Episode 121 - Global Franchising Redemptive Culture with Peter Irvine
At 14-years-old, Peter Irvine took a job at an advertising agency and then worked his way up to the top. Then, someone in his church small group pointed him toward a business that he should get involved in based out of Chicago.
Well, one round trip between Australia and America later and Peter Irvine found himself as an international franchisee for GLoria Jean’s Coffee Shops. His story is amazing, and the work he’s doing to maintain a redemptive culture when his businesses are literally in dozens of countries around the world is fascinating.
With 1,050 coffee shops in 48 countries, few people better understand culture than Peter Irvine. You won’t want to miss this.
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Peter Irvine Shares the Gloria Jean’s Story
Episode Transcript
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Henry Kaestner: Rusty and the rest of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur audience. Welcome back. Rusty, awesome to see you as always.
Rusty Rueff: It's great. Hey, you've never been to Australia, right?
Henry Kaestner: I've never been Australia. One of the cool things is that on occasion we get to do some traveling in this podcast. And today we got that.
Rusty Rueff: I know. I know. So we're getting our dose of going to the beach right here. We're ready. We're ready.
Henry Kaestner: I understand that Peter is one minute away from the beach so I've got a little bit of beach envy. And it's also Rusty. And I, of course, are recording this from California. It's very infrequent that we get a chance to talk to somebody that's on the other side of the time zones. Typically, we're talking to somebody in Europe or the East Coast. And so it's in our afternoon. It's bright and early day tomorrow for Peter. So a little bit of time travel. And I've been looking forward this episode for a long time. There's something really unique about Peter's entrepreneurial journey that I want to get at. There's a lot of scale here. People in America are familiar with Chick fil A and understand the value of scaling a concept. And that's effectively what we have here with Peter. Peter has scaled a concept maintaining his faith at the center of what he does and doing it at some level of scale in mind. So we're going to get right into. Peter, thank you very much for joining us.
Peter Irvine: Well, thank you, everyone, for the opportunity.
Henry Kaestner: It's a great treat to have you. And we want to get you right into it. We want to talk about Gloria Jean's, of course, and the incredible work that gets done through you. But before we do that, share with us some of your personal journey. What was life like growing up in Australia? What's your background? What is your exposure business early on?
Peter Irvine: Well, look, in the early years growing up, but there was no high expectation from my parents because they left school early, because they were in large families and everyone had to go out and work to support those families. So being at school was a matter of going to school, but not actually necessarily achieving. So I thought school was great because of the sport and the P.E. physical education period. I thought that's all you had at school. What was your sport? Well, we play. I played tennis and rugby league, which is a guy and you wouldn't even know over there.
Henry Kaestner: Did you ever play Australian Rules Football? Because late at night on ESPN, they had this most amazing sport that I would get demolished in Australian Rules football. Have you ever played it?
Peter Irvine: Only socially, just kicking a ball around, not the real game, but because rugby league was the main game at that point in time,.
Henry Kaestner: Something more genteel.
Peter Irvine: Yeah. And then I left school at 14 to get a junior job in an advertising agency, and I was just happy to have a job. It's all about getting by and paying bills. That was sort of what I picked up from my father. And it wasn't till many years later that I realized God doesn't want us to just get by and pay bills. But to succeed and be successful, to be a blessing to other people. And that was like a revelation some years later. So I started an advertising agency. I was there for 30 years. The last two years was as managing director. We launched McDonald's into Australia as an agency and we had many other clients like the Rigley Corporation, SC Johnson and a range of other American and international clients as well as Australia. So I grew up in advertising through the disciplines. I actually got to work on McDonald's for many years and traveled visiting franchisees with the company. So I learned a lot about franchising and particularly marketing in a fast moving business like McDonald's. And so in 1995, my partner and his wife, they were our connect group leaders at our church said, would you like to do something different?
