← Going Big! with Kevin Gentry
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In a society where our life expectancy is long enough that we might have this period of time where we can celebrate the end of our lives with a 20 or 30 year vacation, and because we have the material prosperity in society that many people are able to achieve that, we now talk as if the point of work is to not have to do it anymore.
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Welcome to the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and this is the place where we celebrate bold moves and big ideas. Each week I sit down with inspiring leaders, entrepreneurs and change makers who are making a significant impact in their careers and in their communities. Whether you're looking to level up your leadership, pursue your passion, or just get inspired to take your next big leap, this is where those stories come to life. Now, if you're listening on iTunes, YouTube or anywhere else you tune into podcasts, be sure to hit that subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode. Now let's dive in to what it means to truly go big.
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C
Well, welcome to another episode of the Going Big Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Gentry, and I'm so pleased to have as my guest today David Bonson. David, as you may know, is the founder and chief investment officer of the Bonsen Group, which is a nationally prominent wealth management firm. Manages over $9 billion in assets. That's big enough for the Going Big Podcast. But what really has intrigued me is how David has utilized his platform to wrestle quite publicly with issues around work and wealth and relationship and meaning. And you may know him from his many media appearances. He's written a number of bestselling books. But what's really interesting about how his worldview has been shaped by his faith and his look at vocation. So, David Bonson, it's a real pleasure to have you today on the Going Big Podcast.
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Thank you so much. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure to be with you.
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C
All right, so right out of the blocks you've built this firm where you're managing over $9 billion in assets, yet you talk a lot about the meaning of work. And for some, that may be a little hard to reconcile. I kind of get it, but I'm really intrigued. What is the point that you really want us to begin to address as you bring this insight into the public space?
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Well, the reason that the importance of work, the dignity of work, the concept of productivity matters so much to me is off the top, not related to financial ramifications. Now, all of these things integrate with financial reality, but as a starting spot, whether people are very financially comfortable and Independent or not, I am making the claim that people were created to work, that there's something inerrant in our humanity about being productive and contributing with output. And so it is not a financial element, which is the way many of us in post war society in the west have been taught to think about work, that because we have ended up in a society where our life expectancy is long enough that we might have this period of time where we can celebrate the end of our lives with a 20 or 30 year vacation, and because we have the material prosperity in society that many people are able to achieve that we now talk as if the point of work is to not have to do it anymore. And it isn't just the retirement ethos, but it is for many young people the belief that, oh, work was this thing I had to do to pay bills. Work was this thing my parents had to do to feed me. There are pragmatic realities that exist around work. But there is the point that you're asking me about why I care so much about this topic, which is that useful, productive contribution to society is in my mind the greatest formula for people to live flourishing, satisfying lives that itself is disconnected from the mere economic implications.
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C
Well, you know, you bring up an awesome point because, you know, we have. It's quitting time, thank God, it's Friday. This idea that work is like, oh, you know, it's Monday, Monday morning, you know, there's songs, popular culture, we put work into this kind of necessary evil and then everything else is the positive. And retirement, as you say, you know, we look at who, you know, we're done. But you've actually been pretty outspoken to say work is, is the meaning of life. What? There's a lot to dig into, but, but even just comment on that a little bit more because this, it's, it's a pretty radical thought.
