Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the R.T.W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Christian University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On today's episode, we're joined by Brad Carr. Brad is president and founder of Sonic Air. He started the company because of his passion for providing the best engineering solution to a business problem. He saw that no one had a way to keep their plants safe from combustible dust and lint fires. And I'm referring to industrial plants, not just greenery. He and his engineers developed a revolutionary new design approach to solve this problem called barrier air. He's committed to running his company on biblical principles and cultivating a company culture that honors the Lord. Brad, welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Darren. I agree with you. I hope that uh in today's discussion, it'll be an encouragement to someone to want to pursue a uh culture that is uh honoring to God.
SPEAKER_01Yes, sir. So, Brad, when did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in the marketplace?
SPEAKER_00I would say it was I joined a group called C12. Uh I'd taken the company from the startup phase and was really in what I call the fun phase, where we we took off, we're growing 20, 30% a year, uh, we were profitable. Um, and that really had to do with uh Georgia Pacific and CentOS contacting us, and things really took off. And I I knew that I needed some peers that could uh speak to me about uh some of the problems I was having with growth as a new company. And uh, I looked at another group uh called Vista Vista or something like that, but I I really wanted the one that uh you know was based around uh the gospel, I guess you'd say, you know, Christianity. So, you know, within within that, all of a sudden there was a concept that you could use your business uh to promote the gospel and not just make a product and make a profit, uh, which that really that that excited me because uh, you know, really ever since I uh met Jesus, he's been number one. And I've always wanted him to be number one. I thought, well, that's a pretty good idea. You know, now that nobody's going, fewer people, particularly younger people, are not going to church. Uh, you need to have some way of crossing their path. And if you employ them, they have to be with you at least 40 hours a week. And it just made sense to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And what's one of your favorite scriptures related to business and entrepreneurship?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I can't quote it, but it's it is one we use every day. But it just that it is God who causes us to prosper. Uh, you know, it I mean, obviously I work hard and and everybody works hard, but at the end of the day, there are so many things that we're not in control of. And and that's the way when we have our weekly meetings, uh, we start out praying because we want you know God to be the one who's glorified.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, there's uh in Deuteronomy, it says that the Lord has given us the power to produce wealth, to establish his covenant. In Psalms, it it says um the Lord delights in the prosperity of his servants. Uh, there's probably um, you know, verses like that, there's a lot of them kind of swimming around in our head, um, but because it's really a theme of the of the scripture that um it all does come from the Lord. Uh, and one of the ways that you express that is in your company's mission statement uh to show God's goodness to our partners and communities through proven fugitive dust solutions that create safer, healthier, and more efficient work environments. How does um how does accomplishing that show God's goodness?
SPEAKER_00Well, obviously, you're blessing people with uh protecting them. Uh ours our system will keep plants from uh literally blowing up uh or uh catching on fire because we remove the fuel uh overhead in particular that can cause that. Uh it also cleans up the air so all the employees working there, you know, what they're breathing uh is better. And as far as the business owner, uh it reduces the cost of manual housekeeping, uh shutting the plant down to clean it. Uh so it's really bringing three very positive things uh into the uh plant or the facilities operation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I love that, you know, because um showing the Lord's goodness and and bringing glory to God through a company isn't it's not just about what we're doing when we're not doing our job or not rendering the service that God has given to us. Like, you know, you you're you're really doing faith in the workplace when you're sharing the gospel and you're you know passing out tracts to your employees and this kind of thing, but but you're you're doing it through just the the work that you're doing when you recognize that wow, I mean, to create a safer, healthier, more efficient work environment, that's that's truly honoring to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00We had one customer, he said uh his comment was that we are literally saving lives, which is kind of like the gospel. And it really it's true. I mean, uh most people don't realize it, but a lot of industrial plants do blow up and have blown up. Um I know here in North Carolina there was a they made rubber stoppers, a pharmaceutical plant with rubber dust uh that blew up and killed a half a dozen or a dozen people, maimed a bunch of people, uh, all because the dust accumulated and people were not paying attention to it.
