11/13/24 - 2068: Kingdom Legacies that Last

Jim Brangenberg: You've tuned into iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha Brangenberg: We are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to transform the workplace of every Christian into a mission field. What could that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah, Martha and I were in Jacksonville, Florida, a few years back, and a business guy who had owned his business for 30 years was telling us his story. He had infiltrated his entire organization with a biblical worldview. His culture was solidly about loving the employee and taking great care of them.

Overall, he was wildly profitable and his customers and employees were very happy. As this business owner believed the American dream of retirement was biblical, he decided to sell his business. He got multiple bids and sold it to the highest bidder. No consideration was given in choosing a takeover company that would preserve his culture. It was all about the money. Guess what?

In six months, the company was unrecognizable. Employees had quit and the once great culture had eroded into a typical culture focused on profit, not purpose and culture. This is the story being repeated over and over again all over the country. We even witnessed a church do it with their assisted living community. This has got to stop.

Followers of jesus who own companies cannot just sell the companies of the highest bidder. If you're the owner of a company, you're a steward and responsible to God for its mission and profits and the employees, too. How do we stop this massive disaster? We need a humble Jesus centered superhero.

Andy Galpin is just the guy. He wants to buy your company and preserve your kingdom culture. And you need to talk to Andy Galpin. Welcome to iWork4Him.

Andy Galpin: Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Martha.

Jim Brangenberg: All right. So before we hear your story and how you became passionate about preserving kingdom culture, tell us how you met Jesus.

Andy Galpin: Yeah, of course. I like to say it was in a cattle shed, but there were no longer any manger beds in there. In a little town called Shepton Mallet in the UK. I was at a Christian conference called New Wine, which came out of the Anglican Charismatic Renewal. It's a conference we'd attended as a family for many years, and I'd always been part of it and always been brought to church growing up with my family. But it was something that I was inheriting to some extent from my parents rather than something that had become personal to me.

And in that moment in, in one of the sessions, we were invited forward to prayer as we were every other day during that week, but this time I had this sudden urge to move forward, sudden urge to respond that I couldn't quite explain. And the only way I can reconcile it is when you see an injustice in the world and you have that feeling that you need to respond and do something about it. That's exactly what was driving me forward in that moment.

And when they prayed over those of us who responded, I had this overwhelming sense of both how much wrong I'd got in my short 12 years of life up to that moment, but also how much God loved me in spite of that and how much more he loved me regardless of that. And that's the moment that my faith really became my faith and I became a Christian and started following the Lord for myself and leveraging the beautiful foundation that my parents had nourished over those 12 years leading up to that time.

Martha Brangenberg: Wow. I love you sharing that story because really what we're going to talk about today really sounds very similar in the fact that you have seen a need and want to try to rescue that need. So let's talk about that. How did you become passionate about preserving kingdom culture when an owner decides to sell or to move on?

Andy Galpin: Yeah I started my career at IBM, big, massive American company. And I was part of the leadership team for the kind of Christian groups within that, but we were not allowed to talk about our faith openly in that environment. We were actually a secret group within the organization. I had an atheist friend who used to call it the secret church, which I feel puts down our friends in China in terms of what they're suffering with. But it did resonate with us in terms of the journey that we were going on, that we were trying to live out our faith in a culture that doesn't necessarily recognize and celebrate that despite encouraging us to bring our whole selves to work every day.

And I saw the challenge of trying to shape and mold the culture from the bottom. And for me, I really learned in that environment that the leader sets the tone and that it comes from the top and it's very difficult to influence that from the bottom. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. And our role as Christians in those ecosystems is to interact with that and try and shape the culture to better reflect that broader redemption story that we're participating in.

And but I felt that the way to have a bigger impact was to be at the top and try and iterate that from the top down. And the many conversations I've had with people who've owned their businesses and sold them were very similar to the one that you mentioned, Jim and Martha, at the beginning. And that people have regret after they sell because they only focus on that final number that comes out on the other side.

While they're running the company, they think about values. They think about their employees. They think about nurturing and growing people and creating an ecosystem that really allows us to reflect God's culture here on Earth. But we forget that a little bit when the transaction happens. We're too focused on being an owner and not on being a steward, and our responsibilities as stewards outlast the time that we have as owners of a business, which will naturally change over time as we reach the end of our time working and our season working in those organizations.

