Todd Recknagel

Hey everybody I am just so excited to be here today with my good friend Rick Ormsby, who is a partner with unbridled capital. And so Rick has been involved in the investment banking game for some time, but also because they do specialize in franchising, he's just been. Great friend franchising. Rick is also, as you'll hear a little bit. Rick is a great friend to the Lord. And so I'm excited to know Rick and to be with Rick here today. And So what, Rick, why don't you say hello and welcome everybody.

Rick Ormsby

Yeah, I am too, Todd. It's an honor to be here. And I've watched you from the distance for many years, personally. And I know you've had tremendous business success, but I know we've connected primarily. And secondarily, I don't know if it's primarily or secondarily, but in our faith. And so when you asked me to come and talk a little bit about my business and how faith is important to me. I'm happy to do that. And honored to be here I am. I'm managing director at Unbridled Capital. It's a franchise investment banking platform. And let's see, I'm an investment banker. Second, I really kind of consider myself an entrepreneur first and in that way, I feel like I'm part of the franchise community and understand kind of the heartbeat of it. I started my career at Vanderbilt.

Speaker

Yes.

Rick Ormsby

NBA and I was a career change during my early 30s and basically 4:00 in the morning, go and work for free at a small investment banking company trying to get some experience. And there was one guy in the equity research group back in the early days who covered restaurants. And so I learned a little bit about restaurants while taking out the trash. And, you know, all that stuff that you do when you first get going and young brands came to campus and I was a good fit because I knew like, I could knew enough about restaurants from that work to be able to just talk somewhat intelligently and of course, not all franchising his restaurants, you know, but probably back in the 90s and early 2000s. Sure, a lot of big percentage of it was. And I went to work at Yum Brands and I did it for a few years, and while I was doing it, I in a variety of capacities in Louisville, I just got a real love for franchisees and I got to know a lot of. Franchisees and I. Just said, you know, these franchisees need. Help you know with. Business plans with buying more restaurants, recapitalizing their companies, selling when they want to retire. Buying out a partner? Maybe there. To an unfortunate death or divorce and they need help figuring out how to handle their legacies and assets. And so that's how it started with kind of humble means. And you know, the first deal that we closed that I closed, I didn't have enough money to make the next month's mortgage payment. Wow. Yeah. And so it was a. It was a blessing with growing. The business to, I mean I think. Done over $5 billion of deals and you know, and I've learned a couple of things along the way too that I'm happy to share, but I I.

Speaker

What I.

Todd Recknagel

Would say a couple of things. So you went to work, you had a little bit of this experience with the investment banking side and we're working hard like through the MBA and after, but then you went to work essentially for the franchise. Door.

Rick Ormsby

Yes.

Todd Recknagel

But that you were helping franchisees on the transactions and?

Rick Ormsby

That's right. Mostly. Yeah, that's right. KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. So is the place where I started and and that's right. I was a corporate guy that was helping franchisees with transactions and doing finance work most.

Todd Recknagel

OK, OK. Yeah, what a great way to cut your teeth on all of that, right? I'm processing them for the free.

Speaker

Oh my goodness.

Todd Recknagel

So, OK, sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. I just clarify that.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rick Ormsby

No, that's. I would say, you know, I'm always trying to think about what your listeners and watchers will want to hear and I guess I'll say a couple of things from this. Just initial background for me, it was that I loved our industry. I consider our industry all of our industry, our franchise industry, to be the personification of the American dream. And when I wake up and go. To bed every night. I love the people that are a. Part of that dream. Like you. And so that's kind of something that if anyone listens, who's a prospective franchisee or wants to get into business, I would say love. The clients that you support, the industry that you're a part of, we'll talk about faith. That's an important part of just share with you my success. But Integrity is a big part of what we do. I love my whole family was always like if you, you know, you always tell the truth at all times, you know. And if you say something, you always have to live up to it. Those simple rules that people have forgotten in today's world. And then like you guys, Todd and I know you think this way. Two I've sought to do. 3 or 4. Or 5% improvement year over year, consistently over 20 plus years and that's the way you run your franchise business. I know nobody here is a Unicorn. We're all seeking constant and steady improvement over a long amount of time. And then I I would just say that's been a blessing. I'll share with you one other thing. I've been a sales guy for a while. I love sales. When I was a 10. Year old boy, OK. My mom was selling cookbooks at convention shows and she would take me and she would say Ricky, you know, because I was a little Ricky. Ricky, I'm going to make up some chocolate cake and I'm going to leave and I want you to go sell this chocolate cake and bring people. In to see. If they'll buy cookbooks, I'm 10 years. Old well, really quickly. I had a penchant for this. Really quickly I saw that if I held that chocolate cake out to a certain person, they would eat it, talk for a while, and then they might buy 1 cookbook. But I really quickly noticed that there was a certain profile of lady that she walked with a clipboard and she had glasses on and she was walking fast and never stopped at any of the convention booths, and she was the one with the checkbook. I would start to seek that person out as a 10 year old boy and I got A50 cookbook sale. And that was. Kind of the start that was kind. Of the start of it. And I'm like, you know, I don't. Know so I'm I'm half crazy. So thank you for listening.

