Are the people who work for you glad they work for you? More importantly, would their families say the same thing?

Leadership isn't just about hitting targets and growing revenue. It's about changing lives—not just at work, but at home too.

Today I'm talking with Jonathan Sheeley, founder of Sheeley Executive Consulting, a business strategist and leadership coach who challenges the status quo.

After leading marketing teams and traveling to hundreds of schools and churches across 35 states, Jonathan discovered his favorite part of the job: seeing the light bulb come on when someone finally gets it.

Jonathan's wife shook him to the core with a simple observation: the best companies aren't just loved by employees—they're loved by employees' families too. That's the true measure of legacy.

Join us for a candid conversation about leaving a legacy that impacts not just your direct reports, but their families, your community, and generations to come.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

Check your daily purpose. Ask yourself each morning: Am I doing this to glorify God or to glorify myself? Stay grounded in love for Christ and benefit for others, not building your own fiefdom.

Build wealth with kingdom values. Having money isn't the problem—loving money is. Create value, build resources, and use them to bless your employees, serve your community, and give generously.

One challenge from today:

Know your community calendar and honor it. Plan your work schedule around the events that matter to your employees' families. Give them autonomy, responsibility, and flexibility to handle both their work job and their home job.

This flexibility and creative scheduling will build a legacy that will impact both your employees and their families

More About Jonathan Sheeley

Website: sheeleyexecutiveconsulting.co

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-sheeley/

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: 5 Uncommon Truths for Modern Business

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What God Says About Business

Leadership GPS: Christian Business Coaching

Are you looking to integrate your faith and business but don't know where to start, book a time to discover if Christian business coaching and training might be right for you. If you are dissatisfied with your current rate of improvement, desire a clearer vision of what God says about business, or even what those first steps may look like, let's talk.

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So leaders by definition lead others. And although there are different levels of leadership and some lead by force and rank, kind like in the military, and some lead by virtue of who they are. And people just follow them because they like them and they lead them what they're And because just beyond, I'm sorry, because just beyond leading a journey to fight a battle or operation in business, leaders can also have an opportunity to change lives. Leaders can influence you.

not just at work but also at home and that's what we as leaders should venture to do. Today I brought on Jonathan Shealy from founder of Shealy Executive Coaching and he's a business strategist leadership coach and a challenger on the status quo for those of you like to challenge things. But today I brought him on to talk specifically about how leaders can impact those who are bound to them and leave a legacy that lasts well beyond when they're gone. And we're going to

talk about the story of how he's gotten to where he is today as well. So Jonathan, thank you very much for joining me on this podcast. And to start off with before we get into everything, what is one way that you have found that you can honor God in your business?

That's a great question. Thanks for inviting me, David. I think it's really easy for us to get lost in really big answers to that question. But the best way that I know on a daily basis is understanding whether my purpose for that day is to glorify God or if it's to glorify myself. And it's really hard to decipher sometimes as a business owner myself. I own a consulting firm, so that's a small business and it's easy to...

Okay.

look at it as extending my own legacy for my legacy sake as opposed to Christ's sake. that just be, that is just a matter of being grounded, knowing every day that what I'm doing is motivated by a love for Christ and a benefit for others and not a desire to grow my own fiefdoms wherever they are.

Okay, very good. Growth is a natural outcome of hard work and it's not bad to grow, but yes, it's sometimes difficult to keep that in sight, but it's good to keep that in sight. Jonathan, give us a little background, your background on how God has led you to where you are today coaching and consulting and things like that.

Yeah, it's great. I, I tell people that I got a bug for leadership development, because the university that I worked out for 10 years, it was in the mission statement to develop leaders for the local church in the world. And so because of that, I just dove straight in to as many resources as I possibly could on what did that mean? we had a way of defining that for the university that I worked at. but I needed to be able to do that for my.

team on the marketing team and for my recruiters who are on the road and, and for the, speaking engagements that I would be invited to all over the U S. So, I spent a decade figuring out what leadership development did look like and what it didn't look like in my own practice in other schools. I was in 35 different States and hundreds of schools and churches in that time and being able to see how some people do it. Well,

And some people needed some assistance. When it was my time to move on from the university, it became a really natural progression of my career to take the things that I had learned as a director with dozens and dozens of people under me and being able to report to the folks who are above me and say, you know what, this is not stuff that you just like grow up knowing. This is not something that you just like wake up thinking, blue is blue and leadership development looks like this. No, you have to learn this stuff. so

when I found that my favorite part of my job in that year, those years in higher ed was when the light bulb came on and someone said, I get it. I know how to do that now. And that doesn't mean that they did it always well, but now they know how that was my favorite part. And so that was the, that was the impetus for me moving into the coaching and consulting space because I want to see those light bulbs come on more often.

