SHOW NOTES
In this episode of the R7 Christian Marketing Podcast, Dr. Dave regroups with entrepreneur Josef Schmidt for a candid conversation about why Christian marketing often underperforms, what excellence actually looks like, and how to build businesses that truly honor God while functioning at a high level.
The Pursuit of Excellence: Lessons for Christian Entrepreneurs from Joe Schmidt
Faith does not cancel effort.
Calling does not guarantee outcomes. If you want meaningful results in your work and ministry, you still have to grind.
On this episode of the R7 Christian Marketing Podcast, Dr. Dave and entrepreneur Josef “Joe” Schmidt talk honestly about what Christian entrepreneurs often get wrong and what it really takes to build something meaningful.
Their conversation highlights a simple but challenging truth: Faith does not remove the need for hard work. Success still requires grind, focus, and excellence.
Faith Is Not a Shortcut Around Effort
Joe opens with a personal story about his dad, a man who toiled for years as an entrepreneur. His father worked incredibly hard, went to church faithfully, and often interpreted every business outcome as a direct message from God.
When things went well, he saw it as favor. When things went poorly, he assumed God was disappointed and tried to earn more affirmation by going to church more, serving more, and doing more religious activity.
Joe points out the simple problem: sometimes a bad outcome is not a spiritual test, it is just a bad decision.
He remembers telling his dad, in effect, that God was not punishing him. The business decision itself was unwise.
Many Christian entrepreneurs fall into the same trap. They over spiritualize results and under value honest evaluation. You can pray, worship, and trust God, and still have to own the quality of your decisions and the consistency of your effort.
You still have to work.
Why So Many Christian Businesses Feel Average
From there, Joe and Dr. Dave look at the service industry. Home services in particular are notoriously inconsistent. Missed appointments, poor communication, and sloppy work are common.
Joe notes how often those trucks have a fish symbol, a Bible verse, or a statement like “God gets the glory” on them. Yet the actual service experience is not excellent.
The problem is not the symbol on the truck. The problem is a misunderstanding of what it means to follow Christ at work.
A big part of following Jesus is excellence. Whatever you do, you do it as if you are doing it for Him. If you show up late, do half hearted work, and fail to follow through, that is not spiritual warfare. It is a failure of ownership and excellence.
Bringing faith into your business does not mean everything becomes easy. It means you have a deeper reason to pursue excellence in all things.
Church Culture Versus Competence
Next, the conversation shifts to church staffing and culture. Joe describes working with large churches that have big budgets and strong production capabilities. He has seen how much time and energy goes into long meetings and drawn out processes that would get laughed out of most businesses.
There is prayer, fellowship, and a strong internal culture, but often very little metric driven accountability. It is not always clear how staff performance is evaluated beyond the fact that Sunday happened.
The underlying issue is that many churches are operationally led by gifted communicators and preachers who were never trained to be CEOs. It is like expecting a talented actor to automatically be a great company president.
Some churches address this by appointing executive pastors with business backgrounds, which helps. Still, the weekly pressure to prepare sermons, lead staff, and manage ministries can make it difficult to lead with clarity and rigor.
Joe and Dr. Dave are not attacking churches. They are pointing out that Christians are not immune to the temptation of mediocrity, slow decision making, and unmeasured activity. Without clear expectations and measurable outcomes, any organization tends to drift.
Every day, God sends a text with one emoji based on your effort. Not your outcome. Your effort. And here’s the crucial part: “There’s always love in the emoji.”
The “10 and 2” Story: Clarity and Focus in a Crisis
One of the core stories of this episode is Joe’s “10 and 2” moment.
He and his business partner had built a company to around 3 million dollars in revenue, but profits were thin. They were barely breaking even and still grinding.
They were nominated for an entrepreneur of the year award and attended a black tie event in Charlotte. At that event, a private equity professional approached them and offered to meet the next morning. Naturally, they assumed this was the beginning of a life changing opportunity.
The next day, they rode an elevator up to a high floor in a downtown office tower, sat down in a polished office, and began the meeting.
It lasted three minutes.
The investor asked for their top line and bottom line. When he learned they had about 3 million in revenue and no meaningful profit, he politely ended the conversation. For their type of business, he said, they needed to be at 10 million in revenue and 2 million in profit before a group like his would be interested.
On the way back, Joe’s partner asked the key question:
“What numbers would we have to say so you would not throw us out of the room?”
The answer was clear: ten and two. Ten million top line, two million bottom line.
Joe and his partner left that meeting humbled but not crushed. On the drive home they made two big decisions.
- They decided to make “10 and 2” the singular focus of their business for the next 24 months.
- They decided to turn off the noise. No more obsessing over the economic meltdown of 2008, no doom scrolling, no endless financial news and fear. They would put their heads down and build.
Back in the office, they wrote “10 and 2” on every whiteboard and window. Only the two of them knew what it meant, but it became the filter for every decision.
If a conversation, project, or idea did not move them closer to ten or to two, it did not make the cut.
In a brutal economic climate, they tripled the business, hit their target, and sold the company.
The lesson is not that every entrepreneur will hit those exact numbers. The lesson is that clarity and focus change everything. When you know exactly what you are aiming for, what you say “no” to becomes easier, and your daily grind gains direction.
Excellence Is Not Perfection
Dr. Dave offers a definition of excellence that reframes the whole conversation.
