The Kingdom Investor
The Kingdom Investor
62 - Growing Your Business through Servant Leadership | Alan Barnhart
We continue our conversation with Alan Barnhart, CEO of Barnhart Crane & Rigging where we explore his journey of growing his mom-and-pop operation into a $500 million revenue company with 1700 employees and 50 offices across the US. Alan discusses the importance of delegation, and autonomy, and how faith has been a big part of his company's success. He shares his ultimate lesson on leadership, which is to be a servant of all, work for the benefit of others, and build up people.
We focus on leadership and finding the right people as Alan emphasizes servant leadership as a key to achieving business goals. He gives advice on handling tough decisions and the importance of taking responsibility for one's mistakes. We also delve into funding missions globally and prioritizing employee well-being highlighting the importance of generosity, and the proper use of money. Don't miss out on this uplifting conversation about building up people and advancing God's kingdom through your business.
Key Points From This Episode:
- Alan talks about transferring 99% of their company’s stock into a charitable trust under the National Christian Foundation.
- What types of ministry were implemented within Alan’s company and business to support the employees?
- Alan discusses the keys to successfully growing the company.
- Alan advises how you can successfully decentralize and delegate company operations.
- Alan’s advice on how to be a better leader and why servant leadership is crucial to becoming one.
- What is Alan’s principle on dismissing employees?
- What is the greatest investment that Alan has ever made?
- Alan encourages young people to develop generosity as early as possible.
- Alan emphasizes the importance of reading the Bible, heeding its warning about money, and why putting constraints in your life leads to freedom
Tweetables:
“If you're in a spot where God puts you in a position to make money, use that. But read the warnings. Think and pray about it. Be intentional with money because it can be a blessing or a curse.”
“Recognize that God owns it all and ask the owner what he wants to do with his stuff.”
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Generous Business Owner Podcast
The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn
Thomas Sowell / Hoover Institution
Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher
The Kingdom Investor Podcast on LinkedIn
EPISODE 62
[INTRODUCTION]
ANNOUNCER: Imagine taking your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives, and leaving a godly legacy for generations to come. Get ideas and strategies to do just that when you listen to these personal stories from high-level Kingdom champions.
The Kingdom Investor Podcast showcases business leaders who have moved from success to significance, sharing how they use worldly wealth for kingdom impact. Discover how they grew in generosity, impacted more lives, and built godly legacies. You'll find motivation, inspiration, and practical steps to grow as a Kingdom investor.
Daniel White (DW): Hello, and welcome to The Kingdom Investor Podcast. This is your host, Daniel White. Thanks for joining us as we hear from Alan Barnhart. Alan is the president and CEO of Barnhart Crane & Rigging. Alan has grown the company over 37 years from a mom-and-pop operation to now over $500 million in revenue and 1700 employees. They have 50 offices across the US and they use their profits to fund missions globally. In this episode, Alan shares how he grew the business with a greater purpose, keys to success and advice for generosity. If you have enjoyed the show, help us reach more listeners by sharing with your friends and following us on LinkedIn at The Kingdom Investor Podcast. And now without further ado, let's get right into the show.
[INTERVIEW]
DW: Can you talk a little bit more about you giving away the company to, is it NCF?
Alan Barnhart (AB): Yeah, National Christian Foundation. Yeah, we did that in 2007 and 2008, transferred 99% of the stock into NCF. We wouldn't say we gave away the company. I mean, technically, we no longer own the company. Practically, in our mind, we own it in terms of we are the chief steward, still the CEO. We're still pushing just as hard and working just as hard. It's in our mind, we never owned it, God owned it all along. As far as the IRS was concerned, we each owned half. And if one of us were to have died, there was going to be tens of millions of dollars of tax bill. And so, that's what we were starting to try to figure out. And we said, hey, let's just transfer the stock, we don't see any negative dip to doing that. We didn't think there was going to be any tax benefit when we did because we have already given away 50% of our income. Turns out there have been very substantial tax benefits in doing this. But a lot of other benefits, too.
AB: So, we kept 1% of the company at that time that had all the voting rights. We controlled the company from a voting standpoint. Two years later, we took that 1% and put it into a voting trust that's controlled by a group of trustees. So, if I get hit by a truck tomorrow, the ownership is established and covered. And we want that group to kind of be the anti-mission drift group over the next 100 years to make sure that this company continues with its same purpose. There's a lot of stories of mission drift that had been, you know, they drifted 180 degrees and maybe a degree at a time, but they drifted into this thing where the original creator of the wealth would be rolling over in his grave. And so we try to avoid that. And you can only kind of put things in place that avoid what we think is a reasonable attempt to tamp down with financial repression.
