Stewardship with Stephen Arruda

[00:00:06] This is the Tech Arts Podcast, where we talk about tech, leadership, and all things that concern church audio, video, and lighting.

[00:00:16] Welcome to the Tech Arts Podcast and the Earthworks Audio Studios. My name is DL, so glad to have you joining us today.

[00:00:23] First, a massive shout out to our incredible sponsors who make this show possible.

[00:00:41] Without their support, we wouldn't be here bringing you the conversations that matter most.

[00:00:47] Now let's dive into an episode you'll definitely want to share with your friends.

[00:00:51] This week, we're thrilled to have on Stephen Arruda, president of MikeReynolds.com.

[00:00:56] He's joining us for a thought-provoking conversation about stewardship.

[00:01:00] We're tackling some of the important questions like, how does poor stewardship lead to burnout?

[00:01:07] Why is budgeting so hard and how can we make it easier?

[00:01:11] I want to know the answer to that question.

[00:01:13] What's the best way to manage capital assets?

[00:01:16] And how can your personal finance habits shape your decisions for your church?

[00:01:21] Whether you're a leader, volunteer, or just someone looking to manage resources wisely, the insights in this episode go beyond church life.

[00:01:31] They're game changers for your personal and professional world too.

[00:01:36] But wait, there's more.

[00:01:38] This week's tech tip spotlights MikeRentals.com and how they're redefining what it means to support your purchasing decisions.

[00:01:46] Spoiler alert, they're not just about rentals.

[00:01:50] You'll want to stick around to hear how they transform your approach to tech stewardship.

[00:01:55] But right now, let's hear from Paragon 360 and the Paragon Angle.

[00:02:00] More importantly than hiring local or choosing the lowest price or getting three bids or any of that nonsense, make sure you get it right the first time.

[00:02:09] I'm not an accountant, but if you have to do it all over again or pay more to fix it later, you are not saving anything.

[00:02:21] Welcome to the Paragon Angle.

[00:02:22] I want to have a quick conversation about how stewardship matters when trying to choose a group to help you with your next church renovation or upgrade project.

[00:02:31] As a company that does renovations and expansions for churches of all sizes all across the country, we have seen a lot.

[00:02:38] This is what I want to tell you.

[00:02:40] More importantly than hiring local or choosing the lowest price or getting three bids or any of that nonsense, make sure you get it right the first time.

[00:02:49] I'm not an accountant, but if you have to do it all over again or pay more to fix it later, you are not saving anything.

[00:02:56] We had a small church call us about a renovation project several years ago that included some aesthetic changes to modernize the space, along with audio, video, lighting upgrades, and some acoustics.

[00:03:06] They felt our initial cost estimates, although very preliminary, were too high, and they decided to go out and hire a small company.

[00:03:15] Won't say from where, but they were really not an AVL integrator.

[00:03:18] They were a small scenic company.

[00:03:20] They ran out, collected some AV partners that week, and sold themselves as an integrator.

[00:03:25] They threw some AVL systems in the church, skipped commissioning and training, and left.

[00:03:31] Now, we got called in the next year because they were having significant issues.

[00:03:36] Lighting units that were not even UL listed, making tons of noise and not functioning, hung at ridiculously steep angles, light spill all over the screens.

[00:03:45] The PA system pointed at the back wall with domed ceilings with no attention at all to acoustics, except for some panels on the wrong wall that were reflective when they were supposed to absorb.

[00:03:58] Because of the lighting, the video image was terrible.

[00:04:01] So just an absolute colossal failure of a project, right?

[00:04:04] We went down and looked at the project with the church, but we had to walk away from it.

[00:04:10] Why?

[00:04:11] Because none of those issues were their biggest problem.

[00:04:14] The most serious issue was rigging.

[00:04:17] Not only would we have the cost of replacing all that gear, we were going to have to re-rig everything.

[00:04:22] There was going to have to be some structural steel work needed.

[00:04:26] The rigging was so dangerous, if we were going to touch anything in that space, we were going to have to fix everything because of the potential liability.

[00:04:34] So you can imagine that this was not easy for the church to digest.

[00:04:38] And why?

[00:04:39] Because they didn't want to pay for that.

[00:04:40] Who could blame them?

[00:04:42] They already paid for it, right?

[00:04:43] They didn't have the money to do it twice.

[00:04:45] They had the money to do it once.

[00:04:47] They raised money for the project once.

[00:04:50] They had to move out of the space until they could find funding.

[00:04:53] All of it would eventually have to be replaced.

[00:04:55] They will spend much more than the $75,000 they saved up front to get all this fixed.

[00:05:00] It had to come out.

[00:05:01] It's not only the wrong gear, but it was not providing for their needs.

[00:05:05] But it was dangerous to the congregants.

[00:05:08] It's a huge liability for the church.

[00:05:10] Someone could be seriously injured.

[00:05:12] My question, where is the stewardship in that decision?

[00:05:17] How did that three-bid process serve them?

[00:05:20] The company had a well-documented bad reputation and no one would call them an AVL integrator.

[00:05:28] Make sure, above all else, that you're working with the right group.

[00:05:31] I can tell you after 30 years of doing this, these church renovation projects, it's easier to get it wrong than it is to get it right.

[00:05:38] Get it right the first time.

[00:05:41] That is way more important than the absolute best price, some friendly connections down the street that can service it, meeting some arbitrary timelines or anything else.

[00:05:49] Get it right the first time.

[00:05:50] That is good stewardship.

[00:05:52] For more information on Paragon, check out paragon360.com.

