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Welcome back to the Mark Casto program, and today I want to take you somewhere deeper, not just into business strategies, not just into entrepreneurship techniques, but into the sacred why behind what we build the reason we even Chase financial freedom in the first place, and if you're building a business that costs you your peace, your marriage, your children's laughter, you are building the wrong thing. Because let me say it clear and right out the gate right here at the beginning of the podcast, you were not created to fulfill personal destiny. You were created for generational legacy
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and wealth, it means nothing if you lose the people who love you the most along the way. And today, I want to talk about how the business that I've started through digital products, it's not just a tool for making money online. They are tools for buying back your time, reclaiming your presence and anchoring your family for generations. This is more than an episode. This is a wake up call, and I want to talk about something major in our culture today, obviously, even something major in the ministry culture that I grew up in for many of you that this may be your first time listening to the podcast, I got introduced into
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what I would call professional Christian ministry at a very, very young age. So by 2122 I'm literally traveling the world. And for 10 years, I've traveled 42 weekends out of the year, spent at some years, six weeks out of the country, all while being married and having three kids at that time that were under the age of five. Now, my wife and I had a grace to do it for that season, but as my kids got older, and as I began to sit in green rooms with some of my heroes and hear about how their family life was falling apart while they were quote, unquote, touching the world. I had to wrestle with the fact, did I want to be amazing at ministry and fulfill the prophecies and the personal Destiny over my life, or did I want to make sure that I didn't gain the whole world, lose my own soul, lose my family, lose my kids, and I made the decision in 2015 to walk away from everything that I knew people didn't understand. I had family members that turned on me, I had friends that turned on me, pastors that I had preached for for years and years never called me again because they thought I was crazy. And I made a decision in 2015 that more than being a great preacher, I wanted to be a great father. I wanted to be an amazing husband. I wanted to prepare my children for what God has for them. I wanted to be known as a dad and a husband that was present and I was not going to sacrifice my family on the altar of ministry. And so hustle culture is something that we deal with as a society, but it's something that we deal with in the church, whether you're in business or you're in the business that people call church. And I want to talk to you about why the hustle. Hustle culture lies to us and why we must rebel against it. Now you've heard it before. Grind now and enjoy life later. Work 80 hours a week so that you can eventually work for sacrifice everything today for tomorrow's freedom. And that sounds really noble until later. Never comes, until your kids grow up wondering why you weren't there, until your marriage is strained under the weight of an absent spouse who was doing it for them. There's a book that I read that I thought was so powerful. It's by a man by the name of Dan Martell, and he wrote a book called buy back your time, and I recommend that you read it. He had a powerful observation in the book when he said, time is the most precious non renewable resource, and yet it's the one we waste the most easily. It's another great book from another author and friend of mine, Jefferson Bethke, and he wrote a book called Take back your family. And he said that culture trains us to prioritize productivity over people, but God's Kingdom prioritizes people over productivity every single time. So in the cultures economy, busyness equals better. Success equals the sacrifice of your family. Wealth equals worth. But guys, God's economy works entirely different.
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Faithfulness always trumps busyness, presence always trumps productivity. Leg.
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To see always trumps lifestyle flex. Friend, you weren't created to climb ladders you've never asked to be on. You were created to walk with God and walk with your family, being faithful to your spouse and to your children. Now I'm gonna make a big statement here, something that I want the listeners of the Mark Casto program to really dial into ready. You are building a life, not just a business. And I'm going to be brutally honest with you, nobody cares how many followers you have at your funeral. Nobody's going to read off your income statements when you're gone, you know what they'll remember was, dad there? Did mom listen? Did they know me? Did they enjoy me?
