A Call To Leadership

EP301: The Pivotal Power of Intervention with Kevin Thole

• Dr. Nate Salah

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He had the money, the business, and the image, but inside he was breaking. In this powerful episode, Kevin Thole shares how addiction brought him to the edge and how one encounter with God changed everything. His journey from shame to surrender shows that true success begins with humility and grace. Tune in to discover how redemption can rebuild what once felt lost.


 Key Takeaways To Listen For

  • What success can’t fix, and how hidden addiction silently destroys from within
  • Why one moment in Psalm 51 changed everything
  • How daily surrender and discipline build true recovery
  • The leadership shift: from ego-driven to love-led
  • The real key to lasting success and peace

About Kevin Thole
Kevin is the co-owner of SERVPRO Team Thole/Hulsey, a thriving restoration business dedicated to rebuilding what’s broken and leading with purpose. Beyond restoring homes and businesses, Kevin helps restore lives through his work with a children’s home in Kenya. A business leader, mentor, and man of faith, he shares a powerful story of addiction, redemption, and transformation. With lessons on humility, service, and grace, Kevin inspires others to discover that true success comes from obedience, integrity, and love in action.

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[00:00:00] Kevin Thole
With him. There are no levels. So he sees me as clean and all of those things that I thought were ruined and done and gone. But in God's eyes, in the kingdom world, it's different. He can restore, redeem, and reconcile all those things.

[00:00:17] Dr. Nate Salah
Hello my friend and welcome to this episode of A Call to Leadership. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, your host, so glad you are here. While special, special treat on this episode series two parts with my. Brother Mark, Joe. I've got Travis on the first episode with us doing some co-hosting and, mark, man, he's been through it. He's, went through the foster care system, dealt drugs, went to prison for five and a half years, turned his life over to God and man, he's never looked back. He's on fire. He is got his coffee shop. It's so much more than that. It's a gathering place to discover, rediscover authenticity with. His relationship and your relationship, my relationship with our savior. So I can't wait for you to listen in. Make sure you listen to both parts of you. This is, you're coming in on the second one.

[00:01:11]
 Definitely go into the first. He really inspires and I know it will bless you today. Hey Kevin, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. Good to be here. Yeah, good to be here. Yeah, man. So love talking with you a little bit before we hopped on air. What a fascinating story that I know we're gonna get into. And our, our listener, our viewer, will be blessed by your transparency, your vulnerability, your honesty about life and the challenges we face and leadership and business. You've had an interesting journey. 15 to 35 was quite a stint there. I know it's 20 years. Yeah, it was. 

[00:01:50] Kevin Thole
It was not great, but, learned a lot out of it. Obviously, addiction is a terrible disease and it got me pretty good. 

[00:01:59] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. And you've been in that journey, you would be what many would call air quotes successful, right?

[00:02:05] Kevin Thole
Yeah. Successful and functioning at a, at a high level for a majority of that time, thriving business.

[00:02:10] Dr. Nate Salah
You've got, you know, accolades, lots of revenue coming in and you're like, okay, the world is like this, dude's on point. Inside. 

[00:02:23] Kevin Thole
Yeah. What's happening inside was, was miserable. And whenever you, you know, aren't necessarily living a life fully committed to Christ or really committed to doing the right things and you have some success, I think people tell you how great you are. And I started to believe it, or at least act like I believed it. But deep down. I always knew because I was a believer from an early age, I just knew that what I was doing was not pleasing to God, and I knew better. So I had constant turmoil and just, regret, shame, guilt, all the, all the things that you hear about. I, I had it in a, a very deep way and I couldn't seem to get over it. You grew up in church. Grew up in church three times a week and then bible study on Tuesday and prayer meeting on Friday if we had it. So I was in church all the time. How did that affect you? I mean, you said you started addiction Young.

[00:03:16]
 15. 15 was when it started, so that was my first drink, but it, it progressed. Addiction's a progressive disease, so it progressed over time and there was stints of sobriety, stints of. Not sobriety, but, but at the end it was, totally controlling me. But it starts slow and then it, it took time to speed up starts slow. Yeah, you probably, do you remember your first drink? Do you remember that? Remember where you were? My first drink, my first real drink, I had probably taken a sip of somebody's drink at one point, but, I tell the story often and, uh. I was in the my friend's parents' basement and we decided we were gonna drink. We knew it was wrong, and I took a, a big swig of alcohol and I felt warmth from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet. And I thought to myself, this is, this is the medicine that I need. This is awesome. It made me feel really good. I, I thought, and that's the thing with substances is, they're really not the issue.

