Missional Entrepreneurship – Interview with Andrew Perry

Welcome to the Blue Vineyard podcast. This is a podcast for Adventist administrators and ministry leaders designed to help you navigate the growing Adventist digital ecosystem. We'll be having expert guests, but also sharing our own experience as we build and invest in platforms that will help the church in the digital space. Hey everybody, welcome back to episode two.

And this episode is kind of a bit of a cheat episode because we had the privilege of interviewing Andrew Perry and we did that for another podcast that I run, a specifically ministry podcast, but it is actually, I would say more in line with the audience that's going to be listening to this podcast. So this is going to be a shameless cross post and I hope you enjoy it. It is an interview with Andrew Perry and there will be another intro that's coming up, which was on the original show. So when we're referencing the other podcast that is more spiritually focused, hopefully that will make sense to you.

But for now, I will leave that with you. I hope you enjoy the show and look forward to catching you for the next, let's call it a normal episode next time. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Aus Table Talk. My name is Luke and today we are bringing you an interview.

So before we get to the interview, I just wanted to give you a brief update on exactly what this episode is. So for a start, I'm here with Shana. Hi Shana. Hey guys, good to be here.

So you guys haven't heard Shana's voice. We have done an episode with Shana so like you can look forward to that coming out later. But to provide a little bit of context around Shana, Shana is my business partner in what we're doing with Blue Vineyard. If you listened to the last episode we released earlier this year, I explained a little bit about the business that I'm working on at the moment and Shana is the one that I'm working with on that project.

And that leads us into why she's here for this particular episode. This particular episode is an interview with Andrew Perry. And Andrew is an entrepreneur and he's involved with an initiative called Hive. And Hive is, I don't know, how would you explain Hive, Shana?

Like how do you describe that? Yeah, Hive is a group of missional entrepreneurs. He's kind of their tagline. And so just pulling people together who are passionate about business, passionate about ministry and entrepreneurship and how to just combine those and make that a successful endeavor.

Wow, you sound like you're like reading their website or something. I just really appreciate what they're doing. If you're listening to this and you're not quite seeing the connection, wait a second. So you know, ATT is all about having the conversations you wish you could have at church.

Like where does that fit into business? And I've spoken a little bit about this before, but I really strongly believe that business is a, is one of the missing pieces, like the skill sets that are involved in business are vital to evangelism and it's vital to sharing the gospel with the people that are around us. And one of the things I wish that I could talk more freely about at church is my business, right? And how that affects me and how God is teaching me through those experiences and how by extension, how I'm using those experiences to promote the gospel and be missional in how I live my life.

And so when, when Andrew reached out that actually Hive, we're interested in getting a promotional spot on our show. And it was, it was a real easy yes for us because it was, it's something that we really want to promote anyway. And so I said, rather than just giving you a promo spot where we're just like putting your stamp in the show and there's like, you know, a promo section, why don't we do an integration, why don't we make a whole episode that's just about this. And so we use the opportunity to interview Andrew, Andrew Perry.

So what did you think of that? I mean, before I mean, I know we have the benefit of having already had this conversation. So Shannon, what were your, what were your thoughts on the convo? What were some of the main things that stood out to you?

Yeah, I really loved hearing his story and just how like he, like some of the key concepts that he shared that he's learned over the last few years really resonated with me as there have been things that I've kind of been learning and wrestling with myself recently. It's just so cool to see other people on a similar journey and seeking and learning and yeah, becoming better people because of the skills that they're learning and putting into practice and yeah, seeking to follow God's counsel on. Yeah. No, I love that.

And I really appreciate it. One of the things I really liked about it is that for someone who is at the stage that he is in his career, usually when people are in, let's say they're 50s and beyond, usually by then they kind of feel like, oh, well, I've arrived, you know, I've learned what I need to learn. I now know what I need to know. Whereas his approach is very, very growth orientated, very has very much of a growth mindset that he was talking about even just a few years ago, how he had these dramatic changes when he learned and had these, these like new revelations of how to relate to God and therefore how his business fits into that and how that informs what he's doing now.

And I think that continual growth mindset is something that I certainly aspire to as I go forward and so I really enjoyed that about the interview. Yeah. Like when you're stagnant, then you can't, you can't grow. And so realizing that there's a need for that.

Yeah. It's really key and it's really inspiring to see like people who are older and more advanced in their lives doing that in the same way that we're trying to do on this end of our lives. Yes. And at the end of this episode, there will be a promo where there will be a bit more information about the event that we're talking about, about Hive, which is going to be on in Sydney.

So if you are at all interested in business or if you have your own business or you're an investor or any of those things and you are interested in an Adventist focused event that is built around those topics, then this is definitely going to be something that's going to interest you. All the details will be in the show notes, but also in the, at the end of the show, there'll be a little bit of extra info there for you as well. So, but without further ado, we're going to pass over to the actual conversation, the actual interview with Andrew. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we do.

And if you're, if you keep an eye out also on our YouTube channel, just letting you know we are finally beginning to let out some new content, some new episodes are going out. There are a few of them that are YouTube only and they will be going out over there. So make sure if you're not already, go and subscribe on YouTube. But we do have some more seasons of the audio podcast, the full length versions that will be coming out right here on this podcast, on this channel in the not too distant future.

