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Sept. 7, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
47:36
Where God Leads God Provides: A discussion with Matt McPherson
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Your navigator in a volatile world of investments.
You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey everybody, it's Doug Collins.
Welcome back to the podcast.
Today is a special day, and I try to always bring you just podcasts, not only that I believe are effective, not only for what people are wanting to hear, but also that have meant a lot to me personally.
And today on the podcast is one of those.
Matt McPherson is with us, Matthews, Bose, McPherson Guitars.
We're going to talk all about that.
But from a personal standpoint, it's amazing when you get to hear from Matt just in a few minutes.
That in my life, there was a time when I was in Washington, D.C. You're running around, you're stressed, everything's going on.
And I had a friend begin to introduce me to bow hunting.
I never, you know, shot a bow.
I was, you know, brought up, you know, gun hunting.
And I had just never really got into bow hunting.
Had several folks, including, you know, Paul Ryan.
There's many others in Congress that were shooting.
And a lot of them shot Matthew's bows.
And so I went...
Not knowing, had some friends down at a local bow shop down here, got started into hunting, you know, and really just shooting more than anything else.
And the relaxation that came from just sitting out of my backyard, setting up a target, pulling that bow through the string, and just going out.
Personal life.
It's wonderful to me.
So today on this show, we're going to talk about how there's no exception to that.
His companies reflect his commitment to Christ.
They reflect his commitment to making a difference in this world.
And we're glad to have him on the Doug Collins podcast.
Matt, thanks for being with us.
Hey, great, Doug.
I appreciate you asking me.
It's going to be good.
Well, let's start off, because I've read up a lot about you, the company, as far as what's out there.
You, one, have one of those minds.
God, there's this old saying, and sometimes it's misused, but it's, you know, scripture, train up a child in the way they will go, and they'll never depart from it.
And that actual wording there from my pastoral days was bent.
It says train a child, and they're bent, what they're naturally occurring to.
It seems like you had a bent for the things that God put around us in life for mechanical and innovation, probably coming a lot through your dad.
Tell us about your growing up and how you got this mindset of making things.
You know, it's interesting.
My Uncle Ed, I'm on my mom's side.
So my mom had a brother, Uncle Ed.
He had probably a dozen patents.
And he had worked for a company.
And I always loved my Uncle Ed because he was creative and he was always making things.
And my dad was also an inventor and had, you know...
It seems to me right around maybe 10, 12 patents also.
And we just were always working on things.
Well, grew up in a very economically challenged family.
And if you really wanted something, you kind of had to try to figure out how to make it.
And so early on, there was a lot of things that I got involved with through my father.
My father loved, you know, just kind of being outdoors.
He grew up in a log home Basically, you know, speaking with a small family in northern Wisconsin.
And he loved being outside.
And so my mom and dad, they got married in 1955. And I was born in 1957. My brother, Randy, was born in 56. So it just started coming right away.
But my dad was a pastor.
He was a minister in a little town called Nealsville, Wisconsin.
And we, you know, he didn't really, he wasn't in a position where he was making hardly any money.
And so he was having to do work on the side.
He was working at a creamery, I believe it was, in Nealsville area at the time.
Yeah.
And so he did whatever he could to try to, you know, supplement the income in that.
And my mom, I found out that she had even, you know, sold clothing.
They had catalogs and they would have these parties.
I suppose something like the Tupperware parties, except for it was clothing back there in the 50s.
And so she would sell clothing, try to make a little extra money.
But my dad said to my mom one day, he says, you know what?
I need to go deer hunting.
I need to go out and get, you know, some meat for the table, you know?
And my mom says, oh, no, I'm afraid of guns.
Please, I don't want you to have a gun.
So my mom, being an anti-gun person, right, is what...
You know, kind of move my dad into, well, I'll go get a bow, you know?
I mean, of course.
I mean, it's the obvious thing.
No gun?
Okay, use a bow.
And it was so funny because my dad, he was always that way.
He was just, he would just all of a sudden take a left turn, you know?
And he went out and got a bow and arrow.
And the funny thing is he never, ever shot a deer, all those years.
Because I really don't think he really, really wanted to that bad.
But he got me and my brother Randy into archery right away.
And I'm the second oldest of seven, but it was me and my brother Randy, you know, to begin with.
And then there was a couple sisters.
So it was really just me and my brother Randy and my dad.
Originally, we got into archery really, really soon.
And then my cousin Tim Mahoney.
And so we kind of started branching out from there.
But yeah, my mom being an anti-gun person is kind of what, the reason why there's a Matthews Archery today, as funny as that sounds.
