Chapter 1: Partnering with God – 2022 (A Personal Testimony) by Ricky S

It is May of the year of our Lord, 2022. I am a business owner that has been through many aspects of business. Small start up, partnership, growth, investment, debt management, cash flow problems, adding services and specialties, more investments and debt, partnership split, small business start up again only that this time, the business is fully staffed and has a very heavy liability column of the income statement. This business has a new name, a rebranding campaign ensues. Although, even after advice, the customer base is not responding as expected and sales drop, on average, by 50%. Ebs and Flows become difficult to manage. Turnover and firings do nothing to help the loss in revenue. Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. A second chance. Many more mistakes are made but we prevail. Lawsuits and demands are lining up on all fronts. I retain more attorneys in one year than I have ever dealt with in my entire 40 years of life. Hearing after hearing takes place at a local and state level. Interviews happen at a federal level. Back to business. Cashflow improves. Sales and productivity pick up stronger than ever before. Another round of unplanned turnover & vacations goes down dead smack in the middle of the largest job that this company has ever been contracted to do. We pull together and push through the challenge. New hires and orientation help bring back a footing to stand on. Some of the talent that quit abruptly, chose to return to the company and I was in no place to say no, so I took them back. The company stabilizes. We dodged another cannon ball, but not for long. A very scary federal entity serves me with investigation papers as many other demands and suits are concluding in my favor which allows for the modifications of rules, codes and laws that benefit my industry as whole in the jurisdictions that I serve in. I’m kicked out of Chapter 11 without prejudice due to this federal investigation. The legal protection shields from Chapter 11 are down and the company is vulnerable to debtors coming after this strengthening yet still vulnerable company. Patrick states, “Hold the Line”. 2021 ends stronger than ever. We are profitable. We have a full staff. Everybody is busy and making money. Our customer satisfaction rate is through the roof. Our warranties are at an all time low. All assets are utilized. Not one work truck is parked or not being used. Our expenses are under control. We are transferring money to savings and reserves on a weekly basis. For the first time in my business history, we have over $100k in reserves and have sustained it on a regular basis. Happy new year. January 2022 starts off weaker than expected. Phones are quieter than usual. Lead volume drops. The work that is scheduled is spread evenly amongst the team. Cracks in the strength of the unity of the team are beginning to show. A key player in the install team starts behaving erratically. It comes out that he is an addict and is in deep with his demons. He is begging for money from every team member in this company. He comes to work high on his drug of choice. His installations fail. Call backs and warranties spike. We get it handled. The phones start ringing again, but for all the wrong reasons. Drivers on the road are calling in on a daily basis about another key tech. His driving. It’s dangerous, it’s aggressive. It’s unusual. In a span of two weeks, the complaint calls on this tech range from loss of confidence from the customer, the tech looks like a bum, likely intoxicated and theft. I catch up to the tech on a job without announcement. Indeed he was out of uniform, his choice for clothing was torn jeans and a t-shirt. He looked like he had not bathed in a week. Eyes bloodshot and slurred speech. The van had a new ding on the rear passenger side. Clearly he was a hazard to himself and the public. I had his truck picked up by a tow truck and drove him home. In the meantime my phone is going off with more complaints from the team about the drug addict tech mentioned earlier. He won’t stop asking for money and already owes money to more than half the team. In the span of a week, I let them both go and lost a big part of my production team. The phone rings again. My lead Septic Pump Truck operator is crying. “Ricky, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened? Im so sorry Ricky”. It sounded chaotic. There was a lot of noise in the background. “Travis, calm down. What happened?”. That’s when he said it. “I had a head on collision in the pump truck with a jeep”. One of our most invaluable assets was destroyed. The biggest pump truck of our two pump truck fleet wrecked. An employee was injured. The driver of the jeep was taken to the hospital. No matter which way you looked at it, my driver, Travis, was the driver at fault. He tried to beat the red light while turning left at an intersection. He did not have the right of way no matter which way or another he wanted to paint it. He was at fault. In other words, my company was at fault.

