ASI 2018: Business Unusual

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Mark Finley

Young Professionals

History & Mission of ASI

Jason Churchwell

Jesus’ first miracle was making juice!

Sean Wycliffe

Developing a Level 7 Evangelistic Business

Calvin Kim

F5 Challenge – Challenging the Status Quo!

Michelle Doucoumes

Danny Houghton

Denzil McNeilus

Brenda Palmer

Gary Rayner

Michael Tuazon

Panel: Business and Finance for Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs

Business Titans of the Bible:  Lessons for the 21st Century Entrepreneur

GW Chew

Starting a Center of Influence

Nathaniel Justin Khoe

Pick Up Your Phone and Follow Me

Eric Walsh

YP Speaker Panel

Your First Profession

My name is Sean Wycliffe and I am excited to be here today. And I wanted to tell you a little bit about my story before I talk about the fruit tree, which is mostly what I'm gonna be sharing today. And so this is what we're gonna go through. And, and from there we're gonna talk about something called the Level seven business. And we're gonna talk about some of the evangelism that we're doing. But first, I, I, I know I know some of you, but I don't think I know most of you. And so I wanna tell you a little bit about myself. I'll start back in college. I actually went to school at uc, Berkeley a few years ago. And when I was a student there, I started this business. Mike was talking about it selling long distance phone service. And so most of you don't even know what that is, and I understand that. And I barely knew what that was at that time. And so it started going really well and I got really involved and really into it. And so when I was 19, I ended up buying a Porsche and dropping outta school and moving down to Southern California. And my brother did the same exact thing. And so, as Mike mentioned, we were growing this business. Now, at this time, I was actually an evangelical Christian. And so we could work seven days a week, we could kind of do whatever we felt like, of course. And so I'm just working, just doing whatever and just getting really into money, making money. By the time I was 21, we ended up buying this million dollar house. I ended up getting this Ferrari as well. And all I cared about was money. That was my goal. I was basically just dedicated to that and just money. And so God actually had a different plan for me though. So around this time too, my dad, he actually was a physician at the Lo Linda University. And so he went to this thing called restoration. I dunno if anyone's ever been to that before. Restoration. Okay, so he went in 2003, Randy Skeet, some of you maybe have heard him. He was preaching. So my dad gave his life back to the Lord. And then after that he started praying for me. Now, the business I had shortly thereafter, there's a long story here. The business actually went bankrupt and I had to pretty much move in with my dad. Now, I dunno if anyone's ever had to move in with their parents before, okay, maybe you're all young professionals, right? You don't know what I'm talking about. But the reality is I had to do that and I was broke. And so through that experience, my dad was praying for me, working on me, and then I eventually went to a Gyc and that's where I was really convicted on my life. And I became an aist, rededicated my life to God. And from there, that's when I met Michael Tuan. And for the next two years we started just doing a lot of ministry. He was discipling me studying the Bible, the whole nine yards. And this was down at the Fontana, seventh Day Adventist Church. I don't know if anyone's ever been to the Fontana. Okay, a few. I hear a few, yes. Okay, good. So anyways, we were down there for about two years now, after that, I wasn't really sure what God had for me. I started backsliding a little bit. I didn't know what was going on. And so my parents said, why don't you go back to school? You should have never dropped out in the first place. And so I said, okay, why not? So I actually ended up going back to school at uc, Berkeley. And this is when my life changed another direction. At this time, I actually was continuing running a different business now selling cell phones. So it was a similar network marketing business, but now we're selling cell phones. And so I met my wife through this. Now she's in the back somewhere. You'll see her, oh, she's over there in the back next to the water. That's her. There she is. And so her name's Chachi. So I met her and she was working with us and I didn't think too much of it cuz she was boo at the time. But in any case, we became friends. And then I said, well, hey, who knows what, you know, one backslide, why not, you know, date a Buddhist and have fun? Let's see what happens. And so there's a long story behind it, but we actually ended up dating and we moved in together about a week after we started dating. And so, you know, I was really excited about it at that point. And so, you know, I'll leave that as it is and I'll move forward to the next slide. But the reality is, is through this experience now, she