Building Texas Business

In this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, I speak with Amyn Bandali, CEO of Ivy Kids Systems. Amyn shares the story behind Ivy Kids, a premier childcare and education provider founded by his parents. He reflects on how their move to Pearland, Texas, and the challenges they faced finding quality childcare led to the establishment of their first school. Since then, the family business has grown to 20 locations, with 16 more under development.

We discuss the decision to franchise the business, the importance of building a culture of empowerment within teams, and Amyn’s philosophy on leadership. He explains how empowering employees with autonomy, transparency, and responsibility has been key to Ivy Kids' success. Amyn also talks about navigating challenges, including the impact of the pandemic, which required the business to pivot toward virtual programs and innovative approaches to childcare.

The conversation highlights the critical role of early childhood education in shaping lifelong success, the importance of continuous innovation, and how technology like coding and robotics is being integrated into Ivy Kids’ curriculum. Amyn also shares insights into managing a franchise system and the value of fostering strategic relationships and learning from setbacks.

This episode is filled with practical lessons for entrepreneurs and leaders who aspire to create sustainable growth and a strong company culture.

Show Notes

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About Ivy Kids Systems

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Amyn: Yeah, thank you for having me, Chris. Happy to be here.

Chris: So you're the CEO of Ivy Kids Systems. Tell the listeners what Ivy Kids is. What do you do? What are you known for?

Amyn: Yeah. So Ivy Kids, we are a premier childcare brand, not just a daycare where parents just come in to pick up and drop off. You know, we provide education and that's from the infant level, so as young as two months old, all the way to our pre-K program, which is five and six year olds. And then we also have an afterschool program as well, where parents pick up and drop off from elementary school. The kids come in for homework help. And we're next year celebrating our 20th anniversary.

Chris: Congratulations. That is amazing.

Amyn: Yes. So what was the inspiration to get into this primary childcare, education, afterschool learning? Where did that emanate from?

Amyn: Yeah. So, you know, a little bit about our history. So Ivy Kids was actually founded by my parents, Allen and Layla. You know, we had moved from Canada to the States or to Houston in 1995, and we lived in Pearland. So, as you're probably aware with Pearland, it experienced massive growth during that time. You know, 518 had one stoplight. Now it's a six-lane highway, it feels like. But you know, my parents, you know, with my brother and I being young children, they found out very hard time finding high quality care for us. You know, we would be in the daycare system, mom and pop childcare, quote unquote, you know, prestigious childcare program, and it was, you know, observation, where there was no learning going on, or my brother and I would, you know, be picked up and we'd have a bump or a bruise, and nobody would be able to point out why.

Amyn: My parents being engineers and also having a history of entrepreneurship from their parents and their grandparents, you know, they thought about this industry and they thought, hey, we can do a better job of running high quality schools. So I like to say they reversed engineered the childcare. You know, they put a lot of thought, time and thinking, and over that course of 10 years from when we moved to Pearland, to 2005, we opened our first school, and that was in the Pearland area, and it did really well. So from that, we grew from that one corporate location to then five corporate locations. And then when I joined the business in 2015, and I can talk about the reasons why, but that was when we decided to franchise our brand. And, you know, today we are at 20 locations. We actually just opened our 20th location about a month ago and we have 16 under development right now throughout Texas and the Southeast United States.

Chris: And, just curious, I mean, the 20 that exists in the 16 under development, how many of those are franchise versus corporate owned?

Amyn: Yeah. So we still own all of the corporate locations today. We are at five corporate locations and we are at 15 franchise locations. You know, I think one of the things that shows maybe a strong brand and, you know, happy franchisees is folks opening their second or third locations. And even though we opened our first school in 2017, you know, that's been one of the great things to see. As a franchisor, you know, seeing folks open their second or third location, looking for sites for that. And that's kind of where we are right now in the evolution of the business, which is really exciting to see.

Chris: That sounds exciting. So you're going back to the beginning in listening to the story you were telling about your parents. Yeah. It sounds like a very common entrepreneurial inspirational moment where they see a gap and figure out a way to fill that gap or need, right? And in this case, you know, quality childcare.

Amyn: Yeah, absolutely. You know, they saw a lot of great things about this business, which really stand today. And it's, you know, if you do right by that family, you do right by that child, you know, you're having that parent for 10 years from when they're infant to that afterschool program. You know, they saw that childcare is a need, not a want. You know, if you have a dual income family, you have to put your child somewhere where, you know, they'll feel safe where they're learning. And from that they saw a need in building their first Ivy Kids to, well, there's so much research out there about the importance of education at an early age that then, you know, catapults a child into future learning, future success, as opposed to not getting that in the early ages.

Chris: And the kind of the downward trajectory of the backing cause.

Amyn: Yeah. I mean, there's some amazing studies. There was one that was done about eight years ago by Harvard University that basically said 95 percent of who you are is from the first five years that you were born. You know, everything from what your passions are to your ability to learn. So much of that comes from those first five years. And then if you think about, hey, what is the best return on investment then for my education? It's not necessarily those prestigious universities that does have a high rate of return, but the best ROI actually that a family can spend, that a government could spend is that first five years and getting that part right.

Chris: Right. You know, if you're doing that, then you are truly building that foundation. And I think that's one of the drivers for why, you know, why families make a decision. You know, they're looking for, they're seeing the benefits, they're understanding more and more of, you know, the link between high quality learning and how their child is going to do. And they're making a smarter decision now with where they're choosing to enroll their child.

Chris: So let's go a little bit, so we understand your parents' inspiration. You alluded to this, but I don't understand what drew you into the business. What were you doing before and what was it that caused you to leave that to step in and kind of take over?

Amyn: Yeah. So by the time we had opened our first school, I was in, you know, college or close to college and seeing the business up front, you know, seeing the ability to build your own path, create your own destiny, working in the business from everything, from us assembling the furniture when we were opening our first school, actually laying the grass and the sod down in order for us to get our CEO inspection passed, you know, I was just so enthralled by it. I was so excited about it. The ability of owning something and really charting your destiny. And that really didn't leave me. You know, in college, I also took a job. It was with Student Agencies, which is a business run by undergrads and I did sales there. And that also really excited me too.

Amyn: And then, you know, I kind of went the route that a lot of students at Cornell did for undergraduate business, which was pursue finance, look at the business consulting route or the investment banking route. And, you know, I learned a lot going down that path, but I missed being in that small business, you know, really building something that was my own working with a dynamic team and a small team. And, you know, I think building some of that foundation, this amazing opportunity came that was presented by my dad to say, hey, let's franchise the business. You know, we've got something great going. This would be an amazing opportunity for other like-minded people to open their own locations and thrive.

Amyn: And I just thought, man, this marries what I did earlier. I've got a bit of foundation for working at larger organizations. You know, maybe there's something there and it turned out to be a good decision.

Chris: Very good. That's a great, I love the story and how you were able to, I think it's important. You got an education and you got real world experience outside of that, right? To then bring that into and maybe help professionalize a little bit the company, especially as it was launching into being a franchisor.

Amyn: Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, working with the team, let's talk a little bit about, you know, some of the ups and downs that you've experienced and maybe you saw your parents early on experience and building the team around you so that the company can achieve that success. Because if I know anything about hiring, it's an imperfect thing, right? Is that part science, part art? But you do your best to get it right. So tell me, let's talk a little bit about those experiences, you know, what you've learned from that.

Amyn: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, going into small business entrepreneurship, there's very much a feeling of working in the business, you know, being so kind of head down and focusing on, hey, how do we survive today? And, you know, I think when you're joining or launching a new business, which really was the franchising part of our business was a brand new business, you are really thinking in that lens and that mindset. And I always feel like hiring, building an infrastructure, it just allows you to think more long term and that just prolongs the lifespan of your business too. So I think making those right strategic hires as soon as we have that capital, thinking ahead about, hey, where do we want to be in the next 5, 10 years and investing in those people and really giving them the freedom and empowerment, you know, to expand their careers, expand their responsibilities as you're seeing them master their role.

Amyn: I think that really helped, you know. So one book that I read early on about a year or two after I joined the business was Traction by Gina Wickman. Sure. You know, the entrepreneurial operating system. I mean, that's something that we do today. And I think that was foundational in how I look at people, helping the assistant. Hey, do we have the right people in the right seats? And then are we creating a culture of empowerment? You know, I think about what attracted me to Ivy Kids and starting this franchising part of the business. And it was this idea of taking ownership, having accountability, you know, maybe having a little bit too much rope.

Chris: Right. Right.

Amyn: And I just think, hey, at a size that we are, those are probably the people that I'm going to be attracting to. And how can I create that where if I were in their shoes, I'd want to be a part of this business. And I think some of that where, hey, there's alignment on goals, but hey, you have the empowerment and you have the ability to achieve it and how you achieve it and how you get to that final product is up to you. You know, I always feel like that allows you to really grow people, especially when you're smaller, maybe you have that limited capital base, you know, and now you can start thinking strategically about your business and then your business can really grow.

Chris: So I love that term culture of empowerment. Let's talk about culture. You know, everyone agrees culture is king, right? And every book you read and each strategy, you know, all those clichés. What have you done to kind of foster and build this culture of empowerment within Ivy Kids?

Amyn: You know, I think of myself as a generalist. And I think of myself as, hey, I am not the best person in any department. And I think as you grow as a leader, that is just what naturally happens. You know, you have to build a team of people that are smarter, more experienced. I would say better than you in each of these divisions in each of these areas.

Amyn: So I think just thinking, hey, if I'm growing or if the business is growing, I have to increase the skill sets of everything around me and I have to play more of that generalist mindset. And with that, it's let me bring these people on and have and let them be the experts in the subject matter experts of what they're doing now.

Amyn: Alignment and vision and where we are and ensuring that, hey, prove to me that you can do this job is still very important. Sure. You know, We still need to have check-ins and make sure that, hey, are we all marching in that direction and where we want to go as a company. But at the end of the day, I do think that people are more passionate if they feel a sense of ownership, if they can look back and see, "Oh, I or my team accomplished this." I'm getting praise for those kinds of things. You know, one of the things that we do, we have quarterly town halls and we do shout outs, and it's a thing that I love. We just had ours on Friday. And, you know, the team gives each other shout outs, but I think when people are empowered and we are able to showcase, you did a great job and this is why, and this is what your team is doing, is getting the company moving forward, is amazing. And that might be harder to create that visibility as a company grows. But it is something that I like to keep on the forefront of my mind because empowering people, it's just like this flywheel of positivity, right?

Chris: Right.

Amyn: It just, it's like the snowball or flywheel effect. It just grows upon itself. You know, the shout outs that you mentioned, I don't think it can be overstated, the value in just simple recognition. Private recognition is great, but the public recognition amongst someone's peers, I mean, it doesn't replace cash rewards, but some people value it as much or more, right? And I think that you would take the time to do that in a thoughtful way, and I can see where that would inspire your people to do more, right? Or, well, gosh, your coworker got it. I'm going to do something so that the next quarter I get it. And it just, to your point, that flywheel effect, it just creates this atmosphere and culture of wanting to achieve and be successful.

ADVERT Hello friends. This is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas Business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the BoyerMiller.com and thanks for listening to the show.

Amyn: The other thing I heard you say is there's a key piece of autonomy to create the culture of empowerment within Ivy Kids and giving your people the autonomy to go do what they do, what they've been hired to do without being micromanaged.

Chris: Yeah, that's exactly right.

Amyn: I mean, I always think back to when I first started out, you know, in my career, you know, as an investment banking analyst, you know, you're spending 80, a hundred hours a week, you're working on these pitch decks. You're grinding until 2 a.m. You're working on this project and now all of a sudden you have this package, you deliver it to your managing director and then they go to a meeting and you never hear back. You come up from the dungeon, right?

Chris: Exactly.

Amyn: And I always was like, hey, you know what, I wonder what that client thought or if that what I did had an effect. And you know, that’s that part where I'm like, well, am I doing that as a leader? And am I these blockages? You know, because people want to learn and people want to be in those meetings. I think everybody wants to be in that meeting and see where their work is leading to. And I just always think, hey, if I were working for me when I was starting off, would I have liked myself as a boss?

Chris: Right.

Amyn: And that also means, hey, clear vision of where that person is heading. What am I doing right? And what am I not doing well? You know, I think feedback transparency, you know, I really try and instill that criticism is not a negative word, you know, problems are not bad. You know, problems are just identifications of what we can all do better.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: I like hearing problems to not, you know, and that could be a, you know, what we're doing and just what's going on within the organization. You know, what the way I would phrase what I just heard you say is about, it's about mindset, right? You can view someone's performance from a positive mindset or a negative mindset and say, look, okay, this didn't go well, but that's a learning moment. Let's find the learning as opposed to chastise and criticize and beat someone down.

Chris: Yeah, right. And I think, you know, same situations handled, you know, one versus the other can encourage and empower someone to want to do better or discourage them to, you know, put their tail between their legs and maybe leave, even leave your organization when it's not someone you necessarily want to leave.

Amyn: Yeah, and this is a thing that comes over time. It comes with empowerment. It comes with, you know, celebrating that publicly. It comes with a culture of positivity. You know, it is also something that I feel like is so important when you are owning a small business, when you're opening a business is separating yourself and your identity and ego in some ways from your business.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: You know, it's something that I, you know, try and share with our franchisees when they're opening a school and they're having a quality assurance visit or their first, maybe, you know, not ideal interaction with the parent. I mean, there’s a real personal feeling there. It's easier said than done, right?

Chris: It is.

Amyn: But I, to your point, very important to do. So let's kind of dive into some of those subjects because you start the franchise part of the business, I think you said 2017. So it seems to me you're getting it off the ground. It's going well. And then a global pandemic hit. So let's talk about managing through kind of uncertainty, economic downturn, especially when your business is predicated on kids coming into a public, basically facility and gathering together when that wasn't going on.

Amyn: Yeah. I mean, I remember March of 2020, I think our average school enrollment was about 200 children. And I think it went to 40 in two weeks, so very stressful period as you can imagine. You know, and one thing that I learned from the pandemic or from our team and in business is you can really pivot on a dime. You know, and I think that's something that I've taken from me too is we went to online learning, you know, for two, three hours every day we were able to orient the company in that direction. You know, it ended up generating a million dollars of revenue for our franchisees, which was a benefit. You know, we were able to do things like private kindergarten. We were able to do a virtual program for elementary school children. They were able to come in our schools and do the virtual learning from the elementary teacher at our schools, and everybody was separated apart.

Chris: Wow.

Amyn: So we were able to come up with revenue-generating ideas. We weren't able to make up entirely for the lost revenue due to COVID. But we were able to do some really amazing things and stay in really close communication with our franchisees. Yeah. Because as you know, each city, each state had their own requirements.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: I think I learned a lot from that, that, hey, if you've got a long-term goal, a long-term plan and things change within your business, that doesn't mean you don't change your goal. You know, you can orient things, you can turn things on a dime. And, you know, although things have returned to normal and in many respects, right? Or pre-COVID, I think the learnings from that have helped our innovation and just saying, hey, let's push a little bit more. Let's try a little bit more.

Chris: I love it because I think the lesson there is despite what comes at you, whether it was in your control or not, there's always opportunity.

Amyn: So again, it goes back to mindset. I thank you. Okay, get the team, you or your team together and go, okay, where are the opportunities out of this that we probably wouldn't have seen before? And I think, like you said, you see so many people, especially in your industry. Now that kids are back in your facilities, it doesn't take away the opportunities for online learning you can do.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: And it's just added revenue.

Chris: Yeah, that's right. You know, I think, you know, a franchisee, they open and they think, oh man, you know, these problems are just centered around me and oh my gosh, I'm opening a business. And it's luckily now you're around 20 years of experience of us operating, but also imagine those franchisees that had that same feeling and they opened during 2020, 2021, right?

Amyn: Where we had to do everything virtual. So, you know, I think, you know, a business owner, you have to be an optimist. You have to look for, hey, what are ways that either I could turn this around or generate some revenue. Growth mindset is just so important.

Chris: Yeah, so true. So you mentioned innovation. What are some of the things that you have done or that you may be doing now to kind of foster innovative ideas, innovative thoughts within your team that you can then implement with your franchisees, etc.?

Amyn: You know, I think so much of that comes from our goals and seeing, hey, what can we continue to do to further differentiate ourselves as being the leading provider of early childhood education? Right. I mean, you look at our curriculum, you know, we have a lot of, you know, mom and pops that are great, you know, and in varying levels of quality and large franchise organizations too. Right. And what you find is there has not been a great deal of innovation in the curriculum space and in education, you know, so really it's us thinking at things differently, like, hey, just because everybody else is doing the same thing.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: That grounded in the research of today? Right. Does that relate to the teachers of today? What children need to learn in order to be successful in the elementary school, middle schools in the communities that they're in today. I think just always trying to understand the why, you know, I think why is one of the most important questions that you can ask. And that's really what I do in the meetings is understand, hey, why are we doing this? How are we doing this? You know, I think that generates a lot of thought within our team. Then once we have those strategic tools in place, we have those systems in place. Okay, then what is our cadence to see how we're executing on it and seeing how we're going within that?

Amyn: So I always think goal setting at the year, understanding what those rocks are each quarter, but then, hey, just because it's a status quo does not mean that's good enough. You know, so even in our curriculum, implementing coding and robotics, parent assessments that are digital. So you can see every, you know, every month, every two months, exactly what your child's doing in the classroom. Camera access. So as a parent, you can see exactly what's going on in your child's classroom. You know, those are not just tried and true things. Those are things that came from great communication with our parents, a team that is, you know, flexible, forthinking about what they would want to see as a parent and then great execution.

Chris: Wow. That's great. So you mentioned robotics. I've got to ask, what are you doing or kind of what's on the horizon as it relates to your curriculum and your delivery of this, your childcare and child education, early childhood education as it relates to AI?

Amyn: Yeah, I think that's a great question. You know, I think tools like AI are amazing. You know, there's so much that you can do in regards to communication, idea generation. You know, I think for us is just, hey, when it comes to technology, you know, how do we ensure that children today are well-equipped for their technological future? So when we talk about coding and robotics, it's not just sitting in a computer and coding, you know, for it. It's even from that two or three-year-old level of doing logic puzzles, if-then statements. If I take a certain input and I am bringing code puzzles to it, what do those outputs look like? So it's a great way of them to manipulate in a coding language, but not also spending time in the computer and being in front of a screen too, which also which shows you know, a negative impact due to research for that young and FNH, right?

We're making steps towards that direction. We are not diving full ahead, you know, to me, it's one thing to be first in an area, but I'd rather do it best, right? And I'd rather do it where, you know, we're not just testing things on children, but we are providing something that is impactful. That's based on research that we know we can implement really well. And I think you're going to continue to see growth in that area, too. You know, other things is just back to a naturalistic component, having things like gardens in our schools, you know, teaching children, hey, the food does not just come from H-E-B. It comes from the ground, and this is why. So, you know, I think innovation is a big part of it.

Chris: That's great stuff. I mean, I can imagine parents get excited about hearing about that fundamental learning that their kids are going to get to experience with you.

Amyn: Yeah, absolutely. Building strategic relationships, you know, partnerships and things that you have, you know, obviously relationships with franchisees, but other key, you know, advisors or relationships you have. Let's talk in the context of the value you've seen in that, how you think that's helped grow the business and how you lean on those, you know, from time to time to get you through to the next stage, if you will.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, I think you always want to be around people that are adding to your skill set and have exceptional talents in those skill sets. You know, I think about continual learning. Luckily, in franchising, it's an amazing model and way for people to share best practices. You know, the IFA International Franchise Association has amazing resources, especially for emerging franchisors. They have great conferences and that's a great way to share ideas.

Amyn: You know, I'm part of a mastermind group of franchisors, 50 to 100 units. And just learning and seeing what best practices that they do. You know, they advocate a lot for transparency within a franchise system. Franchisees sharing what their P&Ls look like. What's going well, what's not going well in the business. And franchisees learning from each other and sharing best practices. You know, that's something that is important. We're implementing more in our business with benchmarking and KPIs and performance groups. Even being part of a local community, you know, I'm part of a Vistage group here in Houston.

Chris: That sounds like an amazing asset.

Amyn: Yeah, I think that is an amazing asset, going and meeting people in person, seeing their businesses, touring their locations. You know, I think sometimes being an entrepreneur, being a CEO can be a very isolating experience.

Chris: For sure.

Amyn: You know, all the fingers are pointing at you and all the hard questions come to you too. So being able to learn from others. I mean, learning from mistakes is great. Then you're not making them and they're less costly. So I'm always about trying to learn from other people.

Chris: You alluded to one of my favorite questions there. So I always, I like to ask a guest, cause I do, we do learn from mistakes and it is nice if you can learn from someone else's, but has there been a setback or something you would describe, you know, a mistake or, you know, again, learning moment, like I mentioned earlier you've encountered? And let's talk about what that was, but what did you do to overcome it? What was the learning and how did it make you better?

Amyn: You know, I think the learning that I encountered is not stepping into the business. And I think my idea of being a generalist came from mistakes, you know, being young and eager, wanting to jump in, hey, I can write this operations manual because I've spent time in the business or, you know, hey, use this marketing plan or this idea because it worked for me. You know, I think the big one was COVID early on. Oh my gosh, I was seeing the business totally transform. I felt the need to be in this. I need to be a wartime, you know, CEO or senior member. I need to be here. I need to be calling the franchisees. And really, our team had great ideas and approaches and they were thinking about the business and their fears around the business in a similar way that I was.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: Yeah. And the moment I snapped out of it was, hey, this training is great. I mean, but think about X, Y, and Z that the franchisee is going through. And I had my operations person tell me that. And I think it was a, oh my gosh, I've sucked myself into this business. Yes, there was a big change, but I talk about empowering my people. That also means not just when moments are good, but when moments are bad as well. So I think that goes both ways and people and relationships strengthen sometimes when you're giving someone the rope when the business is not going that well.

Chris: Right. But I mean, that's powerful. I can certainly see how that was an aha moment for you. And again, for your people, right? That you trusted them enough in those times had to go a long way.

Amyn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, it's kind of like war stories during COVID or the up and down, but, you know, having a kind of a business history and having institutional knowledge, I mean, those are amazing tenants. You know, a franchisee joins, they have now someone on the operations team that's been with you for 20 years. But you're also incorporating, you know, newer people who are excited about the culture that we're trying to build. That's really important.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I think you've talked around this, but just to kind of crystallize it, I do want to ask, how would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that's changed or evolved over time?

Amyn: That's a really good question. I mean, I would say I like to empower people, you know, I like to set goals and a vision. You know, we have a vision of where we want to be as a company, and I want to understand what people think and how they see us getting there. And I want us, and I'd like to see that individual develop KPIs. What they think are the right metrics. And I want to understand the rationale behind that. And then we'll get together and figure out alignment there. But I like to see how people think. I like to see thinking. I want a demonstration of why they are getting to that problem or what their reasoning is around that problem.

Chris: That makes sense.

Amyn: Then we check in and I let them do it. I always think about how I, you know, if I was the low man on the totem pole, how empowered would I feel? You know, what are my responsibilities? And I think that attracts, you know, passionate people.

Chris: Yeah.

Amyn: And that's what I want to see. I want to see passion because I'm giving that responsibility. You know, as you were talking, it made me think. You know, we talked about learning from bad experiences or, you know, maybe learning, seeing something and going, okay, I experienced this, but I don't want to repeat that. And I can't help but think you learned so much as an early analyst and how you were treated.

Chris: Yes.

Amyn: You go, if I'm ever in a position of leadership, I'm not going to do these things. And it probably serves as a good reminder and a guidepost for you.

Chris: Yeah.

Amyn: To say, no, you know, remember what I didn't like, and let's do the opposite.

Chris: Right.

Amyn: Yeah, you learn a lot from great managers and you learn a lot from not so great managers. Yeah. And, you know, I think I had a lot of those on my bucket list and I think a lot of just reflection too. I mean, you know, I really try and take feedback and I really try and understand. Hey, you know, I mean, I've made a lot of mistakes and I think it's just, hey, let me try not to make that same mistake a second time.

Chris: Right?

Amyn: But you know, the sad truth is you're going to make some more, as will I, and the goal is trying to make the same one twice, right?

Chris: That's right. I mean, this has been great. What an exciting business you have going. I want to, before we wrap up, I just always like to ask a few, you know, maybe less serious questions. What was your first job outside of Ivy schools?

Amyn: My first job was a company called Student Agencies, in college. I sold ad space on the maps that you'd see around the Ithaca campus and these brochures. And I also helped with marketing promotions. A promotion I actually dressed up in a mascot outfit was a big light bulb because it was for an entrepreneurship idea competition.

Chris: That's great.

Amyn: So, I was a light bulb for a few weeks around campus. Talk about humility, right?

Chris: That's right. And if you sold ad space for a brochure, I have to believe you got used to hearing the word no.

Amyn: Oh man, yeah. No is common. No is very common.

Chris: Okay, so, grew up in Pearland, you know, Texan as you can get, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Amyn: Oh, Tex-Mex for sure.

Chris: Something you missed when you were up in Ithaca, I guess.

Amyn: Oh, man, yeah. You didn't see much Tex-Mex over there.

Chris: Well, I mean, this has been a great conversation. Congratulations on the success of the family business and where you've taken it, you know, since joining and the franchise side of things. Really appreciate you sharing that story with us and wish you the best success in the future.

Amyn: All right. Thank you so much, Chris. I enjoyed it.

Special Guest: Amyn Bandali.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I chat with Renee Morris, Chief Curl Officer at Uncle Funky's Daughter. We explore her path from management consultant to leading a national hair care brand.

Renee shares her approach to maintaining business control by relying on personal savings and family support rather than external investors. She discusses forming partnerships with major retailers like Target and Walgreens while building a creative team to drive innovation.

I learned how she tackles recruitment challenges and ensures brand visibility at a national level. Looking ahead, Renee explains her vision to expand into skincare and education, and serving communities of color in new ways.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Uncle Funky's Daughter

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Chris: In this episode you will meet Renee Morris, chief Curl Officer at Uncle Funky's Daughter. Renee shares her passion for helping curly girls solve their hair problems with unique and innovative natural hair products. Renee, I want to thank you for coming on Building Texas Business. It's so glad, happy to have you as a guest.

Renee: Thank you, I'm excited to be here.

Chris: Okay, so you won the award so far for having the coolest and, I would say, funky, but that would be.

Renee: Play on words Right.

Chris: But as far as a name for a company, uncle Funky's Daughter, yes. Okay, tell us what is your company known for and what do you do?

Renee: So Uncle Funky's Daughter is a hair products company. We're based here in Houston, texas. I bought the company, so the parent company is Rotenmore's Consumer Group. But I bought the brand Uncle Funky's Daughter 10 years ago from a husband and wife team. So Uncle Funky's Daughter curates natural hair products for women, men and children who choose to wear their hair naturally, and so that's shampoos, conditioners, curl definers, moisturizers, stylers, finishers. Shampoos, conditioners, curl definers, moisturizers, stylers, finishers you name it, we make it. We also have a thermal protection line for women who want to blow dry and style their hair with heat, and we're distributed nationally Target, walgreens, kroger, cvs, heb, locally, so you name it, other than Walmart, we're there.

Chris: Beauty Easy to find, easy to find, easy to find well, I have to ask this because I have daughters. I mean Sephora or Ulta.

Renee: No, Sephora or Ulta. Yet we've been working that line. We can talk about that as part of this deep dive, but we've been working that line and but no land in Sephora or Ulta just yet okay, very good.

Chris: So how did you find your way into the hair care product world? Because you didn't start there.

Renee: No, I am a former management consultant 20 years management consulting, advising clients multi-billion dollar companies on how to drive revenue growth and through sales and marketing. And I was a mother of three kids. At the time my son was probably three or four, my daughters were two and I was flying back and forth between Houston and New York for a client. And I had this realization that I didn't want to do that as a mom. I needed to be home, but I still wanted to be a career person. So I knew I am not built to be a stay-at-home mother. That is not who I am, and COVID taught me that with isolation. And so what I started deciding was I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next and I realized I had some options. Right, it's that fork in the road that you go through. You start to look inwardly every time you have that fork in the road and I did that and I said okay, your option A is to go find a company based in Houston and be a VP or senior VP of some operation. Option B is you find a small company and you're like a big fish in a small pond kind of thing. Option C is you just go do your own thing. And after I kind of went through it, I realized I worked for the Coca-Colas, like in GE Capitals of the world, in my past. I didn't want to go work for a big company. I didn't think I wanted to work for a small company because of my personality style, right, um.

And so I decided I wanted to go buy something and then or have my own company. And so then the question becomes do you build or do you buy my? I'm a management consultant by heart, so it's always go buy something. Why? Because I can take it, I can fix it and I can grow it. And so then it became all right, well, what are you going to go buy? And so, like most people out there, they're thinking about buying a company.

I started reaching out to brokers, I started doing some networking, calling attorneys, people that work on deals, that kind of stuff, just putting my name out there, and I got all the things that you normally get when you're looking to buy a company the gym, the dry cleaner, the storage facility, the gas station, all the things that I didn't want to buy because I didn't have a passion for them. And so, also, for background, my consulting experience in sales and marketing strategy has been predominantly in consumer products. So I know consumer products, I know revenue growth, I know marketing strategy. So I was like okay, so I kept looking and I used this hair product called Uncle Funky's Daughter.

I found it when I first moved here in 2000. Like all curly girls out there back then, that was almost 20 years ago, my goodness. But 15 years ago back then there weren't a lot of natural hair products out there for women of color and women of curly hair with curly hair specifically. And so I googled when I first moved here natural hair products, curly hair, houston and Uncle Funky Stoddard came up.

I've never heard of this company right. So I go to rice village and buy this product and I start using it. Extra butter, start using it. And for those out there that are, you know, african American descent, you know thick, curly hair, we do this thing called two strand twists to what. I love it. Two strand twist.

Chris: Okay.

Renee: So, you take your hair and you twist it in like instead, instead of braiding it, you put it in twists, and there are single twists all over my head right. So that's how I would style my hair wear it, rock a two strand twist. Those out there will understand that, look it up and then Google it and then and so that worked on my hair really well. And so, again, for those with tight, curly hair, finding the right hair product that works for your hair is tough. It is not easy, as you know. One of your team members, courtney, was talking about. She's gone through all the products Because you go through this product journey trying to find something that works for you right. So found Extra Butter, worked, loved it, and then I would stop using it while I'm traveling because I would forget it right at home sure.

I would go back to some other competitive brand and it didn't work for my hair. So I'm like, okay, uncle Funky's daughter is the only thing that works for my hair. So I go in to get my Uncle Funky's daughter one day, after I, you know, had braids and wash them out. And yada, yada, yada. I'm going in, I'm getting my extra butter and this guy behind the counter who I bought hair products from for the past at this point, five years, says yeah, my wife and I are going through a divorce and I'm like, oh, so I do have an MBA right.

I'm not some, you know, trying to sound like a shark, but my MBA said distressed asset might be willing to sell stress asset might be willing to sell.

Like literally, that is the voice that went in my head. And so I was like, oh really. So I stood there in that store and I just chatted with him for hours and about the company, you know what, you know personally what he was going through, because divorce, you know, for those that may have gone through it, can be an emotional, you know troubling time. So I was a listening ear. But as I'm listening, I'm also thinking about like, okay, what's the story behind the brand? Is this going to resonate? And I'm also watching people come in and out, right. And so I said, well, if you guys are you guys thinking about selling it? And he gives me a story about you know what's happening with the sell and cell and I said, well, if you're ever thinking about selling it, let me know. So I walk out, I Google, because you know this is horrible to say, but divorces are public right right.

Chris: Is it filed in state court?

Renee: it's a public record so I'm figuring out what's happening with the divorce and I find out that the company is in receivership. And for those who don't know, because I did not know at the time what a receivership was, a receivership happens when a divorce is happening and the husband and wife aren't operating, behaving appropriately.

Chris: Well, they can't agree on the direction of the company and it can be not in a divorce. But basically, owners cannot agree and a court may appoint a receiver to run the company.

Renee: Exactly. Thank you, that's why you're the attorney and a court may appoint a receiver to run the company Exactly.

Chris: Thank you. That's why you're the attorney.

Renee: Have a little experience with that yes, so the judge had appointed this guy to be the receiver. I reached out to the gentleman and I said I'm interested in the sale of Uncle Funky's daughter, if that so happens to be the case. And so the one thing I did learn and you can probably expound on this is oftentimes in a divorce, when the receiver comes in, at that point that receiver is really thinking about how to get rid of this asset. And so those are all the things that I learned during this process, and I was like, okay, so he wants to sell because he wants to get paid and he knows nothing about this business.

Chris: He was, you know no offense, no emotional tie to it, for sure no emotional tie.

Renee: He's an older white gentleman who knows nothing about black hair products and so I was like, okay, so he doesn't know, he doesn't have an appreciation for the value of the company. And so I reached out and I said, okay, here's a number. You wouldn't believe the number I gave him and he counted with some minor you, some minor adjustment, and we bought this company for less than $100,000. And they had a revenue at the time. When I saw their tax returns, I think it was maybe a million or so that they claimed in revenue.

At some point they said, but at least for sure I think our first year of revenue was probably around and it was a partial year. Probably a quarter million dollars is what revenue they generated, and so we really, if you talk about a multiple of sales, we bought it on a tremendous it's a heck of a deal the deal.

Okay, I can't find those deals these days. If anybody has one of those deals, you come let me know and so. So that's how we ended up buying this company ten years ago and shortly thereafter, target comes knocking at the door and says, hey, we were having this discussion with the owners about, you know, potentially launching. Would you be interested? And I'm like, absolutely. And it was because they were going through this divorce that they couldn't get over the finish line, right? And so shortly after we buy, we're launching in target. But before I did that, one of the first things I did was because, if you ever, if any, it's probably so old you can't find it. But the label. When I first bought the company, when I was buying it, it was this woman's face with a big afro on the front and it had a cute little 70s vibe on it and it was in this white hdpe bottle which, by the way, those aren't recyclable.

So I said first, we need to change this, we got to change the packaging, we got to upgrade the label, we need to make it universally appealing to all curly girls, because if I look at a woman with a big afro, I think tight, curly hair like mine right and our products work across the spectrum from wavy, like Courtney, to really tight, like Renee, and that wasn't representative on the label okay so we redesigned the label, changed the bottle from an HDPE bottle to a PET bottle, which is recyclable, and then just upgraded this packaging to what I consider a sleeker new look.

Chris: Very good, Great story, Thank you. So back up a little bit, share a little bit, because so you go from big corporate consulting job some comfort in there probably. You mentioned travel and you did mention the mom aspect playing a role. But let's talk a little bit about actually getting the courage to take that leap out of the big corporate role into. I'm going to buy something that's all on me now to either make it or break it. Yeah, that had to be scary.

