Entering The Ring – Fighting For Business, Family, And Freedom – with Sam Hughes – {Ep. 192]

Linda J. Hansen:  Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101® Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101®- Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics Online course, the book, the course and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.Com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement and retention, and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity 101.Com.

Thank you so much for listening today. And thank you to those of you who have decided to become Prosperity partners, offering financial support to help keep these podcasts on the air. If you enjoy these episodes, please consider becoming a Prosperity partner by visiting the Prosperity Partner link on our website, prosperity 101.com. The title of today's episode is entering the Ring fighting for Business, Family and Freedom. Have you ever thought about entering the ring? Before I introduce my guest, I'd like to read some well-known comments made by Teddy Roosevelt, often referred to as the man in the arena. It’s not

The critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error. And shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions? Who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Unless we enter the arena, we cannot impact our society for good, and we cannot enter the ring to fight for. The freedoms we cherish.

Today, I'm introducing you to Sam Hughes. Sam is not unlike many of you, a business owner, husband, father, and community member. Yet Sam chose to be a man in the arena. He chose to enter the ring. Sam is from the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. He graduated from Olivet University and holds an MBA from Marquette University. He is president and owner of Blue Green Carpet and Tile Cleaning, which he started in 2012.

Sam has extensive business experience, and a heart to serve his family and community, and he recently decided to serve as a member on his local school board. And we'll be discussing why he chose to be a man in the arena who entered the ring to fight for business, family, and freedom. Sam, welcome. We look forward to hearing your story and what caused you to be involved in local politics. So thank you so much for joining me.

Sam Hughes:

Oh, thank you, Linda. I am truly honored to be your guest here. And just thank you so much for what you're doing to help get the word out there and to motivate people to learn more about how to serve.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, it's just your servant leadership and your heart for your family, your community, and for your God have always inspired me. And so I wanted to have you on because I think you are just a great example of a normal guy. It's kind of like last week, I had Amber on. She was just a mom, just a mom, just a business owner mom, going about her life, not really paying attention to politics, not really paying attention to what was going on in the world. And then the Lord really began to have her see things that caused her to say she had to get involved. And for you, your story is a little bit different, but similar. You are the parent of a special needs child, and so tell us about your family.

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, thank you. So been happily married, my bride, 20 something years ago now, or hitting our 22nd year, coming into it right now. And we have three wonderful daughters. My oldest just is a freshman in college this year at Hillsdale College, which is one of the, I think the premier colleges in the area in the country. My middle daughter is 16 years old. She was born with a genetic disorder, and it rears its head as severe autism. She is nonverbal and is probably as a 16 year old, has a mental capacity of a nine month old child. So, as you can imagine, it definitely presents some complications in our life and challenges needing 24/7 care and someone to really be with her constantly. In some cases, she requires two people to be with her because she's a little aggressive. She's not, what we kind of jokingly say, a happy special needs child, but her brain, I can tell, is very much alert, and her frustration causes her to get a little aggressive. So I often am the one that can tolerate that and handle that. So my wife is, in many cases, unable to be alone with her just because she can't handle her. You know, I share only that because it impacts how we have to live our life and what we have to do to manage that. And our youngest daughter, Charlize, who also just brings a joy to our family and just a blessing and she has a different set of unique talents and gifts and she's our little theatrical daughter who loves to perform and plays.

Linda J. Hansen:

That is just great. And as a girl dad, I'm sure you have a lot of experiences that you never expected when you were growing up. But we need dads who love their daughters with special love and care and especially with a special needs daughter. I'm sure that that has taught your whole family how to bond together and how to work together. So that is really wonderful.

