Welcome to Living My Faith, a weekly show that celebrates the everyday believers who are walking with Jesus not just on Sundays, but in every area of their lives. From relationships and parenting to health, habits, and home, our guests share how they keep their faith at the center of it all. Hosted in Jacksonville, Florida and supported by Christ-centered partners, Living My Faith is a space where real life meets real faith. Today our hosts, Chuck Coker and James Fenimore, spoke with Lisa Almeida.
Lisa Almeida
Owner at Freedom Boat Club
Website Address: www.freedomboatclub.com
Short company description:
Freedom Boat Club is the simple alternative to boat ownership. Discover how easily you can gain access to a fleet of boats of varying sizes and styles without maintenance, cleaning, or hassles.
How do you define success?
Success for me is living in integrity, creating freedom, though my business, having deep loving relationships, and leaving a positive ripple in the world
What makes you unique?
We are all about fun!
What strategies do you use to improve your performance?
Identify, practice, and commit
Transcript:
James:
Hi and welcome to Living My Faith, where we like to spotlight people that are really living for the kingdom, whether they’re doing it in their business, their private ministry, or their personal life. I’m James Fenimore, and joining me always is my co-host, Dr. Chuck Coker. If you. Chuck, how are you?
Chuck:
It’s great. I’m doing great. It’s. I’m so excited about having Lisa on our program this morning.
James:
Lisa. Tell me. Thank you. Said about the business that God’s called you to.
Lisa:
Well, thank you so much. First of all, for having me on and allowing me to tell the story. So, my business partner and I own the Freedom Boat Club, and, we say it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Because, you know, members show up at the dock, their boats gassed up, ready to go. They go out and have a great time. They come back and we take care of everything. And so, you know, it’s easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Boating and, boating made simple.
And, I could have never, ever dreamed that when I started in January of oh nine with one location and four boats, that we would be at five locations in 135 boats right now.
So it’s pretty amazing. And, it’s part of a franchise system. So there is about 450 locations across the world, including Australia and Canada and Italy and France. And it’s just been an amazing journey.
James:
Well, great. Tell me about the experience that moved you in faith. And how you use that to live out your life.
Lisa:
So I had a 25 year career. Well, let me back up. My parents were competitive water skiers, and my mom and dad were tournament skiers. And my mom actually stayed with me until she was six months pregnant. And the doctor said, you have to stop.
And then my mom was like, well, we couldn’t stop practicing because you were born. So six weeks later, I was in the boat with them. So I’ve been a boater my entire life, and my first 25 years of my career were at BellSouth.
And while I loved what I did and I did, I didn’t understand the difference between loving something and having a passion for something. And, my life really was about getting on the boat on the weekends.
And, AT&T and BellSouth were merging and I had changed. The company was changing and I just was not happy there anymore. And I, I really felt like I was being called to do something else.
And, I was only five years from full retirement and I, I, I found out that with the merger, they had age plus years equals 65. And you could leave with your 401 K.
And, that’s what I did. I took a serious leap of faith. Like, my dad was mad. He was like, you’re five years from retirement. What are you doing? You’re never going to have a job like that, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, dad, I it just doesn’t connect with my heart anymore. And I think I’m supposed to do something else.
And so I left, and I literally for a year prayed every day. And I was like, God, show me. Point me. Where am I supposed to go?
And I’m like, in my mind thinking I’m going to do missions work or volunteer. I don’t know what it was, but, by the grace of God, Freedom Boat Club showed up and I was like, wait, this is my calling.
And, I couldn’t believe it because it was all of the skills I had learned at BellSouth with my first 25 years, and then my love and my passion for boating.
And, when my business partner and I bought the business, I said to him, I want to run this from a Christian perspective, meaning, you know, we want to walk our talk.
And, you know, it’s not our faith in Jesus. That is really what’s important to the outside world. What’s important to the outside world is our resemblance to him.
And so I wanted to walk in that faith and, and, you know, and and believe me, there have been times when we’ve had to make a couple tough decisions.
