Building a People-first Culture with Chris Wright

Every meeting, group meeting, one on one meeting. I said, look, I've been a CEO for, at that time, I don't know, 27 years or whatever. I've never laid anyone off and I don't intend ever to lay anyone off. So when times get tough, we don't do what everyone else does.

Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast. Your weekly dose of practical tips and inspirations to help you operate at your fullest potential by integrating the science of flourishing into how you live, work and lead. In each episode we will share insights, tips and stories from leading experts, company executives and flourishing solution providers that you can implement right away to make happiness your competitive edge and find more success, joy, health, love and meaning in everything you do. Hello friends. Welcome to the Happiness Squad Podcast where we share practical tips to make flourishing your competitive edge and help you achieve stellar performance powered by well being, not at its expense. I'm Ashish Kothari and I'm on a mission to help a billion people not just experience happiness as an emotion, but really use it as a tool to unlock their fullest potential. If you're interested in learning how to make happiness your competitive edge, please make sure to follow me on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter@happinesssquad.com today we're thrilled to bring back an inspiring conversation I had earlier this year with Chris Wright, Founder, CEO and Chair of Liberty Energy. Chris is also recently nominated to be our new Energy Secretary for the Trump Administration. Chris and Liberty Energy are living case examples of how companies can create a competitive distance by prioritizing investments in their people. In this particular episode, Chris shared with us the power of a people first culture and practical strategies on how to build it. Amongst other things, we discussed the role of meaningful relationships, the power of vulnerability and the role of purpose and meaning. Stay till the end to hear Chris's non negotiables when it comes to personal well being to ensure he's operating at his fullest potential as a father, son, CEO and a key leader in his community and industry. Hi Chris, it is so lovely to have you with us. Thank you for taking the time to share. Thank you. The amazing life journey you've had and the mission that you're on.

Great to be here with you, excited, enjoyed your book and excited to chat with you.

So Chris, I always start with the first same question. In fact my co host Anil and I, he's not on this podcast today, but this is the question he always loves to ask. So I'm going to bring him in and ask you that question, which is what is your definition of happiness and how has that changed since probably your younger years?

Oh yeah. Wow. I should have. That is a great question. So when I was young, you know, look, I was a undersized but highly competitive kid, you know, in sports, school, in life, you know, so happiness then was probably a lot about succeeding at what I was trying to do. Winning a tennis tournament, you know, doing better than I thought. And some, you know, I got the top score in the physics test and. But I would say even as a kid, like I had a wonderful. Older. I'm the youngest of four kids, my older sister. Fantastic. So probably my greatest joy has always been happiness with people I like and trust. You know, people sharing things and then we feel better. Somebody's struggling and having a. Or I'm struggling and I'm sharing what, what's bothering me with, you know, my sister or a friend and then. And they're making me feel better. That is just. That gives me a warm feeling inside. And so it's evolved certainly today, but it's really centered around those same things. You know, I always say I'm only going to live once. I'd like to do my part to make the world a better place, you know, when I'm gone. And so that's ultimately about relationships with family, with friends, with people that are struggling, with colleagues in business. And so. But I would say I want to live a sincere, leave it all on the field, meaningful life. And to the extent I feel that I'm doing that, I'm happy, I'm content, I know I'm going to make a lot of mistakes. I'm not perfect, but I want to live a sincere, meaningful life.

Yeah, sincere, meaningful and filled with rich relationships. Right. You've always kind of highlighted the importance of that, even in our pre talk that we were having. Yeah. And relationships show up, right? Consistently. The recent study by Waldinger, it's actually an eight year old study that's been running at Harvard that clearly highlights the quality of relationships being a big driver of flourishing. Right?

Oh, I think the biggest driver by far. I mean, yeah, look, that's. I often say that it's your relationships with your family and your close friends, that's what really matters. Everything else is kind of the details in your life, the specific area you worked or you played in. You know, like I care about those things too. But it's the relationships with your family and your friends and people that are important to you. That's what life is to me.

The rest is details that is it. Exactly. And the other part, which you also say is like, meaning, right, like doing something that matters. Like, you want to leave it all. You want to know that you made a difference and it was a difference. You know, we come with nothing and we leave with nothing. So it's about making a difference in terms of the impact. Like, did you leave the world a better place because of the actions you took?

Exactly, exactly.

So look, I mean, you've had an amazing journey. Your life journey is so inspiring from, you know, techno to entrepreneur and kind of so much of a people, human centric leader that you have. You are. Chris, I would love to hear about, you know, what might have been two to three seminal events that shaped you and how you show up as a leader and what you really focus on.

