This is the Truth Network.
Well, in studio with me today, an entrepreneur of entrepreneurs. I am pleased to have with me Don Baker. Good day, Don. Thanks for being on. It's time to man up.
Well, you know, this is quite an adventure for me. Had no idea what I am getting into. When we met just a couple months ago, or whatever it was, right? Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, we had a mutual friend, and Nikita was gracious enough to come to a Bible study down at Rock Hill Diner with a dozen of us, and. That's how I ended up at this studio. That was the start. That was the start, and of course, he's referring to actually a man, a longtime friend, co-authored a book together called "Wrestling with Success: Developing a Championship Mentality." None other than Jeffrey Gitomer himself, sales salesman extraordinaire, is how I would describe Jeffrey. How how might you describe Jeffrey, Don?
Jeffrey is a live wire. And I am too.
So when we get together, it's very dangerous. There could be some real sparks, is what I am hearing. Oh yeah.
Well, Jeffrey, twenty nine years ago in an hour, inspired me to start a business. Started that Monday, and that was the last time I saw him. I ran into him in this August at a. Convergence of CEOs, and here we are today. And he was the connector with Nikita.
So thank you, Jeffrey. Yes, thank you, Mister Gittermer. Much appreciated. And and little that we know, I guess two words that come to mind are but God. Little that we know what that connection or coming down to that Bible study breakfast would would lead to.
But but here we are developing a a great friendship now. Yeah, well, you know, it's interesting because Nida's, it. Nikita's from the Midwest, and one of my best buddies is from the Midwest. I was in the same high school with him, and geez, they sound like brothers, man. Of course, every dot every time I go back to, of course, he's referring to Minnesota when he says the Midwest.
And every time I go back there, I know I'm there when people say, "How are you?" You know, I always hear that kind of draw on those words, and and not unlike certain accents in in the In the south, right? Oh yes, and you know I'm, I'm. I guess my son calls me a carpet bagger because I'm a halfback. I was in New York, moved to Florida, and ended up in Carolinas. And he was born in Carolina, and he's a little bit of a redneck, and I just don't qualify in his eyes.
You know, I I've heard that term before that you described it so well. What Dobbs referring to is they they go down to Florida. You know, some call some call them snowbirds. They just go down seasonally, but.
Some move there, but then and then make their way halfway back, and with a pit stop in the Carolinas, and never make it back to New York.
Now, now, so you mentioned your son, so let's talk about that for a minute, though. Tell us, just take a minute. Tell us about your family.
Well, I've had an interesting life, and Dad wanted a new life, new wife. I ended up in three boarding schools. Oh wow!
Some were by choice, and ended up in Florida at Saint Andrews High School in Boca Raton, Florida, which was a good prep school, and I had a good basis for moving forward. I married my high school sweetheart. After she turned me down twice, okay, so I didn't give it up, and we had a pretty good life together for about eighteen years. And she developed cancer at the age of twenty-three, and we didn't know what it was. And then my son.
Our deadline was 32, and Dr. Michael Kaufman said, "Hey, there's risks, but we don't know what's up." She was just having seizures and stuff. We just didn't know. And I'll be darned if my son popped up, cancer got the edge, and she wanted to get him to kindergarten, and she she lived another five. Thank goodness to God.
Her herbal witch Opal, who helped her spiritually and physically. And feed and what she ate.
So, I was blessed. I don't need any. I'm sorry because I got a son out of the deal, and just to make life more interesting, he was born with two congenital heart defects.
Okay, and nobody knew how to fix it. And we studied the whole East Coast in finding. We ended up at Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. And they did more there in two days you can do in Charlotte in six months. And Doctor Puga, little Mexican fella, was the only guy in the world experimenting with this procedure.
And first time we were there, three out of five died. My son made it. Wow! He had three operations before he was five.
Okay. And he's thirty-six today by the grace of God. And he is. The connector to my wife. Every time I look at him, but you know, people say, "Oh, geez, it's this cancer thing is pretty outrageous." But God doesn't give you any more than you can handle, and that's been my motto.
I got a bag to carry, and I had a lot of bag to carry there. You just think about that, and then I was a bachelor, one job, thirty years ago, and. I had a fish fry. I'm a good fisherman, so I had a fish fry, and my brother's wife invited this gal. I said no, but in the middle of the night, the Wednesday before, I had this little voice told me, "Don't you be judgmental.
There's nothing to worry about. Let this person come." So she came to dinner, never left.
Okay. Okay. Well, you know, we we we actually, you may or may not know, but so in having things in common, you know, I had a wife that was diagnosed of cancer at the age of twenty four. And she battled it for two years, so she didn't get five. She got two, and passed away at the age of twenty-six.
