David:

[0:00] 2 Corinthians 6, 14, 17, and 18 said, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness? Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and tench not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and you should be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord. When you operate a business for the glory of God, it's not just what you do, It's how you do it, and it's who you do it with as well. And while you don't have to limit yourself to only hiring Christians, those in leadership positions should be in alignment with God's Word. And so today I brought back Rick Johnson, who's a CEO and founder of RC Fasteners,

David:

[0:42] to talk about compromising the workplace and the havoc you can wreak in your business. I recommend don't go there. In episode six, we had Rick on, who had talked about giving his business to God years ago and the change in his business and how that happened. And that'd be a great episode to refresh and be encouraged on. But today we're going to talk about, yeah, about compromise. And you don't have to have, glorifying God is not about having things right all the time. But it's when we realize we're not going God's way, we need to make adjustments and how to get going where God wants us. So Rick, wonderful to have you back on the show.

Rick:

[1:21] David, great to be here again. I always enjoy it.

David:

[1:25] Thank you. And so, like I ask all my guests, what is one way that you have found to honor God in your business?

Rick:

[1:35] We gave him the business. So it's all his and we we follow his lead. We follow the lead of the Holy Spirit. And every day we're doing something. Prayer. Thankful Thursday was today. God brought the message today. So we just follow him. I mean, to honor him is I believe is to follow him, follow his lead. Spend time with him in the morning and then bring that into work and encourage others, lift up others, be intentional in your walk with the Lord and use your business for God's glory. Yeah, it's awesome. It's awesome.

David:

[2:11] Very good. And I think that giving God the business and what you do may look a little bit different for everybody. Just like personality was different, businesses are different, And it shouldn't be a comparison like I'm doing this and you're doing that. It's just between you and the

David:

[2:26] Lord, what does God want you to do and how does God want you to use it?

Rick:

[2:30] Yeah.

David:

[2:31] Very good. Well, go ahead and start us off with the story about a year or so ago. You had merged with another company and thought it was going to be a good idea. It ended up being a vast learning experience. Go back to that time where you were starting out and just give us a little brief history of what led up to the merger.

Rick:

[2:51] Yeah, we had a, we had a guy we'd been praying for, for years. He was, uh, from our old company, uh, that our, our, our boss, he was our boss's son. And, and he had a, he had a company that he, he was, uh, you know, he was, it was starting to lose business and, and, uh, he, he wanted to kind of wrap it up and, and, uh, he came to us, he had, he approached us and said, Hey, uh, You know, I want to shut down our business, but I have a following of customers that I want to bring on board to where I go next. And he goes, man, I've just really loved what what's happening in your business over the years. And I'd love to come to work for you. And what do you think about that? So we so at first we were like, wow, this is an answer to prayer because this is this guy I'd been praying for for years. I'd been praying for him for years that he would come to know the Lord. So I thought, wow, God, you know, so super excited. And I said, I told him, you know, the usual, well, you know what, this is, this is great, you know, but, uh, we're going to pray about it. So, so we did, we did, we started to pray about it and he was kind of checking in and we, we kind of hadn't totally had, you know, an answer yet. And, and, um, um, this was like November of 23. And, uh, so I was kind of praying and I didn't pray right. You know, David, I didn't pray right. I was saying, Lord, if this is from you.

Rick:

[4:19] Um, Lord, just, just make it, make it fall into place. Um, if it's not, would you take it away? Take it away because I want to honor you in every way. Uh, but Lord, if you could do it by the first of January, then that would be, that would be awesome. And Lord, if you don't take it away by the first January, Lord, I just, I think that's the green light. That's the green light to go. And, and you know what I, I did, there wasn't the right way to pray. And, um, you never put God on a, on a time, you know, time, time, uh, time span. And, uh, anyway, so I definitely, that was lesson number one. And, um, so we ended up doing the, doing the merger. We brought him on board and, and, um, uh, there were, you know, even prior to that, we, we couldn't agree on salary. So I was just saying, okay, Lord, just take it away and then take it away. So we stood firm in our salary and we thought for sure he wasn't going to take it but he did and then so we began and the one thing we began was we started noticing that his, his customers were kind of like him they were very um they didn't do things, the way we're ISO certified so they didn't do things kind of by the book they did kind of slide things under the rug and we're like hey wait a minute you know we can't do that um because.

Rick:

[5:42] Because we're, you know, we're a company that follows the Lord. And honesty, integrity, and our word is everything to us. And we just can't do that. So there was a lot of, you know, and then he would try and do it with the employees. So he would do the same thing with them. Well, I can't get there with Rick, so I'm going to do it with these guys. And they were the same thing. They're like, hey, we can't do this. So this kind of kept going and going. And anyway, David, it kind of turned into...

