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Business as Mission - Lesson 2

Business Aspects

God wanted my business to be done well. He doesn't do anything sloppily. He wants to own it, direct it, as one of the systems he has established for the universe by which the kingdom of God enters into our experience on a day to day basis.

Taught by a Team
Taught by a Team
Business as Mission
Lesson 2
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Business Aspects

Business Aspects

A. Questions and Assumptions

B. The Theory of Constraints

C. The Importance of Obedience

D. Investing for Heaven

E. Working with Restraints

F. Learn to See, Learn to Hear

G. Key lessons


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  • Bill Job founded a company in China in 1988 as a Foreign Invested Enterprise. Meixia International produces Tiffany and fine glass for export. His vision is to transform people and communities through profitable business. Hundreds of Meixia employees have become believers in Jesus Christ, churches have been planted and compassionate ministries have started, including a program to hire the disabled.

    Bill Mcleod is founder and executive director of Mission ConneXion Northwest.

    Establishing a profitable business is one way to gain entrance and have influence in countries that are otherwise closed and/or hostile to the Gospel. It's important to depend on Christ and have an attitude of stewardship as you make decisions for the direction of the business.

     

  • God wanted my business to be done well. He doesn't do anything sloppily. He wants to own it, direct it, as one of the systems he has established for the universe by which the kingdom of God enters into our experience on a day to day basis.

  • When you think kingdom, you think about rescuing people. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. The opportunity to be involved in rescue as we ourselves have been rescued, "helicoptered" out of the kingdom of darkness...why wouldn't we want to be part of that?

In this three-session course, Bill MacLeod, founder of Mission ConneXion Northwest, interviews Bill Job, founder and president of Meixia International, a thriving business in China. With the core conviction that eternal things are more important than temporal things, Bill describes how through his business programs hundreds of Meixia’s employees have become believers in Jesus Christ, churches have been planted and compassionate ministries have started, including a program to hire disabled workers from the local community. Approximately 1.5 hours.

Business as Mission

Bill MacLeod & Bill Job

cm200-02

Business Aspects

Lesson Transcript

Bill MacLeod:   So, Bill, what I'd like to focus on next is the business part of the this whole proposition of doing business as mission. What's the actual business? What do you actually do?

Bill Job:  Well, we have manufacturing facilities. We actually have four divisions and two separate companies. I believe what caught me by surprise the most was that God wanted it to be done well, because in my mind I'm just really using as an excuse in the beginning. And what I found is he doesn't do anything sloppily that way. He wants to own them. He wants to be able to direct them. He wants to be involved. He wants to have a chance to be the best in the world at what he does. And so my respect for the concept of business just skyrocketed when I realized it's just one of the additional systems that he's created for the universe by which the Kingdom of God actually enters into our experience on a day by day basis. So I had to radically change how I perceived it, had to really respect every aspect of it and desire to do it with excellence. But in him, with him, because he's an excellent kind of guy. And then and then think.

Bill MacLeod:   Boy, there's so many directions I want to go with you. I mean, there's something I want to talk about. You know, how things began to move in the direction, but not yet, because I'd like to talk about going back this whole relationship thing. A lot of people listening will say, this guy's in China. Like, how can he do like any ministry? I mean, isn't he in jail when he's in China? So that's a question I have. We can come back to that. But I think we need to take a second and talk about the technology, because you've got business guys listening right now and they say, well, we haven't really heard what the heck he does, you know? You know how we make some money? And and I want to talk about how the company grew and stuff. But so, you know, you tried a lot of different things, but you ended up with a technology. And what happened?

Bill Job:  Well, the first technology came from a friend's suggestion, and he passed away about a year into the project. The second technology came from another friend suggestion, and then we ran into the Tiananmen mess and everything froze up. Yeah. So we had to do something that was based on domestic business. We just learned how to do sandblasted. Glass took about two days and we started a company that did that and three days a year we survived on that. Now Jesus is really good with his hands still. I mean, when he was a carpenter, I bet he made really, really good stuff, right? He just doesn't like to do junky stuff. So you get him involved. His hands are still good. People who are good with their hands are always good with their hands. And it doesn't matter if it's wood, steel, blast or whatever they are. It's that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're good with that. So we found it. We gave him a chance to get involved. He would get involved and we would receive benefit, we would get ideas, we would get customers coming out of the blue, we'd get products. We have ten patents that we've been awarded because of inventions that he gave us. We have machines and production lines that come from his guidance that have become, I would argue, in three categories the best in the world.

