Many say the Lord moves in mysterious ways. I believe the Lord connects the dots where they need to be connected and through a mutual friend, I became connected with Bradley Waldrop, host of the new TV show – Business Integrity Matters. Today Bradley is my guest and I’m so excited to have him on the show. To connect with his show – click on: Business Integrity Matters. Or to hear the show click here: Bradley Waldrop on Straight Talk Radio.
Now here’s the show transcription.
Tired of traditional talk? People pontificating about this or that? The left or the right? Sometimes the truth is just off lost in the noise. Having learned life lessons the hard way, Chuck Gallagher, international speaker and author, cuts through the noise to share truth through transparency!
Nationally-known guests talk about what’s important to you – your life, your concerns and your success. So tune in, turn on to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher.
Now, here’s your host, Chuck Gallagher.
CHUCK: Hi, this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio on Transformation Talk Radio and I am so excited today. This is a new approach and a really, really cool way to be able to do a show. Most of the time when I’m doing a show, we’re connected with the guest and I’m in Greenville, South Carolina, and the guest is somewhere on this continent, maybe some place else. It’s through Skype, our engineer Jessica is up in Seattle, Washington, and somehow electronically all of this pulls together, but today we’re prerecording a show with a great guest, a gentleman that I met by the name of Bradley Waldrop.
When I do programs, I always start a program with the comment that every choice has a consequence. Sometimes we don’t know when we do something what the consequence will be and how it will play out, which is where this thing called faith and trust comes.
If I remember this correctly, and Bradley is sitting here with me, that’s what makes this really magical in this particular show today, but as I remember, I had shared a book with a gentleman who lived up in Upper South Carolina and in some form or fashion that book, and it’s amazing thing about books, somebody buys it or you give one to someone and it makes its way around. It almost takes on a life and this book ended up in Bradley’s hands.
I get this call one day and he says, “Well, would you be interested in being on my radio show?” Bradley, normally, is the interviewer in my case, and in this case, well, I’m the interviewer and he is the interviewee, but it turned out to be just a fabulous and wonderful interview. Bradley has written a book and the title of the book is Business Integrity Matters.
I think most of the people who listen to the show on a regular basis know I wrote a book. First book was called Second Chances: Transforming Adversity into Opportunity, and there have been times in my life when I didn’t apply business integrity and I found out then when you don’t do that, it does matter!
[Chuck and Bradley chuckle]CHUCK: And there are consequences. With that said, as I’m sitting here thinking about the show in Straight Talk, I thought it really would be fascinating to talk with Bradley, take the book Business Integrity Matters, the subtitle is Working Out Sunday’s Message Monday Thru Friday. And if you haven’t figured this out, obviously, Bradley comes from a Christian bent and understands the impact of Christian principles in daily life outside of just what might take place on a Sunday morning. And, Bradley, you’ve made quite a name for yourself in the market place of understanding Christian faith but at the same time applying that on a practical basis to business principles, so welcome to Straight Talk Radio!
BRADLEY: Thanks for having me. I appreciate being here.
CHUCK: It’s fun, it’s really cool to be able to sit across from a guest, look at them, see the visual cues that take place and know that there’s a lot that you have to share to the audience about business integrity, about business in general, and especially in the day and age we live in how Christian principles apply.
BRADLEY: Yeah, like you said, it’s interesting for me because I’m normally the one asking all the questions and now I’m sitting here answering them in our studio which is fun for me, but certainly the tables have turned. When I think about why businesses are successful, they are generally successful because they’re trusted organizations and that trust comes from having not just a set of really great skills that they can perform but it has to do with the character of who runs the organization, how they deal with people, what message they send across when they’re trying to sell something, how they follow through. We as business owners all have a set of responsibilities and roles throughout every one of our days. Every business has to do something in marketing, has to do something in promotions, sales, delivery of whatever that good or service is and then warranty work. If for some reason we have a character flaw and any one of those five particular locations, all of a sudden we’re starting to spin off our trusted customers that generation of all of our revenue. It’s been spun off somewhere else because they leave.
CHUCK: Right.
BRADLEY: So that’s what I get to do. I get a chance to work with businesses on the operational end of what do we fundamentally have to do and in that fundamental, it’s not an approach that is flavor of the week. We have an awful lot of books written nowadays, a lot of speakers stand up and pontificate in front of organizations and they say, “You know what? The new Whizbang idea is X.” My approach is significantly different than that, and that is let’s go back in 2000-some-odd years and let’s reach into this really fantastic, CEOs guided the galaxy and figure out what God crafted for us and just implement that and create a culture or structure around us. They can hold us accountable to continue to do that.
