04. Kris Cravey, "From Seminary to Private Equity"

In this episode of The Power of Human Stories, I sit down with Kris Cravey, a longtime leader, operator, professor, and someone I’ve personally learned a lot from over the years. Kris and I first met when he was leading the MBA program at Messiah University, where he became both a professor and a mentor to me. In this conversation, we unpack the unexpected path that took him from Bible college and seminary into executive leadership, private equity, and higher education. Kris shares how his early faith, working-class roots, and years of leadership shaped the way he thinks about people, culture, and organizational health. We talk about career transitions, the hidden forces that shape workplace culture, what healthy leadership actually looks like, and how identity often gets wrapped up in the work we do. We also explore the human side of exits, organizational change, and legacy, ending with Kris’s growing passion for his family ranch and what it means to build something worth passing on. This is a conversation about leadership, but even more than that, it’s a conversation about stewardship, purpose, and the long road of becoming.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Every person carries a story. Stories shaped by choices, by struggle, by growth. This is where those stories are told. This is the power of human stories.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

There are a lot of people who talk about people first leadership. Far fewer actually live it in a way that the people around them can feel. Today I get the pleasure of having a conversation with Chris Cravey. Chris is an operating partner at Pelican Energy Partners and has spent the last couple of decades working across operations, strategy, and leadership in industries like power generation, professional services, and technology. Over the years, he's held leadership roles at Day and Zimmerman, and he's also served as Chief People Officer at DroneUp, and later as Chief Operating Officer and President at Fahrenheit Advisors. Along his work in industry, Chris teaches leadership and organizational behavior at Palm Beach Atlantic University and writes about leadership, culture, and execution for Fast Company. What I appreciate about Chris is how he approaches leadership. In the time I've known him, I've seen how others around him experience that. People genuinely feel like he cares. And that's rare. Chris understands that leadership isn't just about strategy or performance, it's about people. So welcome to the podcast, Chris. Great to have you. Thanks, Rolando. Yeah, I appreciate it. So let's turn back the clock route six years ago.

SPEAKER_03 1:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:53

You're uh teaching in Messiah University's MBA program. And we met and we hit it off, and then you became my professor. And fast forward a couple years later after my MBA, you've had a really interesting career just uh jumping to a couple organizations. I've always thought your career uh trajectory was really interesting. And also just the way you've I've seen you lead has always been, I think, something noteworthy for me as I've like take notes. So I'm excited to sit down with you and just share a little bit about your story and what you've learned in all the different places you've been. So yeah, um, thanks for being here and thanks for saying yes.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, I still remember the first time we met because you were kind of on the fence about whether or not you wanted to do an MBA program. And um, when you and I had a chance to talk, I was like, I've got to get this young guy in this program because he's fantastic. So uh glad you decided to join that program and we've built a great um friendship over the years. Um yeah, to your point, I've had a pretty nonlinear um career background. Um, and I'm sure it's some things that we could talk about and get into, including even my educational background is somewhat nonlinear. Um, but it all seemed to kind of work together to point me in the right direction over the years.

SPEAKER_05 3:16

So let's uh let's dive in then. Okay. So let's go back even further, maybe uh your grad education or even undergrad education, or or before that. Like honestly, what was the those first formative years for you like? What uh what drew you into leadership, people, and organizational life?

SPEAKER_02 3:39

Yeah. Um, well, I think going, you know, going back to when I was a kid, um, yeah, I was the first one in my family to go to college, right? So that was a pretty big deal. Um so I was raised by my my grandparents. Um, my mom and dad got a divorce and I was about a year old, and so they felt like the best, most stable place for me would be with my grandparents. And so um I was raised by grandparents in Northern California. Um, and and back then, Northern California was still very agricultural and country, hence the uh cowboy hats in in my roots uh for sure. We'll talk more about that later. But um I think one of the things that I saw with my grandparents was just the struggle, right? And, you know, we we weren't very well off. Um, you know, we lived in we lived in a mobile home in in San Jose. Um, and of course, back then, and you know, it was all agricultural fields and this little mobile home park, and now it's like Google and all these tech companies, and that mobile home park's still there, if you can believe that. Um, and we moved from there to another mobile home park out in the Central Valley. Um, and you know, I would see, you know, people they would, you know, bring my family groceries, and I just saw the struggle. And so my grandparents kind of had this mentality, and I think some of that was part of their generation of you got to find a company and find a good company and then work there all your life and you know, get your pension, and then you know, you you just you're just kind of a good soldier, you know, in that company. And what I kind of discovered though is, you know, as times evolved and changed, that a lot of companies didn't care as much about their employees as sometimes people thought they were, right? Oftentimes they were a cog or a kind of a sprocket in the machine. And if that cog or sprocket broke, then they just replaced it. And so there were a lot of people that found, you know, their whether their pensions were gone or they didn't offer pensions anymore, that that reality just wasn't there. So I always kind of saw the struggle that they had. So for me, it was like, how do I, how do I take initiative? How do I get beyond that? Um, and so I really applied myself to studies. Now, my grandfather and my uncle, they were very mechanically inclined. They could do anything. They could weld, they could do carpentry, they could do whatever. I actually wish now as an adult that I would have paid more attention because I could use some of those skills today. Um, I was more into sports and I was more into school and really kind of focusing on like, okay, what do I need to, how do how do I create a career? Um and so for me, I I knew that I was gonna go to college. That was, you know, that that was definitely um the direction I needed to go. I just wasn't exactly sure where I was gonna go or what the domain was gonna be. For me, you know, I I had a a very um, you know, I came up in a Christian family, but we weren't really, I don't know, we're kind of Christian by name, if that makes any sense. You know, like we didn't really go to church, that kind of thing. Um, but when I was 18, after I graduated high school, I really had a, you know, a surrendering, if you will, to God of like, you know, I want to give you my life, surrendering my heart to him. And it really, to me, that was such a foundational moment for me because it really changed my direction and trajectory. And so some of those formative years that I had, I was, I was fortunate. Um, uh in the church that I was going to, uh, and this was back in the early 90s, and you really didn't have like mega churches back then, but I I'd probably consider this a mega church, probably three or four thousand people. Um, but they had a big youth group. So like probably four or five hundred youth that would get together and have services. Well, what was interesting to that is that, you know, the the pastor of the church there was very much a visionary. Um, he was a great public speaker. He knew how to um encourage people. He he had a genuine love for people. Um, you know, it didn't matter, you know, where you were uh in your socioeconomic status, like, you know, that was always a place for you to be. Um, and he he liked finding diamonds in the rough. And I think that that experience really got me exposed to something I had never seen before. So I mentioned my family had come up more in in you know trades, and now I was seeing this whole side of organizations where, you know, you cast vision and you know, you have a strategy and you think about how do we develop people and teams and how do we work together and how do we do things with excellence. And I just kind of couldn't get enough of that, right? So at the time, I I really tried to change my trajectory and I decided to go to Bible college and thought I was gonna be a pastor. Um, and so I I got on staff at the church and did a lot of preaching and then eventually um decided I wanted to go to seminary, um, got a scholarship in Virginia and moved. Uh my wife and I were been married for about a year and moved from California all the way to Virginia um to go to school. And um, so while I was in seminary, um, I kind of needed a job to pay the bills. And uh a guy I was going to church with said, Hey, uh, I work in the energy field. Um, we have a we use a lot of union building trades. We need someone who can handle all the union fringes and all that. And I said, I have no idea what that means, but sign me up because I need a job, right? Um, so I got working there, and uh, this company had a great tuition reimbursement program. They would cover anything that was related to business. And so I decided, you know, gosh, you know, being a pastor, it might be good to have a seminary degree and an MBA just because of yeah, you're you're managing, you know, an organization. Um, and then I think for me, the, the, the, the real pivotal moment was, you know, my window was pretty small at that juncture in terms of, you know, how you know, how do I serve God or what's the best way to do that? And I kind of only my only experience was either being a pastor or was a worship leader or something like that. And I got into this business program and I saw people who were just as passionate about doing good works um in the marketplace. And that was very, very attractive to me. Though it I think it really kind of, for me, it kind of opened my window to say God is much bigger than the box that I put him in, and that God is at work in all of these different things that that we do. So my faith was certainly, I think, a pivotal moment of that. And I think, I think the exposure that I had early on, um, you know, being part of a church that really valued people and organization and and excellence, I think kind of fed that um fire that would later help me in in organizations and businesses that I'd be a part of.

SPEAKER_05 10:20

Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned the that the church actually showed you that. Oftentimes it can be the reverse. Absolutely. It can be like you like any non small nonprofit, it's dysfunctional, uh scarcity mindset. Don't they don't invest in their people. Um and so it's interesting that you had a positive experience that showed you, oh, this could be something that could be a career path for me. Um I also heard you say how you you had that tension of being having a moment in your life where your values are become clear and you're motivated by what you want to do for the rest of your life, uh a calling of sorts, and then reimagining that that calling could be in a different industry than what you thought. Um you know, at first it was going to be in the church space, typical pastor's uh career, and now you had this awakening, like, wait a second, I can do good over here. Um walk me through that. Was that difficult for you to make that switch? Did you feel feel like guilty leaving behind the higher calling? Uh like what was that like, or was that easy for you?

