The Business & Faith Podcast®

The only real answer to a bad day is a question: now what?

In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub talks with Derek Volk, president and CEO of Volk Packaging in Biddeford, Maine, the corrugated box company his grandfather founded 59 years ago. Derek explains why he tells his team that the customer pays them, not him, and what happened when his company spent its first Volk Cares Day serving the community: of 106 employees, two did not show. He describes running a business like a baseball season, where a lost customer and a major new account can land in the same week. He talks openly about the faith behind his calm, the debt he took on for two large machines just as the economy slowed, and the question he asks at work and at home: now what? It is a practical case for calculated risk from the author of Go for Third.

Chapters:

00:00 The Customer Pays Your Paycheck
00:26 Meet Derek Volk
01:11 The People Make the Company
03:37 Known for Loving Your Neighbors
04:40 The First Volk Cares Day
11:00 Hiring for Attitude
12:36 The Resource You Cannot Make More Of
17:01 Running a Business Like a Baseball Season
20:24 Faith in a Bigger Picture
23:11 Upset Is Not the Same as Freaking Out
25:10 After the Boom: The Mouse in the Milk
27:30 When Life Gets Hard: Now What?
30:02 Go for Third: Taking Calculated Risks
34:08 Closing Thoughts

Links:

Derek Volk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekvolk/
John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
Dataliction: https://dataliction.com
Go for Third by Derek Volk: https://goforthird.com
Volk Packaging: https://volkboxes.com
Honor a veteran on the Volk Packaging Heroes Wall: https://volkboxes.com/heroes-wall

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

Your team can hit the target for 90 days, but the habits underneath it decide whether the results stay.

Rebecca Stahly started at Vahala Foam in Elkhart, Indiana, as an office manager 29 years ago, after taking a receptionist job as a young mom who could not go to college. In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub talks with her about why her team kept hitting targets in bursts and sliding back, and why she stopped managing outcomes and started building the habits that produce them. She ran the habits on herself for three months before asking her managers to try them. Rebecca also talks about the promotion she felt ill-equipped to take, the identity questions that still follow her without a degree, and the faith that has driven her more than her goals over the last five to 10 years. Her test for any practice is simple: if it feels peaceful, it is probably right.

Chapters:

00:00 Cold Open
00:35 Welcome and Introducing Rebecca Stahly
01:24 Results That Came in Bursts
03:39 Testing the Habits on Herself First
06:18 Going Up the Mountain Before the Team
07:55 Personal Habits, Work Habits, and a Tracker
10:10 Core Habits for Every Role
12:44 Education Through Experience
17:06 Where the Boldness Came From
19:35 Faith as the Driving Force
23:57 The Promotion She Felt Ill-Equipped For
29:56 Starting the Day With God at 4:15 a.m.
32:22 If It Feels Peaceful, It's Probably Right
33:01 Closing Thoughts

Links:

Rebecca Stahly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-stahly-412a8bb2/
Vahala Foam: https://www.vahalafoam.com
John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
Dataliction: https://dataliction.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

Your life deserves a business plan before your organization ever gets one.

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Kevin Bein never served in the military, and he says so plainly. In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub talks with Kevin Bein, President and Director of The Longbow Foundation, a nonprofit that helps combat veterans transition from active duty to civilian life. Kevin starts with the problem every small business owner runs into: you are the bottleneck of your own success, and growing past it means trusting people to fail inside guardrails. Then the conversation turns personal. Kevin describes the mistake of doing everything for everyone else, and the business plan for life he wrote out of Proverbs and Romans to find his way back. He explains why purpose holds steady while vision has to keep moving, why prayer sits inside his daily routine, and why there is no maintenance mode.

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Chapters:

00:00 Burnout From Putting Everyone Else First
00:32 Meet Kevin Bein and The Longbow Foundation
01:17 The Bottleneck and the Guardrails
05:54 Give People the Lead on Their Own Ideas
07:17 Trust, Hiring, and the Three-Strike Rule
10:12 Your Life Needs a Business Plan
13:09 How to Tell You Are in the Wilderness
14:27 Purpose Stays, Vision Changes
18:26 Put On Your Own Airplane Mask First
20:52 Routines, Prayer, and Mental White Space
24:12 Having a Reason for Everything You Do
26:15 Leading the Horse to Water
29:55 The Hunt, the Roadmap, and the Network
31:43 There Is No Maintenance Mode

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Links:

• John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
• Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
• Kevin Bein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbein/
• The Longbow Foundation: https://longbowfoundation.org
• Atomic Habits by James Clear: https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits
• Dataliction: https://dataliction.com

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The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

A company can double in a year and spend the next two years earning its reputation back.

Dan Hooks started working at his parents' event rental company when he was 14. In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub talks with Dan, Vice Chairman and longtime president of Party Reflections, about growing at a pace a company can survive. Dan tells the story of his first acquisition in 1999, a purchase that almost doubled the company and brought complaints the business had never received. That year taught him never to staff so lean that losing one person could break the team.

The conversation also covers:

• hiring for attitude over experience
• planning cash through the slow months
• promoting people who never wanted the job
• why a business either outlasts its owner or is really just a job

Leaders at any stage walk away with a clearer way to judge whether they are growing too fast.

