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A Sit Down with Kenny and Charlotte Webb of Charleston Property Restoration

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As Part of the Heroes of Change Podcast

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Jeremy Turner, Founder & Managing Director at EPIC Mission:

Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Heroes of Change podcast from EPIC Mission. This is Jeremy Turner, Founder and Managing Director of EPIC Mission and I’ll be your host here on the podcast. We are highlighting the trials, victories, and applied wisdom of our community change agents, unsung heroes, and those who empower them to be the change across Appalachia and beyond. We seek to inspire and equip everyday heroes just like you to take on our greatest challenges because together, we are the change. And today I’m super thrilled. I get to welcome my first dynamic duo to the show. Welcome, Team Webb! We’ll get to you here in just a minute, but first let me read a little snippet about you to give our listeners a taste. So Kenny Webb and his wife, Charlotte own Charleston Property Restoration. CPR has been in business since 2018 with the Webbs having started this business with an eye towards improving their neighborhoods one house at a time. The Webbs also have a vision for helping the families in their neighborhoods, working to ignite restoration in their lives. With the opioid epidemic and the exploding need for foster care, they knew this was an area where they could have some impact. They are currently foster parents and consider themselves ambassadors promoting the need for more people to step up and become foster parents themselves. Charlotte and Kenny are also aware of the difficulties facing those trying to re-enter society after having spent time incarcerated due to their own personal battle with opioid addiction as well as other addictions. Team Webb is trying to grow their business so they might offer training and employment opportunities not currently available to people experiencing barriers to employment due to their past circumstances. Awesome stuff; inspiring. And this is why you’re here today. So welcome to the Heroes of Change podcast, Team Webb.

Charlotte Webb, Charleston Property Restoration:

Hello.

Kenny Webb, Charleston Property Restoration:

Thanks for having us.

Jeremy:

Absolutely. This will be fun. So you know, everybody’s got a bio these days, you know, I share often that you can go on LinkedIn or somebody’s Facebook profile and read about them, but we know that that’s only a portion of who they are. So if you would take a minute and let’s go beyond the bio and tell us a little bit more about who you are and the work that you do, things that maybe aren’t appearing in the bio there.

Kenny:

Well, I’ve always had a knack, I guess you could say for working construction, even though that was not my primary employment. I’ve been doing it since 1985 when I got my first house. I started remodeling and I’ve had some training with them. I’m mostly self-help. So I’ve learned the hard lessons. I know some of the things that not to do as well as some of the things that I do need to do. And it’s, it’s been an incredible journey to where I’m at now. And when I retired from my primary job, it was always start a business one day and just kept putting it out one day. Never got there. It was always, you know, next year, wait one day, next year. And finally, after much coercion from, I took the plunge one day in March, I said today’s the day and it went by all my paperwork and hey, I was a small business solver and then the worry and scare began. So what do I do now? So, and thankfully people like you, Jeremy were just so encouraging and helpful and helping us get our feet on the ground and get started. I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for both of us to help us to get going to where we are now. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you and an EPIC Mission. So thank you for you and your beautiful wife.

Jeremy:

Absolutely. We’re just living out our purpose here, too. So, you know, so I guess at this point you’ve been around, it’s about two years, right? You’re about to have a two-year birthday. And you said you know, you went, you filed your paperwork and now you’re a business owner. Not really a background in small business ownership or entrepreneurship. What’s the journey been like and what are some of the maybe early learnings you’ve had, mistakes, failures, we call them whatever, but what are some of the things you’ve learned along your journey thus far?

Kenny:

That you’d need to charge and stuff to be profitable. I have a heart to help people. I mean I’ll come help you for nothing. You fixed the dinner. I’m there to work all day long. But when you’re a small business owner, you gotta work for more than beans. So that’s been a struggle trying to get the price line where it needs to be, where I’m not going to, I’m working all day for nothing. When it comes down to pay the bills, if there is enough money to pay the bills for your employer, I do have one employee, my, our son works with us and you know, you’ve got to make sure that his needs are taken care of as well. So it’s been a learning curve as to what to do. Don’t get discouraged. You’re going to make mistakes. I made mistakes. I’ve made plenty of them. You go out there, you think a job will take you a certain amount of time. And before you know it, you’re in there twice as long as you thought it would take because of the uh-ohs that come up. Unexpected stuff, you know, there’s going to be those moments. And when you have those types of lessons, they stick with you and you’ll know next time to allow for stuff like that. So just tell people, don’t get discouraged. You’re going, it’s not going to be peaches and cream. You’re going to have the bad days. You’re going to step into the poo poo. Don’t worry about it. It’ll all come out in the end. 

