Rewrite your Life! How to Pivot your Platform and Reach the Right People w/ Jackie Bledsoe, Author / Speaker / Coach

Do you want to reach more people with your message, writing or creative gift, but you're worried that trying too hard will risk damaging your family and closest relationships? 

There's hope in the story behind one of our culture's foremost mentors on marriage and building impactful Kingdom culture! 

Author, coach, and creator of The 7 Rings of Marriage, Jackie Bledsoe, is joining  us to share how he's  impacting hundreds of thousands while keeping family and God first. We dive into balancing entrepreneurship, content creation, ministry, and marriage—and how you can authentically share your message, build a lasting legacy, and still honor your closest relationships.

After listening, you’ll be able to:

• Share your creative message authentically without sacrificing family or faith.
• Apply key spiritual principles to overcome creative and business challenges.
• Build a content platform with practical steps from an experienced author and coach.
• Utilize strategies like “borrowed audiences” and daily writing to expand your reach.
• Embrace vulnerability and transparency for deeper relationship and audience impact.

Whether you’re a Christian entrepreneur, author, creative, or simply looking to balance your purpose with your home life, this episode offers inspiring, real-world advice you can start using now.

Transcript

0:01

Do you wish you could share your message with more people, people that God has called you to reach, but you just don't know how. And you especially struggle with the ability to share your message without losing connection with those who you love the most. If you've ever struggled with the balance between building a business, a platform, writing a book, or creating something that will last and stand the test of time, but never losing sight of what matters most, your marriage, your family, your faith, this is the episode that you need to listen to because we have an incredible guest who has shared on almost every platform you can imagine, has sold hundreds of thousands of books and helped hundreds of thousands of couples, but yet he is reinventing himself one product and book at a time, and he's helping others to do the same. I cannot wait for you to meet our guest, Jackie Bledsoe, on this episode of the God and Geek Show. Give us just a moment to welcome those of you who are new to our show, and then we'll get right into this fascinating and powerful conversation. Hello and welcome to our show. Thank you so much for making this podcast a part of your creative day. And you thank. And if you're new to our show, you are in the right place at the right time because we are here to help you to achieve all of your creative goals and to live a unique creator lifestyle that God designed for you by helping you solve temporary creative problems with timeless spiritual principles. So stay connected with us, follow this podcast, and make sure to connect with our community at all of our resources, which you can find in the show notes. Now, I am so glad you joined. Us for this episode because as I mentioned in the open, our guest is the most qualified person I can imagine to help us to learn how to share our message authentically and without compromise with keeping our eyes with what matters most in our families. Now, Jackie Bledsoe is an author, speaker and coach. He's the creator of the Seven Rings of Marriage, your model for a lasting and fulfilling marriage, and the founder of Happily Married Couples, who, with his wife Stefana, they have helped over 100,000 couples with their books, devotionals, and Bible studies. Now, he's not just a coach and a mentor for marriages who has been on all of the platforms from Focus on the Family to ABC News, Disney, Netflix. I mean, he's worked with every single brand to help them dispense these resources to the couples who need them. But he's also helping authors and creatives like me to share their message on author platforms and writing platforms like the YouVersion app. And he is helping creators to share their message through his masterminds. And I am so glad that he is going to talk about how he is doing this, making this pivot between helping couples, building a business, sharing his failures and the lessons he learned so that you too can, can not only build a business, but also build a life that honors God, keeps your relationships intact, but then follows through with the dreams and goals. You have to share the message that God has put on the inside. Whether it's in a book, whether it's on a platform like YouVersion, with devotionals, or anywhere else that God leads you, this is the episode that will help you see the mindset and the methods that Jackie used to to find his calling and to reach more people for the Kingdom of God. My friend, this is an episode you're going to want to bookmark, share and save. So please make sure that you dial in, take some notes, and make sure that this episode stays in your queue. My friend, I'm so glad. So I don't want to give any more time to the introduction. I want to get right into it. So without any further delay, let's talk to author, speaker and coach, Jackie Bledsoe. Jackie Bledsoe, welcome to the Guiding Geek Show. How are you doing, my friend? I am doing great, Alan. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. I'm more excited. So I always like doing all of the weird, behind the scenes, nerdy stuff that no one ever knows about at the top, just so I can feel like I'm not alone in this. So us meeting together in a forum of a platform that neither one of us really understood very well and us getting to know each other in that thing outside of your work with Married with Couples. So both of us have had to navigate just being entrepreneurs and figuring out data and all the stuff that most of us don't even want to deal with. I appreciate the fact that you were opening the door to learning as well as helping. So that's one of the first things I learned about you right away, is that you're not one of the know it all gurus. You're just, you're a regular guy, but a regular guy that loves God but also loves to share. So I just want to tell you right off the bat, thank you for being that kind of person that I felt comfortable with talking about nerdy stuff like data and programs and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, well, I appreciate that and it was, it was mutual because I love digging into that as well. So I'm Sure. We can dig into it as much as we can possibly fit in the time wise. But yeah, I love it. Thank you. Awesome. Well, I always like to try to start these after I get out, you know, that stuff out of the way. I like to tell people a little bit about you, but they usually have read the whole bio, right. If they do know you, they already know about you. And if they haven't, they usually have read the bio and they figured out, oh, this is someone I want to get to know. So I like to try to put this first question about, you know, your 30 second elevator pitch like this. If someone is meeting you for the first time, you know they haven't met you or they don't know about your marriage, your resources and, and you just only have that 30 seconds to kind of have them remember two or three things that are the most important. What are those two or three things that they, you want them to know about you if they don't get a chance to read the bio or learn about your materials? Yeah, yeah. I think the cheat code is my social media profiles. And it starts out with love, Jesus, married to Stefan. You know, a dad of three kiddos with the same initials as me. I think those are the biggest three things. But really at the end of the day, I'm a husband, I'm a father, and I'm a coach at heart. So I've been coaching for 20 years now. Started out coaching youth sports. Didn't realize how that would transition or impact what I'm doing today. Wow. Okay, so I love this that you were able to get the husband and the father in and the coach part, because I do mine. Husband, father, creative. Right. So I have those three that I throw in there and I throw in forgiven, so people know that I'm saved. So gotta get that in there. Yeah, you gotta put that in there. So exactly. So I wonder about, obviously we could talk about your marriage and your coaching and all those types of things, but I do wonder about the first, the passion to help people, which I guess. Does go to the coaching. Right. Because I've always wondered whether or not that's innate, whether God puts it in you or whether it's nurture. Right. That you develop it over time. So you don't become a coach without obviously being coached. You don't become someone that helps people without being helped. So I am wondering what are those first few things? Was it in childhood, was it in high school? When did you get the bug? Or the sense that, hey, one of the things that fuels my Tank is helping people, training people, teaching people. Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll kind of start recent and then kind of go backwards. But I really didn't realize that's what it was until I would say within the last year or so. Honestly, I just really like, man, I'm a coach and everything that I've done up to this point leads me to be a great coach. And so, you know, growing up, my dad, here's our family. My dad coached me and my brother in sports. I coach our kids in sports. My brother became a college coach. So he's a professional coach pretty much. This is basketball related. So we were all coach. My dad was my first coach, great coach. And I had great coaches in sports growing up. That, you know, at the time I'm just a kid and I don't realize, but you get older and you realize, man, hindsight is 20 20. Like these are some lessons or some things that were instilled to me by some of these coaches. So very successful coaches. My high school baseball and high school basketball coaches are both in the hall of fame in Indiana. As far as high school coaches, we had a lot of success, state championships and things like that. So they were impactful. Then when I get into becoming an adult and sports is no longer involved in my, at least in, you know, the majority of my life, I found some great coaches as well. A few, I don't know if you're familiar with some of them. Lamar Tyler with traffic sales and profit. Michael Hyatt, full focus and all that. And so. But the thing that I think that tied it all together and where the coaching comes in at is my spiritual gift is teaching. And so coaching is one way for me to exercise that gift of teaching just as the same as writing is, just the same as speaking is. And so those things all tied in together. But. And even when in our marriage just ties the marriage piece of it into it. Every since the first year in our marriage, me and Stefan, I have had a marriage mentor couple, basically coaches. And this wasn't anything that we really knew to go seek. It just kind of happened organically. And then in each season of our marriage, you know, we've been married for almost 25 years now. This will be 24. We just crossed 24 weeks ago. And so here we are and we've got a different coach, different couple that is mentoring us throughout. And we've learned so much. And I think those things just kind of tied into it. I. I've received so much from other coaches. I Listened to something today I was listening to, maybe I think it was my Bible app. And they were talking about, we are able to forgive. It's forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Because we've been forgiven so much, now we have the ability and the capacity and the desire to forgive. Because I've received so much coaching and mentoring, now I'm recognizing that and have the desire to do the same for other people. I love this. Much is given, right? Much is required. But even out of the required part, it's that joy of giving. Right? Joy giving back and seeing somebody else benefiting the way that you benefited. Obviously, in the marriage thing, I was kind of doing a little stalking thing behind the scenes, obviously, called research stalking, whatever it is. And listening to some of your episodes, talking about Stefana and how you guys met, how, you know, you were in a small town, and. And really, I love hearing this part. And then we'll throw this a limb. Cause we talked about. We have to. We have so much to share. But I would love to talk about the development of your family, of your marriage, and then teaching and coaching. Right. As you guys were coached by these marriage mentors. Because you might say people give you a handbook to marriage, which would be the Bible. But every single marriage, as you know very well, is so different. So tell me a little bit about that. Developing your marriage over these last 24 years while also helping other marriages. Because it sounds like you're learning and doing at the same time. You're learning something about marriage and then teaching it even as you two are developing your relationship. So talk a little bit about that, how you learned how to balance those two things. Teaching it, but also having to, like, apply it to your own. Yeah, great. Great question. Yeah. And I think. Sorry, sorry for this squeaky chair that I'm in right now. I think it's squeaky. I don't know if you can pick it up or not, but every time I move, I hear it, so. So, yeah, like, our marriage was not the perfect. Picture perfect. Hey, we get married, you know, we pray for our spouse, and all this stuff comes together, and it's perfect. In fact, when we were early on in our marriage and we'd be hanging out with other couples, our peers, which was our first small group, many couples, or we'd be in a church, in a class at church about marriage, many couples would share how they pray for their spouse. And they did this. They did premarital counseling, blah, blah, blah. We did none of that. And so it reflected that in our first few years of marriage. In fact, our premarital counseling, we did technically at one, our one year anniversary. So you don't do pre after. So that made no sense. And so here we are struggling and trying to figure it out. And so. But again, God has given me this gift of teaching inside. So as we're learning now, I'm processing and I'm able to share as well. So we were, we were doing married, you know, marriage ministry before we knew we were doing marriage ministry. Our very first small group, which was, you know, we go, we're now at a church that is a church of small groups. All ministry is kind of done through small groups. Well, this church didn't have small groups. We didn't know what small groups were. But we just hung out with a group of couples that we first met in a class where we were learning about marriage at church and started to hang out. So once a month, every couple, we'd all get together at one couple's house. Who would be the host? But in addition to being the host, their job that month was to study up on some topic of marriage and then teach that to us and give us some practical exercises or things to do. So here we are. We're learning, you know, because we're struggling in this area and we got support and accountability. But at the same time, we're also preparing to teach and share what we've gone through. So everybody had different experiences and there was different resources that we may have leaned on, but that just became a natural thing. It wasn't anything intentional. And Stefan always says it as well. Like, people say, you're so transparent. She's like, we don't know how any, any way else to be. Because it feels fake to us to get on stage, to share in a blog post, in a book, you know, in an interview that, yeah, we got it all together. We don't, you know, we say this all the time. We get in there and we get this joke on our. When we do our intro at our events and we say, get, get everybody raised their hand about certain questions. We're like, how many of us had a fight on the way to this marriage conference? You know, some people do it, some people don't. And then my joke is, okay, if you think that's bad, think about having a fight on the way to speak at a marriage conference. Real stories. Those are real stories. Because we just can't close that off. And I think that is just something that God has put in us, not that we're better than anybody else. But he's put some things in us that he's using for that. That transparency, the gifted teaching. And so I'm just trying to take next steps. And sometimes those next steps are hard and I misstep a lot. But I know if I keep taking next steps, that he's going to allow me to grow and fulfill what he has created me uniquely to do and how to serve other people with it. Oh, gosh, I couldn't love this enough. And of course, we can't leave out the scriptures. When these pop into our heads, I'm just going to share them. I'm not trying to preach at anybody. But first scripture that popped into you when you said about being transparent and vulnerable and telling on yourself is one of my favorite scriptures. When you know it's one. It's not one of those great marriage scriptures, because it's when David messed up the worst.