Rick:

[6:10] Everybody's starting to get stressed out. We have a really great culture, really blessed by the Lord. We've got Christian music in the warehouse, Christian music in the office. And there's a lot of joy. And we just started to lose that. And it happened fast. It happened almost overnight. And it was like just our culture shifted to nobody's smiling anymore.

David:

[6:39] Yeah. When you said it happened really fast, was that like weeks fast or months?

Rick:

[6:45] Yeah, kind of weeks. It just turned into major stress. It's turned into long hours. We had our great warehouse quality guy that he just walked out. Yeah. I mean, he told us, he said, man, I just can't do it anymore. And we're like, wow. It's like, wow. So we started to, we started to things gradually started to get better but man we're working six days sometimes seven days and i always said i wouldn't do that but we didn't have a choice and at the time we had some new employees come in and anyway um to kind of get straight to it um we um we i brought my wife and our son and i said hey on a scale of one to ten um what what do you think about this merger. I mean, would you, would you, would you, if you wanted it, if we could get out of it, what would you, what would you give it?

Rick:

[7:40] And my wife said, 10, I want out, I want out of it. And our son said, 11, I want out, we need to get, so yeah. So we were thinking, okay, you know, so, cause you know, and I, and without getting into total details, um, his customers were a lot like him. They just weren't, um, they were always trying to do things, um, that weren't, that weren't, um, they weren't integral. And it, it wasn't, we know the value of integrity by, you know, as we read Proverbs and we, we know the value of honest scales and just scales and we're weighing a lot of parts and there's a lot of stuff going on. And it just, we kept telling him. So, But it just didn't change overnight. But one thing that did happen is I got to minister to him a lot. So a lot of nights after work, I got to minister to him and pour into him and let him know what God's doing and how great it is to have a relationship with

Rick:

[8:43] the Lord through Jesus Christ. So, yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell and kind of how the culture shifted extremely fast. like compromise, just, you know, there was that compromise and it, and it just shifted really fast.

David:

[9:00] Yeah. So you said something about integrity here. The customer's wanting you to, I'm not sure what you're talking about as far as not doing things by the book or whatever, but I know with ISO, you say what you do and do what you say. And so that's, that's what you need to do and follow that or be nonconforming. So if they got a bad example or bad customers and bad employees, that's seems like it's spreading just like 11 spreads throughout the whole, whole lump. It seems like it's spread in your company. So what were early warning signings? What were early warnings that this was happening for you? When did it first become apparent that there's a shift taking place?

Rick:

[9:44] Well, the culture, number one, the culture went from joyful culture to, you know, guys having, you know, our motto has always been work hard, have fun. We, we do, we, you know, the joy of the Lord's in here. we seek the Lord every day through prayer, our Bible studies on Friday, all kinds of things. And so we've always had this amazing culture. People that come in and go, wow, I feel like I'm in a church. I'm like, wow, that's awesome. Yeah, that's great. But so the culture was the first thing. The stress and the workload was the second thing. So those two hand in hand, and it just suck the joy out of you. It totally would just suck the joy out of you. And I come in upbeat in the morning because I spend time with the Lord and in his word and worship. And so I come in pretty on fire. I don't drink coffee or anything. I, all this is natural and it's all from the Lord. And so I come in and immediately, yeah, I come in and there's problem after problem after problem. And they're all little.

Rick:

[10:49] Teeny problems little teeny orders that are this person's orders that there's just amazing problems on it and we lose we're losing all this time and money and people are just stressed and they just can't stand it it could and it happened so quick it happened so quick it was it was it's amazing how a little compromise and it can, can just change your culture so fast. And David, I mentioned this to you is our, I thought our heart was right.

Rick:

[11:24] Um, I believe it is, I believe it was. And we wanted to see this man come on board and come to know the Lord. Well, where we, where we failed number two failure on my end was, uh, was, you know, bringing, um, we hire employees all the time that don't know the Lord. Um, and we see great things, great things. And this guy, we kind of looked at him as, as another employee, um, cause he was. And, um, but with the customers coming on board, it was really more of a partnership, you know? And, um, so when you have that partnership, um, you know, it, it, that's where, that's where God says, don't have unequally yoked, you know, partnerships, whether it be business or whatever it be. So I hadn't really looked at it like that because we do hire, hire employees that don't know the Lord all the time. And so, um, when we were going through this and God led me to that verse, um, I knew he was speaking to me that this was, uh, an unequally, this was a partnership and it was unequally yoked, even though we hadn't signed any contracts or anything.

