Faith, Genesis 50:20, and Why I Started RB Digital

I don't usually lead with this in a client meeting. But it's the honest answer to "why did you start this business," so it belongs here more than anywhere else.

The layoff

RB Digital exists because of a layoff I didn't see coming. There's no dressing that up — it wasn't part of a plan, it wasn't a calculated leap into entrepreneurship. One day I had a job, and the next I didn't, and I had to figure out what came next with no roadmap for it.

If you've been through something like that, you know the feeling isn't really about the paperwork or the job search. It's the ground moving under you. It's wondering whether the thing you built your identity around was ever as stable as you thought.

What I could have done with it

It could have just ended there — a hard season, a scramble to find the next thing, a story I don't tell anymore because it's not interesting once it's over. That's a completely normal way for a layoff story to go, and there's no shame in it.

Instead, it became the reason this business exists at all.

Genesis 50:20

There's a verse I kept coming back to during that stretch: Joseph, after everything his brothers did to him, telling them, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good."

I'm not comparing a layoff to what Joseph went through — it's not the same scale of betrayal or suffering. But the shape of the promise is the same one I needed to hear: what was meant to knock me down, God used for good. Not "eventually it worked out." Not "I made the best of it." Used — on purpose, for something better than what I would have built on my own timeline.

That's not a metaphor I'm applying after the fact to make a hard season sound nicer. It's the actual reason I started building software for a living instead of going back to look for the next version of the job I lost.

Romans 8:28

The second verse is the one I've built the business on since: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

That's not a promise that everything feels good. It's a promise about direction — that even the parts that hurt are being worked into something, if you're willing to let them be. I don't see the work I do now as separate from that. Building websites and software for small businesses, nonprofits, and ministries isn't just a trade I picked up because I was good at it. I see it as a way to use what I've been given — call it a kind of ministry, even when the client-facing side of it is just a normal invoice and a normal deadline.

What that means for how I work

It shows up less as sermonizing and more as a standard: honesty, doing right by people even when it costs me something, and treating every client the way I'd want to be treated if the roles were reversed. It's also why I especially love working with faith-based organizations, second-chance and reentry programs, prison reform and justice advocacy, and nonprofits — the "meant for harm, used for good" story isn't unique to me, and I'd rather spend my time helping build the digital presence for people living that story too.

If none of that matters to you and you just need a fast, honest website — that's fine. You'll still get the same standard of work. But if you're wondering why a web development company's About page talks about a layoff and two Bible verses instead of just a stack of logos, now you know.