God-Centered Family Life And Work Life With Deb Brown Maher
Life is an eternal wheel of uncontrolled incidents that everyone tries to thrive in. No matter what follows, we try to exercise our optimistic nature to both the church and our work to see the positive output from both commitments. It is easier said than done. At some point, you will lose track and even doubt yourself if you are taking the right step. In this episode, Sales Coach and Author Deb Brown Maher shares her insights about controlling negativity and her multi-functioning experience with the church and her profession. Problems are there to strengthen you for the better. Let Deb guide you on how you can stand firm while handling life challenges while still smiling at the process.
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God-Centered Family Life And Work Life With Deb Brown Maher
In this episode, I’ve got a good friend of mine that I became friends with in early 2021, but it feels like we’ve known each other for decades. This is Deb Brown Maher, the author of Sell Like Jesus. She has decades of selling experience, sales management, leadership training, and we had the luxury of having her join us at the first inaugural Living A Better Story Retreat. She shared a lot of her wisdom with the group, and we’re happy to have her on the show. Deb, welcome.
Thank you so much. It’s great to be here with you, Chad.
I love the changing artwork that you have. It’s almost a divine gift that comes through you and shows up in the art. What’s the latest and greatest? What does that mean to you?
What I do is start with a blank canvas in front of the congregation. My back is to them so they can see what I’m doing as I do it. I ask the Lord, “What do you want to be made manifest this day?” “What part of the invisible world do you want to be made visible?” It usually starts with him telling me a color and a brush to use. I will get that color out, start painting, get the next color, next stroke, and shapes. It evolves as much for me as it does the congregation watching. I was telling a friend that I can count on one hand how many times I’ve known what I’m supposed to paint before I painted. The rest of the time, only five times did I know what the image was supposed to be before I started. Otherwise, the image is evolving for me as much as it is for the watchers.
Out of curiosity, when you did the lion, was that one of the five, or was that a random that was evolving, if you remember?
It evolved. What I knew was red, white, and blue. I knew the colors.
That’s how we got connected. I found you online. I was about to write a book called God-Centered Selling. I Googled God-Centered Selling and Jesus-Centered Selling, and then there was the podcast interview that you did with iWork4Him. That was divine intervention that we were able to meet. We did this at the Living A Better Story Retreat. Remember the cards that we stepped on, and if you go back to 5 or 6 years old, what would you love to do? What was your passion then?
Sell Like Jesus: 7 Characteristics of Christ For Ethical Sales
Even then, I loved color. One of my favorite things to do was to draw rainbows. I have a scrapbook where I have pictures of rainbows. I always was drawn to ROYGBIV, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, even before I knew what it was.
What’s funny about that is that Greg, who’s the detective that I mentioned in New York that was on the last episode, his guardian angel’s name was Roy. He said, “There’s no doubt about it. His name was Roy.” It’s funny when I was a kid when we’d go to travel, my friend and I always had this joke about Roy.
Many angels appear as flames of fire. I call them fire angels.
I almost get the feeling on the picture. It’s almost a yin and yang thing. In our room, I’ve got this cool, big marble stone thing, and it’s a yin and yang. There’s the tug and pull of good versus evil. I almost get that feeling from that.
This is called Two Fires and it’s the fire coming out of the throne room of heaven. It shows more specifically the colors of the fire that surround the throne and then the fire of earth, which is the red, orange, yellow with some deep blues or purples, and the occasional white, which is the hottest part of the flame. What I was sensing was heaven and earth connecting and the power of heaven and the power that has been given to God’s people here in the earth coming together, meeting in the middle. It’s hard to see, I didn’t do this on purpose, but there ended up being Jacob’s ladder connecting the two.
The blend in the back looks like an infinity as well. You’ve had a passion early for color, ROYGBIV. It’s obvious, the secret connection between what you did then, but tie it to your career because drawing and painting in the church are different than what you do in your day job. How did those two things tie together?