And I was 49 in 1995, looked around and there was hardly anyone over 50. Either died or they were in a hotel bar, you know, drunk, and I decided that wasn't much of a future. So I said, what do you got in mind? And he said, I've been offered this concept called Gloria Jean's coffees, or it actually said Gloria Jeans. I said, look, I don't know a lot about fashion. And he said, no, it's coffee. I said, Oh, I like a cup of coffee, but I don't understand why. Sometimes it's bitter. It's burned. It's called I do now. But I didn't then. So we came to America in August 1995. And we went to Chicago, which is where it started and visited what they said were the three best stores. And then the next day, I flew to Boca Raton on the East Coast, sat in the room where they said, would you like to buy the rights for Australia? And I'm jet lagged. I don't understand specialty coffee. And here I am sitting here and I said, What do you want? They said, we want you to open 70 stores in a ten year term. I couldn't see my naivete. You could open 70 coffee, tea, gift stores, which is what Gloria Jeans was in America. Anyway, we argued for a while, then they left the room and we decided that we could only really open 25, that's still a lot in 10 years. They came back and we argued for hours, but eventually they agreed and we came back with a verbal deal. And then we came back, got the first store opened in 96, and then both families sold out of the business in 2014. But in 2005, we bought the rights of the Americans for the World. They had 15 countries, which were terrible, though a basket case, what we call going badly. And we took it over and threw a lot of difficulty. Opposition, resentment, criticism slowly grew it to about 39, 40 countries in that time. Today, it's a different company, owns it, probably have less vision than we do. They have a number of franchise brands, but it's not our problem anymore. We're all about funding the kingdom and helping Christian businesspeople and pastors and churches to help their business people in their leadership. So that's a quick summary. There's a lot more in between. Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: So you negotiate, you get to 25. How many, you ended up opening up a lot more than 25. How many did you end up opening up?
Peter Irvine: We got close to 500. We had about 27 stores in Borders books in Australia. And as you probably aware, Borders books folded and we lost those 27. And we had to reposition the franchisees in those stores into other locations. Some of them didn't want to go into the business again. But when we sold, it was over 400 and there was about 500 internationally at that time.
Rusty Rueff: That's a big business.
Peter Irvine: Well, for Australia, it is probably not in America comparison, it might not be.
Rusty Rueff: Now it still is know that many franchised stores. I worked at Pizza Hut for about 18 months as part of PepsiCo. And, you know, we had twelve thousand five hundred franchise stores in North America and seventy five hundred company owned. And I don't care if it's one. Twelve thousand five hundred or ten. Replicating a concept over and over is hard. It's hard to grow a business like that. It's great.
Henry Kaestner: Now you mention meeting this business partner at church and it wasn't just any church. It's a church that a lot of us have heard of. Even if we don't couldn't otherwise name a church in Australia. We've all heard of Hillsong. Tell us about Hillsong.
Peter Irvine: Well, it was about a nineteen ninety three that we'd left our traditional church because it was more dying and I was just about to take over as indeed managing director of the ad agency. But two hundred people and they were moving more into retirement mentality.
So Sue said, I've really got to leave. So she attended Hillsong. I said, look, I need to stay till the end of the year because I'm looking after a part of a youth group. And I don't want to let them down this year. So towards the end of the year, we finished and went to Hillsong. And I was just so blown away by the teaching and the encouragement of business people. I broke out with notes from messages that really helped me during the week with business. And I spoke to other business people as I got to know them in the church. And they say we get so much out of the messages that actually help us day to day. And it just opened my eyes that God is actually really interested and relevant to us in our business. It's not like it's a job and you retire one day.
Henry Kaestner: Was this part of the culture at Hillsong that other people were thinking about more actively doing business together and they got cared about the marketplace? No, it's just different than from the other churches see in Australia. It's different from a lot of the churches we see in America.
Peter Irvine: Absolutely. The pastor, Brian Houston, used to run the business breakfasts maybe every quarter, and they started Kingdom Builders a few years later. And that grew from just one hundred business people to thousands. And he would always talk on leadership. He talk on managing people and what I realize that a lot of pastors have difficulty dealing with business people because they said I've got nothing. I don't understand business people. But I said, you run money, buildings, people and programs. It's no different to a business. So if you've got a staff of 20 or 30 or ten or a hundred a thousand, how are you managing? What are your problems? How do you deal with it? There are lessons that you can help your business people. And when business people get input around the scriptural principles, they get encouraged through that. And that's what Brian Houston actually did.