But from Psalm 51: 14:39

6, when he says, I desire truth or you desire truth. God desires truth in the inward part and in the hidden part. That would maketh me know wisdom. Like, that's the part where God's like, look, just be honest. Like, just fess up. Just this. What you want integrity. Just be who you are. If you're messed up right now, just say you're messed up. If you're riding high, just say you're riding high. But don't try to fake it with God or with your spouse or with the people around you, because eventually just they're gonna figure it out. So I love that transparency that you're sharing again, as a teacher now, you're teaching people to be vulnerable and to share what's real. And that's. That works in any relationship, obviously. So I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, somebody once said. I forgot who said it. Your purpose is tied to your pain. And so if we're trying to live out our purpose as Christians and we're hiding our pain and what we went through, then we can't live out that purpose. So that's something that has resonated with me as well. It's like, man, you know, sometimes I'll be honest. Even now, in seasons that are hard, I'm like, Lord, kind of like Jesus, like, do I have to go through this? You know, when he's in Gethsemane, it's like, man, do I can you can this cut pass from me? But then I get to thinking, it's like, okay, if you're allowing me to go through this, then there's probably Going to be some stories, some testimony, something that I can serve other people with. And that is a big passion to me. Sometimes it's too much where I can't turn it off, where it's like, I just want to learn for myself. But I'm also learning and thinking, how can this help other people? That's how I started writing. That's. That's where the blogging came from, which the book came from and what I'm doing now came from. Because everything that I saw, I was like, man, there's a lesson in that. And so now, since I'm talking to people about it through this blog, let me figure that out and share that with somebody else. And some of them, I didn't solve the problem, but I was in the midst of it. It was something to. For me to grow. And of course, somebody else could grow, too. I. Look, I got it, man. You really learn as you teach. I think that's one of the things. That's because I'm really thinking about our people that are listening and watching those who are involved so deeply in creating something, building a business, sharing their gifts, sharing their talent, what God put on the inside. But like you said, they may not feel equipped yet, but as they are sharing and working it out, like God's kind of implying, okay, go here, go there, share this. Because you literally just went through it. And just like the Sherpas on Mount Everest, they only stay one step ahead of the. Of the people they're leading. They've been up the mountain several times, but they're not trying to get all the way up to the mountain and say, hey, come here, where I'm already there. They're just saying, one step ahead. And one step ahead of this is all you need to be able to follow someone. So I want to jump real quick because you're talking about the blogging and the writing, because it's the same type of thing that I think of, which is you've got to learn it while you're doing it, and you're building a business or building a platform. I don't know what to call it. I hate calling it a brand. But you mentioned some of my heroes. Michael Hyatt, Platform University. I started with that as well. And that's the kind of like this tricky part of saying, hey, I'm not trying to put myself on a pedestal, but I do have to become someone that people can look at. My brand, my image, all these things. I have to build this. While I am also obviously acting it out, learning what I'm sharing. So can you share some of those first business style entrepreneurial lessons, maybe some of those hard truths you ran into? Because again, even though we're talking about mostly Christian area and faith focused platforms, it is also a business that you have to share so you can share a little bit about what were the first tough lessons or things you figured out right away when you were trying to start to share your. Yeah, one of the things that I figured out pretty quickly and was one of the biggest things is when I first started. So see, I started in this online space because I lost a job and so I lost this job and I was like, that was the second job I'd lost. And so I'd been, I've been fired from this job because I was not making the sales numbers. Mind you, when I first started at this job, I was breaking sales records. Then all of a sudden I'm not making sales numbers. So I just was, you know, I wasn't wanting to be there really. And it impacted my work. But so I lost my job. And so now I'm trying to figure this thing out. I was like, I'm not going back to corporate. But we had owned, we were entrepreneurs already. We had owned a real estate company, investing company years before. And I was like, you know what, I'm going back, put my entrepreneur hat on. And I see people are making money online, supporting their family online, so maybe I can try that out. And so I get on there and we create this business and very few people remember the stage. I had a business called say it in Shirts. Some of the OGs that connected with me online years ago remember this. And it's funny when somebody brings it back up. Say it in Shirts was modeled off of a guy by the name Jason Sadler who had a business called I wear your shirt dot com. And so he wore a shirt every day of a different brand and they created social media content and they paid him based on what day of the year was. Every day of the year he wore a different shirt when it was paid. So I'm like, okay. We were a homeschool family, work from home family, kids were young, you know, cute family, all that type of stuff. Photogenic, let's do this. Started that business and it took. And that's way back before WordPress and drag and drop websites and all that type of stuff. So it took us longer to set up the website and get rolling than we were actually in business. And so here we are and I say we got, we got. Remember this is supposed to be Every day we're supposed to sell something I think we were trying to do every week or something, I don't remember, but we got two customers. And I say customers lightly because I call them favors, because they were friends of ours that I just didn't really want us to fail completely. And so they bought. Bought days and we wore their shirts to create a cat sit. But what I learned. And so in the midst of this, I shared this with someone locally that I really respected in this online space. And I was kind of following and learning from him. And we were at a. At a meet and greet in person, and I shared the idea, and he basically looked at me and said, you're a nobody. Not in a you're nobody type of way. It's like, man, you trash. Blah, blah, blah. It's basically like you're trying to do something that requires an audience and you're nobody. So this business is not going to be successful. I didn't realize what he was saying. It hurt me. And so I kind of went back to the drawing board. And what I found was that these people, because I was not successful in this online business, the people that were had this thing that I never had heard of before called a blog. And so that is when I started to blog. Cause I was like, if they use a blog to build this, then I need to use a blog. The blog was really my personal development platform where I was able to try to connect with other dads and husbands who were failing in their marriage and. Or their career, and both were impacting each other. And so I just started, right? And what I was writing about at the time was basically what I was going through in life, you know, So a lot of lessons learned from interaction with my wife, a lot of lessons learned from interaction with my kids. And so that became. I became noticed for that. And so it led to the next thing after another. And here's. Here's a big lesson as well. I had a mentor at that time who was a professional writer, and he challenged me to. So this is a big lesson to get