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Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Veteran, Honey Mogul, I Am Second Founder – Now Fighting for Clean Food | Ron Simmons & Nate Sheets
00:11:58
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Transcript25 lines
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A
Foreign.
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B
Nathan Sheets to the Relatable podcast. And I know you'd much rather have Ali doing this. I get it. But I'll. I'll have to be second fiddle today. But. So thank you so much for coming on. I know you've got a limited amount of time. You're a busy man right now without, with Governor Abbott traveling the state. But what we wanted to do, and we're interested, of course, in what's going on right now in your candidacy, but I wanted to also give you a chance to talk a little bit about your background. Nate, just give us just a, you know, a couple of minute overview of, of, you know, the Nate Sheets first early growing up story. Where did you grow up and maybe your parents, that type of thing?
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A
Yes, my. I. My dad was an Air Force pilot, and so we moved every two years growing up all, you know, always on Air Force basis of, up. Up until high school. But my parents actually met in North Texas. My dad had just gotten out of the Air Force Academy and met my mom when he was up in Sherman in flight training. And my grandfather had been the Sherman band director for 55 years at the high school up there. And so our roots were always in Texas. I'm a fifth generation Texan, but grew up, went to high school and down in Hays county, down south of Austin, and went into the Navy the day after I got out of school to pay for college and came and went to Southwest Texas State University and then moved up to Dallas. Yeah, moved up to Dallas.
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B
That's great. I mean, my dad was a band director as well.
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A
Was he really?
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B
Yeah, in Arkansas. And in fact, he turns 90 here in a couple of months, so his 90th birthday coming up. So. Yeah, so I'm very familiar with high school band and all that type of stuff. And so you got out of the Navy, went to college, and then where did life take you right after college?
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A
Yeah, so I moved up to Dallas. My brother and I had started a little pen and pencil company, kind of serial entrepreneur. And as I moved up to Dallas and then started attending Prestima Baptist Church, where you and I actually knew each other from and met there. But I also met my lovely wife, Patty Sheets, there, and we got married in 1996. But right after we got married, we had a couple things that we did that kind of set a course for life that had no idea where it was going to take us. But one thing I did is I went on a mission trip and so went down to Valencia, Venezuela, with a ministry called E3 Partners. And that resulted in me spending 12 years in full time Christian ministry. But also right after Patty and I got married, she told me that we needed a hobby together. And I think she was thinking like scuba diving or antiques or. But I wound up buying a beehive. And so that one beehive turned into what today is the largest honey company in America called Nature Nates.
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B
Tell us a little bit about your salvation experience, Nate. When, when, when did you, did you grow up in the church and did you. That hit you later. Tell us about that.
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A
Yeah, so my parents were believers and so we were raised, you know, in a Christian home. And when we were at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, I remember at First Baptist Del City, going down front in fifth grade and committing my life to the Lord. And then I'll tell you just, you know, again, we moved every two years. And so we grew up in Baptist churches, Methodist churches, Presbyterian churches, Pentecostal churches, kind of wherever my parents had relationships with, with friends because we were there for such a short period of time. But really the place where I experienced the most spiritual growth was after I got out of college and actually joined Presswood Baptist Church. And I was in a discipleship group with some guys and one of them challenged me to get in this class called Evangelism Explosion, which teaches you how to go share the gospel. And, and so that probably had the greatest impact on my life. And you know, there's nothing you that the teacher learns more than any student. And so just having the opportunity to really learn to be able to represent the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and understanding that salvific experience with him, you know, really transformed my life from a, a maturity standpoint. And really God brought me on that mission trip to actually go out and go learn how to do evangelism. And so that just became a massive part of my life.
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B
And tell us about, you know, coming out of that. You said, okay, I'm going to join this mission field full time with E3, what became E3 partners. And then I want you to also tell us just a little bit about I am second and also the Evanger Cube, because I know those were things that came out of that as well. And just maybe how that all that all happened.
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A
Yeah, I'll tell you, it was such a awesome experience. You know, I never wanted to go to seminary. I never even thought I'd be in full time ministry. I was just a business guy that went on a mission trip that changed my life. And so when I wound up going on staff at E3. I was asked to come on staff and I guess that was in the fall of 1997. And I, I asked Mike Downey, who was the founder, he was also the guy that led my mission trip. When he said, hey, why don't you come on staff with us? I said, you guys have to raise support like a missionary, right? And he said, yeah. I said, well, I have to think about that. So, yeah, so we prayed about it for, you know, a couple months and we felt like that's what the Lord wanted us to do. And so, um, it was, it was such a great experience for me because I felt like I was giving to live out my personal testimony of both learning how to articulate the gospel and then mobilizing people on short term mission trips. And so God gave us in 2000 this idea for this one thing called an evangel cube. Looks like a Rubik's cube and it's got seven pictures that represent the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. And so we started equipping believers all over the world. It was amazing. We'd go to India and train, you know, 20,000 Indian pastors and give them a vange cubes to be able to go out in their communities and share the gospel. And then the second evangelism tool that the Lord allowed us to create was a platform called I Am Second and it's a online evangelism platform. Norm Miller had called me up and was sharing with me about.