[00:04:14]
 The issue is what you're running from. So even from a young age running, or being a Christian and growing up in the church, I never really dealt with the reality of who I was or, or you know, everything about me. Never worked through the process of feeling feelings and understanding all of that. So I used drugs and alcohol and other things over my life to try to basically cover up the, the feelings that I had. Now were your parents aware of any of this? So my parents knew that I, I drank and, lived a little bit of a, a crazy life. Now my, my mom was the Christian, my dad not, not so much. So it was kind of a split home anyway. But one thing, if you grow up in a, a church, very conservative church that is very, very, we'll call it strict, for lack of a better word. It really just helps you learn to hide things better, you know? And so, because I think that. So many times there's so much shame whenever you make a mistake that you just don't want to tell anybody. So you hold that in and I just held it in. Mm-hmm. 

[00:05:21] Dr. Nate Salah
The saying in Ephesians, I wanna say it's four to 27, maybe. Do not give the devil a foothold. You don't think about when you say, don't give the devil a foothold. You think, okay, well, you know, what does that mean? And you know, you're a strong guy. If I were to grab your foot. You could easily get out of it. I mean, you know, my fingers are not nearly as strong as your quads are and your legs, right? So you think no big deal. And I think part of this pathway to addiction is thinking no big deal. And when the reality is even what I would think is no big deal could be the demise of my life that leads me down a dark and lonely road for the next two decades. 

[00:06:06] Kevin Thole
Yeah, it started small and that that's the, what the enemy does. You know, be sober. Be vigilant first Peter five, say. Mm-hmm. You know, 'cause your enemy is crawling around like a roaring lion. And what's interesting is that was I went to a Christian school and my eighth-grade memory verse, I still remember that. And I can remember vividly early on in my addiction, whenever I would go and have few and far between would go drink or go do whatever I was doing. That verse would even come to me and I would just ignore it. And, you know, you ignore things enough. It, it goes away. But you just never know what's gonna pounce on you. And that small thing, that started as a lot of fun. I don't, I don't like to, sometimes people don't like when you say that, but for a lot of years it was fun and it started small, but the enemy just slowly works.

[00:06:51]
 It's like if, if you were grabbing my one leg and I just let it stay there. Then you all of a sudden grab my other leg and I let it stay there. I could probably still get out if I really pushed, but then I let you grab my arm and my other arm. And so little by little I was slowly being just held on by that addiction and which in turn to me was by the enemy, was just gripping me. And it was very hard to shake it. And once you would shake it for a moment, that's where the disease aspect of it comes in, where you, you just have this obsession in your brain where until you have relief from that, there's really no escaping it. That's, that's the thing. It's really hard and not to go completely into a addiction, but the best way I ever heard it described was every morning, and by the end, I was drinking and drugging every single day, every morning.

[00:07:37]
 If you would've hooked me up to a lie detector test, and you would've said, Kevin, are you going to drink or drug today? I would've said no. And the lie detectors test would've said He's telling the truth. But I would've left that lie detector test and went straight to the liquor store. And that's why people that have never experienced it can't understand it because. Yes, it looks like I was lying, but I really meant what I said. I just didn't have any power within myself. There was not enough power, desire, willpower, strength, whatever you wanna call it, for me to overcome it on my own. And it's hard for people that were raised in church or people that are strong or successful to get to that point where they have to say, I can't do it anymore. I can't. For years. I kept saying, oh, I'll do it. Eventually I'll do it eventually, or eventually this will happen. But it just never, never did until I hit what I would consider a rock bottom, you know? 

[00:08:28] Dr. Nate Salah
Thanks for sharing that. Now I want to hear about this rock bottom, and it just reminds me, you know, in the nineties, you know, we partied and hard on the weekends, and I remember, I remember that same. Like Monday morning, like, I will never do this again. I will, I am so drained. I, this is like not fun. And then, you know, Wednesday gets here, Thursday, start feeling better. Friday it's, you know, it's the weekend again. And you go through the cycle, it's, you go the, it's so true, man. You know? And you think it's done. You're done. Like, oof, this is dumb. Why am I still doing this? And then you get drawn right back in. 

[00:09:09] Kevin Thole
Yeah, I think that's where the, the enemy comes in and, and plants thoughts in your head. And we have a, a short memory when it comes to the pain that we experience when we're doing these things. And it, it started even like that for me. And it progressed to where, by the end, the hopelessness, you know, I had a successful business. The business I, I miraculously still own today, but the last three years we were virtually a bankrupt company. Gonna go out of business. I was gonna lose it in a partnership situation that I had it with a current partner at the time and, and things were going to end. So it went from that friend's parents' house in the basement to where all I thought about all day every day was how I was gonna get my fix. And the rock bottom moments, there were so many of 'em for me, but the one that ended it for me. I went every single day for several years where I had some mind-altering substance or gambling or something in me that had that happened.

