The Christian Entrepreneur

Hosted by Cody & Esther Cottle

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Episodes

174

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Hosted by serial entrepreneurs Cody and Esther Cottle, the Christian Entrepreneur Podcast exists for believers who hunger for a move of God in the marketplace. After building 10 companies and walking through both success and painful failures, God called them to shut down their multi-six-figure business in 2024 — and out of that obedience, the Christian Entrepreneur Club was born and has grown into a global community of 600+ members. This podcast is an extension of our mission to equip entrepreneurs with a biblical framework to do business God's way. Each episode delivers proven business strategies, biblical principles, and conversations with top Christian thought leaders to equip you to do business God's way. Subscribe now and join a global family of Christian entrepreneurs committed to bringing revival to the marketplace.

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60 recent

September 7, 20261 hr 3 min

What Nobody Tells You About Getting Everything You Asked For - Comedian Nazareth

Nazareth had the money, the rooms and a network sitcom on the table. None of it touched the thing that was actually wrong. Most entrepreneurs are told the emptiness means they haven't built enough yet — he found out it meant the opposite. The bait shop he ran knowing nothing about bait. A marathon he never trained for. Nine drunks at midnight. A ten-thousand-dollar stadium booked with no money in the bank. And thirty years on, the question he still asks about the deal he walked away from. CHAPTERS 0:00 🎬 The emptiness nobody warns you about 2:39 🌍 Two businesses before he graduated 6:10 🏃 A marathon he never trained for 8:37 🎤 Nine drunks at midnight 9:41 ✝️ Saved Sunday. The Monday phone call. 11:19 ⛓️ The rooms nobody else will play 13:36 🕳️ Everything arrived. Nothing landed. 14:49 🎩 Show business is two jobs 17:47 🧱 What he'd tell you if you started tomorrow 20:07 📱 Eight million views, and he let it go 25:16 🙅 What people get wrong about Christian comedy 31:46 🏟️ The stadium he couldn't pay for 37:01 🤐 Don't mention Jesus until they ask 41:56 🏠 My house is not a house of stress 47:43 🔥 Flesh, or assignment 53:49 🐴 Thirty years on, still not sure 55:40 ⚡ Revival starts with you Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

August 31, 202653 min

The Path to Financial Freedom with Joy Dow

Joy Dow did $73,000 in her first year. This year she'll do over $700,000. The part nobody posts is how long the middle took. Joy is a certified financial planner and the founder of Wise Fit Wealth Management. She takes apart what entrepreneurs get wrong with the money the business makes — why passive income isn't the reality, why 90% rejection is the design of the job, and why the successful owners she meets all have savings sitting outside the business. Then it turns, and Joy talks about what the machine that built it quietly cost her. CHAPTERS 0:00 - The middle nobody posts 0:45 - Meet Joy Dow 2:42 - She wanted to be a teacher 5:58 - $73k to $700k — and how long it took 8:31 - 200 calls a day, 90% rejection 11:04 - Passive income is not the reality 13:30 - The five mistakes she sees most 17:17 - Pay yourself first 19:31 - Where the money actually goes 23:19 - The insurance nobody buys in time 27:18 - When you should actually call a planner 31:07 - What building it cost her 35:06 - Every input except one 38:01 - Positioning yourself, not forcing it 41:09 - Busy as a badge of honour 44:07 - The friend who became a priest 48:29 - Worry in work clothes 50:06 - Where to find Joy Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

August 24, 202650 min

The 5 Biggest Marketing Failures Sabotaging Your Business

Most Christian businesses won’t exist in ten years. Not because the market is hard, and not because God isn’t in it — because nobody knows they exist. Cody and Esther Cottle break down the five marketing fails they see Christian entrepreneurs make again and again, plus the bonus one they think does the most damage: using Jesus as a marketing strategy. They built a marketing agency, shut it down at the peak of it, and grew the Christian Entrepreneur Club to nearly 700 members. This is what they got wrong first — the $7,000 website that did nothing, the years of posting with no strategy, the message so broad nobody could tell what they actually did — and what changed when they stopped chasing the next wave. Chapters 0:00 Cold open 0:41 Welcome — the five marketing fails 1:40 Bonus fail: using Jesus as a marketing strategy 6:07 Fail 1: thinking a website will magically bring customers 17:39 Fail 2: posting randomly, without a strategy 27:15 Fail 3: marketing to everyone 36:22 Fails 4 & 5: confusing messaging, and doing it all yourself 41:07 Cody’s own biggest marketing fail 45:13 Take ownership of the message 49:37 Where to find us Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

August 17, 202630 min

Should Christians Be Influencers?

