Andrew Crapuchettes: Working In A Pagan Labor Market DMW#225

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring theology, doctrine, and all of the fascinating subjects in between.

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Broadcasting from an undisclosed location. Dead Men Walking starts now.

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Well hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking podcast. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

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Thanks for checking us out at dmwpodcast .com. Thanks for telling a friend, reviewing, subscribing, all those things that help us grow, bring glory to God, and always at dmwpodcast .com.

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You can check us out, support us there. We got some fun merch. The Wynham Dynam's Roman Ninum shirt, the

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Turn Down for Watts, the Isaac Watts shirt, that's a fun one, and of course the Job 13 .5. Why don't you shut up and let that be your wisdom.

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Sometimes you just got to quote scripture and people seem to like it. But up top at the show, as you know, we have sponsors that we partner with that help this show, help us go to conventions and conferences and bring you guys content.

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So we want to make sure we honor them. Jacob's Supply, it's that time of the year. Projects are in full swing and you know where to go, whether you're an influencer or decision maker at your work, whether you own your own business, you're in the construction trades.

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These guys do 30, 40, 50 % off building materials. They're located in Temperance, Michigan. But we've got guys,

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I was just there a couple weeks ago and we got guys coming 12, 14 hours away because I mean 40, 50 % off PVC decking, name brand appliances, lumber, metal sheds, barn kits.

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I mean, you need it. They've got it. They buy out wholesale. They also ship nationally too. So if you can't make the drive up here, make sure you check them out at jacobsupply .com

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or call them 734 -224 -0978. Brother in the Lord. We got to support our guys that are building things.

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And let me tell you, the Lord has blessed his business because he is absolutely so generous and customer service top notch.

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So jacobsupply .com, check them out. Two conferences I wanted to tell you about really quick too. First one is works based.

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This one's going to be fun because we have a gentleman who's speaking at works based on the podcast today.

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And they're going to, it's in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, June 28th, 29th. And it's going to be everything about what

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I just said, building things, Christian networking, understanding how to run a business, own a business, staff a business.

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It's going to be a time of also connection and making connections. And you're going to hear some great speakers like Andrew Kraposchetz, who's on the podcast today.

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David Bonson. He might know a few things about managing money. I think he's got a couple billion underneath his belt.

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C .R. Wiley, which that's a fun one. Theology Podcast is a great podcast. He's a historian and scholar, but I think the guy's got like 80 doors or something.

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I mean, I'm a real estate broker and he's over there just renting and investing away. So guys like that,

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Steve Jeffrey, Dave Reese, come on Armor 500. We love that guy. They're all going to be there. They're going to be speaking.

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You got to check out this conference. You can just, everything I'm talking about, link below guys. Just click on the link, click through, get your tickets.

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Those are selling fast. It's coming up at the end of the month. So jump on that one. Moving into July, we have Thank God for Bitcoin with Jordan Bush.

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This is his second annual conference. Phenomenal conference as well. They're going to be talking about the glory of economy, digital currency, fiat currency.

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How do we invest as Christians? I think it's very important that people get to this conference. And you're going to have speakers there like Michael Foster, again,

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C .R. Wiley, Dr. Ben Merkel, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, Nate Fisher, Jordan Bush, list goes on and on.

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Another great conference there or conference. It's in Rockettown, Nashville, July 24th and 25th.

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As always, click through in the link description below and you can check that out. Get your tickets for those two conferences. We support all three of those guys.

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So make sure you go check them out. All right, now that we got the business out of the way, we want to get right to it.

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I'm not going to talk about how I lost my voice, got my voice back, lost my voice and now got it back again. Don't know what's going on with that.

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I'm not going to ramble on about the camping trip that I'll leave him for tomorrow with our church for a week, even though that's fun.

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We're going to get right to it. I want to introduce our guest, Red Balloon CEO Andrew Krapiszewicz is a longtime business leader, entrepreneur and innovator in the technology industry.

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He has founded several successful tech focused companies and is widely considered a global pioneer in the development and use of labor market data analytics, an industry he helped found over 20 years ago.

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In 2021, Andrew founded Red Balloon, which has quickly become America's largest connectors of employers and employees who prioritize a positive workplace.

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Geez, that's a lot of Ps. That's the culture free from the decisiveness of canceled culture mandates trying to make me do a tongue twister in that bio.

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And for those of you watching, you know, I read that did not memorize it. It's Andrew Krapiszewicz. How are you, Andrew? I'm doing really well.

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And honestly, we gave you a tongue twister and then you pronounce my last name flawlessly. So if you want to go on a camping trip or whatever you want to do,

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I feel like you've earned it at this point. Yeah, no, it's so great to have you on in person.

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I know we've met in passing at some of the Fight Left Feet stuff and and I know you got the workspace conference coming up.

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But I've always want to sit down and talk to you because as a business owner and as a lot of listeners who are business owners, entrepreneurs, influencers at their place of business, there's a lot that's been going on in the labor force that I think we just need to talk about shifting, if you will.

05:18

But before we do that, did I miss anything on the intro? Do you have anything on family, wife, church, anything like that you want to throw in there?

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Yeah, I mean, I'll throw in a bunch of other stuff. I'm an elder at Christ Church here in Moscow, Idaho. I've been elder for a long time now, 10 plus years on the board of Logos School here in Moscow, Idaho.

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I'm on the board of ACCS, the Association of Classical Christian Schools. I've got five kids.

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I've got three large dogs and I've got one large gun room and I live on 60 acres, 10 minutes from the office.

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So all the dreams of homesteading and all those things, I don't do any of those things.

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I just have a bunch of land and then I sit in front of a computer and work all the time. But it's the good life and I'm happy.

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And occasionally go out back and relieve some pressure by shooting some guns, maybe. A hundred percent. And then

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I do the real estate thing. I'm doing a housing development. I have commercial property, various other things. But Red Bull is my main jam right now.

