Q&A with Kenny Jahng, CEO of Church Butler

1. Tell us a bit about Church Butler.

Sure! Most churches are struggling today. I recently saw a stat that said 55% of churches in America are at 100 people or less in attendance on Sundays. That means most have a single pastor and maybe an assistant – not a large staff.

But in today’s world, reaching new people in your community (aka marketing) requires a lot of investment of time and energy into outreach communications. Things are changing so fast, you need to keep up learning about all of the new options available to organizations.

What’s a solo pastor to do if he or she doesn’t have a team to help with church marketing? Or social media? Well, Church Butler is a “done for you” service for church communicators providing monthly video training (for staff and volunteers), as well as professionally designed social graphics every day of the year.

2. What gave you the idea for your business and how did it start?

We found that churches are struggling to keep up with the non-stop treadmill of content creation for social media. Church Butler aims to solve that problem by providing engaging ready-for-you pre-designed content so that church teams can focus on engagement and buliding relationships online.

What’s more, pastors want their staff and key volunteers to learn best practices, so we provide monthly training videos as well as live “office hours” to answer questions church communicators might have about social media.

3. What’s your favorite thing about your job?

Seeing churches get excited about embracing new media and digital channels. You can see tides turning as discouragement and overwhelm turn into eagerness and appreciation for what digital communications options can offer today.

When you see that shift — and it’s a pretty easy thing to spot — it’s quite fulfilling to understand we had a part in helping them grow, in helping them become hopeful, in them taking the first steps to learning how to engage with culture using today’s media and mediums.

One recent thing we’ve done is launch the Church Butler Lunch & Learn Podcast where I’m interviewing people to share stories like these as well as interview experts to have them share their wisdom and future forward thinking. This has been one of the best parts of the job for sure.

4. What are your keys to making yourself productive?

That’s a great question. Getting into an accountability / mastermind group has really helped. There’s something special about having others who are invested in you and your success continuing to encourage you. This is especially true during those periods where you feel like you’re not getting any traction.

Outside of that, it’s working on continuous improvement. Incremental gains are the key.

I’ve found that there’s no magic bullet. But you’ll hear me saying a lot around here: Version One is better than Version None.

So I try to schedule at least one day a month to reflect back on my work and see where in the processes and workflows I can develop better routines (repeatable systems are the best!). What I’m also trying to figure out is where I am being the most productive and try to figure out how to protect those times and even expand the opportunities to keep the momentum going.

5. Tell us one long-term goal in your career.

I’d love to have built a business that will have continued impact on helping churches and nonprofits grow long after I’m gone.

6. What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned through the course of your career?

Fail is not the enemy, it is your friend.

With business, it’s better to get things out the door, learn from customer feedback and improve, improve, improve.

Before I used to be obsessed with making sure everything is perfect before releasing something to the public. That’s when you realize you’ve been aiming in the completely wrong direction and you hear nothing but crickets in the end.

But I know now that you want to fail quickly and fail forward in order to continuously move closer toward success.

7. What advice would you give to others aspiring to succeed in your field?

The number one advice would be to get out and connect with peers. There’s no better advice than to build your network and pour into them.

AND — don’t look to gain from the network, look to add value to the network. How can you refer new business to them? How can you connect them with another resource they would benefit from? How can you help? That’s the absolute number one piece of advice I can give to anyone looking for success.

Stop looking for immediate gains.

Success never comes first. It always comes after.

8. What are your favorite things to do outside of work?

The family is where it’s at. We recently got a 2.5 lb Havanese puppy for our kids, so that’s brought our entire family together in a very good way. Puppies seem to suck the life out of you, ha ha, but yet at the same time, a vibrant life is all they give you.

9. Name a few influential books you’ve read and/or websites you keep up with that you’d recommend to readers.

Some of the podcasts I am devouring lately are:
Ask Gary Vee Show
James Altucher Show
Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History
Unleashed – How to Trhive as an Independent Professional