Oh, that is pretty wild.
Well, let me ask, did y'all start, okay, you said your dad, did you hunt, or did you start off with more target, or how did you and your brother, did you and your brother sort of take over the, you know, going more hunting aspect?
Well, actually, right away, my father, of course, did go out hunting, but like I said, he never got anything, you know.
He wasn't much of a...
I'm familiar with that one, Moe.
He's not much, he wasn't that much of a hunter.
But he got us, me and my brother Randy, I mean, I would say probably, I was three...
In four or five years old, in that category, my dad went up and bought us those little wooden bows, you know, with the little suction cups on the front, like they used to sell, you know?
Before liability got, you know, their hands on that stuff.
And, you know, we just...
Or bicycle helmets and sitting in the back seat and in the back end of a pickup truck.
And, you know, it's amazing ways to drive, Matt.
Come on.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So the reality of it was is I fell in love with it right away.
Just totally fell in love with the flight of an arrow.
I mean, there's just something so amazing about the flight of an arrow.
And I remember, you know, it wouldn't take long and we'd break those bows, unfortunately.
And I'd get out a little saw and we'd start sawing up little branches out of trees or little saplings in the backyard and we'd string them up and use those for a while.
And, you know, we just kind of grew up shooting bows, whether they were ones we made or ones we bought.
One thing led to another.
In junior high, there was a shop class.
I realized, hey, we can build serious stuff.
I started building bows in shop class in 1970. I built my first compound in about 1970. That is it.
Now, the sort of help, because I know that during that time, your dad, when did he get in?
Because a lot of people, you know, especially depending on the world, interestingly enough, I had a couple of songwriters, Rob Hatch and Lance Miller were on, who are both hunters as well, but are great songwriters, country music.
I've known them for a while.
Rob shoots them.
I asked him, I said, are you a bow hunter or a gun?
He said, oh, he said, a bow.
And he said, I said, what do you shoot?
He said, oh, only Matthews.
He said, I said, yeah.
And then we mentioned the guitars.
And I mean, their eyes lit up.
I mean, that was one of the biggest things.
And I was noticed in the timeline.
So you're making bows in junior high.
And given the time frame of your birth, I was born in 66. Were you in bows or did your dad somewhere got into the guitar side of this, right?
Yeah, my dad and mom met.
You know, like 1954. And my dad was a writer and a singer and a guitar player.
And my mom was a piano player and a singer and a guitar player.
And so they were singing before They were singing before they got married together.
And all, you know, all church stuff, you know, like Christian songs and stuff like that.
So it was, my dad introduced us really early on, of course, also to music.
So, you know, we had guitars in the house, always had guitars in the house.
And I grew up around guitars and bows.
So it was kind of like a family thing.
People say, well, what's the connection?
Well, they're both stringed instruments.
If you think about it, a bow and arrow is a stringed instrument.
And I'm absolutely certain that the first stringed instruments actually were bow and arrows because before you learned how to play songs and sing, you had to eat.
And so...
Likely somebody had a bow and arrow that they had made.
And you know, if you take a bow and arrow, anybody can do this.
If you just take and pluck a bow and arrow, you can hear a little bit of a tone to it.
But if you put the bottom of the bow on top of a table, let's say, and press down and then pluck the string, it's like amplified.
And immediately you can tell that, oh, there's something going on here.
This amplifies the string, the tone of it.
And so, yeah, I mean, we had both in our house growing up, and we actually sang as a family.
We'd do high school auditoriums, yeah.
And then we would go to the local church the next morning.
So we would rent a high school auditorium for a Saturday night and put on like an evangelistic type of a meeting where we would have music and then maybe an invitation to make a commitment to God, you know?
And so that was kind of in my roots from a very early age on.
Amen.
My wife grew up, and you'll appreciate this, and I hope the listeners are getting lessons here.
She grew up in a tradition of the singings at church.
Mine was not as much, but hers was singings and the old Appalachian shape notes.
Oh, yeah.
And so she went to, she would go every year when she was a child, they would go to shape note school where they, you know, the Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do, and they would sing the notes.
And so when I met and we started going to, I started meeting her family, when you said that your mom played piano, your dad was, you know, guitar, it envisioned what we call down here in the South, what a little hootenanny, where you just get everybody together.
Is that familiar to your upbringing?
A little bit.
My dad was definitely country.
You know, what's interesting, he was born and raised in Wisconsin, up in the northern part of Wisconsin.
But what his background is, is his family came from Kentucky in the 20s and the 30s, I believe.