Wow. Okay, well, look, I'll start one of the big formative things with me growing up. You know, my dad was an alcoholic before I was born, and he's an alcoholic to this day. A functioning alcoholic, not an evil person, but every day drunk. And so, you know, so that affected my, me and my three siblings all very differently. I would say unlucky. The main impact on me was probably quite positive. You know, my mom is just fantastic. She's loving and central person in my life to this day. We just had the family together to celebrate her 87th birthday party, swimming in the ocean in Mexico. And so mom is a sweet angel who always believed in all of her kids and always believed you authored your own life and you got to have whatever your dreams or ambitions are. Don't hold back, don't listen to convention, go pursue your dreams. And she always believed in us, you know, when we. I probably got a big sense of optimism from my mom, who just believed and loved no matter what, and so my siblings too. So I think that challenge maybe brought out great things. Warm, warm strength, you know, from around. So I mean, I probably in business or financially got motivated because I wanted, at the youngest possible age, I wanted to control what I did. I wanted to skateboard. And my dad hated skateboards, right? So the only way I was getting a skateboard was to make enough money to buy my own skateboard, you know, so it takes 10. I really started my weed picking business. And then at 11, 12, I was babysitting and then I was mowing lawns, and then I paid into Social Security since I was 14. So I got motivated to make money and be able to control the decisions in my life from a young age. And then as I got into high school, what was My motivation was I got to be able to take care of my mom and he's done so much for me. So this, you know, somewhat negative thing to me really drove me to be better and stronger and really out of love, you know, again, love, love for my mom, love for my siblings and for so many others. And then Ashish, I'll say another one, maybe along the same personal flow. So when I started, when I went to high school, I went to a big high school. And they weighed you and measured your height on the first day of high school. They would never do that. Today I weighed 68 pounds and I so wanted to be 5ft tall. And when they wrote a 5, I did a fist pump and it was 59 inches, you know, so I was 4 foot 11, 68 pounds when I started high school and I was a competitive tennis player. But I just, it's hard to take me seriously. I was just so. I was a year young and I was very small for my age, so maybe a little chip on my shoulder about that. And I looked young too. So intellectually, I mean, I had confidence and belief in me, but I thought people didn't take me seriously or, you know, wanted to write me off. And so maybe that little chip on my shoulder that I wanted to, I wanted to put my best foot forward and show I was good or show I was special or, you know, I had a little bit in some settings of an edge to me. And then two friends who I'd actually known a long time, but they really became my friends in high school. And they were, you know, tall, bigger, you know, just great guys, two great guys. But what I got out of them was the most lovable thing about them was their self deprecating sense of humor. They constantly teased themselves. You know, they exposed the stupidest thing they did or the most embarrassing. Like, I would have hid those. Like, I wanted to tell you the story about when I was really cool or when I was really good. And these guys didn't. They celebrated the things they did that were foolish or they were just comfortable. And, and what I realized was, man, it's so nice to be around these people. And I learned then, maybe you know, like 15 or something or 14, that people love or connect more for your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities than for your strengths. Right. And so they got me to stop taking myself so seriously. Take that edge off. Yeah, it can be, you know, happy to celebrate. You know, you want to be good at stuff, but don't take yourself too seriously. Have a little fun and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. So I give huge credit to Chris and Bill, who were just great guys and they had a good impact on me. Then I. So I would say I went off to college still as a, you know, young, confident go getter, but maybe, maybe a little better sense of humor, a little lighter. I was super interested to meet everyone. You know, my whole thing was life. I learned most of what I wasn't a conventional student. I was pretty much a screw off. I did well in school because I was naturally pretty good at it. But I was not a hard. Because I wanted to rebel against whatever. If someone told me to sit down, I wanted to stand up. You know, I didn't like the structure of school. I, you know, I didn't want to be in there all day long and then, you know, but I knew that I had to do well in school because it was my road to success so I could take care of mom and realize whatever dreams I had. So I had this thing that I wanted to. I wasn't a conventional student, but it was important to me to do well enough so that it was not going to hold back my future. And I just enjoyed interactions with people or trying to take a risk, you know, missing a class or doing this more than too much of the grind in school. So I always tried to strike this weird balance. But then I go to college, now I'm free. I'm 17 years old, I'm living on my own. I've left Denver, I'm in Boston. It was incredibly liberating, exciting, meeting people from all over the country from all different backgrounds. I loved it and I thought I would love it, but I got to school and it was fantastic. I still never knew, you know, like I went to, I went to college to work on fusion energy because kind of the mania when I was a kid was the world was running out of oil and gas and coal and land and fertilizer and farmland and industrial civilization was going to collapse and the world was coming to an end. And you know, and when you're 16, 17 years old, maybe I knew that wasn't literally true, but I probably didn't appreciate how foolish that view was. But that was a very prevailing view. It drove me a little bit. I went to MIT specifically to work on fusion energy. Like if the world's running out of energy, I want to be in the energy problem. I want to work on that issue. And pretty quickly learned this is my third formative thing that I'm telling too slowly. Pretty quickly learned that I Didn't have the patience for big science. I love it, still love it. But the actual carrying out of it. Okay, I wasn't really wired for that. And I had a summer job when I was somewhere. I was 19, actually, before my last year in college. No, no, summer. I was 18. I had a summer job and at a company called Honeywell, a big company. And people were. First time I'd worked a job indoors, people were really nice, that, man, adult life's gonna be okay. But they had a policy then that, you know, in your first two years, you got three vacation days, you know, and then you got a week, and then, you know, five or 10 years later, and they had the bell curve of human beings. There was smart, really good people and sort of middle of the road. And then, you know, some people that, you know, were just not productive at all. But they'd been there for 30 years and, you know, as long as you didn't, you know, cross some line, you know, you stayed. And so as a very competitive guy, I realized, boy, I couldn't. I don't think I could. I could not work in this environment. I couldn't do a year with three days of vacation in this setting. And partially that rebel thing again as well, so. But that summer job clarified things for me. And now I realize, now I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I have no idea doing what, but I want to be an entrepreneur. Where at our business, we just hire people that I think are exceptional, that are different, that are fun to be around, that are hard driving. We're not going to have these silly three vacation days a year policy. At my company, we have no vacation policy. We don't count the days you're at work. We don't tell you when to show up and when to leave because why do I care about that? I like to travel and do stuff with my family and adventure and presumably a lot of other people do as well. What do I care about at work? Because I care about people that are moving the ball forward and driving success in the company. And if you can do that, you know, traveling several weeks a year and attending all your kids soccer games and arrange your schedule the way it works for you. I don't. I don't want to arrive at this time and leave now. Some groups have to work together. In our company, those groups figure out how to work together. Most people are in the office most days, but we've never asked or required that. We just want people to move the ball Forward. And some people, of course, will work all day, every day, but they're not productive or they're kind of a jerk, or they're not a good team player. And we've got to politely let those people leave. We just want a family of passionate people that have fun together and that are low maintenance and that are hard driving to move the ball forward. And so, you know, I. Look, I never took a business class in my life. I never worked at a real company except for that one summer when I was 19 years old. So I've got a lot of blind spots in my knowledge, too. But to me, it's just been about, man, if we can just get great humans that care about what they do, we're gonna figure something good out.