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, it's interesting. It is a unique perspective to have a sibling with that needs and you can very clearly see it in both of our daughters, how it's refined their character. My youngest daughter has patience that I could never understand and my oldest daughter has an incredible nurturing personality that just wants to take care of children and I see her future somewhere doing that. So yeah, it definitely has shaped us all. We always call our middle daughter as our miracle baby in many ways because it was also through that difficulty of raising her that my wife and I became even more committed to our marriage and to preserve that. And when most people the divorce rate with special needs is well over 80%. So it has actually brought us closer together than we could imagine.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, that is because you chose to work hard and make it. So I congratulate both of you. It's great and it's just a reminder that every life is precious. I have talked off and on the podcast about the importance of protecting life. Our system of government allows us to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And unfortunately in today's society life is not valued as much as it should be. And we see every life matters. Every life makes a difference. So you are a business owner too. So tell us about Blue Green Carpet and Tile Cleaning.

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, I'll give you the real quick version. My career I started out as an engineer for a utility company and got bored with that. Moved up to three different positions while I was there. Certainly got bored with that. My brother invited me to join his company selling satellite TV. So we went from being an $800,000 company to $25 million company within about five years time. And it was just during that I learned a lot of skills to how to build a business. I was a minority shareholder in that and ended up leaving and decided I wanted to do something in the service industry. I love service businesses, I love what they do and I love the fact that I can personally make a difference. So I launched Blue Green in 2012, was able to grow that since every year since then. It's been sometimes small growth but a growth over the last eleven years. But it's really through that I feel like that service has helped me learn how to build better teams, learn how to care for others. It's certainly humbled me being in a floor cleaning industry. I always make this comment that I remember so clearly having to go help on a job. And I'm in the middle of a high end clothing store and I'm scrubbing the floors on a stairs, and I look up and I see one of my daughter's parents, school friends parents, and I'm like, I'm mopping floor. I have an MBA, but I'm on the ground scrubbing floors. And that's God's way of creating humility in my heart that I needed it. So business has been an awesome way to learn that. And you have to learn how to care for people, manage people, direct people, lead people. And it's certainly been a big benefit for me in my life, and I can see how it impacts every part of my life.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, being a business owner is not easy. Being an entrepreneur is quite a roller coaster, always. We talk about it frequently on the podcast, how that is such a roller coaster life, and it's not for the faint of heart. So I congratulate you on having a successful business. And I also say thank you for doing something as unglamorous as carpet and tile cleaning, which we all need from time to time. And so we're grateful for that. And whether you're a business or an individual, you need things like that. And so service industry jobs are very important and they never really go out of style, in a sense, because we all need things. But your involvement in the community, you've been involved in a church, you've been involved with the school, you've been involved through business organizations and things, parenting organizations. You've been involved in the community. But more recently in your life, you stepped up into a new role that you really did not plan to do. You entered the arena. You entered the ring, as I call it. You entered the ring and tell the listeners what you did.

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, so it was real interesting. This was about December 10 last year. I'll back up a little bit. I've always been involved with being an active parent. I definitely, with the two of my daughters, go to a private school, and we've had to be actively involved with that to help preserve that education. And it is a classical education approach, but as anytime there's humans involved, you'll get kind of a wandering of the values. And it requires parents to keep holding administration and school faculty to that standard that they say that they have. And so we were actively involved with that. We were certainly active involved during the whole COVID plan of forcing vaccine and mask mandates on our children. And we definitely felt like we wanted to make sure that we were honoring the freedoms of the country we live in. So we were involved that way. And then last year, around December 10, I got an email from a friend of mine who was in this district, and she said, Sam, you should consider running for school board. I'm like, no, look, I've got too much going on in life. I don't even have a stable business. It's still growing. I've got challenges.

I've got home life challenges of just, you know, dealing with my children and my daughter's going to college next year, know all those activities going on. I said, But I'll pray about it and see. And that feeling could not go away, of feeling that call. And kind of like, maybe to keep the analogy, it's like my coach there was sitting there yelling in the background, saying, get in the ring, get in the ring. And I definitely felt that I had nothing to lose. And I knew it would be an uphill battle in a way, because there's this belief that if your kids go to a private school, then you don't care about the community and you don't have any investment in a public school. And I did have one child. My special needs daughter is in the district, but she wasn't in a typical school because of her needs. There was that lie of saying, like, well, you're not involved. But the truth is, everyone in our community has incredible interest in a successful public education. Some people have the financial abilities to send their kids to maybe a better qualified private school. Some people make the sacrifice to do home school, but some parents don't have that option. And it is through that and this was my process, thinking this was through that knowledge of knowing that I've been gifted as a business owner.

