Lighthouses. Solitary beacons guiding sailors through stormy seas to safe harbors.

They stand as reminders that while we can't eliminate storms, we can prepare for them. The same is true in business. Chaos will come. You can't structure it all away. But you can build a foundation that stands firm when the winds hit.

Today's guest, Bethany Rees, knows what it means to weather storms.

She spent 18 years in education, rising from small-town classroom teacher to high school administrator overseeing 4,000 students—more than her entire college. She learned to serve every walk of life, navigate constant change, and lead through the unthinkable (hello, COVID).

Now as author, coach, and host of Leadership on the Rocks podcast, Bethany helps leaders anchor themselves so they don't crumble when pressure hits.

In this conversation, Bethany unpacks the wisdom from Matthew 7—the parable of the wise man who built his house on the rock. Storms came to both the wise builder and the foolish one.

The difference wasn't whether they faced hardship. The difference was their foundation.

In this episode, you'll learn:

1. Why storms come to every leader
2. The number one battle you face as a leader
3. How to avoid building your business on the sandy foundation of chasing trends, fads, and approval
4. Why memorizing Scripture is one of the most practical leadership tools you have
5. The biggest misconception leaders have when navigating storms
6. How starting your day anchored in Christ changes everything that follows
7. Why you should never trust a leader who doesn't walk with a limp

Redeem Your Business Today

How can we honor God in our business?

We honor God by anchoring ourselves in Christ before we make a single decision. When a crisis hits, the worst parts of us will shine. If we're internally anxious, selfish, or short-tempered, that's what will come out under pressure.

But when we're anchored in Christ, we don't have to know it all or have it all figured out. We can lead with humility and confidence, knowing we're not navigating the storm alone.

One challenge from today:

Anchor your day in Christ before the chaos hits. Don't wait until you're overwhelmed to pray.

Start your morning with God's Word—even if it's just 10 minutes with your coffee. Ask Him: "Show me what I need today. Give me wisdom for the situations coming my way."

This isn't a band-aid for a bullet hole. This is corrective surgery that changes how you lead all day long. Prayer before your opinion. Prayer before strategy. That's how you build on the Rock instead of sand.

More About Bethany Rees

Website: www.leadershipontherocks.com

LinkedIn: Bethany Rees

Instagram: @leadershipontherocks

Facebook: Leadership on the Rocks

Free Resource: Download the Leadership Survival Essentials Checklist to help you lead with clarity and confidence: www.leadershipontherocks.com/checklist

Book: Leadership on the Rocks is available at leadershipontherocks.com/book or on Amazon.

More About David Schmidt

Subscribe to the RBT Weekly Newsletter for weekly simple, practical, and Biblical steps to help you build a thriving business in a way that honors God.

Newsletter also comes with Bible verses for business success for you to read, apply, and be inspired by.

Website: redeemingbusinesstoday.com

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What God Says About Business

So if you have followed me at all, may have noticed a theme in my logo, my website, et cetera, is our lighthouses. I love lighthouses because of what they stand for. They are lights to help sailors in stormy sea to come to shore without getting broken to pieces by the rocks around them. It's kind of solitary thing, but I love it. I love the theme of that. But as we look at businesses, you might see storms and chaos comes to business as well.

Where you cannot structure and eliminate all storms you can't prepare for them And so today we have brought on Bethany Reese who's author coach and podcast host of the leadership on the rocks And we're to talk a little bit about how to navigate this chaos because again, you can't eliminate the storms which you can't prepare for them Bethany welcome and to start off What one question is what is one way that you have found to honor God in your business?

man, such a great question. And thank you so much for having me. To honor God, it's always how I treat people, right? I feel like you can summarize the Bible, the commandments with love God, love others. And it's very much how I interact. It doesn't matter what kind of problem I'm addressing, what kind of constraint I have, what kind of conflict is in front of me. I always want to love and honor and value other people, no matter the circumstance. I think that's the number one way to...

honor God through how I treat other people.

Alright, that's great, that's great. Duthany, give us a little background of what you've done in the past and then basically how God has led you to Leadership on the Rocks and the podcast and the book and all that.

Absolutely. Well, I am the perfect example of you wrote a story for your own life and God looked at it said, that's cute. I'm going to take you somewhere different. And then you're like, yes, sir. And so I was raised in a small town in Arkansas, married my high school sweetheart, just knew I was going to live in Mayberry forever and I was going to be the school teacher forever. And I did spend 18 years in education, but we actually moved to Houston in a massive school district. I felt so out of place.

