Episode 243 - Why an Experienced Entrepreneur and CEO Chose to Live at a Sacred Pace with Terry Looper
Have you ever noticed how unhurried Jesus seems to be in the gospels? He always shows up for the people who need him, but he never seems to panic or rush to get there.
Entrepreneurs can sometimes do the opposite. Even the words we use imply hurry: we sprint. We hustle. We flow. These aren’t inherently bad things, but they can have negative effects on us if they go unchecked.
That’s what happened with today’s guest: Terry Looper. Terry is the Founder and CEO of Texon LP, an energy company with over $6 billion in revenue. He’s also the author of the book, A Sacred Pace which tells the story of how his unchecked ambition led to burnout and how he redirected his life by slowing down and aligning himself with God’s will.
He joins the show to talk about his book A Sacred Pace, share how entrepreneurs can create better boundaries around their time, and give us a 4-step process we can use to hear from God.
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All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast from wherever you find yourself around the globe today. Have you ever noticed how unhurried Jesus seems to be in the Gospels? He always shows up for the people who need him, but he never seems to panic or rush to get there. Well, we entrepreneurs, we have a tendency to do just the opposite. I mean, even the words we use imply hurry. We sprint or we hustle or we flow. Now, these aren't inherently bad things, but they can have negative effects on us if they go unchecked. And that's what happened with today's guest, Terry Looper. Terry is the founder and CEO of Texon L.P., an energy company with over $6 billion in revenue. He's also the author of a fantastic book, A Sacred Pace, which tells the story of how his unchecked ambition led to burnout and how he redirected his life by slowing down and aligning himself with God's will. He joins us on the show today to discuss his four steps for hearing God and to talk to us about how we can live at a sacred pace. Let's get into it.
Henry Kaestner: It is amazing the way that God will use his word and experiences in my life to point me to something that I need to be talking about. If I talk at a conference or on a podcast and today our audience won't know this, but you all do. I showed up 12 minutes late and just behind I just sloppy. Just if I'm honest, just bad calendar management. Part of it may have something to do with my pace. We're going to talk about that. But the conversation I had right before, this is a concept of optimal growth rate. And many of us are in Silicon Valley, and there's this sense of just faster, faster, grow, grow, grow. And it's the pressure from investors, entrepreneurs is good out there by customers is about size, is about market share. And yet our guest today will tell you that there is a different way to think about the optimal growth rate. What our concept of hurry is. He'll speak from an experience of being super successful. So we're not just talking to a hermit. This decided to just kind of like check out of everything and just be contrary to the patterns of the world. And and he's going to be on his own time. This is a guy who's been very, very, very successful. But in the process of doing so, he's also learned some things that I think it would be really helpful for us. And it's amazing that we've had as many episodes of this podcast as we have without having Terry on board. And so, Terry, thank you very, very much for being with us, for being willing to share your life's work. The book, The Concept of Sacred Pace, just being with us today.
Terry Looper: Great. I look forward to it and I'll enjoy visiting about even the subjects you've already mentioned.
Henry Kaestner: So Terry, you've had an experience yourself where everything sort of came crashing down. Yeah. In your book, you describe it as a collision course. Give us a quick summary about what was going on when you decided that you couldn't live the fast paced life that you're experiencing.
Terry Looper: Well, if you back up just a little bit, I helped start a company that I was the minority partner of it, and I started getting dizzy and went to the doctor and he said it was stress related and I'd never heard as you get dizzy from being stressed. But nonetheless, I continued to go. I could function. It wasn't like vertigo or anything, so I could function. It didn't happen all the time, just when I was extra stressed. And then I got to where I couldn't make big decisions. And then I got to where it couldn't even make small decisions. So I started hiding the fact that I couldn't make decisions from my employees. I was the COO and the minority partner. Well, on a Saturday morning was the collision course you talked about. My wife was home. My two daughters were home. I knew who they were, but my brain shut down and I knew where I was. But it just shut down in a way that it was not going to make any decisions of any sort. And I actually thought I had a nervous breakdown. I didn't know I didn't know enough about the medical situation to know. But I found out later I had burned out. But in the middle of that, I asked my wife to help me get to the bedroom and just let me lay down and then pray. And so she did and shut the door. And I prayed and thought I was losing. My most prized possession, unfortunately, was my brain instead of my wife or my kids. Probably if I was real honest with myself. And in the course of that, I finally said to the Lord, Would you take control of my life? I clearly have screwed this up. And so I got on my knees and prayed that, and I didn't know it for many months later, but I was born again. And that morning, at that moment, and the reason I didn't know I was born again is I was absolutely convinced I was a Christian. I prayed. I believed in Christ. I believe in the Lord. I truly thought I was a Christian, I was deacon getting ready to be an elder. And so I thought in a whole lot of other people thought I was a Christian. But it turned out I look back now is I had a relationship with him like a six year old does with a Santa Claus. I told him what I wanted and expected him to do it and kind of had it reversed of who was in charge. And then out of that, I did a bunch of therapy to try to find out why I was so blooming driven, falsely driven, crazy driven, and learned all about my childhood and how that had driven me to want to succeed.
