Jason Pearl: How He Achieved An Extraordinary Life Through Faith
Some business owners make the mistake of burying themselves too deep into their work that they forgot how to care for other things around them. Fortunately for Jason Pearl, he was able to save himself from such a tragedy and lead an extraordinary life. Joining Chad Burmeister, the President and Founder of Nacre Consulting shares how he was able to find success in his professional life by trusting the will of God and giving adequate time to his family. He dives deep into the role of faith in his business management and how he found a significant change in everything because of higher guidance. Jason also shares some business advice, particularly how to avoid burning your cash flow even in the middle of challenging times.
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Jason Pearl: How He Achieved An Extraordinary Life Through Faith
I have a special guest with me, Jason Pearl, who I met in the middle of 2020. He is an amazing person to have on the show. He talks about the family structure as being an important part, his belief in God, and his faith. We’re going to peel into some of this of how did he get to where he is. Jason, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Chad. I’m happy to be here.
It’s great to have you on. Tell us about your company. What’s the name of the company? What are you doing in the world of business?
I’m doing a few things. The core business that I run is Nacre Consulting. It is a sales and growth-oriented consulting firm. I’m working with businesses in $1 million to $25 million space to help them scale their businesses, both revenue-wise, but also build and work with the leaders within that business. I’m many years deep into that and having fun with it.
I like to dig in quickly into these conversations, if you went back to when you were young, like 5 or 6 and some of your first memories. Most people say, “I can only remember one thing when I was five.” What was your passion like? What excited you when you were six years old?
For me, it was family. I have an older brother, younger sister, mom, and dad. We did everything together. First memories come along with holding my baby sister. She’s about 4.5 years younger than me. When I was five or older, I can remember holding her. Playing in the backyard with my brother and my dad, sitting around the dinner table, talking, laughing, and eating. The earliest childhood memory of our family.
My sister is 11 or 12 years younger than me. I was her babysitter in my early 10 or 12-year-old days. It was as if I had a daughter because she was that much younger than me. When I did have a daughter, it all came rushing back. A lot of times, you think back to when you’re young. There’s a secret connection between what you’re passionate about then and what you’re doing now. Is there a secret connection for what you did nowadays to those memories you had when you were younger?
One of my life passions is talking to people about the importance of balance and family. My story is interesting. I grew up in a good faith-based home, brother, sister, mom, and dad. My parents were entrepreneurs. Before, it was cool to say that you’re an entrepreneur like it is nowadays. Business, life, and everything mixed in between was everyday life. It’s what I do. I not only teach businesses how to grow and help them grow from a revenue standpoint, but I work with the leaders because I believe that it’s important to understand how to balance your life. Balance seems like it’s the one thing that most business owners feel is out of touch. They can’t reach it, can’t get there, but it’s about prioritizing success and what success means. For me, it’s faith and family. I try to teach that to the people I work with.
Extraordinary Life: Most business owners feel out of touch with life because they prioritize success even without understanding what it is.
There was a guy named Eric Dunavant at the first Living A Better Story Retreat that we put on. He was the number one rep for Charles Schwab back in Katrina's days in Louisiana. He’s like, “That was because of Katrina.” No, because there was only one, number one, Charles Schwab rep in Louisiana in that year. He is amazing because he does care about his family and he does have priorities. He talks and teaches entrepreneurs how to prioritize things in the proper order.
There’s not a lot of people out there who would approach it like that. “Family first. Take us out of the picture. Let’s look at what’s going on inside the four walls of your family.” I love that about you. You grew up in a good home brother, sister, mom, and dad are together. Not everybody in the world is lucky enough to have that. I was as well and I’m happy. That was lucky for me. I have to imagine sometimes, people might look at Jason Pearl and go, “He’s got it. He didn’t run into any painful things in his life.” I assume that’s an incorrect statement. Can you share with the audience what’s painful memory for you that may have been painful and then later became a gift for you in life?
It’s Brady Bunch breaking up. My parents got divorced when I was a sophomore in college and it rocked my entire world. Although, I had this wonderful upbringing and loving parents, right as I was getting into adulthood in college and trying to figure out what I wanted to do, which was, by the way, go into the family business when my parents got divorced. It shattered what I thought my life was going to be. The Brady Bunch was now broken up. The idea I had of my perfect straight-line life was to get a college degree in business and then go work with mom and dad and grow their business with them.
When I was 18, 19 years old, that changed. What I thought was going to happen, right when I got in and started dipping my toe into adulthood, changed upside down. It was an inflection point for me that I probably didn’t handle the best way when you’re 18 or 19 years old in college. That was super painful. Not only was it painful, it took me down a path that had me confused for a little while. “Why am I here? What am I doing? Why did this happen to me?” All of those things. Brady Bunch being broken up was darn painful.