Charlotte:

I think one thing,just to brag on Kenny, a little bit, one of the things I think that he intuitively knew was just to treat people with honor. And so when he goes in to do a job you know, he doesn’t accept payment until they’re satisfied. And so it just instills trust and people, I feel like his reputation precedes him because of the way that he treats people. And I mean, he’s very good at his work, but I feel like his work ethic and his heart supersedes all of those things. 

Jeremy:

Those are great points. 

Kenny:

A lot of our work, unfortunately, we’re going in and finishing or correcting stuff from where people have had bad experiences, you know, contractors, some of them create a bad name for all of us and most of my work is going in and correct what somebody else started and the homeowners who take them for piles and piles of money. And now I’m in here trying to correct it without causing them piles and piles of more expense on top of that. 

Jeremy: 

Yeah, you know, that’s an unfortunate thing with most any industry. I see it more than I would like in my business as well. But you know, the fact that, and I can speak to the quality of your work and your heart because I’ve hired you before too, so I can absolutely speak to that. And it’s been, it’s fantastic. Do you think that, you know, you mentioned when you, when you bought your first home back in the 80s, and you start tinkering and remodeling and you learn the hard way sometimes you know, hey, this is not exactly the way to do it. There’s a better way in reflection. Do you think maybe that’s actually prepared you for life as a business owner, as an entrepreneur?

Kenny:

Absolutely. If, if it was easy, anybody could do it. You know, the truly successful people that I’ve encountered when we sit down and we’re talking, you know, at a job site or if we meet up somewhere to gas station getting gas and we’re just standing there talking at the gas pumps, we’ve all had those failures, those hard lessons. And you know, when you talk to the others that they’ve been through it, it makes you feel better about yourself that, you know, hey, I’m not the only one out here that has done this. So there are others. It’s not just me. There are plenty of people out here that have experienced the same, have learned these hard, hard lessons and just don’t get discouraged. I can’t emphasize that enough.

Jeremy:

Life as an entrepreneur can feel super lonely and isolated because not everyone is an entrepreneur. And so it can oftentimes feel like you’re the only one who is feeling this way or thinking this or experiencing this thing. So I think you hit on something really critical is the need to you know, in an earlier session I had someone say that you need to find your tribe, you know, surround yourself with other people who may believe as you believe and can with whom you can commiserate a bit and discuss things and talk things through. So I think that’s a crucial point that you made. You know, you’ve got a really, you’re more than a home restoration business. There’s another side to it. And it touched on in the intro, but I’d want to dig into this a little more.

You know, I’ve worked with lots of different types of businesses through my time doing what I do. You know, ones that are considered social enterprises. Social enterprise is a business that is focused on and motivated by both doing good and doing well. So a financial profit and also a social profit doing some sort of good in the world. Coalfield Development is an organization that is focused on employment for those who have traditional barriers to employment, which it sounds like that’s something that you’re very passionate about. Can you speak a little bit more about your mission, what it is you’re trying to do and for whom?

Charlotte:

