Running a Business Inside a Maximum Security Prison: Pete Ochs on The Faith Driven Entrepreneur Podcast
- Apr 2
- 2 min read
Updated: Apr 3
Pete Ochs Featured on Faith Driven Entrepreneur · Episode 367
Pete Ochs didn't set out to change the prison system.
In 2005, he needed entry-level labor for his growing manufacturing company in Hutchinson, Kansas. A work release program gave him ten inmates. He wanted twenty more. Instead, he got an offer he didn't expect: move part of his business inside a maximum security prison. Thirty days later, he did.
What followed was a twenty-year journey that would reshape Pete's understanding of business, stewardship, generosity, and the gospel.
Today, Seat King—the manufacturing business Pete operates inside Hutchinson Correctional Facility—has seen men come to Christ, complete three-year seminary programs, and walk out of prison ready to lead. Two former gang leaders who once tried to kill each other now stand before sixty to eighty men every day, mentoring new inmates in the church Pete built inside the walls.
In this conversation with Justin Forman of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, Pete unpacks the triple bottom line of economic, social, and spiritual capital and why leading with a job, not a sermon, is often the most powerful thing a faith-driven entrepreneur can do. He also wrestles openly with the question that has shaped his leadership for thirty years: How much is enough?
This is one of the most remarkable stories of business as mission in the modern faith-and-work movement. Whether you lead a $5M company or a $500M one, this episode will challenge the way you think about what your business is ultimately for.
Is your business built for lasting impact?
Pete's story is an extraordinary one. But the principles underneath it are principles any business leader can build into the way they run their company:
The triple bottom line of economic, social, and spiritual capital
The discipline of stewardship over ownership
The conviction that business exists to serve people and transform communities
That is exactly what Enterprise Stewardship exists to help you do.
The High Impact Business framework gives Christian CEOs a proven operating system for building businesses that create lasting economic, social, and spiritual capital as the core of how you lead. If you're ready to explore what that could look like for your business, we'd love to have a conversation.
We'd love to have an honest conversation about where your business is today, where you want it to go, and whether the High Impact Business framework could help you get there.