Bill MacLeod:   And tell the story about the lampshades. And in this whole idea of how you know, the forms. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Job:  So this is very early on and I don't. I was just beginning to see how this works. And so I was being trained by a Taiwanese master lampshade producer. And the way that they did it was to make a stink last lampshade out of a, a design that would be triple allocated. So you'd make one panel and another one identical and another one identical. Then you put these together. It forms a whole lampshade.

Bill MacLeod:   Now even I can figure that out.

Bill Job:  Got it. That's good. Is so good. Now, they would put it into a plaster mold and sort of that leaf together, as they called it. But whenever they held those leaves together and saw that the joint was always a much thicker, it just was noticeable and it just troubled me, you'd look at it, it's not attractive. It's like it's just wrong. Yeah, just wrong. So I'm trying to do this. I think Jesus wants this company. I don't think he would do it that way. He ends up being a lord. What? What about this? And immediate, I got an idea. And so I asked the master here, the we say sure for the Yeah, the.

Bill MacLeod:   Yeah, yeah, whatever. Yeah.

Bill Job:  And the expert why don't you put it in a single mold so you don't have those ornaments. And he looked at me like I was just didn't know anything which I kind of didn't. And he said many of the lampshades kind of wrap around like this. If you assemble them in a solid mold, you never get them out of the ball. Yet you see that? And I said, Well, why don't you just do a different come on. And the idea just came from nowhere, you know? What do you mean, Never mind, Never mind. So I went, I just got one of the stained glass master lampshades put some plaster over it, let it dry, sliced into three parts, let it stay there. Put another. Up over the top of that. And when it was dry, pop that off, pop the other three up, put them upside down and they fit together to. A single mold. Now, he needed to pop out just like that. It took him maybe 3 hours. And all of a sudden, the standard for the whole industry went up. And now it's the form that everybody uses in Asia.

Bill MacLeod:   Now, I hear you telling that story. And I think that's not I mean, it's not. And I've seen all the how many years they've been doing this kind of technology. And I'm thinking, why can't I? Didn't somebody figure that out? And your answer was we get I.

Bill Job:  Yeah, we get experiences and experience gives us assumptions and assumptions gives us intellectual arrogance. We quit asking, we quit looking. We make assumptions that this is the best way to do it. So when I have the experience of something, I have a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is now I know how to do something. Something, right? Yeah. The bad thing is I probably believe that's the best way to do it. Now, I quit looking for a better way.

Bill MacLeod:   And if nobody challenges you, you know better than to think. Oh, look at this.

Bill Job:  Right.

Bill MacLeod:   Right. I mean, I feel the same way about Mission Connection. I just feel like, No, I want this to be much better. You know, you're always talking about the law of constraint. Talk about that for a second. Yeah, I know. It has nothing to do with like when you. When you talked at Intel. Well, the other day, I'm thinking, oh, this guy's got quantum physics degrees and no philosophy and but impressed me. But all systems.

Bill Job:  Lead into that is scriptures say wisdom is in the street, at the street corner crying out to be known proverbs, the first eight chapters story of these two women. I learned that here. It's a great professor, great teacher learning. I hear two women, a streetwalker and woman of the streets, that she was righteous, she was wisdom crying out to be known, the streetwalkers foolishness, folly. She's also crying out to be known. We can meet them both in the street that is not exclusive of believers. She's in the public street. Anybody can find wisdom. And so I pay attention to any books that are out because it may be that the nonbelievers found wisdom because the believers are arrogant, aren't looking for any more. Absolutely absolute. Say so. This comes from a book by a guy named Melia who gold read Theory of Constraint, and it says simply that every system has a constraint and the best system in almost anything like a business system.

Bill MacLeod:   Like solar system.