Jim Brangenberg: But you're young. You worked at IBM, which there's no way you knew what was really going on at the top because you were 85 layers from the top when you started IBM. I interviewed with IBM out of college. All right. So how did you become so aware of a problem that's so old that's been going on for so long? Because It's safe to say that 99. 9 percent of christian business owners have never been taught to create a kingdom culture let alone preserve it when they're selling. How did you become so aware?

Andy Galpin: Part of it comes from my experience in churches. I was part of a church in Portsmouth called city life church that was very intentional about building a culture that reflected the kingdom of God and enabled people to carry that out into their day to day jobs and their day to day workplaces. So from a very young age, I was following some of John Maxwell's leadership teachings and trying to apply that in a leadership context within the local church, and then working and going to work and going to university outside of that context and wrestling with how do I take what I'm doing in a church setting and bring it into the workplace because I believe we are called to be ambassadors into the world.

And most of us are not called to be ambassadors solely inside the church. Some people are called to that kind of full time traditional ministry. But oftentimes that removes very key people. who are very good at evangelizing and talking about their faith from the very environments that they have the opportunity to talk to people who aren't yet Christians. So most of us who go to church on a Sunday morning need to be thinking about how do I live out my ministry and my calling in my day to day work? And we spend 90, 000 hours of our life at work. If we don't spend that time focused on ministry and thinking about that as part of our day to day ministry, we're never going to be able to supplement that opportunity and other vocational opportunities.

Jim Brangenberg: It's so true.

Martha Brangenberg: And I love the fact that you recognize that you were part of a church that got it in a sense. And what a blessing that is. But that's why iWork4Him as here, it is to help more people understand the other hours of your week and how you're spending it outside of the four walls of the church.

Speaking of becoming aware of problems: over the past decade or so, Jim and I have been increasingly aware of problems surrounding how we spend our money and how much our money helps promote company values. Several years ago we really dove into the understanding of biblical investing and work hard to make sure that our financial portfolio supports our biblical values.

But why would we actually support companies that fund abortion when we really never would do that directly? As we've uncovered companies that provide quality services that we need, we have aligned ourselves with them and try to inform our listeners about them. Patriot Mobile is one of those companies that we align with. Their quality cell phone service is amazing, gives you towers that you've come to rely upon, while supporting values that you believe in. Built on pillars of faith, freedom, and family, Patriot Mobile is an excellent choice for our cell phone service provider and for yours too.

So go to patriotmobile. com forward slash iWork4Him and talk to their U. S. based support group today.

Jim Brangenberg: All right, so Andy, Tree Leaf Partners is what you call your organization. So how is Tree Leaf Partners put together? Where did you find all these people interested in Stopping the stupid of selling kingdom companies to the highest bidder?

Martha Brangenberg: I bet that's not his tagline.

Jim Brangenberg: That could be though!

Martha Brangenberg: "Stop the stupid!"

Jim Brangenberg: It's available for you at no charge. (laughter)

 I bet there's not one out there like that, though.

Andy Galpin: Probably not. And you need those kinds of catchy phrases that might ruffle some feathers, draw people to you.

So let me tell you about one of my investors. I've got an investor called George Clark from reframe capital. We actually met through an event that InterVarsity was hosting. He's been doing this for 20 years in the private equity space, thinking about how do we retain the values of an organization that have been built over 20, 30, 40, 50 years and ensure that it's continued over time. So not all of my partners are like George and have been doing this forever, but I also saw this as a great opportunity of a man sharing and demonstrating kingdom values and how they can still drive a kingdom level of return.

So what I do is I lean heavily on things like the redemptive business framework that Praxis Lab and Andy Crouch came out with to help communicate what I'm doing and help both people like George, who's been doing this for 20 years, but also other investors and that we're interested in and focused on culture and understanding on what that means to emphasize culture to still drive a financial return in a successful way.

Jim Brangenberg: You gotta go in a little bit deeper there. Redemptive business framework. Explain what do you mean by that? Just in normal people's terms.

Andy Galpin: Yeah, normal people's terms. So they've got a great website that I encourage your listeners to dive into. But it's basically thinking about business through three lenses. There are three ways of approaching it. We can be exploitive. So we take from the world. We can be ethical, do the right thing. Or we can be redemptive and think about how do we want to drive positive change in the world through what we're doing.