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Well, let's talk about that. First of all, I want to know where the name came from. Second of all, I want to know, what's it all about? Because it is really just becoming so popular even within the circles and some of the circles

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I don't run in. I heard someone who is outside of my kind of Reformed Presbyterian circle and they're a mainline evangelical charismatic that was like, have you heard of this

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Red Balloon Company? And I was like, have I? And so it's just, it's growing. And what is it?

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Where'd you get the name and what's it all about? Yeah. What in the world are you doing? So I have to give you a little bit of backstory for this basically.

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So started a bunch of business. I moved to Moscow 25 years ago, saw that there weren't a lot of good jobs, but there's this great kind of church community, but without good jobs to fuel that, we're going to have trouble being able to build, build houses, build churches, build buildings, build businesses.

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We need high paying, prosperous jobs to be able to accomplish those things. And I grew up in San Francisco Bay area.

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I did the .com thing down there. Okay. God gave me skills. I should use those to bless other people. So, um,

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I've been blessed to start a bunch of businesses, had a bunch of exits. Um, and exits are super fun, but you, cause you get a big check, but you lose control in the process.

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So, um, one of the businesses I was running, uh, built up to about a $50 million tech business,

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SAS business. We built a new 70 ,000 square foot headquarters here in Moscow, Idaho. All was going well until the world lost their mind in about 2020.

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Um, and my board lost their mind right along with the rest of the world. So, um, they started having real problems with me being an unapologetic, conservative

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Christian CEO. Uh, they wanted me to start putting things on social media like black squares or BLM or things that just didn't make any sense at all for a, what

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I believed and B for good business, because it used to be, if you were in business, you would care about the business you were in.

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And all of a sudden you started getting into this 2020. And honestly, it happened before then where this wokeness in the workplace was just taking, it was a massive distraction.

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It was taking all the joy out of work. And so my board's like, Hey, you need to do this stuff. And I'm like, Hey, you've got the wrong guy. They said, well, you are welcome to be a

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CEO who happens to be a Christian on the weekend, but you're not allowed to be a Christian CEO. I'm like, wow, it sounds a lot like you want me to not bring my whole self to work.

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They're like, no, no, no, it's not at all like that. Like actually it's exactly like that. So after several months of head bonking

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I ended up leaving the business that I'd helped start and was kind of going to spend a year doing real estate, maybe a little bit of golf, hang out with my kids, that kind of thing.

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But a friend's like, Hey, so you just had to make a choice between your job and your values. And by the grace of God, I chose the right thing.

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I chose my values and lost my job. And in fact, my sweet wife gave me a very nice bottle of Scotch as a way to go.

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You lost your job. But not everybody is in that position to be able to shrug off losing their job and be like, well,

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I'm gonna take a year off. Not everybody can afford to do that kind of thing. And so how do we have the back of those people who are in maybe a different financial position and are being given some of those same decisions?

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Because I think in America right now, unfortunately, if you don't toe the line, whether it's the liberal agenda or the politically correct agenda or the

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D .I. gender or whatever it is, you're going to you're going to find yourself on the wrong end of a of a pink slip.

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And so that was kind of this like, oh, man, I need to do something about that.

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Because Christians and conservatives, if we get canceled from Facebook, we're going to kind of shrug it off. But if we get canceled from our ability to feed our kids and pay our mortgage, we're going to be at least tempted to compromise on something we hold very dearly.

09:54

So that's where red balloon dot work came from. The name is if you've ever been on a hot air balloon, have you been on a hot air balloon?

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I haven't. OK, so it's this it's a very weird sensation. So I did one in Dartmoor, England, with three of my five kids.

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And, you know, you go up there and it's perfectly still like there's no there's no wind noise because you're going with the wind.

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You just kind of are along for the ride. And the way you steer the thing is to try and go up and down and find wind that's going the right direction.

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I didn't know this was fascinating to me. And I had a British Airways pilot because you have to be a pilot to run these hot air balloons.

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Also fascinating. And it felt a lot like looking for a job, this kind of I don't have a lot of control.

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It's very quiet. I'm getting ghosted constantly. It is. And I was like, oh, well, then that's a perfect analogy for helping people.

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Also, balloons help you travel like you go places. In fact, there's this cool story of this family that escaped from East Germany because they were and they did it by building themselves a hot air balloon and they floated over the wall and were able to escape.

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And so so all these kind of analogies and then people are traveling to red states or red businesses or red versions, parts of blue states so that they can be free.

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And so it's like, OK, so red balloon, people are moving, they're traveling for freedom, they're finding a new job and then dot work, not dot com, because dot com sounded too much like communist for me.

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And and we don't want communism. We won't work. So red balloon dot work. That's where it came from.

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So, yeah, now we're the leading the nation's leading pro freedom job board with over 4000 businesses and over two million job seekers have been on the platform in the two and a half years that we've been doing this rodeo.

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So so it's a place. So it's labor placement. So it's people seeking jobs or seeking employees or employers, correct?

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That's right. So if you're a job seeker, if you're or if you're at a job happily or not happily and you're thinking, man, this wokeness in the workplace or I'm underemployed or whatever it is, and you want to find a job with someone who will respect your freedom, then you can go to red balloon dot work.

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Everything is free for job seekers. You can fill out a profile. You can put up your resume. We have a ton of resources on there.

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The employee Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. We've partnered with the Leadership Institute. And so we have a bunch of free video training classes on resume writing or interviewing or last mile project management, a bunch of things that we want to really be a blessing to job seekers with.

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And then if you're an employer, if you're someone who's looking to hire right now, you need to understand that we live in a very litigious society right now.

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Seventy five percent of all employers in America have had a labor based lawsuit in the last five years.