So we look forward to seeing you then. But for now, let's go to the interview with Andrew Perry. All right. So there's a lot of places that I want to take this conversation.

A lot of questions I would like to ask you. But just before we go there, I was looking at your LinkedIn and I see that you have something like 11 positions listed as your current position. What do you do to relax? Because that is, that is a tremendous amount of hats to wear.

Yeah. Well, I guess from my perspective, it's always fun to be working with people who have great ideas and to be able to contribute to, you know, what they're working on. And it'd be very boring if I said that, you know, I like to relax by coding or by that sort of thing. I'll have to say scuba diving.

I love my YouTube and I sometimes say I'm the oldest millennial around, I think. That makes good sense. That makes good sense. So just on that point, and I want to unpack some of those things that you've done and we'll uncover that a little bit more.

But just to rewind the clock and go back, where did you grow up? Where are you from? Because obviously a lot of people that are listening to this will be from all over the world. So where did you start?

Yeah, so I basically grew up in Australia. My parents were working for the Sematha Adventist Church as teachers. So I had the joy of being able to grow up on campus at colleges. So as a five-year-old, I would be running around hectares of space at a college campus and getting bitten by snakes and things like that.

Which, you know, that's what kids growing up in Australia do, right? Yeah. Okay, I'm sorry, I've got to stop there. You got bitten by a snake?

Well, they thought I did. But as a three-year-old, you can't really explain what happened to you. So yeah, they treated me as having got snakebite and now I'm, because of that, having basically an aversion to the anti-venom. So if I get bitten again, I'm in trouble.

They can't use it. Wow. Well, I have a three-year-old and I can totally imagine that scenario. So that's...

Well, I've seen the snakes in your backyard as well. Unfortunately, they're not the poisonous ones that I've seen. Yeah, I know. We have had some very large pythons literally living in the top of my studio.

So well, I'm very glad that they're gone. Okay, so that sounds like a pretty great childhood. At that point, as you were growing up, what did you think you would do? In our church, there's a lot of people that go into some very specific professions and your parents are kind of a great example of that, right?

A lot of the kids tend to grow up and either become teachers or pastors or healthcare professionals. When you were growing up, what did you think you were going to do? Yeah, it was interesting because my grandfather, he was a pastor. My dad growing up had actually gone off to a public university and done chemistry.

So he'd done a masters in chemistry and then came back to education subsequently. So there had been a bit of a history, I guess, of my father at least embracing public education. And so I didn't necessarily have a sense that I would be in those traditional roles. I had thought that perhaps I'd be a scientist.

At that age, we would be watching Jacques Cousteau on the television scuba diving in these beautiful locations. So I dreamed that I might be a marine biologist one day. And so where did the shift happen between going into the sciences of marine biology? And I assume your first look was on the path to where you are now, would be law or was there intervening steps?

Yeah, well, during work experience, I actually did some work as a chemist and realized that if I went down the marine biology path, I'd probably spend my life in a laboratory looking down a microscope that plankton on a glass slide. And all of that, Jacques Cousteau shenanigans would be passing me by. And I dated a girl at school whose dad was an accountant and he had a boat and they went scuba diving and did all of these fun things. So there was this part of me that thought, well, maybe if I go into the business world, that would generate enough revenue that I could go and do the fun scuba diving stuff without getting stuck in a lab code.

I see. Interesting. So where was your first conscious step into that world? Did you study or did you just go the entrepreneurship path and start your own business?

Or what was your first step into that world? Yeah, so I mean, there were other aspects of wanting to do law, certainly growing up, there was a core element where we wanted to always be helping people. My parents were always very active in helping the community around the colleges where we lived. And for me, looking at the legal system and the understanding that the way that the law worked, I thought that can be helpful in any future sort of career.

So I think in my age as well, there was kind of this pressure with high school that you wanted to get the best possible mark that you could. And then having got the best possible mark you could, you wanted to go into the most prestigious hardest to get into course that you could. And then basically fitting into society's mold, you would then be successful and that somehow you'd work it out through that. So it was really being formed very much by society and society's expectations and perhaps peer pressure or ego that started sending me down that direction rather than what I would hope that we can help young people today do.

Well, speaking about that, I'm assuming your spiritual life somewhat in parallel to this professional development that we're talking about, you grew up in a Christian home, but can you look back in your life to a specific time where you can say, look, that was my personal conversion. That was where I really took that step of faith. Yeah, there was really a number of times as a 13 year old, you know, at a church camp, you know, there were moments of Bible study and reflection where I really felt the presence of God in my life. And, you know, so it was at that point that I made a decision to be baptized quite young.

You know, some of those choices then put in good stead when I went off to university. But it was really when I got to university and the chaplain at my university, like the chaplain at the time, a guy called Grenville Kent, you know, was really active on campus. And so for me, there were these opportunities created to be on campus, to fellowship with other Adventist students, to try and connect up with other Adventist students and have a sense of community where we felt like, you know, that we could discuss topics and we could hold debates on campus around, you know, evolution versus science and have, you know, these public debates that we would hand out flyers and, you know, dress up as a robot and hand out some comics that talked about, you know, the likelihood of a robot being created by chance in the context of evolution. So it was these opportunities through campus ministries, you know, that enabled me to continue my faith, to grow my faith, to challenge my faith and therefore personalize it in a way that enables me to say, look, I don't know all of the answers.