Henry Kaestner: Where were you in the business life cycle then?
Terry Looper: I was 36 when I crashed our company. We were in the middle of selling it and part of the reason I crashed right at that moment is I was catching my false God money and we had our company is only about three years old and it was extremely fast paced. And so they crashed for two reasons. One, I thought I was catching my false go, and two, I was a huge people pleaser, just incredible people pleaser.
Henry Kaestner: So presumably as a part of it, what I didn't expect to talk about is the people pleasing part. I think that a number of people that are listening to this right now can identify with the fact that we're just going really fast and at risk of burnout.
Terry Looper: Right? Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: Tell me a little bit about the people pleasing part and how they contributed.
Terry Looper: Yeah, I mean, I'm a recovering people pleaser now. Kind of like you would call somebody a recovering alcoholic. I still have a tendency to want to be nice, but now I get the courage to speak the truth and I don't have any more manipulation going on in my life. Relatively no more hidden agendas, no more. And I had all of that because that's the only way I could get what I wanted which I had to manipulate to have hidden agendas and wear myself out all the time trying to get where I wanted to get with success at the expense of. And I deluded myself thinking I was nice and it was such a crock and it was very debilitating, very distracting. Huge amount of time, distraction of my mind playing, you know, thinking how can I accomplish what I want without having to really confronting. It was unbelievable.
Henry Kaestner: So we're going to get some more of the practical implications of the concept of pace and maybe even people pleasing and what our motives are in just a little bit. But you mentioned something there in passing that I think is super, super important because you had this born again moment at age 36, but it sounds like it wasn't maybe there are some aspects of it being sudden, but you mentioned going through some amount of therapy to help unpack why certain things were happening. Yeah, I don't think we talk about that enough in this program. Can you explain that a little bit? What happened in the moment when you went to your bedroom and then what happened over this next period of time?
Terry Looper: Well, just in the bedroom. It was just I just like I said, everyone said, you know, please take control. And and and so I got on my knees and prayed that, well, that's in esence, you know, found out being born again because I finally, finally gave him control of my life, best I knew how. And then I went to therapy and said, you know, burned out and he gave me a book on it. And so I came back and actually I recovered.
Henry Kaestner: What was it like to just I'm sorry to interrupt you. Was it like I say, you go to your room, you have this. You've been going so fast, you may or may not have been Think about there was your pastor, was it your wife? Was there something like, oh, my goodness, something's going on here? How would you go? Cause a lot of people will intellectually here. Yes. It's important to be able to address the issues of my upbringing, my family of origin, etc. But you made the courageous step of just going ahead and connecting the two. As busy as you were, You decided, I'm going to make a commitment and I'm actually even though I don't have time for it, I have to. How did you make that jump to where you end up getting the help you needed?
Terry Looper: I've learned that pain is one of God's greatest gifts, and pain is one of my best friends. I am not willing to change almost anything in my life until the pain of it exceeds my perceived pain of change. It's incredible. The pain of the situation has to get greater than my perceived pain of change because no one likes the change, really. And so that one was the worst one I've ever had in my whole life. So I was worried based on what psychologists said, I would burn out again because nothing had changed other than I'd been born again, didn't even know it. And so I said, No, we're not doing that again on my watch. He said, Well, no, that's going to take a hell of a lot of work. I said, Well, I'm in. I am not going through that fear, scared thing again.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. Okay. Thank you. At a similar point in life. I ended up going through two and a half years of therapy, and I identify with that the pain of not going through therapy and the pain of what I was going through led me to choose the lesser of the two pains, which is the interruption to my schedule and whatever reputational risk I had as not working on a trading floor at the time, I needed to take time off to go to my therapist. I thought, Oh my goodness, the most embarrassing thing ever and I'm so glad I did. I presume that you are as well. Thank you for sharing that.