And they came up as lumberjacks.
Wow.
And so there's towns in Wisconsin, up north especially, northern Wisconsin, Where there's people that have grown up there all their life.
I mean, to this day.
And you go into town there and you can hear a little bit of a southern accent on these people that have never been down south.
But it was because there were so many of the Kentucky people had come in there to be a lumberjacks.
That is amazing.
Well, and again, from the old singings, I mean, down here, it was the old Red Book.
You know, they had the celebration singing.
And what y'all would sing, everybody, it was just something powerful.
And I think what you hit on, and I'd love to hear your thought, because you hit it with the bows, with the guitars.
I believe inherently that we talk about the Spirit with Christ melding, but there's that song, that instrument, that music, that note, if you would.
And when you get folks singing, just relax singing, they sing the parts, you get the old gospel choirs.
There's just something really special about that.
I think it's what makes people resonate to each other, not only through a musical instrument, but also, as you said, through a bow as well.
I think there's doorways to our soul and there's more than one doorway to the soul and some of its visual some of its audio but when you can mix music and melody and cadence and rhyme all together those are all doorways to our soul and I've seen hardened people that a song a song you know well written An anointed will just absolutely melt them and can change their life.
So God put in us an amazing...
You know, it says we're made in God's image.
And I thought about that a lot over the years.
And I think a lot of that is we're wired very much like God in the sense we get happy, we get sad.
We are moved by things that matter.
Well, God is moved by things that matter.
And so I think, you know, when we hear music, that's one of the gifts that God gave us to be able to move us in a way that can be very powerfully used for good.
But the devil loves stuff like that, too, because he'll take and pervert things, as you know, and try to use music to move people away from making good decisions in their life.
All right, Matt.
One of the things I'm talking about, you made guitars, your dad.
When did your dad...
Was it a side sort of job, a side hustle, today's language, that you're making guitars in the 70s, 80s?
When did it become...
Moving out from your own, I know in 91 is when you got your patent on the solo cam for the actual bow itself.
Tell us about that transition, because God had laid this in your heart, and sometimes I see so many people today, and I'm sure you have it in your company, you get young people who have an idea, but they don't want to wait to see God build it.
And sometimes, I mean, He builds stuff from small things, and I'd love to hear that story on how it transitioned.
Well, you know what?
I had been doing some, you know, because I'm wired to be an engineer, my father had patents, my uncle and my mom's side had patents.
I was just kind of wired to be an engineer.
And so early 70s, I had made a two cam compound bow before anybody ever had one.
They were all four wheelers and six wheelers at that point.
And I was hunting with a two cam.
And I'm going, you know, I mean, I'm a kid, you know, I'm like, let's see, how old was I? Like 15?
And I'm out hunting with this thing and thinking, why aren't they making it this way?
You know, so I was being innovative throughout that time.
And then in the later 70s, I honestly, you know, you start questioning, say, God, you know, what would you have me do in life?
Because I'm taking up space, I'm breathing air, I'm eating food, and I'm, you know, I don't want to be a taker.
I want to be a giver.
The world is full of takers.
Somehow, I want to be a giver in this world.
God, show me how to do that.
And I literally heard him say to me, I mean, audibly.
To me, it was audible.
He said, I'm going to prosper you in business so you can be self-sufficient in ministry.
I knew I was supposed to be tied into ministry.
It was just in my blood.
McPherson means son of a parson.
Yep.
Son of a preacher.
So from way back in the old world, Scotland, McPherson is from Scotland.
And it means the son of a preacher.
And so there's definitely, you know, there's the prayers of our grandparents.
They really mean something.
And I believe that, you know, there's no question in my mind that they prayed for their future generations down the road, that God would direct them and anoint them and protect them.
I do that for my own grandchildren and for future grandchildren I haven't had yet, you know?
I'm praying for them and I'm positive that that was a part of this.
So I felt a calling on my life really early and I just didn't know what that meant.
I thought, man, I I'm pretty basic when it comes to eating.
I like a quarter pounder with cheese and fries.
I don't think I would do real well in another country eating bugs.
I'm just saying.
I was like, God, really, what would you have me be and what would you have me do?
I don't want to live my life and at the end of it think to myself, I wasted my life on myself.
And I heard him say, I'm going to prosper you in business so you can be self-sufficient in ministry.
And I knew at that time that that just rang true in me, that I'm good with numbers.
I'm good with math.
You have to be good at engineering.
But everything kind of made sense to me.
And so I just said, God will show me what that is.
And it ended up being that when I got married in 1980, to begin with, I was actually building acoustic guitars.
