Do You Have Radical Faith?

Hey, everybody, it is Jim Johnson here, your host with Contractor Radio, the head coach of Contractor Coach Pro. And our whole job, the reason that we exist on this planet is to help people grow and help businesses grow. And our show is about that. How do we grow as better human beings and how do we grow better businesses so that we can hopefully lead better lives? Today I have an amazing guest on. I haven't known him real long, but to be honest, but that time that we have gotten to know each other has been like, we've known each other for years. I don't normally bond with friendship and really, more than that, relationship and fellowship with people over it usually takes me a long period of time, and that's pretty common. I think most people, when they become friends with somebody, it takes some time to do that. But every once in a while in my life, I come across a person that is instant. It's like instantaneous. I like this guy, and until he proves me otherwise, he's my friend. I want to bring value to him. He's already brought value to me. I believe he's going to bring value to you today with his story. And I just want you guys to welcome. He's the vice president of First Choice Roofing and Construction out of Houston, Texas. My guy, the man himself, Jason Laverick. Jason, welcome aboard. Happy birthday.

Hey, man, I appreciate that. Is that all right if we start off with a birthday toast?

Yeah, absolutely. I got some water right here. Cheers to you, brother.

You too. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, this is awesome. We wanted to do it actually on the birthday, but your wife went and surprised you. Right. I was just like, hey, I got you this massage deal right during our podcast. So we put it off by day, but no big deal.

Yeah.

So this is like I said before we started the show, and I'm going to let everybody else in on this. This isn't a normal podcast for me. Normally I'm introducing or interviewing, you know, some contractor that's done some things well and has something cool to share. Maybe it's a CEO of a tech company or something like that, influencer in our industry. And I kept thinking, like, how do I introduce this guy Jason to everybody else out there? And really. And truthfully, it's a part of what you are constantly preaching about and a little bit of how I've perceived it. I look at you as a joyful thought leader, and anytime there's somebody like that, I think they can bring value to the masses. And I want to want to help share with that today. So Tell us the story. Like how did, like you became vice president of First Choice? It's, it's pretty interesting how that all came about. But bring us up to speed. What led to all this? The. The Reader's Digest Life of Jason.

The Reader's Digest Life of Jason. That's a good question and thank you for asking. Jim. How I got to First Choice is really starts with faith. The owners of the company have known for a long time, years. And you know, one of the owners, Martin Morales, I just, I met him at a restaurant. I was praying over my meal by myself and I was just asking God to lead me in a way where I could invite people to Easter weekend. Easter weekend was a couple weeks away and Martin had overheard my prayer and we just instantly we had a connection because it was a God centered relationship right from the beginning, very similar to you and I. It took us minutes to talk about our faith and it's been the basis of my relationship with you and it's what led me to First Choice and I'm happy to talk about that versus like a resume because I do have quite a bit of accolades, have been pretty successful. God's blessed me with a power path of, in my realm, we call it failing forward. He's created a lot of purpose. That purpose, the origin of the purpose was pain. Sometimes physically, sometimes mentally, sometimes emotionally, and then also in business. And, and it really has led me to this wonderful opportunity that I have to, to help with the culture here in business, but also the, the people, which is the most important apart. And so the focus now has been how do we choose people and try to get better every day versus a process. Processes are important. The most successful businesses have them. But our focus is really on the people and adding value to them and, and we'll see where it takes us. So that's how I landed at First Choice.

Yeah, it was, it was interesting because we had that first meeting. Martin and Chris, we had coached, you know, five, six years ago, um, in the middle of our coaching, the storm hits. They grab as much quick information as they can to go and, and do that. And the engagement just disengaged at that point and they kind of went on about their business and we stayed in contact. We have conversations, a call here and there. And then Martin reached back out and wanted to re. Engage. So we hop on this meeting and you're there and we do our thing. Like I'm asking my questions and we're having our conversation. Towards the end of it, you're like, hey, can we you and I have a. Have a talk. Yeah, absolutely. Sounds cool, man.

I would.