So, Chris, this is why, you know, we just immediately connected, right? When I met you not that long ago at the IACS event, you know, all the three themes that you mentioned in your life, formative experiences, role of people, I mean, they ring so true for me. And friends, if you haven't done this, I invite you to reflect back. We often don't take the time to reflect back on those seminal events and people who have made such a big difference. You know, Chris, I could see you get emotional. I mean, that's how I feel as I heard you and as I reflected on my own, you know, those events. And I'm just going to play a bit of that back and then dive into, you know, your. How you build the company and how you put people at the center. But I so understand you and kind of, you know, your history. Right. I think the first theme that you mentioned was, like, just like, for you. For me, my mother really had a huge impact on my life right From a very, very young age. And the word that I would say that really captures that. You captured it. It's love. Right? And she and my father, actually, both of them, but in particular my mother, I would say, you know, we have a large extended family, as so many Indians do, and she's the one who bring, you know, she'll call everyone and she like. She's the one who kind of connects, holds the whole eighty, hundred, two hundred people in our family together. So love is a big part of it. She was a PhD in mathematics. She taught. She took, you know, obviously worked at home and kind of took care of us and ferreted me around for my classes after school, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that one, you know, moms and mothers often play such a big role. And I love what you Just said, you know, Chris, the other part of that story for me was, look, there's so many people who say, well, I didn't control, you know, my father was alcoholic and so this is who I became. But through that love, you took that and you basically became a different person. You chose your path, which was, I am going to actually be self sufficient. I'm gonna go make this happen. I'm not gonna let this define me. I am going to take care of my mom, I'm gonna take care of others. Right. I think it's a really, really big deal. So this notion of choice, right, Our circumstances don't define us. What we do when facing that does. It's the choices you make, not what the world gives you that defines you.

