Bob Bamford: Former Chairman and CEO of Banfield Television

[Exclusive interviews with leaders]

No one knows when we will die. However, anyone can choose their own epitaph if they wish. I've chosen mine.

I agree, it's really frustrating to think about your epitaph while you're still alive.

However, there is a distinct image in my heart and mind, which is both a glorious revelation and a great challenge to me: 100X.

It represents a hundredfold, and I took it from the parable of the sower in Matthew 13. I am an entrepreneur, and I want people to remember me as a seed that is planted in good soil and becomes a hundred times more fruitful. I want to live like that; I try to express my passion and my heartfelt commitment in that way; that's how I see my time on earth.

I hope that whether I live or die, I will be a symbol of productivity.

∼The above quote is taken from Bob. "The Second Half of Life: Change Your Game Plan, Go from Success to Extraordinary" by Bamford, Chinese translation by Yang Manru, Yage Publishing, Taipei, Taiwan, 2001

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From success to extraordinary

Bob. Bamford seems to get whatever he wants. As chairman and CEO of Buford Television, Inc., he has witnessed the family business grow from a small-town television station to a cable network across the United States.

However, in 1995, Bob wrote "Halftime" to record his search for meaning and direction in the second half of his life. Four years later, he sold the company and launched a series of innovative evangelistic ministries:

●Leaders Network(Leadership Network)—Provides information and promotes connections to church leaders seeking new breakthroughs. This ministry not only serves large church leadership teams, but also lay leaders, denominational leaders, and supports the next generation of emerging leaders.

●Leadership Training Network(Leadership Training Network) - A network that identifies, trains and mobilizes lay leaders in local churches.

●Peter Drucker Foundation(The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management) and the Drucker Archives and Institute—1988, Dick Schubert, Frances Hesselbein, and Bob. Bamford persuaded Drucker (a famous management guru, 1909-2005) to let the foundation borrow his name, adopt his ideas, and invite him to visit the foundation from time to time to promote it. The purpose of the foundation is to "guide social and humanistic institutions toward excellence." By organizing large-scale gatherings, publishing publications, and funding subsidies, the Dulac Charity Foundation helps social and humanistic institutions focus on their missions, operate pragmatically, and continuously innovate. , outstanding success.

●Ministry in the second half of life—Inspiring business leaders and professionals to embrace God’s calling and move from success to excellence. Bob has set up "My Halftime Coach" on the website www.halftime.org to help those who have read his book and agree with his ideas, but need further help in implementing them.

Bob was also active on the boards of the Young President's Organization, the World President's Organization, and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard. Later, he published "Game Plan, 1997" and "Stuck in Halftime: Reinvest in Your Only Life" (Stuck in Halftime, 2001).

Bob. Bamford's achievements in this life were based on his unwavering faith in God.

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Bob. Bamford said: "As a child, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and was given the great gift of faith. I never doubted that God existed or that Christ was who He claimed to be. "The biggest challenge in my life is not what I believe, but what is the use of what I believe and what is the effect of my faith."

Below is our interview—

Q: Please briefly describe your situation since starting business.

Although I have believed in the Lord since I was a child, I was also attracted to business. Therefore, serving the Lord and being in business became two pulling forces in my life. That is, do I want to do something of God? Or a worldly career?

I can’t pinpoint the exact day when this tug-of-war was decided, but I do know the exact moment when I didn’t want to be a pastor. At that time, I was in ninth grade at Hager Junior High School in Tyler, Texas. In Ms. Mamini's English class, a strong idea suddenly came to me: "You are not going to be a pastor, you are going to be in the television industry."

My mother was something of a pioneer in television. In 1954, when the television industry had just started in the country, she took the lead in establishing the first local television station in Taylor. So that's how I got into television.

God’s call was like the San Francisco trolley to me at that time. Underground cables are in operation all day long. Once the tram and the cable are connected, the tram will move forward; once they are not connected, the tram will stay put. Therefore, my spiritual side will always be walking underground, and it can only rise to the surface through writing worship services and teaching the Bible. This latent gestation period lasted from 20 to 25 years.

As the saying goes, teaching brings mutual benefits. No matter how much the students gain, the service of teaching the Bible makes me familiar with the Bible, which helps me a lot. As a result, I have a deeper understanding of the Bible, and I feel like a teacher with professional Bible training.

Q: So, does faith help your career?

After graduating from the University of Texas, I made a serious decision to "not be the boss's son." Although my mother was the founder and chairman of the local television station in Taylor City, when I first joined, I still started from the most junior position.

Until October 1970, after my mother passed away, I became a senior family member of the TV station and was promoted to general manager. At that time, I set an annual growth target of 10 to 15% for the company. The business strategy was to acquire and develop another TV station, and then recommend and sell it, which greatly increased the company's net worth.

