David:

[0:00] Today, I'm super excited to have with me Rick Johnson from RC Fasteners and Components. Although Rick has a great business supplying fasteners and companies around the country, that is not why I brought him on the show. I brought Rick on the show because he has a story, a story that will inspire and motivate you to go all in following God in your business. So Rick, welcome to the Redeeming Business Today podcast. I'm so glad you're here.

Rick:

[0:25] Thank you, David. Great to be here.

David:

[0:28] Yeah. Like I said, I brought Rick on the show because of his story of transformation. Talking to him is so interesting. He says he's been in business for 22 years. 11 years he ran the business; 11 years God ran the business. And so, Rick, just give us a 7-10 minute condensed version of what was life like before, and kind of what you did, what this transition was like and how life is like right now. Could you do that for us?

Rick:

[0:57] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, appreciate it, David. Yeah, so we got the idea in 2002 to start RC Fasteners. And I just felt it in my heart. You know, God said, I won't let you fail. And I just felt it in my heart. And we, so we proceeded. It was right after 9-11. And it was a terrible time to start. And we sell aerospace products, but planes aren't flying. So, pretty terrible time to start, but we did, we felt if God could get us through that, he'd get us through anything. And so, we went for it and our motto was make it happen, you know? And so that first year we failed. We failed daily. And as I look back on that, God wasn't saying, I won't ever let you fail. But rather I won't ultimately let you fail.

Rick:

[1:56] And he is faithful, and he is good, and he has not let me down. So, but that first year we failed miserably, and my wife got really sick, and we didn't know if we were going to be able to keep it going. And I learned to, you know, get on my knees, get in the bathroom, cry out to God. And I saw a miracle in my wife and her health. And I saw miracles as business started to pick up gradually. And then kind of just, you know, God got us through those hard times, and I had kind of put him back on the shelf and not really even realizing it. And just went forward with the make it happen attitude, you know, seven days a week, 12-14 hour days. Striving to make it happen. And it was really, really challenging.

Rick:

[2:51] Ran into a massive storm in 08 that where I lost my mom, my dad, my sister. And it really brought me to my knees.

Rick:

[3:04] And I went through I started battling mental health problems. And I battled that for three and a half years. But in that time, God taught me, he kind of let me go all the way down and he started to build me back up. And my sister had told me, you got to go after God with all your heart. You can't be messing around and listening to the wrong kind of music, and you need to go after God with your whole heart. And I didn't know what that looked like, but because I was so broken, I said, God help me. And I reached out to him. And so, this went on. This went on for several years. And God just started to rebuild me. And I said, Lord, what do you want to do in this business? He goes, I want to use it for my glory. That's what I felt in my spirit. And I said, well, I have no idea how you want me to do that. And he goes, just hang tight, just hang tight. And truly it started with a Monday prayer.

Rick:

[4:21] And I remember being scared. And what I did was I just really started going all in for the Lord. I started seeking him in his word and really, really going after him. I was battling such severe anxiety and depression. But he's faithful, and he was bringing me through it. Little by little, I'd start to see glimpses of things. And my joy started to really, really spark. He took a little shy kid, and he turned it totally around now. I'm a voice for him and I want to glorify him. And so, he started building me back up during that time. And we have seen these last 11 years, we have seen just miracle after miracle. And we do Bible studies at work. We do fellowship accompanies for Christ at work. We do Thankful Thursdays, Triumphant Tuesdays, where somebody's sharing a message. And what we're seeing is people come in here, they come in broken. They come in hurt. And a lot of them don't believe or they're mad at God for some kind of reason.

Rick:

[5:46] And they start seeing how the spirit of the Lord is moving here and how people are treated.

Rick:

[5:56] We don’t bring gasoline to fires, when fires break out, we step back we talk to the Lord. Lord you know show us how you want to handle this we come back with living water to the fire and so on and on and on and we see people change and they the Lord changes people and he does it pretty rapidly we're seeing lately, lives are being changed quickly and it's really just based on being intentional at work and using your business to glorify God and say, God, this is yours. You know, and that's what it took in my surrender.

Rick:

[6:34] It truly took giving everything to God, giving the business to God, giving our lives to God, giving bank accounts, everything to him and, um, just trusting him through it and watching what he does, and you know, God qualifies the willing, you know, those that are willing to go forward. And so, it's been just an awesome ride. And we truly, we like to say we're a ministry created for God's glory working undercover as a fastener company. And our mission is to plant a seed every day because we're farmers and we're to plant the seed. We're not the harvesters, and he harvests. So, it gives us great joy to see how God changes people's lives when they come here because we're being intentional.

Rick:

[7:34] But at the same time, so just to break it down real quick, David, the first 11 years, nothing to show for. Kind of doing it, you know, God's in the backseat or he's on the shelf, not really realizing it, but when you give your company, you give everything to the Lord and he's driving, right?