How did you rebound from that? Did you work through it, I assume because of the conversations we’ve had? How did you go about working through it?
There are few things that helped me work through it. Number one, I met my now wife in college, who was an amazing pillar of strength in my life then and still now. I was able to start to focus on something else, but when you look at what got me through it, there were a number of things, but it was fortitude. It was, “How long are you going to feel sorry for yourself and blame your parents for getting divorced on all these things that are going wrong in your life?” Bootstrap yourself, grab ahold of life like a bull by the horns, and steer it the way you want to steer it. It took me a decade to start fully changing those things.
It was an incremental change. I worked for Wells Fargo for the first ten years of my career. I got a great business, upbringing professionally with them, international bank. Both personally and professionally, I had the stuff to work through. You step one foot in front of the other every single day. You hold yourself accountable. You shine the light in the areas of your life that you know you don’t want to shine those lights onto, but you start taking step after step to improve.
John Guydon is a friend of mine, and he’s an ex CU Buff. Once a Buff, always a Buff, probably. That was my rival school when I was around. I have interesting feelings there. John talks about Yabba Dabba Doo. One foot in front of the other, you could say, “Yeah, but my parents got divorced. Yeah, but my son had a big accident two weeks ago with an oil burn on his face and hands.” You can always throw these Yeah Buts in the way John’s tip is, “Yeah but, yeah but do.” It just moves forward. Eric had an interesting perspective. The thing that God told him was, “Shut up and pray. Shut up and read the Bible. Shut up and act.” Meaning, now that you’ve prayed, read some scripture, and you don’t have to read ten pages of the Bible. You read a paragraph. Go in, find a scripture. I am randomly flipping to something because usually, I find interesting things and then act. What was your relationship with faith when you were 18 and 19? Did that play a role in your ability to get through those times?
We always grew up in a home, went to church, a Christian faith and had faith in God. I always felt at a very young age that God was there with me. I always felt that presence, but your life was ebbs and flows. If I look at the bad times, I know I wasn’t focused on my faith. I wasn’t focused on following what He wants me to do. I’ll be 42 in May 2021. It took me until my mid-30s kicking and screaming by my wife, pushing me in the back to start making my faith the priority in my life. When I finally turned my life over to God is when he started healing all the things that needed to be healed.
My parents getting divorced. The one thing I will say about that is my parents were adults about it. They were still great parents about it. Even though they decided to stop being married, they always did what was best for their kids. That was helpful to get through that. I got over the divorce stuff by my early to mid-twenties but all those other things like the immaturity of life and immaturity of being a young adult with being a husband and being a young father, I needed to listen to God more and listen to what he’s leading was for me to fully arrive. That’s why I’m thankful to finally listen to him. Year-after-year, I’ve got better because I invest more in him.
What would you like to accomplish in life that would change everything for you?
Extraordinary Life: If you're going to pay other people to do things, you also have to channel your energy to build more of what you think you're good at.
It’s for me to decrease in for him to increase like that. I run a high school ministry on Wednesday nights. I was speaking at my high school kids, and it was about the story of the good shepherd. I was delivering that sermon. What is life-changing for me is the fact that when I stopped trying to steer my life, let him steer the car for me, and he already had a plan for me to do before I was even born, that’s life-changing. Listening to that, that’s what’s going to continue to make me everything that he wanted me to be.
A lot of people go through life and don’t tune into that frequency. For me, the prayer at night has been, “Your will be done.” It doesn’t have to be much more sophisticated than that. A lot of people think, “How do you pray?” There are books on it. When I go to bed at night I say, “What is your will for my life?” At certain times, it might happen at 5:00 in the morning for you. It might happen ten minutes after you go to bed. For me, that’s where I tune into the frequency and get those answers.
To that point, one of the things that they talk about in the church world a lot is the right way to pray. In acronym, ACTS. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication. I’ve started changing my mind in that way. It’s like adoration to him, confession to all the things that I do wrong all the time, which all the time, I make mistakes. Thanking him for who he is, and then supplication is when the requests come in. When you make it less about you and more about him, it changes your perspective on things. I’m just one person on this Earth, but I feel set on fire because I know what my purpose is now.
That’s what I want my life’s where to be. I’m not in vocational ministry. I’m out there dealing with businesses every single day, but I’m trying to do it in a way that’s different that gets to the heart of people. I talk about head, heart, and house. That’s my platform for building businesses. You’ve got to understand individually what’s going on in your head, what’s going on in your heart, and what’s going on in your household as a leader, then you apply that to everybody that you’re responsible for.