CHUCK: One of the things that you started with is it’s based on trust.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: I think today that’s probably one of the challenges that people deal with. I was at a presentation a week and a half ago down in Florida and someone asked me the question in my case, because I broke trust.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: And paid a price for that. The question was, “If you had to do it all over again, would you do it?”
BRADLEY:[laughs] That’s a silly question. [laughs]
CHUCK: The answer was, “No!” For those listening the first time, I spent a little time in federal prison, not that I’m proud of it.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: But I did it because I broke trust.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: And it strikes me that’s really significant in your comment because, fundamentally, whether it is a business relationship with a customer, the relationship you have with your spouse, your significant other, the relationship you have with your children, whatever that relationship is it’s always founded on trust.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: When trust is broken, it is incredibly difficult to rebuild.
BRADLEY: Absolutely. It’s incredibly difficult to build in one particular circumstance, and that is when the trust is broken over character flaws, right?
CHUCK: Fair enough.
BRADLEY: Let me sort of fill you in a little bit. There is somewhat of an equation for trust, and that is equal parts skill, equal parts character and equal parts good habits build trust. Let me tell you why. Let’s just imagine for one moment, if we had an individual who was not skilled but had really great character and had awesome habits, we wouldn’t give them a task to do because we would be afraid that, although they had a great spirit about them, they would ever get it done. They could, they didn’t have the technical chops to follow through. I don’t give a video assignment to someone who’s really great at audio and I don’t give a writing assignment to someone who’s really great at clay work or what have you.
CHUCK: Right.
BRADLEY: You just don’t do that.
CHUCK: Absolutely.
BRADLEY: But there’s a lot of latitude in our relationship. If I screw up something on the skill side, as long as I came to you and said, “Look, I made a mistake and I’m here to make it right,” the habits that I have and the character I have allow me to then rebuild my trust in overperforming for quality and then all of a sudden we’re back to where we started, right?
CHUCK: Fair enough.
BRADLEY: So, let’s go the other direction. If we have someone who doesn’t have good habits, but they have really great skill and good character, they tend to operate in this unorganized, schizophrenic environment in which we don’t want to give them something to do because we don’t know what to expect when it comes back because it’s not consistent. But, when it does come back to us, it will be of high quality and it will be what they said it would be. We would just be confused as to when we’re going to get it and how it all happens. For them to rebuild trust, it is for them then to have to establish a set of habits, tell you what those habits are and ladder, rinse and repeat until they get it right, right?
CHUCK: Okay.
BRADLEY: And in that ladder, rinsing and repeating you can then regain trust. The real problem is that when we have a breakdown in character.
CHUCK: Right.
BRADLEY: Now what, right?
CHUCK: Right.
BRADLEY: We have very little latitude, very little patience for people who have character flaws and those character flaws are things like stealing, lying, deceiving, and the rest.
CHUCK: That’s true and that raises a really interesting question. I’m kind of opposed to trial for the question, because obviously I had excellent skills, I was a CPA, I had good habits, I knew how to grow a business and deliver in a timely manner. Now, everyone connected with me would have said, “He is upstanding character.” However, I ended up being a liar and a thief, which would be two of the characteristics that you said would be character flaw.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: Then the question comes up and I find this often, these people are like, “Is it just a screw loose? Is it just like you’re a character…” I get told I’m a character often but that’s a different connotation of character. “Was there a screw loose?” And the answer for me came down to, like you, there were three components, to me there’s deed, there’s opportunity and rationalization.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: If everything is in balance, a person of good moral character will operate naturally without any issue or hesitation. You know what to do, how to do, why to do and you naturally do that. But if something gets out of balance, if there’s a trigger that changes your need dramatically, at that point then, we can call it a character flaw, but at that point if something gets out of balance, it generally gets out of balance which creates the opportunity for someone to make other than what would be in their life a natural choice.
I’ll give you a quick example. We’re going to run out of time, but we need to continue talking about trust and Business Integrity Matters. I was called as an expert witness in a trial for an elderly lady who had embezzled money from a church. She’d been the treasurer of the church for 30-some years. Everybody knew Mabel. That’s not her real name, but everybody knew Mable was the pillar of the church. There was nothing… I mean, she knew it, character impeccable, until her granddaughter was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and the only “known” treatment was not FDA-approved but available in another country. Well, her need went crazy. Of course, the opportunity was she was the treasurer of the church and her rationalization was, “God wouldn’t have put me in this position with access to money if He didn’t want my granddaughter to live. After all, I will pay it back.”