[00:05:56] I hope this was helpful, and we'll see you on the next Paragon Angle.

[00:06:04] Today's Church Tech Tip is a company that will let you test mics before you buy them.

[00:06:09] They have a massive selection to choose from.

[00:06:11] You'll fall in love with the process, and as a result, your event will rock.

[00:06:16] Plus, you'll save money.

[00:06:18] That's what we call stewardship.

[00:06:21] What is the name of this company, you ask?

[00:06:23] Well, they call themselves MikeRentals.com.

[00:06:27] Joining us today to tell us more about MikeRentals.com is the founder and president, Stephen Arruda.

[00:06:33] Hey, Stephen.

[00:06:34] Hey, how are you, David?

[00:06:35] I'm doing good, man.

[00:06:36] So, tell us a little bit about how your company works.

[00:06:40] How does it save people money?

[00:06:41] Give us the details.

[00:06:42] Well, it's pretty straightforward.

[00:06:45] You know, if you can look and find anything that you would normally spend, you know, $700,000, even sometimes more on,

[00:06:54] and you're not sure exactly how it works other than reading, you know, chat forums and all that stuff.

[00:06:59] It's a good way to find out exactly what a specific microphone or, in some case, of our other gear like Choirflex,

[00:07:07] what it can do for you and if it's something your church or organization can actually benefit from in the long term.

[00:07:13] So, I know the company name is MikeRentals.com, but you just said something there.

[00:07:17] It sounds like you rent a little bit more than just mics.

[00:07:21] That is correct.

[00:07:22] A couple of years ago, we started adding in the Choirflex processor.

[00:07:29] The Choirflex processor is, well, kind of wonder what it's for, right?

[00:07:33] It's mainly for choirs to help attenuate the mics so you get more gain for feedback, specifically for choirs.

[00:07:42] And that led us on to other things like Dante preamps, some outboard gear like the Bus Plus and the Fusion to name a couple.

[00:07:53] Yeah, so we've kind of grown from wireless to wireless in-ears, DIs.

[00:08:01] Our logo says it all.

[00:08:03] It's a mic in a box, so we kind of stay within that box.

[00:08:06] So, we're not the company.

[00:08:07] You're not going to come to us for a PA or like a console or anything like that.

[00:08:14] We like our backs and the shape they are right now.

[00:08:17] So, there won't be any heavy lifting going on here.

[00:08:21] Well, today's episode is on stewardship.

[00:08:23] And I know MikeRentals.com was born out of that idea.

[00:08:26] And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit.

[00:08:29] But for all those out there looking to save money and feel like rentals is just kind of throwing money away, help them understand how your company does just the opposite.

[00:08:40] Yeah.

[00:08:41] Outside of what I mentioned before, like being used for like the discovery process.

[00:08:45] Well, if you have an event coming up at your church and you are needing 12 channels of wireless, well, it doesn't make sense to spend $12,000 for a weekend, especially if this is like kind of a one-time thing.

[00:09:02] Or at least that you're aware of it's a one-time thing.

[00:09:05] So, you know, the rental is going to be closer to like a $1,200 thing versus a $12,000 thing.

[00:09:12] Now, again, if that's going to be a repeat event, then yeah, it might be better to look closer at, you know, a capital expense and an investment into the actual equipment.

[00:09:25] But I mentioned Chiroflex earlier.

[00:09:27] That's one in particular because, you know, the units run about $6,500, I believe.

[00:09:35] Well, that's one that has some mystery to it.

[00:09:38] So, yes, there's the discovery process, but then like if you're going to keep it and you only do acquires twice a year, that might not justify, you know, the cost of buying one versus renting one.

[00:09:52] So, it's always a good idea to look and see if that is that going to – are we going to rent this, you know, five times in this year?

[00:09:58] Then it might be worth just, you know, making the capital expense on this or investment on this.

[00:10:04] Well, you know what I really like about MikeRentals.com is I have singers, they're up on the platform singing, and every single one of them needs a different microphone.

[00:10:13] And a lot of times, you know, I think I know which mic is going to work best, but I'm not totally sure.

[00:10:18] So, my executive leadership is like, hey, let's get a microphone that works a little bit better with our lead singer.

[00:10:24] I'm like, well, it could be this one or it could be that one or it could, you know, I'm not sure which microphone is going to work.

[00:10:31] With MikeRentals.com, you can just, you know, rent all of those heads, test them out, try them before you buy them.

[00:10:39] Is that kind of summarize some of the process that you offer?

[00:10:43] Yeah, our friends over at MXU, they kind of coined this phrase, a bucket of capsules is what we called it when we first started doing them.

[00:10:52] And because I think we only had, we started with like maybe six different options outside of the, you know, normal SM58, Beta58.

[00:11:00] And of course, of course, the majority of the capsules we have are for sure.

[00:11:04] However, we have a decent amount of Sennheiser options as well.

[00:11:09] So, the options alone for sure are about up to probably 30 by now.

[00:11:15] Like last I looked, that's a lot of choices.

[00:11:18] We help you narrow it down.

[00:11:20] We try to keep it around like a half a dozen.

[00:11:22] So, it's not just kind of crazy.

[00:11:24] But we just evaluate like your needs, what's going on, what type of vocalist you have.

[00:11:29] You have females, males.

[00:11:30] What problems are you getting from them?

[00:11:33] Do they have high SPL or do they sing super softly?

[00:11:39] You know, so there's a lot of questions around that.

[00:11:42] Drumbleed, that's a big one.

[00:11:43] That's a big, big one.

[00:11:45] I probably probably get that more than, you know, any other.