uncomfortable. He challenged me to something that his mentor challenged him. To create a new piece of content and post it every day for 365 straight days. And I was like, I ain't got nothing else to do. I'm trying to make this work. And so let me do that. And so in the process, I did that. And maybe 60 days in, I fell off and missed a day, but I jumped right back on and did it again. So basically what it did was it Challenged me, got me out of my comfort zone because I didn't think I was a good writer. It created a habit of creating every single day that, you know, now I still create every single day. Maybe not publicly, but I still do that. And because now, as a brand new blogger who is probably getting 30 page views a month from my refreshes now, I got a lot of content out. So when people come to my site, they're like, oh, he's a content creator. He got 30, 40, 50 pieces of content. And so that led to my first big break, which was with Lamar Tyler's platform, Black and Married With Kids, which is at the time the largest privately owned or independently owned website for black and marriage families at the time. And so that taught me when I got that connection and now I'm writing for bmwk, I realized the power of borrowed audiences. Because now it wasn't just me and me trying to share with all my little social platforms even before the algorithms are what they are today and you had to pay to play. But now I'm leveraging, leveraging somebody else as an audience that has the right people that I want to get in front of everything. Since then, I've followed suit. My entire platform, my business, and my brand, whatever we want to call it is because of content partnerships and broad audiences. Oh, okay. So, so much we can dig into. First of all, talking about content creation, before content creation was even a word, like, like the 63, let's be honest. Like, this is. I. I feel I'm kind of an OG as well. Internet. And, you know, in terms of, like, starting my podcast before Joe Rogan, before all this other stuff, and, you know, I'm like, just get some Zoom Recorder. And I'm like, in my. My mom's basement, my mom's pool room. You know what I mean? And it's like, it was like that. It's like, why am I even doing this? But you just have a sense that, like, your mentor told you, thank goodness, you need to put the breadcrumbs there first, plant the seeds first, have something for people to come find instead of waiting for them to come to you, and then give them something that you haven't even created yet. Like that habit, obviously it served you well. And because you were doing it before it got popular to get into hustle culture, right? And creation and everything, you already have the habit of doing it for the right reasons. Instead of some of these people who, I think in the AI age are trying to just throw anything at people, right? And I'm talking to my fellow creators now that just say, oh, well, just flood your Instagram feed with stuff, but not really have something to say. And so what you said when you were dealing with what you were doing with as a dad, I think that's something we can hang onto a little bit, is that you have to share consistently, but also share from authenticity. It can't just be the masses of content. Am I right about that? Because I think that's one of those big lessons that in this day and age, content creation has become so much about volume and not about, like, the value. Yeah. I think that at the root of success and what we're doing here is authenticity. And so you. You've got to talk and speak from your authentic life. And we. Because here's the thing, you can go online right now and find somebody else doing something great, like, let me do that. Well, you can't do that because that's not authentic to you. And so whether that be because they're so far ahead of you or just because their story's not your story and their audience is not your audience or the way they do it is just different than the way you can do it. And so I think when we start from there, and, you know, I learned then and I didn't know it, people always ask me, hey, did you always want to be an author? Did you always want to be a speaker? I'm like, no and no. I didn't enjoy writing that much when I was a kid and a student, even a young adult. And if I took a class in high school or college or wherever it was and I found out on the syllabus that there was. I had to give a speech, I was quickly trying to get out of that class because it's too late for me to drop out of this class. I hated that stuff. And so now here we are, and I find out again. God, when I said yes to Jesus years ago, God had given me this gift of teaching. First started coming out and coaching, because I started coaching our daughter at like, 5 years old. She's 25 now. She'll be 25 in about a month or two. But. And so now I got this. This vehicle that I can write. And I discovered I like writing. I. You know, I'm. I'm decent at it. And, wow, it's actually impacting people. And so are there other people out there that are, you know, dancing on TikTok? Maybe that's their thing and being silly. Are there other people out there that are podcasts? You know, in that YouTube videos, whatever. I can do those. Yes. But I know that at the root, my sweet spot is writing. And I. My writing form informs everything else. It comes out. My speaking. It comes out. You know, I wrote a bunch of notes before we started this conversation today. I got them right here in case I need to refer to. But I had to write those out because that's my gifting. So, again, you can't just copy what you see other people doing that look successful. First, you don't really know behind the scenes. Second, that's not you. God made you unique, and God gave you specific gifts that when you. I'm listening to Act Like, Think Like a Success, Act Like a Success. Steve Harvey's book, again, that's about the third time I've listened to it. And he was talking about that when he discovered his gifting and is was comedy. And so he's like, okay, I can make people laugh. But he said, I didn't have to just make people laugh on a comedy stage. He said, I can make people laugh in all these areas because that's my gifting. So no matter what the setting is. So when I found my gifting of writing and communication and teaching, now that thing plays out in different areas. So that's the thing I'm speaking directly to the creators out here is I find that in you. And when you find it, don't try to be somebody else. Be that Even if there's 10,000 people already doing it, nobody's doing it like you are. I love this man. This is speaking to me because I definitely dealt with that kind of comparison, imposter syndrome type thing where it's like, yeah, well, my podcast isn't as big as this person. I've written this, but this person wrote it so much more eloquently, right? And realizing that, God. And that's one of the things that. I'm going to be very honest with you and just kind of dig in with the vulnerability part. Hearing you talk, saying that you've been married 24, 25 years, it doesn't put us on the same path at all. But when I look back at my marriage, I'm like, wait, I got 27 in this. Like, how did that happen? Like, how am I honestly sharing what it took me to get to 27? It's definitely different what it took you to get to 24, right? But it's like, wait, I've always leaned away from that because I was nervous about, Wait. I don't know if they want to hear this part. Because we did not follow the traditional model trust, we are much closer to the Old Testament version of those marriages where there was foolishness between Jacob and Leah, and we're closer to that. So I've always feared letting people into that side of my journey because it was easier to keep the safe side of, oh, just do this production, whatever music things. So I'm even dealing with that. Hey, be honest, be open. Let people into the story while it's happening, and God could use that. So I appreciate that personally. Number one. And then hopefully numbers number two, someone's listening. Who was. Is where you were, right? And now is taking your advice. I want to ask you quickly about the entrepreneurial side as well, in terms of your wife, how you