are supported missionaries with rental properties and that also we went into that business.

I helped them manage them for a while, but the Lord's been working, had been working on me, even through all that to reach people in the business world. You know, my mission field, as you've heard, the 10 40 window, that's where my parents work in the, you know, the areas where they're the least reached people groups.

My mission field is what Os Hillman calls the nine to five window. I wanna reach people in the marketplace.

Jim: Make a living, have a life. It seems like, you know, since God created the idea of work, that should be possible.

Mike Cook: Absolutely.

Jim: Yet, in our society today, that seems like those are, that's an oxymoron. That it is impossible. So what have you found in scripture that points the way that that is possible? It's radio. You can't do that silent contemplated fun.

Alright, think about that one for a while. Martha, you had a question you wanted to ask.

Martha: Oh, I just, I mean, do you think that that's the biggest thing that Christ followers struggle with in their, in their business is just even figuring out how to get a compass or what to do with their business?

Mike Cook: Well, in the smaller business especially, it becomes another add-on to, to most people. It's like I already gotta worry about the family, the kids, and getting to work and the business and paying the bills and all those things. And so, That's just one more thing I've gotta think about and add on top of everything else. Where what I talked with my clients mostly about is what I call an integrated life.

Where we want to - instead of the word balance - integrate. We want to integrate our faith throughout all aspects of life. And more recently I've gone from calling myself a business coach to a leadership coach, or whatever term. Gets me in the door to the person there. But the main thing is it's not just about business or it's not just about family.

It's about all of those things. Especially us guys have a problem with that. We tend to like to compartmentalize and change hats when we change locations, things like that.

Martha: And you mean that's not always possible to do that, to change a hat? So anyway, you're delving back...

Jim: You're going sarcastic way?

Martha: I know I was going to, but I'm not gonna.

Jim: It is impossible for man. I mean, the segment of life thing comes natural to us.

Mike Cook: Yeah. I mean, it's good to compartmentalize. We're just simple like that.

Jim: But God created us that way on purpose, that we could segment war from feeding our families. But yet, when it comes to living out our faith, it needs to be integrated, intricately connected within all of our lives.

Martha: So give us like one concept or one way that you help people to understand for it to be integrated.

Mike Cook: Well, it usually starts with , most any coach, business coach, life coach, whatever has the name coach with it, is going to find someone usually in distress, in drama. That's unfortunately, especially entrepreneurs, we don't call for help until we're really deep into it. It's not, you know, it's not when we're starting. Most of the clients I work with are, we're in the manure pit. We got three seconds left.

They've been in business for two or three years and they're stuck. And it's not like a job you can just quit. I've invested money in this. I've rented space. I've got a lease. I'm stuck and help me. Waving white flag. Yeah.

And so my job as a coach, or any coach's job is to bring them back to why they started in the first place. What's the mission? You know, what do you, what are you doing this for? And usually that conversation is where I can also ask the question, did you realize that there's more to work than just making money or more to work than just paying the bills or what we call resume virtues, what they're gonna say about you at the end of life?

Things like that. And that allows to have a conversation about what truly is your mission, who really owns your business?

Martha: So then what do they see? The opportunities - what are they seeing as far as, you know, the results of learning about this integration?

Mike Cook: Well we start them looking at all aspects of life. The integrated life plan that I've been working on basically has three aspects. One is self-care, family and community, and stewardship divided into those three things. And there's more details in each one of those. But it has to start even prior to that is gonna have to start with what's your mission?

Kind of going back to that again. You know, what is your, not just your business mission, which as guys we're really good at, but what is your personal mission? What is your family mission? And all those need to kind of integrate with each other. And that's the foundation of an integrated life, is knowing what your mission is, why you're supposed to do what you do.

Jim: Mollie Yoder, you brought us here. What's your question you wanna make sure Mike answers for us today?

Mollie Yoder: Yeah. Mike, I'd love for you to tell the listeners about a success story from one of your Strategic Doers. Somebody that maybe came in like we were talking about, that entrepreneur that's a little bit underwater and needed some help and how did you guys kind of walk beside him and help there?

Mike Cook: Okay. Can I tell my story?

Jim: Yes, you can.

Mike Cook: Because I am the original strategic doer. I must be the Guinea pig for this. And this is something that I've tried to, I've refined as I've lived it myself. And that started really once my wife and I got married.

You know, if you wanna find out how selfish you are, get married. If you wanna really find out how selfish you are, have kids. You know, when you start catching yourself saying those things about my time and my this and my, you know, whatever.

And so that's really a lot of what started this concept. I'm just one of those fix it guys. When I was in restaurant business, when I worked in radio, different things, I was always the guy that they sent to fix things, train people, and fix things and all that. And so to me this was just no different.

I'm gonna fix this. You know, that work life balance, that time management, all those things that people say, I'm gonna fix it. Let's see what we can do to fix this. So that's when I started creating what is now what we call the integrated life plan, and putting these things together, thinking about all different aspects of life and how they can all integrate together.

Jim: I just, I want to hear it personal though. Okay. Mike. Who was Mike before Strategic Doers? And who's Mike afterwards? I mean, if we called your wife, what's your wife's first name?

Mike Cook: Heather.

Jim: All right, Heather, we get Heather on the line and we say, Heather, how has Mike's realization that he can be a strategic doer? How has that impacted him personally? How has it impacted your marriage? What's she gonna tell us?

Mike Cook: Wow. Well, I hope she'll be nice. We've grown together in this, even being married, just the two of us before having kids. She works as a nurse practitioner as well, was working full-time. Now part-time with the kids and all. And so it has been a journey even for both of us and having those conversations, different personality styles and things like that.

So yeah, I would say Mike was driven, an entrepreneur actually, one of the first times we met. I was still in the cell phone business. it was New Year's Eve. I was on the phone at eight o'clock trying to make the final deal to get my monthly bonus and my yearly bonus, and everybody else was having fun and I was on the phone, five hours from home at the beach, talking back to my office in Lynchburg, Virginia, telling my employee who I was making stay till eight o'clock, New Year's Eve, get this done, give them whatever it takes.

Give 'em free, you know, whatever. Just make this deal, make this happen, and we're all gonna be happy. And that was kind of my priority. At the time was, was business. And so fast forward from that to I wouldn't dare do that. Not just cuz my wife's with me and all, and, but you know, she reminds me of that often.

But fast forward to today, that's not a priority. You know, even when I work with business owners on a business plan, it starts with people first, then excellence in operations, and finally, Stewardship, which is the making money, cash flow, sales net profit.

Martha: So give us something that our listeners can take away today. You know, maybe it's what have you seen people struggling with that you can really say, Hey, Stop and look at this today. Just to give them a little bit of encouragement in where they're at.

Mike Cook: Sure. Probably the biggest thing that business owners struggle with - Christ follower or not - but especially Christ followers because of that, that extra tension: number one, the fact there's not enough time to get everything done. And then the tension that us as followers of Christ in the marketplace run into: the values. You know, our values versus the values of the marketplace. So, Ethics are like water. They seep back and forth, so we need to make sure that ethics, everything is all together.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.

Outro: Thank you for listening to the iWork4Him PowerPod with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. Want more? Hear the full broadcast@iworkforhim.com. Stay connected and receive power pack content when you sign up for our blog@iworkforhim.com, or follow us on social media at iWork4Him.

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