The Burnout Trap of Success (And How to Escape It)
Episode Summary
In this episode of the Free To Grow CFO podcast, Jon Blair and Matt Kyser discuss the intersection of business growth, leadership, and holistic health. They explore the importance of balancing various aspects of life, including work, family, and spiritual well-being, to achieve success and fulfillment. Matt shares his entrepreneurial journey and a framework for effective leadership, emphasizing the need for self-leadership and the role of rest in enhancing productivity. The conversation highlights the significance of marriage and relationships in maintaining balance and offers practical steps for addressing life imbalances through a structured approach.
Key Takeaways
Work is a good thing, but it can also be broken.
Self-leadership is essential before leading others effectively.
Addressing imbalances in life can lead to greater productivity.
A four-step process for assessing and improving your holistic health.
Episode Links
Jon Blair - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathon-albert-blair/
Matt Kyser - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-kyser-0b085018b/
Free to Grow CFO - https://www.freetogrowcfo.com/
RestorRenewal - https://www.restorrenewal.com/
Meet Matt Kyser
Matt is an entrepreneurial thinker and operator in the non-profit and for-profit world alike. In the non-profit world Matt is the Lead Pastor of Village Church in Irvine, CA, as well as the Founder & CRO of RESTOR. In the for-profit world Matt is the Founder and CEO of Curb Cover, a direct-to-consumer skateboarding company, as well as Curb Saver, a business-to-business company serving nation-wide residential home builders. More than anything, Matt is a follower of Jesus, husband to a remarkable wife and father to three amazing kids. Matt enjoys having fun with his family, being active outdoors and acting as an encourager to anyone he meets.
Transcript
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00:00 Introduction to Leadership and Impact
07:09 The Framework of Leadership Levels
12:51 Balancing Life's Areas for Success
18:04 The Importance of Rest in Work
20:33 Marriage and Its Impact on Work
23:37 Addressing Imbalance in Life
31:23 Holistic Health as a Holy Endeavor
Jon Blair (00:00)
Is growing your business making you feel tired and out of control? Does your day-to-day work feel like it's lacking purpose, meaning, and impact? If so, then keep listening. You're not gonna wanna miss this. Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Free To Grow CFO podcast, where we dive deep into conversations about scaling a profitable DTC brand. I'm your host, Jon Blair, founder of Free To Grow CFO.
We're the go-to outsource finance and accounting firm for eight and nine figure DTC brands. All right, today is actually a really exciting day because I've got, who I guess I will say is my spiritual father on today's show, good friend, spiritual father, many other things. Matt Kyser he's the lead pastor at the Village Church. He's the founder of actually many things, Restore Ministries, Curb Cover, a DTC brand.
Curbsaver, a spinoff from Curb Cover, just to name a few. I think I probably even haven't hit them all, but Matt, man, thanks for being here, man. I'm super stoked to be chatting today.
Matthew Kyser (01:01)
I'm glad to be here, Jon.
Jon Blair (01:03)
So what are we gonna be talking about today? Today we're gonna be talking about why your brand's impact and success all starts with leadership and I'll say a guiding principles framework. Now if you've listened to this show at all, know that we're focused, Free To Grow CFO is focused on helping brands scale in the DTC and e-commerce channels profitably. But we're also really, really focused on impact and purpose.
The two are one and the same. Profit is used to drive impact in the world. And business is this beautiful thing that, if you've listened to the show, you've heard me say, I believe God has created business as this beautiful organism that has the ability to make the world a better place for many different parties who are attached to that business. And Matt is someone who, like I mentioned, is a spiritual mentor to me and ⁓ my former lead pastor and
He has a lot of really great and helpful frameworks and principles that he lives by and teaches to others and he's really passionate about how entrepreneurs can, through good work, and through the care of people through their good work, really make the world a better place. So, couldn't think about anyone better to sit down and have a conversation about how to think about leadership and guiding principles to improve your brand's impact and success. So Matt, before we get into some of these principles, can you give the audience a brief background of yourself and kind of your entrepreneurial journey?