Rusty Rueff: And that's what he's done with the church. Right. I mean, you know, talk about a global expansion story and look at Hillsong. I mean, it's just amazing
Peter Irvine: Yeah. What about the lessons out of all that have how to communicate, how to communicate it from a distance. And he's always been putting principles into start. And if you're part of the Hillsong Network, you'll actually get those messages. I'm getting them regularly because our ministry trust is part of the network. So we get those staff messages. And I write some of my short YouTube videos from some of the principles that he talks about because they're fantastic for business.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that's great. OK. So you come out of advertising. You're a small group member leader. Did you this idea you come over to the United States, you become a franchisee overnight and all of a sudden you've got this new business sitting in front of you. Talk about that transition. I mean, advertising. Now I'm running coffee shops and I've got to expand it. What prepared you for that?
Peter Irvine: I would believe that the years working in advertising when I started it was a very small agency. And it grew to be just in one office, 200 people, which is large in Australia with very big clients. And McDonald's was expanding from nothing into 700, 800 stores. It's bigger than that now and running multiple programs. And we're dealing with franchisees.
We're dealing with McDonald's staff. And we as an agency had 50 people. We grew to working on the McDonald's account alone ourselves. So you had to manage those and their expectations. So going through an agency that was growing and I was in different roles through that period. So I actually learned various disciplines. So getting involved in the coffee business. My partner knew the coffee tea business because he had worked on plantations. He buys the coffee. He roast the coffee. And he's involved in distribution. I come in, I have a little bit of understanding about franchising, working on McDonald's marketing from being in the agency and managing people and growing departments and looking for people. When you bring those disciplines together, you've got a bit of a package to work with and you learn the rest. I had to learn about store design, store fit outs, buying equipment and stock that I'd never, ever heard of before. And you've got to find suppliers. You've got to negotiate with them. They're going to get the right pricing. You've got to get the delivery system.
And it was really a group of us. I actually got my wife to come and work for free because we couldn't afford to pay her. And she read the whole procurement and distribution, probably never ran as well while she was doing it. So we had a business that started to grow and I learned about negotiating with the media, trying to get more for less because we didn't have a big budget.
And that really helped to sort of build the brand till it became a well-known brand. It became probably one of the top memorized or recognized brands in Australia. And we weren't in every regional market at that stage.
Henry Kaestner: So tell us about the franchise experience. I'm fascinated by about we've had lots of pikas episodes and I love the fact that this is broadening out our sense of what an entrepreneur is. So the two different things that I want explore in some of our time together. And one is that not every person who wants to be able to be their own boss has to come up with a completely new idea in innovation, patent it and then kind of run the market with it. If there's a passion of an entrepreneur to be able to set culture, to be able to love on their employees, to love on their customers, to be able to be a boss, but wants to be able to be a pure play on what God has given them as gift things and doesn't want to have to try to solve for. How do I figure out what point of sale system use or what kind of like burner or of a.. Use or things like that. This is such a great model for somebody to step in and be a boss and yet take away some of the other things that a lot of people think are distractions in a pain in the rear. So you've got that on one hand. On the other hand, you have so much noise who've come up with a really neat idea and want to scale it, see it delivering a lot of value in the marketplace and want to be able to position their company so that it can grow and grow into different markets and realize that if they just do it under their own power, then they're going to be somewhat limited. But if they can come up with an idea about how to franchise it, how to bring other people on board his owners to give them enough autonomy where they really feel that their boss, gosh, they, can scale this concept, they can really go places. So I want to explore for both of them with you. The first one let's start with what I just had said recently, which is you're the entrepreneur that has the idea that you think in scale. Tell us about how you get to the concept where you say, gosh, I've got something to grow. What was it and what have you seen in other successful franchises where you say, oh my goodness, there is something here. It can scale. Probably the best way to do that is to franchise model. Talk us through that first.
Peter Irvine: Well, firstly, I'm a fan of franchising. A lot of people are not. But I like it because if you get the right operators and you're passionate about it and you build the systems and the support, you can make this work really well and you can almost franchise anything. I think I saw years ago there was a franchise for Stump Grinding. Yeah, that's the tree that's left in the ground. I thought that if you could franchise that you could franchise anything. And since that day, there's been a lot of things like that got franchise. But anyway, putting that aside, what you've got the idea you've got a is this an idea that has what I call legs? Does it have scalability? Is it something that the market may not recognize they want? But there is a gap.
