People Matter at Work

People Matter at Work

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Pastor Josh Block

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 7/21/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, welcome again to a Tuesday edition of Stand in the Gap Today. I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell. As you consider the different institutions that God has ordained, we immediately think of home and government and the church. And these institutions or authorities in society are used to keep order and to direct the affairs of mankind and for certain, promote the righteousness of God here on earth. Yet there’s another institution that God cares deeply about, and that’s the workplace. The Bible speaks much about how masters and employers are to treat their workers equally. It speaks about how workers are to conduct themselves on the job. And like those other entities, the workplace provides a platform for those who know Christ to share the hope that is within us. Yet for many believers, we look at the job as just that, a job, a place to go to nine to five or eight to five to do our assigned task, mind our own business, collect a paycheck.

And if we last long enough, have something to retire with. And for many, work is a drudgery, a necessary evil, a painful part of our existence. A number of studies I’ve read tell us that 65% of workers feel unappreciated at their jobs. You now understand why they’re not motivated to go the extra mile each day after they punch in. But many business owners have complained to me over the years about the lack of commitment, loyalty and hard work from those they hire. I guess we could tolerate the unfulfillment on the workplace and the dissatisfaction between employees and their bosses, or we could try to see change occur so that businesses experience both success and satisfaction. My guest today has been on a personal journey to see that happen in the company he led. Josh Block is the former president of Block Imaging, a business experienced tremendous success growing from 30 million to 200 million in sales.

Yet beyond the profits, Josh focused on people who worked for him and took an approach to leading the company where people wanted to show up each day. That is a feat worth considering. He has written a book about what happened called People Matter at Work. And today we want to talk about the workplace being a business owner and what is happening on the job in the job world in America and how to glorify God at your job. Josh, welcome to Stand in the Gap Today. We’re so glad to have you.

Josh Block:

Thanks for having me, Jamie. It’s great to be with you.

Jamie Mitchell:

Josh, I want our listeners to quickly to get to know you and your story and how you were thrust into leadership and your initial entree into the work of being a CEO. Tell us how 29 year old Josh Block entered in suddenly to lead a company and now have to be focused on its people.

Josh Block:

Absolutely. So my wife and I met on the first day at Taylor University. We spent about 10 years in Muncie, Indiana before feeling like we were called to move north. And so I had been part of our family business for a number of years in a sales role shortly after moving north in 2011 to Lansing, Michigan, which is where I grew up. My dad made the decision to step down from his role as president. He was a founder of the company called Block Imaging and named me president. And so really went from a sales rep to a president of a $30 million business from a Friday to a Monday.

Jamie Mitchell:

A little bit of a shocker and probably not what you were expecting. But Josh, I know we’re going to discuss throughout this program, but I think it’s important to consider why is the workplace hard for people, both workers and business owners? What is it that makes work a lot of times so difficult for people?

Josh Block:

Yeah. There are a lot of factors that come into mind, but one of them is just the innate selfishness of mas that you have employers looking out for themselves, employees returning the favor. You have hierarchy and power and greed. And so there are a lot of dynamics, but I think it very much mirrors marriage in that when people look out for themselves, trouble happens both in the family and the same is true in the workplace.

Jamie Mitchell:

You’re going to come at this and your book speaks a lot about being a business owner, a leader. But the principles of your book, which we’re going to talk about, really goes both ways. They’re both for the employee and the employer. And why is it that you need both to have the kind of satisfaction that we need in the workplace, especially where we’re saying that people matter at the workplace. Why is what you’ve written important for both of those roles?

Josh Block:

Well, a leader without followers just a man or woman out for a walk. So at the end of the day, it’s one of my favorite quotes. And so there are people who are visionaries and they love to take organizations from here to there. And then there are people who are lieutenants. They love to follow and lead from their own position, but they love to actually be an EOS language integrators, but people who are helping the vision come true. And so both are necessary to make something a reality and to build something significant.