Todd Recknagel

Like you're it's like you're multi units now today you're. You're in with the big fish here now. So that's funny. What a great story. How long have you been in the reseller? How long has it been since the Yum Brands days? I have a sense of how long it's been since the cookbook and.

Rick Ormsby

Who knows?

Todd Recknagel

The chocolate.

Rick Ormsby

Yeah. Although I look at me, I mean, I don't know, I probably look like I'm 80. I'll be 51 here this year. So I was 40.5 years ago, I started, I left Yum in 2005 and started doing this privately. So you know, all told with the Yum experience, 25 years without the Yum experience, just in private business, 20 years basically, I mean, I guess I'm in my 21st year or.

Todd Recknagel

Hey. OK. OK.

Rick Ormsby

Or 20th year this year, yeah.

Todd Recknagel

Ohh that's great. That's great. And so I know when I look at your profile and some of the deals and whatnot that we've talked about and over time, you have been doing a lot of restaurants, but then you do a lot of other markets. And I know you've kind of moved moved into other markets and tell us a little bit about that journey as you've grown on bridal.

Rick Ormsby

I'm honored to do that. Thank you. You know, I I like to say that we kind of do investment banking for the world's leading brands. If I look back at our recent. History over the last four or five years, as we've grown our company and it's been a. Real blessing like I. Said we've probably done business in 20 or so brands admittedly, and for everybody in this industry because when you were growing up in Michigan, you driving down main and main and you saw all the restaurant franchises back in the 60s and 70s and 80s and that was about the only type. Of franchising that there was right. So when we started, I mean it was natural when I went private with the service to service the KFC Taco Bell and Pizza Hut franchisees. And to this. Day I get this. I've sold over 70 Taco Bell companies for franchisees and representing I'm sure, thousands of restaurants. Same with Pizza Hut and KFC.

Speaker

Oh. Oh.

Rick Ormsby

You start doing the right thing and you start networking and communicating and people refer you and things like this. And so we started doing other restaurant brands not Yum. And then in recent years we've gotten involved with franchisors and with health and Wellness and fitness brands and some service brands too. It's a growing part of what we do in a natural part of what we do, what I want our company to do more of. And we're just kind of like in the second or third inning of that journey. But I'll give you a couple of examples that you guys might sink some teeth into kind of what we do. And I I just listened to here I. Was thinking about. Them one would be, I'll tell you the first deal that I closed when I didn't have enough money to pay the next month's mortgage. It was a four unit. Taco. Bell franchisee in Manhattan. Kansas and it was a mom and dad team. Who had taken out an advertisement in a newspaper. They were door to door, vacuum cleaner salesman and they took out an advertisement. They saw Taco Bell. They called and Taco Bell granted him one franchise location in the middle of nowhere in Kansas, and they gripped 4 units, mom and pop and they were tired and ready to retire and that that was the first deal we've taken up recently, taken up publicly in the last several years of publicly traded firm in New Zealand and. Australia and had them acquire a, you know, a massive KFC business on the West Coast. We've helped Papa John's corporate and Papa Murphy's sell corporate markets. We've jumped into the European Wax center business and sold some businesses there. We've worked a little bit with Planet Fitness and some other brands too. And then I guess I would give you one other example is really kind of unique. I don't know that anyone's done this successfully with and still doesn't have a hole in their. But uh, a couple of years ago we pulled together 4 Moe's burrito franchisees in the southeast, four different guys, and did a simultaneous clothes and sold it to a private equity group. And that was a that was like shepherding cats. I must say, those are just some examples of some of the things that we're into.