Terry Looper: Oh, huge, huge blessing to me.
Henry Kaestner: It seems that almost all entrepreneurs go through a similar journey at some point. This is a story that many of us are going to be familiar with and where most of our fellow church members struggle with hating their jobs. We struggle with loving them too much.
Terry Looper: Exactly.
Henry Kaestner: And it's you know, we're driven by an ambition of growth and scale. And each of these are gifts, but we have to steward them well. How do you now balance that tension between faithfulness and willfulness in your own life?
Terry Looper: Pain.
Henry Kaestner: It's more pain. Yeah.
Terry Looper: I mean, you know, prayer boundaries have taught myself a lot of boundaries. God's taught me a lot of boundaries. Faith. But what ultimately gets me to shift more to the faithfulness versus willfulness is when the pain finally gets great enough in certain areas of my life. And then I'll surrender some more in that area and become more faithful in those particular areas. I've still got plenty of areas left in my life where our willfulness wins too often, but it's just I would say that kind of in a nutshell.
Rusty Rueff: Terry, I just look back, I actually read a sacred pace at the end of 2019, which was sort of the end of the we all went as hard as fast as we could before we came to a grinding halt in 2020. You know, and I remember in your book, you had a number of examples about, you know, missing dinners and missing, you know, special things like sporting events for your kids. And and, you know, I know you're not alone, right? Because every every one of us have had that happen. And where we felt like we were absent from something that was really important. But it seems like every time there's a good reason for it, right? It's like, Well, yeah, but I had to do this. I had to do that. So what do you tell entrepreneurs and even driven leaders, people who are really driven type-A personalities, you know, what do you tell them to help them not tell themselves the excuses and not to have that kind of behavior in the moment and maybe even silence those voices in our head that says, you know, no, this is okay. I'm only missing this one time, help them with that.
Terry Looper: Well, first speak to my own situation. I would have probably gone to my deathbed believing I loved my family and my wife and my children more than success. But as they say, you pay more attention to someone's actions in their words. And the truth is, the priority of success was greater than my family. That's just the simple truth. And so there was learning from there. Catch up my jump curves to get from a feeder to interstate highway to get to the sports event. I mean, whatever. But I've had to look back with the Lord's help and therapy. That success was more important to me. I'm not saying that's the case with all the people. Obviously it's not. But you need to try to get real honest with yourself, and then from there you can probably improve.
Rusty Rueff: That's good. You know, I'm going to read a quote from your book, if it's okay to do that. So you write, I understand now that at the root of my perpetual discontentment was the perpetual fear that I wasn't good enough, that no one my parents, my business partner, my wife or daughter or anyone else could ever accept me unless I kept achieving and accumulating. I kept achieving and accumulating. One of our 12 marks that we have for Faith driven entrepreneurs is around where we put our identity and that our identity has to be rooted in Christ. Can you talk a little bit about how your relationship with Christ changed this idea that you had to constantly be proving yourself or achieving or accumulating or proving to others to be able to earn their love? Because somewhere in there seems like there was an identity shift that you probably didn't want to have happened but happened to you.
Terry Looper: They are the best thing that ever happened to me. I mean, it was a great lie. You know, it's the great lie. My wife loved me and my children. It didn't have anything to do with achievement. It literally didn't. My parents probably had some conditional love around achievement, and that's how I got driven like I did. But, you know, once Christ entered my life, I mean, everything changed. Everything changed. And the burn out with me driven to get whole with his leading and help. And then I was blessed, oh, probably about a year into my new identity and on vacation with Dawes. And he overwhelmed me with his love. Deep in my heart, I could probably cry right now about it. And that was 30 something years ago. He penetrated my soul in my heart of his love. And I contend when I talk to a lot of men, that most men have never been blessed with, that they know it in their head. But when you get it in your heart, just like a Bible verse, honestly, when you goes from your head to your heart, it changes you. And now I'm more loving and more lovable, and my identity shifts when I feel his love to the level I can feel it not near to the level he offers it, but to the level I can grasp it. It has changed me.