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B
And Norm was the president of Interstate Batteries at the time.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes. He was the CEO of Interstate Batteries. And he was just sharing with me that he was having a conversation with the Lord in his backyard on his 70th birthday and just asking God, what do you want from me for the rest of my life? I got maybe 15, 20 years. And he felt like God said, well, have you ever gone for broke in your Jerusalem? And he's thinking, well, you know, I funded the Jesus film project in Romania and Russia. But. And he's telling me this on the phone. He says, but Nathan, if I was going to go try to sell more batteries, I'd probably do an advertising campaign. And if I was going to do an advertising campaign in Dallas, Fort Worth, I'd probably use Tony Romo. And man, as soon as God, as soon as he said that to me, the Lord put this idea in my head. And I said, all right, Norm, imagine you're driving down the tollway and you see this billboard and it's got Dirk Nabinski on it. He's the man, he's number one.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And that says, I am second. And it drives you to this website and we show you Dirk, test Dirk's testimony, share the gospel with you, and try to hook you up into a local church. And said. Norm said, all right, let's get together in a week and see and let's talk about it. So I hung the phone up, and this guy, Adam Lydic, who worked with me at E3, was sitting on the other side of my desk. And Adam was a creative genius and said, man, that's huge. Walked out of the room with a. Came back with a white piece of paper, wrote, I am second. And that was the beginning of what turned into I am second. We went over and showed it to Norm, and he gave us 3 million bucks. And so it was an amazing thing.
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B
Yeah. Those of you that are watching listening to this, if you haven't heard of that, just all you have to do is Google it or search for it. It's on there. There's some great testimonies through there. But then. Then also during this time, your wife still. You are still doing this, you know, small honey. And then you said, okay, well, the next thing was to take that bigger. Is that right? And I know it's part of. It had to do with one of your relatives that had some health issues, right?
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A
Yeah. My mom had Alzheimer's and cancer, and so she had been negatively impacted by that. But I took that one beehive and started getting into it. And you know what, Ron? I hate this, but the governor, they're right here. I've got to go.
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B
Okay, 10 seconds left, though. Want people to. They can. They can look up Nate's honey, but tell us what you're doing at public service. What. What's your. What you're trying to get done?
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A
Listen, I'm running to be Texas Agriculture Commissioner because we're living, losing agriculture like never before. And we have a pandemic of health crisis related to the food that we're eating in America. And so I've come alongside to be able to run for the Texas Ag Commissioner. I've been endorsed by Governor Greg Abbott. I want to make agriculture great again. And we're going to get out there and help farmers and ranchers. We lost 68 farms this week, and. And we don't have to continue to do that. So you can go see more@nate sheets.com and. And show. And you can see how we're trying to impact Texas and help clean up the food that we all eat.
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B
Well, thank you, Nate. I appreciate it. Give my best to the governor and just be safe out there.
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A
Thank you, buddy.
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B
All right.
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A
Bye. Bye.
- [09:06]
B
Take care. Nathan then decided that his honey business was growing, and he built that into the largest honey company in the world. Put his cell phone on every jar of honey, and he would answer his cell phone in the middle of the night. I've heard him tell the stories about that. Put a nice Bible verse on every one of those. So, like Chick Fil A, like Norm Miller, he followed in the footsteps of those businessmen. And like the Greens with Hobby Lobby, that not only walk, you know, talk the talk, but walk the walk in their business world to help build the kingdom. And then he's been called in to potentially be a part of public service. Nobody knows what's going to happen. The primary elections next week, and not sure if he'll win or not. You know, I support him, but, you know, there's. You never know. Sometimes God calls us into something. I remember when I first decided to run for public office, I didn't know if I would win or not, but I knew for sure that God had called me to be in the middle of it, and so I did that. And fortunate enough to win. I'm not sure whether they will or not, but I know that this whole experience has probably changed him, and he's probably seen a lot of good and a lot of bad, but he's committed to trying to help Texas, you know, live a healthier life. And Department of Agriculture in Texas is a big part of. But I just thought it was an interesting interview. Even though it was pretty short, there was some real nuggets in there. So I hope you'll take those and listen to it, and maybe we'll be able to have Nate on again in the future. But thank you for supporting Ali's podcast. Don't forget to get your share of the Arrows tickets. They're available online, and we'll look forward to seeing you soon. Take care,
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A
Sam.