Bill Job:  Maybe, but what I decided was to ask myself, what if my spiritual life is a system? Does it have a constraint? Like the simplest way to express it is to say, You've got a business. Are you doing hamburgers, fries and coke? Set meals, right? Okay. Right. And you can do 92 burgers an hour, 120 Cokes an hour and 130 fries an hour. And I come along because I'm a fries salesman, French fries salesman. I got this new French fry, 2010. And it is hot and it is great. You can do like 175 sets of fries an hour, and I'm trying to sell it to you, But you go. It doesn't help me at all, because I can only do 90 to an hour. It is controlled by the number of hamburgers I can make. Yeah, that's that systems constraint. So every decision you make for the system, you need to evaluate what happens to the constraint. Because if you're spending money but not get more throughput as the wrong thing to do. So I began to ask myself, I think Jesus kind of prompted me. He says, Well, what about in your spiritual life? What's the constraint? What's holding you back? Where is it that you spend a lot of time and energy but don't get the results? Where are we buying the high power of French fry makers? But we don't get to sell more French fries. And I'm thinking is the constraint knowledge of the scripture wisdom? Is it worship? Is it evangelism? Is it fellowship? All of the classic things that we. try to do. I just kind of probed a little bit and I came to the conclusion none of those were the constraint because one unit of increase at the constraint will always equal a unit of increase in the entire system, such that, if I can say, if you put the burgers down this way, you can go from 90 to 96 an hour. You don't have to spend a penny, but you also go to 96 Cokes, 96 fries, the whole system goes out. That's when you know you got the constraint. So I found out that if I do more Bible study, it doesn't necessarily guarantee I get more spiritual, right? I finally decided that one of the things that may explain that or fit the requirements is the self that Jesus is getting at when he says, I want you to do this, deny that, deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me. I love it. Sometimes he makes it so simple. In Chinese we have an expression We are change or change with joy. Odds are that you don't want it too simple. With simplicity comes responsibility. I just think sometimes we love the complexities that we create because we don't have to come out of that and actually execute something.

Bill MacLeod:   Well, and you even said something about, you know, typically and of course, the Internet is changing all this. But if you have somebody that's got a certain amount of knowledge, he holds onto that knowledge because that's maybe his livelihood or whatever. And talk about that, how that even hurts what you're trying to do sometimes because it's knowledge based.

Bill Job:  Yeah, I think when you're in a country operating in this society, you really don't see a lot of the stuff that goes on. You base it on assumptions. You just assume this is normal. Don't really think about it when you step out of that and you look at it from a distance, you actually can see things you can't see when you're in the middle of it. And what I began to see is the way I thought I would do valuable work came from a knowledge based, systematic approach to my work. I began to realize that's kind of typical. So in the Christian world, in the US, if you want to become a real leader or player, you got to get a certificate that you've got knowledge because it's such an important part. Or if someone accepts Christ February one and we say, When would they typically be baptized? It's usually 3 to 12 months later because they don't have any knowledge. We can't do it today, but the scripture seems to model. It would always be the same day. And so I'm wondering, did they have a different way of thinking that they have a different sort of foundational philosophical way of looking at it? And I looked at my own life. I became a believer through just following a set of statements, prayer right out of Romans, you know, And it was a 730 in the evening, 1969, September, I think, 18th. And it was wonderful. And the guy helping me into this immediately asked if I wanted to be baptized. And I go, No, I want to not be baptized is what I said, because I had been through some weird little experience and as a kid it freaked me out. People were the white sheets at a pool of water and being pushed backwards. And then what? He said, That's where I'm not interested in that now. And he said. Well, would you mind just reading a couple of verses at Romans? And I'm thinking, well, you know, God just forgave all my sins, gave me a new life. I might as well, you know. So I was like, Yeah, yeah. And I read those verses. That explained like, this is about dying to know life resurrected to a new life. And it expresses that, you know, my first statement wants to hear. Can we do this right now?

Bill MacLeod:   Then he is like, Whoa!

Bill Job:  Well, he asked me to wait till Sunday. He said watching one person express this new life. He says it's better than 100 of my sermons. He said, if you would help me, just it would help me greatly if you just wait till Sunday morning. So I waited like four days, but I'm thinking, why did I want to do it? What was happening in my heart and I think it's a period do what is there to do. You don't have to know a lot to be obedient. So then I realized obedience is a bigger foundation to this whole spiritual experience. The knowledge is because you can get in the book within 12 hours, I can essentially guarantee you you're going to find something you don't want to do. Now you got a problem? Yeah. What are you gonna do with that? You don't want to think of yourself as a disobedient Christian. So what tends to happen in my experience is. I tweaked it out, explained away. Yeah. So it didn't actually say what it just said. Now, business guys. Let me tell you this. I have never talked to you about this before. Business guys have another really, really key advantage in the spiritual life they know another way to view reality that has consequences, that requires results. I mean, we live in a world where accountability really matters. Most of the Christian world that is from the West does not yet deal with the concept of delegation theological theologically, that God has delegated things to me and I got to do it Now in the in the working world. You're a boss. You get to the point you delegates after or what is done by 3:00 today. He comes back at 4:00. Did you do it?

