Walking In Faith Through Leadership Challenges: Ricky Dickson & Mark Tappan
Ricky Dickson: The peace of God that passes all understanding will just come over you in a way that gives you the strength to face another day, to take another step, to breathe another breath of air. And from there, the next step. And when you look back, you know that He was there all the time.
Walking In Faith Through Leadership Challenges: Ricky Dickson & Mark Tappan – Episode #415
Narrator: Welcome to the Jesus Calling Podcast. In this week’s episode, we delve into the remarkable journey of Ricky Dickson, a man whose faith has guided him through a fulfilling career and the trials of leadership. Throughout his forty-three years with Blue Bell Creameries, the beloved ice cream maker, Ricky rose to become the president and CEO, navigating the company through both successful and challenging times.
Later in the episode, we’ll hear from Mark Tappan, a police officer whose life took an unexpected turn through his bond with a remarkable police dog named Mattis. Mark shares how his lifelong connection to dogs has taught him lessons in faith, loyalty, and unconditional love.
Let’s begin with Ricky’s story.
Ricky Dickson: My name is Ricky Dickson and I have just completed forty-three plus years working for what I believe is the greatest ice cream on the planet, and that is Blue Bell Ice Cream. I retired as the president and CEO earlier this year, and had an absolute blast for those forty-three years.
Ricky Finds His Calling
I grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and came from three generations of dentists. But I knew early on dentistry was not my calling, and I’m really thankful for that. But even when I left high school and [was] in college, I still didn’t really have a clear path of what I was going to be, where I would land.
My mother and my father both not just taught scripture, but they really taught relationship [with God]. My prayer growing up was, “God, wherever you want me, I want to not only be open and recognize your call, but also put within me the passion to do whatever that is and to be the best I can be at it.”
“My prayer growing up was, ‘God, wherever you want me, I want to not only be open and recognize your call, but also put within me the passion to do whatever that is and to be the best I can be at it.’” – Ricky Dickson
And my journey actually started chasing a girlfriend from high school to college, even though when we got to Baylor the very first week, we broke up. And so it was one of those questions of, “God, why did you have me come here? I don’t understand this part of it, but I trust you.” Within a couple of semesters at Baylor, I took a marketing class, and we had to follow a company for a full semester on how to relate to the consumer. So I went back to my apartment, called my dad, told him about the project that I had, and he said, “Well, right now, I’m reading an article in a magazine about this ice cream company in Brenham, Texas.” And after hearing about the article, I thought, Who doesn’t like ice cream? This is a dream.
I ended up going down to Brenham and interviewing the vice president of marketing and sales, so my beginnings with Blue Bell actually started with a paper.
As I got ready to graduate, I was really looking at advertising as a career path, or public relation. One of those two. But in the back of my mind, that little creamery that I wrote the story on a couple of years earlier, I thought, I’m going to ask to maybe do an interview with them and just see what I possibly would do working for an ice cream company. You don’t usually grow up thinking, One day I’m going to work for an ice cream company, but in this case, it just appealed to me so strongly.
I went down and interviewed and was hired on, and I started in Dallas, Texas. I was in a position that we call a territory manager. I went from Dallas to Fort Worth to San Antonio, where I became the branch manager.
Stepping Outside the Comfort Zone
A real pivotal part of my journey came when they asked me to leave San Antonio at a young age to move to Oklahoma City to start the first out-of-state branch. I was very comfortable in San Antonio, in fact, I was two miles from where I grew up. But there was just something about that appeal. And as the company was growing, I thought, This could be an unbelievable opportunity. I prayed about it. Part of the enticement was the potential of being promoted to what they call a regional manager, overseeing multiple branches.
I made it to Oklahoma, and then it got really quiet, and from where I sat, I didn’t understand the big plan. The day the call came to want to visit, I thought it was the call to maybe get promoted to this regional position. It was actually the day that they sat me down and said, “These are the things you’re not doing right. These are the things we’re used to seeing that you’ve kind of gotten away from.” And it was a really pivotal, strong point in not only my career, but my life.
