Bobby Gruenewald Intro

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Today on the Servant Leadership Podcast, we're joined by Bobby Grunald, entrepreneur, innovator, pastor, and the

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founder of the Uver Bible app before stepping into ministry at Life Church. Bobby was a serial entrepreneur,

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launching one of the early web hosting companies and later building a subscription-based entertainment

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streaming company. At Life Church, Bobby helped pioneer church online long before live streaming was normal. Out of that

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same spirit of innovation, he and a small team launched the Uver Bible app. What started as a simple idea to help

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people engage scripture on their phones has now become one of the most widely used apps in history, recently

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surpassing 1 billion downloads. Join us as Bobby shares how he's seen innovation, risk, and pushing the

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boundaries help make a difference in the lives of millions of people around the world. Bobby, thank you for being on the

Welcome, Bobby Gruenewald

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servant leadership podcast. I'm glad to be here with you, Chris. Look forward to it. This is super exciting. You're obviously

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leading something amazing at Uver, which we're going to get into, but I would love to hear the journey of how you got

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to here. How much of the journey do you want to hear? How far back do you want me to go? Give me the business highlights because

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you've got a cool business background. You know, I actually went when I went to college, I thought that I was well, I

Bobby’s Journey - Humble Beginnings In Website Building

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didn't think I wanted to study finance. Uh, and that's what I did. I thought maybe I'd go into investment banking or

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some kind of financial planning type type space. Um, but I had somebody that

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was a local businessman that saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. And he uh I was working in the

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back office at his car dealership and um honestly was pretty bored. I was, you

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know, 18 years old at the time. And he had somebody come in. And this is 1995.

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And uh had proposed building a website for the car dealership, which this is

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very early on in the days of the internet and days of websites. And so I walked up to the owner after the meeting

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because I kind of listened in and overheard the meeting. And and I think they wanted $2,200 to build like a

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template website. And I walked up to him and I said, "Mr. Bailey," I said, "If you let me build a website for you, I'll

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do it for $100." And he just looked at me and he was like, "Sure." Cuz I mean

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100 bucks, you had nothing to lose. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea how to build a website. Like I

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there were no books on it back then. Weren't even websites about how to build websites. So I had to go figure it out,

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which I loved a challenge. And so I talked to this guy that was down the hall in the dorms for me in college. and

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he was uh kind of one of those underground internet underground guys like that just was room lights were always out in his

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room and he was always on some chat you know room probably had illegal software

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I have no idea what was going on but uh anyway he kind of pointed me in the right direction so I built this website

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built another what proposed and built another website for the car dealership that was focused

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on selling parts and accessories called hondaaparts.com and that took off. Um, they were just

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selling parts and accessories all over the country out of the back of their car dealership and shipping them everywhere.

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So, they were doing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month in car car parts and accessory sales. And so, Mr.

Mr. Bailey’s Investment In Bobby’s Future

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Bailey called me into his office and he said, "What do you plan on doing in life?" And before I even had a chance to

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answer, um, he said, "Whatever it is that you're going to do, I want to invest in it." Wow. And that was one of these pivotal

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moments in my life where I just felt like God said, "Here's an opportunity." And I felt like I was supposed to step

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into it. Like I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. I didn't have any models of it in my life. Um I had great parents

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and great family, but just not they weren't entrepreneurs and that wasn't something I thought was even kind of possible. Um but here was somebody that

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saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. Looking back on it, I had all kinds of entrepreneurial attributes

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including even like proposing to build a website and this second idea.

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Um, so I built put together a business plan for a web hosting company. And back

Starting A Web Hosting Company

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then there were very few web hosting companies in the world that were focused

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on web hosting. They had some, you know, several companies would do web hosting as like a side business for their ISP or

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for some other type of business. But we thought, hey, we could actually build a

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company that's very just focused on that one thing and we could be really great at it. Um, so I I say we because I put

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together a team from um the school. I found some of the smartest people I could find in the computer science

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department and some of the smartest people I knew in the business department and I invited them all to kind of

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partner up with me to start this company. So, we raised money from that um for Mr. Bailey and one of his

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friends, the kind of angel investors for the first deal. I thought it was a enormous amount of money because when I

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was 18 at the time, I just, you know, everything seemed like a ton of money. Looking back on it, I probably could

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have asked them for two or three times as much money and they would have not even batted an eye at it. It would have been like so easy for them to say yes,

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but at the time I felt like I was asking them to for everything. And um so learned a ton. Um we grew our first

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customers from Germany and we grew to um had customers in 33 countries I think

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over the next year and a half. I was still full-time student and I was very much a more than full-time entrepreneur.

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So, it was like and I just got married and so it was like all these combination of things you should probably never all

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try to do at once. But it was a very very intense season and we um we grew

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that business. Uh sold it in 98. Um it

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was kind of honestly an opportunity to fix some of the challenges that we had with just uh structure that was

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different and and we had some a lot of mistakes you make kind of doing your first thing but um but everybody made

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money and then I started another company that was the largest professional wrestling website. We uh I know it's

The Professional Wrestling Site - A Strange Learning Experience

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everything that you think that it is when I just say that, but um it was a um

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uh we we acquired it. Um, it was one of the customers of my web hosting company and we wanted to take an online I

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partnered up with a new business partner and we wanted to buy an online community

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that had a high affinity for the content but was what we were calling like second

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tier content mainly because there was just less competition for that type of of asset. and we wanted to grow it and

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see if we could position it to be something that a public company or somebody that was getting ready to do an IPO wanted because Wall Street was

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valuing eyeballs at at X and we felt like we could sort of buy it for less

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and then grow it and then basically sell it was is the idea. We knew there's a

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window of time. We didn't know how big the window of time was exactly, but um we acquired it from a group. Um, we had

