All posts by Keith Thompson

Harmon Born – my mentor

Family, Life

Everyone needs a mentor and an example to follow. A gentleman by the name of Harmon Born is mine.

I met Harmon Born at The Rock Baptist Church when I was still in high school. That was the church Elaine, my wife today, was going to.  She pretty much told me we were going to that church. Ha. Just kidding. Anyway, I started going to The Rock Baptist Church where Elaine went to because (guess why) I wanted to see her.

In the course of seeing Elaine, I met a man named Harmon Born who, while he didn’t know it, became my mentor. Harmon growing up didn’t have such a great home life and had to work just to make it in life. He started selling cars at Beaudry Ford in downtown Atlanta when he was just out of high school and sold cars part-time. He was drafted into the Army, and I am not quite sure how this came about, but he was still able to sell cars on Saturday while serving in the military. He would sell cars one day and still lead the sales charts for the company over other salesmen who were there the whole week.

See, Harmon believes, as I do, that people do business with people they trust.

When Harmon was in his late 30s/early 40s, he was able to buy Beaudry Ford in the late ’60s and build a fully-integrated, multi-story Ford dealership in downtown Atlanta that won him great respect from the Ford family. Beaudry Ford, during much of Harmon’s ownership, was the #1 volume Ford dealership in the US for many, many years. The Ford family tried to hire Harmon to come in at a very senior role within Ford Motor Company, but he declined because he loved his family, church, and home too much to leave it. For many years, Harmon sat on a number of boards from banks to hospitals, etc. Everyone wanted Harmon.

Harmon is a great speaker, great example, honest, humble, transparent, funny, and he was and is the real deal. One thing I always respected so greatly about Harmon is that I never heard him say a bad word about anyone and never heard him speak a word of idle gossip. He was simply above doing either.

Today, Harmon is in his late 80s and still in a leadership role at The Rock Baptist Church setting the example of what a real man should be like.

Everybody needs a Harmon in their life. I am just glad I met him at a time when I very much needed someone to follow. KT

Ideas for success

Career, Family, Life

(1) Always be real.

(2) Always tell the truth.

(3) Do the right thing even when no one is watching.

(4) Always be respectful to others. Never gossip. You never know what someone else is going through.

(5) Always be a tither and give to help others because it keeps your heart tender and your mind clear.

(6) Walk without fear. Never be intimidated. Walk upright in all you do. Be full of joy each day.

(7) Be bold in everything you do.

(8) Listen twice as much as you talk.

(9) Clean your own closet, garage, office. It is almost spiritual.

(10) Listen to the Holy Spirit’s leading. It is that quiet voice in your spirit that is unmistakable.

Face-to-face is where the magic of business happens

Career

American Airlines had a commercial 10-12 years ago that was one of the best pro-business commercials of all time. The commercial showed the CEO having a meeting with every senior sales rep at the same time in the board room. He starts the meeting by handing out airline reservations to every sales rep to fly, of course, to meet face-to-face with every major account. He says to the group “We have let ourselves rely too much on email and phone calls, and we have lost touch with our business and our clients. Today is a new day at American Airlines. We are physically going to go see our clients and get them back.”  Someone in the room asked the CEO where he was going (thinking he was not going to actually follow his own instructions) and the CEO held up an airline reservation and said he was going to see their biggest client who just fired them and get the client back.”

The message: face-to-face is where the magic of business happens.

I could write about my own experiences on this exact subject, but the description of the commercial above really says it all. KT

The umbrella of God

Life

I am going to tell you what I believe about tithing.

I believe it is the umbrella of God, and I believe it is the greatest investment you will ever make.

In the Old Testament, the scripture is Malachi 3:10 and most importantly Malachi 3:11. I believe Malachi 3:11 is the umbrella of God.

Do you remember the Travelers Insurance commercials where it is raining and the red Travelers umbrella keeps folks from getting wet? The point of the commercial is that if you are insured by Travelers, you will be better protected.

I believe spiritually that tithing is much like that. It doesn’t mean you will never make a bad financial decision again, that you will always have an abundance of money, or that things will not go wrong in your financial life. In fact, we live in the real world and things do happen and bad decisions are going to happen. But, I believe over a long period of time you can look back and see God’s hand on you.

I believe tithing is the only situation in life where God literally says, if you tithe your income, I will fight the fight for you. All of the New Testament mentions that God gives you salvation, his word, his holy spirit, and says to you, go and I will be with you. The financial realm is different than all the other areas of our life; it’s probably because we have such a difficult time with money, and we find it so hard to let go and trust in this area.

Therefore, in the scripture listed above, Malachi 3:10 tells you what to do regarding tithing and Malachi 3:11 tells you what he will do for you. So, read 3:10 first and 3:11 reads as follows:  “And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes and he will not destroy the fruits of your ground, neither will your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of Hosts”

Picture an apple tree with the fruit hanging on the limbs and vines and then picture all the apples that fall to the ground and rot because they fell from the vine too early. Got the image in your mind?

The devourer he is speaking of at the beginning of 3:11 is Satan or anyone that wishes you harm. For me and for you, the fruit of our tree and our vine is what we do for a living and how we earn money. Keep in mind that Malachi 3:10 and 3:11 are talking about money, therefore the vine, the tree and the devourer are speaking about money. So again, the fruit on my vine and your vine is what we do for a living and how you earn money.

To my knowledge, which I will confess is very limited, this is the only place and the only part of our life that God says he will go before us and fight the battles for us.

I can attest that we have been tithers for many, many years, so trust me when I tell you that I have not always made the perfect financial decisions and choices. Every deal I am working on does not always close, and I make financial mistakes. That said, I believe if you are a tither you will get to the 5 yard line of life and look back over your adulthood and see that God was with you more times than he was not.

So, back to the umbrella image. It doesn’t mean you will not get wet, but I do believe that if you are a tither, God will keep a lot of the rain/issues off of you. Will you be completely dry and perfect, no, but you will be able to see that God was there at every turn, every decision, and every financial choice you make. KT

The speed of life

Life

When you are in high school, it seems like you will never graduate and move to the next phase of your life. Then college comes, and it seems that you will never finish your courses, get your diploma, and be free from school. Then, you marry and have children, and you wish your children could get to the age where they can dress themselves. Then comes grade school, middle school, high school and then their life becomes what I said in the first sentence of this post. It really happens that quickly. You turn around and you are my age and you wonder, how did this happen so quickly?

Have you ever seen the movie “Click” with Adam Sander? If you haven’t seen this movie, you should rent it and watch it because the message is so very powerful, and the ending of the movie is one of the best endings I have ever seen in a movie.

The movie is about a dad who wishes time would go faster and he would reach financial milestones in his life quicker. He is given this handheld device that lets you fast forward through days, weeks, months and years with a click of the button.  The problem is the handheld device learns your preferences and then automatically fast forwards you through events like the ones you had chosen in the past to skip. The fast forwarding through life begins to take control and the dad can’t stop it.  As you would expect, the dad gets older, and he realizes that he has fast forwarded through much of his life and missed it. The movie ends, and its ending is one of the best of all time.

He is given a second chance to get it right. He gets a do-over.

The message is that in real life there are no do-overs and no second chances to go back and relive a day, a week, a month or even a moment. Once the moment is gone, it’s gone forever.

So, go watch the movie and choose to make each moment matter. KT