Now, the character flaw was there, but it didn’t really show itself until something got out of balance. And with that, I’m hearing the music now that says we’re out of balance because it’s time to go for a break. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio here on the Transformation Talk Radio Network. I want to say my guest is Bradley Waldrop, author of the book Business Integrity Matters. It’s been great and the time tends to fly so we’re going to break and we’ll be right back in just a minute.
[Commercial break]CHUCK: We’re back from the break. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and I am so thrilled today to have the author of the new book Business Integrity Matters: Working Out Sunday’s Message Monday Thru Friday. The author is Bradley Waldrop and he and I had the opportunity to work together. From time to time he is in Ashville, North Carolina, I’m in Greenville, South Carolina, and today it’s a little unusual because we’re actually recording this in his studio and this is face to face and it’s so much fun.
Bradley, when we went on our first break, one of the things we were talking about is trust and character and you had a three-problem approach to this whole concept of trust.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: I want to go in a kind of a weird direction for just a second. You know I’m kind of an Apple computer guy. I like anything Mac. Last night, I sat down, I had read the book Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. I think it’s the author’s name. But, in any event, it was made into a movie so I watched the movie last night. It occurs to me as I’m sitting there, Steve would not have been the guy you would have looked at and said, “This is the man that would carry Apple to where it is.” I mean, it would be fairly obvious that he probably wouldn’t care about what happens on a Sunday and Sunday might not even be relevant to him.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: To him it was another day, but there was something that took place, maybe not with Steve personally but in the overall concept of Apple computer that has made it one of the most successful companies that we’ve seen in a long time. So when you think about business integrity and that mattering, how does that apply to big organizations like Apple computer and others that might be out there?
BRADLEY: I think that it continues to get back to this equation for trust. If you go back and you look at the history of Apple computers, it hasn’t always been rainbows and lollipops.
CHUCK: No, not at all.
BRADLEY: They made an awful lot of mistakes along the way, but they got to a point in which they were listening to what their customers wanted and they were extending the technology in a way that delivered specifically what they wanted, and what they wanted was a user experience unlike any other. They took that particular concept to a completely new level. In doing that, they hired the best engineers. They hired the folks that would listen to the customer and worked to make sure a product was right before it hit the street.
Then the character piece was that they were ultra committed to the set of core values that they had and that’s, I think, where the sort of rubber meets the road. What is the set of core values in an organization and why does it matter? For them the set of core values included high quality and meeting the needs of the particular end user. Well, the high quality piece, believe it or not, I mean, people will tell you anything they want to tell you, but those are Christian core values, right? I mean, to be able to have that kind of commitment to doing God’s best is still a Christian core value. Well, you could have a secular society but it’s part of their core values. In having it part of their core values, they had a management leadership team that held people accountable to deliver on the set of core values. Yeah, they were making computers, but more than anything they were delivering a customer, a consumer experience. And that consumer experience had parameters and if you got out of the parameters you probably read in the Jobs book or it’s on the movie, they didn’t have the patience for you.
CHUCK: Oh, that’s true.
BRADLEY: Right? It’s not a picnic to work for Apple. You know why you’re there. But, because they’re holding people accountable, they have an organization that has this character that is well understood and they don’t have the weird behavior that happens on the outside because they control it on the inside, and part of that control has to do with the set of habits and operational systems that they put in place in order for the quality assurance and the quality control programs to happen the way they do, have the creative teams get together and work through a new product the way they have elected to do in a process that works for them and delivers results.
The other thing that’s really super important in all of this, and I think most people don’t understand, is that we really all enjoy the benefits of the results of Christian core values but nobody wants to claim them for what they are.
CHUCK: That’s interesting and I think especially in this segment we probably need to kind of delve into that a little bit. You’re right. The core values people want, but there seems to be this, I don’t know, uber odd “you just have to be careful about what you say”.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: It strikes me as incredibly odd that we want the values but we don’t want to talk about the values, and if somebody does talk about the values, they’re somehow wrong. I’m just mystified by this today.