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hired then that group to be the kind of team that ran the website because they were obviously running it well before it

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just became a full-time job for them and they also had some equity in the company. So, they loved it because it

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was sort of like a hobby that turned into like a real, you know, business and then we sold it to a company in December

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of 1999 that Goldman then took public um in early 2000. And um and so at that

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point I was 23 years old and I thought this must be what God designed me to do

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to start and sell companies because I'd had a couple of successes and had an

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investor group that had was growing and was very interested in kind of like what was next and um and so I planned to

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start another company but uh again God had a different surprise and different plan and and uh there was kind of a few

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events that led to me coming on staff and joining the staff of my church, my local church, and then it's been kind of

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a wild ride since then. It's just such a fascinating story on the business side because I think most

From Entrepreneur To Church Leader

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people at 23 after they've had a few successes probably does not jump into church world or anything of Christian

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content after wrestling content and other things, let alone uh it's interesting. How did you come to

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the decision of I feel like God is calling me here. Uh, and obviously I

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don't think you knew at the time anything of what it would turn out to be. Yeah. No, obviously I mean I'm a

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futurist in my strengths but not the kind of futurist that sees the future like confidently. So yeah, the it's I

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didn't it was unexpected. So what happened the actual series of events that happened was my wife and I during that second company we found a church

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near our home where we were we built a home and where we built a home we went

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to go look for a local church that we could get plugged into. We found this church called Life Church. It was a new

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church relatively new church just a couple two or three years old and um we

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instantly fell in love with this church. Like this church is amazing. It was not

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there was no technology and I mean air conditioning was probably the best technology. It was very low-key as far

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as all that was concerned. But the people there were just

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were so warm and so welcoming and you could tell that you could just see that

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people's lives were being transformed by this church. Like just people that had been through some rough, you know,

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phases in life, you could just visibly tell. But God was like doing something really special. So there's this sort of

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I don't know, you're just drawn into it because you're like, man, this we were already Christians before we came, but we were like, man, this is just such a

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special place. So we started to get plugged in. We got into a small group, my wife and I did for like young married

Getting Plugged In At Life Church

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couples. Um we I started playing keyboard on the worship team as a volunteer. So I was working insane

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number of hours at work because when you're an entrepreneur and you're 22 23 years old I mean there's just sort of no

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boundaries to like how much work is you know possible. I mean you can just like

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so I was doing insane amount of work and then on the weekend outside I would work but then in

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addition to that I would serve at the church on Saturday and Sunday because we had six services and I would play keyboard to all of them. And so it was

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kind of this I don't even know how to describe it, but it was just like all pulled together in one big thing whereas

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was like this is our community. This is our church. We love it. Even at that point though, as much as I was connected

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involved in the church, I never thought that what I did in business would have have application in the church. Not not

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just because it was pro wrestling at the time, but even from the standpoint of just technology in general. Partly

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because it wasn't that wasn't even what I saw at church. And then we sold the company and an an article came out in

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the newspaper that had my picture on the front page of the paper because I was 23

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and it was one of the back in the day when all these dot stories were going on. So it's highlighting the sale of the

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company and one of the pastors at the church saw the article in the newspaper

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and he said, "Isn't that the guy that plays keyboard on the worship team?" And he wanted to go to lunch. And I

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initially thought that he wanted to go to lunch with me because he wanted to help me calculate what 10% was on the

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number that he read in the newspaper. Um, but instead he and first of all, and

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that's not a problem because my wife and I, we love to give and and we're tithers and that's not we sort of didn't need

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prompting on that. That was going to happen anyway. But instead, what he asked me at lunch was he said, "Have you

Turning Down an Offer To Join The Staff At Life Church

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ever he first of all, you want to know what I was going to do next?" And I said, 'Well, I don't have an immediate

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plan except that I'm looking at multiple ideas. I'm going to start another company. This is kind of like what I'm

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made to do. Like, like I mentioned earlier, I think this must be what God created me to do. And he said, "Well, have you ever considered using like what

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you're learning in business, what you're doing in business, like in a context of the church, maybe like even on staff of

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the church?" I was like, "No, I'd never considered it." And he's like, "Well, would you consider it?" And I was like,

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"No." Because I I love my church. I just thought if it became a job that that

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would be like like something that wouldn't go well, you know? And in some ways, I kind of didn't trust myself to

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be honest. Like I like I knew my personality well enough to know that like I'm kind of like ready for a

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challenge. I love a challenge. And then if I wake up and I feel like the challenge is over or it's time for a new

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challenge, then I don't drop it, but I like immediately go in the mode of like, okay, I'm finishing how to wrap this up

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so that I can get on to the next thing. And I just I knew that wouldn't be a good thing, you know, like to do at a

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church. So I said, "How about I just volunteer and spend more time doing

A Quick Trip From Volunteer To 24 Years on Staff

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whatever it is that you need me to do besides play keyboard on the worship team?" because I just didn't even have an idea that there was a need or an

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interest or any of that. And so that turned into like a 10-hour a week volunteer role, then 20, then 30, then

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40. And what happened was my my passion for the church really just begin to

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eclipse the passion I had for business. It wasn't like one went away. It was just one got way bigger.

