Great info, friends. Thanks for sending it, John!!
Attached is an article written about me in a hard cover book that is being published by industry magazine BIC. I am one of 50 men and women being featured. (Why, I don’t know.)
John Bird
Sales Manager
Alpine Specialty Chemicals (Retired 2009)
A product of a Christian family with a strong work ethic, Alpine Specialty Chemicals Sales Manager John Bird has always balanced his faith with action.
“I used to think the old saying that God helps those who help themselves was scripture,” Bird said. “I found out, however, that it was actually written by Benjamin Franklin in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Nevertheless, I do believe that you have to put feet to your prayers.”
Bird’s father, who spent several years as a riverboat pilot for the Corps of Engineers in Vicksburg, Miss., decided that it was more important to be with his family rather than away on the river, so he moved the family to a cotton farm in Lorenzo, Texas. This instilled in Bird the value of hard work at an early age and admiration of his father for choosing time with family over his career. When the cotton industry tanked in the ’60s, however, his father resumed his old career with the corps in Vicksburg.
Bird joined the Army Reserve after a stint at a community college. He served in the military for six years and during this time earned a degree in mass communications at Texas Tech University where he met his future wife, Judy. Career opportunities for local radio and television or journalism were scarce in those days, so Bird applied for a sales job at Del Monte Foods. Although he never had aspirations for a career in sales, the company offered Bird a car, an expense account and, as he said jokingly, “all the canned green beans I could eat.” It was a no-brainer for a young man fresh out of college and married for two years with a newborn daughter.
After a few years at Del Monte, Bird found an opportunity to work for a manufacturing company in San Antonio that designed and produced air conditioners for Volkswagen, Porsche and Audi. During that time, he became acquainted with Jerry Romine, vice president of Land & Marine Rental Co. and a fellow deacon at Northeast Baptist Church. Romine explained to Bird the necessity of recruiting new people to work in the oil and gas industry. Bird moved into a sales position at Land & Marine and transferred to Houston by way of Corpus Christi, but was a casualty of the oil industry’s decline by 1990.
Out of work and struggling to find a new direction for his career, Bird found through his personal faith the strength and inspiration to be patient.
“I was in one of the most uncertain periods of my life,” Bird said. “My wife Judy had gone back to work for the first time since we started our family, our daughter Jenifer had gotten married and our daughter Julie had gone off to Texas A&M. I was ‘home alone’ one morning when I read a devotional in a book called Streams in the Desert. Through it, I clearly felt God saying that He had a plan for me and that I should not worry about a job or my future. I cannot trivialize how assured I was that everything would be fine. I was so moved that I hesitated to look up from the book, expecting God or an angel to be standing on the other side of the table. It was that real.”
Not long after that, Bird met Raymond Griffin, the father of a young lady Bird and his wife taught in Sunday school who worked for a chemical company called Sun Drilling Products. Griffin inquired about Bird’s willingness to become a city salesman for Sun, which was planning to expand into Houston. Bird accepted the invitation, beginning a fruitful working relationship with Griffin that would last for nearly 15 years.
Griffin, along with his uncle, Jerry Rayburn, founded Alpine Mud Products in 1999 after the sale of Sun Drilling Products, taking Bird along as a sales manager. Griffin and Rayburn sold the company, now known as Alpine Specialty Chemicals, to M-I SWACO in 2003. Bird, who retired from Alpine Specialty Chemicals in 2009, has certainly come a long way since his first sales job at Del Monte Foods, but he has never forgotten the important lessons about product knowledge learned as a participant in that company’s rigorous sales training program. Nearly all of those teachings have been applicable to Bird’s efforts to sell specialty chemicals to the drilling industry.
“At Del Monte, our trainers would say that a sale is the engineering of an agreement,” Bird said. “When you’re selling a product, you have to believe in it, know how it works and that it will work for the customer’s particular situation. There is always a certain satisfaction that comes along with helping a customer drill a better well. That element has to be there if you want to be successful as a salesperson in our industry.”
Bird is a people person who takes interest in getting to know customers and colleagues alike. He believes this genuine interest in people is key to providing solutions in an industry that demands them every day.
“Some salesmen are so full of themselves that they think they can sell with their personalities alone,” Bird said. “It takes hard work and research to analyze the customer and know what his needs are. It’s a big mistake when salespeople believe that all they have to do is take someone out to lunch or on a golf outing in order to get their business. A customer will always remember you for your business acumen and problem solving, not for the
lunches you bought him or the golf games you played with him.”
Bird’s affinity for people has allowed him to build relationships on the spiritual level, as well. Many people in the oil and gas industry know him as the president and co-founder of the Oilfield Christian Fellowship (OCF), an organization that meets monthly and has chapters in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado and British Columbia. Founded in 1991, the OCF was the brainchild of Bird and Jim Teague, who was the drilling manager at Rutherford Oil & Gas at the time. Bird and Teague arranged for a group of Christians working in the oil field to meet at First Baptist Church in Houston each month to hear speakers from the oil industry share their personal testimonies of faith, and it has grown steadily ever since. It now has a mailing list of almost 4,000 people.
Among the most rewarding accomplishments of the OCF is the publication of God’s Word for the Oil Patch, a Bible that includes testimonies from a cross section of workers in the oil and gas industry, from rig hands to presidents. Bird conceived the book after Mike Chaffin, drilling manager for Valence Operating, shared a moving story about delivering Russian Bibles to a drilling rig near the Caspian Sea. Chaffin and Bird co-produced this unique book and since 2004 more than 60,000 English and 7,000 Spanish versions have been sent around the world. Originally intended for placement on drilling rigs in the United States, they are now requested by hundreds of venues, including drug rehabilitation centers and even prisons. Along with the custom Bible, the OCF has since 2000 provided 7,000 Bibles in 21 languages for oil workers to carry to some 34 countries.
In addition, the OCF has facilitated the first man camp chapel in Big Piney, Wyo., and recently provided a trailer and truck to take into the oil fields around Wamsutter, Wyo. Along with another truck and trailer in Big Piney, three retired couples staff all three. God’s Word for the Oil Patch is the product of the OCF leadership’s desire to touch the lives of oil and gas industry workers on a global scale.
“Proverbs 27:17 serves as a constant reminder of what the OCF is all about,” Bird said. “It reads, ‘As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.’”
On the job, Bird is creator of satisfaction within customers driven by a commitment to integrity passed on to him by generations of family members.
“There have been many mentors in my life, but I am who I am because of my father and mother and their parents,” Bird said. “They were all honest, hardworking and God- fearing people and I stand on their shoulders. For my wife and I, making Christ the Lord of our lives at 31 years of age was the beginning of real marriage, real happiness, real success, blessings to us and in turn blessings to others.
“I believe that Proverbs 3:5-7, if applied, can make a success out of anyone when these priorities are followed: God first, family second and employment third,” Bird said. “Turn this around and you will eventually lose your family and forget God. The verses read, ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding/In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight/Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil.’”¨
- John and Judy have been married for 42 years and have two daughters and nine grandchildren.
Jenifer and husband Barrett and their five children live in Marietta, Ga. where he is the Family Life Minister at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church. He is an Aggie and she, Stephen F. Austin.
Julie, husband Kevin and four kids live in Lake Jackson, Texas where he is a chemical engineer with Chevron/Phillips. Both are Aggies and met ten days after Julie returned to Houston serving as a Journeyman Missionary for the Southern Baptist Mission Board in Valencia, Spain for two years. Both girls have taught school, Julie with her master’s in education, but all nine grandchildren are home schooled.
Retiring in February, John now devotes the bulk of his time to promoting the Oilfield Christian Fellowship and serving as President.
