The Open Doors That Built a Hundred Million Dollar Mission
The man across from me quit his first real job over lunch. He did not agonize over it. He did not run a five-year projection or wait for the perfect quarter. He sat across a table from one of the partners, decided he was finished, went back to the office, cleaned out his desk, and called my mom from a landline to tell her he was on his way home with all his stuff and no paycheck.
There was a two-year-old at home. That two-year-old was my older brother. And the man making the call was my dad.
I have heard versions of this story my whole life, but sitting across from him with a microphone between us, I started to notice something I had missed for thirty-some years. My dad has never once described himself as a risk taker. He does not talk about courage or vision or grit. He talks about doors. One opened, so he walked through it. That one closed, so he found the next one. And somehow that quiet, almost stubborn willingness to keep stepping forward turned into a nonprofit that now sits on a bank account north of a hundred million dollars and has sent millions into missions work around the globe.
I wanted to understand how that happens. Because most of us are waiting for a moment that feels bigger than a lunch break.
The Voice That Tells You It Is Too Late
Here is a number worth sitting with. My dad was forty-eight years old when Community Reinvestment Foundation began. Forty-eight. Not twenty-two with nothing to lose. Not thirty-five with momentum. Forty-eight, with a career of half-finished chapters behind him and no guarantee the next one would work either.
I meet people all the time who have decided their window has closed. Some of them are in their fifties. Some of them are twenty-six and already convinced they are washed up. The math they have run in their heads says the good years are gone and the smart move is to stay put.
My dad’s life is the counterargument. The thing that would become his largest contribution to the world had not even started when most people assume the story is already written. If you are telling yourself it is too late, I would gently point out that you have no idea where your forty-eighth year leads. The only way to guarantee nothing comes of it is to stop walking.
A Ninth Grade Classroom and a Lesson He Did Not Expect
Before any of the impressive parts, my dad taught general business and business math to ninth graders. It lasted exactly one year. As he put it, ninth graders did not particularly care about learning how to balance a checkbook, and he loved teaching most on the day he quit.
That could read as failure. It was not. It was information. Long before the classroom, he had worked a shift in a ketchup factory and walked out knowing one thing for certain, that he never wanted to do that again for the rest of his life. He collected these lessons like a man reading a map by process of elimination. Not this. Not that. Keep moving.
We treat our wrong turns as evidence that we are not built for the thing. My dad treated his as tuition. Every job he disliked narrowed the search. The teaching year sent him toward auditing hospitals and nursing homes for a Medicare contract, which sent him to Philadelphia, which is where the next door was hiding.
When a Joke Becomes a Job
The move that reshaped everything started as a throwaway line. At a college homecoming, a friend from Indianapolis asked when my parents were finally going to move to Indy. My dad answered the way any of us would, half kidding, whenever you find me a job.
Two weeks later the phone rang. A CPA firm in Indianapolis needed someone with an audit background to handle their nursing home clients. He had not applied. He had not planned it. He had made a joke, and the joke came back with an offer attached.
I think we underestimate how much of a life gets built on conversations we did not treat as important. My dad drove forty miles the day after he quit his firm to sit with a friend and float an idea. That conversation became a company. Years later, a dinner with a man from church became the foundation that would give away more money than my dad ever imagined touching. He had a simple rule that he passed to me more than once. It does not hurt to have the conversation. You can always say no. The people who build things are usually just the people who kept showing up to the table.
The Part Nobody Puts on the Highlight Reel
I do not want to make this sound frictionless, because it was not. When he and his partner and a banker friend built a company acquiring nursing homes, the partnership eventually soured. As my dad put it, the partnership stopped shipping. They sold five or six facilities and walked.
The nonprofit years were harder still. He drove to Tennessee to close a deal with an ill elderly woman who owned a hundred-unit property, had a wonderful conversation, believed it was done, and learned the next morning she had signed with someone else overnight. Another Tennessee deal, a large one with every piece in place, collapsed when the owner died in a plane crash. He talked about the government program that once filled a conference table with approved projects, then shut down before most of them could close.
What struck me was not that he pushed through these blows without feeling them. He felt them. He said plainly that you get discouraged anyway. The difference was where he put his eyes. The vision he was building toward was always larger than the deal that fell apart. When a door slammed, his instinct was not to quit the building. It was to pray, ask for a new direction, and look for the next opening. A setback rerouted him. It never defined him.
Why He Built It So He Would Never Cash In
Here is the piece that still stops me. My dad could have built the same real estate engine as a for-profit and kept the returns. He is a CPA. He understood exactly what he was giving up. I have joked with him that I would be a trust fund baby if he had gone the other way.