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And I knew um pretty clearly at that point, but it took about a year. But

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then when it came to a point where I knew very clearly that um this is what I'm supposed to do and I wasn't

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expecting it. I wasn't looking forward. In fact, I said no. Like I thought this wasn't what I was supposed to do. Um but

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with a little bit of humility, you know, I came back to Pastor Jerry who was the one that had lunch with me and said, um,

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is there still an opportunity for me to come on staff and be and join the team? And he said, of course, let's you know,

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let's figure all that out. And and we did. So that's when I joined the staff and that was in 2001. Um I honestly even

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at that point even though I knew that was my next step, I kind of presumed it was my next step that would have other

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steps eventually off the team. I mean I just thought this would be a season because everything in my life up to that

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point had like a two-year expiration date on it. Like it just every business I started it was like seemed like about

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a couple years in ends like it's time to do something new. And so I just kind of thought this wouldn't be any different

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than that. But as we're having this conversation today, it's been 24 and a

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half years, you know, that I've been um on the team. And looking back on it,

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sometimes you cannot kind of only see these things when you look backwards, but you look back on it. God had

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orchestrated this really unique path with really unique experiences, both

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predating even my entrepreneurial start and some of the experiences I had prior to that. those two businesses. Um, the

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leadership things I learned, you know, just so many lessons, the ability to kind of hear his voice, the things I

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learned about technology, the ways that I got to be up close and watch like an online community forum around pro

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wrestling, even as crazy as that sounds, like I learned so much from that that then positioned me when I was in not

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just any church, but like a really special church, um, to be able to then

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take those experiences and use those to do some pretty unique things that like I could not have done had I just like

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gotten an education about it or I had I not I mean just got gone to school and got a certain degree or had I had I

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shortcircuited all that process and just jumped straight in to being on staff at the church. I would have missed out on

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something unique that God wanted to do that prepared me for what I was going to do. And I had no idea that that was going to happen. I had no idea all the

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steps that would be involved in it. It was more of a step-by-step process where you're just trying to ask God like,

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"Where do you want me to be today?" And what what's my next step? Like, "What do you want me to do now? What do

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you want me to do next?" And I'm pretty confident if I had seen the whole map of

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where I was going, I would have screwed it all up. Like, it just would have been like my personality is way too like like

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get to the end and go fast. Um, but the journey itself is what like made the

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whole thing special. So, yeah, I came on staff at the church. never thought it would and I never thought the role that I would be in at the church and the

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things we've been able to build and be a part of would have happened either. So at some point you version came up or

YouVersion Bible App Beginnings

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the idea of a Bible app of some sort. H what was the conversation like around that when you were first kicking around

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the idea you're coming on to the church team you're not necessarily thinking about that? Yeah. Um no so it was actually about

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five years later. Um so I came on staff in 2001. My first job had nothing not

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much to do with technology. I had some responsibilities, but it was really more about our churches had become a

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multi-sight church, like a church that meets in multiple locations. And so my job was kind of the the first six

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locations was sort of helped to get it from 0 to 60 miles an hour. So it was almost like startup startup startup startup startup was kind of the the type

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of vibe I was in. Just not hyper technology focused. There was some

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technology but but it was more limited um than what you might think. And then

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started to process what did I learn and what was that journey in business for and how could I use that in the miss to

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serve the mission of the church and begin to think about ways that we could missionally use technology externally

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like not just to grow our church but because we were already starting to do that but ways we could use outside the

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walls of the church. And this was like the backdrop. This was a ongoing conversation that I was having with the

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rest of our leaders, Pastor Craig and the the team. Um, and they agreed that

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we should like we as a church should figure out how we could leverage technology as a missional tool. Um, to

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do that, we freed up some of my day-to-day responsibilities because I had at that point kind of accumulated

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some teams and responsibilities over those five years that just had sort of come with the growth of everything. and

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freed me up to kind of think more about like what that could look like. Um there's multiple things in 2006 that we

A Foray Into Bible Tech - Church Online and Open

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started that were sort of implementing that concept. One was um church online

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which was actually inspired by the professional wrestling website. It was building a community around a a church

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community in an online context. So, not just streaming a sermon or a message,

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but actually really designing it so people actually could be connected to each other. You could really create a

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sense of community and connection. Uh, so that started in 2006. We started um

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giving away or licensing for free all of our intellectual property like kids curriculum content, sermon content. Um,

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anything we've created we we created as a church, we took our name off of it. we

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gave like kind of like a creative common license, but it's effectively a royalty-free unlimited license for other

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ministries to use. And we launched a website called Open that did that. And

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both those things continue to this day and have affected a lot of people. Um, and then later that same year, I was in

“How Could I Use Technology to Read the Bible More Consistently?”

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the O'Hare airport in Chicago in a long TSA security line. Um, this was before

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TSA pre-check. It was before air clear. It was before anything that let you go fast through the line. It was one of

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those lines that you think you get to the front of it and then it turns a corner and there's a whole another room,

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you know, with people going back and forth in the stansions. Um, for whatever reason in that particular long line that

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day, instead of me being frustrated, which would normally be my attitude, um,

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I was just sitting there thinking, I wonder if there's a way to use technology to help me read the Bible

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more consistently. Mhm. Um, I was I felt like I was a below average Bible reader, somebody that was

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on staff at a church, but not connected to scripture on a daily basis. You know,

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I would kind of go through spurts and well-intentioned starts, but I would

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kind of trail off and lose focus. And um you know there's a lot of excuses but

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and people could obviously rightfully say well I mean you just kind of lacked the discipline and you should have had

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better morning routines or all kinds of things you could kind of go through but I just wonder if there's a way

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technology might be to help with that. And I had this idea initially for a website. Um it had some novel features

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at least we felt like they were novel features at the time. This predated apps by the way this was in 2006.

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um the concept of app stores and all that stuff had not sort of emerged yet at that time. So we um so I came I I

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shared the idea with some of the guys that were traveling with me there at the airport. I'm an activator so I just came

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up with different names and the best name I could come up with that day was Uver this website idea. So I registered

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uver.com before I even got on the plane that day. Um I have a ton of ideas.