Rick:

[7:56] Then he gives he's the redeemer of time and he gives you time to do ministry and time to pour into people. And I just felt like he was telling me, Rick, you got it all wrong. You've been chasing the fruit. For these last 11 years, I'm going to show you to chase the root, and the root is people and the root is God. And if we seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and his righteousness, these things will be added. And these last 11 years, not only have we seen lives changed, but we've been able to be debt free. We've been able to have, we're having a record year this year. And we still get time to do ministry every day.

Rick:

[8:43] And it's just, to the secular world, it makes no sense at all. But when you trust God, when it's his and he tells us to go love him and love our neighbor, love our employees. He does amazing things and he really, really does. And there's so much joy in that. And the joy is contagious, and it spreads to, you know, it goes from the leader, and it spreads out through the employees. And we have Christian music going in the warehouse going in the office and people are singing and dancing and work hard and have fun that's kind of our motto and when the joy of the lord you know is our strength and we're moving forward in the joy of the lord and you know what he's doing you can't help but be excited and when you see him changing people's lives.

Rick:

[9:40] It's way better than going after chasing after success. I think God, you know, as God, he takes care of the fruit as we are obedient by following him in his word and putting him first and others as ourselves. He does amazing things, and I could go on and on, but he is amazing. It's wonderful. It's the best life ever. If you're a business owner, it's the best life ever. And I kind of wish I knew this years ago, but God's timing is perfect.

David:

[10:19] I've been there where it's like, I wish I would have known this like 10, 20 years ago. Would I have understood it then? Probably not. So, God teaches us as we go. It's really cool.

Rick:

[10:30] Right.

David:

[10:31] That's neat. You talked about chasing the root and not the fruit. That's trying to help people more. And is that, is that kind of the idea there?

Rick:

[10:41] Yeah, it's really Matthew 6:33 right there to seek him first, seek him regularly in the morning, going after him, convening with him throughout the day. It's issues that arise and then go after and loving others and loving our employees, loving the difficult ones. There's some that are really, really challenging that really put me to the test. And I have to say, Lord, don't let me blow this. You know, I don't want to blow this. You brought this person in.

Rick:

[11:17] May they see Christ in us. And so, I have to pray pretty regularly with the challenging ones. But I'll tell you, we've seen atheists converted. We've seen people come in that never smiled, never... You know, never really said good morning. And now they're smiling. They're saying good morning. There's joy and it's, it's all God. And it's really just using what God has given us to glorify him and use it because when we're so focused on the day to day and the numbers and the goals. And we miss out on what God is really, truly wanting to do in our business. And I'm not saying those things aren't important, but I am saying that.

Rick:

[12:12] We need to take things at a sacred pace and that's, that's a great book by the way. And we need to take that at things at a sacred pace and let him lead us and quit jumping ahead of him. It's wonderful and loving him and loving others changes everything. And he, and this is what we teach ourselves people too. I just hired a new guy today telling him to go after the people are more important than the orders. I mean, who says that? I mean, who says that? But really, I think that's what God would want us to do. I really do. And we see the benefits in that. We truly care about others. We want to bring joy when we go into companies, and we want to lift people up. If that little seed is just about encouraging someone at that time, then we've planted it. And if we can get our salespeople or people on the phones to do that, it's kind of like Chick-fil-A in a way where we're encouraging people. We're lifting them up. And then they come every once in a while, we'll go, hey, why do you do these? And they might look at our website or it gives us an opportunity. And whenever there's somebody that has a need, we can pray for them.

Rick:

[13:38] Prayer is hardly ever turned down. So that's another beautiful thing.

David:

[13:45] Yeah, for all of us analytical thinkers out here who say, that's really good. How did you get there? Like, what was the first step? It's easy to say, I'm going to give my business to God. But practically speaking, what was the first change you made?

Rick:

[14:01] Yeah.

David:

[14:01] Because you said you put God on a shelf before and now, you're going to go all in.

Rick:

[14:05] Yeah. So, as he was building me back up, I just, it started with, you know, he said, you're going to use RC for my glory. Well, okay Lord, I don't know how to do that. And, you know, I asked you to show me. So, it started with a Monday prayer. And that Monday prayer led to the idea of doing a bible study at work where you could kind of you know just asked the guys hey if we what would you guys think if we did a bible study at work, and I’m like well how about if you came in an hour early on Friday and then you left an hour early so you're kind of getting paid, or you could just go work. And they're like, okay. Well, yeah, I think we could probably do that. So fast forward now, you know, over 11 years later, we see that's been the key to God transforming lives has been his work. But we’ve seen that when we started the bible studies how people's attitudes started to change. They said they're just their facial expressions and one might say well why would an owner do that why would an owner spend that kind of money to do that. Because that costs money, well the benefits of it are we don't have all the all the grudges, the games, the arguing, we don't have that. I mean, we have disagreements, sure. But it's almost like, because the word's doing the work.