was starting to wonder, okay, where is this guy going on Friday nights? He just disappears on Friday night. And so I said, well, I go to this Bible study thing, I don't know, it's whatever. Why don't you come with me if you want? And so she started coming. So she starts having questions, what do you believe? Like why this and that? And so I started doing bible studies with her every night, you know, when we're together I guess. And so the reality is this, through that she actually ended up becoming a Christian, then she became an Adventist. And, and then she start, she kind of passed me up spiritually very quickly. She started doing ministry. She started realizing, well, hey, there's this commandment that says, you know, you shouldn't live together. What's up with that? And so, you know, you know, and so the reality is, is from there we started to get convicted. So we tried to move out, move back in, move out. Well that kept going on. And eventually it led to the point where I went to A G Y C and, and she went to a gic. And eventually we were able to separate, and I'll talk about that in a second. Now, during this period, I'm also trying to figure out other businesses that I can start, what I can do. And so I graduated from college, my parents were so happy I finally did something with my life. And so after that, they're hoping I'm gonna get a job. I don't, and instead I watch this movie and I think, wow, there's all these empty movie theater seats. Why not sell discounted movie tickets? And so I started this thing called deal flicks, which is kinda like a price line, but for movie tickets, we sell discount movie tickets. And that's how that is. And I'll leave it at that. But this was started back in 2012. And so it started as this thing that I was doing part-time. And then we had some co-founders join and then it started to really grow and we started getting some press. We ended up getting on NBC and the New York Times and CNBC and all sorts of things. And over the next few years we ended up raising 4.2 million from investors and we got up to 400,000 a month in revenue. And so I'm thinking, this is a great thing, you know, here we go. And the nice thing with this is I was actually able to keep the Sabbath as well. And so I was keeping the Sabbath and all my team was keeping the Sabbath and all these things. And I'm thinking, this is really good. You know, again, as I mentioned at this time too, we had gone to the G Y C and, and, and my wife, you know, said, Hey, we should separate before we get married. And so by God's grace we were able to separate and then six months later we got married. Amen. And from there we actually started to do a lot of ministry at our campus at uc, Berkeley. And so for the next couple years we did ministry, we started our home, and from there we started to do how to get a seminars on campus. And that's another subject. And this is how we eventually got into asi, how we started getting involved through this campus ministry called Christ Method alone. Amen. And so a few years ago, my wife actually through another testimony, was able to get a thousand square foot office right next to DC Berkeley campus where they have all the riots and where they have the free speech and everything. And so we started doing bible studies there, and God really blessed with this ministry. We've had about seven people get baptized through this. These are all affiliated with uc, Berkeley, the majority of them were not Christian. And, and we've been able to use Christ Method alone to reach people through this. Now, around this time too, I, I saw this thing called media on the brain. So some of you're like, Hey, this is going on here, you know? And so I don't know, has anyone seen this? Okay, watch it if you haven't seen it, okay? But be careful if you saw movie tickets, because I saw this a few years ago. Okay, now you can imagine, right? So I'm a converted person to this point, and I've watched this thing and I'm thinking, oh wow, okay. And I'm just thinking it's r-rated movies and things like this, right? But even g-rated things, you know, it has effects and it's not good. And so I'm convicted now, so I stop watching movies for the most part. And, and, and shortly thereafter was able to have victory in that area. And, and that was a blessing. Now, at the same time, I'm wondering, how do I deal with this? Cuz I have this business selling movie tickets. Now, you know, how do I deal with that? And so we've raised all this money, I'm on the board, I'm the only board member, there's all these obligations. And so for the last few years I've been trying to sell it. I've asked people to pray for it. You guys will pray for it too. We're in the process now of of, of either trying to sell it or just do like a full bankruptcy or something. So, you know, I, I'm asking for a prayer on this cuz we're like literally in this process because, you know, I'm, I'm trying to move out of that now as this whole thing is going on, I'm praying and wondering, God, you know, what do you have for me? And so I met this person named