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Seventy five percent have had a labor based lawsuit in the last five years. And a lot of those are connected to you mispronouned me.

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I believe that you discriminated because of age or gender or sexuality or any of these things that are just demoralizing to an employer, because if you're paying a person or you're interviewing a person and you know that at any moment they would if they decided they wanted to sue you, they're probably going to win because we live in a stupid society.

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It makes it terrifying to hire right now. And so if you go to RedBalloon .org and post a job, you know that you are going to get the type of people that are going to show up, work hard and not be a whiner.

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In fact, we asked the job seekers to sign a pledge that they're going to show up, work hard, not be a whiner. So while some people might sign that and still be a whiner, it does filter out a lot of the people that you simply don't want to hire in your business.

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So you can post jobs in RedBalloon .org. You can look at that resume database, which a lot of employers do.

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And then over the last year, and this actually started with Louder With Crowder, a really good friend where we've helped them do a lot of their hiring.

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They came to us and said, look, can you guys just kind of take over the hiring process? Because we know that every time we hire poorly, it costs us tens of thousands of dollars because you got to get a bad culture fit within your four walls.

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It will not only disrupt all your good employees and your customers and your vendors, but it also will just make everyone miserable because they're walking on eggshells around this person, knowing that at any moment, if you don't treat them in just the way that they believe they should be treated, that they are going to blow up and sue you or sue the employer that you all work for.

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So we're like, sure, we'll take that over. So we started this recruitment process. And in the last,

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I want to say 10 months, we've done over 250 positions for employers where we've actually gone in, helped them write a job description, done a compensation review so they know what the market is looking to pay, and then actually do direct sourcing of talent, put that talent through the interview gauntlet at Red Balloon to make sure that they're a culture fit and a skill fit, and then only presenting the employer with great people who we think are going to be able to do the job.

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And then they just need to decide which one they like the best. And so that's Red Balloon Recruiter. And so whichever way you want to do it, if you want to do it yourself and post jobs and find great people, fantastic.

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If you want us to just run the process for you and bring valuable people that are going to build your culture and not wreck it, we can do that too.

15:11

Wow, that's so good. Yeah, you know, I worked for a Fortune 500 company as an account manager, and we had it really hammered into a $62 ,000.

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That's what it costs to hire this employer that you're interviewing. So make it count because if we have to work them out of the system in three or four months, that's going in the debit side of the sheet.

15:29

So yeah, very costly. I would see great value for companies in having you come in and go, yeah, we're going to place the right person or, you know, narrow it down to five or six or how many ever possible candidates, because it is extremely expensive, time consuming, it's a risk.

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If you don't know, you could be the greatest company in the world and just really bad at hiring. And that can sink your ship.

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So yeah, the fact that you guys expanded into that too is very interesting, because I bet you there's a real market for that for small, medium and large businesses that that go, yeah, we need experts that know how to do that.

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Two questions, though. What happens if someone comes to you who's an employer that wants to post and says, yeah,

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I don't, I don't really agree with any of your, you know, any of your political views or your statements, but you got some good workers and labor's tight right now.

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We want to be, you know, we want to be on the site. Is there something that you do to kind of, you know, filter through possible employers searching for employees?

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Or is it just go ahead and post and? Yeah, no, no, we're, we're, because we don't want our job seekers to come on take a job with a business at Red Bull and then find out they're working for the enemy, as it were.

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So no, we spend a lot of time filtering our employers, we make them sign a pledge. And it's not a complicated pledge.

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It's you believe the Constitution still matters. And you promise to respect and protect the freedom of your current and future employers.

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And in fact, kind of a cool story. So this Red Bull and recruiter process we're talking about, and I'm not trying to, you know, do an advertisement or anything, but we only charge $4 ,500 to do a recruitment process, a typical recruiter is going to charge you $40 ,000 to do the same process, because we're at the scale of a job board.

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And we're working on called 50 positions right now, we're in a position where we can do that at a much more attractive price.

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And so I had a large marketing company called me from New York. And they're like, look, we believe in free speech, and we believe in meritocracy.

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And we probably disagree on a bunch of other issues. But I desperately want the type of people that you have on Red Balloon and your recruitment process might save me $30 ,000 per hire.

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Is there any way that I can use your service? And I'm like, well, you need to promise to protect the freedoms of your current and future employees.

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And that means no DEI training, and no rainbow flags in June. And if you're willing to sign up for those things, and actually let people live their values out loud, everyone doesn't have to agree.

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But you do need to not jam your leftist worldview down the throats of everyone you hire. If you'll agree to those things, and I'll allow you to use

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Red Balloon and, you know, pay us to do this work. And they're like, fine, I will happily sign up for that, because it is worth it for me.

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And that's, that's where we want to get because I feel like a lot of this parallel or freedom economy, so much of it is well,

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I'm a Christian, you're a Christian, so you should pay me more money for my crappy product. Whereas the left is controlling so much, you know,

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LinkedIn, or Facebook or YouTube, if they censor you, it really can hurt. And so I want to be in a position where businesses on the right like Red Balloon, like public square, etc, where we actually have the quality products that the left is like, look,

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I am willing to bend on my ideology, because I am so desperate to be able to access this freedom economy.

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We're a lot smaller, obviously, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, all the big job boards out there have way more traffic, way more people and all those things.

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But we have the kind of people that any employer in their right mind actually wants to hire. So yeah, we do filter businesses.

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And our goal is look, you can't work with us, unless you're going to protect those freedoms. Wow. Yeah, that's so good.

19:13

And that kind of leads me into something that I wanted to ask you, but since you kind of brought it up, you know, you have the the left kind of movement in the progressive movement, shoving things down people's throat, we see some discrimination against people with a certain set of values,

19:27

Christians, things like that. What is now with, you know, when you take national polls, you've got anywhere from 47 to almost 60 % of people who just go, yeah,

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I don't want to see it at the workplace. I don't want to see it in sports. Right. And that's being conservative. So why are big companies doing that?