Renee: It was, and I am fortunate in that. You're right. I had comfort. We have financial security. I had a husband who was, who still is, who's a senior executive in medical devices has nothing to do with anything about consumer products, but you know, we have the luxury for him to say I can carry this load, financial load, and I think that's the big mix, right? I tell people all the time if you're going to take that leap, you got to make sure you've got cash flow, because for not only for your, you know, for the company, but for you personally, right? Because there were several years where my husband called my business a hobby Because I was contributing nothing to the financial plan.

Chris: In fact, you were probably taken away. Yeah, I was taken away.

Renee: So every year I mean. So I wasn't drawing a salary. I didn't draw a salary for a couple of years after I, I didn't draw a salary until our tax accountant said you have to draw a salary because we're changing you from whatever tax to an S-corp. And I was like oh, wow, really Okay. So what am I going to pay myself? Okay, and then he goes Well, you have, and it has to be reasonable. So for probably three or four years after I bought the company, I didn't draw a salary. I was paying my employees but I wasn't paying myself. And so I think and I say all that to say yes, it takes a leap, but it also takes the ability and the willingness to take that financial hit Right. So were there things that we probably wanted to do as a family that we didn't do? Probably so.

Chris: Yeah.

Renee: Because I'm growing this brand and was there times I went to my husband like I need another thirty thousand dollars? Probably so. And because one of the things I specifically had chosen is I did not want, and I currently still don't want, to pull in private equity, vc any type of third party investor funding. That is a personal decision I've made and it's because I am a former accountant and I'm extremely financially conservative and I also don't want different incentives to help influence how I run my business, different incentives to help influence how I run my business, and what I mean by that is I personally just didn't want to have a PE company saying you need to do these three things because your multi, your EBITDA needs to look like this and your revenue growth needs to look like that. Right, so I could have we could have easily grown really fast, like a lot of brands do, and grown themselves out of business, or, but I chose the path to grow really conservatively Now, and so I think I say all that to say I think, yes, financially speaking, having the bandwidth to be able to float yourself and your company for a while is critical, and so don't take the leap if you're still, if you're at your job today, living paycheck to paycheck right, you have to have a cushion.

Your job today, living paycheck to paycheck right, you have to have a cushion. So what that means is, maybe if you're trying to start the company, then you're running your business while you're living paycheck to paycheck and oh, by the way, you gotta stop living paycheck to paycheck because you got to start to build that cushion, right. So some of the you got to make sacrifices and I think that's the hard thing. Not everyone's willing to make the financial sacrifice that it takes to really run and grow a business without third party support. Now, in today's world, you can go get bc capital funding and you know money is flowing, or at least it was, you know but there, but there's sacrifices, but there's sacrifices with that, and so, yeah, that's great advice, you know.

Chris: The other thing that you mentioned, as you were evaluating companies is one of my favorite words when it comes to business is passion. You passed on a ton of things because you weren't passionate about it.

Renee: Yeah.

Chris: You found something you were passionate about, and I think that's a lesson for people too, right Is? It's not easy to do. As you mentioned. Sacrifices have to be made. So if you're not really passionate about that decision to go be an entrepreneur, start your own business. It's going to be tough.

Renee: Yeah, it's going to be tough, and so, because I have to wake up every day, I my passion is really helping people solve problems, and I do that through hair, because hair is a problem in the curly hair community. How do I maintain frizz? How do I keep it under control? How do I keep it healthy so it doesn't break? How do I keep it healthy so it can grow? How do I stop the scalp irritation? There's so many problems that happen in hair and so I what I think about. Like literally yesterday I was with my marketing team and we're talking about a campaign for the next month for products etc. Or really November, and I said, OK, what problem are we helping her solve? And that's literally the way I think about stuff what problem are we helping her solve? Because if we're not helping her solve a problem, then I don't have anything to talk about.

Chris: Ok, Right, yeah, it's not going to move off the shelf.

Renee: It's not going to move off the shelf thing to talk about.

Chris: Okay, right, yeah, it's not going to move off the shelf. It's not going to move off the shelf. So another thing that you kind of alluded to, you went through somewhat. It sounds like a kind of transforming the business that you took over, right? You mentioned the product label and packaging. Let's talk. What else did you, you know, in taking that business over, did you find yourself having to change, and how did you go about making those decisions? Are either prioritizing them and you know we can't do it all- at once yeah, so what walk?

us through some of the learning you went through that well, you know what's interesting is.

Renee: So it wasn't much of a transformation, but it was. If you think about learning from a marketing standpoint, if you're going to buy a business, especially a consumer product company, and you buy it in today's world where we're so used to knowing who the owner is the first people don't like change. So one of the first things I had to do was convince our current customers that nothing had changed other than the label. The minute your package changes and it looks different, they're like the formulas have changed, it's not the same be the same.

It's not the same product. So the first thing I had to do was convince them that this is the same product. In fact, I brought back discontinued SKUs that the receiver had stopped selling because they were slow moving.

**Chris: How did you go about convincing the existing customer base? Nothing changed.

Renee: So news articles, facebook articles, facebook social ads, like having live conversations, going live on social media all of those were things that I had to go in and dispute or Dubuque being like I was the person respond. There was no team, it was me and one other person. The first person I hired was a social media person. Okay, wasn't a warehouse person, it was a social media person because I knew being the being in the face of the customer was so important. So being live and answering questions online, answering the phone and people would call they will go.

I heard that this wasn't the same formula. No, ma'am, it's the same formula. And actually having those, it was me having those live, one-on-one conversations. And so I think really touching the customer and being personal with her was the key to our success in in gaining that confidence. And we also you know this was early in the days of influencers we also had to partner with people to be able to talk about. Like it's the same stuff, guys, this is the bottle. This is the old bottle. This is the new bottle. This is both sides of my hair, no change.

Chris: Okay, okay, very smart to especially, like you said, I mean so many people now the social media influencers have such impact on what products get picked up in the mainstream.

Advert

Chris:So let's move forward a little bit. Part of changing things new products. There's a level. You mentioned your marketing meeting yesterday. What do you do within the company to help kind of foster innovation and inspire your people to be innovative about the products?

Renee: That's a tough one because it's hard. Here's the challenge that we have as a small company. As a small company, it's hard for me to afford to pay me like the equivalent of a me right.

The woman or a man with the MBA in marketing who's got, you know, 10 years at Coca-Cola. I am oftentimes recruiting talent, that's learning and I'm teaching, as they, you know, grow up in our company and so innovation is really. You know, I'm usually in that meeting asking the provocative question Like do these assets, does this story come together like cohesively, what problems are we helping them solve? Like, I am there helping them think through and push their thinking a little bit forward. We'll sit and we just do brainstorming with, you know, little toys in the room and stuff to play with, but it's really just helping them kind of.

All right, just toss some ideas out there. Let's just throw like what is this, what does this mean? What's her brand voice? What does she sound like? What does she look like? Like asking those questions to help them just kind of think outside of the box. Now, if she looks like this, so what kind of tone is she going to have? All right, so what would she say then? Okay, so let's talk about, like how then that manifests itself and how it shows up creatively, and so just helping them kind of drill down to the so what is really kind of the role I like to play.

It's the role I'm playing right now because I'm looking for a marketing director.

Chris: Okay, yeah, anybody listening out there.

Renee: Anybody listening out there? Submit resumes.

Chris: So you talked about some major players as partners that you have right, yeah. Target and Walgreens and CVS, et cetera. So let's talk a little bit about that. How did you go about? You kind of you told a little bit about Target, but what have you done and what have you found to be successful? And maybe strategies that weren't successful in forming those relationships, but maybe, even more importantly, fostering and maintaining those relationships.

Renee: So forming on the forming side retailers. For those who may or may not know the space, they want to come to you in one of two ways either direct or indirect through a distributor. For a small brand like mine, it's usually hey, I don't want to service direct, I want you to go through a distributor. And usually it's because when you first launch, you're going to be in a handful of their stores not full distribution is what they call it so not in all 1700 Target stores, but I think we started out in a hundred and so we had to go through a third-party distributor, and so that distributor then opened the door to other national retailers for us.

So if you're thinking about launching into a national retail partner and you're a small company like mine, your best route to market is finding a distributor that represents your category in a national retailer. So whether that's peanut butter, hair products, lotions, flat tires, whatever, so you have to go and find that distributor. So that was step one. Once we got that relationship, our job is to grow it by driving traffic through the stores and getting that sell through. If it's not generating units per store per week, it gets pulled right.

So one person wisely said a retail shelf space is like real estate. Once you buy your home, you don't want to lose it to foreclosure.

So once you've got that slot, my job is to defend those two slots. And when I say we're national retailers, we're not like a P&G where P&G dominates the shelf. We've got sometimes two slots, sometimes four, but we're not, we don't have 10. So our slots are really important for us at a retailer and so for me, maintaining the relationship comes back to driving the traffic to the store. But, more importantly, supply chain. So when I talked about growing too fast for some brands and having measured growth, it was very important for me because I understood I came from a consulting company, although I did did sales and marketing most of what we did as an organization was supply chain.

I wasn't the supply chain person, but I like to say I knew enough to be dangerous when I bought Uncle Plunky's daughter. So because I understood supply chain, I knew that not, we could not risk. We needed to have safety stock, we need to have inventory levels that look like x, and so that's why I did what I called measured growth. And so you know the distributor may come to me and go. I can get you into Kroger, walmart. Nope, we're going to do one retailer a year, one big guy a year, because I need to make sure I can scale, I need to make sure my contract manufacturers can scale, I need to make sure my team knows what to do and they know how to execute and fulfill the requirements of that specific retailer and so that we are successful. So that was the way that we grew and that's kind of the way we've continued to grow.

Chris: That's so smart, that discipline right. It's easier said than done, because you just start a company and you go a couple years not making any money, or what you do make you put back in the company and then you got all these great opportunities. Come at you once.

Renee: It's easy to say yes yes, yes, yes and yes, but you can't fulfill those promises, no one will come back.

And there are horror stories where brands have been like yes, I'll go into Target, walmart, kroger, heb, cvs and Walgreens all at the same time and they can't meet the demand or they launch and they don't have enough awareness in the consumer market to be able to support and drive the traffic in all of those stores. So you really have to focus on how you're going to grow, where you're going to grow, and how you're going to drive traffic into these markets and into those stores.

Chris: I mean any details you can put behind that, just as some examples to make it a little more tangible of things that you did, things that you thought about. Okay, we have to get this right to kind of prove that we can go to the next level.

Renee: Yes. So for Target we did a lot of in-store events, so we took Target. So imagine if I was doing replicating this across like five different retailers. But for Target back in the day, for social media was much more organic and less pay-per-play than it is now, right, so we would do like it's a 10-day countdown. You know, to Target we're launching in 10, 9, 8, like on social media, it was like running ads. Then we did a find us in the Target, so we would do these fun games on social media and our followers would have to find us in their local Target and if they found us and they won a gift card, so we were doing anything we could. We would do in-store events where we would just have a table popped up where you can try products, give away products, get coupons, you name it. We were doing it. Gotcha, we were doing events outside the store. Inside the store. I was rogue because I didn't have permission from Target to do this. I mean because that would have cost me tens of thousand dollars, right, Target, I hope you're not listening and so we would literally just grab a camera and kind of come in and we would kind of sneak our little basket through the store down the hall and we would sit in there and the manager would come like, oh, we're just doing some footage, and I would say I just launched and I'm really trying to help my business and they would get it because you know, their local store manager, and so they would allow us to do like a little bit of a, a little bit of a pop-up shop kind of thing, and

they would allow it. Now, today they probably wouldn't allow it because we're probably a lot more disciplined, but 15 years ago, 10 years ago, they would allow it and so, yeah, so those are the things that we had to do. So imagine if I was doing that for sally, for walmart, for kro, all in the same year, and I'm still trying to drive the traffic right, because we were still a small brand.

Chris: Sure.

Renee: I still call us a small brand because you know, if I go to you and I say, have you heard of Uncle Funky's Daughter? And your answer is no, then I'm a small brand, right. If I say you cause, everybody's heard of Clorox, coca-cola, pepsi, all the things, right, lacroix, you name it, they've heard of it, they haven't heard of Uncle Funky's Daughter. And so we're still in constant mode of brand awareness, and so trying to build that brand awareness and drive demand in every retail shelf at the same time would have been a daunting task for a brand like ours.

Chris: Sure, do you still have the Rice Village? No, okay, shut that down we shut it down.

Renee: I shut it down when I bought the company. That was the condition of the acquisition, because the day that I went and discovered who the owner was of the brand and I was sitting there chatting up the guy, in about a four hour period that I was there, maybe three people walked into that door okay so that you know, my brain said all right, that's a like a revenue killer.

I'm not, you're not driving revenue right you need to focus on driving traffic on the retail shelf, and so are. We have no physical retail store now. Will we once again one day, maybe in a different format? Right, because now you, my friends? Other people have said you guys should open up a salon, and I'm like so maybe we'll open up a salon where the products are available and featured, but a retail store exclusively focused on our products will not be in a timeline.

Chris: Okay. So there's an example right of an idea from friends. Maybe you thought about it, of branching out from what's core to your business. So far you've said no because you haven't done it. Maybe it's still out there. Why have you not done that? And I guess what could you counsel some listeners if they're faced with that? Or maybe they've done it and trying to make it work Again. That's another danger point, right Before you kind of branch into something different.

Renee: So there are two things what I think about. Again. I always go from management consultant first right when I think about my business.

I don't think about it personally, right, I think about it objectively. So I can go deep in my vertical or I can go wide horizontally, and I can do both. And so right now, where we are as a brand, honestly, is we need to go deeper in R&D and innovation. So we have not had an opportunity to launch a new product since COVID, and so we're in the process of developing a new product, so that's my primary focus. A new product line so we're developing a new product line, so that's my front focus. New product line so we're developing a new product line, so that's my front focus.

Then, as I start to think about adjacency, about how do we take our core and expand and pivot beyond. Do you go to Skin next and stay in consumer products and go into Skin? Do you go in the two places that I'm more actively looking at Skin is out there as a product extension, but that's still core to Uncle Funky's Daughter. Do you go and do you buy another small company within Rote Morris Consumer Group and now you build a portfolio of brands?

Because that's, really what I wanted to do when I started Rote Morris Consumer Group. My vision is to have a portfolio of consumer goods brands that meet the needs of the community of color, whether it's beauty, so for beauty. So that could be hair, that could be skin, it could be makeup, it could be a variety of different things that help her solve her problems every day. So that's really the vision. And then I bought this building a couple years ago and we have this wonderful, amazing space, and so and I open up this space I'm looking around. What are we gonna do with the rest of this space? We have this whole first floor, we have a whole second floor that's unoccupied, and even before I bought the building, this idea of building talent and a pipeline of funky junkies is what we call our followers funky junkies yeah that's what we call our followers, our customers.

But how do you start to build not only a pipeline of loyal customers but a pipeline of loyal users? And so I started thinking about what if you actually had a trade school? What if you actually started? What if you were the next Paul Mitchell for African-American hair products, right when there's a Paul Mitchell school and you're teaching natural hair instead of you know other treatments that they do, and those exist outside of Texas. There's one that exists in Houston, but not focused on natural hair, but focused on beauty school. And so for those people out there who choose to have a different path in life and not go to college, but they're looking for a vocation or trade school and they want to be a hairstylist or barber, do you create a space for them to be able to do that? So that's the second adjacency. And then the third adjacency is then do you go the other end? So I know how to do hair, I'm learning how to do hair, I've got hair products, I'm doing hair on the other side and that's where the salon comes in.

So in all both ends of the spectrum, I am a deep analytical person, so it's understanding what's happening in the market. So in the salon side, you look and you have to figure out and this is for anyone right. You never take a leap in adjacencies just because you think you have the money, the capability, the resources, whatever. You have to understand what's happening in the market because you're not smarter than the whole market. You might be smarter than a couple people in the market, but not the whole market. And so when I look at the hair salon space, I knew of several people in the Houston market that had launched salons and they had failed. They had failed within a three-year cycle and they had failed because the type of offering service offering that they wanted to provide was challenging. And that's the same service offering that we would need to provide as a brand.

Chris: Right.

Renee: And resources and talent. Going back to this other end of the pipeline I was talking about, in the supply chain, those can be sometimes challenging resources to recruit and retain in a salon side, and so when I do the analysis, it's looking at the risk versus reward. How am I smarter than the next person? How do I learn from those failures and ensure that I can recruit talent where I'm not? I don't have a high degree of turnover. I can create brand consistency. I can create service levels that meet the needs of not only what I want to offer, but what our customers expect. I need to exceed it, and so, because I haven't gotten that magic formula yet, we're leaving the salon right here in the marketplace.

Chris: It's still on the drawing board right. Still on the drawing board, I like. I like it well, as it should be, until you figure it out, right? Yeah well, so let's turn a little bit and talk a little more about you yeah in leadership. How would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that's changed or evolved in the last 10 years?

Renee: so I am a type a, hardcore type a. I am a driver and I know that about myself. But I also know that one of my weaknesses as a leader is I don't micromanage. What I have learned to evolve because of my consulting background, right In a consulting world you know 20 plus years is how I was trained. I'm a former salesperson. You just go get it done right, you know.

So that is that's kind of like my bread and butter, and you have a team of type A's that are pretty much driven just like you are. So when you guys have a clear plan and you've got the end goal, all you're doing is managing the type A's to make sure that they get to the goal right at a very high level. No one needs to. You set meetings to review the spreadsheet and the spreadshe's done right. Fast forward to Uncle Funky's daughter. You set meetings to review the spreadsheet and it's like, oh, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, what you wanted me to do, so it requires much more.

What I'm learning is it requires me to evolve my leadership style from one that's hands off, that's a little bit more hands-on, to make sure that my team understands where the bar of excellence is what our customers want from us, what the implications are when we miss deadlines, what the implications are if we ship the wrong product to the wrong customer, and so showing them and teaching them is where I've kind of learned.

That's where my role is as a leader, really helping them really understand the implications of behaviors. And so I've evolved to from a leader that's I'm still. I still tell my team hey, I don't micromanage. If I have to, if I know it before you do, that's probably a problem, and so so they understand that, and so I think I'm still evolving my leadership style to adapt to a smaller company with a different team that thinks differently from the type A consultants with the MBAs that I'm used to working with, to the ones who you know maybe they don't have the MBA or maybe they're going to get it, or maybe they have a desire to get there, and so it really has required. It's a growth opportunity for me that I'm still learning to grow in, to be able to shift my mental mindset away from I got a team of driven people to I got a team that needs to be inspired, you know.

Chris: Yeah, that's great. So what have you done to try to help you in the hiring process? Make sure you're making the best decision you can make about who you're bringing on your team?

Renee: You know it's the hire slow, fire quick.

Chris: Yes, another easier said than done.

Renee: Easier said than done and that's where I am right now. Even in this open marketing director job that I'm looking for, it's really making sure I've gone through I go through so many, I go through all the resumes. My assistant will filter out the trash. But once she's filtered out the trash, I'm looking at those resumes going okay, is this someone who's going to? Because I'll openly say the reason I'm looking for a marketing director. I'll tell you this story. So I hire this person and she's from Adidas. She comes from Adidas background in marketing and she's Under Armour in marketing and she was in Latin America director of Latin America markets and she's just moved from Houston. So I'm thinking I've got a Latina because it's part of my demographic. That's awesome. She's got this global brand experience that's awesome.

All in athleisure but transferable skills. It's marketing. She quits three months later, found another job in athleisure. So I interviewed, interviewed and found this one and this woman, you know, sold me on. I mean we had multiple conversations. I was like you know, sold me on. I mean, we had multiple conversations. I was like you know, hey.

Chris: I'm really concerned about whether or not you know you can migrate from big company to this small company Cause it is a very valid concern.

Renee: It's a big change. Right, you don't have a team. Your team is a team of three, not a team of 20. Right, and so your role really changes. And so she. You know, she convinced me that, but the lesson learned was that you know my spidey senses. I didn't listen to them. Like my spidey senses said, she may not stay. Like there were little things that happened along the way you get enamored with all the other stuff.

Right, but I was so hungry to have a big company, someone to come in to show my team other than me, for them to hear it from someone other than me that this is what marketing looks like, Right, this is the marketing discipline that we need to have. And so she came in. She brought some marketing discipline. She heard that, you know she brought some value in the three months, but it was. It's been really a painful learning process, right, because now I'm short of marketing director, I'm stepping in, yeah, yeah.

Chris: Well, what you alluded to there, right, is just the cost hard cost and soft cost when you make a bad hiring decision yeah Because you know you're having to fill the role or someone else.

Renee: Yep, so that distracts, you, it's me right now.

Chris: It distracts you from doing your full-time else. Yep, so that distracts you. It's me right now. It distracts you from doing your full-time job. Yep, you're now spending time going through resumes and going to be interviewing and you wasted, if you will, all the time on the one that only lasted three months. Yeah, so there's a lot of cost there. There's a lot of cost there.

Renee: And then you're sitting there and knowing I've got to restart this whole process, I've got to try to maintain the momentum within my team this is the second marketing person they've had in the past year so and so how do you start to just kind of manage through that and so, instead of and when you get burned, that one time, as I'm looking at resumes, I'm looking at people with deep experience in a particular industry and I'm going oh nope.

Chris: Learn, that is, that there's that bias creep right you're. You have to not let yourself penalize these people you've never met, just as they might look the same on paper yeah, as the one bad actor in the group.

Renee: Yeah, and so you and you're right, and so I'm going well, and I'm having these conversations and then yeah, so it's just. Yeah, I think that's like one hiring, firing, hiring slow, firing quick.

Chris: Sometimes, even when you hire slow, you still get I tell people it's part science, it's part art and it's the more process I think you can put in place and follow the better. But you're never going to be 100 right and I think figuring out the characteristics that work in your organization is something that you can incorporate into your hiring process and know that this is the kind of background traits, characteristics that thrive here.

Renee: Yeah, and even and I would also say, listening to that, you know, those spidey senses that are coming with those thoughts creep in like, and they were coming like there were things, there were triggers that happened through the hiring process. Then I was like I'm not sure she's going to be a good fit. Like you know, for example, she called and said hey, can I work from home? I was like no, you cannot work from home. So that was like that was.

Oh, renee, we're gonna do a whole episode on work from home. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And so those were the triggers of like, okay, she might not be the good fit. And when those were the when that happens to you, you got to listen to it and like and be okay with backing out. But I didn't listen to the trigger because we were so far down in the negotiation and I should have just said, you know, I don't think this is going to work out Right, and rescinded the offer. But I had already extended the offer, right, and I didn't want to have egg on my face.

Chris:Sure.

Renee: So I mean I, what I should have done is just let my ego go, rescinded the offer and continue to look.

Chris: Yeah, or at least be upfront about this is starting to give me concerns. Here's why.

Renee: Yeah. But I you know you know it's which I did that I did that okay, she covered it up she covered that up. She told me exactly what I wanted to hear, but still the those doubts were in my head and I should have listened to my gut. And that gut is a powerful thing. You know that, maxwell Galt, maxwell Galt Gladwell, it's a powerful thing. And if, when you listen to it, you're usually right, 100%. Yeah, 100%.

Chris: Renee, this has been a fascinating conversation. Just to wrap it up, I have a few just personal things. I always like to ask yeah, what was your first job as a kid?

Renee: Newspaper. I was a newspaper girl. You had a newspaper route? Yes, Absolutely I did. I'll be darned. My sister got up in the morning and helped me through my newspapers.

Chris: You're not the first guest. That was their first job it was fairly common.

Renee: You had to make me dig deep for that one.

Chris: Okay, you made me dig deeper on this one. Sometimes people say this is the hardest question. Yeah, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Renee: Barbecue no sauce Seasoned, very well seasoned, no hesitation.

Chris: No, no hesitation and the woman knows what she wants. Yes, right.

Renee: Don't bring me brisket with sauce on it. No.

Chris: No sauce Extra seasoned.

Renee: I want seasoned brisket, the moist kind. Okay, and, by the way, I'm not a Texan, but I moved to Texas and now I've been here 15 years and now it's like brisket barbecue. It's the only thing that I eat.

Chris: I eat it's the only thing I want to eat. I might die of a heart attack, but it's the only thing I want to eat. I love it All right. So because you have four kids and I know your life's running crazy, this will be more of a fantasy.

Renee: Yeah, if you could take.

Chris: If you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do?

Renee: Oh, I would be somewhere, probably in South Africa, in the, probably on a safari. I would tour safaris. I would go South Africa, kenya. I want to see the migration of animals. I would do that.

Chris: I love it.

Renee: That's where I would be.

Chris: Renee, thank you so much for being on. This has been just a pleasure getting to know you and hear your story.

Renee: Thank you. This is awesome. I listened to NPR how I built this. So this is like my. I feel like I'm excited. I've kind of done the NPR check. I like the how I built this check. Do you listen to that?

Chris: I do, I do, I love it. I love that analogy.

Renee: Yeah, it's great.

Chris: Thanks again.

Renee: Thanks for doing this.

Special Guest: Renee Morris.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I discuss John Marvin's transformative leadership journey as CEO and President of Texas State Optical (TSO).

Founded in 1936 by the Rogers brothers, TSO evolved into a franchise operation spearheaded by John starting in the 1990s. Hear John's compelling account of reviving the brand, establishing the franchise association, and guiding the innovative physician-owned business model that has empowered young optometrists for decades.

With the evolving eyewear landscape, our conversation analyzes consumer behavior shifts and their implications for strategic competition amid growing online retailers.

We also explore the importance of supporting TSO's physician member network through mentorship and partnerships, especially given industry consolidation challenges.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Texas State Optical

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

John: Well, Chris, I appreciate the opportunity to sit down. I always love talking about business.

Chris: Well, that's good, that's what we're going to do. So you're the CEO and president of Texas State Optical, or most people know it as TSO. That's right. Tell us a little more detail about what is the company, what does it do and what is it really known for in the market.

John: Okay Well, texas State Optical was founded in 1936 by four brothers the Rogers brothers, in Beaumont, texas, and anybody who's been to Beaumont or familiar with Beaumont knows of the impact those four brothers had on that community and then in turn throughout Texas. Two of the brothers were optometrists and they opened pretty traditional optometry practice. And if you'll think about what else was going on in 1936 in Beaumont, it was the oil boom that was just blowing up, and so the one that originally came to Texas from Chicago all four of them were from Chicago called back home and said boys, you need to move down here. We got a big opportunity and they did, and consequently, over the next several years they built a large retail optical chain they called Texas State Optical, and one time in the early 60s it had reached over 300 locations.

And one time in the early 60s it had reached over 300 locations and those were in New Mexico, oklahoma, arkansas, louisiana and Texas, and so that went on until, due to some legal issues with the state optometric group, who decided that they didn't want someone in the state running 300 locations, they passed some legislation that limited optometrists to only three locations and so they could subsequently, after a long legal battle had to sell off most of their property, but they kept the core of the business of the optical lab. They kept that and kind of a condition of buying. The practice was that you obligated yourself to continue to purchase items from them. But then in the late 60s the Rogers, having gone through this process of dissolving their ownership in it, decided to turn their attention towards real estate development and at one point they owned 25% of Caesars Palace in Vegas.

They just got involved in other things and then consequently in the early 70s they sold the company to a large pharmaceutical company, gd Searle, who then subsequently sold the company in the early 80s to Pearl Vision. Most people are familiar with Pearl Vision, most people are familiar with ProVision and ran that until the late 80s when they sold it to a group of kind of investors who wanted to own it. They didn't really know how to run it than investors. So in I got involved in 1993 doing consumer research for the corporate office. My background at the time I had a company marketing management group and based here in Houston and it was a small marketing management and consumer research group and was doing work in other areas. But picked them up as a client and began to do a lot of consumer study for them and learned about the business.

At that time it was somewhat distressed because of the leadership that had taken over from the Pearl Vision taken over from Pearl, and so there was a lot of unrest among the franchisees because at that time TSO was a franchise operation and so I helped them form a franchise association and then kind of on a part-time arrangement took on an executive director position within that while maintaining my consumer study and research stuff. And so that happened until the late nineties, when everyone was planning for the great millennium you know, the 2000 and Y2, right, right. And so we gathered everybody in my conference room over here and how, booty building, and down here in the galleria and they started you know, flip chart sheets, what do we want to accomplish? And blah, blah, blah, and and that the result of that was really, guys, you're not going to get any of this done unless you own it.

And so we began to have some discussions about them buying the company, the, the franchisor, and that took about a year to negotiate, and during that process I was asked to come on as the new president and since and then we closed in June of 2001, and since that time I've been the acting and operational by president and CEO of the company, and one of the reasons that it appealed to me was it was the ultimate fixer-upper, because the company had really was kind of loosely held together but had an iconic brand, and so we started opening new locations with Young Optometrist and we're a brand license company.

So we knew that the only way we could pick up a new customer, if you would be, if a young OD wanted to open their own practice and then we could help them do that. People that were established at the time and successful weren't interested in converting to a retail trade name, so we did. We opened up about 80 new locations and helped a lot of young ODs live a dream and had put together a whole turnkey system commercial realty contractors the whole nine yards.

Chris: That's a fascinating history, you know, to kind of just see it grow so big in the beginning, get broken down and then almost come back together. Yeah with, I guess in 2001 you said, with these individual practice owners or franchisees becoming owners.

John: That's, you know, kind of unique, especially for doctors yeah, it was a different approach to it, one of the reasons we can set it as a now. We never incorporated it as a cooperative, we incorporated it as for-profit. We simply chose to run it as a cooperative, which, by its nature of co-op, isn't intended to make money, right? So we could keep the services and the value of what we offer members very high because we priced it at a break-even point, and so it was very appealing to a lot of young ODs who needed that help without any experience knowing what to do. And, of course, we then had a retail trade name that had market appeal. So a lot of them benefited greatly by, as opposed, to, opening up under their own name and unknown in a community.

Chris: Yeah, it gives it instant credibility with the brand name right. That's right. What are some of the things I guess that you know since that time in 2001, that you do and your team around you, to kind of help preserve that brand value, to make it marketable and enticing to these doctors.

John: Well, part of it is the importance. An optometry practice as a small business has a very defined marketplace of about three radium miles Okay, so one. That's part of that is because there are so many options and the profession is a licensed profession and so there's a little bit of perception by consumers that it's a commodity. In other words, anybody who's got a license will be able to give you a good exam. Consumers at one time back in the 60s and 70s, thought mostly of wherever they got their exams. That's where they purchased their eyewear.

Chris: Out of convenience, right Out of convenience.

John: That's right. And in the 80s you had a much more proliferation of retail optical chains like LensCrafters and EyeMasters at the time and Pearl Vision, which were creating an awareness among consumers that you know what, I can get my exam in one location and I can buy my eyewear in another location, and so that added to that sense of commodity. And so what we've done is focus on a three mile marketplace. So instead of running one advertising campaign in Houston, we run 50 around each of our locations, and those are largely driven through community involvement, pay-per-click, you know, today pay-per-click In the beginning though, a lot of it was just getting to know your school nurse, getting to know the coaches in the league ball game, and so from a marketing strategy it was always hyper-local standpoint.

And so if you go into some neighborhoods, everyone knows the TSO. If you go into an neighborhood where we have no location, maybe not so much, and that was done probably more just from a practical standpoint of cost than it was anything else, because you know Houston and Dallas. Where we're at in San Antonio, they're very expensive media markets and so if you've only got, you know, 20 locations in the DFW market to go in and try to buy television, advertising or something more traditional is prohibited, and so it makes a lot more sense because that's where people live and work. People ask me sometimes how do you go about picking your locations, your real estate stuff? And I said we tend to let Kroger and HEB do that for us. So, wherever they're at, we want to be close because that's a neighborhood.

Chris: That's right. You figured they thought there were enough households to support a grocery store. So I like that, you know, uh, you know. There's a lesson there, though, for a business owner, an entrepreneur, in that you don't necessarily have to do all your own organic research if you don't know, aware what's going on, you can, you know, let someone else do some of that and just make sure that their end users look like yours, and that's right.

John: They do a tremendous job, both of those companies, at understanding the market before they ever buy land or pour concrete. I'd hate to insult them by not taking advantage of all that good work they do.

Chris: They're genius right, they're genius, that's right. You just mentioned, you said 30 different or 50 different marketing campaigns in Houston alone. I mean, how do you go about figuring out you know the right message for the right place? That must take a lot of work.

John: Well, not so much I mean because the message in Sugar Land is the same as the message in the Woodlands. I mean people. While we, as as in our profession, try to complicate this, it's pretty simple from a consumer standpoint. They're looking for a place where they can get their eyes checked and buy a pair of glasses. But probably two-thirds of all of our revenue today come from a third-party payer. So that changes kind of the basic consumer behavior dynamic. But by putting out a message that really is focused on that group of people in terms of maximizing the value of those coverage benefits, that becomes real consistent and then it's a matter of just being louder than anybody else.

Chris: Sure, while we're on the subject of that consumer and consumer behavior, what are some of the things that you have done over the last 10, 15 years to either combat the online competition, as you mentioned, because people get their eyes examined and they either go online or do something. How are you managing that and what are some of the strategies you found to be successful?

John: Well, first of all, consumers are driven, and I think this may be generally true, but certainly our consumers are driven with the priority on convenience, and one of the reasons the online marketing purchase of eyewear is so appealing is its convenience, and oftentimes it's not a price issue as much as it is a convenience issue and assortment and selection. So one of the things that we focus on is to make sure that our retail dispensary that's what we call the retail store aspect of a practice is well inventoried with product and assortment price points, and then the ultimate differentiation is customer service and knowledgeable people, and so if you have selection pricing and knowledgeable people, it's a home run and you don't have to worry about it, because if you can make it convenient for them, then they're not tempted to go online.

And because there's a lot of I don't know if you've ever bought a pair of shoes online, but all you need to do is have one bad experience with that and have to turn around, send them back and so forth and so on that people would really prefer to get it locally, where I got my, where they received their exam, and it's kind of hours to lose. So we try to make sure we don't give them a reason to leave.

Chris: Yeah Well, it's an interesting analogy with the shoes, because I can relate to that and see that people like to try on shoes but also glasses right.

John: What are these going to look?

Chris: like, and if you're at a store with a good selection, it's all right there as opposed to ordering one or two online and knowing you're going to be returning something.

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John: It's an interesting change we're seeing right now, especially in the last five to 10 years, and that is, the number of young optometrists who have an interest in owning their own practice is going away.

Chris: It's really an interesting thing.

John: One. It's very similar to what's going on in healthcare in general. You know, I was just talking to some people last week and I said you know when was the last time I asked them? I said do you have children? Yes, do you have a pediatrician? Yes, is that pediatrician private practice?

Chris: No.

John: It's owned by some big organization like Texas Children's, and what you're seeing in healthcare delivery at the provider level is a consolidation of these organizations and the disappearing of private practice, and we're seeing that now in optometry. And another big dynamic is 85% of all optometry graduates today are female, and in the 80s that number was just the opposite. It was very unusual in the 80s and early 90s to see women in optometry school. I mean they certainly didn't represent the majority. And so with that comes different priorities of practice. You know you don't have the hard-charging young guy who wants to go into small-town Texas and really build up a big practice or even a metro area. You have people that are much more interested in part-time, that I want to be able to step aside, raise my family, then maybe come back later, and so there's a whole different culture among the providers now coming in. So our organization as a business model relies on young optometrists wanting to own their own practice, and if that category is declining we've got to come up with some other plan here to maintain Sure. So one the opportunities we have are less.