DW: Yeah, absolutely. That's very helpful. And then, you know, we talked a lot about generosity and just the incredible example that you've been around generosity. Can you also talk about what kind of impact and ministry you've done within the business?
AB: Sure. Yeah. I mean, we are, because we send money out to ministries, to organizations that are changing lives so we're sort of subbing that out, so to speak. We said maybe we need to be doing it inside our business as well. So right from the beginning, we were doing things like sending people to a marriage conference with family life, the same marriage conference where they're going to hear the gospel and get some good input on marriage. We do things with Dave Ramsey and we have financial counselors that people can go to and we have other types of counseling that we provide. We have a benevolent fund, we have about 20 programs in our group that we call Barnhart Cares. We also have, every employee, we designate money to them for them to designate two ministries in their local area that are serving the poor. So, we have an app that does that, and they're able to send money out. And they can, if they do volunteer hours, we put more money in their account. And if they put money in their account, we'll match it. So we're doing things to try to involve every person in our company.
AB: We try to present the gospel to our employees. We're not a Christian company, most of our people are not believers. But we have, we don't want a person to work here a long time, if a person is going to reject Jesus, we want him to do it on good information. My supposition is most people reject Jesus on bad information. And we would like to avoid that obviously. A person doesn't, we would say a person can believe anything or nothing and work in our company. They don't have to conform to our theology at all. The higher they go in our company, the more they have to conform to our culture. And I think that's probably the case in every company. Our company and our culture is informed by scripture. But they don't have to conform to our theology at all and many don't.
DW: Right. Yeah, that's helpful. So all right, then looking at strategy, we talked a lot about strategy, can you maybe highlight some of the keys to your success in growing this company?
AB: Unlike many in our industry, we believe in sales, we believe in selling our product. A lot of people that we've acquired over the years have said with pride, our product sells itself. Our service is so good, it sells itself. And here, we believe in going out and selling the product. We believe in innovation. We try to keep coming up with better ways of doing things, creating a better solution and then harvesting the value that we've created with that solution. If we can come up with a way if everybody else is going to take half a million dollars to a certain project, and we can find a way to do it for $300,000, then maybe we'll bid for 50, you know, and we'll try to harvest the difference. So innovation is the key to that. And just like any company that innovates to come up with something great, you don't want to give away that value, you want to harvest that value. So that's what creates the value and harvests it.
AB: We want to be a great place to work. We have long- incentives, we have good measurement systems, we measure things that matter. And we don't measure a bunch of stuff, that doesn't matter. I think that a mistake. Some people either don't measure anything, or measure too many things. And so I think one of our secrets has been measuring things that matter and focusing on them, measuring things that are going to affect decisions. And then, the decentralization, I think, has been part of our secret sauce, we have a network of 50 branches, and each one is basically an independent business unit. Each one has its own team that makes sound decisions. And there are some parameters, and there are some things that we have to conform to, but we try to keep the decisions made locally as much as possible.
AB: I read a book recently called The Road to Serfdom. It's an old book but basically talking about central planning. They were talking about the Nazis and the Soviets, but how central planning is so detrimental to flourishing. And, I think it's the same in a company. And so we want to decentralize as much as we can and let people have autonomy and do things. And I think that's been part of our secret sauce delegation, and allowing people to make choices. And then I think the big, overarching wildcard has been God has chosen to do it. I think there are plenty of people that have worked harder and are smarter and more godly and have had completely different outcomes in business. And I don't know why God has chosen to do it to people. We've never given away a nickel that God didn't provide to us. We want to just keep being a good conduit.
AB: And we're amazed that God has done what he's done. It was a little bitty company, we weren't sure if we'd survive the first year. It has grown to where it is. When it was a little bitty company. We opened up our hands and said, God, this is yours. You know, and at what point along the way should we say now it's mine. You know, it just doesn't make any sense to us. Watch. We watched over the years God do amazing things and towards the end, let's So let's stay on that path. And let's don't, don't try to grab hold of this thing.
DW: So you mentioned delegation as being really important. And I think that's something that's really hard for a lot of us. Do you have any advice on how to do that well?
AB: I read a lot of books and I read one on the Les Schwab Tire Company years ago. And I think that company has changed over the years. But it was an interesting book, I think to get to the point of realizing that, that if you let people make decisions close to the work, they're gonna screw up, they're gonna make some mistakes. But you know, you are, too, if you. And we read a book called Joy At Work. This guy went over the top, I think he went too far, frankly, in this area but the concept of “mistakes are going to be made”. If you let them get made by others, they're gonna learn from their mistakes. And if you give them the joy of being able to use their skills and gifts, you're going to attract better people. And if you lock people down with rules, and basically say, bring all the data to me, and I'll tell you what to do, that's going to attract a certain type of person, and the company can only get as big and as good as you are. So, if you want to grow and develop, I think it's good for people. I think it's also good for long-term growth, I think everything, all of God's principles work in business, and they're there.
