Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast with host Barry Sheer, an initiative of the RTW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. This is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate their local values into business. You can get more information about the HBU Center for Christianity and Business and sign up to receive free access to all five issues of the Christian Business Review Journal by visiting our website at ChristianityInbusiness.com.
SPEAKER_03On today's episode, we'll be discussing how to cultivate a Christ-centered culture in your company. And we're joined by Chris Patton. Chris is president and CEO of the Mike Patton Auto Family in LaGrange, Georgia, which is a three-dealership group with roughly 110 employees. Actually, it's exactly 110 employees. Chris knew exactly the number before we this interview today. But the company represents Honda, Ford, Lincoln, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram franchises. And along with his younger brother and also his partner Brian, he is a third generation owner and grew up working in every department in the business beginning from the age of 10. And he writes an incredible blog that I follow at ChristianFaith at Work.com. And that's for business owners like yourselves and leaders, like the folks listening to this podcast. I know you are. Those of you who are working to integrate your Christian faith into your business. And he's the author of a phenomenal new book. It's a quick read. It's titled, Why Does Your Business Exist? A Christian Business Guide to Creating Your Mission, Vision, and Value Statements. And that's really going to be the subject of what we're talking about today. Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast, Chris. Thank you, Darren. I appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01I'm excited to be here.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's been a while since I interviewed you on another show. Um, sure enjoyed that that conversation and uh looking forward to diving into this one as we get started here. Tell us about the culture at Mike Patton Auto. So you've written this book on helping leaders to define why their business exists and cultivating a uh developing a mission statement, a vision statement, value statements. So this, I think to the uninformed, this could sound a little bit theoretical, but this is coming from somebody who has done it, who has experienced it. Mike Patton Auto is just an incredible company. Tell us about that culture at Mike Patten and especially how it reflects the Christian values of your family.
SPEAKER_01Well, Darren, I'll be glad to attempt to answer that in a uh in less than a week. Um there I could talk literally for hours about that. Um, the short version is um, like you mentioned, I'm third generation. Uh, my grandfather and my father have created a business that from the beginning, back in 1962, has always been based on biblical principles. It's only in the last 10 to 12 years when my brother and I uh really took over and began running the business uh after them that we wanted to be a little bit more overt about our faith. We felt like um we came to a realization that God owns the business. We are third third generation owners, so to speak, on paper, but truly we're stewards of the business. It's God's business, and He's put us as stewards over this business for a period of time. And uh, so when we realized that, we decided we wanted to be more overt about how faith impacts our the way we run the business and how we see it as an extension of our faith. And that's when we decided to put this into writing. So this was back in 06. We went through a process uh with a uh a consultant that helped us, used our leadership team and went through and we wrote out um over a period of a week, we hashed out our mission statement, our uh vision and core values. And it's you know, I wish I could say, Darren, I put this plan in place. It took us about 30 days, and and suddenly we had this amazing culture. It's just not the case. And anybody that's in business, not just studying business, but's in it, you realize that's just not gonna happen. So for us, it was a matter of first putting it in writing, putting a line in the sand that says, all right, from here forward, we're gonna be public about what it is we stand for, why our business exists, uh, which is the the question that your mission statement answers. And not only are we gonna be public about it, we're gonna use these statements as uh decision-making tools. We're going to tell our employees about them so that they can hold us accountable to those statements. So when we say we, the Mike Pat and Auto family seeks to honor God through impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and community, that's our mission statement. When we say that, if an employee sees that we are doing something that dishonors God, then I want them to stand up and say, hey, are we really about to do this? Or are you really considering this course of action? Um Does that happen? It does. It actually does.
SPEAKER_03Now just an example of how that's happened.
