In this inspirational episode, Ryan King, CEO of Ardent Mentoring, shares his passion for seeing lives, communities, and nations transformed by the love of Christ and a desire to be hands on with people making a difference.
You will discover:
– Why we need to stop looking at NPs like ministries
– Why small business is the best hope for job creation globally
– Who should be a mentor and why
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello, and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And I’m here with a high demand mentor. That’ll make sense here in just a moment. But we’ve got Ryan King with us today. He currently serves as co founder and CEO at Ardent mentoring, which is an organization dedicated to creating affordable access to world class, faith based entrepreneurs who can help social entrepreneurs to scale and multiply their impact. Now, before Ardent, Brian worked in the educational development for Nexus systems, and was a pastor at Inland Hills Community Church, he received his bachelor’s in marketing from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, where I’m from and also a master in theological seminaries from the seminary at Eastern University. Well, Ryan, so excited to have you here, before we jump into what you and Ardent mentoring you’re doing, which is awesome. It’s a project that I love. I love to hear tell us a little bit about what was happening beforehand. And how did that lead you to co found this amazing enterprise?
Ryan King
Sure, Scott, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for the incredible work that you do with so many. There’s really three pieces. One is from my childhood one is from right after college. And then one is from just a couple months ago that led me or a couple of years ago, excuse me, that led me to art it one my dad was a serial entrepreneur. But really, I think he was a social entrepreneur, just that term didn’t exist in my dad’s day and age. But always he looked for ways to impact the communities he worked within and the global communities he worked within, whether indirectly or directly through the services of this company. And it inspired me to always make sure that the work I did made an impact in the world. Secondly, the very first mentoring organization I started was called the beautiful door Foundation. And it worked with first time offenders coming out of prison to reduce recidivism rates by helping them discover purpose in their life, and therefore committing their lives to doing things that would lead them away from prison. And I just saw the power of mentoring and its ability to transform lives when you’re walking one on one with somebody through that organization. And then most recently, since 2014, I’ve gotten the opportunity as a volunteer and a part time employee to participate in the Ministry of edify.org, which is just an incredible ministry working to improve and expand sustainable Christ centered education around the world. And they work with local school owners to infuse capital training and technology to help their schools scale, so that they can multiply impact we call them edupreneurs. And so I’ve gotten to travel throughout Latin America and throughout Africa and Asia and around the world. Meeting with these edupreneurs, hearing their stories, their journeys, the obstacles they need to overcome to be successful. And it began to infuse the idea of there are a lot of other social entrepreneurs just like these edupreneurs doing really cool things domestically in North America and around the globe, who we would like to leverage our resources and our network to help scale and multiply their impact. And thank goodness, we did because just in the first year, we’ve worked with over 70 enterprises, and it’s been a joy to be a part of the incredible work that so many people are doing.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, that’s fascinating. Now, when you say you’ve worked with 70 enterprise, what would you say is some of the most important work that you’re doing?
Ryan King
Yeah, some of the most important work that we’re doing, I really believe, you know, comes down to the transformation of lives. And so how would I define that specifically, to the organizations we help are bringing men, women and children out of sex trafficking one works to save them before they go into it. One literally uses X Special Forces to go in and get them out of it. Another one is helping youth in a very under resourced. Someone’s a dismal part of the world, literally taking them off the street, mentoring them, educating them and helping them get further education, or trade education, or just the understanding of entrepreneurship and how to start a business but literally transforming their lives. I think of one domestically, where they learned their clothing company, and they learned that mental health institutions were clothing their patients with paper clothing, and they just said this can’t be they said, Let’s just start clothing people, as many as we can, every single year. And so these are just some examples of the things happening domestically and globally, that it’s just such a joy to be part of.
Scott Ritzheimer
Wow, wow. So one of the things that we have a tendency to do as humans as people is to kind of stratify the world, you know, the businesses do this government does that schools do this? And it seems to me like you guys are going right at the heart of that and starting to push against this separation, if you will. So, a high level question here for you because you’re I know you’re a high level guy. Right, what is the role of social enterprises in the coming years and decades ahead?
