Flow Construction

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I grew up in Goose Creek, South Carolina, which is a suburb just outside of

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Charleston. It was a couple of months before Lipscomb started. I came, I loved it.

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The ladies were beautiful.

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They didn’t cuss, they didn’t drink.

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This is somewhere I can find someone like my mom one day.

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God wove that story way back when I was 18, and I had no idea.

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He just called me to Lipscomb.

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My grandfather was a developer, and I always admired him and kind of got

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into construction around the age of 16.

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Found out about Flow Construction when I was 24.

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I had a friend that had a project management job at Flow Construction,

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and he hated it. He did not enjoy anything about it.

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And he described it to me and I said, “That is the perfect job.

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Can I help you find another job? And when you get that other job, will you

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introduce me to the owners?” I told them, “I want this job.”

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My wife was actually an interior designer at the time. She knew Brad.

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She hooked us up, said we were going to try it, realized it was a good fit.

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Now I see it

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as God’s path in what He had wanted for me and my

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family.

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I’m Alan Lindsey, and I’m Vice President of Flow Construction.

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Been there for a little over 30 years.

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So we’re a $50 million general contractor.

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We had a mission statement that the original founder wrote.

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None of us could recite it. So the four of us talked about it together.

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We went home, we prayed about it, we thought about it, and then we ended up with

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building relationships, all to the glory of God.

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So there were three owners at that time.

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I was a peon owner. I owned 5%. My hands were

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tied. I didn’t really have a say.

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We were heavily focused on construction when I first started.

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It was like construction, construction, construction.

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It was disjointed. It wasn’t where we met weekly and

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talked about, where do we want to go as a company? That just didn’t happen.

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We just had our nose down to the grindstone, and we were working.

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I’m putting in the hours. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m losing bids.

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And so that was tough. I think it’s because the focus was on

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success, money, profits.

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We were young and aggressive and just worked hard. We were just hard workers.

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In spite of that, God still blessed us and protected us and grew a

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company.

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What mattered most to the partners in my mind, and I saw it clearly, and which I

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thought was different than any other contractor that I interviewed with, was that

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they had faith. We weren’t wearing it on our sleeve every day.

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We all three loved the Lord, but we all served Him

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separately.

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I think there was this,

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“Hey, if you talk too much about God, the business will fall apart.

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Keep them kind of separate. Don’t let that interfere with the harsh

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realities of business,” and construction is a harsh business.

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And that’s just the way it was. It worked fine, but we didn’t have relationships.

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We didn’t have accountability.

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“Building relationships, all to the glory of God.”

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Analyze that a little bit more. We do it with our clients, obviously.

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We do it with our vendors and our subcontractors.

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But the first people, you got to think about your employees first.

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I didn’t realize I had that out of order.

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I think you get promoted to a position because

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it’s something that other people don’t want to do.

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God, I love him. Brad took that reluctantly.

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He’s a smart cookie, smarter than he appears. We just felt like he was the guy.

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I am President of Flow Construction, which sounds weird to even say

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because I started as near the bottom.

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I think he’d give it up today if he could. I don’t think we’re going to let him.

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He’s being obedient.

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I think that’s a servant role. One of the

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things that we wanted to do differently is we wanted to meet and

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actually talk to one another and pray together.

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And where do we want to go? What are we doing this for?

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Somewhere, God got a hold of our hearts, and we went from success to

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significance.

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I knew as soon as I got here,

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this is a place I wanted to be. What Flow’s about,

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more so than just this isn’t a job. To me, this is a

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family.

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That’s been a large area where I’ve been able to grow with Flow.

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Relationships instead of just people as numbers, as contracts,

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as data. I served in Montana. I worked on nuclear missiles.

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So in the military, that works very well. I was a number.

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I was a result of getting things done.

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But what we do differently today is that we focus on our people.

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If we take care of our employees, they’ll take care of the clients.

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They’ll take care of the subs. They’ll take care of the vendors.

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When Brad and I started doing jobs together, talking together,

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meeting together, we would talk about God, and we’d talk about each other,

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about our struggles, our homes, our wives, our

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children.

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They know all these things about Amy and my boys and what we’re into,

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and they genuinely care.

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It’s about relationships. We’ve already built relationships, but it should be

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about more than just a work relationship.

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I don’t think anything that’s worth having comes

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easy.

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Well, we still run a construction company.