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Yeah. No, it's it was a wrestle. And I would say it was a wrestle for, you know, maybe a decade or more, honestly, because there's this tension of, you know, um, you know, am I doing the will of God, right? Or am I, you know, am I doing what God wants me to do, or am I best using my resources uh effectively for God? Um and and I I I kind of come to the conclusion that it doesn't really work that way. I, you know, there's this um, there's kind of this principle. I I believe it's in um I believe it's in like uh meta metaphysics and thermodynamics, and it uses this illustration where they talk about a river. And they said a river is flowing kind of from one destination to another, and among it there's many like bends and curves and rocks and things like that. But the river continues to flow regardless of that. And so sometimes, you know, we might throw a boulder into the river, but what does the river do? The river just kind of goes around the boulder and it just keeps flowing, right? And so I I kind of looked at when I when I think about like God's will or those kind of types of things that are, you know, in our lives, is like, you know, you can't disrupt that, right? As much as you might try, you know, like you might throw a rock in there or you might make a bad decision or whatever. But at the end of the day, the river's gonna continue flowing in the direction it needs to go to as long as you're open to that. And so I really started looking at or what are the doors that are opening for me, right? And really kind of operating more like I call it a green light versus a red light. I used to be like, everything's a red light. All right, I got to stop, got to think about this, I got to consult with a bunch of people, I need to pray about it, I need to do all these kinds of things. Um, and instead, it's like, what are the doors that I actually see opening and how do I begin to step through those, right? Um and that's really uh kind of how it boiled down. So, but it was definitely a a struggle. And I think a lot of people struggle with that. Well, you know, whether it's whether it's God focused or whether it's just, you know, people that that they want to do something great with their lives, they want to have legacy, they want to have mission, they want to have purpose. Am I is this taking me off that trajectory, right?

SPEAKER_05 13:49

I think or there's external pressure from other things like parents and a societal expectations on them, it's hard to discern what you're supposed to do.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, even my, you know, my family, not my wife or or my kids, um, because my wife has always been my biggest fan and biggest champion, but but my um, you know, my rest of my family, they were always kind of naysayers, you know what I mean. So again, they had that mentality, go work at, go work for in a job, you know, stay there forever, don't take risks, don't take challenges, you know, um, you know, just kind of live status quo. Um, but I saw what that kind of brought, right? So I think you I think you have to have initiative, you have to have resourcefulness, you have to get out there and take some risks. Um in because I mean, what's the worst thing can happen? Okay, yeah, you could fail, you can make a mistake, you know, but all right, you you learn a lot from that, right? And um, at the end of the day, the river keeps flowing, and you know, but you got to get in the river if you're gonna, you know, if you're gonna reach the destination, right? You can't you can't sit on the banks.

SPEAKER_05 14:52

Yeah, yeah. And I you just reminded me of something you said earlier in your story with you observing uh your grandparents and the social contract that they adhered to, which you like what you like that's so as a millennial, I um I'm always either on the like maybe five years ago, I our generation was the target of like those hit pieces and in Forbes and all the you know, we were the lazy generation, or now it's uh Gen Z ears, now it's Gen Alpha, you know. Um but observing how the social contract has changed over the past couple decades, I think you you said that early on that you started noticing, wait a second, the loyalty, the the dedication and commitment that we used to have towards organizations and they would take care of us. You started seeing that in your youth falling apart. And that is a quite interesting like observation because some people would perhaps say, Oh, it's not gonna happen to me. I'm gonna try to stick to the script and maybe I'll come out of this with you know a steady job. But now it's just like wow, fast forward however many years now living in the AI like disruption, it's the social contract is way more different than ever.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Yeah. No, no, you're 100% right. And I mean, just as recently as last week, I had a friend call me who had been with a company for you know two decades and got let go, didn't see it coming, and got no severance, got nothing, right? And it's like he he dedicated a big portion of his life there, and all of a sudden it was gone like that. And he it wasn't because he was fired for cause or anything like that, right? So um, you know, I think that's the thing that and and I think organizations don't always realize that either, because it's almost like they expect, you know, okay, well, you're gonna sign this non-compete, right? And you're gonna be loyal to me, but I don't have to give you anything in return, right? And at any point in time, I can your employment's at will and I can get rid of you. And, you know, so people feel that, right? And then they wonder why, you know, people start to become the CEOs of their career and they kind of jump from organization to organization because, you know, either A, you know, the the, you know, the company they're with won't pay them market value anymore, right? Because they have HR principles in place that says I can't give you above a 3% or a 5%, right? So they got to go somewhere else to get their value. And then they maybe come back to that organization, you know, five years later to make what they should have made. Um, or you know, they just they don't see the commitment from the organization on whether it's their career development or the long-term um, you know, uh just just overall trajectory for their career, you know.

SPEAKER_05 17:37

And the the principles you're describing, like me and you have had so many conversations about these things over the last few years. And I know that you get it, but have you always gotten it? Like it talk to me a little bit about your discovery and your journey into that culture space, uh, that organizational development space. Uh how did that go uh after you switched over um to you left the pastoral thing behind? You moved into corporate. Talk to me about your journey into some of these things. Because today you're very passionate about it. A lot a lot of people know that you get it, but did you always get it?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

No, no, I didn't always get it, but I could observe it. Um, so my my first job out of college um was actually quite humorous. I so I I worked uh for a large telecommunications company. And um uh so at the time, the recruiter really sold me on this job, right? And so you're just out of fresh out of college, so you're looking for like, okay, what's this next opportunity? And it was supposed to be near my house. It turned out it was like an hour and a half drive away, but I needed a job, just got married, so I'm gonna go after it. So the recruiter described it as man, you're gonna be leading teams, you're gonna be doing presentations, you're gonna be doing all these things. I'm like, oh, this sounds fantastic. You're gonna have a seat at the table. And then I got into the job, and um, it was working in the procurement department basically as a secretary for the director of procurement and admin. Um, and what I found with the gentleman that I worked for, I mean, he was like super smart. Um, but his team, who were all very qualified people, people who, you know, they had MBAs, they were lawyers, they were contract managers. No matter what they brought to his desk, like he had to mark it up. Like it was never good enough. It was always a problem. And I saw what it kind of did to the morale of the people. Um, plus just working for this was kind of the funniest thing I'd ever heard. I remember one time he was going on a business trip and he said, Hey, Chris, while I'm gone, I'd like you to go into my desk and organize my paper clips. I'd like them all to point in the same direction. And I started laughing because I thought he was joking. And then he had this real serious look. He's like, No, I'm being serious. So that was kind of my first exposure of like, you know, you know, you know, he obviously had his own quirks, but he was also creating a culture within his team of like, like, you know, that this kind of perfectionism culture, and you know, all you know, afraid to make a mistake, and um, it just didn't bring the best out to people. Where he had a peer right next door that people love to work for that guy, right? And it really brought their best out. So I think that was some of the early exposure that I had to culture. Um the next opportunity though really was um, I you know, I got working in the energy field and uh particularly, you know, I worked with a lot of engineering construction companies, and our company was going through an issue with safety. Like we were having people that were getting injured out on the job side. And at the time, um, you know, there was this uh new research house called the zero injury philosophy, zero injury technique. And the all the idea about it was is like, how do we get people to change their beliefs about safety? Right. So, you know, really our experiences kind of shape our beliefs, and then our beliefs kind of shape our values, and then that really shapes how we act or behave. And so a lot of times if you think about what are what were people's experiences they had at construction sites? Well, people just get hurt, right? I mean, if you go way back in the day when you're building, like, you know, the Empire State Building, like they literally factor in how many people they thought would die on that project, right? That's unheard of today. Like you would never factor in someone dying on a project. But you almost had to believe that like, you know, zero injury was possible. So some of it was really kind of changing people's philosophy of can you work an hour injury free? Can you work a day injury free? Could you work 30 days injury free? And so it was really kind of one, changing people's experience and belief about what was possible. And we started to see the the progress. And so all of a sudden, you know, we went from um, if you know anything about OSHA recordable rates, a 2.0, which is terrible, down to, you know, like 0.10, right? In terms of people getting injured. And a lot of that had to do with. With one, people believing and in the values being demonstrated that you know, um, that that you can be safe. And some of that is it's it's changing behavior because what often happens on a construction project is it's schedule pressure. You got to get this done, take shortcuts, you know, it's it's the work, it's the work, the work, the work, the work versus hey, you got to do this thing safely first, you know, and then let's worry about schedule. So I think those were very formative for me of and probably a real world example that I had to apply all of this kind of you know, learning and research I was doing, you know, both in my master's and my PhD program around culture, of actually seeing it at work and seeing like the the tangible benefits that came out of that.

SPEAKER_05 22:44

Was that during your time at Day and Zimmerman?

SPEAKER_02 22:47

It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:48

Okay. So this is just for audience, that's like uh commercial nuclear uh and other energy, commercial energy solutions.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Correct. Yeah. So at the time I was actually working for a company called the Atlantic Group that Day and Zimmerman bought. Um, and then we kind of rolled that into Day and Zimmerman. Uh, but yeah, Day and Zimmerman did um, and and they still are the largest um maintenance and construction provider for existing nuclear energy assets. So, you know, think of um, you know, power generation, nuclear power plants across the country. They service just about all of those uh across the uh across the US. Uh they also did a lot of coal work, natural gas, and kind of some of those adjacent industries as well.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

Yeah, pretty important. And also uh there's a lot of questions I could go down in this space. Um, as I'm thinking through it, the safety um initiatives you led. How difficult was that to um work with people people that were like on the job that were frontline? I don't I don't want to use the term blue collar in a derogatory way, but rather someone who's out there that needs to get the job done, they don't want to get caught up in this fluffy corporate thing, you know. How how did you actually bring that to life for them?

