[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the Wealth Builders podcast. I'm Billy Epahard, and on this show you're going to hear from industry leaders in business, real estate and investing. Our wealth builder coaches and myself are excited to teach you how to make sense of making money for making a difference. Okay, let's get started.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hello.
[00:00:25] Speaker C: Welcome to this week's Wealth Builders podcast. I'm Karen Conrad Metcalf, vice president of wealth Builders, and I am so grateful that you chose to join us today.
We've got an amazing topic, especially going into 2024. I think all of us looking at our businesses, our real estate, even our personal lives can say that this would be a great year to see some miracles. And so my guest today is David Lapp, who is the CEO of Blessings of hope, and he's going to be sharing with us on miracles. David, do you want to say hi to everybody?
[00:01:05] Speaker D: Hello, everybody. Excited to join Karen here just to share some of the things that God has done in our lives the last number of years and just share what God's been doing.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: That is awesome. And David is one of our speakers at the upcoming Wealth Builders conference, February 16 to the 18th. David, you are certainly a favorite of people. It's so inspiring. And there are still some tickets left. If you want to attend in person or live stream, you can go to.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Forward slash events.
[00:01:39] Speaker C: And we're building up a lot of excitement with this conference. I know it's going to be the best yet. And by the way, David, I don't even think I told you this, but Lance Walnow is joining us this year as well, so we just added him on. And of course, you've known Lance for a long time. That's how we initially connected is through Lance. So today's topic for this podcast is miracles in the marketplace, how to trust God for abundance. David, I can't think of anybody better qualified to share on this than.
[00:02:15] Speaker D: Yeah, it's one thing to experience miracles, but if you don't need a miracle, you'll usually not experience one.
What we've found is the best way to experience a miracle is trust God to the point where he has to come through or you're done. And that's not always the easiest place to be.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: No, I've been around you guys. I've had the privilege of hearing some of these conversations. And you have a way to look at things where if you feel like God has shown you to do something and it takes a miracle and there's a lot of cost to do it, you kind of reason things through to get you guys in a position working together as a team, can you take us through that thought process? If you get a really big vision, how do you guys handle this and see it to fruition?
[00:03:08] Speaker D: Well, we've been accused of trusting God too much, but I have not found a better source to trust. And if you think about it, if God calls you to something, who are we to try to educate God? What's possible? And as we go through life, we have learned to, instead of trying to tell God that his plans are unreachable, we ask him how to reach them. And as he shows us the next steps, we take that step. And then we look back and it's like, okay, how did we get to where we are today? And we recognize that it's because God took us there. And over the years, we've heard so many people talk about they had this calling from God. They knew it was of God. They fought it for ten years. And when they finally gave in and decided to follow God, it worked. And we had this discussion, why wait ten years? If we know God called us to something? Why don't we step out in faith in that direction and let God lead us through it, rather than try to rationalize everything out and do a feasibility study for God to see if it's feasible? If he called us to do it, let's take that first step that he's showing us. And it's amazing how often we just were able to walk right through the next obstacles and just experience a miracle in the midst of it.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Wow, that's so know, it reminds me a lot of how she, she was like, okay, yes. Now how is this going to happen? And you guys have something similar. And it just kind of dawned on me as you were talking, David, a lot of people listening may not know blessings of hope or even understand what you do. So can you give us a little recap and then share just even? We are talking about a statistic of growth that you've had in just three years, but where you started and where you are today.
[00:05:05] Speaker D: Yeah, so blessings of hope. We are a food distribution center for nonprofits. So we're the sponge, if you will, between the large corporations that have semi load volumes of food available at no cost and the nonprofit food pantries that need ten boxes of that semi load.
The opportunity that we saw back in 2007, 2008, somewhere back in there was these large corporations have large volumes of food available that they got to get rid of. But their easiest option has been the landfill because you have to take volume hassle free, fast and get it out of their way. And they can't deal with 50 organizations every day. It's not who they are, it's not what they do. So for them, it's cheaper to just send it to the landfill and get rid of it. And then on the other hand, we have the nonprofits that need this food to reach out to the community. And their best option at that point had been the government run system, which is so restrictive on sharing the gospel.