And that's where the concept of servant leadership comes in. If you're being a servant leadership, that means you're putting aside your needs and what is in your best interests for the best interests of other stakeholders. So we as Christians, as leaders, seeking to be servant leaders, are looking to be redemptive in how we operate all aspects of our business. How can I lay aside what's in my own personal interest to benefit others and improve the world and participate in that with God?

Martha Brangenberg: Awesome. Okay, so tell us about George Clark then. He is one of your partners that has that kind of perspective.

Andy Galpin: Yeah, so he is a full time investor, been doing it for over 20 years. Also sits on the board of generous giving so really involved in that movement. We actually attended a journey of generosity together at the Museum of the Bible, just to meet with other Christian business leaders and think and process about how do we think about generosity in the broader scale of things, both as the owners of businesses like this, as the investors in businesses like this, and also on the other side once we've had a capital event and we're no longer operating, but we have income and money that God has given us responsibility to steward well.

And so he's been in investments for over 20 years and really loves what he's doing. At the moment he sits on the board of a Christian publishing house that focuses on homeschool curriculums as well. And so that's part of one of his many board seats as well.

Jim Brangenberg: All right. So we've had conversations prior to the show. You're actively looking for a company or companies to buy. What are you looking for?

Andy Galpin: Yeah, definitely. There are three things I tend to focus on. The first is purpose driven. The company has to be able to point to a real problem they're solving in the world and understand how they're contributing towards fixing that. It's why I tend to focus a lot on sectors like education and healthcare, because if you take a healthcare company and you can trace the problem this company solves directly back to a patient, even if they're 10 steps away from actually interacting with a patient, then they're doing a really good job in the world.

And if you can't, then it perhaps suggests that they aren't doing the right thing in that ecosystem that's really benefiting the person who it should be benefiting in that space. The second thing I look for is places I can add value to. I have capital partners in the form of my investors, but I've also spent six years of my life building better experiences for customers and employees and using technology to do that. So I like to have a technology angle to things so I can bring that expertise from my time at IBM and create more meaningful experiences for that organization.

And the third, I look for a strong foundation. So a company that's been built up over time as a good foundation, a good team, and is ready to grow and scale and build in a market that is excited to, to receive them and do more within that space.

Jim Brangenberg: So you're looking for companies that already have a purpose that are really making a difference in the world. And you're looking for companies that have good bones that you can help grow. Those are really... what was the third thing?

Martha Brangenberg: Places where he can add value.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah things that you can actually hey, this is a good company, but there's some things we can improve on here. So you're actually like hey, we can clean up a little bit and make it better. So you're looking for companies that already have great opportunity, but you want to make it better, make a bigger impact. A lot of private equity guys are like we want to come in, we want to make a quick flash bang, make a ton of money in five years and sell it at big money and move on to the next thing. Is that what this is all about?

Andy Galpin: No, Jim, it's all about a long term vision. And the big challenge with private equity is they are operating on often a five to seven year cycle. So they're looking to sell that business in five to seven years after they buy it. For me, we have no fixed fund lifecycle. So we're more of a permanent hold strategy. And I'm a little unique in terms of I am the one that's going to come in and run this business going forward. And so this is the next 10, 20, 50 years of my career. While I am the right person to run this, I will be running this organization.

And then my investors are all bought into a long term hold of the business and hopefully we'll do that in perpetuity. But obviously I will reach the age where I need to transition out at some point in the best case scenario.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah, but not for 60 years. You're still young. So you got a lot of years ahead of you.

Andy Galpin: Exactly. And at that point, we will then go through the same exercise of finding the right cultural fit for that organization to help us continue to grow, doing the impact that we've done for now 60 years.

Martha Brangenberg: So talking about the good culture, how do you know what the current status of a culture actually is? How do you test that or get the, get a real take on it? And not just the marketing brochure that looks all good and has all the right words.

Jim Brangenberg: Yeah. How do you know it's real? Like, how do you really know? Cause I know business owners are like, yeah, this is what it's all about. How do you really know?

