You know, you have more to give, you know, you have a heart to serve others. Yet. Doubt delay in distractions are slowing you down. Your message is too important to give in now. So rise above the noise, get paid for what you know, because your message man. Today friends, we have a special guest. Jonathan Milligan is an author of your message matters, how to rise above the noise and get paid for what you know, he is also a blogger speaker and online business coach.

He spent the last decade guiding and directing creative professionals on how to pursue meaningful work. And since 2009, Jonathan has run. Own profitable lifestyle business on line. He teaches others how to build a business with their passion story and message. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida with his life charity and their two kids.

You can find him@jonathanmilligan.com and I will have links to how you can connect with him in the show notes below. Welcome back friend. Before we get into today’s episode, I want to make sure you get on. The waitlist for an amazing challenge I have coming up. That’s going to make 20, 22, the most successful year ever for you, you know, deep down that it’s time to turn your years of knowledge, your gifts, your talents, your experiences, your life experiences, and your career knowledge in what I like to call your God-given genius zone.

You know, it’s time to turn it. Into a thriving online business. So you can eventually leave that nine to five that is draining you because it doesn’t align with who God created you to be. You know, that it’s time and you are ready to make an impact doing what you love and using the gifts and talents God gave you while making income.

Are you ready? Would you love support as you go through this journey of creating, building and scaling your eyeline? I have an amazing challenge coming up soon that will get you inspired and fired up to make 20, 22, the most successful year ever. I want you to get on the wait list and we will let you know when it’s open for you to register.

So you can grab your. You can get on the waitlist at Kristin . That com forward slash challenge. The link will also be in the show notes. All right, let’s get in to today’s episode.

Do you know, you have a bigger purpose than that? Nine to five? Yes. Yes. You do. Welcome to the abundant Christian preneur podcast. I am your host, Kristin . I am a wife and mom who loves Jesus, and I’ve also been known to bust a few moves to some old school rock and roll. Right now you are joined by other faith filled with.

Who are using their commute to redefine their life, change their mindset and turn their passions, knowledge, life experience. Or even their hobbies into a powerful online business that allows them to have the freedom to do what they love. My goal is to inspire you, to take a step of faith and transition from that employee mindset to the Christian CEO and create that powerful, profitable, and impactful.

That has been on your heart. This is your show to learn from me and other Christian preneurs tactical tips that will empower you to bring that dream to life. If you’re ready to live your life by design, make an impact and have the financial and time freedom to do what you want when you want. Then crank up that volume and let’s do that.

Jonathan. I am so excited to have you on the abundant Christian preneur podcast today. Welcome. Thank you, Kristin. I’m so excited to be here. So tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got to where you are today. So I grew up in a, uh, family of, uh, Uh, managed tree. Um, my dad was always youth pastor.

He was also the basketball coach. He was a high school teacher and that’s the way it rolls a lot of times as you wear many hats. And my mom was an elementary teacher growing up. And so I’m the oldest of three boys. And so we grew up in that family of teachers and educators and, and, uh, you know, working in ministry and things like that.

And so when it became time for me to figure out. What does God want me to do with my life? I wrestled with all kinds of things, you know, do I go into ministry? Do I pursue a business? Cause I had an entrepreneurial side. Especially, most of my grandparents were entrepreneurs. And so I grew up hanging out in my grandfather’s hardware store and seeing how he ran a business and, uh, same with my other grandfather.

And so I had all of these competing things going in my mind. I ultimately landed on starting as a high school teacher after college. And after a couple of, of years of that, I realized I still had this entrepreneurial itch. I felt a little guilty at first because it was. Teaching is a great profession.

You’re you are instilling values into the next generation. And I had a good relationship with them, but I still felt like there was something else God was calling me to do. And I had to step out and go on that journey. And for a long while it was process of elimination, it was me thinking that my purpose was out there somewhere in a thing, a title, a job.

Something. And what I ultimately discovered, and what I’d like to talk about in the book is I realized my purpose was with me all along. It was actually how God wired me and how he made me. And I need to start there first because he made me a unique individual, just like everyone else. And so what are those strengths that God’s given you?

That’s where you should start. And that’s when I fell into. Fell into, uh, building a business online through being a resourceful teacher and helping people online. And ultimately that led to landing a book deal and building a business online to, uh, help others. So that’s the short version of a 20 year journey.

I love that. And I know a lot of our listeners can relay especially myself too, because we just did what we’re told to do, what society tells us to do. Yeah, good grades go to school, go to college, pick a job. That’s going to help pay the bills, make you a good member of society. And so you can support a family.