You know, there's different ways of interpreting different things. But I know that I've experienced God through my life. And it was actually a book about five years ago, six years ago that was given to me by the elder of my church, Jim Diakoo, called Reimagining the Way You Relate to God. That was really a pivotal moment as a middle aged man to help me get back on track in really having faith in God.

That's really interesting. So what was it about that book? Like, if you could distill, like, one of the core ideas that really shaped you in this, like, next chapter of your life? What was it that in that book that really spoke to you?

Yeah. So as part of my early career, I was involved in politics. I was involved as a young lawyer and a technology lawyer. I was involved in youth ministry type activities.

I had all of these various different interests. And people around me would basically say, look, why don't you just focus on being a lawyer? You'll make lots more money. You'll be successful or take the pressure off family finances and things like that if you focus on doing that one thing.

And when you think of some books out there, things like The Purpose Driven Life was a book that I'd heard of but never read. But there was this sense growing up that I really wanted to serve the community, but it wasn't clear to me what would be the best way for me to do it. And so there was this sense of going from one thing to another thing to another thing, waiting for this light bulb moment where you felt like, oh, OK, now I've found the purpose that God has given to me. And the great thing about this book was it looked at the different ways that we can relate to God.

So one of the ways that it talks about is that you live under God. So it's essentially that you are waiting for that purpose to be given to you so that you can then do what it is that God's called you to do. The other way that we can relate to God is almost that we're living over God. So I have these sort of trigger phrases that when I hear within Adventism things like, they're going to win souls to hasten Christ's coming.

You know, that's saying we have control over God because it's through our actions that we will determine when Christ comes, essentially. So this book basically unpacked the fact that when we were created in God's image in the Garden of Eden, we were created to be with God. We weren't given a long list of things we must do. There was one thing that we mustn't do.

And other than that, God just wanted to be with us. So to suddenly realize, OK, stop looking around waiting for this light bulb moment of what it is that God's called you to do and realize that he just wants to be with us. So just start every day with prayer, inviting God to be with me. Stop thinking that I've got to achieve all of these things on my own and be humble to say, look, God, if this is your will, surround me with the people that will enable this to happen.

And if it's not your will destroy it, let me get on with what it is that I am best at. But not in a way that was expecting there to be this light bulb and that God had one way of doing things. You know, having then decided I should read the purpose driven life, I realized that the purpose coming out of that book is to have a relationship with God. So I kind of have been prejudiced against that book unfairly.

So it was through this process to suddenly realize that God doesn't necessarily care what occupation you choose. He just wants to be with you. I really love that because God calls us to faithfulness, not to fruitfulness. And so we're trying to do, do, do and get these results when really God's like, no, just be with me.

I want you to stop doing that thing. And so yeah, that's really what I was saying, right? And it's not about what, you know, you're specifically called into or like, is this the only thing I can do with my life to do something good? It's like, no, God has multiple ways for you to do good, good, but as we're being faithful each day.

It's more about us being, it's more about us living like in whatever frame we are. Like it doesn't matter if you're a plumber or a lawyer or whatever it is. Are you being a lawyer in the same way that Jesus would be a lawyer if he was a lawyer, right? Are you journeying with him in on that set of rails that you're on as you go through?

Yeah. And what, what you're saying, Andrew, like that is such a common discussion. I was having a conversation with a guy that I would consider very spiritual and like very advanced in his, in his walk with Christ. And I made this suggestion to him that perhaps it is less about a clearly defined straight line that God has prepared for him.

I mean, if he deviates from it, he's in trouble, that it's much more about a mutual process where God works with us and we journey together through the choices that we make. And yeah, and I suggested that to him and he didn't outright say, I think you're wrong. But he said, like, do you realize like that is like completely opposite to what I've been taught for the last like 30, whatever years. And I thought, imagine, like, and I imagine that is going to be a reasonably common refrain if you speak to people that have grown up with this idea of, you know, they're being a very clear and distinct path for us to walk on.

Whereas life is a lot more messy than that. You can even see it with how God relates to Israel, right? God's plan for Israel was different, but he still journeyed with them. He didn't just say, oh, well, you deviated this many degrees.

And so therefore, you know, you're, I'm going to get rid of you. He worked with them. We don't, you know, we want a king. Okay.

Well, you're not going to like it. But okay, I'll give you one, you know, but he still will then use those kings. Yeah, I look back at my life and I see these sliding doors moments where I can see that, you know, if I've made a different decision, and perhaps it would have been the more mature, spiritually mature decision to make. Or, you know, sometimes these things aren't dependent on one person's decision.

It comes down to multiple, you know, relationships and realize, well, you know, if things had gone God's way in that circumstance, this might have been the outcome. But it's not a sense of regret. But rather to say, okay, let's try not to make those sorts of mistakes again. You know, in my early career, I mentioned I was involved in student politics.

So I, best out of left field was invited to join the state executive of the New South Wales Young Liberal movement. And, you know, normally these political roles are sort of hotly contested. So I was brought in because at that time, you know, the internet was just starting to take off and I had, you know, taught myself to program out of magazines, as you did back in the day. I've just turned 50, so I'm kind of dating myself there.

