April 8, 2025 • 46 mins
Alan Barnhart is the CEO of Barnhart Crane & Rigging, which gives away 50% of its profits and he believes is God’s company. His personal commitment to earn a normal person salary makes Alan one of the most unique members of the Army.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How do you go from ten million to a billion
in thirty five years while giving away half of your profits?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Here?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, that's a lot, it is, And.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I tell you it doesn't seem like a valid strategy.
And if you leave God out of the equation, I'd
say it just it's a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach an
inner city Memphis. And the last part, somehow it led
to an oscar for the film about our team. It's
called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never be
(00:47):
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words that nobody ever uses on Sinnin and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks. That's just us,
you and me deciding, Hey, you know what I can help.
That's what Alan Barnhart, the voice you just heard, has done.
Alan is more committed to being a normal folk than
(01:10):
anyone we've ever met. In addition to Barnhart crane and
rigging giving away half of every year's annual profits, Alan's
personally been committed to earn an income like normal folks do.
And there's more that you're about to hear that you
will not believe. Right after these brief messages from our
(01:34):
general sponsors, Alan Barnhart, I'd usually say to my guess,
welcome to Memphis, but I guess I could say welcome
across Memphis. Yes, a native Memphi in.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
It's only like seven minutes away, right, You're very close.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That much time to get over. Usually also ask how'd
you get here? How long you stay in? What are
you doing when in town? But your answer is you're
probably going home and having supper. Absolutely, that's it. Everybody.
Alan Barnhart is one of the strangest, weirdest men I've
ever met. My wife, how's that for an entrance?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Okay, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Actually, he's one of the most successful men I've ever
met my life, and his success is measured in lots
of things that we often don't measure our success in
Allan is the co founder and chief executive officer of
Barnhart Crane and Rigging. And if you've ever seen big,
massive cranes rolling down the road that are red and
(02:43):
white with big tires and big hooks on them. They've
got sixty locations now across the country. That's alan, that's
your place, that's your folks working. How many employees you
got now?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You have about twenty five hundred?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Is that all?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And we pick up and move heavy stuff. That's what
we do for a living.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
We're going to get into all that because it's interesting.
But why are we talking to a guy that moves
equipment and drives big things around. We're an army and
normal folks. Most people that we interview are normal folks
because they're just like me and Alex and Cassius over
there and everybody. We're just average, normal people trying to fit.
(03:23):
Very few people make as hard an effort as you
have to in your whole life to remain average and
normal in terms of the way you live your lifestyle.
And the story is phenomenal and it's inspiring. And while
I don't think many of our listeners are going to
pick up and do exactly what you did, I certainly
(03:46):
think your story will illuminate to us all that they're
simply is more we can do. So would you just
set the stage for us? And I know you grad
waited from Tennessee and I know you came to work
at your small mom and pop family business and just
(04:08):
take it from there. And why you didn't end up
in Saudi Arabia?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Okay, fair enough, and coming out of college came back
and worked in the small family business. My parents had
run this business for several years and international corporate headquarters
was two bedrooms with the home I grew up.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
In and the international head Oh it was.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I mean we had ten employees and it was just
a very small mom and pop business.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
But it was a fun business. I had grown up.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Every summer in high school and college, i'd worked in
the company. I was a crane operator and an iron worker,
and I just grew up in that business.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Back then. You wou'd y'all have seven, eight, ten cranes?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, about eight cranes.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
What would you do? Just be lifting beams onto buildings
and things like that, Not massive, massive stuff, just typical training, riggage.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Smaller stuff, steeal erection, pre cast concrete, erection, and then
whatever anybody needed would we would do it worked in
some of the So your family's making all plans. Yeah, yeah,
and a good, good family business. Fun way to grow up.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And it makes sense you went to school go to
engineering study. Engineering kind of struck a chord with how
this stuff goes together when you lift it up there.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, And you know, as I was getting out of college,
some of my friends said, you need to go to
seminary or you need to go into full time ministry.
You know, that's that's where your heart is. And as
I prayed about that, I came to the conclusion that
all of.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Us were followers of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Are in full time ministry, and that a few of
us will get our paycheck from a charity or a church,
but most of us are going to use our skills
and gifts that God's given us in a regular job.
And I felt that He had gifted me more in
the area of business and engineering than he had in
preaching or writing or so. I just felt like I
wanted to serve God, but I felt that my avenue
(05:52):
for doing so would be in business. So did you
really consider going in the mystry? At a point did consider?
And actually later when I got married. Two weeks after
I got engaged, my wife and I went to this
missions conference and they were talking about parts of the
world where missionaries weren't allowed to go where there was
(06:13):
no access to the Christian message, where they might get
their heads, they might get their heads lopped off, and
I think everyone deserves an opportunity to hear the Christian message.
And so they were telling us about parts of the
world where engineers could go and sort of be undercover missionaries,
and so my wife and I got excited about doing that.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So we started that dangerous seriously, I.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Don't think so dangerous. You might get kicked out. We
were going to go to Saudi Arabia. I don't think
it's a place where you're going to get your head
cut off. I do think it's a place that you'll
get kicked out, and you know they're not going to
you might get a radical person, but most of the
government there would just send you home if they found
out what you were doing.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I was an engineer, so I could do that. So
we started planning.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
To do that, to go to Saudi Arabia, to go
to Saudi Arabia and work as an engineer for Saudi
Arabian companies.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
For a regular you know, probably a US company, but
working in Saudi Arasa and.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Then what under the weather, have some bibble study classes
start fighting some folks, see what happened.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Just tell people, you know, live our lives in front of.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
People and tell them about Jesus, and you know, there's
nothing overt. You don't have to be just you know,
totally radically pushy. Just live your life and who I
am includes my faith and to be able to speak
that and hopefully that would allow people to I think
a lot of people reject Christianity on bad information. They've
(07:29):
had a bad experience, or they didn't grow up as
Christians and they just didn't They just don't know the message,
like I did not know. I grew up for sixteen
years of my life, didn't really understand the Christian message,
even though we did go to church some So I
think that was that was what we were hoping to do,
is to be able to be an ambassador to communicate
our faith.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And you married a cool woman that says, yeah, take me.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
In saudis not a great place for a woman, Oh gosh,
And she was very much anxious to go and really
disappointed that we ended up not going.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
We'll tell us why you didn't go.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And we got married six months after this conference, and
we started trying to learn Arabic and prepare to go.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
You were learning Arabic a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
We didn't get very far. I'd love to tell you
we were fluent. We were not.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
But three or four months into that, my parents came
to us and said, we've decided we're going to leave
the business and we're going to get on a sailboat
and sail around the world. That was their life dream.
And so they, just the two of them, they bought
a boat and they were gone sailing for most of
the next seven years.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So you and your brother didn't tear up their boat
like on stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
We let them go and it was It turned out
to be a really great experience.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
But we my brother and I started talking about becoming partners,
and we were also talking about going on the mission field,
and so we were wrestling with what does God want
us to do. We ended up through a process becoming
partners in this business after we put in some safeguards
in our life. Part of those safeguards came from when
I got out of college and came back to work.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I started reading through the Bible.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
To see what it said about business and about money,
and it said a lot, and as a as a believer,
it scared me. Because the thing it wasn't scary was
the whole concept of stewardship, that everything I have has
come from God, belongs to God. I'm not an owner
with rights, I'm a steward with responsibilities. And that seemed
great to me. But Jesus kept warning about the dangers
(09:25):
of wealth. He warned about wealth ten times more than
anything else. And you know, he said wild stuff like
it's hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom
of Heaven, and don't store up treasure for yourself on earth,
and be on your guard against all forms of greed.
And he told these parables, and it was like scary.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You know that I am really bad quoting scripture, so
I'm paraphrasing scripture and you can probably clean it up
for me. But it's easier for a man to for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than a man dinner the gates of heaven or something.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
And for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yeah,
I mean, it's radical things like that, But.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That was not as I understand it. That was really
not about accumulating money. It was about the love of money. Yes,
is that not correct?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I think that's right. I don't think money in itself
is evil.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
It's the love of the love.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Of money is really dangerous, and you can't serve God
in money. And if you're if you're holding onto money,
it can be detrimental to your spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you're reading this, and you're studying this, and it's
becoming a profound guiding principle of the way you're going
to conduct the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
It scared me.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I mean, it really did scare you.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, because part of business, I'm a competitive guy and
I want to win, and part of having a business
and part of the scoreboard of a business is making money.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Profits is a necessary measure of any organizations.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So I wanted to I felt like we wanted to
have a business that made a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I didn't want that money to mess up my life.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
And I saw these warnings about about this, and I said,
I gotta we got to put some safe guards in
our life.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So I can ask you, do you think it's sinful
if it's about the love of money and not money itself?
