Skip to content Trading One Job to Create Five Hundred - Family, Faith & Balance with Josh McCallen Jan 24 · 53 min ...more
Trading One Job to Create Five Hundred - Family, Faith & Balance with Josh McCallen
January 24, 2026 · 53 min
Ep. 0017 - Gain firsthand insight on faith-driven entrepreneurship, building business with purpose and balancing family life—direct from Josh McCallen's transformative journey and hard-won experience.
Series The Christian Capitalist Show with Russell Gray January 24, 2026 · 53 min · The Christian Capitalist Show with Russell Gray
Ep. 0017 - Gain firsthand insight on faith-driven entrepreneurship, building business with purpose and balancing family life—direct from Josh McCallen's transformative journey and hard-won experience. ...more Show the full description Show less Ep. 0017 - Gain firsthand insight on faith-driven entrepreneurship, building business with purpose and balancing family life—direct from Josh McCallen's transformative journey and hard-won experience.
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The Christian Capitalist Show inspires and equips individuals to express their God-given purpose through enterprise and stewardship powered by faith, fellowship, and balance.
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In this video 0:00 Leaping into Entrepreneurship: Family, Faith, and Building Vivame Hospitality11:17 The Epiphany: Hospitality as Spiritual Ministry25:46 Purpose-Driven Capitalism: Scaling Impact Through Faith38:33 Achieving Balance: Family, Fellowship, and Entrepreneurial Seasons
Leaping into Entrepreneurship: Family, Faith, and Building Vivame Hospitality 0:00 Imagine walking away from a secure paycheck with 10 kids to feed to build a luxury resort business. Well, Josh McCallan made that leap and gave up 1 job to create 500. Discover how we did0:12 it without sacrificing family or faith and glean lessons that you can use for your own entrepreneurial journey. Stay tuned.0:25 Welcome to the Christian Capitalist Show. I'm your host, Russell Gray, and I'm super excited today because I'm gonna be, introducing you to a good buddy of mine that I've known for a number of years. And I remember when0:34 he first started his journey from being a corporate employee to deciding to take that big leap of faith and become a full blown entrepreneur. He's a family guy. He's a Christian man, and he's had0:46 tremendous success and is continuing to be a blessing to the marketplaces he operates in. So, let's say hello to Josh McCallan.0:53 Well well, it's an honor to be here, and that's an extremely kind introduction, Russ.0:58 Well, Josh, you know, as I said, I've known you a long time and your wife, and, I have a daughter who just had her ninth child.1:05 No way.1:05 So, you know, there's not too many people out there that beat me and my wife, and we had a lot of kids, but, my daughter beat me by a bunch, and you beat her. How many kids are you up to right now?
1:16 So I have an old picture of 10 children. See that, Russ? I put it on your screen in case you're visual. 10. We got to 10.
1:23 You got to 10. Okay. So my daughter might be done. I don't know, but she may catch you. But, 10 is a huge family, and, you know, anybody from a practical perspective understands that even though in Psalm 1 27, it says
1:35 that, you know, children are a blessing and blessed is a man whose quiver is full of them. So from that standpoint, you're blessed. Are you there? Yeah. But in the real world, you got a lot of mouths to feed. And so,
1:47 I always like in these shows to take people through the hero's journey. So there was the place when, you know, like a lot of people, you're starting out life. You know, you bright eyed young man, and you turn 18 years
1:58 old, and you enter in that threshold. You cross over that threshold into being an adult. And now you gotta figure life out, what whatever it is. Some people go to college. Some people don't. And some people get married
2:10 right away. Some people don't. Some people start a business. Some people get a job. Some people don't. Right? Now there's a lot of decisions that get made, and over time, you get shaped and formed. And so you've been
2:20 through a lot of that process. And so there might be folks who are here who, are raising sons and can glean lessons from your life. There may be young people listening to this that are
2:32 still on the front end of their journey that can pull some lessons. But I always like to start with where you're at right now, and then we'll kinda go back to the beginning and figure out how you got from there to here.