Speaker

Yeah.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah, gotcha. Those are always tough when you put together multiples at the same time unless it's selling to a strategic that already has the overhead structure. So I presume that was that kind of deal.

Rick Ormsby

Absolutely.

Todd Recknagel

But yeah, that was good because that helped him get scale in that market area so well before we get too far into it, there's just been a lot of upheaval in the markets right now.

Speaker

Yeah.

Todd Recknagel

You know, everybody sees it. Everybody's talking about it. You've got interest rates going one way, the expectation was one way you have uncertainty, maybe take a minute and address a little bit of that. What are you seeing in the markets? What are you seeing with deals that you have in the market or that deals that maybe they were? Heading into the market but pausing right now. I mean, what? What are you seeing on the landscape out there?

Rick Ormsby

Todd, you're qualified to know as much about this as me because I know you're a big franchisee of multiple brands and you're very well connected. It has been tough over the last couple of years and dad gone and I keep saying it's gonna get better. It's gonna get better. It's gonna get better. And so far this year, it hasn't. I kind of figured that there would be kind of a rush to business. The deals come to the marketplace in the first half of 2025 and that many of them wouldn't close and that we might have a little bit of, you know, dropping in valuations. But the deal flow, healthy deal flow just hasn't really happened. There's been a buy for. Location. Some of the brands are doing really, really well. There's a number of brands outside of restaurants inside of restaurants that are just killing it. Those attract a lot of buyers and sellers are selling for high prices, but the majority of businesses just aren't. And so we've probably looked at get this, I would say 60 companies. We've looked at, this is going to be kind of startling. We've done a valuation for over the last 18 months and we've only taken like 6 or 7 assign. That's. OK, in a normal market, about half the people who come to us to want to explore the value of their business and look at strategic alternatives end up being a sale. But what's happening is there's a persistent 15 to 40% valuation gap between what they want or need and what the markets currently showing.

Todd Recknagel

Right. So you you estimated it's about 15 to 40%?

Rick Ormsby

That's typically what it is we, I mean, our business is going to be naturally one. We're a low volume high yield company. If we take an assignment just that's our business model, we're. Typically, historically going to close 90% of the deals we take, that means it's necessarily that we scream pretty hard. On the forefront? But then everyone who sees our deals knows that that our sellers are well vetted and and that we.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rick Ormsby

Anything more than 15% and we we won't take the assignment and so most of those clients will hear us and say, OK, now's not the time to sell, but some of them still will. And then those deals are the ones I think that make it to the market and sit there languish. I mean, and they don't close and there are some reasons why they don't close, but clearly the market is not in the best shape overall, is it? Yeah.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah. Well, as a multi unit multi brand operator, we've actually found the similar uncertainty of anyone else. But from a volume or growth or whether it's our soul or massage. We've found pretty good times our numbers are solid, our numbers are growing, they're up and to the right, things are going well and we probably had two of our best periods of growth just following COVID because people were there was that valuation gap and they were scared. Leaving the market and then just recently this last year, I think some of that uncertainty helped us to buy and acquire and grow and so. That's.

Rick Ormsby

We, the other side of it, isn't it, Todd? That's the other side of it. It's creates an opportunity and massage envy, especially of which I've been a client of massage envy for almost 10 years. Did you know that?

Todd Recknagel

Right, right. Yeah. We appreciate your business.

Rick Ormsby

I love I. Love massage envy? What an awesome now. So what's the line? Look at my hair. I mean, that ain't gonna that ain't.

Todd Recknagel

Gonna cut it? Maybe not a client on that side? No, we. Understand. That's great. Well, what would your advice be recognizing that there's that 15 to 40% evaluation gap, what's your advice on to a seller right now and maybe not talk about the big deals that would come to you? What if somebody's just simply retiring kind of back in the early days, like when you had three or four deals and it's a smaller?

Rick Ormsby

Yeah, yeah.

Todd Recknagel

Franchisee. What's your best advice to a seller right now? Maybe they're timing. They need to sell in the in the next year.

Speaker

Awesome thing.