Exactly. And those are the stories that inspire me the most. It's like your event. One of the reasons I love about this country is immigrants. People come all over the world in all different circumstances and they generally come to this country because they want to author their lives. They want to be in a setting where they have more freedom to pursue whatever their dream or their passion is. And immigrants tend to come to this country on average a little bit hungrier, a little bit harder driving to pursue whatever their freedom and drive. And they constantly prove your point that they come from the humblest, roughest, most violent, awful circumstances. Of course that impacts us. That's in there. But they say, hey, I'm going to remake my life and I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that. So yeah, two words I love a lot are love. I think ultimately what we crave and means the most and authorship, you author your life. It's not circumstances, it's not history, it's not your location, it's not, you know, your strengths or your weaknesses. Other way to say that, that I heard when I was young was it's not the cards you're dealt in life, it's how you play them. That's life.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know the other part of this, Just because building on that point for you, Chris, that you also highlighted, which your friends did for you, in effect, you know what you're talking about is you had a high degree of psychological safety right. With that group that then allows you to be self deprecating, that allows you. And I loved what you said. I'm gonna read it back. Connecting the connections we forge through vulnerability and sharing our weaknesses are lot deeper because they're grounded in the true reality of what every human being experiences. I haven't, Chris Met a single person who, despite what they project out there, doesn't have something that they are trying to deal with in their personal or professional life. We just don't like to talk about them because somehow we feel that shows that I am not perfect, I am flawed. And that is the source of so much agony. That is the source of so much suffering. If we just allow ourselves and we as leaders create an environment for people to kind of connect, it's the imperfections, it's the struggles that makes us human. How deep that connection is, I think.

It'S what forms relationships, too. People tight relationships form when things are awful, when people are scared, when people are struggling, or in business, too, you find out who your real partners are. When things are bad, when things are good, everybody, yeah, the wind is blowing at your back, and everybody loves everybody. But those are shallow relationships. Those don't become deep, lasting partnerships. And yet, as you said, and as I said earlier, I think human relationships, person to person, they're formed and bond more over weaknesses and vulnerabilities than admiration or appreciation of strengths. Like, that's nice, too. But no, humans form love and relationships based on their fears and their struggles and how others make them feel better and stronger through those things.

Yeah, exactly.

That's love.

That is love, and that is growth. Right. That comes from it. I love it. And then I also love, you know, how you kind of reflected on what would bring joy to you and what you would fit or not, and to create this, you know, decided to go the entrepreneurial route. Chris, I want to go there for a minute. You know, one of the things when we talked at iac, in your talk at iacs, that really spoke to me, you know, and it was so contrary to what actions every company takes when things get. People talk about all the things about I care for my people, that I build this culture, that, you know, I want everybody to be respected. And I. You are number one. The moment things get tough. The first lever so many companies pull is letting go of people. And I was deeply touched when you had shared that experience. Over how many times in your lifetime of companies have you pulled that lever and how that was always the last one. Talk to us a little bit about how you've thought about employees, especially when the business is facing headwinds, things that you have done, which is different than many others in being able to kind of still serve shareholders but not do it at the expense of others.

Yes. So as I said, at this age, 19, I decided I'm going to be an entrepreneur. My Model is very simple. I say it was just like backyard football. I just want to get people on the team that want to work together as a team that are good at what they do and that are good humans that you can trust that'll do the right thing when no one's looking and are nice to be around. You know, if you have a team and everybody's fighting inside your team, obviously a backyard football team, that doesn't work. You know, the best players, they don't play as a team. They're not going to win. And so my model was that simple. I'm just going to try to get good humans who care about what they do, and we're going to work together as a team. Yeah, one of my goals from very early on. So I started my first company that became a real business, not a trading business, that became a real business 30 over 31 years ago. And so I've been a CEO for pretty much all that time and a number of times of two companies simultaneously. But one of my goals was get great humans. And I looked at the thing you said, Ashish, and think, I'm in the oil and gas industry. It's very cyclical. There's good times and everybody hires a whole bunch of booms and then it cycles down. It's just a cyclical business. And then they lay off everybody and then. And then they come back. So one of my goals was to never lay anyone off, was to get great people on the team and then just figure out a different. That's our most important asset. Not our trucks or our technology or our computers. Our most important asset by far is the people on our team and that culture that binds us together. When times are tough, we're covering each other. When we have personal or family struggles, our company, although it's bigger now, it's a family and everybody is there for that person. Somebody's a tragedy happens in a family and there's always a go help me page. There's a network of people that call up and go, help that person. Yeah, I would say we don't just use that word. You know, our company's a family. We walk that walk. So through a lot of ups and downs, I had never laid anyone off in my career. And the worst, I have one exception to that, one exception to that that I still wears on me. But the OPEC fought shale and shale won, as I call it. In November of 2014, oil prices went from just under $100 to 13 months later, below $30. And we had two just brutal years 2015 and 2016 where our industry, particularly the part where we were the Rocky Mountains, collapsed, activity shrunk 70%. That is just brutal. But I had lived, you know, for 20 plus years, well over 20 years at that time, never laying anyone off. And as that dropped down quickly, I remember I had 600 employees at that time. And I went and visited our four locations where we worked out of and told everyone at the start, no one is going to lose their job. Everyone here is going to dig deep every day with the person on your left and the person on your right to just deliver a better quality service than all our other competitors. We know we're going to get paid less money. We know we're not going to make any money, but we're going to get through this time together. It was a very stressful, rough two years. But we started that downturn with 600 employees. We ended that downturn with 600 employees, which means that we started with 5% market share. We fracked 5% of the wells drilled in the Rockies. In the bottom of that downturn where activity was so low, we fracked 25% of all the wells drilled in the Rockies because that's what you gotta do, right? You have that size of people and the pie shrinks. But our goal was we just have to be better than everyone else so that people want to use us. The market pricing has pushed pricing way down. We're going to get a little premium to that because we're better than the other guys, but not a lot of. So we didn't make any money, but we built relationships, a loyalty within the company. A whole bunch of other companies that had never been our customers before realized these guys are different. They walk the walk. They back up what they say. When they make mistakes, they admit it. They never lie. They always live by the words and guarantees they gave. And it really like that relationship thing. Those two worst years in our company, they were the most formative years of the business. You know, it's now 12 some years old. Well, we have another formative year coming up in this story. So we, we did that and then, you know, we rebounded and, and it continued to grow.

