I’m not the best boss in the world. I don’t know how to confront an employee without making a joke at the same time, which makes the confronting completely ineffective.  I don’t offer benefits likes insurance or a 401K.  There’s no annual evaluation and once the job description is given I don’t look over shoulders or check in, or encourage daily.  You’ll likely only hear from me when I need something or you’ve messed up, but of course I’ll tell you that while making a joke.  I’m not a great boss.

Except when it comes to hiring.

I’m good at that part.

My philosophy is simple: Hire people who care about what I care about, are generally competent and kind, and then teach them the job.

They don’t need booking experience to book me, or an impressive resume to manage me, or years on the road to oversee my tour.  Those skills can be taught.  Character and compassion cannot.

In short, my team loves what I love or they wouldn’t have a job.  My former manager and current agent (overseeing the writing side of my life), Glenda, is such a person.  Humble, outgoing, hard-working.  She once worked for Youth With A Mission, lived in a brothel in England ministering to young women there.  She also does some work for Compassion International’s radio marketing department these days.  She loves what I love.  My partner in the booking agency and former road manager, Brian? Same deal.  He’s a goal setting machine who would prefer to be given a general task and then be set free to tackle it the way he thinks works best – and it always works best.  And he stopped road managing me to take a job with Compassion in their artist network. He and his kids sponsor two children and are about to have a third.

The goal of our work together is to mobilize the American Church to do what they were saved FOR, one manifestation of that being releasing children from poverty.  We’re so focussed on this goal that we can’t afford to bring anyone on board who isn’t.  We play shows to save kids.  We make music to get people to shows to save kids.  We write books and articles to save kids.  Don’t love kids in the Third World?  Next.

My current road manager, Brody, shares this goal.  He mans the Compassion International table every night at my shows, answering questions, filling out forms, tallying up and sending in the sponsored child information.  He’s a child sponsoring guru now.  He knows our work together makes a difference of about a half inch.

And that affects how he works.