Ryan King
Yeah. I think the role of social enterprises, the definition needs to be expanded, we use a broad based definition. And I put this together, I probably read 50 to 60, different definitions of social entrepreneurship. As you know, we sort of put the white papers together of art it and read a bunch of books on it, and a lot of them got very detailed and, and that’s great. And that work is great. I don’t want to take anything away from those people. But we stepped back and said, we just want to call it passionate people dedicated to helping others with sustainable solutions, solutions that leave dignity and value in the places that they are equip locals, that it goes beyond those that are coming to help. And it really, you know, inspires the next generation as well to say, hey, they can do this also. And so there are things where I believe socially, entrepreneurship is key, if we can expand that definition to job creation, you know, to fiscal management, I think we need to stop looking at nonprofits like ministries and start looking them like businesses, businesses, that should be innately incredibly successful, incredibly successful businesses that are nonprofits, just a tax classification. Yeah. And so if we can begin to think of, in these types of ways, we can begin to see that, hey, in a lot of the under resourced world, I think the small and medium enterprise market is primed for entrepreneurship to create more jobs in these parts of the world, big companies aren’t going there and opening up hundreds of 1000s of jobs. It’s the future of prosperity in these countries is these entrepreneurs. And if they can have the mindset of a social entrepreneur of how does my work make an impact in the world, in my community and beyond? That’s going to be more transformative in life.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So somebody who’s kind of is new to this visual hasn’t really thought about it very much might might struggle with that statement of businesses aren’t doing it. And we have a tendency to kind of look and say, Oh, if they’re not doing it, then it can’t be done, they surely have the resources to do it. Why is it that small medium enterprises have the solution, and not some of the big corporations whose names we all recognize?
Ryan King
You know, big corporations are great in some ways, and not great in other ways, just like all of us, right? We all have positive negatives, every solution, every business has positive and negatives to it, in my opinion, at least. And so I think in some areas, there’s a lot of overhead and cost that goes into expanding as a big business, employment, you know, buildings, all of those insurances, all of those types of things, it’s a large expense for a big business to go into areas. So they have to make sure that their profits are going to equal that expense in that area. And so I just don’t think these markets, either, it’s not so much the big business fault, I don’t think these markets are prime for them to build a huge factory, you know, and then the costs of getting their product out of those areas, shipment and stuff like that. So I just think when you visit these under resourced countries around the world, you see the most opportunity, especially in sort of more of a barter type of economy. And those types of economies that exist, you see the opportunity for the small and medium enterprises, to create a lot of job creation, and to be very sustainable for the next generation to run, you know, versus someone like Amazon or somebody coming in and establishing a ton of jobs in that area.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right. And so with these these entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, they’re out there doing it. What are some of the challenges that they’re facing that were kind of the inspiration behind the art mentoring program?
Ryan King
Yeah, I think it’s number one, the challenge they’re facing is there, there’s a lot that they have to accomplish that they’ve never accomplished before. Nor do they have the example set before them. I initially answered my question about how did I start art and mentoring by talking about how my dad was a serial entrepreneur? I come from a family who has been educated very well, you know, and those types of things. They don’t have the example in front of them. And so mentoring plays a large role with a lot of people we work with, because they’re, we’re supplying them with somebody who’s done it before, who’s walked this walk, and can say, hey, come with me, follow me, I’ll help you. You know, there’s a great opportunity to in this role, but down this road, but what about this pitfall? You know, have you ever thought of that? Have you ever thought about how this decision affects the rest of your business? Have you ever thought about, you know, how? Or is your faith going to play a part in putting this business together or leading this business? And so these are a lot of the examples that these social entrepreneurs, they don’t have that example. They have the passion, they have the heart, but they don’t always have the skills and the competencies, not to their own fault, but often, whether it be in North America or across the globe. They’re just under resourced in these areas. I often think of mutual poverty when I think of this, you know, we’re all impoverished in some ways. We’d love to find poverty financially, but gosh, you know, poverty goes so much deeper than just our finances. And so I think these are the areas where we are mutually impoverished and we income together and mentoring, both the mentor and the mentee grow significantly. This isn’t a one way street.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And so there’s lots of ways to kind of help tackle the problem of entrepreneurism at social entrepreneurism and doing that in these disadvantaged areas. Why mentoring? Why not investing? Or you know, or coaching even why why mentoring?
Ryan King
So I would just say, yes, yes. And yes to your answer, it takes it’s going to take all of it. I mean, one thing is we’ve gotten into our work is we’re really happy that impact investing with charitable dollars through organizations like the impact Foundation are growing significantly around the world. Because, yes, these people starting these small businesses and organizations around the world, it’s not easy for them to get investment. So they need people that see it as a, you know, lead with impact, and not so much with ROI, you know, especially financial ROI. And so I think that’s an incredible piece where they need the impact investment. And why does mentoring Well, there are, it’s, it’s a, when we studied the market, and we were putting our white papers together for audit, we noticed that, okay, impact investing is increasing. There’s a lot of educational entrepreneurship organizations that can help, especially startups, there’s these incubators and accelerators in the tech industry and all these different injuries, threes, that can really once they’ve started out, can really help them get going. And they all have their programs and their programs are rather good, to be honest. They’re very high, highly intelligent, highly impactful programs. But if you’re an entrepreneur, you know, every entrepreneurs journey is different than the other entrepreneurs, even if you’re doing the exact same business, you know, if you’re in a different location, you’re going to encounter different issues, you’re going to have different opportunities in front of you. And so that’s what we’ve learned is that, as the entrepreneurs go through these different programs, we’re learning that sort of our uniqueness to this ecosystem is that we’re one on one, what you don’t see often, we’re affordable. And we’re focused on the specifics of what that particular entrepreneur is going through. And we so we call it subject matter expertise. We are creating a high quality matches that connects somebody with the subject matter expertise to someone who has that specific need and or challenge.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So one of the things that you do, and I was fascinated by this, as we got to know, each other’s organizations, but you also trained in equip and basically Empower mentor. So that’s a big part of the equation here is actually providing those folks. So who’s who out there is sitting there who, who would, you know, not only be a great mentor, but benefit from being a mentor?