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I think this is, you know, I talked earlier about you know having a nonlinear path um and and how things connect. I I one time heard a person say, you know, throughout life, it's almost like this bookshelf. And each shelf has a bucket, and in that bucket, you're depositing knowledge and information and experiences and networks and those kinds of things. At the time, you don't really know how all those pieces connect or if that will add any value. But at some point in your life, those buckets start connecting and you realize, oh wow, like I now see how all this comes together. And that's kind of been my story from an educational perspective. But even like working in construction, um, you know, because I came out of blue-collar roots, I never lost sight of that, right? I've always valued, you know, folks who can work with their hands, who can do trades, whether it be, you know, welding or carpentry or even working on a farm or a ranch, right? Those are things that that I've always valued. Um, so even though I came from more of a white-collar approach, I always valued those things. Um, I will say that, you know, and this is something I'll just do a little tangent here and then and then kind of answer your question. But sure, um I will say, you know, going to work in an engineering and construction business, um, it's kind of like any industry uh or or any way of life, is that people want to know are if you're legit and and they value and they they really kind of place their assessment whether you're legit is did you come up how they came up, right? And so most if you're an engineering construction company, most people are engineers or they came up in a construction trade, right? Well, I didn't come that way, right? I came more from a business, I'm a pastor who became a businessman, right? And now I'm coming into the business. And so I was fortunate enough that I had a few champions in my career that could see past that, right? And they could see the value of, hey, you know what? Chris thinks differently about these things. Like if we could take his perspective with the engineers and the construction guys, like we could actually do something great here, right? And so I was fortunate to have some of those kinds of champions in my life. But but this exists everywhere, like in academia, you know, it's it becomes, oh, well, what school did you go to? Right. Or what journal have you been published in, right? It even comes into cowboying. Are you a real cowboy? You know, did you grow up on a farm? You know, did you actually do this? You know, and uh I I kind of like the there's a song by Luke Bryan. He said, like, what makes you country, right? And it's like, it could have been you grew up on a farm on a tractor, it could be you were just in your truck listening to Alabama and and decided, man, I love the country way of life, and that's what brought me there, right? So we got to get past all this, like, you know, how did you get there? And versus like, you know, what what do you what do you bring to the equation and and and the value and and the the insight that you have, you know, in a particular particular domain. So I think for me, I was able to connect with a lot of folks who were who were, you know, craft trade, blue collar because of that. You know, at the end of the day, though, you know, you can't do it by edict, you can't do it by, oh, I'm gonna write a policy. We had to get out in the field. We had to train, we had to provide real world experiences, we had to show them videos, we had to, you know, show them, you know, here here are tools you can use to help make you safer, help them kind of unpack some of the real world experiences that they come in. What are the pressures that they feel when they're out on that job site? You know, and it could be, and it could even be things like, you know, I remember going to one job site one time and we were having a lot of eye injuries, and it was at a it was at a coal plant. And and there's this big duct, and it's just blowing coal dust out of this duct, right? I mean, just in people are walking by and just blowing coal dust. And I said, Well, somebody gonna fix it, and I said, No, they'll just run it till it breaks. I was like, oh wow. Well, we're wondering why we have eye injuries, right? Well, well, people see that, workers see that. You say, hey, you care about my eyes, but like you've created this condition where this stuff is just floating in the air, right? And so some of that is kind of understanding really from their perspective, like, is the organization um, you know, putting their money where their mouth is? Are they actually stepping up and doing the things to help keep us safe and and then really kind of working to get that buy-in? But it, you know, it takes time. And at the end of the day, you know, leadership is a lot of modeling the way. And so if a supervisor or manager doesn't model the behavior, like it just kills it like that, right? And that's really been my experience everywhere with with culture, is that you can say whatever you want, you can have great value statements or whatever, but what leaders actually believe is how they behave. And so you shouldn't expect different results from that. You know, you can say, hey, we value innovation and we value failing fast and being iterative, but then as soon as somebody fails and you say, Okay, well, who's getting fired? Like they certainly know, like, okay, you really don't value that. You just you just say that, right?

SPEAKER_05 29:18

Um Yeah, I love how you ground it in beliefs too. Um because I've seen people that struggle that try to behave in a way but they don't believe it. And it it's that kind of that internal force of you're gonna naturally fall back into your instinctive way. And if you don't believe in certain values, you can try really hard to kind of fake it, but you you're only gonna do so much. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Yeah, and and that's really where I've seen where culture fails, right? It's it's just lip service, right? It's it's uh it looks good, it sounds good, you know, but in until you can actually believe it value it, you know, as part of your values, you you behave in such a way, you reinforce it, you then and you know. I mean, uh a good example of this, um, you know, even even from a performance perspective, you know, we used to at Dane Zimmerman, we were always looking at continuous improvement and, you know, how do we get better? How do we get out in front? And um, but if you looked at the organization, the organization really valued the medic. And what I mean by that is that, you know, they they value the person that when the when the project went off the rails, that they could go and recover it. And so I used to have this boss, he's the president's name was Tim Reddington, and he was an uh old gruff bouler mick, had this really gruff voice. And and he used to say, he goes, We might not get it right the first time, but we can recover like a bastard. You know, that was like that was like his saying, you know, we we can recover it like that, right? We won't get it right the first time. So, but some of that was cultural, right? Is because when you looked at like who were the heroes of the organization that people talked about, it was the guys who had pulled a project out of the ditch, or we were losing all this money and they figured out how to recover it, versus how do we get in front of that kind of stuff? Like, you know, how do we how do we become a learning organization that can actually go implement these things so we don't go off the track, right? But that really wasn't what was rewarded or valued, or you know, where the folklore was built, right?

SPEAKER_04 31:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

So, you know, culture. I mean, you can you can pick up culture pretty quick in organization about, you know, who are the heroes? Who what are the stories that are told, you know? Um, those things tell you what they what they really value and what's important to them.

SPEAKER_05 31:40

Paint a picture of what the energy industry was like when you were in back then. I know you're back in in it in on the PE side of things now, but what was it like 10 or 15 years ago? What uh just again, uh I'm green. I don't know a lot of our audience members are green to that. Just what kind of pressures what like what was it like back then that informed the way you did business and and yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:08

Well, when I got into I got into nuclear in um 2001, and uh you know it was a it was a growing industry. Um we still had a lot of coal plants as well too. Um and and really around you know, right before uh the Fukushima incident happened, there was a lot of talk about kind of a nuclear renaissance because you had some aging, you know, plants and reactors and building, you know, new plants.

SPEAKER_05 32:33

Um you had uh you had people like Bill Gates also pushing for nuclear. I like I watched his documentary and and he was basically saying, oh, this is the future, and then Fukushima happened.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and you know, everybody got scared. I mean, it's kind of interesting if you if you back up to Three Mile Island, right, which probably the biggest event that we had in in the US, and you looked at the performance of those plants back then, and this kind of goes back to some of our culture conversation, the performance of the plants back then weren't great. I mean, you look at their safety numbers, um, you look at what often look at capacity factor, which basically means, you know, it when this when this unit can produce electricity, are they online to be able to produce electricity? Back then it was like 52%, like it was really low. Um so after after Three Mile Island happened, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission came in and was like, hey, we've really got to tighten things up. And to be competitive in that space, the nuclear industry created what they call INPO, which is the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators. And you kind of think of it as like a think tank that says, if we're gonna be able to be profitable in this very highly regulated market, we have to have superior performance. And so when you when you look at when that INPO was formed and the industry got together on how we can improve performance, now when you look at nuclear power plants, like their capacity factor is like 98%. Like you get almost online all the time. You look at their safety performance, you know, it's it's less than 0.1. You know, I mean it's it's it's phenomenal the change that happened from from Three Mile Island. And so we've been successfully operating nuclear power plants in the United States for for a long, long time. When Fukushima happened, obviously there were some design issues with Fukushima. They never expected the the diesel backup diesel generators to get flooded. There were some human errors that happened because some of the other plants in Japan shut down immediately. One guy decided not to shut it down, it was too late. Um, but that really kind of killed the industry at that point. Um, and additionally was becoming very cost prohibitive in the US to build new nuclear. You know, used to be able to build it for, you know, um several hundred million, and now we're talking billions and billions of dollars, 30 billion dollars to, you know, you know, put in, you know, a new plant down at Vogel. So cost became an issue, safety concerns became an issue, um, and and then nuclear was was kind of getting a bad rap in that they were not viewed as a clean energy, even though they're zero emission, even though they are clean energy. So now you had like solar and wind and other renewable resources who, when they actually produce the energy, um, they're in the red, but they get government subsidies to make them into the black, right? So they're actually not profitable in what they do. And so you imagine, you know, uh competing, you have a nuclear power plant where you're not getting those subsidies or benefits, and now you're trying to compete with a subsidized benefit. You know, it's it's it's a recipe for disaster. And so when I first got in the nuclear industry, everything was taken off. Then Fukushima happened, then we went through this, you know, some of the political aspects of this clean energy movement and nuclear not being included. So now they start shutting down plants. They're going through what they call the nuclear promise of how are we going to drive costs out of the out of the plants? Um, and so it wasn't a great time then to be in nuclear, which is really kind of when I pivoted my career at that at that point in time. Now it's all the rage again. And part of what's happened is people have realized that, hey, this is a clean energy. We can operate it safely. And oh, by the way, with AI and data centers, like we need power. Um and some of it is, you know, and and I know that people have a lot of different opinions, and even some of your viewers will have this as well. But you have to look at it, you know, I come from California, and so California uses a lot of solar um during the day, but around five o'clock, they crank up their natural gas plant. So their carbon footprint stays flat, and then all of a sudden at five o'clock, it just soars through the roof, right? And so sometimes you're not getting the whole story around that. It's like, you know, okay, you can't have enough battery storage to operate everything. You have to have base load power. You know, the wind doesn't always blow. Um, you know, and if it's blowing too fast, you know, you can't run. If it's going too slow, you can't run them. You know, if it's not the sun's not shining, you got to have base load power. And traditionally, that's been coal and then nuclear. And so if we want to get off coal, you're gonna have to have some type of base load power that can run 24-7 in in high capacity. Um, so I think people are becoming more open to that, um, which is really what created opportunity for me in this uh private equity firm that I'm I'm with, because um, the guys that started this firm, they were really focused more on oil and gas. And uh one of the founding partners, really before anybody was betting on nuclear, felt like, gosh, people are gonna have to come back to nuclear. And so he started what was called a zero-based fund. And it was focused on, you know, how do we um support and acquire some of these businesses that are part of the supply chain of nuclear infrastructure? All those that have to come in and do maintenance or electrical or welding work, or uh maybe they provide shielding or canisters or drums or whatever it is. How do we get around those companies that can help support our, you know, our existing nuclear assets for years to come? And he made the right bet because you know it it is it's coming back very, very strong and it's got a lot of uh political support now.

