Episode 190 - Franklin Beach - Leaders On Leadership
Despite facing challenges and questioning his path, Franklin Beach, a pillar of his community and a man of unwavering faith, shares his journey towards joy and living a purposeful life. Through his experiences, Franklin emphasizes the importance of faith in navigating life's difficulties and the power of forgiveness in letting go of burdens. He highlights that overcoming challenges can be a source of valuable lessons and growth. Inspired by his dedication to his church, an international children's charity, and his long-standing service as a local alderman, Franklin underscores the profound fulfillment found in serving others. Whether you're facing challenges or simply seeking a deeper meaning in life, Franklin's message offers a beacon of hope. He reminds us that with faith as our guide and a commitment to helping others, we can all discover the path toward joy and live a truly purposeful life.
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Franklin Beach - Leaders On Leadership
Welcome to the show where we pull back the curtain on leadership and talk with leaders of all ages and stages about what it takes to pay the price of leadership. I am tremendously excited to introduce you to my guest, Mr. Franklin Beach.
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Franklin, welcome.
Thank you so much. It’s good to be here with you and your guests.
Thank you. Let me tell you a little bit about Franklin. He was adopted at less than a year old. Franklin Beach was raised in a Christian home attending a Salvation Army Church where he is still active. Franklin has been a lifelong businessman owning an accounting firm and is involved in other community and international endeavors. Frank is an elected alderman in the city of Rockford, Illinois for 44 years, devoted to servant leadership. He and his wife, Sonja, have been married 64 years and have 2 married daughters, 2 granddaughters, and 1 great-grandson. Franklin, thank you again. I’m so excited to have the honor of meeting you.
Where did you learn all of that stuff?
Tremendous words get out about tremendous people. Speaking of which, Franklin and I have only recently been connected. We were connected to the Lord many years ago. Do you want to tell the folks about your connection with my father and how we found each other?
It’s unbelievable that we are talking to one another. I keep asking myself, “Dear Lord Jesus, why would it be that You’d allow this connection to happen this time in our lives?” The truth of the matter is I saw you on Facebook. It was an email of some kind. I called you on the phone to get the connection. I was like, “Is this truly Charlie Jones’ daughter?” It’s true that I did that.
It was many years ago that I met your father in Rockford. He came through for some seminars. I was a young man at that time, but we had a liking for each other. We spent a lot of time in person on the phone to talk about each other. The thing that really drew me in was that one day, your father called me on the phone and said, “God told me that you’re in the process of selling your business.” I said, “How in the world would he know that?” because I never talked to anybody about it. I hadn’t talked to my wife about it. It was in my thoughts that this was something that I needed to do.
I stood there in my kitchen startled to say, “What do you mean God told you to call me?” He said, “That’s what I did. Are you in the process?” That was the direct question he asked me. I said, “I am.” He said, “That’s good. Meet me up in Minneapolis. I want you to come up. I want to talk to you about some books.” I said, “I don’t want to talk to you about books. I’m not a reader.” He said, “You will be when I’m done with you.” I can still hear that.
He said, “I’m telling you one thing right now. You get this straight in your head. Promise me one thing.” I was like, “What’s that?” He said, “I’m only going to ask you to read fifteen minutes a day. Please understand.” He made a big deal out of that. He said, “Don’t read on the weekends. Please promise me no Saturday or Sunday, but read fifteen minutes a day.” He knew what was going to happen. You can’t eat 1 potato chip and not eat 3, 4, or 10.
There is a famous line about how five years do not make you different as for what you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read. I’m different from meeting you. How true that is. My life is being enriched at this moment. I heard a man tell me, “I’d rather be an inch from hell going away from it than 1,000 miles from it going towards it.” If you take that principle and extract that into other areas of your life, who it is, it doesn’t matter how deep or down you are. If you’re headed in the right direction, it’ll all be fine.
That’s how this thing all started. I went up to Minneapolis and met him. I wish I could remember that couple up there. They were a nice couple. I forgot. Maybe some other day. We talked about books, and your dad was there, “Tremendous” Charlie. How I loved that man. When I traveled around the country, I always took the time to call him. I knew your brother, Jerry. I met him. We went to Minneapolis. I have all kinds of stories about him. That’s for another day.
I remember that I once started a book business called Harvest Time Books. I thought, “This is great. Since God was in it and Charlie was in it, things are going to work out wonderfully.” I’ll tell you the truth. It didn’t work out wonderfully. That’s where my story begins. That’s where loneliness begins. That’s where the abandonment begins.