Henry Kaestner: Terry, you remember what happened is precipitated because I think that so many of us do want to go beyond this intellectual thought that, gosh, Christianity is one that has most explanatory power, or this buy into the Pascal's Wager that will lead some level of people to faith, and they want to have that type of this sense where it permeates to their heart. Do you know what it was that allowed you a year after you're born again moment to get that? Was it the work that preceded it? Was there something that just kind of triggered that for those that are listening, just like I wanted to see Christ is more alive and show up more? Just share a little bit more about that.
Terry Looper: But probably got two answers. One is the answer to your question is no. I do not, I think, though, I did so much deep therapy that I was renewing my soul, so to speak, renewing my subconscious, reprogram my subconscious to truth that I think he just blessed me. I don't even remember praying for that, but he just blessed me that it was all knowing it was a totally overwhelm. I cried like a baby. What I say now when I meet with someone one on one around this very subject and they'll get the courage to know, probably haven't really ever felt it in my soul. I kind of have a little ritual I go through and got a more extensive six page one by a man that had ALS and learned to really tap into the Lord. And I got him to write that for me of how to get set up to actually be able to get in a state. But mine was a lot simpler than that. And I would just, you know how you can dream anything. You can imagine anything. I would imagine sitting with Jesus at my favorite chair or bench in my favorite part of the world and ask him to hold me, ask him to help me understand how much he loves me. I would. Visit with him. And I would imagine that and to the point that it would start penetrating my soul.
William Norvell: Hmm. Amen. Amen. Well, as the resident crier on the FDE podcast, you are welcome to join me later on.
Terry Looper: It really happened.
William Norvell: I'm quite known for it around here. So you're in good company. So I feel like we've been holding everybody in suspense here. So everybody knows the book Four Steps to Hearing God and aligning yourself to his will. But, you know, everybody's just waiting. We're going to get to them. Some jumping in quick, you know, walk us through what are the four steps from your life journey that help us hear more from God? Everybody wants to do that. I'm ready.
Terry Looper: Well, I say, well, I laid them out as steps. It's more of a homogeneous process. It's not the only process by any means. Even my best friend has somewhat of a different approach, but the concept is still very, very important, very valid. So in my steps, the first one is consulting your friend Jesus. And I said that because I developed best I could tell a friendship to allow He ask in John 15:15 to be your friend says he's your friend. So I said, okay, I want to be your friend. And so I would consult him in business deals, consulting on management style management issues. But the process of these four steps, the key is to start praying and start discerning, trying to discern what Christ and the Lord wants for you. And that's what I call consulting my friend Jesus, and he's a great friend. The second one is gathering the facts, just like you do due diligence on a project business deal. That one's pretty definable, with a couple exceptions, along with you doing pro con list. Another thing I realized is a lot of people think their opinions are a fact. So as you're praying and consulting your friend, he starts revealing the truth to you. Some around your opinions aren't facts. The other thing I had a tendency to do around manipulation or whatever is when I'd hear a fact that I didn't like that didn't get me what I wanted, I would discount it. And when I'd hear a fact that really elevated some good news about what I wanted, I would give it more weight. And so through prayer, I started ahead and start saying, okay, no, I got to give everything away. I got to seek the truth because the truth will set me free. And those are a couple examples of how to seek the facts other than the ordinary way. Right. The third was watching for circumstances and everybody says, well, what's that mean? I mean, we've got a thousand circumstances. Well, if you're really trying to seek God's will, I think Psalm 37:4 which says delight in the Lord, he gives you the desires of your heart, I believe if you're going to be trying to do his will, I think that's the lighting in the Lord so I think he'll show you in your heart what circumstances really matter and the timing of it all. And then the fourth step, I got a chapter on each one of these in the book. So obviously we're going fast here. But the forth step is what I coined way back, getting neutral, and it's somewhat similar to obedience, surrender, whatever. But for some reason, the nonreligious term registers a lot better with people of getting neutral, where it really means I want God's will more than my own and you got to get it from your head to your heart or it doesn't work. And George Mueller, a great missionary back in the 1800s, has six step process of discerning God's will. But he said 90% and I can attest to this 90% is when you finally, finally, finally want God's will more than your own. So in that process, when you finally, finally really want is convinced, you jump off the cliff without knowing what is over the cliff, Then he would reveal to me in my soul and in my heart, in my gut, as I call it, his will. I would get a peace that was beyond understanding. It was very convicting. It was usually scary because he wants me to become more whole. So it's usually not what I want at the moment because I want easy street. I want quick answers, quick success, whatever. But as you remember Jesus in the Garden Gethsemane said to the Lord, I don't want to go to the cross for humankind, but I will do your will. So he stayed neutral. He was always neutral. The bigger the decision, the more weeks it takes me to get neutral. So it's a simple process, but it is not easy. It is painful to give up on what you really think you want and what's best.
