Have you ever been witness to unwavering faith and resilience that shapes a life's story? Join in for this episode where a HOPE community member, Bob Brown, shares part of his story with us. In our conversation Bob shares how consistent pursuit of sharing his faith with others transformed not only his personal life but also his business. If you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or leader of others, this episode may be just for you! Special thanks to Bob Brown for sharing his story with us!
NOTES & RESOURCES:
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
Have you ever been witness to unwavering faith and resilience that shapes a life's story? Join in for this episode where a HOPE community member, Bob Brown, shares part of his story with us. In our conversation Bob shares how consistent pursuit of sharing his faith with others transformed not only his personal life but also his business. If you are a business owner, entrepreneur, or leader of others, this episode may be just for you! Special thanks to Bob Brown for sharing his story with us!
NOTES & RESOURCES:
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Jeff Bills:Hey, welcome everybody to the Meet Hope podcast. I'm your host, jeff Bills, and I'm here with Bob Brown, a brother in Christ and member of Hope. Bob, welcome, thank you. Thank you, glad to be here. Yeah, so for those of you who don't know Bob, we're going to start by telling us a little bit about yourself family, background and so forth.
Bob Brown:We're going to Barbara for 23 years. I have three children from my first marriage and two children from Barb, so we have a nice family and 10 grandchildren which give us a lot of joy, grew up in South Jersey and landed in Vordes. All right, we're in South Jersey, oakland, haddon, soundtrip, oh yeah Area. So not far from here. I'd been with St. Andrews for a number of years, right next to Ponzios.
Jeff Bills:Yep, nice, nice. And so, bob, I've gotten to know you over the years. You and I have been in small groups together and had some times at diners together and, having heard your story over the years, I just thought it'd be a great opportunity to have you share your story, both professional as well as spiritual components of your story. So let's start at the beginning. As a young man, you were working with your dad, right?
Bob Brown:Well, my parents were divorced when I was eight so my dad wasn't around much because we had us occasionally, but we lived with my mom and did not have much money. So my entrepreneurial spirit was stoked early on. To have money to buy the stuff I wanted drums or a car I had to go get a job shovel snow, sell snow cones, work at a gas station, you know, do whatever I could do to make money. So I guess I grew up with the spirit of work was part of life. It wasn't. I wasn't able to just coast through. I had to get up and do something if I wanted to go to a movie.
Jeff Bills:Nobody was handing you cash.
Bob Brown:Correct, correct.
Jeff Bills:Okay, so where did that?
Bob Brown:lead you as Well. I graduated high school, went one year to Rutgers at my father's behest and he was paying for that but I really did not like school at all. I was just anxious to get out and start my life. I didn't want to live home, I wanted to have an apartment. I wanted to, you know, be in a relationship and move forward. So I started working.
Bob Brown:Basically I dropped out after one year of college and my dad gave me a job and it was his business knowledge that led him after a couple of years to say you're never going to learn how to run a business watching me run the business so you can work your way through the organization, which I did, driving a truck and cleaning heaters and dispatching other truck drivers. What was this business? It was a home heating fuel business and heating air conditioning. So we put heaters in and cleaned them, maintained them and sold fuel in South Jersey. So it was a nice business.
Bob Brown:But at that age, at 19 years old, it was a lot of work, getting a chance and my dad said I'll front the money to put you in a business. What kind of business do you want to put in? I'll lend you the money, you run the business and pay me back. Okay, so I started an auto parts business and we called it Sun's auto supply. It's still in business Because I didn't want anybody to know my name. The salesman I was afraid would come in and want to ask for Bob. Where's Bob? And by calling it Sun's I could say, like he's not here and yeah yeah, but anyway, it was a great exercise.