Delan Lawrence. I dunno if anyone's known him. He's one of those people. If you know him, you know him because you won't forget him. And so he comes up and he is doing campus ministry with us and we're praying about how can we start something that allows us to do ministry while at the same time supporting ourselves financially, right? I'm sure a lot of you have thought of that. How do you do both? And so we looked at all sorts of different ideas and long story short, we ended up finding this quote. And so this says, those who are engaged in the work of preparing health foods are just as much in the service of God as if they were in the dentistry business or in the medical missionary work. As you help to prepare health foods, you are doing God's service. Amen. And so I'm thinking, I don't know if I can go back and become a dentist, that's gonna be a little difficult at this point in life, but I can make some health food. I'm sure I can learn how to do that. And so we started thinking about different ideas. My wife had been doing green smoothies for the last few years. And so she had a great recipe. And so we actually put this thing together called the fruit treat. And what it is, is we actually make great tasting healthy green smoothies. So our goal is to make them do two things. Number one, be as healthy as possible, and number two, taste as good as possible. And so that way it's good, convenient, healthy, all of these different things. So we started this back in August, 2017. And so this is about a year ago. Yeah, we started this about a year ago. And initially we were selling this door to door. Eventually we got into some farmer's markets. And so we started selling these things and people started enjoying them. Even kids like it. Three year old kids, the parents won't try it, the kids try it, they love it, then the parents buy it. And so it's really, really good. Now from this, things really started to grow and they started to go. And so what we have here, oops, there it is. What we have here now is, is we're in 21 farmers markets across the Bay area. And so if any of you come up there, you can see these markets. And God has really blessed. So this has gone from a little operation to, we're now doing over 40,000 a month in revenue and we're making over 3000 smoothies and selling them per month. The secular people across the Bay area and maybe two Adventists. And so the reality is, is, is we have eight people now that are supported as their primary source of income from this. And so this has been a blessing from God and God has really done this. Now we need help. And so I'm asking everyone for prayer and we also need workers. So if you're looking for work or or whatever, we have positions that we're trying to fill. We can talk more about that. We're trying to buy land, we're trying to buy vans, we're trying to do all these things. So investment, donation, all of those things. We can talk more. We need connections to different people. I can help us with different things. And we're also giving samples. And so I know, I think my wife is gonna be handing some samples around. I look, oh, you already have the samples. And so those are the samples. And so that's what's happening with that. Now what I wanna spend some time on talking about is evangelism. With this evangelism. Because when we first started this, the idea is to not just have a successful business, but to actually do evangelism. That's really what it was about. Not even just service, not even just provide good health, just straight up evangelism, soul winning. And so we were wondering, how do we do this? Now this came to me when I was flying over here on the Southwest flight from from Oakland. I was planning to do things on my laptop with wifi. And then the announcement said, no wifi. So I had five hours and this new idea came to me. This is what I, what I, what I realized there's seven levels to an Adventist business. Okay, now watch this. So the first is just having a business. So if you have a bus, and this can apply too, if you have a job business or a job either way doesn't matter or a career or something. But the first thing is just getting a business or a job, right? That's a big step for a lot of us. And so you wanna do that. The next thing is having a successful business. So it's one thing to have a business and then it's another thing to have a successful business. So that's a good next step. Then there's a way to have a business while you're keeping the Sabbath, you know? So I went from having this network marketing business that operated around the Sabbath to having a business that I could keep the Sabbath for about five years. And that was a blessing in that sense. Now there's another type of business where you're in line with what the Bible and the spirit of prophecy teaches. Does that make sense? And so you can, like Dihl flicks, you can have a business that sells movie tickets, keep the Sabbath, but it's not in line with the Bible and spirit of prop. And so that's the next level you wanna level up. Now you have a business where you're