My dad had Come to me and said, I know there's just a better way of making guitars.
And he was buying acoustic guitars and cutting them up.
And my mom, well, how I found out my mom, I was married, you know, my mom calls me says, Hey, son, you need to talk to your dad.
He's lost his mind.
And I was like, well, that was a long time ago, Mom, but yeah, okay, I'll talk to him.
I said, put him on the phone.
I said, Dad, what's going on?
He says, I just know there's a better way to make an acoustic guitar.
And he said, I'm buying these guitars, I'm plugging up the sound hole where it's at, and I just feel the sound hole should be somewhere else.
Well, he made a guitar that had three sound holes, and it never was quite right.
But years later, he kind of said, son, I just need you to...
And I said, well, I can start building these, Dad.
We'll start experimenting.
But I could tell that it really wasn't quite right.
I had built speaker cabinets also.
And, you know, in speaker cabinet design, there are cabinets that are ported.
They have a little sound port, you know, a low-frequency port.
Some of them don't.
But the ones that are ported properly, you can get a better bass response, and they're more efficient and all this kind of stuff.
So I knew that.
Because I had designed and built quite a few.
And I realized that really what the design my father had come up with actually had too many holes in it.
It should be only one.
And the problem with three holes, there was phase problems with the low frequency.
And that's why they sounded kind of thin sounding and they didn't have a very good bass response.
And so years later, my dad says, son, I'm just handing this to you.
I just need you to make it work.
And so that's when I prayed about it, and I just believe that God kind of directed me into knowing what I knew about speaker cabinet design and started getting involved in that.
But my dad was just integral in both the bows and the guitars.
And I remember my father, I loved the fact that if I came to my dad and just said, Dad, I've got a dream to make a better bow, or I have a dream to make a better whatever, he would encourage me.
He would never discourage me.
He discouraged me one time.
He came home when I was probably 14, and I'd built an airplane.
I had found enough.
And I was in the process of making something that I could maybe jump off of something.
And he says, son, take that apart.
So that was the only time he ever discouraged me.
And I look back, I'm like, yeah, I probably would have broke my leg or something.
You know, you never know.
But yeah, he was always encouraging.
And I appreciated that part of it.
In other words, he was kind of like, you know, you live once, you can live for yourself, or you can try to make a difference in this world, in so many words.
And I thought, okay, I'm going to do that.
That's an amazing story.
And I'm blessed to have a mom and a dad that was very similar in that way.
I mean, sometimes my mom, before she passed a few years ago, she would look at me, especially from, you know, traveling the world and politics and pastoring and everything else.
And she just, you know, for her, it was, you know, she wanted to be at home.
She wanted to, you know, and that was for what I did.
And she would just shake her hand.
She said, I love you, Douglas.
And we just keep going.
But I always, you know, in life, you need that time.
And I think people need to be able to, especially with family, You know, I never, and my dad is still with me to this day, and we have breakfast on weekends, and I never have to worry in life that if I turned around, he wouldn't figuratively be there.
And, you know, and one of the things, man, I'm interested from a ministry perspective, in a business, because you employ a good many people now.
We don't see that.
You and I were blessed in a different way, to have a mom and a dad that were very interested in our life, very, you know, Capable, you know, heard, you know, God's call on their life.
But we're seeing that not as prevalent today.
For business owners who may be listening to this, and I don't take this for a second because your calling is very evident.
Isn't that part or couldn't that be part of a Christian mindset, especially a business person's mindset, that maybe if you were blessed with something like a stable, that there are others in your company that that mentoring that we see in Scripture is something that we're missing a little bit today, but actually could help us with all those people who, quote, don't have that solidity from home.
A hundred percent.
I mean, as you can imagine, I have a lot of people that do come to me and say, hey, I have an idea for this or whatever.
And I love sitting down with them and discussing the pros and cons of their ideas.
And usually they're not very well thought out because they just have no experience.
But I can speak into what they're doing and say, hey, you might want to try doing this and move in this direction.
So I do a lot of mentoring when it comes to that kind of stuff and I enjoy it.
I see these young people that come to me and they've got these hungry eyes and this excitement like they got something really, really great.
And to be perfectly frank, usually it's not really something that has any viability, you know?
But, you know, if you come up with any idea, the beautiful thing about living in America has always been that you have the opportunity to have been brought up in the poorest household in America.
But if you come up with a great idea, you might have something that could change your world and maybe, you know, many people's lives around you.
And that's an exciting thing.
It is.
