Faith Driven Entrepreneur

The Dream He Couldn't Shake

Host Justin Forman sits down with Chris Tomlin, worship leader, songwriter, and founder of For Others, for a conversation about what happens when the platform God gives you turns out to be for something bigger than the thing you're famous for.

He was 18, knew three songs, and had never led worship in his life. At the end of a youth camp week in East Texas, the speaker put a hand on his head and prayed that God would make him a psalm writer for his generation. Three decades later, the man whose songs the global church sings on Sunday mornings is in statehouses talking about the 400,000 kids in America's foster care system.

Chris Tomlin helped shape modern worship music from the inside, back when radio stations told him his songs were "Sunday morning music" and nothing more. It took three albums before one got played. That same pioneering instinct — hacking a trail where no template existed — is what he brought to For Others, the organization he founded after a dream he couldn't forget and a question from his pastor he couldn't answer. Today For Others convenes best-in-class child welfare organizations, states, and donors around a single goal: ending the foster care crisis in America.

Key Topics:

- The prayer at 18 that set the trajectory of a 30-year career, spoken over a kid who didn't have any songs yet

- Pioneering a new category: why radio wouldn't play worship music, and what six years of knocking on doors taught him

- Hebrews 13:15-16 and the conviction that worship which doesn't change the world isn't finished yet

- The dream of a filled stadium and an abandoned baby in the street, and the decade it took to understand it 

- Good Friday Nashville: why he decided to give away every dollar before he knew there would be any

- 400,000 kids in foster care, 400,000 churches in America, and the math that lit him up

- Building For Others as a neutral convener rather than another agency, and why that became the secret sauce

Chris's story is the entrepreneur's story in a different key: no template, no permission, no clear next step. Just enough light for the step in front of him. If you've been sitting on a calling you can't fully explain yet, this conversation is a case study in what obedience looks like before the plan exists.

The Richest Person in Heaven

Host Justin Forman sits down with John Maxwell, leadership author and founder of EQUIP, for a conversation that reframes what it means to build wealth, take risks, and finally stop being embarrassed about the gospel.

It started with a cassette tape colored pink by accident and a five-dollar ask to 39 strangers in a Jackson, Mississippi hotel conference room. Four decades later, that same instinct — just get good, and add value to people — has made John Maxwell the bestselling leadership author in the world and the architect of what may be the largest quiet evangelism movement on the planet.

About John Maxwell: John Maxwell is a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and founder of EQUIP, a global leadership training organization that has trained over six million leaders in every country in the world. He has written 92 books on leadership, with 14 more underway. Through EQUIP's "Beyond Success" small group curriculum — now running in over 191,000 groups worldwide — more than four million people have come to Christ in the last six years.

Key Topics:

• How a $5-a-month cassette tape club in the 1980s became the foundation of Maxwell's global platform
• Why insecurity, not disagreement, is what actually keeps entrepreneurs and pastors apart
• The theology of risk: why Maxwell believes potential only exists outside of safety
• Rethinking the "financial finish line" — and why picking a number for significance beats picking one for security
• The real difference between accumulating wealth and stewarding it
• How Maxwell "crossed over" from 25 years as a pastor into the secular business world — and what it cost him in credibility before it paid off
• Inside EQUIP's Beyond Success model: training leaders first, then earning the right to ask a single, permission-based question about faith
  
  

For entrepreneurs wrestling with what to do with what they've built, this conversation is a direct challenge to the idea that safety, security, or a finish line is ever the goal. Maxwell makes the case that the biggest regrets aren't what we did — they're what we were too afraid to try.

From a Billion Downloads to a Bigger Vision: Bobby Gruenewald on Building the World's Most-Used Bible App

Host Justin Forman sits down with Bobby Gruenewald, Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of YouVersion, for a conversation that pulls back the curtain on how a donor-funded ministry built and scaled the most downloaded Bible app in the world.

Bobby just crossed a milestone: 1 billion devices with a YouVersion app installed. But instead of celebrating the number, he's already recalibrating around a vision for 3 billion by 2033 — because for Bobby, "more" was never the compelling part. In this conversation, he walks through the funnel metrics, the streaks feature, and the machine-learning-driven personalization that power YouVersion's engagement strategy, and connects every one of those business decisions back to a theology of stewardship, humility, and trust.