No. Why not? Well, I just kind of thought that was a suggestion. Hey, you know that I'm the boss. You're the employee. I get to tell you what to do. You do what I tell you. We're not negotiating this, right? I delegated to you. I need you to get it done. When you didn't do that, a shipment didn't go out of customer, didn't get his needs met. And we're, like, failing to do what we need to do. It's important. You need to go do that. Yeah, well, I don't really want to do it. I don't feel like it today. Yeah, Okay. You can hit the trail. I got no time for you. Yeah, and I got to thinking. We think of God as being kind of retired. We think of him as like seated all the time. The work is over there, just sort of waiting. No, it's not a good picture. Yeah, it's not accurate. He is running an enterprise. He calls it the Kingdom of God. When you look at Jesus in the revelation, he's very involved in how his departments are performing. He writes them little letters saying, okay, you did well over here, but you're not doing so good with that. If you don't get. That hole plugged in the system, I'm yanking your cord.

Bill MacLeod:   Yeah. Yeah. Say, yeah.

Bill Job:  He's intent on accomplishing the building of his kingdom.

Bill MacLeod:   And when he looks at us and he looks at you, you know, serving in China. Yeah. Okay. From our perspective, we would say, Oh, this is Bill job. He's. He's serving in China. And look at all these great things he's doing. But I love your story about the fact that you say, now this is just actually an interview. Yeah. Talk to me about that. Well, you know, the toilet paper. Yeah. Not to give away the story, but. Okay.

Bill Job:  What you're what you're referring to is another awareness that comes out of the talents, the stories of the town. So in this story, the master has some resources. In one version, he gives it to several people according to their ability. And another version, he gives it kind of equally to everybody, to a number of people. He always gives the command, I think, do business til I return. Now, interestingly enough, even though I was kind of uncomfortable with the concept of business, in my mind, that makes every Christian a business person.

Bill MacLeod:   Yeah. Good.

Bill Job:  You've been given resources and a command to do business until I come back. Going to go away and receive another kingdom. And once he gets that kingdom, he'll return and then he's going to look at the books. That's like pure business stuff. Right. And so I'm trying to work all of this out now. I came into thinking of this I think, with theology. That was maybe influenced by artwork from the European guys or something. Basically, it was this I kind of believed in the gospel of forgiveness of sins. I knew I had a problem with God. My separation was evidence of it. Sin was the core cause of it. Jesus died, forgave my sin. I can accept that and get that healed up. And then I kind of just. Sort of waited around until I die, you know, do something good, maybe go into church, work, that kind of stuff. But basically nothing's urgent because they're, like, retired. You know, they're just sitting around all the time up there. So we just kind of like, get through this time period. And then after that, I go on a really long vacation, you know, in heaven. That was the kind of concept I came. I read this story and I go, Oh, no, it's not like that at all. It's like take the guy who received one, got ten more and divide his life into two careers and just track his career path. So before the New Kingdom, which I take to be now, he was an investor. He was a steward of some resources. He did a good job. He had a tenfold increase. In our company, we started with a $10,000 investment and we were regularly shipping six $7 million worth of stuff. So we had a financial increase. I feel pretty good about that. And then the master comes back and he says, Well, let's look at this. He says, Master, I got ten for you. He says, That's great. That is really. Good. Now we look at this with this selfishness thing and all that kind of jealousy and greed. It's not there. The master says, I can trust you. Absolutely, I can trust you. I can give more to you. We could do more together. This is great. This is great. I love it. And so he says, All right, in my new kingdom. I know I got these. I got all these cities. Okay, I'm going to give you ten cities in my new kingdom. I want you to manage ten cities. Well, that career is kind of like after leaving this world is what we commonly think of as sort of heaven, although we may be thinking inaccurately of it, because heaven will actually end up back down here in the form of the new heaven and earth, that kind of thing. And so this guy in that later stage ends up managing ten cities. So the question comes up in what career was this guy busiest? It just blew me away. It just knocked all my theology. Completely out of the water. I think managing ten cities might be a little harder than investing those resources. Well, he's going to be busier than heaven and is now.

Bill MacLeod:   What happened to the clouds in the harbor?

Bill Job:  Yeah. As I'm thinking now, this. Actually strikes the chord of a guy in a way that they sit down. The clouds does not.

Bill MacLeod:   You're right.