The vetting process is largely a discussion with very successful people. Our board of directors consists of nine doctors and three outside directors, but the nine doctors are all very successful. And so a young person does approach me and we talk, I want them to speak to one of our successful guys, and then their job is to kind of assess and come back to me and say, John, I don't know if she's ready, I don't know if he can do this, or I think this is a home run, let's go. And with their input and my discussion I've been doing it now long enough that I kind of get a feel for it Then we'll say let's go. And really it's a matter of they own everything. It's a matter of us guiding them through the process and then supporting them with just the knowledge they don't have about building a practice afterwards, and then lots of follow-up and hand-holding.

Chris: And it's done. I think you said just as, basically a license agreement where they're licensing the name and brand and they get some support as a result of that as well.

John: I mean contractually, I'm not obligated to support anything. Contractually I'm not obligated to support anything. All I'm obligated to do is to keep the value of the brand consistent with what they're paying for it. But I realized that if they're not successful, my brand value suffers. So we do all that we can to support them and help them be successful.

Chris: So let's talk a little bit about your internal team. I mean, you've got a team I think you said 12, that's kind of help support you, that support these members. What have you found to be successful as you've gone through maybe trials and tribulations of hiring the right people, making sure you've got the right people in the right seat to kind of support the business and the brand?

John: You know, that's a great question, because I, up until about 2015, I took a whole different approach to personnel than I did 2015 and on, and it was like I learned something, and that is I put together a group of really knowledgeable people in terms of their expertise in certain areas, but the quality that I had not paid attention to prior to that was they also had to be connectors. They had to be the kind of people that could say hey, chris, I know somebody you ought to talk to. And so because when a non-doctor walks into a doctor's office, even with the responsibility of helping, they carry a different level of credibility with that doctor than if a doctor told them something. If we go in and say, hey, listen, you need to be open Saturdays, because there's a lot of business on Saturdays, I don't want to do it. But if a doctor tells them, oh man, you got to be open Saturday, they'll listen to it. But if a doctor tells them, oh man, you've got to be open Saturday, they'll listen to it.

And so our guys who are in the field, they do tactical training and support for staff, but when a doctor is facing an issue that they know the answer to, they in turn, seek out other leadership in the doctor community to say would you mind giving so-and-so a call Because I think you could help them get through whatever issue they're dealing with. And so that quality and frankly it's, you know it requires someone who doesn't have much of an ego. Sure, because you know I say this all the time like my old friend Ronald Reagan used to say, there's no limit to what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And so we take that approach, and ours isn't about trying to get a bunch of credit. Ours is about trying to lift up this organization and get these guys successful, and if we're simply a facilitator in information to how to do that, we don't have to be the initial provider of that information. Even if we know it, it comes much better from a colleague, and so that's one of the things that we put a lot of emphasis on is helping the network, help each other.

Chris: So you know you were very quick to say 2015. Have you seen a dramatic improvement in the performance of the overall business since making that change and kind of focusing on the connector quality as being an additional important quality in the people you bring on?

John: Very much so, because what Texas State Optical was in the beginning was a doctor-owned organization and doctors working with other doctors to help them grow a network and large business.

We're trying to replicate that from the standpoint of, especially as the business, the structure we use I mentioned earlier as a cooperative. It requires doctor leadership to be active and engaged in running their own company, their owners of the company, and so, while I have certainly an important role in that, the more doctors that engage in the leadership of the organization, the better it is overall. And since we took that intentional effort in 2015, a couple of things too. We had a kind of an evolution of membership. I mean, we had a lot of our older doctors retire and sell practices, and then we had a whole influx of young doctors, and so we ended up in 2015 with an organization that was significantly different demographically, both age and gender. That was significantly different demographically, both age and gender. But we thought they need mentorship among the leadership in the organization, and so we worked at creating that for them, and it impacts not just clinical I mean, there's also that aspect of it they're learning clinically from friends but operationally, and so it made a big difference Very good.

Chris: I know that you have supply agreements with certain labs and other things. Let's talk about some of the things that you found to be successful in maintaining, I guess, forming those kind of key strategic relationships for the business, and maybe some of the things you do to make sure that you foster and keep them strong of the things you do to make sure that you foster and keep them strong.

John: Well, in the vendor-doctor community there is a kind of an assumption made by both sides, and one is the doctor assumes that the vendor's got more money than they know how to spend or what they've got all this money to spend, and the vendor assumes the doctor's not going to follow through on all the promises they make.

So that's kind of where we start at the table, and so I think it's important and what we've worked at bringing to our relationships is mutual accountability, and we have found our vendor partners to be extremely invested in our success, but at the same time they've got a business to run as well, and so our success with them and that dynamic of that exchange or relationship cannot be at the vendor's expense.

It's gotta be the classic cliche win type of thing, but you only get win if you have mutual accountability. And so in every agreement we have, here's what the vendor commits to and here's what the doctor community commits to. And then we have business reviews where we sit down and say here's where we're dropping the ball or here's where you're dropping the ball, and we hold that accountability does a long goes a long way to not only making the relationship productive but also building trust and longevity into those partnerships, because if you're making money with a partner, you don't want it to stop, right, you know? And that goes both ways If you're a doctor making money with a partner, you don't want it to stop, and if money with a partner, you don't want it to stop, and if you're a partner, you don't want to stop. So I found that type of mutual accountability and the willingness to be held accountable is critical to those relationships Very good.

Chris: So you know. Talk a little bit about leadership. You've been running this organization for a long time now. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think that's evolved over time?

John: well, I would. I don't know if I've ever been asked to describe it, but I would say it's Maxwellian. Okay, and that means John C Maxwell, who is an author, has written a number of books on leadership and, in my opinion, probably is the most the best leadership author. I'm biased, of course, but I think he is.

Forbes Magazine said that a few years ago, but basically his definition of leadership is influence. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just influence. And an example of that is if you walk into a room of people, you're naturally going to notice someone who's exercising influence on others, and it isn't an authoritarian way, it's in a trust and credibility way. And so if you're influencing, you're leading. If you're not, it doesn no matter what title you have. So an example is my when I explained how we use doctors to help influence other doctors. So that's a level of influence that doesn't come because I require somebody to do something. It it occurs because you're able to influence others to to make a difference. So I would. I'm a big believer in that. I'll plug his book. There are 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. It's a classic, and so that's like a Bible. It's my business Bible in terms of leadership style.

Chris: I was going to use that word because others and it's fair to plug books, because sometimes I ask people what's a book you would recommend. We hear a lot of good to great from people Sure, jim Collins. But what I love what you said if you're influencing, you're leading, because I say a lot of times a true leader leads without a title.

John: Right, you're actually doing things without the title to demonstrate leadership, which is what you're talking about Exactly, and if you do have the title and can influence, it's a home run. It's a home run, yeah.

Chris: So you've learned that through lots of trials and tribulations. I think we all learn through mistakes or setbacks Anything you could share with the listeners about a decision made that didn't go the way you thought but you learned from it and that learning kind of catapulted you made you better because of it. Setback, failure whatever word you want to describe Anything you could you care to share in that realm.

John: Sure the. So I came to Houston. I was born and raised in Western Kansas and I was in Wichita born and raised in western Kansas, and I was in Wichita, kansas, in 1989, excuse me, in the late 80s, 84, 89 era and I was working for a large ophthalmology practice up there as a marketing administrator and in that role I attended a lot of national meetings in ophthalmology and during that meeting I met an owner of a large Houston ophthalmology and during that meeting I met an owner of a large Houston ophthalmology group who ended up offering me a job and I came to Texas. Due to some marketing challenges we were facing at that practice, I was introduced to Texas State Optical while I was at that practice and then left after about four years, left that practice and went to a consumer research firm here in Stafford and quickly turned around and went to Texas State Optical to see if they would like to buy some insurance I'm not insurance, buy some research and they did so. I ended up doing this large project for them but also ended up doing a ton of work for HLMP. During the time they were prepared to try to go to battle with Enron and this was like early nineties, right, and so everything was going well.

And then I get fired from the research thing. Now I moved my family down from Kansas. I've been in the state about five and a half years and I get fired. I've been in the state about five and a half years and I get fired. And that was a big you know. Anytime you've been fired, that kind of devastates you Right, it shakes you up.

Chris: Yeah, it does.

John: But had that not happened, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing Right, and so I have learned, and what pulled me through that is faith, Faith in God and faith in myself is faith, faith in God and faith in myself, and I felt like I can do, kind of what. There was a part of it, chris, that was liberating, because that was like, instead of thinking now what am I going to do, I was thinking now what am I going to do. I mean, it was a whole different frame of attitude and that subsequently ended up leading to the position I have today, through working with franchisees at Texas State Optical and so forth.

Chris: That's a great story. Thank you for sharing. You bet A lot of people don't want to talk about, especially if they've been fired for something. But to your point on that, these other opportunities would have never presented themselves right, because you likely stayed in the comfort of the job and seeing where that takes you. You know there's so much that can come.

John: Actually, I'd gone to that research firm. The owner of it had brought me there with the promise implied I mean not implied, but it wasn't in writing but the idea was that I would take over that firm at some point and it turned out that didn't work out Well you know a lot of what you, I think, describe.

Chris: The undertone to that is the mindset you had in the wake of that setback. You know you didn't let it take you down. You're like like you said what am I going to go? Do I got all these opportunities and go? Explore and figure it out.

John: So I had about 30 days before the next house payment came, so that you were acting quick, got to be decisive man.

Chris: You can't be stewing on decisions forever, for sure, well, that and so you know that leadership, you know is forged and helped you get to where you are today. You know, when you, when you think about applying that mindset and that leadership kind of style, how does it help you kind of navigate the ups and downs of the economic cycles that we've experienced over the last 20 plus years?

John: Well, you know, first of all is to understand which of these cycles are cyclical. That's a little redundant, but I mean, what is it we're going through that's cyclical. That you can. You know, business loves a stable and predictable environment. Right Now, the reality is it's ups and downs. But if it's ups and downs within a certain range of up and down, it's stable right, and you can prepare for it Certain tolerances right, yeah certain tolerances.

What we've seen, not only in the economy and that's a whole different issue but what we've seen in the profession itself and the consolidation of private practice by private equity that's come into the marketplace, is we're seeing disruption like we haven't seen before. And I was talking to one of our board members doctor board members about it and we were just, you know, he was pointing out all of the things that are kind of out without from under excuse me, out of our control, and as we were talking about it, I had this thought and I told him. I said it's a great time to be alive and that because we're the ones that get to go through this, and in many ways I believe that our profession is going through a transformation that will take probably a 20 year period of time. But 40 years from now, optometry, I don't think, will look anything like it does today, and it's always bumpy to be in the middle of that turbulent transformation.

The 80s were very steady, the 90s were pretty steady. It was in starting about 2010, 2000, that things started rapidly changing and then the acceleration with just technology and everything else is just gone, and then you've got now the whole world of artificial intelligence coming into play and it's. I consider it exciting, invigorating, challenging, but I mean what's? The alternative is to be bored right.

Chris: Well, if you don't adopt and if you're not using it, you die use it you die, that's right. So I mean, you know, kind of it's a great segue to what are some of the things you do to kind of foster that maybe innovative mindset of how you're going to embrace the technological changes and use them in the business model to further the brand and the business.

John: So I there's very little I can do without the support of the doctor, owner, community right. And sometimes there's a lot of indecision, because when you're not sure what to do, you're scared of doing the wrong thing.

Chris: Sure, Well, it seems like you got a lot of opinions that out there too, right?

John: You got a lot of them, and so what I have to do is to influence them through other people and through information, to get them to a point of being open enough to consider ideas that they might consider kind of sacrilege in some case. For instance, what is real common in most optometry practices today is what's called an autorefractor. It's a machine that people go through and it gives you a prescription, and the prescription is used by the doctor to zero in on where your visual acuity is right. Well, when that first came out, optometrists thought that was the end of the profession. Here's a machine that'll do what I'm doing. Optometrists thought that was the end of the profession. Here's a machine that'll do what I'm doing.

And so there's a fear oftentimes of innovation. Right, that you have to assure people that there's a way to use this to our benefit, and that's what we're going through with artificial intelligence right now. One group is scared to death. It's going to replace them. The other group is glad they're old enough, they're probably not going to have to go through with it. And then you're looking for those people who say, hey, how can we utilize this to really to our benefit? Yeah, and once people feel that's safe enough to kind of try. Then the people realize that the fear is misplaced.

Chris: So true, right, but it takes education, information and influence, as you said, to get people to get there so that they can adopt it One of the things that I teach my team to say.

John: I mean to believe, and I say it all the time is we believe in everybody's right to make a bad decision. So if someone listens to us and they choose not to do what we're recommending and we know it's a good decision what we're recommending and they choose not to, it's their right. You know, I mean everybody's right to waste their own money. So that kind of patience is necessary with a group like ours. In many ways it's like working with a volunteer organization.

Chris: Yeah, well, lots of challenges there, I'm sure. Well, john, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you sharing everything I want to ask you, I guess, going back to your days, you know, I guess growing up in Kansas what was your first job?

John: A drugstore Rexall drugstore and I grew up in a town of 2000 people and my dad was the family physician of the community and so of course in a town like that in western Kansas the doctor and the pharmacist are close relationship. And so I got my first job at a drugstore, working a soda fountain, delivering prescriptions, restocking things. Like that had a blast and that really I learned a lot in that, not just like everybody learns a lot from their first job, but understanding. I was intrigued by Rexall. I don't know how familiar you are with Rexall, but Rexall was a national organization that gave private ownership of drugstores the purchasing power of a large corporate chain, and so my employer was the pharmacist. He owned the drug store and he stood up in the stand in the dais every day counting pills and chatting with people. So that was my first job.

Chris: Very good. Well, you've been in Texas now since what the late?

John: 80s.

Chris: So do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue Barbecue? Okay.

John: Barbecue Very good. My waistline prefers barbecue.

Chris: And last thing if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? I don't know, Probably nuts.

John: I just I've got to be engaged and I mean I don't have to be. I'm not select. I love business and I love the challenge it has. So I'm not I don't. You said earlier in our discussion about you were describing about the law firm. When I was doing consumer research, I did some healthcare work 12 Oaks Hospital was a client and so but I would tell people, is I specialize in a process, not an industry, because the process is the same and I would say that's what I really love about business, because when you boil it down to what I do and what you do and others that run businesses, it's the same process. It's understanding your customer and then directing how your services or products benefit that customer and communicating and the whole marketing scheme of promotion, price, product and place applies to every industry. And so I'd probably do something if I had 30 days. Like I said, I'd go nuts.

Chris: Well, but I think what you just said there in the end is you have great insight and learning for business owners and entrepreneurs out there. You're trying to find their way. It's it is figure out what the consumer that you're catering to really wants and then deliver that as efficient as best you can that's why you know my, when I first got into consumer research, I thought this is like cheating.

John: I mean you're actually going out and saying what do you want? They tell you, and then you give it to them. I mean it's like, it's amazing.

Chris: Yeah, right, so well, this has been great, John. Thanks again for taking the time. You bet I really appreciate your invitation.

Special Guest: John D Marvin.

In this episode of the Building Texas Business Podcast, I interview Kelly Young, CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston.

We explore how Houston has become a national model for reducing homelessness through data-driven strategies and collaborative efforts. Kelly shares insights on effective nonprofit leadership, emphasizing the importance of building solid and accountable teams and fostering diverse thinking. We discuss the critical need for sustainable funding in homeless response systems, moving away from reliance on sporadic disaster funding.

Throughout our conversation, we delve into Houston's successes and the ongoing challenges in addressing homelessness.

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Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About CFTHhouston

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Kelly: Lovely to see you and thank you for inviting me.

Chris: So you are the CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless in Houston, and so a little bit different guest than normal, but not outside the box for us. Tell us what the Coalition for the Homeless is and what it does. So.

Kelly: I like to think of the Coalition for the Homeless is and what it does. So I like to think of the Coalition for the Homeless as a coordinating body over what we call the Way Home, which is a collective of for-profit or non-profit and public entities that come together to resolve the issue of homelessness.

Chris: Very good. So how did you get involved in the homeless response system, how long have you been involved and what really inspired you to do this?

Kelly: I've actually been interested in helping people figure out better lives for themselves since I was like 12. I mean, I was what was called a people tutor when I was in a middle school, where I actually helped individuals with physical disabilities learn sports. And then I did some tutoring in high school and then I started working in a shelter for abused kids and I worked with kids who were coming out of psychiatric units. Then I worked in domestic and sexual violence. So I think I was always on a path to be a part of something that helped make other people's lives easier for them to be successful.

When you do a lot of that direct work, you see the individual impact and the individual failures. When you get to do it on a systems level, you get to decide whether a system will be helpful in helping someone or whether it's setting up people for failure. So I've been in the Way Home system for about 12 years as an individual agency that helped provide direct services. But I'm actually a systems thinker by nature and so I kept going well, why doesn't this work and why doesn't this work? And the whole system here works. My job was to help it work better. So you know, like with any system or any business, you're constantly thinking about the future and what needs to change and what's going to be different coming up, and so I got the perfect opportunity to come in at a time when there is a major shift in many of the pillars of how the work is done, and I get to help design what that's going to look like, and that, to me, is the purpose of work.

Chris: Love it. That's great. So, just to give our listeners maybe some context, let's just talk about the size of the organization, the coalition itself and maybe then, and maybe then, the system, participants and members, so they get an idea of what it is, that the organization is that you're running, as well as a system that you're trying to help manage and, as you said, get better and be more successful.

Kelly: Well, I think, like any business, we are well-structured in terms of having enough staff to do the things that are core to our business model, and a couple of those things is we have a heavy compliance and finance department. We are nonprofits, are tax status not our business model, and we think of finance and compliance as sort of the heart of the organization. It pumps the blood through because we manage and help support almost 23 million to $40 million with a federal funding which requires us to follow lots of rules and regulation and make sure it's done correctly, not just for us, but also for our partners. We will provide certain types of services if we think that from a systems perspective, it makes sense to have an overlay. So we have an outreach team, we have a landlord engagement team and I can go more into depth about that when I talk about the system and then we have a housing team and those are really to bolster the system, not to replace the system in those jobs.

And then we have this second largest department, which is really our data. We're a data-driven organization. 12 years ago, the coalition made a major shift, which was to use data to drive the construct of how the community actually resolves homelessness or deals with homelessness in the community and in that data. What we did was build out our 100 partners who have to agree to be a part of the database and include all that information but also follow some of our guidelines around standards, so that we can bring more and more money in from the federal government but also provide much better services and a quicker response to somebody who falls into homelessness.

Chris: Okay, so, and at the coalition, what is it? Roughly 80-ish, I think, employees.

Kelly: Yes, we're at 80. And I think we're also unique because we sit between the county and the city. We are trying to manage both of their expectations around homelessness. So sometimes people think of us as quasi-government. We are not. We are a nonprofit. But we sit there so that we can meter both sides what the county and the city wants and they don't have to be trying to work that through. So we always find the best solution for both Harris County, montgomery County and Fort Bend, and then the city of Houston Very good.

Chris: So yeah, let's talk a little bit about the system. You know some people may be aware I think you know a lot aren't but just the success of Houston and how Houston has become the model for the country on addressing homelessness, reducing homelessness in our community. You know a lot's been written, most recently about the Houston Chronicle a little over a year ago, new York Times. You know you've been involved and interviewed in those things. Share a little bit for people to kind of understand how successful Houston's been to date. And of course, we can talk more later about the challenges we still face.

Kelly: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things and again, any good business person or anybody who's looking to innovate understands that you first have to know the problem you have and then understand how you want to solve that problem, and for what I think the system did really well over the last 12 years is to build out the right system mechanisms and then the right interventions to use our money to the fullest extent. So what most people don't understand is that for the homeless response system which we oversee, that is mainly funded by federal dollars and so we are under federal guidelines on how we do that, which means we actually cannot interact or help somebody until they are currently on the street and in that then we have to be able to place them in other places, including permanent supportive housing, which is for somebody with a documented disability who's been on the street for a long time. They still will pay part of their rent out of their disability dollars, but we give them a subsidized apartment and appointments to kind of get off the street and going again. I think the other piece that people don't understand is that we only have two systems. We only have rapid rehousing or permanent supportive housing. So our options are very limited, which means you have to be incredibly smart and innovative about how you engage not only the community, the people who need the service, but then the service delivery when we have taken advantage of, which I think is true in Houston.

Why I love this city so much is we take disasters and turn them into determination, and so we took both the Hurricane Harvey and COVID and use those additional dollars to build out enough of a safety net, but then also a permanent place for people to live, that we were able to move over the last 11 years, 30,000 people off the street. We reduced homelessness by 60% and I know people are like, well, but I see people on the street, Absolutely, but you don't see the ones we placed in the housing and who moved on with their lives because they're gone. They're doing their lives.

Chris: The thing people I think should know is and you can share some details but you know and we know from the research and the data that A lot of what's at the streetlight, those aren't homeless people.

Kelly: Right. We also have an issue with people living below the poverty line. So United Way points out and rightfully so, that 40% of the individuals in Houston are $400 away from catastrophe and that means we have a lot of people living on the edge. So if you're unable to get a job or you're unable to work full time, you might see people who are out panhandling to get a job, or you're unable to work full-time, you might see people who are out panhandling. There's also people who take advantage of people who are in those situations and use that as their own mechanism to make money, because they actually place people there and then collect some of their money so that they could go stay in their shelter. So it's an interesting world when you actually find out what's going on in your street corners.

Chris: Right, right. Well, I love that Obviously very close to this issue and the system, and so I think it's great to be able to tout the success we're having, as well as you know the challenges we face. You know people talk about the goal of ending homelessness and I love the kind of the phrase that's been adopted is making it rare, brief and non-reoccurring, because, as you said, so many people are living right on the edge. People are going to something's going to happen, people are going to end up homeless, but the question is is there a system there that can rapidly get them into housing and the supportive services they need to recorrect?

Kelly: Yeah, absolutely, and I think the important piece of this is looking at equilibrium.

So what you want, I don't need to have a lot of additional dollars that are sitting there waiting to do something.

I need just-in-time dollars.

I need to know that if a downturn has happened in the economy, if there's something happening on the street, return you know, in terms of people falling more readily into homelessness, rents have gone up something else has happened.

I want to be able to bolster that very quickly so I can move those individuals off the street within 30 to 45 days. That reduces not only the trauma on that individual but it reduces the trauma on the community and as a community member myself I mean, I live in Midtown, so I often see a lot of individuals I've known for a long time to be on the street and you know what I don't want people to do is to get to the point where they don't care about those individuals anymore because it's disrupting their community. So equilibrium not only benefits the individual, who is facing a really difficult time, and moving them on quickly so it's a blip in their life, not an extension of their life and then also for the community to be able to stay in that caring and compassionate place so that they'll get involved and stay involved in the work of our unhoused neighbors and friends and, quite honestly, brothers and sisters.

Chris: So let's turn the page a little bit and talk about you know you came into this organization at the beginning of 2024. Let's talk about what it's like to, you know, step in as a CEO, a new CEO into an organization and some of the how you approach that from a mindset, because I would think you know some of our listeners may find themselves there, may be experiencing it as well. So what was the mindset you kind of took in to make it a smooth transition and so that one you could honor what's been, what was being done by the you know, maybe previous CEO, but you know, make a smooth transition and find a way to put your own mark on the organization moving forward.

Kelly: I think one of the best things people can do is first lie to themselves and then tell their truth. The lie you tell yourself is that you know everything's going to change and you list it out and you ready yourself for that. Intellectually, I do think where you probably need to tell your truth is that change is complicated and hard. I think sometimes, when you're in a leadership role, you want to reframe things for other people so that it's easy for them to understand and maybe to jump on board, but you yourself know it's difficult. I mean when you know the financial picture is going to change, the model is going to change, the people are going to change, and those were all true for us. That list sounds great and easy, but it is a constant attention to each small move that you're making and what the long-term impact is.

I always describe strategy as visionary and improvisational and I think that's a good balance and that's how I've been able to translate what I think needs to happen in an organization. I mean, obviously you're listening, you know the pillars have sort of changed. You're listening to other people, you're absorbing other people, but I also come in and I'm really clear about how I work and what my accomplishment looks like and how success looks to me, and I drive that home in every single meeting. So people learn to trust that what I'm saying is true. When I make a mistake, I tell everybody straight up. I'm you know it's not falling on my sword. I just think it's important to model that. I think one thing is, for some of us who are more introverted thinkers, one of the hardest things to learn to do is how to over-commun messaging to people.

Chris: Because I do so much of it in my head, I have to remember to actually put words to it well, and I mean yeah, go ahead obviously not the right, but I mean I can relate to that because you not only that, there's so many things going on in your brain, right, and you're you like. I just completed this, I got to get to the next thing and it's finding that time to either stop and slow down and communicate before you move on or, you know, remember at some point you need to stop and let people know what's going on through those ears.

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Kelly: Yeah, I always call it the Kelly Young madness or the Kelly Young magic, because it's like some people are good at waiting to see what's going to happen. Other people are like I have no idea what she's doing and we're just going to hope this all works out. And it's my responsibility as a leader to alleviate both of those misunderstandings. Right, because I need people engaged in the process. I'm a big believer that right buck stops with me. I'm going to make the final decision, but very rarely is the final decision my decision. It's everybody else's input.

I'll take the accountability, I'll be the one who pushes it through. But if I don't have the buy-in from the group and they can't be settled in some agreement, especially when you're changing from something that has run successfully for a very long time and all the conditions changed and change and you have to let people know it's not, we're not changing because you did something wrong. We're changing because it's time to move forward. That kind of reframing I think is extremely helpful and that stuff. You should know what you're going to say and how you're going to lay that out to your team before you start day one.

Chris: Very good. So, speaking of team obviously you just said this in one of your responses that is, while the buck stops with you, you make the final decision. It's rarely your decision. That's because you have a team around you, right, and you're relying on them and you're pushing them, all those things. So let's talk about building a solid team around you. What are some of the things that you look for? Again, this isn't your first time to be CEO of an organization, so I know you've built teams more than once. Let's talk a little bit about that. What are some of the things you look for in the hiring process, in the evaluation of the people that you have when you take over? I think there's a lot that could be learned from that.

Kelly: I'm one of those people. I'm a little super nerdy this way and I learned a decision-making model a long time ago called the seven hats, and the idea behind it is that each person at the table wears a different hat, and so you have somebody who's the white hat, which is the emotional and red hat, and they're the naysayer. And as much as I'd rather have everybody just do what I want and like me and do all that. I also know that's a terrible way to run anything, so I work really hard at actually having very different ways of thinking at a leadership level. Sometimes that causes more conflict or contrast in the way we resolve an issue, but I expect people to come and learn professional communication skills, and if you can't, you should go back to school or learn a YouTube. I don't care, because the purpose should be. I need you to be here for what we're here for.

I don't like a lot of internal nonsense. I don't like us spending a bunch of time on stuff that doesn't matter, because the kind of work I've always done meant somebody did not get out of a domestic violence situation because we were spending time arguing about who left the coffee pot on. You know I walk past somebody who's on the street who needs to get housed. I don't want to sitting around arguing because somebody thought somebody was rude one day. Like that just can't be in the workplace. I get why it is, but I want people who come ready to do work and actually can define what work means to them.

The second thing is always happens in this field. I just want to help people and that to me, is the death nail answer, because my answer, my question back to you is going to be what does that mean and how does that look? Because you wanting to help people doesn't have very much to do with actually serving people. Those are two very different concepts. So I also am very clear about the environment that I want at work and you have a choice Don't sign up and then come in and want to change it, add to it, make it better. But I'm not going to adjust what I think has to happen in an organization to go to the next level, because I typically have taken jobs where I'm right in the middle of a major change and I do know what needs to be functionally happening on a regular basis to make that shift.

Chris: So you know that's very insightful and you know the core of what I think you're saying. If you boil it down, is it comes back to very clear, direct communication, setting expectations, et cetera, and then holding people accountable. All of that then leads to culture when you're building these teams. If you think about what you've done in the last nine months at the coalition, how would you describe the culture that you're striving for, that you feel like you have? You know, growing there.

Kelly: I have a speech I used to call the mean speech I never thought it was mean, but somebody had called it where I lay out what I learned over the time of my working, in the time that I made some really serious mistakes, and what I learned from those and how they need to interpret that into their new work environment. And so with that, I think what happens in the culture is they actually see me living the story I told and I bring it up over and over again in different pieces. I think storytelling is important for that reason, but I show them what I did that didn't work, so that they have a clear understanding of what I learned from what I didn't do or what I did wrong. So they understand that this is a learning environment, that part of your responsibility is to be curious and to want to understand how to do things better or differently. If you come in and you say to me well, you know, I just need the training and I need this, you will not last well in my organizations, because I expect that you're more interested than that. You have to want to care about data. Data is most important, particularly in nonprofits, because you are telling the future of how most federal dollars are going to be spent in your case notes or in your reports.

I talk a lot about gossip and that you can't stop it, but you have a personal and professional integrity line in how you communicate account. You know, for me I run it this way, which is every single dollar that comes in here is somebody else's dollar and somebody else's money, and so there's very little room to make major mistakes or to waste, because that's your money that you're wasting. And if we cannot do it the best, if we cannot show up in ways that people expect, then we should give that money to somebody else. And I tell people don't be miserable. If you don't like working here, you don't like the here, you don't like the work, you don't like the commute, you don't like any of that stuff, oh my gosh, why are you spending your life doing something you don't like Like? Go be happy.

Chris: That's so true, right? I mean I think we talk about it. I know in our organization is, if you don't connect with our mission and our passion, it's okay. You know it doesn't make you a bad person, it just means there's a different organization for you where you're going to be happier. And then you should go find that, because we want the people that if they connect with that mission and passion of our organization, then they're going to be living their best self, which opens them up to serve our clients and each other to their fullest potential. Right.

Kelly: And I also think we try to be very or I've always tried to be. I'm not interested in telling you how to do your job because you don't want kelly young's opinion of how to do your job. You want your own opinion. I hired somebody who's smart and talented and knows how to do that and you don't want my limited vision of that. But when people also say, well, I don't like to be micromanaged, I'm like, well, I'd be interested in why people feel like they have to micromanage you.

So if you are showing up to work and over-communicating and letting people know, I shouldn't have to do that, but I will if you're not able to do that, because I still need to know what's happening. So I often turn some of those things that people say back on them, just so a little self-awareness, and help them understand, because you will not like working for a CEO who will say, who will call you and be like, why does this number not match this number? And it's not because I don't trust you, it's that I need the number to make sense, because I'm about to go tell a bunch of people this number. So it's interesting. I actually really love building culture. I think I do a good job of creating enough openness that people feel like they can participate if they choose to.

Chris: Well, you know, one of the things I think has been written a lot about and it's hard, it's a hard skill for some leaders to get to, but you learn so much by, rather than telling is asking questions. And you know, like you said, turn it around on them and ask the questions and then, a lot of times, as they are forced to answer those questions, they realize where to go.

Kelly: Yeah, and it's funny because there's a new book out by the gentleman who wrote Sapiens and his new book is called Nexus and I heard him in an interview and I thought this was really interesting because I do think this is an issue with the workplace and maybe some generational conflict. He talks about information and not that. This is new. Talks about information and not. This is new.

But information is not truth and part of the problem is that we tend to try to over inform and over educate to get to truth and neither one of those things will actually get you there, because truth is costly, it takes time, it takes energy and I do think we're in an overload of informing people as though that will change or grow somebody's understanding, when really all it did was add more information, not deeper truth. So, you know, I just find that a fascinating and I thought about it in terms of work we do, because I think one of the things the coalition has always done has been a truth teller and in that truth telling right now we're in huge inundation of information because we're going through a lot of change. How do we settle back into our truth?

Chris: Interesting, yeah, okay, so you mentioned this and what I can't wait to hear more about. May not have time on this podcast, but your mean speech. You talked about the mistakes and sharing mistakes you made in the learning. And you know, I don't know if you listened to one of these before, but I love asking people you know, tell us about a setback, a mistake you made, but then how you learn from it. Right, and I think you know to your point, when you share those stories with the people in your organization, it humanizes you and allows for that culture of learning, take risk and it's okay to fail, because that's how we learn and get better. So let's you know, can you share an example that either comes out of the mean speech or something else? You know a Kelly Young mistake and how it made Kelly Young better?

Kelly: Yeah, and this one was interesting and I think it sort of aligns in particular with people who work directly with people and I was a very benevolent leader at one point. So this is much more of a self-awareness mistake than an actual business mistake, but I think it's important and I was. It's all about, you know, serving, you know, women. Everybody had on their desk, on their computers what did I do today to end domestic or sexual violence? And I was all gung-ho and and I, you know, I was there for the work and, as I said, and we got a new CEO and I thought that I should have been tapped for the CEO position and nobody asked me. And so I was very self-righteous in my understanding of, first of all, well, if you don't let anybody know you're interested, they probably won't ask you. But second of all, just because you've done this job doesn't mean you're actually ready to do that job. And so I was awful. I mean I was awful for about six weeks and I made everybody hear my pain and how hard it was on me and all this kind of stuff.

The hardest lesson to learn in all that was that for all my bravado and my great messaging and whatnot, I really wasn't there for the mission in that moment.

I was really there for my ego. And if we are not self-aware enough to understand when you are using ego to sell people on a version of yourself that you think will make them like you better or follow you better, but it's not true because you haven't done enough self-work, I spent six weeks wasting time, I mean, and I find I left, I went and found a different job and that was the best thing for me to do. But in that one moment when you realize that you are a liar to yourself and to other people and you decide you're not going to do that anymore Best moment of my professional career, because I never made a decision ever again around benevolence or around pretending that rhetoric was more important than what I really could show up and do. So I didn't like that and I hate sharing that story because it sounds awful. I sound like a horrible human being, but I think most of us have that moment.

Chris: What a powerful story. No, I mean I think to your point. I mean it doesn't make you powerful, think to your point. I mean it doesn't make you powerful, a horrible person. But that's a difficult thing for us as humans to face right, to really look in the mirror that deeply and call ourselves out and, more importantly then, actually do what it takes to change.

Kelly: Yeah, and for me, what I learned is that if I really want to lead, lead it is not pretending you can't play at leading, it is a commitment. It's hard, it's lonely, it's complex and you have to build in ways where your mind just stops thinking, because I'm a little bit of an overthinker and you have to do that self-awareness all the time. You're in check, all the time when you're a leader.

Chris: Yeah, everyone's watching, right. So that's, I mean, I think, to your point where basically you can't fake it. It's because so many people are watching every move, whether it's internal to your organization or external partners, you'll get exposed really fast.