Rick Ormsby

And that's where my heart and soul is is with the smaller franchisee. Although the business has changed up and down over the years. But I would say the first thing I'd say is knowing your valuation is important, right? You need, you need to have someone who you trust to tell you realistically what the value of your company is. And we talked about that, right? So you know, are you 15 to 40% are your expectations? Out of line or not, you know, with just what reality is. If you can't put your head in the sand and that's going to kind of drive the decision. What you make if you are a would be seller and you go to the market and you're expecting 30% more than what the value of the company is and it doesn't sell. There's two terrible things that happen #1 you know, your employees are probably gonna find out about it. You're gonna be dealing with employment issues. And then the second thing is and people don't think about this, but do you are spilled milk if you go to the market and you don't sell then even when you come back to the market.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rick Ormsby

Two years later, you're going to get 10 to 20% less value for your company, and people are like no Rick, that's. Not true, but it is. So I tell people I say, hold on, don't rush to do something and think you and ohh if it doesn't work. We'll just do this or that. We have a pretty robust checklist that we go through with people. I'll give you a couple of the things I'll talk about six or seven of them real quickly. #1 so grade these out as if they're like you're a professor of history or something, right? And you have 7 students. Number one is macroeconomic conditions. How healthy is the consumer right now? Put a zero to 10 on there, 10 to their consumer is fat and happy and spending money. Zero we're. In a great. And then second, is your brand strength because in many of these situations like you are doing well in your brands, even though the macroeconomic situation may not be as strong, how does that grade out on a zero to 10 scale right now if you own a wing stop business and fit people like wing stop, that's, you know, if you own a wing stop business, you're in a perfect ten, everybody and their brother wants to buy it. Right. Another one would be is the lending market conducive to your business and brand because that really drives the ability to for someone to acquire? If you're in a brand, it's really been languishing with bad sales and public bank bankruptcies and things like that. It's going to be hard for a buyer to get financing and and be able to acquire your stores and that's going to be a critical piece of it. So that's a, I think a third one. The 4th 1 is opportunistic. What does the brand look like? You know, I mean, are people trying to come into the brand or people trying to leave the brand? Are there natural? Consolidators if you're a small franchisee. Do you have natural people around you who are looking to expand and grow, who might be possible acquirers of your business? And then? Like 5th would be the. Sales and traffic in your restaurants over your franchises over the past 12 months and forward-looking estimates over the next 12 months, you always want to think about selling some. And when you either have flat to slightly positive sales in traffic, if you can, you know, because it prevents retreading down the line and it prevents the banks from being difficult. Interest rates are an issue. You know, that affects buyers and how much money that they're willing to spend and and borrow. And then lastly, this was a big one in 2021. I know you're aware of this.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rick Ormsby

But the threat of negative tax law changes, and we saw that in 2021, if a seller feels like that, they might have to pay more in taxes in the upcoming that'll be a real quick motivator to cause them to sell now. We don't have. That environment right now I don't believe, but that was a huge component with our last administration.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah. Well, we we certainly could have it if the tax laws that are currently in place sunset. If if Congress isn't able to renew those or make them permanent, then all of a sudden it's going to be a different game for the. Rest. Of 25 because as they get into an election year.

Rick Ormsby

No doubt.

Todd Recknagel

26 it's going to be harder to do that, and those laws sunset, I think this. Year. This anyways. Certainly a fact or very very helpful. It's interesting when I look at interest at I don't know tenure at 4 point or whatever it is today from a historical standpoint, it's actually. Good. And banks are still lending and uh, there's still opportunity. So if you have a good deal right now, you still have a great opportunity. And.

Rick Ormsby

Absolutely.

Todd Recknagel

I think you do have to kind of look at.

Rick Ormsby

It that way. But you live in Florida, right? Part of the year. And I do too. I'm in, you know, live in Gulf Breeze, FL near Pensacola. And I liking it. Like this I say if you have. A nice house on the water in Florida. It will always sell at a great price. There will always be people who want it. You know what I mean? That's that's it, even if.

Todd Recknagel

Right, right.

Rick Ormsby

It's if it's. A bad market. People will pay cash more cash for it or they won't use a loan or whatever. They'll do right, but if you got.

Todd Recknagel

Right.

Rick Ormsby

About like a. Yeah, I mean, like, a run down house. You know it, you know, on a swamp. And it's a bad market. Well, that's gonna be a different situation.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah, absolutely, I agree. Well, I'll ask the same question. What advice would you have for someone that's thinking about franchising? Or thinking about being a buyer.