Bill Job:  I mean, I frankly, the image of heaven that we have is not that attractive, but the image of going through this time here getting good at something. So he could give me ten cities to manage for him. It's not self oriented stuff. I want to please him. I'm too. I got the greatest employees. I've got 20, 30, 40 they would do anything for me. Yeah. Yeah. And I love the fact they're not doing it selfishly. They're not doing it so they can gain something. They're doing it because they love me and they want to get this thing done together. Yeah. And so that's what I began to see on my life down here is like investing time and I've been getting given the command and do business while I'm here. So I'm looking at. Relationships and resources. How do I invest that for the kingdom? Because it's just this long interview process. Pretty soon I'll leave here. I'm 63. My dad only lived. I was 57. I may have begun tomorrow. If I'm going tomorrow, I get the check in up there. And I think that check in process is going to be really great. So, you know, checking into a new conference or something like that, you go and they give you like this, this packet welcome packet.

Bill MacLeod:   Right.

Bill Job:  Okay, here's your address. Here's a map to your address. You know, maybe you'll get. Some angels or somebody to take care of. Find it. The first time you go in your room, you find out. What you got, you know what's in there. You get tools or all this stuff to stuff for you.

Bill MacLeod:   And here's the list of your ten cities.

Bill Job:  Yeah, right. There's going to be a little bank book. Bank of New Jerusalem, and it's going to have some deposits already. Mm hmm. And you want those to be big because Jesus commanded you to make them be layered for yourselves. Treasures and Heaven Command not suggested so.

Bill MacLeod:   But you understand that because you wouldn't be in that house with those rules and that bank account had you not learned that on Earth.

Bill Job:  No, like, what if I just was one of the guys in the parable, in the stories about the towns and the miners, and I felt my only job was to protect what we gave it, give it back 100% intact. Those guys get fried. Yeah. That store. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If there is no increase, I'm telling you, the master is going to be mad. Yeah, he is going to be mad.

Bill MacLeod:   Well, I want to talk about some of the increase. Okay? And, you know, thinking about going back to your live constraints, a lot of us here, we may not know that law, you know, but we would think China restricted access, you know, as a missions pass for a while. I know is kind of four quadrants in the world open access and the other end you get restricted access in China is one of those restricted access countries. Yeah. And so you would think well, yeah, constraint I would think I would have thought, you know, you can't do a whole lot in China, but talk to me about like your relationship with employees, with the government, with the community, and you're in the town that you're in.

Bill Job:  Yeah, yeah. In my little history of this thing, early on, the Lord conveyed a message to me, and I can't go into the details now for security reasons. But what do you essentially said was he did not want me to speak about this thing, about the gospel, about what Jesus did, about the love of God, about how to fight for what he said. Nope, I want you to shut up.

Bill MacLeod:   Yeah.

Bill Job:  And I remember thinking, I don’t think I had the class here that taught me to shut up and actually represent God in your life.

Bill MacLeod:   And you're good at it. I mean, you know, you built ministries that were strong. You were a pastor. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We Bibles that. Yeah. So to say your best strength is that you're.

Bill Job:  Yeah, you know, it takes it completely away, right? I just assume, like in San Francisco, I started a Bible study and it grew to 150. Here in Oregon the same thing. In Tennessee, in a friend's home on a Friday night and it grew to 150 people. I'm just like I just over the Bible, teach 150 people. So if I go to China, open the Bible, teach it, and in 50 people and I said, actually, this time I don't want to open in your mouth. And I'm thinking. Oh, well, what do you do? I mean, it's really embarrassing.

Bill Job:  I didn't know that God could say he wanted me to just live out the gospel. And what does that mean? Yeah, let's just start with loving people, okay? Who? And he's just a How about that would how about this? So here's a little guy and he's a baker. He's got no physical deformities. So the society trashed him, and he's the only thing you could do is just ask for money. And God says, Why don't you just let that guy in my name through me? Let me love him through you? How do you do that? It's just a set of experiments. You start by stepping in that direction. I'll tell you. You don't know this one story. A story of a little girl. I met her when she was eight years old and she was this tall. Literally, she had essentially no legs, had double polio situation and curvature of the spine. Her mom had put her in a boat and pushed her out to sea, which is like a year. Somebody found her and saved her and gave her back to the mom. And her mom literally dumped her in the trash can at the end of the street and left. Someone heard her crying and got her out and basically rescued her and cared for her for the next few years. I met her as I was walking home one night, a dark little street, a little tiny doorway to something normal, no bigger than most of our closets. And she and this other lady lived in there, and she was just on the ground, literally on the ground, just kind of looking up at the door. And the Lord says, Well, why don't you love that one?