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Another thing that Beth Key says in his book is, at the end of our lives, it's the kitchen tables and couches that matter, not the conference rooms or platforms that you spoke on, you can win guys the whole entrepreneurial game and still lose where it matters most. And that's why design matters. That's why we have to be builders with blueprints, not just hustlers chasing paydays. And the only way that we're going to be able to do that is we've got to start redefining wealth and take it from status symbols to sacred stewardship. See, real wealth equals margin. You say, Well Mark, what's margin for? Well to pray unhurried, to slow dance in the kitchen, to disciple your children at dinner and not delegate it to YouTube, to be present when life happens, not just when business slows down. One of the things Dan Martell says in his book is buy back your time so you can focus on the things that only you can do. You know what only you can do? Be your child's parent,
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be your spouse's partner. Build a family culture. Nobody else can create guys. You can outsource bookkeeping, you can delegate marketing, you can automate systems, but you cannot outsource your presence in your marriage and with your children and guys. There is no VA for your marriage. There is no assistant for raising your sons and daughters. If you don't show up, nobody else can. And I want to remind you of the biblical blueprint. God's design always starts with family, before there was ever a church service, before there was ever a government, before there was even a ministry, there was family. In Genesis, it shows us that God's first blessing was over a man and a woman united, and they were told to be fruitful and multiply. And Jesus Himself, before he ever worked a miracle, preached a sermon or gathered disciples, he spent 30 years simply being a son, and the first affirmation that Jesus received from Heaven wasn't well done my minister,
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it was. This is My beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased see you guys, identity precedes assignment, family preceded ministry, and presence precedes platforms. Guys, I know this story very well.
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There was a season where I was quote, unquote busy for God, but disconnected from the very people God called me to love. First I was doing ministry trips and meetings and phone calls and emails and at the end of the day exhaustion, guys. I mean, like, like I said, my wife and I had a grace for it. It's all we knew in that season of our life.
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But I was 25 years old, just bought 100 acres of land, built a $23 million church facility. We thought we had arrived. We're preaching in front of hundreds of 1000s of people every single week, we thought we were doing something special. And then as we begin to look around and not only deal with the anxiety and the pressure that we were dealing with, but looking around at heroes of ours that were 2030, years down the road in front of us, and realizing, if I stay on this road, my marriage is going to look like these guys. My relationship with my children is going to look like these guys relationship with their children and guys. I have seen the Lord do this time and time again. He will shatter any false god that we are serving.
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Guys I've had to walk away from the very thing I built, even recently, in the past couple years, I watched us lose a church. I know what it's like to lose a paycheck. I know what it's like to feel like I don't have a platform to speak my ideas and what was left. I had to rebuild, but not from ambition, from.
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Wisdom, and it started at home, not at the altar of public ministry, but at the altar of my heart, at the altar of my living room,
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and that's where, and that's why I'm preaching what I'm sharing with you today on this podcast, not because I figured it out easily, but because God was faithful to rescue me from the lie of hustle culture, to rescue me from the lie of my own idea of how things were supposed to work. Now I'm going to make a little shift here, and I'm going to talk about what I'm doing and get really practical with you,
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and I want to tell you about why I'm so passionate about teaching digital products,
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it's because I believe they're Kingdom tools for time redemption, because when we do it right, they create income on automation freedom, without trading time endlessly for money and space to prioritize your First ministry, which is your home, guys, a digital product is a seed that you plant once, that can bear fruit again and again without demanding constant labor.
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So this is how you shift.
