Welcome back to the Christianity and Business Podcast, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Shear, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by husband and wife, Dr. Ramona and Tim Probasco. Dr. Ramona and Tim are the inventors of the NShield Wiper. The Inshield Wiper has been seen on QVC and sold over 250,000 units, all because the Probascos care about creating tools that solve common cleaning frustrations. Dr. Ramona is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a certified domestic violence counselor, a nationally certified counselor, a nationally sought-after speaker. Tim has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is a sought-after speaker. And during his years of working with Billy Graham, Tim addressed tens of thousands of individuals on topics of leadership and communications, and has been featured as a speaker at several universities across the country on entrepreneurship, nonprofits, and socially responsible business practices. And uh Tim is full-time with um the Inshield Wiper. And Dr. Ramona uh recently retired from running her own uh counseling practice for 25 years so that they could just try to keep up with the growth that's happening with this um this uh really innovative new product. So, Ramona and Tim, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_04Thank you, Darren, for having us. It's a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. So shortly before you were married, a powerful moment took place in a parking lot. And you say it had everything to do with the company you've built today. Uh, tell us about that moment.
SPEAKER_04We were out walking one evening, and in the course of our walk, you know, talking about the Lord is really interwoven into really everything that we do. And that night was no different. And we were talking about the company. And at the time, you know, we had um, this is before we were married. There was quite a bit of debt that had been accumulated, just trying to keep it going.
SPEAKER_01A little bit of product and very little sales.
SPEAKER_04So it was we definitely needed a God moment, that's for sure. And so we we said, you know, we know for this company to really be all that it could be, we need Jesus to be at the helm of this ship. And so we stopped right in the middle of this parking lot. I was living in a in a condo um that I had purchased. And um my husband, or he wasn't my husband at the time, so was he was right across, he was renting a condo right across the parking lot. And we stood in between those two spaces and held each other and just said, Lord, we fully give this company to you. We release it to you, we release the outcome, we release the journey, and we just trust that you, being the leader and being the CEO of this company, that it's going to be all that it can be for the kingdom. And and that was it. And we never looked back. And and now in our office, if you were with us, uh you would see we have this beautiful picture of Jesus on our wall. And we talk to him all throughout the day.
SPEAKER_01Many times we look at that picture and we talk to each other and say, What would the Lord do? And we really do ask him for his guidance all the time.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's not just uh semantics. We ask him about details. And um, so yeah, that's that's that happened on April 3rd, 2014.
SPEAKER_02That was the night that we dedicated it. So you started this company while you were dating.
SPEAKER_01Well, I had I had actually come up with the idea several years before and had some inventory in and had tried to do different cells and stuff. And Ramona, I mean, when when we got married, we've been married for eight years now. And when we came into the marriage, we were talking about everything, and she loved the idea of in shield wiper. It's a very simple device that slides on the back of your hand, it absorbs the pressure of the knuckles, it's got a removable microfiber sponge, but you just stick your hand right in front of you and wipe the inside of that windshield, and it's ergonomically designed to do that. And so Ramona goes, I love that product, I love you, I believe in you. We were trying to figure out, you know, as we're entering our marriage, what to do, kind of how to handle the debt and whatnot. And she refinanced the condo that she owned and put the money into the business. And it was really at that point where I said, you know, this lady who by that point was my wife is not just my wife. She's an inventory in this, ultimately became an inventor too in some of the things we've come up with since then. Uh, but at that point, I said, you know, if an if an investor had done this, they would get ownership in that company above just beyond husband and wife kind of thing. And so it was at that moment that I said to her, you need to be majority owner of this company because of what you've invested in it. And I may have brought the idea in, but she really came behind with some funds in it. And so that's why today uh we're a certified women-owned small business. Ramona's the president of the company, and God's just blessed us to be able to work together.
SPEAKER_04And I I want to add something to that. That was really Tim insisted on that. Um, and largely not only because of the investment, but in my prior marriage, I got married very young. And what started off as blissful turned very dark and um became violent and abusive. And I stayed in that marriage for almost 20 years and raised the kids and what have you. Um, and eventually, when I got out of the marriage, went for counseling, got help for myself, because this was something I kept it secret. I didn't work with couples, by the way, when I was doing the counseling practice. Um, but when I got out of the marriage and got help for myself, I then went back in and worked with domestic violence survivors. So Tim knew my story. He knew that there had been a lot of deep wounds caused in my life at the hands of someone, my intimate partner, my husband, that I trusted. And so I think it was also intentionally to do some repair work in my own heart. And is really, he didn't at the time know that we could apply for this huge certification of women-owned small business. I didn't even, to be honest with you, I didn't even know about it. You know, it's a big deal out there, and and I didn't know about it, and he didn't know about it. So when he did it, he did that out of the goodness of his heart.