He designed it to give the money away from the very first day, when the whole operation gave a hundred dollars to missions. The idea of putting his name on a building, of engineering an inheritance, of being the guy with the plaque, never entered his mind. He grew up in a church that talked about missions constantly, and that conviction was simply load bearing. He was not raising money to hand it out. He was building a business engine that generates on its own, so the giving sustains itself. Churches and business leaders are invited in to give with him, not merely to him, and their contributions get matched. The dollars are leveraged rather than spent.
That is a rare kind of ambition. Most of us build to accumulate. He built to release.
The Only Advice He Had for the Rest of Us
Near the end I asked him what he would say to the person sitting on an idea, frozen by the voice that says they cannot pull it off. He did not reach for anything clever. He said you have to believe in what you are doing, and you have to go for it. Take the step forward, because the longer you sit back and hesitate, the more likely it never happens. And if the thing is truly wrong, something will stop you and redirect you soon enough. But you cannot know that from the sidelines. You have to move.
I told him what I have come to believe watching his life up close. Resistance is not always a signal to turn around. Very often it is a signal that you are onto something worth doing, and the job is to push through it. If it were easy, everyone would already be doing it.
He is not a man who chased the spotlight. He got up, went to work, and kept walking through open doors until the sum of those steps became something that will outlive all of us. You do not need a grand plan tonight. You need the willingness to take the next honest step, and a vision big enough to survive the doors that close.
If a story like his stirs something you have been postponing, that stirring is worth listening to. You were made for this. The world is waiting.
Watch the full conversation with Bryan Neale and subscribe to Create Your Art at 1898creative.com. #createyourart
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Full Transcript
Cold Open
Dave: My full-time gig started out as a ninth grade school teacher.
Darren: Did you love that?
Dave: I loved it when I quit. I called my wife on the phone and said, oh hey, I’m on my way home, I just want you to know I just quit. And I’m going, what have I done? I never anticipated that we would be looking at a bank account of over a hundred million dollars. So the vision of, if we do this right, there’s millions of dollars that could end up in missions work all around the world. You’ve got to take that step forward, because the longer you sit back and hesitate, the more likely it’s not going to happen.
Introduction
Darren: Hey, welcome to the Create Your Art Podcast, where we are here to help you know and believe that your voice matters in this world, and that you are an artist and you should bring that voice out into the world. We are on mission to help as many people as we can find their voice and create their art. And we’re glad that you are here. I’m super glad that you are here, because today’s a special day. I have not only Mr. Dave Cooper with us, but also my dad. Mr. Dave, thank you so much for joining me here on the Create Your Art Podcast.
Dave: Glad to be here.
Darren: Yeah, I bet this is his favorite thing. He loves doing this. He loves talking about all this stuff. You don’t have to lie to me, Dad, it’s okay. It’s not your favorite.
Dave: You’re right, it’s not my favorite. You’re right.
Darren: But we’re going to make you do it anyway. Okay. Well, we’re going to talk a little bit about your story, but I think for those that might not know who you are, right off the bat, even though most people know who you are, to get us started. Over the years, you’ve been a serial entrepreneur, if you will, done a handful of different things. But in the last thirty years or so, you’ve built something pretty sustainable with Community Reinvestment Foundation, or CRF. That was a nonprofit that now has, at this point, given millions and millions of dollars all around the world to missions projects. Which is absolutely, sitting here today, pretty amazing, right? That you could say that after years of serial entrepreneurship and different things, now you get to say, man, this impact of being able to funnel money all around the world is pretty crazy, pretty impactful. Can you talk to me a little bit about what that journey was like? Did you know this is where it was headed? Or was this just kind of following the steps in front of you?
Dave: Well, in reality, if you’re talking about Community Reinvestment Foundation, the story started in 1992. I can’t say that it was a great idea that came to me, because in reality it came from a conversation with a gentleman named Tim [VERIFY: guest states surname as “Shrow” early and “Shroud” later; confirm exact spelling from audio before publish]. He was involved in the multi-family housing business with his father-in-law. It all came about, we ran into each other one night at dinner and started talking. I had made a decision a few months before that to make a change in what I was doing. We kind of talked about that, and he said, why don’t we go to lunch and have a conversation? We were involved with the church in missions, ever since we moved here from the East Coast and got involved at Lakeview Church. I don’t remember the year, but it was a long time ago. We attended that church because I went to college with Tommy Pano [VERIFY: surname spelling from audio].
Darren: He was the pastor of the church?
Dave: No, he was assistant pastor.
Darren: Assistant pastor, that’s right. And so you had always been involved in missions, because that church is very heavily involved in missions.