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Yeah, it is a radical thought and it is not a provocative thought. What I mean by that is I don't say it for the purpose of provocation. It's not a clickbait attention grabber. What I mean by it is literally true, but requires a theological context. It requires me to make the case from my own belief system about why God made the world and why God made us in the world. And from that it's really a very easy story to tell. When I say work is the meaning of our lives, I start with what I believe about the origin of mankind and that God made man to be in his image. There's this really unique and elevated and dignified status that Mankind has that the raw materials of the world do not have, that nature does not have, that the animal kingdom does not have, the plant kingdom, that there's this beautiful world out there, but only one actor in the world who was made with the image and likeness of God, made with souls that could never die, that has this sort of vibrancy and capacity. And when I talk about work being the meaning of life, all I'm doing is looking to the genesis of our lives and understanding that we were made to be fruitful, to multiply, to fill the earth, to care for the earth, to rule over it. That what we share with God as His image bearer is his productivity, his creator capacity. Now, we can't create out of nothing, but we create out of the things that God made. I think that that's the really proper framework for understanding what it is to say that work is the meaning of our lives. And that's going to lead to a lot of beautiful things. Because once we have established that basic framework, then we get into the individuality of mankind, that God made us all different in terms of our skills, our talents, our hopes, our dreams, our passions. And now what that means is totally different things for different people, but all with a focus on participating in life, not merely being a consumer in life. That is the economic framework that so many have adopted. That we essentially have about half of our society that are productive people. Some of them are going to go chase their dreams and feel really good about themselves. But. But, you know, about half of us are just sort of meant to consume, to receive from the spoils of other people's productivity. And we'll be satisfied in our lives too, because we'll go to the mall and we'll buy toys. And I believe that consumption does not fill our souls the way that production does.
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C
All right, Fascinating stuff. There's so much to dig into. Okay, so your most recent book, which is Full Time Work and the Meaning of Life, I noted in the you dedicated to your father. Let's get a little bit personal. I want to learn a little bit more about your journey. Who was your dad? It's obvious in the manner just in which you dedicate it, he had enormous importance in your life. How did he influence your views?
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Well, what I talk about in the dedication is two different elements and I really would have a hard time picking which one was more important. But I think that both are worthy of being shared and I really appreciate this question. And my dad died when he was 47 years old. It was his third open heart surgery. And he just had struggled throughout his adult life with a heart condition, and he didn't make it out of the third surgery. And I was only 20 years old. But in those 20 years, I got to see him model and live out this unbelievable work ethic, this unbelievable discipline, a personal discipline, a passion for what he did, that joy came out of it. He had a hard life in ministry and career, but he got joy out of doing it. He was a very scholarly person, a very disciplined academic, a renowned Christian intellectual, and even though God took him home early, he modeled a real spirit of work ethic and joy around it. Okay, so that's the biggest thing any parent can do, is model it. Living a life in front of your kids of constant discontentment with work is modeling something different. But then in addition to modeling it, I got this free inheritance from him of the teaching, the ideology, the philosophy that I'm kind of sharing right now is my dad taught me that these things were. So he. Where I came up with this sort of creational understanding of work, the kind of theological framework about why God made man and what that meant for mankind's destiny and purpose. These were a byproduct of a teaching legacy I inherited from him. So I got the best of both worlds. I got the teaching from this really smart man, and that same smart man modeled it in my life. And that was the reason that I dedicated the book to him. And it's to this day, he wasn't in a position in his life to leave a financial inheritance, but he left me something far more valuable.
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C
Well, you know, just researching a little bit ahead of our conversation. I wanted to know a little bit more about your dad. And I did not appreciate what a prominent and important biblical scholar he was certainly in the area of apologetics, which is not a well known, well understood area, and just the consequential nature of his work at a full contribution in life and then to pass away at 47, it's just extraordinary. And I don't know whether there's any more you want to comment on about the biblical scholar nature of his work, but I think it's helpful for our audience even to look into more of what he was able to achieve in his time here.
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Well, thank you for saying that and doing that. I appreciate it. I agree. I think nobody can ever. People always say, I'm such a fan of your work, and I was a fan of your father's work. And I always say, well, now you've found the smart bunts. And apologetics is a very important field And a biblical worldview is a very important thing. And so my dad is a philosopher. His area of focus was what's called epistemology, a theory of knowledge. And I think that it's important for believers to have a better understanding of why they believe what they believe. And the thing I would, I guess, say, since you invited me to add a little to it, is he died in 1995. He never wrote a book with Windows, with Apple, with the operating systems we have now. He never had the Internet. He never had, obviously, social media, cloud. So the work ethic that he was able to do in his limited period of time to produce the level of scholarship he did is amazing in and of itself. But when you think about it being in almost like a pre modern, I mean, obviously he wrote with electricity, but his first couple books were written on typewriters. So I'm just in awe, having now written a few books myself with the advantages of technology, it's incomprehensible to me what he did in a pre Internet world.