You know, it's often called a gap analysis in the market or what your unique selling proposition. We often called it in advertising the core idea, what is it? And is it going to be scalable and is there volume? You say there are many specialists, coffee places open, like in America, you know, a boutique roaster, and they can't scale it because it's all on the owner and he's so passionate and committed to it. He can't trust anyone or doesn't believe he can trust anyone to take that and actually do the same elsewhere. A franchise model is you've got to be a leader, but you've got to be able to find the right people, not to staff, but franchisees. And you've got to be able to trust them. You've got to have the system so you can trade them in the system. And then you've got to have a review, a check on them to make sure they're not mucking it up by doing things in the store, in the business that's actually going to be detrimental to the brand.
Henry Kaestner: So it sounds like some trust and verify because you said two things that are interesting. So, yeah, you've got to bring onboard a franchise owner that you can trust, but then you have those systems to make sure that you can verify. So trust and verify, right?
Peter Irvine: Yeah. And if you like, I can come to how do you select a good franchisee?
Henry Kaestner: Yes, and I'm sure actually they apply for every entreprenuer in terms of how you can bring onboard somebody on your team that you can really trust. So what lessons have you learned there?
Peter Irvine: Yeah. So just before that is one key thing is if you've got the idea, you really got to start by opening a store. If it's retail or opening an office or if it's on digital media, you've got to actually start and build it and see if it has what I call durability. You know, can you make money? Could a franchisee make money in the business itself? If you can't make it work, you can't transport it, because if you can't make it work, you create a problem for someone else at Yati. Multiply the problem. So it's looking for franchisees. And we did this very well in the early days and and for quite some years. But I think some of our people at times lost it. What we did was we find people who were. Passionate about coffee. Like people, if they had good business sense, that sort of helped you got.
Henry Kaestner: But that's not the primary business sense is not the primary. You gotta like coffee and gotta like people.
Peter Irvine: Well, you're going to be talking a lot. And we used to get, for example, a potential franchisee. Come look, I've got accounting background. I'm just going to sit out in the back room, in the store room and do the work and I'll hire people. I said, if you're actually seeing one of these store rooms, there are about 400 degrees because there's no air conditioning and there are about a shoe box. I think they all thought it was loaded like a gymnasium out there or something. And so they got the totally wrong idea. And I had one couple come to me and say, this looks to be a great business to retire in, to go. They are going to make it because you work all day on your feet. Then you gotta go home and do your rosters and order product and those type of things, particularly if you micromanage a business anyway, putting those things aside. So you got to find out, are they personable? Are they manageable in the sense help with the system? You wanted to operate alone, but you want them to be part of a team. And the other thing we did, which is crucial to selecting staff and franchisees, we always shared the vision, the mission and the values of the company. And if they look at you and roll their eyes, which means they're not engaged, we never hired them or we never appointed a franchisee. They might have had a lot of money, but we never put him in as a franchisee because we know they weren't aligned with the values of the company. And I had even two senior people that applied for jobs in the company. And they emailed me the next day and said, no, we don't want to join your company. We don't believe in those values. And I got really excited because at least we found out before they start.
Henry Kaestner: Sure. What were those values? What are those values?
Peter Irvine: Well, the values were let me just read them out because I want to get them. Exactly. Because it does help people. Here we go. Partnerships based on integrity and trust. So you've got to be out of trust. Suppliers, franchisees, they've got to be out to trust you. And what you say you're going to do. Number two, a commitment to excellence and innovation. We're in a business that we're going to have to innovate. But it had to be excellent. It's easy to innovate and you drink and put cheap ingredients in it or poor quality ingredients. But we were charging a premium price, so we didn't want to just have poor ingredients to get the margin up. The second one was a culture of joy and passion. If you don't enjoy the business, if you're not going to enjoy it, why do the journey get to spend a lot of time in it? And number four, which we took a bit of time wording but was really crucial, was belief in people building and changing lives. So we wanted our staff to grow our franchisees to grow, our suppliers to grow with us.
And from the business, we wanted to be able to give product and money to help people in need actually to grow the kingdom, but to help people in need and those in the coffee growing regions. So those building a belief in people building and changing lives were really crucial to summarizing all that in a few words. So they were the four values.
Rusty Rueff: Those are great values to build from. I've got to go back. I can't help myself. This, as Henry knows, I can't miss a good pun. You know, we actually have this growing coffee chain in America called Stump Town Coffee. Henry ever had stump town coffee?