Dave: Well, and Tim, his father-in-law was very strong with missions, especially in that church. That was just ingrained in us. Every time we’d go to church, they were talking missions. So when we went out to lunch that day, he said, I’ve got an idea. He’s in the housing business. He said there’s a new program that has just come out with the government, with HUD, so that we could maybe do something here. They had this grant program. They had properties that were over twenty years old that they originally funded, and they were at the point where they all needed to be rehabbed. So it was an opportunity for us to get grants and rehab these properties. It just made sense that we would do it as a not-for-profit, because that way we could give any profits we made to missions, probably more than likely through Lakeview. But as it grew and grew, it became more than that.
Darren: So was the opportunity with the government subsidy and all that, did it need to be a nonprofit organization, or was that just the choice you guys made?
Dave: No, it did not have to be. I think it gave us a step up in the program, because there were a large number of these properties available. It was going to be a great opportunity for us to go in. Like I said, all these properties needed to be rehabbed. So we could do it as a not-for-profit. We’d get the grant from the government and do the rehab. That’s where it all started.
Darren: So what I’m hearing is you have a conversation with Tim, you guys are at church together, the church is a missions-driven church, and you’re going, hey, there’s an opportunity with this business, inside of what the government is offering. And then the creativity with it stems from going, hey, we could do this as a nonprofit, we could fund fifty percent of the dollars out to those missions projects, we could build the business with the other fifty, we could actually make something kind of cool out of this. Was that the conversation you and Tim were having?
Dave: Exactly. And naturally, I was kind of between gigs at the moment. So it sounded really good to me. I think it sounded really good to my wife too. It was just a perfect opportunity to put together. He had the experience and the knowledge, and I was a beginner, but I was willing to learn. That’s how it all came about.
Darren: You had built something before that, right? You had built a company, you had sold a company. You had experience in building things, and the starting line was there, so you’re like, hey, let’s dive in and see what we can create. I love that, because it really speaks to the idea of conversations around a table leading to, hey, there’s a good opportunity here. We can actually build something, use what is out there to creatively put this thing together, and now, thirty plus years later, it’s a thing that has made a serious impact. It’s just cool to see. I wanted to start there because you have done so many different things in life when it comes to business, and it’s just cool to see the last thirty years. How old were you when CRF began? I think this is an interesting stat for me. You may have to help me with the math.
Dave: Well, I’m not sure I’m good at it. It was ninety-two? 1992.
Darren: I was in second grade. I only know that because I was the one who in ninety-two was in second grade, in ninety-three I was in third grade, in ninety-four, Mrs. McCrary in fourth grade taught me that, and I will never look back again. So if we really want to work the math. 1992 it started.
Dave: Were you asking me what year I was born?
Darren: No. I mean, if you want to put that on record, you can.
Dave: Well, in order to tell you how old I was, I’d have to go back and do your math.
Darren: You were born in forty-three?
Dave: 1944.
Darren: Forty-four. Mom’s helping us. You can help us out, Mom, because we’re bad at math right now. Ninety-two, how old was Dad?
Karen: [VERIFY: attribute studio-audience math help to Karen; confirm from audio] 1944 plus fifty would be 1994. So it would be forty-eight.
Darren: So you’re forty-eight. Look at that. That was quick math. Somebody was literally in the car driving, listening to this, going, forty-eight, they knew. So you’re forty-eight years old when you start this. And I love bringing that point out, because a lot of people go, oh, it’s too late for me, I haven’t done anything significant, it’s too late for me. And at forty-eight years old, you start out on a journey that thirty plus years later means millions of dollars to missions, successful, the whole thing from start to finish. And some people at twenty-six are going, oh, I’m washed up. You’re like, no, you’ve got plenty of time. So let’s go back a little bit before forty-eight. You started out as a CPA, right? You kind of went the safe road. You worked at a firm.
Dave: If you want to really go back to the beginning. I graduated from college. Now, I always had a part-time job from the time I was in tenth grade.
Darren: We don’t need to talk about those. Oh, you’ve had some good part-time jobs though. The ketchup factory. The hotel.
Dave: We may want to talk about those. But in 1968, I graduated. We got married that year, and my full-time gig started out as a ninth grade school teacher. Teaching general business and business math to ninth graders.
Darren: Did you love that?
Dave: Well, I loved it when I quit. I learned real quick that ninth graders didn’t really care about learning how to write a check and balance a bank account. So it was a real struggle for me. I lasted a year.
Darren: One whole year. And were you a CPA at this point?
Dave: No. So when that year came up, I was looking for a job. There was a health insurance company that had a contract with the Medicare program to audit hospitals and nursing homes, to make sure they were doing what they were supposed to do. I took that job. Karen was teaching school at the time, and we ended up having to move to Philadelphia. So we moved to Philadelphia and she got a job there. She taught typing. You know what typing is?
