Business: The Last Frontier Of The Mission Field With Rebecca Monet
Faith does not only cover our personal lives. What many often forget is that it also guides us in our professional lives. Rebecca Monet sees the world of business as the last frontier of the mission field, recognizing opportunities within work to evangelize. In this episode, she joins Chad Burmeister to share with us her story and how she puts God in the center of it—be it in her private and professional lives. Rebecca is the CEO and Chief Scientist at Zorakle Profiles, where she takes us in to share how she is letting her faith guide her in the work they are doing. Join her in today’s conversation and be inspired to spread the word of God through your work.
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Business: The Last Frontier Of The Mission Field With Rebecca Monet
I've got someone interesting with me who moved across the country recently from San Diego to Arkansas. Now lives on a lake in beautiful Arkansas so she can be close to her family within an hour. That's near and dear to my heart because my kids are both within 45 minutes. It’s important having a family. Rebecca Monet is the CEO and Chief Scientist with Zorakle Profiles. We're going to get to know what Zorakle Profile is all about. Before that, we're going to get to know Rebecca.
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Rebecca, welcome to the show.
It's so good to be here, Chad.
I'm excited to talk. First, I go to the end of the chase scene in the movie and find out I wonder what question this guest might have asked me to ask them. That usually tells me what the tone of the call is going to be. Let me give you the chase scene then we'll rewind. What are your thoughts regarding business being a mission field?
I am big on that. I am a missionary’s daughter. This is near and dear to my heart where my parents chose to go into the mission field and it was their calling. I wasn’t called to the mission field, but I am a big believer that my faith and my beliefs can be expressed through my business. I see the world of business as the last frontier of the mission field. I think if each of us saw ourselves like Paul, a tentmaker, the evangelist, and a missionary, that we have incredible opportunities right within our work, businesses, clients, and employees to be spreading the word of God.
It’s interesting because it’s happened to me a few years and probably a lot of other people during these interesting times. You have two lines, business and personal and mission, and they start to intersect over time. It’s wild because 25 to 30 years of doing sales and now AI sales, I’ve learned, “I can move one degree off and use all those tools that I built to help other nonprofits.”
I hung up with a nonprofit that’s in Buckhead Christian Ministry. I was like, “I don’t know how I can help. What are your needs?” I took two pages of notes. For about $50 a month of my costs, I can give him $10,000 worth of business value. It’s just opening your ears to God like, “What do you want me to do with my business and my life? How can I help, not a few dozen people, but how can I help thousands of people and expose them to your word?” It’s like, “Now, I get it.”
“The world of business is the last frontier of the mission field.”
I think you hit the nail on the head there where we have to keep that mind open and that question of, “How can I be of service? What are you calling me to do that?” At this moment, I had a horrible experience a number of years ago and went to my spiritual mother, my mentor. I said, “I’m lost. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.” She said, “You know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. You’re supposed to go about your father’s work. Get up in the morning and go about your father’s work. Moment by moment, you will know what that is.” In society, we’ve kept church and stake, business and our beliefs separate. Slowly, we’re starting to learn that they overlap, they should overlap and we should be fearless in that way.
I think what’s also changed is this is my home office. When we’ve moved to remote work in many cases, now it’s like, “Company, you’re in my house now. I can have those conversations.” It’s not like the HR Department standing down the hall listening to my conversation. I can have a little bit more of an open dialogue with peers and people that I work with. That changed a little bit.
That’s true. These have shifted things. As an entrepreneur, as a business owner, I do have a little more leeway than an employee might have but I have noticed over the last 18 months, 24 months, 3 years even, I’m getting older and having more conversations about these things and people are grateful. I also think this has caused people to be more receptive to these conversations. When life has been upside down and they’re questioning what is going on and even questioning, “Am I supposed to go back to work? Does life have more meaning than go to work and pay the mortgage?” People are more open to conversations.
That’s where God has a plan, even when it feels like, “What is going on? What’s going to happen next?” You have to tap into faith and know that everything is going to be okay. At least that’s how I do it. Let’s go back. If we go back to when you’re younger, where were you raised? What was your passion? When we were kids, we’re unfiltered by the world. Our parents have influenced us yet. We wake up and we’re so amazed by what it is we see and do. What were those things that you like to do when you were younger?
I was born and raised in Switzerland, a small village outside of Zürich. My parents were missionaries. I was highly influenced by the Swiss culture, which is very different than the American culture. It’s an inquisitive culture. It’s a culture where you always want to learn and gather knowledge. It’s a culture that is about your neighbors, community, family, and friendship. It’s a very humble culture. There was a much influence.
