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In this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, I sit down with Jacob Robinson, the founder of Dig World, a construction-themed amusement park. Jacob's journey from owning a commercial cleaning business to launching a theme park was inspired by his son Pierce's courage in overcoming a severe illness. Jacob shares how this personal experience drove him to create a space where families can make lasting memories by operating real construction equipment. We also explore Jacob's unexpected invitation to appear on Shark Tank, which initially seemed too good to be true. Jacob describes the rigorous preparation process for the show and how securing a deal with Robert Herjavec provided significant exposure and credibility for Dig World. This experience sparked interest in franchise opportunities nationwide, propelling the business forward. However, Jacob's path has not been without challenges. He reflects on the operational setbacks faced during Dig World's grand opening and the importance of resilience in entrepreneurship. Jacob emphasizes learning from these failures and the need to be patient and ready for success. Throughout the episode, Jacob discusses his leadership evolution, focusing on servant leadership and building a passionate, customer-focused team. He highlights the importance of creating a culture of trust and creativity to ensure a safe and memorable experience for all visitors. Jacob remains committed to expanding DigWorld while offering an affordable alternative to traditional family outings. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I discussed Jacob Robinson's inspiring journey from running a commercial cleaning company to founding Dig World, a construction-themed amusement park inspired by his son Pierce's battle with a severe illness. Jacob shared the story of how an unexpected email invitation led to his appearance on Shark Tank, which resulted in a significant deal with Robert Herjavec and propelled Dig World into the national spotlight. We explored the challenges faced during Dig World's opening day, highlighting the operational setbacks that resulted in temporary closure and how these experiences taught valuable lessons about patience and readiness. Jacob explained the development of custom technology to enhance safety and functionality in the park's machinery, ensuring a secure and manageable experience for visitors operating real construction equipment. We discussed the importance of building a passionate and customer-focused team, emphasizing a culture of creativity and care that enhances the visitor experience and supports the company's mission. Jacob described his evolution from a fear-driven leadership style to one centered on servant leadership, focusing on resilience and motivating his team positively through setbacks. As Dig World plans for expansion, Jacob remains committed to offering an affordable, enriching alternative to traditional family outings, while also contemplating new mascots and improvements to machinery safety. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Dig World GUESTS Jacob RobinsonAbout Jacob TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: Jacob, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking time to come on the podcast. Jacob: No, thank you. I'm so honored to be here. Chris: So we can see from behind you. You know Dig World's your company. Take a minute to tell the listeners what Dig World is. What do you do? What are you known for? Jacob: Yeah, great question. So we are a construction theme park where we allow kids and adults to operate real construction equipment. So we let them drive real skid steers, real excavators, real UTVs would take you up and boom lifts, the whole deal. And the only thing is you need to be three years old or older. And so we truly are a fun family theme park, but we allow you to operate real construction equipment. Chris: Wow, I mean, that's amazing Real construction equipment. I can't wait to get into more of the details behind that, but first I have to ask you what was the inspiration to start a company like this? Jacob: Yeah, it's crazy. You don't wake up with a dream every day to start a construction theme park. Chris: Yeah, maybe a construction theme park, but not one where a three-year-old can operate. That's right. Jacob: That's fair? That's fair? Well, no. So we, my wife and I, were blessed. We have three amazing kids. We have nine-year-old, a five-year-old and almost a two-year-old, and so life is good and hectic right now. But my nine-year-old son, pierce, was born in 2015, a happy, healthy baby boy, and life progressed just normally and just fine. And then, in 2017, one morning on a Saturday morning, my wife found him in his crib unconscious and after rushing him to the hospital, we learned that he had contracted bacterial meningitis. We weren't sure if he was going to make it through the weekend, but the Lord had different plans. He was in a coma 12 days and we were in the hospital 75 days. And when we left the hospital, pierce left with a whole host of issues he's nonverbal, he's epileptic, he's deaf in both ears, you know, wheelchair and mental capacity of call it maybe a one-year-old, but but he is a happy little boy and, as I was telling somebody else, you know Pierce sees the world the way that we should all see the world. He doesn't see your skin color. He doesn't see your income. He doesn't see what car you drive. As long as you hang out with them, you've, we could bring people together. You know, you conceptually always understand that life is short, but when you're faced with something like that, you really understand that life is short and precious and so you want to bring people together and create memories and have good times and not just look up and say, man, all I did was work for 40, 50 years. And here I am, and so we had this idea. You know, as I told somebody, we're pretty good arrogant Texans. We thought we could build a theme park. It couldn't be that hard, right. And man, we were wrong and we'll get into that, I'm sure, at some point in the show. But Pierce's always loved construction equipment garbage trucks, dump trucks, really thinking that whole, everything in that category. And so we said, hey, we really think we could build a theme park where kids could actually come and operate real construction equipment. And for the listeners out there, some of you may be thinking, oh, this must be some toned down version. No, these are real. These are 3027s, these are 305s, these are 243 skid steers, and so these are the real deal that we have re-engineered to where it's safe, but these are the real deal that you get to operate the park. So that's how we got started. Pierce is the inspiration behind the park, the inspiration behind really a lot of things that I do in life, and bringing people together to create memories that last a lifetime. Chris: My gosh, I mean what? I mean? That's a mic drop story, jacob. I mean, you know, blessings to you and Pierce and your whole family. I hope to get the chance to meet him one day. Yes, he's the coolest member of our family. So, yes, that is amazing. So, wow. I love the inspiration and the story and this whole idea of bringing people and families together for those memories. So were you in the construction business when you started this, or what? Jacob: were you doing? I would say yes and no. I had a commercial cleaning company. I started in 2015. That was my job. We just recently sold that business and where we started that business was in the construction cleaning space. So anytime a general contractor would go and build a big building or a hotel or an office building, we would come in, we would work for the general contractor and we would do the final clean on that building. So I was kind of in the construction space. We, you know we answered to GCs all day, but I am not a construction guy by trade. I was an ag major at Texas A&M, so I was a janitor turned theme park guy. So it's been a very interesting career, as you can ask my CPA wife from all the meandering roads that we've taken. Chris: Yeah, so you know we're on inspiration. So then let's yeah, let's kind of dig into what a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners you know face is that first step right Of actually getting the courage to, to chase that dream. So let's take us back to that. What was that like? You know what were, you know what were the first steps like, what were the feelings? Like? How'd you convince that CPA wife that you know CPA wife that this wasn't quite as crazy as it sounded? Jacob: Yes, I'm not sure, when we crossed that line that the craziness went out the window. We may have been there for a couple of years, but I would say to those entrepreneurs out there it's easy to say and it's cliche to say, but everybody sees the end of the story, everybody sees Dig World. Now We've been open, we're on Shark Tank, we're franchising. You know everybody's going ah, great idea. Listen, that was not the case when we first started. We went back and counted. I had roughly 248 pitch meetings where they told me no, that I was crazy, it was never going to work. Nobody's ever going to come to this, nobody's. You know, it's not safe All these kinds of things. And so 248, it's a lot of meetings. It's a lot of meetings. It's a lot of no's. It's a lot of no's. To keep coming home and go, no, it was a good meeting. It was a good meeting. What did they give you? Money? Not at all, quite the opposite, but it was a good meeting, right? And so to those entrepreneurs out there that you, you, if you're pounding your head against the pavement and going, man, if one more person tells me no, hey, I've been there with you, I know what that's like. Keep pressing on, keep going. If you have the vision and you have the conviction behind it, I promise you, at some point you are going to find somebody that believes in your vision for no other reason than you've just been at it for so long and you've got conviction behind it that somebody will take a flyer on you. But it was difficult. It was difficult. We started in 2019, and then COVID hit right, and so we told people not only were we the crazy theme park people running around asking people to invest, but then we were the crazy people saying hey, listen, not only are we going to build it, we're going to get a whole bunch of people together. And that messaging wasn't going over very well during COVID, and so you know, we had all of these factors that were not going in our favor. And then, finally, in 21, in 2021, we had a first couple of people start to say yes, and then Domino's started to fall, and then we opened in March of 2022. And, frankly, that was an epic failure, too, that we can talk about as well, but it was a long journey. It was a long journey, and so my encouragement to those that are out there, either on that journey or those that are at the beginning of that journey is take a step, just take a step. Right, do something. Just call somebody and say your dream out loud, right? Call somebody and say hey, listen, I'm going to let a three-year-old drive a skid steer. Right, and the more you start to say it out loud, the better that muscle is going to become being flexed. And then, all of a sudden, you're going to be the confident person that walks in the room and goes no, yeah, of course we're going to put a three-year-old on skid steer. We're going to let them drive an excavator. We're going to have birthday parties here, and then, hey, guess what they? But that theme of just take the step, just do it just go for it. Chris: No one's ever going to believe it as much as you do, so you got to have that passion and belief and eventually you will find someone to get behind you, and then it's on you to deliver. Right, that's right, that's right, that's exactly right. So I do want to get to the story on the opening, but I have to ask you mentioned it earlier, so how did the Shark Tank thing come about? How did you, how'd you wind up on Shark Tank? Let's talk a little bit about that experience and what that was like. Jacob: Yeah, an amazing experience, you know, it just was fantastic all around. An exhausting experience nonetheless, but it was a fantastic experience. You know, we were very blessed. One day I was sitting at my computer and we got an email to our info account and said hey, would you consider being on season 16 of Shark Tank? And clearly we thought it was a joke, right, and clearly thought something was going to be hacked if I responded to it. Chris: Don't click the attachment right, that's right, that's right. Jacob: All of a sudden our bank account gets hacked. But it was actually one of the producers. She had seen us on Instagram and said, hey, listen, would you be interested? Let's learn more about your business, see if it checks a lot of these boxes. And then that started the whole process. And the process is rigorous and it's long, and your fate hangs in the hands of people that you never get to see or talk to. And you know it goes from one lawyer to another lawyer. None of those lawyers have talked to each other, and so the whole process is very interesting. And then you know the show is true. It's true to form. The only thing scripted about the show is the very beginning pitch that you give, and other than that, it's a free for all. The Sharks don't know about your business, they don't have a flyer on your business, they haven't been given any information. It's truly a live pitch pitching again when I'm like, hey, no, hold on, we got the park open, I don't need to pitch anybody again. Plenty of people have told me no, I don't need, you know, five people on national television to blast me and tell me no. But so when we got there, we did the pitch and we were very blessed it went well. We secured a deal from Robert Herjavec, the tech entrepreneur on the show. He's one of the staple sharks and it's just been a great experience and once there's one of those things that you look up and you really have to sit in the fact that it's one of those once in a lifetime crazy things. And even yesterday I was driving to the grocery store and I sat there and I was like man, this really happened. That's crazy and just trying to enjoy those moments. Chris: Well, and it has to be. I mean, it's great that it worked out and you got, you know, some additional investment from a very seasoned person, but just the notoriety of being on right Open, you know, a lot of eyes to you and had to, you know, you know, increase traction and interest in what you were doing. Jacob: Totally. I think, from even, just you know, foot traffic to the park here in Katy. That that's been tremendous. But then even, obviously, you know we went on the show to sell franchises. That that's our next big hurdle is selling franchises across the country and we have been flooded with requests of franchises to bring people, you know, bring a park to their location, their city. Talking to potential franchisees, it really just just totally gasoline on the fire. Chris: Yeah. So let's go back to the opening. You said March 2022. One of the things I like to talk to people about is let's talk about a failure that you've encountered and most people will tell you can do a whole show on them, right. Literally, I was going to say you don't have enough time on this, but you know you shared that. I guess the opening didn't go so well or something around that. So let's talk about what were some of the failures around that. What did you learn that made you better going forward? Jacob: That's right. You know, I tell people one day when I'm, when I give it, when I give a speech one day at a theme park conference, I'm going to be able to tell people I'm one of the very few theme park operators in the world that has opened a theme park and closed it the same day because it went so poorly. And so you know, I do have that badge of honor with me. So we opened the park too soon and that was a hundred percent my fault, right you too soon, and that was 100% my fault, right? You're trying to you build in these parameters in your head. We got to open this date. We got to do this. You know people are waiting and I really wanted it to be open that Thursday of spring break back in 2022. Could I have waited 48 hours more and would that have fixed our problems? Yes, did I? No, and I think a lot of it was. You know, we had been at this for four years. At this point, we were exhausted and here was the finish line. The finish line was on Thursday and we could do this and everybody's gonna love it. Tickets were sold out there. There was plenty of buzz. You know we were being interviewed from broadcaster. You know I was on NPR and we're doing this interview in this country and all over the US, and there was so much media attention. We had helicopters circling over the park doing filming, getting ready for the opening, and when we opened, man, it was an epic disaster, and the reason it was is I pushed the grand opening. All of our machines were not ready. We had not put on our technology of all the machines, not that we were letting people operate those machines, but we did not have enough time built in to put a computer on this machine, and then this machine, and then this machine. And so what happened is we opened the park to hundreds and hundreds of people and we didn't have that many machines going, and so those hundreds and hundreds of people waited in line for hours and it was just disastrous. And people were angry at me, rightfully so. People wanted to tell me what they thought about me, and rightfully so. The amount of refunds that we issued that day were it was probably dollar for dollar, we probably made $0 that day or just lost money, and so we had to shut the park down. So so I go on, and we, you know we were open. We were going to be open that Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, and I just canceled everything and said hey, I'm so sorry, we're not going to be open, we'll refund you your tickets or you can come back whenever you want. And, man, people were so mad at us. They were so mad at us. The news was doing coverage about how Dig World closed in less than 24 hours and it was a disaster, an epic failure. And so you know you go home that night and something you had been working for four years, there was no, nothing good about it. There wasn't even. There was no silver lining, like you could be, like well, but no, it was terrible and kids left crying. I mean, just like I said, just terrible. And my wife will tell you that, looking back on that night, she goes hey, I thought I lost you mentally that night, like I thought you were so down in the dumps that night that I didn't know where we were going to go from here. And yeah, I remember the next day waking up, I was trying to, I was going to take my son on a walk and I remember getting halfway out of the neighborhood and having to turn around, got to go back into the office. We've got to go on the offensive here and really try to say hey, listen, we're sorry, let's own the mistake right. Hey, we opened too soon, please come back. And so I think you look at it right and it just was one of those epic failures, and we've had many more along the way, right? Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom, and thanks for listening to the show. Jacob: I was thinking of just trying to figure out how to run a theme park, and we've never run a theme park, but that was one. That's an easy recall when somebody asked me to talk about failure. Chris: Right, like you almost were there right Reliving it that day. Jacob: Oh man yes. Chris: Well, the lesson, though, in that you found the positive and I think it's true in so many different circumstances. We're all going to make mistakes, right, we've made them in the past. One thing certain we're going to make them again in the future, it's owning it right, be this, taking ownership of it, and then kind of committing to do better. I think when you do that, you know what, more times than not, what comes from that is grace. You know people grace to you, and I think that's what it seems like what you've experienced. Right, you owned it, so we're going to do better. The community gave you grace, and when you open back up, they came. Jacob: I think don't pass the blame, Even honestly, even if it's not really your blame, right? People want somebody to stand up and say, hey, it's on me, and I think we don't see that a lot of times in leadership throughout you know, whatever. But people willing to say, hey, that was on me, I'm gonna raise my hand, that was on me. And then the key is forgetting quickly and moving on right and not dwelling which, whatever you do, operate out of imagination, not memory. Right, Don't go back there, sit in those failures operate out of imagination, not memory. Chris: That's a good one. I haven't heard that one before I'm writing it down. Jacob: I would like to take credit for it, but somebody much smarter than me said it, so yeah, right. Chris: So I want to talk a little bit about technology and innovation because, I mean, I know these are, you know, big machinery used out in the construction. There's nothing really innovative about them, but it seems to me that using them in your theme park has to have some innovation and technology to make them safe, as you've described them. So you know, tell us about that. How did you come up with it or did you, or where did you find it? Jacob: it? Yeah, great question. So, yes, yes, all of the above. I know I did not come up with it, I'm not smart enough to write code, but we partnered with an engineer and we said hey, listen, this is what we want to do. We believe this can happen. And what we did, in simplistic terms, we built our own computer to put onto the back of the machine. That goes into its wiring to override a lot of the functionality of it. And so when we call it dig world mode, when the computer's in dig world mode, it is safe. The excavators are stationary, they can't go forward and backwards, they only go certain degrees to the right and left and up and down. Our skid steers are heavily governed, the hydraulics and a lot of functionalities are disengaged. We have kill switches and then we can flip the computer back to normal mode and it's a normal functioning machine. And so really, coming alongside a bright engineering team and building this technology that's our technology and putting it on these machines is really outside the box kind of stuff. And finding somebody that wanted to dream alongside with us was the key to success there. And he's still dreaming alongside with us. I mean he had made a technology upgrade this past week. That's one of those things you look at and you go why didn't we do that three years ago? That makes things a lot, you know not safer, they were very safe it makes it simpler for our team to utilize, and so we're always improving. I think that's the other thing. You know you hear it all the time as an entrepreneur, but as a business owner, one of the things that's very easy to do is get stuck in a rut and go well, we've always done it that way, right? I had a call with my business partner this morning and he's newer to the team and he said well, why are we doing that? And I was like well, honestly, I don't know if we've ever asked that question. I think we've just done it and let's try something new here. And knowing that you don't always have the right answers, and your teammate you may have a high school kid that works for you, like I do that comes to you and goes hey, why, why aren't we doing it like this? Could we do it like this? And you go it's a genius idea, let's do it that way. Yeah, and being okay and putting your pride aside and saying let's change and adapt. Chris: Right. So you're clearly kind of in the entertainment business. Let's talk about building a team right, because I think I mean clearly you've got an internal team there, I guess in the office that's got to run the company, some creativity around it, but then you have another team, that's, you know, customer facing. How have you gone about building kind of each of those teams to try to maximize the company's success? Jacob: Yeah, it's a great question, Thank you. I would say, yeah, our two teams I'd almost kind of say like our corporate team. Right, our corporate team is the X's and O's business focus. How do we grow the franchises? How do we optimize the P&L? And really the key to success there is not to overstate cliches, but like go hire somebody smarter than you and go hire somebody that is great at your weaknesses and then give them the reins to run it. I don't go in your lane, you know how to run it. I trust you explicitly. I've given you the keys of the kingdom because if not, if I'm just going to micromanage you, then why would I even have you on my team? That's demeaning to you. I'm going to end up doing the work anyways because I'm a control freak. So I'm going to go hire somebody that really knows what they're doing and say go, do it right. Or my business partner he oversees a lot of different things, but one of them is the marketing, and today he said hey, listen, do we want to spend here? Do you want to spend here? I think the answer is here. Yep, let's go there right, if you think that's interview going. Hey, this is what we sleep and breathe here. We love the customer, we love that people are here. We're going to love on them and we're going to make memories. Can you do that? And that's what I'm going to hire and fire against. If I see you out there and you're not loving on customers and you're not creating memories that last a lifetime, we're going to ask you to leave. But that's what you know from the beginning. We're going to hire and fire against. Do we love people and are we serving them well? And if we do those things, we're going to build a culture that people start to talk about. And every team meeting that we have, I kick off of hey, today we're going to love people and today we're going to think outside the box, and I know you had, you know, a long week at school. I'm asking you from nine to five today to dig deep and love on people because and when you really frame it up, we get to be a part of something so special and so unique. We get to really be a part of this kid or this family's memory bank, and hopefully in a good way. Right, there are going to be hundreds and hundreds of kids for the rest of their lives that are able to say man, when I was five I had my birthday party at this place called Dig World and I got to drive a real excavator. They're gonna tell that story for their whole life. We get to be a part of that. How humbling is that. And so when you really can set the picture for these kids, what we're doing here is not just a job. We're not here today to collect tickets and put you on a machine and say thank you for coming. We are ingraining ourselves into your memory bank, and when we can take that on in the privilege of that, then, man, we can really sky's the limit. Chris: Yeah, well, I could see if you get that light bulb to go off and kind of in any employee, right, it changes the whole dynamic, the mindset and luckily those high school kids I got to believe they're learning great life skills to have to deal with people on the fly. And that's what we do every day. Right, we're dealing with people as we as they come to us, and so that's exactly right. Jacob: And get to teaching that, hey, the customer's not always right Sometimes. You know we can stand our ground every now and then too, and so really, yeah, how do we handle conflict with each other? How do we handle conflict with a customer? You know those are skills that are in an online day and age are becoming less and less, so how do we actually stand in front of another human being and say, hey, listen, I know you're frustrated, let's figure out how we can work through this kind of deal. So hopefully we're teaching them things that can go far beyond Dig World. Chris: Yes, for sure. So we're here in Texas. You started this business here. Tell me some of the things that you found, or have found, to be advantageous about being a Texas-based business. Jacob: Oh man, so many, one. Obviously. Just the people right, the people buy in and they love it. They love supporting the business, they love supporting what we're trying to do here. And so, culturally, it's amazing to be here in Texas. We were fortunate when we started we had a partnership with Texas A&M, my alma mater and so I'm a little biased there but really getting their buy-in, and a university that saw what we were trying to do and said, hey, listen, let's go capture the next generation of construction workers and teach them about Texas A&M. Yes, but let's also teach them about this great industry of construction. And then really, just the flexibility of Texas. You know there's not many states you can just go out and, for the first and foremost, be like, hey, listen, we're going to start a theme park and it's going to let kids operate construction equipment, right, the flexibility and you know we went through the whole rigmarole and everything with insurance and the filings, but really the adaptability of the state and going, yeah, that sounds great, let's do that. And then everybody behind it. It's just, it's been amazing. Chris: That's great. So I'd like to talk about leadership, and you know you're clearly, as a founder and CEO, leader, but how do you think those leadership qualities have developed over time and how would you describe your leadership style? Jacob: Yeah, I tell people a lot of times I think there's two versions of Jacob as the leader. There is pre-Pierce getting sick and then there's post-Pierce getting sick. Not that the goals have changed. The goals are still. Listen, you're running a business. You got to make money and you got to keep the doors open right At the end of the day. That's the name of the game. But mindset around those have changed. The intensity around that has changed and the bigger picture around that has changed. So, for example, pre Pierce getting sick and our cleaning business, we lose a contract. I'm pretty frustrated. I'm probably a little panicky. We're getting a little desperate on how do we replace that contract. I'm driving the team harder. What are we selling? I'm micromanaging more because I'm feeling nervous and anxious. Right, post Pierce getting sick, the intensity is not gone, but the priorities are going hey, we lost the contract, okay, let's go home, let's reset. Tomorrow, we'll find another one. There's another one out there, let's go find another one. Right, and motivating the team that way, instead of fear-based whether it be my fear or the fear I'm instilling rather than going hey, we'll be fine, we're gonna keep doing what we're doing. We're gonna keep doing the X's and O's of the business and it will be there. And so I think, when failure of a grand opening and a grand closing comes, you go. Okay, listen, today was not a good day, today was a terrible day. However, I'm still here, my family's still here, and tomorrow we're going to figure out how we survive this and we're going to pick up and we're going to go to work tomorrow and we're going to figure it out, and then I think, at the end of the day, I'm a servant leader. I hope our high school kids see me doing things that I asked them to do. I hope they see me cleaning the bathrooms. I hope they see me doing this, not to manipulate them to saying, hey, you know, oh, jacob's doing it, I should go do it. No, I want you to see that we're all in this together, right, and I believe in it this much that I'm going to get in here with you and I'm not going do at that point is they go? Yeah, I'll go clean the bathrooms, right, and hey, jacob asked me to do it, I'll go do it because I know he would do it right, rather than the dictator style leadership or the authoritarian style leadership. So I think for me it's coming alongside them, servant leadership, getting in the trenches, dealing with the disgruntled customers and not just making them deal with it, all of those kinds of things, I think. Build in the goodwill with the team and they see somebody that wants to link arms with you, and then what it allows me to do is come alongside them on those times where I either have to discipline or I have to recorrect or reposition, and they go. Ok, I know. But I know at the end of the day, he loves me. I know at the end of the day, it's the best, even if he's firing me. You know at the end that you, moving on, I'm still going to be in your corner, and so I think I view my leadership in those two ways. Chris: I like that. I can identify with it as well, feel the same way. To me the servant leadership is so valuable, right? Your employees have to believe not only they've seen you do it, not that you will do it, they've seen you do it right, and that when you ask them to do it it's important and so that's great. You know, just thinking about the obviously a lot of stuff going on in our world and in any kind of different ways. But you know economically, you know legislatively, what are some of the headwinds, given all that that you kind of see facing dig world as you're kind of looking out over the next 30, 60, 90, 120 days, year, kind of yeah, yeah. Jacob: It's a great question. I would answer it two ways. One you know, as we look at the economics of our park and people coming to our park, you know what we feel like is we sit in that middle or probably lower to middle ground of your discretionary spending as a family, meaning. Meaning, as I compare it to a Disney right, and when the economy goes down a little bit or people are a little worried or nervous, the Disney vacation may go on the back burner. Right, because that's a significant financial investment into that. It's a great experience, but it's significant. Where we fall is on the lower end of that category, hopefully delivering the same memories and experiences and fun and joy, but the price point is significantly cheaper than that. So we feel in good times and in rougher times we hope to be a resource that allows those families to still create memories in that regard. Externally, as we look to grow franchises, the ups and downs of the economy can sway different investors. They can sway how they want to hold their money, what they want to do with their money, what they don't want to do with their money. Now my sales pitch to those individuals are hey, you could take your money and put it over here, or you could take your money and put it over here and you could kind of be in control of it, but you also can create something that's bigger than you for your community, for your family, things like that. So it it will be interesting to see what the next probably call it 120 days have in store for us as far as how we're received on the investment side. But right now, our focus on this phase one is how do we get five franchises across the finish line, and right now, praise the Lord, we're very close to hitting that number. And then we got to get them open and we have to produce right. Chris: At the end of the day, you have to produce and I understand you have two open now or the second one's about to open. Dallas will be open by the end of this year. That's correct. Okay, that's great. So I gotta ask. I mean, you're talking about disney, made me think. Do you have some kind of mascot or anybody like in a big suit when you show up at dig world? You know? Jacob: so. But he said I literally got off a phone call earlier we are, we've honed it into kind of two mascots that we want, and so that will be released soon once the debate can be decided within our team of which way we're going. Chris: Okay very good. So let's just kind of turn to a little more casual side. Yeah, you said you and Katie went to A&M. I'm taking those two data points and making an assumption you're a born and raised Texan, it's a great question. Jacob: It's a great assumption, but no, I am a son of a healthcare executive, and so I was born in Alabama, raised all over Texas, graduated high school in South Carolina, then came to A&M, met my wife, who is a Houstonian, who's a Katie girl and much smarter than I am, and so she had a real job after college, and so I followed her here and I've been here ever since. Chris: Okay, Great story. So just talking about Texas, you know you all have a favorite spot. You like to go within the state to get away, maybe vacation time. Jacob: Yeah, you know it's funny whenever, within the state, melissa and I we love to head over to San Antonio. We love the Hill Country side. We like a couple of the resorts there. That's our, our getaway. And then I think you know when we're getting away. Now we've got young kids. Grandparents and cousins and nephews live in waco and so we head over to waco. We spend a lot of time there. But if melissa and I are just getting away and staying in the state, we're gonna head probably over to san antonio very good. Chris: That leads me to the next question then do you prefer tex-mex or barbecue? Jacob: oh man, that's. Oh man, see that one. That's a tricky question because we'd have to be like specific in the subcategory right. Like'd have, we'd have to like pit two against each other. Chris: I hear you. Everyone says that that's the hardest question saved for last. Jacob: Oh, my goodness, I'm going to have to go barbecue. I'm going to have to go barbecue. Chris: All right, all right. I love how you're going to break it down, though, cause I'm the same way. You know. It's like. Well, I don't know, it depends, I mean it depends it just. Jacob: You know, on Friday night this weekend I had Tex-Mex. On Saturday I had barbecue. So you know like it literally is, but I'd have to go barbecue. Chris: All right, very good. Well, jacob, thank you again for taking time to come on the podcast. I mean your story, obviously from the start of it with Pierce, was amazing, but just such a creative, unique thing that you've created. And you know, just wish you the best of success, thank you. Thank you, honored to be here today. Thank you for taking time Special Guest: Jacob Robinson.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I spoke with Mason Brady, founder and president of Brady CFO, about his entrepreneurial journey and the growth of his fractional CFO services firm. Mason shares how he transitioned from corporate CFO to entrepreneur after realizing the strong market demand for part-time CFO support among construction and agriculture businesses. Starting the business while supporting a family of five tested his comfort with risk and uncertainty. His firm now includes five CFOs who help businesses with revenues up to $75 million navigate financial decisions, capital access, and growth strategies. Brady CFO uses a unique team approach, pairing CFOs with analysts to deliver cost-effective services tailored to clients' needs. Recently relocated from California, Mason appreciates Texas's business-friendly environment and central location for serving clients nationwide. He focuses on helping entrepreneurs evolve as leaders while managing their growing companies, particularly in construction and agriculture where many face similar challenges around financial reporting and bonding requirements. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I introduced Mason Brady, founder and president of Brady CFO, who shared his transition from a corporate CFO to an entrepreneur in the agriculture and construction sectors. Mason discussed the emotional and mental challenges of leaving a stable job, emphasizing the role of faith and family support in his decision-making process. We explored the importance of consistent sales activities for sustaining and growing a business, with Mason recommending that a significant portion of time be dedicated to new business development. Mason detailed Brady CFO's innovative business model, which pairs CFOs with South American financial analysts to optimize client service and provide cost-effective strategic financial services. The conversation included insights into the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in the construction industry, focusing on the transition from skilled professionals to business leaders and the importance of solid financial systems. Mason highlighted the need for effective delegation and trust in leadership roles within agribusiness, discussing the development of middle management and his experiences in Texas. We also talked about the advantages of operating a business in Texas, emphasizing its central location, economic activity, and more minimized regulations compared to other states. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Brady CFO GUESTS Mason BradyAbout Mason TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: Mason, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking the time to come on the podcast, really looking forward to hearing what you have to tell us Awesome. Mason: Thank you, chris, really appreciate this opportunity. Chris: So let's just start introducing yourself to the listeners. Tell us about yourself and about Brady. Mason: CFO self. I'm a husband and father to three little girls, so that's the biggest priority of my life. I was just telling Chris earlier that we celebrated my three-year-old's birthday this past weekend and she had a blast. That did the trampoline and pizza party thing and she had a wonderful Saturday. So that was awesome. And from a more professional perspective, I started Brady CFO about three years ago. Yeah, roughly right around three years ago. That really in just seeing a need in the marketplace that I was a corporate CFO for agribusinesses and I had friends that would reach out and ask for help within their construction or ag businesses. They really just needed some fractional CFO support. That they had an existing accounting team, but that accounting team wasn't really leveling up to help them with the decisions that they need to make, whether it be, you know, hey, we want to buy out our partners, how much should we pay? How should we finance it? Hey, we want to go buy this building. How should we do it? You know, we want to buy out our competitor, or we need help getting access to capital all these multitude of requests that they had. But they certainly didn't need a full-time CFO and so I helped them part-time but really it just kind of exploded on me that within about three months of helping friends on the side, I was making more money on the side than I was in my full-time job and said, oh wow, there's actually a business here to be had, and so eventually decided to go full-time with it, and I've been growing it since then. So now this past weekend we're now a team of five total CFOs. We specialize in the ag and construction segments, and so we serve ag and construction-based companies with revenues up to 75 million and we come in as their part-time CFO, helping them with all the pain points I mentioned that you know. They need to look at potential investment opportunities. They want to bring in partners or buy out partners and want to figure out what's the right way to do that At least finance it. They want to figure out, you know, how to optimize their finances, and so we're the ones that ultimately can help solve those pain points for them. Chris: Very good, yeah, so first I can identify, I have two girls, so I'm a girl dad as well, and no better pleasure in life. And then you know I love hearing that you know this kind of just being entrepreneurial and, I guess, open to opportunities and seeing a gap where you could kind of step in and provide value to clients and small businesses, midsize businesses, and turn that into your own business, which is pretty cool. And I think what all entrepreneurs are kind of looking for right is where can they make a difference? Where's there a gap in the market? And so you said three years ago now tell us a little bit about you. Know. I guess you kind of had it going on the side, and that's not uncommon. Some entrepreneurs will say I kind of had a job and then I was doing this kind of side hustle and then that just kind of exploded. What was it like, I guess, to to go through the process mentally and emotionally, to go I'm going to leave the stable corporate job to kind of, you know, branch out on my own, because a lot of people are probably stuck, scared to make that decision. Let's talk a little bit about your process and what you might offer. Some advice to others who may be listening. Mason: Yeah, I think the path of me becoming a full-time entrepreneur it has been more of an emotional roller coaster of learning how to deal with fear and risk and being comfortable with it. You know, of living in a state of being comfortable with knowing that you're really not in control, which none of us are anyways, even in a W2 job, right, none of us are really in control, but there's some false sense of security that exists in a W2 job and you know, and just reckoning with that in your own heart. As to you know what that looks like. And yeah, it certainly was scary for me to have three young children and my wife doesn't work. I am the breadwinner, my wife is a stay-at-home mom and we generally wanted to maintain that lifestyle, just to be able to take care of our girls in that way. And so it definitely. Yeah, it was on my back, right, but you know, I say this, my, my personal faith is important to me, and so, you know, inherently I kind of knew that it wasn't all in my back, but yet at the same time, you know, as human nature is, we want to try to control things, and so it was scary, but I saw that the door was opening for me. It wasn't on my own, you know, doing that, obviously, I worked hard, but the door had opened to me that I'd personally prayed and I said, hey, if this is the path I'm supposed to go, it's going to be clear when you know, the answer to that was really clear when I started actually making more money on the side and I had more booked revenue than I did in my full-time job and said, okay, there's obviously something here that it's not. Like I have this little launch period where all of a sudden, I'm going to do a dip in income and try to figure it out. It's like, no, I've literally fully replaced the income and then some, I think we're good to go here, and so that was easier. Not everybody has that opportunity but, yeah, for me personally, it certainly was becoming comfortable with risk. That you know, that has been the journey over the past three years, and I think every entrepreneur is a bit on that journey of as an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with taking risk in a bigger way. That you know, especially, I come from an accounting background. Right, I'm a. You know, I was a CFO by trade, that I'm known for risk-taking. No, we generally are conservative decision-makers right, and I had to get comfortable with just, it's okay, get comfortable with fear. That's when the greatest growth happens. And you know, I heard somebody else like you and I are going to do a podcast swap. I heard somebody else say that you know, wealth is managed and conserved via diversification. Wealth is built when you go all in. You know and and it was like okay, well, if that's true, you know. Then I got to go all in and know that I got to go all in and that I'm burning the ships, and you know and just be comfortable with that. And so I began. That wasn't like a day one decision for me. I had to incrementally overcome some things to at that, but it was definitely a huge leap for me of doing that. But I would say to most people that you know it's going to end up being okay that you know all the fears that are in your head for something else. That's better because, as a result of that failure, that if you are good at what you do generally, it'll work out. Chris: Yeah, yeah, I mean it said you know, I guess, succinctly have faith in yourself, right, that you can do the job. The other thing I like about what I heard you say there was it's very rare for someone speaking of entrepreneurs, it's very rare for an entrepreneur to have it all figured out, to not be or be immune to risk, immune to the fear of taking the risk, right, that's the unicorn. The reality is that Almost every entrepreneur shares those fears. They may not want to talk about it until they've done it and then they can talk about it, but you're going to be scared, you're going to have some uncertainty and you're going to grow along with the process. Story may be told different ways of I wasn't sure, but I believed. Or if I didn't try it now, I never would. Mason: And who I was when I started as a business owner and leader versus who I am today is very different because we all evolve, so I think what I would tell entrepreneurs is even though you feel like you're alone, you're not. Chris: Many that have come before. You felt the same way. Yeah, and I would just encourage you're not right, many that have come before you felt the same way. Mason: Yeah, and I would just encourage there's not really a perfect time to start a business that people think, oh, like, at this age, I'll do it when the kids are out of school, or whatever the case is I actually advocate that. I, you know, being the breadwinner of my family, you know, and having, you know, three little kids to take care of it was a higher level of risk, right? Like I didn't have a safety net and that meant the decision-making that I was going to make I was going to focus on the top, like if I had to look at my calendar, I was going to focus on the top strategic priorities that were actually going to deliver a result for my time. Like I wasn't going to mess around because I didn't have the safety net, and so you know, the success of the business I think, has been built upon that. As to making the right decisions, because I didn't have any spare, you know, wiggle room in there for making a wrong one Right, and some of that's luck, some of it is just prioritizing time. I think that mentally we can get in our own way and so I encourage anybody, any listener, that there's no just because you can have a safety net later on in life or it can feel more comfortable. Sometimes entrepreneurship is pretty hard and to make the right decisions is pretty hard. Sometimes, when your back is against the wall, that's the most strategic, opportune time to actually do something, because your ability to fight your way out of that is actually better. Chris: It's really good. Let's go a little deeper on that, because I think you touched on something I think is so important, especially for someone that's starting out in a new business, and the one thing you hear almost universally is you're wearing many hats right in those early days and to your point, where you spend your time doing to make sure you are prioritizing your time in the right ways versus being distracted on the wrong things. Mason: Yep, I would say in any business starting out, I mean, making sure that you have tractions in your sales is critically important and you have to try to drive repetitive repeat sales. That and in order to do that's not just going to fall in your lap, you actually have to take action in doing that. And to the conclusion that I was going to have a weekly set of sales activities that I was going to do and that meant that you know whether it was activities on LinkedIn, whether it was people I was going to meet, who I was going to meet and making sure I was meeting with the right people and saying no to the wrong people. But I was going to commit to a consistent set of actions every week that I was going to prioritize, because even if I had book client work that you know could sustain me revenue wise, that can dry up Right. And so I never wanted to be in a position where, okay, we know that's going to dry up at some point and we don't have a solution to it, or we're going to have this big gap period, like it literally is when you're starting a business always be selling literally and make it a part of a routine, and I think for many people that are somewhat the artisan like, they're going and providing a service. So, whether it could be you know accounting or CFO work, it can be plumbers, it can be you know roofers. They may love doing the operational work themselves or that's what they're good at, and it's really easily mentally to go do what you're good at because that's what you're comfortable with. It's human nature, right, it's human nature. But sales is hard, regardless of whether you have a sales background or not. Sales is hard because you're putting yourself in uncomfortable situations where you're going to get told no, you're going to get told you're going to get rejected, and that is hard but it becomes easier through repetition and through repetition you're going to be able to define things better. You're not going to start perfect and just understand that. You're going to find your niche better. You're going to find who should I talk to better. Where am I going to get the greatest ROI for my time? But create a set of weekly activities I'd say, especially for somebody just starting out, that really needs to represent close to 40 to 50% of your time. Honestly, it needs to. You need to be making at least 40% of your calendar focused on new business development activities and just create that pipeline that's always flowing. And if you do that at least for me, that was a great success. Factor is just trying to implement that. Finally, and I think most people would agree, that is the way that you keep things rolling. Chris: Yeah, thank you for that. So let's talk a little bit about innovation, because you started out on your own. You said you now got five CFOs. How are you using technology or what are you doing to kind of be innovative, to kind of drive your business and grow it? Yeah, I would say. Mason: I mean, we're not heavy technology users in the sense of, yeah, like, we do use technology, but we're not necessarily taking technology to drive where we want to go and how we provide our services. I mean, I do think that there's opportunities in the space of AI to improve what we do 100%. I think what we're a bit unique in is you'll find out there and I think innovation can just come from seeing one way that everybody does something and trying to do it a different way. And I always worked for agribusiness firms that were always low margin and so from an overhead standpoint, you couldn't really staff up in a big way because you know, you didn't know when your next crop was going to, you know when you're going to have a hailstorm that was going to knock out your next crop, and you know and so you had to maintain a really lean overhead at all times. And just through a personal you know aspect my wife is from Chile, I've worked in South America, I can speak Spanish and all that, so I would actually contract, you know, a financial analyst and accountants out of South America, and I did that in corporate where, when I needed project support that I would go secure people from South America and I'd have them help me build financial models when I needed time to focus on other strategic objectives, and I would have them do that on my behalf rather than me getting stuck in Excel analysis and so like. Within our business you'll find a lot of fractional CFO firms where you're kind of you're buying the person of the fractional CFO themselves, you're buying the person, and we have a unique team approach to where every CFO is paired with an analyst and that way in our pricing we can deliver it at a more cost-effective rate to our clients. That ag and construction aren't historically, you know, high margin industries and so that way we can be most cost-effective and be value adding for the client. But we have a unique model in which the analyst does a lot of the Excel analysis, financial analysis work on behalf of the CFO, so the CFO can go actually work on strategic objectives with the client versus being stuck in financial analysis all day. And at least for us, that's what innovation looks like and we're driving that further in regards to setting up systematic ways that we deliver our services and rather than it just being that, hey, you're buying a person for an hourly rate, which I feel like a lot of our competitors do. We're trying to set up a systematic way that we deliver the services, along with a team approach, and that way it just it creates the greatest value add for the client. And so there's not a lot of technology in there, but we're just doing it different. That we feel like is, you know, it's all meant to be valuable to better fit our clients ultimately. Advert: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris:Yeah, so, like I said, you know, I agree I don't think innovation has to be wow always, but just maybe slightly different. Sounds like what you're talking about more is a value proposition, right, and that you're really getting a little team here or not just one person. I can see where that would be different and important to your clients. So you're in Houston. Let's talk a little bit about the advantages you see of being a business maybe not just in Houston, but in Texas the advantages that you think that's brought to you and how you're trying to capitalize on those. Mason: Yeah, so I think I should start a little bit backwards. Originally from California, so I'm one of those statistics right that I moved the business to Texas. I literally picked up my LLC and I converted it to a Texas based LLC. So I'm all in on this. Chris: Welcome. We have, man. We have done so many conversions of California LLCs to Texas LLCs since 2020. Mason: It is crazy, yeah, it's real Still have family in California. We still have many clients in California. There's a lot of ag in California construction as well that we will continue to serve. That still believe that while the state is difficult to operate a business in, that also creates opportunities because there will be people that leave and yet there's still demand for those services and those products and goods. So yeah, for me being in Houston it's really actually great because this is a booming state in terms of its economic activity, especially on the construction side of things. But from an ag standpoint too, it can be a little bit tough not to be, you know, in the ag segments that we serve. You know where we're being able to go out to the ranches and the citrus groves and all that and then the farms themselves on a regular basis in Houston. The fact that we can serve clients in California, go hop on a plane, get out to Fresno, california really quickly, but at the same point in time there's a ton of ag in Florida, georgia and we can go hop to those areas. We happen to work with a lot of fresh produce clients and fresh produce distributors and so those are all over. But the fact that Texas is a central point and has a lot of economic activity where a lot of those goods and services are coming in, and so, while may not necessarily be that all the products and goods are grown here, the distribution of them is happening in a very significant way here, and so the fact that this state is so central to everything, it's just, yeah, it's been actually a blessing, because if I was all the way in California and I wanted to go to a trade show all the way, you know in Georgia, you know that whole lag of time in between, you know travel time and just killing a day worth of travel, et cetera, et cetera, when right now, I can get to most places within two and a half hours. You know the United States, and that's a beautiful thing in terms of building relationships and being on site and the fact that, yeah, the Texas economy is booming. Nonetheless, that you know it's real here, yeah, it's. We actually had one of our CFOs that moved from California to Oklahoma and he just said, yeah, it's amazing, just the lack of I shouldn't say lack, but the more minimized regulation by comparison to other states, and how it just creates additional business opportunities. It's a wonderful blessing. So it's great for us and, yeah, allows us to be centralized, but at the same point, yeah, it allows us to work with Texas and the clients all over too. Chris: Right, you mentioned, I guess, one of the CFOs that you brought on. How are you going about evaluating whether these additional CFOs align with your vision of the company and can, not just from performance but from your ethical standards, which you obviously led with in the very beginning of our conversation? So what are you doing to kind of vet these people out, to make sure you're making the best decision you can and bringing them on board? Yep. Mason: We definitely, through our hiring process we do a very significant case study approach and even in the person's background we want to see that they're. You know, for me it's a personal choice to each person building their own practice or firm in this way. If the background is heavy public accounting, you know that they work for a CPA firm for most of their life. It's probably not a fit for us, because we actually want to make sure that we get people that have been operators inside a business that have experience helping to deal with the issues of whether it be a family transition. You know growing a business and you know wearing many hats, because it's rare that if you have a full-time job in a $20 million revenue business that you're not going to be doing you're going to be doing multiple things, I should say, and you know. And so we want to see that they have operator experience in that regards. But we put them through some significant case studies to really evaluate, because it's unique that many of the business owners that we're working with we say that we work with businesses up to 75 million in total aggregate revenues, because we find that's a perfect segment where they can really use a part-time CFO. They don't quite need a full-timer yet. They can use a part-time on a reoccurring basis. But what's interesting is we're watching the evolution of the entrepreneur themselves as well, or the founder. I got to tell a little bit of my story but even though that they have the CEO title, they're not quite fulfilling that CEO role fully and we're helping them navigate that and there's a lot of emotional rollercoaster that goes with that and so we actually evaluate. We just did interviews with two construction-focused CFOs and that's another part of it too is we wanna see deep industry experience within the industries we serve. But we ask them that, hey, if you were faced with this similar issue we just worked through with a previous client where it's a husband-wife team and we literally just saw the husband wife get in a fight with each other over you know, something they're talking about in the business. We say, how would you handle this? And we want to hear how they would handle the emotional aspects of it from an empathetic standpoint, like, can you actually navigate that as a leader and still come out, you know, on the right way, that you're not going to be overly technical about it. You're going to help them, you know, relationally, work through it and help them move in the right direction, see the bigger picture. And so that's a lot of how we're doing it, that we are working with clients where, again, there's just emotional dynamics, where we're seeing that the entrepreneur themselves is having to evolve in a very significant way. They are not some major corporate CEO, they wouldn't tell you that they are. They're evolving as a person and so being there with them through that evolution and kind of helping to almost be somewhat of a guiding coach too, is what we see in our role and you know that's what we're looking for in our people that they can help do that too and help navigate sticky situations. Chris: Well, very similar kind of parallel seats that we sit in, cause we I find myself in very similar times with a lot of our clients where, you're right, they're evolving through the process, as I mentioned, and they were really good probably at sales or something with an idea, but they all of a sudden have a CEO title and helping them along that journey and whether that's eventually getting a good operator underneath them to really run the business so they can focus on what they you know they enjoy doing the most that made the business successful. Those are fun places to be, to kind of be an extension of that team. Right, let's talk a little bit about your clients. I mean what you know, what are some of the things you're helping them through, some of the challenges. You're seeing any kind of trends of where people are. You know, maybe, what are they excited about, what are they concerned about? You know, how are you helping them kind of navigate through both of those emotions? Mason: Yeah, I like to tell this story because literally you can insert the name and this more specifically applies to, like our construction clients, but you can insert any one of our client names in here and it literally is the same situation. This is the trend that we see. That you know, joe started a construction business that he was. He started general contracting business. He was a project manager for another big general contractor in town felt like, hey, I can do this on my own, I want to go do this on my own. He got the licenses and started bidding on some work and started winning the work and started, you know, actually managing the projects, working with the subcontractors, et cetera, you know, fulfilling the, you know all the work requirements for the job and kept growing. You know, eventually hired some PMs underneath him to handle some additional jobs, but knew that he needed to take care of accounting and so he's got QuickBooks and you know he's heard stories. But he needs somebody that he can trust to handle the day-to-day transactional entry and that he's got to keep things lean. So he asked his wife, his mom, his sister, his aunt, somebody that generally has some knowledge of QuickBooks and coding transactions. He asked him to take care of his books and he can do that for a couple of, a few years and then all of a sudden say Joe, you know, he gets this opportunity at the university or this big hospital, that this big remodel project where he can put his banner up. Everybody can know it's his brand that's doing this work and it can be a real showcase project. And he goes to bonding. He goes to his bonding agent to you know, make sure they can be bonded for the job, and wants to put a bid and proposal forward on it. And the buying company says no way, absolutely not put a bid and proposal forward on it. And the buying company says no way, absolutely not One. The financial reports that you give us show that you are an absolute financial mess. Whenever we ask for those financial reports, you send them two to three months later, so we never get anything on time. And when you actually do send them, the quality of them not just from a financial performance standpoint but your accounting standards and your record keeping is absolute junk. Like we can't really tell what's going on underneath the hood here, but of the little that we can tell, you're not doing that great. Insert Brady, cfo, we help to make sure that you know you are never denied by bonding again, that when you want to go pursue that high profile job, we make sure that you get the yes, and that's done through various ways that we make sure that you do have liquidity, so, whether that's working with banks or other you know capital providers, to make sure that, hey, we get you liquidity so that the bonding companies will like that you have a little bit of backup. But then, yeah, we're navigating that. How do we get your accounting in good order to actually that it's in a useful state? And then how do we optimize your financial performance to where, whoever's provided that capital, we can make sure that there's a good ROI on that too whether you're having to pay down debt, can you actually pay down the debt, et cetera, et cetera. But through that process we're seeing a significant trend that a lot of construction companies right around 15, 20 million mark they're going through an ERP implementation, as an example, just to get their accounting records in a good state, and we're helping to navigate that. We don't like to be deep within the accounting itself, but we certainly serve it because we understand it's a means to an end that once we have good financial records and we make sure that there's some liquidity in place. Then we're talking about, okay, where do we want this business to strategically go, that this is a $15 million business now, but how do we make this a $50 million business? And then how do we make it a hundred million dollar business? And we're creating these long-term plans with the ownership to do that. And so that story I told about Joe though literally you can insert several of our client different names in that and that is the consistent theme across the board. And we find that when we bring that up in a sales call too, that is usually what's being seen for most of our clients that we work with. Chris: That's what's keeping them up at night and again. And when you solve that problem right then, now you have a client for life. Yep, Yep, that's great. That's the goal. Let's talk just a little bit about leadership. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think it's kind of evolved over time? Mason: Yeah, especially as an entrepreneur, I would say that like I have a visionary side to me and that is important, that I think every entrepreneur has to have that visionary kind of fulfillment and believing in what's possible and what can be created. But at the same point in time you still have to put in the operator mode at times, right, like you just have to get stuff done. And that aspect of learning to delegate, I mean I was a corporate CFO so I had teams of people. But again, in an agribusiness environment you're running lean, and so usually what you see in an agribusiness environment is that you have these C-suite leaders or these VPs that they're excellent, but then generally there's not a good layer of middle management below that. That it's basically you have a variety of accounting assistants and they're all rolling up and with the intention that, yeah, you're keeping your labor and your overhead costs low, you know, and so you have one kind of rain maker up at top, but then you have a lot of people that need a lot of additional skill and development reporting into you, and so naturally you're kind of having to manage and keep the reins pretty tight. Right that you're having to be a little bit more controlling to make sure that things are going well and within this business. On the other hand, we're managing other CFOs right Like we're managing, you know, highly qualified people and coming to the conclusion that, yeah, I don't need to be involved in as much. Right Like I. It's important to trust but verify. But you have to be really good at delegating. But delegating doesn't mean you show them once and then you hand it off and expect why didn't that not get done a month later? Why did it not get done the way I wanted it to? To me. Getting really good at delegation I've had to evolve at this is, you know, spend some time with them, show them, make sure that it's being done over the course of a couple of weeks or a couple of months correctly, and then you're good to go and you can leave it and you can touch base and say you're accountable to this. Now I've given you all the training. You know what to do. Be careful about just giving somebody something and expecting that it's going to be done the way that you want it to be done. That's hardly ever the way it works. But you got to be really good at delegating and getting things off your plate as quickly as possible, right. Chris: Yep, very true, very true, let's. Let's try a little bit, since you're new to Texas, places you've gone, experiences you've had since coming to Texas that stand out in your mind. Mason: Yeah, I mean I just the generally friendly nature of people. I mean it's a part of the reason that we love living here and that we wanted to move here is, you know, you walk down the streets and people just say hi, and that doesn't necessarily exist in other states, where people are friendly and just say hi. And we got to be. You know, we got to witness or experience our first hurricane last summer and I couldn't believe the resiliency of people where I mean, yeah, the day after the hurricane people still had to work. Oh, like you go into Barnes and Noble and like people are literally plugging their laptop into the corner little, you know. You know electrical outlet and making sure that they could still get work done and send emails that day, like you're just back at it. And the nature of that type of stuff happens here so often that you know from California, yeah, you get wildfires there's that's a whole nother story of how it can be managed or not but you get wildfires but you don't really get natural disasters that just kind of come and, you know, uproot your life for a bit, but they happen so often in Texas has such, you know, crazy, you know up and down weather people's resiliency. It's pretty amazing in Texas of just yep, we had that terrible storm yesterday. Well, we're back at it tomorrow, you know, and it's just. This is life and we got to get back to it and, yeah, I think the friendliness and people's resiliency here is is a pretty, pretty big thing that we've noticed. Yeah, that's great. I love that perspective. Chris: I think those of us that have been here our whole life maybe lose sight of that sometimes. But yeah, it's good to get that perspective from you. So again, new to the area. But I ask everyone this so it'll be good, because you're kind of a guinea pig or fresh in this, do you? Mason: since getting here is your tex-mex or barbecue tex-mex yeah, that I do love good barbecue, but tex-mex I. We have all kinds of mexican food in california, right. I mean, I think the population in california is good 60 to 70 percent hispanic but tex-mex has a different, unique flavor to it that I grew up on mexican food. Because of that growing up where I did, yeah, and yeah, it's kind of natural to make that migration, I love it. So, yeah, I love a good queso. Chris: Oh man, I have it for my own heart. Yes, okay, well, yeah, really appreciate the time. Mason, love hearing your story and where you're taking this business. I definitely agree. There's a lot of opportunity for the type of services that you're providing, because there's a ton of companies that fit within that space. Again, I know that because that's part of the market we serve in, that kind of middle market there. So congratulations on taking the risk. How it's going so far? Mason: Yeah, no, I just appreciate being able to come on here, chris, and talk with you. It's fun to come and share the story. But, yeah, I just appreciate the opportunity to share with your audience as well. Chris: Well, that's great. Well, we enjoyed having you on and I look forward to seeing you soon. Take care, that's good, awesome. Mason: Thanks, chris. Have a good one. Outro And there we have it Another great episode. Don't forget to check out the show notes at boyermillercom forward slash podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyermillercom. That's it for this episode. Have a great week and we'll talk to you next time. Special Guest: Mason Brady.

In this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, I spoke with James Dieter, Chairman and CEO of Principle Health Systems. James shared his journey from orthopedic and interventional pain specialist to healthcare entrepreneur. Motivated by inefficiencies he witnessed firsthand, he created a more efficient healthcare model focused on mobile diagnostic services. Principle Health Systems has now conducted over 3.2 million mobile lab tests in 2024, demonstrating the success of his patient-centered approach. James opened up about leadership challenges and the importance of self-awareness when managing strengths and weaknesses as a CEO. By redefining Principle Health's mission, vision, and core values, his team created a unified direction that improved employee satisfaction and strengthened company identity. His insights on strategic partnerships showed how the right team can transform an organization. We explored their innovative "daily DON" program, an AI tool that helps Directors of Nursing prioritize patient care in long-term facilities. This technology enhances clinical decision-making while serving as a distinctive marketing asset for the company. James also discussed the Texas healthcare landscape, including Medicare conditions and reimbursement rates. Throughout our conversation, James shared practical advice on informed risk-taking and learning from setbacks. His experience navigating the healthcare industry offers valuable lessons for leaders and entrepreneurs looking to make an impact in this complex field. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I explore James Dieter's journey from an orthopedic and interventional pain specialist to a leader in healthcare entrepreneurship, emphasizing his efforts to address inefficiencies in the healthcare system through mobile diagnostic services. We discuss the transformation of Principle Health Systems, highlighting its achievement of conducting over 3.2 million mobile lab tests in 2024, with a focus on patient-centric care. James shares insights on balancing strengths and weaknesses as a CEO, stressing the importance of self-awareness and strategic partnerships in building a thriving organizational culture. We delve into the development of a strong company culture at Principle Health Systems, driven by redefining mission, vision, and core values, which has enhanced employee satisfaction and strengthened company identity. The episode covers the innovative "daily DON" program, an AI-driven tool that aids Directors of Nursing in prioritizing patient care, which has been recognized for its impact on clinical decision-making and marketing. We examine the challenges and opportunities in the Texas healthcare landscape, including favorable Medicare conditions and low reimbursement rates, alongside the growing role of AI in insurance claims processing. James reflects on leadership and problem-solving, emphasizing the need for quick decision-making, informed risk-taking, and learning from setbacks to drive business growth and sustainability. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Principle Health Systems GUESTS James DieterAbout James TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: James, welcome to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking the time to come on the show. James: Glad to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Chris: Yeah. So let's start at the beginning. Just tell us a little bit about your company and what it does and what it's known for. James: Yeah, so Principle Health Systems has evolved over the years. When we started out we really had multiple directions. We were going in just as a healthcare services company. So a little background on me. I started out in orthopedics and interventional pain. I was really just dedicated to practice inpatient, outpatient and surgery. So going through that for my first decade of work, I saw a lot of inefficiencies in the healthcare, outpatient and surgery. So going through that for my first decade of work saw a lot of inefficiencies in the healthcare services sector, specifically in the Southeast region of Houston where I worked. So I wanted to build a better system right. Our lab results took too long to get back. Our pharmaceuticals weren't in stock at the pharmacies we'd send our patients to. Mri results took too long and started to, through my entrepreneurship journey, go out and started to build little sectors of where I could have influence really over my own practice to have a better outcome and through that over time started over 20 businesses in the first 10 years Just had numerous pharmacies, laboratories, diagnostic facilities, did three surgery centers. I was involved in one large hospital system and then got to a point where I said, hey, let's wrap this thing together, let's put it together. I want to have really just one source solution where we could come in and work with physicians and provide a host of different services. That went fairly well. The service level was outstanding. The most difficult aspect for us was really the payers actually having reimbursements without being contracted with certain individuals. From there, we really, about six, seven years ago, found a niche and that was called long-term care. So we define long-term care as skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities and home health facilities and we provide laboratory and diagnostic services to those guys. So, in-house, you call it your house if you live in a skilled nursing facility or assisted living facility, or at home, but we provide mobile diagnostic services. So we go out and we offer labs, x-rays, ultrasounds, echocardiograms and ekgs in the home. So you bring it to the patient. Bring it to the patient, that's right. That's right. And last year, 2024, we performed over 3.2 million lab tests mobile. So, with a large amount of those being for stat tests, right? So tens of thousands of stat tests per month where somebody needs something in four to six hours and we get us turned around for them. Chris: Okay, so it sounds like the inspiration for you was maybe frustration born out of frustration, for sure, and a gap in our healthcare delivery service, so he's shedding more light on that. I mean, you've mentioned this entrepreneurial journey. I mean most physicians and doctors don't have that. So what was it for you that you kind of took frustration and turned it into action? James: Yeah, I mean just a matter of you know, I'd have a patient that was really suffering right, specifically on the interventional pain side. This is not uncommon. You have a patient who's in a very bad position and you're already jumping through hoops with insurance companies. So it might take three to four weeks to get something approved. And then you're in, then you set them up for surgery. Well, you, the assumption is okay, we're going to have the lab work back, we're going to have the MRI back in time, and then it just wasn't happening. So you're pushing off surgery, you're pushing off procedures and just over time it's just a great deal of frustration. At the end of the day, the mission was always to help the patient, and if it's all about the patient, we've got to do something different here. And that was the biggest frustration for us was just the delays and turnaround times on the imaging and laboratory specifically, but then also getting medications, you know, sending patients out and having sometimes three, four, five phone calls come back up. The pharmacy didn't have my medication, the pharmacy didn't have my medication, the pharmacy didn't have my medication. So that's when we started opening up our own pharmacies back then as well. Chris: So just there, right, you said we. Who did you partner with? How did you go about finding a business partner? If that's the case, going about setting up a business, because you don't just turn on a switch right. There's planning, there's financing. Entrepreneurs in any industry, in all industries, go through that when they're starting a business. Let's talk a little bit about that journey in the beginning, of how you got it going and some of the lessons learned in that process. James: Lots of lessons learned in that process. You know, speaking of that, we call it chewing glass, right, okay, I? heard that one. So much of it's just a grind right and just figuring it out. But as far as partnering goes, I've had numerous partners in different individual business units over the years. When I formed Principle Health Systems in March of 2016, I had to get really specific on who am I going to allow on the bus, who do I really want to partner with on the bus? So I pulled away from certain partners, left goes, let go of certain businesses and then brought some together. So, in total, I believe we started out with there were three of us on day one that we brought in, you know. But I had different skill sets, right. I mean, I was trying to always try to be very honest with myself about where are my weaknesses right. I'm I would say I'm highly visionary. I like to think big. I like to have that 50,000 foot view of where we're going, set goals, set mission, set vision. Big culture guy. I love to talk about culture and instill culture throughout the organization. Chris: We'll get to that in a minute. James: Cool yeah, but just frankly, I would say weaknesses are on details, right. So I've just always been someone who likes to move forward and not analyze every aspect of it. So partnering with some people that were strong in an analytics and detail side of the business was really important for me, and I still have some just phenomenal business partners today in that regard. Chris: That's great. You touched on two things that I think are very common, some of which when we're advising clients. The first is choosing your partners right and being clear about expectations, documenting what the deal is on the front end and making sure you know that where everyone's going and what the roles are. The second is understanding, especially when you're the leader, your weaknesses in hiring around that, because you can't do it all and you're not going to be good at everything, and so I think everyone that I've met that's been successful has that self-awareness Right. How did you go about getting comfortable letting go of some of those job responsibilities and whether it was a good hire or a partner that you chose. James: That's a tough one. I mean, some of it was truly difficult to let go of. And then other pieces. You know you tend to be good at what I would say you tend to enjoy what you're good at. Sure, yeah, and that's one of the so to really convince yourself like, let's go spend more time at what we're good at, more time at what we enjoy, I would say I didn't focus so much on letting go as focused I wasn't spending so much time focused on what I'm not good at as what I was good at right. So it was just a matter of, by virtue, of spending more time on what I enjoy, doing less and less of what I don't enjoy. And that was easier for me to let go. It was almost to to to let it slip to let it slip away rather than to give it away and know that because you weren't giving it attention. Chris: someone needed to Right. James: Right. And then you know, obviously just helping to build folks up I mean, we have right now an unbelievable director of human resources who was in project management at one point and just understanding the value of different people in the organization that you already have built trust and rapport and you believe in them. and then to find, hey, I really think they'd be good at this and then move them into these roles to fill gaps was so important and just finding, really analyzing the people that are around you to understand what are they great at and what might else they do from where they are today, that could be a greater opportunity and bring greater value to the company and organization. Chris: Yeah, so you touched on culture, let's go ahead and go there. Anybody you talk to at a CEO, entrepreneur, business owner, leader will say, right, culture's king. We believe it a hundred percent. We talk about that constantly around here. It's just part of our DNA. We believe it 100%. We talk about that constantly around here. It's just part of our DNA. So everyone goes about it differently. Let's talk about how you have gone about building the culture at Principal Health. How would you describe it first? And then, how have you gone about building it and nurturing it? James: Yeah, so great question. I mean, starting out, I couldn't tell you when we started the organization what was our mission, what were our core values. I couldn't even tell you what they were. There was something we came up with. I think two of us came up with one day, in a couple hours, some marketing stuff yeah marketing stuff. We hung it on the wall, just like you would expect right from most organizations to do most organizations do. And we had a phenomenal, you know, I would say the top 20 people in the organization just had a great relationship together and I would say that we thought culture was very strong. Four years in we polled the entire company and it was pretty, pretty terrible. I mean, it was like a 60% satisfaction, maybe even in the fifties, and we were kind of horrified like wow, we thought we had this great culture and everybody loved this company and it was. You know what it was. Well, I decided a couple of months later I did an offsite. So we did a two day offsite and kind of big hotel room, you know, or I guess I said conference room, with these big windows overlooking clear lake, and you know it know, the whole idea was like let's think big, and we brought in just management. So I think there was 46 managers at that time in the organization and we all came in the room we said, hey, we're here for two days to figure out three things Our mission, our vision and our core values. And we're going to sit together and this isn't going to be the C-suite telling everybody what we're about as a company. We as a people, as a community, are going to discuss what is this company? Who are we Not? What are we? Who are we? Chris: And what do you want to? James: be Exactly, and we did come up with a BHAG. We ended up throwing in a BHAG as well there. But where do we want to go? Classic Jim Collins. So we did get through that two-day period and we came out with a really strong mission, vision, core values. Our mission is to improve patient outcomes and experiences. Relatively simple, very difficult to do in healthcare. We decided our core values would be URPHS Principle Health System the acronym I should say is URPHS. Understand the mission, respect everyone. Patients are our purpose, happy to help and step up. So and we talk about simple, right, exactly, I would believe at this point, 90% of any you know we're approaching, I think, right, right, 500 employees today. I would think 90% of those folks could tell you that and not just tell you what they are, but give you examples of how they've done those things. We live culture. We no longer talk about it. We did that in the beginning. Now we live it. It's brought up in every management meeting. It's brought up in all the leadership training sessions, all the offsites and it's kind of what I call the North Star. So we look at culture as the direction. If you're not sure about a decision that you're going to make in any regard. I want you to think about the North Star. Is it in alignment with, are you walking towards, the culture, are you walking towards the mission of this company? And that helps to drive behaviors so important. Chris: I mean, that is the true key to the kingdom. I think the word I would use is it sounds like your culture has become institutionalized. Right, it starts out where it is you as the culture cop or maybe the C-suite, and getting it deeper in the organization. But once you've done that and everyone knows it and everyone lives it and everyone can hold each other accountable to it, then you've got a true directional tool To your point. I think the more you can tie behaviors to those values that's when they become real the more you can tie behaviors to those values. That's when they become real. And so when you're praising people because whatever they did connects with these two of our six or whatever number is of our values, it becomes real to them and they know how to repeat it A hundred percent. James: Yeah, I'm fairly unapologetic about the culture, so I would say it's even unusual Some of the things I'll say when I'm in management meetings or even when I do a quarterly coffee and conversation. So I meet with the entire company. It's usually takes six or seven sessions, but I go company wide, we bring the big groups and I'll sit down with the entire company for an hour every quarter and what I'll typically say when it comes to culture is that it's up to you to you know we can't police it from management. It's up to the people to police the culture. So one of our core values is respect everyone. So if there's someone who's not respecting everyone, I expect that the people of the company will kick that person out, go after them, make sure they don't work here, and I'll literally look out and I regularly look out across when I'm talking to the whole team. Chris: And I tell them. James: If you really can't say that you're here for the patient, if you can't say that you're really here to serve our mission, I was like I really don't want you here. I was like I prefer you to quit. I was like we will replace you and I would prefer to go without somebody for a short period of time. I'm unapologetic about it. We truly believe it. That's what we're about above all things. The rest of it, because at the end of the day, in our business, if we do a really great job treating patients, everything else will follow. Yeah, the doctors want to work with us, the facilities want to spend time with us, the payers will respect us. It's really about the patients. So we put patients first. Everything else comes next and if you can't get behind that, we don't want you. Chris: Yeah, I think that's a great point. Some of the words we use here, right. We're passionate about our mission and our values, which means they resonate in our heart and our gut. Right, we just it's in our fiber. If they don't resonate with you, it's really okay, because it means it's not the right organization for you, right there's a different organization out there that you're going to be happier with, you'll connect with and we'll go find someone that connects with us. Happier with you will connect with and we'll go find someone that connects with us, because they're going to be the better performer, the self-policer, the self-motivator. They're going to be the ones that connect with for us, similar to patient care, client service, right and mutual respect amongst everyone. So I agree with you it's okay to tell people if you don't connect with this. Actually, I use it in interviews when I'm interviewing someone. Here's who we are, we're very clear about it. And if you don't connect, it doesn't make you a bad person 100% doesn't. It just means it's in the right organization for you and there's a gazillion other organizations. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. You're a Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom and thanks for listening to the show. James: There's another team, there's another team that'll work just well for you. Yeah, totally. Chris: No, let's switch a little bit because I want to get back into kind of the business I'm always interested to ask about, like innovations and technologies I mean no-transcript. James: Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously, with the increased levels of compute, you know, now you have the large language models, you have artificial intelligence and that has already made an impact for us. So I would say that we are the next 18 months are going to be very interesting, but we are already using automation from AI that is changing the way we do things and I can give you one example in particular. Well, two really good examples. One in the back office, we have a team of I believe it's three ladies total. Still we had three ladies that would handle all of our facility invoicing right and it's very complex. We have the decipher between patient to patient each day who's part A, who's part B and how we do the billing, and some of it gets billed to facilities. Some of it's billed to without getting too much in the weeds. Some of it gets billed into the insurance company and we've been able to quadruple our volume with still having the same amount of people and not have to scale payroll because of implementing automation techniques through AI that help to decipher where those go. These get scanned in and it all gets brought up. Still have a little bit of a you know, a people component to it. But, just you know, we would be sitting here with and one division. It's just a great example, because that one division would probably be 10, 11 people, yeah, and the cost increase Exactly. Chris: That's an amazing statistic. James: So that is kind of a back office area that we're really focused on going. Where else can we, where else can we look at the bringing in this technology to help as we continue to scale, so that we don't have to just keep hiring bodies? which is you know, from a real estate perspective even difficult. So we're, you know, we're, we've been tapped out on space for two years and we're it's been very challenging. Where do you just put you know, where do you keep putting people Right? So, but on the I guess I'd say on the actual business, well, that's the back office on the front of the house. We've got a program. We call it the daily DON. So, right, so it's a DON is a director of nursing. A lot of the facilities we work within, you know, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, they have someone who really oversees the house. They're the clinical expert in there that makes sure that all the patients are taken care of. That's called the DON. So we have a form that's. Thousands of these go out every morning to all of our facilities and it's an AI program that picks out the most important things that happened the prior day. So here's, you know, bobby Sue had a stat test performed at X time and here's the result. Here's a critical result or whatever is most important. They kind of have a clinical mind and says, hey, this is where we think you should pay attention to your patients today. These people are trending in the wrong direction. These people if they're doing just fine, they're at the bottom of the page. The things that are most important are highlighted at the top of the page, but it's really helping us provide better healthcare diagnostics for our providers so that they can treat the patients better. So it's right, in line with our mission, but it's really just automation and again, it would take an army of people to do this. Chris: Yeah, that's really cool stuff. I have to believe that is also, if not already, will become a huge marketing tool. Oh, it's a big marketing tool. Right, people are worried about the family mergers they're putting in there, where they're really going to get care, because, you already know this, your industry doesn't have a great reputation as a whole. No for sure. James: And so the more you can say no, this is what we do to make sure we're taking care of your loved one, yeah, so there's a huge journal publication called McKnight's and it is the, you know, the premier publication for the long-term care space and you know, all over the country, the daily DON. We actually won a bronze medal this year against thousands of applicants for innovation. So it was actually yeah, we were awarded. Chris: I guess that was 2024, but last year yeah, close enough, yeah, so let's talk a little bit just about, you know, being in Texas, being a business, primarily in Texas. What are some of the advantages that you have experienced being here, not just in Houston, but taking advantage being in Texas? For us is related to the Medicare Advantage plan, right so? James: or, excuse me, the MAC right so? Different Medicare has Medicare administrative plans and they actually carry out Medicare's will in an area. Texas has a MAC that is somewhat more favorable than the rest of the country. Now there's a few states that share that, but just in general, for us, from a standpoint of clarity they're a little bit more clear. There's a lot of bureaucracy that goes on in just getting paid, so this might be surprising to people outside of health care, but today I believe we are paid on 61% of the business we do and we're actually probably one of the really high end. We've run studies on this and we're we are, better reimbursed than most companies out there in our space, and so we still, you know, roughly four out of 10 patients that we treat, we get paid $0. Chris: It's just fascinating to me that it's that poor it is very poor. James: However, we are in one of the more favorable areas, so I can only imagine if you don't have a lot of clarity and guidance on how to bill, it just becomes more and more challenging for you. Chris: Yeah, this may be one of those, but I'm just interested as you kind of look out going forward, what are some of the challenges or headwinds you see maybe coming at your industry? Some of the challenges or headwinds you see maybe coming at your industry, lots of changes going on in Washington right now will have an effect, I'm sure, on your business but maybe also affect what goes on at the state level. James: So one thing you're kind of worried about as you kind of look out, I would say just one of the concerns, and I mean I think again, everybody likes to point the finger to the big bad guys and I really look at them more as a partner than they're not a, you know, an adversary to us or more of a partner. But the insurance companies have become more active in utilizing ai to to identify discrepancies within chart notes to deny claims. So that's something where, you know, recently went to, one of the conferences I attended was for health care payers and they have booths set up, you know, trying to sell to the health insurance companies of how to use artificial intelligence to identify the to not pay. They're already not paying much and you know they're now. In reality, the reason they are not paying is because the notes are lacking in something. So, rather than paying a person to go and evaluate each note, which is very expensive, you think about the health insurance companies if they have to hire thousands of people to evaluate the charts, or they can use AI programs to evaluate the charts it's going to save them money and hopefully that money gets passed on to the consumer. So I actually don't think it's a long-term a bad thing, but I do expect in the meantime it's going to just decrease even further, decrease the amount of claims that get paid. Chris: Right, it sounds like it would be incumbent upon companies like you to kind of push back a little more in the short term. James: to be able to take advantage of those efficiencies later. Absolutely yeah, and I look at it from our perspective. We're in a really good spot. We're pretty developed to where we can handle those kinds of headwinds. Chris: So let's switch again a little bit. Just talk about leadership. How would you describe your leadership style? How do you think it's evolved over the past, you know, 12 to 15 years since you've kind of been moving forward with this company? James: Yeah, I mean. So starting out with a group, I think, start with five people and 500 folks. So leadership looks very differently as business scales. And, to start right, I mean I used to take out the trash and do the accounting. I mean I've worked every job in the company personally and in the beginning, worked with a lot of people who were for lack of a better, better word incompetent at what they did, and today, having been able to develop people and hire and bring in and partner with incredible people that are, frankly, better than I am, a lot of things it allows me to go and do what I'm really good at and, from a leadership perspective, I've probably, if I've, believed in you from the beginning. I've always given you. I'm not a micromanager. I don't believe you can't really grow a large company if you're watching over everything going on. So you have to truly, just, I would say, collaborate with those around you and I guess, if I had to define it who I am, I try to be a great collaborator, right. I try to really help, provide as many resources for the people around me as possible so that they can be successful. Chris: That's good. Let's talk about problem solving right. Especially where you are today and probably have been in your role, probably more of what you do is facing issues, and how are we going to work through this and solve an issue, solve a problem? What have you found to be the most effective way to kind of get the information you need to make those informed decisions that you believe would be in the best interest of the company? James: Yeah, I mean. So again, that's something that over time, has become, I would say, much more of a process, right? So now we have data analytics and we have incredible CFO that's been coming in and able to provide information. There. We have all these additional resources, from accountants to lawyers, to folks. We sit down. I like to surround myself with the right group. We try to sit in a room with the right people at the right time and analyze all the information, but very quickly. I do not like the old analysis paralysis. That's not us at all. I move very quick, I like to make decisions very fast and I don't look in the rear view mirror very often. I'm always looking out the front window and just moving forward. So when there's challenges that are hitting us, it's just a relatively. Let's get as much information as we can today, let's analyze it and let's go. Chris: Yeah, I love that because I agree, I think, the idea that stagnation will kill the company right, and so I think you try to get as much information as you can, knowing it's never going to be perfect. But I think the key then is, I agree with the mindset of kind of move quick. To me, the next piece of that is to evaluate the decision as it's implemented, because then you're continuing to learn and gather information. If you're doing that so that you can adjust right, Because the plan goes out the window as soon as you start to act right, so some people will act and then ignore, and I think that's a mistake. I think if you act, continue to analyze and then align behind what you've learned, it may not be a pivot, it may just be a tweak, but you've got to keep moving. James: I totally agree and you really touched on a great point that I like to speak about. Often and it plays a little bit in the culture. I tell people, guys, we've got to make mistakes here. If we're not making mistakes, we're trying nothing new. So I hesitate to say I encourage mistakes, but to some extent I think I did in my last meeting ask for mistakes directly. So the idea here is that it's okay to make mistakes, it's not okay to make the same mistake over and over again. But if we're not trying, we're not growing. If we're not growing, we're dying. So we've got to continue to move forward. And the culture is that if you are focused and I mentioned that North Star earlier but if you're heading towards the North Star and you make a mistake, you're okay, there's no problem If you're doing something new and you're trying something for the good of the company and the good of the patient, that's okay. Let's learn from it. Let's learn from it, let's change course and let's keep moving. Chris: Yeah, that's right. Comfort and complacency aren't good, and I think that that freedom to take risk as long as it's an informed risk, as long as it aligns with our mission and values, is the type of risk you want to encourage your people to be doing and learn from it 100%. So that's good. People always learn from setbacks. So let's talk about a failure or setback you've experienced, and I know there's probably two or three examples from yesterday. James: No, but yeah, I mean, where do we start here? Chris: But what was it you know, and how did you learn from it, and how did it make you better? How did it improve you or the company, whatever the example may be? James: Yeah. I think geez, you know, this is only a tough question because I have so many. Chris: Yeah, I think geez, this is only a tough question because I have so many. You're not alone in it. A lot of guests say the same thing and I can identify with that. James: Yeah, so. I think for one this just comes to mind somewhat early on in our business we had just one massive customer. We had a great deal of revenue concentration in one customer who ultimately had a bankruptcy and put us in a really bad financial position when we lost out on. You know they were way behind on paying their bills and you know such and such. You've heard the story. Chris: Oh sure. So not only did you not get paid. If you were that beholden to them, you didn't have a lot of other things coming in Correct. James: Correct, correct. And just to learn from that example of not letting yourself get too far out over your skis for one, but also just to diversify, not just the customer base. We were actually diversified in our revenue and how we were paid, but it was all one customer. So you've got to diversify your revenue base and your customer base and not have too much concentration. That was a really early on lesson that just comes to mind. That, I feel like, was still one of the most painful. I think I laid off 40 or 50 people that day and it was just a tremendous. That one scarred me pretty bad. Chris: Layoffs are never easy. Those are ones you'll remember. James: Yeah, that one still haunts me, so again I've. Which mistake would you like to talk about? Chris: we could do a whole show. Yeah, you really could, but yeah so kind of you know, bringing this more to a close, any advice you would share with our listeners, entrepreneurs and business owners out there that you know, if there's one thing you're if you're thinking about, if you've just started the journey or you're thinking about it, here's one or two things that you would kind of want to pass along. James: Yeah, I mean I just, you know, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, I had a one of my, one of my father's good friends when I was a young kid, you know, probably high school. He told me at one point he said, hey, your business really isn't going to fail unless it runs out of time or money. And just kind of keep that in the back of your head, because I can think of at least six or seven times that we were done, you know, and I had to sit there and go well, hold on, you know, we haven't completely, we're not completely done because we haven't run out of time or money. And that was how, you know, I spoke about chewing glass earlier. I think you know one of my buddies, he's a new entrepreneur. I always I tell him ready, shoot, aim. You know, at some point you can analyze all the data. And if you do analyze all the data, you're probably never going to start Right, because the odds are of starting a new business are challenging. Chris: For sure, as everyone says, it's not for the faint of heart. James: It For sure, as everyone says, it's not for the faint of heart. It's not for the faint of heart. And everyone will run into a lot of problems and challenges. And that's why because if it was easy, everybody would do this Correct, and so just I would. Just it might sound a little silly, but just don't give up. I mean, if it's something you believe in, if it's really a great cause, if your heart's in it, just keep your head down and push on, because you will be successful. Chris: That's great, and perseverance and grit is what it takes if you're going to be a true entrepreneur 100%. But the ready shoot aim is kind of like you were saying earlier, in decision making, at some point you got to make a decision, absolutely you got to go. James: Yeah, I see that as just a big mistake that folks are making over and over again is sitting around just waiting and by the time they actually make the decision, the opportunities passed. Chris: yeah well, let's, we're going to close with some more fun stuff. Talk a little bit more about texas, any favorite vacation spots within the state. James: Things you like to do in your spare time you know we have a little piece of land up in west texas so we're out in the lakey area okay it's kind of kind of over there by Garner State Park for those that know the river and just absolutely love. We go out there probably every month. You know I have two boys and a little girl so I spend a lot of time out there. The family makes it out there every now and then, but I definitely try to grab a boy and go out there every month. How fun is that? We just go and shoot guns and hang out and, you know, take the kids and their friends over to the Garner State Park, dance and do all that kind of stuff. Chris: God's country over there. James: It is God's country. It's fantastic. That was my favorite place. Chris: It's just beautiful out there, yeah, so any like books or anything that you've read lately that you might pass on to a listener as something to go spend some time reading or learning from. Reading or learning from. James: Jeez, you know I'm actually doing 10 books with my kids right now, so there's nothing new and exciting, but they're all you know. I've got them reading Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, so that was the book they read last week. They're reading a book a week, so this week they're on the Five Dysfunctions of a Team Peter Lencioni. Chris: Yeah. James: So those are kind of what's going on. That's what's on my mind at the minute. I like it At the moment, yeah. Chris: And teaching them young. James: I love that, yeah, I mean well, they're 15, 13, not too young. Chris: Right. James: But kind of when I was reading those books and trying to. So a bunch of oldies but goodies. Yeah, we're going through right now. Chris: We're doing Rich Dad, poor Dad world from that perspective. Last question do you prefer tex-mex or barbecue? James: barbecue, all right, yeah I guess you can't go out to lakey and and not have barbecue in that area or on the road trip to and from no, I mean I it's. Chris: That's a tough question I always save it for last and everyone says the same thing. It's a trick question what's yours? People turn that on me and I think I it's a tough one that they. You know, once it's turned on me and I think it's a tough one Once it's turned on me, I realize how unfair it is. Yeah, I think my answer has always been I love barbecue, but my go-to is probably Tex-Mex more than barbecue. James: So if I was going to say Tex-Mex with a margarita, that might go above barbecue For sure, but if it's just food, it's barbecue Okay. Chris: Yeah, because it's hard to have Tex-Mex without a margarita. James: Yeah. Chris: And then, of course, you have places now, especially here in Houston, I'm sure, other places where they're combining, you know, like the brisket into the Tex-Mex. James: so brisket, burritos or tacos, and that, to me, is probably the penultimate, it's fantastic. Chris: Yeah, there really is. It's challenging when it comes to healthcare. So, James, this has been great man. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. It's pretty fascinating, and congratulations for all the success and what I know will be successful in the future. James: Awesome, thanks so much for having me, Chris: you bet. And there we have it another great episode. Don't forget to check out the show notes at boyermillercom forward slash podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyermillercom. That's it for this episode. Have a great week and we'll talk to you next time. Special Guest: James Dieter.

ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT BELOWEn este episodio, mi entrevistado es Cesar Pineda, sociólogo por la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana. Obtuvo el Doctorado en Ciencias Políticas y Sociales y la Maestría en Estudios Latinoamericanos, ambos con mención honorífica en la UNAM. Realizó estancias posdoctorales en el Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas y en la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco. Su investigación se centra en la contradicción del capital en la naturaleza, los movimientos sociales, la autonomía, el Estado y la comunidad. Investigador Nivel I en el Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, es profesor de asignatura en la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales de la UNAM. A partir de 2024 es profesor-investigador de tiempo completo en el Instituto de Investigaciones José María Luis Mora. Es activista y acompañante en múltiples movimientos sociales.Notas del Episodio* La teoria y proceso del capital como metabolismo social* Biomercantilizacion* El problema de clase* Consecuencias escondidas del ecoturismo* Limites* Autoregulacion de las comunidades* Construyendo comunidad en la ciudad* Autonomia es la clave* Un mundo donde quepan muchos mundosTareaPagina profesional César Enrique Pineda (Ensayos, Libros, Proyectos)Twitter de CesarFacebook de CesarTranscripcion en EspanolChris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido César, al podcast El Fin del Turismo. Muchas gracias por estar dispuesto a hablar conmigo hoy. Me gustaría comenzar preguntándote, ¿Dónde te encuentros hoy y cómo se ve el mundo para ti allá? Cesar: Yo habito en Ciudad de México. Desde hace tiempo estoy haciendo una investigación, de nuevo, la continuidad del proceso del proceso del aeropuerto. Entonces estoy yendo muchas veces hacia Texcoco hacia el oriente de la ciudad, hacia el viejo lago de Texcoco, entonces tengo una doble mirada, la mirada urbana tradicional donde vivo y donde doy clases, que es en la UNAM y en el Mora, y por el otro lado, los pueblos, la comunidad y el el sistema lacustre al que estoy yendo cotidianamente.Chris: Y cómo va eso en Texcoco, si te puedo preguntar?Cesar: Va bien, creo que el frente de pueblos en defensa de la tierra ha tenido un nuevo triunfo. Y creo que es un nuevo avance, es un movimiento un poco anómalo en México porque [00:01:00] prácticamente ha ganado todas sus batallas, ha detenido los dos aeropuertos, ha liberado a sus presos y ahora ha logrado proteger el territorio.Y hoy se encuentran frente a un nuevo reto que es ser gobierno local, no? Entonces, en todas ha triunfado al final, a pesar de los costos enormes, pues que ha sufrido por la represión, por la persecución, por la precariedad también por la que viven muchos de sus miembros. Pero creo que van muy bien.Chris: Claro, wow, pues, qué bueno, qué hermosa resultado no? Cesar, parece, que mucho de tu trabajo, se basa en lo que podemos llamar la conversión de la naturaleza en capital, o al menos así es como los teóricos lo han descrito tradicionalmente. Me gustaría preguntar, ¿Cómo ves que eso sucede en el mundo del turismo, la conversión de naturaleza en capital para, para empezar, para darnos un [00:02:00] base de seguir? Cesar: Sí, bueno, hay que decir que lo que he tratado de también estudiar o teorizar. Cuando teorizamos hacemos generalizaciones. La teoría es una generalización para poder dialogar en contextos distintos, en casos distintos, sino cada caso por supuesto, es totalmente distinto que el otro por su historicidad, por su localidad, por su particularidad.Cuando teorizamos tratamos de hacer una generalización válida para muchos casos. Entonces, y eso nos permite a dialogar y pensar a muchos con una misma forma de nombrar y conceptualizar. Entonces, ese trabajo de conceptualización y teorización lo he hecho en la idea de cómo intentar comprender, se despliega efectivamente el capital territorialmente. Generalmente pensamos al capital solo como relaciones dinerarias, como inversiones y como ganancias, de hecho, compensamos el capital como, la [00:03:00] cosa, el dinero, en todo caso, como riqueza material, mercancías, puede ser ropa, puede ser autos, pero en general, el capital es un proceso. Que es lo que plantea a Marx, y el proceso es cómo la gente se organiza, organiza el trabajo, unos trabajan para otros y cómo toman efectivamente de la naturaleza lo que necesitan para producir nuevas mercancías o nuevos valores de uso, que es lo que, la utilidad que es lo que le llama Marx.En ese sentido, producir muchos valores de uso requiere necesariamente, de algún vínculo con la naturaleza. Ese vínculo Marx le llama metabolismo social porque es un vínculo, no solo, porque tomas lo que necesitas, los materiales, por decir así, algunos les llaman recursos en la economía. Generalmente en la ecología política o en la agro ecología les llamamos bienes [00:04:00] naturales. Porque no son cosas para simplemente recursos que están ahí disponibles para gastarse. Y ese vínculo que hoy se ha desarrollado todavía más con algunos teóricos de que han seguido la idea de metabolismo social de Marx, plantean siguiendo también algunas ideas de Marx, que es la forma de organizarnos, de organizar el trabajo. El trabajo es el vínculo con la naturaleza y ese vínculo es a la vez un intercambio de materia y de energía con los ecosistemas locales. Ese intercambio este más le llama metabolismo. Entonces, digo todo esto porque es muy importante pensar como lo que le llamamos la economía, desarrolla ciertas formas de actividad, de trabajo material y no solo de intercambios dinerarios y monetarios, porque a veces parece que una actividad da muchas ganancias y podría estar, tomando, por ejemplo, de la naturaleza, [00:05:00] demasiados bienes naturales, aunque produzca en realidad muchas ganancias, monetarias.Y en ese sentido, lo que he estado estudiando es precisamente cómo se despliegue el capital, buscando por decir así, lo que necesita de los ecosistemas, pero de los ecosistemas no necesita todo a veces, en ocasiones, si necesita todo el ecosistema, que eso es lo que voy a explicar, rapidísimo ahorita.Pero en otras ocasiones, necesita solo uno de los bienes naturales, necesita tierra para cultivar y entonces acapara sea comprando, sea despojando, sea rentando la tierra. Por el otro lado, puede no necesitar el suelo para producir, no solo es la tierra para producir, sino que además necesita que esa tierra tenga climas.Esto parece, no tan de sentido común. Lo tienen mucho más claro todos los campesinos, pero es evidente que en ciertas zonas se dan ciertas, [00:06:00] especies y en otras, por ejemplo en lugares fríos, se dan más pues la producción boscosa y por tanto, la producción, se cultiva pino y eucalipto. Y en los trópicos se cultivan frutas.Entonces las inversiones económicas que le podríamos llamar el capital, pero ese capital es un proceso como he dicho, reorganiza los trabajadores, a las trabajadoras. Organiza también la relación con la naturaleza o la reorganiza. Entonces, doy estos ejemplos siempre porque son muy ilustrativos de lo que sucede, por ejemplo, si hay más inversiones para cultivar, para producción maderera. La producción, obviamente los quien invierte requiere su ganancia rápido. Entonces tienes que invertir y tener ganancias. Tienes que invertir y vender rápidamente la madera, por ejemplo. Por tanto, pues, se cultivan las especies que crezcan más [00:07:00] rápido.Y por como crecen más rápido, necesitan más agua. Si necesitan más agua, agotan los mantos acuíferos. Aquí tenemos una consecuencia directa de la organización humana en la naturaleza, en como reorganizarla porque va sustituyendo el bosque nativo y lo sustituyes por especies que solo son las que se pueden vender, en este caso, pino y eucalipto.Ahí está claro, como entonces, se reorganiza el tiempo, a los trabajadores, por ejemplo. Si hay todos los trabajadores de la industria forestal que les ofrecen un tipo de trabajo y la relación con el agua, con los ecosistemas locales y con las especies que cultivas, ahí está todo el circuito de lo que organiza.Entonces, cuando pensamos en inversiones, no estamos pensando generalmente en lo que hay detrás. Así podríamos seguir la producción de un auto, la producción de algodón para nuestra ropa, la producción de cristal, la producción de hierro, de plásticos, todo se puede, pensar así. Y también dentro [00:08:00] de las formas de despliegue de la naturaleza, he pensado que haya en ocasiones, hay otra forma que le llamo bio mercantilización turística, que es acaparar ecosistemas completos para ponerlos, por decir así, poner a las ballenas, poner a los caimanes a trabajar, que es una forma de decirlo en el sentido de la renta de la tierra, la renta de los ecosistemas y sobre todo, la gran industria que se construye alrededor de los enclaves turísticos.Todo esto constituye una nueva relación con la naturaleza que es, creo la que vamos a estar conversando en tu programa, porque no modifica o no solo se le ha visto generalmente al turismo como una industria benévola porque no tiene chimeneas. Es muy distinta, por ejemplo, de pues de la industria petrolera, que es la que generalmente pensamos que es la única sucia.Pero la industria turística es [00:09:00] una industria. Lo que pasa es que es una industria de servicios. Es una industria también global. También es monopólica. O sea que está concentrada en pocas corporaciones y cambia, por supuesto, la forma de organizarnos alrededor de los ecosistemas.Chris: Wow. Me ha dejado pensar mucho en como las cosas que parecen como tours o recorridos, quizás podrían estar promocionados como ecológicas o ecológicas, caminatas en el bosque o igual esos recorridos en el mar, en el Yucatán o aquí en Oaxaca para ir a solo ver las las ballenas o tortugas, etc. ¿Es un poco así de lo que estás hablando, no? Cesar: Sí. Ahora hay que decir que estos servicios que tú mencionas generalmente que a veces les ponen el nombre eco turístico, son las de menor [00:10:00] producción de valor o mejor dicho, no producen valor, sino solo hay intercambio dinerario. Pero las que tienen mayor producción de valor son la enorme infraestructura global, los hoteles y las aerolíneas. Y estos son controlados evidentemente por las grandes corporaciones y tienen un impacto gigantesco. Es decir, cuando nosotros pensamos que vamos a hacer una actividad también en Oaxaca, por ejemplo, como tú mismo dices, y que estamos viendo una actividad muy linda de reproducción de la vida de las tortugas. No estamos pensando en toda la cadena de mercancías que es una cadena de servicios que también no solo tiene nuestra huella ecológica, sino de cómo reordenan las inversiones los territorios.En México, por ejemplo, pasamos en alrededor de principios del siglo XXI, de 7 millones de turistas internacionales a 30 o 35 millones.Es decir, en 20 años, prácticamente se ha triplicado el [00:11:00] volumen de, turistas. Ahora, esos turistas no, además, siempre pensamos incluso los gobiernos, incluso el último gobierno ha promovido todavía más el turismo, porque se supone que eso es totalmente benéfico, porque obviamente traen una derrama económica para lugares generalmente también que son pobres.Pero el problema de esta percepción es que no estamos, quizá a veces teniendo una perspectiva crítica donde evidentemente se va formando también una división del trabajo social y una división de la naturaleza y quién accede a ella y para qué. Son las elites mundiales, es decir, también los trabajadores asalariados del norte, que tienen mayor recursos y mayor seguridad económica, los que tienen más tiempo libre y también más recursos para acceder al ocio y la diversión.Las clases bajas no. Entonces hay una división de entrada por el [00:12:00] dinero, por el acceso, quien puede acceder al primero, al tiempo libre. Pero no todo mundo que tenga tiempo libre tiene acceso a los servicios de ocio, diversión y turísticos. Entonces, aquí hay una doble división, una división de clase, ya viéndolo así, vamos viendo que entonces los ecosistemas no se usan simplemente, por todos, de manera igualitaria, sino que unos tienen más acceso y otros no. O unos más tienen acceso de manera paulatina y otros mucho más esporádicamente que es esa división de clase. Pero la otra división que es muy importante es el consumo, es decir, convertir, por eso le llamo bio mercantilización, en el sentido de convertir a los ecosistemas en una mercancía que vender, esa mercancía no te la puedes llevar como, como otras, que si se producen con la mano humana, sino ecosistemas que están puestos al [00:13:00] servicio de la renta, pero también a un nuevo control. Y esto es importante, un nuevo control, del ecosistema.Generalmente casi todos los ecosistemas del mundo tienen una gestión hasta hace muy poco tenían una gestión comunitaria. Esta gestión no es solo, que la gente comparta los bienes naturales, sino que hay reglas para compartir los bienes naturales. La premio Nobel de economía Ostrom descubrió curiosamente, se viene a descubrir en las ciencias sociales algo que en realidad los pueblos y las comunidades realizan desde hace cientos de años. O sea, para ellos no es un descubrimiento, es su forma de vida. Que es, que hay un sistema de autorregulación donde, por ejemplo, para no agotar los bienes naturales, hay sistemas de rotación. Hay sanciones para quien viole sistema de rotación, límites, por ejemplo, para [00:14:00] pescar, límites para hacer, para poner a pastar a las vacas, límites para, por ejemplo, en algunas especies que saben que si se recolecta demasiado, pueden provocar la caída de un banco, por ejemplo, de moluscos.En fin, hay muchísimos saberes de los pueblos, donde saben cómo no agotar los bienes naturales. No quiere decir que todos los pueblos tienen sistemas de autorregulación que les llaman comunes. Pero significa que muchos pueblos sí los tienen. Cuando llega un enclave turístico, cambia este tipo de relación y cambia la gestión de puede ser de un manglar, puede ser de una laguna, puede ser de un río, puede ser de un bosque. Y se orienta hacia la venta de servicios, cambiando a veces de manera armónica con esa regulación comunitaria, a veces desplazando por completo a esa regulación comunitaria y convirtiendolos en [00:15:00] trabajadores de los servicios turísticos.Estos dos cambios ya deberían hablarnos el tanto la perspectiva de clase como la perspectiva comunitaria, de dos formas muy violentas en realidad de desorganizar y volver a organizar, pero ya con la base de querer generar ganancias tanto a los trabajadores como a las comunidades. Y junto con las comunidades, los ecosistemas locales.Chris: Wow. Pues sí, inmediatamente hablando de la cuestión comunitaria. Y esos cambios me ha pensado en la milpa y también como, eso fue mucho parte de la vida cotidiana de la gente. Y también pensando en la milpa, o sea ese sistema de agricultura que hay en Mesoamérica. He pensado también en esa cosa de ciertas ciudades o pueblos antiguos mesoamericanos que, fueran [00:16:00] supuestamente abandonados, pero pensando en la milpa, la necesidad de poner límites en el uso del suelo que también quizás eso tenía un lugar en el contexto de una sociedad, o al menos ciudad, o al menos pueblo entero como ya es el tiempo para dejar este lugar a su tiempo. Pero esa cosa es algo que que ha surgido muchísimo en el podcast sobre los años, con esa cuestión de sacar límites, que el turismo es una industria que destruyen los límites. Y pues, mencionaste al principio de Marx y también mencionamos de un poco de la ecología y has escrito un poco de marxismo ecológico. Y quería preguntarte si marxismo ecológico es solo una manera de medir y definir lo que [00:17:00] está pasando o también como reaccionar, responder, evaluar quizás. Cesar: Yo diría que el marxismo ecológico es solo una de las tradiciones de los nuevos ambientalismos, y de las tradiciones teóricas. Porque, deberíamos separar los saberes bioculturales de los pueblos. Es decir, la forma efectivamente que son, saberes sobre la flora, la fauna, los suelos, el clima, la producción, el consumo y el desecho que las comunidades tienen. Otra vez, no todas las comunidades tienen un sistema auto regulado en torno de todo esto. Algunas si los mantienen. Otras se han, mantienen partes y otras más han perdido buena parte de su organización, y entonces empiezan a producir lo que yo llamo una perturbación metabólica. "Perturbación" viene de la teoría de sistemas, por ejemplo, nos explicaban los que se dedican a [00:18:00] eso, especialmente por ejemplo, en los ecosistemas acuíferos que, por ejemplo, cuando hay un cambio bioquímico en las aguas, por ejemplo un contaminante está entrando rápidamente, pues evidentemente, porque en una laguna muy grande, pues no se nota ese contaminante no? Es decir, pareciera que lo puede diluir. Es tanta la cantidad de agua que diluye los contaminantes, no?Pero si hay de pronto una derrama muy importante de un contaminante. Por ejemplo, puede cambiar de color o puede cambiar, repentinamente. Esa capacidad de ilusión o de resistencia, por ejemplo, para mantener su color o mantener ciertas formas, es lo que se le ha llamado resiliencia. Y, la transformación abrupta sería una perturbación en el sistema como tal. Entonces, pensando yo en Marx y pensando en esta teoría de sistemas, pensé [00:19:00] que la idea de que tenemos este vínculo, de la organización social con la naturaleza, pensé en la idea de que la perturbación metabólica podía ser un cambio abrupto de la relación con el ecosistema.Que no necesariamente es porque se le quita la tierra a la gente, por ejemplo, pienso en que los campesinos mismos para poder competir en el mercado, como el mercado está acaparado por grandes corporaciones que producen muy rápido, ellos tienen que empezar a comprar los paquetes tecnológicos, básicamente agrotóxicos, para producir más rápido. Entonces eso, aunque ellos tuvieran una relación más o menos, sostenible, más o menos armónica con su milpa al meter un agro tóxico, empiezan a cambiar su relación metabólica con el ecosistema, aunque no haya llegado la corporación a obligarlos, sino que ellos toman la decisión porque cada vez su producto en el mercado vale [00:20:00] menos.Entonces tienen que producir más. Esa perturbación, por ejemplo, y esos, están organizados alrededor también de ciertos saberes. Entonces, por un lado, tenemos los saberes de las comunidades que pueden perderse, que pueden desestabilizarse o que puede cambiar, como he dicho, y por eso me refería a la perturbación metabólica comunitaria, cambia abruptamente y puede ser muy dañino para sus ecosistemas.Y por el otro lado, tenemos una serie de saberes científicos de una, y de una serie de saberes teóricos, que podría reunirse en varias tendencias, y una de ellas es el marxismo ecológico. Hay una serie de autores, que han regresado a la lectura de Marx pensando que nos puede decir en términos ecológicos y en los textos publicados, los que Marx si quiso publicar, hay una enorme cantidad de referencias y una visión [00:21:00] que, al contrario de lo que se había pensado hasta hace poco, Marx siempre está pensando en la naturaleza.Pero también hay un paquete de notas y de cuadernos de investigación que son los que han dado, por decir así, nuevos descubrimientos. Hasta hoy no se ha publicado todo lo que Marx escribió. Aunque muchas de esas eran notas, no eran textos como los que se conocen como Los Grundrisse o como El Capital.Estas notas están siendo revisadas por muchos expertos, y uno de ellos, por ejemplo, dos de ellos, John Bellamy Foster, ya hace ya 20 años y Kohei Saito de Japón han encontrado en las notas de Marx que él estaba cada vez más preocupado por como la industria capitalista, la industria de la agricultura agotaba los suelos.Entonces, resulta que Marx estaba estudiando precisamente química, estaba estudiando todo la la geología de los suelos, la composición y estaba [00:22:00] muy interesado en lo que iba a producir el capital y estaba convencido al final de su vida, solo que ya no produjo un texto para publicar, estaba muy preocupado por el descubrimiento que el mismo había pensado de que el capital agota las bases de su propia renovación. Agota, es una forma de relación social, aunque pensamos que solo económica, pero es una relación económico-social que agota los bienes naturales. Aunque eso sí lo publicó, Marx dice literalmente, el capital socava a las dos fuentes de la riqueza. Dice, "el trabajo y la naturaleza." Y esa visión doble me parece muy importante al nombrarla en una serie de académicos que han mantenido esta investigación a partir de ciertas ideas marxistas y han seguido avanzando.Son una veintena de ecologistas marxistas que están discutiendo hoy el cambio climático [00:23:00] que están discutiendo hoy la crisis ambiental a partir de la crítica al capitalismo. Chris: wow.Ye wow. Entonces, mi próxima pregunta viene un poco de la capacidad de considerar esas crisis que mencionaste, dentro de otras aperturas de ecología. Entonces, pues, en la segunda temporada del podcast entrevisté a Pedro UC de Muuch Xiinbal en el Yucatán, sobre la situación el mal llamado tren maya y también con un grupo del pueblo Wixarika que hablaba sobre los invernaderos que estaban invadiendo a su región, así como sobre los cazadores furtivos de pepeyote, los turistas espirituales estaban también causando daño a sus tierras, a sus [00:24:00] relaciones, no solo económicas, pero también culturales. Quizás podemos decir espirituales. Entonces, en este contexto, a menudo se dan dos tipos de extractivismo a la vez, la transformación de la tierra en mercancía y el intento de adquisición de conocimiento o poder espiritual.Cesar: Entonces, tengo curiosidad por saber cómo ves que estos dos mundos interactúan tanto en México como en otras partes de Latinoamérica, en esta cuestión de que la ecología también incluye la cultura y la religióna de la gente. Sí, bueno, el capital, como relación social, tiende a mercantilizar todo. Hay que recordar, por ejemplo, yo también doy siempre como ejemplo que el maquillaje de las mujeres en realidad era, que está feminizado era el maquillaje de los pueblos. Era el embellecimiento. Todas las [00:25:00] culturas, todas, todas las civilizaciones tribales hasta grandes civilizaciones de agricultura, ya basadas en los ríos, las grandes culturas en todos los tiempos, solemos embellecer nuestros cuerpos. Solemos decorarles de muy distintas maneras, de muy distintas formas. Generalmente ligadas al proceso cultural local. El capital lo ha vuelto una mercancía. Cesar: Es decir, en vez, si lo pensamos, antes pues todas las culturas, las tribales podían embellecer sus cuerpos, sus pieles, de múltiples maneras, sabían la técnica para hacerlo, utilizar los materiales para hacerlo, o forjar sus propias joyas, y hacer su propio vestido. Todo lo que acabo de decir, el capital lo ha convertido en una mercancía y despojado, por decir así, de los saberes.No sabemos hoy la gente [00:26:00] que vivimos en las ciudades urbanas, modernas, totalmente capitalizadas. No sabemos hacer esas cosas. No sabemos embellecer nuestro cuerpo, o lo sabemos a partir de los materiales y las mercancías que nos vende una industria. Entonces el capital utiliza nuestras necesidades y la necesidad de embellecernos no es una frivolidad. Lo que pasa es que se convierte en una frivolidad cuando se produce en masa mercancías que efectivamente son para el embellecimiento y traen junto con ellas un marketing de embellecimiento de ciertas formas, además de belleza hegemónica. Entonces, por qué digo este ejemplo que parece muy lejano a nuestra conversación sobre la naturaleza, porque el capital puede convertir en servicio y por tanto, en un servicio que de ganancias prácticamente cualquier forma [00:27:00] etno cultural que le llaman, cualquier forma etno turística, cualquier forma eco turística, es decir, generar ganancias a partir de los servicios de conocer, de divertirse, del ocio, de incluso del contacto social que le llaman turismo de contacto social. Es decir que busca una experiencia alternativa que puede ser gran diversión, estas máquinas que te elevan con el agua en el mar con un técnico que te acompaña, o simplemente las motonetas que en lugar, en lugares boscosos, es decir, puede ser cualquier tipo de servicio turístico que esté acompañado, acompañando a vivir una experiencia en un ecosistema que generalmente está fuera de tu ciudad. Pero además, esta división, ciudad y lo rural o ciudad, enclave turístico o ciudad [00:28:00] también lugar del Edén, lugar paradisíaco. Esta división se ha producido, pues por la concentración de capital en las ciudades y por la concentración del trabajo en la ciudad. Entonces, lo que esta división internacional del trabajo que produce entonces ciudades que trabajan y lugares de descanso y, por tanto, trabajadores y trabajadoras que te tienen que atender para tu descanso, pues es lógico que es una división internacional que también hace que haya países productores de servicios turísticos y países consumidores o ciudades consumidoras de servicios turísticos también. ¿Porque también planteo esta enorme división? Porque, la extracción de bienes naturales es muy conocida del sur al norte y tiene que ver efectivamente también con los enclaves turísticos y la infraestructura turística que se construye.[00:29:00] Los gustos y las necesidades de la, el turista de élite de clase media y de clase alta, requiere ciertas comodidades que no necesariamente son producidas en el ecosistema local. Entonces hay que traer, por decir así, si el turista de élite quiere fresas y luego un pan con aguacate, bueno, hay que traer fresas desde el otro lado del país, incluso del mundo, y hay que traer aguacate que que es... ¿Por qué digo estas dos? Porque la primera se produce bajo ciertas formas de explotación de jornaleros, por ejemplo, en el norte de México. Y hay que llevarlos hasta la península. Si dijéramos en el tren maya en un lugar que aparentemente podría ser, eco friendly, es decir, podría producir, intentar producir orgánicamente, no gastar agua o gastar [00:30:00] menos, o tener ciertos servicios en su localidad. Bueno, hay que traer fresas desde el otro lado, hay que traer aguacate que tiene un gran consumo de agua. Esto es muy importante, hay ciertas especies, lo que tú decías, de no hay límites. No hay límites. Si el turista quiere aguacate hay que tener aguacate y, por tanto, hay que traerlo de Michoacán, que agota también los mantos acuíferos y se expande como monocultivo.Ahí está esta relación extractiva, no sólo del sur al norte, también de las ciudades, frente a lo rural y de los enclaves turísticos frente a los ecosistemas en general. Entonces este tipo de relaciones no son sostenibles. Este extractivismo, entonces no solo es, puede ser cultural, evidentemente, que volver mercancía, relaciones sociales, relaciones culturales que en general no eran, no entraban a la esfera de las mercancías. Por eso también llamo bio mercantilización, porque es incluir en [00:31:00] esferas de los bienes naturales, esferas de los ecosistemas al área de las mercancías, cuando antes no lo eran, generalmente es el agua lo que pensamos. Antes no era una mercancía. Ahora, cada vez más, hay un intento, porque lo sea.Entonces, en este doble sentido de extractivismo, me parece muy importante hacer la claridad de que los enclaves turísticos son también una forma de extracción y de descampesinización. Otra vez, hace una perturbación metabólica porque el campesino que no puede acceder con la propia venta de su producto, ve como una opción el trabajar en un hotel, ve como una opción abandonar la tierra. Y si se abandona la tierra, entonces se puede rentar para otras cosas, o se puede deforestar o se puede urbanizar esa tierra si el campesino... la mejor forma de cuidar la tierra es que el campesino la siga cultivando. Pero si [00:32:00] la abandona, le puede suceder cualquier cosa a la tierra. Y terminamos efectivamente con un enclave turístico que incluso puede tener, insisto, una perspectiva verde, decir que está produciendo, que tiene comida orgánica o que recicla las aguas o que hace este tipo de acciones que son evidentemente muy positivas, pero en comparación con el cambio metabólico que va a producir en los campesinos del ecosistema local, abandonando la tierra y considerando el enorme consumo que tiene que llevar de otras partes del país y del mundo para el consumo de élite, pues parece que es insuficiente reciclar el agua, no dar popotes o tener una dieta vegetariana en un hotel. Es decir, la perturbación del ecosistema y la extracción de bienes naturales de otros lugares y el más importante, el agua, [00:33:00] simplemente no son cambios mitigables, no son cambios que se pueden comparar con las pequeñas acciones de cuidado ecológico que, por supuesto, todos tenemos que hacer, y todos tenemos que educarnos en ellas, pero a nivel estructural, por supuesto, el enclave turístico es más destructor, enclave corporativa, enclave industrial, enclave de oligopolios, enclave de gran consumo. Que estas acciones que mencionan.Chris: Gracias César. Pues una cosa que solo pude entender cuando ya he empezado trabajando en la industria turística, era de como cada lugar que fui a visitar en el mundo antes, aunque si me quedé una semana, dos semanas, un mes o igual como tres, seis meses, [00:34:00] no me quedé suficientemente tiempo para entender la consecuencia de mis movimientos allá.Y entonces creo que eso se queda muy fuerte, que los turistas tienen una responsabilidad que está totalmente, no totalmente, pero casi totalmente alejado de su capacidad para saberlo, para entenderlo, y, pero cuando hablamos del poblador campesino, que no solo tiene como ciertas fuerzas económicas, pero también siento que deseos culturales, o sea, como ese sueño americano, que ahora es un sueño global y eso. Pero por ejemplo, me quedé pensando los pueblos de Oaxaca que hacen ecoturismo, y ecoturismo basado en el municipio, en la asamblea, como una manera de quedarse la gente en el pueblo, generar ingresos y quizás también entrarse [00:35:00] con un vínculo y relación de hospitalidad que va más allá de la industria turística, por ejemplo, pero también la mera presencia del extranjero, extranjera en un lugar así cambia, lo que existía en el pueblo antes . Y en muchos pueblos, si hay gente que dicen, pues no, "fue un error." Y hay otros que dicen "no, o sea, está alimentando, muy bien, el pueblo." Entonces quería preguntarte qué piensas de esas, no necesariamente contradicciones, pero distintas reflexiones y consideraciones.Cesar: Yo creo que es una alternativa, efectivamente, cuando viene como proyecto de los propios pueblos. Y cuando los pueblos tienen un proceso organizativo que les permite, afrontar el reto de una empresa comunitaria, de una cooperativa comunitaria [00:36:00] de servicios comunitarios y establecer efectivamente las reglas, y las formas de regulación de visitar, sea una comunidad, un ecosistema, en fin. Es decir, creo que cuando viene desde abajo, es una verdadera alternativa, aunque yo diría que es indispensable combinar con las formas de producción campesina que, insisto, se deterioran y se deteriora todos los ecosistemas.Entonces, creo que sería una forma desde abajo. El problema es cuando se impone desde arriba. Como en el tren en maya, donde se abren zonas hacia el turismo, donde formalmente se va a cuidar, discursivamente se va a cuidar estos elementos, pero hemos visto cómo la captura, por ejemplo, de las playas, cómo la captura y espacialización de los negocios con gran [00:37:00] inversión, acaparan por ejemplo, el comercio, acaparan el acceso a las playas, acaparan incluso la forma de urbanización. No son combinables, es que hay gente que piensa que lo comunitario puede combinarse armónicamente con las grandes inversiones del gran capital y con el gran capital corporativo turístico.Pero pues tienen lógicas distintas. No es que sea una buena y una mala no es una cuestión de moral, es una cuestión de organización social. Si el turista está de acuerdo, por ejemplo, en adecuarse a una dieta que localmente tenga una menor huella ecológica, y además se puede programar los límites como tú también destacabas de la capacidad de visita y la carga que puede tener la visita hacia el lugar en específico, puede ser perfectamente una alternativa, aunque [00:38:00] hay que decirlo, lo que pasa es que si cambiamos de escala, no es viable que mil millones de europeos y norteamericanos estén viajando todo el mundo. No no pueden producir tanto Co2, es decir, no pueden, entonces tenemos y hasta ahora no hay una discusión global sobre esto.Está en la discusión sobre los jets de los multimillonarios porque de por sí, un vuelo es muy contaminante, pero los jets son todavía más porque están dedicados al confort y para viajes que no son indispensables, sino de lujo. Entonces, si pensamos en la, en lo que habría que no solo regular, sino prohibir, los vuelos en jet, en la explosión gigantesca de las aerolíneas a nivel internacional, incluso en vuelos comerciales y no privados es insostenible.La industria de las aerolíneas dice que ellos solo producen el 1% [00:39:00] del Co2 mundial. Si, pero así cada industria dice no es que yo solo produzco el 2% o el 5%, o el 0.5%. Claro, entonces, al final, nadie es responsable de la producción de Co2, porque cada uno puede decir yo soy tan poco responsable que no me regulen, pero no es viable.Entonces, creo que tendríamos que pensar en turismo local, con acortar las cadenas de mercancías de producción de servicios turísticos. Es decir, pensando en que son los nacionales, los conacionales y los internacionales tienen que ser regulados. Bueno, incluso que tú conocerás más, yo conozco mucho más el turismo comunitario y los impactos comunitarios y menos el impacto del turismo barrial y urbano que viven varias ciudades europeas y que prácticamente está fuera de control en París, en Barcelona, está fuera de control y junto con Airbnb o otras [00:40:00] plataformas que permiten la llegada masiva de gente o incluso la visita permanente de extranjeros que no tiene que ver con su nacionalidad, no es una cosa xenofóbica, sino en el sentido del desplazamiento que no lo quieren los extranjeros, por ejemplo, en México, no es que sean malos, no es que sean, que sean extranjeros. Insisto, no es una cuestión ni racial ni xenofóbica, sino en el sentido de que los extranjeros en México, en la ciudad de México, no en una comunidad, no en un ecosistema todavía, protegido en un ecosistema, digamos más armónico que el de la ciudad, está siendo desplazada a la gente porque la capacidad dineraria, la capacidad de ingreso, la capacidad de clase desplaza la habitación en las colonias como Roma y Condesa. Entonces, por eso es muy importante que, cuando pensamos las alternativas, creo que tenemos que mirar todas estas [00:41:00] escalas, para la comunidad por supuesto, creo si, insisto si, si viene desde la comunidad como proyecto comunitario. Yo creo que es un proyecto que puede fortalecer el proceso, puede seguir manteniendo ciertos equilibrios ambientales y puede ser una alternativa económica de ingreso para las comunidades. Si lo vemos como estructura internacional, el turismo comunitario se queda muy corto para la capacidad de que, que los últimos 40 años de neoliberalismo han creado en infraestructura. Es decir, si hoy se puede viajar a cualquier lugar del mundo también a menor precio es porque hay más aerolíneas, es porque hay más infraestructura, porque hay más competencia, porque hay paquetes de crédito. Es decir, hay una mega industria, porque hay una enorme marketing para venderte vuelos, para ofrecerte, vuele ahora y pague después. Esa industria gigantesca mundial es insostenible, no puede viajar tanta gente al mundo, lo vamos [00:42:00] a reventar. Bueno, lo estamos reventando, estamos reventando al mundo con la movilidad turística internacional que cada vez es más incontrolable, y por el número. Otra vez, los turistas no son malos. El problema es la enorme cantidad de turistas que, efectivamente, por cantidad agotan el peyote en el norte, dejan sucia las playas, consumen más agua, requieren más energía eléctrica.Es decir, la industria en su forma corporativa e industrial internacional es insostenible. Creo que hay que pensar cómo se podría reducir los impactos hacia un turismo comunitario controlado por los propios pueblos. Y ahí, yo creo que esa es la alternativa. Chris: Mm. Mm. Gracias, César. Y pues, por lo que he leído, parece te metes mucho en la cuestión de autonomía y la emancipación de los pueblos. [00:43:00] Así como me gustaría preguntarte también, como crees que esos entendimientos puede ayudar a la gente urbana también para construir comunidad, comunalidad y solidaridad.Es algo que pensamos mucho como ah, pues ellos allá tienen la respuesta porque terreno y territorio, pero nosotros, como inquilinos, etcétera, que pues quizás jamás en nuestras vidas van a tener casa o territorio o terreno.Cesar: Bueno, primero mi interés es porque, en general, hasta 1989 hubo 200 años de una promesa, encabezada por la izquierda política. Y cuando me refiero a la izquierda política, no me refiero solo a los partidos, me refiero a un proyecto de superación de organización de la sociedad que prometió libertad, igualdad, fraternidad. El proceso por el cual, se [00:44:00] deterioraron los proyectos y los horizontes de transformación es muy grave, o sea, se ha pensado, hoy estamos, prácticamente resignados, resignadas, aunque hay millones que no, pero parece que si ese es el espíritu, el mood dirían los jóvenes, el mood de la época es que no hay una alternativa que, como han planteado Fredric Jameson o Žižek, es más fácil, pensar en el fin de la humanidad que en el fin del capitalismo, o en el fin del mundo que el fin del capitalismo. Entonces, estoy muy preocupado por pensar alternativas, y pensar efectivamente horizontes políticos, insisto político en un sentido amplio, no político partidario, sino político como la capacidad que tenemos, como incluso como especie para ponernos de acuerdo y tener horizontes de que queremos hacer, qué vida queremos, qué vida, qué proyecto de vida también deseamos y podemos [00:45:00] construir. De hecho, eso es lo que nos define como especie, que nos damos nuestra propia forma organizativa. Es la especie que puede tener una forma en China y otra forma en los Andes, y otra forma en Norteamérica, y otra forma en Sudáfrica. Cesar: Es decir, distintas formas de organización social que reproducen la vida y reproducir la vida, puede hacerse de manera muy despótica o de manera mucho más libre. Y en ese sentido, me he involucrado, si tengo muchísimo tiempo, quizá década y media o dos décadas, pensando entonces, cuáles han sido los elementos emancipatorios que ha habido en esos proyectos. Y en realidad lo que pensamos que fue el socialismo o el comunismo, que fueron en realidad experiencias autoritarias de partidos únicos y de élites, tenían en su germen otras ideas que era que el poder de los trabajadores, la autogestión de los trabajadores fuera la [00:46:00] nueva forma de organización social. Es decir, que los trabajadores tomaran las decisiones de la producción.Lo que yo veo en América Latina, donde hay un movimiento obrero menos importante, o menos grande, como lo fue el movimiento obrero en Europa, también en Estados Unidos, es que las formas originales no capitalistas permiten también reproducir la vida de otros modos, de modos comunitarios y de otros modos.Estos dos elementos en el norte de Europa, el poder de los trabajadores para controlar reproducción, los pueblos originarios controlando sus propios ecosistemas locales. Me parece que nos dan lecciones de otras formas de organización social. Acabo de publicar un texto, un libro, que habla de la producción de comunidad en las ciudades. Es una investigación en ciudad de México, donde un movimiento [00:47:00] masivo... es decir que generalmente también pensamos la comunidad como una cincuentena de personas, poquitas.Esas son miles de familias que han podido constituir, construir comunidades urbanas de la nada. No, no eran pueblos originarios que se desplazaron a la urbe, a la periferia como si ha sucedido, por ejemplo, en El Alto en Bolivia, sino clases populares, con muy bajos ingresos, que en la búsqueda de vivienda encontraron que no solo querían vivienda, sino también querían mejorar y dignificar su propia vida. Insisto de clases populares muy precarias. Y lo que han c onstruido, Raúl Zibechi, uno de los periodistas, intelectuales más conocidos de América Latina porque ha estado en prácticamente todos los movimientos sociales del continente. Desde el cono sur hasta México, desde la Araucanía de Chile hasta la Selva Lacandona en México. Lo llevamos [00:48:00] a que visitara esta experiencia aquí en Ciudad de México y dijo esta es la autonomía urbana más importante de América latina. Y concluyo diciendo en el tema de la autonomía. Entonces estoy muy interesado en no por estudiarlas desde la ciencia social como un objeto de estudio, sólo para saber cómo funcionan, sino porque al comprender cómo funcionan, nos dan alternativas a quienes no estamos en esas comunidades.Entonces, estoy muy interesado en conocer esas experiencias, rastrearlas históricamente, estudiarlas y entenderlas, y comprenderlas y aprender de ellas. Es decir, yo lo que quiero es que ese aprendizaje que han producido esas comunidades podamos comprenderlos otros que no vivimos en comunidad. Y, por último, un aprendizaje que de una noción que ha surgido después de la caída del muro de Berlín ha sido precisamente la autonomía, porque frente a las experiencias autoritarias de Europa del este, pues pareciera que [00:49:00] nadie queremos repetir una experiencia que, aunque rechazamos las formas capitalistas y liberales de la política, no queremos tampoco una experiencia autoritaria y centralizadora, y mucho menos totalitaria de un partido único que es el que decide todo. Lo que hemos encontrado a tanto teórica como en estos casos empíricos es que la autonomía, la capacidad de darse sus propias leyes, eso significa autonomía, pero más allá de las leyes, es gobernarse a sí mismo. En realidad es la emancipación. Emancipación significa quitarse de encima la mano del señor. ¿Qué señor? Era el señor feudal, así se creó más o menos la palabra desde, o del esclavo desde hace muchísimo tiempo. Quitarse de encima la mano del amo o del amo o del señor feudal, es decir que no te mande alguien más.Eso es vivir también en libertad, pero las comunidades viven en colectivo y para emanciparse requieren quitarse [00:50:00] ahora de una mano que es invisible, la mano del mercado, la mano del capital. Entonces, como nos emancipamos también en colectivo y la autonomía. Gobernarse a si mismo, significa también poner un freno a las decisiones de estados que generalmente en América Latina han tenido una perspectiva colonial en relación a los pueblos indígenas, o neocolonial, o también de colonialismo interno, como decía don Pablo González Casanova.Ahora, por último, la autonomía, entonces la considero, es el elemento central, incluso más allá del igualitarismo económico. Son dos proyectos distintos. Es decir, cuando la gente logra dignificar su vida, creo que es muy positivo, creo que todos quienes tenemos una perspectiva crítica emancipatoria o incluso de izquierda, queremos que la gente en general vivamos dignamente, no con grandes lujos, pero tampoco con una enorme precaridad donde a veces, pues si muchas comunidades viven en una enorme precaridad. [00:51:00] Pero lo que es más interesante es que sean los propios pueblos los que decidan como vivir y que decidan que es pobreza y que decidan que es dignificar, y que no se decida desde el estado, ni desde la academia, ni desde los estudiosos de el igualitarismo.Qué es lo que necesitan sus vidas, y cuando los pueblos logran controlar sus vidas, nos enseñan, otra forma de libertad. En ese sentido creo que estas experiencias también son reunidas para precisamente seguir la discusión de cómo sociedades que ya no tenemos organización comunitaria, que no tenemos una trama de organización tampoco en la fábrica, podríamos emular, replicar algunas de las prácticas, algunas de las formas organizativas para vivir efectivamente y regular la sociedad de una manera a otra, una manera más libre, una manera más igualitaria. Ese es un poco también el trabajo que he estado haciendo, que tiene que ver con [00:52:00] esta preocupación de, yo creo que hay mucho, muchísimas alternativas, pero ya no hay una alternativa que llame a todos, , que fue lo que movilizó en el siglo XX a muchísimos a muchísimas, a millones y millones de personas que incluso dieron su vida por hacer un cambio, un cambio que llamaban revolucionario. Y me parece que hoy, a pesar de que tenemos muchas más experiencias alternativas de base de los pueblos, de alternativas agroecológicas, de alternativas comunicacionales, de formas de regulación, de nuevas formas de establecer las relaciones de género, tenemos múltiples alternativas y múltiples teorías. Hoy pareciera que no, no los podemos, articular, digamos, en un proyecto común y a lo mejor necesitamos algunos elementos comunes, no para crear una sociedad que toda sea igual, sino al contrario, como decían, como dicen los zapatistas, un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos, muchas alternativas, pero [00:53:00] pensadas en muchas formas también de, de relación social comunal, igualitaria, libre y emancipadas.Chris: Mm. Sí, pues a través de ese comentario sobre la autonomía y la dignidad, y la diversidad que puede venir cuando tenemos esa libertad, quería preguntarte si podrías imaginar de un futuro sin turismo como lo estamos criticando el día de hoy, quizás un tipo de ocio, o viaje, o interculturalidad, que podrías imaginar, ¿Qué planteas en la conversación para la gente antes de terminamos aquí? Cesar: Si, primero, sobre esto del turismo, creo que deberíamos pensar que el mundo está terminando tal y como lo conocíamos. No hay ya condiciones, nos [00:54:00] dirigimos efectivamente, a un posible colapso sistémico si seguimos consumiendo energía y materia al ritmo que lo estamos haciendo. Y cuando digo al ritmo que lo estamos haciendo, reconociendo que los pobres consumen menos agua, por ejemplo, hay un estudio de familias del agua en ciudad de México donde algunas familias, las más pobres de la ciudad, consumen solo unos 50 litros, y en cambio, las más ricas o las más adineradas consumen más de 1000 litros al día, una sola familia.Entonces, me parece muy importante, entender estas diferencias de clase vinculadas a, la naturaleza y por el otro lado, pensar que todos, que hemos vivido, lo decía un empresario en un documental, dice, estamos volando un momento de la historia donde parece muy lindo porque hemos tenido una serie de comodidades que ninguna civilización pudo tener.Es decir, conocer el [00:55:00] planeta entero porque tenemos esa oportunidad cuando tenemos un poco de dinero, incluso aunque no seamos ricos, tenemos la capacidad, por la infraestructura, por las fuerzas productivas, porque efectivamente hay una red mundial que lo permite. Pero esto es insostenible, como son insostenibles muchos de los lujos.Es muy lamentable tener que pensar que ese lujo turístico debe terminar. Quizá en una sociedad donde pudiéramos decidir que preferiríamos. Pues, por supuesto, en mi caso, yo decidiría también conocer muchos lugares y reducir mi huella ecológica en muchísimas otras cosas que no son indispensables, pero eso solo sería posible, es decir, mantener el turismo. No bajo la forma corporativa que tenemos hoy. Si pudiéramos reducir nuestro consumo, por ejemplo, en el vestido, nuestro consumo eléctrico, nuestro consumo, por supuesto de carbono, entre muchos otros contaminantes y consumo de materia y energía. Entonces creo que [00:56:00] habría que pensar que en la nueva sociedad, que se tiene que construir, y a veces la gente lo ve a uno como loco, como diciendo, pero cómo, eso no va a suceder. El capitalismo está funcionando perfectamente. Pero estamos en un memento ya de transición, estamos, lo que sucedió con el huracán el año pasado aquí en México, en Acapulco, lo que sucedió en Valencia, son solo las primeras señales de muchísimas más que hay que no son conocidas. Estas fueron tragedias humanas y por tanto, se conocieron más. Pero ya vivimos una transición en términos del sistema tierra, que no sabemos qué va a suceder y debemos prepararnos para eso. Entonces, creo que debemos pensar más bien en cómo sería una sociedad alternativa donde el turismo comunitario y el turismo a baja escala, y el turismo controlado, o mejor dicho, regulado con bajo impacto de huella ecológica fuera posible, pensando en toda su cadena de mercancías, toda su cadena de servicios.[00:57:00] Creo que ese es el horizonte que deberíamos trazar en torno del turismo. Y mientras tanto, seguir apoyando las alternativas de los pueblos por controlar sus ecosistemas cuando deciden efectivamente, abrirlos al turismo, en cualquiera de sus formas.Y por el otro lado, y para cerrar efectivamente, hay decenas de aprendizajes de lo que donde yo me he acercado, y me he acercado también, precisamente porque he visto no solo esperanza, sino formas alternativas de relación social. Digo algunas, se puede crear comunidad urbana. Las clases populares tienen una capacidad política propia que se tiene que desarrollar, no es automática, no está ahí por su esencia popular, sino que puede generar sus propias formas políticas en un largo proceso de aprendizaje que permite entender que la comunidad es también una forma de ejercicio del [00:58:00] poder, una forma que regula también las posiciones, actitudes egoístas y las posiciones que se aprovechan de los otros, y las reprime, las suprime, pero también permite la producción de comunes, de beneficio común y la producción de nuevas relaciones sociales que satisfacen a todos y a todas, porque no son solo relaciones materiales, sino relaciones también emocionales, vínculos afectivos, satisfacción por servir a otros. Es decir, la comunidad si puede reproducirse en las ciudades, a diferencia de nuestra noción, de que solo en las comunidades rurales puede producirse, o en el ámbito rural puede producirse comunidad.Estos elementos son muy importantes. Por el otro lado, que la enorme riqueza biocultural de los pueblos, a pesar del deterioro ecosistémico, a pesar del avance de la urbanización, a pesar del deterioro de [00:59:00] los campesinos como clase social, a pesar del cambio climático, los pueblos siguen resistiendo. Ya han encontrado formas maravillosas para mantener cohesionadas sus comunidades, para reorganizarse, para tener sus propios horizontes político-comunitarios, sus autonomías y los saberes bio culturales que guardan, que ahora lo estoy precisamente investigando, como decía yo, en el caso de Texcoco, que es aprender de su relación con las otras especies, con las algas, las algas del lago de Texcoco, con las aves, con los suelos, suelos que no eran fértiles o que tienen una producción diferencial en en el maíz, en las otras especies que cultivan, sus propios saberes del cultivo, la combinación de cultivo, su relación con la tierra. Hablan de un, digamos de un cúmulo civilizatorio de ellos, pero de toda la humanidad. [01:00:00] Pues que nos da esperanza porque esos conocimientos, yo siempre les digo a mis estudiantes, imaginen en cuánto tiempo pasó para que pudiéramos aprender cuál hongo era comestible, cuál era alucinógeno y cuál no es comestible. Es un aprendizaje vital, no por, solo por los hongos, sino pero lo podemos reproducir en todos, el maíz, las frutas, las verduras, las hierbas medicinales.Es un conocimiento que no es de nadie. Es un común. Está abierto para todos y con ese podemos sobrevivir, los conocimientos sobre las semillas, sobre las aguas, sobre los ecosistemas locales. Y ese, los pueblos además están compartiendo esos saberes.Creo que con la idea de que la comunidad puede ser producida en la ciudad y que los saberes bio culturales no solo son de los pueblos locales, sino son los saberes de las grandes civilizaciones humanas, creo que tenemos dos herramientas para afrontar el enorme peligro que tenemos hoy frente al cambio [01:01:00] climático y los otros problemas ambientales que tenemos hoy, especialmente la sexta extinción masiva de las especies, la sedificación de los océanos, entre otros elementos. Pero tenemos dos grandes cúmulos de conocimiento humano que es milenario, y que ese nos puede permitir sobrevivir aquí y ahora, y hacia el futuro, que va a ser difícil, pero la organización de los pueblos, la organización de las clases populares, las alternativas que están ya instaladas en al menos las que yo conozco en toda América Latina, dan muestra que podemos tener alternativas viables, más libres, más horizontales, más democráticas, más emancipatorias.Chris: Mmm, vaya. Pues gracias, gracias César, por esos dos champiñones, lo comestible y de lo que está pasando en el día de hoy y también lo alucinógenico, lo que podemos imaginar en [01:02:00] otros mundos. Fue un gran gusto y honor para pasar este tiempo contigo. Entonces, me gustaría agradecerte, en el nombre de nuestros oyentes también.Y antes de terminar, solo me gustaría preguntarte si hay alguna manera de que los oyentes puedan seguir tu trabajo, ponerse en contacto contigo, leer tus libros, etcétera. Cesar: Sí, la forma más fácil es, utilizo X. . Que nombre tan horrible , pero es @cesarpinedar, con r al final, @cesarpinedar. Y también en mi página, enriquepineda.info, ahí en realidad están todos mis textos.Publico muchísimo en redes sociales, especialmente en X. Yo le sigo diciendo Twitter porque el verbo Twittear es mejor. ¿Cómo se dice ahora con X cuando publicas algo? Entonces, supongo, pero es más aburrido. En fin, les invito, agradecerte a ti mucho tus preguntas y esta conversación y esta [01:03:00] posibilidad de difundir un poquito de lo que sabemos y un poquito también de nuestro saber, que es un saber también entre muchos otros, muy diversos y legítimos y válidos todos.Entonces, agradecerte también por esta conversaciónChris: Gracias, César. ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT - Ecological Marxism w/ Cesar PinedaChris: [00:00:00] Welcome Cesar, to the podcast The End of Tourism. Thank you very much for being willing to talk to me today. I'd like to start by asking you, where are you today and what does the world look like for you there?Cesar: I live in Mexico City. For some time now I have been doing research, again, on the continuity of the airport process. So I often go to Texcoco, towards the east of the city, towards the old Texcoco lake, so I have a double view, the traditional urban view where I live and where I teach, which is at UNAM and Mora, and on the other hand, the towns, the community and the lake system that I visit daily.Chris: And how is that going in Texcoco, if I may ask?Cesar: It's going well, I think the people's front in defense of the land has had a new victory. And I think it's a new advance, it's a somewhat anomalous movement in Mexico because [00:01:00] it has practically won all its battles, it has stopped the two airports, it has freed its prisoners and now it has managed to protect the territory.And today they are faced with a new challenge, which is to be a local government, right? So, in all of them they have triumphed in the end, despite the enormous costs, because they have suffered from repression, from persecution, from the precariousness in which many of their members live. But I think they are doing very well.Chris: Yeah, wow, well, what a great, what a beautiful result, right? Cesar, it seems that a lot of your work is based on what we can call the conversion of nature into capital, or at least that's how theorists have traditionally described it. I'd like to ask, how do you see that happening in the world of tourism, the conversion of nature into capital to, to start with, to give us a [00:02:00] basis to follow?Cesar: Yes, well, I have to say that I have also tried to study or theorize. When we theorize, we make generalizations. Theory is a generalization in order to be able to dialogue in different contexts, in different cases, otherwise each case of course is totally different from the other due to its historicity, its locality, its particularity.When we theorize, we try to make a generalization that is valid for many cases. So, and that allows us to dialogue and think about many with the same way of naming and conceptualizing. So, I have done this work of conceptualization and theorization in the idea of how to try to understand how capital is effectively deployed territorially. Generally, we think of capital only as monetary relations, as investments and as profits, in fact, we compensate capital as, the [00:03:00] thing, money, in any case, as material wealth, merchandise, it can be clothes, it can be cars, but in general, capital is a process. That is what Marx proposes, and the process is how people organize themselves, organize work, some work for others and how they effectively take from nature what they need to produce new merchandise or new use values, which is what, utility is what Marx calls it.In this sense, producing many use values necessarily requires some connection with nature. Marx calls this connection social metabolism because it is a connection not only because you take what you need, the materials, so to speak, some call them resources in economics. Generally in political ecology or in agroecology we call them natural goods [00:04:00] . Because they are not things but simply resources that are there available to be spent. And this connection, which has been developed even further today by some theorists who have followed Marx's idea of social metabolism, propose, following also some ideas of Marx, that it is the way to organize ourselves, to organize work.Work is the link with nature and this link is at the same time an exchange of matter and energy with local ecosystems. This exchange is more commonly called metabolism.So, I say all this because it is very important to think about how what we call the economy develops certain forms of activity, of material work and not only of monetary and monetary exchanges, because sometimes it seems that an activity gives a lot of profits and it could be, taking, for example, from nature, [00:05:00] too many natural goods, even though it actually produces a lot of monetary profits.And in that sense, what I have been studying is precisely how capital is deployed, looking, so to speak, for what it needs from ecosystems, but sometimes it does not need everything from ecosystems, sometimes it does need the entire ecosystem, which is what I am going to explain very quickly now.But in other cases, he needs only one of the natural resources, he needs land to cultivate and then he monopolizes it either by buying, or by dispossessing, or by renting the land. On the other hand, he may not need the soil to produce, not only does he need the land to produce, but he also needs that land to have a climate.This seems to be not so common sense. All farmers are much clearer about it, but it is clear that in certain areas certain species are found and in others, for example in cold places, they are found more because forest production and therefore production, pine and eucalyptus are grown. And in the tropics, fruits are grown .So economic investments that we could call capital, but that capital is a process as I said, reorganizes the workers, the workers. It also organizes the relationship with nature or reorganizes it. So, I always give these examples because they are very illustrative of what happens, for example, if there are more investments to cultivate, for wood production. Production, obviously, those who invest require their profit quickly. So you have to invest and have profits. You have to invest and sell the wood quickly, for example. Therefore, the species that grow the fastest are cultivated .And because they grow faster, they need more water. If they need more water, they deplete the aquifers. Here we have a direct consequence of human organisation in nature, in how to reorganise it because it replaces the native forest and replaces it with species that can only be sold, in this case, pine and eucalyptus.It is clear that, as in the past, time is reorganized, for example, for workers. If there are all the workers in the forestry industry who are offered a type of work and the relationship with water, with local ecosystems and with the species that are cultivated, there is the whole circuit of what is organized.So when we think about investments, we are not generally thinking about what is behind them. So we could follow the production of a car, the production of cotton for our clothes, the production of glass, the production of iron, of plastics, everything can be thought of like that. And also within [00:08:00] Of the forms of deployment of nature, I have thought that there is sometimes, there is another form that I call tourist bio-commodification, which is monopolizing entire ecosystems to put them, so to speak, to put whales, to put alligators to work, which is a way of saying it in the sense of land rent, ecosystem rent and above all, the great industry that is built around tourist enclaves.All of this constitutes a new relationship with nature, which is, I think, what we are going to be discussing in your program, because it does not modify or not only has tourism been generally seen as a benevolent industry because it does not have chimneys. It is very different, for example, from the oil industry, which is the one we generally think is the only dirty one.But the tourism industry is [00:09:00] an industry. The thing is that it is a service industry. It is also a global industry. It is also monopolistic. In other words, it is concentrated in a few corporations and it changes, of course, the way we organize ourselves around ecosystems.Chris: Wow. It's gotten me thinking a lot about how things that seem like tours could perhaps be promoted as ecological or eco-friendly, like hikes in the forest or even those tours on the sea, in the Yucatan or here in Oaxaca to go just to see the whales or turtles, etc. Is that kind of what you're talking about?Cesar: Yes. Now it must be said that these services that you generally mention, which are sometimes called eco-tourism, are those with the lowest [00:10:00] production of value or rather, they do not produce value, but rather there is only monetary exchange.But the ones that have the greatest value production are the enormous global infrastructure, the hotels and the airlines. And these are obviously controlled by the big corporations and have a gigantic impact. That is, when we think that we are going to do an activity in Oaxaca, for example, as you say, and that we are seeing a very nice activity of reproduction of the life of turtles. We are not thinking about the whole chain of goods, which is a chain of services that also has not only our ecological footprint, but also how investments reorder the territories.In Mexico, for example, around the beginning of the 21st century, we went from 7 million international tourists to 30 or 35 million.That is, in 20 years, it has practically tripled [00:11:00] volume of tourists. Now, these tourists don't, in addition, we always think that even governments , even the last government, have promoted tourism even more, because it is supposed to be totally beneficial, because obviously they bring an economic spillover to places that are generally also poor.But the problem with this perception is that we are not, perhaps sometimes, having a critical perspective where a division of social labor and a division of nature and who has access to it and for what purpose is evidently also being formed. It is the global elites, that is, also the salaried workers of the north, who have greater resources and greater economic security , who have more free time and also more resources to access leisure and entertainment.The lower classes do not. So there is an entry division by the [00:12:00] money, for access, who can access the first, free time. But not everyone who has free time has access to leisure, entertainment and tourist services. So, there is a double division here, a class division, Now, looking at it this way, we see that ecosystems are not simply used by everyone in an equal way, but that some have more access and others do not. Or some have more access. gradually and others much more sporadically, whic