Enjoying this episode. If you think someone you know could benefit from these insights, why not share the podcast with them right away? A quick share could make a big difference in some someone's day. Thanks for spreading the happiness and being part of this happiness revolution with us. Riz, can I ask you for a moment before you go there, how did you, what did you do that allowed you to keep all those people employed when your business, basically the top line, like, just died. Like 70% is a huge, massive number.

It is a massive number. So we did a lot of things at the start. They were cultural. Like, we immediately cut. We ultimately cut executive pay, you know, by like 80%. We did that again in Covid. Now, in both times in my business, I'm a flat organization guy, so executive pay is actually not a meaningful part even of our G and A. But it matters if you're, you know, you've got to do the right thing. And everybody on our team, you know, we, we now, first thing we announced was we cut. The very first announcement was we cut executive pay by 40% and eliminated all bonuses for executives. Ultimately, we eliminated all bonuses for everyone. I think to build a company correctly, you got to have a highly variable bonus. When the company's killing it, everyone does well. And when the company's struggling, everyone tightens their belt. Yeah, because of course, shrinking the compensation of five or six guys, that's not enough. We have 600 people. But we shrunk. We removed bonuses, which were a good part of our thing, so people could leave their income shrunk. But I think the culture of a company that was going to stand together was appealing to people. And so some people left because. And they left our industry because they couldn't withstand. You know, for the. For the average person, it was probably. I don't know the number, but it's probably a good 20% cut in compensation, which is very tough. So some people are like, man, they left the oil and gas industry, but most people, most everyone stayed. And knowing that we're going through this the right way, we're going to be a stronger company to average. And we're going to go to. And we're going to go to a good place by doing through this together. We don't know how long it would last, but it was very much a bonding experience for our company. As we did during COVID We had zoom calls where we just. We had hundreds of people on a phone line. We had different themes. Tell us about your favorite car. And we just had dialogues. We just had. Because people are spread all across the country. So it's. We did town halls, obviously, as I traveled to locations, but I think making people feel that they're in it together, that what they do matters and that it's not all for. Not like I was 100% sure our company will survive. We're going to have to, because even our lenders, you know, people we Paid rent to we personal relationships with all of them, like, and people said, hey, you know, don't pay the next six months of rent. We'll add it on. Pay double rent the last six months at the end of your lease. Yep, we'll do that. All of our partners, all of our suppliers stood behind us also. It was a time where people signed contracts to buy materials like our competitors. And that as the industry collapsed, they just ripped up those contracts and said, you know, sorry, guys, we're starting over again. We don't do that. We signed agreements and contracts for multiple years to buy sand was the biggest material. We bought every grain of sand we contracted to buy. We talked to those partners and said, look, if you don't adjust the price on the sand, we're going to be buying sand for much more than all our competitors who ripped up your contracts, who are now, you know, just starting anew. And they're like, yeah, that's right. No, no, you've come to us. You're going to take our sand. We'd rather you. So all of our suppliers, voluntarily, at their own discretion, lowered pricing to keep us competitive. But we signed commitments for volumes. And they're running mines. They've got to keep those mines running because they want to employ their own people. We bought every grain of sand, every chemical we contracted with. Well, customers did the right thing. Like, again, it was a formative experience for our company. We got. And then as things came out and things were strong, we did well. We took the company public only a little more than a year after this downturn and looked up most of the leadership team in the company, were also my partners in the company I started 31 years ago. So we've been a family and a team together. But when we went on our IPO roadshow, I made sure I told every investor. And of course then it was like 85 meetings over nine days, traveling around, seeing eight or ten people a day. Some of those group meetings, every meeting, group meeting, one on one meeting. I said, look, I've been a CEO for, at that time, I don't know, 27 years or whatever. I've never laid anyone off and I don't intend ever to lay anyone off. So when times get tough, we don't do what everyone else does. We handle it very.