Like you said, money itself is not evil, it's the
love of money. When what money starts defining you start
worshiping the money above all else. Do you not think
that you can be faithful in a christ centered, living
(11:27):
Christian and also accumulate your own wealth.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No, I think you can.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
I just think that there is a danger in it
that we need to be on our guard against. So
I don't think it's impossible at all. There were plenty
of rich people in the Bible, and some that their
riches ended up being a downfall for them. But I
do think it's dangerous, and I think it needs to
be handled with care.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It's important. I don't want our listeners hearing you thinking, well,
this is it thinks if you make any money either
doomed to hell. That's not what you're saying. Not at
all You're saying. Is you you personally feared that money,
too much money, could grupt you.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yes, that I had that in my nature to be
a materialistic person and seek after money and have it
infect me, and so I wanted to be I wanted
to put some safeguards to make sure that didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So those safeguards look like what, well, two things.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I mean, my brother and I committed this whole concept
of stewardship that this company we were starting was going
to be God's company. Everything we have belongs to God,
including this company. And so Catherine and I and Eric
and his wife committed that we weren't sure if the
company would even survive the first year. I mean it
was a mom and pop business, really small. I'm a
(12:43):
twenty five year old kid. But just in case, we said, God,
this is your business, and do with it what you will.
It's yours now. Technically my brother and I each owned
half of it at that point. The second thing we
did is we decided to put a cap on our lifestyle.
We said we're going to live a certain life, not
a the Teresa.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Once again, not a zeal it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Not as we had air conditioning in vehicles and cell phones,
and we had everything.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
We need to and your children were well taken care.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yes I have food and all that good stuff, but
just have a relatively simple life. And if and if
God chose to prosper the business, we weren't going to
see that as a call to ramp up our lifestyle. Instead,
we were going to set a permanent, relatively simple lifestyle,
and if additional money came in, we were going to
use that money to help others. So that was our
That was our commitment to God and to each other
(13:30):
before we started the company.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I have a question, right, I've been dying to ask
you this.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I started my business in two thousand and one, was
seventeen thousand dollars. Okay. My father left home when I
was four. My mother was marrying, divorced five times. Oh
I come from nothing, man, Okay. So when I was
thirty and started my business, a commitment to live that
lifestyle wasn't really much a commitment because pretty much what
(13:59):
my business was doing and I was there anyway, yep, yep.
But when that company becomes really large and there's a
lot of money come through it, that commitment changes in scope.
You can Yeah, I got to ask you. As your
company grew, and here's a spoiler alert, I think you'll
do what two hundred and fifty million in sales this.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Year, probably getting close to a billion?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
How much?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Almost a billion?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah? B everybody who heard that, right, a billion? The
pull on that commitment when it's that volume of money,
does it not get a little more difficult at that
point because you've got to be looking at those dollars thinking, wow.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, I actually think it's gotten easier as we've gone
through and we've been doing this now for for almost
forty years. And the cool thing is we've seen a
lot of money flowing and through the company clearly, and
we decided at the beginning we would give away fifty
percent of our profit each year, which you think would
be kind of a crazy thing for people.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
It is a crazy thing.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Highly you know, it's a very capital intensive business. We're
buying equipment that costs millions of dollars, and we're growing
pretty fast. And to do that and still kind of
jettison fifty percent of your profit each year, you would.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Think would never work.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And yet my brother and I each put twenty thousand
dollars in in eighty six. No other money has come
into the company since then, no other investors or anything.
And God has just grown our business to the point where,
you know, attracted a lot of great people. So the
company has generated all the money it needs to grow
itself and also to send out fifty percent of our
(15:37):
profit each year.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
But a story you or your brother, or your wife
or nobody never once looked at and said, man, fifty
percent of where we started is one thing, but fifty
percent of this is a whole another.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
No, it's never been.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
We're so glad we put those safeguards in before we
started because it's not been a conversation since ever ever. Really, Yeah,
I mean my brother I've been partners now for thirty
nine years. We've never argued about money. Been married to
my wife almost forty years. We've never argued about money.
And you see so many families that have successful businesses
that get kind of ripped apart, not by too much money,
(16:16):
I mean, not by too little money, but by too much.
We just haven't had that problem. We I mean, our
life is wonderful. We have everything we need relatively simple.
We could have a whole lot more toys if we
wanted to, but the toys just aren't aren't interesting to me,
and so I don't spend any time accumulating and maintaining toys. Instead,
(16:36):
I enjoy what I do in my business, and I
enjoy what I do on the side of trying to
take the dollars that God is bringing in and using.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Them to help others. And that's to me much more
fulfilling than any of the toys.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
At the top of the show, I said, we've never
had a guest who's a normal folk, because they absolutely
have demanded and chosen themselves to be that. Because with
the type of money you're talking about, let's be honest,
you could you could have not chosen this lifestyle, and
you could have private jets and houses on beaches and
(17:09):
everything else.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
And I don't think my life would be any better.
I love what I'm not. This is not some sacrificial thing.
I love my life. I don't think adding those complications
would make my life better.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I don't. I don't envy anyone who has those things.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So you make this commitment, but then you also make
a commitment to your income, which was I think the
average cost of your Sunday school.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Something like that.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, so it started out I think we were making
forty thousand dollars a year, and this is in you
and your brother each each and that was in eighty six,
so that long time ago. You know, the equivalent today
that would probably be one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I mean it was not a small amount.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
We ended up with a nice living. We had no
upper living, but nothing crazy.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, we had no kids at that point. We ended
up with six kids, and so that number changed over
time from forty thousand dollars. I think we got up
to a high of about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
And so it's not some mother Teresa. I mean, this
is way above average. And you know, when you speak globally,
it's wildly above average to talk about our life as
being simple a global standpoint.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
We're filthy rich.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
But just so it's not been some vow of poverty
at all. It's just try to have a relatively simple life.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
And now a few messages from our gender sponsors. But first,
I hope you'll consider signing up to join the army
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about our incredible guests, we'll be right back. So you
(19:01):
capture own income based on what you figured was just
starting to stay kind of middle income folks, And tell
me about the growth of the company.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, the company started growing. I mean first year we
actually made money. We couldn't believe it. And we had
we had fifty thousand dollars to send out.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
To send out to give away, to give away. Who'd
you give it to?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Well, we didn't know, you know, and we're thinking, how
do we figure out what do we do with this money,
you know? And so we didn't think we'd have that much,
And so we got a group of us at the
company together and we said, let's together pray and see
what God wants us to do with his money. And
so we started researching groups and we sent it out
and the next year the company grew and I think
we had one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to send.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Out and we were tripled it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
This is sweet. We couldn't believe it was amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
And so we started learning from others who are good
at at distributing money to help others, and so we
started learning from some foundations and other organizations, and it
got up to where it was a million dollars a
year we were sending out.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
After maybe six or eight years. We couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And so and we started that group of six of
us became a group of about twenty of us by
that time that we're looking at groups and trying to
figure out they were all people.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
They're bringing people in that work in the business and saying, hey,
I want you to help decide where we're sending the money.
That's the fruits of your labor, exactly, exactly. That's a
beautiful idea.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It's so motivational to this.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, they buy in now they're part of that problem
because they really are part of it. It's not my
money to me, it's God's money, and we together are
trying to figure out what to do with God's money.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Did you focus in on a specific type of thing
you wanted to do or you just shotgun and whatever
sounded good and everybody agreed.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
To the first first year it was shotgun. Then we
started putting some parameters in and some focus, and we
started focusing internationally because we saw a disproportionate need internationally.
There's lots of great stuff to do in Memphis, and
we do things in every city where we have an operation,
but in terms of the major dollars, we tried to
zero in on some hard areas in the world, areas
(21:11):
with the worst of the poor, and.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Like in South Africa.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, Middle East, Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, India,
and West Africa. Those are the four geographies that we've
kind of now zeroed in on.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Well, you like supporting missionaries.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
We don't support missionaries, and we don't support building programs,
which is what a lot of people think of. But
we support indigenous ministries, indigenous organizations that are changing the
lives of people in their.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
In their area.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
And so there's lots of them, and we we travel there,
we get to know them. We're not we're not taking requests.
We are going and we're trying to find people we
can invest in. You know, if we were taking requests,
we would be saying no to probably ninety nine percent
of those things just because they don't fit what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Plus the amount of time it would take to get
through all the world.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, And so we we just we decided to try
to get good at a few places.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And so I go to India every year. I'm on
the India team.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
We now have about sixty of us that are part
of this sixty sixty and.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
So get together and make these decisions.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Well, the sixty are formed into teams, and so I'm
on the India team with about eight other folks and
so they're all either employees or spouses of Barnhart or
one of the other group companies. In our group, we
have a group now about seven companies. I can talk
more about that. But so they get together, our India
team gets together every month and we travel to India
(22:35):
and we try to come up with a portfolio of
things that we want to support, and then once a
year we take that to our board of directors of
Grove and say here's what we want to support and
the Grove and then the board will say yes or
no and are modified a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
As the board ever told you know.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I have been turned down more than anybody else. I
promise you. I promise you then, which I love. I'm
so glad to.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Know your names on every one of the crane.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, I mean I'm on the board, by the way,
but so is my wife.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And your wife ever voted against your.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Very many times.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Are you kidding? But because your wife is on the
board of the board that you started to give away
the money you make and she has told you.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Know many times, because because we have a process, and
the process sets us free. And I'm kind of a
I'm not a guy for staying in the lines enough
and uh so when I when I kind of bring
something off the hip, some of the other guys may
be more timid to do that, but she's willing to say, Hey,
that doesn't fit what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Hey, let me ask something straight up. We'll talk ever
make you angry?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yep, a few times she's talk about but most of
the time I realized that I had it coming.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
And that's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That's that's oh my gosh. And nobody looks across and
says no to Alan and thinks, well, but I'm gonna
get fired tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, heaven snow.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's a group effort, and I don't want to. I'm
not the owner, you know, God's the owner, and we're
together trying to be stewards of it. And so these
we've invited these people into our stewardship and they work
hard at it, and so it's a I'm very glad
to we.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Just have the hel umilody come from. I'm going to
tell you something. Okay, I started my business. I'm proud
of it. I know, Dad, come good and well. Without
a bunch of really great people that I have been
blessed with in my life to work alongside me, some
outside my business, to mentor me side outside my business,
(24:39):
to help finance me, there's no doubt that I'm not
one of these guys said, I did this. It's a
we did this and everything else. But today, if any
of those people came in and told me I couldn't
I want to do my business, I might lose my mind.