How do toys shape who we become? Today, I sit down with a fascinating toy historian Chris Byrne who reveals the hidden power of play - from how different toys develop everything from relationship skills to problem - solving abilities.    We explore why true play isn't about reaching an end goal, but about embracing the pure joy of the journey. Whether you're looking to understand the art of playing alongside your kids or giving them space to explore independently, this episode will transform how you think about playtime. Join us for a rich conversation about rediscovering the magic that happens when we give ourselves permission to simply play.   After exploring the art of play with our toy historian today, I want to share something powerful with you. My book Fertile Imagination tackles a crucial truth: we can't guide our children toward imagination if we've lost touch with our own. I'll show you the exact framework I used to reawaken and strengthen this superpower – the same one that transformed both my life and my three sons'. If you're ready to rediscover your creativity and childlike zest for life, grab your copy now: https://bit.ly/fertilebook     In this episode, you will hear:    Play is a process, not a means to an end, and embracing it can reduce stress. Imagination influences every decision we make. Playing with toys helps kids develop problem-solving and relationship skills. Adults benefit from play too—it fosters creativity, joy, and innovation. Letting children lead playtime strengthens their confidence and creativity. Kids learn by doing, and unstructured play is vital for their development. In corporate settings, a playful mindset can unlock new ideas and innovation. Fear of failure limits creativity—kids don't judge play, and neither should we.   This episode is brought to you by:    Fertile Imagination: A Guide For Stretching Every Mom's Superpower For Maximum Impact – My book is available as a hard cover, paperback, and also as an audiobook. If you are on the go and wish to quickly jot down where you can purchase the book then head to: https://bit.ly/fertilebook.    If however you want to grab the audio version then head to the show notes to click the direct Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Fertile-Imagination-Stretching-Superpower-Maximum/dp/B0CK2ZSMLB   About Chris Bryne   Chris Byrne has spent over 35 years in the toy industry, holding major marketing and creative roles before launching Byrne Communications, a consultancy specializing in product development, strategic planning, and marketing. A passionate advocate for the power of play, he has studied its impact on child development and creativity across industries. He has appeared on major media outlets worldwide, sharing insights on toys, play, and innovation. He also co-hosts The Playground Podcast, diving deep into the toy industry's past, present, and future.   SHARE this episode with fellow moms and entrepreneurs who want to bring more creativity into their lives! Chris's insights on play, imagination, and innovation are a must-listen for anyone balancing motherhood and career growth. Let's embrace play, rediscover joy, and inspire the next generation! Supporting Resources:   Website: https://www.thetoyguy.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetoyguy/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetoyguyofficial/ The Playground Podcast: Spotify & Apple Podcasts Subscribe and Review   Have you subscribed to my podcast for new moms who are entrepreneurs, founders, and creators?  I'd love for you to subscribe if you haven't yet.    I'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast for writer moms. About Fertile Imagination   You can be a great mom without giving up, shrinking, or hiding your dreams. There's flexibility in how you pursue anything – your role, your lifestyle, and your personal and professional goals. The limitations on your dreams are waiting to be shattered. It's time to see and seize what's beyond your gaze. Let's bridge your childhood daydreams with your grown-up realities. Imagine skipping with your kids along any path – you, surpassing your milestones while your kids are reaching theirs. There's only one superpower versatile enough to stretch your thinking beyond what's been done before: a Fertile Imagination. It's like kryptonite for impostor syndrome and feeling stuck when it's alert!    In Fertile Imagination, you will awaken your sleeping source of creative solutions. If you can wake up a toddler or a groggy middle schooler, then together with the stories in this book – featuring 25 guests from my podcast Unimaginable Wellness, proven tools, and personal anecdotes – we will wake up your former playmate: your imagination!  Advance Praise    “You'll find reality-based strategies for imagining your own imperfect, fulfilling life in this book!” —MARTHA HENNESSEY, former NH State Senator    “Melissa invites the reader into a personal and deep journey about topics that are crucially important to uncover what would make a mom (and dad too) truly happy to work on…even after the kids are in bed.” —KEN HONDA, best-selling author of Happy Money    “This book is a great purchase for moms in every stage of life. Melissa is like a great friend, honest and wise and funny, telling you about her life and asking you to reflect on yours.” —MAUREEN TURNER CAREY, librarian in Austin, TX           TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Chris: I really believe is what we play with as kids really becomes, we become a lot of that. And we had a basement in our house that had a room in it, that had a window in it. And my brothers and I would create puppet shows. And we would do that. And we would just go round up all the kids in the neighborhood and say, you have to watch this puppet show. And they did. I mean, they were good. But it was really about storytelling. It was about connection. It was about making things up and just feeling very alive in that moment, feeling very connected to who I was at that time and being able to share that with other people. 00:00:43 Melissa: Welcome to the Mom Founder Imagination Hub, your weekly podcast to inspire you to dream bigger. Plan out how you're going to get to that next level in business, find the energy to keep going, and make sure your creative juices are flowing so that this way you get what you really want rather than having to settle. Get ready to discover how mom founders have reimagined entrepreneurship and motherhood. Ever wonder how they do it? Tune in to find out. 00:01:09 Melissa: And stretch yourself by also learning from diverse entrepreneurs who might not be moms, but who have lessons you can tailor about how you can disrupt industries and step way outside of your comfort zone. I believe every mom's superpower is her imagination. In this podcast, I'm gonna give you the mindset, methods, and tools to unleash yours. Sounds good? Then keep listening. 00:01:36 Melissa: So how do toys shape who we become? Have you ever asked yourself that question as you are giving your child a toy? If that toy is going to influence their career choices ahead or the way that they are, their character. Today, I sat down with a fascinating toy historian, Chris Byrne. 00:02:04 Melissa: Now he is a 35 year plus veteran of the toy industry. He's held major marketing and creative positions earlier in his life. And he's appeared on TV talking about toys and play in the US and around the world. He's even been on the Live with Kelly and Mark show as a regular guest. And he has his own podcast, by the way, the Playground Podcast. 00:02:29 Melissa: So, Chris reveals today the hidden power of play, from how different toys develop everything from relationship skills to problem-solving abilities. We also explore why true play isn't about reaching an end goal, it's about embracing the pure joy of the journey. So, whether you're looking to understand the art of playing alongside your kids or giving them some space to explore independently, this episode is going to change how you think about playtime. So I encourage you to join us for this rich conversation about rediscovering the magic that happens when we give ourselves permission to just play. 00:03:10 Melissa: Okay, so before we jump into the conversation, I wanna just let you know that after the conversation, I would invite you to explore the art of play with my book, Fertile Imagination. Why is that relevant to you as a mom? Here's what I want you to know. It's really hard to guide our kids toward imagination if we've secretly lost touch with our own. So in my book, Fertile Imagination, I share with you the exact framework that I used in order to reawaken my imagination, play with my imagination, stretch my imagination, and strengthen what I believe to be our greatest superpower. 00:03:56 Melissa: So this framework is super simple to follow. It is guided and it is also provided in lots of really cool journaling question prompts in the book. And it's gonna be the same exact process that I used in order to really get back in touch with that little childlike spirit that all of us has, but maybe we forgot we have held quite tightly close to our hearts. 00:04:22 Melissa: So, I invite you to go ahead, rediscover your creativity, and see if you can find your childlike zest for life. Because I really believe that it's hard to teach our kids things that we may have forgotten are natural to us, and maybe came naturally to us when we were younger. So enjoy the conversation. The link to the book is available in the show notes where you're listening to this. Let me read the actual link so that you can learn more about my book, Fertile Imagination. 00:04:53 Melissa: It is a bit.ly link. So it is bit.ly/fertilebook. You can absolutely grab a copy right there of Fertile Imagination. If you wanted the audio version that is available exclusively via Amazon. So go ahead and check out the show notes for that link. Thank you again. And I hope you enjoy the conversation and let me know what you think at the end, I will share with you my top three takeaways that you can apply to your immediate mom life. Thank you so much. 00:05:28 Melissa: Chris Byrne. I am so excited to have you here on the Mom Founder Imagination Hub. How are you? 00:05:35 Chris: I am very well. I'm so excited to be with you. Thank you so much for the invitation. 00:05:40 Melissa: I couldn't get enough of your TED Talk. I was like, oh my gosh, he's not just a toy historian. He's like a toy psychologist. I loved it. I loved it. So welcome to the show. Chris, I want to just start with the big, big question on my mind. Help me understand from your perspective, decades in the industry, learning about the art of play, like what is an imagination to you and do you consider it a superpower? 00:06:12 Chris: Well, I absolutely consider our imagination our superpower. It is the one thing that, really one of the many things that really define us as human beings. Nothing happens in our world that doesn't start in the imagination. It can be, what do I want for lunch? Or what do I want to be when I grow up? Or should I marry this person? Or should I have children? 00:06:34 Chris: Or whatever it is because we begin in the imagination and other kinds of animals, you just put food in front of them and they eat, it's instinctual. But for us, it's not- as humans, it's not just instinctual. We literally create our worlds on a daily basis and that starts in the imagination. 00:06:54 Melissa: I agree. And it's interesting because as a fully grown adult, I would say that when I was writing my book, Fertile Imagination, and I see it as like a superpower for moms who are technically adults. I feel like it's a topic that is seldom discussed amongst adults. Like, is this something that you are noticing? Or maybe, you know, people that have that childlike quality because of your industry? What's your take on imagination, the art of play, and being an adult? 00:07:30 Chris: Well, I think all of those are really critical to who we are, because play is really the act of asking a question, what if? What if I do this? What if I, you know, as an adult in can be, what if do whatever? For me, as a kid is like, what if I jump off this wall? What's gonna happen? You know, but we grow up and we have a little bit more, more adult kind of perceptions, if you will, for that. And it really is like trying to spin out a scenario. 00:08:06 Chris: So if I am going to take a new job, for example, what is that gonna be like? Who am I gonna be working with? And we begin to develop stories around things in our imagination. And those stories are very important because we really can't take action to make things real until we've imagined them as a concept. 00:08:28 Melissa: Yeah. And so, okay. So this is something that I'm struggling with right now. This is like real time, I need some help, get me unclogged sort of stuff. So this idea of having a story in my mind and having a vision I want to make real, the vision side of it is so hard right now for me to see, mainly because it's like, there's things that I've envisioned in the past, but I haven't made happen. So I don't know kind of like how to play myself to a solution or a vision or just kind of like, think with a little less of like the past, you know, like hindering this vision. 00:09:15 Chris: Right. It's a great, it's a great thing. I mean, I'm sorry you're going through that, but I think that if you look at how a child plays, right, when they get an idea and they don't sit there and think, well, if I just do this or I do this or I do that, it's going to be fun, right? They come, that's not fun. I'm done. I'm on to the next thing. And I think as adults, we should do that too. If something is becoming too much effort, if it's not working, then we just drop it and go on to the next thing. 00:09:47 Chris: And I don't think there's any harm or foul in that. And I think that when you look at a kid who is imagining and playing, they're not judging the play as they're doing it. They're looking at well, where did this take me and where should I go next from it? And it's a much freer, kind of more peaceful way to go through the world. 00:10:08 Chris: I mean, I talk about things that I've done that turned out to be mistakes. And I call them I said, well, that was a once in a lifetime experience. As in I don't have to do that again. I learned the lesson. 00:10:20 Melissa: Yeah. And I think, you know, approaching any problem from that perspective releases that pressure to get it right the first time. And it gives you like the levity to get back up and just be like, okay, let's go at it again. And I imagine like, cause I noticed also, and I know that this side of it might be a little bit more conventional thinking, but like, you actually bring these ideas into corporate settings, you know, the art of play. 00:10:51 Melissa: And I'm like, if I think about the different environments where it's not okay to play. It's not okay to make mistakes. Like how do you sell that idea of we're just playing right now and don't get frustrated if it works or not in like a corporate setting, you know? 00:11:11 Chris: Well, one of the things that's so interesting in a corporate setting is people come into a meeting or a brainstorming and they're focused on one specific outcome, right? So if you're focused on an outcome, you kind of end-run the process of play because play is a process. Play is asking, what if, you know, let's go down this road and let's go down this road and see what it is. So I always encourage people to be as off the wall as possible. I will give you an example that almost got me fired. 00:11:43 Melissa: This is a good one, okay. 00:11:44 Chris: And nobody will like it, but I was working with Ideal, with Ideal Toy Company and we had the Shirley Temple doll. And nobody, we had these porcelain $400 Shirley Temple dolls and Shirley Temple dolls were huge in the '30s and still with doll collectors, but nobody was buying them. And we thought, how do we get rid of them? And I said, well, why don't we put them on the QE2 and use them as skeet? Like people can launch the doll. 00:12:11 Chris: So the brand manager got really mad at me. And told me I was inappropriate. But as we talked more, we ended up doing a doll collecting event with Cunard that actually turned out to be good. So the idea is, go out there and play off the wall in a safe environment, obviously. So the idea of creating an environment where it's safe to play, where it's safe to have that sort of impulsive childish response to a situation is okay. 00:12:45 Chris: We would never have promoted that in a corporate sense. But the idea that we were just playing with ideas and being silly. That opens the pathway to being really creative and to seeing what could actually work. And then once you get that, you put the action steps in place to get to the next step. 00:13:05 Melissa: Yeah, I think just, you know, going crazy and just really trying to break out of conventional thinking and our very logical pathways in our mind, it's like first we do this, that, the other. It's almost like some sentences, right? And the way we like greet each other, it's so like rehearsed that to come up with something like, oh my gosh, I love your outfit. You know, it reminds me of like a toy soldier or something. It would be like way off, but it would start rapport, I think. Rapport or like, you know, people would be like, kind of weirded out. But I've always tried that. How can I not weird people out? 00:13:44 Chris: Well, it's, right, well, that's always a question, but I don't really worry about that too much. But I think that one of the things, again, as I was saying about process, but also getting over fear, right? As adults, we think, well, what if I get it wrong? Children, when they play, if you watch them play, they don't worry about getting it wrong. They just think, well, that didn't work. That didn't do what I wanted it to do. Let me do something else. They haven't built a hierarchy of judgment and really being unkind to themselves about doing something wrong. 00:14:19 Chris: And if you embrace play, there's really no kind of, you can't be wrong when you're playing, right? Some things may be practical, but there's imagination and there's spinning things out, things that might never become real, but then things that actually could practically become real. And the process of getting to that point is actually pretty joyful. 00:14:42 Melissa: And I think we could all use some more joy these days, that's for sure. Adults and children alike. So let's see, let's go back in time. So let's go back to the time where you recall maybe playing with a toy and feeling like an insane amount of joy. If you can think about, you know, your one moment or one of the moments, I'm curious to hear your perspective. 00:15:06 Chris: Well, it's really interesting because one of the things that I really believe is what we play with as kids really becomes, we become a lot of that. And we had a basement in our house that had a room in it. They had a window in it. And my brothers and I would create puppet shows. And we would do that. And we would just go round up all the kids in the neighborhood and say, you have to watch this puppet show. And they did. They were good. But it was really about storytelling. It was about connection. It was about making things up and just feeling very alive in that moment, feeling very connected to who I was at that time and being able to share that with other people. 00:15:52 Melissa: Wow, so that's interesting. So it's funny because I feel like maybe I was, because I was an only child for most of my upbringing, like a lot of the things I did were just on my own and I had to really figure out how to make something out of what was around me. So let me share like this one thing that I would do to just pass the time. And of course, like in the background, like there was like maybe Magnum P.I. playing or, you know, name- Hawaii Five-0, whatever my mom was into. 00:16:25 Melissa: So I would go to the closet and I would take out a shoebox. And I would proceed to create like a scene. So they're called dioramas. I looked it up because I was like, this is a weird thing that I just kept doing all the time. And then I would create little figurines and put like little slots, you know, on the sides and move the little carboards in and out, you know. And I was like, okay, I have to ask Chris, like, what does that say about me? I have no idea. 00:16:56 Chris: Well, I mean, I would say it sort of starts you as a storyteller, which is what you're doing today. You're telling stories and you're facilitating other people telling stories. But it's also, I mean, especially for children at that age, it's about trying to make sense of the world and the stories they tell us, like trying to make sense of relationships. I'll tell you another story. 00:17:18 Chris: Years ago, we were playing with some kids with Barbie dolls. And they had all these different Barbie dolls. And one kid took all the blonde Barbie dolls and they were making fun of the brunette Barbie doll. And we were just watching this and going, yeah, this is somebody who is working out a reality in their life. 00:17:38 Chris: And that is really what play is, because even as she, in this case it was a girl, became powerful in that situation, was able to stand up for herself, you're giving your brain the sense that you can actually do this. If you do it vicariously, you've already had that experience on some level. So that when you confront that in real life, it might be easier, or you might have a solution. 00:18:03 Chris: I mean, how many times do you go into a situation, an interview or whatever, and you've rehearsed what you're gonna say? And your brain already knows that. It's like visual, what they talk about in sports about visualizing, you know, the outcome. You know, you're already having that experience, which is so cool. Cause our brain doesn't know the difference sometimes between reality and what we imagine. 00:18:24 Melissa: I love that. I love that. And so, yeah, who knows what I was trying to work out? There are a lot of things going on in my home. I'll tell you that much. But yeah, I think, you know, that idea though, just like trying to work things out that, you know, maybe you don't have that first person experience with, but like doing it through the use of a toy. Have you noticed at a curiosity any sort of changes with the dynamics between toys and kids now that there's like AI sort of toys out there? 00:19:01 Chris: There are so many different types of play experiences. What we were just talking about is more traditional doll or action figure or stuffed animal kind of play where a child is really doing that. Some of the other stuff with AI or licensed space like Star Wars, Marvel, all of that is beginning to understand yourself as a capable human being. 00:19:23 Chris: So for example, if I'm a superhero, I can feel. I can have the feeling of what it's like to be a superhero. And I always say, if your life is all about mom is in control, eat your peas, get in the minivan, do your homework, suddenly if you're a superhero, that's very empowering. And then empowering as an individual to be able to confront the world in a different way because you're empowered. So it's very classical, the kind of totemistic idea that we take on the powers of the superheroes. 00:19:59 Chris: And even though we're not gonna fly, we're not gonna lift, we're not gonna pick up a truck, we're not gonna do that, you have the emotional sense of capability, which is really what it's all about. 00:20:10 Melissa: That's interesting. I think, I mean, I don't know. Now that I think about my kids, for example, their toy experiences these days is really YouTube videos and playing video games and things like that. And I wonder if that's also along the same thread of what you just said, feeling the different capabilities like running fast or jumping high, things like that. 00:20:37 Chris: I think definitely. I mean, it's, you know, YouTube videos are like today's cartoons, right, on some level. You know, I grew up watching cartoons and, and it was- so they're looking at who are my role models and who are, you know, somebody's doing something. Oh, I'd like to try that. And, you know, or oh, wow, they tried that, I'm not gonna do that, but what would it be like if I did this kind of thing? 00:21:03 Chris: So I think that it's a window on the world and people are always concerned about screen time and I'm never concerned about screen time so much as I'm concerned about what's on the screen. So that is what's being modeled through the YouTube things, things that you as a mom or a parent want your child to be consuming because it can be very supportive or it can be kind of dangerous depending on what kids have access to. 00:21:30 Melissa: Yeah. And it's so interesting what you're sharing right now, because I mean, I had Saturday morning cartoons, for example, and I ate a lot of cereals with all the dyes and all these other things. And my kids literally tell me, they're like, oh, we want to have Saturday morning cartoons just like you. But of course, it is that YouTube thing. And I limit it to SpongeBob. Like, that's appropriate for their ages right now. 00:21:54 Melissa: But I think that's so interesting, this whole idea of rehearsal and visualization and imagination. I wonder because when it comes to toys and just the way that they've changed through the years, how did, for example, Tickle Me Elmo, how did that support people in terms of capabilities or anything? I'm curious. 00:22:22 Chris: Well, Tickle Me Elmo was kind of an outlier in that, you know, in terms of classical play. Tickle Me Elmo became a fad, right? And fads take on a life of their own. They kind of jump the shark or jump from the toy industry because Tickle Me Elmo started as an entertaining little preschool doll for preschoolers, infants and preschoolers. Suddenly it becomes this whole cultural phenomenon that everybody has to have. 00:22:50 Chris: It becomes, so it's a fad, so it becomes kind of a marker in time. So if you were around for Tickle Me Elmo, and you remember that, it's sort of a springboard to your memories of what the latter part of 1996 was about, because that's when Tickle Me Elmo was really huge. So that's not really kind of play in the way that I talk about it a lot. That becomes a cultural event. And my other joke about Tickle Me Elmo, Tickle Me Elmo was $40 really, basically, or more. You know, you can have a Tickle Me Elmo and be really cool for a lot less than you can have a Birkin bag. 00:23:26 Melissa: Wow, yeah, that's true. That is true. It's so funny, this conversation just takes me down the whole nostalgic route. Like I'm thinking about my Steve Urkel joke pull doll. Do you remember that one? 00:23:39 Chris: Yeah, yeah, of course. 00:23:41 Melissa: Yeah, so anyways, I'm totally like aging myself right now. I'm like, oh, I had Steve Urkel and I had Popples and all the like. What do you think, you know, nostalgia? Let's talk about that. Because I feel like a lot of marketers use that, you know, in order to kind of like pull forth a certain generation, let's say. And I even feel like at a supermarket, like I'm like, I think they know who their shoppers are with the music. But let's talk about nostalgia. 00:24:09 Melissa: Like, and again, thinking about more quote unquote modern toys, you know, like. And back to like these like electronics, like do you think that it'll be the same sort of calling card, I think is the right phrase? Like when someone starts saying, oh, like, let's say 10 years from now, you know, what's the name of the- Stumble Guys? Like, do you think that people will say like a certain like thing on video games and it'll have the same emotional pull as like Tickle Me Elmo, Popples, or Cabbage Patch? 00:24:41 Chris: It's hard to know. The thing about nostalgia is it's really for adults, right? Nostalgia is for people looking back. When you're three and four, you're not nostalgic for much. You're not remembering much. Maybe you remember your pull ups, right? When you had your pull ups. But you don't, you're not really nostalgic for something because you haven't been around that much. 00:25:03 Chris: The challenge from a toy marketing standpoint is relying on nostalgia to sell toys. Because I mean, yes, there's a certain level of you as a mom had My Little Pony or Littlest Pet Shop or any of those huge hits, Masters of the Universe. And you want to share those with your child. But for it to engage your child's imagination, there has to be something authentic to them. It's not just, mom liked this, so I'm going to like it too. That doesn't really work. 00:25:31 Chris: Look at Barbie and how Barbie's been redefined over the years, because Barbie always reflects the culture at any given time. So in 1959, she could be a fashion model or a bride, right? Pretty much, those are the Barbie options. Today, there are hundreds of careers and there's hundreds of abilities. And Barbie, the Barbie line looks like the world kids are growing up in, just as it did in 1959. It's just a more diverse and broader world with more possibility for girls and women today than it was in 1959. 00:26:08 Melissa: So when it comes to the toy industry, who's actually using their imagination to come up with like what to make for the future? Like, is it a combination of kids and adults? Is it like who's actually imagining like right now, like in the Mattels, et cetera, you know, what's coming down the line like 10 years from now? It's going to be hot and cool. And like, how do you how do you imagine something like that? 00:26:36 Chris: Well, it's hard. I mean, I think I think it's like, you know, my crystal ball usually needs a shot of Windex so I could get a clearer sense. But it's more an art than a science, that's for sure. And it's looking at trends. It's looking at how are kids playing, how are they interacting, how are they socializing, what is fun to them, and what's going on in the culture at large. Because the toy industry always reflects the culture. 00:27:03 Chris: We're always reflecting, because kids, you know, most healthy kids, they aspire to being big. They wanna grow up and they want the things like their parents have. So back in the, you know, in the early 2000s when cell phones came out, you saw tons of preschool cell phones, right? You don't see that so much anymore because the preschoolers have a real cellphone. 00:27:25 Chris: But you see things that will allow them to feel like they are part of the culture and they are growing up into it and that they are older and perhaps more capable than they really are because that's an important imaginative tool to help in the maturation process. 00:27:41 Melissa: That's fascinating. So that's true. It was definitely a lot of like, I don't know, mommy and me things. Like you see them with like a cash register or like a Target cart, right? The plastic little one, right? Cause their parent is shopping at Target. And so I wonder because it's like, there's some habits that as a parent, like maybe we wanna shake off ourselves, but we're inadvertently doing a lot. 00:28:06 Melissa: So like the cellphone one, I'm like, oh God, yeah, mommy has a cellphone and now her child does too. And it's like, how can I stop? And it's a reinforcement, but I'm wondering, okay, so in terms of the future and in terms of toys, have you ever done or seen any sort of things where the mom was playing with the child versus the child was playing by themselves? Like any differences there? 00:28:31 Melissa: Because I would love to just kind of inspire a listener right now to consider the fact that actually getting lost in play with their child can be even more beneficial than just having your child play with a toy to the side and you're doing something completely different. 00:28:52 Chris: I think that is critically important. One of the things that we're talking to parents of Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids. And Gen Alpha was born 2010 to this year. And one of the things that parents talk about is some of the best part of their day is when they're playing with kids. And what I always suggest is that if you're playing with your kid, especially if they're a preschooler, let the child run the play and you respond. Don't tell them, oh, look at this, oh, do that. 00:29:24 Chris: And you don't have to teach, it doesn't have to teach them anything, right? It doesn't have to teach. Kids are going to learn. So really letting that child's imagination drive the experience because, you know, I think every parent has had the experience where your child comes up with something and you go where did that come from? 00:29:45 Melissa: 100%. All the time. 00:29:47 Chris: And it's because they're sponges and they're listening to their absorbing everything and then they're processing it to their childlike brains or their childish brains. So I think that letting the child do that, but being there and being in communication is really important. 00:30:02 Chris: When I was growing up and maybe when you were too, we had three different worlds. We had kid world where no adults came in and the kids were doing that. We had adult world where we weren't allowed, where the parents would do that. And then there was family world, which is dinner and vacations and being yelled at about your grades or whatever that was. 00:30:21 Chris: But those three worlds don't really seem to exist anymore. And parents and kids are much more integrated in one another's lives. I think that's an outcome of COVID. It's actually a very positive outcome from COVID. Because you as mom and dad, have fun with your kids. Come on. It's, again, back to the idea of process rather than outcome. They don't have to become an expert ball player. They don't have to become an expert thing at times. They can actually just learn and play and discover the world and share those discoveries with you. 00:30:51 Melissa: Yeah, I love that. And I think it's an opportunity for someone that has to think a lot in life and feels the stresses of life to kind of let go and just stop thinking and just going with what is. Be present. You know, be totally present. 00:31:12 Chris: Be totally present and just be open to what it is. It's trying not to, as I was saying, it doesn't have to have a definitive outcome. And the one thing I think we've lost track of, often in our culture right now, is the idea of embracing process. It's really okay to make mistakes. It's really okay to try something, as long as you get up and start again. 00:31:36 Chris: I mean, how many times have you, I was talking about, for me, I learned to ski late. And I'm a really mediocre skier. I'm enthusiastic, but I'm not good. And I had somebody who was teaching me and he said, Chris, eventually I was scared. Eventually you're gonna have to point your skis down the hill. So I did it, I fell a lot, I did that, but I was so eager to learn that I'd fall and get up again. 00:32:04 Chris: I had to learn how to get up, but that's the thing that I think is, you know, if you have an idea of where you'd like to go but embrace the process on the way there because who knows what you're going to learn and what you're going to discover. 00:32:16 Melissa: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think that's the key to any goal. It's just you have to really fall in love with the process as you head towards the vision the goal, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. And I also love the fact that, you know, as with play it's like there's something that's so pure about it, you know, when left on unmanipulated. 00:32:40 Melissa: It's like as a parent, we might have this desire to like educate our kids up to wazoo with regards to like every educational toy out there and every moment with we're with them, we're teaching them another language or coding or something. But I think, you know, just being open to a little bit, you know, unstructured play and that time with your child has so many benefits. And I think, you know, Chris, the work that you're doing just stay connected to like play as just being fun and okay and positive is is really helpful. Thank you so much for the work that you've done. 00:33:18 Chris: Thanks. I mean, I really do think that it as I mentioned, joy before it really does open the door to being joyful and going, oh, wow, that's fun, you know? I mean, when was the last time you said, oh, wow, that's really fun. 00:33:31 Melissa: 100%. Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much, Chris. So where can listeners continue to learn about their favorite toys, about you, about what's up ahead in the toy industry? 00:33:42 Chris: You can come see the toyguy.com. That's probably the best way. And then on Instagram, I'm thetoyguy. So, yeah. And I post a lot of pictures from things like toy fairs and different things and things that are fun for me and that make me giggle. 00:33:58 Melissa: Thank you so much, Chris. Have an awesome one. 00:34:01 Chris: Thank you. 00:34:03 Melissa: My three takeaways for this conversation that you can absolutely take to the bank and apply in your home are, first, this idea that playing with our kids has benefits for our kids, but also for us, especially if you're a super busy mom. It helps put you in the immediate present moment. So that's a big, big perk right there. 00:34:25 Melissa: Second is this idea that it's all about the process as opposed to the final answer. And that's something that I know is hard to think about when you're constantly thinking about what's next in your life. So thinking about play as something that you're doing and it's a process instead of to put together that Lego piece might be a great shift in your thinking and could relieve you of the stress and pressure of getting things right. 00:34:54 Melissa: Second, no, actually my third point here, my third point would be that in terms of the benefits of playing, I hadn't realized how psychologically deep some of these toys touch the minds of our kids. So the simple fact that we are thinking about, you know, working out relationships when you're doing a diorama, which may have been the case for me personally or maybe you're thinking about whether or not you have skills like a superhero, which was something that Chris shared, I just never thought about how psychologically interesting playing with a toy could be. 00:35:32 Melissa: So you might want to reconsider this idea that playing with a toy is just a way to distract your child or keep them focused on something other than breaking things. There could be real psychological value and also something for you to just consider psychological opportunity when it comes to the choices behind the toys we put in front of our kids. 00:36:00 Melissa: So I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Again, this episode was brought to you by my book, Fertile Imagination. I am excited about it. It's a guide for stretching every mom's superpower for maximum impact. Your imagination is your superpower. That is why I had Chris on the show today. I encourage you to check out the show notes where you could actually purchase the book and let me know that you did. I am always available for conversation and any questions. Thank you so much and I appreciate you. And until next Tuesday.

In this episode of The Building Texas Business Podcast, I spoke with Brian Freedman, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, about the region's economic development. We explored the five major industry clusters shaping the area: maritime logistics, aerospace, tourism, healthcare, and petrochemicals. Brian shared updates on aerospace innovations at Ellington Field, including projects by Intuitive Machines and Axiom, while highlighting new opportunities in defence manufacturing. I learned about Project 11, an initiative to expand the Houston port's capacity for larger vessels. Brian explained how this infrastructure project connects to the broader transportation network, particularly the role of trucking in regional commerce. We discussed how the partnership works with legislators and industry leaders to address challenges like insurance costs and maintain economic momentum. The conversation shifted to leadership approaches and team dynamics in Texas business. Brian described how maintaining diverse projects keeps his team engaged and motivated. We explored how the Houston area supports entrepreneurs through community partnerships and mentorship programs while adapting to technological changes like AI integration. Our discussion wrapped up with a look at workforce development in the region. Brian explained how educational partnerships are building talent pipelines across industries. We covered the importance of aligning training programs with business needs while fostering collaboration between municipalities, educational institutions, and industry partners. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I spoke with Brian Freedman, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership, about the economic development in the Houston Bay Area, focusing on the recruitment, retention, and expansion of primary employers. We discussed the significant industry clusters in the region, including maritime logistics, aerospace, tourism, healthcare, and petrochemicals, and their impact on the area's economic growth. Brian highlighted developments at Ellington Field, including contributions from companies like Intuitive Machines and Axiom, as well as the emerging opportunities in defense manufacturing and procurement. The episode explored the scale and impact of the Houston port, emphasizing Project 11's role in expanding the port's capacity and the importance of logistics and innovation for regional prosperity. We delved into the leadership style necessary for motivating teams and managing diverse projects, underscoring the Texan entrepreneurial spirit characterized by ambition and a collaborative approach. Brian shared insights on the vibrant business ecosystem in Texas, driven by a skilled workforce, affordability, and a supportive community fostering partnerships and mentorship opportunities. Finally, we addressed challenges like insurance costs and the importance of regional solidarity, as well as efforts to mitigate natural disaster risks and promote responsible development in the area. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About BAHEP GUESTS Brian FreedmanAbout Brian TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Brian Freedman, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership. Brian shares how his organization works to recruit, retain and expand primary employers in the greater Houston Bay Area region. Brian, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for joining us today. Brian: Hey, thank you, Chris. Honored to be here and great to catch up. Chris: Yes, likewise. So let's start with you. You're the president and the organizational name's kind of long it's Bay Area, houston Economic Partnership. Tell the listeners a little bit about what that organization is and what it does, to kind of put the rest of our conversation into context. Brian: Sure, so BayHEP is the short version of it. So we're the Regional Economic Development Group and kind of the, as I like to say, in the Houston-Galveston region. We're three o'clock to six o'clock on the watch, face right. So we kind of go out 225, all the municipalities and cities going out east and then going down south 45. We go a little west of 45, but really that 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock and we're really focused on how do you recruit, retain and expand primary employers in the region with the idea that if you can get great companies located here and have a group of industry clusters that are cranking away every day, that we can have a great place to live. We have great involved residents that are in this area and opportunities for the folks who live here and kind of build what the future will look like for this region. So a lot of good stuff going on and, happy to get into that a little further, we do economic development, recruitment, retention projects. So how do we get companies here? We do some grants and then we're a membership organization is how we're funded. So we have about 300 members, 19 municipal members, Harrison-Galveston County, the port, the airport system. It's really how do you get the leaders of a region to work together to advance what we're doing here. Chris: Wow, I mean that's it sounds like it's easier to say and harder to do coordinating that many organizations and trying to get everybody pulling the same direction. Brian: Yeah, it's a lot of fun and we get to work with a lot of great folks. That's how we met Chris, is that, you know, through some of our mutual connections. But yeah, you know, it's really when you can get generally like-minded folks thinking about what the future of a region will look like and pretty aligned and working towards that effort, it's more of a well, it's just fun and you can create a lot of impact and we're seeing that and I'll be happy to dive into some of the specific projects we're working down here. But I mean, you guys do it too at Boyer Miller. Y'all are working with clients all over the spectrum of types of industry and you have to adapt to what's coming up, what's at you, and be ready for that kind of stuff. Chris: Yeah, no doubt. So yeah let's jump into some stuff. Let's talk first, because when I think of your area, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is NASA and all that's going on around that, and that leads me to technology and innovation. So what are some of the emerging technologies or trends that you're seeing that are kind of helping shape the future of Texas and kind of the business opportunities, at least in your region and for Texas? Brian: Yeah, so I call it kind of the big five on the industry cluster. So everybody thinks about this area for NASA, which we love right, because it really is a crown jewel out here, but I call it the big five right Maritime and all the associated logistics with the port aerospace and aviation, so nasa, but also the great work that the airport system is doing with ellington and hobby, tourism and recreation, health care and all the hospitals that have campuses down here, and then specialty and petrochemical and the energy industry partners and every one of those ecosystem has a ton of stuff going on. So I'm happy to talk about some of those more granular. But a couple of observations. One is that often overlooked in this community and really an asset to the greater Houston region is Ellington Field, ellington Airport, the Spaceport and, if you haven't seen or heard about it, the work that's going on at the Spaceport. They have three new beautiful buildings. One is occupied by Intuitive Machines who just put the first commercial lander payload on the surface of the moon. One is occupied by a company called Axiom that's building the next generation of commercial spacesuits and the next generation space station, and Collins who do spacesuit design in our building and maintaining the current spacesuits. They've set up huge facilities down there and so new stuff coming on. But I'm equally excited about just across the runway is the 147th Reserve Group. So there's a reserve unit out there, a reserve base, and the defense opportunities are pretty exciting. So that's highlighted by the 147th. But almost every branch has a reserve unit out there, save the Space Force, and we're working on that. And so the opportunities with defense manufacturing to come out to do more work in Houston and some of their innovation units and, as mundane as it sounds, some of the procurement opportunities, because when it comes to contracting, having a group of folks here would be a great opportunity for Houston businesses to then pipeline the work that they're doing into the broader defense industry, which can be really exciting. One other thing I'll mention, chris, is if you just look at the path of predictable growth for Houston, right, it keeps going out and we see that on our freeways every day. So there are growing pains that come with that, but for our region it's that steady march down Interstate 45. And so while Clear Lake Lake City are starting to get to fully built out and we're looking at what is the next generation of building look like, what's redevelopment look like For communities Dickinson, hitchcock, santa Fe, to some extent Texas City. Although they've got quite an industrial complex too, there's still space, and so it really brings up the opportunity of we can handle big projects, and whether they're industrial or tourism, there's a lot of opportunity that comes with that. And so, as folks you know, as we get built out further and further, those cities that were, they've always been important cities for the regional ecosystem, but they become major players, and so it's exciting to be able to work with them on that stuff. Chris: Sounds like a lot of opportunity for real estate development. Both residential, retail, commercial, industrial kind of all sectors are going to be playing a big part in that ongoing development in your region. Brian: Exactly right, and part of the the fun part is, you know, every municipality has different targets of what they view their economic development to look like, and so we get to work with all those cities where some may be really focused on industrial, some may want to be bedroom communities and be focused on residential. Our task is to support those municipalities in this region and identifying good players to bring to the table. So who are people that we do want to partner with that can follow through on the projects that can complete them and make them successful? Chris: That's great. I think I saw recently in the news the state of Texas, I think it's had something along these lines, but it's like a fund for the space-related projects and I know I don't know the name and you'll help me with that, but I seem to recall the governor being in town and making some big announcement right after the first of the year. Tell us a little more about that. Brian: Recall the governor being in town and making some big announcement right after the first of the year. Tell us a little more about that, exactly, right? So last legislative session, primarily spearheaded by State Representative Greg Bonin, who's also a Princewood resident he's a neurosurgeon by day and State Representative Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee during the legislative session he had this kind of vision of how does the state become a major player in the aerospace community. That's been primarily a federal and private industry ecosystem and so under his vision and with support of the state legislature and certainly the governor, they put a bill that kind of outlined a direction for the state to engage and the resources behind it. It does a couple of things. One was it allocated about $200 million that would go to Texas A&M to build this A&M Space Institute, and they've actually located that property. It will be built on the edge of the campus of Johnson Space Center, so for those familiar with this area, right on Saturn Lane. $200 million building and, as A&M's laid it out, it will have a giant lunar rock yard and a giant Mars rock yard, with the idea that everybody who's going to be doing hardware testing to send vehicles to the moon or Mars is trying to figure out where they're going to do that testing. And it's very expensive to build, obviously. And so companies are making the decision whether they're going to build that themselves and own it or go lease it somewhere. And if they're going to lease it, where do you go to find a giant brockyard to simulate the surface of the moon? And well, the state of Texas answered that question. So what was so unique about that vision was that everybody who's in that ecosystem now wants to come through Houston Texas to do that work. And so with that comes the. You know they'll be have their lab space there, but they may need offices, they're going to be hiring people, and so you know it really is an exciting project. They had their groundbreaking right at the end of last year. I've seen surveyors out there and they think they're going to have it open in 2026. So an aggressive timeline to get that bill. The other part to that bill was they appropriated $150 million for a grant program to incentivize sort of space leadership projects in the state of Texas, and so they have to set up a whole, basically administration portion of this. So they selected nine individuals to serve on the Texas Space Commission who will review those proposals and evaluate them and make awards. Who will review those proposals and evaluate them and make awards, and then they'll also help advise the state on how they can keep their leadership position in the space industry. The first of those awards about 20 million were released a little over a week ago. A couple of them were studies for best use for really cool stuff hypersonic corridors where to be landing sites. And then another one that is to build assets and capabilities for the Space Force in El Paso to have more of a Space Force presence in the state of Texas, which is pretty exciting. So I'm optimistic about what's to come for them. Chris: Yeah, that sounds very exciting, especially the concept of the $200 million grant to A&M and what that will do to attract other businesses that might relocate somewhere else and bring them here, and then all the ancillary things around hiring and jobs et cetera. So that's very exciting news and I think it'll be just around the corner. Let's maybe talk a little bit about. You mentioned Maritime and the port, and most Houstonians People know the Houston port is a significant asset for our area. Anything going on there that's new and exciting, any kind of innovation that you see when you're working with those entities and, I guess, the port authority itself. Brian: Yeah, well, maybe the first thing when you talk about the port is you're absolutely right just how important they are to this well, to all of Houston, but to the country I mean. The scale of the port is hard to appreciate when you just look at the numbers. But the numbers are just staggering. The amount of capability that comes through there and the innovation really is on the logistics and management for how they move, whether it's container, you know, container containers, the container terminal organization and how that whole orchestra is operated, and the capabilities from there is that the crane's getting stuff unloaded, then onto the trucks or rail or whatever. The mechanism to get it out and then get it distributed to wherever it's going is pretty incredible, and so we're fortunate to have them. We just hosted the new port CEO, charlie Jenkins, who's a phenomenal leader, has a career in service of the port, is the right guy to lead that organization into their next chapter. But he made this comment kind of in passing that the port's operations are about a $3 billion a day operation, you know, and you just go like a day of economic impact that go into that. The scale is really something impressive and that's all the trickle out and secondary effects. But it's amazing, the big thing that's going on with them right now is Project 11. That's the deepening and widening of the channel that'll allow additional capacity to go in there, and it's really writing the story for what the next chapter of the port's future is and Houston as a trading hub is, and so it'll allow for larger ships to come through. The additional investments they're making will allow faster turn and movement of all the goods that are on there. So a lot of good stuff going on. I guess the last thing I'll say is anybody who's driven 225 sees all those trucks and I drive it pretty regularly and see that too and as much as nobody likes driving next to a giant 18 wheeler, every one of those trucks is jobs and prosperity for our region, and so the next time you're driving there and you see a hundred trucks going down 225, that's our economic prosperity moving around our region and, candidly, around the country. It's good stuff. Chris: It's a good point. Yeah, I mean it's. You wouldn't want the roads to be empty and no trucks moving. I mean that's not a good sign. So feel blessed that we have all that you know in our area and driving all kinds of different prospects and opportunities for people. So when you are working with, let's talk a little bit about these member organizations and all the different moving parts you know what are you doing? How do you, I guess, keep things organized and people kind of moving in the same direction? Just, I would think that in itself is a full-time job. Brian: Yeah, it's a lot, but you know it's good stuff. I guess I'll start with a phrase that I kind of live by, which is we have a lot of stuff going on and so we'll find something to get on about. Right, we can always find something to work together on, and so, if you kind of start with that attitude, there's a lot of common issues that really require a lot of work but you can get maybe not perfect alignment, but general directional alignment. And so you know, one of the big issues we're working with right now is insurance. Right, we're all dealing with it. I'm sure you've gotten your insurance bill, but whether it's home or your business insurance, all those things, and so you can find a lot of commonality and ideas about hey, how can we work with our state leaders, potentially our federal leaders, with the insurance companies themselves, to try to manage the cost of doing that and find ways could it be grouping, doing kind of what they do in medical where you can have these larger groups or other mechanisms to try and help mitigate some of the costs? For that I'm getting a little granular, but you can find these little pockets where you can go move the ball down the field and get general alignment and so we spend a lot of time doing that. But we are very fortunate that our membership and generally this is kind of a Texan spirit type thing is hey, how do we go get some stuff done? Right, we want to go work on some stuff we want to go work on together. Generally it's a rising tide mentality and I spent a good portion of my career in industry and there are times where we compete like crazy and that's fun and, you know, makes great products and great opportunities for our customers. There are a lot of times where we need the tide to rise and finding alignment about that we try to be an outlet for that and keep things running. Right Is that we have not a big staff but a staff that can help make sure that. You know, our members are doing a lot of this stuff as volunteers, right, but they're bringing ideas to the table. So how can we make sure that they're staying engaged, that we're checking in on them, that we're helping carry these things and that we're creating a forum to have the right discussions and bring leaders together so we can invite in elected officials over relevant stuff, the right industry players, and bring them to the table and figure out what we can do, and then I guess the last thing I'll say is that manifests itself. We have a very active state legislative agenda. That we're going to be spending a fair amount of time in Austin, federal priorities. That we work with our congressional delegation and then very on the ground working with our municipalities and all the companies that are out down here to make movement. Probably talk all day about little one-offs. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Well it is. You know legislature is in session, so I know that creates a busy time for you. You talked a lot about some of the opportunities and I hope we can talk some more about that, but I do want to ask you at this point what are some of the headwinds that you see you know this region and specifically kind of where you are. You know that could be out there. That you see you know this region and specifically kind of where you are. You know that could be out there that you've got to try to deal with, to get ahead of or navigate through. Brian: I'll start with. It's a great time down here. Just the way that each one of those big five industry clusters is going about is that it's a. You know they're all doing well and have a lot of opportunity that's on the horizon or that they're in the midst of right now, but certainly you know, a few headwinds. One of the things that we're always worried about and we work actively is just natural disaster flood mitigation and storm surge and making sure that we're resilient and prepared for the future, and so the risk from some incident happening. I'm more excited to talk about, when it comes to that, all the things that we're doing to mitigate that. In terms of flood mitigation, the coastal barrier protection work that we've been spending a lot of time on. That's the Ike Dike. It has a lot of names, but most commonly known is that but a system to protect us from storm surge. So one is the risk of natural disaster I don't like it, but it's a real thing, right? The second is that we're in the you know how do we have responsible development? And so when you have a project that comes online, there are, you know, reasonable concerns from citizens saying, hey, is this the best thing to be doing with this piece of land, and so anytime you're talking about a development that's going to take a field and turn it into a thing, people get concerned about that and that's perfectly reasonable for them to be concerned and want to do that. And so part of what I spend time doing is addressing like, hey, here's why this is worthwhile, here's why this funds your local municipality and build more parks so we can have the resources and the tax base that justify expenditures that come elsewhere and make through that. But just the ability for the public's ability to impact development, as it happens, is important. But for them to do that knowing all the ground truth, knowing what the trades are and understanding that, so that if they are concerned about something that they come with that from an educated knowledge base and so that's out there. And then I certainly don't want to get political, but anytime there's an administration change, there's just priorities that get changed. And so we're still waiting to understand all of those. We're kind of watching how things are shaken out in Washington DC and we'll adapt and make sure that we're doing everything we can to put our region in a great posture with whatever those priorities are at the end of the day. Chris: So yeah, to that last point where you're kind of right in throws that change. Right now that's happening pretty fast, so you got to stay on your toes. Let me take you back to the Ike Dike, because that you know something to get after Harvey. Hurricane Harvey got talked about a lot. You don't hear much about it anymore. Any kind of updates for the listeners. That might be curious. Is it really going to happen and, if so, what's really going on down there to make sure it doesn't happen? Brian: And if so, what's really going on down there to make sure it doesn't happen? Yeah, so it's still moving along, you know, and with some enthusiasm. So a couple of big milestones. One is that in December of 22, it became a formal project of the US Army Corps of Engineers. It was authorized by Congress as a project, so that says, you know, they can now go focus on that. And so the next big question becomes how do we pay for it? To answer that, the state stepped up in a big way in the last legislative session and they had previously formed what's called the Gulf Coast Protection District. That is the local entity for that project. That will work with the US Army Corps of Engineers. So that group exists and has monthly meetings. They actually have an office in our suite. We lease an office to them them and they have their meeting in our conference room two out of every three months and then they do a rotation on that. Third, and they've been funded to the tune of about a half a billion dollars from the state of Texas. So they're ready to take significant action. We've been working with our federal partners about identifying where the big dollars come from for that project. It's going to be expensive and it's going to take a long time, but it will be likely done in phases and so that allows it. Where you don't need this one giant tranche of money all at once, you can do it sort of in a series and address the most important aspects of that, like the gates, some of the initial most highly populated areas, in phases. But we got to get federal appropriations for it. So in addition to the state entity being in our office, actually the US Army Corps of Engineers is on the fourth floor of this building and so all of the players for that project are in one building in our area right here, so that when what I'm hopeful for is if Corps moved in about six months ago, anytime an elected leader wants to come down and meet, they'll get every leader for that project in the same building and often meeting in our conference room or one of the core conference rooms. But a lot more can get done. There's sort of the opportunity for water cooler conversations between the state and the fed folks, and so I'm optimistic that the cadence just from that proximity will be helpful to that effort. Chris: Very good, that's good to hear. Let's change conversation a little bit. So, as I said, you're the president of BHEP. You mentioned your staff. Let's talk a little about leadership. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that's evolved kind of as you've been in this role? Brian: Yeah, well, I don't know that I can quantify terribly well, but I'm a kind of hey, all hands on deck and let's all just lean into wherever we're going. Right, and I kind of have that expectation of our team that we're have a clear set of priorities generally around the growth of this region and the projects that we're undertaking and that we're just leaning into them all the time and focusing. That I've been. You know I love getting down and into projects and so that's as I've been on this journey. That's been one of the big focus points to me is that you know you need a team to get this amount of stuff done and the size of these projects and the scope and so the ability to trust in the team and lean on them and let them go run with the ball is really important. I've been extremely fortunate that we have a great staff and we have a great membership base that we can lean on to help go bring those things to fruition. But it's a lot of fun coming to work. I think the team has a great time and enjoy the work that we do and you can see the difference that we make because there are buildings. We can point to that, wouldn't, you know, if not for the work of us and the leaders in this community wouldn't be there, and I'm looking forward to seeing that one on Saturn Lane with giant Texas A&M buildings sticking out of it coming through. Chris: It sounds like it's going to be impressive with the rockyards and all. But, you know, it made me think, though your team has a lot on its plate, I would think at times it may feel overwhelming. So, you know, what do you do to kind of help keep the motivation and keep the energy level up for a team that probably, at some points is, you know, starting to get to the end of the rope or run out of gas? Brian: Yeah, diversity of projects and lots of different stuff to work on. I'm guessing and actually I'd kind of turn that question on you, chris, because I can only imagine the type of stress that you guys live under, especially working big cases and big projects. There's one part that is, hey, we're just all in this together, right, and the esprit de corps that comes with. We're tackling big projects and that's just part of what comes with it. But there's another part where you just need to shift gears for a little bit and work on something different and give yourself a little recharge time. But how do you guys deal with it? I'm curious how? Chris: Boyer Miller, yeah that's a fair question to turn around on me. I would say it's similar. I think it's. You know to me that you can't underestimate the power of a team and if you have the right people on the team, there's some self-motivation just within that group, Right. And then I think it is the. We are fortunate to have very diverse type projects. We practice in all industries. So we may be doing a, a deal or a project, but it's in a different industry and there's different nuances that make it exciting. And at the end of the day I think it's the one point you highlighted on you can point to something and we're helping clients achieve their goals. So we can, you know, point to a deal that's been done or, you know, maybe it's a merger of two companies, or one that's grown and now has a new building and doing whatever. But you can point to those successes that you, where you've helped the client achieve, you know something really big for them and their business and their life. And so I think all of that continues the motivation. Yes, sometimes at the end of a big deal, you need just a little bit of a breather, but you just jump right back in and get going. So it makes it fun. Brian: Well, if you'll let me share. So you and I first met in person, had an opportunity to meet at one of your big forums, and that was a bunch of your customers and clients were there, and I love meeting new folks, as you probably saw, and I you know, walking around just saying, hey, I'm Brian, what do you do? And almost every one of them I would ask like, hey. So how do you know Chris, how do you know this group? You know, have you worked with them? And they all had a story. That was exactly that. You know, whatever thing it was that you helped them. We did XYZ project and it was awesome. We use them all the time for all these things. It was just very striking how passionate your customers, your clients, are with the help they've gotten from you guys, and so, anyway, that is extremely commendable and what I've seen from your team has just been amazing. Chris: Well, I appreciate the feedback. It's always good to get that, especially from different sources. So you know, like I think, we're always trying to create raving fans so that they'll keep coming back and tell their friends. So you get a unique seat and I think it's similar. You kind of analogize back to us. I think we get a unique seat to work with Texas entrepreneurs, and that's a pretty cool thing to do, in my view. What's, what would you or how would you describe the Texas entrepreneurial spirit if you could, based on your experience? Brian: Yeah well, I'm a native Texan. I have this hypothesis that part of the reason we're such a proud bunch is that when you go through I don't know if you grew up in Texas, chris but then also this sense of like we can do big things and big audacious things and we can make big asks and ask big questions and go get it done. And so we see a lot of that down here. And so you know, if you were sitting in I'll make this up Iowa and you said you know I want to have a space business and we want to go put hardware on the moon, and you know your neighbors would look at you and kind of scratch their head and in Texas they'd go oh yeah, that's intuitive machines and they're down the street, you should go. You know, go talk to them. They'd love to work with you. So that kind of spirit is really something special. When I was in industry I traveled all over the country working projects. There's something very special about this region, this community, this state, and that translates into why people want to come here. You know we keep Texas and Houston keep winning all these awards for business, new businesses coming here, people moving here, and that's not by accident, it's not by coincidence. It's because we have a great, great story to tell, whether that's workforce and the capabilities, the affordability of being here, the caliber of people you can work with and who your competitors are, and the level of intensity in the game that we play here is high and that creates the right ingredients for a really thriving community, for entrepreneurs, but also for industry any size. Chris: Right, very good. So what advice would you give to entrepreneurs out there that might be looking to start a business, let's say specifically, kind of within your region? If not, maybe beyond that in Houston? What's? Some of the advice you might give them if they wanted to get involved in some of the all the things you've been talking about. Brian: Yeah, dive in. It's a great community and a great ecosystem and there's a reason people are investing here and making a great run at it. We try to make that as easy as it can be. Now it is not easy. There's no illusions that starting a company you know scaling and growing a company all those things are very challenging. So the question I find myself asking I don't know that I'm in a position to give you know this immense amount of wisdom about these things, but what can we as a community and we as an organization be doing to help that entrepreneur? How do we help them build a relationship so that if they're having trouble with a permit, they know who to go ask, who to go talk to If they have a big idea, who might be good partners If they want to bounce something off, a retired executive who they might go talk to about that has the right skillset, so that we can create the conditions for them to be successful? And so that's really how we find ourselves interfacing that ecosystem is how do we put the right players together to go make things happen? Chris: Very good. So the other thing I'm curious to know is what do you see? You mentioned your five big industries. What have you observed of those industries working together to create innovative ideas to help each other? You got to move forward. Brian: Yeah, there's been a lot of. So workforce has been one of the biggest, especially over the last few years, where there's been this really high intensity competition amongst folks. And I wouldn't be surprised if you have been in some of that with, you know, recruiting and retaining high talent attorneys, right Is that? That's been, and so we've spent a lot of time and I've observed a lot of our members in this community go with that as a spirit of, hey, we're not really doing anybody any good If we're just poaching each other's people and you know, and creating pain points and friction between senior executives and those kinds of things. Let's go look at other communities and go figure out hey, what are the best universities and how do we get the professors that are training the students in it to send resumes to our area, right, and that we have a coalition of companies, not just one company has a relationship with one professor and that company benefits from that it's. How do we build that relationship as a community and say to them hey, we have a very strong demand signal, let's work together on things like that and so feeding that workforce pipeline so we're not divvying up the pie, we're growing it. And so, on the workforce side. I hate to be cliche because everybody's talking about AI, but we've had a couple of membership meetings about it. We've been working with partners about integration of it. We've adopted different technologies that have come out of it. But that stuff really, I mean it's the wave that we're living in right now, and so the integration of that into systems, both the how to do it and the mitigation of risk. I think I saw over the weekend that the new DeepSeek had a big not terribly surprised, but had a giant data leak and compromise, and so when you know when you're using that, I can only imagine, chris, I'd be curious how y'all are integrating it. But you know everything you put in there. You got to assume that at some point, somebody you don't want to have access will at least have the opportunity to have access to it, and so you have to be quite careful about how you integrate it. I, just as an aside, how are you guys using it much? Have you all banished it? What's the? Chris: Well, I'd say it's a little bit of both. I mean, we are definitely looking at and finding ways to integrate it. We've adopted a policy, but it starts with, as you mentioned, with us. It starts and stops with maintaining client confidentiality. So there's some systems out there through recognized kind of legal researchers. So Westlaw comes to mind, where they developed AI tool that is solely within their database. So it's secure, it's, it's all legal. You don't have to worry about we were still spot. You still have to check things right the human element of that. But if you're searching, for example, using the AI tool within Westlaw, you don't have to worry about the fake cases you've seen in the news. But our attorneys, you know, if you're going to use it, it has to be approved through the firm which are only a handful. You can't use anything outside and everything has to be double checked by a person to make sure for accuracy, etc. But so it is. I mean, the confidentiality side is a real concern, not just for law firms, for everybody, any company using it, and unfortunately that's just gonna be more and more what we see right. The more that we're moving everything to cloud, you're going to have people coming after it to try to. You know, on the bad side of that and certain countries it's not illegal to be a hacker. So it's just, you know, that's the world we live in now. Yeah Well, you know, brian, this has been a very interesting conversation and the you know, the last time we spoke I came away with the same feeling, and that is, we talked a lot about a lot of opportunity going on in the three to six o'clock region of greater Houston and we didn't even scratch the surface, I'm sure. But my takeaways have been it doesn't matter what industry again, I said earlier, you always kind of automatically think of space and NASA, but it's every type of business you could think of. An industry you could think of Sounds like you've got ample opportunity for businesses and entrepreneurs to start, grow, expand and be there and thrive. Brian: Well, perfectly said, and I think we get a recording. I may use that in some of our promotional material. Chris, that's exactly right. Great time, great place to be and welcome folks to reach out to us to help however we can if they're interested in looking at opportunities down here for that Before I lose you. Chris, one of the favorite questions that you had sent over that I wanted to ask you that you didn't get a chance to ask is what your favorite recreation vacation spot in the state of Texas is. Chris: Well, I'll answer that. I was about to ask you that. I would say if it's kind of a vacation spot in Texas, it would probably be anywhere along the Texas coast to relax a little bit and get some fishing in. Brian: Perfect. Chris: How about you? Brian: We are huge campers, like we love going camping. My kids are eight and 11 and we have state parks pass, and so any day I'm in a state park is a good day for me. But Inks Lake is one of my favorites and McKinney Falls between the two of those. Those are my top two right now, but we've probably been to Keene and we're just checking off the box to hit them all, and maybe we'll upgrade to National Parks as we get a little bit older. But I love our visiting our state park system. They're just absolutely wonderful. Chris: That's great. Okay, last question You're native Texan, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Brian: Oh, I feel like that question is going to get me in trouble, but if you made me choose, I'd pick barbecue. I'll eat it all day, every day, as it shows how about you, how about you? Chris: I think it's a tough one, so I've had some guests. You know, it depends on the day. I probably lean Tex-Mex more than barbecue. But I love the restaurants now that are combining the two, so brisket tacos or brisket nachos or something like that. It's a great combination. Brian: Yeah, there should be an answer all of the above there. Chris: So we're getting close to the rodeo time in Houston, so I have to go with barbecue for now and then back to Tex-Mex, I guess. Brian: Well, I look forward to seeing you at the kickoff event, where we get to go sample a little everything. Deal, that sounds good. Well, I look forward to seeing you at the kickoff event, where we get to go sample a little everything. Chris: Deal. That sounds good. Brian, thanks again for taking the time. Really appreciate your friendship and definitely appreciate what you and your team are doing for all the things business down in the Bay Area. Brian: Well, right back at you, Chris. Thanks for your leadership and all the great work you're doing with your team. Appreciate the opportunity to visit with you today. Thank you. Special Guest: Brian Freedman.

Join host Carol Pankow in this thought-provoking episode of Manager Minute as she sits down with VR fiscal powerhouses Katie Marchesano, Chris Merritt, Allison Flanagan, and Sarah Clardy. Together, they unpack the pressing fiscal issues shaping the vocational rehabilitation (VR) landscape, including: ·  Navigating fiscal forecasting challenges · Addressing technology gaps · Strengthening collaboration between program and fiscal teams The conversation highlights the vital role of policies, training, and institutional knowledge in sustaining VR programs while anticipating future shifts, such as technological advancements, fiscal constraints, and potential WIOA reauthorization. Don't miss this episode, packed with actionable insights and expert reflections to keep VR programs thriving!   Listen Here   Full Transcript:   {Music} Katie: I'm really excited for that tool to be shared, and I think it's going to be a really helpful tool for the agencies.   Carol: This job takes constant attention to detail in what is happening. It is always going to be work.   Chris: More people are going to be reaching out asking for fiscal forecasting and understanding how to look at this program in the future.   Allison: One of the things that pops in my mind that might happen over the next three years is reauthorization of WIOA.   Sarah: I think we're going to see some new resources, hopefully in the technology world develop, that will assist our agencies so that their focus can remain on the customers where it belongs.   Intro Voice: Manager Minute brought to you by the VRTAC for Quality Management, Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time. Here is your host Carol Pankow.   Carol: Well, welcome to the manager minute. Joining me in the studio today are my colleagues Katie Marchesano, Chris Merritt, Allison Flanagan and Sarah Clardy. So this might be a little bit of calamity for our listeners, but we're going to do it. So how y'all doing today?   Sarah: Great   Chris: Great.   Allison: Good.   Katie: Wonderful.   Carol: Awesome to hear it. Well, we have had quite a journey on the QM for the past four years. The fiscal focus was a new aspect of the grant, and we are so grateful to then Commissioner Mark Schultz for realizing that TA in this area was an essential element to the work. And since we're in this final year of the grant, we wanted to have a chance to visit together, share our insights with the listeners into the whole fiscal picture across the VR program, and discuss our perceptions and perspectives. So buckle up, folks, and we're going to dig in. So I want to start with how you each found your way to VR. And I'm going to start with Chris to talk about your journey into VR.   Chris: Well thanks, Carol. Mine's a little bit different than most people. I did not start in VR. I have a very different background. All fiscal for the most part. But I came to work at a fiscal state unit and learned about VR there. Loved it, loved it, loved it. And then was kind of asked to be part of this Ta team and couldn't say no because it's just an incredible program and it's a little complicated. So being able to help the states understand it better is what brought me to this team.   Carol: Well, not you, and you're being modest now. Tell them about like a little bit more of your background because you have an interesting educational background and all of that.   Chris: Yeah, I do. So I'm an environmental engineer by trade. Worked in that field for a while. Learned that sampling sludge was not a cool thing to be doing. So went to work for a small business that was just starting on Department of Defense World. Loved all the fiscal part of that. Went back to school and got my MBA and have been doing fiscal stuff ever since. So yeah, it's a long road that brought me here, but I'm happy I took it.   Carol: Yeah, we're glad you're here. How about you, Miss Allison?   Allison: Well, it's kind of hard to believe that I have over 30 years in this VR journey, and it actually started out in the field as a VR technician, and I just fell in love with the mission and purpose of VR. So I quickly changed my direction to be a VR counselor, and then that evolved to other promotions and positions throughout the year, where I ended up being director of both Kentucky Blind Agency and then moved to Florida as the General Agency Director. And when the VR TKM opportunity came about, I was ready for a change, especially after being a director through the pandemic and through the implementation of WIOA. I was looking forward to just a new opportunity, new learning areas, so this has been a great jump for me. I've enjoyed it very much.   Carol: Why don't you tell them too about your other gig with NRLI a little bit. We'll make a plug there.   Allison: Yeah. So part of the VRTAC-QM is the National Rehabilitation Leadership Institute through San Diego State University. I have the honor of continuing Fred McFarland's legacy, who began this program about 25 years ago. And it is a program that is building the future leaders in the vocational rehabilitation field. And it's been a joy to see these leaders be promoted throughout their careers. Being stepping up, having an interest at that national level, the issues that are facing VR. So it is definitely a part of my job with QM that I hold near and dear to my heart.   Carol: Yeah, it's good stuff, I love it NRLI of our favorite things to participate in when we get to do training. So Katie, over to you next.   Katie: Well, my journey with VR started when my brother was receiving VR services, and he actually is who inspired me to go and get my bachelor's degree in psychology and work in social services. That led me to Department of Workforce Services, where I spent 13 years in various roles and capacities, which ultimately led me back to VR.   Carol: Awesome sauce. And last but not least, Sarah Clardy.   Sarah: So I started out about 24 years ago out of college. I was working in banking full time and going to school full time, and had an opportunity to come on with a state and Missouri vocational rehabilitation, had an opening for an assistant director of accounting and procurement. They had some systems and processes that were a little out of whack and needed some help with reorganizing pretty much the whole accounting structure. So I came over at that time and started in with Missouri, and then spent 20 years there and got to spend half of that time in the field directly with our field staff and counselors and really take this program to heart, and then had an opportunity four years ago to join the VRTAC-QM. I had said for a long time we needed technical assistance in the fiscal realm for years and years. I was thrilled that Mark Schultz saw the vision and made it happen.   Carol: Good stuff. Well, now we're going to enter the danger zone because I have some questions for you all. Not exactly sure how this is going to go, but we are going to do our best. So y'all jump in when you want. So what has been your biggest realization or aha moment since you started with the QM. And Allison, I'm going to have you kick us off and then other folks can jump in.   Allison: Honestly, Carol, there's been a lot of those aha moments for me over the last, you know, almost three years with the Technical Assistance Center since my experience in VR started in the field and I was a counselor, kind of the program side is where my comfort level is or my knowledge and experience. So when I joined the fiscal team there, definitely there was a lot of those aha moments, mainly a lot of the things that I did not know or did not realize even as a director when I came over. So one of those aha's is the director. Even though I received these beautiful monthly budget reports for my fiscal staff, even though I had a leadership team that we reviewed budgets with, understanding the fiscal requirements in and out, the uniform grant guidance and all the regulations. And, EDGAR, all of that, I think, is critical for any director or their leadership team to have knowledge of. And that was definitely one of my aha moments. And one of those things I go back, wow, if I could go back and be a director, I would be a lot smarter after being on the technical assistance side. And like I said, there's been a lot of those aha moments. I could share tons of them, but a couple other ones that jump out is just that critical need for that program side of the House and the fiscal side of the House, to always be communicating and always making sure they're checking with each other. On whether it's a new implementation, whether it's expenses, contracts, doesn't matter. There needs to be that collaboration happening at that level. And then probably the technology challenges is another one of those constant aha moments in the year that we're in and how reliant we are on technology. I am still amazed that there is not technology out there that will do what VR needs it to do, right off the shelf.   Carol: Amen, sister. You said it all. No, but I'm sure there's people that want to say some more.   Chris: I found it interesting when I came over that not every single, not a single state has it right. I thought that there would be more that are fully knowledgeable and are running with it and doing all the great things they are doing, the great things. They just don't have 100% right.   Carol: You are making me laugh with this because I'm just going to say I have to jump in on that. Sarah and I right away, in the beginning, anytime we had met with RSA we learned something new, we're like, uh, I gotta call back to Minnesota, tell them, because we realized, like, hey, we thought we were sort of doing it right, but we all realized things. We went, uh, yeah, we had a little slight misstep on that.   Katie: I would agree with that. Like, we came from a state that was in an intensive agreement. And, you know, I was like, man, we really got it wrong. But then, you know, it's a huge learning curve and there's a lot of people that are putting in their best effort, and they're still just a few things that aren't quite right.   Chris: Absolutely.   Katie: Another realization that I had was we have this table of contents for a grant management manual that we send out to agencies. And when I received it in Wyoming, I was intimidated by all the things that needed to be included. But my aha moment was when you break that down into individual items and you really look at it, it's things that are already in place, the policies and procedures that you're already working on. It's just finding a way to get that on paper and put it into some sort of policy and procedure and internal control. So realizing that states have the capacity to do that, just figuring out how was an aha moment for me.   Sarah: You know, when I came in, I was thinking back to 2017 and RSA came out with guidance on, I'm going to say it, Period of Performance. And it dominated our whole agency for a good nine months, trying to understand the guidance, looking at systems. We had to do a whole overhaul with the way we looked at obligations, just we spent a massive amount of time and effort to right size our systems, internal controls and all of that because prior to performance sets the beat for all of financial within a VR program. So coming into the QM, I really assumed that more agencies knew of Period of Performance and had gone through at least similar steps, or at least had internal conversations. And what I found was completely the opposite. Somehow a lot of folks missed the memo and that work hadn't been done. And of course, we've been running Fred Flintstone style, trying to help agencies get up to snuff. So that's the piece. I think that's been the most interesting. I think for me.   Carol: I think along that same vein for me was really that realization states are more different than I thought because I figured we all had the same information. We all kind of operated sort of the same. You might have your own internal systems, but I remember, Sarah, you and I talking that first year just going like, oh my gosh, everybody is organized so completely differently. They approach their work so completely differently. There isn't just one size fits all. Like, hey, you should do it this way. And like, everybody can do that. Uh uh, it is like having an IPE for how the fiscal is managed. Individualized we need to give very individualized TA. So what do you guys view as the number one challenge facing our programs nationwide? And Sarah, I'm going to have you start us with that.   Sarah: Okay? I'm going to say it I think Allison said it earlier. We are lacking in the technology space. I think a couple of things we have, the pendulum has swung to the other direction and before it was spend, spend, spend, a lot of agencies made adjustments so that they were increasing their spending. The large carryover balances weren't so large. Now my concern is how are we looking at our finances to see if we can still sustain that. And in order to get accurate projections and for leadership teams to have the conversations about where they stand financially, we have to have technology systems in place that are reliable, are tracking period of performance, can provide those fiscal calculations in terms of where we stand on all of the different requirements, so that we have a constant pulse on where do we stand as an agency. And I liken it to being in private industry and a CEO knowing at all times how much does it cost to make the widget? How many widgets are we making and what amount of time? All of those kinds of things. And I feel like in that space right now, we have agencies that are trying to figure that out, and we have some that are in a very delicate position, and it can cause a lot of catastrophe and crisis if that's not solidified. So really, it goes back to having reliable technology that will take care of all of that. And that includes our CMS, our Case Management Systems space. A lot of our vendors are struggling in that Period of Performance area, and we're not there yet. We have a lot more work to do.   Carol: Well, it's like a $4 billion industry, you know, and I feel like we're still using an abacus or something in some cases for tracking the money. It is the most insane thing I have ever seen.   Allison: And, you know, related to that technology challenge, though, is knowing that, that challenge is there, knowing that the technology is not correct. I think what adds to the complexity of that is the fiscal staff or the just the staff within the VR agency. They lack the fiscal knowledge enough to know if their system is working correctly or not, or know how to go in and make the adaptations needed to assist them. And that's a challenge within itself.   Chris: And I will piggyback right on that, because the thing I think that we've struggled with is we have lost so much institutional knowledge that people don't stay in jobs like they used to. And so if these policies and procedures are not written down, you get new people coming in, they don't know what they don't know. And if the technology is not working right, they don't know that that's not something that they can handle. So it's a lack of that long time knowledge that used to be in this program.   Katie: Yeah, Chris, that is exactly where I was going as well, is the loss of staff and institutional knowledge is huge, and it really highlights the importance of getting policies and procedures in place and not waiting till that person has their foot out the door and is ready to head out to make sure that you're getting that in writing. You know, succession planning and really building up success in the team.   Carol: I think for me, one of the things I see, because I love that whole organizational structure and non-delegable responsibilities, I love that area. I think one of the biggest challenges facing the program is the whole shift in how things are organized between if you're in a designated state unit within a designated state agency, and that centralization we have seen of all the fiscal functions along with IT and HR and all of it, but I feel like VR has lost control. And so as these services are centralized, and not that they can't be, but that they get centralized to a point that the VR program has lost complete input control direction. I mean, you've got directors being told you can't spend anything over $5. It has to go through 40 layers. You can't hire anybody. Staff cannot travel to go see customers like all of that. If we can't fix this structure of how things are put into play in each of these states, I really see kind of the demise of the program. As we see things get buried, the program gets buried down within these big agencies. The lack of control ends up leading to problems with them and being able to carry out the mission. And it's really hard to get a handle on that. And I know Congress has given, you know, this leeway so that states can organize like they want. But boy, the way they're organized right now, it's pretty tough.   Allison: It's a double edged sword when you think about it, because you're probably like me Carol, as former directors, we wanted more money going into the consumer services. We wanted it going to support our customers. We wanted to find ways to reduce any kind of administrative type expenses so that that money can go there when the centralized functions were really being pushed at the state levels. In my mind at first, I will say this, at first I saw, yes, this is a benefit because we're going to have these shared services, we're going to be able to spend more of our funds on our customers. And I still somewhat agree with that approach because it is a cost savings. But what has to happen, though, is that balance, what you talked about, the balance where VR still has control over the decisions or they are included in those decisions and the restrictions that have been put in place has to be lifted. But I do see the benefits of those shared services as long as the structure gets set up right.   Carol: Right. And that's been few and far between.   Allison: That needs a national model.   Carol: It does. And that's been a problem. I mean, if there's anything anyone can work on, little congressional assistance in that or whatever, you know, getting some of that rewritten, how that looks.   Sarah: Well, and I came from an agency that was able to retain an entire unit of 13-ish folks when all of those consolidations were occurring because within our Department of Education, our commissioner understood the complexities of our award and knew that if all of those positions rolled up to a department level, they weren't going to be able to support the program and were able to coordinate with our state leadership. And it served the program very, very well. So I think we have a little bit to be desired still in that space to get agencies the support that they need 100%.   Carol: So what has been your favorite thing to work on or accomplishment in your role? And Katie, I'm going to kick that to you to start us off.   Katie: Well, I've really enjoyed my role here with the QM. There's a lot of things that I enjoy, but the task that I've enjoyed the most is really having the ability to dig into the new uniform grant guidance that went into effect October 1st of 2020. For one of the things that I did while doing that was I took the old uniform grant guidance and the new ones and did a side by side where all of the things that were taken out were redlined and all of the things that were added were highlighted, and I'm really excited for that tool to be shared with the agencies right now. That's with RSA to get the stamp of approval, but I've used that tool already to help update all of our things on the website and all the tools that we're sharing with everyone, and I think it's going to be a really helpful tool for the agencies.   Carol: I love that tool, Katie, so much because even when we were down doing to last week and some of the just the nuance pieces that came out, when you're reading it and you go, okay, that language did change. Like there is a slightly nuanced variance to this that I hadn't completely grasped until you see it in the red and the yellow, and it all highlighted up. I mean, it was pretty nice.   Katie: Yeah, they did a lot of plain language changes, which is really evident when you look at the side by side.   Chris: I'll jump in here and tell you what my favorite thing is. And it's when we were working with a state intensively and, you know, we've been working with them for a long time, and you get to know them really well and you understand their environment and how things work, and they come to you and say something really profound, like, I was watching this training the other day and they got this wrong, and they got this wrong and they got this wrong. It is like a proud parent moment. When you go, they understand what the program is supposed to be doing, and they understand when other people not necessarily are getting it wrong, but mostly they're able to recognize what's not absolutely correct. And it just makes you feel like, oh, we have come so far.   Carol: It's like fly, little bird, you're flying.   Chris: Yes.   Allison: That's probably one of my favorite parts too, Chris, is the state work that we've done and how you get to know these state people. There's so many amazing VR staff across the country, and their hearts are all in the right place, and they want to do good. That's what I've enjoyed is getting to know these people better, broadening my network as well because I learn from them. But just being that resource I do like, I'm one of those weird people that likes digging into the laws and regs and finding where is that gray, vague area that we can interpret a little better. So part of the TA work, you know, really digging into some of the laws and some regulatory guidance I've enjoyed as well.   Carol: I have a story I love to share. I was having a breakdown probably a year ago, Sarah's laughing at me, I had a breakdown. You know, you're providing TA to state you're so ingrained with them, especially when they have a corrective action plan, you feel like you're part of them. I always say we, you know, when we're talking because I feel like I'm part of their team and we've been working on a particular piece of it, and nothing that we sent in was anything RSA wanted. All I knew was that this was not what they wanted, but we couldn't exactly figure out what they wanted. And it was driving me crazy. And I'd called Sarah and I said, I think I have to quit being a TA provider because I suck at this. I'm not able to help them. I haven't been able to figure this out. I am done, and I went to bed that night. I actually was on site with another state and I woke up at two in the morning and I do my best thinking as I'm sleeping. It's so weird. I've done it my whole career. I wake up in the middle of the night and have an idea. I woke up at two in the morning. I'm like, oh, I know what they're talking about. And I got up and I typed, I typed for like three hours and then got up for the day and got ready for the other state. But exactly what was needed was that, I mean, when we ended up meeting with the state and then they met with RSA, and that was the thing. It was the thing that was needed to get accomplished. And I felt super proud that we could kind of like, figure it out. It took a while. I almost quit, but, we got there in the end.   Sarah: You know, being in the final year of the grant, everybody's asking the question, what comes next? And of course we don't know what comes next. But I think my favorite part is looking back and building the relationships. So kind of touching on what all of you all have said. Relationships are important to me. Building the trust we are learning alongside of them just like they are. I always say there's no top of the mountain that any of us are ever going to reach when we've arrived. It's a daily learning process, but the program financially is so complex and trying to take those federal requirements And each of the state's requirements, which we've acknowledged already are all different, and bring that together in the center. And there's never been a resource to help agencies get down in the weeds, look at their systems, look at their processes, and help them navigate through that. And so just having something to offer and having directors send an SOS text at 9:00 at night, or we've talked to directors who have been in tears or excited because something really great has happened, and they want to share the success. It's all of that. Just being able to provide that valuable resource and support them along the way has been very rewarding for me. I know, and you all, but especially I think for the States.   Carol: So if you had a crystal ball, what would you predict regarding the financial state of the VR program over the next three years? And Chris, you get to start us on that lovely prediction.   Chris: Okay. Well, since I don't have a crystal ball, I think Sarah touched on this a little bit earlier. So for several years, the message from RSA and from Congress has been to spend, spend, spend. And so there's been a lot of changes in all the agencies to be able to spend more, to spend quicker, to do everything quicker and faster. And I think the spending is catching up. And I think that it might go too far. Like Sarah mentioned, the pendulum is going the other way, and I don't think the fiscal forecasting is robust enough to be able to predict when it's going to get hard. And since most directors do not come from a fiscal background, most directors come with the VR heart that you know is what a counselor has, paying attention to that. Fiscal forecasting is going to be a critical, critical point. And I know that most states are not doing it right. So that's my prediction. More people are going to be reaching out asking for fiscal forecasting and understanding how to look at this program in the future.   Sarah: And I think to tack on to that, I think we're going to see new technology and new resources emerge that will assist our agencies. Again, like Carol said earlier, some days it feels like we have our big chief tablet out and we're still doing things old school. And I think the only direction to go is up. So I think we're going to see some new resources, hopefully in the technology world develop, that will assist our agencies so that their focus can remain on the customers where it belongs.   Allison: And I would have to say ditto to both of that, especially the fiscal forecasting and the pendulum swinging the other way. And a lot of states considering order selection or going into order selection. But one of the things that pops in my mind that might happen over the next three years is reauthorization of WIOA. I know the discussions are happening with Congress right now, and if that implementation happens, you know, what's it going to look like? Because ten years ago when WIOA was passed, it was a huge impact on VR. And it still is. I mean, we're still challenged with trying to get everything implemented, trying to spend the minimum of our 15% on Pre-ETS. There's just so many things that we're still working on through. So very interested to see where that's going to go.   Carol: And I definitely think like nothing ever stays the same. So we always think like we're going to get to the place and it's just going to be even flow, like it's all going to be cool. We don't really have to pay a lot of attention, and I don't think that's ever going to be the state of the VR program. Like it's going to constantly need people paying attention. Whether the pendulum is one way and we have loads of money or it's the other way and we have no money now, like we have to somehow try to like even this out with the fiscal forecasting and all the things you're doing. But if you think you're going to get to the place where like, oh, I've reached it, Nirvana, it's all great. That's never going to be like this job takes constant attention to detail and what is happening. And so it is always going to be work. It's going to take a lot of effort from a lot of people. And as all the new people keep coming and going, figuring that out for the team so that you can sustain the practices and things that you have that help you to understand what's going on.   Katie: Yeah, I would just agree with everything that everyone already said. One of the big pushes that was brought up at CSAVR, is technology, and I think it is going to be interesting to see what kind of technology is introduced in the next three years that's going to help assist our programs.   Carol: So what is your best piece of advice for our listeners? And I'll let anybody open that one up.   Allison: I'm going to say you need to have a deep bench of leaders who are adverse in the financial requirements, maybe incorporating fiscal training for all staff on an annual basis, whether that's just refreshers or making sure new folks being hired understand all the requirements. But fiscal needs to be part of your ongoing training with staff. It's just critical.   Carol: I'd say, for directors coming in, I know the tendency is to want to be like, I have to know everything. I'm the director, I need to know all things. And even when you don't know the things, you pretend, you know the things. Don't pretend you know the things you don't know. Like you need to be humble and figure it out and learn and be willing to learn. For a lot of folks that are growing up in the VR system, having that sort of physical part of your brain, it may not be completely there. You're like, I went into VR because I didn't want to do math, and now you're in charge of, you know, $300 million in a program. And so you've got to just continue to learn and chip away and figure out how you can gain that really strong understanding, because you cannot just hand that off to some other group and think someone's managing that for you, because the buck really does stop with you in the end. As far as the responsibility over the control and allocation of the VR funds. So please keep learning, as Allison said, and be open and be humble when you don't know things and ask.   Sarah: There's a song by the Beatles called With a Little Help from My Friends. Everybody needs a Little help from time to time. And I know over the years we've worked with most of the agencies, but there are some that we haven't, and I've always assumed they're good. They don't need us. They're fine. It's not always necessarily the case. So acknowledging if I pick up a phone and call a peer or a fellow director, or hopefully the TAC continued to exist beyond this grant cycle. Reaching out and asking for help is okay, and it's encouraged.   Katie: Yeah, mine will be through the lens of policy and procedure. That's where I keep hitting. That's my passion on this QM team. We have a ton of resources available, and if you're struggling, you're looking at that table of contents saying, I can't do this. Reach out, give us a call. We can help you with prompting questions just to get the thought process going. And you can do it. It's going to be okay.   Chris: Ok, my piece of advice is to make connections. And I think everybody has kind of said that in their own way. But make those connections so that you have people you can reach out to and ask questions of whether it's us at the TA center, other states, other fiscal people. You need to be able to ask, how do you do this? What do you think of this idea that I have? How would you handle this? I mean, being able to have that connection and that type of conversation is critical 100%.   Carol: Well, I sure appreciate you all. And while we're still around, all our listeners can still connect with us. And we do have a QM fiscal email address. I will spell out for you. It is QM f I s c a l at v r t a c-qm.org. So qmfiscal@vrtac-qm.org. So please do reach out. We still are around for a little while and we can be your phone a friend. So thanks for joining me today guys I really appreciate it.   Chris: Thank you Carol. This was great.   Allison: Thanks for having Us.   Sarah: Thank you.   Katie: Thanks.   {Music} Outro Voice: Conversations powered by VR, one manager at a time, one minute at a time, brought to you by the VR TAC for Quality Management. Catch all of our podcast episodes by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening!

n this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, we dive into the entrepreneurial journey of Summer Craig, founder of Craig Group, a strategic consulting firm. Summer shares how a vacation epiphany led her to start a business while caring for a newborn. Her firm now partners with private equity-backed companies, helping middle-market businesses transition from startups to structured entities ready for expansion. We explore the early challenges of entrepreneurship, including securing initial revenue from clients like Gulf States Toyota. Summer discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly fueled growth in the middle market and healthcare sectors. She emphasizes the importance of building high-quality teams through strategic hiring, focusing on complementary skills and an ownership mentality. Craig Group stands out with its hands-on approach and a patent-pending software platform for sales and marketing forecasting. Summer highlights the significance of creating a flexible work environment that prioritizes excellence and authentic client relationships. Her innovative approach to consulting demonstrates how companies can adapt and thrive in challenging business landscapes. The conversation reveals the delicate balance of cost-saving strategies and necessary investments. Summer shares insights into maintaining a remote work culture built on trust and continuous improvement. We learn about the power of problem-solving, client feedback, and the determination required to transform business challenges into opportunities. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Summer Craig, founder of Craig Group, shares her entrepreneurial journey that started with an epiphany during a vacation while caring for her newborn. Craig Group focuses on strategic consulting for private equity-backed middle-market companies, helping them transition from successful startups to structured entities. The early days of the business involved securing foundational clients like Gulf States Toyota, with initial revenues critical for startup success. Summer discusses the positive impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business growth, particularly in the middle market and healthcare sectors. Strategic hiring decisions and fostering a company culture of complementary skills and flexible work environments are highlighted as key to building high-quality teams. Craig Group differentiates itself with a hands-on, results-driven approach and a patent-pending software platform that enhances sales and marketing forecasting. Building trust with elite clients through effective communication and personal interactions is emphasized as crucial for maintaining successful business relationships. The episode underscores the importance of collecting client feedback to ensure service excellence and continuous improvement. Summer uses her passion for mountain climbing as a metaphor for her entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the determination and vision required to navigate business challenges. The conversation concludes with reflections on the importance of strategic growth consulting and the ongoing journey of team building and client success. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Craig Group GUESTS Summer CraigAbout Summer TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Summer Craig, founder and CEO of Craig Group. Summer's passion for excellence has helped fuel her company's growth, and she and her team's authentic approach to delivering for clients has formed relationships built on trust. Summer, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking the time to come on the podcast. Summer: Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. Chris: So I know there's a lot for us to talk about. I want to start with giving you the opportunity to tell the audience who your company is and what are you known for. Summer: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I love your podcast. I love what you're doing, telling people's stories, so I'm glad to be here. Chris: Thank you. Summer: Yeah, my story is a unique one, very interesting. It actually started with an actual epiphany that I had. I had a true, you know, entrepreneurial lightning strike moment. That that moment was sitting in Frisco, colorado, on vacation, while rocking my three month old third child, which is never the time that you should start a company. But I but that was my I had an epiphany, and the epiphany really was this that I was always going to work very hard, I was going to outwork the people around me, I was going to outwork my peers and I was in a fantastic role, fantastic job. But I had the epiphany that if I was going to always work that hard, no matter what, I could create more value for myself and for the economy by starting my own firm. And I knew that I needed to start my own firm because of that that, if I'm going to always do this, why not build something instead of working for someone else and creating value for somebody else? So that was the epiphany, and it was a true anxiety ridden, sweat inducing moment when I knew that I was going to start a company, you know, despite having a newborn third child. But fast forward. And you know, we're five and a half years later, and you know, we have a firm of 32 people and it turns out the Epiphany was the right way to go for me, that's a really unique story. Chris: And I'm sure your husband thought it was part of brain fog, but you proved him wrong. Summer: Yeah, actually he's been nothing. I think he said okay, sure, you know a little bit, maybe a little more, thinking like oh, we'll see what, we'll see what actually happens here. Chris: Okay, so. So it sounds like the inspiration for you was I want to do this for myself and build something that's mine. Tell us what it is that you've built. Summer: Yeah, absolutely. So what we've built is we built a strategic consulting firm. So we consult with sponsor-backed typically private equity-backed portfolio companies. We really focus on the middle market, lower middle market. What we do with those companies is we come in at different phases in the hold period even pre, even in LOI and we support top line organic growth. So we've built a system of tools and a system of really smart people and a platform that creates a formulaic way to streamline processes, streamline people, streamline technology for growth in these companies. The solution is really right size for companies that have been really successful but haven't really worked on their operations and growth. So they're selling whatever they're selling widgets, whatever it is but have they truly really looked and said is there anybody else I could sell to? Could I be doing something better? Could I be faster, could I do this more cheaply? They haven't really had to do that, but when the PE sponsors come in, you definitely do have to do that and what we're finding is that in a lot of in-house and PE there is a trend of hiring operating partners, which is a newer trend. So some have expertise on top line growth, but for the most part, that expertise is not in-house. So the PE firms need to go outside of their doors to get support to help these firms grow. Chris: So it sounds like you take a company that's almost been successful, despite themselves. That's right and help them systemize that that's right, so that they can maybe leverage it for more success. Summer: Well, yeah, and I mean I hope some of my clients are listening, but many are in Texas and I'll say it's so impressive, a lot of industrial manufacturing it unbelievably successful, either family businesses or entrepreneur-led businesses. But you're right, they haven't really had to. I'm using, you know, using air quotes here, but try that hard because they've had a great product right they've had a great story. the entrepreneur, the founder, had a really great connected network right, so that gets you to a certain amount of growth. But then when you have, you know, pe dollars coming in who are betting on you, there's a growth mandate and the growth mandate that that activity to grow is not the same as what it takes to start a business, so growth is harder and it takes more structure, and that's exactly right. We come in and say, man, this is awesome, how can we take what's awesome, do more of what's awesome, and let's try to reduce some of the risk that you have in the business, probably because nothing's repeatable, nothing's written down, maybe there's no technology supporting system, so we help them build that structure. Chris: And it helps them go to scale. Summer: That's exactly right. Chris: So let me take you back to the beginning, right after the epiphany. What were some of the first things you remember doing to kind of start the business? And, as you said, you build this thing of your own. What were some of those basic building blocks and things you did? Summer: Yeah, Well, for me personally, it was. The first thing was, you know, pray, look for guidance and then talk to people. So I spoke to a lot of people in my network just saying, hey, I've got this crazy idea, I want to build a firm. And the initial idea, while still very similar to what we do, was really around looking at sales and marketing and being able to tie the two together and prove ROI. So that's the crux of what we do right is show your work, show that this works. And I have a long career of traditional marketing. Marketing and marketing has always struggled to tie themselves to results. And that was really, you know, the core idea, you know, back when I originally founded it. But at the time I was working for Gulf States Toyota best people in the world and I'll never work for another company again. That was the, I think I topped out working for them and being, you know, affiliated with the Friedkin family. They are just salt of the earth. So I was very lucky. At the time when I had my epiphany, I said, well, wouldn't this be great if I built my business plan and I started my company but I already had a client? Wouldn't that just make me feel better? Chris: For those of you listening, it's the ideal thing to do. Summer: It really is the ideal and I think, as an entrepreneur especially somebody that I wanted to do something, but it does mitigate some risk when you first file that paperwork and you know you've got some revenue coming in. So I was lucky enough to have Gulf States Toyota before I actually quit my job, they had agreed to hire my firm, which at the time was me, and we had a great relationship and we ended up entering into a contract where I was consulting with them and I was able to do that the day I officially opened, you know, opened Craig Group and opened my doors, and I think that gave me just a little bit of peace, knowing that there was revenue coming in while I was building all the structure that you have to do, which, honestly, is quite painful. Chris: Right, it's very painful. It's always more work than you even can think. Right, absolutely. Summer: And if you've not done it before, which? Who has? That's something, that's a skill set that you know. I mean, I guess you know lawyers do it all the time. You probably do it all the time, right, setting up entities. But if you I just had this, I you know, probably should have advised, got more advice, but I definitely was able to say, oh well, I can do this, I can. And what state do you incorporate and why, and what do you do, and who do you bring in, and is it all those questions? As an entrepreneur, you have to just do it. Chris: We advise on those issues all the time. I was in a conversation yesterday with someone on the same issues and always tell people look, because as the entrepreneur, the other thing you're doing at the very beginning is trying to save every penny you can, and people will maybe try to do it themselves on the legal side, and I try to counsel people. It's an investment in your business, not an expense, and but try, you have to keep it manageable you're exactly right, exactly right. Summer: And luckily I was at that juncture. It was a small enough entity where I was able to get by with it. I don't cannot today with. I have, you know, a wonderful legal team, but that time, you know, just as an entrepreneur, it's really a pain, it's overwhelming, just to figure out how do I, how do I get you know, a wonderful legal team. But that time, you know, just as an entrepreneur, it's really a pain, it's overwhelming, just to figure out how do I, how do I get you know, get started. But again, I was lucky that I had a client and so I had revenue coming in. It really enabled me to get a lot of things done because you didn't have to worry so much about that. And I remember thinking my first goal was, oh, you know, back half of the year, six months, if I could just, you know, make my salary back right, thinking like, oh, I'll just replace my income. Well, that I quickly got client two, client three, and that I blew past that goal. It was amazing. It was a little bit of a you know it, who you know. I really talked to people and got advice and those ended up being some of my clients eventually, when people that I was asking for advice. So that was great. But it was such a funny little goal, which was okay, because if I can do that, then it's like, okay, I've done something that hasn't been a detriment to my family. I'm adding to the family kitty. Well, we realized like, oh wait, now I can. There's more here. Chris: So I was just thinking as you were answering that question. You said it's been just over five years. Summer: So, given the calendar, that means you started in 2019 and then the world went upside down. Chris: So let's talk about, I mean, every business that starts out. It's going to face some headwinds and obviously this was a pretty big one. But just walk us through some of the challenges you faced and how you managed through that, given that you just had this new business. Summer: Absolutely Well, of course, like you know we. Business. Absolutely Well, of course, like you know we. I was just looking at right before COVID so COVID was in March and February I was just looking at expanding and getting some more office space because I'm hiring people. I was looking at leases. So that was hilarious, right, because the minute COVID hit, you know you don't sign the you don't sign the lease, which was great that we hadn't signed it yet, so that was just a fortuitous that was a God thing, but I will say there's a few good things that came out of COVID. In general, COVID was very good for Craig Group and here's why it was good for Craig Group. I think that middle market businesses that I was working with and we also work with healthcare companies as well, especially healthcare technology, B2B and B2C healthcare I think that what COVID brought to us was that people always did, but then they had to go and find your business online Right, and probably on their phone Right. So if you were not ready with a digital presence and for sales and marketing, so if somebody could not seamlessly buy something from you online or if they couldn't research your product online, you were toast in COVID. Chris: Very true yeah. Summer: And even B2B industrial manufacturing businesses that never cared a day in their life about their website. All of a sudden they need their spec sheets to be posted online because they can't drive over and drop them off in person right? They're not going to trade shows, right? So website, but not just the website, really the content, the interaction. And then how good is your email response? How good is your team on the phone? How good are they at working those leads that just got spotlighted? And on the healthcare side, as you can imagine, about COVID, people are scared to death. At that time, telehealth was nascent. Chris: Right. Summer: Pretty terrible still, kind of, and they realized we have to invest here. Patients don't know how to get in touch with us. Everybody's scared. People aren't coming into the doctor's office or the hospital because everyone's afraid that they're going to get COVID. So the messaging opportunity for what we do, which is growth, really about growth. We no longer had to convince our clients you need to take action, because before pre-COVID, and even either at the same time of COVID, there was also this shift with the markets too. Around PE also said oh wait, this has been like really good times and I actually need to start building organic growth instead of just buying another company and doing roll-ups. So this happened very right after COVID. So those two things we did not. We stopped having to tell people. People would ask us why are you doing growth support? We don't need that, right, and nobody says that now, right, no, there's no argument. So COVID, plus what was happening in kind of the deal-making PE market, which we can, that's another. That was another big change for us, but it just helped people say, oh my gosh, we need help. We need help right now. And that was a huge. It was a huge growth time for us. So we grew significantly in 2020 and 2021. Chris: Stars aligned, it sounds like. Summer: Stars aligned and again, it was just one of those who would have. There would have been no way to know. Chris: Forecast, foresee or plan no way. Summer: The only way that I was able to do is I said we were able to kind of make hay, which was okay. We have a door here, so how can I be really good about scaling in a smart way? So I didn't hire tons of people, I hired slowly. I never wanted to have layoff right, so I was able to say I have an opportunity, let's scale slowly. Due to that growth, we're also bootstrapped. So we were able to fund our whole company out of revenue which, especially at that time, I wasn't going to go fundraise. It was just so we were just. We're really lucky that we were able to build something, grow, but grow in a. We weren't growing too fast that we were getting out over our skis. We were able to service our clients, grow, you know, as needed. Then it ended up being a good time for us to kind of get our feet under us about who we are as a firm. Chris: It's a great segue when you talk about the growth you were seeing from the client revenue side forced you to start building your team. Yes, so let's talk about how you went about. One setting the strategy of not growing too fast, because you can fail when you do that, but really focusing on making sure you're making the right hires and adding to your team in the right way. Summer: Yeah Well, I'll say I don't always make the right hires and I've made so many mistakes. If you said that, we'd know you're lying, yeah if there was a thing that I think I could always do better at, it was being even better at hiring. I mean, to me it's the hardest thing that I think we do as business leaders, as CEOs and entrepreneurs. So that is something that I think you just get better at, but you still fail. So that's hard. I have no secret. I have a few things I've learned on that side, but I will say, on the growth side too. Before that, as a person, I'm just a fiscally conservative person in general, so I think some entrepreneurs can get especially more kind of visionary and I think I for sure hold the vision, but I'm very conservative. But that helped us. I think I've had to almost pull myself off of that, so I almost can be too conservative, right. So that's something that I've had to learn about myself, which is I need a counterweight to say you know, do this. But at that time it worked. It was a good way to scale. So I am conservative there, but I did realize in terms of people, if I was really going to grow and we have this value prop about growing with sponsored backed businesses. I myself while I am married to somebody that works in PE and I know a lot about PE. I never myself worked inside the doors of PE and I really had to have that in my firm in order to just have that credibility, you know, just to. Okay got it right and so I did decide very early on. We're growing, we're having a lot of success. I knew that I had to have somebody else at a partnership level that was going to be able to move us to the next level, and it had to be somebody that did not have my skills. Chris: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom, and thanks for listening to the show. Summer: So I needed somebody that was very, you know, has a different background than me, had a different skill set than me, and so that was, you know, really a game-changing hire. So we brought on at that time Libby Covington. And again, she comes out of private equity, she was in-house at Cap street but also worked at law firms and then had also operated in-house with the Doggett family, so we had a lot in common in that sense. But I knew what she brought and what I brought were going to be complimentary to the market and that was ended up being true. You know that that was. But it was hard right, deciding to bring in, you know, somebody. It's really hard. Chris: You make it sound really easy. Summer: It's not. Chris: Because a lot of people entrepreneurs, maybe just humans in general we tend, you know people that we're like, so you tend to hire people like you Absolutely. Instead of doing. What you should be doing is what you did. And how do you hire someone that fills you out right the other side of the skill sets that you don't have to make the strong team. So you know, kudos to you for seeing that, and I know of Libby from her days at Cap Street. So so then you bring Libby on and there's 30 other people you've hired in a few years. Summer: That's right, that's right. Well, I have, you know, tricia Eaton. She started with me. She was actually my first employee, trisha Eaton, she started with me, she was actually my first employee. She now is in an operations role for me. She's been with me since day one. You can do anything. She's the person that can do anything. You just give her a problem and she just goes and solves it. So she has just been my right-hand woman and I couldn't do this without her. So we had her, we had Libby and then, quickly, we had to hire some subject matter experts. So me and Libby cannot keep delivering all the work. Patricia can't deliver all the work. So we really had to go and fill out the teams and I focused on hiring high-margin employees. So where could I bill and where could I charge for their expertise? Sure, right. And then if there was employees where we didn't really use them that much or it was really low margin, we would usually go with consultants. So I had a bench of 1099s. And we still do. We've less. So now we still do. And again, that was another way where we scaled more slowly. So it didn't, you know, have to get ahead of ourselves on building. When was it the right to have the full-time versus the part-time. That was also a benefit of COVID. So I think COVID and I'm seeing this today too it really, I think, enabled people to work the way that was better for them, like there was a new definition of work. Chris: For sure. Yeah, and it's being talked about every day. Summer: Of course, and especially in your industry too, in law firms with a very kind of traditional track, and I think there's people that say I want to work and do really good work, but I can't work in this way, and whether it was in the office or not, but even if it was maybe I want to do great work, but I need to do it 30 hours a week because I'm taking care of my aging mother or I want this lifestyle. I will make less money, but I need to work this much time from this location. So we leaned in hard on that Huge value prop for us. So I think that was one of my successes of being able to hire really great talent, because I was able to align with the times, because it was what it was but also to truly say I want your best work. I don't care if you need to live in Miami, right, I don't care. If you're telling me I really have to work 30 hours a week because I have personal responsibilities, I'm like great, give me your best 30 hours a week. To me that's better than any you know 40 plus hours a week person. That isn't maybe the best. Chris: Sure. Summer: Right. So I, we scaled that, we scaled through that way, we also would. We have a and we still do this today. We bring people on and we do a 60 day trial, and so and it's written, it's papered up and it says if this isn't a fit fit, we're going to separate fast. Chris: Yeah, there's a lot of value in that and it does help the saying of hire slow, fire fast, absolutely. So you get a test run at it. Summer: That's right, and sometimes you can't hire slow. Sometimes I wish I could. I've got I don't know four roles we're hiring right now and I need them to be filled yesterday. Chris: Right. Summer: But at least we've learned that we do have to have a trial period and we have to be eyes wide open about it. You know we're and I. Just part of our culture and it's part of our values is we do excellent work. So excellence is part of our culture. But also, if you can't meet that excellence, you will be let go, like we fire people, and it's not a scary thing, it's just. You know we're, we just have no tolerance. You know, and what we talked about we something we say in houses we don't have. Just you know we're, we just have no tolerance. You know, and what we talked about we something we say in house is we don't have middle managers. You know we don't have that. You're, you're, everyone's in the spotlight. It's that ownership mentality that's right and everybody's like that, so everyone's in the spotlight. There's no middle, you know. So you years, I mean there's been lots of not home runs you know, it's been you know there's hills and valleys there with hiring. Chris: Well, that's good for people to hear. Right, You're not always going to get it right. There's ups and downs, just like in life. But if you're, if you have a mission, like like Craig group does and like our firm does, then you know what your why is. And if something veers off from that, then you stay true to the why and then make those hard decisions. Summer: Yeah, and it always is. It's always hard. It's the hardest thing we do. Chris: No doubt. I want to talk a little bit about innovation, because clearly what your company's doing is innovative and for PE firms. But just in your space, how do you go about fostering innovation amongst your team and encouraging it within the company? Summer: Yeah, I mean, I think that it is who we are. Honestly, it has to do with every single person that we hire. Again, even going back to that, we don't have any middle managers mindset, which is there's no medium, there's no mediocrity, we're always how could you have done better? How could we have done something faster? Wait, what tools did we not use this time? So those questions are asked. Every engagement we have, I'll say we're doing something pretty different. We do have a few competitors out there not very many, but we do something unique. I mean, we are consultants, we do consult, but we're certainly not a consulting firm typically. You know, we're not an Accenture right, because? Why? Because our people actually get in and then they actually do the work, Not that we don't do at Accenture, but that's our model, it is what we do. So we're boots on the ground, so we actually do the work. So we're not an agency, but we do some agency work right. So and then on the technology side, we have a software platform. It's patent pending. It's all about forecasting and how do we get better at forecasting sales and marketing? And if we can forecast better, we can then make action and take action more quickly. And so those are the three things we do. And again, we have some competitors, but what we do as a company inherently is pretty innovative, Like we're doing something a little different, Like the skill set is a little different. We move faster, you know. We have a different, you know. So we are doing something different. I think everybody at the firm knows that and they're aware of it, it's just ingrained in your culture, it's just who they are. Chris: They know it, and I've been to your website so I'll tell you it absolutely comes across from your website, which I know is part of the thought that went into design of the website. Right, you show up different Yep, so it seems like that's part of when you're hiring these people you're looking for someone that can fit that. Summer: That's exactly right that DNA that innovative mindset. It's right and something that Libby and I talk about all the time and again, I fail on it. Sometimes I succeed, but we hire and we've really landed on this for Craig Group is we have to hire for people that just figure it out? They just get it done. It's like I don't really care what they're, you know exactly what they know or what they've done. It's like can you solve this problem? Just you know, almost like if you just did a business school case and put it in front of them and said solve it. Chris: Well, I'm curious because I've been reading a lot about this lately and we have some internal debate about it in our recruiting process. Summer: Do you do any kind of role play as part of your process to put them in the position or challenge them to see how they problem solve. You know, we don't do it formally and I think maybe we also thought about doing it formally like a formal case. We do it in an informal way, which is here's a situation that we're in Usually, it's a real, it's a real client situation and we say hey, what do you think about this? And let them, you know, talk it through. Right so we do it as part of our interview process, but we certainly don't have it formalized and I think maybe we should. Chris: I feel like there's a lot of value in it. I've heard people a lot smarter than me talk on it, and you know the question is and it is the question of does that scare a candidate away? And my answer that is well, if it does, and maybe we learned something early on we should have won't find out till a year later. Absolutely. I'm kind of at a mindset. It seems like a good idea. Summer: I think it's great. I would agree wholeheartedly. If somebody's scared of any kind of testing, then that's probably not a good. It's probably not a good choice. Chris: It was not going to be the person that says let me prove to you I can do this, I'll figure this out, right. So just interesting. You know people's mindsets on that so that always leads me, maybe, into the culture of Craig Group. How would you describe it and what are some of the things that you believe you're doing that help foster and allow it to grow? Summer: yeah, yeah, I'd say that our culture again, we you know excellence in our work is really the number one pillar. We have a thing on our on our mission also. This is no bs. What we mean by that is we show up authentically. We're real, we're real people, we're real humans. We have, you know, everybody that I work with either is caretaking for somebody else in their family, whether it be aging parents, children. They're passionate about volunteering and they're doing that. So we are whole humans and whole people and so I believe in like I don't want to if somebody shows up in an inauthentic way, it's like I'm fine, everything's fine, and I have no tolerance. So we have this real culture of authenticity, excellence, absolute excellence in client delivery. So everybody shows up with that. It's our culture, because we talk about it in hiring, we talk about it in our all-hands monthly meetings, we talk about it in the way we behave, which is we meet people where they are today. So it's okay in Craig group to be very authentically who you are. So that's just how I am, that's how I run the company, so, so we have an authentic culture. But what that also means is everyone at the company we're on, we're remote. We do have a lot of people in Houston, but we are remote. But that does require people to communicate with each other, which is are you okay, all right, picking up the phone and saying because you, if we're all going to have no bs and we're going to work hard, you have to know what your team how, what is your team okay? Chris: what's going on in their life? Summer: yeah, might impact their ability to deliver excellence 100, which is like tell me, do you need help? Chris: my follow-up question was going to be you sounded like a remote company. So, yeah, creating the, the connectivity of that culture, especially at that level that you're trying to achieve, has got to be challenging because you're not in person. Summer: It's so hard, it's so hard and again, I think it's. You know, we have a cameras on culture, you know, and everyone's cameras are on. I mean, I spend, we are all on. You know, video calls all day. Which pros and cons. Chris: Right. Summer: But I think that everyone's leaned into that. There know we can't be grumpy about that. We're not, you know, and everyone's also required to do really good work. But part from a training standpoint, and I think we're getting better at this, I think we can keep getting better. We're not perfect, but working asynchronously, which is what remote work is Right. Not everybody knows how to do that. Like you can't assume that everybody just knows how to work asynchronously. It's a skill set. Knowing when to do async work versus when do you need to have an in-person meeting, knowing when those workflows that is not something that I think you can just know. Chris: Sure. Summer: And so we definitely have an expectation that everyone works really efficiently asynchronously, and I love asynchronous work. Personally, I think it's way more efficient than getting in a big meeting full of people all at the same time and wasting everybody's time. But there is also this time to get everybody in the meeting and you know, sit together. But we are doing better at training people about asynchronous expectations. So we use you know, very technology heavy, very tool heavy. So we use a tool. There's a tool called Loom. It's a video tool. Basically, you can explain something really quickly on your own time and then send it to people so then they can go figure out what you're trying to explain to them. even if you couldn't meet in person. We use project management software. Basecamp is the one we use. Other people use Asana, so we use Basecamp, and all of our work is asynchronously matched. And so I think that culture though one thing that does it, we move really fast. So the culture is again with the excellence and you can move fast with async work. Sometimes it slows you down, sure, because you need to just pick up the phone Instead of you know, so you can. And that's a lot of times where I get into things Is, hey, let's stop doing this Call like call each other, you know somebody's not understanding, right, but our culture is really, we move really fast. Our clients have extremely, extremely high expectations. I mean our clients are you know? PE firms. They're, you know, there's no tolerance. Chris: And they're worried about the ROI and they want the growth yesterday. Yes. Summer: Yesterday and they, you know. So we work under that pressure with all of our clients high intensity, high growth. So we're high intensity, high. You know that we match our clients. We're yeah, that's what, that's who we are, and I think it works really well with a remote team. I think we've been able to hire people that want that, that high intensity work. If you don't want it, you can tell and it doesn't work with that. Chris: It shows up real quick, it shows up. Yeah, so you were talking about, you know, your base clients, the PE firms. Let's talk about what are some of the things you found to be successful for you and your company to kind of build and maintain those relationships so that you keep them and you get more. Summer: Yeah, absolutely so. I think it's challenging to, I think, sell anything which we're selling a service, right, but I think it's challenging to sell into. I don't want to put them all in the same basket. So not all PE or independent sponsors are sponsored, because they're not all created equal, right, so that's. I can say that but it is a tight group of people. It's a it's tight knit. It's a small group. I think it's an it's elite. Most people that have those roles are very well educated. They have great experience. I think you really have to be trustworthy, like they are not going to pull in a partner that has not been vetted. You know that, had that, that hasn't really been like. You know this is the real deal. So those relationships are really hard-earned. You know those are not easy to come by. I will say me and Libby both have our own sets of networks. That was enabled, sort of the catalyst. But the only reason why that's been able, we've had success, is because we've had to prove it. And when we prove it, you know, we then can build onto the next one and the next one. And I mean our model would be that we become a partner with the firm and that they bring us in on multiple portfolio companies and that's what happens, right. But it's hard. It's not something that you don't. You know we're not selling. You know something that's not high value, high stakes, and we really are a partner. We're not a, you know, a vendor and that takes a lot of trust. We have to spend a lot of time. Chris: Yeah, it's funny because I can totally relate. Our mindset here at the firm is the same. We want to be as we say this all the time the legal partner to our clients, an extension of the C-suite, not a vendor, not a commodity, but an actual value-added partner. Summer: Yes, that's exactly right. And it's hard to get there. You don't just say that and you know you're like oh, I want to be your growth partner. I want to be a member of your management team. It's like OK, prove it. Chris: Right. Summer: Right, and so I think that we do that. I think our team consistently delivers best in class results and best in class work. We're also right sized for the lower middle market and middle market, and I think that's what needs to happen. We can't you know it's not Bain, right? No, and they can't, they couldn't, they can't do it anyways Right, but we're also not, you know, your sister's brother that's going to help you with sales and marketing. That you know out of their garage. So I think we're right size and for our size, like for where we are in the market, I think we're an absolute best in class option and we've had to prove it and prove it and that's also why we have best in class talent, because we've proven it and proven it. But it's definitely been. You know it's a hard fought. It's hard fought. Chris: You know every single win is a hard you're only as good as the last one, that's right. Summer: I mean it's dig and ditches hard. You know, it's like we have to say. I mean we're making sure that every time we deliver the work product, the trust and then also the ability to immediately implement our plan, and that's one of we really stake our hats on that, like we don't just give you a here's some really great ideas that you can't implement, nor do you have the money to go hire the team to do it. So we really just hang our hat on, let's roll, let's go, and it's like ready to go, and so that's hard, it's hard work. You know this is tough and so that's exactly right We've got. You know we need that to be so good that the firm, the CEO of the port co and the firm are going to say man, that was really worth it. What would we do without that team? How would we, where would we be right now without that team? Chris: Where else can we use them? Summer: And that's what they. You know it's like we can't. We have to. You know, we have to keep. I think we can always get better. Chris: The results would suggest that. But to your point, the last word you just said right was if you don't have the mindset of continuing to, how can we improve? You're going to get left behind. Summer: That's right, and I think, a lot of my core team. You know one of my senior strategists, Macy Allen. I think every time she works on something, she comes up with another innovative idea about. You know what, if we would have done this or wait this tool, can we try out this tool? We're really leaned into that technology and AI in our work, but I think that what works so well is the answer is yes. Bring it in, let's try it, let's test it no-transcript and just your leadership style. Chris: How would you describe that and how do you think it's evolved since you started this five years ago? Summer: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it definitely has evolved, you know, I think that also going from having you know two people to this very large team. We're very flat organization so we don't have lots of hierarchy. So most people directly report to me probably too many, which is something we're working on. But I think I've got a very straightforward management style so there's really not a lot of dancing around things. There's not a lot of confusion. If I'm telling you something, it's probably going to be very clear. I also give feedback continuously. I believe in spot feedback so we don't wait and write it down and wait for the quarter end to go back and like report. I think that's just tiresome. So everyone is encouraged to give spot feedback both you know, positive and negative and do it in that moment. Sometimes I will do it in our project management tool and say spot feedback and just put it. And that way if it's written. Sometimes they can have some time to react. Chris: Right. Summer: As opposed to kind of. Chris: I like how you signpost it though. Yeah, I say spot feedback. Summer: Like prepare thyself. You are getting feedback. Yeah, and I put it and I just say it, and I think that I lead with kindness, always, always. I think that truth without kindness is cruelty and that's a direct quote from my husband, jason Craig, one of his themes and I think that being kind to people, even when you're frustrated and is, is the only way to be. So lead with kindness, but also tell the truth, which is this you know this went well, this didn't go well, you know, but it's not. It's not about you as a human. You know this isn't a. You know we're not making a personal judgment about you, but this work product, you know, wasn't what it needed to be or whatever it is. But I tend to give feedback. You know, again, it's rapid, it's in this, it's like I lead. You know, very, you know, crisply in the moment I've had to get even more efficient with that, with a lot of people you know, and I don't see all the things, and so I definitely try to speak to every a lot of people to get you know other people's opinions on work product. So I talked to a lot of people. I talked to clients ask for feedback and then go and manage my employees. That are what I heard from clients. So yeah, I think I'm a management style again. I think I get a lot of feedback, a lot information, but crisp, kind, but really Christmas and some compassion right, always, always. Chris: So that's something you mentioned. I don't think a lot of people think to do or they think to. They think about it but they're scared to do it, and that's get feedback from your clients. Summer: Yeah. Chris: Right, it's the most valuable feedback you can get because you're really trying to serve the clients. But if you're not delivering what they want in the way they want it, you're missing the mark. Right, you can work hard and you can believe it's excellent, but if they don't believe it's excellent, hard and you can believe it's excellent, but if they don't believe it's excellent. So anything you do this kind of systemize that, or is that just you know periodic check-ins with your clients, or I don't like that. Summer: You know people will disagree with me on that and there's a whole theory in marketing around, you know, net promoter scores, which is it's just a survey, essentially that we're just not big enough for that. Like I need to be able to call all my CEOs which I do and can, and I get feedback and write it down. I mean, you know, and I talked to all of my CEOs at least every other week and I asked them all every time, you know, and sometimes they would say I don't even know, go talk to the other team and I do which is great, because if the CEO doesn't know if if anything's good or bad, that's great. Chris: That means there's no problem excellent. Summer: But no, I do it continuously. I see that as really one of my roles in sort of steering the ship is talking and saying you know what's, you know and I want everything. I want silly stuff, little bitty, you know things. I got some of that last week. It was a really super small thing, but that you know it matters. That's right. You know I don't, you know I want all the things. So I just try to have a relationship that's very trustworthy. It's informal in the sense that we can talk. I want that kind of relationship. I don't need it to be something that's this big thing. Chris: You don't need an email saying click the button and fail the survey. Summer: I really hate it. I really do I mean again somebody's going to quote me on that in a few years when we do that and send the email but I just no thanks, We'll ask directly? Chris: I don't. I'm not in favor of them either, and I don't know that you get the most authentic feedback. Yeah, right now, at some point, if you're so big, maybe you don't have a choice. Summer: But yeah never lose the personal yeah, that's right, that's right. Chris: Summer, this has been such a fun conversation. I want to just end on a few lighter notes. Okay, what was your first job growing up? Summer: oh, lifeguard, life lifeguard. Out at pecan grove, country club, out in richmond texas, which might have been my most favorite job I've ever had. I still like love it taught because you had to wear. Chris: You got to wear a bathing suit. You were the most tan you ever did. I was the most tan. Summer: I also love to swim. I love teaching swim lessons and I was a swimmer, and it was just it was great very good. Native texan native texan born in odessa, texas. Yeah, native native Texan Lived in Oklahoma, lived in Illinois, but I'm back in Texas. Chris: Okay, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Summer: Tex-Mex, all right yeah. Chris: I usually ask people this question, but you have three young kids so I don't know. But if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where'd you go and what'd you do? Summer: Yeah, my husband and I, even though we live in the flattest part of Texas I think that's under sea level we really love to mountain climb. So we're hikers and climbers. We try to take a pretty big trip every year or so if we can. We did a really big trip this summer. It would be a no-brainer. I mean we would go and climb a really big mountain. Aconcagua in South America has been on his list. I can't quite get it on mine because it's a 30-day trip and I can't. I've got a 11-year-old, a nine-year-old and a five-year-old and I can't quite do that. But if I could wave a magic wand and I could be gone for 30 days, I would go climb Aconcagua and spend time in South America. Chris: How cool. That's a good one. Well, thanks again for taking the time. Love your story. Congratulations on the success that you've already achieved and that I know that's in your future. Summer: Thanks, Chris, appreciate having me on. Special Guest: Summer Craig.