And I think coming into now, after you started the guitars, and then what, and I'm sensing here, and I wanted just to piece the story together, give you the chance for, you're doing the guitars in the 80s.
Were you working something else, or was this a side, or was this your main occupation?
I was an auto body.
My dad was an auto body man, and he was also a used car dealer.
And so that's how I got involved in auto body.
And so I was doing auto body and building guitars and building bows, pretty much all at the same time.
And I was hoping that the guitar thing would take off first in the early 80s.
But it really was a tough time.
Remember, that's when all those electronic keyboards came out where you can play Bass guitar on a keyboard.
You can play drums on a keyboard.
What?
I mean, you don't need to play violin.
You can play violin on a keyboard.
And you can play acoustic guitar on a keyboard.
It was just like, oh my goodness.
Everybody just wanted to play electronic keyboard.
And so it made it real tough for the acoustic realm for many, many years.
Ironically, MTV, when they came in with MTV Unplugged, That's when acoustic guitar started getting popular again.
There we go!
Isn't that funny?
So I realized, okay, the timing is off on the acoustic guitar thing here.
And I've been building Bose right along.
And if you want to hear the story, I mean, it sounds crazy, but the story...
No, I think people are fascinated by stories in which God's hand moves.
My goodness.
I told you in the late 70s, I heard his voice.
He said, I'm going to prosper you in business so you can be self-sufficient in ministry.
And I mean, it was like the hair in the back of my neck stood up.
I mean, it was that real.
And it was no doubt in my mind that God just spoke to me.
Well, so I'm married, you know, trying to build guitars and doing out-of-body work.
And I'm just in my house, minding my own business, and I heard God speak to me again.
This is probably around 82, 83, somewhere in that area.
And I heard His voice again.
And it was just right out of the blue.
I wasn't being spiritual or anything.
And I heard Him say, I know every answer to every problem in the world.
And it just blew me away.
And of course, I said, well, yeah, because you're God.
You're God.
And then, unexpectedly, I hear him say again, if men would only ask me, I'd give them those answers.
And I knew what he meant was mankind.
Men are women.
And ask for the right reason, you know, not for selfish reasons.
And I said, okay, God, I said, I know that I heard your voice, that you're going to prosper in business.
And I have sensed that I should be getting into archery.
I just have sensed in my spirit that that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
I have been building bows for many years.
You know, I've been building compound bows, you know, since 1970 for myself and recurves for that matter.
And so I knew a lot about archery, but I said, I'm challenging you then.
You know how to build better bows.
And so I'm asking you to give me those ideas, and I promise you I will honor you with my life.
And so I literally just kind of dwelt on that for a few days, and all of a sudden I woke up in the middle of the night, and I am not kidding you, it was literally a vision of a new concept I had never thought of before.
And my wife wakes up.
She goes, what are you doing?
Because I'm sitting up in bed.
I said, honey, I'm literally having a vision.
So either I'm sleeping and I'm dreaming.
And I think I got a great idea.
Ever have one of those where you in your dream, you're going, that's a great idea.
And then you wake up and you go, man, that was a dumb idea.
So I said, either I literally am having a vision of a new concept or I'm dreaming and it's, you know, I got to get up, I got to draw this down.
And then in the morning, I'm going to look at it and decide from there.
Well, I woke up in the morning and I looked at the drawing and I thought to myself that I've never thought of that angle, never thought of a design like that.
And so I developed that into the first boat company, which was McPherson Archery.
I got investors in 1985. And McPherson Archery had high let-off.
We were the first to have, you know, let-off, you know, higher than 50%.
So that if you're shooting a 60-pound bow...
With a 50% let-off, you'd be holding 30 pounds at full draw.
Well, this was 75% let-off.
So this 60-pound bow at full draw, you were holding 15 pounds.
And it just made it so much more pleasant to hold in that.
And so we brought this to market.
I had some investors in that.
We brought it to market.
But, you know, anytime you have...
I try to talk most people out of investors.
I really do.
I mean, because...
Having partners.
I don't mind investors.
I'm not big on partnerships.
Right.
I understand.
Like one person told me, he says, Matt, it's better to have 50% of something than 100% of nothing.
I had to make a compromise and get some partners to begin with.
I had that experience and it was growing, but it needed more capital.
And it was, you know, dealing with all of the financial issues of, you know, do I have to sell controlling interest and all this kind of stuff.
Anyway, I ended up selling it to them.
Stayed on as an engineer until 1992. And then that's when I had the new concept for the single cam.
And I started Matthew's Archery with a single cam.
And, uh, I had a couple early on investors that I could buy out.