Darren: I was in the last of the typing classes, I believe.
Dave: And if you needed copies, you used carbon paper.
Darren: Oh, wow. Carbon paper. That’s taking me back.
Dave: But don’t make a mistake on the top one, because you’ve got to correct the back. So we moved to Philadelphia and we were there, I think about two and a half, three years. We had gone to homecoming at the college we graduated from, Evangel, it’s Evangel University now. We ran into some friends from when we were in school who lived in Indianapolis. One guy says to me, when are you guys going to move to Indianapolis? And I just said, whenever you find me a job. I didn’t plan on moving there. But about two weeks later, I get a call from a CPA firm, and that’s where it all started. They had a number of nursing homes that they did audits for, and they needed somebody that had the background. Since I did audits, they thought I would really love to do that.
Darren: So in Philly you’re working for a company that does audits, and then you make this joke with a buddy, find me a job. They call with a job in Indy for a company that does audits. That’s what ends up bringing you here.
Dave: That’s where it all started.
Darren: So it’s not like you set out to be a CPA. You were kind of following the steps of what life was having for you. You always told me, when you worked in the ketchup factory, you at least learned what you didn’t want to do for the rest of your life.
Dave: That was the lesson that I learned. After one shift, this is not what I want to do for the rest of my life.
Darren: So you just continue. Now school teacher, and then it’s like, all right, that wasn’t for me. Oh, next door’s open, let’s step into that. There’s an interesting parallel as you start to unfold some of these stories, just kind of taking the logical next step that’s in front of you. You make a joke to a buddy about get me a job in Indy, and next thing you know you’re here in Indy. So you’re working for a CPA firm doing audits for nursing homes.
Dave: Right. And one of the requirements of me taking that position was I had to be a CPA, which I was not. I was a business major in college, had nothing to do with accounting. So part of that requirement was that I had to get my CPA certificate. I had to take classes at night, accounting classes and tax classes, and then work a full-time shift. One thing I did not realize when I took the job, we moved here in December, I did not realize that this firm had a rule that during tax season, you came to work at eight o’clock in the morning and worked till five. Then you went home for dinner and came back and worked from seven to nine.
Darren: Oh my goodness. Even if you weren’t involved in taxes?
Dave: Well, you had. And back up a little bit, she didn’t come with me, because we had to move and she had to finish her school and teaching job. So I’m sitting there, dark outside, just trying to find something to read. And I’m going, what have I done?
Darren: So you move here, you guys are in separate states now. You’ve taken this job after a buddy got it for you. You move state lines, and now all of a sudden you find yourself sitting in an empty office. Did anybody you knew work at the business?
Dave: No. The guy that got me the job was the administrator of the nursing home at the church.
Darren: So you had some friends, but not necessarily somebody that worked with you. And you find yourself sitting in this office, it’s dark outside in the middle of an Indianapolis winter. What’s going on in your mind at that point?
Dave: How do I go back?
Darren: Mom’s still there back in Philly. Do you just retreat? What ended up keeping you, pushing you through that season?
Dave: Well, we had a lot of friends there. Not just the guy that got me the job. There were a lot of friends, and I knew that once we got settled in, it would work. And it was a new experience.
Darren: Do you like the new experience? Something new to try to figure out? Is that something you enjoy?
Dave: As you look through my history, you probably find out that I did a lot of that.
Darren: That must be where your son gets it too. Now I understand so much about myself all of a sudden in that one question. So you end up getting your CPA license. Working at this company, auditing nursing homes, and fast forward a little bit, you kind of look around and go, I think I could do that. So you end up deciding to go out on your own. As a CPA or as something else?
Dave: Well, that story’s kind of funny too. It was kind of in between. I went out to lunch with one of the partners, the guy I worked with when I first got there. We were talking, and I just decided that I wasn’t going to stay there any longer. I told him I was done at lunch.
Darren: Just on a whim.
Dave: Yeah. So I had to go back and clean out my desk, and we didn’t have cell phones back then. So I called my wife on the phone. I called Karen and said, hey, I’m on my way home. I just want you to know I just quit, and I’m bringing all my stuff with me.
Darren: So this wasn’t a conversation had over the course of months, where Mom kind of had that feeling that you might be doing that? It was literally, you’re at lunch, you go, I’m done with this. How does she respond when you got home?
Dave: I’d look over there and see, but I think she cried.
Darren: She’s staring at you with anger eyes right now. Did you cry?
Dave: No, she cried. But if you know Mom, that’s Mom. And of course we had a new baby too, I think.
Darren: How old would Erik [VERIFY: raw audio says “Eric”; the organization spells it “Erik Cooper,” confirm] have been at that point?