And so, you and I have that in common. And so, unlike some, you know, who might sympathize because they've never been through that. Don, I can empathize because I know what you went through. You know what I went through, right? With all the treatments and everything that they did back then, way back then.
Yeah.
Well, you know, it was. Interesting because it wasn't identified until my son was born, and the body will let down the immune system because the child is an alien, and that gave the cancer the edge. But she still battled it for five years, and passed three days after we got him in kindergarten. But now he's thirty six. What what's his name?
His name's Charles. Charles Michael Baker. Charles, come on, Charles. All right, and and so, the the the little fast forward. A little gal comes to the first fish fry, never leaves.
So you you guys and what's her name? This is my Cheryl. Cheryl, and you guys been married how long now? Twenty eight years. Wow.
Okay, and children with Cheryl.
Now we, I was about thirty-nine at the time.
Okay, she'd already tied him up, said she'd untie him. I said no, but I got a bonus there. I got Cheryl, and a daughter, so I got a twofer.
Okay, and today I have three grandkids, and a son-in-law. Hmm.
So I made out pretty good, pretty good investment there. Yeah, that's that's a good ROI. Oh yeah, turn on investment, right? And even more interesting is, I have three adopted grandbabies.
Okay. I have a white one, a yellow one, and a brown one, and they are. Absolutely, mine. And the interesting part is, the young, the oldest one prayed for a little sister, okay, and got a little brother. Ah, come on.
All right, now then we get a call from the mom of the first one, ten years later, and she lost a child to DSS.
So now I have two of them, and they have the same mother, and they're ten years apart.
Now that's a God thing, folks. Yeah, and it's just amazing when I think about what might have happened or where they would be if I hadn't had the opportunity and the means to facilitate getting these kids, because my daughter couldn't have children for some weird reason.
So we have something else in common.
So my youngest daughter and her husband, my youngest daughter Colby and her husband Andrew, um, are adopt just getting ready to adopt their third, and um, and the first two are from the same mother but different dads, and then the third one is is a completely different. Mom, but um, but yeah, they've taken these these three babies in into their home and with a you know a mixture of, of you know dads and and moms and backgrounds and so different colors and but you know the times I've been with them stayed with them been around them you you wouldn't know it I mean the way my daughter. Loves on them. Tell tells them how much she loves them.
Now they're only they're going to be a newborn, a one year old, the two year old, essentially all at the same time for for see.
So they'll all grow up a year apart as time goes on. But and then my son in law Andrew, he's. Amazing with them as well, the way the two of them love on them, and I was just even thinking this morning in my prayer time, Don, how how those children get to grow up, you know, and and not in a you know not being. Shuffled around, you know. You mentioned three different boarding schools, right?
Oh yeah.
But they're going to have a stable home, and they're going to grow up, you know, being taught the word of God.
So they're going to be exposed to that, and ultimately make their own decision. But they're going to have a good Christian home. They're going to grow up in compared to what it potentially could be had the moms just thrown them up for adoption, or you know, or into an orphan. Or whatever, but here these three babies are going to have an an amazing environment in which to grow up in.
So here again, I can relate to some of your story. We get we have that relatable story, right? This is pretty wild because you know, you know, the first one, the mom brought the baby over two weeks old and asked my daughter to take care of her, and didn't show up for three weeks. Came back and got the baby, and then a week later wanted the same gig. And my daughter basically said, "You need to figure out whether you're going to take care of this child or not." And I was not wanting to get close for a year because even the wayward father that she didn't know had rights, right?
That could pull it away, and it was hard for me because it's heartbreaking if you had that child and then you'd have to give her up, you know? Yeah.
But all three of them were infants. Yep. The second one, my a lawyer that actually took care of my wife's estates turned out to be a adoption lawyer that found Hudson, and the mom interviewed thirty six people to determine who she was going to let the child to because she wasn't lost. She was just a single mom that couldn't handle a second one, working girl. Yep.
And three weeks before was born, called up. Jody Lynn, and said, "Are you willing?" Now you say God things. I got a place in Florida, and Hudson came out of Florida, and by law you have to stay in the state for thirty days before you can move them out. And I had the place, so everything lined up. All worked out, didn't it?
Wow! Again, but God, right?
So, so pretty, pretty amazing. Journey, to to say the least, and so and and again, I'm just kind of taken aback by the the the things we we have in common and and connection there.
Now, I mentioned on the onset of the show, you know, entrepreneur, you're you're you're what I call marketplace guy. You're out there in the marketplace.
So you you built. Multiple businesses over the years, and it's a very successful businesses. Going back to Jeffrey Gitimer for a moment, you said he was really kind of the inspiration. Was that inspiration for you to launch the first one, and then that led into all the other ones, or how that unfold? All right, my dad was a builder, and he worked for a pool outfit in New York, and he started in 1957.
