Justin Forman: As welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. It is a gift, as always. It is to be with you and it’s fun to see. This is a time when the movement gathers from far and wide and it is just a gift to see how God works. I think I was saying recently that sometimes I felt like growing up that the Holy Spirit was kind of this retired author. And yet I’ve come to realize that he’s writing bestsellers every day in the way that he works, the way that he connects. It’s just a very, very beautiful thing. And so friend of the movement, partner in the movement in different places and different ways that we’re going to hear about. Nona Jones is here to join us. Nona, welcome to the podcast.

Nona Jones: Hey, thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be here.

Justin Forman: Yeah, it’s such a gift. We’ve heard from so many different friends of the movement and different people from Ubers and other things, and we’ve heard about the books and we’re going to talk a little bit more about that later. But we love hearing a little bit of a sliver and a slice between just kind of how God works, what’s the winding moments and those turns in the journey. So who are you and where do you come from.

Nona Jones: Man? Okay, so let me start with the way that I describe myself is I am a statistically improbable product of God’s grace. If you’ve ever heard of, there’s an assessment in the social sciences called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Assessment. And what it does is it takes a child’s experience of trauma and it gives the probability that that child will have adverse outcomes in life things like premature death, incarceration, drug addiction, system dependency, etc.. And it’s on a scale of 0 to 10, and a child who scores a three is considered very high risk for adverse outcomes. Well, when I took the assessment, I scored an eight.

And so when I think about the life that I’ve been allowed to live and afforded by God, I am truly a product of his Grace had a pretty tumultuous childhood, a lot of abuse and dysfunction. My father passed away shortly before my second birthday and was raised by a mom who had some mental illness. And despite that, you know, God truly rescued me. I was about the age of 11 when I was first introduced to church and the very first sermon I ever heard the pastor preach that God is a father to the fatherless. And so that kind of changed the trajectory of my life, because before that time, I had been acting out in school. You know, the things that were happening to me at home just made me an angry kid. But after really discovering who I was in Christ, I just kind of changed my behavior because I wanted to make God pleased with me, frankly.

So ended up doing really well in school, graduated from college, entered into corporate America, and within about a year, I was appointed to an executive leadership role with a really large for profit corporation. But it’s a national corporation. And I was about 23, and I think that kind of placed me on a trajectory of corporate leadership because from that point I was either recruited to other organizations to lead various teams, and ultimately I ended up at the company formerly known as Facebook, now known as Metta. I was leading the global faith Partnerships team there, and I was with the company for about, I don’t know, almost six years when I really just got to a place that I wanted to bring everything I had done, everything I had learned, everything I had built, I wanted to bring it to ministry.

And so I reached out to a friend of mine who is the CEO of YouVersion, which makes the Bible app and just kind of said, Hey, if there’s some way that I can serve the mission, listen, I’m all in. I’d love to do it. And so I was able to be on that team for about a year in a leadership role there. The Lord just kind of called me away from that because simultaneously I’ve been, you know, speaking. I travel around the world, I get to speak about business and leadership, and I also talk about my faith pretty openly. And that just got to a place where it was kind of a fork in the road, You know, it’s like I was full time speaking and full time leading a team and you kind of can’t do both and be a wife and a mom.

And so I’m very fortunate. I still get to serve the mission of YouVersion as global ambassador. And right now, I’m actually I think we were just talking about this before hopping on here I am building a new company called Inside Out Leadership, which is going to be focused on helping high capacity women of faith in the marketplace live their life both on purpose and healed. And so I’m really excited about the trajectory my life has taken because now I get to bring everything I am and everything I’ve done to the work of helping women leaders live in purpose.

Justin Forman: I love that. I love how we were talking earlier just about how like seeing the Spirit, seeing Holy Spirit working in our lives and the little winks and those turns in those twist. How have you learned to look for those? Because, I mean, you talk about the jumps in the moments that you’ve had in that journey right there. How have you looked through it and what do you feel like you was saying to you in this last turn?

