Merging Faith and Entrepreneurship: A Transformative Journey with Brian Dixon

Have you ever wondered how faith can intersect with entrepreneurship? We bring you a conversation with the inspiring Brian Dixon, who successfully blended faith and business to transform his life. Brian's journey takes him from starting a charter school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to becoming a successful business leader, utilizing marketing and networking in innovative ways to grow his enterprise. 

Brian's story is a testament to the power of faith in business. He navigated his way through obstacles by using Facebook as a creative tool to connect with his target audience. But more than just business, Brian's story illuminates how delighting in the Lord can lead to clarity in our desires. He sought wisdom from the Lord to steer through difficult times, demonstrating how faith can be transformative in the realm of business. Join us as we explore Brian's inspiring journey that beautifully merges the spheres of faith and entrepreneurship.

Chapters

• 0:00 Entrepreneurship and Faith
• 10:16 Delighting in the Lord and Clarifying Desires

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Awesome. Hey guys, welcome back to the certain success podcast. We're here kind of live at Funnel Hacking Live with my special guest today, brian Dixon. We are, we're just loving it at Funnel Hacking Live and we're working and praying with a nucleus of believers that are here and I'm sure there's a lot more believers just than the ones that have been praying with us this morning. But anyway, it's been super cool to see what God's doing here, and so, if you guys have been listening along, you know that this podcast is about the intersection of business and faith, and I haven't found too many examples better than Brian and what he's doing in his business. And yeah, man, so you know, I think that's what I want to ask you about is just, you've been on this journey for a little while.

Speaker 2: 0:50

Yeah, it's my 11th year of entrepreneurship now.

Speaker 1: 0:53

Wow, and I you know well, tell the story a little bit. I mean, I'm looking at your videos of that kind of know a little bit, tell us about how you got here.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Well, I started out in K-12 education. I was a classroom teacher and then a school administrator. My last real job was starting a charter school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So I'd never been to Baton Rouge and I had to really level up as a leader to get the school off the ground. Why 'd?

Speaker 1: 1:15

you do that.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Because that's where the education reform movement was happening. Yeah, so the education system in Baton Rouge is really rough. I have a doctorate degree in education and I just want to do something just do something cool, you know. And so I just had this amazing opportunity to move to Baton Rouge, start a school, launch a school, grew a school. I was there for five years and passed it on to my you know, my successor, who's now taking it to the next level.

Speaker 2: 1:39

But through the process I discovered two things. I discovered number one I discovered marketing. Number two I discovered networking. And I always wanted to make a difference in, like in the lives of kids. I was in big parks in it when I was 18 years old, so my life kind of was like borrowed time, make the most of every day. But I didn't know how to do it and I realized, like the tools of the culture are marketing and networking, because that's what I discovered in launching the school. So after the school was off the ground, I was like how can I use marketing and networking to keep growing something? Because this thing's doing fine. And that's where I found the world of entrepreneurship and authorpreneurship, writing books, sharing a message, and and launched into that now 11 years ago. So it's been. It's been quite a journey. That's incredible.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Well, even you know, starting a school was incredibly entrepreneurial, oh yeah, that took the same kind of gumption that it takes to start any business right.

Speaker 2: 2:28

That's right. You know, we couldn't figure out how to get the kids, because a charter school is one where the kids decide that they're going to go there. They have to like, apply, then they're in a lottery to get in. And we couldn't find how to connect with the kids because the local school system would not let us go talk to. It was a ninth through 12th grade and the school system would not let us go to the eighth graders to pitch them to school, because we're competition to the local public school, and so we figured out Facebook. So we're targeting 13 year olds and you can't. You can't talk to 13 year olds on Facebook. We're supposed to be 14. So I was having a conversation with a few eighth graders that went to our church and they were talking about Facebook. This is years ago now, right. What year was that? It would have been 2009, 2010.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Brand new Facebook days, oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:10

So kids thought Facebook was so cool, right. And so I'm like how are you guys on Facebook? You're 13. And they said oh, we lie about our age. We're all over 100. And so I started running Facebook ads for people that were 99 years old and older.

Speaker 1: 3:23

So they purposely really do that?

Speaker 2: 3:24

Yeah, ok, and so all of my ads were for people 99 years old and older, which meant I was only going to people that lied about their age, which were mostly kids. That's awesome. So, the kids were all seeing my ads. They'd come to our open house. We'd give them free headphones. We told them about this media art school that we're launching, and then they signed up.

Speaker 1: 3:41

That is so awesome and so that's so interesting. Like we're sitting here at FunnelHack and live we're listening to all these unique ideas about ads. That's so creative.

Speaker 2: 3:49

It was so fun and it was just, I think, such a god moment ago Like I'm stuck. What do I do Right? And the Bible talks about if you lack wisdom, pray for wisdom, and so I think that's one of that's like. The first lesson of entrepreneurship is stop trying to figure it out on your own. Ask the throne, go to the Lord and say, lord, what do you have for me? And sometimes it means just waiting, and then all of a sudden, what Deuteronomy says it's the Lord who gives us the power to create wealth. And so God already knows, because he knows the beginning from the end, he knows the future. So just ask him and then he'll go. Here you go, try this, try this little thing, yeah.

Speaker 1: 4:24

I was listening to a book by Chris Bauton, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:27

I love him. I'm going to give this stuff. Rich's Poverty and Wealth is one of my favorite books from him. Really, that's so good.

Speaker 1: 4:32

So he's talking about? I guess he had repaired cars or whatever. Heard the story about some brand new vehicle. Nobody could fix it. It was causing massive amounts of cost for their business and God led him to this weird thing under a fender that had nothing to do. It happens it's like my knee hurts but I'm going to work on my elbow, kind of Like what God and anyway it was huge business win or whatever. But I think those are the things where that intersection of business and faith that we talk about all the time of, just stop and ask all these little teeny moments, it's true.