Dave: One or two, something like that. He was young. Probably two.
Darren: So you’re telling me that you quit your job on a whim with a two-year-old at home, and then came home and told Mom after lunch.
Dave: Yeah. But in reality, it worked out. It worked out well.
Darren: So what’s going on in your mind at this point? You’re going, I’m done with this, I want something new. Did you have an idea of what was next, or was it just, I’ll figure it out later?
Dave: No, I had an idea, because like I said early in this conversation, I was pretty sure that I could run a nursing home and own a nursing home and do well with it.
Darren: Because you’ve been auditing them, right? Seeing all their books, seeing how they work, seeing how it flows. And then you’re going, wait a minute, that guy over there is not smarter than me. You almost got the front seat to how the whole thing works.
Dave: Well, in addition to that, one of the administrators I worked with at one of the nursing homes, I got to be close friends with him. We played tennis and stuff together. So the next day I drove over to his office, it was like forty miles away. I’m out of work. So we started talking. He worked for his father-in-law, and he was kind of not happy working for his father-in-law. So I said, one of the nursing homes I’ve been working with, the guy’s talking about getting out of the business. What if we went and approached him and said, how about you lease that facility to us? We’ll just pay you monthly fees and we’ll take over the complete operations. All you’ve got to do is we’ll send your check to Florida. And he said, that’s a good idea. He said, sign me up. So we started that process, and he was excited about it. In the meantime, he had a friend that was a banker that was looking to get out of the banking business. And he also knew of a nursing home that was available. So it ended up the three of us formed the entity. We started acquiring nursing homes. Started out as just manager, rental, if you want to call it. And then we acquired them, we bought them, and then we bought some others. That’s how we took the next step.
Darren: As I’m listening, it’s literally the next logical thing. Lunch one day, you quit your job, the next day you drive to a friend, hey, this is kind of what I’m doing. You were probably looking for work or connection.
Dave: Yeah, I had, I was still doing some accounting work. That’s another story, I don’t know if we want to tell that one or not.
Darren: So it wasn’t like you were completely out of nothing. You had this ability to at least have the CPA stuff.
Dave: I had started my own CPA firm, because I’d gotten a call from a couple of those people that I was going to try to rent from or take over their properties. So I was doing that work, doing some accounting work.
Darren: So you were working for the firm doing all the audits, and then you did some on the side?
Dave: No, this was after. I started that and had my own CPA practice. Had my name on the wall on the door.
Darren: Nice. Big guy. What’d you call it?
Dave: David E. Cooper CPA.
Darren: There it is. A lot of thought went into it. I like it.
Dave: And one of the other guys who was doing a lot of the tax work at the firm I left quit. He called me and wanted to know if he could come over and work with me. Did a partnership.
Darren: This is where the story gets fun.
Dave: He had, part of getting out of there was that you signed a no-compete clause. That basically meant you can’t steal any of our clients. Well, I don’t think he read that letter. He sent a letter out to these clients.
Darren: And so you got sued.
Dave: In breach of contract.
Darren: They came after not only, well, he attached himself to you, and then you by proxy got sued as well. So did you have to pay, or were you able to get out of it?
Dave: I was kind of an innocent bystander in that. I wrote them a letter and said, hey, I’m not interested in doing CPA work, so I’m more than happy to just tell those people that I wasn’t going to do it. They dropped me out of it and went after him.
Darren: So you were able to stay an innocent bystander and didn’t get sucked into the thing. So did you officially walk away from David E. Cooper CPA at that point?
Dave: I did. I still have my CPA.
Darren: You still have your license. You could still do it, but ultimately that business was, hey, you know what, I’ll let that go down with the ship.
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The Build and the Setbacks
Darren: So were you in tandem at that point also doing the nursing home business?
Dave: We were. So we added a few more of the nursing homes to our portfolio, and then, I don’t know how long it was afterwards, we decided to sell those properties.
Darren: But you built it up to a place that was something worth selling.
Dave: Oh yes. We had five or six facilities, I can’t remember.
Darren: So you have five or six facilities, you go, hey, we have something here, we’re going to sell it. What was the vision there? Were you and your partners just going to look to do something else?
Dave: No, I remember. I’m not sure how I want to respond to that. The partners didn’t get along real well together.
Darren: Got it. So at this point it was, this isn’t working the way it was intended to. We need to move on and do our thing.
Dave: And this was quite a period of time. Like four years or something. In the meantime, I got involved in a restaurant and that kind of stuff as well with one of them. At that point in time, we were just done. We needed to do something else.