Nona Jones: Wow. You know, it’s it’s hard to notice what you’re not looking for. And I want to start there. Her because I think sometimes we can get so heads down in the work of building a business or, you know, scaling a team or whatever we’re doing that we can actually miss the working of God in our lives because we’re not looking for it. We’re so focused on what’s immediately in front of us that we may not see, you know, the ram in the bush over there to the left, right.

And so I think that it’s really important to just have a posture of sensitivity to the spirit. One of the things I do every morning is part of my prayer is, Lord, make me aware of your voice and your presence. Like, make me aware of that. And so there will be times where I’ll be in a conversation with somebody about something and they’ll they’ll say something that will cause my spirit to leap inside of me. And I’m like, I need to listen to what they said and I need to be like, very sensitive to what they’re saying. And it has happened that the very thing that they said became a seed that caused me to make a decision that ended up being a blessing. And so I think it’s about just having that posture to really expect the working of the Lord in your day to day. And then you can become sensitive to that. But I think you have to start with that expectation.

Justin Forman: So, man, what a powerful place. I mean, looking for it because entrepreneurs were trained to look for things, right? Were trained in so much else of our life that we’re looking we’re on the hunt. We’re looking for opportunities where we’re keen and we looking for things are broken so that we can fix them. Yes. But why is it that we aren’t looking there? Is it We’re running too fast. Is it we’re looking to achieve and other things? Where do you think that is? That we get off track, that we don’t look there?

Nona Jones: So as you said that what came to me is I think a lot of it is fear, because we become afraid that if we miss an opportunity, that that may be the only opportunity or we have a fear that if we don’t move this fast, that somehow somebody is going to overtake us. And I think we have to remember that the Kingdom of God does not operate by fear. It operates by faith. What does faith mean? Faith means that I place my resources. I place my time, my energy, my talents in the hand of God. And I trust that his omniscience is going to produce what I never could in my own intellect.

And so I do think that we have to counter fear. Whenever that fear rises in you and you start to think, I have to do this thing, because if I don’t, something will happen, right? We have to ask ourselves, do we truly believe that God owns everything? Because if it is true that God owns everything, then we have to remember that we serve the God who spoke into nothing and created everything. And so if you live a life that is defined by fear and is led by fear, you will always miss the voice of God and you will always miss the move of God because you’ll be so focused on what you’re afraid of instead of being able to simply rest in the fact that God is your provider and he’s not going to let you fail. Why? Because you are literally his representative to the earth. And so when you succeed, when you prosper, you actually bring him glory. And so I think you have to just rest in that and have faith in God’s provision.

Justin Forman: And so true. We were in South Africa, a friend that we were talking about, the entrepreneurial wounds that we’re carrying, and just how often times where, you know, they often say, are you running to something or are you running from something else? And I mean, it’s that tension in the entrepreneur. If we cut ourselves open and kind of looked at the day like, I think we would see that oftentimes that like, we’re missing it because we’re so quickly running, running, running, running, that we aren’t seeing what’s right there in front of us. So, I mean, that really drives into this. And you have such a unique perspective of this because God’s opened doors and given you some unique experiences. Is it possible kind of in all of that to really be, you know, knocking down doors, breaking through the force fields, pursuing those things as an entrepreneur and kind of have that balance of being like rooted in your identity? I think in like in the faith and work conversation, like oftentimes people as entrepreneurs, they’ll say this conversation of work life balance makes sense for like people on staff in a company. But man, when you’re blazing trails as an entrepreneur, it’s maybe rhythms, it’s maybe circles, it’s not as neat and is even so, we know it’s possible. But what does it look like to really kind of walk in a place of confidence but also be fueled to kind of chase big things, go after things. What does that balance look like to you?

Nona Jones: Well, I think this gets back to really being able to discern the voice of God, because when you know that God is calling you to something. And let me also make a distinction. You can either be called or you can be driven. Those are two very different orientations when you are called. There is a grace that. It actually enables you to do something that other people probably wouldn’t be able to do. There’s a grace that will sustain you so you’re not going to get burned out. You’re not going to have anxiety. You’re not going to be depressed, like I can tell you.