I just know that about me, I don't. I don't
have I think of myself as giving. I don't think
(25:00):
serving is a nice thing to do. I think it's
a requirement of my faith and the grace that my
life is given. Having said all of that, I don't
have the humility to hear know in my own organization
by the people that work for me, that wouldn't have
their job if it wasn't for me. I don't have
the humility just to hear that very well.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
You know, I have benefited greatly from it in this
grove process, which is the giving process. I've also benefited
greatly with my inner circle. I have two guys that
were very willing to tell me no. It's funny when
I when I go to a ministry and we're trying
to assess them. It's one of the questions I asked them.
I said, you know, the leader of the of the ministry,
(25:42):
I said, who tells you when you're being an idiot.
What are you talking about? I said, who tells you
when you're wrong? Do you have somebody in your organization
that can tell you when you're wrong? Because if you don't,
you're probably going to go off track. And so we're
looking for we want to I've benefited so greatly because
for having accountability like that, have people that are willing
(26:03):
to tell me I'm wrong. And we want ministries that
have a similar humility. We're not looking for rock stars.
I have that person. I still don't have the humility
to like it, but I still have that person.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
I'll listen to well, I didn't like it all the
time you get in speeches. I talk about it sometimes actually,
And the metaphor is, do you know if you got
on an airplane in Washington, d C. And flew exactly
around the world to land back in washingt d C.
If your heading was off three degrees, do you know
where you'd be by the time you were supposed to
be back in DC Nova Scotia. Three degrees? Wow, would
(26:39):
set you off sixteen hundred miles. And you've got to
have a good compass there. It is, that's it is
what you're talking about. I call a compass is that
you have to have a compass to keep you headed
on your true bearing, and that when we're riding down
the streets of life, we failed humans are going to
(27:00):
test the integrities of the curb, but the goals might
end up in the ditch. And if you don't have
a compass, you're gonna end up in a ditch, or
you're gonna have nova Scotia or any other metaphor you want.
And you better have somebody in your life that you
know loves you enough, respect you enough, and cares you
enough to tell you when you're being an idiot.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
If you're not willing to listen, and if you rebuff
them enough, then they'll quit telling you and you'll lose
all that benefit.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Boy, that's also true. You'll be able to give up
a nova Scotia. He's too hard headed. I'm not talking
about this anymore. It's not what the phether.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
That's your wife, or your coworkers or compasses.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
My wife, for sure, she is the one person who
tell me no, and I just shut up.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
How about you now, I often tell you no, no, no,
I said, I often tell you you know or that
you're on.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, But I don't listen to you. I listened to Lisa.
You say what you want to in my guard Alex,
and I'm gonna do what I want to Lisa, I
say yes, ma'am, and I don't go to it. That's
the way that worlds, all right, So go back. So sorry,
I told you to be squirrels. Ups, go go. So
we're five six years in the business. I want to
(28:06):
hear about at five years, what one hundred million sales?
Someone with no?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
No, no, maybe ten million?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
How do you go from ten million to a billion
and thirty five years while giving away half of your
profits here? Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
It is, And I tell you it. It doesn't seem
like a valid strategy. And if you leave God out
of the equation, I'd say it just it's a bad idea.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
But you put him in the equation.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
God's just done miracle after miracle in our business, and
part of those miracles is bringing good people into our company.
But just all kinds of opportunities have come our way.
I'm not some great business guy. I've never took a
business class. I just was able to attract a bunch
of people that are a lot smarter than me and
a lot better than me, and and it's worked. So
I can't tell you that there's some secret sauce at
(28:57):
all that revolves around me. But I think, you know,
God is the has been the I want to give
him the credit because I think that's where the credit belongs,
and the and the vehicle that he's used as a
bunch of great people joining us.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Internal growth acquisitions, I mean, how do you I mean,
that's a little both, that's that's a tremendous amount of growth.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yeah, we've made about thirty five acquisitions over the years. Uh,
most of them relatively small businesses. Most of the growth
has been been organic growth. And uh, we just keep
pushing hard. We work hard. I mean it's a we
would say our goal is to be the best company
in our industry. We work really hard. We don't think
work is a negative word. We think work is part
(29:36):
of the good stuff in life, you know, and being
good at what you do matters. And we're not we're
not looking for We're looking for people that want to
work hard.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
One of our equips is the reward for hard work.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It's more work.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
I mean, you know, when you do good work for
your customer, they don't tell you to just take off.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
They say, can you come do more for it? You know?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And that guy that runs a small crane, well we
let him run a bigger crane, you know. And so
the reward for good work is to be able to
do more work. And work is a positive thing. It
should It doesn't suck you dry. It It's what gives
you dignity. It's one of the good things in life.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I want to ask you something about prayer and miracles.
There's a lot of people listening to us that are
sitting on the fence in their faith, and I'm not
here to convert them with the show, but I'm also
not here to lose them with the show. And a
lot of people hear that stuff and they really do
think hocus pocus. Would you agree? And if not, tell
(30:33):
me what you would agree with, or if so, expand
on it. That oftentimes the miracle and an answer to
prayer is you arriving at conclusion about what you have
to do to work harder, invest more, who to hire,
and all of that. In other words, you don't just
(30:55):
pray and hocus pocus. Things come up correct. The answer
to prayers mentifact listed in the work you as a
human being do absolutely to talk about that. I don't
want people to hear prayer and miracles and just kind
of dumping a Bible and everything happens that is us,
not what it is now.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Flip a coin and God will tell me what to do.
It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I'm talking to God in prayer and I want him
to give me an answer, and then something in a
white cloak shows up with an r around him speaks
to you. Well. I mean people think we're saying that
when we say so in human terms, maybe even a
secular term. Sure, how that really works? Sure?
Speaker 3 (31:42):
I mean I think Jesus was the greatest social reformer
of all time. If he was, if he had no
if he was not God, he changed a lot related
to children, to women, to.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Religion.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Is a crazy progressive.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
He changed the world.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I mean, yeah, we're twenty twenty five because he was.
That's when he lived. I mean, it's so he changed
the world in some wild ways. I think the concepts
that he taught work, and I think they are good
for business. I think they're good for life, and so
doing it his way works. He and I would say
it's that way because he created as he knows how
we work best. Every one of his restrictions is for
(32:21):
our benefit. That's how That's what I would say from
a from a faith standpoint, from a secular standpoint, let's
say this stuff works because it's it's I mean, it's
just good teaching, it's good.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Principles, good morals. There are people that.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Are more spirit led than I am and listen to
what you know, trying to try to ascertain what God
is speaking to them, And not that I don't do
that at all, But most of the way God is
speaking to me is through other people, through my experiences,
through my thinking, through what I see in the Bible,
through the teachings of Jesus. All that stuff blends together
(32:56):
into what is generally common sense. And occasionally it's a
more radical than common sense, but it's it's it's not
a flitting around. I do worry about a lot of
people that say God told me this. God told me that.
That's what I'm talking about right there.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, it's like, was this God or was this a
bad pizza? I'm not sure what.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Didn't have too much sauced kind of like Scrooge, Yeah,
when he when he didn't know if it was a
bit of indigestion or really that goes to Christmas past.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think, I mean, there
are examples I think where God really does speak to somebody,
but I think there's a lot of times that that's
lip serviced, that to.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Try to justify something that somebody wants to do.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
So I can tell you that's what I think is
one of the biggest downfalls of people coming into our faith. Yeah,
I really do. I think Christianity as a religion itself
and many times is its own worst enemy because of
the way we talk without explaining it and other highly
religious I'm not saying faithful religious people trying to impart
(34:04):
their belief sets on an unsuspecting public. Yeah, what do
you think about that? I agree.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I mean, no one was harder on religious people and
on hypocrites than Jesus. I mean he hammered them really
tough language. He had a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Of you of vipers.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, but he approached a lot of really sinful people
with grace and mercy, and he approached some of these
religious people with no one was you know, people talk
about I don't want to be a Christian because of
all these hypocrites. Maybe that's why you would stay away
from organized religion, but to focus on Jesus. He's with you.