I would enjoy that. And the first, first words out of your mouth when we had that talk was, I can tell you're a man of faith. And that is the statement when said to me is this statement that says my actions are right. That's that I'm on this path doing what God wants me to do, Right. To bring his kingdom to earth. And there's no greater. There's no greater comment that could be made. To me, it's better than the comment that I had about three weeks before that that said, hey, you remind me of a young John Maxwell, which I was thrilled with too. But it was like, as I say.

That'S a pretty good comment.

Yeah, that's not bad.

Somebody compares you to John Maxwell, you're doing a lot of things right. Yeah.

Out of your mind. Like, that dude is a whole different level of a human.

Yeah. God, clearly you don't know who I am.

Exactly. It was. It was pretty funny conversation. But so. So faith, obviously a big part. Like, that's how you met Martin. You know, you're praying by yourself. And. And that's how you and I met was faith was prevalent. Why. Why is that such a thing in your life? Because lots of people out there profess that they have faith, but it is central in your life, and it's obvious. Where does that come from?

You know, there's three places, right. It was the way that I was raised. My parents were strong believers from the word get. A couple that shouldn't have made it, practically speaking. Right. They had all odds against them. My mom was pregnant at 15, lived in a very legalistic Catholic household. Was. Was asked to leave when she was pregnant. So no driver's license. Right. No high school education. On her own, living in a mobile home park with her sister. Her older sister didn't even have a chance to tell my dad that, you know, he was having a. Having a daughter. And then, you know, my dad was off doing his thing after he graduated high school. He's a little bit older, so you think at. At 17, graduated in 18. My mom 15, about to turn 16. She had my sister and. And turn 16 two days after she had my. My sister Stephanie. And. And as soon as my. My mom wrote a letter just asking for help to my dad's parents. And it's just an amazing story because my dad literally dropped everything he was doing. He went and found my mom when he heard from his parents, like, hey, we had a letter from Yvonne My mom, Randy went and met her and, and they've been inseparable for this. May 16th, we'll make 48 years of marriage. Whoa. Yeah.

It's like, that is unbelievable. That's not how that story usually goes.

No, no. And, and to think that, you know, I have a brother Stephen, who's older than me, and then I'm the baby. And, you know, it wasn't always easy growing up having young. I would even say immature parents. My dad grew up in northern Michigan and a Baptist faith. And what I'll say about that is that it was one of those churches that you attend in a wooden pew where you're just puckered up the whole time, right? Like, you know, like hard back pews and just like there's no instruments in church.

Probably very small would be my guess.

Very small. Like, I think might add 150 members. But I, you know, what I will say is the pastor at the helm was a guy named Pastor Ballman. And he was, he was a man of, of scripture. It was a word church. They did not cherry pick verses from the Bible. And so I learned from a very young age I was not ashamed of my faith. And I loved scripture. It was just a really great book. Just. I treat it as such, right. So at a young age when you don't really understand faith, what I did know is that I loved the stories. And so that is the foundation. So that's one. Number two, I would say is man, my encounters. You can't unencounter, you can't unexperience. Right. I like to use the, the analogy of skydiving, right. We ask somebody, well, have you been skydiving? And they say, yes. How's somebody going to tell them? Well, you don't know what it's like. Even though they've been skydiving. I can tell you that my experience with, with faith and with God is, is he has shown up in, in a radical way. And, and I, I can't take away from those experiences because it can only be explained. God is real and he's been real in my life. So that's number two. And then, and then number three is, you know, I'm a little crazy. Anybody who prays to someone who's invisible in the room, it's got to be a little crazy. And so I don't mind being just a, just a touch crazy.

Yeah, that's that radical faith, right? Like, I'm not really worried about all of you. That's not what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping at some point I hear the words, well done, good and faithful servant, and that's the master I choose to serve. That's a, it is a radical way to live life. You get some crazy looks. You get this, you get this. What's the right word for it? Stereotype or personification applied to you of, ooh, charismatic.

Right.

Like that type of thing. And, and, and said in almost like a negative way. Right. Have you experienced any of that?