It’s taking a lot of work to to build my company at the same time. There’s so much grace on it that it’s it’s like I heard it said once that vision is not something that happens while you sleep. It’s something that keeps sleep from you. So when God gives you vision, he’s going to give you the grace to pursue the vision so that you don’t lose everything in the process. And I need to be really clear. Sometimes what’ll happen is we will be so driven that we will sacrifice what really matters in the long term for what’s important in the short term. And then we get overwhelmed. We’re anxious, we’re depressed, we’re discouraged.

But I think about success this way. Success does not have a period and only has commas. So no matter how much you achieve, there’s always going to be someone who’s achieved more. No matter what you do, there’s always going to be someone who has done more. If you win, let’s just say you’re a musician and you win the Grammys this year. Okay, great. You got a Grammy. Guess what? The Grammys are happening next year. And so there’s never going to be a moment where it’s like, my gosh, I can finally rest. So you have to surrender to what you’re called to and what you’re called to. Maybe in the opposite direction from what you’re applauded for.

This is a really hard concept for an entrepreneur to grasp because we tend to go after the thing that we think will give us validation and affirmation. The thing that will make people be like, my gosh, they’re amazing. But it could be that the thing that you’re called to is something that people don’t really care about. So it’s like, Yeah, it’s cool that you’re doing that thing over there, but it’s not bright and shiny. The question is, are you graced to do that? Are you okay with not getting the applause, not getting the celebration, but knowing that you did what God called you to do and you’re making the impact God calls you to make? I think if we don’t get that balance right, we will end up being driven in our identity will become secured to what we’re driven to as opposed to the God who called us. And I think that’s where we start to have some identity challenges.

Justin Forman: So one of the things we’re hitting in is some of the stuff from your book of about comparison. And like, you know, I think we’re all susceptible to that. We’re all, you know, whether whatever the social platform is that you’re on, you’re always looking at something and the gift of connection and the gift of technology. The downside there is that comparison element. But in some ways you look at entrepreneurs from the outside and you say, they’re so confident. They’re so driven, they’ve got this, you know. But they’re always saying something to somebody and it masks that. Do you think like, what’s the key for this entrepreneurial breaking of that comparison? What’s the detox move, if you will? Like what’s that like detox move to kind of get us away from it.

Nona Jones: So in order to share that, let me first be vulnerable. And vulnerability is actually my ministry. Like, I love to really help people understand that you’re not alone in this, because sometimes what keeps us in bondage to comparison is that we’re not even honest about the fact that we do it.

So back in 2020, you know, I had two books that we’re going to be releasing that year. I had a full calendar of speaking engagements, and then the pandemic happened and I started to see events get postponed and canceled. And I remember one day I was about to log on to a video conference for work, and usually in the morning I would go on Instagram. I would kind of respond to comments before I got started with my day. I would never really look at my newsfeed because that’s like that’s just like a rabbit hole that’s going to just suck you in.

So I wouldn’t usually look at it, but that morning I caught a glimpse of my newsfeed and I saw a friend of mine making a post about her being so excited because she was going to be speaking at this virtual women’s conference that normally met in person, but it was going online because of the pandemic. And she was like, It could be tens of thousands of women watching. You got to get registered. And I remember looking at the post and I was like, that’s like really cool. You know? My first thought was, Wow, that sounds like a really great event. Well, I scroll down some more. And another friend of mine made the exact same post. Like she was so excited because she was going to be speaking at it too, and encouraging women to get registered going to be so huge.

And I saw and I was just like, okay, that’s that’s cool. I scroll down a little more and there was another friend making the same post, and then there was another and another and another. And it got to the point that I realized I knew all of the speakers and I knew the event host like all of these people, I knew them. And so I started to click on people’s profiles because I was wondering, I was like, Well, why wasn’t I invited to speak? You know, like the host knows I’m a speaker, like these are my peers. Why wasn’t I invited? So I started clicking on their profiles and I was trying to figure out how many followers do they have in comparison to me. Then I started to click on their websites, you know, Well, where else were they speaking in comparison to me?