Everyone has a microphone in their pocket, and culture is clear about what to do with it: build a following, build your brand, go viral, make it all about you. The trouble is that you can do all of that, watch the numbers move, and never once have God's hand on any of it. Esther's first solo teaching makes the case that the follower count was never the measure — that real influence is what happens where nobody can double-tap it, and that “good” and “God” are two different explanations for the same result. If your numbers aren't moving, this will read as permission. If they are, it will read as a question. Chapters 0:00 📱 Should Christians Be Influencers? 2:13 🪞 A Subculture That Sounds Like the World 4:16 🔍 Influence Isn't Your Follower Count 5:57 ⚠️ Growing an Audience Without Growing Character 7:44 👑 Nobody Is Built to Hold Glory 9:01 🚨 Influencing Thousands, Discipled by No One 11:28 ✝️ What Jesus Did Instead 12:46 🙏 Building With a Pure Heart 14:28 🎭 You're Living Two Separate Lives 15:47 🏷️ The Brand Built “For Jesus” 18:19 📈 There Is a Science to Going Viral 19:48 📉 Doing It Right When People Unfollow 21:27 🌱 Let God Bring the Increase 23:33 📬 Maybe It's the UPS Driver 25:47 🕊️ Just Be Faithful 27:27 🤝 The Christian Entrepreneur Club Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

August 12, 202635 min

The Giant Isn't the Problem

Every entrepreneur has a Goliath. The competitor with 10x your ad budget. The debt that grows every time you check it. The launch you keep pushing back because deep down you don't believe it'll work. In this episode, Cody breaks down 1 Samuel 17, the story you've heard a hundred times in Sunday school, and pulls out two decisions David made before he ever threw a stone. First, he refused to fight in Saul's armor, the best equipment in Israel, because it wasn't tested in his hands. Second, he refused to let Goliath dictate the terms of the fight, because the battle was never his to win alone. If you've been trying to build your business by copying someone else's funnel, someone else's pricing, someone else's playbook, this episode will show you why that armor is slowing you down instead of protecting you. And it'll help you find the sling God already trained into your hand in the years nobody was applauding. Your giant isn't actually your problem. Fighting him someone else's way is. In this episode: Why "proven" strategies can still be the wrong armor for you What your unseen years were actually training you for How to stop measuring your giant by the world's scoreboard The declaration David made before he ever picked up a stone Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

August 10, 202634 min

The Hidden Cost of Building a Business

Everyone talks about building the business. Almost nobody talks about what it costs to carry a vision the people closest to you cannot see — at the dinner table, in your marriage, and in the pew on Sunday morning. Cody and Esther on why the people who love you most still won't understand what God called you to, why that was never the betrayal it felt like, and what Scripture says isolation quietly does to your judgement. Plus the honest part: how you actually go and build the room you need. Chapters 0:00 🎙️ Nobody Warns You About This Part 0:47 💬 The Conversation Nobody Has 2:28 📊 What the Numbers Say 3:18 🚗 Living Ahead of Everyone Around You 6:57 💍 The One Who Can't See the Weight 9:08 🎭 What Men Don't Say Out Loud 10:10 🦃 The Thanksgiving Table 13:50 🪞 Whose Approval Are You Building For? 15:21 🤝 The Room You Actually Need 19:51 ⚠️ Scripture Calls It a Wisdom Problem 22:28 📖 Moses, Elijah and Paul Were Alone Too 26:10 🧭 When You're the Only One Carrying It 29:38 💒 Build It Together 31:51 ✝️ Your Room Is Ready Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

August 3, 20261 hr 10 min

How They Became The #1 Christian Network Marketing Team in The World After Giving it To God- With James & Becky Zheng

James & Becky Zheng had the Bentley, the Audi, the million-dollar home — then lost 80% of it in a single year and filed for bankruptcy. The problem was never their work ethic. It was what they'd quietly started worshipping. They walk through how ambition and accolades became the idol — and what broke open when they stopped measuring their worth by the fruit. The month James stopped working entirely became the highest-earning month of an eight-year career, and they went on to #1 in the world out of 400,000. Chapters 0:00 🎙️ Meet James & Becky 5:14 💔 From abandonment to a Father 6:37 🎓 “I thought I was too smart for God” 10:00 🍇 Chasing the fruit, not Jesus 12:17 ❓ The question that changed his career 18:13 🌱 Why growth is the design 25:30 💌 The least romantic recruitment ever 28:31 📋 Rick Warren & the 11-point list 30:51 🙏 True faith feels like nothing 33:56 😭 Six months of crying — the vision board 41:49 🏎️ Bentley to bankruptcy 47:05 ⚒️ Work ethic isn't enough — the soil, not the seed 53:10 🛑 “Take a Sabbath” — a month, not a day 58:39 📈 The turnaround year 1:03:23 🔥 Revival won't start in the church 1:07:00 🙌 The prayer & sign-off Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