[00:10:05]
 And one day I went on a trip and went away, told my full of lies. Addicts, we lie a lot, and I was lying a lot. Told my wife I had this work trip and I didn't have any money to do that, but it was really just a trip to get away so I could party so people wouldn't, wouldn't know what I was doing so I could hide it and I could, could just get one last thing. Went away. And then my wife discovered things, where I went. They sent an email and all these different things, like in my email inbox, she saw it, among other things that she saw on my phone and all kinds of stuff That was just, just bad stuff for any wife to see. That was devastating and was so mad about that. But I'm so thankful 'cause I got home from that trip and, I went home and. I had brought flowers because I was gonna, I was always a good talker, so I thought I'd talk my way out of it. Again, I could somehow show her how I promise this time's gonna be different. But I opened the door and there was a couch full of people sitting there, and that was the intervention that ultimately saved my life.

[00:11:05]
 And we talk about all the time how God is so sovereign, and I could tell we could talk for six hours of all of the times that God gave me an opportunity to get out and I pushed it away. Or he just saved me through some situation where I don't deserve any saving, where literally my life I'm, I'm referring to in those cases. But I walked in there and I was just broken and beaten down enough at that moment that I walked in and I wasn't mad, I wasn't angry. Normally I would be like, look what I've done. I've built this business. I'm the man of this house. But for some reason, God had softened my heart with people he had put around me on that trip. I walked in and I was ready and willing, and my wife, such a strong woman, she gave boundaries and she said, here's the deal. You're going to either go to rehab or this is what's gonna happen. And she had said stuff like that before, but I knew this time she meant business. So my, ah, my, my, I was either gonna go back live with my parents, if they would've even had me live with a friend, maybe go from couch to couch, but I was not gonna be in the home anymore.

[00:12:07]
 I had a 2-year-old daughter at the time. Then my former business partner who, who loved me enough at the time, even though I deserved none of it, gave me the same opportunity and chance to go to rehab. And so I'm not the smartest guy, but when being homeless or going to rehab are your two options, I decided to choose rehab and ended up, you know, going to rehab and Utah. And it was tough. It was really hard and really humiliating and all of the things that you can think of, but. The best thing that ever happened to me, and we'll just go right into it. I, I think that it's, it's appropriate. I'll never forget the day that I, I sat down in the rehab center. I, my room was in the lower level and I happened to have my own room that night. I walked in, broken down, kind of wondering how did this just happen? Detoxing not feeling well physically, emotionally, spiritually, in anything. I just remember thinking, you know, everything that I ever dreamed of, of my life, all of the callings and the giftings that God had given me, I've ruined. And so many people had told me things God was gonna u use me to do and I thought I ruined it all and I was broken down and I thought God was done with me.

[00:13:16]
 He hated me and I ruined it. And my wife snuck a Bible in my bag. I'll never forget it. I remember saying and thinking in my head subconsciously and even consciously thinking, I've heard so many people that were at this point in their life, and they just opened the Bible and God speaks to 'em. And I said out loud, I said, all right, God, I'll give you one more chance. And I love our God who can handle us when we're being stupid, for a lack of a better word. I grabbed the Bible and I opened it, and I opened right to Psalm 51. I began to read it out loud. I can hardly even tell the story without getting emotional because I, it's where David, you know, had just committed a grave sin and he is pleading with God and repenting, truly repenting. You can hear the repentance in his heart more than just, I'm sorry, truly. And I read it out loud and I began to weep. And I remember thinking that God was so mad at me, but I felt the love of God, the other most vivid memory of my life from that first drink. Is that moment where I felt the love of God in a way that, that was so tangible and so real and not everything's great.

[00:14:21]
 Tomorrow will be a new day. No, but like the love of saying, Hey, we will get through this. I will walk you through this. And, my life was forever marked in that moment and changed, and that was where the new life began. The real new life began for me was in that moment. Wow. It's powerful. It's hard to talk about sometimes I talk about it a lot on, on different platforms and things like that, but words cannot express, you know, a lot of people were angry with me. A lot of people hated me. I did a lot of really bad things in my addiction, but no one hated me more than I hated me. Mm-hmm. And and that's a hard thing to come to grips with that you hate yourself. And, it took, and still sometimes does take time to work through that to understand that, because. When I felt the love of God, I felt I was unlovable and I felt the love of God, and then God began to restore other people in my life and all of that. But that relationship and walking through, it's just like when there's any betrayal in a relationship. I had to walk through my relationship with Christ the same way me and my wife did, where there had to get trust being built where I had to actually, again, God loved me unconditionally, so it wasn't like he wasn't gonna love me or he was gonna kick me out.