Well, I think to do that, to back up a little bit, we are not originally from West Virginia. We moved here six years ago and really the instant we moved here just something happened in our hearts about people. We instantly fell in love with West Virginia and West Virginians. And just you know, hearing the statistics and just seeing the hearts of the people in West Virginia and knowing that for some of them they have adopted that identity. And I think coming from the outside, we could see their true hearts. We could see the people as they were, who are just such beautiful, kind, generous people. And so for whatever reason, I think just through a time of prayer and you know, praying for our state and for the people and wanting to see healing and restoration, come, the Lord really just planted some ideas and dreams in our hearts. And so, I don’t know if we ever really started out to be business owners per se. It was more we wanted to position ourselves in a way that could bring hope and help and healing. And so Kenny was still working at the railroad. He’d been there 30, 35 years and they wanted to relocate us to New York. And I told him I would miss him because I was like, I cannot leave. I love this, this is my home. And so that’s when he retired. And you know, that’s how all that kind of started just like, well, what could we do? Well, you know, he knew he has a gift for building and construction. And so we said, well, you know, we could use that not only to you know, restore homes but to help restore families as well, because in order to restore the state, in order to restore communities, that’s about restoring people. And so we started just seeing that whole thing, that whole vision just open up like, oh, well we can do the work, but we can train others to do the work. We can employ others to do the work. And even in the last few weeks, we feel like it’s just kind of exploded in our own hearts about, you know, oh my gosh, we can add this, we could do this. We can open up different avenues you know, for employment for people. And so that, that’s kind of the, the backstory of how that came about.

Jeremy:

Love it. There’s a story behind everything and that’s part of what I’m, you know, again, what this podcast is about is pulling out the real stories of real people that have, you know, real lives that are not always neat and tidy and clean. You know, and with what you’re hoping to do with the employment piece is there’s something amazing that happens when you take someone who is downtrodden and hopeless and not employed and you know, you get them back working. You know, you give them purpose and you give them, you help them help restore their dignity and their place in this earth and they become contributing members of society again. Are these things that, you know, you’ve thought about this before. Have you seen this before? You want to talk about what it is that you hope to do for people?

Charlotte:

Well, I I don’t know. What have we seen? 

Kenny:

Well, we have firsthand knowledge. Unfortunately, people that come out of being incarcerated, especially if they have drug charges, that there’s nothing out there available for them. There’s no assistance. There’s no job placement. There’s no welfare money, you know, there’s nothing they come out, there’s nothing waiting over there. They’re on their own. They’ve got fines. They’ve got to pay from their common jail. Driver’s license. They’ve got no transportation to get around. And they’ve really got really no hope in the future. They don’t have a car, they can’t get the job. People are reluctant to hire felons. They’re reluctant to hire them because of their past mistakes. Even though they’ve been rehabilitated or however you wanna word that; paid their debts. So, and that’s why so many of them ended up right back in there because they go right back to what they know. They know that they can go back to dealing the drugs. They know there’s money there. They’ve got no hope of digging themselves out of that hole that they’re in. It’s that crackpot mentality. You know, one gets up so far, another reaches up and pulls him back down into the pot that is just hopeless. That’s why they end up back in jail after not a long length of time of the only thing they know, the only way they know to make money is to go back to their old ways. We’re looking to break that cycle, break those chains of bondage to, that’s the only way I can make money and try to help people realize that there’s more good than the end of the local dealers.

Charlotte:

Yeah. And I, you know, I think too, the Word talks about him who is forgiven much, loves much and we too have struggled with our own addictions and come out of that and had people who would come alongside us and you know, walked with us through that lameness you know, without reservation and gave us a second chance. And I can tell you, I, boy, West Virginia is doing an incredible job of trying to familarate some of these issues that you face. People coming through recovery, coming out of incarceration. I’ve just met some really amazing people who genuinely want to see people healed and restored and like you said, the dignity returned to them.

Jeremy:

Yeah. Then there’s so much work to be done yet still, you know, as you talked about, you know, the, when they go to jail, it’s supposed to be, that’s their that’s the method though, which they pay their debts to society for having broken the law. And yet they come out and it’s as though the debt continues and it continues to mount against them because of all these barriers to have, you know, I have this thing on my record and no one wants to hire me. I can’t get a driver’s license. I have fees and fines that are mounting up and continuing to grow. And yet I have no way to gain employment. So, you know, I think kudos to you for taking on this topic because it’s huge. And you know, if we want people to come out of jail, supposedly having paid their debt we need to get them back working, you know, so that they, so that we can help them break that cycle. So I think that’s awesome. The name of this podcast is the Heroes of Change. The tagline for my company is “Guiding the Heroes of Change.” And so, and you, you’ve heard me use this phrasing probably once or twice. When you hear that phrase Hero of Change, what does that mean to you and why do you think it’s so important for everyday people like you and I to get up and go be the change that we wish to see in the world?

