How To Hear God and Build a 400 Million Dollar Company!

Lance: Hey, this is Lance Wallnau. I want you to meet one of the great mentors in my life, somebody who’s helped to build and create four-hundred-million-dollar companies and one of the truly great presenters we’re going to have at the Dream Trip this year. Somebody I really want you to meet, Ken Eldred. Ken is going to be speaking on a couple of different themes including hearing the voice of God and being able to establish clear priorities in an age of chaos. What an important message. It’s going to be June 20 through 22nd in Carlsbad. You want to go to “ExtremeDreamTrip.com” because this is going to be one of the best networking and educational events you’ve ever been to in terms of impartation, anointing, and wisdom. The very best that can happen and we need it now because this is game time in America. “ExtremeDreamTrip.com”.

This man is one of the big titans of industry in my life. I was looking for people that have mastery on the top of the mountains and has it. but what’s interesting about Ken Eldred is not the fact that he helped to build the $400 million-dollar inmac company which I’d heard about when I started getting involved with computers and then there was the architect for Ariba technology.Which if those of you that know this the older folks remember this, around 992000 this was a company which had revolutionized the process for payments and stuff and it ended up valued at like a $40 billion. But what I love about Ken is two things. One, he’s smart obviously. He knows business but he mentored me on how to create and which my wife will always be happy for. How to create a way of having balance. I could be an out-of-balance person but he taught me balance isn’t the focus. Priorities are the focus. Ding, ding, ding.

I want to talk for a moment about that and the second thing I love about Kent is he hears God‘s voice and he’ll be the first person to tell you that a lot of his success had been just because went to Stanford. He knows that stuff. It’s because he’s learned to listen to God and probably his wife. So, Ken, tell us a little bit about are people going to love the story about hearing God‘s voice because they start there. That’s why we do dream trips. It’s how to hear God more clearly. When did you start hearing the Lord and how did you and what impact has it had on you as a businessman?

Ken: Before I was actually walking with the Lord I had been in my boss’s office and what he told me changed my life but it wasn’t what you’d expect. He said, ‘Ken, I want you to go from being a one-man band in our corporation which the division was 200 million.’ It was roughly $2 billion dollars today’s money. He said, ‘I want you to go from running that one division activity which is business planning to running all of marketing.’ Which included 350 people or 7 groups. In my salary by 25% gave me an office space and a secretary and I was just over the moon but that’s not what changed me. When I went home that night and I was lying in bed, planning out my life. I was 27 years of age. I’m thinking I’m going to do this and I’m going to do this and I kept changing it and going through it. By about 11 o’clock at night, I was absolutely spent I was tired as a morning. In my mind it reached the age of 60 and I lay there I finally stopped thinking about all this stuff and I was at peace.

When I heard this small still voice say to me, he said, “So can is that all there is to life”. That scared the Torah out of me because I thought this seems so irrelevant. All these things, all these wishes, all these thoughts of what I would do and so what? What if I actually wake up at the age of 60 and realize that I missed it. And I don’t even know what it is that I missed. That scared me and that started me on the road of trying to understand who God is. I didn’t know it was God‘s voice at the time, but that’s what it was. So, I committed my life to Christ over a period of time and it was a real struggle for me because I thought, Lord if you want me to be a Christian that means I’ve got to be a pastor somewhere and more than likely a missionary in a mud hut. I thought, Lord I just don’t want to do that. And the Lord gave me the right words. And it and in a sense because I said to him, the Lord says, it says in your Bible in chapter Psalm 37, that trust in the Lord and part of that is he’ll give you the desires of your heart.

So, I said to him, ‘Lord, if that’s what you want me to do change the desires of my heart.’Because that’s not where my desires are. And I thought that was at the time I thought hm that’s an interesting prayer thought. But actually, that’s really what God wanted to hear. He said but otherwise I accept whatever you want me to do. Because we need to be the first thing, I learned was issue of being obedient to God.

Lance: Yeah, in retrospect now you realize this idea that if you’re going to serve God you got toleave, we all have it. We have to leave the thing that you’re you you’re created to do, capable of doing, and position to do and go to Mozambique or go be a missionary. We have so many stories of people that do it that you almost think that that’s how it happens but, in your case, as in most cases, the Lord just wanted you to reprioritize who he is in your life and you’re called to business, right?