Darren: So correct me if I’m wrong, business going well, obviously doing some good things, then you sell, you take some of that money and start to invest into some other things. Like you mentioned, a restaurant, which growing up as a kid, my brother Erik [VERIFY: “Eric” in raw audio], who’s ten years older than me, he had it a little better. He could do this in high school and show off a little bit. I remember going to the restaurant called The Cork. It was awesome.
Dave: Cork at the Crossing.
Darren: Cork at the Crossing [VERIFY: restaurant name spelling, low stakes]. If you’re in Indianapolis, Sullivan’s at Keystone at the Crossing, not the building, because they tore your building down and rebuilt that, but that was the land your restaurant was on. I drive by it all the time going, oh man, I wish we could go in there and have some food. But it was awesome. You owned a restaurant, but then you also dabbled in some other things, had some investments. In your mind, what was the thing at that point that you were trying to do? Was it money driven? Or was it, I don’t really know what I want to do, I’m just going to take the logical next step?
Dave: Well, it was kind of difficult, because I knew I didn’t want to be in nursing homes. I knew I didn’t want to be in the restaurant business. So I really didn’t have a strong idea of where I was going to go next. And that’s about the time that I got connected with Tim.
Darren: So all those pieces don’t all fit together. But again, it goes back to what you said, even back to the ketchup factory. You were like, you know what, I learned I don’t want to be in the ketchup factory. I know I don’t want to be in nursing homes long term. Let’s go find something else. It’s kind of this, I tried it, some of them were successful, some maybe not as much, and you always just move to the next thing, the logical next step.
Dave: Yeah, and I think a lot of that with the nursing homes was being involved with government. And I say that and I turned around and went into the same thing again. But in reality, the nursing home and all that, it was a time to make a change because of the, how can I say it politely, conflict. The way the partnership was structured, it needed a change. The partnership didn’t ship anymore.
Darren: I think Dave Ramsey says the only ship that doesn’t sail is a partnership. So maybe there’s part of that truth. Okay, so I love this. Maybe this is because this is how I’m wired. I’m starting to see myself and you a little bit in your story, of just that next thing. Oh, there’s this opportunity, let’s just go figure it out. I think you were always somebody that told me, why not have the conversation? It doesn’t hurt to go have the conversation. You can always say no.
Dave: You can always say no.
Darren: And that’s what’s so interesting about the story. For you, you were just following the path, seeing what was opening, but there’s these kind of truths in it. Hey, just take the next door, take the next step, be curious enough to see if it’ll work. Drive forty miles across to your buddy and say, hey, what do you think about this? Chase the idea down. I want to talk a little bit about, most people that start things, or have this entrepreneurial spirit, there’s often that voice in the back of your head that says, eh, you can’t do that. The fear keeps them locked into the safe path. What was that voice in the back of your head telling you? What were some of those fears you had to face and overcome? Or was it just, I don’t know, I just did what I did?
Dave: Yeah, I think it was more of that. Because every time I tried something, it was a learning experience. I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to do that again. So I really think that’s what the whole thing was.
Darren: It’s like a little bit of curiosity. You’re curious about, could we go do that? And you start to go down that road to see.
Dave: Yeah, I think that’s probably what it was. It’s hard to say, looking back at it all after all this time.
Darren: As I hear you talk about it, it wasn’t like, oh, I risked everything to go do this thing and jumped off this cliff. Other than quitting your job and going home to tell Mom about it. Other than that, it’s very much a, hey, there’s an open door, let’s step through it, and not necessarily this wrestle at night trying to figure out, oh, I’ve got this thing I’ve got to go do. It’s just continual steps in the right direction. So you decide, I guess the part of the story we’re at now is you and Tim have this conversation about what is now CRF. You go, hey, there’s an open door, an opportunity to step through, let’s do it. You’re in between gigs. You’ve got to get back into government work if you go down this road. But what excited you about this opportunity to start CRF, low income, Section 8 housing, helping manage and run them? What got you curious enough to step into that?
Dave: Well, I think there were two things. One was I felt more comfortable with the people I was dealing with in this conversation. People that you had trust in, people who had the same vision.
Darren: Same belief system.
Dave: Belief system. They were all part of the church. And the other thing was they were all very successful. They were in the housing business, very successful. And the third thing was that the missions giving side of it was probably the strongest of those three.
Darren: Which was really just a potential of missions giving. Because you had to build something. You give zero if every year you go, we didn’t make any money. The only way you help the mission side is if you build something sustainable and successful.