AB: So the concept of servant leadership is something we preach a lot. And, you know, I think it's the right thing to do to build it, you know, for people to build up people. I think it's also good business. We have found, at least in the United States, very little, maybe very, very little disadvantage in business, of being a follower of Jesus. There are a few tools that are not in our toolbox because they're not tools that work long-term anyway. They do work sometimes in the short term, and we would allow some of those, but I do think it would be different in some other countries where some of the corruption issues would be much more significant. Fortunately, we live here. And that's why we have decided, we looked hard at branching out internationally. And that was one of the reasons we decided not to is it's really hard. And let's stay where we understand the law, the culture, the currency, the whatever, the language. So we've decided we're going to stay in the US and go to foreign countries like California. Which is pretty foreign.
DW: Yeah, that's good. So, you mentioned the importance of leadership. Can you share some leadership advice for us, as we try and grow to be better leaders?
AB: Yeah, I mean, keep studying. The Bible has a lot to say about leadership. And I think grasping servant leadership is very crucial. We've had some branch managers who were highly successful at making money, they really understood how to bring in profit, but they were tyrants. And we had to replace them, which was difficult to let somebody go, who has really good numbers, but so I think, grasping servant leadership, what does it mean to work in a way that you're benefiting others? You're there to serve them. And I think hard work is part of it.
AB: One of the benefits of having a relatively limited lifestyle is I don't have a bunch of toys to maintain or acquire. So I am able to work, and I don't think there's much of a replacement for hard work nor do I think it's a necessary evil. I think it's part of the good stuff in life. God gave us work before the fall. Work is something that brings us dignity. It's a great thing using our skills and gifts. And his service doesn't tear us down. I mean, we obviously don't want to be workaholics and we want a balanced life. But we want an integrated life and work as part of that integration thing because it's really cool. And, you know, having a purpose for the profit is motivational.
AB: So, anyway, I'm getting off of the leadership topic, but I do think finding the right people, most of the key people in our company I recruited were not part of our industry. They were people that I knew personally and understood their character and said, that's the kind of person we want in our organization. We'll find a spot for them. And they have migrated into key positions in our company. Not 100% success there but a higher percent success. One guy who has a Ph.D. in chemistry and working for a big company, and they wanted to transfer him and I said, why don't you come work for us? And he said, what do you need with a Ph.D. in chemistry? I said, I don't need a Ph.D. in chemistry, but I need you. I said, you know, it's the kind of guy that changed his own oil and rebuilt his own engine. He was a mechanical oriented guy, he was like what we do. And he's been with us now for 15 years or so in just with a variety of positions over the years, and a really key guy.
AB: A lot of our key people are in that category, recruited them because of their character and taught them. They learned because of their character. And so, finding the right people, I think, is really critical. We've made some mistakes there. We've kept people longer than we should. I think that a great leadership principle is when it's time for a person to go, make the move, don't linger. You're not being nice to them by lingering in dealing with it. Everybody in your company is watching you. And if you don't deal with it, they're scratching their head, and you're losing credibility. And so it's one of the leadership principles that has been hard for me, and that I've learned from and I totally agree with it, it's still hard. But, I've made some big mistakes in keeping people longer than I should have.
DW: Right. That kind of leads to another question about having hard conversations. When to let somebody go and when to, you know, give a warning. Do you have any advice around that and when to be merciful? And how that plays in? Any recommendations or advice on that?
AB: Yeah, great question. A couple of things I'd say is, I don't think anybody should ever be surprised when they get fired. They should have seen it coming. But the conversations we've had leading up to that. So I think you need to have hard conversations. And when a person when it gets to that point, they should be okay. Yeah, I knew that was coming. I could, you know, we've talked about it, and I knew that was coming. As far as second chances, we've had some very key people make some huge mistakes in our company, and surviving. And it's all really dependent on two things. One is their response to it. It's not the crime, it's the cover-up. You know, it's if Nixon had, Nixon had come clean, he didn't do anything wrong if he had to come clean, it'd been fine. But he lost the presidency because of the cover-up. So if a person was saying, I screwed up, and here's what I've learned and I'm not gonna let this happen again, I can live with that. And we've had a guy, we had a guy that just he was in office just a few minutes ago, when he was a young guy here, tipped over our most expensive crane and destroyed it. It was a million-dollar crane at that time, and he owned it. That was 20 years ago. And, he's still with us.