guys navigated. This, because I've done a couple of. Podcasts with other married creative couples. Is your wife a creative creator? Do you consider her a business partner? Has it ever been kind of like those fights be where the CEO, CFO situation, where y' all are not on the same page in terms of a business issue? Because I think a lot of us would like to know, like, how do you guys navigate that? Because it's a balance, like you said, in both your married life and clearly in your creator and your professional life as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great questions. And yes and no to also. I'll break them down. But. So is my wife a creative? No, that would be me. I'm the creative. She honestly would rather be back behind the scenes, just kind of, hey, tell me a few things to do. I'll knock those out. And so that's my wife, by the way. So you get it, you get it. And here's what I've been saying, and not in a disrespectful way, but people like, okay, is Stefan involved in the business? I'm like, no, not really. She really just does appearances. And so on stage, sometimes we have an interview where it requires both of us and things like that. She shows up and administers and coaches and teaches from just talking. So. But me, it's opposite. But, you know, here's a great example. Let me say this first. It is growth in progress again. We've been kind of talking about this whole thing. We're still learning and growing and still figuring out. And some things that, you know, I thought this was my dream, and this is what I wanted to be is not her dream. And so I can try to force her into the dream that I have, because my dream is a family business where everybody's working together. Side, we're you know, equal partners doing this, and you do this, and I do that. Here's your skill set. She wants none of that. However, the thing that we do get on, you know, we continually get on stage and speak together. And this is a great example of how you can work through some of these things. So. And it kind of goes back to something you said, too, just about us sharing kind of the messiness. And so one of our talks, we share a story. At the time, it was kind of breaking down a story. We're kind of walking through what happens when we sin and do different things, like shame, you know, we're trying to hide. There's five different points. I can't remember the exact points now. And I had a phenomenal. And I say phenomenal. I say this kind of joking. A phenomenal story about our youngest son losing his basketball jersey and keeping it hidden for a few weeks, until I found out by a mom calling to say, hey, my son's got your son's jersey. I'm thinking, like, what's he been playing in? So anyway, we walked through that, all the different points, and I make the points with the story. Phenomenal. We get ready to do this talk again. It's the morning of. We're kind of practicing, and we're. We're like, okay, we got about two hours before we go on stage and do this talk. Stephanie's like, babe, I think you got too many sports stories. She was right. I do. That was one of them. And this is a marriage conference. So she's like, we need more marriage stories. And she said, instead of telling the story about Joshua, that's our youngest son, when we talk about our story about this, and I'm thinking like, okay, I don't know about that. It's last minute, and she needs to be more prepared than I. I can go on the fly. Boom. And just talk. Where we at? Oh, we get off target, we can get back to it. But she needs that methodical. Here's my notes. Here's where I'm going. And so I was like, babe, this ain't what you like to do. You hate when I change stuff at the last minute. So why are you doing it? She's like, I think this is better. And so we share this story of how us coming together was messy and all of that type of stuff. And I made the decision. I was like. At first, I told her no. And I was like, okay, I think God had you say that and press it on your heart. And you said to me, we're gonna Go with it. I'm not sure exactly how it's gonna play out. And so the story is we. You know, again, we. If you. If for anybody that was really kind of caught this, I mentioned the age of our daughter and how long we've been married. Our daughter was 10 months old when we were born. I mean, when we were married. And so she was already, you know, almost a year old. We were having sex before marriage, and it was messy, and that caused challenges. You know, I was unfaithful to Stefano when. After our daughter was born, but before we were married. Messy came into marriage. Very, very messy. So share that. Share the guilt and shame that we had going down those points of a Christian couple having sex before marriage, ended up with a child and now getting married and all that. We didn't pray, didn't, you know, do all that stuff, all this baggage. When we got done with that talk, finished that talk up, and we were ready to walk off stage, we were bombarded. People were rushing to the stage saying, this is my story. I've been feeling that you put words to my story, something that we've never really shared, not at that depth until then. And so the point of working together is you guys are going to see things differently, function differently, have different strengths and all that, but there's got to be a time where you just kind of heed some of those. And that was an example for me where I was like, okay, I'm the content creator. I put all this together. If we change some of it at the last minute, it could be me, because I could go with it. And she owned that story and took it. So I think that, you know, even today, we're still figuring it out and still learning. And I. And I just told her, actually, you know, this week, I was like, babe, we need to get some stuff together, because I think that there's some stuff that we need to work out that is impacting us from doing what God really wants us to do at this stage and beyond. And so it just. It still goes back to that transparency, that humility, and just like, man, I don't know at all, maybe I wanted to do this way. I think she should just. It goes back to roles in marriage outside of business. We think that we have specific roles of gender roles or whatever it is. But how has God brought your oneness together and how does that act out in a daily basis? Oh, gosh, man. Okay. This is going to be. It's going to turn to a whole other podcast therapy, slash. Yeah. Because when my Wife hears this, trust me, we're going to have something totally different coming up probably after this. If we're both convicted like this, like, you're convicting us. Now, the next podcast episode, maybe in a whole nother subject, because we've talked about this for years about what is our show going to be. And like, oh, God, yeah, okay, Lord, I don't really want to hear this. Conviction is usually the one you don't want to do. Right. So. But I love it because it talks about two things. One is being willing to trust your partner. And for those who are not married, there might be a trusted friend. There might be a confidant that might be a pastor that's saying, no, you need to step out in an area that you're not usually comfortable in, but this is where God's going to use you. And here's the thing that I think goes right into, right back to the practical, spiritual being like this. This. This thing where it connects both dots. Right. It will be the answer to your community traffic business problem of what do I share? What will people actually show up for? So, so many of us are creating, creating, creating, but we don't know. Well, what's. Why aren't they coming? Is because, like you said, there's got to be a story that they connect to behind just the art form or the blog or whatever. And it's just something that's antiseptic and doesn't really mean, like we talked about, again, coming back to authenticity. That really matters to you, that it hurt. Like you said, the pain and the purpose. Yeah. So I think a lot of us, we do have to get to that uncomfortable place where I don't want to talk about it or share it or write about it or sing about it, but it's where people are, actually are. Because I had to go through that same situation. Yeah. So I think you're blessing a lot of people who may, again, may have heard that story, but didn't realize, like, the backstory. That's good. That's good. Yeah. This is so cool. So I would say that. I would almost say that's kind of like a high point. Cause I always try to go into, like, low points and high points so people can see, like, that's not all mountaintop. Right. But I feel like you kind of shared there where it sounds like it was some low points between your marriage where you guys were working through some stuff, and then all of a sudden it's like God takes you to the pinnacle. Can you share one of those other Lessons that maybe was something that was, I don't know, it could have been in church ministry, could have been in sports, but something where you saw the lows and then the lesson taught you how to get to the highs of it because there's so many lessons that we could go through. But I feel like you might have a story. You're a storyteller, naturally. So I feel like there's one of those things where maybe you could share with someone who's at a point where, oh man, God's not going to use this. And you saw how it worked in your favor. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, there's so many stories in our marriage like that. There's so many stories in my journey as a creative and an entrepreneurial person as well. I think one of them. And I'll catch up to kind of like where we are in, you know, in our entre, in the entrepreneur journey. Yeah, that's what I get. That's kind of like where I'm getting at because I mean, like I said, people are going to see where you're at now. And I always want to make sure they don't think like this happened like overnight. And of course they're going to study all your stuff, they're going to go to your blogs and everything else. But I do like them to hear kind of like that little bit of that rag to riches story. Yeah, yeah. And I think this is like this. You know, we've had a lot of impact in what we've done with marriage. You know, the numbers are staggering. It's just amazing that so many people that we've impacted and I don't take that lightly at all. But you know, when. And let me see, when we first started, you know, the blog was Jackie Bledsoe.com. it was a personal brand. I just talked about marriage and family a lot. And then it got to the point where it got so big that it was like people would go to an event like, hey, what's your ministry? Or what's your, you know, it depends on what setting, what's your ministry name, what's your brand name? And I'm thinking like Jackie Bledsoe. So it's kind of a little bit of a disconnect. That's how happily married couples was born. And so now it's like we need a place for our marriage stuff. You know, that was. Right. I finally got the space to build it during COVID build the site out and all that type of stuff. So that's great. But here we are now I've got other. I'm getting people also coming to me saying, hey, you know, how'd you do this? How'd you get partnered with YouVersion? How'd you get partnered with family life? How'd you write your book? Blah, blah, blah. And so I'm the mayor's guy. I'm known as the mayor's guy. And so I kind of quietly started doing workshops quietly because I was. This was against what I'm known for by other people. And so I do a workshop here, do a workshop there, get some good turnout, get some good, you know, results from a people. I'm like, cool. But I'm also a starter. So I'm like, okay, let me do something else. So from probably, I don't know, 2021, maybe, I don't know when it was, I kind of. My first transition was when we did our podcast. First we did a summit how we built this and stayed happily married. It was basically trying to target couples who are entrepreneurial or in ministry together. And so that was the first venture in that. But then I kept doing more and more and I found a thing where I did a build with borrowed audiences workshop. And so that right there was like, okay, that got traction. I loved it. Turned that into a membership. Then I'm an entrepreneur who's a starter. I got a little bored and didn't. And I was still in that place where I was like, do I want to go full fledged or abrupt? The people who think that I'm only a marriage person or is this going to be weird to them? And so I spent a few years basically downplaying something I was passionate about, was getting great traction with and helping other people with. And then 2023, where I. Which brings us up to current. I started a mastermind. And this mastermind was totally outside of the mayor's space. There was no connection. I didn't try to bridge any gaps, do it for couples. And any of that, I was like, nope, I'm going straight at it. And that freed me in many different levels. First, to show, yes, you do have an impact in something other than marriage. Why are you being afraid to do that? Because it was fear. And I'll be honest, let me be completely transparent. Still to this day, I still kind of have a little funny, you know, feeling inside when I, when I go full fledging that or I create content that is boldly not marriage because I've been known for marriage so long. Fast forward. And that mastermind is taking completely off and we're opening up New cohorts. And I'm. I wrote the notes because I got to share it. Some of the people, because I love. This is. This is where my coaching comes in. A buddy of mine told me earlier this year, we talk every day. He's. He's a digital nomad. He lives in all different parts of the world with his family. But he's like, dude, you're a coach. You're a true coach, and I'm a consultant. He said, I love to come in there and tell people what to do and let them execute on their own. And I'm out. They do it great. It's not on me. But you're a coach. You got to walk with them and talk with them and mentor them and get them through that. And so that's what I found out here is like, man, I love that. And it feels even greater to share the success stories of my mastermind members, because in the marriage space, you don't always hear those success stories. And so, like, you may be impacting people's lives, but you don't know you kind of doing stuff. But so I got to share a few things. Scott and my Mastermind, we met 10 years ago in a coaching program that we were in, and we're kind of at the same spot. He had been stuck for years, got in the program, started, you know, teaching that we do what I call OP3. It's kind of where we get people to focus. One person, one problem, one pathway. And so he started locking in on that. And he had 1800 email subscribers. He's trying to get a traditional publishing book deal at 1800 email subscribers. He started, you know, kind of figuring it out, getting locked in. January 24th, he locked in on the pathway on the right Bible plans with you version. By December 2024, he had 12,000 email subscribers on this list. And so blown away. Now he's got 3,940 Bible plans. His email list is like 18,000. And he's having conversations about publishing a book deal with traditional publishers. And so like that. But here's where it almost didn't happen. And this is what I want to speak to the creators out there is maybe you're known for something, or maybe you're not comfortable or not as confident going into a certain area for whatever reason it is. That's where we got to take those bold leaps. But I feel like I was stunting growth. Our revenue dropped like it was no longer a business. It was like if I'd have been on a Dave Ramsey show. He'd have been like, dude, that's a hobby. Quit that and go do something else. So it was bad. But the revenue started ticking up again. And actually happily married couples and speaking started ticking up again too, at the same time, even though it wasn't, you know, result of me making this decision. But now I've given my. I've given myself opportunity and so many other avenues opened up from this. And so here I am now I'm strategically focused for a certain. I'm practicing what I preach in my mastermind, which is simple, focused and consistent, simplifying things. And I'm focusing on one thing primarily right now, and then I'll get back to, you know, putting some things attention at happily married