Chapters:

00:00 The Acquisition That Almost Broke Us
00:30 Introducing Dan Hooks
01:18 Starting at the Ground Level
02:11 Hiring for Attitude Over Experience
02:54 Family or Team?
05:57 Holding Culture Together While Scaling
08:13 How to Spot the Right People
11:31 Sustainable Growth in a Burn Cash World
15:03 Seasonality and Planning for Winter
17:17 Lessons From a Depression Baby
17:39 The 1999 Acquisition
21:30 Embrace Change as a Core Value
23:16 Building a Business That Outlasts You
28:54 Strengthening Your Leaders

Links:

• John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
• Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
• Dan Hooks: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danhooks/
• Party Reflections: https://partyreflections.com
• Dataliction: https://www.dataliction.com/

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

Half the office quit in a week, and the company came out of it better.

In this episode of the Business and Faith Podcast, John Staub talks with JR Bussard, chief operating officer of Cornerstone Companies, the family-owned luxury window and door firm in West Palm Beach he runs alongside his father and his three brothers. At the beginning of 2025, fifteen to sixteen employees became roughly half that inside a single week, and the entire inside office was gone. JR walks through what rebuilding actually cost: teaching himself accounting, cycling through fractional CFOs and an HR firm that didn't stick, and rebuilding estimating by calling builders directly to ask what the numbers should look like. He makes the case that you can lead by the principles of Jesus without making faith a condition of employment, and he leaves listeners with one rule for delegation that most owners learn too late.

Chapters:

00:00 Half the Office Gone Overnight
00:19 Meet JR Bussard and Cornerstone Companies
01:08 Business as a Ministry
01:41 A Tested Stone in a Make-or-Break Industry
03:33 Opportunities, Not One Big Moment
07:01 Obsessed With Getting Better
07:24 Fail Fast and Move On
10:09 The Parable of the Talents
14:30 Leading by the Principles Without the Sermon
16:38 The Week the Office Emptied
19:07 Rebuilding While the Showroom Opened
22:59 Process as a Priority
27:50 If You Cannot Document It, You Cannot Hand It Off
31:19 A Word for Middle Managers

Links:

John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
JR Bussard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jr-bussard-0937bb122
Cornerstone Companies: https://cornerstonecompaniesfl.com
Book a free call with the Dataliction team: https://dataliction.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

It was not his roof, and he tore the whole thing off anyway.

In this episode of The Dataliction Podcast®, John Staub and Travis Hall talk with Bryan Eberson, founder and owner of Eberson Construction and Remodeling, a custom home builder working around Flagstaff and Sedona with a team of 20. Bryan is a fourth-generation contractor who runs his company on a chain that moves one direction: leadership to team, team to clients, clients back to the business. He explains why his company refuses to call itself a family, how he learns what his people actually want long before the one-year review, and what a 30, 60, 90 day window reveals that a performance plan never will. Then he walks through the garage build where a roof he did not contract went wrong, the month and the $10,000 he ate to make it right, and the referrals that followed.

Chapters:

00:00 A Roof That Was Not His Problem
00:18 Meet Bryan Eberson and Eberson Construction
01:06 Leadership First, Then People, Then Clients
02:41 Be Genuinely Curious
03:22 Team, Not Family
04:43 Knowing What Your People Actually Want
09:02 Grow or Die
11:08 When Trying Hard Is Not Working
12:47 Battle Scars and the Garage Build
14:14 Tearing Off the Whole Roof
16:56 Pivoting While You Scale
20:01 The 30, 60, 90 Day Test
24:02 Hiring for Core Values First
27:48 Chief Reminding Officers and the North Star

Links:
John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
Bryan Eberson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-eberson-7587a4298/
Eberson Construction and Remodeling: https://ebersonconstruction.com
Book a free call with the Dataliction team: https://dataliction.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

Papa John was not in the pizza business. He was in the people business.

Two emails reach a business owner more than any others. In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub and Travis Hall go back through the first stretch of the show and name the threads that kept turning up across very different leaders. Travis explains why owners who ignore ordinary podcast invitations started saying yes once the conversation included what drives their culture. John returns to John Porter's humble confidence, to Gina Rogean's habit of treating the root instead of the symptom, and to a personal tagline exercise that has stuck with him for years. Humility turns out to be the most consistent thread across every guest, and it shows up as availability rather than modesty. Leaders will walk away with a cheaper way to diagnose the next problem they are tempted to staff.

Chapters:

00:00 Part Two, Same Room
01:52 The Two Emails Every Owner Gets
03:11 Faith as the Thing Driving the Culture
04:30 People Follow Real Leaders
05:28 Papa John and the People Business
10:05 A Learner Who Helps Others Learn
11:01 Humble Confidence and the Biggest Deal in the Room
13:53 The Humility Thread
15:20 Rural King and a Culture You Can Feel
17:20 What Love Looks Like at Work
19:10 Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Focus
21:36 Treat the Root, Not the Symptom
24:25 What You Are Going Through Right Now Matters
27:02 Why the Show Comes From Dataliction

Links:

John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
Brought to you by Dataliction: https://dataliction.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

The thing underneath the best answers was never a business principle.