It’s great that you asked me that. It was probably within 2020 that I had the revelation that what I do verbally is the same skill that enables me to paint. Let me flush that out. I’ve been gifted with the ability to process information between the right and left brain very quickly. I see patterns, images, colors, and connections, as I’m listening to people share what their challenges are, what they’ve tried, what’s worked, and what hasn’t worked. I’m able to, on the fly orchestrate, using what people have shared to teach and help them find the bridge over the gap.
I shared a challenge with you. You quickly said a prayer, “May the doors that need to be open, be open, and may the doors that need to be closed, be closed.” That was precisely what was going through my head. You could hear, see, and articulate that quickly.
It’s that 3rd or even 4th dimension of the spirit when you know Christ, and you have an intimate, personal relationship with him, you’re able to see things from a completely different perspective. It’s a spiritual perspective. The spirit knows the spirit, can see the spirit, and understand things of the spirit. It’s a God-given gift and ability to manifest the spiritual, which is typically invisible, into the earthly realm so that it can have the effect it’s meant to have. It’s no good if it’s just up there inaccessible. Many people feel distant from God when, in fact, he craves that personal connection with every single one of the people that he created. We are all his creation and he craves that relationship.
I remember on the second call that we did, I had this high-pitched sound, and you could hear it too. It’s not just in this room. It wasn’t my lighting or my speaker. It happens at different places, and it’s a real high pitch frequency. I can almost tune into the channel. I haven’t figured out what it means when the ringing gets loud, but it seems to be a good thing.
I encourage you to keep noticing when it’s happening, make note of it, and then take that to the Lord in prayer and ask him for a greater revelation. What is he trying to say to you through that?
You’ve shared your secret connection from the past to the present. We all go through stuff in life, without necessarily revealing the deepest painful memories. If you can share something that was maybe hard and then how did it become a gift to you later. A lot of times, people go through something where they’re like, “This suck,” and then they look back and they go, “It changed me for the better.”
As you can imagine, over the years, there have been numerous disappointments. One of the most difficult and worst, I’m glad I lived through these experiences. I’m grateful for it, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone kind of experience was losing my husband, Bill Brown, to a sudden illness. After we’d been married 25 years, our lives were completely intertwined. He was my best friend, as well as my husband. All of a sudden, he was gone, and everything shifted in ways that you can’t imagine. I can’t even fully articulate. Everything changed. Other people felt the loss and were at a loss to comfort me. Other people were dealing with grief in ways that I couldn’t identify with. They couldn’t relate to what I was going through. It was this place of complete isolation.
I had to look to God. I remember more than once thinking, “Who can I call to comfort me?” I think about a best friend, my mother, my sister, and each time I thought of a person, I’m like, “No, there’s nothing they can do for me. There’s nothing they can say to me. There is no consolation.” It drove me right into the face of God. I got in front of him and made a declaration that I’ve come to learn later was the best thing I could have done. I got in God’s face, and I said, “This sucks, and you are good. I’m going to declare your goodness. I know you’re going to get me through this, but right now, this sucks.”
I was raw. I was real. There was no hiding anything. He knew it all, and I knew he was the only one who could comfort me. That started a path of connection at such a deep level between me and him that I wouldn’t give up. I hated that I had to go through what I went through to get there, but because I turned to him and I made him my strong tower and my fortress, I ran to him, and I didn’t try to get my needs met through any human being, knowing that they could not. They would always fail me, not because they wanted to fail me but because they were unable and inadequate for the task.
God-Centered: God is good, and He has good things planned. So, people should set sight on His goodness so that they could take that step each day.
When we were at the retreat, this was exactly the book that my parents used to read to me when I was a kid. It’s fairly well beat up, but it’s very much of a picture book and easy-to-understand words that convert the Bible into something that’s understandable. It was the story of Job. It completely aligns with what you said. It’s interesting that it was marked in the book. My mother, when she handed it to me before the trip, said, “I don’t know why this mark is in the middle of the book, but it is. I have a feeling it might mean you’re supposed to read it.” I was like, “We can do that.” What a great read that was.