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doesn't mean they're all good and it doesn't mean they're all ones that we're going to do. So, that was really just me kind of creating an anchor point for the

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idea, but not necessarily like a green light. We're doing this, you know, kind of thing. I I basically came back to

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talk to the rest of our my my leadership team or our leadership team and shared

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the idea. And at that point in time, I had, you know, I was presenting lots of different new ideas for different things. So, we'd kind of marinate on the

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idea a bit, talk about some of the pros and cons and and process it. And we

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decided not too long after that we it was worth pursuing and probably worth doing. At that time, we were we were so

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tight financially though back then that being kind of blessed to do something

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meant you were blessed to do it, but you didn't have a budget. That was kind of what that meant. And so when my say we

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thought we might be able to do it, it basically meant I was, you know, I was approved, you know, by the team to like

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go and spend time pursuing it, but we didn't really have money to put towards it. So it was going to involve good

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oldfashioned leadership, you know, just figuring out how to vision cast and get

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people to really buy into it. um people that would donate their time to kind of help pull it together and but God began

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to bring the resources. You know, he brought a key person onto our team. His

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name's Terry Stor. He was not somebody I was expecting. He's a friend. Um and I

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was not expecting there to be an opportunity for him to come join our team, but God sort of spoke to him when

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he's as he was hearing some of these ideas and visions that we had for things. And Jerry Terry joined our team.

Difficulty With Bible Text Acquisition

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And then we started to have other obstacles that emerged with um not being able to get the Bible text. Uh I I

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didn't even realize it. And maybe the people that are listening to this are a lot smarter than I am, probably are a

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lot smarter than I am, but I didn't realize that people own the Bible. I just kind of had this presumption that

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the Bible's been around for thousands of years. It's got to be free. Um certainly the King James Bible has been around for

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hundreds of years. Um, but turns out the modern English versions that that most

23:38
people read um are all owned by various groups, publishers or Bible societies or

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folks that in some cases spent millions of dollars carefully translating it. And so it's understandable that they would,

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you know, monetize it in a way to help pay for the translation. And some are for-profit, some are not for-p profofit.

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But the point is that that that was the model at the time. So, we had to figure out how to get permission because we

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felt like this website needed to be free. So, not just needed permission, but we needed permission that didn't

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cost anything and want to be able to give it away to as many people as possible for free. So, it was a pretty

24:14
big pretty hard sell. And we also didn't have any relationships. And just through a series of events, honestly, just being

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bold and stepping out and declaring that we're going to do it led to a a chain reaction of things that ultimately

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connected us to like the perfect people to get us the perfect person to get us connected to these publishers.

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Ultimately got permission from from one of them, which is enough for us to start. And we started the website in

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2007. I'll try to fast forward the story. Um, the short version of it is we launched the website and it failed.

YouVersion’s Big Failure - How to Learn From Failure

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It technically worked, but it didn't change how we engaged in the Bible. So,

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it failed in terms of its purpose, like what the goal was. Um, I'm not afraid to

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start things that fail and not certainly not afraid to acknowledge that they failed. And that's exactly what we did

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in December of 2007. It launched in September of 2007. By December, I'm like, this is not working. And um but I

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wanted to learn from the failure. So I I I find personally that until you acknowledge something's actually failed,

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it's really hard to learn from the failure. And there's a hesitancy I know a lot of

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leaders have where they it's almost like this um excessive positivity sort of

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belief that if I'm just like excessively positive, I just can overcome kind of any obstacle. And there's a good I

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understand the logic of that. But I think sometimes if you're not willing like to to say something failed, you um

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struggle to to go deep enough under the white failed part of it to really learn. Like

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you'll like there'll always be like you might say your ideas will sit more in

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the like what can we improve and what could we change or what are some things we could tweak or what are some it's like what if like the foundational

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premise is off like what if the actual idea or complete

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method that you chose to kind of approach it with is the wrong you know method. Um, how what if we just go all

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the way back to the problem we're trying to solve and start there and then say we still agree that that's a problem,

26:22
right? Oh, yeah. No, it's a problem. Like, it's really a problem because maybe that's not even a problem. Maybe that's what you found. You know, that's

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why it failed. It's like a problem for you but not a problem for anybody else. It's like, well, now if the problem's still there,

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then okay, where did the idea break down and fail? And that process of of

The Desktop Issue - Moving From Website To App

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acknowledging the failure led us to realize that one of the changes. One of the things we felt like was important is

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to basically had the Bible on a device that we had with us all the time. Computers at that time were desktop

26:51
computers and they literally stayed on your desktop. Like they were not laptops. I mean there were very few

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there were some but they were not most people didn't have a laptop. They had a desktop if they had a computer. So, a

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website was pretty well confined to your desk and your Bible was therefore pretty

27:08
well confined to your desk. And we thought, what if we could put it on a mobile device that you had with you at

27:13
all times? So, we redesigned the website to work with a Blackberry. The Blackberry um was

27:20
very basic um smartphone. It was a Crackberry because it was very addictive. Had a keyboard on it, but the

27:26
screen was really simple. It was small. Um, kind of counterintuitive to think that the Bible would work on it, but it

27:33
did. And our data showed that it did. The momentum of the traffic going to the website from people using Blackberries

27:39
went up significantly. And Steve Jobs announced that it's possible to develop apps and create something. He was going

27:45
to create something called the app store. This is now in early 2008. So, we just thought we should try to build an

27:52
app. The problem was nobody knew how to build an app. Um, we found a 19-year-old on our team that loved Apple. And that

27:58
was about all you had to have back then to build an app was to be 19 and love Apple. As a part-time project, nights

28:04
and weekends for about three months, three and a half months, we worked together to build this um Bible app and

YouVersion Launches With Apple’s App Store

28:12
submitted to Apple. Had no idea if Apple would approve it. In July of 2008, the