AB: So, I think that we would say people don't get fired here for making a mistake. They do get fired for not learning from their mistakes, not owning their mistakes. I've had other guys that had accidents. And they basically said, It's not my fault. I wasn't driving too fast around that corner. I don't know why the piece came off my truck. And I say, What? So you're telling me you were going to have that same load on the same corner, and you drive the same speed as next time? And you didn't want to answer that. We just can't have you in our company. I'm sorry. You know, we even have people that make mistakes go before the team and explain, instead of us explaining what went wrong, let them explain what went wrong.
AB: And so, I think there's a lot to owning the mistakes that you make. And if somebody's willing to do that we can live with a lot of them. And there are other people that are not attentive enough. They're a danger to themselves and others. We're in a relatively, in an industry with some risks to it. And so there are times we say this person just shouldn't be in this industry because their personality is not one that's going to, they're more likely to have an accident and get themselves hurt. And so, for their sake, we need to encourage them to find another industry. But that's over. Everyone, but most of them are people not owning to their mistakes is pretty, pretty deadly here. But owning your mistakes, I think, the right person is much less likely to ever make that mistake again if they've found it.
DW: Alright, I've got a fun question for you, what is the greatest investment that you've ever made?
AB: Greatest investment? Well, an engagement ring was probably my greatest investment. Getting my wife to marry me, that was my greatest investment. You know, the $20,000 that we put in to start the company turned out pretty good. But I'd say I'll go with one more, which was, it was a $350 investment that I made when I was in college. And I was a senior in college, that can set in 83. There were famines in Ethiopia, people were starving to death in Ethiopia, and my roommate and I were hearing about this. And we're talking about it saying, you know, these are brothers and sisters in Christ who are starving to death. How can we live like we're living when other people in this world are starving to death. We struggled with that conversation, it's a hard conversation. And I think we should continue to struggle with it.
AB: And a couple of days went, we kept talking about it. And what we decided to do, we planned to go skiing out in Colorado on spring break. And it was gonna cost us 350 bucks. And we decided to not go skiing, and take that 350 bucks. And it ended up being about 10 of us, about 10 and send it to Ethiopia. And you know that $3,500 probably didn't change all that much in Ethiopia looking back on it. But it changed us. It kind o, it was probably the only sacrificial gift I've ever made in my life. And it was. So I think it was a heck of a good investment. It's something I look back on. Like, it's been almost 40 years ago and I remember and think that was a heck of a good investment.
DW: Wow, that's so cool. And just to see how God multiplied that time and time again, over the course of your life since then. That's incredible.
AB: It's for that reason that I encourage young people to develop generosity now. Don't wait till the student loans are paid off. Don't wait until the car is paid off. Start now with generosity. Because generosity breaks the power of greed. And, again, I know there are blessings that come with generosity. I'm not a prosperity gospel guy. I don't think those blessings have dollar signs attached to them most of the time. But I do think there's tremendous blessings that we miss out on by doing what comes naturally in this area of money, which is society. I don’t need more.
DW: So before we enter the mentor minute, is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience?
AB: No, I mean, I think maybe the one thing I would share is read your Bible, particularly the Gospels. If you're in a spot where God puts you in a position to make money, use that. Don't do what comes naturally. Be careful. God warns about it a bunch. Read the warnings, think about it, pray about it. And be intentional about it because money can be a blessing money can be a curse. And I think it's more often a curse than a blessing. So be careful, be intentional. Putting constraints in your life leads to freedom. You would think it doesn't. You're thinking putting in constraints cramps your style. I'd say living a life without constraints leads to bondage. And that in every area of life, in throwing off what God would have you do and say I want to do it my way ends up leading to bondage. So recognize that God owns that all and ask the owner what he wants to do with his stuff.
DW: Yeah, that's very good. Who is the most influential person that you know, and how have they impacted you?
AB: You know, I think Randy Alcorn impacted me a heck of a lot. He wrote some great books, particularly The Treasure Principle. That's my kind of book. It's really short was small, but it is so powerful. So, I think he is. He is a great one. I love listening to Tim Keller and it just seemed like he always has insights that are out there that are powerful. My wife has been a tremendous impact on me. She keeps me humble and she has insights that I don't have. So I know there's a whole bunch but those three quickly come to mind. On the secular side, I've been listening to a guy, Thomas Sowell, older guy with the Hoover Institution. To me he has some good answers for some of the problems that we have in our society today and debunk some of the bad answers. So I've benefited from him.
DW: And then what book or podcast has changed the course of your life?