Kenny:

Our grandson was three and they were living with us. They moved here from Kansas City and they were staying with us while they got settled in and three years old when he prophesied that our house was a house of superheroes.

We’re just trying to live up to the word that he prophesied over all of us.

Charlotte: 

And I, you know, I think because we have people say to us all the time like, oh gosh, it takes a special person to do that. Takes a special person to be a foster parent or, and we just look at each other like, nope, no, it doesn’t. You know, it just takes saying yes, just like how can I help? What can I do to affect change? And I mean I can tell you there’s really nothing special about us or I don’t feel like we really have any unique gifts other than we just see the need and we want to be part of you know, trying to bridge that gap. And so heroes, we want to be a superhero. That’s our goal. But right now we’re just regular people getting up and working.

Kenny:

Getting up every day whether I want to or not. And up and going at it. Again, yesterday was yesterday. Today’s a new day with new grace and new mercy and do the best you can today. But I will tell you and to anyone who is trying to move towards this or move into some sort of purpose or destiny in their lives, there are countless mornings that we get up at 4:45 every morning. We pray together before we do anything else. There have been countless mornings that we’ve just sat and cried and like, Lord, we’re not the ones, we don’t know how to do this. We don’t know what we’re doing. We don’t know how to price. We don’t know how to move ahead. We don’t know. You know, and it’s like just stay steady, stay engaged and I’ll give you open doors as far as you can see.

Jeremy:

That’s good counsel. And just to know, again, with this podcast, trying to pull back the curtain and let people see behind the scenes of real life. You know, we live in a wonderful country where it’s relatively easy to start a business. Unfortunately most businesses fail within the first five years and it’s largely because of a few things. It’s ego. It’s, I have no idea what I’m doing at all and I won’t, I don’t, I can’t ask for help. I don’t know how to ask for help, whatever. So I want to pull back the curtain a little bit and let people see that struggle is part of this. Right? And struggle strengthens you. There’s a great deal of learnings that can occur during the struggle. It pulls people together as well. And the struggle and that, you know, just because you’re struggling doesn’t mean that you’re failing. You know, one of the worst things I think we do in our culture is we teach that failure is not an option and we have people completely terrified to fail when a failure could be you know, you miss cut a board, right? You failed, you made a mistake. Really mistakes and failures within the world of entrepreneurship are often the same. We just, we think of failure as some huge monumental thing though. I absolutely sink the ship and if we fail, then that’s the worst thing ever. It becomes our own scarlet letter that we hang around our necks or wear on our heads and we are now failures because we have failed. So I appreciate you being open about some of your own struggles because I mean, you know, the thing is that that’s real. If, and you said it earlier, Kenny, if it were easy, someone else would do it. Why is it that that is so important for everyday people like you and I to get up when we recognize that there’s something that needs change when there’s a problem in society or a problem where a certain product or service doesn’t exist in the market, why is it so important that everyday average people like you and I get up and go take care of that?

Charlotte:

Well, I think for us, we don’t look at the issues as those issues or those people or you know, those problems. Like this is our city, this is our state, these are our people. This is our community that’s suffering. And you know, we have a role, we have a part in this. If one of us suffers, we all suffer. You know, if there is this large percentage of our community that is struggling with addiction and all the associated effects of that, that means the entire community is less than it could be if everybody was functioning in their full capacity, fully participating citizen and person and family member. So for us, it is personal, you know, because it’s, you know, it matters. We can’t be the best we can be without everyone else being the best they can be. So, you know, it’s like the old saying, a rising tide raises all ships so that, you know, that’s what I believe about our work. Anything we can do to make things better, it helps everybody, not just us. You know, it’ll help our business, but boy, it helps the entire community or helps every family. It helps all the state or region.

Kenny:

And sometimes we go out and will be working on property, maybe the homeowners are not physically able to get out and do what they want to be done. We’re sprucing up. We’re making it look nice and the people that live around will see that and they take pride and ownership of their home property and they say, look how nice that is, and the next thing you know you’ll look to the right and to the left and across the street and there are people out there raking leaves or picking up the trash, they’re nailing up that board that fell down six months ago and they’re taking pride in their place now because it’s just planting a seed there to, hey this could be better. I know my house was run down and I looked over there and that house used to look worse than mine. Mine looks worse. Let me go out here and do what I can do. Let me get a handful of nails and go out. I don’t want to be the low fruit on the tree. I want to be on up there with the better looking house.