Ken: That’s absolutely right. In fact, I wasn’t quite as sure but I thought, well, I was sitting down with a friend and we were at ideas he said, well, let’s start a business. Because we’d lost in attempting to buy one, which was kind of crazy because we didn’t have any money. But here we’re trying to buy this company, the deal failed. He’s saying, ‘I’ve got half a dozen ideas of businesses we could start.’ And I said, no, I don’t think I want to do that.’ And he said, ‘Well,what do you have to do today.’ And I said, ‘Nothing, I mean I didn’t have a job.’ So, it’s a crazy world. Anyway, so he started going through these ideas one two, three, and he’s on it. He’s about halfway through and I hear somebody say in the backroom, back of the room, that’s it. Just about that loud. So, I turned around and looked to see who was talking. Realized there was nobody else in the room. Just me and Jim. And then I stopped and I looked at him and I realized he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.

Lance: Because he kept on going.

Ken: Because he kept on going. I finally said, wait, stop. Stop. I finally struck me. That’s Godtalking to me. I thought I’ve never heard that before like that but that’s God talking to me. He said, back up, back up. We’re going to do that one. We sat down and over the next 90 days strategize the plan and with $5,000 a grocery bag of connector parts, we built a $400 million dollar business.

Lance: Is that Inmac?

Ken: That’s Inmac.

Lance: Wow. Alright, so I got to slow down and rewind the tape on this. So, he’s going down we could do this, this, this. You have limited startup cap like $5,000 and you hear God say that’s it. Once you heard that said, you still had to do the strategizing and the labor and the work but Godprospered the work of your hands.

Ken: He set us in the right direction and he showed us what he wants us to do, but that’s an important part of the comments I want to make on the weekend dealing with partnership with God. Partnership doesn’t mean he does the work. He’ll lead you. He’ll guide you. He’ll solve problems but you have to be diligent. I mean, perseverance is absolutely critical. Many days I’d come home from work exhausted beat up, my wife would polish up my helmet and my shield and send me back. There were days like that. But early on in my experience I wasn’t sure that I still wasn’t sure that God want me to be in business, because it seems like at church, they screamed at you saying, look, if you’re really serious about being a Christian you become pastor.And many people do that and maybe go into the mission field, because they really feel like that if you’re serious about God because the church didn’t talk about this much. It simply talks about the pastor’s speed really the people who know who God is in that relationship.

So, the company got started. We were up to our eyeballs and debt. The company was only about 7 months old, maybe 8 when our sales were got up to about $2,500 a day. The best day we had and then it was down to $2,300 was an average day, three orders. And of course, our business was such that we want to ship everything same day. If you didn’t have an order that day, you didn’t have business. And of a sudden our order started to drop $100 a day. We got to 2,200, 2,100, 2,000 a day and this just was constant. And it really worried me because I thought we’re right up to hear I mean in debt. We’re committed and yet it’s failing. So, I went home to my wife Roberta and I said to her, ‘I’m really worried.’ She said, ‘What are you worried about?’ ‘I’m worried that I’m doing something that God really never had in mind for me to do and I shouldn’t be here. And I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be here or not.’ And she says, ‘Well, what’s the problem that you’re not sure?’ ‘Well, our sales are dropping.’ She said, ‘Okay, well let’s pray about a sales day. A big day. Seven’s God‘s perfect number.’ Yeah. ‘So, let’s pray for a $7000- day.’

Well, I just about fell out of my chair. I’m the head of the household now. I’m the spiritual leader of the house. I’m a Christian at this point. She is too. We’ve just both come to Christ and I’m saying, ‘How can I pray for that? How could I?’ She said, and before I can finish digesting that, she said, ‘But it could happen once by accident so let’s ask for three of those days.’ Oh my gosh.

Lance: Wow.

Ken: Anyway, I’m trying to process that and she said, ‘Let’s do, let’s spend ten day praying day and night about this and ask God to tell us if that’s what he has in mind.’ Okay, so I thought at least I’ve got 10 days to figure out how I’m going to deal with this. I mean you have to imagine the emotion of all.