Peter Irvine: No, I haven't heard. I've heard of most of them but not that one.
Rusty Rueff: So they must have taken the stump grinding business, put it with the bean grinding business. And now we've got Stumptown Coffee.
Peter Irvine: I hope their not mixing all of that wood chips with it. I thought for a minute you're going to say charbucks.
Rusty Rueff: That would be good, too. Speaking of Starbucks, I actually want to ask a question about coffee houses and community. And, you know, when Howard Schultz started Starbucks, he talked about it. It was supposed to have turned into the third place. Right. We had home, we had work and there would be the third place. I actually think that vision's never been fulfilled because there's really not community at Starbucks. You may know the barista and maybe somebody else behind the counter, but when you go there, you very seldom talk to each other. You just do your own thing. But community and coffee houses have seemed to be something that comes together. How important is community in coffee houses? And if it is important? Talk a little bit about how your faith has informed that building of community through the coffeehouse.
Peter Irvine: Well, I believe when we started, we always wanted to have a place where people felt at home. And could meet people, could dialog. And I learned a little bit of this from McDonald's, McDonald's in Australia was a lot different to America. And you could go to a McDonald's store and there'd be all people from all walks of life, all ages, and often a lot of those.
Even though they may not be there for long periods of time, we'll actually talk and share with each other. And we tried to do that. And we didn't learn this necessarily from Gloria Jeans in America when we bought the franchise. We discovered they really didn't have a good handle on their business. So we had to stumble across. What are the things that are going to create community? And in fact, one of the statements in our mission statement was to build a unified family who consistently served the high quality coffee and provide outstanding and personalized service in a vibrant store atmosphere. Well, that's all words. So. We thought, how do we actually make this happen in store? And we stumbled across it, we believe God guide and have seen this. And it came across by putting a couple of lounges or comfortable relaxing chairs in there. And at Funny, we did some research. And people used to say, oh, it's like home having that lounge there. They could never get it because there was always someone in it. But it actually gave them a perception or a feeling about the store. The other thing was the colors. We just didn't paint a white wall. We actually had unique colors, the brown tones and sometimes orange that fitted in with coffee sort of feel with murals painted on the wall from a coffee growing region. And that was unique in those days in Australia. And it actually made people feel like they wanted to stay even if they couldn't get a seat, even if it was a kiosk with those seating. I actually felt the same about it. And it was a place I could relax for a few minutes and dream and drift just for a few minutes in their life. So it was actually the atmosphere came from the fit out itself. And then it came from the trained staff who were willing to dialog with them, not just about, you know, how are you today? But they actually moved beyond that in their conversation with them. So there was a lot of work in trying to hire the right staff, even casuals who were able to bring about a dialog with people that did we get it right all the time? No, we didn't. But that was the benchmark we aim for.
Henry Kaestner: So one of the hallmarks, of course, of Gloria Jeans, is that you went to a lot of different places. Well beyond Australia. And what I've heard from others that I don't know if this is fairly or unfairly Australia to you is that Gloria Jeans became this great platform for ministry, evangelism and discipleship in different countries, in different places. In a way that was never over the top, but was used as this place to foster community in a way that actually loved on people and pointed to a guy that loved them, even in a country or a culture that didn't necessarily know that. Surely lots of places. You open up, Gloria jeans. We're not in a majority Christian culture. How did you create that type of atmosphere in culture wasn't intentional. How did you nurture it? Riff on that for a bit.
Peter Irvine: Well, that's interesting question. Whenever we interviewed a franchisee staff member or master franchise for a country overseas, it didn't matter whether they were from the Muslim countries in the Middle East or through Europe. We always shared who we were that we were Christians.
We live by biblical examples. We wanted to build a family and he's our values and they come out of what we believe. And that didn't scare anyone off. In fact, actually, they gravitated to that. Now, having said that, majority of our franchisees, staff and master franchisees were not Christians. But what happened, and it started before we went internationally in Australia. I would travel the country visiting franchisees and stores and I discovered that the churches, particularly more charismatic or Aoki Assemblies of God type churches who are very active, would actually be in the stores all the time. They'd actually invite franchisees out to dinner and nurture them and invited them to events. And then the franchisees started hiring staff from the church. The young people from churches that I used to go there and they say, you know, the best employees are the guys from the churches. They turn up on time. They're great with people. They dialog. They're friendly. You know, we can work well together. And that was the testimony. And we started to see a few franchisees become Christians. We saw shopfitters become Christians. We saw staff become Christians.