SPEAKER_01Wow. That's a lot of dust.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I mean, is that like dust that you can I mean, it seems like at that point you'd be able to really see it in the air, or is this something that really is just Well it I think because it's overhead, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Most of it, people aren't looking overhead. They're looking down on the floor, you know, where they're working. And you know, if you've never experienced it, you don't think about it. But uh OSHA, I guess, starting around 12 years ago, had a dust emphasis program uh because there were so many plants that had blown up. There's a sugar refinery in Savannah, Georgia. Uh, and it was sugar dust that blew up, and and again, it killed at least a dozen people. Um and then there's the facilities that that burn up too. Uh that usually if it's a fire, people can get out of the building, but if it's an explosion, it reacts too fast.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So we we want to prevent that. If you if you get rid of the fuel, nothing is gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01Right. So clearly there is uh there is a eternal kingdom value in just the the the value proposition of your company, but you're also doing some really great three things uh within the culture and the way that you uh take care of your employees, but it didn't necessarily start out that way from from what I understand. Um you you brought in the best Christian Workplaces Institute and they did uh uh an assessment of your of your company. Um tell us about that journey.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, uh I guess I was encouraged by fellow businessmen through C12 to, you know, you don't really know what kind of impact you're having for the kingdom if you don't measure it. And uh so I thought, well, okay. Uh, but you know, when I when you live in the corner office, you really don't know what's happening sometimes, particularly culturally. So we did the assessment and it came back we were toxic, which uh obviously was uh kind of a blow. Uh, but I knew that it was my fault or responsibility anyway, uh, to try to figure this out and uh turn it around. Because you know, I was I I call it I I try to create a petri dish in my business as far as the culture where the gospel can be talked about uh with employees. I mean, they can talk about whatever they want to talk about, but that there wouldn't be a hindrance uh to people just you know building relationships and being able to share what's you know what is meaningful in their lives. But yet if you have a toxic environment, uh that that does not show God's uh goodness. So we had to do something about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So what were some of the sort of before and after snapshots that you could share with us?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I guess I'll back up a little bit. The way we got into the the uh problem was uh you know, it took us about three and a half years to get out of the startup phase, then we went into the fund phase. Uh, but we're still small. Uh, you know, sales were going 20, 30% a year, making good profits. Uh, we really finally got so big that uh we needed organization. Uh, and and even though I have an engineering degree, I am not an organized person. And I've really learned through the process that I needed people who had the skills of organizing, uh, other than myself. And so we we implemented a system called EOS, entrepreneurial operating system, that really put in accountability and measurements and and it caused us to develop uh our core values, which is humble, hungry, people smart, and grateful. And uh when we interview people, if they don't meet those qualifications, that we will not hire them. Uh, they can be the best, you know, whatever their craft is. Uh obviously that you know, if we hire someone for a position with certain need or crafts, they got to be able to do that. Uh, but our culture really takes top priority because we feel like if you get the culture right, uh, then what you get out of people is exponentially greater because now they can live up to their potential, uh, which is really is tremendous. So that's what caused us to do it. You know, we realized we were kind of in our own way. I I guess you'd say uh, Darren, the second thing was we had several people on our leadership team that really did not want to go uh where I wanted to go, which was really to use the business uh as a petri dish for the gospel. Uh good people, no, no problem. Uh, but they really just wanted business to be business. And I wanted it to be greater than business. Uh, I guess they call it the why, begin with why. And um so they left the company uh and we replaced them with uh leaders that really wanted to go where we wanted to go. And I'd say getting the alignment at the top of the company and the leadership, uh that's why we were so toxic, is uh people that you know would see that you know, one leader wanted to go this way, one leader wanted to go that's what another way, and we just didn't have unity. And once we got the right people on the bus, um and we had our core values, along with um measurements and everything else, uh that's when things really started to turn around.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What's an example of uh something where, as you said, they just wanted it to be business uh as usual, and you were wanting to make it a, as you said, a petri dish for the gospel. Um tactically, what did that what did that look like?
SPEAKER_00Uh well uh I wanted to get all of our leaders to join C-12, and uh not all of them wanted to join C-12. Um why not? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01You were gonna pay for it.
