Profitable Christian Business

What would it cost you each month to hire someone to build your software tools, run your research, and take your meeting notes? Doug Greathouse tells you what he pays for the same work: $135 a month.

In this solo episode, Doug walks through what AI has actually done inside his business, with real costs and no hype. He shares the three jobs his AI tools handle today: building SEO, ads and social agents with Codex, a funding research agent built for a client, and an AI meeting notes pipeline. He is also honest about what AI does not do, and what it still takes from him: setup time and checking the work.

Then the faith side. Using the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25, Doug asks whether we are being faithful with the tools we have been handed, and why faithful means both putting tools to work and cutting the ones that do not earn their place.

You will leave with a six-step assignment to find one repeatable task, price your own hour, test one AI tool for a month, and decide with real numbers.

In this episode:

• What $135 a month of AI buys in a real business
• Three AI jobs: building agents, client funding research, meeting notes
• Why a hire is not the same as a tool
• Matthew 25 and stewardship of AI
• A six-step weekly assignment

Get clear on your next 90 days with Goal Getting: https://goalgetting.app More episodes: https://profitablechristianbusiness.com/profitable-christian-business-podcast

What does it look like to make prayer part of the way you run your business, rather than something you fit in after everything else?

Doug Greathouse talks with James Williams, author, podcaster, speaker and creator of Dark Waters, about what James calls partnering with God in business. James shares how he organizes his day around prayer, learns to discern the Holy Spirit's direction, and makes room for faith when work feels overwhelming.

The conversation moves into James's views on spiritual warfare, repentance, generational patterns, and the relationship between priesthood and kingship. Doug and James also discuss business setbacks, sacrifice, removing distractions, and praying for protection over a business and home.

In this episode: - Making time for prayer when business feels overwhelming - Hearing God's voice through prayer, scripture and experience - James's perspective on repentance and generational patterns - Why James connects spiritual life with business leadership - Learning from business setbacks and trusting God - Removing distractions to make room for spiritual growth - The "gates of prayer" and James's biblical explanation - Praying for protection over your business and home

CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction and welcome to James Williams 01:40 Organizing the business day around prayer 06:06 Overwhelm, sacrifice and partnering with God 12:08 Hearing God's voice and discerning His direction 21:37 Repentance and spiritual communication 26:38 Generational patterns and the bloodline 32:55 Priesthood, kingship and business leadership 44:18 Removing distractions for spiritual growth 49:17 The gates of prayer and their biblical basis 54:35 Praying for protection over business and home 01:06:32 Where to follow James and a possible part two 01:08:22 Final challenge: make time to pray

What does it actually feel like to work for you?

You can put Christian values on your website.

You can talk about servant leadership.

You can say people come first.

But your employees experience your culture every single day—and their experience may tell a very different story.

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse sits down with Douglas Shaw, author of Curative Culture: Stepping Away from a Toxic Workplace, to explore how leaders can build healthy, high-performing workplaces rooted in dignity, trust, accountability, purpose, and Christian values.

Douglas says employees are constantly evaluating three things when they enter a workplace:

Am I safe?

Can I trust your intentions?

Can I respect you?

Those questions reveal far more about your real culture than a mission statement hanging on the wall.

Douglas also challenges the idea that healthy culture means soft leadership.

A curative culture still demands excellence.

It still requires accountability.

It still requires difficult conversations.

And sometimes it requires removing someone—even a high performer—to protect the rest of the organization.

In one of the strongest stories from the episode, Douglas explains why he hesitated to deal with two highly productive but toxic employees. A consultant finally challenged him: if leadership continued tolerating their behavior, the rest of the company would assume leadership approved of it.

Douglas acted.

The employees left.

And something unexpected happened:

Other people began to flourish.

• What Douglas means by Curative Culture
• How nature helped inspire the idea behind the book
• How quickly you can sense whether a workplace feels healthy
• The three questions employees silently ask
• Why leadership owns culture
• How Christian leaders should think about the Imago Dei
• Why treating employees with dignity does not eliminate accountability
• How Douglas handled an employee he initially wanted to fire
• Why understanding context can change a difficult personnel decision
• How a firing can sometimes become a blessing
• Why healthy culture isn't "soft"
• How culture affects retention and profitability
• Why toxic high performers can damage the entire organization
• Why what leaders tolerate becomes part of the culture
• How to improve culture starting with leadership self-awareness
• Why leaders should ask, "How do I want it to feel to work here?"
• Why values must be embodied instead of simply written down
• How servant leadership changes the use of power
• Why great leaders ask questions instead of always making pronouncements
• How leaders can stay connected to employees
• How Douglas maintained culture after his company went remote
• Why remote teams still need intentional in-person connection
• Why asking employees for their opinions builds confidence
• Why purpose can keep employees engaged longer than compensation alone

Douglas ends with a powerful leadership challenge:

Help employees understand what they are actually accomplishing through their work.