Jamie Mitchell:

When you made the move to begin to focus on people and help people flourish in their job, was it infectious? Did they change and take that attitude as well? Did you see that occur in your situation?

Josh Block:

Yeah. For us, I really think that a lot of times we get what we expect. And so if we treat people like they’re lazy and entitled and selfish and trying to do as little as they can and leave as fast as they can, a lot of times we actually see that reciprocated. And yet when we believe the best and when we invest in people and we treat them like owners, we’ve just seen over and over where people reciprocate with generosity and they have a deep sense of ownership and trust builds. And instead of leading followers and sometimes I think of the analogy of pushing a rope versus leading leaders where you actually get to steer a rocket, which is a whole lot more fun.

Jamie Mitchell:

Josh, as I was reading through your book and being a pastor for 42 years and obviously people are our business. We want to bring the best out of people. We want to disciple people. We want to grow people. And the unique thing is that we work with almost a total volunteer force. But I also was reading that and saying to myself, how many times have I forgotten this and had expectations on the people I was leading without looking and saying, how can I bring out the best for them? How can I invest in them? Instead of them being there to do something for me and make my life easier, did I really take the time and pour into them as I needed to? It was convicting in many respects and that’s why I wanted to have you on the program today because I think your book and the principles that are there translate even further than the workplace.

And friends, that’s what we’re trying to do today to help you both find some satisfaction in the workplace, especially if you’re a business owner and a leader, but also to translate these principles that Josh is going to talk about in his book that really focus on how do we elevate and raise up and encourage and make people better. We want to try to overcome some of those struggles on the workplace though. And when we return, I want Josh to explain how he changed the focus of his business and became a place where people matter. Don’t go anywhere. Stay with us. We’re talking about the workplace here today on Stand in the Gap Today.

Thanks for staying with us Josh Block, business leader and author of People Matter at Work is my guest today. We’re looking at our work lives and hopefully how to move from merely surviving work to thriving at our jobs. Josh, in your book, you tell the story of creating a culture focused on people, not just profits. Can you explain that change that you implemented at Bach Imaging? How did you move from where the company was to a people focused organization? What did you do? What did you do first? Unpack your story about what transformed your company.

Josh Block:

Because of my quick transition, it really required us to work together. And together is kind of a cute idea, but it was thrust upon us just by there was so much I didn’t know. I hadn’t been to our Japan operation, hadn’t seen a profit and loss statement. And so really looking at the senior leaders and saying, “Hey, we’re going to have to do this together.” And that was the first T. And then the second is this word thoughtful. And I could just sense it in my spirit from the very beginning and not exactly sure what it meant, but just try to make decisions that are thoughtful in the eyes of the people I was leading. And then later came across the definition which was using careful consideration of the needs of others. And so really trying to make decisions that if I was on the other side of, they would be thoughtful, they would be caring, they would seem intelligent, they would seem caring to not just the people I’m leading, but to vendors and the customers and all those sorts of things.

So those two T’s really started to shape the shift from a me cycle culture to a we cycle culture.

Jamie Mitchell:

In your book, you talk about that me cycle versus the we cycle. Unpack that a little bit. What did you mean by that?

Josh Block:

When I grew up, work was a positive thing in the home that I was raised in. And then in my 20s kind of got out into the workforce and heard people complaining whether it was somebody working at Subway or General Electric or anywhere is just work has become kind of the four letter word of our time. And so just looking to reverse engineer why is that? What are people experiencing? And so in the me cycle, bosses look out for themselves, employees return the favor and everybody’s pretty miserable when people are just looking to extract from the other. And yet a shift happens. When we move from a me cycle to a we cycle, bosses become leaders and employees become team members. And that might seem like just a small syntax change, but there’s a huge difference between an employee and a team member as there is between a boss and a leader.