But so I've been invited to join the, you know, state executive of the Liberal movement and started building a website and a membership management sort of section of their website. And then at the end of my year, thought I will go back to my legal career. And, you know, some person that studied computer science will come up with cool stuff for, you know, managing members and volunteering and what have you. And so I progressed through my legal career and became president of the New South Wales Young Lawyers Association in part because I had a server that was sitting under my desk that was plugged into a modem back in those days so that all of the young lawyers within Young Lawyers could join an email discussion list.

So by just having this computer under my desk, it was facilitating, you know, hundreds of lawyers around New South Wales communicate about the topics of interest that they had. And so that then provided a bit of an opportunity to, you know, contribute in a different way through leadership of the young lawyers that got me then involved in the Law Society Council and, you know, ultimately being the national head of intellectual property and technology law at a national firm. And it was at that point that one of my friends from my young liberal days came to me and said, oh, you know, this technology stuff, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, do you know anyone? Do you know anyone like you who could write some software to help man the polling booth is on election day, the handing out the how to vote cards for the for the Liberal Party.

So, yeah, so I took that upon myself on the bus to and from work you know, heading up the intellectual property section of this law firm to to write software. And the thing that I realized is, you know, that by enabling thousands of people to volunteer across that first election in New South Wales, it was much more powerful than sitting in an office drafting contracts or drafting those mobile phone terms and conditions that nobody ever reads or, you know, those website terms and conditions that you tick the box that says you read. Of course, you never do. So that really sent me down this path of saying, okay, I'm not going to do the boring paperwork for other people's great ideas having come out of the dot com boom and bust.

I decided I'd set up my own law firm and technology firm. And surprisingly, no computer science geeks had come around and built membership management platforms and funds management platforms and things like that to help the political party. So, you know, that's what I decided I would do I'd set up a couple of tech tech companies and continued to provide my legal advice to people in the intellectual property startup world. And we're then spinning out of that set up a innovation lab and a co-working space called Collaboratory to help people come together who wanted to start their own businesses, probably businesses that had a social impact to make the world a better place.

And by working in the same environment, we could provide some mentoring and assistance to help that grow. And that's really cool that you're like seeing that need led you to do something about it. Yeah. And for me, that was coming back to our discussion earlier.

Growing up, there was this sense that doing something wrong was kind of the worst thing you could do that every decision was a decision between right and wrong. So you could have analysis paralysis because you thought, well, I don't want to sin. So to suddenly realize that there's lots of decisions in life that black and white. And so at Collaboratory, we ended up from working together with a church plant called Parameter Central.

So we had a church plant on the weekend and we ran some health programs together in the evenings. And one Sabbath a month, we held Sabbath brunch. So the idea of Sabbath brunch is that's not about letterboxing your neighborhood and inviting random people to come so that you can teach them something. It was about, you know, brunch, what's brunch about when you get together with the people you love and you care about to understand where are they at?

That's an opportunity to catch up. The Sabbath brunch aspect means you might be comfortable talking to one of your colleagues at work about Sabbath and saying, well, would you like to come along and catch up with some friends for a barbecue breakfast and we'll have a Sabbath brunch at Collaboratory. And one of our members would then sit up on the bar stool and just share some of their testimony. It might have been a testimony of their decision years ago or maybe something that had just happened to them in a recent week.

But it was all about not telling people what they should believe, but sharing your experience and how that's led your beliefs and how your beliefs have influenced your ability to handle that situation. So for me, that was moving from this sort of fixed mindset where there is something that you have to tell people and you need to tell everyone these things, whether it's three things or 28 things. They must be the right things. Yes.

So instead saying, look, we're all on a journey. We have this growth mindset that we need to be open and inviting God to be with us as we get to understand ourselves. And instead of growing up thinking, I have to be perfect and therefore I need to focus on everything that's wrong and make that better to actually say, well, I'm never going to be perfect. I need to understand what I'm really good at and I have to create room in my life for other people who are better at the stuff that I'm not good at.

So don't be so proud that you think you can be the best at everything. Lawyers have that criticism. Sometimes ego and what have you and certainly from my perspective, that was something that I had to learn the hard way. But nobody who truly thinks that will ever be successful at anything, be that in church organizations, in evangelism or in the entrepreneurial world, nobody who wants to do everything can ever scale their impact large enough to do what they want to do.

Exactly. And so that was the moment for me where having tried to do it all myself and having this sense that you give to others, it's better to give than to receive was creating this whole ecosystem around Collaboratory where I could hardly pay the rent and I was so busy doing the things to try and pay the rent that I wasn't able to put the time into actually serving the community. So it was only after a couple of years where I spoke to the Parramatta Central team and said, look, can we create Sabbath brunch so that it's at least one week a month that I can just serve, that I can just be on the barbecue or whatever and serve rather than feeling like I'm so caught up in the machine that I'm not actually physically serving. So when you started Collaboratory, were you planning to do like combined ministry and business like these, the thoughts you're having in your head or you just say, hey, this is a cool opportunity.

Let's see where this goes. And then as you went along, you noticed I need to serve. This is a place I can serve in. What did that look like?

