It’s no secret that small businesses are the heart and soul of America. Small businesses provide 2 out of every 3 jobs in America.
I am a passionate and proud small business owner. I have been endeared with the idea of owning a small business ever since my dad lost his job when I was young. I promised myself that I would never get in a position where someone else could take my freedom and finances away from me.
To this day I have kept that promise, and I wish success for every small business owner and aspiring entrepreneur out there! Luckily, there are a couple organizations that fight for our right to be independent business owners.
In this podcast episode of Retire in Texas, we dive into the two organizations putting in the work and making it easier for Christian CEOs to align their business practices with their faith.
C12 is a leader in the Kingdom seeking CEO space. They hold monthly meetings for all 2,500 of their members to help equip business owners with the right tools and resources to instill Christian values into their business practices.
The National Federation of Independent Business Owners (NFIB) works to protect small business owners’ freedoms and independence. The local governments have gone too far to regulate the free market, and we need to protect our freedom by lobbying in every facet of American government on the local, state, and national level.
Whether you are a seasoned small business owner, or an aspiring entrepreneur, you should be inspired by these organizations that are protecting our faith, freedom, and financials.
#RetireInTexasPodcast #FaithBasedBusiness #FaithDrivenEntrepreneur
TRANSCRIPT:
Retire in Texas: EP 83 transcript
Do you want a wealthy retirement without worrying about money? Welcome to the Retire in Texas podcast, where you will discover how to enjoy your faith, your family, and your freedom in the state of Texas. And now here’s your host, financial advisor, author, and all around good Texan Darryl Lyons.
Hey, this is Darryl Lyons, CEO and co-founder of PAX Financial Group. Thanks for tuning in to Retire in Texas. I have to tell you the disclosure, this information is general and natures not intended to provide specific tax or legal advice. Visit paxfinancialgroup.com for more information. So, hey look, I’m gonna talk small business today. I have a legislative update I wanna share with you guys. I’ll tease that out and share that with you at the end because it does have relevancy to where we’re going. But I do need to talk some small business stuff in there. Even if you are not a business owner, stay tuned for this because small business makes up two thirds of all jobs in the entire country. So when I talk small business, it’s impactful in the fact that we discount the relevancy of small business and hyper focus on Silicon Valley, Facebook, Amazon, which they do have a place in our economic system, specifically in the stock market.
But again, two thirds of all jobs in the entire country come from small business. I have been endeared to small business since I was little. Going back to the eighties, we lived in Bernie, Texas, and this was before Bernie was really a popular place. And if anybody is listening outside of Texas, think of like Franklin, Tennessee. That’s the best way to describe Bernie. Just these really special cultural communities, beautiful landscape, good people, good food. That’s Bernie. And we lived there when I was younger and the sheriff lived right next door to us. And my dad at the time was working for a large company and he had some toys. He had a big red truck, if you can imagine. My dad in the eighties, it was kind of like Burt Reynolds mustache kind of thing. In his truck, he had one of those car phones, but it wasn’t a cell phone, it was a big bulky thing.
We had a boat and a motorcycle, so there was stuff and toys. And my dad was doing well and he had a management and leadership role for a relatively larger company. And he would drive in from Bernie to San Antonio, which at that time there was no traffic. And I’ll never forget him going to the office one day and putting his key in the door to go to the office and it didn’t work. So my dad called corporate, actually I think he called, I may have this story a little off, but he might have called the building management. And building management said, well, it’s not us, it’s corporate. And corporate said, you’re done. You’re outta here. You don’t have a job anymore. Now keep in mind, this was the eighties. There was something called a savings and loan crisis. Some of you guys remember that oil and gas issues, really a lot of tension in 87 in the stock market crash.
So he was a victim. And many of you guys listening were victim of that era. And I’m not saying by a victim of mentality, I’m just saying that you were impacted by the economic environment specifically in the South Texas region. And my dad wasn’t averse to that. The challenge was is my dad didn’t have that college degree or high school degree. So going and finding another job was challenging. And from that point, he struggled to find work that could support the family. So we moved down to Harlingen. There was just always something financially problematic. And I could tell story after story about my experience as a child dealing with financial challenges, but the reality was is I always blamed that key that didn’t work. And I thought I created this story in my mind as a child that I never wanted to be in that situation where somebody could just let me go and I would be destitute and my family would be hurting.