[00:11:48] So, we talk through like pickup patterns and capsule types because condensers, you're dealing with sensitivities and all this other stuff.

[00:11:55] But then, you know, by now we've heard of a lot of them ourselves through whether it's on the PA side of things or on the broadcast side of things.

[00:12:03] So, yeah, we try to narrow that down so you're not, you know, spending, you know, you could go nuts and rent all, you know, all 30 for like two grand or something like that.

[00:12:13] And that's not good stewardship either.

[00:12:14] So, we try to whittle that down to like, hey, it'd be great if you tried these, you know, these six.

[00:12:21] And the end range of those as far as purchase wise ends up being from, you know, less than $200 capsule to just less than $1,000 capsule.

[00:12:34] So, there's a range there.

[00:12:36] That way you can decide like is, do I hear an $800 difference between these two capsules?

[00:12:43] Yeah, it just allows you to have real-time A, B so you can, you know, track the vocals, go back and listen and compare them and things like that.

[00:12:54] Play them back in the room.

[00:12:55] Yeah, listen for that drum bleed that you're trying to get out and all that stuff.

[00:12:59] So, I love it because it's kind of like a little, you know, you get to have like a little discovery lab with microphones.

[00:13:05] It's fantastic.

[00:13:07] Yeah, so I know you have Shure, you have Sennheiser.

[00:13:10] I saw that you have Earthworks on there as well and DPA.

[00:13:15] You got DPA, so there's a lot of different, and I saw some headsets on there as well.

[00:13:20] So, if the pastor is kind of looking for a headset as well.

[00:13:23] So, it sounds like you offer a lot of options and a lot of choices for people to go and, you know, rent and kind of narrow things down before you spend a lot of money on a microphone.

[00:13:34] And you're like, hmm, you know what?

[00:13:35] I did not hear that much of an $800 difference between, you know, the Earthworks 3117, which is, I think, like 200 bucks or something like that.

[00:13:44] 150, I can't remember.

[00:13:46] Versus, say.

[00:13:47] Yeah, just under.

[00:13:48] Yeah, versus a DP.

[00:13:49] Yeah, matter of fact, let me get that right.

[00:13:50] I think it's 100 and, looks like it's 170.

[00:13:54] Yeah, something like that.

[00:13:55] Some 170, 180, somewhere in there.

[00:13:57] We just threw out 25 numbers.

[00:13:59] Go look it up.

[00:14:00] Earthworksaudio.com.

[00:14:02] But, yeah, you can test these out.

[00:14:04] It's like we were bidding on these.

[00:14:05] Yeah, I know.

[00:14:06] Going once, going twice.

[00:14:07] You can test the microphone out.

[00:14:10] Find the right mic for the person that's singing.

[00:14:12] So, your website.

[00:14:14] I went to your website, Stephen, and it's super simple, super efficient.

[00:14:18] But I'd like you to jump on and kind of show everyone how it works so they can see a little bit of the process at mikereynolds.com.

[00:14:26] Yeah, here's just the homepage.

[00:14:29] So, it's pretty simple.

[00:14:31] All these carousel images you can click on and it'll go straight to that item or even event like this MXU event.

[00:14:38] Down here, we have our most popular departures.

[00:14:41] It's kind of a neat little thing, Dave.

[00:14:43] It kind of shows you what people have been renting from us lately.

[00:14:47] As you can see, DPA is a hot topic with us.

[00:14:51] So, it's five of the top six there.

[00:14:54] Then we have new arrivals, which is kind of neat.

[00:14:58] These are things we recently added to the site.

[00:15:00] We may or may not have had these for a long time before we added them to the site.

[00:15:05] So, sometimes we get overwhelmed with just new equipment requests.

[00:15:09] We add them to our physical inventory before you see them up online.

[00:15:15] Anyway, the renting process.

[00:15:17] Let's just jump into something as easy as this Earthworks DM6, which this actually just came out last week.

[00:15:23] So, good timing.

[00:15:26] You'll see straight right from the gate, we give you a price that says $72 for five days.

[00:15:31] So, where a lot of people get confused about that is they think that that means every five days it's going to be $72.

[00:15:40] Well, that's not true.

[00:15:41] And I'll show you right now.

[00:15:44] So, you're going to pick your arrival date.

[00:15:46] That's the day that you want to receive it.

[00:15:50] We recommend that not be the day of your event, just for preparation and preference sake.

[00:15:56] But that's the day we try to get it there on or before that day.

[00:16:01] And if it arrives early, hey, you don't pay more for that.

[00:16:04] It's just our scheduling buffers to – because FedEx ain't perfect.

[00:16:09] I think we all know FedEx and UPS are definitely not perfect.

[00:16:12] The return date is similar.

[00:16:15] It's the day you're able to actually bring that back to FedEx or if you have like a daily pickup that they're coming to, they're going to come pick it up.

[00:16:23] And those return dates are typically – and arrival dates, those are usually Mondays through Fridays.

[00:16:28] We do have certain circumstances where we have to like air cargo something and get it there on the same day.

[00:16:34] That's not going to happen through our website.

[00:16:36] You're going to have to reach out to us for that.

[00:16:38] Anyway, I could pick 10 days from the 21st, which looks like that's going to be on a weekend.

[00:16:47] So, I'm going to move that to – let's see – Monday the 4th here.

[00:16:53] And you notice that price didn't double.

[00:16:56] A lot of people thought that price would just double.

[00:16:59] It doesn't.

[00:17:01] I always guess we have this formula that gradually just tapers off as the longer and longer and longer your rental period is.