And so when we live out these three T’s, we create a culture where people feel safe, seen and successful. That stirs a we cycle forward and ultimately leads to what I talked about earlier, which is people trust, they carry ownership, they’re generous. And that stirs the leader forward that instead of dealing with entitlement and the load getting heavier and heavier, we actually carry it together. The burden gets lighter for the leader, people thrive. And actually at the end of the day, it’s not about forsaking performance, but caring for people, investing in people actually leads to success and performance.

Jamie Mitchell:

That is so key and so insightful. Josh, I was reading the book and getting a sense of your family’s business and all. It was a good, it was an excellent company. It wasn’t seemed like it was broken or falling apart or headed towards bankruptcy. So you had a good company and some might say don’t mess with things that aren’t broken. But that’s not what you were going after. You weren’t trying to fix something with broken. You wanted to make it more effective and to really flourish in some unique ways. Isn’t that the case?

Josh Block:

Yeah. So we had grown from really zero. So my dad loved the company from a home office and really had no aspirations of building an extraordinary organization. The plan was just he had five kids at home, two more were adopted later. So seven kids that he was going to pay for college. He was just looking to put food on the table. So we really grew from zero to 30 million that had kind of plateaued. And there were a lot of dynamic things going on within the organization, but it was my hope to really close the gap between what other people were experiencing at work and what I believed that work could be.

Jamie Mitchell:

And so you began to transform this. In your book it says that you were fostering a culture. Help people understand when you say culture, especially at the workplace, what does that mean? What does culture mean in the workplace?

Josh Block:

Yeah. Culture is really what’s normal. And so when you walk into, we all know what it’s like to walk into a fast food restaurant, but then you can even distinguish the difference between a McDonald’s and a Chick-fil-A, for instance, is what’s normal there? Chick-fil-A, it’s normal for people to say my pleasure. It’s normal for lines to be stretched around the drive through in really unique fashion. And so for me, what did I want to be normal in an organization is we wanted integrity to be front and center. We wanted to care for customers. We wanted to honor people, not just tolerate, not even just respect, but really honor people and create a place where people could bring their best. And for us, from a culture perspective, one of the challenging things when you talk about people matter is it leads to extreme tolerance of either toxic behavior or poor performance or lack of ambition.

But in reality, what I wanted to become normal was that we would invest in people. We would care for people in their most challenging moments of life, but we would invest in them in such a way that in two years, five years, 10 years, they would transform, that they’d go from someone who didn’t know much about a role or the industry to being an expert. And that’s such a joy, one, to be a part of the investment and obviously for the people who are being invested in as well.

Jamie Mitchell:

Josh, as I read your book, I learned what you did, some intentional steps that you took. But what I was most interested was the employee’s response. What were some of the initial feedback? Did you receive any resistance for how you now were conducting yourself? The changes that you were making, the expectations that you were now having on some of the people in senior leadership, not to just manage, but to lead people and to focus on people. Did you receive any resistance and what did you do with that?

Josh Block:

Yeah, for the most part, people were on board. A large percentage of people were excited about the path that we were taking and grateful to be part of the organization. And yet there were some people who prefer independence to interdependence and they prefer more of a cowboy approach to go it alone. And the business has some complexities, used imaging equipment at the time. Now we’re in the parts space and the service space and we rent mobile MRIs and do all sorts of different things. But yeah, most people were on board. They really enjoyed the leadership and the intentionality that we were seeking to bring. But of course that’s not 100%. And I’ve even learned that there are certain people who thrive in certain stages of a company. Some people really thrive in the startup stage and where you’re taking all sorts of risks. And then as you grow larger and you start to have more processes and more procedures and more structure, some of those cowboys don’t like it so much.

And then we start to bring in people who are more into ISO certification and all sorts of different elements of professionalizing a company.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yo focused on a certain discipline, a certain type of business in the imaging business. You’re now in some respects, and we can talk a little bit later about this, but you’re now transitioning more to help all kinds of CEOs and all kinds of businesses and all kinds of leaders start to implement some of these disciplines, these principles, this culture into their business. Are you finding that there are certain types of leaders that can do this and certain types of leaders that they just find it very difficult to try to create a culture that focus on helping people flourish as people?