Kelly: Right, and then you lose their trust so they won't show up for you when you need them to and at the end of the day, whatever it is that you because I think about innovators and I have a gentleman I know who helped work on some incubation around medical devices. Well, some people are like, oh well, you work with homeless and it must be so rewarding. I'm like I actually think it'd be pretty cool to make medical devices that make people's lives better. I don't have that talent, but you know. So it doesn't really matter what is at the center of your passion and your mission.

I worry when we tell people you know you fake it till you make it, because in leadership you really can't do that. You need to sit down and learn it. You need to know your truth. It goes back to that. You can inform me about all these things about being a leader, but until I know the truth about being a leader, I'm going to waste time and I'm a hyper efficiency person. So for me it's like if I can do it in two steps, I'd rather do that than 15. So I really don't faking. It would be way too easy for me to just practice all the time, so I have to not allow myself some of those, those things, cause I yeah, I'd rather be out riding my bike, only because it's only because it's been a long week.

Chris: I get you, I get you. You need that release too. Finding a way to you know release as a leader is equally as important.

Yes absolutely so. Let's turn the conversation back around to homelessness Talk a little bit. You know, maybe, where we are, but what the future looks like. You've mentioned a couple of times, you know, facing new challenges in this world of homeless response. Let's talk a little bit about that. I know we have, you know, world Homeless Day coming up. You know, share a little bit about that, but I just wanted you know our listeners to know a little bit about you know, maybe, how they can get involved and how they can help in this issue.

Kelly: Yeah, I think you know. I think we have done such an incredible job of getting people into some type of permanent solution, so we're in decent shape there. But it was, as the Chronicle said, it's duct tape and determination. When you have to rely on funding that comes from disasters or pandemics, that is a terrible planning model and not very fiscally sound. So I think a couple of things for us. One is broadening our perspective in this phase we're kind of calling it phase four, and I think it's important to realize that systems should always have phases or pivot points, because systems die when they don't read themselves and make sure they're on the right track is kind of an overhaul of our data. What is our data telling us, but what is it, more importantly, not telling us? What do we need to know about who is still on the street? What do we need to know about our funding sources and what's available? We know that we're gonna run out of funding because of COVID by 2025.

I'm going to make the argument over and over again that we are not. Homelessness used to be able to be resolved by people coming together and kind of helping a family or helping an individual. We've had so many other systems end up feeding people into homelessness, that we actually need a system response, and that includes system funding, which typically aligns with some type of consistent, regular money that's funding the system, so we never have to be out of balance again, and that's one of the things we're working on. The second is we've actually been going out and doing community mapping to help people understand community is not given, it's built. So if you want a different kind of community that you live in, you're going to have to get engaged and that's one of the ways that you can volunteer.

So maybe you have a church, that you're in a neighborhood that people get fed, but the food containers and stuff get left all over the street or there's whatever. Well, you could complain about the trash, or you could complain the city doesn't pick up the trash, or you all could start a walking group. Everybody needs exercise, so you have choices in how you decide to engage in your community. I do think becoming much more aware and understanding how the system works and doesn't work resolves a lot of people's frustration about seeing somebody on the street. We also have to have much better interventions for individuals who are severely mentally ill and have substance use issues. We have housed a lot of people who apartments and appointments works really well, for we have some individuals who just cannot make good decisions to care for themselves, and we're going to have to address that and I think that's one of those things where people don't understand you said this earlier right now the way the homeless response system is set up.

Chris: The federal dollars are all housing, coming from the housing side, and yet what we face and what you know, you and and your team know that we face is a very severe mental illness issue and kind of what's the hardest to serve, yet no dollars from the mental health side of the equation.

Kelly: Right and certainly not at the level it needs to be in. Including residential care, additional beds and substance use is even far worse funded and I understand people are like, well, I don't want to. You know that's. People just need to figure out how to get their lives together, I agree. But you're making a choice then. You're either deciding we're not going to help somebody so they'll get where you want them to go, or you'll leave them on the street so they won't go where they're going to go. So you know again, these are choices that we are making.

I am so happy to live in a city and a county that is as generous as it is. I mean, houston is one of the, I think, premier cities for the purpose of the fact that people actually care, kind, friendly, smart, innovative. I think the other piece for us is really having to get more upstream. That 40% scares me. That is devastating to a system you want to right-size or actually shrink Like. I don't want you to have me on a call 10 years from now and I've grown the homeless response system by three sizes Like somebody should fire me. That's not-.

Chris: Work yourself out of a job.

Kelly: Right, exactly, and so right-sizing ours, with the right amount of funding and then really pushing upstream to figure out how healthcare doesn't release people back onto the street with serious illnesses. Re-entry that's dealt with. Somebody who's hit a hard time can quickly get rehoused because we're helping for a few months. That's just being good neighbors, right. So I think that's pretty easy for people. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but I have the world's smartest team and the people who built this system and have watched over it the last 12 years. We're only gonna figure out the right and have watched over it the last 12 years. You know we're only going to figure out the right and the best path with the resources and the influence we have coming forward.

Chris: Very good. Yeah, I think the future is very bright with the right people. So you know this is, you know, fundamentally, it's a business podcast and one of the things that you know, some of the data that I love to share is I always tell people, you know, when it comes to this homeless response and taking care of our neighbors who have fallen on this, you know, unfortunate time, there's a compassionate side, you know, which is, you know, obvious. But there's also a business side and some people you know connect on that and just share the numbers on the cost it takes to, you know, house someone on an annual basis versus if they're left on the street and use our public health system, et cetera. Because to me, if business owners are listening and thinking about this, the investment in the homeless response system is a no-brainer.

Kelly: Right when we look at the numbers and I'm going to add for inflation, because we'll probably be in a recession next year is what I understand. Of course, they say that every year and I'm like, really at some point you know we're either or we're not, I don't know.

No reason to even use the R word, right? Can we come up with something else, because this feels like a whole new thing. But I think you know you're talking about to house somebody and to make sure that they have access to the current systems that they need. Through their appointments and I always stress this they do not get to live for free, there is no free housing. They have to pay a percentage of their income or their benefits 30%, like the rest of us, and so for that it's $19,000 to $25,000 a year, not an overextensive amount of money you can go up to, depending on how often somebody uses other services up to $250,000 for them to stay on the street, and the reason for that is that every time you call the police on them, you have to count that money. Every time they go into an emergency room, you have to count all of that money. It's not to say they won't use those services, but they'll use them appropriately, which right sizes the dollars in the systems. So, right now, all this money.

People are saying, well, we don't have the money. I'm like we do, we're systems. So right now, all this money. People are saying, well, we don't have the money.

Chris: I'm like we do, we're just it's in the wrong bucket.

Kelly: That's right. And if we moved it over and we agreed to just pay this for the next three years? I mean, if you're willing to pay a hundred dollars a month for charity, why are you not willing to pay one percent on your beer or your vaping? You don't even see that and get it to the point where you see the reduction in the rest of your costs and then you actually feel the relief on the tax end. You know, because you're not paying more and more on those parts of it. Wayne Young with the mental health services demonstrates that from a diversion point, for people with severe mental health to get into care is a one to $5 save. So it's $1 for him to do. It costs $5 for them to stay on the street, so economically it makes no sense. It's not cheaper. You're avoiding the problem instead of solving it and from any good business standpoint that's not what you do. You define the problem, you solve the problem.

Chris: Right To summarize right I mean support the housing homeless response system. It's roughly $19,000 to $25,000 a year to do it and help us move people into housing and off the street. Leave them on the street. You're looking at annual cost of $100,000 to $250,000 to our system.

Kelly: Right.

And just the burnout rate of everybody trying to solve that and the trauma and the individual. I'm always going to add compassion to the dollars. But if you actually really care about that individual instead of just want them off the individual, I'm always going to add compassion to the dollars. But you know, if you actually really care about that individual instead of just want them off the street, I don't actually even care. You can have either of those opinions, doesn't matter to me. But it's going to be cheaper, more efficient, more effective if you buy into the response system and ensure that we have the right interventions for those people and don't have to wait till something terrible happens to be able to do this again.

Chris: And ultimately all of that will make our community better and stronger.

Kelly: Absolutely, absolutely. When you look at the best player on a team, you also have to look at the one who's struggling. And you bring up the one who's struggling. You spend less time on the one who's already figured it all out. But if you're in a team, you're in a community, you're looking at who's struggling and how do we get them to some level of consistency in their lives or whatever. Otherwise, we're always going to have to play down to that denominator.

Chris: Kelly, this has been a fascinating conversation. Thank you Really appreciated your thoughts and sharing those with our listeners. I want to turn it to a little bit more of a fun, lighter side before we wrap up. Excellent, what was your? You may have said this earlier, cause you mentioned something when you were a teenager. What was your first job?

Kelly: My first job was working at an ice cream store called Farrell's. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and every time it was somebody's birthday you had to bang out the drum. You had to slide it over your head and bang out the drum, and they get this big thing called the zoo, which was like 150 scoops of ice cream and you had to wear this horrifying outfit with one of those straw hats that never sits on my head Cause I'm a little pointed, I think, and I you learn very quickly and this is why I love anybody who's ever done food service and was successful in it and why I have an affinity for them. You learn very quickly how difficult it is to run restaurants on margin, but also nobody wanted to do that and had to do it every single time. So that was my first real paying job that I got to check.

Chris: Gotcha, yeah, and I knew you weren't from Texas and grew up in the Northwest, but you've been here long enough to be able to answer this question. Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Kelly: Well, that's a good question. That's hard to decide, that's hard to define. I probably eat Tex-Mex more often, but I prefer barbecue, okay.

Chris: Unique answer.

Kelly: Yeah, I like it. That's an and yes answer. That's an improv technique. Very politically motivated or correct answer I just don't go to barbecue as much, but if I really sat down and thought about it, I prefer it. I just don't, for whatever reason, don't get there, which seems weird.

Chris: Very good. Well, kelly. Thanks again for taking the time. This has been a great conversation. I'm looking forward to getting this out on all the social media. I hope people will listen and learn more about what is going on in our homeless response system.

Kelly: Oh well, thank you so much for having me. I mean, I would do anything for you. I think you're amazing, so appreciate your time this morning.

All right, talk with you later.

Special Guest: Kelly Young.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I learned how a missed home run sparked the creation of Rivalry Tech from co-founder Aaron Canopy. He conveyed the early challenges of building their platform from the ground up and initial launches at Rice University football games.

Aaron discussed their pivotal strategic partnership with Aramark, which led to expansion into major league venues like the Mets, setting them up for scalable growth. I also discovered how the company used the COVID-19 pandemic to refine its software and form industry relationships.

Additionally, the importance of building a dynamic culture centered around transparency, open communication, and employee empowerment was highlighted. Strategic collaborations with Comcast Business assisted in entering new verticals.

Aaron provides insightful entrepreneurial lessons through strategic partnerships on values like self-funding phases, team building, and innovation.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Rivalry Tech

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Aaron: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me, Chris so let's talk about Rival would use to order the food. And it's our software and it's our hardware that's back in the kitchen, that lets the people back there get that food out faster. So, known for sports and entertainment, we're now in healthcare, fast food, restaurants, hotels, resorts, casinos, wow.

Chris: So kind of like the Amazon Prime of food delivery. I think so yeah, it is, I like that. So what was the inspiration to start the company?

Aaron: Yeah, so my partner Marshall Law. Actually his full name is Jesse James Marshall Law no way, no joke.

Chris: Yeah, that's his real name.

Aaron: Parents are comedians. They must have been. Yeah, they're awesome. But he was at Astros-Dodgers World Series back in 2017, sitting out in the left field and ran up to get a hot dog and a Coke with his two boys, and while he was up there waiting in line for 20, 25 minutes, yuli Gurriel just hits a bomb and it's right over his seats and you can go back to the highlight reel and you can see Marshall's empty seats. So he's crushed, right, he's devastated, and that's the whole reason you go to an Astros game to see moments like that. But it was even worse that it was right over his seats. So he texts me that night and says man, we've got to fix this. We've got to like why is there no app for food delivery in a stadium? And so that's when Rivalry Tech was born. Back then we called it seats, but that's when it was born.

Chris: Oh, we don't, yeah. So a lot of people start companies where they see gaps in a process or something.

Aaron: Yeah.

Chris: But that was pretty remarkable. I mean literally leaving the stadium. He sends you a text about this.

Aaron: He did and he was adamant. You know my being, you know, skeptic in general. I was like, well, either it's already being done or it's not efficient to do in a stadium. And he said, well, it's got to be done somewhere, so we're going to do it. It's going to be you and me, and he's very charismatic. So he convinced me to join up with him and we started the company a couple months later, Wow so walk us through that then what was it?

Chris: you know what was it like and kind of what were the missteps taken to kind of start from scratch on this kind of idea that born out of frustration.

Aaron: Yeah, yeah, you know that neither of us are tech founders, right? Neither of us are tech guys. So we had another hurdle to cross. You know, marshall had done some internet research and found you could build an app for $3,000. And we laugh to this day we look at the millions of dollars we've spent on the platform. So we might have been a little fooled into thinking it was going to be easier than it has been.

But we started by, you know, trying to understand what the real need was, trying to just kind of map it out. And then we had to find a tech guy who was going to build this for us, right, because Houston's got a lot of tech talent now, a lot more than it did seven years ago when we started the company. But seven years ago it was tough and all the tech talent was being utilized by oil and gas and healthcare. You know, it's not like the West Coast where you've got a lot of talent. So we set out to find tech talent and that's where I went to. One of my old rice MBA classmates got in Craig's a canty who I knew had been a developer in his past life. He had his own successful company called Pino's Palate that he had built and grown and scaled, and so I said, hey, help me find a tech guy. And so we looked for two, three months and finally Craig comes to me and he says I found him, it's me.

So great.

Aaron: So Craig got back into startup life and that was probably one of the best things that happened to us, because he's very organized, very methodical and he's not just a coder, he's an architect, and so we got really lucky early on that we weren't like a typical tech startup where we're just writing code and it's kind of all thrown together. We were building enterprise grade, minimum viable product in the early days, right. So we kind of had a leg up in those early days and Craig is also co-founder, so he joined the company, really helped us get it off the ground. And then we went to work. We went to work and started out at Rice University football with our wives handing out flyers, our kids and brothers and friends were delivering the food into the stands and I was running a laptop just manually assigning orders and it was definitely a minimum viable product back at the time. But Rice had faith in us and we did them right and delivered a good first product and we learned a lot from that experience. Wow.

Chris: So yeah, and it's grown from there.

Aaron: We've grown from there. We then went, we got the Skeeters now the Space Cowboys to sign up with us, right, and then we had our big break. Then we got really lucky. We're building software the whole time, we're learning from Rice and Skeeters. And we had really good opportunity to be put in front of one of our old mutual friends, jamie Roots oh, sure, and president of the Texans at the time, and it was at a pitch event and it was funny.

I'd never met Jamie. I didn't know him prior to this and he was sitting in my chair at my table at some point and I didn't recognize him. And I walked up to grab my bottle of water and Marshall's wife, melissa, knows him and she said, hey, aaron, this is Jamie. And I'm like, hey, what's up man? And she goes no, this is Jamie Roots. And I'm like, oh. And so we had a great 15-minute conversation and he said, man, I really like what I'm hearing. I like your ethos, I like the aggressiveness.

We have an issue with the fan experience at NRG Stadium. I want you to come down and meet with Aramark and let's give it a go. So he got us into the stadium and I remember walking in and meeting with Aramark and Jamie and I won't name names. But the Aramark guy walks in the in the boardroom and he sits down and he goes mobile ordering is BS. It'll never work at scale and in stadiums. And I thought, man, we're done, yeah, we're toast. And Marshall leans across the table and says, well, that's because you're doing it wrong. So we got a kick out of that.

They gave us a shot and we did well. We had a few thousand seats we were serving. We showed them that it could be done logistically, we could make money off of it and that we had a good product. So from there we started to scale and and built a really good relationship with Aramark, one we maintain to this day. And you know the sports side. We work with them at other pro stadiums. We work with them at Minute Maid. Right now we work with them at Fenway Park. The Boston Red Sox, the New York Mets. Those are some key Aramark partnerships with us.

Chris: Wow, that's a great story, fortuitous, like most, if you're working hard and you get that lucky break and take advantage of it. The combination of hard work and luck sometimes is a really good thing.

Aaron: It is. It helps, and we were astute enough at the time to understand that there is a bigger problem. The bigger problem wasn't that a fan wanted a beer or a hot dog in their seat their seat. It's that the operators the arrow marks of the world were having trouble keeping up with that unfettered convenience. We'll call it right, okay. All of a sudden, you go from lines, which naturally throttle your demand, to cell phones and everybody can order as much as they want, whenever they want, and they all expect it to show up in two minutes. So we learned that the operational challenges were the real problem and that's where we turned our focus. So now, when you look at our platform, it's not just about delivering food, it's about streamlining that entire process.

Yeah, if the kitchen can't keep up, then it doesn't matter. Right? That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. So building in the controls, the throttles, the reporting, the communication, all that stuff's baked into our platform.

Chris: So a couple of things that come to mind as you talk about what sounds like a lot of focus in Energy One on product development, software and then trying to prove the concept. What did you all do to try to finance that? Did you have to go out and raise money? Were you doing it yourself? Because most startups and entrepreneurs face that conundrum and there's a number of different ways to handle it.

Aaron: What did y'all do at Robbery, at the beginning we were self-funded, we were self-financed, we were bootstrapping it. I had a good job. I was president of a manufacturing company. Marshall has like three, four other companies, he's a serial entrepreneur and Craig was running Pino's Pallet.

So we all had good jobs and we were able to fund the beginning parts of the company and ultimately it got to a point where really two things happened. One, I was spending more than 40, 50 hours a week on rivalry tech, and we saw that we were getting enough traction that it needed full-time focus, and so as a group we decided, okay, it was time for one of us to leave, and that was me. So I left my job and we financed a salary to get it going and do some fundraising, and we raised our first round of funding from Venture Capital probably about a year into operations, when we really wanted to start scaling, and that was interesting as well. That was a fun experience, but now that's how we got it started Just a lot of sweat, blood, tears and a lot of our own money.

Chris: Yeah, that's a common theme for anyone kind of starting something from the ground up.

Aaron: Yeah it is, and it's interesting when you do it that way, and I'll give credit to know when you have an idea and you want to start a company. You've got about a thousand ideas. Here's what it should be, and Craig was really good at saying, ok, but we can only afford to build three of those things out of the thousand things. What are the three things we really need to prove? What's going to help us get to that next round of funding or what's going to help us get that next customer? And it's not all the super convenient stuff right. It's not about sending you a text message when you're within a mile of the stadium. That's not going to generate revenue.

So we really had to spend time and figure out what are the most most important things to build, and that's how we got the first version of the platform out right. We just wanted to prove that, a people would use it. B people would spend money to use it. And C we could help the customers make more money. And that was it right. So that's how you get to a platform where you have to have your kids deliver food.

Chris: I'm sure that was great. Yeah, they enjoyed that a bit. They did, they had a blast. So then you know, the next, I guess, issue you face, I'm guessing is, as that success is coming, you've got to start building your team to service the customers that you're bringing in. Yeah, how did y'all go about doing that and kind of going through adding key people in the right spots at the right time?

Aaron: You know that was a really interesting journey for us. You know, at the beginning we knew it was mostly about tech, like we had to build the technology and the software. We did hire an operations guy in January of 2020. It was a great time to hire a field ops guy, no-transcript. And so you know, at that stage we were really trying to figure out where we scale and how we scale, and we got to go hire all these operations, people et cetera. But then something happened in March of 2020 that changed the course of live sports and entertainment.

Just a little bit.

Chris: Right. Well, our good friend Jamie. I remember him saying at the time it's a terrible time to be in the mass gathering business.

Aaron: That's exactly right. So you know, when COVID shut everything down, it was really funny we were actually in an investor meeting. It was, I think it was March 11th, 2020. And we're talking about raising a series A and we're going to raise some more money, and then the phones kind of start buzzing and vibrating and everyone's looking down and they're like, oh man, the rodeo just canceled and or just shut down. And then a few minutes later it was like, oh, the Rockets have postponed, you know, their season already. And or no, it was the Astros. I'm sorry, the Astros postponed their season, start dating all of this. And so we said, okay, well, maybe we shouldn't have this investment meeting right now. And that really kind of set the stage for, quite honestly, was a better growth phase for us, and I actually give COVID not that it deserves any, but I give it credit for turning us into the company we are today.

We took COVID and took that time to build the software we really wanted to build, if that makes sense. So, rather than splitting resources you know we had precious resources at the time rather than splitting it between operations and marketing and all the other things you're normally spending money on, we put it all into tech and by then we had established a good relationship with Aramark. We had established a good relationship with the teams like the Texans, like the Astros, and we had established a good relationship with Major League Baseball through some of our other connections at Aramark. And so we just spent all that time in isolation talking to these other people who were in isolation. So, mlb, they became really good, almost friends, and said here's what hasn't been built, here's why you don't see it at every stadium.

And we listened, and so we somehow managed to raise almost $2 million during COVID throughout 2020 and just put it all towards the software Wow. And so we were able to come out of 2020 better funded, but also with a product that MLB signed off on it we launched at the New York Mets in 2021, coming out of COVID. So that really helped us allocate those tech resources and then we could start. And, if you think about it, covid also gave us a really nice kind of gradual increase in activity with operations. So we hired one ops guy, because ballparks are only at 10% capacity, sure, and they were at 30, then 50, and then 100. So we were able to scale. It was a lot better runway than just getting hit with it all at once yeah, I guess it makes sense right.

Chris: You were able to kind of that hiring process that we kind of started talking about you were able to ease into that right and not have to throw a lot of investment at it because of exactly the ramp up exactly and we were able to take our time and find good people.

Aaron: You know, culture is huge for us. Startup life is a grind. Startup life in live sports and entertainment is probably worse because it's a lot of nights, it's a lot of weekends. It's going to happen, whether you want it to or not, you know. I mean, the schedule is the schedule and so we had to find those people who, you know, kind of thrive on that life. They like going and the insanity and the chaos around. You know, trying to serve food to 80,000 people, you know, on any given Sunday.

Chris: Oh, I can't imagine right. The other thing, though, that you know, I hear from your lessons and the advantages you took during, you know, kind of the COVID shutdown, if you will, was you really and this applies at any time but the importance and value that you gain by listening to your customer? And we have what were the issues, what did they like, what would they change if they could? And then you were one listening and you took that back to the developers or maybe they were in the meeting too to make those adaptations and modifications.

Aaron: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It really helped highlight a lot of those bigger challenges right, where we got to understand, okay, well, we did have the good fortune of working through Texan season in 2019 and we saw the issues, and then COVID just allowed us to sit face-to-face from the customer when they weren't distracted, when Aramark and the Texans weren't distracted by the season. They're just sitting at home literally and let's talk through it and we're going to build it for you guys. So, yeah, it really helped put a magnifying glass in without the chaos, and that made all the difference, right, because we have a lot of competitors who just build on the fly and they're just trying to build and learn and they're getting beat up every day and that, and they're getting beat up every day and that's the advantage we have.

Chris: That's great.

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Chris: Well, you mentioned culture, and I definitely don't want to gloss over that. Couldn't agree more. I mean, culture is everything. What have you done at Robbery to build the culture that you appear to be proud of, and how would you describe that culture?

Aaron: with grit. I mean a lot of people use that term as part of their core values, but for us it's. We really make sure, whoever sitting across the table, they know that this isn't an eight-to-five job, that this is going to be some nights and weekends and you may have a thought at 2 am and you know Marshall and I talk at 2 am all the time. We don't expect that from everybody, but hey, just know that you don't have to answer that 2 you in text, but if you want to, that's okay. But we've got a really fun culture. I mean, look, first of all, we're doing a lot of fun things. I mean whether we're at sports or, you know, I mean resorts. We do the Margaritaville up in Conroe. I mean there's worse places to go to have to do work, right. I mean we even enjoy going down to the hospitals. We're at Methodist in the Med Center. We've got some robotics stuff. It's just a lot of fun.

And it's really fun to go into areas where, you know, people aren't using a lot of technology on the food and beverage side, and so we really focus just on people who are creative and they like to question and they like to come up with answers or solutions, you know we don't have. We try not to have any of those barriers where they feel like they can't approach me with an idea or criticism or feedback. You know, I think part of our success has been allowing everybody in the company to have a voice and there's no such thing as a stupid idea or a bad idea. You never know where it's going to go right, and so you know we like that everybody can feel safe just throwing it out there, right, I mean? And we've had some crazy ideas come across the come across the whiteboard, and some of them have gone on to become parts of the product and some we've tucked away and some we've giggled at and erased, you know yeah.

And then we've got definitely a culture of you know, just a very candid culture, right? I'm trying to think of what the phrase is, but our candor is very important. So, you know, we have a lot of meetings where we'll share ideas and opinions and then we'll fight about those ideas and opinions and voices will get raised and pulses will increase and language will be thrown around. But at the end of the day, everybody does it respectfully and you can scream and yell at your partner all you want, but we always make up and we realize it's coming from a place of trying to better the company.

Chris: Yeah, Sounds like transparency, but also in a safe environment, right.

Aaron: It is.

Chris: Yeah, the other thing that sounds like you've created within that culture is one that fosters innovation you talked about. People are encouraged to bring their ideas to the table. Yeah, their ideas to the table? Yeah, how? I mean? Are there things that are meetings you have to, or challenges you present to people so that they know that innovation is respected and welcomed?

Aaron: Yeah, we do. I mean we have weekly meetings where we kind of go through everything from the tech roadmap to the operational roadmap to sales and marketing, and we just talk through what we're seeing in the market, try to identify the gaps, right. So we're really trying to teach everybody in the company look for those gaps. Where are we seeing, you know, areas where there's no solutions? And so I mean we love whiteboards. I mean if I could have every surface in the office be whiteboard, it would be whiteboard. I mean, put it up on the whiteboard and go and let's start playing with it.

And we've gone through some sessions where we've covered a whole room and come up with new ideas or better ways to execute. Right, I mean we're dealing with, you know, a stadium or a hospital. They're not simple organisms, they're very complex. And then when you get back into the food and beverage service side and fragmented technology stacks that they're using in the back and how do you tie it all together? And then you got to pull in the different stakeholders the hospitals, the aramarks, the employees. It becomes a lot of moving pieces and within that is opportunity, yeah, and so we spend a lot of time just talking through you know where and how can we do this?

Chris: so let's let's talk a little bit about you. Know you start in sports missing the home run of the World Series. You mentioned this and alluded to it earlier. You've grown in sports. While you still do. That's not your primary area. Tell us a little bit about you. Know how you moved into health care, as an example.

Aaron: And what are some?

Chris: of the innovative things that you're actually doing, that when people show up, you know hopefully not at a hospital, but at a resort or or something that they could see to know that this is your technology in play.

Aaron: Yeah, so sports and entertainment was our focus market for a very long time and we realized that the needs existed everywhere. Right, the problem that we were solving wasn't just at large stadiums, so large operators like Aramark, they operate in a whole host of other industries, right, like we talked about hospitality or leisure hospitals, etc. And so we knew we wanted to expand into those other verticals at some point. And we got really lucky again where and you can obviously tell Aramark's been a great partner throughout all this Right, they called us out of the headquarters up in Philly and it was really funny. I'd gotten to know the guy well and he says, hey, great job in sports, you've solved a lot of issues for us. You've built a great platform. Can you do it in other business verticals? Could you do it in health care? And we said, absolutely, yeah, we've been wanting to for a long time. What are you looking for? And he goes well, we've got a customer down in Houston and you can hear the papers kind of flipping through. You ever heard of MD Anderson? Yeah, yes, I've heard of MD Anderson. He goes. Yeah, they have a need down there. We want you to go look at it, and so worked through some of that.

But what ended up happening is we actually got in front of Houston Methodist and their innovation team is really great, really employee focused, really patient focused. But they wanted us to focus on putting in our mobile platform for the employees because you think about it a doctor or a nurse, 30-minute lunch breaks you don't want them waiting in line for 15, 20 minutes, right. So we saw that as our opening. We knew we wanted to expand here. We have a customer pulling us into this other market, right. So that's how we got started. We built the platform for hospitals at first, but the really cool thing about it is that that same platform applies to every other market in the world, right? Sports is unique. It's a four-hour event, five-hour event. You turn it on, you turn it off.

A day or two, a couple days a week, depending on a baseball home stand football once a week, exactly, but a hospital, a hotel, fast food, I mean 365 days a year, sometimes 24 hours a day. So we built this new platform for them. And let's use Houston Methodist as an example. So we've got our mobile at all. And let's use Houston Methodist as an example. So we've got our mobile at all eight of their locations in Houston. We have our kiosks at all eight of their locations, so you can walk up to a coffee shop, order a coffee at one of our kiosks and the barista will make it. You don't have to wait in line and then we're doing some really fun stuff.

So, like in the Med Center, we are integrated with a big robot made by ABB Robotics, and this thing makes your food from fresh ingredients to. It actually cooks it, it puts it in a bowl and puts it in a locker for you. That robot didn't have any way to communicate with the guest or for the guest to communicate with the food preparation system, right, which normally is a person behind a counter you talk to Right, and it didn't have any way to communicate with Aramark in the back. Hey, here's the reporting for the day. Here's what I've made.

Well, we do all of that, and so we essentially said look, just let's and to oversimplify, just run a line from the robot into our platform and we'll take care of the rest. And that's what we we did. So you can order food from our app and the robot will make your food. It'll tell you when it's ready. It'll tell you what locker it's in. You walk up and you scan a little code we give you, and your locker just opens up, and then we do all the reporting for the customer at the end of the night as well, so they can see what you know delivery or make times were, etc.

Now we're getting into delivery. Robotics have the just, so we're controlling that order fulfillment process again from the very beginning to the very end, right, Whether it's a human or a robot. So it's pretty fascinating.

Chris: Sounds like I'm still trying to wrap my head around a robot cooking in the kitchen. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Aaron: It's their induction cookers. They look like concrete mixers and so it's tossing these, this pasta or this chicken, and like a concrete mixer and it's cooking it. So it's pretty neat. That's amazing.

Chris: So you know clearly. You mentioned AeroMark several times and, based on the story, I can see that they're a key strategic partner for you, as are some others. What are some of the advice you could give others about how to cultivate those relationships that are so central to your business?

Aaron: So I mean, Aramark was an obvious one for us in the early days because they were the gatekeeper to a lot of our stadiums. And the other part of that is we knew we didn't want to go door to door knocking on different stadiums' doors. They are in hundreds of stadiums, so build for one major customer, make them happy and they'll sell for you and they'll take you along right, and they'll take us along. That's exactly right. So we were very intent and strategic on a relationship like that and we've worked with Aramark's competitors as well. We work with a lot of them and it's that same mentality, right. But then, you know, we started looking for other partnerships and this was a really interesting one where Comcast Business, comcast Sports Tech, has, or Comcast Business has, a sports tech accelerator and we were asked to join a couple of years ago and we thought we might have been a little too big. We said, well, we've grown, we don't know that we need a tech accelerator. But they said, look, we're trying to give our partners in the space some more developed platforms and their partners are like PGA Tour, wwe, nascar, and so we signed up with. But we were very upfront with them. We said sports is not our focus market anymore. We want to work with Comcast business and they came back to us and said absolutely We'll intro you to the mothership big Comcast, join our sports tech accelerator. So we did, and great relationships out of that right We've. We now work with PGA Tour. We've got some agreements with them, working with them in a few locations, but Comcast Sports Tech did exactly what they said they would and I'll respect them forever for this, because you never know, right, like, do they really have any pull with the mothership Whatever? And so we are now fully ingrained in the Comcast business and what's called Comcast Smart Solutions, where they sell internet right, they sell connectivity and it's a commodity, but what they're using us for and a few other companies are where the value add wrappers right. So we're working with an NHL team. Right now Comcast is going to provide the Wi-Fi, the access points, but hey, guess what NHL team? We also provide mobile kiosk back of house software. There's other companies doing digital signage, iot, and so now they've got this whole ecosystem that they're taking out to their customers and we work with them, not just pro sports, but major franchise chains with 30,000 restaurants, more major hospitals, hotel chains with thousands of hotels, and so now we start going in and we've got this really strong partnership with a major player. And they had a lot of people knocking on the door and we just took the same approach Build, listen to them first, build what they want, build what their customers want, and they'll take you wherever you want to go. So that's great.

It's not without its challenges, right. It's a slow process. You're building something for a multi-billion dollar company like a Comcast or an Aramark. You don't get sales overnight. You've got to dig in and you've got to understand that it's going to take time and investment. But when that flywheel gets spinning it's sure hard to slow down.

Chris: Yeah, that's great, yeah, but you're right. I mean we talk about it. It doesn't happen overnight. You've talked maybe a little bit about it, but I think we also learned. I'm sure there were some mistakes made, setbacks that you and your team learned from. That also helped you later become as successful as you have been 100%. Anything that comes to mind that stands out as one of the bigger ones. Yeah.

Aaron: You know, in software it can be challenging because people, customers, will just say, hey, I want this, I want it to do this, and the proper answer is do you really need it? Do you really need it to do that Other than a?

Chris: programmer going sure, I can do that, yeah, and they will right.

Aaron: And you could spend all the money you want. And I remember this isn't a major mistake, fortunately. But I remember we were at an NFL team and it was a customer and they said we want the ability for the app to, or the users to, pay with cash. And we're like why do you want to pay with cash? We're digital, we don't need, and they're like we have to have it. You have to have the ability to say this was a cash payment and then reconcile the end of the night. And we were like and this was a week before the season, and so we hired a couple of extra developers, we spent I don't know 50 grand to add this cache functionality. And we go back a week later and we're proud of it and we're like check it out, and you know what the team said oh man, we decided afterwards we didn't need it anyway.

I wanted to strangle them.

Aaron: I was going man, we jumped through hoops. You could have told us, right, yeah, you could have told us, like, when you decided you made the decision, but here we go and we built it. So you know, in the early days of a company you're really eager to please and you do have to kind of take a step back and say, look, we can't build it all, you'll go broke or you'll build need and you'll never use. That goofy function is still sitting out there somewhere attached to our platform, right just turned off, yeah like an appendix right.

We don't need it and it's just there forever. That's probably one of the biggest things we learned in the early days. You know we've learned as well that I mean you've got to keep your head on a swivel for new developments in the market. You've always got to be looking at what's coming down the pipeline. You know we probably erred a little bit and not getting into kiosks earlier. When COVID hit, we thought no one's going to, no one wants a kiosk, they don't want to touch anything.

Right, remember the early days we were fogging everything and the reality is kiosks are probably the biggest thing out there right now and it's a natural extension of our platform. We had the time to do it and we're getting in the game and getting in the game a good way and you know, to be fair, it's we're not worried about that first mover advantage. We've got a lot of mistakes from our competitors that we're learning from and gaining ground very quickly. But you do learn to start looking farther down the road. Right, we were maybe looking a year down the road. You've got to be looking two years down the road. What's really coming down? So now, if you look at what we're focused on biometrics, computer vision there's a lot of components that are on our roadmap or on our current integrations that we're building, that you won't even recognize our platform six months from now.