William Norvell: Hmm. I believe that I'm hearing that, and that sounds fantastic, but difficult.
Terry Looper: Right, I had one thing that you have to decide who God is to you. If he's not worth giving up what you want for something that you don't even know what it's going to be. You got to decide who God is to you. And what I finally decided to do. He was to me in my heart, everybody's got to decide their own is that he sees the future. And I don't. He knows best. And I just think I do. And he loves me and everybody around me unconditionally. 1000 times, 100,000 million times better than I can. So when you finally get in your soul that he's worth the risk, that'll help you get there.
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William Norvell: So I heard this great quote years ago that said, you know, there's no greater job in the world for a workaholic than ministry because you can always justify more and more when somebody is in trouble. I feel like that can really be applied to Faith driven entrepreneurs ship. So many faith driven entrepreneurs feel they've been called feel that God has pushed them on this journey and [....] myself of signs and partners show up out of nowhere and into my mind saying, I mean, how do you think about being neutral to God's will? How did you get into this journey? I don't think we've got I know Rusty did the intro to your background. We hadn't talked about the large enterprise that you were running at the time, but it was quite large and you could talk a little bit about that. But my question is, how do you separate God's calling and, become neutral to, you know, a business that you feel like you have been given to steward and then obviously a family that you've been going to steward and then other responsibilities in the community and your church. And I'm curious how the sacred pace framework helped you think about those roles and how you prioritize them, even on a day to day basis, how you walk through decisions on where to go and what to do.
Terry Looper: Well, obviously, prayer I mean, it's a journey. You know, it's a journey still for me today. But prayer, obviously, whatever boundaries, I put several boundaries in the book to help. And I believe I've been blessed now to believe in my soul that God cares more about my soul than my ministry. If he gets my soul right. My ministry will soar. I tell a lot of ministry leaders that he cares a lot more about my soul because then he can work in me and through me. If my soul is bruised or clogged up, I have an image of my soul, or heart is like a conduit pipe. And the greater the faith, the wider the diameter. But within there I got dysfunction and I got sand. So the wider the pipe, I can get it with his leading and then less sand less dysfunction in my business. I believe truly long term will be actually better. I will make more money, I will be a better leader. I'll be a better manager if it works. I'm telling you, I've got 33 years of proof and it just works with these really tight boundaries about my hours and other convictions.
William Norvell: That's good. Did you go into that a little bit, You know, and I know you know where a one size fits one community here. You know, no one's life is identical to someone else's life, but it's always still great to just hear once again, you ran a $6 billion revenue company and it's always encouraging to hear someone say, you know, this is how it actually worked. And God still showed up because I'm in the thick of it. I'm the young entrepreneur here and I'm like, That sounds great, But when did you actually put that into practice? Were you the chairman by then? You know, it's kind of what our mind wants to say, but I'm curious.
Terry Looper: Well, I was the founder and principal, and I put up all the money, which wasn't that much money in today's terms, but it was, you know, a significant portion of mine, I'll say that. But in doing that, I was absolutely not willing to go back to my old ways. I had succeeded prior to that, but I absolutely was willing to forego success versus a life of a relationship with my Lord and my wife finally, and my kids finally. He had convicted me of that. So in order to start my own company with my own money and I've never started my own company, he convicted me to start it with a maximum 40 hours a week and a completely trusting not so, I don't know, one entrepreneur that started a business then our sense that 40 hours a week he said, Well, in essence you trust me or you don't. And I jumped off that cliff and I said, All right, I really believe you can make it successful. 30 hours a week. 40 I can handle and know I can still have time for my family. And the other thing he convinced me of is not to have a false god of metric goals. So we've never had metric goals and we became the largest private company in Houston based on revenue. I think 15 years into the company, it would never happen. Any metric goals, you know, Jesus, I don't think had any and I don't think he disciples had any. And, you know, they had some pretty good results. So I think through surrender, prayer, wisdom, patience, humility, it really worked. I'm still [pitiful].