[00:17:10] Because the biggest thing is you're – you know, we're – we want to give you ability to try these mics out.

[00:17:19] But obviously, there's going to be a tipping point where it's going to probably make more sense to buy these.

[00:17:25] If – I have never tried this, but let's say you put the dates in for a year.

[00:17:28] I bet the rental rate is probably going to be more than what it costs to actually buy the thing.

[00:17:32] So, if you need a year to figure this thing out, it's probably worth just buying one.

[00:17:37] Let me stop you there for a second, Stephen.

[00:17:40] You just – you went past something there on the shipping that I think is very important.

[00:17:44] This is production-friendly shipping.

[00:17:47] If you go to a normal rental house, the date is when it's received or when it leaves their building to when it comes back to their building.

[00:17:57] And they are going to charge you a whole lot more than $107.40 for 12 days.

[00:18:04] But that is – what you just said, hey, we ship it to you, and if it comes in early, you know, we don't charge you for that.

[00:18:10] It's just according to your day.

[00:18:12] And then you ship it back to us on the day, and if it takes two days to get there, we're not charging you for those additional days.

[00:18:18] That's production-friendly shipping.

[00:18:21] You don't find that at every rental house.

[00:18:23] And I just wanted to point that out, that what you guys are doing are really helping the church or any production do better in terms of their money that they're spending.

[00:18:34] Because if that was a regular rental house, and if it left on Monday to be shipped to you, you're renting it from that Monday on.

[00:18:42] So I think that's a really, really awesome thing that you guys do.

[00:18:47] Yeah, something, too, that I kind of blew past by is like right on the front page – right on the carousels of the site, it says free ground shipping.

[00:18:56] Well, we actually don't ground anything or very rarely ground ship stuff.

[00:19:02] It just has to be something that we're very, very sure of, and it probably leaves like super early.

[00:19:08] Just, again, we're trying to create those buffers.

[00:19:10] But it's free shipping.

[00:19:12] Like if you book this within three days – so if this was needed on a Friday of this week, when you go to the cart side –

[00:19:22] because if I add this to my cart right now, it's going to add like a $35 overnight fee because today's the 20th and that's the 21st.

[00:19:32] Well, if that was – I already forgot what day's Friday – oh, the 1st.

[00:19:39] Yeah, so if that's the 1st, then you won't get charge shipping.

[00:19:42] That's all on us.

[00:19:43] And return shipping is also on us.

[00:19:46] Wow.

[00:19:47] Wow.

[00:19:47] We put a return label in the box.

[00:19:51] The whole idea was just to get mics in the hands of people for them to try them, to see if they like them long term and all that stuff.

[00:20:02] And a lot of times people come right back to us for the ownership of these mics because we're –

[00:20:07] obviously, we buy all these mics for ourselves, but we – all of the lines that we rent, we also sell them as well.

[00:20:16] So – and most of the time, we're able to give the – pretty much give the rental right back to you on a quote for purchasing this stuff too.

[00:20:26] So we're just kind of – we're kind of built for that, you know, that test environment, that discovery environment, if you will.

[00:20:33] So, Steven, it sounds like you get free shipping.

[00:20:35] Is that correct?

[00:20:37] Yes.

[00:20:38] Yeah.

[00:20:38] If you place your order within three business days of arrival, it's always going to be free.

[00:20:42] Both directions, to and from us.

[00:20:44] That's awesome, man.

[00:20:45] And I heard there's a little trick to get a bigger discount.

[00:20:51] Yeah.

[00:20:52] So we just keep giving and giving.

[00:20:54] As you can see, when I go into my car, I'm going to change these dates.

[00:20:57] That way, it gets rid of the overnight shipping because that part's not free.

[00:21:00] So I change these dates to the 28th to the 4th.

[00:21:04] But then down in this apply coupon section, I'm going to type in rent 15.

[00:21:08] That's R-E-N-T 1-5.

[00:21:11] And hit apply.

[00:21:12] And that's going to take 15% off your rental.

[00:21:15] So we made it even more easy to do and even more affordable just by saving a little bit more money.

[00:21:24] And anybody who's listening to this podcast can totally use that coupon.

[00:21:30] The site that I got inspired by, believe it or not, was LensRentals.com.

[00:21:34] A lot of people have used them.

[00:21:35] And I was just like, this is great.

[00:21:37] And, of course, when I looked for MikeRentals.com at the time in 2014, no one had it.

[00:21:43] It was just parked.

[00:21:45] So it wasn't until like eight months later that I realized it was something I needed to actually do.

[00:21:50] And thankfully, the domain was still around.

[00:21:53] And so here we are.

[00:21:55] This is our version four of our site, which we had to launch actually in an emergency a week before Christmas because the other one crashed.

[00:22:02] But thank the Lord we had one being built in the background for six months.

[00:22:08] And we had to basically launch it and just immediately start debugging.

[00:22:13] So right now we're looking at MikeRentals 4.3.

[00:22:16] And it's doing everything we want it to do.

[00:22:19] And it's faster.

[00:22:20] It just makes things so much more efficient for our customers.

[00:22:23] Because if I get annoyed looking at it, you're going to get annoyed looking at it.

[00:22:28] So that's kind of our approach.

[00:22:30] Everybody in this building is production people.

[00:22:33] So we're kind of our own worst critic.

[00:22:38] Yeah, it sounds like it's kind of a one-stop shop.

[00:22:41] You can go there, rent the microphone, test it out, come back to you and say, hey, I really like it.

[00:22:45] Wrap it into a purchase.

[00:22:47] And boom, you're good to go.