SPEAKER_05 38:07

Yeah, that's so interesting. The just like many things, good ideas have to go through the meat grinder of like the political lens of things and the political discourse and after they come out on the other side, so much is lost. And uh that's great to see that the tides are turning back to something because I had looked into it a little bit when I watched that documentary. I was like, oh, this is so interesting. And and now, as we're recording this today, like not to get political, uh the Strait of Hormuz is currently closed in Iran. There's an energy crisis in 20% of the world that gets their oil from there. And now, you know, this energy industry that you're in, I'm sure, is is taking note of all of these global forces at play. It's not just a domestic decision for policy or for environmentalism or anything. It's now you have to look at how world markets react to to things. And how has and I'm gonna I'm gonna get back to the next stage of your career, but since you went into uh your um current role at at Pelican Energy, how are you guys navigating this like constant shifting landscape?

SPEAKER_02 39:26

Yeah. Well, no, it's it's a good question, and and probably the guys on the oil and gas side could probably speak better to that. Um it was kind of funny. I was at a conference um uh about a month and a half ago, and there was a guy speaking, and he was saying, hey, you know, oil is going to get back over a hundred dollars a barrel. And so I went home and told my wife, I was like, you know what, I think we should like invest a hundred thousand dollars and uh buy some oil right now. And uh we didn't, and I really wish I would have because it's probably worth like about a million dollars right now.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Oh man. Short time. You just never know, right? On those kinds of things.

SPEAKER_05 39:57

You could have been you could have been part of like those secret options trading that happened right before uh the the announcement, you know.

SPEAKER_01 40:05

Uh it was a public conference. I thought it was public information, right? He's just giving his opinion.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Um, so no, I I think those are always things that um that we have to look at and navigate. Um, I think the biggest, you know, the biggest challenge that um any of these types of industries have is really around workforce, right? And um there's just not enough people who are going into craft trades to support those businesses. So, regardless of, you know, yeah, the economics play a factor because, you know, maybe it costs more to produce or less to produce or whatever it might be. And those things are always gonna have the ebb and flows in the world. But it's also like, how do we continue to maintain these assets? How do we build new assets when we don't have a lot of folks that, you know, want to go and be a welder or a carpenter or do some of those other kinds of trades. And so I think that's the continued tension that we have as we buy some of these businesses, is that there's such a need for like welders, for example, and then finding enough welders to be able to cover all the work that needs to get done across the country.

SPEAKER_05 41:12

It's crazy just seeing the shift from when I was going to undergrad and the focus on on the specific skills needed to thrive in the workplace to now and how like the push for trades. Um I can't imagine being a parent like sending a kid off to college right now and trying to figure things out for with things changing so quickly. Um you shifted careers at kind of the height of this economic uncertainty around nuclear. Where did you go and what happened?

SPEAKER_02 41:50

Yeah, so I had a uh a guy that I knew. Uh, we had done some work in the past when I was at Day and Zimmerman, and um he uh helped us build a couple of software applications. And he and I built quite a rapport because um we what we had kind of put together, the nuclear industry really liked it. And so we kind of proposed to Dan Zimmerman at the time, hey, why don't we do a joint venture and go sell this software and it gets us further embedded into our clients? But DNZ was kind of like, yeah, that's not really what we do. And so it it was kind of short-lived, but we always stayed in touch. And um, and this guy was kind of a serial entrepreneur, so he was always looking at new opportunities and data and information. And so in 2016, he got into drones and um originally started off with creating an app for kind of casual drone users to be able to um uh go on kind of like missions, and it was kind of a nonprofit organization where it's like, hey, we have a missing elderly person or a missing dog, and it would say, here's all the drone pallets in that area, let's get a drone in the air and let's go find them. Um his business then kind of evolved into like doing inspections with drones, like you know, buildings, bridges, and that kind of thing. And then when COVID hit, um, Walmart was kind of experimenting with this idea of last mile delivery. And so he went out, did a demo, um, and Walmart made a big investment in his company. And so he called me up one day and he was like, he's like, hey, Chris, um, I I got 12 employees. Um, I need about 2,000 in two years. Um I'm gonna be scale, we're gonna be at like, you know, several uh, you know, 100 to 1,000 Walmarts across the location. Would you come help me build this? And uh I was like, wow, this kind of sounds like a once-in-the-lifetime opportunity. And uh, and so I did it. I made the pivot and uh jumped over. Um, and it was a blast, like the first 18 months. Um, you know, we went from from 12 employees to over 600 employees. We opened up 38 locations with Walmart. Uh, but we were kind of like that rocket ship that never hit the second stage. Um, so we ended Up having a failed um uh raise with Goldman Sachs. It didn't work out. Um Amazon had kind of pivoted and had were was shutting down their drone program at the time, we're giving indications of that. Walmart hit the brakes, and so we opened up 30 locate 38 locations, we're now prepared to do a hundred locations the next year, and they opened zero.

SPEAKER_04 44:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

And so that went on for a few months and they actually opened zero that entire year. So I was brought in to help them scale. And when you're not scaling, then you don't need me. So yeah, it was unfortunate because I mean there was a lot of excitement about the business. Um, we we hired a lot of uh people that moved from a lot of different states to go support that, and and unfortunately, you know, it it fizzled out pretty quickly. Um, and and some of that, you know, there's there's a lot of factors around that. I mean, some of it was regulation, you know, regulation not moving as fast enough that as we needed it to move. We were kind of making a bet on, you know, that we could be kind of a an aggregator of software as opposed to actually having to build our own drones. And then we found that, you know, the drone manufacturers couldn't keep up. So other folks like Wing, who's backed by Google or Zipline, who's a Silicon Valley-based uh uh firm, they were really focused on building the technology. And at the end of the day, that that play is what won uh the day. So uh I know Walmart is still doing drone delivery. I think they're doing it with uh with Wing uh now. So um so it's cool the idea is still there. It just didn't quite fizzle out, or it fizzled out and didn't quite uh hit the Starship status that I was hoping it might. But learn the touch.

SPEAKER_05 45:36

I mean, uh me and my team were there, and it it felt like there was so much energy and momentum in telling the story of what you guys were doing, and yeah, ultimately that just amazing people, talented. You guys really had to pull in a lot of talent to make it happen. And uh as the storytellers for a very short time of that in that season, it felt like we it was a privilege to be a part of that, and it was intoxicating, like that that startup feel. And I've been a part of that startup uh world before. Um, that's when we met. Uh, and um there's something about the culture of a startup that gets you believing that okay, we're gonna make it. And what what kind of struggles did you have in hiring and retaining uh talent and especially when there's a large amount of pressure from someone like Walmart and potentially other investors in the room that are pushing things maybe too fast?

SPEAKER_02 46:41

Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. You know, and um, you know, hindsight they say is always 2020 or maybe 2030. I don't know what it is, but it's it's you you see things a little bit different when you kind of step back. Um and I think that there probably were some pivotal times that, you know, we were very focused with Walmart on, you know, what it appeared to me is that Walmart was trying to beat Amazon, right? So it was like if if Amazon was going to open a location, Walmart's gonna open 10, right? So we felt that pressure and our and our technology really wasn't ready for that yet. So it was a huge kind of Herculean manpower effort to get that going. And the hope, the hope was is that somehow they'd meet in the middle. So it's like we get all this manpower going, we get the technology going, and then eventually you don't need as much manpower, and the tech takes over, but we never could quite reach that in time before that happened. Whereas other companies like Wing and Zippline, I mentioned, they were focused on the tech and they were obsessed with the tech, and the tech won, you know, at the end of the day. Um, but probably, you know, some of the biggest challenges even with finding people is you had to break down sometimes people's barriers or mindsets around, you know, where can someone even work? So I know it was like, you know, we were coming out of COVID, and so remote work was still somewhat new uh to people. But there was, you know, we were based in Virginia Beach, and Virginia Beach is not a big tech hub, you know. And so if you're gonna get a developer that's in Seattle or somewhere or in the Silicon Valley, they don't want to relocate to Virginia Beach because if this thing doesn't work out, like they can't just walk across the street and get a job, right? So some of that was trying to break down some of those barriers. Um, I also found that a lot of startups early on to attract people, you know, they'll give them a small percent of the company or something like that. You know, we tried to work out some, you know, kind of like phantom type shares or whatever, but they were never really quite as tangible as what some of these other startups would actually give you. I'm gonna give you a half a percent or a percent in the company. And so sometimes attracting people to come out of those startup world that, hey, I've got something that could be, you know, a rocket ship and come work for us was a challenge. Um, certainly our brand and and the recognition we were getting around our brand was helpful, you know, in finding these individuals. And there were also a lot of like drone pilots, if you will, who had graduated from places like Embry Riddle and other places that were looking for jobs. And so it's it was kind of a new industry. And so it's like you they get this degree and they're certified to fly drones, but then there's nowhere to actually go fly them or do it. So we kind of create that avenue. So we did attract a lot of drone pilots, but we struggled more on the tech talent because it was, oh, we wanted them in Virginia Beach, and we had to kind of overcome some of those barriers that hey, they can kind of work from anywhere, had to get competitive with pay, had to get competitive with benefits, all those kinds of things that they would get um in in in other places. Um so, but I I definitely think, you know, we were probably way too aggressive, not probably we were, we were way too aggressive in just the ramp of people we were trying to bring into the organization. And just, I mean, you can only you can only eat so much, right? You can only assimilate so much at a time. Um, and then it just it just be kind of becomes overload.

SPEAKER_05 50:00

What did you learn about having uh healthy amount of friction in in those kind of high-intensity creative environments? So like when the deadlines are coming, when the fundraising round fails, like what was the lesson that you took from being in those rooms with really smart people that just believe something differently than you?