I just, uh, I had a good grades that I could buy it out and, uh, I did.
And, um, so just my wife and I owned, ended up owning it.
And it was a, such a relieving and a beautiful thing because, I mean, if you have a partner, I mean, again, I'm not against partnerships.
It's better to have 50% of something than a hundred percent of nothing, but make sure God Is in the mix there.
Because let's just say that you're making money, you know, making great money, but you got a partner in there.
Well, the partner wants you to take your profits and he wants you to reinvest back into the company.
And so he doesn't like you to necessarily go and start putting missionaries on the field, you know, because, you know, we need to grow this company bigger.
So there's always this push and pull between having partnerships.
So it would take a special partnership.
So it ended up being just me and my wife owning it.
And my wife is like me.
She loves to give, loves to make a difference in this world.
And so we've been able to do unique things that sometimes my banker would look at me kind of cross-eyed in my accounts.
But we were able to do it and make it work amazingly well.
The company grew incredibly fast.
We became an Inc.
500 company.
I mean, bumping heads and bumping next to telecommunications and computer software developers and bow and arrow guy.
It was the strangest thing.
We were number 78. Yeah, in the first time through.
And then the next year we were number 248, I believe it was.
So to make Inc.
500 two years running, you have to be growing at just a ferocious rate.
And we did.
And the blessings have been amazing.
And the doors that God has opened for us to be involved in ministry.
All I can say is I'm not that good, but he is.
And I saw the power of what can happen if you really truly just say, God, I promise you this is what I'm going to do as you bless me.
And as I was blessed, I would do that and then God would give more and God would give more.
And it's amazing.
It's amazing the position we're in today.
I mean, 92, and of course, Matthews today is, you know, the leader in the industry.
I mean, it's just out there.
You've got, and you've got wonderful, you know, people who are out there, spokesmen, like Morgan and others who are just, you know, family people.
And it's just, if you ever, you know, want to see that, because they're drawn to that company.
Like my friend Rob Hatch the other day, when he said, he said, I don't do anything but Matthews.
He said, they're good people.
And that was, you know, just the thought.
Sure.
McPherson, the guitars came on a little bit later, but you now have two in becoming world-renowned as far as the guitars again and God opening that door.
You made a comment earlier, and I want you to say it.
You're supporting how many missionaries?
We have actually 1,000 missionaries that we fully 100% support.
We're their food, shelter, income per year.
And so that 1,000 missionaries, which are all over the world in different countries, they're leading in the millions of people to Christ.
It's amazing.
They're literally leading millions of people to Christ every year.
So it's an incredibly humbling thing.
And it's what...
When I wake up in the morning, I never say to myself, oh, I got to go to work because I'm like, you know, I'm in such a privileged position and I know that it can be taken away.
I know that it can be given to somebody else.
I'm like, no, don't give anybody my job.
Don't give anybody my job.
I love it.
Matt, one of the things when you look at it, you said you grew up with hunting.
Do you still have time to go hunting?
I do.
Honestly, I could do it a lot more than I probably do.
But I have a tendency to be one of those people that if something else needs to be done, I'm doing that.
But what's ironic is sometimes my wife even says, why don't you go hunting?
I mean, my wife, isn't that wonderful?
No, it's not for that reason, but she just knows that I'm kind of wound up and that I do need to get away time.
And you know what?
Those are some of the sweetest times when I can get out.
And I have to admit, I love hunting blinds.
I really do, because I'm fidgety, and I can fidget as much as I want in a hunting blind.
Yeah.
And there's no issue at all.
There's no issue.
But I can clear my head and I just really feel like, you know, God made us to be in the garden with Him and to fellowship with Him in the garden.
Well, here, when you go in the woods, where are you?
You're in His garden.
And so why should we be surprised that we really feel that closeness to our Creator when we're there?
It's interesting you should talk about a blind.
I had just, this morning, I had temporarily set up my blind on our land here and got back.
I had to go to some Air Force duty, and I got back, and there was a thunderstorm coming, and I hadn't locked it down like I should have.
So this morning, I've been out setting my blind back up.
But there's something about it, and let's take this for just a second.
I want to explore this.
Is...
God, so many times in our Christian faith and faith, everybody thinks it's so loud, that it's out there, you're doing, you're going.
But one of the disciplines that is spoke of so many times, it speaks of when Jesus said, how many times it talks about him going away to be by himself, going away to speak, and taking that intentional.
And so, look, for me and you and others, when I got back into just going to Look, I'm sort of joking.
This year is going to be my turnaround year for actually achieving, you know, hunting success with a bow.