Andy Galpin: Yeah this is really hard, Martha, in a acquisition scenario because you're dealing with imperfect information and you don't always have access to the employees, for example, prior to the transaction happening. So there's three things I tend to focus on and try to dig into.

The first starts with the owner. They represent the business, so how they talk about the business, how they talk about the people and the employees, the decisions they've made over time, and the impact they've had, and how they foresee the impact of the transaction affecting their employees. That tells you a lot about the business and a lot about the person who's been leading and setting the standard for what the culture looks like in the organization.

Second, I tend to look at kind of third party sources. So in, in the modern age, we've got platforms like Glassdoor. If companies are big enough, they'll often have a profile on there where employees are talking about the company. Reviews from customers on Google or on Yelp are a good insight into how they're treating their customers and the interactions that people have with that.

And then you can look at kind of other third parties that are involved in the ecosystem. So their competitors, how do their competitors talk about them? Their suppliers. Do their suppliers enjoy working with them? Are they good to work with? Do they pay their bills on times? Once you get further down the process, you can often talk to some of their customers to try and unpack that and understand what's going on there. And it's really insightful to talk to both existing customers and previous customers. So particularly if customers have left, understanding why they've left and they're often more likely to be honest if they no longer have that commercial relationship with the organization.

And then people like ex employees or even the community that the company resides in, just seeing whether it's well thought after in the kind of broader community that it operates in is really important.

Jim Brangenberg: You know there was that famous tv show, undercover boss, maybe you should start a new one undercover buyer.

Why couldn't you? Listen, I'm really interested in your company, we're 90 percent of the way down the road but I would like to hire somebody to infiltrate your organization so I can really make sure that everything you're telling me is true. What about that?

Martha Brangenberg: That sounds like a good show anyway. (laughter) Now I think that would be fun and exciting. And if people even said yes, you know that they're already getting close to being vetted, right? Because they're actually being willing for that to happen. That's awesome.

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Martha Brangenberg: Alrighty, so where do you think that believers get the idea that the American dream of retirement is biblical? The business owners thinking that they should sell to the highest bidder so that they can maybe tithe a lot of money, but then that's the end of things. Like, where do you think that all comes from?

Andy Galpin: Yeah, I think one of the things that has made Christianity spread so well is it doesn't have very necessarily defined ways of running the economy or the government or the ecosystem. So it adapts really well to different cultural environments. So although the core of Christianity is the same all across the globe, when you go to Uganda, when you go to Ukraine, when you go to different places, you will see different cultural expressions of that.

And I think that's a really beautiful thing we have in the church, but it's also a negative side because societal values can then influence the church and shape what we view as important or not. And I think particularly in the West and in the U. S. we're taught that our worth is tied up in our ability to either produce or spend.

So we spend the first three quarters of our life producing as much as we can. And the final quarter of our life spending as much as we can. So if we're taught in society that we are to maximize that spending power towards the end of our lives, then we look for that highest financial return when we're making that biggest decision of our lives, to exit the business and for someone else to take over it.

And I think the church has let us down a little bit broadly. We've been too focused on heaven and not enough focused on our time on earth. We're called to be part of that process with God, and God cares about our work and what we spend a hundred years doing before we go to heaven and before we have the new earth.

So he's got a role for each of us to play here and now. And I think we need to take more ownership of that role that we're playing and we need churches to step up and help educate us on how to do that better. I believe we can have a bigger kingdom impact from selling your business for a million dollars less than if you sold it for a million dollars more and just gave that money away. It just depends how you're measuring the success.

Jim Brangenberg: I just am stuck in the fact you said I have to live a hundred years. I really don't hope, I hope I don't make a hundred years. All right. So give us one success story that you found of a company that was rescued from the highest bidder process and the culture was saved.

Andy Galpin: Yeah, I love the example I heard at Main Street Summit this year. Scott and Ray bought a company called Walker Lumber. It's been around for 75 years. It's a lumberyard in Nashville. And they have spent time learning and investing in that culture. And now they partner with a halfway house to give work to recovering addicts, to help them reintegrate to society. And that's something new that they've taken the existing culture and built upon it to do something really great with it. So that's a much bigger company.

Jim Brangenberg: So they bought a company that was already had a good culture and they just take it to the next level.