Let’s go future state. Three years from now, and I have you back on this show. It’s now March of 2024. You’re looking back, and you say, “Chad, I had the best three years of my life.” Tell me about those three years.
If it’s going to be the best three years of my life, it’s going to start with faith and family. Why I’m an entrepreneur? It’s because it gives me the ability to prioritize what’s most important to me. If I had the best three years, I’d be telling you that my faith life is the best it’s ever been. I would tell you that your business is going well, but I have the flexibility to spend the time, pour into my wife, and my two girls like I need to be the right faith leader and family leader for them, and then everything else. I say faith, family, and everything else. If I’m doing those things the right way, I can almost guarantee that my business is going well because that’s the fuel. Faith and family are the fuel to make everything else go.
What are you tolerating in your business?
What I’m tolerating is the yo-yo effect that COVID and this pandemic have had on our world. We’re in a great spot in Nacre Consulting. I have a few other consultants that work with me that are doing great work. I would like to be able to do more with more. The toleration of being able to get in front and speak to the right people that I can serve in the best way is what I’m tolerating, but we’re making strides to change that.
It’s an interesting story. Daniel Chan was at the Living a Better Story Event. He’s a magician. In the first two weeks of his conversion into COVID, he lost $8,000 in one week of physical shows. Since then, he’s done 310 virtual shows and doubled his income. A lot of times, we can get stuck in our path of the way things are done nowadays. There was a great sermon I heard on Elevation. It said, “Our big challenges are little tiny speed bumps. The little things that we do for other people are God’s amazing gifts.” My son had 2nd and 3rd degree burned on his face and hands. We prayed. It went through the United Pilots Association because my sister-in-law works there.
It went through my LinkedIn network. It went to my newsletter of 10,000 people. There were more people praying for my son than I’m sure I’ve ever had pray for me in life. In two weeks, the night before, if you look at his face, and you’d be like, “No way. There’s this third-degree here.” The next day they took the bandages off, and it was miraculous. That doesn’t happen by accident. When you’re a kid, you think prayers are like, “It’s a nice thing to do. I got you in prayer, Jason.” You grow up and you realize that there are miracles that are happening every single day. What bores you in your day job or in your family life, for that matter?
What bores me in my day job are tasks that I’m not good at, nor do I like to do. I’ve taken a big step to pay people to help me with those things, as opposed to trying to do them all by myself. I brought on a bookkeeper and somebody to handle some of the other more operational stuff in my business. I like to be freewheeling. I like to strategize with my clients. I like to do all those things. I need to create that space so I can be good at what I’m good at and pay other people to do those things. What bores me are the things I’m not good at and take me too much time.
For other entrepreneurs that are reading this, how do you do that effectively so that you don’t burn your cashflow? I’ve learned a few things, but I’d love to know what your thoughts are.
It is a good point because what you have to do is if you’re going to pay other people to do things, you have to also channel your energy to build more of what you think you’re good at. If you’re like, “I’m going to pay all these people to do these things. I’m not going to channel that energy in that time and put it into highly productive activities that are going to make my business money or make my business successful,” then you’re missing the point. You could offload it because you maybe want more time, and that’s okay. If you can’t balance it and revenue in dollars and cents are critically important, you better make sure you’re spending that time that you freed up by paying somebody else by going in and generating more revenue.
I made a lesson learned. It went from me to me plus 1, to me plus 3. All of a sudden, me plus three, your burn rates four times on what they used to be. What I learned and what you’re talking about is there are things like Fiverr and PeoplePerHour, you can get level 4 or level 5 Salesforce programmers, content producers, whatever it is you need at the cost of $25 to $40 an hour, sometimes less. Before you go bite off, “Let me hire a $4,000 a month bookkeeper,” think about you can do it on a part-time basis or a shared CFO, $350 a month. Those are ways to do that in a smart way and then make sure you’re redeploying that time towards other things like that.
Another good point on that is not to make simply reactive decisions to situations like that. You have a bad day. You’re like, “I’m so sick of this. I’m going to go hire this person because I know that they do it.” Sit down and strategize it. Think about how much time it’s taking you and what that time for you is worth, and then budget it properly, so you’re not concerned about taking on that expense.
It’s an ROI. You gave up the $350 for the seat shared CFO. Now you’re going to do one hour of cold calls using a dialer so that you can talk to five of your best prospects and close a $10,000 deal once every other week.
One of the reasons that I did that is I also launched a podcast called The Company We Keep Podcast. There’s a cost that’s associated with that. I also knew that, for me, it was a passion and it was something that I wanted to be able to speak to people in a way and give people real strong takeaways for business owners, entrepreneurs, and high-performers that are looking for better balance and growth in their life. I was like, “I need to put this aside and invest money here, so I can do this to build the life that I want to build, which is effecting change within people and helping people grow and create balance.”
