Faith in the Workplace

NOTE: The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything—A VeggieTales Movie, written by Phil Vischer and directed by Mike Nawrocki, opened Jan. 11, 2007, in theaters nationally from Universal Pictures. For more information, go to www.veggiepirates.com.

What does it mean when God gives a dream, and the dream comes true, and then it dies? And what if the dream envelopes a whole lot of people before it dies for them too?

And why would a man who achieved early and spectacular business success stop using the word "dream"?

At age 21, Phil Vischer had created VeggieTales to make cartoons with content. To staff the work, he incorporated Big Idea. By his early 30s, he was helmsman of the biggest animation enterprise between New York and L.A. By his mid-30s, he was in bankruptcy court. In his new book, Me, Myself and Bob, the man who left his ocean-liner sized dream by life raft turns and looks back with hard-won wisdom.

Phil, you built an empire on your ability to shrink sometimes complex theology into small bites. Can you shrink the story of your career?

You want me to summarize?

I wasn't trying to start a career. I was responding to a burden I felt to try to offset the negativity coming out in media, in pop culture—the negative messages, the unbiblical values, that saturated the amazing stuff. I wanted to make amazing stuff too. But I wanted to flip the polarity on the values.

That led to entering the world of video production, then computer animation when it was beginning, and always looking to pick up more skills and access to the tools to tell the stories God put on my heart.

That led to me attempting, in 1990, to make a kid show pretty much all by myself, in my spare bedroom, with a little help from a couple of friends. I got part way into it and realized I needed staff. And that started Big Idea productions. So I didn't really want a company. It wasn't a goal. It was a goal to work, and along the way I needed a company.

Then the good work took off and started going like crazy. We just kept adding to the staff and building the company, and somewhere along the line, I started reading business books. And my focus shifted from good work to the company. I decided I was going to build the next Disney and be the next Walt, and that became my new focus. By the year 2000, we were the largest animation studio between the coasts. We were named one of the top 10 studios to watch in worldwide animation by Animation Magazine. I was one of the 10 people to watch in worldwide religion named by a PBS special. It seemed like all my dreams were coming true. Three years later I was sitting in the back row of a bankruptcy court watching the whole thing put in a box and sold to the highest bidder. That was a fun three years.

Plenty of entrepreneurs have built empires that eventually went down in flames or out the door with the highest bidder. What prompted you to write about it?

That was also not part of my plan, but people kept asking me to. I started telling my story and people came up and said, "You need to write that down." I thought, "That's not what I do. I write fiction for children, not nonfiction for grownups." Finally I said, "All right, God, I will right one chapter. If that goes well, maybe I'll keep writing." The one chapter was a lot of fun to write, and I kept going.

Did you learn anything about yourself in the writing process?

The book was a summary of what I'd gone through and what I'd learned, so there wasn't anything necessarily new in the writing of it. Initially I was asked to deliver an address at Biola University, and I had to figure out what to say. They asked me to do spring commencement during the time I was in the midst of bankruptcy. And I couldn't think of anything to say. So they asked if I could speak at the commencement at the end of the semester? So I said, "Okay, God, you've got five months to explain this to me. And in that five months, he peeled the onion, unpacked my backpack of baggage from my entire life, and showed me what I'd been dragging around.

If God helped you start Big Idea, why did he let it fly out of control? If he called you to give it life, why did he let it die?

I was trying to follow the call I felt he placed on me. Once that started working, once it became successful by the world's standards, my ambitions grew and I began grafting on personal desires, personal goals, personal dreams that weren't necessarily a part of God's call. Soon I'd confused my own dreams with God's will, muddled them horribly. I was spending most of my energy pursuing my own dreams and becoming more miserable every year.

My dream of being the next Walt Disney was not what God wired me to do. It was affecting my health, my marriage, my kids, my employees. I was increasingly miserable, run down, burned out … pushing a rock uphill. He never asked me to push. I think he took a step back and said, "I'll let you run with this and find out how it goes."

In hindsight, it was a divine mercy killing. He stood back and let my dream fall apart. I saw that it wasn't what I needed, and that my fulfillment comes not from anything I dream up or pull off with my own power.