And I started to do just all of this, what I call a. Paris and calculus to try to figure out, you know, why her, not me? What did they have that I didn’t have? Why was I not left out? Why wasn’t I chosen? And then in the midst of me asking all of those y questions, I heard the Holy Spirit say, No, no. Why does it matter? And that was a question that, you know, we’ve all had those moments where we’re like, gosh, why wasn’t I chosen? I was. And I selected and I never asked, Why does it matter?

So when the Holy Spirit asked me that, my answer was, well, it matters because this is a huge event and I won’t be speaking at it. And there’s like these tens of thousands of women who will be watching it and I won’t be speaking. And the Holy Spirit said, No, no. Do you only think you matter based on the speaking invitations you receive? And I was like, well, no, you know, like I know I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. I’m a royal priesthood, peculiar people. I start to like, rattle off all the scriptures, you know, before I was formed in the womb, this whole thing. And the Holy Spirit said, No, no, your problem is not what you know in your head. Your problem is what you believe in your heart. And because you do not believe in your heart. What I have said about you, you are insecure.

And that was such a profound revelation for me, because if you would have said to me in 2020, none of your insecure, I would have said, you are lying. Like, look at all I have, look what I’ve done. But in that moment, what I had realized is I was insecure. Because when you think about what it means to be insecure, it means that your identity is secured to an insecure foundation. And I think as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as people who are building things that other people may deem worthy or valuable, we have to be really, really careful that we don’t allow our identity to get secured to their approval or their opinions because people’s opinions change like the current of the sea. And so I think as as entrepreneurs, we just have to know that because we have been called to whatever it is that we’re building, our identity has to be secured to the one who called us. What does he say about us? What does he think about what we’re building? About what we’re doing? Because when you secure your identity to the unchanging evaluation and assessment of God, the same God who said that when you were my enemy, you were worth dying for. Like that. Become such an anchor for our identity that I think the detox is when you really know who you are and you see somebody else who appears to be more successful than you. Instead of taking that as an indictment on my worth, I just celebrate them. Let’s ask them what God is doing for you. That doesn’t take anything for me. Your win is not my loss, your successes, not my failure. Because I’m in my own lane and God has called me to my lane.

Justin Forman: Now, I love the thing when you talk about like the celebration, like because I think whether it’s a detox move or it’s a creative resistance to that, it’s like a force field that if you put it up a little bit, it allows you to just not entertain that rabbit hole of negativity. I think that like celebrating and championing we’re great at a kid’s sports, We’re not great at it when we get older, but like, if we can really find ways to celebrate what God’s doing there, it keeps that stuff from creeping in. So I love one of the things of what you’ve often talked about is and I think that what you’re saying is like, you know, there’s two particular things in content in books that you’ve written about the comparison side, but then this idea of a gift that most entrepreneurs would probably never see it as a gift at first, maybe ten years later, maybe 20 years later. Hindsight gives us some lenses to see it. But this idea of a gift of rejection, what did that mean for you.

Nona Jones: Man? So let me just say that I share the sentiment of everybody. Like, how can you say rejection is a gift? This was not something that I just pulled out of thin air. This was truly a revelation God gave me. And I’ll give you just some of the theological grounding for this. I was in the book of First Samuel chapter 16 one day, and I was just reading and I’ve read it many times. This is like, you know, David and I was reading about David and Goliath. This is actually first Samuel 17, and David said something really interesting, and for some reason it just caught my attention.

So he tells Saul, Hey, you know, let nobody lose heart on account of this uncircumcised Philistine. I’ll go fight him. And Saul is basically like, You can’t fight him. You know, he’s been a warrior since his youth. You’re nothing but a young man. Like there’s no way. And David makes a statement. He says, I have been keeping my father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear would come and take one away, I would attack it. I would kill it, and I would rescue the sheep from its mouth. And then he said it was the hand of the Lord who protected me from the poor, the lion in the poor bear, and the Lord will protect me against this Philistine. Like he will be like one of them, basically.