Speaker 2: 5:15

I think that the greatest trick the devil ever played is convincing the world that he doesn't exist. So that's true. Number two I think the greatest trick the devil ever played is he took Thomas Jefferson's words separation of church and state which was just in a letter. It's not in the Constitution, it's not in the Declaration of Independence, it's not in the Bill of Rights. It's just a letter. It's a personal letter that he wrote. But we stand on this and we say separation of church and state. And what happens is, because of our public indoctrination system, as Christians that send our kids to public schools, what happens is we think separation of church and state. And so what we say is oh, there's secular and there's sacred, and there's this artificial division that does not exist. And so I'm a believer, because I'm a believer no matter where I am. And so, instead of trying to integrate your faith or all that sort of stuff, just be you. Just be who you are, wherever you are, and then you'll have the clarity to lead in the way that you need to lead.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Man, that's amazing. So my book that's coming, it's called Dirty Disciple Congrats and I think, along with what we were just talking about, sort of the undercurrent of I'm Too Dirty, I'm Not Worthy, god's not going to do that for me, right, right, but that's a lie. Yeah, that's lie. Number three is where I was going with that you laid out the proof too. So how do you coach people past them like that?

Speaker 2: 6:39

What's true. All our sin is filthy rags we are. While we were still sinners, christ died for us. Yes, of course I believe in total depravity. We were born into the sin of our Father Adam. We are lost. Without the Lord we are lost.

Speaker 2: 6:56

But what does he do? He redeems right, he fixes the broken, he makes all things new. And so to live in your identity of your new heart. He replaced your heart, right? You look at David David murdered, he had an affair Like he was a failure, and yet he was called a man after God's own heart. And so I think this guilt is not of the Lord, right, there's godly guilt, but once we accept the Lord, there's this process of redemption and sanctification.

Speaker 2: 7:25

So to step in your identity as the son of the king. And it's kind of like, you know, I'm a dad, right? So I look at my seven year old. It's like, let's say, my seven year old makes a mistake, he knocks over a vase or something, and then he feels bad about it. Well, great, he said I'm sorry, we got it right, but then the next day he's still beating himself up. And then, a year later, he's still beating himself up and he won't give me a hug because he thinks I'm still mad at him and he won't go to school because he thinks I'm mad at him. Like that's how we, as men, I think, are living, because we feel guilty about lust, we feel guilty about pride, we feel guilty about a mistake that we made in the past.

Speaker 2: 7:58

But, like step into your identity as a kid of the king Right and think about if I love my son in such a way that of course I forgive him, of course I love him Like he's my kid, how much more does God love us? And so I look at it as a hall of heroes and heapers. It's like we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. So run the race. My grandfather in heaven I believe this is biblical he's cheering for me right now. It's like run your race, man, and I'm going. I'm not worth it. Or run Like no. He's like this is your moment to run. And so step into that identity of who you really are, because you know who's you are Every day right, like whatever happened yesterday.

Speaker 1: 8:34

You know would, however much you blew it yeah, every day we blow it Morning man.

Speaker 2: 8:38

Well, yeah, I mean even the apostle Paul, right, he talked about how the things I want to do I don't do, and the things I don't want to do I do, and like hello. And he didn't have TikTok, he didn't have internet pornography, he didn't have social media, he didn't have the pride of life in terms of like seeing. You know, we don't compare ourselves to the Joneses anymore, we compare ourselves to the Codons. You know, we compare ourselves to the Trumps, like we don't just look at our neighbors now, we look at the most famous people in the whole world. Can we say I am not worthy and like no, of course.

Speaker 2: 9:11

So I think the pressures of today, this is, the pressures of society, make it really difficult to see the truth. That's why we need to start every day in the word. If you're not exercising the spiritual disciplines, of course you're not going to be disciplined. Just start there Time and prayer, time in the word. Remember who you are, be in community. Too many Christians are not going to church. Like don't forsake the fellowship of believers, get there. What a stupid excuse. No, you've got to be in church, you've got to be with other believers because you got to remember who you are.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Man, that's so good you know, and I think it's true for anybody. But in a business space where we both live, I think that is so important to get really deep into, whatever your mission is, because the more you're on mission, the more that other steps sort of just fades to the background, right. Because you're going to have to be thinking about your mission every day.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Oh yeah, you know and I think that's part of what you and I are both trying to do in the workspace is like, like figure out what you're chasing, what it's that you want. That's right. More deeply. You're committed that the mission's burning in your mind every minute. What does that have time to think about?

Speaker 2: 10:16

I love it, the verse that says delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart, right? Well, there's actually two steps in that. Number one is delighting the Lord, but number two is what the heck are your desires Like? Be clear as to what it is that you actually want in your life, and so, as you delight yourself in the Lord, your desires will shift right, because you go I really want to do this thing, and I want to do it in a way that honors the Lord and that it serves other people really well, and so, as you're doing that, it gives you such clarity, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:45

So good, dude? Well, look, I don't want to keep you too long.

Speaker 2: 10:48

I know.

Speaker 1: 10:49

We're about to go and hit the conference. It's the, I think, the best business conference in the world.

Speaker 2: 10:55

I mean, I just think it's a must be at every year.

Speaker 1: 10:58

Yeah, so, guys, if you haven't been to Funnel Hacking Live, which is the Click Funnels marketing event, and it's every year, although it looks like they're going to skip 24 to go early, early 50. It'll be February 25, almost 15.

Speaker 2: 11:12

Yeah, yeah but anyway, February 2025.

Speaker 1: 11:15

Brian, thanks for being on the Cirque Success Podcast. Man, I appreciate you. Dude. Yeah, you too. All right, Y'all being blessed.