actually involved in active medical missionary industries. So for instance, a number four business is where maybe you're selling cars, it's agnostic. Does that make sense? Yeah, it's not against God, but it's not necessarily for 'em. It's just a good solid business. Now you have a business where you're in dentistry or you're in medicine or you're in something like that. And that's amazing cuz you're actually doing medical missionary type things. The level six business, we're stepping it up. Now you're actually actively and heavily evangelizing to folks. And so that's what you wanna be active in. Now you might think that's it, isn't it? That's it. No, there's seven, there's oh seven in these kind of talks. And so the reality is, is number seven a successful business that actively and heavily evangelizes successfully. See, sometimes we focus on we wanna make our business successful. And if I hand out a few tracks, so be it, whatever happens, happens. But we gotta put that thing kind of effort and that evangelism side too. There should be some fruit to that too, as well as to what's happening on the business side. So look at, look at this for me. So for me, my deal flick thing, that was like a number three business, right? It enabled me to actually keep the Sabbath and God's commandments, things like that. However, it wasn't necessarily in line with the Bible spirit of prop. We realized this and we said, you know what? If we're gonna start something new, I don't wanna keep going from level one to two to three to four, let's just go all the way to level seven. Let's just do the whole thing. Let's just start with that in mind. And so that's what the fruit tree's about. Okay? So as we get ready to wrap up here, I wanna encourage all of you here to start with number seven in mind, a successful business that actively and heavily evangelizes. So I wanna share a few testimonies here. We give out some smoothies to the poor that are next to the place that we blend our smoothies. Isn't that, that's good. We had a smoothie night where we invited our customers to come to our church. About 12 people from the community, non-Christians came to the smoothie night. It's like a veggie cooking class, that kind of thing. So that was really good. I wanna talk to you about Chor. She was a Buddhist and she was a uc Berkeley student, and she ended up working with us through that. She ended up becoming a Christian at Adventist and now is baptized. Amen. She's at ASAP Ministries now in Cambodia doing mission work there. This just happened in the last four months. Non do, he's selling Indian food. Ndu sells Indian food at a farmer's market in the bay. All right? You can go get some good Indian food from him. But the thing is, we made some friends with him and through this Bible studies decisions for following Christ Adventist baptized a couple weeks ago, amen. And so God is really blessed in, in this effort of combining this gospel work with the business side. And so one last thing I wanna leave with you. A lot of you have these tracks that we found out. We just made these for the purposes of, it's kinda like a glow track, but it tells our testimony. And then it's a Bible study on health. And so you'll have these, please read it, our contact info's on there as well. And so I'm gonna skip this for the sake of time, but my appeal right now to old you right now as I end is really be prayerful. Now, some of you, you might be a level one business and you're just trying to get the thing off the ground and praise God for that. But start with level seven in mind. Some of you already have a successful business, start with love, go to level seven with it. You know, really pray about how can I start actively doing evangelism? Some of you might need training in evangelism. You might be successful business people, but you need training in evangelism. Some of you might be successful at evangelism, but you need training in business, right? But when these things are combined, amazing things can happen. And so that's my PIL to everyone today. I thank all of you for your time and I look forward to getting to know all of you through the rest of the weekend. Thanks so much. This media was produced by Audio verse for ASI Adventist Layman's Services and Industries. If you would like to learn more about asi, please visit www.asiministries.org. Or if you would like to listen to more free online sermons, please visit www.audio verse.org.

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Series

Young Professionals

Developing a Level 7 Evangelistic Business

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

History & Mission of ASI

Jesus’ first miracle was making juice!

Developing a Level 7 Evangelistic Business

F5 Challenge – Challenging the Status Quo!

Panel: Business and Finance for Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs

4 more

Business Titans of the Bible: Lessons for the 21st Century Entrepreneur

Starting a Center of Influence

Pick Up Your Phone and Follow Me

YP Speaker Panel

6 more

Your First Profession

Sound Doctrine