Rick Ormsby

I think this advice is going to expand whether you're a former military guy and you want to get into a one unit franchise, a service, but like a mosquito business or whatever, or you want to be a private equity person buying 500 Taco bells, I think it's the same advice really. So I would say start broadly for six to nine months. It's very specific advice. And I've said it so many times. And a couple of people will come back to me over the years and I'll say Rick. You're exactly right. So start broadly for about 6 to 9. Months for your search. Talk to people like us, talk to franchisees, franchisors and start getting some deal flow. What we do when we sell companies, we put out a SIM, however big or small the company is so that you can learn, you sign an NDA and then you get the information. You can learn a little bit about from us, at least what the business is and how we think about it and what the growth is and what the EBITDA is and who the employees. Are and what the brand's all about? We're not the only source for that. Lots of people do this stuff, but that's the first thing an education process and that should take ideally 6 to 9 months. Then you want to narrow your search down to two or three brands. You don't want to be a 5 or 10 brand guy who's looking at everything. Near the sun, you want to look at two or three very narrowly and then go get your rear end down to the corporate office of those two to three brands that you really think you like and get to know. The franchise or. Why? Because later in the process, if you eventually make an offer on a business, if you haven't done that, you'll get sniffed out as someone who's not serious and no seller is going. To take you off.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah. Seriously. And then how how important do you weigh passion for the business against? I mean, I've been in some businesses that I've liked, but they were vehicles we knew we could grow and there was a great opportunity and I didn't have some incredible passion. And you're going to have some for more for some. But how heavy would you weigh that in, in terms? The long term success.

Rick Ormsby

That would be amiss if I didn't acknowledge that you've done it right. So my initial comment would say I think you got to have some amount of passion for the business that you look to buy. It shows, doesn't it? Usually I.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah. Well, but I guess what I'm asking too is a little bit I I think that's right. And but let's say you're picking up trash or you're picking up and you think they don't really want to do that. But some of those service buses.

Rick Ormsby

Mean, you know.

Todd Recknagel

Are the absolute greatest, highest margin businesses you know or like you said, mosquitoes. Well, I feel kind of funny about killing mosquitoes. Except I hate mosquitoes. But. But then you realize it's one person on one vehicle. Your costs are low. You don't have a lot of real estate expense. And it's like, wow, this business looks pretty good.

Speaker

Yes.

Rick Ormsby

Yeah.

Speaker

Mega.

Rick Ormsby

Yeah, I would submit to you that you would find in a mosquito business some passion there in a different way. You'd find passion in building and acquiring it and expanding it and maybe making it more profitable and enjoying the fruits of the labor with less employees. You know what I mean?

Speaker

Yes.

Todd Recknagel

Right. So.

Rick Ormsby

The passion for it doesn't necessarily need to be. I think the the actual product itself. I know plenty of people who love being XYZ restaurant franchisees, but don't eat the food very often.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah, yeah, that's a great point.

Rick Ormsby

But they love the marketing of it. They love the branding of it, they love the building through expansion or building the. Team right? Just throw a couple of other points I think would be important to hear about being a buyer of a business is go get to the franchise door once you've narrowed it down to two or three brands, then jump in there and then people come back to me after 2 years. I say this if you haven't done anything, if you've been in the game looking for two years or more and you haven't bought anything, you're likely never going to buy anything. And so there's some element of like don't fiddle around with it like be intentional in what you're doing. And that's obviously a faith component too. But be persistent. And then if you're in entering family office or private equity group on a bigger deal, I just say a couple of things. The path is a little bit well worn at this place at this time. We're not like in the first or second. Meaning of people who want to come into a brand and consolidate it and then sell it. We're like in the 6th or 7th inning of. Yet and so it's still available, but it's just not maybe as available as it was four or five. Years ago, so. Another thing I would tell a bigger group is you be cautious about having to find your own operator. A lot of these mid-size franchisees that seller companies are the operators and so that becomes a real sticking point. I see some private equity and family office groups being really successful when they. Cultivate and groom their own operator to come. Into the business. And don't disqualify themselves for a deal otherwise, when. The franchisee was the operator. Strategic buyers stand out more than financial buyers do in difficult markets, you know, because they have higher deal certainty. So know that. And a lot of the private equity and family office groups look like robots. There's no unique proposition between them. So be cognizant of trying to show a unique proposition. And then so so maybe this some of those ideas, I don't know if any of. Those kind of hit home, yeah.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah. No, no, they all, they all resonate and it's helpful. People to understand the buying and selling process and when somebody like you who is a subject matter expert on that, I think there's a lot of learning for folks to gain when they're in there thinking about buying or selling either way. Well, you talked about passion and I know we've talked you and I have talked about being a believer and I'd I'd love to hear. About your passion for Christ, how did you originally come to know the Lord? And then what kind of difference does he make in your in your daily activities as you go through?