Don't simply give people a job.

Help them understand the mission they're part of.

Doug Shaw Perspective: DougShawPerspective.com

Douglas Shaw & Associates: DouglasShaw.com

Book: Curative Culture: Stepping Away from a Toxic Workplace

Knowing your culture needs to change isn't enough.

The Goal Getting App helps entrepreneurs turn one important outcome into a focused 90-day goal, identify the needle-moving actions that matter, and consistently execute.

Start Your Next 90 Days with Goal Getting

What if the biggest problem inside your business isn't your people?

What if it's the system you've asked them to work inside?

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse sits down with organizational architect, executive coach, best-selling author, and transformation expert Adam M. Ward to explore organizational friction, systems thinking, sustainable growth, burnout, aggressive goal setting, and faith-driven leadership.

Adam has spent more than 20 years diagnosing broken systems across multiple industries. He tells Doug that after doing this long enough, he can often spot organizational problems in about 30 seconds.

One thing he looks for?

Stacks.

Stacks of inventory.

Stacks of emails.

Stacks of meetings.

Stacks of projects.

Anywhere work continually piles up can signal that part of the organization isn't flowing properly.

But Adam makes an even stronger argument:

"If you're blaming people, you have a system problem."

Most employees don't come to work intending to fail. When capable people repeatedly depend on heroics, workarounds, phone-a-friend solutions, or constant firefighting just to get through the day, leadership needs to examine the environment those people have been given.

• What completing an Ultraman taught Adam about business transformation
• Why you shouldn't ask a "couch potato" organization to immediately run an Ironman
• How Adam defines organizational friction
• Why different business problems require different improvement frameworks
• How to recognize a system problem versus a people problem
• Why Adam looks for "stacks" when diagnosing a company
• How to prioritize when multiple systems are broken
• Why revenue and profit are outputs—not the underlying processes
• Why Adam says "money masks everything"
• Why leadership humility determines whether transformation can happen
• How to perform a simple internal systems audit
• Why every company has more good ideas than it can execute
• Why repetitive processes need documentation and continuous improvement
• The difference between the entrepreneur who dreams and the operator who scales
• Why startups need to transition from startup mentality to production mentality
• Why broken systems—not simply workload—can cause burnout
• Why leaders should ask frontline employees how to improve their own work
• Adam's approach to aggressive but realistic goals
• Why leaders underestimate what's possible long-term while overestimating what's possible short-term
• Why progress should still be celebrated when a stretch goal isn't fully achieved
• How Adam's Christian faith shapes the way he works with clients
• Why character matters more than getting ahead
• What it means to trust God when business outcomes aren't controllable
• Why a friend once told Adam to put down the whiteboard and fast and pray
• Adam's candid story about self-reliance, burnout, and eventually needing intensive recovery and pastoral care
• Why successful leaders need accountability and Christian community
• Adam's final challenge around integrity, vision, direction, and trusting God

Adam offers a free 30-question organizational diagnostic on his website that provides immediate results.

Adam M. Ward — Website & Free Diagnostic

Once you know what needs to change, you still need to execute.

The Goal Getting App helps entrepreneurs turn clarity into a focused 90-day goal, identify the needle-moving actions that matter most, and consistently execute.

Start Your Next 90 Days with Goal Getting

How do you grow a company without losing your culture, your mission, your faith—or the people you're called to serve?

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse sits down with Kenny Wyatt, CEO of Pushpay, for a practical conversation about faith-driven leadership, company culture, customer focus, stewardship, innovation, goal setting, and sustainable growth.

Kenny describes one of his foundational leadership principles as:

"Humility as an operating system."

For Kenny, servant leadership isn't the opposite of high performance. Leaders can set ambitious goals, hold people accountable, make difficult personnel decisions, and build high-performing teams while still leading with humility, love, and purpose.

Kenny also makes a strong case that CEOs and founders cannot allow growth to disconnect them from the customer. He argues that leaders need to spend significant time with their ideal customer profile, listening closely enough to recognize when the company is beginning to drift from its mission.

• What fly fishing taught Kenny about adaptability, instinct, and leadership
• Why culture matters even when you're a company of one
• Why Kenny hires for mission and values before skill
• What Pushpay does and how it serves churches
• How Pushpay evaluates AI and emerging technology
• Why your ideal customer profile should guide innovation
• Why CEOs can't outsource their relationship with customers
• How to recognize when a high-growth company is drifting
• How to create and use a customer advisory board
• Why in-person customer conversations still matter
• Kenny's Philippians 2 approach to servant leadership
• What "humility as an operating system" looks like in practice
• How to hold people accountable without abandoning grace
• How to handle difficult firing decisions with dignity
• Why stewardship includes time, talent, and treasure
• How to identify your company's stewardship metric
• How faith shapes Kenny's approach as CEO
• Why your leadership team matters so much
• A radically different approach to annual goal setting
• Why Kenny believes you should rebuild the business every single year
• Why leadership retreats create better thinking
• Why Christian entrepreneurs need to keep prayer in the driver's seat

Kenny closes the conversation with a deceptively simple challenge for every Christian business leader:

How's your prayer life?