In this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, I speak with Amyn Bandali, CEO of Ivy Kids Systems. Amyn shares the story behind Ivy Kids, a premier childcare and education provider founded by his parents. He reflects on how their move to Pearland, Texas, and the challenges they faced finding quality childcare led to the establishment of their first school. Since then, the family business has grown to 20 locations, with 16 more under development. We discuss the decision to franchise the business, the importance of building a culture of empowerment within teams, and Amyn's philosophy on leadership. He explains how empowering employees with autonomy, transparency, and responsibility has been key to Ivy Kids' success. Amyn also talks about navigating challenges, including the impact of the pandemic, which required the business to pivot toward virtual programs and innovative approaches to childcare. The conversation highlights the critical role of early childhood education in shaping lifelong success, the importance of continuous innovation, and how technology like coding and robotics is being integrated into Ivy Kids' curriculum. Amyn also shares insights into managing a franchise system and the value of fostering strategic relationships and learning from setbacks. This episode is filled with practical lessons for entrepreneurs and leaders who aspire to create sustainable growth and a strong company culture. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Amyn Bandali is the CEO of Ivy Kids Systems, a premier childcare brand founded by his parents in Pearland, Texas, offering education from infants to pre-K and afterschool programs. The company was inspired by the founders' personal experience of struggling to find high-quality childcare when they first moved to the United States from Canada. Amyn joined the business in 2015 and initiated the franchising strategy, growing from 5 corporate locations to 20 total locations with 16 more under development. The company emphasizes a culture of empowerment, focusing on giving employees autonomy, transparency, and timely feedback while understanding the "why" behind strategic initiatives. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Ivy Kids pivoted to online learning and alternative programs, generating a million dollars in revenue for franchisees despite significant enrollment drops. The company is innovating its curriculum by incorporating coding, robotics, digital parent assessments, and classroom camera access to enhance early childhood education. Amyn's leadership style prioritizes empowering team members, setting clear visions, and allowing individuals to develop their own key performance indicators (KPIs). The company values continuous learning, participating in franchise associations, mastermind groups, and local business networks to share best practices. Amyn learned a critical leadership lesson during the pandemic about truly empowering his team by trusting them during challenging times. The company's educational philosophy is grounded in research showing the critical importance of early childhood learning in a child's development. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Ivy Kids Systems GUESTS Amyn BandaliAbout Amyn TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: Amyn, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business. Thanks for agreeing to come on the show. Amyn: Yeah, thank you for having me, Chris. Happy to be here. Chris: So you're the CEO of Ivy Kids Systems. Tell the listeners what Ivy Kids is. What do you do? What are you known for? Amyn: Yeah. So Ivy Kids, we are a premier childcare brand, not just a daycare where parents just come in to pick up and drop off. You know, we provide education and that's from the infant level, so as young as two months old, all the way to our pre-K program, which is five and six year olds. And then we also have an afterschool program as well, where parents pick up and drop off from elementary school. The kids come in for homework help. And we're next year celebrating our 20th anniversary. Chris: Congratulations. That is amazing. Amyn: Yes. So what was the inspiration to get into this primary childcare, education, afterschool learning? Where did that emanate from? Amyn: Yeah. So, you know, a little bit about our history. So Ivy Kids was actually founded by my parents, Allen and Layla. You know, we had moved from Canada to the States or to Houston in 1995, and we lived in Pearland. So, as you're probably aware with Pearland, it experienced massive growth during that time. You know, 518 had one stoplight. Now it's a six-lane highway, it feels like. But you know, my parents, you know, with my brother and I being young children, they found out very hard time finding high quality care for us. You know, we would be in the daycare system, mom and pop childcare, quote unquote, you know, prestigious childcare program, and it was, you know, observation, where there was no learning going on, or my brother and I would, you know, be picked up and we'd have a bump or a bruise, and nobody would be able to point out why. Amyn: My parents being engineers and also having a history of entrepreneurship from their parents and their grandparents, you know, they thought about this industry and they thought, hey, we can do a better job of running high quality schools. So I like to say they reversed engineered the childcare. You know, they put a lot of thought, time and thinking, and over that course of 10 years from when we moved to Pearland, to 2005, we opened our first school, and that was in the Pearland area, and it did really well. So from that, we grew from that one corporate location to then five corporate locations. And then when I joined the business in 2015, and I can talk about the reasons why, but that was when we decided to franchise our brand. And, you know, today we are at 20 locations. We actually just opened our 20th location about a month ago and we have 16 under development right now throughout Texas and the Southeast United States. Chris: And, just curious, I mean, the 20 that exists in the 16 under development, how many of those are franchise versus corporate owned? Amyn: Yeah. So we still own all of the corporate locations today. We are at five corporate locations and we are at 15 franchise locations. You know, I think one of the things that shows maybe a strong brand and, you know, happy franchisees is folks opening their second or third locations. And even though we opened our first school in 2017, you know, that's been one of the great things to see. As a franchisor, you know, seeing folks open their second or third location, looking for sites for that. And that's kind of where we are right now in the evolution of the business, which is really exciting to see. Chris: That sounds exciting. So you're going back to the beginning in listening to the story you were telling about your parents. Yeah. It sounds like a very common entrepreneurial inspirational moment where they see a gap and figure out a way to fill that gap or need, right? And in this case, you know, quality childcare. Amyn: Yeah, absolutely. You know, they saw a lot of great things about this business, which really stand today. And it's, you know, if you do right by that family, you do right by that child, you know, you're having that parent for 10 years from when they're infant to that afterschool program. You know, they saw that childcare is a need, not a want. You know, if you have a dual income family, you have to put your child somewhere where, you know, they'll feel safe where they're learning. And from that they saw a need in building their first Ivy Kids to, well, there's so much research out there about the importance of education at an early age that then, you know, catapults a child into future learning, future success, as opposed to not getting that in the early ages. Chris: And the kind of the downward trajectory of the backing cause. Amyn: Yeah. I mean, there's some amazing studies. There was one that was done about eight years ago by Harvard University that basically said 95 percent of who you are is from the first five years that you were born. You know, everything from what your passions are to your ability to learn. So much of that comes from those first five years. And then if you think about, hey, what is the best return on investment then for my education? It's not necessarily those prestigious universities that does have a high rate of return, but the best ROI actually that a family can spend, that a government could spend is that first five years and getting that part right. Chris: Right. You know, if you're doing that, then you are truly building that foundation. And I think that's one of the drivers for why, you know, why families make a decision. You know, they're looking for, they're seeing the benefits, they're understanding more and more of, you know, the link between high quality learning and how their child is going to do. And they're making a smarter decision now with where they're choosing to enroll their child. Chris: So let's go a little bit, so we understand your parents' inspiration. You alluded to this, but I don't understand what drew you into the business. What were you doing before and what was it that caused you to leave that to step in and kind of take over? Amyn: Yeah. So by the time we had opened our first school, I was in, you know, college or close to college and seeing the business up front, you know, seeing the ability to build your own path, create your own destiny, working in the business from everything, from us assembling the furniture when we were opening our first school, actually laying the grass and the sod down in order for us to get our CEO inspection passed, you know, I was just so enthralled by it. I was so excited about it. The ability of owning something and really charting your destiny. And that really didn't leave me. You know, in college, I also took a job. It was with Student Agencies, which is a business run by undergrads and I did sales there. And that also really excited me too. Amyn: And then, you know, I kind of went the route that a lot of students at Cornell did for undergraduate business, which was pursue finance, look at the business consulting route or the investment banking route. And, you know, I learned a lot going down that path, but I missed being in that small business, you know, really building something that was my own working with a dynamic team and a small team. And, you know, I think building some of that foundation, this amazing opportunity came that was presented by my dad to say, hey, let's franchise the business. You know, we've got something great going. This would be an amazing opportunity for other like-minded people to open their own locations and thrive. Amyn: And I just thought, man, this marries what I did earlier. I've got a bit of foundation for working at larger organizations. You know, maybe there's something there and it turned out to be a good decision. Chris: Very good. That's a great, I love the story and how you were able to, I think it's important. You got an education and you got real world experience outside of that, right? To then bring that into and maybe help professionalize a little bit the company, especially as it was launching into being a franchisor. Amyn: Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, working with the team, let's talk a little bit about, you know, some of the ups and downs that you've experienced and maybe you saw your parents early on experience and building the team around you so that the company can achieve that success. Because if I know anything about hiring, it's an imperfect thing, right? Is that part science, part art? But you do your best to get it right. So tell me, let's talk a little bit about those experiences, you know, what you've learned from that. Amyn: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, going into small business entrepreneurship, there's very much a feeling of working in the business, you know, being so kind of head down and focusing on, hey, how do we survive today? And, you know, I think when you're joining or launching a new business, which really was the franchising part of our business was a brand new business, you are really thinking in that lens and that mindset. And I always feel like hiring, building an infrastructure, it just allows you to think more long term and that just prolongs the lifespan of your business too. So I think making those right strategic hires as soon as we have that capital, thinking ahead about, hey, where do we want to be in the next 5, 10 years and investing in those people and really giving them the freedom and empowerment, you know, to expand their careers, expand their responsibilities as you're seeing them master their role. Amyn: I think that really helped, you know. So one book that I read early on about a year or two after I joined the business was Traction by Gina Wickman. Sure. You know, the entrepreneurial operating system. I mean, that's something that we do today. And I think that was foundational in how I look at people, helping the assistant. Hey, do we have the right people in the right seats? And then are we creating a culture of empowerment? You know, I think about what attracted me to Ivy Kids and starting this franchising part of the business. And it was this idea of taking ownership, having accountability, you know, maybe having a little bit too much rope. Chris: Right. Right. Amyn: And I just think, hey, at a size that we are, those are probably the people that I'm going to be attracting to. And how can I create that where if I were in their shoes, I'd want to be a part of this business. And I think some of that where, hey, there's alignment on goals, but hey, you have the empowerment and you have the ability to achieve it and how you achieve it and how you get to that final product is up to you. You know, I always feel like that allows you to really grow people, especially when you're smaller, maybe you have that limited capital base, you know, and now you can start thinking strategically about your business and then your business can really grow. Chris: So I love that term culture of empowerment. Let's talk about culture. You know, everyone agrees culture is king, right? And every book you read and each strategy, you know, all those clichés. What have you done to kind of foster and build this culture of empowerment within Ivy Kids? Amyn: You know, I think of myself as a generalist. And I think of myself as, hey, I am not the best person in any department. And I think as you grow as a leader, that is just what naturally happens. You know, you have to build a team of people that are smarter, more experienced. I would say better than you in each of these divisions in each of these areas. Amyn: So I think just thinking, hey, if I'm growing or if the business is growing, I have to increase the skill sets of everything around me and I have to play more of that generalist mindset. And with that, it's let me bring these people on and have and let them be the experts in the subject matter experts of what they're doing now. Amyn: Alignment and vision and where we are and ensuring that, hey, prove to me that you can do this job is still very important. Sure. You know, We still need to have check-ins and make sure that, hey, are we all marching in that direction and where we want to go as a company. But at the end of the day, I do think that people are more passionate if they feel a sense of ownership, if they can look back and see, "Oh, I or my team accomplished this." I'm getting praise for those kinds of things. You know, one of the things that we do, we have quarterly town halls and we do shout outs, and it's a thing that I love. We just had ours on Friday. And, you know, the team gives each other shout outs, but I think when people are empowered and we are able to showcase, you did a great job and this is why, and this is what your team is doing, is getting the company moving forward, is amazing. And that might be harder to create that visibility as a company grows. But it is something that I like to keep on the forefront of my mind because empowering people, it's just like this flywheel of positivity, right? Chris: Right. Amyn: It just, it's like the snowball or flywheel effect. It just grows upon itself. You know, the shout outs that you mentioned, I don't think it can be overstated, the value in just simple recognition. Private recognition is great, but the public recognition amongst someone's peers, I mean, it doesn't replace cash rewards, but some people value it as much or more, right? And I think that you would take the time to do that in a thoughtful way, and I can see where that would inspire your people to do more, right? Or, well, gosh, your coworker got it. I'm going to do something so that the next quarter I get it. And it just, to your point, that flywheel effect, it just creates this atmosphere and culture of wanting to achieve and be successful. ADVERT Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas Business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the BoyerMiller.com and thanks for listening to the show. Amyn: The other thing I heard you say is there's a key piece of autonomy to create the culture of empowerment within Ivy Kids and giving your people the autonomy to go do what they do, what they've been hired to do without being micromanaged. Chris: Yeah, that's exactly right. Amyn: I mean, I always think back to when I first started out, you know, in my career, you know, as an investment banking analyst, you know, you're spending 80, a hundred hours a week, you're working on these pitch decks. You're grinding until 2 a.m. You're working on this project and now all of a sudden you have this package, you deliver it to your managing director and then they go to a meeting and you never hear back. You come up from the dungeon, right? Chris: Exactly. Amyn: And I always was like, hey, you know what, I wonder what that client thought or if that what I did had an effect. And you know, that's that part where I'm like, well, am I doing that as a leader? And am I these blockages? You know, because people want to learn and people want to be in those meetings. I think everybody wants to be in that meeting and see where their work is leading to. And I just always think, hey, if I were working for me when I was starting off, would I have liked myself as a boss? Chris: Right. Amyn: And that also means, hey, clear vision of where that person is heading. What am I doing right? And what am I not doing well? You know, I think feedback transparency, you know, I really try and instill that criticism is not a negative word, you know, problems are not bad. You know, problems are just identifications of what we can all do better. Chris: Right. Amyn: I like hearing problems to not, you know, and that could be a, you know, what we're doing and just what's going on within the organization. You know, what the way I would phrase what I just heard you say is about, it's about mindset, right? You can view someone's performance from a positive mindset or a negative mindset and say, look, okay, this didn't go well, but that's a learning moment. Let's find the learning as opposed to chastise and criticize and beat someone down. Chris: Yeah, right. And I think, you know, same situations handled, you know, one versus the other can encourage and empower someone to want to do better or discourage them to, you know, put their tail between their legs and maybe leave, even leave your organization when it's not someone you necessarily want to leave. Amyn: Yeah, and this is a thing that comes over time. It comes with empowerment. It comes with, you know, celebrating that publicly. It comes with a culture of positivity. You know, it is also something that I feel like is so important when you are owning a small business, when you're opening a business is separating yourself and your identity and ego in some ways from your business. Chris: Right. Amyn: You know, it's something that I, you know, try and share with our franchisees when they're opening a school and they're having a quality assurance visit or their first, maybe, you know, not ideal interaction with the parent. I mean, there's a real personal feeling there. It's easier said than done, right? Chris: It is. Amyn: But I, to your point, very important to do. So let's kind of dive into some of those subjects because you start the franchise part of the business, I think you said 2017. So it seems to me you're getting it off the ground. It's going well. And then a global pandemic hit. So let's talk about managing through kind of uncertainty, economic downturn, especially when your business is predicated on kids coming into a public, basically facility and gathering together when that wasn't going on. Amyn: Yeah. I mean, I remember March of 2020, I think our average school enrollment was about 200 children. And I think it went to 40 in two weeks, so very stressful period as you can imagine. You know, and one thing that I learned from the pandemic or from our team and in business is you can really pivot on a dime. You know, and I think that's something that I've taken from me too is we went to online learning, you know, for two, three hours every day we were able to orient the company in that direction. You know, it ended up generating a million dollars of revenue for our franchisees, which was a benefit. You know, we were able to do things like private kindergarten. We were able to do a virtual program for elementary school children. They were able to come in our schools and do the virtual learning from the elementary teacher at our schools, and everybody was separated apart. Chris: Wow. Amyn: So we were able to come up with revenue-generating ideas. We weren't able to make up entirely for the lost revenue due to COVID. But we were able to do some really amazing things and stay in really close communication with our franchisees. Yeah. Because as you know, each city, each state had their own requirements. Chris: Right. Amyn: I think I learned a lot from that, that, hey, if you've got a long-term goal, a long-term plan and things change within your business, that doesn't mean you don't change your goal. You know, you can orient things, you can turn things on a dime. And, you know, although things have returned to normal and in many respects, right? Or pre-COVID, I think the learnings from that have helped our innovation and just saying, hey, let's push a little bit more. Let's try a little bit more. Chris: I love it because I think the lesson there is despite what comes at you, whether it was in your control or not, there's always opportunity. Amyn: So again, it goes back to mindset. I thank you. Okay, get the team, you or your team together and go, okay, where are the opportunities out of this that we probably wouldn't have seen before? And I think, like you said, you see so many people, especially in your industry. Now that kids are back in your facilities, it doesn't take away the opportunities for online learning you can do. Chris: Right. Amyn: And it's just added revenue. Chris: Yeah, that's right. You know, I think, you know, a franchisee, they open and they think, oh man, you know, these problems are just centered around me and oh my gosh, I'm opening a business. And it's luckily now you're around 20 years of experience of us operating, but also imagine those franchisees that had that same feeling and they opened during 2020, 2021, right? Amyn: Where we had to do everything virtual. So, you know, I think, you know, a business owner, you have to be an optimist. You have to look for, hey, what are ways that either I could turn this around or generate some revenue. Growth mindset is just so important. Chris: Yeah, so true. So you mentioned innovation. What are some of the things that you have done or that you may be doing now to kind of foster innovative ideas, innovative thoughts within your team that you can then implement with your franchisees, etc.? Amyn: You know, I think so much of that comes from our goals and seeing, hey, what can we continue to do to further differentiate ourselves as being the leading provider of early childhood education? Right. I mean, you look at our curriculum, you know, we have a lot of, you know, mom and pops that are great, you know, and in varying levels of quality and large franchise organizations too. Right. And what you find is there has not been a great deal of innovation in the curriculum space and in education, you know, so really it's us thinking at things differently, like, hey, just because everybody else is doing the same thing. Chris: Right. Amyn: That grounded in the research of today? Right. Does that relate to the teachers of today? What children need to learn in order to be successful in the elementary school, middle schools in the communities that they're in today. I think just always trying to understand the why, you know, I think why is one of the most important questions that you can ask. And that's really what I do in the meetings is understand, hey, why are we doing this? How are we doing this? You know, I think that generates a lot of thought within our team. Then once we have those strategic tools in place, we have those systems in place. Okay, then what is our cadence to see how we're executing on it and seeing how we're going within that? Amyn: So I always think goal setting at the year, understanding what those rocks are each quarter, but then, hey, just because it's a status quo does not mean that's good enough. You know, so even in our curriculum, implementing coding and robotics, parent assessments that are digital. So you can see every, you know, every month, every two months, exactly what your child's doing in the classroom. Camera access. So as a parent, you can see exactly what's going on in your child's classroom. You know, those are not just tried and true things. Those are things that came from great communication with our parents, a team that is, you know, flexible, forthinking about what they would want to see as a parent and then great execution. Chris: Wow. That's great. So you mentioned robotics. I've got to ask, what are you doing or kind of what's on the horizon as it relates to your curriculum and your delivery of this, your childcare and child education, early childhood education as it relates to AI? Amyn: Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, I think tools like AI are amazing. You know, there's so much that you can do in regards to communication, idea generation. You know, I think for us is just, hey, when it comes to technology, you know, how do we ensure that children today are well-equipped for their technological future? So when we talk about coding and robotics, it's not just sitting in a computer and coding, you know, for it. It's even from that two or three-year-old level of doing logic puzzles, if-then statements. If I take a certain input and I am bringing code puzzles to it, what do those outputs look like? So it's a great way of them to manipulate in a coding language, but not also spending time in the computer and being in front of a screen too, which also which shows you know, a negative impact due to research for that young and FNH, right? We're making steps towards that direction. We are not diving full ahead, you know, to me, it's one thing to be first in an area, but I'd rather do it best, right? And I'd rather do it where, you know, we're not just testing things on children, but we are providing something that is impactful. That's based on research that we know we can implement really well. And I think you're going to continue to see growth in that area, too. You know, other things is just back to a naturalistic component, having things like gardens in our schools, you know, teaching children, hey, the food does not just come from H-E-B. It comes from the ground, and this is why. So, you know, I think innovation is a big part of it. Chris: That's great stuff. I mean, I can imagine parents get excited about hearing about that fundamental learning that their kids are going to get to experience with you. Amyn: Yeah, absolutely. Building strategic relationships, you know, partnerships and things that you have, you know, obviously relationships with franchisees, but other key, you know, advisors or relationships you have. Let's talk in the context of the value you've seen in that, how you think that's helped grow the business and how you lean on those, you know, from time to time to get you through to the next stage, if you will. Chris: Yeah. I mean, I think you always want to be around people that are adding to your skill set and have exceptional talents in those skill sets. You know, I think about continual learning. Luckily, in franchising, it's an amazing model and way for people to share best practices. You know, the IFA International Franchise Association has amazing resources, especially for emerging franchisors. They have great conferences and that's a great way to share ideas. Amyn: You know, I'm part of a mastermind group of franchisors, 50 to 100 units. And just learning and seeing what best practices that they do. You know, they advocate a lot for transparency within a franchise system. Franchisees sharing what their P&Ls look like. What's going well, what's not going well in the business. And franchisees learning from each other and sharing best practices. You know, that's something that is important. We're implementing more in our business with benchmarking and KPIs and performance groups. Even being part of a local community, you know, I'm part of a Vistage group here in Houston. Chris: That sounds like an amazing asset. Amyn: Yeah, I think that is an amazing asset, going and meeting people in person, seeing their businesses, touring their locations. You know, I think sometimes being an entrepreneur, being a CEO can be a very isolating experience. Chris: For sure. Amyn: You know, all the fingers are pointing at you and all the hard questions come to you too. So being able to learn from others. I mean, learning from mistakes is great. Then you're not making them and they're less costly. So I'm always about trying to learn from other people. Chris: You alluded to one of my favorite questions there. So I always, I like to ask a guest, cause I do, we do learn from mistakes and it is nice if you can learn from someone else's, but has there been a setback or something you would describe, you know, a mistake or, you know, again, learning moment, like I mentioned earlier you've encountered? And let's talk about what that was, but what did you do to overcome it? What was the learning and how did it make you better? Amyn: You know, I think the learning that I encountered is not stepping into the business. And I think my idea of being a generalist came from mistakes, you know, being young and eager, wanting to jump in, hey, I can write this operations manual because I've spent time in the business or, you know, hey, use this marketing plan or this idea because it worked for me. You know, I think the big one was COVID early on. Oh my gosh, I was seeing the business totally transform. I felt the need to be in this. I need to be a wartime, you know, CEO or senior member. I need to be here. I need to be calling the franchisees. And really, our team had great ideas and approaches and they were thinking about the business and their fears around the business in a similar way that I was. Chris: Right. Amyn: Yeah. And the moment I snapped out of it was, hey, this training is great. I mean, but think about X, Y, and Z that the franchisee is going through. And I had my operations person tell me that. And I think it was a, oh my gosh, I've sucked myself into this business. Yes, there was a big change, but I talk about empowering my people. That also means not just when moments are good, but when moments are bad as well. So I think that goes both ways and people and relationships strengthen sometimes when you're giving someone the rope when the business is not going that well. Chris: Right. But I mean, that's powerful. I can certainly see how that was an aha moment for you. And again, for your people, right? That you trusted them enough in those times had to go a long way. Amyn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it's kind of like war stories during COVID or the up and down, but, you know, having a kind of a business history and having institutional knowledge, I mean, those are amazing tenants. You know, a franchisee joins, they have now someone on the operations team that's been with you for 20 years. But you're also incorporating, you know, newer people who are excited about the culture that we're trying to build. That's really important. Chris: Yeah. Well, I think you've talked around this, but just to kind of crystallize it, I do want to ask, how would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that's changed or evolved over time? Amyn: That's a really good question. I mean, I would say I like to empower people, you know, I like to set goals and a vision. You know, we have a vision of where we want to be as a company, and I want to understand what people think and how they see us getting there. And I want us, and I'd like to see that individual develop KPIs. What they think are the right metrics. And I want to understand the rationale behind that. And then we'll get together and figure out alignment there. But I like to see how people think. I like to see thinking. I want a demonstration of why they are getting to that problem or what their reasoning is around that problem. Chris: That makes sense. Amyn: Then we check in and I let them do it. I always think about how I, you know, if I was the low man on the totem pole, how empowered would I feel? You know, what are my responsibilities? And I think that attracts, you know, passionate people. Chris: Yeah. Amyn: And that's what I want to see. I want to see passion because I'm giving that responsibility. You know, as you were talking, it made me think. You know, we talked about learning from bad experiences or, you know, maybe learning, seeing something and going, okay, I experienced this, but I don't want to repeat that. And I can't help but think you learned so much as an early analyst and how you were treated. Chris: Yes. Amyn: You go, if I'm ever in a position of leadership, I'm not going to do these things. And it probably serves as a good reminder and a guidepost for you. Chris: Yeah. Amyn: To say, no, you know, remember what I didn't like, and let's do the opposite. Chris: Right. Amyn: Yeah, you learn a lot from great managers and you learn a lot from not so great managers. Yeah. And, you know, I think I had a lot of those on my bucket list and I think a lot of just reflection too. I mean, you know, I really try and take feedback and I really try and understand. Hey, you know, I mean, I've made a lot of mistakes and I think it's just, hey, let me try not to make that same mistake a second time. Chris: Right? Amyn: But you know, the sad truth is you're going to make some more, as will I, and the goal is trying to make the same one twice, right? Chris: That's right. I mean, this has been great. What an exciting business you have going. I want to, before we wrap up, I just always like to ask a few, you know, maybe less serious questions. What was your first job outside of Ivy schools? Amyn: My first job was a company called Student Agencies, in college. I sold ad space on the maps that you'd see around the Ithaca campus and these brochures. And I also helped with marketing promotions. A promotion I actually dressed up in a mascot outfit was a big light bulb because it was for an entrepreneurship idea competition. Chris: That's great. Amyn: So, I was a light bulb for a few weeks around campus. Talk about humility, right? Chris: That's right. And if you sold ad space for a brochure, I have to believe you got used to hearing the word no. Amyn: Oh man, yeah. No is common. No is very common. Chris: Okay, so, grew up in Pearland, you know, Texan as you can get, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Amyn: Oh, Tex-Mex for sure. Chris: Something you missed when you were up in Ithaca, I guess. Amyn: Oh, man, yeah. You didn't see much Tex-Mex over there. Chris: Well, I mean, this has been a great conversation. Congratulations on the success of the family business and where you've taken it, you know, since joining and the franchise side of things. Really appreciate you sharing that story with us and wish you the best success in the future. Amyn: All right. Thank you so much, Chris. I enjoyed it. Special Guest: Amyn Bandali.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I chat with Renee Morris, Chief Curl Officer at Uncle Funky's Daughter. We explore her path from management consultant to leading a national hair care brand. Renee shares her approach to maintaining business control by relying on personal savings and family support rather than external investors. She discusses forming partnerships with major retailers like Target and Walgreens while building a creative team to drive innovation. I learned how she tackles recruitment challenges and ensures brand visibility at a national level. Looking ahead, Renee explains her vision to expand into skincare and education, and serving communities of color in new ways. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Renee Morris discusses her journey from management consultant to Chief Curl Officer at Uncle Funky's Daughter, emphasizing her desire to balance career ambitions with family life. We explore Renee's decision to purchase an existing company rather than starting from scratch, leveraging her experience in sales and marketing strategy within the consumer products sector. Renee highlights the importance of having a financial safety net when transitioning to entrepreneurship, sharing her personal experience of not drawing a salary for years and relying on her husband's support. We talk about Renee's strategic decision to avoid third-party investors to maintain control over her business, focusing on conservative growth and solving customer problems. Renee explains her approach to forming strategic partnerships with major retailers like Target and Walgreens, discussing the role of distributors in helping small brands enter national markets. We discuss the challenges of recruiting and nurturing talent, emphasizing the importance of fostering a collaborative environment that encourages innovation and creative thinking. Renee outlines her vision for expanding the brand into adjacent areas such as skincare and education, aiming to serve the community of color more broadly. We explore Renee's leadership style, focusing on adaptability and learning from failures as she considers new business ventures. Renee shares personal insights from her early career and hiring experiences, emphasizing the importance of trusting one's instincts during the recruitment process. We examine the role of social media and influencers in maintaining customer confidence and visibility during brand transitions, particularly when changes are made to product packaging. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Uncle Funky's Daughter GUESTS Renee MorrisAbout Renee TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Renee Morris, chief Curl Officer at Uncle Funky's Daughter. Renee shares her passion for helping curly girls solve their hair problems with unique and innovative natural hair products. Renee, I want to thank you for coming on Building Texas Business. It's so glad, happy to have you as a guest. Renee: Thank you, I'm excited to be here. Chris: Okay, so you won the award so far for having the coolest and, I would say, funky, but that would be. Renee: Play on words Right. Chris: But as far as a name for a company, uncle Funky's Daughter, yes. Okay, tell us what is your company known for and what do you do? Renee: So Uncle Funky's Daughter is a hair products company. We're based here in Houston, texas. I bought the company, so the parent company is Rotenmore's Consumer Group. But I bought the brand Uncle Funky's Daughter 10 years ago from a husband and wife team. So Uncle Funky's Daughter curates natural hair products for women, men and children who choose to wear their hair naturally, and so that's shampoos, conditioners, curl definers, moisturizers, stylers, finishers. Shampoos, conditioners, curl definers, moisturizers, stylers, finishers you name it, we make it. We also have a thermal protection line for women who want to blow dry and style their hair with heat, and we're distributed nationally Target, walgreens, kroger, cvs, heb, locally, so you name it, other than Walmart, we're there. Chris: Beauty Easy to find, easy to find, easy to find well, I have to ask this because I have daughters. I mean Sephora or Ulta. Renee: No, Sephora or Ulta. Yet we've been working that line. We can talk about that as part of this deep dive, but we've been working that line and but no land in Sephora or Ulta just yet okay, very good. Chris: So how did you find your way into the hair care product world? Because you didn't start there. Renee: No, I am a former management consultant 20 years management consulting, advising clients multi-billion dollar companies on how to drive revenue growth and through sales and marketing. And I was a mother of three kids. At the time my son was probably three or four, my daughters were two and I was flying back and forth between Houston and New York for a client. And I had this realization that I didn't want to do that as a mom. I needed to be home, but I still wanted to be a career person. So I knew I am not built to be a stay-at-home mother. That is not who I am, and COVID taught me that with isolation. And so what I started deciding was I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next and I realized I had some options. Right, it's that fork in the road that you go through. You start to look inwardly every time you have that fork in the road and I did that and I said okay, your option A is to go find a company based in Houston and be a VP or senior VP of some operation. Option B is you find a small company and you're like a big fish in a small pond kind of thing. Option C is you just go do your own thing. And after I kind of went through it, I realized I worked for the Coca-Colas, like in GE Capitals of the world, in my past. I didn't want to go work for a big company. I didn't think I wanted to work for a small company because of my personality style, right, um. And so I decided I wanted to go buy something and then or have my own company. And so then the question becomes do you build or do you buy my? I'm a management consultant by heart, so it's always go buy something. Why? Because I can take it, I can fix it and I can grow it. And so then it became all right, well, what are you going to go buy? And so, like most people out there, they're thinking about buying a company. I started reaching out to brokers, I started doing some networking, calling attorneys, people that work on deals, that kind of stuff, just putting my name out there, and I got all the things that you normally get when you're looking to buy a company the gym, the dry cleaner, the storage facility, the gas station, all the things that I didn't want to buy because I didn't have a passion for them. And so, also, for background, my consulting experience in sales and marketing strategy has been predominantly in consumer products. So I know consumer products, I know revenue growth, I know marketing strategy. So I was like okay, so I kept looking and I used this hair product called Uncle Funky's Daughter. I found it when I first moved here in 2000. Like all curly girls out there back then, that was almost 20 years ago, my goodness. But 15 years ago back then there weren't a lot of natural hair products out there for women of color and women of curly hair with curly hair specifically. And so I googled when I first moved here natural hair products, curly hair, houston and Uncle Funky Stoddard came up. I've never heard of this company right. So I go to rice village and buy this product and I start using it. Extra butter, start using it. And for those out there that are, you know, african American descent, you know thick, curly hair, we do this thing called two strand twists to what. I love it. Two strand twist. Chris: Okay. Renee: So, you take your hair and you twist it in like instead, instead of braiding it, you put it in twists, and there are single twists all over my head right. So that's how I would style my hair wear it, rock a two strand twist. Those out there will understand that, look it up and then Google it and then and so that worked on my hair really well. And so, again, for those with tight, curly hair, finding the right hair product that works for your hair is tough. It is not easy, as you know. One of your team members, courtney, was talking about. She's gone through all the products Because you go through this product journey trying to find something that works for you right. So found Extra Butter, worked, loved it, and then I would stop using it while I'm traveling because I would forget it right at home sure. I would go back to some other competitive brand and it didn't work for my hair. So I'm like, okay, uncle Funky's daughter is the only thing that works for my hair. So I go in to get my Uncle Funky's daughter one day, after I, you know, had braids and wash them out. And yada, yada, yada. I'm going in, I'm getting my extra butter and this guy behind the counter who I bought hair products from for the past at this point, five years, says yeah, my wife and I are going through a divorce and I'm like, oh, so I do have an MBA right. I'm not some, you know, trying to sound like a shark, but my MBA said distressed asset might be willing to sell stress asset might be willing to sell. Like literally, that is the voice that went in my head. And so I was like, oh really. So I stood there in that store and I just chatted with him for hours and about the company, you know what, you know personally what he was going through, because divorce, you know, for those that may have gone through it, can be an emotional, you know troubling time. So I was a listening ear. But as I'm listening, I'm also thinking about like, okay, what's the story behind the brand? Is this going to resonate? And I'm also watching people come in and out, right. And so I said, well, if you guys are you guys thinking about selling it? And he gives me a story about you know what's happening with the sell and cell and I said, well, if you're ever thinking about selling it, let me know. So I walk out, I Google, because you know this is horrible to say, but divorces are public right right. Chris: Is it filed in state court? Renee: it's a public record so I'm figuring out what's happening with the divorce and I find out that the company is in receivership. And for those who don't know, because I did not know at the time what a receivership was, a receivership happens when a divorce is happening and the husband and wife aren't operating, behaving appropriately. Chris: Well, they can't agree on the direction of the company and it can be not in a divorce. But basically, owners cannot agree and a court may appoint a receiver to run the company. Renee: Exactly. Thank you, that's why you're the attorney and a court may appoint a receiver to run the company Exactly. Chris: Thank you. That's why you're the attorney. Renee: Have a little experience with that yes, so the judge had appointed this guy to be the receiver. I reached out to the gentleman and I said I'm interested in the sale of Uncle Funky's daughter, if that so happens to be the case. And so the one thing I did learn and you can probably expound on this is oftentimes in a divorce, when the receiver comes in, at that point that receiver is really thinking about how to get rid of this asset. And so those are all the things that I learned during this process, and I was like, okay, so he wants to sell because he wants to get paid and he knows nothing about this business. Chris: He was, you know no offense, no emotional tie to it, for sure no emotional tie. Renee: He's an older white gentleman who knows nothing about black hair products and so I was like, okay, so he doesn't know, he doesn't have an appreciation for the value of the company. And so I reached out and I said, okay, here's a number. You wouldn't believe the number I gave him and he counted with some minor you, some minor adjustment, and we bought this company for less than $100,000. And they had a revenue at the time. When I saw their tax returns, I think it was maybe a million or so that they claimed in revenue. At some point they said, but at least for sure I think our first year of revenue was probably around and it was a partial year. Probably a quarter million dollars is what revenue they generated, and so we really, if you talk about a multiple of sales, we bought it on a tremendous it's a heck of a deal the deal. Okay, I can't find those deals these days. If anybody has one of those deals, you come let me know and so. So that's how we ended up buying this company ten years ago and shortly thereafter, target comes knocking at the door and says, hey, we were having this discussion with the owners about, you know, potentially launching. Would you be interested? And I'm like, absolutely. And it was because they were going through this divorce that they couldn't get over the finish line, right? And so shortly after we buy, we're launching in target. But before I did that, one of the first things I did was because, if you ever, if any, it's probably so old you can't find it. But the label. When I first bought the company, when I was buying it, it was this woman's face with a big afro on the front and it had a cute little 70s vibe on it and it was in this white hdpe bottle which, by the way, those aren't recyclable. So I said first, we need to change this, we got to change the packaging, we got to upgrade the label, we need to make it universally appealing to all curly girls, because if I look at a woman with a big afro, I think tight, curly hair like mine right and our products work across the spectrum from wavy, like Courtney, to really tight, like Renee, and that wasn't representative on the label okay so we redesigned the label, changed the bottle from an HDPE bottle to a PET bottle, which is recyclable, and then just upgraded this packaging to what I consider a sleeker new look. Chris: Very good, Great story, Thank you. So back up a little bit, share a little bit, because so you go from big corporate consulting job some comfort in there probably. You mentioned travel and you did mention the mom aspect playing a role. But let's talk a little bit about actually getting the courage to take that leap out of the big corporate role into. I'm going to buy something that's all on me now to either make it or break it. Yeah, that had to be scary. Renee: It was, and I am fortunate in that. You're right. I had comfort. We have financial security. I had a husband who was, who still is, who's a senior executive in medical devices has nothing to do with anything about consumer products, but you know, we have the luxury for him to say I can carry this load, financial load, and I think that's the big mix, right? I tell people all the time if you're going to take that leap, you got to make sure you've got cash flow, because for not only for your, you know, for the company, but for you personally, right? Because there were several years where my husband called my business a hobby Because I was contributing nothing to the financial plan. Chris: In fact, you were probably taken away. Yeah, I was taken away. Renee: So every year I mean. So I wasn't drawing a salary. I didn't draw a salary for a couple of years after I, I didn't draw a salary until our tax accountant said you have to draw a salary because we're changing you from whatever tax to an S-corp. And I was like oh, wow, really Okay. So what am I going to pay myself? Okay, and then he goes Well, you have, and it has to be reasonable. So for probably three or four years after I bought the company, I didn't draw a salary. I was paying my employees but I wasn't paying myself. And so I think and I say all that to say yes, it takes a leap, but it also takes the ability and the willingness to take that financial hit Right. So were there things that we probably wanted to do as a family that we didn't do? Probably so. Chris: Yeah. Renee: Because I'm growing this brand and was there times I went to my husband like I need another thirty thousand dollars? Probably so. And because one of the things I specifically had chosen is I did not want, and I currently still don't want, to pull in private equity, vc any type of third party investor funding. That is a personal decision I've made and it's because I am a former accountant and I'm extremely financially conservative and I also don't want different incentives to help influence how I run my business, different incentives to help influence how I run my business, and what I mean by that is I personally just didn't want to have a PE company saying you need to do these three things because your multi, your EBITDA needs to look like this and your revenue growth needs to look like that. Right, so I could have we could have easily grown really fast, like a lot of brands do, and grown themselves out of business, or, but I chose the path to grow really conservatively Now, and so I think I say all that to say I think, yes, financially speaking, having the bandwidth to be able to float yourself and your company for a while is critical, and so don't take the leap if you're still, if you're at your job today, living paycheck to paycheck right, you have to have a cushion. Your job today, living paycheck to paycheck right, you have to have a cushion. So what that means is, maybe if you're trying to start the company, then you're running your business while you're living paycheck to paycheck and oh, by the way, you gotta stop living paycheck to paycheck because you got to start to build that cushion, right. So some of the you got to make sacrifices and I think that's the hard thing. Not everyone's willing to make the financial sacrifice that it takes to really run and grow a business without third party support. Now, in today's world, you can go get bc capital funding and you know money is flowing, or at least it was, you know but there, but there's sacrifices, but there's sacrifices with that, and so, yeah, that's great advice, you know. Chris: The other thing that you mentioned, as you were evaluating companies is one of my favorite words when it comes to business is passion. You passed on a ton of things because you weren't passionate about it. Renee: Yeah. Chris: You found something you were passionate about, and I think that's a lesson for people too, right Is? It's not easy to do. As you mentioned. Sacrifices have to be made. So if you're not really passionate about that decision to go be an entrepreneur, start your own business. It's going to be tough. Renee: Yeah, it's going to be tough, and so, because I have to wake up every day, I my passion is really helping people solve problems, and I do that through hair, because hair is a problem in the curly hair community. How do I maintain frizz? How do I keep it under control? How do I keep it healthy so it doesn't break? How do I keep it healthy so it can grow? How do I stop the scalp irritation? There's so many problems that happen in hair and so I what I think about. Like literally yesterday I was with my marketing team and we're talking about a campaign for the next month for products etc. Or really November, and I said, OK, what problem are we helping her solve? And that's literally the way I think about stuff what problem are we helping her solve? Because if we're not helping her solve a problem, then I don't have anything to talk about. Chris: Ok, Right, yeah, it's not going to move off the shelf. Renee: It's not going to move off the shelf thing to talk about. Chris: Okay, right, yeah, it's not going to move off the shelf. It's not going to move off the shelf. So another thing that you kind of alluded to, you went through somewhat. It sounds like a kind of transforming the business that you took over, right? You mentioned the product label and packaging. Let's talk. What else did you, you know, in taking that business over, did you find yourself having to change, and how did you go about making those decisions? Are either prioritizing them and you know we can't do it all- at once yeah, so what walk? us through some of the learning you went through that well, you know what's interesting is. Renee: So it wasn't much of a transformation, but it was. If you think about learning from a marketing standpoint, if you're going to buy a business, especially a consumer product company, and you buy it in today's world where we're so used to knowing who the owner is the first people don't like change. So one of the first things I had to do was convince our current customers that nothing had changed other than the label. The minute your package changes and it looks different, they're like the formulas have changed, it's not the same be the same. It's not the same product. So the first thing I had to do was convince them that this is the same product. In fact, I brought back discontinued SKUs that the receiver had stopped selling because they were slow moving. **Chris: How did you go about convincing the existing customer base? Nothing changed. Renee: So news articles, facebook articles, facebook social ads, like having live conversations, going live on social media all of those were things that I had to go in and dispute or Dubuque being like I was the person respond. There was no team, it was me and one other person. The first person I hired was a social media person. Okay, wasn't a warehouse person, it was a social media person because I knew being the being in the face of the customer was so important. So being live and answering questions online, answering the phone and people would call they will go. I heard that this wasn't the same formula. No, ma'am, it's the same formula. And actually having those, it was me having those live, one-on-one conversations. And so I think really touching the customer and being personal with her was the key to our success in in gaining that confidence. And we also you know this was early in the days of influencers we also had to partner with people to be able to talk about. Like it's the same stuff, guys, this is the bottle. This is the old bottle. This is the new bottle. This is both sides of my hair, no change. Chris: Okay, okay, very smart to especially, like you said, I mean so many people now the social media influencers have such impact on what products get picked up in the mainstream. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom, and thanks for listening to the show. Chris:So let's move forward a little bit. Part of changing things new products. There's a level. You mentioned your marketing meeting yesterday. What do you do within the company to help kind of foster innovation and inspire your people to be innovative about the products? Renee: That's a tough one because it's hard. Here's the challenge that we have as a small company. As a small company, it's hard for me to afford to pay me like the equivalent of a me right. The woman or a man with the MBA in marketing who's got, you know, 10 years at Coca-Cola. I am oftentimes recruiting talent, that's learning and I'm teaching, as they, you know, grow up in our company and so innovation is really. You know, I'm usually in that meeting asking the provocative question Like do these assets, does this story come together like cohesively, what problems are we helping them solve? Like, I am there helping them think through and push their thinking a little bit forward. We'll sit and we just do brainstorming with, you know, little toys in the room and stuff to play with, but it's really just helping them kind of. All right, just toss some ideas out there. Let's just throw like what is this, what does this mean? What's her brand voice? What does she sound like? What does she look like? Like asking those questions to help them just kind of think outside of the box. Now, if she looks like this, so what kind of tone is she going to have? All right, so what would she say then? Okay, so let's talk about, like how then that manifests itself and how it shows up creatively, and so just helping them kind of drill down to the so what is really kind of the role I like to play. It's the role I'm playing right now because I'm looking for a marketing director. Chris: Okay, yeah, anybody listening out there. Renee: Anybody listening out there? Submit resumes. Chris: So you talked about some major players as partners that you have right, yeah. Target and Walgreens and CVS, et cetera. So let's talk a little bit about that. How did you go about? You kind of you told a little bit about Target, but what have you done and what have you found to be successful? And maybe strategies that weren't successful in forming those relationships, but maybe, even more importantly, fostering and maintaining those relationships. Renee: So forming on the forming side retailers. For those who may or may not know the space, they want to come to you in one of two ways either direct or indirect through a distributor. For a small brand like mine, it's usually hey, I don't want to service direct, I want you to go through a distributor. And usually it's because when you first launch, you're going to be in a handful of their stores not full distribution is what they call it so not in all 1700 Target stores, but I think we started out in a hundred and so we had to go through a third-party distributor, and so that distributor then opened the door to other national retailers for us. So if you're thinking about launching into a national retail partner and you're a small company like mine, your best route to market is finding a distributor that represents your category in a national retailer. So whether that's peanut butter, hair products, lotions, flat tires, whatever, so you have to go and find that distributor. So that was step one. Once we got that relationship, our job is to grow it by driving traffic through the stores and getting that sell through. If it's not generating units per store per week, it gets pulled right. So one person wisely said a retail shelf space is like real estate. Once you buy your home, you don't want to lose it to foreclosure. So once you've got that slot, my job is to defend those two slots. And when I say we're national retailers, we're not like a P&G where P&G dominates the shelf. We've got sometimes two slots, sometimes four, but we're not, we don't have 10. So our slots are really important for us at a retailer and so for me, maintaining the relationship comes back to driving the traffic to the store. But, more importantly, supply chain. So when I talked about growing too fast for some brands and having measured growth, it was very important for me because I understood I came from a consulting company, although I did did sales and marketing most of what we did as an organization was supply chain. I wasn't the supply chain person, but I like to say I knew enough to be dangerous when I bought Uncle Plunky's daughter. So because I understood supply chain, I knew that not, we could not risk. We needed to have safety stock, we need to have inventory levels that look like x, and so that's why I did what I called measured growth. And so you know the distributor may come to me and go. I can get you into Kroger, walmart. Nope, we're going to do one retailer a year, one big guy a year, because I need to make sure I can scale, I need to make sure my contract manufacturers can scale, I need to make sure my team knows what to do and they know how to execute and fulfill the requirements of that specific retailer and so that we are successful. So that was the way that we grew and that's kind of the way we've continued to grow. Chris: That's so smart, that discipline right. It's easier said than done, because you just start a company and you go a couple years not making any money, or what you do make you put back in the company and then you got all these great opportunities. Come at you once. Renee: It's easy to say yes yes, yes, yes and yes, but you can't fulfill those promises, no one will come back. And there are horror stories where brands have been like yes, I'll go into Target, walmart, kroger, heb, cvs and Walgreens all at the same time and they can't meet the demand or they launch and they don't have enough awareness in the consumer market to be able to support and drive the traffic in all of those stores. So you really have to focus on how you're going to grow, where you're going to grow, and how you're going to drive traffic into these markets and into those stores. Chris: I mean any details you can put behind that, just as some examples to make it a little more tangible of things that you did, things that you thought about. Okay, we have to get this right to kind of prove that we can go to the next level. Renee: Yes. So for Target we did a lot of in-store events, so we took Target. So imagine if I was doing replicating this across like five different retailers. But for Target back in the day, for social media was much more organic and less pay-per-play than it is now, right, so we would do like it's a 10-day countdown. You know, to Target we're launching in 10, 9, 8, like on social media, it was like running ads. Then we did a find us in the Target, so we would do these fun games on social media and our followers would have to find us in their local Target and if they found us and they won a gift card, so we were doing anything we could. We would do in-store events where we would just have a table popped up where you can try products, give away products, get coupons, you name it. We were doing it. Gotcha, we were doing events outside the store. Inside the store. I was rogue because I didn't have permission from Target to do this. I mean because that would have cost me tens of thousand dollars, right, Target, I hope you're not listening and so we would literally just grab a camera and kind of come in and we would kind of sneak our little basket through the store down the hall and we would sit in there and the manager would come like, oh, we're just doing some footage, and I would say I just launched and I'm really trying to help my business and they would get it because you know, their local store manager, and so they would allow us to do like a little bit of a, a little bit of a pop-up shop kind of thing, and they would allow it. Now, today they probably wouldn't allow it because we're probably a lot more disciplined, but 15 years ago, 10 years ago, they would allow it and so, yeah, so those are the things that we had to do. So imagine if I was doing that for sally, for walmart, for kro, all in the same year, and I'm still trying to drive the traffic right, because we were still a small brand. Chris: Sure. Renee: I still call us a small brand because you know, if I go to you and I say, have you heard of Uncle Funky's Daughter? And your answer is no, then I'm a small brand, right. If I say you cause, everybody's heard of Clorox, coca-cola, pepsi, all the things, right, lacroix, you name it, they've heard of it, they haven't heard of Uncle Funky's Daughter. And so we're still in constant mode of brand awareness, and so trying to build that brand awareness and drive demand in every retail shelf at the same time would have been a daunting task for a brand like ours. Chris: Sure, do you still have the Rice Village? No, okay, shut that down we shut it down. Renee: I shut it down when I bought the company. That was the condition of the acquisition, because the day that I went and discovered who the owner was of the brand and I was sitting there chatting up the guy, in about a four hour period that I was there, maybe three people walked into that door okay so that you know, my brain said all right, that's a like a revenue killer. I'm not, you're not driving revenue right you need to focus on driving traffic on the retail shelf, and so are. We have no physical retail store now. Will we once again one day, maybe in a different format? Right, because now you, my friends? Other people have said you guys should open up a salon, and I'm like so maybe we'll open up a salon where the products are available and featured, but a retail store exclusively focused on our products will not be in a timeline. Chris: Okay. So there's an example right of an idea from friends. Maybe you thought about it, of branching out from what's core to your business. So far you've said no because you haven't done it. Maybe it's still out there. Why have you not done that? And I guess what could you counsel some listeners if they're faced with that? Or maybe they've done it and trying to make it work Again. That's another danger point, right Before you kind of branch into something different. Renee: So there are two things what I think about. Again. I always go from management consultant first right when I think about my business. I don't think about it personally, right, I think about it objectively. So I can go deep in my vertical or I can go wide horizontally, and I can do both. And so right now, where we are as a brand, honestly, is we need to go deeper in R&D and innovation. So we have not had an opportunity to launch a new product since COVID, and so we're in the process of developing a new product, so that's my primary focus. A new product line so we're developing a new product line, so that's my front focus. New product line so we're developing a new product line, so that's my front focus. Then, as I start to think about adjacency, about how do we take our core and expand and pivot beyond. Do you go to Skin next and stay in consumer products and go into Skin? Do you go in the two places that I'm more actively looking at Skin is out there as a product extension, but that's still core to Uncle Funky's Daughter. Do you go and do you buy another small company within Rote Morris Consumer Group and now you build a portfolio of brands? Because that's, really what I wanted to do when I started Rote Morris Consumer Group. My vision is to have a portfolio of consumer goods brands that meet the needs of the community of color, whether it's beauty, so for beauty. So that could be hair, that could be skin, it could be makeup, it could be a variety of different things that help her solve her problems every day. So that's really the vision. And then I bought this building a couple years ago and we have this wonderful, amazing space, and so and I open up this space I'm looking around. What are we gonna do with the rest of this space? We have this whole first floor, we have a whole second floor that's unoccupied, and even before I bought the building, this idea of building talent and a pipeline of funky junkies is what we call our followers funky junkies yeah that's what we call our followers, our customers. But how do you start to build not only a pipeline of loyal customers but a pipeline of loyal users? And so I started thinking about what if you actually had a trade school? What if you actually started? What if you were the next Paul Mitchell for African-American hair products, right when there's a Paul Mitchell school and you're teaching natural hair instead of you know other treatments that they do, and those exist outside of Texas. There's one that exists in Houston, but not focused on natural hair, but focused on beauty school. And so for those people out there who choose to have a different path in life and not go to college, but they're looking for a vocation or trade school and they want to be a hairstylist or barber, do you create a space for them to be able to do that? So that's the second adjacency. And then the third adjacency is then do you go the other end? So I know how to do hair, I'm learning how to do hair, I've got hair products, I'm doing hair on the other side and that's where the salon comes in. So in all both ends of the spectrum, I am a deep analytical person, so it's understanding what's happening in the market. So in the salon side, you look and you have to figure out and this is for anyone right. You never take a leap in adjacencies just because you think you have the money, the capability, the resources, whatever. You have to understand what's happening in the market because you're not smarter than the whole market. You might be smarter than a couple people in the market, but not the whole market. And so when I look at the hair salon space, I knew of several people in the Houston market that had launched salons and they had failed. They had failed within a three-year cycle and they had failed because the type of offering service offering that they wanted to provide was challenging. And that's the same service offering that we would need to provide as a brand. Chris: Right. Renee: And resources and talent. Going back to this other end of the pipeline I was talking about, in the supply chain, those can be sometimes challenging resources to recruit and retain in a salon side, and so when I do the analysis, it's looking at the risk versus reward. How am I smarter than the next person? How do I learn from those failures and ensure that I can recruit talent where I'm not? I don't have a high degree of turnover. I can create brand consistency. I can create service levels that meet the needs of not only what I want to offer, but what our customers expect. I need to exceed it, and so, because I haven't gotten that magic formula yet, we're leaving the salon right here in the marketplace. Chris: It's still on the drawing board right. Still on the drawing board, I like. I like it well, as it should be, until you figure it out, right? Yeah well, so let's turn a little bit and talk a little more about you yeah in leadership. How would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that's changed or evolved in the last 10 years? Renee: so I am a type a, hardcore type a. I am a driver and I know that about myself. But I also know that one of my weaknesses as a leader is I don't micromanage. What I have learned to evolve because of my consulting background, right In a consulting world you know 20 plus years is how I was trained. I'm a former salesperson. You just go get it done right, you know. So that is that's kind of like my bread and butter, and you have a team of type A's that are pretty much driven just like you are. So when you guys have a clear plan and you've got the end goal, all you're doing is managing the type A's to make sure that they get to the goal right at a very high level. No one needs to. You set meetings to review the spreadsheet and the spreadshe's done right. Fast forward to Uncle Funky's daughter. You set meetings to review the spreadsheet and it's like, oh, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, what you wanted me to do, so it requires much more. What I'm learning is it requires me to evolve my leadership style from one that's hands off, that's a little bit more hands-on, to make sure that my team understands where the bar of excellence is what our customers want from us, what the implications are when we miss deadlines, what the implications are if we ship the wrong product to the wrong customer, and so showing them and teaching them is where I've kind of learned. That's where my role is as a leader, really helping them really understand the implications of behaviors. And so I've evolved to from a leader that's I'm still. I still tell my team hey, I don't micromanage. If I have to, if I know it before you do, that's probably a problem, and so so they understand that, and so I think I'm still evolving my leadership style to adapt to a smaller company with a different team that thinks differently from the type A consultants with the MBAs that I'm used to working with, to the ones who you know maybe they don't have the MBA or maybe they're going to get it, or maybe they have a desire to get there, and so it really has required. It's a growth opportunity for me that I'm still learning to grow in, to be able to shift my mental mindset away from I got a team of driven people to I got a team that needs to be inspired, you know. Chris: Yeah, that's great. So what have you done to try to help you in the hiring process? Make sure you're making the best decision you can make about who you're bringing on your team? Renee: You know it's the hire slow, fire quick. Chris: Yes, another easier said than done. Renee: Easier said than done and that's where I am right now. Even in this open marketing director job that I'm looking for, it's really making sure I've gone through I go through so many, I go through all the resumes. My assistant will filter out the trash. But once she's filtered out the trash, I'm looking at those resumes going okay, is this someone who's going to? Because I'll openly say the reason I'm looking for a marketing director. I'll tell you this story. So I hire this person and she's from Adidas. She comes from Adidas background in marketing and she's Under Armour in marketing and she was in Latin America director of Latin America markets and she's just moved from Houston. So I'm thinking I've got a Latina because it's part of my demographic. That's awesome. She's got this global brand experience that's awesome. All in athleisure but transferable skills. It's marketing. She quits three months later, found another job in athleisure. So I interviewed, interviewed and found this one and this woman, you know, sold me on. I mean we had multiple conversations. I was like you know, sold me on. I mean, we had multiple conversations. I was like you know, hey. Chris: I'm really concerned about whether or not you know you can migrate from big company to this small company Cause it is a very valid concern. Renee: It's a big change. Right, you don't have a team. Your team is a team of three, not a team of 20. Right, and so your role really changes. And so she. You know, she convinced me that, but the lesson learned was that you know my spidey senses. I didn't listen to them. Like my spidey senses said, she may not stay. Like there were little things that happened along the way you get enamored with all the other stuff. Right, but I was so hungry to have a big company, someone to come in to show my team other than me, for them to hear it from someone other than me that this is what marketing looks like, Right, this is the marketing discipline that we need to have. And so she came in. She brought some marketing discipline. She heard that, you know she brought some value in the three months, but it was. It's been really a painful learning process, right, because now I'm short of marketing director, I'm stepping in, yeah, yeah. Chris: Well, what you alluded to there, right, is just the cost hard cost and soft cost when you make a bad hiring decision yeah Because you know you're having to fill the role or someone else. Renee: Yep, so that distracts, you, it's me right now. Chris: It distracts you from doing your full-time else. Yep, so that distracts you. It's me right now. It distracts you from doing your full-time job. Yep, you're now spending time going through resumes and going to be interviewing and you wasted, if you will, all the time on the one that only lasted three months. Yeah, so there's a lot of cost there. There's a lot of cost there. Renee: And then you're sitting there and knowing I've got to restart this whole process, I've got to try to maintain the momentum within my team this is the second marketing person they've had in the past year so and so how do you start to just kind of manage through that and so, instead of and when you get burned, that one time, as I'm looking at resumes, I'm looking at people with deep experience in a particular industry and I'm going oh nope. Chris: Learn, that is, that there's that bias creep right you're. You have to not let yourself penalize these people you've never met, just as they might look the same on paper yeah, as the one bad actor in the group. Renee: Yeah, and so you and you're right, and so I'm going well, and I'm having these conversations and then yeah, so it's just. Yeah, I think that's like one hiring, firing, hiring slow, firing quick. Chris: Sometimes, even when you hire slow, you still get I tell people it's part science, it's part art and it's the more process I think you can put in place and follow the better. But you're never going to be 100 right and I think figuring out the characteristics that work in your organization is something that you can incorporate into your hiring process and know that this is the kind of background traits, characteristics that thrive here. Renee: Yeah, and even and I would also say, listening to that, you know, those spidey senses that are coming with those thoughts creep in like, and they were coming like there were things, there were triggers that happened through the hiring process. Then I was like I'm not sure she's going to be a good fit. Like you know, for example, she called and said hey, can I work from home? I was like no, you cannot work from home. So that was like that was. Oh, renee, we're gonna do a whole episode on work from home. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And so those were the triggers of like, okay, she might not be the good fit. And when those were the when that happens to you, you got to listen to it and like and be okay with backing out. But I didn't listen to the trigger because we were so far down in the negotiation and I should have just said, you know, I don't think this is going to work out Right, and rescinded the offer. But I had already extended the offer, right, and I didn't want to have egg on my face. Chris:Sure. Renee: So I mean I, what I should have done is just let my ego go, rescinded the offer and continue to look. Chris: Yeah, or at least be upfront about this is starting to give me concerns. Here's why. Renee: Yeah. But I you know you know it's which I did that I did that okay, she covered it up she covered that up. She told me exactly what I wanted to hear, but still the those doubts were in my head and I should have listened to my gut. And that gut is a powerful thing. You know that, maxwell Galt, maxwell Galt Gladwell, it's a powerful thing. And if, when you listen to it, you're usually right, 100%. Yeah, 100%. Chris: Renee, this has been a fascinating conversation. Just to wrap it up, I have a few just personal things. I always like to ask yeah, what was your first job as a kid? Renee: Newspaper. I was a newspaper girl. You had a newspaper route? Yes, Absolutely I did. I'll be darned. My sister got up in the morning and helped me through my newspapers. Chris: You're not the first guest. That was their first job it was fairly common. Renee: You had to make me dig deep for that one. Chris: Okay, you made me dig deeper on this one. Sometimes people say this is the hardest question. Yeah, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Renee: Barbecue no sauce Seasoned, very well seasoned, no hesitation. Chris: No, no hesitation and the woman knows what she wants. Yes, right. Renee: Don't bring me brisket with sauce on it. No. Chris: No sauce Extra seasoned. Renee: I want seasoned brisket, the moist kind. Okay, and, by the way, I'm not a Texan, but I moved to Texas and now I've been here 15 years and now it's like brisket barbecue. It's the only thing that I eat. Chris: I eat it's the only thing I want to eat. I might die of a heart attack, but it's the only thing I want to eat. I love it All right. So because you have four kids and I know your life's running crazy, this will be more of a fantasy. Renee: Yeah, if you could take. Chris: If you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do? Renee: Oh, I would be somewhere, probably in South Africa, in the, probably on a safari. I would tour safaris. I would go South Africa, kenya. I want to see the migration of animals. I would do that. Chris: I love it. Renee: That's where I would be. Chris: Renee, thank you so much for being on. This has been just a pleasure getting to know you and hear your story. Renee: Thank you. This is awesome. I listened to NPR how I built this. So this is like my. I feel like I'm excited. I've kind of done the NPR check. I like the how I built this check. Do you listen to that? Chris: I do, I do, I love it. I love that analogy. Renee: Yeah, it's great. Chris: Thanks again. Renee: Thanks for doing this. Special Guest: Renee Morris.

On this episode of the pod, my guest is David Cayley, a Toronto-based Canadian writer and broadcaster. For more than thirty years (1981-2012) he made radio documentaries for CBC Radio One's program Ideas, which premiered in 1965 under the title The Best Ideas You'll Hear Tonight. In 1966, at the age of twenty, Cayley joined the Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), one of the many volunteer organizations that sprang up in the 1960's to promote international development. Two years later, back in Canada, he began to associate with a group of returned volunteers whose experiences had made them, like himself, increasingly quizzical about the idea of development. In 1968 in Chicago, he heard a lecture given by Ivan Illich and in 1970 he and others brought Illich to Toronto for a teach-in called “Crisis in Development.” This was the beginning of their long relationship: eighteen years later Cayley invited Illich to do a series of interviews for CBC Radio's Ideas. Cayley is the author of Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey (2022), Ideas on the Nature of Science (2009), The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (2004), Puppet Uprising (2003),The Expanding Prison: The Crisis in Crime and Punishment and the Search for Alternatives (1998), George Grant in Conversation (1995), Northrop Frye in Conversation (1992), Ivan Illich in Conversation (1992), and The Age of Ecology (1990).Show Notes:The Early Years with Ivan IllichThe Good Samaritan StoryFalling out of a HomeworldThe Corruption of the Best is the Worst (Corruptio Optimi Pessima)How Hospitality Becomes HostilityHow to Live in ContradictionRediscovering the FutureThe Pilgrimage of SurpriseFriendship with the OtherHomework:Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey (Penn State Press) - Paperback Now Available!David Cayley's WebsiteThe Rivers North of the Future (House of Anansi Press)Ivan Illich | The Corruption of Christianity: Corruptio Optimi Pessima (2000)Charles Taylor: A Secular AgeTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, David, to the End of Tourism Podcast. It's a pleasure to finally meet you. David: Likewise. Thank you. Chris: I'm very grateful to have you joining me today. And I'm curious if you could offer our listeners a little glimpse into where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you through the lenses of David Cayley.David: Gray and wet. In Toronto, we've had a mild winter so far, although we did just have some real winter for a couple of weeks. So, I'm at my desk in my house in downtown Toronto. Hmm. Chris: Hmm. Thank you so much for joining us, David. You know, I came to your work quite long ago.First through the book, The Rivers North of the Future, The Testament of Ivan Illich. And then through your long standing tenure as the host of CBC Ideas in Canada. I've also just finished reading your newest book, Ivan Illich, An Intellectual Journey. For me, which has been a clear and comprehensive homage [00:01:00] to that man's work.And so, from what I understand from the reading, you were a friend of Illich's as well as the late Gustavo Esteva, a mutual friend of ours, who I interviewed for the podcast shortly before his death in 2021. Now, since friendship is one of the themes I'd like to approach with you today, I'm wondering if you could tell us about how you met these men and what led you to writing a biography of the former, of Ivan.David: Well, let me answer about Ivan first. I met him as a very young man. I had spent two years living in northern Borneo, eastern Malaysia, the Malaysian state of Sarawak. As part of an organization called the Canadian University Service Overseas, which many people recognize only when it's identified with the Peace Corps. It was a similar initiative or the VSO, very much of the time.And When I returned to [00:02:00] Toronto in 1968, one of the first things I saw was an essay of Ivan's. It usually circulates under the name he never gave it, which is, "To Hell With Good Intentions." A talk he had given in Chicago to some young volunteers in a Catholic organization bound for Mexico.And it made sense to me in a radical and surprising way. So, I would say it began there. I went to CDOC the following year. The year after that we brought Ivan to Toronto for a teach in, in the fashion of the time, and he was then an immense celebrity, so we turned people away from a 600 seat theater that night when he lectured in Toronto.I kept in touch subsequently through reading mainly and we didn't meet again until the later 1980s when he came to Toronto.[00:03:00] He was then working on, in the history of literacy, had just published a book called ABC: the Alphabetization of the Western Mind. And that's where we became more closely connected. I went later that year to State College, Pennsylvania, where he was teaching at Penn State, and recorded a long interview, radically long.And made a five-hour Ideas series, but by a happy chance, I had not thought of this, his friend Lee Hoinacki asked for the raw tapes, transcribed them, and eventually that became a published book. And marked an epoch in Ivan's reception, as well as in my life because a lot of people responded to the spoken or transcribed Illich in a way that they didn't seem to be able to respond to his writing, which was scholastically condensed, let's [00:04:00] say.I always found it extremely congenial and I would even say witty in the deep sense of wit. But I think a lot of people, you know, found it hard and so the spoken Illich... people came to him, even old friends and said, you know, "we understand you better now." So, the following year he came to Toronto and stayed with us and, you know, a friendship blossomed and also a funny relationship where I kept trying to get him to express himself more on the theme of the book you mentioned, The Rivers North of the Future, which is his feeling that modernity, in the big sense of modernity can be best understood as perversionism. A word that he used, because he liked strong words, but it can be a frightening word."Corruption" also has its difficulties, [00:05:00] but sometimes he said "a turning inside out," which I like very much, or "a turning upside down" of the gospel. So, when the world has its way with the life, death and resurrection and teaching of Jesus Christ which inevitably becomes an institution when the world has its way with that.The way leads to where we are. That was his radical thought. And a novel thought, according to the philosopher Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, who was kind enough to write a preface to that book when it was published, and I think very much aided its reception, because people knew who Charles Taylor was, and by then, they had kind of forgotten who Ivan Illich was.To give an example of that, when he died, the New York [00:06:00] Times obituary was headlined "Priest turned philosopher appealed to baby boomers in the 60s." This is yesterday's man, in other words, right? This is somebody who used to be important. So, I just kept at him about it, and eventually it became clear he was never going to write that book for a whole variety of reasons, which I won't go into now.But he did allow me to come to Cuernavaca, where he was living, and to do another very long set of interviews, which produced that book, The Rivers North of the Future. So that's the history in brief. The very last part of that story is that The Rivers North of the Future and the radio series that it was based on identifies themes that I find to be quite explosive. And so, in a certain way, the book you mentioned, Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey, [00:07:00] was destined from the moment that I recorded those conversations. Chris: Hmm, yeah, thank you, David. So much of what you said right there ends up being the basis for most of my questions today, especially around the corruption or the perversion what perhaps iatrogenesis also termed as iatrogenesis But much of what I've also come to ask today, stems and revolves around Illich's reading of the Good Samaritan story, so I'd like to start there, if that's alright.And you know, for our listeners who aren't familiar either with the story or Illich's take on it, I've gathered some small excerpts from An Intellectual Journey so that they might be on the same page, so to speak. So, from Ivan Illich, An Intellectual Journey:"jesus tells the story after he has been asked how to, quote, 'inherit eternal life,' end quote, and has replied that one must love God and one's neighbor, [00:08:00] quote, 'as oneself,' but, quote, who is my neighbor? His interlocutor wants to know. Jesus answers with his tale of a man on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, who is beset by robbers, beaten, and left, quote, 'half dead' by the side of the road.Two men happen along, but, quote, 'pass by on the other side.' One is a priest and the other a Levite, a group that assisted the priests at the Great Temple, which, at that time, dominated the landscape of Jerusalem from the Temple Mount. Then, a Samaritan comes along. The Samaritans belonged to the estranged northern kingdom of Israel, and did not worship at the Temple.Tension between the Samaritans and the Judeans in the Second Temple period gives the name a significance somewhere between 'foreigner' and 'enemy.' [00:09:00] In contemporary terms, he was, as Illich liked to say, 'a Palestinian.' The Samaritan has, quote, 'compassion' on the wounded one. He stops, binds his wounds, takes him to an inn where he can convalesce and promises the innkeeper that he will return to pay the bill.'And so Jesus concludes by asking, 'Which of the three passers by was the neighbor?'Illich claimed that this parable had been persistently misunderstood as a story about how one ought to act. He had surveyed sermons from the 3rd through 19th centuries, he said, 'and found a broad consensus that what was being proposed was a, quote, rule of conduct.' But this interpretation was, in fact, quote, 'the opposite of what Jesus wanted to point out.'He had not been asked how to act toward a neighbor, but rather, 'who is my neighbor?' And he had replied, [00:10:00] scandalously, that it could be anyone at all. The choice of the Samaritan as the hero of the tale said, 'in effect, it is impossible to categorize who your neighbor might be.' The sense of being called to help the other is experienced intermittently and not as an unvarying obligation.A quote, 'new kind of ought has been established,' Illich says, which is not related to a norm. It has a telos, it aims at somebody, some body, but not according to a rule. And finally, The Master told them that who your neighbor is is not determined by your birth, by your condition, by the language which you speak, but by you.You can recognize the other man who is out of bounds culturally, who is foreign linguistically, who, you can [00:11:00] say by providence or pure chance, is the one who lies somewhere along your road in the grass and create the supreme form of relatedness, which is not given by creation, but created by you. Any attempt to explain this 'ought,' as correspond, as, as corresponding to a norm, takes out the mysterious greatness from this free act.And so, I think there are at least, at the very least, a few major points to take away from this little summary I've extracted. One, that the ability to choose one's neighbor, breaks the boundaries of ethnicity at the time, which were the bases for understanding one's identity and people and place in the world.And two, that it creates a new foundation for hospitality and interculturality. And so I'm [00:12:00] curious, David, if you'd be willing to elaborate on these points as you understand them.David: Well if you went a little farther on in that part of the book, you'd find an exposition of a German teacher and writer and professor, Claus Held, that I found very helpful in understanding what Ivan was saying. Held is a phenomenologist and a follower of Husserl, but he uses Husserl's term of the home world, right, that each of us has a home world. Mm-Hmm. Which is our ethnos within which our ethics apply.It's a world in which we can be at home and in which we can somehow manage, right? There are a manageable number of people to whom we are obliged. We're not universally obliged. So, what was interesting about Held's analysis is then the condition in which the wounded [00:13:00] man lies is, he's fallen outside of any reference or any home world, right?Nobody has to care for him. The priest and the Levite evidently don't care for him. They have more important things to do. The story doesn't tell you why. Is he ritually impure as one apparently dead is? What? You don't know. But they're on their way. They have other things to do. So the Samaritan is radically out of line, right?He dares to enter this no man's land, this exceptional state in which the wounded man lies, and he does it on the strength of a feeling, right? A stirring inside him. A call. It's definitely a bodily experience. In Ivan's language of norms, it's not a norm. It's not a duty.It's [00:14:00] not an obligation. It's not a thought. He's stirred. He is moved to do what he does and he cares for him and takes him to the inn and so on. So, the important thing in it for me is to understand the complementarity that's involved. Held says that if you try and develop a set of norms and ethics, however you want to say it, out of the Samaritan's Act, it ends up being radically corrosive, it ends up being radically corrosive damaging, destructive, disintegrating of the home world, right? If everybody's caring for everybody all the time universally, you're pretty soon in the maddening world, not pretty soon, but in a couple of millennia, in the maddening world we live in, right? Where people Can tell you with a straight face that their actions are intended to [00:15:00] save the planet and not experience a sense of grandiosity in saying that, right?Not experiencing seemingly a madness, a sense of things on a scale that is not proper to any human being, and is bound, I think, to be destructive of their capacity to be related to what is at hand. So, I think what Ivan is saying in saying this is a new kind of ought, right, it's the whole thing of the corruption of the best is the worst in a nutshell because as soon as you think you can operationalize that, you can turn everyone into a Samaritan and You, you begin to destroy the home world, right?You begin to destroy ethics. You begin to, or you transform ethics into something which is a contradiction of ethics. [00:16:00] So, there isn't an answer in it, in what he says. There's a complementarity, right? Hmm. There's the freedom to go outside, but if the freedom to go outside destroys any inside, then, what have you done?Right? Hmm. You've created an unlivable world. A world of such unending, such unimaginable obligation, as one now lives in Toronto, you know, where I pass homeless people all the time. I can't care for all of them. So, I think it's also a way of understanding for those who contemplate it that you really have to pay attention.What are you called to, right? What can you do? What is within your amplitude? What is urgent for you? Do that thing, right? Do not make yourself mad with [00:17:00] impossible charity. A charity you don't feel, you can't feel, you couldn't feel. Right? Take care of what's at hand, what you can take care of. What calls you.Chris: I think this comes up quite a bit these days. Especially, in light of international conflicts, conflicts that arise far from people's homes and yet the demand of that 'ought' perhaps of having to be aware and having to have or having to feel some kind of responsibility for these things that are happening in other places that maybe, It's not that they don't have anything to do with us but that our ability to have any kind of recourse for what happens in those places is perhaps flippant, fleeting, and even that we're stretched to the point that we can't even tend and attend to what's happening in front of us in our neighborhoods.And so, I'm curious as to how this came to be. You mentioned "the corruption" [00:18:00] and maybe we could just define that, if possible for our listeners this notion of "the corruption of the best is the worst." Would you be willing to do that? Do you think that that's an easy thing to do? David: I've been trying for 30 years.I can keep on trying. I really, I mean, that was the seed of everything. At the end of the interview we did in 1988, Ivan dropped that little bomb on me. And I was a diligent man, and I had prepared very carefully. I'd read everything he'd written and then at the very end of the interview, he says the whole history of the West can be summed up in the phrase, Corruptio Optimi Pessima.He was quite fluent in Latin. The corruption of the best is the worst. And I thought, wait a minute, the whole history of the West? This is staggering. So, yes, I've been reflecting on it for a long time, but I think there are many ways to speak [00:19:00] about the incarnation, the idea that God is present and visible in the form of a human being, that God indeed is a human being in the person of Jesus Christ.One way is to think of it as a kind of nuclear explosion of religion. Religion had always been the placation of a god. Right? A sacrifice of some kind made to placate a god. Now the god is present. It could be you. Jesus is explicit about it, and I think that is the most important thing for Iman in reading the gospel, is that God appears to us as one another.Hmm. If you can put it, one another in the most general sense of that formula. So, that's explosive, right? I mean, religion, in a certain way, up to that moment, is society. It's the [00:20:00] integument of every society. It's the nature of the beast to be religious in the sense of having an understanding of how you're situated and in what order and with what foundation that order exists. It's not an intellectual thing. It's just what people do. Karl Barth says religion is a yoke. So, it has in a certain way exploded or been exploded at that moment but it will of course be re instituted as a religion. What else could happen? And so Ivan says, and this probably slim New Testament warrant for this, but this was his story, that in the very earliest apostolic church. They were aware of this danger, right? That Christ must be shadowed by "Antichrist," a term that Ivan was brave enough to use. The word just has a [00:21:00] terrible, terrible history. I mean, the Protestants abused the Catholics with the name of Antichrist. Luther rages against the Pope as antichrist.Hmm. And the word persists now as a kind of either as a sign of evangelical dogmatism, or maybe as a joke, right. When I was researching it, I came across a book called "How to Tell If Your Boyfriend Is The Antichrist." Mm-Hmm. It's kind of a jokey thing in a way, in so far as people know, but he dared to use it as to say the antichrist is simply the instituted Christ.Right. It's not anything exotic. It's not anything theological. It's the inevitable worldly shadow of there being a Christ at all. And so that's, that's the beginning of the story. He, he claims that the church loses sight of this understanding, loses sight of the basic [00:22:00] complementarity or contradiction that's involved in the incarnation in the first place.That this is something that can never be owned, something that can never be instituted, something that can only happen again and again and again within each one. So, but heaven can never finally come to earth except perhaps in a story about the end, right? The new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem come down from heaven.Fine. That's at the end, not now. So that's the gist of what he, what he said. He has a detailed analysis of the stages of that journey, right? So, within your theme of hospitality the beginnings of the church becoming a social worker in the decaying Roman Empire. And beginning to develop institutions of hospitality, [00:23:00] places for all the flotsam and jetsam of the decaying empire.And then in a major way from the 11th through the 13th century, when the church institutes itself as a mini or proto state, right? With a new conception of law. Every element of our modernity prefigured in the medieval church and what it undertook, according to Ivan. This was all news to me when he first said it to me.So yeah, the story goes on into our own time when I think one of the primary paradoxes or confusions that we face is that most of the people one meets and deals with believe themselves to be living after Christianity and indeed to great opponents of Christianity. I mean, nothing is more important in Canada now than to denounce residential schools, let's say, right? Which were [00:24:00] the schools for indigenous children, boarding schools, which were mainly staffed by the church, right?So, the gothic figure of the nun, the sort of vulpine, sinister. That's the image of the church, right? So you have so many reasons to believe that you're after that. You've woken up, you're woke. And, and you see that now, right? So you don't In any way, see yourself as involved in this inversion of the gospel which has actually created your world and which is still, in so many ways, you.So, leftists today, if I'm using the term leftists very, very broadly, "progressives," people sometimes say, "woke," people say. These are all in a certain way super Christians or hyper Christians, but absolutely unaware of themselves as Christians and any day you can read an analysis [00:25:00] which traces everything back to the Enlightenment.Right? We need to re institute the Enlightenment. We've forgotten the Enlightenment. We have to get back to the, right? There's nothing before the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is the over, that's an earlier overcoming of Christianity, right? So modernity is constantly overcoming Christianity. And constantly forgetting that it's Christian.That these are the ways in which the Incarnation is working itself out. And one daren't say that it's bound to work itself out that way. Ivan will go as far as to say it's seemingly the will of God that it should work itself out that way. Right? Wow. So, that the Gospel will be preached to all nations as predicted at the end of the Gospels." Go therefore and preach to all nations," but it will not be preached in its explicit form. It will enter, as it were, through the [00:26:00] back door. So that's a very big thought. But it's a saving thought in certain ways, because it does suggest a way of unwinding, or winding up, this string of finding out how this happened.What is the nature of the misunderstanding that is being played out here? So. Chris: Wow. Yeah, I mean, I, I feel like what you just said was a kind of nuclear bomb unto its own. I remember reading, for example, James Hillman in The Terrible Love of War, and at the very end he essentially listed all, not all, but many of the major characteristics of modern people and said if you act this way, you are Christian.If you act this way, you are Christian. Essentially revealing that so much of modernity has these Christian roots. And, you know, you said in terms of this message and [00:27:00] corruption of the message going in through the back door. And I think that's what happens in terms of at least when we see institutions in the modern time, schools, hospitals, roads essentially modern institutions and lifestyles making their way into non modern places.And I'm very fascinated in this in terms of hospitality. You said that the church, and I think you're quoting Illich there, but " the church is a social worker." But also how this hospitality shows up in the early church and maybe even how they feared about what could happen as a result to this question of the incarnation.In your book it was just fascinating to read this that you said, or that you wrote, that "in the early years of Christianity it was customary in a Christian household to have an extra mattress, a bit of candle, and some dry bread in case the Lord Jesus should knock at the door in the form of a stranger without a roof, a form of behavior that was utterly [00:28:00] foreign to the cultures of the Roman Empire."In which many Christians lived. And you write, "you took in your own, but not someone lost on the street." And then later "When the emperor Constantine recognized the church, Christian bishops gained the power to establish social corporations." And this is, I think, the idea of the social worker. The church is a social worker.And you write that the first corporations they started were Samaritan corporations, which designated certain categories of people as preferred neighbors. For example, the bishops created special houses financed by the community that were charged with taking care of people without a home. Such care was no longer the free choice of the householder, it was the task of an institution.The appearance of these xenodocheia? Literally, quote, 'houses for foreigners' signified the beginning of a change in the nature of the church." And then of course you write and you mentioned this but "a gratuitous and truly [00:29:00] free choice of assisting the stranger has become an ideology and an idealism." Right. And so, this seems to be how the corruption of the Samaritan story, the corruption of breaking that threshold, or at least being able to cross it, comes to produce this incredible 'ought,' as you just kind of elaborated for us.And then this notion of, that we can't see it anymore. That it becomes this thing in the past, as you said. In other words, history. Right? And so my next question is a question that comes to some degree from our late mutual friend Gustavo, Gustavo Esteva. And I'd just like to preface it by a small sentence from An Intellectual Journey where he wrote that, "I think that limit, in Illich, is always linked to nemesis, or to what Jung calls [00:30:00] enantiodromia, his Greek word for the way in which any tendency, when pushed too far, can turn into its opposite. And so, a long time ago, Illich once asked Gustavo if he could identify a word that could describe the era after development, or perhaps after development's death.And Gustavo said, "hospitality." And so, much later, in a private conversation with Gustavo, in the context of tourism and gentrification, the kind that was beginning to sweep across Oaxaca at the time, some years ago, he told me that he considered "the sale of one's people's radical or local hospitality as a kind of invitation to hostility in the place and within the ethnos that one lives in."Another way of saying it might be that the subversion and absence of hospitality in a place breeds or can breed hostility.[00:31:00] I'm curious what you make of his comment in the light of limits, enantiodromia and the corruption that Illich talks about.David: Well I'd like to say one thing which is the thought I was having while you, while you were speaking because at the very beginning I mentioned a reservation a discomfort with words like perversion and corruption. And the thought is that it's easy to understand Illich as doing critique, right? And it's easy then to moralize that critique, right? And I think it's important that he's showing something that happens, right? And that I daren't say bound to happen, but is likely to happen because of who and what we are, that we will institutionalize, that we will make rules, that we will, right?So, I think it's important to rescue Ivan from being read [00:32:00] moralistically, or that you're reading a scold here, right? Hmm. Right. I mean, and many social critics are or are read as scolds, right? And contemporary people are so used to being scolded that they, and scold themselves very regularly. So, I just wanted to say that to rescue Ivan from a certain kind of reading. You're quoting Gustavo on the way in which the opening up of a culture touristically can lead to hostility, right? Right. And I think also commenting on the roots of the words are the same, right? "hostile," "hospice." They're drawing on the same, right?That's right. It's how one treats the enemy, I think. Hmm. It's the hinge. Hmm. In all those words. What's the difference between hospitality and hostility?[00:33:00] So, I think that thought is profound and profoundly fruitful. So, I think Gustavo had many resources in expressing it.I couldn't possibly express it any better. And I never answered you at the beginning how I met Gustavo, but on that occasion in 1988 when I was interviewing Illich, they were all gathered, a bunch of friends to write what was called The Development Dictionary, a series of essays trying to write an epilogue to the era of development.So, Gustavo, as you know, was a charming man who spoke a peculiarly beautiful English in which he was fluent, but somehow, you could hear the cadence of Spanish through it without it even being strongly accented. So I rejoiced always in interviewing Gustavo, which I did several times because he was such a pleasure to listen to.But anyway, I've digressed. Maybe I'm ducking your question. Do you want to re ask it or? Chris: Sure. [00:34:00] Yeah, I suppose. You know although there were a number of essays that Gustavo wrote about hospitality that I don't believe have been published they focused quite a bit on this notion of individual people, but especially communities putting limits on their hospitality.And of course, much of this hospitality today comes in the form of, or at least in the context of tourism, of international visitors. And that's kind of the infrastructure that's placed around it. And yet he was arguing essentially for limits on hospitality. And I think what he was seeing, although it hadn't quite come to fruition yet in Oaxaca, was that the commodification, the commercialization of one's local indigenous hospitality, once it's sold, or once it's only existing for the value or money of the foreigner, in a kind of customer service worldview, that it invites this deep [00:35:00] hostility. And so do these limits show up as well in Illich's work in terms of the stranger?Right? Because so much of the Christian tradition is based in a universal fraternity, universal brotherhood. David: I said that Ivan made sense to me in my youth, as a 22 year old man. So I've lived under his influence. I took him as a master, let's say and as a young person. And I would say that probably it's true that I've never gone anywhere that I haven't been invited to go.So I, I could experience that, that I was called to be there. And he was quite the jet setter, so I was often called by him to come to Mexico or to go to Germany or whatever it was. But we live in a world that is so far away from the world that might have been, let's say, the world that [00:36:00] might be.So John Milbank, a British theologian who's Inspiring to me and a friend and somebody who I found surprisingly parallel to Illich in a lot of ways after Ivan died and died I think feeling that he was pretty much alone in some of his understandings. But John Milbank speaks of the, of recovering the future that we've lost, which is obviously have to be based on some sort of historical reconstruction. You have to find the place to go back to, where the wrong turning was, in a certain way. But meanwhile, we live in this world, right? Where even where you are, many people are dependent on tourism. Right? And to that extent they live from it and couldn't instantly do without. To do without it would be, would be catastrophic. Right? So [00:37:00] it's it's not easy to live in both worlds. Right? To live with the understanding that this is, as Gustavo says, it's bound to be a source of hostility, right?Because we can't sell what is ours as an experience for others without changing its character, right, without commodifying it. It's impossible to do. So it must be true and yet, at a certain moment, people feel that it has to be done, right? And so you have to live in in both realities.And in a certain way, the skill of living in both realities is what's there at the beginning, right? That, if you take the formula of the incarnation as a nuclear explosion, well you're still going to have religion, right? So, that's inevitable. The [00:38:00] world has changed and it hasn't changed at the same time.And that's true at every moment. And so you learn to walk, right? You learn to distinguish the gospel from its surroundings. And a story about Ivan that made a big impression on me was that when he was sent to Puerto Rico when he was still active as a priest in 1956 and became vice rector of the Catholic University at Ponce and a member of the school board.A position that he regarded as entirely political. So he said, "I will not in any way operate as a priest while I'm performing a political function because I don't want these two things to get mixed up." And he made a little exception and he bought a little shack in a remote fishing village.Just for the happiness of it, he would go there and say mass for the fishermen who didn't know anything about this other world. So, but that was[00:39:00] a radical conviction and put him at odds with many of the tendencies of his time, as for example, what came to be called liberation theology, right?That there could be a politicized theology. His view was different. His view was that the church as "She," as he said, rather than "it," had to be always distinguished, right? So it was the capacity to distinguish that was so crucial for him. And I would think even in situations where tourism exists and has the effect Gustavo supposed, the beginning of resistance to that and the beginning of a way out of it, is always to distinguish, right?To know the difference, which is a slim read, but, but faith is always a slim read and Ivan's first book, his first collection of published essays was [00:40:00] called Celebration of Awareness which is a way of saying that, what I call know the difference. Chris: So I'm going to, if I can offer you this, this next question, which comes from James, a friend in Guelph, Canada. And James is curious about the missionary mandate of Christianity emphasizing a fellowship in Christ over ethnicity and whether or not this can be reconciled with Illich's perhaps emphatic defense of local or vernacular culture.David: Well, yeah. He illustrates it. I mean, he was a worldwide guy. He was very far from his roots, which were arguably caught. He didn't deracinate himself. Hmm. He was with his mother and brothers exiled from Split in Dalmatia as a boy in the crazy atmosphere of the Thirties.But he was a tumbleweed after [00:41:00] that. Mm-Hmm. . And so, so I think we all live in that world now and this is confuses people about him. So, a historian called Todd Hart wrote a book still really the only book published in English on the history of CIDOC and Cuernavaca, in which he says Illich is anti-missionary. And he rebukes him for that and I would say that Ivan, on his assumptions cannot possibly be anti missionary. He says clearly in his early work that a Christian is a missionary or is not a Christian at all, in the sense that if one has heard the good news, one is going to share it, or one hasn't heard it. Now, what kind of sharing is that? It isn't necessarily, "you have to join my religion," "you have to subscribe to the following ten..." it isn't necessarily a catechism, it may be [00:42:00] an action. It may be a it may be an act of friendship. It may be an act of renunciation. It can be any number of things, but it has to be an outgoing expression of what one has been given, and I think he was, in that sense, always a missionary, and in many places, seeded communities that are seeds of the new church.Right? He spent well, from the time he arrived in the United States in 51, 52, till the time that he withdrew from church service in 68, he was constantly preaching and talking about a new church. And a new church, for him, involved a new relation between innovation and tradition. New, but not new.Since, when he looked back, he saw the gospel was constantly undergoing translation into new milieu, into new places, into new languages, into new forms.[00:43:00] But he encountered it in the United States as pretty much in one of its more hardened or congealed phases, right? And it was the export of that particular brand of cultural and imperialistic, because American, and America happened to be the hegemon of the moment. That's what he opposed.The translation of that into Latin America and people like to write each other into consistent positions, right? So, he must then be anti missionary across the board, right? But so I think you can be local and universal. I mean, one doesn't even want to recall that slogan of, you know, "act locally, think globally," because it got pretty hackneyed, right?And it was abused. But, it's true in a certain way that that's the only way one can be a Christian. The neighbor, you said it, I wrote it, Ivan said it, " the neighbor [00:44:00] can be anyone." Right?But here I am here now, right? So both have to apply. Both have to be true. It's again a complementary relation. And it's a banal thought in a certain way, but it seems to be the thought that I think most often, right, is that what creates a great deal of the trouble in the world is inability to think in a complementary fashion.To think within, to take contradiction as constituting the world. The world is constituted of contradiction and couldn't be constituted in any other way as far as we know. Right? You can't walk without two legs. You can't manipulate without two arms, two hands. We know the structure of our brains. Are also bilateral and everything about our language is constructed on opposition.Everything is oppositional and yet [00:45:00] when we enter the world of politics, it seems we're going to have it all one way. The church is going to be really Christian, and it's going to make everybody really Christian, or communist, what have you, right? The contradiction is set aside. Philosophy defines truth as the absence of contradiction.Hmm. Basically. Hmm. So, be in both worlds. Know the difference. Walk on two feet. That's Ivan. Chris: I love that. And I'm, I'm curious about you know, one of the themes of the podcast is exile. And of course that can mean a lot of things. In the introduction to An Intellectual Journey, you wrote that that Illich, "once he had left Split in the 30s, that he began an experience of exile that would characterize his entire life."You wrote that he had lost "not just the home, but the very possibility [00:46:00] of home." And so it's a theme that characterizes as well the podcast and a lot of these conversations around travel, migration, tourism, what does it mean to be at home and so, this, This notion of exile also shows up quite a bit in the Christian faith.And maybe this is me trying to escape the complementarity of the reality of things. But I tend to see exile as inherently I'll say damaging or consequential in a kind of negative light. And so I've been wondering about this, this exilic condition, right? It's like in the Abrahamic faith, as you write "Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all begin in exile.And eventually this pattern culminates. Jesus is executed outside the gates of the city, nailed to a cross that excludes him even from his native earth." And you write that "exile is in many ways the [00:47:00] Christian condition." And so, you know, I've read that in the past, Christian monks often consider themselves to be homeless, removed from the sort of daily life of the local community in the monasteries and abbeys and yet still of a universal brotherhood. And so I'd like to ask you if you feel this exilic condition, which seems to be also a hallmark of modernity, this kind of constant uprooting this kind of as I would call it, cultural and spiritual homelessness of our time, if you think that is part of the corruption that Illich based his work around?David: Well, one can barely imagine the world in which Abram, who became Abraham said to God, no, I'm staying in Ur. Not going, I'm not going. Right? I mean, if you go back to Genesis and you re read that passage, when God shows [00:48:00] Abraham the land that he will inherit, it says already there, "there were people at that time living in the land," right?Inconvenient people, as it turns out. Palestinians. So, there's a profound contradiction here, I think. And the only way I think you can escape it is to understand the Gospel the way Ivan understood it, which is as something super added to existing local cultures, right? A leaven, right?Hmm. Not everything about a local culture or a local tradition is necessarily good. Mm hmm. And so it can be changed, right? And I would say that Illich insists that Christians are and must be missionaries. They've received something that they it's inherent in what they've [00:49:00] received that they pass it on.So the world will change, right? But Ivan says, this is in Rivers North of the Future, that it's his conviction that the Gospel could have been preached without destroying local proportions, the sense of proportion, and he put a great weight on the idea of proportionality as not just, a pleasing building or a pleasing face, but the very essence of, of how a culture holds together, right, that things are proportioned within it to one another that the gospel could have been preached without the destruction of proportions, but evidently it wasn't, because the Christians felt they had the truth and they were going to share it. They were going to indeed impose it for the good of the other.So, I think a sense of exile and a sense of home are as [00:50:00] necessary to one another as in Ivan's vision of a new church, innovation, and tradition, or almost any other constitutive couplet you can think of, right? You can't expunge exile from the tradition. But you also can't allow it to overcome the possibility of home.I mean, Ivan spoke of his own fate as a peculiar fate, right? He really anticipated the destruction of the Western culture or civilization. I mean, in the sense that now this is a lament on the political right, mainly, right? The destruction of Western civilization is something one constantly hears about.But, he, in a way, in the chaos and catastrophe of the 30s, already felt the death of old Europe. And even as a boy, I think, semi consciously at least, took the roots inside himself, took them with him [00:51:00] and for many people like me, he opened that tradition. He opened it to me. He allowed me to re inhabit it in a certain way, right?So to find intimations of home because he wasn't the only one who lost his home. Even as a man of 78, the world in which I grew up here is gone, forgotten, and to some extent scorned by younger people who are just not interested in it. And so it's through Ivan that I, in a way, recovered the tradition, right?And if the tradition is related to the sense of home, of belonging to something for good or ill, then that has to be carried into the future as best we can, right? I think Ivan was searching for a new church. He didn't think. He had found it. He didn't think he knew what it was.I don't think he [00:52:00] described certain attributes of it. Right. But above all, he wanted to show that the church had taken many forms in the past. Right. And it's worldly existence did not have to be conceived on the model of a monarchy or a parish, right, another form that he described in some early essays, right.We have to find the new form, right? It may be radically non theological if I can put it like that. It may not necessarily involve the buildings that we call churches but he believed deeply in the celebrating community. As the center, the root the essence of social existence, right? The creation of home in the absence of home, or the constant recreation of home, right? Since I mean, we will likely never again live in pure [00:53:00] communities, right? Yeah. I don't know if pure is a dangerous word, but you know what I mean?Consistent, right? Closed. We're all of one kind, right? Right. I mean, this is now a reactionary position, right? Hmm. You're a German and you think, well, Germany should be for the Germans. I mean, it can't be for the Germans, seemingly. We can't put the world back together again, right?We can't go back and that's a huge misreading of Illich, right? That he's a man who wants to go back, right? No. He was radically a man who wanted to rediscover the future. And rescue it. Also a man who once said to hell with the future because he wanted to denounce the future that's a computer model, right? All futures that are projections from the present, he wanted to denounce in order to rediscover the future. But it has to be ahead of us. It's not. And it has to recover the deposit that is behind us. So [00:54:00] both, the whole relation between past and future and indeed the whole understanding of time is out of whack.I think modern consciousness is so entirely spatialized that the dimension of time is nearly absent from it, right? The dimension of time as duration as the integument by which past, present and future are connected. I don't mean that people can't look at their watch and say, you know, "I gotta go now, I've got a twelve o'clock." you know.So, I don't know if that's an answer to James.Chris: I don't know, but it's food for thought and certainly a feast, if I may say so. David, I have two final questions for you, if that's all right, if you have time. Okay, wonderful. So, speaking of this notion of home and and exile and the complementarity of the two and you know you wrote and [00:55:00] spoke to this notion of Illich wanting to rediscover the future and he says that "we've opened a horizon on which new paradigms for thought can appear," which I think speaks to what you were saying and At some point Illich compares the opening of horizons to leaving home on a pilgrimage, as you write in your book."And not the pilgrimage of the West, which leads over a traveled road to a famed sanctuary, but rather the pilgrimage of the Christian East, which does not know where the road might lead and the journey end." And so my question is, What do you make of that distinction between these types of pilgrimages and what kind of pilgrimage do you imagine might be needed in our time?David: Well, I, I mean, I think Ivan honored the old style of pilgrimage whether it was to [00:56:00] Canterbury or Santiago or wherever it was to. But I think ivan's way of expressing the messianic was in the word surprise, right? One of the things that I think he did and which was imposed on him by his situation and by his times was to learn to speak to people in a way that did not draw on any theological resource, so he spoke of his love of surprises, right? Well, a surprise by definition is what you don't suspect, what you don't expect. Or it couldn't be a surprise.So, the The cathedral in Santiago de Compostela is very beautiful, I think. I've only ever seen pictures of it, but you must expect to see it at the end of your road. You must hope to see it at the end of your road. Well the surprise is going to be something else. Something that isn't known.[00:57:00] And it was one of his Great gifts to me that within the structure of habit and local existence, since I'm pretty rooted where I am. And my great grandfather was born within walking distance of where I am right now. He helped me to look for surprises and to accept them also, right?That you're going to show up or someone else is going to show up, right? But there's going to be someone coming and you want to look out for the one who's coming and not, but not be at all sure that you know who or what it is or which direction it's coming from. So, that was a way of life in a certain way that I think he helped others within their limitations, within their abilities, within their local situations, to see the world that way, right. That was part of what he did. Chris: Yeah, it's really beautiful and I can [00:58:00] see how in our time, in a time of increasing division and despondency and neglect, fear even, resentment of the other, that how that kind of surprise and the lack of expectation, the undermining, the subversion of expectation can find a place into perhaps the mission of our times.And so my final question comes back to friendship. and interculturality. And I have one final quote here from An Intellectual Journey, which I highly recommend everyone pick up, because it's just fascinating and blows open so many doors. David: We need to sell a few more books, because I want that book in paperback. Because I want it to be able to live on in a cheaper edition. So, yes. Chris: Of course. Thank you. Yeah. Please, please pick it up. It's worth every penny. So in An Intellectual Journey, it is written[00:59:00] by Illich that "when I submit my heart, my mind, my body, I come to be below the other. When I listen unconditionally, respectfully, courageously, with the readiness to take in the other as a radical surprise, I do something else. I bow, bend over toward the total otherness of someone. But I renounce searching for bridges between the other and me, recognizing that a gulf separates us.Leaning into this chasm makes me aware of the depth of my loneliness, and able to bear it in the light of the substantial likeness between the Other and myself. All that reaches me is the Other in His Word, which I accept on faith."And so, David at another point in the biography you quote Illich describing faith as foolish. Now assuming that faith elicits a degree of danger or [01:00:00] betrayal or that it could elicit that through a kind of total trust, is that nonetheless necessary to accept the stranger or other as they are? Or at least meet the stranger or other as they are? David: I would think so, yeah. I mean the passage you've quoted, I think to understand it, it's one of the most profound of his sayings to me and one I constantly revert to, but to accept the other in his word, or on his word, or her word, is, I think you need to know that he takes the image of the word as the name of the Lord, very, very seriously, and its primary way of referring to the Christ, is "as the Word."Sometimes explicitly, sometimes not explicitly, you have to interpret. So, when he says that he renounces looking for bridges, I think he's mainly referring [01:01:00] to ideological intermediations, right, ways in which I, in understanding you exceed my capacity. I try to change my name for you, or my category for you, changes you, right?It doesn't allow your word. And, I mean, he wasn't a man who suffered fools gladly. He had a high regard for himself and used his time in a fairly disciplined way, right? He wasn't waiting around for others in their world. So by word, what does he mean?What is the other's word? Right? It's something more fundamental than the chatter of a person. So, I think what that means is that we can be linked to one another by Christ. So that's [01:02:00] the third, right? That yes, we're alone. Right? We haven't the capacity to reach each other, except via Christ.And that's made explicit for him in the opening of Aylred of Riveau's Treatise on Friendship, which was peculiarly important to him. Aylred was an abbot at a Cistercian monastery in present day Yorkshire, which is a ruin now. But he wrote a treatise on friendship in the 12th century and he begins by addressing his brother monk, Ivo, and says, you know, " here we are, you and I, and I hope a third Christ."So, Christ is always the third, right? So, in that image of the gulf, the distance, experiencing myself and my loneliness and yet renouncing any bridge, there is still a word, the word, [01:03:00] capital W, in which a word, your word, my word, participates, or might participate. So, we are building, according to him, the body of Christ but we have to renounce our designs on one another, let's say, in order to do that. So I mean, that's a very radical saying, the, the other in his word and in another place in The Rivers North of the Future, he says how hard that is after a century of Marxism or Freudianism, he mentions. But, either way he's speaking about my pretension to know you better than you know yourself, which almost any agency in our world that identifies needs, implicitly does. I know what's best for you. So Yeah, his waiting, his ability to wait for the other one is, is absolutely [01:04:00] foundational and it's how a new world comes into existence. And it comes into existence at every moment, not at some unimaginable future when we all wait at the same time, right? My friend used to say that peace would come when everybody got a good night's sleep on the same night. It's not very likely, is it? Right, right, right. So, anyway, there we are. Chris: Wow. Well, I'm definitely looking forward to listening to this interview again, because I feel like just like An Intellectual Journey, just like your most recent book my mind has been, perhaps exploded, another nuclear bomb dropped.David: Chris, nice to meet you. Chris: Yeah, I'll make sure that that book and, of course, links to yours are available on the end of the website. David: Alright, thank you. Chris: Yeah, deep bow, David. Thank you for your time today. David: All the best. And thank you for those questions. Yeah. That was that was very interesting. You know, I spent my life as an interviewer. A good part of my [01:05:00] life. And interviewing is very hard work. It's much harder than talking. Listening is harder than talking. And rarer. So, it's quite a pleasure for me, late in life, to be able to just let her rip, and let somebody else worry about is this going in the right direction? So, thank you. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I discuss John Marvin's transformative leadership journey as CEO and President of Texas State Optical (TSO). Founded in 1936 by the Rogers brothers, TSO evolved into a franchise operation spearheaded by John starting in the 1990s. Hear John's compelling account of reviving the brand, establishing the franchise association, and guiding the innovative physician-owned business model that has empowered young optometrists for decades. With the evolving eyewear landscape, our conversation analyzes consumer behavior shifts and their implications for strategic competition amid growing online retailers. We also explore the importance of supporting TSO's physician member network through mentorship and partnerships, especially given industry consolidation challenges. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS John D Marvin shares the history of Texas State Optical (TSO), founded by the Rogers brothers in 1936, and its growth into a franchise operation. We discuss how John Marvin revitalized TSO in the 1990s and his journey to becoming the president of the company in 2001. The episode explores the challenges and strategies involved in competing with online retailers in the eyewear industry, emphasizing the importance of convenience and well-stocked dispensaries. John describes the shift in optometry ownership trends, with fewer young optometrists interested in private practice, paralleling broader healthcare industry trends. We examine the strategic importance of building a physician member network to support optometrists and the criteria for network inclusion. The episode delves into leadership principles inspired by John C. Maxwell, highlighting the role of influence, trust, and accountability in effective leadership. John reflects on the transformative impact of setbacks, such as being fired, and how these experiences shape one's leadership journey. We explore the importance of forming strategic vendor partnerships and the role of mutual accountability in maintaining long-lasting business relationships. John emphasizes the need to adapt to industry shifts, including the rise of artificial intelligence, while fostering an innovative mindset among optometrists. The episode concludes with a discussion on the significance of understanding and meeting customer needs through effective consumer research, as a universal business strategy. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Texas State Optical GUESTS John D MarvinAbout John TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet John Marvin, ceo and President of Texas State Optical. John shares his views on how the fundamentals of leadership boil down to influencing and how having mutual accountability in your business relationships create win situations. John, I want to thank you for taking the time to join me today. It's really been a pleasure to get to know you before we got started here. John: Well, Chris, I appreciate the opportunity to sit down. I always love talking about business. Chris: Well, that's good, that's what we're going to do. So you're the CEO and president of Texas State Optical, or most people know it as TSO. That's right. Tell us a little more detail about what is the company, what does it do and what is it really known for in the market. John: Okay Well, texas State Optical was founded in 1936 by four brothers the Rogers brothers, in Beaumont, texas, and anybody who's been to Beaumont or familiar with Beaumont knows of the impact those four brothers had on that community and then in turn throughout Texas. Two of the brothers were optometrists and they opened pretty traditional optometry practice. And if you'll think about what else was going on in 1936 in Beaumont, it was the oil boom that was just blowing up, and so the one that originally came to Texas from Chicago all four of them were from Chicago called back home and said boys, you need to move down here. We got a big opportunity and they did, and consequently, over the next several years they built a large retail optical chain they called Texas State Optical, and one time in the early 60s it had reached over 300 locations. And one time in the early 60s it had reached over 300 locations and those were in New Mexico, oklahoma, arkansas, louisiana and Texas, and so that went on until, due to some legal issues with the state optometric group, who decided that they didn't want someone in the state running 300 locations, they passed some legislation that limited optometrists to only three locations and so they could subsequently, after a long legal battle had to sell off most of their property, but they kept the core of the business of the optical lab. They kept that and kind of a condition of buying. The practice was that you obligated yourself to continue to purchase items from them. But then in the late 60s the Rogers, having gone through this process of dissolving their ownership in it, decided to turn their attention towards real estate development and at one point they owned 25% of Caesars Palace in Vegas. They just got involved in other things and then consequently in the early 70s they sold the company to a large pharmaceutical company, gd Searle, who then subsequently sold the company in the early 80s to Pearl Vision. Most people are familiar with Pearl Vision, most people are familiar with ProVision and ran that until the late 80s when they sold it to a group of kind of investors who wanted to own it. They didn't really know how to run it than investors. So in I got involved in 1993 doing consumer research for the corporate office. My background at the time I had a company marketing management group and based here in Houston and it was a small marketing management and consumer research group and was doing work in other areas. But picked them up as a client and began to do a lot of consumer study for them and learned about the business. At that time it was somewhat distressed because of the leadership that had taken over from the Pearl Vision taken over from Pearl, and so there was a lot of unrest among the franchisees because at that time TSO was a franchise operation and so I helped them form a franchise association and then kind of on a part-time arrangement took on an executive director position within that while maintaining my consumer study and research stuff. And so that happened until the late nineties, when everyone was planning for the great millennium you know, the 2000 and Y2, right, right. And so we gathered everybody in my conference room over here and how, booty building, and down here in the galleria and they started you know, flip chart sheets, what do we want to accomplish? And blah, blah, blah, and and that the result of that was really, guys, you're not going to get any of this done unless you own it. And so we began to have some discussions about them buying the company, the, the franchisor, and that took about a year to negotiate, and during that process I was asked to come on as the new president and since and then we closed in June of 2001, and since that time I've been the acting and operational by president and CEO of the company, and one of the reasons that it appealed to me was it was the ultimate fixer-upper, because the company had really was kind of loosely held together but had an iconic brand, and so we started opening new locations with Young Optometrist and we're a brand license company. So we knew that the only way we could pick up a new customer, if you would be, if a young OD wanted to open their own practice and then we could help them do that. People that were established at the time and successful weren't interested in converting to a retail trade name, so we did. We opened up about 80 new locations and helped a lot of young ODs live a dream and had put together a whole turnkey system commercial realty contractors the whole nine yards. Chris: That's a fascinating history, you know, to kind of just see it grow so big in the beginning, get broken down and then almost come back together. Yeah with, I guess in 2001 you said, with these individual practice owners or franchisees becoming owners. John: That's, you know, kind of unique, especially for doctors yeah, it was a different approach to it, one of the reasons we can set it as a now. We never incorporated it as a cooperative, we incorporated it as for-profit. We simply chose to run it as a cooperative, which, by its nature of co-op, isn't intended to make money, right? So we could keep the services and the value of what we offer members very high because we priced it at a break-even point, and so it was very appealing to a lot of young ODs who needed that help without any experience knowing what to do. And, of course, we then had a retail trade name that had market appeal. So a lot of them benefited greatly by, as opposed, to, opening up under their own name and unknown in a community. Chris: Yeah, it gives it instant credibility with the brand name right. That's right. What are some of the things I guess that you know since that time in 2001, that you do and your team around you, to kind of help preserve that brand value, to make it marketable and enticing to these doctors. John: Well, part of it is the importance. An optometry practice as a small business has a very defined marketplace of about three radium miles Okay, so one. That's part of that is because there are so many options and the profession is a licensed profession and so there's a little bit of perception by consumers that it's a commodity. In other words, anybody who's got a license will be able to give you a good exam. Consumers at one time back in the 60s and 70s, thought mostly of wherever they got their exams. That's where they purchased their eyewear. Chris: Out of convenience, right Out of convenience. John: That's right. And in the 80s you had a much more proliferation of retail optical chains like LensCrafters and EyeMasters at the time and Pearl Vision, which were creating an awareness among consumers that you know what, I can get my exam in one location and I can buy my eyewear in another location, and so that added to that sense of commodity. And so what we've done is focus on a three mile marketplace. So instead of running one advertising campaign in Houston, we run 50 around each of our locations, and those are largely driven through community involvement, pay-per-click, you know, today pay-per-click In the beginning though, a lot of it was just getting to know your school nurse, getting to know the coaches in the league ball game, and so from a marketing strategy it was always hyper-local standpoint. And so if you go into some neighborhoods, everyone knows the TSO. If you go into an neighborhood where we have no location, maybe not so much, and that was done probably more just from a practical standpoint of cost than it was anything else, because you know Houston and Dallas. Where we're at in San Antonio, they're very expensive media markets and so if you've only got, you know, 20 locations in the DFW market to go in and try to buy television, advertising or something more traditional is prohibited, and so it makes a lot more sense because that's where people live and work. People ask me sometimes how do you go about picking your locations, your real estate stuff? And I said we tend to let Kroger and HEB do that for us. So, wherever they're at, we want to be close because that's a neighborhood. Chris: That's right. You figured they thought there were enough households to support a grocery store. So I like that, you know, uh, you know. There's a lesson there, though, for a business owner, an entrepreneur, in that you don't necessarily have to do all your own organic research if you don't know, aware what's going on, you can, you know, let someone else do some of that and just make sure that their end users look like yours, and that's right. John: They do a tremendous job, both of those companies, at understanding the market before they ever buy land or pour concrete. I'd hate to insult them by not taking advantage of all that good work they do. Chris: They're genius right, they're genius, that's right. You just mentioned, you said 30 different or 50 different marketing campaigns in Houston alone. I mean, how do you go about figuring out you know the right message for the right place? That must take a lot of work. John: Well, not so much I mean because the message in Sugar Land is the same as the message in the Woodlands. I mean people. While we, as as in our profession, try to complicate this, it's pretty simple from a consumer standpoint. They're looking for a place where they can get their eyes checked and buy a pair of glasses. But probably two-thirds of all of our revenue today come from a third-party payer. So that changes kind of the basic consumer behavior dynamic. But by putting out a message that really is focused on that group of people in terms of maximizing the value of those coverage benefits, that becomes real consistent and then it's a matter of just being louder than anybody else. Chris: Sure, while we're on the subject of that consumer and consumer behavior, what are some of the things that you have done over the last 10, 15 years to either combat the online competition, as you mentioned, because people get their eyes examined and they either go online or do something. How are you managing that and what are some of the strategies you found to be successful? John: Well, first of all, consumers are driven, and I think this may be generally true, but certainly our consumers are driven with the priority on convenience, and one of the reasons the online marketing purchase of eyewear is so appealing is its convenience, and oftentimes it's not a price issue as much as it is a convenience issue and assortment and selection. So one of the things that we focus on is to make sure that our retail dispensary that's what we call the retail store aspect of a practice is well inventoried with product and assortment price points, and then the ultimate differentiation is customer service and knowledgeable people, and so if you have selection pricing and knowledgeable people, it's a home run and you don't have to worry about it, because if you can make it convenient for them, then they're not tempted to go online. And because there's a lot of I don't know if you've ever bought a pair of shoes online, but all you need to do is have one bad experience with that and have to turn around, send them back and so forth and so on that people would really prefer to get it locally, where I got my, where they received their exam, and it's kind of hours to lose. So we try to make sure we don't give them a reason to leave. Chris: Yeah Well, it's an interesting analogy with the shoes, because I can relate to that and see that people like to try on shoes but also glasses right. John: What are these going to look? Chris: like, and if you're at a store with a good selection, it's all right there as opposed to ordering one or two online and knowing you're going to be returning something. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at BoyerMillercom, and thanks for listening to the show. That's right, yes, well, that's it. So let's shift now kind of to this physician member network. What do you look for, if anything, as far as qualifying people to come into the brand, and then how do you help, kind of manage and support once they're in the network, if you will, to make sure that you're doing all you can to help them be successful? John: It's an interesting change we're seeing right now, especially in the last five to 10 years, and that is, the number of young optometrists who have an interest in owning their own practice is going away. Chris: It's really an interesting thing. John: One. It's very similar to what's going on in healthcare in general. You know, I was just talking to some people last week and I said you know when was the last time I asked them? I said do you have children? Yes, do you have a pediatrician? Yes, is that pediatrician private practice? Chris: No. John: It's owned by some big organization like Texas Children's, and what you're seeing in healthcare delivery at the provider level is a consolidation of these organizations and the disappearing of private practice, and we're seeing that now in optometry. And another big dynamic is 85% of all optometry graduates today are female, and in the 80s that number was just the opposite. It was very unusual in the 80s and early 90s to see women in optometry school. I mean they certainly didn't represent the majority. And so with that comes different priorities of practice. You know you don't have the hard-charging young guy who wants to go into small-town Texas and really build up a big practice or even a metro area. You have people that are much more interested in part-time, that I want to be able to step aside, raise my family, then maybe come back later, and so there's a whole different culture among the providers now coming in. So our organization as a business model relies on young optometrists wanting to own their own practice, and if that category is declining we've got to come up with some other plan here to maintain Sure. So one the opportunities we have are less. The vetting process is largely a discussion with very successful people. Our board of directors consists of nine doctors and three outside directors, but the nine doctors are all very successful. And so a young person does approach me and we talk, I want them to speak to one of our successful guys, and then their job is to kind of assess and come back to me and say, John, I don't know if she's ready, I don't know if he can do this, or I think this is a home run, let's go. And with their input and my discussion I've been doing it now long enough that I kind of get a feel for it Then we'll say let's go. And really it's a matter of they own everything. It's a matter of us guiding them through the process and then supporting them with just the knowledge they don't have about building a practice afterwards, and then lots of follow-up and hand-holding. Chris: And it's done. I think you said just as, basically a license agreement where they're licensing the name and brand and they get some support as a result of that as well. John: I mean contractually, I'm not obligated to support anything. Contractually I'm not obligated to support anything. All I'm obligated to do is to keep the value of the brand consistent with what they're paying for it. But I realized that if they're not successful, my brand value suffers. So we do all that we can to support them and help them be successful. Chris: So let's talk a little bit about your internal team. I mean, you've got a team I think you said 12, that's kind of help support you, that support these members. What have you found to be successful as you've gone through maybe trials and tribulations of hiring the right people, making sure you've got the right people in the right seat to kind of support the business and the brand? John: You know, that's a great question, because I, up until about 2015, I took a whole different approach to personnel than I did 2015 and on, and it was like I learned something, and that is I put together a group of really knowledgeable people in terms of their expertise in certain areas, but the quality that I had not paid attention to prior to that was they also had to be connectors. They had to be the kind of people that could say hey, chris, I know somebody you ought to talk to. And so because when a non-doctor walks into a doctor's office, even with the responsibility of helping, they carry a different level of credibility with that doctor than if a doctor told them something. If we go in and say, hey, listen, you need to be open Saturdays, because there's a lot of business on Saturdays, I don't want to do it. But if a doctor tells them, oh man, you got to be open Saturday, they'll listen to it. But if a doctor tells them, oh man, you've got to be open Saturday, they'll listen to it. And so our guys who are in the field, they do tactical training and support for staff, but when a doctor is facing an issue that they know the answer to, they in turn, seek out other leadership in the doctor community to say would you mind giving so-and-so a call Because I think you could help them get through whatever issue they're dealing with. And so that quality and frankly it's, you know it requires someone who doesn't have much of an ego. Sure, because you know I say this all the time like my old friend Ronald Reagan used to say, there's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit. Chris: Yeah. John: And so we take that approach, and ours isn't about trying to get a bunch of credit. Ours is about trying to lift up this organization and get these guys successful, and if we're simply a facilitator in information to how to do that, we don't have to be the initial provider of that information. Even if we know it, it comes much better from a colleague, and so that's one of the things that we put a lot of emphasis on is helping the network, help each other. Chris: So you know you were very quick to say 2015. Have you seen a dramatic improvement in the performance of the overall business since making that change and kind of focusing on the connector quality as being an additional important quality in the people you bring on? John: Very much so, because what Texas State Optical was in the beginning was a doctor-owned organization and doctors working with other doctors to help them grow a network and large business. We're trying to replicate that from the standpoint of, especially as the business, the structure we use I mentioned earlier as a cooperative. It requires doctor leadership to be active and engaged in running their own company, their owners of the company, and so, while I have certainly an important role in that, the more doctors that engage in the leadership of the organization, the better it is overall. And since we took that intentional effort in 2015, a couple of things too. We had a kind of an evolution of membership. I mean, we had a lot of our older doctors retire and sell practices, and then we had a whole influx of young doctors, and so we ended up in 2015 with an organization that was significantly different demographically, both age and gender. That was significantly different demographically, both age and gender. But we thought they need mentorship among the leadership in the organization, and so we worked at creating that for them, and it impacts not just clinical I mean, there's also that aspect of it they're learning clinically from friends but operationally, and so it made a big difference Very good. Chris: I know that you have supply agreements with certain labs and other things. Let's talk about some of the things that you found to be successful in maintaining, I guess, forming those kind of key strategic relationships for the business, and maybe some of the things you do to make sure that you foster and keep them strong of the things you do to make sure that you foster and keep them strong. John: Well, in the vendor-doctor community there is a kind of an assumption made by both sides, and one is the doctor assumes that the vendor's got more money than they know how to spend or what they've got all this money to spend, and the vendor assumes the doctor's not going to follow through on all the promises they make. So that's kind of where we start at the table, and so I think it's important and what we've worked at bringing to our relationships is mutual accountability, and we have found our vendor partners to be extremely invested in our success, but at the same time they've got a business to run as well, and so our success with them and that dynamic of that exchange or relationship cannot be at the vendor's expense. It's gotta be the classic cliche win type of thing, but you only get win if you have mutual accountability. And so in every agreement we have, here's what the vendor commits to and here's what the doctor community commits to. And then we have business reviews where we sit down and say here's where we're dropping the ball or here's where you're dropping the ball, and we hold that accountability does a long goes a long way to not only making the relationship productive but also building trust and longevity into those partnerships, because if you're making money with a partner, you don't want it to stop, right, you know? And that goes both ways If you're a doctor making money with a partner, you don't want it to stop, and if money with a partner, you don't want it to stop, and if you're a partner, you don't want to stop. So I found that type of mutual accountability and the willingness to be held accountable is critical to those relationships Very good. Chris: So you know. Talk a little bit about leadership. You've been running this organization for a long time now. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that's evolved over time? John: well, I would. I don't know if I've ever been asked to describe it, but I would say it's Maxwellian. Okay, and that means John C Maxwell, who is an author, has written a number of books on leadership and, in my opinion, probably is the most the best leadership author. I'm biased, of course, but I think he is. Forbes Magazine said that a few years ago, but basically his definition of leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just influence. And an example of that is if you walk into a room of people, you're naturally going to notice someone who's exercising influence on others, and it isn't an authoritarian way, it's in a trust and credibility way. And so if you're influencing, you're leading. If you're not, it doesn no matter what title you have. So an example is my when I explained how we use doctors to help influence other doctors. So that's a level of influence that doesn't come because I require somebody to do something. It it occurs because you're able to influence others to to make a difference. So I would. I'm a big believer in that. I'll plug his book. There are 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. It's a classic, and so that's like a Bible. It's my business Bible in terms of leadership style. Chris: I was going to use that word because others and it's fair to plug books, because sometimes I ask people what's a book you would recommend. We hear a lot of good to great from people Sure, jim Collins. But what I love what you said if you're influencing, you're leading, because I say a lot of times a true leader leads without a title. John: Right, you're actually doing things without the title to demonstrate leadership, which is what you're talking about Exactly, and if you do have the title and can influence, it's a home run. It's a home run, yeah. Chris: So you've learned that through lots of trials and tribulations. I think we all learn through mistakes or setbacks Anything you could share with the listeners about a decision made that didn't go the way you thought but you learned from it and that learning kind of catapulted you made you better because of it. Setback, failure whatever word you want to describe Anything you could you care to share in that realm. John: Sure the. So I came to Houston. I was born and raised in Western Kansas and I was in Wichita born and raised in western Kansas, and I was in Wichita, kansas, in 1989, excuse me, in the late 80s, 84, 89 era and I was working for a large ophthalmology practice up there as a marketing administrator and in that role I attended a lot of national meetings in ophthalmology and during that meeting I met an owner of a large Houston ophthalmology and during that meeting I met an owner of a large Houston ophthalmology group who ended up offering me a job and I came to Texas. Due to some marketing challenges we were facing at that practice, I was introduced to Texas State Optical while I was at that practice and then left after about four years, left that practice and went to a consumer research firm here in Stafford and quickly turned around and went to Texas State Optical to see if they would like to buy some insurance I'm not insurance, buy some research and they did so. I ended up doing this large project for them but also ended up doing a ton of work for HLMP. During the time they were prepared to try to go to battle with Enron and this was like early nineties, right, and so everything was going well. And then I get fired from the research thing. Now I moved my family down from Kansas. I've been in the state about five and a half years and I get fired. I've been in the state about five and a half years and I get fired. And that was a big you know. Anytime you've been fired, that kind of devastates you Right, it shakes you up. Chris: Yeah, it does. John: But had that not happened, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing Right, and so I have learned, and what pulled me through that is faith, Faith in God and faith in myself is faith, faith in God and faith in myself, and I felt like I can do, kind of what. There was a part of it, chris, that was liberating, because that was like, instead of thinking now what am I going to do, I was thinking now what am I going to do. I mean, it was a whole different frame of attitude and that subsequently ended up leading to the position I have today, through working with franchisees at Texas State Optical and so forth. Chris: That's a great story. Thank you for sharing. You bet A lot of people don't want to talk about, especially if they've been fired for something. But to your point on that, these other opportunities would have never presented themselves right, because you likely stayed in the comfort of the job and seeing where that takes you. You know there's so much that can come. John: Actually, I'd gone to that research firm. The owner of it had brought me there with the promise implied I mean not implied, but it wasn't in writing but the idea was that I would take over that firm at some point and it turned out that didn't work out Well you know a lot of what you, I think, describe. Chris: The undertone to that is the mindset you had in the wake of that setback. You know you didn't let it take you down. You're like like you said what am I going to go? Do I got all these opportunities and go? Explore and figure it out. John: So I had about 30 days before the next house payment came, so that you were acting quick, got to be decisive man. Chris: You can't be stewing on decisions forever, for sure, well, that and so you know that leadership, you know is forged and helped you get to where you are today. You know, when you, when you think about applying that mindset and that leadership kind of style, how does it help you kind of navigate the ups and downs of the economic cycles that we've experienced over the last 20 plus years? John: Well, you know, first of all is to understand which of these cycles are cyclical. That's a little redundant, but I mean, what is it we're going through that's cyclical. That you can. You know, business loves a stable and predictable environment. Right Now, the reality is it's ups and downs. But if it's ups and downs within a certain range of up and down, it's stable right, and you can prepare for it Certain tolerances right, yeah certain tolerances. What we've seen, not only in the economy and that's a whole different issue but what we've seen in the profession itself and the consolidation of private practice by private equity that's come into the marketplace, is we're seeing disruption like we haven't seen before. And I was talking to one of our board members doctor board members about it and we were just, you know, he was pointing out all of the things that are kind of out without from under excuse me, out of our control, and as we were talking about it, I had this thought and I told him. I said it's a great time to be alive and that because we're the ones that get to go through this, and in many ways I believe that our profession is going through a transformation that will take probably a 20 year period of time. But 40 years from now, optometry, I don't think, will look anything like it does today, and it's always bumpy to be in the middle of that turbulent transformation. The 80s were very steady, the 90s were pretty steady. It was in starting about 2010, 2000, that things started rapidly changing and then the acceleration with just technology and everything else is just gone, and then you've got now the whole world of artificial intelligence coming into play and it's. I consider it exciting, invigorating, challenging, but I mean what's? The alternative is to be bored right. Chris: Well, if you don't adopt and if you're not using it, you die use it you die, that's right. So I mean, you know, kind of it's a great segue to what are some of the things you do to kind of foster that maybe innovative mindset of how you're going to embrace the technological changes and use them in the business model to further the brand and the business. John: So I there's very little I can do without the support of the doctor, owner, community right. And sometimes there's a lot of indecision, because when you're not sure what to do, you're scared of doing the wrong thing. Chris: Sure, Well, it seems like you got a lot of opinions that out there too, right? John: You got a lot of them, and so what I have to do is to influence them through other people and through information, to get them to a point of being open enough to consider ideas that they might consider kind of sacrilege in some case. For instance, what is real common in most optometry practices today is what's called an autorefractor. It's a machine that people go through and it gives you a prescription, and the prescription is used by the doctor to zero in on where your visual acuity is right. Well, when that first came out, optometrists thought that was the end of the profession. Here's a machine that'll do what I'm doing. Optometrists thought that was the end of the profession. Here's a machine that'll do what I'm doing. And so there's a fear oftentimes of innovation. Right, that you have to assure people that there's a way to use this to our benefit, and that's what we're going through with artificial intelligence right now. One group is scared to death. It's going to replace them. The other group is glad they're old enough, they're probably not going to have to go through with it. And then you're looking for those people who say, hey, how can we utilize this to really to our benefit? Yeah, and once people feel that's safe enough to kind of try. Then the people realize that the fear is misplaced. Chris: So true, right, but it takes education, information and influence, as you said, to get people to get there so that they can adopt it One of the things that I teach my team to say. John: I mean to believe, and I say it all the time is we believe in everybody's right to make a bad decision. So if someone listens to us and they choose not to do what we're recommending and we know it's a good decision what we're recommending and they choose not to, it's their right. You know, I mean everybody's right to waste their own money. So that kind of patience is necessary with a group like ours. In many ways it's like working with a volunteer organization. Chris: Yeah, well, lots of challenges there, I'm sure. Well, john, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you sharing everything I want to ask you, I guess, going back to your days, you know, I guess growing up in Kansas what was your first job? John: A drugstore Rexall drugstore and I grew up in a town of 2000 people and my dad was the family physician of the community and so of course in a town like that in western Kansas the doctor and the pharmacist are close relationship. And so I got my first job at a drugstore, working a soda fountain, delivering prescriptions, restocking things. Like that had a blast and that really I learned a lot in that, not just like everybody learns a lot from their first job, but understanding. I was intrigued by Rexall. I don't know how familiar you are with Rexall, but Rexall was a national organization that gave private ownership of drugstores the purchasing power of a large corporate chain, and so my employer was the pharmacist. He owned the drug store and he stood up in the stand in the dais every day counting pills and chatting with people. So that was my first job. Chris: Very good. Well, you've been in Texas now since what the late? John: 80s. Chris: So do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue Barbecue? Okay. John: Barbecue Very good. My waistline prefers barbecue. Chris: And last thing if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? I don't know, Probably nuts. John: I just I've got to be engaged and I mean I don't have to be. I'm not select. I love business and I love the challenge it has. So I'm not I don't. You said earlier in our discussion about you were describing about the law firm. When I was doing consumer research, I did some healthcare work 12 Oaks Hospital was a client and so but I would tell people, is I specialize in a process, not an industry, because the process is the same and I would say that's what I really love about business, because when you boil it down to what I do and what you do and others that run businesses, it's the same process. It's understanding your customer and then directing how your services or products benefit that customer and communicating and the whole marketing scheme of promotion, price, product and place applies to every industry. And so I'd probably do something if I had 30 days. Like I said, I'd go nuts. Chris: Well, but I think what you just said there in the end is you have great insight and learning for business owners and entrepreneurs out there. You're trying to find their way. It's it is figure out what the consumer that you're catering to really wants and then deliver that as efficient as best you can that's why you know my, when I first got into consumer research, I thought this is like cheating. John: I mean you're actually going out and saying what do you want? They tell you, and then you give it to them. I mean it's like, it's amazing. Chris: Yeah, right, so well, this has been great, John. Thanks again for taking the time. You bet I really appreciate your invitation. Special Guest: John D Marvin.

In this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, I interview Kelly Young, CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston. We explore how Houston has become a national model for reducing homelessness through data-driven strategies and collaborative efforts. Kelly shares insights on effective nonprofit leadership, emphasizing the importance of building solid and accountable teams and fostering diverse thinking. We discuss the critical need for sustainable funding in homeless response systems, moving away from reliance on sporadic disaster funding. Throughout our conversation, we delve into Houston's successes and the ongoing challenges in addressing homelessness. -- SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Chris introduces Kelly Young, CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston, discussing the organization's role in coordinating the Way Home system. Kelly describes her journey from providing direct services to adopting a systems-thinking approach, emphasizing the importance of data-driven strategies and compliance in managing federal funds. We discuss the structure of the Coalition, including key departments like finance, compliance, outreach, landlord engagement, and housing, as well as its unique position working between city and county governments. Kelly shares insights on building strong, accountable teams in nonprofit leadership, balancing visionary goals with improvisational strategies, and fostering an environment where diverse thinking thrives. We explore the significance of clear communication, especially for introverted thinkers, and the importance of acknowledging mistakes openly to build trust and strengthen teams. Kelly highlights the critical need for sustainable homeless response system funding, discussing the inadequacies of relying on sporadic disaster funding and the necessity of evolving data to better serve those still on the streets. We delve into the business rationale for investing in homeless response systems, emphasizing that it's a financially sound decision that ultimately reduces costs on public health and other services. Kelly explains the success of Houston's model for reducing homelessness, including the collaborative efforts among for-profit, non-profit, and public entities, and the innovative use of disaster funds from Hurricane Harvey and COVID. We address the importance of community engagement and understanding how systems work, as well as addressing severe mental illness and substance abuse issues more effectively. Kelly shares leadership lessons learned through experience, including the importance of passion, data integrity, personal and professional integrity in communication, and fostering a culture of risk-taking and growth. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About CFTHhouston GUESTS Kelly YoungAbout Kelly TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Kelly Young, CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston. Kelly shares several great tips for leaders, including the value of direct communication. She also sheds light on the homeless response system and why Houston is leading the country in reducing homelessness in our community. Kelly, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on Building Texas Business. It's great to see you. Kelly: Lovely to see you and thank you for inviting me. Chris: So you are the CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston, and so a little bit different guest than normal, but not outside the box for us. Tell us what the Coalition for the Homeless is and what it does. So. Kelly: I like to think of the Coalition for the Homeless is and what it does. So I like to think of the Coalition for the Homeless as a coordinating body over what we call the Way Home, which is a collective of for-profit or non-profit and public entities that come together to resolve the issue of homelessness. Chris: Very good. So how did you get involved in the homeless response system, how long have you been involved and what really inspired you to do this? Kelly: I've actually been interested in helping people figure out better lives for themselves since I was like 12. I mean, I was what was called a people tutor when I was in a middle school, where I actually helped individuals with physical disabilities learn sports. And then I did some tutoring in high school and then I started working in a shelter for abused kids and I worked with kids who were coming out of psychiatric units. Then I worked in domestic and sexual violence. So I think I was always on a path to be a part of something that helped make other people's lives easier for them to be successful. When you do a lot of that direct work, you see the individual impact and the individual failures. When you get to do it on a systems level, you get to decide whether a system will be helpful in helping someone or whether it's setting up people for failure. So I've been in the Way Home system for about 12 years as an individual agency that helped provide direct services. But I'm actually a systems thinker by nature and so I kept going well, why doesn't this work and why doesn't this work? And the whole system here works. My job was to help it work better. So you know, like with any system or any business, you're constantly thinking about the future and what needs to change and what's going to be different coming up, and so I got the perfect opportunity to come in at a time when there is a major shift in many of the pillars of how the work is done, and I get to help design what that's going to look like, and that, to me, is the purpose of work. Chris: Love it. That's great. So, just to give our listeners maybe some context, let's just talk about the size of the organization, the coalition itself and maybe then, and maybe then, the system, participants and members, so they get an idea of what it is, that the organization is that you're running, as well as a system that you're trying to help manage and, as you said, get better and be more successful. Kelly: Well, I think, like any business, we are well-structured in terms of having enough staff to do the things that are core to our business model, and a couple of those things is we have a heavy compliance and finance department. We are nonprofits, are tax status not our business model, and we think of finance and compliance as sort of the heart of the organization. It pumps the blood through because we manage and help support almost 23 million to $40 million with a federal funding which requires us to follow lots of rules and regulation and make sure it's done correctly, not just for us, but also for our partners. We will provide certain types of services if we think that from a systems perspective, it makes sense to have an overlay. So we have an outreach team, we have a landlord engagement team and I can go more into depth about that when I talk about the system and then we have a housing team and those are really to bolster the system, not to replace the system in those jobs. And then we have this second largest department, which is really our data. We're a data-driven organization. 12 years ago, the coalition made a major shift, which was to use data to drive the construct of how the community actually resolves homelessness or deals with homelessness in the community and in that data. What we did was build out our 100 partners who have to agree to be a part of the database and include all that information but also follow some of our guidelines around standards, so that we can bring more and more money in from the federal government but also provide much better services and a quicker response to somebody who falls into homelessness. Chris: Okay, so, and at the coalition, what is it? Roughly 80-ish, I think, employees. Kelly: Yes, we're at 80. And I think we're also unique because we sit between the county and the city. We are trying to manage both of their expectations around homelessness. So sometimes people think of us as quasi-government. We are not. We are a nonprofit. But we sit there so that we can meter both sides what the county and the city wants and they don't have to be trying to work that through. So we always find the best solution for both Harris County, montgomery County and Fort Bend, and then the city of Houston Very good. Chris: So yeah, let's talk a little bit about the system. You know some people may be aware I think you know a lot aren't but just the success of Houston and how Houston has become the model for the country on addressing homelessness, reducing homelessness in our community. You know a lot's been written, most recently about the Houston Chronicle a little over a year ago, new York Times. You know you've been involved and interviewed in those things. Share a little bit for people to kind of understand how successful Houston's been to date. And of course, we can talk more later about the challenges we still face. Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things and again, any good business person or anybody who's looking to innovate understands that you first have to know the problem you have and then understand how you want to solve that problem, and for what I think the system did really well over the last 12 years is to build out the right system mechanisms and then the right interventions to use our money to the fullest extent. So what most people don't understand is that for the homeless response system which we oversee, that is mainly funded by federal dollars and so we are under federal guidelines on how we do that, which means we actually cannot interact or help somebody until they are currently on the street and in that then we have to be able to place them in other places, including permanent supportive housing, which is for somebody with a documented disability who's been on the street for a long time. They still will pay part of their rent out of their disability dollars, but we give them a subsidized apartment and appointments to kind of get off the street and going again. I think the other piece that people don't understand is that we only have two systems. We only have rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing. So our options are very limited, which means you have to be incredibly smart and innovative about how you engage not only the community, the people who need the service, but then the service delivery when we have taken advantage of, which I think is true in Houston. Why I love this city so much is we take disasters and turn them into determination, and so we took both the Hurricane Harvey and COVID and use those additional dollars to build out enough of a safety net, but then also a permanent place for people to live, that we were able to move over the last 11 years, 30,000 people off the street. We reduced homelessness by 60% and I know people are like, well, but I see people on the street, Absolutely, but you don't see the ones we placed in the housing and who moved on with their lives because they're gone. They're doing their lives. Chris: The thing people I think should know is and you can share some details but you know and we know from the research and the data that A lot of what's at the streetlight, those aren't homeless people. Kelly: Right. We also have an issue with people living below the poverty line. So United Way points out and rightfully so, that 40% of the individuals in Houston are $400 away from catastrophe and that means we have a lot of people living on the edge. So if you're unable to get a job or you're unable to work full time, you might see people who are out panhandling to get a job, or you're unable to work full-time, you might see people who are out panhandling. There's also people who take advantage of people who are in those situations and use that as their own mechanism to make money, because they actually place people there and then collect some of their money so that they could go stay in their shelter. So it's an interesting world when you actually find out what's going on in your street corners. Chris: Right, right. Well, I love that Obviously very close to this issue and the system, and so I think it's great to be able to tout the success we're having, as well as you know the challenges we face. You know people talk about the goal of ending homelessness and I love the kind of the phrase that's been adopted is making it rare, brief and non-reoccurring, because, as you said, so many people are living right on the edge. People are going to something's going to happen, people are going to end up homeless, but the question is is there a system there that can rapidly get them into housing and the supportive services they need to recorrect? Kelly: Yeah, absolutely, and I think the important piece of this is looking at equilibrium. So what you want, I don't need to have a lot of additional dollars that are sitting there waiting to do something. I need just-in-time dollars. I need to know that if a downturn has happened in the economy, if there's something happening on the street, return you know, in terms of people falling more readily into homelessness, rents have gone up something else has happened. I want to be able to bolster that very quickly so I can move those individuals off the street within 30 to 45 days. That reduces not only the trauma on that individual but it reduces the trauma on the community and as a community member myself I mean, I live in Midtown, so I often see a lot of individuals I've known for a long time to be on the street and you know what I don't want people to do is to get to the point where they don't care about those individuals anymore because it's disrupting their community. So equilibrium not only benefits the individual, who is facing a really difficult time, and moving them on quickly so it's a blip in their life, not an extension of their life and then also for the community to be able to stay in that caring and compassionate place so that they'll get involved and stay involved in the work of our unhoused neighbors and friends and, quite honestly, brothers and sisters. Chris: So let's turn the page a little bit and talk about you know you came into this organization at the beginning of 2024. Let's talk about what it's like to, you know, step in as a CEO, a new CEO into an organization and some of the how you approach that from a mindset, because I would think you know some of our listeners may find themselves there, may be experiencing it as well. So what was the mindset you kind of took in to make it a smooth transition and so that one you could honor what's been, what was being done by the you know, maybe previous CEO, but you know, make a smooth transition and find a way to put your own mark on the organization moving forward. Kelly: I think one of the best things people can do is first lie to themselves and then tell their truth. The lie you tell yourself is that you know everything's going to change and you list it out and you ready yourself for that. Intellectually, I do think where you probably need to tell your truth is that change is complicated and hard. I think sometimes, when you're in a leadership role, you want to reframe things for other people so that it's easy for them to understand and maybe to jump on board, but you yourself know it's difficult. I mean when you know the financial picture is going to change, the model is going to change, the people are going to change, and those were all true for us. That list sounds great and easy, but it is a constant attention to each small move that you're making and what the long-term impact is. I always describe strategy as visionary and improvisational and I think that's a good balance and that's how I've been able to translate what I think needs to happen in an organization. I mean, obviously you're listening, you know the pillars have sort of changed. You're listening to other people, you're absorbing other people, but I also come in and I'm really clear about how I work and what my accomplishment looks like and how success looks to me, and I drive that home in every single meeting. So people learn to trust that what I'm saying is true. When I make a mistake, I tell everybody straight up. I'm you know it's not falling on my sword. I just think it's important to model that. I think one thing is, for some of us who are more introverted thinkers, one of the hardest things to learn to do is how to over-commun messaging to people. Chris: Because I do so much of it in my head, I have to remember to actually put words to it well, and I mean yeah, go ahead obviously not the right, but I mean I can relate to that because you not only that, there's so many things going on in your brain, right, and you're you like. I just completed this, I got to get to the next thing and it's finding that time to either stop and slow down and communicate before you move on or, you know, remember at some point you need to stop and let people know what's going on through those ears. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom and thanks for listening to the show. Kelly: Yeah, I always call it the Kelly Young madness or the Kelly Young magic, because it's like some people are good at waiting to see what's going to happen. Other people are like I have no idea what she's doing and we're just going to hope this all works out. And it's my responsibility as a leader to alleviate both of those misunderstandings. Right, because I need people engaged in the process. I'm a big believer that right buck stops with me. I'm going to make the final decision, but very rarely is the final decision my decision. It's everybody else's input. I'll take the accountability, I'll be the one who pushes it through. But if I don't have the buy-in from the group and they can't be settled in some agreement, especially when you're changing from something that has run successfully for a very long time and all the conditions changed and change and you have to let people know it's not, we're not changing because you did something wrong. We're changing because it's time to move forward. That kind of reframing I think is extremely helpful and that stuff. You should know what you're going to say and how you're going to lay that out to your team before you start day one. Chris: Very good. So, speaking of team obviously you just said this in one of your responses that is, while the buck stops with you, you make the final decision. It's rarely your decision. That's because you have a team around you, right, and you're relying on them and you're pushing them, all those things. So let's talk about building a solid team around you. What are some of the things that you look for? Again, this isn't your first time to be CEO of an organization, so I know you've built teams more than once. Let's talk a little bit about that. What are some of the things you look for in the hiring process, in the evaluation of the people that you have when you take over? I think there's a lot that could be learned from that. Kelly: I'm one of those people. I'm a little super nerdy this way and I learned a decision-making model a long time ago called the seven hats, and the idea behind it is that each person at the table wears a different hat, and so you have somebody who's the white hat, which is the emotional and red hat, and they're the naysayer. And as much as I'd rather have everybody just do what I want and like me and do all that. I also know that's a terrible way to run anything, so I work really hard at actually having very different ways of thinking at a leadership level. Sometimes that causes more conflict or contrast in the way we resolve an issue, but I expect people to come and learn professional communication skills, and if you can't, you should go back to school or learn a YouTube. I don't care, because the purpose should be. I need you to be here for what we're here for. I don't like a lot of internal nonsense. I don't like us spending a bunch of time on stuff that doesn't matter, because the kind of work I've always done meant somebody did not get out of a domestic violence situation because we were spending time arguing about who left the coffee pot on. You know I walk past somebody who's on the street who needs to get housed. I don't want to sitting around arguing because somebody thought somebody was rude one day. Like that just can't be in the workplace. I get why it is, but I want people who come ready to do work and actually can define what work means to them. The second thing is always happens in this field. I just want to help people and that to me, is the death nail answer, because my answer, my question back to you is going to be what does that mean and how does that look? Because you wanting to help people doesn't have very much to do with actually serving people. Those are two very different concepts. So I also am very clear about the environment that I want at work and you have a choice Don't sign up and then come in and want to change it, add to it, make it better. But I'm not going to adjust what I think has to happen in an organization to go to the next level, because I typically have taken jobs where I'm right in the middle of a major change and I do know what needs to be functionally happening on a regular basis to make that shift. Chris: So you know that's very insightful and you know the core of what I think you're saying. If you boil it down, is it comes back to very clear, direct communication, setting expectations, et cetera, and then holding people accountable. All of that then leads to culture when you're building these teams. If you think about what you've done in the last nine months at the coalition, how would you describe the culture that you're striving for, that you feel like you have? You know, growing there. Kelly: I have a speech I used to call the mean speech I never thought it was mean, but somebody had called it where I lay out what I learned over the time of my working, in the time that I made some really serious mistakes, and what I learned from those and how they need to interpret that into their new work environment. And so with that, I think what happens in the culture is they actually see me living the story I told and I bring it up over and over again in different pieces. I think storytelling is important for that reason, but I show them what I did that didn't work, so that they have a clear understanding of what I learned from what I didn't do or what I did wrong. So they understand that this is a learning environment, that part of your responsibility is to be curious and to want to understand how to do things better or differently. If you come in and you say to me well, you know, I just need the training and I need this, you will not last well in my organizations, because I expect that you're more interested than that. You have to want to care about data. Data is most important, particularly in nonprofits, because you are telling the future of how most federal dollars are going to be spent in your case notes or in your reports. I talk a lot about gossip and that you can't stop it, but you have a personal and professional integrity line in how you communicate account. You know, for me I run it this way, which is every single dollar that comes in here is somebody else's dollar and somebody else's money, and so there's very little room to make major mistakes or to waste, because that's your money that you're wasting. And if we cannot do it the best, if we cannot show up in ways that people expect, then we should give that money to somebody else. And I tell people don't be miserable. If you don't like working here, you don't like the here, you don't like the work, you don't like the commute, you don't like any of that stuff, oh my gosh, why are you spending your life doing something you don't like Like? Go be happy. Chris: That's so true, right? I mean I think we talk about it. I know in our organization is, if you don't connect with our mission and our passion, it's okay. You know it doesn't make you a bad person, it just means there's a different organization for you where you're going to be happier. And then you should go find that, because we want the people that if they connect with that mission and passion of our organization, then they're going to be living their best self, which opens them up to serve our clients and each other to their fullest potential. Right. Kelly: And I also think we try to be very or I've always tried to be. I'm not interested in telling you how to do your job because you don't want kelly young's opinion of how to do your job. You want your own opinion. I hired somebody who's smart and talented and knows how to do that and you don't want my limited vision of that. But when people also say, well, I don't like to be micromanaged, I'm like, well, I'd be interested in why people feel like they have to micromanage you. So if you are showing up to work and over-communicating and letting people know, I shouldn't have to do that, but I will if you're not able to do that, because I still need to know what's happening. So I often turn some of those things that people say back on them, just so a little self-awareness, and help them understand, because you will not like working for a CEO who will say, who will call you and be like, why does this number not match this number? And it's not because I don't trust you, it's that I need the number to make sense, because I'm about to go tell a bunch of people this number. So it's interesting. I actually really love building culture. I think I do a good job of creating enough openness that people feel like they can participate if they choose to. Chris: Well, you know, one of the things I think has been written a lot about and it's hard, it's a hard skill for some leaders to get to, but you learn so much by, rather than telling is asking questions. And you know, like you said, turn it around on them and ask the questions and then, a lot of times, as they are forced to answer those questions, they realize where to go. Kelly: Yeah, and it's funny because there's a new book out by the gentleman who wrote Sapiens and his new book is called Nexus and I heard him in an interview and I thought this was really interesting because I do think this is an issue with the workplace and maybe some generational conflict. He talks about information and not that. This is new. Talks about information and not. This is new. But information is not truth and part of the problem is that we tend to try to over inform and over educate to get to truth and neither one of those things will actually get you there, because truth is costly, it takes time, it takes energy and I do think we're in an overload of informing people as though that will change or grow somebody's understanding, when really all it did was add more information, not deeper truth. So, you know, I just find that a fascinating and I thought about it in terms of work we do, because I think one of the things the coalition has always done has been a truth teller and in that truth telling right now we're in huge inundation of information because we're going through a lot of change. How do we settle back into our truth? Chris: Interesting, yeah, okay, so you mentioned this and what I can't wait to hear more about. May not have time on this podcast, but your mean speech. You talked about the mistakes and sharing mistakes you made in the learning. And you know, I don't know if you listened to one of these before, but I love asking people you know, tell us about a setback, a mistake you made, but then how you learn from it. Right, and I think you know to your point, when you share those stories with the people in your organization, it humanizes you and allows for that culture of learning, take risk and it's okay to fail, because that's how we learn and get better. So let's you know, can you share an example that either comes out of the mean speech or something else? You know a Kelly Young mistake and how it made Kelly Young better? Kelly: Yeah, and this one was interesting and I think it sort of aligns in particular with people who work directly with people and I was a very benevolent leader at one point. So this is much more of a self-awareness mistake than an actual business mistake, but I think it's important and I was. It's all about, you know, serving, you know, women. Everybody had on their desk, on their computers what did I do today to end domestic or sexual violence? And I was all gung-ho and and I, you know, I was there for the work and, as I said, and we got a new CEO and I thought that I should have been tapped for the CEO position and nobody asked me. And so I was very self-righteous in my understanding of, first of all, well, if you don't let anybody know you're interested, they probably won't ask you. But second of all, just because you've done this job doesn't mean you're actually ready to do that job. And so I was awful. I mean I was awful for about six weeks and I made everybody hear my pain and how hard it was on me and all this kind of stuff. The hardest lesson to learn in all that was that for all my bravado and my great messaging and whatnot, I really wasn't there for the mission in that moment. I was really there for my ego. And if we are not self-aware enough to understand when you are using ego to sell people on a version of yourself that you think will make them like you better or follow you better, but it's not true because you haven't done enough self-work, I spent six weeks wasting time, I mean, and I find I left, I went and found a different job and that was the best thing for me to do. But in that one moment when you realize that you are a liar to yourself and to other people and you decide you're not going to do that anymore Best moment of my professional career, because I never made a decision ever again around benevolence or around pretending that rhetoric was more important than what I really could show up and do. So I didn't like that and I hate sharing that story because it sounds awful. I sound like a horrible human being, but I think most of us have that moment. Chris: What a powerful story. No, I mean I think to your point. I mean it doesn't make you powerful, think to your point. I mean it doesn't make you powerful, a horrible person. But that's a difficult thing for us as humans to face right, to really look in the mirror that deeply and call ourselves out and, more importantly then, actually do what it takes to change. Kelly: Yeah, and for me, what I learned is that if I really want to lead, lead it is not pretending you can't play at leading, it is a commitment. It's hard, it's lonely, it's complex and you have to build in ways where your mind just stops thinking, because I'm a little bit of an overthinker and you have to do that self-awareness all the time. You're in check, all the time when you're a leader. Chris: Yeah, everyone's watching, right. So that's, I mean, I think, to your point where basically you can't fake it. It's because so many people are watching every move, whether it's internal to your organization or external partners, you'll get exposed really fast. Kelly: Right, and then you lose their trust so they won't show up for you when you need them to and at the end of the day, whatever it is that you because I think about innovators and I have a gentleman I know who helped work on some incubation around medical devices. Well, some people are like, oh well, you work with homeless and it must be so rewarding. I'm like I actually think it'd be pretty cool to make medical devices that make people's lives better. I don't have that talent, but you know. So it doesn't really matter what is at the center of your passion and your mission. I worry when we tell people you know you fake it till you make it, because in leadership you really can't do that. You need to sit down and learn it. You need to know your truth. It goes back to that. You can inform me about all these things about being a leader, but until I know the truth about being a leader, I'm going to waste time and I'm a hyper efficiency person. So for me it's like if I can do it in two steps, I'd rather do that than 15. So I really don't faking. It would be way too easy for me to just practice all the time, so I have to not allow myself some of those, those things, cause I yeah, I'd rather be out riding my bike, only because it's only because it's been a long week. Chris: I get you, I get you. You need that release too. Finding a way to you know release as a leader is equally as important. Yes absolutely so. Let's turn the conversation back around to homelessness Talk a little bit. You know, maybe, where we are, but what the future looks like. You've mentioned a couple of times, you know, facing new challenges in this world of homeless response. Let's talk a little bit about that. I know we have, you know, world Homeless Day coming up. You know, share a little bit about that, but I just wanted you know our listeners to know a little bit about you know, maybe, how they can get involved and how they can help in this issue. Kelly: Yeah, I think you know. I think we have done such an incredible job of getting people into some type of permanent solution, so we're in decent shape there. But it was, as the Chronicle said, it's duct tape and determination. When you have to rely on funding that comes from disasters or pandemics, that is a terrible planning model and not very fiscally sound. So I think a couple of things for us. One is broadening our perspective in this phase we're kind of calling it phase four, and I think it's important to realize that systems should always have phases or pivot points, because systems die when they don't read themselves and make sure they're on the right track is kind of an overhaul of our data. What is our data telling us, but what is it, more importantly, not telling us? What do we need to know about who is still on the street? What do we need to know about our funding sources and what's available? We know that we're gonna run out of funding because of COVID by 2025. I'm going to make the argument over and over again that we are not. Homelessness used to be able to be resolved by people coming together and kind of helping a family or helping an individual. We've had so many other systems end up feeding people into homelessness, that we actually need a system response, and that includes system funding, which typically aligns with some type of consistent, regular money that's funding the system, so we never have to be out of balance again, and that's one of the things we're working on. The second is we've actually been going out and doing community mapping to help people understand community is not given, it's built. So if you want a different kind of community that you live in, you're going to have to get engaged and that's one of the ways that you can volunteer. So maybe you have a church, that you're in a neighborhood that people get fed, but the food containers and stuff get left all over the street or there's whatever. Well, you could complain about the trash, or you could complain the city doesn't pick up the trash, or you all could start a walking group. Everybody needs exercise, so you have choices in how you decide to engage in your community. I do think becoming much more aware and understanding how the system works and doesn't work resolves a lot of people's frustration about seeing somebody on the street. We also have to have much better interventions for individuals who are severely mentally ill and have substance use issues. We have housed a lot of people who apartments and appointments works really well, for we have some individuals who just cannot make good decisions to care for themselves, and we're going to have to address that and I think that's one of those things where people don't understand you said this earlier right now the way the homeless response system is set up. Chris: The federal dollars are all housing, coming from the housing side, and yet what we face and what you know, you and and your team know that we face is a very severe mental illness issue and kind of what's the hardest to serve, yet no dollars from the mental health side of the equation. Kelly: Right and certainly not at the level it needs to be in. Including residential care, additional beds and substance use is even far worse funded and I understand people are like, well, I don't want to. You know that's. People just need to figure out how to get their lives together, I agree. But you're making a choice then. You're either deciding we're not going to help somebody so they'll get where you want them to go, or you'll leave them on the street so they won't go where they're going to go. So you know again, these are choices that we are making. I am so happy to live in a city and a county that is as generous as it is. I mean, houston is one of the, I think, premier cities for the purpose of the fact that people actually care, kind, friendly, smart, innovative. I think the other piece for us is really having to get more upstream. That 40% scares me. That is devastating to a system you want to right-size or actually shrink Like. I don't want you to have me on a call 10 years from now and I've grown the homeless response system by three sizes Like somebody should fire me. That's not-. Chris: Work yourself out of a job. Kelly: Right, exactly, and so right-sizing ours, with the right amount of funding and then really pushing upstream to figure out how healthcare doesn't release people back onto the street with serious illnesses. Re-entry that's dealt with. Somebody who's hit a hard time can quickly get rehoused because we're helping for a few months. That's just being good neighbors, right. So I think that's pretty easy for people. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I have the world's smartest team and the people who built this system and have watched over it the last 12 years. We're only gonna figure out the right and have watched over it the last 12 years. You know we're only going to figure out the right and the best path with the resources and the influence we have coming forward. Chris: Very good. Yeah, I think the future is very bright with the right people. So you know this is, you know, fundamentally, it's a business podcast and one of the things that you know, some of the data that I love to share is I always tell people, you know, when it comes to this homeless response and taking care of our neighbors who have fallen on this, you know, unfortunate time, there's a compassionate side, you know, which is, you know, obvious. But there's also a business side and some people you know connect on that and just share the numbers on the cost it takes to, you know, house someone on an annual basis versus if they're left on the street and use our public health system, et cetera. Because to me, if business owners are listening and thinking about this, the investment in the homeless response system is a no-brainer. Kelly: Right when we look at the numbers and I'm going to add for inflation, because we'll probably be in a recession next year is what I understand. Of course, they say that every year and I'm like, really at some point you know we're either or we're not, I don't know. No reason to even use the R word, right? Can we come up with something else, because this feels like a whole new thing. But I think you know you're talking about to house somebody and to make sure that they have access to the current systems that they need. Through their appointments and I always stress this they do not get to live for free, there is no free housing. They have to pay a percentage of their income or their benefits 30%, like the rest of us, and so for that it's $19,000 to $25,000 a year, not an overextensive amount of money you can go up to, depending on how often somebody uses other services up to $250,000 for them to stay on the street, and the reason for that is that every time you call the police on them, you have to count that money. Every time they go into an emergency room, you have to count all of that money. It's not to say they won't use those services, but they'll use them appropriately, which right sizes the dollars in the systems. So, right now, all this money. People are saying, well, we don't have the money. I'm like we do, we're systems. So right now, all this money. People are saying, well, we don't have the money. Chris: I'm like we do, we're just it's in the wrong bucket. Kelly: That's right. And if we moved it over and we agreed to just pay this for the next three years? I mean, if you're willing to pay a hundred dollars a month for charity, why are you not willing to pay one percent on your beer or your vaping? You don't even see that and get it to the point where you see the reduction in the rest of your costs and then you actually feel the relief on the tax end. You know, because you're not paying more and more on those parts of it. Wayne Young with the mental health services demonstrates that from a diversion point, for people with severe mental health to get into care is a one to $5 save. So it's $1 for him to do. It costs $5 for them to stay on the street, so economically it makes no sense. It's not cheaper. You're avoiding the problem instead of solving it and from any good business standpoint that's not what you do. You define the problem, you solve the problem. Chris: Right To summarize right I mean support the housing homeless response system. It's roughly $19,000 to $25,000 a year to do it and help us move people into housing and off the street. Leave them on the street. You're looking at annual cost of $100,000 to $250,000 to our system. Kelly: Right. And just the burnout rate of everybody trying to solve that and the trauma and the individual. I'm always going to add compassion to the dollars. But if you actually really care about that individual instead of just want them off the individual, I'm always going to add compassion to the dollars. But you know, if you actually really care about that individual instead of just want them off the street, I don't actually even care. You can have either of those opinions, doesn't matter to me. But it's going to be cheaper, more efficient, more effective if you buy into the response system and ensure that we have the right interventions for those people and don't have to wait till something terrible happens to be able to do this again. Chris: And ultimately all of that will make our community better and stronger. Kelly: Absolutely, absolutely. When you look at the best player on a team, you also have to look at the one who's struggling. And you bring up the one who's struggling. You spend less time on the one who's already figured it all out. But if you're in a team, you're in a community, you're looking at who's struggling and how do we get them to some level of consistency in their lives or whatever. Otherwise, we're always going to have to play down to that denominator. Chris: Kelly, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you Really appreciated your thoughts and sharing those with our listeners. I want to turn it to a little bit more of a fun, lighter side before we wrap up. Excellent, what was your? You may have said this earlier, cause you mentioned something when you were a teenager. What was your first job? Kelly: My first job was working at an ice cream store called Farrell's. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and every time it was somebody's birthday you had to bang out the drum. You had to slide it over your head and bang out the drum, and they get this big thing called the zoo, which was like 150 scoops of ice cream and you had to wear this horrifying outfit with one of those straw hats that never sits on my head Cause I'm a little pointed, I think, and I you learn very quickly and this is why I love anybody who's ever done food service and was successful in it and why I have an affinity for them. You learn very quickly how difficult it is to run restaurants on margin, but also nobody wanted to do that and had to do it every single time. So that was my first real paying job that I got to check. Chris: Gotcha, yeah, and I knew you weren't from Texas and grew up in the Northwest, but you've been here long enough to be able to answer this question. Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Kelly: Well, that's a good question. That's hard to decide, that's hard to define. I probably eat Tex-Mex more often, but I prefer barbecue, okay. Chris: Unique answer. Kelly: Yeah, I like it. That's an and yes answer. That's an improv technique. Very politically motivated or correct answer I just don't go to barbecue as much, but if I really sat down and thought about it, I prefer it. I just don't, for whatever reason, don't get there, which seems weird. Chris: Very good. Well, kelly. Thanks again for taking the time. This has been a great conversation. I'm looking forward to getting this out on all the social media. I hope people will listen and learn more about what is going on in our homeless response system. Kelly: Oh well, thank you so much for having me. I mean, I would do anything for you. I think you're amazing, so appreciate your time this morning. All right, talk with you later. Special Guest: Kelly Young.