Yep, I get it. And that's where it, yeah, it's a two-way street, isn't it? Because it gets them going and gets you going. Have you found that as far as leadership, are some people naturally more leaders than others or is this completely across the board learned?

I think there are some character traits that different cultures prioritize as being synonymous with leadership. think charisma is the most misunderstood characteristic that is not synonymous with leadership. the leaders that I have found that are the most successful and the things that I would define as leaders are actually quiet. They're the ones that are steady and calculating and intelligent.

And these are things that are character qualities that take time to develop. I think there are some character qualities that are less concrete, that people know that they can trust you. And so as a matter of development, folks that are more trustworthy, they find themselves in positions of leadership. But I like to say it that way because people who find themselves in positions of leadership have a different leadership style than people who are aspiring.

positions of leadership. and I don't think it's a bad thing to want to be a leader. I think the Bible talks about that in leadership of the church but I think that there is a heart posture of I will serve. Those are the best leaders and so those are things that you have to teach and train and become better at. Not so much be born with them.

very good answer. I always think of Saul and David. Saul looked like a king, had his shoulders above everybody. He's handsome and all this stuff. Everybody's like, wow, that's our king. But later on you see his God's spirit left him and his heart wasn't there. David came along. David was the man after God's own heart. And it's like the first king of the people wanted, the second king is who God wanted.

You know, it says David was beautiful and good looking to look at too, but it just, that wasn't the only thing. It just wasn't outward as inward as well. You talked about leaving a legacy. In your definition, what would be, what does it mean to leave a legacy as a leader?

Mm.

My wife shook me to the core one time we were driving and we kind of shook out what this means for Shealy Executive Consulting to leave a legacy. And we were talking about a particular company that had a good name. And she was like, you know, the reason that I think that this company has a good name is because it's not just the employees that enjoy working there. It's the families of those employees that like their loved ones working there. And I love that as like a

a pulse check, the legacy of a good company, the legacy of a good leader is that they aren't just impacting the team that is directly connected to them. So if you have a CEO of a medium sized company, they probably only have five or six direct reports who then have, you know, 15 to 50 direct reports who then, you know, it just keeps going and keeps going. But the legacy is the further away that you get from that direct, direct impact, the legacy doesn't change.

The legacy of leadership coaching is that they have developed a strong culture, a strong sense of morality, a strong sense of purpose, and it continues. It continues down. doesn't, it doesn't stop wherever they stop walking. It doesn't stop whenever they stop talking. and so ultimately that means the best leadership legacies continue after they're no longer in that company. And so the vision that they've casted and the processes that they've built.

while they might need to update with new terminology for the new age, don't have to alter in substance because they continue to be the fiber of what it's meant to be solid moving forward. And that's not an easy thing to do.

Yeah,

sure, no. I like what you said when you said their families enjoyed them working there. It's true. I mean, you can be happy at work, you can be not happy at work, and you bring that home. Whether you like it or not, you bring it home.

Yes.

I've found that that's a pass fail. That's not a, that's not a, an ABC F it's a pass fail.

Interesting.

Is a hard pass a hard fail or just pass fail?

It's just pass fail.

Interesting.

Cause you can get the sense of a conversation. If you go to a holiday party and the spouses or significant others have been there, have been invited, you can tell. Just talk to the significant others and see how they respond. You can tell.

Okay.

Hmm, interesting. I guess that's because they come home and they talk about work and they talk about whether it's positive or negative. So I remember doing that once. I came home, I switched jobs and then it was a better job and I didn't complain as much and my family noticed. I'm like, I didn't think I was complaining. They're like, yeah, you complained a lot about that. I guess I didn't see that, but they did. So what is...

It is.

Mm.

an area or two that is a good thing, is helpful or a good thing to leave a legacy in. How do you do that?

I think businesses specifically, when they leave a legacy well in their community, that's to be praised. I think it's easy for us to think of brands as disconnected from any geographic area that they are planted in or they're built on. And as a leader, it's disingenuous to not think of the direct community and the secondary communities that you impact with your services or your products.

So yeah, we talk a lot about serving our clients well. We talk a lot about hospitality to the people who come through our doors. But what is the secondary and tertiary impacts to your business? And how are you planning to make a positive impact on those areas as well? you know, my particular clients end up being in the medium-sized company. So 50 to 250 employees. That's quite a bit of economic impact.