The back up truck, a much smaller pump truck, is put back into production after a three month hiatus at the mechanic. $7500 in repairs had to be paid on the spot to pull the truck out. It ran for a week. It too began having mechanical issues again. It goes back into the mechanic for the same reasons it was in for well over 3 months. 2 weeks later and $7k in additional repairs, its back out. 3 days later, its back to the mechanic again. Same issue only worse. Another $2500 and 2 more weeks, its back out. 7 days later, its back to the mechanic yet again. The mechanic, who is also the dealer, is at a loss for words. They hold on to the truck for another two weeks. Requested help from the engine and transmission manufacturers. Got it figured out and the truck was back on the road. Not even a week later, the truck is down again. A new problem that is completely unrelated. The PTO for the Pump. It’s wrecked and nothing is available around the country for replacement. Both trucks are permanently down. Another key service is no longer offered. That of septic pumping. During all that chaos, our lead Septic Pump and Panel specialist sends me a photo of what appears to be his ankle. Its swollen to the point that it looked more like a thigh than an ankle. He hurt himself on his lawnmower and in doing so, tore his ligaments around his ankle. Surgery and recovery was needed. He has now been down for 4 months and there seems to be no end in sight. The septic pump and panel department, another key strategic service, is also down. Major revenue is lost. Around that time, my lead salesman for the underground sewer and water pipe repair and replacement department loses his dad to cancer. He leaves for two weeks to spend time with his family. He comes back and on the second day back he calls me stating that he hurt his lower back while practicing baseball with his son. He can’t move. He too is down for the count for a month. The underground sewer and water pipe repair and replacement department, the key strategic service for this entire company, an anchor service, has sales that were scheduled in the past and were yet to start but no future estimates were being done. So its time in production was not looking bright. The entire company production, in a matter of 2 months into 2022, had come to a near and complete halt. Critical profit was nowhere close to being hit. We started hemorrhaging cash. I went back into the field full time in a desperate attempt to sustain some level of productivity. At least I had my underground sewer and water pipe repair team still intact. Together, we might be able to pull a miracle. Monday comes around, its 6am and my phone pings. A text message from Josue. My Lead Excavator & Directional Drill Operator. A guy who I had just invested a great deal of time and money to train him on how to use our new directional drill machine. His text read, “I won’t be coming into work today. I took a job with another company. I quit”. 8 years together, through thick and thin. He had already quit on me in 2021 and came back. I had no idea he wasn’t happy and was given no choice to save his job. Another devastating blow. But the hits were not done yet. Nehemiah, the lead Installer for the underground sewer and water pipe repair team was about to go on Vacation on Wednesday of that very same week. Work was stacked and there wasn’t anybody to do it. I had no choice but to plow forward. I took over the heavy equipment and installations. I strategically moved around the remaining 2 techs that were left in the field to try to deliver some level of production in the plumbing, drain and septic pump services. I started working every day in the field. My production was nowhere near as good as the two team members that left permanently or for a vacation. Thankfully, Nehemiah would be back by Monday. But he wasn’t. I woke up Monday morning to a text stating “My brother fell ill. I have to stay behind to make sure he is ok”. He replied to no further texts from me. On that monday, the last helper of the underground sewer and water pipe repair team started his three week vacation which he had carefully timed with Nehemiah’s return. He was heading back to his home country of Honduras. So there was no turning back. Leaving just me and the oldest team member in this entire company, Ernesto Henriquez. Him and I were to run the underground department. A team of 4 brought down to just 1 plus me. A septic pumping team of two trucks and two drivers brought down to none. A plumbing team of 3 lead techs, one of which was also the lead for pumps and panels, brought down to 1 tech. Trucks and trailers started breaking down left and right. Cashflow is in a mass negative. 85% of reserves was depleted and the end appeared to be nowhere in sight. I was absolutely and undeniably horrified. The gremlins of business failure were in full blown assault by land, sea and air. My company and I were brought down to our knees.

Going back to January of 2022, in the first week of a noticeable drop in volume, and before all of the major events that were about to take place in the weeks to come, I had advised Patrick and team that we needed to aggressively attack the advertising fronts. Invest, invest and invest. We needed more leads. “I’m getting nervous Patrick” I said. “I don’t want our reserves to get below $100k”. Julie identified my fear of the $100k as an operational comfort zone. Patrick identified my fear as a weakness. A loss of trust in God. “Ricky, stop relying on this $100k. Rely on God and only God. Trust me. He will have you lose up to your last Dollar so that you learn this valuable lesson and lean on him. Trust and rely on him and him alone. He is the Almighty God. The $100k is just money. Nothing but a tool. Learn to rely exclusively and only on God”. Little did I know that the father was speaking through Patrick and laying down prophecies. I didn’t want to believe it. I had no other choice. It had begun.

Last week, I was physically and emotionally spent. It seemed like there wasn’t a week that a new major and devastating event wasn’t about to happen. I had put out “Now Hiring” adds all over the place with little to no feedback. Reserves were and are down to a week’s worth of holding down the fort. I had put a lot of prayer into the situation. I had put a lot of thought into the matter and status of my company. I was tired of putting my wife through hell. I felt alone. I was done being a failure. I watched on social media how fellow business owners around my area and the country were buying new trucks and adding new team members left and right while i was collapsing and imploding like a house of cards. The anxiety was real and did nothing but to add to my feelings of perdition. I was pretty sure that my message read as “something better is around the corner. Cut your losses and change lanes”. I was done. I felt it was time. I met the end of my road. Like I said, it was time. Time to sell what’s left. Liquidate all my business and personal assets and use that money to pay off as much as possible. My tax burdens, hard money lenders and hopefully find a job and start all over again with minimum carry over from, what was now in my mind, the former company and a past nightmare’ish life. I was prepared to lose everything. So I wrote that dreaded letter that started off with, “Dear Patrick and Julie”.