Matthew Kyser (02:36)
Yeah, thanks, Jon. Well, you know, I'm 51 years old now and I didn't really understand that I was kind of an entrepreneurial minded person until a few years ago as I went through kind of a master's program and helped me really kind of put some language to that. Actually the guy that leads that, Bob Schenck, was also a pastor, one of my pastors at one time, and really helped me to see that the church planting and the revitalization work that I was doing was coming out of an entrepreneurial kind of mind and heart and bent. And so I'd always say I'm a church sort of revitalizer, help guys get revitalized and renewed and all of those sort of things were more entrepreneurial and looking back on it I can see he was right you know I got kind of kind of cut my teeth doing church work and youth ministry with young people. I had a spiritual mentor, had a spiritual father, mine's Lyle Caselaw, and Lyle really helped me with this as well. But in those early days, we were revitalizing youth ministries. So I went with him to a church, a kind of mega church in our area, and the church was sort of waning and the youth ministry was waning as well. And he brought a group of guys in to rebirth that.
It was starting something new, kind of renewing something. And that's kind as I look back, I think I kind of got my first experience there. Also, just shortly after that, I helped to plant it, and start a church. And that's a very entrepreneurial thing. I think looking back, I've learned.
I really didn't understand how entrepreneurial it was and how hard it would be, but it was hard. And I was a part of a team of a few guys at a young age in my early 20s doing that. And then when I hit age 30, I came to the Village Church and the Village Church has been a great place. Maybe I think I was age 33 when I came to the Village Church and really revitalizing, rebirthing, replanting that church. And so I've been doing that there at the Village Church, helped to get three other churches started in various ways. Along that journey, Dean and I, you know, birthed Restore, which is a ministry that helps renew pastors and their wives and helps to revitalize the churches they serve and lead. then kind of through that process, during COVID, Luke and I started Curb Cover, a direct to consumer skateboard brand. We actually have two patents now on our product. We have the longest skateboard element on the market that you can buy online. Most skateboard elements are six or eight feet, ours are nine and twelve feet. And so really happy and proud about that work. So glad to do with my son. And that's kind of taken a turn now as well into a B2B business where we're helping with Curbsaver construction companies.
save a lot of money on their curb repair and replace some costs and also their bond release and so kind of kind B2B now. So I don't know if that's what you're looking for but that's kind of the journey it's been. It's been fun, it's been really hard and I gotta say you have been a godsend right.
Jon Blair (05:41)
I love it. No, I mean I
Yeah, it's been very enjoyable and fulfilling to help work with you on the business side as opposed to the ministry side. Although, like, you know, was thinking as you were talking and I was making a few notes actually, I've started to form this. So, you know, right after this we'll get into some of these concepts I wanna make sure that the audience is able to listen to, but like.
Matthew Kyser (06:13)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (06:14)
The Bible says in Genesis and elsewhere, the first book of the Bible, that our God is a God of creation, right? He is a God who created everything. And the Bible says that we are created in His image. So if God is a God of creation and we're created in His image, then we are created to be creatures of the creators, right? Creators like God. And entrepreneurs are the creators of our time. And that to me is the spiritual connection.
Matthew Kyser (06:20)
Yeah.
That's right. Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (06:43)
one of many spiritual connections between being an entrepreneur, the creator of our time, the creators of our time, right? And that connection back to God, who is the God of creation, who created us in his image to be creators. And so I am very passionate about that connection. And what I wanna start this conversation with is you have this really great framework.
Matthew Kyser (06:59)
Yeah, you know, it's exciting.
Jon Blair (07:09)
about kind of, I'll call it, and maybe not doing it justice, but like these levels, and I would even venture to say probably a sequencing of leadership, that like if you don't get these levels and the sequencing right, the ability to really succeed and make impact in the world through a group of people, which is something that all scaling businesses are trying to do, is very hard and maybe even impossible. So can you run us through your framework.