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Why? I've never heard a good reason for that. Because I think deep down, most companies are still free market capitalists.

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And they want to do the best job that they can do to get the money out of your pocket into their pocket, whether that's, you know, providing a better service product, whatever it is, you know, some of them cheat a little bit, use the government regulations, that's a different episode.

20:06

But my point being, is what why do you think the push for this? Where's the profit in jumping on something that's now it's growing, but but but it's a minority view.

20:17

For most consumers, what do you think of that? Yeah. So if you look at the history of I'll call it wokeness in the workplace, and I know some people are like wokeness in the workplace, is that just a straw man that you're just using to try and prop your business up?

20:30

Like you, the stories that I have heard through all of this will curl your hair of, you know, of a lady at Microsoft, who was actually fairly far up the food chain, she was using her team's meeting, and she had an

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American flag for a background. And she was told by HR the next day that that was triggering to some employees.

20:47

And she was never to have that on her background again, because it's a sign of white supremacy in America, right?

20:53

An American flag on her team's background. She said, literally, this is her words.

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Next day, a different employee had a background image of a black man being lynched. And the and the caption said, a good man died at your hands today.

21:09

It's straight out of the CRT playbook. And it is this like, think about if you're in that environment, like it is demoralizing.

21:17

It is I think DEI is actually a liturgy designed to try and change the worldview and change the thinking of conservative employees.

21:24

So wokeness in the workplace is not a straw man. It's it's real, it's having an impact on a lot of employees.

21:30

If you look at the history of wokeness in the workplace, and why do these big businesses great question? Why these big businesses decide to ostracize at least some of their customers, employees, vendors, etc.

21:41

You can track it back really to 2008. 2008. If you remember, we had the Occupy Wall Street movement, there's all the economy crashes, because we had this house of cards in Wall Street, the housing market crashes.

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And then we have this Occupy Wall Street group that is saying big banks are evil, big corporations are evil, because they're making all this money.

22:00

And we're poor. And we're greedy. And we're envious. And therefore, we want your stuff. And so big businesses kind of looked around at that moment.

22:08

And you can see this number of books kind of cover this Vivek Ramaswamy's Woke Inc.

22:14

talks a little bit about this, but 2008. Businesses are like, Okay, so how do we solve this problem? Because we know we don't want to change our behavior.

22:21

We just want this problem. And we're not giving them any of our profits. So we're not giving them our profit. I want to change the behavior. How do we make it go away?

22:28

And they looked around, they said, Who is the biggest microphone in our society? Well, it was the liberal media. They're like, Great, if we can say the things that the liberal media will be happy with, then we can get away with whatever we want.

22:39

So if you're Nike, you can decry the sins of slavery and white supremacy, while effectively using slave labor to make tennis shoes in somewhere in Southeast Asia, right?

22:48

As long as you say the right things, then you're going to be fine. And that works.

22:53

The problem is words matter. And so when you say that stuff over and over and over and over again, and then you hire a recent college grad out of a woke

23:04

Marxist University to be your head of HR, and then you've said this stuff over and over again, everyone starts to believe it.

23:11

And all of a sudden you believe that this is the way you should do things DEI CRT, microaggression training,

23:17

I talked to someone who was at Silicon Valley Bank after they went out of business. And he's like, Look, the CEO said things that just you cannot believe that American would say that to another

23:26

American the things like you know, I wish people would go to all the unvaccinated people go to an island and die together.

23:33

That said, you know, that kind of thing is said, and they go through this weekly microaggression training. Well, the problem is, he's like, we all knew that the bank was going to fail.

23:41

But we knew that if we went to the credit department and told them that it would be seen as a microaggression, we'd be written up by HR, we'd be tarred and feathered and probably lost our job.

23:49

So let's just ride the Titanic into the ground, lose our job and go that way. So unfortunately, that's what's happened is they back in 2008.

23:56

They're like, Okay, we'll say the things that will make people happy. But the problem is, when you compromise like that, when you start to just say the words to try and make everyone happy, you start to believe it.

24:07

And this is where a lot of conservatives and Christians, they're like, you know, I go through a lot of DEI training, but I just kind of tune it out.

24:14

Be careful, it is having more of an impact on you and on your family than you realize. And if you don't stand up, if you're just the person who self censors, get along, go along to get along, that is affecting who you are as a person.

24:29

Don't think it has a zero impact on you. So I think that's where it came from for all these corporations. Well, no, that's very well explained.

24:36

And I would agree with that as well, too. I'd heard that theory. And the more I look into it, because I was around then too, you did see a shift of placating by the corporations.

24:46

And no real change, but then it started as placating and platitudes. And then like you say, you repeat it enough times, then you have to start acting it out and start believing it.

24:55

And now we're right. You know, we're getting into the next generation removed where they're coming through the universities and they actually do believe it.

25:02

You sit down with someone who's 16, 17, 18, 19 and believes that way.

25:08

They will look straight in your face and say, you know, there's no such thing as two sexes.

25:13

Gender is a spectrum. It's just what you think. And I can claim to be a chair. I mean, I've had people tell me, you know, there's a guy in Japan who's turned himself into a border collie and that's completely legitimate.

25:24

That's fine. So, yeah. So in the workplace especially, it's tough. I mean, I know we chuckle at that, but it's a deranged, horrible thing when you support something like that, when someone has a mental illness, you know.

25:38

So, yeah. So let's get into the workplace stuff because I just want to take a snapshot since you're in this industry. And really quick, just backing up,

25:45

I wanted to tag on what you said and agree with you that, you know, I work with a lot of Christians too, and sometimes they can be the best and sometimes they can be the worst.