Bob Brown:It was a low amount of dollars to get in and learn how to Build customer relationships, run, inventory, manage your money, decide the hours you're gonna operate higher and fire. It was a great capsule to learn business. So I did that for About five years and then my father had a heart attack and they called me and said basically, your dad's in the hospital, you got to come over and run this heating, air conditioning business and that was painful because I had the auto parts business was a part of me. I couldn't separate me from the business. It was intertwined. I felt like they were cutting my right arm off to leave something that I had built to go to run the bigger company. But that was the calling, that was the right thing to do. So I did that and then sold off the auto parts business.
Jeff Bills:Okay, so how long then did you run your dad's business?
Bob Brown:Well, my dad gave me a lot of rope. So my relationship with my dad you know Not being there when I was a teenager to being there as a mentor and a business coach and he had business experience Changed the dynamic that I had much more respect for him and then I had respect that he allowed, he gave me the reins and let me run the business. When he had the heart attack he didn't come back to work right away. I was doing good, I was making money in the account, said let the kid run it, you know he's doing good.
Bob Brown:Yeah, but unfortunately for him letting me run at that age. I ran too fast, I grew too fast and Expanded the company, bought four or five other companies up and folded them in to get more customers and Ultimately that was too much, too fast and the business was in trouble. So I had to sell it. Okay, in order to not go bankrupt. It was easier to sell, to get myself out of a gym, but my father I still owed him money for it. I was buying it from him over time, so that was. I fumbled the family jewel there.
Intro:That was really hard.
Bob Brown:Difficult it was. It was a hard time. A lesson in life is it doesn't matter how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back.
Jeff Bills:How will you at this point? Oh, probably late 20s, 28, 29 Wow that's a lot for a young guy like that. Yeah, I'm about that.
Bob Brown:A lot of you have a lot of people's lives at you on your shoulders. We probably had 60 or 80 employees with their families, and to not be able to make payroll is not an acceptable Option, right? Those people are dependent on you to feed their family, so it's weight Wow.
Jeff Bills:So you sell the business, and then what would you do from there? I?
Bob Brown:sold the business and I went to work for the company that bought the business Okay and quickly found out that the person we sold it to was not an honest individual and I could not Work in that environment where it wasn't an honest environment. So I left quickly and unfortunately leaving. I had less leverage and he was buying the company over time. He never made a payment. He was. We had agreed to five annual payments and he never made the first payment. So, wow, so the money that was coming for my dad and hopefully some for me, evaporated and we didn't get paid. So I was home Three kids, a mortgage, no job, no money and wondering what I'm gonna do. And at this point, you know, I went to church on Sunday but I thought it was my problem. I didn't go to God and say what should I do? I was praying to take the pressure off, help me figure it out, but it was like I wanted him to bless my plan instead of trying to ask him what's his plan.
Bob Brown:I wasn't mature enough to realize that. But he did. At the time I didn't realize that. He put something in front of me that was this little asphalt business that was for sale and I was able to go to friends and relatives 20 different friends and relatives. I asked them to lend me $10,000 each. 10 of them said yes, 10 said no. So I had $100,000. And then I went to a bank and said I have 100,000, but I need another 300,000 to put a down payment on a business. And the bank said we believe in you, we know your history, we'll give you the 300 grand. So with none of my own money, I was able to show up, put 400,000 down, buy a business, and the owner took back a note over time that I could pay him as the business earned money.
Jeff Bills:So Now, of course you had lots of knowledge and background in asphalt, right, correct?
Bob Brown:none whatsoever in asphalt, and which is foolish. I mean, if you would look at it, how did I survive Without God being in it? It should not have made it Against all odds. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know how it worked.
Jeff Bills:Now tell the story of when you first arrived. You shared that with me, so you're looking, you're meeting the staff and checking out all this the seller did not want me to meet the employees prior to buying the company.
Bob Brown:He was afraid they would quit. So I bought the company without meeting them. So I met him on the first day after I had made settlement and they scared me by saying I hope you know what you bought and I hope you have a lot of money because we need all new stuff and I'm like I don't have any money. What is gonna happen with that? And it was run into the ground to the point that there wasn't a battery in one truck or piece of equipment that would start it. So the first guy in the morning would show up with jumper cables and use his personal car to jump the first truck and that would jump the second truck and that would jump.