Rick:

[12:30] Um, uh, so, um, yeah. So that's where the compromise began. And I praise the Lord that I have friends in my life that also recognized it because we were going to try and push through it. And even though we lost our, one of our best guys, we thought, you know what, it's starting to get a little bit better. I think we can do this. And then I had a friend step in and said, are you serious? Are you really gonna? And I go, well, I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not a guy that's going to give up. And then they, they kind of reminded me, well, yeah, but look what's happening to your culture. Look what's happening to your people. And I'm like, yeah. So I really had to really seek the Lord on that. And I knew it after that was brought up. I knew and I said, Lord, I want to try and do this. I feel like this was from you. But Lord, I also feel like this could take down this company. And Lord, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. It's not worth it. So after I got the vote from my wife and son, as I sought the Lord after that, I immediately knew, no, this was an unequally yoked partnership. And we needed to walk away from it. And it was a nice, lucrative deal. So it didn't matter the money. It didn't matter the amount. So we did.

David:

[13:56] Yeah, that's a hard thing to feel like you've made a good choice. You feel like you're following the Lord. But all the results seem like, well, maybe it wasn't the best decision. Maybe it was the wrong decision. And then be able to have to go back and backtrack on that.

David:

[14:12] That happened to my dad once when he was an administrator at a nursing home. He was in charge of hiring the head people, you know, the head nursing, the head of dietary and all this stuff. And he had made this one hiring choice. And I don't know how soon it was, but, you know, again, the culture was just there's tension and just lots of problems. And everybody around him was like, you've got to get rid of that head nurse. She is the problem. And so he did. But he did some research, just again, did some praying and ended up asking her to leave. And that, again, changed the culture back to more of a helpful, healthy culture in that nursing home. And it's similar to what it sounds like you've done.

Rick:

[14:53] Yeah. And I think, you know, I think, David, when you're a Christian company, you know, you, we have, you know, we have a target on our back by the enemy. And if there's joy in your facility and the Lord is moving and your, your business is the Lord's and he, he's doing great things. The enemy wants to do everything he can. He's going to try to throw everything he can to, to, um, change that culture. And a lot of times it's with some type of deal or something, and you think you can make it through it, is it really worth it? Is it really worth, is the growth of the company really worth the loss of the culture and the loss of employees and the loss of people's wellbeing? People used to leave here upbeat. I had an employee tell us this morning in

Rick:

[15:48] group, I don't know, I don't really like the weekends because I love, I miss work. I miss work. And I go, can you say that again? You know, can you say that again?

Rick:

[15:59] And, uh, but, but man, it wasn't like that when we were going through this, people couldn't wait to get out of here. And really, you know what? Our people are our greatest asset. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter the growth and all that. I want to see our people grow in the Lord. And, and there's, there's something you're familiar with. Um, when you, when you go after the root um god takes care of the fruit when you go after your people and treat them you know the way that god would want you to treat your people um god's going to take care of the fruit um because you're loving people first and then he takes care of the growth and that's where we've seen the success because the first 11 years we didn't have anything to show for it we doing it all backwards so.

David:

[16:46] Yeah yeah like like you said taking care of the people your people are your biggest asset everybody a lot of people say that but i think in their actions say something different so that's really cool and it from having your employees say i don't like the weekends is a testimony to that you actually have a great culture there that's that's cool so what steps did you take to get out of this um out of this relationship with this merger? Did you divorce all the customers

David:

[17:19] too, or just get rid of them? Or how, how'd all that happen?

Rick:

[17:22] We did. We, um, we wanted to, um, we wanted to extend grace as, as much as God allowed us to, as much as, much as he wanted us to. So we, we went to this person and we told him, Hey, this is really, um, something that, you know, he was on a probationary extended probation we did it for three months and we were like we're not sure we're gonna extend it three more months and okay during that time it was when we made this decision so um we reminded him of that and um we just told him hey this isn't working it's really killing our culture and he he's like all defensive like hey it was his fault and i go i go no no i mean.

Rick:

[18:09] Not not totally um there's a lot involved and it's you know so i we explained everything and and i told him i says well we want to we really care about you and we want to end this in a way that that um we don't want to leave you hanging or anything so we agreed to pay him compensation for several months um actually throughout the rest of the year which was six months left, And then we also agreed to put into writing that we would not take on his customers' business, that we were at a certain time frame, we no longer would take orders from his customers, nor would we sell to them. And we did that out of loyalty to him because these were his customers. Since then, we've had several of them try to come back to us and we absolutely will not sell to them because of our loyalty. to this person. So, um, all that went through, he didn't take it real well. Um.