SPEAKER_02 50:27

Yeah. Well, you know, I wish I could say that it was healthy friction. Because I I I don't think we had healthy friction. Uh I think we had unhealthy friction. And that I think that was some of the some of the challenges, right? Um, you know, and I think that's one thing as a leader that we always have to be mindful of of like what's the environment we create, whether we're the CEO, the CFO, whatever the position of leadership or managing a team, how do you create that environment where people can have differing views and you're willing to kind of explore those views, right? Um, and not just shut them down. So I think that was uh I think that was some of the challenges we had even as a leadership team. You know, I don't think that we were really aligned well, which I think affected culture. I think it affected direction and a lot of the things that we were doing.

SPEAKER_05 51:17

Yeah. I have seen that in organizations I've worked in, and and I just don't know how to operate or how to how to infuse a level of health and and healthy dialogue into that when it's like, oh, this is a deep-rooted issue.

SPEAKER_02 51:31

Um, my first leadership team meeting, I actually saw it and uh and I was I was kind of shocked. I I'm I'm in the meeting and there's something comes up and there's kind of this argument that goes on, and one of the leaders gets mad and throws his stuff down on the table and walks out of the room for like 10 or 15 minutes. I was like, what in the world's happening? Then he comes back into the room like nothing had ever even happened. And I remember I remember calling my wife because she was working on selling our house in Pennsylvania where I was had already started my job, and I was like, I might have made the wrong decision. Like this this feels a little challenging, right? Um, and I mean, you some lot of times people like will look at Steve Jobs, for example. And look, Steve Jobs can you know did a lot of great things, and and he might be um romanticized more than he should because he passed away and all those kinds of things. But most people that work with him know like he was really challenging to work with. And a lot of people wouldn't take the elevator, they would take the stairs because if you're on the elevator with him, there's a good chance you might get fired, right? So he didn't have the greatest culture, and some people say, Well, yeah, but look at the success he had. Yeah, he did at, but at what cost? At what expense, right? Um, and uh, you know, that's for me, that's it doesn't align with my values, right? Of of how I want to lead and treat people, you know?

SPEAKER_05 52:54

Yeah, yeah. Uh so I could have a whole podcast on this with you because I struggle with our society's infatuation with romanticizing morally bankrupt leaders that we're wishing that they're going to come through for some really amazing breakthrough. Um I'm not gonna name names because I don't want to like be polarizing, but we know there's all these leaders in our society that we will immediately just um look past a lot of character flaws because they're bringing something to the table that is incredible. And I think Steve Jobs is his his story's been retold so many times through books and movies and stuff. There's still like I have a device in my pocket that is was made possible by his bullish nature of stubbornness and stuff. So a lot of people think that the end is is like worth it, that um for the journey that it takes to create that innovation, that breakthrough. If we're okay letting go a couple of character flaws, um we're gonna keep doing it. But I don't know if that sends the best message to our society um and if that erodes like a certain level of integrity and boundaries that we're willing to tolerate. So um I don't know, we'll see. I think um we have a lot of those personalities today in our world that we're gonna see at the end of their life, like what their legacy is gonna be. Um I just know that okay, those are one in a million, one in a billion kind of leaders. Uh the day-to-day leaders that are looking at them and thinking, oh, I can be that way because I'm I'm changing the world. No, you're not changing the world. You're just you're you're affecting 20 to 100 people max, but just don't be a jerk in the process. Um that's my soapbox moment.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

No, no, I mean, and it's a good one. I mean I I guess in some ways, you know, Steve Jobs had a reputation. Um, I think Elon Musk has a reputation, right? Um, but a lot of people when they go to work for those companies like SpaceX or Tesla or whatever, they kind of know what they're getting into because they've they've heard about it. You're gonna work your tail off, and this is whatever's gonna happen. But guess what? The resume you're gonna have when you come out of there is gonna do it. So they kind of know going in, eyes wide open, of this is the leader. And I think even with Steve Jobs, there was some of that as well. What I really struggle with are leaders that act like that's not who they are, and we're this great culture, but that's really who they are, right? Where it's a bit deceptive, right? Of like now, like I'm walking into something and like, wow, I didn't even realize this is what I was gonna, what I was walking into. I would also say, too, to your point about where people are more forgiving. There was an article on this many years ago that talked about like the sexier the brand, the more forgiving people are, you know? And so if it's a sexy brand or it's a popular brand, I think you even see this with like athletes and other people. Like, you know, they can have big indiscretions, and at first it's it's a big bombshell, but then you know, a year or two goes by and it's completely forgotten, right? Because it's almost like the entertainment value that they bring to us and satisfaction, we kind of overlook that. I think it's the same with like whether it's an iPhone, right? And we say, oh gosh, iPhones are made in China and China has oppressive, you know, labor policies, and like, and you know, but we kind of overlook it because like this, the the iPhone's my whole ecosystem, everything's there. I love what it does for me, so I can kind of like compartmentalize that out, right? So I I do think that that that's part of our psyche, right? And I think that's the justification or rationalization that leaders sometimes make is that I can be a jerk because jobs was a jerk or Musk or whoever was a jerk, and I'm gonna change the world. And to your point, you probably aren't. And and number two is that why don't you change the world and still be a good human being, right?

SPEAKER_05 57:08

Yeah, yeah. And it it'll come at a cost, maybe, um, of maybe things not happening as fast as you want it to, maybe not even in your lifetime, which is like letting go of your ego, even. Um, but I don't know. I just I can see the collateral damage of a of a bad leader. And then what what does that do in the as a ripple effect? And then back to you know, your faith background and my faith background, I can see the collateral damage in those spaces that are supposed to be safer, that are supposed to be people with character and integrity and following a certain set of values, um, but they're not living that out. So um I I mean you have talked a lot about this. You leave drone up. Where do you go next?

SPEAKER_02 57:59

Uh yeah, I went to work for well, I actually I started doing some independent consulting work. Um, and that got me connected to uh a consulting firm um uh out of Richmond, Virginia. And um, and really how I got connected to them was um there was a private equity firm that was uh in the nuclear space, and Fahrenheit was looking for somebody that had some nuclear background. I had met the founder, he remembered I did, and so I did a project for him. Um so then once I did the project for them, um, the founders approached me and said, Hey, we'd actually like you to join the firm, but we want to sell the firm. And they said, we'd really like you to help us accelerate our growth. Let's get to a place where we can get to an exit and then um and then move forward. And so that's what we did. Um it was a great experience. We went in there and grew the business by about 20%, got them to a great exit. Um, and then they kind of became part of a larger uh platform that had consulting and tax and other types of finance things and did that for a while uh until I pivoted over into uh uh into private equity.

SPEAKER_05 59:09

Okay. So but in your time at Fahrenheit, you were also helping uh clients through MA, right?

SPEAKER_02 59:16

We did, yeah. Yeah. So we we did everything from like, you know, it could just be uh, you know, we tend to work with like lower middle market companies. So think companies that um, you know, somewhere up to $100 to $200 million uh in in revenue value, some smaller, some some bigger. Um and so we would help them with HR, finance, strategy, those kinds of things. And then we had a private equity arm where if they were maybe it's helping them on the diligent side uh to uncover aspects of the business or post-integration where they needed support or first 100 days, kind of get that organization set up. Uh, those were a lot of things that we did. So it's kind of a natural progression for me to kind of go from there into this, you know, private equity firm and help them evaluate businesses and then kind of work with them kind of post-integration uh to get those businesses rolling.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:09

I liked the example that you gave about the bookshelves, I think, or or the books, and then you're collecting this knowledge and bites of wisdom along the way, and then you don't know later on how they're all going to overlap and how are you gonna use them? And now today you're in the private equity space that is in like you mentioned, in the energy field, both gas and oil and nuclear, yeah, and it's bringing together a lot of your background. How does creating healthy cultures fit into that? And now that you're um looking at organizations that could become part of the portfolio, how does is culture a competitive advantage?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:58

Yeah, yeah. Well, before I answer that, uh let me let me go back to the point you made about the buckets connecting, because you know, when I first when I got my first job, you know, outside of like pastoral work, I think what helped me be successful was the fact that when I would when I worked as a pastor, I had to speak publicly, I had to lead teams, right? I had to cast vision, I had to do all of those things that were, you know, transferable skills. And so it really helped me early on in my career. It's like, oh, this guy can speak well, he can go to conferences, he can do training. Like, so all those things that I learned in my early church work actually translated well. I also think it translated in the aspect of my passion around culture too, right? Of like viewing human beings as more than just cogs in a wheel, right? We're made in the image of God. Like we need to people need to be able to flourish. Um, and then to your point is, you know, when I was in the nuclear industry, I had no idea I'd spend 20 years there. Um, had no idea I'd go into the technology space and a startup and then go into into consulting. But what I found is all those pieces have connected because I mean, there's a lot of businesses that I've worked with that are startups, right? And how do I help them and accelerate them? Some that have a technology focus, right? Um, and then others that we work with, even on the private equity side, are much more field services labor intensive, which is what Day and Zimmerman did. So again, it's one of those, to your point, of all of those kinds of pieces um connecting together. I think on the culture side, I mean, I honestly think in private equity, this is probably an area that people don't focus enough on, right? Um, because most private equity folks are, you know, they're investment bankers or, you know, they that's kind of where they came out of. Um, one thing I would say about Pelican is that all of those guys came out of the field. So they have some appreciation for, you know, what it is to actually work in the business. And, you know, they're not just spreadsheet jockeys, if you will. Um, but at the end of the day, I mean, you know, people are looking at the numbers, you know, how well is the business doing? How well is it gonna, you know, how much is it gonna grow? What's the EBITDA? You know, what do I think I can sell this company for? At what multiple in three to five years? And of course, every deck you see from someone selling their company, it's always a hockey stick, right? It's like, we've been doing this growth here, now we're gonna go boom, it's just gonna, you know, accelerate. Everyone I've seen, I've never seen anyone say, we're gonna stay flat or we're gonna go down, right? Um, but the problem is is what founders don't realize when they do that hockey stick, you know, the PE firm's gonna hold you to that hockey stick, right? And that's gonna drive a lot of your earnouts or incentives that you're gonna get later on in terms of the financial value. Um, so I don't think we look enough at culture when we look at these organizations and are they set up to succeed? And what is the founder's role going forward? Because, you know, a lot of times in businesses that we're buying, you know, you could have a founder that's like, hey, I just want to retire and get out of the business. Um, and they may put him on a one or two year earnout, you know, he or she might have that earnout period and then they and then they walk away. Um, others, you know, hey, they've reached kind of as far as they can get in terms of, you know, uh private capital, other capitals that they can uh, you know, exhaust. Now they need some private equity funds to really kind of grow to the next level and make those investments. That's kind of a different strategy. Um, or there's some that, you know, they could be a turnaround case. It's like, you know, this is a a business that's got a lot of opportunity, it just doesn't have the right leadership or management. But I think going in is understanding, you know, one, what is that culture? What's the founder's role in that company going forward? Because, you know, you have somebody who started a business, you know, their identities are very tied up into their business, right? And so when you come in and start saying, hey, your baby's a little ugly, like they get pretty offended by that, or you start making a change and they're like, well, it was perfect when I had it, or what why are you why are you doing that? You know, and yeah, you're changing my company, you're changing my culture. Um, so I see that a lot. Um, so I think you have to really have really candid conversations about what's the founder's role going forward. And we're not just talking about on an org chart, but are they now an ambassador? You know, are they an advisor? Are they a champion? Are they going to exit? Are they still gonna run the business? And with what what what kind of controls or oversight? Because in the past, you know, they probably had no control uh or no, no one really kind of governing what control they could put on the business, right? So that I think is probably the biggest culture shock when you buy a company is like what does that look like for the founders who are running the business? Because we do buy a lot of founder-led uh businesses.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:40