William Norvell: Ok Rusty got one. And I have to go one more layer deeper because I'm setting my annual goals right now. Are you really mean you led this [....] of it you showed up to the all I then you're like we're just we're just going to work our best and I. That sounds awesome. I just want to double click on that.
Terry Looper: Yeah. And some of our guys have goals, metric goals. I said, Sure, you know, that's okay, but I don't believe in them. I think actually the eight players, if I give them a goal, I think it's short changes in the C players. It doesn't matter, you know. So I think they perform better without me overland them. My metric goals.
Rusty Rueff: It's fascinating. I'm just kind of blown away that the disciples didn't have KPIs. I thought everybody had KPIs
Terry Looper: Yeah i know you think about it.
William Norvell: Oh. He's been around a long time.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that's right. Okay. Yeah, exactly.
Terry Looper: And they really had some pretty good results, you know, kind of set the world on its ear.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah. Okay, so you've been at this for a while. You found your sacred pace, but you just made a little statement there before William jumped back in that you're still pitiful at it, You know, you're still trying to get better. Talk to us a little bit about what does getting better look like and and what are you continuing to learn? Because I think that you can kind of get a false sense of, well, I can get to this place where I've got it all under control and then it just, you know, my boundaries are set and always good, but it never quite works out that way. Does it.
Terry Looper: No, I was just before we started this show I was talking about my book was published four years ago next month, and the last two years I was doing exactly what I said you're not supposed to do. That he cares more about my soul than my ministry. Well, the book turned into my ministry that I would not expecting, and it got a little out of hand. I was meet with too many men and trying to help them and helped too many to where. Finally, the pain got too great, and so I've changed again. So it's an evolution of doing something that really in the line with the Lord to some degree of usually trying to overdo and then wait until the pain gets great enough. You say, I'm I'll change and we'll go back to the Lord's pace, in the Lord's way, in the Lord's will.
Henry Kaestner: So I'm struck as I listen to this about the back to the KPI's in the [....] and you coming out of this experience with a sense that you didn't need to have goals and trying to think about the production and what people like Paul went through, I mean, the shipwrecks and the imprisonments and all of those things. And I'm also been wrestling with John Wooden's teaching and definition of success. You know, he kind of turned the concept, the success on its head a little bit. I'm wondering what that means for Faith driven entrepreneurs and just kind of a mash up of all the different things we've been talking about. And I think that one of the truth it's impacting me is that the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom, the knowledge of God, the pursuit of him. When we do that, everything else flows from that. So how do you get a guy like Paul who is shipwrecked that many times and went through all the different challenges he had and be able to have God use him so magnificently? Or are you at Texon or any of us? It seems that it all starts from the right view of God if we have an encounter with the living God. In an endeavor to understand or come to understand depths to which he loves us and what he's done for us, then that provides us with this nuclear source of energy that transcends any KPI's. It makes a mockery of just what we might otherwise expect from ourselves, and we just do it just naturally because we've had an encounter with the living God and it's gone from intellectual to this heart level. And with that comes peace. With that clearly comes success in your case. But with that comes peace. But my sense is that for faith driven entrepreneurs, listening to this and trying to figure out what are some of the things to take away from Terry's story. Well, number one bUy the book of Sacred Pace. That's a good place to start. But beyond that is, gosh, Terry seems to really have endeavored to know God since the age of 36. Am I on the same type of quest? And what is my encounter with the living God? Tell me about pace. My motives. How I manage. How I lead. What is important? What is not? We're going to go through something we call Lightning Round here a little bit. Just get some very quick answers to some of the other questions we've been thinking about before. William closes out. You mentioned before, and I think that you spoke to two of these which are boundaries, one of which is not to be laboring under these kind of these goals that may be arbitrarily set or not. And they don't work for A the players, don't work for the C players. I love that distinction because I think we can get around that. You also talked about the 40 hour workweek. Before we get to the lightning round, which Rusty or William will lead us through. Can you just talk about what some of those other boundaries might be?