Matthew Kyser (07:40)
Yeah, well it's really 10 areas of life. know, some guys have 10, some have seven, some have eight. 10 areas of life broken up into four sections. And so we're actually leading young guys through this now. I'm working with 20 somethings. Some of the most exciting work I'm doing right now is with 20 somethings. So we're just kind of getting on this journey from the beginning. But really those four areas are one, leading yourself. Second, leading at home. Third, leading at work. And last, leading on mission. so leading yourself is spirits, soul, mind and body. Leading at home is marriage and parenting. Leading at work is vocation and finance. And leading on mission is church and world. In my scheme, in my paradigm, that's how that works. So four sort of avenues or areas or spheres of life. And yeah, to your point, you know, if you don't get it right from the beginning, you're not gonna get it right for very long. And so I could talk a little bit about what that looks like in the church world and maybe what that looks like in the business world.
Jon Blair (08:44)
Yeah, let's definitely do that. And I wanna start with like, I'm curious, the leading yourself and then leading your family or at home, leading at work and then leading on mission, is there an evolution where you have to do some of those well first before moving on to the others or is it all kind of connected holistically? How do you view that?
Matthew Kyser (09:08)
you
Yeah, well, I think it is all connected holistically in the end, but here's how I kind of found that out. You know, the church and nonprofit organizations sometimes open themselves up to basically whoever, because they're largely volunteer organizations, right? And so my experience early on as a young man was being part of a mega church and a great pastor who was on the radio looked up to his teaching and to him immensely. And he had a moral failing. And then I saw that happen, you know, in other ways, pastors burning out or walking away from the church. And what I found was sometimes you get a guide in leadership, he's leading on mission, right, in the church or in the world. But come to find out a few months or a few years typically later, you look back and you think, actually, I don't know that that guy was really leading himself well.
And you look at his family and you're like, you know, I'm not sure he's got a great relationship with his wife and his kids are kind of frazzled or unruly or just not healthy. And then maybe you think in terms of leading at work, like maybe he just got this role because I don't know, man, the marketplace is hard, it's tough. And would he've done well there and stewarded his resources well. you know, not to...
cast judgment, not what I'm trying to do. I'm just saying that's what revealed it to me. That was my experience showed me. Sometimes we got guys way down the field in football, my son plays football and I use the term outkick this coverage, you know, it's just, it's not working. And so, yeah, I really do believe there is a progression. You need to lead yourself.
any young man especially, you know, gotta lead yourself well before you plan to lead a woman well and lead a household well. You you gotta do that as you're leading well at work. I think Christians should be leaders at work. The Bible says that pastors, elders, people that lead, leaders in the church should have a good reputation among those who are outside a lot of that reputation is through our work. And so that's kind of how the evolution worked out for me and my thinking. And that's kind of a framework we're using, not kind of, that is the framework we're using at Restore and all the things we're doing in the church and the different things I'm working on.
Jon Blair (11:21)
Okay, so this is interesting because I think that putting this in the context of our audience, brand founders who are actively trying to grow their businesses and turn them into increasingly bigger economic generators of value. And so I think that there's, one of the reasons I want to have you on is because there's plenty of content about how to crush it at work.
Matthew Kyser (11:33)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Blair (11:51)
Is work the totality of life? Right? In my opinion, from my viewpoint, it's not. And I would even venture to say, and I bet you would agree with this, it doesn't matter what God you do or don't believe in. I know people who are atheists or who are agnostic or a part of a different faith. ⁓ It doesn't matter the way that we are wired. We are wired to feel healthy and be happy and energized and
Matthew Kyser (11:53)
No.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (12:21)
at peace I'll even say, when these four areas that you're talking about are in balance and are all healthy. And when you have one that is out of balance, you can keep it out of balance for a time, but as the others suffer, eventually the connection between them, right, renders the area that you are supposedly crushing it at kind of useless or it starts to not work as well anymore, right? And so,
Matthew Kyser (12:26)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Blair (12:51)
So do you agree and what else do you have to say about that?