All of those things that say, “Are you going to go for it or not?” Leadership, as his book outlines, has nothing to do with personality, title, or other things that people think you have to have as a leader. Your dad said in the first seminar I ever attended with him, which he made a big deal and you know that, The Seven Laws of Leadership. He said, “You get your pencil. You’re going to write this down.” I can still hear his voice saying, “The first law of leadership is work.” You’ve heard that before, right?
Yeah. Nothing works unless you work it. He was like, “Get to work. What are you doing here?”
Exactly. You don’t have to put your sign up that says you’re the president, this, or that. Get your butt to work.
I love when you said, “Are you going to go forward?” There are readers out there who are like, “You’re speaking to me right now.” How do you deal with that when you’re in something? You feel called to it. You feel the Lord has given you confirmation. You said something didn’t work out. We’ve all been there. The question is, are you going to go forward? You do get that loneliness. Can you unpack that for us?
Loneliness And Finding Peace
The loneliness comes in all the relationships you’ve made in the community, your church, or whatever. You start going inward by thinking, “What are they going to think about me? They think I’m going to be a failure.” Everything starts going about me rather than getting on with it. I had to reach that point. Let me say this to you. I remember that one evening, I came back to my office because my inventory was in the basement of this building, about 4,000 square feet. I saw all my inventory, the last hope of trying to recover funds floating in the water. There must have been at least half a foot or more of water.
What had happened was that during the snowfall, the exhaust system in the building that we were at was drawing the snow in the building and melting it. I was so angry. I was angry at the Lord. I was angry at everything. I was like, “This isn’t working. What am I going to do, Lord?” I walked up into my office and left the darn book floating in the water. You know Jesus lives in my heart. I’ve been growing gracefully with Him through the years. I said, “Dear Lord Jesus, with friends like you, who needs enemies?” That’s exactly what I said. The Lord said, “Do you have anything else you want to tell me?”
We’ve all been there.
I let go of a whole bunch of things. He said, “Now we know who you are.” I said, “Who am I?” He said, “You’re a traitor.” I said, “What?” He said, “The first time you run into a concrete wall, I’m the first one you want to throw out.” I went and got on my knees, laid down on that floor, and said, “God, now I understand there is no set of circumstances that we can carve out that’ll produce a lasting joy and a lasting peace other than a right relationship with you.”
I asked Him to forgive me for those words. I didn’t want to say them, but they came out of my mouth. I told my friends. They said, “How can you be so happy losing all this money?” I said, “That’s a cheap lesson.” It’s a tremendous lesson to learn that there are no circumstances that bring peace and joy other than a right relationship with God. That’s been helpful to me all through my life. Time doesn’t permit us to go through other stories, and I’m sure your readers don’t want to read all of those kinds of things.
You may have known this about Charles. In ‘72, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we had Agnes, the flood of a lifetime. Charles had the bookstore at 10 North 2nd Street in Downtown Harrisburg. He couldn’t even get across because of the floods. When he finally got there, he looked in the basement and the inventory, his plaques, and all his board recognition from when he was with Mutual of New York were gone.
He had that same thing where he looked at the Lord and was like, “It’s yours to give. It’s yours to take.” I’ll never forget him coming home and crying. I was only nine at the time. I’ll never forget that. That was such a lesson for him. He was like, “God, You can take it at any point,” but when your life comes up like that.
I didn’t know that about your dad. Maybe this is going the wrong way, but I can also remember the tender heart of your father. I remember sitting with him at the airport. He said he was going home to sell his boat. I said, “Why in the world would you go sell your boat?” Your father started crying right there. We were sitting on suitcases in the airport. He said, “There are many people that need help. I can always buy another boat, but right now, they need money. I’m going to go sell it and give it to them.” Lessons to learn from a young man.
He was very convicted about that. That was like, “You got to do this.” I have nothing against people who want to spend their wealth doing fun stuff. He was terribly convicted about that. The other thing he said was, “While I’m out in my boat having fun, other people are on dry land recruiting my clients.” That was the other thing. People used to laugh too. He was like, "Leisure is great, but you have to be careful because you’re trading your time off with somebody else.”
Thank you for sharing that. The Lord really softened his heart. I want to get to abandonment after that because you talked about that. How do you deal with weariness? we got to run and not be weary. It is exhausting. You get beaten when you look at your last hope of recouping revenue. Pretty much, 99% of our audience have felt that, especially as entrepreneurs. They are like, “Lord, this is it. I’m so tired I can’t even see a weight out of this. How do You stay strong? “
It’s interesting. I told my kids not long ago, “I remember an illustration that we’ve all had. You’ve gone to a restaurant, and it’s got really dark lights that you could hardly see. After you sit down and they serve you the water, pretty soon, your eyes adjust to it. You can see in that dark room real clearly. It is wariness in business. Nobody wants to go in that ditch. No one wants to go in that pit. No one, including Joseph, who was sold into slavery out of a pit. Once you get down in the pit and your eyes get adjusted, it’s easy to say, “I like it down here. I have no responsibilities. I don’t have to do anything. Put my thumb in my mouth and have a pity party.”
