Conversations on Redemptive work

Nancy Duarte

Co-founder and CEO of Duarte, Inc. - A presentation, design and storytelling agency

Nancy Duarte is a communication expert who has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Wired, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times and on CNN. Her firm, Duarte, Inc., is the global leader behind some of the most influential visual messages in business and culture. As a persuasion expert, she cracked the code for effectively incorporating story patterns into business communications. She’s written five best-selling books and four have won awards. Duarte, Inc., is the largest design firm in Silicon Valley, as well as one of the top woman-owned businesses in the area. Nancy has won several awards for communications, entrepreneurship, and her success as a female executive. On the list of top 250 Women in Leadership, Duarte ranks #67 and on World's Top 30 Communication Professionals for 2017, Duarte ranks #1. She has been a speaker at conferences and a number of Fortune 500 companies, and counts many more among her firm’s clientele. Her TEDx talk has had over a million views. She speaks at business schools and has lectured at Stanford University several times.

Podcast (15 min)

Summary: 

1. What does it mean to be redemptive and what is at stake if the Christian entrepreneur doesn’t adopt it?

• A redemptive entrepreneur is willing to sacrifice his or herself on behalf of others and on behalf of the greater good, which in turn should give a sense of meaning and purpose to his/her employees.

2. What has been the most fruitful way to live out your faith in your work?

• Love pervasively, live integrally 

3. How have you made the value of forgiveness central to your organization? 

• Nancy shared a story of being obedient to God and forgiving debt, which has had an impact beyond her imagination.

4. What would be the first steps you would recommend for someone to lean in to the possibilities of what God might do in their sphere of influence? 

• Be open to being prayerful about what God is really doing through your leadership; focus on the people. 

• Spend time loving yourself for who you are and not what you produce, so that you may love others well. 

Victor ("Vic") Ho

Co-founder and CEo of FiveStars, a loyalty and shopping analytics platform for small businesses.

Vic co-founded Five stars following his work at McKinsey & Company, where he helped build out cutting edge loyalty and customer engagement strategies for premiere Fortune 500 brands.  FiveStars was born out of a desire for small businesses, the heart of thriving communities, to access the same marketing power of large corporations at a fraction of the cost.  Vic started his career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and holds three degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, where he triple majored in Industrial Engineering, Rhetoric, and Business Administration. 

Podcast (15 min)

Summary:

1. Can you tell us what Five Stars is and where it came from? 

• Five Stars is focused on helping small businesses through democratizing the power of a Fortune 500 customer loyalty program. Their mission is to turn every transaction into a relationship.

2. When you began Five Stars, did you question how to scale something up that was focused on small customers? 

• Five Stars was born out of a blind faith, with no expectations and large amounts of naiveté. With dream job offers on the table, the founders knew they needed to be obedient to God’s call, face their cowardice and start a company. 

3. What are the core values of Five Star and how have you created a culture of productivity coupled with a wonderful place to work?

• Vic and Matt intentionally chose character traits over action verbs as their core values (shared humility, warrior spirit, authentic relationships, and joy every day) in pursuit of defining the type of people and community that they desired to be.

4. Which core value is the hardest for you to live out on a regular basis? 

• The value of authentic relationships, because it's so much easier to choose a non-vulnerable path that keeps a successful image intact and feeds the desire to people-please. 

5. How do you combat anxiety when the pressure and high expectations of growth are ubiquitous in a place like Silicon Valley? 

• The biggest lie of the enemy is that the goal of a company is to grow, but the kingdom goal of a business is to pursue its mission. We must humbly accept that due to our lack of eternal perspective, we cannot confuse growth as a sign of kingdom impact.