Rick:

[19:12] So that was kind of the hard part because, you know, really care about the guy. So that was kind of the hard part. Still to this day, don't really hear from him. I know this, a lot of seed was planted in that man's life. You know, and I pray that at the right time, God brings it to harvest because we continue to, you know, continue to pray for him.

David:

[19:35] Sure. So what advice would you or counsel would you give to business owners who are thinking about a merger or getting a whole group of clients get together? What are things that they need to look for?

Rick:

[19:50] Well, definitely number one, don't ever put God on a time frame. Don't ever tell him, God, if you can do this by this time and you don't take it away, I know it's good to go. I think, you know, so that's number one. Number two, make sure you're truly spending time with the Lord. And you're really, really, you know, I recommend like journal your prayer in the morning and then say, God, I'm going to go into the word. And I need to hear from you and, and, and seek the word. And, you know, you know, I did that, David, and I went back into that prayer where I said, God, I need to hear from you on this. And do you know this? I totally did not even have an answer from it. I didn't, it was blank. It was blank. And I, I had missed that. I had missed it. So I would say.

David:

[20:44] You know, deadline came so you know

Rick:

[20:46] Deadline came yes it did i would say you know on a big important um big important um uh situation like you're talking about you know fasting fasting do some fasting prayer um seeking the lord in his word and until you have peace don't move forward even if you want it at a certain time frame and it goes past that time frame go you know what i just don't have peace and if the peace never comes then it's a no-go it's a no-go you know i think that i always find.

David:

[21:26] It yeah i don't know what prophet it was but i remember there's a prophet in the old testament where the people came to him for counsel whatever he's like let me see what the lord says and i I think it was like 10 days later. He's like, oh, here it is. Here's what God wants you to do. But it wasn't like bang right away. It took a week and a half before it seemed like God responded to him. And then he talked. Even with... Elijah, when he went to Mount Carmel, when he was fleeing from Ahab and Jezebel, God didn't speak to him right when he got there. He made him go out and here's the wind, here's the rain, here's the earthquake. And he just waited a little bit before he responded. I like what you said as far as don't put God on a timetable.

Rick:

[22:11] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a great book called Sacred Pace.

David:

[22:16] I've heard of that.

Rick:

[22:17] It's really, really good. Terry, I don't recall his last name, but, um, he, a really good book and it's a lot of good lessons to learn in there and how he was a big time CEO and he did so many things, but man, he was stressed out. He went into, had mental illness problems and, and, uh, uh, he learned through those problems to take a sacred pace and let God lead. You know, that's why God says, be still, you know, be still and know that I am God. It's like, yes, man. You know, when, when are we being still? I mean, you know, as CEOs and this it's, it's hard. And sometimes we need to sacrifice some sleep, you know, not that we probably don't, we do that already, but there's certain times if you're, if you're tossing and turning at night, instead of doing that, just get up and get in the word, Seek the Lord. Sometimes at one, two in the morning, that's the best time. And then when you do, you kind of get peace. And he may even give you that word at that time. And then you fall back to sleep. It's a beautiful thing. So I encourage business owners, hey, if you lose an extra hour of sleep, man, you're going to get right back to sleep when you get along with the Lord. So that's, yeah.

David:

[23:39] Very good. Very good. Rick's been great having you I know we talked about a lot of things what is one challenge or encouragement you'd like to leave with our listeners today

Rick:

[23:50] Challenge our encouragement like to leave with the listeners today um well i would say um, if you haven't given your company to the lord what are you waiting for what are you waiting for because we've done it both ways we've done it where we're in the make it happen stage and god's with us but he's kind of back there he's kind of the back seat and that's not his that's not his his place um when you give your company to the lord um there's an extreme peace about that because you know now it's really as long as we be good stewards it's god's responsibility and let's say you get a three hundred thousand dollar tax bill in in the in the in the mail suddenly like we did one time you go god you have we have a problem you have a three hundred thousand dollar tax bill here and uh what do you want to do about and and he provides so i'd say the the best years of our lives have been these last 12 years where god it's been god's company we've seen him change lives here um and we've we've we've we've been able to get out of debt so the world will say hey you don't have time to do this stuff god will say you don't have time not to do this stuff yes yeah so.

David:

[25:14] I love that i love that give it to the god what are you waiting for yeah um yeah there's a lot more i can say but that's that's about it right now um so friends thank you rick thanks so much for your encouragement today and next steps to put into practice what you've heard is check out the show notes and uh for links to help you know to connect with uh rick if you want to and hear more about his story or talk to him about business and giving it to god and what he did. Subscribe to the podcast. Sign up for the newsletter. It's a great way to communicate and not miss out on future episodes. And friends, that's all we have for now. Trust you've been inspired to redeem your business, redeem your time, back and walk worthy of God's great name. Bye for now.