So what blessings of hope is, is we're very kingdom focused. We're focused on it, on empowering the organizations to be the hands and feet of Jesus, to share food as a tool, and not as the next handout program that people become dependent on. And in 2016, we started hiring, or we hired our first employee outside of the founder team, which was ten years after we started. At that point, our operational budget was $195,000 for the year that was for.
2016 was first that we hired anybody. We just came through our 2023 calendar year. Our operational budget was $8.7 million.
And we are at 104 employees now. Beginning of 2020, we were at eight employees. Right now, we're at 104. And it's mind blowing to see what God did the last couple of years.
I'm in the midst of it. Day to day, I am in the meetings discussing where we're going, and it feels like we're just getting started with the opportunity that's out there. It feels like there's no limits on how fast we can grow, except for the fact of how fast can we put people and infrastructure in place to continue to grow and grow sustainably?
It's just been amazing.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: That is amazing. You think that it took ten years for you guys to even hire one employee, and then it's like God is fast tracking everything. And so in that, what advice would you give people that are looking for that type of growth in their organization?
What can we do to position ourselves? Like you have learned to position yourself, to be able to take this type of growth and really make a difference with what God's called you to do.
[00:08:04] Speaker D: The best advice I can give you is make sure, number one, that your relationship with God is solid, that you are building that relationship with God on a daily basis, to the point where you can actually trust that what he's showing you is what he's called you to. I like to see my relationship with God similar to a wifi connection on a computer.
With my computer, as long as I have Internet connection, I have access to unlimited data, I have access to anything that's out there. And as soon as I lose that connection, I have access to what's on my computer with my relationship with God. If I have the connection with God, I can pray about something, and God will show me step by step what the next step is. And I have that relationship to where I can trust what he's showing me is where he's actually taking me. And if the connection is broken between God and I, it's usually not on God's end that broke that connection. It's usually on my end. And being intentional of getting back into that relationship with God is what allows me to do what I do.
If I could choose between data and God, I would definitely go with what God is showing me, because I do trust that what God is showing me is where he's taking us as an organization. Now, I do value the data as well, but the relationship is, I would say, by far the number one priority in my life. And looking back over the years, one of the ways that I have built that is I have listened to audio bible and gospel music between 60 and 70,000 hours in the last 15 years.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Oh, wow.
[00:09:50] Speaker D: What I'm discovering is subconsciously, I have programmed my brain that God is enough, that God has the answers. And there's so much good music out there. There's so much listening to the audio Bible probably 15 times, 1520 times, and just getting that in you, where you actually live and you actually believe the message. And there's so many times I would wake up during the night and I would hear a specific Bible verse, or I would wake up to a certain song. And make sure if you do that, if you're listening to music, make sure that you listen to something that you want to meet in your future.
Don't listen to country music where your wife left you, your dog's dead, and everything's going down, because that's what you will meet in your future.
Guard the diet of your mind.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: Wow, that is so good. I'm writing that down. Guard the diet of your mind.
That's really good, David, and what great advice, because I think as organizations grow, the pressures, you might say, or the amount of work that has to be done increases, and it's a temptation for a lot of people to like, oh, I'm not going to spend time with the Lord today because I've got all this work. So what advice do you have for us if we are feeling that? I think there's people listening today that are like, yeah, that's exactly what I'm dealing with. How do you keep that balance and keep God first in your life?
[00:11:31] Speaker D: You have to delegate the responsibilities of the day to day and focus your time as a leader on leading the people that are responsible for the day to day operations.