(34:48):
He believes that. I mean, he hammered the religious hypocrites
and he's still very unhappy with religious hypocrites. I'm sure so.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
And we all have some of that. I mean, I'm
not a pure personal we.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
All have it. But it's just important to me people
hearing how you grew your business and bringing people and
answers to prayer and miracles. That we're not talking about
some white winged, feathery looking thing in the movies plopping
down on the end of your bed telling you what
to do and answer to prayer is oftentimes work, experience, opportunity,
(35:25):
those things. I'm with you, We'll be right back. You
start buying up businesses you've grown all of that. If
limiting your income wasn't radical enough, which many would say is,
I think it's inspirational. I haven't had the tamara to
(35:46):
do something like that. And then if giving away fifty
percent of every dollar your company made wasn't radical enough,
you reached a point that you needed to think about
the future of the company, and then you did what
I think is the most radical of crazy nutty things
you could ever do, but I think you will probably
(36:07):
explain to us what it is and how and why. Sure.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, the company continued to grow, and it grew about
twenty five percent a year for twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
And touly smokes, you mean it grew twenty five percent
a year every year, like in year fifteen.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah, all the way up to year twenty three.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
So it went from this little bitty ten people in
Memphis to one thousand people working in you know, several
states across the country.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
This was in two thousand and eight. From two thousand
and five to two thousand and eight, we.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Went from a fifty million dollar company to a two
hundred and fifty million dollars company.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
That's where I saw the two to fifty number in
those four years. So it was gosh, I'm fourteen years
behind or sixteen or something.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
So, and the company became worth a lot of money.
And as far as we were concerned, God owned the company.
We had committed that back in eighty six. As far
as the IRS was concerned, we each owned half, you know,
And this thing became worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And we started going through this process and what if
one of us dies and the whole state tax issues
(37:05):
and you know it could really hurt the company, and.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So we started, Yeah, because let's explain that a little bit.
I mean, it's it's kind of like the family farm
out in Montana that has seventy thousand acres. They're making
a living with this thing, but if they die, now
you've got to pay inheritance tax on seventy thousand acres
up against some ski lodge in Montana that's worth seventy
(37:30):
million dollars. Now, these state's got to come up with
twenty million dollars to hold on to their family land.
Yeah happens.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, and for us it would have been sixty or
seventy million dollars.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
That your heirs in my hand would come up. Yeah,
keep the business.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah. So, and there's all kinds of.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Why a lot of private owned guys like us end
up selling their business to avoid all that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And there's all kinds of ways that you know, people
have that you can buy insurance, or you can go
through these generations skipping trusts, and there's all kinds of
methods to try to avoid that, and really rich people
spend a lot of money doing that and maybe they
should because of it's very expensive. I think it's over
fifty percent of your estate.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
When you have a large estate, and people lose their
family businesses over because they can't afford that, they have
to sell it to meet the tax burden. Yeah, it happens.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Yeah, And so we looked at that and we said,
this is God's business, and these methods of managing this
potential problem are really cumbersome. Let's see if we can
just give this company away.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
And it was always God's God.
Speaker 5 (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, people are hearing us, and they just heard
the bedroom International office of ten people about I guess
I'm doing the math about sixteen seventeen years later is
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
And your initial incarnation is how do we give this away?
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Yeah? We thought it made perfect sense. We didn't think
it was radical, and some people think of that as crazy.
We thought of it as just a natural As far
as we've concerned, everything belongs to God, and putting the
stock in a different vehicle rather than in my personal
statement made perfect sense to us. And so there was
lots of advantages to doing it, and so we went
(39:11):
to our advisors and we said, we want to give
the company away.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And they all looked at you like you're out of.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Your truck, like you're an idiot. Yeah, what are you
talking about that You're in your forties and this thing
you know you can't do that, you know at that table, yes,
oh yes, May They were like, you're crazy. And so
I connected with another group that had a different mindset,
as a group called the National Christian Foundation, and within
thirty minutes they told us. They said, you can't give
away one hundred percent of the business, but you can
give away ninety nine percent.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
That's how How does that work?
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Well, we just took ninety nine percent of the company
and put and we divided the stock where one percent
of the stock had all the voting rights of the company.
The other ninety nine percent had the vast majority of
the value, and so we kept the one percent that
had the voting controlled the company. Basically, they said, we
can't take control of your business. That wouldn't fit what
(40:02):
they do, and so we put ninety nine percent of
the company irrevocably into a charitable trust with them, and
so now they're basically owned the company. And then later
we took the one percent and put it in a
voting trust and I'm one of the trustees on that trust.
We have eight trustees, and I did we want the
company to go on forever. And so now we can
(40:23):
transfer the company to another generation or to a leadership
team without a state taxes, without all the headache and
right without the danger of handing something that's worth probably
now a billion dollars to.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
People.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
You know, the money can do strange things to people.
And so now people can take up the leadership of
our company without having the to meet the danger stuff,
which is the money.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And so so this National what is what's it called.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
National Christian Foundation, So.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Phil, it's actually how I met Rick Jackson was through them.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
So that Ricks. Have you met Rick at all? And
Accent Healthcare in Atlanta?
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Yeah, he's involved in them too.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yeah, he does a lot down in the Jerry at
any and I think or not not not yours.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
But he's the ron Blue had convinced him, hey, you
need to set a financial finish line in your life,
and he said, I've made enough. And then one hundred
percent of the profits of his company have been given
away ever since.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Oh yeah, great, folks, Yeah, all right, So this National
Christian Foundation owns it, but they don't control it. Correct,
So you just direct what money that the company that
the National Christian Foundation has to reinvest in the business.
But then you also direct, as you did at the
very beginning, how much it gives away. Unbelievable. Are you
(41:42):
allowed to tell me how much money you gave away
last year? I can, it's before I do, though, I
want to say. People get so impressed with big numbers,
and I don't think God is impressed with big numbers.
I mean, when Jesus was around, there's one story that
he he he told he did not a story of
(42:03):
a scene where he's watching people put a lot of
money in the in the temple offering, and this this
widow came up and put two small coins in. He said,
nothing about these big gifts going in, and that widow
made a sacrificial gift.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
He said, hey, guys, check this out. It was like
the Hall of Fame giving story in the Bible. It
is so so God is not impressed with the commas
and the zeros.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
We've never given away a nickel that God didn't give us.
We're not, We're not.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
It's not sacrificial giving. I made one sacrificial gift when
I was in college. I haven't made one since.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
What was it.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
It's kind of a long story, but it was. It
was not going on a ski trip so we could
send the money to a famine an Ethiopia, and it
was canceling that. Yeah, it was three hundred and fifty
bucks and and it didn't it didn't change that much
in Ethiopia, but it changed me. No, it was a
it was a moment in my life where I just
(43:01):
had I saw people starving to death, said how can
I live like I'm.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Living when people are starving to death? And so that's
and we said it just didn't fit right to go.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, that's interesting that of all the stories you evoked,
that this deep into the conversation, that feels like that
might have been a benchmark in your whole thinking. It
was it was.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I mean, I think generosity sets us free in some ways,
and I think that was it broke some connection with
money for me at that time that it really helped.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
I'm very thankful for.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
So I get you, don't. I get what you're saying
about the commas, and that the widow given those two
coins was probably a much greater sacrifice on her part
than the very wealthy guys putting gold bars in exactly.
I get it. Yeah, still I'm curious.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Yeah, so we last year we sent out fifty five
million dollars?
Speaker 1 (43:56):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Is that crazy?
Speaker 1 (44:00):
I may not be impressed, but I sure wow. Yeah,
and that's a year. That was last year.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Yeah, And altogether we've sent out maybe three hundred and
sixty million dollars or something like that. So it's it's
really ramped up in the last five or six years.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Are you do you allow yourself to be proud of that?
Or is that or is in your mind that also wrong?
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I'm a human being, you know, and I mean it's
a wild story, and I'm for the first fifteen years
we were doing this, we wouldn't tell anybody what we
were doing.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
It was like, never was bragging.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, I mean the verse that says, don't let your
left hand know what the right hand's doing, you know,
be don't give to get the attention of other people.
And so I would have never come on a show
like this in the first fifteen years. But then people
challenged me to say, you know, this is an amazing
story that God has done.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
It's not something you've done. God's done a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
At this company, and you need to be willing to
tell the story of what he's done.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah, and what if your story can inspire others to
give a little more exactly?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
And I think it has.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
I mean many people I think have heard the story
and said, man, I want to be in on that.
That seems like freedom to me. That seems like a
great way to live life. And I think it is.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
So it's.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Fifty five million dollars last year. Bro.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yeah, that wild.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Alan
Barnhardt and you do not want to miss part two.
That's now be able to listen to. Together. Guys, we
can change this country, but it starts with you. And
as a special note, I'm sitting next to George, Alex's son,
(45:43):
and he really wants you to join us in part two.
Don't you George ring the bells talk, don't care. George
wants to see you in part two. We'll see you there.
How do you go from ten million to a billion
in thirty five years while giving away half of your profits?
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Here?
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, that's a lot, it is, And.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I tell you it doesn't seem like a valid strategy.