SPEAKER_01Well, and it was also it was also an important thing to do because often, you know, husbands and wives are looked at, and and it's just kind of like the husband, and then kind of the wife falls behind. In some cases. In some cases, and for us, we're very much partners, 100% partners. And if anything, I want to give the honor to Ramona as the one. I mean, she brings so much to this company that I would never have, and I could not do it without her. And so that was part of the reason, too. Yes, to protect her, to let her know that I valued her, but more than that, to basically say to the world, you know, I think this is how Jesus loves the church, is he lifts the church up. He does, you know, he he loves by by doing so much. And it was like, this is a little thing I can do for my wife by just adoring.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so Inshield Wiper is a kingdom-focused company. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that's that's I I think more than anything, that came about on uh a morning when I was having coffee with my mentor and I was talking to him, and he said to me, He said, Tim, you have to remember the purpose of business is to further the kingdom. Everything we do in life, and specifically business, we need to be thinking about how we can bring Jesus into that and into the relationships and into the lives of the people we interact with. And it was very interesting because later that same day, he had a stroke and passed away a couple of days later. And so that's just so vivid in my mind. And so we had we knew with with Jesus as the CEO and and really dedicating it to him. It was just a very natural thing to say, we need to really be kingdom focused. The kingdom of God, loving people, needs to be involved in everything we do.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like well, and what we mean by that is like the nitty-gritty, you know, it's a global concept of, in a sense, bringing heaven to earth, but it's a tangible concept in the fact that it's how we handle uh someone, someone who's working with us that maybe is not manufacturing the product exactly, you know, and there's glitches, and we have to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth with the factory or, you know, our design team that's doing graphics, that we have to go back and forth, back and forth. There's there's a lot of that behind the scenes. And Tim and I really, really practice at how do we show up? You know, because these every person we work with, they matter. We want them to know that not only that they're seen by us, but they're seen by God. And we feel like we are, in a sense, his representatives, right? If we call ourselves lovers of Jesus and and we're believers, you know, well, what does that look like in practicality? And and then it goes beyond that to how we treat each other, which frankly can be the most challenging because we're doing the grind every day late into the night, sometimes, you know, and and our desks literally face each other, our laptops are back to back, and we are looking at each other all day long, interacting, engaging. And so it's taking that kingdom focus concept to how we talk, how we respect each other, how we lean into each other's strengths, how we don't get you know annoyed or irritated. And that does happen sometimes, you know, but we have to stop, pause, and realign ourselves.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And y'all have been working together full time for how long now?
SPEAKER_01It's been yeah, a couple of years, two and a half years full time. But you know, we were doing a lot of stuff together before that, but full time was obviously.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was helping him when I could when I was still running my practice. But as I knew that I was going to be retiring from practice, I wasn't taking on new clients, obviously. And so my client load was slowly going down. And as the client load went down, my time with InShield wiper went up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So what's the key to being able to do that successfully? Because the the word on the street is don't work with your spouse.
SPEAKER_04We hear that a lot. We do hear that a lot, you know.
SPEAKER_01Um I would I would say, I would say there's probably two things that come to mind. The first one is humility, and I'll just speak for myself. I have to continually stay humble and say to the Lord, you have brought this wonderful woman into my life who actually is to be my business partner. She has so many good things to say, and I can learn from them. And sometimes she'll say things that I'm like, well, I don't know if I really agree with that. You know, I've got the MBA, whatever. And it's like, no, it's about humility, listening, and I don't always do it as well as I want to. And then I think the other one is agreement. Uh, do you want to talk to about agreement for a second?
SPEAKER_04That was something that the Lord taught us really early on. We may still have been dating at the time, but we were walking along the beach and we looked up, and there was this large group of pelicans flying, and they were flying in this perfect V, and there was probably like 50.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there were a lot of them.
SPEAKER_04And it was a perfect V, and they were just in sync. And I said to Tim, I said, I that to me looks like what agreement is like. They're doing the harmony. So when we say agreement, we absolutely do not mean we always agree because we have different personalities. Tim's real efficient, quick, fast.
SPEAKER_01I'm like triple check everything and stuff. I need to do that more, but that's one thing I'm learning from them.
