Interviewer: Welcome to a very special episode of Your Money, Your Life. I have here today a man who needs no introduction: a titan of industry, a respected author of over 38 bestselling books, and with the last of his payments confirmed, the newest Chief Executive Priest of the Golden Church of Arjax. It is my great pleasure to introduce to you Robert Sandré.

Sandré: Thank you, James.

Interviewer: No, thank you. It’s an honor to get a piece of your valuable time. And the first question I want to ask is: do you think you’ll be facing any animosity from your rivals given how close the bidding to become chief executive priest was this time?

Sandré: Of course not. These are all great people, any one of them would have made a fantastic spiritual leader. We’re all competitors, not because we hate each other, but because we know that competition inspires us to reach our fullest potential. Sins like jealousy, resentment, and envy aren’t profitable. It’s like the saying goes, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”

Interviewer: Well said. Now, you grew up in a poor family. How did you escape from that to become one of the richest men in the world?

Sandré: You’re probably expecting some big theological treatise, but the answer goes back to the fundamentals of our faith: dedication, hard work, sacrifice, trustworthiness, and austerity. Arjax teaches us to become the best versions of ourselves so we can do the most good for the most people, and in return they’ll express their gratitude in the form of payment. Success in business or in anything else in life isn’t a matter of complicated theology and convoluted plans; it’s living out the basics every day without compromise. That’s what got me where I am today.

Interviewer: You’ve come such a long way in your spiritual journey. But where did it all start?

Sandré: My parents raised me in the ways of Arjax, but they weren’t the most spiritual, and I have to confess I was not a particularly good child growing up. But something in my heart told me I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to live and this thought wouldn’t go away. So I saved up my allowance for weeks, made an appointment with my local priest, paid my consulting fee, and asked my question. I remember the conversation word for word. I said, “I feel guilty all the time, like I’m not doing something I’m supposed to. What am I missing?”

Interviewer: How did he respond?

Sandré: He said, “Get a job.” And then he moved on to his next appointment.

Interviewer: And how did that impact you?

Sandré: Well, at first it just made me angry. I might have dropped out of the Church of Arjax entirely that day, except for one thing. When I got home, my copy of Mannat Saint Steven’s Business Principles for Kids was open, and there in big, bold letters was his Rule #1 “You get what you pay for.” And instead of reacting out of emotion, I reacted out of contemplation. I started thinking. This was a priest of Arjax; he knew that one of the keys to running a successful business was to always give the customer a good value for their money. And so even as I thought about all the toys and treats I could have bought with that consulting fee, I realized that the advice had to be worth more than all of that.

Interviewer: So what did you do?

Sandré: I went out and got a job. I found a landscaping company that was hiring and I went in and told them I wanted to work there. They asked how old I was. I said “twelve”. They said that was too young and told me to go home. But I didn’t; I just stood there and any time they acknowledged my existence I told them I wanted a job. This went on I don’t know how many hours went by but eventually they gave in and told me to come in at six in the morning the next day for work. I don’t think they expected me to actually show up, but I did. I worked hard, I came home aching and sore every day. I think I passed out once. But you know what, in spite of all the pain and exhaustion, I felt good. I knew I was making a difference.

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When I went back to school (this was a school of Adara) my teacher had us all get up in front of class and talk about one good deed we did over the summer. One kid told a story of how he’d saved a turtle. Another said how she’d made a snack for her brother. I talked about my job and all the money I’d made and I looked over to my teacher, expecting to see how proud she was of me. But her face was filled with disgust. She quickly had me sit down and talked to the kids about how there’s more to life than money. And while I don’t know for certain, I’m pretty sure that she called the police after class because when I went back to work the next weekend, the place had been shut down.

Interviewer: You must have been mad at her.

Sandré: No, I felt pity for her. She didn’t know right from wrong. The other students had done good things here and there, when the opportunity arose. But I was dedicating 50 hours a week to helping people and making the world a more beautiful place through my work, and the only thing she can see there is greed. I realized right then and there that my priest knew more about morality than my teacher could ever understand, and that the landscaping job had taught me more than I would ever learn in school.

Interviewer: Inspiring! Now, we’ve all heard of your achievements in the business and philanthropic world, but do you have any regrets?

Sandré: Oh, I’ve got a lot. Opportunities I passed up. Investments that didn’t pan out. Partnerships that ended with me getting stabbed in the back. But the mistake that haunts me more than anything else was when I relocated my printing shops.

You see, I was still a young entrepreneur and I’d started up a profitable printing business in East Malana. One day the press did an exposé on that, calling them sweatshops, and people got upset. Bleeding hearts complained about the harsh working conditions and the child labor. Others said I was funneling money to the trow when I could be pumping it into the local economy. And so I closed the factories down and moved the printing to New Babylon, all the while justifying it as a good business decision. After all, didn’t Mannat Saint Steven say, “A good reputation is a monetizable asset”? But deep down, I knew it was the wrong thing to do.

That decision haunted me year after year, even after my relocated factories went out of business. And eventually I decided to find out what had happened to all my workers after I laid them off. I couldn’t find any data, so I commissioned my own study, and what I found made me sick. Almost all of the children who had been working at my factory were out on the street. Over a third of them had died or disappeared, and most of the rest had been trapped in prostitution. There were no protests over this, none of the people who were calling for my resignation before lifted a finger now to make these people’s lives better, because it was never about helping the poor in the first place. But I shouldn’t have needed to commission a study; I already knew the truth deep down. These parents wouldn’t have sent their kids to work for me unless it was the best option they had available for them. And I failed them. I took away those children’s chance at a better life the same way my teacher had once taken away the vocation that had brought me purpose. As a result of my sin and my greed I hurt my employees, my investors, my partners, my customers, and the world as a whole. And so I vowed that I’d never again cave to the mob rather than follow my conscience.

Interviewer: Now, some of our viewers aren’t familiar with the teachings of Arjax, and they’re going to wonder why you didn’t just set up a charity to provide for those children. I hope you don’t mind my asking, how would you respond to their criticism?

Sandré: Well, I wouldn’t have spent almost a hundred billion lucre to become the chief executive priest if I was afraid of tough theological questions. Let me use an illustration: my wife has a cat she keeps as a pet. She had its claws removed as well as its testicles, and she pampers it so much it’s grown fat and lazy. She’s terrified at the thought of it running away, because she knows if it spends so much as an hour in the wild it’ll be killed by a predator. In short, she’s kept it weak and utterly dependent on her.

There are some out there who want to keep other people as pets in that same way. They find someone weaker than them and pamper their victims, keep them fed, warm, and comfortable, but also utterly dependent on their “savior”. All the while, they sabotage every opportunity for their victims to grow or develop. And others look at this behavior and say “Wow, what a good person!” I call it evil. I call it despicable.

No one can ever be free when their existence is wholly dependent on someone else’s whims. Do I want those children to be healthy, fed, educated? Of course. But more than that, I want them to be free. I want them to grow up with the same discipline, confidence, dedication, and work ethic that I was able to learn. And if I handed them everything, it would have taught them that the path to success is to sit and wait for someone else to live your life for you. That’s not good. There’s dignity in work. There’s dignity in strength. There’s dignity in earning. There’s no dignity in being someone else’s pet.

Interviewer: That’s certainly food for thought. Well, I have a lot more I want to ask you, but first a word from our sponsors…