Terry Looper: Sure. One is this one, probably, I tell people, is probably the best tip in the whole blowing book is when somebody asks you to do something. Wait till tomorrow to give an answer. When they first ask me. I either have a reaction of pride or people pleasing or being wanted or whatever. And if I'll just wait till tomorrow. The objectivity is incredible of how busy am I, is it really aligned with my purposes? Hey, maybe what my wife or significant other says about it. You can actually come up with objective answer and give a yes or no. That's been a huge blessing to me. And when I deviate, I'm usually sorry that I deviated. Another is I always come up with ideas like, Oh, entrepreneurs, it's endless. So when one is going to really impact my employees or my company or pocketbook or the family, I park it for a week and I don't even pray about it. I just try to park it and kind of forget about it. And a week later I never celebrate it, really. But on average, I'd say 80% of them were bad ideas. A week later, one week in God's answers in his program, are always very slow in our eyes. So one week is not going to cause a problem. Even if it's God's calling. He will honor the fact that you're just trying to lift it up for one week and come back and see. I'm amazed at how often they're bad ideas. And I didn't draw my boys crazy or my wife. That's another huge one. And then when I've had a life changing event of selling the division, we sold several divisions. Over the years, I've learned that I can't trust myself, that my pride gets in the way and I need to wait one year before I invest any of that money or buy anything. So those are three significant ones that I really, really work hard at work have been huge blessings to me. And as a sidebar, there was a not necessary a boundary, but I saw a video the other day, about 11 minutes long, that I realized what we do here is what they had proven worked in the business world is if you love your employees first, you love your customers second, and you love making money. Third, you will smoke the companies that put making money first. They had a study of S&P companies that were similar competitors, and they did a study over like ten years. And the ones that love the employees first, love the customer second and put money last, that they had tremendously better results than the ones that put money first. So that's one of my messages.
Henry Kaestner: Great truth.
Terry Looper: Yeah.
Henry Kaestner: I remember telling the guys at Chick-Fil-A who, you know, are so great at delighting customers. Like, tell me, I mean, how do you delight customers? Like, we actually don't focus on delighting customers. We focus on delighting our employees, but we can't have somebody look someone in the eye and say, it was my pleasure unless they really feel that they've been delighted.
Terry Looper: Exactly. And I tell my employees, you know, our mission statement to be best service provider in our industry. And I tell all my employees, there's no way we can be the best service provider if my management team and I aren't the best service provider to them, there's no way.
Rusty Rueff: I'm going to jump into the lightning round and get it started. But I have to ask one question about this. Waiting one year with any money you've gotten. Does that include like philanthropic or tithing? Do you set it away for a year?
Terry Looper: No that doesn't.
Terry Looper: I'm glad you asked that. No, I've been giving away 50% of my money since 1998. So when I have a big liquidity event, I don't think it's advisable to give it all away in one year. So I'll put it in a donor by phone or my foundation and whatever. But I will try to guard my heart in terms of me giving an unusually big gift to somebody in that year. Yes, I will try to enlist. There's no time left. I will definitely postpone any big out of the ordinary gifts because of my pride.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, a lot of wisdom there. A lot of wisdom. Okay, so we have this thing called Lightning Round. They're just fun little questions that we ask you, and you just answer them quickly and we run through them. I've got two, William have one or two, and then Henry will have one or two. So my first one starts in the book. You, you actually said you grew a mustache so that people would take you more seriously as a negotiator, but then you shaved it off. You don't have a mustache now? No, no. So how long did it last? And did people take you more seriously?
Terry Looper: Probably in my perceived delusion. I thought they did, but I grew it at 25 because I had a pretty good role and I'd shaved it. January one, 2000, the day of Millennial, I shaved as I think 52. And I shaved it because people were starting to think my mustache was gray and people were starting to think my blond or brown hair, I was dying it. And I got tired of answering people. No, my hair is not bad. They have not colored my hair, so I shaved my bloomin mustache off.
Rusty Rueff: Yeah, I have that problem with this thing on my chin. Yeah. Bright white. Now I get it all the time. All right, that's good. That's good. Okay, my second one. Last one. So setting boundaries means being able to say no. Give us a couple examples quickly of the best way to say no.
Terry Looper: Well, that's a wait till tomorrow. That's my best one. So, you know, just give me till tomorrow and I'll give you an answer. That's my best one so I can get I can't trust myself on the firing line. So I had to buy time so I can get away and see what makes sense. You know, what's happened is, like I said, I used to be huge people pleaser. But I've learned that I'm just really big on speaking the truth now. And so I just have learned that I've just got to speak the truth and have the courage to do it or otherwise. I've slid back in my old ways.