I I had a lot of experience um through uh my work I do with culture wise, uh telling their stories. And oftentimes there's that trajectory of we started this, it grew very fast, and then it the identity shifts a little bit from the founder, but it's still very grounded in the founder. So my response. To you is this. I think, and you know this PE private equity gets a lot of batteries in the press. You know, when you tell people you're working in private equity, you might get a response like, oh, are you gonna come in and buy the business that I love and I've known all my life and strip it of what makes it unique and make it an inferior product because it's you know five percent cheaper? Um what would you tell that skeptic that might be listening, um, that's different about how you approach this process, especially knowing that you've seen again from your grandparents' generation to now this disloyal kind of spirit in corporate America that if you're a cog and I could strip you, take you out of the company and save five percent, you're gone. Like, what would you tell that skeptic right now?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:00

Yeah, well, I I would tell them that in many cases they're not wrong they're not wrong, right? And we do see that a lot in in private equity. Um, you know, I I just for me on my for me personally, um, there are things that private equity is involved in that I'm like, why are you guys involved in that? You know, like I I I there was a local like uh dentist that I had, right? And every time I go back, there was a different dentist. And I was like, what's going on? Like, how come you can't keep dentists? And they got bought up by a private equity company that was consolidating all these dentists, right? They're doing like car washes, veterinarians, like, you know, all these kinds of things.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:35

HVAC.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:36

Yeah, yeah. So my service feels like it's going down, right? Because they're trying to um to squeeze the buck. So that absolutely does happen, right? Because they are looking at, you know, how do you drive efficiency optimization, improve EBITDA, grow revenue, you know, so they can get some kind of multiple. So I will say that in some cases, private equity has done damage. And um, and and I think it's created a lot of frustration with people. Um, what I like about the firm that I'm with today is that, uh, and I think some of this comes again from their roots of being in the field. Um they really it's kind of an interesting dynamic because sometimes, like when they buy a business, I, you know, I can see some of the issues. And so I'm I get into like fix it mode and I'm like, let's go help them get this, you know, where they're more like kind of holding me back and saying, hey, like, let's let them kind of work through this. Like, you know, they want them to be entrepreneurial. They don't want to create a lot of bureaucracy with decision making. They want them to feel like they have an identity and a strategy and how can they grow? And now you're under different ownership. So what were the what were the constraints you had before? And now how can we help you accelerate? Now, at the end of the day, do they want to see growth? Yes. Like they want to see top line and bottom line growth, 100%. And um, but the truth is, like, you know, if you have a healthy organization, if you've got a good strategy, like those things should, you know, uh occur uh somewhat naturally, um, depending on the market that you're in. And so I think it's just really the approach because I I have definitely seen private equity firms where it's like every month it's just a grueling board deck and they're just hammering you on the numbers all the time. And what are you gonna do different or how are you gonna make cuts or whatever, versus like, hey, what do we need to do? And if we need to do a J curve where we got to need to invest a little bit, so we're on the numbers are gonna go down a little bit so that we can get a bigger, you know, ROI in the future, then let's make those kinds of investments, right? So I don't think all private equity are created equal, but I do agree that you know there are some out there that we've we've experienced, you know, as consumers that have not made the world better.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:48

Yeah, you look at the back of your favorite like sriracha, you know, bottle, and then like, wait, the ingredients changed. What happened? Oh, PE, you know, it's messed it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:59

Why are they in sriracha?

SPEAKER_05 1:10:01

You know, just leave it alone. I think maybe maybe there is out there a model for redemptive PE that that holds intention the values of human dignity and human capital and excellence and efficiency and synergy. I don't know. If you if that exists, it may or not exist for long before you know greed or whatever kind of sneaks in there. But um I'm sure whoever cracks that and then also can crack the messaging behind that will get a lot more buy-in from public uh sentiment, I think.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:48

Yeah. Well, it kind of comes back, and and you you'll remember this from from your studies at Messiah when we uh did some research with uh Jeff Van Duzer, right? And one of the things I liked about how Van Duzer would paint out when he talks about business, is he said, you know, really a business fundamentally exists to produce a product or or service that allows a community to flourish, right? I mean, if you think about it, we all need businesses, we need dry cleaners and restaurants and grocery stores and all those things for just humans to survive, right? And if we have more businesses that think about like, you know, what are the things that I'm doing that allow my communities to flourish as opposed to taking advantage of my community so that I can benefit? And that's a human nature issue. That's a human dilemma we have, right? So I think that's where, you know, having, you know, my faith lens has helped inform that around, you know, like there's gotta be more to business than just purely, you know, uh increasing, you know, value to shareholders, you know. Right. As Milton Friedman would say, right? It's gotta do more than that, right? It also has to help communities flourish and allow those people to engage in creative and meaningful work. So to your point, you know, if if private equity firms or other investors can come along and say, gosh, I see a really great business here that has potential that could even have more impact in their communities and even adjacent communities, like that could be significant. And oh, guess what? Yeah, we can make a profit, but that's the natural kind of byproduct of building a great business, right? Yeah. You know, it's the the it just naturally occurs versus like, I'm just gonna squeeze this thing for everything it's worth. You know, everybody hates that company now because of what they've become, but yeah, we've we've made you know great money.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:33

And I remember I remember quoting Simon Sinek in one of my papers that I probably submitted to your class and the infinite game and uh with game theory, and that that profit in a business becomes the fuel to continue the infinite game. So if the absolutely if the infinite game is we want to just sustain this uh flourishing communities and it never ends. So there's no end here. So there's no winning. Um so how do we sustain it? Well, the fuel is the profit, and then it allows you to grow the vision. So again, not a lot of people I think think about business that way, but I think a lot of people if they thought if they were introduced to this would agree, like, wow, that sounds great, you know. But it like what you said, human nature, it's hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:19

Yeah. Well, you know, Michael Porter at Harvard, I mean, he he actually gave a great lecture on this, and he said, you know, businesses are really probably in the best position to solve some of the biggest human challenges, right? Because to your point, they can do things at scale. Because as a nonprofit, you know, you're always in this kind of fundraising or this, but if you can make something that can produce a profit that you can then reinvest back into the business to grow it at scale, like, you know, it can become infinite, right? In terms of what it could solve, right? So we need more people being thinking about business in terms of, you know, like what's the mission? What is it that I'm trying to actually solve for? Some human issue or challenge that my product or service can can you know create that create value that would allow humans to flourish. And guess what? Profit will become a natural byproduct of that, you know. But but sometimes we get the equation backwards, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:14:12

Agreed, agreed. Um, so we've quoted a couple academics. Let's shift to the this thing that's been in the background of your career is this desire to be in higher education. Um tell me a little bit about like why you've just had that be a part of your career journey. Um and I want to also talk about the state of higher ed, but just give me a little intro how how you got into it because that's how we met. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:42

Well, you know, my original thinking was like when I was gonna be a pastor, I thought, you know, gosh, sometimes being a pastor can be tough. And I never really liked the idea of living off of, you know, people's donations. So I was like, I need to, I need to work. So nothing against pastors that live off donations, but I I struggled with it. So I was like, you know, if I could maybe I could teach or be a professor and that could kind of supplement, you know, uh what I would do at a church. So that was the original thought behind it and um and why I got into a PhD program, which was probably the toughest and craziest thing I ever did, and not sure I'd do it again. But again, it's uh one of those things looking back, it's it's opened up a lot of doors and opportunities I didn't expect to have. Um so when I finished um my PhD program, I was looking really kind of for an outlet to be able to do that. And um, so I really kind of started moonlighting as an adjunct professor and then later as a professor. So I always kind of had one foot in academia and one foot in the business world. Um what's interesting is the pace at academia is so slow that I could do side hustles, you know, I could, I could consult, I could work because it's like like we don't move very fast over here. Like, so you know, I'm I was used to being in business where you just go, go, go. Um, and but I also saw it as a way to like, how do I give back, right? How do I kind of invest in the next generation of leaders? Is there, you know, in in a meaningful way? Um, so that's really what's led to that. So I, you know, I've been teaching in higher ed now since probably like 2014 or so.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:14

I distinctly remember you being one of those champions that you talk about that you mentioned earlier on, to me specifically. Um, you know, this has been brought up in other episodes in this podcast, but sometimes you need people to tell you, hey, you think about things differently. Or I think you know, you'd be really good at X or Y. I distinctly remember feeling a lot of imposter syndrome doing an MBA. Like, I'm a filmmaker. Why am I doing an MBA? That and I think I remember when I met you and and kind of you wooed me into the MBA program. You kind of I don't think it was like fake hype, unless it was and it was really good. Um just this idea of after you got to know me a little bit to kind of champion me into someone who I wasn't yet, like I hadn't become that person yet, but and I still am becoming, I think, that person. But I thought that was really cool. So for you, how important was it to impact the next generation, especially with the state of higher ed being the way it is? Like why are you still doing that today?