As a founder, it's usually hard to let go of the day to day because that's what you enjoy doing. But what I've discovered is that if I am too deep into day to day operations, I'm not there to see the big picture. And I get bogged down in the details that really don't matter that much. That our team, if we let them, they actually have what they need to carry that out. And as we continue to grow, it becomes more and more important that I stay out of the day to day operations and I put people in place to take care of that, people that I trust, people that have a heart for the mission. And if you think about it, they want to see the organization succeed just as much as I do. So what keeps us as leaders from giving them responsibility? And then with responsibility, you also have to give them the authority, because if you just give them responsibility, they get frustrated. If you just give them the authority, it tends to become a dictatorship. You have to delegate responsibility and authority in equal levels so they're able to carry out what needs to be carried out and have the authority to push it through.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Wow, that is so good. Wow. What nuggets of wisdom here, David, and a follow up question I have with that is when we do that as leaders, we delegate. We give people responsibility and authority. We know that sometimes mistakes are made or things are not done the way that we might think we could do it. And I think that's where a lot of entrepreneurs kind of get. They hit their ceiling. That lid is because they're not willing to take that risk.
But you have learned how to take that risk. And so just share with us, if we're nervous about somebody messing something up.
[00:13:45] Speaker C: Is it going to happen?
[00:13:47] Speaker D: They will, yeah.
They're not going to do it the way I would do it every time, and that's fine. They don't have to.
There's a quote, a changed imposed is a change upposed. I think it's from the who moved my cheese book. And if you can include your team in coming up with a strategy, they will own it at a whole different level than if you just tell them, this is how we're going to do it, and you oversee them, if you will.
What we have found that works is if we can include the team that's responsible to carry this out in the planning phases, they will have a whole different level of buy in than if we just tell them this is what the next thing that you have to work on. And, yeah, they'll make mistakes, but that's awesome.
There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. Like I told my team, if you can make a mistake bigger than what God can fix, that we're in the wrong business, because that's so good. I've made so many mistakes over the years. But you learn from your mistakes and you take the next level.
There's so many opportunities to make mistakes. I don't have time to make them all myself. I have to let some of the other team make some as well. Because if we can work together on making these mistakes and figuring this out, then we can grow faster as an organization. Mistakes are not a bad thing.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness. What a great perspective. And when somebody does make a mistake.
[00:15:20] Speaker C: How do you deal with that?
[00:15:21] Speaker B: Because I think this is something that a lot of us can learn from to get comfortable with people making a mistake and not to, I guess, come down too hard on them.
[00:15:32] Speaker D: How do you deal with it? Well, let me give you my definition of a mistake, okay. Mistake is a well thought out plan that didn't go the way you planned it. It didn't go the way you thought it would go. That's what I see as a mistake. And I like to look at it as if our team, if they step out and try something and it works great, I like to come behind them and push them forward in that. If they step out and try something and it didn't work, I'm looking for ways where I can own that and help them walk through that with integrity rather than putting the blame on them. I try to take the blame on myself. Like, as a leader, how did I not communicate properly to you that this is what we were trying to accomplish here? And how can we together walk through this as a team instead of you messed up or you didn't do this right, and how can we? Let's walk through this together.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: Oh, wow. That is great. And I'm guessing that or expecting that that creates an environment where people feel that they can really contribute and they can be creative.
Probably takes the fear out of the workplace.
[00:16:44] Speaker D: It definitely does.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Wow, that's awesome.
Okay, let's switch gears here a bit and talk about the know, we hear so much, David, about there's food shortage. People are starving, which they are, and it's unfortunate. And you're really called God's put. You guys in a place where you're solving this issue.
But do we have a food shortage problem?
[00:17:12] Speaker D: No, we don't.
There's way too much money to be made by governments by keeping people in poverty.
And there is no reason anybody globally should be suffering from food insecurity. Half of the global food waste would end world hunger. I have seen statistics as low as 35% of global food waste would end world hunger. We're talking about resources that are already produced. They're in perfect quality condition. They're getting close to expiration date.