Chris: Wow, that sounds pretty cool. Yeah, it's fun. So while we have some time, let's turn and talk a little bit about leadership. As you said, you kind of were the first to really step in full time. You were running a company before. How would you describe your leadership style and why do you think that style has been successful in helping Ravelry grow to the company? It's been.

Aaron: Yeah, we like to hire people who take a lot of initiative on their own, who aren't afraid to go out and do something and maybe make a mistake and try it again. So you know, in the startup world or in the tech world there's a and this applies to a lot of places but you know it's hire slow and fire fast. And we hire slow and we'll fire like medium fast. You can't make everybody think they're going to get fired for making a mistake. My leadership style I'm not a micromanager. I very much.

When we hire people, I say look, I'm not going to give you a book to tell you how to do your job. We're going to write this book together because we're breaking new ground every day and we're learning something new every day and I'm not going to pretend to know everything. So I'm hiring you because you're smarter than me. Hopefully. You're known for what you do and do it well. And if I'm going to teach you anything, it's going to be how this company operates and where you can find your best fit and your best purpose. You know, if it's a salesperson, where and how do they make their best fit as a salesperson. You know, if it's a salesperson, where and how do they make their best fit as a salesperson. So you know, that's been my style it's give them some autonomy, give them some ability to go out and make it their own and if you hire slow, you've got a good feel for the person, you know what they're going to be capable of and if you're comfortable with them.

So that's how I've tried to lead the company. We've got you know, it hasn't always worked we've had people come and we've had people go. And then we've got some people who, just, you know, they grind it out every day for this company and they're always thinking of new ideas and their days. You go, man. You know when is this guy going to leave me? He's so good, he's bound to go find something better. And they don't and they stay and and I think that speaks to the culture and the loyalty and the environment that we've built- Well, that's certainly true, especially for those high performers.

Chris: If they're staying, the reason they're staying is because of the team that they feel like they're a part of, which goes to the culture.

Aaron: It does. Yeah, it does, and I'll share a little bit more on the intimate side. We're a tech company, right, and you have your ups and your downs you always do and teams come, teams go, covid happens, covid goes away. We've been through times in our history where we, you know, you're strapped for resources, you're strapped for capital, right, because you're raising venture dollars, sure, and we've let people go who have said can we work for free, like, can we still keep doing our job? We know you can't, you know, afford to have this big team.

And you know, I mean I get emotional when I think about that. Sure, that we have people and it's been multiple people who've done that and you bring them back. And the goal is to bring them back. And I mean you can't buy loyalty like that. No, that's not something money buys. And so, you know, if we, as we grow, you know I know that would get harder to keep that part of the culture, but man, it's the early days. If you can just capture that magic of the stress and the trenches and have responses like that from all your employees, you know you can go out and teach a pretty good course.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, and get to your point. I think you know one of the goals of a company should be hire really good people, give them good opportunities, autonomy, training so that they become really good so good that they're marketable anywhere else in your industry or others, but also have a culture that's so good they don't want to leave. Yeah, Right, and if you can hit on those two things, man, it's like the key to the kingdom.

Aaron: It is, it is and those people are priceless and you know our goal is down the road. If there's a big exit or something like that, I mean loyalty gets rewarded right, and you don't forget those times, because those are meaningful for business owners.

Chris: Very good. That's great, man. It's great. What a cool story. I mean like seven years, yeah, it has been. So let's, we'll turn it a little bit on the lighter side. What you know growing up, what was your first job?

Aaron: My dad's a large animal vet and so I was shoving the proverbial you know what. So, yeah, I worked at his vet clinic quite a bit, so it was a lot of painting, a lot of fence building a lot of you know cutting hay out in the pasture.

Chris: So I was a farm boy. That's funny. So my dad was a primarily large animal and there was a big pile behind the stalls and that was one of the jobs and his partner's sons and I, yeah, I could totally relate. Exactly, that's too funny. Well, you know, not necessarily the best segue from shoveling that stuff, but I'm going to ask you do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Aaron: oh, tex-mex. All right, tex-mex. Yeah, you know it's. I've lived around the world and I you know, I know it's not exactly true, but I mean, it seems like you can find barbecue or barbecue adjacent foods almost everywhere, man, tex-mex, you just cannot find it. I mean, it's just you. There's tex-mex everywhere, but it's not Tex-Mex unless it's here.

Chris: I think that's a pretty true statement. Yeah, and then the last question. I'm curious to know if you could take a sabbatical for 30 days, where would you go and what would you?

Aaron: do. Oh man, if I could take a sabbatical for 30 days, you know I would go back. So we spent a lot of time as a family over in Europe and in France and in small towns. So you know there's just a, it's a part of that world. You know, if you asked me where I would go you ask a lot of people where they would go in France they'd say Paris. Paris is okay. I like the small towns, I like the history, the quietness that you get in a lot of those places. You know rivers and streams running through it. So I just found that part of the world to be especially peaceful. And if it's a sabbatical, you know that's where I prefer to be. Good food yeah, can't beat it. Good wine yeah, really good wine yeah, can't leave that part out.

Chris: No, not at all. Well, aaron, this has been an amazing conversation, love and your story that you and Marshall and others have created. So thanks again for taking the time. Yeah, appreciate it, chris. Thank you,

Special Guest: Aaron Knape.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I learned valuable lessons from Patrick Terry, founder of the popular Austin-based restaurant chain P Terry's Burger Stand.

Patrick explains how the company's success has been centered around its commitment to natural ingredients, competitive pricing, and exceptional customer and employee care.

We explored the challenges of maintaining price discipline amidst rising costs and inflation, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patrick also shared insights from his origin story, hiring practices that bring on passionate individuals, and the importance of company culture.

He also touched on the strategic considerations that underpin P Terry's expansion plans into new markets like Houston and the employee support programs in place.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About P.Terry's

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Patrick: Well, thanks, I'm honored to be here. I really am.

Chris: So I think the first place to start is for you just to tell us, those that don't know of P Terry's, what is P Terry's and kind of. What are you known for?

Patrick: Well, so my wife and I started P Terry's 2005. So we'll be celebrating our 20th anniversary next month, next year, and the idea behind it we sell we're a quick service hamburger stand, and the idea behind it was if we were going to compete with, you know, the giants in the industry the McDonald's and the Burger Kings and the Jack in the Boxes and the Chick-fil-A's you know everybody. You know we're going to have to find a way to be different and you know I talk about so often. People want to get into business and they find a retail store or a restaurant or a concept that they like and they go across the street and pretty much do the same thing as the guy that they liked.

And when you do that, all you've done in a best case scenario, is you take half his business. It's pretty hard to take all of his business. If you're going to do the same thing, then you're going up against the fact that he's established. Clearly he's doing okay because you liked it and he's there. And so I think that's the biggest mistake new business owners and entrepreneurs make is they like a yogurt stand and they go across the street and they do the same yogurt stand. And so, all that said we were going to be different, and where we were going to be different was that we were going to offer the quality beef and the food that we serve is really that of an upscale restaurant, to be honest and we were going to do it through a drive-thru and a dine-in at a fast food restaurant, but we weren't. Because of that, we weren't, of course, able to charge any more than the fast food guy across the street, so what we were trying to do was make ourselves bulletproof.

We were going to offer a quality product that you couldn't get at a fast food restaurant at a price that was the same as the guy across the street that wasn't serving that quality food. And obviously, if you're able to pull that off, it's a huge advantage. And by doing so what we did, we established right away that we were going to look for a fair profit, and that was what it was going to be. And so if I could sell an order of French fries and I might be able to get $2.50 for that order of French fries, I looked at the cost and I'm thinking well, actually, my overall cost of goods, I only have to sell those franchise at $2.15. We have very low overhead. We have a small office with a G&A under 6% and we work hard and we work smart and we don't spend money on marketing or advertising. We don't have that luxury. We don't pay, of course, any franchise fees because we own the business. And so we were able to pull it off. And so we serve a black Angus, all natural beef, and what that means is it's antibiotic free, it's hormone free, it's a vegetarian fed, it's a pure beef. I mean it really is a great product. We serve the same thing with a hormone-free chicken. And you know, our buns don't have high fructose corn syrup. Our potatoes come from Idaho and they're fresh and they're cooked in a canola oil which doesn't have any hydrogenated oils. I mean, we literally just went down the line and said, okay, this is what we're going to do. Now we're going to have to make it work and by keeping our costs down and, frankly, working really hard, really hard with a lot of smart people, we were able to pull it off. We opened up our 34th store two weeks ago in Cibolo, outside of San Antonio, and, as you know, we're on our way to Houston. We have our first Houston location in Richmond I believe it is in October, and we're going to have five. We plan for five Houston locations.

One of the other things that we do that makes this unique is that we have our own commissary. We cook we do a lot of cooking and for our restaurants ourselves, so we bake our own banana bread, we bake our own cookies from scratch, we make our own veggie burgers from scratch. We take chicken breast all chicken breast, boneless, skinless breast and we actually grind it into a patty for a chicken burger and for our chicken bites. And all that's done in the commissary by our own staff. We share the offices, share a space with the commissary, and every morning three or four trucks go out and deliver that product to the stands, and so we're able to keep our costs down by doing that as well. We pretty much just take charge of everything we do, yeah and that's what separated us.

Chris: Well, it sounds like what I'm hearing is a very focused, you know thought into what you wanted this business to be and I guess what you didn't want it to be.

So you know what I heard you talk about is, you know, obviously very cost conscious, so that you could be profitable, but also singular, focused on this. You know premium quality food at a lower price point and you know really it sounds like in the beginning, very focused on what profit margins would look like, what your cost of goods would be. Before you even opened a store it seems like.

Patrick: Yeah, and I don't want to make it sound like we're smarter than we are, because a lot of that stuff just you know fortunately just works itself out. Now where it got tricky is when COVID hit and the supply chain issues and the inflation that we've seen and where we've benefited from that is by having always done what we've done in the last 19 years and everyone's read about. You know the McDonald's Big Mac combo meal. It's for $16 in Idaho and you know McDonald's are great operators. So I got nothing bad to say. But every time you take a price increase if you're not looking over your shoulder when you do that if you're not conscious of?

am I really doing everything I can before I go up on this price?

Patrick: way I can make this a nickel instead of a diamond. Unless you've done that from the start, you find yourself taking price increases to cover up mistakes or issues of the day, and it becomes this band-aid that's very hard to take off, right.

Chris: We've seen that in your industry right, where the classic pass it on to the consumer, and then in the fast food wars just over the recent months, the consumers rebelling.

Patrick: Absolutely, absolutely. And so when you know Starbucks and McDonald's show, you know negative comp store sales, last quarter, for the first time since you know COVID hit, we were up 8% in our compor sales. And because, frankly, when you take our strategy and you stick with it and the hard part is sticking with it it's really easy to look around and go, man, that guy over there he's getting six bucks for that burger and I'm only getting five. I could probably go up a quarter and that's the illusion, right, you get into that game and there's a mind game and if you're able to keep pushing that off and, trust me, it's a hell of a lot easier going up a quarter.

When you're able to pull that off, then you don't go down that rabbit hole and find yourself in a situation where so many of our competitors have found themselves. I mean, I look around and see what similar pricing is, I mean what similar menu items are and what the pricing of our competitors are, and I'm astounded. I mean there are some of our competitors are 20 percent higher than we are on their menu, and you know we're all serving food out of a drive-thru and so it's a dangerous game. It really is. And so I think that I think you've hit on it exactly the way it is, it's a discipline and it's every day.

Chris: Yeah, well, that's what Jim Collins talks about in Good to Great. You know, discipline, people with disciplined thought and disciplined action is how you get from good to great. Yeah, so let me, let me take you back, cause I mean I love the thought that went into to the concept from the beginning, but what inspired you to, in 2005, open up a hamburger stand?

Patrick: Well, thank you for asking. It's almost embarrassing, I apparently. When I finally did it, a score of my friends contacted me to remind me how much I had been boring them for so many years that I had always wanted to open up a hamburger stand. And do not ask me where that came from. I have no idea, other than to say that I love the idea of serving a hamburger, french fries and a milkshake. I just, I just think that's glorious and I know that's probably way over the top, but there's something so satisfying and it's probably because it's my favorite meal that I just can't get past it.

So I had always wanted to do it and I had a particular location that I had in mind and I lost it five years earlier and it sat empty for five years and finally it became available, and so that's when we opened up at Lamar and Barton Springs in Austin.

Chris: I love that. Well, I mean. So, like, like any good entrepreneur, in my view, you followed your passion, your favorite meal, something that you have a passion about doing.

Patrick: Let me tell you, if you don't love this business, you better not get in it, because it is consuming, it's all consuming. And so you know I look around. When I used to, you know, when I would hire somebody, I would remind them that if they didn't really love the restaurant business or what we do every day, you are not going to be happy, and if you do love it, you're going to be very happy, because we're drinking out of a fire hose here pretty much every day.

Chris: Let's talk a little bit about hiring, because I think that's really regardless of the industry, really regardless of the industry. I mean, companies are made of people and you've got to get the right people to help, you know, maybe bring your vision to light, your strategies to life. What have you done over the years to make sure that you are making that right hire decision? I assume it's evolved over time and I think there's at least a couple of pieces. I'd love to maybe hear how it was starting out, but oh, yeah, it was.

I know that coming out of COVID it had to be even more challenging, because people wouldn't even come to work.

Patrick: Right. Well, when we first opened, the first day we opened, my wife Kathy was there and she had no restaurant experience. I had some and I put her through it. It was. You know, it was very difficult, and she likes to tell the story that she looked around the very first day and realized that there was no way we were going to do this by ourselves. And so the first three years we were in the stands every day. I mean, I worked every day, morning to night, and by doing that I got to know, obviously, everything that it took to run the stand, every position. But I also got to see the people that were there and I was able to separate the ones that were working out and the ones that weren't. And I was not a good hire at first. There is this you know, boy, it's easy to take what you think is the simple route and just put a body in place and, man, if it's the wrong body, everyone's miserable, and so it took me a while.

I just had a certain, but I was not going to give in. I had a certain level of employee or stand or team member that I was, that I had envisioned, and so I wasn't going to lower the bar. And so the first three years were really difficult because a lot of people you bring in had other unfortunately had other fast food experience and they brought a lot of bad habits with them. And so you know, it's one of those deals when you hire somebody, frankly, they either have to be scared of you or they have to like you, and I'm not the guy that they're going to be scared of. That's just not the role I want to play. It's not the business I want to run. We're not always going to agree, but my hope is that we like and respect each other and respect each other. The other thing is what we learned being there every day is we learned so? Many of our employees' lives are completely different than mine.

You know I've been around for a long time. I had some money in the bank. You know I had a college education, I had a career before this, so it's really easy to live in your bubble and not recognize it, and so I tell this story a lot. We had an employee, vinny and this was 18 years ago and, by the way, I'm proud to say Vinny still works for us, as do a lot of those people in those first few years. They're still with us and Vinny's truck broke down and I had worked all day and I didn't want to do his job that night, so I convinced him just to get in a cab and I would pay for the cab.

And then when Vinny got there, I said what's going on with the truck? And he said well, it's going to cost $150 to get fixed and I don't have $150. So I handed him $150 and I said pay me when you can, because I need you here and I need your truck fixed Now if I'm in a corporate office, then he probably loses his job because he didn't show up.

Right, right, I don't answer the phone, we don't have that conversation. So then I've lost an employee that I've had for 18 years. But, more importantly, I understand the position they're in, and so the very first thing we did from that is we created a non-interest loan program for all of our employees. So if you walk in to my office right now or you don't even have to do that you tell your manager, and the manager is going to make a phone call and you say I'm behind in my rent or I have a, you know, whatever it is, you're going to get a loan, and if it's under, if it's five hundred dollars or under, we don't even ask, we just you get it. If it's more than that, we want to know what's going on, you know. And so what we did is we made hiring easier. This is a really hard thing to do every day.

The last thing I need to do is make it more difficult. So so we started by taking care of our people better than most, and they told their friends, they told their relatives, and so they understood that this is a two-way street and I'm going to take care of you, but you have to take care of me and, of course, the way you take care of me is you take care of the customer.

Advert:

Chris: That's great. I mean the idea and I think it's true in any organization. If the people that work for you think that you genuinely care about them as a person, not just that they get the job done, you're going to create loyalty and engagement with that employee. Naturally, hearing your story leads me to the question about culture. Let's talk about that. How would you describe the culture at P Terry's? Obviously, the fundamental philosophy you just described, I would assume, is some of the foundational elements of the culture that you're trying to build or have built. So what can you share about that?

Patrick: Well, I'll tell you the obvious. You and your listeners already know this culture is the most important thing. There's nothing even close to second when it comes to running your business. The culture that you establish speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. Speaks for who you are, not only to your employees, but to your customers. There's nothing more important.

I can't even think of number two. I'll tell you an interesting story very quickly. I hope it's real. I had a person call me and want to visit with me about the business, and they had a very successful online clothing company and they were about to open up stores for the first time. Everything they had always sold was online, and he asked me what it took to open the store and take care of the employees for the very first time.

Right, this is all of a sudden. It's not a click, it's a conversation, and I probably talked for 15 or 20 minutes about everything we do every day for our employees. I thought I really thought his head was going to explode. I mean, he. It was so beyond the realm for him. And I get it right. This is like, and what I was trying to explain to him was you're, you may be selling the same item, but you've got an entirely different business model now. I mean, now you have, for the very first time, you have a person representing you selling that product to someone. And boy, you better get that right.

And so that's really what it boils down to is understanding what we do every day and what our people do, and the culture has to be led by me. You know, I read a great line a couple of weeks ago. Somebody said to the person running the company, what's your job? And he said my job is to be right. And so when you accept that as your job and, by the way, I don't do it by myself, oh my Lord, not even close right, I mean, I've got all. I got these people around me that are just terrific, and but I certainly go to them and we certainly talk about everything.

But the first thing that this has to be established is I'm here and I answer my phone and if, if you're in the hospital, I need to be there and make sure everything's okay.

If you have a family member that has an issue, if there's something I can do, I got to do it.

And then you have to understand everyone has to understand that there's a bar set and no one goes below the bar, and I can never go below the bar, obviously, and so it's really for me and for P Terry's, it's really by example, and if you know, dogs and kids can spot a phony a mile away. And so if you're not sincere in what you're trying to do and what you believe in and I've had some people that work for me that I could tell immediately you know you're faking it and you know you just don't feel the same way the rest of us do, and nobody wants to be in that position. So you're not happy here and I'm not happy with you here, so let's just shake hands and walk away from each other. So there's a lot of that going on, but the culture and what we do every day, the first thing we do is we just take care of our people and then we count on them to take care of the customer.

Chris: Yeah, Some of what you're saying there I've heard others speak to. We certainly have that philosophy here in the business we run in this firm and that is we say we hire and fire from culture. Right, you have to know what the culture is. You have to look for the people the best you can through interview processes and hire from culture. More importantly, when you figure out someone's, you know you set the standard and you can't go below it. But if you see someone that's consistently going below it or faking it, then you've got to move fast and they need to be out of the organization.

And it doesn't have to be harsh to your point.

Chris: They're not happy, no one's happy. They're going to be happier somewhere else that has a different set of standards that connect with them. But you've established your standards. You've tied behavior that you can demonstrate is consistent with that that comes from the top down, and then everyone can be on the same page.

Patrick: And it has to be. It's almost like, you know, being in the middle of an orchestra. You know we're all playing the song and we've all got a part to play, and if one of us, you know, drops the violin, it's not going to feel sound the same. Yeah, so true.

Chris: So you know, reading up on, you know the goings on at P Terry's. I want to kind of turn the conversation a little bit to the last maybe I guess it's been four or five years you did something that is not easy for a founder to do in 2019. You decided to step down as CEO of you know, your proverbial baby let's talk about that. Obviously not the first time an entrepreneur has done that and kind of handed reins over. What led to that decision and how was it for you to kind of transition out of the CEO role?

Patrick: Well, if it's okay, I want to step back a couple more years before that and talk about something that it really doesn't make the papers very often. That, and talk about something that it really doesn't make the papers very often. We had at one point I had just kind of hit a wall. I was exhausted. I was working with a kind of a person that I had next to me that was, you know, my right hand man. It was just it was. We had been going at such a pace for so long. You know, my wife and I have funded, had funded this business all by ourselves. The entire time we borrowed money but we didn't have any other investors, so everything kind of fell on us every day and the idea came up that maybe we should sell because this is just exhausting. And we did a dog and pony show and had a half a dozen legitimate buyers and we got a wonderful offer. You know, as I said to the person when I turned him down, you offered me enough money to go live on an island and I've got two little girls. I don't get to live on an island even if I wanted to. So I appreciate the offer very much and I think what I was doing when I did it, and it was sincere, I wasn't trying to waste anybody's time. But I think after the offer came in and my wife and I both agreed that we didn't want to do that. This is not how we wanted our legacy to end.

I think I was looking for validation. I had never been validated for the work I had done, other than you know that the we were allowed to expand. Our business was good, our customers were very appreciative, but from an industry standpoint, I didn't know what we had created. I really didn't. I'm not the guy that I'm terrible at networking. I don't go to. I don't go to meetings, I don't go to conventions, I just I really it's not my deal, I really just work. And so I got that validation and then I made a decision that the next decision we made was do we want to leave Central Texas? You know the Austin area, and I had never done that.

And so I thought well, I got some great advice one time that I don't want to learn something that somebody else has already learned, that I don't want to learn something that somebody else has already learned, and so I chose to bring somebody in with the experience of having done that, and Todd came in. Todd Korver came in. He had a great resume, same moral compass that we have here, a really good guy. And what I was finding was that, no matter what, I'm still here, and there are certain things that I'm just comfortable with, that, if I'm going to be alive and still owning the business, that it's important to me that we do every day. And so it wasn't that Todd did a bad job. It's just that I looked around and said, you know, there's stuff going on that I think we can do a little differently. Maybe we can do it better. I don't know, because I don't have all the answers, but I think I'm more comfortable in the front seat than I am in the back.

The departure was amicable, he's a good guy. He's got a great job here in Austin. He's going to do very well there. But I just found that if I'm going to be in the office every day, you know I might as well do what I really want to do, and so that led to me coming back, and so, you know, I think it also gave me a new energy that I hadn't had because Todd did some heavy lifting for four years, and so we kind of have come back with the vengeance.

We got the idea four days after Christmas that maybe we should really take a serious look at serving chicken bites. We compete against everybody in the business and Chick-fil-A is, you know, the leader, and so a lot of our customers had told us hey, the only fight in our family. You know, my kid wants a chicken bite at Chick-fil-A and I want a hamburger or a chicken burger from P Terry's. And so, you know, the 29th of December we had this conversation and the 16th of March they were for sale in our stores. We made them out of our own kitchen and we created them and, you know, worked on sauces and stuff, and so we've really been going very fast at that. But that you know, and I found that I'm just much more happier if I'm going to, if I'm going to be around, if it's going to still be my company. I'm just happier being the guy that's running it.

Chris: I understand. Well, it had to be difficult, especially so it sounds like you stepped out of the CEO seat but stayed, I guess, involved in the company. That had to be challenging, right, it was one thing if you kind of, like you said, go to some Island or just complete a separate business, but and I, you know, I did my best.

Patrick: I didn't think it was fair to, you know, be in Todd's office every day pounding the desk, going why aren't we doing this, why can't you do this? I, you know, I let him run the company because that was the only fair thing to do, but I was in the office next door and so you know, you're right, I'm not on an island and so, yeah, at some point it just was like easier for me just to do it.

Chris: So let's let's talk a little bit about the expansion. You mentioned that you had expanded beyond kind of the Austin area into kind of San Antonio. You just mentioned a store in that area your plans to come to Houston you mentioned just a minute ago, and ultimately five stores, what? I want to talk about maybe have you share, is kind of what goes into that thinking of the strategy, of when it's right to kind of take those steps which I would assume are, you know, somewhat trepidatious.

Patrick: Yo, absolutely, and what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge. Absolutely, and what we found is that we were interested to see in the challenge. And you know we really had established ourselves in central Texas. We have a lot of stores here, you know we're. I mean I have there's Lamar Boulevard in Austin. I have three stores on Lamar Boulevard, you know, and about three miles apart. So we're pretty inundated and I just wanted to see, I believe that our concept traveled outside of Austin. I believe that our concept really works most places and I wanted to see what we could do. And so San Antonio made the most sense because of our commissary and our delivery, so we can be in San Antonio in just over an hour. And that made it. And, by the way, we just went down, you know, i-35 and we opened a store in Kyle and one in San Marcus and one in New Braunfels and then into San Antonio and so so from a logistics standpoint it made sense, but it was really kind of a challenge.

Now, I don't, you know, there is something I truly believe in and you know I have to tell you real quickly, I spoke at a UT, at the MBA program, one time it was a wonderful class, and the professor called me after the class and he said I got to tell you the students loved it and I thank you for coming.

And I said well, I appreciate that. And he said but I got to tell you I'm probably not going to be inviting you back. And I said totally fine, can you ask, can you tell me why? And he said well, there's nowhere on the syllabus that just says work hard and listen to your customers. And I said okay, well, I get it, cause that's, frankly, all I know to do, to the God's honest truth is that's all I need, that's all I know what to do. And so you know we take. What I was getting to is, at some point you take a leap of faith and you've listened to the people around you and at some point, obviously, you're the one that has to make the final decision. And then you, just you know, you trust your experience over all these years and you know you make the jump. You just make the jump.

Chris: So I guess just you know, since I live in Houston, what was it about Houston that makes you think that you know again the concept travels? Why the first location in Richmond? What are some of the things there that you know, you and your team see and are excited about that you and your team see and are excited about.

Patrick: So we picked that part of Houston because we could drive from Austin again for our commissary until at some point we will hopefully have a satellite commissary in Houston. But a lot of it is the loops are of interest. There's a lot of growth there, there's a lot of room for expansion and, frankly, when you get in the middle of all of your fair city it gets very expensive. So you kind of go to the loops because the land is cheaper and the leases are cheaper. So there's definitely some of that. I'm just being very honest about it. I mean, there's some great locations but I can't spend $300,000 a year on a ground lease, you know it doesn't, I think it's a well.

Chris: the transparency is what we're after here, and I think, again, kind of for a listener to go look, you may have some great ideas, but be smart about that expansion. It goes back to the first thing you said. You've been mindful in this business of controlling cost, and obviously I can speak to it. You're picking locations where the population's growing, so that's not a bad thing either. Right, your demographics must line up with the things that you know makes a store successful.

Patrick: And at the same time and I've got a competitor across the street from me, across the highway from me, in San Marcos, and you know he picked a really bad location and my assumption is he picked it because it was cheap. So you know there's a balance here, right? You know you got the land for $60,000 a year and the reason is because nobody can get to it, so you got to be careful about that. You know, I had a friend of mine come to me. He and his wife came to me years ago and said I think we're going to get into the restaurant business. And I said why? And he said, well, we're going to sell, I think we're going to sell sandwiches.

And I said what are you going to do that? And he said, well, people have to eat. And I said yeah, but they don't have to eat at your restaurant. And unfortunately, you know there is. You know, you just have to look at this stuff so realistically. And that balance of, yeah, I'd love to be in that location, but it's a wonderful location, but it costs me so much. All I'm going to do is sell burgers and, you know, not make any money, that's right, I get to pay the landlord to sell burgers, right?

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. That boy, that's a tough. That's a tough way to spend your day.

Chris: Well, patrick, thank you so much for sharing the story and the ups and downs, but I'm looking forward to having a burger once you get here you said you did it in Austin, obviously, and it is as good as you described. I want to turn a little bit to just a little personal side of things. Obviously, you've said a couple of times you just know how to work hard. What was your first job, even as a kid?

Patrick: So I had a lemonade, a Kool-Aid, stand in front of my, in front of our house I was probably five or six and my dad was, and my parents were always there and always had suggestions and my dad came up to me and he said you need to put the because we lived in West Texas. I grew up in Abilene and you think your summers are hot, so my dad said you need to put the temperature on the. On your poster and and I said so I wrote it's 102, kool-aid, five cents. And you know the car stopped and it was such a great idea and so I always had that influence. I said that was my probably my first inroad.

I remember in seventh grade I started selling candy bars there was no you know, costco or Walmart or anything back then or Sam's to the grocery store and buy a little six-pack of Hershey's. My mom would go and take me and I started selling so many candy bars at the 10.30 break that I was messing up the senior store at noon and the superintendent called me in and told me to stop. So that's funny, all right.

Chris: So this is a question I ask everyone, and I'm incredibly intrigued to get your answer, because you're the self-described hamburger guy. Right, I got to know do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Patrick: Oh, I'll go to Tex-Mex all day, okay.

Chris: I'll go to Tex-Mex.

Patrick: And I love barbecue, don't get me wrong. But I got to tell you if I can have chicken enchiladas with the verde sauce and a side of rice and beans. I am doing just fine.

Chris: Okay, so it's your second favorite meal.

Patrick: it sounds like yeah, absolutely, my poor children. I'll tell you this real quick. I know you want to wind it down. My daughter is 16 now and when she was 10, she went on a water ski camp and she spent the day. And she got in the car and she said I said what'd you have for lunch? And she said they served these submarine sandwiches. And I said, oh, what'd you get? And she said a meatball sandwich. And I said, oh, that's great. And I said you don't seem like you're in a good mood. And she said I didn't know those existed because my poor children eat P Terry's every day. So that's, you know, that's it's a family deal.

I love it.

Chris: It reminds me of the story of you know, it was in a movie a while back right when the parents try to tell convince the kids that yogurt was vanilla ice cream exactly. Patrick, thanks again. Really enjoyed meeting you and hearing your story. Congratulations on the success and best of luck as you expand and move into the Houston market.

Patrick: I appreciate it Well. I'd love to meet you one day and grab a burger.

Chris: Let's do it, in fact, let's stay in touch on when that Richmond store is open, and I'll be there.

Patrick: Absolutely, absolutely, and I'll even buy.

Chris: What do you think? That's a heck of a deal. Very good, well, thanks again.

Patrick: Thank you, I enjoyed it very much.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with serial entrepreneur Steve Reynolds for his perspectives on innovation in corporate travel tech.

As CSO of Embers Inc., Steve shares his journey developing TripBam, an early pioneer utilizing algorithms and robotics to optimize hotel rates. He explains TripBam's strategic transformation from consumer to enterprise software, strengthening the company and positioning it for seamless integration under Embers.

Steve offers valuable lessons on championing passion within high-performing teams. The importance of actively engaging customers and development staff to creativity solve problems is emphasized. We discuss the challenges of maintaining innovation at scale versus smaller startups.

Steve's experiences navigating acquisitions and a turbulent industry offer cautionary advice. A theme emerges—embracing flexibility positions leaders to overcome challenges and achieve lasting impact.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Emburse

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Chris: In this episode you will meet Steve Reynolds, chief Strategy Officer for Emburse Inc. Steve has built his career in corporate travel technology and in starting various companies over the four-decade career. Steve looks for opportunities to be disruptive. Steve, thanks for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure to meet you and appreciate you taking the time.

Steve: You bet Chris Glad to be here.

Chris: So you know there's a lot that I'd love to get into with you. I know that you know currently you're with a company called M-Burst Travel, but that you started a company before that called TripBam. Tell us a little bit about, I guess, those companies and what they do. What is the business they're known for?

Steve: Okay, and just to back up a little bit further, I guess what you could call a serial entrepreneur. Tripbam was my third or fourth venture kind of lost count, but I've been in the corporate travel tech space for 40 some odd years. And TripBam when we started 10 years ago, we recognized that hotel rates change a lot more often than people actually realize. If you were to create some robotics that went out and grabbed the rate at a particular hotel for a certain date in the future, you'd see that rate changes just about every hour and what we found is if you just keep watching it, eventually it's going to drop, especially as you get closer to check-in. So we created some algorithms, robotics, whatever you want to call it that said okay, I've got a rate of $2.99 at the Grand Hyatt in New York. I'm arriving on the first and departing on the third. I want you to just let me know when it drops and if it does, I want you to rebook it for me If everything is the same room, same bed, same cancel policy, blah, blah, blah. So that's what we did.

We originally invented it for the consumer market. We put out a website and we got mentions in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today and so on. But sort of my corporate travel buddies called up and said, hey, Steve, we really need you to apply this to corporate travel. And they started writing some pretty significant checks. We followed the money, we pivoted and went all B2B at that point. And so the company grew 40% year over year for the first six years, cashflow positive within just a couple of months. I mean it was great. It was great. And then COVID came along and kind of took our knees out from under us for a bit.

Chris: COVID kind of wiped out the fundamental business model for at least a little bit.

Steve: At least for a little bit. But fortunately a lot of our customers were paying us subscription fees rather than transaction fees, so we were to stay afloat. We got through COVID and we actually came out on the backside of COVID in a much stronger position, both financially and you name it, because we were able to do a lot of just cost improvements, right-sizing the organization. We kind of got a little bit ahead of our skis, I think, in some areas and created some new products, just all kinds of things, pushed everything out to the cloud and such that dramatically reduced our costs and just were firing all cylinders.

Chris: And then we worked out a deal with Emburse in July last year to buy the company. Okay, how does I guess what TripBand does fit within the Emburse excuse me, overall, maybe suite of products or company strategy.

Steve: Yeah. So Emburse provides travel and expense to the largest of companies, to the smallest of companies, and what I mean by that? Everybody. When you go, you have kind of a booking tool to start with. Most folks are familiar with Concur. We have our own. The reservation gets created. It then needs to be watched, monitored, audited, improved upon. That's kind of where we fit in. So before the money is spent we actually see if we can actually do better than what the traveler did on their own.

Travelers are not going to check the hotel rate every day. They're not going to check their airfare every hour. They're not potentially going to book the preferred property within a particular city. We fix all that before the money's actually spent. We then push all that to mobile. So you've got a companion app in your pocket where the traveler gets a ton of destination content specific to that company.

So I'm going to New York, I'm staying at headquarters, what hotel should I stay in? I need to go take a client to dinner, what restaurants do you recommend? All kinds of other stuff, including safety and security perspective and so on. Then the data is all captured and fed into an expense report so that your expense report if the traveler is compliant. It's kind of pre-created and pre-approved, so the traveler in a lot of cases doesn't have to do anything and if they're compliant all the way throughout, they could actually kind of be paid as soon as their plane hits the ground. Then it all feeds into reporting and analytics so that we can improve your travel program, identify additional savings opportunities, find some fraud issues, detect all kinds of other stuff that might be a problem. We also offer a card product if you don't have one, and that's kind of the travel plus expense ecosystem that we provide.

Chris: That's fascinating. I obviously wasn't aware that something like that existed, but I can see how large companies with a lot of employees traveling could see the benefit and realize a lot of savings from those services.