Even when friends came, they tried to pull you out of that pit. You fought to go into it, and then you’re fighting to get out of it. I had a friend who came by and helped pull me up out of that pit and put me on the ground. That’s when I reconnected back with your dad and all of that kind of thing. That’s true. Are you in the pit? Do you want to stay down there? Do you want to keep sucking your thumb? Do you want to let life pass by? Are you going to take the God-given gift you’ve gotten? Get up and move on. That’s my story as far as that motivation. I’ve been in those pits. The good thing is when you go to a pit, you’re only there for a few minutes because you know what the past was. You get yourself up and go. I don’t know if that answers your question.
That’s beautiful. When you’re down there, you think about how long you used to stay in it when you were either spiritually immature or too prideful to ask for help or give yourself grace. The older you get, you’re more seasoned as a leader like most of our audience where you realize, “We’re still going to get in the pits and the ditches.” We don't have to stay in them for any length of thought.
Learning Opportunities
That’s right. That’s the exciting part about it. At this point, it’s not that you’ve arrived or I’ve arrived. We won’t arrive until we’re there in glory. The point of it is the experience comes by saying you can either stay there or get out. How long do you want to be there? How long do you want to be miserable?
You said the word miserable. Charles would say that you can be happy miserable or miserable-miserable. Somebody said to me, “Pain is a fact of life. Misery is optional.” I thought, “Isn’t that true?”
Pain is a fact of life. Misery is optional.
That’s exactly right.
If you are all the negative emotions, the guilt, the shame, and the misery, that’s all self-imposed. It’s going to be a pain. People say, “You’re going to act like everything in life is going to go right.” You are never going to hear me say that. Who wants to tune in to a show where everybody’s life is perfect? I wouldn’t find anybody to interview.
I’m a little suspicious of, “My life is perfect.”
That’s a good point.
We can enjoy our life on the journey. There were times when they were having a good time, and there were other times when they were in the pit. Jesus told me, “Get out and move on.” Those are choices that we make. I have to tell you this. I could still remember this one man. He was the vice president of a large aerospace company from our church. I said it before, but he said, “How can you be so happy losing money?” I said to him, “God was gracious enough to only let me lose this amount.”
There was a lesson that we all have to learn. I might as well learn it there than go someplace else and really have to learn at a much more difficult level. I do believe in my heart there are lessons that we all have to learn. We are either going to learn them from our parents as we grow up, the ones that love us the most and that give us the most slack, if you will, or if we don’t and the guy says, “I don’t like discipline,” I’m sure he’s going to love it and pamper it. I believe in my heart that we all have basic lessons we have to learn and we might as well get on with it. That’s what I learned from your dad. He was the same way.
Purposeful Life: God is gracious enough to bring us lessons to learn.
He knew about pits. He is going to pump you up. He is going to smack you, pull your thumb out of your mouth, and then give you a big hug. That was it. There was no going back. Otherwise, you were going to have to deal with him. You did not want to go back to him thumb-sucking a second time.
One of the gifts God gave your dad was to shake people up a bit off of the normal things you get or hear in leadership seminars. It’s not that they’re wrong, but they’re not in the right direction. That’s what was good about it. He gave a new perspective on what was really real. The truth of it is with any embarrassment, Jesus Christ was a part and parcel of every one of those decisions.
Have it in your heart, first of all, who you’re going to serve, and then move on with it. Everything we do is an act of worship. I don’t care what it is. This interview is an act of worship. Selling books is an act of worship. Digging a ditch is an act of worship. No matter what we’re doing, this short time on Earth is an act of worship. That’s my view of it.
People might feel like, “I got to worship and go to church, sit in the field, fold my hands, say two prayers, and memorize a verse.” Those are all good things, but there’s more than that. The salvation we get through Jesus Christ is his gift to us. What we do with that is our gift back to him, no matter what it is. There’s nothing more than loving our kids.
Purposeful Life: The salvation we get through Jesus Christ is a gift, and we should give back to him.
Loving our Heavenly Father.
That’s what He did. He loved them.