Ryan King
Yeah, you know, if you’re a previous executive, Founder, CEO, someone who’s been involved in the vision and creation of a business or organization, even someone who’s just done a lot of startups, you might not have a lot of accolades behind your name, or, you know, a ton of money in the bank as some other successful people have. But you’ve helped people start, you start a lot of nonprofits, you started, a lot of businesses got them off the ground. These are the type of people that we’re tapping into as our mentors. And what I love about our program, particularly, is that number one, we’re asking them to bring themselves, bring your experience, bring your expertise, that’s what’s going to fuel your mentoring. But we’re going to help you learn how to approach this type of mentoring with social entrepreneurs to be the most effective and the most impactful. And literally, we have an onboarding that all of our mentors go through called the audit approach, where it helps them understand how do you take problems and turn them into goals? How do you create solutions for those? You know, how do you encourage your mentee during times of disaster? And just when they feel like it’s all falling apart? You know, what about mentees who are working in different contexts around the world that you maybe haven’t worked in before, you know, in contextualization of your mentoring. And so we take them through this art and approach. And last but not least, we always want to it’s a two way street, like I said before, so this art approach also gives them a personal self assessment. And once they have that we allow them to have at their choice, a champion mentoring session. And what that is, it’s it’s a session with someone who has 30 plus years experience being a mentor, who has tried and true ways and helped multiple fortune 500 CEOs be successful and is just has mentored some of the most incredible people around the world. And we give them a session with this to go through that self assessment so they can learn about themselves and where they need to grow and where they’re doing well.
Scott Ritzheimer
Well, yeah, there’s there are a few things that I’ve found as rewarding as being able to step from that role of the mentee the learner and have them ever graduate from it, but where our primary role is that of the mentor of being The guide in someone else’s journey of being a facilitator and an enabler, someone else’s success, like there’s a richness to that, but I’ve just not experienced in other platforms. And so I love that you’re able to make that available to folks. So, alright, I’ve got a question for you. I like to ask this of all my guests, and it’s this what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing that you wish everybody listening or watching today knew?
Ryan King
I think I’ve thought about this a little bit. And to me, it’s knowing your identity. I think far too many social entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, workers, you know, of different businesses, their identity gets wrapped up in what they do. Even if what they do is highly impactful. The secret I would want them know is your identity is not connected to what you do what you do, what you do is part of your identity, but there is so much more to you than the work that you do. Even if the work that you do is the majority of your hours in a given week, besides your sleep, you know, there is so much more to you. And fueling that identity is what can give you passion and ability and energy to do what you do. When you’re excited about the things that are happening in your life. You know, I look forward tonight, I get to go see my daughter do gymnastics because a huge part of my identity is being the best dad, I can be. You know, I coach my son’s sport teams. Every week, I take my wife on a date. You know, we sit either I get technology out of the way. And we talk and these are small examples. But knowing what your identity is and who you are, I think is the secret. A huge secret to the building the foundation of a successful enterprise.
Scott Ritzheimer
And what’s interesting is it’s it’s a little easier to separate the two when you don’t like what you do. Yeah. It’s when those start to align that I think we actually have to be more careful about them conflating Right, right? And so I love that you’re able to do this and especially in this space of social entrepreneurism. I don’t think just because what you do is noble that it is who you are, would you agree?
Ryan King
I couldn’t agree more. And I totally agree with you that it’s the more aligned you are and passionate about what you do, the harder this becomes. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. All right, the more important it becomes also, right, because the more you are into your work, the more you can get wrapped up in it. I mean, let me just be honest here. I got, I love being a pastor, I love speaking I loved counseling people, I loved launching different we called the ministries, but really, they were just small businesses and the communities we were doing and equipping people to go serve in those. And yet I got so into it. I’m literally preaching from the pulpit about having a good marriage and being a good dad, while I’m working 80 to 90 hours a week. And I’m putting more time into other people’s marriages and other people’s kids that I’m putting into my own life. And I had a rude awakening in 2017, on a two week vacation with my wife, and I’m like, wow, we’ve never connected like this before in our lives. And she’s like, Yeah, you’ve just been busy. Our whole marriage, like I met you, you were getting your masters, and you’ve been busy. And I’m like, I don’t want that life. I want to change the world. You know, part of that is changing myself, often the first one of the first steps. And so that’s, I’ve been on a major journey to correct that in my life.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Oh, thank you for sharing that this more than one person needed to hear that I can guarantee that. So, on that note, it’s actually a great segue into my last question here. And then we’ll make sure folks know how they can connect with you. But I’m gonna have you take off your your mentor hat, right, I’m gonna have you put on your CEO hat and kind of jump down into the ring with us, what’s the next stage of growth look like for you as a leader in our ardent as an organization and what challenges we have to overcome to get there?