Jeremy:

I think that that sense of community that you’re talking about of community really has to work two primary meanings. You’ve got the physical sense of the community, the buildings and the structures and the streets and all the infrastructure. But you’ve got the sense of community, right? The rights and responsibilities. And I think it’s too often it’s the responsibilities piece that people forget about. Right? You know, you’re a member of a community and you have privileges, but there are also responsibilities that come along with being a good member of society, of your community. And so, you know, I think that’s you know, I appreciate the fact that you’re stepping up and owning your responsibilities while also in a kind and loving way, encouraging others to embrace their responsibilities within the community as well. I think that’s cool.

Let’s fast forward a bit. You know, let’s say that we’re looking at, you know, some point in the future and you’re looking back on your work and CPR has really blossomed and become more of what the vision is for the business. And you’re looking back, when will you feel like you’ve succeeded in your work and you know, what’s the legacy that you want to leave behind? You know, what kind of change are you really fighting for with the CPR? That’s a big question. You can take it in two parts. When you feel like you’ve succeeded, what does success mean?

You know, we, we’ve already helped, I wouldn’t say we’ve built fandom. We’ve made family, we’ve made friends. There’s not a house that we’ve been into that we’ve not made friendships while we’re there. And that’s community, too. And we’re, I’m trying to instill that in our son, Charlie who works with me, that that’s what you’re striving for. You make these relationships. You want to be able to have a business that people will say, yeah, I have them in my house. They’re very nice. They did a wonderful job. They didn’t come in here, they didn’t drive into the building. They’re honest. They’re straightforward and they will help you if you need help. And I want that to be perpetuated, generating a thousand generations down. You know, I don’t want this to die when I die. I want this to keep going for Charlie and his children and any of our other children that we’re praying will come and become part of what we’re doing here. That, you know, it will, it will grow. It will just exponentially grow.

Charlotte:

Yeah. And I think one of the things we say all the time is when we go in to do a job, we want to, certainly we want it to be blessed. We want to, you know, make money for the work that we do, but our bigger desire is that we are a blessing, that it’s a win-win situation for everybody. So when we walk away, the people we work feel blessed, they feel honored. You know, and then the company grows. So I think short-term, right now, I mean, I feel like in a lot of ways we do feel successful in that we do feel like we’re accomplishing that, you know, one job at a time. Boy, but long-term, we just really, our prayer is that everybody that wants to work has a place to work. That’s where they can provide for their family, where they can provide a good living. You know, like again, just, bringing dignity to their family. That every man or woman that desires to do that has a place that they can go, they can fulfill their purpose and their destiny and be a part of something bigger than themselves. Not just going to a job, but really going to like, this is a day in my destiny. This is who I’m created to be. And that’s really, that’s what we’re going after. But I don’t know what that looks like.

Jeremy:

Well, you’re doing it, and that’s called marketplace ministry. You know, it’s operating with the spirit inside the traditional for-profit marketplace. So you know, you’re making a difference in the lives of other people. You’re inspiring others. And you know, I know that the future is bright because you’re going to be providing people a sense of purpose. And that’s a very, very noble thing. It’s not easy though. And you know this and you know, you said earlier that you guys get up every morning and you pray together. Sometimes, those mornings are, it’s tears. It’s, you know, you’re crying and feeling woeful. Talk about if you would for a minute, when have you really felt like, you know, we can’t do this anymore. When have you felt most discouraged, and why did you keep going? Why did you persist?