You alluded to or hit on in the beginning the word abandonment. Charles’ term of abandonment was not walking away from something. I’m like, “How’d you get so successful?” He’s like, “I do more in a day to contribute to my failure than my success. It’s only by the grace of God I’ve had any success.” His point was that most of the time, we are busy with what we like and want to think about and not what we ought and need to think about. It was this real pruning, capturing every thought, every word, and every moment, and being very intentional about the highest use of our time for the service of God. How do you stay abandoned to your truest and highest calling?
Letting Go Of The Past
I’ll try to answer that for you here. It’s very easy to look backward and say, “If I would’ve only done this, that would have solved blah.” If you get that thing going in your mind, it can destroy any forward movement. I had to come to the place in my life where I say, “Lord, thank You for my past, thank You for the future, and thank You for today. God, what is it that You want me to do today to get to tomorrow?”
I told someone this not long ago. They asked, “How is it that you and your wife can be married 64 years?” I said, “First of all, understand one thing. I couldn’t be married yesterday. That’s over with. I can’t be married tomorrow. That hasn’t happened yet. I’m married today. I take care of it today.” That’s the same way in my walk with Jesus. I can’t be in love with Jesus yesterday. That’s gone. I can’t be in love with him tomorrow. It hasn’t got here. Take care of your relationship with him today, whatever that is.
The point of it is if there’s a problem between you and someone else, get forgiveness. Don’t sit there and hold it. It’ll destroy you. Jesus said over and over, “Forgive.” He even said, “When you go to the altar and there, you realize you are all against your brother or your brother is all against you, get off of that altar. Go make it right.” I can tell you stories about that in my life. That’s how I move forward. It’s not that I’m perfect, but that’s in my mind. Do you have to plan? Yes. You plan for you. God says, “Plan the state of your businesses,” but I can’t live it until it happens. I don’t know if that answers your question, but That’s where I’m at.
It did. Charles wrote a book called Forgiveness is Tremendous with Dan Ledwith. For our audience out there, it is one of the most profound books. It talks about what forgiveness is and what forgiveness isn’t. We’ll get you a copy of that. I narrated it too. It’s so powerful. That’s one of the things if you do nothing else, is abandon that sense of animosity, enmity, and anger even towards yourself. You’ve got to forgive yourself, and you have to forgive others.
Charles in the book and Dan really unpack what it is. They’re like, “If Christ remembers our sins no more, what are you doing? Why do you keep dragging this up? Is there something Jesus left? He died for every sin that ever was, will be, and ever committed. End it. You don’t need to spend your time on that.” I’m so glad you brought up forgiveness because that is one of the things that a lot of people cannot move forward from. Blessed are the peacemakers. They’re still stuck in that past and that anger. That’s a devil. The devil may not be able to get our souls, he loves to keep us in that sense of anger and hostility.
One of the things that God has helped me understand through the years is understanding that grace has settled it as far as us and Him. He doesn’t remember anything any farther than the East from the West. I thought that was interesting. There’s no ending to the East or West. There’s an ending to the North and South, but not the East and West. There’s still a memory there that helps you remember what He saved you from, but we’re not supposed to live in that. We’re not supposed to let that be the thing that defines who we are. That’s what happens so often. If Satan gets a hold of our minds and keeps whipping over, tell him, “Take a hike.”
It’s done. It’s already been covered. Christ being omnipotent and omniscient has already seen the end. He has already seen the end of the story. We already know from Revelation what the end of the story is going to be, but get out of it. I keep going on about this because even up until about a few years ago, I really did not understand the concept of forgiveness and what it is. It’s not that you erase it out of your mind, but you don’t live in it. It makes you more empathetic. You talked about Charles’ tender heart. It’s because he knows what a scoundrel he was. He knows what scoundrels were in his life. When he found Christ, nobody was more thankful for, “You’d love somebody like me than Him.” He realized how rotten he could be and how much forgiveness he needed.
It certainly is not a passing passage in scripture. I have to bring up to my own family from time to time when things go sour with other relationships not just in the family but with other people, “You have to let go of that. Give it to God.” If it’s true that if thy enemy is hungry, feed him. Give them something to drink. God said, “I will repay.” If that’s true, if the Creator of the world says, “I will repay,” it is going to be better than anything I can think of. He’s like, “Take care of yourself, Frank Beach.” It’s like the old adage. If you’re only 1% wrong and the other person is 99%, take care of your 1% and leave the 99% to God. I think that’s true. What do you think about that?
If you're only 1% wrong while the other person is 99%, take care of your 1% and leave the 99% to God.
I love it. I’m writing that down because that is so good. We’re worried about being right. It’s like Christ, “We don’t know the other person’s motives. We can’t even mend out justice.”
That’s right.