Josh Block:

I think that ironically, as I have invested in lots of leaders in all sorts of different spaces, it seems that at times the men have more trouble with it than women. And a lot of times I’ll get the question, but how do you care for people and for performance? And I never get that question from a woman, that a lot of women have a tendency to understand that through care, it will lead to greater discipline. It will lead to growth. And yet oftentimes some of the men that I work with feel like I have to choose people or performance. I have to really be rough and tough and I need to never show weakness or vulnerability. And I’m not very transparent because people will take advantage of me when in reality I think they pair together really well is when we care for people. And I think of it in terms of parenting.

When you create a home where a child feels safe and a child feels seen, it’s very natural for the outcome to be a child who’s successful versus the other way around.

Jamie Mitchell:

So interesting. I was just talking to an elder board this weekend about how to make decisions and those kinds of things. And I’ve said to them always that in my history, when I give suggestions to the elder boards, I usually say to them, “Guys, when we come back next month, we’ll make this final decision.” And they kind of look at me, they’re kind of strange. And they say, “Well, why is that? ” I said, “Because I want you to go home and tell your wife and your wife will weigh in from her perspective the decisions we’re making.” And they go on to all laugh because they knew that that was the case. We went home and we said, “Hey, this is what we’re thinking of doing.”

Josh Block:

And

Jamie Mitchell:

The wives will usually say, “No, that’s not a good idea. You got to think about people. You got to think about how people are going to respond. And have you considered how the children are going to be affected? You’re exactly right. That’s why God has given us both a mom and a dad in the home. Well, in the long run, anyone working for a company who begins to feel appreciated and is encouraged to grow and given the support to be successful responds positively and productively. When we return, I want to talk about that balance. Josh just mentioned it. The need to produce along with the desire to help people grow. You got to have both. How do you do it? And still continue to be people focused. Stay with us. We’ll be back in a moment.

Well, if you’re just joining our program, we’re discussing the workplace today and especially how to change the culture and create a place where people matter, not just the bottom line or deadlines. Josh Schlock has focused on putting people first and has written a new book, People Matter at Work. Josh, you almost preempted my question for this segment. I was kind of laughing, but I can’t anticipate some of our listeners, especially those who run their business, they might be thinking this. Look, I care about my workers, but at the end of the day, we got to get work done. So how do you balance that need to produce, get products done, meet deadlines, meet budgets along with focusing on people? I guess they’re not mutually exclusive, but I guess sometimes you look at that and say, “I want to focus on people, but we just got to get the work done.” What do you say to those who are struggling with that balance?

Yeah.

Josh Block:

I would say that the whole reason that people are here is to get the work done. Is to build something, to move an organization from here to there. And so caring for people in all sorts of ways from what’s going on in their lives. Sometimes it means weighing in and helping them through their… I have a team member who’s getting ready to buy their first home and to put yourself in that position. Today, after buying quite a few homes in my life, it’s something that happens on the side. It’s not something that takes a lot of time or energy, but remember when you’re buying your first home and you’re navigating the appraisal and the inspection and all of the things that it takes a lot of bandwidth to get through something like that or maybe when you have your first child and you’re going through a new season.

And so what does it look like to walk with people and understand that they’re whole people? They’re not just automatons that come and do things for us and then we put them back to sleep and charge them up for the next day. These are people who have lives and have families and who have all sorts of difficulties that happen. So caring for them as they walk through all sorts of circumstances of life and the highs and the lows. And then ultimately inviting them into the mission and the vision so that they’re driving the business forward. There are a lot of people who look at this as a management exercise that we give people tasks to complete. And I just see it as something very different that we actually cast a vision that this is where we’re going as an organization. This what we’re looking to achieve.