One of the biggest influences of Switzerland that started even as a child and runs to who I am now is when you interact with a Swiss person. They will meet you where you are. It’s like life starts at that moment. They’re not asking questions like Americans are, “Where did you go to school? Where were you raised? What degrees do you have? What zipcode do you live in? What do you do for a living?” Those are not questions. It would be considered rude to ask those questions. The relationship starts with unconditional acceptance of who you are and the relationship builds from that point forward.
If the relationships are more authentic and based on two people meeting rather than what I can get from this person, any projections or expectations, that had a great influence on me as a child. For me, it was always about connecting, bonding, and getting to know someone through friendship and relationship. I was endlessly curious about others. I was also a little bossy as a kid.
I had no idea. I remember a book in my MBA program called Kiss, Bow, Or Shake Hands. It was about Japan and China and when you go to places, what are you supposed to do? I'll have to find that book because I'll need to look up Switzerland and figure out what do they say about all that. How does that understanding and what you learned there now tie to what you're doing with Zorakle Profiles? I have to believe there's a very solid tie to that.
Business Mission: In society, people kept church, state, and beliefs separate. Today, people are starting to learn that they overlap, and they should be fearless in that way.
I hadn't consciously thought about it, but they're definitely is a connection because that non-judgmental, total acceptance mode allows me as a human being and as a scientist to look at someone at face value. There's no judgment about their past and who their family was. It's only who they are. In the profiling business, I want to know objectively who you are. I don't want to project something onto you. I want to truly know what your gifting is, what makes you tick, and you know what your why is. A combination of this endless curiosity with this non-judgmental, this is who you are.
You were built and manufactured that way. Let’s look into how you were built because you were built for a purpose. It’s like, “That’s cool. Let’s compare purposes.” I love to tie those two things together. I learned this at an event that I did. It’s a four-day workshop. This guy would do this in twelve minutes. By the end, most people were teared up like, “I’m doing exactly what I should be doing,” because you said, I haven’t consciously looked at that. Our best life is unconscious. We follow the river and where it takes us.
That’s pretty neat that you’re living in that. I talked to a guy who wrote a book called The Ant and the Elephant. He said, “If you compare the size of the ant to the elephant, that’s your unconscious versus conscious.” Conscious is the ant. Unconscious is the elephant. Imagine this little ant trying to tell the elephant what to do. It’s like, “You have to get in tune with where the elephant is going and follow the elephant, not trying to over Einstein things.”
That's a great visual.
This guy was a recreational skier turned Olympian in four years. I like to ask all of my guests this question and that is, can you share a painful memory? Something you’re comfortable sharing, obviously and how did you get through it? What were your strategies or tactics? Maybe you didn’t have a strategy at that time, but looking back now, you’re like, “That was an important piece of my life.” What are you comfortable sharing?
I have three that pop up into my head. All are somewhat complex but I'm trying to think of the one that would be easiest to describe. Probably would be this idea that when my parents were on furlough from the mission field, they split up. It was a traumatic thing. My father, as a pastor and missionary at that time, Southern Baptist, when there was a divorce or a split-up, you are no longer allowed to be in a leadership role.
He lost his career because of this. What he believed to be his purpose was ripped away. Of course, we were dramatically traumatized, too because now we are being ripped away from our mother. My father stole us and took us to another state. We didn't see our mother for many years or even know if she was alive. It was a lot of trauma around that. The way I dealt with it was like a lot of kids, you don't ask questions.
At some point, the pain stops or at least you think it stops. I still think it affects me now when I think about my father having to give up his career because of a major obstacle or choosing a situation where a spouse didn't come alongside that. How traumatic that was for everyone. Even in my business now, a lot of what I do is about helping people find what their true purpose or gifting is and make sure they get into the right business so they can express those God-given talents.
“Get up in the morning and go about your father’s work. Moment by moment, you will know what that is.”
I’m helping them get into the right business. Indirectly, there's been some benefit out of that trauma of watching someone gifted and talented have something ripped away. Now, obviously, I can go into, why wasn't he more tenacious? Why did he overcome those obstacles and find another way but it was traumatic enough as a child? Like a lot of children do, I stuck my head in the sand and continued but I do think it has carved out who I am in many ways and also created a business that helps others to not experience that.