[00:15:34]
 I felt like the next year specifically of my life was rebuilding my trust, the mutual trust between the Lord and I, which is kind of a, maybe not the most biblical way to say it. I don't have the right words to say it, but where I began to little by little, do honorable things and do the right things where God began to entrust more things to me. More things were revealed to me over time. More things I had to deal with within me, but also more trust that I was able to have in God because he would show me things that he had for me. Show me more of his words, show me more of just his love, just in new ways in the process. 

[00:16:11] Dr. Nate Salah
Brother, I am just so floored by your story so far, and it's partly because of what you have gone through. So significant to you. The other part is it's so significant to so many others who are facing that right now. They're either in the, the, the grips of addiction, they're in the grips of loneliness. They're in the grips of the lies that the enemy says, that you're unworthy, that you're unloved, that there's no coming back, you're all alone. And those are just lies. Those are just lies that we. Must fortify ourselves to believe the truth that God's love is boundless. It covers a multitude of sins, and when it covers the sins, it means you can't see 'em anymore. It means they're gone. What does that mean? That means that you get to walk in the righteousness of Jesus, and it does require a change. It requires that same repentance that you, that you spoke of, that repentance that says, God, I'm not just, sorry, I am turning from having my back to you, to having my face to you because I wanna feel the warmth of your love again. 

[00:17:37] Kevin Thole
Yeah. It's a, it's such a process after that. And I think so many people, especially like charismatic believers, we feel like healing happens instantaneously. It can and it, it does. And I hear a lot of people that struggle with addiction that are healed instantly. And even after that encounter with God, my next morning I woke up wishing that I had a drink and I had a drug. Mm-hmm. I'll be honest with you, but what it was, was he put the right people in in my path to walk me through what I call, you know, a discipleship process and a sanctification process where. It was a process to get to the point where I'm at today where the easiest thing I'll do today is not drink or do drugs. Like it's, it's not even there. But that's because I've walked through it and so many people get to the point where they surrender their life to Christ or they surrender their addiction to Christ.

[00:18:29]
 But it says, faith without action or faith without works is dead. So they think we give it to God and it's done. No, we have to turn around. Do some work to work through this process. 'cause it's real life. It's not just a magical thing, it's real life. We still have to live and walk on this earth. And so taking that time that it took me to work through those things, understanding where I can be, where I can't be, which is different, where you can and can't be, and things you can be around that I can't and vice versa. And, and that's even changed over time with me too. And there's different things. That I'm comfortable with, that I was uncomfortable with and all of that. But it's been a process with the right people. And you see humans are humans and it's hard for us. What you said was so important. Humans are different than God. And so there are people still to this day that no matter, I, I shouldn't say forever 'cause God can redeem and reconcile anything. There's one particular relationship in my life that's extremely painful, that has had no restoration and no reconciliation and, and I've tried. Most everything that I can try.

[00:19:32]
 But God's not like that. He doesn't hold it against us. He doesn't hold it up. Whenever I make a mistake today, he doesn't bring back, oh yeah, well you did this, this, this. No, it's, it's, Hey, let's walk through The same process of repentance happens every day. You know, just different levels, different things. With him, there are no levels, so he sees me as clean and all of those things that I thought were ruined and done and gone. In the reality or in the world or with in human nature, that was true, but in God's eyes, in the kingdom world, it's different. He can restore, redeem, and reconcile all those things. 

[00:20:12] Dr. Nate Salah
He sees you. He sees me in our true selves. He sees us in the way we are formed in the image of God, and he elevates us back up to that rightful place. As children, as sons and daughters of the most high God, where we've chosen to wallow in the mud as outcasts, he, he's cleaned us and put clothes on us and put a ring on us just like the prodigal son, and said, it's time to celebrate. My son was dead. He was lost, and now he's found.

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[00:22:08] Kevin Thole
Yeah, the prodigal son story is, is my story. I'm very b lessed to be able to share that in churches. I've been able to share my story in churches all over the country and even all over the world. I've been in other nations and been able to do it using that story. I, my favorite visual of the story, and this might not hit home to everybody, but you know, when I was a kid, we had these blinds in the front of our house and when we knew people were coming over, we would, when you'd hear a carpool up or a carpool by you'd, we'd run up and peek out the window. We'd like open the blinds and look and see who was coming. I don't know, but God just gave me a vision or whatever of him just every time I would start to take a step, he was right there looking through the blinds, like saying, oh, is this the day? Is today the day my, my son is coming home? And that moment in that basement of that rehab center was truly him running to me, putting a ring on my finger and being like, let's have a feast.