25:53

Sometimes they think they're owed business just because, hey, I say I'm a Christian. And I think deep down a Christian will do themselves well if they are a red blooded capitalist and believe in a free market and just outwork, outperform, give a better service, a better product than anyone else, do it with godly principles, with a cheerful heart, and your business will grow because that's the way that God has created the world.

26:17

And I think if more Christians did that, kind of what you're doing, I think we'd be in a, in a better place within the

26:22

Christian community as well, because like you said, we're playing catch up right now. We, we coasted on the coattails of kind of being in a priority position as a, as a

26:33

Trinitarian Christian in the United States. And boy, now that they're turning, we go, Oh, what do we do?

26:39

Well, we can't go to tech. They own tech. We can't go to the media. They own media. Oh, we can't go to job placement. They own all those. And to see some, someone like Red Balloon coming in and going,

26:47

Oh no, no, no, no, they don't. We can do it better than them. We can place better workers. We have better employers.

26:52

We have, you know, far superior services. Well, that's what we need within the

26:58

Christian space. And like you said, then you have leftists coming to you and going, well, we'll bend our principles because we need what you have.

27:05

We have become indispensable. You have become indispensable. And I think that's the way it really should be. So I compliment you on that.

27:11

But with that being said, the past 50 years and going forward the next 50 years, I mean, what, what is this, what, what does the workplace look like?

27:20

The secular workplace look like for Christians? We've seen how it's changed just rapidly in the last 10 years, even 15 years and very rapidly in the last three years, four years since COVID.

27:32

What are we looking at into the future? What should we be concerned about? What is there to be optimistic about?

27:39

You're in that space. What could you tell us if someone's listening right now? Yeah. If you look at the future,

27:45

I think, you know, you always, the, the best way to predict the future is always to look at the past because you know,

27:50

Ecclesiastes there's nothing new under the sun. It's all come around before and it's going to come around again.

27:57

So if you look at the workplace over the last 50 years, you had a generation my parents generation who believe that neutrality in the workplace was a possibility.

28:08

They believe that as long as you didn't talk about politics and as you stated, you know, you ask many

28:15

Americans today, they'd like to stay away from all of those things. And while I think that is fine,

28:21

I think it's actually far better to engage in debate. Where is applicable in the workplace? Obviously you don't want to spend all your time, you know, talking about politics.

28:53

You don't want to spend all your time, you know, talking You don't want to spend all your time, you know, talking about politics. You don't want about politics. You don't want to spend all your time, you know, talking about politics. You don't want to spend all your time, you know, talking about politics. You don't want to spend all your time, you know, talking about politics.

29:01

You don't want to spend all to not bend to the latest political ideology. Um, and what happened is the left said,

29:07

Hey, we need everyone to feel inclusive and welcome in the workplace. We want everyone to bring their whole self to work.

29:14

And the conservatives are like, ah, that sounds pretty good. I guess we should do that. Um, and then as soon as they got in a position of power, they're like, just kidding.

29:21

You can't bring your whole self to work, but we're going to bring all of us to work. Um, and so I think that's what's happened in the past.

29:28

Although if you look at history, pendulums always swing back and forth. And so I think a lot of the DEI stuff is, um, losing ground.

29:36

Um, I see the pendulum switching right now, which I think is encouraging, should be encouraging to everyone.

29:41

Um, but what happens is the liberals turn it up to 11, the conservatives freak out like a COVID or any of these other things.

29:48

Um, then the liberals dial it back down to eight, wait for everyone to calm down, which they do. They go back to sleep, they get back to racing their family.

29:55

Um, and then they dial it back up to 13. And so that's unfortunately kind of the, the, the, the, what history has shown.

30:03

And so as I look at the next 50 years in the workplace, um, AI is going to have an impact, but I think it's going to have the same kind of impact that computers had on the workplace, right?

30:14

It used to be, if you were doing manufacturing, you were there with your, you know, your cranks and your pedals. Um, now you're, uh, you're putting all your numbers into a computer and then voila, it's manufacturing the pieces and parts for you.

30:28

Obviously the white collar jobs have been deeply impacted by computers. Um, I think AI is going to be a very important tool.

30:35

I do not think it is going to kill anyone. Um, I think obviously, um, any tool, a hammer or a gun or anything else can be used for harm, but I think it's going to, it's just going to be an interesting tool that if used well, we'll just increase the productivity of human beings.

30:50

And I think that's how it's being primarily used today. Um, and so anyone who's worried that AI is going to take their job, um, it means you're not being creative.

30:58

I used to tell college students who would come in a first job working for me and they'd say, okay, can you give me a list of things to do?

31:04

And my response was always, if you need a list of things to do for me, computers are really good at lists.

31:11

They're cheaper and they're faster. You need to be a creative person who's figuring out what needs to be done. And if you do that, there will always be a job for you, um, in America, in the world.

31:22

Um, because work is redeeming. God gave us work, work was before the fall. And so it's an important thing.

31:28

So I would say if I look at the next 50 years, I'd say even the next five to 10 years,

31:33

AI is going to bring a lot of efficiency to human beings who are willing to adapt to it. Um, it's not going to bring creativity, but it will bring efficiency.

31:41

And so those who are classically educated, those who are clear thinking, reading books, pushing themselves, um, mentally, academically, willing to have creative, um, innovative thoughts.

31:52

Those are the people that are going to really succeed over the next five, 10 and 50 years in our labor market.

31:58

Yeah, no, so good. You know, I agree with you. The pendulum is swinging. Uh, you're seeing it within social circles, within comedy.

32:06

Uh, you're seeing it, uh, even in some jobs just going, okay, this is, this is too much. And I've always said there, you know, there's this, uh, underground current when you're in a free market of the,

32:17

I call it the Michael Jordan, uh, effect, which is like, why don't you talk about politics? Well, because Republicans buy shoes too, right?