Bill MacLeod:   You had how much time to figure that out?

Bill Job:  You get those instructions in a matter of seconds. I mean, just look at Jesus walking through the stories in the New Testament. Any of those stories where he's walking along and he stops and he touches somebody's heels, somebody speaks to somebody and just ask yourself the question, when did you get that directive from the father? Because he says, I never said anything. He didn't tell me to say. So His father told him to stop and do those things and say those things. He also says, My father gave me the strength to do that. So what was that relationship like? This is a great.

Bill MacLeod:   So what do you do? You see the girl and then? Then where does it go?

Bill Job:  Well, he. I befriend her and I begin to see. And the Lord says, I want you just to go see her again. And it wasn't like he said, I want you to see her every two weeks. But for the next 14 years, every two weeks, I get this impression to go see her and I go see her sometimes. She was where she where I met her just as a neighbor down the street, a blond. Sometimes she was living in a school for the deaf. Sometimes she was living in the city compound for orphans. But I would go find this man ten, 15 minutes, whether that be it for years. And then I knew that you want me to give her a job, and I that wouldn't be good for her spiritual life to give her something. But I did tell her that we were hiring people who could do CorelDraw. So she went out and got herself a course in it. Now she could get around with a little walker, but she can't move her legs, you know, you kind of dragging yourself around. So she goes, gets this course, and I take her out to lunch about a month later. And I said, Hey, how's it going? It's her birthday, and I'm taking it out to her for a birthday. And I said, Are you doing learn anything? She says, Yeah. So I said, Can I give you a test? So I take her to the office, fire up a computer, put her on and give her a test. And she's already better than all of our people.

Bill MacLeod:   Really? Yeah. As in drawing some kind of artwork or something.

Bill Job:  Yeah. Giving doing design work. So we hire her and give her a job. Computer programing for a big waterjet machine that we have. The American who manages that department for me said she did it two years in a row, never made a single mistake. And so then she becomes a believer. And I talked to her after about six months or so later. I said, Have you figured out why you're here yet? You know, we're all here for a purpose. I think of that's kind of our calling.

Bill MacLeod:   That's empowering. Just ask the question, not tell them. Yeah, Just say, you know why you're here.

Bill Job:  Yeah, just think about it. She came back a little bit later because at this time, she was living in the in the compound, the welfare sort of division of the city. She's a rent paying resident now.

Bill MacLeod:   She's not taking.

Bill Job:  She’s giving. And so she comes back to me one day, she says, I think I found it. There's some other kids here who have deformities. And one girl actually was abandoned because of her condition. And they just sort of ride around to help change baby diapers. And that's what she's been doing since she was three or four years old. Now she's 20. Never been out of compound. I'm taking her out. I can reach these people, she said, Boss, because I got the same background. I know what's going on. I can reach these people for Christ. I thought, that is great. And then she told me she got this girl out of the back, go a little tricycle, got three wheel tricycle, motor, like she took a busted out and took her out of the city, got her a job at a tea shop. You know, it was really good. About a couple of months later, she said, I was talking to one of the vice mayors of the city. I told him, If you want those of us with disabilities to really mainline mainstream, you need to give us some real housing, some regular housing that with everybody else, let's make it. Six months later, she comes into my office. Little walker. You know, it's got this big smile on her face. And I said, What are you up to? She smiles, Voice I tell you something. She said, The mayor, He came to me the other day and he said, I listened to what you said and I decided to give you an apartment. So I had given you part. I think it's probably worth 40 $50,000. US just given to her.

Bill MacLeod:  If she hadn't been a beggar. Yeah. So wouldn't be blessed. Yeah. If you hadn't had ears to hear what the spirit would say to you about this girl. She would be still there.

Bill Job:  Right now, our vision statement is transforming individuals and communities through profitable business. I'm not done with a story she gets a little closer to be, takes another couple of steps, bigger smile, and she says, I gave the house back to her.

Bill MacLeod:   And after how long?