This is what we’re looking to accomplish and inviting them into solving that problem or seizing that opportunity. And when we do that, we actually get to dive in together and we go from control to really conceding to finally collaborating where we don’t just have on idea or even two ideas, my idea or your idea. We actually have three because we’re sharpening an idea together and we can celebrate and we can look back and nobody gets to really take full credit because it’s something we built together. And everything I just shared is a totally different view than just telling people what to do.

Jamie Mitchell:

Josh, when you get people to view that they’re part of a team and their ideas and their input matter, all of a sudden they begin to tap into their own creativity and their idea may not be the best idea, but the expression of it and bringing it to the table, boy, that really begins to have the kind of buy-in that you want if you’re running a company or really any organization. And it’s so, so important. Josh, as I was listening to you talk, obviously you were keenly aware of what was happening in the lives of your employees, but if you have a massive staff or a massive company, you can’t know everything about everyone. Were there some practical ways that you just stayed in tune with the life of your people?

Josh Block:

Yeah. So the first way is for one-on-ones with the people that you lead is that you should have only enough direct reports that you can have consistent one-on-ones and you can really get an understanding of what’s going on in their lives and then modeling so that they in turn know what’s going on in the lives of their team. And then with HR, there are tons of different approaches in HR, but for us, one of the things we look for from our business partners is that they’re giving us updates, not on confidential things, not on things we shouldn’t know. But I just got a report this morning on a number of team members and things that are going on from a team member who just traveled down to Kentucky to attend his wife’s mother’s funeral. Another was someone just got engaged and they bought their first house.

And when you think about those situations, what it allows you to do is one, be aware of just the myriad of things that are going on in people’s lives. It’s always surprising that, wow, every week there are 15 or 20 things that the business partner has been made aware of and just thinks that we’d like to reach out. And then the second is to do that, is to take a step and to make a phone call or to text or email. And in this case, Todd Van Dyke to say, “Hey, congratulations on your new home. It’s an exciting step. You’re getting ready to get married as well. Lots of change going on. And just thinking about you and excited for the season that lies ahead takes all of a minute and a half. And yet it recognizes that it’s not all about us. And there are some really powerful things that are going on in Todd’s life while he’s walking out this significant period and also trying to do a great job as an engineer in our organization.

Jamie Mitchell:

Boy, I tell you, in our own lives, we know when those kinds of things happen, we get the card, we get the text message, we get the email, and there’s an acknowledgement of something that’s happening in our lives other than you’re going to have to miss a day of work or you didn’t meet that deadline. Boy, that just draws me in and talk about increased loyalty and being concerned for a company that’s concerned for me. Josh, in implementing these kinds of things, there must have been some difficult things of staying on course and trying to be people focused. If someone were to pick up your book and say, I’m going to start to do some of these things, are there any tips or warnings or just things that we should be ever so mindful that as we head into this direction, there may be some choppy water along the way?

Josh Block:

Sure. So the first T was together. The second T is thoughtful and you’ve led perfectly into the third, which is transparent, is sharing openly and honestly. And one of those things is feedback loops is that a lot of people will choose their own comfort, their own peace over someone else’s development. And I would just say that it’s cowardice, is that if we really believe in people and we’re really seated as leaders, that we are going to put down our own comfort. We’re going to put down our own piece to lean in and say, I believe in you enough to share this feedback with you. And when we do that, we have a transparent organization. We have an organization that grows feedback muscles and we actually get better together. We start to trust the feedback as opposed to waiting for once a year and dropping the hammer with all of the negative developmental feedback I have for you at a performance assessment puts an enormous amount of weight on that moment.

And it candidly freaks people out versus when we have consistent feedback loops. I’ve just seen over and over that people actually can trust that. They can grow in the spaces you’d like them to grow into. They don’t have to guess what you’re thinking. And then in certain spaces where people don’t carry humility, they don’t want to grow, they don’t trust your feedback. They exit on their own, which is best for them and frankly, oftentimes best for the organization.