SPEAKER_04You know, um, so we definitely have different styles, but really being mindful, agreement, which to us means harmony, is so important because when we're not in harmony, it affects everything. And so when I say we have to stop and realign ourselves, what I mean is we kind of have to check ourselves and say, kind of do a, you know, have a moment with self, like, okay, where am I, you know, being unreasonable here, or where am I not being patient with him, or where am I, you know, where's my I'm a recovering perfectionist, you know, where is that affecting how I'm showing up in this moment, you know? And so that that agreement is vital, is is really important. And but we don't just do it here, we really wherever we go, you know, it's something it's probably a word we use every day, several times a day.
SPEAKER_01And and it's it's it's knowing how to be strife-free even when we disagree. I think that is not that we agree on everything, but how do we how do we come to agreement, even if we disagree on things so we can move forward in harmony?
SPEAKER_04Right. Because it what we have been learning is that one of the reasons why we believe we're growing the way we are, and God is blessing this company the way He is, is because the Lord, I don't know what I've been learning is that He He blesses harmony. You know, we can see when we start getting um Yeah, exactly. I don't know how you would define that, but we start getting like that, kind of annoyed or irritated, it just seems like blessing just kind of just doesn't flow. It goes down to a triple, sort of, you know. And so it's so important because we've got so much on the line with this company and we've made such enormous personal sacrifices. Like we don't want to mess this up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, and and agreement is to me is kind of one of the pathways to blessing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I guess. Yeah, that's so good. Uh what would you say is your, and maybe it's related to this concept, but what's your favorite Bible verse or passage related to business and entrepreneurship?
SPEAKER_01Oh, you you go ahead and well you were you picked this up. No, that's true. Okay. So one of the things there you go, is a perfect example. You know, I I've I've kind of had a very varied career. I I uh graduated from Bible college. I worked for Billy Graham for about seven years and had wonderful training. I mean, what a great place to learn.
SPEAKER_04Not to spend some one-on-one time with Billy Graham.
SPEAKER_01Just integrity, just just I don't know of a more integrous person uh in the world than Billy Graham. Uh, and and so I had this heart from ministry, and I did that for many, many years. Now, stepping into business, I had almost felt like, well, you know, there's something kind of holy about poverty or not making a lot of money or stuff like that. And one day somebody shared this verse with me and from Deuteronomy 8.18 that says, But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth. And I thought, you know, it's not about myself. God gives me, gives us, gives every person the ability to do what he calls them to do. And in business, you need to be making a profit, otherwise, you're gonna go out of business. You know, so again, it's his ability to produce that wealth that allows us to do what we're doing.
SPEAKER_04And we know that wealth is not just a dollar sign by any stretch of the imagination. We don't want to convey that to us, you know, the the relationships that we steward with with each other, with our family, friends, coworkers, what have you. You know, that's wealth. And so it's it's not, it goes far beyond a profit law law statement. Um, the other verse that is special to us is out of Luke 16. It's Luke 16, 10. And it says that um basically it talks about the little things, how we how we steward, how we manage the little things is going to be indicative of how we show up and treat the larger things. And so to us, it's like that, you know, that that's that's really where it's at, right?
SPEAKER_01It's in the little things. And it starts right here, like we've said, between the two of us, if we can't be in harmony together, how can we ever think that we can do great things in harmony with others? I mean, it you can't do it. Right.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah. Is it is it accurate to say that because you got these 12 um core values as an expression of your your mission, vision. Um, it I mean, really these kind of flow from the core values of your marriage, right? Into the into the company. And so the you know, the biblical concept of a of a household really also includes a business. Um, it's not just the nuclear family, um, but in the old testament and and really the new testament sense as well, we're talking about um when Cornelius was saved and all of his household. This is talking about really the whole, you know, economic engine and everybody that was participating in that. But if it's not happening with the husband and wife, it's probably not going to be happening in the in the business. Um, is that is that what's happening in the in the company?
SPEAKER_04Well, definitely. And like I I mentioned, I can't, I don't know if it was before we started the podcast or during the podcast, but in my prior marriage, you know, uh it went from blissful to to really abusive three years in the marriage with physical violence and verbal and what have you. And so I there was no way that I could have been in flow with him, you know, because abuse does not allow for that. It doesn't matter how hard you try. And certainly I did. I ended up writing a book on the whole subject matter and and and studied when I did my doctoral studies on domestic violence in faith-based relationships. So when Tim and I talk about agreement, I want to be very careful. You know, you may have some listeners that are in a marital situation where abuse is involved. And, you know, that partner who's on the uh the reciprocating end of that and the receiving end of that, they can try as hard as they can pray. They can be the best wife or husband, you know. And if you have someone, if you're married to someone who has an abusive mindset, you're not going to be able to experience that harmony that we're talking about. So I want to be very careful not to mislead your listeners that this is something that everyone can experience because it really does take two people to harmonize.