32:24

That famous quote. It's like at the end of the day, businesses are a business and they're not going to shoot themselves in the foot when they have shareholders and a board and all that, you know what

32:34

I mean? Big corporations right down to the guy who just started his lawn maintenance business. Right. They both work or working on the same principle of free market and capitalism.

32:43

And there's this thing going, okay, too much is just too much. I think you're at the front of that Renaissance in the labor market.

32:50

And honestly, I think it'll only go better for you, even if that pendulum keeps swinging that way, because then you'll be, you know, you're three, four, five years ahead of the curve of, oh yeah, we've been doing this since this year.

33:00

And here's the army we have ready for real workers building real things with real principles.

33:06

And I don't know. I like that. Uh, I like that you're ahead of that curve because it is swinging back that way. But so if someone's listening right now and, um, and goes, well, why is it important for me to have,

33:17

I work in, I'm a cog in this big corporation. Let's say, why is it important for me to have the same worldview, uh, as my employer, or they have the same worldview as me.

33:27

If I'm a Christian, can I just kind of go in, do my job clock in clock out now? I think you would say something like it's not that way anymore, right?

33:36

It just hasn't got to you yet. Maybe. Um, because that would be my answer. Cause I've seen some horror stories as well, especially in real estate, probably one of the most heavily regulated, fair housing, uh, no staring, no puffing, no denying anyone.

33:49

Everyone's equal kind of industry I'm in. Um, what would you say to them? Would you kind of agree with me going, it's here.

33:55

You just haven't experienced it yet. And you need to understand who you're working for. What, what would you be their answer to them if they're asked that question?

34:03

Yeah. Um, I would say that the workplace is affecting you way more than you give it credit for.

34:09

And it should, because a job, your vocation, um, God has given us work to do.

34:14

Your vocation is actually a defining feature of your life in a lot of ways, right? When you meet someone new, you ask them, what do you do?

34:21

And you're asking them what their job is, but it betrays that a job is not a nine to five hobby. It is a defining feature of who you are.

34:27

And so if the defining feature of who you are, um, is, um, involved in jamming a worldview down your throat, don't think that you can live through that and have, um, it not affect you in any way.

34:41

And I have proof of this. Um, I have received hundreds and hundreds of thank you notes from people who found jobs through red balloon .org.

34:47

And they now work for a freedom minded company. Not all of them, you know, not all the companies on red balloon are

34:53

Christian. Um, all of them are, they believe America is a good thing. They believe capitalism is a good thing.

34:58

Um, and many of them are Christian, but not all of them are. And these people are like, so I got, just got a new job and I had no idea what an impact my job at Microsoft or Amazon or Facebook was having on my worldview.

35:13

And, um, I had many people write me and just say, Hey, I just wanted you to know that you saved my marriage because of the job that I found on red balloon .org.

35:20

Because when you swim in those waters for eight to 10 hours a day, it is impossible for that to not deeply impact the way you see the world and how you interact with everyone around you.

35:31

And so when I keep getting these thank you notes from you change the trajectory of my family. Um, I have joy at work again.

35:37

I'm sleeping again. Um, I'm going to church again. I'm plugged in with my kids. Like, um, sin doesn't stay nicely confined in any area of our life.

35:47

So if you are lazy at work because you're dealing with a nasty boss, guess what you're about to be, or you already are more than, you know, lazy at home.

35:55

If you are angry at work, you're probably going to be angry at home. Um, I had a single mom write me and she said,

36:01

I didn't realize that I have been an angry person for the last five years because of the job that I had.

36:08

I found a new job where I was working for someone who just let me live my values out loud, who valued me because of the merit that I brought, not because of my skin color or my sexual orientation or any of these things.

36:21

And she's like, and I realized I was about to lose my two kids because I was angry all the time.

36:27

And she said there was a moment she came home, she'd had this new job for a couple of months and one of her boys is like, mommy, why aren't you angry all the time anymore?

36:37

And she's like, Oh, right. But so, so, so that's my encouragement to people is you have no idea what an impact the job is already having on you and, and they're coming for you.

36:48

Right. I've had, I've had guys call up and say, Hey, I was just told I'll never get a promotion at this business unless I become a woman.

36:54

Um, I couldn't start a woman, but if I decided to transition to a woman that I'm going to get unbelievable raises and promotions within my business.

37:02

Well, that's evil. That's not just like gross and a funny story. That's evil. Um, so it's coming for you and the opportunity to look for something new.

37:11

Um, and that's part of the reason what I'm trying to accomplish at red balloon .org. If you go fill out your profile, an employer could tap you on the shoulder.

37:17

You don't have to quit your job per se, although you should stand up in your job because those who are courageous will be leaders and they will give courage to everyone around them, but you should stand up, but you don't have to quit your job per se, but you do need to, um, have an oar in the water of looking for something where you can be free.

37:34

Uh, because if you can do that, then you have optionality and then it's a lot easier to be brave at work because you know, you've got a backup plan.

37:41

Yeah. All right. Let's put bookends on this and, uh, we'll, we'll move on to our next segment. But, um, before we do,

37:47

I just have to say, I've been saying this for probably 10 years and I'm, I just repeat it to all guests, uh, just to get it out there in the ether.

37:55

You know, I would really love a national database of all believers that I could refer and, uh, use their business.

38:01

You know what I mean? Like when I need a new roof, I want to go to like my county and be like, all right, where's that Bible believing reform brother that I can hire and give him my money instead of some

38:11

Joe Schmoe down the street that just paid for more advertising, get himself at the top of Google search or whatever it was, you know, so just put it out there.

38:18

I don't know you're in the labor market. Maybe you create, create, you know, create some networking, uh, website or something.

