Why you can't actually "get rich quick" (with Mark Batterson)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Release Date: 11/29/2025
We Let a Church Ask Us Anything About Money (Here's What They Actually Wanted to Know)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Mike Tyson made $400 million and ended up $23 million in debt. A janitor named Ronald Reed made minimum wage his whole career and left $8 million to charity. The difference had nothing to do with income — and everything to do with one rule. That's where this conversation starts. Linda and I were guests at a church for their "Money Talks" series and the questions were so good we wanted to bring this to the podcast. We walk through the John Wesley framework we based our whole book on (make all you can, save all you can, give all you can — and enjoy it), the one number that tells you whether...
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Matt Chandler: I Won't Even Let Billionaires Bless Me (Here's Why)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Matt Chandler has been in the room with actual billionaires on multiple occasions — and the way he describes what happens to people who have everything almost everyone else is chasing isn't what most of us would expect. He told us he won't even let some of them bless him. And after 23 years pastoring one of the most affluent suburbs in America, he's seen exactly what the chase actually does to families. In this conversation, we get into a question Matt says nobody has asked him: what he's actually watched wealth do to people up close. We talk about the upgrade cycle most Christian families...
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THIS is how we gave $1 Million
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
We are opening up our Mission Driven Millionaire Cohort to 15 people and we are enrolling now until spots fill up. Get details and apply here: Also, this is an episode you might just want to watch (you know, with your eyeballs lol) for it to make the most sense. And you can . I have coached people pulling in 250,000 a year who are completely broke. No margin, no savings, no clue where any of it went. And I have sat with families bringing in 40,000 who quietly become millionaires. It is not income. It is not pinching pennies. There is one specific thing that decides which side of that line you...
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The 4 Stages of Money (And Why Most People Get Stuck in Stage 2)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
37% of people making $250,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck right now. Which means the thing keeping most of us stuck financially has almost nothing to do with how much we make. Linda and I have coached people pulling in $250k who are dead broke. We've watched a $20,000 raise get absorbed by lifestyle inside six months and leave them exactly where they started. The problem isn't income. The problem is that most of us are working hard on the wrong math problem. In this episode we walk through the four stages of money (surviving, stable, secure, and surplus) and the one mistake almost...
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The 17 Investments I Actually Own (Full Portfolio Reveal)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
In this episode I walk through our entire 2026 investment portfolio: every account, every position, and exactly what I'm doing with our money. That includes a full update on gold (which has nearly doubled but I genuinely don't care), where we stand with Bitcoin at $65k, why I moved Linda's Roth IRA into a fixed indexed annuity after spending my whole career skeptical of them, our real estate split between Fundrise and Roots, the Tesla concentration problem in our stock portfolio, and what happened when I ran an app that automatically copies Nancy Pelosi's trades for 8 months — including the...
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He Burned Out as a Pastor (Then Discovered this…) w/Mark Buchanan
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Most of us have quietly convinced ourselves that busy-ness is a badge of honor. Mark Buchanan believed the same thing — until it almost cost him his health, his marriage, and his connection with God. And what he found on the other side of that is something the modern church has almost entirely stopped talking about. In this conversation, Linda and I sit down with Mark Buchanan — author of The Rest of God, God Walk, and his new historical fiction novel What Is Left of the Night — to talk about why busyness kills the heart, what Sabbath really means as more than a day, how walking is a...
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You're Not Broke — You Have a Leak. Here's the Framework That Finds It.
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
You're not careless with money. You try to be intentional. But somehow at the end of the month, there's still less than there should be — and you can't quite figure out where it went. What if the problem isn't discipline — but a type of spending leak that even the most careful budgeters almost never catch? In this episode, I walk through the Cost vs. Frequency Matrix — a simple framework for identifying three invisible drains that quietly bleed most middle-class budgets dry. We talk about value decay (purchases that made total sense once, but quietly stopped serving you), what the...
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Why When You Feel Least Qualified Is When God Does His Best Work
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
The day Jesus fed five thousand people from almost nothing — he was also grieving the violent death of his best friend and cousin. He'd tried to get away to be alone. The crowds followed him anyway. And instead of sending them home, the Bible says "he had compassion on them." Out of his grief. Out of his exhaustion. In this episode, Linda and I walk through Matthew 14 and what was actually happening to Jesus during this wild 24-hour stretch — the grief, the exhaustion, the interrupted attempt at solitude, and the back-to-back miracles that came out of it. We also talk about what Linda...