And by the time we get there, we’re looking at our career and in a sense, in a sense, it doesn’t align with who God created us to be. And we’re in a career that kind of drains us because of. Ignite that fire inside. And it sounds kind of that’s how you were. So you took a journey to get to where you are today and you wrote the book called your message matters.

And when I opened that book, thank you. By the way, for the book, the first sentence in the introduction was I am just ready to go fail at something. And I got so excited inside. I was like, yes. Yes. Because with that entrepreneurial mindset, we know that. Failure leads to success and failing is the stepping stones to success.

So I knew this was going to be a great book and it was born out of your experiences. So at what point in your life was the pain of not going after your dreams, greater than the pain of failing at something? When did you realize that something needed to change? Yeah. So that’s, that is exactly the journey we go on and we reach sometimes that valley of despair and we think we’re doing something wrong, or something’s not right with this, but actually that’s part of the pathway that we have to go through.

So for me, after. Me and my wife sat down and I decided I wasn’t going to renew my teaching contract. I had to find something. So I went out and found a call center job at night and did that. My idea was that would open me up during the day, since the job was five to 10 at night. And it would supplement our income that would give me all day to launch some kind of.

Whether that was online or a real estate business or some other business I’d had my days free to do that. So I dove head in during my day because it was completely open. My wife was still teaching at the time our kids were in preschool. So I literally had the whole day to myself and I dove into reading books.

Yeah. Taking courses and, and researching online and figuring out like, what is that thing that I’m supposed to do again, in the beginning, I was trying to find my calling in a thing. And after about nine months, I had not moved one step at all. I had not taken one. All I did was fill up my head with a bunch of knowledge and it became more complex.

It became more difficult because I was not taking action and learning is an important component, but I think what’s important even more so is learning just to take action. And that’s when I made that comment, it was after a call center job, uh, one night, 10 30 in the parking lot with a coworker. He knew my ambitions and I said, you know, I am so desperate right now.

I’m just ready to go fail at something. It was almost as if trying something and failing would feel better than staying where I was and not doing anything. And I didn’t change overnight. There was still a process, but something changed in. And it pushed me from being a passive observer of my life to being an active participant and starting to figure things out because the truth is you can’t improve something until you actually do it.

You can’t improve it when you’ve never done it. So it’s sort of like starting a podcast. You both of us have podcasts. We, we, it wasn’t that we had to get really good at podcasting. Then start a podcast. We had to start the podcast. And get more comfortable at doing it. The more that we did it, you have to do something first, then you can improve it.

And that was the lesson I had. Right. I love that. And with action, action brings clarity is kind of like how Jesus said that I’m a lamp onto your feet. When you take this step, that lantern goes with you and lights the path. So you just have to start taking. Those steps and the pack lightens up in front of you.

So I love that. Now you talked about finding your purpose and I think that’s the number one question. A lot of us ask, what is my purpose? Why am I here for, and you mentioned how you were looking for it way out there, but you ended up finding it inside of you. So what’s the difference between finding your purpose and uncovering.

Yeah. So this is an important distinction. And again, it was, I was trying to find my purpose and a thing, but here, this is an important lesson, especially for us Christians. Anytime you put your identity in something that can change, you leave yourself open for disappointment, for discouragement, right? So if I’m putting my purpose and my identity in a title, Or even in a business and that business or job fails now, my identity has been hurt, but instead we, as Christians have the awesome opportunity to put our identity in something that never changes.

One of those is putting your full identity in God and allowing him to direct your. One thing that really helped me when I was first kind of starting on my journey is I wrestled with, do I want to, should I be in ministry or should I do something else? And if I pursue. Uh, being an entrepreneur is that selfish.

Whereas ministry feels more like God’s calling and I wrestled with that for a long time. And ultimately what I, uh, through wisdom through my wife and even conversations with my mom, they, the women in my life are so brilliant. So smart. They were more like, Jonathan, you need to go on the journey. Like your identity is not in that thing.

God may direct you in ministry and he may direct you out. He may have you go run a business for awhile and he may call you to go plant a church. God can do whatever he wants to do, put your identity and your focus on him and his next step. So that’s part number one. The second part of that, that never changes is how God made.

Because we are a unique creation of God and there’s so many different personalities and so many different gifts. He has called us over and over again in scripture, you can see it in the old Testament. You can see it in the new Testament where he is challenging us to live out how we were. Some of us are more speakers and teachers.