Now of course, there’s other factors involved, but I, as a child, created a story that I never wanted to work for somebody. I wanted to be my own business owner. And so I’ve always been endeared to the idea of being a business owner. And here we are today, PAX Financial Group is a small business in San Antonio, Texas, I helped co-found. My sister is a business owner, she has a photography business. My brother does various augmented virtual reality stuff. And my parents, actually, my dad’s rebounded quite well and him and my mom still own a fire and safety protection business. So family dinners are very much about talking small business, marketing, budgeting, capital, things like that. So small business we’re endear to. And so when I talk about it, I talk about it not from necessarily a place of authority, although we’ve had a lot of success, but more so as a place of passion for small business owners and understanding the grind.
I was telling my wife the other day, when I see a logo on the highway of a small business, I don’t see the logo. I see somebody that developed that logo and had this moment of, it’s a euphoric high of hope where they look at this logo and they say, “I can do this”. And they have this dream, and I know it sounds pollyannic, but when I see a business logo of a small business, I think there’s somebody that looked at that logo and built it and had the entire world in front of them of hope. And it’s a grind. I’m telling you, there’s that moment of euphoria, of hope, of dream, of vision, and then you have the grind and the grit and the ugly. But I look at business logos differently because I know that there was a moment in time that somebody had a passionate dream and I get it.
And so very passionate about small business. And I’m gonna tell you about two groups that you need to know of that are to me, defining leadership in the small business space. And you’re gonna be proud to know that these organizations exist. And I’m not talking about your local chamber or the national chambers. They do play a role, although I’ve not really been a big chamber guy. I do love the chamber for a lot of reasons. I just never found my footing in the chamber. I went to a lot of the networking things when you’re younger and trying to grind and find clients. But that was tough. And so I just haven’t found my footing in the chamber, although my dear friends that actually are presidents and leaders in the local and national chambers. But the two groups I wanna talk to you about today, look, if you were to look at these two groups, you would say there’s hope <laugh>, there’s hope in the world, in the business world specifically because we reflect, if we contrast it with what we see in the corporate setting, which seems to be very abrasive against not only capital free market, but also those that hold onto a biblical worldview, they seem to be abrasive towards that.
Small business owners, generally speaking, are not abrasive towards the Christian worldview, nor are they abrasive towards capital markets. This is generally speaking, but there’s two groups that I think that you’ll find that are supporting that. Let’s talk about the first one, C 12. I have mentioned C 12 to you guys before, but I gotta double click on it because they’re so stinking. The growth trajectory is crazy. I guess lemme say it that way. The C 12 group, which is a national coaching group for small business owners, they had in 1992, again, the C 12 CEO gave me this information just recently in 1992, they had hardly any leaders in this organization and hardly any members that was, you know, gosh, you think about 1992, you’re like, oh, that was only 10 years ago. That was a long time ago. I get it. But look at today.
Today they have 2,465, 2,465 business owners, CEOs, the leaders of these small businesses take full day out each month and they gather around with each other and wrestle with small business issues. And here’s the kicker. These 2,500 US CEOs are designing their business to align with the biblical worldview. They lean into their faith and they’re stewarding their business according to Christian principles. 2,500 CEOs in the United States are doing this every single month. In fact, taking a excerpt from one of the curriculum that they’re using, this is straight out of the curriculum from a C 12 platform. This is something these 2,500 CEOs are reading each and every month. I mean, it’s not like, “Hey, how do we maximize profit?” There’s an element to that, but this is what they’re reading. Here’s an excerpt. It says, “Prayer is a powerful resource in the Christian toolbox. While praying for the Thessalonians, Paul asked God to make them worthy of his calling so that they may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power.”
Paul recognized that the goal of fruitfulness is not our glory, but God’s. So let me just tell you something real quick. Think about 2,500 CEOs of small businesses around the country gathering once a month and reading about how to integrate their faith into the workplace and what impact that has on the countless number of employees that work for them. This is a powerful stinking movement. In fact, there’s 275 members outside of the United States. This thing is growing and it’s growing fast. I don’t think people realize that even though there is destruction in Hollywood, maybe even in corporate America, small business movement is powerful. And C 12 is a leader in that space. And so wanna make sure you’re aware of that group and what they’re doing. And you can certainly take a look into it as it may scratch an itch. It may be interesting to you.