Thank

just being from a small town to now this massive city that's larger than my entire state. And I learned how to serve so many different cultures, different people from different backgrounds. And it ended up being just a beautiful experience as I kind of rose through those educational ranks of being the classroom teacher and instructional coach, and then a high school administrator. And I even opened up a brand new high school that was actually bigger than the college that I went to. I mean, it was massive, 4,000 students.

And so from that experience, I feel like I've been able to serve every walk of life. I always talk about education being the hub of society. You get to see what the trends are with the kids, what the trends are in parenting styles, but it's also the hub for where all the economic workforce demands come out and also where politics play out. And so all of that meets at the schoolhouse, at the school gate. And then from there, I just learned so much about leadership and serving every kind of stakeholder possible.

Now from that we've now moved back to my home state of Arkansas. And as we looked at that transition, I really felt God was calling me to step out of education to help encourage other leaders, whether it was in the family or in the workplace. And so that's now what I do with Leadership on the Rocks. I have the podcast, my book came out, it's available on Amazon, but I'm all about encouraging and supporting people as they go through their storms. Because chances are, been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt for that storm.

Yes, and in a real sense, you're still an educator. You're still in education. It's just in a different realm with leaders and that. Very good. So we talked about storms a little bit, and I know Peter Drucker talks about emergencies. Emergencies come up, but a well-run business shouldn't have the same emergency twice, because once the emergency comes up, you should put the steps in place to eliminate that.

Absolutely.

huh.

So what are, in your definition, what would be the definition between storms that arise and just emergencies that you might be able to navigate through and correct out of your life?

And I love Peter Drucker. know, one of his most famous quotes that I use all the time is, you know, culture will eat strategy for breakfast. It's one of my favorite quotes by him. And it's so true. It's your job is to mitigate the problems. Problems will always come. Problems, conflicts and constraints. You can't outchase that. You can't outstructure that. But you can learn the process of how to mitigate so many of them on the front end.

Yes, yes, yes, I love that.

And that's the whole point. I love Eisenhower, President Eisenhower or General Eisenhower as well. He was always about playing and he said, the whole point of the plan is nothing will happen the way in which you expect it to happen. But you plan anyway. Plans are everything, but plans are also meaningless. And so as a leader, your job is always to think ahead. And there's certain things like once you understand a foundation of what people need to not just survive, but thrive, they need clear communication.

They need a structure. They need training. They need coaching. They need supports. And once you understand to lay out those things, then you're going to mitigate a lot of problems that other organizations or other businesses feel because you were able to get ahead of that. Now you're still going to have the one person, even though I told you, think about this also applies to parenting. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times this thing and they weren't listening. So again, you're still going to have those problems and conflicts and constraints.

And I know Eisenhower also said, your plans, no plans withstand contact with the enemy because the enemy has a vote too. But he said that the purpose of planning is to think those things through ahead of time. And like you said, it doesn't always go to plan, but you've already thought through the different scenarios. And so making that decision is easier.

Mm. Yeah.

Absolutely.

And let me tell you one thing about COVID. Nobody really saw COVID coming. for us specifically, I was gone for spring break and came back and the kids did not come back to school. And so you had to completely flip education on a dime, I mean, within a week. And so that was a storm that nobody could prepare for. Like you never saw it coming. And yet if you stop and think about it, what do people need all the time? They need

They're looking to you on how are you going to respond? Are going to respond with high stress? Are you going to respond with anxiety? And so the first thing you do is you communicate, we're going to figure this out. It's going to be okay. And I'm going to communicate with you. And if things change, guess what? I'm going to communicate with you about that too. So you provide that calmness, that stability, that communication and that structure. And it helps the even the unthinkable that you're going through go a little smoother.

And it's a confidence. If you have a good track record that you did what you said you were going to do, yeah, it helps quite a bit. So storms are inevitable, like you said, and we can't structure them out. Why are storms not enough? Why can't you structure storms out? What is it about them that you can't prepare for?

Absolutely.

the human side of what you do. I mean, yes, I mean, if you're going biblical, right, for, you know, we've all said and fall short of the glory of God. We're dealing with people and people are imperfect. I am an imperfect leader. I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to forget to think about a scenario. And guess what? That scenario is probably going to happen. And so it is a completely imperfect life. But I will tell you, the more that you focus on and this is the foundation for leadership on the rocks, really, it comes from

The human person, yeah.