Andy Galpin: Exactly. And if you think, if the owner had sold it for a couple of million dollars more and given that money to maybe a rehabilitation clinic, that's a very different short term impact versus the long term impact of having an employer that's dedicated to helping reintegrate people into society for the next 20, 50, 100 years, however long that lasts.

Jim Brangenberg: But if you happen to be one of those business owners that just believes in selling to the highest bidder and looking for an organization to give a couple million dollars to, iworkforhim. com forward slash donate. (laughter)

Martha Brangenberg: I'm not sure, that was counterproductive there, jim.

Andy Galpin: If you've already sold, Jim, then we've got to do something with the money.

Jim Brangenberg: There you go. If it's already in your giving fund, you need to empty the giving fund. We are a qualified 501c3. Okay. All right.

Martha Brangenberg: Okay. So Andy, I hope that our listeners are really getting an understanding of like... from what I'm hearing from you,, you could do a lot of things with the gifts and talents that God has given you. And you're choosing this niche that is very specific and it's a long game, which a lot of people, they don't like the long game. They want that quick turnaround or whatever. So thank you for your patience. You have a very diligent personality, obviously.

Let's dream 10 years from now. What does it look like in this trend that's preserving kingdom culture , when it finally reaches maturity? Maybe it's in 10 years. I don't know.

Andy Galpin: Yeah. Martha, I'll be busy running a company by that point, all things going well, but I'd love to see more of an ecosystem in the church where young, hungry, passionate believers can step into kingdom led businesses, learn from the best, the people who've been running these businesses for 30 years, and then continue building out that kingdom led vision into the future as the owner takes a step back.

And I think we can be more intentional about creating that ecosystem. And I know some organizations like C12 are already trying to think about how they can do that. And I'd love to see more people getting around solving this problem.

Martha Brangenberg: Actually, let me, dig deeper with just one more question, because a lot of people, we know that there's this research that says millennials want jobs that have purpose, that they want that, they want more from what they're going to do.

And it may look very different than what more might look like to me or past generations, right? So how do we make that connection? How do we get those people that are looking for that purpose connected with the businesses that we're hoping can have longevity purpose for the kingdom?

Andy Galpin: Yeah, I think it takes some intentionality. I really love the NASA story where I think it was President Kennedy was visiting the NASA space station and he bumps into the janitor and the janitor's sweeping up and clearing up after everyone at the end of the day and he asks him, What do you do here, sir? And he says, I am helping put a man on the moon.

And that's, he's not focused on his specific role in the organization. He's focused on the purpose of the organization and why it exists. And whoever leads that organization has helped him connect his work, a clean environment, with the broader purpose and passion that the company and NASA is focused on of putting a man on the moon.

So I think as business leaders, we need to be intentional about thinking through that. What is the problem I'm solving in the world? And how do I help connect everyone in my organization with that problem so they can be purpose driven in the work that they do? And then when I'm going out to the market and either hiring people into the organization or thinking about that next step and that successor, I have got a story that I can help the millennials and Gen Z kind of latch onto and understand the real problem that they're solving in the world and connect with that in their environment.

Because small businesses are 99 percent of the U. S. economy. I think 46 percent of people are employed by small businesses. We need more people in small businesses, and we need people with kingdom minded values to shape the world.

Jim Brangenberg: All right, 30 seconds of a final appeal from Andy Galpin to the business owners listening to the show today. Maybe somebody that's family members of a business owner that's thinking of selling. Andy, give your spiel.

Andy Galpin: Yeah. So I'm a redemptive acquisition entrepreneur looking to help paint the future vision of an organization with an owner who's ready to take a step back and feels called into something different. Whether that's into a different business, because they're excited about a new idea or they're ready to spend more time with the grandkids or on the golf course, because those are very exciting as well. Our ministry doesn't end, but our seasons of ministry change over time. So if you're looking for someone who has similar values to you and is excited about building out the legacy that you've started building and completing that picture that you've started painting, then I'd love to hear from you.

Equally, I love capturing stories of kingdom businesses that are breaking the way we do things conventionally. So I'd love to hear from you if you've just got stories to share as well.

Jim Brangenberg: You can find Andy online at treeleafpartners. com. Thank you, Andy Galpin for being here on iWork4Him.

Andy Galpin: Thanks, Jim. Thanks, Martha.

Jim Brangenberg: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately iWork4Him.