I even had to call my pastor about one of them. And, but it’s been an incredible blessing and it’s just been an amazing joy.
James:
How do you use your business to extend the faith to the people that you’ve come in contact with and that you work with on a daily basis?
Lisa:
So, first of all, I talk about my faith a lot, and I talk about how I could have never, ever imagined that my business would prosper like this.
My membership executive and I, when we go through hard times, we pray together. And, as a matter of fact, he was at a, he was at a Bible study, and they asked, you know, do you ever pray with, you know, anybody at work or whatever?
And he’s like, yeah, my boss and I prayed together and they were really surprised.
And, I really talk about faith with my employees. And when I’m coaching them or we’re making decisions, I’m talking about, you know, how to do this from a Christian perspective.
Like, you know what the Bible says, you know, forgiveness and, you know, walking in your faith and weathering the storms and all of those things.
And then I talk with members about it. I’m very open about it. And I really do know that this business was a gift from God.
And so I hold it in my hands and treat it with reverence.
James:
That’s great. Now what advice would you give someone that may be struggling with issues of their faith right now.
Lisa:
Yeah. So interestingly enough I went to Eleven22 and last week, you know, Pastor Jobi was really talking about that, like, what do you do when you keep asking and asking and asking and it’s not happening.
And that is, you ask for more faith. You believe that it’s going to happen. You listen to Scripture that says, you know, above and beyond all understanding, and you realize that God is doing everything for your good, and he’s always working, and you just have to bring yourself back to that grounding.
I’m not going to say it’s always easy and it’s not. But it’s definitely worth it.
And I think that if you can remember, just stop and remember to pray. I mean, that literally. That’s been like my Bible study the last 3 or 4 days is just stop and pray.
I mean, I’m going to give you an example this morning. My internet’s messed up. I couldn’t get on my computer. I’m frantically trying to get here on time.
And I was like, okay, God, you’re going to work this out? Satan, I rebuke you.
And then I was like, you know what? I’m just going to use my phone as a personal hotspot, and I can connect that way, and I’ll figure out what’s going on with my internet afterwards.
And here we are.
James:
And you got to share all that with our audience because of your faith. So we thank you for that.
Lisa:
And I got to tell you, you know, I was sweating a little bit, but I, I’m hoping you can’t see the sweat, but I, I was like, what the heck? Like, it’s crazy, but it happened, you know, don’t worry.
Chuck:
Next to me, you look great. And we’re right next to each other. So you got a person to compare against?
James:
I do want to say I love what you said about, you know, people don’t just want to know you are a Christ believer. They want to see the fruits of that. And that’s what’s going to move them.
And reminds me of first John two six, all that say they abide in him ought to walk the way in which he walks.
So it’s one thing to be about Christ. It’s another thing to walk like Christ, or at least they always attempt to and usually fail pretty miserably, if it’s my case. But I try every day.
Lisa:
But yes, I mean, I had a big issue and I was really upset and wrapped around the axle.
And I was like, I gotta call my pastor about this. And so I call and ask him and, and he tells me, well, why don’t you do this?
And I said, well, it’s not fair.
And he said, “Lisa, what do you want for your business?
And said, I want peace.
And I go, but it’s not fair.
And he said, I got some bad news for you. There’s not in the Bible and it’s not for you to decide.
So why don’t you do what you want to do to create peace in your business and ask your father to bless it and be a stand for that?
And boy, did we get blessed.
I’m not going to say it was easy. I also, I’m going to say eight years later, eight years later, it came full circle and I had to say this without getting I got a gift from that eight years earlier from that same problem was amazing.
James:
Let me say it’s been a real treat having you today.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. Several stories, and really, I know our audience is going to benefit greatly from it.
And thank you for being such a faithful follower of Christ.
Lisa:
Thank you so much.
James:
For Dr. Chuck. I’m James Fenimore. This has been living my faith and we can’t wait to see you next time.
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