[00:23:06]
 Because I wish that I could be a communicator. That was as good as I've heard other people communicate it, but. The words could never describe the feeling that I had of like, I love you, and deeper than just words, like the feeling, the, the emotion, but deeper than emotion, even of just true love, unconditional love, and that's who he is, and that's who we're called to be in many cases too. And that's where my life has been completely changed in the way that I treat people, the way that I see people, the way I see business, the way I see leadership is because when I've experienced that love. It helps me to then give love, mercy, grace to others as well, man.

[00:23:45] Dr. Nate Salah
Speak it bro. And the operative piece of this, I think about like practically speaking, you know, why would it be that God does give us unmerited favor that we can't earn, maintain or ascertain the grace that surpasses anything we can ever imagine? And I think about like as human beings, why do we withhold that? And I think the, the difference is God gives us unconditional love because he has nothing to lose that is of greater value than us. 

[00:24:23] Kevin Thole
Yeah. That's mind-blowing when you think about it, bro. 

[00:24:26] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. Like and take it to our level as human beings. One of the reasons I think that we withhold that same love is 'cause we believe we have something to lose. The truth of the matter is if we were gonna follow in our father's footsteps, we'd realize there's nothing more valuable than love. 

[00:24:47] Kevin Thole
That's so true. There's so many business influencers and stuff that you hear that. Love is certainly not their, their mantra not, and what they say. 

[00:24:55] Dr. Nate Salah
It's not, not their strategy, it's not what they talk about when they're in a board meeting or how we're gonna have competitive advantage or when someone perhaps isn't measuring up to whatever the standard is. None of that. That doesn't mean that there's not consequences. Consequences are real. Our God allows us to have consequences. You are in a ditch. 

[00:25:13] Kevin Thole
Yeah. 

[00:25:14] Dr. Nate Salah
Doesn't change love. And the problem is, I think it's hard for us to process that as business owners, as leaders. Because it's so antithetical to traditional systems oriented, doing business in life, whether it be with our families or our communities and our business environment, and it's a flip of the script, man. It's like, it's it's mind. Like you said, it's mind blowing because it's like, oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay, so what do I truly have to lose that's more valuable than the love that has been freely poured out to me? Nothing, nothing. 

[00:25:49] Kevin Thole
And when you lead with love, the results come it. It's hard for me to even explain it or understand it, but what I've noticed in my business as we've acha, achieved some pretty crazy growth since I've been sober, which was six and a half years ago. We've grown and grown and grown, and I think it's because from the top down. We shifted from focusing so much on the consequences which are still there and there is love in those consequences. 'cause we want what's best for the people and, and the business and stuff. But instead of looking for the problems, but looking for a way to love or a way to, to help our team members, our customers, everybody, you look for the service aspect and the love aspect of these. People you're able to build better team members, better partners with when it comes to like business partners that you do business with. If your first instinct is to be angry at someone when a mistake is made, it's not gonna work. Where now, whenever there's a mistake, if someone's missing work, whatever, we always sit around and we talk.

[00:26:52]
We're like, what's going on? Mm-hmm. What is going on? And there's a, a really good chance sometimes that maybe the issue is, is they're not in the right role, or the issue is something that's deep within them. They're the personal issue that they have that we can help them get through it. Our organization, we have about 175 employees now. And so one employee, I mean there our key employees isn't going to make or break us to where if we have one employee that we need to love along a little bit in order to get them through a tough season, that's not gonna break my entire organization. Some smaller organizations that can be different. I understand that. But what we found is as we go through those processes with those people. They become such strong, loyal employees that care about what we're doing. 'cause they're bought into the vision because they've seen the vision in action in their own life. And that's been a huge, huge thing, huge with us. 

[00:27:43] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah. In your organization, I mean, 175 employees is no small company. You've got, you know, you're a medium to medium to large, almost size business now as far as your, you know, gross revenue and, and the footprint. And whether there's small organizations, they can say, oh yeah, we can integrate love into the atmosphere and the culture, and it's all cute, right? The larger you get, the more it seems like does this really belong in a larger environment? And the pushback that I would say for that is this your misunderstanding. What love is, you may think, oh, this is an emotion. I'm supposed to feel good. And in some ways it is. However, we're talking about actions. We're talking about active characteristics of how we treat people. And in fact, I mean my son, when he was little, he was, I dunno, four or five.