SPEAKER_01Oh man, so it's very easy to happen in advertising. Um as a car dealer, uh, that does not when when you say car dealer, people don't instantly think of uh a halo, they they think of something else. And when it comes to advertising, the dealers, it's typical for a dealer to um stray outside the lines, so to speak, of of what you say or don't say. And as we try to determine, number one, how do we compete in a marketplace where advertising is not always truthful, um we may throw out ideas that get close to the edge. And you will and and when you're in the heat of discussing things, I mean, we're still human. I'm I'm no angel. So we're still human. We start throwing out ideas, and somebody may say, you know, that just doesn't seem like what we need to do. Another example, the state of Georgia has certain laws around how you disclose fees as a dealer. You've got a price, you've got a customer service fee or a documentation fee, you've got taxes, title fees, that kind of thing. And the state of Georgia dictates how those are to be communicated in advertising. Well, at one point we were not disclosing those the way the state of Georgia required. They had changed the law, no, none of the dealers changed with the law, and we look up and we're, gosh, it was probably six to twelve months past that law change, and we're still doing it the old way. And somebody said, Is that honoring God? No, it's not. So since then we've been disclosing those fees in our advertising like we're supposed to. And we're the only dealer within a hundred miles doing that, yeah. Which is difficult when it raises your price in apples to apples comparison. So then it's on us to educate the customer around why there are differences in the price, and we got to get into detail. But but it's one of those situations where if what you're doing doesn't line up with what you say you're doing, somebody needs to call it out.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And if we were uh if we held the mission statement in our heart and just tried to make the decisions on our own and did not put it public, did not let it be a part of our culture, we're not gonna get that accountability.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. You know, and if if you would have settled on that mission statement of crush the competition, then you know, it might have fit with that one. So you have to start with what is what do we stand for? So let's now let's back up. Tell us, tell us that story that you share with me a little bit earlier about about crushing the competition.
SPEAKER_01So when we this consultant was leading us through this process, and we had set our mission statement, so that was determined, and we were trying to come up with our vision statement, which technically is supposed to define your future picture that you're going toward. Kind of in the in the 1800s, California was the vision statement, and the settlers crossed the US, crossed the Rockies to get to California. So that's the vision, right? So the vision statement for the business should point out to a certain point in the future and kind of paint a picture of what you want to get to, and and that's how you and the mission statement determines how you get there basically. So the the consultants shared some different examples of vision statements, one of which was Kumatsu, which is a heavy equipment land moving equipment manufacturer, and their vision statement was very simple, two words. It was eat cat, cat being caterpillar, right? So caterpillar was at the time the premier uh market share holder of that equipment line, and Komatsu wanted to take over their market share and become the number one uh provider in the market. And so their vision statement was eat cat. And as we tried to figure out something that matched up with that, uh, and again, it's one of those situations you've got six or eight humans in a room trying to get excited around what does our future look like? How do we communicate it? We wanted to be the best business, the best dealership in the market. We wanted to be so far out in front that second place was just didn't even see hope in trying to overtake us. And yet we wanted to be out front in measurable ways, like we were exceptionally good to our employees. We paid well over market, we you know had customer satisfaction that was just crazy good. And we actually landed on a vision statement of three words, crush the competition. And for a period, that sounded really good to us. And I I even I told you earlier, I went out prior to our launching of this uh mission's vision and value statements. We're gonna launch it to the to the employee base and then the public. But prior to that, I went out and got 12 Coca-Cola cans, had them crushed, and then sent them off and had them bronzed, like your grandparents used to do their baby shoes. And I was gonna give those to the managers and let them put it on their desk to remind them we're out here to crush the competition. And then I took all this excitement and I went to my C12 group, which is a Christian round table, business roundtable, and I presented to them our new mission, vision, and values, and they just looked at me dumbfounded. And I said, What? Well, I don't understand. You should like this. And they said, Crush the competition. Does that line up with honor God?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And man, I just, I just, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I was blinded so much that I missed it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01And so we went back to the drawing table, and that's when we came up with moving people, which is it refers to the transportation we're in, but it's deeper. It's basically our desire to be the company that when people come into contact with us, whether it's a customer, an employee, or someone in the community, that we take them from where they currently are when they come into contact with us and we move them to a better place. So an employee, we want to move them from a position of, hey, I'm in financial need, I've been without a job, or I lost my job, or whatever. Um, we we've come on, they've come on board with us with little experience selling cars or fixing cars or whatever. Want to move them to a point where they're trained, they're more stable, they are able to support their family. And we've moved people when we do that. Same with customers and community. So that that's where we landed. I've still got the crushed bronzed Coca-Cola can on my desk to remind me what you say and what you do needs to be in alignment.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And uh, and it's a constant reminder to me. Uh, there are no other desks that have crushed Coca-Cola bronzed cans anymore, but mine still does.