These retreats that we’re putting on, we’re going to be in Scottsdale and Winter Park. We’re going to do one in different places all across the country. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a biblical, “Let’s get together and talk all about religion.” It’s a, “Let’s dive deep into the mind and let’s figure out what it would mean to have a better connection with God.” It’s amazing that one person that came was Hindu. Another person does not have a relationship with God or Jesus, and yet when everyone left, I feel they became a little bit more curious and closer connected than they were before they came. Energy versus what drains you. Is there something that drains your batteries, and then what recharges them?
There’s one thing that drains me that I have to protect myself from, and that is people who insist on playing the victim when they don’t have to. It’s that mentality of, “Everything is happening to me. I have no control. Life hates me. People hate me. God hates me. I might as well just eat worms.” Being around someone like that can completely drain me because I am so polar opposite. My belief is we choose our response. Yes, stuff happens. I described something that happened to me that could have put me square in a victim box for the rest of my life. Fortunately, I’ve met some women who have carried that pain unnecessarily.
There’s an appropriate time. There’s a season for grieving, and then there’s a time to get dressed and go back to work. If you look at the example of David, when Bathsheba’s first son died, the son that he had with her out of wedlock. Solomon was his second son. At the time of his son’s sickness, he fasted, prayed, mourned, and when the child died, he got dressed and ate a meal. People were scratching their heads like, “That’s weird. You should be mourning now that he’s gone.”
David was putting all his energy into asking the Lord to heal his son. Once God made the decision that the healing was not going to take place, Solomon got on with things. We need to be able to get through. I’m not in any way diminishing the difficulties that people experience. I have experienced them. What I am doing is encouraging people to say, “This is the hand I’ve been dealt. What can I do?” “What do I need to do?” “How do I get through this?” “What’s a healthy response to this?” “Where is there wisdom to help me walk through this so that I don’t get stuck and it doesn’t become my identity?”
John Guydon is a friend of mine. He played CU football. We met a couple of years ago, and he speaks at different events. I’ve introduced him to a handful of people, and he’s an amazing guy at the core. He did a TED Talk. He invited me to TED Talk. He said, “It’s in Dallas.” It was about a four-hour drive from Dallas. I went out and listened to his TED Talk. He’s African-American. He talked about, he went first class on an airplane, and he was sitting in row 1C. They served him last, and he was scratching his head like, “This doesn’t feel right.”
He goes, “I’m not going to play the victim here. Let me just ask the question.” “Out of curiosity, I’m sitting in first class. Is there a reason why I got served left?” She goes, “It’s all based on the pecking order of how many miles people fly. That guy over there has 1.8 million, and you don’t have the same level of miles flown.” A lot of people would not have that level of curiosity. He had the foresight to always question and get beyond that.
It started with his choice to ask.
This one is the one that Greg, the detective, immediately knew the answer and I look at it as a loaded question. What would you like to accomplish in life that would change everything for you?
I’m conflicted because, in some ways, I feel like I am in the process of accomplishing. I’m not there yet and I’m not sure I’m ever going to arrive completely. What I have been driving towards for many years is that I am passionate to see an integration of spiritual-work-family. Not, “We go to church on Sunday,” and then we live the rest of our week. Not separation of church-work, church-state. I say spirit because there’s a religion that brings rules and regulations.
I have to define these words because regardless of what label you put on it, whenever you’re being put in a box, and you’re being weighed down with rules that make it impossible for you to succeed in your effort, that’s a prison. That’s not faith. That’s not the spirit. That’s not freedom in the Lord the way it was intended. I want to see that living out of values and expressions of my faithfulness and my connection with the Lord integrated completely in everything that I do. It’s that integration that I’m striving for, and there’s always room to improve that. I want to show up as real and authentic. Although I am firmly planted on the Jesus movement and mountain, that does not exclude people who are not. It means I need to be authentic and real about who I am and not hold that back because that would be inauthentic.