The other group that I need to tell you about that’s doing some incredible things. This one is less about faith, but this one is ensuring that the freedoms of small business are protected. And this one’s the National Federation of Independent Business Owners. This is a lobbying group for small business. And you can imagine that small businesses, they’re just grinding every day. Stress, employee issues, payroll, all that stuff, accounts receivables, accounts payables, you get it. But they don’t have a collective voice. The National Association of Realtors, they’ve got one of the largest lobbying groups in the world. Of course the chamber, pharmaceutical companies, heck, even Amazon has one of the largest lobbying groups in the world. So small business owners tend to not have that voice that’s hyper focused on small business freedom. And that’s the National Federation of Independent Business Owners. That’s what they do.
And I have lobbied with them in Texas, in Austin, and in DC. I couldn’t make the recent DC trip because I like to go up there and kind of get in front of what are some of the legislative issues that are coming our way in small business world because they impact the economic environment. But they did recently, you gotta hear this, this is cool. They did recently in Texas pass something called the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, the Texas Regulatory Consistency Act. The reason that that’s important for you to know is because the local city councils have extended their power beyond what is reasonable. And you’ve seen this over the last several years. You probably know city council members. I know, I know plenty of city council members. There’s a scope of work that needs to be done within the city council. But lately, over the last several years, I would suggest to you, and I think you would agree with this, that they’ve gone beyond the scope of what they need to be doing.
One of which is they’ve said, okay, we’re gonna start regulating small business overtime pay. So we don’t think it’s fair that some employees get overtime and others don’t. Well, there is a degree of fairness to that that needs to be addressed. But does that need to be addressed at city council? Well, city council thinks it does. The problem is this, if San Antonio has a rule for overtime work for small businesses, and Austin has a different rule, how does a small business who has employees in both cities handle that? And it becomes chaos for a small business owner. And when a small business owner is trying to battle through regulatory issues, it’s not growing. Its mind is cloudy and it’s thinking about other things and it’s wasting time. I don’t think people realize the power of focus of small business. And when regulatory issues get in the way of that focus, money is lost, productivity is lost, and ultimately people will get fired.
So the last several years, city council have overextended their reach. They’ve started to make decisions that’s beyond the scope of what they’re good at. And Texas has come in very quietly mind you, come up with an act that says Texas Regulatory Consistency Act. The city council can’t go beyond the scope of what they’re supposed to do and they can’t try to do something that supersedes Texas regulatory framework. And this is powerful because we’ve seen in the last several years, chaos ensue from city councils going haywire this squelches that quite a bit. So you may not know about that. You may think everything’s going crazy around the world, which I know there’s a lot of chaos, but there’s powerful movements happening quietly but aggressively. So C 12 is a leader in that space and NFIB and you think, well it doesn’t matter because it’s not big business.
It does matter because two thirds of all jobs in the entire country come from small business C 12 and NFIB are making a big impact on making sure that we can integrate our faith into the workplace and our rights as small business owners are protected. Wow, that was a lot of content in 15 minutes. I hope I didn’t give you a fire hose of information, but only enough to get you curious about these two organizations and what they’re doing. Look into them if you’re a small business owner. Hey, just real quick, I learned when I was real young that there’s two ways you can build wealth. One is save early and often. And two is starting a small business. You’re like, okay, well wait a minute. I’m 60. I can’t start a business or I can’t save early. You might not be able to save early.
But I don’t discount the power of starting a small business. It’s a little bit different today. So I don’t discourage anyone at any age to consider starting a small business. There’s just something stinking special about it. If you didn’t get a chance because of circumstances or just life you weren’t able to save early and often, save now, but also do this. Encourage your kids, your grandkids, your nieces, your nephews to start saving early and often. And they can set up a Roth IRA, a traditional IRA, a savings account, and just have them start saving 15% of their gross income or whatever it is, have them save. So just pass that wisdom down to the next generation. But again, two ways to really build wealth. Of course you can build wealth through inheritance and lottery winnings, but that doesn’t really count my book. But to truly build wealth saving early and often and starting a business, that’s it.
Certainly passionate here about small business. And I hope that encourages you today. Thank you for tuning in. Hey and again, we’ve got some great eBooks, one of which is a Retire in Texas eBook. I think we have a Retire in Texas. I know we have a Biblical Responsible investing eBook on our website. Grab that. That’s a free resource. And then if you need to meet with an advisor, text the word Texas to 78 4 68. That’s Texas to 78 4 68. And we’ll have an advisor with the heart of a teacher, connect with you. Thank you for tuning in. Hope this was enjoyable for you. And remember, you think different when you think long term. Have a great day.
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