On this episode, my guest is Craig Slee, a disabled writer, consultant and theorist dealing with mythology, folklore, magic and culture, exploring life through the lens of landscape, disability and fugitive embodiments.He has contributed essays and poetry focusing on the numinous and disability to various anthologies including The Dark Mountain Journal. Craig has also co-facilitated multiple seminar series at the Dresden Academy for Fine Arts, regarding ableism in the arts, as well as how ableism affects our relationship to space. In 2023 he was one of the speakers at the World Futures Studies Federation 50th Anniversary Conference, introducing the concept of (Dis)abling Futures. Craig resides in the northwest of England.Show NotesCornwall and the Seasons Who Gets to Decide What it Means to Know a Place?The Folding in of Identity to TourismA Question of Productive vs Generative AbilityAbleism and AttentionFinger Bending and the Freedom of MovementRedefining and Remembering Other Forms of MovementWhat is Stillness?The Dance of MountainsObeying LimitsHomeworkCold Albion (Craig's Blog)Goetic Atavisms (Hadean Press)Craig's Blue Sky Page | Facebook PageTranscriptChris: Welcome to the End of Tourism, Craig. Craig: Thank you for having me. Chris: Yes, it's great to be able to speak with you today. I've been ruminating for a couple of years now as to the themes that we might speak of. And I was introduced to you via a mutual friend and have come closer to your work via the Emergence Network's online gathering, We Will Dance With Mountains, in the last quarter of 2023.And so, to begin, I'd like to ask you first where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you, where you are. Craig: Where I find myself today is by the canal in my flat, looking out the window, just as evenings coming in, in the northwest of England, in Lancaster, and it's chilly here which is actually a good thing, I guess, these days.Chris: Perhaps I could ask you to elaborate a little bit on what Lancaster looks like, but I know that, you know, from our conversations previous that you grew up [00:01:00] in Cornwall, a place that was previously, a town, an area devoted to fishing and mining, and from what you've told me, it's also become a massive tourist trap that you know, from the little that I've seen online, that the area receives around 5 million visitors a year, and tourism makes up about a quarter of the local economy.So I'm curious what you've seen change there and what do you think has happened to Cornwall and its people as a result and maybe there's something in there as well regarding Lancaster. Craig: Yeah, so I should emphasize this. I was born in Cornwall. My family has been lived down there for many many generations anyway and my father's side of the family actually, at various points, worked in the tourist trade as well before they went on to other things.And, [00:02:00] yeah, I mean, I left because, frankly, there was no jobs that weren't tourism. I came to Lancaster to study because one, I have a physical disability which means that Cornwall is a very rural area, so you need to drive everywhere, and that's fine, I drove at that point, but for good or ill, a more urban center was better for me later in life as I left.But the way that it shifted, even in the years when I was growing up, was that, you know, essentially was a rural area where nothing really happened socially or culturally that much until the summer seasons. So, you were very, very aware of the seasons in terms of, you'd have visitors [00:03:00] starting, and that was when the town would wake up, and then it was kind of dead for the rest of the year, so it was very much one of those things where the tourist trade has actually made me more aware of human rhythms in the natural world than perhaps I would have been, because it's so based on seasonal stuff.And just looking at the way the infrastructure because a lot of the towns and areas, they boomed a little bit well, quite a lot in certain areas with the tin mining of the 19th century. But a lot of the architecture and things like that was 19th century. So you had small villages and slightly larger towns, and they have very, well, I guess some people, if they were tourists, would call "quaint, narrow streets."And when you have that many visitors, in the summer, you can't get down the streets. [00:04:00] You can't drive it because it's full of people walking. You know, there's an interesting anecdote I'd like to recount of when my father, he was a vicar, he was a priest, moved to a new area he would go to the local pub and all the locals would greet him as the priest and be like, very polite.And then when it would come out that my dad was actually a local, that he was born down there and part of the family, everybody would relax. And there was this real sort of strange thing where people came and stayed because it was a lovely area, but there was still that whole issue with second homes and certainly keeping an eye on things from a distance here during the pandemic when people left cities during the pandemic, they went down there amongst places in Britain.And that meant that, [00:05:00] literally, there were no houses for newly starting teachers, you know, teachers who had got jobs and were moving down there, couldn't find places to live because during the 2020 and sort of 2022 period, everything was just opening up either as Airbnb because there was this influx from the cities to the more rural areas because it was supposedly safer.You know, and I feel like that's a reflex that is really interesting because most people think of it as, oh, "a tourist area," people go there for leisure, they go there to relax and get away from their lives, which is true, but under a stressful situation like a pandemic, people also flee to beautiful quotes isolated areas, so there's that real sense of pressure, I think and this idea that we weren't entirely sure, growing up, [00:06:00] whether we would have a place to live because a lot of the housing was taken up by people with second homes. And plenty of people I went to school with because it's a surfing area took the knowledge that they learned in the tourism trade, and actually left and went to Australia. And they live on the Gold Coast now. So it's this self perpetuating thing, you know? Chris: Well, that leads me to my next question, which kind of centers around belonging and being rooted and learning to root, maybe even becoming a neighbor or some might say a citizen of a place.And with tourism or a touristic worldview, we seem to be largely stunted in our ability to know a place, to become part of that place in any significant or enduring sense of the word. And so, I'm curious what your thoughts are on what it means to know a place, [00:07:00] and perhaps on the often mad rush to say I know a place for the sake of social capital, you know, given the context of the kind of relative difficulties that one might incur, or in a place like Cornwall, and the relative degree of exile that forces people out.What do you think it means to know a place in the context of all of these economic pressures denying us that possibility, or at least making it really, really difficult. Craig: I think we have a real problem in modernity with the idea of knowing as a sense of capture, right? So if I know you, I have this boundary of this shape, this outline of Chris, right, that I can hold, that I can grasp. And I think sometimes when we say, "oh, I know a place," or, "oh, I know a person" there's no concept of the [00:08:00] ongoing relationality. You know, you capture the image and then you keep it. And it's a whole construct of extractive knowledge that really, I think, comes down to the idea that the humans are the ones who get to decide what a place is, right?So. I could say in the standard sense, "Oh, I know Cornwall because I, you know, I grew up there for nearly 20 years." My family has been there since about the 1500s. You know, "I know a place, it's in my bones." Yada yada yada. All the metaphors you want to use. But the fact of the matter is, the place itself influences me more than I influence it. So there's this strange sense of belonging in which modernity [00:09:00] says "I belong" or "it belongs to me" rather than perhaps the place has extended hospitality to me and allowed me to grow and I could live/work in a place for 30 years and never know it because we're not comfortable as a culture with the idea of going, "I don't know this place."And it's a variety. It's always changing. And I think about all the times I used to watch the sea and talk to folks whose parents were fishermen or lifeboatmen, and they'd be like, "Yeah, we know the waters, but the waters can change. We know roughly what they do under certain conditions, but we don't know them completely, because they can always surprise us."And So, when somebody says, "oh, you're from Cornwall, you're a Cornishman," and all that sense of identity, [00:10:00] I'm like, "yeah, but that's, that's both really fluid for me, because, you know, there's a lot of history." Is it the tourist world of the 20th and 21st century, or is it the farming and the mining that goes back to the Neolithic?How we relate to a place purely in a modern sense isn't, to my mind anyway, the only way to conceive of belonging because, even though I'm now 300 miles away from there, I have its isotopes, its minerals from drinking the water in my teeth, you know. So, on some level, the idea that you have to be in a place also to belong to a place is something that I'm curious about because, there's this whole notion, [00:11:00] "you're only in the place and you've been in a place for this long and that means you know it and you're local." Whereas growing up, there was this sort of weird thing where it was like, "yeah, you might have been here 30 years and everybody knows you, but you're not a local." Right? You still belong, but there was this other category of " you're not local or something like that."And so it's complicated, but I really do, for my personal take, tend to look at it as a, the landscape, or wherever it is, influences my sense of belonging in a non human context, or more than human context, if that makes sense. Chris: Hmm. Yeah, there's so much there. Yeah. I mean, I'm also, in the context of identity, also wondering in what ways, not only has the tourism industry shaped one's identity of being local, which [00:12:00] is, I think, a huge issue in over touristed places in the last, you know, 10 or 20 years, as identity politics rises into the mainstream, and but then also not just the industry and the interaction with foreigners or, or guests, or tourists, but the way in which the image of that place is crafted through, often, ministries of culture or heritage, you know, so you could grow up in a place that isn't necessarily overly touristed or anything like that. But then have your identity crafted by these ideas of culture or heritage that the government's, federal and otherwise, have placed on people.Craig: And especially because where I come from, Cornwall, actually had its own language, which died out, which was on the verge of dying out in the 19th century. And slowly there are more speakers of it now. And you go back there now and you'll find, [00:13:00] even when I was growing up it wasn't so prevalent, but you'll find a lot of the signs for the street signs will have the English and the Cornish.So that's where the government has embraced this identity and enhanced it after people have been saying, you know, "this is a language we've rebuilt it. It's cousin to Welsh and Breton. We should use it. It's part of our identity and it's got folded into that." And so the infrastructure itself is now been part of that. You know, those very same streets have a name that wasn't known for like, 50, 60, maybe to 80 years, and suddenly people are now deliberately using the old names in non English languages because of that. And it's very strange because, especially in the UK, what with all [00:14:00] of Brexit and all that, there is a very weird sense wherein the rest of England, i. e. North and London and those sort of areas don't understand because Cornwall was a peripheral area and much like Wales, there's a lot of distrust of central government. Hmm. So, you've got this whole construction of a personal identity of nobody actually really understands what goes on outside. Either they're incomers, either they're emmets. You know, which "emmets" is the old English for "ants." Referring to tourists as ants in a kind of, yeah, they get everywhere. And the whole notion of who we are is always constructed. But in that case, going away and coming back to visit, I'm going, "Well that street didn't [00:15:00] have that label on it when I left. But it does now. And so in a certain sense it's the same place, but it's got this overlay of somewhere different that really enhances that sense of layers for me of "which Cornwall?" "Which of any of these places are we talking about?"Like you say, is it the one you see on a picture postcard or an Instagram or is it the ones who sat there as kids going, right, 'there's nothing to do, let's go and drink in a field?' You know and all of these things can co exist.Chris: Hmm, right. Yeah, I just interviewed a friend of mine, Christos Galanis, who did his PhD on hillwalkers, as well as homecomers in the Scottish Highlands, so people who spend their weekends climbing, summiting the Highland Mountains, and also the Canadian or Americans who travel to Scotland on heritage trips or ancestral [00:16:00] journeys. And he mentioned how in the Highlands that the governments have placed the original Gaelic place names on all of the the signs there, whether you're entering a village or perhaps on the street signs as well.And that he said that something like "only three percent of the of the people in Scotland actually speak, speak Gaelic," so they see the sign, they see the name, the vast majority of people, and they have no idea what it means. And I also remember the last time I was in Toronto, which is where I'm from originally, or where I grew up.And my family grew up in the east end of town, and the main thoroughfare in the east end of town is largely referred to as "Greek Town." You know, when I was a kid it was certainly Greek Town. The Greek letters, the Greek alphabet names as well as the English names of the street signs in that area.But it's much, much, much less Greek than it was 25 years ago, right? So again, [00:17:00] this question of like, is that to some extent trying to solidify the kind of cultural geography of a place. That people come to that street and that neighborhood because they want to experience Greekness in its diasporic kind of context.And yet, so many of those people, so many of those families have moved on or moved along or become more Canadian in their own sense of the word, so. Craig: Yeah. It's very strange as well because things like that attract... there's a loop obviously, because you'll get people coming to experience the greekness or the cornishes, and people will be like, oh, we should open a business that will enhance the greekness or the Cornish of the place, and that will draw, and it just becomes this thing and, yeah.Yeah, it's very strange. And I would totally agree with you on that one. Chris: Yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. Until like a Greek person from Greece or a Cornish grandmother comes into town and says like, what? No, that's not Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'd like to shift the conversation, Craig, a little bit towards ableism, and begin with this question that comes from our dear mutual friend Aerin and who admits that she's happily robbed it directly from Fiona Kumari Campbell.Yes. So, you might have heard this question before but she she felt the need to kind of pose it anew and and so the question is this. How does disability productively color our lives and Aerin wanted to ask it, to modify it slightly and ask, how does disability generatively or creatively color our lives? Craig: I can't speak to anybody's life other than my own really. But I would say that for me disability has, [00:19:00] one, given me a real sort of ability to look at the world and go, "you guys think this is how everything works and it clearly doesn't."You know, it has given me a generative gift of going, "hold on, what people think of the default really isn't the default, because I was never born as the default, and so I've had to find my own way of relating to the world" and that means that anybody goes anytime anybody goes "Oh, well, everybody knows..." or "the only way to do it is this?" I am always going "are you absolutely sure about that?" You know, "are you absolutely sure that what you're looking at or experiencing or noticing is only perceivable in one way, it's only ever [00:20:00] frameable, in one context?" But also this idea for me that disability is simply a fact.It's not good or bad. It is a thing that exists in the world and ableism is essentially the urge to measure against the vast field of disability and impairment and go, "We don't want that. That's the worst thing to be. So, we will strive to not be that." As Fiona Kumari Campbell would say, " It sets up a ranking and notification and prioritization of sentient life."So, this is why we, to a certain extent, we have such a obsession with youth culture. Young, healthy, fit folks are in some way better than the elderly. Oh god, nobody wants [00:21:00] to get old cause, if you're of white extraction, "oh, they'll probably stick you in a home."Nobody wants to conceive of the idea that actually you can have a generative and intimate relationship with somebody, not necessarily a romantic one, but a deep, deep friendship that also involves, frankly to put it crudely, perhaps wiping somebody's arse, right? There's this whole notion of messiness and failure and why Aerin reworded it from "productive" to "generative" is that whole idea of being productive, of having capitalist use, to produce, to make for purposes. And for me, disability and the field of disability in which I exist says "I exist and I don't have to be productive." it really [00:22:00] challenges the capitalist framework for me. And also, ableism, because it's set up to rank things like speed, mobility, all kinds of things like that, having a disability where you're sitting there going, but there are other ways to do this. There are other ways to exist. To notice the way our bodies move that are mostly ignored in the sense of "yeah, we don't pay attention to our posture or our muscle structure or what our guts are doing because we're all already forced along to the next thing.You know, we're already touring from, "okay, I've got up in the morning. Next thing I've got to do is have breakfast," right? And if you can easily shift between those stages, so you get up in the morning, start your breakfast, put your clothes on easily. [00:23:00] You don't think about it as much, but if it takes you 10, 20 minutes to even get out of bed and you have to do specific things, maybe exercises, maybe things like that, the whole process thickens.And in a sense, for me, it's an antithesis to escapism because there are things you cannot escape. There are things you have to deal with. And because there are things you have to deal with, you have to pay attention to them more. And that means the most ordinary mundane thing becomes or can become, if you're willing to gently sense it, a lot richer.So, this is one of those interesting things where if people want to go places to experience new things, Okay, that's a whole issue that you've obviously talked about throughout the podcast, but there is a certain sense in [00:24:00] which we don't even know where we started from. We've not explored our own bodies.I mean, I wrote a piece in 2020 when all the lockdowns hit that got shared around various bits of the internet and I think even in the newspaper at one point in, but I got a request to syndicate it, of how to exist when you're stuck in your house. You know, what do you do to "keep," in inverted commas, "sane," which, of course, is an ableist framework, but what do you do to stop yourself from losing mental health? How do you function? And I broke it down and I sort of made practical suggestions of, this is how I, as somebody that doesn't actually have a, quotes, "normal life," and spends a lot of his time unable to travel or go out much, stops myself from feeling isolated, [00:25:00] because I've ended up having to learn to explore what some might regard as a limited domain.But to me, that limited area, that limited domain has given me this sense of vastness that's, you know, I can't remember which philosopher it is, but there is a philosopher who basically says, I think it is a Camus, who says "you just need to reopen when you're in your room and the whole world will reveal itself to you."And when you don't have a choice, when you're stuck in chronic pain, or sickness, or something like that and you have to work out what to do with your limited energy, to embrace life, there becomes a sort of challenge, to go, "okay, how can I feel like things are enriching? How can I, almost metabolize the things that other people would reject.⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.You know, [00:26:00] because disability is so "Oh, it's so sad he's disabled. Or we've got the cure for this and that. And we've got to cure it." And it's not really about ameliorating suffering. Which is a good thing. It's an analoid good to ameliorate any form of suffering. But there is this sense that the only way to perceive the world is through a so called "non disabled" abled body.The only way to experience a rich world, and again, I'm not knocking people who do a lot of travelling per se, but the only way to experience the world is to go on long journeys, and backpack and explore you know, new ways of thinking. That's great. And I'm not saying you can do exactly the same at home, but you can also become radically hospitable to yourself and to the environment in which you find [00:27:00] yourself.And that opens a whole lot of doors that I think I would regard as generatively colouring life and revealing life. In a way that was possibly occluded before. Chris: Yeah, I mean, so much of what I've come to in the research around tourism and hypermobility is this question of limits.And that certainly comes up in other themes, in other contexts. But not just the limits to one's place. Like, where does your place end? But also the limits of the human body. And, when we talk about freedom generally in the West, or in, in the context of modernity, it's so often pinned or underpinned via the freedom of movement, in part, because I know you're coming from the other side of the Atlantic, but certainly in, in this part of the [00:28:00] world, in the Americas and especially North America, freedom is understood as freedom of movement because that's in part how, the states and, and the nation's existences are justified.And so, I would just ask you what you think of that in the context of freedom being, of course a synonym for liberation. And how so many of our western notions of freedom are attached to movement and have. To a large degree become glorified in the hyper mobility of our times.Craig: I would agree with you. I think it was always there because of the colonial urge, but I think North American notions of freedom have, through a certain cultural hegemony, filtered back. You get it in the media, even Star Trek, you know, the final frontier, you know. Things like that. Or wide open spaces. There's still this notion of, freedom to move, room to live. It has its own European context and [00:29:00] horrors, unfortunately.But also, I think the notion of freedom as freedom to move. There is a question there for me, because I'm not sure we know what we're doing when we move. Right? And one of the questions that always was raised for me is, if I raise my finger, as I'm doing now, and I bend it so it's 90 degrees, how did I do that?What did I do? Well, science would say, okay, you used all your tendons and so on and so forth, and I'm like, yeah, "okay, those are nice descriptors. But what did I actually do?" Where's the connection between the impulse and the urge to bend my finger? Right. I don't know what I did there. I just thought I'm gonna bend my finger and the [00:30:00] finger bent But there's a whole bunch of stuff going on.So when I'm thinking about freedom of movement First the question is, "freedom to move in what way?" Right? So the the classic example is, in perhaps North America and and English speaking countries is "to go where I want, when I want, with none to to gainsay me, none to say you can't go there," which has been problematized thanks to the history of enclosure of land and capture by state and political actors, but also this notion that if you get into a city and you can go and people go, "Oh, I'm free to go wherever I want."I always sit there and I'm going, "yes, but you can go wherever you want, but if a place has stairs and no lift..." right? I [00:31:00] can't go there. So do I have less freedom? Well, according to the traditional notions of freedom, yes. I am less free. When I grew up, as an example in the UK I went to America when I was about four or five, and I was absolutely stunned by the amount of public toilets that had a disabled toilet.Right? Because virtually nowhere where I grew up at that point had a disabled toilet. This was due to the fact that the U. S. has a disability rights movement that was slightly ahead of the U. K. 's. So I was freer to go about my holiday in the U. S. than I was technically at home. I couldn't go certain places because there weren't toilets, or there weren't ramps, because that had not been legalized. You know, there'd been no legislation. In the UK, there was [00:32:00] no disability legislation until 1995. You know, so technically, I was born in 1981. I had no specific extra legal rights that I needed for 14 years. Now some would say, "oh, that, you've got freedom there... the law has given you freedom.It's giving you the ability to move, but it's only given me the ability to move in approved ways, right? And so every single time somebody talks about room to move, my query is always, okay. "One, as I said, move in what way? And two, who taught you what method of movement is approved or disproved?" So, particularly in Europe, we have folks like the Romani, the Irish travellers, [00:33:00] even the so called New Age travellers, right, who are nomadic folks.And despite this obsession with freedom, the idea that people are nomadic, are shiftless and rootless, still exists. Yes, a degree. The degree of privilege, the degree that I could be, quote, "more confident going into public spaces." And you'll see this in American history and throughout European history as well.And when I was talking about the nomadic folks, I was saying, you know, there are only certain people who are allowed to move in certain ways, to travel in certain ways that are approved. In similar ways with disability there were only certain kinds of people who were allowed into public spaces.They might not have been legislated against in the mid twentieth century. They might have struck those off the books, but at [00:34:00] various points, at least in the US, if you look up the Chicago Ugly Laws, people who were regarded as vagrants or unsightly, were not allowed in public spaces. They could be jailed for that.It's not just loitering. It was very much anything that could give offense because they were physically disabled. Or, the idea that the physically disabled are more likely to be begging or doing things like that. That was all folded in. So, this notion of freedom as the ability to move and move in space.Despite the North American urge to be like, "well, nobody can tell me what to do." There's still a certain level of certain forms of movement are privileged or regarded as normal versus others. So, you know it's weird if you don't stay [00:35:00] in one place or perhaps, it's weird if you don't have a reason for your seasonal job, right?When I was a kid and a teenager... like I said, where I grew up was kind of known for surfing, right? And I met folks who would come from places like Australia and live in Volkswagen transporter vans and work in the seasonal hotels and then go surfing. And then sometimes in the winter they disappear off to Morocco.And you wouldn't see them for six months and they'd come back and there's all this kind of idea of Differing rhythms, which has really influenced my entire life because those folks, they were there there were hundreds of them you could see them parked on every road and I knew several of them very very well, but the fact of those seasonal rhythms, which weren't [00:36:00] approved. It wasn't approved that they didn't stay in one place and pay taxes. To some that might be, you know, "Oh, that's freedom! That's telling the government, I don't have to pay your taxes or I don't have to stay in one place and be a registered visible citizen. I can be a free spirit and go to Morocco whenever I want. But, the fact of it is, if you walked on the, on the roads, people would look at you funny, right?If you look at people who do long distance walking in areas that are drivable, I mean, especially I guess in North America, that's looked at as very, very, very strange, because you guys don't have the infrastructure. So, for me, it's this really strange notion that we're fixated on particular kinds of movement to do with agency and power, right?And we, we will say, "oh, [00:37:00] that's mobile, that's fast, that's quick, that's agile." And I'm always curious about what criteria we're using to say, "oh, that's fast, that's agile, that's nimble," when you look at the so called natural world, and you've got plants that are seemingly immobile, but they actually turn to the sun.You just don't notice it until you stick it on a stop motion camera. And then you're like, "wow, they move." But you could go past that plant every single day and be like, "yeah, it doesn't move. It's a plant. It just stays there." Right? Because our perception of what movement is and what is approved is based around one, what we're taught and two, what we see every day.But also three. What we can't notice unless we're forced to look at the same thing over and over again, right? [00:38:00] Because our tendency is to see one thing, think, "Oh, I know it. I've spotted it. I know what it is. I've identified it. It's fitted into my matrix of identity. I can move on now. It's all sorted." But the whole ethos, I guess, that I'm coming at iswhat if you don't know? What if you don't know? What if that microphone that I'm speaking into and you're speaking into it looks like a particular thing and you think you could describe a microphone to somebody but go down to say the flows of the electrons and it's a context issue. You know? And, and So, I'm interested in thinking about what are the contexts are in the room with us right now that we're not even paying any attention to, and not even in the room, in our own bodies, in our own language.Chris: Wow. Yeah, again, there's so much there. My [00:39:00] my thoughts just flew off into a million different directions. And I feel like it would probably take me a while to to gather them in.Craig: No problem. You do what you need to do. I mean, that's, that's the whole point. Chris: Yeah. So I had a queer crip travel writer named Bani Amor on the podcast in season three.And we were talking about the fallout and the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic. And she said something like, you know, "the settler can't stay still. That the pandemic showed us that we can't stay still." In the context of that time that so many people who had been engaged in and who glorify or who simply have been taught to live a hyper mobile life, that there was this opportunity to question [00:40:00] that, to bring it into a different context.And I know a lot of people, couldn't necessarily leave their houses in the quote unquote lockdowns. But I don't think that wouldn't necessarily stop people from tending to or allowing themselves to witness the more than human world in that way. And so, my question is, assuming we have the opportunity, in some manner, in any manner, how do you think we might have our understandings of movements subverted, or at least challenged, by virtue of looking at the movement in the more than human world.Craig: Great question. I think one of the biggest notions, and I just want to return to that phrase, "the settler can't stay still." And really, agree with that, and so add to secondary things of what actually is stillness, right? We have [00:41:00] this idea of stillness as immobility, as, as, as perhaps staying in one place.Not moving, but actually, if we look at what we're doing when we're actually apparently still, there's still movement going on, right? There's still movement going on in our bodies. There's still a different kind of mobility going. And we're not the only ones, right? The more than human does this exactly as well.If you look at a rock, oh, you think a rock doesn't move? I mean, it doesn't move, but then you have erosion, right? Then you have the rain, and the way that particles are shaved off it, and it shifts. So, when we're thinking about outside, when we're thinking about... and when I say "more than [00:42:00] human," I'm not saying "better than human," I'm saying "exceeding the human," I just want to make that clear, it exceeds the boundaries of the human. Disability as mutual friend Bayo would define it is, I believe he said "it's a failure of power to contain itself." So, that's Bayo Akomolafe. And this notion that the world and the modern human flows through and beyond any sort of boundary, right? So, any outline we form is not immune in the sense of there's no boardwalk, right?A wall is not an untouchable upright edifice. It's actually touched and permeated, right? So everything in the more than human context interrelates and is, to a certain extent, degrees of [00:43:00] permeable. So, yeah, our cells keep certain things out, and let certain things in, but even the things they keep out, they're in contact with.They're relating to. Right? Because in the same way, with COVID 19 vaccine, people think, "oh, it's a vaccine. It's immunity, right? It'll stop me getting COVID. Or it'll stop me getting this, or stop me getting that." What it actually does is it has an interaction with your, the vaccine has an interaction with your immune system.There's a dialogue, there's a discussion, a call and response, which then engenders further responses in your body, right? So, there's constant relation that is ongoing. So, nothing is one and done, right? To borrow from Stefano Hani and Fred Moten No motion is ever completed, right? Nothing's [00:44:00] ever finished. It's not like we're gonna get off this and, and you'll be like, "oh, I've finished recording the podcast." Sure, you've hit the stop recording button, but the recording of the podcast is still ongoing. And there's this fundamental ongoingness, which is a product of the world.The world is worlding, right? And that means the most ordinary, mundane thing you can think of is ongoing. The mug I have right in front of me right now with tea in it. It's ceramic. It's been painted, but it's still ongoing, right? It still has the relation to the machines that shaped it. And it also has this ongoingness with the human history of pottery.Right? And people go, Oh, that's ridiculous. That's not practical. You know, "it's a mug," but I always [00:45:00] think. Isn't that just commodification? Like, is that not just saying it's a commodity, it doesn't have a story? Like, I don't want to get all Marxist here, but there's that real alienation from ongoingness and the fact that we also are ongoing attempts at relation. We're not even fixed identities. Our movements cannot be technically circumscribed because I have a disability which means I can't dance. Right? I use a wheelchair. I can't dance. I can't do the tango. Right? Okay. But everybody uses dance in a context of bopping to the music and doing all this thing and it's a bit like freedom. You know, everybody assumes that dance is a particular thing.But as Bayo and We Will Dance with Mountains, the course, the whole point of it being [00:46:00] called We Will Dance with Mountains is the fact that mountains don't dance like humans. Mountains dance like mountains. And the only way we spot how mountains dance is to actually pay attention to them and attempt to relate to them.We can't get out of our framework completely, but we can be open to say, what does our framework for a mountain miss about those massive landforms? What are we missing when we say a mountain doesn't move? And that's where you have references to indigenous and local stories that actually talk about these landforms, these places, these folklore places, as the living, moving beings that they actually are.Hmm. You know. Yeah, "okay, that stone circle over there was because a bunch of women were dancing on a [00:47:00] Sunday and in a Christian country, that's bad, so they got turned to stone," or in Scandinavia, "that rock there, it's actually a troll that got caught out in the sun." that these are living, ongoing beings and events, which it's not woo, it's actual or intellectual, I think.If you look at anything for long enough, you start to notice what's ongoing with it, even something that's solid and fixed. And that, to me, the gripping is the bending of the perception, right? That is queering, but crip-queering is that point where you have the restriction involved. People will talk about queer liberation, and yeah, we want crip liberation. That's cool. But if you think about crip liberation as, it might actually be the limits that bring us liberation.And then, if you track back [00:48:00] into mythologies long enough. You've got figures like Dionysus or then poetic gods who say, they're the ones that fetter you. They can bind you, but they can also set you free. And that is really interesting to me that a lot of these liberational figures also have a side that they can tie you up.And I don't just mean in a bondage sense. It's this notion that the two things, the two complexes are part of a whole thing, and you can't divide it into restricted and free and you can't escape. You can't pull a Harry Houdini from existence, which, to a certain extent, some people, when they go on holiday, engage in tourism, they're trying to escape for a little while, their other lives. But we all know you can't escape them. Mm-Hmm. But the inescapability of it is not bad. Right. By default, it's not [00:49:00] bad. It can be, but the assumption something is inescapable, just like, oh, something is disabling. Mm-Hmm. the assumption of good and bad. If you can hold that in abeyance and actually look at it for a second and go, Okay, what's going on here?Maybe our conceptions of this need reevaluating. Now the reason we don't do this on the regular, even in modernity, is because it takes a lot of effort and time to focus. And that's another benefit that I get as a disabled person, right? Because I can't use my time for a whole bunch of things that non disabled folks can.So I've got more time, I've got a different relationship to time and space, which means that I can sit and look at things with that differing relation to time and space, and be like "Huh, I never noticed that." And then I get to talk [00:50:00] about this stuff to folks like you, and people get surprised.And they're like, "you think about this all the day." I'm like, "no, I don't think about this. This is my life. This is how I live. This is my embrace of life, right? And this is my freedom to literally, Be like, " well, okay, my restrictions. How do they actually open me to the world?" And I'm not offering a prescription here, because everybody's different.But it strikes me that even the most nomadic person always carry stuff with them, right? And to borrow from Ursula K. Le Guin with her "Carrier Bag Story of Fiction," which Bayo talked about in We Will Dance The Mountains, the idea of what we're carrying is really interesting, but how often do we rummage in our own bags?Hmm. [00:51:00] Right? How often do we take off our backpacks and rummage just for the sake of it? Often we just look in the backpacks for something specific. Hmm. Right? Oh, I need a map. Oh, I need a chocolate bar. Oh, I need my, you know my iPad. We rarely stick our hands in and notice the way our clothing might shift around our fingers or the way, you know, the waterproofing is possibly coming off and means that the fabric has these different textures because we don't take the time and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the fact that we don't have that relationship to time and space.And babies, kids do. It's why kids put things in their mouth. All those things where you're like, "Oh no, don't put that in your mouth, it's bad for you." They don't know that. But the whole point of putting it in their mouth and feeling it is to try and not [00:52:00] understand it, not get it.There's nothing there in a baby in its early function that says, "I must understand what that is." The understanding comes upon you through experience. But there's no bit, at least as far as I can work out, that's like, "I must understand what it is that I'm putting in my mouth."It's more like, "hmm, that tastes interesting, it has some interesting textures," and then your brain does all the work or your brain and your body mind do all the work, but the personhood isn't also doing all the work, just like the "I" of my body, right, my relationship with the "I", as in my sense of self, I have to expand that to my entire body, You know, because there's so much going on right now in this conversation that I'm not aware of, right?There's stuff going on in my room that I'm [00:53:00] not aware of, but it's going on now. And so I have to expand and that expansiveness also means I sometimes have to venture into realms of pain, right? Because I have chronic pain. And in order to fully experience that, sometimes I have to encounter that pain.I have to slow down and focus and go, "Oh, the chronic pain that I was mostly ignoring because just in the background, it suddenly leaped to the fore because I'm paying attention." Now, modernity says you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do stuff that causes you pain. Understandable in a certain context, but If I didn't understand that the pain was also part of the experience and changes how I move, if I didn't understand that chronic pain changes how time stretches, then I wouldn't be where I am.So the more than human permeates the human in ways [00:54:00] that the human is either deliberately trained to deny or doesn't even know is going on and the pandemic basically was, in my eyes, the more than human kind of knocking on the door going you are not this completely hermetically sealed box, right? Your society is not a hermetically sealed box. Chris: Amen. Amen. I mean, could have gone in a lot of different directions, but here we are, at least being able to reflect on it in a good way, and I'm reminded, this notion of abeyance and attention and, and the expansion of the I.I'm reminded of this, this line from Simone Weil who said that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." And so, I think that it, something like that is worthy of the times we, we wish to live in and perhaps sometimes do. Craig: [00:55:00] Definitely.Chris: And so, you know, I wish we had more time, Craig really getting into some beautiful black holes there. But hopefully we get the opportunity to speak again sometime.Craig: I'd be, be happy to. Be happy to. Chris: And so before we depart, I'd just like to ask the kind of token question that always comes at the end of interviews, which is where can our listeners find your work?And I'm pretty sure you had a book that came out last year entitled, Goetic Atavisms, if I'm not mistaken. Craig: Yes, I did. So you can find me on my mostly moribund, but strange little blog at cold-albion.net. And you can also pick up the book, which is, to be clear, more of an occult angle on this, but it also brings in the disability angle directly from the publisher Hadean Press or you could get it from, you know, the Bezos Behemoth, if you really [00:56:00] wanted. I am also not really on social media as a project, but I'm also on you know Blue Sky, so you can search me up there, or Mastodon, which you could always search me up there, and I occasionally post things on there.Chris: Wonderful. Well, I'll make sure that all those links and connections are available for our listeners once the episode launches. And I very much look forward to reading Goetic Activisms myself. So, thank you so much, Craig.Chris: Thank you, Chris. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I learned how a missed home run sparked the creation of Rivalry Tech from co-founder Aaron Canopy. He conveyed the early challenges of building their platform from the ground up and initial launches at Rice University football games. Aaron discussed their pivotal strategic partnership with Aramark, which led to expansion into major league venues like the Mets, setting them up for scalable growth. I also discovered how the company used the COVID-19 pandemic to refine its software and form industry relationships. Additionally, the importance of building a dynamic culture centered around transparency, open communication, and employee empowerment was highlighted. Strategic collaborations with Comcast Business assisted in entering new verticals. Aaron provides insightful entrepreneurial lessons through strategic partnerships on values like self-funding phases, team building, and innovation. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I interview Aaron Knape, CEO and co-founder of Rivalry Tech, about his journey from a missed World Series home run to founding a successful food delivery technology company for sports and entertainment venues. Aaron discusses the initial inspiration for Rivalry Tech, which came when his partner, Marshall Law, missed a crucial home run while waiting in line for food during a 2017 World Series game. Aaron and Marshall, neither of whom were tech experts, navigated numerous challenges in the early days, including finding the right tech talent and building a minimum viable product with the help of Craig Zekonty, a former Rice MBA classmate. The episode explores how Rivalry Tech started at Rice University football games and eventually expanded to other venues, including a significant partnership with the New York Mets. Aaron shares how the COVID-19 pandemic allowed Rivalry Tech to focus on fortifying their software and establishing key industry relationships, ultimately positioning themselves for scalable growth. The importance of strategic partnerships is highlighted, including collaborations with Aramark and Comcast Business, which have helped Rivalry Tech expand into new verticals like healthcare and hospitality. Aaron emphasizes the significance of company culture at Rivalry Tech, which includes transparency, open communication, and fostering an environment where employees feel empowered to voice their ideas and criticisms. The episode delves into the lessons learned from strategic partnerships, including the necessity of validating customer needs before development and anticipating market trends. Aaron discusses his philosophy on hiring, emphasizing the "hire slow, fire medium fast" approach and the value of team loyalty during tough times. The episode concludes with a glimpse into Aaron's personal life, including his preference for Tex-Mex over barbecue and what he would do on a 30-day sabbatical. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Rivalry Tech GUESTS Aaron KnapeAbout Aaron TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Aaron Canopy, CEO and co-founder of Rivalry Tech. Aaron tells a fascinating story about how missing a home run during the World Series led to he and his partner creating a successful technology company in the food delivery industry. Aaron, thanks again for taking time. Welcome to Building Texas Business. Aaron: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me, Chris so let's talk about Rival would use to order the food. And it's our software and it's our hardware that's back in the kitchen, that lets the people back there get that food out faster. So, known for sports and entertainment, we're now in healthcare, fast food, restaurants, hotels, resorts, casinos, wow. Chris: So kind of like the Amazon Prime of food delivery. I think so yeah, it is, I like that. So what was the inspiration to start the company? Aaron: Yeah, so my partner Marshall Law. Actually his full name is Jesse James Marshall Law no way, no joke. Chris: Yeah, that's his real name. Aaron: Parents are comedians. They must have been. Yeah, they're awesome. But he was at Astros-Dodgers World Series back in 2017, sitting out in the left field and ran up to get a hot dog and a Coke with his two boys, and while he was up there waiting in line for 20, 25 minutes, yuli Gurriel just hits a bomb and it's right over his seats and you can go back to the highlight reel and you can see Marshall's empty seats. So he's crushed, right, he's devastated, and that's the whole reason you go to an Astros game to see moments like that. But it was even worse that it was right over his seats. So he texts me that night and says man, we've got to fix this. We've got to like why is there no app for food delivery in a stadium? And so that's when Rivalry Tech was born. Back then we called it seats, but that's when it was born. Chris: Oh, we don't, yeah. So a lot of people start companies where they see gaps in a process or something. Aaron: Yeah. Chris: But that was pretty remarkable. I mean literally leaving the stadium. He sends you a text about this. Aaron: He did and he was adamant. You know my being, you know, skeptic in general. I was like, well, either it's already being done or it's not efficient to do in a stadium. And he said, well, it's got to be done somewhere, so we're going to do it. It's going to be you and me, and he's very charismatic. So he convinced me to join up with him and we started the company a couple months later, Wow so walk us through that then what was it? Chris: you know what was it like and kind of what were the missteps taken to kind of start from scratch on this kind of idea that born out of frustration. Aaron: Yeah, yeah, you know that neither of us are tech founders, right? Neither of us are tech guys. So we had another hurdle to cross. You know, marshall had done some internet research and found you could build an app for $3,000. And we laugh to this day we look at the millions of dollars we've spent on the platform. So we might have been a little fooled into thinking it was going to be easier than it has been. But we started by, you know, trying to understand what the real need was, trying to just kind of map it out. And then we had to find a tech guy who was going to build this for us, right, because Houston's got a lot of tech talent now, a lot more than it did seven years ago when we started the company. But seven years ago it was tough and all the tech talent was being utilized by oil and gas and healthcare. You know, it's not like the West Coast where you've got a lot of talent. So we set out to find tech talent and that's where I went to. One of my old rice MBA classmates got in Craig's a canty who I knew had been a developer in his past life. He had his own successful company called Pino's Palate that he had built and grown and scaled, and so I said, hey, help me find a tech guy. And so we looked for two, three months and finally Craig comes to me and he says I found him, it's me. So great. Aaron: So Craig got back into startup life and that was probably one of the best things that happened to us, because he's very organized, very methodical and he's not just a coder, he's an architect, and so we got really lucky early on that we weren't like a typical tech startup where we're just writing code and it's kind of all thrown together. We were building enterprise grade, minimum viable product in the early days, right. So we kind of had a leg up in those early days and Craig is also co-founder, so he joined the company, really helped us get it off the ground. And then we went to work. We went to work and started out at Rice University football with our wives handing out flyers, our kids and brothers and friends were delivering the food into the stands and I was running a laptop just manually assigning orders and it was definitely a minimum viable product back at the time. But Rice had faith in us and we did them right and delivered a good first product and we learned a lot from that experience. Wow. Chris: So yeah, and it's grown from there. Aaron: We've grown from there. We then went, we got the Skeeters now the Space Cowboys to sign up with us, right, and then we had our big break. Then we got really lucky. We're building software the whole time, we're learning from Rice and Skeeters. And we had really good opportunity to be put in front of one of our old mutual friends, jamie Roots oh, sure, and president of the Texans at the time, and it was at a pitch event and it was funny. I'd never met Jamie. I didn't know him prior to this and he was sitting in my chair at my table at some point and I didn't recognize him. And I walked up to grab my bottle of water and Marshall's wife, melissa, knows him and she said, hey, aaron, this is Jamie. And I'm like, hey, what's up man? And she goes no, this is Jamie Roots. And I'm like, oh. And so we had a great 15-minute conversation and he said, man, I really like what I'm hearing. I like your ethos, I like the aggressiveness. We have an issue with the fan experience at NRG Stadium. I want you to come down and meet with Aramark and let's give it a go. So he got us into the stadium and I remember walking in and meeting with Aramark and Jamie and I won't name names. But the Aramark guy walks in the in the boardroom and he sits down and he goes mobile ordering is BS. It'll never work at scale and in stadiums. And I thought, man, we're done, yeah, we're toast. And Marshall leans across the table and says, well, that's because you're doing it wrong. So we got a kick out of that. They gave us a shot and we did well. We had a few thousand seats we were serving. We showed them that it could be done logistically, we could make money off of it and that we had a good product. So from there we started to scale and and built a really good relationship with Aramark, one we maintain to this day. And you know the sports side. We work with them at other pro stadiums. We work with them at Minute Maid. Right now we work with them at Fenway Park. The Boston Red Sox, the New York Mets. Those are some key Aramark partnerships with us. Chris: Wow, that's a great story, fortuitous, like most, if you're working hard and you get that lucky break and take advantage of it. The combination of hard work and luck sometimes is a really good thing. Aaron: It is. It helps, and we were astute enough at the time to understand that there is a bigger problem. The bigger problem wasn't that a fan wanted a beer or a hot dog in their seat their seat. It's that the operators the arrow marks of the world were having trouble keeping up with that unfettered convenience. We'll call it right, okay. All of a sudden, you go from lines, which naturally throttle your demand, to cell phones and everybody can order as much as they want, whenever they want, and they all expect it to show up in two minutes. So we learned that the operational challenges were the real problem and that's where we turned our focus. So now, when you look at our platform, it's not just about delivering food, it's about streamlining that entire process. Yeah, if the kitchen can't keep up, then it doesn't matter. Right? That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So building in the controls, the throttles, the reporting, the communication, all that stuff's baked into our platform. Chris: So a couple of things that come to mind as you talk about what sounds like a lot of focus in Energy One on product development, software and then trying to prove the concept. What did you all do to try to finance that? Did you have to go out and raise money? Were you doing it yourself? Because most startups and entrepreneurs face that conundrum and there's a number of different ways to handle it. Aaron: What did y'all do at Robbery, at the beginning we were self-funded, we were self-financed, we were bootstrapping it. I had a good job. I was president of a manufacturing company. Marshall has like three, four other companies, he's a serial entrepreneur and Craig was running Pino's Pallet. So we all had good jobs and we were able to fund the beginning parts of the company and ultimately it got to a point where really two things happened. One, I was spending more than 40, 50 hours a week on rivalry tech, and we saw that we were getting enough traction that it needed full-time focus, and so as a group we decided, okay, it was time for one of us to leave, and that was me. So I left my job and we financed a salary to get it going and do some fundraising, and we raised our first round of funding from Venture Capital probably about a year into operations, when we really wanted to start scaling, and that was interesting as well. That was a fun experience, but now that's how we got it started Just a lot of sweat, blood, tears and a lot of our own money. Chris: Yeah, that's a common theme for anyone kind of starting something from the ground up. Aaron: Yeah it is, and it's interesting when you do it that way, and I'll give credit to know when you have an idea and you want to start a company. You've got about a thousand ideas. Here's what it should be, and Craig was really good at saying, ok, but we can only afford to build three of those things out of the thousand things. What are the three things we really need to prove? What's going to help us get to that next round of funding or what's going to help us get that next customer? And it's not all the super convenient stuff right. It's not about sending you a text message when you're within a mile of the stadium. That's not going to generate revenue. So we really had to spend time and figure out what are the most most important things to build, and that's how we got the first version of the platform out right. We just wanted to prove that, a people would use it. B people would spend money to use it. And C we could help the customers make more money. And that was it right. So that's how you get to a platform where you have to have your kids deliver food. Chris: I'm sure that was great. Yeah, they enjoyed that a bit. They did, they had a blast. So then you know, the next, I guess, issue you face, I'm guessing is, as that success is coming, you've got to start building your team to service the customers that you're bringing in. Yeah, how did y'all go about doing that and kind of going through adding key people in the right spots at the right time? Aaron: You know that was a really interesting journey for us. You know, at the beginning we knew it was mostly about tech, like we had to build the technology and the software. We did hire an operations guy in January of 2020. It was a great time to hire a field ops guy, no-transcript. And so you know, at that stage we were really trying to figure out where we scale and how we scale, and we got to go hire all these operations, people et cetera. But then something happened in March of 2020 that changed the course of live sports and entertainment. Just a little bit. Chris: Right. Well, our good friend Jamie. I remember him saying at the time it's a terrible time to be in the mass gathering business. Aaron: That's exactly right. So you know, when COVID shut everything down, it was really funny we were actually in an investor meeting. It was, I think it was March 11th, 2020. And we're talking about raising a series A and we're going to raise some more money, and then the phones kind of start buzzing and vibrating and everyone's looking down and they're like, oh man, the rodeo just canceled and or just shut down. And then a few minutes later it was like, oh, the Rockets have postponed, you know, their season already. And or no, it was the Astros. I'm sorry, the Astros postponed their season, start dating all of this. And so we said, okay, well, maybe we shouldn't have this investment meeting right now. And that really kind of set the stage for, quite honestly, was a better growth phase for us, and I actually give COVID not that it deserves any, but I give it credit for turning us into the company we are today. We took COVID and took that time to build the software we really wanted to build, if that makes sense. So, rather than splitting resources you know we had precious resources at the time rather than splitting it between operations and marketing and all the other things you're normally spending money on, we put it all into tech and by then we had established a good relationship with Aramark. We had established a good relationship with the teams like the Texans, like the Astros, and we had established a good relationship with Major League Baseball through some of our other connections at Aramark. And so we just spent all that time in isolation talking to these other people who were in isolation. So, mlb, they became really good, almost friends, and said here's what hasn't been built, here's why you don't see it at every stadium. And we listened, and so we somehow managed to raise almost $2 million during COVID throughout 2020 and just put it all towards the software Wow. And so we were able to come out of 2020 better funded, but also with a product that MLB signed off on it we launched at the New York Mets in 2021, coming out of COVID. So that really helped us allocate those tech resources and then we could start. And, if you think about it, covid also gave us a really nice kind of gradual increase in activity with operations. So we hired one ops guy, because ballparks are only at 10% capacity, sure, and they were at 30, then 50, and then 100. So we were able to scale. It was a lot better runway than just getting hit with it all at once yeah, I guess it makes sense right. Chris: You were able to kind of that hiring process that we kind of started talking about you were able to ease into that right and not have to throw a lot of investment at it because of exactly the ramp up exactly and we were able to take our time and find good people. Aaron: You know, culture is huge for us. Startup life is a grind. Startup life in live sports and entertainment is probably worse because it's a lot of nights, it's a lot of weekends. It's going to happen, whether you want it to or not, you know. I mean, the schedule is the schedule and so we had to find those people who, you know, kind of thrive on that life. They like going and the insanity and the chaos around. You know, trying to serve food to 80,000 people, you know, on any given Sunday. Chris: Oh, I can't imagine right. The other thing, though, that you know, I hear from your lessons and the advantages you took during, you know, kind of the COVID shutdown, if you will, was you really and this applies at any time but the importance and value that you gain by listening to your customer? And we have what were the issues, what did they like, what would they change if they could? And then you were one listening and you took that back to the developers or maybe they were in the meeting too to make those adaptations and modifications. Aaron: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It really helped highlight a lot of those bigger challenges right, where we got to understand, okay, well, we did have the good fortune of working through Texan season in 2019 and we saw the issues, and then COVID just allowed us to sit face-to-face from the customer when they weren't distracted, when Aramark and the Texans weren't distracted by the season. They're just sitting at home literally and let's talk through it and we're going to build it for you guys. So, yeah, it really helped put a magnifying glass in without the chaos, and that made all the difference, right, because we have a lot of competitors who just build on the fly and they're just trying to build and learn and they're getting beat up every day and that, and they're getting beat up every day and that's the advantage we have. Chris: That's great. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermiller.com, and thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Well, you mentioned culture, and I definitely don't want to gloss over that. Couldn't agree more. I mean, culture is everything. What have you done at Robbery to build the culture that you appear to be proud of, and how would you describe that culture? Aaron: with grit. I mean a lot of people use that term as part of their core values, but for us it's. We really make sure, whoever sitting across the table, they know that this isn't an eight-to-five job, that this is going to be some nights and weekends and you may have a thought at 2 am and you know Marshall and I talk at 2 am all the time. We don't expect that from everybody, but hey, just know that you don't have to answer that 2 you in text, but if you want to, that's okay. But we've got a really fun culture. I mean, look, first of all, we're doing a lot of fun things. I mean whether we're at sports or, you know, I mean resorts. We do the Margaritaville up in Conroe. I mean there's worse places to go to have to do work, right. I mean we even enjoy going down to the hospitals. We're at Methodist in the Med Center. We've got some robotics stuff. It's just a lot of fun. And it's really fun to go into areas where, you know, people aren't using a lot of technology on the food and beverage side, and so we really focus just on people who are creative and they like to question and they like to come up with answers or solutions, you know we don't have. We try not to have any of those barriers where they feel like they can't approach me with an idea or criticism or feedback. You know, I think part of our success has been allowing everybody in the company to have a voice and there's no such thing as a stupid idea or a bad idea. You never know where it's going to go right, and so you know we like that everybody can feel safe just throwing it out there, right, I mean? And we've had some crazy ideas come across the come across the whiteboard, and some of them have gone on to become parts of the product and some we've tucked away and some we've giggled at and erased, you know yeah. And then we've got definitely a culture of you know, just a very candid culture, right? I'm trying to think of what the phrase is, but our candor is very important. So, you know, we have a lot of meetings where we'll share ideas and opinions and then we'll fight about those ideas and opinions and voices will get raised and pulses will increase and language will be thrown around. But at the end of the day, everybody does it respectfully and you can scream and yell at your partner all you want, but we always make up and we realize it's coming from a place of trying to better the company. Chris: Yeah, Sounds like transparency, but also in a safe environment, right. Aaron: It is. Chris: Yeah, the other thing that sounds like you've created within that culture is one that fosters innovation you talked about. People are encouraged to bring their ideas to the table. Yeah, their ideas to the table? Yeah, how? I mean? Are there things that are meetings you have to, or challenges you present to people so that they know that innovation is respected and welcomed? Aaron: Yeah, we do. I mean we have weekly meetings where we kind of go through everything from the tech roadmap to the operational roadmap to sales and marketing, and we just talk through what we're seeing in the market, try to identify the gaps, right. So we're really trying to teach everybody in the company look for those gaps. Where are we seeing, you know, areas where there's no solutions? And so I mean we love whiteboards. I mean if I could have every surface in the office be whiteboard, it would be whiteboard. I mean, put it up on the whiteboard and go and let's start playing with it. And we've gone through some sessions where we've covered a whole room and come up with new ideas or better ways to execute. Right, I mean we're dealing with, you know, a stadium or a hospital. They're not simple organisms, they're very complex. And then when you get back into the food and beverage service side and fragmented technology stacks that they're using in the back and how do you tie it all together? And then you got to pull in the different stakeholders the hospitals, the aramarks, the employees. It becomes a lot of moving pieces and within that is opportunity, yeah, and so we spend a lot of time just talking through you know where and how can we do this? Chris: so let's let's talk a little bit about you. Know you start in sports missing the home run of the World Series. You mentioned this and alluded to it earlier. You've grown in sports. While you still do. That's not your primary area. Tell us a little bit about you. Know how you moved into health care, as an example. Aaron: And what are some? Chris: of the innovative things that you're actually doing, that when people show up, you know hopefully not at a hospital, but at a resort or or something that they could see to know that this is your technology in play. Aaron: Yeah, so sports and entertainment was our focus market for a very long time and we realized that the needs existed everywhere. Right, the problem that we were solving wasn't just at large stadiums, so large operators like Aramark, they operate in a whole host of other industries, right, like we talked about hospitality or leisure hospitals, etc. And so we knew we wanted to expand into those other verticals at some point. And we got really lucky again where and you can obviously tell Aramark's been a great partner throughout all this Right, they called us out of the headquarters up in Philly and it was really funny. I'd gotten to know the guy well and he says, hey, great job in sports, you've solved a lot of issues for us. You've built a great platform. Can you do it in other business verticals? Could you do it in health care? And we said, absolutely, yeah, we've been wanting to for a long time. What are you looking for? And he goes well, we've got a customer down in Houston and you can hear the papers kind of flipping through. You ever heard of MD Anderson? Yeah, yes, I've heard of MD Anderson. He goes. Yeah, they have a need down there. We want you to go look at it, and so worked through some of that. But what ended up happening is we actually got in front of Houston Methodist and their innovation team is really great, really employee focused, really patient focused. But they wanted us to focus on putting in our mobile platform for the employees because you think about it a doctor or a nurse, 30-minute lunch breaks you don't want them waiting in line for 15, 20 minutes, right. So we saw that as our opening. We knew we wanted to expand here. We have a customer pulling us into this other market, right. So that's how we got started. We built the platform for hospitals at first, but the really cool thing about it is that that same platform applies to every other market in the world, right? Sports is unique. It's a four-hour event, five-hour event. You turn it on, you turn it off. A day or two, a couple days a week, depending on a baseball home stand football once a week, exactly, but a hospital, a hotel, fast food, I mean 365 days a year, sometimes 24 hours a day. So we built this new platform for them. And let's use Houston Methodist as an example. So we've got our mobile at all. And let's use Houston Methodist as an example. So we've got our mobile at all eight of their locations in Houston. We have our kiosks at all eight of their locations, so you can walk up to a coffee shop, order a coffee at one of our kiosks and the barista will make it. You don't have to wait in line and then we're doing some really fun stuff. So, like in the Med Center, we are integrated with a big robot made by ABB Robotics, and this thing makes your food from fresh ingredients to. It actually cooks it, it puts it in a bowl and puts it in a locker for you. That robot didn't have any way to communicate with the guest or for the guest to communicate with the food preparation system, right, which normally is a person behind a counter you talk to Right, and it didn't have any way to communicate with Aramark in the back. Hey, here's the reporting for the day. Here's what I've made. Well, we do all of that, and so we essentially said look, just let's and to oversimplify, just run a line from the robot into our platform and we'll take care of the rest. And that's what we we did. So you can order food from our app and the robot will make your food. It'll tell you when it's ready. It'll tell you what locker it's in. You walk up and you scan a little code we give you, and your locker just opens up, and then we do all the reporting for the customer at the end of the night as well, so they can see what you know delivery or make times were, etc. Now we're getting into delivery. Robotics have the just, so we're controlling that order fulfillment process again from the very beginning to the very end, right, Whether it's a human or a robot. So it's pretty fascinating. Chris: Sounds like I'm still trying to wrap my head around a robot cooking in the kitchen. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Aaron: It's their induction cookers. They look like concrete mixers and so it's tossing these, this pasta or this chicken, and like a concrete mixer and it's cooking it. So it's pretty neat. That's amazing. Chris: So you know clearly. You mentioned AeroMark several times and, based on the story, I can see that they're a key strategic partner for you, as are some others. What are some of the advice you could give others about how to cultivate those relationships that are so central to your business? Aaron: So I mean, Aramark was an obvious one for us in the early days because they were the gatekeeper to a lot of our stadiums. And the other part of that is we knew we didn't want to go door to door knocking on different stadiums' doors. They are in hundreds of stadiums, so build for one major customer, make them happy and they'll sell for you and they'll take you along right, and they'll take us along. That's exactly right. So we were very intent and strategic on a relationship like that and we've worked with Aramark's competitors as well. We work with a lot of them and it's that same mentality, right. But then, you know, we started looking for other partnerships and this was a really interesting one where Comcast Business, comcast Sports Tech, has, or Comcast Business has, a sports tech accelerator and we were asked to join a couple of years ago and we thought we might have been a little too big. We said, well, we've grown, we don't know that we need a tech accelerator. But they said, look, we're trying to give our partners in the space some more developed platforms and their partners are like PGA Tour, wwe, nascar, and so we signed up with. But we were very upfront with them. We said sports is not our focus market anymore. We want to work with Comcast business and they came back to us and said absolutely We'll intro you to the mothership big Comcast, join our sports tech accelerator. So we did, and great relationships out of that right We've. We now work with PGA Tour. We've got some agreements with them, working with them in a few locations, but Comcast Sports Tech did exactly what they said they would and I'll respect them forever for this, because you never know, right, like, do they really have any pull with the mothership Whatever? And so we are now fully ingrained in the Comcast business and what's called Comcast Smart Solutions, where they sell internet right, they sell connectivity and it's a commodity, but what they're using us for and a few other companies are where the value add wrappers right. So we're working with an NHL team. Right now Comcast is going to provide the Wi-Fi, the access points, but hey, guess what NHL team? We also provide mobile kiosk back of house software. There's other companies doing digital signage, iot, and so now they've got this whole ecosystem that they're taking out to their customers and we work with them, not just pro sports, but major franchise chains with 30,000 restaurants, more major hospitals, hotel chains with thousands of hotels, and so now we start going in and we've got this really strong partnership with a major player. And they had a lot of people knocking on the door and we just took the same approach Build, listen to them first, build what they want, build what their customers want, and they'll take you wherever you want to go. So that's great. It's not without its challenges, right. It's a slow process. You're building something for a multi-billion dollar company like a Comcast or an Aramark. You don't get sales overnight. You've got to dig in and you've got to understand that it's going to take time and investment. But when that flywheel gets spinning it's sure hard to slow down. Chris: Yeah, that's great, yeah, but you're right. I mean we talk about it. It doesn't happen overnight. You've talked maybe a little bit about it, but I think we also learned. I'm sure there were some mistakes made, setbacks that you and your team learned from. That also helped you later become as successful as you have been 100%. Anything that comes to mind that stands out as one of the bigger ones. Yeah. Aaron: You know, in software it can be challenging because people, customers, will just say, hey, I want this, I want it to do this, and the proper answer is do you really need it? Do you really need it to do that Other than a? Chris: programmer going sure, I can do that, yeah, and they will right. Aaron: And you could spend all the money you want. And I remember this isn't a major mistake, fortunately. But I remember we were at an NFL team and it was a customer and they said we want the ability for the app to, or the users to, pay with cash. And we're like why do you want to pay with cash? We're digital, we don't need, and they're like we have to have it. You have to have the ability to say this was a cash payment and then reconcile the end of the night. And we were like and this was a week before the season, and so we hired a couple of extra developers, we spent I don't know 50 grand to add this cache functionality. And we go back a week later and we're proud of it and we're like check it out, and you know what the team said oh man, we decided afterwards we didn't need it anyway. I wanted to strangle them. Aaron: I was going man, we jumped through hoops. You could have told us, right, yeah, you could have told us, like, when you decided you made the decision, but here we go and we built it. So you know, in the early days of a company you're really eager to please and you do have to kind of take a step back and say, look, we can't build it all, you'll go broke or you'll build need and you'll never use. That goofy function is still sitting out there somewhere attached to our platform, right just turned off, yeah like an appendix right. We don't need it and it's just there forever. That's probably one of the biggest things we learned in the early days. You know we've learned as well that I mean you've got to keep your head on a swivel for new developments in the market. You've always got to be looking at what's coming down the pipeline. You know we probably erred a little bit and not getting into kiosks earlier. When COVID hit, we thought no one's going to, no one wants a kiosk, they don't want to touch anything. Right, remember the early days we were fogging everything and the reality is kiosks are probably the biggest thing out there right now and it's a natural extension of our platform. We had the time to do it and we're getting in the game and getting in the game a good way and you know, to be fair, it's we're not worried about that first mover advantage. We've got a lot of mistakes from our competitors that we're learning from and gaining ground very quickly. But you do learn to start looking farther down the road. Right, we were maybe looking a year down the road. You've got to be looking two years down the road. What's really coming down? So now, if you look at what we're focused on biometrics, computer vision there's a lot of components that are on our roadmap or on our current integrations that we're building, that you won't even recognize our platform six months from now. Chris: Wow, that sounds pretty cool. Yeah, it's fun. So while we have some time, let's turn and talk a little bit about leadership. As you said, you kind of were the first to really step in full time. You were running a company before. How would you describe your leadership style and why do you think that style has been successful in helping Ravelry grow to the company? It's been. Aaron: Yeah, we like to hire people who take a lot of initiative on their own, who aren't afraid to go out and do something and maybe make a mistake and try it again. So you know, in the startup world or in the tech world there's a and this applies to a lot of places but you know it's hire slow and fire fast. And we hire slow and we'll fire like medium fast. You can't make everybody think they're going to get fired for making a mistake. My leadership style I'm not a micromanager. I very much. When we hire people, I say look, I'm not going to give you a book to tell you how to do your job. We're going to write this book together because we're breaking new ground every day and we're learning something new every day and I'm not going to pretend to know everything. So I'm hiring you because you're smarter than me. Hopefully. You're known for what you do and do it well. And if I'm going to teach you anything, it's going to be how this company operates and where you can find your best fit and your best purpose. You know, if it's a salesperson, where and how do they make their best fit as a salesperson. You know, if it's a salesperson, where and how do they make their best fit as a salesperson. So you know, that's been my style it's give them some autonomy, give them some ability to go out and make it their own and if you hire slow, you've got a good feel for the person, you know what they're going to be capable of and if you're comfortable with them. So that's how I've tried to lead the company. We've got you know, it hasn't always worked we've had people come and we've had people go. And then we've got some people who, just, you know, they grind it out every day for this company and they're always thinking of new ideas and their days. You go, man. You know when is this guy going to leave me? He's so good, he's bound to go find something better. And they don't and they stay and and I think that speaks to the culture and the loyalty and the environment that we've built- Well, that's certainly true, especially for those high performers. Chris: If they're staying, the reason they're staying is because of the team that they feel like they're a part of, which goes to the culture. Aaron: It does. Yeah, it does, and I'll share a little bit more on the intimate side. We're a tech company, right, and you have your ups and your downs you always do and teams come, teams go, covid happens, covid goes away. We've been through times in our history where we, you know, you're strapped for resources, you're strapped for capital, right, because you're raising venture dollars, sure, and we've let people go who have said can we work for free, like, can we still keep doing our job? We know you can't, you know, afford to have this big team. And you know, I mean I get emotional when I think about that. Sure, that we have people and it's been multiple people who've done that and you bring them back. And the goal is to bring them back. And I mean you can't buy loyalty like that. No, that's not something money buys. And so, you know, if we, as we grow, you know I know that would get harder to keep that part of the culture, but man, it's the early days. If you can just capture that magic of the stress and the trenches and have responses like that from all your employees, you know you can go out and teach a pretty good course. Chris: Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, and get to your point. I think you know one of the goals of a company should be hire really good people, give them good opportunities, autonomy, training so that they become really good so good that they're marketable anywhere else in your industry or others, but also have a culture that's so good they don't want to leave. Yeah, Right, and if you can hit on those two things, man, it's like the key to the kingdom. Aaron: It is, it is and those people are priceless and you know our goal is down the road. If there's a big exit or something like that, I mean loyalty gets rewarded right, and you don't forget those times, because those are meaningful for business owners. Chris: Very good. That's great, man. It's great. What a cool story. I mean like seven years, yeah, it has been. So let's, we'll turn it a little bit on the lighter side. What you know growing up, what was your first job? Aaron: My dad's a large animal vet and so I was shoving the proverbial you know what. So, yeah, I worked at his vet clinic quite a bit, so it was a lot of painting, a lot of fence building a lot of you know cutting hay out in the pasture. Chris: So I was a farm boy. That's funny. So my dad was a primarily large animal and there was a big pile behind the stalls and that was one of the jobs and his partner's sons and I, yeah, I could totally relate. Exactly, that's too funny. Well, you know, not necessarily the best segue from shoveling that stuff, but I'm going to ask you do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Aaron: oh, tex-mex. All right, tex-mex. Yeah, you know it's. I've lived around the world and I you know, I know it's not exactly true, but I mean, it seems like you can find barbecue or barbecue adjacent foods almost everywhere, man, tex-mex, you just cannot find it. I mean, it's just you. There's tex-mex everywhere, but it's not Tex-Mex unless it's here. Chris: I think that's a pretty true statement. Yeah, and then the last question. I'm curious to know if you could take a sabbatical for 30 days, where would you go and what would you? Aaron: do. Oh man, if I could take a sabbatical for 30 days, you know I would go back. So we spent a lot of time as a family over in Europe and in France and in small towns. So you know there's just a, it's a part of that world. You know, if you asked me where I would go you ask a lot of people where they would go in France they'd say Paris. Paris is okay. I like the small towns, I like the history, the quietness that you get in a lot of those places. You know rivers and streams running through it. So I just found that part of the world to be especially peaceful. And if it's a sabbatical, you know that's where I prefer to be. Good food yeah, can't beat it. Good wine yeah, really good wine yeah, can't leave that part out. Chris: No, not at all. Well, aaron, this has been an amazing conversation, love and your story that you and Marshall and others have created. So thanks again for taking the time. Yeah, appreciate it, chris. Thank you, Special Guest: Aaron Knape.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I learned valuable lessons from Patrick Terry, founder of the popular Austin-based restaurant chain P Terry's Burger Stand. Patrick explains how the company's success has been centered around its commitment to natural ingredients, competitive pricing, and exceptional customer and employee care. We explored the challenges of maintaining price discipline amidst rising costs and inflation, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patrick also shared insights from his origin story, hiring practices that bring on passionate individuals, and the importance of company culture. He also touched on the strategic considerations that underpin P Terry's expansion plans into new markets like Houston and the employee support programs in place. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS I discussed the inception of P Terry's Burger Stand in 2005 with founder Patrick Terry, focusing on their strategy of using high-quality, natural ingredients at competitive prices to differentiate from fast food giants like McDonald's and Starbucks. Patrick emphasized the importance of customer feedback and employee well-being in ensuring operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, without relying heavily on marketing or advertising. We explored the challenges of maintaining pricing discipline amidst inflation and supply chain disruptions, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and how P Terry's managed to outperform competitors with consistent pricing strategies. Patrick shared the origin story of P Terry's, highlighting their commitment to quality food and a strategic hiring process that prioritizes employees' passion for the restaurant business. The unique approach to food preparation at P Terry's through their own commissary was discussed, showcasing how it helps maintain quality and cost control, along with their plans for expansion into Houston. We delved into the significance of company culture and employee care, including P Terry's innovative non-interest loan program for staff in financial need, as a means to foster loyalty and engagement. Patrick recounted the emotional journey of running the business, his brief hiatus from leadership in 2019, and the decision to reengage with renewed vigor, underscoring the importance of leadership in maintaining company culture. The strategic expansion from Austin to San Antonio and the considerations involved, such as logistical feasibility and location selection based on cost and accessibility, were discussed. We highlighted the balance between choosing affordable locations and ensuring they are accessible to customers, using demographic trends and growth areas to inform business decisions. Patrick shared personal anecdotes, including his early entrepreneurial ventures and the cultural philosophy at P Terry's, emphasizing the importance of setting high standards and leading by example. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About P.Terry's GUESTS Patrick TerryAbout Patrick TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Patrick Terry, founder and owner of P Terry's Burger Stand. Patrick attributes the success of P Terry's to two fundamental strategies First, work hard and listen to your customer. And second, take care of your people and they will take care of your customer. Patrick, I want to thank you for coming on Texas building Texas business and it's just a pleasure to have you on as a guest. Patrick: Well, thanks, I'm honored to be here. I really am. Chris: So I think the first place to start is for you just to tell us, those that don't know of P Terry's, what is P Terry's and kind of. What are you known for? Patrick: Well, so my wife and I started P Terry's 2005. So we'll be celebrating our 20th anniversary next month, next year, and the idea behind it we sell we're a quick service hamburger stand, and the idea behind it was if we were going to compete with, you know, the giants in the industry the McDonald's and the Burger Kings and the Jack in the Boxes and the Chick-fil-A's you know everybody. You know we're going to have to find a way to be different and you know I talk about so often. People want to get into business and they find a retail store or a restaurant or a concept that they like and they go across the street and pretty much do the same thing as the guy that they liked. And when you do that, all you've done in a best case scenario, is you take half his business. It's pretty hard to take all of his business. If you're going to do the same thing, then you're going up against the fact that he's established. Clearly he's doing okay because you liked it and he's there. And so I think that's the biggest mistake new business owners and entrepreneurs make is they like a yogurt stand and they go across the street and they do the same yogurt stand. And so, all that said we were going to be different, and where we were going to be different was that we were going to offer the quality beef and the food that we serve is really that of an upscale restaurant, to be honest and we were going to do it through a drive-thru and a dine-in at a fast food restaurant, but we weren't. Because of that, we weren't, of course, able to charge any more than the fast food guy across the street, so what we were trying to do was make ourselves bulletproof. We were going to offer a quality product that you couldn't get at a fast food restaurant at a price that was the same as the guy across the street that wasn't serving that quality food. And obviously, if you're able to pull that off, it's a huge advantage. And by doing so what we did, we established right away that we were going to look for a fair profit, and that was what it was going to be. And so if I could sell an order of French fries and I might be able to get $2.50 for that order of French fries, I looked at the cost and I'm thinking well, actually, my overall cost of goods, I only have to sell those franchise at $2.15. We have very low overhead. We have a small office with a G&A under 6% and we work hard and we work smart and we don't spend money on marketing or advertising. We don't have that luxury. We don't pay, of course, any franchise fees because we own the business. And so we were able to pull it off. And so we serve a black Angus, all natural beef, and what that means is it's antibiotic free, it's hormone free, it's a vegetarian fed, it's a pure beef. I mean it really is a great product. We serve the same thing with a hormone-free chicken. And you know, our buns don't have high fructose corn syrup. Our potatoes come from Idaho and they're fresh and they're cooked in a canola oil which doesn't have any hydrogenated oils. I mean, we literally just went down the line and said, okay, this is what we're going to do. Now we're going to have to make it work and by keeping our costs down and, frankly, working really hard, really hard with a lot of smart people, we were able to pull it off. We opened up our 34th store two weeks ago in Cibolo, outside of San Antonio, and, as you know, we're on our way to Houston. We have our first Houston location in Richmond I believe it is in October, and we're going to have five. We plan for five Houston locations. One of the other things that we do that makes this unique is that we have our own commissary. We cook we do a lot of cooking and for our restaurants ourselves, so we bake our own banana bread, we bake our own cookies from scratch, we make our own veggie burgers from scratch. We take chicken breast all chicken breast, boneless, skinless breast and we actually grind it into a patty for a chicken burger and for our chicken bites. And all that's done in the commissary by our own staff. We share the offices, share a space with the commissary, and every morning three or four trucks go out and deliver that product to the stands, and so we're able to keep our costs down by doing that as well. We pretty much just take charge of everything we do, yeah and that's what separated us. Chris: Well, it sounds like what I'm hearing is a very focused, you know thought into what you wanted this business to be and I guess what you didn't want it to be. So you know what I heard you talk about is, you know, obviously very cost conscious, so that you could be profitable, but also singular, focused on this. You know premium quality food at a lower price point and you know really it sounds like in the beginning, very focused on what profit margins would look like, what your cost of goods would be. Before you even opened a store it seems like. Patrick: Yeah, and I don't want to make it sound like we're smarter than we are, because a lot of that stuff just you know fortunately just works itself out. Now where it got tricky is when COVID hit and the supply chain issues and the inflation that we've seen and where we've benefited from that is by having always done what we've done in the last 19 years and everyone's read about. You know the McDonald's Big Mac combo meal. It's for $16 in Idaho and you know McDonald's are great operators. So I got nothing bad to say. But every time you take a price increase if you're not looking over your shoulder when you do that if you're not conscious of? am I really doing everything I can before I go up on this price? Patrick: way I can make this a nickel instead of a diamond. Unless you've done that from the start, you find yourself taking price increases to cover up mistakes or issues of the day, and it becomes this band-aid that's very hard to take off, right. Chris: We've seen that in your industry right, where the classic pass it on to the consumer, and then in the fast food wars just over the recent months, the consumers rebelling. Patrick: Absolutely, absolutely. And so when you know Starbucks and McDonald's show, you know negative comp store sales, last quarter, for the first time since you know COVID hit, we were up 8% in our compor sales. And because, frankly, when you take our strategy and you stick with it and the hard part is sticking with it it's really easy to look around and go, man, that guy over there he's getting six bucks for that burger and I'm only getting five. I could probably go up a quarter and that's the illusion, right, you get into that game and there's a mind game and if you're able to keep pushing that off and, trust me, it's a hell of a lot easier going up a quarter. When you're able to pull that off, then you don't go down that rabbit hole and find yourself in a situation where so many of our competitors have found themselves. I mean, I look around and see what similar pricing is, I mean what similar menu items are and what the pricing of our competitors are, and I'm astounded. I mean there are some of our competitors are 20 percent higher than we are on their menu, and you know we're all serving food out of a drive-thru and so it's a dangerous game. It really is. And so I think that I think you've hit on it exactly the way it is, it's a discipline and it's every day. Chris: Yeah, well, that's what Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great. You know, discipline, people with disciplined thought and disciplined action is how you get from good to great. Yeah, so let me, let me take you back, cause I mean I love the thought that went into to the concept from the beginning, but what inspired you to, in 2005, open up a hamburger stand? Patrick: Well, thank you for asking. It's almost embarrassing, I apparently. When I finally did it, a score of my friends contacted me to remind me how much I had been boring them for so many years that I had always wanted to open up a hamburger stand. And do not ask me where that came from. I have no idea, other than to say that I love the idea of serving a hamburger, french fries and a milkshake. I just, I just think that's glorious and I know that's probably way over the top, but there's something so satisfying and it's probably because it's my favorite meal that I just can't get past it. So I had always wanted to do it and I had a particular location that I had in mind and I lost it five years earlier and it sat empty for five years and finally it became available, and so that's when we opened up at Lamar and Barton Springs in Austin. Chris: I love that. Well, I mean. So, like, like any good entrepreneur, in my view, you followed your passion, your favorite meal, something that you have a passion about doing. Patrick: Let me tell you, if you don't love this business, you better not get in it, because it is consuming, it's all consuming. And so you know I look around. When I used to, you know, when I would hire somebody, I would remind them that if they didn't really love the restaurant business or what we do every day, you are not going to be happy, and if you do love it, you're going to be very happy, because we're drinking out of a fire hose here pretty much every day. Chris: Let's talk a little bit about hiring, because I think that's really regardless of the industry, really regardless of the industry. I mean, companies are made of people and you've got to get the right people to help, you know, maybe bring your vision to light, your strategies to life. What have you done over the years to make sure that you are making that right hire decision? I assume it's evolved over time and I think there's at least a couple of pieces. I'd love to maybe hear how it was starting out, but oh, yeah, it was. I know that coming out of COVID it had to be even more challenging, because people wouldn't even come to work. Patrick: Right. Well, when we first opened, the first day we opened, my wife Kathy was there and she had no restaurant experience. I had some and I put her through it. It was. You know, it was very difficult, and she likes to tell the story that she looked around the very first day and realized that there was no way we were going to do this by ourselves. And so the first three years we were in the stands every day. I mean, I worked every day, morning to night, and by doing that I got to know, obviously, everything that it took to run the stand, every position. But I also got to see the people that were there and I was able to separate the ones that were working out and the ones that weren't. And I was not a good hire at first. There is this you know, boy, it's easy to take what you think is the simple route and just put a body in place and, man, if it's the wrong body, everyone's miserable, and so it took me a while. I just had a certain, but I was not going to give in. I had a certain level of employee or stand or team member that I was, that I had envisioned, and so I wasn't going to lower the bar. And so the first three years were really difficult because a lot of people you bring in had other unfortunately had other fast food experience and they brought a lot of bad habits with them. And so you know, it's one of those deals when you hire somebody, frankly, they either have to be scared of you or they have to like you, and I'm not the guy that they're going to be scared of. That's just not the role I want to play. It's not the business I want to run. We're not always going to agree, but my hope is that we like and respect each other and respect each other. The other thing is what we learned being there every day is we learned so? Many of our employees' lives are completely different than mine. You know I've been around for a long time. I had some money in the bank. You know I had a college education, I had a career before this, so it's really easy to live in your bubble and not recognize it, and so I tell this story a lot. We had an employee, vinny and this was 18 years ago and, by the way, I'm proud to say Vinny still works for us, as do a lot of those people in those first few years. They're still with us and Vinny's truck broke down and I had worked all day and I didn't want to do his job that night, so I convinced him just to get in a cab and I would pay for the cab. And then when Vinny got there, I said what's going on with the truck? And he said well, it's going to cost $150 to get fixed and I don't have $150. So I handed him $150 and I said pay me when you can, because I need you here and I need your truck fixed Now if I'm in a corporate office, then he probably loses his job because he didn't show up. Right, right, I don't answer the phone, we don't have that conversation. So then I've lost an employee that I've had for 18 years. But, more importantly, I understand the position they're in, and so the very first thing we did from that is we created a non-interest loan program for all of our employees. So if you walk in to my office right now or you don't even have to do that you tell your manager, and the manager is going to make a phone call and you say I'm behind in my rent or I have a, you know, whatever it is, you're going to get a loan, and if it's under, if it's five hundred dollars or under, we don't even ask, we just you get it. If it's more than that, we want to know what's going on, you know. And so what we did is we made hiring easier. This is a really hard thing to do every day. The last thing I need to do is make it more difficult. So so we started by taking care of our people better than most, and they told their friends, they told their relatives, and so they understood that this is a two-way street and I'm going to take care of you, but you have to take care of me and, of course, the way you take care of me is you take care of the customer. Advert: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyMillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: That's great. I mean the idea and I think it's true in any organization. If the people that work for you think that you genuinely care about them as a person, not just that they get the job done, you're going to create loyalty and engagement with that employee. Naturally, hearing your story leads me to the question about culture. Let's talk about that. How would you describe the culture at P Terry's? Obviously, the fundamental philosophy you just described, I would assume, is some of the foundational elements of the culture that you're trying to build or have built. So what can you share about that? Patrick: Well, I'll tell you the obvious. You and your listeners already know this culture is the most important thing. There's nothing even close to second when it comes to running your business. The culture that you establish speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. Speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. There's nothing more important. I can't even think of number two. I'll tell you an interesting story very quickly. I hope it's real. I had a person call me and want to visit with me about the business, and they had a very successful online clothing company and they were about to open up stores for the first time. Everything they had always sold was online, and he asked me what it took to open the store and take care of the employees for the very first time. Right, this is all of a sudden. It's not a click, it's a conversation, and I probably talked for 15 or 20 minutes about everything we do every day for our employees. I thought I really thought his head was going to explode. I mean, he. It was so beyond the realm for him. And I get it right. This is like, and what I was trying to explain to him was you're, you may be selling the same item, but you've got an entirely different business model now. I mean, now you have, for the very first time, you have a person representing you selling that product to someone. And boy, you better get that right. And so that's really what it boils down to is understanding what we do every day and what our people do, and the culture has to be led by me. You know, I read a great line a couple of weeks ago. Somebody said to the person running the company, what's your job? And he said my job is to be right. And so when you accept that as your job and, by the way, I don't do it by myself, oh my Lord, not even close right, I mean, I've got all. I got these people around me that are just terrific, and but I certainly go to them and we certainly talk about everything. But the first thing that this has to be established is I'm here and I answer my phone and if, if you're in the hospital, I need to be there and make sure everything's okay. If you have a family member that has an issue, if there's something I can do, I got to do it. And then you have to understand everyone has to understand that there's a bar set and no one goes below the bar, and I can never go below the bar, obviously, and so it's really for me and for P Terry's, it's really by example, and if you know, dogs and kids can spot a phony a mile away. And so if you're not sincere in what you're trying to do and what you believe in and I've had some people that work for me that I could tell immediately you know you're faking it and you know you just don't feel the same way the rest of us do, and nobody wants to be in that position. So you're not happy here and I'm not happy with you here, so let's just shake hands and walk away from each other. So there's a lot of that going on, but the culture and what we do every day, the first thing we do is we just take care of our people and then we count on them to take care of the customer. Chris: Yeah, Some of what you're saying there I've heard others speak to. We certainly have that philosophy here in the business we run in this firm and that is we say we hire and fire from culture. Right, you have to know what the culture is. You have to look for the people the best you can through interview processes and hire from culture. More importantly, when you figure out someone's, you know you set the standard and you can't go below it. But if you see someone that's consistently going below it or faking it, then you've got to move fast and they need to be out of the organization. And it doesn't have to be harsh to your point. Chris: They're not happy, no one's happy. They're going to be happier somewhere else that has a different set of standards that connect with them. But you've established your standards. You've tied behavior that you can demonstrate is consistent with that that comes from the top down, and then everyone can be on the same page. Patrick: And it has to be. It's almost like, you know, being in the middle of an orchestra. You know we're all playing the song and we've all got a part to play, and if one of us, you know, drops the violin, it's not going to feel sound the same. Yeah, so true. Chris: So you know, reading up on, you know the goings on at P Terry's. I want to kind of turn the conversation a little bit to the last maybe I guess it's been four or five years you did something that is not easy for a founder to do in 2019. You decided to step down as CEO of you know, your proverbial baby let's talk about that. Obviously not the first time an entrepreneur has done that and kind of handed reins over. What led to that decision and how was it for you to kind of transition out of the CEO role? Patrick: Well, if it's okay, I want to step back a couple more years before that and talk about something that it really doesn't make the papers very often. That, and talk about something that it really doesn't make the papers very often. We had at one point I had just kind of hit a wall. I was exhausted. I was working with a kind of a person that I had next to me that was, you know, my right hand man. It was just it was. We had been going at such a pace for so long. You know, my wife and I have funded, had funded this business all by ourselves. The entire time we borrowed money but we didn't have any other investors, so everything kind of fell on us every day and the idea came up that maybe we should sell because this is just exhausting. And we did a dog and pony show and had a half a dozen legitimate buyers and we got a wonderful offer. You know, as I said to the person when I turned him down, you offered me enough money to go live on an island and I've got two little girls. I don't get to live on an island even if I wanted to. So I appreciate the offer very much and I think what I was doing when I did it, and it was sincere, I wasn't trying to waste anybody's time. But I think after the offer came in and my wife and I both agreed that we didn't want to do that. This is not how we wanted our legacy to end. I think I was looking for validation. I had never been validated for the work I had done, other than you know that the we were allowed to expand. Our business was good, our customers were very appreciative, but from an industry standpoint, I didn't know what we had created. I really didn't. I'm not the guy that I'm terrible at networking. I don't go to. I don't go to meetings, I don't go to conventions, I just I really it's not my deal, I really just work. And so I got that validation and then I made a decision that the next decision we made was do we want to leave Central Texas? You know the Austin area, and I had never done that. And so I thought well, I got some great advice one time that I don't want to learn something that somebody else has already learned, that I don't want to learn something that somebody else has already learned, and so I chose to bring somebody in with the experience of having done that, and Todd came in. Todd Korver came in. He had a great resume, same moral compass that we have here, a really good guy. And what I was finding was that, no matter what, I'm still here, and there are certain things that I'm just comfortable with, that, if I'm going to be alive and still owning the business, that it's important to me that we do every day. And so it wasn't that Todd did a bad job. It's just that I looked around and said, you know, there's stuff going on that I think we can do a little differently. Maybe we can do it better. I don't know, because I don't have all the answers, but I think I'm more comfortable in the front seat than I am in the back. The departure was amicable, he's a good guy. He's got a great job here in Austin. He's going to do very well there. But I just found that if I'm going to be in the office every day, you know I might as well do what I really want to do, and so that led to me coming back, and so, you know, I think it also gave me a new energy that I hadn't had because Todd did some heavy lifting for four years, and so we kind of have come back with the vengeance. We got the idea four days after Christmas that maybe we should really take a serious look at serving chicken bites. We compete against everybody in the business and Chick-fil-A is, you know, the leader, and so a lot of our customers had told us hey, the only fight in our family. You know, my kid wants a chicken bite at Chick-fil-A and I want a hamburger or a chicken burger from P Terry's. And so, you know, the 29th of December we had this conversation and the 16th of March they were for sale in our stores. We made them out of our own kitchen and we created them and, you know, worked on sauces and stuff, and so we've really been going very fast at that. But that you know, and I found that I'm just much more happier if I'm going to, if I'm going to be around, if it's going to still be my company. I'm just happier being the guy that's running it. Chris: I understand. Well, it had to be difficult, especially so it sounds like you stepped out of the CEO seat but stayed, I guess, involved in the company. That had to be challenging, right, it was one thing if you kind of, like you said, go to some Island or just complete a separate business, but and I, you know, I did my best. Patrick: I didn't think it was fair to, you know, be in Todd's office every day pounding the desk, going why aren't we doing this, why can't you do this? I, you know, I let him run the company because that was the only fair thing to do, but I was in the office next door and so you know, you're right, I'm not on an island and so, yeah, at some point it just was like easier for me just to do it. Chris: So let's let's talk a little bit about the expansion. You mentioned that you had expanded beyond kind of the Austin area into kind of San Antonio. You just mentioned a store in that area your plans to come to Houston you mentioned just a minute ago, and ultimately five stores, what? I want to talk about maybe have you share, is kind of what goes into that thinking of the strategy, of when it's right to kind of take those steps which I would assume are, you know, somewhat trepidatious. Patrick: Yo, absolutely, and what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge. Absolutely, and what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge. And you know we really had established ourselves in central Texas. We have a lot of stores here, you know we're. I mean I have there's Lamar Boulevard in Austin. I have three stores on Lamar Boulevard, you know, and about three miles apart. So we're pretty inundated and I just wanted to see, I believe that our concept traveled outside of Austin. I believe that our concept really works most places and I wanted to see what we could do. And so San Antonio made the most sense because of our commissary and our delivery, so we can be in San Antonio in just over an hour. And that made it. And, by the way, we just went down, you know, i-35 and we opened a store in Kyle and one in San Marcus and one in New Braunfels and then into San Antonio and so so from a logistics standpoint it made sense, but it was really kind of a challenge. Now, I don't, you know, there is something I truly believe in and you know I have to tell you real quickly, I spoke at a UT, at the MBA program, one time it was a wonderful class, and the professor called me after the class and he said I got to tell you the students loved it and I thank you for coming. And I said well, I appreciate that. And he said but I got to tell you I'm probably not going to be inviting you back. And I said totally fine, can you ask, can you tell me why? And he said well, there's nowhere on the syllabus that just says work hard and listen to your customers. And I said okay, well, I get it, cause that's, frankly, all I know to do, to the God's honest truth is that's all I need, that's all I know what to do. And so you know we take. What I was getting to is, at some point you take a leap of faith and you've listened to the people around you and at some point, obviously, you're the one that has to make the final decision. And then you, just you know, you trust your experience over all these years and you know you make the jump. You just make the jump. Chris: So I guess just you know, since I live in Houston, what was it about Houston that makes you think that you know again the concept travels? Why the first location in Richmond? What are some of the things there that you know, you and your team see and are excited about that you and your team see and are excited about. Patrick: So we picked that part of Houston because we could drive from Austin again for our commissary until at some point we will hopefully have a satellite commissary in Houston. But a lot of it is the loops are of interest. There's a lot of growth there, there's a lot of room for expansion and, frankly, when you get in the middle of all of your fair city it gets very expensive. So you kind of go to the loops because the land is cheaper and the leases are cheaper. So there's definitely some of that. I'm just being very honest about it. I mean, there's some great locations but I can't spend $300,000 a year on a ground lease, you know it doesn't, I think it's a well. Chris: the transparency is what we're after here, and I think, again, kind of for a listener to go look, you may have some great ideas, but be smart about that expansion. It goes back to the first thing you said. You've been mindful in this business of controlling cost, and obviously I can speak to it. You're picking locations where the population's growing, so that's not a bad thing either. Right, your demographics must line up with the things that you know makes a store successful. Patrick: And at the same time and I've got a competitor across the street from me, across the highway from me, in San Marcos, and you know he picked a really bad location and my assumption is he picked it because it was cheap. So you know there's a balance here, right? You know you got the land for $60,000 a year and the reason is because nobody can get to it, so you got to be careful about that. You know, I had a friend of mine come to me. He and his wife came to me years ago and said I think we're going to get into the restaurant business. And I said why? And he said, well, we're going to sell, I think we're going to sell sandwiches. And I said what are you going to do that? And he said, well, people have to eat. And I said yeah, but they don't have to eat at your restaurant. And unfortunately, you know there is. You know, you just have to look at this stuff so realistically. And that balance of, yeah, I'd love to be in that location, but it's a wonderful location, but it costs me so much. All I'm going to do is sell burgers and, you know, not make any money, that's right, I get to pay the landlord to sell burgers, right? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. That boy, that's a tough. That's a tough way to spend your day. Chris: Well, patrick, thank you so much for sharing the story and the ups and downs, but I'm looking forward to having a burger once you get here you said you did it in Austin, obviously, and it is as good as you described. I want to turn a little bit to just a little personal side of things. Obviously, you've said a couple of times you just know how to work hard. What was your first job, even as a kid? Patrick: So I had a lemonade, a Kool-Aid, stand in front of my, in front of our house I was probably five or six and my dad was, and my parents were always there and always had suggestions and my dad came up to me and he said you need to put the because we lived in West Texas. I grew up in Abilene and you think your summers are hot, so my dad said you need to put the temperature on the. On your poster and and I said so I wrote it's 102, kool-aid, five cents. And you know the car stopped and it was such a great idea and so I always had that influence. I said that was my probably my first inroad. I remember in seventh grade I started selling candy bars there was no you know, costco or Walmart or anything back then or Sam's to the grocery store and buy a little six-pack of Hershey's. My mom would go and take me and I started selling so many candy bars at the 10.30 break that I was messing up the senior store at noon and the superintendent called me in and told me to stop. So that's funny, all right. Chris: So this is a question I ask everyone, and I'm incredibly intrigued to get your answer, because you're the self-described hamburger guy. Right, I got to know do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Patrick: Oh, I'll go to Tex-Mex all day, okay. Chris: I'll go to Tex-Mex. Patrick: And I love barbecue, don't get me wrong. But I got to tell you if I can have chicken enchiladas with the verde sauce and a side of rice and beans. I am doing just fine. Chris: Okay, so it's your second favorite meal. Patrick: it sounds like yeah, absolutely, my poor children. I'll tell you this real quick. I know you want to wind it down. My daughter is 16 now and when she was 10, she went on a water ski camp and she spent the day. And she got in the car and she said I said what'd you have for lunch? And she said they served these submarine sandwiches. And I said, oh, what'd you get? And she said a meatball sandwich. And I said, oh, that's great. And I said you don't seem like you're in a good mood. And she said I didn't know those existed because my poor children eat P Terry's every day. So that's, you know, that's it's a family deal. I love it. Chris: It reminds me of the story of you know, it was in a movie a while back right when the parents try to tell convince the kids that yogurt was vanilla ice cream exactly. Patrick, thanks again. Really enjoyed meeting you and hearing your story. Congratulations on the success and best of luck as you expand and move into the Houston market. Patrick: I appreciate it Well. I'd love to meet you one day and grab a burger. Chris: Let's do it, in fact, let's stay in touch on when that Richmond store is open, and I'll be there. Patrick: Absolutely, absolutely, and I'll even buy. Chris: What do you think? That's a heck of a deal. Very good, well, thanks again. Patrick: Thank you, I enjoyed it very much.

2-10 minute high-performance clips delivered to you Monday & Friday from our top interviews I love incredibly successful people that still have the down-to-earth human touch. It is really enjoyable to talk with them and understand why they are who they are.  Today's guest is one of those people and yet so much more. Janice Bryant Howroyd is the founder The ActOne Group and she is the very first African-American female to found a billion dollar company, and yes you heard me right, a billion dollar company.   What is even more impressive about Janice is that speaking with her was like talking to an old friend. She is incredibly relatable and really a caring and authentic human being. Contact Info: Website: thebusinessmethod.com/ Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/TheBusinessMethod Google Podcasts: bit.ly/TheBusinessMethodGooglePodcasts Spotify: bit.ly/SpotifyTheBusinessMethod Amazon Music: bit.ly/AmazonTheBusinessMethod Transcript: Chris: Do you ever wonder how a billionaire thinks? How do they process all those crazy thoughts that go through their head on a regular basis? Well, I was curious, so I asked one. And the person I ask is Janice Bryant. Howroyd the first black woman to build a billion dollar company.  Want to hear what she has to say. Let's hop into it. Going back to what you mentioned earlier in the interview, when you talked about your mind bouncing around all the time, Ray asks, how does Janice keep her mind in check and stay focused when it's all over the place and you see the world as a kaleidoscope? Janice: Ain't trying to do that Ray for chance. That's a failure from your perspective. I have no interest in organizing this beautiful mess. I love it. I thrive in it. What I do have though is Discipline. Discipline around initiatives and discipline around behaviors. So I love for my, you know, I, if you go up in there, it probably looks like Einstein's hair. But I, I, I deeply, deeply enjoy letting all the light come in, let all of it come in. And then once I filter it toward an initiative. Or, or a team effort, then I believe, as a matter of fact, my team will tell you, , one of my quotes they most often use is discipline ain't a dirty word. It's not a dirty word, you know, so I think that helps balance if that's what you're going at. I'm a highly disciplined person. . Chris: What is your filtration process there? , you know, we all get crazy ideas and they bounce around our head and we want to start this like new side hustle or new business or new project. , what are the ones that, what's your process for finding out which ideas are legitimate and the ones you want to continue to work towards? Janice: Oh, great. So there are four questions I asked myself. One, and this is kind of formulaic for me, Chris, so I can rattle it off. One is what do I want from it? If I do it. What's the outcome? What's the goal of it? What do I want from it? The next question is, what do I want from it? In the next 12 months, depending on where your energies are already obligated, you've only got so much time in a day that you can give. Even though all of us have the same amount of time to work with. So what do I want from it? The ultimate? What's it going to do? What's it going to be? Then what do I want from it in the next, , 12 months? What will it take to get to the next 12 months? And that's a biggie because entrepreneurs tend to tend to be, , exuberant in our thought about our own capacity. And then the fourth question is, what value will it have? You know, I'm very interested in being certain that the space I occupy, I leave better than when I got there better is in quotes because we all can define it differently, you know, and so that's how I filter to get to does this idea stand right now. The other thing I do is that, okay, so I live with an iPad. I'm on an iPad right now talking with you. I love, love, love, love, love iPad. Yes, I own stock in Apple, and yes, I bought it when it was a really good deal, but I love iPad anyway, and it allows me to do so much. And my notes section is busy. I am a fierce note taker. So I will write things down in my iPad and then I have a regular check in system where I go back. Is it still as clear to me as it was when I wrote it? If it's not, check, you know, and I move it. And so I systemize. ideas that come into my mind or initiatives. I also do that with asks when people are asking things of me, I do it that way as well. Mom used to do it much less, uh, complicated. She would say, oh, I'll come back to it later. If I can't remember what it was, it's gone. Or if it's burning at me and turning at me that I got to get back to it, then it's up there. You know, I think some people call it putting a pin in it. Chris: Yeah, I always tell myself if the idea keeps coming back to me, it means something that I should work towards or something I should implement. Janice: It can, it always doesn't mean that though. Sometimes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, seriously. Sometimes it's the gateway to something else. Chris: Good point. Yeah. Good point.  And boom. There, you have it. You guys, Janice Bryant. Howroyd I love this because I, and I don't know if you can relate often feel guilty because of this beautiful mess up here. My mind, my thoughts, not harnessing them better, not using them better, not being more productive. And sometimes, , our minds can just go down rabbit holes.  And the next thing, you know, two hours went by and we don't even know, , what happened and we forgot the task that we're working on. And I love that Janice says that she loves this beautiful mess in her brain. She absolutely loves it. She says that probably it looks like Einstein's hair and she has no agenda or no care in the world to organize it.  She just lets it in. And filters it as best as possible. Absolutely. Absolutely incredible answer.  And if you guys take away anything, what are the four questions that you need to ask yourself? If you want to filter through all these thoughts in your head, right?  So what would Janice say? One. What do I want from it? Great question. Two what do I want from it in the next 12 months? Also a great question. This helps implement the short term thinking and also the long-term thinking. Is it worth my time and activity in the next 12 months. Maybe I should postpone it, or maybe I should implement it immediately, depending on what it is.  And three, the third question. What will it take for me to achieve in the next 12 months? Again? Revisiting that question of how much time and effort and energy it will take you to achieve this idea that you have in the next 12 months and the last question. And probably the most important. What value will it have? Will it raise the bar of my business. Will it raise the bar of my life will raise the bar of my relationships. Is it a priority or is it something that we can postpone until later? And I also love what Janice said about thoughts that are reoccurring, that you really think you should do. And I have this, I actually wanted to start a second podcast at one point. This was probably about four years ago. And I was just chewing on this idea for a new podcast and I thought it was so good and so juicy and it would be so successful. And I was convinced, , by another,, another podcaster, that's a good friend of mine and somebody I look to for advice like this, and he kept telling me, no, do not start a new podcast.  Do not start a new podcast. What he said is expand on your current podcast. And that's why now we have almost 200 high-performance episodes. So the high-performance are the short episodes. They're generally like this one, two to 10 minutes, , from the longer interviews that we do. And I took his advice and I'm very glad that I did. Cause I didn't have the time or bandwidth to run a second podcast and I'd be exhausted and that podcast would be stagnant now. So sometimes we have these great ideas. And like Janice says they're actually a gateway to something else.  It doesn't mean that idea is the actual thing. So. We're going to wrap it up there. You guys remember those four questions? One. What do I want from it to what I wa what do I want from it in the next 12 months? Three. What's it going to take for me to achieve in the next 12 months and for what value does it give?  Whenever you have a thought or an idea to do a new thing? We're going to leave it at that. You guys, if you haven't checked out Janice's episode yet. Please do you won't regret it? It's episode number 544. And interview with the 32nd richest woman in the world. Make sure you check it out.  If you like what you're hearing and you want to make sure you don't miss any of these tips, please subscribe. Here or here or wherever. Subscribe. Leave us a review and share with your friends.  We'll see on the next episode.   

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with serial entrepreneur Steve Reynolds for his perspectives on innovation in corporate travel tech. As CSO of Embers Inc., Steve shares his journey developing TripBam, an early pioneer utilizing algorithms and robotics to optimize hotel rates. He explains TripBam's strategic transformation from consumer to enterprise software, strengthening the company and positioning it for seamless integration under Embers. Steve offers valuable lessons on championing passion within high-performing teams. The importance of actively engaging customers and development staff to creativity solve problems is emphasized. We discuss the challenges of maintaining innovation at scale versus smaller startups. Steve's experiences navigating acquisitions and a turbulent industry offer cautionary advice. A theme emerges—embracing flexibility positions leaders to overcome challenges and achieve lasting impact. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS In this episode, I spoke with Steve Reynolds, Chief Strategy Officer at Emburse Inc., about his journey in corporate travel technology and entrepreneurship. Steve discussed the origins and evolution of TripBam, a platform he founded that uses algorithms and robotics for hotel rate monitoring, which eventually pivoted from a consumer-focused to a B2B model. Steve shared insights on navigating the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the strategic decisions that helped TripBam emerge stronger, including cost optimizations and product enhancements. We explored the importance of fostering a passionate and innovative team, highlighting the value of listening to customers and involving development teams directly in problem-solving. Steve explained the critical difference between passionate programmers and those who are merely formally trained, and how assembling a team that shares the company's vision and offering equity can drive success. The episode delved into strategies for managing company growth and financial stability, such as quick decision-making in right-sizing staff and optimizing operational costs through cloud environments. We discussed the benefits of subscription-based pricing models over transaction-based ones, particularly during economic downturns, and how this approach helped maintain cash flow during the pandemic. Steve reflected on the evolution of workplace environments and leadership styles, noting the shift from rigid, traditional settings to more flexible, results-oriented cultures. We talked about the challenges of maintaining innovation in large companies, contrasting startup environments with big company mindsets, and the importance of hiring the right people for each setting. Finally, Steve shared his thoughts on the future of the travel industry and the innovative approaches that have set new standards in modern practices. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Emburse GUESTS Steve ReynoldsAbout Steve TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Steve Reynolds, chief Strategy Officer for Emburse Inc. Steve has built his career in corporate travel technology and in starting various companies over the four-decade career. Steve looks for opportunities to be disruptive. Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you and appreciate you taking the time. Steve: You bet Chris Glad to be here. Chris: So you know there's a lot that I'd love to get into with you. I know that you know currently you're with a company called M-Burst Travel, but that you started a company before that called TripBam. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, those companies and what they do. What is the business they're known for? Steve: Okay, and just to back up a little bit further, I guess what you could call a serial entrepreneur. Tripbam was my third or fourth venture kind of lost count, but I've been in the corporate travel tech space for 40 some odd years. And TripBam when we started 10 years ago, we recognized that hotel rates change a lot more often than people actually realize. If you were to create some robotics that went out and grabbed the rate at a particular hotel for a certain date in the future, you'd see that rate changes just about every hour and what we found is if you just keep watching it, eventually it's going to drop, especially as you get closer to check-in. So we created some algorithms, robotics, whatever you want to call it that said okay, I've got a rate of $2.99 at the Grand Hyatt in New York. I'm arriving on the first and departing on the third. I want you to just let me know when it drops and if it does, I want you to rebook it for me If everything is the same room, same bed, same cancel policy, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we did. We originally invented it for the consumer market. We put out a website and we got mentions in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and so on. But sort of my corporate travel buddies called up and said, hey, Steve, we really need you to apply this to corporate travel. And they started writing some pretty significant checks. We followed the money, we pivoted and went all B2B at that point. And so the company grew 40% year over year for the first six years, cashflow positive within just a couple of months. I mean it was great. It was great. And then COVID came along and kind of took our knees out from under us for a bit. Chris: COVID kind of wiped out the fundamental business model for at least a little bit. Steve: At least for a little bit. But fortunately a lot of our customers were paying us subscription fees rather than transaction fees, so we were to stay afloat. We got through COVID and we actually came out on the backside of COVID in a much stronger position, both financially and you name it, because we were able to do a lot of just cost improvements, right-sizing the organization. We kind of got a little bit ahead of our skis, I think, in some areas and created some new products, just all kinds of things, pushed everything out to the cloud and such that dramatically reduced our costs and just were firing all cylinders. Chris: And then we worked out a deal with Emburse in July last year to buy the company. Okay, how does I guess what TripBand does fit within the Emburse excuse me, overall, maybe suite of products or company strategy. Steve: Yeah. So Emburse provides travel and expense to the largest of companies, to the smallest of companies, and what I mean by that? Everybody. When you go, you have kind of a booking tool to start with. Most folks are familiar with Concur. We have our own. The reservation gets created. It then needs to be watched, monitored, audited, improved upon. That's kind of where we fit in. So before the money is spent we actually see if we can actually do better than what the traveler did on their own. Travelers are not going to check the hotel rate every day. They're not going to check their airfare every hour. They're not potentially going to book the preferred property within a particular city. We fix all that before the money's actually spent. We then push all that to mobile. So you've got a companion app in your pocket where the traveler gets a ton of destination content specific to that company. So I'm going to New York, I'm staying at headquarters, what hotel should I stay in? I need to go take a client to dinner, what restaurants do you recommend? All kinds of other stuff, including safety and security perspective and so on. Then the data is all captured and fed into an expense report so that your expense report if the traveler is compliant. It's kind of pre-created and pre-approved, so the traveler in a lot of cases doesn't have to do anything and if they're compliant all the way throughout, they could actually kind of be paid as soon as their plane hits the ground. Then it all feeds into reporting and analytics so that we can improve your travel program, identify additional savings opportunities, find some fraud issues, detect all kinds of other stuff that might be a problem. We also offer a card product if you don't have one, and that's kind of the travel plus expense ecosystem that we provide. Chris: That's fascinating. I obviously wasn't aware that something like that existed, but I can see how large companies with a lot of employees traveling could see the benefit and realize a lot of savings from those services. Steve: Yeah, when you combine travel with expense, some kind of magic happens in that we have enough data and insight to be able to start pre-filling out that expense report. Otherwise, all we're counting on is card transactions and receipts, and that's really not going to do the trick. But if we can get that card information augmented with the receipt scanning and everything else that we do now, we can really do a nice job of pre-filling out that expense report. So really all you have to do is add mileage, hit, click and you're submitted. Chris: So you mentioned that you've been in this industry for 40 plus years. I'm curious how did you first get started in the corporate travel tech space 40 years ago? Steve: It was just by happenstance, I guess you could say. I was originally started as a programmer for Texas Instruments, got accepted into their executive program, which meant I could go off and get an MBA and then come back to TI, but quickly realized that the consulting firms were paying a lot more. So I ended up with Ernst Winnie, at the time with Ernst Young and my first assignment was with a travel agency in Houston, Texas, called LifeGo Travel, which doesn't exist anymore. The owner of that company hired us to come in and build some technology. It really put him on the map and he got tired of paying the bills and seeing the hourly checks that we were charging. And so he approached and said, hey, you know, do you want to come work for us? And I'm like, well, that never thought about working for a travel agency. That doesn't sound all that exciting. But he said look what if we created a company, We'll spin it off and we'll give you some equity. And I'm like, okay, now you're talking. So we left, we started up a company called Competitive Technologies and all of it was bought by American Express Travel two years later. Chris: Oh, wow. So unquestionably you had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit going way back then to see an opportunity. Put you in it. Steve: And a lot of it is just kind of, I guess, my personal. I don't do well at big companies. I really struggle because I get so frustrated at just the lack of progress or the lack of innovation or the speed at which things happen, so I tend to sort of find an excuse to hit the exit button, usually within a year or two. Chris: Right. So you said something in that response that I want to talk to you about, and that's innovation. I think that's there's such a common theme, I think, with entrepreneurs about. You know, and innovation can mean so many things. What do you think that you've done, as you've built several companies, as you mentioned, to create or foster and nurture a spirit and environment of innovation? Steve: You know a lot of it is just becoming a really good listener to the buyer, to whoever the customer is. And then when they say things, there are certain kernels that are aspects of what they say that you just go oh, wait a minute, okay, can we go back to that? That sounds important. You know this level of frustration. Why does that frustrate you? And if you have engineering and development in the room when those things are said, oftentimes some real magic starts to happen and we just the creativity, the innovation just comes out naturally as wow, we can solve that problem. That's not that hard, you know, let's go do that. So that's on the B2B side. That's kind of the formula, that conversation. Something falls out as far as a new feature, product, something like that, that we can start working on the B2C side. Chris: Go ahead. Well, it sounds like there's a function there of asking the right questions and really listening. Steve: Well, and just most big companies or companies they try to protect the dev engineering. They're like oh, we're not going to let you talk to customers. You guys sit over here in the back room and we'll come to you with sort of a priority or roadmap of what we think is needed. And I feel like that's just the wrong way to do it. You've got to get the dev and the engineers and the programmers in the room to hear the story, otherwise you get this telephone tag of what actually gets built isn't quite what the customer wants or was even asking for. And for most companies that's really hard. I don't know why, but they just. It's like we can't allow that to happen, but that's just not the way I operate. Chris: Well, I mean, it makes sense that people you're asking to solve the problem probably need to hear what the problem is firsthand, right? Steve: Exactly. And then it's oftentimes the dev guys are like they're coming up with much more creative solutions. If you just hand them a requirement sheet or spec sheet, they're like, oh okay, this is going to take a month. But when they're involved with the client and they actually hear what the true problem is, oftentimes they're like, oh, I can knock this out overnight, I'll have a solution to you by tomorrow. It's just a night and day sort of sense of urgency or sort of the emotion around creating the solution. They're bought in. At that point, when they hear it directly from the client, they can be the hero. Chris: Well, when you think about kind of that and getting the right developers and the right kind of team together, what have you found to be successful as far as what to look for in building the right team and then keeping the team together? Steve: Yeah. So fortunately for me I mean through all of these different companies that I've started I've been able to kind of get the band back together multiple times. A because I, you know, I'm a big believer in sharing the equity. You know, let's get everybody, if not equity, at least options, so that when there is an exit, everybody benefits, and they've all seen that so far today, knock on wood, I haven't had an unsuccessful exit where we've had to, you know, turn out the lights or whatever. My shareholders have all made money, you know, typically around 5x to 10x on their investment, which has been great. So it's easy to get the bad back together. But what I also have found out is there are certain programmers that are passionate about programming and others that are just taught programming, and there's a night and day difference on the result. If they're passionate about it, the results come out quick. I get creative solutions that nobody would think of. They're usually extremely low cost and it's just so much better than if I have someone that's college taught. I'm doing this because it's a paycheck and I took this degree because that's what somebody told me to and I was good enough to get a B in college on all my programming courses, but at the end of the day, if their heart's not in it and they're spending their time, you know, just on the side weekends and nights learning new stuff, they're not going to be very good. So give me one or two of those that are passionate and I'll put them against 10 to 20 of those that are school taught and will kick their ass every time. Chris: So yeah, well again, I think that transcends all industries and disciplines, the key being passion. Right, I think you, as the leader, are the one that has to start with the passion and then find people that share that passion to get to where you're talking about, where there's that flow within the organization. Steve: Yeah, I think development's a little bit different. I mean, you're not going to find anybody super excited about accounting or I don't know the other aspects of it, but with development there's guys that just get so into it. You know they're programming on the side. They get into hackathons, they want to prove that you know they're smarter than the guy next to them and just constantly looking for the next challenge and just coming up with those creative solutions. I don't know of any other discipline that really has that level of it, but there might be. I mean, I could be wrong. Chris: So, just going back and maybe not the first venture where you and the travel agency in Houston started, but maybe I'm just curious to know as you began some of these startups, maybe sharing some of the lessons learned through some of the challenges you found in starting that venture, whether it be raising capital as an example, or any other challenges that may come about, but I think that capital raise can be one in the startup that some entrepreneurs find daunting and maybe can't solve and never get anything off the ground. Steve: Yeah Well, I think, first off, just wait as long as possible to raise capital. You know most of them kind of build an MVP which just kind of barely works and then go out and try to raise money on it. And whenever you go down that path you just end up way undervaluing what you have. And I know people get in certain situations where they just need to have a check, you know, or it's you know, lights out. But if you can wait until you actually have a client actually generating revenue, actually having positive cash flow, whatever, and then you can show someone, look, we just need to add fuel to the fire here. This is not about keeping the lights on, this is about generating growth You're going to have a dramatically better outcome. The other thing I found out is when you take the big check too early, you start making really stupid decisions. You start hiring attorneys that are expensive, you hire a CFO before you need it, you have a head of HR, all kinds of stuff and overhead that's just not necessary and over time it makes you less and less nimble because you're so worried about payroll, you know, and less focused on just delivering a product that has a you know, a bunch of value. Keep your day job, keep working nights and weekends, wait as long as possible. I mean, I always said, look, cash is like oxygen. If you run out you're going to die. So hang on to it with both hands first. I mean beg, borrow and steal from friends and family and whatever to just get stuff. If you need a contract, go out on the web and search for a capolar plate contract. It'll be good enough to get you started. Or find someone that's a buddy, that's a lawyer, that's willing to do some pro bono work in return, maybe for a little bit of equity stuff like that. Just hang on to that cash as much as you can, for as long as you can. Chris: Well, I think there's a lot there that someone can learn from. Obviously, speaking as a chairman of a law firm, I can't endorse legal Zoom for the startup, but I understand your point. We talk to clients a lot about especially know, especially in the startup phase. Maybe you know helping them get going, but you know and being smart about how they spend their money. But make it an investment in getting at least a sound structure and they may not need right the full-blown set of legal documents, but I can promise you I've seen people start on legal Zoom and wish they hadn't, you know, a couple of years later when things were getting a little tight. But I understand your point there. But conserving cash is important to get off the ground. Steve: Yeah, I mean you don't need to come right out of the gate being in an Inc. You know and incorporated in Delaware and pay all the fees, whatever to make that happen. I mean, just start out as a low-cost LLC and then, when you're ready to sort of raise capital and become a real company, you know you use part of that capital to convert at that time. Chris: So you had mentioned earlier, you know just, I guess, going back to kind of trip BAM COVID having, at least initially, a pretty profound impact but then turning it into a positive, and I'm kind of want to take you back to that time and you maybe dig in a little bit deeper. I think it's a beautiful lesson of something where you know a lot of people just throwing up their hands because travel stopped, et cetera, which decimates your business specifically to you. But then you said we actually learned from that and became a better, stronger company because of it. And you've mentioned right-sizing, the organization stuff. But could you share a little more detail and some stories from that our listeners can learn from if and when their business faces something similar? Steve: Yeah, I think, first off, being fairly quick. You know you can always hire people back, you know. But if you keep them on the payroll and you start burning up cash just way too fast or you're starting to trend towards in the red, you just got to pull the trigger. Nobody wants to, nobody likes to do it, but it's really nobody's fault. It's just something as an executive or CEO you have to do, or a founder. So that's one. Second is, as companies grow, you kind of make stupid mistakes along the way. You get kind of inefficient. You don't anticipate the level of growth that might have been reality. So going back and saying, all right, take a step back, let's catch our breath. You know, what should we have done to kind of handle the scale better? And so, for example, just moving everything to a cloud environment, you know, putting it out to bid, switching from one cloud provider to another, whatever it is, you know you can just generate or reduce your costs dramatically. You know, rather quickly, if you just focus the time on it. Everybody gets so white hot, focused on growth and the next client and the revenue they forget to look at the rear view mirror about. You know there was a lot of costs we could have taken out, you know, which could generate even more cash going forward. Advert: Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at BoyerMiller. com and thanks for listening to the show. So we pulled the trigger pretty quick. We right-sized the staff. We had a pretty good and, fortunately for us, this is the other. We kind of lucked into this. Our customers, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to pay a subscription fee rather than maybe a percentage of the savings or a transaction fee, to where what they were going to spend would fluctuate month over month. By paying a subscription fee, they could budget it and they were going to get a better return on investment. So we did most of our deals that way and thank God we did, because when COVID and everything went into toilet in April of 2020, we still had cash coming in the door. So we were actually stayed cashflow positive because we kind of right-sized the staff fairly quickly. And then, coming out of COVID, as the revenue started to ramp back up and our sales started to continue, we were just on a much better platform that would scale after it because it was just all right-sized and efficient and whatever, and at the same time we added new products. So we had a two-year kind of all right, just keep the lights on, market will come back around. We added an air reshopping solution. We added a bunch of analytics to audit contracts and to benchmark performance, so that we had a whole bunch more to sell coming out of COVID than going in, and so that caused another year of kind of explosive growth as a result. Chris: That's great. So, yeah, obviously part of that is give some deep thought to how you price what your product right. So that subscription-based versus transaction for you sounds like a very. Maybe it didn't seem as meaningful at the time you made it, but it turned out to be. Steve: You know that's a tough one If the ROI of your product is pretty clear, like reshopping. If you've got a rate of $2.99, I drop it to $ to $250. I've got $49 per night in savings If you pay me a couple of bucks. Okay, here's the ROI. And we could run some pilots and all kinds of stuff to prove that out. So that makes it really simple and we try to hit look, I need a ROI that when they take it to their boss the guy that's doing the budgets, you know, won't cause all kinds of frustration and concern. So four to one is usually the minimum. A lot of our customers, the larger ones, are getting eight to one, 10 to one, you know. So you could say like you've probably underpriced it. But that's okay, you know we'll claw back some of that. You know, over time when it's a product that's the ROI is a bit fuzzier. You just got to somehow convince the client that this is the potential savings. They're going to guesstimate and then from there work backwards to a price which kind of gets you back to that four to one ROI. So if I think I'm going to save you five bucks a transaction, I'm probably going to charge you a dollar to $1.50 is what I'm going to aim for. Again, to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate for Relagate. Again to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate. Chris: So part of that goes, I think, in building that customer base, really focusing on strong relationships. Talk a little bit about that and what you've done, because it sounds like over the course of the various businesses, you've done a good job of creating some very good partnerships and alliances. What are some of the things you think that have helped you foster that and keep those for so many years? Steve: I think one is you know you got to under promise and over deliver. So if they're going to sign up, you know, don't make them look bad or stupid to their boss. The other one is identifying the influencers in the market. So I'm sure every industry has some individuals that are kind of on the bleeding edge, willing to try new things. And if they do and it works, they've got the microphone or the megaphone to tell a whole bunch of others. So fortunately for me, I've been able to identify who those influencers are. I've got a reputation for just delivering as promised. So when they sign up they have confidence and then they tell their peers and a lot of our sales in the large enterprise market are peer-to-peer networking. It's not from email campaigns or other stuff that we do. Chris: The kind of part of that, the old adage of just do what you say you committed to do when you said you committed to do it right. Steve: It's just delivering as promised. Don't sell me a can of goods and all this great wonderful thing. And then when the reality is just not there, you know, don't make them look stupid. You know that's the key one. I mean, these are after 40 years they become. We have some pretty tight relationships with these folks and I want them to keep their job and we want them all promoted and moving on to the next big role, because when that happens they just take us with them and we just keep getting bigger and bigger. Chris: So you mentioned that about kind of keeping this, your words, the band back together. You've been able to do that, hiring some of the right people and incentivizing the right way. Any insights into. You know what people could think about when they're looking at their team one, trying to, I guess, evaluate whether they have the right people and then finding the right ways to incentivize them to kind of keep that core group together. Steve: To me it's if they feel like they're a part of a team and they understand the value they're providing to the customer and they see that customer's appreciation. You know they're in the conversation with the client, you know, and that's easy to do at a small company, because who else are they going to talk to? Right, you got to bring the dev and engineering. But when you start layering and bifurcating and have people you know in engineering back there in the back room, kind of stuff that don't talk to clients, that's when it gets a lot harder. But when you get them into the conversation and that sense of this is my company, this is my reputation. I'm a part of something here, you know, that's growing and doing well and whatever. It's not that hard, it's really not that difficult at all. It's just everybody wants to be appreciated and feel like they're, you know, part of a team. So that's the formula, right, I mean I could throw money at them. But I ask my employees I mean I am not the guy that's writing big checks to hire people right? I'm like look, we're going to pay a reasonable salary. You know this is not, you're not going to be broke, but you know we're in it for the long term game, and so we want to keep the cash in the company so that we don't have to go do another capital raise which is going to dilute all of us, and so your equity just keeps getting smaller, you know, over time, and the guys that actually make the money, or the investors this needs to be a collaborative team effort so they get that. Chris: I think that transparent communications is key right. So they again they understand their role on the team, they understand what the goal of the organization is and how they can help further that. Steve: You know it's always been kind of fire slow, fire quick as well. You know the people, everybody makes hiring mistakes. It happens all the time. And you know when you hire someone within like a couple of days you're like this is not feeling right. You know, don't let it just sit, don't let it be two years later when you actually kind of work them out. You have to kind of pull the trigger fairly quick because it messes up the whole culture of the company. Oftentimes, especially at a small company, it can create some real problems. Chris: Yeah, I mean that may be the most sage advice and, I think, maybe the most consistent that I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners. It's been my own experience too, that that kind of fire, you know, don't be slow to fire when you know you made a mistake and it's the hardest, maybe one of the hardest ones to do because you're dealing with people. I spoke to someone yesterday and they were like hired, someone had some uncertainty and literally what I learned was to trust my gut because on day one that they started in a conversation went oh my God, this is a huge mistake. Tried to play it out, tried to make it work and guess what? It didn't. Steve: Yeah, the thing is I don't believe resumes anymore and I don't believe LinkedIn pages at all, especially when it comes to higher dev and engineering. It's just anybody can put whatever language they want and say they've got a ton of experience. You've got to figure out a way to validate Most of our hires. There's kind of referrals and peer-to-peer sort of networking. If I find someone, I can usually find someone they know, especially in the Dallas market where we are, that's worked with them at a prior company. That sort of thing and do some back-channel checking is what really pays off for us. And we know the rock stars. We know the rock stars. We know the rock stars, but they're not that hard to kind of pick out. It's the ones that are kind of questionable. That you know. You just got to do your homework and don't count on the resume. Chris: That's a really good point. It's a hard thing to do, though, and it may be easier in programmers. But, to you know, I totally agree with resumes, and profiles can be, you know, massaged, but it's sifting through and kind of through the smoke to really get to what's behind the curtain. Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean. And Zoom calls, I mean people hire on Zoom calls or whatever. Like dude, you got to get them in the office face to face, go to lunch, have a couple of face to face interactions before you actually bring this person on board. You know, make them pass a coding test or something. You know something tangible. Don't just look, they're very nice people. You know they all have a. You know look great on a phone call or Zoom call, whatever, but that doesn't cut it. Chris: Yeah, I mean no substitute for personal interaction and seeing how people show up. Right. Steve: Yeah, the other thing is, since we're, you know, on a startup mode where everybody's looking at kind of the potential for equity, I'm like, look, if you're as great as you are, why don't you come on board for a month on a contract basis? Let's see how it works out, you know, and we'll go from there All right, and you really get a feel for someone and how well they're going to. We try it, we like to try it, before we buy. Let's put it that way. That's one way to do it. Chris: just talk about you know specific kind of leadership styles and and how you would describe your leadership style, and maybe how you would describe it today versus maybe 20 years ago as you you were emerging as a leader, and how you think it's changed oh, my god, it's night and day. Steve: so first company way back when. Maybe it comes as a surprise or not, but it was a coat and tie environment. Okay, guys, we've got to put on the ties and whatever. That was just so stupid. Checking office hours and all that crap and tracking vacation time just seems so silly. Now, if you can get the job done, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care where you do the work, I don't care if you have to take vacation on a pretty regular basis for whatever reason. I don't care if you're going off and disappearing to watch your kid play soccer, I do not care anymore. Just here's the job. Here's kind of an expectation. You know, as long as I understand, you're trying hard to get it done as quick as possible. We are good. You know, it's kind of a thing. So all that other stuff was just noise. That was just stupid, anyway it's. I mean back when I started in this, I mean programming and development and all that and the whole tech world was fairly new, so nobody knew what they were doing or how to manage these folks and it evolved over time, but fairly quickly. I mean, by company two, ties were gone. By company three, office was gone. I mean I've been virtual for 25 years. Unfortunately, we had offices but we just I think they were a waste of money but we did it for optics more than anything. Chris: Yeah, so it sounds like more kind of a traditional and somewhat of a command and control, starting out to now a little more, much more flexible and providing autonomy as long as people deliver on the expectations that they're communicated with. Steve: Which comes down to you just hire the right people, right, if you can get kind of get that sense for what the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see, if you can get kind of get that sense for what are the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see that you've got you spent 20 years at a really big company, you are not going to do well at a startup. I could guarantee you You're used to other people doing work for you. You know you're just kind of the sit back in your office and sort of you know, tell folks what to do. That ain't going to happen. You need to get your hands dirty. You might have to write code. You got to do PowerPoints, you got to do Word docs all that stuff yourself. Big company folks just tend to lose that ability, let's say, or it's beneath them and that's not going to work. Chris: Yeah, I mean it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality, right, it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality right, it's about getting a job done, no matter what it takes. Steve: And I think that drives me crazy at a big company because, you know, unfortunately for others, I tend to poke my nose into others' lanes and I get told a lot Steve, stay in your lane. Nothing bugs me more, you know, than to hear that. But that's the big company way. Chris: So you've gone through a few companies and you're now, I guess, inside of a larger company. Now Are you finding it easy to kind of have that mentality of flexible leadership and innovative environment? Steve: In the new company? Yes, I would have to say no, it's kind of as I expected. You know, with other acquisitions you start. You know, this kind of here's how it happens. However, embers, I believe, is trying hard to carve out a role where I can exist, let's put it that way. So my title right now is Chief Strategy Officer, and it's a bit nebulous, kind of by design. I can sort of make it what I want and as a result of being chief strategy officer, I can get outside of my lane and people can question it. I'm like everybody needs strategy. That's my title, I'm going to get in your lane, kind of stuff you know. So I tend to kind of bounce around to lots of different projects, objectives so on. I kind of help make sure that it's cohesive, you know, across this travel and expense story, you know. But at the same time I don't have a lot of direct reports, which is great. That usually doesn't go too well either. So so far, so good. Chris: Fingers crossed, that's great, yeah, we we kind of covered kind of the challenges of COVID If you think back prior to that, any other challenges along the way with the first two or three companies, everybody, yeah, yeah, I think people some of those are the best lessons we learned or some of the challenges we go through. I'm just curious to know any kind of lessons from a challenge that you could share with the listeners that might help them when they face something similar. Steve: Oh my God. I mean everybody's made mistakes and if they got lucky along the way and if they don't admit that they're lying, I mean some of the bigger ones. 9-11, we had a solution that was processing about 80% of all corporate travel reservations made in the US. 9-11 hit and we went to zero within about 24 hours, so that was kind of a gut check. Fortunately, travel bounced back fairly quickly, but it made us take a step back and realize how nimble we were If something like that were going to happen again. So that's one, and you know, and there's all the kind of day-to-day stuff. I mean there's fraud, there's employee HR issues that happen. You know there's. I'm not going to get into details on that, but you know you just kind of all right, let's deal with this. You know, don't just look the other way and take care of it. I think the latest I mean the big one right now is just, you know, the whole third party hacking and getting into your network and holding you hostage, stuff like that. You know that's made everybody just super anxious and nervous and to the point where companies are kind of shutting down their network so much that individuals can't do the job. You know, which is causing concern and it's what else are you going to do? I mean, if some employee can click on a link and bring down your network, do? Chris: you just turn off email. You're right, it's creating such a challenge. Everybody, all companies, are being attacked every day from all kinds of angles, and it just takes one and but you also? You can't operate out of fear and you can't let it stop you from doing your business. Steve: Well, they say there's two kinds of companies out there. There's those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. So just kind of keep that in mind and I think it's fairly true. I think, you know, it's just almost too easy to get into someone's network and poke around and kind of see what's going on these days. Chris: It's so scary, but I thought you were going to say those who have been hacked and those that will be hacked, but I guess already have you, just don't know it. Well, see, I really loved hearing your story. It's a fascinating industry, and one that you don't really hear much about, but you definitely. It sounds like for 40 years you've been crushing it at it, so congratulations to that. Well, thanks for that. Steve: But also the one thing people don't know about corporate travel is that it sits on a backbone of legacy technology that's probably 40 years old. That has not changed. The GDSs are antiquated, the travel agency systems are antiquated. It's not that hard to come up with something innovative and new in this environment. So I just got lucky to where I got into it and I'm like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems and it just kept evolving from there. Like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems, and it just kept evolving from there. Chris: Yeah, that's really. You know so many entrepreneurs I've talked to. It's what you just said solving the customer or client's problem. Because what I said earlier, it goes back to asking the questions and listening and then trying to solve that problem. Steve: So many great ideas that come from that across so many industries. Yeah, and just to set up a little process to where you talk with your customers on a regular basis or a group of clients or people you trust and it just happens naturally, it's really not that difficult. Chris: Well, let's turn to a little bit on the lighter side before we wrap this up. I always like to ask people like yourself what was your first job? Steve: oh, my first job, let's see. Uh, I worked at a pet store at junior high. Well, actually first job was mowing yards, right? So everybody every kid did that just to get my allowance money. Then I worked at a pet store in junior high for a short period but fairly quickly realized waiting tables made a lot more money. So I told a guy I was 18, when actually I was 16, and they never really checked. They hired me as a waiter. I was actually kind of a part-time bartender, so I was serving liquor in Houston the strawberry patch I'll probably get them in trouble back when I was 16 years old and just made a ton of money as a, you know, a high schooler. So that was kind of the first. And then, you know, got into computers and writing code at a very early age. I was part of a program at Shell where they gave us mainframe time to go in and kind of play around and then went off to Baylor for computer science and then went to TI and then went to A&M for grad school. Very good, very good. Chris: So okay. So, being a native Texan, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Steve: That is not a fair question, because both are pretty dang awesome, but, being in Texas, I think we've got some of the best barbecue on the planet. So Pecan Lodge here in Dallas is, I think, kind of the best, and there's a lot of Tex-Mex, though that's really good as well, yeah, I agree on all points. Chris: I haven't heard of Pecan Lodge before, so I'll have to check that one out. Steve: Yeah, it's in Deep Ellum, so next time you fly in, go in out of Love Field, and it's not too far, it's a 10-minute drive from there. Chris: Deal Noted. And then last thing is you know you've made early in the career, probably never did this and maybe have done since. But if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Steve: I actually got a 30 day sabbatical. So a guy hired me or not hired me, but when he brought me on board to run a company he said hey, you know, I threw in there. Just, I read it in a magazine that it was the hot thing for techies to ask for, so I threw it in there and they accepted it. I guess they thought I'd never make it to my five-year anniversary. Anyway, I did and I took the kids and family, went all the way throughout through Europe. So we went to Italy, paris, france, austria, switzerland, whatever you know, just really unplugged for that 30 days. Actually it was a 90 day sabbatical. That's what I took. Wow, so I got a little bit more time. Yeah, it was great, it was great. So if that were to happen today, I'd probably look to do something similar, but nowadays if I want to take 90 days, I probably could just got to ask for it. Chris: Very good, very good. Well, steve, thanks again for taking the time to come on and love hearing your story and all the innovation you brought to the travel industry. Steve: All right. Well, thanks for having me, chris, I really enjoyed it. Good conversation. Chris: Thanks, well, we'll talk soon. Steve: Okay, you bet. Special Guest: Steve Reynolds.