Lance: Sure.

Ken: So, we begin to pray first thing in the morning and night before we go to bed and about the 5th day in, I’m thinking, God loves me and he loves everybody and he wants the best for us. So, if this isn’t it, there’s something that’s better and I started thinking, there’s something better that Godhas in mind for me. Don’t even know what that is, but there’s got to be something better. So, I’m kind of thinking, that’s exciting. What an exciting opportunity. I don’t know what that is but I know he has something better for me if this isn’t it. Well, about sort of the 8th day of this prayer time. Why did God choose 10 days? He needed to change my mind and my heart. So, about the 8th day and I’m thinking, oh by the way, every business day sales are dropping $100 a day.

Lance: So, you’re watching the evidence going.

Ken: The wrong way.

Lance: The wrong way.

Ken: And I’m thinking and the Friday before, this happened to be Sunday night. It was our last night of prayer. The Friday before, we’re at $1,600 a day. Yeah. And scary, scary numbers. That night, as I got up from prayer, Sunday night, said to Roberta, I think we’re going to have a $7,000 day tomorrow. And she looked at me. She said, ‘I do too.’ There’s no evidence of it whatsoever. Nothing. Nothing. Get to the office in the morning and I hounded up my four employees. And I said, ‘Today we’re going to have a $7,000 day.’ Talk about. I mean you have to speak God‘s word. If God tells you something you have to speak it. You have to believe it. And so, the three of them. The four of them, the first one sort of the reaction was where I put my resume. Another one says he’s fine cracked, under the pressure because they knew the pressure. They were feeling the same pressure. Another one thought, how can I humor him because he’s got a problem and about that time I said to my customer service rep, I said, if things get too busy for you, just knock on my window. Because I was right there. I could see her. I wasn’t far away and I’ll pick up the code. I’ll take the call. That look on our face was okay.

Lance: Right. The sales are going down. Not like we need backup.

Ken: Well, what Happened was we ended up she’d finished a call taking an order. She’d write up the order and another call came in. And it was just kind of just like that one after another after another. About 2 o’clock in the afternoon. She walks into my office and she says, ‘Ken we could have a $5,000 day today.’ I said, ‘No Nancy, it’s going to be a $7,000 day.’ She looked at me and says, ‘It’s like I gave you a chance to get out of that crazy number and you still refuse.’ Well, 5:30 in the afternoon, we get our last order. It came from Hawaii which is three hours different timing so it’s earlier in their day and they placed the order. Well, we were all excited. We couldn’t wait. We’re a computer industry company. We don’t have a computer. We got a 10 key adding machine. So, she’s busy adding up all these orders. And she does it twice without looking at the totals and looks at the red totals and the totals were $7,000.

I was just so blown away. I was so excited about it. I called Roberta. I said, ‘Guess what happened today?’ She said, ‘I know you had a $7,000-day. Now, come home. The kids need you.’ Went home the following Monday, had another one, the following Monday after that, had another one. Went right back down to $1,600 a day at that point.

Lance: Wow.

Ken: I didn’t care. It was okay because what I knew was that God had me where he wanted me to be in business. And it’s so important to know and confirm your calling that you understand this is where God wants you because you’re doing what God has called you to do.

Lance: What is the Barna data on this? We were talking about this earlier on people clear on their calling.

Ken: Yes, it’s amazing. I’m shocked but I’m not surprised. Only 10% of those people who call themselves Christians and are have a biblical worldview. Yep. Know what their calling is. Have a clear indication of what that is.

Lance: And what percentage of them are engaged in it.

Ken: Only half of them. So, that’s 5% of Christians are engaged in their calling. It’s no wonder that the country has problems, because people aren’t doing what they’re called to do. Instead, Paul talks about two things. He talks about good works and charitable works. We’re so busy doing charitable works. We miss the good works that God prepared for.

Lance: What’s the difference between a charitable work and a good work?