And if you leave God out of the equation, I'd
say it just it's a bad idea.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach an
inner city Memphis. And the last part, somehow it led
to an oscar for the film about our team. It's
called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems will never be
(00:47):
solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits
using big words that nobody ever uses on Sinnin and Fox,
but rather by an army of normal folks. That's just us,
you and me deciding, Hey, you know what I can help.
That's what Alan Barnhart, the voice you just heard, has done.
Alan is more committed to being a normal folk than
(01:10):
anyone we've ever met. In addition to Barnhart crane and
rigging giving away half of every year's annual profits, Alan's
personally been committed to earn an income like normal folks do.
And there's more that you're about to hear that you
will not believe. Right after these brief messages from our
(01:34):
general sponsors, Alan Barnhart, I'd usually say to my guess,
welcome to Memphis, but I guess I could say welcome
across Memphis. Yes, a native Memphi in.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
It's only like seven minutes away, right, You're very close.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That much time to get over. Usually also ask how'd
you get here? How long you stay in? What are
you doing when in town? But your answer is you're
probably going home and having supper. Absolutely, that's it. Everybody.
Alan Barnhart is one of the strangest, weirdest men I've
ever met. My wife, how's that for an entrance?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Okay, I'll thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Actually, he's one of the most successful men I've ever
met my life, and his success is measured in lots
of things that we often don't measure our success in
Allan is the co founder and chief executive officer of
Barnhart Crane and Rigging. And if you've ever seen big,
massive cranes rolling down the road that are red and
(02:43):
white with big tires and big hooks on them. They've
got sixty locations now across the country. That's alan, that's
your place, that's your folks working. How many employees you
got now?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
You have about twenty five hundred?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Is that all?
Speaker 2 (02:57):
And we pick up and move heavy stuff. That's what
we do for a living.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
We're going to get into all that because it's interesting.
But why are we talking to a guy that moves
equipment and drives big things around. We're an army and
normal folks. Most people that we interview are normal folks
because they're just like me and Alex and Cassius over
there and everybody. We're just average, normal people trying to fit.
(03:23):
Very few people make as hard an effort as you
have to in your whole life to remain average and
normal in terms of the way you live your lifestyle.
And the story is phenomenal and it's inspiring. And while
I don't think many of our listeners are going to
pick up and do exactly what you did, I certainly
(03:46):
think your story will illuminate to us all that they're
simply is more we can do. So would you just
set the stage for us? And I know you grad
waited from Tennessee and I know you came to work
at your small mom and pop family business and just
(04:08):
take it from there. And why you didn't end up
in Saudi Arabia?
Speaker 3 (04:15):
Okay, fair enough, and coming out of college came back
and worked in the small family business. My parents had
run this business for several years and international corporate headquarters
was two bedrooms with the home I grew up.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
In and the international head Oh it was.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
I mean we had ten employees and it was just
a very small mom and pop business.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
But it was a fun business. I had grown up.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Every summer in high school and college, i'd worked in
the company. I was a crane operator and an iron worker,
and I just grew up in that business.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Back then. You wou'd y'all have seven, eight, ten cranes?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, about eight cranes.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
What would you do? Just be lifting beams onto buildings
and things like that, Not massive, massive stuff, just typical training, riggage.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Smaller stuff, steeal erection, pre cast concrete, erection, and then
whatever anybody needed would we would do it worked in
some of the So your family's making all plans. Yeah, yeah,
and a good, good family business. Fun way to grow up.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And it makes sense you went to school go to
engineering study. Engineering kind of struck a chord with how
this stuff goes together when you lift it up there.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, And you know, as I was getting out of college,
some of my friends said, you need to go to
seminary or you need to go into full time ministry.
You know, that's that's where your heart is. And as
I prayed about that, I came to the conclusion that
all of.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Us were followers of Jesus.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Are in full time ministry, and that a few of
us will get our paycheck from a charity or a church,
but most of us are going to use our skills
and gifts that God's given us in a regular job.
And I felt that He had gifted me more in
the area of business and engineering than he had in
preaching or writing or so. I just felt like I
wanted to serve God, but I felt that my avenue
(05:52):
for doing so would be in business. So did you
really consider going in the mystry? At a point did consider?
And actually later when I got married. Two weeks after
I got engaged, my wife and I went to this
missions conference and they were talking about parts of the
world where missionaries weren't allowed to go where there was
(06:13):
no access to the Christian message, where they might get
their heads, they might get their heads lopped off, and
I think everyone deserves an opportunity to hear the Christian message.
And so they were telling us about parts of the
world where engineers could go and sort of be undercover missionaries,
and so my wife and I got excited about doing that.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
So we started that dangerous seriously, I.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Don't think so dangerous. You might get kicked out. We
were going to go to Saudi Arabia. I don't think
it's a place where you're going to get your head
cut off. I do think it's a place that you'll
get kicked out, and you know they're not going to
you might get a radical person, but most of the
government there would just send you home if they found
out what you were doing.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
I was an engineer, so I could do that. So
we started planning.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
To do that, to go to Saudi Arabia, to go
to Saudi Arabia and work as an engineer for Saudi
Arabian companies.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
For a regular you know, probably a US company, but
working in Saudi Arasa and.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Then what under the weather, have some bibble study classes
start fighting some folks, see what happened.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Just tell people, you know, live our lives in front of.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
People and tell them about Jesus, and you know, there's
nothing overt. You don't have to be just you know,
totally radically pushy. Just live your life and who I
am includes my faith and to be able to speak
that and hopefully that would allow people to I think
a lot of people reject Christianity on bad information. They've
(07:29):
had a bad experience, or they didn't grow up as
Christians and they just didn't They just don't know the message,
like I did not know. I grew up for sixteen
years of my life, didn't really understand the Christian message,
even though we did go to church some So I
think that was that was what we were hoping to do,
is to be able to be an ambassador to communicate
our faith.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And you married a cool woman that says, yeah, take me.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
In saudis not a great place for a woman, Oh gosh,
And she was very much anxious to go and really
disappointed that we ended up not going.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
We'll tell us why you didn't go.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
And we got married six months after this conference, and
we started trying to learn Arabic and prepare to go.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
You were learning Arabic a little bit.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
We didn't get very far. I'd love to tell you
we were fluent. We were not.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
But three or four months into that, my parents came
to us and said, we've decided we're going to leave
the business and we're going to get on a sailboat
and sail around the world. That was their life dream.
And so they, just the two of them, they bought
a boat and they were gone sailing for most of
the next seven years.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
So you and your brother didn't tear up their boat
like on stuff.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
We let them go and it was It turned out
to be a really great experience.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
But we my brother and I started talking about becoming partners,
and we were also talking about going on the mission field,
and so we were wrestling with what does God want
us to do. We ended up through a process becoming
partners in this business after we put in some safeguards
in our life. Part of those safeguards came from when
I got out of college and came back to work.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I started reading through the Bible.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
To see what it said about business and about money,
and it said a lot, and as a as a believer,
it scared me. Because the thing it wasn't scary was
the whole concept of stewardship, that everything I have has
come from God, belongs to God. I'm not an owner
with rights, I'm a steward with responsibilities. And that seemed
great to me. But Jesus kept warning about the dangers
(09:25):
of wealth. He warned about wealth ten times more than
anything else. And you know, he said wild stuff like
it's hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom
of Heaven, and don't store up treasure for yourself on earth,
and be on your guard against all forms of greed.
And he told these parables, and it was like scary.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You know that I am really bad quoting scripture, so
I'm paraphrasing scripture and you can probably clean it up
for me. But it's easier for a man to for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle
than a man dinner the gates of heaven or something.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
And for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yeah,
I mean, it's radical things like that, But.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
That was not as I understand it. That was really
not about accumulating money. It was about the love of money. Yes,
is that not correct?
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I think that's right. I don't think money in itself
is evil.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
It's the love of the love.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Of money is really dangerous, and you can't serve God
in money. And if you're if you're holding onto money,
it can be detrimental to your spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you're reading this, and you're studying this, and it's
becoming a profound guiding principle of the way you're going
to conduct the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
It scared me.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I mean, it really did scare you.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Yeah, because part of business, I'm a competitive guy and
I want to win, and part of having a business
and part of the scoreboard of a business is making money.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Profits is a necessary measure of any organizations.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
So I wanted to I felt like we wanted to
have a business that made a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
I didn't want that money to mess up my life.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
And I saw these warnings about about this, and I said,
I gotta we got to put some safe guards in
our life.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So I can ask you, do you think it's sinful
if it's about the love of money and not money itself?
Like you said, money itself is not evil, it's the
love of money. When what money starts defining you start
worshiping the money above all else. Do you not think
that you can be faithful in a christ centered, living
(11:27):
Christian and also accumulate your own wealth.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
No, I think you can.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
I just think that there is a danger in it
that we need to be on our guard against. So
I don't think it's impossible at all. There were plenty
of rich people in the Bible, and some that their
riches ended up being a downfall for them. But I
do think it's dangerous, and I think it needs to
be handled with care.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
It's important. I don't want our listeners hearing you thinking, well,
this is it thinks if you make any money either
doomed to hell. That's not what you're saying. Not at
all You're saying. Is you you personally feared that money,
too much money, could grupt you.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
Yes, that I had that in my nature to be
a materialistic person and seek after money and have it
infect me, and so I wanted to be I wanted
to put some safeguards to make sure that didn't happen.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
So those safeguards look like what, well, two things.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
I mean, my brother and I committed this whole concept
of stewardship that this company we were starting was going
to be God's company. Everything we have belongs to God,
including this company. And so Catherine and I and Eric
and his wife committed that we weren't sure if the
company would even survive the first year. I mean it
was a mom and pop business, really small. I'm a
(12:43):
twenty five year old kid. But just in case, we said, God,
this is your business, and do with it what you will.