It would be an interesting movie to say, “Stories of Missionary Kids.” I’ve only met a handful and they’re always very intriguing stories. Dr. Jim Wilder, a neurotheologist. His parents were missionaries in Africa. As a kid, he was like, “I don’t even know if I believe in God.” He questioned it. These three girls, as he described it when he was a teenager said, “Come to church with us,” then they forced him and pushed him into doing the prayer at midnight because it was an all-night thing. He’s like, “I don’t know if I can do it because if I pray and I’m faking it, then God could be mad at me, but do I believe in God?”
He’s struggling with all of this, then he meets a kid at the church that night who said, “I don’t know either.” They said, “Why don’t we get together. Let’s pray every night. Let’s make the decision to at least test this, then we’ll meet the next day, share notes, and see what he told us.” He does this for like 20 or 30 days in a row and he goes, “You wouldn’t believe how almost word-for-word the story was that God told them every night.” I think of the Memphis facility at FedEx. They ship all the packages into the middle and they go out. There is a single source of it all at the sorting center. That was wild. He’s dedicated his whole life to neuro work, but with a theology perspective to it.
It's amazing how these things come about. It almost seems random at the time. It almost seems chaotic and confusing, even emotional and overwhelming, but God is not a God of chaos. He will straighten the lines out and draw a picture correctly.
I have one good friend who is like, “Chad, you don’t understand population control and all this.” He’s bought in hook line and sink to every single thing that’s out there. Maybe he’s right on 1%, 10%, or 15% of it. My answer to him is, “This is above our pay grade. There’s a chess game being played by a good force we always know wins and a bad force. Let’s them play their chess game. Let’s have faith that it’s going to work out. We need to play our part in that chess game.” Be in alignment with what you’re supposed to be doing, and the game will end exactly as it was meant to end.
You're right. During that process, what role do we play? It’s because there is a master chess player and the forces of good and the forces of evil are clashing. We're noticing some mess around us because of it, but what is our role? What is our responsibility? Are we in any way called to worry and obsess? No, we're not.
I do need to get you this link from Dr. Wilder about trauma. It would be something interesting for you to share with people, probably because he worked with people that were in wars, lost an arm, physical trauma and mental trauma. It’s this three-step process, and I don’t want to butcher it. They can do this in three minutes and it will change the traumatic experience into a positive outcome and a positive mindset. It’s so good and I don’t want to mix it up. This person saw something coming at him then his arm was gone. That’s the picture that he sees when he sees that. They’ve put in place of that something positive and the way that they order that within 3 to 4 minutes. Every time you go back to try to think of that event, you don’t think of the lost arm. The pictures were wiped away.
It's been reframed in some way and you can't have the same emotion attached to it any longer.
Business Mission: Have a nonjudgmental total acceptance mode that allows you to look at someone at face value. There's no judgment about their past or who their family was. It's just who they are.
I'm pretty sure if I think of some of those famous mindset speakers that are out there, they probably have a similar thing, but this is from the neurotheology perspective.
I would love to see it.
You move forward. You’ve moved to Arkansas. You’re on a lake and with your kids. All that’s amazing. I think what a lot of people goof up in life is they’re always thinking like, “In ten years, if I could have X,” then they keep chasing their tail. I met a woman at this restaurant in the mountains one time and she owned the bar. We were there early, it was a restaurant bar and they had a band playing. We got to know her for ten minutes like in the Switzerland way, by the way.
She comes out and says, “I won the lottery for $40 million in 1984. It was the best day of my life and the worst day,” because he lost her husband and all stuff happens. She goes, “I’ve been through a lot of counseling.” I’m like, “Let me guess? You came to the conclusion that you need to be.” She was like, “How did you know?” I’m like, “I’ve talked to a lot of people and all you have is this moment now.” Enjoy the lake. Enjoy Arkansas and your kids when they’re there. It is as simple as that. Be amaze by that.
The thing I always have to come back to because I'm highly driven as an entrepreneur and building an empire. I'm finally at that place where I'm thinking about passing the baton or selling or whatever. It is learning to be to what is it that's important and you have to remind yourself. Otherwise, you're on this hamster wheel. You just go because you've got a certain nurser or momentum and you don't stop to fully appreciate why we are here and why certain people are in our lives or what we're even called to do. We go into automatic pilot.
Sometimes I ask, if I talked to you three years from now, what would you say? I'm not going to ask that one. I want to ask if you went back to talk to your younger self and let's not use twenty. That's the number I usually use. Pick an age because maybe it's when you were in those traumatic times, it was immediately after, or whatever. If you could tell yourself something at some point, years ago, what would that be?