28:18
App Store launched. And the day that the app store launched, the Bible app was among the first 200 free apps that were

28:24
there on the first day. And we were shocked that it made it in the store, but even more shocked when

28:29
the first weekend we saw 83,000 people install it on their on their iPhone. And

28:35
it was just I mean 83,000 is a big number, but back then, you know, when you're starting

28:41
with basically zero, 83,000 in one weekend just it was mindboggling. like

28:47
it was like really hard to wrap your head around. Um and then we've been on this crazy journey ever since then. Uh

28:54
that's kind of and you could say that's where it started. It actually obviously started earlier in the journey, but um

29:01
but even in then if you had asked me kind of what I was expecting um I never would have expected that you know today

29:08
we've passed a billion installs. I mean, which and it's growing at the fastest

29:14
rate this year that it's ever grown at in the history of all the years that we've done. It's been over 17 years. And

29:21
so to think that even 17 years later, you're not talking about a story that has peaked

29:26
um but is continuing to grow. All those things are there's so many aspects to it that have been incredible to be a part

29:32
of. So that's a really long answer to your really simple question. Why do you think that the rate is growing faster

YouVersion’s Accelerated Growth Even Today

29:37
now when it seems like the Bible might be more accessible than ever? Yeah, it's a great question. So, you're

29:43
right. The Bible is more accessible than ever in many ways. We have our app,

29:49
obviously. There are now thousands of Bible apps. Like, we're not the only Bible app that's out there. print Bible

29:54
sales are actually up and setting records and particularly among Gen Z um

30:00
where we're seeing, you know, 25 30 33% year-over-year growth in print Bible

30:06
sales. At the same time that you're seeing digital Bible engagement like a

30:12
new version set all-time records. me. Our highest days of use were here in the

30:17
fall, which is not seasonally a high time of the year, but that's our all-time historic highest days ever.

An Age of False Media And AI Generations

30:25
So, the answer to your question is I don't know. No, that's the short the quick answer. the the the more

30:31
thoughtout answer is I I there are um there are multiple trends that we see

30:37
happening globally that I think play into it but there is a certain aspect to

30:42
it that feels like God's doing something that is a little difficult to explain like in in in its entirety

30:49
but I do think that we one of the dynamics we see happening right now particularly with the youngest

30:55
generation Gen Z gen Y is They're growing up in a time where they pretty

31:02
much have to question the veracity of everything that they consume. You and I have been around a little bit

31:09
longer and we knew that there was a time when we didn't actually have to question

31:15
everything we watch and read and wonder if it's true. Like we used to be able to say, "I've saw it with my own eye. I

31:22
know that it's real." And now that doesn't mean the same thing anymore, right? like you can watch a video and it

31:28
looks as real as real can be and it was completely generated by AI. Well, we have a generation of people

31:35
that came after us that actually their re that reality is the reality for them.

31:41
Like they haven't known a different reality like that pretty much their their not adult if not their adult life

31:48
their sort of teenage and early adult life is basically filled with this dynamic. So when you think about that

The Bible - An Answer To The Hunger For Truth

31:55
like what's the consequence of that and the and one of the consequences of that is that you develop a hunger and sort of

32:03
a quest to find out what's true and what's real. It's just sort of a reaction

32:08
to that environment. And so you take something like the Bible and the Bible

32:14
is so unique. There's nothing like it in its category. It was you. It was written

32:20
thousands of years ago and it's been carefully moved from generation to generation thoughtfully through through

32:28
very dark periods of time through, you know, times where where where basically translating the Bible or even

32:35
transferring the Bible, you know, was was something that you get killed for,

32:40
burned at the stake for. Um but it's managed to sort of not just survive but

32:46
thrive through all these generations. And you can actually go look um um right

32:51
at the time of this podcast you can look at the Museum of the Bible where the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display

32:57
and you can see that the content from the this artifact that's thousands of

33:02
years old and the writing in it is consistent different language but

33:08
consistent when translated with the Bible that we read today. And so you look at that, there's nothing

33:14
else like it. And so when you're when you have a a sea of people out there, a

33:19
generation of people that are just looking for something that can be trusted, looking for a source of truth,

33:25
it's not a big surprise to me that the Bible resonates that it's sort of like, wow. Like this

33:31
is the moment for the Bible. In many ways, the Bible's the answer to the problem that everyone's complaining

33:37
about about like what we're having to deal with with being inundated with all this sort of fake content or false or or

33:43
generated content. So, I'm not trying to say that all generated content is bad. I'm not trying to say that everything,

33:48
you know, about technology that's happening today is something that is terrible. I'm just trying to say that

33:54
this is sort of a reaction though that happens when you find yourself inundated with things you can't trust the the

34:00
veracity of or if they're real. I think there are people that look and say maybe there's answers for the challenges I'm

34:07
dealing with that I can count on in something that predated all this and not just something

34:12
but something really special that is the word of God and um and that people have

34:18
been able to trust for so many generations to do it. So I don't want to kind of oversimplify it because I think

34:24
there's a lot of dynamics, you know, that are at play, but I think that's one of them. And and we definitely see this.

34:30
It's a global thing. It's not a phenomenon that's just happening in one country or another country. It does happen in certain regions more than

34:36
others, but it's definitely something that we've seen happen everywhere. I love that. I've never thought of that

34:42
perspective. Uh but that rings so true and it makes sense. One of the things

Servant Leadership - Providing Their Apps For Free

34:47
that I've always been curious about just from the outside, and we talk a lot about servant leadership on this

34:52
podcast, is you guys have so many good ideas, you and your team, and you create

34:59
and spend a lot of money making really good things, church online, U version,

35:04
dozens of other things, and you give them away. Uh, it's not a great business

35:10
model, um, at least from the outside to give stuff away. uh where does servant

35:15
leadership play into this in all the decision- making because it feels like it's been at the root of a lot of the decisions you've made.