Bill Job:  I never got it. Never moved in and moved in. He gave it to her and she said, I'm afraid if I leave her, I'll forget these people that I need to care for her. So I gave up the house. I let somebody else have it. So she can transform. We hit our target the other day. She I started a new company. She came to work for me in the new company as a designer, and she noticed on May 1st of this past year that a new big, big, big, big company with 10,000 employees has a new manager, a new general manager who's not Chinese. It was previously the Chinese parent company. And that means in her mind, she's she thinks they're trying to up their quality. It's an excavation equipment company we have in this new company, something that we can sell them. So she says we need to get that guy. And she does some research on Internet. Can't find out what the name of the new Korean president. And so she calls in her contacts with the vice mayor and she goes and gets the head like a board member of the company that owns this big company. And she wants 5 minutes with him. And so she gets it. She walked in there with little Walker and he said, what do you want? Because they all know her. She's really pretty famous in the city. And she says, I want a meeting with the president of this certain such a company. So I get a chance to sell our product. And he says, Well, I can set you up. So he sets her up. We end up with a 30 minute meeting with the president of the company. I go in there, she goes in there, and then the manager for this company goes in. We have make a sales process presentation. It goes really good. We decide we think she needs to be in sales and everybody goes, She's deformed. You don't want her in sales. People will look at her and they'll think she's defective, the company's defective. You know they'll make that assumption. I go, I don't think so. What do. Salespeople really fear? Being forgotten or rejected? Being rejected or ignored?

Bill MacLeod:   She’s been there, done that.

Bill Job:  And so we actually have set her up and she's doing a fantastic job of doing telephone sales. We send her off by her.

Bill MacLeod:   They don't see her well.

Bill Job:  We sent her off by herself to call on people physically face to face that had been talking to for six months. And now they go meet her at the airport up. And you know, that whole thing about being forgotten, I can guarantee you they're not going to forget. I mean, and every single case. They have had an unusually good response. When I see her, she's a fighter, you know.

Bill MacLeod:   She's Well, yeah. I mean, they're going to look at her and say she ain't going to give up on.

Bill Job:  That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, her whole life is being transformed. Now. She's being elevated, allowed to travel throughout the nation on her own, independently promoted by the company and entrusted with this idea of you. You represent us. Unbelievable.

Bill MacLeod:   Did you. So was that like the first person that you came that had deformity, that you've the first one that you brought into the business, or?

Bill Job:  She was the first one that I just had already made a friendship with? Right? Then we began to meet beggars on the street.

Bill MacLeod:   Now, as a result of people knowing her or just you just had the eyes now. Yeah. Yeah. You see what's.

Bill Job:  There? That's a lot of it, right? You learn to see. And you learn to hear. Like, I'll tell you the story of Sheldon. He's a guy outside of a restaurant begging. I walk out of the restaurant and as we said earlier, you only get a few seconds to respond to some of these opportunities. So you need to be like a gun. Cocked and ready to go. You need to be well, that's what we call living by faith. Yeah. You know, you don't ever know when the Lord's going to show up, but he claims the right to show up anytime you want him. And so you get these little senses and nudges, perceptions. And so I'm like walking by this guy and it sounds like we help a lot of beggars and we don't. It's just the ones that he puts us in contact with. So I had that sense that this is one of the guys. So I go, I'm not going to give you any money because I don't think that helps, but I'd like to know your story. Like, give me 10 minutes, tell me your story. So he says he's 34 years old now. When he was 21, he had a stroke and the stroke paralyzed his right side. So he kind of was listing, you know, he couldn't use his hand. And he's been begging ever since because that's the only thing he could do. And I said, well, if you had a chance to get a job, would you want one? And he goes, Well, sure, but nobody will give me a job. And I go, Well, it's possible somebody could I have a friend who maybe has an opportunity? So I wrote down my phone number, scrap piece of paper, gave it to him. I said, Call me in three days and I'll find out. So I went to work and we have a whole division of guys off the street. And I said, Can you guys use somebody with only one good hand and they said, Sure bring him on, we will find something for him to do. And so he called and I said, Meet me back at the same street corner. What I didn't know at the time was he'd been in town maybe three weeks. And when he first got to town, he went to the train station to find out sort of what the begging network is, because it's all kind of controlled. I mean, they have social rankings and all that kind of stuff, the best corners and locations. And so while he was getting the lay of the land, so to speak, he heard about our company by name as a company that might hire somebody like him. And so he got a little bit excited and he was talking to this person. They said, Oh, do you think they would hire me? And the guy looked at him again and said, No, no, no, they won't. They are a handicraft company?

Bill MacLeod:   You got to use your hands.