I want to hear from other people’s perspectives where they’re coming from, understand and respect them and not have my personal beliefs become a barrier. I don’t have it figured out. If I could figure it out, it would change everything very quickly. The blessing and the good news are I’m figuring it out and I’m able to do that with good people like you and others that we met at the Living A Better Story event where we were able to connect at a deep level very quickly out of respect for the vulnerability that we shared.
The reason I’m not a huge fan of the question, but I like to ask it anyway is because of the way you answered it. Early in my career, someone would ask, “Are you successful?” You’d go, “I’ll be successful when,” and the answer is once you own it and you go, “I’ve written four books. I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’ve traveled to Hong Kong, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.” What do you mean you’re not successful yet? Wake up and smell the roses. Everything’s amazing in this universe, and it all works together for good. What bores you? Do you get bored easily?
God-Centered: People should exercise faith to experience God’s goodness.
Watching sports. I’d rather be doing it. I’m not a watcher. I’m a doer.
In your career, life or whatever you want to apply this question to, what’s working and what’s not?
What’s working is connections like this. As I pursue this integration of faith and work, I have discovered a key with the Lord’s help and the help of a missionary by the name of Heidi Baker, who has orphanages in Mozambique. She has been in Mozambique for more than a couple of decades rescuing children from the trash dump where they’ve been abandoned, and they are going to try to find scrap to be able to eat. When somebody asked Heidi, “How do you do what you do?” She said, “I serve the one that’s in front of me.” That is what I am doing. I’m connecting with the one that is in front of me, and in making that connection, my life is enriched. I hope theirs is enriched. Sometimes we connect further, like you and I. Sometimes it’s just that one conversation for now. My perspective is, everyone has value and a story. I want to hear yours if you want to share it with me.
What role does faith play in your journey? How would you communicate to other people if faith isn’t important in their journey? What advice would you give them to at least open up the door and see what’s on the other side?
If you can see it, it doesn’t involve faith. If I see it and know it, then I don’t faith because the proof is there. Faith enters the picture when you can’t see, you don’t know. Back to my story about losing Bill, I was in the midst of a desert, a valley so deep that it was excruciating even to take one step to try to crawl out, but I had faith that God was good, and he had good things planned for me. I set my sight on his goodness so that I could take that step each day. Each time I took a step, I could go, “Good job, Deb, you took a step. This day, you packed up some clothes. Good job. Tomorrow, you’ll get them to the goodwill. The next day, you’ll get to the grocery store.” It was that tedious.
Just one foot in front of the other. Breathe in, breathe out. Get your shoes on and brush your teeth. “I can breathe. I’m alive. I’m going to trust.”
For months, it was horrible. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was disgustingly horrible. The other act of faith that I actively did was to worship the Lord. I would go to Wednesday night band practice, and I would go to Sunday morning band practice before the service and then the service so I could worship in a corporate setting, not alone, but with others around. I would sing, dance, flag, paint, and be in the Lord’s presence, and here’s what happened. It’s like when David played his harp, and the demons in Saul went away. When I worshiped, I had joy unspeakable. In the midst of the horrible depression and difficulty, I experienced moments of joy in Christ that I can’t describe in words. That helped me get through.
My son had some massive burns that you’re aware of. He had 2nd to 3rd-degree burns on his face. Luckily, he closed his eyes. It was an oil fire. It was terrible the day before the surgery. A mom and a dad, you look at your son, and you’re like, “What is going to happen?” When you talk about the faith through the valley, he knew because he’s got the same strong faith and belief system. I, my mom, my dad, and my wife knew, we all knew he was going to be okay, and we all prayed about it every day.