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C
All right, well, I want to continue this particular foundational element and then take it into some of your work today. But, you know, just recently I had Arthur Brooks on the Going Big podcast. He has this new book himself about how to live, you know, the meaning of your life. How to live a life of meaning. He touches on it in a different way. He talks about how faith is very important, but he has a particular perspective. You do, too. There's a lot in conversation about this today. What is something that you think a lot of people get wrong when they hear you talk about finding meaning through your vocation and through work?
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Well, I think that a lot of people get wrong in their own belief about work, that it is something that is done transactionally, that the good that comes from work exists outside of the work. Where my argument is more akin to Pope John Paul the Great's argument that work is a transitive activity, that work matters to God because the worker matters to God, and the subject being served in work matters to God. So the line between the object and the subject must matter to God. And I think that too many people now, and this is even more prominent, unfortunately, in evangelical circles, view work as something that is important because it pays the bills or because it can help finance other organizations or ministries, or because it can achieve something. In other words, they take on almost externalized utilitarianism about work that I think is very problematic. Now, if what you mean is something people get wrong in their understanding of my belief, I think that often people will say that what I'm doing is condoning workaholism. What I'm suggesting is that workaholism doesn't exist, that there is a. When people will say someone is working so much, they're ignoring their family, the error there is not working too much. It's ignoring your family. Okay, where with alcoholism, which is the prefix and suffix, you know where this term will come from. And we'll start calling things holic like workaholic. The sin and error is not merely the bad things that come from it, but the thing itself, the excessive drunkenness, the abuse, the addiction. Those things are inerrantly problematic. Where with work. It isn't that I'm condoning ignoring one's family. I'm vehemently opposed to ignoring one's family. I'm vehemently opposed to idolatry. But the error is the idolatry. The error is what you might be ignoring in other elements of your life. Where we now talk as if work is this boogeyman that is there, creating conflicts and problems in our life, when in reality, I believe work is there as this fundamental blessing and source of dignity and Arthur Brooks's nomenclature of earned success. So I think we have the target wrong. I also happen to not believe that the prominent error we see often in faith communities is people that are just working too darn hard. I think the more prominent thing we're dealing with in today's society is people that are too removed from their work. But. But hopefully that gives you a little taste in your question of both where I think there are errors in this subject and where people might misconstrue errantly. My own. My own beliefs.
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C
All right, so comment a little bit more on the idolatry part, because I actually think the workaholic thing is a poor term. What do I know? But it's not the addiction. It's making it an idol. But yet, on the other hand, what you're talking about is contribution and gift. I mean, the talents you've been given, these gifts. And we're all trying to find our contribution, and that, in a way, is living out what God has blessed us with. Can you kind of go through a little bit more of that? I think that's something that we all struggle with.
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A
Well, let's first of all be clear about the idolatry component. If someone were to say, david, do you support work as an idol? My answer will be no. But I would like to then further say I also oppose everything as an idol. Anything. Tim Keller's Language about a counterfeit God, something that we have put in our life that we become undone if it is gone. And so where people turn to idolize money, where they turn to idolize their own achievements, when they idolize their children, when they idolize a romantic partner or a life mate or their friends or a activity, I don't know that work itself is as common of an idol as some of those other elements. The Bible certainly speaks a lot more about money being an idol than work itself. But it doesn't matter. I'm against any attempt to have a God before the one and only true God. So once we have established that idolatry is universally problematic, then we have to look at how we define work as an idol. And if we define it as an idol merely because one is passionately engaged in doing it, I disagree. I think it is when one is using it as a substitute to the proper worship and relationship with God. And I think that a mother who does that with her children is wrong. But I don't believe the children are a sin. I believe that a husband who is so head over heels in love with his wife that he's idolized her, put her on a pedestal in an unhealthy way, I think he's wrong, but I don't think marriage is wrong. So I think sometimes people in the faith community have a very convenient way of picking on idols, because we all should. Because we all are opposed to idolatry and we all are First Commandment Christians. Thou shall have no other gods before me. But work sure seems to be the one people focus on the most. And I'm not convinced that it's the most prominent error that we run into. And that's why I think that we have to kind of have a little more self awareness in how we wrestle with these issues.