And so if you have that many employees, they're living somewhere, they're grocery shopping somewhere, they're going to clubs, they're going to schools. And the impact that you have positively or negatively on all of those secondary and tertiary places can be significantly positive or it can be significantly damaging. And you don't always know immediately, but you can start to tell on the trajectory of a company on whether or not they burn through their employees. Well, it'll become a lot harder to get new people.

If you burn through your employees. Well, if you have a great name in the community, it becomes really easy to have enough people in your queue to choose from, but then you have to start working on how do you develop more? How do you expand effectively so that you can serve better? I think if a business is focused on their impact in the longterm, it will help them make their short-term decisions easier. doesn't mean that those decisions are.

not weighty, they're light decisions. They're still heavy decisions to make, but they're easier to make because you've already predetermined what kind of outcome you want for your customers, your employees, and the impact of your community.

Okay, this has come up before, so I want to just ask the question, what kinds of things can you do as an employer owner to keep your people there? What kind of things are important to them that we may not know about that in canvassing the people that they say, hey, this is really important to me in this company?

Well, I think just very fundamentally, knowing the calendar of events in your community is a really simple thing to know and planning your work calendar around the calendar of your community. So if there's, for instance, you've got a bunch of parents that have high schoolers and they have a homecoming game going on, it's really easy to not schedule third, you know, third round, 12 shifts on homecoming night so that all your parents have to work.

And they're really upset because they didn't get to see their seniors playing homecoming night. Like that is a really intensely specific example, but I've seen the community size directly impacts what kind of actions you take. So maybe you have a bigger company that can't actually conduct their calendar around, but you can be listening to your people and say, you know what? Hey, we know that there are things come up. so flexibility is a huge name of the game for keeping employees because they want autonomy.

Gotcha.

They want respect and they want flexibility. So autonomy, give them a specific set of situation or a specific set of job things to accomplish, some articulated outcomes and let them do it. And then let them tell you the best way to do it because they're the first person that has to accomplish it. Then they also, they need responsibility. They need to be backed up. So when they say this thing needs to be done,

you know, double check it, go through the right means to checking whether that request is appropriate, but then support them that way. So support them in their job, but then also support them in their home jobs with flexibility, because it's a, it's a home job to be a mom or a dad. It's a home job to go home and pay the bills and keep the house updated and keep the car running and keep, get your kids to where they're supposed to be on, on school. And so I like to talk about it as the home job, not just the home life.

Right? all of it is life. Your job is your life and your home is your life. There's just the work job and there's the home job.

review with that because she's like, I never get a day off because I'm working all the time. Yeah. No, we don't. No, we don't. Anyway, that's another subject there. But those are great ideas about being flexible. I never thought about that. And as far as events coming in your workplace and on that autonomy and empowerment, I know as a production worker, I like that too, where my opinion actually matters. can help.

It's right. We don't get PTO from being parents.

Mm-hmm.

make things better. So very good. We discussed this a little bit before. It's interesting. I'm just going to throw the question out. What do feel is the attitude of mainline Christianity concerning money, prosperity, and wealth building? Because we talked about companies and sometimes they grow big, sometimes they don't. What do you think the mainline Christianity's attitude towards money is?

Hmm.

I think the easy single word would be confusion. People are very confused as to what they ought to think about money and wealth and value and growth. because, know, appropriately we see in Proverbs, we see in the Old Testament and some in the New Testament as well, that our, our perspective ought to be eternal and not temporal. And so we, don't want to invest in those things that are moth and rust and that do corrupt.

And so we also, hear and we maybe mishear the verse that says the love of money and we reinterpret it as the, says the love of money is the root of all evil. And we misinterpret it to say money is the root of all evil. And this is a significant error because the posture around money is what will make the difference in how it's used.

And I distinguish in my practice, the difference between wealth and money, because you can define wealth in so many non-financial terms. I work at home and so my two kids are at home. My wife keeps the two kids here. She educates my six-year-old and I have a 20-month-old daughter. And I would say that it's wealth. I'm a wealthy man. When I get to hear my 20-month-old slap, slap, slap feet on the ceiling above me, from the level above me in the house.