I was born in 1957. And it was paddock pool, and they went out. They went bankrupt, and my dad competed for it. And in the early sixties, he got it, and that's how we got in the pool business. And I was a dutiful son; I was on the old man plan, and it was not by.
It was I just felt a responsibility to my dad. I was a certified GC Unlimited at twenty years old, state of Florida. Could have gone to Dubai and worked for Brown and Root for a buck and a half, and my dad said, "Come on with me," and you know I took a twenty eight thousand dollars salary for the next ten years. Learned the trade and and the oh yeah, ins and outs of the business. But I've been building pools since I was thirteen years old.
Wow! And I literally been building pools for fifty five years, and so that was the deal. My dad moved from. New York brought his manufacturing business. He manufactured pool equipment, big stuff.
And I came down, and he carried his construction business with him. And when I came out of school, that's what I did.
So I ran the construction company for thirty-five years. And like I say, when I met Cheryl, I had one job, and that was construction. Subsequently, I had another business in Florida for pools. Two thousand and eight kind of wiped it out. I had two businesses down there, and one was pool finish, one was building the pools.
So I came on back, and when we developed what we were doing there in two thousand and four, I had an interesting thing happen to me. Our group would have a meeting every year and bring all our builders, and I went to Saddlebrook in two thousand and four, and I only go in there. I'd never go early, but I went four days early, and I had an epiphany, and I wrote a fifty-two page business plan on paper. Sent it back to my gal Rachel Ivory. She printed it, and I was writing it, and my dad came to find out what I was up to.
He's a big man, and he about knocked the door down. I said, "Just leave me alone," because when you're flowing, you don't want anybody to break it, and he would break your flow. Right. At any rate, I gave it to him, and that's the one compliment he gave me my entire life. Wow!
And the name of it was Paddock Pool Builders: Grow or Die. And I mapped out basically how to grow that business. And at that time, I invented something I wanted to show him, and I honored him at that meeting. And then he died two months later. Wow!
Wow! So fast forward. My stepbrother was running the joint. He was there as a placeholder. He really wasn't his calling, and about went in the ditch in three and a half years.
So I, I basically. Was able to find a banker who loaned me two million bucks on a handshake, a smile, and a good story. And I took care of my stepbrother financially, and I had to run the big one and learn how to do that.
So, in the midst of that, with the Jeffrey thing, what happened was I was contemplating starting a business that's chemical based for pools. I sat in a seminar, and I did the math on the water we put in the ground—two hundred million gallons. It was worth five million dollars in net profit a year, and I wanted some of that.
So I was thinking about it, and then I go see Jeffrey at a North Carolina independent insurers show, where my wife was the only recruiter there, which was kind of cool. And it was—don't anybody spoil your dream. Right, right. That's the key. And stay away from those folks that'll naysay it, because most people don't have the guts to do it, the smarts, or the drive, or the willingness, and they will nothing but criticize you.
So he basically said, get away from those people. If that's in your heart, do it. Monday morning, I got forty grand from my old man, started the business with one man. Right. And it's a twenty million dollar year business today.
Been around for seventeen years. Yeah, and and what's the name of the company? It's called Pure Aqua. Pure Aqua. And they provide chlorine delivery systems for seventeen industries all over the world.
Wow.
They also have a service division that supports my pool construction division. Yeah.
And supply the chemical feed, and then on top of it, just for fun, we have a plumbing distribution. That provides pipe to all three companies. Just for fun, so so out there in listening land, you can understand when I say businessman extraordinaire. That's what Don is, as he has had success with multiple businesses across the the marketplace. Let's let's do this, Don.
You know, I want to talk about this before we run out of time. But what were you going to say? Your lead, take me there.
So, so I want to fast forward to the the Bible breakfast and and our conversation, and then once again, Jeffrey encouraged you to come to something called Man Camp, which you had have recently done, and we're impacted by the camp. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because Jeffrey told me I needed to go. Right, and Nikita told me to give me the Russian sickle if I didn't show up next time he saw me. That's right, and I'm I'm one that's curious, and I've been on a journey. My sister's a pastor, her husband's a pastor.
My best friend's sister, that was a missionary that I hadn't seen in forty years, reached out to me, and then I have a brother of a different color that we helped facilitate in a church in the last four weeks.
So and then I get Nikita, and I'll be quite frank with you, you show up with a bunch of strangers, and by the end of the week, you're brothers. And I was able to fast for four days, and every day I got stronger, and Nikita made me eat on the last night so I could have dinner with the boys. That's right, and. I was able to get clarity. I probably read more of the Bible than I had in my entire life, and I didn't just read it; I understood it.