Yeah, so if you don't want to invest in me, don't invest in me.

Exactly. I said, that's how we roll and it's not going to change. So we might not be for you. So we're very candid like when I was young, I almost took a company public. But my fear then was I don't want a bunch of people who don't know my business telling me what to do. I realize now I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. I wasn't worried about that at all. I'm going to tell them how we run the business and yeah, they don't have to be a shareholder, they don't have to be involved. And heck, if they own enough of the company, they can fire me. But this is how we roll. These are the principles we operate under and we just do business a little bit differently. We always honor our commitments to our customers. We miss bid a contract price and we do that sometimes. We live with it. You know, if we made an agreement, we live with it. Oh my God, the market's gotten so tight, we could move that fleet away and go to someone else for a higher price and wouldn't that be great? No, we're not going to break that contract we made with you for that time period. We just do business differently than our competitors. But we were very open about that. Our IPO was 17 times oversubscribed. So I think investors could also see we were just different. And it's maybe not the model for everyone, but we'd had a quite successful track record rolling that way and we're not going to change it.

Chris, you brought what you are describing. I'm going to pause here and just lay some of these themes and I'm going to replay them for our listeners. What you are describing here is a living case study example behind the research and the work done, you know, over the years by Raj Sisodia, but also most importantly, by Alex Edmonds. We had him on our podcast. He's a London business school economist. This notion, friends, of investing in your people is a far superior competitive strategy than any other business strategy you're going to come up with that increases shareholder value two to three and a half percent higher returns for companies that invest in job satisfaction in their people, in taking care of, you know, creating cultures of flourishing. That's the research. You can look it up. It is not correlation, it is causation. Work done at Oxford also highlights the same that when we take care of our people, our return on assets are higher, our, our shareholder returns are higher and our profitability is higher. But it is really important, friends. It is fundamentally different than splitting the pie. This is about growing the pie. And if you walk the walk, if you walk the walk on this, the actions that Chris Highlighted are important. It is not just about investing in wellbeing when times are good. It's about protecting the asset, protection. Protect the asset when the times are hard. If Chris could do that with a 70% decline in demand and still keep people employed and really use that crucible moment as a way to show how they walk the walk, you emerge stronger like they did, right? We let people go. When 15% softness shows up in the business, this is 70% and actions that they took, you know, number one, you know, cutting executive pay first, creating a more of a bonus structure that is variable, that gives you the flexibility to not let people go. Right. Families stick together, be and build that foundation from the beginning again. It ties to the formative moments in his life. Be open. Be open with our struggles, with our people, with your suppliers, with our customers about what we are going through and trust that they will pull forward, pull together. It's that weakness and the vulnerability that's going to make you stronger. You know, Chris highlighted how some of his suppliers on their own deferred rent or on their own said, hey, we know what you're trying to do and we appreciate you. Love that connection, that compassion, customers staying true to those partnerships and sticking through. I love what you said. I bought every grain of sand. Because in the end, it's contracts, right? And our actions speak louder than our words. If you say, I have a contract, I'll keep you around and the employee sees you operating with, you're not honoring your contract out there. You know, how are they going to trust you? Honor the contract here. And the most beautiful thing that you said, Chris, that is again, something that people don't think about is you do this this way with openness, engaging everybody, making sure they're valued, that they matter and they feel safe, they're not stuck in fear. Am I going to have a job or not? Do I matter or not? You will never win a comp like you. Nobody can compete with you, right. Come lean all you want, whatever. Because people, when they feel their family and they're fighting together, will dig in deeper. They will give you more productivity, more creativity, more innovation than anything you can ever buy. And it's those moments that are going to define and help you out, compete everybody else.