I’m happy to say that a month after, you wouldn’t even know that he was in a fire. You thought he might’ve gone through a little bit of a sunburn, and that’s about it. As hard as your situation feels, if you’re reading this, and you’re like, “I don’t know if I can make it.” What advice would you share so that they read this and take the chance to put one foot in front of the other? What’s the light? What’s the reason why they should have faith?
Because God is always good, God is goodness. A lot of people attribute lots of bad things to God that should be attributed to the devil and the demonic forces. I’m not going to get into the theological difference. I’m going to make the statement, and to some, you’d have to exercise faith to experience God’s goodness. I get that life has been pretty nasty to many people in many different ways, and God is good. He’s always good. Uncompromisingly good. If you seek a deeper understanding of him and his ways, then he will show you his goodness.
His mercy endures forever. I remember that from my church days. What a fabulous conversation. Deb, you ooze what it means to live a better story. I appreciate you. I love you. I can’t wait to see you at the next one. Thank you, everybody, for reading. This is Deb Brown Maher and if you want to read a cool book, read Sell Like Jesus. If you’re in selling, buy the book. If you’re managing a team, have Deb come in and take a look at your organization and see what you can do by bringing together faith in sales and see what that can do for your company. I'm signing out.
Important Links:
TED Talk - Everyone has hardships by John Guydon
About Deb Brown Maher
I’m Deb Brown Maher, president of Deb Brown Sales and author of Sell Like Jesus, and I want to tell you a story. It was 1965, summertime, and I’ll never forget the feeling…
My mom had bought me one of those little metal looms and different colored cloth loops so I could weave them into potholders. I made lots of them, but one kitchen can only use so many. So I decided to sell them around my neighborhood for 25 cents each. At the first door I knocked on, Mrs. Stevens bought three! I was thrilled. With 75 cents in my pocket I went to the next house and the next, and in a short time, I’d sold all but two of my inventory! I had enough money to buy more loops and put some money in my savings account. I was hooked on sales, and I was fearless!
Fifteen years later, armed with a college degree that had little practical value, I landed a sales job. That first week brought a rude awakening. Some people wouldn’t even talk to me. Others ended the conversation with “I’ll get back to you”—but they never did. My fearlessness vanished, replaced with a deepening awareness that I was being unfairly associated with the pushy used-car salesmen that everyone hates!
And so, I re-calibrated. I took a professional sales course and realized certain principles being taught really resonated with my faith. As a follower of Christ, I wanted to please God in all I did, so using any form of manipulation to get a sale was not an option. I knew God had gifted me to be good at sales, and that I could help people through the things I was selling. As I put the principles that were true to my faith into practice, people began to see me as a collaborator in their success, not a huckster. They trusted me.
I also started reading the Bible through a new lens, examining how Jesus communicated with all different types of people in the process of presenting His message (the “product” he was selling). Jesus attracted people. They felt good around Him. He targeted His message to each one. I reasoned that if I could apply the strategies that made Him successful, I could sell in a way that drew people to me, benefited them, and would allow me to make my living in sales — which I’ve done for more than 30 years now.
My search to improve never stops. I am a lifelong learner, and I believe in ongoing growth through cycles of study, implementation, evaluation, and adjustments. Along the way I discovered that other business owners, freelancers, home-based business people, and sales executives also struggle to overcome the negative sales stigma that I felt. But “sales” is not inherently evil. Just like any other profession, the “bad apples” leave a black mark on the profession that hurts us all.
In 1992, I began to train and coach others in successful, ethical sales strategies that bring positive outcomes for both buyer and seller. And in 2019, I incorporated those proven principles and strategies into my book, Sell Like Jesus. Applying the communication methods used by Jesus opens the doors to reap the benefits of the spiritual law of the harvest: Everyone reaps what they sow. In sales, as in life, when we do the right things for the right reasons, we get right results.
My career is proof that when we seek to serve others as Jesus did—when we “sell like Jesus”—we create sustainable partnerships that bring success and joy.
