Daniel Im

Pastor + Author

Daniel Im

The Experience Economy and the Church

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When was the last time you bought a mattress?

Did you walk around a showroom and awkwardly lie down on several of them? Did you close your eyes, try to get comfortable, and imagine what it would be like to sleep on it day after day? Did you then pay too much, and wait too long for it to be delivered to your house?

No wonder the mattress industry was ripe for disruption. In the same way that Amazon disrupted brick and mortar retail, Uber disrupted the Taxi industry, and smart phones disrupted camera, calculator, and flashlight sales, Casper has done the same for mattresses.

Casper, an online mattress retailer, has been so effective at upending a $29 Billion industry, that other companies have quickly followed suit. And just last month, they took things to the next level by building their first brick and mortar store—except, at this one, you can’t buy a mattress.

You buy a nap instead.

Instead of designing their store like other mattress retailers, such as Mattress Firm, The Brick, or Ikea, they decided to create an experience, where the mattress was secondary. It’s called the Dreamery in New York City. Here’s how they describe it on their website,

At Casper, we want everyone to sleep better and live better. So we created The Dreamery, a magical place in NYC where you can rest and recharge whenever you want. Because when you snooze, you win.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Book a nap session: Choose a 45-minute time slot whenever you could use a boost. Walk-ins are welcome, too.
  2. Get some rest: Wind down in the lounge, change into pj’s, and lie down in your own Casper Nook—a perfectly private, quiet pod with an outrageously comfortable bed.
  3. Feel recharged: Embrace your post-nap pep. Freshen up and enjoy a coffee before taking on the rest of your day (or night).[i]

Do you see how the mattress is peripheral to the whole experience? The point is the nap, not the mattress. But what’s genius about this strategy is that they’re actually creating the ideal conditions for customers to fall in love with their mattresses, without having to box it up and ship it back to them if they’re not satisfied.

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To Develop or Not To Develop?

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As the calendar year comes to an end, you’re either looking for ways to spend the rest of your development budget, or you’re planning on how to use it next year.

If you don’t have a budget set aside for development, then make sure you get one next year! If it’ll help, consider sharing this article with your boss. After all, leaders are learners, aren’t they?

But what if you’re the one approving proposals for development?

What if you’re the one who sets the budget? Have you ever considered that the types of proposals coming in, the amount given to each team member, and how your team looks at development reveals a lot about your culture?

If you’re leading a team, here’s the tension that you face as it relates to development:

On the one hand, if you develop your people, they might outgrow their job, realize the weaknesses on your team, and/or now have a new set of skills that’ll set them up for another role somewhere else.

On the other hand, if you don’t develop your people, their performance can stagnate, they might not innovate, and you’ll essentially be cultivating a culture of mediocrity, maintenance, or at best, incremental growth.

So what are you to do? To develop or not to develop?

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5 Things I’ve Learned About Writing

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As much I enjoy writing, I never thought I’d be a published author in my thirties.

So to see my name on two published books, four eBooks, and another published book on the way is humbling. This is not a humble brag—I’m just seriously floored and surprised by the way that God has led my wife and I to this point. All glory be to God!

In my twenties I had a wonderful plan for my life.

I literally wrote out a plan until my wife and I were in our eighties. Several years later, am I ever glad that this wonderful plan didn’t come to pass because God’s ways are always higher, deeper, and better than ours. We unfortunately had to learn that the hard way post-Korea, which is another story for another time. You can read more about it here.

God’s ways are always higher, deeper, and better than ours.

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So to celebrate the one year anniversary of my book, No Silver Bullets, being on the bookshelves, I wanted to share 5 things I’ve learned about writing.

If God has placed a dream on your heart to write, I hope that this will be an encouragement to you.

1. Don’t write to go viral. Just write.

There’s no formula for going viral—even the best marketers haven’t cracked the nut. Sure, your article or book needs to be timely, it needs to hit a felt need, and it needs to be written well, but there’s that intangible “share-ability” nature to everything that goes viral that’s hard to figure out. In fact, a pursuit for the next viral article can cause you to chase rabbits and trends, rather than write on topics that you’re personally passionate about and have something to say on.

A pursuit for the next viral article can cause you to chase rabbits and trends.

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So stop obsessing over SEO hacks and keywords for your title, and instead focus on honing your writing skills. I’m not telling you to ignore SEO and keywords, since they do help the “share-ability” of your content. I’m just saying that it may not be the best way to spend your time as a writer. What’s most important is practice, since the only way to get better at writing is by writing.