Yeah. So because I'd grown up with technology, programming out of magazines and teaching myself to code, when I set up my own law firm in Parramatta, one of the local government team members there was responsible for this thing called social enterprise. And now I thought social entrepreneurs were people that tried ripping off all of their mates through pyramid schemes on Facebook. Facebook was only just starting to come out at this sort of stage.

But the idea of a social entrepreneur was like, oh, you use social media to scam people or something. But she educated me around that there are kinds of businesses that are actually designed to help other people, that it's not all about making money. And it's different to corporate social responsibility in law firms. We're familiar with the idea that you have a team outing and you go and do something with some charitable group or what have you.

But she educated me that a social enterprise actually has built into its DNA that it's going to do good for the community. So for me, as kind of a geeky lawyer, when I looked at open source technologies, most of the internet is running on software that was developed by people that they then sort of gave away to other people to create an ecosystem that's beneficial for everyone. So I was able to make this adjustment in my mindset to say, okay, well, there is this thing called social enterprise. And when I look back on my life, it's actually at the core of who I am and what I want to be.

But because of my kind of upbringing and the secular culture within places like Australia and Europe, which are very different to the US, there was this sense that I really needed to keep my spiritual life and views and believe very separate from my work. So I should employ people that are going to work on the social enterprise side of things who may not share my faith. And there was an interesting sort of awakening where I realized that I'd kind of got that wrong. And so was this during that time at Collaboratory?

Yeah, I think it was the first time I actually met you, Luke. I went to a conference called Digital Discipleship and I suddenly realized that there was a lot of people who really wanted to share their faith in useful ways. And so I wasn't alone. I shouldn't be shouldering this sort of burden on my own.

And at the same time I went around the same time I went to a conference in America. There's an organization in America called ASI. It's a lot of Adventist business people. Historically it's been very successful Adventist business people who make a lot of money, have a conference once a year.

They have their own local conferences as well. But there's this annual conference in America. And it's like this huge event where you have an exhibition hall with all of these ministries that are sharing all of the great stuff that they're doing in different parts of the world and encouraging the high-ranking people to and encouraging the high-rollers of Adventism to donate to their projects, so kind of the corporate social responsibility of Adventism. And yeah, so when I went along to the first one, it was also a new event had been set up to run alongside it called fruition lab.

And fruition lab was much more the young sort of startup crowd, sort of the people that I've been used to dealing with outside Adventism in my life as an intellectual property and technology for working with lots of different startup types. And so to suddenly realize that there is actually people who have made millions of dollars, whether they're the CEO of Oakley sunglasses or whether they've created or been involved in growing the company red that makes the cinema, the movie cameras that super high definition stuff. But there are always people within Adventism that have been super successful and were wanting to invest back into making the world a better place. But many of them had only seen it from this, I guess, poverty kind of mindset that we're going to give money to the ministry and the ministry, basically all of the people that turn up as ministries.

And I'm going to completely overly generalize here. That's okay. We'll deal with all the hate now later. So there's this kind of sense that if you're in a ministry that you need to say, I'm not paying myself anything and all of the money that you give to me is going to go straight to the people that need it.

And so what that's sustainable. Yeah. I'm about to say that's exactly you're highlighting the fact that, hi, I'm over here and I'm doing something that's completely unsustainable. So I'll only be doing it for a couple of years, but give me money while I do it.

Or I'll look forward to seeing you next year because I'll be asking for that money again. Yes. Yeah. I'm working hard for it and I'll do something else for it.

That's right. Yeah. So you sort of have this scenario of people, you know, they're just doing awesome work and I love working with them and helping them to look at the way that they do mission differently and equally working with business people and say, let's look at how you can do business as a social enterprise, not just as corporate social responsibility and not just as a social enterprise, but as a mission enterprise. So coming back from these conferences, going to the digital discipleship in Australia and seeing that, yeah, there's actually people here in Australia that are excited about, you know, this stuff just made me realise that I needed to bring social enterprise and my faith together.

And that's where I thought I came up with this term of mission entrepreneurship, but it was actually being used by other people in different parts of the world, you know, before I thought I created it. But, you know, it's this aspect that if you're trying to help people who are homeless through your business, or if you're wanting to help people who can't get a job or can't hold a job through your business or a fighting addiction, but you're not willing to share the core element that you think makes the difference, having a relationship with God, with those people, then what kind of business are you running? And both can do good, right? Just sharing about God or just giving people money.

Both of those can do good things, but if you put them together, how much more powerful can they be? Yeah, exactly. So, sorry, you go. I was just going to say, from the conversation that we've had so far, I'm just looking at these broad chapters in your career and your experience, you started out being motivated by, well, you know, if I get this kind of a job that has this kind of income, then I can have this kind of lifestyle that will be fulfilling for me.

And then you seem to transition, your motivations change and it becomes, well, let's think like more social responsibility, let's think about building things that positively affect our communities. And that kind of leads you through the collaboratory timeframe. And then there is this shift that, if I'm hearing right, is what you're telling us about right now, where you move from simply improving our communities to this idea of missional entrepreneurship, where we're not just improving the community, we're unifying those, like previously, it sort of feels like you were saying before, there's this separation of our spiritual life from our secular life. And now you're going through this phase of unifying those two and saying, no, no, no, these are actually inseparable things.