On this episode, my guests are Jesse Mann (editor-director) and Tyson Sadler (director), the brains behind the documentary The Last Tourist. Jesse is both a picture editor and director whose professional work has spanned commercial, tv and film projects. The Last Tourist is her second feature film as editor. Her first film, as both editor and director, Material Success, screened internationally and won the Audience Choice at the Canadian Film Festival and Best Film at the Canadian Film Festival (2012). Most recently, she both directed and edited the online horror mini-series “The Confinement” (2021). She is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada and an associate member of the Canadian Cinema Editors. Jesse has an B.F.A. from Ryerson University's School of Image Arts.Tyson Sadler is an explorer, traveller and award-winning filmmaker. He has directed video content and documentaries for The New York Times, Associated Press, and The Huffington Post. His films have been screened at festivals around the world including Tribeca Film Festival, South by Southwest, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. An early pioneer i virtual reality documentary, he has worked tirelessly to use cutting edge technology to tell stories that build empathy around causes such as climate change, forced migration, and human rights.Show Notes:The Film's InceptionIndustry PolarityRegulating TravelAddressing the Root ProblemsGreenwashing Animal and Child Welfare TourismHow the Wealth Gap Increased During COVIDWhat was Left on the Cutting Room FloorHomework:WATCH THE FILM HEREThe Last Tourist Film Website | Instagram | FacebookThe Last Tourist TrailerJesse Mann's Website | InstagramTyson Sadler's Website | InstagramTranscript:Chris: Welcome Jesse and Tyson to the End of Tourism Podcast. Jesse: Thanks Chris for having us. Tyson: Thanks for having us. Chris: Thank you so much for joining me today to talk about your documentary film, The Last Tourist. So, it was released in 2022 to great reception.And as you might imagine, many of my listeners have pointed me in its direction. And after watching the film, I found myself really grateful that people finally approached these themes in the medium of documentary filmmaking and with what seemed to be a budget to do justice to what those themes confront. And so first I'd like to ask you two how The Last Tourist got started and what the inspiration behind the film's creation was and how did you decide to write a treatment for it? Tyson: Ultimately, you know, I think the inspiration for The Last Tourist came from a combination of personal shared experience and a shared passion for travel and particularly responsible travel.You know, in early 2018, I was approached [00:01:00] by the executive producers to write a treatment, for a short film around responsible tourism in the country of Peru. And through, you know, some follow up conversations, we sort of quickly realized that we had an opportunity because, a large scale documentary, on the subject of responsible tourism just didn't exist yet. I mean, we have wonderful films out there which challenge our conversations with our relationship with climate change and our relationship with our food source like An Inconvenient Truth or like Food Inc., but we didn't at that time yet have a documentary which really challenged our perceptions of the global impact of the travel and tourism industry and so over conversations with with our team and the producers we quickly realized that we had a unique opportunity to make "An Inconvenient Truth" for the travel industry and in early 2018, we seized on that opportunity to explore the positive and negative impacts of tourism on destinations.Jesse: And I think just to add to what Tyson was saying, I think originally [00:02:00] it started off as a short project and yourself and the executive producers who brought us together kind of pushed for it to become the large scale project that had ended up being filmed in 15 different countries or 16 with 400 hours of footage.So, sometimes you don't know, especially myself as a co-writer and editor, when you come on to a project, in the initial stages, you think, "Oh, you know, this is wonderful. It sounds like a great project." I had been an avid traveler, lived in a few different countries over 20 years and I thought, yeah, this is a story that needs to be told, but I will say in no way in the beginning, did I ever think it was going to be, and I think Tyson didn't either, was it going to be such a huge project. And you comment, Chris, on the expansiveness of the subject and the different kind of facets of the tourism [00:03:00] industry we were able to look at.And really I have to say that I'm happy that we got to touch on all those points and to the chagrin of my personal sleep and Tyson's as well, but it started off small, I have to say that, and it grew into something tremendous that I think we're very proud of.Tyson: It really was a natural progression of our desire to raise awareness about responsible tourism and its consequences. We had our world premiere, honestly, I think it was about two years ago now at the Vancouver International Film Festival, two years ago. And a little over two years ago, a little over two years ago.And the film is still doing a festival run. Just last weekend, Jesse was at the the Innsbruck Film Festival and it's still been getting a wonderful response, great conversations around it. And we're streaming on platforms around the world, you know, Crave in Canada, Hulu in the U.S., Amazon Prime in other countries. I was just in French Polynesia and was able to find our film on Amazon Prime, which was really delightful [00:04:00] to see that. Jesse: Yeah, it makes us happy as filmmakers to know that the story that we spent a lot of time trying to create in a way that we thought would connect with audiences worldwide is actually getting out there. And so it's really nice to be speaking to you on your podcast as well and kind of extend that out to potentially more people who haven't seen the film or some who just want to talk more about the topics. Chris: And I wanted to ask you two, given the fact that the film was released, you know, still very much in a pandemic during the, the COVID 19 times what the reactions were given the fact that tourism had ground to a halt in that time you know, I received a lot of Mail regarding your film, like, ah, you have to check this out.You have to watch this, right? And so a lot of people really excited about the project, about the film. But then I guess I'm also curious about[00:05:00] if there was much of an industry backlash in regards to the degree of sincerity perhaps around which the film exhibited these kind of deep and sometimes dire consequences that visit themselves on places and people in the name of tourism.Tyson: Yeah. I think the reactions to the film have been in my experience, almost entirely positive. But people don't come to me with criticism, they come to me with congratulations, but I think there's a lot of individuals in the tourism industry and sponsors that have really welcomed our film, The Last Tourist, as a necessary and eye opening piece of work.It sparked a lot of interesting conversations and prompted the industry to, in many ways, I think, reevaluate some of their practices. You Jesse: If we back it up to when we were just when we were meeting with all of the different professionals that we interviewed across the different facets of the tourism industry, I mean, when you and I were writing the story, there were so [00:06:00] many different conflicting opinions on how to solve one issue that we still come across that sometimes when we meet those industry experts outside of, let's say, film audiences.Because When we were writing it, we had to kind of decide which side of the coin we were going to follow through our story with, and whether it's a topic of let's say regulation, that was a topic that Tyson and I had a lot of conversations about when we were making the film because the industry in itself is kind of very polarized in terms of regulation.There's some strong proponents within the tourism industry who want regulation. And then there's some who are very against it. And Tyson and I had a lot of conversations about that. And I think we still do when we meet certain industry professionals out there and I think that's a really important topic as well.[00:07:00] Now that you are bringing up, post covid and the pandemic where we saw kind of what happens when things are shut down. You know, we see both the positive and the negative. I mean we mentioned it in the film, but almost every single person that we interviewed in our film lost their means of income during that time. Gone.And at the same time, the world experienced kind of you know, a refuge from, you know, airplane emissions and damage to destinations. And, you know, these were calculable things like we could see that this was a definite impact. So, I think there's these kind of topics and these conversations are where we see a lot of polarity.And I think that we tried our best to focus on the people and the developing nations in our story. But, there are a lot [00:08:00] of stories that were left on the cutting room floor and so it is good to discuss them after in a podcast like this. I know that's kind of a long winded interjection, but I do believe that we do have some polarity for sure Tyson and I have come across, but just not in terms of what Tyson is talking about, in terms of not not so much with the audiences It is more a bit in the industry. Tyson: I'll share an observation. During the process of creating this film, we interviewed literally dozens of travel experts, you know from academics to tour operators across the industry.It's universally recognized that responsible tourism and sustainable tourism is a good thing. But then when we dive a little bit deeper I found a very fractured kind of industry because everybody believes that they know how to do responsible tourism, right. And everybody else, often, isn't executing responsible tourism correctly.And so, on a foundational level, sure, we all believe in responsible tourism, but I think, the approach at how we get there isn't universally accepted, throughout the industry, and I think [00:09:00] that that's, on a basic level, we kind of explore those themes in the film as well as we interview people who kind of take different approaches to how to engage responsibly with tourists and host communities.Jesse: And we had to make some hard decisions, obviously based on the research that was coming in on what side we wanted to promote in the story. But sometimes I think it's fair to say, Tyson, if you agree with me that we did try to leave it a bit more open for audiences to try to make their own decision based on what we had learned, because it's not always an easy answer for every situation.It's quite nuanced, I think. Tyson: Absolutely. Chris: And you mentioned Jesse, regulation. In terms of the people you interviewed and your research, generally speaking, what does that look like, or what might that look like in particular locales or within the industry?Jesse: Well, I think we've seen quite a bit of it post pandemic because where we thought there was going to be [00:10:00] an ease back into traveling that has not happened. All the reports are coming back in that tourism is back up in droves and a lot of the same problems, if not more are back with travel again.And so we've seen places like Machu Picchu has started regulating the amount of people that are able to visit annually. Worldwide, there's different popular tourist destinations who have decided to limit the amount of tourism and tourists that come to certain destinations.You know, I think when it comes to destinations, we just have to be really careful that it doesn't become a tax that is elitist because that happens a lot with regulation across the board. You've seen it with cigarettes, you've seen it with airfare as well. You're paying a higher price for travel. And although I do believe personally and Tyson, you [00:11:00] can speak to this as well, but because we haven't discussed this recently, but when you put a strong tariff or tax on travel, I think it is important, but I think it has to be calculated so that it's not elitist because if we only have people traveling in the world who can afford it, if it becomes so unaffordable, this is totally against the core value of travel, which is to unite all people of all different socioeconomic statuses and really connect with different cultures and people, and if it's just suddenly becomes for people who can afford a really overpriced flight, I think that will completely take away the value of the core value of travel.But I do strongly believe that, and this I think is a very controversial thing to say. I do believe that things have to be regulated and there has to be something done, especially about the amount of flights that are happening on this planet. Because, you know, for instance, I don't know the statistics for Canada, but I was looking at it the other day for[00:12:00] the UK.And I think something like 70 percent of all flights in the UK are taken by 15 percent of the population, and I don't doubt that that's very similar for a lot of the Western world without knowing all the statistics specifically, so I think that that has to be really taken into consideration when putting out regulation in terms of flights or destinations and such.Chris: Yeah, I've thought about it quite a bit as well, and the elitization of travel, and this understanding that, well, we remove subsidies, for example, for air travel or other things, that we'll just have rich people flying around the world, which is more often than not the case already. Most flights are undertaken for business travel and that's a huge thing that I think most people don't know about, but instead of getting people with corporate backed funds or just rich people flying around the world, we're obviously looking for people with strong principles and good behavior to be the ones [00:13:00] traveling.But then how do you measure that? How do you quantify that in a way that honors the kinds of worlds we want to live in? And it's not just this like, oh, it's impossible. Sure. And we could take that understanding that to quantify such a thing would be next to impossible, but then it could also open up these kind of doors of imagination where in like what kind of infrastructures would we want to put in place that were not maybe Government sanctioned or not maybe top down, but actually from the bottom up, creating these kind of international or intercultural bonds and practices between people that would allow not just for the kinds of people who locals in quote unquote "destinations" want to receive to be able to travel, but then also to create the conditions whereby that kind of, for lack of a better word, behavior or principles could be deepened in the world.I mean, it'd be extremely difficult to, [00:14:00] to manage, but How would you quantify that? How would you measure that? Jesse: Yeah, and I think that's such a, such a complicated issue and I love what you're saying though. I think it's absolutely wonderful. And I do think it's possible to move in that direction.I'm not sure I have the answer for that and maybe Tyson wants to speak to it, but I also want to say that something that I think could be part of the solution is also promoting train travel as well. And I know that that kind of that stops at domestic. But at the same time, you know, I think governments should be allocating a lot of funds to push train travel to create and develop train travel and to also subsidize train travel more because it's just a wonderful way to reduce emissions and to actually continue allowing people to travel. Tyson: Yeah. There are some countries here in Europe, Jesse, and I think Europe is just far beyond a lot of the rest of the world. Canada, I think we're still living in the dark ages, you know, when it comes to long [00:15:00] distance train travel.Jesse: That's a shame. It hasn't been made a priority. Tyson: It just doesn't exist.Chris: Well, I'm curious also for you two how your own travels in your lives might have come to bear on your production or pre production and research in the film. Maybe you could tell us a little bit of how you've seen the world over the course of your life and your travels and if that came to bear at all in the making of the film.Tyson: Personally for me, I traveled extensively, for 20 years prior to embarking on this film. I worked in the travel industry. I worked for an airline for many years. I was also a journalist and I've done work for several large publications, which allowed me to travel to very, some very remote and exotic destinations around the world.This travel really exposed me to the beauty and the wonder of the world. But also the environmental and the cultural challenges that a lot of these destinations face. You know, the experiences, with travel for both work and for pleasure, I think they served as a [00:16:00] catalyst, for me just to delve deeper into this topic.And so when I was approached about directing and writing a film on this topic, I don't think there could have been a better fit. Like it just, everything just kind of fell into place and I just felt like I was really well poised because prior to that I had traveled to 70 different countries in a number of different capacities.I had personally engaged in a number of behaviors that we are critical of in the film in terms of animal interaction, you know, interaction with other cultures. And my travel through two decades was really an eye opening and learning experience for me. And what this film really is, I think for me and in many points in the film is a reflection of my past travels and things that have been illuminated in my mind in terms of what are some important aspects that we really need to address if we want to be more conscious and responsible travelers.Jesse: And I think from my end I surely [00:17:00] had not traveled to as many destinations as Tyson. But I did indulge my wanderlust in my twenties and thirties. I lived in a few different countries, Holland, South Africa, Germany, Canada. And I think that the absolute best aspect for me personally of travel is meeting the people.I absolutely love meeting people in different cultures and seeing the differences and the similarities and learning the wisdom as much as I possibly can in such a moment of my life, when I'm in a destination, if it grants me such a gift. And I think from that, I still do have such a deep, deep gratitude to my privilege and being able to travel in and meet such people.I've made such beautiful friendships over the course of 20 years and many I still keep in touch with across the various places I've lived. And I think that when you come back, [00:18:00] perhaps from living in different cultures in different countries and you come back to your home, the place you were raised in and where you were born and where you were raised culturally, and you can note the vast differences, and it's not a negative thing, but you start to pick up on the ways in which many people can see different cultures or different countries in a way that is completely disconnected from the actual truth and and this knowledge often comes with privilege.I was privileged enough to be able to travel to these destinations to meet certain people and to dissuade certain prejudices, but not everyone can. And so part of this film, I have to say, ironically, is that if you can't travel, this film is also a wonderful film to watch because it's something that you can meet these people [00:19:00] in these destinations.You know, there's so many places that I've been to also that are so many places I have not been to that were featured in the film as well. And with documentary filmmaking and making, and especially as an editor, I really do feel like I get to know these people so well, and I don't think that's just exclusive to myself.I think audiences, hopefully, if I've done it correctly, if Tyson and I have, have made the film correctly, that these people's hearts have come through in the film. And, this is something that Tyson and I really worked hard on. And I'm sorry if I'm deviating from the question a bit, but it does connect very deeply to my love of travel is is people and also my love of editing people and so it was something we worked really hard to focus on is how do we give these people a podium. They have their voice there. They're saying their truths. How do we give them a podium [00:20:00] and as the white filmmakers who are coming into different countries, how do we take a step back and really let them preach their wisdom? And so it was a balance for us really in finding the right voices, obviously speaking to the right professionals and speaking to professionals within different cultures that you see featured in the film and really making sure that their knowledge, their voice, their direction was giving us direction on how we edited and formulated the story and stories of everyone that we met in the travels of the production as well. Chris: And on that note, I'm curious for each of you, what was the most important topic or theme that came up in the film for you personally?Tyson: For me, maybe it's an echo of Jesse's sentiments there, but really it comes down to the impact on the communities that so graciously host us when we when we do travel. Travel you know has you know has an encyclopedia [00:21:00] of challenges that come with traveling responsibly unless we address the people. And I think we address this and the the film addresses this, but we can't begin to you know to start focusing on the environment unless we first focus on the communities who are there and helping them emerge from poverty. We can't begin to focus on how we can solve the problem of poaching in the African savannah unless we first address the root causes of why it's there and how it affects the host communities and how poverty affects people's decisions to be involved in this trade. Jesse: That was something that Jane Goodall was was really adamant about speaking in the film about as well Tyson: Yeah, and so to answer your question Chris, I mean ultimately it comes down to the communities and the people, the humanity of it all. First, we need to address the human aspect and then we can address the secondary aspects of what it means to be a responsible traveler.[00:22:00] Jesse: So for me, personally, the most incredible voices in the film that when they came in, I just thought, "oh, wow," were definitely Lek from Elephant Nature Park and one of our contacts in Kenya Judy Kefergona, who ended up being one of the main speakers and narrators throughout a huge portion of our film.These two women were just heroes. Like just with Judy, with the words that she was able to express for the people working in not just only the tourism industry in Kenya, but the people of Kenya who were vulnerable to unethical tourism, and then speaking to so many different subjects that were connected to so many different stories worldwide with such eloquence and such power and such knowledge [00:23:00] and encourage really, I think. She spoke about these topics. I was just enamored, just blown away and so grateful for her coming onto our film and Lek Chailart is just a modern day hero. She is the tiniest woman with the biggest heart who when I saw her story in our film against the backdrop of these beautiful giants, these elephants that she has rescued. And essentially she's an elephant whisperer in the truest sense of the word. And it's just such a magical thing to see.Listeners won't be able to understand this. I'm getting goosebumps when I just talk about her and this was the kind of thing that when Tyson and I were looking through footage and looking through stories that we were looking for, "Oh, that's the moment, ah! the moment. I got the goosebumps. That's it. It's there. And we found it in the stories, not just these two women, everyone you see featured in the story and some that were left on the cutting room floor, unfortunately there that gave us beautiful insight that we still used in crafting the story, that just wasn't able to [00:24:00] make it into the actual film for timing constraints.But really, I would have to say that these two, it's not specifically the stories, although both of them touch on really important stories, including child welfare and animal welfare, which to me, those two stories were really close to my heart. And we felt really strongly that they needed a really important part in the film.But it was really these two women who I just felt so grateful for in the film. Chris: I mean, the, the chapter on animal welfare was quite devastating for me in part because it had reminded me that in my early twenties, I had visited Thailand and I had gone to an elephant sanctuary. Not a zoo but a sanctuary, and had the opportunity to ride an elephant for a short time, and I felt really uncomfortable probably because I was on top of an elephant, just the kind of immediate awkwardness of such a thing, having never seen one in person, having never [00:25:00] experienced that before, but also kind of like, "what am I doing here?" And so, that part of the film really kind of opened up for me why I felt that perhaps existential discomfort, not just about being on top of an animal of that size, but in the context of the dynamic, you around how that was happening and why that was happening and not having the context for it so long ago.And of course, this is one of the things that we touch on in the episodes, in the interviews, in the podcast, is how can we come to understand these things when our visits are so short in these places, when we are only in a place for just a very brief time and there's really no context for the history and the culture and the political dynamics that surround these things.And then, most travelers, most tourists just end up leaving and the consequence of one's presence on the scene is kind of forgotten, at least by the tourist or traveler. Yeah, so thank you for [00:26:00] for that. Jesse: That question did come up actually at the recent screening of the film in Innsbruck at the Nature Film Festival, whereas someone in the audience asked very specifically, even though it would be great to stay at a destination for a long time, most people are, saving up for short travel when they have time off work. And they need to take this kind of tour because they can only afford this one. And what do you say to those people who want to travel better, but feel like they're kind of stuck or don't know where to go. But I would say in short, I think that touches on an issue that we have in the modern world with a lot of things. We are all overtired, overworked, and we don't have time to be ethical, we don't have time to do the research, we don't have time to investigate, if anything is against our core values, and we don't have time to and I get that, you know, it's not easy for everybody.And if you do have the [00:27:00] time and you are able to really do a deep dive then you're very privileged, because you have the time, which just means that you have the money. So we did try to give a lot of smaller tips at the end of the film in terms of how you can do smaller acts of, of kindness and of conscious traveling, to travel local, to put money into local economies to make sure that you're not requesting your sheets to be washed every day, making sure that you're traveling using reusable, to make sure that you're and I guess this goes into a little bit more of the extensive questioning is to ask the destination that you're traveling to what their policies are in connection with the locals, in connections with the environment. Unfortunately, there is a lot of greenwashing in tourism. And you know, that's in all industries right now worldwide. So it's not going to be so easy for someone who isn't an investigative [00:28:00] journalist to really find out the truth behind it all the time, but we can do our best.And there are quite a few links on the website thelasttouristfilm.com where you can see some of the different organizations that we spoke with that have lists upon lists of different collaborating companies that you can look to that can can show you places that are not greenwashing or that are working with locals, but back to the idea of taking the time and it is about taking the time, whether it's an hour even, just to take the time and do a bit of research and this especially comes back to the topic of child welfare and people who are still, en masse, volunteering worldwide to orphanages and orphanages where children have existing family members and that these orphanages have become of monetary value to developing nations [00:29:00] because they make money and it's really easy for us to pass judgment on places that do this, and it's definitely wrong, but if we as travelers are going there and saying with our travel dollars, this is something we want to invest in, then people in developing nations are going to say, this is how I make money.And it's the same with animal welfare. You pay for an animal sanctuary that you haven't done the research on. They're going to keep perpetuating that cycle. It's going to be the same with child welfare. So, if you do want to be ethical, you have to fit in a little bit of research in your travel time. And that's it. And I know it's not so easy for everybody.Tyson: Yeah, I'd like to expand a little bit on a theme that sort of both of you have talked about. Jessie, you had mentioned greenwashing. Chris, you had mentioned that you had been to an elephant sanctuary in Thailand. One of the most memorable takeaways that I had from this film is just the massive amount of greenwashing [00:30:00] and deception that exists within the industry.I came to know a lot of companies that appeared to just be normal travel companies doing the same thing that has been going on in the travel industry but marketing "green" although nothing really changes. It's just their marketing strategy that's changed. If we look at, for example, in Thailand, there are a number of places that call themselves an elephant sanctuary, an elephant retirement home, an elephant rescue center. And we can't rely on those names anymore to know that the service provider is giving us an ethical experience. We really need to ask deeper questions. It's the trend in the industry now to use this type of language, " sustainable," "responsible," "eco," all of these buzzwords.And I've just come to find these completely meaningless, in those terms. We really need to ask some deeper, more challenging questions of these experiences and the tour operators and the service providers to actually know whether what they're doing is ethical or not because it is very easy to call yourself a [00:31:00] sanctuary, when in fact, it's the complete opposite. If it truly was an elephant sanctuary, we wouldn't be able to ride the elephants, in that place and they would be providing them a life of dignity free from exploitation. And it's the same with children. Calling these places orphanages ,I think it's a misnomer. It's incorrect. You know, 70 percent of children who live in these quote unquote "orphanages" actually have at least one living parent.But it's all under the guise of trying to gain sympathy from the traveler. "Oh, come see an elephant at a retirement home. Come see a child at an orphanage." It's just a piece of marketing that doesn't reflect the truth. We have a lot of companies doing the same unethical practices they've been doing for decades.However, they've just really changed their marketing to appear more green.Chris: Yeah, it seems to be a never ending cycle where responsible isn't good enough, that now we got to be regenerative. So many of these words just end up becoming, marketing tools. Tyson: I'm hearing that word a [00:32:00] lot more these days as well. Chris: Yeah, so how do we proceed, not just with a degree of dedication towards research and, and and planning, but also deep discipline as to how these words are unfortunately, as you said, becoming kind of meaningless in their significance..I want to take a little turn with you both to ask about what happened as the film was going through post production and its release because most of the footage that you have is quote unquote pre pandemic and the COVID 19 pandemic hit, obviously, in 2020 and from what I understand your team was entering into the post production process and, of course, tourism ground to a halt almost completely, worldwide. And throughout the film, there are people that you two interview that contend with the consequences and context of tourism and look [00:33:00] to a more honorable path that it might take. But I'm curious in regards to the people that you did interview who had found a degree of success and perhaps within a more small scale, a more honorable way of doing tourism that those flights, those trains, the reception of people in their villages went from a hundred to zero, basically overnight.So much of the dire consequences of tourism revolve around or end up as exile, local people can't afford to produce food anymore in their places. And the education systems kind of move them towards getting jobs in the next city or even in other countries, and I'm curious in the context of the film and I guess the treatment that you put forward, you know, never perhaps thinking that something like this could happen. What was the fallout among the people that you interviewed in regards to their understandings of tourism and if it was [00:34:00] still this kind of for lack of a better word, golden goose or calf or sacred cow that they could rely on for the rest of their lives.What did you hear kind of in the ether as you were doing that post production? Tyson: I think it substantially expanded the wealth gap. I think during COVID the people that were hit the hardest are the people in the tourism industry that often are paid the least.Depending on what their jobs were, they were the ones who were suffering layoffs and they were the ones whose businesses couldn't afford to sustain themselves. And so I think, for the most vulnerable populations, the pandemic was absolutely devastating.People couldn't afford to put food on the table and pay rents, not just, I think, in developing countries, but even in the developed world. Airlines were laying off massive amounts of employees. Hotels were cutting staff. This was a global challenge that affected everyone. However, at that same time, we did hear stories that, you know, CEOs of major airlines were taking million dollar bonuses[00:35:00] for cutting costs. And that was an observation of mine, through that experience, you know, that the people who needed tourism the most for daily sustenance and to put bread on the table were the ones who were absolutely the most affected and the people kind of at the top of the tourism industry were still fine and they were also taking bonuses, which really bothered me just because the wealth gap just seemed to get further and further apart through that. But we do know, with the stories, that were featured in our film... there's a wonderful lodge in Ecuador, a homestay that we look at and they lost their income during that time.The elephant sanctuary in Thailand, the one that does do great work, not one that greenwashes an elephant sanctuary but they lost a lot of revenue where it was very challenging to feed the elephants and to house the elephants because they didn't have that revenue coming in to support the project. Jesse: We were hearing in in Africa, right?Some of the rangers [00:36:00] were who were placed in defense of the elephants and animals and rhinos and such were just gone. They just weren't there anymore at that time because if they're not getting paid, they can't stay there. And so poaching also went up in those areas as well.But you know, I think that in terms of what the positive was, I think a lot of people were hoping that post COVID that there was going to be hope for change, for renewal for doing things differently. And I think this was in when we were in post that this was maybe, potential to show people how things can be different by showing kind of the polar opposite and the effect and also showing how intrinsically connected people's livelihoods are to this industry and how vulnerable they are to massive change like this. I mean, the Dominican Republic that has [00:37:00] almost 90 percent of their GDP related to tourism? Tyson: Island nations are the ones who are most affected by tourism. You know, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic. The Caribbean islands specifically. I don't know if it's as high as 90%, but the vast majority of their GDP from island nations comes from the travel and tourism industry, and they were certainly hit the hardest during the pandemic. Jesse: And so I think that we can see from that, I think the hope for us during post production was, okay, you know, this is a horrific blow to the people most vulnerable in this industry, but if we can get this message out after the pandemic, perhaps this could be something that could really change. And to be fair, change is slow sometimes and I mean, it's wishful thinking that post pandemic right after that suddenly everyone was going to become ethical travelers but I see so much potential just in the discussions online the people that we're [00:38:00] meeting at different screenings, the interest that we're getting worldwide, just to have these conversations and see that there is an interest in change.And when you talk about moving change, it does often come from the people, and I think, across the world over the past few decades, we've all been seeing again, I think our power as people, as citizens, as individuals, and the power that we have to come together over certain issues that we feel need radical change and even if it is slow change, I do see the inklings of that change happening within the tourism industry and I think it's really positive.Tyson: You still have a lot of work ahead of us. Chris: Amen. I think that's really, really important and, and perhaps fits properly inside of the context of the dominant culture, at least of North America or the quote unquote West, wherein, the pandemic also produced a deepening of the [00:39:00] culture of "everything now."Suddenly it was like, "okay, well, I can't go out here, so everything has to be deliverable, and at the tip of your fingers, right? And what might come with that is this notion that, we also expect social change to happen overnight. Right? And that it might be overshadowed by this kind of dominant culture of wanting everything now and also the unwillingness to do the necessary work, which is sometimes generational.Right? Not just a week or a month or a year, but generations.In that regard, the themes of the film are extremely broad and you go into a lot of detail and depth with each. So I'm very grateful for that, but I'm also curious what might've gotten left out.What might, one day end up on a director's cut of the film. Jesse: Oh, so much. Tyson: Ask the editor. Jesse: Oh. Well, I mean, you had so many stories that you brought [00:40:00] to the table that were beautiful, beautiful stories. Forgive me. I don't remember his name and you'll remember Tyson.But one of the. Tyson: I know who you're talking about. Jesse: Oh, do you? One of the men you interviewed at the UN had a really beautiful story to tell. And then we also had a really beautiful story from Costa Rica. An animal welfare and environmental story. Oh, my goodness. There were so many stories.Tyson: We had a wonderful story from Cusco Peru with an organization that was putting the first female porters on the Inca Trail and really fighting for gender equality on the Inca Trail.Jesse: What was that company's name again, Tyson? Well, the reason why I bring it up is because it's so unique that I just think, "oh, we should definitely highlight that to listeners" because they were taking female porters and they were reorganizing the whole industry based on their [00:41:00] precedent because they were treating porters with dignity, with safe conditions, with, valuable wages and this is something that's just not done across the industry on the Inca Trail with the male porters and there was some really, really horrific footage that we came across of the way these porters were living just not too far from where the tourists were sleeping comfortably in their tents. And this is a wide practice across the industry and Miguel from this company Evolution Treks and the gallon, do you remember his full name, tyson? Tyson: Miguel Angel Gongora Jesse: from Evolution Treks, yeah, a wonderful, wonderful man who was really, really passionate about changing the industry. And we spoke with many of the female porters, and yeah, that was a story that we were really, really sad to lose that [00:42:00] story. Tyson: Yeah. Yeah. With only 90 minutes, you know, we yeah, really had to make some challenging decisions on what to be included in the film and I really feel that a 90 minute film can scratch the surface, it can spark some interest in a number of these themes, but certainly, and maybe that's next steps for us, but I certainly think that what this the subject matter, deserves is a series, you know, cause we could dive much deeper.Jesse: Tyson and I have been talking about it. Tyson: Yeah, we, we can dive much deeper into each of these subjects and create a 90 minute doc on each of them. And so, at some point in the future, we'll be making some pitches and writing some additional treatments into how we can make a six part series and expand on the themes in this film, you know, from the environment to gender inequality to animal welfare and everything deserves a lot more time, but hopefully, what we've done with this film is just been able to spark a number of conversations and inspire people to go and do some additional research [00:43:00] into how these themes impact these communities.Chris: Yeah, well, thank you both so much for that. I have a lot more questions, but maybe that'll also be saved for a sequel. Jesse: Yeah, we'd love to speak to you again, Chris, if you'd like, in the future. Chris: That'd be great. Before we finish, I'd like to ask you what might be next for you two in your respective filmmaking and writing lives?Tyson: My world currently revolves around photographing wildlife particularly large wildlife. Yeah, I've been spending a lot of time traveling recently and in the ocean. I mentioned to you, I mean, tomorrow I'm hopping on a flight and I'm heading to Norway to go photograph large marine mammals in Norway. So that's that's where my life is taking me right now is in pursuit of wildlife filmmaking and photography. Jesse: Although I wish I could, I could say similarly, I right now my life is a little bit calmer. I had a baby 20 months ago. So, I've been on an extended maternity leave [00:44:00] and I'm currently just in development of projects for the future.I finished up this project in full right before my child was born. And I still have a few projects that were finished up recently, but as of the moment I'm completely in development and yeah, I really look forward to developing something with Tyson in the future in regards to what he was talking about a series on travel and on a lot of stories that we were so passionate and so blessed to come across, but that we just didn't have the ability to give the podium to in our film, but yeah, so I'm really excited for the future and just coming from this festival that I was at recently, I'm just so invigorated with the energy of the audiences and the passion to travel better and to demand better travel from the industry and from travelers as a whole. So this just really gives me a lot of hope. Chris: Well, congratulations on your [00:45:00] motherhood. Thank you. And having a little one in your life and this work and Tyson and the opportunity to be able to travel as you do, and to try to honor the lives of those beautiful four leggeds and no leggeds and the tailed and finned ones. So finally, how can our listeners watch The Last Tourist? Are there any screenings coming up? Jesse: Definitely on the website, thelasttouristfilm.com, right when you go to the webpage, there's a whole list of all the different avenues you can watch the film.But maybe Tyson could elaborate more. Tyson: Absolutely. Yeah, you can connect with us on Instagram at Last Tourist Film, as well. We're just kind of wrapping up the fall festival season before we do some additional screenings next spring. We just wrapped up in Germany and Iceland.I think streaming is the best way to find us, in Canada we're streaming on Crave. In the United States, we're streaming on Hulu. Delta Airlines, Emirates Airlines. In other countries around the world, you can also find us, I [00:46:00] know in France, in French Polynesia, Hong Kong on Amazon Prime. And there's a number of other markets that the film will be opening in very shortly which is really exciting.It's not available everywhere, unfortunately, around the world, but if you have a desire to see it, you know, please get in touch with us and we'll do our best to make sure that you have an opportunity to see the film. You can host a private screening. There's a number of ways that you can see this film, but please let's keep the conversation going.Let's get in touch. I'd love to hear from a number of the listeners, and let's find a way that we can allow everyone to see this film. Jesse: And what's been really exciting is we've got a lot of interest from schools. So, educational screenings have been happening all across the world, and that's just been amazing.Those are the best for us, I think. And I would just say, if any of the listeners have any further questions for us, we're always open to taking questions and chatting. Personally, Tyson and I can both be reached at our Instagram. So you can I think Tyson's is @TysonSadler, and mine is [00:47:00] @JesseMann, two S's, two N's. So if you want to leave that for your listeners, they're welcome to contact us. And anyone who's listening can contact us directly that way, who want to host a screening or find out ways to watch. Chris: Absolutely. Yeah, I'll make sure that all the websites and handles are available for our listeners at theendoftourism. com. And on behalf of them on behalf of myself, I'd like to thank you both for joining me today. Your film is incredibly inspirational, necessary, and deeply important for these times and I don't doubt that our listeners think the same. So, I wish you the most beautiful paths ahead on your travels with your families.And ...We get the opportunity to speak again sometime. Tyson: Thank you, Chris. This has really been a meaningful conversation. Thank you. Jesse: Yeah. Thank you so much for giving us this space and I wish you all the same. Chris: My pleasure. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Are you thinking about launching a dental startup but don't quite know where to begin? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Chris Green to dive into the essentials of setting up a new dental practice, beginning with the crucial steps of demographics analysis and site selection. Chris shares his insights on the "windshield test," a simple method to augment data analysis with hands-on site evaluation. He also reveals practical strategies for identifying promising locations, accounting for natural barriers, and balancing commercial and residential areas—all keys to making sound, long-term decisions for your practice.The conversation continues with essential advice on how to work effectively with real estate agents and what to consider during site visits. Chris also discusses his book, "The Eminently Qualified Dentist," which includes a valuable self-evaluation scorecard to help dental professionals assess their leadership skills. As the episode wraps up, you'll get tips on regular self-assessment and Chris' philosophy on being always a work in progress.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Why demographics analysis is critical for dental startupsHow to perform the "windshield test" to evaluate potential practice locationsEffective strategies for identifying the best areas for a new dental practiceTips for navigating natural barriers and balancing commercial-residential zonesHow to collaborate with real estate agents to find the perfect siteInsights from Chris' book on self-evaluation and leadership in dental practiceThe importance of regular self-assessment for continuous improvementTune in now to equip yourself with the tools for a successful startup!‍‍Sponsors:Studio 8E8: Dentistry's story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true‍You can reach out to Dr. Chris Green here:Website: thepracticelaunchpad.comEmail: cmgreendmd@gmail.comChris' Book - The Eminently Qualified Dentist: https://a.co/d/3AgXjbI (Reach out to Chris for a free copy!)‍Mentions and Links: ‍People:Dr. Thomas Reed‍Software/Tools:CoStar‍Podcasts:Jocko Willink Podcast‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)Michael: Hey, Chris, we'll talkto us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Chris: Hey there, Michael. I'd like to talk about demographics and actually the analysis of driving and having the area or the location you pick pass the feel and the site test more so than just the numbers test.talk to me a little bit about that like driving around and just looking or.Yeah. So it's a little bit.more intuitive than that. we have our demographics reports. We might be looking at them. We're looking for that 3, 001 dentists to population ratio, you know, the high income area.But then we have to look at how does it feel? Does it pass the windshield test? When I drive by behind the numbers, what does it feel like? So that's what I like to do. Michael: What's the windshield test? Chris: Yeah, so just. behind the steering wheel, you know, you're looking out the windshield and you're looking around and you're like, oh, cool.There's a lot of homes being built or. Oh, wow. You know, The demographics report said this was only like 1800 to 1, but I'm not really seeing the dentists. where are they at? so does it pass the eye test? So to speak would be maybe another way to say that. Michael: Gotcha. Okay. I like that.So then if you can, let's just say we're listening to this and we decided to do that. We're taking a drive strategically. How should we start? What are we mainly looking for that are red flags and what are some things that. We can probably let pass. Chris: Sure. So one thing that's well, known, if you've researched anything on demographics with a startup are natural barriers, like a highway that maybe people wouldn't want to cross or by us, there's the foothills in Colorado.So there's no real homes along the foothills. So now I've just eliminated growth to the West of me completely. Right. So if I'm butted up too close to there. And a couple more dentists come in and there's not a lot of room for new homes. I could be in trouble long term and I'm praying for turnover of the existing home, so to speak.The other thing would be, how much commercial real estate is in the area. Is there more commercial than residential, We want a nice balance of both and a lot of times in these newer areas that are up and coming The residential is there before the commercial is developed. So a lot of these projects are ground up commercial that we see a lot of startups going into they're waiting for the developers to finish to give them that great show Michael: How do we know that's a good balance then the commercial? And then the residential, Chris: some point you got to go with your gut and say, this is the location, right? You've worked with plenty of startups over the years. I'd turn the question back on you. What's your opinion on, some of that?Michael: Oh man. so when we focus, we focus just on ground marketing, right? So if it's commercial. We do want a lot of commercial, if it's residential, you have the HOAs, you have a lot of other specific things that you can be a part of. So I don't know, I guess it just depends on the type of practice you want to be right in the city, specific suburban area.Chris: Yeah, that's a great point. Are we talking a city and urban type atmosphere, rural or suburban for me? Just, I would say 80 percent of people are going to go to a larger suburb close to a major city. Let's say within 20 minutes to an hour outside a major city, Denver, Chicago San Francisco, whatever it may be.Michael: Yeah, gotcha. Okay. you're investing so much money into this, right? Your startup. Why wouldn't, not everyone just want to do this? Chris: And you said, hey, bring something that's unpopular. It's a little ambiguous, right? What I'm saying, it's not quite a science. It's a little bit of driving around, analyze the competition.Maybe your real estate agent didn't show you place that was available that has great visibility that meets the demographics and everything. But it just isn't on their radar and you have to say, Hey such such real estate agent. Would you mind looking into this place? It looks like it's vacant.Looks like it could be a good opportunity. I've seen situations like that work out really well for startup clients. Michael: Okay. So when you talk to them, real estate agent, is there a way you would want to bring that up to let them know like, Hey, you missed a lot of stuff. Or no, Chris: Some of them might be directing you where they know they're going to get a nice commission on it. But other times it's just not on the market, right? Maybe the hasn't listed it. maybe it's just doesn't show up on their searches on, what is it? CoStar or whatever. or maybe they didn't realize it was in a good demographic zone.Based on your demographics reports. So it's a team approach. Remember no one is more invested in this than you, the startup doc, So they're dealing with maybe, 20 clients at a time or something like that, you have your one little baby, you gotta do everything possible to make sure it's a home run.Michael: Nice. I like that. So Chris, you also have a book that you just came out with, right? Chris: Correct. So the book's called the eminently qualified dentist. I was listening to the Jocko Willink podcast and he talked about the eminently qualified Marine and I printed out this sheet and itit's about Marines and likethe levels of leadership what would signify that you're good at your job as a Marine.And I was like, wow, what if there was a scorecard that we could more objectively evaluate ourselves as dental practice leaders. so myself and Dr. Tom Reed compiled with or 12 categories the practice culture.Marketing leadership so on and so forth.And then some descriptions and ranking yourself from zero to five. And at the end, you could fill out the scorecard let's say you did that today, and maybe you've been working on some things you check in, six months from now, take test again and you see, Hey,it looks like I'm doing a little bit better as a leader.It looks like I am growing in the trajectories in the right direction.So that was the idea behind the book and it's quick read, more of an evaluation something that you might take on a flight,fill it out, read it, and then, reevaluate yourself. Michael: So if you can, one of the main things on there that you do, would you recommend, Hey, we should probably reevaluate ourselves every how often, Chris: maybe quarterly, there used to be a scorecard that I would use and evaluate quarterly, definitely annually when you're doing your maybe annual goal setting and things like that.but for maybe a book like this, twice a year, Michael: If you can let us know right now, where do you feel like, okay, I need to improve on this? Chris: Sure. I would say if a hundred percent, means. You've got it all dialed in. I would say we're probably lying to ourselves. I would say where I could improve a little bit more is with hard So you could always get better at having those hard conversations and not putting hard conversations off. I would say that would be an area for me to focus on. Michael: Yeah, man, that's interesting. So it does dive deep into the, not just like, what's your production looking like? What do you want it to be? But it's. goes into the granular part of conversations, which honestly Chris like, I feel like that's hard for anybody. You know what I mean? Like that's a, a difficult, nobody loves to be like, I love coming in and having difficult conversations.Maybe like 01 percent people, but that's good, man. Okay. So then this is available where? Chris: This would be available on Amazon. It's called the eminently qualified dentist. I it's 19 or 20. I've sent out a lot of free copies as well. So just hit us up if you want a copy I've got some good feedback so far for the people that have actually gone through it.It's, a reality check, right? When we introspective and evaluate how we're showing up to the world. we're always a work in progress is how I look at myself. So. There's always room for improvement and it's like when one category starts to do well, maybe another one suffers and it teeter totters.So it's hard to find that balance and everything. Michael: Yeah, no, a hundred percent, man. We go through seasons all the time, but awesome. Chris, I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find them on the dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Chris: Sure. I'll just give my personal email. C M green D M D at gmail. com. You can also find me at the launchpad. com, which is our startup coaching group. Michael: Nice. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below and Chris, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode. Chris: Hey, I really appreciate you having me, Michael.Thank you.

On this episode, my guest is Sean P. Smith, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. Much of his research has focused on the relationship between social media and tourism, and how colonial histories shape today's ideologies and visual cultures of travel. The inequalities that result from many forms of tourism development, he argues, are intimately linked with how tourists create content for Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, and the ways tourists frame themselves in landscapes and alongside local residents often replay colonial hierarchies.Show Notes: Why Study Instagram?The Pre-tour Narrative (Edward Bruner, Raul Salazar)The Habitus of Tourism (or How We Got Here)The Promontory Witness (or that photo)The Logic of InfluenceEmptying the Landscape (John Urry)The Techno-Generational DivideMedia EcologyOther Horizons in OmanHomework:Sean P. Smith - Tilburg UniversitySean P. Smith: Twitter / X | Instagram | Google Scholar (Articles)Transcript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Sean, to the pod. Thank you so much for being willing to join us to speak about your work. Sean: Thanks very much for having me. Chris: My pleasure. I'm curious, Sean where you're speaking from today and, and how the world is, how the world might be housing you there. Sean: Well, it's very rainy and dark. I'm in the Southern Netherlands, an area called North Brebant, where I just moved less than a month ago.So, in many places of moving around, if so, getting used to this one. Chris: Sean, I found out about your work from one of the pod's listeners who sent in a link to one of your academic articles entitled, Instagram Abroad, Performance, Consumption, and Colonial Narrative in Tourism. Now, I've been ruminating on the effect that social media has on tourism, spectacle, surveillance, and cultures of disposability for a long time now.So I'm really excited to speak with you today. And [00:01:00] likewise parts of the podcast are shared via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, so there's always this sense of kind of feeding the machine. unaware and perhaps more aware each time. And so first then, I'm curious why focus on Instagram in the context of critical tourism studies? What makes it different from say Facebook or Twitter?Sean: Yeah, that's a really good question Chris. I think with Instagram, in many contexts around the world, certainly not universally, but it's the social media platform that is most readily identified with not just tourism, but the way that people represent themselves engaging in tourism. It's very image driven.Of course, people do write captions, they do engage in other forms of storytelling, but nowadays it's mostly pictures and especially reels, arguably in the last few years. And for a long time, this [00:02:00] has been could almost say the dream work of tourism going back 200, maybe longer years. So even though today, I think you can find forms of tourism well represented TikTok to varying degrees on Facebook.Instagram, at least in many of the places where I've conducted research, is the place that one goes to both learn about places to travel and also to show how oneself travels.Chris: And I'm kind of imagining that we're more or less in the same age range, but I'm curious if on your travels, you mentioned just briefly that you had also spent time backpacking as a younger person and I'm curious if Instagram existed at the time and also if this dream work was evident to you in your travels.Sean: It was. I think I was relatively young when I got my first [00:03:00] smartphone, but certainly not as young as people nowadays. I must have been maybe 22 or 23. So I did have some years of traveling before I think Instagram really reshaped the way that tourism is done, not just for people that actually use this app, but regardless of whether or not anyone's ever downloaded it on their phone, I think Instagram has had a significant impact on the way that tourism is done. So when I first got a smartphone, I was in a period of my life where I was able to travel quite frequently and that was something that I was really pursuing at the time. And Instagram was a way that I was able to engage in a long running interest in photography, but also kind of a diary of where I had been, but certainly one that was legible and sort of visible to other people.And it was through that, you could say "performance" of travel that began to think a bit more critically about this app and other social media [00:04:00] platforms as well. And the way that it was reshaping tourism destinations. Chris: Mm. Mm. Yeah, you mention in your work this notion of the pre tour narrative.And I'm wondering if we could unpack that a little bit for our listeners and what part Instagram plays in this pre tour narrative. Sean: Yeah, I'm very happy to point that out, because I think this is, this is an important way to think about tourism, and that particular phrase I'm drawing on the work of Edward Bruner, who was an American anthropologist.And that's also been picked up in other realms to be identified as what other people have called tourism imaginaries, such as in the work of Raúl Salazar. So what this concept of the pre-tour narrative describes is that before people travel to a particular destination, they are exposed to [00:05:00] various forms of representation.And oftentimes this is very image based or narrative based. So we would see this maybe thinking back in the era before social media, images encountered in magazines and films, perhaps novels, other forms of storytelling, such as just talking with people who have been to places that one wants to travel.However, in social media, as it's become more integral to the way that people conduct their everyday lives, let alone traveling. It's become the dominant engine for the way that the pre tour narrative is formed. Many people who use Instagram as a space to learn about places to travel, they will encounter images of these of these places on this app or and not just sort of the way that it's portrayed, but what people do in these spaces, the people that live [00:06:00] in the places they're going to visit. So, this process of the formation of a pre tour narrative has really always been a part of tourism. But I think it perhaps it's if not accelerated, then certainly taken a bit of a different form with the advent of social media.Chris: So on some level, it's not just the question of what you're going to go see, but also how you're going to see it, how you're going to stand in front of that tower or restaurant and see, experience, what's there. Sean: Yeah, that's a really good way to put it. Chris: And I know it's a little early in the interview, but I'd like to jump into the heart of the matter and your critiques, if we can. You know, you wrote this incredible article Landscapes for Likes, capitalizing on travel with Instagram. And, in that article, you wrote that, deep breath, "Instagram's networked architecture and affordances produce three [00:07:00] outcomes that circulate and magnify utterances about travel to a degree impossible in pre-networked media.One, a mediated travel habitus hegemonically informs prevailing aesthetic norms. Two, the scalability of embodied performances entrench the motif's narrative underpinnings. And three, the monetizable market of Instagram encourages neoliberal notions of the branded self." Now that's a beautiful mouthful. And so I'm wondering, if you might be willing and able to flesh out these three outcomes for our listeners. Sean: No, that's brilliant. And it's nice to talk about these things, perhaps when they're written that can be quite a bit denser.So maybe we can start with the first idea, this mediated travel habitus. And with the word habitus, I'm trying on the work of [00:08:00] the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who theorizes he's talking about class and culture and ways that people display their belonging within a particular class.And the reason that I'm looking to Bordeaux here is tourism and travel, really, it's important to look at this as a practice that has been connected to what Bordeaux might call the pursuit of distinction, to the search for an acquisition of cultural goods. You know, we might think of cultural goods as being a painting or a taste and a particular kind of music, clothes, certain way of speaking even. And when one amasses certain, certain cultural goods, and they're recognized as being part of the upper classes, being marks of somebody who is [00:09:00] sophisticated, somebody who is typically from a fairly privileged financial background, these cultural goods are desirable.So, this background I think is important because tourism from its modern beginnings in the 18th century has been obtaining these experiences and often physical artifacts that can be a way of claiming a certain social status. So, maybe you've discussed this in other podcasts already, but, when the Grand Tour began in the 1600s, but really took off in the 1700s there was this process in which the aristocratic men, young men, were sent on a tour around Europe, and they would go to capitals like Paris, later Vienna, and then especially places like Rome, and, where they could encounter the remnants of the Roman Empire and classical learning. [00:10:00] And this was meant to do a few things in the first sense. It was meant to introduce them other parts of the world, to certain historical understandings. They could refine their Latin. They could get better at French and then they could go home and be recognized as a sophisticated member of the aristocracy. And this practice really became quite popular up until about the turn of the 19th century, when it stopped briefly because of wars on the European continent, and then after the Napoleonic Wars ended, it basically exploded. So when we think about over tourism now in 2023, this was, you know, 1815, 1820s, and this was a period where all of a sudden there were more tourists than ever before.And what that meant is this practice, which had only been done [00:11:00] by the wealthiest classes, was now something that the middle classes could engage in and that produced a kind of anxiety, where how was one able to become a distinguished or sophisticated traveller. How was one able to obtain the cultural goods provided by travel if everyone was doing it?So, the habitus of tourism, the kind of implicitly learned practices and sensibilities that developed during the Grand Tour experienced this period of challenge where people had to look for a way to find distinction by other means. And I think this beginning led to this friction where now you see people who are trying to go places that no other tourists go, trying to take pictures that no other tourists have taken, trying to be the only person in a picture of a [00:12:00] famous place. So this way of understanding how to be a tourist has become enshrined in the kinds of images that we see in a space like, like Instagram to the extent where I think these images are circulating the ideologies of tourism. The scalability refers to, in social media studies, the way in which a single image can achieve a degree of circulation that is not really possible in pre-networked media. So, by networked media, we can think of platforms like Instagram. We can think of Twitter, anything where the possibility of likes and retweets or reposts achieves a degree of visibility what we might call going viral.So what I was writing about in that article was this particular composition called the "promontory witness" where you have typically one [00:13:00] person who's standing on a promontory or we can say the edge of a cliff the top of a building, in front of a waterfall and they're looking really, really small as compared to the vast scale of nature.And people see these images and they understand through the mediation, the widespread circulation of these images, that this means something important about travel. This is what I mean by the mediated habitus of travel, that taking an image like this and being a person in a promontory witness image has a particular value. It is a way of claiming distinction, again, in Rodrigo's terms. And by taking a promontory witness image, one is able to circulate that image on Instagram in a very different way than before the social media platform existed. So, you know, we think about images circulated in tourism before Instagram.It would either be, say, in a family photo album. That people used to have projectors. [00:14:00] People used to maybe send holiday pictures to family and friends, basically whoever they could, you know, show it to, but this is a really, really small circulation, unless somebody was able to get an image in a magazine or some sort of formal publication. But what really shifts with scalable social media is that somebody can take an image and there really is the potential to go viral.I think in Instagram, the potential to have an image seen by a really significant number of people is less than on a platform like Tik Tok. But there remains the possibility if I post a promontory witness image and I put a geo tag in a place that is particularly trendy at this, at this moment and I put the right hashtags that thousands of people can witness this image and because of that possibility, I think there's a degree of enlistment, a degree of interest in [00:15:00] participating in this trend because taking a promontory witness picture is going to have much more possibility of going viral of leveraging these architectures, these scalable architectures.Much more so than if it just take, if I take another image that isn't so popular on a platform like Instagram. Chris: Thank you. Thank you, Sean. Yeah. So there's, there's a lot in there I'm going to come back to in just a little bit. But I wanted to just finish off this one last part because you kind of, you know, mentioned it a little bit.The monetizable market of Instagram that encourages neoliberal notions of the brand itself. And, you know, I pulled this, this other sentence from one of your articles where you write that "as a banal mediator of travel and tourism, Instagram can encourage tourists to imagine themselves as a capital generating brand." Sean: It's really a comment on the attention economy structure of social media platforms, [00:16:00] where I want people to see my pictures and I want to get likes.And I say that very much as being somebody who continues to study social media and tourism from a critical angle. When I post something I'm always aware of how it's going to be received. Some part of me, even when I'm very aware of the issues with thinking this way potentially is I always want it to gain more visibility.If I post something and it has less likes than something I posted previously, this will likely incur some degree of thinking, what did I do wrong? What could I have done differently? You know, maybe I'm just produced such interesting content. And what I think is really taking place there is that we're constantly thinking about ways to achieve visibility in a way that is not dissimilar to the kind of negotiation that celebrities and [00:17:00] other public figures have to go through when managing their, what we might in today's terms, call their brand, where because there is always this metric of how popular one is or how visible one is in the form of likes or in the form of reposts or retweets or what have you it's means that we develop a way of always orienting towards this possible public. We're always thinking about the people that are going to see whatever kind of thing we say online, and we, I think much of the time, are hoping that it's going to be received.If not, you know, people are going to like it, if it is going to maybe change the way that people think about something, if it's going to influence them in some way. And Instagram, of course, is like other social media platforms, is monetizable in the sense that when one gets a lot of followers, you know, if I continually create fantastic travel content and I get tens of thousands or more followers, then [00:18:00] that means that I am able to start making money from it. I'm going to be paid by different companies to come and stay at a resort or go on some sort of guided tour and take an image or make a reel of this experience and post it on Instagram, talk about how great it was, and then tag the company.And that's a way of them bringing in business. This is how advertising works. So, people become advertisers. But even before that influencer level, I think those of us who are not influencers, and I am certainly not, there's a degree to which we are participating in this logic because even if we don't have any designs of becoming influencers, we still want our posts to be liked and this ultimately influences not just posts we make, but the kind of traveling we do and the kind of relationship we have with the places to which we travel.Hmm. Chris: Well [00:19:00] contentious at the very least. But thank you for that, Sean, for being able to flesh that out for us. And I'd like to return back to this notion of the promontory witness, and you know, because even before Instagram I remember seeing in my backpacking years, these same photos, right?The photo of the person, of their back to the camera facing the open horizon, you know, whether it be a cliff face or a desert or whatever it is, and spreading their hands or arms and, just this kind of emanating freedom, I guess.But you also mentioned that this kind of perspective, if you want to call it that, manufactures emptiness because there's nobody else in the photo, and this is so much a part of the kind of sometimes they're Instagram reels, or sometimes they're photos of people, what it looks like when people are at tourist destinations, actually taking the [00:20:00] photo in front of the Eiffel Tower, or the Great Wall, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or whatever, and there's actually hundreds.And thousands of people taking the same photo or trying to, and everyone wants to have that photo without anyone else in it. And so, just a little preamble to the question again, in Landscapes for Likes, you write that "this manufacturing of emptiness privileges tourists as the sole consumers of a landscape, and with its residents hidden from view, a landscape is voided of its human and temporal context. Thus abstracted, place is relevant as little but a visual commodity." And then just another quote that I think brings a little something else to the picture is that "the promontory witness motif scrubs the landscape of the tourist destination of any sign of human habitation, but that of the tourist, singularly pictured in a position of mastery that confers [00:21:00] possession over the destination." And so there seems to be a kind of shared understanding in critical tourism studies that modern and especially social media based travel photography emphasizes empty spaces, of course, minus the Instagram user, the person photographing question. And so I'm curious, why is identifying the emptying of the landscape so important for our understanding?What does it do to us as photo viewers? Sean: Yeah, that's an excellent question and I think I'm very, I'm very interested in this composition, which the lone tourist and the landscape, which, mean, other people before me have pointed to, and at least John Urry.And I think there are two things happening here. For one, it's the kind of picture that's due to the mediation of what we can think of as a travel habitus, due to the way that [00:22:00] people have learned about how to do tourism and to represent themselves doing tourism and the most sophisticated way or in the way that is the most likely to gain them social distinction. They take these images because they've seen these images before and they're attractive images as well. Maybe they're attractive because we have, through seeing so many pictures like them, we've been taught or sort of subconsciously imbibed the aesthetics as being something that we value and are attracted to.One degree of what's of what's taking place. And to another extent, when it comes to this notion of possessing something of being the only person that that goes there, this kind of image of the tourist being the only person in a landscape or in front of some sort of cultural monument is , a way of [00:23:00] claiming a symbolic status, which links back to this ideology of getting off the beaten track. So, I imagine if you're experience backpacking and my own there's a real interest in getting off the beaten path, of going to places that aren't touristy, of being a traveler and not a tourist. And part of the way that the success in getting off the beaten track is signified is being the only person in a photograph.You know, we as backpackers or tourists don't want to be associated with other tourists. And there's very little better way to represent not being another tourist than being the only person in a particular image.Chris: Yeah, it [00:24:00] makes you wonder. And putting together the research for this episode, I came to this, this kind of possibility, question, consternation, And it arose in this way. And so the, the next question, which kind of relates to the last one is, do you think there might be, or is a connection here between the emptying of the photo of humans or locals and the emptying of places of humans and locals, and that is in the context of the gentrification of local people and culture in tourist destinations. Sean: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's a very good point. I think especially because gentrification is aesthetically produced through a kind of emptiness or a kind of minimalism. And this gentrified neighborhood is not something that is crowded. It is not some place that there are a lot of wayward signs, [00:25:00] wayward, quote unquote.It is a space which is typically designed according to what might be understood as a globalized regime of clean lines and interesting fonts and a lot of white space. So thinking about the way that that works and everything from upmarket coffee shops to designing neighborhoods that are meant to attract capital on upper middle class consumers and residents.I think that does link quite persuasively with this desire to be the only person within this landscape. I mean, what ultimately is taking place in both processes is that, no matter where somebody is going and taking a promontory witness picture, there are people who live there. There's people who've always lived there and been a part, in many ways, of the land that is being made into a landscape.And by not including [00:26:00] them, within these pictures or in processes of gentrification, actually through state-sanctioned programs or other forms of state-sanctioned investment, local residents are being pushed out to make way for different people, the tourist in this case. There is a process of erasure and, and often what can be conceived as really a very colonial process of taking over, taking over a space and privileging the owners of capital, who in this case, typically are tourists.And of course, it's a little bit different when you're taking a picture versus when you're taking a picture in a place that is not considered part of the Global North. But tourists typically have a lot more privilege and financial resources than local residents.And when they're not in these images, but the places in which they are are included, then at least when we're seeing pictures of it, how [00:27:00] do we imagine who, who controls the space? How do we imagine who has a right to this space? It would be the person in the photograph, the tourist, rather than the people who actually live, work, and, and shape these landscapes.Okay. Chris: Since Instagram tends to be the go to medium for these images and for images in general, as far as social media is concerned, do you think that Instagram then is a tool and driver of gentrification? Could we say that with a sense of coherence? Sean: I think it's as much a tool as, as many other tools and it is very easily leveraged to that end by actors who are seeking to mobilize processes of gentrification. And then I think this is pretty well documented for instance, in Yoo Jung oh's article Instagaze, Aesthetic Representation and Contested Transformation of Woljeong, South Korea.Well, she was [00:28:00] writing about Jeju Island in South Korea, and how once tourists started to take particular forms of images often of being one person in a beach, then different interests were able to move in and realize the value of this image and find ways to capitalize on all of the tourists that wanted to come and take that same image. So what that led to was the beach front where, this is largely a fishing community and other sort of small scale, more artisanal economies, was remade into cafes and restaurants and guest houses in a process that.I think it can be widely recognized in tourism development around the world. But what the author, Yu Jung Oh, is saying, is showing there, is that this was largely motivated by the ability to take this image, that [00:29:00] a tourist could go and purchase a coffee or something, and they would be able to take that image for their Instagram. So there's a really clear linkage there and I think that linkage can be made in many other places as well. But I think in that sense, Instagram and social media is, is can be leveraged for gentrification as, as many other tools can be and are being.Chris: Thank you, Sean. And so, know, for the rest of our time together, I'd like to kind of lean on you a little bit for your personal opinion. I know that sometimes working in and living in academic worlds that's kind of something to be left the doorstep before you walk in. But you know, you mentioned this notion of networked media and pre networked media and kind of social media falling into this wider term of networked media and since these mediums have only come to exist, in terms of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, [00:30:00] we're talking 15 years at the most, and then the extension or prototypes of those existing in the previous 10. So about 25 years, maybe. And I'm curious in this regard you know, I imagine that you're about my age, maybe a little bit younger so I'm curious if you have a lived memory of how things were before social media and perhaps even before the internet, what do you think we might be losing by virtue of not being able to remember the world without social media Sean: yeah, great question. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, very good question. Very, of course, fraught. So I guess for context, I was born in 1988. And. So I, got a cell phone at 16, and again, I got a smartphone and Instagram and WhatsApp. So I'm really in two minds about this. And in the first sense, I think it's important to be aware of [00:31:00] how with any new technology there's a great deal of anxiety and resistance and what might be called panic. And this isn't just social media or it's not just television, but we can go all the way back to radio, to novels.People were worried about that, to the written word back in the ancient Greek era. People were concerned that when we start writing things down, this is going to make it very difficult to remember things, and we're going to be less successful orators and our reasoning will be diluted because we start writing things down.So there's always this kind of fear of new technology, and part of me wants to recognize that this is just another one of those periods in which some sort of transformative technology comes along and many of [00:32:00] the generation who can remember what it was like beforehand is going to feel varying degrees of nostalgia for that period.That said, it's also difficult to not, at the same time, say that something really significant has, has, has happened, to not feel, I mean, honestly, I do certainly feel nostalgia for periods before social media. Some of the things which I think have been changed is the interest in finding ways to represent oneself, traveling. And this isn't to say that whenever one goes somewhere, one is always sort of seeing it as if from the viewfinder or, well, it wouldn't really be a viewfinder of a camera so much as, you know, one's phone screen.But that leads to. In being very interested in taking images that would be successful within the attention economies of a platform like Instagram, it can be difficult to [00:33:00] not see the world as if from the perspective of what would make a good picture for Instagram. There's a lot of different people who've come up with critiques of this process.I mean, if you think about it in terms of spectacle, you know, like Guy DuBord's idea that we're no longer, and he was writing in the 60s, you know, that we are seeing relationships, not between people, but between people and images. And so some sort of fundamental human connection is being lost because all we're doing is just relating to images and using images to relate to other people.I'm not so sure about universalizing that idea, but the ubiquity of social media and the Challenges to not somehow be on one of these platforms, in some even practical way does mean, I think, that there are significant influences in tourism as much as anything. Chris: Yeah, my my phone died the other day, abruptly. [00:34:00] And you know, I still have this computer that thankfully allows me to have this interview with you. And I can still access Facebook and Twitter, but for whatever reason, I can't access Instagram. And you know, it's been a few days and I'm really loving it.And then this morning I realized that I had planned to upload a post for the podcast. And then I was just like, okay, well, my best recourse of action is to just stay calm and wait, right? Yeah, and it's a big question, and I think it's something that, I wonder if young people, say people born, you know, 2000 or after would be able to answer with, with any, without having lived in a time without social media, for example. And so this kind of like brings us a little bit towards the towards theme of media ecology, which, you know, we talked about just very briefly before we started our interview here and I had taken Andrew McLuhan's Understanding Media [00:35:00] Intensive last year.He was also on the pod in the, in season three and just generally speaking for our listeners media ecology, within media ecology, the focus is on the medium and not just the message. It's a way of taking to task the context of our technology and not just the content.And so this manufacturing of emptiness of people and places as brands and I'm curious, isn't this to a large extent, also contingent on our tools, on the limits and architecture of the camera, for example? You know, do we stop with Instagram or do we look at all social media and later all tools? Because these media exist within each other, right?Instagram is a medium within the internet, I suppose, and then the internet is a medium within the phone. Maybe you could make that argument. It's not to say, if we didn't have these things, if we didn't have Instagram, if we didn't have [00:36:00] social media, would the promontory witness just disappear? I don't think it's as easy as that. But Would it be as intensely magnified in our time? Sean: So yes, I think the question of magnification is really what sits at the heart of social media because if we're looking at the medium of Instagram, then we have to think about photography and which was invented in the 1840s.And then if we think about photography, we have to think about painting the way that landscape has been represented in many different cultures, both in painting in the Western, Chinese and many other traditions, but then also in poetry and literature. So with all of these things, there's a precedent.And I think if you look at something like the Promontory Witness, this composition and this the visual formation of having one person immersed within a landscape or standing at some edge of a cliff, that's been around for [00:37:00] 200 years at least. You can see some in the later 1700s that look like this, but then the desire to be the only person in a particular place to have gotten off of the beaten track and be the distinguished traveler, that's also been around for, for a very long time. So that's why I think I'm hesitant to sort of pin the blame on Instagram.And I think my thinking around this has taken a bit of it, not exactly a turn, but it's changed a bit. So I think there's a real tendency to look at platforms like Instagram as only being spaces in which processes of gentrification can gain momentum, or only be spaces where one is almost disciplined into being a neoliberal subject who, is working sort of subconsciously thinking about how to brand oneself all the time, specifically in places of tourism, you know, that it's a way that people [00:38:00] only think about the pictures. They only want to go take a picture in these places. They don't actually want to have any experiences in this place or relationships with the people there. And I think that really exists. That is absolutely one dimension of what takes place with social media platforms. But as many people I've spoken to say, social media is a double edged sword. And where that's really been driven home to me has been where I've been conducting research for the past almost two years now. Sometimes they're in person, other times digitally, in Oman, a country in the Arabian peninsula where I was interested initially because it was becoming more popular as an international tourism destination. So, I went there after the pandemic expecting to meet all these people who were experiencing the problematics of international tourism as we know well, I think from your podcast among other, among other spaces.And there's some of that, absolutely. But what I also found was that, in the past few [00:39:00] years, people who are living in Oman, and this is both Omanis, people who have citizenship and then also residents, so there's about 40 percent of the country is made up of people who don't have citizenship in Oman, like many other Gulf countries.And in the past few years, I mean, we're talking five years, maximum ten years, there's been this surge of interest in nature, or we can say is the non human or even the more than human environment and what's can be understood as domestic nature tourism, I think, like many places around the world, domestic nature tourism in Oman became was very popularized during the pandemic when people could not travel abroad. But what this meant is that people saw these images on Instagram and Instagram is really most popular app in Oman, next to WhatsApp, and that introduced them to parts of the country that they'd never [00:40:00] interacted with before.And Oman is this incredibly various and fascinating environment where there's mountains that are, you know, over 3, 000 meters higher, what is that 10, 000 feet you know, all of this coastline and with coral reefs and these waddies or slot canyons. And people began to engage with the environments in a very different way to go on hiking trips, to go on canyoning trips and social media was this massive part of that. You know, this is where people learned about this possibility, this is where people met people to introduce them, to take them safely into these spaces. They'd never been on a hike before. You know, Instagram is where they're going to meet somebody to go out into nature with.And it's not to say that this doesn't have problems associated with it, and everything I suppose related with tourism does, but I think it also represents a case where Instagram, in this sense, was a way that people are actively connecting to nature, and in a place [00:41:00] where, you know, Instagram existed and was widely used before nature tourism was a thing.And I think this kind of flips the narrative a bit where in Western Europe, where I'm sitting right now, for instance, there's been this long time practice of nature tourism, you know, going back to, again, the 1900s. You know, people started climbing Alps in the 1850s and so forth. And then Instagram comes along and everybody's saying, oh, people just want to climb the mountain to take a picture. you know, they don't actually care about nature. Well, in Oman, people weren't really, not that many people were climbing mountains, before the ability to take a picture existed. So, there's a bit of a different trajectory in which people began to relate to a particular space and to the kinds of experiences that one can have engaging in nature tourism.So in that sense to go back to your to your question about what do we essentially do with this platform? [00:42:00] And how do we address the problematics? I don't think that I mean, I think that Instagram will not be the most popular platform forever, certainly, but social media, or this kind of connected media, barring some kind of unforeseen complication. I mean, looking at you, AI. But this sort of communication is here to stay probably. So, can we find ways in which this space is can be generative of community could be generative of care and ethical forms of travel? What might that look like? And what kind of imagery might be associated with it?Chris: I'm curious in that regard, Oman to me is someone who's never been and probably, you know extremely ignorant to any of the nation's culture or history. I imagine modernity to be something of a recent arrival in that place, relatively speaking, correct me if I'm wrong, of course. And I guess what I'm curious about in the context of your research and most [00:43:00] recent research is if you've seen the conflicts that might arise in terms of traditional hospitality? What it means to be in a place, as opposed to a landscape, what it means to be a host, as opposed to, I guess a landlord, in the Airbnb sense of the word and perhaps also what it means to be a traveler as opposed to a tourist within the context of these new economic dynamics in Oman and if Instagram has anything to do with that? Sean: No, that's, that's a wonderful question. It's one I really appreciate as I continue to work there and spend time with people who've been incredibly generous showing me around and introducing me to what their life is like as people who participate in tourism. I mean, the first thing I would say is the Oman, the Arabian peninsula and really Arabic speaking cultures generally is hospitality is one of the most fundamentally [00:44:00] important things in social relationships. In what it means to be a part of this culture, one is hospitable to guests, to friends, to family members. It's almost difficult to understate how integral this is. I mean, it is, in many cultures, hospitality is big, but it's very big in this space.And so I think it's a particularly well suited question to, you know, how is tourism and how is social media impacting this code of conduct and, you know this really wonderful practice that I think, you know, the rest of the world can stand to learn a lot from.So, to your question about sort of where my mind sits in this span of development. Oil was discovered in the 1960s and kind of transformative effect as it has everywhere. And in this time, there was a great degree of urbanization. People could get services rather than relying on culture, trading, which comes from a pre oil economy.[00:45:00] Now, you see, I think, a couple things. For one thing, cultures of hospitality, I think, were already being disturbed by the way that neoliberal capitalism tends to work, not just in Oman, but anywhere around the world. It encourages people to find ways to profit themselves and to think as individual agents rather than as being part of a community, having responsibilities to the humans, but also nonhumans to the land as well as to one's family.So that process is already in it's already taking place before tourism began to take root. And I think there are some spaces in which tourism is developing in such a way that it's very profit oriented. And where people are incentivized to privilege [00:46:00] their own gains over those of others.However, there are other ways I think in which people who, say we're living in the city, are meeting people who live in fairly remote areas, under the auspices of tourism. Because they're engaging in tourism, they're meeting people who are living in these spaces and often chatting with them or sharing a meal or sharing coffee or something like this.Sometimes these people who are living in places that are becoming tourism destinations are part of the industry and sometimes people are not, but as it stands now, it seems as very much a preservation of hospitality within this, this particular context. As with anything, I think the question of tourism is to what extent this will become commodified or not, like how do we make money off of this culture of hospitality?How do we turn it into a tourist product? You know, we can sell Oman as being it's hospitable, come meet the locals. But in the way that people continue [00:47:00] to practice it, both people who are living in Oman and being domestic tourists and also people who are seeing tourists come to where they live in ways that they haven't before. To me, it still seems like it's very robustly in place.Chris: Good to hear. And I very much look forward to the publication of your research. Hopefully it'll see the light of day soon, perhaps. Sean: I hope so. Yeah. Things are in process for sure. Chris: Okay. Well, I'd like to thank you, Sean, on behalf of our listeners for joining us today. And you know, this leads me of course, to the question of how might they be able to get in touch with you or follow your work. And if that includes an Instagram handle. Sean: Yeah, that's, that's fine. So I I recently started another Instagram account. I had my own account and stopped posting about 2019.And then I got interested in it again. I opened a new account, which is sort of more research facing. So yeah, if people wanna check that [00:48:00] out, it's @SPSMITHS, so S-P-S-M-I-T-H-S or email spSmith@tilburguniversity.edu. So always pleased to hear ideas and of course things that I've missed because of course I have so much to learn in this space.So I would really look forward to feedback and ideas. Hmm. Chris: Well, I'll make sure all of that's on the End of Tourism website and the podcast page when the interview launches and as well as the other authors, researchers and works that you mentioned earlier on. So once again, it's been amazing, Sean, thank you so much for being able to really flesh these complex ideas out for us and we'll see what happens, right?Sean: Absolutely. Thanks very much for the invitation. And as always, I'll look forward to continue listening. This is such an excellent project. Chris: Thank you, Sean.This episode and others like it are created and made possible by the generosity of Substack subcribers like yourself. Similarly, I have subsidized the work of the pod with my own time and money. This is a labour of love and lineage that requires the support of others. Please consider offering a gift in return, whether that include upgrading to paid subscription, making a one-time donation, sharing the podcast among your people or being willing to reach out and assist in production (as others have). Thank you. Bless. Peace. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Listeners welcome back to the pod - today we will dive deep into the life of one of the most influential figures in the cruise line and maritime world. Our guest is a titan of the cruise line industry, a visionary entrepreneur, and a lifelong champion of global tourism his name is Manfredi Lefebvre d'Ovidio.  Manfredi has transformed his family business into a global leader in luxury cruising. Under his leadership, Silversea Cruises expanded its company offering travel experiences across all seven continents around the world. In a strategic partnership with Royal Caribbean Manfredi orchestrated the sale of a ⅔ stake in Silversea for a whopping $1 billion in 2018. This strategic partnership not only elevated Silversea's brand but also marked one of the most significant deals in the cruise industry's history. And lastly, Manfredi is the Chairman of The Heritage Group which is a private equity company that acquired 85% of one of the biggest luxury travel companies in the world Abercrombie & Kent - whose founder Geoffrey Kent was on the podcast just last month.  Today we are going to dive into the life and mind of Manfredi Lefebvre d'Ovidio.    00:12: Who is Manfredi Lefebvre d'Ovidio? 03:42: Manfredi's Recommended Books      05:56: Manfredi's Starts a Cruise Line 13:01: How this Billion-Dollar Founder Spends his Time 15:05: The Biggest Challenge Manfredi Experienced was September 11, 2001.  18:56: Manfredi Takes Over the Family Business 21:18: Manfredi Pioneers the Luxury Cruise Industry.  24:39: Why Manfredi Loves Being an Entrepreneur 26:13: Manfredi's Career Chapters 29:59: Manfredi Orchestrated the Most Significant Deal in the Cruise Industry.  32:47: Manfredi & Geoffrey Kent Built the First Expedition Cruise Ship 34:59: Manfredi's Daily Routine 37:13: Advice Manfredi Would Give His Younger Self 37:58: Things to Look for in Executives and Partners When You Bring Them On  40:25: What is Manfredi Most Proud Of?   Contact Info: https://www.manfredilefebvre.com/ https://heritagemonaco.com/ https://www.silversea.com/ Transcript:   [00:00:12] Chris: Listeners, welcome back to the podcast today, and we will dive deep into the life of one of the most influential figures in the cruise line and maritime world. Our guest today is a Titan in the cruise line industry, a visionary entrepreneur, a lifelong champion of global tourism, and his name is Manfredi LaFavre D'Ovidio. Manfredi has transformed his family business into a global leader in luxury cruising. Under his leadership, Silver Sea Cruises expanded its company, offering travel experiences across all seven continents around the world. In a strategic partnership with Royal Caribbean, Manfredi orchestrated the sale of a two third stake in Silversea for a whopping 1 billion in 2018. This strategic partnership not only elevated Silversea's brand, but also marked. One of the most significant deals in the cruise industry's history. And lastly, Manfredi is the chairman of the heritage group, which is a private equity company that acquired 85 percent of one of the biggest luxury travel companies in the world, Abercrombie and Kent, whose founder was actually on the podcast last month. So if you haven't listened to that interview yet, make sure you check it out. And today we're going to dive into the life and mind of Manfredi. Listeners, welcome to the show. Manfredi, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? [00:01:34] Manfredi: Not too bad. Not too bad. Can I add something to what you said? [00:01:38] Chris: Please do. Add or take away. Whatever you like. [00:01:41] Manfredi: Well, what happened is that as soon as I did my deal with Royal Caribbean, I did buy, uh, Abercrombie Kent, which recently I brought up to 100 percent shareholding, and I sold to Royal Caribbean subsequently one further that I owned, uh, in, uh, Silver Sea in exchange of Royal Caribbean shares and acquired another cruise line, which is called Crystal Cruises. [00:02:04] Chris: Ah, I did actually read about that. Forgive me for not putting that in there. [00:02:08] Manfredi: No, so it's just, the story goes on. And before Silver Sea, we had another cruise line, which was called Sydmar. Okay. [00:02:17] Chris: Was Sid, was Smar the one created by your father or was Silver Sea created by your father? Uh, [00:02:23] Manfredi: Sid Smar was acquired by my father with me because I was working with him at the time. And we bought, uh, the Cruise Line, which was one of the first cruise lines ever. And, uh, Sid Bar built the first free purposely built cruise ships, which were built in Italian shipyard fi can and LA in France. [00:02:42] Chris: Great. So that [00:02:42] Manfredi: was the beginning. Then we got an offer we couldn't refuse. We sold Smar. And we started Silversea together with my father, which I took over shortly after. [00:02:52] Chris: And that was in the 90s, correct? [00:02:54] Manfredi: That was, uh, we started in 92, we acquired in 86, Sidmar, sold it in 89, started in 92, uh, 91, Silversea, and, uh, we're ordering the ships, and then we started operating in 94. [00:03:10] Chris: Incredible. [00:03:12] Manfredi: So, and then in 2018, uh, we, I sold to Royal Caribbean and I bought in 2000, uh, actually was in 2019. The negotiation started earlier 2019. I bought Abercrombie & Kent. [00:03:27] Chris: That's right. Incredible. Um, so Manfredi, I was told by a mentor of mine a long time ago that the, uh, difference between a wealthy person and the average person is the information that we put in between the two ears that we have. and what we choose to do with it. And I hear you're an avid reader, so if it's okay with you, I'd like to ask about what you're reading right now and some of the more impactful, uh, books of your life. [00:03:59] Manfredi: Yeah, I tend to read two, three books in parallel. So now I'm reading the Silk Roads, number one, the old Silk Road and the new Silk Road. Then there is a new book which was written about the oil industry and the energy markets, which is very interesting. I don't remember now the exact title. And then, you know, other things which went back in time. An interesting View of the history of the United States of America, which is unconventional view. Ah, [00:04:34] Chris: do [00:04:34] Manfredi: you [00:04:34] Chris: know who, do you know who the author of that book was? [00:04:38] Manfredi: I can let you know. [00:04:39] Chris: Okay. [00:04:40] Manfredi: Um, it was recommended to me and I bought it and it's quite interesting. [00:04:44] Chris: Do you have two or three books that were the most impactful in your life? [00:04:50] Manfredi: Yeah, you know, but probably I'm, I, I had once, um, hepatitis, so I was stuck in bed for a long time and I managed to read all of War and Peace, the whole story. It's a massive book. In today's world, it's very difficult to read at all. [00:05:10] Chris: Yeah. Okay. Anything else, any others? [00:05:17] Manfredi: Oh, this is the one that comes to my mind immediately. The other ones are, you know, I try to always read something which will leave me something, uh, in knowledge. [00:05:27] Chris: Yeah. [00:05:28] Manfredi: A book that I loved was, uh, A Hundred Years of Solitude. [00:05:33] Chris: I've heard of that one. [00:05:35] Manfredi: There's a life in this village in Colombia, which goes through the civil wars in the country. It's quite interesting. [00:05:42] Chris: Nice. Um, so I kind of want to start this off about, uh, going back to your, your past and your childhood. And I'm curious about the first moment that you realized you had a passion for ships and cruise lines. Uh, do you remember that moment? [00:06:03] Manfredi: I can, uh, reconnected because when I was 14, my father told us, uh, he was We're going on a cruise. Now it's 14, it's uh, what is it, 56 years ago. It was really at the beginning. Nobody knew about cruises. And, uh, he, because his friend had his cruise line, which was called Sidmar, and so we went to all the way to Mexico, Los Angeles, took the cruise down the Mexico coast, and, uh, that was the first impact with, uh, uh, cruising. But I've been involved in shipping all my life, because my father was a ship owner, a professor of university of maritime law, and a lawyer, and he was always involved with shipping. So it's been all our lives that we've been involved with ships, we had yachts, and so on. We had shipping companies, we had ferry companies, we had all sorts of things. But that was a crucial moment because we sold this company, where I subsequently went to work. When I was 18. And then, uh, you know, we, we bought it. So it was a chapter here. You know, you go on a cruise and you work for them and then you buy them. Yeah. And then you see them. I hear your father was quite a, an interesting figure and he was a lawyer and he actually helped create the maritime law in Italy. [00:07:24] Chris: , and then You, you, did he start the cruise line, , the very first cruise line venture that you guys owned, or did he acquire it and then continue to run it and it became the family business? [00:07:39] Manfredi: He, we acquired it. [00:07:41] Chris: Okay. [00:07:42] Manfredi: And then, and when we acquired it, we built the new ships. And then they were so beautiful and were so, so innovative that we got a very good offer and we sold it. And then we started SilverSea. SilverSea is the first one that we started. In the past, you know, I had worked in other businesses. My father, with his, uh, partners had bought a big shipping company, which was listed on the UK Stock Exchange, which owned ships. It owned a very large, uh, Ship broker company and, uh, insurance broker company called Clarkson. It owned Maritime Insurance company. So he was always, uh, involved in that. He even had a fleet of tankers in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the seventies. [00:08:26] Chris: Oh really? can you share about your father's influence on you? You know, as a young man, I could imagine, and a boy growing up, I could imagine, uh, a father who, I think about the influence my father had on me. Right. And I can imagine you and your father had a cruise lines. He is part of the maritime industry, um, or he was at least getting involved in cruise lines at the time. , How did that have an effect on you as a young man? [00:08:55] Manfredi: I mean, that's, uh, fundamental. He was an extraordinary person, an extraordinary father. And, uh, he was lucky he had a wife who always, uh, put him on a, uh, how do you say it when you put somebody on a pedestal? Pedestal for us. So we always had, and because he was working all the time, he was traveling a lot, working, and he would, his Sundays were because he would take Saturday to work always. On the Sundays, his vacation, his day was to pass the day working in our playroom. So he had a desk. His children were playing around and he was there working. And that was his, uh, his Sunday. So, uh, you know, it's an example of, uh, dedication to passion, to work dedication. And, uh, but he was still very present to us because he was a symbol. for us. So, uh, we always looked up to him. And then he would sometimes take one of the children. For example, he, when he had some, uh, launch of a new ship, would take one children with him. And so he created some moments for us, which he was pretty much always linked his life with his business, but he involved us. So he got us very much attached. And especially my two sisters, they were deeply in love with him and the same with me. I mean, I adored him. And, uh, when I was, um, uh, 18, he said, Okay, you go to university, you will have a desk in the office next to mine. You can listen to all my phone calls, join all my meetings, read all my papers. Asked me every question, and any day in the week, Saturday, Sunday, during the week, and so that I did, and then he would send me to his businesses. He had many businesses in various countries, Mexico, England, etc, etc. So I would go three months in his businesses. And then come back and study and go on with the university and then work with him. And, uh, so it was a very tight relationship. [00:11:10] Chris: What do you think was the most impactful lesson that you learned from your father? [00:11:16] Manfredi: You know, the most is to be very respectful of the others. He was, uh, the most, uh, Curtis person you can imagine with everybody, and it wasn't linked to the fact if you had anything to exchange with somebody, uh, somebody who was relevant for his business or for any other reason. He would be the same with anybody from the lowest level and, uh, business community or the people working for him in service to the highest level. It was true that everybody with extreme kindness and courtesy. And, uh, and would always be, uh, responding to anybody. So, it was this kind of attitude. Very humble, simple, very successful man. Uh, an incredible brain, but very humble and simple. [00:12:06] Chris: So let's switch to the roles that you play in your life now. So you're the chairman of the heritage group, which, uh, a heritage groups, a private equity group in a travel and tourism sector. Um, you're the chairman and orbital solutions, Monaco co chairman. And I guess you said, uh, are you no longer chairman at Amber Cromby Kent, or are you still co chair there? [00:12:27] Manfredi: No, I'm, uh, I'm the chairman. Geoffrey. sold me the steak, and he is the co chairman. I don't know what his exact title is. He's the founder chairman, let's say. Okay. He's not actively involved in the running of the business. He's very involved in everything, which is the product. [00:12:49] Chris: . And then you're a member of the board of Bucksense Incorporated, vice chairman of Monaco Chamber of Shipping, um, member of the executive community of World Tourism and Travel Council, and member of the board of SKULD Skold. Is that what that's pronounced? Skold? Skold. The maritime school in maritime insurance company based in Oslo. So I'm, I'm curious with all those, those titles and accolades, where do you spend the most of your time? [00:13:18] Manfredi: Well, first of all, they evolved, you know, some are gone and there's some new ones. [00:13:22] Chris: Okay. [00:13:23] Manfredi: And I spend most of the time, reality, I divide myself between three things. One is where I have the most relevant business opportunity where I focus a lot. [00:13:35] Chris: Okay. [00:13:35] Manfredi: Was like, I try to make sure that that things they are done well and they get my support. I, I cultivate very, uh, mature and capable management and then, and want them to, to, to drive, but I'm there to help them and to know everything which is going on. In any case, that's the first thing, which is very important. The second thing is whenever there's something which is not going that well, it happens to follow my laps. Because this is what happens with owners, you know. So there I dedicate with the team and to solve whatever there are some problems and something which is not going as I would wish to solve it. And the third thing is the things which give me satisfaction. So there are a number of things which give me satisfaction and I dedicate myself to. So now I've been recently appointed by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. as ambassador to UNESCO and for charity and philanthropy, which is something which is not going to earn me a cent. It's going to cost me, but it gives me satisfaction. I use my capabilities, my relationships, my, uh, dedication to, um, better cause. So it's a mixed, I have the freedom of choice. [00:14:51] Chris: That's good. I was going to ask, , you mentioned about, you know, if there's ever a problem in the business, it comes to you, it comes to your desk. [00:15:00] Manfredi: I didn't mention the new businesses. Of course, I mean, new investment. I follow also. [00:15:04] Chris: Yeah. Did you share with us maybe one of the biggest challenges that you've had in your career when it came across your table, , and how you decided to handle it? [00:15:17] Manfredi: Oh, there's a very clear example. September 11th. I was in a bank negotiating the refinancing of the financing. It's a new ships. And in the bank, they tell me, they come, somebody rushing in, come, come and watch on the television. So there, we were on television, in the bank, because CTF financing for the company. And we saw what happened. So you can imagine from that moment on, what can happen to the travel business. [00:15:51] Chris: Yeah. [00:15:52] Manfredi: The world shrinks. Every place which has a Muslim religion or Arab language, Is disappears from the world. You cannot go there. It's a small world and uh, uh, people don't wanna travel. If they want on a plane, they will look if there's anybody who looks suspicious. And, uh, actually for some time, planes were suspended. So that was a very tough time and you have to hold the company together. And, uh, going through, uh, you know, all sorts of difficulties. You dedicate your time there and, uh, and succeeded. And then, the cruise industry recovers very fast, so it bounced back. But for some time, it was tough. [00:16:39] Chris: How long was that time period? [00:16:42] Manfredi: There is, I think that you can, the turning point was when President No. 43 went on the aircraft carrier. [00:16:51] Chris: Okay. [00:16:52] Manfredi: It was like a liberating moment. [00:16:54] Chris: Ah, okay. [00:16:55] Manfredi: Confidence came back. It was like a fantastic case of how to rebuild confidence in the consumers. [00:17:06] Chris: And, , what are, what are some of the ways that you held the company together, at least the, the morale of the company together during that time? [00:17:20] Manfredi: You know, they, they, they have to see that you're on top of everything and you can find the solutions. And I think that my people were quite confident. I had additional resources of my own, which I could put in to support the company. But I was trying to have the company support itself as much as it could by itself. But I had good relationships, and I got some incredible, uh, support by people. Um, really incredible support by people based on their trust and confidence. [00:17:54] Chris: What do you think was harder on the cruise line industry, uh, 9 11 or COVID? [00:18:00] Manfredi: 9 11. [00:18:01] Chris: Yeah? How come? [00:18:04] Manfredi: Well, 9 11 was, uh, wasn't only a travel space. And during COVID, most of the businesses were still going well, if you think about it. Some businesses actually had an incredible success. During the electrical container business. Well, during 9 11, it was simply the world was paralyzed. And the governments did not find a way to intervene to support the businesses. It was very, very tough. [00:18:34] Chris: , I guess that makes sense. , so okay, let's shift gears a little bit and, and we talked about your father and his impact on your life. , can you tell us a bit about when you took the company over, , what was that moment like for you and what were some of the decisions leading up to that that made you guys decide it was time? [00:18:56] Manfredi: Well, the decision was because we made a family partition. So I got, uh, in the division of the family assets, I got that business, like several things. And how it felt, well, you know, I had already been working with it. So it wasn't something new. And we always been very close. So I was participating to everything. It became my baby, only mine. And, uh, of course it, it was, uh, it, I must say that, uh, that choice or that moment, the fact of taking over, so it changed my life. Because from being the son of a wealthy man with many businesses, taking care of them together with him, suddenly I had something that was mine and I had to grow. And so I identified myself a lot with that company, with that product, with that success. And it became, after all, today became my legacy. [00:19:53] Chris: I am [00:19:54] Manfredi: especially that I'm not the only the son of a wealthy man from a family which has because we are a family which with 200 years of industrial history. [00:20:05] Chris: Oh, really? [00:20:06] Manfredi: Yes. [00:20:07] Chris: I didn't know that. [00:20:08] Manfredi: It started in, uh, in Italy and, uh, at the beginning of the 19th century with paper industry, banking, a number of things. So I'm not only that, I'm, uh, and I'm not only the son of a very successful man. I had my thing and I did it successfully and I've become an expert in the field. , so which allowed me. When there was another opportunity to buy to, which was during the, at the end of COVID, the beginning of the Ukraine war, to buy crystal cruises, to do it with great confidence, because I, I knew all the levers of the business, I knew the people to choose to bring on board, I knew where to go to get support for the generating the revenue, etc, etc, to restructure the ships. So, I could do it very well because I had full confidence of my knowledge of that industry, and the people had confidence on my knowledge of the industry, so they give me a lot of credit. [00:21:06] Chris: A friend of ours, Mr. Geoffrey Kent, , told me to, that you pioneered the industry, , the luxury area in both normal and expedition. So I'd love to learn more about how you did that and your strategies behind it. [00:21:18] Manfredi: How we did that was, we had, Sittmer was a typical cruise line. At the beginning of the cruise lines, they were transatlantic operators. And when the transatlantic routes, uh, became dry, no more passengers because people were flying, and from Europe there was no more migration to the U.S or to Australia or to South America, those ships needed to have a new employment, and they were converted into cruise ships. So that was the, uh, the beginning of that industry. So when we bought it, we bought it in an industry which was at its beginnings. And we built these two ships, three ships, which were the first ones to be built purposely. So that was, uh, uh, the, the, really the moment in which, uh, we dedicated to that great, , vision, because it was my father's vision that that could have been a great industry and had a great future. And then so on. And then we bought into, uh, then we developed Silver Sea. And I remember when we asked my father, Daddy, what, what is it you? really wish for. And he was 92, I think. And he said, Oh, I wish that Silver Sea will have 12 ships. And I think that we had six, maybe. It was impossible for him to see 12 ships. [00:22:34] Chris: Yeah. [00:22:34] Manfredi: But it was part of the, of really the, the passion that he had and that he gave me, this passion of, uh, and, uh, looking forward always. Not making a calculation of what you're going to make out of it and how it's related to your life, but the project, the vision, what you're building was quite, uh, driving. [00:22:59] Chris: And how many ships do you guys have now? [00:23:02] Manfredi: No, now we just started again. So we have two ships. Now we have to grow it. We start a new chapter. You see what you do when you turn 70. Some people retire. [00:23:11] Chris: Yeah. [00:23:12] Manfredi: Not in my family. [00:23:13] Chris: You start another business. [00:23:15] Manfredi: You start another business. In our case, we started more businesses because we started . We bought Abercrombie & Kent, which we're growing very fast and very much. [00:23:25] Chris: Yeah. [00:23:25] Manfredi: And then we bought again, the cruise line that we have other businesses also, which we run. So it's, uh, it's simply the fact that, uh, what is it that you, that you gives you enjoyment? And, uh, is it to play golf or is it to have, uh, in the morning, wake up and think of the things that you're doing, the projects that you have, how you can accomplish things. And, uh, so in our case, that is because of my father, who started when he was a, who started when he was very young and at 92, he was, he lived until 98. So he was still, uh, when he was at 98, he would do, still the first thing he would ask me is how are the ships going? And so it's part of that. My, the first Lefebvre, the guy in the, uh, at the beginning of the 19th century. He died when he was 84, which for those times, that's a very old age. Because he got pneumonia coming back from the board of his shipping company. So it's in the DNA of the family to work, uh, until you, you go. And it's not a question you already have the money to live well. It's a question of money as an instrument of freedom and to, realize yourself, to to achieve the satisfactions that you're looking for. In my case, I give myself a lot of other satisfactions. But the number one. is to be an entrepreneur! [00:24:54] Chris: That's most important to you to, to be known for as an entrepreneur. [00:24:59] Manfredi: Not to be known to know myself, that I am, I wake up in the morning and I'm busy. I have a lot of things which, uh, interest me. [00:25:09] Chris: Yeah I have a lot of things which I do, which interests other people. If I wasn't an entrepreneur, I wouldn't be here with you. It's very true. So [00:25:16] Manfredi: it's a very strong connection with the living world instead of going into the. Sleeping world. [00:25:24] Chris: I'm curious if you weren't in the shipping business or anything related maritime, , what business do you think you would be in [00:25:33] Manfredi: investment banking? [00:25:35] Chris: Yeah. How come [00:25:37] Manfredi: I always liked it a lot, but investment banking, private equity. investing in businesses, selling businesses, advising people, uh, working on. I, I worked when my father sent me around. Uh, he sent me also to some investment banks for some time to learn, to learn how that work, that will work. I don't know [00:26:02] Chris: if you know, but, , on our podcast, we're interviewing founders, a hundred founders of a billion dollar companies. And I always ask each guest the same question. , and it is, if you're going to break your career into chapters, what chapters would they be? And what would you name them? [00:26:23] Manfredi: A chapter is number one is, uh, the chapter in which I was a golden boy. Which means I was, uh, living, uh, a very, uh, prosperous youth with a daddy who adored me and wouldn't deny me almost anything. [00:26:40] Chris: Okay. [00:26:40] Manfredi: So understanding this, I, uh, I kept and I developed a strong, uh, uh, desire of accomplishing by myself. [00:26:48] Chris: Okay. [00:26:49] Manfredi: That was the first part. Then the second part was, uh, being like, uh, uh, a stamp on my father's back. Okay. Following him everywhere and, uh, listening to him, et cetera, and working together with him. What [00:27:02] Chris: Were the ages for chapter two? [00:27:05] Manfredi: Yeah, you can say, you know, from when I started working with him when I was 19. So let's say 20. Okay. And 20 a decade. Then I started to have diversified investments. Then, uh, that's another age. And then there was the age, which I took over the, the Silver Sea. [00:27:29] Chris: How old were you then? Became [00:27:30] Manfredi: my baby. [00:27:31] Chris: How old were you then when you took over? Silver Sea? [00:27:35] Manfredi: We're talking about a year, 2000. So I was, uh, 47. Nice. [00:27:40] Chris: And any more chapters after Silver Sea? [00:27:44] Manfredi: Yes. It's a new chapter, which is the continuation in a way of Silver Sea, which is, uh, which is happening now. But now my chapter is entrepreneur, but my enterprise is The family wealth. I see myself as somebody who is, uh, administrating the family wealth, not only to increase it, or first of all, keep it as it is and possibly increase it, but also to make it such that it is well transmitted to new generations. So my following, and so this requires a number of choices, which are different in your, in your relationship with the business of themselves, because I was permanently on top of the business. Now I want to, uh, support the manager to grow so that they can deal independently for me, benefit from my presence, but eventually one day they can, the company can go by itself. Yeah. So I joined the company that way, and that's all I'm trying to do it. So I'm trying to diversify risk, enhance liquidity very much so that the liquidity is always there for the family. So it's a different vision. When you're an entrepreneur, you're 47 and you take risks, you want to expand, you have to grow, you have to make, you have to make a jump in the size of your business. You have to go from four ships to actually work two ships to 12, 14, 16 ships. Yeah. So the company is a hundred percent yours. You don't have a public markets, you have to compete with credit, you have to do this and that. So it's a, you know, I had to finance my ships, I had to fly to China because that was the best market. So you'll find always the solutions to get the things to function. But that's when you're the full entrepreneur, then now it's a, it's a much more stable approach. Yeah. [00:29:45] Chris: Makes sense. , your partnership with Royal Caribbean, it was marked as one of the more significant deals in the cruises history, uh, the cruise industry's history. can you tell us a little bit about the unfolding of that partnership? [00:30:01] Manfredi: Well, it was easy. I mean, it was, uh, it wasn't easy. I mean, it was a simple process. I was, I wanted to build more ships, so I decided to open the equity of my company to investors. I informed my competitors that I was doing it, so not to have gossips all the time around. And then, uh, someone from Royal Caribbean, uh, came and said, could we be your investor? They said, I thought about it and I said, why not? And then at a certain point in the process, it evolved from then buying the majority. And so that's, I did. And I had a, a, so a, a stake in the role in the company. But then Covid came and Covid made clear everything first, all that the company had to be absorbed into Royal Caribbean. Mm-Hmm. because of the financial situation. 'cause it was, uh, was not easy for cruise lines and uh, um, and because, uh. And when you are the full disponent of a business, then you can't learn and being somebody who just participates. Yeah. And so it was a good way. We find a great deal, great deal for them, great deal for me. And uh, I got a big chunk of Royal Caribbean shares, which I'm happy to have. And so that's how it evolved. And I could start, I could buy a Abercrombie & Kent and start my own business. [00:31:28] Chris: , was that a pivotable moment in your life? [00:31:30] Manfredi: Sure. I mean, you know, you, you decide that you don't want to be, uh, what was I saying? Sixty six year old retired person with all the banks calling you to invest your money and private equity funds and all of these people asking you to underwrite their funds. But having a very easy life. Uh, very comfortable and deciding now to challenge yourself and to do something new, which excites you every moment, which is exactly the opposite direction, no? You have a capital event. Capital events don't happen many times in the life of an individual. [00:32:10] Chris: Yep. [00:32:11] Manfredi: So it happens. At that point, you have to make a decision. Are you going to go into a new world, which is the world of the person who is either entirely or half retired? Yep. Or you'll find a way to go back into the world of being active in the colony. That's what I decided. I [00:32:33] Chris: think it was a good choice. , Geoffrey also told me, , to ask you about how you became his partner on the MS Explorer, um, which was the first expedition ship that was ever built. [00:32:47] Manfredi: Well, yeah, I mean, it was fantastic. Um, so Geoffrey had this company that he had developed, you know, Geoffrey, as you and your followers know, is a fantastic and unique person. And he wanted to go and send a ship to the Antarctic to propose, to offer to his guests, his clients, the opportunity to go and see the Antarctic. But he wasn't a ship owner. So, we were launch, starting to launch SilverSea at the time. And, uh, we were approached by his consultants, who were going to do the management of this ship, which is a company called V Ships, which is one of the major service companies in the shipping world. And they introduced us, so we made a partnership there, which lasted for two, three years. And then he kept it on his own, but by then we were good friends. And we became even more friends because, uh, then, uh, I, I was next to him and, uh, he was the chairman of WTDC, and I was like his right hand there. And then we developed all the segments for Abercrombie Kent doing services to the cruise industry. He started with us. So Abercrombie & Kent does a lot of the best quality, um, uh, pre post or excursions for cruise industries, part of its business. So that we did together and we became great friends and we always try to do something together. But he did some deals with other people in the meantime on the equity. And then one day, he told me, why don't you buy Abercrombie & Kent? And so that's what we did. And we still work together and, uh, we're, we're going tomorrow. We're flying on, uh, to one of the crystal ships. [00:34:39] Chris: Yeah. [00:34:41] Manfredi: We say two days on it and then we fly back. , so we were always, uh, we do a lot of things together. I mean, [00:34:48] Chris: nice. I'm curious on, you know, and I'm sure this is a hard question to answer, but, , I would imagine for most entrepreneurs, their day to day is very different. , I would imagine yours is similar. , do you have any regular structure you like to keep in your days, even though. You have a thousand things that are thrown at you every single day and you have to change up as much as possible. Some people, for example, you know, have the same waking time every day or the same sleep time or, , the same diet or, , All different types of things. Are there, are there any consistencies or daily rituals that you have in your life? [00:35:25] Manfredi: The daily ritual is a weekly ritual, which is doing the Luggage, so I'm always traveling. Yeah. What is a recurrent? I come back from a trip. I start packing That's the most Methodic thing I do all the time. [00:35:45] Chris: Pack. Pack and unpack. [00:35:47] Manfredi: Pack and unpack, pack and unpack. And then schedule from assistant, assistant, I have to do this, this, this, this, this. Work on the planning, work on how I'm gonna do this. I can fit, fit the meetings. That's the most thing. Um, I try to, if I can, to swim during the day, but uh, as I travel all the time, it's very difficult. [00:36:10] Chris: , what about, I'm curious about, you know, entrepreneurs, a lot of it depends on the entrepreneur. Some people sleep very little, , some people sleep, , a lot and then work hard throughout the day. How about yourself? Are you a heavy sleeper? Are you a light sleeper? Are you getting six, seven hours a night every night on the same time or is it fluctuate? [00:36:30] Manfredi: No, I'm basically going, trying to take six, seven hours every night, trying not to go to sleep too late. This morning I woke up at 6. 30. Yesterday I went to bed at 11. 30. It was seven hours. It was a very tiring day, so I was tired. Uh, but it can be six, it can be seven. Rarely goes above seven, unfortunately. I would like to have more sleep if I could. And, um, but it's normally very regular hours. [00:37:01] Chris: , any advice that you would give yourself, , your younger self that you didn't know when you were younger, say at the age of 20 or 30, that you know now that you wish you knew. [00:37:13] Manfredi: You know, and anything which is not real estate. Already built in the state business number one thing to look at is the people you're going to be working with as partners as executives, because that makes or breaks or fixes anything. So whenever you choose to deal with the wrong partners or whenever you, uh, appoint or go into a business without having the right person. You're going to have some problems. [00:37:45] Chris: Yeah. What are some things that you look for in a partnership or an executive when you, when you bring them on? [00:37:52] Manfredi: They have to be, first of all, they have to be trustworthy. They have to be honest, trustworthy. They have to be hardworking people. And if they're hardworking people competent, they can make a lot of money. [00:38:05] Chris: I'm not stingy. So you pay them well, [00:38:07] Manfredi: yes, they may. They, they have good incentives. [00:38:11] Chris: Have you ever noticed any, any, any ways that you identify individuals like that? You, you mentioned trustworthy, hardworking, is it through reputation that you hear from other people? Oh, this individual's trustworthy. Uh, he or she has built, you know, this business, or is it personal experience? Do you want to meet with them, get to know them really well, sit down with them, how they interact with you? [00:38:35] Manfredi: Well, you know, now the last, uh, oh, it's, what is it? 25 years more, 30 years. As I've been in the same business, it's much easier because I, I know the people that I'm going to retain, or I'm gonna promote, I'm going to delegate to. So it's, it's quite easy because 30 years since, uh, we started, uh, SilverSea Cruises now it's, uh, the same market. So the CEO of Abercrombie and Kent Travel Group, which includes Abercrombie and Kent. And Crystal Cruz is a person who has been working with me for 14 years. [00:39:13] Chris: Yeah. [00:39:14] Manfredi: She joined Silversea, and then when she was extremely young, now she's still very young, but she's in her beginning of her 40s, and she's the CEO of the group. I know her inside out, she knows me inside out. So just full trust, a hardworking person, work ethics are extremely strong. That's fundamental because mine are extremely strong. So I can't deal when people tell me balance of life. Balance of life is, is not compatible to be running a competitive business. [00:39:50] Chris: How many hours a day do you say you work from from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep? [00:39:55] Manfredi: Yes, basically I work that seven, what is it called, seven days a week, , although I work always that it is divided between days in which I work more and days in which I work less. So there are some days in which I work less because it's a Sunday or it's a vacation. So I will be working less, but I will always be working. It doesn't, I think it never happens a day in which I don't take care of something. [00:40:25] Chris: what would you say you're most proud of? [00:40:27] Manfredi: Most [00:40:27] Chris: proud of my [00:40:30] Manfredi: friends, my friends. I am very proud of the fact that I have great friends with a strong friendship. And I tell myself there's something right that you can do if you have friends of such good quality that are so attached to you and you're so attached to them. [00:40:52] Chris: I think that's a fantastic answer. And a lot of people would probably want to know a little bit more about that. , When I would imagine trustworthy, , is something that's important when you look for friends. But what are some other things that when you look for friends or friendships that are important for you? [00:41:13] Manfredi: Well, you know, the first of all, there's a generosity in the relationship. [00:41:16] Chris: Yeah. [00:41:18] Manfredi: If the, if the relationships are transactional, there's something which compromises the friendship. So it's just, there can be transaction with friends, but that must not be the basis of a friendship. So trustworthy, uh, based on the sentiment of friendship, the, the interest of seeing each other because of what puts you together, that both have, uh, memories or of a present or of things that interest you, that you're interested in talking to them, uh, sharing with them. So this is, uh, the basic thing. [00:41:59] Chris: I think that's a great way to wrap up the interview Manfredi. , one more question. What else do you want to do? Say in the next 10 years of your life, what are your goals? [00:42:09] Manfredi: Is that there are three things in parallel. One thing I want to have this, Abercrombie & Kent travel group grow and, uh, become very interesting and I do fantastic things. It's such a beautiful business that we enjoy every moment of it. The second thing is. Organize the rest of the world and, and also Abercrombie & Kent ownership in such a way that it can survive me well. And the third thing is, besides doing these things, is enjoying many things that I like. I like to travel, I like to read. Uh, I like to be with my friends. And, uh, so. And I like to do things which are not only tied to a monetary benefit. You know, having been successful from a financial point of view has to buy you, first of all, freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is how you spend your time. So how I spend my time is important. And And spending it, developing the business that we have created, is a satisfaction. Spending it, organizing the wealth, in a way that it can then be at the benefit of the persons I love is a satisfaction. Doing other things, cultivating myself, traveling the world, visiting the world, etc., is a satisfaction. Having the freedom to dedicate part of the time to this without Having to be obliged by other things and having the substantial means to do it is part of the freedom of choice that success gives you. [00:43:45] Chris: Well said. Manfredi, I want to thank you so much for the interview and thank you for sharing your time and your wisdom with our listeners. I love how you wrap that up, talking about the freedom of choice and relationships in your life. So Thank you so much. We're, , honored to have you on the podcast and, we'll see you next time on the show. [00:44:05] Manfredi: Thank you so much. Bye bye. Ciao.  

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Rob Holmes of Texas Capital Bank. Rob shares the bank's dramatic turnaround story since he became President and CEO in 2021 amid challenges, including a failed merger. Rob explains how Texas Capital improved its standing through strategic moves like fortifying capital levels and attracting talent from global institutions. We explore Texas Capital's community focus through initiatives increasing volunteerism and launching a charitable foundation. Rob highlights how their junior program brings diverse talent while nurturing a vibrant culture. Wrapping up, Rob discusses maintaining liquidity amid regional banking stress, their strong capital position, and diversification that sets them apart. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Rob and I discuss the transformation of Texas Capital under Rob's leadership since 2021, highlighting the strategic moves that improved the bank's financial standing and attracted top-tier talent. Rob explains how Texas Capital's strong capital position and strategic diversification helped it navigate the regional banking stress of 2023. We explore Texas Capital's commitment to community engagement, including extensive volunteer hours, the founding of a new charitable foundation, and various philanthropic activities across Texas. Rob elaborates on the bank's innovative junior program, which has attracted diverse and talented professionals to Texas Capital. We discuss the importance of maintaining a respectful, collaborative workplace culture and the value of in-office collaboration for fostering a strong, healthy culture and achieving better customer outcomes. Rob shares insights on the challenges facing the banking industry, such as regulatory inconsistencies, the inverted yield curve, technology integration, and commercial real estate risks. We discuss Texas Capital's strategic initiatives to expand services, including public finance and equity research in oil and gas. Rob reflects on the lessons he has learned from his career, emphasizing the importance of candor, transparency, and servant leadership. Rob recounts personal anecdotes about his first jobs and leisure pursuits, offering a glimpse into his personal life and leadership style. We touch on the role of media in shaping perceptions of regional banks and the distinct advantages of regional banks in serving local communities and businesses. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Texas Capital GUESTS Rob HolmesAbout Rob TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Rob Holmes, President and CEO of Texas Capital. Rob shares an inspiring story on how Texas Capital has rebuilt itself and become the first full-service financial services institution headquartered in Texas. Rob, I want to thank you for joining me here on Building Texas Business. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Let's start. I know you're the CEO Building Texas Business. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Let's start. I know you're the CEO of Texas Capital. Tell the listeners a little bit about what Texas Capital is and the type of services it provides here in Texas. Rob: Great. Well, thank you very much for having me. So Texas Capital had a very proud founding in the late 90s by Texas business people to found a bank to serve Texas businesses with local decision making. After all, the banks failed in the late 80s and they had a very proud run and 05 went public and did very well. Then about the mid teens we kind of started going a little sideways and by the time I got there the bank needed to be kind of rebuilt and so we had a failed merger with a bank about a third our size and that tells you anything, and really because of COVID. But after that they needed new leadership and so what we did was we started over and we went fast. So we raised a perpetual deferred deal with sub-debt securitization, got out of a line of business correspondent banking that attracted a lot of capital and improved the capital by about 270 basis points in about eight weeks, and that's my bet as we run the bank very conservatively. We also brought in a lot of new talent. So the entire operating committee is new. We have a new junior program we can get into that later. But then we started on the journey to build and this is kind of interesting. I think you'll find it interesting. We're the first full service financial services firm ever to be headquartered in Texas and if you think about it it makes perfect sense. So in the 80s you had Glass-Steagall and stuff. You had a lot of big banks. They failed. They were replaced by larger institutions from out of state that saw this as a very attractive market. But the in-market banks never went into the full service direction. So regional banks are made from community banks and they get bigger and they didn't have the products and services. They just had NIM banks, if you will Sure. Chris: Well, that's an impressive thing to have a claim to being the only one headquartered in Texas. I would not have thought that, you know, given some of the other Texas yeah. So I mean you're not kidding when you said a full restart just a few years ago. Rob: Full restart. So we have think about who we're able to attract, and this says more about Texas than Texas Capital. But the woman that runs treasury services for us ran treasury services for JPMorgan Chase globally. Our chief risk officer was the head of risk for JPMorgan's investment bank and then chief risk officer was the head of risk for JP Morgan's investment bank and then chief risk officer for the commercial bank and then head of risk for real estate globally. Our head of ops was a head of ops and tech for Stan O'Neill at Merrill Lynch. The CEO Started in the mailroom, ended up reporting as CEO head of ops and tech for Merrill Lynch. I think he can do it here and that so and that just kind of it keeps going. Our CHRO came from Cilindes and our CIO has an impressive background. Our head of commercial banking all of them had bigger jobs at much larger institutions. Chris: Yeah, what that tells me, Rob, is that those people saw a bright future in the business climate in Texas to make those kind of moves to join you and the Dallas headquarters. Rob: There's no doubt about it and, by the way, I wouldn't have tried this anywhere else, I mean for sure. So, as you know, texas is eighth largest economy in the world, second largest workforce, youngest workforce, fastest growing. We've created 46,. We've created more jobs in 46 last 48 months, so it's a very attractive place to be overall? Chris: What was it about just speaking to you? I know you joined in 2021, that based on the career you had built to that moment where you saw this as the right opportunity for you. Rob: I was very happy where I was. So I was primarily in the investment bank at JPMorgan Chase, but my last 10 years I ran the large corporate bank and the commercial bank ended up taking that to 22 countries. So I ran that business. Globally it was over $180 billion in assets. It was a third treasury, a third lending and a third investment banking. Great business, great people. But when this bank kind of went sideways, I had two or three people call me and say, hey, I'm thinking about this, would you come run it? And it surprised me. I'm like, why are you calling me? But then I started looking at it and, like you, I'm from Texas. I commuted to New York for 25 of the 31 years that I worked for JP Morgan. But people kind of said, why don't you come home and build something special with where you're from? And that, through more and more dialogue, became very appealing to me and I did not know and shame on me that as bad a shape as a bank was when we got there. But it ended up being a blessing because you know like today it'd be very difficult to do what we did. I mean to have a board, investor base, regulators, constituents. Let you reinvest. We reinvested over a third of our non-interest expense and then more, and we said to the investor community and the board and others that we're going to have negative operating leverage for about a year and a half. That'd be very hard to do in this climate, right? And so the other thing we had to do became a blessing because you had to do it all at once, and so I'm glad that's behind us. Today the bank is. It used to have just mono banking, like a community or regional bank. Today we have segmentation, so you have business banking for small businesses, middle market banking for a little larger businesses, a little more sophistication, and then we have a corporate banking group like a money center bank. And when you have a corporate banking group you have to have industry expertise. So we have energy, diversified FIG, government, not-for-profit healthcare, tmt and mortgage, so we have the industry expertise of any money center bank right here in Texas. And then we have private wealth and then we rebuilt all of treasury. So it's a brand new bank. We have a new payments platform, new lockbox, new card, new merchant, new digital onboarding that we came up with. And so we people say the banks can't compete on technology like with the big bank, but we can because we have one platform. Those big banks have many platforms because they're a combination of many banks. We can go in that if you want. And then we have one platform. Those big banks have many platforms because they're a combination of many banks. We can go in that if you want. And then we have, as I said, private wealth, investment banking, and we can go into as many of those areas as you want. Chris: So you basically built it like you said. As businesses are coming to Texas, you're ready to serve whatever need they have. Rob: For sure. So we want to be very relevant to our clients and we are a one-stop shop, so you won't outgrow us. We were a top 10 arranger of bank debt for middle market companies in the years. We've done about $110 billion of notional trades in about 18 months. Wow, it's profitable. Chris: So what's your vision for the future, then for Texas Capital, and kind of, how are you working to achieve? Rob: that it's actually pretty simple. It's maturing the platform that we built. So we are the number one lender to Texas-based businesses of any Texas-based bank. Now that's new. We've had tremendous success. Business owners and decision makers love the local decision making. They love the fact that when they hire us, they're getting a very talented, experienced MD working for them instead of maybe the money center bank, whatever, a VP or something assigned to it. They just like the local decision making, local access. But the go forward strategy is People ask me this all the time what's next? And they think that we have a big bang answer. The big bang answer is delighting clients and banking the best clients in our markets, and we've always said, or I've always said we'll be defined by our clients, and so we have been blessed to have clients be attracted to the strategy and platform. So we're going to just do more of what we've done. Chris: So what I like about that strategy is the simplicity. I think there's a lesson there for entrepreneurs and other business owners in what you've done in the last few years, and that to me is get the foundation right and your core right Correct, and then do the fundamentals really well. Right, it's blocking and tackling is what you're doing. Rob: It's executing now for sure. And I had one CEO of a very renowned New York financial firm ask him to come see me. They had heard about what we were doing and he wanted to understand it because we actually we took what he would say was the very best person from his sales and trading floor who had been there 18 years. He didn't understand how we could attract that person because that person drove a U-Haul to Dallas with his wife and kids before we were even open. And he said tell me your strategy. And I went through it and, to be honest with you, I was hoping he would like it because I was pretty long the strategy. And so he did. And I said what do you think? He said I think y'all are going to be very successful. And this was early on. And I said why is that? He said do you have a differentiated strategy with differentiated talent in a differentiated market? And I think that's true. But then he said what do you think? And I said well, our talent's really. This is back in 21. Now we've done all these things, but I said that the talent is really good, but we've got to do everything with this jersey on now and delight our clients with TCB jersey, not another jersey. And he said look, rob, do it once, it'll be hard, do it three times, you'll be good. The fifth time you're an expert and I kind of he kind of and he's pretty renowned. It was a pretty simple lesson but it's kind of true. And now we have done it and we are good at what we're doing. But we still can mature the platform, that treasury platform we talked about. It's literally second to none. We're doing open banking for clients. We're doing a digital onboarding. You can open a commercial account tomorrow at a money center bank. That take eight weeks or six weeks. But that platform to scale to get the most out of it, I mean we could run it without any more investment for five years. So we got to scale the business and, by the way, it's happening. So that treasury platform is it's called P times V, price times volume that's how many transactions are going through the factory or warehouse financial transactions. That's usually for a bank it's a 2% business at best. It grows the economy, it grows the GDP. We're going 17%, quarter over quarter, year, quarter after quarter. That's remarkable Because of new clients moving to the platform. So it is scaling but we just need to continue to do that Right. Chris: So you talked about the platform a couple of times. What type of I guess technology or emerging technologies do you see having the biggest impact in the banking industry over the next, say, three to five years? Rob: I think real-time payments, I think open banking, and people don't really understand what open banking is. What open banking is? It's actually very simple, so think well, here's, here's one simple way. Part of it is you don't have to leave your internal financial platform to go to our platform. We'll put an API on yours and so you can just push a button and be into our system and send ACH or wire or what. So I think AI, I think open banking and I think real-time payments. Okay. Chris: Well, I can speak from experience, as we transitioned to Texas Capital a year ago and, to your point of the ease of that transition and being able to deal with decision makers made it seamless. Good Well thank you. It's been a great relationship for us, for sure. Rob: Good Well thank you. Chris: What you're saying is true, Well, thank you. It's been a great relationship for us for sure. Good, Well, thank you. I can attest to that. What you're saying is true, Well, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about where you see corporate leadership whether that's your C-suite or just the company as it exists and community impact. What type of initiatives is Texas Capital working on to be a meaningful member of the community? Rob: Yeah, well, that's a. Thank you very much for the for the easy pitch. So I think we do. We bat way above our weight in community impact. So we do tens of thousands of hours of employee volunteer in the community. We, as part of this transformation, when we were investing in the platform, we took time to also found our first foundation. We never had a foundation before. So we have a foundation and we do volunteer hours and we just were part of the group that bought Opal Lear Newhouse. We were the first one to open a branch in West Dallas. We gave the founding seed money for Southern Gateway in Dallas. We're big supporters of Rodeo here in Houston. Last year I think we sponsored the opening night, so I think you're going to see us pretty much all over the state of Texas in terms of giving and more than just money but time, resources, expertise to philanthropies. We hosted a great event about three weeks ago. People came from all over the country and it was for veterans and we had veteran not-for-profits and we had veteran-owned businesses and we just brought them together and talked about issues and how they could work together and synergies between the two and advancing veterans on a go-forward basis, and the people that came would just blow you away and the feedback of it. I happened to be out of town on a three-day weekend afterwards out of the country and somebody approached me and I didn't know them and they didn't know me, but I guess they'd seen my picture or something and they thanked me for having that veteran event. Wow, and so it had a far, far impact. It will do things like that. We have a nonprofit event in every city, getting nonprofits together, helping them learn how to raise money and trade best practices, and we do that and we'll do that in every city during the summer. So you know, our giving is good, Our volunteer hours are fantastic, Our sharing of expertise is good. Our investment in the community is great, Good. Chris: Let's circle back to because that kind of made me think of team building, right, so you talked about basically a wholesale change with the team around you. What are some of the things that you look for to make sure you're you know, through that recruiting and hiring process, that you're getting the right person for the position? Rob: Yep, so this is a great question and this was the key to what we've done so far and how we're going to reach our 25 goals. So in September of 21, when we announced a strategic plan, which was pretty dramatic, we said we're not going to achieve our financial goals until 25. With that came a lot of change and a lot of talent. So 80% of the people at the firm are new since I got there. That's 80% of over 2,000 people. So that's a lot of change, managing through a lot of change through a transformation, through a regional quote, unquote regional banking practice that I'd love to talk about, regional banking practice, regional banking stress that I'd love to talk about transformation. So there's a lot going on there, both internally and externally, that we had to manage through. And what we did is we started at the top and the bottom, so we put new leadership with new skill sets and new expectations and new goals of banking the best clients in our markets instead of just being a bank, etc. And we also started a junior program. It was the first junior program in the history of the bank. Chris: You mentioned that earlier, so tell us a little more about the junior program. Rob: It's awesome If you have a kid and they want to get into finance and they don't want to go to New York but they want to work at a great financial services firm to have them join us. So we post in. So I got there in January of 21. It so I got there in January 21. It's COVID Nobody's in the office. We'd just been through this internal stress with the failed merger, new CEO, the whole bit. I said we need a junior program. We posted 60 positions. We got 800 applications. We hired 60-something. A third of those had their masters. That wasn't required. The average GPA was over 374. So people love what we're doing right. The next year there's over 2,000 applicants and our junior program is great. And, by the way, I helped build one in the investment bank in my last firm and one in the commercial bank in my last firm. I thought they were both very good. This one's awesome. So you come in, you go through four or five months of training and then you go into your line of business. But we probably hired you after your internship the summer before, if that makes sense. Sure, the program has some of the diverse classes I've ever seen in banking and we didn't do that. This may be controversial. We do that on purpose. We did that because we hired the best people Exactly and they're the most diverse classes, and so we're really excited about that. And then the attrition rate there isn't nearly what we thought it would be. We built it for a higher attrition rate because those kids usually leave a large percentage after third year. Sure. They're not leaving. Rob: They like it, so that's been kind of fun. It's a good problem, right, it's a great problem and we'll use all of them. And, by the way, after that change you should just know the attrition stuff has dramatically slowed as the transformation slowed. We got all the talented people in place that we needed so we are ahead of corporate America, finance and Texas companies for attrition and excited about that in the new culture here. ADVERT Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom and thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Well that you know that low attrition rate leads to what you talked about earlier better customer experience, more stability. Rob: We need stability. Chris: Everybody needs stability. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you mentioned regional banking stress. Tell me what you're referring to about that. Rob: Yeah, last spring of 23,. Eb failed, first Republic and the like. We were fortunate. So, november of 22, we sold a business to Truist for $3.5 billion with a very big premium on it. With the sale of that we became if you compare us to any $100 billion bank or above in the country or any Texas public bank we have the third most capital and I think in the next quarters we'll have the second most but third and we're number one in equity tangible common equity assets. So we're the least levered. We have third most capital. Our highly liquid assets are like 29% our cash and securities. Our AOCI problem, which is the mark on the bond portfolio. Banks are struggling with that. We're very good there. So our capital, our liquidity, et cetera, was very strong. So we didn't experience outflows of deposits or anything. What we did experience was a rotation, like every bank in the country, from non-interest-bearing deposits to interest-bearing deposits. So all banks if you want to call this cost of goods sold went up. But the regional banks for us the reason I wanted to come back and talk about that people call it a regional banking crisis. It was not. It had to do with certain banks were of the size that they define regional banks that had the wrong strategy, the wrong concentrations, and they failed, right. That's not because they're regional banks, right, they just happen to be that size. By the way, credit Suisse failed too. It is a global bank, right. So you know, I think this is sometimes where the media gets the message wrong and puts fear into the market, and they love it, and they love it and so I'm really proud of what the regional banks do and how they serve their clients in market and their local communities, giving back to their communities, being Main Street lenders, and I'm really proud of. You know how we do that. I think I told you before we went on the air. We're the number one lender of Texas-based businesses, of any Texas-based bank. That's a big deal because these money center banks they may be in the state or super regionals in the state or even regionals in the state but, if they decide, oh you know what, it's not okay to bank an energy company, they don't Well, guess what? We have those decisions here. We don't have somebody else deciding our social norms. Chris: Right, right, that's a great selling point. Going back to the kind of the junior program and this new team, let's talk about culture, I mean. So how would you define the culture at Texas Capitol and kind of, what do you think you've done to kind of foster that and what do you see as necessary to keep it growing? I think? Rob: the culture is transparent, curious, candid and relentless dissatisfaction, as my general counsel calls it. So, look, we've made a lot of change. We'll continue to make a lot of change. We just hired somebody to run public finance for us. We didn't have that before. Lot of change we just hired somebody to run public finance for us. We didn't have that before. We started into the foray of public equity, research and oil and gas. We're going to keep growing and building, doing things that serve our clients and our clients' needs. But the one thing that we kind of talk about a lot is and I'll say it little softer is you know just no jerks allowed. You could talk about, you can talk about Ivy League. You know culture and they have you know big words, but the simple thing is like we're gonna treat people with respect, period. Right now. You can be tough and you can be hard, but you gotta be fair, right, and you gotta be polite. And you know you can be hard but you've got to be fair and you've got to be polite and you can have high expectations while being compassionate. So we have high expectations, we are moving fast, but we do treat people with respect and we like working with one another and that's been part of the fun is, we've been in office because we think that's how you build a career and not a job, and that's how you collaborate to serve your client and that's what's best for our clients and best for employees. And we like being with one another. We don't want to work remote from a beach and not share life's experiences with our colleagues. Chris: Yeah, couldn't agree more. I mean, we got back to the office in May of 2020. I believe, and my partners here, you're a part of an organization for a reason. Organizations are a group of people together, right, correct, and we learn from each other. We can collaborate in a customer service-related industry. Like you and I are in the customer does better when we're collaborating to serve them, you and I are in the customer does better when we're collaborating to serve them, and we do that when we're together. Yep Hands down, no question. And we've been like you. We've been in office in person for a while now and you read as much as I do for the last six, seven months. You just see the pendulum swinging back because the other organizations are realizing they're losing customer satisfaction, they're losing engagement with their people. You can't have a culture if you're not together. In my view, or you can. Actually, you can have a culture. It's just not a healthy one in my view. Yeah, it's really bad, that's right. Rob: So, look, looking back, it seems like a really easy decision and, by the way, I was back in the office in 2022. But at this room, I didn't get there until January 21. Nobody's back in the office. You meant 22 as well. Yes, I did. I did. Excuse me, I did, but you know I got here in 21. We went back to office Memorial Day the Tuesday after Memorial Day of 21. And it was a harder decision then. It seems easy now Because, like even the day before, there was rumors of everybody in our ops organization that they were going to protest and walk out. You know at 901 and we decided, we made a conscious decision that this is what they're going to do and we wanted the people that wanted to be in the office right, and we may lose some people, and that's fine, and it would be harder in the short term, but the people that would be attracted to the platform and the business and us would be people that wanted careers, not jobs, and, by definition, those are the better employees, right, and I think those people attract those people and that's how we were able to transform so much while other people were sitting at home. Chris: Yeah. Now to your point. I mean, if you have a long-term strategy right, then you're willing to go through some short-term pain to get the right people that are going to help you achieve that For sure. A little bit about just your thoughts on what are some of the biggest challenges you think facing the banking industry as we sit here today and maybe for the foreseeable future. Obviously, for the last couple of years, every month everybody's watching the Fed, so that may be part of the answer. But just what do you see as the challenges? Rob: Yeah, so there's plenty for most industries though, too. So one is, and this is an excuse, but it is a challenge. The regulatory body needs to come together and be consistent and apply things consistently. That'd be helpful. We have an inverted yield curve now for the longest time, one of the longest periods in history, you know the two years four, seven something. The 10 years four two something. That makes banking very hard for a lot of technical reasons we can go into. For most banks, technology is a problem. Most banks are an aggregation of multiple banks. They're not like us that has one technology platform. That's, by the way, brand new and totally modern. Banks have not been willing to. It's been a cost cutting game because a lot of banks this is why our strategy is so good NIM banks. So net interest margin, which is loan only, the model of taking a deposit and making a loan and achieving a return above your cost of capital through cycle, I think is very difficult and that's why we supplemented our platform. You know loans, investment banking, private wealth. You know all the different things we do for a client so that we can achieve that return, because a lot of the banks to have that return would have to maybe make a riskier loan to get a higher spread or what have you? So I think the NIM banking model to get a higher spread or what have you? So I think the NIM banking model especially after spring of 23, is hard. I think the technology spend is hard. I think there's a lot of banks that have too much commercial real estate. So our commercial real estate is a very small percentage of our total capital. Regulators want you to be maybe 250 or 300%. There's a lot of banks that are 400. That's too much, yeah. And when you have that much commercial real estate, remember a lot of its construction loans, and so the construction loans. You made that decision today and you're funding it in two years. So you're going to you're that that concentration, because those paydowns are, you know, like a five-year low and commercial real estate is going to keep growing. So banks marginal loan the dollar to make the next loan. The cost just went up, so they're going to slow down their lending while the commercial real estate gets absorbed. They can't be relevant to their clients with anything other than the loan product and if they're not doing that, they're going to slow down their growth and slow down lending. They can't be relevant to their clients with anything other than the loan product, and if they're not doing that, they're going to slow down their growth and slow down lending. They don't have the margin to spend on technology. Chris: And those are some of the problems. Yeah, there's cascades, right, totally. Let's turn a little bit to just kind of you and leadership. How would you describe your leadership style today and maybe how you feel like it's evolved over your career? Rob: I think you've got to do what you want other people to do. So I'm in Houston today. We're seeing six clients we talk all the time about it's about the client, not us. Ops exists to serve a client, technology exists to serve a client. It's not for the bank. And so we have become pretty client obsessed at Texas Capital, delivering the best outcomes for our clients. I mean, like the one deal I think I told you about, we sole managed the largest debt deal in the country last year. The largest sole managed debt deal in the country last year. That's after a money center bank failed doing it. We gave the client the best advice, knowing they'd probably go with the other bank. They did. The other bank failed them. They came back to us and we did it. Now we have a client for life. So give the client the right advice, do the right thing for the client, but your people have to see you do what you want them to do. So I'm with clients. We are aggressively serving clients, but we've managed the place very conservatively. And then I think candor and transparency is really important. Chris: I think those are great qualities, anything that you could point to. I always think people I'll speak for myself, but I think I hear it in others as well a setback or failure that you encountered, that you learned from, that made you better as a leader, as a business person, anything that comes to mind, that where you look back and go, wow, that was transformational. Because of that, how long do you have? Rob: No, I think we talked about junior program, one that always comes to mind because there's early on the program of what early on my career was. When I was a junior, you know, I talked to that junior class a lot and one of the things I tell them is be careful, because you know, building your brand sometimes is too easy, like you know, if you do something great, like I had some successes early on as being a good client guy, then I was the client guy, but also my brand that I got early on was, as a junior was I wasn't very good at details and as a junior an analyst associate your only job was details Right, and so I learned the hard way that maybe I needed to focus on the details. Now I would suggest that the people that work with me think I'm too focused on the details. But that's because I learned the hard way as a junior and people corrected me Right and I'm not sure if they corrected me the wrong way or right way. That was the old days, but they certainly made an impression. So I think that was one of the things I learned is details matter and details are important, and I learned it as a junior and that stayed with me throughout my career. The other one was one I think is interesting is later on, when we were talking about a promotion, one of my bosses told me that I think this is really important for people to know, because I think it's true. He said rob, I don't it, my vote doesn't matter. The vote that matters is everybody else on the floor that works with you, because I'm not promoting you unless they want you promoted, right and so I do think that you know that's a pretty good lesson too. Chris: Yeah, kind of well servant the well, servant leadership, for sure, and that kind of team mentality For sure, team mentality. And I've said forever, I think the lessons you remember the most are the ones you learned the hard way. For sure, so the details right. Chris: So he's like I'm not going to let that happen again. For sure, that's great. Well, I appreciate you sharing those up, but I think it's a great quality leadership to have that vulnerability and humility about you for sure. So I'm going to kind of move away from the business stuff. Okay, to wrap things up, I want to know what was your first job, my? Rob: first job was uh bagging groceries and stocking grocery shelves in high school I did the same thing, did you? Chris: yeah, uh, it was hot and yeah, I tell people we had to wear like black pants. Oh, yeah, these kids get to wear shorts. Now I'm like this is going easy on them. Rob: Yeah, I think one day one of the guys got mad at me because they made me restack all the remember when people used to return the glass bottles. Yeah, and it was in a cage in the back of the alley of the grocery store. It was about 110. And nobody had organized them for about three months and I got fine job. Chris: Very good. All right, you're born and raised in Texas, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Rob: Both Like a brisket taco. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, I like that All right. And last thing if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? I'd probably spend half of it fly fishing in Montana and half of it quail hunting in South Texas. There you go, Just not this time of year. Not this time of year. That's right. Chris: Rob, I want to thank you for taking the time. I mean, I had no idea the details behind the transformation at Texas Capital and obviously what you and your team are doing and have done is nothing short of remarkable. So thanks for sharing that. Rob: Well, thank you, I think you know. We think Texas does deserve its own full-service financial services firm. Chris: Well, I'm glad you're delivering it. Thank you, take care. And there we have it another great episode. Don't forget to check out the show notes at boyermiller.com forward slash podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at Boyermiller.com. That's it for this episode. Have a great week and we'll talk to you next time. Special Guest: Rob Holmes.