35:22
Yeah, you're absolutely right. We've we are all former business people or maybe even just business people at heart um

35:29
that have felt like for our church that God's just called us to do the things

35:34
that we do externally for free or at least they're not they're not free to create like you just mentioned

35:40
there's a lot of money that's actually invested in them but they're free to use and they're free to people to to be able

35:46
to benefit from. Um, and I I I feel like um from a servant

35:54
leadership perspective um I think the the number one

36:00
thing that goes through my mind as we were thinking about solving this problem

36:05
um was really what are the obstacles and what are the barriers and how do I remove all those obstacles and barriers,

36:12
you know, for people because we're so missionally concerned about the result that I wanted every obstacle barrier to

36:18
be on the table. And at the time that we started this um

No Sense Selling What’s Unclear

36:24
you had a generation of people that couldn't fathom paying 99 cents for a song that they loved. Like the concept

36:32
of doing that was just so foreign. They had just come through seasons of downloading songs illegally um through

36:39
all the file sharing services and all that. And at that time we were asking them to pay tweet

36:47
but we collectively meaning we the the the church the industry the you know Christian music Christian media industry

36:55
publishing industry were asking them to pay $25 for a digital copy of a book that they didn't understand.

37:02
And so it's not that there's something wrong with asking $25. It's just I knew

37:10
that that was going to be an obstacle, right, for this generation because you're like, son, I need them to actually see what's inside.

37:17
And to do that, I can't put a barrier that like when they won't pay 99 cents

37:22
for music they love, I can't do this, you know, for something that they're not even sure of, you know, they're trying to figure out. That was back then. And

37:28
so, we just didn't want that to be a hold up or a barrier. Technology also allows us to scale things like never

37:35
before. like the concept of doing what we're doing in back if you back up and do it 45 years ago

37:42
um or you know 30 years ago uh it was just there wasn't a practical way to do

37:48
it like it wasn't possible like you had to print things and print things like scaling a a ministry giving away print

37:56
Bibles is really really hard to do because the cost structure is just so significant and so substantial and it's

38:03
not that I'm saying it doesn't cost anything to do. But when you think about kind of the scalable aspect and how many

38:10
how many cents per person it takes to kind of get down even on a marketing level and all the different aspects to

38:16
it, it scales really well. So if it can scale well, why not try to build a different model,

38:21
you know, around it? We do have a business model. It's just a different business model. The business model is that we're donorfunded.

YouVersion’s Business Model

38:28
Um we we're more than just not a not for-p profofit. We actually don't have advertising. We don't sell data. We

38:34
don't do a lot of the other monetization things that people think would be the what we what we probably do, but we

38:40
don't do those. We never done those. Um because trust was the other thing that

38:45
we're trying to solve for. And I think um thinking about it from a leadership perspective, we just were like, man, we

38:52
want to we want to lead the way with a rational generosity by um by investing

38:58
the resources that we're entrusted with in a way that serves other people. But in doing that we inspire other people to

39:05
want to do the same. And so we have businesses, we have

39:10
entrepreneurs, we have um a guy from India that gives 200 rupees which is

39:16
like a $1.97 every month. um and is so proud to do that every single month to

39:21
make it possible for other people to access the Bible all the way up to people that that write seven figure

39:26
checks, you know, to support the work that we do because they're inspired by our generosity and they're like, if if

39:33
if these guys are doing this with their resources, I I can do it with mine. Um

39:39
and we create opportunity because we've sort of built this um this ministry in a

39:45
way that allows others to be involved and partners. We've create an opportunity for people that have a high

39:51
capacity um in their own resources to have a fruitful ministry that they can

39:58
be a part of that they don't have to go through and go through all the brain damage and the hard work that we did trying to build all this. We can enable

40:04
them. we can deploy their resources in a way that get people connected to scripture and impact people's lives.

40:09
Um, but we're always trying to serve the person that we're trying to reach first in everything that we do.

How To Keep The Innovation Alive

40:16
When people look at it from the outside, it might look like everything you're doing works. You know, church online,

40:22
Uver, all these different things, scaling to a billion users. Uh, but there's plenty of stuff that doesn't

40:27
work. Sure. Uh, how do you keep the innovation alive and know when to just stop stuff?

Fear of Failure Prevents Us From Quitting

40:35
Well, I gave you an example already when I talked about the story and the website. Obviously, that didn't work. Keeping the innovation alive is um is

40:44
the harder one than stopping stuff for us. But I will say a lot for a lot of

40:49
people it's kind of the reverse though. Um, I think a lot of people typically

40:55
the the fear of failure is sometimes a fear that people reference when they think that like when they're referencing

41:01
the fear that keeps people from starting something because they're afraid it'll fail like the fear of failure. I'm too

41:06
afraid to fail. That's why I couldn't be an entrepreneur and start something. I

41:11
actually think for most people the fear of failure is not the thing that keeps them from starting something. And it's the thing that keeps them from stopping

41:17
something that's that's not working. Because it's only then that you actually really have to acknowledge that it

41:23
failed. Because you can start stuff all day long and it can just be this like, yeah, we're working on it. It's not there yet.