My grandparents were one-on-one at a time serving others, going to the hospital, bringing food to people. I always saw that as a neat one-to-one. My mom did the same thing. Both my grandparents and my mother have influenced hundreds of people doing it on a one-to-one basis. Knowing what we can do in business and with scale these days, have you thought about any goal of how can you leverage your skillset to bring more people to the kingdom and show more people that God’s love? I’m not saying one-on-one is wrong. We still need to do that. Have you thought about that bigger and better major way of influencing others?
Extraordinary Life: The more people you talk about your skill sets, the more individuals who will be like you.
It’s one of the main reasons that I launched my podcast because when you listen to my podcast, you understand that there’s an underlining of faith and you understand that faith is what drives me. In the day-to-day consulting with my clients, I can’t sit on a pulpit and preach to them. It’s different. They understand that’s why I am as an individual but the podcast is more reach. That’s number one. I did that very specifically because people say, “You help all these companies grow. You do all these things, and you’re having all this success. Why isn’t?” I’m like, “It’s right up there. That’s what drives me.” He’s putting these things in front of me, and they become softballs when you put more faith in him.
I use the analogy of like, for years, I was trying to hit with a stick Major League pitchers’ slider, and I’d strike out all the time. Now when I put my faith in him, it’s like hitting a softball with a huge bat because I’m setting myself up that way, but how I affect more people? This podcast is the start of it, much like what you’re doing. I love what you’re doing with your retreats and Robert. You and I met at a retreat that was affecting more than one-on-one. There was someone I wanted to affect more. I do see myself with my platforms, podcast, and other things, spending more time in a live event arena and working with groups of people. On October 14, 2021, me and a few other guys are doing an event up here in Buffalo, New York, where it’s going to be focused on leadership, growth, and faith.
That’s how I think I can start affecting more of a group. You create that content, and then you put that content out there because you never know who’s listening to it. This is you and I talking on a Zoom, but in many years, somebody could watch this, and maybe they’re inspired by something. When you create this level of content, that is core and is true, and it’s honoring God, that’s the sky’s the limit. I’m going to try to be a lot more intentional with that.
Coming off the Living a Better Story, I’m calling it an experience because it is. We had an investor reach out and said, “We see what ScaleX is doing, but let me ask you about this Living a Better Story thing. What’s that all about?” It’s at the kernel level, and I can’t wait to see it. We’ve given it to God. We don’t know where it’s going to be, but I can guarantee you there’s someone that’s going to be in a room at some event. I’m pointing to the future where you go, “Are you kidding me?” That’s why we did all this.
I did a podcast and it was titled Everyone Can Win. The point here is that guys like you and I have similar skillsets that are doing similar things. Here we are collaborating on a Zoom call because there are many people that need this message. I’m not in competition with you. You’re not in competition with me. We’re doing this together because there’s a greater good that’s coming out of this. You can live a better story. It’s guys like you, me, Robert, RJ, and the people that you talked about, the more people like us with our skillsets that do this, the more people that will be affected.
I don’t care what side of the political aisle you sit on, if you’re a man or woman, or what religious background you have. Arjun Sen is a PR wizard for people like Tiger Woods, Hank Haney, and Papa John’s Pizza. He came and he is not a practicing Christian but he walked away with some very unique perspective of what it means to be in the Bible and to see what Christians are like on the inside. Jason, I’ve enjoyed the conversation. Congratulations on your podcast. I look forward to having you at one of the upcoming Living a Better Story Retreats and participating. Let’s keep changing the world. It’s great to have you here.
I love it. Thanks, Chad. I appreciate the opportunity.
Talk to you soon.
Take care. Bye.
Important Links:
Everyone Can Win - The Company We Keep episode with Jason Pearl
About Jason Pearl
My name is Jason Pearl and I’m a speaker, fast-growth specialist, and business mentor who specializes in scaling startups from the ground floor to noteworthy success.
My work has helped dozens of business owners and tech-founders produce over $40M in realized revenue over the last 36 months.
As one of the nation’s top emerging sales consultants in scaling technology companies from startup to acquisition, my heart-centered approach to life and business has made me a highly sought-after consultant.
You’ll find me collaborating with today’s fastest growing companies like Mongoose, Bariatric Fusion, and LenderLogix.
For almost two decades, I’ve been a high-impact, fast growth specialist leading businesses of all sizes to get the most out of their leaders and revenue generating staff.
From international banks to family-owned businesses, I’ve seen clients consistently outpace the competition in all things growth. I focus on not just the dollars produced, but those key people producing the results.
