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Community Banking

Not even a year had passed since Radha and I had finished Deputy Knowles’s garage enclosure. Built with Love had grown so much that I was running two crews, and Radha was a full-time office manager/bookkeeper. Not only were we getting more and more work, but the jobs were becoming larger and larger. In September 1977, right after the clothing store job, the inevitable happened—a young couple asked me to build them a house.

Up to that point, Built with Love had been doing remodel work, and job financing was always handled by the home owner. The building of a house, however, would require a construction loan between the company and a bank. I had no assets in my name; I had signed everything over to the Temple. Any profits Built with Love was making were also being donated to the Temple. So neither the company nor I had the balance sheet necessary to obtain a first-time construction loan. I simply took the attitude that if we were meant to build houses, something would work out.

I put together a portfolio for Built with Love that included some references from jobs we had done, as well as our nine-month financial history. We hadn’t even earned a hundred thousand dollars yet, so to show that I had experience in building houses, I listed the buildings I had constructed on my land. I dropped the portfolio off at a number of banks along with loan applications. When it came time for a follow-up appointment, I went from bank to bank only to receive rejection after rejection. Built with Love simply did not meet the profile necessary for a first-time construction loan.

Before giving up, I played a game with life. I agreed to follow up with just one more bank before taking it as a sign that home building was not in our future. I remember sitting in the lobby of one of the nicer banks in downtown Gainesville. I had been waiting a long time for a loan officer, but people kept being moved in front of me. It was rather disheartening, but I used the time to focus on letting go of whatever the voice was saying about the situation. That is one thing I had noticed: running the business was putting me into very different situations than I had experienced living alone in the woods. I found this very helpful to my spiritual growth. By watching different parts of my psyche get stimulated, I could learn to let them go. Without realizing it, I had become conscious enough to use sitting in a bank preparing for the inevitable loan rejection as an opportunity to fall behind whatever the voice was saying. If the whole purpose of my surrender to life was to get rid of myself, it was working out quite well.

Finally, the receptionist who had been putting every customer in front of me asked me to follow her. But she wasn’t leading me to the group of loan officers in the open lobby area; she was taking me to one of the offices that overlooked the lobby. As she knocked on the door, I noticed the nameplate: Jim Owens—Branch President. I was kind of shocked but not nearly as shocked as by what happened next. I was invited into the office, and the president took his place behind the desk. He proceeded to tell me that though my application did not meet the normal standards set by the loan committee, he personally felt that a community bank should try to support community businesses. It seems Jim Owens had taken such an interest in my application that he had driven out to my land and looked in the windows of my house and the Temple building. He had then personally gone to the loan committee and hand carried my application through. He was here today to tell me that the construction loan request for $20,000 had been approved, but his neck was on the line, and I had better not let him down.

What do I say to this man? Who are these people, anyway—Alan Robertson, Rama Malone, Deputy Knowles? They’re like messengers from God sent to tell me what I’m supposed to be doing with my life: teach at Santa Fe, invite Baba to Gainesville, start Built with Love, go forth and build houses. All I could do was thank him and assure him that I would rather die than let him down.

The young couple was overjoyed, and we built them a beautiful little house. Moreover, Built with Love was now in the position to start building larger, custom homes. I felt so honored to have met a man like Jim Owens. I never thought that the president of a bank would go so far out of his way for a total stranger—especially one who lived in a spiritual community. I obviously had a lot to learn.

If I had thought this was the end of my story with Jim Owens, I would have been very wrong. A decade later, after I had experienced significant business success, the hand of life brought us back together again under the most unlikely of circumstances. I was working late one night at Donna’s and decided to take a break. There was nothing on TV, so I drove in to a new video store I had noticed on the north side of Gainesville. It is worth noting that I hardly ever went into town at night. The store was empty except for someone behind the checkout counter. While I was browsing the movies in the back of the store, I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation the clerk was having on the phone. He was telling someone that he had gone into a bank for a working capital loan, but it seemed banks were not going to lend to a small video store. The man looked vaguely familiar to me, but I just couldn’t place him. When I went to check out, it hit me: the man behind the counter was Jim Owens.

Jim recognized me, and we caught up on the past ten years since we had last seen each other. He told me he had left banking and was now trying his hand as an entrepreneur with his own business. I apologetically told him I couldn’t help overhearing his conversation about needing a loan. Mindful of what he had done for me years earlier, I asked if perhaps I could help. He looked very surprised by the offer but eventually disclosed that he was looking for a loan of about $20,000 to cover cash flow while he upgraded the store. That was pretty much the exact amount he had provided for me ten years earlier when our roles were reversed. I couldn’t believe this was happening. What was the probability of these events, including my being in that store right after the bank had rejected his loan request and exactly at the time of that phone conversation? It was as though after ten years I was sent there to repay Jim’s act of kindness. Needless to say, I was honored to make him that loan.