1988

Back in 1988 I boarded a Greyhound Bus in the parking lot of our local auto parts store in my tiny hometown of Cushing, Oklahoma — headed for the big city lights of Springfield, Missouri.

Barely 18 and fresh off a two-year failed run at Christian Rock Stardom — the biggest disappointment of my life — I walked to the back of the bus… bass guitar in hand… and scared to death.

The plan was to attend Bible College, talk a pretty girl into marrying me, and spend the rest of our lives working in the ministry.

Plans Changed

Everything was going according to plan for the first 10-15 years, including marrying a pretty girl, but then Faith Harvest Church, the church I helped start with my father-in-law, went belly-up.

I put everything into building that church… my youth, my hopes, my future… and now it was over. Devastated and depressed, my wife and I walked away (got shut out) from our dream in October 2004.

Roofing sales and telemarketing were all I knew outside of church work — jobs I took while supporting my ministry dream.

Since I was never, ever, never going back to telemarketing again, we packed up our Jeep and moved to Pensacola, Florida to work with my brother-in-law’s roofing company.

Broke and desperate, we figured our best chance of survival was to sell roofs in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan out in Pensacola. Almost every roof up and down the gulf coast had been blown off. There was a lot of work.

If we couldn’t make it doing hurricane work, we weren’t going to make it anywhere.

We didn’t make it!

After six miserable weeks in Pensacola that included almost every imaginable fiasco, my 9-month pregnant wife finally cried, “I want to go home!”

We Went Home

It was the best decision we ever made.

We went home and started our first business — a roofing company that was marketed using a simple two page sales letter, a basic website, and a little (actually, lots) of door-to-door hustle.

Years of hard work, massive failure, and desperation sprung to life overnight as we went from broke & hungry to actually having money in the bank.

The marketing tips I picked up while struggling in the ministry were paying off with our business. Soon after, family and friends were wanting help with their business challenges and things just took off from there.

It’s like I turned into a business strategy prophet — able to clearly see the future — and building businesses got real easy, real fast.

I got a corporate management job in a Fortune 500 advertising agency (mainly because we needed the health insurance), got bored after a few years, and quit to go back full-time into roofing before landing a keynote speaking gig with GAF Roofing that finally led to traveling nationwide to consult company owners on the best ways to grow their businesses.

It all started in 1988.