2:43 So what does here look like as we're recording in October, or sorry, December of 20 25 for Josh McCallan?
2:51 So today, my lovely wife, Melanie, and I, after I left a wonderful family office where I had helped them create a massive luxury resort portfolio based on
3:03 virtues, and we launched a company that is now becoming rapidly successful, growing, called VivaMay Hospitality, which is stylized French for revive
3:14 the soul. And back when we were doing this in 20 18 and we were launching on our own, riding that massive wave of the success I had in my first mega hundred million dollar portfolio, we
3:26 looked like starving artists, you know, thinking we would be making Picassos. But somehow we knew, personally, it was my wife's conviction that we were doing what we were born to do that made
3:38 it comfortable. I met you early on in that process. But today, we have 4 resorts up from 0 a few years ago. Right? This accounts for over 1000 beautiful acres.
3:50 A lot of them are natural farms that turned into luxury experiential resorts. Some are wood vineyards and wineries. We own 2 championship golf courses in that 4 property portfolio. So picture
4:02 massive business machines sitting on top of unrepeatable properties. Oh, and by the way, we love telling the story and the history of each property. So we get it. It's like if you loved Magnolia
4:14 and Chip and Joanna Gaines for houses, you kinda get to have that whole experience here at these resorts.
4:20 So in a lot of ways, you're an artist even though you're canvassed as business. You hear Donald Trump, back in the day when he was a resort property developer himself. I just got a chance to see his son, Eric,
4:32 speak, at a conference, and now he's running the Trump Organization. And they have, I think, 26 properties in their portfolio that they're operating. So big, big properties, as
4:44 you well know. And they built a reputation for doing things at a certain level and award winning and all of that kind of things and different types of businesses that are involved in. And I know you've you've kind of
4:55 evolved in that direction. But I think on your LinkedIn, it talks about you having responsibility for a pretty big team. So talk a little bit about that.
5:05 Unlike, you know, when I was first, when I met you early on, we were learning how to put proper formation together to raise capital so that we can be honest and true and and and fulfill our promise to each investor. And
5:16 I remember everybody I met, Russ, back then was I felt like they were a cell phone, 1 colleague, and a bunch of outside partners, which is a good way to build some businesses. But, you know, we have a
5:28 different calling. My calling, as my LinkedIn says, is I'm the CEO leading and serving 500 plus souls in a high growth hospitality revival. And we meant each word we put in there. It's,
5:40 like, super deep and rich. But the 1 word that summarizes it all is souls. And, you know, not everybody's called to have a lot of teammates. Not everybody has to have a mega scale business.
5:52 But, because of the gifts god gave us, souls and focusing on how to treat them and how to work with them and motivate them to provide their best life is our calling. And so hospitality
6:04 fits perfectly, and we've been able to activate that industry to both be good for the teammate, great for the guest, and wonderful for investors too.
6:14 Well, you know, we talk a lot on this program about the concept of purpose. I consider myself to be an evangelist for purpose driven Main Street capitalism. And you are right in that,
6:25 camp, which is why I really wanted to do this interview. And I'm super excited that you're here and you're giving me time because I know you're a very busy man. So thank you. But let's talk a little bit about purpose.
6:35 You've described some of it, but, you know, when you think about your personal purpose, your personal mission statement, there's 2 parts to it. What it is, and I think maybe even the more important part, how did
6:47 you figure it out?
6:48 Okay. I actually have an origin story. So I know we don't have much time, but when we were building for this wonderful family office, and if you haven't heard that expression yet, these are people that either were born
6:59 with wealth or, in my case, the gentleman I worked for had built beautiful, scalable businesses and sold them. So then he was sitting on a lot of capital, and he created a family office. In that, he did multiple
7:10 businesses, but he gave me the opportunity to build a resort business within his family office. And that family office resort business started off as real estate. Oh, we have real estate. Let's make it beautiful and have
7:22 it produce income. That's how most real estate stories start. Let's have it make income. Well, what the problem was when I wrote the business plan and named it a beautiful name, and it was it was quite 6 it was failing
7:34 at first, by the way. I had to put my time in, sweat equity. And when it failed or when it struggled operationally to build out you know, we're promising luxury resort, and yet we would have chefs
7:46 quit in the middle of a season, or we'd have general managers fail the job, or we became me became the backstop. Just like in any business, whoever comes up with a great idea or who signs their
7:58 name on the debt is the backstop to failure. So I was the backstop to failure, and I was happy to do my duty, but I would spend weeks and weeks on end there. My wife said she was a widow to my business that I was a
8:09 partner in. And when I was on the floor of restaurants or when I was at the front desk of hotels, which were all connected through the resort, obviously, I would watch something transpire that was not
8:21 commerce. And this epiphany is as if a light came down from heaven. It was not commerce. It was relationship. And in hospitality, it's the tip of the spear. I call it the original primordial
8:33 ministry of mankind. It's where physicality meets spirituality. Because all the moments that we control are some of the most intimate moments for people, whether it be breaking bread. I mean, every
8:45 culture says you get to know people over breaking bread. Guess what, though? If you screw up the bread baking and screw up the cheeseburger and the fancy steak, they want to hurt you. It's not
8:57 just commerce. It's not buying a pack of gum at the grocery store. It is hurtful. And so I started to dissect why do people love us and hate us depending on the day
9:09 and how we deliver the service? It's and I transpired it all the way down to 1, meeting expectations, and 2, delivering love. And I said, but if we focus on it as a transmutation of love, as a gift of
9:21 kindness, relationship, and love, it is game changing. So that journey went so badly at first. I used to joke, and I'm not kidding. The f word was a common expression at the front desk because we had made
9:33 accidental mistakes, and the guests were so hurt. I came to realize it's not hurt. It's it's disrespect. They were feeling disrespect, and disrespect implies that you didn't see their dignity.
9:44 So, anyway, I started dissecting it. I have a great, history that goes all the way back to studying theology and philosophy and trying to to figure out if I was supposed to be in ministry as an adult person. Turning out
9:56 when I was 22 was supposed to be business. But but but back then, I'm like, I'm gonna dig deep into the word and into, understanding the motives of people. So I I kinda dissected hospitality as, like,
10:10 physical. And I said, wait a second. This is gonna blow your mind, Russ. I'm a lot like you. I said, the word hospitality tells you what the power is. Do you know that for over 1800 years, as the Latin
10:22 language was migrating through the countries, it was 1 word for hospitality. Hospital and hospice was 1 English word for a long time. It was 1 Latin
10:34 word called hospes, and it became all 3. Guess what? Only hospitality is not perceived as spiritual today. Hospital's kinda spiritual. There's bedside manner and the idea of loving on people. Guess what's the most
10:45 spiritual? Hospice. It's when death is imminent, medicine cannot save the day, and only love and relationship with eternity is the only medicine. It's spiritual. So I
10:57 said, wait a second. The word is spiritual. I didn't know that until I thought about it. So then it transformed my life into making the work, though it's very practical, my personal
11:09 purpose in life was to deliver, 1, the love to the guest, and 2, to teach the teammates, and this is what I wanna show you if you don't mind me showing you, teach the teammates that they're allowed
The Epiphany: Hospitality as Spiritual Ministry
11:22 they're allowed to find purpose in all the work we do. Okay? And I unleash that potential where we just say, good news, great news, folks. You're allowed to love this work. Oh, great news. You're
11:34 allowed to feel the dignity of showing other people dignity. It's incredibly rewarding. I say we are the gift givers who receive the greatest gift. So we teach our
11:45 team. You're you're gonna I hope you I hope you're not driving folks, because if you are, you're gonna swerve off the road. Watch this. We teach people how to live 3 virtues through business. And guess what? Not many of
11:55 us are believers in the business. I thankfully am. My wife is. We love what we have received from God. We love the gift of relationship in in in our faith. Not all the teammates. I mean, hundreds and
12:07 hundreds of teams. Over 500. In a given year, we'll employ we'll get w twos out to 750 people a year. Right? Because, clearly, we have festivals and events that might have people here for a few weeks, and
12:19 then we have everyday workers. Right? That's a lot of lives Melanie and I and our team get to touch every year. So we take our job as loving on the team, and we broke it into 3 virtues, the
12:31 joy of service, the humility, and ministry are the 3 virtues. We say, good news, folks. We're not great at them either. It doesn't mean you have to be perfect to work here, but you you're going to need to be
12:43 built to want these. So during the interview process, we pull out the CredoCard, which if you're watching online, you'll see is this cute little card. Write me a DM. I'll send you 1 in the mail, or I'll send you a PDF
12:55 instantly, on LinkedIn, Josh.
12:56 We'll give them an email address at the end. Yeah. They can they can find everything all things pertaining to Josh.
13:02 Exactly. So my point is you're the point is we say to people before they join, if you want these doesn't mean you're perfect. If you want to grow in these, you're gonna love it here. If you hate these,
13:14 like they piss you off, don't even take the job. It's you're gonna hate it here, my friend. So, anyway, that's that's our purpose in life, brother. I hope I answered that.
13:23 You you did. And I think that 1 of the things I wanna point out to everybody because, you know, a big part of the reason I do this is because there's a cohort of people out there, even in the Christian world, that have
13:34 bought into this idea that entrepreneurism is greedy. In other words, it's it's it's about making money. And I I think there's a mentality that's crept into the
13:46 Christian church that I take exception to, and not everybody, but some, where the attitude is, well, how much is enough? Like, how how much should you focus on making money? And
13:58 then the rest of the time, you should be busy doing ministry as though the 2 things aren't 1 in the same. And the reality is, is people who work for other people, people who
14:10 go to work to earn a paycheck, and that's their mission is to earn a paycheck. That's the way they think. But people who are running a business that is their ministry, and it's a
14:21 financialized ministry, but I got news for you. Churches are businesses too.
14:25 That's true. Right.
14:26 Right? They have cash flow. They have revenue and expenses, you know, p and l just like anybody else. Right? And and so if if you if you have that attitude, how much is enough, and then you
14:37 stop when you personally have met your own needs, I consider that to be selfish. If you have the ability to meet more new entrepreneurs, think about how many people can I serve? How
14:49 can I do more? And that is never done as long as there's needs in the world. So that's 1 of the premises of being a Christian capitalist. And it fits to me and tell me what you think of this, Josh, because this is the
15:00 way I think of it. As I've sat down and you've known me for a while, you knew me in all my days with the real estate guys and the things I was doing over there. And that when I, decided to go
15:12 on my own, the first thing I did was went into this 20 month, kind of road to Damascus experience where I'm asking the Holy Spirit to renew my mind, you know, transform me by the renewing of my mind.
15:24 We talked about this before we hit record Romans 12 2. Transform me into the man I must be to fulfill the plan and purposes that God had created me for beforehand that I might walk in them. I think that's
15:36 Ephesians. And so the the thing is, how do, what do I do fit? And so I said, okay, well, what's God's master plan, right? Whatever I do has to fit within the
15:48 master's plan. And to me, the master's plan is to love God, first commandment, great commandment. The second commandment is like the first, love your neighbor. And the third is a great commission, make disciples. So
15:59 to me, the master's plan, love God, love each other, and make disciples. So what I'm hearing you say is you love God, and you manifest that love by loving others, and you've
16:11 wrapped a business around that both your employees and your customers and your investors to provide as much value as you can, and it never ends. And then embedded inside of
16:23 that is the evangelical, the outreach make disciples because you've got a percentage of people who are the salt in your organization, who think the way you think, who know the the the savior you
16:35 know, who believe in the biblical truths that you subscribe subscribe to. And then you've got the other group of people who aren't there yet, who can be be discipled. And all of those things
16:47 can be packaged up in 1 activity. And that's the beauty of being a Christian capitalist. At least that's the way I see.
16:55 You see, you have a great articulation, and I have a lot of comments on that. But I wanna go back to when we, you're right about the investors too. I did not mention that. We'll we'll host over 330000 guests this year.
17:07 It's just 4 resorts. In the next few months, we'll almost double that from 1000 acres of beauty to 1900 acres of beauty, and we'll be buy buying more properties with investors. And so
17:19 we actually embedded, and I took this from a a speech you gave 7 years ago where you said the day you raise a dollar, you now own 2 businesses. Whatever business you're putting the money into,
17:31 and now the money is the business because guess what? The investor deserves the same dignity and respect that the project needed. You know? Yeah. Or the people of the project. And so I said, boom. It was like a lightning
17:43 rod. And so over over in 1 side of my life is I've built an entire executive team running a capital formation company, 5000 investor interested 5000 are interested. About 4
17:54 62 families from all over the country and world have written investment checks to become part of these real estate portfolio pieces, and we will continue to grow that, and they deserve their dignity. That's why I
18:06 call that formation accountable equity. But I wanna I wanna add something to, you know, you said how much is enough. Right, Russ? A man with 10 children, always
18:18 earning to provide, not a luxury guy. I'm not really a consumer. Thank the good lord. I was not cursed with that. So money to me is capital, and you taught me this 1 time when we were studying capital
18:30 together, and this is why I named the podcast after talking to you. I have a cap capital Hacking podcast. And I said, well, capital's not purely just the financial part. It's the I call it the human capital
18:42 meets the financial part. And now you are here talking about that as a podcast. You're saying people in business are the human capital, and, yes, they attract financial capital. And together, they
18:54 influence the world. They impact. They they change. They create. They produce. And, that's been the journey I've been on for I think you've been on my show 3 times. So that journey is incarnate.
19:05 Now the last thing is how much is enough for us? We actually have an answer for that. Would you like me would you like me to answer that question? So when we had that epiphany 15 years ago about how powerful
19:17 hospitality can be if you choose to let it be, we learned about Ritz Carlton, Horseshultz. We learned about a few other famous brands. Ritz Carlton's pretty famous. As a matter of fact, I
19:29 learned how to write credo cards from reading credo cards of Ritz Carlton. And I said, you know, they had implemented 1 philosophy that just changed my heart. It was called ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and
19:39 gentlemen. It was like revolutionary 50, 60 years ago.
19:42 It's like my main street investing in main street.
19:45 Yes. It is. It's like well, that that was the concept that the server has dignity, and I find that powerful. And that's why Rich's teammates are powerful. But here's the point. They impacted the world with that premise.
19:57 Books have been written about that premise. Disney was modified by that person. Chick fil A was trained by Horace Schultz. They impacted the whole world. Guess how many resorts they had? 110. So it only took
20:08 110 resorts to change the world. So we're at 4. We're about to be at 8 with investors' help, and we are on our way to our first plateau, 25 resorts. And you might say, but Josh, you said 100.
20:20 You know, over the years, I've come to realize sometimes you have to regulate your language, Russ. And when I used to teach people when I had no resorts, they were gonna have 100 resorts. They couldn't see and believe
20:30 the vision. So when I got to 4 and I said, we'll go to 25, everybody's like, oh my gosh. We're right around the corner. I always say plateau 1 is 25. So we'll be there in the next 9 years, and then we'll keep growing.
20:41 Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I'm going through that right now, because I have well, I say the math is the path. And so if you say you're gonna hit hit a big goal, you know, how are you gonna get there? So what I'm
20:53 doing actively right now is explaining to people what we have to do today, step 1. If you think of Gary Keller's book, The 1 Thing, right, Moving the Dominoes. What is the 1 domino we gotta knock over today that sets up
21:04 the second domino, that sets a third domino? And if you follow the math, which is the path to the end game, all of a sudden that exponential growth, 2 can become 4, 4 becomes 8, 8 can become 16. And And
21:16 all of
21:16 a sudden you wake up 1 day and you're like, wow. I've had some serious impact. And today with technology and the ability that we have to share ideas, ideas become actions, actions become results. Thought leaders
21:28 have an opportunity more than ever to impact the world. And I would say along with that opportunity comes the responsibility. And 1 of the things that I'm so excited about with you, Josh, and the reason I wanted to share
21:40 you with my audience, and I encourage you guys, if you're if you're blessed by this show, please share it with other people. Because, you know, if you're 1 of those people out there that has a job and you work for a boss
21:51 who doesn't think the way Josh thinks and you wanna change the work place for people that have jobs, you don't have to be an entrepreneur, but wouldn't it be great to work for a guy who thinks the way Josh Macallan
22:03 thinks? Well, you make that happen by helping them get good ideas in their head. And a lot of people in business don't think that spiritual things, philosophical things matter in the
22:15 pragmatic daily, getting things done and driving revenue and managing expenses and pushing towards the bottom line. But I think Josh and I would both beg to disagree because because the fact of the matter is those
22:26 philosophies are 100 percent what drive the activities which produce not just financial capital, which is really just a derivative of human capital. Right? It's really what
22:38 develops humanity and human people. The first commandment that God gave humanity after he created them was be fruitful and multiply. He expects us to work. He expects us to produce. That's what we were
22:50 created to do. We were created in his image to become a co creator with him to create things, to take dominion over the world, to make it be prosperous and beautiful. Right? That's our job. And
23:02 so it really bothers me when I hear people who think their sole mission in life is to to earn enough money to retire. I mean, I'm not saying you you shouldn't retire. Right? But to me, it's like keep as long
23:14 as there's needs, find a way to be productive. It doesn't mean you have to work for money. You can sell your business. But, you know, the and again, I'm not judging. Please, please, please, please don't hear that I'm
23:24 judging. But I'm just saying that I think a lot of people get seduced into believing that the ultimate in financial and business is to get to a place where they
23:35 can retire and and really be taken offline. And I'm like, no. I gotta be busy about my father's business. That's the way I look at it. That's powerful.
23:45 That's powerful.
23:45 So, Josh, did you have something you wanted to entertain?
23:48 I just wanted to add to that that, you know, we've experienced this. This is gonna blow your mind, Russ, and I think you know this because people come to you all the time that have had a wonderful career and are having
23:58 epiphanies in their own personal calling. There's a book called the half halftime by Bob Buford. Lloyd Reeb, you and I were talking about them, that they created the halftime institute. It's all about what you just
24:10 said. It's those that have gotten to a mature age, experts in their field perhaps, have the ability to either sell their business or retire. Is that what God's calling up to? No judgment, like you said, Russ. But the
24:22 book takes you through a journey. And I got to go through that journey with Lloyd, who's the president of that, where you just say, well, what did what were your giftings? Right? How do you wanna keep using them, whether
24:32 it's sell your business and do them differently, or is your business actually your future? And so this is the revolution of turning business instead of just worrying about exits, turn it into a gift for those that work
24:44 with you and the world and the community you impact. So really big, big asterisk on what you just said big time. Business can be a force for good, and we think of it as all the souls
24:55 Well, that it could
24:56 be. Property.
24:56 It should be. And I think it was designed to be. And I think when we forget that errand, we miss the whole purpose. We started out talking about purpose. It's not just personal purpose, but there's, there's purpose
25:08 in all of creation. You know, human beings as a species was put here for a purpose, not just each individual, although each individual has a unique purpose. But that's why I kinda talk about this mat there's the master's
25:20 plan, and then inside of that, there's a whole bunch of diversity, but it all subordinates to this master plan.
25:24 Amen, brother. But I wanna tell you 1 fun thing that could be a pragmatic takeaway from this conversation because not everybody's gonna to do exactly what I do or what you do. Here's 1 thing that's amazing, though, and
25:34 you can take this into your family. This crossed my mind, what you just said that the master's plan has embedded truth that people will find whether they knew the master or not. Here's 1 that'll blow your mind, thatShow more
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