SPEAKER_03I love that story. And, you know, it really speaks to the foundation, the starting point for embarking on this process of defining your vision, mission, values, uh, that you need to understand that Christ is the cornerstone for all of this, and that's what really sets your book, Why Does Your Business Exist, from uh apart from so many other books that are talking about the same things, is that you're really starting with the foundation of honoring God as you've done through Mike Patent Auto. Uh so with that with that in mind, um, how how do you preserve this Christ-centered culture uh specifically in Mike Patent Auto?
SPEAKER_01That's a great question, and also could be a very long answer because it's not there's not a short answer to that, Darren. It is you, you know, for us the process, and I go through it uh in the book at more length, but the process is you determine what it is that you stand for, what is your mission, vision, and values, and that's just the beginning, saying this is what we're about. The next part, you've got to change your policies, processes, procedures to line up with your mission, vision, values. So, in other words, our advertising can't be in conflict with our mission statement. Um, so you you you lay out these uh various parts of your culture, your methods and and the way you do business to align with your mission, vision, values, reinforcing what you're saying. But then you've got to go out and over-communicate it as the leader. So I cannot determine or dictate culture for our company. Over time, I can hire the right people, move out, coach up or out the wrong people, reinforce consistently, continuously ad nauseum the processes, policies, procedures, updating and changing when necessary. And then I've got to be out there casting that vision and reinforcing that continuously over-communicating what that culture is about. So, an example of that, I've got our company has a chaplain from corporate chaplains of America. Uh, we contract with them, and our chaplain, Mike, comes in twice a week, spends two days in the dealerships every week, going from employee to employee to employee and just having conversation, building relationships, and his presence is helping to reinforce that culture, right? Once a month, I get in front of every department in the business. I go around in one morning and just touch every department and I lead a devotion. I give a five to ten minute illustration. It's usually a either a real-world illustration or a parable type story that has some business truth in it, but also spiritual truth. And I spend 10, 15 minutes total in front of each of the employees in groups in every department every month just talking about various aspects of our culture, what we're about, why we're about this. I cannot force feed my faith. I don't want to force feed it to them. I don't require them to believe what we believe, but I'm constantly sowing those seeds every month. Um, you know, we open meetings with prayer. We do just a bunch of little things that over time add up to a can a culture that's maintained.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I mean, and it really is just that simple. I mean, those little things, I mean, certainly our heart is in the right place at all times, but in terms of those over the very overt expressions that would be noticeable, I mean, it doesn't take a whole lot. Um, you know, and it and it goes both ways. Like those, it's the you know, the small foxes that spoil the vine, but on the other hand, you know, it just takes a few fish and a few loaves uh to to shift a culture and to and to preserve a culture. You know, what are some of those other um you know, those, those other very practical things um that you're doing in order to preserve that culture?
