God's 200K/Year Bet

In an effort to build brand and pursue impulse buys, I used to spend between $14k and $16k a month on billboards along interstates 15 and 84. Invariably, when people learned I spent nearly $200,000 annually on those signs they'd all ask the same question - Do they work? My answer was always the same - "Yes, I just don't know which ones."  My $200k/year bet was that some unknown fraction of drivers would see, remember, and eventually buy. I wasn't good at isolating the signal from the noise, yet I kept the campaign running because the aggregate lift was real. Likely I was wrong about which lever moved the needle, but right that some lever does.

A close friend once shared that one of the fundamental tenants governing his life is this - "I live my life like I'm wrong about most things, I just don't know how wrong." The translation of which for me and my life is - "I live my life mostly ignorant, I just don't know how ignorant."

My friends rule is the same principle at the level of personal belief. He assumes a high error rate in his worldview, not out of paralysis, but to force continuous updating. The moment you pretend to know how you are wrong, you stop looking.

In 1920, the electron and freshly named proton were regarded as the ultimate atom of matter. The neutron's discovery in the 30's shattered that certainty, revealing nuclei; quarks arrived in the 1960's, and the Higgs boson materialized in 2012. Each breakthrough came because someone refused to close the book. Today the Standard Model crowns 17 point-like particles as "fundamental." History continues to whisper in someones ear, "keep looking," not because we're sure something lurks beyond, but because stopping guarantees we'll never know. The fuel isn't certainty of success; it's the refusal to let the "known" become calcified into the "knowable."

In the book of Ether (Covenant of Christ), the Lord spoke with the brother of Jared and chastened him for three hours for not continuing to pray. Not because he did not know the Lord but because there was more. They had lived by the sea for four years. Maybe after four years he assumed he'd arrived. Maybe fatigued by the effort it had taken to get this far they'd become comfortable in their present existence, knowing "more" would once again take tremendous effort. They weren't lost. They were settled. Comfortable. Assuming the journey's hardest legs were behind them. The rebuke wasn’t for not knowing--it was for not seeking.

So now, in my personal and spiritual life I continue to run the expensive experiment that I mostly can't fully explain. Billboards, Philosophies, Business models or spiritual guess work—The cost isn't waste. It's tuition. You pay to learn which parts are signal and which are noise. You pay to shrink the ignorance you finally admit you have.

The Lord's $200k/year bet is that some unknown fraction of seekers will see, remember, and eventually buy.

Stay allergic to certainty.

It's the only way to keep the book open.

Carry On

Signed

John The-Not-So-Beloved

Henry Ford would definitely be LDS

Henry Ford and the LDS church (most churches for that matter), at first glance, seem worlds apart—one a titan of industry, the other a beacon of faith. Yet both have mastered the art of the assembly line, transforming individuals into task-doers rather than visionaries. In Ford’s factories, the moving assembly line revolutionized production, churning out Model Ts with unmatched efficiency. Each worker, stationed along the belt, focused on a single, repetitive task—tightening a bolt, attaching a wheel—blind to the car’s final form or likely, at their current wage, when automobiles were still considered a luxury, unable to posses or purchase one. The genius of Ford’s system lay in its simplicity and scale, but it reduced workers to cogs, their hands busy but their minds seldom free to imagine beyond the part before them. Churches, too, often streamline devotion into an assembly line of the soul. Adherents move through prescribed rituals—sing this hymn, recite that prayer, serve in this role—each act a brick in a spiritual structure they rarely see in its entirety. The rhythm of routine offers comfort and order, but stifles the spark of personal revelation.

This mechanization breeds efficiency but dims creativity. Ford’s workers, tethered to their stations, were not encouraged to innovate; their role was to execute, not to dream. Similarly, churchgoers, bound by tradition or expectation, may fulfill their duties—attending services, volunteering, giving alms—without wrestling with the deeper mysteries of faith. Both systems prioritize compliance over curiosity, producing reliable outputs—cars or congregants—but rarely pioneers. A factory worker might climb to foreman, mastering one task only to oversee others, still bound to the line’s logic. A devoted churchgoer might rise to bishop or stake president, yet remain anchored to a script, not a living, breathing calling. When the ability to follow the spirit—whether of innovation or divine inspiration—fades, one becomes like a bird that no longer flies. Grounded, they peck at the task at hand, unable to soar and survey the vast acres of possibility below, where new paths or truths might be found.

Consider Thomas Edison, a man who defied the assembly-line mindset. He didn’t follow a manual; he chased the unknown, tinkering through thousands of failures to invent the lightbulb, illuminating the world in ways no one could have predicted. Edison’s restless curiosity stands in stark contrast to the factory worker or churchgoer confined to their station, their potential clipped by routine. Ford’s system needed workers to keep the line moving, just as churches need faithful adherents to sustain their communities. But without space to question, to experiment, to take flight into the uncharted, neither will produce an Edison nor a soul that truly grapples with the divine. The assembly line, whether in a factory, a chapel or a temple, can ground even the most vibrant spirit, turning eagles into creatures that merely peck at the ground, never seeing the horizon where innovation or God might be found.

Good Luck Thomas

Signed

John The-Not-So-Beloved