41:29
It's it's uh you we pivoted one, two, three, four, five times, you know, and

41:35
we're still calling it the same thing. It's not a failure if you don't stop. It's not a failure if you don't give up. All these kinds of phrases, you know,

41:41
that we use. Um, and I think so it takes a little more courage to kind of acknowledge. I I feel like we culturally

41:48
in our culture have managed to do that. We might I might have some some blind spots I'm not catching, but generally

41:56
speaking, it's like we look at the data, it's not working. Make sure we understand why it's not working, but you

42:02
know, if it needs to be cut, it's cut. We launched uh we launched a podcast feature in the Bible app and it took us

42:08
way longer than we anticipated to launch it and it lasted a year, less than a

42:15
year maybe um before we cut it. Um it's not that podcasts are bad. I mean obviously we're talking on one right

42:21
now. Um but it didn't get it's either you could say it's the way we did it. You could say a lot of things um might

42:28
have been the way we architect it. It might have been the way we went to market. It may be something that gets brought back in the future, but

42:34
something will have to be different about it when it gets brought back because the first iteration of it didn't work. Um, innovation, the challenge

Innovation Happens Best Under Constraints

42:41
there is, you know, I think innovation happens best inside of constraints. At the beginning, we had everything was a

42:49
constraint, budget constraint, time constraint because we had, you know, I had other

42:55
jobs like other responsibilities like that were plenty. Um, so this was like extra, you know, on top of that and we

43:03
we had staffing constraints, we had all those things, but those worked to our advantage because it allowed us to just

43:10
do things in ways that other people wouldn't have thought to do them because we didn't have a choice. Like we kind of had to kind of come up with an

43:16
innovative solution to how to solve the problem. when you have financial resources or when you have a team or

43:23
when you have time or when you have all those things the first thing to go is innovation

43:28
like that's that's what that's what leaves the building um and the reason is because you can just buy stuff like I

43:35
don't I can buy a solution I don't have to innovate one um and buying things

43:40
generally is a whole lot easier you know if I could solve the problem with a check I mean why not you know do that

43:46
now I'm not trying to imply that we can just write a check for everything today. But we we do have a lot fewer

43:54
constraints than we used to have. Yeah. Um and it's not just a financial resource thing. It's I mean we've got

44:00
team, we've got gifted and talented people. We've got all these um things that that we didn't have when we

44:07
started. And so you really have to fight to stay innovative. And you have and sometimes you got to put artificial

44:14
constraints on things. I mean one of my favorite artificial constraints is time.

44:19
Because if you just allow whatever amount of time for something to happen,

44:25
um your ideas won't get more innovative as time goes on. They'll get less. Um

44:30
but putting like saying how do we accomplish this in half the time or a third of the time. The other day I gave

Cutting Down A Process From Three Weeks To 48 Hours

44:36
a challenge to the team to um take a process that we had that I felt like was just excessively long and um and I

44:46
challenged him. It was it was taking about 3 weeks to do this process. It's a routine thing we did and and every time

44:51
we did it, it took three weeks to do it and it was like like clockwork and it had grown to that because there had

44:58
become complexity and all this stuff and it on that particular one I said um the

45:03
challenge and that what we need to do is to move it to 48 hours from 3 weeks. And

45:10
at first it was like this doesn't sound like a good idea. Um help me. And I I said, "No, I want you to think through

45:16
there's some technology I think that can enable us to do it, but a lot of it is the assumption of risk and and then some

45:23
of it, which I'm completely good to assume, and then some of it is just really pro thinking differently about

45:30
every hour of the 48 hours, not two, not um 48 work hours, 48 actual hours,

45:38
right, to do it." And um and so they took on the challenge and they did it

45:44
like they came up with a whole new approach but it required like the constraint of time you know on it and

45:50
they came up with this innovative way that they accomplished it and we've had great success. I think we had one time

45:56
recently we missed it because of some variable that got you know came in place but man if we could you know do that 90%

46:03
of the time successfully we just saved a ton of time and it also but it also drove a more innovative approach now

46:10
that approach is also not like an industry standard it's like the opposite of an industry standard and so that's

46:16
the other thing that happens too is that we have a lot of really talented people and they come in with experience and

46:22
experience works for you on several way in several ways. It works against you in many other ways.

46:27
Part of our greatest benefit we had early on was we had no idea what we were doing. We we had not even we didn't even know

46:34
the correct way to do it, let alone like like we not we had no experience doing it. We didn't even know

46:40
what the right way to do it was. And those were to our advantage because you're just like, well, why can't we do

46:45
it in this time and why can't we do it this way? Um we didn't hadn't read the book yet like on how you're supposed to do it.

“I Loath Best Practices”

46:52
And so I have like quirky things about the way that I lead. And one of them is I say that I loathe best best practices.

47:00
Like I don't like best practices because usually a best practice is our effort to do something as well as someone else who

47:07
wrote the book on it does it. And we're probably not likely to exceed the the level at which they're

47:12
able to do that because they're the ones that wrote the book on it and probably perfected that approach. And if so,

47:19
we're always going to be aiming likely to basically do it as well as the best person that did it and or the best that

47:27
that approach. And I just feel like that already by definition keeps us from

47:33
trying an approach that could be 10 times better. Yeah. You know, and so we kind of try to keep these thing. This is what I I say that

47:40
because these are ways that I try to lead and drive innovation today. Um

47:45
because when you don't have these kind of overt efforts as a leader to do that, you're going to be left with responses

47:53
that look like the sum of everybody's experiences, which are not bad things.

47:58
They're just not going to ever 10x something. Well, I love just the thought of the practical application even for our own

48:05
team and probably a lot of people listening that they can take and move on to the next to their next adventure or

48:11
whatever it is that they're trying to do timewise. How would they cut it in half or shrink it into 48 hours? There's just

48:17
a lot that a lot of practical application. Yeah. With our last 60 seconds, I want to hit

Ten Rapid-Fire Questions

48:22
you with 10 rapid fire questions. Okay. And I I just want you to say the first thing that comes to mind. Oh no, this is going to be a problem.

48:28
And there is no right or wrong answer. That is not true. There can I can say

48:34
wrong answers all day long. No, there's nothing wrong. Who's the first person you think of when I say servant leadership?