SPEAKER_01So I take every new employee through an orientation class. So once a month, uh I'm meeting where it may be two or three employees. We may have uh added some additional salespeople, it may be six or eight employees. Um, but every month I go and I spend an hour to an hour and a half with the new employees and I walk them through the history of our company, going back to my grandfather up through my dad to the present with my brother and I. I talk about how our company has always been based on biblical principles. Today we are very intentional about how we operate and very vocal, verbal about that. I make it crystal clear to them that we're not forcing them to do it, uh to believe what we believe. We just want them to understand what the principles are based on and that they need to follow our business principles. Um, I take them through the mission, vision, value statements, and I teach it to them from straight from my mouth and my heart what it's about, how it was birthed, why it's important to them. I give examples, Darren, uh, where a technician, a mechanic technician on in working on a car, if a technician makes a mistake and it ends up a car has fallen off of the rack and is totaled, and it is a three or four thousand dollar mistake versus they took the liberty to take a dollar bill out of the cup holder of a customer's car, which is gonna cause them to lose their job. One's a three or four thousand dollar issue, one's a one dollar issue. But actually, one's a technical error, one's an integrity issue. Yeah, the dollar is gonna cause them to lose their job. The three thousand dollar mistake is gonna cause them to be very uh, you know, they're gonna be disturbed around what they did and and coached and so forth. Now they can't do it two or three times and keep their job, but mistakes are not big to us unless it's an integrity violation. That's when it becomes a problem. Um so you know, that new higher orientation and really digging into the to the nitty-gritty of what it looks like is a big part of it, making sure that every new customer or new employee comes through and gets that. Um, you know, we have Bible studies once, I guess twice a week. The chaplain leads one at Thursday lunch, one at Friday morning breakfast, so that different employees have different times available to them based on their schedule. Um, those are voluntary. Typically, we have about a third of our employee base going through those at any given time. Um, you know, we we put Bibles, it's a New Testament uh copy that the cover says um owner's manual for life. We put those in the glove box of every car that we sell, wholesale or retail. Don't tell the customers about it, we just let them find it. But it's it's continuing to reinforce that that culture. Our employees are the ones putting it in there, they know what we're doing and why. Um it's and go on and on.
SPEAKER_03It's just those things. It's awesome, it's awesome. And it all flows from that foundation of the the vision, the mission, and the values. So, what how would how do you explain the differences between vision, mission, values, and kind of how they work together? And and why do I need why can't I just have a tagline for my business? You know, why do I need a vision, mission, and values to be really clearly defined?
SPEAKER_01That's a good point. Um so the mission statement, all right. So let's back up for a moment. Number one, I'm I am my blog, this book, everything I do is is written from or birthed from being in actual business. So it's not theory, you can read something in a textbook somewhere that may speak a little differently to these answers that I'm gonna give, but when it comes to real business, some people just don't think it's that necessary. I can do my business without it. And you're you're right, you can. But if you've got a very specific desire for your business and and if it's anything other than what typical people think about business, then you're gonna have to put something in place to make it clear what you're about. And and the difference in my mind, and and in using these statements in different ways, the mission statement answers the question that I pose in the title of my book. Why does your business exist? So my father, my grandfather invested heavily, put a business together that my brother and I have uh stepped into. Why are we not selling? The business, taking the proceeds and going off and getting jobs and living off of some of the benefits that my father and grandfather created. The reason we're not, the reason we're staying in the business, the reason the business exists is so that we can honor God through impacting the lives of our employees, customers, and community. We feel like God gave us the business and we're to use it. Parable of the talents is a model for us. The business to us is a talent. How do we invest it today so that in a hundred years from now we can show eternal fruit, eternal return on that business? So the mission statement says this is why we exist, this is what we're about. Every decision that we make needs to come out of this mission statement. This is what drives us. The vision statement, like I described earlier, should point out a time in the future and a picture of what that future looks like to you so that you are going after that. For Komatsu, it was eat cat. We want a picture in the future when we own the market share in this line of equipment. For us, it's moving people. We want to be that company that down the line, people can look back and say, I came to this company as an employee, or I came as a customer, or I came even as a member of an organization that the company supports in the community. And because of my contact with the Mike Patton Auto family, I'm in a better place. I can give you example after example of people, employees, community, and customers that have been moved because of what we've done. We want to be that company in the future that can look back and see a long line of people that have been moved by us. And then the last is your core values. Those values, those core values are those that are true of you and your business, no matter what industry, no matter what you choose to do. If we chose tomorrow to get out of the selling end of the car business and decided just to open 20 service departments in various areas around the Atlanta market, these core values are still true of that business. If we sold everything real estate-wise and went online and chose to sell just parts, these core values are still true about us. It's integrity, excellence, employee development, spiritual growth, and community impact. Those five things are going to be true about whatever business we choose, regardless of recession or prosperity, regardless of industry, profitability, whatever. So the core values are those things that you say, I'm not willing to compromise on these. I may change my advertising strategy, but my core value of integrity is going to be rock solid, and I'm not changing that.