Listeners, welcome back to the podcast today, and we will dive deep into the life of one of the most influential figures in the cruise line and maritime world. Our guest today is a Titan in the cruise line industry, a visionary entrepreneur, a lifelong champion of global tourism, and his name is Manfredi LaFavre D'Ovidio.  Manfredi has transformed his family business into a global leader in luxury cruising. Under his leadership, Silver Sea Cruises expanded its company, offering travel experiences across all seven continents around the world. In a strategic partnership with Royal Caribbean, Manfredi orchestrated the sale of a two third stake in Silversea for a whopping 1 billion in 2018. This strategic partnership not only elevated Silversea's brand, but also marked. One of the most significant deals in the cruise industry's history. And lastly, Manfredi is the chairman of the heritage group, which is a private equity company that acquired 85 percent of one of the biggest luxury travel companies in the world, Amber Crombie and Kent, whose founder was actually on the podcast last month. So if you haven't listened to that interview yet, make sure you check it out. And today we're going to dive into the life and mind of Manfredi. 2-10 minute high-performance clips delivered to you Monday & Friday from our top interviews Contact Info: Website: thebusinessmethod.com/ Apple Podcasts: bit.ly/TheBusinessMethod Google Podcasts: bit.ly/TheBusinessMethodGooglePodcasts Spotify: bit.ly/SpotifyTheBusinessMethod Amazon Music: bit.ly/AmazonTheBusinessMethod Transcript:  [00:00:00] Chris: Hey listeners. Have you ever met somebody that's built his own cruise line and, or shipping company? I think that's really interesting because it's an industry that doesn't get a lot of PR there's literally massive shipping companies that are keeping the infrastructure of this world going and , operating on a regular basis. And there's some founder out there that built this massive company. Also with a cruise line. There's some founder out there that have, that is built Royal Caribbean and all the cruise lines out there that you can imagine. And they're operating on a regular day-to-day basis. What's very interesting with the gentleman that I just interviewed. He is the founder of not only a cruise line, but he's a founder of a shipping company as well. So he's been in this industry, his entire life. He grew up around it and now he's operating these massive billion dollar companies on a day-to-day basis. And I got to interview him. His name is Manfredi Lefebvre d'Ovidio and he's an Italian entrepreneur that lives in Monaco, not only does he have his own cruise line and shipping company, but he's also a majority owner in one of the biggest luxury travel brands that that's out there today. Sounds like a busy guy. But the awesome thing about Manfredi and talking to him is his philosophy around money. And when I got to interview him Manfredi talked about. How money is an instrument of freedom. Now, what I thought was fascinating is that a gentleman at this level is built. Multi-billion dollar company is a billionaire himself. Still believes that money is an instrument of freedom. Now you think most of us entrepreneurs out there, . Or freelancers or people just trying to do something online to make a buck we're using this muse. As an opportunity to have more freedom in our lives. And here you have a gentleman that has been an entrepreneur for somewhere around 50 years and he still believes that in his core, that money is an instrument of freedom. And I asked Manfredi, what is most important to you to be known as an entrepreneur? And he said, no, not to be known, but to be an entrepreneur. And there's a difference in that he doesn't care that he's known as an entrepreneur when he is an entrepreneur, he can make choices and have those freedoms in his life. Now, one thing that was really unique is when I dug deeper with Manfredi, he talks about how being an entrepreneur and a business person. , is a strong connection with the living world versus operating in the sleeping world. And I thought this was really unique and a subtle hint that he gave into his mindset that I think a lot of people will miss over when they listened to the podcast. So it's important to point out. , again, I'll repeat that. , being an entrepreneur is a strong connection with the living world. Versus operating in the sleeping world, meaning that entrepreneurs provide value and service. To the, , economy into the way that we operate. In the world today, entrepreneurs are a necessity for the world to keep going around the way that it does for the modern conveniences that we have for the opportunities that we have. We need entrepreneurs. Period. Versus operating in the sleeping world and what I think he meant by this means operating in a world where you're not really aware of the life that you're choosing, you're doing it because society told you, you should. And really in the grand scheme of things, if you want to live a fulfilled life, you have to operate in the living world and escape from that sleeping world somehow in some way. You've got to do it. And then Manfredi goes on to talk about how having more money is not his goal to live well. Cultivating self working on self. Having a freedom of choice is vital. which is really interesting. So let's hop into this. High-performance clip with Manfredi Lefebvre d'Ovidio. Enjoy it. [00:04:07] Manfredi: Money as an instrument of freedom freedom of choice. But the number one to be an entrepreneur! [00:04:14] Chris: That's most important to you , to be known for as an entrepreneur. [00:04:18] Manfredi: Not to be known to know myself, that I am, I wake up in the morning and I'm busy. I have a lot of things which, , interest me. [00:04:25] Chris: Yeah [00:04:26] Manfredi: I have a lot of things which I do, which interests other people. If I wasn't an entrepreneur, I wouldn't be here with you. [00:04:31] Chris: It's very true. So it's a very strong connection with the living world instead of going into the sleeping world. [00:04:37] Manfredi: And it's not a question you already have the money to live well. It's a question of money as an instrument of freedom And to, realize yourself, to achieve the satisfactions that you're looking for. And I like to do things which are not only tied to a monetary benefit. You know, having been successful from a financial point of view has to buy you, first of all, freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is how you spend your time. So how I spend my time is important. And spending developing the business that we have created, is a satisfaction. Spending it, organizing the wealth, in a way that it can then be at the benefit of the persons I love is a satisfaction. Doing other things, cultivating myself, traveling the world, visiting the world, etc., is a satisfaction. Having the freedom to dedicate part of the time to this without Having to be obliged by other things and having the substantial means to do it is part of the freedom of choice that success gives you. [00:05:41] Chris: So, what do you think you guys. Oh man. Freddy talks about money being an instrument of freedom, and it doesn't matter if you're operating a $20,000 company. Or a $2 billion company. We as entrepreneurs believe in our souls that money is an instrument of freedom. And if we can bring value to the world, the more value we bring to the world, the more money we make. The more freedom we have. Ideally, as long as you're managing that freedom and that money in that business really well. So you have the freedom of choice, but also when it comes back to it, the most important thing is really the freedom of choice. And if you choose to work out hard in choose to work 80 and a hundred hours a week, That's great. As long as you're doing what you love and you're fulfilled. And if you choose to work four hours a week, like another entrepreneur and billionaire that we interviewed, like Richard Kosch. You can work four hours a week. Also, literally, this is what he does I asked him personally, how much do you work, Richard? Half a day a week. Fantastic. Amazing. . So, um, but anyway, going back to Manfredi's con conversation, , you know, not to be known as an entrepreneur, that's not his goal. It's to be an entrepreneur, which he has been for many years and to have that freedom of choice and the freedom of choice to cultivate his life. Well, he even mentioned he really enjoys doing non-monetary activities. Uh, things that don't produce money, right? Things that give him more fulfillment, it could be spending time with your family, uh, going after the goals and dreams that you want practicing as a hobby or sport or something you really enjoy. And to be connected to the living world. I think it's a very powerful. A couple of questions to ask yourself, I want to leave you with. What are you doing to be connected to the living world? Really? What are you doing? Or are you operating in a way that you're really more connected with the sleeping world? You're more unconscious and unaware of the choices that you're making on a regular basis. You're working in a career that doesn't really fulfill. You, give you the life that you really want, give you the light that you deserve when, , going to work. And, , how are you? , cultivating that. How are you cultivating your life? Uh, do you really have the freedom of choice? And I think that's the most important takeaway. From Manfredi here. Do you have the freedom of choice? And if you don't. It's time to start working on that. It's vital. And if you do. Are you cultivating that freedom of choice? Well, And can you do it better? If you guys like what you're hearing and make sure you don't want to miss any of these tips, please subscribe. Leave us a review and share with your friends. See on the next episode.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Chantell Preston, CEO of Facilities Management Group. She takes us through her journey of transforming the healthcare industry - from an unexpected start managing facilities to founding Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation. Chantell's strategic moves in positioning her company through the pandemic era offer key leadership lessons. We discuss her transition in fostering trust and respect amongst staff, vital for a positive culture, especially in difficult times. Her reflections on setbacks emphasize emotional readiness for both failures and leadership burdens. Wrapping up on a lighter note of future dreams, from travel adventures to family time, Chantell offers a well-rounded portrait of an impactful leader. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Chantell Preston shares her unexpected entry into the healthcare industry and how it led to her role in developing numerous healthcare facilities across Texas. We discuss Chantell's experience founding and successfully exiting Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation, a company focused on traumatic brain injury patients. Chantell explains her strategic decisions and leadership style transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, emphasizing the shift from an authoritarian to a collaborative approach. We explore the importance of trust, respect, and open communication in maintaining a positive team culture, especially during challenging times. Chantell recounts the lessons learned from entrepreneurial setbacks, including the emotional toll of difficult business decisions and the significance of building strong relationships. We discuss the tactical choices made to support frontline workers and expand service lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chantell reflects on her evolution from a closed-off, authoritative leader to a compassionate and empathetic one, inspired by her business partner's example. We talk about the challenges and liberation of breaking societal norms as a female leader and the importance of achieving work-life integration. Chantell shares her personal dreams of travel and family time, highlighting the difficulty of balancing a busy work schedule with personal aspirations. We discuss the advice Chantell gives to young entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of focus, having a supportive team, and being ready to pivot when necessary. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Facilities Management Group GUESTS Chantell PrestonAbout Chantell TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Chantell Preston, CEO of Facilities Management Group. Chantell is a self-described risk taker who emphasizes the importance of establishing trust and respect in building a strong company culture. Chantell, I want to thank you for coming on Building Texas Business. I appreciate you taking the time. Chantell: Thanks, Chris. I appreciate you inviting me to come on. Chris: So let's just kick this off by telling us a little bit about Facilities Management Group, the company you're currently CEO of. Chantell: Sure, so Facilities Management Group. We're really a platform company. We own and operate healthcare facilities throughout Texas. Initially, when I took it on, we had a hospital in Las Vegas, but we divested that and sold that to a local system there, and so now our main facilities are here in the Texas market. Chris: Okay, and I know this isn't your first venture in the healthcare space Tell us a little bit about how you got involved or found yourself being an executive in the healthcare industry. Chantell: Sure, it's kind of an interesting story, chris. I don't think any of us know when we graduate from college where we're going to end up in life, and I can truly tell you I never thought it would be health care. So you know, straight out of school I got a great opportunity to go to work for a small company that was developing ambulatory surgery centers. Didn't know anything about ambulatory surgery centers but I knew the folks that were in the organization. So took the leap of faith and I just wanted to learn every aspect. I felt like if? How could I go out and sell things if I didn't realize or understand how they were operated? So took the opportunity to really dive into the health care and learn both the development aspect as well as the operational aspect. Best thing I ever did. From there just kind of soared, I became very niched in regards to building healthcare facilities. I've built over 65 hospitals in my career, whether they're LTACs, rehabs, full acute care hospitals, linear accelerators. So I just kind of found a niche. I really enjoyed watching something from concept to operations. However, I got to a certain point in my life I decided I didn't want to be a consultant forever. So my previous partner and I started a company called Atlantic Health Group. We were going to be a surgery center company. We realized the market was saturated at that point, so we started a company called Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation. Mentis was assisted living rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury patients. To be honest, we really didn't know much about it when we started. We built an amazing team to operate the company for us and then we realized how much need there was for traumatic brain injury patients, so we continued down that path. I continued to build facilities to generate revenue, to build Mentus, so we didn't have to raise huge capital. So we bootstrapped everything together and we took Mentus from concept to exit in 2015. Chris: Wow. Chantell: So we exited the mid-market. And then comes back to what are you going to do with your life from there? So I really stayed for about a year and realized that just my heart wasn't in it anymore. Things changed. We built such an amazing culture, so really focused on what was the next phase of my life. That's when I ended up taking over facilities management group. One of my partners that was operating the entity got ill and so I stepped up and said I'll take over, and that's when we really developed Facilities Management Group. At that point, we had a lot of individual facilities running independently of each other and we wanted to build a platform company that we could have some synergistic services across all facilities. So that was 2018. And so that was a great ride. I learned a lot. Six months after I took over, covid hit so you can only imagine what happens with the hospital industry when that happens? Chris: Yeah, I'm sure there's. We'll get into that because there has to be a lot of good stories there, but I can't help but notice that, as you told, that is, you talked about being thrown in cold, knowing nothing about the industry healthcare that is but then you found yourself evaluating opportunities for surgical centers and then the mental health, brain injury type of facilities that you mentioned. I want to talk about what type of processes did you go through, and or with your partners, to evaluate the opportunities when you're like, okay, what's next or what else can we do? What are some of the things that you found to be valuable and useful in going through that process, as well as maybe some of the things you wish you hadn't done? Chantell: Sure, Great question, chris. You know, as we all go through our career, we, you know, we try to evaluate things. Everybody looks at things very differently and you know you probably say I'm a calculated risk taker. So, again, I wanted to be able to find a path where, you know, my number one was I wanted to help people. You know, I think most of us get into health care because we have this naivety that we really, you know we can make a change in the world, and I think we do, just maybe different than what we anticipate when we go in. So I think it's really about when I would look at each of the opportunities that came up. You know, again started at a small company and I wanted to learn as much as I could, and then I got recruited from there. Once I found a niche for myself, I didn't really have to go looking for jobs. People would come to me, but then it was like, okay, I learned some hard knocks at the same time as to going to work for folks, because they throw a lot of money at you or they say, oh, we're going to create this amazing environment, and then you get in and you realize this is not really a productive place for me to be and in those situations you just try to take, learn everything you can, you know, gain as much experience and knowledge, because I look at everything as a stepping stone to the next place. So when we, you know, when we started Atlantic, it was kind of an interesting scenario because I had a ton of development partners that I had already established that I was working for as an independent consultant. I didn't really want to be a consultant forever. I wanted to build something, I wanted to have some security. So I actually talked my partner, my business partner, into leaving his organization because he had a skill set that I didn't have. So he was really more around the finance side of things, operationally, and I was really more the development aspect. And so you know, and I was really more the development aspect, and so you know, I think it's really important when people look at their careers, a everything in life is a stepping stone to the next thing. I mean, you have to look at it that way. What can I get out of this particular situation to advance my overall objectives later? Chris: Sure. Chantell: But also who you're getting in bed with and I speak a lot to entrepreneurs. It's really important to pick your partners wisely. And when you say your partners, you know I tell people it's like a marriage. Oh well, we're best friends. We're never going to, you know, get sideways with each other. Well, it is important that when you're going into a partnership, you know even a company is what's it going to look like if we got divorced? I look at everything as it's kind of like a marriage. Chris: No, no, Look, I advise clients all the time into the same thing. You know, be careful, Don't do 50-50 unless you have a good deadline provision. But it is they are. I can attest from being on the litigation side of these things. They are truly business divorces when they go south, and we always tell people it's better to invest up front to getting your documents right. You don't want to think you and your best friends could ever go south, but there's a reason. There's a bunch of law firms and lawyers that stay busy because that's what happens. Chantell: Right, and I was fortunate not to go through that. To be honest, it was just, I was very cognizant and I think when I was younger I didn't realize the value I brought. So I felt like safety was in numbers, right, and sometimes we create an environment around us because it makes us feel protected and then at the end of the day you go, wait a minute, what about me? And so you know again, lessons learned. You know, we also have a tendency, you know, adhd. We're all entrepreneurs. We like to do lots of different things. You know a few mistakes that we made along the way was we started getting into things that we didn't know too much about, because it was the shiny penny oh this is great, let's go do this and then, oh my God, we would either lose a ton of money. You know a lot of headaches. We didn't stay focused on our core business and it kind of school of hard knocks a little bit. It took us a little bit of time to realize that, hey, we need to solely focus on, you know, our core business, mentis, and let's stop messing around with all this other stuff that seems like it's fun and exciting. Let's stay focused on our core business until we reach. You know what we were hoping to accomplish. Chris: That's great advice. The discipline of staying focused on your core and what you do best can't be overstated. So many people lose their way because of the distractions, and you're right. They end up costing more money than you expected and taking more of your time away, and it takes it away from your core, so then it suffers. Chantell: That's right, and people don't realize. You know, time is the one thing we'll never get back in life, and so if you're looking and focusing your attention on something else, what are you losing at your core business? And I see a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people oh, I want to go do this and this. Again, we did it Not successful, but we did it. And so now, when I'm looking at things and where do I want to go next, it's where do I want to spend my time, knowing that if I spread myself too thin or too many things, I won't be as successful as I want to be. Chris: Yeah, that's great advice. I hope people are taking notes on that. So let's go back. You kind of left us a minute ago taking over the reins at FMG, right before COVID hits. Obviously, you have to manage through that in the healthcare space. Take us back to that time. What were some of the things that you learned, having to manage through such an uncertain period of time? Chantell: When I took over FMG there was a couple things that identified very quickly. Again, they were all running as independent facilities and there was no collaboration and really the culture there was no culture. You know, in my previous organization with Mentis and a lot of the companies I've been involved with, culture was huge. You know, you wanted people to want to be there and fortunately we were able to quickly build a culture that we felt and it was actually proven true through COVID that people wanted to be there. You know I was very visible in our facilities. I wanted people to know me, I wanted to hear what they had to say. As a new CEO coming in, you know, tell me how can we help you do your job more effectively? How can we help you be happier? You know, looking at things in a different perspective, other than you need to be here nine to five every day, do exactly what we want, right? You know, when COVID hit, the uncertainty of everything I mean we were. Some of my facilities were emergency rooms at the time, some of them were hospitals. You know we had limited staff, we had limited services. You know, when COVID hit it was really interesting because with the unknown of nobody really understanding the magnitude of what was happening. It was decisions on a day to day basis. Right, you know, everything was a crisis every single day. It was a very time for me, as a leader, to figure out how could I continue to hold on to this culture that we had built so we didn't lose staff, right? So, but also giving our staff the ability to take a break every once in a while, even though we didn't really have folks to fill in for them, in for them. So it was a time that we really had to bond together. And again, me being in our facilities during that time, even though I really couldn't do much to help, but at least showing my face, saying hey, I'm here with you and I'm standing beside you, especially on some of those hard decisions, I think made a big difference for our success. Chris: Yeah, you raised an interesting point there because first of all, I mean I it's been four years and maybe the memories start to fade but health care frontline workers, right, that was ground zero for the response. So I can only imagine the taxing environment for your employees. Most CEOs can be there shoulder to shoulder with their employees and maybe actually get in, you know, step in on the manufacturing line or pick up something and help out in the shop, and if you're not a licensed physician or a PA or a nurse, you can't right, you couldn't do the work, you could just be there to encourage them. Chantell: That had to be a challenge. You know you're right, because we just want to jump in and help and but there was a lot of things that what I could do and again you know, spirits high, helping clean, I mean there was, you know, again it wasn't above anybody. We had to kind of all throw hands in, all hands on deck, to help out in any aspect. And so we did what we could to try to motivate and try to help give people some breaks and give them the resources that they needed, and that was a big thing. That we did was just trying to get the resources that they needed, and so it was a trying time, but again we came across. You know, as a CEO, I wanted to be able to expand our service lines because we knew what was coming. And you know, after we got kind of settled in and we realized this was going to be a longer, a longer path than we thought, we converted all of our ERs into hospitals so we could provide additional service lines. So there was things that we could do on the strategic and on the management side where we weren't necessarily in the trenches, but yet it provided our staff some amazing resources that they needed. Chris: So you talked about culture and how important it is. It doesn't have to necessarily be at FMG, but just in your role as a leader. What are some of the things that you have done to try to build that positive, sounds like collegial team environment type of culture at the various organizations you've been? I mean, is it kind of the same playbook every time, or you know? If so, what is it? And if it's changed, how do you adapt? Funny question I'm just going to. I'll give you a quick story. You know? If so, what is it? And if it's changed? Chantell: how do you adapt? Funny question. I'm just going to give you a quick story. You know there's a lot of people that have been with me for the last 10, over 10 years, so they've seen me kind of develop as a better leader as I've gotten a little bit older. So in my old days, I have to tell you I was probably very authoritarian, very dictatorship it's my way, no way. And leadership, it's my way, no way. And then, as I've gotten a little bit older and through you know my role at FMG I realized I can't continue to lead like this. This is not how to get the most productivity out of my staff, and so I changed a lot in regards to how to build a culture. And so now you know people will tell you these are the four principles I use authenticity, I want to build trust and respect. You know again, you know I'm going to be very direct with individuals. I don't beat around the bush and I think anybody that knows me knows that. Collaboration I want people to have the ability to have a say. I want them to take ownership. You know used to as my way. You know we're going to do things my way. Now it's let talk about it Because, in today's world, I want my staff members they're there for a reason and that's to come together in a path or a process that everyone feels like is going to be beneficial to the organization. Now, it doesn't mean I won't give them my thoughts, but again, that collaboration and that belonging, I want them to feel like they're part of the team. Whether you and I both know, in an organization everyone's valuable and I want everyone to realize how valuable each member is and where they fit within that organization. Authenticity, trust, collaboration yeah, those are communication too, you know. Chris: Oh, for sure. Chantell: We used to be like we wouldn't tell anybody anything, you know, just say here's our goals, to go do them. Now we really talk about why you know and really have those hard conversations about this is you know the company. And when we went through COVID I know everybody's tired of hearing the COVID stories, but when we went through COVID, you know we would tell them hey, this is why we're doing this. And it wasn't just oh, they're causing us all these headaches. You know they're pushing stuff down. No, it was. We're doing it because of X, y and Z, and that made people appreciate it a little bit more, versus us just shoving things down. Chris: Yeah. Chantell: And so I think communication is a big one as well. Chris: Couldn't agree more. I mean, I think you know, at the end of the day, all those things sound really good and are important, but if you're not communicating effectively, it won't matter. That's right. So, something that occurred to me, I want you to talk a little bit about being innovative, because I know for sure at FMG, because I just know enough about the story that in the middle of all that y'all did some pretty innovative things that other competitors of yours weren't doing. That required some really quick on the fly decisions to get some innovative things going. So tell us about that. It helped the patients and it helped your facility. Chantell: Sure, you know, one of the perks of dealing with a smaller organization is we can make quick decisions. So when all of this was happening, you know we did have to get innovative in regards to how we were running tests, how we were treating the patients, what we were doing when we couldn't find patients higher level of care. So there was a lot of innovation that we did, you know, whether it was streamlining our processes, whether it was, you know, the equipment that we were bringing in to try to mitigate certain things. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that we did that if we weren't going through that time, we probably wouldn't have been forced to do so quickly, if that makes sense. And so there was some stuff that we tried to do in regards to you know, I'm trying to think of some specifics. A lot of it's around the labs and the testing side of making sure that our patients are being treated in-house versus having to send things out. I mean, we just tried to do everything we could to control our own destiny. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslik, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermiller.com, and thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Well, for example, I know one of the things you did was very quickly developed an app so patients could schedule an appointment that you didn't have before. Chantell: Yeah, that's correct. We tried to do some things so people would mitigate being around other, you know, possibly infected COVID people. So, yes, we did do some things to try to limit exposure during that time, just because, again, we didn't know what was going to happen long-term. Chris: So I guess one thing that people may not know about you that we want to talk about is, in addition to this professional you know journey you've described, you do a lot and have done and continue to do a lot where you advise other entrepreneurs. I want to ask you a little bit what are some of the kind of the key nuggets of advice that you tend to provide, and maybe what are some of the mistakes you see young entrepreneurs making that you try to correct before what still can be corrected, I guess Sure, it's kind of interesting. Chantell: The world has changed a lot in regards to entrepreneurship. You know, in our day it was just work your ass off. You know 24-7 and just try to climb the ladder. You know now, with some things that have happened, you know, with technology, sometimes they have this misperception that it's just going to be easy, it's going to be rainbows and unicorns all the time. It's not. There was many nights we'd sit at the bar going, holy shit, how are we going to make payroll? So I mean again, I think it's bringing that true realism back into their world of hey, you're not going to go get a CPT code for a device that doesn't exist in six months. It just doesn't work like that. And I think sometimes these young entrepreneurs are given almost bad counsel because they think that things are just so easy. Well, so-and-so did it, so I can do it. I see that a lot. I do get the opportunity to speak to some of the entrepreneurship classes up at UT and I do probably focus more on the negatives versus the positives, because I've always learned more from my failures and my successes. Some of the things of hey look, be focused. You know you don't have to have everything figured out, but have a pretty good path of where you're headed. You know, and surround yourself with the folks that are going to build you up, not break you down. You know, as an investor as well. I look at who's the team. If you've got a good jockey, I'm going to go ahead and support you. Having that right team in place is so critical and you want it to be more than just one individual. You know you want to make sure if they get hit by a bus, somebody else is right there ready to take the company. So I think that there's just little things that you know. I would probably give some insight to the entrepreneurs of you know, again, you're going to have good times and bad times. The bad times will come and go. But again, being willing to pivot If something's not working, don't wait too long to pivot or to reevaluate maybe certain aspects of the organization. Chris: Okay, so you brought it up, but I was going to. You said you learn more from your failures than successes, so tell us a story it's story time now, chantel a failure or setback that you've encountered, experience that you survived because you're sitting here today, and what that learning was and how it made you better. Chantell: So we talked a little bit earlier about how we got a little bit outside of our wheelhouse of oh, let's go do some different things, because we, you know, have been very successful at what we were doing. We were trying to purchase a hospital group out of bankruptcy. We thought, oh, how hard can this be? We can run organizations, we can run ASCs. Why can't we do this? It was a very eye-opening experience because when we got in there, we hadn't really had a path forward as to what we were going to do or how we were going to do it. It was just like, oh, we'll figure it out as we go. We also didn't think about other things that could come in and really impact us that we couldn't control. So we had purchased, we were in the process of purchasing this group, they were in bankruptcy, and then we had a flood. Well, we had just finished remodeling a hospital here in town. The flood came in. It flooded the hospital. At that point we were kind of at a place where there was not much more we could do. It was a horrible time to have to tell all those individuals that worked so hard with us that we were going to have to let them all go and you know lessons learned. You know there was positives in there because I remember the day we were getting ready to tell these poor individuals we were going to fire them the night before. You know we probably drank too much and you know it was a very emotional situation because I'd worked hand in hand with these individuals for so long. Chris: Sure. Chantell: And I remember having to tell them in tears I mean, you know, I know we're not supposed to be emotional, but these are these people's livelihoods. I was emotional, I you know I was not in a great place and I remember, after that happened, one of the the janitors came up to me and she said don't worry, chantel, we're going to be okay. But are you going to be okay? Chris: Oh, wow. Chantell: And I realized, you know, even through this failure, we had built such great relationships with these individuals and made them feel valued in so many ways that you know again, that's probably a really good example of learning myself of how important it is for relationships you know and building that trust as a leader. Chris: Well, to what to point you made just a minute ago. There is emotion in business. For sure, people try to carve it out and maybe for decades that's been the mentality, but it's ignored the reality that there's emotion in business and you're affecting people's lives when you are hiring them and when you're firing them. So you know people that lose sight of that are missing the boat, and I think how you manage the emotion in the business is one thing, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's not there. Chantell: No for sure, and you know, again, my old days I would have never showed, you know, a whole lot of emotion. I will tell you, though, being authentic with people just builds more trust. And look, some people say I'm very challenging to work with. You know, because I'm very specific, I'm very direct, but you know where you stand with me at all times, you know, and I had a situation last year where I had to let someone go, and it was. I mean, I really love this person as an individual, but this just wasn't the right place for them, and I tried very hard to mentor, to get him to that place, and I just couldn't, and it was very emotional to have to say, hey look, this is not, you know, the best place for you. The greatest return was six months later. They contacted me and said thank you so much. The best thing you ever did was have that conversation, and now I found a place where I love I'm being respected, and so, again, I think we all have emotion. It's as you mentioned, it's how you use it. It's okay for people to realize that you're human. I mean you know I'm human, I mean, and so I have emotions, and there's people I like and, again, you are impacting their lives and they're impacting yours. Chris: For sure, and I mean I have a number of stories similar to the one you just shared, where you run into an employment situation that's not working. You, knowing that it's not working, have to make a decision, expend a ton of emotional energy over it, worried about it. My experience has been, I think I can say, almost every time, despite that hard conversation, that person ends up in a better place because it's where they were meant to be. And we say this all the time. We're not trying to be the largest organization. We just want to be the best for those that fit with our mission and what we're passionate about and our values. And doesn't mean we're right for everybody and that doesn't make people a bad person. Chantell: That's right. Chris: There there's another organization where they're going to fit. Chantell: And and, and she did say to me she goes thank you, because I always knew where I stood with you and thank you for always being very direct. You know and that's the other thing people hide from those conversations. I'd rather have those conversations, you know, leading up to it. Look, here's the expectations. Let's talk about how you can get there, and I'm always happy to mentor and advise, but at some point you have to say, hey, look, this just isn't the right place. Chris: Right. Chantell: And so, and that's OK too. Chris: So let's talk a little bit about as you built these companies. You've had to have key stakeholders and relationships with them that are part of the success, that's vendors, customers. Let's talk about what are some of the things that you've learned that have helped to kind of build, nurture and grow those types of strategic relationships, if you will. Chantell: Sure, most of the people that I still work with, I've worked with for many years and I think you know I tell people all the time my integrity is the only thing that I really is mine in this world. My kids have everything else, but my integrity is mine. I think it's really being fair with people. You know I'm loyal to a fault, but I'm also again, I don't want to say high maintenance, but I have great expectations of people as well. And so if you look at a lot of the vendors, you know, again, they've been with me forever because I'm very loyal to them, I'm very fair, I'm very direct and they're good to me. Chris: Right. Chantell: You know, and I think as I've gotten older I had never realized the importance of relationships and how you have to be very intentional with giving and taking Right Right. But I also know with my vendors, they do a great job for me. I'm going to, I want to give them out to everybody else. I mean, I'm going to drive business their direction. And so I think that you know, with the stakeholders, a lot of people make a mistake of. You know everyone's got to win. You know that's just the reality. There's an abundance for everyone in life. You know, one of my best friends is a direct competitor of us. We laugh all the time. We can't be friends in public, but we can be friends behind closed door. But there's an abundance for everyone in life and so if you treat people like that and you're fair, I think you know you win, everyone wins. Chris: Everyone wins, and that's the thing I think finding the way where everyone can win, sure, and there's the value in kind of reciprocity, right, when someone does treat you well, that you obviously should treat them well in return. But have that be a lesson how you should be treating others that you're coming into contact with, right, absolutely, absolutely. So you mentioned this earlier because I like to talk about leadership style and you've kind of alluded to some of your evolution. Any more you can share kind of on how you view your style, how you feel like it's evolved and maybe some of the things that have helped you make those steps to kind of grow from the command and control to the more collaborative leader. Chantell: I think self-awareness, I think when we're younger, we think we're invincible and we do no wrong. I think self-awareness, I think when we're younger, we think we're invincible and we do no wrong. I think self-awareness has been critical for me, just for personal growth, right. So I also realized, you know, I wasn't getting the most out of the people and I realized that how I came in impacted everybody around me, if that makes sense. Chris: Sure. Chantell: So when I walk in and I'm closed off, everyone's going to scatter. If I walk in and I'm in a great mood and I say hello to everybody, your energy that you put out, you get back. And so I think, as I've gone through my career path, I've realized that, getting more and really I had a great partner, business partner, that he would talk to everyone. I wondered how he got anything done some days because he was just the most jovial guy that loved everyone and he would sit and listen to people for hours and I used to say I don't know how you do this. Isn't this driving you crazy? You know, I just I want, I don't want to know what time it is, I want to know, yeah, I want to know what time it is. I don't want to know how to build the clock. And I realized how much everyone respected him because he not only cared about them on the job, he cared about the whole person. Right, and people felt that. And I finally asked him one day. I said can you teach me how to be like that? Because I want people to realize I do care. I may not come across and show it, and so I that's how I kind of evolved, of taking that time and realizing ten minutes out of my day of sitting down and really focusing and being present with people, how much more they wanted to be there, how much more productive they were, and so it's really again being the leader that you have to establish boundaries. I'm not saying you, you know, let everybody circumvent their ladder, but having the ability to really show how much you care for those individuals and also what's going to put them in a position to be a better employee, right, right. And look, I went through a big thing with my team about working from home. Okay, I hate working from home, ok. Chris: I hate working from home. I'm just going to tell you that I like the collaboration. I like everyone in the office. You know that you're in good company. There was literally an article in the online Houston Business Journal this morning about that topic and how everything is swinging back to five days a week in the office. Chantell: That's right, and it was a big fight in my office about that and I finally said, okay, let's compromise, because I realized that some of them were driving an hour both ways, okay. So Mondays and Fridays we have home days. Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, we're all in the office. So again, I met them where they wanted to be and how could they be most effective. And I realized, having that time at home, where they didn't have 5,000 people walking in their offices every day, they were more productive. And so again it's you know. You know you asked me a specific question about how I've changed. I mean, I've really come, you know, 180 in regards to who I was many years ago versus how I am now. Chris: Well, and what I hear you saying is there was an evolution and development in your leadership style that started to focus on and demonstrate humility and empathy, absolutely, you know, going back to kind of the work remote thing. I think those things, what you've got going on, can be successful because you have to start with why are we here? It's the why around the company, and we have to all agree that the company has to survive in order for any of us to have any benefits. That's right, right and so what's that going to take? And then where can there be some compromise around? You can't sacrifice productivity and you can't sacrifice delivery of services or you won't have the business. Right and right. It's really to me, getting clear around that, communicating, that we talk about communication with clarity and really everyone understanding the why absolutely, and I'll just we'll talk about the elephant in the room also being female, I mean. Chantell: So in my younger days I thought in order for me to gain respect, I had to be that authoritative bitch. You know. Basically Because that's what society told me, you know in order for me to be able to play in a man's world, I had to really be that person. You know, as my career, and I got to a point where I didn't need anybody's approval or permission. You know, I realized, got to a point where I didn't need anybody's approval or permission I realized, wait a minute, I can be my authentic self. I can be compassionate, I can be empathetic and I can still be a damn good leader at the same time. Chris: That had to be liberating. Chantell: It was very liberating, and I try to instill this with a lot of the women that I talk to now. It's okay to be who we are. Let's use our innate qualities that make us such great individuals in our professional lives. You know, and I mean again, people say I'm aggressive. That's okay, I'll take it and I can be, but it enables me to also utilize what I need to build the culture and the team that I want, and so I think that's also been, you know, the last 30 years. It's also changed a lot, you know, as a society, but that's also breaking the societal norms of, oh, I have to be a certain way in order to be a good leader. I don't think that's true anymore. Chris: I agree with you Again. I think there's been an evolution in how we think about business, corporate America, whatever. And again I go back to as long as we realize that there are certain fundamentals that, no matter what is going on, we have to do for the business to survive. Then we can look on the fringes and go okay, where can we make maybe some things a little more accommodating. Chantell: Exactly so. Chris: I like to talk about those a little bit. So what are some of the strategies that you've employed to kind of and you mentioned being a mom, being a leader, being an entrepreneur to help, not necessarily balance, but be successful in both your business and personal life? Chantell: Great question. Here's my theory behind that. There's no such thing as balance. Chris: That's why I didn't use the word. Chantell: I call it work-life integration. I can't say I've figured it all out, chris. I'll just be honest and I think it's being very intentional with your time. I used to let a lot of people control my time, meaning, you know, I was always willing to meet whenever they were available. I was willing to move around things because it was important to them. I've now really been intentional about taking control back of my own time, and that's time for myself in the mornings, that's time for my kids, but that's time for work too, and so I think we all have to establish boundaries. Because I used to work 24 seven. I'd be at dinner. I mean, my five-year-old used to say mom, please put the phone down, and I would thought I was that important that I had to respond to that email, right. That second, because that's how important I was. It's not true, and I think that really establishing you know we also try to get through our entire things to do list every day what are the top three priorities I really need to get done today? Okay, let's focus on those. First, because we all know once everybody starts coming to the office, you're going to get blindsided 5,000 different ways. So really prioritizing maybe three items that I need to get done that day and then all the rest of it's great if I do, but if I don't, it's okay to walk out of there at 4.30 to go to my kids' game, right. And so I'm really trying to be intentional with my time. I'm not going to say I'm successful all the time. Chris: You know, but I've really tried with that. You have to keep in mind no one's perfect right, but I think, if you have, those intentions, that thoughtfulness about how you're going to approach your day, and I totally agree with the work-life integration. I think that's a much better way to think about it than balance, I mean. Chantell: I've learned you can have it all. You just can't have it all at the same time. So, everything in life is about a give and take. It's about you know you're sacrificing something for something else. And so it's again where are you in your life, what's important to you? I mean, I waited late in life to have children, you know, and now I'm going to enjoy my kids. So again, doesn't mean I'm sacrificing my professional, but I do amazing conversation. Chris: I really appreciate it. I want to kind of turn to some less business topics that I like to cover with all my guests. So what was your first job? Chantell: My first job. I worked at Mount Asia when I was in high school. I loved scooping ice cream and I loved hosting birthday parties for small kids. Chris: Okay, so that was it. I was going to ask what Mount Asia was. It's that golf off I-10. Chantell: So yes, that was it. I was going to ask what Mountasia was. It's that golf off I-10. Chris: So, yes, that was my first job. I love it. Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Chantell: Tex-Mex, of course. Chris: All right. And if you could take a sabbatical for 30 days, where would you go? What would you do? Chantell: Oh gosh, A sabbatical for 30 days. Chris: Does that exist I? Chantell: don't know. I think I would really just like to travel the world. You know, I spent so much time working I would never take more than two days off at a time. I never got to see a lot of the world, and so I think it would probably just grab my kids and just embrace a great trip with my family. Chris: That sounds great. Yeah, pick a spot and go enjoy it Absolutely. Very good. Well, again, this has been great. Thank you for taking the time to share your story Lots. Special Guest: Chantell Preston.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I chat with Mike Snavely, CEO of Phunware. Mike details Phunware's evolution from a mobile development agency into a thriving SaaS company delivering high-ROI apps to hotels and healthcare providers. Hear how shifting culture from rigid control to empowering autonomous teams with accountability revived success. Key strategic maneuvers included trimming the workforce judiciously and securing capital patiently. Timely decisions breathe new life into businesses' surfaces repeatedly. We delve into crafting a trusting, candid culture. Difficult conversations are promptly addressed and failures learned foster innovation and resilience. I share that I founded such an environment at a former startup. Mike's unique hobby of creatively mapping dream destinations blends work wisdom with life's pleasures, crafting an episode uplifting attendees' strategies and spirits. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Mike Snavely explains the evolution of Phunware from a mobile solution development agency to a SaaS company that specializes in customized mobile apps for hotels and healthcare institutions. We discuss the strategic decisions and cultural shifts necessary during the transition to new leadership at Phunware, including capital injection and reshaping the balance sheet for growth. Mike highlights the move from a command-and-control culture to one that champions autonomy and accountability, emphasizing the importance of empowering team leaders. We explore the significance of building a leadership team grounded in trust, accountability, autonomy, and candor, and how these principles contribute to a positive organizational culture. Mike shares his personal career journey, detailing his long-standing experience in mobile technology and his eventual rise to the CEO position at Phunware. We examine how Phunware fosters a culture of appreciation and collaboration through a Slack channel called Momentum, which recognizes and celebrates employee contributions. Mike talks about balancing professional obligations with personal passions, including the importance of prioritizing family and maintaining a positive trajectory in both areas. We discuss the importance of in-person engagement for building and maintaining key relationships with stakeholders, despite the trend toward virtual interactions. Mike reflects on past experiences and learnings, including the value of having prompt and honest conversations to avoid delays in decision-making and mitigate potential failures. We delve into Mike's hobby of pinning dream travel destinations on Google Maps and how this practice turns travel planning into an immersive and memorable adventure. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Phunware GUESTS Mike SnavelyAbout Mike TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In today's episode, you will meet Mike Snavely, ceo of Funware. In building and maintaining key relationships with your stakeholders, mike shares his opinions on why there is no substitute for being in person to engage on a human level. Mike, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business and thank you for taking time to come on the show with me. Glad to be here. Thanks for the invitation. So, as the CEO of Funware, let's start by just orienting the listeners to what is Funware and tell us what the company's known for. Mike: Sure so. Funware is a 15-year-old publicly traded company based in Austin, Texas. We build mobile experiences that help hotels and healthcare institutions engage their guests and patients while they're on premises in ways that drive satisfaction and monetization. Chris: Very interesting. So you said the company started I guess in the early 2000s. Mike: Then it would have been in 2009. The company started. It was private for the first 11 or so years of its existence and then we went public via SPAC transaction in 2000. I believe it was 20. Chris: Okay, and it sounds like a fairly niched focus for the company. How did it come to be that the company, I guess, was so focused on kind of those two industries and providing that type of, I guess, service to those customers? Mike: Well, originally it wasn't. So over 15 years, you might imagine, there's been an evolution in the focus of the company, and so the company in 2009 was really more of a mobile solution development agency. So some of the biggest brands you know in the world really selected Funware back in the timeframe to build some of their first mobile apps in the app store. So companies like Fox, the NFL, the Sochi Olympics, wwe, a number of airports and so on were spending a lot of money to build their first mobile application and then to develop their first mobile audience. For lots of reasons and that was two years after the iPhone was introduced. It was actually before the iPad was introduced and so obviously there's a lot of evolution of consumer expectations when it comes to engaging on mobile, and those brands were spending a lot of money in the early comes to engaging on mobile, and those brands were spending a lot of money in the early days to build their first mobile presences. That's evolved over time, and so agencies are really not, they really don't drive the valuation that a SaaS company does, and so we've, over time, evolved into becoming a SaaS company. So we license our technologies. We'll essentially build an app, configuring it for the customer, launch it into the app store and then generate license fees off that app for as long as it exists and is available for download. That's a much better valuation model because typically when our customers get involved with us they stick around. Our retention rate is very high because we drive a positive ROI. So we've kind of followed the evolution of mobile from really high investment work for hire, boutique agency-like development all the way through today where we charge between 50 and $150,000 a year for a given property, whether it's a hotel or a hospital, to have their own mobile app in the app store, to have their own brand in front of their users or guests and then ultimately to develop that one-on-one relationship with that guest or patient in a way that drives repeat business and satisfaction and additional monetization. Chris: That's fascinating. Now you mentioned retention rate. What do you which obviously is very important for success of a company, especially like yours what do you attribute that successful retention rate to? Mike: Well, we do good work and I can make available to you a list and you could even put it in the podcast if you'd like of the apps that we build, or some of the apps that we build. They're beautiful apps. So, number one, we do really high-quality work that all of our customers are proud to have their name on. And then, number two, we drive ROI, plain and simple. For a dollar they put into our solutions, they get between $5 and $50 back, depending on who they are and the specifics of their business. And you know, if I could give you a machine that would, you put a dollar bill in, you get a five or a 50 back out. You would say how many dollar bills can I put in there? Chris: Yeah, no, no, kidding, right Well. I mean, but fundamentally, you mentioned at least you know two fundamental things that is key to customer retention. That's one provide good service. If you're in the service industry, it starts with providing good service and I think an outcome of that is your customer sees a valuable return on the investment for your service. Those are not unique to software but for any kind of service type business right, exactly, that's right. Let's talk a little bit about your. So you're the CEO. The company was founded by others than yourself. How did you come, I guess, to work at Funware and I know just a little bit that you've had this is like your second stint there but give us a little background on your connection to the company and how it was you became the CEO. Mike: Yeah, sure enough. So I've really made a career of pursuing technology trends. So I'm kind of an old guy so I've been in business for a long time. But I started off in offline marketing technologies, sending out snail mail and running telephone centers. Then I evolved into social marketing with a startup in Austin, texas. I then got into mobile and I've been in mobile really kind of on and off ever since. Mobile's a big deal because you've got a device that knows who you are and knows where you are, you tell it all your secrets. It really is an indispensable. It's become an indispensable tool. And so I've really made kind of a career over the last shoot 15 years at this point in mobile. And so I was originally with my first stint in mobile was with a little mobile application development boutique in Austin called Mutual Mobile. That was 2008, 9, 10, 11 timeframe Did something else and then I was recruited to come to Funware by somebody who had worked for me at Mutual Mobile and I said look, we're building out this platform company. We're very interested in having somebody who can really help to drive revenues. Would you be interested in joining? So that in 14, I joined Funware for the first time and I came to run the software business. So I was responsible for all revenues for the software business of Funware from 14 through 16 or so, got to know the company, got to really understand the technologies Actually, a number of the people who were there then are still with the company. Then I went off, worked at a Silicon Valley startup and did a couple of other things, couple of other things. And then, when the founding CEO left in 23, they hired a guy that I had worked with at Mutual Mobile back in the day as the new CEO and he said look, mike, I know that you're great at building businesses on the revenue side. Would you like to come and be my CRO, as I'm CEO of Funware? And he said I'll make it worth your while. So I said no a couple of times and then eventually I said yes. Well, this was September of last year that I rejoined the company and 30 days in the board said look, you know, what we really need is somebody with sales DNA at CEO. Let's try that again. Easy for me to say CEO role. So, mike, would you like to step in as CEO? So I actually I had a buddy who brought me back to be a CRO and then wound up taking this job. We're still friends, we still talk all the time and he was very supportive of that move. But a long story short, I think that the company for a time kind of lost its way in the simple fact of selling, servicing accounts and driving revenues, and that's something I've had the good fortune to develop pretty good skill at, and so now I'm the CEO and I'm going to tell you I think the E in CEO stands for extra. Everything about it is extra, but it really is the best job I've ever had and I'm really enjoying it. I still spend a lot of time working with customers, selling, identifying strategic partnerships and that kind of thing, because I enjoy it, I feel like I'm good at it and it's absolutely critical to positioning the company for growth and valuation, which is exactly my job. Chris: There you go, so let's talk a little bit about that. What are some of the things that you do to build and maintain relationships with those partners, customers, strategic relationships that you think someone listening might learn? Mike: from. Well, it's funny, there's been a real trend away from in-person, and so you and I are meeting today on Zoom. Our business, funware, is essentially 100% virtual at this point, and what I find is there's no substitute for hopping on a plane and going to see somebody, breaking bread with them, getting to know them as a person, understanding what it is they're trying to accomplish, what their hopes and dreams are, what their fears are. Once you get to that point and really just kind of understanding them as a person, and then exposing yourself as a person and say, look, you know, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, mr and Ms, partner or prospect, and really kind of, you know, engaging on a human level, which you know is a whole lot easier for sitting across the desk from somebody, and that's that to me, is is where I spend a lot of my time. I do invest a lot of time in in person, you know, spending time with customers, prospects, partners and the rest of it, and I really just don't think there's much of a substitute for that. Chris: Couldn't agree more. I think that's how, really, until the pandemic, it's how business got done in person. I don't think anything's changed here. I think, especially these days, I think it says so much more that you take the time to do that when you could otherwise, yeah, do a Teams or Zoom call or whatever, and just the human interaction I mean. As humans, I think we're meant to be together, right and interact, and I think that just fosters the relationship. So great advice there. Keeping on that kind of theme you've come back in not in an easy economic time, so let's talk a little bit about managing through kind of some economic uncertain, rising interest rates and all the stuff that's out there in the news. Let's talk about kind of what are some of the things you've done to stay focused and keep your people focused on driving the business forward? Mike: Sure enough. Well, there are some benefits and some drawbacks to being a public and trading company. Of course One is access to the capital markets. That's a benefit, and we certainly have the ability to draw capital out of the markets in ways that don't require us to be as susceptible to excuse me, the interest rate environment, but that doesn't mean that our customers aren't susceptible to that environment. And so we've had to do some things. Selling into hospitality and healthcare, I mean, we're typically selling into pretty big organizations and they have a little bit of a buffer, I suppose, from the ebbs and flows of the economy, particularly when you look at luxury hospitality. I mean, COVID aside, luxury hospitality has really been on a growth tear because of the generation of a lot of wealth on the part of a lot of people and they're wanting to spend it on high-quality experiences. But that doesn't mean that we don't have to be creative from time to time when it comes to pricing a deal or generating terms that are acceptable to the customer. They can digest, they can maybe capitalize the expense as opposed to turning into an OPEX expense and that kind of thing, and certainly we've had to be creative there. When I first took on the CEO role. The company was having a little bit of financial trouble and you could read in our public filings all about it. But, long story short, we were having problems with access to capital and I had to work with my CFO and others you know capital partners to really inject some capital into the company from the market in ways that allowed us, you know, the ability to move forward without paying a lot of interest, frankly. So we were able to kind of reshape the balance sheet in a way that puts us in a great spot for growth today Smaller companies I can only imagine what it must be like if you're dealing with debt financing, distinct from capital financing, and what some of the challenges there must be. We had to make some hard decisions in connection with the recapitalization of the company that had to do with people, in large part because that's our number one expense and those are hard things to do, and I spent many a sleepless night, you know, because I had to do some of those things. But the fact of the matter is that most companies don't cut fast enough and they don't cut deep enough because of those reasons, and it feels terrible, but preserving the company and giving ourselves the ability to go forward and thrive is really kind of the job for the shareholders. Chris: Yeah, and yeah, I agree. I think, regardless of the size of the company, making those people decisions are extremely difficult because, again, we went back to in person and it's human and these people have been with you typically and but it's what they say, right, it is when you have to make the hard cuts, you have to cut muscle and those can be challenging decisions. On the flip side of that, sure, as you come into the CEO role, you are either have or still in the process of building your team. What are some of the things that you do? Processes maybe you've created to help you identify the right people to surround yourself with to further the mission and strategies of the company. Mike: Well, there are two non-delegable duties that the CEO has, in my belief. Number one it's setting the strategy of the company. So we're going to be a SaaS company serving these markets, we're going to drive toward these margins, we're going to deliver in this way, and these are the things that are important for the strategy of the business. Number two is the culture of the business, and so I can't hire somebody to give me a culture. I've got to work with the company to create the culture that we want, and so I'll give you a little bit of a story there. So I have a lot of respect for the fellows who founded the company, a lot of respect for them, because they built something that I now have the good fortune to run and take to the next level. But there was a lot of. They were literally army guys, and there was a lot of army DNA in the company. Now that there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing at all wrong with that, and the company was successful for a number of years, but and the culture that was built was one of command and control, because that's what the army is Right. Chris: Well, it's not. I'll just interrupt it. That's also not atypical of kind of startup mentality. Right, it's dominant kind of leadership. Got to get it done, got to get this off the ground. Mike: Yep, dominant leadership plus the military background equaled very much a command and control structure, a bit of a cult of personality around the founding CEO, and all of that, you know, paid great dividends. For a long time, I could not be any more different from the founding CEO. I'm not an army guy, you know. And so one of the first things I did when I took on the job is I said look, you know, you know if you're the vice president of sales or you're the vice president of, you know of product or delivery or deployments or whatever it is. You're the CEO of your own business and I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to give you an objective and I'm going to give you the flexibility and the support to go and achieve that objective. You need people. You get people. You need investment. You get investment. But your accountability is to go and run your portion of the business as if you were the CEO. I'm not going to micromanage the decisions at all. I'm going to empower you to do the right thing number one for the customer, because then that ultimately becomes the right thing for the company over many observations and so that was a transition that some people are still working through. Frankly, in leadership roles within the company. It's sometimes people get comfortable being told what to do and we just we don't do that anymore. And you know a couple of people have left as a result of that. They did not have that comfort and that's okay because it's not the right job for them anymore. But most people have really embraced the opportunity of agency and empowerment and the ability to kind of run their own part of the business. ADVERT Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, but clearly what you're talking about in my terms are giving people autonomy, but with accountability, which I think is the right way to go. However, organizations evolve over time, just like people. So I think we talk about command and control in the early days. That, for most companies, may make sense, but where this company is now and size and scale, you couldn't do that because there's too much going on and you have to then hire the right people, and the people that work for the company in the first few years may not work, you know, 10 years, 15 years later, because different skill sets needed, right, so it sounds like you've got your hands around that pretty well. Mike: Well, you know, it's always a work in progress, and so one of the one of the accelerants to adopting a new cultural tone is bringing in people, you know right. So I brought in a couple of guys and they are both guys, I'm afraid, who I had worked with a number of times in the past, who I knew kind of got the way that we wanted to run the railroad and who are are the kind of guys who just roll up their sleeves every day and make the most of the day. And, you know, those guys are not only in leadership roles within the company but they're also, you know, setting a tone for the others they work with most closely day to day, and I absolutely think it's working. Chris: That's great. So kind of sum that conversation up for us how would you define the culture of Funware today? Mike: I'd say that we're kind of a restart up, but with all the good elements of a startup, and what I mean by that is that we had a revenue profile that grew, grew and then it kind of dropped off. For some reason I wasn't here, and we're in the process of growing back up and we're getting in the right people who are interested in not only doing great work and serving the customers really well and building a terrific product, but also ones who are embracing the autonomy and the accountability that we're providing to them, and I couldn't be any more pleased with the reception that I'm getting. Chris: Anything special that you've kind of put in place to kind of help foster that type of culture so that you can perpetuate it and see it grow. Mike: Well, we tend to recognize the behaviors that we're looking for, and here's what I mean by that. So you know, somebody will just do a thing right and they'll do it. They'll achieve an accomplishment, whatever that accomplishment may be, and we'll talk. We've got a Slack channel. Slack is a tool we use all day long, every day, and we have a Slack channel called Momentum, and the Momentum channel is really about recognizing the contributions that a person makes, and the deal is that if you put something in Momentum, you've got to recognize somebody else. So you say, hey, a great thing happened, you got to recognize somebody else. So you say, hey, a great thing happened. And I want to thank Bob over here for his contribution to the thing, because Bob, you know, contributed in a way that if he hadn't done that, you know we might not have gotten the outcome that we're looking for. You know that that's something that you see traffic in every single day, that's great. Chris: We obviously I can relate to that we do something similar here at the firm Every single day. That's great, I can relate to that. We do something similar here at the firm, not necessarily on a specific channel, but it's kind of become part of our culture to. We call them core value kudos and it's about recognizing other people not yourself, obviously in efforts that they made and tying them to our mission and values, so that the behaviors and the values marry up right. And then people. It makes it tangible that I want to thank or, you know, congratulate someone for doing X, Y and Z which demonstrated this value in action. Mike: That's terrific. Yeah, I've been in companies that have done that. I think that's something that I may need to reincorporate into my bag of tricks there, for sure that have done that. I think that's something that I may need to reincorporate into my bag of tricks there for sure. Chris: So you know along those lines your software company. I always am interested to know what are you doing to kind of promote or foster creativity and innovation within the company? Mike: Well, some of the things that you know it's interesting, I'm going to I'll give you maybe a little bit longer answer you might be looking for, but there is, and it's really important to kind of separate the day-to-day from the long-term vision. And what I mean by that is that I'm, let's say, a developer and today I have to fix a bug, and I just have to fix the bug because the bug exists and it's in the way of something happening and it's not my favorite part of the job, I'm quite confident of that. Not my favorite part of the job, I'm quite confident of that. Not my favorite part of the job to fix a bug. But there is some long range stuff that I'm really excited about. A big part of what we do is indoor wayfinding and hyperlocal marketing offers, and there are lots and lots of innovations that we're looking at right now, and so we identify people who are interested in innovation. We put together both formal processes for them to say, okay, you're on the R&D team and you're going to be doing this work, but we also give them informal opportunities. Hey, look, I want you to go to Denver to our customer with Gaylord Rockies and I want you to actually go into the physical space that we're trying to map, and I want you to help me figure out a better way to do it. And so that's two things. It's number one, solving a strategic problem for the business, but it's also kind of getting them out of their, since we're all virtual, it's getting them out of their own office, sending them to Denver, take an extra day, engage the customer, do great work, but also enjoy yourself a little bit. So we try to give people an opportunity to get out of the context within which they're working sitting in my home office squashing bugs and get out into the real world where our solutions are deployed in ways that are not only sort of fun but also problem solving. Chris: So you've been in some leadership roles throughout your career, obviously CEO now. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think it's evolved over the last few years? Mike: Well, I try to work with people. I try to work as best I can. You can't always do that right, but you can absolutely make the investment of time to get to know them, and so I walk into this job. I've got a CFO that I just met very recently, and I had a chief legal officer that I met just recently, and I had a chief operating officer that I had known actually for some time and one of those guys wound up leaving that I had known actually for some time and you know, one of those guys wound up leaving. But you know the other two guys that I had just met. I made it a real point of going to where they were, sitting down with them breaking bread, understanding who they are, what they were trying to accomplish, why they were at the company in the first place and all the rest of it, because it was important for me to understand whether I could trust and whether it was appropriate to invest in these guys. Right and absolutely it was. By the way, I had a couple of gaps in my leadership team and what I did was find people that I'd worked with in the past and I said, look, are you willing to come and work for me again, and the answer in every case was absolutely so, and that's not because I'm the greatest guy in the world or because I gave him a zillion dollars or anything like that. It's because we have, over the years, established a working cadence that's founded on this idea of trust and accountability, autonomy of action and really candor of discussion. There's nothing that the leadership team and I don't discuss in detail and with candor. We're not afraid to tell our truths to each other. We've created what I think is a safe space for us to really talk about what's on our mind and what concerns or challenges we have, or if somebody is all wet, you know, and and that kind of. That kind of culture. The executive table, I think, filters down to the rest of the business in ways that help support the culture we're trying to build. Chris: Yeah, and I was gonna say it sounds like it's a culture of safety to have the hard conversations, but that those conversations are done in a respectful way. Mike: Yeah. Chris: I don't know if there's no better way to do it Right, and it's okay to fail. Mike: And I got to tell you, I used to race, I used to race cars a long time ago and you know, if you don't crash, you're not driving fast enough and so it's okay. It's okay to crash every once in a while because that means you're pushing the envelope, You're trying to get, you know, you're trying to get to the edge of the performance envelope and that's positive. Chris: Yeah, no, let's talk about that, cause I I there. There's always learning, and so I think there's. You know, when you have setbacks or failures, you can learn from them and it can make you better. Don't let it define you. So can you give us an example of more than not the car racing, because crashing is easy to understand as a failure, but in the business world, as a leader something that you felt a failure of yours, a bad decision, a setback that you absolutely grew from, and it's made you better today. Mike: Yeah, sure enough, I think that my greatest learnings are not being decisive enough and not acting quickly enough. And so you know, let's say, for example, I'll give you the example of last company I worked for before. Well, yes, I'll give you that example. So I was working at an AI video startup in Madison, Wisconsin. It was essentially a unit of a publicly traded company that I won't name, but your viewers can certainly look it up. And, long story short, that company is now bankrupt and I don't fault any of the. I don't fault the CEO of that company, which was not me, by the way, in that, but I fault myself. Yeah, exactly, it wasn't me. I didn't bankrupt the company. This was a guy I had worked with before were pretty small, and so what I said was I need this much to make this happen. I was given about half that much and I didn't adequately reset the expectations on how long it was going to take to get that thing done, slash. I should have had probably more pointed discussion about is this worth doing at all, and I didn't do that. And the long story short is that company is now bankrupt for lots of reasons, but the thing that I that my not being as aggressive as I felt like I should have been was a contributor to that. I think it was a small contributor, but you know all that to say that it didn't help. Chris: And so I kind of trace it. I would say the learning for you is kind of having the hard conversations faster right and that's the kind of culture that's terrifically important for me. Mike: So that informs the culture I'm building at Funware, which is like, if this ain't going to work, I just need you to tell me, and I might disagree and I might argue with you, but I will absolutely hear you. I might argue with you, but I will absolutely hear you. It's going to be super important for us to just trust each other enough to be able to have the discussion about you know, without fear. I guess is where I'm coming from. Chris: I understand that, so let's talk a little bit about you know these are important jobs that you've held over the last few years, and as is the current one. I don't like using the term work-life balance, but how do you? Manage work and personal life to try to keep them both going in a positive direction. Mike: Well, I spend a lot of time with my kids. I really, yeah, my daughter. So I'm here in Ohio, I'm spending time with my father and mother, but my daughter came along, my older daughter came along, she's out of school already. I'm going to go next week pick up my younger daughter in boarding school in Colorado, drive her down to Big Bend, where she has never been, and then, you know, spend time with her over the summer. So I mean, it's really about being deliberate about that and working from anywhere, candidly, in my opinion, helps. There's no expectation. I'm going to the office, I'm going to be there during the business day on Monday through Friday, and what I kind of joke is that I mean, I work a lot, no question about it, but I work around my life as opposed to work, as opposed to planning my life around my work, to planning my life around my work. So I might work, you know, 60 hours a week, but that's not going to be five times 12. That's going to be, you know, kind of eight-ish times seven. I'll work every day a little bit, but I'm certainly going to put my kids first and that's just the way it is. Chris: Well, I can identify with that. I think everyone has to find their own way and each job and role requires different things. In different stages of life require different things. So I think that's what people you know should stay focused on, individually as well as the companies to try to make sure you have good people. You don't want to lose them for those types of reasons. People you don't want to lose them for those types of reasons. Yeah, so, mike, this has been a great conversation. Before we wrap up, I just want to kind of get a little bit more less or a little less serious about things. Tell us what was your first job as a kid? Mike: It'd be funny, you should ask. So I'm back in rural Ohio where I grew up. Right now, at my parents' house, as I mentioned earlier, my first job was was am I allowed to say shit on your podcast? Of course, the texas my first, my first job was shoveling hog shit. Chris: Shoveling hog shit for minimum wage and I was nothing that wants to make you go to college and get a degree than that right. Mike: well, the funny thing is that I wound up raising hogs to pay for college. So it was fine to shovel the hog shit, but I was like, if I was fine to shovel the hog shit, but I was like, if I'm going to shovel the hog shit, I'm going to do it for more than $3.35 an hour. I'm going to do it in exchange for a college education. So that's not exactly that way, but that's a big part of how I kind of got off the farm and moving ahead. Chris: I love that, okay, well, yeah, obviously, as we now know, you're from Ohio, but you spent enough time in Texas for me to ask you this question Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Mike: I love Tex-Mex. I would eat Tex-Mex every day of the week All right. And sometimes I do. I do love barbecue, but the thing is that the best barbecue is something I don't want to wait in line for and I don't want to drive a long ways. If I happen to be by La Barbecue or Franklin's a little bit over their great barbecue a little bit overhyped, or if I want a great barbecue, I'll just treat it as a destination thing. I'll go down to Lockhart or something like that, but I can get absolutely terrific Tex-Mex around the corner from my house every day of the week. Chris: Yes, it was one good thing. You know, I think we living in Texas both are abundant right. Mike: But you're right. Chris: The marquee barbecue, you know, is tucked away in some places. All right, so my last thing is if you could do a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do? Mike: Well, I got a bunch of customers who have really beautiful beach resorts so I might go to one of those. Chris: You might go break bread with them there. Mike: Break bread with the customers at the most beautiful resorts in the world. That would be one thing I might do. There are a lot of places around the world that I'd love to see, so I've got a Google Maps layer that has little flags. There are probably 800 flags on that map and I add some every week. Places that I like to go around the world. Sometimes they're restaurants that I read about. Sometimes they're beautiful. You know natural features, like you know mountain ranges, the Painted Mountains in the Andes, or you know beautiful lake I've never been to Crater Lake, things like that so what I'd probably do is find 30 days worth of those pins in an area that I can consume within that 30-day period and I'd just go knock it out. Chris: I love that. I like the concept of keeping track of the pins. Yep. Mike: And there's too many on the map that you know I'll be dead and gone before I get to see all of them. But you know, it is kind of a it's a memory bank for things that have caught my interest and that I do want to experience at some point, if I can pull it off. Chris: Love it. Love it Well, mike, thanks so much for taking the time to be a guest on the show. Really enjoyed hearing your story, and the things y'all are doing at Funware sound really fun, exciting and innovative. Mike: Thanks a lot. Special Guest: Mike Snavely.

Anthony Diana and Samantha Walsh are joined by Lighthouse's Chris Baird as part of our series on what legal teams need to know about Microsoft 365 AI-driven productivity tool, Copilot. This episode presents an overview of the risks relating to Copilot's access to and use of privileged and sensitive data and how businesses can mitigate these risks, including using Microsoft 365's access control tools and user training.  In particular, the episode provides in-depth information about Microsoft 365's sensitivity labels and how they can be used to refine a business's approach to managing risk associated with privileged and sensitive data stored in Microsoft 365. ----more---- Transcript: Intro: Hello, and welcome to Tech Law Talks, a podcast brought to you by Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies Group. In each episode of this podcast, we will discuss cutting edge issues on technology, data, and the law. We will provide practical observations on a wide variety of technology and data topics to give you quick and actionable tips to address the issues you are dealing with every day.  Anthony: Hello, this is Anthony Diana, a partner here in Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies group, and welcome to Tech Law Talks and our podcast series on AI for legal departments with a focus on managing legal and regulatory risks with Microsoft Copilot that Reed Smith is presenting with Lighthouse. With me today are Sam Walsh from Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies Group and Chris Baird from Lighthouse. Welcome, guys. Just to level set, Copilot is sort of the AI tool that Microsoft has launched relatively recently to improve productivity within the Microsoft environment. There are a number of risks that we went through in a previous podcast that you have to consider, particularly legal departments, when you're launching Copilot within your organization. And let me just start to level set with Chris, if you could give a little bit of a technical background on how Copilot works.  Chris: Absolutely, Anthony. So thanks Thanks for having me. So I guess a couple of key points, because as we go through this conversation, things are going to come up around how Copilot is used. And you touched on it there. The key objective is to increase, improve data quality, increase productivity. So we want really good data in, want to maximize the data that we've got at our disposal and make the most of that data, make it available to Copilot. But we want to do so in a way that we're not oversharing data. We're not getting bad legacy data in, you know, stale data. And we're not getting data from departments that maybe we shouldn't have pulled it in, right? So that's one of the key things. We all know what Copilot does. In terms of its architecture, so think about it. You're in your Canvas, whatever your favorite Canvas is. It's Microsoft Word, it's Teams, it's PowerPoint. You're going to ask Copilot to give you some information to help you with a task, right? And the first piece of the architecture is you're going to make that request. Copilot's going to send a request into your Microsoft 365 tenant. Where is your data? It's going to use APIs. It's going to hit the Graph API. There's a whole semantic layer around that. And it's going to say, hey, I've got this guy, Chris. He wants to get access to this data. He's asking me this question. Have you got his data? And the first thing, really, there's this important term Microsoft use. They call it grounding. When you make your request into Copilot, whatever you request, you're going to get data back that's grounded to you. So you're not going to get data back from an open AI model, from Bing AI. You're only going to get data that's available to you. The issue with that is if you've got access to data you didn't know you had, you know, through poor governance. Maybe somebody shared a link with you two years ago. That data is going to be available to you as well. But what's going to happen, a few clever things happen from an architecture perspective. The graph gives a response. It says, hey, I've got Chris's data. It looks like this. That's going to go into the large language model. That's going to make it look beautiful and pass you all that data back in a way you can understand it. There's a final check that Copilot does at that point. It goes back to the graph and it says, I've got this response. I need to give it to the user. user, are there any compliance actions I need to perform on this response before I give it? And I think that's what we're going to focus on a lot today, Anthony, right? But the important thing is thinking about that grounding. And the one message I want to give to people listening is really, you know, don't be immediately scared and worried of Copilot. It respects a lot of the controls that are in there already. The challenge is if you have poor access control and governance, there are things that you need to work on.  Anthony: Yeah. And I think that's one of the challenges. I think a lot of legal departments don't know what access controls and what controls that the IT department has put in place into M365. And I think that's one of the things that you have to understand, right? I think that's one of the things we'll be talking about today is the importance of that. out. So Sam, just talking about what we're our focus today, which is on the risks associated with privileged information, highly confidential information, sensitive information. So can you just give a just a brief description of what those risks are?  Samantha: Sure. So I think one of the risks Chris just alluded to that Copilot is going to have access to information that you have access to, whether you know it or not. And so if you have privileged information that is sort of protected by just being in a spot maybe where people don't know it's there, but it's not necessarily controlled in terms of access, that could be coming up when people are using Copilot. I think another thing is Copilot returning information to people, you lose a bit of context for the information. And when you're talking about privilege and other types of sensitivity, sometimes you need some clues to alert you to the privilege or to the sensitive nature of the information. And if you're just getting a document sort of from the ether, and you don't know, you know, where it came from, and who put it there, you know, you're obscuring that sort of sensitive nature of the document potentially.  Anthony: Yeah. And then I guess the fear there is that you don't realize that it's privileged or highly confidential and you start sharing it, which causes all kinds of issues. And I think just generally for everyone is the regulators. And I think both on the privacy side, where there's a lot of concern about where you're using AI against personal information or highly sensitive personal information, as well as the SEC, which is very focused on material, not public information and how you're using AI against it. I think one of the things that people are going to be asking, the regulators are going to be saying, what controls do you have in place to make sure that it's not being used inappropriately? So again, I think that sets the groundwork for why we think this is important and you start setting things up. So one of the first things you do, let's talk about how you can manage the risk. I think one of the things you can do, right, which is pretty simple, is training, right? Like the users have to know how to do it. So Sam, what should they be thinking about in terms of training for this?  Samantha: I think you can sort of train users both on the inputs and maybe on what they're doing with the outputs from Copilot. I think there are certainly ways to prompt Copilot that maybe would reduce the risk that you're going to get just this information flooding in from parts unknown. known. And I think having clear rules about vetting of co-pilot responses or limitations on sort of just indiscriminately sharing co-pilot responses, you know, these are all kinds of things that you can train users in to try to sort of mitigate some of the data risk.  Anthony: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think we're also seeing people just so in doing this and launching it, having user agreements that sort of say the same thing, right? What are the key risks? The user agreement says, make sure you're aware of these risks, including the risks that we've been talking about with sensitive information and how to use it. Okay, so now let's switch to more sort of from a technical perspective, some things you can do within the M365 environment to sort of protect this highly confidential information or sensitive information. Information so let's start with Chris sort of this concept of which i know is in there when you have a SharePoint online site or a team site that has a SharePoint online site i think one of the one of the things you can do is basically exclude those sites from co-pilot so if you give us a little a brief description of what that means and then a little bit about the pros and cons.  Chris: Yeah of course Anthony so that that control by the way that's that's nothing new. So for anybody that's administered SharePoint, you've always had the ability to control whether a site appears in search results or not. So it is that control, right? It's excluding sites from being available via search and via Copilot. You would do that at the SharePoint site level. So, you know, Microsoft makes that available. There's a couple of other controls, maybe one I'll mention in a second as well. These are kind of, I don't want to call it knee-jerk reaction, I guess I just did, but it's what are the quick things you can do if you want to get access to Copilot quickly and you're worried about some really sensitive information. And it is a knee-jerk, right? It's a sledgehammer to crack a door. You're going to turn off entire access to that whole site. But in reality, that site may have some real gems of data in that you want it to make accessible to Copilot. And you're going to miss that. The other quick win that's similar to that one, there's a product called Double Key Encryption. A lot of the products I'm going to talk about today are part of the Microsoft Purview stack. And as part of MIP, which is Microsoft Information Protection, we're definitely going to cover that, Anthony, shortly about labels. One thing you can do with the label is you can apply something called Double Key Encryption. And you would use your own encryption key. And that means Microsoft cannot see your data. So if you know you've got pockets of data that are really secret, really sensitive, but you want to activate Copilot quickly, you've got these options. You can disable a site from being available at search level. That's option one. The other option is at a data level. You can label it all as secret. That data is not going to be accessible at all to Copilot. But like I say, these are kind of really quick things that you can do that don't really fix the problem in the long term. don't help you get the best out of Copilot. The reason you're investing in Copilot is to get access to good quality data and hiding that data is a problem.  Anthony: Yeah. And I think one of the things that, and Microsoft has basically said, even though it's available, they've been pretty open about saying, this is not the way you should be managing the risks that we're talking about here. Because you do lose some functionality in that SharePoint site if you take it out of search. So it's an option if you're rushing. And that's basically why they said, If you frankly aren't comfortable and you haven't have all the controls in place and you really have certain data that you want excluded, it's an option. But I think, as you said, it's a sort of a knee-jerk short-term option if you really have to launch, but it's not a long-term solution. So, now let's focus a little bit on what they think is the right way to do it, which is, and first let's talk about the site level. I think you talked a little bit about this, is putting in this concept of a sensitivity label on a site. Now, before you do that, which we could talk about, is first you have to identify the site. So, Chris, why don't you talk a little bit about that, and then let's talk a little bit about the technical.  Chris: No, absolutely. So a couple of terminology things. When I talk about data classification, I'm talking about something different to applying a label. When I often say to a lot of my clients, data classification, they think, oh, that's confidential, highly confidential secret. What I mean when I talk about data classification is what is the data in its business context? What does it mean to the organization? Let's understand who the data owner is, what the risk of that data is if it falls into the wrong hands. What are the obligations around processing and handling and storing that data? How do we lifecycle it? So simple things would be, really simple things would be social security numbers, names, addresses, right? We're identifying data types. We can then build that up. We can move on from those simple things and we can do some really clever things to identify documents by their overall type, their shape, their structure. We can use machine learning models to train, to look for specific documents, case files, legal files, customer files, client files, right? We can train these machine learning classifiers. But the great thing is if you get a good handle on your classification, you will be able to discover and understand your data risk across your enterprise. So you'll see there are tools within Microsoft 365 Purview, Content Explorer, data classification. These tools will give you insights into SharePoint sites that you have in your organization that have high amounts of social security numbers, high amounts of case files, legal affairs documents, right? It's going to come back and tell you, these are the sites that have this type of information. And you can do that analysis. You don't have to go out and say, guys, you've got to put your hand up and tell us if you've got a SharePoint site with this information. The administrators, the guys that are running Purview, they can do that discovery and reach out to the business and go and discuss that SharePoint site. But Anthony, what you're talking about there is once you've identified that SharePoint site, you know, if we know we've got a SharePoint site that contains specific case files that are highly confidential, we can apply a highly confidential label to that site. And the label does a number of things. It visually marks the file, right? And what I mean by that, at a file level from a metadata perspective, anybody interacting with that file electronically will receive a pop-up dialogue on a ribbon or a pop-up. It's going to be front and center to say this file is labeled as highly confidential. I've also got options, which I'm sure we've all done before in the day-to-day work. You can mark the document itself across. You can put a watermark across the document to say it's highly confidential. You can put headers and footers on. So the label isn't just this little concept, but it takes it a step further even more. And this is where it really, really works with Copilot is you can define custom permissions at a label level. So we can say for highly confidential labels, we might have a label for a particular case, a particular project. And if it is a case label, then we could give permissions to only the people involved in that case. So only those people can open that file and that means only those people can talk about that file to copilot you know if you're not in that case Anthony if you're not part of that case and me and Sam are and i use that label you're going to ask copilot to give you all the information it can about that case you're not going to get any information back because you don't have the permissions that's on that source file so that's that's one of the first things that we can do is we can take that label and apply it to a sharepoint site and that's going to apply a default label across all the documents that are in that site. What we're really talking about here, by the way, when we talk about labels, is we're trying to plug a hole in access control and governance. So think about SharePoint management and hygiene. The issue is SharePoint has just grown exponentially for many organizations. You know, there's organic growth, you've got SharePoint migrations, but then you have this explosion of use once you're on SharePoint online. There's going to be public sites. There's going to be SharePoint sites that are public, that are available to everybody in your organization. There'll be poor JML processes, join and move and leave processes, where people who move departments, their access isn't revoked from a SharePoint site. The issue with Copilot is if the site access control isn't strict, if it's open and the file doesn't have permissions on the file, Copilot is going to be able to see that file. If it's public, it's going to be able to see that file, right? So with the label, where that differs to the permissions is it puts the access controls on the files that are in that SharePoint site directly. So if you lift those files from that site, if it is a public site and I take those files, I put it in another SharePoint site or I put it on my laptop, it carries the access control with it. And that's what's really important. That means that wherever that file goes, it's going to be hidden from Copilot if I don't have that access. That's the important thing. So, you know, sensitivity labels are a huge part of ensuring compliance for co-pilot, probably the biggest first step organizations can take, And I think you touch on the first step quite nicely, Anthony. A lot of our clients say, well, we're scared of labeling everything in the organization, going out immediately, doing all that discovery, labeling everything, right? Maybe just knock off the top SharePoint sites, the ones that you know contain the most sensitive data. Start there. Start applying those labels there.  Anthony: Yeah, and Sam, we've talked with some clients about using their provisioning process or attestation process, process lifecycle management to start gathering this information because it's a big project, right? If you have thousands of sites, the concept of figuring out which ones have that. Obviously, Chris talked about, so the technical way you could do it, which would be fantastic because that obviously, but there are other ways of low-tech ways of doing this.  Samantha: Right. Just kind of relying on your human resources to maybe take a little bit more of a manual approach to speaking up about what kind of sensitive data they have and where they're putting it.  Anthony: Which they may be doing already, right? I think that's one of the things that you have to track is like they may, an organization, you know, a specific business line may know where their data is. They just haven't told, they haven't told IT to do something with it. So I think it's just getting that information, gathering it through, you know, whether it's the provisioning process, you could do an attestation or survey or whatever, just to start. And then as Chris said, once you have an idea of what the highly confidential information sites are, then you start doing the work. And again, I think it's applying the labels. One of the things that I think, just to emphasize, and I want to make sure people understand this, is in the sensitivity labels, it's not an all or nothing. At least what I've seen, Chris, is that for each sensitivity label, right, and you could have different types of highly confidential information. Maybe it's sensitive personal information, maybe a material non-public information. Whatever it is, privileged information, you can have different settings. So, for example, you can have it where the site is in essence like a read-only, right, where nobody can touch it, nobody can transfer the data, you can't copy it. That's the most extreme. But then you can have others where it's a little bit more permissive. And as you said, you can tailor it so it could be, you know, certain people have it, certain groups or security groups or whatever, how you want to play. But there is some flexibility there. And I think that's where the legal departments have to get, you know, really talk to the IT folks and really look and figure out what are the options for just not just applying the sensitivity label, but what restrictions do we want to have in place for this?  Chris: Anthony as well like you know you you're touching on the really important thing there and I'm going to go back to what Sam had talked about earlier with training as well about culture but I guess you know the the important thing is finding the balance right so with a sensitivity label you are able as an administrator as an IT administrator you can define the permissions for that label so like I say you could have a high level and by the way you can have sub labels as well so let's go with a common scheme that we see, public, internal, confidential, highly confidential. We've got four labels. Highly confidential could be a parent label. And when we click on that, we get a number of sub labels and we could have sub labels for cases. We could have sub labels for departments. And at an administrative level, each of those labels can carry its own predefined permission. So the administrator defines those permissions. And exactly as you say, Anthony, you know, one of the great things about it, it's not just who can access it, it's what can they do with it. Do not forward, block reply to all. You can block screen share screen copy all of those kind of things save and edit it can block all of those things where i say you need to find a balance is that's going to become onerous for the administrator if every time there's a case you're going back for a new label for each case and you're going to end up with thousands of labels right so what microsoft gives you is an option to allow the users to define the permissions themselves and this is where it really works well for copilot but before i talk about what that option is i want to go back to what Sam said and talking about the training. One of the important things for me is really fostering a culture of data protection across the organization, making people realize the risk around their data, having frequent training, make that training fun, make it interactive if you can. At Lighthouse, our training is, it's kind of a Netflix style. There's some great coffee shop things where it's fun. We get to watch these little clips. But if you make people want to protect their data, when they realize data is going to be available to co-pilot now, they'll be invested in it, right? They'll want to work with you. So then when you come to do the training, Sam, you need to say, right, we're not going to use the administrative defined labels. It's too much burden on the admin. We're going to publish this label for highly confidential that allows the users to define the permissions themselves. And that's going to pop up in Word. If you're in your favorite canvas, you're in Word, you click highly confidential, it's going to pop up and say, what permissions do you want to set on this file? If you haven't trained, if you haven't fostered that culture of information protection amongst the user community, people are going to hate it, right? People aren't going to like that. So it's so important to start to engage and discuss and train and coach and just develop that culture. But when it's developed, people love it. People want to define the permissions. They want to be prescriptive. They want to make sure that information cannot be copied and extracted and so on. And anything you do at that level, again, it protects that data from being read in by Copilot. That's bringing that back to the whole purpose of it.  Anthony: And I would just say, again, that this all goes about prioritization because people are like, I have 50,000 people in my organization. There's no way I'm going to train everybody. You don't. I mean, obviously some, but there's only certain people who should have access to certain of this information, right? So you may want to train your HR people because they have a lot of the personal sensitive information, the benefits folks or whatever, because you have to break it down because I think a lot of people get caught up into, I'm never going to have 50,000 people do this, but you don't. Everyone has different things that come across their desk based on the business process that you're working on. So again, it's just thinking logically about this and prioritizing because I think people think training and, oh my God, I'm relying on the user and this is going to be too much. I think to your point is if you do it in chunks and say, okay, here's a business line that we think is really high risk, just train them on that. And like you said, it's part of their job, right? HR is not going to have like compensation. They're not throwing that everywhere in the organization. They shouldn't be right. But if they do, they know they're sensitive about it. And now you're just giving a tool, right? We know you want to protect this. Here's the tool to do it. So again, I think this is really important. Before we end I know, Chris, I think you had one more thing that you want to add, which was on the monitor monitoring side, which I had not heard of, but could you just talk a little bit about that?  Chris: You know, this is sort of really key information that you can think of going up to your leaders in your organization to say, look, we've got a roadmap for co-pilot adoption. It's X many months or however long it's going to take, but now we can implement some quick wins that really give us visibility. So there's a product, there's two products. Many of the listeners will probably know the second product that I'm about to talk about, but the first one might be new. There's a product called Communication Compliance. It's part of the Microsoft E5 or E5 Compliance or IP and Governance Suite. It's in Purview. Technically speaking, it's a digital surveillance product that looks at communications through Teams and throughout Look and through Viva. But what Microsoft has introduced, and this is a stroke of genius, it really is, they've introduced co-pilot monitoring. So the prompt and the responses for co-pilot can now be monitored by communication compliance. And what that means is we can create simple policies that say, if personal information, client information, case information. Is passed through a prompt or a response in Copilot. Let us know about it. We can take it a step further. If we get the sensitivity labels in, we can use the sensitivity labels as the condition on the policy as well. So now if we start to see highly confidential information spilling over in a Copilot response, we can get an alert on that as well. And that I think is just for many of the listeners, it's a quick win. You can go, cause you're going to be your CIO or, or, you know, your VP is going to be saying, we need Copilot. We want to use Copilot. that your CISO and your IT guys are saying, slow down. You can go to the CISOs and say, we've got some controls, guys. It's okay. Now, the other tool, which a lot of the listeners will know about is eDiscovery Premium. What you can do with communication compliance once you're alerted is you can raise a case in eDiscovery Premium to say, go and investigate that particular alert. And what that means is we can use the eDiscovery tools to do a search, a collection. We can export and download. We can look at a forensic level. What information came back in the response? And if it was data spillage, if that data came from a repository that we thought was secure, specific to some case or legal information, and now it's in the hands of a public-facing team in the organization, you can use the tools. You can use eDiscovery through the Graph API to go and delete that data, that newly created data. So two real quick wins there to think about is deploying communication compliance with eDiscovery.  Anthony: That's fantastic. Well, thanks, everybody. This was really helpful. We're going to have additional podcasts. We'll probably talk about e-discovery and retention alike in our next one. But thank you, Chris and Sam. This was highly informative. And thanks to our listeners. Welcome back. We hope you keep listening to our podcast. Thanks.  Outro: Tech Law Talks is a Reed Smith production. Our producers are Ali McCardell and Shannon Ryan. For more information about Reed Smith's Emerging Technologies practice, please email techlawtalks@reedsmith.com. You can find our podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, reedsmith.com, and our social media accounts.  Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. All rights reserved. Transcript is auto-generated.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Amanda Hanks Bayles, the 100th president of the Junior League of Houston. Amanda shares her remarkable journey within this organization, which is dedicated to empowering women and bettering local communities. She reflects on 11 years of involvement, emphasizing the value of mentorship and smooth leadership transitions. Amanda provides keen insight into balancing leadership roles as a volunteer and professional. She discusses integrating volunteer experiences into her career at Plains All-American Pipeline and the support of employers. Wrapping up, Amanda offers practical advice on embracing change and maintaining balance. Through this insightful conversation, examples from her path illuminate strategies for cultivating leadership abilities with heart wherever one's journey may lead. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Amanda Hanks Bayles, as the 100th president of the Junior League of Houston, emphasizes the organization's commitment to promoting voluntarism and developing the leadership skills of women. We explore the structure of the Junior League of Houston, highlighting the executive committee and board of directors, as well as the 4,500 total members, including 1,400 active volunteers. Amanda discusses her 11-year journey within the Junior League, focusing on the importance of saying yes to opportunities and the value of annual leadership transitions for continuous personal development. We touch on the challenges of balancing leadership roles in volunteer organizations with professional careers, and the supportive role played by employers like Plains All-American. Amanda shares insights into leadership development, particularly the importance of owning mistakes and learning to communicate effectively within a large organization. The conversation includes how the Junior League's Leadership Institute Training Program and the Outside Board Representative Program prepare members for impactful roles on nonprofit boards. We discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Junior League, noting how virtual meetings have enhanced inclusivity and the organization's ability to address mental health issues in the community. Amanda offers practical advice for business leaders and aspiring entrepreneurs, emphasizing the need to embrace change and balance professional and personal commitments. The episode touches on Amanda's personal journey, from her first job to her educational path, and her love for Tex-Mex cuisine and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. Amanda's story serves as an inspiration for women leaders, showcasing the potential for growth through volunteerism and community service. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Junior League Of Houston GUESTS Amanda Hanks BaylesAbout Amanda TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Amanda Hanks-Bales, President of the Junior League of Houston. Amanda shares insights on how the Junior League works to build a better community by being grounded in gratitude. Okay, Amanda, welcome to Building Texas Business. I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. Amanda: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Chris: So you are currently, among other things, you're the 100th president of the Junior League of Houston, and so I want to kind of focus a little bit around that organization, tell us what the Junior League is and what it does. Amanda: Absolutely. The Junior League of Houston is a nonprofit organization. We are dedicated to promoting voluntarism through developing women and then unleashing our trained volunteers into the Houston community through effective action and leadership, and that's really our bread and butter. We focus on training generation after generation of outstanding women to then go out and tackle our community's greatest issues and hurdles, and we've done a great job at overcoming some of those things. Chris: When was the Junior League of Houston founded it? Amanda: was founded in 1925. So we are vastly approaching our centennial celebration, which we are very excited about and, in true Junior League form, we've been planning it for about five years. So we're ready to stop the planning process and to start executing. Chris: That's great. So what inspired you? To get involved in the beginning. Amanda: Yeah, I joined about 11 years ago. I really was just looking for a way to give back. I had a really great job and had some spare time and was trying to find what my passion projects would be with that spare time. And the Houston Junior League really gave me an opportunity to one meet a ton of women both in my relative age range and then other generations, and then it also really gave me a great introduction to the nonprofit landscape here in Houston, and so through my years of membership I've been introduced to. I think we partner with 32 community agencies that we send volunteers to, but we also award what we call our community assistance grants to, you know, 15-ish nonprofits every year, and it's a great introduction to all of the really incredible things that are happening here in Houston. Chris: That's great. So then you know, so you get involved as a member. 11 years ago, Then what was the inspiration? To kind of make the bigger commitment and get into leadership. Amanda: Yeah, that's. I wish I knew the specific event. You kind of just get called and asked to step up, and it's learning to say yes instead of no is probably what launched my trajectory in the Junior League of Houston. I'm going back through all of the roles I've had. I like to call the Junior League life on steroids, because we do an annual turnover, the junior league life on steroids because we do an annual turnover. So it's you get new co-workers every year, you get a new league boss every year and you can completely change what you're doing in a matter of months, and so it's just a really cool way to develop yourself and especially your leadership skills. Chris: Well, that sounds challenging in and of itself, that kind of annual turnover. So what, I guess? What has your experience been and what have you tried to do in your term as president to make that as smooth of transition over time for the benefit of the organization? Amanda: Yeah, well, we again, in true junior league form. We have lots of. We have a sheet of paper that we call our chronological and it is your job duties for whatever leadership role you take on, and those get updated annually and passed on. So there's definitely a process there for us to document. I like to say the best day on a league job is when you get your successor, because you're then not I no longer felt alone. It was then someone I could loop into something to then say like, hey, what do you think about this? Or I'm leaning towards us doing one event instead of two. Give me your thoughts and it's. It actually becomes a really great mentorship or friendship bond between your predecessors and successors, because I think we all remember feeling like, oh gee, what did I get myself into? And then having the women around us support us and prove that we can handle whatever role we take on. Chris: Very good. So how many in the leadership team then at the junior league? Amanda: So hard question. We have an executive committee that's comprised of about seven members total, including myself, and they oversee kind of each of our bigger areas within the league. And then our board of directors is 23 members strong. That includes some of the executive committee and as well as some other directors in charge of some other key areas that we do. But beyond that, you know, we have a head active role, which are the actives in a community placement or a tea room placement who are really working with our first year members and making sure they have a good year. And I honestly think in some ways I learned more as my time as a head active with that one-on-one interaction than I have in some of my higher level with finger quotation roles. So I would say we have close to 250 total leadership roles. Those obviously span the gamut of what type of leadership you're interested in. Chris: So you said 250, maybe total leadership. What's the total membership? Amanda: Total membership, we have about 4,500 members. Of those 4,500, we have about 1,400 who are active members, and those are the ladies who are signing up to volunteer at least 60 hours a year in our community or here at the Junior League of Houston. So the remainder of our membership are what we call our sustainer members of Houston. So the remainder of our membership are what we call our sustainer members and they are the women who have served their time as active members and choose to stay a part of our organization to continue to build the next generation. Chris: Yeah so that's a sizable organization by anybody's definition. Tell me a little bit about, I guess, what you have done in those senior leadership roles and as president to effectively lead the organization. What are some of the skills or things that you have learned along the way that you've implemented to make sure that everything is running smoothly and efficiently? Amanda: Geez, the list is long, so I would say Top two or three maybe. Back to the list of or the league being lifelong steroids. Moving up the ranks to get to president, I really got to work with some incredible women and pick what I liked about each of them that made them a fantastic leader, and so I really went into this year saying you know, so-and-so was a great motivator. She always knew how to start a meeting and make us feel valued, and so I really focused on expressing gratitude, because the other challenge with being a president of the Junior League of Houston is you are not. We have eliminated salaries, right, so everyone is there out of the goodness of their hearts, and trying to figure out how to motivate people when a paycheck is not in the equation is an interesting formula to come up with, and so I really have always focused on understanding people, what makes them tick, what drives them, and trying to individualize that on whichever leader or member I'm talking to, to get them to either create the results we're wanting in a fundraising event or, to, you know, make sure that they feel like they're supported in a way that can continue to help them feel like they can move up in the organization. Chris: So I think you kind of referenced something that's very important for any leader or an aspiring leader, and that is be aware of your surroundings and learn from others. Like you said, you kind of saw others and what they did. Like you said, you kind of saw others and what they did and you get to pick and choose what you think might work or might fit for you and mold yourself from a number of different sources, and I think any smart leader should be aware of that and should try to emulate that. Amanda: Absolutely, and that's been the true blessing of my time at the Junior League is having the annual turnover. I think it's our blessing, and our curse is the ability to work with so many women so quickly and to really use that chance to hone my own skills as to the type of leader I wanted to be. Chris: So you mentioned. It's a great segue because you said how you're not getting a paycheck, nor are any of the other members or leaders at the junior league, but you do have a day job where you do get a paycheck. Amanda: I do. Chris: Right, so you're an in-house lawyer at Plains All-American right, I am. So let's talk about first. There's a couple of things we can, I think, cover. But just how do you maintain that balance of making sure you're doing and meeting your commitments for All-American while also meeting your commitments to the Junior League? Amanda: Yes, and that is a huge balance to try to manage. Try to manage. I am very blessed to work at a place that, when I told them about this opportunity that was given to me at the Junior League, they immediately saw the experience I would receive and the skill set I would be able to develop and they saw immense value in that, and so for that I am immensely grateful to Plains for their support and my direct supervisors for understanding, like some days there are random days I need to take a vacation because I have a long list of junior league things to do, and they have accommodated that beyond my expectations. The balance I just I don't know, I don't like the phrase work-life balance because I think if it's important to you, you find a way to integrate it into your life. Chris: I couldn't agree more. Amanda: So there have been weeks that have been work-heavy and I've had to put Junior League on hold, and then there have been weeks that have been league-heavy and I've had to ask for grace at my office and my co-workers have all been very cooperative of it or supportive of it. So it's been a really great experience on all ends. Chris: Well, I think it was beneficial for you, but also wise of Plains All-American, to see the value in some skills that you could develop, that they maybe couldn't provide that same opportunity but would receive the benefit because you take what you learn in the leadership roles of junior league and apply them in your day job. Amanda: Right. Chris: And, I'm sure, in all aspects of your life. Amanda: Oh, yes, absolutely. But to your point, I have been for several years now intrinsically involved in managing, you know, close to $40 million budget for the junior league, and really not just administering it but having to be responsible and report out to various stakeholders about that budget, and that's something that that gate hasn't opened at my professional career yet. And so there's just been a really great way to supplement and enhance some of the skills that I know I will need at some point in the future at work, and then the Junior League has been a really great resource for that. Chris: Yeah, how has it translated into the rest of balancing or lessons you've learned? That kind of make you better in all aspects of your life. Amanda: Yeah, I will say I reached a point where a mentor of mine at the Junior League told me as soon as you realize that the job's a lot less about the to-do list and a lot more about the people, the better you'll do. And from that I realized that I was extending grace to a lot of people on my teams or volunteers I was talking with who were struggling, and you know the work-life balance we all try to find, and I realized that I wasn't necessarily extending the same grace to myself. And so I will say being having to act on all capacities for a year plus, both professionally and with the junior league, has been a masterclass in how to be graceful with yourself and be proud of what you're done, what you're doing and not focus on what you haven't done. Chris: That's a very astute observation and something that I think everyone could benefit from keeping in mind, because it doesn't come natural to us. Amanda: No, no, we're our worst critics, unfortunately. Chris: Now I also understand that Junior League, in addition to doing great work in the community, also, I guess, has some training available to your members to help them develop the skills to be in leadership positions and serve on boards. Tell us about that. Amanda: Yeah, we do. We have. We call it our Leadership Institute Training Program and it's a comprehensive program for our up-and-coming league leaders to introduce them to all the facets of the operations of the junior league and help them get better on board for future league experience. And then we have a program called our Outside Board Representative Program and those are agencies, nonprofits that we work with, where we place a junior league member as a non-voting member on their board, with where we place a Junior League member as a non-voting member on their board, and some are very well established nonprofits are up and coming. We have about 35 of them and the terms for our outside board representatives run from, I think, two to three years. And what's really great about that is we let the nonprofit tell us what they need. Do they need help with with governance? Do they want someone that you know was trained heavily in robert's rules of order? We will try to place a member there that can help them with that. And sometimes they say we need a lawyer, or sometimes they say we need someone who can help us with communications, and so it's a really cool. It's ended up being a really cool network of just nonprofits out in the Houston community that then all of our members come back and tell us about. And then we started having some meetings with the executive directors of all of those nonprofits and just to have the conversation of what's fundraising doing this year. How are you motivating your people, those types of conversations? So it's a really awesome way to get the junior league experience and kind of launch you into what I call the next phase of finding your passion and making a difference. ADVERT: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: That's great. So you know. Obviously you've developed along the way. I want to ask you about, and whether it's in your professional career, as you've grown and moved up the ranks, or at the junior league, think about some challenges or setbacks that you've encountered. Maybe a mistake, but did you overcame it and learn from it, and it made you a better leader today because of that. Amanda: Oh, I mean absolutely, and I think that's another thing. That's what's great about spending time. The time I've spent at the Junior League is it taught me how to handle a mistake right To own it right up front and say I think I screwed something up, I missed this, and then say here are my steps to fix it. And I think you have to live through that a couple times to realize you need to say and here's my plan to fix it. Chris: Right. Amanda: And then owning up to the mistake isn't quite as bad as you think it will be. So, yes, I mean, there were times I remember I mailed a donor packet to the wrong donor and that poor vice president that was in charge for me was not happy. I apologized profusely and got to write a thank you slash, I'm sorry. Note to the donor and it ended up being perfectly fine. I think everyone understands mistakes happen, but it's certainly again a training ground to give you a chance to figure out how you want to respond when a situation like that comes up. Chris: I think you're so right Mistakes are going to happen. I think it's what you do when they do occur. That is kind of the test right, and owning up and not turning away or running from it or leaving it to someone else to fix but be a part of the fix shows determination to just own up to it. Right, absolutely. And those are all important skills because the odd chance that was your first mistake, we know won't be the last, right, it's very true. So that's good. Thanks for sharing that. I know some people don't like sharing the mistakes and challenges, but I think there's so much learning in that, absolutely. It's going back just to kind of the ins and outs of the role as president with this large organization. What I mean? I have to believe communication is key. So what are some of the things that you do to make sure that communication is not only clear but consistent, so that people stay on the same page? Amanda: Yes, and we actually have a person on our board whose sole responsibility is communication, so she helps me immensely in the messaging and it's one of those things you think you only need to say it once and you realize you need to say it three or seven times and all it takes is one email response where someone interpreted what you were saying differently to go oh, I really messed that message up. I think I have lived in a world of trying to be transparent and wanting people to understand my logic and my reasoning when something's changing or a decision's being made, and then just being open to the why of whatever is being communicated and also including that in my communications, especially to our board members. Chris: And I think that, at least for that group, has fostered a really great collaborative environment for us. That's great. I think you know transparency, clear communication, is so important. I also know that if you're communicating things out to that many people, there's going to be a few that just don't get it or don't read it the way you intended right. Amanda: So it's just, it's inevitable, absolutely. Let's talk a little bit, I mean any organization has a culture. Chris: Right, You've got one at Plains All-American and the Junior League has a culture. How would you describe the culture at the Junior League as a organization and what have you done to try to continue to foster and build upon that? Amanda: Yeah, that's a great question. I have always found our culture is rich in traditions. We have almost 100 years of trying to build a better community. That's our tagline, and what I have found to be most impactful in that culture is when we take a moment to express gratitude, and so each president's given the opportunity to develop an annual theme, and my theme this year was grounded in gratitude, and I quoted it was a Warren Buffett quote that and I'm going to butcher it on the spot, but it is essentially those who plant the acorn aren't intending to sit in the shade of the tree that grows, and so I really think what the Junior League has done really good at is we've created women who are not afraid to plant an acorn and then know that they're not going to reap the benefits of it. Someone who comes behind them 20, 30, 100 years later are the ones that will reap that reward. Chris: Kind of that attitude of pay it forward. Yes, that's very inspiring and noble. So what so sounds like a very collaborative and supportive culture? Absolutely, I want to talk a little bit. Maybe you know, outside of culture, just in the ins and outs of running this organization. What is a junior league doing with technology to help serve the mission, further the mission or anything innovative that the organization's trying to do to keep the organization current and move it into the next generation? Amanda: Yeah, gosh, that's a question we try to answer all the time. Covid forced us to change a lot of things from a member experience perspective and we've shifted some of our meetings to the virtual space, which I really think created an inclusive environment. Because if someone's being asked to attend a one-hour meeting and they were being asked to drive to and from our building, you're looking at a two, two-and-a-half three-hour commitment right there. And then I at one point realized the number of women who were having to line up child care so that they can make that meeting. So then the added burden of expense and just making your day-to-day work right. Sure that our leadership after COVID, when we realized that we really could communicate some of our meetings and our trainings in that capacity in a virtual manner, embraced it. Our trainings in that capacity in a virtual manner, embraced it. And so our approach has really been like, if you are in a situation where you need to line up childcare and you need to, you know, take three hours off of work to make a time with the junior league work. We wanted them to be spending their time in the Houston community, and so I really think that's been a pivotal shift for us where, like. Yes, our meetings and our, our trainings are important, but what's more important is us getting our volunteers out in the community yeah and so it's. It's been in. A change is interesting, right. People react to change in various ways. It's challenging right. Chris: So I mean a lot of what I hear you saying is you're there's been a focus, at least two things. One how do we use technology to increase our member engagement? But what I'm interpreting what I've heard you say is that's been grounded in a focus on how does this help further our mission and help our members further the mission and that is your guiding light Absolutely, and that's true, it should be true for any organization. Right, when you're making these tough decisions or navigating through difficult times. Right, any other examples of technology or innovation where you think things that you're trying to implement. Amanda: Things that we're trying to implement. We always try to be at the forefront of issues as they come out in the community. I love talking to some of our sustaining members who were part of our organization in the 80s and 90s, because they will talk about what the Junior League of Houston did to start helping and assist children with HIV, which was a very taboo topic back then, and so our membership is really focused on mental health and what we can do to support those struggling with mental health in our community, and so we are continuing to find new ways to either train our own volunteers to spot mental health issues and the appropriate steps to move that forward, and then we're continuing to try to find places. It's a tricky placement, right, because you borderline healthcare and need someone with certain certifications, but to find a way to interweave our members so that we feel like we're giving appropriate energy and resources to a really important topic. Chris: Yeah, to find that intersection of what those organizations may need and then where you can help. So obviously you've talked a couple times about the annual transition of leadership. Let's talk a little bit about, maybe, what has been your experience and what are you trying to do as you're about to transition out to kind of prepare the organization for that change in leadership again, so that to keep it as smooth as possible yeah, I always say you need mentors and sponsors, right, and you need people who are supporting you, who are the phone of friends, that you come and you say like I don't know how to do this, please help me. Amanda: And then there are the people behind the scenes who are saying you need to do this, you can do this, and I think I really have tried to one do that to all of the people on my team and then encourage them to do that for their teams, because I think once you realize you have women speaking up for you saying like, oh, amanda, she's great, she can do this, your confidence level increases and then you're not afraid to ask the questions, because what happens in the annual turnover is you go. Oh, no one told me about that one thing right that wasn't an issue last year, but it's suddenly an issue this year, and how do I address it? So I really think, creating the environment of there's no dumb question. How can we support you? Tell me how I can help. What can I do for you to make your job easier? Or what can I do to you to help get you the clarity you need to feel like you can move forward? And to your point earlier, that's a culture thing. Right like that goes back to that supportive culture right, it's a safe place. Chris: Right, that's got to be key to one. Furthering an organization for as long as it's been around right, but continuing that flow of solid leadership, right, um, I think that's. I think that's important for any business to try to create that environment where people feel safe in asking questions, asking for help and not feeling like they're going to be criticized for doing so. Amanda: Absolutely. Chris: You're basically running, would you say, a $40 million business. You obviously have an important role at Plains All-American Plains All-American. What is some advice you might offer to someone that is a business owner leading a business now or maybe an aspiring entrepreneur about? You know from your experience what you've learned, to just pass on a couple of key things that might help them in their journey. Amanda: Yeah, I mean first I would say yes, when someone calls you with a wonky idea and you don't always feel like you need to say no, embrace change, embrace different. And then I would say and this is probably me looking in hindsight, since I'm coming up on the end of my term as president is set expectations and it's, I think that's, I mean, it's universal and can apply to anyone, right, your team, your staff, but then also, like yourself and your family, and you know, I tried to make a commitment to my husband that I would try to not do Junior League on Sundays, and that would be the day where I wasn't answering emails or on the phone. And so to really, as you're taking on something new, to create the boundaries for everything that's gonna be impacted by a decision. And then I succeeded and I didn't succeed at the same time. Chris: Well, that's okay, right, I mean, I think it's really. I mean you're so spot-on, set expectations of yourself, of your team, hold people accountable right, set boundaries, but know that no one's perfect. And I think it's about awareness. So, just as you said, you weren't perfect at it, but you were aware when you didn't. And then you're like okay. Amanda: And to be able to have the follow-up conversation when something isn't right with someone on your team. Like I thought, our goal was this we seem to be straying from it. What's going on? And that goes back to what my mentor told me it's normally there's something with the person and not the job. Right, there's something underlying that's causing a shift in that expectation. So to circle back or, you know, confront those expectations months in or years in, it's definitely something's worth it. Chris: Yeah, I agree. So what about you as a leader? How would you describe your leadership style? Amanda: I would describe my leadership style as what is it? I would say I love rolling my sleeves up and getting into the trenches. I just I don't. I think we I preached on this to my board servant leadership, Like I will never ask someone to do something that I'm not willing to do myself. And if you need help, say you need help and I will be there right alongside you helping. If it's stuffing envelopes, if it's planting trees, whatever it is, and it's just that's. I think that's just who I am as a person and that's who I've seen some of my favorite leaders be over time, or the people who are there who focus on. We're here for a greater cause, we're here for the common good, and let's find a way to accomplish it together. Chris: Very good Anything that you would point to over the last few years that you've done to help grow and develop as a leader Books, mentors, conferences, anything like that. Amanda: Yeah. So we had a time management coach come and speak to us at our board this year and I I would tell you I before talked her name is Anna dearman Cornick. She is fantastic and before I would tell you, I thought time management was a bunch of hooey and like who has time for time management, essentially. But some of the tidbits she gave were eye-opening and it again, I mean, probably goes back to the expectation she was big on you schedule time for the important stuff you can't miss, whether it's, you know, personal relationship, your health, your faith, whatever that is, and then you find a way to make the other stuff happen around the really important matters. And it was a good perspective check for me hearing it. So it's, I do like time management now that I've been won over to the side of time management. Chris: She won you over to change your perspective and your mindset. Very good. So just kind of wrapping things up, I mean, give you a chance. If someone out there listened to this and was interested in joining the Junior League, what should they do? Amanda: Yeah, you can go to our website. It is JLH for Junior League of Houston, jlh.org. There is a join how to join section which you can look at, and then there are links to take you. We have a admissions process that runs once a year. It opens up September ish and runs through January, so it's fall to winter time, and then we can help you with all of the steps of filling out your application and getting you on board. It's a really great way to enhance your network and find all of the fantastic things that are happening in the Houston community and be a part of it. Chris: Great. Well, Amanda, let's turn away from the business side of things and tell us what was your first job. Amanda: My first job, gosh, it was. I worked at the Gap and I was I don't even know what my title was I would fold jeans. Chris: Everyone came in and messed them up, even know what my title was I would fold jeans. Amanda: Everyone that came in and messed them up. I never realized how people, how messy. People were in dressing rooms until I was the one having to fold it all after. It changes your behavior now right, Absolutely. Chris: So okay, native Houstonian right. Amanda: I am a native Houstonian, grew up in the Klein Champions area. I moved away for college, which was at the University of Texas at Austin, and then I did my law school and MBA at Texas Tech. So the move from Austin to Lubbock was an interesting one. I didn't know that tumbleweeds were real until I lived in Lubbock and then I quickly came home. I miss the great Houston community so much, so happy to call it home now. Chris: Very good. So do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Amanda: Oh, tex-mex, all right. Chris: And tell us one of your favorite hobbies or pastimes when you're not working at Plains All-American or volunteering with the Junior League. Amanda: I truly love the Houston livestock show and rodeo and luckily my husband is from Louisiana and I onboarded him into loving the rodeo, but we can go every night and just watch the rodeo itself or the exhibits. That's a fun time of year here in Houston. We're big fans of it. Chris: That's a good one. No, it's a true Houston treasure. Amanda: Absolutely. Chris: Well, Amanda, I want to thank you again for coming on the show and taking time to be with us today and share your story and that of the Junior League. So congratulations to all y'all are doing for our community. Amanda: Thank you so much and thank you for having me. Special Guest: Amanda Hanks Bayles.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I welcomed Jen Sudduth, CEO of Sudduth Search, for an insightful discussion on her journey in the executive search industry. Jen shared her story of transitioning from Taylor Winfield to launching her boutique firm focused on transformative growth companies. I learned how Sudduth Search crafts a supportive work culture that prioritizes both productivity and well-being. Our dialogue also uncovered nuances around balancing work responsibilities with life's pleasures. As we wrapped up, Jen reflected on life lessons from mentorship to her commitment to the Special Olympics community SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jen Sudduth shares her transition from Taylor Winfield to founding Sudduth Search, focusing on middle market private equity and emphasizing the need for leaders who can drive change. We explore the importance of having a business and marketing strategy before starting a venture, as well as considering when to hire based on company growth and values alignment. Strategies for maintaining work-life balance in recruitment are discussed, including setting boundaries and fostering a culture that supports employee well-being alongside business success. The episode delves into the comprehensive selection process for executive search, particularly for pivotal roles such as CFOs, and the role of retained search firms in this process. Jen reflects on the role of empathy in leadership and the importance of mentorship, drawing from her own experiences and her involvement with the Special Olympics. Personal joys, such as a preference for Tex-Mex cuisine and planning for sabbatical destinations like Maine and Santa Fe, are shared as part of achieving a joyful living. The conversation covers the initial opportunistic hiring during COVID and the shift towards a more strategic hiring approach to raise the team's overall expertise. Chris and Jen discuss the benefits of leaving a company the right way, honoring agreements, and how transparency can lead to unexpected opportunities. Jen advises on the importance of planning for success, not just the startup phase, by having operational projections and growth strategies in place. The episode also touches on Jen's past experience as Director of Talent at a consultancy, highlighting how internal hiring insights can improve external recruitment advice. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Sudduth search GUESTS Jen SudduthAbout Jen TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In today's episode, you will meet Jen Sudduth, co-founder and CEO of Sudduth Search, a boutique executive search firm. Jen's advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to be intentional and purposeful in your business planning, and don't forget to plan for success. Okay, jen, first off, welcome to Building Texas Business. Thanks for being here. Jen: Thank you. Chris: So I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. I want to start by just allowing you to introduce yourself and tell us what your company, Sudduth Search, is known for. Jen: Sure. So we are a seven-person boutique executive search firm, but I think what we do is a little bit unique. We work with the middle market private equity. Probably 75% of our clients are private equity backed. The other are public, private you name it individually owned, it doesn't matter. I think the common denominator with all of them is that all of the companies are going through some sort of transformation, and most of the time that's growth. It could have been that they raised capital. That's a trigger to bring us in and go and replace some of your leadership team. Could be some of our bigger companies going through some sort of culture change. We did 10 positions for a Blackstone-backed company and basically they wanted to pull from outside of their industry and they didn't know how to do that, and so we helped them come up with a concept of how to do that completely, you know, changed their recruiting processes from how they were doing them before, and then they brought in a whole new culture and that's what they wanted. They wanted a different culture than they had before. So it's just, it doesn't matter what the trigger is, but it's usually some sort of change, transformation. You need a leader that can drive that change right. You need someone that is fearless. A lot of times that can come in, and they're you. You know they can make things happen. Right and that's where we play most of the time. Chris: Well, what I find interesting about that is how laser focused it is what inspired you to kind of start a search firm that was so focused on that kind of niche industry. Jen: So I've actually done it for over 20 years and the firm I was with before was called Taylor Winfield. I only bring that up because a lot of people know Taylor Winfield. I started with Taylor Winfield and kind of worked my way up and that's what they focused on. They were more. You know that was 2000, so there was a lot of venture money out there, there was Silicon Valley and they worked a lot in California we did. I was just a lowly junior recruiter back then and that's where I learned the business and that's where I kind of learned that world. And it's not for everyone, both as a candidate and as a recruiter, because sometimes candidates will go well, what are they going to sell? Am I going to still have a job? I'm like, well, you're really not, you're not right for this, because that's not the mentality that we look for in a candidate. But so that's how I got my start and that's how I learned it. And then when I started this up my practice five years ago, I kind of I don't do a whole lot of venture. I have a few here and there. Usually they're a little bit more mature as a company. I think. As I've aged I'm not as patient with the venture. I think they've got a great thing going. But it's just a different world and I think sometimes those, the people that are willing to go and do something really earlier stage, are not the same people that I'm looking for the middle market series, b series, c type folks. So so that's how I had got into. It was really that's kind of what I've done my whole career. Chris: Gotcha. Well, I know that you started this company Suddeth Search around five years ago. Jen: Exactly. Chris: So you had to make some decision to leave and just start fresh on your own. Let's talk about that a little bit. What drove that decision? Jen: So the company that I worked for was actually owned by and I don't usually say this, so you're getting new information here by my stepmother, connie Adair, and I bring that up because she's fully retired now. She's been retired for about two years. But she brought me into the business, not as a multi-generational business. I had to earn my keep, earn my way Right, just like everyone else. She was very big on treating me like everyone else. Chris: The benefit for you that she did that. Jen: Absolutely and I learned from the best. She was really known as one of the best in the industry so I kind of got to see that world and that process. But she sold to private equity and it was a private equity roll up. Like some of them, it didn't go really well. The integration piece was a little rough. Chris: Not unique in that regard, right and I got no benefit from it. Jen: To be quite honest. I stuck around to try to support her and she did well. And then she got another bite of the apple and I tried for two years. I wasn't a big company person and I realized if I can make this kind of money for someone else, I should be doing it for myself. And so I kind of did it because I could, and she fully supported me. She knew that retirement was on the horizon and so when I told her she said you know, I think you should go for it. So that's what I did. Chris: That's great. Well, I mean good to have that encouragement for someone that you were close with but considered to be a trusted mentor Absolutely. So got to be a little bit trepidatious to just start out on your own, even though you know what you're doing and you, I think you can't do that unless you have confidence that it's going to work and confidence that it will work isn't a guarantee that it will Absolutely. But you know what were some of the things you did to kind of set yourself up in those early days of starting your own company, to try to pave the path towards success. Jen: So I will start with the fact that I had a very strict non-compete. I did not get any clients from the company or from her, and I am a devout follower of non-competes. Chris: Well, it's funny, you say that you bring that, yeah, you know, now we devise people, I mean literally every day, on both sides of those, and right because because they exist and obviously you know there's a lot of buzz recently because the ftc came out with the rule to ban them, uh, which is, you know, probably not going to take effect because lawsuits have already been filed to challenge it. Jen: But it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out yeah in the next, over the next few years, I think yeah, and not to say I don't think some non-competes go overboard. I have heard some ludicrous non-competes as I'm interviewing, so sure, I do think a lot of them go overboard. I think the fdc is in the is moving in the right direction with some of them, because I think they're a little too restrictive. Chris: But that's not your question yeah, and even as the rule's written, it doesn't apply to executives, so it wouldn't change your world. Jen: It wouldn't, and I'd been there a long time. Everything I got was under their umbrella. So what I did do was I planned for a long time. I've owned businesses before and so I had a business plan, I had a marketing plan, I had a strategy. The other advantage I had was that I had been I've been asked to be on the board of ACG and so that was a. I knew that was going to be great PR. It's gonna be great relationships there. That's how I met Steve Kasten here at the Boyer Miller and a few others, and so I knew that was coming. But it was pretty far out. You know my tenure had just started. Didn't know I was gonna be president, but I knew that was gonna be on the. I'd have a lot of visibility. So that helped quite a bit. I think that was one factor. Fun story unrelated to your question the day before I quit, the day before my last day, I gave like four months notice and they knew I was leaving. I was unwinding. I had some really big searches, so I was unwinding those and finishing those up for clients, kind of on the bench, but just doing that. So the day of the last day of employment I get a call from that client that I just mentioned wanted to change their culture Blackstone Back Company. He said I got 10 searches for you, jim. I said, well, I can't do them, I'm leaving, today is my last day. And he's well, I'm not doing it without you. And so I called the company and I said here's what's happening. Would you, would we, can we do a fee split? Didn't know that was coming, but that was really great cash flow. And they said yes, and so we worked out a fee split. I continued I worked with that client and then they brought in their team, but it was great cash flow right out of the gates. And and then they brought in their team, but it was great cash flow right out of the gates. And then I developed brand new clients from that point on. But I knew the industry. I think the industry knew me. Chris: So even if it wasn't somebody, I'd worked before, I had a plan and I went after those people. That's a really cool story to hear and there's a lesson. There's probably many lessons, but one that just struck me right between the eyes is the lesson in leaving the right way, when you leave a company versus leaving the wrong way and you just laid out a roadmap for the listeners. If you're thinking about leaving, you left the right way, honoring your agreements, and then, with the transparency to get the slug of business for your new business, for your new company, because you went to them and said here's the deal, because you've done everything else right. It's good to hear that. I guess they could have not honored that, but they did the right thing in my mind too, yeah, by saying yeah, it'd be fair to share this and, by the way, we should. Customer comes first. That's what they want. Let's make them happy. Jen: So customer comes first. That's what they want. Let's make them happy. So, yeah, and I completely agree and I try to tell people and I know there's exceptions, I know there's bosses that are just difficult and if they know you're even looking there, you're gone. I know that happens, but I think majority of the time people are reasonable and if you come to them and sometimes I'll have friends come to me and say I'm thinking about making a change- Grass is greener Right and I'm like I know they're in a great situation. I'm like have you had a really difficult conversation with your boss before you leave, before you start thinking about? Have you told them that you're unhappy You've been there? Chris: 14 years or you've been there seven years. Jen: Have you talked about it? And usually the answer is no, and so I try to encourage them to say go talk to them first and then if it's still you know, in a month you still feel like it's just not fulfilling then talk about leaving. Yeah, but you need to give them a chance. Chris: It's great advice. People unfortunately right. It's kind of human nature to avoid the difficult, uncomfortable conversation, or at least I'll say this, the ones we perceive have it that they're going to be difficult or uncomfortable. And to your point, I think, a lot of times if you actually have the courage to go have it, they usually aren't as difficult or uncomfortable as you work them up in your mind to be. Jen: Absolutely. Chris: And you know I can speak. You know as well as you can. If you give your employer, where you've been otherwise happy for a while, the chance to have that conversation most people if there's a tweak or two that would keep you there, it's probably going to save the company a ton of money. To consider that. Jen: And it might benefit the company. Talk to them about. You know I'd really like to do more sales. You know I'd really like to take on bigger projects. You know what We've been looking for someone that wants to take on bigger projects. You just never know what the company needs. Chris: So we can go back. You mentioned, and just for the listeners ACG Association of Corporate Growth. Jen: Yes. Chris: Indice Group industry in the kind of M&A, a lot of private equity. So sounds like part of that marketing plan was to plug yourself in to the right kind of networking system where you would meet people and build relationships. Jen: That's correct. Yeah, yeah, and I eventually was asked to be president I don't know if you know that and so it was a lot of it was a lot of visibility as well. That's half the battle. Chris: Yes. Jen: Because there's a lot of top of mind search firms out there. Yeah, getting top of mind and helping them see that. I understand private equity, I understand what their challenges are. I understand what they're trying to achieve. I understand how capital's raised. You know I've got the knowledge base to be able to convey that to candidates and to help find the right one that's going to fit that. So I think that helped a lot and it's it was educational for me. You know, going to conferences, hearing panels speak. I know a lot about a lot or a little about a lot. Chris: Let me rephrase that I shouldn't admit that, but it's true, but it does. Jen: It's real educational to hear those conversations and to hear what's happening in the market. You know from your peers that are in the organization. Chris: A couple other takeaways from what you said. That I hope people listening caught is that you had a plan before you did this right, absolutely. You sat down and put it to paper a business plan, a marketing plan, a strategy. Look, I think those are so important and can be overlooked. When people say, look, I'm just going to go chase this dream, that's great because you need the inspiration, but you also need some substance behind it, because if you eventually do go to and most will go to a bank or an investor or something, they're going to be asking about that. So you better be prepared. Jen: Absolutely. Chris: So one of the things and you and I were talking about this, I guess before we got the recording going, and that is you know about this, I guess before we got the recording going, and that is you know, you now have seven employees. Let's talk a little bit about you know. I think there's a few conversations. One is what was it that triggered you each time to make the decision Now it's time to take on an employee or another employee, because those are big investments and then how did you go about making sure they were the right fit? Jen: Yeah. So it was growth that predicated the need. That was the part I didn't plan was when am I going to hire what? You know what? At what point do we need to bring on another person? At what point do we need to bring on a junior person, et cetera, et cetera. I didn't plan that piece of it and I probably should have, but it was really just my bandwidth and being able to do what I needed to do. You know, we were super busy during COVID, which sounds really strange, but I had some. I had that one big client that was still going. I had just so, if you think about I had been in business for about a year and so that year I had been really busy doing marketing and business development and getting out there and making relationships, and so it just it paid off and I think a lot of those people one of my biggest clients I don't know if you know Dave Marchese, he'd be a good guest. Let's do it. He called me out of the blue in the middle of COVID and we had met like five years prior, but he had seen my posts and my marketing and my emails and so he said I can't go out. I'm not going to go out and interview five interview candidates, but we're in the or excuse me search firms because we're in the middle of COVID. So what you got Jen, and so I took it on, and we've probably done 15 different positions over three or four years. Wow, so he's one of our biggest clients. So there that, I think the prior relationships definitely helped us make it. You asked about employees, though. Chris: Yes, well, before we go there. Yeah, one of the things you so interesting. You said I didn't plan for growth. Yeah, probably should have. Jen: Yeah. Chris: So, looking back, what do you think you could have done in that regard that you might offer as advice to someone that you know is maybe about to do something similar that you did five years ago? You know, what have you learned? Looking back, to say I would have, if I was going to do it again, I would plan for growth in this way. Jen: Plan for success. I think I was so focused on how am I going to get there that I didn't say if, when I get there, if when I get there, how am I going to get to the next level? I never did that. I never said, okay, I can handle 12 searches, or whatever it is, at different in different phases. So if I get 14, what do I do? At what point do I, you know? Do I need to start hiring when I get to 9 searches, whatever it? So maybe it was a revenue. I think I should have projected and said, because I've been in the business a while, I know how many searches I can do by myself or with a team, and so I think that would have been very helpful to do kind of like an FB&A analysis, but on the operational side. Chris: Right, Very helpful, that's very helpful. Okay, so now let's go back to kind of set a search. You starting to decide I've hit the point, I can't do this all, I've got to bring someone on. Yeah, you know how did you go about sourcing. I know obviously you've probably had a lot of contacts, but you know just the whole process of how you interviewed to make sure they were going to be a good fit for your company. Jen: So my first hire, I got really lucky because she was a neighbor, a friend who got laid off during COVID and so we brought her on just to do some of this data pushing type stuff. She made phone calls, cold calls, she's fearless, and then she grew into being a really good recruiter. After that first hire it was, oh my God, I can't handle this. I just need a body that can help do, a professional person that can do all this. After that hire I was much more purposeful. After that it was we want experience. We want, you know, degree Now she was degreed. But we want degreed individuals that understand the business world, that understand you know degree Now she was degreed. But we want degreed individuals that understand the business world, that understand, you know. I think every time I made another hire I kind of elevated my expectations. Chris: Right. Jen: And not to say the first hire was. She was a phenomenal employee, but I think every time after that I was much more purposeful about how I, who I wanted to hire and what my expectations of them were. Chris: Yeah, that makes sense to me and you're right, it's not a condemnation of the earlier hires. It's if you're doing things right, I believe you're always learning and your processes can always get better, and it doesn't mean you didn't make bad hires before, but you can get more intentionality around the decisions you're making and I think that's part of growth and when you're a one person show or two because my husband did join me about six months in it's harder to attract talent you know, Now we're about to make an offer to a pretty senior person and we had a really good slate of people that were interested, that were like, yeah, I want to join a boutique firm, I want to do what you're doing. Jen: So it changes too. Advert: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Well, that's validating. So you've gone through this process of sourcing people for your company, right, and what have you? What has that process and the learning? Jen: through that done to help you better advise your clients or vet candidates for them. What else about that I'm actually gonna go back to. So I took about five years. I left the executive search world and went to a consultancy and they I was director of talent. We tripled in size in about five years time and then they sold to Accenture about two years after I left. When I left, I think oil and gas was zero. The barrel, the barrel. Chris: I remember that yeah. Jen: So they made a strong comeback and then eventually sold. But being on the inside like that was the best education I could get, because it was. This is what happens when you make a really bad hire. This is what happens to the entire company when you make a really good hire. And we weren't huge I think we ended up being about a hundred but but it was really helpful to me to see. I also learned you know really short tenures on people's resume. There's a reason you know, I know there's reasons that people have to leave jobs absolutely there's good reasons, but when it's over and over and over, and then you hire that person because you're desperate for a data manager or whatever it is. You're desperate for that skill. You're going to find out why they can't stay in a job longer. I learned a lot being on the inside, you know, and I think that job is really what taught me kind of the hard knocks of making a mishire. Chris: Right. Well, I think you're to your point, right, it's if you look there are red flags, pay attention to them, and I know from our we're not perfect either in this business that I have, and you know sometimes you can convince yourself to overlook a red flag here or there, and more times than not you shouldn't. Right, there's exceptions to every rule, but we don't want to run a business based on exceptions necessarily You've got to be purposeful about those hires is really what it taught me. Jen: You know very purposeful. Chris: So just to kind of come back to Sutter's search a little bit so you have seven, about to have eight, and you talked about doing a search for a client where it was a culture change. Let's talk about culture at Sutter Search. What are you, as the kind of co-founder and CEO, doing to try to cultivate a culture? How would you describe it? And what are you doing to kind of, you know, foster it and breathe life into it? Jen: Yeah, it's hard with seven people, eight people, you know, to kind of create that, because you're like oh, we're just eight people, but they need it. Employees need training, they need to be developed, they need to evolve, they need to expand and grow, and so we actually started EOS at the beginning of this year. Are you familiar with entrepreneurial operating system? Chris: Yes. Jen: I think I don't know if Allie was the one that told me about it, but you know I've heard a lot of business owners that have done it, and so we actually started it and I think it's been evolutionary and I'm not selling it, I don't sell anything they do but it has really helped us be very purposeful about what we're doing for our employees, and so my one of our other managing directors is. She's in charge of kind of the HR and training, and so we have a weekly training every single week and it's sometimes it's heavier than others, but we have a weekly training every week and one of the employees actually gives it, so they have to go out and learn themselves and then they come and teach the rest of us. I try to. I'm a big advocate in the old school headhunting world is just dog eat, dog work, and so when I started my firm I was like I don't want to be that way. We're not working 12-hour days, we're not working both coasts, we're going to have a great and I hate to use the words work-life balance because I know it's overused. Chris: That's right. Jen: But we are, we're going to edit that part out. I'm kidding it is overused, but I think in some aspects it's important because you're a better employee if you take your vacation, if you didn't have to work until 9 pm the night before, if your managing director isn't calling you at 6 in the morning because she happens to be on the East Coast that is not the culture that we have. I'm always telling them you're going on vacation. Who's taking your emails? You're going on vacation. Who's taking your emails? You're going on vacation. Who's taking your calls? Did you put your out of? We require out of office messages to be turned on and I'm just, I'm always preaching that. I really think it's important to separate yourself and give your brain a break, because what we do is very, it's very repetitive, it's very. You know you may, if you have ten searches, that you have four candidates at least on what we usually have a hundred, but you have four finalists going through to offer yeah you think about the ups and downs every single day. Chris: It's a lot well, I mean, to your point, what you're doing, I mean, has to be stressful because you're affecting people's lives. Absolutely right, you got four candidates and or maybe see this as a great opportunity and are very hopeful, and you got a, a client, that needs to fill a hole and every day they don't have that whole field, they're losing money. So I can get that yeah to your point, the work-life balance and we could do a whole podcast on that. But I think what my experience has shown, or at least what I feel like I've learned through that, is our work-life balance is different at different times of our career. So it's hard to institutionalize that when everyone's at different stages. We try to use the term more like professional development. Developing our people to be great professionals means you tend to your business, but you tend to you have a life as well and you got to figure out how to manage both in a healthy way, knowing that the way it works for me now is totally different than it was 15 years ago right and that's okay because everything changes and we have new employees here that are going through totally different life stuff than I go through now. but how do we help give them the tools, the training to manage that and still be successful both in the office and in their personal life? Jen: Yeah, and we do we have different? Everybody kind of has a different work methodology. I shouldn't say hours, it's more like hours, you know a 20-something. They like to kind of work late in the day and have their workouts in the morning or whatever. Like everybody's kind of different. And then Hazel and I are about the same age and we like to not be disturbed until 8.30 or something. You know, like we like to go do our thing in the morning and work out and whatever. Read the paper and everybody's a little different, but we are very understanding of each other's different lifestyles. Right To your point. Chris: The key there comes to communication right. Yeah absolutely Absolutely, and so do you have. What is it that you're using as such to make sure those conversations are happening? Yeah, so that people understand how each other works differently, but together you can work for success. Jen: Yeah, we talk about it when they're hired. I say I'm not going to track your hours unless your productivity is not working Right, and then we're going to talk about it. Do you have too of a workload? Or, let's be honest, are you not working enough? You know, because last week you didn't have very many searches. This week you've got a lot. So if I need you to work till six, you gotta admit that last week you didn't have to. And they're very honest with me. A lot of times they'll say, hey, not going to be online until 10 or so, but I'm going to be working late or whatever. Or I stayed up for four hours last night sourcing. So you know I'll be available on phone but I'm not online. Perfectly okay, and we're very flexible that way. It's a little hard sometimes. You know, I'm always like are you working? I'm on the back of my brain and then I have to call myself and go. Of course they are, it's not producing. Chris: So that comes down to two fundamentals no matter what industry, communication, yeah, and what you're willing to do is have what some people might feel like is the harder conversation or uncomfortable conversation, but you approach it with kind of support and transparency. Jen: Yeah. Chris: The other thing. It comes down to productivity. Jen: Yeah, right. Chris: Absolutely. If we're running a business, we're running a for-profit business. We have to be productive to make the business go. So you can't lose sight of that. Some people, I fear at times the extracurriculars overweigh what we do to make our money and what is our. You go into the. This is what fuels our economic engine. We can't lose sight of that. It won't matter how many out-of policies or things we do, we won't have a business to support it. Jen: So it's finding a balance there, right? Yeah, I'd say the common denominator with all my employees is they thrive on success. They thrive on accomplishing things. They're not going to just shut things off if they're not done and they haven't accomplished what they set out to accomplish. They're very driven that way. That's a common denominator. Chris: Very good. So a little bit about your business. So you were saying you know, middle market focused, we're kind of approaching mid-year 2024, which is like just blows my mind that we're, you know, that far into the year already. But you know there are businesses out there that either use services like yourself or maybe contemplating that, and I know, at least in your world there's at least two different ways to go about it Retain, searches or kind of the contingency model. Can you just share maybe a little bit about what each is, the differences, pros and cons, and maybe flow into what a company should consider going one versus the other? Jen: Yeah. So I want to make it clear that I am not pro or con. Either way, I think there's a contingency, there's absolutely a place for it. I have several friends that are in the contingency recruiting world and they say I will never be in the retained world. So there is a place for it and I think if you have a large number of hires, you have a position or a company that is attractive to candidates and you want to get all the resumes you can get and then choose because they want to come to you, that's great. You can use contingency. What we do is a consultancy. So if you're a middle market working with a middle market firm right now, it's a downhole tool. Cfo position this position is critical that they get it right because they have big plans. I'm not going to tell you what those big plans are. They're private equity backed and they have big plans and it's going to happen, but if they don't have a financial expert that can devote time and devote, then it's not going to happen. And so it's critical, and in that situation you absolutely need to find the best person that you can find, and you need to interview a lot of people to make sure that you are choosing the right person, and so that's what we're doing. That's where we come in, and it doesn't have to be a CFO role. We can do. We do VPs and we do directors sure directors but we're going to look at 150 people that we know could do this job, and then we're going to reach out to every one of them and then we're going to interview 20 or 30. I'm going to interview half of those and then I'm going to present and rank the top. So it's not like we're going out and finding five people that are qualified and handing them to you. We're going out and finding 10 times that many maybe not 10 times, but a lot more than that and then finding you the best and ranking those for you to interview. So if it's a critical hire for your company to succeed, I would absolutely recommend retained, because they should be a retained firm, should be a consultancy, they should help you find that person. Chris: So that's really helpful, and hearing you describe it makes the difference very clear for me. I hope for the listeners and what I hear is you're doing a lot more upfront work on the retained side and I guess, as a consumer of these services, you should expect that your retained firm will do a lot more upfront work and vetting the best clients to bring to you. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I think that's important for my clients to know is our database is completely open. Our kimono is open. Is that a bad thing to say? Chris: No, we don't have video, so we're good. Jen: They can see everything we're doing, when we're doing, how we're doing. It's not a we'll talk to you in a month or two and we'll give you three great people. There's no magic thing that happens like that. It's a database they can go in. They can be like ooh, I know that guy and not going to work. Chris: Right, whatever reason, work right, whatever reason. So through, I guess, an online portal that you give them access to. Jen: okay and so it's a process to get to the fine. We meet once a week and I say here's why we chose, here's why we interview these people. What do you think? And a lot of times I'll say you know what? That company doesn't hire well, or they might be an acquisition on the horizon with that company. We can't talk to their people, so we have weekly conversations that get us closer and closer to the best person. And so it's a process, it's a very thorough process that gets us there. But that's 15, 30 minutes a week from our client, that's it. Chris: Okay, Well, they have to be invested, especially in these that are so critical. The positions to fill the client has to be invested. That's right and I like the somewhat. Maybe it's not. It sounds innovative to me that you are creating that opportunity for them to vet and see what's going on whenever they want. Right, but have those weekly check-ins. You know, it sounds like a kind of a white glove service, if you will. Jen: Yeah, and I think a lot of times people are scared, overtained. They're like what if it doesn't? What if you don't find someone? I'm like never happened in the history of 23 years, because we're talking to you and if we're not finding the right people, we're going to pivot, we're going to merge, we're going to figure out why is that happening. Is it the company reputation? Is it our pitch? Is it the way we're describing it? I mean, we're going after the wrong people. We will figure it out. We always fill the positions. Chris: Right Always, because you're invested in it. Right, right, it's not which. Jen: Because it's and it's not a. Here's three resumes, let me know. Chris: Right. Jen: That's not how it works. I got it. Chris: That makes sense. So a little bit, I just want to ask you're obviously, you know, leading this company. What, what would you or how would you describe your leadership style and how would you say that maybe has evolved over time based on your experience? Jen: So I would describe my leadership style as real. It's too real. I like to be pretty open with my employees and I have weekly calls with almost all of them I shouldn't say almost all of them. My fellow managing director we talk almost every day, so I don't have a weekly calls with almost all of them, I shouldn't say almost all of them. My fellow managing director we talk almost every day, so I don't have a weekly call with her. But the others, who I may not speak with, I have weekly calls. We talk about what's happening, what's going well, what is their workload like? I ask them what was the most challenging? Because we all work remote, so that's the other thing. We don't see each other every day right and I'll say what was the most challenging thing and what are you most proud of. And sometimes I had no idea. They're like oh well, I met that candidate at that event. I went to one of my. One of my employees told me that I'm like, I had no idea. Like you went to this networking event and happened to meet the right guy. So you know, just things like that. I try to have the communication very open yeah and they can tell me listen, I'm just not feeling well today or I'm mentally having some issues with home. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I just need to sit back and I'm like, take the time, whatever you need to do. So I like to think I'm a pretty real manager. Chris: Yeah Well, it sounds like there's a lot of empathy that comes across in those calls, so they feel safe. Yeah, empathy, that comes across in those calls so they feel safe, and I think that's an important thing for a leader to be able to show empathy so that people will be more open and responsive, at whatever level your leadership is in the organization, is an important quality. It's interesting too, I think, that you asked about challenges, because I find it to be helpful to if you're kind of forced to reflect on what was really good about the last week and maybe what was a challenge, because we learn from both. Right, well, that's really good. Anything that you mentioned your stepmother earlier as a mentor, any learning from her that you kind of feel like you're implementing today and kind of carrying on some of the things you learned along the way from her Well, she is my free consultant, so you know, so I call her all the time. Jen: I'm like, okay, more free. Chris: Don't let her listen, she might start charging. Jen: She's fully retired, so she's like no problem. No, I think, being a peer to your clients and telling them no, sometimes you know she's not a yes man and I think I learned that, that you know you've got to push back. When you know, because of your 20 years experience, that something's wrong, you have to call the elephant in the room yeah and you have to say you, you may not skip this recruiting. You know, a lot of times my clients will get very excited about a candidate and they're like, well, can you just come see me tomorrow? And I'm like, no, he cannot because that's too fast for the candidate. They need time to process. You look too eager. I had one client that said it. He said I'm not coming to the first date with a diamond ring. You cannot come to the first date with a diamond ring, you have to let the process happen. But she was always very good about not being a yes man and I've learned that works and it pays off to help your clients be successful. Chris: It's funny that works and it pays off for to help your clients be successful. It's funny that reminds me there's an analogy that applies in all kinds of situations. But it's the cake right. So, just like you were saying, don't be too fast. Yeah, you can have all the right ingredients, mix it up, put it in the oven. If you pull it out too quick, it's going to flop yeah right. So you got to let the process, trust the process, let the process play out, and that applies in so many different aspects of business yeah, and these are humans that we're dealing with. Jen: These are people and they weren't thinking about a job change most likely. Chris: So you've got to let that change management process happen in their head, you know, let them go through that as well so good point to make and we'll repeat it that for what you're doing with these targeted executive searches, most likely the right person was not looking. The ones that are looking there could be one of those red flags there, Not always right, not always, but yeah. So, jen, this has been a fun conversation. Congratulations on your success, thank you. I want to ask you just a few things to wrap up. Yep, so obviously you've been in the search world, or executive search world, for you said 20 plus years. What was your first job? Jen: I remember you asked somebody else this, so I actually worked at a daycare for intellectually disabled kids and adults. Not that fun story that you wanted to hear, but it was fun. I absolutely loved it. I worked every summer. 0:36:20 - Chris: There had to be a lot of life lessons learned in that. Jen: Very challenging. These were kids that were not accepted at other daycares, even for special needs kids. And so I made $4.25 an hour. I was just telling this story because now I'm the chairman of the board for Special Olympics. Chris: Are you really? Jen: I am, and so they asked me my why, and I was like well, I did this for about five years, six years, all through college. I did summer camps and stuff, and so that population has a very soft spot in my heart. Chris: I love how that's come full circle in your life to be able to be doing what you're doing with Special Olympics. As an aside and maybe a plug, isn't Houston hosting the Special Olympics? Jen: next year, next year, I did not tell you that you didn't, but I just know we are right at rice, and is it 2025? Yeah, so that's a big deal, so huge those. Chris: Any listeners in houston, be on the lookout to go support that, what a great cause thank you, appreciate that all right. So my favorite question tex-mex or barbecue? Jen: tex-mex. I'm not a barbecue fan. My husband loves it, but I don't. Chris: Well, you know, you had no problem answering that question. Jen: Some people struggle so I love that In Texas only probably Right. Chris: So another question I get travel ideas from. So if you could do a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Jen: Maine. Chris: Maine. Jen: We. If you could do a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Maine, maine. We went to Maine last year. Oh my God, it's beautiful. We're empty nesters and so we're doing two-week working vacations. We just got back from Santa Fe and then we're hoping the next spring we're going to do Maine. Chris: Good for you. Yeah, I like that, kenny. Jen: Bunk or somewhere around there. Chris: Okay Well, you didn't let me finish a sentence, oh sorry, no, so I know you meant it right. Some people have to think about it. Jen: Oh, I knew. Yeah. Well, we're thinking about where we want to go now, so we've got a whole list. Chris: That's a fun process to go through. Yeah, it is so well, jen. Thanks again for coming. Special Guest: Jen Sudduth.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, we delve into the remarkable journey of Jason Hayes and his family's business, Top Coat Fabrication. Despite the tumultuous nature of the markets, they managed to emerge as an industrial leader, a testament to their resilience and adaptability. He shares Top Coat's blueprint for navigating change while excelling in oil, gas, and petrochemicals. Intentional culture-building through staff gatherings and challenges instilled trust and community, cornerstones of Top Coat's prosperity. In conclusion, his journey to company president wove together personal learning, workplace achievements, nurturing customer bonds, and proactive growth to create the powerhouse that Top Coat is today. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jason Hayes discusses the transformation of Top Coat Fabrication from its sandblasting roots to becoming an influential player in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. We explore Jason's early involvement with the family business, starting straight out of high school and eventually becoming president, as he emphasizes the value of hands-on experience. Jason shares how Top Coat navigated the challenges of the oil industry's downturns and how strategic diversification into fabrication opened new opportunities in the petrochemical sector. Jason and I delve into the pivotal moment in 2010 when Jason embraced intentional leadership and continuous learning, transforming his personal and professional outlook. Jason highlights the cultural shift within Top Coat, illustrating how he cultivates a positive work environment through team-building exercises and weekly staff meetings. We discuss the significance of building strong customer relationships, with Jason explaining his personal approach to post-project follow-ups and the search for honest feedback. Jason reflects on the importance of networking and trusted advisors, detailing how open communication within the leadership team is essential for resolving conflicts and fostering growth. We delve into Jason's leadership style, his efforts to understand team members' goals, and his commitment to maintaining a balance between work and family life. Jason explains the importance of hiring for culture fit, noting that while skills are necessary, alignment with the company's ethos is crucial for long-term success. Personal anecdotes are shared, including Jason's love for Tex-Mex, his first job experiences, and his aspirations to travel more with his family. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Top Coat Fabrication GUESTS Jason HayesAbout Jason TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Jason Hayes, president of Top Coat Fabrication. Jason is the second generation of leadership in a family-owned business and tells how he went from hope to learning to be more intentional about growth. Jason I want to welcome you to. Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking time to come on the show. Absolutely Glad to be here. So I think the best place to start is just tell us a little bit about Topcoat. What is the business and what? Jason: does it do? Okay, we're an industrial fabricator, so we fabricate oil and gas and petrochemical equipment, a lot of welding, piping, structural steel, pressure vessels pretty much anything you see when you drive by chemical plants. That's the type of stuff that we fabricate. Chris: Okay, and y'all been in business. Now for what? 40 plus years, 40 plus years. Jason: This is our 44th year. I think it started in 1980. Okay, yes, it started as a sandblasting and painting company, and that's how they got the name Top Coat. Chris: Oh, okay, that makes sense. And so started by your father, I believe. Mom and dad, okay, still 100% owners. Very good, so what was the I guess, the inspiration that had them start Top Coat to begin with? Jason: I think honestly, if I remember the story right, my dad was working for a contractor down in Freeport and I don't remember the whole story but he didn't get treated right so he got let go or whatever happened. So he decided he was going to start his own thing. So he did they and they started this blasting and painting and it just kind of took off. His work ethic combined with everything else and industry in our area, so there was a lot of oil and gas in our area at that time. Mobile had a big shore base down there, so his contacts led to him doing some blasting painting for mobile and then they asked him if he could do some work offshore on their platforms, because they have platforms out there. So that that led to that part of the business and it just kind of started growing a little bit from there so it's interesting. Chris: So many people that I've talked to have you know unique stories, but there's a there, there's some that have a common theme that it's kind of, out of that hardship or disappointment or something, they decide to go on their own and do it their own way. It sounds like that was the case for your dad. Jason: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know exactly what drove it, you know, but yeah, that's what led to it. Chris: Tell us a little bit then you know how did that lead to. You know what the company is today as it relates to you know the focus and the mission and the purpose of the company. How has those early days influenced where you are today, some 44 years later? Jason: Well, let me give you a little bit of history about that. So when he started working offshore for Mobile at some point, he was just doing sandblasting and painting, well, on a project. They had asked him if he had any welders or knew any welders, because they needed some welding done out there. So he said yes, as a matter of fact, I do so. Welders because they needed some welding done out there. So he said, yes, matter of fact, I do so that he started hiring welders and doing construction on the platforms as well. So the offshore oil and gas was our bread and butter for many years, 20 plus years at least. So that even when I came on board in 98, that was our biggest business was oil and gas offshore construction. We'd send crews to the platforms and do maintenance and platform installations, platform removals, kind of everything in between. So that was great. The downside was, you know, when oil and gas is great, it's great, but it's dead, very cyclical too, right Big time. So we had a lot of struggles and I didn't see any other struggles that they saw. My mom and dad went through so many downturns that it was everything they could do to survive, but they did Well. Then, after the BP spill, macondo incident. Then the government really cracked down on offshore industry. So pretty much all the platforms we used to work on started coming out of the water. So all the stuff that we used to do existed no more. So that's when we really had to decide and make a big pivot in the business and say you know what we've been doing? A little bit of fabrication that supports the oil and gas, the offshore let's, let's focus on that. We have the knowledge base, we had some experience in it. Let's let's focus on that. So we literally changed the name to top coat fabrication and we didn't do anything off-site anymore. We focused strictly on fabrication and we would ship our stuff, you know, kind of all over. So it opened another big door to us for the petrochemical industry, because down in our area, you know, we've had Dow Chemical, all these chemical plants right in our back door. But it was almost like we swore we'll never work for the plants, we'll never work in the plants, just because it has that stigma of okay, once you get in, you know your foot in Dow, you know it's, it can be great. But then they people say they own you or you know whatever, and so we never did. Well then now with just the fabrication, that's when we started reaching out to these chemical plants and started really digging in and started doing a lot of work for them. So, and then, another big blessing was not too long after that, we got approached by a big company that had property next to us, had a, a facility, and then they wanted to buy our facility for an expansion. So we were on the water, we were on the intercoastal canal because we had crew boats coming in and out. We did a lot of dock services, so none of that existed anymore. So this was just a huge place that we didn't need, so that we used that to actually buy a piece of property, built a brand new shop where we're at now, a brand new facility. We built it the way we wanted. That was, you know, based on fabrication. So that's where we still are. Chris: Okay, that's great. So you know, I guess, a good lesson in the adage of don't put all your eggs in one basket. Yeah, y'all learned to diversify pretty quickly, right? Yes, yeah, exactly. Jason: So now you know we still do oil and gas work, but it's fabrication. We do a lot of stuff for West Texas oil and gas and we ship our stuff out there. We do a ton for the petrochemical industry right in our back door. We're getting into commercial building fabrication now not the buildings themselves but the structural components that go into them. We're looking into the offshore wind generation, solar, anywhere. We can do our fabrication in different industries for that exact reason to diversify. Chris: It's a good lesson right for people out there that you know. Start a business, maybe with that one big customer, that focus. It can be good when times are good, but you got to think about you know what. If this goes away, what else do we have? That is a compliment to it. It's a big liability yeah, if you don't, yeah, it ain't no different than what you were saying if, if you got too far in with someone like Dow, that'd be no different than you know, kind of that singular focus. So let's talk a little bit. How did you get involved and kind of come up through the business? Because you're now the president, I definitely want to talk a little bit once I hear kind of the back story about at some point there was a transition in leadership, so I definitely want to dive into that. Sure. Jason: So right out of high school I worked for Topcoat for the summer between high school and college and I went off to college that next semester. I went to Texas A&M. I was in mechanical engineering program. I wasn't ready for college, so I was there for two semesters and then they suggested that I leave. So I left. After that I came home and started working in 98 at some point and started at the bottom, started as a helper. The summer before college I was just a weed eater. We had this huge facility on the shore basin. I literally just weeded it all summer pretty much. So then when I came back I was a helper, just doing whatever you know in the shop around the facility. At one point we also made a realization or my dad did, because I had nothing to do with management then, but he made a realization that we needed somebody that would take care of the safety. We always had good safety records and good practices, but we needed somebody that could take charge of the program. Right? So I got volunteered to be the safety man. There you go. So I did that for a few years. They call that voluntold. Chris: Yes. Jason: I was being polite, you're exactly right. So I did that for a couple years and then I don't remember how the transition it was kind of a slow transition into just kind of taking more of the reins of the management. So at some point I can't tell you when, but he named me as the general manager. Okay, so he was the president, I was the general manager and then so I had, you know, a couple of people that kind of reported directly to me and then all the work happened underneath them. So that, and that was the case for a pretty good while. And I mean I'll be brutally honest that I was not into leadership back then. I wanted to be the top dog, right, I wanted to be the guy in charge, but leadership as I understand it now was not in my repertoire. Chris: Yeah, well, I mean, it's easy to want to be the guy, yeah, but there's a lot that goes with it that not everyone understands. Right To do it, the right way To do it right? Yeah, I knew nothing about leading people. Well, what have you done to try to help educate yourself, get some experience to become a better leader? Jason: I think it started with a desire wanting to be better. When you hit that point in 2010, I hit a really low point in my life. That's when I turned my life over to God and became a Christian. It just really changed the way I was thinking. So that kind of led me into leading my family and at some point, you know, I started reading books, I started learning more, listening to podcasts, and that just literally flowed into work. Okay, there's a realization. Okay, now I need to be a better leader at work. And what does that look like? So I started going to conferences, reading books, listening, just consuming as much content as I could, yeah, and then just slowly started putting things into practice at work, which was awkward, you know, at times when you try to bring some new thought processes and stuff to the team where it's never been before. You know, this is the way we've always done it type of mentality, and I was the same way. Chris: So it's a struggle, it's a beautiful story. It's an easy trap to fall into, right For people. Well, we were just doing it this way, because we've always done it that way. That is a eventually that becomes a death sentence for a company because no one will. Eventually that becomes a death sentence for a company because no one will innovate or think differently. And so I definitely applaud you for coming to that point. And you know, and as you know, now it's a, it's an everyday. You know you got to keep learning and keep growing, yeah for sure. So let's go back to the kind of the transition, because at some point you become president I don't know what your dad's title is now, but you kind of take over the reins. Let's talk about how did that decision kind of come about? And then how did y'all manage through the transition where you became kind of the. Jason: It was gradually happening already, so my dad is still the CEO now and he was like saying he was the president back then and it was just I, I probably just. It was a combination of me taking more and taking more initiative and him being able to release more right. So there wasn't anything set like, okay, I'm going to give you more, I need you to take more. Chris: It was just kind of I started pulling and he started giving well the given parts, probably the hardest of those two, oh, I'm sure'm sure, allowing himself to let go and trust. How did y'all manage the communication within the company? Did you just let it happen by kind of osmosis? The actual? Jason: leadership just happened. So I've worked really closely with most of my leadership team for gosh I guess 16 or 17 years now several of them and so it just happened. We started really clicking together, growing. A lot of us have the same kind of mentality we want to get better personally, we want to get better in the business. We're, all you know, looking at the big picture type of thing. But the actual transition from me to GM to president, I didn't even know about it. So we have a staff meeting every Monday with the entire company. We have breakfast and I typically show some type of motivational video, tell the whole staff a few things that might be going on within the business. And in one of those meetings my mom shows up. And my mom, she just doesn't. She's never been involved in the business since I've been there. She's part owner but never been involved in it, and so she's. So you know, I said hi to her before I'm going to the meeting and I didn't think anything about it. Well, during that meeting my dad gets up and says okay, I want to announce that jason is now the president of the business and I'm he. I don't think he said this, but he was stepping up to the ceo. So it was like a we both kind of moved up okay. But he mentioned, you know, that he just that he just wanted to. He knew I was passionate about it, I was passionate about the business, passionate about the people, and he knew I wanted to take it to new places. So he named me president. So nobody knew, not me, not anybody else, it just happened one day oh, we don't. So it was a cool honor and you know it didn't change much. It didn't change much because the structure was already there. Yeah, it was just a matter of a title really then. But I think I started taking it even more serious then. Chris: Makes sense. So I guess we talk about as it exists today. Then you're still working with your dad, but more the responsibility for the day-to-day falls on you, Right? Yes, definitely. Jason: He's there almost every day. I mean he's there every day that he's around. If he's not, you know, gone out of town or something, he's there. He's typically in his shorts and flip flops or you know shorts and shoes and fishing shirt. But he is there, which is great to have him. I'm honored to be able to work with him. He still lets me pretty much do what I want. I mean trusts me. Chris: So one of the things I noticed in getting ready to meet you today was on your website, the company's website. You're very big on your people and your culture, so let's talk a little bit about how you would describe the culture at Top Coat and what are some of the things you think you've done to help kind of build to get to that type of culture. Jason: The culture is amazing at Top Coat and that's my passion. My passion is the culture. That's one of the biggest things I think spend most time thinking about. One of the first things I did was start having a just a like a weekly meeting with my, the leadership team. We started doing that, I would bet, six or eight years ago, Just a weekly meeting. We didn't really have any structure, I just wanted us to meet, put our heads together and talk about things going on. So that was the first thing I started. And then, after that, we started the full staff meetings. After we moved to our new place, we actually had a place we could meet, but we started having our full staff meetings once a week too, and we kind of used that as a transition. I don't remember how it came about, but we started doing a type of physical challenge where every Monday after our staff meeting, we'd have some kind of challenge where it would be, we'd do push-ups, we'd do dead hangs. We've done just about everything you could imagine. Some of them are physical, some of them are not, but we do that and it's we literally make the people pay. If you want to play five bucks, Everybody puts in five bucks and wants to do it. Winner takes all, unless it's a team sport. You know, we've done tug of war, We've done dodgeball tournaments and little things like that. It just creates like maybe 15, 20 minutes of fun and there's trash talking from all the you know, the audience and everything else. But it's that's just a tiny layer that just it just adds a little bit of fun into the workday. It makes it a little more human, right? Yes, and that's one of the biggest things my dad fought me on at the very beginning was doing these. You know his mentality was you know, think about what that's costing the company. You know you have this entire crew shut down for 30 minutes additional. What do you think that's costing us? And I wrapped my head around it and I thought about it and I understood. But at the same time I tried to make him understand. I think it's way more valuable to spend that time and spend that money on this time, because I think overall it's going to be well worth it. Chris: Yeah, kudos to you for that, because it's easy to look at the black and white and ensure there's a cost to that. But I think you're right when you evaluate it holistically. If you're creating engagement and fostering that environment where everyone kind of knows each other better and feels more like a team, I think the returns are exponential. Right, you can't necessarily put dollars on it, but you probably can't look at lack of turnover, maybe better productivity once they're back at work. So I think to your point it was it's a wise investment to making your people yeah, I agree, and I mean to this day. Jason: If you look on our LinkedIn page or Facebook, when I put up videos of the challenge that we do, that's even on LinkedIn. Those are the posts that get so many comments, so many shares. It's people connect with it and so many people say, man, I wish we did that at our place, or I wish my company would do stuff like that. And it's like it's those little things that people I don't know if they don't think about them or they just don't think it's worth it, but for us it's been kind of a game changer. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: So one of the things you mentioned kind of as the company's evolved is, you know this diversification into fabrication and doing other lines of business. What are some of the things you do as the president of the company to kind of create those relationships with the new customers, new vendors, and maintain those strong relationships? Jason: We have a sales team that does a lot of the actual interaction. But most of our customers I'll know their name, I'll know their contact information and I'm the one that reaches out to them personally. For if we're going to do it, then let's say we sponsor a lot of golf tournaments, you know skeet shooting teams for fundraisers and that sort of thing, and I'm the one that normally reaches out to the people and ask them if they want to you know, participate with us. We had an industry night a couple of weeks ago and I call all the what the customers that I know and have the contact information. I'm the one that calls them and I also do customer follow-ups. With every project that we do that ships out, I do a customer follow-up call with everyone. I call them personally, just as me, thanking them, number one for their business and then number two just seeing if there's anything we can do to improve that I love. Chris: And I'll tell you we tried here and we're not consistent with it. Love, and I'll tell you we tried here and we were not consistent with it, but that kind of what I would call customer survey, satisfaction survey. So you've got it baked into your routine to do it on every order. Jason: That's amazing, I learned that from Mattress Mac. Okay, we bought some furniture from him and I think twice now, and every time sometime afterwards he calls personally and just thanks us for his business. Oh we darn. Chris: Yeah, Well, I think it's a great lesson for people you know that are listening to this and have their own business. That personal touch and that follow-up can go so far in creating that customer loyalty Right. So that's amazing. I guess you report back to your people on what you learned from that so that's amazing. Jason: I guess you report back to your people what you learned from that. Yeah, so we have a Teams, our Teams folder that we open up every day or every week in our leadership meeting and I keep the spreadsheets in there so we review it every week. Any ones that I call, you know, I'll be honest, I'll let them build up, because our project coordinator sends me. Every time we ship one out, he sends me the contact, you know, until I know what the project was, who the contact name is and so forth. And I will, all honesty, I let them build up because sometimes I'll procrastinate doing it, you know, because I'm like, oh, it's one more thing I gotta do, right, right. But then after I do, let's say, just the day before yesterday I called six, six clients and every time I do it I'm so glad that I did because I feel better, I'm sure you know, I feel better because I let them know, number one I that I them. Number two we're trying to ask them if there's anything that we can do to improve and be better. We want to know and I don't think. I think it's so uncommon that people don't people say they want feedback. But I think they want the five-star rating Right. They don't want the honesty, they just want okay, how many five stars can we get? Chris: Yeah, they want the high google rating, right right which it feels good to get that. Jason: But we're not going to get any better if, especially if there's a client that's not happy about something, some most of them aren't going to come and just out and tell us, hey, so and so went wrong. But if I ask, is there anything we could do to better, that's when they're going to say, as a matter of fact, there is. Yeah, I haven't got that yet, but we will sure you will. I mean, that's the point, that's what I want. Chris: I think that's great. You know, sitting here thinking I need to do more of that. You know that, as I told you before we came on, I learned from all the guests and I've at least learned that from you today. I think that's wise advice. Jason: And it has to come from the top. If my project coordinator is talking to the clients, you know 24 seven7. It's not going to be the same Right. Chris: That's right. So let's talk a little bit. I mean, it's been up and down in the economy the last few years. What have you experienced at Top Coat kind of as it relates to the last four or five years and kind of the you know turbulent environment, and what are some of the things you've done to kind of manage through? Jason: that We've stayed pretty steady the last several years. Now. Last year ended up being our best year in history revenue-wise. Revenue and profit-wise. Several stars aligned for that, some great projects from some longtime customers. But the few years before that we were okay, we were steady, right, and that's. I think that's one thing that Vistage taught me is to be proactive. I'd sit back for years and say, man, I hope this company grows, I hope this company grows. And then, with you know, the Vistage group and just everything that I've been involved in so far with that has just really taught me that you have to be intentional, you have to, we have to make it happen. So we going to grow, how are we going to make this happen? So that's where the big focus is now. I mean we since I've been there, you know, 26 years we've had some horrible years. I mean when we first take great story, when we first built our new facility beautiful shop, beautiful, everything we had no work, zero. We got down, I believe seven people in the company completely, and I remember just like it was. Yesterday we're having my staff meeting, so it's a small group, but I'm kind of telling them look, we literally had 75 grand in the bank and we said this is all the money we had left. We had all this money from selling our property, but we'd spent on this new facility and we had some money, but it had just dwindled down to nothing because the work had died, and so that was in 16, I think 2016, 2017. Okay, so I'm telling the whole team look, guys, I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to figure this out, but I really don't know what I do, what we're going to do. And then, literally during that meeting, our phone, our office phone, rang. There was nobody in the office, so I turned around and I answered the phone. Quick, five-minute conversation. It was a guy driving by our facility. He was an inspector for Chevron, phillips and Sweeney and he said I'm leaving the shop and I'm the inspector and I can't stand Something along the lines of I can't stand working with these guys. They keep lying to me, I need to find another shop and I've just been driving by your place. I want to see if I can come talk to you about doing some fabrication work for us. That led to us doing $2 million to $3 million a year for them almost every year since. Oh, wow, and so that was. It was like that was. Since I've been in the business, that was the lowest point that I felt, because I was really feeling that pressure of what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And there was no strategy to this. It was like it was a God moment of having him drive by all this stuff at the same time by having a new facility help? yes, absolutely if we had not been there, he never would have driven by our place, because where we were before nobody drove by right, so nobody knew so so that's it. Chris: I mean well, that's an incredible deal. So 2016 is seven employees, $75,000 in the bank. How did you end 2023? How many employees and what was your revenue? Jason: 2023,. We had $22 million in revenue and for most of the year we were probably around close to 100 employees. Wow. Chris: That's an amazing turnaround, congratulations. Appreciate it yeah, congratulations, appreciate it. So, yeah, I like what you said earlier, when it was you were hoping to grow and you've learned to go think about how to grow and be intentional, because that otherwise you hear there's another cliche hope's not a strategy, right? So sounds like you mentioned vistage, so you're a vistage member, that sounds like, and other vistage members, including myself. I know how valuable it can be to grow as a leader, but then how you think about your business. Jason: Sure, absolutely yeah. And, like I was telling you earlier, the network that you meet the people, the different people in every area of business yourself for legal, whether it's taxes, insurance, whatever has to do with business. There's people that I'm connected with, literally one-on-one, that I can call, I can sit down with. Most of them will just meet me for lunch. If I need to bounce an idea off of them. That's the biggest thing. Chris: Something I tell people that have businesses all the time is you've got to build a solid network of trusted advisors that you can reach out to, whether it's a banker, insurance person, accountant, lawyer, another entrepreneur or business owner right, that you can just reach out to, because even when you're having a bad day and maybe they can you know, hey, I've been there before, so you'll feel, because a lot of times you feel alone. What are some of the things I guess, as you've evolved as a leader that you've found to kind of whether it's a particular book or conference you go to that have really been valuable to you to kind of grow as a leader? Jason: I can't think of a specific book, but I think, the mentality of giving your people the tools that they need to do what they have inside their head. You know, I think so many times I've learned that even our leadership team at work they have so many ideas and great ways to do different things, but they don't always let them out. So I think creating number one, creating a safe place, like our leadership meetings that we have every Wednesday morning, that's a safe place. Whether it's a conflict that we have, whether it's an issue that they've been holding in, whatever it may be, that is the place where we draw those things out and we squash them or whatever we need to do. To me, that's probably been the biggest thing. Chris: It's a hard thing to do, but you're so right that safe place where people feel like they can share without being judged or criticized is unique, I think, but so important. Jason: And it's so simple, but we're all humans, especially at work. Yeah, and it's so simple, but we're all humans, especially at work. I'm sure we all swallow a whole lot more at work than we do anywhere else, because maybe we're afraid of our job, we're afraid of whatever. But I think it's been really good for us. We've solved so many issues just because we've created the structure for it. Chris: So one of the things I like to ask folks that come on is can you tell us a setback you've encountered in your professional life? Maybe it's your personal life, but something that sets you back. But you learned so much and you grew from it that you're better off because of it today. Man. Jason: I know there's plenty of them. Chris: That's what most people say. Jason: Yeah, there's plenty of them. Chris: I'm just trying to think what would come to mind, maybe something right after you kind of took over being either general manager or president at Topco, maybe something in those early days. Jason: I think one of the real struggles is it's not a moment but learning the business finances. You know I struggle a lot with okay, we need this piece of equipment to get better, we should just go buy it. Well, my dad has the finances and the history of the accounting behind it and I've struggled because he and I butted heads quite a bit on things I think would be a good investment and things he thinks wouldn't be a good investment. So that's become something we both had to work on. Really, I mean, I lean on him a lot for his knowledge and different things when we're purchasing, making big purchases or expanding our facility, whatever we're doing. But I think having those conversations was probably some of the toughest things we've had to do. Gotcha, and it's just like anything else, it's just like with the leadership team. It's creating a space that we can have those. I mean, he and I have worked together for literally 26 years, so we work well together and we communicate fine together. But it's me getting up the courage to ask those questions too. That's been a struggle. Chris: So what I hear you saying in that and I think it's a natural struggle for people in leadership because, like you said, from day one, you wanted to be the top dog. Sure, it's having the humility to ask your father or mentor someone that you don't know or don't know enough, right. Sure, so that takes a lot of humility, yeah, for you, and I think it's also a blessing that you have the courage to use it. Jason: Is you have a built-in, you know, advisor, mentor, right there, you know, letting you grow and being there to kind of guide you along the way yeah, and I don't utilize them as much as I should, but every time we have a conversation like this, it reminds me how much I should I, how much I do and should you know, put more value in that another thing that you mentioned was mentioned was y'all can butt heads. Chris: So what have y'all done? Because I guarantee I've had other people that have done what you've done on the show, that have taken over a family business. I guarantee there's people who are going to listen to this, that are doing that or see that in their future when you get to that place of how will you and your dad communicate on big issues. If you all kind of got it agreed upon, let's do this in private and really hash it out and not let other people see what's going on. I mean, is that something that's one that you all kind of have a practice of doing? If so, how does that work? Jason: Yeah, definitely. I mean, he's in our leadership meeting. He sits in our leadership meetings pretty much every week. He's pretty quiet, you know, off to the side, he's just mainly listening, but there's plenty of times where I'll you know if I have an issue with something he said, or vice versa. He'll either come to my office and shut the. I always, I constantly, have to remind myself that this is his baby. This whole company is. I've had a lot to do with the growth and where we're at in you know the current state, but at the end of the day, this is his and he. He created it and I'm just a part of it. Yeah, so I have to constantly remind myself of that. And then he I mean, he tells me multiple times that you know I'm doing a good job of running it. So he's constantly having to remind himself that he gave me the authority and the power to run it. But it's definitely a team effort. Chris: I think it would have to be. The other thing that comes to mind again, kind of unique to family-owned business and second generation of leadership of that family-owned business is how well do you and your dad do at leaving the issues at the office versus trickling over to the Thanksgiving table or anything like that? Jason: Yeah, he's probably better at that than I am, but even I don't know. From the time I was born, he and I have had an absolutely solid relationship always. He was gone a lot when I was growing up for many years because he was doing a lot of offshore work. So he was gone a lot when I was growing up for many years because he was doing a lot of offshore work. So he was gone a lot, but we always had just a top-notch relationship. Yeah, so I think without that it would have been a hundred times worse. Yeah, but I don't think I can't remember a single time where any tension between me and him ever stayed very long period, but certainly much less made it out the door. Yeah, yeah, we could have this tough discussion and then say, all right, let's go get some lunch yeah, you know that's good here and you know. Chris: The other thing is, I think when you're an entrepreneur and you own this business, you live and breathe it, so you you're going to be thinking about it when you're at home and those conversations could come up versus, just as natural, when they happen at the office right it. Jason: It always has. Yeah, I mean, whether we're at my house, his house, it's typically something with work is going to come up and we're going to talk about it. Chris: It just happens. So let me ask you this just about your own personal leadership style. How would you describe your leadership style today? How do you think it's evolved or developed over the last several years? Jason: I would say my style is to. This is just off the cuff, but I would say my style is to help anybody that I'm leading, make sure they have the tools to do what they need to do. You know I'm really passionate about I haven't been extremely proactive about mentoring all of my leadership team, but I want to know their goals, not just professionally but personally too, and I think a lot about like, what can I do to help them succeed? If the person is going after what they were put on this earth to do and I can be a part of that and help guide them to that, I think that is the ultimate definition of success when it comes to leadership. Yeah, so that's kind of my passion. I haven't been as good at the mentoring side and maybe the personal side. We talk about business roles and stuff quite a bit but I really want to be more involved with their goals in life overall. Sure, Not involved in them, but what can I do to help? How can I help? Chris: Well, at least understand them, so you know how you can be a resource. Jason: Yeah, and again, I want all my resources to be their resources too. Chris: So that brings up kind of a good subject. When you think about that, and maybe I'm going to ask you about yourself, what do you do to try to maintain some type of balance in your life right between work and family, knowing that you're always thinking about the business, right? Jason: I've done pretty good with that for the most part. I've never been a workaholic, just not me. I've been a huge family guy always. I have four kids, ages 15 down to 7, so we stay busy, sounds like it, but that's another. Passion of mine, too is just the kids and the family. I've never had a struggle with staying at work when I should be at home. Chris: Now having the leadership team that I have is what makes that possible. I was going to say you got to have some tools in place to help facilitate that. So hiring good leaders to work with you, Anything that you look for, or when you do interview or interview someone for a leadership position and or think about promoting them to one. Jason: Culture is the number one thing. That's what I always start with. Will this person be a fit for our culture? And that's typically if we're going to hire not just leadership team, but maybe even the level right. You know, underneath that, most of the time I'll. I want to know the person. I want to have a one-on-meeting. You know, I've met several people for coffee that we were interviewing for a project manager position, just because I want to just get to know the person. The resume says what they've done. The resume says everything that they've accomplished. But I want to know are they going to fit with us? And if they don't, then that's an immediate no. So I think that hiring for the culture is the number one thing. Chris: So many people, including myself, believe that right. Lots of people have skills that could fit with what you do, but are they a type of person that fits with who you are and who you want your people to be? Right, and I believe the people that are culture fit. Jason: You never know where they might end up, even with the company. We've hired a couple of people that were a great fit for us and they were doing one thing. Well then, as soon as we get, they get in and they're a great fit, and then we start seeing all the stuff that they're capable of. Then they start getting snagged by this person and next thing you know they're just keep moving up because everybody's starting to see. Chris: You know they're capable of yeah, but it started with the fit right. That's great. Well, jason, I love the story and the family transition. I think it's a beautiful story when they're done right. They're not always are. I want to always wrap up on a few off-topic personal things. Okay, what was your first job? Was it something at Top Coat or something other than that? Jason: Yeah, it was Top Coat, the one right after high school, so weed eating, yeah, it was great. Chris: So great. All right, what's your preference? Tex-mex or barbecue Tex-Mex? I could eat it every day. I mean, I didn't even finish the sentence. Jason: I know you jumped on that one, I know. Chris: No question. Jason: So I always ask people if you could take a sabbat Ooh 30 days, oh man, for at least a week I'd take my wife and we'd just sit on a beach somewhere. Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, and then I would just do some traveling, a lot of traveling. I want to do a lot more traveling. The only place out of the states I've been is to Mexico, for me and my wife on our honeymoon. Okay, so I've got so many places I want to see, but I just don't make the time or make the plans to do it. Chris: Well with the four kids as you described, you got your hands full right. Yeah, well again. Jason, thanks for taking the time to come on the show. Really enjoyed getting to get to know you better and meet you. Jason: I appreciate the opportunity man. Special Guest: Jason Hayes.