Excellence is doing the best you can with the resources you have in this moment.
It is not perfection. Perfection is impossible and paralyzing.
Excellence asks, “What do I have right now, and how do I steward it fully?”
If your arm hurts and you are an athlete, you give the best you can with that limitation. If your business is underfunded, you still deliver the best possible experience with the tools and people you have.
This definition also guards against using faith as an excuse. You cannot say “God will handle it” and then work lazily. If God gave you talents, time, relationships, and opportunities, excellence means you bring your full effort to those while trusting Him with the outcomes.
Gifts, Passion, and Real Calling
Joe also shares a perspective he heard from a speaker to college students. He challenges the popular advice to “follow your passion,” calling it unhelpful at best and destructive at worst.
Most of the time, passion alone does not lead to sustainable work or impact. Many passions are hobbies that cost money rather than generate it.
Instead, Joe encourages people to discover what they are good at and what gifts they actually have. Then, learn how to use those gifts to create value in the world.
When you do that, something powerful happens. As you serve others with your gifts, gain responsibility, and see positive results, passion grows around that work. You begin to enjoy and care deeply about what you are good at.
For Christian entrepreneurs, this means that calling is often discovered through giftedness and obedience, not just through emotional passion or a single dramatic moment.
Faith and Work: Two Buckets or One Life
Another theme in the conversation is the difficulty many believers face in integrating faith with daily work.
It is easy to treat them as separate buckets. One bucket is “faith” that includes church, prayer, and spiritual practices. The other is “work,” which is your job as a project manager, designer, business owner, or leader.
If you never mix the buckets, life can feel simpler in one way. You do not have to wrestle with questions like, “What does it mean to follow Jesus in my inbox, my staff meeting, or my quarterly numbers?”
But that separation also means your faith has little impact on the quality and ethics of your work, and your work never becomes an arena of worship and growth.
The alternative is to bring your faith into your work not by forcing religious language on everyone, but by letting it shape your character and effort.
That looks like integrity when no one is looking, generosity when budgets are tight, courage when hard decisions need to be made, and excellence in every assignment, no matter how small.
Unlimited Resources Are Not the Goal
You might assume that Joe’s life became easy after selling his business. In reality, he describes a very different challenge.
When he did not have to work for a season, his fundamental question became, “Why get out of bed in the morning?”
Unlimited options can be paralyzing. Just like a website with thousands of shoe choices needs filters and categories, human beings need meaningful constraints.
We are not built for endless choices with no direction.
Ironically, many entrepreneurs chase financial freedom so they can do “whatever they want,” then discover that lack of structure is deeply unsatisfying.
Joe argues that the grind itself has value. Having something difficult to build, problems to solve, and people to serve is not just part of the struggle, it is part of the gift.
Wealth, Generosity, and What God Wants For You
Joe is honest. He wants to build wealth. But his main driver now is not comfort. It is generosity.
He believes generosity is not something God wants from you. It is something God wants for you. Giving your time, money, and energy to others is good for your soul, good for your body, and good for your relationships.
More resources mean more opportunities to be generous.
That does not mean only rich people can give. Anyone can give time, encouragement, and skill. But as God entrusts you with more, one of the most joyful ways to use it is to bless others.
Ideas Are Cheap. Commitment Is Costly.
Dr. Dave closes with a story about a mentorship program he nearly launched. He assembled a room full of influential leaders who were ready to say “yes” to his vision.
The feedback was strong. The appetite was there.
But as he looked at what it would actually take to build and sustain it, he realized it would require five to seven years of focused effort. After thinking and praying it through, he chose not to move ahead.
That decision was not a lack of courage. It was a sober assessment of cost and calling.
Too many entrepreneurs fall in love with an idea, race ahead, involve partners and investors, and only later discover they are not willing to pay the long term price.
The time to decide that is before you drag others into it.
A lot of people say you need to go “all in” from day one. Joe and Dr. Dave suggest a more thoughtful path.
Prototype. Test. Build the plan. See if it fits your wiring and season of life. The most valuable outcome of planning might be clarity that you should not do this after all.
A Call To Christian Entrepreneurs
This episode is a kind but firm wake up call to Christian entrepreneurs, leaders, and creatives.
Stop hiding behind the language of calling while bringing half hearted effort.
Stop blaming every setback on spiritual warfare when some of it is just bad strategy.
Stop assuming that putting a Bible verse on your truck or footer will make up for broken systems and poor service.
Start treating excellence as worship.
Start identifying your true gifts and aligning your work with them.
Start using clear, measurable targets, like Joe’s “10 and 2,” to focus your decisions.
Start seeing your work as one of the primary places where God develops your character through the grind.
Faith provides purpose and hope. Excellence provides credibility. Hard work provides results. When you put all three together, you create something much more compelling than a slogan. You build a life and business that reflect the heart of God in the real world.
Pray deeply. Work hard. Commit to excellence in all things. The journey is where God shapes you and often where your greatest impact is found.
The R7 process helps Christian leaders and marketers discover their purpose and build actionable strategy around their calling. If you’re ready to stop using calling as an excuse and start living with championship-level intentionality, tune in to The R7 Christian Marketing Podcast for more faith-driven conversations about excellence in business and ministry.
Remember: Eagles don’t seek approval. They just fly. What’s keeping you grounded?
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