couples, but focusing on my mastermind right now. And that is freeing internally and the results are showing externally. Oh, wow. Okay. Again, preaching to the choir. Because as a, you know, fellow youversion writer, now there's so much again, I don't know if it's comparison. I don't know if it's, oh, well, will people listen to this particular story? Should I be writing only to creators? Should I be writing only to artists? So I'm literally one of those people that are in your same niche that say to themselves, maybe I'm not in the right place or saying the right thing. And if you commit to nothing or you try to do everything, you commit to no one. Right. So you have to be very clear about that and be. And I love that anagram. I want to try to get everybody to focus on your stuff. If you have a blog for that, please give me that note because I'll put it in the show notes so they can follow that. And then eventually, for those who are writers, I mean, your. Your desire to help you, the fact that you were writing every single day for 365 days, like, that's the first qualification even before you got on you version, because you are a writer who showed that you were willing to put the work in before the results. Yeah. So that the fact that you're getting results for other people shouldn't be a surprise because you've already shown, hey, you put in the work, you get the results, and you're just showing the template to do it in the specific place of you version. So I'm a fan already, so we'll be talking later. But then for those who are interested in not just you version, but just in terms of sharing their stories, sharing their life online, sharing their ministry online, I want to kind of take it and kind of start to wrap it up with this because you have so much to share and you just talked about it. The fact that you are having these questions in your head of should I do this fear? And we're hearing you talk about this after helping thousands and thousands of thousands of people. Someone else is listening. Like, what are you talking about, Jackie? Like you've already figured it out. Why do you have any fear of doing anything? So I wrapped this into like two questions in one. Okay, so forgive me for this. It's bad, bad interview. It's all good. First, tell me what you are trying or what you're looking forward to overcoming. Is there something, like you said, you're a starter. So if you're still dealing with fear and these things and now you see. Success, God gave you success here, success there. Is there anything that you're looking ahead to, Right. That you're saying, okay, God hasn't shown me this. I think there's another mountain for me to climb in the future that I'm still trying to build. And then the second half is, what do you say to the person that's at the bottom of the hill? Right. That has not gotten where you've gotten to. So. But I wanted you to do the. First half because I know it's a lot. Yeah. So first question is basically, what am I trying to overcome or looking to getting over? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. Your neck. You're like the next mountain. You cheat. You overcame the mastermind fear. You've overcome getting into happily married couples and doing all those things. Is there something next that you're looking forward to that you know, still you realize you got to have a little. Bit of faith for? Yeah, yeah. I think it's kind of wrapped in. It's kind of be a bad answer and can probably give a twofold answer. But I think even though I'm a starter, I still am a slow starter. And so let me explain that. And so I am a, you know, the analysis, paralysis by analysis. I want to make sure everything things right. I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. And so one of the things I want to overcome and I think this is going to break through what I want to, you know, what can happen next, it's going to open the doors or remove a block is I want to get out there and just fail faster, start faster. And so I am cautious about making sure. Like I should have started what I'm doing right now a long time ago, but I wanted to make sure I was okay. I'm comfortable that I can not fail that to me is a little doubt, you know, doubt and faith. You know, that's lack of faith where I'm not trusting, believing that, okay, yet this can happen. And so I want to get better at that. And then after I do that, I think it's. And I want it. And here's connected. I want to choose one vehicle to focus on for one year. Whether that be, you know, and, you know, if it's the mastermind, entrepreneur mastermind, or if it's happily married couples, I want to choose one to focus on for one year and see where that can take me. Our pastor says this all the time. He says, I dare people all the time to give God one year of your life, and your life will never be the same. And I've seen people get on that stage and do videos at our church time and time again who gave God a year of their life. And their life, like you said, net will has never been the same. And so I want to do that for my business. And I, And I. I am an entrepreneur. So, yes, my family and all that, but I'm like, I want to do it in this. In this world. I think I have succeeded, but I think I've left a lot. There's a lot more on the table for me to do. And so I think that this is what I. What I. I want to say preach. This is what I continue to say in my mastermind. All the. And I just said it a minute ago, simple, focused, consistent. I talked about Scott. Scott did something simple. He figured out I'm a pastor who's been writing for. I've been doing sermons for 20 years. I'm gonna repurpose purpose, my best sermons, and do you version Bible plans every week. Simple. I'm gonna lock in on that. I'm not gonna do social media stuff. I'm not gonna do any of that. And I'm gonna consistently do it. Boom. There's other people. Rachel, she did the same stuff. Her and I were in the same boat. We've been partners since, like, you version partner since like 2016. And we got off. We didn't write anything for a long time. She said, I'm gonna get back to writing. She just crossed over a YouTube threshold. She just crossed over a record of revenue for her from her digital products in May and already beat that record in June because of those things. And so I, you know, I am in the process of coaching and doing it like we've been talking about the whole time, but I want to take that bold step, and I've done it for a period of time, but not that long. A year seems like an eternity for me, and so I'm a little tiptoed about that. So. But I think when I do that, I'm a breakthrough, and I'm. I'm my. My goal with my businesses is get them to the point. Not that I want to do this, but get them to the point where they don't have to run with me. I no longer have to be the face. And, you know, me and Stefan are the face of happily married couples or the face of entrepreneur mastermind. I'm working on training coaches now that I have an asset that if I decide to stop doing this on. On day 25 or whatever it is, that somebody else, like, that's a valuable enough asset that I would buy or take over, and then that way I'm free to build more businesses or what's the next step of this business? But that's the thing that I think will break the lid off of what I'm doing. But that year's got me right now. That year got me a little bit. I love it. But I love the fact that you're putting the challenge out for yourself and for your students. Right. That. Hey, there's more. The verse that keeps popping into my head that Joshua does all the stuff to conquer the land of Canaan, and then there's a verse that says, and there was still more land to be conquered. He's like, wait, but he did everything God said to do, and there's still more. There's always something new to go forward and, you know, go higher and higher in God. I love this. And then the second half of the question, which, again, I tried to throw it all in one question, is, what would you say to the person who was or is now where you were long before if you had to go back and talk to yourself? Right? Because we're always talking to someone who was where we were. Right. And that's what we want to try to give them that sense