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C
Okay, well, I want to dig in a little bit more to the tension that does. I totally agree with you. That does indeed exist in aspects of the faith community. And now your prominent on media many times, most of the times, for your views on the economy, markets, the Bunsen Group is enormously successful. We're talking about finance. And yet the Bible says money is the root of all evil. And that can also influence those in the faith community that create this tension with respect to work. Obviously this is not. You have a different perspective on that, but speak to that because I think it's important for somebody in your position who has your views. I don't think there are radical views, but there aren't many people who speak out in the manner that you do speak a little bit to that.
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Well, let's first of all correct one thing. The Bible doesn't say that money is the root of all evil. It says the love of money is the root of.
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Thank you. Thank you. Good challenge. Thank you for that connection which goes back to idolatry.
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That's right. And so I appreciate you connecting it there because that's where I was going that the. Look, the love of money and an idolatrous relationship to manna, which is the biblical metaphor often used, is one that is a constant in scripture. And you can see after the fall in a, in a sinful world why it is so alluring for people to become dependent and, and fall and believe falsely that they have a ticket to happiness that doesn't require God once they've achieved some financial well being. And this is not new. It didn't come about with the Internet. It didn't come about with the Gilded Age. It didn't come about with the industrial revolution. It didn't even come about with free market, free enterprise capitalism. It existed in the Old and New Testament of a very, very pre modern world that people have long believed that they can utilize financial well being as a substitute to a relationship with God and a dependence on God. I believe that we can hold these things in the proper biblical tension. And in fact I don't just think we can. I think we must all at once rejecting. And I wrote a whole chapter in the book about this, what is really just rank Phariseeism that says I believe too much money is sinful and the right amount of money one should have just so happens to be exactly at the line of what my own prosperity has commanded. So now I can live a very convenient and comfortable life. But I'm not as rich as that guy. And that guy is obviously where the problem is. And Christians do this all the time. And it drives me bonkers. I think there are people of very limited means that have an unhealthy relationship with money. And I think there are people that have significant prosperity that have a very healthy relationship with money. But at the root of it is humility, it is rejecting pride, it is rejecting idolatry, but also recognizing that if we're going to thoroughly adopt and understand and wrestle with, as you and I are now, the biblical teaching on the love of money, we must also thoroughly interact with the biblical teaching on money as an incentive, as a healthy incentive that when in a market economy we can generate profits and growth by serving others, by meeting, by making goods and services that meet other human needs, that this is a commendable thing. And so the Bible becomes almost incoherent if we want to say that money is a bad thing. There are so many references, allusions to the idea of money and profit as incentive, as reward. But tempering that, as anything else in the Christian life must be with the fruits of the Spirit, with the right moral framework, is the need of the hour. So I all at once want to promote, and I mean vigorously promote, an entrepreneurial pro wealth viewpoint that is wrapped in the biblical teachings about morality, about character, about integrity, but recognize that the profit motive creates a better standard of living for others, it facilitates human flourishing, and yet has a spiritual connotation to it as well. And for whatever reason, many have decided these things are very hard to hold together. I believe walking and chewing gum is not as hard as we have made it out to be.
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C
All right, okay, this is great. So, and you've hinted at this already, but you've obviously addressed a lot of the tension that is then among Christians on this subject. But in the broader culture, these ideas, these things also create a bit of a different tension. Some similar, but different. You hinted at it earlier, but where do you think so many people are today, broadly outside of faith with respect to the meaning of work?