I’m divorced and I have two children. The first thing that pops up in my head is I would tell my younger self that it’s okay to get married again. I was taught that once married and divorced, I could never marry again. Since then, of course, I’ve gotten into the scripture and learned that it is a false understanding of the scripture. I would tell myself not to stay single. I would choose to marry again.
That’s a great one. Other people, funny enough, prayer number three that came through 77Pray, the first one was a kid named Noah and God had been telling me about Noah all year everywhere I went. To the point I flew to Kentucky and went to the Noah’s Ark experience. The very first prayer is Noah. Prayer number 3 or 4, maybe 5 or 6 in the app, is this woman who’s been married for 30 years. She said, “I prayed for peace.”
“God is not a God of chaos. He will straighten the lines out and draw a picture correctly.”
We’re going in for mediation and that didn’t go well. Now it’s going to move to the court cases next. I had talked to her pastor that day, who, I don’t know if he got divorced and remarried to the same person or separated and remarried to the same person. I’m like, “God had me talk to this guy first and now this is in the app. Now I could share my experiences.” It’s amazing when you let God be the hub like we talked about.
That’s the key and to be in the word. It's an instruction manual for life. Sometimes, we are not in it as often as we need to be. I know when I was younger, I certainly wasn't. I was juggling, working, surviving, and single-parenting. It was not a priority. It should have been.
Have you seen the show, The Chosen?
Yes, I have. I love it.
That’s a common thread I’m hearing. It’s being spread virally because it’s so well done. The credits are my favorite part when they play the music and it’s walk on water. If you notice, it’s these gray fish swimming in the circle and the one flips blue. My favorite is when the second one turns after the first one. My new job in life that I believe for the second half turns gray fish blue. I don’t know how yet. I have these conversations. We had a planning meeting with the Living a Better Story team. I’m like, “I don’t know why God’s got me to do all these shows. I’ve done 75 of these conversations.”
You learn a lot when you go deep with people. Your experience with this and this. I go, “We were talking about running a monthly meeting in different cities called Living a Better Story and getting people to come together,” because the church is on this decline religion, but the firepit conversation, which is where Living a Better Story was invented is a group of people that started one-on-one ended with twelve and then we were all sitting around the firepit going, “What’s going on in the world? What about our faith?”
Jewish woman comes over and like, “It’s not about race, color, creed and religious background. It’s about connection to the hub.” I go, “We’ve recorded 70 conversations.” We can go in and say, “Let’s pull the piece that says, what role does faith play in your journey? Tell me about the hardest thing that happened in life.” We can play that segment. That’s 2 to 3 minutes and ask questions as a group and talk about that.
In a conversation and they're smaller conversations. It's not a pastor in front of 3,000 people in one-way communication. It is a conversation. It's more intimate. It's similar to what I'm doing with The Coterie for Women and The Franchise Women. It's a more intimate situation, create those relationships, and build, in my case, sisterhood based on biblical principles around the idea of friendship. Jesus modeled what a true friend is up to and including the ultimate sacrifice. I think we are a society that no longer understands friendship. If there's not an ROI, meaning you can't connect me to someone that'll make me a million dollars, you know someone, or you have some wisdom, all of a sudden, we don't have friends. If we look through social media, friends are simply people that we like their comments on their social platforms.
Business Mission: Jesus modeled what a true friend is. As a society, people no longer understand friendship. You can't connect with someone today if there's no ROI.
Unconditional love is what’s demonstrated. It’s funny. My wife was picking up my daughter, who flew back from Orlando and she had said something to me that all of a sudden, the bell rang in my head. She’s with the pond in the back with five small fishes. She goes, “Where’s the rake? I need to pull all those lily pads out that are stinky.” I’m out there in the backyard watering some plants and I’m like, “She asked me for that and I told her where the rake was. This is an unconditional love opportunity.” I yanked them all down to four. It took twenty minutes and I’m like, “I should cut the grass,” because it’s long. We did that and it feels so good when your unconditional love. There are no expectations on the back of that.
Now you're talking Swiss. What's fascinating about that is love is a commandment. It's not an emotion, which is what we're being taught, especially in the US. If we don't feel it, then, of course, we shouldn't have to behave it, but that's not what the scripture tells us. It tells us we are to love. It's a commandment. That includes acts of service like you are provided. Here's what's fascinating. I experienced this myself. I had a student one time that was difficult.