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It’s got to be done in a way where you make money, and you run it

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efficiently, and you do it well.

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But I think the difference is we think of how is this

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impacting our employee’s life.

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I

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had declined to go on a family vacation because I needed to be here at work

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And I remember telling Bubba, and this is before Bubba’s an owner.

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We were talking and he’s like, “Oh yeah, the family just left,” and he’s like,

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“What are you doing here?”

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And I was like, “Well, I mean, I got a job to do.” And he’s like, “Yeah, and you

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got a family you got to take care of.” He kicked me off and sent me to a

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vacation.

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When I come in front of that computer screen, I say a prayer every day.

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I say, “God, help me to be effective and efficient in my day so I can go home and

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be the husband and father that I’m called to be.”

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The business didn’t fall apart. And in fact, I would say

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it’s the exact opposite because now their

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employees and their subcontractors, I mean,

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we work hard for them

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because we love them.

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Because we’ve experienced their love for us.

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We show our love for them by serving them really well.

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It’s more friendship. It’s more

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love.

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We’ve had a lot of employees go through hard times.

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When that happens, it is so neat to see how our

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team pitch in and want to help.

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The four guys that run this company, I mean, they are servants,

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and they want to help any way they can.

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It’s not about

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money. It’s just, how can we help? If that’s our time, if that’s

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our wisdom, whatever that is, I mean, they’re willing to share them.

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Bubba and I have been to Honduras.

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They find people in the community that have the land, and we build them a

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house.

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So we go down there to build houses.

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It’s the

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mission, but we have devos every morning and every

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evening. We have people getting up and sharing their heart.

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You can’t be of service in any easier way.

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A week-long paid trip to hang out with people that you like, that you respect.

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One of the employees got back. He looked at us and he said,

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“We went down here as a group of

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employees, and we came back as brothers.”

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That’s the why.

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We have 45 employees. There’s anywhere from 17

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to 20, their first language is Spanish, that work for

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us

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that I cannot have a conversation with.

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I’ve heard people say, “They’re in America, they need to learn English.” Hmm.

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Have you ever been at a restaurant where the person you’re talking to

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has no idea what you’re saying? You look them in the eye and you say,

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“Como se llama?”

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All of a sudden, you see this smile.

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There’s this one lady that was working at a car wash place, and she looks so sad

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every time I go in. So I learned the Spanish word for smile,

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sonrie. And I would go, “Sonrie.” Every time I

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drove in my truck, she would go.

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I want that with my employees.

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My name’s Emily Daniel. I own a business called Spanish Lessons with Emily D,

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and we teach adults how to speak Spanish here in Nashville, locally and

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virtually as well. In the first class, I went around and asked everybody, “Why do

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you want to learn Spanish?” And I got around to one of the

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students, Brad Ellis, and his reason really stood out to me

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because he said, “I want to learn Spanish to share the gospel of Jesus

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Christ.”

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I’ve led prayers in front of the company.

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But that first one, I can tell you, I wrote the prayer down.

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I was like, “I got to do this.” So I wrote it down in Spanish, and man, I

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butchered that thing, but I tried the best I could praying.

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I think that really makes a difference to the employees, and a lot of them have

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watched him learn Spanish. So they’ve seen him go from nothing to pretty much

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fluent, and I think it really has made an impact on them.

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I probably did look like a fool up there.

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It was worth it.

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Four owners is not probably ideal.

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Four owners having the same goal is beautiful.

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We came together through a common purpose,

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and that was to see

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Jesus be the king of our business.

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Francis of Assisi taught this phrase, “Predique el

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evangelio todo el tiempo, y cuando sea necesario,

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use palabras.” Preach the gospel all the time,

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and when necessary, use words. I just want it to continue to be a

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company that honors God first, that its people

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feel appreciated.

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I still think our best days are ahead of us, and we just see ourselves as a conduit

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of letting God’s blessings,

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he allows us to just pass through us to be his hand and feet.

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After all the stuff we’ve had to do, man.

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El Señor, gracias por este día. Gracias por la

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gente aquí y en Texas. Gracias por

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tu reino. Gracias por como tu

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ayúdanos en cada día. Gracias por

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nuestros empleados, para nuestras familias.

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Gracias por Jesucristo. Que diferencia él hace

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en nuestras vidas. En el nombre de

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Jesucristo, amén.