I've been able to soup up the success of the community and use the community to help create my success. And it required for me, and I believe, to give back to our community. And I saw that as opportunity. And every single person that lives in this community has an investment, has an interest in a successful educational system, and I'll get into it maybe later. But as I went through that process of deciding to run and running and then being I'm very much of a winner mentality, I don't like to lose. So I gave it my all. I pushed forth 100%, 110% of my time and energy. I sacrificed. I had to skip a family vacation that year during the election season, while my family went, I was there at home having meetings and creating contacts and doing Facebook posts and all that stuff that goes along with that. So I responded to that and got in the ring. And I definitely want to jump ahead of it, but that's what brought me into that. And what I'm seeing now, being there, which I think is very important, is there's so much of a blessing and an honor and a skill set that's being developed in me that I will have forever for the rest of my life. So I'm thankful for that. And I think initially I thought it was going into this role as a sacrifice. But what I have found is that it's dramatically helped develop my leadership skills. It's helped me figure out how to navigate challenging and difficult situations. And above and beyond all that, I have an ability as a business minded individual to really help bring that into a school system which I desperately know they need that type of involvement that.

Linda J. Hansen:

Is encouraging and for everybody listening, what skills could you bring to the table? As you're listening right now, I want you to think about this. What could you bring to the table? How could you enter the ring for your business, for your family, for freedom? Maybe it's school board like Sam. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's just being part of an organization or volunteering or offering to be a poll worker on election day to make sure we have free and fair elections. There's something you can do. So I ask you now as you're listening, to maybe say a prayer, ask God to show you what you could do to use your gifts to help your community, to help this country, to help future generations. Not everybody is going to be a school board member like Sam. But he decided to enter the ring. He decided to get into the fight and use what he could in a way to help his community.

And you bring up a really good point, Sam, that whether you have children in the school district or not, that you need to be invested in what goes on in that school. Because those are the leaders of tomorrow. Those are the people that will be leading our nation in years to come. And we need to make sure that they have proper academic skills, excellent academic skills, but that they also are growing in character and wisdom. And so often in our public schools now, that's not what we see. And we see the results of that in our streets. We see the violence in our streets. We see the unrest. We see the division. We see parents in uproar across the country against curriculums and books and things that are causing division, that are causing division among the races, but also division among the sexes. And we're seeing gender confusion. I know some schools, they have litter boxes in the rooms for kids who identify as furries. There's just this strange change in education that has become not rooted in truth anymore. It's like all truth is anyone's truth, right? But we know well, for one, as a believer, as a Christian believer, I know Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and his Word brings truth. But also there are basic truths. If you drop an apple, it drops to the ground because there's gravity. If you are born a male, if you are born a female, that is your gender. And there are basic things that just do not change, no matter how many people say it's different. And we're seeing so many things in schools now that are upsetting to parents and causing parents to get involved. For you, it had a lot to do with the needs of your special needs daughter who was in the public school system. And I know that you really saw some things lacking there and that was one of the things that caused you to get engaged. But I think this cultural war also caused you to get engaged. Is that true?

Sam Hughes:

No. Absolutely. And I think, Linda, you bring up a good point about just we're seeing an infestation of termites in our education system and our local government and time and time again they're eating away at the foundation of a good education. They want to integrate the progressive ideology of sexuality. They want to bring that into the youngest of youngest. In fact, our neighboring district right here, they have now decided to start teaching sex education to kindergarten kids. That's part of their curriculum. And I bet you 90% of the parents in that community think that's crazy and foolish. But the problem is they sat on their hands and they've not been out there voting. They've not been out there finding good school board members to run and to serve. And now they're in a community where the property values are declining. That community has sought more referendums than any other school district in the state. And now they're going to go to operational referendum, which now they're so poorly run that they have to now go get monthly, every annual revenue to just pay their monthly expenses of teachers and all the stuff that goes along with that. And that's the problem that we're facing. And that's the outcome of that. The problem we're facing is just that. I was just on a board meeting last night and we had probably nine people in the community that came in to complain about why we're not allowing these sexualized books to be taught in advanced AP classes.