I went back to the hotel. We were at a retreat with all the management team, and I was very frustrated. I didn’t understand. “God, I thought you asked me to move here? I really believed in my heart this is where you wanted me. What did I miss?” And so, so clearly—even though it wasn’t audibly—I heard in my spirit that He said, “You’re not here for your promotion. You’re here for my wealth. You’re here to do what I’m asking you to do.”
And it just kind of shook me, because it was so true. I had lost sight of the things that I should be doing for His glory. I had gotten wrapped up in things, you know, that the world would tell you [is important like] climbing the corporate ladder. I thought at that moment, Whatever it is, God, that you want me to do, I believed in my heart that you asked me not only to come to work for this company, but also to move here. So if I’ll focus on you and not me, I think everything will fall into place.
And because of that and taking that attitude, it wasn’t long after that I was asked to run a manufacturing plant in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. That gave me the whole look of the production side, which eventually led to the day they asked me to become CEO and president, because I had been able to journey on both sides of the equation. I knew the day that they asked me to become president that this definitely was a God thing. This was something that was never on my radar. You want to grow and you want to excel. But at the same time, the Kruse family had run the company for so long and had done just a tremendous job running the company that I just didn’t include that in my dream package, I like to say. So I knew it was a God moment, and every day that I was in that role, I gave God not only the glory, but my prayer was consistently like, “Please God, give me the strength and the wisdom to walk and to lead in the way you would want me to lead, and for you to get the glory and for the company to be able to. It’s not about Ricky, it’s about Blue Bell.” It’s about lives. It’s about what we do for His glory. Period.
“My prayer was consistently like, ‘Please God, give me the strength and the wisdom to walk and to lead in the way you would want me to lead.’” – Ricky Dickson
Getting to the Heart of the Business
My role was to lead and guide the team that was in Oklahoma. But my thought was, I need to get down on the production floor and start getting to understand not only what we do, but who was doing it and why we did what we did. I walked down to the production floor and I made my way down to a position where they were filling what we call sherbert quarts. They were putting six into a box, taping the box, and putting it on the conveyor. And I thought this may be something I could do. I felt pretty confident. I walked over to the lady doing the taping of the box and putting the quarts in and I introduced myself because she didn’t know who I was. I said, “This is your lucky day. You’re going to get an extra fifteen minute break. I’m going to take over and I’m going to do what you’re doing. I think I’ve got this.” And so she smiled and there she went. Boy I tell you, that first box, the quarts went in the box, the tape went on the box, and I put it on the conveyor, and I watched to go down the conveyor into the cold storage. And I thought, That has to be the best taped box in the history of the company, kind of in a prideful, joking way to myself. And I turned, and there’s six boxes waiting on me, and I had gotten the whole thing way, way behind. For the full fifteen minutes, I was in panic mode trying to get the tape on and the product in the cartons and on the conveyor. And let’s just say I broke the ice with the employees, because they saw that I was human. They saw that I was not afraid to get involved. But at the same time, I assured them that this would be the first and probably the last time I would try to do what they were so good at, and it really kind of lifted their spirits. It was a great first day on the production floor.
Navigating Blue Bell Through Difficulties
Faith seems easy until it gets hard. If you live long enough, you’re going to have all kinds of difficult times that will come your way.
“Faith seems easy until it gets hard.” – Ricky Dickson
Our company has had a lot of great, great, exciting days. And we’ve also had some of what I would call very dark days. Some of my personal experiences of some really tough situations in my life—and then situations at Blue Bell, whether it was a situation with Listeria back in 2015 or we had a situation where hurricane Katrina was coming in…
There’s so many promises that we read in Scripture that not only is He there, but He loves us more than we can comprehend. And if we can somehow find that place in rest, it’s the peace that passes all understanding. It’s just a wonderful place to get to, especially in the middle of the storms.