Faith was always a parallel path for me at that time, just like what many people faced - faith was related to the church, reading the Bible, and doing good deeds, but business was still business. As long as you stick to the most basic things - don't do anything - don't have an affair, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, you seem to be a good Christian.

Frankly speaking, I am the best in the industry when it comes to sticking to fundamentals. In terms of my influence in the television industry, my testimony lies not in publicity but in relationships, the way I treat people.

Q: Did faith and career intersect at some point?

Anyone who is engaged in the media industry, especially the television industry, is bound to encounter various temptations. If you ever said, "I want to get into television, but I don't want to show anything that would displease God," that would be like trying to remove salt from the sea. It's impossible. Just think of TV talk shows, soap operas, or bloody and violent dramas to understand how much of a struggle this industry is.

It would be difficult for the cable television industry to survive without popular channels such as HBO, showtime, movie channels and the big screen. But more than half of the plots in these movies are R-rated, so you have to decide whether to go along with it or insist on what you can contribute to society? I always choose the latter. My faith makes me constantly examine myself: What can I contribute? What should I do to be a useful instrument for God?

Q: Was this problem what prompted you to change your career?

Yes. Life is seasonal, what works one season may not work the next. Therefore, many of the challenges that people face are how to adapt to the next season.

In my book The Second Half of Life, I describe life as a series of overlapping S-shaped curves. When you enter a new season of life or develop a new business, you may reach the downward part of the S-shaped curve. The situation may look bad. Maybe there is a problem with your interpersonal relationship. Maybe you are unfamiliar with the current situation. Not good at it.

If so, you've probably chosen the wrong path. It's like participating in a football match, the ball is intercepted, and points are deducted for mistakes. You're scrambling to make up for these mistakes, as if you're driving on a big upward bend in an S-curve, and suddenly, as the saying goes on bumper stickers say, "Anything can happen," you run out of gas.

Q: Speaking of adapting to next season, how do you do it?

For me, adaptation comes in several forms. When I was in my early twenties, the main adjustment was transitioning from being a student to being a father, in addition to learning about business and how to behave in the business world.

By about age thirty-five, adaptation becomes about finding a balance in life rather than being driven by business-related matters. At that time, I often asked myself: What would I lose in the process of gaining all this?

So, I set six life goals or directions for myself, which basically affected my future life journey.

First, serve God by serving others. I know this is God’s will and it is in line with the teachings of the Bible.

Second, make the company grow at a certain rate, make a profit of 10 to 25% per year, and be committed to achieving the highest goal.

Third, be loyal to your spouse and be determined to maintain your marriage. Treat each other with respect as guests instead of "competing with each other like soldiers."

Fourth, cultivate children to establish a good self-image and set an example to become a role model for children.

Fifth, lifelong learning in culture and intelligence - do not give up the right to be a student. Business people should avoid being in a "brain-dead state" after graduating from school.

Sixth, when the time comes, invest the money I earn in the most ambitious gospel ministry of my dreams.

I entered the "second half of my life" in my early forties. People in their early forties, if their business has been successful, usually start to feel that "the business has been done enough." Just like the subtitle of the book "The Second Half of Life": Change your game plan and move from success to excellence.

We live in an extraordinary time when many people are successful, at least from a middle-class perspective. They are successful academics, doctors, entrepreneurs or senior executives, etc. To be honest, if you are smart, diligent, and focused enough, it should not be difficult to become successful in America today.

Currently, there are many successful middle-aged people in the United States, and about 78 million people born after World War II are turning fifty. They are all asking and thinking: "Is this the end of life?"

Q: What happened to you in middle age?

I started thinking seriously about this issue in my early forties, and subsequently started a parallel career as a result. To be fair, achieving those lofty dreams is simply impossible in television. Business is business, you can change to another game, but you cannot change the common rules of the game.

If you plan to stay in the cable TV industry, you must broadcast MTV. We never showed it on our own TV station, but if we buy a system to show MTV, we must fulfill our contractual obligations, otherwise the public will protest. So you end up putting on R-rated movies and doing a lot of things that you would condemn in a Sunday sermon.

So, from a business perspective, my testimony is not to lie, not to cheat or steal, not to do the evil things that others might do—to stage pornographic or harmful videos—when I have a legitimate reason to choose “no.” No shows on MTV. But that still involves quite a lot of sin involuntarily and requires grace to cover it.

I think this is true for any career. If you were running a hotel business, would you let people who are not married live together? If you were Bill Marriott, a kind and loyal Mormon, would you run a business like Spectra Vision, where 80% of the profits come from adult films? There are similar moral conflicts in all walks of life, and I don't think anyone can ever completely escape them and achieve 100% purity.

Q: How do you reallocate and develop parallel careers?

Before starting to set up a parallel business, I consulted with other operators in the company one by one.