[00:22:48] Yeah, we stock a lot of stuff.

[00:22:50] We did that back in like 2020.

[00:22:51] And I still just keep putting stuff on the shelves.

[00:22:56] When something's new like this DM6, that's one we'll put extras on the shelves.

[00:23:01] Because, again, people want to try it.

[00:23:03] And that mic is funny enough.

[00:23:04] I'd pick this one.

[00:23:05] That one's been really interesting as far as people liking it a lot, going away from their two mic solution and all that stuff.

[00:23:15] So it's, yeah, it's just, I love it.

[00:23:18] But, hey, I couldn't, there's no way I was going to be able to convince my wife to own all this inventory.

[00:23:23] I had to start a business in order to make that actually happen.

[00:23:28] To get your hands on a mic before you buy it, make sure it works for your singers, or just expand your needs for Easter or Christmas, go to MikeRentals.com.

[00:23:40] Their tagline is, like it, love it, rock it.

[00:23:43] And I think that sums this company up.

[00:23:44] To find out more about them, go to MikeRentals.com.

[00:23:50] Steven, I know stewardship is a major reason for the start of MikeRentals.com.

[00:23:54] And today we are talking about stewardship.

[00:23:56] Can you stay a little longer and chat with us about that subject?

[00:23:59] Yeah, it's one of my favorite topics.

[00:24:01] How do you build a budget?

[00:24:02] Should you build a budget?

[00:24:04] Burnout and stewardship, how do they relate to each other?

[00:24:06] We will answer those questions and more right after these messages from our sponsors.

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[00:25:32] Welcome back to the TechArts Podcast.

[00:25:34] Today we are talking with Stephen from MikeRentals.com about stewardship.

[00:25:39] Stephen, before we jump into today's subject, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

[00:25:44] Well, here I am.

[00:25:47] I've been married for about 18 years.

[00:25:49] Met my wife Christina at Dry Gulch USA where I ended up working later.

[00:25:53] We have a family of six kids.

[00:25:56] To Dry Gulch?

[00:25:58] Dry Gulch, is that the, like, that's the kids thing out there?

[00:26:02] Yes.

[00:26:04] Was it Tulsa?

[00:26:05] Yeah.

[00:26:05] Church on the Moves in Tulsa.

[00:26:07] Dry Gulch was an adair.

[00:26:10] We, I think in 2016, we sold it to another Christian organization.

[00:26:14] I think New Life Ranch bought it.

[00:26:15] Um, yeah, yeah.

[00:26:17] So I was out there for seven years, um, as the technical director.

[00:26:21] So, um, yeah, I, I worked for Church on the Moves in 2000 for about, you know, three years.

[00:26:29] Um, that's where I got my start in audio.

[00:26:31] So mainly just editing on Pro Tools free, baby.

[00:26:35] Uh, editing, um, doing location sound.

[00:26:39] Yeah, so like out on those long, hot, uh, summer day shoots out in the country.

[00:26:45] Um, I did not, uh, know what that was like until I did it.

[00:26:49] And, um, and then I ended up being, doing all the mixing and mastering for a lot of the

[00:26:53] children's, uh, curriculum.

[00:26:55] Um, so anyway, uh, I rounded up my, uh, time at Dry Gulch USA in 2014 around the time where

[00:27:03] this Mike Reynolds idea started kind of floating around.

[00:27:05] Um, didn't really jump into that until about six to eight months later.

[00:27:10] And so, yeah, so here we are.

[00:27:13] Mike Reynolds has been around since 2015.

[00:27:14] We're approaching on ninth birthday, um, in mid April and, um, started really, really

[00:27:20] small.

[00:27:21] And, uh, I feel like we're, uh, my, my, I based our growth upon my team.

[00:27:26] So we got, uh, seven other people on the other side of this door here.

[00:27:30] Um, saving the world one rental at a time, I guess, right?

[00:27:33] Saving the world one rental at a time.

[00:27:35] That's cool.

[00:27:36] And, you know, stewardship, which is what we're talking about today.

[00:27:39] It's super important, uh, to growth.

[00:27:42] Um, but as humans, uh, Steven, we tend to, to naturally not steward things very well.

[00:27:49] So first off, why do you think that is?

[00:27:52] And what can we do to help correct that?

[00:27:54] That's a great question.

[00:27:56] Um, that's a really good question.

[00:27:57] I think it goes, it's like our human, our human nature to do, to do things.

[00:28:02] Like I, I would say stewardship is within like what God wants us to do.

[00:28:07] God's will, if you will.

[00:28:08] Um, it's, it's our, in our human nature to try to do things outside of sound, uh, sound

[00:28:15] judgment, outside of wisdom.

[00:28:17] Um, even outside of knowledge, we do some really dumb things that we know are dumb and we still

[00:28:23] do them as babies all the way to adults.

[00:28:27] We want more, more, more, more.

[00:28:29] It is.

[00:28:29] And I, I, you know, I have six children and so that's a, that's a, that's a daily, that's

[00:28:36] a daily thing.

[00:28:37] You know, it's like you just got that for Christmas and you're already sick of it.

[00:28:40] It's only been two days, you know, it's like correct.

[00:28:44] And it's that level of maturity that brings again, self-control, uh, measuring things out,

[00:28:52] planning, just going slow, uh, you know, just also remembering God is your source.

[00:28:59] Don't freak out.

[00:29:01] Stop freaking.

[00:29:02] I have that right up on my whiteboard.

[00:29:03] That's from 2020.

[00:29:04] I wrote Psalm 91 right next to God is our source because we had to navigate that too.