As a leader, being mindful of the good times, but knowing that there will be struggles ahead—I get some of those anchor points and I gravitate back to scriptures. But I also realize that if you’re in a leadership position, you’re not just being listened to, but you’re being looked at. And [the employees are] reading body language, they’re hanging onto every word. And I think it’s critical at those moments that you’re not panicked to run out and start looking for the scriptures, hopefully they’re already anchored into you. It’s not always easy. I think that it’s a daily journey, a daily walk that you have.
There are a handful of us that regularly read Jesus Calling, and it’s been a real staple. And I have on my phone some of those pivotal days where we’re shooting texts or we’re shooting pictures back and forth, “Hey, did you read Jesus Calling today?” But the common denominator is seeing Jesus Calling on our desk when you walk in, it would open the door to an opportunity to discuss Christ. I just would have it on my desk for that opportunity.
You want to be strong in your faith and beliefs and walk by faith. What we’re fearful of is the unknown, the unknown diagnosis or the diagnosis that may not have gone the way we wanted it to, or it could be as strong as a really bad tragedy or a simple bad day. It’s the fear of the unknown. It’s the fear of what ifs, what’s going to happen. And it’s in those moments that I think you have to focus on the bigger picture.
I just think that so much of our journey is a daily walk with God, daily prayer life, preparing for the storms, also enjoying the moments that they’re not there, but use those times to be ready because it’s a real ebb and flow.
This is from Jesus Listens, November 6th:
Dear Jesus,
Help me to lead a victorious life by living in deep dependence on You. I used to associate victory with success— not falling or stumbling, not making mistakes. But being successful in my own strength made me vulnerable to going my own way, forgetting about You. It is through problems and failure, weakness and need, that I’m learning to rely on You.
I realize that true dependence is not simply asking You to bless what I have decided to do. It involves coming to You with an open mind and heart— inviting You to plant Your desires within me.
This is not a path of continual success but a way of multiple failures. However, each failure is followed by a growth spurt— nourished by increasing reliance on You. I want to enjoy the blessedness of a victorious life by deepening my dependence on You.
In Your victorious Name,
Amen
Narrator: Be sure to check out Ricky’s new book, One Scoop At A Time: Lessons from Fear to Faith, available July 16th.
Stay tuned to Mark Tappan’s story after a brief message.
God Hears Your Prayers
In the days that are dark, where the news isn’t good, when we’re looking desperately for answers, or just looking to be heard, we just want someone to listen. Someone to hear our fervent prayers. More than ever, people need help. More than ever, people need hope. And more than ever, people need to know that they are heard.
Jesus Listens is a 365-day prayer devotional with short, heartfelt prayers based on Scripture, written to deepen your relationship with God. Learn more about Jesus Listens and download a free sample at www.jesuscalling.com/jesuslistens.
Our next guest is Mark Tappan, who shares his experience of working alongside a fierce, loyal, and unconditionally loving police dog named Mattis, and what we can all learn about God from our loyal four-legged friends.
Mark Tappan: My name is Mark Tappan. I’m really not that known, but my dog Mattis is a little more popular than I am. He’s a pretty cool German Shepherd that I had the privilege of handling as a police officer for six and a half years. I work in the city of Alpharetta as a police officer and have been doing that for the past eighteen years.
Looking for a Life Direction
I was born in Tennessee. At about age eight, I moved to Louisiana. We were a churchgoing family, I definitely would have called myself a Christian, but looking back, I was a cultural Christian more than anything else. I would go on the weekends to church, but my life Monday through Saturday was very much my own.
I think the only plan that I had was going into college. And I found myself, after two semesters of college, on academic probation and needing to take responsibility for my life because I was super immature, irresponsible, with no discipline. And so I joined the Marine Corps, and it kind of changed my life through the Marine Corps and the awesome example of the life of my sister, who loved Jesus and had this inexplicable joy that was so much different than anything I’d ever seen in someone who called themselves a Christian before. And so it led me to explore who I was and what I claimed.