48:41
Uh uh my wife.

48:46
All right. I've met her. She's awesome. Uh five words that most describe you.

48:53
Um probably jumps to mind are the strength finder. So um competition,

48:58
competitive, activator, futuristic, achiever, and um ideiation.

49:05
I think literally those are my five. Uh ironically. Um, favorite author or book?

49:12
I can't say the Bible. Um, oh gosh, I would say um, this is this is

49:20
a funny answer, but like I don't actually read very many books. I read book covers. Y

49:26
um, I can generally learn what the concept of the book is on the back of the cover and then that's enough. Um,

49:32
and save all the fluff time or I read book summaries. Um, one of those is the

49:38
it's an older book. I think it's called the Houdini principle or the Houdini solution. I'm not sure. It's one of

49:44
those two phrases. But funny funny things I've recommended the book a hundred times. I don't think I've ever

49:49
read the whole book. Um, but it is um the principle I just talked about which

49:55
is that innovation happens inside of constraints. I will check that one out for sure. That's a good one. And I haven't heard

50:01
of it. favorite. And and you say, and for me to say favorite is probably a massive exaggeration. It's just the first thing

50:06
that popped in my mind. The best back of the book cover. Uh favorite food.

50:12
Favorite food? Um probably Thai. Favorite thing to do in your free time?

50:19
Fly airplanes. All right. This might actually fit that. But what's a surprising fact about you?

50:24
I was a Christian rapper for five years. I didn't know that. Uh, what's the best

50:30
advice you've ever received? First thing that comes to mind when you say that is probably

50:35
um advice that Craig

50:41
Gchelle said that someone else gave him. So this is a little bit so I received it but I

50:47
received it via someone else and that was um we will tend to overestimate what

50:55
we can do in the short run and grossly underestimate what God can do in the long run. So the emphasis on

51:02
just sort of consistency over time like we have like and I'm I'm wired towards that notion of like what can get

51:09
accomplished in the short term but then realizing and appreciating the value of this sort of consistent faithfulness

51:16
over time. Well, that's kind of the story of you version and a lot of the stuff you've done. Uh favorite place you've been and

51:22
somewhere you want to go. Okay. Uh my two favorite I'm going to put two. My two favorite cities because

51:28
I haven't figured out which one's number one is Cape Town, South Africa and Melbourne, Australia. Love it.

51:33
Um, and as far as like places I want to go, um, I want to go to Russia.

51:39
Cool. Yeah, I haven't been to Russia. All right. And last one. Why do you think a podcast on servant leadership

Importance Of A Servant Leadership Podcast

51:44
could be important for people? Well, I think, you know, I'm a follower

51:49
of Jesus, and Jesus was kind of like the ultimate servant leader. Mhm. And so I think so many people get get

51:58
models of leadership or pictures of what they believe is leadership from whether

52:04
it be social media from something that they see on CNBC or from you know um

52:11
what they see maybe in the billionaires that are out there like the world's richest people and kind of how they lead

52:16
like a story about Elon Musk or about whatever it is. While all those people are interesting, um they don't always,

52:23
and I don't want to call any specific one out, but they don't always reflect servant leadership.

52:29
And so I think some of the models we see in our lives um that are heralded as the

52:35
world's top leaders don't resemble what I feel like is the best model for leadership. So if you

52:42
have a podcast that is one platform to be able to sort of get out a message of what it is, I think this is better. This

52:49
is a better thing for leadership in general. Well, thank you for being on our servant leadership podcast and uh I'm just so

52:56
thankful for the work that you and the team have done on Uver. Thankful that you're willing to share some wisdom and

53:02
some of your story with our audience. What's one thing if you could ask people to do anything related to Uver, what

Why You Should Read Your Bible Every Day

53:07
would you want them to do after listening to this? Yeah. Well, I mean, I I started like this journey, as you heard me say,

53:14
because I was trying to find a way to use technology to help me read the Bible more consistent consistently. As we're

53:19
recording this, I think I'm like eight days or nine days away from a 30,000 day

53:25
streak in the Bible app. And so, I've managed to find the rhythms and

53:30
routines. And what that the reason that that's important is that when we make

53:35
God's word a part of our everyday life that there even there's been science and

53:40
there's been been research that indicates that that actually has measurable changes in our behavior like

53:47
four more days a week in the Bible and divorce rates go down, drunkenness goes

53:52
down, porn use goes down substantially, like not just a little bit but a lot. things that even I think secular

54:00
society, people that aren't Christians would look and say, "These are good things. These are things that we would probably all want um in our lives." And

54:08
so my challenge to people that are listening is that if they don't have the Bible as a part of their everyday life,

54:14
why not start today? Love it. We've built an app that makes it really simple. They don't have to use our app.

54:19
They can use any app that has similar features or they can use their print Bible if they want to. If they don't

54:25
have one, they can get one. Um, but our app is completely free. It's non-commercial and it's literally

54:31
designed to try to help make it easy for you to make the Bible a part of your everyday life. So, if you've tried

54:36
everything else, why not try the Bible? And you can download it for free. Just go to the app store and search for

54:43
Bible. It should be the first one you see. It's a brown holy Bible icon. And I

54:48
just encourage people to take the time to do that. Just see what God does. You might not be a Christian. That's okay. Many people that use our app aren't

54:54
Christians. Um, it's you might think, well, how where do I start? Well, that's the whole point. We've kind of really

54:59
tried to help make that easy for you because the Bible can be intimidating. So, my encouragement would be for them

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to do that. We'll take that and throw it in the description so people can easily find it. Uh, and thank you again for being on

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the podcast. What a pleasure. Of course, Chris. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Servant Leadership

Closing

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