Jamie Mitchell:

Well, that great lead into my last question for this segment. That do you ever fire anyone? And if you do, does that undermine your overall commitment and what you’re trying to do in the culture of saying, look, people matter. And so does it ever get to a place where you say, look, this is just not going to work? And how does that affect the cultural dynamic that you’re trying to create there?

Josh Block:

Sure. So words create worlds. So I try, and this again might be a syntax thing, but we talk about transitioning people from the organization rather than firing just because it just has kind of more of a acrimonious element to it. But when we think about releasing someone from the organization, there are three Cs that we’re looking at for hiring and also transitioning people and it’s character, chemistry and competency. And so the only reason that someone would ever be let go from an organization immediately is for character. We don’t teach character in our organization. But when it comes to issues of chemistry and competence, we really try to grow and develop people and we try to close the gap between where we are and where we’d like to be. And oftentimes if we’re unable to close the gap, that someone will leave on their own. They’ll see the writing on the wall and they’ll just say, “Hey, I just can’t get to where I’m expected to get, whether it be from sales performance or maybe even working well with other people.

” Or there are times where we make it clear to people that, “Hey, if we’re unable to close the gap between now and August, it will be time to have you exit the organization.” And to be honest, it’s graceful. It’s gracious that if we’re unable to be on the same page from a standards and expectations perspective, it’s probably not going to be a great fit. And rather than just resenting someone over the course of a long period of time and growing in frustration, we can actually release them, set them free. And I will tell you a number of times in my career, the other person has looked back and said that was one of the best things that happened to them. They don’t always say in the moment and I’m not saying that To justify every decision that we make, but there are times where people come into the organization.

There are times where people exit the organization and that’s the moment. And it’s a responsibility of the leader to really make that call when they think that the person is not suited for their role or suited for the team.

Jamie Mitchell:

I love that. I love that. You see, friends, loving people you work with not going to make your workplace culturally weak, laxicdaisical, ineffective. It will develop a team that serves together, wins together at times. You have to make some hard yet thoughtful, purposeful decisions. When we wrap up with Josh, I want to ask him about the landscape of work in America. What does he see? And he’s trying to start a movement. Welcome to our last segment. It’s been a joy to have Josh Block get to know him and his story. He’s the author of People Matter at Work. Josh, can you tell our listeners where they can get the book, but also to find out more about you and about the movement that you’re really trying to see happen within the workplace when it comes to making people matter at work? Tell our people a little bit about what you’re trying to do.

Josh Block:

Yeah. So people can pick up a copy of the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble Books a Million, really. Anywhere books are sold, the audiobook is available on Audible and then they can connect with me on peoplematteratwork.com. And my email is josh@peoplematteratwork.com.

Jamie Mitchell:

Josh, are you now coming alongside other business owners and helping them implement some of the principles that you’ve written in your book?

Josh Block:

Yeah. So right now I’m continuing forward in an advisory role at Block Imaging, overseeing a mobile imaging business and also speaking at conferences, associations and to companies, whether it be leadership teams or whole companies on the shift from the me cycle to the we cycle. And I also have a number of other keynotes on leading from identity, leading with vision and navigating stress.

Jamie Mitchell:

That’s fantastic. Well, if you’re a business owner, tap in to Josh’s website, get the book. I know it will be a help to you. Josh, I got two questions. I hope we can get both of them in. But as I look across the landscape as we do on this radio program a lot and look at the news and look at what’s happening across our country, we see things like the rise of socialism. And I keep asking myself why we’re a capitalist country. Work has always been an important part, growing business, creating wealth, but there is this attitude that’s creeping in. Do you think that entrepreneurship business owners, they’re viewed with increasing skepticism today? There is this view of a callous capitalist. But as I was reading your book, I was thinking to myself, man, this could be the answer. This could change the attitude towards the business world, especially capitalism today.

What do you see as you look across the landscape of our country, both in businesses but also people’s attitudes towards work and even this thing of socialism creeping in?