My dad trained labs, and so I was always around extremely intelligent dogs. I thought it was the neatest thing. We had a family dog named Sylvester that my dad said was untrainable. And Sylvester was my best friend. Sylvester and I were like two peas in a pod, hanging out all the time. The dog didn’t like anyone else besides me. He would listen to me, only me, which frustrated my dad. It was very meaningful to me, dogs just always had a special place in my heart.
A Meet With Cute Mattis
When I met Mattis, I went through a trainer school. The trainer there had an incredible dog named Abby that was a Belgian Malinois, and she was about sixty-five to seventy pounds. Incredibly intelligent, fierce. And I made my mind up that that’s what I wanted, a Belgian Malinois.
I went to pick a dog and the kennel that I went to, they had probably a dozen different dogs and half of them were Belgian Malinois. And so I started testing all these dogs. And the last dog that they had in the kennel they told me, “Hey, look, we’re just getting this dog out so it can have some exercise.” It was a personal protection dog, so that meant it didn’t have any of the nose work training that all the other dogs did. So they’re like, “It’s not supposed to be a police dog.” And so I’m like, “Yeah, that’s fine. I’d love to see what the dog looks like. I love to see dogs work.” And so they got the dog out of the kennel and it was this massive German Shepherd. And at the time, the dog’s name was Cayman. And I was like, “Oh man, that’s a beautiful dog, but way too big for me.” And it’s not supposed to be a police dog. But I started testing the dog, and I was kind of blown away by how intense this dog was in everything he did. And so I kept testing all the dogs, and Cayman kept coming out on top. And we got to the final test, which was where we tested their bite, and that’s where you put on the protective jacket, and you let the dogs bite you in different scenarios just to kind of see how they are if they have confidence, if they’re scared of anything. And once again, I went through all the dogs and the last dog was Cayman. And Cayman came out, and he obliterated me.
But the cool thing about him was when all the other dogs were coming in, they went nuts—like you’ve probably seen on TV. When dogs do the bite work, they’re barking and they’re yapping and they’re foaming at the mouth. Cayman came in and he was level-headed, and he just looked around the room like he was processing information. And he was like, “All right, just tell me when to go. I got this.” And so that impressed me. And then when he bit, it was the hardest I’ve ever been bitten in a suit in my life. Like, I could not open my hand for three days after. He was intelligent, he was strong, he was fierce. He had just an excellent learning curve. He’d pick things up really fast. But you could see even when he came in that room and he wasn’t going nuts like the other dogs, he had this clarity about him, and I think that’s what really set him apart from the other dogs. And so I said, “This one has to be my dog.” And they’re like, “He doesn’t know any of the odor stuff.” And I’m like, “I don’t care. I’ll teach him. I got this. I will teach him. That’s the dog that I want.”
His name was Cayman, and my son’s name is Cayden. It was way too close, so I had to pick a new name for him. I thought the perfect name was Mattis.
Serving Others With All of Your Heart
The story of how he earned his purple heart, it was very early on in his career. I got him in 2015, and in 2016, we are on the road and this car came out onto the road right in front of us. And it made this abrupt lane change that was just odd. And just out of curiosity, I ran the tag and the tag came back to a rental car. But after that abrupt lane change, it ran a red light right in front of me. But the second I turned my lights on, he took off and started flying down this busy, busy road. And so I was like, Man, this isn’t really safe to pursue after him. We have policies in our department that say the need to apprehend has to outweigh the safety for the public, right? If all I had was he busted through a red light, and I have no idea why, and there’s tons of traffic.
The guy makes a U-turn and comes right back at me and I’m like, Oh my goodness. So I make a U-turn and I get behind the guy, but again, he’s driving erratically and I can’t keep up. So I give out the description of the car and funny enough, the car ends up going into a parking lot. And it’s a parking lot that has this overhang. It went over the edge to where it was teetering and almost fell down to the lower part. So it was stuck. Two guys jumped out, but there was a police officer in that parking lot doing reports. And so they get out and start running and they give a direction of travel, and I’m not too far away.