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How to Hear the Holy Spirit About Your Finances (with Alex Seeley)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
She prayed for seven years for a breakthrough. The more she prayed, the worse things got. And she ended up on the bathroom floor saying she didn’t want to be alive anymore. What the Holy Spirit showed her in that moment — about control, about fear disguised as faith, about the difference between begging and believing — is something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. In this episode, Linda and I sit down with Alex Seeley — author of The Divine Counselor — for one of the most honest conversations we’ve had on this show. Alex shares how a 20-year eating disorder rooted in...
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The 3 Money Tests God Gives Every Christian (And Why Most of Us Are Failing)
SeedTime with Bob and Linda Lotich
Have you ever wondered why financial breakthrough feels so close yet so far? Bob and Linda Lotich reveal that God is constantly testing us with money—and most of us don't even realize it's happening. In this eye-opening conversation, they break down the three distinct money tests every believer faces, how to identify which one you're in right now, and what God is trying to teach you through it. What You'll Learn: The Three Tests - The Struggling Test - When you have less than you think you need The Surplus Test - When extra money comes your way The Stable...
info_outlinePastor and bestselling author Mark Batterson joins Bob to unpack one of the most misunderstood principles of growth: the way breakthroughs actually happen—gradually, then suddenly.
From Warren Buffett’s compounding to Jim Carrey’s famed $10M check, to the long arc of ministry, writing, generosity, and family life, this conversation is a hopeful reset for anyone who feels “behind.”
In This Episode
- Why most “overnight success” stories take decades
- What 95-year-olds say they would do differently (and how it should change our lives today)
- The “25-year time machine” mindset that makes ordinary moments priceless
- Why young adults often underestimate what God can do in 10–20 years
- How Mark pastors a church with seven properties and zero debt — and the long-term mindset behind it
- Turning your church “inside out”: how NCC generates $2M/year through marketplace engagement
- The hidden power of giving goals (and the difference between getting vs. giving goals)
- The surprising truth about Buffett’s wealth: it’s not returns… it’s time
- Mark’s take on grand gestures, faith steps, and why God honors long obedience
- Bob’s story of writing a 5-year giving goal that seemed impossible—and what God did
- What to do when your dream is taking way longer than you thought
Key Quotes
- “You’ll overestimate what you can do in two years and underestimate what God can do in ten.” —Mark Batterson
- “Faith is taking the first step before God reveals the second.” —Mark Batterson
- “The greatest risk is taking no risks.” —Mark Batterson
- “We decided to do a ten-year book launch. Let’s give it a decade and see if it’s any good.” —Bob Lotich
Timestamps
00:00 — Why get-rich-quick thinking never works
01:00 — Introducing Mark Batterson & the story behind Gradually, Then Suddenly
02:00 — What 95-year-olds regret most
04:00 — The “25-year time machine” for parenting and life
05:00 — Why we plan vacations better than our futures
07:00 — The power of long-range thinking (and why it’s so rare)
08:00 — Why most people quit right before the breakthrough
10:00 — Bob’s 10-year book launch strategy
12:00 — Early results vs. long obedience
14:00 — The myth of the fast start: Circle Maker sales + slow beginnings
16:00 — Teaching a generation to love “gradually”
19:00 — Mark’s 29-year pastoral journey and miraculous property story
21:00 — Why NCC’s venue generates $2M/year
24:00 — What church leaders can learn from marketplace strategy
28:00 — Jim Carrey’s $10M check and the power of a grand gesture
29:00 — Bob’s five-year giving goal that changed everything
32:00 — How giving goals open doors for God to move
34:00 — What to do with dreams that are taking too long
35:00 — Closing encouragement + where to get the book
Resources & Links
- Mark Batterson’s new book: Gradually, Then Suddenly
- The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson
- Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel
- Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
If You Enjoyed This Episode
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If you haven’t checked out our best-selling book Simple Money, Rich Life (https://seedtime.com/smrl/), we think you’ll love it. It was named the 2022 Book of the Year by ICFH and has over 1,000 5-star reviews on Amazon, and is best described as “a money book for people who don’t read money books.”
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