It's yours now. Technically my brother and I each owned
half of it at that point. The second thing we
did is we decided to put a cap on our lifestyle.
We said we're going to live a certain life, not
a the Teresa.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Once again, not a zeal it.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Not as we had air conditioning in vehicles and cell phones,
and we had everything.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
We need to and your children were well taken care.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Yes I have food and all that good stuff, but
just have a relatively simple life. And if and if
God chose to prosper the business, we weren't going to
see that as a call to ramp up our lifestyle. Instead,
we were going to set a permanent, relatively simple lifestyle,
and if additional money came in, we were going to
use that money to help others. So that was our
That was our commitment to God and to each other
(13:30):
before we started the company.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
I have a question, right, I've been dying to ask
you this.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I started my business in two thousand and one, was
seventeen thousand dollars. Okay. My father left home when I
was four. My mother was marrying, divorced five times. Oh
I come from nothing, man, Okay. So when I was
thirty and started my business, a commitment to live that
lifestyle wasn't really much a commitment because pretty much what
(13:59):
my business was doing and I was there anyway, yep, yep.
But when that company becomes really large and there's a
lot of money come through it, that commitment changes in scope.
You can Yeah, I got to ask you. As your
company grew, and here's a spoiler alert, I think you'll
do what two hundred and fifty million in sales this.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Year, probably getting close to a billion?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
How much?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Almost a billion?
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah? B everybody who heard that, right, a billion? The
pull on that commitment when it's that volume of money,
does it not get a little more difficult at that
point because you've got to be looking at those dollars thinking, wow.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, I actually think it's gotten easier as we've gone
through and we've been doing this now for for almost
forty years. And the cool thing is we've seen a
lot of money flowing and through the company clearly, and
we decided at the beginning we would give away fifty
percent of our profit each year, which you think would
be kind of a crazy thing for people.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
It is a crazy thing.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
Highly you know, it's a very capital intensive business. We're
buying equipment that costs millions of dollars, and we're growing
pretty fast. And to do that and still kind of
jettison fifty percent of your profit each year, you would.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Think would never work.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
And yet my brother and I each put twenty thousand
dollars in in eighty six. No other money has come
into the company since then, no other investors or anything.
And God has just grown our business to the point where,
you know, attracted a lot of great people. So the
company has generated all the money it needs to grow
itself and also to send out fifty percent of our
(15:37):
profit each year.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
But a story you or your brother, or your wife
or nobody never once looked at and said, man, fifty
percent of where we started is one thing, but fifty
percent of this is a whole another.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
No, it's never been.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
We're so glad we put those safeguards in before we
started because it's not been a conversation since ever ever. Really, Yeah,
I mean my brother I've been partners now for thirty
nine years. We've never argued about money. Been married to
my wife almost forty years. We've never argued about money.
And you see so many families that have successful businesses
that get kind of ripped apart, not by too much money,
(16:16):
I mean, not by too little money, but by too much.
We just haven't had that problem. We I mean, our
life is wonderful. We have everything we need relatively simple.
We could have a whole lot more toys if we
wanted to, but the toys just aren't aren't interesting to me,
and so I don't spend any time accumulating and maintaining toys. Instead,
(16:36):
I enjoy what I do in my business, and I
enjoy what I do on the side of trying to
take the dollars that God is bringing in and using.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Them to help others. And that's to me much more
fulfilling than any of the toys.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
At the top of the show, I said, we've never
had a guest who's a normal folk, because they absolutely
have demanded and chosen themselves to be that. Because with
the type of money you're talking about, let's be honest,
you could you could have not chosen this lifestyle, and
you could have private jets and houses on beaches and
(17:09):
everything else.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
And I don't think my life would be any better.
I love what I'm not. This is not some sacrificial thing.
I love my life. I don't think adding those complications
would make my life better.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I don't. I don't envy anyone who has those things.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
So you make this commitment, but then you also make
a commitment to your income, which was I think the
average cost of your Sunday school.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Something like that.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Yeah, so it started out I think we were making
forty thousand dollars a year, and this is in you
and your brother each each and that was in eighty six,
so that long time ago. You know, the equivalent today
that would probably be one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I mean it was not a small amount.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
We ended up with a nice living. We had no
upper living, but nothing crazy.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, we had no kids at that point. We ended
up with six kids, and so that number changed over
time from forty thousand dollars. I think we got up
to a high of about one hundred and sixty thousand dollars.
And so it's not some mother Teresa. I mean, this
is way above average. And you know, when you speak globally,
it's wildly above average to talk about our life as
being simple a global standpoint.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
We're filthy rich.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
But just so it's not been some vow of poverty
at all. It's just try to have a relatively simple life.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
And now a few messages from our gender sponsors. But first,
I hope you'll consider signing up to join the army
at normal folks dot us. By signing up, you'll receive
a weekly email with short episodes summaries in case you
happen to miss an episode or if you prefer reading
about our incredible guests, we'll be right back. So you
(19:01):
capture own income based on what you figured was just
starting to stay kind of middle income folks, And tell
me about the growth of the company.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, the company started growing. I mean first year we
actually made money. We couldn't believe it. And we had
we had fifty thousand dollars to send out.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
To send out to give away, to give away. Who'd
you give it to?
Speaker 3 (19:27):
Well, we didn't know, you know, and we're thinking, how
do we figure out what do we do with this money,
you know? And so we didn't think we'd have that much,
And so we got a group of us at the
company together and we said, let's together pray and see
what God wants us to do with his money. And
so we started researching groups and we sent it out
and the next year the company grew and I think
we had one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to send.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Out and we were tripled it.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
This is sweet. We couldn't believe it was amazing.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
And so we started learning from others who are good
at at distributing money to help others, and so we
started learning from some foundations and other organizations, and it
got up to where it was a million dollars a
year we were sending out.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
After maybe six or eight years. We couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
And so and we started that group of six of
us became a group of about twenty of us by
that time that we're looking at groups and trying to
figure out they were all people.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
They're bringing people in that work in the business and saying, hey,
I want you to help decide where we're sending the money.
That's the fruits of your labor, exactly, exactly. That's a
beautiful idea.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
It's so motivational to this.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, they buy in now they're part of that problem
because they really are part of it. It's not my
money to me, it's God's money, and we together are
trying to figure out what to do with God's money.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Did you focus in on a specific type of thing
you wanted to do or you just shotgun and whatever
sounded good and everybody agreed.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
To the first first year it was shotgun. Then we
started putting some parameters in and some focus, and we
started focusing internationally because we saw a disproportionate need internationally.
There's lots of great stuff to do in Memphis, and
we do things in every city where we have an operation,
but in terms of the major dollars, we tried to
zero in on some hard areas in the world, areas
(21:11):
with the worst of the poor, and.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Like in South Africa.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, Middle East, Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, India,
and West Africa. Those are the four geographies that we've
kind of now zeroed in on.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Well, you like supporting missionaries.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
We don't support missionaries, and we don't support building programs,
which is what a lot of people think of. But
we support indigenous ministries, indigenous organizations that are changing the
lives of people in their.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
In their area.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
And so there's lots of them, and we we travel there,
we get to know them. We're not we're not taking requests.
We are going and we're trying to find people we
can invest in. You know, if we were taking requests,
we would be saying no to probably ninety nine percent
of those things just because they don't fit what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
Plus the amount of time it would take to get
through all the world.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Yeah, And so we we just we decided to try
to get good at a few places.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
And so I go to India every year. I'm on
the India team.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
We now have about sixty of us that are part
of this sixty sixty and.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
So get together and make these decisions.
Speaker 3 (22:13):
Well, the sixty are formed into teams, and so I'm
on the India team with about eight other folks and
so they're all either employees or spouses of Barnhart or
one of the other group companies. In our group, we
have a group now about seven companies. I can talk
more about that. But so they get together, our India
team gets together every month and we travel to India
(22:35):
and we try to come up with a portfolio of
things that we want to support, and then once a
year we take that to our board of directors of
Grove and say here's what we want to support and
the Grove and then the board will say yes or
no and are modified a little bit.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
As the board ever told you know.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
I have been turned down more than anybody else. I
promise you. I promise you then, which I love. I'm
so glad to.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Know your names on every one of the crane.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, I mean I'm on the board, by the way,
but so is my wife.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And your wife ever voted against your.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Very many times.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Are you kidding? But because your wife is on the
board of the board that you started to give away
the money you make and she has told you.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
Know many times, because because we have a process, and
the process sets us free. And I'm kind of a
I'm not a guy for staying in the lines enough
and uh so when I when I kind of bring
something off the hip, some of the other guys may
be more timid to do that, but she's willing to say, Hey,
that doesn't fit what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Hey, let me ask something straight up. We'll talk ever
make you angry?