We need to embrace that and move into that. Some of us are more caring and support and administrative. We need to use the gifts of the D the being detailed that God’s given us. And so the thing that I try to explain in the book is that instead of finding your purpose out there, you need to do inward work.

And the inward work is what is the unique gift or gifts that God has given you? I love that. Yes. Cause that’s the key to your purpose. It’s the key to finding what you’re called to do on this side of heaven. So you can live a fulfilled life while making that impact as well. So I love that, which goes along with your book, your message matters, your story matters and who God created you to be matters.

And no matter how big or small you think your story or your message, is it still has a power to change. Someone’s life. So in order for. Us to define our message. You recommend that people answer three primary questions. What are those questions? Yeah. So the simplicity of it is think of purpose people and past.

Purpose is what we were just talking about. Take a moment and find what your unique gift is. One of the things that I like to, uh, use in the book to make it practical, instead of just being theory is a lot of the people that I attract to my audience are messengers. They either want to write, they want to speak.

They want to coach. Maybe they want to teach courses online. And so what I do is I help them first identify one single word that best describes. And I walk them through an exercise to determine how to figure out what that is. And it’s a lot of fun people like their, their, their life, uh, comes alive when they figure it out that thing.

And we do that by involving other people in our lives. So when I went through this journey, the word that I got back from a lot of my people who know me best was resourcing. So then in the book, I have an assessment to help you identify if you’re more of a teacher writer, speaker, or coach. And by doing that, you can combine your unique gift with your influencer voice to combine that powerful.

Way that you show up and serve others best. And so for me, it was resourceful teacher. Now that doesn’t mean I can’t speak and that I can’t write books and I can’t coach people, but resourceful teacher helps me to know where to get started. So that’s number one is your purpose. Now we need to look at people.

We often feel like we’re called to serve everyone, and that just doesn’t work. You have to get specific on who you’re helping. Like, I love your audience. You’re focusing on Christian. Entrepreneurs and helping them learn and discover how to build a business, but do it in a way that partners with God and where God is leading you in your journey and in your life.

So that’s a very specific audience as opposed to trying to be something for everyone. So that’s number two and then finally passion and the way that I define passion. What problem are you passionate about solving for the next two to five years? Let’s start there because passion can feel like this big, heavy pressure it’s overwhelming.

What is that passion I’m called to do in my life? And the truth is that may change. But right now with the people you want to serve, what’s the problem you want to help them solve that you’re passionate about. And when you know how you show up. The specific people you want to help. And the problem you’re trying to solve, you have ignited a powerful message.

That’s the goal. I love that. Yes, it is the goal. So that assessment you’re talking about, that’s the influencer voice assessment that’s in your book, correct? Correct. So why exactly though, should someone take that. Yeah. So what it does is it’s not a test of competency, so I’ll have people take it that I coach and they’re like, oh, rider was last on the list.

That means I can never write a bestselling book. It’s not about competency. What the assessment is designed to do is to get to your core motivations. Some of us are more motivated to. So doing a podcast or even YouTube videos might be a great place to start. Some of us, we feel more motivated to write, like having nothing on our calendar and having a free time to sit in the backyard with a keyboard, you know, our laptop and being able to express ourselves through writing that ignites a lot of people.

Not everyone though. I have a good friend who knew he’s like, that’s like, that’s like the worst kind of day I want to have. I want to be talking to people and coaching people and asking really good questions. So if you’re more of a coach, then you are great at asking questions and interacting with people and you love that human interaction.

And so really what it does is the assessment helps you to determine what is, what is your motivation because where you’re most motivated is a great place to start. And then you can build all four of these into your business. I wri I speak it. And I coach, but I didn’t start there. I started with one and then added the others along the way.

Cause you can build skills in all four areas. Right, but start with what you enjoy, what lights that fire inside, because that’s going to encourage you and motivate you to keep going through the hard times. And these past couple years, we definitely know about the hard times with this pandemic that happened.

Um, but I think it’s kind of been a blessing in disguise because it allowed people to take a step back just to kind of. Slow down. A lot of people started working at home. They were around their family more and they started realizing they wanted more of that time, freedom that flexibility of their work life.

And a lot of them don’t want to go back to that nine to five hustle and grind, but it’s also intimidating to think about starting something new right now. So what would you say to someone in that position? Who’s taken a step back and just breathe and realized there’s more important things in life than that hustle and grind.