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You got to shift from the employee mindset to an owner mindset. You've got to shift from operating what other people have told you to do and learn how to be an architect. You've got to shift from being tied to your schedule to stewarding your time and guys, your wisdom is an asset. Your experiences are an asset. Your skills are an asset. And when you create a digital product, you're not just making money. You're buying back mornings at the breakfast table. You're buying back afternoons playing in the backyard. You're buying back evenings spent tucking your kids in without a laptop open beside of you. So I want to give you some practical blueprints here on how to start reclaiming your time. And again, I encourage you to go read Dan Mark tells book. I'll leave a link. Link for it in the podcast show notes here, but here's how you buy back your time, Made Simple. Number one, you need to audit your current schedule. Write out everything that you do. Write everything out. Think about how you spend Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Write out your full week. Audit your entire schedule. Write out everything that you do. And then I want you to go back after you've done this time audit. And I want you to circle only the things that require you only the things that you have to do, not the things you think you have to do. Be honest with yourself and say, what can be automated in my life? What can I build a system around that can do this for me? Or who could I hire to do this for me that's actually skilled in that area more so than me and circle only the things that require you. Okay. Second thing, learn how to delete, delegate and automate. I want you to look at everything you do and be honest with yourself. What's on my current schedule that I could just delete? It has no impact. It doesn't move the needle forward for my business. It doesn't require me at all. What can I just completely delete from my schedule? Or what can be handed off? Like, what can I delegate to somebody else that's more skilled at it than me? Think about what you can hand off. Think about what you can delegate. Then think about what can be automated with the tools and the technology that we have today, guys, what used to take men hours to do, can be done in a matter of seconds with AI technology and the amazing things that are coming out in the software world. So think about what can be automated. Thirdly, create digital products. Learn how to package your wisdom into something scalable. This is what I teach people how to do every single day. Take your wisdom, your knowledge, your experience, translate that into a digital product. I teach people how to do this every day, and that wisdom that you're that's in your mind, I believe this is what the Lord said to me. Said, Mark, I'm going to teach you how to teach other people how to monetize their mind because we as Kingdom believers, we ought to be the like we ought to be thought leaders, like our thinking should be so transformed it provides solutions for global problems, and this digital product industry has it hasn't even reached its a lot of people look in the social media world and they think it's so oversaturated. Guys, less than 1% of people on social media use it as a business, which means there's a whole market out there. And the digital product business is like less than half a billion and by 2028 it'll be almost a trillion dollar industry.
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Three what an amazing opportunity for you to get in now and start packaging your wisdom into something that can actually replace a 40 hour work week.
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Fourthly, protect family margin like a billion dollar asset you need to schedule family time before business launches like family margin is huge. It's your billion dollar asset. It's your generational legacy.
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So you need to guard it. You need to protect it, you need to schedule it. And then, of course, number five, you need to learn how to measure success differently, not by income, but by intimacy, not by revenue, but by relationships. We've got to redefine success. Success guys, when you, when you go to the bookstore, go read a biography of people that we consider to be great, I mean world changers, major entrepreneurs, highly successful and motivated leaders. The unfortunate thing about a lot of these leaders, not all, but the majority, is that behind their success is a trail of bodies, marriages,
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relationships that failed with their children,
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tons of turnaround in their work. Nobody could hardly work for them, because success was for them,
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success in numbers, finances, opportunities and always on to the next thing. And they lost intimacy, and they lost relationships. And I don't know about you, but no amount of money can show up for you when life really kicks you in the mouth, you better have real relationships with amazing people. Now I want to give you
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a prophetic invitation. Builders of a new kind of wealth.
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God is raising up a different kind of builder,
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builders who prioritize covenant over contracts, builders who see dinner tables as altars, builders who raise sons and daughters, not just followers and fans. See another quote from the Bethke book is the family is meant to be a multi generational team, not a collection of individuals chasing their own dreams. That's the picture I want for each and every one of you listening to this podcast, or maybe you're watching this on YouTube. That's the picture I want for you a family so rich in love, so strong in covenant, so anchored in presence that hell itself gets nervous when your family walks into the room.
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I love that, so I want you to learn how to choose to be present over whatever platform you're trying to build. And you've got to make a decision today. Do you want platforms, or do you want to be present?
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You want to grind, or you want grace. You want destiny, or do you want legacy? Guys, it's not complicated. It's just costly, but all the reward, a table of laughter, a home full of peace, a life full of margin, a legacy that echoes into eternity. And guys, if you're ready to build that way, to launch digital products that serve your family instead of sacrificing it, to buy back your time and live the life that God designed for you, I want to invite you to take action. I want you to watch a video
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I'll put the link for in the show notes below. Want you to watch this video. I want to share with you how I grew my digital product business to a $10,000 a month business. Guys, there are some of you that are working 120 150 hours a month and barely making $5,000 a month,
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and you're watching or listening to a guy today that I worked
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probably 20 hours in the entire month of April, and did over $21,000
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guys, that's the kind of wealth that lets you be rich where it matters Most. And guys, this is what you're born for, not just to succeed, but to show up for the people that matter the most. So let's buy back our time. Let's take back our families. Let's build what no one can steal from us in Jesus name. I'll catch you guys on the next episode of the Mark Casto program you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