And when I read that, I thought that was interesting. I was like, So he felt like he could defeat Goliath because he was fighting off lions and bears by himself. But then you go back one chapter, go to first Daniel, 16, and you find that the Prophet Samuel told David’s dad, Jesse, to bring all of his sons to a sacrifice because God told Samuel that he had chosen one of Jesse sons to be the next king. Well, Jesse brings seven of his sons to Samuel. He brings seven and Samuel looks at them and he’s like, The Lord hasn’t chosen any of these. Are these all the sons you have? And then Jesse is like, they’re still the youngest. He’s out in the field tending sheep.

And it was funny because it was like, Well, Samuel said, Bring all of your sons. Seven Got the memo when you were asked, Where was the other one? You knew exactly where he was. So it wasn’t that he wasn’t there because you didn’t know where he was. It’s because he wasn’t invited. And it just so happened that that youngest son was David. And so when I kind of tied the ends together of the story, what I realized was David had been left out in a field by himself, the ten sheep. But that became the training ground for him to ultimately defeat Goliath. And so as I was reading that, I heard the Lord say that rejection is a gift and that you have to change the way that you look at it, because the pain is not a gift, Right? But the pain is just wrapping paper. There’s a gift on the inside. There are lessons that every rejection can teach you about yourself, about others, about God that can ultimately serve your purpose. And so I wrote the book because I just wanted to equip people on how to open the gift so that it ultimately serves your purpose and helps you build the character and resilience that you need to live the purpose for which God created you.

Justin Forman: I love it. I love the tie to like I mean, when I sit here and I think about, you know, being early 40s and you sit there and you think you’re 20s, you’re, you know, you’re charging the gates, you’re just knocking down things, you’re just in fiercely throws. You probably don’t realize the hurt you’re causing yourself or maybe the people around you. And then you get in the 40s and like, I was having this conversation with our men’s group here earlier this week, it’s like at some level, like somewhere life slows down a little bit to just be able to see the thing behind the thing. I think that I’m like, for me personally, just getting to that place now where you’re seeing that thing behind the thing. And I think that at some level it’s like it ties back to that idea of like hearing God whisper earlier. Like when I think about like my 20s, the Holy Spirit was a retired author. Like there’s something in those 20s, the late 20s, where you’re just running so fast that as you said earlier, you needed to look for. It wasn’t looking for things. You start looking, you still doing some things for you. You kind of get into this moment here that I think it comes back to the very thing. And what you’re saying is like if we realized earlier what we know now and that God was speaking to us, he’s always been speaking to us, He’s been in the whispers, He’s been in the big things, the small things, and see the thing behind the thing. It’s just it’s so interesting in the pace of the entrepreneur, those early stages, we’re just running so fast, it’s hard to see it. It’s hard to listen to it.

Nona Jones: Yeah. And I’ve been there. Like you can get so focused again. You get so focused on what’s right in front of you that you can miss what God is doing around you. And so even in the seasons where you do, you move fast, you move quick, we have to make space and it’s something we have to do intentionally. We have to make space for the Lord to show us what is he doing. And that’s also one of the things that I am really trying to do through this idea of the gift of rejection is I’m trying to equip people with a framework that they can use in the middle of rejection.

Like I think many of us can look back on rejection experiences and we can see now that it ultimately served us right. But when you’re in the middle of it, you’re like, why is this happening? I have just really quickly story. So the reason why I’m even a speaker today is because of rejection. I was working for a global company and I wasn’t hired as a spokesperson, but I was doing an internal presentation one day and the communications team saw me give the presentation and they were like, you know, we get invited to do conferences and events all the time. You’re a great speaker. Would you be willing to, you know, become one of the speakers for the company? And I said, you know, sure, I’m happy to help.

Well, I start going out and speaking at conferences and events, and I guess I did a good job because they sent me out to more and more. Well, performance review season comes around and my manager, she said to me, she said, You know, this is not really part of your core work. I need you to focus on your core work. You’re not doing any of the speaking anymore. And I was like, Well, is there something I’m not doing that you need me to do? Because I got an exceeds evaluation. And she was like, No, no, I just need to kind of shut that down so you can focus on your core work.