What’s most important is practice, since the only way to get better at writing is by writing.

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2. Knowing God was J.I. Packer’s 9th book.

We love overnight success stories. When we see people pop, or their book go on the New York Times bestseller list, we get jealous—especially if we’ve never heard of them before. But when you dig deeper, most of these overnight success stories aren’t overnight success stories. J.K. Rowling’s original Harry Potter pitch was rejected twelve times, Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit was self-published, Madeleine L’Engles’ A Wrinkle in Time was rejected 26 times, and on and on it goes.

Don’t get caught up in hacks to get famous or to make your book pop. Like Dory in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

Don’t get caught up in hacks to get famous or to make your book pop.

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The theologian and professor J.I. Packer is probably best known for his book Knowing God. It’s been a classic for over 40 years, one of the top 50 books that have shaped evangelicals, received a platinum book award from the Evangelical Christian Publishing Association, and has sold over one million copies. When Knowing God popped, I’m sure most people thought that Packer was an overnight success—unbeknownst to them, this was his ninth book!

Don’t give up. Just keep writing, just keep writing, just keep writing.

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Don’t Be Dead Weight

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Your church or organization is like a train.

There are things you’re doing that are causing the train to move (the coal).

There are things outside of your control that are either speeding up the train or slowing it down (hills and air resistance).

And there are things within your control that are slowing the train down (baggage and needless weight).

The next time you gather your team together:

Try identifying what’s core to your team and what needs to happen to keep things running, like casting vision, celebrating, or having the right metrics.

Then, identify the things outside of your control that are moving your team forward or slowing you guys down, like neighborhood growth/decline, market growth/decline, change in leisure activities, or time of year.

And then identify what’s within your control that could be slowing your team down, like toxic team members, a weak culture, or a lack of planning.

And for you personally, reflect on whether or not you want to be on the train that you’re on.

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The One Thing Husbands Need to Know About Their Wives

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The following is a guest post written by my wife, Christina Im, on the one thing that she wants every husband to know. I pray that it encourages you as much as it has encouraged me.

Marriage is hard.

Marriage takes work.

Marriage isn’t always what we thought it would be.

Marriage takes sacrifice.

Daniel and I have recently entered our 12th year of marriage. During our engagement, if someone were to have had told me any of the above statements, I would have scoffed at them. “Actually, marriage is going to be amazing because I can finally have sex,” is what I would have wanted to say. But honestly, I would have NEVER had the audacity to be that abrupt.

On a perfectly sunny August day, I married my best friend. And, we lived happily ever after, right?

Well, like you always hear from those who have gone before us, the first year of marriage was difficult—we had A LOT of “iron sharpening iron” moments. However, nothing could have prepared me for the agony and the deep soul searching that awaited me.

I can recount two times where I cried out to God, “Hey…I think you’ve forgotten me.” The first time was when Daniel felt a strong calling to leave everyone and everything behind and move to South Korea. I was just entering my second year at a job that had GREAT potential and I was toying with the idea of going back to school to get my Masters of Social Work. Moving to Korea was not on my radar, and while I begged God to change my husband’s heart…God changed mine instead.

Have you ever felt put on the sidelines…by God?

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The second time I felt that God had put me on the sidelines was the moment I saw the blue double lines appear on the pregnancy test. “Oh God, we are living in Korea with no family around. We are BOTH just about to start our second semester of school. We don’t have time to be pregnant.” In the end, Daniel and I chose to put my schooling and career on hold while I became a full-time stay-at-home mom.

I never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

I wanted to wear heels during the day and slippers at night while I rocked my precious children to sleep. However, with Daniel working full-time, writing part-time, and the cost of having three kids under five in daycare, it didn’t financially make sense for me to go back to work. So, life tumbled on.

A year ago, a theme began to appear in my life.

Whether it was the latest Bible study I was doing, or the new hit song that would play on the radio—the theme was “SEEN.” Slowly, God’s past whispers of “I have not forgotten you,” turned into billboards screaming, “THE UNSEEN IS SEEN.” Suddenly, through one event catapulting to another, my dormant dreams, passions, and aspirations emerged from their cocooned state.

What is unseen to you is SEEN by God.

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Husbands, I share my story with you because we have something in common.

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