Steve: Yeah, when you combine travel with expense, some kind of magic happens in that we have enough data and insight to be able to start pre-filling out that expense report. Otherwise, all we're counting on is card transactions and receipts, and that's really not going to do the trick. But if we can get that card information augmented with the receipt scanning and everything else that we do now, we can really do a nice job of pre-filling out that expense report. So really all you have to do is add mileage, hit, click and you're submitted.

Chris: So you mentioned that you've been in this industry for 40 plus years. I'm curious how did you first get started in the corporate travel tech space 40 years ago?

Steve: It was just by happenstance, I guess you could say. I was originally started as a programmer for Texas Instruments, got accepted into their executive program, which meant I could go off and get an MBA and then come back to TI, but quickly realized that the consulting firms were paying a lot more. So I ended up with Ernst Winnie, at the time with Ernst Young and my first assignment was with a travel agency in Houston, Texas, called LifeGo Travel, which doesn't exist anymore. The owner of that company hired us to come in and build some technology. It really put him on the map and he got tired of paying the bills and seeing the hourly checks that we were charging. And so he approached and said, hey, you know, do you want to come work for us?

And I'm like, well, that never thought about working for a travel agency. That doesn't sound all that exciting. But he said look what if we created a company, We'll spin it off and we'll give you some equity. And I'm like, okay, now you're talking. So we left, we started up a company called Competitive Technologies and all of it was bought by American Express Travel two years later.

Chris: Oh, wow. So unquestionably you had a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit going way back then to see an opportunity. Put you in it.

Steve: And a lot of it is just kind of, I guess, my personal. I don't do well at big companies. I really struggle because I get so frustrated at just the lack of progress or the lack of innovation or the speed at which things happen, so I tend to sort of find an excuse to hit the exit button, usually within a year or two.

Chris: Right. So you said something in that response that I want to talk to you about, and that's innovation. I think that's there's such a common theme, I think, with entrepreneurs about. You know, and innovation can mean so many things. What do you think that you've done, as you've built several companies, as you mentioned, to create or foster and nurture a spirit and environment of innovation?

Steve: You know a lot of it is just becoming a really good listener to the buyer, to whoever the customer is. And then when they say things, there are certain kernels that are aspects of what they say that you just go oh, wait a minute, okay, can we go back to that? That sounds important. You know this level of frustration. Why does that frustrate you? And if you have engineering and development in the room when those things are said, oftentimes some real magic starts to happen and we just the creativity, the innovation just comes out naturally as wow, we can solve that problem. That's not that hard, you know, let's go do that. So that's on the B2B side. That's kind of the formula, that conversation. Something falls out as far as a new feature, product, something like that, that we can start working on the B2C side.

Chris: Go ahead. Well, it sounds like there's a function there of asking the right questions and really listening.

Steve: Well, and just most big companies or companies they try to protect the dev engineering. They're like oh, we're not going to let you talk to customers. You guys sit over here in the back room and we'll come to you with sort of a priority or roadmap of what we think is needed. And I feel like that's just the wrong way to do it. You've got to get the dev and the engineers and the programmers in the room to hear the story, otherwise you get this telephone tag of what actually gets built isn't quite what the customer wants or was even asking for. And for most companies that's really hard. I don't know why, but they just. It's like we can't allow that to happen, but that's just not the way I operate.

Chris: Well, I mean, it makes sense that people you're asking to solve the problem probably need to hear what the problem is firsthand, right?

Steve: Exactly. And then it's oftentimes the dev guys are like they're coming up with much more creative solutions. If you just hand them a requirement sheet or spec sheet, they're like, oh okay, this is going to take a month. But when they're involved with the client and they actually hear what the true problem is, oftentimes they're like, oh, I can knock this out overnight, I'll have a solution to you by tomorrow. It's just a night and day sort of sense of urgency or sort of the emotion around creating the solution. They're bought in. At that point, when they hear it directly from the client, they can be the hero.

Chris: Well, when you think about kind of that and getting the right developers and the right kind of team together, what have you found to be successful as far as what to look for in building the right team and then keeping the team together?

Steve: Yeah. So fortunately for me I mean through all of these different companies that I've started I've been able to kind of get the band back together multiple times. A because I, you know, I'm a big believer in sharing the equity. You know, let's get everybody, if not equity, at least options, so that when there is an exit, everybody benefits, and they've all seen that so far today, knock on wood, I haven't had an unsuccessful exit where we've had to, you know, turn out the lights or whatever. My shareholders have all made money, you know, typically around 5x to 10x on their investment, which has been great. So it's easy to get the bad back together.

But what I also have found out is there are certain programmers that are passionate about programming and others that are just taught programming, and there's a night and day difference on the result. If they're passionate about it, the results come out quick. I get creative solutions that nobody would think of. They're usually extremely low cost and it's just so much better than if I have someone that's college taught. I'm doing this because it's a paycheck and I took this degree because that's what somebody told me to and I was good enough to get a B in college on all my programming courses, but at the end of the day, if their heart's not in it and they're spending their time, you know, just on the side weekends and nights learning new stuff, they're not going to be very good. So give me one or two of those that are passionate and I'll put them against 10 to 20 of those that are school taught and will kick their ass every time.

Chris: So yeah, well again, I think that transcends all industries and disciplines, the key being passion. Right, I think you, as the leader, are the one that has to start with the passion and then find people that share that passion to get to where you're talking about, where there's that flow within the organization.

Steve: Yeah, I think development's a little bit different. I mean, you're not going to find anybody super excited about accounting or I don't know the other aspects of it, but with development there's guys that just get so into it. You know they're programming on the side. They get into hackathons, they want to prove that you know they're smarter than the guy next to them and just constantly looking for the next challenge and just coming up with those creative solutions. I don't know of any other discipline that really has that level of it, but there might be. I mean, I could be wrong.

Chris: So, just going back and maybe not the first venture where you and the travel agency in Houston started, but maybe I'm just curious to know as you began some of these startups, maybe sharing some of the lessons learned through some of the challenges you found in starting that venture, whether it be raising capital as an example, or any other challenges that may come about, but I think that capital raise can be one in the startup that some entrepreneurs find daunting and maybe can't solve and never get anything off the ground.

Steve: Yeah Well, I think, first off, just wait as long as possible to raise capital. You know most of them kind of build an MVP which just kind of barely works and then go out and try to raise money on it. And whenever you go down that path you just end up way undervaluing what you have. And I know people get in certain situations where they just need to have a check, you know, or it's you know, lights out. But if you can wait until you actually have a client actually generating revenue, actually having positive cash flow, whatever, and then you can show someone, look, we just need to add fuel to the fire here. This is not about keeping the lights on, this is about generating growth You're going to have a dramatically better outcome.

The other thing I found out is when you take the big check too early, you start making really stupid decisions. You start hiring attorneys that are expensive, you hire a CFO before you need it, you have a head of HR, all kinds of stuff and overhead that's just not necessary and over time it makes you less and less nimble because you're so worried about payroll, you know, and less focused on just delivering a product that has a you know, a bunch of value. Keep your day job, keep working nights and weekends, wait as long as possible. I mean, I always said, look, cash is like oxygen.

If you run out you're going to die. So hang on to it with both hands first. I mean beg, borrow and steal from friends and family and whatever to just get stuff. If you need a contract, go out on the web and search for a capolar plate contract. It'll be good enough to get you started. Or find someone that's a buddy, that's a lawyer, that's willing to do some pro bono work in return, maybe for a little bit of equity stuff like that. Just hang on to that cash as much as you can, for as long as you can.

Chris: Well, I think there's a lot there that someone can learn from. Obviously, speaking as a chairman of a law firm, I can't endorse legal Zoom for the startup, but I understand your point. We talk to clients a lot about especially know, especially in the startup phase. Maybe you know helping them get going, but you know and being smart about how they spend their money. But make it an investment in getting at least a sound structure and they may not need right the full-blown set of legal documents, but I can promise you I've seen people start on legal Zoom and wish they hadn't, you know, a couple of years later when things were getting a little tight. But I understand your point there. But conserving cash is important to get off the ground.

Steve: Yeah, I mean you don't need to come right out of the gate being in an Inc. You know and incorporated in Delaware and pay all the fees, whatever to make that happen. I mean, just start out as a low-cost LLC and then, when you're ready to sort of raise capital and become a real company, you know you use part of that capital to convert at that time.

Chris: So you had mentioned earlier, you know just, I guess, going back to kind of trip BAM COVID having, at least initially, a pretty profound impact but then turning it into a positive, and I'm kind of want to take you back to that time and you maybe dig in a little bit deeper. I think it's a beautiful lesson of something where you know a lot of people just throwing up their hands because travel stopped, et cetera, which decimates your business specifically to you. But then you said we actually learned from that and became a better, stronger company because of it. And you've mentioned right-sizing, the organization stuff. But could you share a little more detail and some stories from that our listeners can learn from if and when their business faces something similar?

Steve: Yeah, I think, first off, being fairly quick. You know you can always hire people back, you know. But if you keep them on the payroll and you start burning up cash just way too fast or you're starting to trend towards in the red, you just got to pull the trigger. Nobody wants to, nobody likes to do it, but it's really nobody's fault. It's just something as an executive or CEO you have to do, or a founder. So that's one. Second is, as companies grow, you kind of make stupid mistakes along the way. You get kind of inefficient. You don't anticipate the level of growth that might have been reality. So going back and saying, all right, take a step back, let's catch our breath. You know, what should we have done to kind of handle the scale better? And so, for example, just moving everything to a cloud environment, you know, putting it out to bid, switching from one cloud provider to another, whatever it is, you know you can just generate or reduce your costs dramatically. You know, rather quickly, if you just focus the time on it. Everybody gets so white hot, focused on growth and the next client and the revenue they forget to look at the rear view mirror about. You know there was a lot of costs we could have taken out, you know, which could generate even more cash going forward.

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So we pulled the trigger pretty quick. We right-sized the staff. We had a pretty good and, fortunately for us, this is the other. We kind of lucked into this.

Our customers, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to pay a subscription fee rather than maybe a percentage of the savings or a transaction fee, to where what they were going to spend would fluctuate month over month.

By paying a subscription fee, they could budget it and they were going to get a better return on investment. So we did most of our deals that way and thank God we did, because when COVID and everything went into toilet in April of 2020, we still had cash coming in the door. So we were actually stayed cashflow positive because we kind of right-sized the staff fairly quickly. And then, coming out of COVID, as the revenue started to ramp back up and our sales started to continue, we were just on a much better platform that would scale after it because it was just all right-sized and efficient and whatever, and at the same time we added new products. So we had a two-year kind of all right, just keep the lights on, market will come back around. We added an air reshopping solution. We added a bunch of analytics to audit contracts and to benchmark performance, so that we had a whole bunch more to sell coming out of COVID than going in, and so that caused another year of kind of explosive growth as a result.

Chris: That's great. So, yeah, obviously part of that is give some deep thought to how you price what your product right. So that subscription-based versus transaction for you sounds like a very. Maybe it didn't seem as meaningful at the time you made it, but it turned out to be.

Steve: You know that's a tough one If the ROI of your product is pretty clear, like reshopping. If you've got a rate of $2.99, I drop it to $ to $250. I've got $49 per night in savings If you pay me a couple of bucks. Okay, here's the ROI. And we could run some pilots and all kinds of stuff to prove that out. So that makes it really simple and we try to hit look, I need a ROI that when they take it to their boss the guy that's doing the budgets, you know, won't cause all kinds of frustration and concern.

So four to one is usually the minimum. A lot of our customers, the larger ones, are getting eight to one, 10 to one, you know. So you could say like you've probably underpriced it. But that's okay, you know we'll claw back some of that. You know, over time when it's a product that's the ROI is a bit fuzzier. You just got to somehow convince the client that this is the potential savings. They're going to guesstimate and then from there work backwards to a price which kind of gets you back to that four to one ROI. So if I think I'm going to save you five bucks a transaction, I'm probably going to charge you a dollar to $1.50 is what I'm going to aim for. Again, to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate for Relagate. Again to get to that four to one kind of savings estimate.

Chris: So part of that goes, I think, in building that customer base, really focusing on strong relationships. Talk a little bit about that and what you've done, because it sounds like over the course of the various businesses, you've done a good job of creating some very good partnerships and alliances. What are some of the things you think that have helped you foster that and keep those for so many years?

Steve: I think one is you know you got to under promise and over deliver. So if they're going to sign up, you know, don't make them look bad or stupid to their boss. The other one is identifying the influencers in the market. So I'm sure every industry has some individuals that are kind of on the bleeding edge, willing to try new things. And if they do and it works, they've got the microphone or the megaphone to tell a whole bunch of others. So fortunately for me, I've been able to identify who those influencers are. I've got a reputation for just delivering as promised. So when they sign up they have confidence and then they tell their peers and a lot of our sales in the large enterprise market are peer-to-peer networking. It's not from email campaigns or other stuff that we do.

Chris: The kind of part of that, the old adage of just do what you say you committed to do when you said you committed to do it right.

Steve: It's just delivering as promised. Don't sell me a can of goods and all this great wonderful thing. And then when the reality is just not there, you know, don't make them look stupid. You know that's the key one. I mean, these are after 40 years they become. We have some pretty tight relationships with these folks and I want them to keep their job and we want them all promoted and moving on to the next big role, because when that happens they just take us with them and we just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Chris: So you mentioned that about kind of keeping this, your words, the band back together. You've been able to do that, hiring some of the right people and incentivizing the right way. Any insights into. You know what people could think about when they're looking at their team one, trying to, I guess, evaluate whether they have the right people and then finding the right ways to incentivize them to kind of keep that core group together.

Steve: To me it's if they feel like they're a part of a team and they understand the value they're providing to the customer and they see that customer's appreciation. You know they're in the conversation with the client, you know, and that's easy to do at a small company, because who else are they going to talk to? Right, you got to bring the dev and engineering. But when you start layering and bifurcating and have people you know in engineering back there in the back room, kind of stuff that don't talk to clients, that's when it gets a lot harder. But when you get them into the conversation and that sense of this is my company, this is my reputation. I'm a part of something here, you know, that's growing and doing well and whatever.

It's not that hard, it's really not that difficult at all. It's just everybody wants to be appreciated and feel like they're, you know, part of a team. So that's the formula, right, I mean I could throw money at them. But I ask my employees I mean I am not the guy that's writing big checks to hire people right? I'm like look, we're going to pay a reasonable salary. You know this is not, you're not going to be broke, but you know we're in it for the long term game, and so we want to keep the cash in the company so that we don't have to go do another capital raise which is going to dilute all of us, and so your equity just keeps getting smaller, you know, over time, and the guys that actually make the money, or the investors this needs to be a collaborative team effort so they get that.

Chris: I think that transparent communications is key right. So they again they understand their role on the team, they understand what the goal of the organization is and how they can help further that.

Steve: You know it's always been kind of fire slow, fire quick as well. You know the people, everybody makes hiring mistakes. It happens all the time. And you know when you hire someone within like a couple of days you're like this is not feeling right. You know, don't let it just sit, don't let it be two years later when you actually kind of work them out. You have to kind of pull the trigger fairly quick because it messes up the whole culture of the company. Oftentimes, especially at a small company, it can create some real problems.

Chris: Yeah, I mean that may be the most sage advice and, I think, maybe the most consistent that I hear from entrepreneurs and business owners. It's been my own experience too, that that kind of fire, you know, don't be slow to fire when you know you made a mistake and it's the hardest, maybe one of the hardest ones to do because you're dealing with people. I spoke to someone yesterday and they were like hired, someone had some uncertainty and literally what I learned was to trust my gut because on day one that they started in a conversation went oh my God, this is a huge mistake. Tried to play it out, tried to make it work and guess what? It didn't.

Steve: Yeah, the thing is I don't believe resumes anymore and I don't believe LinkedIn pages at all, especially when it comes to higher dev and engineering. It's just anybody can put whatever language they want and say they've got a ton of experience. You've got to figure out a way to validate Most of our hires. There's kind of referrals and peer-to-peer sort of networking. If I find someone, I can usually find someone they know, especially in the Dallas market where we are, that's worked with them at a prior company. That sort of thing and do some back-channel checking is what really pays off for us. And we know the rock stars. We know the rock stars. We know the rock stars, but they're not that hard to kind of pick out. It's the ones that are kind of questionable. That you know. You just got to do your homework and don't count on the resume.

Chris: That's a really good point. It's a hard thing to do, though, and it may be easier in programmers. But, to you know, I totally agree with resumes, and profiles can be, you know, massaged, but it's sifting through and kind of through the smoke to really get to what's behind the curtain.

Steve: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean. And Zoom calls, I mean people hire on Zoom calls or whatever. Like dude, you got to get them in the office face to face, go to lunch, have a couple of face to face interactions before you actually bring this person on board. You know, make them pass a coding test or something. You know something tangible. Don't just look, they're very nice people. You know they all have a. You know look great on a phone call or Zoom call, whatever, but that doesn't cut it.

Chris: Yeah, I mean no substitute for personal interaction and seeing how people show up. Right.

Steve: Yeah, the other thing is, since we're, you know, on a startup mode where everybody's looking at kind of the potential for equity, I'm like, look, if you're as great as you are, why don't you come on board for a month on a contract basis? Let's see how it works out, you know, and we'll go from there All right, and you really get a feel for someone and how well they're going to. We try it, we like to try it, before we buy. Let's put it that way. That's one way to do it.

Chris: just talk about you know specific kind of leadership styles and and how you would describe your leadership style, and maybe how you would describe it today versus maybe 20 years ago as you you were emerging as a leader, and how you think it's changed oh, my god, it's night and day.

Steve: so first company way back when. Maybe it comes as a surprise or not, but it was a coat and tie environment. Okay, guys, we've got to put on the ties and whatever. That was just so stupid. Checking office hours and all that crap and tracking vacation time just seems so silly.

Now, if you can get the job done, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care what you wear, I don't care what you look like, I don't care where you do the work, I don't care if you have to take vacation on a pretty regular basis for whatever reason. I don't care if you're going off and disappearing to watch your kid play soccer, I do not care anymore. Just here's the job. Here's kind of an expectation. You know, as long as I understand, you're trying hard to get it done as quick as possible. We are good. You know, it's kind of a thing.

So all that other stuff was just noise. That was just stupid, anyway it's. I mean back when I started in this, I mean programming and development and all that and the whole tech world was fairly new, so nobody knew what they were doing or how to manage these folks and it evolved over time, but fairly quickly. I mean, by company two, ties were gone. By company three, office was gone. I mean I've been virtual for 25 years. Unfortunately, we had offices but we just I think they were a waste of money but we did it for optics more than anything.

Chris: Yeah, so it sounds like more kind of a traditional and somewhat of a command and control, starting out to now a little more, much more flexible and providing autonomy as long as people deliver on the expectations that they're communicated with.

Steve: Which comes down to you just hire the right people, right, if you can get kind of get that sense for what the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see, if you can get kind of get that sense for what are the kind of folks that are going to do well. So, for example, if I see that you've got you spent 20 years at a really big company, you are not going to do well at a startup. I could guarantee you You're used to other people doing work for you. You know you're just kind of the sit back in your office and sort of you know, tell folks what to do. That ain't going to happen. You need to get your hands dirty. You might have to write code. You got to do PowerPoints, you got to do Word docs all that stuff yourself. Big company folks just tend to lose that ability, let's say, or it's beneath them and that's not going to work.

Chris: Yeah, I mean it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality, right, it's almost. Yeah, that's not in my role. Mentality versus everything is in everyone's role. Mentality right, it's about getting a job done, no matter what it takes.

Steve: And I think that drives me crazy at a big company because, you know, unfortunately for others, I tend to poke my nose into others' lanes and I get told a lot Steve, stay in your lane. Nothing bugs me more, you know, than to hear that. But that's the big company way.

Chris: So you've gone through a few companies and you're now, I guess, inside of a larger company. Now Are you finding it easy to kind of have that mentality of flexible leadership and innovative environment?

Steve: In the new company? Yes, I would have to say no, it's kind of as I expected.

You know, with other acquisitions you start. You know, this kind of here's how it happens. However, embers, I believe, is trying hard to carve out a role where I can exist, let's put it that way. So my title right now is Chief Strategy Officer, and it's a bit nebulous, kind of by design. I can sort of make it what I want and as a result of being chief strategy officer, I can get outside of my lane and people can question it. I'm like everybody needs strategy. That's my title, I'm going to get in your lane, kind of stuff you know. So I tend to kind of bounce around to lots of different projects, objectives so on. I kind of help make sure that it's cohesive, you know, across this travel and expense story, you know. But at the same time I don't have a lot of direct reports, which is great. That usually doesn't go too well either. So so far, so good.

Chris: Fingers crossed, that's great, yeah, we we kind of covered kind of the challenges of COVID If you think back prior to that, any other challenges along the way with the first two or three companies, everybody, yeah, yeah, I think people some of those are the best lessons we learned or some of the challenges we go through. I'm just curious to know any kind of lessons from a challenge that you could share with the listeners that might help them when they face something similar.

Steve: Oh my God. I mean everybody's made mistakes and if they got lucky along the way and if they don't admit that they're lying, I mean some of the bigger ones. 9-11, we had a solution that was processing about 80% of all corporate travel reservations made in the US. 9-11 hit and we went to zero within about 24 hours, so that was kind of a gut check. Fortunately, travel bounced back fairly quickly, but it made us take a step back and realize how nimble we were If something like that were going to happen again.

So that's one, and you know, and there's all the kind of day-to-day stuff. I mean there's fraud, there's employee HR issues that happen. You know there's. I'm not going to get into details on that, but you know you just kind of all right, let's deal with this. You know, don't just look the other way and take care of it. I think the latest I mean the big one right now is just, you know, the whole third party hacking and getting into your network and holding you hostage, stuff like that. You know that's made everybody just super anxious and nervous and to the point where companies are kind of shutting down their network so much that individuals can't do the job. You know, which is causing concern and it's what else are you going to do? I mean, if some employee can click on a link and bring down your network, do?

Chris: you just turn off email. You're right, it's creating such a challenge. Everybody, all companies, are being attacked every day from all kinds of angles, and it just takes one and but you also? You can't operate out of fear and you can't let it stop you from doing your business.

Steve: Well, they say there's two kinds of companies out there. There's those that have been hacked and those that don't know they've been hacked. So just kind of keep that in mind and I think it's fairly true. I think, you know, it's just almost too easy to get into someone's network and poke around and kind of see what's going on these days.

Chris: It's so scary, but I thought you were going to say those who have been hacked and those that will be hacked, but I guess already have you, just don't know it. Well, see, I really loved hearing your story. It's a fascinating industry, and one that you don't really hear much about, but you definitely. It sounds like for 40 years you've been crushing it at it, so congratulations to that. Well, thanks for that.

Steve: But also the one thing people don't know about corporate travel is that it sits on a backbone of legacy technology that's probably 40 years old. That has not changed. The GDSs are antiquated, the travel agency systems are antiquated. It's not that hard to come up with something innovative and new in this environment. So I just got lucky to where I got into it and I'm like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems and it just kept evolving from there. Like this thing is so bad. I mean anything you do is going to be innovative. And so we just started coming up with new stuff solving clients' problems, and it just kept evolving from there.

Chris: Yeah, that's really. You know so many entrepreneurs I've talked to. It's what you just said solving the customer or client's problem. Because what I said earlier, it goes back to asking the questions and listening and then trying to solve that problem.

Steve: So many great ideas that come from that across so many industries. Yeah, and just to set up a little process to where you talk with your customers on a regular basis or a group of clients or people you trust and it just happens naturally, it's really not that difficult.

Chris: Well, let's turn to a little bit on the lighter side before we wrap this up. I always like to ask people like yourself what was your first job?

Steve: oh, my first job, let's see. Uh, I worked at a pet store at junior high. Well, actually first job was mowing yards, right? So everybody every kid did that just to get my allowance money. Then I worked at a pet store in junior high for a short period but fairly quickly realized waiting tables made a lot more money. So I told a guy I was 18, when actually I was 16, and they never really checked. They hired me as a waiter.

I was actually kind of a part-time bartender, so I was serving liquor in Houston the strawberry patch I'll probably get them in trouble back when I was 16 years old and just made a ton of money as a, you know, a high schooler. So that was kind of the first. And then, you know, got into computers and writing code at a very early age. I was part of a program at Shell where they gave us mainframe time to go in and kind of play around and then went off to Baylor for computer science and then went to TI and then went to A&M for grad school. Very good, very good.

Chris: So okay. So, being a native Texan, do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Steve: That is not a fair question, because both are pretty dang awesome, but, being in Texas, I think we've got some of the best barbecue on the planet. So Pecan Lodge here in Dallas is, I think, kind of the best, and there's a lot of Tex-Mex, though that's really good as well, yeah, I agree on all points.

Chris: I haven't heard of Pecan Lodge before, so I'll have to check that one out.

Steve: Yeah, it's in Deep Ellum, so next time you fly in, go in out of Love Field, and it's not too far, it's a 10-minute drive from there.

Chris: Deal Noted. And then last thing is you know you've made early in the career, probably never did this and maybe have done since. But if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do?

Steve: I actually got a 30 day sabbatical. So a guy hired me or not hired me, but when he brought me on board to run a company he said hey, you know, I threw in there. Just, I read it in a magazine that it was the hot thing for techies to ask for, so I threw it in there and they accepted it. I guess they thought I'd never make it to my five-year anniversary. Anyway, I did and I took the kids and family, went all the way throughout through Europe. So we went to Italy, paris, france, austria, switzerland, whatever you know, just really unplugged for that 30 days. Actually it was a 90 day sabbatical. That's what I took. Wow, so I got a little bit more time. Yeah, it was great, it was great. So if that were to happen today, I'd probably look to do something similar, but nowadays if I want to take 90 days, I probably could just got to ask for it.

Chris: Very good, very good. Well, steve, thanks again for taking the time to come on and love hearing your story and all the innovation you brought to the travel industry.

Steve: All right. Well, thanks for having me, chris, I really enjoyed it. Good conversation.

Chris: Thanks, well, we'll talk soon.

Steve: Okay, you bet.

Special Guest: Steve Reynolds.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Rob Holmes of Texas Capital Bank. Rob shares the bank’s dramatic turnaround story since he became President and CEO in 2021 amid challenges, including a failed merger.

Rob explains how Texas Capital improved its standing through strategic moves like fortifying capital levels and attracting talent from global institutions.

Wrapping up, Rob discusses maintaining liquidity amid regional banking stress, their strong capital position, and diversification that sets them apart.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Texas Capital

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Chris: In this episode, you will meet Rob Holmes, President and CEO of Texas Capital. Rob shares an inspiring story on how Texas Capital has rebuilt itself and become the first full-service financial services institution headquartered in Texas. Rob, I want to thank you for joining me here on Building Texas Business. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Let's start. I know you're the CEO Building Texas Business. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Let's start. I know you're the CEO of Texas Capital. Tell the listeners a little bit about what Texas Capital is and the type of services it provides here in Texas.

Rob: Great. Well, thank you very much for having me. So Texas Capital had a very proud founding in the late 90s by Texas business people to found a bank to serve Texas businesses with local decision making. After all, the banks failed in the late 80s and they had a very proud run and 05 went public and did very well. Then about the mid teens we kind of started going a little sideways and by the time I got there the bank needed to be kind of rebuilt and so we had a failed merger with a bank about a third our size and that tells you anything, and really because of COVID. But after that they needed new leadership and so what we did was we started over and we went fast. So we raised a perpetual deferred deal with sub-debt securitization, got out of a line of business correspondent banking that attracted a lot of capital and improved the capital by about 270 basis points in about eight weeks, and that's my bet as we run the bank very conservatively. We also brought in a lot of new talent. So the entire operating committee is new. We have a new junior program we can get into that later.

But then we started on the journey to build and this is kind of interesting. I think you'll find it interesting. We're the first full service financial services firm ever to be headquartered in Texas and if you think about it it makes perfect sense. So in the 80s you had Glass-Steagall and stuff. You had a lot of big banks. They failed. They were replaced by larger institutions from out of state that saw this as a very attractive market. But the in-market banks never went into the full service direction. So regional banks are made from community banks and they get bigger and they didn't have the products and services. They just had NIM banks, if you will Sure.

Chris: Well, that's an impressive thing to have a claim to being the only one headquartered in Texas. I would not have thought that, you know, given some of the other Texas yeah. So I mean you're not kidding when you said a full restart just a few years ago.

Rob: Full restart. So we have think about who we're able to attract, and this says more about Texas than Texas Capital. But the woman that runs treasury services for us ran treasury services for JPMorgan Chase globally. Our chief risk officer was the head of risk for JPMorgan's investment bank and then chief risk officer was the head of risk for JP Morgan's investment bank and then chief risk officer for the commercial bank and then head of risk for real estate globally. Our head of ops was a head of ops and tech for Stan O'Neill at Merrill Lynch. The CEO Started in the mailroom, ended up reporting as CEO head of ops and tech for Merrill Lynch. I think he can do it here and that so and that just kind of it keeps going. Our CHRO came from Cilindes and our CIO has an impressive background. Our head of commercial banking all of them had bigger jobs at much larger institutions.

Chris: Yeah, what that tells me, Rob, is that those people saw a bright future in the business climate in Texas to make those kind of moves to join you and the Dallas headquarters.

Rob: There's no doubt about it and, by the way, I wouldn't have tried this anywhere else, I mean for sure. So, as you know, texas is eighth largest economy in the world, second largest workforce, youngest workforce, fastest growing. We've created 46,. We've created more jobs in 46 last 48 months, so it's a very attractive place to be overall?

Chris: What was it about just speaking to you? I know you joined in 2021, that based on the career you had built to that moment where you saw this as the right opportunity for you.

Rob: I was very happy where I was. So I was primarily in the investment bank at JPMorgan Chase, but my last 10 years I ran the large corporate bank and the commercial bank ended up taking that to 22 countries. So I ran that business. Globally it was over $180 billion in assets. It was a third treasury, a third lending and a third investment banking. Great business, great people.

But when this bank kind of went sideways, I had two or three people call me and say, hey, I'm thinking about this, would you come run it? And it surprised me. I'm like, why are you calling me? But then I started looking at it and, like you, I'm from Texas. I commuted to New York for 25 of the 31 years that I worked for JP Morgan. But people kind of said, why don't you come home and build something special with where you're from? And that, through more and more dialogue, became very appealing to me and I did not know and shame on me that as bad a shape as a bank was when we got there. But it ended up being a blessing because you know like today it'd be very difficult to do what we did. I mean to have a board, investor base, regulators, constituents. Let you reinvest. We reinvested over a third of our non-interest expense and then more, and we said to the investor community and the board and others that we're going to have negative operating leverage for about a year and a half. That'd be very hard to do in this climate, right? And so the other thing we had to do became a blessing because you had to do it all at once, and so I'm glad that's behind us.

Today the bank is. It used to have just mono banking, like a community or regional bank. Today we have segmentation, so you have business banking for small businesses, middle market banking for a little larger businesses, a little more sophistication, and then we have a corporate banking group like a money center bank. And when you have a corporate banking group you have to have industry expertise. So we have energy, diversified FIG, government, not-for-profit healthcare, tmt and mortgage, so we have the industry expertise of any money center bank right here in Texas.

And then we have private wealth and then we rebuilt all of treasury. So it's a brand new bank. We have a new payments platform, new lockbox, new card, new merchant, new digital onboarding that we came up with. And so we people say the banks can't compete on technology like with the big bank, but we can because we have one platform. Those big banks have many platforms because they're a combination of many banks. We can go in that if you want. And then we have one platform. Those big banks have many platforms because they're a combination of many banks. We can go in that if you want. And then we have, as I said, private wealth, investment banking, and we can go into as many of those areas as you want.

Chris: So you basically built it like you said. As businesses are coming to Texas, you're ready to serve whatever need they have.

Rob: For sure. So we want to be very relevant to our clients and we are a one-stop shop, so you won't outgrow us. We were a top 10 arranger of bank debt for middle market companies in the years. We've done about $110 billion of notional trades in about 18 months. Wow, it's profitable.

Chris: So what's your vision for the future, then for Texas Capital, and kind of, how are you working to achieve?

Rob: that it's actually pretty simple. It's maturing the platform that we built. So we are the number one lender to Texas-based businesses of any Texas-based bank. Now that's new. We've had tremendous success. Business owners and decision makers love the local decision making. They love the fact that when they hire us, they're getting a very talented, experienced MD working for them instead of maybe the money center bank, whatever, a VP or something assigned to it. They just like the local decision making, local access. But the go forward strategy is People ask me this all the time what's next? And they think that we have a big bang answer. The big bang answer is delighting clients and banking the best clients in our markets, and we've always said, or I've always said we'll be defined by our clients, and so we have been blessed to have clients be attracted to the strategy and platform. So we're going to just do more of what we've done.

Chris: So what I like about that strategy is the simplicity. I think there's a lesson there for entrepreneurs and other business owners in what you've done in the last few years, and that to me is get the foundation right and your core right Correct, and then do the fundamentals really well. Right, it's blocking and tackling is what you're doing.

Rob: It's executing now for sure. And I had one CEO of a very renowned New York financial firm ask him to come see me. They had heard about what we were doing and he wanted to understand it because we actually we took what he would say was the very best person from his sales and trading floor who had been there 18 years. He didn't understand how we could attract that person because that person drove a U-Haul to Dallas with his wife and kids before we were even open. And he said tell me your strategy. And I went through it and, to be honest with you, I was hoping he would like it because I was pretty long the strategy. And so he did. And I said what do you think? He said I think y'all are going to be very successful. And this was early on. And I said why is that? He said do you have a differentiated strategy with differentiated talent in a differentiated market? And I think that's true. But then he said what do you think? And I said well, our talent's really. This is back in 21. Now we've done all these things, but I said that the talent is really good, but we've got to do everything with this jersey on now and delight our clients with TCB jersey, not another jersey. And he said look, rob, do it once, it'll be hard, do it three times, you'll be good. The fifth time you're an expert and I kind of he kind of and he's pretty renowned. It was a pretty simple lesson but it's kind of true. And now we have done it and we are good at what we're doing.

But we still can mature the platform, that treasury platform we talked about. It's literally second to none. We're doing open banking for clients. We're doing a digital onboarding. You can open a commercial account tomorrow at a money center bank. That take eight weeks or six weeks. But that platform to scale to get the most out of it, I mean we could run it without any more investment for five years. So we got to scale the business and, by the way, it's happening. So that treasury platform is it's called P times V, price times volume that's how many transactions are going through the factory or warehouse financial transactions. That's usually for a bank it's a 2% business at best. It grows the economy, it grows the GDP. We're going 17%, quarter over quarter, year, quarter after quarter. That's remarkable Because of new clients moving to the platform. So it is scaling but we just need to continue to do that Right.

Chris: So you talked about the platform a couple of times. What type of I guess technology or emerging technologies do you see having the biggest impact in the banking industry over the next, say, three to five years?

Rob: I think real-time payments, I think open banking, and people don't really understand what open banking is. What open banking is? It's actually very simple, so think well, here's, here's one simple way. Part of it is you don't have to leave your internal financial platform to go to our platform. We'll put an API on yours and so you can just push a button and be into our system and send ACH or wire or what. So I think AI, I think open banking and I think real-time payments. Okay.