So I go to the communications director and I’m like, You know, what’s going on? And she said, Well, your manager came to me and said that she wants to be the one speaking for the company, not you. So I was like, I remember being so disheartened by that. I mean, I really was because I had never thought of myself as a spokesperson, but I started to love what I was doing. And so the thing is, though, because I was going out and speaking so much, people were emailing me, inviting me to speak at more events, and I told them, Hey, I can’t speak for the company anymore, but I forward this to the communications team. And they said, No, we want you like, can you just speak as you? And I was like, I don’t think so. I said, But let me ask.

And so I asked my communications colleague and he was like, well, if you don’t use your. Company title or the company name. You can do what you want to do that’s on your own time. And the thing is, when I was speaking on behalf of the company, I couldn’t get paid. So suddenly I’m now speaking as known as Jones, Inc. and I can get paid. And I got to the place where I was making as much in speaking fees as my corporate salary, all because of a door that she closed. That was so painful to me in the moment. But I can look back on it now and I can see how God’s grace and favor actually used that as a redirection into a purpose for me. Because if she hadn’t done that, I would still be speaking for the company today, most likely, you know. But God has used even that to position me for purpose. And that’s one of the gifts I talk about in the book is the gift of rejection. It positions you for purpose, but you have to have eyes to see what God is doing in this situation instead of taking it personally.

Justin Forman: I love that we love a good framework and love that idea of like the position for purpose that the rejection in that position for purpose. I love that. So most people I mean, when you would look at something being a part of you version, being a part of the great work of that, I love the language that you’re sharing is we before we came on, just about how God called you into that and just kind of that analogy. Can you share that with everybody here? Because I think that’s beautiful because sometimes we think like with a human mind and just as you said that like it, surely he’s not call me from here to there. But I love how God was speaking to you in that moment.

Nona Jones: Man. So I was in leadership at the company formerly known as Facebook for about five years. All my fifth anniversary. I went before God and I prayed. I was like, Lord, you know, because the average tenure at what’s now met is like eight months. And so me being there for five years, I was like, you know, o.g basically of there longer than 99% of the company. And I just got to a place where I was like, you know, I’ve done a lot. I’ve learned a lot. I’ve built a lot because I started to feel like unsettled. I did. I felt unsettled. And I said, Lord, whatever you have for me next, I really want it to be ministry. Like, I want to bring everything I’ve done and built and learn to your kingdom explicitly.

Now, I was doing that in kind of an adjacent way, like in a peripheral way, like I would consult with churches and speak at church conferences and all of that. But I was like, No, I really want to do this in explicit way. And so I remember, you know, fast forward, that was August of 2022. Fast forward to November of 2022. Mark sent an email to and I didn’t email, but he sent a calendar invite to all of the executives at the company and invited us to a random meeting. Just it just said meeting with Mark. Like that’s all they said.

And so we’re in the meeting and he says, you know, tomorrow you’re all going to receive an email telling you who on your team is being laid off and had absolutely no idea that that was coming at all. I had not been asked who on my team I would let go like none of that. And so I felt in that meeting, though, I felt a release like I felt in that meeting that God was like, Your time is up here. Because I couldn’t even imagine. I was like, What am I going to tell these people? Because I didn’t know this was coming.

So the next day I spent maybe, gosh, 15, 16 hours just on the phone talking to people. And it was truly one of the worst days of my life. And I’ve had some pretty bad days, but also one of the worst ones because there was no explanation. But that same day I reached out to Bobby at YouVersion and I, I knew because I already knew that I was going to transition away like I knew that. But I was like, okay, if there’s a way for me to serve the U.S. mission, like, let me know whatever that looks like. I’m happy to do it because I believe in what you’re building. And so, yeah, I was very fortunate to get called into that team to be able to support the mission and bring some of the thinking from, you know, big Tech to you version, which was amazing.