This is going to be it.
I'm fully good.
If not, though, for the last few years, just sitting in a stand, sitting in a blind, it's that solitude.
It is that being one with and thinking and knowing that I say this a good deal.
He's God and I'm not.
And it's just amazing.
In looking at it, God's gave two great ministries here that you're able to use for ministry through the guitars and through the bow hunting as well.
You also are very active in helping others get into the sport as well.
If somebody's out there today and they're looking to get into bows, and again, I had a lot of dealing with songwriters as you've had as well, and these are some of the most artistic people in the world.
What would you say to them as far as chasing that dreamer?
On a different note, the songwriter's a little bit different, but the bow, how do you encourage people to get involved with either target or hunting?
If they don't want to go hunting, but the target, just the enrichment of having a bow in their hand.
You know, usually we start with the Genesis bow.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Genesis bow that we have, but we were one of the pioneers that worked with Kentucky Wildlife.
We call them DNR up here.
I'm not sure.
I can't remember.
Do you call them DNR? Anyway.
They were interested in getting kids back involved to being outside.
They've gotten so tied into the digital world, the fake world, that it's tough to get kids away from their own computers anymore.
And so we started a thing called National Archery in Schools Program with a Kentucky DNR, how have you.
And we're able to...
I developed a bow called the Genesis.
And the Genesis has no let-off.
So typical compound bows, when you pull them back, if it's 60, it'll be 60 about here.
And then it goes down to, let's say, 15 pounds or 12 pounds.
Well, a Genesis bow, I realized, hey, we don't need any let-off on a Genesis bow, because it's just going to be a 20-pound bow the whole way.
And that way, you can stop wherever you want, because let's say I'm 5'9", and let's say I have a 28-inch draw, and you might be 6'0", and you might have a 29-inch draw.
How do you make a universal bow that can easily be handed from one kid to the next, or to even an adult?
And say, you don't have to readjust it.
They can just pull it back to where they're comfortable.
So I had designed this bow called the Genesis.
And it literally is a 20 pound bow.
That you pull back to where you're comfortable, and that's where you shoot from.
And so it made it real simple to get it in the hands of all these high school and junior high kids.
And so we used that to start the National Archery School Program, which is absolutely the biggest archery program in the world.
We set a Guinness World Book record every year, I believe.
For the biggest archery tournaments in the world through the National Arts and School Program.
But we use that bow because it's so simple.
It's the perfect bow to get a family involved.
Because I could, let's just say that you said, Matt, I'm kind of interested in archery.
You know, I've got some kids, you know, they're in a neighborhood of, let's say, eight years old and, you know, 14 years old.
And I would say, let's get you a Genesis bow.
Because you can shoot it, your kids can shoot it, and you can see if this is something you really want to do.
It's really inexpensive to get involved with a Genesis bow, and it makes it so simple and so easy.
And Genesis has really opened the door to so much of the growth of archery because it got kids to get a bow in their hand to realize they love it.
And the fun thing about archery In the archery in the school thing that really, really show this is that kids that are not aggressive, that are kind of timid, they excel in something like this.
Because you don't have to be aggressive to be coordinated.
Would you agree?
There's a lot of kids that are very coordinated, but they're just timid.
And so they don't try out for football.
They don't try out for wrestling and soccer and basketball and hockey and all those different sports that are aggressive sports.
And so all of a sudden, here's kids who never thought that they really fit in anywhere on a sport, where all of a sudden, here's archery where being fast is not a good idea.
You know, it's just like golf.
It's like, I'm going to teach you fast golf.
Teachers...
Teachers would be going, no, no, no, no.
Start over here.
Golf should not be fast.
It should be well thought out.
So here's archery.
I find as many girls want to try archery as boys.
That's another thing that's wonderful about archery.
So a whole family can shoot this, and you'll find that a lot of men will find that their wives will absolutely love it just as much as they do.
And so it's just a great sport, and it has opened so many doors.
We've been so blessed to be a part of the National Arts in School Program, the NASP, and have gotten letters from teachers, from parents, I've said this has changed this student's life or parents that have said this has changed my child's life because now they feel like they can be good at something.
And, you know, even if they don't move on to be into archery later on in life, you know, if you can at one moment in time, how many how many people all of a sudden they took a new a new turn in their life that was a good turn because all of a sudden there was some their eyes were opened up to, hey, I can do something or I could be good at something.
And so tremendous response that we've gotten from this Archery School program.
So really, in a lot of ways, it's also connected to ministry and missions.
To make kids believe in themselves is a wonderful opportunity.