Galatians 1:11-12 – Paul Called by God
11 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ

That same morning, Patrick called me while I was having breakfast with my wife at our favorite breakfast spot, Cracker Barrel. It was pretty noisy there. “Hi Patrick”. As always, he cut out the short talk and went straight to the point. “Hey, to start off, I need you to get to a quiet place where we can talk”. I got out of my seat and headed to the front door. “Ill be outside to the car in a minute. It’s totally quiet there”. “Ok, I’ll call you back in a few. Be ready”. So I ran back inside to pay the bill and advised my wife that we had to go. An hour later, the phone rang again. And so it went:

“Do you have faith in the Lord?”. Patrick started off strong right out of the gate.

I replied with, “Of course I do. I prayed hard about this before I brought it up to you and Julie. I feel this is the path the Lord wants me to follow. I feel that through all the failures he is telling me, get out.”

Patrick waited for a second. As if to give me a second to reflect on what I had just said. “If you weren’t a man of faith, I would tell you to get out immediately. Sell it all. Get rid of it all. It wouldn’t help you much because your problems are pretty big, but at least you would be free of this responsibility which was instilled upon you by the Lord and as a person of little to no faith, you would not be worthy of managing that responsibility.”

He continued, “But since you are a man of very strong faith and prayer, I know for a fact that this is your path. Remember when I told you that the Lord would have you lose up to your very last dollar until you learned to lean and rely solely and exclusively on him?…You have to partner with God”.

“I work with a lot of people, with different backgrounds. They’re believers, non-believers, some-kind-of-believer and then there’s used-to-be-believers, or maybe casual-believers” – Quote from Chapter 1, Partnering with God – 2022. Patrick Rettig

“Believer. That’s a big word. I believe a man named Jesus Christ died for my sins so I can go to heaven for all eternity, and I want to pay Him back with better than my best in all things. Let’s focus on that” – Quote from Chapter 1, Partnering with God – 2022. Patrick Rettig.

Like a Harpoon, meant to retrieve a whale, my chest was pierced by Patrick’s words. “Partner with God”. “Rely on Him and on Him only”. Words that are now burned into my heart and the scar tissue reads like graffiti that reminds me of where I have been and how I will get to where I am destined to be.

• Lean on Him
• Rely on Him
• Have faith in His plan
• Ask him to give you the strength to follow through with your List
• Again, lean, love, rely on him and only him. Have faith in only him. Only ask of him and give grace to him and only him for blessing and tasking me, yes, little ole me, with the miracle that is the responsibility to carry through with My Mission. His Plan.

Since that conversation with Patrick, my morning prayers have evolved quite a bit. And something has evolved with it:

“Heavenly Father, good morning and thank you for this new blessing to rise and be alive father. Lord, I am so grateful for the day I concluded yesterday. My wife came home safe. My kids came home safe and sillier than ever. My entire team went back home to their families, also safe and healthy. All of our daily lists were completed and tasks were taken care of. Lord, thank you for your guidance and grace in our success. Heavenly Father, I reach out to you today, as a humble servant begging for your direction and strength. I ask you lord to bless me with your protection and shield me from my everyday demons. Lord, please silence their whispers and cast them out of my body in your most holy name father. I say it again, I cast my demons out of my body and my way in your most holy name Jesus Christ.
To the demon of my fears and anxiety. In his most holy name, I silence your whispers and cast you out of my body in the Name Of Jesus Christ.
To the demon of my addictions. In his most holy name, I silence your whispers and cast you out of my body in the Name of Jesus Christ.
To the demon that curses my business operations and endangers my team, I silence your whispers and cast you out of my daily operations in the Name of the most holy and most powerful, son of the one and only God, Jesus Christ.
To the demons that fight day in and day out to fog my thoughts and distract my focus off of the one and only, true God, Jehovah the Father and his only son, Jesus Christ, in his most holy name, I silence your whispers and cast you out of my body, direction and operations. In his most holy, my lord Jesus Christ. All of you are Cast Out. Stay Out. I am the son and servant of the one true God. I am protected by his glory and his Holy Spirit. I say these things in his most holy name, my holy Lord, Jesus Christ………Amen”

I started this prayer early last week. Since then, Nehemiah, the underground sewer and water pipe installer has returned from his extended vacation. I also hired a highly skilled operator of heavy duty equipment named Romeo. He gan dig, but still requires a lot of training. I’m ok with that. On Wednesday last week, a very important truck part called a rebuilt PTO, that was nowhere to be found around the entire country, was finally located. I picked it up and hope to have it installed into one of the Pump Trucks this week in hopes to get it back up and running again. On the production front, sales of major jobs have started to come back in search for additional information and interest in booking the work. The wheels are starting to spin again. We have ways to go to get to stability, but at least we are moving, taking care of the list for today. Knowing that tomorrow will take care of itself. I am fully partnered with my heavenly Father. I trust in him and exclusively in him. I lean and rely on Jesus Christ for everything all day long. I am strong thanks to him and I face my many challenges head on because of his grace and glory which shine on me. Thank you Lord.

Patrick said it best: “There are only so many minutes left in my life, same as you. What will you do with yours? Here’s a tip. Ask Him. As I understand scripture there are many job openings for Kingdom work. It pays good dividends. Apply for the job, every day. He is waiting for you, every day. The best is yet to come”.

Amen.

Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.