Matthew Kyser (12:53)
Yeah, like
Yeah, of course. So, and in our paradigm and in our curriculum, we have this progression that I kind of just discovered over the life of being involved in ministry in the church world and now sort of in the marketplace, but really in the nonprofit and the church world, really a kind of a five-step progression. And one is you start by getting unbalanced.
And like you said, we were created to be healthy, balanced people. The Bible says in Genesis that God created Adam. put in the garden to tend and to steward it, to keep it, to cultivate it, to nurture it. God created everything. He said it was good. He created mankind. said he was very, it was very good. And so God created us to live a joyful, balanced, healthy, holistically healthy life. So when we get unbalanced and we get too unbalanced in too many areas of our life, then we become unhealthy.
know if you've been in an unhealthy season you go from unhealthy to unhappy very quickly. So unbalanced, unhealthy, unhappy and if you become unhappy for too long you become unfruitful in whatever you're doing including your work and then it's not very long till you become unaffected which means you just don't care anymore. So you're unbalanced then you're unhealthy. If you're unhealthy for too long then you're unhappy. It goes really quick from unhappy to unfruitful and over time eventually if you're unfruitful you become unaffected.
just don't care anymore. And that can be true in any of those areas, but I see this happening a lot with guys in their work. know, men in particular are very focused at work, very focused on leading at work, right? Vocation and finance. And so leading yourself can suffer, leading your family can suffer on the front end. And unfortunately, you miss what's on the back end, which is leading on mission. And if you're not a Christian or you don't have faith, you could say something like, you know, becoming some
part of something bigger than yourself, right? Giving your life, giving yourself for something bigger than yourself. So you're missing that as well. So yeah, you might be crushing it at work and you're getting all this content and you're doing a lot of work there, but you're unbalanced in these other areas. And this is just a recipe eventually for disaster, See you in the time we have.
Jon Blair (15:02)
It's interesting,
yeah, me too, and it's interesting, I can even use myself as an example, like, I'll have seasons. And you know, like, it's not even, I think the trick, or the trap for a lot of us entrepreneurs is that we like our work, right? We don't, and the joy of our work and the joy of the progress, we enjoy it, right? And I've caught myself many times.
Matthew Kyser (15:22)
work is a good thing.
Jon Blair (15:30)
And like for me, keeping holding these kind of areas that you're talking about in tension or in balance, like it's not, I'm not ever in equilibrium. It's like I've got this imbalance and then like, hold on, I've noticed it, right? And I, and then what do I need to do about it? Okay. And I'm going to tip the scales back the other way. But what I've seen oftentimes happen and this, I want, I want everyone to hear this. We're so wired as entrepreneurs.
Matthew Kyser (15:42)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (16:00)
to make progress on any given day. Check things off the list. Make measurable progress in our businesses, right? And usually we're the ones driving forward growth. So oftentimes it's sales numbers in one way, shape or form, right? We're so focused on that and that's how we measure the success of our day that when leading at work for me starts overtaking and overshadowing,
Matthew Kyser (16:06)
Thank
That's for sure.
Jon Blair (16:28)
leading my family well and leading myself well, you know what the anecdote actually is? It's not working harder at crushing work or driving sales. It's stopping and maybe getting some rest and waking up in the morning and reading my Bible and feeding my spiritual side of my life for a few. Praying, maybe reading some other self-help book that I just enjoy or feeding my...
Matthew Kyser (16:40)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (16:57)
working on a hobby, right? Going and spending unadulterated time with my wife and my kids. When I do those things which actually feel, here's the trap, it doesn't feel like working. It feels like I'm actually getting behind at work because I'm not checking things off the list. But when I actually stop working and go do that, when I come back to, first off, while I'm doing those things, the groundbreaking ideas for work.
Matthew Kyser (17:24)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (17:24)
pop into my head and I'm like,
I know what to do, right? But then secondarily, when I get back to work, I'm ready to go. And so actually, you've taught me something, and I'd like you to speak into this a little bit more, because it's been really groundbreaking for me, is that rest. I think most of us think we rest, in your words, from our work, right? And rest is about resting from our work, but you also talk about resting for our work, right?