If we operate them together, we can have the kind of impact that God wants us to have. Would that be a fair appraisal of your career span? Yeah, exactly. I think, at the age I was, before social media, BS, BSM, there was this sense that within, for example, the legal community as a young lawyer, we were really focused on social justice issues and things like this.

So there'd be this sense that, oh, if they knew that you used to be involved in young liberals, then you'd be kind of outcast or looked at as some kind of infiltrator. And then if they know that you're a Christian, then they might have other connotations associated with that. So there was this real sense that you needed to segment who you were. And basically, I realized 15 years ago that it was Facebook that saved my faith, in a sense, because it's suddenly, if you have friends, all of a sudden, your friends know you across all of the different things that you care to be involved in and share about.

So you can't have these different personas, as Google tried for the geeks, I'm listening. Google circles didn't work too well, because everyone, it just becomes too hard to manage these little personas that you have. You just have to start to share things and share things authentically. And so, for me, having gone to university, having had these career experiences, I suddenly realized that the language that a lot of people use in church just doesn't resonate outside the full wall.

So it was really looking at how do we tell the story of a God that wants us to get the most out of life here and now. And we're now starting to see, obviously, in Victoria recently, for those in Australia, there was a big issue made of a CEO of a football club there, basically having to quit because he had a role with a church organization that had particular positions on issues that we are seeing these issues come up. And as Christians, it's our responsibility to say, how do we share the love of God in a way that's going to fix people's problems, that's going to share our personal experience, rather than telling people what they have to believe? And I think realizing the whole person experience and realizing God actually wants to make a positive impact in our lives, he wants us to give us an abundant life here and in hereafter.

And when we're just thinking about, do you believe the right thing? Do you think the right thing? Do you just do that? It takes a perspective of, no, God actually wants the best for us.

That's what he's here for. Exactly. Why do you just, some of the comments that have been made, we've been operating on a couple of assumptions that the church is often divorced from the business world. But why do you think that is?

Why do you think that as a church community, we tend to separate those two, rather than seeing how they can serve one another? Yeah, it's really interesting because when you look at our history, the founders of the Sanctuary Adventist Church were really entrepreneurial people, whether it's Dr. Kellogg with the Kellogg's Sanitarium and things like that, whether it's Ellen White with the publishing work that she did. There's this really strong history and it seems that at a certain point, things became sort of institutionalized.

And for me, I guess that's where the church is an institution, the church is a movement. They're separate things and they each have their strengths and have their importance. As a lawyer, I understand the importance of constitutions and these different structures. But equally, unfortunately, as things have grown and there's a church handbook that has this sort of global operation, people of a particular generation who perhaps had that fixed mindset, perhaps had, they were missionaries that were trying to make the most of every post-war or during the war, even my grandfather was out in Vanuatu and these places where they had to repair everything and be very frugal with everything.

So there was a particular mindset associated with, this is the way things are done and this is how you do things very frugally that doesn't necessarily translate into this booming sort of information economy that we're surrounded with now, where there's this exponential growth and huge opportunity. So there was kind of this sense, I guess, when you were growing, the church has grown quite exponentially. So there were career paths that as young people, you could become a pastor, you could become a teacher, you could become a nurse or what have you that you could see that you could make a contribution through the institution of the church, through these fantastic hospitals, through the sanitary and health food company that does amazing work for the health of Australia. But we now get to a point where it's suddenly like, well, there's way more Adventists than there are jobs within Adventism and we haven't developed a consciousness that there are these extraordinary opportunities out there.

I think in Australia, in particular, there's this tall poppy syndrome that sometimes makes people feel like they need to shrink and not have huge aspirations. And for me, going to America and seeing what was being talked about at Prooition Lab to be hearing about these big audacious goals that people have to take and really just reignited in me this excitement that God wants us to understand what it is we could have. He wants us to understand what the problems are in the community around us and He wants us to look at new ways of solving those problems. Now, that might be with my church community, it might be with a couple of Adventist mates that I know that we can start a company and we can fix this problem.

But it shouldn't be a sense that I go to church to pay my tithe and I go to work to have enough money to pay my tithe and my taxes. It's a case of get to know ourselves and get to understand that the calling that we have and it's not a calling that's just externally imposed on us. It's something that is actually an opportunity that God has created within us. That means maybe, yeah, maybe it's great to keep going to that job that you've been doing, but maybe it's now with a different perspective.

Yeah. Yeah. And I like that thinking because people are wired very differently. God has made people with all kinds of skill sets and I think the problem is not that people aren't going into lines of business.

I think the problem is more that what we were talking about before, that there is the separation of the sacred and the secular. And that's what I think is the problem because and I think because of that, we see far less people taking the entrepreneurial path, people that are naturally skilled in that direction, that choose not to because they don't see it as a viable option or they don't see it as an encouraged option. So I think it's a case of evaluating who God has made you to be, what are your personal desires and what talents has he given and then seeing, does that equate to me becoming a school teacher? And if it does, that's fantastic.