[00:28:33]
 And I've told this story a couple times before. He asked me about a love. He's like, dad, we say we love each other all the time, but help me to understand it. I don't understand what it means. Right. I went to my wife and, and I said, I'm not quite sure exactly how to go about this. And she said, well, why don't you go through First Corinthians? You know, 13, four through eight. They're called the love versus you hear about weddings all the time. And so we went through them one by one and we focused on each of the characteristics unilaterally. Okay. What does it look like to have patience today? Just be patient. What does it look like to be kind? What does it look like? To not boast, envy, to not walk in pride. What does it look like to not be easily anger? What does it look like to not hold record of wrongs, to not be rude or inconsiderate, to have to delight in truth, right, rather than in evil? What does it look like to not be self-centered? To always protect, always trust. Always hope. Always persevere. Like imagine building an organization. Built on those principles, bro. 

[00:29:45] Kevin Thole
That's like bulletproof. Yeah. That that's gonna be an organization that's gonna see a lot of success. Yeah, and, and you're right. Like love for people, they think it's like weak, but really love is strong because it's all of the things you just said. It's not just, Hey, we feel great about everything that happens when bad stuff happens, let's love through it. No, you fix the problems by enacting those actions that you said. And it's just like you hear these stories all the time, you know, I love my daughter. If my daughter goes to, does something she shouldn't do. I love her enough to correct her so that she can grow and get better and improve. And that's the same way it is within an organization. To truly lead with love. I can't let somebody be an underperformer or just do the wrong things or the wrong actions or make all of these mistakes. That wouldn't be love. No, because back to the principles Protect, 

[00:30:34] Dr. Nate Salah
Right? What am I protecting? I'm protecting the whole, what am I protecting? Truly the mission. And there's no one person who is above the mission, including myself. Correct. Yeah. Right. So this is all, goes back to these same principles. They, they work in tandem with one another and they become, like you said, their strength, not weakness. It takes a lot of effort by the way, to implement, as you know, this, to implement a kind of culture that has these, these principles, these virtues at the foundation of how we do business. And like you said, you'll see a lot of success. Why? If you truly lead that way and you truly honor all your stakeholders with that philosophy, that's extremely attractive in the marketplace, there's no one who's gonna tell you in the marketplace. I don't want you to treat me with dignity, respect, care, and help me to solve my problems more effectively than I can solve them on my own. 

[00:31:32] Kevin Thole
If they, they don't want that, then they're, you don't wanna be with them anymore. They're not customer, yeah. 

[00:31:37] Dr. Nate Salah
They're not fit, because that's what they do. And you know, this, you're a, you're both a consumer and a contributor. I am too. Right. And I'm constantly looking for organizations that check these boxes, not from the perspective of it's a box check, but because they truly believe and they live by those principles. Because we share that. And I'll go on further to say that when we as leaders. You can't manufacture this stuff, you have to first receive it. When we as leaders have let down our guard, truly surrender to God and say, you know what? Like you said earlier, I can't do this on my own. You can't give away what you haven't received. You have to receive it. Receive it so you can turn around and give it away. 

[00:32:25] Kevin Thole
Yeah, love is, an interesting thing because men, I think a lot of men that I deal with mostly in the addiction space, they don't feel like they're capable of love because they haven't received love, you know, whether it's their earthly father. That's where our heavenly father comes into play so much where you may have been hurt or, or broken by a, a, a man, but God won't do that. And once you experience that and you give it away and you said it, you can't manufacture it. When I was active in addiction, we had all kinds of cool little sayings written around our office, but people weren't seeing it in me, or in anybody really within our organization. But once we put it in action, we didn't need the signs on the walls anymore. It just becomes who we are. And even if we have differing styles with some of our leadership team, and some of 'em are more direct and some of 'em are less direct, ultimately. You could pull everyone and ask, do you believe that that person wants what's best for you?

[00:33:23]
 They would say yes, because we really do care. And when you really do care and you want what's best for people, even sometimes there are situations where the organization will come second in a snapshot to help someone. That's okay if, if, if you are capable of doing that because we really care. We want to help these people. We've been given a really good opportunity at our organization to hire some people who have the same history as me, some addiction history, and we have a lot of rules that they have to follow and a lot of boundaries and things with different tests and all of that. Being able to give someone a second chance in life and seeing them coming into the organization, seeing it. All of our leadership team is in recovery pretty much at this point. And my business partner's in recovery or our GM is in recovery, so almost everyone is in recovery. And so we're, we're in a, a really good spot where we get to help walk along that with other people and see them and it, it builds you don't do it for this, but one of the biggest.