And they want to do something else to start building their dreams, their vision, and fulfilling their purpose on this side of heaven. But they’re scared. They’re intimidated. What would you say to that? I’ve got two thoughts. The first thing is anytime God’s at work in our lives, it’s either pushing or pulling factors.

Sometimes it’s both. Let me explain. So sometimes, uh, polling factors are your work and your, your normal day job, you’re doing your thing, but you feel pulled and called to something else. You don’t necessarily hate what you do or not like what you do. Maybe in some cases you do a little bit, but you just feel pulled to doing something else that you feel motivated to others.

Uh, other times we have pushing factors where we’re kind of comfortable where we are. But things change. Like all of a sudden I got to work at home. My job’s not as enjoyable from home. It works better when I’m in person, I’m more of a people person or whatever, or I get, let go downsized. It’s a pushing.

What’s happening right now is something that’s probably once in a lifetime, hopefully, but pushing and pulling factors are happening at the same time. And so what that does is it creates a lot of uncertainty in us, which can cause a little bit of stress in us. It can cause. You know, the, the uncertainty of the future.

And this is a time where you got to get grounded in a daily walk with God to help, you know, like you were saying earlier of what’s my next step. I can’t see with my, with my, uh, my light. I can’t see 20 steps ahead, but I’m asking God to show me just the next step. So that’s the first thing. The second thing I would say.

Some of the best times to start something is in the middle of downturn in the middle of when things are, um, not as great, or it seems like maybe we’re going into recession, who knows. Right. And so those are the best times to start. I started my online blog in 2009. Right. When everything was kind of coming downhill from the housing crash.

And what that does is it allows you. There’s less competition out there. Other people are more distracted by other things that are going on. It’s a great opportunity to start something new. And I would also say for a lot of people, they have a little bit more flexibility because they’re working from home.

So now’s the time to start a side hustle. Now’s the time to invest in a little bit of education because there’s less commuting going on. There’s less demands. So for all those reasons, those are good opportunities for you to start. I love that. So true. What, looking back, what is one thing that you would have done different?

Oh man. There’s lots of things that I would’ve done differently. Uh it’s like if I could have the knowledge I have now go back 10 years ago, I may have gotten where I am now twice as fast, but sometimes we had to, we have to learn those. We have to go through those things. We learn those lessons and, and they help us to be better because we had to go through that valley of despair to get to the other side.

And, um, I would say one thing that I there’ll be two thoughts, and this is related to people who, uh, you know, you want to have like an online business. The first one was, um, building an email list sooner. Uh, I think having an email list of people is still important. I know there’s a lots of other ways we can communicate with people, but for me, it’s still the lifeblood of my business.

If I’m going to go live for my live stream show, the best way I get people to show up is not to depend on Facebook to show it to my followers, but I send an email and say, I’m live, come join me. So an email list, it would be one. There was a period of time where I stopped building a list because I was listening to voices, uh, um, peers who were telling me, make money with AdSense.

You can make thousands of dollars. It’s easy to rank on Google back in the day. So you need to just, you know, this is how you make $10,000 a month. We’re not doing anything, but traffic clicking on ads. And I realized after about a year of doing that, wait a minute, I don’t know if this is what I need to be doing.

So luckily during that time I had a mentor who spoken to me and he said, Jonathan, with an online business, there’s only two things you can take with you to the. Number one is your email list. Number two is your reputation, how you treat people. And that’s when I got serious about it. The second thing that I wish I had done sooner would be focusing on, on not just building an email list and having a big email list, but focusing on acquiring customers.

So what I mean by that is having low dollar items that you can sell, even though a $7 item. Make you millions of dollars. What it’s doing is it’s building a list of customers, people who have proven that they’re willing to take out their wallet or their purse and spend money, even if it’s low dollar, that’s a fundamentally different person than someone on your list.

Who’s just a freebie seeker. And so for me, one customer is worth 16 email subscribers. So I would rather have a few thousand customers than a hundred thousand. People on an email list. So you don’t need the biggest email list. You just need a handful of custom. I love that. Those are two great tips of advice.

I love that. So let’s talk about your clients and some of the challenges that they’ve gone through, because I love that we can learn from other people. So what are some common challenges that your clients have faced in setting up their own business and how do you help them move through? There are, I mean, there are a lot, but I’ll give you two.

Number one is having too many options. This is the problem that our generation has. If you go back to the great depression, it was a completely different problem. The problem there was not having enough options. That’s why people were standing in soup lines and trying to get work, just doing anything.