This episode has no cold open and no scripted introduction. In this episode of The Business & Faith Podcast, John Staub and Travis Hall explain why the show changed its name and what is staying exactly where it was. Travis Hall describes burning out on the build it up and sell it off pattern, and how he started choosing companies by their culture and first principles instead of their exit. John Staub traces his own path from a humanitarian aid project in Macapá, Brazil, through a decade of church work and three campus launches, into selling software to faith-based organizations. Together they reframe authenticity as open-handedness: the willingness to be wrong, and to let a good culture change you. The format, the cadence, and the guest list are not changing. The questions are getting more honest.

Chapters:

• 00:00 No Cold Open, No Intro
• 01:23 Why the Name Changed
• 02:22 The Common Thread in Every Conversation
• 04:16 You Can't Get the Real Without the Full
• 06:07 What to Expect Week to Week
• 07:49 Burned Out on Build It Up, Sell It Off
• 09:16 Choosing Culture Over the Goalpost
• 11:40 Nobody Goes In Planning to Be Changed
• 14:01 Authenticity as Open-Handedness
• 15:23 Brazil, Websites, and a Church Job
• 17:39 Selling Software to Faith-Based Organizations
• 19:16 What We Hope Leaders Walk Away With
• 22:08 I See Me, and I'm Not Alone
• 23:59 Applying to Be a Guest

Links:

• John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
• Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
• Dataliction: https://dataliction.com
• Apply to be a guest: https://businessandfaithpodcast.com
• Remodel Health (mentioned): https://remodelhealth.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

The numbers you use to grade a partner usually come straight from that partner.

In this episode of The Dataliction Podcast®, John Staub talks with Paul Brinkman, president of Trans-Solutions Consulting, about what happens when a company runs on data it never actually owns. Paul works with manufacturers, retailers, and shippers whose reports arrive already summarized by carriers and third-party logistics providers, with the detail stripped out before anyone in the building sees it. He explains the giveaway that tells you your data has been cleaned before it reached you, why rolled-up cost numbers hide the story, and how trimming both ends of the bell curve gets a leadership team to the 80% they can agree on. He also lays out a reporting cadence for teams stepping out of firefighting mode, and what your data has to tell you before the next tariff or war risk surcharge lands.

Chapters:

• 00:00 Whose Story Is Your Data Telling
• 00:35 Meet Paul Brinkman and Trans-Solutions
• 01:26 Firefighting Instead of Fixing the Cause
• 02:40 How Much Data Is Enough
• 03:35 Every Milestone From PO to Final Mile
• 05:11 Catching Sparks Before They Become Fires
• 06:59 The Mountain and Micro Adjustments
• 08:34 Challenging the Cost of Doing Business
• 10:41 The Only Constant Is Change
• 16:11 Junk Data In, Junk Data Out
• 17:40 Trimming Outliers to Find the Real 80%
• 20:45 How to Spot Data That Has Been Cleaned
• 23:40 Choosing Your Reporting Cadence
• 27:50 Preparing for What's Coming

Connect with the host and guest:

• John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
• Paul Brinkman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-brinkman-3634894/
• Trans-Solutions Consulting: https://trans-solutions.com
• Dataliction: https://dataliction.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!

Your circumstance and your self-worth have nothing to do with each other.

In this episode of The Dataliction Podcast®, John Staub and Travis Hall talk with Josh Eldridge, a business coach at Painter Growth who owns a construction company in Knoxville, Tennessee. Josh is an Air Force veteran and a former pastor who lost his house and his first business, carried well over $100,000 in debt, and spent a November on scaffolding pulling brick off a wall with a sledgehammer. He explains why he tells people to build on their strengths instead of repairing their weaknesses, how he measures impact by earned trust rather than by goals he can keep moving, and what he does on the days he is not okay. He also talks openly about the months after his service when he did not want to be alive, and about the small thing that got him to the next morning.

Chapters

• 00:00 The Thing That Keeps You From Panicking
• 00:19 Meet Josh Eldridge 01:09 Purpose Comes Before Excellence
• 02:15 Homeless, and Swinging a Sledgehammer
• 03:15 Learning to Love the Hard Work
• 04:34 The Input Is Not the Curse
• 05:36 How Do You Measure Impact?
• 07:39 Your Gifts Are the Map to Your Purpose
• 10:45 Proximity Over Talent
• 13:51 Talking About Not Being Okay
• 18:28 One Small Goal at a Time
• 21:58 Suffering, Endurance, and Hope
• 26:15 Why He Doesn't Get Scared Anymore

Connect with the hosts and guests:

• John Staub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-staub/
• Travis Hall: https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-m-hall/
• Josh Eldridge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-eldridge-knox
• Painter Growth: https://paintergrowth.com
• Dataliction: https://dataliction.com

The Business & Faith Podcast—learning from leaders whose experience and faith shape how they grow their organizations on purpose. New episodes weekly. Brought to you by Dataliction. Follow us and keep the conversation going. Enjoy this episode? Leave a review and share it with someone who needs to hear it!