[00:34:22]
 Benefits of doing everything we've talked about. Our organization is the loyalty and in our business loyalty, not necessarily loyalty to go jump ship. That obviously happens too. But we're an emergency business where tonight at 2:00 AM we could get a call that could be an opportunity of a lifetime for us, and we need 25 people to wake up at 2:00 AM and come into work and we only have six people on call. So. You've done all of these things to where people, you've built the trust, you've built the equity within the relationship or whatever you wanna call it, to where they're willing to do it. And I'm amazed. The biggest success that me and my GM were just talking about that we have within our culture is a couple of weekends ago we had some a weekend job that came in and we sent out a text and we said, Hey, we need volunteers.

[00:35:11]
 And we had every single person within our organization. Either had a real reason why they couldn't or they volunteered. It wasn't just ignoring it and anything like that. And that was like a bigger win than any revenue win that we have or any sales win that we have. That was a win to show it. And that's again, I was telling you, we were so focused pre-sobriety for me on win, win, win, win, win, and more, more, more and more and more. And I still like to win and I still like more, of course, but the focus has shifted to serving and helping. And once we've served and helped our way to it, now we're winning, winning, winning, and getting more and more and more. We implemented the, the, the leadership principles from the biggest and best leadership book that there is the Bible, and all of a sudden we're achieving great success and exponential growth, both on the revenue side, profit side, but also just in the people side of business where we have all these relationships with people that trust us and in like us serving works.

[00:36:14] Dr. Nate Salah
Bro, it never fails. You never, it never fails.

[00:36:17] Kevin Thole
You never lose. Same with, in my opinion, giving and, and generosity. These things, these principles, biblical principles that require wisdom, of course, but you're never gonna lose helping someone. Never. No. 

[00:36:32] Dr. Nate Salah
That was Jesus' model and he taught that. One of my favorite verses in this subject, we briefly talked about it and our listener would've have heard, this is at the end of the parable of the talents, where the master sees, of course, the, the multiplication of the two talents. And, the two servants who multiplied what they were given and one who didn't. And the response. To each of the individuals who multiplied and increased, by the way, they had different amounts. Same response, well done, good and faithful servant. That's really the heart of what we want to hear when we go to meet Jesus. Like there's nothing better to hear than that. So if that's true, which it is, then what am I doing? What am I doing daily to receive a well done good and faithful servant? Well, if we just go back to the story, I love Jesus' stories because they seem like they're real people, but they're really just stories because they're so vivid.

[00:37:27]
 You're entrusted with time, talent, and treasures. Multiply, increase 'em for God's glory. Don't be so concerned. This is hard for business guys like you and I about the number. It's important to have metrics, but don't be so concerned 'cause the number is not relevant. To the result. The only thing that's relevant to the result is one word in its obedience because you trust that the master is good and he loves you.

[00:37:55] Kevin Thole
Yeah. That the master is good, and that is sometimes we forget who the master is. Mm-hmm. We think we're the master. You know, and we think we're in charge. And I'll be honest, we've achieved a lot of success. And we talked about this before too. You know, you start to, and I may have even said it earlier, you start to believe when people tell you you're good, they tell you how good you're doing and how great you are, and you start to believe it like it's me. But it's important for all of us to remember me specifically, that all good things come from him. And all of my success. If it was not for him, I would be 100% dead today. Both in every aspect in the ground, I'd be in the ground. The, the way that I was living, the success rate of someone with the addictions that I had is very low.

[00:38:43]
 And the volume and things that I was doing is, is certain death. There's no other way around it. And people may, if you're watching, you may see me and be like, that doesn't look like it. I could show you some pictures of me back in the day compared to now of, near death. I was. So when it comes to that, it's like all glory to God. But it's the same with business. Oh, we're making, doing good things all making a difference. It's from him. Just like my sobriety, I had to do the work in business. We have to do the work, but if it wasn't for him, the work is fruitless and, and pointless really. And that's why everything that we do, every good thing is from him. As soon as, I think humility is a huge thing and people that know me, if they're listening, they're kind of smiling because my ego sometimes still gets to me. So remembering it's not me. It's not me. I'm just, but a vessel that God has chosen to use, and he's gifted me with a lot of great things, but if I'm not multiplying and I'm not using them, I'm squandering them like the OR, or bury them. Mm-hmm. Then it's pointless. Amen. To that. 

[00:39:49] Dr. Nate Salah
And it doesn't have to be stressful. That's the other thing is we tend to stress. About all those things. Right. And God's model is just walk, walk in obedience. Yeah. Things aren't gonna always go the way you anticipated them. We're not playing a short game here. I'm playing the infinite game.