Chris: Well, I can speak from experience, as we transitioned to Texas Capital a year ago and, to your point of the ease of that transition and being able to deal with decision makers made it seamless. Good Well thank you. It's been a great relationship for us, for sure.

Rob: Good Well thank you.

Chris: What you're saying is true, Well, thank you. It's been a great relationship for us for sure. Good, Well, thank you. I can attest to that. What you're saying is true, Well, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about where you see corporate leadership whether that's your C-suite or just the company as it exists and community impact. What type of initiatives is Texas Capital working on to be a meaningful member of the community?

Rob: Yeah, well, that's a. Thank you very much for the for the easy pitch. So I think we do. We bat way above our weight in community impact. So we do tens of thousands of hours of employee volunteer in the community. We, as part of this transformation, when we were investing in the platform, we took time to also found our first foundation. We never had a foundation before. So we have a foundation and we do volunteer hours and we just were part of the group that bought Opal Lear Newhouse. We were the first one to open a branch in West Dallas. We gave the founding seed money for Southern Gateway in Dallas.

We're big supporters of Rodeo here in Houston. Last year I think we sponsored the opening night, so I think you're going to see us pretty much all over the state of Texas in terms of giving and more than just money but time, resources, expertise to philanthropies. We hosted a great event about three weeks ago. People came from all over the country and it was for veterans and we had veteran not-for-profits and we had veteran-owned businesses and we just brought them together and talked about issues and how they could work together and synergies between the two and advancing veterans on a go-forward basis, and the people that came would just blow you away and the feedback of it.

I happened to be out of town on a three-day weekend afterwards out of the country and somebody approached me and I didn't know them and they didn't know me, but I guess they'd seen my picture or something and they thanked me for having that veteran event. Wow, and so it had a far, far impact. It will do things like that. We have a nonprofit event in every city, getting nonprofits together, helping them learn how to raise money and trade best practices, and we do that and we'll do that in every city during the summer. So you know, our giving is good, Our volunteer hours are fantastic, Our sharing of expertise is good. Our investment in the community is great, Good.

Chris: Let's circle back to because that kind of made me think of team building, right, so you talked about basically a wholesale change with the team around you. What are some of the things that you look for to make sure you're you know, through that recruiting and hiring process, that you're getting the right person for the position?

Rob: Yep, so this is a great question and this was the key to what we've done so far and how we're going to reach our 25 goals. So in September of 21, when we announced a strategic plan, which was pretty dramatic, we said we're not going to achieve our financial goals until 25. With that came a lot of change and a lot of talent. So 80% of the people at the firm are new since I got there. That's 80% of over 2,000 people.

So that's a lot of change, managing through a lot of change through a transformation, through a regional quote, unquote regional banking practice that I'd love to talk about, regional banking practice, regional banking stress that I'd love to talk about transformation. So there's a lot going on there, both internally and externally, that we had to manage through. And what we did is we started at the top and the bottom, so we put new leadership with new skill sets and new expectations and new goals of banking the best clients in our markets instead of just being a bank, etc. And we also started a junior program. It was the first junior program in the history of the bank.

Chris: You mentioned that earlier, so tell us a little more about the junior program.

Rob: It's awesome If you have a kid and they want to get into finance and they don't want to go to New York but they want to work at a great financial services firm to have them join us. So we post in. So I got there in January of 21. It so I got there in January 21. It's COVID Nobody's in the office. We'd just been through this internal stress with the failed merger, new CEO, the whole bit. I said we need a junior program. We posted 60 positions. We got 800 applications. We hired 60-something. A third of those had their masters. That wasn't required. The average GPA was over 374. So people love what we're doing right.

The next year there's over 2,000 applicants and our junior program is great. And, by the way, I helped build one in the investment bank in my last firm and one in the commercial bank in my last firm. I thought they were both very good. This one's awesome. So you come in, you go through four or five months of training and then you go into your line of business. But we probably hired you after your internship the summer before, if that makes sense. Sure, the program has some of the diverse classes I've ever seen in banking and we didn't do that. This may be controversial. We do that on purpose. We did that because we hired the best people Exactly and they're the most diverse classes, and so we're really excited about that. And then the attrition rate there isn't nearly what we thought it would be. We built it for a higher attrition rate because those kids usually leave a large percentage after third year. Sure.

They're not leaving.

Rob: They like it, so that's been kind of fun. It's a good problem, right, it's a great problem and we'll use all of them. And, by the way, after that change you should just know the attrition stuff has dramatically slowed as the transformation slowed. We got all the talented people in place that we needed so we are ahead of corporate America, finance and Texas companies for attrition and excited about that in the new culture here.

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Chris: Well that you know that low attrition rate leads to what you talked about earlier better customer experience, more stability.

Rob: We need stability.

Chris: Everybody needs stability. Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you mentioned regional banking stress. Tell me what you're referring to about that.

Rob: Yeah, last spring of 23,. Eb failed, first Republic and the like. We were fortunate. So, november of 22, we sold a business to Truist for $3.5 billion with a very big premium on it. With the sale of that we became if you compare us to any $100 billion bank or above in the country or any Texas public bank we have the third most capital and I think in the next quarters we'll have the second most but third and we're number one in equity tangible common equity assets. So we're the least levered. We have third most capital. Our highly liquid assets are like 29% our cash and securities. Our AOCI problem, which is the mark on the bond portfolio. Banks are struggling with that. We're very good there.

So our capital, our liquidity, et cetera, was very strong. So we didn't experience outflows of deposits or anything. What we did experience was a rotation, like every bank in the country, from non-interest-bearing deposits to interest-bearing deposits. So all banks if you want to call this cost of goods sold went up. But the regional banks for us the reason I wanted to come back and talk about that people call it a regional banking crisis. It was not. It had to do with certain banks were of the size that they define regional banks that had the wrong strategy, the wrong concentrations, and they failed, right. That's not because they're regional banks, right, they just happen to be that size. By the way, credit Suisse failed too. It is a global bank, right.

So you know, I think this is sometimes where the media gets the message wrong and puts fear into the market, and they love it, and they love it and so I'm really proud of what the regional banks do and how they serve their clients in market and their local communities, giving back to their communities, being Main Street lenders, and I'm really proud of. You know how we do that. I think I told you before we went on the air. We're the number one lender of Texas-based businesses, of any Texas-based bank. That's a big deal because these money center banks they may be in the state or super regionals in the state or even regionals in the state but, if they decide, oh you know what, it's not okay to bank an energy company, they don't Well, guess what?

We have those decisions here. We don't have somebody else deciding our social norms.

Chris: Right, right, that's a great selling point. Going back to the kind of the junior program and this new team, let's talk about culture, I mean. So how would you define the culture at Texas Capitol and kind of, what do you think you've done to kind of foster that and what do you see as necessary to keep it growing? I think?

Rob: the culture is transparent, curious, candid and relentless dissatisfaction, as my general counsel calls it. So, look, we've made a lot of change. We'll continue to make a lot of change. We just hired somebody to run public finance for us. We didn't have that before. Lot of change we just hired somebody to run public finance for us. We didn't have that before. We started into the foray of public equity, research and oil and gas. We're going to keep growing and building, doing things that serve our clients and our clients' needs.

But the one thing that we kind of talk about a lot is and I'll say it little softer is you know just no jerks allowed.

You could talk about, you can talk about Ivy League. You know culture and they have you know big words, but the simple thing is like we're gonna treat people with respect, period. Right now. You can be tough and you can be hard, but you gotta be fair, right, and you gotta be polite. And you know you can be hard but you've got to be fair and you've got to be polite and you can have high expectations while being compassionate. So we have high expectations, we are moving fast, but we do treat people with respect and we like working with one another and that's been part of the fun is, we've been in office because we think that's how you build a career and not a job, and that's how you collaborate to serve your client and that's what's best for our clients and best for employees. And we like being with one another. We don't want to work remote from a beach and not share life's experiences with our colleagues.

Chris: Yeah, couldn't agree more. I mean, we got back to the office in May of 2020. I believe, and my partners here, you're a part of an organization for a reason. Organizations are a group of people together, right, correct, and we learn from each other. We can collaborate in a customer service-related industry. Like you and I are in the customer does better when we're collaborating to serve them, you and I are in the customer does better when we're collaborating to serve them, and we do that when we're together.

Yep Hands down, no question. And we've been like you. We've been in office in person for a while now and you read as much as I do for the last six, seven months. You just see the pendulum swinging back because the other organizations are realizing they're losing customer satisfaction, they're losing engagement with their people. You can't have a culture if you're not together. In my view, or you can. Actually, you can have a culture. It's just not a healthy one in my view. Yeah, it's really bad, that's right.

Rob: So, look, looking back, it seems like a really easy decision and, by the way, I was back in the office in 2022. But at this room, I didn't get there until January 21.

Nobody's back in the office. You meant 22 as well. Yes, I did. I did. Excuse me, I did, but you know I got here in 21. We went back to office Memorial Day the Tuesday after Memorial Day of 21. And it was a harder decision then. It seems easy now Because, like even the day before, there was rumors of everybody in our ops organization that they were going to protest and walk out.

You know at 901 and we decided, we made a conscious decision that this is what they're going to do and we wanted the people that wanted to be in the office right, and we may lose some people, and that's fine, and it would be harder in the short term, but the people that would be attracted to the platform and the business and us would be people that wanted careers, not jobs, and, by definition, those are the better employees, right, and I think those people attract those people and that's how we were able to transform so much while other people were sitting at home.

Chris: Yeah. Now to your point. I mean, if you have a long-term strategy right, then you're willing to go through some short-term pain to get the right people that are going to help you achieve that For sure. A little bit about just your thoughts on what are some of the biggest challenges you think facing the banking industry as we sit here today and maybe for the foreseeable future. Obviously, for the last couple of years, every month everybody's watching the Fed, so that may be part of the answer. But just what do you see as the challenges?

Rob: Yeah, so there's plenty for most industries though, too. So one is, and this is an excuse, but it is a challenge. The regulatory body needs to come together and be consistent and apply things consistently. That'd be helpful. We have an inverted yield curve now for the longest time, one of the longest periods in history, you know the two years four, seven something. The 10 years four two something.

That makes banking very hard for a lot of technical reasons we can go into. For most banks, technology is a problem. Most banks are an aggregation of multiple banks. They're not like us that has one technology platform. That's, by the way, brand new and totally modern. Banks have not been willing to.

It's been a cost cutting game because a lot of banks this is why our strategy is so good NIM banks. So net interest margin, which is loan only, the model of taking a deposit and making a loan and achieving a return above your cost of capital through cycle, I think is very difficult and that's why we supplemented our platform. You know loans, investment banking, private wealth. You know all the different things we do for a client so that we can achieve that return, because a lot of the banks to have that return would have to maybe make a riskier loan to get a higher spread or what have you? So I think the NIM banking model to get a higher spread or what have you? So I think the NIM banking model especially after spring of 23, is hard. I think the technology spend is hard.

I think there's a lot of banks that have too much commercial real estate. So our commercial real estate is a very small percentage of our total capital. Regulators want you to be maybe 250 or 300%. There's a lot of banks that are 400. That's too much, yeah.

And when you have that much commercial real estate, remember a lot of its construction loans, and so the construction loans. You made that decision today and you're funding it in two years. So you're going to you're that that concentration, because those paydowns are, you know, like a five-year low and commercial real estate is going to keep growing. So banks marginal loan the dollar to make the next loan. The cost just went up, so they're going to slow down their lending while the commercial real estate gets absorbed. They can't be relevant to their clients with anything other than the loan product and if they're not doing that, they're going to slow down their growth and slow down lending. They can't be relevant to their clients with anything other than the loan product, and if they're not doing that, they're going to slow down their growth and slow down lending. They don't have the margin to spend on technology.

Chris: And those are some of the problems. Yeah, there's cascades, right, totally. Let's turn a little bit to just kind of you and leadership. How would you describe your leadership style today and maybe how you feel like it's evolved over your career?

Rob: I think you've got to do what you want other people to do. So I'm in Houston today. We're seeing six clients we talk all the time about it's about the client, not us. Ops exists to serve a client, technology exists to serve a client. It's not for the bank.

And so we have become pretty client obsessed at Texas Capital, delivering the best outcomes for our clients. I mean, like the one deal I think I told you about, we sole managed the largest debt deal in the country last year. The largest sole managed debt deal in the country last year. That's after a money center bank failed doing it. We gave the client the best advice, knowing they'd probably go with the other bank. They did. The other bank failed them. They came back to us and we did it. Now we have a client for life. So give the client the right advice, do the right thing for the client, but your people have to see you do what you want them to do. So I'm with clients. We are aggressively serving clients, but we've managed the place very conservatively. And then I think candor and transparency is really important.

Chris: I think those are great qualities, anything that you could point to. I always think people I'll speak for myself, but I think I hear it in others as well a setback or failure that you encountered, that you learned from, that made you better as a leader, as a business person, anything that comes to mind, that where you look back and go, wow, that was transformational. Because of that, how long do you have?

Rob: No, I think we talked about junior program, one that always comes to mind because there's early on the program of what early on my career was. When I was a junior, you know, I talked to that junior class a lot and one of the things I tell them is be careful, because you know, building your brand sometimes is too easy, like you know, if you do something great, like I had some successes early on as being a good client guy, then I was the client guy, but also my brand that I got early on was, as a junior was I wasn't very good at details and as a junior an analyst associate your only job was details Right, and so I learned the hard way that maybe I needed to focus on the details. Now I would suggest that the people that work with me think I'm too focused on the details.

But that's because I learned the hard way as a junior and people corrected me Right and I'm not sure if they corrected me the wrong way or right way. That was the old days, but they certainly made an impression. So I think that was one of the things I learned is details matter and details are important, and I learned it as a junior and that stayed with me throughout my career. The other one was one I think is interesting is later on, when we were talking about a promotion, one of my bosses told me that I think this is really important for people to know, because I think it's true. He said rob, I don't it, my vote doesn't matter. The vote that matters is everybody else on the floor that works with you, because I'm not promoting you unless they want you promoted, right and so I do think that you know that's a pretty good lesson too.

Chris: Yeah, kind of well servant the well, servant leadership, for sure, and that kind of team mentality For sure, team mentality. And I've said forever, I think the lessons you remember the most are the ones you learned the hard way.

For sure, so the details right.

Chris: So he's like I'm not going to let that happen again. For sure, that's great. Well, I appreciate you sharing those up, but I think it's a great quality leadership to have that vulnerability and humility about you for sure. So I'm going to kind of move away from the business stuff. Okay, to wrap things up, I want to know what was your first job, my?

Rob: first job was uh bagging groceries and stocking grocery shelves in high school I did the same thing, did you?

Chris: yeah, uh, it was hot and yeah, I tell people we had to wear like black pants. Oh, yeah, these kids get to wear shorts. Now I'm like this is going easy on them.

Rob: Yeah, I think one day one of the guys got mad at me because they made me restack all the remember when people used to return the glass bottles. Yeah, and it was in a cage in the back of the alley of the grocery store. It was about 110. And nobody had organized them for about three months and I got fine job.

Chris: Very good. All right, you're born and raised in Texas, so do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Rob: Both Like a brisket taco. Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, I like that All right. And last thing if you could take a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? I'd probably spend half of it fly fishing in Montana and half of it quail hunting in South Texas. There you go, Just not this time of year. Not this time of year. That's right.

Chris: Rob, I want to thank you for taking the time. I mean, I had no idea the details behind the transformation at Texas Capital and obviously what you and your team are doing and have done is nothing short of remarkable. So thanks for sharing that.

Rob: Well, thank you, I think you know. We think Texas does deserve its own full-service financial services firm.

Chris: Well, I'm glad you're delivering it. Thank you, take care.

And there we have it another great episode. Don't forget to check out the show notes at boyermiller.com forward slash podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at Boyermiller.com. That's it for this episode. Have a great week and we'll talk to you next time.

Special Guest: Rob Holmes.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down with Chantell Preston, CEO of Facilities Management Group. She takes us through her journey of transforming the healthcare industry - from an unexpected start managing facilities to founding Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation. Chantell's strategic moves in positioning her company through the pandemic era offer key leadership lessons.

We discuss her transition in fostering trust and respect amongst staff, vital for a positive culture, especially in difficult times. Her reflections on setbacks emphasize emotional readiness for both failures and leadership burdens.

Wrapping up on a lighter note of future dreams, from travel adventures to family time, Chantell offers a well-rounded portrait of an impactful leader.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Facilities Management Group

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Chantell: Thanks, Chris. I appreciate you inviting me to come on.

Chris: So let's just kick this off by telling us a little bit about Facilities Management Group, the company you're currently CEO of.

Chantell: Sure, so Facilities Management Group. We're really a platform company. We own and operate healthcare facilities throughout Texas. Initially, when I took it on, we had a hospital in Las Vegas, but we divested that and sold that to a local system there, and so now our main facilities are here in the Texas market.

Chris: Okay, and I know this isn't your first venture in the healthcare space Tell us a little bit about how you got involved or found yourself being an executive in the healthcare industry.

Chantell: Sure, it's kind of an interesting story, chris. I don't think any of us know when we graduate from college where we're going to end up in life, and I can truly tell you I never thought it would be health care. So you know, straight out of school I got a great opportunity to go to work for a small company that was developing ambulatory surgery centers. Didn't know anything about ambulatory surgery centers but I knew the folks that were in the organization. So took the leap of faith and I just wanted to learn every aspect. I felt like if? How could I go out and sell things if I didn't realize or understand how they were operated? So took the opportunity to really dive into the health care and learn both the development aspect as well as the operational aspect. Best thing I ever did. From there just kind of soared, I became very niched in regards to building healthcare facilities. I've built over 65 hospitals in my career, whether they're LTACs, rehabs, full acute care hospitals, linear accelerators. So I just kind of found a niche. I really enjoyed watching something from concept to operations.

However, I got to a certain point in my life I decided I didn't want to be a consultant forever. So my previous partner and I started a company called Atlantic Health Group. We were going to be a surgery center company. We realized the market was saturated at that point, so we started a company called Mentis Neuro Rehabilitation. Mentis was assisted living rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury patients. To be honest, we really didn't know much about it when we started. We built an amazing team to operate the company for us and then we realized how much need there was for traumatic brain injury patients, so we continued down that path. I continued to build facilities to generate revenue, to build Mentus, so we didn't have to raise huge capital. So we bootstrapped everything together and we took Mentus from concept to exit in 2015.

Chris: Wow.

Chantell: So we exited the mid-market. And then comes back to what are you going to do with your life from there? So I really stayed for about a year and realized that just my heart wasn't in it anymore. Things changed. We built such an amazing culture, so really focused on what was the next phase of my life. That's when I ended up taking over facilities management group. One of my partners that was operating the entity got ill and so I stepped up and said I'll take over, and that's when we really developed Facilities Management Group. At that point, we had a lot of individual facilities running independently of each other and we wanted to build a platform company that we could have some synergistic services across all facilities. So that was 2018. And so that was a great ride. I learned a lot. Six months after I took over, covid hit so you can only imagine what happens with the hospital industry when that happens?

Chris: Yeah, I'm sure there's. We'll get into that because there has to be a lot of good stories there, but I can't help but notice that, as you told, that is, you talked about being thrown in cold, knowing nothing about the industry healthcare that is but then you found yourself evaluating opportunities for surgical centers and then the mental health, brain injury type of facilities that you mentioned. I want to talk about what type of processes did you go through, and or with your partners, to evaluate the opportunities when you're like, okay, what's next or what else can we do? What are some of the things that you found to be valuable and useful in going through that process, as well as maybe some of the things you wish you hadn't done?

Chantell: Sure, Great question, chris. You know, as we all go through our career, we, you know, we try to evaluate things. Everybody looks at things very differently and you know you probably say I'm a calculated risk taker. So, again, I wanted to be able to find a path where, you know, my number one was I wanted to help people. You know, I think most of us get into health care because we have this naivety that we really, you know we can make a change in the world, and I think we do, just maybe different than what we anticipate when we go in. So I think it's really about when I would look at each of the opportunities that came up.

You know, again started at a small company and I wanted to learn as much as I could, and then I got recruited from there. Once I found a niche for myself, I didn't really have to go looking for jobs. People would come to me, but then it was like, okay, I learned some hard knocks at the same time as to going to work for folks, because they throw a lot of money at you or they say, oh, we're going to create this amazing environment, and then you get in and you realize this is not really a productive place for me to be and in those situations you just try to take, learn everything you can, you know, gain as much experience and knowledge, because I look at everything as a stepping stone to the next place. So when we, you know, when we started Atlantic, it was kind of an interesting scenario because I had a ton of development partners that I had already established that I was working for as an independent consultant.

I didn't really want to be a consultant forever. I wanted to build something, I wanted to have some security. So I actually talked my partner, my business partner, into leaving his organization because he had a skill set that I didn't have. So he was really more around the finance side of things, operationally, and I was really more the development aspect. And so you know, and I was really more the development aspect, and so you know, I think it's really important when people look at their careers, a everything in life is a stepping stone to the next thing. I mean, you have to look at it that way. What can I get out of this particular situation to advance my overall objectives later?

Chris: Sure.

Chantell: But also who you're getting in bed with and I speak a lot to entrepreneurs. It's really important to pick your partners wisely. And when you say your partners, you know I tell people it's like a marriage. Oh well, we're best friends. We're never going to, you know, get sideways with each other. Well, it is important that when you're going into a partnership, you know even a company is what's it going to look like if we got divorced? I look at everything as it's kind of like a marriage.

Chris: No, no, Look, I advise clients all the time into the same thing. You know, be careful, Don't do 50-50 unless you have a good deadline provision. But it is they are. I can attest from being on the litigation side of these things. They are truly business divorces when they go south, and we always tell people it's better to invest up front to getting your documents right. You don't want to think you and your best friends could ever go south, but there's a reason. There's a bunch of law firms and lawyers that stay busy because that's what happens.

Chantell: Right, and I was fortunate not to go through that. To be honest, it was just, I was very cognizant and I think when I was younger I didn't realize the value I brought. So I felt like safety was in numbers, right, and sometimes we create an environment around us because it makes us feel protected and then at the end of the day you go, wait a minute, what about me? And so you know again, lessons learned. You know, we also have a tendency, you know, adhd. We're all entrepreneurs. We like to do lots of different things.

You know a few mistakes that we made along the way was we started getting into things that we didn't know too much about, because it was the shiny penny oh this is great, let's go do this and then, oh my God, we would either lose a ton of money. You know a lot of headaches. We didn't stay focused on our core business and it kind of school of hard knocks a little bit. It took us a little bit of time to realize that, hey, we need to solely focus on, you know, our core business, mentis, and let's stop messing around with all this other stuff that seems like it's fun and exciting. Let's stay focused on our core business until we reach. You know what we were hoping to accomplish.

Chris: That's great advice. The discipline of staying focused on your core and what you do best can't be overstated. So many people lose their way because of the distractions, and you're right. They end up costing more money than you expected and taking more of your time away, and it takes it away from your core, so then it suffers.

Chantell: That's right, and people don't realize. You know, time is the one thing we'll never get back in life, and so if you're looking and focusing your attention on something else, what are you losing at your core business? And I see a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people oh, I want to go do this and this. Again, we did it Not successful, but we did it.

And so now, when I'm looking at things and where do I want to go next, it's where do I want to spend my time, knowing that if I spread myself too thin or too many things, I won't be as successful as I want to be.

Chris: Yeah, that's great advice. I hope people are taking notes on that. So let's go back. You kind of left us a minute ago taking over the reins at FMG, right before COVID hits. Obviously, you have to manage through that in the healthcare space. Take us back to that time. What were some of the things that you learned, having to manage through such an uncertain period of time?

Chantell: When I took over FMG there was a couple things that identified very quickly. Again, they were all running as independent facilities and there was no collaboration and really the culture there was no culture. You know, in my previous organization with Mentis and a lot of the companies I've been involved with, culture was huge. You know, you wanted people to want to be there and fortunately we were able to quickly build a culture that we felt and it was actually proven true through COVID that people wanted to be there. You know I was very visible in our facilities. I wanted people to know me, I wanted to hear what they had to say.

As a new CEO coming in, you know, tell me how can we help you do your job more effectively? How can we help you be happier? You know, looking at things in a different perspective, other than you need to be here nine to five every day, do exactly what we want, right? You know, when COVID hit, the uncertainty of everything I mean we were. Some of my facilities were emergency rooms at the time, some of them were hospitals. You know we had limited staff, we had limited services.

You know, when COVID hit it was really interesting because with the unknown of nobody really understanding the magnitude of what was happening. It was decisions on a day to day basis. Right, you know, everything was a crisis every single day. It was a very time for me, as a leader, to figure out how could I continue to hold on to this culture that we had built so we didn't lose staff, right? So, but also giving our staff the ability to take a break every once in a while, even though we didn't really have folks to fill in for them, in for them. So it was a time that we really had to bond together. And again, me being in our facilities during that time, even though I really couldn't do much to help, but at least showing my face, saying hey, I'm here with you and I'm standing beside you, especially on some of those hard decisions, I think made a big difference for our success.

Chris: Yeah, you raised an interesting point there because first of all, I mean I it's been four years and maybe the memories start to fade but health care frontline workers, right, that was ground zero for the response. So I can only imagine the taxing environment for your employees. Most CEOs can be there shoulder to shoulder with their employees and maybe actually get in, you know, step in on the manufacturing line or pick up something and help out in the shop, and if you're not a licensed physician or a PA or a nurse, you can't right, you couldn't do the work, you could just be there to encourage them.

Chantell: That had to be a challenge.

You know you're right, because we just want to jump in and help and but there was a lot of things that what I could do and again you know, spirits high, helping clean, I mean there was, you know, again it wasn't above anybody. We had to kind of all throw hands in, all hands on deck, to help out in any aspect. And so we did what we could to try to motivate and try to help give people some breaks and give them the resources that they needed, and that was a big thing.

That we did was just trying to get the resources that they needed, and so it was a trying time, but again we came across. You know, as a CEO, I wanted to be able to expand our service lines because we knew what was coming. And you know, after we got kind of settled in and we realized this was going to be a longer, a longer path than we thought, we converted all of our ERs into hospitals so we could provide additional service lines. So there was things that we could do on the strategic and on the management side where we weren't necessarily in the trenches, but yet it provided our staff some amazing resources that they needed.

Chris: So you talked about culture and how important it is. It doesn't have to necessarily be at FMG, but just in your role as a leader. What are some of the things that you have done to try to build that positive, sounds like collegial team environment type of culture at the various organizations you've been? I mean, is it kind of the same playbook every time, or you know? If so, what is it? And if it's changed, how do you adapt? Funny question I'm just going to. I'll give you a quick story. You know? If so, what is it? And if it's changed?

Chantell: how do you adapt? Funny question. I'm just going to give you a quick story. You know there's a lot of people that have been with me for the last 10, over 10 years, so they've seen me kind of develop as a better leader as I've gotten a little bit older.

So in my old days, I have to tell you I was probably very authoritarian, very dictatorship it's my way, no way. And leadership, it's my way, no way. And then, as I've gotten a little bit older and through you know my role at FMG I realized I can't continue to lead like this. This is not how to get the most productivity out of my staff, and so I changed a lot in regards to how to build a culture. And so now you know people will tell you these are the four principles I use authenticity, I want to build trust and respect. You know again, you know I'm going to be very direct with individuals. I don't beat around the bush and I think anybody that knows me knows that.

Collaboration I want people to have the ability to have a say. I want them to take ownership. You know used to as my way. You know we're going to do things my way. Now it's let talk about it Because, in today's world, I want my staff members they're there for a reason and that's to come together in a path or a process that everyone feels like is going to be beneficial to the organization. Now, it doesn't mean I won't give them my thoughts, but again, that collaboration and that belonging, I want them to feel like they're part of the team. Whether you and I both know, in an organization everyone's valuable and I want everyone to realize how valuable each member is and where they fit within that organization. Authenticity, trust, collaboration yeah, those are communication too, you know.

Chris: Oh, for sure.

Chantell: We used to be like we wouldn't tell anybody anything, you know, just say here's our goals, to go do them. Now we really talk about why you know and really have those hard conversations about this is you know the company. And when we went through COVID I know everybody's tired of hearing the COVID stories, but when we went through COVID, you know we would tell them hey, this is why we're doing this. And it wasn't just oh, they're causing us all these headaches. You know they're pushing stuff down. No, it was. We're doing it because of X, y and Z, and that made people appreciate it a little bit more, versus us just shoving things down.

Chris: Yeah.

Chantell: And so I think communication is a big one as well.

Chris: Couldn't agree more. I mean, I think you know, at the end of the day, all those things sound really good and are important, but if you're not communicating effectively, it won't matter. That's right. So, something that occurred to me, I want you to talk a little bit about being innovative, because I know for sure at FMG, because I just know enough about the story that in the middle of all that y'all did some pretty innovative things that other competitors of yours weren't doing. That required some really quick on the fly decisions to get some innovative things going. So tell us about that. It helped the patients and it helped your facility.

Chantell: Sure, you know, one of the perks of dealing with a smaller organization is we can make quick decisions. So when all of this was happening, you know we did have to get innovative in regards to how we were running tests, how we were treating the patients, what we were doing when we couldn't find patients higher level of care. So there was a lot of innovation that we did, you know, whether it was streamlining our processes, whether it was, you know, the equipment that we were bringing in to try to mitigate certain things. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that we did that if we weren't going through that time, we probably wouldn't have been forced to do so quickly, if that makes sense.

And so there was some stuff that we tried to do in regards to you know, I'm trying to think of some specifics. A lot of it's around the labs and the testing side of making sure that our patients are being treated in-house versus having to send things out. I mean, we just tried to do everything we could to control our own destiny.

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Chris: Well, for example, I know one of the things you did was very quickly developed an app so patients could schedule an appointment that you didn't have before.

Chantell: Yeah, that's correct. We tried to do some things so people would mitigate being around other, you know, possibly infected COVID people. So, yes, we did do some things to try to limit exposure during that time, just because, again, we didn't know what was going to happen long-term.

Chris: So I guess one thing that people may not know about you that we want to talk about is, in addition to this professional you know journey you've described, you do a lot and have done and continue to do a lot where you advise other entrepreneurs. I want to ask you a little bit what are some of the kind of the key nuggets of advice that you tend to provide, and maybe what are some of the mistakes you see young entrepreneurs making that you try to correct before what still can be corrected, I guess Sure, it's kind of interesting.

Chantell: The world has changed a lot in regards to entrepreneurship. You know, in our day it was just work your ass off. You know 24-7 and just try to climb the ladder. You know now, with some things that have happened, you know, with technology, sometimes they have this misperception that it's just going to be easy, it's going to be rainbows and unicorns all the time.

It's not. There was many nights we'd sit at the bar going, holy shit, how are we going to make payroll? So I mean again, I think it's bringing that true realism back into their world of hey, you're not going to go get a CPT code for a device that doesn't exist in six months. It just doesn't work like that. And I think sometimes these young entrepreneurs are given almost bad counsel because they think that things are just so easy. Well, so-and-so did it, so I can do it. I see that a lot.

I do get the opportunity to speak to some of the entrepreneurship classes up at UT and I do probably focus more on the negatives versus the positives, because I've always learned more from my failures and my successes. Some of the things of hey look, be focused. You know you don't have to have everything figured out, but have a pretty good path of where you're headed. You know, and surround yourself with the folks that are going to build you up, not break you down. You know, as an investor as well.

I look at who's the team. If you've got a good jockey, I'm going to go ahead and support you. Having that right team in place is so critical and you want it to be more than just one individual. You know you want to make sure if they get hit by a bus, somebody else is right there ready to take the company. So I think that there's just little things that you know. I would probably give some insight to the entrepreneurs of you know, again, you're going to have good times and bad times. The bad times will come and go. But again, being willing to pivot If something's not working, don't wait too long to pivot or to reevaluate maybe certain aspects of the organization.

Chris: Okay, so you brought it up, but I was going to. You said you learn more from your failures than successes, so tell us a story it's story time now, chantel a failure or setback that you've encountered, experience that you survived because you're sitting here today, and what that learning was and how it made you better.

Chantell: So we talked a little bit earlier about how we got a little bit outside of our wheelhouse of oh, let's go do some different things, because we, you know, have been very successful at what we were doing. We were trying to purchase a hospital group out of bankruptcy. We thought, oh, how hard can this be? We can run organizations, we can run ASCs. Why can't we do this?

It was a very eye-opening experience because when we got in there, we hadn't really had a path forward as to what we were going to do or how we were going to do it. It was just like, oh, we'll figure it out as we go. We also didn't think about other things that could come in and really impact us that we couldn't control. So we had purchased, we were in the process of purchasing this group, they were in bankruptcy, and then we had a flood. Well, we had just finished remodeling a hospital here in town. The flood came in. It flooded the hospital. At that point we were kind of at a place where there was not much more we could do. It was a horrible time to have to tell all those individuals that worked so hard with us that we were going to have to let them all go and you know lessons learned. You know there was positives in there because I remember the day we were getting ready to tell these poor individuals we were going to fire them the night before.

You know we probably drank too much and you know it was a very emotional situation because I'd worked hand in hand with these individuals for so long.

Chris: Sure.

Chantell: And I remember having to tell them in tears I mean, you know, I know we're not supposed to be emotional, but these are these people's livelihoods. I was emotional, I you know I was not in a great place and I remember, after that happened, one of the the janitors came up to me and she said don't worry, chantel, we're going to be okay. But are you going to be okay?

Chris: Oh, wow.

Chantell: And I realized, you know, even through this failure, we had built such great relationships with these individuals and made them feel valued in so many ways that you know again, that's probably a really good example of learning myself of how important it is for relationships you know and building that trust as a leader.

Chris: Well, to what to point you made just a minute ago. There is emotion in business. For sure, people try to carve it out and maybe for decades that's been the mentality, but it's ignored the reality that there's emotion in business and you're affecting people's lives when you are hiring them and when you're firing them. So you know people that lose sight of that are missing the boat, and I think how you manage the emotion in the business is one thing, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's not there.

Chantell: No for sure, and you know, again, my old days I would have never showed, you know, a whole lot of emotion. I will tell you, though, being authentic with people just builds more trust. And look, some people say I'm very challenging to work with. You know, because I'm very specific, I'm very direct, but you know where you stand with me at all times, you know, and I had a situation last year where I had to let someone go, and it was. I mean, I really love this person as an individual, but this just wasn't the right place for them, and I tried very hard to mentor, to get him to that place, and I just couldn't, and it was very emotional to have to say, hey look, this is not, you know, the best place for you.

The greatest return was six months later. They contacted me and said thank you so much. The best thing you ever did was have that conversation, and now I found a place where I love I'm being respected, and so, again, I think we all have emotion. It's as you mentioned, it's how you use it. It's okay for people to realize that you're human.