of hope. So just take yourself back to. I don't know how old you were. 20, 22. Like they were. You look. You still look like a young man. But when you first. You and Stefano were first getting together, going through those challenges, having that blog with only that failed business, what would you say to yourself now that you know what you know, because someone else is listening, wanting that same kind of advice? Yeah, this is. This advice, you know, is what we've been modeling and doing. And actually, I had a meeting with a friend of Mine, he's very successful business owner, like crazy successful. His brand is on NBA jerseys. And so we hadn't connected in a while. Met with him and I asked him that same question, like, okay, where you are compared to where I am, what would you say I do? And he said, basically, get around those people that are already doing it or in the process of going, there's. And so that's what we've done with small groups, masterminds, mentorship. What we're receiving is we put ourselves in a position like our marriage. Mentors were basically couples that we saw something in them that we liked about their marriage and we want to be around them. That's how it started. That's why they were all organic. We have a small group. We like those couples. You know, we hung. We love hunging out with them. We're on the same age demographic, whatever. We hung out with them. You know, the mastermind, be honest. I selfishly created it as well because my greatest growth, seasons of growth and success had come when I was in a mastermind. I had just never ran one of mine that, you know, I had other people get in other than one, just, hey, let's hang out. But those, those were not really committed because it wasn't paid committed. And so I was like, let me, let me do that. So find those people that are where you want to be and get around those people, whether that be virtually or if you got access to people in person and then get, you know, look at your circle and you don't have to cut off the people in your circle. They're not going where you want to, but find a circle that is going where you want to. They don't necessarily have to already be there, but spend more time and more in closer proximity with them. That's what my mastermind is like. It ain't me sitting at the, at the top coaching. I'm learning every week I'm in there. I mean, like, there are some people in there. It's great. We just, we. We just got a mastermind member from Africa who was. Is highly successful in what she does over there. And it's now coming to learn. So I'm thinking, like, we want to learn from you. We, we. I can't wait to get you in the seat so we can hear what you're sharing and what, what challenges you've overcome and are going to right now. So find those people that are doing it. Get around proximity of people that are going towards doing what you want to do. Man. Hey, the scripture is right man, we said in a multitude of counselors, there is safety, brother. There's so much wisdom that you're talking about connecting with. So, please, we can't go any further. I want to eventually find some way to continue to get my community into your communities. They need to know about marriage. They need to know about how you can grow your writing career, and you have all of that available for them. So I know this is old school. Most of them can just click on the link right when you say this all the time, we end those interviews, it's like they already know where to go. But just in case someone's old school and is writing it down right now, tell them how they can connect with you. What's the best ways for they can continue to learn from your resources and the amazing ministry. Yeah, I got a link. I want to make sure I got it right. So I was trying to find it. Jackie bledsoe.com forward/godand gigs all one word, yo. No, you didn't. That's it. So I am so honored. Whoa. Okay, wait. I just want to. I want to savor this for a second. This is a mountaintop one for me. That. My brand, y'. All. Y' all understand this? Like, my brand is like the very next word after that. You just put those two together. Jesus is real. I know the Lord. Okay. Anyway, I'm done. Yeah, yeah. So that link will be what. What is going on in my life and brand. That link will go to it right now. I don't know when this will come out. If they went today, you know, I don't know if it's not coming out today, of course it would go to. Oh, yeah, we know After Listening is definitely going to be live. So at that time, when it goes live, it might be something else, but right now, it's going to the wait list or the. The information about our mastermind. So if that's what you're excited about, boom, you go get it right now. It may be. I don't know when this podcast episode will come out exactly, but something will be there. But it'll be tailored towards this audience so that way they get something that we talked about on here and can learn something. So there'll probably be a freebie on there as well. I don't know what that is right now because I haven't created it because I knew this was something that was going to come out in the future, but I want to go back and listen to it, too, and create something specifically for your people. See, I love this because it shows, really. And this is the part behind the scenes again, that we can be very transparent and say, hey, y', all just build it and then continue to refine it. The very thing you just said, which is, we're not sure. We're gonna, we're gonna look at this, we're gonna see what the calendar does, we're gonna coordinate and make sure that this makes the best sense for our community. So release it then. And I'm okay with sharing that part. Right? So they're watching us in real time. But hey, no, whatever you're building, go ahead and start planning. And if it's not perfectly put together, get it ready so that whenever God brings the people, all right, we'll flip it, change the URL, but we're still going somewhere. You've already got it prepared before the people are even here or we have the particular thing open. So I'm fine with that. I'm fine with them seeing how the sausage is made. These are the decisions that we have to make in order to do this. Well. And like you said, fail fast, fail often, but then you succeed faster, you succeed more often. So I love this so much, man. We have to finish it up because this has been a great, great, great talk. So please, y' all go to Jack. I, I, I'm just enjoying saying that that right now. Jackie blazzle.com Godand gigs and we'll get you all the information that you need to stay connected to this amazing brother and man of God. Thank you so much for doing this, Jackie. This has been an absolute treat. I can't wait for us to do it some days, man. I appreciate it, Alan. Thanks for having me here. Well, my friend, I could not be. More inspired or encouraged by that talk with Jackie Bledsoe when I tell you he is as authentic as they come and yet has so much knowledge and experience that you can draw from now through this episode. Listening to his story, listening to his tips, from borrowed audiences to writing and making it a habit, to having that one year goal of focusing every single bit of this interview is something that you can take and pull from so that you can reach the God given goals that God has put in front of you. Whether it's for your writing, your content, creating, or any other part of your creator lifestyle. And because Jackie is so powerfully helping other artists and creatives like me who are writing or sharing their work on the YouVersion platform and other platforms like this, I highly encourage you to check out his resources that we have at that website, which he so graciously made for us. Jackie bledsoe.com Godand gigs stay connected with Jackie because everything he's sharing is going to help you to find your calling, find your voice, and to reach the people you are called. To reach one of my friends friend there was so much in this episode. I'm just hoping you'll share it and save it so that it will continue to be a resource for years to come. So until next time, continue to become the creator that you were created to be. God bless and we'll see you next episode.