And then about, I don’t know, ten months into that role, I was in prayer one day and the Lord, he said, I’ve called you to be a light and dark places. And frankly, my corporate background, I was always bringing Jesus. I was always bringing the gospel into those dark places. And so it’s like a full circle moment where now he’s sending me back into the corporate space. But by equipping women leaders in the corporate space to live out their faith and live on purpose and heal. So it’s been a blessing.

Justin Forman: I love that analogy. There was a conference that we did a couple of years ago with Faith Driven Investor, and they’re a friend of ours. So Jorma that talked about this idea of like, yes, the power of a light in a dark room versus a power of a light in a bright room, a room that’s already bright. And that’s not to say that I mean, it’s a beautiful body of Christ that God calls us, and that different places and different ministries and different things. But I love the visual of that because that visual is very much what every Faith Driven Entrepreneur is doing out there. They’re bringing light to dark rooms. We bounce from room to room. Some are darker than others, but the light that we’re bringing might be oftentimes the only light that is being invited into those spaces anymore. I mean, these days, the business. People are some of the few people still being invited into this room. And we’re not turning to the church’s society and culture in the way that we had in the past. And that visual of bringing light to dark places is a really powerful thing.

Nona Jones: Well, you know what’s happened over this last year. So I’m, you know, serving as a global ambassador, you virgin. So I still get to support the mission in that way. And God has been calling me into spaces that have been quite surprising even to me. So there’s a magazine, national magazine called Black Enterprise, and it’s really for entrepreneurs and C-level executives, predominantly black companies and or black executives. And they invited me to speak at a summit that they have. And they told me they were like, you know, you’re the first preacher that we’ve invited to speak in this space.

And so here I am in this room of like 4000 women executives, and I’m talking about Jesus in a very like a very clear way. You know, I was not couching anything. I was I was talking about Jesus. And then I got invited also to deliver a keynote to a very large national bank. And, you know, in the conversation, I’m talking about Jesus, you know, And so people were coming up to me afterward, even people who are not Christian, but they appreciated what I said because it wasn’t proselytizing, but it was just being honest about my faith. And so I thank God for those moments because you’re able to take the light of Jesus, the light of the Word of God into places where his name isn’t normally mentioned. And to do it in a way that doesn’t offend people. But it plants a seed. And that’s really, I think, the blessing.

Justin Forman: Yeah, I love what you’re saying there. The honesty, the authenticity that you’re bringing when you’re speaking authentically about Jesus. It breaks through. It is that light, the grace. You and I love how you started things off earlier and you said, Hey, before I talk about fear of rejection or the blessing of rejection, like the silver lining that let me confess and be authentic about where I was coming from and what a powerful thing that is in today’s kind of polished world. So as we kind of come to a finish here and love for everybody to know a little bit more about what you’re up to. And I think part of it is because it’s something that we’re going through when we think about Faith driven entrepreneurs ship is oftentimes we’ll see a video that’s very inspirational. We’ll hear something, we’ll see the grit, the story, we’ll get in a group and we’ll go through a course or a study like a Faith Driven Entrepreneur course. But I think one of the things that we’re appreciating is as you go through those journeys, oftentimes you need a good framework and you need this idea of thinking about a coaching and a process to kind of really kind of make this stuff stick. So tell everybody about what you feel like that God’s leading you to next.

Nona Jones: Thank you so much. First of all, this has been such a blessing and a highlight of my day. Right now I am building an organization called Inside Out Leadership. I’ve been a coach for women leaders for many years, but it’s been kind of, I would say, more like ad hoc. But I’m actually building an organization that the explicit mission is to help high capacity women live on purpose and healed. And those two pieces are important because what I have found is that a lot of times executive coaching is really all about how do you do the thing? But I believe we have to get to the place of why do you do the thing before we get to hell.