Matthew chapter 7 verses 24 through 27, which is at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is telling us this is what it means to be, to live in the kingdom of God. And then at the very end of that, after He said all these amazing things, think beatitudes, think about love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, all of these things, He says, the man who listens to these words of mine and puts them into practice is like the wise man who built his house on the rock. And so then He also says the person who doesn't is like the foolish man that built his house in the sand.

But in that verse, if you know it, if you know the story, we're singing this song with your kids, storms came to both. Whether you were building a sand castle life and leadership or on the rocks, storms come. Again, to the main point, we're imperfect humans. Storms are gonna come. Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. And you have to anchor on that. And so that's why you can't always out plan the storms. They're coming, because we're imperfect.

You can eliminate some emergencies because the emergencies that come upon you because of your lack of forethought, thinking

Yeah.

things through. Those are self-cause emergencies, but yes, think there's some other things. So what are some simple practical steps that we can take to start building a good foundation so when things happen, chaos happens, our house stands and doesn't fall apart?

Yeah.

I think the first thing is you've got to anchor yourself in Christ. The biggest battle you face as a leader is not with other people. It's the one in your own head. And so it's how am I handling the problems, conflicts and constraints? Am I coming at it from a selfish angle of I want image management maybe? I want to look good. I want to look like I know what I'm doing.

I'm all about preservation. I want to make sure I get the next promotion. want to, you know, if it is it self-focused? So you anchor yourself on Christ and it honestly gives you this humble confidence of, don't have to know it all. I don't have to have it all figured out. And so I'm humble in that, but I'm also confident in God will help me lead through this. And so I think the very first thing to build that foundation is having that anchor mentally, spiritually, and every other way of capturing your thoughts to Christ.

And then no matter what storm comes, you're like, okay, inside what's happening on the inside is good because as the Bible says, whatever's on the inside will come out. And here's the thing that you've got to know is whenever a crisis happens, the worst parts of you are going to shine. If you are internally an anxious person or a selfish person, when you get in a stressful situation, that's going to come out. People will be able to tell.

that you're highly anxious or that you're selfish or that you're short tempered. You know, I may have been able to hide it for the most part, but whenever a stressful situation comes, the worst parts of you are going to shine. So if you're anchored on Christ in that, then that's the first step and that's going to give you the most solid cornerstone foundation that you can have. And one of the most practical ways that you can do that is memorize scripture. Have a mantra of scripture that you memorize that helps you capture your thoughts in the moment.

because I call it spilling the tea. Your thoughts create your emotions, your emotions drive your actions. And it's kind of a little phrase that I have a 20 year old and you have 15 year old and they're like, spill the tea. You don't want to spill your tea as a leader. You want to be very thoughtful in what you serve. And so capture those thoughts where you're not telling yourself stories. You're asking open-ended curious questions. You're coming across with empathy towards people.

as you try to find out the information you need to make the next right decision. And so that is the first one. The second part, I think, is have a plan, you know, whether it's a proactive plan where you're thinking through of what's the true goal here? What are we really trying to accomplish? What's most mission critical? What's the structure behind that? Who needs to be in the room where it happened going to the Hamilton play that we all love and sing, right? Who needs to be in the room where it happens to make that plan?

Who needs to be communicated with that plan? How can I roll that out and make sure that everybody's ready for it? And then how can I have a first aid plan when none of that works? Because you're gonna have a situation where none of that works.

Thank

Sure, sure. It's interesting as I hear you speak, you're talking more high level and that getting a good relationship with Jesus, with God, is key and foundational. I know why that's foundational. Can you explain to my audience why that relationship with God is so foundational to your leadership as an owner or even leadership in the home? Why is that foundational?