Bill Job:  You got to have two good hands. You only got one good hand their not going to use you. And so his hopes kind of went up and then crashed down. Then he went to a group of believers and then a week later after that, and they said, you know, why don't you just give that a chance test? You ask for something as if it doesn't hear you. He might show up, might come through. And so he goes, okay. And he asked God for a job. And the Christian that was leading him and said. Oh, I can't believe I said, there's never going to get a job. And then the week after, you know, I was walking to another restaurant in the Lord has me stopped, talked to this guy, engaged the conversation. And so then he calls. After the third day, I said, Go back to the same street of old man, I'll meet you 5:00. I go back at five and I give you my name card. And this time he looks at the name of the company. It's ringing the bell, you know. Well, that's the company I heard about. And I did ask God for a job. And he had the president of the company person invites me in. And I got a phone call 2 hours later from another guy who was off the streets but now is pastoring these guys for us and he was laughing his head off. He continues to set up. And I said, Chelsea, what are you driving about? He said, well, did you just give your name cards or cell phone? I said, Yeah. He said, Well, he's your brother in Christ now. You know, he's at work. So it's just a natural flow of things. But if I didn't have a company, I couldn't offer him a job.

Bill MacLeod:   Yeah, right. I mean, that's. Yeah, I mean, you're empowering them to have their own money to make their own decision. And I think the other part of that was on the technology side. Wasn't there also a connection with this guy?

Bill MacLeod:   Look, what you did to accommodate him ended up being right.

Bill Job:  So we were still stuck with, well, what do you do with the one handed guy? And I had to grab him. And it turned out. That we were starting another division for a beveled glass door window production facility.

Bill MacLeod:   And your stuff is sold by Home Depot. I mean, yeah, it's an export company.

Bill Job:  You won't see our name, but our customers sell to all those guys. And so we make windows and they go through a company out of Michigan and we sell Giftware and they go through companies, several companies.

Bill MacLeod:   So we have senior stuff like all over.

Bill Job:  Very likely this last two years, we innovated a new product that got tagged as weather stone in the outdoor tabletop market.

Bill MacLeod:   Yeah.

Bill Job:  So we were the ones that developed and produced that stuff.

Bill MacLeod:   Okay, so now you started this new division.

Bill Job:  Oh, yeah. So yeah, I wanted to add a computer control system.

Bill MacLeod:   Inventory.

Bill Job:  Information. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to know when something got started and when it got stopped. I want to know if there's any defects between here and there and all that kind of stuff. And I had experts come in and give me an estimate. It's going to cost me 20,000 bucks. Well, I don't have didn't have 20,000 bucks, so I go, Lord, you've got a problem. You know, I was thinking you wanted to have this control system, information control system. But if you want me to have that one, you need to provide $20. Otherwise, you got to keep looking. And later on that night, he often will give you an idea. And you wake up in the middle of the night with an idea. And so about 4:00 in the morning or something, I got this idea. I could just see a card and it had like the product number and the time for this process and the time for that process and the workers number. And so it just kind of created out the next day and got to thinking about it. And we decided to put that number on every single product. So every single product that we made had its own ID number and then this card would be printed and it would follow the production process. So whenever anyone did anywhere, the process is that quickly put their number in there and the time they started and the time they start. But then we had to collect all that data because before I want this automatic system, it's going to cost me 20,000 bucks. Don't have the ability that I realized this guy with one hand. He could do data entry. It's just numbers. The only thing I could think. Yeah, yeah. So we'll put that thing on a computer screen. Looked identical to the card we write him over. Had never seen a computer up close before. We fired it up, showing at the start that they get to this grade and within an hour he was a computer operator. You know, putting data into that thing.

Bill MacLeod:   You must have some incredible beggars in China because I don't know if I took some person off the street. There's a beggar here that they know ten key and they know computers and that's amazing.

Bill Job:  Well, you know.

Bill MacLeod:   It’s just God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So as we've looked at the business side of this, this is mentioned, what are some of the key lessons that we've, we've learned?

Bill Job:  I believe God works through our hearts even in the business realm. I've the when I've listened to my heart, I've been more successful than I then now it's where I have passion and it's where things get done just a little bit better than before. Be prepared to keep your eyes open. Just keep always looking. Business is learning an internal skill set, serving as one of the things that we know he's very interested in, and it's one of the things that gives you a better chance for a seat of honor there. According to what he said to the disciples serving customers is the way one way we can learn to do that. That's even harder than serving in a compassionate way. Because in serving customers, you have to put yourself well aside and listen to them and give them what they want, regardless of what you want.

 

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