SPEAKER_03So good. And you have said that when you really start to go down this path and implementing this vision, mission, values, and over-communicating that to your organization. I you know, I've heard it said that the CE, the CEO really is the chief reminding officer for the for the organization. You have said that chaos will begin to ensue when you start to uh implement this. What do you what do you mean? What type of chaos? When you you're talking about when you first start? Well, when when you s I mean either way, I mean when you first start or or even after you get going with it, um, I assume you're referring to when you first begin the process. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So chaos, it well, it it doesn't necessarily have to ensue. Okay, so let's take two different companies. Company A um is has been running a culture for a period of time, running a business, and the culture has been established over time. And it's pretty true, maybe it's a smaller company, but it's pretty true to the core ideals of the owner or the operator, the CEO. And when they finally decide to sit down and write out and document a mission statement, a vision statement, and core values, they just don't deviate that far from where they have been. They may not see chaos, right? It's it's the company B that either deviates dramatically from where they were or where they've been operating, or comes very uh clear and overt, like I said, about something that is just not typical in that industry. So for us, we did not see chaos when we first announced or or launched our mission statement, vision, and values. Um, it was fairly well received, and it was for the most part, people said, yes, we like this. Um the chaos really came shortly before we did that, when we started living out some of this before we even announced it, and we started making decisions in the car business uh around our pricing systems. We're a one-price organization, so there's no negotiating. We pre-discount everything. When we made that change in an industry that that's highly abnormal among employees that have not thought that way before, and it's a dramatic change, there was a lot of chaos around that. Uh when we made some decisions, even after announcing our mission, vision, and values, announced some decisions to step away from certain processes or policies we had had that have been long-held policies, but they just didn't align with where we felt we were, that's when you start to see some chaos. And it again, it depends on your quality of culture leading up to that point. It depends on the relationship the leadership has with the employees, mostly founded on trust. Is there a lot of trust between employee and owner or employee and operator, or is there not? And where you see a lack of trust, you're gonna see an increase in chaos.
SPEAKER_03Well, so you know, I've heard it said that if you begin, if you go down this path, and then you stop, you just stop reminding, you stop reinforcing it, you just kind of you just kind of have it on the wall, but you don't really hold people to it. I mean, I'm sure part of the chaos is you you discover that okay, this is what we stand for, everybody else knows that, and that there's certain people that aren't lining up with what we stand for, and they need to be let go. And I know a lot of companies go through that, uh, through that as well. But I've heard that it's even worse for the organization that you you go through this process, you make a big deal out of it, and then you just you just kind of abandon it and just kind of go back to business as usual. It would almost be better to have not even started that process than to not even to than to not follow through.