So it wasn't Bible bashing or preaching or they my partner did do a bit of preaching at times. But we opened all our international conferences and Australian conferences in prayer. We always had a past that with Brian Houston came once, but we had pastors who would come and give a leadership message and had John Maxwell a couple of times. So there was certainly a Christian element. Actually, I have to say, some people did accuse us of a revival meeting at times at the conference, but that was only because we had a preacher in the opening pray.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, well, you've maybe you've been accused of worse. That's not such a bad thing to be accused of, I suppose. But at the same time, your multicultural company. And yet there is just something about the community that really allowed for that type of culture and witness our love hearing about how folks came from the churches in and witness to the franchise owners in becoming great employees. How did that change? How is that different in different countries? You've got a whole bunch of different cultures, summer tea culture, summer coffee cultures. You went to so many different countries. Tell us about some of the things you learned about different cultures in the way that they consume your product. But also, I'm going to camp out on this area of discipleship about the way that the Christian communities there use your stores in a way to be a witness. How did that change from country to country culture, culture?
Peter Irvine: Well, even in quite a few of the international countries, churches or business people would actually hold their connect groups or even what they call Bible studies in Gloria Jeans store. They would just come in a group of five or six or 10, whatever it was. Some stores were quite big. So they would actually have an area they would set aside for them because they were coming once a week. You get to India, you get to Hungary, Romania, Kuwait, Dubai, Saudi, Lebanon, all those places. But it's interesting how. The middle up market and 20 to 40 actually want to do what is an international product, which is coffee.
Now they see it in the movies. They see people sitting in cafes or coffee shops, you know. Back then, a lot of these countries were friends. You know, the program friends, they're always in a coffee sign, feel those things, create image and China's design and they create images. Korea, where people want to go and they'll actually pay the higher price compared to a cheaper version locally because they want to be seen in those. That's a lifestyle thing. They want to actually live. And in that 20 to 40, most of those that come actually have the income. You're not going to attract the older or the poor in those countries as much as I'd like to come. But you actually attract in fact, when we were going into India, my partner said, oh, we've got someone interested in the master franchise in India. And I said, well, they're all poor. I'd never been to India that started there or poor. He said no. The middle class is about 10 per cent, which, if you quake to their population, was 100 million. Well, that's more than four times. Back then, what Australia's size was a population. I go, oh, well, that's a decent market, isn't it? And they have a lot of shopping malls, which I've since been to. And, you know, they are very busy, very active with people buying in the shops, whether it's Starbucks, whether it's other coffee change. They're all sitting around. They're all enjoying the environment that I see. So it actually translates. It's funny thing. Coffee speaks many languages and a quality product created around a place to meet and share. Seems to be a magic mix, if you like.
Rusty Rueff: Hey, Peter, I want to fast forward us to the time when you decided to sell. Right, it was time to let go of Gloria jeans. You know, most entrepreneurs, that comes with a lot of mixed emotions. You know, it can be a great exit. It can be. It's just time. There's lots of factors that go into that moment, but that moment does show up. And for entrepreneurs, I believe uniquely, not probably exclusively, but uniquely, the shift in one's identity, the going from nonstop breakneck speed to tomorrow. You know, everything stops. How did you handle that? And what are some of the lessons that you could pass along, having gone through that experience yourself?