That’s not what we have today, especially for us online entrepreneurs, we have too many options and there’s a lot of messaging that gets thrown your way. The more that you dive into it, because it’s like, well, this person’s telling me I should blog. And this person saying, start a podcast, this person saying a membership site or an online course, or no, you don’t need to do that.

Webinars work. Don’t waste your time doing that. And what happens is we dabble in a lot of things and we don’t dominate any. The truth is there’s a million ways to make a million dollars. You just need to choose one. And there’s something about learning and understanding that the thing you’re fighting against is having too many options instead.

And I know that’s hard because what we, what we do at least this is how I was Kristin is I was like, I’m dabbling in all of this because I’m not sure which one. Right. And so that’s, that creates that anxiety. Instead of saying, I’m going to choose one, I’m going to learn as much as I can and push through this thing.

And it’s going to help me get further, faster. Instead of taking one step in 10 directions, we’re taking 10 steps in one direction. That’s a big difference. It’s the same amount of energy and time, but there’s a big difference in taking 10 steps in wonder. So that’d be number one. Number two is technology.

Technology is the thing for my audience that blocks them from their message. They’re like, I don’t know how to do live. I don’t know how to do live streaming. I don’t know how to do this, that and the other thing. And so, uh, we try to provide like a low tech, easy ways for you to just go back to human connection and human interaction with the people that you want to help.

And so those are some of the biggest challenges I see. Those are some definitely some big challenges. I know I went through that too, especially with, I like to call it the shiny object syndrome. Like, oh, let’s do this and let’s do that. But you’re right. When you can focus and narrow it down to one way, I like to say, um, one product, one offer one year, one ideal client and you will be successful.

So that was great. One last question. What does making an impact mean to you? That for me is living a life well, lived and fulfilling what I believe God put me here for, which is what we all want to do. Right? We want to live our life that actually produces impact on others. It’s not even about the income.

It’s like the more impact you make, the income is a by-product, but at the end of the day, you got to make an impact. And, uh, the thing that I’ve been challenging over the last year, even with my own team, is how can we be known for producing an outcome instead of just offering a service. And it’s easy sometimes for, you know, your courses, they offer a service or you do a mastermind, it offers support, accountability, all those things are important.

They play an important role. But at the end of the day, what I’m trying to do is produced outcomes for the people. That I’m trying to help. And so to me, that’s impact. I told my wife this several years ago, I said, I don’t want to be known. I don’t want to be on the biggest stages. I don’t enjoy the limelight.

I’m more laid back, easy going. I love being at home. I’ve said no to lots of speaking opportunities, cause I just didn’t want to do it. And the reason I bring that up is because for me, the thing that lights me up when it relates to impact is I want to go in. A thousand or a few thousand influencers who go on to influence millions.

If I can be the influencer who influenced the influencer, that is ultimate joy and reward for me, whether or not I ever get on a big stage or ever have a New York times bestseller. That’s not what it’s about for me. That ripple effect. Yeah. Yes. So, Jonathan, thank you so much. I know our listeners are going to want to connect with you.

How can they find you and better question? How can they get this amazing book? Yeah. So, uh, market your message.com is where you can find. Uh, the book is available everywhere, bookstores. Uh, you can go find it on Amazon. However, I have purchased a couple thousand copies from my publisher that I’m giving away for free.

I’ll ask is that you pay for the shipping and handling and, uh, yeah, if you want a copy of the book sent to you, you can go to your message matters, book.com and we’ll get one out to you and you can dive in and. Thank you so much, Jonathan. That is amazing. I will definitely link all of those links in the show notes below.

So listeners go get your book, your message matters because it is amazing. Thank you so much, Jonathan. I appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me. That’s it for today, friends. It’s your time to step into the role of the abundant Christian manure and put to use the gifts God has given you. There is only one you and you are the expert.

Someone is out there waiting to hear from. I want you to know this, feel this, and most importantly, the, this never underestimate the impact. And power you and Hey, real quick, before you go, do you want to win a free private coaching call with me? Take a screenshot of an episode and post it on your IgE stories.

And take me at Kristen. Turangi using the hashtag. Christian prenuer and if you feel extra daring, share one of your biggest takeaways, that is how you will get entered into the monthly drawing. And if you found value in today’s episode, I would love it. If you would subscribe, leave a review and rate the show.

This not only helps me bring you more expert guests to learn from, but it also spreads the message to those who need to hear it. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day and spending it here with me. I appreciate you and see you next episode.