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yep, a few times she's talk about but most of
the time I realized that I had it coming.
Speaker 5 (23:52):
And that's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
That's that's oh my gosh. And nobody looks across and
says no to Alan and thinks, well, but I'm gonna
get fired tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
No, heaven snow.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's a group effort, and I don't want to. I'm
not the owner, you know, God's the owner, and we're
together trying to be stewards of it. And so these
we've invited these people into our stewardship and they work
hard at it, and so it's a I'm very glad
to we.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Just have the hel umilody come from. I'm going to
tell you something. Okay, I started my business. I'm proud
of it. I know, Dad, come good and well. Without
a bunch of really great people that I have been
blessed with in my life to work alongside me, some
outside my business, to mentor me side outside my business,
(24:39):
to help finance me, there's no doubt that I'm not
one of these guys said, I did this. It's a
we did this and everything else. But today, if any
of those people came in and told me I couldn't
I want to do my business, I might lose my mind.
I just know that about me, I don't. I don't
have I think of myself as giving. I don't think
(25:00):
serving is a nice thing to do. I think it's
a requirement of my faith and the grace that my
life is given. Having said all of that, I don't
have the humility to hear know in my own organization
by the people that work for me, that wouldn't have
their job if it wasn't for me. I don't have
the humility just to hear that very well.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
You know, I have benefited greatly from it in this
grove process, which is the giving process. I've also benefited
greatly with my inner circle. I have two guys that
were very willing to tell me no. It's funny when
I when I go to a ministry and we're trying
to assess them. It's one of the questions I asked them.
I said, you know, the leader of the of the ministry,
(25:42):
I said, who tells you when you're being an idiot.
What are you talking about? I said, who tells you
when you're wrong? Do you have somebody in your organization
that can tell you when you're wrong? Because if you don't,
you're probably going to go off track. And so we're
looking for we want to I've benefited so greatly because
for having accountability like that, have people that are willing
(26:03):
to tell me I'm wrong. And we want ministries that
have a similar humility. We're not looking for rock stars.
I have that person. I still don't have the humility
to like it, but I still have that person.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
I'll listen to well, I didn't like it all the
time you get in speeches. I talk about it sometimes actually,
And the metaphor is, do you know if you got
on an airplane in Washington, d C. And flew exactly
around the world to land back in washingt d C.
If your heading was off three degrees, do you know
where you'd be by the time you were supposed to
be back in DC Nova Scotia. Three degrees? Wow, would
(26:39):
set you off sixteen hundred miles. And you've got to
have a good compass there. It is, that's it is
what you're talking about. I call a compass is that
you have to have a compass to keep you headed
on your true bearing, and that when we're riding down
the streets of life, we failed humans are going to
(27:00):
test the integrities of the curb, but the goals might
end up in the ditch. And if you don't have
a compass, you're gonna end up in a ditch, or
you're gonna have nova Scotia or any other metaphor you want.
And you better have somebody in your life that you
know loves you enough, respect you enough, and cares you
enough to tell you when you're being an idiot.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
If you're not willing to listen, and if you rebuff
them enough, then they'll quit telling you and you'll lose
all that benefit.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Boy, that's also true. You'll be able to give up
a nova Scotia. He's too hard headed. I'm not talking
about this anymore. It's not what the phether.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
That's your wife, or your coworkers or compasses.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
My wife, for sure, she is the one person who
tell me no, and I just shut up.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
How about you now, I often tell you no, no, no,
I said, I often tell you you know or that
you're on.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Yeah, But I don't listen to you. I listened to Lisa.
You say what you want to in my guard Alex,
and I'm gonna do what I want to Lisa, I
say yes, ma'am, and I don't go to it. That's
the way that worlds, all right, So go back. So sorry,
I told you to be squirrels. Ups, go go. So
we're five six years in the business. I want to
(28:06):
hear about at five years, what one hundred million sales?
Someone with no?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
No, no, maybe ten million?
Speaker 1 (28:13):
How do you go from ten million to a billion
and thirty five years while giving away half of your
profits here? Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
It is, And I tell you it. It doesn't seem
like a valid strategy. And if you leave God out
of the equation, I'd say it just it's a bad idea.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
But you put him in the equation.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
God's just done miracle after miracle in our business, and
part of those miracles is bringing good people into our company.
But just all kinds of opportunities have come our way.
I'm not some great business guy. I've never took a
business class. I just was able to attract a bunch
of people that are a lot smarter than me and
a lot better than me, and and it's worked. So
I can't tell you that there's some secret sauce at
(28:57):
all that revolves around me. But I think, you know,
God is the has been the I want to give
him the credit because I think that's where the credit belongs,
and the and the vehicle that he's used as a
bunch of great people joining us.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Internal growth acquisitions, I mean, how do you I mean,
that's a little both, that's that's a tremendous amount of growth.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Yeah, we've made about thirty five acquisitions over the years. Uh,
most of them relatively small businesses. Most of the growth
has been been organic growth. And uh, we just keep
pushing hard. We work hard. I mean it's a we
would say our goal is to be the best company
in our industry. We work really hard. We don't think
work is a negative word. We think work is part
(29:36):
of the good stuff in life, you know, and being
good at what you do matters. And we're not we're
not looking for We're looking for people that want to
work hard.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
One of our equips is the reward for hard work.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
It's more work.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
I mean, you know, when you do good work for
your customer, they don't tell you to just take off.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
They say, can you come do more for it? You know?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
And that guy that runs a small crane, well we
let him run a bigger crane, you know. And so
the reward for good work is to be able to
do more work. And work is a positive thing. It
should It doesn't suck you dry. It It's what gives
you dignity. It's one of the good things in life.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I want to ask you something about prayer and miracles.
There's a lot of people listening to us that are
sitting on the fence in their faith, and I'm not
here to convert them with the show, but I'm also
not here to lose them with the show. And a
lot of people hear that stuff and they really do
think hocus pocus. Would you agree? And if not, tell
(30:33):
me what you would agree with, or if so, expand
on it. That oftentimes the miracle and an answer to
prayer is you arriving at conclusion about what you have
to do to work harder, invest more, who to hire,
and all of that. In other words, you don't just
(30:55):
pray and hocus pocus. Things come up correct. The answer
to prayers mentifact listed in the work you as a
human being do absolutely to talk about that. I don't
want people to hear prayer and miracles and just kind
of dumping a Bible and everything happens that is us,
not what it is now.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Flip a coin and God will tell me what to do.
It doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
I'm talking to God in prayer and I want him
to give me an answer, and then something in a
white cloak shows up with an r around him speaks
to you. Well. I mean people think we're saying that
when we say so in human terms, maybe even a
secular term. Sure, how that really works? Sure?
Speaker 3 (31:42):
I mean I think Jesus was the greatest social reformer
of all time. If he was, if he had no
if he was not God, he changed a lot related
to children, to women, to.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Religion.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Is a crazy progressive.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
He changed the world.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
I mean, yeah, we're twenty twenty five because he was.
That's when he lived. I mean, it's so he changed
the world in some wild ways. I think the concepts
that he taught work, and I think they are good
for business. I think they're good for life, and so
doing it his way works. He and I would say
it's that way because he created as he knows how
we work best. Every one of his restrictions is for
(32:21):
our benefit. That's how That's what I would say from
a from a faith standpoint, from a secular standpoint, let's
say this stuff works because it's it's I mean, it's
just good teaching, it's good.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Principles, good morals. There are people that.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Are more spirit led than I am and listen to
what you know, trying to try to ascertain what God
is speaking to them, And not that I don't do
that at all, But most of the way God is
speaking to me is through other people, through my experiences,
through my thinking, through what I see in the Bible,
through the teachings of Jesus. All that stuff blends together
(32:56):
into what is generally common sense. And occasionally it's a
more radical than common sense, but it's it's it's not
a flitting around. I do worry about a lot of
people that say God told me this. God told me that.
That's what I'm talking about right there.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, it's like, was this God or was this a
bad pizza? I'm not sure what.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Didn't have too much sauced kind of like Scrooge, Yeah,
when he when he didn't know if it was a
bit of indigestion or really that goes to Christmas past.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think, I mean, there
are examples I think where God really does speak to somebody,
but I think there's a lot of times that that's
lip serviced, that to.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Try to justify something that somebody wants to do.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
So I can tell you that's what I think is
one of the biggest downfalls of people coming into our faith. Yeah,
I really do. I think Christianity as a religion itself
and many times is its own worst enemy because of
the way we talk without explaining it and other highly
religious I'm not saying faithful religious people trying to impart
(34:04):
their belief sets on an unsuspecting public. Yeah, what do
you think about that? I agree.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I mean, no one was harder on religious people and
on hypocrites than Jesus. I mean he hammered them really
tough language. He had a lot.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Of you of vipers.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Yeah, but he approached a lot of really sinful people
with grace and mercy, and he approached some of these
religious people with no one was you know, people talk
about I don't want to be a Christian because of
all these hypocrites. Maybe that's why you would stay away
from organized religion, but to focus on Jesus. He's with you.