Because sustainable growth isn't simply about better technology, smarter goals, or stronger systems.

It's about becoming the kind of leader capable of stewarding the growth God has entrusted to you.

Pushpay: Pushpay

Nurture: Nurture

Knowing what matters isn't enough.

The Goal Getting App helps entrepreneurs turn clarity into a focused 90-day plan, identify the needle-moving actions that actually create progress, and consistently execute.

Start Your Next 90 Days with Goal Getting

What happens to your leadership when the pressure rises, the plan stops working, and you have to make a decision without perfect information?

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse sits down with leadership, growth, and performance coach Jon Sheldon to explore what combat, entrepreneurship, sales leadership, coaching, marriage, and faith have taught him about performing when the stakes are high.

Jon served as a Marine infantry leader during the Iraq War before building a career in finance, Fortune 500 sales leadership, and eventually coaching business owners, sales leaders, and high performers.

But some of the most powerful lessons in this conversation aren't about tactics.

They're about love, purpose, authenticity, ego, clarity, resilience, and community.

Jon shares why combat taught him a kind of love and commitment that is difficult to describe unless you've experienced it—and how that same commitment influences the way he serves clients today. He explains that strong leadership requires wanting the people around you to win, sometimes even more than you want to win yourself.

We also unpack Jon's framework for making decisions under pressure:

Clarity → Condition → Cost → Align → Act → Adapt

Instead of waiting until chaos arrives, Jon argues that leaders need an internal operating system they've practiced enough that good decision-making becomes almost second nature.

• What combat taught Jon about pressure, sacrifice, love, and leadership
• Why great leaders want their people to win
• Why work-life "balance" is better understood as counterbalance
• How to define purpose without talking about your career
• Why your actions—not your words—prove your authenticity
• How ego prevents leaders from adapting quickly
• Why humility increases trust
• Jon's internal operating system for making decisions under pressure
• Why clarity must come before action
• The four parts of Jon's Personal Performance Blueprint
• Why motivation still matters
• How accepting the cost of a decision creates confidence
• Why saying no protects your purpose
• Why entrepreneurs need coaches, mentors, systems, and community
• Why successful men need permission to admit they aren't always okay

Jon closes with an important reminder:

It's okay not to be okay all the time.

Strong leaders don't have to carry every stone themselves.

Website: https://www.belleauwood.coach

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/belleauwood_coaching/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-sheldon-82760a51/

The Goal Getting App helps entrepreneurs turn one important goal into a focused 90-day execution plan—with clear needle movers, consistent action, and accountability.

https://goalgetting.app

What is quietly sabotaging your leadership, career, and God-given purpose?

According to Christian executive coach Shawn Sommerkamp, the greatest obstacle is often not your boss, your company, the economy, or a lack of opportunity.

It is what you are telling yourself.

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse sits down with Shawn Sommerkamp, founder of Motivationeer, motivational speaker, and ICF-certified professional coach.

Shawn combines biblical truth, brain science, and executive coaching to help leaders change how they think, improve how they perform, and influence their organizations for Christ.

Doug and Shawn explore the difference between positive thinking and truthful thinking, why negative internal beliefs sabotage otherwise talented leaders, and how Christians can discover greater purpose in the work God has already placed in front of them.

You will discover:

• The four internal blockers represented by the acronym FAIL
• Why listening can be one of the most powerful ways to love and lead
• How negative self-talk affects performance and confidence
• Why truthful thinking creates more sustainable change than positive thinking
• How preparation helps overcome the fear of public speaking
• The connection between biblical principles and modern brain science
• How to identify the values that fuel your energy and passion
• Why clarity, systems, and measurable goals matter
• How Christian leaders can influence workplace culture without being performative
• Why serving others does not mean saying yes to everything
• How high-value content can build trust before the sale
• The question every leader should ask before setting a 90-day goal

One of Shawn's most important reminders is that your career is not merely a way to make a living. It can be a way to transform the world.

Visit Shawn's website:

https://motivationeer.com

Explore his coaching resources, core-values assessment, free training, and 72 weeks of inspiration.

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/c/motivationeer

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdsommerkamp/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/motivationeering

Do your goals keep fading out—not because you are lazy, but because you lack a clear system for execution?