SPEAKER_00I know. I guess they thought it was like Sunday school or a waste of their time. I don't know. I that I can't I can't answer. I didn't I wasn't in their head. Uh the other thing was in our core focus statement of beginning with showing God's goodness. Uh, they thought that was off-putting to people. And uh, you know, maybe it's a little bit like being politically incorrect. I I don't know. The kind of where our culture is gone, they they didn't want to offend people. Uh whereas, you know, my thinking was particularly if you're hiring someone, they need to know what they're getting into. You know, we don't need to hide it, we don't need to be abusive. Uh, but just to say you want to show God's goodness, if that offends somebody, we we need to find out early. It could be an opportunity to you know share the gospel there. You know, what you know, what's happened? It makes that offensive to you. But anyway, I'd say that was that that probably kind of encapsulates it. That I just wanted and we you know, we don't hand out tracts and and we don't have uh uh whatever rallies or preaching going on. It's just people day to day that you know share what's happening in their lives and and the fact that they got the freedom to talk about really whatever they want to talk about, as long as uh they're s civil about it, not you know, such as that, which uh is not difficult, you know, really in itself.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um what was another, I think there was a particular manager that really was uh impediment to cultivating the kind of culture that that you wanted. Uh what can you tell us about how that how that played out?
SPEAKER_00Uh yes, and this was really before we had the ELS implemented. Uh that yeah, we had a manager that would talk talk behind your back, I guess you'd say, say bad things and you know, all the things that I was doing wrong, I guess, or whoever else in leadership was doing wrong. And and so I mean that causes division, obviously, that you know, people don't know who to who to believe uh when all the leadership's not on the uh same page. And you know, the kind of irony of it is that you know, today I I love the guy, you know, he's I still consider him a friend, but um he was miserable working here, and and when I you know um told me he had to go, I said it's it's as much or more for you than it is for the company because you're showing up miserable every day. You know, obviously this isn't working out, and we don't have time to figure it out because the company needs everybody rolling in the same direction. And I I guess that was probably the beginning of realizing that you know people have really got to agree on the why, which is in our case is showing God's goodness. Yeah. And that's our that's our employees, it's our uh customers, it's our uh vendors, uh, as well as our community.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And and you uh uh relieved him of his duties uh after having you tried to work with him for four or five months. You you sent him to a week-long uh uh leadership training course to really kind of help him get his mind right, and and he quit after two days, right? Just kind of decided he didn't need it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. That that was kind of the uh that was probably the straw that broke the camel's back. It really wasn't it was just it made me realize uh this is not gonna work out, you know. And I'm probably one of the worst people to fire people. I I I put up with a whole lot, and I think the sooner you can do it, uh, and I think you can do it with love, the better off everybody is once you realize that uh this is not a fit. And I will say this um what we have experienced over the years is when someone uh starts failing at their job, what you know, whatever their responsibilities are, their core values, weaknesses will show up. Like if there's a lack of humility, hey, I'm not I'm not. We don't mind people failing as long as they're honest about it and we talk about it. Um or if they're not hungry, you know, they don't want to work hard, or whatever the issue is, it really starts showing up. Um and that that's it's I guess that's the way using the core values tells us that somebody they're either on the wrong bus or they're in the wrong seat. Uh, and we have some experiences where we had uh one person in particular, he he had all the core values, but he's in the wrong seat and he was failing at his job because it was requiring certain skills he didn't have. And we changed him to a different job, and he has flourished. I mean, so you know, just because someone's failing doesn't mean there can't be somewhere else, even though I would say that's more the exception than the rule.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So in the Best Christian Workplaces Institute survey, the you guys jumped from 35% employee engagement rate to 65% employee engagement. It if you were to apply the 80-20 uh reasoning behind that increase, would you say that it was 80% uh changing out the management? Uh or what how would you um how would you really account for the bulk of what caused that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'd say 80% was change in leadership.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, the I don't care what the organization is, it could be a church, it could be anything. Um it always begins at the top and goes down. Uh I would say probably in my case, it was probably more omissive than uh, you know, just ignoring problems, hoping they'd go away rather than jumping into them. Um one of the things we kind of picked up from C12 is a buffalo culture where you run into your problems. Um, and that's really the way we are today is if there's a problem, and I think it's because we got everybody's got everybody's back. They know that we're here together, we're here um to solve whatever that issue is. But getting getting it right at the top, until you do that, there's nothing else you can do that will fix it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. How do you explain to your employees the the severity with which you would consider doing something like gossiping or just not um, you know, maybe initially they were hungry and they were hustling, but now they're not doing that anymore. Like, how do you communicate what is a uh a firable offense or or an offense that really is going to prevent them from being able to go anywhere in this company?