Josh Block:

Yeah. I think there are two things that come to mind. One is when you go back and you look at the last say hundred years and in so much of America, the scratching and clawing and the difficulty from the Great Depression to navigating World War II, and really this is the first generation that hasn’t had as much military involvement on a grand scale from American young people is that when you think of the last several generations, what a 17-year-old to a 22-year-old was involved in very different in the really ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, all the way up through early 2000s to today. And so I think that some of that rugged, even the difficulty that was faced, I think led people to scratch and claw and really chase after a better future for their family. And so I think that that has changed. We’re in a generation that even when I think of me as a child, you walked up and you ordered off of a menu.

Now you go into whether it’s Chipotle or whoever and you kind of order by ingredient is it’s a culture that we get a lot of what we want, lots and lots of options from television to food and beyond. And so that’s kind of one thing that I think has changed a whole lot. And then the other is sensationalism in the media is so much talk of billionaires and just so much talk of whether it’s failed pastors or failed business people or greed. And nobody wants to write a story about the faithful local pastor or the business person who has just created a culture where people thrive and been incredibly generous and benevolent, not just at the end of their career, but during it. And that doesn’t make media, that’s not exciting. It doesn’t sell newspapers. And so I think those are a number of reasons why there isn’t as much focus on the health and wellbeing that’s created in business and in commerce.

And even the goodness that comes from work and the difficulty that’s actually created ironically from a life of ease.

Jamie Mitchell:

Yeah. I just heard yesterday, I heard someone say that my father struggled coming to this country. He struggled and worked hard to create an easier life. The generation below him experienced an easy life, which led to complacency and squandering that easy life. And the generation below them will be back to the struggle. And there seems like there’s benefit. There’s sometimes the forgetting of where that came from. Josh, I want to finish up with this. Obviously you love the Lord, you love Christ, you want to serve him, you want to make an impact for the kingdom, but also you must have people in your business who don’t know Christ. Has your approach in a real Christlike mattered opened doors for you to share with people the hope that’s in you and to make an impact on people’s spiritual life, not just in their work life?

Josh Block:

Yeah. So St. Augustine’s preach the gospel wherever you go and when necessary, use words has probably been the foundation of a lot of my life and testimony and really trying to create a safe place for people to grow in their lives and build families and all those sorts of things. And so yeah, I would say that it’s been very much covert in my life and at the same time through all sorts of relationships, that’s really what it’s looked like. The gospel for me flows through love and relationship. And so how do we create a safe place for everyone who works in the organizations I lead? And then ultimately, how do I model and how do I exemplify and embody the values that I carry and the faith that I hold when it comes to close love and relationship?

Jamie Mitchell:

Josh, without giving names or in particular, but is there one story, is there one encounter as you look back in your career that God has allowed you to touch a person or touch a family through your business that when you walked away, you say, “God, thank you that I had the opportunity to be involved with that person’s life.”

Josh Block:

Yeah. So there are a lot of names that come to mind, but I share a fair bit about Emily Jones in the book. And I hired her as a sales support specialist and a very entry level role. And she ended up becoming my executive assistant for 11 years and then now leads our part sales team and getting to walk with her husband, she and their six kids over the last 15 years and really growing and developing as adults. And now she’s a grandmother and has navigated and continues to navigate cancer treatments for the last eight plus years is really getting to walk together with their family has been an absolute joy and privilege.

Jamie Mitchell:

And that’s where it comes down to when it’s not the profits and loss, it’s not how many people you have working for you. When you can look back and say, there’s a person that God allowed me to touch, it makes for a whole different work experience. Josh Block, thank you so much for sharing your story, your insights, your passion for changing business owners and workers and making people matter at work. Friends, order the copy of Josh’s book. And I believe you’ll be encouraged even if you’re not a business owner. Tremendous principles. We need these principles in the church. And so if you read it, decide to implement it and start advocating it, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to have to have courage. And that’s why I say at the end of every program I host, live and lead with courage.

Have a great day. Come back and see us in 23 hours for another stand in the gap today.