The Goal Getting App helps Christian entrepreneurs:

• Choose one clear 90-day focus
• Identify weekly needle-moving actions
• Build consistency through daily execution
• Measure meaningful progress
• Finish what they start

Start your next 90 days with greater clarity, execution, and momentum:

https://goalgetting.app

Are you building your business from love or from the need for approval?

In this solo episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse explores one of the hidden motivations that may be holding back Christian entrepreneurs: the difference between trying to be loved and choosing to show love.

Doug shares why entrepreneurs can sometimes use business as a way to chase validation, respect, recognition, applause, and approval. The problem is that approval is a moving target. One goal leads to another goal. One level of recognition creates the desire for more recognition. And when your identity depends on people's response, fear becomes your operating system.

In this episode, Doug unpacks how this motivation affects leadership, marketing, sales, networking, parenting, relationships, and how entrepreneurs handle success and failure. He also points back to the example of Jesus, who did not live for public approval, but showed love even when it cost Him, even when He was misunderstood, rejected, and abandoned.

You'll learn:

• Why approval-seeking creates fear, pressure, and exhaustion
• How entrepreneurship can become a vehicle for validation
• Why showing love creates freedom, purpose, and peace
• How your motivation changes your marketing, sales, networking, and leadership
• Why identity rooted in Christ frees you from needing constant validation
• How to ask a better question before your next sales call, post, networking event, or business decision

If you are a Christian entrepreneur, business owner, leader, coach, or creator who wants to build from identity, service, authenticity, and faith instead of fear, this episode will challenge and encourage you.

Start building your next 90-day execution plan with the Goal Getting App: https://goalgetting.app

Connect with Doug: https://www.facebook.com/DougGreathouse/

How do you build a mission-driven business that people do not just buy from, but truly believe in?

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse interviews Anton Krecic, founder and CEO of Seven Weeks Coffee, about building a values-based brand, standing boldly for the pro-life movement, creating excellent products, and using business as a vehicle for impact.

Anton shares the story of how Seven Weeks Coffee began with a simple idea shortly after he got married: create a coffee company Christians could rally around while supporting the pro-life cause. What started as a side hustle has grown into a mission-driven direct-to-consumer coffee brand that donates 10% of every sale to pregnancy care centers and supports life-affirming organizations across the country.

In this conversation, Anton and Doug discuss:

• How Seven Weeks Coffee started and why coffee became the vehicle for the mission
• Why mission-driven businesses need excellent products
• How to build a brand around conviction without watering down your values
• Why knowing your customer matters when taking a bold public stand
• How becoming a father deepened Anton's conviction around the pro-life issue
• Why fear drives many abortion decisions and how pregnancy care centers bring practical help and gospel-centered hope
• How Seven Weeks Coffee partners with pregnancy care centers, maternity homes, adoption organizations, and pro-life groups
• What Anton learned from being laid off and going all in on entrepreneurship
• How trials shape both the entrepreneur and the business
• Why your business should be built around your current skill set, network, and area of influence

If you are a Christian entrepreneur, mission-driven founder, values-based business owner, or leader who wants to build a business with purpose, conviction, faith, and excellence, this episode will challenge and encourage you.

Try Seven Weeks Coffee and support the mission: https://sevenweekscoffee.com

Start your 90-day execution plan with the Goal Getting App: https://goalgetting.app/reset

How do you grow a business without burning out, losing your culture, or doing everything yourself?

In this episode of the Profitable Christian Business Podcast, Doug Greathouse interviews Todd Krause, founder of Silversun Consulting and owner of The Cleaning Authority, about sustainable business growth, leadership, culture, fundraising, client retention, and building a company that can scale without overwhelming the owner.

Todd shares practical lessons from growing The Cleaning Authority from $1.8 million to more than $4 million, leading businesses across finance, banking, franchising, consulting, and home services, and helping owners identify the leadership gaps, service model issues, and hidden inefficiencies that keep them stuck.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why business owners should not try to grow alone
• How culture impacts retention, referrals, service quality, and profitability
• Why knowing your ideal client is essential for sustainable growth
• How recurring revenue and customer retention change the growth equation
• Why hiring people with complementary strengths helps owners scale
• What investors and lenders look for before funding a business
• How to know when you have outgrown the way you are running the company
• Why delegation is not about getting people to do it your way, but helping them create good results
• How faith shapes leadership, dignity, service, and workplace culture

If you are a Christian entrepreneur, home-service business owner, nonprofit leader, or growth-minded business owner who feels overwhelmed, stretched thin, or stuck at the same revenue ceiling, this episode will help you think differently about leadership, culture, systems, and sustainable growth.

Connect with Todd Krause and schedule a complimentary Business Clarity & Growth Conversation: https://www.silversunconsulting.com

Start your 90-day execution plan with the Goal Getting App: https://goalgetting.app/reset