Let me give you an example. I'm new to entrepreneurship. education, everybody was forced to come to me. It was great, right? I had the audience. As an entrepreneur, I now have to go out and, you know, prospect for clients and for customers and things like that. So it's completely different. And so as I'm making this transition and learning how to become an entrepreneur,

I feel bombarded with so many things pulling for my attention. Hey, just follow these 10 steps. Hey, follow these three steps. No, you need to do these five steps over here. And what I've come to realize is that is sand elements. Sand elements, think about sand, just physical sand. If you've ever been to a beach, think about a time you've gone to the beach and the waves are constantly moving the sand, right? If you're in the ocean, you're gonna walk out of the ocean with lots of sand that's gonna be chafing you.

physically and then later on mentally as you can't get rid of it in your vehicles. But sand also is blown to and fro. And so the physical element of sand is completely at the will of the environment that it's in. Trends, fads. And so if you build your life and leadership like a sand castle with sand, you're constantly pulled to the next trend, the next fad.

Well, who do I need to please? How do I not end up on the news with bad publicity? How do I get on the news with good publicity? How do I become famous? How do I make millions of dollars so I can live a lavish lifestyle? All of those trends of the world are gonna pull you. And again, sand chafes you. It chafes you physically and mentally and spiritually. And so you don't wanna build your life and your leadership and your business on sand. You wanna think, what is my business? Why did I even create it to begin with? What's my mission?

What are my values? Who do I serve? How can I serve them well? And then it removes all the noise of, hey, do it this way. Hey, do your marketing this way. Hey, have an online platform this way. It removes all that when you're clear about who you are and who you serve. Now I can serve you well. So I think that's why you need Christ. It removes the sand, puts it on rocks, and you can last through all the storms.

Sure. And as I talked to one of my clients as well, we talked about pleasing everybody versus pleasing God. It's like you figure out what does God want me to do, you do it, and some people may be happy with it and others will not, but that's fine. That's who you're trying to please. I think that's part of that solidness of going forward. And we all want peace. We all want joy, patience. Those are the fruits of the Spirit, know, coming and living life as God intended. But yeah, we're not perfect.

You

Yeah.

Absolutely.

So what are some, you've talked to lot of entrepreneurs, business people, educators, what are some common misconceptions or mistakes when they're trying to navigate the storm and maybe it goes well, maybe it doesn't? What are some common mistakes you've seen?

I think a common mistake is thinking that it's all on your shoulders. I think the first step that you do anytime you're in a storm is you have to recognize you don't have to navigate the storm alone. Number one, pray. Do you know how many people, myself included, tend to lean on my own power and my own strategy? And I've got to take that to the cross every day. God, give me your strategy because it's better. And then next, God gives us community and people.

And, know, unless you're in a safety situation where you're like taking duck and cover, you have a hot second to phone a friend, call somebody and say, Hey, here's the situation I'm in financially with marketing, looking at product development, whatever it is, you have a minute to go talk to somebody else and get their feedback. God gave us community. And so I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that you have to do it all by yourself. And then to talk to anybody about it.

would be considered failure. And it's not because we've all walked through those things. So go reach out to your community. You don't have to navigate the storms alone.

I get it because we want to do things and sometimes like in the test your mind locks up. You blank out that, yeah, this person knows about that. I should go talk to them and I don't want to bug them. You know, that's part of what I think sometimes. I don't want to bother these people, but I've never reached out for help and people have said, hey, quit bothering me. Usually they're very gracious and yeah, sure, we can help because we've all been there. You know, anybody who's up high in the world,

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

they start out low and they work their way up and people help them get there. We talked about putting God's Word first and your relationship with God and all that, so how do you step back and put God's Word into practice when life starts to go crazy because a storm just hit? What do you do?

Absolutely.

So good. And you have to make God's Word a priority. And I want to give you an example. So whenever I was a high school administrator, I would sometimes work 16 hour days, right? I had to be in the school at 615, kids are showing up at 630. And sometimes, you know, you've got the Friday night football games. I'm not getting home till 11 or 12, depending on if we're traveling for a game. And what I learned is the stress was so intense of just

the physical exhaustion, the mental exhaustion, you're running through a revolving door of problems, you know, or maybe you want the visual of I'm constantly putting out fires and I have like water guns on my hips, pew, pew, pew, you know. And so I learned I had to anchor my day in Christ, period. And so I was getting up at four in the morning and it wasn't long Bible study. I couldn't spend an hour, but I had to anchor my day in Christ, period. So I attached it to a habit I already had. I love drinking coffee.

And so as I'm having that first cup of coffee before I even dry my hair or get ready is I'm in the word and I'm just, God, show me, give me what I need. Give me today my daily bread. You know the situations that are going to happen today, whatever problems, conflicts or constraints, give me the wisdom, give me the spiritual discernment for that. so prayer and Bible study, first thing with my coffee anchored the entire day.