But don't discount the role of being actively engaged in something like online. So we've been talking about. As a church sometimes, we haven't had this sense of support, Adventist business that's like you come to church and you focus on church stuff, but there's not really this mechanism for us to share about, well, these are the skills that different people have within our church. And let's try and support each other through the stuff that we're buying so that we're able to help that person have the social outcomes or the missional outcomes that they're wanting to have through their lives and careers.

We tend to say, okay, all of the professional business people, come to all of the church committees, give us all of your ideas for free. We'll then try and execute them without your expertise, or we'll burn you out trying to do stuff as a volunteer. That means you can't deliver to the quality that you would otherwise do that then makes you embarrassed. And we haven't created this environment that says, okay, we're all brothers and sisters in Christ.

And whether this is something that the institutional church should get behind, whether it's something that a bunch of Adventist investors should just say, let's get behind these people or whether it's just some people that have to start their own business. And the funding comes completely from the outside of the church network, but as part of their design, they want to have missional outcomes, not just money. So speaking of that, I know you're associated with Hive and that that's a part of the reason that we got connected again recently to chat about this. How did that happen?

How did you get connected with Hive? And maybe also you could give a short explanation of what Hive is. Yeah, so Hive is an organization of Adventist entrepreneurs. And basically, we're looking at how do we help fix this problem that we've been talking about.

So at the fruition lab conference that I talked about, I met a couple of guys from Germany, Jesse Zicker and Marcus Witter. And they were creating this organization called Hive in Europe so that it could hold events that would bring young Adventist entrepreneurs together where they could pitch their ideas and where they could learn some skills over the course of the weekend that would help them improve the idea that they had. And then at the end of the weekend, be able to pitch their idea again with a panel of investors who could basically pick the best one. And in addition to the prize money that they would get, maybe that if the business was advanced enough, maybe it was beyond the idea stage, it was already generating revenue, then these Adventist business people might invest in the business.

So a bit along the lines of Fartank or those who are from the UK, the Dragonsden kind of TV shows. And so we've basically now looked at that in the Adventist context and said, well, we should probably call it the Lionsden. Oh, that's a good one. Basically now have these pitch competitions as part of Hive events, which are known as the Lionsden.

So having met Marcus and Jesse at fruition lab, they invited me to come across to the first Hive camp that they were going to run to speak there and share my experience. And just from financial perspective and things that were going on in my life at the time, basically the final breakdown of my marriage and I was at a point where I just couldn't go. And so as we were approaching the following year, my marriage had had broken down. I basically had this realization that, God, I really need you to take the wheel as the song goes.

And as part of that said, okay, well, I can't really afford to go to the Hive camp this year and to the fruition lab event this year. As a tech lawyer, as a person who was focusing on the innovation sphere, we've been talking about the sharing economy and Airbnb and these, the Ubers and these sorts of things. And I discovered a Facebook group called Hospitality Seventh Day Adventists. And within the group on Facebook, I encourage people to look it up and ask to join.

You can basically say, I'm going to be in this part of the world at this time. Can anyone put me up? So I thought to myself, and I guess one of the things that I thought to myself is, sometimes growing up, we end up trying to position ourselves so securely that we never give our faith an opportunity to be tested or we're living so safe that we can credit ourselves for all of the successes that we have. And I thought, okay, God, I'm not sure how this is going to work out, but Hive camp is in Berlin on this state fruition lab is in Los Angeles six weeks later.

I'm going to book a flight basically to Berlin, to the US and from LA back to Australia. And I'll leave it to you to guide me in the interim to work out where should I be in the world, what is, when we coach businesses, we talk to them about what's your unique value proposition. So as a human, what is it that I can uniquely do to help people and where in the world am I best placed to do that? So I went on that journey and it was through that process that I really connected very closely with Hive and appreciated the fact that the Hive methodology isn't about just coming together for a weekend and getting all of this inspiration and going away and then having it all sort of fade away.

The reason I created Collaboratory is a co-working space was I was sick of going to these different events where you would get all hyped up and then there would be no support after the event to actually work on realizing the potential. So I saw that having like-minded people like the team at Hive, we could really work together and bring out different skills together to grow a movement that could support people, take the great idea, test the idea and maybe in some cases throw the idea out before you waste too much energy or money on it or in other cases refine the idea or work out who are the other people that you need to bring on board to make it successful. Alright, well just before we wrap up, a couple of practical questions but before I get there, I just feel like I want to finish this story arc. So I know that right now you're in the Cayman Islands.

How did that happen? Yeah, so it's interesting because the intellectual property technology lawyer when you're working with startups who are wanting to have a global presence, you would look at these different jurisdictions that they could operate from and have helped people set up in places like the Isle of Man and I thought to myself, it's freezing cold and terrible weather and I've never been there but that's my perception. If you're going to base yourself somewhere, why wouldn't you base yourself in the Cayman Islands? And I think that's a good thing to do.

I think that's a good thing to do. And at the end of this six-week sort of trip when I turned up at the fruition lab conference, I was catching up with different people and met a guy called Vaughan Henry who's a pastor from the Cayman Island but I thought to myself, what's this pastor from the Cayman Island doing in Los Angeles attending this innovation startup event? And long story short, I came down to Cayman and visited him, discovered that 10% of the population in the Cayman Islands is 7,000 Adventists. So 6,000, 7,000 Adventists here in the Cayman Islands and that's a Commonwealth jurisdiction.

