Searching for a deeper purpose within your work? Failing to balance your faith, family and success?

Are you in a successful place but feel empty? You are not alone.

Meet John Crow as he shares his journey from a career surrounded by material things to a fulfilling one centered on faith.

From managing luxury car rentals to founding Christ-centered real estate business, John has dedicated his life to integrating faith into every aspect of his work.

Discover how his intentional approach to life has redefined his success, allowed him to spend more time with his family and drawn him closer to God.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

Realize that your business is your ministry. When running a company, you’re there to serve your employees and clients and if you rephrase that, you’re there to serve God in everything that you do.

One challenge from today:

No matter the obstacles, take a small step of faith and you’ll see what happens when you do.

More About John Crow

Website: Century 21 Northwest Realty

More About David Schmidt

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Mentioned in this episode:

Step Up Referrals

Ever wished you had all your business information in one place? With Step Up Referrals, you can! It’s the ultimate digital referral card that makes sharing your business and showcasing who you’re connected with easier than ever. Step Up Referrals helps you stand out from the crowd, build relationships, and grow your network. Follow the link below and get started today.

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Bayou Refuge - Christian Mystery by Dr. Joshua Powell

If you are looking for a Christian novel to make you think about how your conversations impact those around you check out Joshua's book Bayou Refuge today.

Pick up the Bayou Refuge

David:

[0:00] Hello. Well, today I'm super excited to have with me John Crow. He is a great story of what it means to redeem your business. And he has a story of good success in the world and what the world brings. And then he has also a story of success by doing things God's way. So, John, welcome to Redeeming Business Today podcast. I'm delighted to have you on the show.

John:

[0:19] Pleasure to be here, David. Thank you.

David:

[0:22] Yeah. So, John, what is one way you believe that we can honor God in our business that others may not know about?

John:

[0:28] Well, you know, the Bible is pretty clear on it. We're going to honor God with everything we do, all our heart, all our soul, all of our energy. Right. And so I think it's more of, I think most Christians try to do that. I think it's more realizing and rephrasing mentally that your business, when you're running a company, is your ministry and it's your calling. And, um, if you kind of, if you kind of change that, you know, look, I'm here to serve my clients. I'm here to serve my employees. I'm here to serve, uh, you know, my family through making, you know, great financial decisions, et cetera. If you rephrase that into that, no, I'm here to serve God and, and everything I do, um, to me, it's just such an amazing blessing that comes back from that. You know, it's just, it's mind blowing the transformation that made it to me personally when I, when I was able to reframe things that way.

David:

[1:34] Very good. Thank you very much. So we've talked and you have quite a story,

David:

[1:39] I think, and we all have stories. Could you take five, 10 minutes and tell us a brief journey of your story? You can start with college with Rent-A-Car and where you are today.

John:

[1:50] You bet. Yeah. So my first job right out of college was in the rented car industry. And I started at the absolute bottom. I think it was a manager trainee with a radio driving around a shuttle full of sweaty guys making about six bucks an hour. And I had a college degree. And uh you know in those days especially in that industry if you were you know paying attention and you were willing to work hard uh you could climb up through the industry fairly quickly and i was able to do that um by the time i was 30 29 actually i was running a multi-state territory, based in Denver, Colorado.

John:

[2:34] A couple of years into that, we had the opportunity to divest of some of our corporate assets. And I was asked to do that with two of our big airports, luxury airports in Eagle and Aston, Colorado. And I was able to put together a deal with a luxury rent-a-car provider in Beverly Hills who did much more than that. Um, but the, the, the business bottles made sense and I was able to kind of put together a deal to, to, um, sell that portion of our business off to a, to another company. And, uh, in doing so, uh, it was clear that this was, uh, an organization that was led by a really great marketing mind, but didn't have any operational sophistication or, um, acumen, if you will. And um so you know we we put together a deal and i went out there as a minor minority equity partner.

John:

[3:34] And took over that organization and that was uh that was an eye-opener i was a farm boy from a little town in arizona and uh i i come out there and my first day in business is literally uh in little santa monica and wilshire boulevard which is the absolute gateway into beverly hills Colorado. Our client list was the A-list celebrities, all sorts of sports entertainment figures, and just about anybody else that you could think of was coming through that town looking for luxury cars at that time. And again, we did the rental cars part of it, but we also did sales and we did leasing. And in the end, we were even helping the industry, the automotive manufacturers do product launches.

John:

[4:24] And so we had our fingers to just about everything to do with luxury cars. And it was a wild, wild ride for me. Um, again, now I think I'm 30 and I'm driving every luxury car you can think of. I'm going to the craziest, wildest parties, you know, out there. Um, I have, uh, I've been, I've been in the church since I was nine years old. So I always had a compass. Um, but certainly what was going on around me was, was as worldly as it could be.

John:

[5:02] And it was a total for me solemn moment i was like i had done everything that i ever thought i would in terms of business i had kind of climbed to this pinnacle of my career and in every, respect that you know young young business leaders do uh the cars the planes the money the you know even being around that level of famous people etc and it was empty david it was utterly, it was vanity. And I knew it. And I was allergic to it. And long story short, my wife quickly, she was much brighter than I was. And she realized early on that we couldn't raise kids out there. And so we moved the family back. And for four years, I commuted, I got on an airplane every Monday, came back every Friday and tried to lead that life. And once it really sat in on me that this is just not something I can do, I put together.

John:

John:

[7:09] When it became apparent that because of the economy, we weren't going to be able to do with the organization what our long-term plans were in a time that was reasonable, I stumbled into the real estate world and was able to kind of take a piece of an organization that had already been started and buy it and then have the chance to kind of build it the way I wanted to. And this time from the very, very beginning, I knew that I had to make this a Christian organization, lead it as a Christian, you know, leader and really just use it as a vessel to glorify God.

John:

David:

[8:06] Very good. You kind of mentioned that things seemed empty. What was the turning point for you where you've said, I've been running this long enough and I'm just done. I want to do something different. What was a push at the end?

John:

[8:25] Yeah, it's a good question. I remember one specific event. We were asked to provide two Rolls-Royce convertible cars, and they were very special cars. You couldn't get them anywhere. We happened to have two of them, and they were matching white cars. And we delivered them to the, to this event and I was invited to go to the event. So I go to the event and they have, it's at the time, you know, these were half a million dollar cars in the luxury world today. That's not outrageous, but at the time it was completely outrageous. It's still outrageous, but you know, at the time it was, it was just mind blowing and they had parked them nose to nose and there was just a party favor. It was just a little adornment to the entry to their to their party and you know it's thousands and thousands of dollars to have this decoration for their party and it was just it was just um it was i i i looked at that and i was like this is the most wasteful this is you know this is rome before it burned you know and i and i just remember saying to myself that i i just can't do this i can't i just can't be a part of this.

David:

[9:47] Very interesting. So it was just decoration then? They didn't even drive them?

John:

[9:50] They didn't even drive them. They brought them back with zero miles in the cars. They literally had just put them there to impress people as they were walking into the front door.

David:

[9:58] Okay. It made an impact on you, didn't it?

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