I had the privilege of joining the Encourage Mindset podcast for a 28-minute live conversation on April 26, 2026. We talked about the things that drive every decision I make at Capital City Roofing, at BuilderLync, and at the Feeding the Future Project. Faith. Mindset. Recovery. Why mission has to come before margin if a business is going to last.

The full episode is below. If you only have a few minutes, the central thread is this: the work I get to do today is downstream of decisions that started in a Walmart parking lot at 25 years old. Mindset is what made the comeback possible. Mission is what makes it durable.

The mindset shift that made everything possible

I have told the recovery story in long form before, including in my Sacred Grit podcast appearance. I will not retell every beat of it here. The short version is that I went from sleeping in a truck in a Walmart parking lot at 25 to running a multi-market roofing company, a CRM software company, and a nonprofit by the time I was in my late thirties.

The thing that changed first was not the income. It was not the network. It was not the skills. The thing that changed first was the mindset, and specifically the willingness to make one phone call I did not want to make and follow through on the next right step in front of me. That is a small distance to cover on any given day. It is an enormous distance to cover over a decade.

The Encourage Mindset show is built around exactly that idea. The host's framing is that the right mindset is upstream of every external outcome you are trying to produce, and the wrong mindset is upstream of every problem you cannot seem to solve no matter how hard you push. I agreed coming in. I agree more strongly coming out.

Faith is the operating system

A lot of people separate the spiritual side of life from the business side. I have never been able to. I am a licensed pastor and a roofing CEO at the same time, and the two roles inform each other constantly. Capital City Roofing is not a roofing company that happens to be run by a Christian. Capital City Roofing is the platform through which I am trying to live out a calling.

That sounds abstract until you map it onto operational decisions. How do you treat employees who are in the worst week of their year. How do you handle a customer dispute when your team is in the wrong. How do you decide whether to chase a margin opportunity that requires you to be less honest than you want to be. Faith is the operating system that decides those questions before they ever land on your desk.

The Encourage Mindset conversation goes there. We talk about why mindset and faith are inseparable for me, and why running a business according to those principles is not a marketing tactic but a structural choice that shows up in everything from hiring to scope language to how we treat licensees on the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform.

Mission is the multiplier

The roofing business is the engine. The mission is the destination. The two have to be connected for either to make sense.

We started the Feeding the Future Project with the goal of feeding one million children in ten years. Every roof Capital City Roofing replaces contributes to that mission. That is not a marketing tagline. It is a structural commitment that runs through the company's economics. I want our team to know that every job they sell, every roof they install, and every problem they solve adds up to something bigger than this month's revenue.

When I tell people to build mission into their business, this is what I mean. Not a generic statement on the About page. A specific mission with measurable progress, structurally tied to the company's revenue, that the team can see themselves contributing to every day. Mission is the multiplier. It is what makes the work pull people forward when motivation runs out.

What this connects to

If the conversation on Encourage Mindset resonated and you want to go deeper on any of the threads, here are a few places to start:

Where to go from here

If you want to talk about the Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform, the conversation starts at licensing@capitalcityroofing.net. I read every one of those personally.

If you are running a roofing or home services operation and want only the technology layer, BuilderLync is available standalone.

If you want to support the Feeding the Future Project, the easiest way is to share this post with someone whose values align with the mission. Word of mouth has carried us this far.

Thank you to the Encourage Mindset team for the invitation. Conversations like this one are how the work gets shared, and how the next person sitting in a parking lot at 25 finds out the comeback is possible.

Keep Exploring

Related reads on faith, mindset, recovery, and mission-driven business:

About Brad Strawbridge

Brad Strawbridge is the Founder and CEO of Capital City Roofing, a GAF Master Elite, GAF Commercial Certified, and CertainTeed ShingleMaster Premier roofing company serving Greater Atlanta and Nashville. He is also Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of BuilderLync, an AI-driven CRM and project management platform built for contractors, and Founder of the Feeding the Future Project, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to feed one million children in ten years. Brad is a licensed pastor and an active member of RT3 (Roofing Technology Think Tank), NRCA, and The Roofing Alliance.

bradstrawbridge.com | LinkedIn | capitalcityroofing.net

Tags: Brad Strawbridge, Encourage Mindset podcast, faith and business, mindset, recovery story, mission-driven business, Capital City Roofing, Capital City Roofing Licensing Platform, BuilderLync, Feeding the Future Project, leadership, values-driven leadership