[00:29:10] You know, it was tight for us too.

[00:29:12] And so, and we had to help other churches do the exact same thing as well, which I'm sure

[00:29:17] we'll talk about here soon.

[00:29:18] We hinted at this earlier, uh, when we talked about stewardship, um, but how did Mike Reynolds.com

[00:29:25] come about and tell us a little bit about that story and how stewardship played into

[00:29:31] it?

[00:29:32] Yeah.

[00:29:33] So it was my last year at Dry Gulch USA, which was, uh, 2014.

[00:29:37] And, um, I was the AV director and I had a team.

[00:29:42] I had a team about nine, nine guys ages from like 15 to 22.

[00:29:47] And, um, I was given the task to produce a video for, um, to help recruit staff for next

[00:29:55] year.

[00:29:56] And of course I have all these credentials of producing videos.

[00:29:59] That's not true.

[00:30:00] You asked an audio guy to produce a video, but you know what?

[00:30:03] That was probably a good choice on their part.

[00:30:05] I think audio guys do a pretty good job at producing videos.

[00:30:08] Yeah.

[00:30:09] Well, cause obviously the audio had to not suck.

[00:30:12] That's right.

[00:30:12] If you can hear them, it's a great video.

[00:30:15] Isn't that crazy?

[00:30:17] Um, I'll be darned.

[00:30:19] If you say fix it in post one more time, but the guys that I had, uh, with me, thankfully

[00:30:26] they, they knew how to shoot and stuff.

[00:30:28] They knew how to use cameras.

[00:30:29] We had some DSLR Canon bodies and, uh, and I was like, well, uh, what do we need?

[00:30:35] It's like, well, it'd be great if we had better lenses.

[00:30:36] I was like, well, I'm, I ain't buying these lenses.

[00:30:39] So I actually went to lens rentals.com and I was like, geez, they, these lenses were so

[00:30:45] inexpensive to rent, but I know that these, these, the glass on these is like 12, $1,300

[00:30:52] and I needed a couple of them.

[00:30:53] So that was a great solution.

[00:30:55] But then I was like, well, I got to capture all these interviews too.

[00:30:58] And at the time lens rentals also had, uh, mics available that I rented through them.

[00:31:04] Obviously they were because I went and looked and it was like, is there a mic rentals.com?

[00:31:08] And, and there wasn't, this is because like I, for number one, I, I think I might've even

[00:31:13] asked, um, if, if the church had anything we could borrow and it was just too complicated.

[00:31:20] They're 50, 50 minutes away from us.

[00:31:22] So this just made it easy, easy for everyone.

[00:31:25] Um, and again, without having to actually buy the gear for what we wanted that those videos

[00:31:31] were turned out, turned out so good and so amazing.

[00:31:36] Um, uh, not cause of me either is because of the guys I, I, I put over the project for over

[00:31:42] the actually capturing the stuff they did incredible.

[00:31:44] I just like did the post-production on the audio, but when we played those for the, the

[00:31:49] outbound staff and everything that, um, yeah, there was, it got kind of emotional too.

[00:31:55] Cause, um, just, they were able to tell their testimony about going to camp there and now

[00:32:00] being a staff, uh, being on staff there.

[00:32:02] And, um, I know they helped with the recruitment, uh, the recruitment next year.

[00:32:07] So that was, that was awesome.

[00:32:09] The production value was huge and we spent less than less than $500 to rent the lenses and

[00:32:16] the, uh, and the shotguns we needed.

[00:32:19] So that was, that was kind of a taste of what, uh, I guess what was, what was to come.

[00:32:24] Yeah.

[00:32:25] I think it's funny.

[00:32:25] You said the lenses were $1,300 and I was like, Whoa, Oh, that was right.

[00:32:29] It was 2014.

[00:32:30] Nowadays.

[00:32:30] They're probably like 5,000, 8,000, $10,000.

[00:32:35] Everything is.

[00:32:36] I haven't touched the camera so long.

[00:32:39] Everything has, but it made the point, right?

[00:32:41] I mean, you, you had only a few hundred dollars.

[00:32:44] You didn't have $2,000, $3,000 to, to put this video together for an internal video for

[00:32:50] staff.

[00:32:51] And, uh, you found, uh, lensrental.com kind of helped you with your budget that launched

[00:32:57] the Mike Reynolds.com idea.

[00:32:59] But talk a little bit about, um, budget.

[00:33:03] Um, why do we have to budget?

[00:33:05] I'm one of those guys like, why the heck, why do I have to budget?

[00:33:08] Why can't, why do I need to do a budget?

[00:33:10] Um, how do I build a budget?

[00:33:12] I mean, there's a lot of people sitting there listening to us just saying, well, help,

[00:33:16] help us right there.

[00:33:17] We know we need to me, you know, maybe we do, I don't know.

[00:33:21] And, and then how do we build a budget?

[00:33:24] I'm just not a big budget fan, but I know you need one.

[00:33:28] Yeah.

[00:33:29] I gotta be honest.

[00:33:29] Help me out, Steven.

[00:33:30] Help me out.

[00:33:31] I gotta be honest.

[00:33:33] I don't like them either because they're, they're truthful.

[00:33:38] Oh, you heard me, man.

[00:33:39] You stung me right there.

[00:33:41] They're truthful.

[00:33:41] We don't like the truth as I'm telling you from a, and I've seen this on a couple of,

[00:33:48] from a couple of different perspectives, obviously from the, from the business side.

[00:33:52] Um, we build our budget from, we look at what we did last year and based upon like, okay,

[00:33:58] we, if we perform identical to what we did last year, um, we always plan on growing.