Can you talk about that a little bit, like the different, I don't wanna say uses, but the different impacts that rest has aside from just resting from our work?
Matthew Kyser (18:04)
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. So I want to say first, work is a really good thing.
Matter of fact, the Bible says that God is a worker. So if any of your listeners are listening and are not familiar with the Bible or they're not sure how Christians would approach the idea of work, it's called the Protestant work ethic, I think for a reason and for some better reasons than others. One of them is ⁓ God is a worker. That's what the Bible says, that God worked. God worked for six days and created everything. God is a worker. And the first thing he did is he put Adam in the garden to tend and to keep it.
So the first role that we had as human beings was workers, right? Work is a good thing. It's created by God. So just a point of clarity there, I know we're on the same page on this, and this is a foundational truth in reality, but we don't want to be workaholics, right? Because work is good, but work is broken.
Work is good, but work is broken. And as Christians, we believe it's broken because of sin and the fall, and that sin impacts everything in the world. It breaks things, it breaks relationships, it breaks a relationship with God, it breaks our relationship with others, it breaks systems and structures, it breaks the good things that God created. so work is a good thing, but it's also a broken thing. And we're broken people. And so our tendency can be to overwork.
or to not work hard enough, right, to be lazy. There's a book in the Bible, in the book of Thessalonians, Paul's writing, he says, hey, some of you guys are expecting Jesus to come back, and so you're being lazy, you're not working hard, and that's not what Christians should do, right? And so, as Christians, we should, correct, rest from our work. We should not be workaholics, not overwork.
but we should also rest for our work, because we should be working hard. And so if you're a Christian and you're listening, people in your company should look at you and be like, that guy, that gal, those people, they work hard, and they do good work. And that's what God's calling us to. And so yeah, it's not just enough to rest from our work, although we should, so that we're not workaholics and overworking, we should also rest for our work, so we're doing good work that brings glory to God.
Jon Blair (20:11)
I'm curious because I do personally see how all these ten areas of life are all equally important but do you see one besides work that people maybe get wrong more frequently than others or maybe a small handful that are like the biggest challenges that you see to like really like keep in balance?
Matthew Kyser (20:33)
Yeah,
I mean, that feels like a loaded question because at the core, I'm a pastor. So I'm going to say it's the spiritual, know, mostly people get the spiritual life wrong. But I'd say one that's really, really, really important is marriage, right, as a leading at home is marriage.
Jon Blair (20:39)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Matthew Kyser (20:57)
I think people have this idea that they get married and this other person's gonna complete them and that like marriage is basically for them.
The Bible says no, actually not that way. And so I think a lot of times marriage is something that we get wrong. Marriage is a chance to serve another person, not to be served by another person. And so the Bible says the two become one flesh. so matter of fact, this holystic health idea, actually the best picture of it in the Bible is marriage. Paul said that the husbands should love their wives as their own bodies because no one ever hated his own body but nourishes it and cherishes it. And so Paul's saying,
love your wives this way because you would love yourself, you take care your own body and now you're united together with your wife, take care of her. And so I think that's one people miss a lot and that has a huge impact on work. I just want to say, know...
I'm not meaning to like stroke your back here, whatever, but I just think you and Andrea do a great job with this. I think you're a great husband. Even some of the coaching that we've done, you you set aside a lot of time. You realize, yeah, Andrea is my biggest asset in my life, right? And so I want to invest all of my best everything, time, money, whatever, into her. And I think you do a really good job with that. Not everyone does. And when you're synced up together with your spouse,
it has a huge impact on your work. So I feel that way about Dina.
Jon Blair (22:24)
Yeah, in fact, when you're not, it makes it next to impossible to get anything meaningful done at work. I've even, when Andrew and I have been out of sync and I've gotta go to work, I've actually had like, admittedly, like full half days where I actually am just like, I'm not gonna go to work and we're gonna sit down and we're just gonna talk about this because I'm not gonna get anything done anyway, so like.