Ken: Charitable work is something that you see a need and you fill it. Somebody calls and says, I’m hungry, you feed them. It’s going to need a cup of cold water you give it to them. I’m short 100 bucks, would you help me out? Those are good, those are charitable works. But is that what God called you to do in your life? And what’s interesting is that from a platform point of view God puts you where he wants you as a platform from which to leapfrog into the thing that he’s really called you to do as a part of what your platform is. Example would be Paul. Or Saul and Barnabas spent 13 years in Samaria and Judea sharing the gospel with mostly Jewish people. At the end of 13 years, the Holy Spirit said, now set aside for me Saul and Barnabas for the work I have for them. I thought that was the work they were doing. No, no, no that was a preparation.

The work was to speak to and to build the church for the Gentiles across the world. If he had known that beginning, he probably wouldn’t done it I mean just to realize. But and so most of us don’t understand that the work that God gives us is a platform from which we are to do the work that God has called us to. It’s a little bit different.

Lance: So, there are people that are working and pursuing the call of God and then there’s this moment like in Acts was it Acts 13 set apart from me Barnabas and Saul for the work that I’ve called him to do. When you’re in the work you’re really doing what God predestined you to do and only a small percentage of Christians evidently get into that zone.

Ken: And that is the good work.

Lance: And that’s the good work.

Ken: We’re also called to do charitable work. We’re do both.

Lance: Sure.

Ken: But not to let the charitable work get in the way of the good work.

Lance: Yeah, because the good work is the strategic work. Like Paul says this one thing I do. He at least was clear on the one thing that he was called to do that he had to do.

Ken: He sets that out so beautifully in Romans chapter 15 verse 16. He said, “I was called to be a minister to the Gentiles”. That he would present them acceptable to the Holy Spirit.

Lance: Interesting. Well, we only have 8 minutes here. It’s amazing how the time flies. Let’s talk about the big challenge. Christians don’t know about their calling and I think I pastor for 20 years so I have my fingerprints on the crime scene. What we taught for years. I came out of business answering the same paradigm you had. Well, I felt guilty in business. My dad owned the oil company and I felt like I have to leave it as a sign of devotion to Jesus. So, I left my dad’s oil company to go plant churches and so off I went and my dad thought I lost my mind because I was doing so good in the oil industry. We had a Fortune 500 company. It was great and I left it as a sign of dedication. Well, when I get out there in the church world, I realized that well here’s the paradigm I’ve got. You business guys have the money. We are the priests. They set apart sanctified seekers of God.

So, we’ll get the vision. You got the provision. You get the provision over to the vision and I’ll build us a big church and we’ll both get rewarded together. That paradigm has been in America so baked in that then when I came out of that and realized there’s 7 Mountains and you got callings for Christians in business and government and journalism and arts. Oh my gosh, we’ve messed the whole thing up because we’ve got everyone out there that’s not in a pulpit thinking their job is to get behind the pulpit. But the pulpits aren’t changing America. Churches aren’t tackling the gates of hell are they, Ken?

Ken: If you think about it, it’s like the field of dreams. The movie if they build it. If we build it,they will come.

Lance: Yeah.

Ken: Churches seem to be focused on bigger and better locations for their churches and if they build those churches they will come to the church. And they will build the Church was never designed to be built that way. The church was designed to be built by disciples who went out and changed people. Very early on, Jesus said to disciples, okay, I’m sending you out two by two to different cities. Not to individuals but to different cities to change those cities. Stay with an individual and bless that house, but share the gospel. If they don’t hear you. Shake the dust off your feet. Go to the next town. It was always a concept of bring together a broad group of people. Well, a tribe if you wish. Well, there’s tribes in business. There’re tribes in education. There’re tribes in government. And each of these are tribes that we need to be changing as opposed to getting away from.

Lance: So, going into all the world would mean going into that business mountain and beginning to bring the kingdom of God somehow there. Thy kingdom come. Into the business arena. Into government. Into law. I don’t think that’s our paradigm.

Ken: No, and when we use the word world, the first thing we think of is this globe. No, it’s worldly life that’s going on around us and to go into that worldly life and change it.

Lance: Alright, so give me a quick synopsis on the whole, we’re talking about by the way they just discovered Melchizedek’s throne. Believe it or not they have excavated the city of David and they believe they have a 5000-year-old sighting of the original throne of Melchizedek.

Ken: Wow.