Bob Brown:And it was like how do you run a business like this? If it stalls out, you're stuck. Your battery won't start the thing. So it was a very challenging first few weeks that I went home and curled up in the fetal position wondering what have I done? I mortgaged everything I borrowed from everybody that trusts me. I can't fail. I just had to get up and go and fight my way through it as best.
Jeff Bills:I could. There's a life lesson right there, Just as we are getting started today talking about resilience, right? What's that mean to you, this idea of resilience?
Bob Brown:It's energy and the faith and the hope that things will work out and the trust in other people that they're gonna pay you for what you do for them, work-wise, or that the bank will trust you to lend your money or that vendors will trust you to be laid on a payment when you can't make it. So so much of it is intertwined with building relationships with people and acting in an honest, forthright fashion. People will give you a rope. People will say sure, I'll wait 90 days to get paid because you told me what's going on and you told me what's happening and why it's happening and I trust you. If you don't answer the phone and you hide from the bad news, then it just gets worse and you don't get that kind of rope. So I learned earlier on relationships or what builds the business, and trust.
Jeff Bills:Yeah, all good stuff. The word resilience Marilyn and I were talking a couple of years ago and reflecting on the experience of starting Hope Church and I said you know, I think the thing that set us apart from all of the other church startups that happened in the area at the same time Hope has started in that same few years that aren't around the thing that we had was resilience, this idea of we're going to get up every day and we're going to go to work and do the best we can. Obviously, god is involved in this. We knew that, but every once in a while I would remind God you know you're invisible and I'm not.
Bob Brown:But you're a vision caster. So I know I've heard the story where you stood in the middle of the field and you felt that, calling that I'm supposed to plant a church here. But the entrepreneurial spirit and the resilience I think is tied with being a visionary. You have to see what nobody else sees, what could be, and how do I get there and how do I get the team to do the work so we can get there, because one person can't do it. You need a team of people. So that vision casting I think is critical, that you can get people to understand your dream and what it might look like.
Jeff Bills:There you go. So that's how you get started. You've got discouraged employees and bad equipment and you've got everything riding on this and so you start just going out and building relationships with customers. I guess what?
Bob Brown:I found the asphalt industry was not a service industry. It was sort of a low bid industry. The cheapest guy would get the job and you would treat your customers very poorly. That I'll come when I feel like I'm, not when you want me to come. I'll do the job when I feel like it. That's what the competitors were telling people and my history of being in the home heating oil business. It was high service. You had the customers relied on you. They needed you to come when they needed you to come. So I turned the business sideways and said, well, let's be a customer service organization. How about we go when the customer wants us? And that opened doors for me. People wanted to do business with me because I treated them with respect. I came when they wanted. I stood behind my work. I went back and fixed up if it was wrong and built the business, trying to be unlike the competitors, not like the competitors.
Jeff Bills:Well, that's so smart, so smart, so you stand out in that way, right Correct? How long did it take before things started to turn around?
Bob Brown:The business started increasing almost immediately, just being diligent and caring and showing up every day. The first year we did more than the previous owner had done, but it was still like the Flintstones. I mean, it's almost like your feet were going through and peddling the car around the lot and you know, you see, fred Flintstone, you want a dinosaur. That's what the plant was like. I mean dust and dirt and noise and nothing worked right. So it took three or four years to be able to buy used equipment. I still couldn't afford new equipment, but at least when something wore out I could buy a five-year-old truck.
Bob Brown:Not couldn't afford a new truck, but slowly, piece by piece, and I had to discern what's the most important piece, because I could only afford maybe one piece a year. So what do I need? A paver or a roller or a truck or repairs to the plant? So it years to get it up and then, as it's like a snowball going downhill, the more business you do, the more dollars you have, the quicker you can grow. It gets easier and I wasn't worried about making payroll that first year, like every week, is do we have enough? Yeah, how to go out and collect money, knock on doors to make sure I got paid so I could pay everybody. That's rough, it was tough.