Matthew Kyser (22:28)
⁓ like, yeah. Yeah.
it's horrible.
Yeah, yeah.
Jon Blair (22:53)
Let's just figure this out. Let's just figure this out and then I'll go to work because I'm just I'm not gonna be able to get anything done anyways.
Matthew Kyser (22:53)
Totally. And if you have a good marriage or you want a good marriage, that's true for you, right? Dina and I, and you know this, Dina and I take prayer walks three days a week. We took one this morning. Early in the morning, we have a four mile loop. It takes us about 45 minutes to an hour. And we walk, we talk, we connect, we pray. We work through conflict, right?
We stay connected and those are like our large chunks of time to do that because it's just the most important thing, you know, in the world to me, right, next to Jesus himself, right? So I think that's, you know, I'm tempted to say spiritual, but I think the marital one is one that a lot of people miss and really, really, really important.
Jon Blair (23:29)
Absolutely.
Okay, so once you realize that, or have a sense that you're out of balance on some of these things, what is your framework for beginning to address it?
Matthew Kyser (23:50)
Yeah, so I've got a four step process. I know that sounds salesy. Here's my four step process, but I do have a four step process. I use it.
Jon Blair (23:55)
Yeah
Matthew Kyser (24:02)
When I read my Bible every morning for myself, I don't wanna, I think one things I love about Jesus the most is he doesn't ask us to do things he's unwilling or unable to do himself. And so I wanna lead my life that way. So if I'm asking people to follow these steps, I gotta follow them. So, and I wanna follow them, because I think they're God's design for renewal. So the four steps are all R words, you know, it's restore, so they're all R words. I thought that was cute. I guess it kind of works, but it at least helps me to remember. So the first step is revelation.
And the question I'm asking there is what is God saying? What is he saying through the Bible? What is he saying through prayer, through godly counsel and friends, through my circumstances? So, Revelation, what is God saying? The second step is repentance. And the question there is what am I missing? What am I missing about what God's already said to me about my relational life or the life of my mind or my body or my marriage or my parenting or my finances or my work? You know what am I missing?
Third step is reformation. And the question there is what needs to change and how. We actually use the EOS system. I know you're familiar, you love that. And so I'm all about it. And it's been really helpful for me when we do our strategic planning sessions with churches, we use EOS. And then the last stage is renewal, last R is renewal. And the question there is what does the future look like? So revelation, what is God saying? Repentance, what are we missing? What am I missing? Reformation, what needs to change and how?
and renewal what does the future look like. And I hope it sounds simple. If it sounds complicated, I work through this system or these steps very quickly, right? It becomes really intuitive. And so I try to apply this to everything I'm doing.
Jon Blair (25:43)
Yeah, this reminds me, when you and I were prepping the other day, I mentioned to you that this sounds to me like very akin to the classic, like in the business world, you hear about the after action review, the AAR. Came originally from the military, and it was their way of assessing how something was actually going, and ultimately the goal is to get to what needs to change, right? What behavior needs to change, or what actions need to change.
And so the after action review is like, what did you expect to happen versus what actually happened, right? Which is similar to like your revelation. And then what worked and what didn't work. Like, where's the gap at, right? And then what do you need to change? And that reformation, like what needs to change? And there's a nice little simple framework too that you can use in anywhere, any area of your life.
Matthew Kyser (26:19)
Yeah.
What am I missing?
Jon Blair (26:41)
whether you're talking about spiritual and reading the Bible or other problems in your life, the what will you change? There's this kind of like, there's this acronym, KISS, K-I-S-S, what will you keep? What will you improve? What will you start? What will you stop? Change really all comes down to like, what am I gonna keep doing and lean into further? What needs to be improved? What should I just stop altogether? And what am I not doing that I should start, right? And so, to me, it's not a surprise that there's like,
Matthew Kyser (26:57)
Yep.
Jon Blair (27:11)
that kind of classic, classically used business framework has so much alignment with what you're talking about because I believe in, you know, God's design of humans. And so that's wired into us to, as this kind of like framework that works for self-reflection and ultimately change, new action plans and taking action in a different way, right? And that's all healthy businesses, all successful businesses.