BRADLEY: Right, I mean, you have experience in the legal system that’s based on core valued that are Biblical core values. We work in working environments where our customers expect those kinds of core values, but for some reason or another, I know a part of it and a part of it is that we’re living a lie and the lie is that we can’t talk about religion and politics and work all at the same time. We have to compartmentalize these portions of our lives.
I was just sitting and chatting with a gentleman yesterday who is an expert in anthropology, and in this conversation we were having we were talking about how the society has changed, fundamentally changed, before the enlightenment and after the enlightenment. Before the enlightenment everybody was into lives of community, in which we didn’t have private lives. Those private lives were a part of our culture as a community. Everyone knew where our kids went to school, they knew what we did for work, they knew the problems we had in our marriage and all the other stuff.
CHUCK: Yeah, because everybody was in the community, that you didn’t scatter far from the community, and everybody relied on each other in that community for success and subsistence.
BRADLEY: That’s right, and now through the enlightenment period we were all searching for the truth outside of the Bible, somewhere away from God, and what that did was it created our own opportunity to act on our own and be our own a judge, jury and executioner. If we didn’t tell anybody else what it is that we were struggling with, they never knew and we just felt like that was part of what life has become. Because of that we tend to see that that sort of culture has sort of culture has oozed into American life in general. I mean, think about this, this is a horrific statistic and that is that less than 20% of American families will participate in any church this weekend. Less than 20% of American families, but almost 90% of American families will be represented at work. However, because we’re afraid of the government and we are afraid of offending someone, we have separated the two. We said, “We now have to have two different kinds of lives; the life that we go on Sunday morning and we hear a message and we go to breakfast or whatever, and then we go on Monday…” and the reality is, that stuff doesn’t apply. When all that does is create confusion in our own lives and breaks down the trust that we have with individuals because they know what we believe and they see what we do and they’re disconnected. And that discontinuity between the two causes people to freak out.
CHUCK: Oh, that’s true. I would say I would be shocked by your statistic except that a year or so ago I was in Canada and there it’s less.
BRADLEY: I don’t doubt that.
CHUCK: And churches, the physical buildings… I’m not talking about the existence of the church, but churches are literally being sold and either raised or turned into condos or turned into something entirely different.
BRADLEY: That’s right.
CHUCK: Because they can’t sustain themselves, and although it’s a funny kind of statistic, but even in the United States, I think it’s the Los Angeles diocese the Catholic Church makes more money off of their cemetery sales than they do off of the offerings that come in on a Sunday morning, which is a really weird thing.
BRADLEY:[laughs] It’s a horrible statistic. [laughs]
CHUCK: Sometimes it is what it is.
BRADLEY: Sure.
CHUCK: But it strikes me as interesting because, like what you said, a) only 20% of the people will be involved in any organized religion, but the other side to it is whether you are or whether you’re not, it’s difficult today to state how you believe or what you feel. I mean, let me just make it simple. There was what I call the Chick-fil-A fiasco where Mr. Kathy says, “Here’s how and what I believe.” It’s what he believes! That doesn’t mean everybody has to believe as he believes.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: But I think it’s amazing that in a country where we espouse the concept of freedom of speech and that’s supposed to be a core value, if you freely speak, it’s not okay! That’s amazing to me.
BRADLEY: Yeah. We were just talking about even the formation of capitalism came through monks and monasteries. Most people, in fact I didn’t until yesterday, have that sort of face-to-face understanding, “Wow, this really fantastic system that provides so well for so many people and is an environment of so much productivity is directly rooted in the Christian fate.” The gentleman I participated with in a meeting yesterday because of his anthropological background he was able to directly relate statistics and productivity of societies to the faith basis that they have. Massive differences in productivity with Christian-based communities versus those that are not.
There were no other political, economic conditions in which all of that aligned to say, “Wow, the set of core values that this one organization or this one country has directly relates to productivity.” Like I said, we all want the benefits of it, but we’re afraid to say it, and we’re afraid to say it, I think, because we’re afraid ourselves of being judged and we’re afraid that the government is going to be standing over our shoulder saying, “Wait, hold on, just a second. The separation of Church and State, that means you can’t do what you’re doing.” That doesn’t mean separation of Church and business! It’s separation of Church and State, and that’s a [25:25] as well. So, by having a business that happens to say, “I believe in this,” but if they truly believe, they’re going to provide equal opportunity to everyone that’s there, be able to treat you with the utmost respect and deliver results for their customers. Who doesn’t want that?