It’s more important to be relational than right and to focus on yourself. When we do that, everything takes care of itself. Charles would say that. Nobody wants to be told, “You brought it on yourself.” People will call me, even salespeople, and tell me how I messed up and how wrong my website is. I’m like, “If you were within arms reach, I would slap you. If you show me what’s wrong, I’d understand.” That was his thing. He was like, “Focus on yourself and let God fix everything else.”
What is this song we sing in church? Trust and obey for there’s no other way. Those are simple words to be happy in Jesus.
That’s how we lead and grow teams. The disciples were loyal to Him because they trusted who He said He was and then they obeyed. That’s it, these two things. Whatever you’re committing to. That’s what Charles would do too. He’d be like, “I’m not going to tell you what to believe or where to go to church,” and he would challenge you, “but you better know where you’re planting your flag and be able to defend it because otherwise, you’re living an inauthentic life.”
You better know where you’re planting your flag and defend it. Otherwise, you're living an inauthentic life.
That’s exactly right.
It was a very good challenge.
That’s a brief story.
I love it.
I get to meet Charlie’s daughter after all of these years. What a treat that is for me.
This is crazy.
I hope that we can continue to communicate with each other.
We will. That brings me to the last point, vision. What is the future for Franklin Beach? We’re getting started.
I don’t see anywhere in the scripture that gives me permission to retire. It tells me to occupy until He comes. As long as it gives me strength, I'll keep moving on. I may sleep a little later, maybe an hour, or I may do my scheduling a little differently, but I’m far from being done. The vision for me is that most of my activity is centered on my work with the Salvation Army. I’m on the board of directors and an active charter member for Kids Around the World. They’re an international organization that builds playgrounds, does feeding projects, and leads kids to Jesus Christ all over the world. It’s in about 137 countries. You might want to look it up on the website, Kids Around the World.
I will.
We got through our springboard meetings. It’s exciting to see what’s going on. We’ll probably do pretty close to ten million meals this 2024 with kids and see how they come to learn about Jesus. We’ve created a new way to tell stories for kids. I spend a lot of my time with that and then the city council. I’m still on the city council as an alderman in the city of Rockford. I said, “As long as the people want me there, that’s fine.” That’s a story in and of itself someday on how in the world I became an alderman. Someday, we’ll talk about that on the phone. That’s where I’m at. I’m excited about life. I love my kids. I love my wife. We do stuff together when we get a chance. That’s it. You can call me Frank too.
I will.
My adoptive mother changed my name from Frank to Franklin because my biological mother was like, “I’ll call him Frank.” She changed it to Franklin. When my mother was alive, I always had to sign Franklin to make her happy.
That’s beautiful. Have you ever met your biological mother?
I met my biological aunt. The long and short of it is I called my aunt on the phone and said, “I don’t expect you to talk to me, but please let me say one word. If my mother had been alive, I would want to thank her for not aborting me and giving me life.” She started crying. She said, “Come to me. We have been praying for you ever since. We didn’t even know our sister was pregnant.” I came to find out that my biological grandfather had been a Pentecostal minister for 37 years. To see how God had taken me from the womb of one woman and put me in the arms of another to where we’re talking to Charlie Jones’ daughter, are you kidding me? Am I excited or what?
It’s unbelievable.
If I could go near you, I’d take you in my arms and give you a big hug and kiss.
I will take a rain check on that. I used to live in St. Louis. We would’ve been a lot closer. I get out in the Midwest. We will connect and hug this side of Heaven. I promise you that.
I can’t wait. Thank you so much for taking time with me.
You’re welcome. I want to say to our audience, thank you so much. Frank, this has been such an incredible blessing. You spoke to my heart. I know you’re speaking to other people. I look forward to talking about many more books with you and many more tremendous connections. To our audience out there, if you like what you’ve read, please hit the like and the subscribe button.
We’d be honored if you would leave us a review and share this with other people who need to know about what it takes to pay the price of leadership and how life gets more tremendous. They need to meet Tremendous Frank because Frank is proof positive that you’ll be the same person five years from now that you are today except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read. Thank you again.
Thank you for your time. Thank you to your audience as well.
Have a tremendous rest of the day. Bye.
Thank you. Same to you. Bye.
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About Franklin Beach
Adopted at less than a year old, Franklin Beach was raised in a Christian home, attending the Salvation Army Church, where he remains active today. Frank has been a lifelong businessman, owning an accounting firm and participating in other community and international endeavors. Frank has been an elected City of Rockford, Il Alderman for 44 years, devoted to servant leadership. He and his wife, Sonja, have been married for 64 years and have two married daughters, two granddaughters, and one great-grandson.