It's typically the benchwarmers that excel the most in archery.
And what a wonderful thing to have the jocks in the background giving them high fives and clapping because these kids, all of a sudden, they step up and they're just...
They're just doing unbelievable.
Yeah, it is.
What you just said, though, is that the one who gave us the very breath in our life and existence is the one.
There's a story that I love to tell, and I preach when I teach, and it's Gideon.
And the old story, if you want to go find it, is just Gideon in the threshing floor by himself.
He's sort of hiding.
And it says the angel of the Lord, God's presence, was sitting there looking at him and saying, What are you doing?
You know, it's like, huh?
And he calls him a mighty man of valor.
Sometimes in life, you just need that speaking of, hey, try.
Be encouraged.
Do that.
That's what I think inherent spirit in us.
And I think that's what has been amazing about your companies, your careers, the things that God has interwoven into that.
I do have one question, though.
The thing that I've heard so much.
In all of archery, every year it seems like we get one little better.
How much more can you get better in these compound bows?
I mean, there's some of the best in the world right now.
I mean, you're looking at it.
Everybody sort of laughs.
Oh, here's the next best thing.
What do you think?
Right.
Well, I know that we've got at least one more in us because it's going to be coming out in November, and it's a good one again.
You know, it's funny because every year I do think to myself, oh my goodness, okay.
Lord, I'm coming to you again because we've got to do something here.
But I'm usually maybe a couple, two, three years ahead on some things and that.
But I think one of the keys for me has always been, and I learned early on in life that...
You know, you can try to go around being important or you can focus on doing what's important.
And if you work on doing what's important, you will likely become important by default.
And I realized early on in my life that God doesn't have to bless me.
And at any time that I forget where everything comes from, He'll hand it to somebody else.
And again, I don't want Him to hand my job to anybody else.
He's sort of good at reminding us of who He is and who we are.
And the great part about God is He'll remind you of that at the same time carrying you.
You know what?
I do have to say this according to that.
I remember when we got to a point, you know, one thing you'll find out in business that you've got to make millions of dollars before you realize you have any money to spend at all.
It's ridiculous because everything's being sucked up in inventory and new computers and desks and buildings and new machinery.
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
But I remember when it got to a point where I realized, you know what?
If a missionary wanted a helicopter car, I think I could buy him a helicopter, you know?
Now the problem is, but should I be buying him a helicopter, right?
And so I remember on the way to work, this went on for several days.
I just said, God, just having kind of quiet time with him on the way to work, I said, God, what do you need from me?
What do you expect of me?
I'm coming into a position where I can start making some real, really big impact here.
And I would just hear him say real softly, just be faithful.
Just be faithful.
In other words, when something comes before you, if it feels in your spirit like it should be and it lines up with my word, be faithful and do it.
And I kept on asking that day after day because I wasn't getting any particular direction.
And it was like all of a sudden I really sensed him say, hey, listen, I'm not broke.
I'm not broke.
But all I want you to do is be faithful to what I ask you to do.
And what it really did was it relieved me from the pressure of thinking that I have to try to help God.
God was going to make it clear to me if I was asking.
God was going to make it clear to me.
And He would open those doors.
And when He opens that door, you're going to know.
And when that door gets opened, make sure that you accomplish the task that's set before you.
In other words, don't try to be important.
Just focus on doing what's important.
What does the Lord expect from you?
Live humbly and walk with Him.
Do the things that He asks us to do.
And I think that last story, Matt, was perfect.
Folks, if you've been listening to this podcast today, Matt McPherson has been with us.
Matthew's Archery, McPherson Guitars, But more importantly to that, a thousand missionaries around the world who are supported by this business and an owner who says, God, use me.
Here I am.
Send me.
That's in all of our lives.
Many times we fail at that.
Many times we come short of that.
But there's always a reminder that he's willing to take us back.
He's willing to focus us again if we're willing to listen.
It's not a matter, the old saying goes, as many times as God is not mute if we're not deaf.
And I think, Matt, thank you for being one who has not been deaf to that call in your life.
This has been an amazing podcast.
For the hunters out there, they're going to love it.
For the Matthews fans out there, for non-Matthews fans, they're going to understand what drives your company, the guitars, the songwriters.
I mean, they are benefiting from the hands that have been used by God in this.
And I thank you so much for spending some time with us today on the podcast.
Thanks for what you're doing.
And I'm looking forward to getting to know you better and getting to know the company better.
And anything we can do together is going to be great.
But thanks for being a part of the podcast today.
Thanks, Doug.
God bless you.
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