I mean, books that have extreme explicit sexual description of activities that should only be between a man and a woman in the private of their bedroom. But they want this to be part of the education. And I don't understand it. I don't understand why individuals want to bring this pornographic information and material to our children. And I can't change that. But what I can change is and what we can all change is to say enough is enough. And we are in the district I'm in probably was just rated top 45 school district and 42 42nd school district in all of the country. We're at the 0.3% quality that we're probably 60% conservative in this community. It's a very strong school system. But I am seeing the erosion that's happening from the bottom up. And I'm yelling fire. I'm yelling, hey, there's termites here. And unfortunately, it's hard to get people to say I want to serve. I feel sad because what's going to happen in a year or two from now, these parents, these progressive, ideology parents are going to have won and they're going to be instituting these books to be a part of all of our education process. And all the parents are going to feel so shocked and surprised. And I'm like, no, this was being yelled a year ago, so yeah, I can go on for that forever.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, it's true. And for parents who have gotten involved, they are appalled at what is actually being taught in schools now. And when you hear things like sex education in kindergarten, some people might think, oh, that's teaching, that there's boys and girls or whatever. I mean, it sounds so innocuous, right? But when you begin to see some of the actual books that not just in high schools, but in grade schools, in lower grade school, lower level grade levels, some of these books are literally pornographic. They are really inappropriate. And last week in the episode we shared, we talked about how some people say that people who don't want this in school are about burning books or banning books or things. I mean, these books can still be printed. We want to have a free country. We want the First Amendment to be available. These books can still be printed. It doesn't mean our tax dollars have to pay for them to be given to children in schools and sometimes without the knowledge of the parents. And so this is something that is just really important.

So listeners, if you are a parent or a grandparent, start to look at what the books are in your child's school. I mean, it matters. It not only matters for the future, for the children and their own individual lives, their own sexuality, their future marriages, their future relationships. It matters in that way, their health, their safety, but it also matters to the community at large and to our nation. Because the way to take down a nation is to destroy it from within. And this is a goal of Marxism. And we see it everywhere. And it is a long term goal that they've had. I've been speaking about these issues for 40 plus years and calling fire, saying there's termites in the education system, there's problems and things. And I've just watched it just degrade into what it is now. And we see the results of it, like I mentioned earlier, we see it in the streets of our communities. We see it in the immorality, we see it in the violence, we see it in the drug abuse, the unfortunate overdoses, the depression, the anxiety. We see it and we see it in the work ethic. So this is, again where it touches businesses. If we don't teach children to be strong academically, we don't teach them to have a good work ethic, to know how to learn, it's going to be very difficult for them to hold jobs and to be successful in business. And therefore their government will say, oh, I'll come take care of you. And you have a nation of people dependent instead of a nation of independent people who are creating a thriving country. As a business owner, what do you see? I mean, you've been in business now with your own business for several years and you were in business before. What do you see in the change of the educational system in terms of hiring young people?