38:25

I'd be all for it because, um, I really do believe we should support each other. But, uh, before we get into our fresh 10, um, can you throw out now everyone knows where to go.

38:33

It'll be linked up for red balloon dot work, but, uh, do you got any other websites or socials or anything? Do you do anything online if you want people to follow you or anything like that?

38:41

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm a newbie to social media. I try and do things on occasion. Um, I, I always avoided that kind of thing just to be honest, but you can go to a crap you sheds and yes, it's the, uh, uh, normal spelling of crap.

38:53

You sheds, uh, a crap. You sheds on Twitter, probably Instagram, uh,

38:59

Facebook. I never checked. So if you send me a message on Facebook, I'm never going to get back to you. LinkedIn is probably where I'm the most active.

39:06

Uh, so you can go and follow me there. And then at red balloon work, uh, we've got a pretty active presence on all the major social media platforms, the woke ones and the non woke ones.

39:16

So yeah, absolutely. Go and follow, see what's cooking, um, in the red balloon world. And we're going to give job alerts.

39:22

We're going to give you news alerts. Um, we're going to tell you about businesses that a, you should work for and B you should support because I agree.

39:29

We should be supporting people who don't hate us. Don't hate our worldview. Um, and don't hate our country.

39:35

Yeah, no. Well said. All right. Uh, when we have first time guests on, especially interesting, interesting guys like you, we like to do what's called fresh 10.

39:43

We ask you 10 rapid fire questions. Kind of fun to get to know you a little bit more. Would you like to stick around for that segment?

39:49

A hundred percent. All right, let's do it. One more time. All right, here we go.

40:04

Andrew crap. Shed sent for us questions. Number one, what is your go -to joke or funny story you tell when you meet someone new or when you're just hanging out with friends, what's something that, uh, is an icebreaker for you?

40:15

Uh, last name. Uh, my last name has multiple swear words built into it. And there's, uh, there's so many things you can do with crappy sheds.

40:22

I worked for a university once and they gave me an email address. It was the first letter of my first name and the first five of my last name.

40:29

So I got a crap you at U of I .edu. Yeah. I guess when you have it built in like that, the jokes write themselves.

40:37

All right. Uh, number two, uh, what do you wish you had known even 10 years ago or something, you know, now that you wish you would have known when you were younger, uh, you know,

40:46

I started a housing development here in Moscow, uh, called a $10 million project. Um, I thought, you know, how hard can a housing development do, you know, raw land, um, putting in a bridge lift station, all those things.

40:58

And the answer is a lot harder than I thought it was. So that has been more work than I could have even imagined.

41:05

Um, and God is good and we need housing, but, uh, I would have told a younger self don't do it.

41:10

Yeah. Uh, yeah. Cause you, you had a 50 % partner over there with this arms cross called the local government looking at it.

41:19

Exactly. All right. Number three, uh, what three albums are you taking with you on the deserted island or three artists, three albums, three songs, a couple of songs, something like that kind of music you're listening to is what we're saying.

41:31

Yeah, no, I guess, um, I, I, I am a music guy and I kind of, I'm all over the map.

41:37

So I, I spent a lot of time listening to classical music. So Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Bach, Beethoven.

41:43

Um, and, but I also like Eddie Vedder and kind of, you know, some classic rock crowd just depends on the mood.

41:52

I'll even go into AC, DC, um, when I'm pumping iron. So yeah, my 10 year old just learned back in black on the drums because it's, it's just a good drum song.

42:01

And my teenage, my teenage daughters, I'll just sometimes walk up to him and be like, Hey, you don't know the nineties, man.

42:11

It was awesome. Trust me. It was beautiful. You didn't have to notice him. Uh, okay. What properties are you going for when you're playing

42:18

Monopoly? Are you a boardwalk guide? You go for the slums. Uh, you go for the oranges, the yellows.

42:24

What do you like? Yeah. So totally, uh, go for the slums. You want the light blues, that kind of first three set.

42:30

Um, I don't remember the names, but because Oriental continental. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

42:35

Because you can get to hotel in a hot minute with that. And cashflow matters. Um, monopoly is just a cashflow game.

42:41

And in fact, um, I play real monopoly because I own a lot of commercial buildings and it plays out.

42:46

So you don't want to go for a boardwalk, um, unless you have the cashflow to put a hotel on boardwalk and then it's a, not a terrible idea.

42:54

There you go. That was somehow I knew that question. You were going to answer precisely.

42:59

And probably the best answer we've asked, you know, James white, Doug Wilson, Sam storms, all these guys, and they kind of look at me and they go, what,

43:06

I don't know, uh, what colors are, and then you were like, no, it is a cashflow game.

43:12

It's a cashflow game. And when you played real monopoly with, you know, multi -billion dollar businesses, you find out it's true.

43:18

Yeah, absolutely. Uh, oh, you came through on that one. All right. Question number five, moving right along. What's a movie that you can watch again and again and again?

43:25

I always ask favorite movie. People go, I can't pick a favorite. I go, which one do you watch over and over that's used to their favorites.

43:31

So which one are you putting in and just watching or streaming? Yeah. Um, I mean, you know, the classic

43:36

Prince's bride, I've watched that more times than I'd like to admit. I like gladiator.

43:41

I like how he, uh, he dies for, um, you know, his country and his family and is a dude, um, and I think we need more masculine movies and I think he's masculine in the movie, so I like gladiator.

43:54

I have a lot of probably movies that are top, you know, 100 movies, Oscar winners, great actors, and people go, yeah, but one that I always fall back to and people go really have never even heard of that, or it wasn't that big was payback with Mel Gibson.

44:07

It's a weird movie where he's just owed 70 grand. He's just trying to get his money back and they all misunderstand him.