Ashish, let me give a couple numbers on that. So there's a firm called Kimberlite that does an exhaustive survey of our industry every year. They call everyone you use. What do you like about them? How are they good? I can text you some stuff. They write exhaustive report, but the summary of this, and they've been doing this survey now for seven years. And there's sort of four big players in our industry that are the four big companies. And they have five different categories, you know, their technology, their quality of the service. They'll respond when they make a mistake. You know, there's five major categories. Liberty is ranked number one in every category every year. Like that's every category every year. And so that's the point you just made, that when we have a culture this way, we have great people that work together as a team that believe they're part of an important mission. Now, our broader mission is to supply energy to the world, to enable great lives. But to do that and to do better at that, we've got to provide tremendous service to our partners and be the best customers to our suppliers. But I would say that the data from surveys and our performance in the marketplace back it up are last thing. And I don't really want to too much about the business, but yeah, our cash return on capital invested, our Croce is about 50% higher than the S&P 500 since the day we started the company today. And this has been a decade of terrible returns in our industry. Our industry has probably had less than half the average cash return on capital invested than the S&P 500. But our returns have been two to three fold higher than our industry and higher than the industry as a whole for just the reason you say, like, we're known for our efficiency or our technology or cutting edge this. But why do we have all those things? Like, they all only come from one place. It's the people. That's where technology comes from. That's where innovation comes from. That's where processes come from. They're not separate inputs with your humans. They're created by your team members and your family in the company.

Now, I love that. I love that you all are such a living example of that. Chris, I was engaging with a bunch of CEOs the other day and I asked them these two questions and then I asked them a third one. Literally, I asked them, I asked them this first question. I asked them, how many of you think Earth is flat? And they're like, nobody raised their hand. And I'm like, well, 500 years ago, 50% of you would have said, yep, Earth is flat. You know, science has then has proven it's not. When it comes to this topic of do you really believe investing in your people is a dominant competitive strategy than almost any other strategy? Right. This is the strategy that is dominant because without this, nothing else is possible. You need people to execute every other strategy you come up with. And they say, yep, I believe in it. And I said, no, you don't. I want you to question that belief because if you did, you will not let people go the first time. You would use data on your people at the same granular level. Like you get data on your operating assets, right? You know every well, you know every store's data every day on what they're doing. You have no idea where your people are. Maybe you do that once a year, some employee engagement survey and then you roll a one size fits all program. You'd never do that, right? You'd never run the same operational program for every oil well. Every situation, every site is different. They need different things. We don't personalize, we don't customize. So I'm like, I want you to reexamine your belief and I want you to think about this. Because in 50 years, this fact that Chris, you are living and you have been showcasing for 30 years that Alex has proved through research that multiple other companies like you who are trying to lead, but it's still, you know, odd man out. Science will be as clear as the science behind flat earth that no investing in people matter. But you know what? For this to be a competitive advantage for you, you have to do it before the others. You have to lead differently. Because in 50 years, this next generation of employees will demand it to even be able to fill a seat. And the governments will mandate it. It's already started with mental health and well being, part of employee health and safety. The first lawsuits that have been given on toxic workplaces. It's all started. But if you make a choice to build a company or integrate these learnings into your company like Chris did from the beginning, I think there's a real shot that you actually get those competitive returns. You do create this competitive edge where flourishing is at the heart of it. Because this is coming.

Yes, indeed. Yes, indeed.

So, Chris, just keeping an eye on the clock, I want to ask you one more question. We have so many that we can talk about. I mean, it's really, really amazing. You highlighted some of the skills around the people, leaders and what you cultivate. Right? Talk to us a little bit about what are some practices, Chris, that you integrate into your life so you make sure that you are protecting the asset that you are, that how do you take care of your own well being to make sure that you could serve so many others with all the demands you have as The CEO of a business.