CHUCK: Right. Yeah, who doesn’t want that and as we approach the break, my guest is Bradley Waldrop. He has written a great book called Business Integrity Matters: Working out Sunday’s Message Monday Thru Friday. I want to say this for those people that are listening literally coast to coast, whether you affiliate yourselves as a Christian or some other religion, here’s the reality; it doesn’t make a difference to me. What makes a difference to me is the quality of the material in the book because integrity is part of what can be our human experience. So you can be a Baptist, a Presbyterian, or of the Jewish religion, but the reality is the core information in the book is critical to running a successful business.
This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and we’ll be back. We’re going to explore what motivated Bradley to write the book and let’s talk a little about the success of that. We’ll be back in just a minute.
[Commercial break]CHUCK: Hi, this is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio. We are back here and my guest is Bradley Waldrop, author of the book Business Integrity Matters and we have been talking about character and integrity and basic principles of success in business. Bradley, your book’s fairly new. It just came out not long ago.
BRADLEY: Right, three weeks ago.
CHUCK: Three weeks ago and it’s really done pretty well, pretty quickly.
[Phone rings]CHUCK: I told Mom not to call. See, there you go. What can you say? Every time she wants to call while we’re in the middle of a radio show. No, I’m just kidding. That’s the magic and miracle of electronic wizardry.
BRADLEY: That’s right. [laughs]
CHUCK: And you’ll notice with the ring tone that was an iPhone. I do believe…
BRADLEY: Yes, it’s an iPhone.
CHUCK: Oooh, yes, there we go! In any event, tell us a little about what motivated you to write the book?
BRADLEY: Well, in 2009 I was participating as a very successful business operations expert in project-based businesses. I was in several structural engineering working on high-profile projects, both in the non-profit space and for the State. And as I was doing the work, I finished two really neat jobs and I felt absolutely empty. And I felt absolutely empty because I realized that we had let the proponents of the projects, the owners of the projects, we let them off the hook. We allowed them to choose the path of least resistance and we left the soul of the projects way back in the initial meetings.
I sat down with the owners of those two jobs and I said, “I got to tell you I’m sorry. I feel like I let you down.” And they said, “I don’t understand.” And I said, “Well, here’s the deal. We finished on time, on budget and we delivered the scope of services that you had asked for, but these two projects are not the vision that you cast.” The realization at the table was that we had all sacrificed a set of core values that we really wanted to have and we sacrificed them on the altar of price and the expediency. We did it subconsciously, but the reality is we got to be very, very good as project managers or project participants to manage chaos but not really lead anything.
That leadership piece that I’m talking about is holding the organization accountable to the set of core values owning the vision that was stated upfront and saying, “Here’s the target that we’re going to shoot at and come hell or high water we’re going to hit the mark that we are after.” In doing so, we had a realization at the table between me and the owners of this that someone had to do something different. So what I decided to do was go back and do some really quick research and try to figure out what God’s plan for leaders was because that was the set of core values I understood that I was responsible to deliver. In that study what I realized was that God really does lay out an amazing plan for leaders, but I was really struggling to write a book.
Since 2009 I kind of hit the wall, hit the wall and hit the wall. I started a radio program kicking and screaming a year ago called Holy Profits Radio in which God sort of delivered to me an idea that the Bible is the CEO’s guide to the galaxy. If you look era to era to era in the Bible, there are uncanny business parallels and those include things like what do you do when you want to start a brand new business? Let’s go back and figure out what God did in the first six days. That seems like a no-brainer. What do you want to do in order to have a great succession plan in your organization? Let’s go look at the patriarchs, how do they do it? If we want to do an acquisition of another company, let’s go look at the conquest era. What was God concerned about when new territory was acquired? Those are the kinds of things that we need to structure our business and our operations after. We don’t have to beat anybody up over their head with the Bible. What we do need to do is recognize that these principles have already been laid out for us.
So, we started to show a year ago within just months, it was in 43 countries, distributed over the Internet and in almost every state. We went from a half-hour show once a week to a one-hour a show twice a week with a replay in the middle of the week for the second show. We went to the National Religious Broadcaster Show in February with the concept that we wanted to nationally syndicate the program after it was rebranded to Business Integrity Matters and I walked up to the syndication manager at the Truth Network and I said, “Hi, I’m Bradley. I have this show,” and he said, “I already know who you are. We’re trying to figure out how to get you on the Network and work with you to get you on 500 stations next year,” and we sort of parked that and in parking that we were developing the revenue model that exists for a radio show or anything else that you’re doing. Part of that is writing down this vision that God has given me and the examples that we have come up with in working in small groups of business owners and watching their lives and their businesses transform in these groups. It just made good sense to write a book and then a study guide as well.