44:13

It's just because we kind of relate, right? Like, come on. I'm just as someone who owns a business, like I'm just listen to what

44:23

I'm saying. That's all I want. Okay. Question number six. Um, you're in the, uh, DeLorean, the flux capacitor is fluxing.

44:29

Are we going back, uh, to the past to visit our great, great, great grandfather?

44:34

Are we going to the future to visit our great, great, great grandkids? What, which one are we doing? Going to the future.

44:40

Yeah. You post -millennial by chance. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. Yeah. I see what you guys see, what you're building there.

44:47

I know they're going to crush stuff. I'm just, I want to see how it's going. All right. I love it. Question number seven.

44:54

Uh, what's the best piece of advice someone has ever given you? Um, I mean, this is going to sound very cliche, but I remember when

45:02

I was 16, I went to my mom, I'm like, man, I want to be wise. Like I see people that are wise and I'm a 16 year old.

45:07

And I was a 16 year old who did stupid things beyond what should be aired on YouTube. Um, and, and much of it was because I had friends on team rollerblade and we did things on our rollerblades that I should be dead lots and lots of times over.

45:21

And I'm like, all right, mom. So how do I get wise? She's like, read your Bible every day, stupid. And so there you go.

45:26

Read your Bible every day, stupid. I like it. Uh, question number eight, just a few more left. Uh, when you're creating, when you're, uh, thinking about business, when you're going, okay, we're moving to a new stage,

45:38

I got to get serious about something. Is that in the morning, the afternoon or the night? What kind of person are you? Where does that night?

45:44

I'm a, I'm a night person. Um, I, I, I do mornings on, you know, I've done a bunch of Fox interviews at like seven 30

45:51

East coast time. And you're like, this is so stupid. Um, but no, I'm, I'm, I'm a night person at 11 o 'clock.

45:57

I can kind of crank out some great ideas. It's a blessing and a curse. My brain turns on at about eight o 'clock and then, you know,

46:03

I have that great idea around midnight and then I'm up till about three working on it. Uh, and then you pay for it the next day when you get up for a

46:10

Bible study in homeschool with little ones. Um, all right. Question number nine, we got two left. What is one thing that people would assume about you, but isn't true.

46:19

So something people look at, you might assume and go, Hey, he's this way or that way, and you go, nah, it's not necessarily true.

46:25

Uh, mine is I'm a big jerk. I'm pretty direct. So people go, he's kind of a jerk. And then they get to know him and he go, no, he's all right, guy.

46:31

He just, you know, uh, yeah. Some people think I'm smart and it's not true. Uh, I'm just, uh, you know, a lot of dumb luck pointed in the right direction.

46:40

We'll get you a long way. All right. Last question for fresh 10 with Andrew Kravich. That's, uh, who is one theologian dead or alive that you would want to interview, uh, or just sit down with a cup of coffee or talk to for a little bit, maybe an hour, um, someone outside of the

46:55

Bible. So a historical theologian, scholar, something like that. Um, do they have to, we have to speak the same language.

47:02

No, there's a, some type of translation device there that AI probably, probably Calvin, um, you know, when he accomplished at a very young age, uh, because not only was he a theologian, but what he did in city government and understanding dominion, um,

47:17

I just, uh, a lot of respect and, uh, you know, a lot of my theology comes from him. So, yeah.

47:23

Yeah. In a time where monarchies abounded and everything else. I mean, you put him in that time, you go, wow, that guy was a forward thinker.

47:29

What he accomplished and he was, and he was young, right. He wrote, he was in his twenties. So, um, it's pretty incredible what he accomplished in a small amount of time.

47:37

Oh, when you read Calvin's bio, you definitely feel depressed. You feel behind the curve. You're like, well, he was doing what when he was 26.

47:43

Exactly. All right. There we go. That was fresh. All right.

47:58

Andrews, we wrap this up. You got a final word for us. Everyone listening out there. What would you tell them? Uh, give them something about your industry.

48:04

Maybe a little advice. Go ahead. Yeah. Um, first of all, you should come to the workspace conference in Dallas.

48:10

Um, I will be there with some other dignitaries. Um, they needed a bald guy. I guess it was a diversity quota that had to accomplish.

48:17

So ta -da, I made the list, but, uh, I would encourage you to come to that. I think it's going to be a great conference. It's going to be a great opportunity to fellowship.

48:24

Um, and to just be reminded that work is, um, is warfare in a lot of ways.

48:30

Um, and we need to be reminded of that as we go out into the world. Um, I would also encourage people.

48:35

Um, it, it can sometimes be overwhelming when you see what's happening in DC or in New York or in Ukraine or in Korea or Beijing.

48:45

Um, you see world events and it's very easy to forget that you're a post -millennial if you are, or just forget that God is in heaven and he, uh, laughs them to scorn.

48:55

And so my encouragement to people is it's not doing you any good to sit on your couch and watch TV, particularly

49:01

Fox news, and just wring your hands and think how bad the world is. Go do something.

49:06

It would be better to do something poorly than do nothing at all. So get off your couch, go bless your neighbor, go start a business, go buy a building, go teach your boys how to do something really hard where their hands are bleeding at the end of it.

49:21

Because if you do those things, God's going to bless it. When you are a boat and you're just sitting at the dock, it's a steering doesn't do you a lot of good.

49:29

But when you're out there doing stuff, um, the steering actually gets you somewhere. So that's my encouragement is, um, don't be lazy.

49:36

Go do stuff. You just got me hyped up, man. I own three businesses. I'm about to go start a fourth now.

49:42

What the heck? What's going on? Andrew, thank you so much for taking time with us. I appreciate it.

49:47

Thanks for having me. Yeah, guys. Remember as always, anything we discuss all linked up in the description below, you can click through his site and learn more about Andrew red balloon, all that stuff, all the conferences we talked about will be linked there as well too.

50:00

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50:07

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50:14

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