Rick Ormsby

Yeah. Thank you.

Todd Recknagel

Life.

Rick Ormsby

Thank you. Yeah, it's a big, big part of it. I'll tell a little bit of the testimony. I, I suppose, uh, just since people may want to know it, I'll go. I'll go a couple of minutes on it, but I grew up. It's kind of kind of a not really a strong believer in general. I was more of an academic, believe it or not. People laugh when I say that, you know, when I am married my wife. Her mother, who has since died of cancer, and we watched that battle and she was a very consistent. Model of faith, even though I wasn't quite. A believer and I watched. The faith that she had and that over the course of a couple of four or five years really kind of helped nudge me a little bit. And often times when it comes to faith, you have to have a nudging to start, like you have to have a reason. You know, someone needs to soften you up. Kind of like a boxing match, right? So I was softened. Up a little bit, even though I wasn't a believer. And then God used a mentor. Or a friend, a messenger, let's say, to knock on the door. And it happened to be a marketing guy at Yum Brands who came to me and said, Rick, you want to do a Bible study in the basement of Yum Brands in the morning time. Heck, you probably get thrown out of the the company now for that. Right. You know what I mean? And I said I said fine, I'll do it. You know, whatever. You know what I mean? But I got invited. And I went down there and he opened the book of James. In the book of James in the Bible is a book that's very hard hitting very little. Mention of Jesus, but it's. A very hard hitting faith driven like. Work out your. Faith, like almost like, be a man about this. Here's the things you should and shouldn't do. Wake up in your. Life and it. Hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean immediately. And I I realized at that moment that I needed to figure this thing out. I put my faith in Jesus and gave my life to him in 2000, February of 2005. One of the verses in James still sticks with me so well, it's James 112 and it's like blessed is the man who perseveres under trial because when he has stood the test, he will receive. Of the Crown of Glory that God has promised to those who love him, and I'm like. Oh man, that's so beautiful. I was baptized in 2005, but again I told you I'm kind of a learner and an academic, so I tried to go without knowing much about the Bible or Christianity. I tried to spend about the next year. Disproving Christianity. And answering the biggest questions, why are we here? Is there a God? Why is there so much pain and suffering in this world? If there is a God? Was Jesus a? Real person did. What he do really makes sense and and it took me on a study of world religions of different philosophies answering these biggest questions. And I came down to four or five things I found. You know, in the 1950s there. Was a little boy who took. A rock and threw it in a cave in Kumaran, Israel, and it hit a pot and he heard a smash and he goes into this cave and he finds the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Dead Sea Scrolls. And they they they unroll them, they carbon test them to like between 400 and 700 BC. And they are almost exactly. Word for word. Almost exactly word for word the same words as we have in our modern day Old Testament of. The Bible and you say, why is that a big deal? Well, the Old Testament of the Bible has over 300 messianic prophecies forecasting the coming of Jesus Christ, many of them very, very specific. So I. Start so I am. Convinced without a reasonable doubt that the Old Testament was written way before Jesus time. So then I say I'm studying the messianic prophecies and they pointed to Jesus Christ. That was one. The second thing is. The life and death of the apostles was just miraculous. These guys lived three years with Jesus Christ. They died of separate circumstances in different places, under different torture. And there's not one story of them saying that the story was far.

Speaker

Fun. Boss.