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Yeah, yeah. Well, no, it's a great question. Um and it is becoming more challenging, I would say. Um you know, I had a professor one time that said when I was going through my PhD program, he was like, you know, very shortly you're gonna be able to call yourself a doctor. But he said, you know what's more, even more cool than that is that you think like a doctor, you ask questions like a doctor, you you probe, you know, you listen, you know. Um, and it's really kind of this whole aspect of matriculation of the process of becoming. It's like the caterpillar, kind of becoming the butterfly. And that's really kind of what education was supposed to be, right? It's like this, like this matriculation of becoming, but we've lost that, right? And so you don't really find a lot of students, and that's one of the things I enjoyed about having you in the program, is because you wanted to eat up everything that you were, you know, able to take in, right? You wanted to kind of think about it deeply, process it. How does that impact how you think today? How's that gonna shape you for the future? You don't have a lot of students to do that, right? A lot of it is I want to come in, get my assignments done, they're gonna use AI tools, right? So now you're figuring out how to engineer assignments where they maybe could use AI, but still use critical thinking skills. Um, and they just want to get it done, get a grade, and get out, right? And it really only kind of hurts them in the long run, right? It's kind of like when you go to the gym, it's like, it's like we want instant results, but you know, it takes years of like, you know, it's a long obedience in the same direction as Eugene Peterson would say. It's like you just gotta keep grinding, keep grinding, keep grinding, and eventually you see those kinds of results. And so I think we've lost a lot of that, you know, as a society. You know, I don't know how it is in in the UK or other places, but particularly in the US, we've lost a lot of that. So you don't see as many students coming in. There's still a few. I might have two or three in a class of 30 that have that.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:31

I think um it's interesting hearing you say that because I look back at who I was back then. The what drove me to do the program was probably unconventional uh motivation. So um at the time I thought I was gonna rise up in leadership in an organization that I'm no longer a part of, and I thought, okay, this will be a tool. And of course, a lot of people see graduate degrees as a ticket to higher pay, higher roles in an organization. And then I'm also thinking, okay, I'm going to an online graduate school program. So already the people that know the graduate school world is if you're not going to the top 20 business programs in the country, you're not really going to gain the benefits of the social capital of being associated with that, with that school. I also had to pay my way through through it. I didn't have like a sponsorship from like my job that sometimes you have the uh you know tuition reimbursement. So I think when I got there, I was very much motivated by learning and and also not knowing what the heck an MBA was gonna do for me either. Uh because then shortly after I left that organization and I'm like, I remember calling you and I don't know if you remember this conversation. I said, Hey, I'm not working there anymore. I'm struggling with whether I should continue the MBA. Um and you know, ultimately decided it was right. But then the last like uh year and a half was all just motivated by education. Like that I don't think I was motivated by that in my undergrad at all. Um I was just that's what you do. That's life, life stage number four, you know. Uh so I think that's probably the difference. I look back at that time and really it was definitely hungry for knowledge. And even today, I sometimes wonder if I were to be a little bit honest. I wonder, like I have this knowledge, it's great. I don't know where it fits necessarily, but it's kind of like that bucket analogy that maybe one day in the future it will come into complete sense, you know, the dots will connect.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:49

Um, I think it already has for you. I mean, one, some of the networks, right? We're having this conversation, right? So it's created networks, opportunities for you to work with other businesses, you know, you're starting your own business, thinking through strategy, all those kinds of things that, and and I think you'll see broader value of that. But I I do think you bring up an interesting point. Um now, look, if you can go to a top-tier school or whatever, great, go to that. That's not everybody's path or journey, right? Um, you know, sometimes people can't get into those. I couldn't get into one of those. I couldn't afford one of those, right? So I had to go a different path. Um, I would also say, and and and and I I'm not saying this to sound braggadocious, but when I worked in Philly with some folks at Day and Zerriman who were all Wharton MBAs, there were some of those guys I could run circles around, right? Now there were others that were worth their salt. Now, it because it's not just where you go to school, it's also the athlete, right? And how much you put into it, right? So just because you go to Wharton or Harvard doesn't mean that, you know, you're spectacular, right? Um, it's really what did you put into that education regardless of where you went. So some of it, you know, as as I kind of mentioned earlier, this is a bit of my soapbox, is that, you know, people like to uh kind of compare, oh, well, I went to this school as some sort of validation. But at the end of the day, it's it comes down to initiative and work ethic and what did you put into where you went. That's the big deal. Um, you know, I think in terms of the imposter side that you talk to, I think everybody struggles with that everywhere we go. Every new job we walk into, you know, it's like, oh my God, like I'm gonna be found out, right? They're gonna but you know, we learn through imitation, right? There's there's actually a scripture passion I love about that where it talks about how that we are to imitate Christ, right? There's this idea that the more that we imitate, the more we become, right? So, like when we were young kids, how do we learn how to eat? Because our parents would like, you know, they like we learn through imitation, right? And eventually we become. Um, so it's like, you know, even if you want to be a cowboy, how do you become a cowboy? You learn through intimidation or or imitation, I should say. Intimidation. Not intimidation. I can be intimidating too. Uh you learn through imitation till you actually become that, right? Um, and I think people worry about that and people get weird about, well, you're an imposter, you're you didn't come up the way I did, you know, kind of like the whole construction thing we talked about. But at the end of the day, you know, you you you decide that you want to learn something and you you become a master at it, and um, but you got to start somewhere, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:22

Yeah, yeah. So back to uh this you gave me a great segue um back to this uh idea of you and your cowboy identity. Um I wanna ultra ego. Ultra ego. I I still remember when we were at one of those drone-up video shoots that you had your boots on. I'm like, oh, that's Chris, you know, and then boom, I I don't know how you're gonna show up today, and boom, I see the big hat. I want to shift gears to this personal slash passion project of yours. You've developed this ranch brand, Twin Tiers Ranch. Tell me a little bit about it. Where did it come from? Um, and why is it important for you?

SPEAKER_02 1:25:06

Yeah, no, it's I I appreciate you asking about it. Um so originally I had bought some property with no intention to make it into a ranch or farm. When I moved to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania has a big hunting culture. And so everybody I work with, you know, they hunt white-tailed deer, black bear, turkey, those kinds of things. And so um growing up, my grandfather did that when he my grandfather's originally from Pennsylvania, um, but you know, he was older and really didn't have any interest. I didn't learn how to hunt when I was in California. So I really learned from guys in Pennsylvania. So my son, um, Mason, he, since the time he was young, um, he wanted to be out there hunting with me. So probably as young as four years old, he was out there, you know, he was in the blind. He wasn't shooting anything, but you know, he was in the blind. And then as he got older, you know, he got a crossbow and rifle, and then he's become a really good hunter where now it's a competition, and he always seems to do better than I do uh each year with the size of the deer and getting more deer. But we started looking for property at the time because we were hunting on these like public game lands. And if you've ever hunt on public game lands, it's I think it's like the worst experience, you know. We would go out in the utter corner of the game lands and think up in a tree stand and think, oh, there's nobody out here. And then somebody would roll up on their ATV and drink beer and be loud and like that eat us, you know, it was terrible. So um, so I started looking for hunting property. And in Pennsylvania, it was pretty expensive because it was going through the natural gas and shell movement. And uh, but if you went over to just over the border to New York, there was a moratorium on all that, and you could buy land pretty cheap. And so I found some land over there that I we originally bought as um as hunting property. And then once I got there, I was like, gosh, this can be so much more. Um, it was interesting when I bought the property. There was the the deed was it was probably like that thick of like who had owned it, the history of the property, you know, everything from, you know, growing potatoes to a Christmas tree farm to they had a deer lease. I mean, all kinds of different things. And I thought, you know, how can I kind of bring some of that back to life and and and also kind of merge some of these passions that I've always had about, you know, potentially ranching or farming. Um, it was always kind of out of, I never really thought when I was young I could be a farmer because, you know, there was just it was land was so expensive in California. Like you just, you know, the cost to buy land, tractors, like that just seems so unrealistic to me. And now that I've gotten older, I'm in a place where I can do that in New York. It's obviously a lot cheaper to buy the property there than it is in California. Um, so that's what really started. Now, what's interesting about my family roots is that my my grandfather, my great grandfather, they were all farmers. Um, they had a thousand acre farm um in Pennsylvania, in Tawanda, Pennsylvania, which is just about 30 minutes from where my Property is today. They had moved to California in the 1950s. And because my great-grandfather had was in World War I, had some health issues, that kind of thing. And when they landed in California, California was still very agricultural. So like their first jobs were working farms in California. So it was always kind of part of kind of my culture and DNA. Even my mom, even though my mom dad got a divorce, she got remarried to a rodeo guy. He rode bulls and did, you know, roping and they ran a ranch in San Jose. So I'd go out there every week and ride horses. So it was always kind of part of who I was, but it was kind of suppressed, if you will. And it was always something I had a desire for. So once we bought the property, we started developing it and we put a pole barn on it and uh a pond and a pasture, and then you know, started raising um, you know, growing hay, and uh, and then we've looked at potentially growing hops because there's a lot of breweries that are popping up in that area. So that works pretty well. Um, I'd like to do cattle, like to do black Angus cattle. Um, you know, that uh I'd probably need a little bit more property for that. So I'm looking into that. Um, but when we came up with the name for the ranch, um again, talking about buckets connecting, so I was like, what's a good name for for this ranch? And so back in the mid-90s, there was a pastor named Rick Warren. Um, a lot of people might know him. He wrote the book, The Purpose Uh Driven Life. Well, there's actually a book he wrote before that called The Purpose-Driven Church. And it's a great book to read, even if you're not a church person, but you're in business, because it was just great things about purpose, mission, strategy, you know, who you want to reach. Well, one there was one section there we talked about where he had to name his church. And at the time, everybody was like getting creative about, oh, it's got to be, you know, crossroads or cornerstone or whatever. And the name was going to attract people. And so he he defied all those. And he just said, we named our church Saddleback Church because we were at the bottom of the Saddleback Mountains. And it just represented the area and who we were, and there was no fluff about it. And so that always kind of stuck with me. And I said, you know, when I named this ranch, I want it to be something that honors the the area and the heritage, and also honors my family heritage who farmed this area for for years. And uh, so in the 1960s, the Elmira Gazette um put out this thing, what they called, they named the area the Twin Tiers, and they were struggling because the lower part of New York, the southern part of New York, they called the southern tier, and the northern part of Pennsylvania called the northern tier. And they thought it was weird that the southern tier was north of the northern tier. It was always like a quandary for them. So they said, we're gonna call this area the Twin Tiers, but it never really caught on. Like people don't really use it that much. But you'll see a Twin Tiers car wash or, you know, occasionally. So I said, you know, this name, one, it reflects the region. It gives honor to the region. It reflects that, you know, I had family that farmed in Pennsylvania in the northern tier. I had family that were in the southern tier of New York. Um, and and serendipitously, my property has two tiers, an upper and a lower of pastures. And so I was like, this was just meant to be. So we handed the Twin Tiers Ranch.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:07