Ryan King
Yeah, and so the next stage of growth for us is our initial success has led to some great new partnerships for us that are actually, you know, in the works of agreements being signed right now, and are all kicking off in q1 of next year. And these partnerships are with tried and trued organizations that are large, much larger organizations than we are that work with, you know, hundreds and 1000s of social entrepreneurs around the world. And they’re excited about what we’re able to offer to their ecosystems. But where that does is, it’s, you know, we can’t get ahead of our skis. That that was we get down into into the nitty gritty, you know, hiring the right people is so important, of course, along the way, having the funds to do that along the way, you know, often you need the funds before you make the impact, you know, in the type of work that we do. So there’s some key pieces here, but it’s almost like the success of what we’re doing, if we’re not careful could be the demise of what we’re doing as well. You know, and when you really get down into the day to day, some of the hardest pieces of what we do is, you know, relationship management. These are people and these are busy people. They’re just Trying to be the best dads moms, you know, that they can be, they’re trying to be successful and have boundaries and be the wives and husbands that they need to be, you know, but that drawl doesn’t always leave a lot of time. You know, we often spend way too much time, if you think about the four quadrants, you know, and the unimportant immediate stuff in front of us, you know, rather than the important non immediate and often advisory work like we give falls into that portion, but not immediate. And so tracking people down and getting people scheduled as much as we have a platform where they could do it all on their own. They don’t always do it. And if that multiplies, and we don’t have the ability, that’s some of the dangers that we face as an organization.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, fascinating. So that kind of leads us to our next question is, there’s some folks out there that said, Hey, I could be like, Yes, I could use a mentor, I need someone to come alongside me. I’d love to have someone who can show me the ropes and probably have some folks that are also listening, say, Hey, I wonder if I wonder if I have something to offer? What would you say to those groups? How can they get in touch with you and discover the path forward?
Ryan King
Yeah, first and foremost, anyone could always email me at [email protected], you know, Ryan King [email protected]. Specifically for the mentees, I would encourage, while I’m both groups, I’d encourage them to visit our site. And so for mentees specifically, they can visit our site, check out everything we do. We also have a YouTube page where they can watch reviews of our work from previous mentees, they and they can go through and from there, they there’s a little Contact Us button, or they can just register, it’s only a couple of questions that they need to answer. And we’ll get in touch with them. And that site, just audit mentoring data work for the mentors, again, go to the website ardentmentoring.org. But I would encourage them, if they scroll over the about section, there is a link to the type of mentors we already have. There’s about 20 different profiles that describe the type of mentors if they read through that. And they’re identifying with some of those things that are there. And they believe that, hey, I would fit my pedigree would fit this list, you know, by all means, we would love to talk to them. And some of the greatest mentors are those who realize they need to be they need mentoring themselves. And so they also want to be mentored. There’s plenty of people we’ve asked to be mentors, and they’ve turned around and said, How about I get mentoring first? And we’re like, Wow, thank you. All right, let’s do this.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. So yeah, head on over to ardentmentoring.org and we’ll drop the links there in the show notes so you can get right to it. Ryan, fantastic, loved, loved, loved having you on. I absolutely love what you and art and mentoring are doing think it’s gonna be a big, big deal for a lot of people for a very long time. So thank you so much for that. For those of you who are watching, listening, you know your time and attention in the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Ryan King
Ryan King currently serves as Co-Founder and CEO at Ardent Mentoring, an organization dedicated to creating affordable access to world-class faith-based entrepreneurs who can help social entrepreneurs scale and multiply their impact. Ryan also serves as a Director of Philanthropy and Edification at Edify, an organization dedicated to improving and expanding Christ-centered education globally. Before Ardent & Edify, Ryan worked in educational development for Nexus Systems and was a Pastor at Inland Hills Community Church. He received a B.S. in Marketing from West Chester University in Pennsylvania, and a Masters in Theological Studies from the Seminary at Eastern University.
Want to learn more about Ryan King’s work at Ardent Mentoring and find a mentor or maybe even become one yourself? Check out his website at https://www.ardentmentoring.org/
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