On this episode, my guests are Martin Lena and Linda Poppe of Survival International. They join me to discuss “fortress conservation” in the Congo, the issues facing Kahuzi-Biega National Park, and the recent victories of Survival International there. Linda is a political scientist and director of the Berlin office of Survival International, the global movement for Indigenous peoples' rights. She is also part of Survival's campaign to Decolonize Conservation, which supports Indigenous peoples, who continue to suffer land theft and human rights abuses in the name of conservation.Martin is an advocacy officer for Survival International. He primarily works on Survival's campaign to Decolonize Conservation and has collected testimonies directly from communities facing violations of their rights in the name of conservation. Show Notes:What Conservation Looks like in the Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Evictions of the BatwaSafari Tourism in DRC ConflictThe Militarization of Conservation in Kahuzi-Biega National ParkLand Guards vs Land GuardiansOrganizing Victory! Scrapping French Involvement in Kahuze-BiegaThe German Government Continues to Fund the ParkSolidarity: How to Respond / Act in ConcertHomework:Survival International: French government scraps funding plan for Kahuzi-Biega National Park, citing human rights concernsSurvival International Decolonize Conservation CampaignBalancing Act: The Imperative of Social and Ecological Justice in Kahuzi-BiegaTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the End of Tourism Podcast, Martin and Linda. I'd love it if I could start by asking you two to explain to our listeners where you two find yourselves today and what the world looks like there for you. Linda: Well, hi everyone. My name is Linda. I work for Survival International and I'm in Berlin. I'm at home, actually, and I look forward to talking to you and chatting with you.It's dark outside already, but, well, that's, I guess, the time of the year. Martin: And I'm based in Paris, also at home, but I work at Survival's French office. And how does the world feel right now? It feels a bit too warm for October, but other than that. Chris: Well, thank you both for for joining me today. I'd like to begin by reminiscing on the season three interview that I had with your colleague Fiore Longo, entitled "Decolonizing Conservation in Africa and Beyond."And in that interview, we discussed the history [00:01:00] of conservation as colonization in the context of Tanzania and the national parks that were built there and the indigenous lands that were stolen in order to do so. I'm curious if you two could offer a bit of background for our listeners in terms of the history of conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and especially in regards to the Batwa people and the Kahuzi Biega National Park.Linda: We were quite you know, astonished of the colonial history that, we find in the park where we're here to discuss today. Well, the Congo, obviously, you know, was a colony. And I think in this context, we also need to look at the conservation that is happening in the DRC today.And a lot of the things that you have discussed with our colleague, feel very true for the DRC as well. And the, the park that we're going to look at today, I think it's probably [00:02:00] also the best example to start to explain a little bit what conservation looks like in DRC. It's an older park, so it was created a longer time ago, and it was always regarded as something that is there to protect precious nature for people to look at and not for people to go and live in.And this is exactly what the problem is today, which we see continues, that the people that used to live on this land are being pushed outside violently, separated from the land which they call home, which is everything for them, the supermarket, the church, the school, just in the name of conserving supposed nature.And unfortunately, this is something that we see all over the DRC and different protected areas that exist there, that we still follow this colonial idea of mostly European [00:03:00] conservationists in history and also currently that claim that they're protecting nature, often in tandem with international conservation NGOs.In the park we look at today, it's the Wildlife Conservation Society, and they're, yeah, trying to get rid of the original inhabitants that have guarded these spaces for such a long time. Martin: To build on that, in our campaign to decolonize conservation and survival, we often say that fortress conservation has deep colonial roots and you can definitely see that with the the actual history of the of Kahuzi Biega National Park because it started as a reserve that was created by the Belgian colonial government in 1937 and It was transformed into a national park after independence.So in the 70s, but it was still designated as such following the lobbying of a Belgian conservationist. So it's really the continuation the Western and the European will to keep controlling the, [00:04:00] the independent territories. And that in Africa oftentimes was done through conservation.Linda: And it also has this idea of, I think a lot of the conservation projects that we see, Martin just said it, there was also this post independence push on creating national parks, which was obviously related to the idea that Europeans might lose hold of control in certain areas, so they were pushing for the creation of national parks like the Kahuzi Biega National Park.And that is the setting that we're talking about, basically, something that has very colonial roots and has been pushed into the post colonial era, but in a way which is actually very colonial. Chris: Thank you both for that brief, brief history and introduction into what we'll be speaking about today, Linda, you mentioned that so many of the circumstances around the creation of these national parks includes the exclusion and [00:05:00] displacement of the original inhabitants.And in this case, among others, this includes the Batwa people. And so I'd like to just give our listeners a little bit of a context for what's happened to the Batwa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And so the statistics tell us that "over 90 percent of the 87, 000 indigenous Batwa people in the park have lost legal access to their native territory, turned into conservation areas, and who are desperately poor," according to a 2009 United Nations report.Now, in a recent Reuters article, it's written that, quote, "Local human rights and environmental experts say that the authorities failure to fulfill promises to the Batwa has undermined efforts to protect the forest and its endangered species, including some of the last populations of eastern lowland gorilla.Some of the Batwa around the [00:06:00] park participate in the illegal poaching, mining, and logging that are destroying the gorilla's globally significant habitat. As a result, the conservation outlook for the park is critical, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature." The article goes further and says that "the Batwa have no choice because they are poverty stricken, according to Josue Aruna, president of the province's environmental civil society group, who does community outreach for the Batwa." It seems in this way that the land rights and traditional lifestyles of the Batwa are intimately tied to the health and survival of the ecosystems within the national park, which they've been excluded from, and that their poverty is a consequence of their displacement. Do you think that the issue is as simple as that? Martin: It's always interesting to read these reports from the conservationists, whether it's the IUCN or the NGOs, because the problem is always "the local people. So they are poor and they [00:07:00] have no choice. They participate in poaching." and it's always their fault.Like you were saying, if they end up being poor it's because they were evicted from the land. And as Linda was saying earlier, the forest and the land more generally is everything to them or was everything to them. So it's not only the place where they get food, it's also the whole basis of their identity and their way of life.So once they lose that, they end up in our world, capitalist system, but at the lowest possible level. So, that's why they end up in poverty. But it's a problem that was created by the conservationists themselves. And even when you read Their discourse or their position about trying to improve the situation for the Batwa, it's always about generating revenue ,lifting them out of poverty, developing alternative livelihoods. But what we are campaigning for is not some alternative to the loss of their rights. It's Their land rights themselves. And to go to your other question [00:08:00] about the fact that the loss of their land rights has led to a degrading in the health of the ecosystem.I think, yes, for sure. That has been the case, and it's what we're seeing all around the world in these protected areas that are supposed to protect nature. But actually, once you evict the best conservationists and the people that were taking care of the land for decades, then there is room for all kinds of exploitation whether it be mass tourism or luxury safaris or even mining and logging concessions.So it's not a coincidence if 80 percent of the biodiversity on the planet is located in indigenous territories. It's because they have lived in the land. It's not wild nature. They have lived there for generations. They have protected it and they have shaped it through their practices. So, to us, the best way to protect this ecosystem is to ensure that their land rights are respected and blaming them for poaching or putting that on the fact that they are poor, it's just [00:09:00] dishonest and ignoring the basis of the problem.Linda: Yeah. I agree. And when you just read out these sentences, I noted down like the way it was formulated, as a result, the park is threatened. It's again, just focusing on the local people as being the problem. Like the protected areas, they are to protect an area from the local people, which I think becomes very clear in the way you explained it. And also, like, Martin, I'm quite struck by the idea that they talk about poor people, but ignoring that, you know, their actions that of the Batwa have also caused this poverty. So it's, in a way, you know, first you make people poor and then you kind of insult them almost for being poor and then, you know, acting accordingly.I think that is quite, you know, ignoring what has happened. And I think it's the same with [00:10:00] the general model of conservation. Like the sentences you read, I mean, there is some sympathy in it, you know, it sounds like, "oh, these poor people," you know, "in a way we regret what has happened and that they were evicted."But it's like "those poor people," they don't really look at, you know, why were they evicted and what are the consequences for our kind of conservation today? Like the consequence could be that the Batwa can return to their land because they are the best guardians and because it would give them a base to, to live, not in poverty.So that consequence, they don't see it's because they ignore all the things that have caused the supposed poverty and have caused this kind of conservation that we see. So, don't think about what we've done in the past, we'll just go on, but that is a problem because they don't learn any lessons from what has happened and that land rights should be so important.Chris: Yeah, I think that it definitely points towards this notion that I think a lot of people are becoming apt to in our [00:11:00] times in these days, which is the general kind of approach to the dilemmas in these contexts are to look at the symptoms of the dilemma and not the causes.And in the context of the eviction and exile, displacement of the Batwa people, one of the articles mentions that "one of the consequences of the induced poverty includes the endangering and further endangering of the eastern lowland gorilla." And I mention this because in my research leading up to this interview, this conversation, I looked into the tourism offerings in Kahuzi Biega, in the National Park, and I found the following.I'm just gonna read off a list of what I did find. " Gorilla safaris, or trekking. Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center tours. Camping safaris. Cultural tours. Bird [00:12:00] watching. Hiking. Climbing and boat cruises." And so my next question is this. To what extent does the safari tourism in the national park play a part in this conflict?Linda: Oh, that's a super interesting question. I mean, it obviously depends on the specific park that you look at. But I think I would say in almost any national park that we look at in Survival, there is some kind of idea that this park needs to have tourists. Tourists need to come and go and see the beauty of nature, ideally Western tourists, so that they become involved in conservation and donate money, and also in a way that tourism would be a way to pay for services that are related to maintaining the park.So it's something that usually always pops up. It's kind of, it's like twins a little bit. And, you know, I, I work on, on [00:13:00] mostly German politics and how they relate to this conservation. And it's something that you can't really separate where you read about conservation projects that the German government funds, you will always also read about tourism.So they're very interlinked. In some parks, you know, there isn't a lot of tourism because the situation is not very attractive to western tourists, but the idea is always there. And then the extent to which tourism actually happens obviously differs and then has different effects. In some parks that we work on, There's a lot of tourism, there's a lot of creation of infrastructure for tourists, hotels, for roads, for tourist vehicles to go places.Then it obviously has a much stronger impact on the area and also on the people that live there. If there are less tourists, then the actual effect of tourism is, of course, a little bit less than it might sound in these proposals to have tourists there at all.Chris: In the [00:14:00] context of conflict zones, which from what I understand this particular park in the Congo is a conflict zone, or at least parts of it, that tourism can act as a kind of barrier between local populations or local ecologies and the consequences of those conflict zones, right? But it doesn't necessarily stop the conflict. It just turns it underground, it turns a kind of blind eye to it, waiting, in most instances that I know of, until the organized crime in the area ends up getting, you know, their hands into the economy of, of the tourism itself.Martin: Yeah, I mean, I agree with Linda that it's always there and it's always under the discourse and it's never only about conservation, there's always tourism. And often the national parks are created for this purpose. If you read the UNESCO definition or the IUCN definition of what a national park is, it says it's also for [00:15:00] recreation.So these places are built for tourists. against the locals. So, yeah, it's always there and it's even in the definition.Linda: So yeah, when you said tourism is a barrier in some cases tourism can amplify the problems that are there because there is more eviction or there's more interest of, for example, governments to evict people, to create this great picture of nature, which is so attractive to tourists.So I think, I would find it as something that can really worsen the situation. I think from what I've seen, you know. We sometimes talk about sustainable tourism or respectful tourism, but in the terms of conservation projects, my impression really is that it's been harmful.And the indigenous populations that work in tourism, which is one of the things that funders of conservation projects often [00:16:00] say, that they can find jobs in tourism. A lot of these jobs are not very good. And I would argue that a lot of times people need to take these jobs because they have lost the choice to not take a job and live from the forest.Chris: Yeah, it's an interesting thing to wonder about in the little research that I did around what's happening in this particular park in the Congo, that there are rebel groups. It is a conflict zone, and yet there are these tourism offerings, right? And that surely, the champions of the National Park and conservation and in many areas would say, "well, you know, the more, the more tourism we can get in here the more we can undermine at least the economic causes if not the political ones that are contributing to the violence," when in fact, from what I can understand from Survival's work, that this is just deepens the causes that produced that conflict and that exile in the first place.Linda: Yeah. And I think there's also [00:17:00] perception of injustice, which we shouldn't underestimate. I mean, if you're an indigenous person that has been violently evicted or whose family has been violently evicted from a certain area, and then you see, Western tourists mostly, which are rich, you know, pay a lot of money for these trips, are allowed to go in and use that area in a way. I think that also creates, yeah, a sense of injustice, which is also, yeah, it's quite, quite sad. Chris: Mm hmm. Definitely. And then that's certainly what we see in over touristed places around the world and in places that are just starting to become over touristed, this kind of deep resentment amongst locals for the inequalities, the growing inequalities and yeah, as well, the injustices that these industries bring.And so on that point of conflict zones, especially in and around Kahuzi Biega. I wanted to ask you both a question around the militarization of conservation. So, [00:18:00] some people believe that militarized park police, which is what exists in this park, are a necessary evil.Officially, at least, "the guards protect the park from armed militias or rebel groups in the area, ensuring that they stay out of the park." Of course, those who they confront and sometimes attack also include the indigenous people, the Batwa in this case, who are trying to retake and reclaim their ancestral lands.And the argument is that without the guards, the land would fall into the hands of much more malevolent groups or forces. And so how do you think the presence of armed conflict as well as militarized conservation guards complicates the issue? Linda: That's a tough question. Well, maybe I can just give like a little anecdote.It was actually about this park, the [00:19:00] Kahuzi Biega National Park, and we were talking to German politicians and government officials about the problem of conflict and about the problem that these park rangers you know, are trained and have a lot of weapons, which seems very militant. And they, they were seeing the problem.They were seeing that this is probably not the best thing they should do, support security forces in an area which is already so problematic. But their thinking was, if we don't give them the money, now we have created this this force, basically. We have hired people, we have trained them.Now, if we stop supporting them, what are they going to do? You know, they're gonna maybe take the training and their weapons and make it even worse. So in a way, I mean, this was off record, right? They were just kind of thinking out loud. But in a way, they were seeing that the projects that they have supported have created structures which [00:20:00] very likely will increase conflict.And it seems quite obvious also because you see all these conflicts with indigenous peoples. So, I'm not going to say that it's a very peaceful area and there is not a need maybe for people to defend themselves. But in a way, the structures that we have in militarized conservation are not the solution.You know, they make the situation much more complicated than it initially was. And now, like, in this park, we're in a situation where we witness terrible human rights abuses, and everyone's scared to act and do something because it could get even worse. And it's, yeah, it doesn't seem like a very good solution.I think we need another way. We can't just stick our head, and say, oh, you know, we just go on, we'll just go on and then let someone else deal with it in a few years. I don't think that's a very good solution. Very good example.Martin: And it's questionable also to what extent do these these guards, these armed [00:21:00] rangers actually protect the, the parks and the species because they are here supposedly to fight against illegal wildlife trade and poaching and everything.But what studies have shown is that the root cause of of poaching and of the, of the illegal wildlife trade is mostly the demand for such products that comes from industrialized countries or at least other parts of the world and the system is made for the guards to take action against the local population and not against the actual criminal networks that lead to illegal wildlife trade and poaching.They get money for people they arrest and the easiest people to find are the locals that are trying to get to their ancestral lands. And there's also sometimes the park management involved in these criminal networks. So, you pretend to put in place a system to fight against illegal wildlife trade, but there ends up being no choice but [00:22:00] for the guards to, to take on the local people. Linda: Maybe we should also think about the indigenous populations as guards, or maybe guardians is the better word, of this area. And if we zoom out of the DRC and look at South America, where we have much stronger land rights... it's not perfect, but of course, better for indigenous people.They often act as guardians or guards of these territories, even though they're also confronted with illegal logging, quite brutal illegal logging, for example. But in a way, they are there and they, of course, are supported by authorities ideally, in defending these territories, but you see a less violent or militarized conflict because you have the indigenous guardians, as opposed to starting out with their protected [00:23:00] areas and armed guards, which are not just there to defend themselves, but have extensive rights of use of violence, and they don't have to fear any repercussions if something goes wrong and they kill, for example, an indigenous person.I mean, that's what we've seen in this park, that they can basically act with impunity. Chris: And thank you, Linda, for offering that example of the difference or the contrast between places like the Kahuzi Biega National Park and the DRC and other places in South America, for example, where there is this inherited intergenerational understanding of guardianship and while there's only maybe a half a century of conservation industry in these places, of course, they're an extension of the colonial project or projects that were undertaken much further back in time in places like Africa and places like the DRC before it was known as such.And then what happens, you know, after X amount of [00:24:00] generations after this kind of exile and displacement, that there is no lived memory anymore of what it means to be a guardian of your place. And I don't just mean as a title, but in terms of how you guard that place, as an indigenous person.We might be able to say that the Western world or the modern world that that's very much what we've become is people who are unable to remember or have a lived memory of what it's like to adequately stand as guardians for a place. You know, I think with the work that you two in Survival International are doing, there's a path forward towards that.And I'd like to remind our listeners that we're also here speaking today in part because there was a victory that was won by Survival International on behalf of the Batwa people and activists like yourself. And so I'd like to just read very briefly from [00:25:00] July 2023 press release from Survival International, in which it is said that, quote, "in a landmark decision, the French government has scrapped its plan to fund the controversial Kahuzi Biega National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."France's Minister of State for Development, francophonie and International Partnerships, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, confirmed that the plan to begin financing the Kahuzi Biega National Park has been scrapped. Ms. Zacharopoulou said, quote, "It has been abandoned, in line with our requirement for the respect of human rights."So first of all, I'd like to say congratulations to you both and to your teams at Survival for for getting this this victory and for doing the work you need to do in order to get there. And I'd like to [00:26:00] ask about the strategies that were employed in order to revoke French support for the park. You know, so many of these efforts and victories are either ignored in the context of the endless dilemmas or they're celebrated kind of superficially without considering the work it took to organize such campaigns.And so my question is, how has this campaign been organized by Survival International? Martin: Well, to give a bit of context the first time we heard about the French Development Agency planning on funding Kahuzi Biega, it was in the exact same time period as the publication of a report by Minority Rights Group International detailing brutal waves of violence in 2019 and until 2020 of appalling human rights abuses. So, atrocities that including murder, torture, rape [00:27:00] the burning alive of children, the burning of villages. So, we are, in this context, where we are reading the minority rights group report and understanding the scale of these waves of violence against the Batwa.And around the same period, we see that the French Development Agency has been a delegation, including the director, has been to the park and plans on funding it. So, of course we are appalled and and decide to write to the French Development Agency, but also to the to the ministry that has oversight.So, one of them is the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. And then we wait. And then we also got the support of a senator who also sent a letter and asked a question in Parliament to the government about their plan to fund this park in the context of these human rights violations.And so in July 2022, so last year, they decided to suspend temporarily the project. It was also in the context of an internal scandal because there was an expert[00:28:00] in the field and contracted by the French development agency to carry out a feasibility study. And he was basically saying around, and it can be heard in recordings saying that basically the study is just a formality and that the decision to fund the park has already been made.So there's both scandals. An internal scandal about the due diligence apparently being considered a formality on the field and the scandal of the very detailed report that had just gone out about the atrocities. So, that led to a temporary suspension. And they said that they would conclude the study and look into the abuses into social aspects.And then a year passed and we kept sending letters, of course, and doing some public campaigning about it on social media, et cetera. And then the senator asked again a question in July this year, and that's when we learned that the project was cancelled. So, of course, it's a victory, and it shows that sometimes the government actually does have the oversight[00:29:00] on the development agencies and takes the right decisions.But, of course, it's just the whole model still needs to be challenged and the park still has many international backers, even in the context of the atrocities that we that we know about. Chris: Mm. So the senator that asked about the status of the funding and found out that it was in fact scrapped, the scrapping of the funding was never made public until that point?Or there was never any press release saying so? Martin: No, they made it public, In the answer to the question, orally, in, in commission in Parliament. Chris: Mm. And would there be no way that the French public, for example, would be able to find out about this otherwise?Martin: I don't think so. And to be honest, I'm not even sure the decision had been taken before. I think they looked into it again because the senator asked a question again, but that's just speculation. Chris: And you spoke about writing letters, obviously to politicians and to the ministries [00:30:00] and also social media campaigns. Do you think there was more of an effect on the scrapping of the funding because of the public campaign, the social media campaign? Martin: Yeah, I think and that's basically the whole premise on which our campaigns are based is that an efficient mobilization of the public opinion will lead and the fact that the public cares and is informed will lead to a more efficient lobbying and advocacy of the governments and, and other government agencies. So yeah, I think one can't go without the other. And I don't know what would have happened if only the Senator had asked the questions or if only the Senator had asked a question or if we had only sent a letter and no public campaigning at all, or no press release, or no social media, I don't know. So I think, yeah, both go hand in hand.Chris: Mm hmm.So do you think that without the report from the Minority Rights Group, that the funding would have gone ahead, regardless of what was actually happening there? Martin: It's possible because we know that the funders were aware for years and [00:31:00] years of the human rights violations. And even before the waves of violence that are described in the report, we know that they were aware of that risk of violence at that time and of the human rights violation in the whole context of the militarized park.So, I think it could have very well gone ahead, because the other funders knew and kept funding it. And yeah, it's very important to get that kind of report with very detailed testimonies and information from the ground, and really documenting these atrocities. Otherwise, it's just business as usual.Chris: And the original proposal for the funding at least by the French government or the ministries involved, they were basically just promoting conservation in the way that it typically is. That's what the funding was for? Martin: Well, it's hard to know because they never published anything and actually, they never actually started funding it.It was just, just a project. Like I said, they went on a visit there and started making [00:32:00] promise to the local conservation agencies and to the local authorities. It's not clear to this day what exactly they were planning on funding, but it was clearly stated that there were planning on supporting the park itself, but I don't know for which kind of activities, but still, funding the same structure that that has been responsible for these abuses is still unacceptable.Chris: Mm hmm sounds "sketchy," as we say in English. And and so for our listeners, just a little bit of further context while France simply abandoned plans, the country had not yet made, or the government had not yet made, Germany continues to finance the park despite France's, however, subtle acknowledgment of human rights violations.And so, Linda, my question for you is, first of all, why is Germany funding a national park in the DRC to begin with? And, if you know, [00:33:00] how does that money get spent? Linda: Well, I guess the, the German interest in this park is pretty old, so the German government started funding the park already in the 80s.And there were some other projects even before that, supposedly. But it's considered to be a very, well, it obviously is a very long running project financed by the German government. And some local people call it the German park, because they assume that without the German funding, it wouldn't even exist. Like the kind of money that has been given over decades and the kind of things that have been funded, the infrastructure, the Congolese conservation authorities, the park rangers, you know, all the things that were funded basically crucial for the park to function. So yeah, it is a very German funded project. And also the German government has for very, a very long time looked at it as being a prestigious [00:34:00] project.You know, it was this great park, the gorillas, you already mentioned it, you know, and the Germans been funding it, which when you know a bit about German history, post World War II, there was a lot of interest in biodiversity and conservation funding because it was a good thing to do, which gave Germany a little bit of a different international picture than it had after the war.So there was a lot of interest in funding projects, and they were perceived as being fantastic, and they were shown to be these great projects that Germany is supporting internationally. And then, obviously, it isn't, but the German government has been very, very good at denying that there are these problems, and the role that it has had in facilitating these horrific human rights abuses. Mm. Chris: And how, if at all, has the German government responded to the [00:35:00] scrapping of the French funding? Linda: Very good timing, because I just got a response today, actually from the German government. Mm. 'cause we did point out to them that the French government has decided to not fund the park because of the violations of indigenous people's rights and because of human rights concerns. So we pointed this out to the ministry again, just in case, they would not have learned about this themselves. But the reply basically doesn't address this at all. You know, this was what we wrote the letter about and the replies about all the great things that the German government keeps funding and the improvements it is supposedly seeing on the ground and these improvements justifying their continued support.So it's just a letter explaining why they continue funding it and not addressing why maybe partners like the French government have decided not to fund it. And it's something that we have seen over the years. I think [00:36:00] survival first raised human rights violations in the Kahuzi Biega National Park in actually 2017, so that's quite a few years ago.There was a Batwa family. A father with his son, a teenage son. They were going into the park to collect herbs for medicine because another son of the family was sick. They encountered park rangers who killed the teenager and hurt wounded the father. So it was quite a terrible incident.And the father wrote to the German government, to the funders, and he complained about these human rights violations and the fact that the Batwa had lost access to the park and to their livelihood because of the German funding. The German government just said, "well, you know, there's not much we can do about it, basically."They tried to pay some money, but then really nothing, nothing else happened. And over the years, the situation hasn't improved. It has [00:37:00] gotten worse. But the German government keeps saying that they have faith in the Congolese conservation authorities and they do not see grounds to stop the funding or the project.They keep saying that they see progress. And things will get better. And we know it hasn't gone better. Chris: I'd like to return anyways to this this question around tactics and strategies and organizing. It seems that activists and those not directly involved in social movements struggle with the weight of our times.I mean, it's you know, kind of hard to ignore these days. And so, given that the German government, I imagine, is the obvious next target in the campaign to defund Kahuzi Biega, or at least the conservation authorities and programs there, what tactics, what strategies are being employed by Survival in your campaigns, [00:38:00] and how might our listeners in Germany, France, Europe, and, and beyond, how might they participate?Linda: That's a very good question, because, as I said, you know, Survival has been working on this for a few years, and there's a little bit of frustration, of course, that not much is happening in the terms of acknowledging the problem of funding this park. I think what Survival, what we're thinking is, quite important in this issue of conservation is making sure that donors in the West understand that this is a very symptomatic problem.So, a lot of conservation projects function like this and it is because there is this underlying problem with them, that they do not acknowledge land rights. But they continue to say that certain government authorities or certain conservation organizations are best put to run these places. It's the same with the [00:39:00] Kahuzi Biega National Park.The German government now says, "well, we know there are problems, so we pull in the WCS. They're the conservation organization and everything will be better. But it won't because they also have a record of not respecting indigenous people's rights. So, we need to make them understand that there is this underlying issue of not acknowledging indigenous people's land rights.And we try to do this by pointing out that this is a problem which is happening in a lot of national parks. So, protected areas that Survival has looked at in Africa and Asia, almost all of them, even the ones that we were told were good examples, have these problems. And we try to show that to the donors that have such big impact on these conservation projects and make them rethink what they're doing.It's a very difficult process, of course, because they've always done it in a different way. And now it's hard for them to think [00:40:00] about, you know, giving control and power to local people, which until now they've always said is a threat to conservation. It's like a total turn of what they assumed so far.But for us, it seems like that's the thing that we have to do for them to actually acknowledge the problem, because otherwise all the solutions that they come up with are not real solutions. They put people like the WCS in power, which is also not going to respect the Batwas' rights. Chris: Yeah, I think one of the critiques around development is in the context of these industries, especially things like conservation, volunteerism is another one that as industries, you would imagine that they would have in their mission statement, or vision, or ten-year plan, the slow and intentional disappearance of their own industry, right? Because if what they were [00:41:00] doing was working, we would need less of them. And there would be less of them, but here we are, right? And it's just, of course, a massively growing industry, both conservation and volunteerism. Martin: Yeah, it's true that our key targets are the donors, because like many of the issues that indigenous peoples are facing across the world, the root of the problem and the funding for these problems come from the West and our societies. So that's going to remain one of our targets and key part of the strategy. I think we are starting to see a shift in the discourse, in France, at least. And when we talk to the politicians, we also see that shift, that shift in the discourse of the conservation NGOs, but it's still as harmful. So instead of saying that these places are wild and empty and that the local artists are destroying it or encroaching, well, they still say it, but they also say that what we were saying before about the poverty issue and that [00:42:00] they will generate new projects and new activities and development basically.So, I think that they are starting to acknowledge the presence of these people. They couldn't be further from recognizing their land rights because, like you said, otherwise it means their own disappearance, and they're not built for that. Linda: Yeah, so it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing. I mean, I think we try to talk to people that are more inclined to understand the importance of indigenous people's rights so that we can have a base of people that support our campaigning, which is very important for us.And then we select our targets and try to engage the people that support us in convincing these targets to change projects or change their minds. And sometimes, you know, that can just be it a tweet that texts someone who we know makes decisions about certain [00:43:00] projects, try to raise awareness that there is concern about this project, that some people disagree, that this doesn't comply with human rights, that this doesn't comply with, agreements or treaties they're supporting for indigenous people's rights.And sometimes it's a more complex lobbying strategy. So there are different things we try to do and sometimes, like we saw with the example of the French government, sometimes it works because there's timing, there's different things coming together. But obviously, even though we have a lot of strategies, it's always difficult to know what will work in the end.So we try different things and try to engage with people that will help us spread the word about the need to decolonize conservation and do it differently and acknowledge land rights. And sometimes it's little things that really change a lot. Sometimes we work on something for a long time and it wasn't the right strategy and we need to change.[00:44:00] Chris: Well, speaking of how might our listeners find out more about Survival International and the decolonize conservation campaigns and especially around the work that you two are doing. Martin: Well, I strongly encourage people to read more of our campaigns on the website, on social media, also to subscribe to our newsletter, because that's where we mostly share our urgent actions.So which are one of our tools to put pressure on the targets. So, mass emails basically sent by our supporters to the targets about specific projects. And we also publish some video, direct video testimonies in our tribal voice projects, as we call it.So if they want to listen to, to the victims explaining the problems they are facing, but also the way of life that they have lost or sometimes more inspiring things about the resistance and and the fight. I think it's also very interesting to hear directly from the people affected.But yeah, I strongly encourage people to join the movement by [00:45:00] any means possible. And sometimes as Linda said, just small actions like a tweet or sending an email through these campaigns can be can really make an impact and and it does help ensure that the advocacy and the lobbying is effective.Linda: Yeah, and I think it's also a nice way to picture that you're showing solidarity with, for example, the Batwa, who often perceive the Western donors as being the cause of their problem. And I think for them, it's nice to see that there are also people in the countries that, where the problems originate that are standing up for their rights and supporting them.And I think it's probably the least we can do also, because we're so obsessed with African nature that I think it would be a very good step for us to think about the people that live in these places.Chris: Yeah, absolutely. And maybe not immediately or superficially in part because of the inundations and the dilemmas in our times, but that kind of [00:46:00] solidarity can begin to break down as well, the largely like unconscious nationalist tendencies we have when we think of other people in other countries, we always associate those people with their governments, right?Which is just like, absolutely ridiculous when anyone thinks of themselves in relation to their own government, right? But these are two faces, two voices of the resistance that are working on behalf of many others.And so I just wanted to reiterate that we're here today just to have the chance to be able to speak about a little bit about this this small victory that all willing will lead to many more to much bigger ones in regards to the Decolonize Conservation campaign of Survival International.It takes work and I'm grateful to be able to speak with you both today and to have you share some of your work and your dedication with our listeners and I will make sure that all of those links that you mentioned, Martin, will be on the End of Tourism website and available for our [00:47:00] listeners to sign up to the newsletter and follow on social media and of course participate if they so wish.Thank you both. Linda: Thanks. Martin: Thank you.​ Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Wes Cummins, CEO of Applied Digital, for an inside look at the company's revolutionary trajectory. Wes takes us behind the scenes of Applied Digital's evolution from Bitcoin mining infrastructure to leading the charge in specialized cloud and high-performance computing. Our discussion also tackles the grit of entrepreneurship. Wes reflects on Applied Digital's resilience amid regulatory shifts, sharing lessons from his upbringing on perseverance and hard work. As the company grows, so does its specialized workforce, prompting insights on fostering talent retention and aligning culture with business goals. Overall, Wes offers a compelling narrative of continuous innovation through adversity, partnership and calculated risk-taking. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Wes Cummins discusses the origin of Applied Digital, beginning with infrastructure for Bitcoin mining and pivoting to high-performance computing and specialized cloud services. We examine the company's strategic response to China's crackdown on Bitcoin mining and how this external challenge spurred a significant shift in Applied Digital's business model. I reflect on my own experiences with business pivots and emphasize the importance of seeking opportunities amidst market disruptions and regulatory changes. Wes shares insights from his upbringing on a family farm, including the values of hard work and resilience, and how these qualities have influenced his entrepreneurial journey. We talk about the rapid growth of Applied Digital, expanding from three to approximately 200 employees, and the operational challenges associated with scaling up. Wes outlines the importance of building a specialized team with the right skills, highlighting the role of strong human resources and recruiting in managing rapid company growth. The conversation delves into the significance of company culture in driving employee motivation, retention, and the cultivation of a spirit of empowerment and ownership. We discuss the energy challenges in powering AI technology, the use of renewable energy sources, and the potential of nuclear power to meet the increasing demand for data center capacity. Wes considers the future of Texas businesses within the energy grid, including the financial and infrastructural challenges of meeting the needs of hyperscalers. Finally, Wes and I touch on personal leadership styles, the evolution from micromanagement to autonomy, and the value of mentorship in fostering a productive work environment. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Applied Digital GUESTS Wes CumminsAbout Wes TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Wes Cummins, ceo of Applied Digital. Wes's company is building the next generation of digital infrastructure in the United States. He shares his thoughts on how building a strong company culture starts by providing opportunities for growth to your employees. All right, wes, I want to welcome you to Building Texas Business and thanks for taking time to come on the show. Wes: Chris, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. Chris: So let's start by just you introducing yourself. I'll at least say I know you're the CEO and founder of Applied Digital. Tell us a little bit about Applied Digital. What is that company and what is it known for? Wes: Sure. So. Applied Digital is a company that is building next generation digital infrastructure, and the company started by building infrastructure for Bitcoin mining back in 2021. Crypto mining, where a lot of the hash rate about 70% of the hash rate was in China at the time had to go elsewhere in the world. A lot of that came to the US. We assembled a team that had experience in the sector which there wasn't a lot of people in the US that had experience, given. I think it was sub 5% of the hash rate was actually in the US at the time Assembled a team, secured power sites because it takes a large amount of electricity and built data centers, which is the digital infrastructure for Bitcoin. We don't mine Bitcoin ourselves. We never have. We provide a data center service for Bitcoin miners, and the original business idea around that was anyone can be a Bitcoin miner if they come to us, so you need to have money to buy the miners, the servers, and you come to us and sign a contract. We put it in our facility, we run it for you and Bitcoin just starts hitting your wallet and you're a Bitcoin miner. So that was the original business idea. What it ended up being was we signed a few industrial scale Bitcoin miners that filled up all of our facilities Our largest customer being Marathon Digital, which I believe is the largest Bitcoin miner in the world and so that we built about 500 megawatts of data center capacity in about 24 months for Bitcoin mining. And then, in 2022, we started looking at what other products or services can we offer on our sites and with our assets, and what we landed on was high-performance computing, and at the time, high-performance computing was more of a niche market. That went after, like geotech analysis for oil and gas, aerospace design, automotive design, drug discovery, graphics rendering, and high-performance computing is typically GPU-based, typically requires significantly more power in a single rack, so much, much higher power density than traditional data centers. So we designed that in 22, started building it at the end of 22, our first facility, and then, in October of 22, we put a software layer in place to run a cloud service out of our facility, and we started running that cloud service in December of 22. Out of our facility and we started running that cloud service in December of 22. And the customers were initially small, mostly universities that were doing research, machine learning, deep learning out of that facility, and we put the cloud service in place to be our own first customer and our new style of data center, to show the data center work, and then we could lease out the data center capacity. And then, as everyone knows, the world has changed since December 22,. Really, it was when ChatGPT hit the scene, so everyone got their first taste of generative AI at a wide scale and what it does. And then, in March of 23, nvidia introduced the H100 GPU, which was their next big data center GPU upgrade from the A100. And it turned out that the data center we were building was kind of a perfect fit for the new NVIDIA gear and we were out marketing that and we landed our first actually cloud service customer in May of 20 character AI. And so we've leaned. Now we've done two things. We've leaned into the cloud services business and signed more contracts and more customers. There we're basically we own the compute and we provide a very specialized cloud service that's GPU based. And then the other thing we're doing is we went back and initially we were going to build five or 10 megawatt facilities on these sites and now we're back to building hundreds of megawatts of high performance computing, high power, density, data center capacity, mostly right now in North Dakota. But we, you know, this is a new kind of a new world on digital infrastructure and we can talk about that a lot more, but that's really what our company does is next generation digital infrastructure. Chris: That's an incredible story. Let me just kind of back up to the beginning. What was the inspiration for you to even start the business back when you did yeah, so? Wes: it's a little bit interesting. So the business model changed quickly after we started. So the initial business model was actually deploying you know kind of industrial scale GPU capacity to do altcoin mining. And that goes back a lot more to my background, which you know. I've been a tech investor for 25 years now and really what I saw was an opportunity in that market. So altcoins are anything but Bitcoin, basically, and the largest being Ethereum, and the idea was we were going to deploy a lot of GPUs and there were many different proof of work networks that require GPU capacity to run for different altcoins Again Ethereum being the largest when it was proof of work, before transitioning to proof of stake. And the idea was, as an investor, instead of putting money into these different altcoins, you could actually just aim the compute power at different networks depending on which one was most profitable. And so we were going to be a large scale GPU operator doing Ethereum and other altcoins, and we signed an agreement with a company called Sparkpool that was the largest Ethereum pool in the world I think it had roughly 25% of the entire hash for Ethereum at the time and we were going to deploy a lot of GPUs in China actually, and so we raised money for that in April of 21. And then, at the end of May of 2020, was when China cracked down on Bitcoin mining and our business model changed because the opportunity to build all this infrastructure in the US was basically presented to us. I'd already started to assemble the team that could go out and do that, and then we just accelerated that. So that was really the genesis of the company. But you know, when the world changes, you have to be accommodative to that, and so we have been. Chris: That's a great point to make and let's kind of stay on that for a minute. You start out with an idea and a plan and that was going to be in China. China, you know, without any control, you have changes, the laws and things, and you're forced to pivot. Walk us through, maybe, how that played out for you, the decision-making. Other entrepreneurs face that all the time, I think, and some successfully and, as you know, some unsuccessfully. So what are some of the things maybe you could share to help someone navigate through when market dynamics beyond your control change and force you to just totally pivot your business model? Wes: Yeah, it's an interesting position and, you're right, sometimes it's hard to make it through those. So what we did? We stepped back, because when the news first hit I remember it was I think it was the last Friday in May I was sick to my stomach. It was just like the entire business model we were going after has just been closed for us. But we spent some time over the weekend thinking about what opportunities does this create? And it became very clear the opportunity it created very quickly. The thing that was fortunate for us is I had already been in discussions about building sites for our GPUs in the US. We were looking at power sites. We were looking the US, we were looking at power sites. We were looking at, you know, construction, we were looking at that, and so there was a pretty clear path. And you know, our partners in China were looking for capacity outside of China very quickly and so we kind of had a natural customer base and we already had kind of the start of looking at these sites and what we could do there. So it was very helpful to have that. But you know, at the start it was a big gut punch when we found that out and it took us. You know, really over the weekend it became clear for us, but then it took us a couple of weeks to really change and take action on the new business opportunity and take action on the new business opportunity. But what I would say in general is typically if there's a big change, it definitely can wreak havoc with current businesses, but it's going to create some new opportunity. Chris: I think that's the idea. Wes: That's the idea of the opportunity, yeah. Chris: Yeah, I think that's the. The lesson I see consistent in talking to entrepreneurs is, you know, gut punch moments cause you to rethink the business model or where the weaknesses are, but it's about looking for the opportunity, because with every roadblock then I said, if you really take a close analysis of the situation, you can find opportunity, and then you just try to figure out how to pursue that. Wes: Yep, that's what we did, and, like I said, we were fortunate in that we'd already started putting some of these puzzle pieces in place prior to that news coming out, and so it was a little bit of an easier transition, but it wasn't an easy transition by any means. Chris: So you know it may be too a little bit of your makeup and I know I think a little bit about you. You grew up on a farm, I think in Idaho, and there have to be some lessons learned in growing up in a rural environment that teaches you that you just keep your head down and keep plugging away. Wes: Yeah, you know there's many lessons from farming and I was in kind of the last generation at least in Idaho of family farms where you know all the family members worked on the farm before it was much more commercial and so you know, generally around five to six years old we started working on the farm. I'm sure at that age we were zero help, but you know you have to get trained into it. But we, you know we did in Idaho. You do a lot of irrigating. You get up at 430 in the morning and go stand in a wet, cold potato field and move irrigation equipment around for about an hour and a half. Then you get to do it again in the middle of the day and again at night. So there was a lot of lessons. But our dad taught us being self-starters right. So self-starter was a big part of what else do I need to do, not just the task he gave me and then I have to wait for him to give me another task. Obviously hard work, but I always make the joke. The biggest thing that growing up on a potato farm taught me is that I did not want to be a farmer. That was probably the biggest takeaway for me, but it did instill, you know, very strong work ethic and that's. You know farming is a hard business. Just because you know, like many businesses or maybe it's the worst out of any business the predictability is just. It's just not there right, it's not predictable at all. You know, I always tell people when we used to do stock investments. You know, let me tell you how farming works is. Let's say that you're going to invest in a company that trades publicly. You give me all your money now, and let's call now being it's April, but let's say it was March, and then in October I'll tell you how many shares of stock you purchased, right, which would be your yield of your crop, and then you have, you know, five months to sell all those shares, no matter what the price, and that that's how farming works. You put all your money in up front. You have no idea what you have until your yield comes out, and then you don't know what the market's going to be after that, and maybe you're going to get zero shares because a hailstorm comes through or something. So you know there's a certain resiliency that it teaches you as well, because there's very lean years and there's very fat years. Chris: Yeah, interesting perspective and very true. So you know that's kind of turning back to kind of apply digital. So you know, kind of turning back to kind of apply digital, how has the company grown from a kind of a workforce and facility location in the last couple of years? Wes: So we went from three employees at the start to we're about 200 employees now. Our headquarters in Dallas, texas, and we have the second headquarters here where we run a 24-7 network operations center. And then we have sites, two sites in North Dakota. We recently divested a site in West Texas, so now we're down to two sites in North Dakota and we're really focused on those sites right now. Hyper-scale size data center deployments it is specifically our Ellendale North Dakota site. Data center deployments, specifically our Ellendale North Dakota site, where we have a significant amount of power contracted, so expect to continue to grow pretty significantly over the next few years just because of the market opportunity we see in front of us, it's a lot of growth in a short period of time. Chris: What are some of the things that you've done, kind of as a CEO, to help manage that growth, so that you know you're building a strong team to kind of execute on the company strategy? Wes: So one of the things I've done and I'm, you know, I've been an entrepreneur and investor for a long time, but as I've just, I guess the wisdom I've gained with age is making sure I put the you know the people around me that have the skills that I'm lacking. So I, you know, really focusing on the things that I do really well and putting the other you know other people in the seats around me that do things that I don't do well, extremely well. And so you know, as you grow, I would say the kind of the bigger one for me or for us growing this quickly is, you know, having strong human resources, having strong recruiting, so that we get the right people in the right positions and they're managed the right way and we put the right type of structure in place for all of our employees to be successful. And then so, so we have that. That's been a big one. And then you know, our financing team we're in a capital intensive business, and then so we have that's been a big one. And then you know, our financing team we're in a capital intensive business, and then so we have a great finance team, and then, you know, we have a tech team, so we're kind of a blend between a real estate and a technology business and we're on the leading edge of this new high power density. You know, really, ai workload technology, and so we've had to attract the right talent for that, because, similar when we were building the Bitcoin facilities, you know it was a really shallow talent pool in the US. And it's the same with, you know, large GPU deployments that, like I said earlier, that was a niche market going back to you know 22. And now it's just exploded. But finding the people that know what they're doing, managing these and you know deploying, operating, managing large scale GPU deployments is was difficult. We were early and we were able to attract you know good, really good talent in that space. But you had to go to, you know, national labs and universities to find people that had experience with really large GPU deployments, and so we've done a good job. But that goes back again to recruiting and HR and having a really strong team there to find the people that we need. But there's definitely growing pains, right, as you grow up as a company and you know putting the appropriate structures in place, because when you're, you know a three to five person startup, right, everyone's doing everything and as you grow, the people that were there originally doing everything need to become more specialized. You know, in a group of the company, so that's a that's kind of a harder transition as well. But if you, you know you find the right people and you, you know the team all works together, you're able to achieve that. But there's a in three years there've been a lot of changes at the company, a lot of new faces, and then you know, specializing people. That started, you know, doing everything. When we built our first facility, I think it was eight or nine of us at the company, right, and we're all doing everything to make that happen. And now it's gotten bigger and larger scale and we've added a lot of specialty inside the company. AD: Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick. You're building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the at BoyerMiller. com. And thanks for listening to the show Chris: That's great. So you talk about kind of the importance in the recruiting process and, I think, equally important, in the kind of onboarding, integration process, anything that y'all have implemented that you believe that's innovative in that regard to kind of help customize and streamline that process. Wes: You know, I don't think there's anything particularly innovative about what we've done. It's what I will say about our company is, you know you it's kind of recruiting from two different pools. So you have nationwide recruiting for you know people that will come and sit in, you know whether it's exec or you know SVP type roles at the company, and then we have to do a lot of local recruiting. That's another one is you know, our sites are managed locally. We have the 24-7 NOC that sits here in Dallas, but there's been a big push because our sites are typically in rural areas and so that's probably one of the biggest challenges is recruiting and training all of the people and the talent that goes directly to the sites. So it's a unique mix for our company in that instance is that you know it's kind of two different styles of workforce but we have two different recruiters that manage that. Chris: How do you then bring it back together, as you mentioned, two different workforces and obviously two different geographic locations, different states. What are some of the things that you are doing as a CEO and maybe with your senior management, to build and nurture a culture at the company that everyone gets behind, to kind of further the mission? Wes: So I think one of the biggest things that I promote a lot at our company and a lot of the other management promotes is what you would expect at a small, fast growing company. There's a lot of upward mobility opportunities at a company like this and I love to highlight those success stories within our company and really encourage people with the upward mobility. That, I think, is just a big motivator and a big part of our culture. Chris: I think it's been my experience. If people don't see opportunity in your organization, then they're going to start looking somewhere else. Wes: Look we have Our site manager in Ellendale. He was. He was like the I don't know if he was the night manager or but he was. You know he was. He was working at Walmart at night in Jamestown, north Dakota, when he started as an operator at our site in Jamestown jobs that you could do for our company and a year later he was managing the site in Ellendale and he just you know his work ethic and he just shined through and he was able to move up very quickly and, you know, moved his family to Ellendale, north Dakota, and is running the site there for us now. And it's just, you know that we have many of those stories inside of the company, but we do. I think we're unique in that we do hire locally, we offer training for these technical jobs and you know they pay typically very well versus other jobs that are available in these locations and again, there's a lot of room for advancement inside the company and it creates a really nice culture for us. Chris: So you were talking about where the business, I guess is pivoted to in large part, is providing energy and power to fuel the AI movement. There's been a lot written and discussed about the idea that one of the limiting factors of the power of AI is the lack of power to run the centers or the computers needed to run the machines to do the learning and have that advance. What's your take on that? Because where do you see the industry from the power supply and how do you see that improving over time to try to keep up with the technology? Wes: Yeah. So it's a big issue issue now and it's going to become an even bigger issue as we go through this year and into next year. Just the power capacity in the US. So the ring in Virginia basically out of power. That's the most popular data center market in the US. Santa Clara, maybe the second most popular data center market out of power. Chris: If you want new power there, it's seven to 10 years and a lot of the other Wait a minute, say those two things again because I don't think people have an appreciation for that issue and the magnitude of what you just said. So in Virginia and the nation's capital-. Wes: Yep Santa Clara. Chris: And so. Wes: California, yes, silicon Valley, two big data center markets. They're effectively out of power. Chris: If you want new power there, it's a really long wait time seven to 10. Wes: Because you have to build the infrastructure right. You need power generation and you need transmission right, and generation can be built much faster than transmission can be built. It depends on where you are right. Some states are much friendlier to new power generation than others are. So what we have done to solve that is we focus on stranded power, which stranded power means there's a lot of power generation and maybe not enough transmission to move that power out of the location where it's being generated. And the way we solve for that is we take our product, our infrastructure, to the point of generation. And so there's some other things that you have to do. You have to make sure that there's a good fiber grid for fiber optic communications at the site as well. So not every site works for this, but there's a significant amount of stranded power around the globe, but we're focused mostly here in the US. And how do you get stranded power around the globe? But we're focused mostly here in the US. And how do you get stranded power? There's really two ways that I've seen that you end up with stranded power in the US, and one is renewables are a big source of that solar and wind and typically everything we have done has been located with wind farms and there's an incentive to build where the wind blows a lot for wind farms and land is cheap, and it's, you know, there's an incentive to build where the wind blows a lot for wind farms and, you know, land is cheap. And so North Dakota, I believe, is the sixth largest wind producing state in the country and they're 48th or 49th in population. That state generates over double the amount of power that they use inside the state, and so we, you know, at our Ellendale facility, I believe, it's about two gigawatts of wind that feeds into that substation, and that's where we are located. So finding strain of power that way the other way strain of power happens in the US and, I would assume, around the world too is a very power hungry. Industry goes out of business, company goes out of business or closes a plant or something in a certain area, and there's this massive amount of power infrastructure that's left behind. So, like Alcoa smelter plants, for example, that have been shut down, those have become Bitcoin mining sites and probably sites that are attractive for high power density data centers as well. So we focus on that. Now that can be a short and kind of medium termterm solution. Longer term, you know, it becomes a bigger issue and I've heard you know any kind of. There's been so many numbers thrown around. One of the hyperscaler CEOs last week, at a conference I believe, said that a hundred gigawatts of data center capacity would need to be built between now and 20, just to supply the hyperscale. And so to put that in perspective, the entire US market for data center capacity is like 22, 23 gigawatts right now built over the last 30 years, and you're saying there needs to be a hundred in the next six years. That's going to be pretty hard One to find the power and two permitting building all of the other things that go along with it. Maybe the number's not that high, but it's still going to be a very big number. And in the meantime, for electricity, you have competing priorities, right. So you have this new data center application, you have EVs becoming a bigger percentage of cars being driven, you have new things like green hydrogen generation, which requires a lot of electricity as well. So there's definitely competing priorities and it's going to be a bigger and bigger issue. And for me I've thought a lot about this that the only solution that I see the longer term for this. If we want to do it in an environmentally friendly way, which I think everyone's focused on is there needs to be a lot more nuclear generation for baseload. Chris: Okay, that's interesting. Baseload, okay, that's interesting. Not dissimilar from what I've heard and the other things that get talked about is a lot of power is generated through water, right, and then we have competing issues on the need for water. Is it going to be to power these centers or for human life? So we're going to be struggling with those over the years to come. Let's talk a little bit about, I guess, from where you sit. Where do you see this AI and power generation issue and what are the opportunities and or risks for the Texas business ecosystem, if you will? What are the opportunities where Texas and Texas businesses might thrive and what are some risks? Wes: So there's I think there's a lot of Texas businesses that will thrive. We actually source a lot of our components and equipment out of many local Texas businesses here. So there's that ecosystem and that includes, you know, transformers, switchgear a lot of the electric gear that's going into our facilities we source out of Texas. So there's a big opportunity there for Texas at large. Outside of us, you know one of the largest, you know, energy grids in the country here with ERCOT, and so there's a lot of opportunity there. You know there's a lot of there is stranded power opportunities specifically in West Texas that could feed into this. It needs a little bit better. You know fiber network. It depends on where you are in West Texas. So some of those work. But there's a large opportunity for infrastructure in Texas for certain, and it's a very attractive market for that. But there's a lot of other businesses in Texas that are feeding into this entire supply chain. You know it goes down, it's pretty, it's a pretty deep supply chain for this business. And if you think about so, let's say, a meg of data center capacity, we have our own costs, that we do. But if you're building tier three style data centers for this type of power application you $1.2 billion for a gigawatt. You're spending $12 billion on construction and equipment and so we're saying $12 billion for a gigawatt and, like I said, on the high end of the numbers I've seen out there, we need 100 gigawatts over six years. That's a lot of business to be done. A lot of investment by the way, chris, that doesn't include the compute gear inside of the data center. So yeah, so that the cost does not include, you know, the gpus or servers and networking gear to go inside the data center and you should think about that being kind of. You know two and a half to three x what the cost of the data center is, so it's just staggering numbers. Chris: You're talking 30 to 40 million per gigawatt per megawatt. Wes: And then times that by a thousand for a gigawatt, and then the number I gave early was again this is a number that was not provided by me, but 100 gigawatts over six or seven years. Yeah, it's a really big number. Chris: Wow, well, it's coming off of that. I want to turn back kind of towards you a little bit and I always like to kind of talk about leadership styles. I think that's helpful for business owners to kind of reflect on themselves about how you show up as a leader, knowing that can evolve over time. So how would you describe your leadership style today? How do you think that's evolved over time? Wes: Yeah. So my leadership style is, you know I mentor some people. I like to, you know, keep people constantly involved in what I'm doing so they see what I'm doing day to day. And you know again, as the company has grown right, that I don't interface with every employee on a regular basis. You know I have a leadership style, that is, I'm not a micromanager. I want people to be successful in their roles. I want them to take, you know, the authority in their roles and manage their part of the business for them. And I think that's how you know, over time, how you build a much more efficient. You know big company versus a small company. You know, when we were first starting out, I definitely was, you know, had to be more of a micromanager because I was involved in every single task of the business. But as you get the right people in places and I give them a lot of autonomy to run their groups, I think that fosters a good culture and company over time is, you know, people feeling empowered and then feeling like they have you know, the destiny of at least their group. And then what I really still like about being a small company, even though we're much bigger than we were is everyone can see their own direct impact on the company. Right, you can still make a big difference as one individual inside of the company and I really I foster that culture inside the company a lot and again, I always push on this upward mobility and the fact that you're at a place where there's a lot of opportunity. Here at this place, you don't need to look outside of it to find opportunity, and I think it creates a lot of excitement inside the company and we all kind of with a small business, you kind of all ride the roller coaster together because you constantly have setbacks and you constantly have victories Then and you know we've had stretches where we have, you know, setback after setback and that maybe comes on the heels of a lot of victories in a row too. So you know, riding that roller coaster is something that everyone has to get used to, but I think we do it really effectively. But hopefully that answers the question of kind of a leadership style. Chris: Yeah, no, definitely. And you alluded to something that's part of my next question and that is because it's just part of life Can you think of and share with us kind of a challenge or setback that you've encountered could be in your personal life, but or in business that you learned from? That made you better? Wes: Yeah. Chris: And those are always, I think, some of the best learning moments. Wes: I've. You know, in my career I've had many of those and those are, you know, those are definitely learning moments and it's been, you know, either investments or in other businesses, and this is where I was talking about earlier that. You know, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is surrounding myself with people that have the skill set I don't have right. That's probably the biggest one, but I would say the biggest as far as running this company. You know, as you run a company that's growing fast and you're doing a lot of different things, you know you have to be a problem solver, right. A lot of people get really down about issues that happen inside the company. You know we had some setbacks recently where we had some. You had some equipment issues on one of our sites that went down and then, while that was happening our Texas site we were notified by the power provider that they were taking it down, for I don't remember if it was 10 or 14 days, for improvements on their grid had nothing to do with us, and so you have all of this kind of hit at the same time and if you're the CEO or another executive company, you have to be a leader. Through that. You have to solve those problems. I'm not a person who goes and screams and yells at people because I don't find it productive, but that's been the biggest is, if you're starting a company, you're going to have so many challenges. You have to be a problem solver for those challenges and especially if you have employees around you, you have to be the problem solver. And I say this about most. We're kind of an interesting blend between real estate and tech as a business, but if you're like a tech entrepreneur, you have to be a perpetual optimist. Right, you just have to be, otherwise you won't last. So you have a lot of setbacks and you have to fix those and grow and become stronger from them. But, yeah, I would say that's probably the number one is being a problem solver. Chris: I like that. So many people I've talked to. The word I would use is as an entrepreneur, you have to have grit, and it's not as easy as you think it's going to be and expect the unexpected right. Wes: Definitely expect the unexpected. Chris: Kind of like when China shut your business model down. Exactly so you know, Wes, this has been a really great conversation. I think we could go on forever, but I want to just turn to a little kind of fun personal side before we wrap up that. You know, I think we've already answered this question, because I usually ask my guests what their first job was, and I think it sounds like yours was on a potato farm in Idaho. Wes: So yeah, my first job was working on the family farm and then my second job when I was in college was I was a service station auto mechanic from skills I had learned on the farm. And then I was finally able to get out of that with an internship institutional money management firm. I think it was my junior year in college I was able to do that. But and then I went to an investment bank in New York out of college and then it's kind of been you know some of those through that to here. But yeah, the I would say my first real job outside of working for my dad on his farm was auto mechanic at a service station. Chris: That's impressive. So how long have you been in Texas? I moved to Texas in 2013. Okay, so you've been here long enough to answer my next question, which is do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Wes: If the Tex-Mex is right, I prefer Tex-Mex. Chris: Okay, I like that qualification, so we'll wrap up with this one. If you could take the Tex-Mex is right, I prefer Tex-Mex. Okay, I like that qualification, so we'll wrap up with this one. If you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Wes: Wow, that's a good question. It's never even crossed my mind that I would have the ability to do that 30-day sabbatical somewhere that is not a population center, probably has a beach, doesn't have to be anything specific and people can't find me on my cell phone. That would be the requirements. Chris: Those are good ones. I like those. Well, I do like the question, because most entrepreneurs never take the time to think about that right. Wes: Or have the liberty to. I have not thought about that one. Chris: Well, good, now you at least have a framework for it if it ever happens. So, wes, thanks so much for taking the time. I really appreciate getting to know you and hearing your story. It's fascinating stuff what you and your team at Applied are doing and have done already. Wes: Thanks for having me. I always love talking about our company.

In this episode, host Victoria Guido interviews Chris Pallatroni, creator of The Standard, a platform dedicated to sharing self-care stories. Chris shares how his interests in gardening and mental wellness fueled the inception of The Standard, which was initially intended to be a landscaping venture. He delves into the hurdles faced while developing the platform, highlighting the struggle for product-market fit and the critical role of integrating technology with human connection to enable meaningful support and interactions. Chris underscores storytelling's pivotal role in enhancing mental health, advocating for the sharing of personal triumphs over adversity to motivate and assist others facing similar challenges. He envisions The Standard as a vast collection of genuine, relatable self-care narratives aimed at reducing the feeling of isolation among individuals. Through inviting users to share their experiences, Chris seeks to leverage human connections to cultivate a community supportive of mental health and personal development. The Standard (https://thestandardapp.com/) Follow The Standard on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/thestandardapp/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@__thestandard__), or Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/__thestandard__/). Follow Chris Pallatroni on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-pallatroni-9bba3b22/). Follow thoughtbot on X (https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) or LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/150727/). Become a Sponsor (https://thoughtbot.com/sponsorship) of Giant Robots! Transcript:  VICTORIA: This is the Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots podcast, where we explore the design, development, and business of great products. I'm your host, Victoria Guido. And with me today is Chris Pallatroni, Founder of The Standard, a storytelling platform where people share stories about self-care. Chris, thank you for joining me. CHRIS: Yeah. Thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure. VICTORIA: Wonderful. So, before we dive into all about The Standard, why don't you just tell me a little bit about what's going on in your world outside of work? Anything fun? Anything exciting? CHRIS: Yeah. Well, first of all, I've got two boys, so for anybody that's listening that has kids, I mean, let's be honest, your life is completely chaotic. So, I've got two boys, one's almost 12, one's almost 10, so all boy, all the time. That's just another way of saying our house is really loud, and there's just tons of stuff happening, sports, whatnot. I also have a wife, a beautiful wife. She's my better half. I've been with her for 24 years. So, between that, I got three cats, not that they take a lot of energy, but there's just a lot of love in our household. So, that's sort of, like, the family side of things. And then I'm an avid gardener. I'm really big into mental health and wellness, which, as we start to talk about The Standard, will become really evident. So, I'm all about just doing the things that you need to do to take care of yourself, so lots of running, lots of working out, lots of just being in nature. I know you're a surfer, so, I mean, let's be honest, water is amazing. So yeah, anything I can do to, like, duck out into nature and spend time with my family. Honestly, there's just not enough time in the day. VICTORIA: What is growing in your garden that you're the most proud of? CHRIS: You don't want to get me started on gardening. So, before I started The Standard, honestly, I thought I was going to be a landscaper, and the name of The Standard actually was going to be applied to a landscaping company. So, I am a professional landscaper. I took all the classes: soil, science, irrigation. I got the degree in design and maintenance. I have a tiny, little property, but I have about 700 plants on my property. So, I know everything on the roses, and grass, and camellias. I mean, I'm that guy that, like, likes to see...nature is just amazing, first of all. And it also has very therapeutic qualities when we start to talk about mental health and well-being, birdsong, water, greenery, sunsets, sunrises. I'm also developing a piece of land. We have a house we're building, and it's three acres. So, I'm in the process of building out, like, what I'm going to just describe as the most amazing garden anybody's ever seen. I really take a lot of pride in gardening. I'm very disciplined and very specific on how things grow. And so, I've got a property that's about an acre and a half I'm planting, which will probably have, like, 20,000 plants on it when it's all said and done. VICTORIA: So, you have 700 plants now, and you plan to have 20,000, so you don't want to choose favorites. There's nothing...you got to, like, spread the love around. CHRIS: God, it's like saying, which child do you love more? I mean, right now on my property the ones that currently stand out is I've got a couple of these Eden Rose bushes that I've trained to climb up. I've got three of them. The one in the front of my house is about 20 feet tall at this point. So, I've trained it to grow up the entire side of my house. In full bloom, it will have about 300 roses on it in full bloom. And so, an Eden Rose has about a 220 petal count. So, it's a very dense rose. They are a pain in the butt to prune, but they're pretty spectacular in full bloom. VICTORIA: That sounds really beautiful. And I hope you send me some pictures [laughs] after the show. Send them to me in an email because I want to see...I love growing, but I do not have a green thumb. I usually try to pick what is most likely to survive [laughs]. CHRIS: That's my wife's strategy. She's like, what can I not kill? And, surprisingly, even with, like, cactuses, she still finds a way to kill some of them, so...[laughs] VICTORIA: Some people have it, some people don't. I do agree on the therapeutic side. And I'm curious, too, having this background, how did you go from landscape and this interest in growing things to starting businesses? CHRIS: Yeah, you know, the landscaping actually picked up at a much later stage. So, if I rewind my entrepreneurial journey, it started in 2004. I got mixed up with some guys as I was finishing up my degree in economics and finance. I was like, look, I don't have, like, a 4.9 GPA, so I'll probably need some sort of internship that starts to separate me. Anyways, got mixed up with some guys that were running a franchise painting company, took part in that, really loved the idea of seeing something grow. Did really well on that internship. You really ran, like, a mini-painting division of this larger company, so knocking on doors, producing painting jobs, so forth, and so on. At the end of that, which was a really intense about a year internship, they said, "Hey, we're going to build this marketing company. Do you want in?" And I was like, "Let's do it." And so, what I really wanted...and that was, like, my first major let's start a business. And I loved the idea of taking something from an idea to...the idea was, could we sell it for a hundred million dollars? So, the money was attributed to it, but I wanted to see something grow. And so, we went at it for, like, 15 years. We did end up selling, not at a hundred. We sold it for, like, 70 million. But we did really well. It was a bootstrapped company. We built this massive national marketing company. It's sort of like match.com for contracting. You can take a consumer that's interested in remodeling their house and connect them to a local contractor. And we built that all from, like, a bedroom with plyboard and literally rotary phones all the way to a national brand that's...I think we became the second largest in the space. It's still the company I still work for. As I build this other business, I'm still working at that. We're pushing 250 million now. But the concept of building something and selling it I thought was really intriguing. Landscaping was just a hobby that came in much later in my life. Thought that was going to be my next venture. I decided to pivot after getting all of the education, mainly because I wanted to build something that had application for everybody. And what I started to realize in landscaping is the average consumer doesn't have $50,000 to dump on their backyard. And what I didn't want to do is work for rich people and wineries. I really wanted to build a magical, little space for the average person. But I also started to realize most people don't have that type of income, which then pivoted me to The Standard, which I thought had more universal application. VICTORIA: That's really interesting. So, I love that because there's, like, a common phrase you hear about tech where every company is also a tech company now. So, it's really interesting to hear and, like, to hear about you think about growth and how it applies to businesses and that care that you put into it as well. CHRIS: Yeah. I mean, I think everything is tech-related in a lot of different ways. I don't know, I think at least with The Standard, like, there's such a human element, and I still need to figure out so much about it. But as tech-driven as we get, we're still a social species. We still want human connection. And maybe at one point far off in the future, like, a robot can replace some of that, but the human connection, the human story, the ability to feel connected and not isolated or alone has very profound impacts on people's mental health and well-being. And so, as much as I still have to figure out, I try not to over-index on too much tech and try to keep things very authentic and organic. Because I think when you do that right and you can do the matching of a consumer that's interested in a specific story with someone that has gone through that experience who can share that story, that connection is very profound. So, I do think it is a blend of tech, but I try not to dive too deep into the tech side of things. VICTORIA: Right. It's more that you need technology as a tool to solve the problems of the people that you're trying to work for or trying to, like, provide services for. So, it sounds like, to recap a little bit, you were part of growing this company. You were able to build it and sell it for 70 million. And then, you decided to, like, keep doing it. You're like, that was fun. Let's do another one [laughs]. CHRIS: Well, I mean, in all honesty, I think some of the challenges become when you're starting a company, which is incredibly invigorating. But if you're starting a company in an area that you don't have expertise...so, although I know a lot about mental health and wellness, I've read hundreds of books. I interviewed lots of people. I hired you guys to do some market research for me. So, I'm not naive, but I've never built a platform that does what I'm trying to do. And in all my research, I haven't exactly even seen a platform that does exactly what I do. So, it's hard to have that perfect measuring stick. And so, you know, what I've realized along the journey is it's really easy to spend money, and it's really hard to find product-market fit. And so, what I've chosen to do, and maybe it takes a little bit longer to get there, is rather than, like, go all in, quit my day job, and really just financially stress the crap out of myself and my wife, I still have a day job. I get paid exceptionally well. I'm very senior in my company. It's not overly stressful, but it also pays the bills. And so, I think one of the things I've learned about being an entrepreneur is you've got to enjoy the journey. And so, I do enjoy what I still do, and it serves a very valuable purpose. And it gives me still the freedom to play around with The Standard, to still do the things that I want to do. Sure, I can't burn as many hours on it, but at the same time, if I quit this job, my runway would highly compress, and maybe that's good for some people, but there's still just so much I have to figure out. So, I need the runway. VICTORIA: I can relate to that, and I think that's a really common story for people who have a great idea, and they need the time and space to find the right product-market fit to move forward and then make the big investment with your time and all the, like, other financial investments you would need. So, maybe to go back to the beginning a little bit, what led you to think of starting The Standard in the first place? CHRIS: So, I'll try to say this as succinctly as possible. Life is really hard for a lot of people, you know, and you can dice it up in a lot of different ways, whether we're talking about, like, you know, global events that happen, be it war, be it COVID, you know, anything on a very large level. But even on an individual level, like, we lose people. People are dealing with weight issues, how to eat healthy, stress. There's a lot. When we start to think about the concept of mental health and well-being, it is overwhelming. And I'm built for discipline. I've always been that way. I'm incredibly disciplined as a person. Some things may feel like they come a little easier to me, but I also look at like, oh my God, I got to worry about like, how do I sleep right? And how do I eat right? And then, how do I exercise? And then you got to be grateful for stuff, and then have social friends, and then be with your family. Like, I mean, adulting is tough; let's just be honest. And so, a lot of the concept behind The Standard was I have the freedom to explore a lot of this stuff. I've had the luxury to read hundreds of books and, meet so many people, and really invest a lot as to educating myself about these various topics that I think are important. I also have the luxury to deploy a lot of these strategies in my personal life, and it's a privilege to be able to do that. And a lot of people don't have that. They're struggling. They're working multiple jobs. They don't have a lot of time in the day. Maybe they're commuting. They don't have the luxury to take care of themselves. And that's just the Western world. Do you want to, like, dive into the Global South or start to look at, like, Ukraine or stuff like that? Like, there's just people, like, literally just trying to make it through the day, let alone be grateful about something or eat healthy. And so, I started to realize, like, God, if I think this is even remotely challenging, what does somebody else feel about their mental health and well-being? And so, that was sort of the jump off of, like, it is tough to maintain your sanity. It is tough to do all of those things. Is there a way that I can make that process easier for people? And so, that just led to a rabbit hole that started about six months before COVID hit, so late 2019. I spent a lot of time researching. I read several hundred books on habit formation and neuroscience and all these different topics. And, I mean, to the point where I was reading every morning, typing notes of these books, mind mapping this out, looking for the connection of all these topics. And what I was trying to figure out is what is the least amount of information somebody needs to know to have the most profound effect on their life? And what I came to as a conclusion was most people will not read a book or listen to a podcast. Some will, but the average person won't. They don't have the time, the desire. But everybody's got a problem they're trying to solve, whatever that problem may be, and if you could take somebody that has a problem and you could find a way to connect them to somebody who had that problem but is a little farther down the road. So, let's pick something pretty simple, like weight loss. I've interviewed a lot of people on my podcast this year that have lost 100 pounds, which is a really big number. And even if it's not a hundred pounds, you want to lose 20 pounds. The point being is that weight is a big issue for a lot of people. It affects their self-esteem, their body image. There's a number of things that, like, impact that. But if you could connect somebody who's really struggling to lose weight with somebody who has lost that weight and could share their story, how they felt, the habits they've deployed, and most importantly, they could talk about that experience, what would happen is the person that's been through that issue, if you will, would use a set of language that would be very specific and would resonate with the person that hasn't overcome the challenge yet. And this is what's so unique about it is: I don't know what that particular challenge is like. I've never had that particular issue. I won't know the language to use. But if you've ever talked to somebody who has lost a significant amount of weight, they will use words, and they will give examples that only somebody who's struggling with it would resonate with. I remember doing an interview, and a lady was like, "God, you know," she's like, "I was so overweight. I would be very thoughtful of getting on the ground because I wasn't sure if I could get back up. Or I'd be very thoughtful of the chair I sat on in case it broke." I mean, these are the things I'm like, unless you're overweight, you don't think about that. And so, my idea was like, could I take somebody who's overcome some of these problems, get them to share some of those self-care stories that they used to solve whatever that problem was, and then create a mechanism in which somebody who was struggling with, in this case, weight loss, that they could type in, "How do you deal with weight loss?" and they could connect to other people that have developed the habits and the mindsets that helped them through that? And weight loss is just an example, but you could pick anything from racism to depression to domestic violence and so forth and so on. The caveat there is you need a mechanism to connect the person that's overcome the challenge with the person that's still going through it. So, you got to get a lot of people on the other side of the tunnel to share their story and to know that they're doing it maybe not to monetize it but to do it for the benefit of other people who were like them at one point. VICTORIA: Yeah, if I can try to summarize what you meant when you said, like, what's the least amount of information to have the most profound realization on how to impact your life? It sounds like what you discovered was that it's human connection to other humans who have had the same experience and survived it and overcome those challenges. CHRIS: Yeah, without a doubt, because I think when you're struggling with an issue, you tend to think you're alone. You tend to think the way you're thinking about your addiction to something, or your weight loss, or your body image; you tend to think, oh, this is just me. And what motivates somebody who's in that mindset is to hear somebody else who can use a certain set of language that helps them realize, wow, I'm not alone. There is other people that have gone through this particular issue. And what that does is it starts to open up the door, open up their mind in a way of, wow, change can happen. Now, you can't copy other people's habits. It doesn't exactly work that way. But what it can do is at least give you a starting place to say, "Here's somebody who I feel is like me in some ways, and they've made it to the other side. Here's some of the habits, and the mindsets, routines that they specifically have that have helped them get through this. Maybe I can try some of those on, at least as a starting place, and then I can modify them as time..." So, it really starts with the mindset and the clarity of I'm not alone and maybe there is some hope. And I think that's a really big thing when you're talking about some of these very large issues that people run into on a day-to-day basis. MID-ROLL AD: Are your engineers spending too much time on DevOps and maintenance issues when you need them on new features? We know maintaining your own servers can be costly and that it's easy for spending creep to sneak in when your team isn't looking. By delegating server management, maintenance, and security to thoughtbot and our network of service partners, you can get 24x7 support from our team of experts, all for less than the cost of one in-house engineer. Save time and money with our DevOps and Maintenance service. Find out more at: tbot.io/devops. VICTORIA: So, what lessons did you learn from your previous experience in starting a business are you taking into what you're doing now with The Standard? CHRIS: Oh my God, so many lessons. Well, I mean, here's the brutal reality is: I've chosen to go in an industry that doesn't exactly have carryover effects. I was in marketing, dealing with homeowners and contractors, and now I'm diving into mental health. So, I, unfortunately, don't get to, like, flex my black book and, you know, voilà myself into, like, success here. I've also chosen to go from marketing and generating leads to now I'm trying to build a platform, which apparently is one of the hardest things you could possibly do. But here's one that I really do take away, and it's probably not in the way that you actually intended that I would answer, but here's the biggest lesson I've taken away. When I built the first company, Jason Polka was our CEO, and Gabe Luna...it was three of us that really started it. So much of that entire journey...especially after the first five years of building the infrastructure, and you started to move out of the basement, and you had a corporate office, and, you know, you felt a little bit more legit. You started generating 10, 20 million dollars a year in revenue. I'd say from year, like, five through the time we sold it, I just wanted to sell the company. So much of the conversation became around, when is this going to happen? And it was always a grind. I mean, building a company is just tough. I mean, maybe some people, it works out, and everything's great, but it's really tough. A lot of businesses don't succeed, and we were very lucky that we did. But so much of it was me just trying to check off that final box of, like, I just want them to say, "We did it." It wasn't even really the payout. It was, just, I want to know that we were capable of doing it. And what happened is there was so much of that ten years where I wasn't enjoying the journey. I mean, don't get me wrong, like, I love the people I worked with, some great friendships. But it was so much of like, how do we fast forward this a little bit? And so, once the day happened that it was sold, and especially as I started to embark on this other side, I said, look, I'm now in my, like, early 40s. Like, that can't happen again. I mean, maybe I never sell the next company. Maybe I'm working on this for a decade or two decades. I need to enjoy the journey. Like, my kids are young once. Like, I've got this wife. I've got this life. Like, selling a company is great, but it is not the defining thing of your life. Like, you still need to live your life. And so, the big lesson I took away from it is how do I enjoy the journey as I go through this process? And I'll be honest, that is a big mind f, if you will, like, it's not an easy thing to do because as entrepreneurs, you're very much like, well, what metrics, and what's the next milestone? And dah, dah, dah, dah. And, like, dude, it's brutal. So, I'm really trying to, like, enjoy the process, even if the process is a struggle. VICTORIA: What are your top strategies for enjoying the process or making it fun? CHRIS: Well, one, take care of your mental health and your well-being [laughs], whatever that is for you. I do a lot of weekly planning. And so, when I do my weekly planning, it literally will come down to I look at my schedule, and I make sure I get my runs in there. I get my gardening in there. I get my time at my kids' events, my time with my wife. I get my workouts. I make sure I eat healthy. I do everything that I can to take as good of care of Chris as I possibly can. You know, a cliché is to say, but you can't pour from an empty cup. So, if you want to give your best to your company, your family, your friends, your community, whatever, like, you really do need to prioritize yourself. Self-care is not selfish. So, that's the number one thing I do. I'd say the other thing, too, is how do you deal with anxiety? How do you deal with this constant...and anxiety is one of the most pronounced mental health issues on our planet. 350 million people deal with this annually. It's easy to start to think about the future and to fill in the gap with the worst-case scenario, to get anxiety of, like, oh my God, I didn't do this, or I shouldn't be doing that. And so, learning to just take a deep breath, do the best job you can. Let your intuition carry you, and not be so judgmental when it doesn't turn out the way you want it. Like, I wish I had much more success at this stage of the business than I do. But I'm still making forward progress, and I'm enjoying the process, and I'm learning stuff. And could I be faster? Yeah, probably. So, I try not to over-index on what I'm not doing, and I try to just take the best next step possible and just trust it will all work out but be okay if it didn't. That's easier said than done sometimes, especially if you've never had success. I think part of it is the fact that I've been successful in selling a company. I mean, in a lot of ways, like, hey, I know I could. Maybe I can do it again. Maybe I can't. And I'm okay either way that that pans out. VICTORIA: I think that part about being okay if it doesn't is so important. And tying that together to what you mentioned earlier about being financially stable enough to invest in what you want to invest in, like, it's a really big, important thing for founders. And I think if you're constantly worried about how am I going to pay myself? How am I going to pay my bills? You're not really going to be focused on building the best product, or actually solving the problem, or being willing to pivot in a way you need to to create something that is going to last and be really impactful for people. I think that's really interesting. In climbing, there's some...it teaches me that because I have some projects that probably I might never complete them [laughs]. They're really hard. The people who actually create videos of themselves climbing it are, like, six feet tall, and I'm never going to be six feet tall, but I just try to enjoy the hike up to the climb. I enjoy going up to this little boulder and just, like, touching it and feeling it. So, I'm curious if you could say more about how are you thinking The Standard will solve that problem and, like, create that connection for you and, like, solve your anxieties as, like, a founder about, is this company working well enough? Do you connect people in that same way as well? CHRIS: There's a famous quote that says, "It takes seven years to become an overnight success." I mean, maybe in some ways, it even takes longer, depending on what you're trying to build here. And, I don't know, success is somewhat arbitrary. You know, like, I remember when I got the call that we sold our first company, which was the moment I was waiting for, I remember getting the call. I was driving home. "Hey, we did this. Here's your payout." I did not feel any more successful in that moment. Like, it wasn't like that checked off the box. I'm like, well, there I go. I'm super successful now. It was like, now what? You know, my kids didn't, like, hug me and be like, "Oh, successful dad sold companies," you know, it wasn't. It was like, you know, life continued. And it was just such a powerful reminder of so much of the significance that we put on things is like, it's us. Like, I don't want to say nobody else cares because, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs are trying to build products that, you know, change the world, make a meaningful difference to people's lives. And we do put a disproportionate burden on ourselves of, like, God, if I don't do this, maybe it just doesn't get done. I think, for me, when I'm building The Standard, I try to, one, I always try to think of like, enjoy the journey. Am I doing things that I enjoy doing? So, we started a podcast last year. I mean, The Standard, like, so just a quick on timeframe, I mean, I spent a year building it. So, I did all this research for about two years, including hiring you guys. I got to the place where I'm like, okay, I think I got a concept, not product-market fit. I just got a concept, and I want to start to build that out into reality. Hired a designer, really great designer. Found him, you know, cold-called him, got him involved. Took us six months to build literally, like, a wireframe of like, it could look like this. And then I was like, okay, great. Now I'm going to go sell that to a VC and, like, convince him to give me millions of dollars. And I was like, and then I quickly realized, like, you absolutely have nothing at the moment, Chris. Like, there's nothing here. There's, like, you think you got something, like, you've got nothing. Like, there's no users. I mean, you got literally nothing here. And I was like, okay, great, so nobody's going to give me any money for this. Where do I go from here? And then I was like, well, I need to build something to see how people interact with it. So, then I decided to go through a no-code platform when I spent ten months teaching myself how to build something using no-code. So, I used bubble.io, which was a really great product. Now, that was a big mind cluster right there because I'm not a coder. I'm sort of the visionary of a product. That's, like, I'm not the technical expertise. But I didn't have a CTO. So, I was like, I need to solve for this problem. So, I taught myself how to use this. That was incredibly painful but incredibly rewarding because I know how to build something. So, then I built this, and then we beta test the launch, but now I'm like, okay, [inaudible 24:46] I built this, but I don't even know if it's a product-market fit. I don't even know if I built the right thing yet. Now, I got to see people who will interact with it. And then I was like, well, then how do you even get this thing to be exposed to the world? Like, it is just every step along the way; there's some mountain that seems insurmountable. You find a way to get to the peak, and then you realize there's a larger mountain that's [laughs] right behind it. And so, then it led down to, like, how do I get people to be aware of what I built? Played around with that for six months. And then, I was like, I got to start a podcast, like, now I'll interview people. And so, it's just a constant iteration of, like, toying around with some stuff. And look, there's plenty of things I do that I'm like, that clearly fails. And I think the question I ask myself a lot with the things that don't work is, did you give them enough time to be successful? Did you go about them in the right way and then decide to pivot? And, like, you won't always know all the answers to that. So, I think the point in giving sort of that timeline right there is it's a constant evolution, and you just do the best job you can and be okay with how the sort of the cards fall. VICTORIA: Yeah. And if you fail or it doesn't work how you expect it, it's like, well, did I learn something? And did I have fun doing it? [laughs] CHRIS: And if you take care of yourself along the way and you haven't sacrificed your own mental health and your well-being, your relationships with your kids, your partner, whoever it is, then at least you, like, if you fail, you're not like, and now I'm 30 pounds overweight. I'm miserable. My mental health is suffering. Like, you've got to balance that out. And so, I think that's going back to enjoying the journey as like, don't lose sight of the things that are really important. Building a company, yes, important, and for some people, it is really important. But at the end of the day, your health, your sanity are the most important things that you have. And so, I see all too often that a lot of entrepreneurs and just people in general are willing to literally kick that to the curb to chase some prestige, some recognition, some financial gain. And look, man, like, you know, there's plenty of rich people out there that are completely miserable, that are unhappy. I always think of Steve Jobs a lot. He had really lot of good...he did a commencement speech at Stanford when he was diagnosed with cancer. And, I mean, this is one of the most successful business people on our planet. Apple is the most successful company today at three trillion dollars or so market cap. And here's the visionary of the company. And when he was diagnosed with cancer, all he wanted was more time. It wasn't like, oh, I need more time to build another product. It's like the dude just wanted to be around longer. It didn't matter how many billions of dollars he had or products. Those were things that sort of fell to the wayside. It was all about his health. So, point being is like, just over-indexing on success and not really looking at what is success; success is your mental health, your well-being. That is real success. VICTORIA: Yeah. Wow. I can relate to that, too. I had, like, at a very young age, decided, oh, I'm going to be, like, an IT project manager. And then I got my PMP certification and I was like, oh, well, what do I do now? [laughs] What's the next thing? And it's just like, keep going and going and going. So, enjoy the moment, you know, love the journey, and prioritize that above those things. And that includes, like, learning, learning all these different parts of, like, how to build a business and how to build product. It reminds me of a journey that we hear where you could have a great idea and you're like, oh, I need to design it, and then I need to build it. And then, like, a year later, you're like, wow, I haven't talked to any users yet [laughs]. It's like, I don't actually know anything about what people want. And that's a really difficult thing to do. And it's a very emotional journey as well to go out and talk to people and try to ask questions in a way that doesn't give you false positives or false negatives and being able to leave your ego to the side and actually connect with people and hear about their problems. So, how has that been for you? Has there been anything in your discovery process that has surprised you and caused you to pivot in direction? CHRIS: And although you didn't ask the question in this way, a recommendation I would have for a lot of people and, you know, if you read The Lean Startup, it's a good book. It's one worth reading. I read a lot of product books and stuff. I would say, like, imagine you have no money. How will you test your concept? Like, so, like, I came into building this with some capital behind me, my own capital. And it's just easy to spend money, and not that I was naive to think spending money you do need to invest in some things, but I wish I had a lot less money than I did coming into it because I would have spent a lot less money. And I think you don't need a tremendous amount of money to start to get that user feedback that you're suggesting. I think there's some very organic ways that you could do it. And you really got to imagine, like, you have nothing. Like, how will you test this with $100? I was listening to a podcast episode the other day on the founder of Boston Dynamics. He was being interviewed, and it was a really cool one. Boston Dynamics is one of the leading robotic companies out there. And this guy had, you know, started the company 30 years ago, and he was walking through some of his early days. And he's like, he was talking about building the pogo stick robot and how he only had, like, I think it was, like, it was either a hundred or a thousand dollars to, like, build this robot, or maybe it was 3,000. It was a really, really low amount. And he basically was trying to build a robot that, like, jumped up and down on, like, a benign budget himself. It was a complete failure, but he learned some things through it. But he had enough success in that that when he then pitched that concept to the next person, I think it was, like, some congressional person, they gave him, like, a $250,000 budget, which was, like, back in 1980. But the point being is like, he had so little to start with, but he was still able to get some success. Versus if he had had 250,000, I don't know that he would have figured it out at that moment. He would have spent a lot more money. And so, I think for entrepreneurs that are starting something out, you're so right: the product-market fit is huge. It's hard not to get false positives. It's hard not to just hear what you want to hear. And so, what I've learned is that, like, there's a difference between what people say and what people do. And what you need to be doing is paying attention to what people actually do, not what people say. I interviewed lots of coaches across the planet. I'd share this idea. And, I mean, I had a phenomenal, like, 90% of them were like, "Chris, this is amazing." They would share some of their personal videos with me. And I'm like, wow, God, like, everybody thinks this is a great idea. And then, I started to realize like, it's probably because I'm decently looking. I can talk to people well. Like, there's a little bit of a me factor. I was like, well, what happens when I take me out of the equation? Will still 90% of people still think it's a good idea? And the answer was like, no. It completely changes. If I'm not there to navigate or provide the narrative, which, as entrepreneurs and founders, we're typically the storyteller, but if you remove me and I just show you it, you'll be like, "Ah, it's cool." But, I don't have enough of the expertise in product design and the sticky factor. I haven't found the right combination for somebody just to interact with and be like, "This is pretty sweet. I want to use it." So, going back to your original question, is like, you need to do more of that, and you need to learn how to do that stuff. I am still like you at surfing. I'm a novice at this. Like, I'm out there trying, but I am crashing all the time. And I am constantly trying to get back up and figure out how can I do this better and not provide an illusion that I'm getting it right, really paying attention to what do users actually like and not like? I am far from figuring that out. I'm still dedicated to doing it, but by no means have I hit a home run here. VICTORIA: What keeps you motivated? What keeps you going and trying to solve that question? CHRIS: You know, it goes back to an original statement I made with you is like, life is so hard for so many people. I jokingly will tell people, I said this a lot when I was interviewing coaches, is like, look, I'm very aware of my privilege. I'm a white, male who lives in Northern California in the U.S. I was born in the '80s. Like, I did not grow up with, like, this insurmountable, you know, adversity that I had to overcome. Like, there's a lot that was easier for me to obtain in my life. And look, I work really hard. I am incredibly focused. I put in a lot of work. I'm very focused in that way. But I also just recognize, like, it might have been different if I was born somewhere else, if I looked a different way, if I didn't have access to the resources that I did. And so, my point with that statement is that I am a massive believer that whatever excess currencies you have, time, capital, energy, whatever it is, it is our obligation to help as many people on this planet in whatever way we think we can help them. There are 800 million people on our planet that don't have clean drinking water, which is mind-boggling to me, considering the age we live in. I mean, we take it for granted you turn on the faucet and water comes out. That is a luxury that we have in living in the United States and in the Western Hemisphere. I mean, when you think about 800 million, that's almost 1 out of 8 people that don't have clean drinking water. And that's just drinking water, let alone access to vaccines or whatever you may choose. And so, the point that I'm making is that for those of us that have excess of anything, and maybe it's just time, or maybe it is you have a lot of money, we should be doing the best job we can to help other people in the ways that we think would help them. For me, I'm focused on mental health and well-being. For somebody else, that might be providing good food, or medicine, or whatever it may be, and that's okay. We just need more people contributing to, hopefully, you know, lift as many people up to the point that we all have good lives. That's what keeps me going is the fact that, like, I don't take for granted for one second how easy my life is. VICTORIA: I love that. And I like that you're trying to build technology that helps people and isn't just trying to, like, make the most money you can, or try to, like [laughs], flip it around or just share something that, you know, is really personal to you and, like, really is meaningful to you. So, I really appreciate you sharing that with me. What does success look like six months from now or even five years from now? CHRIS: Look, success for me is pretty much what I've stated this whole episode is, like, I'm taking good care of myself. I'm very present in my life with my wife, my kids, my friends doing things that make Chris happy. That's what success looks like. Now, clearly, we're here talking about The Standard and growing, and so I'd love to see more progress being made. I'd love to see more users on the platform. I'd like to be learning and figuring out, how do I help people share their story in a way that empowers them to share that story? How do I get people to want to share their story that don't feel like they have to be paid to do so? You know, what I find so interesting when I talk to so many people and, you know, I ran 45 episodes of our podcast this year. So, I talked to a lot of people that have gone through some adversity, and they'll all say the same thing, "Dude, I will help anybody that is going through what I've..." Like, nobody wants to see somebody struggle, especially when you know how hard adversity is, whatever that may be for you. You don't want to see other people struggle because you know how painful that is. I want to see people who are willing to quote, unquote, "give back" and say, "Look, if I can share a few things about how I've navigated my adversity, whatever that adversity is, because it will benefit other people going through this, I don't need to be paid for that. I just want to share it because it's sort of the right thing to do. It's sort of a pay it forward." I think in today's age, like, in the creator economy, like, everybody's like, "Well, I'm not going to help out unless I get paid." And, like, look, that might be a very privileged statement that I'm making, that I have the luxury. But when I build The Standard, right or wrong, and some people would argue, "This is, like, the dumbest business model ever, Chris," is like, I don't think about monetization. Like, I'm not like, how do I get paid on this? Is it ads? Do I charge people? Like, I'm just trying to build something that I think actually will help people, and I'm trying to do it for the right reason. So, it's people before profit. But, at one point, there has to be money involved to some extent. But I don't put the money part first. I put the people. How do I get that right? So, my hope would be, in 5, 3 years, whatever the time would be, is that more people buy into the message and they're like, look, if all it takes is me to spend 20, 30 minutes to create a couple of videos on my habits and share a little bit of my story, and there's a way to memorialize some of the things that I've learned for the benefit of other people going through it, that's great. That's a drop in the bucket of my time. That if enough people started to do that, it would send a signal to a wider swatch of our community, or people, or species that it's okay to share some of the things that make you who you are. And if you did that, it lets somebody else do that. And if you get enough people doing that, you build a phenomenal habit bank, if you will, of just stories that other people can leverage for their own benefit. That would be success from my perspective. I try not to attach a certain amount of users. It's really just like, can I start to convince more and more people that you probably already have some information that would be really valuable to other people? I'm just trying to organize it in a way that someone can find it, but I need people to share their story because the platform is not about me. Although I'm on it, it's not about Chris Pallatroni. It's about you. I mean, I'm sure you've gone through things in your life that you've learned, and you've navigated that. If you could share that in a way that was authentic and easily organized, other people would hear your story and be like, God damn, that's me too. I'm just trying to get more people to do that. That would be success in my mind. VICTORIA: Well, it reminds me of a program I'm involved with. You might have heard of Big Sister, Little Sister, or Big Brother, Little Brother. It's a mentorship program. So, you have a one-on-one relationship with someone who's...like, the little sister I have really reminds me of myself when I was that age, like, you know, early high school awkwardness, trying to figure out how to navigate friendships and family life and getting a lot of pressure on, like, what are you going to do with your career? Even though you're still, like, really young. So, it's interesting to think about how could you scale that and, like, have more content, like, take some of the little bits of conversations we have and, like, share that with other people who are going through the same thing. CHRIS: Yeah, it's exactly that. And there's lots of stuff out there. I mean, you think of, like, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous like, in a lot of ways, that is it. Or people that have gone through school shootings, like, they find a lot of comfort in talking to other people that have navigated that. Like, there is no topic that does not touch mental health and well-being. Like, there's none. Like, I mean, I've read them all. And so, it's just about taking people...and this is the beauty of it, like, sure, there are experts out there, Mel Robbins, Tony Robbins, you know, they've read. Their whole life is about self-development and empowerment. But if you take an average person somewhere in the world and maybe they have read notebooks on self-development or any of that, and you just start to dissect their experience as a human, what I know to be true is that they'll say, "I went through this," whatever this may be. And if you start to unravel the, how'd you cope with it? What did you learn? What habits did you develop? What mindsets did you develop? There is profound wisdom. It may not be textbook. They may not understand the science behind it, but what they will share is something that is very real and that it's said in a very authentic way. And the words they use are incredibly powerful that if you could just capture that in a very authentic way and store it, and most importantly, find a way to organize it so it's easy for somebody to find, that's what this is about. And so, there's lots of this that exist out there. There's just no central mechanism that tries to tie this all together. And so, that's sort of what I'm attempting to do. VICTORIA: That's really cool. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and talking about what you've been building. Is there anything else that you would like to promote? CHRIS: No, not at all. I mean, I would just say, like, if anybody's interested, like, the platform that we have is thestandardapp.com. It's not an app; that's just the URL for it. Or you can find us on pretty much any social channel. It's just The Standard. We do run a podcast, which is The Standard Podcast, where we interview a lot of the coaches. But any one of those things will give you a really good idea of what we're trying to do. And if you feel like you've got something of value, we'd always love for more people to come on and just share their story in a way that's authentic to them. And that's really what we're about. VICTORIA: Awesome. Thank you so much. You can subscribe to the show and find notes along with a complete transcript for the episode at giantrobots.fm. If you have questions or comments, email us at hosts@giantrobots.fm. And you can find me on X @victori_ousg. This podcast is brought to you by thoughtbot and produced and edited by Mandy Moore. Thanks for listening. See you next time. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions.

On this episode, my guest is , a friend and scholar who recently completed his PhD in Cultural Geography from The University of Edinburgh where his research centered on themes of displacement and memorial walking practices in the Highlands of Scotland. A child of Greek political refugees on both sides of his family, Christos' work looks at ways in which ceremony and ritual might afford us the capacity to integrate disconnection from place and ancestry. Further, his research into pre-modern Gaelic Highland culture reveals animistic relationship with mountains which disrupt easy definitions of colonialism and indigeneity.Show Notes:Summoning and Summiting a DoctorateThe British Empire & EverestThe Three Roots of FreedomHillwalkers and HomecomingThe Consequences of Staying and LeavingThe Romans Make a Desert and Call it PeaceFarming EmptinessLandscapes as MediumsRitualized Acts of WalkingHomework:Christos Galanis' Official WebsiteTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Christos, to the End of Tourism podcast. Christos: Thank you, Chris. Chris: Thank you for joining me today. Would you be willing to let us know where you're dialing in from today? Christos: Yeah, I'm calling in from home, which at the moment is Santa Fe, New Mexico in the United States. Yeah, I moved out here for my master's in 2010 and fell in love with it, and and then returned two years ago.So it's actually a place that does remind me of the Mediterranean and Greece, even though there's no water, but the kind of mountain desert. So there's a familiarity somehow in my body. Chris: Sounds beautiful. Well I'm delighted to speak with you today about your PhD dissertation entitled "A Mountain Threnody: Hill Walking and Homecoming in the Scottish Highlands." And I know you're working on the finishing touches of the dissertation, but I'd like to pronounce a dear congratulations on that huge feat. I imagine after a decade of research and [00:01:00] writing, that you can finally share this gift, at least for now, in this manner, in terms of our conversation together.Christos: Thank you. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life in terms of a project. Yeah. Nine years.Chris: And so, you and I met at Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School many years ago. But beyond that from what I understand that you were born and raised in Toronto and Scarborough to Greek immigrants, traveled often to see family in Greece and also traveled widely yourself, and of course now living in New Mexico for some time. I'm curious why focus on Scotland for your thesis? Christos: It was the last place I thought I would be going to. Didn't have a connection there. So I did my master's down here in Albuquerque at UNM and was actually doing a lot of work on the border with Mexico and kind of Southwest Spanish history.I actually thought I was going to go to UC San Diego, partly because of the weather and had some connections [00:02:00] there. And two things happened. One was that you have to write your GRE, whatever the standardized test is you need to do for grad school here in the US, you don't have to do in the UK. So that appealed to me.And it's also, there's no coursework in the UK. So you just, from day one, you're just doing your own research project. And then I wanted to actually work with what Was and probably still is my favorite academic writer is Tim Ingold, who was based in Aberdeen up in the north of Scotland and is kind of that thing where I was like, "well if I'm gonna do a PhD What if I just literally worked with like the most amazing academic I can imagine working with" and so I contacted him. He was open to meeting and possibly working together and so I was gonna fly to Scotland.I was actually spending the winter in Thailand at the time, so I was like, if I'm gonna go all the way to Scotland, maybe I should check out a couple more universities. So, I looked at St. Andrews, which is a little bit north of Edinburgh, and then Edinburgh, then visited all [00:03:00] three schools, and actually just really fell in love with Edinburgh, and then in the end got full funding from them. And that took me to Scotland. And I didn't know what was in store for me. I didn't even follow through on my original research project, which had nothing to do with Scotland. The sites that I was actually proposed to work with was on the Dine reservation out here in Arizona. There's a tradition, long tradition of sheep herding and there's a lot of, some friends of mine have a volunteer program where volunteers go and help the Diné elders and herd their sheep for them and what's happening is they're trying to hold on to their land and Peabody Coal, a coal mining company, has been trying to take the land forever and so by keeping on herding sheep, it allows them to stay there.So I was actually kind of looking at walking as forms of resistance and at that time, most undocumented migrants trying to enter Europe were walking from Turkey through Macedonia. So I was actually going to go there. And yeah, once I kind of hit the ground, I realized that that's way too ambitious.And I [00:04:00] decided to focus on this really strange phenomenon called Monroe Bagging in the Highlands of Scotland, where people work all week in their office, Monday to Friday, and then spend their weekends checking off a task list of 282 mountains that they summit. There's 282 of them and they're categorized that way because they're all over 3, 000 feet, which for us in North America, isn't that high, but for the Scottish Highlands, because they're very ancient, ancient, worn down mountains is pretty high.And also the weather and the climate and the terrain make it pretty treacherous out there. So it's, it's not an easy thing. Yeah. And I just thought this is a really weird, strange way to relate to mountains and to land. And it seems like a very British thing to do. And I kind of just got curious to figure out what was going on and why people would actually do this.And it came from a very, actually, critical perspective, to begin with. As things unfolded, that changed a fair amount in terms of getting to know people. But, yeah, that was Scotland. And, I think looking back, I think [00:05:00] I was called there by the mountains. I can give the bigger context maybe later on, but essentially one of the main mountain called Ben Cruachan, in Argyle that I ended up most working with and kind of going in and doing ceremony for, and with. I ended up later meeting my what would become my wife and married into her family and on one side of her family, they are literally the Macintyres who are from that mountain. So yeah ended up kind of going there and marrying into a lineage of a mountain that was the center of my my dissertation.So in the end I think I was called there. I think I was called to apprentice those mountains. And then I feel like my time ended. And I think this dissertation is kind of the story of that relationship with that courtship.Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for that beautifully winding answer and introduction. So, you know, a lot of your dissertation speaks to kind of different notions of mountain climbing, summiting, hiking but you also write about [00:06:00] how our cultural or collective understandings of mountains have defined our ability to undertake these activities.And I'm curious, based on your research and personal experience, how do you think mountains are understood within the dominant paradigm of people who undertake these practices. Christos: Yeah, good question. I would say, I know I don't like to speak in universals, but I could say that one universal is that, as far as I can tell, all cultures around the world tend to not only revere mountains, but tend to relate to mountain peaks as sacred.And so in most cultures, at least pre modern culture, you will always find a taboo around ever actually climbing to the top of a mountain, especially a significant mountain. So ways that you might worship a sacred mountain, for example, you know, in Tibet is to circumnavigate. So hiking, walking around a mountain three times or walking the perimeter of a mountain, kind of circling [00:07:00] around and around the summit.But it would be absolutely abhorrent to actually ever climb to the top. So one thing I was interested in is what happened, what shifted, where in the past people would never think of climbing a mountain summit to that becoming almost the only thing that people were focused on. And I didn't know this, but out of all countries, the country that most intensely kind of pursued that practice was, was England, was Britain, actually.So it's really fascinating. There's this period, the Victorian era, where basically Britain is invading other countries such as Nepal, India, into China, into Kenya, parts of Africa, South America certainly here in North America and the Americas and of course mountain ranges serve as pretty natural and intense frontiers and barriers, especially back then before. You know, industrial machinery and airplanes and things [00:08:00] like that, you're going over land. And so to be able to get through a mountain range was a pretty intense thing. Really only became possible with kind of Victorian era technology and because they were able to penetrate these places that people really couldn't have before it was a way of kind of proving modern supremacy or the supremacy of kind of modern secularism.Because even in places like Sutherland and the Alps, the indigenous Swiss also considered like the Alps sacred, the mountain peaks and wouldn't climb them. And so as the British kind of came up into these mountain ranges. They had the idea of proving that essentially there were no gods on these mountaintops.There was nothing sacred about them. It's just a pile of rock and anybody can climb up and nothing's going to happen to them. And so they really started setting out to start summiting these mountains. And it was mostly military engineers. There's a big overlap between kind of military engineering and surveying and [00:09:00] map making and this kind of outdoor kind of Victorian kind of proving your manhood against nature kind of thing.And so it's a strangely poetic and very grief soaked proposition where increasingly humans had the technology to penetrate anywhere on the planet, you know, more and more. And maybe I'll just go into the story of Everest because it was perceived that the, the earth had three poles.So the North pole, the South pole, and Everest is the highest peak on the whole planet. So there was this race to set foot on the North Pole on the South Pole and on Everest. I don't know much about the North and South Pole expeditions I think they were first but Everest was kind of like yeah I think Everest was the last literally the last place on earth that humans weren't able yet to physically step foot on. And so the British set out to be the ones to do it after World War one. And there's another overlap where most of the men that were obsessed with mountain summiting after World War I had [00:10:00] been through the horrors of World War I and had a lot of PTSD and shell shock and kind of couldn't reintegrate back to civilian life.They kind of needed that rush of risking your life for some kind of larger goal, which warfare can provide. And, slowly they kind of got better technology and eventually by, I think it was maybe 1952, 1953, they finally conquered Everest. And it's almost like the moment that they penetrated this last place of wilderness that was holding out the British Empire started collapsing, which the timing is quite fascinating. You know, they lost India and Pakistan. And as soon as you kind of are able to dominate everything, there comes this nostalgia immediately for wild places. And this is where Scotland comes back in. Where, Scotland, the Highlands have been inhabited for tens of thousands of years.There's nothing wild about them. There were villages everywhere. But what happened through the [00:11:00] 16, 1700s was the Gaelic population, the indigenous population were ethnically cleansed. And then kind of the lands that follow for maybe 100 years. And then when the English started coming in, they were like, "Oh, this is wilderness.These mountains have never been climbed before. We're going to be the ones to conquer them because we're the superior race." And they did so, and when I chose the the title of my thesis used this little known word, Threnody, which is actually from Greek, Threnodia, which translates something as like a song of grief or a song of lament.And I think for me, this incessant kind of like summiting of mountains and risking and sometimes losing your life to penetrate these places where you actually don't retain control, or it's very hard to retain control, right, because of like storms in the weather, that it's almost like a kind of mourning for the loss of the very things that this technology has kind of erased or has compromised.So it's almost, I can't even put into words the feeling around it, but it's almost like, [00:12:00] You're doing the thing that's destroying something, but you have the impulse to keep doing it as a way of connecting to the thing that's being lost, if that makes sense. And I can imagine, you know, maybe all the work that you've done around tourism might have a similar quality to it.There's, I don't know, there's like a melancholy that I experience interviewing and going out with these people that I don't think they would ever be conscious of or even name, but there's a longing for something that's missing. And so that's where also this kind of song of lament theme comes into my, into my dissertation.Chris: Yeah, it's definitely something that shows up over and over again in these conversations and thank you for putting it into such eloquent words is that. I think it really succinctly speaks to the, the condition or conditions at hand. And I guess I'm curious you know, in regards to what you just said about notions of freedom [00:13:00] that are often experienced in touristic experiences or contexts and some of your dissertation centers around the freedom that your friends and hill walking acquaintances experienced there in the Highlands and freedom can often seem like a kind of recurrent trope sometimes in describing the tourist's reasons for travel.And surely outside of a trope for many people's reasons for travel you know, especially in the context of migration. Beyond the surface, we can wonder about the inheritance of ancestrally or ancestral indentured servitude, the commons and the lack thereof in our time and also like a kind of communion or relationship with what you refer to as other than human worlds. And I'm curious what kind of contradictions or insights came up for you in regards to the supposed freedom that was either found or sought after by the Hillwalkers you encountered.[00:14:00] Christos: Thank you. Yeah, I think before I started going deep into this, I probably, I probably shared most people's notion of freedom, which most of us don't ever really sit and wonder that deeply about.But there's a section of my dissertation where I go deep into freedom and I actually look at three different cultural and kind of etymological or linguistic lenses through which to understand freedom. And there's two that the people I interviewed, I think, were most practicing. So the word freedom itself comes from the Germanic, and it's two words.It's broke frei, which is "free," "to be free." And dom, translates kind of as "a judgment." So if you know like doomsday or the doomsday book. What the doomsday and judgment day actually mean the same thing It's just doom is like the older Germanic word for judgment. Okay, and so freedom can kind of translate as like freedom from judgment freedom from constraint and it has this quality of like spatially removing [00:15:00] yourself or getting distance from something that might constrain you, so you mentioned indentured servitude and slavery, which are as old as human civilization across the world.And all these different things that, basically, we are more or less constrained by, whether it's, family, the state, our living conditions, poverty, excess wealth, you know, all these things that might, or the expression of our true life force. And so for a lot of the people that I was working with, that was certainly what they would describe, you know, like I work in an office as a manager Monday through Friday in Edinburgh, and then it's only on the weekends that I get out into the hills and I truly feel alive and free, right? Because I'm in this vast expanse and, I mean, It's not my climate. I'm Greek by both sides. Wet, soggy moss and mold and endless rain and drizzle and cold and dark is not my thing, but it is visually stunningly beautiful. And you know, [00:16:00] and I'm sure we all know the experience of getting up to a peak of something and that sense of kind of almost being removed from the everyday and that sense of like maybe connecting to something higher or bigger.So that sense of freedom is obvious. The other, another lens is through Latin liberty or libertas, which comes from ancient Roman society, which was a heavily hierarchied society where up to 60 percent of people were actually slaves. So, there's a big distinction between those who are free and those who are slaves.And so the idea of liberty, and this also came up with my informants is the idea that you have to compare yourself to another and the more freedom you have compared to someone else, the better it feels. And I think of that as all the mechanics of like air airports and you know, first class lines and first class seating.I had the experience once flying because flying from New York through back to [00:17:00] London to get back to Edinburgh. And for the first and only time in my life I was bumped up to first class for some reason, I don't know why. But it was on, I don't know, one of the newer kind of jumbo jets, and the difference between economy class and first class in many ways is pretty profound.At the same time, it's ridiculous because you're all sitting in the same tube. But I remember the feeling that happened once we took off and they drew the curtain between the first class and everyone in the back. And it was this experience where everyone back there just disappeared.It's just kind of like, you can't see them, they're out of sight, out of mind, and you're just up front. You can lay down completely horizontally in these chairs, you have real glass, glassware and real cutlery, you know, and people treat you super, super nice. But like, in order to enjoy that, you need other people to not be enjoying that, right?So the idea of liberty kind of requires another, or it's almost a zero sum game where someone else has to be losing for you to be winning. And you know, I think of that with tourism, the idea that those of us from the North, you know, are stuck [00:18:00] at home in the winter while those with money, you know, can fly off to Mexico or Costa Rica and stuff like that.So that difference that like your experience is enhanced by other people's discomfort or suffering. And then I came across another lens, which comes from the Greek. So the Greek word for freedom is Eleftheria. And I didn't know the etymology, but one of my office mates in Edinburgh was from Greece, and we sat down with like a Greek etymological dictionary and I discovered that the Greek notion of freedom is completely different.It's almost counterintuitive, and it translates as something close to " loving the thing you were meant to love" or like "being the thing you were meant to be." And even more distinctly, the rios part in Eleftheria would translate into something like "returning to your home harbor after like a long voyage," and it's that, it's literally the experience of coming home, [00:19:00] which in a way is the freedom of not wanting to be anywhere else or to be anyone else, which is in some ways, I think to me, the most true freedom, because you don't want for anything, you actually love everything you are and everywhere you are, and you don't want to go anywhere else.So in that way, I think for me, cultivating a connection to place as an animist, you know, and I think that's a lot of what you and I I imagine experienced, you know, listening to Steven Jenkinson's many stories that keep circling around this idea of, you know, belonging is cultivating that place in you or that muscle in you that doesn't want to be anywhere else, doesn't want to be anybody else, but is actually satisfied and fulfilled by what is, which it's probably at the heart of most spiritual traditions at the end of the day, but to think of that as freedom, I think for me, really, really changed my perspective from, the idea of going around the world as I have and certainly in the past to experience all these different things and to [00:20:00] feel free and to be a nomad versus I would say the freedom I have here of loving Santa Fe and not imagining myself being anywhere else right now.Chris: Well, the theme of homecoming is definitely woven into this work, this dissertation, alongside hill walking.They seem, generally speaking, superficially very disparate or distinct activities, homecoming and hill walking. One is going and then it's coming. And I'm curious if you could elaborate for our listeners a little bit of what those terms mean, and where or how they come together in your work.Christos: Yeah. So the title of my dissertation, you know, is a "A Mountain Threnody: Hillwalkers and Homecomers in the Highlands of Scotland."So I set out to study hill walkers, which is basically a British term for going out for a walk or a hike where the focus is summiting some kind of peak, you know, whether a hill or a mountain, but that's what most people do there. When you set out on a walk, it's just assumed that you're going to end up going to the top of something and then [00:21:00] back down.What ended up happening is actually through Stephen Jenkinson's Orphan Wisdom School, I met several other Canadians of Scottish descent who had already or were planning on going quote "back" to Scotland to connect with their ancestral lands and their ancestors which is a lot of the work with Stephen's school and that, you know, that idea of connecting with your ancestry and with your roots and with your bones.And I kind of just started following along and interviewing people and talking with people that became friends just out of curiosity, because, you know, that's a lot of my background with being first generation Canadian and growing up in a huge Greek diaspora in Toronto and speaking Greek and going back to Greece multiple times and this idea of kind of being Canadian, but really home is in Europe and Greece, even though I've never lived there.So, there's a lot there, personal interest and eventually against my supervisor's advice, I was like, this might be an interesting [00:22:00] conversation to put these two groups together, these people who are spending their weekends summiting mountains in the Highlands and then these other people coming from Canada and the US and New Zealand and Australia who are going to the same mountains to connect with their ancestral, you know, lands and and people. And these two groups are probably the two biggest sources of tourism, like, in the Highlands, which is fascinating. Wow. Except that the one group, the Hillwalkers tend to imagine that they're in a pristine wilderness and that there's never been anybody there. And the homecomers like to imagine that the hills used to be covered in villages and their own people that were there for thousands of years and that they're reconnecting.So it's interesting how the same landscape is both imagined as being repopulated and also emptied. And that both groups are kind of searching again for this kind of belonging, right? This belonging through freedom, for this belonging through ancestry. The other piece that gets, [00:23:00] well, you know, we're interviewing this, we're doing this interview November 21st and we're, I think most people these days are pretty aware of what's going on in Israel and Palestine and this idea of home because to have a homecoming means there has to be somewhere out there that you consider your home.And that's such a loaded, loaded, loaded concept, right? Like many wars are fought over this idea of who a land belongs to, right? I mean, I know you and I have talked about both our families being from the borderlands with Greece, Macedonia, Albania, and those borders just change over and over and where you belong to what is home keeps changing depending on which war has happened, which outcome and things like that.And I think for those of us, I'll say in the Americas, who don't have deep roots here this idea of home being somewhere else other than where you live, is a very complex prospect because certainly when I go to Greece, people don't recognize me as being home, you know, they, they consider me a Canadian tourist. And at the same time growing up in Canada, I certainly never felt [00:24:00] like, "Oh, Canada is like my ancestral home. You know, it's, it's skin deep. My parents came over in the sixties. Right." So this idea of homecoming and, you know, maybe we can just riff on this for a bit. Cause I know you've explored this a lot. It's like, is it tourism or is it something else? Because a lot of people in Scotland, including people I interviewed, just laugh at these Canadians who come over and just start crying, standing over some rocks in the Highlands and who will buy some shitty whiskey at a tourist shop and feel that they're connecting with their roots and buy bagpipes and by kilts and all this stuff, whereas like most Scottish people don't wear kilts and don't blow bagpipes and don't necessarily drink whiskey all day, so there's these kind of stereotypes that have often been just kind of produced by the media, but it's almost like, other than that, how do people actually connect with the homeland, right?Like, what does it even mean to connect with a homeland? And one thing that I found that I think is one of the most powerful things is the idea of walking. So [00:25:00] this is why the comparison and the contrast with hill walking and homecoming is most people, when you go back to your homeland, there's something really central about walking in the footsteps of your ancestors, right?So walking around in the same village, walking the same streets, going to the same house, maybe even if it's not there anymore, going to... I remember going to my mom's elementary school in the little village that she grew up in the mountains of Greece and walking down the same hallways with her, and we went to the auditorium, and she, showed me the little stage where she would literally be putting on little plays when they were, like, in third grade and there's something about standing and stepping in the same place that is so fundamental. And so I'm kind of looking at homecoming through these kind of memorial or commemorative practices of walking. So it's not just walking, but walking and activating a landscape or activating the memories that are kind of enfolded in a landscape. And I've come to believe and understand that walking is a kind of almost magic technology that I [00:26:00] almost see it as really like opening up portals to other times and other places when done in a ceremonial kind of ritualized manner.So a lot of my work again, as an animist and kind of being as far as I know, the first in my field was just cultural geography, to kind of bring an animist lens to the field and kind of look at how, doing ceremony on a mountain, going into these glands and doing ceremony is more than just the material kind of walking, but is actually kind of connecting with these memories and these people in these places.In a way that's, I think, deeper than tourism and that's maybe the distinction between tourism and let's say homecoming on the surface that you might actually be doing almost the same thing, but I think there is this kind of animist lens to understand homecoming through where you let's say you bring a stone from home or you take a stone and bring it back home you know, like these kinds of Ritualize little practices that we do to connect with the place that I don't think tourists do in the same way, [00:27:00] you know?Because in tourism, you're often just trying to get away from where you live and experience something different, where this is trying to reconnect with something that's been lost or something that's in the past. Chris: Yeah, definitely. This leads me into a lot of different directions, but one of them is this question of animism that I'd like to come back to in just a moment but before we do, I want to ask you about. These heritage trips sometimes they're referred to as within the tourism industry, homeland returns which in most cases is a paradox or an oxymoron because most people are not returning to the places that they either were born in or lived in.They, typically, like myself, had never actually been there before. I'll just pull a little quote from your dissertation because I think it precedes this question in a good way. You write that quote, "the commissioner of Sutherland advocated for a state administered program of colonization in the Scottish Highlands, similarly arguing that the [00:28:00] Gaelic race and its inferior temperament presented an obstacle to the onward march of civilization. Locke set out a vision for the colonization, displacement, and reeducation of Gaelic Highlanders, where eventually, quote, 'the children of those removed from the hills will lose all recollection of the habits and customs of their fathers.'Locke's vision has broadly come true," end quote. And so, within the context of the wider spectrum and calendars and geographies that we've kind of been discussing, but more specifically in the context of Scotland, I'm curious if the people that you met there, either locals or visitors and especially in the case of those coming for a homecoming or heritage trip had an understanding of these things, of this history.Christos: No, that's what I found out. [00:29:00] What I've found in my lifetime, cause this isn't the only kind of project around this kind of theme that I've done. Maybe we'll get, I did another project with Mexican friends going back to Spain and kind of repatriating or reconnecting back through the kind of the displacement of the Spanish civil war.But what I've found is those of us of the colonies, that's kind of what I consider myself in ourselves, like people of the colonies. I'm not sure if it's better or worse that we're the ones that hold on to the stories and the memories and the people back quote "home" or in the "homeland" for the large part have moved on and don't really give much thought to these histories of displacement.It's almost, oh my God, it was strange to be in this country where most of the place names in the Highlands are Gaelic, and 98 percent of Scottish citizens cannot read or understand Gaelic, so partly it was this strangeness of being in a country where only two out of every hundred people could even understand the names of the places where they lived, even [00:30:00] though they had never left there and their people had never left there.And you know, if you let that sink in, it's like, let's say you and I being of Greek descent, imagine if 90 percent of Greeks couldn't understand Greek, you know what I mean? And couldn't understand the name of their own village. And well, there's, here's another angle to this in Scotland.When you want to learn traditional Gaelic fiddle, you go to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia in Canada because that's where the Highlanders who immigrated to Nova Scotia in the past kept the tradition pure and kept fiddle playing what it had always been. Whereas, you know in Scotland now, they're into hip hop and trap and drum and bass and stuff like this.And so if you're Scottish and you've never left Scotland in order to connect with the music of your ancestors you have to go to Canada, so most people that I interviewed and I think this is fair, you know to assume of most people Don't [00:31:00] think much about the ethnic cleansing that went on whichever side that they were on And it's kind of left to us in the colonies either to also let it go and move on and try to settle into these new lands or you kind of keep holding on to this memory of a place you've actually never lived, you know, and it's almost like both propositions are grief soaked.Both are kind of almost an impossible poem to hold because obviously there were people here before our European ancestors came. Obviously, we don't have these deep roots or memories or connections to this place. We don't have ceremonies or songs or much that's derived from this land, at least not yet.And yet many of us lose the language and the ceremonies and the traditions of the places where our ancestors came. It's almost like at least we still know where we've come from. Whereas to be in Europe, or at least in Scotland, and to have never left, but to nevertheless have also lost the connection with [00:32:00] your own ancestors and your own language and those places it's almost like a parallel process where there are people that get on the boats and leave, but there are people that are left behind. But it's almost like, regardless whether you leave or whether you stay, the fabric of that culture just gets completely rendered and torn apart by that displacement. And somehow, even though you never leave having so many of your people leave actually kind of compromises the ability to stay where you are, and to be connected to where you are. ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber!I interviewed one woman who had an ancestor who in Scotland, they call like psychic abilities, the second sight.So the idea of having kind of psychic premonitions or all of a sudden knowing that like your brother has died, even though he's in Australia, you know, that kind of thing. That people had that when I lived in Scotland and when they moved to Canada, they actually lost that ability. You know, so it's this idea that it's not that you carry almost these knowledges or abilities just in you, but it's actually comes from the connection [00:33:00] to the place.And once that connection becomes severed, you lose those capacities. And I've actually never said this out loud, but I wonder how much the people that stayed behind actually lost because of all the people that left, if that made sense. It's almost like, how does a culture stay resilient when almost everyone between the ages of like 20 and 40 leaves and never comes back.I think you could consider that this is all just stuff to wonder about. But like, for those of us that come from these kind of like largely settler countries like Canada and the U. S, we're still living through these questions. We're still living through these implications of like, how long do you hold on to the past? And at what point do you just kind of let go and move forward? And If you do so, how do you move forward in a place that you don't have any roots?Chris: You know. I remember going to see, going to my father's village in northern Greece for the first time some eight years ago, and knowing that I had [00:34:00] one baba or grandmother left there, and after searching for a few hours, she was hard of hearing at the time, finally found her, finally found the house and shared a delicious meal and traded photographs.I had no Greek or Macedonian language ability at the time. And then I was I called a taxi later on some, you know, at the end of the day to go back to the city, to the hotel, and standing in her garden there, she began to weep, right, without having said anything, even with the language barrier, I could understand what she was saying, and she was, she was mourning the migration of my family or my side of the family, or my father's side of the family to Canada, and then, her son and his family to Germany.And so, there's this question of what comes upon the people that quote unquote "stay." that's so often lost in the discourses [00:35:00] around migration, kind of always focusing on the individual, the migrant themselves, or the places that they arrive in.But do we just let it go? And how do we do that? I have this other quote from your dissertation that lands really strangely in this moment, in this conversation and it has to do a little bit with the kind of what I think you refer to as a national geographic imaginary.And so this is the response of the people in Scotland, in the Highlands embedded and engaged and indebted to these hill walking and homecoming industries. And so in your dissertation, it's written that "in February of 2017, an uproar on all sides erupted when, in a rare sign of bipartisan solidarity, both Mountaineering Scotland and the Scottish Gamekeepers Association attempted to pressure the Scottish government to abandon a [00:36:00] proposal to increase woodland cover, trees, from 17 percent to 25%. by 2050. The commitment to plant 10, 000 extra hectares of trees between now and 2022 was made in the government's draft climate plan. The protesting organizations argued that there had not been enough consultation and consideration given to the changes to the highland landscape that would come about by this tree planting initiative.And they were voicing their concern on whether, quote, 'adequate weight is being given to the significant changes this will have on the landscape of Scotland, and in particular, the dramatic open views and vistas which have come to signify to the outside world that which is unique about our country.'" End quote.And so this seems to be, to some degree, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but a manner of contending [00:37:00] with that past in a way that is, you know, perhaps ignorant of it. Or that is perhaps also faithfully serving the needs, the economic needs of the people, of the place.Christos: There's a lot there. I'm, what's coming to me, do you know this quote? It's from ancient Rome. It's a bit convoluted, but this is a Roman text talking about the colonization of Britain, so of the Romans conquering the Gaelic people in the Picts, but it's In a speech written by this Roman historian that he's attributing to like the Gaelic king, basically. So it's not, this wasn't actually said by a Gaelic king, it's just a Roman kind of putting these words in his mouth to kind of create like a battle scene, but but a lot of people quote this and it's from the Gaelic perspective referring to the Romans saying "the Romans make a desert and call it peace."[00:38:00] And that's kind of what's happened in Scotland is the villages were cleansed, literally. You know, the houses were burned down and knocked down. The people were forcibly, sometimes violently, thrown out of their homes into the cold. Many of them just had no prospects to be able to stay and move to Glasgow.And many of them, you know, came to Toronto and Saskatchewan and North Carolina and all this. And so after they left, these highlands kind of became empty, like this vast emptiness. And then once the Victorian English came into that landscape and started painting it and writing Victorian poems about it, this aesthetic of this, treeless, vast expanse became kind of that National Geographic kind of aesthetic of the mountain peak and the colorful heather and then the loch or the lake, kind of [00:39:00] reflecting the mountain.You can just imagine the scene, right? Of like the mountain peak being reflected in inverse in the lake, you know, kind of thing. It's just that perfect kind of symmetrical perspective photograph or painting. And then that kind of became the symbol of freedom and tranquility which is basically like a site of ethnic cleansing becomes a symbol of beauty.And then what happens is you keep managing the landscape to maintain that aesthetic, which is why you find the strangeness of, like, environmental groups arguing that planting trees is ecological vandalism, that you're ruining the ecology of a place because your trees are gonna get away in the way of these vast expanses.So it's it's this weird wondering on, like, how certain aesthetics become symbolic of something. And then you manage the land, to maintain that aesthetic. Even though it's [00:40:00] absolute death for the wild, the wildlife and even the people in that landscape, to maintain it in that way. The thing that might not be obvious to most people which wasn't I didn't know about this whole world before I moved there, but Scotland's one of the few if not only place in all of Europe where you can still be a feudal lord like they call it a laird, l-a-i-r-d, but it's like a lord where all you need to do to be a lord is you just buy land and if you have enough land you're you claim title of Lord Wow.And most people that are lords in Scotland these days are not even British. You have people from Saudi Arabia, from all over that have bought up the highlands in many ways. And they have these estates and you know, Balmoral estate, which is like the Queens, or I guess she's dead now. Now it's King Charles's estate.And what you do is maybe once a year you and all your rich friends from all over the world fly in [00:41:00] and do this traditional game hunt where you might be hunting deer, but more often you're actually hunting wild birds. You know, so grouse especially. If anyone's seen, I find it fascinating watching Downton Abbey, that TV series, because it's kind of, it covers a lot of the kind of that, that time in Britain.And there's an episode or two where they go into the Scottish countryside to go, you know, go hunting. So it's this weird aesthetic where you dress up in a certain way, kind of like an old time Scottish lord, and you go out on the land with dogs and you shoot down birds, and in order for the birds to live there you need the landscape to basically be wide open, because that's actually what they prefer.And so, this is why, again, for the context of that quote, you have an environmental group, and basically, rich, elite gamekeepers working together to keep the government from planting trees in this landscape because it's in both their interest to maintain [00:42:00] this landscape as an ecological wasteland, essentially that people can't sustain themselves off of or people can't live in So you're kind of farming emptiness if that makes sense in a way you're like cultivating emptiness. Yeah. For tourism. Which again I mean, you've been talking to so many people about this subject. To me, it's fascinating what tourism can be or what it can mean, you know, or like what need is trying to be fulfilled in these, in these landscapes that often get kind of territorialized as touristic, you know, because most people, when they travel, they don't go to walk around the suburbs of a city. There's only certain places that tourists are drawn to, right? Hmm. And so I'm always curious about why and what tourists are drawn to, you know, what is like almost like the resource there that is being extracted. In Chris: the context of your work, you know, largely in regards to, to landscapes and we've spoken a fair amount today about [00:43:00] landscapes as, as objects at the very least.But in, in your dissertation, you know, there was a line that struck me certainly I think coming from your animist tendencies and sentiments where you say that "landscapes are mediums and landscapes are a process," and I'm curious, as we kind of wind ourselves towards the end of our time together, if you could elaborate on this for our listeners a little bit, this, this idea of landscapes as mediums or as processes.Christos: Yeah, so I've done my, my PhD in the field of cultural geography, or sometimes called human geography, which is kind of like anthropology except kind of rooted in place, I'd say that's the big difference. It's not as popular here in North America, but in the UK it's much more popular. And probably the primary focus in that field is landscape, which I think most people might be familiar with that term in terms of like, maybe landscape [00:44:00] gardening or landscape painting.But when you get deep into it, which is kind of what grad school is, is you're like a big weirdo and you just get so deep into something so friggin specific that, you know, most people think you might think about once in your lifetime, but you end up spending nine years thinking about and writing about.It's almost like you can't perceive a place without some kind of filter, if that makes sense. It's almost like there's no such thing as just like a place or land that's just objectively out there. Like, I spent most of a winter, you know, down where you are in Oaxaca, but you having lived there for this long, like if you and I walk around in the streets of Ciudad Oaxaca, you're going to perceive so much more than I am, or at least many different things than I am, right?I'm going to be purely a tourist, I'm going to be reading on a surface level where you might have dozens of memories come up from your time living there and different things that have happened. And [00:45:00] so, in that way, like a landscape is almost, is always like a medium, meaning like our own perceptions, our own projections, our own memories are always affecting the way that we perceive a place.And so cultural geography, the field that I'm in, kind of looks at that. It looks, literally at the kind of the, the collision of culture and geography and like the politics of a place. You know, I was talking about like earlier about landscape management. You know, there are people that are choosing how to manage the landscape in the highlands, where to allocate money and where to cut money from.And all of those decisions are based on preferences of aesthetics and land use, in terms of landscape. So for anyone that's interested, it's a fascinating field to start looking at what we perceive in a place or in places [00:46:00] and how, what we perceive or what we wish to be there affects, you know, the politics of a place.And again, the contemporary crisis right now, Israel Palestine, this question of like, who belongs there? Whose land is it? What do you see in that landscape? For some people, they see an ancient Jewish homeland that these persecuted people are trying to return to and reclaim and for other people, they see, you know, an indigenous Arab people that are being displaced by outside colonizers and, you know, both in their way are right and wrong.I'm not going to wade into the politics of it, but the way that landscape is used as a medium, politically, economically, culturally, is a really fascinating subject, at least for me.Chris: Well, thank you for that, and to finish up with a question around pilgrimage, which Jerusalem being the quote unquote, "holy land" and where so many pilgrimages landed in in previous times and of course in contemporary ones as [00:47:00] well. I'm curious about what you could describe as ritualized memorial acts of walking. And I'd like to finish by asking what have been the most achieved and enduring acts of ritual that you've encountered? What lessons might they have to teach us in a time of hypermobility?Christos: Again, that's like a huge question. Okay, I'll try to be succinct if I can. I don't know why I'm drawn to these kinds of histories, but anywhere I go in the world, I tend to be drawn to, yeah, histories of displacement, I would say.It's a strange thing to be interested in for most people, but it probably speaks to the fact that I am the fourth generation of men to leave the country that I was born. You know, that's between both sides of the family, it's not all one lineage. But being of Greek descent, Greece has long been a country where people leave, you know?Like, right now, the [00:48:00] United States is a country where people come to, but to be claimed by a place where for hundreds of years now, so many people, whether by choice or circumstance, leave their home probably does something to you, you know? And so Anywhere I've traveled in the world, I tend to either seek out or be sought out by these kinds of histories, and so I referred a bit earlier to this project I did years ago where I was spending a lot of time in Mexico and ended up meeting what became a friend is an artist from Mexico City, Javier Arellán, and he was second generation Mexican.His grandfather was from Barcelona in Spain and was a fighter pilot for the Spanish Republic, so like the legitimate democratically elected government of Spain. And when Franco and the fascists kind of staged a coup and the Spanish Civil War broke out you know, he was on the side [00:49:00] of the government, the Republican army.And Barcelona was basically the last stand of the Republicans as the fascist kind of came up from the from the south and when Barcelona fell everyone that could literally just fled on foot to try to cross into France, nearby to try to escape, because knowing that if they were captured they would be imprisoned or killed by the fascists who had basically taken over the country now.But the French didn't want tens of thousands of socialists pouring into their country because they were right wing. And so rather than letting people escape they actually put all the Spanish refugees in concentration camps on the French border. And that's where my friend's grandfather was interred for like six months in a place called Argilet sur Mer, just over the French border.And then from there, Algeria took a bunch of refugees and he was sent to Algeria. And then from there, the only countries in the whole world that would [00:50:00] accept these left wing Spanish refugees was Mexico and Russia. And so about 50, 000 Spanish Republican refugees relocated to Mexico City. They had a huge influence on Mexican culture.They started UNAM, like the national university in Mexico City. And my friend Javier Grew up in Mexico city, going to a Spanish Republican elementary school, singing the Spanish Republican National Anthem and considering themselves Spaniards, you know, who happened to be living in Mexico. And so when I met him, with my interests, we, you know, overlapped and I found out that him and his wife were soon setting out to go back to that same beach in France where his grandfather was interred, in the concentration camp and then to walk from there back to Barcelona because his grandfather had died in Mexico before Franco died, so he never got to return home. You know, maybe like a lot of Greeks that left and [00:51:00] never did get to go back home, certainly never moved back home.And so we went to France and we started on this beach, which is a really kind of trashy touristy kind of beach, today. And we thought you know, that's what it is today, but we then found out talking to people that that's actually what it was back in the 1930s, 1940s was this touristy beach and what the French did was literally put a fence around and put these refugees on the beach in the middle of like a tourism beach literally as prisoners while people on the fence were like swimming and eating ice cream and, you know, and being on vacation.So even that site itself is pretty fucked up. A lot of people died there on that beach. And it was 15 days walking the entire coast from the French border back to Barcelona. And whereas Javier's community in Mexico city actually raised [00:52:00] funds for us and we're really excited about this idea of homecoming and going back home to Spain.We quickly discovered when we started talking to locals about what we were doing, they would stop talking to us and walk away and they didn't want anything to do with us. They did not want to know these histories. They didn't want to touch it. And what we found out is like Spain has never really dealt with this history.And it's such a trauma and nobody wants to talk about it. So again, it's this strange thing where it's like us from the Americas, you know, my friend from Mexico was wanting to return home and it was a strange trip for him because he thought of himself as a Spaniard returning home and these Spaniards were like, "you're a Mexican tourist and I don't want to talk to you about the civil war, you know?"And I think that really hurt him in a lot of ways because he almost kept trying to prove that he wasn't a tourist, whereas for me, I knew that I was a tourist because, you know, I have no history there.[00:53:00] In terms of pilgrimage, I've done other pilgrimages, other walks I won't get into now, but there's something about walking a landscape or walking a land as opposed to driving, obviously, or flying that the pace of walking, I think, allows you to interact with people and with places at a rhythm that is maybe more organic, maybe more holistic. I did do the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage in Spain, like I did that another 15 days as well. And for me there's nothing like walking. You know, there's, there's something that happens. To your mind, to your body, to your spirit when you're moving that I've never experienced through any kind of other travel.And unfortunately there are only so many places in the world where you can walk for days or weeks on end that have the infrastructure set up to do so. And I know that here in the Americas other than walking on busy roads, it's pretty hard to get long distances through walking.And so I think another thing that tourism has done is kind of cut off the transitional kind of walking and you just kind of fly off and just kind of plop yourself [00:54:00] down and then get extracted out through an airplane, but you don't have the experience of seeing the landscape change day by day, footstep by footstep, and experiencing the place at that speed, at that pace, which is, you know, a very slow pace compared to an airplane, obviously.Chris: Mm hmm. Perhaps, perhaps very needed in our time. Christos: I hope so. I think there's something about it. I think there's something humanizing about it. About walking. Chris: Well, I've asked a lot of you today, my friend. And we've managed to court and conjure all of the questions that I've, that I had prepared for you.Which I thought was impossible. So, on behalf of our listeners and perhaps all those who might come to this in some way, your dissertation at some point down the road, I'd like to thank you for your time and certainly your dedication.And I imagine a PhD, nine year PhD [00:55:00] research process can be extremely grueling. That said, I imagine it's not the only thing that you have on your plate. I know that you're also an artist a teacher, writer, and Kairotic facilitator. I'm saying that right. To finish off, maybe you'd be willing to share a little bit of what that entails and how our listeners might be able to get in touch and follow your work.Christos: Yeah, first I'll just say thanks for reaching out, Chris, and inviting me to do this. I've listened to your podcast and love these kinds of conversations around these topics of place and belonging. It's obviously deep in my heart and I said this to you earlier, other than my supervisors and my examiners, I think you're the first person to read my dissertation, so I appreciate that you took the time to read it and to draw quotes and to discuss it with me because, I think most people that have done a PhD know that it can be a pretty solitary process to go so deep into such a tiny little corner of like knowledge that for most people is not what they're interested in every day and to [00:56:00] share these stories. Thank you. So yeah, my website is ChristosGolanis. com. And part of what I do is working with this Greek term, kairos. So in Greek there are at least three words for time. One is chronos, which is like linear time. One is aeon, which is like kind of eternal time.And one is kairos, gets translated as kairos, which is like almost the appropriate time or ceremonial time. And my best definition of that is you know, there are some things that are scheduled, like you and I for months ago planned this particular time and this particular day to do this interview.But deciding, let's say, when to get married with your partner doesn't follow any kind of rational, linear timeline. That's more of a feeling. And so the feeling of like when some, when it's appropriate for something is what Greeks consider to be keros, like, you know, keros for something like it's, it's the appropriate time for something.So. What I do is I kind of counsel people to craft [00:57:00] ceremonies or rituals for big transitions in their lives to mark things in their life through ritual or ceremony. Like I said, for like a homecoming two weeks of walking the coast of Spain can be a ceremony, right, of kind of walking your dead grandfather back home. I think there's something about the impulse to go out into the world, to find something, to integrate something, to process something, right versus staying right where you are and kind of with community, with others. It's kind of ritually marking it, integrating it, and you know, it's cheaper, it's easier on the environment, and sometimes can, can go a lot deeper than going away and coming back, and maybe not much has changed.But it can be dealing with the transition of someone from life into death or a birth or a career change. And so basically using ceremony and ritual to really mark and integrate these significant moments in our lives so that we can be fully with them as they're happening or as they've happened in the past, but haven't been able to be integrated.So that's some of the kind of [00:58:00] work that people can do with me if you want to reach out through my website. Chris: Well I very much look forward to seeing and hearing your dissertation in the world outside of these small groups of podcast interviewers and academics. So, hopefully one day that's the case if there's any editors or publishers out there who enjoyed what you heard today and want to, want to hear more, please get in touch with me or Christos and we can, we can get that into the world in a good way.Christos, thank you so much brother. It's been a pleasure and I hope to have you on the pod again soon. Christos: All right. Thank you. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, I chat with Sassie Duggleby, founder of Venus Aerospace, about her groundbreaking work developing hypersonic flight technology. Her vision is to connect the world through travel that spans continents in just one hour. She shares her motivation, sparked by living abroad and a desire to unite people across borders. We discuss Sassie's journey building Venus Aerospace from the ground up. She offers insights into raising capital, growing from a small team to over 70 employees, and prioritizing work-life balance for families. Sassie also talks about navigating challenges in aerospace, an evolving field with careful regulation. Our discussion delves deeper as Sassie reflects on balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood. She also addresses tackling biases facing women in STEM fields. With her tenacity, Sassie is clearing paths for others. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Sassie Duggleby, CEO of Venus Aerospace, discusses the company's vision to revolutionize global transport with hypersonic flight, aiming to turn international travel into one-hour journeys. We explore Sassie's personal experiences, from living in Japan to leading a pioneering company, which fuel her ambition to make the world more connected through rapid travel. The conversation covers the evolution of Venus Aerospace from a small team to a 70-employee company, emphasizing the challenges and strategies of scaling a startup. Sassie shares the importance of cultivating a strong company culture that prioritizes family time and how it aligns with their vision of 'home for dinner'. We delve into the regulatory challenges faced by the company, such as securing permission for supersonic flights over land and navigating government relations. The episode touches on gender biases in the aerospace industry and how societal norms impact women, with Sassie recounting her own experiences as a female CEO. Sassie reflects on the need for potential changes in the academic system to accommodate different learning styles and to support women in STEM fields. Discussing personal challenges, Sassie emphasizes the importance of balancing motherhood with the demands of leading a startup and the intentionality required to maintain a work-life balance. A lighthearted discussion ensues about Tex-Mex versus barbecue, providing a glimpse into Sassie's personal preferences and her vision for a tech-free sabbatical in nature. We highlight Sassie's journey as a successful female entrepreneur and her contributions to the aerospace industry, particularly during International Women's Month in March 2024. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Venus Aerospace GUESTS Sassie DugglebyAbout Sassie TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Sassie Duggleby, co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace. Venus Aerospace is a startup company focused on engineering the future of hypersonic flight by making one-hour global transport possible to connect the world and make it safer. Sassy talks about the importance of cultivating a strong company culture, where at Venus, they are focused on making it home for dinner. She also shares how she balances being the CEO of a startup while also being the mother of two. Sassy, I want to welcome you on to Building Texas Business. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today. Yeah, thanks for having me so very intriguing stories. I was reading your bio and I just want to give you a chance to introduce yourself to the audience and the listeners. Tell us you know who you are and what you do. I know your company is Venus Aerospace, which sounds really cool, so let's tell us about who you are and then what Venus Aerospace is. Sassie: Yeah, so I'm the co-founder and CEO of Venus Aerospace. Venus, we are using a next generation rocket engine to enable super high speed vehicles. So what does that mean? High speed vehicles is in planes, drones, and we've got an engine that allows you to take off and get up to speeds around Mach 4. So four times the speed of sound and super efficiently cruise across the globe. You can push all the way up to Mach 9 if you really wanted to, and then come back down and land and it would let you go. You know, say, san Francisco to Tokyo in under two hours. Wow. Chris: That's a little crazy, huh yeah, so does that mean you're a true rocket scientist? Sassie: I'm actually married to a rocket scientist and I manage a ton of rocket scientists, but I would not claim that title for myself. Chris: Okay, all right, so, but you're the one of the few that would say, well, it's not rocket science, but it kind of is. Sassie: It is in this case for sure. Chris: Yeah, I love it. Okay, so that Venus Aerospace, so high speed travel. For what? For? Obviously for a normal consumer. Sassie: Yeah, so the ultimate goal is commercial travel. We have near term opportunities doing hypersonic flight testing for the Department of Defense and then hypersonic drones, kind of for national security and defense purposes, both for, you know, nato and the US Department of Defense. But that ultimate goal is you know kind of how does the world change, if you could get anywhere, you know, in two hours, you know whether it's business travel or it's, you know, delivering parts or it's, you know, global organ transplant. There's a bunch of opportunities that you know what's your time worth and if we could give you back time by helping you get across the globe faster. That's our ultimate vision. Chris: Wow, I mean that's. It is visionary. So what inspired you to get into this business? Sassie: Yeah, so prior to starting Venus, andrew and I. So we co-founded the company together. Andrew's, my husband and we were both working for Virgin Orbit, so we were launching rockets off the wings of 747s. And while we were working for Virgin Orbit, we actually deployed to Japan. So Andrew's in the Navy reserves and in the Navy he does ship repair. So I always joke why a PhD rocket scientist is doing ship repair. That's a whole different question. But 2018 was a really bad year for the Navy and there were a bunch of collisions out at sea and they couldn't get the Navy ships all the way back to the United States. They could only get them to Japan. And so he got a call in like February 2018 and said, hey, we need you Any chance you could come to Japan. And I looked at him and said, can we go? And so we pulled the kids from school, moved to Yokosuka, japan, and it was actually living in Japan that we realized you know how big the world really is. So, you know, I had, we had traveled internationally, but we'd never actually lived overseas. And so it was literally a Sunday afternoon. We were sitting out on our balcony overlooking Tokyo Bay. You could see the whole, you know American shipyard there and we were talking about my grandmother's birthday was coming up and how do we get home? Do I take the kids jet lag socks, like we were just having a normal Sunday conversation. And Andrew looks at me and he says well, you know, there's a new rocket engine coming on the pipeline. That's been theorized for about 30 years. They've been working on it at academia, at the universities, and he said I think if this engine's ever proven, I think we could put it on a plane and we could be home in an hour. And I literally laughed at him in that moment. But then he started explaining the physics to me and how the engine works and how it's way more efficient If you don't have to, if it's more efficient, you don't have to have as much fuel. And just was getting into it. And we started kind of dreaming like, well, what if this engine ever really comes along and it's proven? And so you know, fast forward, we get back to Southern California and we're back working at Virgin orbit after the deployment. And he comes home from work one day and he said, hey, purdue University, their research, one of the research labs proved this engine and it's called a rotating detonation rocket engine, which I know is a mouthful Rotating detonation rocket engine. And so this engine in an A B test. So the rocket engines that, like we use today, are only about 2% more efficient than the rocket engines that we sent, you know, astronauts to the moon with 50 years ago on the Apollo missions. So in 50 years we've gained about a 2% increase in efficiency, which is not much. Well, this engine, on the other hand, gains about 15% efficiency, and so it's just a total game changer. It's almost equivalent of going from like propellers to jets, like how much that impacted airplanes. It's the same thing. So going from a it's called a deflagration engine like a campfire burn in a chamber, which is what we've been using forever, so subsonic combustion, to detonation, which is supersonic combustion, and if you can detonate a propellant you extract more energy. It's just more efficient. And so we literally stand up that rotating detonation waves, so it rotates around and around in an annulus. If you go to our website you can see videos of it and with that detonation it's just more efficient. And so if you don't have to hear as much fuel, you can put wings and landing gear and all the things that actually would finally make kind of a rocket plane actually work. Chris: Wow, yeah, and I guess going that fast at me all I know is what I see, like on TV in the movies, that going mock speeds is challenging, I guess for pilots now, because it's only people in, you know, in jets that do it. But for passengers, I guess the cabin can be pressurized or contained where it's safe for the, or maybe that's where you're getting to, I don't know. Sassie: Yeah, well, so humans are really good at constant velocity. So once you get up to speed and you're going the same speed, I mean you know an airplane, you don't feel like you're trying to get there. I mean you don't feel like you're traveling what? 800 miles per hour across the globe or whatever the speed is. You know it's acceleration, like when you have G's, that that's what we're not as good as handling. So our vehicle, our plane experience, you would take off and it would be about kind of a 10 minutes of that takeoff experience where you're in the back of your seat, but then you'll hit constant acceleration, just like an airplane. So it's no different. I mean, think about astronauts in space or traveling what Mach 24, Mach 25, and orbit constantly, and you know that it's just the acceleration that's the hard thing. So okay, we've got one of the joys of being here in Houston is you know we've got Johnson Space Center down the road from us and you know we've had their human factors team look at you know our kind of trajectory and they've said oh, you're totally fine, you've got no problems at all. Chris: That's nothing. Right, yeah, exactly so. You have an idea and I love the story of on a balcony in Japan and just it's interesting to me because so many entrepreneurs they may not be in that same setting, but it is this conversation about an issue or a problem and how to solve it and they have the idea right and it boiled down to its basics, no different than what you and your husband were talking about. So how did you take that concept and the idea that, ok, Purdue proved it and turn that into Venus Aerospace? Sassie: Yeah. So as soon as Andrew came home and said, hey, they've proved it, I kind of looked at him. I said, do you have this? Because he intimately knew he was a former professor at Texas A&M, so we intimately knew how far academia could kind of push the technology. And we said, all right, we've got to go grab that technology and kind of pull it up and actually bring it to the world. So I incorporated the company and then I actually went and took a class on how do you raise venture capital. You know, while I have an engineering undergrad and an MBA, I had not ever, you know, raised VC money before. And so it was actually a group of women that I found they were teaching a course on how to one of the goals was to get more venture capital into the hands of female founders. So statistically, about 2% of venture funding goes to females, and so they were trying to help with that. So I took a class and learned how do you raise VC money and how to, you know, build a pitch deck and all the things. And then, as soon as we got Virgin Orbit to its first launch, we actually quit our jobs and went full time on Venus and we spent about. It took us about six months and, I think, 200 conversations, 200 pitches, until we finally, you know, found that investor that said, yes, I'm in, and we closed a seed round of $3 million in January 2021. And that was actually the same time we decided to move the company from Southern California to Houston. I'm a seventh generation Texan so wanted to get back home and Houston. One of the great things about Houston is it's got the Houston spaceport at Ellington Field and it's the Ellington Field. It's the only urban spaceport in America, which means, you know, we are literally firing rocket engines here at Ellington. You know our previous experience. You know Virgin Orbit our headquarters was Long Beach, but our testing all happened out in Mojave, and so Andrew, when he became head of launch operations, pretty much lived in Mojave. I was a single mom for a couple of years and we were, like you know, as a husband wife founding team. This is not like we have to find a place. We can do it all in one location. And Houston, you know, rose to the very top, and so we closed our seed round of funding and moved the family to Houston and it's been, you know, I really believe, the best move for what we could have done, you know, for the company. Chris: That's great. So let's talk a little bit about the challenges of raising venture capital money. I mean you obviously at 50,000 feet, you said 200 conversations before you got one bite. But you know, I have to believe. I know we have clients that go through this or come to us, you know, in the similar stage trying to capitalize on an idea of raising money around it, so they get a company off the ground. And I have to believe. Other listeners out there are curious as well. What are some of the lessons learned that you feel like you could pass on to someone that might either one help them understand what they're about to get into, or maybe it's. You know, I learned this and avoid doing this. It might make it your process easier, sure. Sassie: You know. So one of the things that Coach Tommy in learning is it only takes one, yes, right, and so you just need one person to believe in you, so kind of having that grit and just saying no, like Andrew and I knew we had a good idea, we knew we had something. One of the challenges was finding the right fit. You know so venture capitalists often have a thesis in terms of what they want to invest in. So if you're an enterprise, saas, software investor, you're probably not going to invest in a rocket company, and so it took a while for me to find, for us to find kind of those folks with the correct thesis and they get introductions to them. The other thing is we needed patient capital. So we're also not on this like super short journey. We're not going to throw a bunch of programmers in the room and, you know, spit out a program of a unicorn. You know we need time. We need time to build, we need hardware, we're capital intensive and so finding those people that understood those longer timelines, and we're okay with that. So that's one. The other thing I would say is we started off building our own pitch deck and thought surely the design doesn't matter, and fortunately we had a pretty early believer that said hey, I'm interested, I want to help you guys, but you need a better pitch deck. And so it kind of like crushed my soul to go pay a designer to build our pitch deck. But the minute we went from the one we designed ourselves to like a professionally designed one, our traction went way up. And so it and I look back in the pitch deck we have was horrible. In the pitch deck the designer built was beautiful. And so you know, I'm actually glad, I'm very glad we sent the money. Chris: I think that you know there's a lesson there for sure in the way I've seen it play out in a number of different scenarios with kind of startups because you need to figure out what's truly an expense versus an investment in the future of your business right and what you just described and hiring that professional. You're trying to say I can do this myself, I'm going to save a little money, but the investment you made, even though it seemed like an expense you probably were questioning whether you could afford, is actually a smart investment. That the return on that was crazy. And you know I can analogize that. Sometimes the startup legal stuff we tell clients or potential clients look, you're investing dollars, even though it seems like an expense on legal, but you're investing dollars and making sure your company's set up right. That will help you going forward. Sassie: Absolutely I completely agree. Chris: So you got the pitch deck going and and then I guess you continued on the road to pitch the idea to people. I also love kind of what you said about the honesty and being direct about what your business was and what this investment would look like and what it wasn't right. You weren't going to be returning a profit or return on the investment anytime soon. So you that I think you said someone paid capital or patient capital. Yeah, I love that. So you got that going. It was January, I guess, 2021, you said. And so take us now. How many employees have you grown to? Sassie: Yeah, so we're. You know that was January 21, 21, we're what? In March 24. So it's been three years. We've scaled about 70 full-time employees and we scaled really quickly. You know we did a $3 million seed and, what was fascinating, the minute our main investors are called Prime Movers Lab for our seed round put out a why we invested in Venus Aerospace. We got an incredible amount of well we would have invested. We would have invested. So we ended up capturing another 10 million in safes, so simple agreements for future equity. You know, built for a year and then the Prime Movers Lab actually did a preemptive A. They were like you guys are crushing it, here's 20 million more, keep going. And so, yeah, so we scaled pretty quick up to, you know, 50 ish. And that was an incredible challenge, like going from three where it's three people and a PowerPoint presentation, to 50 to 70 people like you. Just, you know you go. You've got to learn how to communicate better. It's no longer sitting around a kitchen table. You know. We literally started the company at our house and so everybody knew what was going on. Everybody was connected. I think once we hit 15 employees, we were like we have to find a location because we had two new people coming and we did not have a single spot in our house to put them Like we were about to start using our kids' bedrooms, and so that was the trigger. That was like, all right, we, you know, we ended up finding the hanger at Allington. But yeah, scaling is a fascinating, you know, and every stage, you know, it just gets a little bit different the minute you think you have it figured out. You grow again, and so we've started about 70 now for the last year, which I think has actually been really healthy for us because it's allowed us to build kind of better systems and processes into the organization for decision-making and for budgeting and all the things that I think will help us as we go to raise our next round of capital and want to really accelerate and start building, you know, mach 5 drones. We've got all the pieces in place to help us with that. Chris: So that you know you described, I think, any fast-moving business the challenges that scalability and managing it right, keeping your arms around it so it doesn't get out of control. I guess that's very hyper growth that you went through. So what were some of the things that you had to do through the hiring process to make sure you were making smart decisions on these hires while you were still trying to build processes and systems in place to kind of manage it once they were all there? Sassie: Yeah, you know, one of the things we early on put we call it the Venus values into place, kind of our culture and who we are and how we operate is just as important to us as the technology that we're building, and so we call it the Venus flight plan and so every kind of and it's all related to, you know, flight. But we do a lot of, we did a lot of culture. Yes, we want to make sure you can fit technically and can you do the skills, but then are you going to be a cultural fit? And so you know, even from an interview perspective, we'd have people doing technical interviews and understanding their technical skills. But then a cultural fit, are they really going to fit in culturally? And I actually think that is key. And then I do tons like I'm constantly I feel like I'm a broken record but talking about our values and who we are and how we're going to treat people, you know, I think the aerospace industry as a whole is often very broken. It was born out of war and it's. You know, I found myself at 38 as the oldest female engineer at Virgin Orbit and I don't know, I don't think 38 is that old. Chris: So I don't think so either. It seems like we're getting young, right now. Sassie: Yeah, so you look around the room and there'd be a ton of, you know, 25 year old female engineers a few 30, and by the time they're 40, they're all gone. And so you know we it was like what's wrong with the industry that you know there's no 40 year old engineers, that they all flee. And so we were very intentional. I mean, we actually named the company Venus because she's the only female planet. All the other planets Mars, jupiter, saturn, mercury they're all Roman gods, whereas Venus is a Roman goddess, and then she's also the goddess of love, and so we have a premise of like what would it actually look like if we love our employees as well? And so you know that's. I think that's been one of the key tenants of like kind of who we are as a company. You know we want to build that family friendly, female friendly aerospace company and that you know those shouldn't be in dissonance with one another, but they often are. Yeah, that's brilliant. Chris: Yeah, what you kind of started with. And to totally agree, culture's keen and I think it's important you know that. You emphasize that in the way you did and I hope our listeners took note. We believe here is the same thing. When we hire, yes, you have to have the technical skills and that's kind of a given and you can interview for that and test for, you know, while someone's here, through your training programs and whatnot. But culture, it doesn't matter how good you are technically, if you're not a cultural fit, you will never work. If the company is really committed to culture, right With this inclusive and loving the employees and wanting that environment where people want to be. Actually, I think Jack Welch said it, if you have a real high performer, that's not a cultural fit. He calls that cancer, right, and that can. We all know what cancer can do to things. So you can't allow that into your organization. But I think it's great with your focus on that. So what are some of the things that you do to make sure the culture is one defined but two cultivated and nurtured? Sassie: Yeah, so we do, you know, values shout outs. I mean, everybody has the Venus flight plan. I literally have it here on a mouse pad, you know. It's like this is who we are, it's on our website, it's on our screen savers kind of plastering around, and then we do a lot of Venus values shout outs. So we have like kind of managers and we expect like we want shout outs on certain places. You know we do awards. Anytime I send a communications email out to the company, I always, like, put some reminder about a Venus value. So I've just I just constantly say that, say it over and over, like this is who we are, this is how we operate. I feel like sometimes I'm a broken record, but you know they say you have to say something seven times before someone really hears it, and that's been a huge lesson for me, Like things that I feel like, oh, it's obvious, this is what we're going to go do as a company. This is our strategic goal. Well, I'm talking about it all the time to investors, but I realized sometimes, you know, our team might not be hearing it, and so that's been. Probably one of the biggest learnings is just how often you just have to say the same things over and over again. Chris: Yeah, I think you're right. I think it's that repetition and certainly top down, it has to be at the tops to become to infiltrate the entire organization. And I believe what I've experienced here is when you start tying your values and the behavior that you say defines your culture to behaviors that others in the organization are doing, so your shout outs as an example, right, when you say you know, jane did such a great job on this task and it demonstrated this value, right, people start personalizing going. Okay, I see what that value means in action. That's. I think that's great. And you said something there at the end I think is so true, cause your job is so external sometimes and I can relate to this you sometimes forget how important it is to make sure all those great things you say externally to keep the company going, that you're saying them internally to remind everyone how great the organization is and you know how important it is to keep this thing going. Oh for sure, for sure, what? Let's talk a little bit just about any challenges you've faced getting this company up and going and kind of what the lessons learned have from that and how it's kind of made you or the company stronger, cause you went through a rough patch or two. Sassie: You know, I say one of our biggest challenges we've been hitting is regulatory. So we're trying to fly a supersonic. Well, we actually flew a supersonic capable drone a couple weeks ago but we had to throttle it down to below Mach 1 because we didn't have the regulatory clearance to fly supersonic. It's illegal to fly supersonic over land without authority. Yeah, I mean the sonic boom does. It's legit, it does make a noise and so you know, they outlawed that back, I think the 50s or 60s, and so there are places, there are ranges in the United States that you can fly those speeds, but you have to get government approval and it's, you know it's been. Yes, you can go fly here, but it'll be three years. Well, we're a startup in three years like we're out of cash or we're growing super fast, and so that's regulatory hurdles have probably been one of our biggest challenges. That I kind of didn't expect. And then you know we're building technology that right now is one of the top priorities for the Department of Defense, and so in my mind you would think that DoD would be just throwing cash at us, but it's been very small. You know, we've got a little bit of DARPA money and a little bit of NASA money and a little bit of AFWARX Air Force money, you know, but not to the extent of what you know, based on the priorities of what you would think it is. And so I've had to learn, like, how do you play the DoD kind of Congress lobbying game and I call it a game because I feel like it is a game- and so I don't. Chris: I don't envy you at all, but I game, I think is the right way to say it sadly. Sassie: Yeah. So you know kind of learning that it's not necessarily a meritocracy, it's not the best technology wins, but it's. You know, do you have the right relationships? And were you in Capitol Hill at this time and we've been talking to this person? And the minute you build that relationship, then that person leaves that group and then you got to start over again. And so I joke, I've learned. I've had to learn how Adventure Capital World works and then the minute I figured that out, it's like now I've had to go figure out you know how congressional budgets and DoD and how all that works, and you know. So it's been. I've learned more in the last three years than I've learned, I think, in my previous 40, just because it's fascinating, but it's been a lot harder, I think. In my mind I thought the DoD, like if you build great tech, they will come, and that's not necessarily the case, and so we've had to start really building the right relationships and brought in a team that knows how to do government relations and so it's been a big learning curve. Chris: Yeah, you hate to hear that bureaucracy can get in the way of something so innovative and potentially transformative, but at the same time, I don't know anyone's gonna be shocked by that either. Right, it's kind of a sad statement. Sassie: Right, and there are lots. I've got to give the DoD credit. There's lots of groups are really pushing on innovation and recognizing that hey, we need to change and you know, one of the things that makes America great is our innovative ecosystem and how we can. You know the startup world and the venture capital and you know what happens in Silicon Valley and other places, and so there are definitely folks within the Department of Defense that recognize that's kind of the. That's what the US is, super power is, and how do we leverage it. But it's just a really slow flywheel and we'll get there. I know, because I know what we are building is so important that you know we'll be able to knock down the right barriers. But it's just been. It's been harder than I think I expected it was going to be. Chris: Yeah, it seems that way. So, as you were talking about that, I'm curious are there competitors to Venus out there, like others, that either have a similar or they've gotten permission to use the same technology, and not just necessarily in the US and other countries? Is this kind of like a you know back, going back to the 50s and 60s, when it was a race, you know, us and Russia were racing to the moon? Sassie: So in terms within the United States, you know. So, venus, our whole premise is that if you want to go really fast with a plane, instead of being a fast jet you should be a slow rocket. You know so our last rocket went mock, like when we were at Virgin orbit. It would go mock 10, split in half and then go on to mock 25. And so you know, when we're seeing mock four or even mock nine, that's slow compared to what our last last vehicle did, and so there's nobody else that's using the engine technology that we are to build fast, fast or slow rockets, and so we're kind of the only one in that realm. Like there are some other companies trying to build really fast jets. But we always say Top Gun Maverick was the perfect marketing story for us because, assuming you saw it, what happens in the very opening scenes of Top Gun Maverick? Chris: Yeah, he goes faster than what they told him he could, or why right he pushes? Sassie: he tries to push his plane to mock 10 and he literally melts his vehicle. Because if you fly fast through the soup of the atmosphere, you know it creates an incredible amount of friction and it creates an incredible amount of heat, and so it's really hard. And so, because you're a jet, the difference in a jet and a rocket is a jet has to bring. You know, go to campfire one to one. What do you need for a fire? You need fuel, oxygen and a spark. So a jet gets its oxygen from the air, which means it has to fly low enough in the atmosphere that can. It can feed its jets, which means it's got to fly through the soup. Right, we're a rocket, we're carrying our own oxygen with us in a tank, and so we can go up higher in the atmosphere where it's not as soupy, and thus fly where it's way cooler, so our vehicle won't melt. It's actually a much easier problem. So nobody that we know of in the world is looking using the engine that we're using for in the ways that we're using it Now. There are other people using this rocket engine, possibly for, you know, orbital launches, or you know we're working with NASA because they're really interested in it as a moon lander. But you know, we think we're the only ones. Now, that's not to say that some of our competitive you know, near peer competitors are not also looking at the same technology. Chris: Gotcha. Let's go back, because you said something that I found interesting you know we're going to get your take on it and that was around females in this industry and how you looked around at 38 and you were the oldest and that there aren't any in there Once you get to mid to late 30s, into the 40s. What is it? Do you think that was, or still is, maybe driving women out of the aerospace industry after you know they're in it for early, an early stage of life? Sassie: You know I've done a lot, spent a lot of time reflecting on this and I wish I knew the exact answer. I think I think it's multiple. I think one of them, when you don't have mentors, when you don't have someone older than you to mentor you and show you how it's done, you know, you decide like hey, maybe it's not worth it. I think some of it is. I mean, it wasn't unusual to have an 8pm meeting on a Thursday night when I was at Virgin Orbit sometimes, and so you know, if you're a mother and have young kids at home, like that's really hard. So just hours and expectations of hours, I can. You know. I think, as much as I would love to say it starts at a young age. There's no messaging sent to young kids, to young girls versus young boys, of like hey, you should be playing with these types of toys and boys can play with rockets. And I don't know that. I don't think society intentionally means to do that, but I think those messages still happen. I mean, I can tell you this happened recently. I was, we were given a tour here at Vina and it was with a group of very respected angels that went to a very respected university, I'm not gonna see what it is. And this gentleman came up to me and I introduced myself we hadn't started to tour anything and I said hey, I'm the CEO of Venus Aerospace. And he turns to me and he says you don't look like a very typical aerospace CEO. This is you know what 2024. Like I was so shocked by it, I didn't say anything and I wish now I'd said well, what makes me look different? Like what does an aerospace CEO look like? But that is still, I'm typically the only woman in the room when they're presenting for Venus as a founder of an aerospace company. It's just I wish I had better answers. You know, I've, even I've spent some time talking with some people that do kind of education on, you know, stem education and some of it. They even say, like you know, a lot of the engineering education is built based on how men learn, like men and women actually learn differently, and so based on how they teach, because it's been, you know, taught since, you know, for a thousand, hundreds and hundreds of years. Engineering is often taught with more how the male mindset works, and so it just tends women to be like, yeah, we're not going to go that route. Interesting. So I think it could need some changes in the academic system. But I mean, having come from a world where my husband was a professor, like there is no incentives for a professor to change how he teaches or she how she teaches. Sure, they're. They're actually, especially at a tier one research institution. They're there to, you know, do research and teaching just happens to be this little side gig, right. It's something they have to do right. It's something they have to do, not exactly? Chris: Yeah, I'm still a little shocked by the comment you got a couple of weeks ago. But so let's talk. You know, maybe digging a little bit on your own personal journey, because you're I think you said a mom of two, correct? So you know how have you managed that and navigated through. You know, still being a mom to those two, while you, I guess, one when you worked at Virgin. It couldn't have been easy, but even more challenge embarking on a startup and you know the growth that you told us about from zero or three to 50 so quickly and that. How have you tried to balance and manage your time, because I know there's clients in our firm, of our firm and listeners of this podcast that are in that same position. Sassie: Yeah, you know, I wish I could say it was easy, but it takes a lot of intentionality. So our company vision is home for dinner. We want to fly you across the globe and have you home for dinner. If you work for us, we want you home for dinner. And that's because we have, you know, as a husband and wife team, we have, you know, the two daughters that it's like we've got to be home for dinner with them because you know one of them is in high school and she's going to be out, hopefully, god willing, out of the house in a couple of years, and so we just put that in as a value from the very beginning. And so we are home, we eat dinner around the kitchen table with them almost every night I can't, you know, I can't say every night, but most of the time. Chris: No one would believe you if you said that. Sassie: Yeah, no, we don't. I mean, I just came back from two weeks of almost straight traveling and I did. I was heading to another event and I came out with my suitcase in the morning and my daughter literally looked at me and said, mom, you're leaving again. And so there are times that's hard, I can't say, I can't say I've got to figure it out, but it's being that being super intentional. And then when I do have time with them, you know, just making sure I make the most of it. It's like, you know, we do not at dinner ever have our phones out. We don't talk about Venus at all, because it's the last thing they want to hear about, you know. And then I do try we have tried to kind of sometimes bring what we're working on into their world. So I got to fly my younger daughter out to one of my events and she got to see me on stage and see what that world looks like. And so you know, getting them to understand like what we're doing, you know we've been trying to be more inclusive of that for them. Chris: I think that's great. I mean, to your point, everything's a balance, right, but I think that balance of not talking about business with them or around them all the time is smart. But introducing and incorporating a little bit about what mom and dad do isn't a bad thing. So it gives us some context about, because all they know is you leave the house and you're gone, right, and then you come back and introduce some context to that? Sassie: Well, one of my favorite stories we did. Actually we were trying to hire somebody, you know, maybe six months, a year ago, and so we were told the girls at dinner we were like, hey, we're trying to hire this person. You know, what do you think we could do to incentivize them to come? And my younger daughter was like well, what if you give them cookies? Chris: I was like you know everybody likes cookies. Sassie: That's true, So-. Chris: That would get me Exactly. Yeah, the innocence of that is, I mean, that's magical. So yeah, busy schedule, we balance this. How would you describe kind of your leadership style? Sassie: Well, that's a really interesting question. I try to lead how I would want to be led with super high integrity, positivity. I actually one of the analogies we use a lot is giving away our Legos. So I've really had to learn. We started the company and I was doing everything. Well, not the technical stuff, but I was setting up accounting, I was doing payroll, I was doing HR, I was doing all the fundraising, and so, as the company grows, I will never have more responsibility. Today is the most responsibility I will ever have, because hopefully, we'll continue to hand away Legos and so trying to really encourage people to share their Legos like the story we use all the time is, if we want to build the largest Legot Tower possible, the best way to do it is for everybody to contribute and build, and so in that case, I have to share my Legos. Chris: I love analogies. That's a good one for building a business and you're right, I think it's hard. It starts with trust, right? You have to be able to get to a level of trust to give a Lego away to someone, to take over HR, to take over accounting. Sassie: And my goal is to hire everybody smarter than I am and that's more of an expert in their area than I am, because if that's the case, then Venus will be so much better. And so I ultimately want the very best in whatever role it is, and let them have it, because they're going to be so much better equipped to do that role than I ever was. Chris: It's a great goal. Well, the story is fascinating, sassy. I can't wait to continue to watch where y'all take this, and what do you I mean unique and special opportunity right? You're literally going to change an industry. Sassie: I always say it's the adventure of a lifetime, and Andrew and I were two engineers with an idea, and it really shows the power of the American dream that there are investors out there I mean, we're not billionaires and so that there are investors out there that understand what a world changing technology can do and that are willing to back entrepreneurs and then continue to support us and help us grow. To me, it's what makes America by far the greatest country in the world. Is this type of ecosystem that happens, so it's truly just such an adventure. Chris: Let's have a little fun before we wrap up. So what was your first job? We were growing up? I was a lifeguard. Okay, and do you ever have to save any lives? Sassie: I had one time a little boy that just had walked too far out and was up under underwater. I wasn't even on duty and I would happen to be walking by and his mom was screaming and I just jumped in the water and grabbed him. Chris: Okay. Sassie: So thankfully, that was the extent of my life saving. Chris: Very good. So this is going to be an interesting question. Seventh generation Texan. You told me yeah, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or Barbecue Tex-Mex? All right, I think that's spoken like a seventh generation Texan. Sassie: I like Barbecue, but yeah, deep down anytime when we didn't live in Texas and like we lived in California, virginia, all over, the first meal that when I would come back and like stay at my parents' house, was always like greasy Tex-Mex. Chris: I can identify with that. Look, the question's not meant to be easy. It's a tough one. I mean, most people struggle, as I do, because I like them both. But you're right, that may be the best barometers what's the first meal after you've been away? Yeah, so all right. So, given what you're doing and the pace at what you're growing this company, this may be hard for you to envision. But if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Sassie: I am an outdoor person, so I would go somewhere in the middle of no weather I don't know if it would be up into the mountains or on a foreign. I'd probably want to hop between like an island and like surf and snorkel and scuba and play in the water and fish and then be up in the mountains and hiking or skiing. Anything that gets me away from technology and out into nature would be my what I'd want to do. Chris: Okay, that's good, that's good. Well, sassy, thank you for taking the time. Yeah, as I mentioned, yeah, we're in a really yeah, this is March of 2024. This is International Women's Month. I can't think of a better guest to have on the podcast than you out there, showing women by example how you can be a successful entrepreneur. So, thank you. Sassie: Thank you, thanks for having me.