Matthew Kyser (27:22)
100%.
Jon Blair (27:41)
and I'll say led by successful entrepreneurs, are willing to reassess where they're at and what needs to change. And that ability to adjust, right, and after self-reflection is the key driver of their success.
Matthew Kyser (27:49)
Yeah.
man, Jon,
yeah, I cannot say in the church world, in the kind of consulting or advocacy that I do with churches, step two, repentance, kind of pains me to say a little bit is our differentiator, because as Christians, Martin Luther said, the whole Christian life is one of repentance. But that repentance is the differentiator. There's a lot of processes where there's steps and people call it Christian, they sprinkle Bible verses on it.
But if it doesn't have repentance, it's not inherently Christian, because that's how you become a Christian, and that's what the Christian life is, it's about repentance. And I'm telling you right now, every single time, without fail, the churches that take one step back the soonest, take three steps forward the soonest. The pastors that are quickest to raise their hand and say, I blew it, I haven't been leading you well in this way.
They get more grace and mercy. They get more understanding from their people. They begin to make more progress more quickly. And I can imagine in the business world, it's the same way when I look at Curbsaver, know, when something's not right and I just get to it, I know it, I address it, I assess the data, what are our users doing? What kind of feedback are we getting? The quicker I am to change, I think we say fail fast, right? Yeah, so these are all God ordained principles, you know?
Jon Blair (29:14)
Yeah, yep.
100%.
Matthew Kyser (29:19)
We call it general revelation in theology. We call it common grace in theology, right? God gives this know-how to everyone because he's good and these are good principles.
Jon Blair (29:32)
Well, that's part of the reason why my faith and my entrepreneurial journey are so tightly woven because in God's providence, he was blessing my entrepreneurial growth at the same time that he, that's the same time I met Jesus and he was working on me spiritually and so when I'm
Matthew Kyser (29:58)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (29:59)
when I'm like so deep in both of those things conceptually and couldn't help but see the parallels were just everywhere, right? And also I'll be honest with you too, not every successful business person or entrepreneur is Christian, but the more that I study successful entrepreneurs, because that's something that I'm just, is a passion of mine, is to study the stories and the writings of successful entrepreneurs, I find more that are faithful
Matthew Kyser (30:07)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Blair (30:28)
that are men of faith than are not oftentimes. I don't think, again, I'm not preaching prosperity gospel that you have to, you believe in the Bible and so you're just gonna be blessed. It's not that at all. I'm just saying that these are God-ordained principles. This is the design that God designed us with. And when you align yourself with them, you...
Matthew Kyser (30:48)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jon Blair (30:56)
make progress and you feel fulfilled, you feel at peace, you feel healthy, you feel energized, you feel joyful. And so I wanna ask you if this is intriguing to someone listening, your frameworks for holystic health, but it seems overwhelming to like really dive into this, what in your opinion,
Matthew Kyser (30:58)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yep.
Jon Blair (31:23)
What's the simplest single thing someone can do to like at least get started on this journey of trying to become more holistically healthy?
Matthew Kyser (31:31)
Yeah,
that's a great question. for one, I've got a survey where you can evaluate your holystic health in 10 areas of your life in 10 minutes or less. And so that would be a good place to start. The second thing I'd say is, know me, Jon I mean, I'm a pretty simple person. I'm a...
Yeah, so I got these 10 areas and I have a one sheet, one pager, right? Kind of like the traction was a vision, vision on one side and traction on the other. I've got a one page document that's got the four core on the front, which is spirit, soul, mind, body, leading yourself. And then the other three are on the back. And I have that similar kiss format in boxes. And once a quarter, I take about an hour and I just sit down and I assess how am I doing in each of these areas. And I write one thing in each box.
Jon Blair (31:57)
Yep.