Lance: Which would be where Abraham met with Melchizedek. It’s interesting that God is revealing it right now. That’s being excavated in the old city of David. Melchizedek a forerunner of a king and a priest but really that’s the model God had in mind all along, isn’t it? Yeah, first Peter 2:9 talks about a royal priesthood. Well, that is the picture when Jesus came, he was fully man fully God he was royal being a king and he was a priest. And he worried about him he looked at and he concerned himself over the economy, the culture, the over. Yeah, we talk about Ecclesia and Ecclesia we think translate as church. It’s really all the things that are going on in life. If you think about the Sanhedrin, they concerned themselves on everything that was going on in life. They understood that part. They just didn’t understand how it was supposed to be done. And we too need to be focused on all things that are going on in the world as opposed to becoming isolated inside the church to build something big inside the church.

Lance: So there ain’t no doubt about it man. So, I look at what happned in academia. Troy Kirk turned me out of that. He said whatever’s happening in the campus in one generation in one year is going to be on the street in the next. And man, the radicalizing of those campuses happen and next thing you know, Antifa and BLM is in the streets. Then, we’re looking at culture entirely being taken over from Wall Street to, you see the advertising thing going on with Bud Light. I mean, it’s woke has penetrated every single mountain of those 7 Mountains. Maybe it’s even penetrated the church to a degree, because leaders don’t want to talk about controversial subjects. When we get together for our Dream Trip, Ken is going to be there. You’re going to be teaching. I just want you guys to hear who he is because you’ve got insight on kings and priests. You got insight on gates and gatekeepers as well and hearing God‘s voice and it’s a practical’s kind of thing because you’re doing as a businessman. You’re also doing as someone who convenes and leads other families and businesses in making a difference. Give me a quick summary as to what you’ve learned about gates and door in terms of the gates of hell.

Ken: Wow, that’s an interesting subject. I started looking at this gates, because of a verse in Genesis chapter 24 verse 26, which says that Rachel who’s the picture of the church, maybe the mother of thousands of tens of thousands which means discipleship.

Lance: Rachel or Rebecca.

Ken: Sorry, Rebecca.

Lance: Okay, I just want to make sure I got my right Jewish wives down here. Rebecca.

Ken: Rebecca. She’s architype of the church.

Lance: Okay.

Ken: And the second part of it was and may your descendants which shows after you build disciples you then send out these disciples or descendants to possess the gates of our enemies. And when Jesus talked about gates, and by the way gates are mentioned, gates and doors are mentioned over 400, almost 500 times in the scripture. I mean there’s something really there that seems to be missing that people have missed. And Jesus the gates of hell will not prevail against the Ecclesia. The gates have been held by our enemies, God‘s enemies for a long–long time.Satan understands that’s how you control the culture and when you control the culture you take it. What we’ve done is we’ve looked at that we’ve said, no, we don’t want to be in that. We don’t want to be around that it’s evil it’s ugly it’s nasty I’m going to be in the church. And when we do that, we take out the fragrance of Christ in that marketplace or in that education world and as a result we lose all rationality.

The rationality is based on truth and truth only exist through God. And truth only comes to people through the hearing of God‘s word. And if they don’t hear it from us, they end up doing crazy stuff like we see today. It’s not surprising.

Lance: Not surprising at all. I want to make sure we get the dates for the Dream Trip up there on the screen for everybody. If you haven’t taken action yet, you want to go to Dream Trip what is it? Lancewallnau.com/DreamTrip” to be able to check out the dates for the next one in Carlsbad.And you also teach annually. You have a tradition of teaching at Stanford University or Stanford grad, right? So, this is a big deal having Ken come out and share some of the secrets that he’s learned about mastering the business mountain hearing God and he hasn’t even gotten into the main message which is the one he’s coached me on which is how to live the life of ultimate balance by understanding your priorities. That’s a power revelation itself. But go to “Lancewallnau.com/DreamTrip”. Check out this this powerful get together. We only get together with 200 or 300 people, because the networking and the ecclesia building itself together is what we’re focused on.

We do events with thousands. This isn’t one of those. This is an event which is deliberately a little more exclusive so the right people show up. You don’t want to miss it. We’ll see you again in the next program.

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