[00:34:06] It was always at least going, you know, the curves going up.

[00:34:09] Right.

[00:34:09] So we budget based upon things that happened last year.

[00:34:13] And if we stay within those guidelines, we do, we usually do pretty good.

[00:34:17] Um, but if you're like, it's so, uh, the, the structure to budgets is always like looking

[00:34:23] at income versus expenses, expected income versus expenses, personal budgets, same exact

[00:34:30] thing, stuff coming into the house versus, you know, rent utilities and all that stuff.

[00:34:35] But when it comes to the church, that gets a little bit tougher because you don't know

[00:34:42] what's allocated to this department or that department.

[00:34:45] That's where a lot of communication comes in.

[00:34:47] And for the couple of churches I've worked with, they told me what their overall budgets

[00:34:52] were and, and, uh, for what specific areas.

[00:34:56] And I've tried to help them navigate like, yeah, you probably don't need to upgrade your

[00:35:01] lighting right now.

[00:35:03] Cause has anybody said anything like your lighting's terrible other than people who know lighting

[00:35:10] versus, you know, somebody that's watching online at home is, man, your key lighting is real

[00:35:15] bad.

[00:35:16] It was probably need to look at it, you know, if, or your production, um, or your, uh, audio

[00:35:21] on your stream.

[00:35:22] It's like, sounds really rough.

[00:35:23] It sounds like it's in a box.

[00:35:25] Those types of things you should take note of to make, you know, to make changes going

[00:35:29] forward.

[00:35:30] But if it's just, you know, we could, as production people, we pick apart ourselves all day long.

[00:35:36] Like you could send a mix to somebody and a board mix and, and, uh, you tell them, Hey,

[00:35:40] here's my board mix from the weekend.

[00:35:41] Ignore this because I did this.

[00:35:43] Ignore that.

[00:35:43] And they, you don't even tell anything.

[00:35:46] They'll hear it and be like, that sounded amazing.

[00:35:47] But if they have, if they say something like, man, uh, it sounded distorted, like halfway

[00:35:53] through this song, that's probably something you should address.

[00:35:57] Um, so it just matters what, who you're communicating with, um, uh, about, uh, about needs about and

[00:36:06] about budget.

[00:36:06] And usually church leadership is, is, you know, like a CFO or somebody like that is really

[00:36:11] going to be the only one who knows, um, uh, what your boundaries are going to be with

[00:36:15] that.

[00:36:15] He's probably not going to tell you, Hey, the church brought in this much and, and tithing

[00:36:20] and stuff.

[00:36:20] No, he knows that they know that.

[00:36:23] And then that gets broken down into, you know, let's call it 12 different departments.

[00:36:27] And then you're, you're, you now have this, this, you know, guideline for audio, video,

[00:36:34] lighting, contractors, all that stuff.

[00:36:36] So you have to sit down and ask yourself, like, how often are we going to be contracting

[00:36:41] out different things?

[00:36:42] Um, how many volunteers do we have that are going to offset the contract stuff?

[00:36:46] Um, do we have separate budgets for Christmas versus Easter versus mother's day versus VBS

[00:36:53] related stuff?

[00:36:53] You know, it, every, every church is different in that regard.

[00:36:57] So it does take, takes a lot of, um, a lot of communication to get the, get the clarity

[00:37:04] and, and the expectation.

[00:37:06] Um, and then you, you just operate within those guidelines, get multiple quotes for things.

[00:37:13] Don't just go off of one person.

[00:37:15] Now, obviously trust gets gained over time, um, with certain vendors and you can, you can

[00:37:22] count on them to, uh, after they've gone with you through a few times and they tend to

[00:37:27] always be the lower number, the better service, you know, um, most likely they're going to

[00:37:32] continue to keep doing that.

[00:37:33] But once you have a established relationship, then you're able to get, uh, set those, uh,

[00:37:39] uh, quotes and estimates and into your, into your budget.

[00:37:43] And you can use those to plan, plan, uh, plan ahead, um, plan for the next season and the

[00:37:49] season after that.

[00:37:50] So that's kind of like a, a three dimensional answer between like business budgeting and

[00:37:55] personal budgeting.

[00:37:56] And then, uh, in the church when I was at dry Gulch, uh, I was under Andrew stone.

[00:38:01] There was a global production budget.

[00:38:03] Then there was, um, I had a monthly, uh, incidental budget.

[00:38:07] I think it was like 500 bucks, uh, a month.

[00:38:10] And that some, for some that's a lot, uh, for others that like, how in the world did

[00:38:15] you survive?

[00:38:15] It's just, it just, it was incidental stuff, just things that I needed.

[00:38:21] Um, I didn't go out and buy expensive microphones.

[00:38:25] If I needed microphones, I either borrowed some from the church or I just got more 58,

[00:38:31] some more 57s.

[00:38:33] And, and, and those worked fine for the groups that were coming in and out of camp.

[00:38:38] It wasn't always our church group.

[00:38:39] It was groups from other places.

[00:38:42] So, uh, but then when it came to events like Christmas train, huge event, uh, especially

[00:38:48] when we launched it, we launched it again, that had a whole different number to it.

[00:38:52] Um, when it came to summer camp, there was certain things that had whole different figures

[00:38:56] to it, but I had to have all my stuff in before that budget was set for the entire summer.

[00:39:02] So that's three months.

[00:39:04] Um, and that's not the time.

[00:39:07] The, the budget time is not the time to like turn in your Christmas lists.

[00:39:13] That's a lot of people do that.