And I also unloaded a bunch of stuff that I thought wasn't a problem that truly was a problem, and it lightened my spirit. It literally. I've been on fire, but I stay that way. But I'm burning even harder than I normally burn. You said something to me on the phone the other day.
I'm gonna see if I get the quote right. You said I didn't come to man camp with with a laundry list, but I I definitely got rid of some dirty laundry. Did I get that right? Absolutely, and you know people say that, and I never truly understand the concept of conviction—conviction of an issue that you need to deal with—and then repentance from it, and then asking for the forgiveness, and forgiving, and the prayer—the prayer that comes, and then the mercy, and. And so now I have tools that I didn't have because I didn't fully understand.
I wasn't raised in church. My father didn't believe in God. My my three of my brothers died, and there was no funerals. Wow.
My father died, no funeral. Wow.
And I almost fell into that trap with my my wife Melanie. But I could feel people needed it, and I needed the ability to mourn. And every person I met, she was important to important to me, and we were able to release and. Mourn. Yeah, it's a powerful, a powerful journey and a powerful statements you've you've made about the camp and your experience there and and and the tools right and that's part of our vision when Lex Luger and I put this camp together was bring men from all walks of life whether a man in the marketplace like you highly successful or a homeless man or a pastor or just any walk of like the oldest attendee to date has been eighty.
One years of age, still hungry for God, and so to hear you say, you know, you you received some tools you didn't have at camp that that are empowering you and and helping you be a better man. That that that encourages me, and I know it will encourage Lex to hear that you you were blessed in in that regard. In our last couple minutes here, what what would you say to listeners out there? Maybe there's a wife or a mom or a significant other out there. When it comes to hey, encourage your husband, your son, your significant other to go to man camp.
Take a minute. What would you say to them?
Well, I'll be quite frank with you. I've talked to at least a dozen of my compadres and shared that this was life changing for me, and it was. And in there, I realized that as The things my dad didn't give me, I gave some to my son, but I didn't realize how much more I could have done if I'd ministered properly, taken the time, and given him the father's blessing. And that struck me because I'm down there, and I didn't think that was a problem, but I got the blessing from, I believe it was Joel. With Josh, Josh, yeah, Josh, and it was real, folks.
I was able to forgive my dad. I didn't hate him, but he just didn't give it, and he didn't give me the tools to take care of my son properly and launch him properly. I just happened to be one of those guys that fought what I saw with my three brothers. I lost them, and I learned from them and found my own way, which is rare. Yeah, and the biggest part of it for me was.
Being the minister to your wife, spend the time, honor her, and folks. Just so you know, today is administrative day. This is the day where we honor those at service, and the next side of that was ministering to my son, my co-workers, and anybody that'll listen. Yeah, it's powerful, and and so you know we just encourage if you're encouraged by Don's story today, whether on the business acumen side of it or on on the man camp side of it, and and you want to learn more, find out more, get more information on man camp, just go to mancamp.info. Very simple, man camp.
Info, and you can learn more. We only do one in the spring and April, one in the fall in October. My wrestling compadre Lex Luger and I, God gave us the vision for this camp. We've had men from over twenty-five different states in Canada and Europe that have come into these camp, flown in, drove in, and had a similar experience as Don. You know from the From the quote I wrote down, life changing.
The five words I probably hear the most at the end of camp is this week was life changing. And so, if you're encouraged by that, encouraged by his story, I encourage you to check that out. And last thought, last thought in our last minute here. What I would say is the folks that go to that camp are blessed. There's no more than 1,600 folks have gone.
In the last twenty years or so, and what it is is, life runs you over, and you're too important to do it. And I found out with no phone, no computer, that I wasn't that important. And the house didn't burn down, the businesses didn't fail, right. And I wasn't as important as I'd like to think I am.
So all I can say is I was blessed to meet Lex, Nikita, and I. I can't get rid of him. He's like a tick on a dog's ear, so I'm leaning hard to the right.
So, thank you, Nikita. Oh, that's that. No, that's amazing. And and and I thank you. I thank you for being here today.
Thank you for being on the show, Don Baker here, and and I look forward to just seeing what the future holds for the two of us as we collaborate together and work together, tag team together, if you will. Absolutely.
Now I got one last closure. When I was down there. Jerome, the owner of the property, awesome man, said, "Jesus, I said, 'Where's your pond? I don't have one.' Well, we might build a pool. I happen to be a pool builder, and in less than three days, I've got half the folks that do business with me, and we were going to build that man a pool.
So there you go, the way God blesses. And so, thank you for tuning in today. Until next time, my challenge to you is to go out and have a God-filled, a God. God bless today, and I hope you enjoyed some of Don's story. Till next time, this is Nikita Koloff, the Russian nightmare.
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