Dave: Well, and the way we started out with that too was that we separated that from Tim’s companies. We separated this entity from that. We didn’t ask them for anything. I’m not sure they even understood at that point, hey, we’re wanting to give all this money to missions. Because Roy [VERIFY: “Roy Prox” in raw audio, likely garbled; confirm person and company name from audio, publish blocker] was a big missions giver, and he’s going, well, I’m giving money to missions. So we went through some struggles there for a long time, getting it on track. It was not as easy as we thought it was going to be. We thought, hey, these are government programs, we’ve got the experience in housing, this should be, we got it. And it didn’t turn out that way. It was a long, slow process from 1992. But we got there.
Darren: That’s interesting, because I’ve heard a business guy right now, his message is, it’s going to be a lot harder than you expect, and it’s going to take a lot more time than you expect. It’s not get rich quick, it’s not overnight success, it is sleepless nights and building and growing and learning. And that’s almost what I hear you saying. Hey, the opportunity was there. But that doesn’t mean the work is not there.
Dave: No, because it was really difficult, even trying to get, like we had to go into the city or the town and get approval from them to do these things. And they question you. You’re coming in from out of town. We don’t know you. I remember one deal was down in Tennessee. It was an elderly lady that owned it, and she was ill. It was not a big project, like a hundred units, a hundred percent Section 8. I remember driving down there and talking to her, great lady, we had a great conversation. Thought we had this all taken care of. I went back home, and the next day I called her, and she went, well, Joe Smith came in here after you left, and I’ve signed the papers and I’m selling it to him. It’s that kind of thing, where you think it’s going to be a simple process, because hey, they ought to love us, we’re in here to help them. We went through a lot of that. And one deal, this was in Tennessee too, they had five huge properties, set up very similar to the way Tim’s companies were set up, with all those entities. We had it all put together. We’d gone in and met with the town.
Darren: Did all your due diligence.
Dave: The father of the family had his own airplane, and he had an accident and got killed. So it just, I mean, that just takes it out of you.
Darren: Wow. And to add to that, when you guys started, there was a whole government program that was like, oh, we’re just going to walk down through. I remember Erik telling me, there was, your whole conference table is full of all these projects, we just have to get through the paperwork and they close them and they’re good. And you get one done and they shut down the program. So what does that do to your morale when that happens?
Dave: Well, the first thing you say is, I don’t ever want to get involved with the government again. And I’m glad to be away from that. But in reality, you still can’t lose your vision. We want to do missions, but also you’re dealing with Section 8 low-income people who need to be well taken care of. And we were going to go in and rehab all these properties. So you can’t let that discourage you, but you do get discouraged anyway.
Darren: How do you overcome that when you find yourself faced with what feels like a setback?
Dave: Well, for one thing, pray about it, because you know how you feel, you need some help here. I think that’s it. It wasn’t to be. If it didn’t happen, it wasn’t to be. So you go back and pray and say, take us in a new direction, because there were a lot out there.
Darren: And to your point too, you’ve got to keep that vision in front of you. You had that vision of, we’re going to not only go in and help these properties, the low income Section 8, we’re going to make sure they feel dignity and their place is a good place to live. But then also the vision of, if we do this right, there’s millions of dollars that could end up in missions work all around the world. The vision is bigger than the setback. You just have to keep going. It’s funny, obviously I was young in ninety-two, but the last thirty years is kind of all I really know, other than the restaurant memories. That’s all I really know of you, building what is CRF and now the Stone Table. As you’re telling the story, I can attest to times that I’ve been a fly on the wall, watching, just, oh, setback, man, we’ll figure it out, let’s go pray about it, that vision keeping us here. And now over the course of thirty plus years, it’s kind of staggering the impact that you’ve been able to make. And I say you, but you, Tim, the whole team that has helped you build. I know it takes more than just one person, but you were kind of at the helm for most of that time. So did you ever in a million years think that this would be what it is today?
Dave: Oh, it’s much bigger. It’s much bigger. You look at people that have done what we’ve done, you can name some firms here in Indianapolis that have done what we’ve done. But that’s all the further they’ve taken it, and all the further they will take it. And we’ve taken it, I say we because I had just a minor assist in this, because we’ve got guys that are a lot more experienced. I never anticipated that we would be sitting looking at a bank account of over a hundred million dollars.
Darren: A hundred million dollars. Do you remember or know the number of missions dollars given at this point?
Dave: I know Erik mentioned it to me at one point, but I can’t remember.
Darren: But it’s multi-millions of dollars given around the world to different projects, amazing things happening around the world. And I want to make sure people understand, it’s not just philanthropy for the sake of giving. It’s strategic dollars. It’s things that build beyond yourself into other businesses even, that sustain. And that’s what I’ve always loved about what you’ve done. It’s not, I’m raising funds to go give them away. It’s, let’s build a business engine, something that generates and makes the world a better place, and then ultimately you’re able to spread that around. So talk me through, you said the church was a big thing, hey, you’ve got to give to missions, so that was ingrained. But you could have done what everybody else does and go, oh, I’ll just build a really successful business, I’ll give it away myself. What was the driving force in going, man, this makes sense to do it nonprofit. I’m stepping out, I’m not the one that gets all the dollars. Where’d that come from?