July 27, 202624 min

AI, Faith, and the Line You Can't Cross

Half the church calls AI the mark of the beast. The other half runs their whole business on it. Cody and Esther think both camps are dodging the question that actually matters — and the answer cuts closer to home than either side expects. This is the line between good stewardship and spiritual laziness: why refusing to use AI might be the real failure, the danger nobody names (it's built to agree with you), the one thing that decides whether it's pulling you toward God or away from Him — and what a Christian must never, ever hand to a machine. Faith and strategy in the same room, as always. ⏱️ Chapters 0:00 🤖 Mark of the Beast, or Better Tool? 1:06 ⚙️ Tool or Threat? 5:18 🎯 The One Line AI Can't Cross 6:45 📖 A Better Tool for the Word 8:26 🪞 AI Is Built to Agree With You 11:49 😴 Stewardship or Spiritual Laziness? 15:36 🚜 Multiply It, or Dodge the Work? 19:03 🙅 What You Must Never Outsource 20:55 🔥 Build Better Than the World 22:12 🙏 Submit It to God Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

July 22, 202635 min

"I'll Never Do Business With a Christian Again" (Here's How We Change That)

"I'll never do business with a Christian again." If you've ever heard those words, or worse, been the reason someone said them, this episode is for you. Cody unpacks a hard truth every Christian entrepreneur needs to sit with: the way we operate in the marketplace is either pushing people toward Jesus or away from Him. There's no neutral. When you put the fish on your business card and then cut corners, lowball, or burn a client, you're not just losing a deal. You're shaping how the world sees your Father's brand. Working through Matthew 5:38-42, Cody breaks down three lessons that separate Kingdom business from business as usual: Always do what's right, even when it costs you. Cody shares the story of a man who took his system, his slides, and his training, then sent his team to poach his clients, and what his mentor taught him about taking the high road instead of settling the score. Go the extra mile. The one mile the law required built no reputation. The second mile, the one nobody could demand, is the only one that ever did. Give freely. Revival is breaking out in the marketplace, and wealth is moving into righteous hands. But it gets entrusted to the generous, not the cutthroat. The vision is bigger than avoiding a bad reputation. Imagine a world where even non-believers say, "I'll only do business with a Christian," because they know we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We play for an audience of One. And God cares how you build your business. Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!

July 20, 202625 min

The Truth of Why Some People Succeed and Others Don't

In 1956, The Strangest Secret put a number on it: of 100 people who start at 25 with the same dreams, only five build the life they imagined. The success principle Napoleon Hill and a century of teachers chased? It was God's all along. This is the framework Cody's lived by for years: why sincere Christians drift into the 95%, the one tool most believers walk past, and the four things that separate the five — awareness, desire, accurate thinking, discipline. Get honest, and go be one of the five. Chapters 0:00 🎯 The 5% Question 0:52 📉 100 Dreams, Only 5 Winners 2:36 🧠 Not Luck — Not Even Psychology 3:47 📚 The Godfathers of Success 6:00 ✝️ Borrowed From Scripture 9:42 🪞 The Part Most Christians Walk Past 11:16 🚗 Why You Suddenly See That Car 13:04 ⚓ Four Ways to Take the Wheel 15:08 🔍 An Honest Look in the Mirror 18:25 💭 Don't Believe Every Thought 20:01 🌒 What You Do When No One's Watching 21:40 🏁 Be One of the Five Send us Fan Mail Support the show Get your ticket to our upcoming Revival In The Marketplace Conference ✝️ Sign up here for our FREE weekly Bible study every Wednesday 🔥 Are you looking for a community of Christian business owners you can learn and grow with? We want to invite you to learn more about our Christian Entrepreneur Club with over 600+ business owners and growing. 👉 Click Here To Join Our Intro Call 📲 Follow The Club on: Instagram 📲 Follow Cody on: Instagram 📲 Follow Esther on: Instagram Watch the video version on YouTube (Click Here) If this episode blessed you, please leave us a review and share it with 3 people who need to hear this message!