Peter Irvine: Well, when I first started in the advertising agency, I probably assumed I would be there till the day I died. Well, to you. You have to retire. But as your relationship with God develops and you grow, you start to realize he has a whole lot more in store. And before I became managing director of the agency in the last two years, I since God had something else, I didn't know what it was. So when I was offered the managing director role, I didn't want it. I never aspired to it. And I came home and said to Sue, I've been offered this role and I don't want to do it. She said, you should take it. I said, wrong answer. So we just moved to Hillsong Church. If properly, I'd stayed at the other church, I wouldn't have taken it, but I'd just move. I rang one of the pastors. He said, you should take it. I said, it's a wrong answer. So in the end, I was convinced that I went ahead and I took it and I got everyone together and said, Where we going with this? And I thought I'd be doing this for a number of years. But it was in mid 1995 when our Partners in Glory genes came along and told us about their vision and we liked it. We sense it was a good idea. Once we agreed to go with the concept after visiting America, I came back and resigned. I had to give three months notice and I was at peace with that. I saw it as a transition out into something new. I probably didn't see the fee as much as I should have. You starting something of this nature from scratch of nothing. And so we started, we got going and our plan was we would be involved with Gloria Jean's till the day we died. We may not work towards the latter end of our lives day to day, but we could come in and out. But other people would run it. And as we got about 10 years into this, maybe a bit longer. I started to sense God had something more in mind. And one day I got back from holidays and I since God was saying to me, I want you to step back because I want you to go and speak to the business community and reach the business community. And I go, yeah, sure, whatever. I've already had a few invitations to speak at conferences and churches, but I went in and I said to my partner, look, I've got to step back. We need to find a M.D. to take over my role, which we did. I step back. I got absolutely inundated by company speakers, bureaus and churches, especially in Australia, for the first two years. And then it grew internationally. And I was traveling so much speaking and I could visit master franchisees in countries while I was traveling an interstate in Australia. But stepping out of advertising to Gloria Jeans was in some ways exciting, probably wasn't as fearful. I felt that we'd grown a big agency from nothing with a team of people that you could do that with another business. I mean, it was a bit naive, I guess, but we did actually do it and it grew. We grew international despite all the difficulties and opposition. And it got to the stage where I sense after I pulled back and started to speak that it was time to sell because what we wanted to do was give a whole lot. We're giving a lot of money to ministries from the business ourselves to families. But Sue and I would like to get our share and set up a trust that infests and be able to fund growth of the kingdom. So both partners agreed to sell. It took a while, but we actually sold got a bigger price than we expected because we realized God's got our back and he's got the plan and we set about that. So we set up to trust. That was the first one was to invest. The second one was to engage, Sue and I and some other people to actually do ministry. We've got a couple who are doing marriage retreat weekends for people help with their marriage. I've got someone who's working strongly with Alfa, you know, their course that brings people on the journey. And Sue and I, especially me, are spending time speaking into business, people's lives, especially Christian, speaking for churches to their business people to leadership. I do a lot of church services and we're creating content because my board said to me, how are you going to keep doing this as you get older? Well, I'm still young, 73, but I took it on board, so I thought I'd just stop doing everything by 60. Now what I want to talk to you. You know, the phone and emails and texts, they just run relentlessly.
Henry Kaestner: Like podcast requests with strange people from California?
Peter Irvine: Oh, yeah, that's right. So we set up a YouTube channel which is free for people. We've got over 100 videos on their short videos on marketing or leadership, on building plans on disaster recovery. I'm doing one on how do you lead from a distance at the moment to minute videos every week. It's about 100 videos on there and they all for free. And we're getting people subscribe. I use it as a library. If someone says I've got this issue, I say, go to this video after I talk to you and watch. We started to produce resources. We put out a couple of books, we've put out a training series of 12 videos plus workbook, how to build an actionable plan for someone starting a business right through to marketing sales. How do you build a championship team? So at 73, we're still escalating up because God said to me, I remember him saying, since in a quiet time what you've learned, the mistakes and the good things is not gonna be wasted. You're not gonna die with them. You're gonna help other people. So that's probably what prompted the ramp up to move to the next level.
Henry Kaestner: So tell it as you go around. First off, where do we find these videos?
Peter Irvine: All the videos. Peter Ervine Kingdom Momentum A go to YouTube. You just subscribe for free. There's no charge. There's over 100 videos there. And the website is Kingdom Dash Momentum dot com and you'll see the resources.
Henry Kaestner: Excellent. I want to do a free form riff. Up until now we've asked you a bunch of different questions. You've been very kind of responding them. I think we've got much more of a sense of the value of franchises in some of the leadership lessons you've learned across different cultures. But I wanted you to do a free form riff. Ours is an audience of faith driven entrepreneurs as you go out to speak to churches and talk to different business people. What are the lessons you want in part on them? What are the things that you think that they might be missing? Speak to our audience anywhere you'd like.