Where does happiness come from? Right? It's from work that's meaningful, from earned success and even more from loving long term relationships. So, you know, my mom, my wife, my kids, my siblings, my friends are critical to me. They're critical to my happiness, to my joy, to my well being. So I am not a six days at the office, 6am to 8pm guy. I've never been that way. Never, never like, yes, I work in the week when stuff comes up, but I've always tried to keep from my whole professional career that work, life balance. This came back. We celebrated my mom's 87th birthday party in Mexico with my entire extended family. We do that every year, every Thanksgiving week for seven days. My siblings, their spouses, the nine grandchildren, my mom, we all go and spend a week together. I'll be heading to Montana. We spend, you know, before Christmas, well through New Year's with a good crew of family and friends. I've continued to climb mountains and travel the world and do things that matter and that make me feel. I read a lot. I would say part of my success in business is maybe a differential knowledge. I love to read. It's meaningful to me. And so therefore I need to turn that into a business advantage. And it is a business advantage, of course. And so yeah. And that's why recognizing I have different needs or desires than what the average company, their rules or constraints they would have on me just wouldn't work for me. My view was then I've got to understand everybody has different rules and needs. And some people come in early and some people come in late and some people work very flexible schedules. If your kid's got an important game, go see it. We treat people like adults is the simple way we say it. We want you to help move the ball forward. We're not going to. I don't want someone calling me up if they can ask to have three days off. No, no, no adult should ask that question. Deliver on your work and what you're doing. If you're going to be gone a day, something important you needed to do is there, then find that person who can cover for you or do it remote. I mean, people can solve these own challenges about their schedule and all if you just let them as opposed to having a system that they have to work within. We treat people like adults. I mean, heck, we have a bar in our office and we have happy hours. You know, most of us are drinking a beer or drink. We play all sorts of crazy games together. We laugh and cry Together we have a take your parents to work day which is a growing event. It's just awesome. People come in and you know, these are people and their parents are coming in to hear about the company and why, what liberty's mission matters. Why the oil and gas industry is the most important industry in the world. And the reason is because it enables every other industry to do what it does. And our biggest problem in the world today with oil, gas and coal is not too much of them, it's too little of them. A third of humanity's cooking their daily meals today, burning wood and dung and agricultural waste. 3 million people every year die from that indoor air pollution. That is an urgent crisis. And we can solve that crisis by getting energy to the people that live in unenergized worlds. Low income people struggle with the price of energy and food. The more we get better, the more we can abate that problem. I'm the weird oil and gas guy who celebrates low oil prices and low natural gas prices. We have to get efficient so we can deliver a good return at a lower and lower price in real terms so that people can live better and better lives. Our mission, and as I write in that report, I think you've got Ashish, is to better human lives. And what does it take to better human lives? First you got to hit the basic necessities. People have to have food and shelter and health care. And too many people don't have these basic necessities taken care of. Even low income people in our own country struggle with these. We've got to cover those because if you cover those, they can achieve those higher, those ultimate desires of happiness and meaningful relationships and thoughtful lives. We want everyone, when they die, to have left it on the field and lived a full and meaningful life which, and as you end with saying, which involves struggle like tragedy and insecurities and fear and bad thing happen to all of us. There is no way to avoid them. They're going to happen. All we can do is use our family and our friends and our partnership to soldier through those things.

And our bigger why, Chris. Right. And our bigger why. If we know our North Star. Nietzsche said it best. If you have a why, you can survive anyhow. You gotta have a why. And you gotta have friends and others who support you to trudge through it. Because if you do it, that suffering, that struggle is at the heart of a better you.

I love that quote. I'm gonna say it slower again. If you have a why, you can suffer through any how. If you know what you're about where you're going, what's meaningful. You can survive any adversities and setbacks because you have a reason, you have a purpose, you have a meaning that's above everything else. It makes us stronger, it makes us happier.

Chris, thank you. This was such an amazing conversation and my friend, I know we could talk on and on together. There's a new report that Chris is going to launch. It's the Bettering Human Lives. It's a report that comes out every year. There's a new one coming in January if you talk about. There's another one that I highlight for our listeners to check out is thank you North Face, the video that you recorded because you so clearly articulate the importance of energy and the role it plays away from all the politicizing. You know, we're just at the brink of the cop and there's all of this kind of what's out there, but there is a role of energy, right? I always talk about capitalism is not bad. Conscious capitalism is the reason that we can actually heal the planet through capitalism. Capitalism is at the heart of why poverty levels are down to where they are over the last 250 years, as is energy. And so please check that out. But Chris, I'm so grateful for you to take the time to spend with us. Share your thoughts. You are really a beacon of hope. You're a beacon of love. You're a beacon of inspiration to so many business leaders who should be looking and learning from what you've been able to create through the companies you've created and launched and are running now with Liberty. You're the model that so many I wish could follow and we could create a more prosperous, a healthier, kinder world. Thank you.

Pleasure being with you, Ashish. I appreciate you. I appreciate your thoughts and your work. Thank you. Take care everyone.

Thank you. Bye. That wraps up another episode of the Happiness Squad podcast. We hope you found the insights actionable to enhance your journey towards happiness and fill your life with more joy, health, love and meaning. Please consider leaving us Review and Share Share the podcast with anyone in your professional or personal life who you feel will benefit from some of these very insights. It's a really simple way to extend support and spread positivity. Take care and remember, happiness is a choice that's available to you moment to moment in the here and now. Take care and see you next week. Sam.