I have. You know, there's been times where, man, we've had. Well, I'll just use Covid. Like just leading up to Covid, Church local here in Houston was the, the fastest growing church in the history of the United States. And we were in high schools, we were occupying gymnasiums and we were converting a basketball court into what appeared to be a church. So it's like, you know, every Sunday. And then so you have load in where you're literally covering a basketball gymnasium floor with carpet tiles and having a layout like an engineer of the perfect way to put a thousand chairs in a basketball auditorium where you're violating fire marshal code. Right. And the fire marshal does show up because you're still occupying a school. And, and, and the, the fact that people would show up and not even feel like they're showing up at a school, but at a church campus, it's like super bowl weekend every weekend. And so it was just a, it was an honor to be a part of that and lead it. I was leading it all the while, you know, battling an ailment, being told I shouldn't be doing it. You know, I just had this, this thing where I was like, God was just constantly saying, jason, this is where you're meant to be. We're in the middle of revival and, and we just saw, I mean, we saw thousands of baptisms and tens of thousands of people saying yes to accepting Jesus Christ as their savior right in my backyard, where. It wasn't like that. We're in a big city, very faithful city in Houston. And there was, it was unbelievable to see that there was this gap of the lost and those people were being found and serving and starting their own connect groups and asking people to come every weekend. And so, you know, that was really critical because I was able to share that with at that time, I would say strangers. We had these wristbands that I wear still to this day, and we would take these wristbands and like everywhere I would go, the validation, like when you say the ultimate compliment would be somebody says, I know you're a man of faith. Let's talk about that. Everywhere I went, what wristband or not, they didn't notice it. There was something different. And the validation in my faith came from people recognizing like, man, there's something different about you. Brand new person never met before. And I would say if you want to learn more about why I'm different, that's that crazy. Hand him a wristband and say come to this church. Here's the website. And I think the part about the wristband, as simple as that seems, it was a way that gave them a reminder because people love wearing right bracelets and the rubber band. This one's active faith. This one is says in Jesus name I play. Lanny, an ex football player is connected to, to my brother in faith. And he's, he's no one's closer to me in this world is my accountability partner. His name is Fendi Onobond. They both played in the NFL together. And he started a faith based company. So like people like Steph Curry wear it proudly on the basketball court. And he's got. Basically it's a faith based brand of active clothing for men and females, like workout clothing. And, and I had the wonderful opportunity of having a bunch of swag given to me and I have countless wristbands. If you want one, I can send you a bag of them.

Yeah, those out for sure.

Yeah, man, we need to hand them out. Plug to the brand. Plug to the brand.

Yeah, I'm gonna be in Houston not next week, but the following.

Dude, I'll bring you a bag of those. It's. It's just unbelievable the, the conversation starter that it would happen and then it's also reminder where they would go. Oh, the name of that church. Oh, you know what that guy that I met at, you know, I might be a happy hour at Capitol Grill or Eddie V's you know, having a glass of wine and a burger or something or a salad. And you know the person behind the bar or somebody next to me, they would hear me talking about my faith. And it just was a conversation starter and it was really a, it was the way of like open transparency of the, the gift of handing someone something so simple then putting it on. And it was a reminder. I can't tell you if I wish that I could track the percentage of success of handing someone something tangible that they would wear and the messages I would get because I give people my phone number, I would have. This is not a joke. And I'm not. And I will, well, I will say this to brag because it's in the name of Jesus. And he says we can brag in his honor. When I say, like dozens, dozens to sometimes hundreds of people, I would be messaging saying, hey, I'm gonna. Can I get a seat? It's, it's backed up. They only have overflow. Can I get in the auditorium? And I would remember the person because it would trigger this memory, this memory burn of where I met him, who it was, when I met them, because I put it in notes on my contact, right? Like, hey, I was at Irma Southwest in downtown Houston having tamales, right? And I handed it to Chris. And then Chris would be messaging me. Might be three weeks later, we'd be like, hey, this is Chris. I met you at Irma's Southwest downtown Houston. I'm here. Can I get a seat? And, and.