Rick:

[16:02] We don't have to spend all that extra time, you know, breaking people up and, hey, you two got to get along and we, you know, you guys got to respect each other. And we don't have that. The Lord's doing that for us in all of our hearts. And so that's a beautiful thing. So not only is it a benefit there, but you just see that not only is it a benefit that people's lives are being changed, but that God's doing the work. He's doing the work, and we don't have to spend that extra time disciplining and writing up problem reports or those kind of things. So yeah, it's a beautiful thing. There's a lot of benefits.

David:

[16:43] Yeah, that reminds me of an engineer who basically said, you either put the work up front or you're going to put the work up in the backside, cleaning up after yourself. He goes, I'd rather put it up front where I can control it. That's essentially what you're doing. You're creating a culture centered around God, paying these people to learn about God. And they're like, wow. And it's transforming their lives. That's really cool.

Rick:

[17:06] Absolutely.

David:

[17:07] So question for all these business owners out here who are listening, if they wanted to start something like this, if they wanted to say, hey, I like what Rick has, I want what Rick has, what would be one or two things that you could encourage them to start doing today? day?

Rick:

[17:24] Well, number one is, go to the Lord. Go to the Lord, surrender all to him and say, Lord help me, help me. I want to be your business. I want my life to be yours. I surrender to you. I take the wheel of this business. I don't want to crash it anymore. I'm tired of striving and I want to have peace by you being the owner, by you leading me and guiding me. So that's the first one is, is seek him first and surrender it to the Lord. Surrender your bank account to him. You know, last year we had a massive tax bill that came out of nowhere or it was massive. And we just said, Lord, we got a massive tax bill here. How do you want to handle this? And by his grace, he did. He handled it. And we made it through that. And here we are this year having a record year. And so, he's faithful. So, number one, surrender. Surrender to him. Number two, seek his face. Seek to know him and know his character. And let his word do the work in you first. because it starts with the leader. And once it starts with the leader and the joy of the Lord filters in.

Rick:

[18:49] Then it starts to roll down onto the employees and you start to see the atmosphere and the culture change. And that is what it's all about. When your culture changes and there's joy and people feel valued, they're going to work harder. They're going to work better. they're going to be excited to come to work because one of the worst things is if somebody just can't stand coming to work oh man I got to go to work on Monday and man you can't you just can't get good production like that so your people have to be valued and they need to be and they need to be loved and you know there's a little emotional intelligence in that and so yeah I would say those two things definitely.

David:

[19:34] Very good that's excellent well I’d love to spend a whole hour with you talking about this but our time is pretty much running out but just in in closing is anybody any way if people want to get a hold of you and talk more about this or more about RC fasteners what would be a good way to connect with you guys

Rick:

[19:55] Yeah, you can contact us directly. We're on the website, www.rcfastener.com and reach out to me. Rick J at rcfastener.com and to say, hey, you heard us, on the Redeeming Business Today podcast with David Schmidt and I'd love to talk to anybody. People are hungry and they're hungry now. And if there's no secret formula, but it's truly, it's truly just God running the ship. And when he's running it, it's, there's so much peace and you see what God does every day. And it's actually very exciting. It's exciting to come to work because we sell fasteners. And I mean, how exciting is that? Now we're able to help fasten people to Christ. And that is where it's at. That is where it's at. That's where our passion comes from.

David:

[20:56] Very good. Fastening people to Christ. That's a great motto. Thank you very much for coming on board today, Rick. I really appreciate your story. And I'm sure people are encouraged by it as well. Thank you very much.

Rick:

[21:10] Thank you for having me, David. God bless.

David:

[21:12] Well, there you have it, my friends, our conversation with Rick Johnson from RC Fasteners and Components. What I liked about Rick's story is how that going all in with God started with just a simple, humble statement. It's yours, Lord. Show me how. That one small step started him down the path to where he is today. day. From the perspective of a business coach, what I observe is that Rick has followed God down the path of creating a work culture that both honors God and builds up people. This positive God-centered culture has made a tremendous change in what continues to transform the lives of not just employees, but of everyone R.C. Fasteners works with. In seeking God first rather than and money first, Rick has been given both. What an inspiring example of God's goodness unto us. I encourage you today to go all in with Jesus. Give your business to God and ask him what is one thing he would like you to do in your business to glorify him. Today, if you desire to seek God's kingdom in your business, I exhort you to follow Rick's example and respond by saying as he did, Lord, it's yours. I don't know the way. Show me and I'll follow. Take action today. God will not disappoint. And remember, time has limits. You can't do everything. Choose wisely.