So I headed to the area with Mattis, it was behind this strip mall that backed up to a creek with a retaining wall between the strip mall and the creek. And so I went to the far side of the strip mall to cut them off in case they went around back. And so I jumped out of my car, threw it into park, and I hit this mechanism that flings open Mattis’s door, and then he knows to run right beside me. And the second that I hit it, the guy’s running right at me. To the left was the retaining wall, and the retaining wall was like ten feet in places. And that’s all I knew. I thought it was ten feet. And so the guy jumps over the retaining wall, and so I’m running at the guy full speed, and I go to jump, and I see that he’s still falling. It wasn’t ten feet high. It was thirty feet high. And so I caught myself, ripping the skin off my hand on the metal barrier between the strip mall and the retaining wall. And then I see Mattis leap over the wall like I was leaping over the wall, doing exactly what he was supposed to do. And he fell thirty feet.
It was the first time I saw fear in my dog’s face. He was hunched over. He was confused and frozen in the air as he fell. And he landed on the guy. Didn’t bite him because he wasn’t on a bite command. He was on a command to follow after me. And I told the guy not to move, and Mattis guarded him. Eventually, I figured out a way to get down there. I checked Mattis, and he was standing. He didn’t show any sensitivity or pain.
And right then the police officer said the other guy that had been running from the car was at another location, and they asked for Mattis and I to get there. So we had that guy in custody, I loaded Mattis in my car, and we flew over to the other location. Mattis is dragging me, following his nose. We’re passing all the other officers. And the guy sees Mattis, he gives up. And so Mattis captured both guys, and then the second he gave up, Mattis just collapsed to the ground.
How Dogs Can Teach Us Principles from the Bible
He had internal bleeding, and he had a lacerated liver from the thirty foot fall. I remember that uncertainty and the trip to the vet, and even as he recovered and not knowing if he was ever going to be a police dog… it taught me that God was in control of it all. Even though I couldn’t see the end, He had a plan for Mattis, not only that injury, but his entire service.
“God was in control of it all. Even though I couldn’t see the end.” – Mark Tappan
Jesus said, “Cast your cares upon me. Don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself.” The dog just wants to go outside and play ball. Like, he has no worries about anything. And for us, like how am I not supposed to worry about tomorrow? About food and shelter and how I’m going to make it through tomorrow? But somehow a dog doesn’t, you know?
He’s eleven years old. He’s still with me today. He kept working as a police officer. But to me it’s like, now everything is God teaching us through the circumstances that we’re in.
There’s so many things that if you look at a dog’s life, especially Mattis and how he stood out, he did things with his whole heart. And there’s one verse that I think is my life verse that really, to this day, convicts me every time I read it. It’s Colossians 3:23. It says, “Everything you do, do with all of your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for men.” And when I looked at my dog, I saw that in everything he did and the work that he did as a police dog and the friendship that we had. He gave everything to it. You know, he loves unconditionally. There’s so much perseverance. He doesn’t quit. He goes all in on everything. He teaches me humility in just the way that he does his job. Because in all circumstances, we know God directs them.
“Colossians 3:23 says, ‘Everything you do, do with all of your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for men.’ And when I looked at my dog, I saw that in everything he did and the work that he did as a police dog and the friendship that we had. He gave everything to it.” – Mark Tappan
Narrator: To learn more about Mark Tappan, check out his latest book, A Dog Named Mattis: 12 Lessons for Living Courageously, Serving Selflessly, and Building Bridges from a Heroic K9 Officer, wherever you buy books.
If you’d like to hear more stories about finding our life’s purpose, check out our interview with Erica Campbell.
Next week: Darren Mulligan
Next time on the Jesus Calling Podcast, we’ll hear from Darren Mulligan, frontman of the Christian band We Are Messengers. Darren approaches his life and music with authenticity, sharing openly about the not-so-holy moments. He believes transparency is required when connecting with others.
Darren Mulligan: I am not in need of applause. I’m satisfied with Jesus. I’m satisfied with my walk with God. I’m satisfied with the joy He has brought me.