CHUCK: So, the book itself is a stand-alone book. You can go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, wherever it happens to be and pick up a copy of it.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: Now, let me ask this. Since we’re into it at this point, if I go to Amazon and I search “Business Integrity Matters”, obviously you’re going to pop up.
BRADLEY: Yes.
CHUCK: Where else can someone, if they want to purchase the book, purchase it?
BRADLEY: You can go to businessintegritymatters.com.
CHUCK: Okay.
BRADLEY: It’s certainly there. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CreateSpace. If you simply do a Google search for “Business Integrity Matters” with my name, it will pop up as one of the first two or three search results. It’s pretty simple.
CHUCK: From a practical perspective, if I’m sitting here and I’m listening to the show and I’m thinking, “Okay, wait a minute. First thing, I don’t know the eras.” So I’m not going to be able to connect as you have with your study to particular eras of the Bible. But I’m interested in what the road map is.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: I don’t need to know if Rand McNally did it or somebody. I just need to know what the road map is. Fundamentally, through your book they are going to get that.
BRADLEY: Absolutely. It’s a very practical hands-on how-to. I don’t work in platitudes real well. I’m an operations guy. I want to figure out what can I do tomorrow to take this really great idea to start to implement it. Not only have we written it that way but we’ve proven it out that way in the small groups that we’re working with through a study, we have been talking about very specific things that individuals are doing to transform their organization. Something very, very simple to transform the culture of your organization, just to have an attitude of gratitude which goes an awful long way to get through the [34:32] in the day or in the week or in the month.
Let’s say you’re going through a horrific lawsuit for one reason or another and you can’t see the upside to anything. Wouldn’t it be great to simply have a corkboard next to the refrigerator in the lunch room that all it has is posted notes that say, “I’m thankful for…” from all of your employees what they’re thankful for that day or that week or that month. It starts to put life into perspective and doing something like that transforms an organization. No longer are we concerned about the stress and anxiety. We know we have to get through it, but we know also that we’ve been blessed somehow or another along the way.
CHUCK: Now, in what you’ve said, there’s the book and then there is a workbook.
BRADLEY: There’s a workbook, right.
CHUCK: Explain a little bit, because I’ve heard you reference this a time or two, I’ve heard you reference the workbook or the study guide and also small groups? Help me understand that.
BRADLEY: Fundamentally, at the end of the day here’s our vision: our vision is that we are going to craft an organization that allows individual companies to be certified as businesses of integrity. That certification process requires training. The training is a year-long face-to-face peer group kind of exercise to work on perfecting as best as possible the business operations that you have, With individual solutions for individual companies because we’re all different. We all have a different module, we all have a different value proposition and that’s fine, but working together in a group to say, “Deal with training issues, deal with hiring and firing, deal with mentorship programs, deal with financial transparency, the raise process, or the promotional process,” all of those kinds of issues are encapsulated in this study. We walk through this study with these businesses. At the end of the year, if they view that they’re ready to be interviewed and to be audited, then they can apply to be a business of integrity.
In addition, we want to make sure that not just business owners but leaders, ministry leaders and faithful laborers get this idea that there is a better way to do things and it has to do with the integrity and our own personal integrity can play out in the business that we’re working in and not just benefit the business but benefit us personally in our own careers. The study was designed for them, too, in a shorter session where it’s not a year long. They can do it in 12 weeks in their church, they can do it in 12 weeks in their own business and now all of a sudden have a set of common core values, vocabulary to be able to work through those issues and a set of action items that will help them get to the next level in their own organizations. So that’s how it’s been designed.
CHUCK: Okay, because of the, obviously, title of the show, Straight Talk, I’ve got to ask this straight talk question.
BRADLEY: Absolutely.
CHUCK: I’m in South Carolina, you’re here in Asheville. We’ve got listeners, you have listeners all over the world and, certainly, I have over the country, so how do you do this face to face? Are we talking about a Google Hangout, Skype or is it literally, literally face to face?