Peter Irvine: Well, that God's got the plan and what he birthds he's gonna to make happen when he puts a vision and idea., he wants it to succeed. Let me give an example in two thousand and two. On October three, we get a call at home to say your warehouse is on fire. We have 92 stores open. It's our warehouse, our roasting and our office. You don't need a call like that. So we get there and the whole place is alive. It burns for three days and burns to the ground. I'm standing in the car park halfway through that first night and I'd learned a few lessons up to this point. And I said to God, will you burn this? Not to go up in smoke. So you've got the plane. And we started to see that unfold over the next few days, which actually took us over many years from 90 stores to over 400 to then. Thirty nine countries around the world. Increase your play in Lebanon, right? Yeah, including Lebanon. Yeah. When they come to training in Australia for Lebanon. I said you guys are a bit optimistic, aren't you? The country's all bombed. They said that that's just down on the border down there. The rest of the country is getting on with life. You see, it's the media that give us the impression that it's all bombed.
Henry Kaestner: These guys have come now for training at Gloria Jeans. And you're saying guess you're a bit bold. You're living in a bombed out country.
Peter Irvine: Exactly. And there was just a test to see if they persevered through that. And clearly they did and in order to being successful franchise. But they did scare away a lot of people.
Yeah. They open more stores and so on. I'm really encouraged by those people. Yeah, it did. You know, one day I was about four years ago. Have a quiet time in the afternoon and you know what you do? You open the Bible and you pray. And next thing I know, I wake up 30 minutes later. You know, you go to sleep. You do that when you're busy. You don't close your eyes at any time. And I thought I felt really guilty. And it used to happen every day. Did I realize when I woke up, I was having all these innovative ideas and solutions to problems that people were giving me that they wanted help solving? And then I got guilty because so far I haven't even got to the Bible. And then after a few weeks, I realized that God's birthing new ideas and I got to write them down. And then I get back to the word. And then I came across this great verse in I saw a chapter forty eight, first six and seven in the message version. My wife says you should always read it in the message, but it's pretty good in the others as well. And here's what God says. God says, I have a lot more to tell you. Things you never knew existed. This isn't a variation on the same old thing. This is new. Brand new. Something you'd never guess or dream up. When you hear this, you won't be able to say, I knew it all along. And I'm going. That's exactly what's been happening. And I used to get ideas for people and for the self. I used to get ideas for our ministry. Trust me. And I used to get solutions to businesses that had major problems. And I'd bring a guy up and say, look, I think I've got a solution. And he goes, that's fantastic. Where did you get that from? And I said, Well, you probably don't want to know. And he had no right to do me. So when he pressed me, I told him, he goes, Oh, it's like a big disappointment. But anyway, it's selling a seed.
Henry Kaestner: So I love it. That's a new concept. That's going to bridge us to our close. The concept of the Bible nap for a busy entrepreneur. You stop in the middle afternoon, you open up God's word. You fall asleep and God sees you through that time. So that's a new concept. We've surely never talked about that on the podcast.
Peter Irvine: And no one will ever invite me to interview me again after that.
Henry Kaestner: No, I love it. I think it's great. I mean, I'm going to go do one right now. We gonna close out the way that we always do with our guests. And that is to ask them what they're hearing from God in his word. And I think that you've partially answered it just there. We could kind of close with that. But I want to ask you and give you a chance to answer any way you'd like. Maybe it was today. May was last week. But something that you're hearing, that guy's speaking to you about from his word that you might offer up, in addition, what you said before as it encouraged to faith driven entrepreneurs.
Peter Irvine: Yes. Well, let me encourage you with what God's getting through to me that he's still got the ideas. Covid 19, global financial crisis, a health issue, finance issue are irrelevant. God doesn't wake up in the morning, he says, and I've run out of money. But the world thinks he has. And Christians often think that he has. He hasn't run out of resources or money. What he first he's got to make happen. But the thing is, it's not always. He's saying to me, it's not always your interpretation of what I'm gonna do. So you're gonna to have to wait for me. And when you step out of the boat, you've got to keep walking.
Henry Kaestner: That's an awesome word. Peter, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for your story and your faithful obedience. And I love the fact that you're getting out there and taking your show on the road and online. You're an encouragement to us. Love to revisit. Back with you another time as we look more into this concept of franchising. I think that there's just so much there that we can get back into next time. But thank you for sharing your day with us.