Key Topics:

• Why YouVersion measures success by daily engagement (DAU+4), not downloads

• The donor-funded business model — no subscriptions, no data sales, no ads

• How Bobby's team uses passive personalization to meet people where they are

• The "streaks" feature and the psychology of habit formation

• Why Bobby hires learners instead of experts

• Stewardship vs. ownership — and what the parable of the talents has to do with company culture

• Why "problem casting" is a broken fundraising model, and what to do instead

For entrepreneurs building anything mission-driven, this episode is a masterclass in translating business rigor into Kingdom impact — without losing the soul of the mission in the process.

From the Rose Bowl to Real Estate: Colt McCoy on Identity, Injury, and the Long Obedience After Football

Host Justin Forman sits down with Colt McCoy, former University of Texas and NFL quarterback, for a conversation that traces how a career-altering injury on the biggest stage of his life became the foundation for a faith that never wavered — through 14 years in the NFL and into a new season as a commercial real estate entrepreneur in Fort Worth.

Colt McCoy played quarterback at the University of Texas and spent 14 seasons in the NFL before retiring to found a commercial real estate company alongside partners at HPI in Fort Worth, Texas. Raised in West Texas by a coaching family, Colt has spent his entire adult life "in a glass box" — watched, known, and never quite off the record. This conversation traces that journey from a national championship injury that shattered his sense of identity to the quiet, unglamorous grind of starting a business from scratch.

Key Topics:

• The night before the national championship game and the injury that changed everything
  
  
• Why Colt says his identity was "totally on football" — and what it meant when that was taken away
  
  
• Growing up in a coaching family in West Texas and learning leadership as a young quarterback
  
  
• Living in a "glass box" — faith and integrity when everyone is watching
  
  
• The elbow injury that ended his NFL career and the hard conversation that followed
  
  
• Praying through a life transition with his wife after 14 years of football-first structure
  
  
• What playing quarterback taught him about leading a team through crisis
  
  
• Building a faith-first commercial real estate company from the ground up in Fort Worth
  
  

For entrepreneurs walking through their own transitions — whether that's a career ending, a new venture starting, or an identity being re-formed — Colt's story is a picture of what it looks like to hold tightly to Christ and loosely to everything else. This conversation is a reminder that our calling doesn't end when the game does.

Two Tunics and $7.5 Billion

Host Justin Forman sits down with Finny Kuruvilla, MD, PhD, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Eventide Asset Management, for a conversation that moves from a 32-year-old jacket to a $7.5 billion investment thesis — and asks what it actually means to own something, whether it's a stock, a business, or a life.

Finny still wears the jacket his mom bought him for medical school interviews in 1994. That's not nostalgia — it's conviction, traced back to a single verse about tunics that rearranged how he thinks about money, ownership, and enough. That same conviction became the founding thesis of Eventide: investing is ownership, and ownership carries ethical responsibility. Nearly two decades later, Eventide manages $7.5 billion under that idea, and Finny — father of nine, homeschooler, and a physician-scientist by training — is still wrestling with what it means to hold power, capital, and gifting without letting any one of them define him.

Key Topics:

• Why Finny still wears one jacket — and the Bible study that started it

• The founding thesis of Eventide: investing as ownership, ownership as ethical responsibility

• Raising nine kids with zero screens before junior high and no phones until 18

• The family worship streak that hit 200 days — and what happens when it does

• Why "the powers that be" today are algorithms, not nations

• The Great Commission, Great Commandment, and Great Cultivation — and why entrepreneurs need all three

• Why science deepened Finny's worship instead of shrinking it

• The communication gap that makes people distrust business and medicine

This conversation is for any entrepreneur who has confused simplicity with sacrifice, or capital with control. Finny makes the case that ownership — of money, of a business, of a calling — was never meant to be casual. Walk away with a sharper sense of what you actually hold, and Who it belongs to.

Watch the full episode on YouTube or continue to stream audio on your favorite podcast platform.

Finny Kuruvilla is the Co-Chief Investment Officer at Eventide Asset Management, LLC. Views expressed in this podcast are intended for information purposes and do not constitute investment advice. Eventide does not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. Eventide's values-based approach to investing may not produce desired results and could result in underperformance compared with other investments. There is no guarantee that any investment will achieve its objectives, generate positive returns, or avoid losses. Assets under management data is as of 02/12/2026.

Host Justin Forman sits down with Chip Ingram, pastor, author, and CEO of Living on the Edge, for a conversation recorded at South by Southwest that reframes ambition, love, and servant leadership through language entrepreneurs actually recognize.