I mean you know I'm human, I mean, and so I have emotions, and there's people I like and, again, you are impacting their lives and they're impacting yours.

Chris: For sure, and I mean I have a number of stories similar to the one you just shared, where you run into an employment situation that's not working. You, knowing that it's not working, have to make a decision, expend a ton of emotional energy over it, worried about it. My experience has been, I think I can say, almost every time, despite that hard conversation, that person ends up in a better place because it's where they were meant to be. And we say this all the time. We're not trying to be the largest organization. We just want to be the best for those that fit with our mission and what we're passionate about and our values. And doesn't mean we're right for everybody and that doesn't make people a bad person.

Chantell: That's right.

Chris: There there's another organization where they're going to fit.

Chantell: And and, and she did say to me she goes thank you, because I always knew where I stood with you and thank you for always being very direct. You know and that's the other thing people hide from those conversations. I'd rather have those conversations, you know, leading up to it. Look, here's the expectations. Let's talk about how you can get there, and I'm always happy to mentor and advise, but at some point you have to say, hey, look, this just isn't the right place.

Chris: Right.

Chantell: And so, and that's OK too.

Chris: So let's talk a little bit about as you built these companies. You've had to have key stakeholders and relationships with them that are part of the success, that's vendors, customers. Let's talk about what are some of the things that you've learned that have helped to kind of build, nurture and grow those types of strategic relationships, if you will.

Chantell: Sure, most of the people that I still work with, I've worked with for many years and I think you know I tell people all the time my integrity is the only thing that I really is mine in this world. My kids have everything else, but my integrity is mine. I think it's really being fair with people. You know I'm loyal to a fault, but I'm also again, I don't want to say high maintenance, but I have great expectations of people as well. And so if you look at a lot of the vendors, you know, again, they've been with me forever because I'm very loyal to them, I'm very fair, I'm very direct and they're good to me.

Chris: Right.

Chantell: You know, and I think as I've gotten older I had never realized the importance of relationships and how you have to be very intentional with giving and taking Right Right. But I also know with my vendors, they do a great job for me. I'm going to, I want to give them out to everybody else. I mean, I'm going to drive business their direction. And so I think that you know, with the stakeholders, a lot of people make a mistake of. You know everyone's got to win. You know that's just the reality. There's an abundance for everyone in life.

You know, one of my best friends is a direct competitor of us. We laugh all the time. We can't be friends in public, but we can be friends behind closed door. But there's an abundance for everyone in life and so if you treat people like that and you're fair, I think you know you win, everyone wins.

Chris: Everyone wins, and that's the thing I think finding the way where everyone can win, sure, and there's the value in kind of reciprocity, right, when someone does treat you well, that you obviously should treat them well in return. But have that be a lesson how you should be treating others that you're coming into contact with, right, absolutely, absolutely. So you mentioned this earlier because I like to talk about leadership style and you've kind of alluded to some of your evolution. Any more you can share kind of on how you view your style, how you feel like it's evolved and maybe some of the things that have helped you make those steps to kind of grow from the command and control to the more collaborative leader.

Chantell: I think self-awareness, I think when we're younger, we think we're invincible and we do no wrong. I think self-awareness, I think when we're younger, we think we're invincible and we do no wrong. I think self-awareness has been critical for me, just for personal growth, right. So I also realized, you know, I wasn't getting the most out of the people and I realized that how I came in impacted everybody around me, if that makes sense.

Chris: Sure.

Chantell: So when I walk in and I'm closed off, everyone's going to scatter. If I walk in and I'm in a great mood and I say hello to everybody, your energy that you put out, you get back. And so I think, as I've gone through my career path, I've realized that, getting more and really I had a great partner, business partner, that he would talk to everyone. I wondered how he got anything done some days because he was just the most jovial guy that loved everyone and he would sit and listen to people for hours and I used to say I don't know how you do this. Isn't this driving you crazy? You know, I just I want, I don't want to know what time it is, I want to know, yeah, I want to know what time it is. I don't want to know how to build the clock.

And I realized how much everyone respected him because he not only cared about them on the job, he cared about the whole person. Right, and people felt that. And I finally asked him one day. I said can you teach me how to be like that? Because I want people to realize I do care. I may not come across and show it, and so I that's how I kind of evolved, of taking that time and realizing ten minutes out of my day of sitting down and really focusing and being present with people, how much more they wanted to be there, how much more productive they were, and so it's really again being the leader that you have to establish boundaries. I'm not saying you, you know, let everybody circumvent their ladder, but having the ability to really show how much you care for those individuals and also what's going to put them in a position to be a better employee, right, right. And look, I went through a big thing with my team about working from home. Okay, I hate working from home, ok.

Chris: I hate working from home. I'm just going to tell you that I like the collaboration. I like everyone in the office. You know that you're in good company. There was literally an article in the online Houston Business Journal this morning about that topic and how everything is swinging back to five days a week in the office.

Chantell: That's right, and it was a big fight in my office about that and I finally said, okay, let's compromise, because I realized that some of them were driving an hour both ways, okay. So Mondays and Fridays we have home days. Tuesday, wednesday, thursday, we're all in the office. So again, I met them where they wanted to be and how could they be most effective. And I realized, having that time at home, where they didn't have 5,000 people walking in their offices every day, they were more productive. And so again it's you know. You know you asked me a specific question about how I've changed. I mean, I've really come, you know, 180 in regards to who I was many years ago versus how I am now.

Chris: Well, and what I hear you saying is there was an evolution and development in your leadership style that started to focus on and demonstrate humility and empathy, absolutely, you know, going back to kind of the work remote thing. I think those things, what you've got going on, can be successful because you have to start with why are we here? It's the why around the company, and we have to all agree that the company has to survive in order for any of us to have any benefits. That's right, right and so what's that going to take? And then where can there be some compromise around? You can't sacrifice productivity and you can't sacrifice delivery of services or you won't have the business. Right and right. It's really to me, getting clear around that, communicating, that we talk about communication with clarity and really everyone understanding the why absolutely, and I'll just we'll talk about the elephant in the room also being female, I mean.

Chantell: So in my younger days I thought in order for me to gain respect, I had to be that authoritative bitch. You know. Basically Because that's what society told me, you know in order for me to be able to play in a man's world, I had to really be that person. You know, as my career, and I got to a point where I didn't need anybody's approval or permission. You know, I realized, got to a point where I didn't need anybody's approval or permission I realized, wait a minute, I can be my authentic self. I can be compassionate, I can be empathetic and I can still be a damn good leader at the same time.

Chris: That had to be liberating.

Chantell: It was very liberating, and I try to instill this with a lot of the women that I talk to now. It's okay to be who we are. Let's use our innate qualities that make us such great individuals in our professional lives. You know, and I mean again, people say I'm aggressive.

That's okay, I'll take it and I can be, but it enables me to also utilize what I need to build the culture and the team that I want, and so I think that's also been, you know, the last 30 years. It's also changed a lot, you know, as a society, but that's also breaking the societal norms of, oh, I have to be a certain way in order to be a good leader. I don't think that's true anymore.

Chris: I agree with you Again. I think there's been an evolution in how we think about business, corporate America, whatever. And again I go back to as long as we realize that there are certain fundamentals that, no matter what is going on, we have to do for the business to survive. Then we can look on the fringes and go okay, where can we make maybe some things a little more accommodating.

Chantell: Exactly so.

Chris: I like to talk about those a little bit. So what are some of the strategies that you've employed to kind of and you mentioned being a mom, being a leader, being an entrepreneur to help, not necessarily balance, but be successful in both your business and personal life?

Chantell: Great question. Here's my theory behind that. There's no such thing as balance.

Chris: That's why I didn't use the word.

Chantell: I call it work-life integration. I can't say I've figured it all out, chris. I'll just be honest and I think it's being very intentional with your time. I used to let a lot of people control my time, meaning, you know, I was always willing to meet whenever they were available. I was willing to move around things because it was important to them. I've now really been intentional about taking control back of my own time, and that's time for myself in the mornings, that's time for my kids, but that's time for work too, and so I think we all have to establish boundaries.

Because I used to work 24 seven. I'd be at dinner. I mean, my five-year-old used to say mom, please put the phone down, and I would thought I was that important that I had to respond to that email, right. That second, because that's how important I was. It's not true, and I think that really establishing you know we also try to get through our entire things to do list every day what are the top three priorities I really need to get done today? Okay, let's focus on those. First, because we all know once everybody starts coming to the office, you're going to get blindsided 5,000 different ways. So really prioritizing maybe three items that I need to get done that day and then all the rest of it's great if I do, but if I don't, it's okay to walk out of there at 4.30 to go to my kids' game, right. And so I'm really trying to be intentional with my time. I'm not going to say I'm successful all the time.

Chris: You know, but I've really tried with that. You have to keep in mind no one's perfect right, but I think, if you have, those intentions, that thoughtfulness about how you're going to approach your day, and I totally agree with the work-life integration. I think that's a much better way to think about it than balance, I mean.

Chantell: I've learned you can have it all. You just can't have it all at the same time. So, everything in life is about a give and take. It's about you know you're sacrificing something for something else. And so it's again where are you in your life, what's important to you? I mean, I waited late in life to have children, you know, and now I'm going to enjoy my kids. So again, doesn't mean I'm sacrificing my professional, but I do amazing conversation.

Chris: I really appreciate it. I want to kind of turn to some less business topics that I like to cover with all my guests. So what was your first job?

Chantell: My first job. I worked at Mount Asia when I was in high school. I loved scooping ice cream and I loved hosting birthday parties for small kids.

Chris: Okay, so that was it. I was going to ask what Mount Asia was. It's that golf off I-10.

Chantell: So yes, that was it. I was going to ask what Mountasia was. It's that golf off I-10.

Chris: So, yes, that was my first job. I love it. Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Chantell: Tex-Mex, of course.

Chris: All right. And if you could take a sabbatical for 30 days, where would you go? What would you do?

Chantell: Oh gosh, A sabbatical for 30 days.

Chris: Does that exist I?

Chantell: don't know. I think I would really just like to travel the world. You know, I spent so much time working I would never take more than two days off at a time. I never got to see a lot of the world, and so I think it would probably just grab my kids and just embrace a great trip with my family.

Chris: That sounds great. Yeah, pick a spot and go enjoy it Absolutely. Very good. Well, again, this has been great. Thank you for taking the time to share your story Lots.

Special Guest: Chantell Preston.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, I chat with Mike Snavely, CEO of Phunware. Mike details Phunware's evolution from a mobile development agency into a thriving SaaS company delivering high-ROI apps to hotels and healthcare providers.

Hear how shifting culture from rigid control to empowering autonomous teams with accountability revived success. Key strategic maneuvers included trimming the workforce judiciously and securing capital patiently. Timely decisions breathe new life into businesses' surfaces repeatedly.

We delve into crafting a trusting, candid culture. Difficult conversations are promptly addressed and failures learned foster innovation and resilience. I share that I founded such an environment at a former startup. Mike's unique hobby of creatively mapping dream destinations blends work wisdom with life's pleasures, crafting an episode uplifting attendees' strategies and spirits.

Show Notes

Previous Episodes

About BoyarMiller

About Phunware

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Mike: Sure so. Funware is a 15-year-old publicly traded company based in Austin, Texas. We build mobile experiences that help hotels and healthcare institutions engage their guests and patients while they're on premises in ways that drive satisfaction and monetization.

Chris: Very interesting. So you said the company started I guess in the early 2000s.

Mike: Then it would have been in 2009. The company started. It was private for the first 11 or so years of its existence and then we went public via SPAC transaction in 2000. I believe it was 20.

Chris: Okay, and it sounds like a fairly niched focus for the company. How did it come to be that the company, I guess, was so focused on kind of those two industries and providing that type of, I guess, service to those customers?

Mike: Well, originally it wasn't. So over 15 years, you might imagine, there's been an evolution in the focus of the company, and so the company in 2009 was really more of a mobile solution development agency. So some of the biggest brands you know in the world really selected Funware back in the timeframe to build some of their first mobile apps in the app store. So companies like Fox, the NFL, the Sochi Olympics, wwe, a number of airports and so on were spending a lot of money to build their first mobile application and then to develop their first mobile audience. For lots of reasons and that was two years after the iPhone was introduced. It was actually before the iPad was introduced and so obviously there's a lot of evolution of consumer expectations when it comes to engaging on mobile, and those brands were spending a lot of money in the early comes to engaging on mobile, and those brands were spending a lot of money in the early days to build their first mobile presences.

That's evolved over time, and so agencies are really not, they really don't drive the valuation that a SaaS company does, and so we've, over time, evolved into becoming a SaaS company. So we license our technologies. We'll essentially build an app, configuring it for the customer, launch it into the app store and then generate license fees off that app for as long as it exists and is available for download. That's a much better valuation model because typically when our customers get involved with us they stick around. Our retention rate is very high because we drive a positive ROI. So we've kind of followed the evolution of mobile from really high investment work for hire, boutique agency-like development all the way through today where we charge between 50 and $150,000 a year for a given property, whether it's a hotel or a hospital, to have their own mobile app in the app store, to have their own brand in front of their users or guests and then ultimately to develop that one-on-one relationship with that guest or patient in a way that drives repeat business and satisfaction and additional monetization.

Chris: That's fascinating. Now you mentioned retention rate. What do you which obviously is very important for success of a company, especially like yours what do you attribute that successful retention rate to?

Mike: Well, we do good work and I can make available to you a list and you could even put it in the podcast if you'd like of the apps that we build, or some of the apps that we build. They're beautiful apps. So, number one, we do really high-quality work that all of our customers are proud to have their name on. And then, number two, we drive ROI, plain and simple. For a dollar they put into our solutions, they get between $5 and $50 back, depending on who they are and the specifics of their business. And you know, if I could give you a machine that would, you put a dollar bill in, you get a five or a 50 back out. You would say how many dollar bills can I put in there?

Chris: Yeah, no, no, kidding, right Well.

I mean, but fundamentally, you mentioned at least you know two fundamental things that is key to customer retention. That's one provide good service. If you're in the service industry, it starts with providing good service and I think an outcome of that is your customer sees a valuable return on the investment for your service. Those are not unique to software but for any kind of service type business right, exactly, that's right. Let's talk a little bit about your. So you're the CEO. The company was founded by others than yourself. How did you come, I guess, to work at Funware and I know just a little bit that you've had this is like your second stint there but give us a little background on your connection to the company and how it was you became the CEO.

Mike: Yeah, sure enough. So I've really made a career of pursuing technology trends. So I'm kind of an old guy so I've been in business for a long time. But I started off in offline marketing technologies, sending out snail mail and running telephone centers. Then I evolved into social marketing with a startup in Austin, texas. I then got into mobile and I've been in mobile really kind of on and off ever since. Mobile's a big deal because you've got a device that knows who you are and knows where you are, you tell it all your secrets. It really is an indispensable. It's become an indispensable tool. And so I've really made kind of a career over the last shoot 15 years at this point in mobile.

And so I was originally with my first stint in mobile was with a little mobile application development boutique in Austin called Mutual Mobile. That was 2008, 9, 10, 11 timeframe Did something else and then I was recruited to come to Funware by somebody who had worked for me at Mutual Mobile and I said look, we're building out this platform company. We're very interested in having somebody who can really help to drive revenues. Would you be interested in joining? So that in 14, I joined Funware for the first time and I came to run the software business. So I was responsible for all revenues for the software business of Funware from 14 through 16 or so, got to know the company, got to really understand the technologies Actually, a number of the people who were there then are still with the company. Then I went off, worked at a Silicon Valley startup and did a couple of other things, couple of other things.

And then, when the founding CEO left in 23, they hired a guy that I had worked with at Mutual Mobile back in the day as the new CEO and he said look, mike, I know that you're great at building businesses on the revenue side. Would you like to come and be my CRO, as I'm CEO of Funware? And he said I'll make it worth your while. So I said no a couple of times and then eventually I said yes.

Well, this was September of last year that I rejoined the company and 30 days in the board said look, you know, what we really need is somebody with sales DNA at CEO. Let's try that again. Easy for me to say CEO role. So, mike, would you like to step in as CEO? So I actually I had a buddy who brought me back to be a CRO and then wound up taking this job. We're still friends, we still talk all the time and he was very supportive of that move.

But a long story short, I think that the company for a time kind of lost its way in the simple fact of selling, servicing accounts and driving revenues, and that's something I've had the good fortune to develop pretty good skill at, and so now I'm the CEO and I'm going to tell you I think the E in CEO stands for extra. Everything about it is extra, but it really is the best job I've ever had and I'm really enjoying it. I still spend a lot of time working with customers, selling, identifying strategic partnerships and that kind of thing, because I enjoy it, I feel like I'm good at it and it's absolutely critical to positioning the company for growth and valuation, which is exactly my job.

Chris: There you go, so let's talk a little bit about that. What are some of the things that you do to build and maintain relationships with those partners, customers, strategic relationships that you think someone listening might learn?

Mike: from. Well, it's funny, there's been a real trend away from in-person, and so you and I are meeting today on Zoom. Our business, funware, is essentially 100% virtual at this point, and what I find is there's no substitute for hopping on a plane and going to see somebody, breaking bread with them, getting to know them as a person, understanding what it is they're trying to accomplish, what their hopes and dreams are, what their fears are. Once you get to that point and really just kind of understanding them as a person, and then exposing yourself as a person and say, look, you know, this is what I'm trying to accomplish, mr and Ms, partner or prospect, and really kind of, you know, engaging on a human level, which you know is a whole lot easier for sitting across the desk from somebody, and that's that to me, is is where I spend a lot of my time. I do invest a lot of time in in person, you know, spending time with customers, prospects, partners and the rest of it, and I really just don't think there's much of a substitute for that.

Chris: Couldn't agree more. I think that's how, really, until the pandemic, it's how business got done in person. I don't think anything's changed here. I think, especially these days, I think it says so much more that you take the time to do that when you could otherwise, yeah, do a Teams or Zoom call or whatever, and just the human interaction I mean. As humans, I think we're meant to be together, right and interact, and I think that just fosters the relationship. So great advice there. Keeping on that kind of theme you've come back in not in an easy economic time, so let's talk a little bit about managing through kind of some economic uncertain, rising interest rates and all the stuff that's out there in the news.

Let's talk about kind of what are some of the things you've done to stay focused and keep your people focused on driving the business forward?

Mike: Sure enough. Well, there are some benefits and some drawbacks to being a public and trading company. Of course One is access to the capital markets. That's a benefit, and we certainly have the ability to draw capital out of the markets in ways that don't require us to be as susceptible to excuse me, the interest rate environment, but that doesn't mean that our customers aren't susceptible to that environment. And so we've had to do some things.

Selling into hospitality and healthcare, I mean, we're typically selling into pretty big organizations and they have a little bit of a buffer, I suppose, from the ebbs and flows of the economy, particularly when you look at luxury hospitality. I mean, COVID aside, luxury hospitality has really been on a growth tear because of the generation of a lot of wealth on the part of a lot of people and they're wanting to spend it on high-quality experiences. But that doesn't mean that we don't have to be creative from time to time when it comes to pricing a deal or generating terms that are acceptable to the customer. They can digest, they can maybe capitalize the expense as opposed to turning into an OPEX expense and that kind of thing, and certainly we've had to be creative there.

When I first took on the CEO role.

The company was having a little bit of financial trouble and you could read in our public filings all about it.

But, long story short, we were having problems with access to capital and I had to work with my CFO and others you know capital partners to really inject some capital into the company from the market in ways that allowed us, you know, the ability to move forward without paying a lot of interest, frankly.

So we were able to kind of reshape the balance sheet in a way that puts us in a great spot for growth today Smaller companies I can only imagine what it must be like if you're dealing with debt financing, distinct from capital financing, and what some of the challenges there must be. We had to make some hard decisions in connection with the recapitalization of the company that had to do with people, in large part because that's our number one expense and those are hard things to do, and I spent many a sleepless night, you know, because I had to do some of those things. But the fact of the matter is that most companies don't cut fast enough and they don't cut deep enough because of those reasons, and it feels terrible, but preserving the company and giving ourselves the ability to go forward and thrive is really kind of the job for the shareholders.

Chris: Yeah, and yeah, I agree. I think, regardless of the size of the company, making those people decisions are extremely difficult because, again, we went back to in person and it's human and these people have been with you typically and but it's what they say, right, it is when you have to make the hard cuts, you have to cut muscle and those can be challenging decisions. On the flip side of that, sure, as you come into the CEO role, you are either have or still in the process of building your team. What are some of the things that you do? Processes maybe you've created to help you identify the right people to surround yourself with to further the mission and strategies of the company.

Mike: Well, there are two non-delegable duties that the CEO has, in my belief. Number one it's setting the strategy of the company. So we're going to be a SaaS company serving these markets, we're going to drive toward these margins, we're going to deliver in this way, and these are the things that are important for the strategy of the business. Number two is the culture of the business, and so I can't hire somebody to give me a culture. I've got to work with the company to create the culture that we want, and so I'll give you a little bit of a story there.

So I have a lot of respect for the fellows who founded the company, a lot of respect for them, because they built something that I now have the good fortune to run and take to the next level. But there was a lot of. They were literally army guys, and there was a lot of army DNA in the company. Now that there's nothing wrong with that, there's nothing at all wrong with that, and the company was successful for a number of years, but and the culture that was built was one of command and control, because that's what the army is Right.

Chris: Well, it's not. I'll just interrupt it. That's also not atypical of kind of startup mentality. Right, it's dominant kind of leadership. Got to get it done, got to get this off the ground.

Mike: Yep, dominant leadership plus the military background equaled very much a command and control structure, a bit of a cult of personality around the founding CEO, and all of that, you know, paid great dividends. For a long time, I could not be any more different from the founding CEO. I'm not an army guy, you know. And so one of the first things I did when I took on the job is I said look, you know, you know if you're the vice president of sales or you're the vice president of, you know of product or delivery or deployments or whatever it is. You're the CEO of your own business and I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm going to give you an objective and I'm going to give you the flexibility and the support to go and achieve that objective.

You need people. You get people. You need investment. You get investment. But your accountability is to go and run your portion of the business as if you were the CEO. I'm not going to micromanage the decisions at all. I'm going to empower you to do the right thing number one for the customer, because then that ultimately becomes the right thing for the company over many observations and so that was a transition that some people are still working through. Frankly, in leadership roles within the company. It's sometimes people get comfortable being told what to do and we just we don't do that anymore. And you know a couple of people have left as a result of that. They did not have that comfort and that's okay because it's not the right job for them anymore. But most people have really embraced the opportunity of agency and empowerment and the ability to kind of run their own part of the business.

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Chris: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there, but clearly what you're talking about in my terms are giving people autonomy, but with accountability, which I think is the right way to go. However, organizations evolve over time, just like people. So I think we talk about command and control in the early days. That, for most companies, may make sense, but where this company is now and size and scale, you couldn't do that because there's too much going on and you have to then hire the right people, and the people that work for the company in the first few years may not work, you know, 10 years, 15 years later, because different skill sets needed, right, so it sounds like you've got your hands around that pretty well.

Mike: Well, you know, it's always a work in progress, and so one of the one of the accelerants to adopting a new cultural tone is bringing in people, you know right. So I brought in a couple of guys and they are both guys, I'm afraid, who I had worked with a number of times in the past, who I knew kind of got the way that we wanted to run the railroad and who are are the kind of guys who just roll up their sleeves every day and make the most of the day. And, you know, those guys are not only in leadership roles within the company but they're also, you know, setting a tone for the others they work with most closely day to day, and I absolutely think it's working.

Chris: That's great. So kind of sum that conversation up for us how would you define the culture of Funware today?

Mike: I'd say that we're kind of a restart up, but with all the good elements of a startup, and what I mean by that is that we had a revenue profile that grew, grew and then it kind of dropped off. For some reason I wasn't here, and we're in the process of growing back up and we're getting in the right people who are interested in not only doing great work and serving the customers really well and building a terrific product, but also ones who are embracing the autonomy and the accountability that we're providing to them, and I couldn't be any more pleased with the reception that I'm getting.

Chris: Anything special that you've kind of put in place to kind of help foster that type of culture so that you can perpetuate it and see it grow.

Mike: Well, we tend to recognize the behaviors that we're looking for, and here's what I mean by that. So you know, somebody will just do a thing right and they'll do it. They'll achieve an accomplishment, whatever that accomplishment may be, and we'll talk. We've got a Slack channel. Slack is a tool we use all day long, every day, and we have a Slack channel called Momentum, and the Momentum channel is really about recognizing the contributions that a person makes, and the deal is that if you put something in Momentum, you've got to recognize somebody else. So you say, hey, a great thing happened, you got to recognize somebody else. So you say, hey, a great thing happened. And I want to thank Bob over here for his contribution to the thing, because Bob, you know, contributed in a way that if he hadn't done that, you know we might not have gotten the outcome that we're looking for. You know that that's something that you see traffic in every single day, that's great.

Chris: We obviously I can relate to that we do something similar here at the firm Every single day. That's great, I can relate to that. We do something similar here at the firm, not necessarily on a specific channel, but it's kind of become part of our culture to. We call them core value kudos and it's about recognizing other people not yourself, obviously in efforts that they made and tying them to our mission and values, so that the behaviors and the values marry up right. And then people.

It makes it tangible that I want to thank or, you know, congratulate someone for doing X, Y and Z which demonstrated this value in action.

Mike: That's terrific. Yeah, I've been in companies that have done that. I think that's something that I may need to reincorporate into my bag of tricks there, for sure that have done that. I think that's something that I may need to reincorporate into my bag of tricks there for sure.

Chris: So you know along those lines your software company. I always am interested to know what are you doing to kind of promote or foster creativity and innovation within the company?

Mike: Well, some of the things that you know it's interesting, I'm going to I'll give you maybe a little bit longer answer you might be looking for, but there is, and it's really important to kind of separate the day-to-day from the long-term vision. And what I mean by that is that I'm, let's say, a developer and today I have to fix a bug, and I just have to fix the bug because the bug exists and it's in the way of something happening and it's not my favorite part of the job, I'm quite confident of that. Not my favorite part of the job, I'm quite confident of that. Not my favorite part of the job to fix a bug. But there is some long range stuff that I'm really excited about.

A big part of what we do is indoor wayfinding and hyperlocal marketing offers, and there are lots and lots of innovations that we're looking at right now, and so we identify people who are interested in innovation.

We put together both formal processes for them to say, okay, you're on the R&D team and you're going to be doing this work, but we also give them informal opportunities. Hey, look, I want you to go to Denver to our customer with Gaylord Rockies and I want you to actually go into the physical space that we're trying to map, and I want you to help me figure out a better way to do it. And so that's two things. It's number one, solving a strategic problem for the business, but it's also kind of getting them out of their, since we're all virtual, it's getting them out of their own office, sending them to Denver, take an extra day, engage the customer, do great work, but also enjoy yourself a little bit. So we try to give people an opportunity to get out of the context within which they're working sitting in my home office squashing bugs and get out into the real world where our solutions are deployed in ways that are not only sort of fun but also problem solving.

Chris: So you've been in some leadership roles throughout your career, obviously CEO now. How would you describe your leadership style and how do you think it's evolved over the last few years?

Mike: Well, I try to work with people. I try to work as best I can. You can't always do that right, but you can absolutely make the investment of time to get to know them, and so I walk into this job. I've got a CFO that I just met very recently, and I had a chief legal officer that I met just recently, and I had a chief operating officer that I had known actually for some time and one of those guys wound up leaving that I had known actually for some time and you know, one of those guys wound up leaving. But you know the other two guys that I had just met. I made it a real point of going to where they were, sitting down with them breaking bread, understanding who they are, what they were trying to accomplish, why they were at the company in the first place and all the rest of it, because it was important for me to understand whether I could trust and whether it was appropriate to invest in these guys. Right and absolutely it was.

By the way, I had a couple of gaps in my leadership team and what I did was find people that I'd worked with in the past and I said, look, are you willing to come and work for me again, and the answer in every case was absolutely so, and that's not because I'm the greatest guy in the world or because I gave him a zillion dollars or anything like that. It's because we have, over the years, established a working cadence that's founded on this idea of trust and accountability, autonomy of action and really candor of discussion. There's nothing that the leadership team and I don't discuss in detail and with candor. We're not afraid to tell our truths to each other. We've created what I think is a safe space for us to really talk about what's on our mind and what concerns or challenges we have, or if somebody is all wet, you know, and and that kind of. That kind of culture. The executive table, I think, filters down to the rest of the business in ways that help support the culture we're trying to build.

Chris: Yeah, and I was gonna say it sounds like it's a culture of safety to have the hard conversations, but that those conversations are done in a respectful way.

Mike: Yeah.

Chris: I don't know if there's no better way to do it Right, and it's okay to fail.

Mike: And I got to tell you, I used to race, I used to race cars a long time ago and you know, if you don't crash, you're not driving fast enough and so it's okay. It's okay to crash every once in a while because that means you're pushing the envelope, You're trying to get, you know, you're trying to get to the edge of the performance envelope and that's positive.

Chris: Yeah, no, let's talk about that, cause I I there. There's always learning, and so I think there's. You know, when you have setbacks or failures, you can learn from them and it can make you better. Don't let it define you. So can you give us an example of more than not the car racing, because crashing is easy to understand as a failure, but in the business world, as a leader something that you felt a failure of yours, a bad decision, a setback that you absolutely grew from, and it's made you better today.

Mike: Yeah, sure enough, I think that my greatest learnings are not being decisive enough and not acting quickly enough. And so you know, let's say, for example, I'll give you the example of last company I worked for before. Well, yes, I'll give you that example. So I was working at an AI video startup in Madison, Wisconsin. It was essentially a unit of a publicly traded company that I won't name, but your viewers can certainly look it up. And, long story short, that company is now bankrupt and I don't fault any of the. I don't fault the CEO of that company, which was not me, by the way, in that, but I fault myself.

Yeah, exactly, it wasn't me. I didn't bankrupt the company. This was a guy I had worked with before were pretty small, and so what I said was I need this much to make this happen. I was given about half that much and I didn't adequately reset the expectations on how long it was going to take to get that thing done, slash. I should have had probably more pointed discussion about is this worth doing at all, and I didn't do that. And the long story short is that company is now bankrupt for lots of reasons, but the thing that I that my not being as aggressive as I felt like I should have been was a contributor to that. I think it was a small contributor, but you know all that to say that it didn't help.

Chris: And so I kind of trace it. I would say the learning for you is kind of having the hard conversations faster right and that's the kind of culture that's terrifically important for me.

Mike: So that informs the culture I'm building at Funware, which is like, if this ain't going to work, I just need you to tell me, and I might disagree and I might argue with you, but I will absolutely hear you. I might argue with you, but I will absolutely hear you. It's going to be super important for us to just trust each other enough to be able to have the discussion about you know, without fear. I guess is where I'm coming from.

Chris: I understand that, so let's talk a little bit about you know these are important jobs that you've held over the last few years, and as is the current one. I don't like using the term work-life balance, but how do you? Manage work and personal life to try to keep them both going in a positive direction.

Mike: Well, I spend a lot of time with my kids. I really, yeah, my daughter. So I'm here in Ohio, I'm spending time with my father and mother, but my daughter came along, my older daughter came along, she's out of school already. I'm going to go next week pick up my younger daughter in boarding school in Colorado, drive her down to Big Bend, where she has never been, and then, you know, spend time with her over the summer.

So I mean, it's really about being deliberate about that and working from anywhere, candidly, in my opinion, helps. There's no expectation. I'm going to the office, I'm going to be there during the business day on Monday through Friday, and what I kind of joke is that I mean, I work a lot, no question about it, but I work around my life as opposed to work, as opposed to planning my life around my work, to planning my life around my work. So I might work, you know, 60 hours a week, but that's not going to be five times 12. That's going to be, you know, kind of eight-ish times seven. I'll work every day a little bit, but I'm certainly going to put my kids first and that's just the way it is.

Chris: Well, I can identify with that. I think everyone has to find their own way and each job and role requires different things. In different stages of life require different things. So I think that's what people you know should stay focused on, individually as well as the companies to try to make sure you have good people. You don't want to lose them for those types of reasons. People you don't want to lose them for those types of reasons. Yeah, so, mike, this has been a great conversation. Before we wrap up, I just want to kind of get a little bit more less or a little less serious about things. Tell us what was your first job as a kid?

Mike: It'd be funny, you should ask. So I'm back in rural Ohio where I grew up. Right now, at my parents' house, as I mentioned earlier, my first job was was am I allowed to say shit on your podcast? Of course, the texas my first, my first job was shoveling hog shit.

Chris: Shoveling hog shit for minimum wage and I was nothing that wants to make you go to college and get a degree than that right.

Mike: well, the funny thing is that I wound up raising hogs to pay for college. So it was fine to shovel the hog shit, but I was like, if I was fine to shovel the hog shit, but I was like, if I'm going to shovel the hog shit, I'm going to do it for more than $3.35 an hour. I'm going to do it in exchange for a college education. So that's not exactly that way, but that's a big part of how I kind of got off the farm and moving ahead.

Chris: I love that, okay, well, yeah, obviously, as we now know, you're from Ohio, but you spent enough time in Texas for me to ask you this question Do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Mike: I love Tex-Mex. I would eat Tex-Mex every day of the week All right.

And sometimes I do. I do love barbecue, but the thing is that the best barbecue is something I don't want to wait in line for and I don't want to drive a long ways. If I happen to be by La Barbecue or Franklin's a little bit over their great barbecue a little bit overhyped, or if I want a great barbecue, I'll just treat it as a destination thing. I'll go down to Lockhart or something like that, but I can get absolutely terrific Tex-Mex around the corner from my house every day of the week.

Chris: Yes, it was one good thing. You know, I think we living in Texas both are abundant right.

Mike: But you're right.

Chris: The marquee barbecue, you know, is tucked away in some places. All right, so my last thing is if you could do a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do?

Mike: Well, I got a bunch of customers who have really beautiful beach resorts so I might go to one of those.

Chris: You might go break bread with them there.

Mike: Break bread with the customers at the most beautiful resorts in the world. That would be one thing I might do. There are a lot of places around the world that I'd love to see, so I've got a Google Maps layer that has little flags. There are probably 800 flags on that map and I add some every week. Places that I like to go around the world. Sometimes they're restaurants that I read about. Sometimes they're beautiful. You know natural features, like you know mountain ranges, the Painted Mountains in the Andes, or you know beautiful lake I've never been to Crater Lake, things like that so what I'd probably do is find 30 days worth of those pins in an area that I can consume within that 30-day period and I'd just go knock it out.

Chris: I love that. I like the concept of keeping track of the pins. Yep.

Mike: And there's too many on the map that you know I'll be dead and gone before I get to see all of them. But you know, it is kind of a it's a memory bank for things that have caught my interest and that I do want to experience at some point, if I can pull it off.

Chris: Love it. Love it Well, mike, thanks so much for taking the time to be a guest on the show. Really enjoyed hearing your story, and the things y'all are doing at Funware sound really fun, exciting and innovative.

Mike: Thanks a lot.

Special Guest: Mike Snavely.