AB: Yeah, The Treasure Principle definitely did. The Bible definitely did. And I've been reading a couple of books lately that I would, I don't know if I'd call them life changers but maybe confirmers. One was called The Coddling of the American Mind. And one was called Live Not By Lies. So those are some fairly recent books that I think speak into some of the cultural issues that are going on today and how we should respond. The Coddling of the American Mindwas written by a couple of liberal guys, but they have some really good insights. So, I like George Will. I listen to George Will. He's an atheist, but I think he has some…I like Warren Buffett and a ton of pastors, you know. Nowadays, you can go online and listen to every, these brilliant people, it's just great. And so I listened to many different, I listen to a lot books and one of the maybe tips I would add is, I have a headphone and I just put it in my platform while doing the dishes or doing chores around the house, I'm listening to books. And I've been able to listen to hundreds of books that way. And, I do think we ought to be listening to people that disagree with us, too, and get balance in our, in our thinking. So that's been helpful to listen to some liberal guys and listen to some Bernie speeches and NPR, whatever.
DW: You co host a podcast called the Generous Business Owner Podcast, correct?
AB: Yes.
DW: Yeah. So that's another one to check out.
AB: Faith-Driven Entrepreneur is a great podcast as well. Who handles the case from those guys to have some grant of, I think they also have one called Faith-Driven Investor. Those guys are great. It's all here in stories, you know, and stories are so inspirational. And other thing, I would encourage people to look at it as this thing called the Journey of Generosity that's done by Generous Giving, where you go away, and they have a whole bunch of stories, and you spend 24 hours interacting together in a small group around those stories and around some Bible study and, and some, some great talks and people don't get this whole issue of money is something that our enemy uses to mess us up. And people stay isolated. It's not really cool to talk about generosity. But I think that to, get away and, and be intentional about thinking about it. I'd really encourage people to see if they can find a journey of generosity to get to. Yeah, let's get
DW: What is the greatest lesson in leadership that you've learned?
AB: Let's say he wants to be great as the servant of all is that, to me is the ultimate leadership lesson. I'm sorry, I just finished hiking the Appalachian Trail. And on the trail I took, you don't go by your real name, you take a trail name. And I took the trail name Wilberforce. And, I deduced people never heard of William Wilberforce, very few have ever heard of him. And I say, would you like to hear his story? He was the number two social reformer of all time. And I keep wanting people to ask me who was the number one social reformer of all time? And it's amazing how few did. I mean, it seems crazy. You think that's unfair? And so you think it's very natural questions. I told his story which was a great story of God changing a man and him changing the world. But yeah, I think Jesus was the number one social reformer of all time and you know, how he interest women and children and, but leadership, servant leadership was his mantra. He demonstrated it, he preached it. He reacted against those who are practicing the opposite. And so I think, really grasping that your job is to serve those who work for you, as opposed to being served, I think is the number one leadership concept.
DW: Yeah, that's good. Thank you so much for that. And thank you for coming on the show. This has been very insightful and I just really appreciate you sharing your story and being open with us. Is there anything in your life or, business that we can be praying for?
AB: Yeah, real short term. I mean, I know people aren't going to pray for you for five years that when you say something. So two weeks from now we have our senior leadership team and meeting are off site. And what's a time we really want to glue ourselves together more, and we have a few new entries into that. So if you could be praying for our our senior leaders meeting, it takes place in two weeks.
DW: Can I pray right now?
AB: Please.
DW: God, I thank you and praise you for Alan Barnhart and his family. I thank you for the leaders at Barnhart Crane & Rigging. Lord, I pray that you'd be with them, especially in this meeting coming up. I pray that you would help them to be good servant leaders so that they would be focused on you, following you and really just trying to pursue your kingdom, build your kingdom and lead really well. Lead through serving others and adding value to them. God we thank you for this time. We thank you for all of the listeners and their families. I pray that you would be with them, that you would guide them and that you would help us to use business to advance your kingdom and bring You glory. In Christ’s name, I pray. Amen.
AB: Amen. Thank you, Daniel.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
DW: Thank you guys for listening to another episode of The Kingdom Investor Podcast. You guys have a wonderful day. Bye!
[OUTRO]
ANNNOUNCER: What if you could take your generosity to the next level, impacting more lives in your community and around the world, creating a godly legacy for generations to come?
Now you can. Your first step is crafting your kingdom investing thesis. Reserve your spot in our next online workshop where we guide you through the process of discovering your passions, create a strategic plan and connect you to opportunities that will help you fulfill your God-given calling as a kingdom investor. Register today by clicking the link in the show notes.
Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you next time for another episode of The Kingdom Investor Podcast.
[END]