BRADLEY: It’s literally face to face and the reason it’s face to face is that there is intimacy required to get through the authentic portion of any of this stuff. In order to become trusted in an organization, you really have to have a personal relationship. One of the things that we’re challenged with right now is that there’s an individual in Paris, France who wants to create one of these groups, so he and I are trying to figure out the technology necessary to get on a Skype call or a Google Hangout so that I can train him that he can then facilitate the group. That’s essentially the model. We’re training trainers, there’s a leader’s guide and there’s a way for individuals to get connected with me so that we can work through the leadership piece, and then it’s up to them to take these groups and grow to groups.
CHUCK: We need to come back in out last segment and talk about that a little bit more. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio, my guest is Bradley Waldrop. His book is Business Integrity Matters and we’ve just been talking about the study guide and the train the trainer approach so as I’m hearing the music that says, “It’s time for a break,” but we’ll come back and finish up with that and maybe a few other issues that we can talk about as we think about Business Integrity Matters here on Straight Talk Radio.
[Commercial break]CHUCK: We’re back for our last segment. This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and, boy, this has been fun. This is one of the few radio shows that I’m actually able to do live and in person, although, of course, it’s prerecorded. My guest is Bradley Waldrop. He, in fact, has a radio show, Business Integrity Matters.
BRADLEY: I don’t want to confuse anybody. [laughs]
CHUCK: Okay, that’s right. Let’s say Business Integrity Matters, but that’s also the title of the book and it’s also the title of your radio show and there’s a study guide and this has been picked up in a whole bunch of places in a multitude of countries.
BRADLEY: Right, yeah.
CHUCK: Number one, I have to say that’s incredible. That says to me you got really a significant tribe out there of people who really do connect the idea of business integrity mattering, but let’s talk a little bit about the train the trainer approach.
I’m a tech guy. Well, I’m an old guy, but I like tech, let’s put it that way. But I do find that it’s incredible to be able to say, “Yeah, I want to be able to train those principles,” but if that training is going to be in person, it’s almost like a vestige group where you’ve got a leader facilitating a group of 12 to 15 people. It’s just the challenge is being able to train people to be able to carry that message out.
BRADLEY: Right, and the easiest way to sort of tackle that, eating an elephant one bite at a time, is to work with…
CHUCK: Are elephants tasty? No, we don’t need to go there. Let’s stick back with eating an elephant one bite at a time.
BRADLEY: As we eat this elephant one bite at a time, we’ll add some salt and see if that helps.
CHUCK: Mrs. Dash, I’m off the salt thing, but that’s okay.
BRADLEY: That’s because you’re old.
CHUCK: You’re right.
[Chuck and Bradley laugh]CHUCK: And I appreciate the honesty and integrity that you had in sharing that with me.
BRADLEY: All right, all right.
CHUCK: I can’t wait for your hair to go gray.
BRADLEY:[41:12] formula. Okay, so here we go. If we think about this and I cast this vision, and this vision is this worldwide opportunity to be able to connect with organizations and we are connected now to about 10,000 Christian-owned businesses worldwide through other organizations that have decided to partner with us. But the very real stuff is to start locally with local churches to be able to then do a small group at-home study and allow them to catch the vision directly market back out to them and allow them to then to come to a train a trainer event and then go and facilitate these groups in their own communities.
You are right, I am one guy. We have a wonderful team of volunteers that help get this thing off the ground and do what we’re doing. At the end of the day, I don’t want to be the bottle neck. I don’t want to be the one guy that says, “I’ve got to be everywhere in order for us to participate.” We have published a bunch of information online for people to be able to follow blog posts and video and audio, and as we bring in more of these trainers, we’re going to hear directly from them what the additional challenges that they have are and then we’re going to address those specific challenges, but right now the model works and people are interested in participating.
We have, I like I said, someone in France that we’re still trying to work all that out. He happens to have a radio program on Catholic Radio that he all of a sudden gets it. We are connected to a CNLTV. They are the second largest distributer of Christian content to the Russian-speaking world. We’re going to be launching a brand new media outlet, that we’re not going to talk all the details right now, to seventy million homes shortly. So the vision is cast and God is doing something really, really great because I’m one guy in all of this and by myself I can’t do it.
CHUCK: I have to say I’ve been very impressed seeing the evolution of this process and, obviously, doors are opening for you in some very unique and interesting ways. It’s not every day that you ultimately put together your thoughts, put it into a book, create a study guide. I’m not saying there’s no effort, there’s a lot of effort that’s been put into it, but for the doors to open to allow this to take place, and I know in my travels around the country there are a lot of places that I talk with who have faith-based leadership and faith-based organizations.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: They may not be overt in the way they communicate that, but it is there and this is a book and this is a subject that connects the practical dots of, “Okay, here’s the roadmap of how to do this,” and know that that roadmap is founded from the content that their faith is originating from the Bible.
