About Ben

I’m Ben Langhofer — a father of three amazing kiddos adopted at birth, founder of Family Pillars and Creed Culture, a John Maxwell Certified Leadership Coach, and someone who has spent much of his life trying to understand the power of belonging within families.

But before any of those titles, I’m a dad.

And like a lot of dads, I found myself in a very unpleasant season in life where I realized that simply loving my kids wasn’t enough. I needed to lead them.

The Turning Point

In 2011, I became a single father overnight.

Suddenly I was raising three young children on my own while trying to run a business and keep life moving forward. Most days felt like survival. I was putting out fires, reacting to problems, and hoping things would somehow work out.

Deep down, I knew that wasn’t enough.

If I continued to drift, my kids would drift too.

I read parenting books, went to parenting classes, studied parenting programs and strategies and sought all sorts of advice and wisdom from other intentional parents. We were in survival mode back then. But one thought continued to emerge. “We” are in survival mode because “I” am in survival mode. They didn’t have to be. It was up to me to cast vision and get them to see beyond survival. If I didn’t do it, nobody would.

I was challenged by a simple truth from Proverbs 29:18:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

I knew that if we continued in survival mode, that’s all we would ever do. We just survive. We’d get to the end of a decade or two and think “we survived”. That was no way to live. I knew I had to cast a vision beyond the pain we were all experiencing. I had to redirect them to a greater purpose.

I realized that every successful organization I’ve ever admired had a mission, a vision, a set of values, and a clear sense of purpose. Yet the most important organization I would ever lead — my family — had none of those things written down.

So I decided to change that.

Building the Langhofer Family Handbook

I created what became known as the Langhofer Family Handbook.

It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t designed to impress anyone.

It was simply an intentional effort to define who we were as a family, what we believed, where we were going, and how we would treat one another along the way.

Over time, our handbook grew to include our family’s vision, mission, core values, code of conduct, expectations, responsibilities, and rhythms.

More importantly, it gave us a shared identity.

It gave us something to stand on during some of life’s most difficult seasons.

The handbook didn’t eliminate pain, conflict, or hardship. But it created clarity, belonging, and direction when we needed it most.

Helping Other Families Build With Intention

What started as a tool for my own family eventually became a mission to help other families do the same.

Today, through Family Pillars and Creed Culture, I help parents create intentional family cultures built around vision, values, belonging, and purpose.

I’ve had the privilege of mentoring parents, supporting families navigating adoption and divorce, and helping organizations think differently about family leadership.

I’m also the author of Babytalk for Mommy, a book written to encourage and support birth mothers considering adoption.

More recently, I’ve begun opening up my story and my schedule to speak with parents, churches, schools, organizations, and community groups about family culture, belonging, identity, adoption, leadership, and the power of intentional parenting.

My Mission

I believe every family has a culture — whether they create it intentionally or not.

My mission is to help parents become the architects of that culture.

Because children don’t just need rules.

They need identity.

They need purpose.

And perhaps most of all, they need a deep sense of belonging.

Direction doesn’t eliminate life’s storms.
But it gives families something solid to stand on when those storms inevitably come.