Dave: Well, basically it was the whole concept when we designed it. Even when we designed it, we gave a hundred dollars away. That was the whole purpose. I never thought, wow, I could have done that and gotten my name on that building or whatever. That never entered my mind.
Darren: That’s not part of the desire.
Dave: No. And I didn’t do this by myself. There were a lot of other individuals. But that never entered my mind, that we could be taking this ourselves and helping my grandkids go to college or something.
Darren: Well, you still do that in a wonderful way. So I think there’s something to, people that will say that when you can find yourself giving more than you receive in some way, you still get it back in some way or form. And I know that regardless of the hundred million might not be in your personal bank account, I think you’ve been able to be successful in your own way along the way because of the way you’ve set this up.
Dave: One of the other things that has helped with all that thought pattern is that we do a lot of matching of contributions. We really like that part of it. A church, in fact, every year we take an annual trip. We take a group of pastors and a couple of businessmen, and we have a project specifically that we want to build, the orphanage or school or church or whatever. We take them along on the trip. And then when they come back, on Christmas they make their presentation, and whatever contributions they get from that church, we match.
Darren: It’s leveraging the dollars, right? It’s leveraging what you guys have been able to generate. That’s what’s so cool about it, because of the way it’s set up, it’s a give with us. It’s not a give to us. I’ve heard Erik say that a lot. My brother Erik, who is kind of running the Stone Table mission side of this now. That whole idea of it, everybody working on this together. Because you built this as a business engine, the dollars are being generated, and now it’s not, hey, we’ve got to cover our fees, we’ve got to cover our people, and I need to make a few hundred grand a year. It’s literally a way that you can invest all of that into making greater impact. Inviting the churches in, inviting the business leaders in to connect those things, match those dollars, and now we’re better together. So cool to see. I love this story, and I’ve always loved it. That’s why I wanted to have you on. Obviously you’re my dad and it’s super cool to watch, but to hear the story of just, open, walk through the next door, walk through the next door. You almost don’t overcomplicate it. It’s not like, oh, I need to spend sleepless nights struggling. What’s the logical next step? What’s the open door that we take? And you look back thirty years and go, holy crap, there’s some really beautiful things that have happened along the way. I think there’s some inspiration there to some people that are listening today.
The Closing Charge
Darren: So last thing, and this is probably more for me than anybody else, but somebody’s out there building something, somebody out there is feeling like they should build something. The fear monster is speaking in their ear. They go, man, I have this idea, I want to make this impact, but I don’t know. All the excuses, all the things. What would you say to them today? How would you encourage them today?
Dave: Well, we can probably come up with maybe ten or more things right now, but it all goes back to, you have to believe in what you’re doing, and you have to go for it. You’ve got to take that step forward, because the longer you sit back and hesitate, the more likely it’s not going to happen. So if you believe in what you’ve got in front of you, you’ve got to go for it and just move ahead. Move ahead. If it’s not going to happen, there’s something that’s going to stop you in the near future, something that’s going to stop you and say, this is the wrong path, go this way. But you’ve got to move forward, you’ve got to make a step, and pray about it.
Darren: For real. I love that, because I think often, in my experience, many times resistance comes, even when you know it’s the path you’re supposed to take. Resistance comes, and I heard that in your story plenty of times. You get to Indy from Philly and you go, what the crap am I doing here? And then all these times the government shuts down the program. All of these resistance pieces happen. I think whenever resistance comes, often we think it’s somebody saying to go a different path, whether it’s God or something else, I need to go somewhere else. But often when resistance comes, it means you’re onto something, and you’ve got to push through it.
Dave: Yes, and that’s really what it boils down to.
Darren: Because if it was easy, everybody would be doing it. That’s a clip right there. You’re going to be clipped and put on social media with that one. Well, Dad, anything else you want to share with us today?
Dave: I don’t think so.
Darren: Well, thank you for telling us and inspiring us through your journey, because I think it’s super cool. You didn’t seek out the limelight to go say, hey, let me be put on the billboards and show how awesome I am. You were just a guy that got up and went to work every day and built something pretty cool. I think that’s an inspiring story to a lot of people. So thanks for sharing it.
Dave: Thanks for having me.
Darren: And thanks for listening. Thanks for being here. And before you go, I want you to remember this, that you are an artist, and that your voice is needed in this world more than you know, and you are loved more than you could ever imagine. So go out and create your art, and we’ll see you here next time on the next episode. See ya.