William Norvell: Amen you've given so much advice so far, but one other, you had one or two other piece of advice for next generation FAITH DRIVEN ENTREPRENEURS What would it be?
Terry Looper: Amazed that you cry and I cry, but I might be crying over this, but I'm telling you, it works, I'm a much better businessman. I'm way more successful in business as a leader, as a father, as a grandfather. I mean, I'm doing a Bible study on Wednesday mornings with my granddaughter who's in college. I mean, what a gift. And that's not the only one I've done with, but it works. He's got it figured out. He's got it figured out. He loves us so much. He wants us to succeed. He didn't have anything against us succeeding. So it works. I'm telling you, I'm a better business man because of my generosity. Because I no longer swing for the fence out of greed. And I no longer hide the money under a bucket because I'm scared of losing it. I'm just now make better business decisions.
William Norvell: Amen. Well, speaking of great place for my last lightning round, we love talking about amazing nonprofits and ministries here. Speaking of your generosity, favorites, the wrong word, but an exciting nonprofit that you're given to today that you'd love to share with others.
Terry Looper: Well known nonprofit. I'm own now board is Young Life Board. I went off and then they asked me to come back on. So I've come back home. But I said, I'm only coming back home. To pour in to the staff if we can get the staff back to their soul. We get the souls of the staff right then. A lot of things that happened in terms of high school kids coming to know Christ. So we've started a soul care program there for the staff. That's been a lot of fun and it's been a real gift to me to be involved in that.
William Norvell: Amazing. I'm heading out on a family trip to Young Life camp in California here in a few weeks.
Terry Looper: Ok.
William Norvell: Couple of our families are all heading out there, so that's amazing operation. Okay, so lastly, we love.
Henry Kaestner: Nope nope nope.
Henry Kaestner: I'm going to throw one in there.
William Norvell: Nope never mind.
Henry Kaestner: No, the last one that you'll ask is going to be the most important one, but kind of just a random one. Is there an author, an actor or an athlete that you admire and then come into contact maybe with their work? Maybe this makes it easier for an author or an actor, but you come to know God more fully because of their cultural influence in your life. You've written a book, Sacred pace. You're an author, whereas some are. Give me another cultural influence that you would recommend to people as they endeavor to know God more fully. And you can't say the Bible.
Terry Looper: I would say books by far. I'm really not much of a sports fan, to be really honest. And I would say a really good one is, well, Andrew Murray with humility is a good one. But Jesus calling by Major Ian Thomas, He's got two real simple short books. They're powerful. They're powerful.
William Norvell: So where we do love to end speak, we have the greatest author ever. We love pointing back to Scripture and just always learning from God's Word. And we love to just invite you to share maybe a piece of God's word that's working on you today or in this season, or maybe something you've been meditating on your whole life, but some piece of God's word that you feel God telling you to share with our audience.
Terry Looper: Well, lately I've been blessed for the last five, seven, eight verses of Romans one really impacting me. And it's basically he's saying when you turn away from God, he turns you over to a depraved mind and that goes nowhere south. And it kind of reminds me of our culture. And he tells us not to judge them because that's his role. And for some reason, it's taken away a lot of frustration and a lot of my judgment of our culture. And I feel very blessed to be freed up from that, to say, I don't have any frustration. That's not true. And just, you know, to say I'm free of judgment, that's not true. But it's been a quantum leap. He just said that's what he's going to do and that's what they're doing. So we all worked up about it. We're right on track. So it's been a real blessing for me.
William Norvell: Amen Amen. Well, I know. I'm just so grateful for you stopping in what is an incredibly busy schedule to spend time with us and our audience, and.
Henry Kaestner: They are so busy. It's only 40 hours we've already established.
William Norvell: I know that makes it more busy. I mean, you've got 39 left. We've got to work overtime.
Henry Kaestner: Terry I'm grateful for you. Thank you for your leadership, your humility, the lesson of just endeavoring to know God more fully, making it really practical for us all. And yes, indeed, I'm poking fun at my mustache friend down there, but thank you for blessing us in our audience.
Terry Looper: Your blessed us. Thank you for your ministry in blessing others. I hope this will bless many. Thank you.