Kenny:

Last winter was the first winter doing it. The wintertime is always lean times for home improvement. Home projects. There was no work. We still had the bills coming in. You know, it was frustrating. It’s almost like, why am I beating my head against the wall to do this? And then this time of year comes around where it’s tax time. You know, you go through the winter time, Christmas time, people spent their money on Christmas just like we do. We all did that and they don’t have money for the home improvement stuff. So we’ve all got bills to pay. We all struggle with finances and the bills are still piling up. Things are still going on, there’s no work going on and you feel like you’re just overwhelmed. You want to give up on it, you know, I can just file bankruptcy and you know, say I tried and that’s over with. But I personally have a fear of failure. I hate to say with anything I can, and that’s what makes me go on personally. I’ll find a way. I go do the things that need to be done. You know, the jobs that I won’t say beneath the, but the small jobs, I’ll go out and do the 20 and $30, $30 coming in and I wouldn’t have, you know, I’m not, I’m not all about the big $10,000 remodel job. You need an outlet put in your house and put them out with it. You know, it’s just fear of failures. What keeps me going on, I don’t look back and say, you know, if I would’ve done this, I would’ve been all right. Or if I’m just stuck about two more weeks and everything would’ve been fine. That’s what keeps me going. 

Charlotte:

Well, at least, you know, I think for us, probably with a lot of small business owners, you know, our son works for us and so we, we also feel the weight of that responsibility that if we fail, you know, that puts him in a hard place. It puts his family in a hard place. But I, you know, one thing that keeps us going though is those hard times are when we really hunker down and like, okay, wait a minute. You know, we still, like the Lord, let us do this. So there has to be, there has to be provision in this somewhere. And it’s those times where, gosh, just the dreams start happening. You know, just the vision sort of starts welling up within you and all at once, you have a hope, you know, that just keeps you moving forward. There’s just a hope in front of you about, you know, this, this really is going to happen. We don’t know how always we just have a confidence and a hope within us that will do have a purpose and a part in this healing and restoration of our state,

Jeremy:

It takes many people. Right? And you know, you’ve been able to meet some of the other people out there doing amazing things. You know, my first guest was Debbie Davis, you know, Debbie is an amazing and fun human being and you know, so you’re playing a role in this greater picture. So you know, stay encouraged and keep doing what you’re doing. The cool thing is you’re not having to do this alone. There’s others.

So, you know, life is about, it’s about learning. It’s about learning key lessons and try not to touch that hot stove for a second time trying to learn from those mistakes and not keep doing them. As you look back on life, is there any advice that you’d give to your younger self? As you, as you reflect? Would we need a whole separate show for that? Maybe even, let’s change, let’s change it up a little bit. You’re two years into your business. What would you say to Team Webb two years ago that you know now maybe some advice or words of wisdom you would give?

Charlotte:

I think like we talked about a minute ago, for us it really is about relationships. That that’s primary and everything we do though relationship with customers, our relationship, even with our children, you know, relationships are primary. And so focusing on that, focusing on staying healthy, you know, staying connected because it’s really easy when things get hard. So want to pull away or hide or isolate and, well I think that probably would be an encouragement. Like we’re just going to stick together and we have this thing. Sometimes when it gets hard, he’ll look at me and he’ll say, I will, if you will.

Jeremy:

Love it. It’s nice to have a team. Right? You know, so often as you go out and try to conquer something you know, again, the world of entrepreneurship can be very, very isolating and lonely. And especially when you’re trying to take on a social cause as you are, you know, talking about working with people who have struggled with addictions and those who have, have you know, been incarcerated and such. Why should people care about this work that you’re trying to do and you know, the people that you’re trying to serve? Why does it matter? Talk about that for a minute. 

Kenny:

People matter. No one’s above anyone else. We’re all, we’re all equal here. Some of us make choices that aren’t the best and just because of those choices doesn’t make you any less than someone else or someone any better than than you are. You know, roles that have easily have been reversed. And if I were the one that was in this situation and needed help and needed training and a hand up, I want to say a handout, a hand up, how would I want to be treated in the roles were reversed and that’s my whole railroad career. That’s how I operated was how would I want to be treated if the roles were reversed? If you go through life looking at that, not putting yourself above anyone else.

Charlotte:

Yeah. I think Andy Stanley, in one of his books I read, he said you know, to everyone, you either are a mass, you were a mass or you’re one dumb decision away from being a mass. So like I said, for us it’s personal, you know, but for the grace of God, and there are so many times that we could have ended up in very similar or worse situations because of bad decisions that we may see on that was in our lives. And so we really do see every person, like they’re made in the image of God. They are a value. They’re important. They, you know, they’re worthy of love, they’re worthy of respect and honor. And so I think that kind of drives us.