At minimum difficult in every possible way unlovable, I found myself doing things for her, including picking her up and taking her to church. Over a period of a few months of serving her, even though she was difficult, and in my opinion, quite unlovable, my love began to grow. I started to see who she was. Those acts of service that unconditional lists of it that I'm not going to get anything back will help us develop those feelings of love. It comes as we act on the command. Love yourself.
That's powerful stuff. You've commanded to love. That's well said. I think that needs to be a lesson. Final question and it's packing time. We've already touched on it, but I like to ask it anyway. That is, what role does faith play in your journey in life?
In my business, the scriptures are my roadmap. If I don’t have an answer to a business situation, employee situation, a client situation, or whatever it is, I simply go to the scriptures and say, “What about?” There’s always an answer. My clients, my team, know where I stand and with each year that passes, my clients are becoming more comfortable coming to me and asking me questions. Most importantly, I think we are supposed to be a model, even if we’re not called specifically to evangelize, disciple or whatever other giftings we might have, we are called to be a mirror of Christ or to be Christ-like. I hope that the day-to-day way that I do business and live my life as a grandma and a mom that it is an example of that. It isn’t always, obviously.
There’s only one who does exactly perfectly. All we can do is try to approximate that. I talked to another guy who was in prison, meth addict, everything. The word he chose to use is he was broken, “This is my body broken for you.” He approximated Jesus more than most people in society. Therefore, he can empathetically understand what Jesus went through and go, “I get it. I’ve got the coat on,” then he goes, “Father, I can’t do it myself.”
He was like, “I had two choices. I could take the razor blade out of my shaver and walk into the back at the prison and slowly melt away because the blood would go into the drains by cutting my wrists or give it all to God. I decided it was into thy hands of the Lord. I commend my spirit. You wouldn’t believe the rushing messages.” God talked to him and said, “You got to go do this and this and amend this. Apologize for that.” His wife divorced and he goes, “I would have, too. It’s the right thing.”
“Love is a commandment, not an emotion.”
A year later, she gets back to him and said, “You found Christ. I can’t handle it. Will you take our son back and raise him?” He was like, “I was so happy.” My point is someone in a suit thinks they’re being godly by tithing with 10%. That guy is closer to the understanding of Jesus because he was broken and had to decide, “You’re the only way.” It’s wild. Two things happened to me this 2021 that caused me to feel in that state. I wasn’t as broken as him, but I can empathize with, “I get it. God, what do you need me to do with the rest of my life?” Ever since that turn, it’s like, “The gifts he has for you are out of this Earth.”
You weren't broken in the same way. I'm not broken in the same way. If you break a piece of bread, it's not always going to break in the same way or loss in the same way, but we're all broken and desperately in need of a savior.
I want to leave you with one thing. I go to pray for someone. I’m not a biblical scholar but I’ve read enough and my parents read enough to me when I was a kid that I know the basics. With this app, think of a word like faith or love, but let’s do love. I’m praying for someone and I search love. It looks through all the Bible and every verse with the word love in it comes up with, that’s what I get to post to that prayer thread. I can give my own human thoughts to it but I can also share the biblical thoughts. I go in and look at this, and say, “We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19, send. Now it’s like, “Biblically, that gave me guidance of what I should be doing next.”
It also teaches us how to pray the word we are instructed. If we're using the word as we pray, we have a sword there because to go against whatever is the opposite of that. Pray the word. If you have access to 300 scriptures on a particular issue that you have, pray the word.
In sales, there's the Art of War and if you have a 3 to 1 advantage, then you go frontal attack. If you don't, you go around the side. Think about when you have a frontal advantage and you've got 87 verses with love in it. Rebecca Monet, this has been amazing. We didn't get as much as I like into the Zorakle Profiles, but if people want to reach you and get ahold of you to have a conversation, how would they reach out to you?
The two best ways are @RebeccaMonet on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only one on the planet. That'll be easy or ZorakleProfiles.com is the website.
Amazing conversation. I'll send you a release form and maybe we'll need to put this conversation in one of the Living a Better Story Training Classes someday or a piece of it. Thanks so much. Enjoy your family. Enjoy your new home there at the lake. God's peace to you.
Thanks, Chad.
Thank you, Rebecca.
Important links
The Coterie for Women - LinkedIn
@RebeccaMonet - LinkedIn
About Rebecca Monet
Zorakle Profiles provides assessment tools to the franchise space. Our SpotOn! meta-analysis provides insight no singular profile, survey, algorithm or assessment can. Our SpotOn! science determines franchisee-franchisor compatibility and predicts performance.
For more information: 760.207.2214 or www.ZorakleProfiles.com