Rick Ormsby

And the difference between that and modern day fanatics is that they walked with Jesus for three years, and so that was big. And then I go into the words of Jesus and I open the Bible and I open the Bible and I, you know, and I come at it from my perspective of either sings all bogus and false. And someone wrote it on a parchment and tricked the whole world. But as I start studying it, I start realizing. That you either have to take Jesus as a lunatic, a liar, or your Lord and. And at that point, this leap of faith for me, after all of that study, came from leaping from mountaintop to mountaintop to leaping over a tiny, bubbling brook that I could easily do. And I I became so convinced about it. And that's where my start really happened. And and then immediately, what happened when I became fully convinced. Of the faith. As I jumped into it and started teaching and I taught for over 10 years. To usually 100 Sunday school adults, I would guess preach at some churches and Christianity just became something that was just a part of my life and has been a part of my life now for 20 years. And along the way, what have I learned? I would say, you know, God has a plan for each of us. It's your job to put plants out in the field, man. So you've got a responsibility to go out. And do it and finding a mentor. I had plenty of them in my life, but finding a mentor really makes a difference. You know, I encourage everybody to find.

Speaker

Yeah.

Rick Ormsby

A mentor while. And it's just in a I was just in a live through it every day. Still we've got a lot of fun things that we do in our lives, you know, in our church, in our community, we're trying to bring a group called Young Life into the Gulf Breeze community because I have a real passion for high school. College and young adults, that generation if not brought up in the community, if not brought up to have a greater purpose because it's really failing right now. But if that group. Does not grow up and have that kind of linchpin in their lives. We are one generation away from total failure. I don't care what we say about the economy, you know you. Yeah, absolutely. That's a piece of our life now. But it's been a real blessing. I live that way. The other thing I'll tell you is Christians will disappoint you worse than anybody else, right? They're equally errant and wrong, but we tend to put our hope and trust in other Christians. And so when they do disappoint you, it hurts and stings a lot. More than it otherwise would.

Todd Recknagel

Yeah, right.

Rick Ormsby

So you know what I mean? So don't ever. Relied too much on the faith of somebody else to make your decision. For you, let Jesus be the person that that you're going to.

Todd Recknagel

Right. No, that's great. You know, it's interesting you mentioned James being some of the favorite verses and that you were studying and scholars believe that James was actually James, the brother of Christ and and. Probably recall that his brothers, which you know Joseph and Mary, went on to have other, you know, half brothers of Jesus, that they were skeptics at the time early in his ministry, although they knew he was special and a teacher. But then to have James be one of those disciples and then go to his death. So Jesus's own brother in the category that you mentioned, James, is probably the most direct of any of them. Any of the letters by the apostles. It's interesting. I think a huge turning point for James was the empty tomb that you can see the ministry. But then all of a sudden we just came through Easter. The fact that there's an empty tomb Buddha doesn't have an empty tomb. You can still go see the tomb. Confucius, Mohammed, the person today, that's, you know, Gandhi. That might be more contemporary. They all have tombs. And Jesus has the empty tomb, which becomes the fulfillment of what you were saying from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The fact that he rose. Again and is alive is just an incredible fact.

Rick Ormsby

It's incredible. And and you know, I take that empty tomb, Todd, that as you just talked about and I say look at Matthew 28 and actually there's an Angel that appears and rolls a sealed tomb with a huge rock that all the guards witnessed. The Roman Guards who were standing there watching and the. Angel rolls it away and the guards are frightened and Mary sees it. This is not just some we're waddling in a field and there's an empty tomb and there's not a body there. This is a big moment witnessed by people. It was witnessed so much that in Matthew Chapter 28, the Jewish leaders are told right that they they say they paid off the Roman guards and the Roman people and said, don't tell anyone that this happened. Or else his name will be made known to the.

Todd Recknagel

Whole world, right? Meanwhile, our entire dating around the world is. Before Christ and in the year of our Lord. Yeah. So the entire world, our system of dating today dates, I guess, are based on that cataclysmic event of of Jesus life. But hey, it certainly seems that not only is Jesus is alive, but that he's working in you and continuing to work. Today, to bless you, that's incredible that you have 5 billion. I think with the B in transactions, we are one of the most respected around in the business. Thank you. We appreciate you anything more before we sign off that we should say to our guests or listeners.

Rick Ormsby

No, and thank you for all the kind words. I would just share the same thing back to you and and thank you. I know, God bless your business and. For anyone who. Listens. You know, Todd here is just a a wonderful man. Know if he calls you, if he has advice to give you, please listen. Because it's worthy. Of listening to I'm. Thankful to be to to be part of this today and to know you and I guess we're both trying to make the world a better place.

Todd Recknagel

Right. Right. Hey, thanks so much, Rick. I appreciate it, Rick. Orms be with unbridled.

Rick Ormsby

Thank you, Todd. Bye bye.

Speaker

Take care.