What does doing this project and all the things that all the ideas that you have for it, like what is that doing for your for your soul? What is that doing for like your interests? You know, you have so many other things you're working on in your professional life. What does having this on the side mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:29

Yeah. Well, if I could do it full time, I would, you know, hopeful, hopefully someday I I can. Um I think what I realized when I was out there um that there's not a lot I enjoy more than sitting on top of a John Deere tractor for a day and a half mowing my pasture. I know that sounds that sounds like boring to some people, but I was like, gosh, this is amazing. I mean, there's just something about, and I think most people probably find where they get re-energized, where they go into the mountains or whatever, but you know, um, the Finger Lakes area of New York is just beautiful. Mountains, trees, you know, uh rolling hills. And there's just something about there where you can just kind of quiet all the noise, which I think is what the attraction that you see in some of these Taylor Sheridan movies, right? Whether it's in Montana, these he's got a new one out called The Madison, which is which uses this great illustration of the New York City life versus this life out in Montana, you know, is that we're always going so fast all the time that we're never really kind of stopping and taking time just to be in the moment and to reflect. And I almost kind of feel like that's how God wanted us to live, you know, we're always striving all the time. And so for me, I think it's become that of not only a getaway, but really kind of the simplicity that that I really desire in life that I sometimes find really hard to find, you know. Um, and and that's probably the thing I would encourage most people that, you know, we can become very career-driven, we can strive. Some of that's tied to our identity, some of it's tied to us wanting to prove ourselves or to feel like we're enough. But it's like the simplicity, the the life of simplicity and um, you know, really being able to um slow down uh is I think what I value, value most. Um you know. So yeah, that's kind of the that's kind of the heart and soul of the ranch and we're what we're doing and and and hope that we can share that kind of idea and lifestyle and get other people uh interested in doing some of that stuff as well.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:35

Sounds awesome. I think when I read the uh doc you sent over, it really felt like it could go in so many different directions with just even the whole merch stuff, having fun with the actual literal brand and uh creating some cool um you know apparel that but also just even the spirit of what you could be doing in in the land itself. Uh I know that you have lots of ideas, so I look forward to uh hearing more as as things develop there.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:04

Yeah. Well, nobody thinks about cowboys in New York or farmers in New York, you know. I I was I was at the Houston Rodeo recently and I was looking at a new John Deere tractor, and the and the guy says to me, What you have tractors that big in New York? And I was like, son, let me tell you something. We got some big farms up in New York, you know. Um, so yeah, people think of New York City, they don't think of all the the big farming community and cattle and everything that's raised uh in the broader state of New York.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:32

So um today you are married to Deidri and have a daughter and a son. When you think about your life, the work that you've been doing, work with family, um, legacy at this stage of life. What do you think feels most important for you to preserve or build or pass on?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:59

Yeah, that's a good question. Uh so something I as my kids were growing up, um I just made up this thing. I called it the the cravey credo. And uh we we had a little like uh chalkboard thing and we would we wrote it down and it was it was pretty simple. It was love God with all your heart, love people, um stay out of debt and find something that you're really passionate about and do with all your heart. I was like, you do those four things in life, you're probably pretty successful, right? You know, have a good relationship with God, you know, um have a good relationship with your neighbor and people, be kind. Um, I said stay out of debt because early in my life, that that was not my story, right? I was I was putting a lot of debt in to get educated and all those kinds of things. I didn't have those resources, which then created a lot of additional stresses in my life that I didn't need in our family. Um, so it was like, how do you stay out of debt? So helping them, like my daughter's finished up college, she's getting out of there debt-free, same with my son. How do we how do I set them up for success to do that? And then the passion piece, you know. I mean, I would say that, you know, I disagree with there's some leaders, I think Steve, we were talking about jobs. I think he was one of these guys that said, if you look at yourself in the mirror and you're not passionate about what you're doing, you need to quit and go find something you're passionate about. I don't I that seems like so silly to me because most people don't have that opportunity, right? You know what I mean? Most people don't have this, oh, I want to go pursue my path, I want to go sing, or I want to go do like some people just don't have that opportunity. They have a grind in front of them. They work in a factory or they work, you know, in in this particular job and they might like it, they may hate it, but some of it is it's just they gotta work, right? So not everybody's privileged to do something they're passionate about, but even in the midst of whatever your career is, you can still find what are the things that you know give you the most joy that interest you and how do you feed those, right? Um, because I think that's what I learned from my grandparents is that they kind of lost that somewhere in the mixed. And so as they got older and as they retired, they just kind of existed. You know, they didn't have anything that woke them up in the morning that they were passionate about or they wanted to pursue or go after. And and it was kind of it was kind of it kind of broke my heart a bit. It was kind of sad, right? Because it's just like I'm I'm just existing until I die. And so for them, regardless of what career they find themselves in, what's that thing that wakes you up in the morning that you get excited about? And that's probably for me, you know, I've I I um my wife says I'm a bit of a renaissance guy because I like a lot of different things. And when I learn about something, I want to go deep and wide. So if I'm gonna learn about cattle, I learn everything I can about cattle. If I'm gonna drink bourbon, I'm gonna learn everything I know about bourbon or cigars or whatever it might be. That's just kind of how I'm wired. Um, so it's like find some of those things and go deep, you know. Uh, and that's that's that's what I hope for my kids. Um, to me, that's my real legacy. And I also think my friends, the people I did community with. Um, as the uh, as the great philosopher Brad Pitt once said, um, he was at an award show and someone said, Well, what's more important? You know, is it the the destination or the journey? And he said, It's the company. And that was pretty profound to me because it's like a lot of us, we either get folks on a destination or we say, Well, it's the journey of becoming. But the truth is, it's the people that we share it with along the way that make it the journey worthwhile, right? That make the destination worthwhile, the friends, the family, the people. And so, as part of my legacy, I hope that, you know, I have had impact people, friends, when they look back, they think fondly of that, that I was a champion for them, that I love them. Um, I might have I might have given them a little heck here and there. And, you know, if you know my personality, I'm a little bit of a prankster and and uh I'm gonna talk some smack, but you gotta know it's all in good love.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:59

Yeah, yeah. You you painted a picture there that I also um just love this idea that the company along the way is really um, I think the valuable part of the experience too. I'm all for just not thinking about okay, the destination's important, but I think if you don't see that along the way, the people that are part of that with you are actually gonna make it so much more enjoyable. Um, I feel like that's kind of what I recognize looking back and what prompted me to start this podcast was along the way I've met some awesome people. And your story is so different than everybody else's story, and it'll continue to be that way. Um, but I know we can just hang out and have a good time together and make memories. And I look forward to one day being on your ranch, having some barbecue from you know, some Angus that and maybe a beer from one of the hops that you know you've cultivated on on property. And that for me is just a great um I think expression of what you said before, going deep and wide. I don't think you have to pick. Um and you can enjoy life that way and still be a nice person and not be a jerk and uh and just enjoy the journey.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:21

Absolutely. I think you know, one maybe kind of one kind of departing quote that always stuck with me was um Ralph Waldo Emerson said, We're always getting ready to live, but never living. And um, I see that so much where people are always focused on, well, when I get to retirement or when I get to this, like I get to some stage. It's like, no, you need to live now. Like you need to enjoy life now. Enjoy the company, enjoy the journey, enjoy the destination, be curious, like you know, learn new things, take new things on, don't worry about being an imposter. Yeah, you're gonna imitate a little bit at first, but eventually imitation turns into mastery. And, you know, yeah, just get out there and do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:03

Yeah. Well, Chris, thanks again for the conversation. It's so cool for me to think that uh six years after our initial paths crossed in an MBA class, we'd be having a conversation like this, just kind of recapping everything. And that's honestly what this podcast is really about. The people we meet, the experiences we carry, the perspectives we glean along the way all shape who we become. So absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:30

Thanks for having me, Rolando. Yeah, really appreciate your friendship and encouragement uh throughout my career and the short time we've known each other.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:38

Thanks, Chris. Really appreciate it. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening. Um Rolando, and this is the Power of Human Stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:52

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