Jeremy:

Good. I think that’s great. So, you know, we’ve got people of all different types listening to this podcast from various backgrounds, not quite sure exactly where they might be located, they could be here within Appalachia or not. But what sort of words of encouragement or advice would you want to give to people that might be listening who you know, perhaps they have something tugging at them saying you need to go do this and you know, like them can either there one day seems to keep getting pushed off or you know, maybe they have started something and they’re struggling and it’s not quite going so well and they’re scared and then feeling helpless in any sort of words of encouragement or words of wisdom you might offer to other Heroes of Change out there that are trying to do something?

Kenny:

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t just assume that because you don’t know that somebody else is going to look at you and say, oh, what a stupid question. You know, the only stupid questions, you already know the answer to and you’re just hoping somebody you want to give me more sunshine. So I ask questions. I mean, I’m not, you know, I’ve been doing it. Like I said, I started home improvement stuff in 1985 and I asked a question today as a matter of fact. So you know, it’s every day I’m doing this. How do you do it when you do it? You know, it’s always a learning curve. If you have something that you excel in, don’t discourage people from calling you and asking advice, you be the one that people can call and ask, their day has gone south. And they’re needing help and advice. They’ve made that bad choice. They’ve cut that board two inches too short. And how do I get out of this now? You know, be there to offer encouragement to make yourself available and just pay it forward. You know, we were all there at one time. Nobody walks into entrepreneurship knowing everything going to happen and having an answer for everything. It pops up. It’s a learning curve. And the hard lessons are the ones that stick with you and the ones that you can help others to avoid. You might make or learn a hard lesson doing one thing. And I learned something, another thing, learn a hard lesson, and then we collaborate. Neither one of us would want to repeat that. 

Charlotte:

Yeah. And I think going back to our friend, Debbie Davis, I remember when we were making some decisions about our lives, I, you know, I was like, well, you just pray. We just need confirmation. And she sends back that verse from Esther, if I perish, Iparish. And it just solidified something in our heart. It’s like, you know, we’ve got one life to live. At the worst, you know what can happen where we want to do the right thing. We’re trying to go the right direction. You know, we’ve lost a lot of money before for a lot less so. So it’s kinda like, you know, what’s the worst that can happen? You know, we’ll never know unless we try, unless we move forward.

Kenny:

If you try and fail, at least you can sit back and say, you know, I did try, you know, how would you like be there in your death bed and you’re saying, I wonder what would have happened if I started that business? And yeah, I wish. David Cassidy, when he passed away, his dying words were so much wasted time. And you know, I don’t want to waste time. I’ve wasted too much time at this point in my life. Now I’m willing to step out there and to take the chance to do what I think is right. I may fall flat on my face, but I’m going to step back there and I’m going to try.

Jeremy:

Yeah. One of my favorite quotes is something like this, and I apologize if I butcher it, but whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. So I think what I’m hearing you say is get up and go do it. Go forward and be the change. So, you know, if somebody wants to learn more about you and the work that you’re doing with CPR, how can they do that?

Kenny:

Well, we do have a, a website, charlestonpropertyrestoration.com  Facebook page, same thing.

Charlotte:

All of our contact information is on the Facebook page. 

Jeremy:

Awesome.

Kenny:

Message, you know, we get messages, Instant Messenger on Facebook, text me, call me, you know, if I’m up on a ladder with one hand and a paint bucket and I don’t know, I may not answer the phone, right then, but, you know, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

Jeremy:

Good. Well I’d encourage those that are within the local market especially to, you know, to reach out and if you have a need, if you have a question you know, these are good human beings. I’ve had the fortune to get to know them over some time now. So again, if you’re listening, if you’re in the Charleston-Huntington Metro area especially and you have any, be sure to reach out. So that’s all for this episode of the Heroes of Change podcast from EPIC Mission. We hope that you’ve been inspired by something that you’ve heard today because together, we are the change. Tune in next time as we dig into the story of another hero and learn about what they do, how they do it, and most importantly, why they do what they do. Take care, stay encouraged and we’ll look forward to seeing you next time on the Heroes of Change podcast from EPIC Mission. Take care.

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