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we sit down with Jerry Mooty, the CEO and Principal of @properties, Christie's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry takes us through his remarkable journey from managing partner at a law firm to heading a major real estate brokerage. He shares how resilience and adaptability allowed him to steer his business through the 2008 financial crisis and leverage opportunities arising from the pandemic. Jerry also provides insights into growing his firm through innovative hiring strategies and technological platforms that streamline agents' work. We explore lessons learned around overcoming adversity, strategic partnerships, and balancing operations with culture. His story offers a candid look inside one industry titan's challenges and triumphs in managing debt, acquisitions, and new ventures in sports and entertainment. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jerry Mooty shares his transition from being a managing partner at a law firm to creating and growing a real estate brokerage, including the challenges faced during the 2008 financial crisis and opportunities leveraged during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss Jerry's innovative business model that hires agent-attorneys and how it differentiates his brokerage in a competitive real estate market. The episode covers the technological advances at @properties, such as the Platform, which incorporates AI and a suite of tools to increase agent productivity. Jerry reflects on managing $60 million in personally guaranteed debt and the strategy behind transitioning to a debt-free business structure. Strategic partnerships and the process of acquisitions, especially in the technology sector, are explored along with Jerry's experience in due diligence and venture capital dynamics. Jerry discusses the significance of cultivating a company culture focused on employee well-being and the shift in his leadership style from operations to creating an enjoyable work environment. We touch on the importance of friendships in Jerry's professional journey and how they've influenced his career decisions and leadership approach. Challenges facing traditional real estate agencies like Remax are considered, with a focus on adapting to technological advancements and market changes. Jerry provides insights into his personal preferences, revealing his fondness for barbecue over tex-mex, adding a personal element to the conversation. The conversation highlights Jerry's efforts in expanding his business, including the recent launch of a sports and entertainment division and developer services to cater to specific client needs in the real estate market. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About @properties,Christie's International Real Estate GUESTS Jerry MootyAbout Jerry TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Jerry Mooty, ceo and principal of App Properties, christy's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry, by anyone's definition, is a serial entrepreneur, having started a law firm, credit card processing company, real estate development company and now a real estate brokerage firm. And Jerry tells aspiring entrepreneurs expect the unexpected. Jerry, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on and welcome you to building Texas business. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. Good to see you too. It's been a while. Let's just start. You know you've done a number of things and we'll get into some of that, but currently, what's the business that you've started and you're currently today? Jerry: So Jerry Mooty from Dallas have a business now in the residential real estate brokerage industry. So I compete with Compass and some big national brands that most of the listeners will know about. Chris: And that company's called App Properties right. Jerry: Yes, sir, it's called App Properties Christy's International Real Estate. So we kind of have a working on that. Chris: And I know you're kind of got the Dallas area covered, but I think you've also recently expanded into Austin. Jerry: Yeah, so we started in Dallas proper with our headquarters, and then we opened a second office in Frisco, texas, and then we just recently, in the fall of 2023, opened up Austin, texas. Chris: So you know, as a recovering attorney, what was it that inspired you to get into the residential brokerage real estate business? Jerry: So, interesting enough, you kind of know my history, but I founded a law firm when I was 28 and I grew that into about 60 lawyers in four cities. As the managing partner, I started doing a lot of deals for the partners as opposed to practicing law, and I went down several paths. I had a litigation support company that I founded and grew that for the partners and then, you know, ironically got into a real estate development a little startup where I had a home building division building spec homes and I had a commercial division where I was doing some commercial projects. Raw land development had a resort under contract in Bernie, but, like a lot of people in real estate, 2009, 2010 came and that was the end of my glory days in real estate. All right. Chris: So then, what led you to? You know, get involved with app properties and then take this down, go down this rabbit trail. Jerry: Sure. So in 2012, I sold my interest in the law firm back to the partnerships. I didn't want to go back to practicing full time and then did quite a few different entrepreneurial things from about 2013 to about 2019. Any you know, I had a credit card processing company, backed by the Jones family, called Blue Star Payments that merged in with a tech company and we rebranded Blue Star Sports. We were backed by some pretty large VC firms Bain Capital and GenStar partners and Providence Equity and then obviously, the Jones family. So we acquired about 27 companies in about three years and then we sold that company in 2017. Then I was kind of looking for the next thing and I became the chief business and legal officer for a Silicon Valley tech company for a couple of years. They were in a big money raise and it wasn't going so well and I was deferring comp. So I started looking at what I was going to do next. One of the people in my network is a ex litigation real estate litigator. She had gone on and got married, had kids, got a real estate license and had a brokerage here in Dallas and her model was she was going and convincing unhappy lawyers to get the real estate license. So she had about 10 agents slash attorneys as her brokerage and she approached me to come in and run her brokerage for kind of like I did the law firm. So that piqued my interest enough so we went down that path. Sadly we didn't get to execute our documentation because they ended up having a divorce situation. And then two weeks later COVID hits and so I'm waiting to take my real estate license and not sure what I'm going to do after that. Come out of the first 90 days of COVID, the market's red hot, so I hang my license, I start doing deals for my network friends and start marketing myself as an agent. All the meanwhile I'm looking for something to buy or to own or start, and so that led me through developer relationship here in Dallas to the ownership group of at properties out of Chicago. They made that introduction, flew up and met with them and really fell in love with not only the brand and the culture but also the technology that they had built. Chris: Amazing story. There's a lot to dive into there. I may definitely want to go back some, but let's stay with that properties for now. And yeah, so you that's a. It's born out of COVID, I guess. Tell us, though you know, because I know just from you, know keeping up with you and then reading on the website you've experienced some like amazing growth in the last, I guess, three and a half years. Let's talk a little bit about that. And in talking about what you've done that you think has helped accelerate it, let's talk also about the maybe the pains with growing so fast. Jerry: Sure. So as I was looking to own something and this opportunity came up, I negotiated to purchase, you know, the North Texas territory. But I wasn't really prepared to launch because it was just me and I hadn't done a whole lot of recruiting. But I had some real estate deals in the pipeline that I needed to leave the current brokerage I was at before I papered those up. So I ended up launching at properties by myself just one agent, and got temporary space and, you know, true entrepreneurial spirit started recruiting, putting in my support team, landed a pretty big compass team right out of the gate and that kind of helped accelerate the visibility. And so the first, you know, six months we grew to 10 agents by Christmas. So it wasn't, we weren't a big brokerage, but we were putting things in place. By the next year we were about just under 40 agents. So we had a really good, successful year and, you know, quadrupling our size and then last year 2023, we doubled again to about 80 agents in Dallas. So we've been kind of there's been some faster growth brokerages, but we're very we're considered more luxurious. Our agents are more high producing agents and they take a little longer to transfer from one brokerage to another based on their pipeline and their restrictions. So now that we're three and a half years into this and Austin's really kind of been a little bit of a catalyst in the last six months because initially that territory wasn't available there was a Christie's affiliate there my corporate partner asked me if I wanted Austin about a year and a half ago. I said yes and so I started putting the play pieces in place and we launched that in September. We've added quite a few agents in the first 120 days over 70 something agents there. So all in we got about a hundred agents in Dallas, about 70 in Austin. So that's the good side of the business. The headaches, as you know as an entrepreneur, are several and many. Too many to list, but we'll cover a few. My most recent success story is I just hired a controller after three and a half years. So I've been doing the books, reporting to corporate, paying the royalties, paying the checks, paying the agents. So those are the things. As an entrepreneur, you really you put your blood, sweat and tears into these businesses and then you have to get to a certain level, to where you could start to relieve yourself of some of these pains. Chris: Yeah, that's so true, jerry. A lot of the people that I've had on before say exactly that that it's one when you're starting out, you're not big enough to outsource it or to hire for it, so you got to do it. But then it's getting to that point when you even when you are big enough and can afford it the level of trust and hiring the right person to hand off those key aspects of the business, so it frees you up to do the things as an entrepreneur or the visionary you want to be doing. So let's talk about that. What was it that you think helps get to a level of trust and comfort that it's time to hand off and it's the right person to hand off to? Jerry: Yeah, I think, based on my background of being an entrepreneur, you make a lot of friends and you kind of know. You learn the hard way. You hire the wrong person a few times and then, as you get older and more seasoned, you kind of know what to look for. In this instance, with that properties, I hired somebody I'd known for 35 years to come in and be my director of agents. I've known her since the SMU days, so the trust was already built in and then you're just very selective as you add the pieces to the puzzle to get those right people in place. So in half years we've let one or two people go, but we've been pretty successful in hitting the mark. Chris: That's great. So 70 agents or so you said. Have you started to implement any kind of processes that help with the integration process as you bring in these new people, so they understand kind of what the expectations are, what the benefits are for making the move? I mean, so where are you and what's the process you've gone through to kind of make that more institutionalized? Jerry: So the background for at properties and the corporate support we have is pretty important in how we've gotten here. They're a 25 year brokerage. They're the eighth largest in the country before acquiring the Christie's affiliate network, so they kind of had the processes in place. So it's buying. Whenever you buy a franchise and you wanna go down this path, you kind of get a little bit of assistance from and some help along the way on someone else putting the right pieces in place. I think what we've done a great job is integrate and implement those things that they've brought to the table, which I think revolves around a lot of our culture. You know, I think culture is so important in any business you have and so it's just we have fun things called at love, local events that came from corporate. So we'll pick a merchant somewhere in our geographical area, we'll partner with them, we'll send out a marketing campaign. Let's say it's a coffee shop and then whoever shows up at that coffee shop, our agents are there and we're running a tap for a coffee or a Danish in the morning. So that's kind of the community outreach piece. We use the word love strategically in all our marketing. So we say bringing the love to Dallas, bringing the love to Frisco and those types of things. So you know, recruiting is probably once you get the, once you get your overhead stabilized and your office space and those types of things. This is a business about relationships and recruiting. So I would say our two most important people outside of myself are our head of recruiting out of Frisco, head of recruiting out of the Dallas office, and so those have been very good hires. Chris: You know most, I think most businesses. It's hard to say they're not people, businesses or relationship, but certainly you know in the business you're in, where you're so customer facing right, you need good people that can go out and attract good customers, provide good service. But I have to imagine the last 18 months or so in residential real estate hasn't been the easiest. So can you talk a little bit about what you've done to help continue, promote one, promote the culture, to keep people positive and energized while managing through what has to have been a challenging time? Jerry: Yeah, absolutely so. Obviously we're all aware of how hot the market got, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, during COVID and post COVID. What that did in our industry is everybody wanted a real estate license because they saw all these transactions happen. So we had an influx of agents that came in that are young, inexperienced, but were here to make some money. And then, when the market turns, you kind of have the reverse effect. Those people were all eat what you kill, or 10, 9, 9 commissioned agents. They got to figure out how to pay the bills, and so we've had a pretty big exodus. Probably 15 to 20% of our agents across the nation have left the industry, and so that's been good for the sense of the people staying in it because you got less competition. But the ones that stayed in it most of them, have been through some of these ebbs and flows of the market, and so they kind of know how to prepare. And most of that revolves around when your transaction desk is slower, what are you ramping up to do? Are you ramping up your marketing, your postcard, social media content, are you revamping your website? And so those are all things that we, which the agents that work for us and part of our big, strong sales pitch based on the technology that we have. Chris: Got you Speaking of that on the marketing side, you know, are you seeing? I guess, one area or the other as far as marketing strategy work better, get more visibility or more return on investment. You see so much on social media, so it seems natural that that would be one, but I don't know if that's the leading one based on your experience or not. Jerry: Yeah, I think in pretty much every industry has been affected by the internet and no industry more so than real estate. I would say probably 10 years ago you saw a lot of print ads. You saw a lot of ads and you know business journals and those types of things trying to move property. But now it's really a digital world. We're using social media, we're using tools called AdWords, which is a retargeting tool to where it's essentially like if you went and looked at a pair of shoes at Nordstroms and then you left Nordstroms, those shoes are following you around. So we have the ability to target, geo track and geo target potential prospects and clients through our technology. Obviously, websites are important. Your collaboration tools that you're preparing a search for a prospect, like they're looking in this area for a certain price point. We have the ability to set those searches up and work with a prospect or a client on finding the home, ironically in the last price. I don't know when this started, but in the last year or so, almost 85% of buyers find the home they want before they hire an agent, or at least they zero it down based on how much information is on the internet. And so, really, as an agent, what you're trying to do is bring your expertise not only to get that transaction under contract, but then most of the work happens one second transactions under contract all the way through closing. Chris: Right, that is an amazing statistic 85%, but you're right. I mean, when everyone goes to the internet first, I think, to research or validate or do something. So it makes sense to me, but it's a big number. Sounds like you know here you use your work, technology and innovation and stuff quite a bit already since we started the interview. Some of this may have come from your franchise or some may have come from some things You're doing, but what are some of the things you believe are innovative in the way that you're operating the brokerage and helping your agents be successful? Jerry: Sure. So I think when you start understanding what different brokerages bring to the table in regards to support for their agent portfolio. Obviously marketing is a big one because they're pushing all the stuff out that we're talking about, but also the day-to-day operation of an agent is pretty important. Most brokerages large brokerages like Coldwell, banker, some of your biggest national brands are very antiquated when it comes to technology support. I would say there's two brokerages at the forefront. I'd say Compass is in second place and I think App Properties is in first place. And I say that because we've been building a technology stack called Platform, or our franchise or has, since 2003 and basically an agent logs in and does everything they need to do as an agent in one technology. When I interview agents and I show them the technology, they're blown away because they're in four or five, six different technologies throughout the day trying to get their social media posted or created, their transactions done over here, their docuSigns another technology they have to use, and we have everything in one place, and so that's been a real big selling point for us when we're recruiting these agents. Chris: Yeah, I mean anything to make your employees or, in your case, I guess, your contractor's life easier. Have you started to look into, or is this already incorporating any kind of versions of AI? Jerry: AI is already integrated. Nowadays, agents are always doing, as an easy example, they're doing descriptions of the properties. So now you can lean on AI to help you describe a $5 million house with five bedrooms, six baths by describing it into AI, and then it'll help you create that luxury description. So there's things like that. Obviously, our CRM has a lot of AI tied to it and so, yeah, that's the way of the future and it's getting more and more integrated and implemented into all our tools. Very nice, very nice yeah. Chris: All right. So I want to make you kind of reflect back. So yeah, this about, by your own description, not the first time you kind of started a new venture or stepped outside your comfort zone. So when you think about what you did I guess leaving, you know, maybe leaving the law firm or even some of the ventures you started while you were there, but going to credit card processing et cetera where are some of the lessons you learn through those ventures that you think prepared you for taking the step you did without properties and the steps you're taking now to grow so rapidly? Jerry: Yeah, I think if you're a serial entrepreneur like myself, I think the one thing you learn each time that you have an idea or you go down the path of starting something is you think you're going to get to the finish line a lot easier. It's your idea and you think you're going to do that. And I think probably in every instance including the law firm, including the credit card processing is one lesson is it just takes a lot to probably 10 times, 100 times more man hours and work and you got hurdles. That you're not expecting. But I think that's part of the reward too is why I'm built the way I am. You enjoy that when an obstacle comes and you get your way around it or over it. But I think you know frankly, it's probably what every entrepreneur says it's never as easy as you think it is. There's no get rich. You know we talked about most of what we do as lawyers and what I'm doing is a people game. You know you're hiring people and people disappoint, you know, and you're having to find different people sometimes, and so the lesson is just pride and expect the unexpected and you'll be okay and be able to sleep at night. Chris: I like that. Well, think about, is there a kind of a challenge or a failure setback that you can point to over the last, you know, 15 years, 20 years, whatever that you feel is maybe in some ways either a defining moment for you or one of the bigger learning moments that you got? You kind of got hit with a little headwind but you overcame it and because of that it's kind of helped propel you either in your own personal journey as a leader or, you know, in things you learned as an entrepreneur. Jerry: Yeah, I'd say you know, probably the biggest lesson learned of all time was me starting a real estate development company with a home builder and a commercial partner and, you know, diving into that with not a whole lot of experience, and so the challenge was obviously, in real estate, you're hoping to build something and sell it, and so the big challenges is if you build it and you borrow a bunch of money and you don't sell it. And so in 0809, 2010 is probably should have been my premier happiest days of my life. I'm on a law firm, I'm making some good you know coin on the law firm side, but I'm literally getting dragged through the mud financially on the real estate piece, and it's probably one of the reasons it's taken me 10 years to get back into it on the brokerage side, because I literally came out of that was some financial PSD. You know just could not sleep, you know got I mean health issues, depression, pretty much everything you can experience as an entrepreneur and so you figure out a lot about yourself when you're going through something like that, and you know you either stay in bed and talk about it or you pull up your socks and get out and try it again. Chris: That internal fortitude, you know I think any entrepreneurs got to have that or it's just not going to happen. I appreciate you sharing that. Were there some things that you did? You know that you know other than just I mean pure gutted out. You know, to help you kind of get through that. You know, leaning on family friends, I don't know. I mean I have to believe we've got some listeners and other people out there that you're going through the same thing. Jerry: Sure, I think where I lucked out was, you know, just to be frank, I was on about $60 million and personally guaranteed debt that was worth probably about 30 by the time I was trying to get out of it. So there wasn't going to be any family help. It was. It was hey with you, you know, in a loving way, of course. But when you dig a hole like that, you just got to figure out the best way out. And for me, where I benefited was I had a law degree and I was a lawyer and creditors could not touch the ownership interest in my law firm because it was tied to my license. So, through bankruptcy lawyers and all that stuff, I got educated on that and gave me the strategy to get through that situation and come out on the other end, which was one of the reasons I sold the interest of the law firm back to the partners, because that allowed me to have a little bit of a stream of income there in 2012, 13 and 14, while I got the credit card processing company going and getting these other things going. So there was, if there was, a silver lining, it was that fact, but it was still still pretty embarrassing financially and pretty embarrassing as a professional to really go through that over a three or four year period. Chris: You got to be hard but, like I said, I mean now that you've come through it, you know you can certainly appreciate the opportunities you have today and know that. You know I certainly probably learned some lessons of what to not do, going forward right. Jerry: Absolutely, I would say. The one lesson you learn in that scenario is you become a lot more frugal with your financial decisions and you know, especially in the banking industry, like one thing I'm proud of with that properties is we've never bought a bar to dollar. We got zero debt, and so those that's a probably a direct result of what I went through, you know, 15 years ago was I don't want to do another business where I got a bunch of debt and I'm trying to get that off and make money to live off of. Chris: That's great. So you mentioned earlier I think it was a credit card processing BlueStar, where you had some dealings with Bain Capital, and obviously you're dealing with a franchise or in this current business. So let's talk a little bit about maybe what you've learned through that. I kind of relate or maybe call those you know investors, partners, strategic partners. What have you learned as kind of some of the best ways to deal with them so you keep that relationship strong and healthy? And maybe it's something you know that happened that you're like I did this or they did. You know something that happened that soured the relationship, one they got to help our clients here at the firm you know, you know find themselves in those situations all the time, and so I'm curious you know what you know, what lessons you've learned through that process? Jerry: Yeah, so I would say getting involved in. And so when we had the credit card processing company, it was pretty a pretty simple model. We were going out and you know recruiting or or you know we're trying to sell merchants, you know restaurants Anybody who ran a credit card was it was a prospective client approached by a group who had an idea of buying up these technology companies in the youth sports space. So like, if you sign your kid up for soccer, you're there's usually a form and at the end of that form, whether it be the YMCA or anywhere else, you're paying a fee for your child to play that on that soccer team. So the model we had was take the credit card processing that we had built our own API and those types of things and bake it into a technology and go buy these companies. And interestingly, it was about how do you flip the model from a EBITDA and a multiple perspective. So these tech companies that weren't that large of companies because they were kind of geographically located, running different types of youth sports camps or whatnot, they weren't sophisticated enough and they were usually outsourcing their credit card processing to stripe or squares or something like that. So we would acquire these companies and bake in our own processing and from an ownership perspective, then that would change the multiple for maybe two times to 12 times because you have that reoccurring revenue stream coming into your business model. I literally probably learned more over that. First, 12 to 20 per month as we were acquiring these companies, doing due diligence on them, and I was the chief legal officer of the company, so I was in charge of all the due diligence. So we acquired 20 something companies and I bet I did due diligence on about 300 over two years. But it was really cool because I got to see what investors and power players in the venture capital market, how they looked at things and it's there's not a lot of emotion, it's numbers on paper and it's how do we make, how do we do this to this group of businesses, and then how do we sell it and make money. All about the return on investment, right. Chris: Exactly so. It's a. Jerry: It's very cutthroat which some businesses are, some aren't, but it was a great learning experience. I'd like to say I probably learned more in that two to three years Dealing with those big VC firms and listening to those meetings and kind of running point on due diligence than I probably learned in any other aspect of my life. Now, that's so, but that's so. Chris: Let's turn it back a little bit to app properties specifically. I know you've recently launched a new sports and entertainment division Tell us about that. What's going on behind that and what are you trying to accomplish so in the real estate brokerage? Jerry: world. There's different ways to market yourself right, and a lot of that boils down to your experience of your agent portfolio, and so some real estate brokerages are residential, some may just be commercial, but on our side we have, we've accumulated some agents that allowed us to create these divisions because of their experience levels. So land and ranch is one division, and then sports and entertainment is another division, and basically there's some criteria that we've put in place before an agent can say they're part of that team or that division dealing with professional athletes or celebrities on a number of occasions, some of the qualifications, but essentially, when somebody's moving like a professional athlete or a celebrity, there's a lot of sensitivity to that, or there's a lot of urgency, there's a lot more moving pieces, and so that specific division has agents who are, you know, experts in helping that transaction or that client Get from point A to B and solve a lot of problems along the way how to move their cars, how to move their kids into new schools, you know everything that comes along with kind of that type of transaction, as opposed to someone just buying a house and selling a house. So are we going to see? Chris: Super Bowl ads anytime soon, if I can at homecom I could afford it. Jerry: No, that's the goal is. We're really good because of how the clients affiliate network has come into play for us. I don't know if we mentioned this before the call or on the call, but you know our corporate partner ended up buying the Christie's affiliate network, which is a network of independently owned brokerages around the world. I think we have 900 offices in 54 countries, about 35,000 agents, and the reason Christie's the auction house, christie's the family who's owned that brand and that company for two hundred years. They sold the app properties because of the technology and we've been for two years bringing a worldwide global powerhouse network together into the technology to share referrals and data and information, and so that's been one of the one of the real keys to some credibility for us. Very cool. Chris: I think you just launched something else, maybe in the last week. Developer services Tell us about that. Jerry: So so again, we all know there's developers out here but we're not sure there's developers out here building multifamily building, you know, developing neighborhoods, multi-use, and so for a brokerage our size to have the ability to provide those services was kind of hard. So we ended up meeting a group of people out of Austin who came from Storybill and for those listeners who've heard about Storybill, that's a multi-billion dollar developer who went, ran out of money last summer. But we ended up negotiating their entire creative team to come over to Christie, our Christie's, and create this development services division. So starting with the chief marketing officer all the way down to their website development team, their on-site sales, so we've got a team of about 12 of superstars and they really fell in love with the Christie's brand to kind of move from Storybill into our umbrella, to kind of push those services out. So that'll be a huge win for us. Chris: So, as you sit there running all this, what is it that kind of triggers for you that this is an opportunity that makes sense, because not everybody can see that, and so there are things you're looking for. How do you go about making that decision and taking on the risk? Jerry: Yeah, so risk is a little less scary in our business because most everybody who works for our brokerage is a 1099 contractor. So we really have a pretty lean machine when it comes to we're running this right now with about seven full-time employees, three offices, so you got overhead from an office space perspective, but really you're kind of it's kind of a lean business model, which is one of the things that attracted me to it. And then obviously you have to have the people to be able to promote these different levels of services. So I think the thing that's been lucky for us is one our relationship and our network in Dallas to help get it started. And then obviously the people we've been able to add at such a young infancy of a company have given us the credibility and the numbers are reflecting that. Chris: Gotcha. So before I don't want to wrap this up without talking a little bit just about you and your leadership style, let's talk. You know, how would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that's evolved over time based on the scars and other lessons learned? Jerry: You know you work at a law firm, so you know running a law firm is you got a lot of smart people, a lot of egos, a lot of staff, a lot of overhead, and so I learned a lot about you know the operational side of a business in that seat. And then I think my ownership style has probably changed completely since I left the law firm. I'm a lot more interested in the well-being of my employees, a lot more sensitive to the culture. I think. When you talk about people coming to work and going home, in my mindset now I want that to be a great experience. I kind of use the word experience a lot in the last couple of years for some reason, and I think it's just. My evolution is like everything in our lives is an experience and you can make it a good one or you can make it a bad one, and so I think my leadership style is I want every experience to be a good one. At the best I can make it. Obviously you're going to have your headaches and your issues pop up, but we have the music on in our offices every day. We have happy hours on Thursdays. We built bars in both of our offices in Dallas and Frisco, and then we're putting one in our location in Austin so that we can have happy hours with our agents and our clients and our prospects. We hold a lot of events and I think our interaction with the community and the philanthropic stuff that we're doing is really cool. So I think where I've gotten is you know I'm 54 now and you know I started that law firm at 28 and I had a whole different picture in my mind at 28, right Till 35, of what life was going to be for me, and now I'm kind of trying to enjoy it a lot more. Chris: I love that man. Happy for you. You know clearly you're on the right track and couldn't agree more about how important culture is to any company. And I think I've said similar to you. I think life is about experiences. I think they're only really down to learning experiences good experiences and learning experiences as though, rather than bad, just learn from them and don't repeat them. Jerry: Yeah exactly right. Chris: So let's turn a little bit on the personal side of things and not as serious. What was your first job? Jerry: First job, I was a clerk in a law firm. Chris: Okay. Jerry: I was working in law school. Okay, my first job in high school. Like most of us, I grew up in Missouri in a small town. I had a yard. You know service with my best friend and we had our lawn mowers in the back of his truck and we mowed yards. So that was probably my first experience as a having a job. There you go, and first is an entrepreneur was leaving a 250 person firm to start a law firm with two other guys and being 28 years old and that was pretty exciting. We had metal chairs and you know fold up conference room table and laid out of the movie. Chris: Love it. Well, I can relate to the a little bit to that, but definitely relate to the mowing yards. That's what buddy of mine and I did in high school. So you know good money then I guess. Okay, personal preference, tex-mex or barbecue? Well, that's a tough one Probably barbecue. All right. And if you could, take a 30 day sabbatical. Where would you go? What would you do? Jerry: You know, this is my two sons who are a senior and sophomore at University of Texas right now. They called a year ago about this time and said, dad, we're going to go to Japan. And I was like, okay, and they got on a plane, just the two of them went to Japan for three weeks and after hearing that I kind of want to do that. Chris: How cool is that. The two of us went and did it on their own. Jerry: They did it on their own, traveled around on trains and backpack and love it. They're experienced when they told the stories and went through the pictures. I mean it's just a really cool culture. I'd like to go experience that. Chris: Okay, jerry, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come on. It's hard to believe that you know I don't. I might add the numbers we met at SMU and, as undergraduates, went to law school together, so we had a lot of years together. So it's great to see where you are today and what you're doing. So proud of you. Jerry: Man. I appreciate that. And the same back at you. I followed you your whole career and super, super proud of you. What kind of legal person you are and lawyer and leader and everything you're about. So appreciate having me on and proud of you too, my man. Chris: All right, we'll do it again. We'll find a reason to do it again sometime soon. Awesome Sounds good. Special Guest: Jerry Mooty.

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we sit down with Jerry Mooty, the CEO and Principal of @properties, Christie's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry takes us through his remarkable journey from managing partner at a law firm to heading a major real estate brokerage. He shares how resilience and adaptability allowed him to steer his business through the 2008 financial crisis and leverage opportunities arising from the pandemic. Jerry also provides insights into growing his firm through innovative hiring strategies and technological platforms that streamline agents' work. We explore lessons learned around overcoming adversity, strategic partnerships, and balancing operations with culture. His story offers a candid look inside one industry titan's challenges and triumphs in managing debt, acquisitions, and new ventures in sports and entertainment. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jerry Mooty shares his transition from being a managing partner at a law firm to creating and growing a real estate brokerage, including the challenges faced during the 2008 financial crisis and opportunities leveraged during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discuss Jerry's innovative business model that hires agent-attorneys and how it differentiates his brokerage in a competitive real estate market. The episode covers the technological advances at @properties, such as the Platform, which incorporates AI and a suite of tools to increase agent productivity. Jerry reflects on managing $60 million in personally guaranteed debt and the strategy behind transitioning to a debt-free business structure. Strategic partnerships and the process of acquisitions, especially in the technology sector, are explored along with Jerry's experience in due diligence and venture capital dynamics. Jerry discusses the significance of cultivating a company culture focused on employee well-being and the shift in his leadership style from operations to creating an enjoyable work environment. We touch on the importance of friendships in Jerry's professional journey and how they've influenced his career decisions and leadership approach. Challenges facing traditional real estate agencies like Remax are considered, with a focus on adapting to technological advancements and market changes. Jerry provides insights into his personal preferences, revealing his fondness for barbecue over tex-mex, adding a personal element to the conversation. The conversation highlights Jerry's efforts in expanding his business, including the recent launch of a sports and entertainment division and developer services to cater to specific client needs in the real estate market. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About @properties,Christie's International Real Estate GUESTS Jerry MootyAbout Jerry TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode you will meet Jerry Mooty, ceo and principal of App Properties, christy's International Real Estate in Dallas and Austin. Jerry, by anyone's definition, is a serial entrepreneur, having started a law firm, credit card processing company, real estate development company and now a real estate brokerage firm. And Jerry tells aspiring entrepreneurs expect the unexpected. Jerry, I want to thank you for taking the time to come on and welcome you to building Texas business. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. Good to see you too. It's been a while. Let's just start. You know you've done a number of things and we'll get into some of that, but currently, what's the business that you've started and you're currently today? Jerry: So Jerry Mooty from Dallas have a business now in the residential real estate brokerage industry. So I compete with Compass and some big national brands that most of the listeners will know about. Chris: And that company's called App Properties right. Jerry: Yes, sir, it's called App Properties Christy's International Real Estate. So we kind of have a working on that. Chris: And I know you're kind of got the Dallas area covered, but I think you've also recently expanded into Austin. Jerry: Yeah, so we started in Dallas proper with our headquarters, and then we opened a second office in Frisco, texas, and then we just recently, in the fall of 2023, opened up Austin, texas. Chris: So you know, as a recovering attorney, what was it that inspired you to get into the residential brokerage real estate business? Jerry: So, interesting enough, you kind of know my history, but I founded a law firm when I was 28 and I grew that into about 60 lawyers in four cities. As the managing partner, I started doing a lot of deals for the partners as opposed to practicing law, and I went down several paths. I had a litigation support company that I founded and grew that for the partners and then, you know, ironically got into a real estate development a little startup where I had a home building division building spec homes and I had a commercial division where I was doing some commercial projects. Raw land development had a resort under contract in Bernie, but, like a lot of people in real estate, 2009, 2010 came and that was the end of my glory days in real estate. All right. Chris: So then, what led you to? You know, get involved with app properties and then take this down, go down this rabbit trail. Jerry: Sure. So in 2012, I sold my interest in the law firm back to the partnerships. I didn't want to go back to practicing full time and then did quite a few different entrepreneurial things from about 2013 to about 2019. Any you know, I had a credit card processing company, backed by the Jones family, called Blue Star Payments that merged in with a tech company and we rebranded Blue Star Sports. We were backed by some pretty large VC firms Bain Capital and GenStar partners and Providence Equity and then obviously, the Jones family. So we acquired about 27 companies in about three years and then we sold that company in 2017. Then I was kind of looking for the next thing and I became the chief business and legal officer for a Silicon Valley tech company for a couple of years. They were in a big money raise and it wasn't going so well and I was deferring comp. So I started looking at what I was going to do next. One of the people in my network is a ex litigation real estate litigator. She had gone on and got married, had kids, got a real estate license and had a brokerage here in Dallas and her model was she was going and convincing unhappy lawyers to get the real estate license. So she had about 10 agents slash attorneys as her brokerage and she approached me to come in and run her brokerage for kind of like I did the law firm. So that piqued my interest enough so we went down that path. Sadly we didn't get to execute our documentation because they ended up having a divorce situation. And then two weeks later COVID hits and so I'm waiting to take my real estate license and not sure what I'm going to do after that. Come out of the first 90 days of COVID, the market's red hot, so I hang my license, I start doing deals for my network friends and start marketing myself as an agent. All the meanwhile I'm looking for something to buy or to own or start, and so that led me through developer relationship here in Dallas to the ownership group of at properties out of Chicago. They made that introduction, flew up and met with them and really fell in love with not only the brand and the culture but also the technology that they had built. Chris: Amazing story. There's a lot to dive into there. I may definitely want to go back some, but let's stay with that properties for now. And yeah, so you that's a. It's born out of COVID, I guess. Tell us, though you know, because I know just from you, know keeping up with you and then reading on the website you've experienced some like amazing growth in the last, I guess, three and a half years. Let's talk a little bit about that. And in talking about what you've done that you think has helped accelerate it, let's talk also about the maybe the pains with growing so fast. Jerry: Sure. So as I was looking to own something and this opportunity came up, I negotiated to purchase, you know, the North Texas territory. But I wasn't really prepared to launch because it was just me and I hadn't done a whole lot of recruiting. But I had some real estate deals in the pipeline that I needed to leave the current brokerage I was at before I papered those up. So I ended up launching at properties by myself just one agent, and got temporary space and, you know, true entrepreneurial spirit started recruiting, putting in my support team, landed a pretty big compass team right out of the gate and that kind of helped accelerate the visibility. And so the first, you know, six months we grew to 10 agents by Christmas. So it wasn't, we weren't a big brokerage, but we were putting things in place. By the next year we were about just under 40 agents. So we had a really good, successful year and, you know, quadrupling our size and then last year 2023, we doubled again to about 80 agents in Dallas. So we've been kind of there's been some faster growth brokerages, but we're very we're considered more luxurious. Our agents are more high producing agents and they take a little longer to transfer from one brokerage to another based on their pipeline and their restrictions. So now that we're three and a half years into this and Austin's really kind of been a little bit of a catalyst in the last six months because initially that territory wasn't available there was a Christie's affiliate there my corporate partner asked me if I wanted Austin about a year and a half ago. I said yes and so I started putting the play pieces in place and we launched that in September. We've added quite a few agents in the first 120 days over 70 something agents there. So all in we got about a hundred agents in Dallas, about 70 in Austin. So that's the good side of the business. The headaches, as you know as an entrepreneur, are several and many. Too many to list, but we'll cover a few. My most recent success story is I just hired a controller after three and a half years. So I've been doing the books, reporting to corporate, paying the royalties, paying the checks, paying the agents. So those are the things. As an entrepreneur, you really you put your blood, sweat and tears into these businesses and then you have to get to a certain level, to where you could start to relieve yourself of some of these pains. Chris: Yeah, that's so true, jerry. A lot of the people that I've had on before say exactly that that it's one when you're starting out, you're not big enough to outsource it or to hire for it, so you got to do it. But then it's getting to that point when you even when you are big enough and can afford it the level of trust and hiring the right person to hand off those key aspects of the business, so it frees you up to do the things as an entrepreneur or the visionary you want to be doing. So let's talk about that. What was it that you think helps get to a level of trust and comfort that it's time to hand off and it's the right person to hand off to? Jerry: Yeah, I think, based on my background of being an entrepreneur, you make a lot of friends and you kind of know. You learn the hard way. You hire the wrong person a few times and then, as you get older and more seasoned, you kind of know what to look for. In this instance, with that properties, I hired somebody I'd known for 35 years to come in and be my director of agents. I've known her since the SMU days, so the trust was already built in and then you're just very selective as you add the pieces to the puzzle to get those right people in place. So in half years we've let one or two people go, but we've been pretty successful in hitting the mark. Chris: That's great. So 70 agents or so you said. Have you started to implement any kind of processes that help with the integration process as you bring in these new people, so they understand kind of what the expectations are, what the benefits are for making the move? I mean, so where are you and what's the process you've gone through to kind of make that more institutionalized? Jerry: So the background for at properties and the corporate support we have is pretty important in how we've gotten here. They're a 25 year brokerage. They're the eighth largest in the country before acquiring the Christie's affiliate network, so they kind of had the processes in place. So it's buying. Whenever you buy a franchise and you wanna go down this path, you kind of get a little bit of assistance from and some help along the way on someone else putting the right pieces in place. I think what we've done a great job is integrate and implement those things that they've brought to the table, which I think revolves around a lot of our culture. You know, I think culture is so important in any business you have and so it's just we have fun things called at love, local events that came from corporate. So we'll pick a merchant somewhere in our geographical area, we'll partner with them, we'll send out a marketing campaign. Let's say it's a coffee shop and then whoever shows up at that coffee shop, our agents are there and we're running a tap for a coffee or a Danish in the morning. So that's kind of the community outreach piece. We use the word love strategically in all our marketing. So we say bringing the love to Dallas, bringing the love to Frisco and those types of things. So you know, recruiting is probably once you get the, once you get your overhead stabilized and your office space and those types of things. This is a business about relationships and recruiting. So I would say our two most important people outside of myself are our head of recruiting out of Frisco, head of recruiting out of the Dallas office, and so those have been very good hires. Chris: You know most, I think most businesses. It's hard to say they're not people, businesses or relationship, but certainly you know in the business you're in, where you're so customer facing right, you need good people that can go out and attract good customers, provide good service. But I have to imagine the last 18 months or so in residential real estate hasn't been the easiest. So can you talk a little bit about what you've done to help continue, promote one, promote the culture, to keep people positive and energized while managing through what has to have been a challenging time? Jerry: Yeah, absolutely so. Obviously we're all aware of how hot the market got, you know, a couple of years ago, you know, during COVID and post COVID. What that did in our industry is everybody wanted a real estate license because they saw all these transactions happen. So we had an influx of agents that came in that are young, inexperienced, but were here to make some money. And then, when the market turns, you kind of have the reverse effect. Those people were all eat what you kill, or 10, 9, 9 commissioned agents. They got to figure out how to pay the bills, and so we've had a pretty big exodus. Probably 15 to 20% of our agents across the nation have left the industry, and so that's been good for the sense of the people staying in it because you got less competition. But the ones that stayed in it most of them, have been through some of these ebbs and flows of the market, and so they kind of know how to prepare. And most of that revolves around when your transaction desk is slower, what are you ramping up to do? Are you ramping up your marketing, your postcard, social media content, are you revamping your website? And so those are all things that we, which the agents that work for us and part of our big, strong sales pitch based on the technology that we have. Chris: Got you Speaking of that on the marketing side, you know, are you seeing? I guess, one area or the other as far as marketing strategy work better, get more visibility or more return on investment. You see so much on social media, so it seems natural that that would be one, but I don't know if that's the leading one based on your experience or not. Jerry: Yeah, I think in pretty much every industry has been affected by the internet and no industry more so than real estate. I would say probably 10 years ago you saw a lot of print ads. You saw a lot of ads and you know business journals and those types of things trying to move property. But now it's really a digital world. We're using social media, we're using tools called AdWords, which is a retargeting tool to where it's essentially like if you went and looked at a pair of shoes at Nordstroms and then you left Nordstroms, those shoes are following you around. So we have the ability to target, geo track and geo target potential prospects and clients through our technology. Obviously, websites are important. Your collaboration tools that you're preparing a search for a prospect, like they're looking in this area for a certain price point. We have the ability to set those searches up and work with a prospect or a client on finding the home, ironically in the last price. I don't know when this started, but in the last year or so, almost 85% of buyers find the home they want before they hire an agent, or at least they zero it down based on how much information is on the internet. And so, really, as an agent, what you're trying to do is bring your expertise not only to get that transaction under contract, but then most of the work happens one second transactions under contract all the way through closing. Chris: Right, that is an amazing statistic 85%, but you're right. I mean, when everyone goes to the internet first, I think, to research or validate or do something. So it makes sense to me, but it's a big number. Sounds like you know here you use your work, technology and innovation and stuff quite a bit already since we started the interview. Some of this may have come from your franchise or some may have come from some things You're doing, but what are some of the things you believe are innovative in the way that you're operating the brokerage and helping your agents be successful? Jerry: Sure. So I think when you start understanding what different brokerages bring to the table in regards to support for their agent portfolio. Obviously marketing is a big one because they're pushing all the stuff out that we're talking about, but also the day-to-day operation of an agent is pretty important. Most brokerages large brokerages like Coldwell, banker, some of your biggest national brands are very antiquated when it comes to technology support. I would say there's two brokerages at the forefront. I'd say Compass is in second place and I think App Properties is in first place. And I say that because we've been building a technology stack called Platform, or our franchise or has, since 2003 and basically an agent logs in and does everything they need to do as an agent in one technology. When I interview agents and I show them the technology, they're blown away because they're in four or five, six different technologies throughout the day trying to get their social media posted or created, their transactions done over here, their docuSigns another technology they have to use, and we have everything in one place, and so that's been a real big selling point for us when we're recruiting these agents. Chris: Yeah, I mean anything to make your employees or, in your case, I guess, your contractor's life easier. Have you started to look into, or is this already incorporating any kind of versions of AI? Jerry: AI is already integrated. Nowadays, agents are always doing, as an easy example, they're doing descriptions of the properties. So now you can lean on AI to help you describe a $5 million house with five bedrooms, six baths by describing it into AI, and then it'll help you create that luxury description. So there's things like that. Obviously, our CRM has a lot of AI tied to it and so, yeah, that's the way of the future and it's getting more and more integrated and implemented into all our tools. Very nice, very nice yeah. Chris: All right. So I want to make you kind of reflect back. So yeah, this about, by your own description, not the first time you kind of started a new venture or stepped outside your comfort zone. So when you think about what you did I guess leaving, you know, maybe leaving the law firm or even some of the ventures you started while you were there, but going to credit card processing et cetera where are some of the lessons you learn through those ventures that you think prepared you for taking the step you did without properties and the steps you're taking now to grow so rapidly? Jerry: Yeah, I think if you're a serial entrepreneur like myself, I think the one thing you learn each time that you have an idea or you go down the path of starting something is you think you're going to get to the finish line a lot easier. It's your idea and you think you're going to do that. And I think probably in every instance including the law firm, including the credit card processing is one lesson is it just takes a lot to probably 10 times, 100 times more man hours and work and you got hurdles. That you're not expecting. But I think that's part of the reward too is why I'm built the way I am. You enjoy that when an obstacle comes and you get your way around it or over it. But I think you know frankly, it's probably what every entrepreneur says it's never as easy as you think it is. There's no get rich. You know we talked about most of what we do as lawyers and what I'm doing is a people game. You know you're hiring people and people disappoint, you know, and you're having to find different people sometimes, and so the lesson is just pride and expect the unexpected and you'll be okay and be able to sleep at night. Chris: I like that. Well, think about, is there a kind of a challenge or a failure setback that you can point to over the last, you know, 15 years, 20 years, whatever that you feel is maybe in some ways either a defining moment for you or one of the bigger learning moments that you got? You kind of got hit with a little headwind but you overcame it and because of that it's kind of helped propel you either in your own personal journey as a leader or, you know, in things you learned as an entrepreneur. Jerry: Yeah, I'd say you know, probably the biggest lesson learned of all time was me starting a real estate development company with a home builder and a commercial partner and, you know, diving into that with not a whole lot of experience, and so the challenge was obviously, in real estate, you're hoping to build something and sell it, and so the big challenges is if you build it and you borrow a bunch of money and you don't sell it. And so in 0809, 2010 is probably should have been my premier happiest days of my life. I'm on a law firm, I'm making some good you know coin on the law firm side, but I'm literally getting dragged through the mud financially on the real estate piece, and it's probably one of the reasons it's taken me 10 years to get back into it on the brokerage side, because I literally came out of that was some financial PSD. You know just could not sleep, you know got I mean health issues, depression, pretty much everything you can experience as an entrepreneur and so you figure out a lot about yourself when you're going through something like that, and you know you either stay in bed and talk about it or you pull up your socks and get out and try it again. Chris: That internal fortitude, you know I think any entrepreneurs got to have that or it's just not going to happen. I appreciate you sharing that. Were there some things that you did? You know that you know other than just I mean pure gutted out. You know, to help you kind of get through that. You know, leaning on family friends, I don't know. I mean I have to believe we've got some listeners and other people out there that you're going through the same thing. Jerry: Sure, I think where I lucked out was, you know, just to be frank, I was on about $60 million and personally guaranteed debt that was worth probably about 30 by the time I was trying to get out of it. So there wasn't going to be any family help. It was. It was hey with you, you know, in a loving way, of course. But when you dig a hole like that, you just got to figure out the best way out. And for me, where I benefited was I had a law degree and I was a lawyer and creditors could not touch the ownership interest in my law firm because it was tied to my license. So, through bankruptcy lawyers and all that stuff, I got educated on that and gave me the strategy to get through that situation and come out on the other end, which was one of the reasons I sold the interest of the law firm back to the partners, because that allowed me to have a little bit of a stream of income there in 2012, 13 and 14, while I got the credit card processing company going and getting these other things going. So there was, if there was, a silver lining, it was that fact, but it was still still pretty embarrassing financially and pretty embarrassing as a professional to really go through that over a three or four year period. Chris: You got to be hard but, like I said, I mean now that you've come through it, you know you can certainly appreciate the opportunities you have today and know that. You know I certainly probably learned some lessons of what to not do, going forward right. Jerry: Absolutely, I would say. The one lesson you learn in that scenario is you become a lot more frugal with your financial decisions and you know, especially in the banking industry, like one thing I'm proud of with that properties is we've never bought a bar to dollar. We got zero debt, and so those that's a probably a direct result of what I went through, you know, 15 years ago was I don't want to do another business where I got a bunch of debt and I'm trying to get that off and make money to live off of. Chris: That's great. So you mentioned earlier I think it was a credit card processing BlueStar, where you had some dealings with Bain Capital, and obviously you're dealing with a franchise or in this current business. So let's talk a little bit about maybe what you've learned through that. I kind of relate or maybe call those you know investors, partners, strategic partners. What have you learned as kind of some of the best ways to deal with them so you keep that relationship strong and healthy? And maybe it's something you know that happened that you're like I did this or they did. You know something that happened that soured the relationship, one they got to help our clients here at the firm you know, you know find themselves in those situations all the time, and so I'm curious you know what you know, what lessons you've learned through that process? Jerry: Yeah, so I would say getting involved in. And so when we had the credit card processing company, it was pretty a pretty simple model. We were going out and you know recruiting or or you know we're trying to sell merchants, you know restaurants Anybody who ran a credit card was it was a prospective client approached by a group who had an idea of buying up these technology companies in the youth sports space. So like, if you sign your kid up for soccer, you're there's usually a form and at the end of that form, whether it be the YMCA or anywhere else, you're paying a fee for your child to play that on that soccer team. So the model we had was take the credit card processing that we had built our own API and those types of things and bake it into a technology and go buy these companies. And interestingly, it was about how do you flip the model from a EBITDA and a multiple perspective. So these tech companies that weren't that large of companies because they were kind of geographically located, running different types of youth sports camps or whatnot, they weren't sophisticated enough and they were usually outsourcing their credit card processing to stripe or squares or something like that. So we would acquire these companies and bake in our own processing and from an ownership perspective, then that would change the multiple for maybe two times to 12 times because you have that reoccurring revenue stream coming into your business model. I literally probably learned more over that. First, 12 to 20 per month as we were acquiring these companies, doing due diligence on them, and I was the chief legal officer of the company, so I was in charge of all the due diligence. So we acquired 20 something companies and I bet I did due diligence on about 300 over two years. But it was really cool because I got to see what investors and power players in the venture capital market, how they looked at things and it's there's not a lot of emotion, it's numbers on paper and it's how do we make, how do we do this to this group of businesses, and then how do we sell it and make money. All about the return on investment, right. Chris: Exactly so. It's a. Jerry: It's very cutthroat which some businesses are, some aren't, but it was a great learning experience. I'd like to say I probably learned more in that two to three years Dealing with those big VC firms and listening to those meetings and kind of running point on due diligence than I probably learned in any other aspect of my life. Now, that's so, but that's so. Chris: Let's turn it back a little bit to app properties specifically. I know you've recently launched a new sports and entertainment division Tell us about that. What's going on behind that and what are you trying to accomplish so in the real estate brokerage? Jerry: world. There's different ways to market yourself right, and a lot of that boils down to your experience of your agent portfolio, and so some real estate brokerages are residential, some may just be commercial, but on our side we have, we've accumulated some agents that allowed us to create these divisions because of their experience levels. So land and ranch is one division, and then sports and entertainment is another division, and basically there's some criteria that we've put in place before an agent can say they're part of that team or that division dealing with professional athletes or celebrities on a number of occasions, some of the qualifications, but essentially, when somebody's moving like a professional athlete or a celebrity, there's a lot of sensitivity to that, or there's a lot of urgency, there's a lot more moving pieces, and so that specific division has agents who are, you know, experts in helping that transaction or that client Get from point A to B and solve a lot of problems along the way how to move their cars, how to move their kids into new schools, you know everything that comes along with kind of that type of transaction, as opposed to someone just buying a house and selling a house. So are we going to see? Chris: Super Bowl ads anytime soon, if I can at homecom I could afford it. Jerry: No, that's the goal is. We're really good because of how the clients affiliate network has come into play for us. I don't know if we mentioned this before the call or on the call, but you know our corporate partner ended up buying the Christie's affiliate network, which is a network of independently owned brokerages around the world. I think we have 900 offices in 54 countries, about 35,000 agents, and the reason Christie's the auction house, christie's the family who's owned that brand and that company for two hundred years. They sold the app properties because of the technology and we've been for two years bringing a worldwide global powerhouse network together into the technology to share referrals and data and information, and so that's been one of the one of the real keys to some credibility for us. Very cool. Chris: I think you just launched something else, maybe in the last week. Developer services Tell us about that. Jerry: So so again, we all know there's developers out here but we're not sure there's developers out here building multifamily building, you know, developing neighborhoods, multi-use, and so for a brokerage our size to have the ability to provide those services was kind of hard. So we ended up meeting a group of people out of Austin who came from Storybill and for those listeners who've heard about Storybill, that's a multi-billion dollar developer who went, ran out of money last summer. But we ended up negotiating their entire creative team to come over to Christie, our Christie's, and create this development services division. So starting with the chief marketing officer all the way down to their website development team, their on-site sales, so we've got a team of about 12 of superstars and they really fell in love with the Christie's brand to kind of move from Storybill into our umbrella, to kind of push those services out. So that'll be a huge win for us. Chris: So, as you sit there running all this, what is it that kind of triggers for you that this is an opportunity that makes sense, because not everybody can see that, and so there are things you're looking for. How do you go about making that decision and taking on the risk? Jerry: Yeah, so risk is a little less scary in our business because most everybody who works for our brokerage is a 1099 contractor. So we really have a pretty lean machine when it comes to we're running this right now with about seven full-time employees, three offices, so you got overhead from an office space perspective, but really you're kind of it's kind of a lean business model, which is one of the things that attracted me to it. And then obviously you have to have the people to be able to promote these different levels of services. So I think the thing that's been lucky for us is one our relationship and our network in Dallas to help get it started. And then obviously the people we've been able to add at such a young infancy of a company have given us the credibility and the numbers are reflecting that. Chris: Gotcha. So before I don't want to wrap this up without talking a little bit just about you and your leadership style, let's talk. You know, how would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that's evolved over time based on the scars and other lessons learned? Jerry: You know you work at a law firm, so you know running a law firm is you got a lot of smart people, a lot of egos, a lot of staff, a lot of overhead, and so I learned a lot about you know the operational side of a business in that seat. And then I think my ownership style has probably changed completely since I left the law firm. I'm a lot more interested in the well-being of my employees, a lot more sensitive to the culture. I think. When you talk about people coming to work and going home, in my mindset now I want that to be a great experience. I kind of use the word experience a lot in the last couple of years for some reason, and I think it's just. My evolution is like everything in our lives is an experience and you can make it a good one or you can make it a bad one, and so I think my leadership style is I want every experience to be a good one. At the best I can make it. Obviously you're going to have your headaches and your issues pop up, but we have the music on in our offices every day. We have happy hours on Thursdays. We built bars in both of our offices in Dallas and Frisco, and then we're putting one in our location in Austin so that we can have happy hours with our agents and our clients and our prospects. We hold a lot of events and I think our interaction with the community and the philanthropic stuff that we're doing is really cool. So I think where I've gotten is you know I'm 54 now and you know I started that law firm at 28 and I had a whole different picture in my mind at 28, right Till 35, of what life was going to be for me, and now I'm kind of trying to enjoy it a lot more. Chris: I love that man. Happy for you. You know clearly you're on the right track and couldn't agree more about how important culture is to any company. And I think I've said similar to you. I think life is about experiences. I think they're only really down to learning experiences good experiences and learning experiences as though, rather than bad, just learn from them and don't repeat them. Jerry: Yeah exactly right. Chris: So let's turn a little bit on the personal side of things and not as serious. What was your first job? Jerry: First job, I was a clerk in a law firm. Chris: Okay. Jerry: I was working in law school. Okay, my first job in high school. Like most of us, I grew up in Missouri in a small town. I had a yard. You know service with my best friend and we had our lawn mowers in the back of his truck and we mowed yards. So that was probably my first experience as a having a job. There you go, and first is an entrepreneur was leaving a 250 person firm to start a law firm with two other guys and being 28 years old and that was pretty exciting. We had metal chairs and you know fold up conference room table and laid out of the movie. Chris: Love it. Well, I can relate to the a little bit to that, but definitely relate to the mowing yards. That's what buddy of mine and I did in high school. So you know good money then I guess. Okay, personal preference, tex-mex or barbecue? Well, that's a tough one Probably barbecue. All right. And if you could, take a 30 day sabbatical. Where would you go? What would you do? Jerry: You know, this is my two sons who are a senior and sophomore at University of Texas right now. They called a year ago about this time and said, dad, we're going to go to Japan. And I was like, okay, and they got on a plane, just the two of them went to Japan for three weeks and after hearing that I kind of want to do that. Chris: How cool is that. The two of us went and did it on their own. Jerry: They did it on their own, traveled around on trains and backpack and love it. They're experienced when they told the stories and went through the pictures. I mean it's just a really cool culture. I'd like to go experience that. Chris: Okay, jerry, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come on. It's hard to believe that you know I don't. I might add the numbers we met at SMU and, as undergraduates, went to law school together, so we had a lot of years together. So it's great to see where you are today and what you're doing. So proud of you. Jerry: Man. I appreciate that. And the same back at you. I followed you your whole career and super, super proud of you. What kind of legal person you are and lawyer and leader and everything you're about. So appreciate having me on and proud of you too, my man. Chris: All right, we'll do it again. We'll find a reason to do it again sometime soon. Awesome Sounds good. Special Guest: Jerry Mooty.

My guest on this episode is Healani Sonoda-Pale, a Kanaka Maoli Human Rights advocate for Self-Determination and a Water Protector who has been organizing at the intersection of the indigenous struggle for liberation and environmental protection in Hawai'i. She is a member of the Red Hill Community Representation Initiative and the spokesperson of the Ka Lahui Hawaii Political Action Committee. Healani was born and raised on the island of O'ahu where she resides with her family.Show Notes:The Beauty of the Pandemic Shutdown in Hawai'iThe Fallout of the Lahaina Fires in West MauiNo ControlsManufacturing the AuthenticReopening for Tourism in the Midst of CatastropheLocal Schism: Those in Favour and Those AgainstThe Tourism at the Heart of the Housing CrisisKa Lahui Hawai'i Political Action CommitteeThe Water Crisis in OahuDecolonizing Tourism is an OxymoronSolidarity with Kanaka MaoliHomework:Healani Sonoda-Pale InstagramKa Lahui Hawai'i | TwitterOahu Water Protectors | Red Hill Community Representation InitiativeTranscript:Chris: [00:00:00] In the first season of the podcast I spoke to Hokulani Aikau and Vernadette Gonzalez about the attempts to decolonize tourism in the Hawaiian islands. And following that Kaleo Patterson. Who offered a deeper historical and cultural background into the ongoing us occupation of Hawaii. The military industrial tourism complex, and some of the traditional forms of hospitality that Hawaiians have engaged in. Since then, and especially because of the wildfires that spread through west Maui this past summer. Listeners have asked again and again, to return to the islands, to host the voices of those. They're now struggling with another catastrophe. Who are offering resilience and resistance. In the face of these enduring consequences. And as such, I welcome.Healani Sonoda-Pale to the pod. Thank you for joining me today, Healani.Healani: It's my pleasure to be joining this podcast and to help [00:01:00] spread the message about tourism in Hawai'i. Chris: Healani, could you do us the favor of elaborating a bit on where you're speaking from today and how the world looks like for you?Healani: Okay. So I'm a Kanaka Maoli woman, born and raised in Hawai'i on the island of O'ahu. I have been in the Hawaiian movement for liberation and self determination for nearly 30 years. I am a student of Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask, and I am on the front lines of many, many issues. The issues that we face today are, many of them are a consequence of tourism.The desecration of cultural sites. The degradation of our beautiful beaches pollution, traffic, overcrowding, the high cost of living in Hawai'i, the extremely high cost of housing in Hawai'i. These are all because of tourism. This is happening to Hawai'i. [00:02:00] As a result, direct result of the tourist industry, which Hawaii relies on.And in Hawaii, we have two businesses. We have the military industrial complex and the tourist industry. Those are the two worst industries to rely on, number one. And they are the most exploitive and extractive industries to have. They do not enhance our way of life here on, on these islands in Hawaii.They do the opposite. They have brought many of us to the brink where we are now, most of us living paycheck to paycheck. The average cost of a house in Hawaii is a million dollars.I believe Honolulu is the number one or at least the top three most expensive cities in the United States to live in. So tourism is a plague in Hawaii. It is a plague upon this place and it has caused us to [00:03:00] struggle on a daily basis, not just financially and not just socially, mentally as well. Having to deal with tourists on a daily basis in Hawaii is frustrating, so that's kind of like the space I'm coming from. I am involved with the water issue, protecting our water, which is now something that is a huge issue. I'm very much involved in the Red Hill issue. I'm involved with protecting Iwi Kūpuna, which is our traditional Hawaiian burials. I'm involved with the repatriation of our land. Again, another big issue. It never ends because the, the economic, social pressure to take and take and take until there's nothing left is relentless. So that's the space we're coming from. So you talked about COVID, right? You started this podcast in the beginning of COVID and COVID was an eye opener for a lot of people in Hawai'i. When COVID happened, [00:04:00] the state of Hawai'i shut down and tourists weren't allowed here during our shutdown.I believe it was like a year and a half. It was beautiful. Even though we were living in the middle of a pandemic, our beaches were empty. There were no lines at the stores. There was no traffic. Even the air we breathed seemed cleaner. The water we swam in, in the ocean, didn't have this sliminess on it, from tourists with suntan lotion swimming in it all day, right?So the fish came back. Even the plants and the land was happy. I mean, it was a beautiful time. Even though it was sad because we were living through a pandemic, it was a beautiful time for us as Kanaka because we got to see Hawai'i without tourists. And that really opened the eyes for people who usually are not as [00:05:00] critical of tourism, as many of us have been so more people in Hawaii started saying, especially Kanaka Mali, well, how do we move forward without tourism?But when the state opened up again, tourism came back and it came back with a vengeance.When you look at what was happening on social media and, you know, what people were posting and across all the islands, we saw some frustration. We saw people posting about interactions they were having with tourists at sacred sites and beaches. People were more aware that tourists were there after COVID because we were able to enjoy our beaches, enjoy our islands without them.And then when they came back, it was not only dangerous because we live 2, 000 miles away from the nearest continent. So, they were bringing in the COVID. I mean, from the time of [00:06:00] Captain Cook, tourists, visitors, explorers, missionaries, they have been bringing in diseases when, when Captain Coke arrived in 1778. We didn't have any immunity to these diseases, and so now, I think for a lot of residents here in Hawai'i, our eyes have been opened on what we have to give up for tourism.We have to sacrifice not only our beautiful island life, but a way forward that doesn't include commodifying who we are as a people, our culture, everything. The state's been talking about diversifying the industry here in Hawai'i, right? They wanted to look into agriculture was one. They've never seriously taken that up. And they always fall back on tourism.Chris: And why do you think that is? Because it's just so easy.Healani: Because they've invested. It's a multi billion dollar business. There's hotels. Waikiki [00:07:00] is loaded with hotels. It's business interests. It's those that have been in control of the tourist industry, wanting to keep control of that and wanting to keep their financial interests protected and keep going.So that is, that has been a problem. And of course we have strong lobbyists here in Hawai'i for the tourist industry. It is an industry that is supported by taxpayer dollars. It's one of the few industries we give millions of dollars of our money. It's a private industry supported by taxpayer dollars.So it's a private industry that we support that exploits not just our resources, our culture, but they have really degraded our way of life here. They've made everything so expensive that most of our people, most of the indigenous people of Hawai'i have moved away because they can't afford to live here.Chris: And you know, I'm curious [00:08:00] in this regard, to what extent do you think that this Government money and government decisions played a part in these wildfires that passed through West Maui in August, you know, like reading and researching for this interview and seeing what's been shared online and social media, the term management and mismanagement continues to arise in and among social movement activists.And I'm curious to what extent you think that either government action or inaction or the tourism industry had a part to play in what happened this past summer.Healani: The Lahaina Fires. was so tragic and the tragedy continues months after. The suicide rates are on the rise in Lahaina. Families are still displaced, thousands of them. They were just [00:09:00] a few days ago, I had posted about it. They were just given again, eviction letters. The last time I was in Maui was there.The first set of eviction letters that went out. So they're being housed in hotels, 7,00-8,000 of them; families that have lost everything, in hotels. And now they're being told to leave to make way for tourism, to make way for tourists. That's the enormity of the pressure that tourists, tourism brings with it. The pressure to a piece and to serve and to put tourism first.Just going back to my childhood in school. We were basically brainwashed into thinking we need tourism. Without tourism, we wouldn't have jobs. There would be no money, you know? So it's been kind of ingrained in us. And that's why I think COVID was super important because it was an eye opener for a lot of us.Because they saw really [00:10:00] what was possible, a world without tourism. And so the pressure to support, to push tourism, to... "they always say, we want to support small businesses," but it's really not about small businesses. It's about those huge, multinational corporations that have invested millions.into this industry and have supported and lobbied for their industry, for the tourist industry. That's what it's really about, to a point where they really don't care about the people, the residents of Lahaina. They're literally traumatizing these families again and pushing them around to make room for an industry that we all pay to support.And the Lahaina fires is a result of corporations, land grabbing by corporations of [00:11:00] tourism gone wild, literally. The whole culture of Hawaii is about making sure tourism is going to be okay in the future. We're one big resort. That's what we are.Hawaii is one big resort. Everything is catered for tourists first. It's always tourists first, residents last. And kanaka maoli not even considered, like we're not even in the equation, except when they want us to dance hula, and when they want us to chant, and when they want us to teach tourists how to make leis. So the whole Lahaina situation is very complicated.Tragic, and it continues to be tragic. Over a hundred people died in those fires. And Lahaina is like a real big hub for tourists, and has been. It's like the Waikiki of Maui. So having that burned down, I think, was a big loss for the tourist industry on Maui. [00:12:00] So they are trying every which way to bring that back. In fact, today they're going to unveil the strategic plan for the next few years for Maui, which again, is just a slap in the face. It's insulting to the people of Lahaina. They're actually having it in West Maui. It's insulting to the people of Lahaina to have now a discussion about how to move forward with tourism while they're still displaced. There's thousands of families that don't know where they're going to be next month.There are thousands more that don't have access to clean water, don't have jobs, that have multiple families living in their homes and they're going to have a big presentation on tourism today. That's what we have to deal with.There is a mythology that's been built around the tourist industry that basically tells us, you know, [00:13:00] we need tourism. We need tourism. For some reason, we won't be able to survive without tourism. So that's the culture of Hawaii. And that's what I've grown up in. One of the things that is concerning about tourism is the fact that there's never been an environmental assessment or environmental impact study done on the effects tourism has on Hawaii .There are no controls. There's no control of how many people will be allowed in, how many people will be allowed at a certain beach, how many people will be allowed to swim and hike up to a sacred pond.There's nothing like that. It's like a free for all here in Hawaii when it comes to tourism.With tourism comes a thriving sex trade. So we have a number of brothels that, of course, are illegal, here in O'ahu. And a real epidemic with a [00:14:00] high number of missing and murdered Native Hawaiian women and girls. Hmm. This is the average characteristics of a victim of a missing girl is 15 years old native Hawaiian.And that's you know, that's the reality here in in Hawaii. So tourism is one of those industries that has a lot of low paying jobs. People have to work two to three, sometimes four jobs to survive here in Hawaii because Hawaii has the highest cost of living and one of the highest in the United States and it's really a struggle to make a living off of the tourist industry.Once tourism gets a foothold in your community, then it's very difficult to get tourism out. And right now, I'm in the midst of a struggle with keeping tourism out of East Maui.[00:15:00] They're expanding tourism into rural areas because they want to make these real authentic experiences for tourists.And they want to provide cultural experiences for tourists now. And the last couple years, the Hawaii Tourism Authority has done something called destination management, which is where they give money to non profits to host tourists in these real authentic settings, where they get to work in the taro patch or they get real cultural experience hiking or storytelling or something like that and in exchange these non profits get paid.The reality of this Destination Management Program that they always give Hawaiian names to -Aloha Aina, Kahu Aina -the reality of these programs [00:16:00] is that they're actually community bribes.Residents are less tolerant of tourism these days, especially post COVID. And so these programs, like the Destination Management Programs that they're now doing, and have been doing for a couple years are community bribes that help residents swallow the bitter pill of tourism. And that is pretty much how this whole thing kind of plays out.Whatever financial benefits we get out of tourism, they're short lived and they aren't sustainable. And in fact, they threaten a sustainable and livable future for residents here, especially Kanaka Maoli.Chris: Do you see any parallels between the quote return of tourism following the COVID-19 lockdowns and later after the fires? Was anything learned by the inundation of [00:17:00] COVID carrying tourists?Healani: Yeah, so I see parallels between what's happening with tourism post COVID and what's happening with tourism post-Lahaina fires. And what's very clear with the government here, the local government has made very clear is that tourism, no matter the cost, in terms of our health and safety, comes first.And that has been shown over and over. While, when they opened up tourism, the COVID numbers went up. And because, of course, people are bringing COVID in. And that put the numbers of people in the emergency rooms and in our hospitals that went way up. We don't have the capacity and we still don't have the capacity to serve thousands and thousands of residents and tourists at the same time.In terms [00:18:00] of medical health care. And so we, you know, we're in a really tight spot for that, you know. So we were really struggling because our hospital and our medical system was overrun.We had sick tourists and we had sick residents. And when you look at the numbers, it was the Native Hawaiians and the Pacific Islanders who were not just catching COVID more, but also dying from COVID more often than others. And with Lahaina, same thing. Instead of waiting, holding off on reopening Lahaina and Maui for tourists, they opened it up super early.In fact, they opened it up a month ago, for tourism. They opened up line up for tourism and families are still suffering. Families don't know what's going to happen next month, where they're going to be living next week. There's [00:19:00] thousands of displaced families still in Lahaina, yet the pressure to open up to tourism is so immense that they did it anyway. So what happened with COVID and the Lahaina fires is that they really show that what they're prioritizing.They're not prioritizing the health and safety of, of the residents, let alone Kanaka Maoli residents. They're prioritizing business interest.Chris: Mm. Hmm. Really just showing the true face, the true nature of the industry. Right. And then not in any way surprising why locals, both residents and Kanaka Maoli would be so upset and so angry, not just with the industry, but with tourists as well when they arrive having no understanding of this. Right. And so my next question kind of centers around locals there, workers, especially. And in this particular article, It says that, "as tourists returned to the [00:20:00] island, displaced residents are still in need of long-term solutions for their future, most notably in terms of long-term affordable housing. Currently. Quote, "a coalition of 28 community groups have staged what's being called a 'fish-in' on Kaanapali beach to help raise awareness of the ongoing impacts of the Malai wildfires. Wearing bright red and yellow shirts, the protesters have pledged to fish along kind of poly beach. An area usually crowded with sunbathers in swimmers, around the clock 24 7, in order to bring awareness to these issues. And so in terms of strategy and solidarity, How have local people and organizations responded in the context of these last few months.Healani: Yeah. Many locals work in tourism. So a lot of people in Hawaii felt that the reopening was too fast, too early. There were other ways they could have dealt with. They always use the term 'affordable housing,' they always use that to [00:21:00] develop. Here they use small businesses to justify prioritizing tourism. So, their whole justification for opening up to tourism early, in Lahaina, was to support small businesses. But there are other solutions. We all know that. They give billions of dollars to Israel and to Ukraine for a war that has nothing to do with us, to other countries who are doing whatever they want with it. But when it comes to this whole issue of tourism and the displaced families, they could have supported these families and for at least a year supported these small businesses like they did during the pandemic, but they chose not to.There's other solutions they could've used, but for them, opening it up was more important than making sure families were okay.So, there is a split between some residents who feel they need tourism and some [00:22:00] who don't. And it's usually, again, business owners who rely on tourists for their livelihood. And like I said before, any kind of benefit we get from tourism is really short lived and the effects of tourism, not just on our environment, but on our society and on our economic system is more detrimental than beneficial.I'll give you an example tourism fuels people from other places wanting to buy a second home here. Tourists come to Hawaii, they see how beautiful it is, they love the beaches, of course. We have like really good weather on a daily basis. So when they come here to visit, they wanna buy a second home here.⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Right now we have a housing crisis in Hawaii, and the reason for this housing crisis is because we have [00:23:00] tens of thousands of empty homes. In fact, we could put all the houseless people that are in Hawaii right now into these empty homes. And we would still have thousands of homes left over. And that is one of the reasons why number one, we have one of the, like the highest housing costs. The average house right now sells for a million dollars.It could literally be a shack on a piece of land. It'll sell for a million dollars in Hawaii. It's because of the demand for housing here in Hawaii. And it's because of the fact that a lot of the housing that we do have are usually second homes. And lots of times they use it for short term housing rentals as well. And I just want to clarify the numbers for the short term housing rentals. There's about 30, 000 residential housing units that are being rented to tourists, instead of residents, instead of locals, instead [00:24:00] of Kanaka Maoli, so that's part of the problem here. We don't have a housing shortage.We have a shortage of housing rentals or landlords that want to rent to residents.So, what we gain from tourism doesn't even come close to what we are losing from tourism, from the tourist industry.Chris: Uh, Wow. . It's just a. It's incredible. How so much of this, this desire to vacation, escape, have fun, rest, make money "passive income" lead so much to the detriment of neighbors, of what might otherwise be neighbors in our midst. And I know that, I think I've read the other day that there's this group Lahaina Strong, that was asking for government intervention. Is that right? Healani: Yeah. So they've asked. Yeah, that's a, that's a good point. [00:25:00] Lahaina Strong, one of the lead groups in Lahaina, have asked for the mayor and the governor to intervene and to ask short term housing rental owners to provide long term housing solutions for those, the displaced families. And that hasn't happened yet.It's been months. It's been September, October, November, over three months. And these families, their future is still up in the air. They don't even have reliable housing. So again, it just tells you what the priorities of the state is. Honestly, I don't think they're going to get what they want.Chris: Thank you, Healani and for being a witness to all this and proceeding accordingly. I'd like to, if I can ask you a little bit more about your political work. If I'm not mistaken you're a spokesperson for Ka Lahui Hawai'i Political Action Committee. Could you explain a little bit about [00:26:00] this organization? What the name means, how it was formed its principles, goals, and actions, perhaps. Healani: Okay, so yes, I am the spokesperson for Ka Lahui Hawai'i, and I am part of the Komike Kalai'aina Political Action Committee, which is a national committee of Ka Lahui Hawai'i, which means the Hawaiian Nation.We are a native initiative for self determination and self governance. We were formed in 1987 by Kanaka Maoli, Indigenous Peoples of Hawaii, as a response to the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and as a way forward for our people to seek out justice and to create our own way forward by creating our own nation.I have been with Kalahui Hawaii since 1993. And I [00:27:00] joined after watching Dr. Haulani-Kay Trask do her speech on the grounds of Iolani Palace, where she proclaimed that we are not American. And that was an eye opener to me. And I joined Ka Lahui and I transferred to the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, became her student. A lot of the work that we've done has been nation building. We are a nation in exile, literally. We take stances on issues a lot of times. And the issues we've been doing has been from water issues to intellectual property rights, to land rights, to tourism. The issues we cover is literally anything that affects us as a, as a people and as a nation. So we cover a wide [00:28:00] spread of issues. Most recently it's been the water issue that we've been really focused on. And when you look at the water issue, again, you see the disparity there. We are in a water crisis on the island of Oahu. We are encouraged to practice conservation measures. However, the tourist industry, hotels with pools and fountains and large golf courses, which have to be watered daily, are not being told the same thing. They are the exception. They continue to waste water while on O ahu are concerned about the future.Of our children and grandchildren because we're not sure if number one, there will be clean water and number two, if there is clean water, there'll be enough clean water for everyone in the future, but the hotels in the tourist industry, they don't care. They have swimming pools and[00:29:00] golf courses.Tourists are not told to come here and conserve water. You know, in fact, they waste water in the tourist industry and you can see it. Are you seeing how they waste it? It's pretty visual and obvious. So Ka Lahui Hawaii has been active On the front lines with Mauna Kea issue, and we have treaties with other Native American nations. We've gone to the U. N., our past Keaāina, our governor, Merilani Trask helped to draft UNDRIP, which is the U. N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is one of the most important documents that have come out from the U. N. for Indigenous Peoples and has reasserted all of our rights to self determination.There's about 400 million indigenous peoples around the world, and UNDRIP [00:30:00] is important to every single one of us.Chris: Well, thank you for, for that and the work that you do with Ka Lahui, Healani. I'll make sure that the requisite websites and links are up on the homework section and the end of tourism podcasts for our listeners. Now, in my interview withHokulani Aikau and Vernadette Gonzalez, they spoke of various projects within the tourism sector, undertaken by indigenous Hawaiians to uncover and share with tourists or visitors, the histories of the people and place so often ignored by the industry. Now in order to do this, to educate, many people work within the confines of the structures and the systems we already have, that is to decolonize tourism, for example. Now if we weren't limited by those current structures and systems. How would you personally want to proceed hosting the other, the foreigner? How would you want them [00:31:00] to proceed towards you and your people? How might you imagine such relationship to unfold? Healani: Yeah. Yeah. Decolonize tourism. That's an oxymoron. I don't believe in decolonizing tourism. The nature of tourism, it's like colonization. The nature of tourism is to exploit, is to extract everything it can from a place and from a people and it commodifies, things that to us are spiritual, to us are sacred, tourism commodifies it all. To decolonize something that was not created from indigenous peoples is impossible.We can decolonize our world. But we cannot decolonize systems of [00:32:00] oppression because they're set up to oppress us. And so that is, I don't know what to say. It's like I said before. You know, they keep changing the name, you know, Hawai'i Tourism Authority even though they have leadership that is Kanaka and they're trying to be culturally sensitive and they are doing, you know, destination management practices kind of thing and working with nonprofits and cultural groups.It's still tourism. It's still a business that wants to benefit from our land, from our water, from our culture, from our people. And when we talk about decolonization, when we talk about working against systems of oppression, it's really about us rebuilding our own systems that counter their systems.So it's all systemic, right? It's like a system of power that benefits one group [00:33:00] over the other. It stems from colonization, which is a system of power that is working against us. So to counter that, we have to create our own systems. We actually have to reconnect and recreate our old systems. So Franz Fanon talks about this. When colonization happens, what they do is they compartmentalize our world.So, you know, where we see the world as living, as where we see ourselves as part of nature, and part of this living system where there's balance. We give and take from the land. We take care of the land, the land takes care of us. In our cosmogonic genealogies as Kanaka, it tells us basically our universal perspective on all life, which is basically we are related to all the animals and plants and to the islands itself, because what it does is it recites the birth of every [00:34:00] living thing in Hawaii that was here during the time we were here, before Captain Cook arrived, but it connects us to this world and it tells us our place in it. And when colonization came, what they did was they ripped our world apart.And they separated us from nature. They separated us from our ancient beliefs. They separated us even from our belief in ourself. And many Native people, I'm sure can relate to this, but it's like living in two worlds. We live in a Hawaiian world, and we live in the Western world. We act a certain way in the Western world because of the way it's organized. And in our world, it's different. So, it's important to understand that we cannot infiltrate a system. Without the system infiltrating us. We're going to change before the system changes because these systems have been in place [00:35:00] for centuries.So I don't even want to answer the question about hosting foreigners or others because that's not even something that's on my radar. I don't imagine tourism in my future or in the future of our Lāhui, or in the future of our people. Kalahui, Hawai'i has taken stances against tourists and tourism. It's not worth what we have to give up to host foreigners. And I could go on for hours with stories of our people, putting themselves at risk, saving tourists in the ocean, and not even getting a word of thanks. Having tourists pee on our sacred sites, having tourists throw rubbish on our beaches. It never ends. So I think it's cute that they want to decolonize tourism. It's a multi billion dollar business. You cannot decolonize tourism unless you take [00:36:00] the aspect of capitalism out of it. It's like decolonizing money. How are you going to do that? It's like you need to build systems where you can sustain yourself and your people outside of these capitalist and outside of these corporate systems of power. Healani: Yeah, so what I would want to say to those who want to stand in solidarity with Kanaka Maoli, with the Native people of Hawai'i, I would say stay home. Help us spread the message that we do not want or need visitors to come to our islands. As the Native people of Hawai'i we're building our own food systems, we're bartering. We're trying to move forward as a people away from these other systems, away from tourism, away and out from under military occupation.It's a struggle that we're in. I think for those that are listening, it's important for you to[00:37:00] spread the word about the struggle that Native Hawaiians are going through in our own homeland and our struggle for liberation and to support us in whatever way you can. So I think it's important to support us from afar, I would say.And if you're here anyway, like if you end up coming anyway, then support. Don't just come here. Give back. Help out a Hawaiian organization. Help out a Hawaiian on the street. 40 percent of all houseless in Hawaii are Indigenous Hawaiians. And we only make up 20 percent of the population in our own homeland. 50 percent of the population in Hawaii's prisons and jails are Hawaiians.We have low educational attainment. We die from diseases that other people usually don't die from. We have probably the highest suicide rates in Hawaii. High infant mortality rates. So this isn't our paradise. But we have to make it a paradise for tourists. And that's something we can't continue to do.The reality of the [00:38:00] situation is that it's destroying our future right now. And you look at what happened to Lahaina, and that's all because of unsustainable development, high cost of living, corporations running amok, diverting the rivers, water being diverted to hotels and golf courses, instead of letting water just flow freely from the ocean, from the mountains to the sea.So that's what we're dealing with, and if you are thinking about coming to Hawaii, please, please think again and just support a Hawaiian organization in their struggle to reclaim what we lost. We did something around tourism. It's a survey that we gave to tourists who are here anyway, right? So that is our pledge for tourists if they are gonna come here. And we've had it out for a few years. We've tried to get like the airlines to push it out and stuff like that to raise awareness. Now they're doing more of that, which is good. [00:39:00] And I appreciate that. But ultimately, we don't want people to come here.Healani: That would be the end goal because Hawai'ians are displaced on our own land.This is our mutual aid that we set up to help families of Red Hill who still don't have clean drinking water, which is nuts. And this is two years after, right? So if they want to help with that, we appreciate that. Chris: I'll make sure that our listeners have all of those available to them when the episode launches.Healani: Because we're basically providing services to the residents, but Yeah, that's pretty much it. I can't believe people think they can decolonize tourism. It's freaking nuts.Chris: Yeah. I keep coming back to this notion that, you know, [00:40:00] part of colonization of our minds and the wars against us tend to stem from a war against the imagination and a war against us being able to imagine other worlds and just things completely differently. And I also think that when people don't have examples to follow of what that might be like to, to imagine things differently, and then also to not have the time to do that.You know, people tend to fall back on kind of simple alternatives, I guess.Healani: I think it could be useful for a little while, but it's like, we've got to work towards not sustaining it, but dismantling it, somehow getting rid of it.I mean, look at what everything that's happened to Hawaii, COVID, Lahaina fires. Our wildfires are like happening more and more. We have more on this island now than we've had before. It's just a matter of time before we have our own huge fire that's going to be devastating on this island.Chris: [00:41:00] I'm very grateful for your time, and I can tell very clearly that you're one of those people that's offering an example for younger people on how things might be different. So, I'd like to thank you for your time, your consideration. And I'll make sure, as I said, that all of these links are up on the End of Tourism website when the episode launches and and on social media as well.Healani: Awesome. Thank you so much. You have a good day. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we have a discussion with Devlin Lyles, President of Improving, about AI's evolving role in business. With his extensive tech leadership background, Devlin offers insightful perspectives on strategically integrating AI and shifting workforce mindsets. He explains how AI enhances personal productivity and compels a transition from manual tasks to advanced system management. Other notable topics include vendor resiliency, learning cultures, and personal growth's influence on business innovation. Wrapping up, Devlin shares his views on AI's future impact through emerging tools and personal assistants that boost productivity. Join us for this enriching exchange at the intersection of technology, leadership experience, and work-life harmony. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Devlin discusses his transition from a young programmer to a leader in technology, emphasizing the role of AI in changing business strategies and operations. We explore the psychological aspect of AI adoption in businesses, addressing how the workforce adapts to the enhanced productivity and evolving roles that AI tools bring. Devlin makes an analogy between the historical rise of ATMs and their impact on bank tellers, to the current transition from manual task execution to strategic AI system management. We dissect common misconceptions in AI implementation, such as the belief that data must be perfectly curated and the pitfalls of building bespoke AI solutions from scratch. Devlin highlights the importance of focusing on problem-solving over the technology itself, encouraging companies to differentiate between truly valuable AI applications and those simply following trends. The conversation delves into vendor resiliency, with a focus on the legal protection offered by large companies like Microsoft for their AI services. We discuss the cultivation of a learning culture within Improving and the impact personal development has on managing technology and fostering business innovation. Devlin shares insights on the future of AI, such as the potential of a "cloud of things" and personal AI tools that can enhance daily productivity and support memory. We examine the transformative effect of AI on mundane tasks and its potential for significant impact on industries like logistics, supply chain, and manufacturing. Devlin and I reflect on the importance of hobbies and personal interests, such as golf and video games, for maintaining a balanced life while engaging with technological advancements. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Improving GUESTS Devlin LilesAbout Devlin TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Devlin Liles, President of Improving. Devlin is a leading expert in the application and use of AI for businesses. Devlin shares several helpful ideas relating to AI for businesses and believes that a business's readiness for AI is mostly psychological. Devlin, I want to thank you for taking time to join us today. Why don't we start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and your role with improving Sure. Devlin: So Devlin Lyles. That seems like an odd thing to say. So I'm a technologist by kind of trade and training, so I started writing software when I was very young. I was 8 when I started programming. Chris: My dad got me into it. Devlin: I started my first software company when I was 16 in high school, building used car websites and that kind of thing Right at the kind of dot-com bubble expansion, and so decided I was going to not do that as a career. I was going to become a professional soccer player. That didn't work, so I kind of fell back into it as a hobby and kind of continued on that. Chris: Most programmers think of a professional soccer player as a dream, right yeah absolutely. Devlin: And so I ended up kind of falling back into my hobby as a career and then came up through kind of corporate IT at Tys Foods and then got into IT consulting and been doing that for the last 15 years. So that's a bit about me. Chris: Okay, and let's talk a little bit about improving where you serve as president. Tell us a little bit about what improving does in your role there, and then you know one of the things I really want to focus on, as you know, is things on most people's minds over the last 12-18 months is AI, so it's kind of couched in that context. Devlin: Sure. So my role with improving has kind of evolved over the years. So I actually started as a consultant delivering to our clients and I came in kind of two and a half three years in and so we have an equity share model. So I grew an equity share at improving and then took over as president here in Houston in 2017. My global role for improving is chief consulting officer, so I own client delivery, thought leadership, go-to-market and employee growth kind of that space, and so AI has been a big part of that conversation. Now the interesting thing is I get to live in a time machine somewhat in this space of AI has been a big part of that story for us for five to seven years. The world with chatGPT, kind of making it a part of the zeitgeist, is really catching up, and so it's cool to have these conversations and really talk about it, because a lot of our excitement and like oh, it's going to be utopia from 2017-2018, when there were some big strides being made forward and we get to kind of relive with everybody else. Chris: Interesting. Yeah, so you're living it for the second time. Devlin: Yeah, and it's. The thing is that, going through at the second time, you get somewhat of the hindsight in real time, which is interesting. Yeah, because we ended up helping a lot of customers apply some of these technologies, and technology always has this kind of pull to off the shelf right Systems. We used to pay tens of millions of dollars to build custom right. Think about CRM, a client contact management system, right Almost everybody has today. Chris: Yeah. Devlin: In the 1990s that was a multi tens of millions of dollar project for only the biggest companies to really have a unified customer relationship management system. And today I can go, put in a credit card and sign up for HubSpot or Salesforce or Dynamics right off the shelf. There's this pull to off the shelf that happens in technology, which leads to the middle market and small businesses being able to take advantage of what used to be incredibly expensive technology and that's actually what we're seeing in the AI space is it's driving from. I no longer need 100 million to approach this problem. I can actually apply this for 20 bucks a month, yeah. Chris: It's a great observation and yeah it's so true that it becomes, I guess better, efficient and more economical right Each time, I guess, as technology is with us and develops longer. That's a great kind of segue. I want to just kind of start with what are some of the key factors a business should consider when evaluating their readiness for adopting AI into the business. Devlin: Interesting For adopting AI into the business. Readiness is mostly psychological, because there are pieces in the business today that you can do better. We break this into kind of three parts when we talk to business leaders about this. One is how do you do your job much more effectively, right? What's the superhuman version of Chris? Right, there's AI tools to make that happen. Like, I'm a very well augmented human, I have tools that analyze my notes and make sure that I don't forget things. I've got tools that keep reminders and stuff on my personal network. Now, they're not spamming my friends with, like text messages to buy things, but it's going. Hey, you haven't talked to Bob In two months. Here's what you talked about the last time, so I can reach out to Bob. Hey, man, we haven't caught up. How's your wife doing? How's your son doing? Like those kind of things. That's the superhuman version of me, because I want to stay connected with my friends Just bad at it and so it covers that gap for me. So that's the first part is like that personal productivity side, which is mainly just a resistance to change. That you'd see in any technology adoption. It's psychological, organizational. People have tied their identity to the work they do and so changing that means like an existential crisis sometimes, right? Sure, think about a bank teller when the ATM came out. Right Now, we still employ a lot of bank tellers, but their jobs drastically changed. It's that moment where we're not going to get rid of a bunch of humans and have robots doing those jobs. What we're going to do is change the job of the human to guiding them, controlling and managing the robots. Chris: I think that's an important point to kind of reemphasize for the listeners, because I think so much that's out there. You see these news headlines and articles. I think people think robots are going to take over the world and I think the point you just made that that's not the case. But the role the human will play will adapt and change and while that sounds scary in a vacuum, if you actually take a moment and look back, that's what's happened throughout our evolution, especially in the industrial world and the business world in the United States. Right, jobs have evolved and changed over time, and I've heard you say this before, so this is nothing different. I want you to dig in a little deeper on that to help the listeners understand and maybe some historical points to compare to. So it makes it a little more tangible. Devlin: Absolutely so. Think about the way we did accounting before the PC was invented, right? So before the Apple II, we're talking in the 1970s, right Before computing devices were in everybody's office on everybody's desk, right? The way we did accounting was we managed the book and you wrote entries in and you had somebody checking the math and you had the you know 10 keys sitting there with the stream of numbers coming out of it. Right, and your accounting department was massively larger than it is today. To be able to accomplish that, it had to be right, which was a big overhead for a business to bear. Right, and you had these big accounting firms who would help with economies of scale or whatever. But like, that was really the ballgame, right, and it took a long time to like, close out the books and do tax audits and those kind of things. Now fast forward to the introduction of broad computing power. That sped up that process. We still have accountants, we still have bookkeepers. In most businesses you can close the books on a month in 10 days, 30 days if you've got a lot of moving parts. It's not. Hey, we just closed January. In June, a crude accounting became far more prevalent. We had less financial fraud overall, the stories about it happen more often, but we have less by volume and we're actually getting more insights out of that, because it's no longer just tracking all the pieces but going hey, did you notice last month you had increased expenditures in this area without the increased revenue tied to them? And so we get business insights on top of what we used to get was just transactions. We not only have lower accounting costs, but we then have better outcomes from it. Ai is going to do something similar From a business perspective. It's going to allow us to get. It's going to allow us to get better outcomes or lower our costs, to give us pricing power in the market. Because all technology is labor compression right, what a welder by hand used to take hours to do on the original factory floors and structural integrity of the original cars that we were rolling across an assembly line right. Think 1930s, 1940s. We now have robotic welders who can do in 15 or 30 seconds with far more precision, with less human injury. Right Now, the quality checking, the x-ray and all that is still reviewed by a human to make sure that weld is solid, and even that we're automating some of. But like that, evolution allowed us to produce stronger, faster, cheaper, safer cars. I think we're in that space where AI is largely going to be applied to the problems that are on the edges of humans do a lot of it, but we're not very good at it because, like our bookkeepers, there's that whole notion of human error. Chris: Yeah, not that there won't be computer error as well. Oh, yeah, and so you kind of that's where the check and balance comes in. Devlin: And the idea of technology is just going to solve everything. Hopefully, as a civilization we've moved past right the 1970s to today. I used the 1970s because that was kind of the broad evolution of available computing right To today. Every new technology has created new problems. A joke with our team that yesterday's solutions caused today's problems. And that's a good thing, because, one, we always have problem to solve and, two, we don't have yesterday's problems. So AI being introduced is going to create things like we now need to manage bias, the computer error, right. That's not something we do today very well. When we talk about humans, right, like how do you manage bias at scale? In a thousand person company is like all right, hr and an army of training, but with a computer you can actually try to start tilting at some of these things. Now, does that mean we're going to do it Well, we're going to do it better than we do today. Probably we're going to do it wrong and have to create tomorrow's problems. Chris: Yeah, I love that perspective. So what are some of the obstacles or pitfalls that you've seen that businesses encounter when they're trying to implement technology, and maybe even specifically, obviously specific to AI technology? Devlin: So there are two. One of them is perfectly valid and it's going to be some learning that we have to overcome, and I'm going to start with that one the belief that I have to spend a ton of time and money to correct my data right. Because, traditionally over the last 20 years you've had data engineering and data warehousing and data lakes and, like you, had to clean it and curate it and do all this work. That belief is a little antiquated, right. You can bring in raw data and then actually use a lot of these automated systems AI systems to clean it up with you so that the labor of that is way less scary. Now that's the pitfall most people fall into is all I got to get my data cleaned up before I get any value. And so that ends up raising the price tag of going after these technologies and ultimately keeps companies from getting some of that benefit because they don't want to pay that cost. And then the second pitfall is building your own. And what I mean by building your own is every business has unique challenges and they have their particular flavors, right? It's why, where SAP works for one, but you know, acumatica would be better for somebody else as an ERP system. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel and we keep doing that, right? I was just talking to a friend of mine, houston based company yesterday. 500 million in revenue and we're like talking about one of their AI initiatives. It wasted $6 million, didn't get anything out of it Wow. And we're talking about them like. You can do that with almost off the shelf tools everything you guys were trying to accomplish in about four months for about half a million and the difference is that they try to reinvent all the wheels. We don't need to do that, just like you're not going to build your own email system, right? You don't need to build your own baseline architecture for a large language model. Use one of the foundational ones that's off the shelf and you don't waste a lot of that time and effort. Chris: And that gets you that good way to get started. Devlin: Yeah, it may evolve from there, may evolve from there you may hit a problem where you do need to build your own. Chris: I kind of the rule of thumb I use is if your IT budget doesn't start with a, b, you're probably not building your own machine learning models, so that raises a good question, and that would be how can companies distinguish between an AI solution that actually is going to offer value real value versus just a company following the hype right and being misguided by the solution. Maybe they choose. Devlin: Fall in love with solving the problem, not the tools. So if let's take my company right, we spend a lot of time trying to solve one big problem. That big problem was knowledge. We grow the acquisition We've done 14 acquisitions in 14 years and we always create knowledge silos. And so when we bring in somebody, our current team doesn't know their stories for, like, selling their skill sets, what they're good at, those kind of things, and they don't know all of our stories. And so we had this big knowledge silo gap problem right Right Now. Ultimately, what that means is when a customer goes, hey, do you do X, regardless of what X is, they're going to say no because they don't know the stories. Now, how do I overcome this? I could do training, all right, but then I got to do that training every time we acquire a company and we're doing like we're aiming for two to four acquisitions a year, which means that's not a sustainable thing because of the labor cost. Right, it's like, okay, well, maybe I allow the silos to continue and just accept that's part and parcel of the business. It's possible. Chris: Possible, but you're a miss out on a ton of opportunity. Exactly. Devlin: Or we take all their stories, their case studies, their customer testimonials. We loaded them into what we call echo, which is a AI enabled chatbot, and it literally reads SharePoint. Right, it's not like it's not parsing data. There's no big data engineering effort. It's loading Word documents, PDFs, all this off SharePoint and they just chat with it and they go hey, have we done a deal with a major energy company? And it goes yes, here are the three, they're most relevant to you. And then it embeds the PDF and goes and here's where you find more details, so that the sales team on a sales call can have echo up on another window. Like, hey, have we ever done that? And it goes yes, in this office, here's the people to reach out to that level of knowledge. Access would have cost us thousands of hours of training, Right, and so it's that type of thing. Focus on the problem. Where do you have pain and where are you wasting hours? You don't actually care as a business owner unless you're selling AI as a product, Right. You don't actually care if it's an AI solution, an automation solution or just really clever software. You just want the problem solved, and by not falling in love with the tool, but falling in love with solving the problem. You focus on the right thing Because the value add, the ROI, is all about the problem, not about the tool. Chris: Look, that makes sense. It's easy to remember, for sure, and I mean I think you're right. Devlin: I think most business owners agree. Chris: I just need this problem solved effectively and efficiently. Devlin: By the way, you find these problems by going. What would it take for me to 5x my business today? The things that immediately popped to mind? You're like, oh well, this would break and this would break, and this would break and this would break. That's your list. For me, it's like well, I need five times as many account managers and my accounting staff's got to grow and I'd need better hiring. That's my list. Do I need five times as many account managers or do I need to help automate a lot of the account management and administrator to make them more effective? How do I upskill and get my recruiters leveraging AI, sorting and those kind of things to pull more people into the pipeline? That's my list. By simply going. What would it take to get bigger? Buy a big number. If 5x isn't scary enough, tack a zero on there. Chris: That definitely would be scary. Devlin: So let's, talk about. Chris: There's a lot that's been written and it's something we're doing here ourselves and that's with AI out there. What are best practices that businesses should be considering around policies for using, evaluating, adapting AI technology in the business, ai technology in the business. There's a lot that I think it's probably best practice. There should one. Yes, you should have a policy, but anything you can kind of guide the listeners on on those issues around a competent and well thought out AI policy. Devlin: So it's got a few pieces. Number one data privacy needs to be forefront in that conversation, primarily to protect your business and to protect your competitive advantage. So if your AI usage or acceptable usage policy doesn't include something about how data privacy should be evaluated, that's a big gap. Now your opinions about data privacy are gonna be your company's opinions, but those tools that are cheap and freely available today are largely cheap and freely available so that they can use your data to train a better tool. Is that okay with you? Some people will like yeah, it doesn't matter, and some people are like no, I absolutely can never allow this data out of my control, at which point you gotta choose different tools. So data privacy is number one. Chris: To that point. You may be aware of this and I recently wrote a little, brought it on it, but you had the New. York Times lawsuit saying that all trained on copyrighted material. Trained on copyrighted material, so that's kind of to me somewhat akin to data security and privacy, and that's a whole other issue about copywriting and licensing around information. So we haven't talked with that in a minute. Let's keep on the data or AI kind of policies. And so you said, most important thing, data privacy. What's next? Devlin: Second is vendor resiliency. Now, this is gonna sound a little tough to like the indie developers who are trying to launch their product, but last year in the US there were 6,000 plus tools launched on the AI Hype Wave. Now the punchline to that story is over 4,000 have already failed Already, had to either pivot or gone out of business. Vendor resiliency if you're gonna start pulling these into your business, evaluate the vendor. Are they gonna survive long enough to be valuable to you, or do you now have a broken tool that's no longer being accessible that you've woven into your business? That is gonna drive you towards some of the bigger vendors, the ones that have been around for a while, and, as it kind of should. If you're weaving it into your ops Now for experimentation, use the little players, Like that makes sense to me, but when you're talking about a broad policy, vendor resiliency is gonna be a big thing. The other side of vendor resiliency is how are they going to indemnify you from the inevitable lawsuits in this space? Right? Microsoft, Google, Amazon have all said if you're using our tools inside the license agreement, there's indemnity. Right, that's a pretty big shield, right? Microsoft actually said that they would. If you're using their AI services. They would protect you and defend and pay a settlement if one ends up happening for copyright infringement. So, like the Times article thing won't hit the consumers of those AI tools. Microsoft has stood in front of it and said we're good, that's a big shield. Now if you're a small to mid-market software player, can you put up a shield right Right To your customers? As a customer, I need to start caring about this. And then, lastly, in that policy, some centralized knowledge repository, some centralized store, Because what we found is everybody's play. Everybody's trying, experimenting using these tools. They're wiring in their favorite one. I do this almost on a daily basis. I kick out unapproved tools from meetings that somebody like wired up like a meeting transcriber, listener, bot, and I kick them out of meetings and send a note to whoever did it. I'm like just to be clear not approved. Chris: Right. Devlin: Here's the approved one. Don't use that one and everybody's just so. Expense control and some kind of central review. It doesn't have to be heavy handed. Ours is literally just a let us know when you're experimenting so we can check in on the experiment because it might be something we want to share. Yeah, right, but some kind of central right. Yeah, because a lot of these are SaaS based. A lot of them are out, kind of in the ethos of like knowledge tools, like note taking tools that I use. There would be no way for improving to know that its IP is in that tool if I didn't tell them. And so you've got to. You've got to have kind of a reporting and honor system for the employees to tell you where your data and vendors live. Chris: So one of the things that I know that improving and the leadership and improving which includes you. You've done a great job of building a culture and a company that embraces technology, embraces innovation. What can you share about that experience and that journey at improving to maybe help others understand, you know how they may be able to do the same thing. Devlin: Absolutely so. I have the oddity of looking at this kind of if I look back down the mountain, it seems like it's a long way, but all I can see is looking up the mountain and it still seems insurmountable. So I guess first would be the journey doesn't end. Don't let the size of the mountain scare you, Just take a step Right. For us we have a lot of like growth and planning kind of baked into our employee management model. We call it PATH, that's our employee growth systems, and part of that is maintaining your marketable job skills, literally what we call hard skills right, the marketability of a person to maintain. Because there's this kind of natural degradation If I stop learning, I become less and less valuable because the market moves ahead of me. Right, and so, recognizing that truth and going okay, what are you doing this quarter to grow with technologies? Then we go okay, what new tech are you learning or playing with or experimenting with this quarter? What we have found is, as long as there's a vehicle for them to share that back to the company and make an impact, people are highly engaged If it is just playing over here and then they have to come back over here and do the same thing that they've been doing for 15 years less engagement, and so creating the vehicle in which their experiments can have a long lasting impact on the business created a lot of engagement. And then the other side of it is we recognized a while ago that if you're not growing, you're dying as a business, and that's true for all of our people. It's what we call the plateau of slow death. Like you've just decided to coast that will have an accelerating decline in your value to the business. How do we help people stay on a plateau of slow growth where they're still incrementally investing? Sure, Now for us that's five hours a week because we're a technology company, it moves quick. Right, that might not need to be five hours a week for somebody in manufacturing, distribution etc. But probably an hour a week just reading. Like there's the Wall Street Journal podcast, there's this podcast that's phenomenal for staying abreast of what's happening. Like consume an hour a week of new information for you and your team, and you'd be amazed at what doing that week after week will do to the business. Like it just accelerates. And it sounds very simple. It was one of the first steps we took. Chris: You know that the dedication to being intentional about the learning and self improvement on a weekly basis, I think is amazing that any business right I believe so I am amazed how many business owners and friends I have that work in businesses and they're so busy that they're too busy to survive. I've said here in this firm before and you have to repeat it, and we're all can be victim of it and guilty of it, but busy can't be an excuse. I'm too busy to do X when X is strategic work on how to improve the company or yourself. Busy can't be an excuse, Because if it is, then nothing will ever get done because you always feel too busy right, and so I pay for a lot of tools. Devlin: I'm a well augmented human right. One of those tools is summaries of like business articles and books and all that. And so while I was sitting here waiting for this conversation, I was reading one of those. And it's that overarching approach of like how am I getting value out of those moments, like when a meeting wraps up early, do you sigh in relief and like, walk out and waste 10 minutes? Maybe that's good recovery and you need that for emotional balance. Okay, but is it intentional? Did you go hey, you know what I need emotional balance and chose that. Or did you go? I got 10 minutes. I'm going to read that book summary, or I'm going to read an article, or I'm going to check out what's on HPJ innovation stuff, like those questions. Right, just making the consumption of data an option mentally for all this. This is why I say like, a lot of our barriers are psychological, because the technology is actually not scary Once you start exploring it. It's only scary when it's like Skynet and Terminator from the movies, and so then it's scary and that makes sense. Chris: But let's get this right, let's bring this full circle from the beginning of the conversation. Right what you're talking about and recommending people. Be intentional about that. Self learning, that discipline around self learning and improvement, is really going to be essential as new technologies come online, because we you said earlier right Technology is going to force the worker to adapt and the only way you can adapt is by continuing to learn. So, to be successful alongside technology like AI, it's going to be essential. Devlin: This is actually. I'm a future optimist, and what I mean by that is I think that technology elevates humanity right, Very similar to capitalism. Elevating humanity it has made life better. It's increased longevity, it's done a lot of things. Now, that's not to say technology is perfect and we live in utopia Like, but it is. Technology elevates us, but it makes us do the harder version of life right. Technology allows us to play life on hard mode. So, like social media, I can doom scroll forever, which means I have to own the choice. Right Before that, technology enabled me to stay connected with all my friends. I didn't have to make that choice Right. Right, ai, by taking a lot of the complexity, a lot of the time consuming tasks off my plate, means that all that's left are the difficult tasks, it's the hard mode tasks, and getting really good at the hard mode tasks is the value creation in the future. It's hey, I got to go write this software. The writing of the software, the actual typing, is going to get much easier, just like accounting, just like bookkeeping, just like going through and like automatic scanning of discovery documents in the legal space. Sure, used to be very time consuming Now is being accelerated by AI and automation. So now then, the hard part is understanding what software I need to write and why, understanding what those transactions mean to the business and why, understanding what, in that discovery, is pertinent, important and relevant to the story I'm telling. Right, like all the hard tasks, get left the difficult task, because those are the ones AI is really bad at Right. Chris: Basically for now. So before we wrap this up, I definitely want to ask you your thoughts on regulation and what you think Congress should or shouldn't do around putting some regulations in the AI space. Devlin: So AI regulation is coming, like that's going to be the case. Any sufficiently developed technology ends up getting regulated at some point. Should do. Transparency to empower a educated consumer is phenomenal Like stating if you've baked an ethical bias or a political or religious bias into a model so that the people who are using it can choose, right, that makes sense. Chris: Realize that the output is tilted in some way. Devlin: Right, that's great to know as a consumer. Right, and luckily that's where a lot of the early regulations in this space are tilting. The shouldn't do side of it is dangerously close to that, which is then publish how you built the model to prove that statement, which is a lot like saying give everybody your proprietary trade secrets. Right, there's a reason that open AI stopped publishing a lot of their and here's exactly how we built it, and that's because a whole bunch of other companies took that research that they poured tens of billions of dollars into and created additional models that were almost identical in performance. Right Now they're different and they were developed by different teams and all that. But, like, there's a reason it went from we have one major version of this to we now have 15 publicly available commercial models. Right, that gets dangerous when you start regulating people to destroying their business, and so that's the line I'm hoping we walk the stifled innovation that happens on that second one we're seeing in the EU when they passed the and here's all the restrictions of AI you have to publish your training set and your methodology and all this stuff. It's like awesome, and there was a mass exodus of AI companies from that area. Like yeah, they're like nope, we are not going to, not going to participate if you require us to kill ourselves. Chris: Right. And so we're going to invest time and money in something that they can't then have a return on. Devlin: I mean, if you look at the open AI side of it, this is tens of billions of dollars in decades of research and development and work to make this happen. Imagine if you then had a law that said and you have to enable your competitor, who doesn't have that cost, to then rapidly get to the same point for a 10th Right, and so there's a balance between you want to democratize some of it, you've got to balance the investment side of it, and if you go too far which I believe personal belief that the EU did it just causes a significant drop in investment. Chris: So you know, kind of with that in mind, where do you kind of foresee the evolution of AI over the next five to 10 years? Devlin: We have largely looked at AI as the Jetsons robot or terminator, where it's this one thing that is omnipowerful, omnikable, right, omnipresent. I don't believe that's where we're going. The best minds in this space, of which I get to talk to I am not one of, I beg the difference. Go ahead. They would tell you that it will be a cloud of things like imagine that you're surrounded by Chris's swarm of empowering bots. You've got a bot that helps you manage your schedule. You've got a bot that helps you take notes from a meeting without having to like jot them down, and all of these save you 10, 15, 20 minutes an hour and a half a day. That means somehow Chris is doing 50 hours of work in a eight hour day because you've got this super human capability that's empowered by all of these things. That's where we're headed. I just saw I was playing around with a toolkit that there's been a lot of hype over the last few weeks is the video generator, pica. It's like mid journey or Dolly or stable diffusion for images, but does videos. Chris: Okay. Devlin: Like cinematographic grade quality. The problem is you have to also get really good at understanding camera movements and placement and blocking and all these things that directors have known for decades, and so it's not built for this average consumer. It's built for making folks with that knowledge massively more successful. Right, being able to go and here's a rough of my movie idea. Right. Here's a short of my movie idea for $1,000, not 70. Chris: Right. Devlin: Right, that will accelerate the creative space in movie making, but it's not going to get rid of a need for that knowledge base. Same thing's true with geophysics and well-planning and the energy space. How do we conceptualize all of this and make a human significantly more powerful? So this team that includes a drilling engineer, a geophysicist and all this can plan wells and make financial analysis, and all that in days, not years. Right, that acceleration is where we're going to see it. We're going to see it through these kind of micro enhancements. I carry several of them with me. I've got a note-taking system that maps all of the connected topics that I've been researching and digging into and it's wicked, fun and crazy. But I built a chat system on it that runs on my laptop and so I can ask questions on my notes. I'm like, hey, in my last Vistage meeting there was a speaker who talked about this what were the key takeaways? And it goes. Here's the notes. Here are the key takeaways. It's that kind of empowerment, because human memory is fallible, and so how many of us have wished like I wish I had a better memory. Chris: It doesn't have to live in my head. Yeah, Kind of like what it. There was something five minutes ago I said I needed to do and now I can't remember what it is. How often does that happen? Devlin: I carry around to do this and to do this integrates with it, and so at the end of the day, right before I typically leave the office, I get a reminder set from the automation I hooked up to it. Now it looks at my calendar and goes where's the right point to remind a Devlin to do those things before the end of the day. So like folks literally like I don't know how you do this, I'm like I don't, I'm very well augmented that yeah, you said that more than once. Chris: I know you mean it very well augmented. So I was going to ask you what some of your favorite AI tools are. I think you've shared them just now, but maybe just a quick summary of maybe three or four of your favorite tools for the listeners who were trying to frantically take notes. Devlin: So I for network management. So my personal network management I use clayearth. You literally go to. Clayearth is the URL. I think it's phenomenal and I use that to manage my network. It does not spam or reach out to, it just helps me reach out and stay connected the kind of in my business version of that one is dynamics. We use sales copilot for dynamics. Einstein in Salesforce does the same thing. Chris: So in the business. Devlin: We use a different one because different needs, right? Sure For note taking, I use obsidian. You can use ever note or one note in this same thing and it'll do a lot of the same AI enablement through plug ins and those kinds of things. Chris: And then you mentioned one about just the main of the reminder. Devlin: So I use to do is and power automate. I've combined those two tools. So if you're in the Microsoft stack right, you use office 365 or Microsoft 365, you have access to this one already I didn't know it and so you can go to makepowercom. It's a Microsoft tool. You'll log in with your Microsoft thing and you can describe what you want it to do. I did this yesterday. I was presenting to a group of CEOs on this topic and I was like take the notes, my handwritten notes that I emailed a picture of myself. Take the notes I emailed a picture of to myself, parse them, put the text in my notebook, scan it for action items and put those action items into do list. Literally, that's all I described. And it goes okay, and it's got this massive library of these tiny little tasks and it pulls them all together and goes. Here's the automation that will do that and it writes the rough draft, the prototype of the automation for you and you just click all right, create. And it goes. This is the permissions I'm going to need. Are you good with that? Yep, go. And it's there and it's running. I had to write no code, I had to wire nothing together, it just did it and so we're using this for, like, back office automation all the time. Like, hey, take this output of our financial system, slice it, dice it in this way and it writes the pivot table creation and all that in Excel. Like that's might be half an hour or 45 minutes that I just saved our business partner in accounting, and so it's a lot of these tiny little bots. Chris: Wow. So when you think about AI and how it could be disruptive to industry, what are maybe one of the top two industries you think it's going to be the most disruptive to? Devlin: So oddly, I think logistics, supply chain and manufacturing are probably those two. One, they've typically been under invested in technology and so there's a lot of low hanging fruit. But two, it gives pricing power. Like, imagine that I can compress the labor to accomplish a task. I can now out price my competitors who aren't doing that, and in those two spaces where they're very commoditized prices can't. If you can be 3% cheaper while maintaining your margins, that's the ballgame and you can just put people out of business. So I think those two are going to have massive kind of immediate six to 18 month impact. If you look slightly beyond that, the construction space is huge in this AP great Houston story here has a robot called Dusty that they helped to develop. It takes the construction documents for a high rise and it prints the lay down onto the concrete. It uses basically a Roomba guided by AI. It parses the construction documents and, in color coded paint, prints the lay down. And it reduces the labor of manual labor, construction labor, of building out that building, because they don't have to snap chalk lines and measure everything and everything else, they just follow the color coded thing, which also means I need lower scale labor, which is the labor savings. And so these things are changing the game and changing the pricing power on a lot of these fixed bid contracts. And so you see some interesting spaces where traditionally non technology based business has a lot of low hanging fruit, like fintech and financial services has been heavily invested in technology. Less low hanging fruit there, sure. So the disruptive stuff I think is going to be in those three over the next few years. Chris: Okay, Devlin, this has been such an interesting and fun conversations. Thank you for doing that. I want to just turn just to a little bit of the fun side of things when I have a guest in, and what was your first job, I guess you told us today you were programming, but was that where you get paid to do it? Devlin: No. So my first job there was a pool near our house and I love like there was a cherry seven up, like you got the bottle cap thing and you could earn points and order stuff. Like that moment in time and I my parents like I didn't have enough allowance to like as much cherry seven up as I wanted, right, and so I talked to the owner of the pool that we were a member of near our house into letting me like, do the chlorine and the cleanup and scrub the pool for cash when I was 12. Like this was definitely not legal. And then so like I'm moving buckets of chlorine and doing all this stuff while my friends are playing at the pool, because I was earning $5 a day that I could spend on cherry seven up. Chris: I grew up from an early age right. I love it. Devlin: So hopefully I don't get anybody in trouble. I'm not giving you names of pools, okay. Chris: So what do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Devlin: Oh, barbecue Hands down. Yeah, I have a massive pit smoker in my backyard Like oh, for real Okay. So we throw a barbecue in Dallas every year for fourth of July, feed like 400 people. We throw one here at our office for Labor Day, memorial Day, which one's at the end of the summer. Chris: Labor Day, labor Day. Devlin: For Labor Day feed like 250 folks. Chris: Like I'm bigger than barbecue. You're serious? All right, I love it. And what do you like to do for fun when you're not out speaking? Devlin: on AI. So I play a lot of golf with my wife and she kicks my butt, or I like video games and stuff like that, and so my brother and I play a lot of video games Very good. Chris: Well, like I said, Dylan, I love the conversations we've had in the past. What you shared today was so enlightening and I know we'll be valuable to those listening, and I said that they probably, like me, took a lot of notes that they'll try to implement into their daily life. So thanks again for being here. Thank you, thank you.