[00:40:06] Kevin Thole
Yeah. I really, I always relate everything back to addiction and that is, was the key to my success early on of, and by success, I mean sobriety early on was, we're just gonna walk. Where God, I really felt in such a strong way that God was just the whole way walking hand in hand with me, saying, Hey, okay. And a challenge would come and I wouldn't freak out. I was very surrendered. I was very surrendered to God and we just walked through it. And my pastor at the time, see, I came out of rehab. I was there for 90 days and. We were looking for a church and I had some church history in my life and blamed churches for a lot of things, which was ridiculous, but that's either neither here nor there, but we looked for a church, but I still wasn't fully committed to like the church deal. Like God and me were cool, but church was not gonna be my thing still. And my wife, it was very important to her. So I agreed, fine, we'll go. We went to a church and met the pastor and I went to lunch with the pastor and I told him everything I did.

[00:41:06]
 'Cause I was like, watch, we're gonna show this guy, like this guy's gonna give up on me. And that way I can just walk through it kind of on my own or with some support group. My pastor said something that has been one of the biggest leadership lessons ever to me. He said, I don't have a word from the Lord. I, I don't have a scripture even. He goes, but man, I'd love to walk through this with you. And he didn't have to have all the answers. And as a leader, when people come to me with problems, both let's talk business, yes, very true, but personal or or other issues that they have, when they come to me, I don't have to have the answer. I can literally say, Hey. I don't know everything right now. Let's walk through this process. Let's do it together and we'll figure it out. We'll learn. And, he's done that to this day and that's been a huge blessing. And that's what I continue to try to do with both people that I'm mentoring, whether it's sobriety or spiritually or whatever, walk through it with him. Don't just try to tell 'em or, or teach 'em or show 'em some word or tell 'em what to do, but walk through it with them and show them the way really slowly, little, a little. 

[00:42:11] Dr. Nate Salah
Amen. There's a, there's a lot of wisdom in that and that squashes the ego that you were talking about earlier as well. One of the things I love to say is now, as opposed to many years ago, is, you know, I'm not sure, I don't know, I don't have an answer. Let's just walk it out. Especially when you have kids. I have an 18-year-old and he's throwing some zingers at me and he continues to, and some things I can, I can answer and some things I don't and that's okay. That's totally okay. There's a liberation in that freeing, especially for folks who are high achievers. Who are we? We've been bred to be problem solvers. We've been conditioned to always have an answer, and we've got to dispel that myth that that's necessary for our self-worth. It's unnecessary, completely unnecessary. In fact, your self-worth becomes even more valuable when you are true and truly present for the journey rather than the instant answer that sometimes maybe out of your back pocket. Not even true. Anyway, 

[00:43:22] Kevin Thole
Yeah, I've been guilty of that a lot of times in my life acting like I know. 

[00:43:27] Dr. Nate Salah
Now, lemme ask you this. You built a healthy enterprise, your. You've been sharing about addiction, valiantly and transparently, and for that, praise God, it sounds like you have a beautiful family. One day you, Kevin, like me, will be on that great summit, that very end of the journey, this side of eternity, and you'll be able to look at all the people who you had a blessing of impacting, whether it's folks who you've had directly or even folks like here that you may never see. If there's one thing that you would like them to say about you as you cross over, what would that be? 

[00:44:07] Kevin Thole
 I think the, the number one thing for me would be that he really cared. I know that's simple, but I cared because so many people go around thinking nobody cares about what they're going through, what their struggle is. I just wanna be the guy that. Truly cares, not with words, but with actions and with the way that I invest all of my time, talent, treasure, everything is to helping care for others in my addiction. I, I really felt alone and so many people, and it's not just addiction. So many people are sitting in church every Sunday and they're hurting and they're broken. They're just beat down and they just don't have anyone that cares. And they probably do. They just don't feel like they do, and I want to be the guy that that went to the broken places, went to the places where nobody else wanted to go, and just just showed people. That they're loved, that they're cared for, and that they have hope.

[00:45:08] Dr. Nate Salah
Well, my friend, you are on your way. 

[00:45:10] Kevin Thole
Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. It was an honor and a privilege. 

[00:45:14] Dr. Nate Salah
We did it. Again, thank you so much for being a part of our program. We thank you and we couldn't do it without you. If you've been blessed by this show, we would just ask that you give us end. Unfiltered. Review and share with the world how God is speaking to you through a call to leadership. You can do it on Apple or any of the podcast platforms, a call to leadership, and we thank you again. God bless you.

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Dr. Nate Salah

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