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question. And and this that's probably somewhere where EOS has really helped us, and that's called rhythm. Uh, we have quarterly uh meetings for the whole corporation. Uh, and we always in our meetings re-emphasize our core focus and we go through and emphasize our core values and what they mean. Uh, but in addition to that, we have quarterly conversations with all of our employees and their supervisors. And during that conversation, what always comes up is how do they feel like they would rate themselves on the core values, and the uh supervisor rates them on the core values. And if if it's not a thumbs up on anything, then there's a discussion about it. Uh, and if it's if it's a thumbs down, then basically uh they're gonna end up in a uh three strikes and you're out, uh, where they've got a kind of a probationary period where they've got to change that core value, uh, or we're gonna ask them to go off of the bus. And in our experiences, some people do change, uh, but if they're not gonna change, they we don't have to fire them because they leave. And and it's not just the management either. Their peers put pressure on them. Uh you know, everybody that works here loves the culture, and they don't want someone coming in and uh messing it up because they don't have the core value.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because you're the the culture you're cultivating is a place where God's goodness is shown. And so if if somebody is is uh counterproductive to that, I mean that's that's cancerous to the whole organization.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and yeah, I I don't know, I put a number on what what the value is of culture, uh, but it really is tremendous. Um, one example, we I had a serviceman at a plant and he saw three or four of our fans on the floor in the shop. Said, hey, this is not good. Uh so he took the initiative. He said, We got to do something about this. He's not the owner, he's just he works here. And you know, we talked about it and we worked out a deal where the customer would ship the fans back, and for a certain amount of money, we'd fix them and ship them back to them. Lost our shirt on that first venture, but we learned from it. But that's just one example of we got people all the time. Uh seeing better ways of doing things and and coming up with ideas on, you know, and it may be an idea on how can we help our customer. So that that you don't want, I don't want just one person in the company with all the good ideas. You want everybody with all the good ideas.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Brad, is there something um you're working on right now you're excited about that you want to tell our listeners about how they can uh potentially get involved?
SPEAKER_00Um you're talking about our culture?
SPEAKER_01So, you know, a lot of times um folks will come on the show and they they want to tell everyone about their book or something like that. You're I mean, I think you're really here, you're you're in the trenches with your company doing this stuff that we teach on this show and here really just um just to share uh and and encourage others, but um I just didn't know if there was a certain you know link or something you wanted to share with our listeners today.
SPEAKER_00No, I guess the only thing I would close it in and uh is that I've kind of entered a new phase of life uh where I'm working halftime uh as the visionary, and and it's part of EOS. Is I operate as a visionary, I've got all the ideas, and and half of them are pretty crazy. Uh, and our chief operating officer really runs the company day to day. So if I take off a week or two, it doesn't affect anything because I don't have anything to do with operations. And I am really having fun because I'm doing uh really what I think God meant me to do, which is being creative and creating, you know, whether it's a new product or a new process or a system or uh you know, whatever the the ideas that that uh comes, that way we're constantly improving uh what we're putting out to people. Uh and I think we're on our fourth generation in 20 years as far as our basic design on the fan. Uh so we're constantly improving and adding to it. And um, you know, I'm I'm having a blast uh at this phase where I think a lot of people would have retired. I'm uh you know, my thinking is why do I want to retire? I'm impacting the kingdom and and I'm having a good time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, we do have um uh folks listening to this who are in in a lot of different facets of the marketplace, some in industrial uh uh companies that probably need your um the the products and services that you offer. So the website is sonic air, uh sonic a-e dot com. Uh, people can go and and check out and learn more about your technology and your your processes. Um, but uh Brad, thank you for uh being so generous with your time and your um your your wisdom uh acquired through your your journey. Uh we really appreciate the the work you're doing and um and keep uh showing God's goodness in the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00All right.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Darren. Appreciate it. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you'd leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HCU's Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.