That's wealthy. I'm a wealthy person to have a family, to have a house, and to have my kids close in proximity to me six days a week. Then I would also say that there's the financial responsibility of Christians to then say, right, so if the money itself is not the problem, if it's the selfishness and the love of that money, and investing in the money for the money's sake, if that's the problem,

And what ought we to do? And I think it is a distinctly Christian thing to provide value for the world around us, because guess what? God is a creating God. He created the earth for his own pleasure. And I think that we, as Christians, we enter into that same work of creating when we build businesses, we create value for the people around us. We create the opportunity with an environment of a workplace or with the products and services.

for other people to build their wealth when we do that. And we want the way in which we do business to be so distinctly not of the world's values that it's shocking that it works. Because it doesn't make sense for a non-Christian to do business this way, but a Christian doing business this way thrives. And it's not like there's this cosmic promise that if you are a Christian and you have a business that you're gonna be massively

successful by the terms of the world. But that's the fundamental issue is that we need to define our terms by kingdom values. So it may not be a really flashy thing, but if your business grows to the point where it has some employees and your employees are very well paid and they have good benefits and they're very, they're comfortable being involved with their children's lives and they can go to church on the weekends, that is a high value, high wealthy thing for you to do as a business owner.

And God is pleased with that. God is pleased with you building a business that is creating wealth and financial resources for you. Because guess what? We're also commanded to give in the abundance of our resources. And you don't have abundance if you're not creating. You don't have abundance if you're not giving, you're not identifying that your financial resources

or what you're able to give or your culture is what you're able to give your hospitality. You have to have resources for that. Building those resources is not a bad thing. It's when you use those resources for selfish and for earthly bound values that is where you get off. And I could go on and on for that answer for that conversation for an hour because I think it is something that has tripped up Christians for a long time.

Having money is not a problem. Having money for having money's sake is a problem.

Yeah, and like I said, like you said, you could talk about that for long time. I always think of from Proverbs, it says, when the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice. When the wicked reign, the people mourn. And we've seen it in our lifetime, the righteous reign, the wicked reign. So what do the righteous reign? The righteous reigning, they are wealthy and they're using that wealth to benefit those under them. I've learned Psalm 112, which talks about the

Yes.

Blessed is the man who fears the Lord who greatly resides in his lights and his laws Talks about wealth and riches are in his house But then later on it says he has distributed he was given to the board You know, he's he's distributed wealth not that he gives all his wealth away But he's he helps people look at the Old Testament law that you know If you see a brother need you help him out and that's what the righteous man does he takes that wealth and

Hmm

helps people out, maybe help a startup get going or whatever. But yeah, I think it's a needed thing to revamp our view on wealth, that we're here to do good works with our wealth.

Right, right. Otherwise we'd

have been called home as soon as we accepted the Lord.

Yeah, we're here for a bigger reason than that. So we talked about legal legacy, wealth, business, all that. Can you give us a couple of simple, practical steps that we can take as business owners to help build that legacy for our people to pass on good things?

Yeah.

I think it's as simple as having a very clear vision for what you want to accomplish with your business. And I say that like, that's some kind of easy thing to do, but it all starts with having a clear vision of the impact that you want and then working backwards from there. What does it take to get to that vision and being doggedly determined to get to that vision at whatever cost it has that

That determination and that specificity of vision will determine at some level your impact for the people who are around you. And maybe you've had a vision before and you've never made a plan to actually accomplish it. I think that is your next step. Make a plan. Maybe you've had a clear vision and you've never told it to anyone. Well, you need to tell some people that they're a part of that vision work as well.

Maybe you've had a vision, you've had a mission, you've even communicated it, but you haven't made decision making through that lens of the vision, a regular part of your business. Well, I think your next step is to be clearer on your decision making matrices on how you're going to do business in such a way that you you can retire, you can hand off, you can sell your business and be satisfied.

that your efforts meant something because you were determined to have a specific outcome. Businesses are very good at having the outcome of income. But the problem with that is your income can be defined in many different ways. And if you only think about the return on your investment financially, you will lose your opportunity for investment in non-financial terms. But if you articulate that vision in

in the vastly different terms that you want it to make, that's what's going to make the difference. Have a vision, work towards the vision, and be determined to stick to that vision.

distracted. That's really easy to get distracted. Jonathan, how can we learn more about you? People want to learn more about consulting and coaching with you.

I'm always on LinkedIn. Find me on as Jonathan and Shealy on LinkedIn. Message me there. Follow me there. Follow my newsletter. Leadership matters or go to my website at ShealyExecutiveConsulting.co. You can find the most recent work that we're developing as company and follow my newsletter for the different prompts as I build out different products.

Jonathan, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. Talk about leaving your legacy and just blessing those under you and not just to use them but to help them have a good life outside of work. I like the job work you talked about. Well friends, your next steps to put into practice what you've heard is to check your show notes for links and sites and contact information for Jonathan. We'll put them in there and sign up for a newsletter as well to receive Bible verses for business success to help you read and apply the Bible.

and deliver it right to your inbox. And remember that your business represents the great God you serve. So build a business worthy of God's great name in a way that honors Him.