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Well, this is a very interesting thing because I am one who believes that most of the time when you look at key moral, social, cultural issues in our adult lifetime, I've seen the world, the culture around us go in a bad direction on an issue and then the church is better, but ends up playing catch up to the world, unfortunately. And this issue about work has been fascinating to me because I would have said that I mostly grew up in an evangelical world that I think was wrong about work, had an inappropriately low view of work, but that the culture around us, the DNA of the American spirit, was much more pro work, that it celebrated risk taking and pioneering and entrepreneurialism. And yeah, there's always been faculty lounge progressive socialism, and there's always been covetousness and resentment, but that by and large, our society has celebrated a good hard work ethic. And it's been rooted in the DNA of our country since its founding. And I fear that some of this is changing, that it is moving to a point that is problematic. And this was really the catalyst motivation to me writing the book the COVID moment and our society's adoption at scale of this concept of the non essential worker that we had because of a medical situation or health related moment, that it was Time for us to identify. A lot of people had jobs that were essential, but a lot of people's jobs just weren't essential and we were okay to classify it as such. And I'm sorry, I vehemently disagree that there is such a thing as a non essential worker. And I believe that all workers are essential regardless of how one wanted to apply it to public health policy. My point is the language itself undermines the biblical teaching. God does not believe there are any non essential workers. So when I see in the public policy realm suggestions for a 32 hour work week, or for universal basic income, or for other things that are all geared towards making more and more people not turn to work, when I see in the culture and media this notion that we have a mental health crisis and we have a lot of antisocial behaviors with depression and addiction and that getting people to work less would be a solution, I think we're dealing with an entirely different American relationship to work and it has to be resisted. I think that the solution to our mental health problems and young people that feel isolated or alienated is more purpose, more work, more endeavor. Arthur Brooks has done some of the best work on this out there. I think that the basic creational understanding I'm proposing is all at once a spiritual, emotional and economic solution to so much of what is plaguing the American society today.
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C
Well, thank you for speaking out on this, by the way. Writing on it, but also speaking out. Okay. But there's another tension I want to introduce in here that I think naturally comes for those of us engaged in business. And that is, have you confronted a situation where you had a smart business move that perhaps was different than the right moral move? And how do you address that? How do you reconcile it? What do you do and what would you advise to others?
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Well, I would advise that people not compromise their morals for their business. Now, what I have not ever run into is a situation where I had to do something wrong. There's always a choice. There's no question that if someone can commit fraud and not get caught, they will be better off financially and compromised morally. And if the only barometer to avoiding immorality in the marketplace is fear of getting caught, it's only pragmatic, Then what people will eventually do is focus their energies. It would be entirely rational to do so. Once you've committed to such an amoral framework, they would commit their energies to how to do the bad thing without getting caught. Where my argument is that not only does getting caught doing something bad undermine your business well being your commercial endeavor, your freedom and happiness, but that it is undermining of your own soul, that there is essentially anti creational component to working against the betterment of those around you and that this is embedded in God's ethical expectations for us. So we get to, we don't have to, we get to choose every day to do what's best for our business. By choosing what's best for our neighbors, that we serve those around us, we build a better framework for our employees, for our vendors. And that does not mean that we're running our businesses as charities. However, that your question was the ability to do something absolutely wrong, immoral, sinful, and in those cases, if the question is really as simple as what would I advise others to do, it would be to always resist the temptation to do what is wrong and ultimately they will find that this is best for their business as well.
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C
All right, well that bleeds into another subject that you've written about and that is responsibility versus blame or taking responsibility versus blame or perhaps even more broadly, you know, we talk a lot now about agency and then victimhood. Is that also an issue that you see that is serious in society? And does it relate to everything that you're talking about here?