The first step was to talk to my two brothers. We each own one-third of the shares. I confessed, "I feel like God is calling me to do something different. I'm willing to reallocate over a period of time so that I go from 80 percent career, 20 percent ministry to 100 percent It’s eighty percent ministry, twenty percent business. I won’t let the company fail, but it won’t necessarily continue to grow.”

At that time, I had to face the fact that the company's annual growth rate was 28%, and it had been achieving such brilliant results for twelve years. It was all me who set the strategies, negotiated deals and other matters; I was the one who knew how to make money. Eggs of the goose.

I tried to ask myself, and I asked them: "If the growth of this business dropped from 28% a year to 5%, would you accept it?" I mean, that would be a huge loss of money - a lot of money. One million U.S. dollars.

My brothers were really kind and wise and forgiving enough and they said to me, "If you feel called to do that, we want to stand with you."

Then I went to the non-family executives in the company and said to them, "We're at a fork in the road and we have to choose one of these paths because I feel so strongly called to do what I've started. Maybe. We should sell the company and go our separate ways. Maybe you come up with a plan where I spend most of my time doing other things and you run the company." That's what they did.

That was around 1984, and for the next fifteen years I became chairman of the board, setting basic policies, personnel arrangements, setting standards, and serving as an advisor. As for the daily operation of the company, it is done by them. However, we eventually sold the company in 1999.

Q: Are you happy that you made that decision?

During that time, the company's annual growth rate dropped to nine percent. So, I often ask myself, "Am I willing to make a much smaller net profit for myself, my brothers, and non-family executives than before?" I may succeed in doing what God has called me to do, Might as well screw up. Who knows? However, I still have some regrets in my heart, after all, it is a very considerable amount.

I talked to Dulac about this once. He said, "Yes, regret is inevitable. But if you hadn't, you wouldn't have been able to live the kind of life you wanted to live during those fifteen years, and there wouldn't have been a network of leaders serving the big churches. things, as well as the Leadership Training Network, the Second Half of Life Seminar, and the Dulac Charity Foundation; not to mention writing best-selling books such as "The Second Half of Life", "The Second Half Winner" and "The Second Half Breakout".

Q: Could you please explain the concepts in the book "The Second Half of Life".

In the book, I use a three-game game to illustrate that this is what most people experience in middle age. The first game is very tense. What most people pursue is how to succeed. The "second half of life" means that you have more choices. Success allows you to make various choices and plan for the rest of your life. Then, the second half is where you now at least have a chance to reallocate your resources and time.

"The Second Half of Life" has sold 170,000 copies in the United States without advertising, which shows that many people are asking such questions. I came to the conclusion that 80 or 90 percent of people are "stuck in the second half." They seem to desire the extraordinary; to some extent, they have absorbed biblical truths, attended church seriously, and have a heart to give and serve. god.

Everyone has a calling, which is the spiritual DNA God has put into them (see Ephesians 2:10). After the rather heavy teachings of the first three chapters of Ephesians, in chapter 4 verse 1, Paul says, "Live in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called."

However, eighty or ninety percent of people ignore their calling, they say, "Oh, that's for the church," and they don't actually translate success into excellence.

Q: How can we integrate faith into business life?

It's really hard. When you reach the second half of your life, you have three choices. The first is more success. The theory is, "I'm this kind of person; I just know this stuff; it makes me a lot of money; I get a lot of recognition; I'm a star in this business; I've been in this business long enough, twenty or two Fifteen years." They basically retreated into success.

The second option is to gradually push themselves towards what they consider "extraordinary", whether it is building a house in Mexico; or like me, helping large churches to build efficiency. This is what the Leaders Network has been focusing on for the past seventeen years. .

The third option is the leisure world, leading a variety of retirement lifestyles. To use an academic analogy, I think most people pretty much stop at old class notes by the time they are forty or fifty. This doesn't work in the shopping mall. "Old class notes" is equivalent to thinking that just because you are an expert in a certain field in the past, you will surely sit on the throne in the future; you only use 50% of your energy to scare others. Many people This is true for everyone.

Q: What about retirement and leisure?

Should Christians retire?

Many people think that “retirement means leisure,” but biblical metaphors have once again challenged my view of this. On October 10, 1988, I wrote "My Life Goals." This goal is unique to me and focuses on the balanced development of the whole person. Ten years ago, I carefully studied two parables in the Bible again, and they had a great impact on me, namely, the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:18-24) and the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30).

We have been making different investments throughout our lives and looking at life with an eternal perspective. The life we are living now is just a brief glimpse. One must say: What kind of life am I willing to live compared with eternity and a fleeting glimpse? Everyone must have this vision and know that they will have to answer to God for their lives in the future.