[00:39:15] And I was even tempted to do that.

[00:39:16] Like, Hey, I need this just cause I need it.

[00:39:19] Um, now I had this a couple of times I had to tell myself to just cross that off my Excel,

[00:39:24] take, delete that from my Excel sheet.

[00:39:26] I don't really need that.

[00:39:28] Um, yeah.

[00:39:30] So get, get other, uh, Andrew was very transparent with like, uh, ask and actually holding me accountable

[00:39:36] to that is what I should say.

[00:39:38] Um, just asking like, Hey, what's this for?

[00:39:41] What is that needed for?

[00:39:43] Um, always that's right.

[00:39:45] Always seeing if there's a need beyond summer camp, if that, Hey, does this affect Christmas

[00:39:50] train too?

[00:39:51] And I was like, it does.

[00:39:53] And then like, Oh heck, then we need to do it now because yeah, it has to have like more

[00:39:58] value than just one small season.

[00:40:01] And you know, when I was redoing distributed audio all through the camp, we tried to do

[00:40:07] some of that stuff in the summer budgets too.

[00:40:09] That was going to improve and affect things for Christmas train, which was our, our largest

[00:40:14] outreach, you know, 50,000 people.

[00:40:16] That was our largest seasonal outreach we ever did a year after year after year.

[00:40:20] Um, and so those were the, anyway, those were the dynamics within, uh, um, you know, the,

[00:40:27] my experiences, uh, both at Dragos USA personally, and of course now running my own business.

[00:40:34] Yeah.

[00:40:34] I think, you know, you've got to look at a few things when it comes to budgeting.

[00:40:39] I think you look at what the church did last year and find out what they're going to do

[00:40:44] this year.

[00:40:44] And that kind of establishes your operational budget.

[00:40:47] But then you kept saying something there as you talked, and that is what is our need?

[00:40:52] And the need needs to be looked at from an audience noticed mistake perspective, not necessarily

[00:40:59] a tech production mistake perspective.

[00:41:01] So I think you look at the vision of the church and what they're going to do for the next year.

[00:41:06] Are they going to cut back on Christmas?

[00:41:07] Are they going to expand on Easter?

[00:41:09] Are they going to have these events?

[00:41:10] And so that establishes an operational budget, which is kind of year to year.

[00:41:14] And then what's my needs?

[00:41:16] Like what went wrong that the audience noticed that I need to fix?

[00:41:20] So that's something that you put into your budget.

[00:41:22] What are my wants?

[00:41:24] Okay.

[00:41:25] That is a little bit of a separate budget.

[00:41:27] A lot of churches call it a capital asset purchase, but what are my wants?

[00:41:31] Like I really want this because it will decrease staff.

[00:41:35] It will decrease hours.

[00:41:36] It will allow me to do it with one volunteer instead of six volunteers.

[00:41:40] What are my wants?

[00:41:41] And then what are my emergencies?

[00:41:43] So I think if you build a budget based on operation, want, need, and emergency, and you

[00:41:50] sell that to your executive staff member or to the volunteer who's over it, or if you're

[00:41:54] a small church yourself, I think if you are doing that operation, want, need, emergency,

[00:42:03] and operations based on the vision, then I think that will help you establish a budget.

[00:42:09] My problem is I want everything.

[00:42:11] And so that's why I don't like budgets, but they're needed, they're necessary, and they

[00:42:16] help us move forward.

[00:42:17] But on the one thing, the capital asset thing, and I know this doesn't apply to a lot of small

[00:42:24] churches, but talk a little bit about capital asset purchases and how you build a budget

[00:42:29] for large purchases and installs and how you kind of plan for that inside your year.

[00:42:34] Let me ask it this way.

[00:42:36] Capital asset purchase typically means what's going to happen in a year from now, what's

[00:42:42] going to happen two years from now, what's going to happen three years from now.

[00:42:46] So for MikeRentals.com, let's just take the business perspective because I think it pretty

[00:42:51] directly applies to churches.

[00:42:53] What's your one-year, two-year, three-year plan, and how does that relate to stewardship?

[00:42:58] Gotcha.

[00:42:59] So we basically take about 10%.

[00:43:02] I can't wait to hear that answer on capital expenditures and how to plan for them.

[00:43:06] But we'll have to hang tight for part two of this episode.

[00:43:10] Speaking of part two, in that episode, we tackled the following questions.

[00:43:14] How does poor stewardship lead to burnout?

[00:43:17] Why is budgeting so hard and how can we make it easier?

[00:43:21] And how can your personal finance habits shape your decisions for your church?

[00:43:26] All of that is coming up in part two of our conversation with Stephen Arruda on stewardship.

[00:43:32] Don't miss it.

[00:43:33] Well, that wraps things up for today's episode.

[00:43:35] I can't wait to talk to you on the next Tech Arts podcast.

[00:43:38] Until then, I'm David Leuchner signing off by wishing you a great day and praying God

[00:43:43] blesses every moment of your week.

[00:43:46] See you soon.

[00:43:47] You have been listening to the Tech Arts podcast presented by Digital Great Commission Ministries.

[00:43:53] DGCM is a 501c3 nonprofit that was started to help churches with all things technical.

[00:43:59] Whether you need help building a team, finding the right gear, or just a better understanding

[00:44:04] of the church tech world, DGCM is here for you.

[00:44:07] Find out more about our free on-site visits, reports, and consulting by going to audiovideolighting.com.

[00:44:15] Digital Great Commission Ministries will help you run your church service like a pro.

[00:44:19] Find out more at audiovideolighting.com.