If you don't have that, then what you're looking at is you're looking for band-aids later on in the day when what you needed was the corrective surgery of the morning time with God. So don't go for the band-aid for a bullet hole. Just avoid the bullet by starting your day with Christ.

good, very good. And one more thing, we don't like to think of it this way, but what are some benefits of the storm? I feel like there's benefits when the storm comes, because we always look at the negative, but I know there's positives that come. Can you give me one or two benefits of a storm?

Always. You know, we work, especially American culture, we love comfort and we will do anything and everything to stay in our lane of comfort. And that is not what we were meant for. I mean, if you just read the Bible, believers all the way through the Bible, they got some hardships, right? And I already said this verse, John 16, 33, in this world you'll have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. You know, part of your journey is your sanctification journey is to understand that you can't do it all in your own power.

you're going to struggle and suffer. You need God. You need to lean on him. So I love saying this is I started off, I was a high achiever, people pleaser, like just tell me what to do. I'm going to check those boxes and I'm going to do it well. Right. There is a, used to joke, there is a certain level at which I work and it is a high one, you know, match my energy. Very arrogant sounding. Right. And then I was so, whenever I truly stepped into leadership, I was so overwhelmed with so many

people that needed things, it's like, can't do it all. I don't have enough time and energy. And so things started slipping through the cracks or I'm having to make hard decisions of, will get to your problem later. This one's a little more important. But, and I even, because of that stress level, I even handled some hard situations the wrong way because I was more emotional, right? I didn't capture my thoughts to Christ and therefore the emotion slipped out, I was a little short tempered with this person or maybe I didn't handle that right. All of those lessons taught me number one, humility.

It is not all about me. I will not get it all right. I am imperfect. And then the second one is that it also taught me the lessons of how to mitigate that problem in the future, but then also how to teach other people to start mitigating their own problems. I don't have to take on everybody's problems. So I love to say never trust a leader that doesn't walk with a limp. Your limp, your scars become your testimony of I have been through some hard stuff.

and survived. And now I can look back at the next generation going through the hardship and say, there is life on the other side of hard. There is godly character after going through hard. You know, in the church, we like to say, you're having a desert experience. Yes. You know, it's so important that you have the desert experience because you learn to trust God and you learn to develop His character. He humbles your heart in a way that you so need. So you've got to have it. It's so important.

So.

to have those hardships and to walk with that limp.

I don't want to limp, but you know that they say a calm sea does not make a skillful sailor. It's good to learn on a calm sea, but if you want to really be skillful, you got to have those storms and be able to last the storms, because anybody can run it when it's good. Can you run it when it's rough? That's the big question. Yeah, a lot of good things there. So any last final parting words that you'd like? We talked about a lot of different things.

you

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

that you'd like to leave our audience with concerning this or anything else. That was really good.

Yeah, I think

one of the things is when you hit a storm is don't think that you're a failure. Don't think that you've done something wrong. I want to remind you whether you're, you know, building your life and leadership, hopefully not. But if you're building it on sand, storms are going to come. Even if you're building down on the rock of Christ, storms are still going to come. Storms are coming. If you're not in a storm, you're coming out of a storm. You're going into a storm.

But there's going to be storms in your life. There's going to be storms in your marriage, in your parenting, in your career, in your business, everywhere. And so when that happens, the first thing you've got to do is give it to God and say, show me, guide me, help me through this. Please give me not only the spiritual discernment, give me the business strategy. Give me the humility. Maybe it's in marriage. Give me the humility to apologize to my spouse, you know, whatever that is. So number one,

A storm does not equal failure, but number two, recognize that the storm always go to Christ. That should be your first move. Prayer before opinion, know, prayer before strategy. Make sure that you handle that side first by surrendering.

Absolutely. yeah, like I tell people, God is the beginning, middle, and end. And that's where it can draw it all back to his God-fixed care of it. He's there to help you. He's there and I think the lights will come to him for help. Anyway, so Bethany, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. And friends, the next steps to put this into practice is to check the show notes. We're gonna put some links and sites in there so you can contact Bethany and learn more about her.

Leadership on the rocks in her book and all that and also sign up for our newsletter to receive Bible verses for business success Delivered right to your inbox and you inspired by and remember finally your business represents the great God you serve So build a business with God's name and a way to honor him