Jeff Bills:Yeah, so while the business is growing, your faith begins to grow at some point in your life. Talk about that some.
Bob Brown:So I was brought up in the Methodist Church was I don't think I was ever as bad as a Sunday Christian as we go. You know, you went back to work but I didn't have the guts to wear it on my sleeve. I didn't have the ability to force my thoughts and beliefs on other people. So it was go to church on Sunday, pray. I prayed a lot and prayers were answered, but it took more years to get to a maturity level that I realized that. You know I spend more time with people than they spend with their families. I'm with them at least 40 hours a week, sometimes 50 or 60 hours a week, and they go to church maybe an hour a week and they're with their families. But I'm in a position where I can sway their thoughts and if I demonstrate, if I can walk the walk and treat them well, which I think I always did.
Bob Brown:I was always honest, never cheated anybody tried, never to go to court and just was a Christian businessman. But then, 15 years or so later, when I joined C12, which is a Christian CEO peer group, I was given a different vision of what a business might look like if it was outwardly Christian, where you told people up front. You were Christian and you flew a Christian flag and you put Christianity or a Bible verse on your business card and stuff. That was out there and I needed a little hand holding, a little backbone from some peers to say, yes, you can do this, it's okay. And that was challenging and a little step out of faith to say, all right, I'm going to do it. I hope it doesn't negatively affect the business and it positively affected business, but that was a journey.
Jeff Bills:Yeah, so when you say positively affected the business, I know internally it's got to have an impact on the culture of your shop.
Bob Brown:Customers, even Jewish customers, commented to me as like we respect that you're outwardly. We know where you stand, we know what you're believing. We have no problem at all with that. I thought they might be alienated or not like it. I found the opposite. But what was even more beneficial and true was employees. Prospective employees came to me and said I would like to work in your company. I finally found something aligned with my values and that was like I had never thought about that.
Bob Brown:They were like looking for a place that they could work, where they could trust that they would be doing the right thing, so that was really beneficial to end up with a team of people with similar faith and hope to work with.
Jeff Bills:Interesting. So a number of years ago you hired onto your staff a chaplain, and that's again. That's unusual for a business to have a chaplain on staff. Talk a little bit about that.
Bob Brown:It is unusual and that's a sad fact that it really shouldn't be unusual because it's so simple to bring in a spiritual counselor. We have no problem bringing in a counselor for drug addiction or HR functions or to check your hearing or OSHA safety. You know all that stuff is intertwined with business and we leave out the heart, the faith portion of everybody. We want people to bring their whole self to work every day. Well, if I'm not caring for your soul and your faith and what's going on in your life, all that stuff is on your mind while you're at work. You can't really be 100% productive when you're worried about your wife and your relationship or your child or whatever's going on in your life. So it is such a natural attenuation of being a steward and being a Christian leader is, well, I'm not trained to do that. When people came in and told me, bob, my wife told me she's leaving me. What do I do? I'm like I could tell you what I think, but I'm not trained. I probably not. I shouldn't be answering that question. I feel for you and I want to help you.
Bob Brown:Yeah, it was wonderful to outsource it to a trained professional that is, you know, multi-dimensional chaplain, the whole chaplain, to any religion you are, I don't care if it's Hindu, buddhism or Christianity, whatever. We're going to care for the person, listen to the person, connect them with resources, and that was so beneficial. My employees didn't like it to start. They didn't want anything to do with them, but it quickly turned within months to hey, I want to talk to the chaplain. Send that chaplain out to my job site. I got a problem. I want to talk to him.
Jeff Bills:How about that and how long goes that?