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, it's interesting. I literally had to part ways with a person I hired with sales experience in his mid thirty s and interviewed really well. It was really well answered questions, well understood the sales process. But what I found was when this individual would start sending out emails to clients, it was like, oh my goodness, there's sentence fragments here. You're not using full sentences, you're rambling. I can't even understand what you're writing there. And I'm like, that's a product of our public education system, and he has an extended degree beyond that. And so I'm seeing firsthand the challenges I think businesses are seeing, or will continue to see in the next generation of not being able to write, not being able to have good sentences, or not be able to even explain their thoughts. That's the challenge. And I think that that's one reason why business owners need to be getting involved today to help change the future and help make a difference in the education system and also in the local government. This shouldn't be just about school board. This is about serving in our municipality, which has a very close relationship with the school board. They're kind of almost two peas in a pod in many ways. They definitely influence each other. But yeah, in the professional world we're seeing the work ethic has been declining. It's been harder and harder to find people. You hear that over and over again. What's helped me as a business owner is running a good ethical business, paying our guys better than everyone else in the market, because I care about those people individually and I think business owners that can find those people. But in large part it's harder and harder to find. I mean, you'll spend thousands and thousands of dollars to hire one technician or one field person.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, that's a good point that the quality of candidates has fallen because the quality of education has so declined. And this is important not just for business, but for the future of our nation. A well educated population is a population that can protect their freedom. But those who are not well educated cannot digest information through a lens of wisdom. They're more willing to give up their freedom for some false security. So we just really appreciate you stepping into the ring, getting into the arena, and joining the fight. It's hard to run for office. To those who are listening, don't be afraid of It. It can be a little messy. It can be a little scary. It can be exhausting. But you mentioned before, Sam, that you feel honored to do it and that it's turned into be a blessing in your life. And I think that's true for so many people that they begin to see the benefits of serving and listeners. You can volunteer. You can run for local office or some elected office that you feel called to do. What's your skill set? If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me at Prosperity 101. Com. I'd be happy to answer questions about what you might be well suited for in terms of running. I've done a lot of campaign work, and I'm sure Sam would appreciate helping anyone, too. If you're interested in running for a local position, So, Sam, how can people reach you?

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, no, certainly you can just send me an email. Sam@sjhughes.com super responsive to that. I do have a campaign website that you can contact me through, but it's probably just easier to email me directly on that. That's probably the best way.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, that would be great. And I'm sure you'll be willing to help others step into the ring as well. Before we close, what would you say to employers who would like to educate their employees about the importance of all of these issues? What would be some final words you have to say to them?

Sam Hughes:

Yeah, I think employers and everyone in the community has to be involved with educating the reality of what's going on in our school systems, what's going on in our local government. And I definitely highly encourage, if you're an employer, to give your team members time to vote. Make sure they have the right information to do that. More importantly, if you're an employer, ask yourself that question. Say, how did I get here with this success? How have I been able to provide a good income for my family and for my community? And it's because of the community you have now. We still, I think, good communities across the country. And in many situations we were able to, like I said earlier, soup up some of that success from the community here. And I want to challenge every business owner to think about giving back. It's not a lifetime commitment. It's sometimes just a one, two or three year commitment that can make a difference in the community. Because we definitely need strong business leaders to be running our schools and running our community, not academia.

Linda J. Hansen:

Well, we need people who understand how to manage a bottom line of a business and how to make sure a business can be profitable. And if we started running our governments like businesses, I think America would be in a much better place at all levels of government. So. Thank you, Sam. Please give your email address again. So if people want to reach out to you, they may.

Sam Hughes:

Yep. It's Sam@sjhughes.com.

Linda J. Hansen:

Okay, well, thank you and listeners, maybe you'd like to run for school board or local office and let Sam be that inspiration for you. So step up. A great nation is only made great by the people in the nation, and we all need to be active citizens and doing what we can to not only protect our freedom, but to protect freedom for future generations. So thank you again, Sam, and thank you to the listeners. Please don't forget to go to the Prosperity Partner link on our website and support the podcast and help us stay on the air. Thank you.

Sam Hughes:

Thank you, Linda.

Linda J. Hansen: Thank you again for listening to the Prosperity 101® Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, and leave a great review. Don't forget to visit Prosperity101.com to access the entire podcast library to order my newest book, Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck or to enroll you or your employees in the Breakroom Economics online course. You can also receive the free e-book, 10 Tips for Helping Employees Understand How Public Policy Affects Their Paychecks. Freedom is never free. Understanding the foundations of prosperity and the policies of prosperity will help you to protect prosperity as you become informed, involved, and impactful. Please contact us today at Prosperity101.com to let us know how we can serve you. Thank you.