BRADLEY: Right, absolutely. One of the things that has been real interesting in this process, you were talking about doors being opened, we continue to say in this small group of volunteers, you can’t make this up. There’s one thing after another that continues to happen in ways that we just think this is amazing, that we are not normally connected to the network that is out there that has popped its head above to say, “Wow, it’s interesting, I want to participate.” One of the aha moments that I had too is the week of the release of the book. It made it into Amazon’s top 50. It made it in two categories; it made it in Business Ethics and it made it in Christian Professional Development. I think that there’s this massive hunger out there to try to figure out how to do business the right way, not sacrifice the profitability of the organization, but I think that we’re also really, really tired of seeing the top tier of organizations build their own thiefdoms, step on heads to get there and drive their really fancy cars, but there’s poverty in the organization everywhere. I think there’s a real hunger for that.
CHUCK: Bradley, I talk a lot about ethics choices, so let me kind of deviate a little bit as we start to wrap things up. What do you see today, we’ll just limit it to the United States, but what do you see today from an ethical perspective? Do you think businesses are operating ethically, more ethically, less? Do you have an opinion?
BRADLEY: I do have an opinion because I’m a recovering idolater. Ethics is a real big issue. In fact, the guest that we just had on the radio today, he and I met previously and we were talking about helping him in his own business. There is something that I noticed about his own business that we could automate and in the automation piece I was doing the research where we had talked up this concept and this idea that would have literally multiplied his income by a factor of 10 or 12 within a week and only through this automation.
The automation has a license to it and the license agreement says, “You may not use the data that I’m going to give you for the purposes in which you have just said that you could multiply your business by 10 or 12.” There’s a very real tension there. Well, who’s to say that I really am using the data that way? Are they really going to know? I just want the data. Well, that’s where this ethical piece comes in. It’s about a choice but because technology is going fast as it is, it’s very simple for us to bypass intellectual property rights and the desires for other people to share information with us for a specific purpose and honor what it is they asked us to do. We had a very real choice to make and it was either $3,000 to $5,000 a month in a particular solution they currently had or $50,000 a month. With the temptation of $50,000 a month, you can bend an awful lot of rules, but you have to have people around you. They are going to hold you accountable because if you don’t, you’re going to make some pretty horrible decisions along the way.
CHUCK: Yeah, it’s really interesting and one of the things that strikes me that you said and we’ll have to wrap things up here in just a second, but with technology as it is today, you’re right; intellectual property is challenging. I talked with a real good friend who has a best-selling book in Korea, South Korea. I mean, just sold millions of copies. He’s a rock star there.
BRADLEY: I love it.
CHUCK: But he knows he also sold a million books in China. It’s just he didn’t sell a million books in China because, fundamentally, they took the book, reproduced the book, reprinted the book.
BRADLEY: That’s right. They sold one copy in China and then they gave away the rights.
CHUCK: Yeah, so he goes to an engagement and they have his books there and it’s like, “I didn’t ship these books,” but it didn’t make a difference. So, there is a place today where people are looking at… It’s what you say what you do.
BRADLEY: Right.
CHUCK: What you say is what you do.
BRADLEY: Yeah.
CHUCK: I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. Bradley’s book is Business Integrity Matters: Working Out Sunday’s Message Monday Thru Friday. I would highly advise to go to amazon.com, search “Business Integrity Matters”, it will immediately pop up. Let’s try to keep you in those top tiers within Amazon and thank you for taking the time and being willing to follow the message and the lead God has given you because obviously it is opening doors.
This is Chuck Gallagher with Straight Talk Radio and we love doing the show. It’s a lot of fun because we know that every choice has a consequence. Bradley, you made some great choices, the consequences are just unfolding today. Join us again. This is Chuck Gallagher, Straight Talk Radio and we’ll be back next week.
You’ve been listening to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher. Tune in each week on transformationtalkradio.com, each Monday at 2 p.m. Pacific, 5 p.m. Eastern, as Chuck Gallagher, international speaker and author, cuts through the noise to share truth through transparency. Nationally-known guests talk about what’s important to you – your life, your concerns, and your success. Visit gallagher.pcgdev.com for more information and turn on to Straight Talk with Chuck Gallagher.