Bob Brown:That's probably 12 or 15 years ago. We started with a chaplain, so now he's intertwined with the company. They all know his name and phone number. He's available 24-7. If they're in the hospital at night with a child, they're calling the chaplain and he's dropping what he's doing. He's going to the hospital. He's doing funerals, he's doing weddings, he's the preacher that most of my staff. They don't have a formal relationship with the church so they don't know what to do when they're in trouble. He's it and thank goodness that he's willing to step, step forward and be that person.
Jeff Bills:That's great. I'm gonna give you some cards to give you Welcome, to hope. That's great. Hey, just to pivot a little bit in a time we have remaining. You shared with me a couple years ago about a Retreat that you and and your wife Barb went on. It was focused on my language, generosity. I don't. I don't know what it was called. Tell us about that.
Bob Brown:It's called a journey of generosity J-o-g jog, so they called a jog, but a journey of generosity, and it's a small group of people that I hadn't met before, other than the, the person that invited me. Okay, to go and sit together and Dream a little bit about what it looks like to be a generous giver and you can't out give God and there's so much joy in giving but we're all Reluctant. We have a budget and we set aside a certain amount and it's sort of fixed and we don't realize the effect of Changing somebody's lives. So this journey of generosity shows you some videos of what it was like for a couple to show up on a doorstep of a neighbor who adopted children and didn't have enough money and hand them a check for 10 grand and to see the tears.
Bob Brown:It gets me emotional thinking about but, that that exposed my heart and my wife's heart to what it would look like. We're in a position where we can give money away. How could we do that better than we were doing?
Intro:it.
Bob Brown:It's easy to tithe and give it to the church and let the church worry about it, but when you actually get involved in it and what's true to your heart or what you believe in and you can change lives, it's a joy to be a generous giver.
Intro:Mmm.
Jeff Bills:What a great message. Well, there's so much that you and I could talk about. I'm so attracted to entrepreneurs and the things that you Learn and and experience the the highs and the lows of that. Anything that you would share with a Somebody who is either at the front end they're they're just starting a business, or they're thinking about starting a business, or, you know, they're in the thick of it. I know there's there's a thousand things you could say, but what comes to mind?
Bob Brown:I'll go to the Bible where iron sharpens iron, that's one man sharpens another. I would say, get some advice. You don't know what you don't know.
Intro:You think?
Bob Brown:you know everything, you think you have a plan and you think everybody's gonna stop and buy from you. That's not true. I don't care what you're gonna do, yeah, but talking to people that are in the business, talking to people that might be Customers or might be suppliers or friends, that are business people or accountants or lawyers, or there's a lot of sources, but I would do the tour and ask as many questions as you can so you open up your blinders to what's what's the negative. You're only looking at the positive. You got to look at the risk and the negativity. Make sure you have enough money Under capitalization is the number one failure, I believe, for businesses takes a lot of money. You got to weather the storm and are you prepared for that? Do you have the resources or the access to capital? So, talking to people, relationships, getting advice it would be where the first thing place, I'd start great well, bob.
Jeff Bills:Thank you and, and just to follow up on that, I would say, if, if that speaks to you, reach out. You can reach out to me, jeff, at meet hope org and I'd be happy to talk with you. Put you in touch with with Bob. We have other folks who started businesses here at Hope and Love talking about it and supporting people who are in that process and this idea of integrating our faith into our work life because, to your point, bob, we spend so much of the hours of our week in that place and to be able to bring our faith there is so important.
Bob Brown:Glorifying God by helping others is my, my tagline. That's what's on my new business cards. Nice, since I sold my business, so I'm. I'm joyful when I can talk to somebody over breakfast or a lunch or a phone call and try to give somebody some help. So I'd be open to that glorifying God by helping others.
Jeff Bills:Helping others well, that's a great way to close out, bob. Thanks so much for taking the time to share with us and Thank you all for tuning in to this episode of the meet hope podcast. Have a great day.
Intro:Thanks for being a part of the Hope community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meet hope org or find us on socials at meet hope church.