Most entrepreneurs have felt the guilt at some point — the sense that wanting to build something great must mean you're arrogant. Chip Ingram has spent decades pastoring high-capacity leaders in Silicon Valley and beyond, and he's convinced that guilt is bad theology. In this conversation, he and Justin unpack what happens when pastors stop trying to recruit entrepreneurs into church programs and start helping them discover who God made them to be in the marketplace instead.

Chip Ingram is a pastor, author, and CEO of Living on the Edge, a ministry devoted to helping believers become truly transformed followers of Christ. He's led some of the most significant turnaround churches in the country, built a discipleship process called Prime Movers to develop entrepreneurial leaders, and recently released his book, I Choose Love. Few voices have spent more time in the space between the pulpit and the boardroom.

Key Topics:

• Why entrepreneurs and pastors mutually intimidate each other — and what breaks the ice

• The "Prime Movers" process Chip used to disciple entrepreneurs instead of recruiting them

• Coining "humbition" — holding ambition and humility together without guilt

• What servant leadership actually requires: leading boldly while dying to ego

• God's sovereignty and human responsibility — doing your best and trusting the outcome to Him

• Why sharing failure, not success, is what actually builds a team

• Redefining love as a covenant choice instead of an emotion

This episode is for the entrepreneur who has felt the tension between wanting to build something great and wondering if that desire is even okay. Chip offers permission — not to chase glory, but to steward the dreams God already placed there.

Watch the full episode on YouTube or continue to stream audio on your favorite podcast platform.

The Crime Scene Disguised as a Website

Host Justin Forman sits down with Laila Mickelwait, Co-Founder and CEO of the Justice Defense Fund, for a conversation that traces how one late-night test upload exposed a multi-billion-dollar corporation built on abuse — and how she built a movement to take it down.

In 2020, Laila Mickelwait uploaded a test video to P*rnhub just to see what it would take. All it required was an email address. No age verification. No consent verification. No ID. What she uncovered next — a corporate empire worth billions, a website ranked fifth-most-trafficked in the world, and a system that allowed rape and child sexual abuse material to be monetized at scale — set her on a five-year fight that would eventually pull in Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, billionaire investors, and the CEOs of Visa and MasterCard.

Key Topics:

• How one test upload revealed P*rnhub's complete lack of age and consent verification
  
  
• The corporate structure behind P*rnhub — MindGeek, hidden ownership, and a $362 million hedge fund loan
  
  
• Serena's story: the "immortalization of trauma" and the human cost of self-generated CSAM
  
  
• The strategy shift that actually moved the needle: going after Visa, MasterCard, and Discover
  
  
• How a Nick Kristof article and a billionaire's outrage collided to force real corporate change
  
  
• The Justice Defense Fund's two-part model: public pressure and strategic civil litigation
  
  
• Why 2.3 million petition signatures — and a single share on social media — actually matter
  
  

This conversation is a case study in what it looks like to take a problem the size of a global industry and find the leverage point that actually moves it. For any entrepreneur who has ever felt paralyzed by the size of a problem worth solving, Laila's story is a blueprint for turning conviction into strategy — and strategy into change.

Watch the full episode on YouTube or continue to stream audio on your favorite podcast platform.

Key Topics:

•          The NIL earthquake — how a $471-a-month scholarship check gave way to a multi-million-dollar collision between money and college sports almost overnight

•          Why Trent believes the “quick-fix” entrepreneur mindset is a spiritual dead end, even when it pays

•          The coming clash between private equity and institutional leadership in college athletics

•          How Tim Tebow's boldness opened the door for a new generation of athletes to talk openly about faith

•          The hardest story Trent has ever told: losing his five-year-old son, and the peace that “transcends understanding” that carried his family through it

Notable Quotes:

“I think you could be spiritually bankrupt if you go chase the gold and forget about the soul.” — Trent Dilfer

“I have a peace that transcends understanding. I am not my own.” — Trent Dilfer

“Our God is a master of brokenness. He is the healer of the broken.” — Trent Dilfer

Description:

Trent Dilfer has seen the collision of money and college sports from every angle: as a Super Bowl-winning quarterback who earned $471 a month on scholarship, as a head coach at UAB who watched NIL rewrite the rules six weeks into his first season, and as a broadcaster who now studies the institutions trying to keep up. On this episode of Faith Driven Entrepreneur, Trent joins host Justin Forman for a wide-ranging conversation about what happens when entrepreneurial disruption crashes into institutions that were never built to move fast — and why he believes chasing money without character is its own kind of bankruptcy.