Think about it, when I reach the end of my life and face the Lord face to face, it will be like handing in a final exam and I must answer two basic questions. First: "Bob, how have you treated Jesus in this life?" Second: "How have you used the gifts I gave you in this life? This gift is not what I gave to Graham or Mother Teresa. I gave it to you Bob. !”

As for "retirement is leisure", I think it is like a person getting a thousand taels of silver but completely burying it, not investing himself in the ministry of serving others, or only setting aside a small part of himself to participate in the church, which is like giving money. Two percent of your income, it doesn't cost a lot to do that.

As for me, I was influenced by the parable of the sower. I think of four types of soil: roadside, shallow soil, thorny soil, and good soil. I think most people’s soil belongs to the third type in the parable. The thorns represent the life of Christ in the believers and cannot properly take root and sprout. As Jesus said: “He who was sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, and then there is the world.” The deceitfulness of care and money chokes the Word and makes it unfruitful.”

The American experience is in many ways a Christian experience, just like Europe. However, it has many "thorns" that are not strong. Life is busy, busy, busy, or life is occupied by money. Jesus often used the word "deceive" to describe money, meaning that it promises to deliver something it cannot. Money can deceive people, making it appear real but is not real at all.

Jesus next describes the fourth type of soil, which is for the purposes of the Kingdom of God. Everyone has the ability to make good use of life thirty times, fifty times and a hundred times. And me? I want to be soil that can be a hundred times stronger.

So, in my early forties, I reallocated seventy to eighty percent of myself toward that goal. When I turned sixty-one, I sold the company and was almost 100 percent allocated to that goal. In addition to setting aside some money for myself and my family, I plan to invest all my money in God's work, so that when I reach the age of seventy-five, I hope to be penniless. passed away.

Q: Andrew Carnegie said:

It is a sin to die rich, do you agree?

Carnegie once exercised great influence. If the vast majority of people in South America and Africa live on a dollar a day or less, you don't have to look back in history to see that the situation in the United States is an exception. Let’s not talk about the rich. Looking at the middle class alone, most people in the United States are middle class. Compared with any other era in history, the United States is a special case. Carnegie said: If you have more money than you need, you have three options:

First, leave it to your children, but he believes that it is not appropriate to do this beyond a certain level, because you will hinder your children from pursuing their own lives.

Second, leave it to a lawyer or estate representative, but in doing so you are leaving money to be distributed to others who do not have the same calling. I don’t think God calls lawyers to carry out our calling, especially after we die.

Third, while you are still alive, use all the talents and abilities God has blessed you with and invest your money in gospel ministry.

I don't know what other options there are. Of course, it can be left to the government. That will happen naturally without any arrangements. In my opinion, paying taxes is a way for wealthy people not to take the initiative to help others, but to push it to the government's social work units to take care of others.

Fifteen years ago, I changed the core thing in my life from making more money to serving Christ. However, this does not mean that I have left my career, it just means that I have invested less in my career. When I turned sixty-one, I began to want to devote myself full-time to good works and serve God. Even if I had a small stake in a closely held company, I would not be able to devote myself fully to ministry. So I sold the business, used it for Kingdom purposes, and devoted my life to it.

Q: What advice do you have for young Christians who want to go into business?

I hope young people know that life has its seasons. Season 1 will likely fall during a very stressful time of getting married, raising children and having a career. The most important thing this season may well be your third priority—career. Because the first two items allow you to see clearly "who you are" and "how you work", which will help you achieve your goals.

However, at some point, each of us asks, "Is this the end of life? Where is the finish line in this race?" The finish line should be moved forward, as it was for me in my forties. Reallocate yourself and gradually transfer yourself to a godly career? Or should we stay in the business and let it continue to possess us?

In my opinion, real success belongs to those who go from successful to extraordinary. I truly believe that the second half of life should be devoted to extraordinary things, rather than still caring about points in the race, because you have already crossed the finish line and are way ahead.

This will lead you to your next question, which is: "What can I do that is good for others?" Don't just live a life of laying up treasures on earth, but store up treasures in heaven. The successful people I see who develop parallel careers in middle age don't say, "One day when I'm too old to do what I'm doing anymore," "When I retire," "When I'm retired. When the system forced me to retire, I went to serve others.” Most people who say "what I want to do one day" can't do it. They talk about it, but very few actually do it.

So here's my advice: There's more to life than career success - which I was - in fact, it's much more than that, and career success is seasonal for most people. Therefore, you need to know your future clearly and don’t wait until you are sixty-five years old to start reallocating yourself.

＊Taken from the book Corporate Giants: Personal Stories of Faith and Finance, by Bob Darden, Robert Darden, and PJ Richardson, published by FH Revell, 2002, the Chinese version was translated by Mo Zhuoyijuan and reviewed by Gao Lili , will be published by Eagle Press in the near future and is published with permission.