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It's the subject of the very first book I ever wrote, Crisis of Responsibility. And it is in my personal opinion, now at this middle age stage of my life. My observation, my commentary is that I think it is the most prominent problem in society, that it is bipartisan, it is not something that one political party has a monopoly on. It exists in the church, it exists outside of the church, that there is something incredibly soothing to people to blame others for their problems. And there are moments in which we are legitimately aggrieved, there are moments in which we have been legitimately wronged. And yet to lean into an ethos of victimhood I think undermines our agency and it is counterproductive to our own well being because it facilitates a self fulfilling prophecy where we then now try to live life from the posture of being a victim. But there are also a gazillion things in which we were not legitimately wronged, but we play into it or exaggerate it or maintain it in a very, very unhealthy way. And it undermines the entirely biblical notion of agency. We are looking for some institution to be responsible for what's long in our life. We're looking for government, we're looking for big business, we're looking for media. There are culprits that are easy to identify. And what they do is they have a macro validity to it, that without any specificity there's a lot of sympathy to say government has really created some problems. You know, a big bad company has really created some problems. And yet then the ability to connect those dots to the micro from the macro, the micro. Where in my own life and journey have I been forced down a fatalistic path that I cannot break free from because of some bad government policy or some big corporation or whatever the case is, the fact of the matter is that two things are abundantly true at once. That in a macro there's a lot of big organizations or institutions or whatnot that might do bad things. But that on the micro, none of us are enslaved by those things that all of us have the ability to overcome. And it becomes impossible to overcome when you capitulate to the enslavement. And it is a self induced enslavement. And so I vehemently oppose, on totally selfish grounds a ideology of victimhood. Because I don't want to live my life that unhappy. I've had some very, very difficult things happen in my life, but I believed and was proven right in this, that I could be better, I could have better than the worst things that happened to me. I think that's true of all God's people, that all of humanity has the ability, some are going to have tougher cards than others. I recognize that I don't say it without sympathy, but this crisis of responsibility is a major issue and it's a mentality that has to be overcome.
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C
Well, what happens to our society or our culture if we don't?
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It's what's already happened, that what we do is get into a never ending game of blame casting. And so then we become tribalized, we become polarized, we become separated because a bunch of people lined up on one side, they listen to certain podcasts, they watch certain TV shows, they have a certain framework and they're all united in what the bad people are on the other side that are responsible for their problems. And so let's just say in this reduction that there's a lot who believe big government has created all the problems. But then there are others who would say big business has created the problems, or big pharma or whatever the case may be. As if we don't have the ability to make decisions in our own life, our own health and wellness, regardless of what a big pharmaceutical company might be doing. As if there aren't options in the marketplace outside of what a big corporation might be. Doing even myself as a center right, limited government conservative. I'm a real Reaganite guy. Politically, I've never believed that big government fatalistically left me without options. They make me overcome more than I want to overcome. But this is the crisis of responsibility that I think we face. And it has led to a separation in society where we're really not that far apart. We all agree that the problems in our life are someone else's fault, but we disagree on whose fault it is. And then we end up polarized around that dividing line.
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C
Well, David, you hinted at something, and if I could be so bold and make this personal, are there one of those circumstances in your life that you could share that were tough but help make you better?
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Well, I think that there's a real biblical precedent for this. And, and one of my favorite passages in scripture and stories in scripture is Joseph being sold into slavery. And you say, how could that be one of your favorites? What an awful thing to happen. Can you even imagine being sold into slavery and let alone being that, that happening at the hands of your own family, your own trusted loved ones? And yet what he said was that men meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And I did not have this clarity when I was going through some of the difficult things I've gone through in my life. But with the gift of hindsight, we understand that with perseverance, with faith, sometimes some of the most difficult things in our life can lead to some tremendous doors being opened, opportunities, blessings. And I don't think we get a chance to taste that or experience it or appreciate it if we capitulate to the crisis of responsibility that I'm referring to.
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C
Well, sadly, we need to begin to take this interview to a close, but I want to bring it to the point of more insights and recommendations and advice that you might offer to those watching or listening around the world about how they can live this life of meaning. You've given lots of great things about how we should think about identifying our gift, finding our vocation, how we should see that. But first, you mentioned, of course, the influence, the extraordinary influence of your father. Are there other people who have been influential in your life that we might take a lesson from? I've had Father Robert Sirico on this podcast who's amazing, and I know you've been a fan of his over time. I don't want to suggest to any particular people you and I met through Tim Bush, the amazing businessman who's been very active for his Catholic faith. Anybody that you might mention, besides Ronald Reagan.