SPEAKER_01With humility and with the ability to say, you know, I need to listen to you and be willing to change and back and forth like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well said. So InShieldWiper.com is the website. Um, what else do you want to say about where people can go and to hear more from you and learn more about what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01Well, and and again, InShield, it's like the inside of a windshield. And that's exactly what InShield Wiper was created for to clean the inside of the windshield. But um, we have a space on Facebook and our uh we're available on Amazon right now. We're rolling out to retail this year. Uh some of the Travel America truck stops, uh, Pilot Flying J, other places. We're uh in the process of beginning to slowly build that. And so it's exciting to see. So there'll be other places they'll begin to see it locally uh in stores.
SPEAKER_04Uh but I think our website, you can find out more about our core values, about us and about our story, uh also about how we support domestic violence survivors. We we um formed a nonprofit last year called the Healing Well and Living Free Foundation. And we give a portion of our profits to excuse me, to support organizations nationwide that help domestic violence survivors and their children heal. And so that's something that's very important to us. And if people are interested in that, there is a tab on our website where they can listen to us talk about what we do there as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And one thing I want to add is uh Ramona mentioned that she wrote a book in 2018. She had her book published by Revell Publishers, uh Healing Well and Living Free from an Abusive Relationship, from victim to survivor to overcomer. And one of the things that she said is she said, I want to join you full time at InShield Wiper, but I have to make sure that it's more than just selling a product. And that's the reason we created the foundation. And she has the audio rights, full audio rights to her book. And we make that available free of charge to anyone who would like that. That's one of the things that we can do by giving back. So we always want to be incorporating together.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Awesome. Well, inShieldWiper.com is the website. Um, and what a great product. I mean, I've got uh I love having a kind of an old SUV that I can just haul around, you know, any old thing in. But it's got like uh there's like a leak where there's a lot of like, I guess, water vapor that just kind of ends up in getting onto the windshield from the inside. And so it just ends up being very difficult to see out of sometimes. So I'm constantly having to wipe it down. But one thing I will say do not try to wipe your windshield like that when you're driving, because you will crash, you will crash your car unless you have the endshield wiper, right?
SPEAKER_01Because can we make one comment? Tell them where that comes from, the haze, because every car gets that, not just the older ones where maybe there's a leak.
SPEAKER_04Right. It's a it's a fancy term that we learned from Dan Hughes. He's a beloved host on QVC, he's been with him for 30 years. He said to me one time on air, he said, Ramona, do you know where that comes from? And I'm like, I'm clueless.
SPEAKER_01It's the haze that's on the inside of the.
SPEAKER_04And he says it's a term called plasticizer migration. And I and I botched it up many times. I could not get that phrase out. But anyhow, basically what it means is when the sun comes through your windshield and it hits your dash, the chemicals that they put in our dash and the plot and in the plastics in our car to keep the dash and other things from cracking under the heat, they get released. Those chemicals get released and they get trapped on the inside of the windshield, which causes that kind of greasy film. So even like you would say you run your car through the car wash and your windshield is still not clean, it's because the haze on the inside. And so when Tim went out a few years back to clean his wind, hit clean his car and he's trying to clean his windshield, and he just had a had a cloth, and he's like, you know, twisting like an acrobat. You put the cloth on the back of his hand, he was leaving streaks wherever his knuckles hit. He's like, shoot, I'll go to the store. There's got to be something you can slip on the back of your hand that ergonomically can make it easy to do the inside of your windshield. He went to three different places and he couldn't find it. So he's like, Well, just I'll go ahead and I'll invent it. And he was brilliant enough to patent it as well. So here we are.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01But don't use it while you're driving. Yes, don't.
SPEAKER_03There's a caution. We have a caution sign just for anybody that would attempt to do that. Definitely do not do it, use it while you're driving.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but if you do, it's going to be a lot safer than trying to use a napkin or something. And a lot and a lot more effective. More effective.
SPEAKER_04A lot more you just store it in your card or pocket. And so you always have it, you know, within fingertip reach. And what we also discovered, Darren, is when you flip it on the palm of your hand, you can clean all the electronic screens in your life. So, like your smartphones, your TV sets, your stain. Well, stainless steel is not electronic, but stainless steel appliances. I mean, really all hard surfaces.
SPEAKER_02So many uses for it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well, it's a great product. And um, you know, God gives us woody inventions, right? Woody ideas. So praise God for that. And um, Ramona and Tim, thank you for sharing your time and wisdom with us and um letting us know about this product, this great product as well. Um, everybody go check it out at nShieldwiper.com. Thanks again. Thank you, Darren.
SPEAKER_04We really appreciate your time.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity and business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianityandbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.