Matthew Kyser (32:21)
and I fold it up, I tuck it in the back of my Bible, and I reference it on an ongoing basis. And so I'd be happy to send that out to whomever, but that's what I do. I'm a pretty simple person, and I just put one thing in each box. So I'm just thinking about one thing that I can do in each of those areas, and I follow that same parallel.
paradigm, revelation, what is God saying to me in this area, right? And so on. So yeah, simple stuff. Yep.
Jon Blair (32:50)
love it.
I love it. In kind of closing here, of all the things we discussed today, what is kind of the simplest one thing that you want the listeners to take away from these principles that we've talked about here today?
Matthew Kyser (33:13)
Yeah, I think I would just encourage everyone that holystic health is a holy endeavor. And so when I spell it, I spelled H-O-L-Y-S-T-I-C. It's holystic health. Yeah, I was like, well, it's a holy endeavor. This is the way that God designed us to live. And so I think the one simple takeaway is if you live this way and it feels good, right? If you live this way and you feel like,
Jon Blair (33:24)
Why did I not get that the first time I saw that?
Matthew Kyser (33:43)
this is really a good way to live, that's because that's the way God designed you to live. And so I'd say holystic health is a holy endeavor. God wants us to live this way, God designed us to live this way, and that's why it works, right? Wisdom works, and I think biblical wisdom works the best, and that's what this is.
Jon Blair (34:04)
just love this man. Well, man, Matt, this is a great conversation. I feel like this is full circle for me to have you come on the show and chat through this stuff. like, look, what I wanna leave everyone with is like, look, it doesn't matter where you are personally at in your faith journey today. It doesn't. You can still use this stuff and see the benefit. And my challenge would be like, just try it. Like if you are feeling burned out,
Matthew Kyser (34:14)
then
Jon Blair (34:32)
tired and out of control or like, hey, I seem to be successful in some areas of the business, or of my life mostly being in business, but I can just feel that I'm lacking purpose or meaning or impact or traction in other areas of life. man, it's worth giving something a shot. And one thing I really appreciate for what Matt has done is he's put together a very simple framework that you can use and give something a shot, give something like it a shot.
and ⁓ give it a chance and just see what it does for you. Matt, if people are interested in finding more information about Restore, where can they go to find it?
Matthew Kyser (35:13)
Yeah, so our website is restorrenewal.com. There's no E on the end of restore. I also thought that would kind of be a catchy marketing thing. But so RESTOR restorrenewal.com or honestly.
My name's, think, right here on the screen, matthewkyser@me.com I'm a little old fashioned, so if you just want to drop me an email, I would love to send you whatever I can. I could send along my Holystic Health Workbook that has all of this and more, a link to the test, QR code, all that sort of thing. But that's where you'd find it.
Jon Blair (35:51)
I got, so you just reminded me, I had my loan officer who is the guy who finances most of my personal real estate investing deals on the show. His episode hasn't aired yet, but when I asked where everyone could find him, he just straight gave his phone number out, his cell phone number, and I was like, he's, yeah, and he was like, it was like, he's like, call me, I dare you, give me a call and I will help you finance your next real estate deal. It was great. But yeah, man.
Matthew Kyser (36:07)
Yeah, it's fine with me.
I like it.
If someone wants to call me 949-290-7407. And if I don't like you, I'll just block you.
Jon Blair (36:24)
There we go.
Yeah, exactly. I love it. I love it, man. Well, Matt, thank you for coming on. This has been a great conversation. I really think that it'll be fruitful for our audience. And before we close, I just want to remind everyone, if you liked today's episode, please hit the subscribe button wherever you're listening and leave us a review. It helps us reach more people like you, which is really important to us. Also, if you want more tips on scaling a profitable DTC brand,
Matthew Kyser (36:30)
Yeah.
Jon Blair (36:53)
Follow me, Jon Blair, on LinkedIn, and if you're interested in learning more about how Free to Grow CFO can help your brand increase profit and cash flow as you scale, check us out at FreetoGrowCFO.com. Thanks for joining, Matt.
Matthew Kyser (37:07)
Thanks, Jon.