There is an unlimited amount of free food available if you can take volume, hassle free, fast. And the more we're digging into this, the more I'm convinced that there's no reason that anybody needs to be going hungry anywhere in the world because we have the resources. We just need to utilize them. And just for example, in the US, according to the USDA website, 30% to 40% of all food produced in America is wasted. And just a fraction of that would take care of the 50 million people in the US that are suffering from food insecurity. And it's not that we don't have the resources, it's just that we are wasting the resources. Just last week, I met with the local Lancaster county solid Waste Management Authority. And the gentleman I was talking to said, he said for 15 years they've been trying to figure out what they can do to address the food waste issue in this county, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. And he said that the model that he sees here at blessings of hope checks every one of their boxes that they were trying to figure out.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:18:53] Speaker D: And his question was, how can we push more food into blessings of hope? And I just told him, I said, getting food is not the problem. There is so much food out there. And he sees, they see it all the time with trucks backing up to the landfill and just dumping a semiload of perfect quality product into the landfill. And he said, exactly what I'm describing is why they do this is because they don't want to deal with 50 organizations every day. They don't want to deal with people digging through pellets in their warehouse, leaving a mess. It's not what they do. It's cheaper. Just get rid of it, send it to the landfill, they build it into their margins and move it on. But the other side of that equation is, if they can donate the food, not only don't they have to pay the landfill fees to dispose it, but they can also take a tax write off for it because they are donating a product that can be used and they can take a tax write off, which is a win win for everybody.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: Oh, that's just amazing. And that's where blessings of hope comes in, because you realized early on that you have to have the ability to take these semi loads all at once in, and then it's a matter of distribution. So, David, maybe just kind of share with us what happens when a semi truck pulls up to blessings of hope, what you're able to do today. But really, what is that next step? Where is your vision? Where's the vision God's given you for your place in helping solve world hunger?
[00:20:21] Speaker D: Yeah. So right now we have about 110,000 square foot, something like that in space here in Lancaster county. We also have a satellite location in Campbellsville, Kentucky that we started in 2020. But the whole food insecurity issue is a logistical issue. It is not an availability of product issue. There is an unlimited amount of free food available, but you have to take volume, hassle free, fast.
And then with all these different companies that we work with, we have over 200 organizations that we receive product from. And then on the nonprofit side, we have over 1400 organizations that we serve with that product. And we are the logistical warehousing distribution in between those two issues.
And what we're seeing is there's an unlimited amount of need on one side and there's an unlimited amount of free product on the other side. How fast can we build that supply chain in between there? How fast can we build the infrastructure to take the product to the need? Because the food waste issue in America, which is equivalent to 24% of everything that's in landfills, is food related product. There's millions of tons that gets composted or fed to animals or stuff like that that could be utilized. That issue, if we can steward it, if we can take the resources and steward them for God's kingdom, we can actually take more than take care of the world hunger issue. And yeah, world hunger is a multi hundred billion dollar a year issue that these governments are trying to figure out, if you will. But there's no solution that I see from a government level that's going to figure this out. It has to be taken private sector and community, and taking that product and just getting it out to the people.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: That need it, it's amazing. I know you do outreaches, you work with other organizations. If you find a need, you guys do disaster recovery. You do absolutely as much as you can with your infrastructure and the finances and really what God has called you to do. So, David, tell us how we can get connected with blessings of hope and then know what are some of your current projects that you are working on that we could come alongside you to help support to really bring this to the next level?