So with a Commonwealth legal background and world place to understand the lay of the land from here. So an hour from the US time zone wise, it's great. I can deal with Europe in the morning, US during the day and Australia during the evening. So it's a fantastic spot to work if you're wanting to help people at global scale.

That's why you're doing a really good job selling me on moving to the Cayman Island. Come for a holiday for sure. We'll blow up the air mattress. Yeah, that sounds great.

It's one of those places that just it has this reputation of being like beautiful but you don't know much about it. And so I was just like, oh, that's really curious. So it's just like Vanuatu or Fiji and many respects for those who are from the South Pacific. There you go.

So just a couple of sort of rubber to the road questions because I know that some of the people that are listening are potentially going to be at places in their life where they're trying to decide what is next for them. And so I would ask you like if someone feels that the path of mission entrepreneurship is something that perhaps they should be pursuing. Two questions. Number one, like how would you self diagnose yourself as prepared for that?

What sort of things, what sort of skills would you say are the most important for people to be on the lookout for in themselves? And and secondarily, what steps would you say would be the first steps to take along that path? Yeah, so I think the first thing to look at is you're wanting to solve a problem that you have personally experienced or that the people in your community have experienced. So is it that you're wanting to do this because you're wanting to solve a problem?

Or have you come up with some idea that you think is the best, smartest, fanciest, coolest thing that you want to patent and it's going to make you million? Because unless you've humbled yourself to test or look at how you might test the ideas and the solutions that you have to answering a real world problem, then you're probably driven from the wrong point. Now, if you're a student or if you're doing a day job and you've got the different thoughts and you're just wanting to explore these things, then definitely we would encourage you to get involved in the Hive community. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, Andrew Perry on LinkedIn and we can help whether it's connecting at an event.

So the exciting thing for Australian listeners is that we've actually got a Hive Australia event that we're running in collaboration with Julian Arch from the South Pacific Division in Sydney, March 24 to 27. So you can come along to that event. It's a place to be. Yes, you should be able to catch.

In theory at this point, we should be able to catch all of us there. So it sounds like it's going to be a great event. Yeah, it'd be brilliant. And then we're also in March also looking at an event in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

So those who are listening in the US could look at coming along to that or also at the GYC conference in the US. No, that's excellent. So we'll add relevant links in the show notes. So if you want to see that, you can obviously jump on our website and catch it there.

Andrew, I'd just like to, if there's, is there anything else that you have on your mind? Anything else people should know about before we wrap up today? Yeah, I guess stuff just like to share a very personal element for me when I was starting to shut down and collaborate through realizing that I had this global, I guess, a different, different future than what I had envisioned. And at the last Sabbath brunch, I shared some of my testimony in particularly around things like marriage breakup, which you can't bat them how these things can happen.

And I'm sure that it's not part of God's plan. And if we look at things like Moses, Moses had a pretty intense relationship with God. There was a time when he was instructed to hold up the rod and talk to the rock and water would come from the rock. But in the past, he had hit a rock, he thought, well, maybe I'll just do what I think is the right thing to do.

I'll hit the rock to try and get the water out of it. And of course, that's not what God had asked him to do. He had some pretty significant consequences he had to face. He didn't get to go into the promised land.

But when we finish reading the biblical account, there's very few people that are with Christ in heaven now. And so we can look back on our life and we can say, look, there are these moments that could have handled better. I don't think whether it's individuals, whether it's groups of people, whether it's relationships with spouses or employers or others, where you will have to live with the consequences of what happened there. But there is an exciting future.

And that's the exciting thing about Hive. And I would hope the Adventist churches, the people who are listening to this podcast, might go to or might choose to rock up to, is that they can be places of healing, restoration and reconciliation, because God wants us to have an exciting future with Him, not just when Christ returns here and now. Yeah. Amen.

Well, that is a great and profound thought to end on. Andrew, thank you so much for not only telling your story, but also being open about the parts of it that are tangled and difficult at times, because I think that is where a lot of ministry happens, when people can see how others have navigated things with Christ. So thank you for sharing and I appreciate it. Amen.

Thank you. All right. We'll leave that there, everybody. Thank you so much for writing out this episode with us.

We look forward to catching you for more episodes soon. And if you're interested in these kinds of things, we hope to see you at the Hive conference. So we will catch you then. God bless and have a great week.

Regular listeners of the show will know that I have a real passion for anything that's entrepreneurial, especially when that's connected with mission or making the world a better place. That's why when we got the call from the organizers of Hive Australia and they asked if they could sponsor an episode of the show, the answer was a straight up yes. So if you're not familiar with Hive, the event will provide opportunities to meet other visionaries, entrepreneurs, missionaries, CEOs, investors, innovators and the like. You'll be able to get the latest updates in marketing, product development, entrepreneurial ministry, attracting investment and scaling your business.

You can even pitch your idea and win up to $5,000. Hive Australia 2023 will be an event unlike anything the Adventist Church has seen here in Australia. So if you want to join me and be there at the event, you can look up all the details and register at the website that's Australia.Hive that's H-Y-V-E.Site. I hope to see you guys there.