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A
Well, I would say Father Rico's been a tremendous influence in my life and I do believe his teaching and his, the way he's modeled so many of the things he believes in terms of Catholic social thought is inspiring. You know, I do think, even though it's not my father, that many people might find one of their best accesses to a mentor influence in their own family community. Many do not. And obviously those situations are very sad and challenging. But we would be a healthier society if that strong family unit was reaffirmed and reiterated and there were more parents worthy of being a mentor to their kids and more kids, including adult kids, that viewed their parents in that role. So sometimes the people that have been most influential in my life, you know, Ronald Reagan was someone I adored as a president and agree with so much, much of his political philosophy and historical achievements, but I didn't know him. He wasn't in my life. If I had had a breakup with a girlfriend when I was 19 years old, I couldn't have gone to Ronald Reagan for advice on it. Right. There's a subsidiarity in this of local bottom up friendships, relationships. You mentioned Tim Bush, who is a client of mine and a business partner and so forth. People have folks like that in their life often now those who have achieved a certain degree of business success have a responsibility to be a mentor. I don't like the expression giving back because I don't know that they stole anything from someone that they need to go give back. But I do agree with giving, giving of their time, giving of their advice. I'm in a position where I've had a very successful and fruitful career, but, but I did not do it alone. I went to folks in a younger stage of my life. I was a sponge for information, for counsel, for direction, for wisdom. And I think that those of us who have been blessed have a responsibility to be that sponge to that source of information that others can sponge in, if you will. So that's the best advice I have. Do not go it alone. Find a mentor. Find multiple mentors and there's a lot of safety and a multitude of counselors.
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C
The Bible says, well, David, you're still a young man. I'm guessing you're one of your early 50s. Looking back at a 20 year old version of yourself, what would you advise that younger self to have done any differently, knowing what you now know in a way, of course, that we can benefit from that. From your own personal wisdom.
- [43:33]
A
I advise all young people to make good decisions, recognizing that the Consequences of bad decisions sometimes can set you back much further than you wanted to be humble. There is a sense of pride where one wants to be treated the way that they want to be, but they're not there yet. And so there can be an insecurity. I struggled with that in a younger phase of my career that I wasn't yet where I wanted to be. And so I tried to overcompensate for that insecurity with ego, and it's unhealthy and unnecessary. Everyone will get to the place they're supposed to be in the right time. But then, most importantly, just celebrate the fact that it's about the journey and not the destination. This is very Arthur Brooks message. People don't always believe me when I say this, but some of the greatest memories in my life were a point in the business that was far more vulnerable and insecure and problematic and stressful than it is now. There's almost a sense in which that journey of trying to make it was more rewarding than even having made it. And, and, and you, you won't necessarily appreciate that till it's too late. Just lean into the present because it is what is about in our professional lives, in our personal lives, just truly absorbing the blessing that is every day. And I am blessed that, honestly, I really do wake up every day, extremely, extremely excited to be alive. And I hope that for everybody listening that they can in their young years wake up. Even if your career is not where you want it to be, your relationships are not yet where you want it to be, wake up, excited to be alive, and then go take action towards having the life you want to have in the life God wants you to have.
- [45:35]
C
Well, David Bonson, I'm so glad you agreed to be on the Going Big podcast. You're perfect for the theme and objectives of this and really appreciate all that you continue to do and the manner in which you speak out and live your life, your public life as well. Thank you for joining us today.
- [45:51]
A
Thank you so much for having me and all your kind words, and it's really been a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
- [45:57]
B
Thanks for tuning in to the Going Big podcast. I hope today's conversation left you feeling energized and ready to tackle your biggest question goals. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps spread the word and it gets these inspiring stories out to more people. You can also find more content, resources and updates at our website, goingbigpodcast.com Remember, the only limits are the ones you don't challenge, the limits that you impose on yourself. Keep pushing, keep growing, and above all, keep going big. See you next time on the Going Big podcast.