(34:48):
He believes that. I mean, he hammered the religious hypocrites
and he's still very unhappy with religious hypocrites. I'm sure so.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
And we all have some of that. I mean, I'm
not a pure personal we.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
All have it. But it's just important to me people
hearing how you grew your business and bringing people and
answers to prayer and miracles. That we're not talking about
some white winged, feathery looking thing in the movies plopping
down on the end of your bed telling you what
to do and answer to prayer is oftentimes work, experience, opportunity,
(35:25):
those things. I'm with you, We'll be right back. You
start buying up businesses you've grown all of that. If
limiting your income wasn't radical enough, which many would say is,
I think it's inspirational. I haven't had the tamara to
(35:46):
do something like that. And then if giving away fifty
percent of every dollar your company made wasn't radical enough,
you reached a point that you needed to think about
the future of the company, and then you did what
I think is the most radical of crazy nutty things
you could ever do, but I think you will probably
(36:07):
explain to us what it is and how and why. Sure.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, the company continued to grow, and it grew about
twenty five percent a year for twenty three years.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
And touly smokes, you mean it grew twenty five percent
a year every year, like in year fifteen.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Yeah, all the way up to year twenty three.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
So it went from this little bitty ten people in
Memphis to one thousand people working in you know, several
states across the country.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
This was in two thousand and eight. From two thousand
and five to two thousand and eight, we.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Went from a fifty million dollar company to a two
hundred and fifty million dollars company.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
That's where I saw the two to fifty number in
those four years. So it was gosh, I'm fourteen years
behind or sixteen or something.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
So, and the company became worth a lot of money.
And as far as we were concerned, God owned the company.
We had committed that back in eighty six. As far
as the IRS was concerned, we each owned half, you know,
And this thing became worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
And we started going through this process and what if
one of us dies and the whole state tax issues
(37:05):
and you know it could really hurt the company, and.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
So we started, Yeah, because let's explain that a little bit.
I mean, it's it's kind of like the family farm
out in Montana that has seventy thousand acres. They're making
a living with this thing, but if they die, now
you've got to pay inheritance tax on seventy thousand acres
up against some ski lodge in Montana that's worth seventy
(37:30):
million dollars. Now, these state's got to come up with
twenty million dollars to hold on to their family land.
Yeah happens.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, and for us it would have been sixty or
seventy million dollars.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
That your heirs in my hand would come up. Yeah,
keep the business.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah. So, and there's all kinds of.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Why a lot of private owned guys like us end
up selling their business to avoid all that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:50):
And there's all kinds of ways that you know, people
have that you can buy insurance, or you can go
through these generations skipping trusts, and there's all kinds of
methods to try to avoid that, and really rich people
spend a lot of money doing that and maybe they
should because of it's very expensive. I think it's over
fifty percent of your estate.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
When you have a large estate, and people lose their
family businesses over because they can't afford that, they have
to sell it to meet the tax burden. Yeah, it happens.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
Yeah, And so we looked at that and we said,
this is God's business, and these methods of managing this
potential problem are really cumbersome. Let's see if we can
just give this company away.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
And it was always God's God.
Speaker 5 (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, people are hearing us, and they just heard
the bedroom International office of ten people about I guess
I'm doing the math about sixteen seventeen years later is
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
And your initial incarnation is how do we give this away?
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Yeah? We thought it made perfect sense. We didn't think
it was radical, and some people think of that as crazy.
We thought of it as just a natural As far
as we've concerned, everything belongs to God, and putting the
stock in a different vehicle rather than in my personal
statement made perfect sense to us. And so there was
lots of advantages to doing it, and so we went
(39:11):
to our advisors and we said, we want to give
the company away.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
And they all looked at you like you're out of.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Your truck, like you're an idiot. Yeah, what are you
talking about that You're in your forties and this thing
you know you can't do that, you know at that table, yes,
oh yes, May They were like, you're crazy. And so
I connected with another group that had a different mindset,
as a group called the National Christian Foundation, and within
thirty minutes they told us. They said, you can't give
away one hundred percent of the business, but you can
give away ninety nine percent.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
That's how How does that work?
Speaker 3 (39:39):
Well, we just took ninety nine percent of the company
and put and we divided the stock where one percent
of the stock had all the voting rights of the company.
The other ninety nine percent had the vast majority of
the value, and so we kept the one percent that
had the voting controlled the company. Basically, they said, we
can't take control of your business. That wouldn't fit what
(40:02):
they do, and so we put ninety nine percent of
the company irrevocably into a charitable trust with them, and
so now they're basically owned the company. And then later
we took the one percent and put it in a
voting trust and I'm one of the trustees on that trust.
We have eight trustees, and I did we want the
company to go on forever. And so now we can
(40:23):
transfer the company to another generation or to a leadership
team without a state taxes, without all the headache and
right without the danger of handing something that's worth probably
now a billion dollars to.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
People.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
You know, the money can do strange things to people.
And so now people can take up the leadership of
our company without having the to meet the danger stuff,
which is the money.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
And so so this National what is what's it called.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
National Christian Foundation, So.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Phil, it's actually how I met Rick Jackson was through them.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
So that Ricks. Have you met Rick at all? And
Accent Healthcare in Atlanta?
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Yeah, he's involved in them too.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yeah, he does a lot down in the Jerry at
any and I think or not not not yours.
Speaker 4 (41:07):
But he's the ron Blue had convinced him, hey, you
need to set a financial finish line in your life,
and he said, I've made enough. And then one hundred
percent of the profits of his company have been given
away ever since.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Oh yeah, great, folks, Yeah, all right, So this National
Christian Foundation owns it, but they don't control it. Correct,
So you just direct what money that the company that
the National Christian Foundation has to reinvest in the business.
But then you also direct, as you did at the
very beginning, how much it gives away. Unbelievable. Are you
(41:42):
allowed to tell me how much money you gave away
last year? I can, it's before I do, though, I
want to say. People get so impressed with big numbers,
and I don't think God is impressed with big numbers.
I mean, when Jesus was around, there's one story that
he he he told he did not a story of
(42:03):
a scene where he's watching people put a lot of
money in the in the temple offering, and this this
widow came up and put two small coins in. He said,
nothing about these big gifts going in, and that widow
made a sacrificial gift.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
He said, hey, guys, check this out. It was like
the Hall of Fame giving story in the Bible. It
is so so God is not impressed with the commas
and the zeros.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
We've never given away a nickel that God didn't give us.
We're not, We're not.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
It's not sacrificial giving. I made one sacrificial gift when
I was in college. I haven't made one since.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
What was it.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
It's kind of a long story, but it was. It
was not going on a ski trip so we could
send the money to a famine an Ethiopia, and it
was canceling that. Yeah, it was three hundred and fifty
bucks and and it didn't it didn't change that much
in Ethiopia, but it changed me. No, it was a
it was a moment in my life where I just
(43:01):
had I saw people starving to death, said how can
I live like I'm.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Living when people are starving to death? And so that's
and we said it just didn't fit right to go.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, that's interesting that of all the stories you evoked,
that this deep into the conversation, that feels like that
might have been a benchmark in your whole thinking. It
was it was.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I mean, I think generosity sets us free in some ways,
and I think that was it broke some connection with
money for me at that time that it really helped.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
I'm very thankful for.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
So I get you, don't. I get what you're saying
about the commas, and that the widow given those two
coins was probably a much greater sacrifice on her part
than the very wealthy guys putting gold bars in exactly.
I get it. Yeah, still I'm curious.
Speaker 3 (43:52):
Yeah, so we last year we sent out fifty five
million dollars?
Speaker 1 (43:56):
How about that?
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Is that crazy?
Speaker 1 (44:00):
I may not be impressed, but I sure wow. Yeah,
and that's a year. That was last year.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
Yeah, And altogether we've sent out maybe three hundred and
sixty million dollars or something like that. So it's it's
really ramped up in the last five or six years.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Are you do you allow yourself to be proud of that?
Or is that or is in your mind that also wrong?
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I'm a human being, you know, and I mean it's
a wild story, and I'm for the first fifteen years
we were doing this, we wouldn't tell anybody what we
were doing.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
It was like, never was bragging.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yeah, I mean the verse that says, don't let your
left hand know what the right hand's doing, you know,
be don't give to get the attention of other people.
And so I would have never come on a show
like this in the first fifteen years. But then people
challenged me to say, you know, this is an amazing
story that God has done.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
It's not something you've done. God's done a really cool thing.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
At this company, and you need to be willing to
tell the story of what he's done.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah, and what if your story can inspire others to
give a little more exactly?
Speaker 2 (45:02):
And I think it has.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
I mean many people I think have heard the story
and said, man, I want to be in on that.
That seems like freedom to me. That seems like a
great way to live life. And I think it is.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
So it's.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Fifty five million dollars last year. Bro.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yeah, that wild.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Alan
Barnhardt and you do not want to miss part two.
That's now be able to listen to. Together. Guys, we
can change this country, but it starts with you. And
as a special note, I'm sitting next to George, Alex's son,
(45:43):
and he really wants you to join us in part two.
Don't you George ring the bells talk, don't care. George
wants to see you in part two. We'll see you there.
Host
Bill Courtney
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