SPEAKER_01That's exactly right. Um just picture first thing that comes to my mind is you got like a six-year-old kid and you promise them as the dad, tell you what, buddy, I'm gonna take you to the baseball game tomorrow afternoon. It's a promise. And then tomorrow afternoon he's sitting there waiting on you to get home and you don't show because somebody called and you got a sales opportunity, you run and you follow that, and two, three hours later you walk back in. He's anticipating that you're gonna be good to your promise. And you've caused more trouble by saying it and not doing it than if you had never said it in the first place. And uh for a business, you know, there can be chaos if there's no mission or vision. There can be chaos if it's stated and put out there and promised and then not delivered on. Um, yeah, there's a number of ways, but I would I agree with you 100% to say it and then not do it is worse than just not saying it in the first place.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. So true. So uh Chris, as we wrap it up here, what would be a a parting piece of advice, really a next step for people to no matter, maybe let's speak first of all to those who they haven't even begun this process in their organization, uh, and then and then to those who maybe started but just really have not followed through.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So in in an effort to be transparent and make sure I'm communicating advice and not self-interest, whether somebody goes and downloads this ebook that I've put together or not, it's not gonna be any skin off my back. Okay. This is not uh my livelihood, it's not what I need them to do. So I'm not gonna sell, oversell, or try to push my book. Having said that, if there's a if there's a someone out there that's leading a business or a team and they've not yet written a mission, vision, values, I strongly encourage you to do it. In my book, I give you several different ways that you can do it. One, you can go hire somebody to help you through it, which is what we did 10, 12 years ago. You can try to work on it with a team of people from your company, or you can just do it on your own. One of the questions that I get fairly regularly from readers of my blog and people that have picked up the book is we really like your mission statement. Can we copy it? Would you have a problem with that? Theoretically, I tell them, no, I don't have a problem with it. I anybody that wants to seek to honor God, I'm all in. And it's not copyrighted. I'm it's not gonna hurt me for you to copy it. It's gonna hurt you. Because if it's not your mission, if it's not what you or your people have come up with, then you're short-circuiting the benefit. You're you're just you're taking a shortcut that's not gonna give you the benefit that you need out of it. So one big piece of advice is don't go out and find one you like and copy it because people see through that, employees see through that, they know it's not genuine. Take the time, go through the hassle, the work of putting one together, a set of these statements, and make it customized and and true to the heart of you and your people. Um, to those that have done it before and it's just it's really not driving the company, it's just either it's aged out or uh it's just not followed. Recommendation is one of two things. Either dig back into it, drag it back out, if it's still true, if everything about it's still true, put it back out there and start living it out. Start being intentional about reinforcing those statements with policies, procedures, with decisions, use it in meetings to decide things, use it as a litmus test against your decisions and reinvigorate it. Or if it never was, maybe you're the first case, you've copied it from somebody else, it just never stuck. Take the time, go through it. My book is a quick, easy, inexpensive way to go through that process. But you can do it for free on your own, or you can go hire somebody to do it for you with you. Um, but either way, you need to do it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and and Chris really does lay it all out. I mean, it's got my five-star uh review rating on Amazon, and it's extremely practical. I mean, definitely don't go copy somebody else's vision, mission, values, but there are a lot of examples that he shares of other Christ-centered companies, and you know, what are their vision statements? Just to kind of get inspired uh to really look and see what is that calling for you and your organization, and uh it's it's extremely practical. I mean, he wastes no words in that book, so certainly go pick it up at Amazon for sure, right? And any anywhere else people need to go uh check it out and connect with you?
SPEAKER_01At this point, it's exclusively on Amazon, so it's a it's currently an ebook uh or Kindle version. Um there we do have a plan in the near future to make a print version available. Um that's not there yet. Uh my my dad asked me the day, well, is it on Audible? He is not a reader of books, he likes to listen, and it's not on Audible at this point, maybe in the future, but right now it's exclusively on Amazon.
SPEAKER_03Excellent. Well, ChristianFaith at work.com, is that the best place for people to go? Absolutely. And also to Amazon to go get a copy of that book. Chris, thank you so much for being so generous with your time and uh this uh just sharing this message with us and some of what God has done in your business and how He has led you, and just thank you for what you're doing to empower other business leaders to take uh to take this and implement it in their own organizations. May God continue to bless you and your family, your company, uh, and everything you put your mind to.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, dear, and I appreciate it. And thank you for the opportunity to be here. Uh, it's always fun to talk with you and and see what's going on.
SPEAKER_00We 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 of Business Podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about the HBU Center for Christianity and Business at Christianitybusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.