So, for example, I gave the example earlier about, you know, time management, like we tend to as women leaders, we’re always trying to maximize our time and we’re trying to figure out what’s the system that we use to get the most out of our day. But the question is not how do you manage your time? The question is why do you say yes to things that you know you don’t have the capacity for? What is it that is making you believe that if you say no, that something will go wrong? Like, let’s deal with that because there are some heart and some mind implications. It’s not just about the strategy of time management. It’s also about helping you heal from perfectionism, like helping you heal from the idea that if I don’t say yes, people won’t like me. So that’s what I’m building with Inside Out leadership. I’m just so excited about it. To be able to come alongside of women at all levels. So not even just executive women, but independent contributors, you know, women who just want to get more out of life and they know there’s more potential that they have than they’re living in. So I’m excited about that. And then being able to bring that framework into corporations, which is another kind of extension of this idea of being light and dark places to serve women within businesses and how they can grow both on purpose and healed.

Justin Forman: I love that, ma’am. So beautiful. We still are wrestling with this with the Faith Driven Entrepreneur side of things as a ministries. You know, oftentimes when we talk about discipleship, we talk about clear cut principles of stewardship versus ownership called to create all these different things. And yet we know that the entrepreneurial journey is full of adversity. And people are saying, man, I’m struggling with with cash flow, I’m struggling with my pipeline, I’m struggling with whatever it might be. And I think that we can’t ignore the fact that you said they go hand in hand because when you get about. Two inches deep underneath some of those questions, there is still some other underlying questions of do you trust me? Are you really seeking my approval or are you seeking somebody else’s approval? What that balance is and and I think it’s a bullivant like we’ve got to, as you said, we’ve got to treat the inside. We got to treat the outside. But we have to recognize the relationship between the two of those. And one of them oftentimes is just an entry point into the other conversation.

Nona Jones: That’s absolutely right. Yeah, I think we spend a lot of time on the things that are urgent, but the thing that’s most important is our emotional, mental, spiritual, psychological well-being. And for whatever reason, that’s the part that we say, I’ll get to that later. But that’s the foundation. Like if you are not well inside, if you’re not well inside, it honestly doesn’t matter what you accumulate around you. If there’s a deficit within you, like it becomes a vacuum. And so I believe that when Christ said that I’ve come that you would have life and have it more abundantly. He meant that we would live a life that is fulfilling, that is exciting. And so I feel so bad when I find entrepreneurs who just are constantly discouraged and feeling like a failure. And I’m like, That’s not God’s will for your life. And so my hope is that people will experience the healing that is in, number one, knowing who you are in Christ, but number two, living on purpose. And to me, I think that’s the goal for all of us.

Justin Forman: That’s awesome. Well, one of the traditions we have here that’s going to sound like a softball question about you version, but it’s really a question that we ask all guests is what is a particular verse? Is there a particular passage? Is there a piece of scripture that is coming uniquely alive to you, speaking to you in the season as you start this new venture? Is there something that is really speaking to you?

Nona Jones: I would say Philippians four and six, you know, be anxious for nothing but an everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. And then verse seven says, And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. God helps me to focus on one word in verse six that I had kind of sped over for years because we say like, well, don’t be anxious, just pray. What it says is pray and supplication with Thanksgiving. So what that means is we have to continuously take inventory of the goodness of God in our lives because anxiety is worry about a future that we don’t control. That’s what anxiety is. But Thanksgiving, what Thanksgiving does is it forces you to remember the goodness of God in the past, in the present. And so when you remember the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God in the past and the present, it makes the future worry small. Because you remember that God has been faithful, God has been faithful. And so that’s what activates the peace of God is Thanksgiving. And that’s what I’m focusing on now.

Justin Forman: Gosh, I love that. One of the things we said earlier, it’s a detox move. It’s a resistance. It’s a one of those things that keeps it at bay. And I love it. And gosh, there’s probably 2 or 3 more podcast episodes in that. But we’re going to we’re going to lay in the plain here. But I have a feeling that we’ll do some more of these down the road, but not I So grateful for you, grateful for the way that you are leading, the way that you’re challenging. Just grateful to be on this larger mission together. It’s a gift to have you join us here today.

Nona Jones: This was such a blessing. I’m grateful for you. I’m grateful for the ministry that you have and just the people whose lives are being impacted by the encouragement that’s offered on this platform. So I’m just honored to be a part. Thank you.

Speaker 3: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you. With content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There’s no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven Entrepreneur dot org.

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