The conversation moves from the mechanics of NIL and the coming wave of private equity in college athletics, to the deeper story of how faith became a normal, bold part of the conversation in locker rooms — tracing a line from Tom Landry and Reggie White through the Tim Tebow era to today's young quarterbacks.

Then Trent shares the hardest chapter of his own story: the loss of his five-year-old son, and the supernatural peace that met him in the middle of it. It's a raw, honest picture of what it looks like to trust God when nothing about the outcome makes sense — and why Trent says brokenness, not polish, is where most people actually meet Jesus.

Half of all U.S. teenagers say they already have a business idea they're passionate about pursuing. That's the headline finding host Justin Forman digs into with David Kinnaman, CEO of Barna Group, in this data-rich conversation about a generation quietly gearing up to build.

David has spent his career turning research into a roadmap for the church, and in this episode he brings fresh findings on entrepreneurially minded teens — their hope, their hunger for mentors, and the pressure they carry to succeed. Justin and David trace the thread from Lego sets and Shark Tank reruns to the Old Testament story of Daniel, building a case for what David calls a “theology of influence”: preparing young people for a level of impact none of us can fully predict.

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation exploring Barna's newest research on faith, identity, and the entrepreneurial generation — and what parents, pastors, and business leaders can do with it.

Key Topics:

•          New Barna data: 49% of U.S. teenagers already have a business idea they're passionate about pursuing

•          A “theology of influence” — what Daniel's story in Babylon teaches us about preparing the next generation

•          Why entrepreneurially minded teens report 85% more hope about the future

•          Growing up in “digital Babylon”: raising kids among tech built to capture their attention

•          The mentorship gap — and why entrepreneurial teens are 88% more likely to already have one

•          Identity formation in a world where AI is reshaping the whole idea of a career

•          A practical next step for families: Faith Driven Entrepreneur for Teens

David Kinnaman is CEO of Barna Group, the research firm he has led for over two decades, helping churches, nonprofits, and business leaders understand cultural and generational trends through a faith lens. He is the author of several books on faith and the next generation, and continues to lead original research at the intersection of faith, work, and identity.

This conversation is for any parent, pastor, or entrepreneur wondering whether the next generation is ready to build — and whether the church is ready to help them.

Notable Quotes:

“We need to prepare this generation with a theology of influence that God can and will use them in their faithfulness.” — David Kinnaman

“We prepare a generation for success, but we don't prepare them for suffering.” — David Kinnaman

“I think we've seen the funeral of the lone wolf over the last decade.” — Justin Forman

Watch the full episode on YouTube or continue to stream audio on your favorite podcast platform.

Join host Justin Forman for a candid conversation with Stephen Ellsworth, co-founder of Poppi, the prebiotic soda brand that went from a Dallas farmers market stand to one of the largest exits in beverage history when PepsiCo acquired it for $2 billion. Stephen walks through the pivotal decisions that shaped Poppi's rise — rewriting the formula a week before Shark Tank, the branding fight that determined whether Poppi would be sold as a health product or a soda, and the negotiating table where his team turned down a $1 billion offer because it “didn't feel right.”

But the most striking part of Stephen's story isn't the exit — it's what came after. He opens up about the identity crisis, isolation, and unexpected grief that followed closing the deal, and how wrestling with purpose in the months afterward reshaped his understanding of calling, generosity, and what he calls this next season: not retirement, but “preferment.”

Throughout, Stephen traces how his faith — dormant since he was a teenager — was reawakened through the entrepreneurial journey itself, from a providential tax refund that arrived the week his mortgage was due, to the conviction that let him walk away from billion-dollar offers that didn't align with what he and his team believed was right.

Key Topics:

•      From a Wyoming kitchen to Shark Tank to a $2 billion PepsiCo acquisition

•      The branding pivot that turned an apple cider vinegar tonic into a prebiotic soda

•      Why Stephen's team walked away from a $1 billion Pepsi offer and a $1.65 billion Keurig Dr Pepper offer

•      The unexpected identity crisis and isolation that followed the exit

•      Moving from a Mormon upbringing to a faith renewed through entrepreneurship

•      Setting up a Donor Advised Fund and learning to give with the same rigor used to build a business

Notable Quotes:

“Sitting where we are now, a $2 billion exit from a farmers market stand is just wild.” - Stephen Ellsworth

“Pepsi is a huge system. If you're gonna buy us, buy us.” - Stephen Ellsworth

“The idea of coming to know God more fully through [the entrepreneurial journey] is one of the greatest side benefits of the whole equation.” - Justin Forman