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Foreword

AM DELIGHTED AT HOW GOD has used, and is using, Josh Tolley as a champion for the free-enterprise system and the American dream of owning your own business. His book, Evangelpreneur, boldly exhorts people to return to the idea of personal responsibility and financial freedom.

I first connected with Josh Tolley about fifteen years ago at a coffee-shop business meeting. At that time he was twenty years old and embarking on his entrepreneurial education in the school of hard knocks.

I had already gotten my degree in that school, having owned over a dozen businesses by the time I was twenty-eight. My wife, Linda, reminds me how in the early years of our marriage I would wake up regularly at three in the morning with a new idea for a business. She called it “the idea of the month.” Yet at twenty-eight, we were still broke. But I never gave up on that dream. By age thirty-two we were millionaires, and it’s been uphill since then.

I grew up in an entrepreneurial family, my father being a self-employed millionaire. At a very early age I had a paper route and lawn-mowing business. At age twelve I got interested in the stock market, and began tracking and charting the price cycles of stocks. My father told our stockbroker to allow me to trade without his permission, and I began to invest my paper route money, growing it into a nice little nest egg.

Growing up in a Beverly Hills–type suburb, all my friends were given new cars by their parents when they turned sixteen. I remember going to my father on my sixteenth birthday and asking, “Dad, when do I get my car?” He replied, “If you want a car, work for it.”

The hard reality of personal responsibility was established.

Over the next twelve years I would work in a job long enough to save money to start my own business. I understood that all business is, is identifying a need and coming up with a solution to meet that need with a product or service.

The longest I ever worked for someone else was six months. I never was fired. I just quit. I would get bored. Every time I had a job I would look at the people around me, many of whom had been there fifteen to twenty years, and I would think, Is this it? Is this all there is to life, just nine-to-five-ing it day after day, month after month, year after year?

There has to be more to life than this, I concluded. Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” and that’s how I felt every time I had a job.

Through his own enterprise, J. Paul Getty became the wealthiest man in the world, having tapped Saudi Arabia’s oil riches to build one of the most successful petroleum companies in the world. In his book, How to Be Rich, he teaches that the number-one principle of financial success is that you’ve got to be in business for yourself.

Robert Kiyosaki, in his best-selling book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, explains this concept through the grid of the cash-flow quadrant. The “E quadrant” is the “Employment quadrant.” This is where most people find themselves, working for someone else’s dream. And your employer will pay you as little as he has to pay you to replace you. If he doesn’t make a profit on your labor, he’s out of business. Why then do people choose the E quadrant? The most common response I get is “job security.”

As I went through my school of hard knocks with a myriad of unsuccessful businesses, my wife would continually implore me, “Can’t you just get a secure job with a secure paycheck?” (She was being a good mother, wanting to make sure her baby chicks were taken care of.)

“Job security” is an oxymoron. We should more accurately call it “job insecurity.” When someone has the ability to sign or not sign your paycheck, that’s not secure. Your only security is in your ability to produce.

In 1900, 50 percent of Americans were self-employed. By 2013 that number had dropped to 6.6 percent. A July 2014 Harris poll found that only 39 percent of Americans had the hope of one day owning their own business. What in the world happened to the American dream of entrepreneurship and financial freedom?

In Evangelpreneur, Josh writes from his own experience of business ownership, encouraging people to return to their God-given right to free enterprise in a business of their own. In addition to being an entrepreneur himself, Josh has written and taught on the subject extensively, and owns and hosts a syndicated talk-radio show on the subject that is broadcast to millions of listeners in all fifty states and 160 countries. His program has interviewed some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country, promulgating many of the principles he writes about in this book.

I reconnected with Josh as he interviewed me several months ago on his show. We immediately saw that we were like-minded on many levels.

For one, Josh and I are both committed Christians. The word “Christian” is used three times in the New Testament. In the original Greek text it means “Christ follower.” So as best we can, Josh and I are committed to living 100 percent for Jesus and 0 percent for ourselves. The grid through which we see all of life is a Biblical grid, the Bible in our opinion being the Holy Spirit–inspired word of God.

Interestingly, a full 15 percent of the Bible is on money and possessions; there are 2,350 verses on the subject in Scripture. And since Josh and I view Scripture as God’s operating manual on planet earth, we believe we need to go back to this Biblical teaching. I wrote a best-selling book on the subject some years ago titled The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant. In it, I teach Biblical financial principles in the context of a historical storyline that takes place in Venice and Rome in the 1500s. Dave Ramsey wrote the foreword to the book, and the last sixty pages contain a twelve-session Biblical study on marketplace ministry and money. This was the book Josh was interviewing me about on his radio show when we reconnected.

As Christians, Josh and I are aware of several things to which God has jointly called us. As we enjoy financial success ourselves, and as we teach others Biblical principles on success, we recognize that this is prosperity with a purpose. It’s all about pointing people to our Lord. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” My Jewish friends, who are more fluent in Hebrew than I am, tell me that this is mistranslated. It should read, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, and you will fulfill the desires of His heart.” In other words, if you put God first, if He’s your Lord and you’re his bondservant (Romans 1, Philippians 1, James 1), then as best you can, you will be an imitator of Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1). And Jesus said in John 5:19 that the Son can do nothing of himself, but “what He seeth the Father do.” As imitators of Christ, then, that should be our cry—that we can only do what the Holy Spirit leads us to do. In other words, as Christians it’s not about us, it’s about advancing His Kingdom (Matthew 28:18–20) and pointing people to Him.

So this is what Josh is all about, and this is what I’m all about.

And that’s why I am excited to endorse and promote Evangelpreneur. It will challenge you—but that’s a good thing. I believe we need to continually reassess our lives and our Christian walk. It’s called being continually transformed by the renewing of our minds. So be blessed as these words bring revelation and life to you.

TERRY FELBER

Entrepreneur, Pastor, and

Author of The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant