Three runs on tape

What happened the last three times

Same topic, three different evenings, three different rooms.

Side by side

The numbers

Run	When	Venue	Min	Voices	Film	Film %	Intro→Disc	Facil.
Cohort 1	—	startup hub	91	13	standard	22%	1.62 → 2.21	37%
Cohort 2	2025-08-17	convention centre used by City Harvest Church	97	20	substitute	17%	1.47 → 2.6	40%
Cohort 3	2026-06	Christian charity retreat centre	106	9	substitute	26%	1.83 → 2.62	44%

The most family-heavy session of the eight. Expect spouses, children and the cost at home to come up unprompted.

Run by run

What each evening was like

Cohort 1. Met in a startup hub for 91 minutes with 13 voices in the room. The standard film was shown, taking 22 per cent of the evening. 7 questions were put. Coded depth rose from 1.62 in the introduction round to 2.21 in the discussion. The facilitator took 37 per cent of the turns.

Cohort 2 · 2025-08-17. Met in a convention centre used by City Harvest Church for 97 minutes with 20 voices in the room. A substitute film was shown, taking 17 per cent of the evening. 5 questions were put. Coded depth rose from 1.47 in the introduction round to 2.6 in the discussion. The facilitator took 40 per cent of the turns.

Cohort 3 · 2026-06. Met in a Christian charity retreat centre for 106 minutes with 9 voices in the room. A substitute film was shown, taking 26 per cent of the evening. 6 questions were put. Coded depth rose from 1.83 in the introduction round to 2.62 in the discussion. The facilitator took 44 per cent of the turns.

The plan · about 98 minutes

Run of show and what to show

Plan for 9 to 20 people. The sequence is the one feature of the evening with a measurable effect, and it should be run whole.

Run of show

Timing

0:00Arrive and welcomeSay why the room exists. Keep it short.10 min
0:10Introduction roundName, business, what brought them, a fun fact. Visible timer, one minute each.25 min
0:35FilmObserved film share for this session ran 17 to 26 per cent of the evening.15 min
0:50DiscussionThree questions keyed to the film, tables of six to eight, one recorder each.40 min
1:30Commitment and closeOne action each before next month, then pray.10 min

Ask how the person measures success before asking what they are motivated by. The order matters.

Which film

What to show

Standard

FDE promo, Kaestner intro, a profile of a Seattle cabinet manufacturer through partner fraud, debt repayment and the 2008 collapse.

Substitute used

Cohort 2 used the Endowus co-founder Samuel Rhee profile; Cohort 3 used 'Pruning to Grow' with Lara Casey.

All three worked. This is the session where substitution has been most common and least costly.

A substitute was used in 2 of the three runs. Across all 24 sessions, substitution made no measurable difference to depth (2.10 against 2.19, p = 0.24). What it changes is the subject matter.

What the room actually talks about

Subjects this session produces

Share of the 73 participant contributions carrying each subject, against its share across all 618 contributions in the corpus.

Over-represented

Relative to the corpus

Rest and Sabbath16% vs 5% corpus

Family29% vs 13% corpus

Prosperity and blessing7% vs 4% corpus

Identity and success29% vs 19% corpus

Risk and failure18% vs 14% corpus

Cultural material and who speaks

Frames, stance and gender

Frames raised: Expatriate and transnational life (3), The Singapore state system (3), Western hustle and VC norms (3), Differences between church cultures (2), Mission abroad (2).

Where the room took a position on that material, it pushed back or negotiated 6 times against 1 endorsements.

Who speaks: 28 contributions from women, 38 from men.

Community and loneliness0% F · 13% M

Spirit-guidance and prayer15% F · 4% M

Identity and success18% F · 9% M

Family18% F · 9% M

What was asked

Every question put, by cohort

Choose three. No recorded session got through more than about three at any one table, so the rest are a reserve rather than a plan.

Cohort 1 · 7 questions

q0Introduce ourselves to each other — do like [an] elevator pitch and a fun fact.
q1How do you measure your success? … What do you think about [identity] and what you say yours is?
q2Who is the one who actually [does the] work — is this success, whose credit is this, God's or mine? … being spiritually mature versus being successful… how do you battle the temptation of doing that one last email, that one last thing every day?
q3Given the video that we watched today, what you are motivated by, and do you have temptation to be motivated by something else, especially in Singapore?
q4The roles [God has] called you [to] — how do you prioritize? … How have you dealt with balanc[ing] spiritual life, home life and work?
q5What kind of habits do you practice in order to balance your work, home and spiritual life?
q6Let's do a sprint, everybody going to share: for this coming week, how you going to rest… how do you incorporate more rest into your normal routine?

Cohort 2 · 5 questions

q0Please introduce yourself and your company (1 min 'elevator' pitch): tell us about your business and what brought you here; any fun fact about yourself?
q1What do you think about identity, and what do you say your identity is — an entrepreneur, a leader who just closed a funding round, an innovator — or to be loved, a son of God following his will? Did you face this kind of decision, and how was it made?
q2Your business and career choices: times when you really wanted to do something but followed God's word — what was the result, and has it changed how you make decisions now?
q3What aspects of the entrepreneurial journey have been most difficult for your family and other responsibilities? How do you balance them?
q4'I sacrifice, we win': when you did something irrational in worldly terms in your business because you believed it was right / what God told you — have you had that kind of experience, and how did it end up?

Cohort 3 · 6 questions

introPlease introduce yourself and your company (1 min “elevator” pitch). Tell us about your business and what brought you here! Any fun fact about yourself?
q1Identity in Extremes: Lara Casey had to decouple her identity from a highly successful, glamorous 10-year-old media empire. Shady Hebeish had to decouple his identity from a catastrophic $20 million debt he inherited. How do both of these extremes—massive success and massive failure - threaten to become idols, and how can we anchor our identity in Christ regardless of what our balance sheet looks like?
q2Defying Worldly Wisdom: Conventional business wisdom would have told Lara to keep her highly profitable magazine, and it would have told Shady to immediately declare bankruptcy on his father's mess. Yet, both followed counter-intuitive promptings from the Holy Spirit. Can you share a time when you felt God leading you to make a business decision that made zero sense on a spreadsheet?
q3The Duality of Patience (Pruning vs. Enduring): Shady's faithfulness required a grueling, 20-year marathon of patiently paying off debt. Lara's faithfulness required the painful, immediate pruning of a healthy brand she spent a decade building. Where in your current business are you being called to patiently endure a long-term struggle, and where are you being called to abruptly "prune" a good thing to make room for God's best?
q4The Necessity of Counsel: Lara relied heavily on the feedback and wise counsel of her C12 peer advisory group to make her bittersweet decision to retire Southern Weddings. Shady needed the alignment of his family and community to endure two decades of corporate turnaround. Why is it so dangerous to make major operational transitions in isolation, and who currently has the permission to speak hard truths into your leadership? (Alex's reformulation [086:44]: 'last time you needed to make a decision, whether there was any community or communion with God or both that actually helped you')
q5Redefining the "Win": Shady found himself at the center of a redemptive story that started in a deep hole, while Lara realized that true flourishing meant shutting down her biggest brand. Both stories destroy the assumption that obedience to God automatically equals instant financial growth. If God's ultimate metric for your business isn't financial scale or market dominance, how does that change the way you measure your success this upcoming quarter?

Faithful vs. Willful