[00:22:55] Speaker D: Yeah. The latest project that we're working on is food dehydration. We started early last year just getting into what taking fresh produce, giving it a shelf stable life, is a process of dehydration. According to our research, we can salvage over 90% nutritional value, shrinks to less than 20% of volume, and we can give fresh produce that is ripe, that is literally a waste product because it's ripe, a five plus year shelf life. And what we do is test that nutritionally, make a mineral balance to balance that out as a meal, and then pack it into a soup blend. And we sent into Haiti here in October. And the beauty of the dehydrated product is not only does it have a five plus year shelf life, we were able to, because of the density of nutrition, we had a pilot that offered to fly it into a grass strip in Haiti and bypass all the corruption at the ports. And we were actually able to get it to the people because we didn't have to go through the ports with a container and two pallets of product, had equivalent feeding value of a full sum out of fresh. And all you had to do is add water and cook it for 20 to 30 minutes, and you have a nutritious pot of soup. And there was one pastor in Haiti that oversees a school of a thousand children. He got two buckets, and he plans to ration that for a year. He doesn't want to waste all his nutrition in the first few weeks, so he's going to ration it out over the next year so the students can have nutrition every month through the season. We're looking at two buckets, but it's just one of those things where we do what we can and we let the rest up to God. But in the meantime, we did buy a 52,000 square foot facility where half of it will be set up for a ministry selection center, which is a location where organizations come in, select food that they need to restock their pantries, and the other half will be set up for a large scale food processing. And our goal there is to process large scale dehydration, as well as probably some freezing as well, where we flash freeze it and put it in bags. So that's probably going to be a part of that whole project as well, because we're going to be able to process quite a bit faster than our dehydrator is going to be able to dry it. Even though the dehydrator we have now has eight carts, 30 trays on a cart, where this one's going to have over 150 carts. So it'll be quite a bit bigger. But there's so much capacity that we're going to have to process that we're probably not going to be able to dry everything.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Oh my goodness. I mean, just in what you described with mean that food can go all over the world and really help in areas here, even in the United States. It's hard to believe, but there are children that are going hungry. And so this is amazing. It's like God has shown you how to solve this problem and it's getting it out there. So I know a lot of people listening are really inspired by this. So, David, if somebody wants to donate to your organization to help you with this vision, how can they do that?
[00:26:32] Speaker D: Blessingsof.com. We have donations through our website. You can also mail a check Blessingsof Po box five six seven effort of PA 17522.
Yeah, you can also donate through like donor advised funds. We're set up with most of the major donor advised platforms. You can do non cash assets, you can do cryptocurrency.
The benefit of doing stocks or non cash assets is you can take the value of the appreciated item without having to pay taxes on the appreciated item. Just for example, as we had one gentleman that when he was in his boss put one dollars a day in the company's stock for a year. So he had a $365 investment in the company. He is now in his seventies. He doesn't need the money. But this investment is worth $26,000. I think it was. He said if he sells the investment, he can donate around $17,000. But if he donates the stock, he can donate the full $26,000. Because we're a nonprofit, we don't have to pay that capital gains tax and those types of strategic donations, we can expand the impact of the donation. So yeah, we are open to all kinds of non cash donations.
Check, cash, credit card, of course, cryptocurrency, there's multiple ways to get involved.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: That's so great. Again, that's blessingsofhope.com. And David's going to be speaking again at the upcoming wealth Builders conference. He always has an amazing presentation, lots of pictures. I think that's so great to know what is actually happening in this organization. And so, David, this has been awesome. I know that I am inspired, which I always am when I have a conversation with you. And I know that our audience is as well. So again, join us in Denver, February 16 to the 18th. Learn more about
[email protected].
Events David, thank you so much for being on the Wealth Builders podcast today. Any final words for our audience?
[00:28:49] Speaker D: The Wealth Builders weekend is always a highlight for us for the year. We got introduced in 2018 through Lance wall now, and it's just been a whole crazy group of people that don't help us think smaller, they help us think bigger. And with God and connections like this, it's just amazing what can happen. And for those of you that have met us before, we're actually planning on bringing our wives this year so you'll get to meet them. And we are very excited to see you here at the conference.
[00:29:24] Speaker C: Awesome.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Well, we can't wait. And so thank you, David. Thank you to our wonderful wealth Builders family. We are looking forward to seeing all of you in person or on live stream February 16 to the 18th. God bless you and make it amazing rest of the day.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Wealth Builders podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please rate and review the show. You want to learn more about who we are, visit our
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